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xiubaek-13 · 5 years ago

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Let Me In - Part 2

Prompt: “If I knock politely will you let me in? I’ll make it worth your while”

Pairing: Baekhyun x Reader

Word Count: 4,950

Warnings: Vampire AU, smut, blood, mentions of death, murder & torture.

A/N: Part 1 was in my Halloween drabbles from a long ass time ago. I continuously got requests for a second part so it finally came into being today. Let me know what you think, comments help me greatly given the large breaks between posting for me, they help me work out if I’m still any good at this writing business.

“S-so, a-are you g-gonna k-kill me?” You stutter out, your fear making it hard for you to get the words out.

He smirks and steps back, freeing you from the wall. Before you can even think about regaining some semblance of composure he kneels on the floor and sinks his fangs into the dead man’s neck. Your eyes widen as you stand frozen to the spot, unable to blink, run, anything. It takes all you have just to remember to breathe.

He drops the corpse back to the floor when he’s finished feeding, licking his blood-stained lips as he sets his eyes on you again. “I think you’ve bought yourself some time.” He steps closer to you, caging your body between his arms, your back pressed back against the wall. “Convince me to let you live, but your case had better be compelling since you wasted my time earlier.” His dark gaze feels like its searing lines into your flesh as you feel it travel from your eyes to your lips, throat, & chest before raking back up to your eyes. “You still haven’t let me in.” He smirks.

What was that stupid saying that you used to say to your friends? Mark me down as scared and horny. That’s pretty much where you were right now. Terrified for multiple reasons (vampires were real, one sent a madman to kill you then killed said madman in front of you and was maybe, probably, most definitely doing to kill you) but also horny. It was impossible to deny how attractive Baekhyun was, both before when you thought he was human and now as he pinned you to the wall. Your mind is racing, jumping between freaking out about your impending death and lewd comments about his lips, hands, hips. If it had the capacity to take on anything else it might also be disgusted with itself for allowing lust to creep in at a time like this.

Somewhere deep down in your psyche a thought sparks. Draw this out, stay alive as long as you possibly can. The longer you are alive, the closer you are to sunrise. Make it to sunrise and escape. It wasn’t much to go on but it was the best you could think of. There was no way that you would overpower him with strength. If you wanted to win here then you were going to need to be smart and bide your time. Use every advantage that you could and the sun was a powerful one. His ego might just be another.

“I want to know more about you.” He raises one brow in response.

“Why?”

You inhale, steeling your nerves as you say the words that will change your life forever. “In the bar before, we talked. I liked that, liked getting to know you -” the words were not untrue. The bar had been nice. You’d captured the attention of the man every person, men and women alike, desired but he had only had eyes for you. You had been sitting at the bar enjoying your Old Fashioned when Baekhyun had first approached you. At the time it was immensely flattering but in hindsight you were probably just easy prey. You were alone and no one else had been paying much attention to you. “- but now that I know that you’re well, not human, I feel like that was all lies. Tell me about you first. Then I’ll let you in.”

He shifts back and considers your words. “Why should I tell you anything at all? I could just compel you to let me in and use you until I’m bored of your body.” His tone betrays him. He might be impatient and used to getting what he wants but from the way his tone shifted when he said he could compel you, you could tell that doing so would ruin the fun for him.

So you played with fire, figuratively speaking of course. Standard negotiating probably wouldn’t work here because a) you were terrified and b) impatient vampire. You weren’t trying to get out of sleeping with him either. You were attracted to him even through your fear and there was no denying that you wanted him. All you were trying to gain was time. The closer it got to sunrise, the higher your chances of survival were.

So you tried to match his ego to unnerve him.“Where is the fun in that?” You shrug. “If all you want is a body to fuck, then why ask me to convince you to let me live? Surely it’s better for you with a willing participant.” You take a step forward, avoiding the dead body on the floor, and advance on Baekhyun as you continue to speak. “One that wants you, that begs for you, that needs you.” You lick your lips as you finish, your words affecting you more than you thought they would. “Why put it all of the effort at the bar when you could have simply locked eyes and told me what you wanted me to do? I think you enjoy the hunt so why spoil it now? What harm is there in telling me about yourself when I’m just going to die anyway?” You shrug.

Baekhyun takes a few steps back and looks at you, really looks at you. His eyes narrow as he takes you in and tries to work out your ploy. “Interesting tactic little one. Futile though.” He smirks and turns away from you, heading off towards your kitchen.

Left with the corpse just behind you, you decide to follow him rather than rush out the front door. Baekhyun has already proved that he is faster than you so you probably wouldn’t get very far and even if you got to a neighbour in time there is the very real possibility that they’d die and it would be your fault.

As you enter the kitchen you spot Baekhyun mixing drinks. He points at the two armchairs you have in your makeshift reading nook, a place that has brought you comfort over the years. If there was ever a place for you to fight for your life then this would be the one place that would bring you strength. You make your way over to one of the armchairs and sink into its comforting embrace while you wait for Baekhyun to finish making drinks.

“I’ll play your game for now little one but don’t push your luck.” He says as he carries two drinks over, handing you one once he is close enough. You notice that he’s made the same drink that you were having at the bar. “You’re not wrong, compelling a mark kind of ruins the vibe but if I have to do it, I will.”

“Noted.”

“Asking me to tell you about myself is a bit vague given my lengthy existence so why don’t you try something more specific? I’ll let you ask as many questions as you want but there is a price for my answers.” He smirks.

“Name it.”

“Each time I answer you, you must remove an article of clothing. Once removed I’m free to touch the unclothed area. When you run out of clothing, your question time ceases and you submit yourself to me to have you as I please.”

You gulp as you try not to let on how appealing his price sounds. The logical part of your brain tries to yell over the burning lust that is taking over your senses about the dangers involved here but as far as you see it your options are die in pain or die in pleasure. Given the choice, you will avoid pain at almost any cost. He thinks he has you trapped, like a cat cornering a mouse but you aren’t so sure that you’ve been beaten yet. Not that he needs to know that.

“I accept your terms.” You say before taking a sip of your drink. The whiskey soothing any errant nerves.

You see Baekhyun’s eyes darken with desire as he sits opposite you, a smug look on his face now that he thinks he’s won. “I’ll give you a point for not forcing an unnecessary negotiation or rebuttal upon hearing my price.”

“You said not to waste your time. Your terms are not unsurprising and it did not seem like it was up for negotiation when you delivered it.”

“Smart woman.” He relaxed into the armchair, swirling his drink in one hand as the other beckoned for you to begin your questioning.

“How much of what you told me about yourself at the bar was true?”

“All of it.” He states bluntly, chuckling at the surprised look on your face. “I do work at a law firm in town with 8 others, it’s how we exist in human society. I don’t have traditional family as such anymore as I’ve long outlived them. I do prefer to go out at night for obvious reasons beyond my control and I find great beauty in the night.”

Baekhyun was right, he had told you the truth, just a very short version of it. Should that make you trust him any more? Probably not, but it did instil a small amount of something in you about him. He could have just lied about everything in order to lure you away but he chose the truth. In some weird way that counted for something.

“No lies, you just never bothered to dig deeper at the time.” He purred, eyes roaming your body as he waited to see what you would remove.

You slipped out of your leather jacket and draped it over the back of your seat. Baekhyun groaned impatiently when he saw the long sleeves that remained covering your arms. Victory, it would seem, was not yet within his grasp. Begrudgingly he took another sip of his drink as you laughed internally at his reaction.

“Is your normal pattern to trick someone into letting you into their home then you kill them?”

“No. My clan and I have tried many things over the years. Let’s see. There was compelling which was just too easy and made our existence dull, posing as missionaries which weirdly enough worked better than it should have… not that I’ll ever let Suho know that. Next was outright frenzy where we razed a town, feasted and moved on - that was one of the early ones.” He grins as he reminisces. “Where was I, oh yes. We told people we were vampires - that one was particularly popular in the 2000’s, we’ve pretended to be injured or dead then attacked the person who was kind enough to try and help us, also too easy in my opinion but effective. You humans are gullible.” He chuckles. “We also tried to use blood banks but supplies could not sustain our hunger without detection, so then we tried setting up our own donor systems but that was a logistical nightmare and more red tape than you should ever have to deal with as an immortal. Roleplay was a fun one, biting is a real kink for so many people - who knew? - and now the current approach which is an amalgamation of past methods - seduction and pleasure followed by feeding.” He finishes his account of vampiric blood sourcing by licking his lips, his fangs hidden from your view.

If you hadn’t seen them plunged into the neck of the now deceased man in your entryway you could be fooled into thinking that the man sitting across from you was just that, a man. But you had seen them and you knew they were real. You also knew the telltale signs of an impatient man and Baekhyun was most definitely impatient.

For an immortal being who could remain as still at the night he was fidgeting and tapping his glass more than any vampire should. Whether it was hunger or something else causing it you didn’t know. The erratic movements were unsettling and causing your nerves to return. His gaze pierces yours as he waits.

You set your drink on the floor and stand, moving your arms behind you as you unzip your skirt, letting it fall to the floor, revealing a small amount of flesh at the top of your thighs, your garter belt and stockings covering most of the unveiled skin.

You hear him inhale, something he does not need to do. “You’re just going to leave it on the floor like that? Little one, it will crumple.” His voice is rough as he chides you.

You smirk and turn away from him before giving him what he wants. You step out of the skirt, bend at the hips and collect the discarded piece from the floor. You can feel his eyes on your ass as you bend forward, leaving little to the imagination. Only a small strip of fabric prevents him from your sex.

After you place your skirt on the back of the chair, on top of the jacket, you sit. Your brain doesn’t register the movement but before you can cross one leg over the other Baekhyun is there, kneeling between them, his hands on the uppermost part of your thighs where the skin is exposed.

“You,” He growls. “do not know the fire with which you are playing with.” You can see the tips of his fangs now. Your body betrays you as you feel heat and want rushing to your core and your eyes close. His fingers trace patterns into your thighs, ghosting near the edge of your panties and down your inner thighs which only builds your arousal.

“You’ll beg for me to fuck you before you’re fully undressed little one. Why deny yourself what we both know you desire?” He grazes his fangs along the column of your neck as your core clenches around nothing.

When you open your eyes he is back in his seat swirling his drink like he had never moved. The absence of his touch left you wanting. Your stubbornness is the only thing keeping you from rushing through your questions because Baekhyun is not wrong, you want him - badly. “Are you going to kill me?”

He cocks his head as he ponders your question. “Honestly haven’t made my mind up yet. Before this current bargain I was just going to fuck you and drain you, the only variable there being if I let you enjoy it or if I let you feel pain. Now… I’m not sure. You might be interesting enough to keep alive for now. It all depends really.”

Your fingers expertly undo the buttons of your blouse and you shrug out of its sleeves, leaving you clad only in your underwear and heels. “On what?” You ask. The lines of this little ruse are starting to blur for you. The original plan to keep Baekhyun talking in order to reach sunrise is fading, leaving only images on the vampire taking you every which way, giving you pleasure you could only dream of.

“On you little one.” Baekhyun’s voice comes from directly behind you. You feel his hands moving down your sides, one snaking between your legs and gripping your inner thigh and the other splayed over your stomach. You feel his fangs drag over your throat and you shudder. “You might just convince me.” You feel his presence disappear and know without turning around that he is no longer standing behind you. You can feel where his hands were on your body, the ghost of his touch remaining.

As you look around you can’t spot him anywhere. You know he’s still in the house because why would he leave now? You make your way to the various rooms in your home as you search for the vampire but he is nowhere. You start to feel frustration overtaking your lust as you call out. “Baekhyun! Where are you?”

His voice sounds from a room that you had already checked, your bedroom. “This game needs to continue in another room little one.” You make your way back upstairs to your room as he speaks again, his voice closer this time. “You are far too indecently clothed to be in a sitting room.”

As you enter the room you see him leaning against your bedpost, his eyes roaming your body. Your ears register the sound of him moving past you but your eyes do not. The door closes behind you and he appears to have not moved. The fear inside you spikes back up as you witness a modicum of his power. You’ve been toying with him when all along he could just snap you like a twig.the thought terrifies you but you try to push your fear down. It will not help you now.

You saunter towards the bed only for him to hold up a hand and stop you. “I believe you asked a question little one. You know the rules.” Left with only a few options you step out of your heels and continue towards the bed.

By your count you have three questions left before this little game ends and you plan to use them to ensure that whatever happens after doesn’t hurt you and might just lead to you keeping your life. You aren’t going to bother with asking more about his past. You are pretty sure you know enough, he’s been undead for quite some time but from looking at him you would guess that he was in his 20’s when he was turned. He can be cruel - you have not forgotten the madman he compelled earlier - he is determined, overconfident, smug, impatient and alluring and he has made you crazed with lust.

“How do you want me?” you ask sultrily as you reach the foot of your bed.

Out of the corner of your eye you see him remove his jacket and place it over the chair at your dresser. His shoes and socks are next, then he starts to unbutton his shirt as he moves behind you. You can feel him standing behind you but he does not touch you. He lets the anticipation build, he knows this game has almost reached its end, he is one step closer to getting what he wants from you.

“Naked and wanting.” He confesses. “Reveling in the pleasure I give you, begging for more.”

Your bra drops to the floor, making him groan. “And what will you do to me?” You ask, before he can say anything to alter your train of thought. Your mind is set on one path and one path only now. You want him. You want him to make you forget that you were ever afraid of him, that he ever posed a danger to you, that he is anything more than an incredibly attractive man with eyes only for you.

“Everything.” He whispers in your ear. His hands cup your breasts, fingers lightly pinching your nipples. “I’ll make you feel pleasure like you’ve never felt before. Make you beg for me to never stop fucking you, for me to bite you. And I will, once you beg for it.”

A moan escapes your throat, giving away just how aroused you are. Your hand brushes against his crotch as you move to undo your garter belt and you feel how hard he is for you. He stops your hand and completes the action for you, sliding the stockings down your legs and off your feet. He spins you and pushes you down onto the bed, removing the shirt from his shoulders and undoing his pants as he kneels at your feet.

“Why me?” you manage to say as you watch him undress, your eyes taking in the lean planes of his body. He wasn’t wearing underwear you muse as your eyes are drawn to his cock, hard and waiting to enter you. His eyes follow yours and he grins when he realises where their gaze has not wavered. Shuffling back of the bed far gracefully than he has any right to, he moves back into a standing position so that he can remove his pants.

Fully naked, he moves back to his position between your legs. “What’s the point of being immortal if you deny yourself the simple pleasures in life?” he responds as he kisses your ankle, before moving up your calf, to your thigh, hip, breast, neck before finally reaching your lips. “I find beauty in the night and I take what I want. Right now, that is you.”

His lips crash into yours in a kiss that is so desperate that you don’t register the ripping of your panties until you can feel him, all of him flush against your skin. His body doesn’t emit heat, rather it is cool to the touch but it isn’t a bad feeling. Rather it is refreshing in comparison to how hot you feel. His mouth works against yours, the lip ring providing a new sensation for the kiss.

When he breaks the kiss to allow you to breathe you see the dark fire in his eyes, his desire palpable. “You’re mine now little one. I told you your game was futile, that you would give in to me and here we are, your wet little cunt begging for my cock. Do you think you deserve pleasure after how long you made me wait?”

“Yes.” you breathe.

He looks amused. “Oh? And why is that?”

“I was scared of you. There was no desire to let you in before we talked more but now, now I want you even though I know part of the truth about you. You said it was better if the other person was willing, well, now I am.” You laid out the truth for him. You were no longer scared of him even though you knew he could still inflict the worst pain imaginable on you and kill you. What you felt now was desire so strong that nothing, not even fear of death, could break through.

He grinned, baring his fangs to you. “You, my dear, have proven to be far more interesting than I gave you credit for. There is one thing I didn’t tell you though, something that will make what is about to happen much more pleasurable for you. Vampires can direct the blood flow of any body that they are in contact with. You think you want me now? Wait until you feel as though you’re on fire, your skin burning with need as I taste you. You’ll beg me to drink your blood from wherever I please. And I will.”

You shuddered at his words. Desire pouring through you, making you feel as though you were drugged. “Kiss me.” The words left your mouth without any thought. Baekhyun leaned down and his lips closed over yours gently, seeing if you were going to try and get away from him. When he realised that you weren’t going anywhere he intensified the kiss, increasing the pressure and igniting your senses.

He ran his tongue along the seam of your lips until you opened your mouth, allowing your tongues to work against each other. You could feel his fangs grazing your lip but it did not scare you, rather it made you want more. His hands roamed your body as the two of you kissed, teasing your nipples and brushing near your core, never where you wanted the friction the most.

“Please” you moan.

“What do you want little one?” he teases.

“Touch me.” His hands grip your thighs, spreading your legs wide for him. You try to roll your hips, desperate for any sort of friction but you don’t achieve the contact you’re after. You whimper as the frustration builds. You want him to touch you so badly, you need your release and soon.

“Patience little one.” He chuckles. “As flattering as it is to see just how badly you want me, I want to savour this. His eyes drift down. “You look delectable.” He shifts his body down the bed so that his face is level with your dripping centre.

He slowly drags his fangs from your thigh, up your leg, and moves over your centre, to the other thigh. The sensation makes you whimper as you try to grind your hips, but he holds you down with his hands as you try to find some friction to help you along. “Please” You breathe.

Smirking he moves back to where you need him the most, flicking his tongue against your clit. Your mind goes blank at the sensation as he repeats the motion, deepening the pressure he’s applying until you moan loudly. If anything, it only serves to spur him on, attaching his lips to your clit as his tongue presses and swirls around it. Your hips would have been bucking into his face if he wasn’t holding you down.

He pauses for a moment to confess “You are fucking delectable, I could do this all night.” before resuming his feast. You bite your lip as he rolls his tongue against you, his fangs lightly grazing your clit and sending a whole new wave of pleasure flowing through you. You never expected his fangs to draw such a response from you but you felt yourself moan louder every time they grazed over your clit. You could feel his eyes watching you as he pleasured you, taking in every reaction and building his actions on that. Your arousal builds as he alternates the pace and pressure of his tongue, and increases the feel of his fangs against you.

“Fuck” you whimper. The sensations are building too quickly and you can feel your release approaching with haste when he detaches his mouth from you. You look down at him and he smirks at you before you can utter a complaint, not breaking eye contact as he pushes one then two fingers into your wet heat.

You can’t stop yourself from moaning his name as he starts to move his fingers back and forth in a steady rhythm. “You like that?” he growls as you clench around his fingers. “Little one, you are so wonderfully wet. Just for me. You love it don’t you? You love how my fingers feel, how my tongue feels and most of all you love how my fangs feel against your clit. Don’t you?” His pupils are so dark and blown out with lust as he lowers his skilled mouth back to your bundle of nerves.

The combined sensation of his long fingers, skilled tongue and sharp fangs become too much for you. He moans against you as he works, curling his fingers inside you and fluttering his tongue against your clit. You writhe on the bed as he increases his speed to a level that a mere human could never achieve and right before your orgasm hits, he sinks his fangs into you. The pleasure was so intense, so overwhelming that you sobbed his name as he helped you ride out your high. You were too far gone to realise that he was tasting you, really tasting you now that his fangs penetrated your flesh. You felt no pain, only white hot pleasure.

When he released you he looked up at you, mouth and fangs dripping with a mixture of your juices and blood. Your body still tingles with aftershocks of your orgasm and you feel like you’re on fire. You should be spent but you only want him more.

God you wanted to him to fuck you.

He flips you over, positioning you on your knees. He grunts as he enters you in one fluid motion. He meets no resistance given how ready you were for his cock. He grips your waist tightly as he sets a brutal pace, the only sounds in the room are of skin hitting skin and cries of pleasure.

“You fit my cock perfectly. Look at how much you want this, at how badly you want a vamp to fuck the life out of you.” He grunts in between thrusts.

“Baekhyun. Fuck” You moan when he hits your g spot.

You had never felt pleasure like this before. You’d had great sex before but this was on a level of its own. Baekhyun had had an unknown amount of time to perfect this act and hone his skills and he was not disappointing. He moved between a pace that felt more like what you were used to and then a pace faster than you could have ever imagined.

“This.” He growled, “Is how a vampire fucks you.” and lifted your body up so that it was flush with his, tilting your head so that your throat was exposed for him. He ran his tongue along your neck, making you moan deeply as you recalled the feeling of his fangs.

“You want it don’t you?” He asked as he pounded into you. “Want me to sink my fangs back into your flesh as I fuck you?” You couldn’t form words to respond to him, only moans of want and pleasure. He grazed his fangs along your neck and you writhed against the touch.

His fangs pierced the skin of your neck and the sensation barreled you over the edge. Everything was heightened and a feeling that you had never experienced before flooded your system. You felt full, alive, and like you were about to explode. You shuddered and cried out as your orgasm ripped through you harder than last time as Baekhyun chased his.

The last thing you saw before you blacked out were his eyes, now a deep red as he stared down at your form and smiled. “I think I’ll keep you.”

#exowritersnet #kloversnet #kwordsmiths #exo fic #exo drabble #baekhyun fic #baekhyun drabble #exo smut #exo scenario #exo imagine #baekhyun smut #baekhyun scenario #baekhyun imagine #baekhyun vampire #exo vampire au

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actualyuuri · 5 years ago

Note

If you don't plan on finishing your latest Viktuuri story, will you share what your plans for it were? I know a summary/outline type of thing isn't the same as writing out your story, and I understand if you don't want to do that. I'm asking because I'd feel a bit of closure but that's selfish and I know that. I think about that fic a lot.

I’m afraid it was too long ago for me to recall what my exact plans were.

BUT! I do remember the password to the doc, and just checked, and I had part of chapter four written but unpublished. Might as well share it! A warning, it might have some typos/rough patches as I don’t believe I ever went through it and refined it like I normally do.

(if you are reading this and haven’t read chapters 1-3 of “if i’m never your hero”, what is below will make zero sense, so maybe check this out first)

INT. HISTORY MAKER TRIBUNE BUILDING — MORNING

Yuuri has been waiting for Thursday.

He’s reclining at his desk, earbuds in his ears and an article that he’s barely paying attention to playing in a monotone, perfectly articulate voice. His mind is distracted. Because it’s Thursday. It’s finally Thursday. It’s Thursday, which means that he and Victor are going out for lunch today, which means that he really should not have stopped another mugging last night because laughing makes his bruised ribs hurt, which means that—

A finger taps his shoulder.

Yuuri jumps, one arm reaching up to tug on the right wire of the earphones and his foot pressing against the ground, swiveling his chair around. His ears instantly adjust to the environment he hadn’t paid attention to, lips instantly parting to see if he can taste anything in the air.

“Guess who.”

He doesn’t have to, really.

Firstly, there’s only two people with Russian accents at the Tribune, and Yuuri highly doubts that Yurio would use such a flirtatious tone with him.

Secondly—embarrassingly enough—Yuuri can recognize his heartbeat by now. He hadn’t tried to memorize the sound of it, no, it had just happened.

Thirdly, he uses the same cologne every day. It’s musky, strong but reserved in the scent. Familiar, at this point. Yuuri inhales, licks his lips and tries to calm his own heartbeat, because, admittedly, Victor had scared him.

“I have no idea,” he jokes, and he’s smiling already, which is a little ridiculous, perhaps a little overenthusiastic, but it’s Thursday, it’s Thursday, and Thursday means that they’re going on a date today, a lunch date, probably short due to the limitations of a lunch break but a date all the same.

It’s Thursday.

With one hand, Yuuri twirls the earbud, the black wire going round and round until it’s spinning so fast that it’s no longer visible. In front of him, he hears the sound of skin rustling against fabric. Victor’s hands must be in his pockets. “Take a guess.”

“Is it…” Yuuri starts, and he’s laughing, for some reason, and he tries to bite it back but it’s hard with Victor, somehow. “Leo?”

“Mmm. Not quite.”

(Victor is smiling, too. And his heart racing.)

“Guang Hong?” Yuuri tries. The article is still playing in his left ear so he removes that earbud, too, attention now fully put on the man standing in front of him. He licks his lips, and a second later, he hears Victor do the same.

The sliding of a chair on wood. The swoosh of air as Victor sits down.

“You can do better than that,” Victor urges.

“Emil? Mickey?”

He chuckles and runs a hand through his hair—the sound of the strands parting beneath his fingers, the gentle exhalation that sends a shiver up Yuuri’s spine. “Are we still on for lunch?” he asks. “Our second of many dates?”

If Yuuri was repressing his smile before, he’s now grinning. He can’t be bothered to care. “Many?”

“Yes, don’t you think?”

At that, Yuuri retreats by ducking his head, folding his arms across his chest. He tries desperately to think of a witty retort, a kind thing to say, anything, anything, but Victor Nikiforov—not for the first time—has left him speechless. “Yeah… I’d… Um, yeah.”

With his palm, Victor taps out a beat on Yuuri’s desk. “We’ll leave at eleven?”

“That’s a bit early,” Yuuri points out quietly, taking extra caution to make sure his tone doesn’t sound like that of a rejection, because he is most definitely not trying to reject Victor Nikiforov. “Do you think Celestino is okay with that?”

“What can I say?” Victor drawls, and pauses, as though letting the words settle. He leans forward, the chair creaking, the scent of his cologne growing more prominent, the warmth of his skin searing as his fingers brush against Yuuri’s, a ghost of a touch. “I just so happen to be hungry today. So I’d like an early lunch. It’s completely unrelated to my desire to spend as much time with you as possible as soon as possible.”

“Right, unrelated,” Yuuri teases back, but it comes out breathless, so, embarrassed, he leans forward to poke him. His finger lands in Victor’s chest—bullseye, probably—and then he spins his own chair back around to face the computer, reaching for his earphones. “See you at eleven.”

No footsteps.

Yuuri keeps the black buds in his fingers, not putting them back in just yet.

A pause.

“How about ten?”

“Victor,” Yuuri groans with fake exasperation, and he can’t help but be overwhelmed with excitement, the man standing behind him so absolutely captivating and interesting and endearing, above anything else. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re very determined?”

“Oh, all the time. It’s one of my better traits. That, and the handsomeness. See you at eleven, Yuuri Katsuki.” The chair is pushed back in and there are finally quieting footsteps as Victor walks away. There’s an extra spring in his step. Yuuri smiles at the thought of that and makes sure he’s facing his computer before covering his face with a hand, trying his very best not to freak out where Victor would most definitely be able to see him.

There’s a snort from his left, and Yuuri jumps again, unsure how he hadn’t been able to notice the young boy standing near him. “That was physically painful to witness,” Yurio tells him.

EXT. CAFE — 10:30 AM

It’s sort of automatic, Yuuri taking Victor’s arm.

Neither of them say anything about it. Nor do they say much about anything as they walk to the nearest restaurant, shoulders brushing against each other’s far, far more than they need to. Yuuri doesn’t bother to use his white cane, simply pays attention on his own and trusts Victor.

When they sit down, Victor laughs.

“What?” Yuuri asks, hand self-consciously reaching up to brush through his hair, in case there’s something in it, then touching his shirt.

“Oh, sorry. There’s a painting of a dog on the wall. It looks like my dog,” Victor explains, and Yuuri hears a camera click. “Standard poodle.”

“I used to have a toy poodle,” Yuuri provides, and turns to his right. He can sense the wall a few feet away, can even tell where the air parts and the picture frame begins. But the contents of the image are lost to him. “Is the dog playing poker?”

Victor laughs. “No, he’s… He’s on a beach. Running on a beach. The water is turquoise. It almost… It almost looks like it could be mistaken for the horizon. Like it’s meant to be either the sky or the sea, sort of an optical illusion. There’s a gradient, but it’s so subtle that it’s hard to tell.” Then, Victor shrugs, turning back towards him. “You had a toy poodle?”

“Vicchan,” Yuuri adds, mind briefly contemplating the irony of the name. “What’s your dog’s name?”

“Makkachin. Would you want to meet him?”

Without even thinking about it, Yuuri nods.

“He’d like you,” Victor decides after a moment, thumbing through the menu. “In, fact, he’s—oh.” He looks up. “Want me to read off the menu to you? It’s not very long. Sandwiches, burgers, pasta.”

Yuuri shrugs. “I’ll just have whatever you’re having. I’m not picky.”

“You’re sure? What if we don’t have the same taste?”

He runs a hand through his hair. “Read it to me, then.”

Victor sets his menu flat on the table, begins to read off different items. A few items in, Yuuri feels fingers brush against his and he takes in a sharp breath, surprised to hear Victor’s heartbeat is hardly quicker than normal. He shuts his eyes as Victor’s thumb brushes against his knuckles, a quick sweep of them, then settles on the back of Yuuri’s palm, creating a small, circular pattern.

He realizes he hadn’t been paying attention to half of the menu.

“And what are you having?” Yuuri asks, and if he’s breathless, he’d put the blame on the contact between them, on the fire that erupts over every inch of him with each of Victor’s movements.

“I’ll just have whatever you’re having,” he responds.

Yuuri bites his lip, suppressing a smile. “I don’t know what I’m having.”

Victor shrugs—Yuuri hears the muscles, the faint creaking of the chair, the delicate flick of the air. “I guess we’ll just wing it, then.” His thumb ceases its movements on Yuuri’s palm and drifts higher, to his wrist, where it remains still. “So tell me what you think of my article.”

“Your article…?” Yuuri starts, both knowing that Victor is speaking about his vigilante-based piece and hoping that he isn’t.

When Victor had first told him about the article, he’d mentioned that the vigilante had saved his life after a jewelry store robbery. Yuuri had tried to think back, tried to remember, and, yes, he’d pushed someone out of the way of a vehicle, had brought them to the ground and been gone again in an instant, chasing the perpetrators. Then, though, he hadn’t known it was Victor, hadn’t been able to recognize the heartbeat that is now growing more and more familiar each day.

But he’d saved Victor’s life.

And then, during the factory fires, he’d spoken to him.

Victor shifts in his chair, leaning forward, and his thumb presses more firmly into Yuuri’s wrist with excitement. “You know the article. Tell me what you think.” With that, he rests his free hand on his thigh, begins drumming his index finger on the fabric. He’s restless, Yuuri realizes. He’s restless seemingly all the time. “I’ve been trying to search for more sightings the past few days, but no such luck.”

The past few days, Yuuri had kept his head lower than usual. But if he hopes to continue what he’d been doing, he can’t do that forever. It’d be best to get Victor off of this track in the first place, but given the sudden step-up of his heart rate and catch to his breath, that won’t be an easy task. “I think it’s, um…”

He trails off, torn between praise and forced criticism.

“I spoke to Celestino about it,” Victor adds, thoughtful. “He said he’ll publish it.”

“That’s… Great,” Yuuri decides, and keeps his head turned towards the table. He feels Victor’s fingers leave his arm. “I hope it sells.”

Victor hums. “You don’t sound like you mean that.”

Yuuri glances up, apologetic. “I do mean it! I do, really, it’s just… I don’t want you getting hurt. But we’ve talked about that already.” He swallows. “Really, I do think it’s great. Just… Yeah.”

There are footsteps, and then suddenly there’s an individual standing to their left, hands being smoothed down a cotton apron. “Have you two decided?”

Before Yuuri can even open his mouth to speak, Victor has answered.

“I’m having whatever he’s having.”

Yuuri flounders, a reddish blush powdering his cheeks as his mouth opens and closes in an attempt to say something. “Uh… A cheeseburger.”

“Two cheeseburgers?” The waitress confirms.

Victor nods, then she walks away.

A companionable silence settles between them and Yuuri leans back in his chair. He feels a foot press against his ankle and he grins automatically, pushing back. Victor’s foot moves away and Yuuri has to shift forward in his chair to chase it. He can’t seem to find it, though, and it takes him a moment to realize that Victor put it behind the leg of his chair. “Cheater,” he accuses.

Victor laughs and kicks him lightly again, and this time Yuuri is relentless, catching him before he can retreat. His chair creaks loudly when he accidentally shifts it a few inches, and Victor takes a sip of his water, presumably glancing around the restaurant to see if anyone has noticed them.

“All’s fair in love and war,” Victor replies without missing a beat.

“And which is this?”

Yuuri only realizes what he’d just said after the words had left his mouth. If he could reach out and grab them from the air, he would, but instead he just clears his throat, pushing his glasses up with his left hand. With his right, he absently reaches for the white stick that’s leaning against the table.

“Love already, Yuuri Katsuki?” he teases, then whistles. “Well…”

“You said it, not me,” Yuuri points out, and kicks Victor’s shin once again.

Victor shrugs one shoulder. “And here I was, hoping to catch you off guard once again. I guess you’re learning my tricks.”

“You’re a one trick pony,” Yuuri replies.

“Ah, now that’s not true.” Yuuri feels fingers drift against his own once again, and warmth floods through him, his heart beating just a little bit faster. He hears Victor swallow. “I’ve got many talents.”

There’s a blatant suggestion behind the words, and Yuuri’s breath catches. Instead of replying, he leans forward and takes a sip of his drink, using the hand that isn’t currently underneath Victor’s. He moves his fingers against Victor’s own, turning his palm upwards. The other man gets the hint and laces their hands, offering a slight squeeze.

Yuuri isn’t sure where his own audacity had come from, as Victor is normally the one to initiate things, but he smiles a little to himself—can’t help it, really.

It doesn’t take long for their conversation to steer itself back on track. They discuss coworkers, assignments from Celestino, everything that isn’t Victor’s article, which Yuuri is thankful for. He worries, though, that Victor may have noticed his reluctance to discuss it. The last thing he wants is for Victor to think that he thinks it’s bad, and that he’s not a good journalist by extension, but he also wishes he’d turn his attentions elsewhere.

All he can do is hope.

EXT. WEST 43RD STREET — NIGHT

Yuuri’s shoulder hurts like hell.

He sits on the edge of the roof of Ice Castle, gripping it with his right hand and trying to determine whether or not he should head inside and call it a night. Hopefully, he could prevent Yuuko from seeing the injury—if she’s even still inside. He’d underestimated a lithe mugger, who had had an unexpectedly sharp right hook.

He rolls it, groans out loud and arches his back, eyes squeezing shut and ears still acutely listening to the city around him. With his other hand, he tugs off his mask, needing to breathe fully, and brushes his hair back. He gels it back when he goes out at night—otherwise it could fall in front of his eyes and obstruct his fighting.

After he determines he’ll head back inside, sirens go off in the distance.

At least six blocks away.

He breathes.

Shuts his eyes.

Narcotics. In progress.

West 50th Street and 9th Avenue.

Yuuri squeezes his shoulder again, testing.

It’s just drugs—the police can probably handle it.

And then he hears a gunshot, just a faint echo of a thing.

Staggering slightly, he gets to his feet, stretches his back. He approaches the edge of the roof, makes the easy jump to the next building, and his walk slowly develops into a jog which slowly develops into a run, and then it’s a full sprint, the wind blowing against his still-exposed face and hair.

After another jump, he slides the mask back over his head, listens as the situation develops. The gunshots—there were two total—ceased, but he has made it this far, so he may as well continue.

When he has finally made it, he crouches on a rooftop above the scene, panting. His stamina is reliable, but it has been pushed to the limit. He collapses against an air conditioning unit, listens carefully to the activity below. It would appear a few individuals have been apprehended—he hears the police officers speaking into their walkie talkies and getting back into their cars.

So there was no reason for him to come, after all.

(And then something grabs his shoulder.)

Time slows.

Everything slows.

Like traversing through thick mud—no, quicksand, sinking and sinking.

First, he gets to his feet and swivels on his heels, grabbing the attacker’s wrist hard. He bends it but then another hand comes flying out of nowhere, fist meeting his cheek and knocking him off balance.

His heart leaps as the ground below comes into view, being knocked onto his stomach with his upper torso hanging over the edge of the roof. He scrambles off of the edge and turns again so that he can see his assailant.

Black.

Wearing all black.

Yuuri’s vision spins.

The attacker, taking advantage of the fact that they’re above him, lurches forward with their right leg. It lands on Yuuri’s bad shoulder and he groans in pain, trying desperately to make it onto his feet so that he can better defend himself.

He manages to get onto his feet, gripping his left shoulder to try and press away the pain and punching with his left hand. However, it doesn’t hit—the attacker dodges by stepping backwards, their movements quick.

When he licks his lips, he tastes blood.

“Who are you?” he manages to choke out, because his heart is racing and stalling for time may be the best option.

Instead of responding, the attacker predictably moves forward. Yuuri rolls to the right, back once again pressed against the air conditioning unit. He gets on top of it with one quick movement, now having the advantage of height.

Their hand moves to their waist.

Gleaming silver.

A knife.

He takes a step back on the air conditioning unit, glances around. If he’s fast, and if he’s smart, he can make it past them and make the short jump to the next rooftop. His advantage is his senses—it’s easy to predict movements. Their muscles tense in their right leg as they take a step forward with their left, grounding them.

With Yuuri above them, it appears they’re unsure of what to do.

Waiting, he realizes.

They’re waiting for him to get down.

And if they’re not moving first, despite the fact that they have a knife, there must be a reason for that.

And they hadn’t pulled the knife out right away, either—they’d started with their fists.

Yuuri listens deeper, feels for details that he must’ve missed.

And then he senses it.

Trembling.

Trembling from more than just adrenaline.

“You’re scared,” Yuuri realizes out loud, and hates how breathy his voice sounds, how pathetic. “You don’t have to…”

They leap.

He leaps off the AC unit and to the right, rolls with his back and breaks out into a full sprint towards the other rooftop. It’s only a few meters, but the attacker has the advantage of distance and lack of exhaustion, and they’re on his heels, and—

It grazes his skin.

The scent of copper mingling with oxygen, the taste of it in the air…

But then a yell.

Yuuri pushes himself up with his palms digging into the gravel on the rooftop and turns his head. The attacker falls to the ground and the knife clinks as it lands a few meters away. Shifting towards it, Yuuri ignores the roaring pain in his back that is begging to be noticed.

A third heartbeat.

There’s a third heartbeat on the rooftop.

But before he can contemplate that he wraps his fingers around the hilt of the knife and stumbles to his feet, holding it forward towards the attacker who remains laying on the ground. Breaths heaving, he listens for the third heartbeat, which is rapid, frantic, horrified, on the other edge of the rooftop and slowly backing up farther and farther.

Friend, not foe.

The attacker gets up quickly, and then there’s a standstill.

A triangle.

Yuuri, the attacker, and the third.

Yuuri knows what’s going to happen an instant before it does.

Instead of running at him, the attacker runs at the horrified presence on the roof, and Yuuri chases, knife in his hand. They’re planning on using a hostage. He manages to grab him just in time, but the attacker swings with his left fist, catching him in his bad shoulder once again. Without a choice, Yuuri lurches forward with the knife and catches him deep in the arm. The attacker slumps, yelling in pain, and beneath them, Yuuri hears hasty footsteps.

The police were alerted by the noise.

Leaving the bleeding assailant on the ground, who is live and very much conscious, Yuuri stumbles backwards. His back is bleeding, his shoulder is potentially displaced. He swallows, tries to maintain his balance. The police are coming up the stairs, the police are coming up the stairs and—

“You’re hurt,” a voice says.

Except…

No, no no no…

(The heartbeat remains rapid, but as Yuuri focuses in on it he realizes it was obvious all along, that it belonged to Victor. That Victor had seen the knife and knocked the attacker to the ground, that he must have snuck up when Yuuri was distracted with the fight.)

(That he must have come here to find Yuuri.)

(It was obvious, but Yuuri was distracted, and now…)

Quickly gaining his sense of direction and realizing that the police will be here any second, Yuuri turns towards the closest building. He limps to the edge, considers whether or not he’d be able to make the jump in his current state. The knife wound hadn’t been deep, but his senses allow him to feel every agonizing centimeter of it, every last lit nerve.

Afferent neurons, Yuuri can hear Phichit saying in his head. Damn them.

“I’m fine,” he bites out, careful to keep his voice low.

“The knife hit you,” Victor says, and steps forward. When they’d last met like this, there had been hesitancy, fear. Although it’s still present, it’s lessened by the adrenaline and the fact that there’s a man bleeding on the ground beside them. “You’re bleeding.”

Yuuri doesn’t turn to face him. “I’ll be fine,” he corrects, and takes a step back, readying himself to take the jump.

“The police can help you,” he promises. “I know the police chief. I can talk to him.”

He doesn’t move.

A hand touches his shoulder and he reacts on instinct, turning and grabbing the wrist hard. Victor makes a noise of protest and Yuuri realizes what he’d done instantly, letting go. There’s an apology half-formed on his lips but Victor has already backed up, eyes wide and horrified.

Despite his fear, he scans Yuuri, taking in every detail of his appearance. Yuuri’s mask is only from the nose upwards, so he steps backwards into the darkness. Victor is smart, after all. He doesn’t waste a second, mainly focusing on the limited part of Yuuri’s skin that is exposed. A journalist by nature, Yuuri realizes.

“Or at least come with me,” Victor begs. “I can help you. They don’t know I’m here. I came because I…”

He falters, but they both know why he came here.

Yuuri thinks about the man lying on the ground, still smells the growing presence of blood in the air. He feels sick to his stomach. “That was stupid.”

“I didn’t realize that someone would—”

“You got in the way.” He says, and turns again so that Victor can’t continue looking at his chin. “Don’t look for me again.”

And with that, he jumps.

The landing is rough—his knees hit the concrete and he feels his body protest. But he continues, hearing the excited chatter of the police as they storm the rooftop. He hears Victor’s heartbeat, increasingly distant, and hears his voice as he tries to explain himself to the police chief.

#anonymous #maddie answers #i have a vague memory of justine and i talking the whole plot through so maybe she remembers something #this is a p big chunk of chapter four though huh!! i didn't even realize i had that #i hope this gives you some sort of closure anon and i'm sorry i can't do more

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dhaskoi · 6 years ago

Text

She Doesn’t Work For Me

Chapter 1

Of course Kara knows who she is. You can’t be a woman in America, let alone a feminist, and *not* know who she is. That goes double if you care about or studied law or journalism or politics (so probably triple for Kara). Funny thing, the first time Kara heard her name was before any of these things loomed large in her life on Earth, when she was still struggling to adapt to an impossibly new life and just beginning to hope that the Danvers might become a true family to her. It had been a conversation between Eliza and Jeremiah, he’d made some throwaway comment about women leaving the field because of the wage gap and Eliza had responded ‘not if Alison McBeal has anything to say about it’.

At the time it had been one more reference Kara didn’t get, and her understanding of Earth culture was barely reaching a point where she had a good sense of what she needed to know to blend in (favourite band, favourite tv show, where did you get that t-shirt, nickels, then dimes, then quarters and the base ten number system) and what she didn’t. She was able to grasp that their conversation wasn’t anything an early adolescent would be expected to take an interest in and dismissed it as one less data point she had to keep track of, when she was struggling with so many already.

In her last year of high school, sufficiently comfortable with Earth culture that she could spare the energy to indulge her own curiosity, Kara had encountered the name again in her current events class and had one of those ‘oh, that’s what that was about’ moments that were already familiar to her. Alison McBeal, a civil rights lawyer famous for her involvement in several precedent setting cases, most recently ‘March vs Ingersoll’ when she’d represented a lab technician who’d discovered she was earning three quarters as much as her less qualified male colleague. Kara realises this must have been the case Eliza had been referring too and her attention is caught. Reading about this woman fighting for justice is an echo of home, and however arbitrary the association Kara finds comfort in it. More so when her name crops up at odd moments in Kara’s studies – an interview with Cat Grant, an impassioned rant directed at some idiot who’d questioned if Superman could legally have a relationship with a human – and her name becomes a sort of talisman for Kara, not unlike Cat Grant’s.

Kara certainly never expected to actually meet her.

And definitely not like this.

Three months into Cat’s triumphant return things are finally starting to feel settled. Kara’s spending more time at CatCo these days and more time writing features and think pieces. She’d been resistant to the move at first, despite Cat’s not so subtle nudging. Kara had suspected the suggestion that her unique perspective was arguably more valuable in that role was Cat’s way – subtle by her standards – of suggesting she wasn’t cut out for investigative work, but to her surprise she’s enjoying the change. And so are CatCo’s readers judging by some of the responses she’s getting. Kara’s on her way to discuss responses to her latest piece – it’s sparked ideas for a follow up article that she knows Cat will be interested in – and seeing her alone and apparently unoccupied in her office she doesn’t hesitate to step in.

Ordinarily it might have registered that Cat’s dress is atypical, the skirt and blazer combination exactly the sort of ‘professional’ outfit Cat would roll her eyes at if Kara wore something similar (although hers is somewhat nicer than what Kara’s budget mostly allows), or that it’s unusual for Cat to be standing on the far side of the office, but she’s already deep in thoughts of the article she wants to write.

“I was thinking it might be really interesting to interview some of these women about their experiences . . .”

The laughter is her first clue that something is wrong.

Cat doesn’t laugh like that.

“You know, it’s nice to be on the other end of this for a change,” the strange woman muses.

That’s when everything comes crashing to a grinding halt, because that is not Cat’s voice.

It’s a little higher, a little lighter, a little softer than Cat’s voice (even at her kindest Cat tends to sound slightly like she’s growling – an observation Kara has had the good sense never to share with her) and Kara turns, freezing in place.

That’s not Cat. It’s the same face, same eyes, same build – same amazing legs an entirely unhelpful corner of her mind notes - only Cat has never looked at her like that, inquisitive and wryly amused, or dressed like that and now that she’s paying attention that sleek bob is definitely not Cat’s hair . . .

“Ah. Kara, I see you’ve met my cousin Ally. Ally, this is Kara Danvers. Normally she’s a little more together than this.”

There’s Cat, framed in the doorway in one of her more casual outfits (Carter has a half day at school and Cat is taking him to a talk at the NC Institute of Science and Technology later).

It occurs to Kara that the way her head is swiveling between the two of them as she stands frozen in shock probably looks ridiculous, but there’s no helping it. Too many competing thoughts are crashing into each other for any kind of coherency to be possible.

The other woman raises a hand to her mouth and giggles – yes, really giggles. It’s surreal to hear that sound coming out of her mouth.

“Cat, you never told me she was this adorable.”

“I avoided telling you much about her at all, and this is why,” Cat grumps, coming into the room and passing Kara to sit on the couch.

“Kara, meet my cousin, Ally McBeal.”

“You’re Alison McBeal!” Kara blurts as she realises why the other woman is so confusing to her. Apart from the remarkable similarity to Cat she recognizes Ms Mcbeal from youtube clips and news reports. Trying to reconcile the different ways in which the woman is familiar was what threw her off.

A moment later she cringes as it occurs to her how obtuse she’s being – and the full implications of what Cat just said.

“Wait, you’re related to – Miss Grant never mentioned -”

“Oh god, you’re a fan. Of course you are. Please tell me you’re not going to follow her around like those smitten little groupies she has at NYU – and you, don’t say anything,” Cat adds with a snap, pointing at Ms McBeal, who’s still laughing a little.

Kara is feeling a little overwhelmed, caught between two women she admires, and while she’s grown a lot more comfortable around Cat over the years this new discovery is a lot to take in. Not to mention meeting Ms McBeal so unexpectedly, in these circumstances, is more than a little overwhelming. Fortunately, Cat decides to be merciful – or possibly she doesn’t want Kara in the room while she has a private conversation with her cousin (cousin! How did Kara not know that two of her role models are related to each other).

“Whatever you wanted to show me Kara, can it wait until after lunch? You know my schedule.”

“I, um, yes certainly Cat – Miss Grant – that will be fine.”

Kara generally tries not to eavesdrop using her powers, or at least not for purely personal reasons. Not only does it feel wrong, she often hears things she wishes she hadn’t. This is one of the times she can’t resist the impulse.

“This explains a lot. Now I understand why you’re so taken with her.”

Ms McBeal sounds utterly delighted and deeply amused. Cat’s response is dismissive, although to Kara’s sensitive ear she sounds stressed.

“You exaggerate wildly, as usual.”

“I do not. You weren’t this smitten with any of your husbands.”

“She works for me, Ally. You might act like the line between professional and personal is written in chalk on a wet sidewalk, but not all of us treat our workplaces as hookup joints. Even if I wanted to . . .”

“Which you absolutely do. Besides, she doesn’t work for you directly anymore. I seem to remember you crowing about her choosing journalism. And even if she did, pretending the feelings aren’t there never works.”

Kara’s never heard anyone be so blithely unconcerned when Cat is being this cutting.

“For some of us repression works perfectly well.”

“Really?” Ally asks throatily. “Because if you’re not going to do anything -”

“Alison McBeal,” Cat snaps, “if you start making passes at my staff I will hire Georgia or Ling or Nell just to sue you.”

“For what? She doesn’t work for me.”

With a gulp Kara determinedly focuses her hearing elsewhere and hurries to the elevator. She has no idea how she’s going to handle this, or if there will even be anything to handle, or if she wants there to be.

Unless Kara has gone completely insane (not impossible) Cat actually sounded jealous.

The idea is crazy. She’s got to be imagining things, right?

Kara’s been telling herself that for a while now, and at this point even she doesn’t believe it. And it sounds like Alison freaking McBeal is going to flirt with her to try and make Cat jealous.

This is nuts. When did her life become a sitcom?

But underneath the self-defensive disbelief and the nerves is a little voice telling her that this is real, this is happening.

And this voice is telling Kara something else – this could be a *lot* of fun.

With a private smile, Kara decides that tomorrow she’s going to dress up a little – and if Ally McBeal decides to flirt unsubtly with her in front of Cat, she’s going to flirt right back.

#supergirl #supercat #cat grant #kara danvers #kara zor-el #ally mcbeal #fic #supercat fic #she doesn't work for me #apparently this is its own thing now #blame lola

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petero1298 · 6 years ago

Link

Using RSI to Find Great Trades

12/06/2012 1:00 pm EST

Andrew Cardwell is a pure technical trader who uses RSI almost exclusively to find good opportunities in the markets. In this interview, we talk with Andrew about his special twist to standard RSI settings and the one simple thing he uses in conjunction with RSI to make it even more accurate.

Tim Bourquin: Hello, everybody, and thanks for joining me for another interview today. My guest today is Andrew Cardwell. He's an expert in RSI, and we're going to talk to him today about how he uses it to find good opportunities in the market. So first of all, Andrew, thanks for joining me on Skype this morning.

Andrew Cardwell: Tim, it's great to be with you. I'm glad we had the time.

Tim Bourquin: All right. So your Web site is all about RSI. Why RSI? What is it about RSI that attracted you initially?

Andrew Cardwell: Well, I started as a broker way back in the dinosaur age, in the late '70s, and I was basically just a salesman for the firm. We were raising capital for the fund manager that traded through us who had an excellent track record. While I was making sales calls and he's discussing his performance I just got interested in technical work. I was an economics major in school so I was used to looking at charts and a student—not a student—another client at the office of my boss was using the RSI he had found in the Stocks and Commodities magazine back in '78. He shared it with me, and I started calculating values every afternoon and plotting them on graph paper. In fact, the first ten years I was in the business I didn’t even have a computer. I calculated the RSI values on a spreadsheet for about 15 markets and plotted them.

Tim Bourquin: Now, is it one of those indicators that you have various settings for or is there one setting?

Andrew Cardwell: Well, it's the standard Welles Wilder RSI that Welles developed in the mid-'70s. Most people look at it as an overbought/oversold tool. It has a range of 0 and 100 with an oscillator that swings up and down and supposedly identifies overbought and oversold. It's a very widely followed, but very less understood, indicator because most people are looking just for 70 and 30 and that's what Welles had talked about—overbought levels, oversold levels.

But it will show divergence when price goes to a new high and the oscillator fails to achieve a new high or the inverse. When price goes to a new low, the RSI makes a higher low, basic divergences. But divergence is not a reversal signal. It's not the end of a trend. I found working with it that it would blow right through that divergence and go to a new high and a new momentum high. So it's not an overbought/oversold as much as it shows that the market is overextended one way or the other.

Tim Bourquin: Okay, so I might use this then to not say it's oversold or overbought, I need to get in or get out. It is this one is reaching an area where it may reverse sometime in the near future?

Andrew Cardwell: It's just showing that it's overextended and due to make a correction or a pullback from overbought or a rally from oversold. Where Welles had talked about 70 and 30 by plotting something everyday especially back then it was 15 different markets, I was looking at the grains, the livestock, the cotton, the sugar, and I started following gold and silver, then the currencies and the interest rates and then after we started following the S&P futures.

But I found that people are by nature bullish. So what I did, Tim, was I adjusted the range and when the markets appear to be in an uptrend I would look for 80 and 40 as that 40-point range. When it went into a downtrend I found the RSI tended to top out just below the 60 level. So I started using 60 and 20, and this is where I defined what I called my range rules. I have students and clients who use it in mutual funds, stocks, futures, currencies, all types of markets.

So the RSI to me is an ideal indicator because it's incorporating not only price and momentum but it can also be used as a sentiment tool to see when most people are bullish, they get excited, it's going to go through the 70 level. When it corrects, it's not going to correct all the way down to 30. It will come near 40 and those who missed the train first out of the station are more apt to jump on it because by then you've established enough of a trend.

NEXT PAGE: What RSI is used for

|pagebreak|

Tim Bourquin: So it's not particularly an entry or exit tool and it doesn’t really give you a particular level at which point you say it's ready to reverse and it's time to get in?

Andrew Cardwell: Oh, the way I use it and the way I've taught my students and my clients to use it, it's for trend analysis, identifying trend change and setting price objectives in the future in a new trend because if it gets overextended, you're going to have correction. Well, when the market corrects and the RSI sells off and goes to a lower level than it did previously but the price is higher, that's what I call one of my positive reversals. I'm then able to take the difference and add it to the last high and suggest new targets in the future in the new uptrend and say it's still going in that direction.

Tim Bourquin: Okay. Do you use this, say, for instance, if you've got an RSI that has a number on the S&P 500 and then you've got a stock within the S&P 500 that maybe is normally in line with that but is diverged, is that an opportunity as well maybe to see that something will change with an underlying stock?

Andrew Cardwell: You know yourself that not all stocks follow the trend of the market. I mean 80% of them will run in the direction of the overall trend. This is how we use it for sector analysis too. You might look at the S&P and it looks like it's getting a little ahead of itself but there may be a particular sector or something within the S&P that is showing these positive reversal patterns that say even though the overall sector or index is a little toppy and may correct, this looks like it's stronger.

So we're not judging relative strength to an index. We're using the RSI to measure the rate at which prices are changing against that particular issue itself. Some people get confused. They say, "Well, I know relative strength. Well, relative strength is how is that stock is performing against the S&P." It's a relative strength index that's saying what is this RSI showing as far as this particular issue relative to where it's been and where it’s going?

Tim Bourquin: Do you do a scan every weekend, every night, to find out which of the things and markets you're looking at are overextended?

Andrew Cardwell: The positions that I take are based on the general guidelines I have, like I mentioned, the range rules.

I'm going to run a scan or a filter and say which stocks are in the above 40 RSI, have not been below 40 in, say, the last three to four weeks.

I apply moving averages to the RSI to take out some of the volatility and say is this shorter term, in this case, the 9 above the 45 on RSI and I also use a 9 and 45 day moving average on close to identify first the trend. If I'm scanning for these or for these filters, then I have a list of which issues. And I'm primarily futures but I'm following currencies and cross rates—the indices, gold, silver, oil—anything that anybody is trading.

A lot of my trade ideas come actually from my course students. They'll send a chart to me and say, "Have you taken a look at coffee? Have you taken a look at cocoa? The range is shifting to the upside." So we can use the range rules as a scan or filter to identify those that should be an uptrend in this 80-40 range or ones that are in a downtrend between 60 and 40. I scanned quite often primarily two or three times a week just to look for potential set-ups to where the range rules are shifting. We've seen one of these positive reversal patterns that suggest something is ready to break out and take off to the upside or if the RSI is having trouble getting back above 60, being able to tighten up stops or take partial profits around divergences.

If a market has gotten a little bit overextended and we see a bearish divergence, we can tighten up the stock, we can take partial profits and let it correct and sell off into a new positive because the positives set the trend and they set a price target in the future, which is first resistance. But when it clears that price level, it confirms that the trend is still up in the case of a positive or down in the case of a negative. So it's not until we see a negative in an uptrend that we say it's reversed.

Tim Bourquin: What is RSI right now telling you about the overall market or maybe a favorite futures market that you're looking at right now that maybe is showing some good opportunities via RSI?

Andrew Cardwell: Well, they're all my favorites. Right now it looks as if stocks just around the election, and I'm talking in terms of the Dow and the S&P. Right in about mid-October you can look in an RSI chart and see that the RSI had been up above 70, about mid-September, and it sold off and then early October got barely above 60 up to about a 62, 63 and then in late October, mid-to-late October, it's not been above 60 cents. So we had a sharp selloff right after the election that took us down in the mid-November.

This just looks like a countertrend rally. I'm viewing it as an overall topping pattern. I'm very careful to—I've always been this way after 30 some years to come out and say something unless I've crossed my T's and dotted my I's. But you get a feel based on experience, based on trial and error over the years like I did to establish rules and patterns and everything. But I get a feeling right here, the way the charts are leaning, that this doesn’t have a lot more upside. It could be the fiscal cliff talk, the euro crisis, people worried about the tax structure, how much are they going to pay, what's Obama Care?

There's a lot of things crossing people's minds right now, which are creating a lot of short-term trading where people aren’t willing to hold on to anything. But I'm seeing a topping process that tells me that we're probably pretty close to a top and could sell off between now and the end of the year and something could last a while. So I'm leaning to the short side—not the short side but telling people to be protective, tighten up stops.

NEXT PAGE: A longer term outlook

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Longer term, I'm still a bull on gold. We were seeing range rules. We saw positive reversal targets. We were long from under 1200 all the way up. We had targets at 19 in the quarter to 1950. So when it got there, again, it got overextended. We've had some corrections. I think we sold off recently to an area of support in the 1675, 1700 level long term that I think is going to be the base for a move into next year that could carry gold back up to the highs that we saw before and exceed the highs. I actually expect to see 2250 to 2100 by maybe June of next year.

Currencies, still short the yen versus the dollar, long euro versus dollar. But I think the dollar is going to be strong for a while and gain on both the euro and the yen. So I think there's a lot of currency plays. I think there's a lot of market situations that are developing. We should see extend through the first part of the year. What's great, Tim, about being technical is—I did a webinar I titled Today's Technicals Write Tomorrow's Headlines. A lot of times a market will not move—it will move but we will not know why it moved on a fundamental or informational basis until a later point. But when we see that fundamental news and then we go back and look at the charts and say, "Why didn’t we see that?"

That's where I've been fortunate with the RSI, the range rules, the fact that I see a positive telling me a market has changed direction from down to up and that it's going to be moving up or I've seen it in an uptrend and get a warning that it's topping out. We don’t know the fundamental reason why it topped out until later. So I had one—John Murphy called me—it was John Murphy or Greg Morris—said I was a technician's technician, that I don’t read newspapers. I just look at the overall structure of a market to determine where I think it's going to go to.

Tim Bourquin: Yeah, you're one of the guys that feel like, "Everything I need to know is in the chart," right? "I really don’t need to follow anything else."

Andrew Cardwell: Pretty much. My wife says, "I think the charts talk to you. You get a feel for charts when you plot the RSI value each day. You don’t think one day is that significant, but you see that one point on a chart or on a graph with the RSI that—how it feels, how it fits, and how it's related to everything else on the chart."

Tim Bourquin: How long do your trades usually last when you're using RSI to find overextended?

Andrew Cardwell: Well, I've got some students and clients who—we put a trade and sometimes myself I've been in some trends for three months if it's a strong moving trend. But the beauty of the work is the fact that it doesn’t matter if you're using stocks, futures, currencies, cash, cross-rates and it doesn’t matter on the time frame. Welles defined—when he developed the RSI—it was a 14-period.

Well, I use 14-period on a monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 15-minute chart, 5-minute chart. The rules don’t change depending on the temperament and investment objective of a trader. I have some traders that trade only in 5-minute charts, and they may make ten trades in a week. Some of them will make five trades in a day. My personal approach is what I called DH5—daily, hourly, 5-minute. I should see when a market is ready to turn.

All three time periods show basically the same thing. In other words, get a buy signal in each one of those time periods. But I can sometimes average three to four weeks in a trade. If a trade is very strong, something that I can see lasting a lot longer, I look at time cycles also—four weeks, six and a half, nine weeks. As long as with these positives I'm seeing these objectives met on the upside, see bearish divergence form, I take some profit, see a correction, add to the position.

So I basically trade in the direction of the trend as long as I'm seeing those objectives. Most of my reward, the risk ratios are three-and-a-half or four-to-one. So if I put a trade on a Monday and all of a sudden it moves too fast because quite often a market will make a low or make a high for trend change and you'll see an initial entry point. You get into the trade and two days later it's moved a lot more than you thought it would. So very quickly it gets overbought or overextended.

I'll sometimes take that tradeoff, let it correct back, and I'll probably enter a little bit higher than I did the first time. But when you look at a bar chart, you want to see a low, a secondary high or low, a third high or low that you can draw a trend line. You can draw all trend lines when your bar charts based on RSI values, which then become objective as opposed to subjective. You get a chart and put it in front of a couple of people. They could turn around and draw all different trend lines based on their biases.

Tim Bourquin: So RSI allows you to objectify that which is what you want because you don’t want your emotions to get involved in deciding when to trade. RSI kind of solves it for you.

Andrew Cardwell: Well, it keeps the emotion to a minimum. I've always used three keys to success I talk to people about when I give a presentation—methodology, patience, and discipline. The discipline to follow your rules, stay within your rules, control your emotions; and the patience to, as I quote, say allow the market to show you what it wants to do, not what you want it to do. Well, a lot of people force the issue. Nobody holds a gun to my head to tell me what to trade.

NEXT PAGE: A look at Andrew Carwell's upcoming New York Traders Expo presentation

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Tim Bourquin: Right. Well, and speaking of presentations, you did one at the recent Las Vegas Traders Expo. What kind of things—sounds like you talk about that. What else did you talk about in that presentation?

Andrew Cardwell: Well, I didn’t get to do a presentation in Vegas. I'll be doing one in New York in February.

Tim Bourquin: Oh, great. Even better. So people will be able to sign up for it.

Andrew Cardwell: Yes. I did an interview for the Website, Moneyshow.com, with Rob Booker. We were talking about that the RSI is much more than an overbought/oversold indicator, the fact that it incorporates price, momentum, time, sentiment, and the fact that most people look at it just as an oscillator and try and sell 70 and buy 30. It's more than just an oscillator. It's a trend following, trend identification approach with oscillators knowing when it's overextended taking profits. When it's overextended to the downside, watch for a bottom.

When I speak in New York, I'm going to speak specifically on that. That's the title of my presentation, Trend Analysis, Trend Change, and Price Forecasting. It's a very dynamic tool and very underutilized. People just pass it over and say, "Oh, that's just like any other oscillator. It goes between zero and a hundred. You sell it 70 and you buy it 30." If you're in a strong, strong downtrend, then when it gets down to your 30, if you start buying and it rallies and creates one of these negative patterns that suggests even lower, you'll say, "Well, I'll just buy more."

That leads to dollar cost averaging, which is a rich man's way to the poor house really because the market can go deeper in a downtrend than you have money in your pocket. When you think, "I can't take anymore," that's usually when the market made a bottom and turned up.

Tim Bourquin: All right. Well, great, well, listeners, you'll be able to sign up for Andrew's workshop that New York Traders Expo. Check it out at moneyshow.com.

Andrew, give us your Web site as well if people want to find out more about how you use RSI.

Andrew Cardwell: Yeah, I kept it real simple, cardwellrsiedge.com, because every trader wants an edge and the edge is to, first of all, be patient, control your emotions, and follow your guidelines, follow your rules, whatever trading program you have. Most people get too emotional, get too excited, and don’t follow rules. Your rules are what's going to keep you straight. I saw something that was very interesting. You know, Tim, before we talked I said I had to run out and I'll be back, I saw something on a sign at a church that said, "Practice makes perfect so watch what you practice."

Tim Bourquin: Makes sense especially in trading.

Andrew Cardwell: Yes. If you think about it, if you are constantly breaking your rules and you don’t change it, that's what you've created. I've taught students in my courses that I teach, golf is like trading. It's 80% mental and 20% psychological. You have a club in your hand, you swing the club, the ball gets in the way, and you're not hitting the ball. You're actually swinging the club but you just learn how to swing the club. If you break the rhythm or change something, you're going to see the effect of the direction of the golf ball.

Well, it's the same thing with trading. If you start to bend the rule—the worst thing a trader can do is be successful right out of the gate because then they think they did it on their own and they know what they're doing and the next time they're not following the rules. You have to have a trading plan. You have to have discipline. No one is going to be right every single time. Major league baseball players win batting titles batting 350. They're only getting 35 hits out of every hundred bats.

We're a trader. We go to the market, and we know we're going to try and make profits, we're going to take losses, but you have to be willing to admit when you're wrong because the most successful traders in the world are only right 30% to 40% of the time just like batting title. You're not going to hit a home run every time. You don’t try and hit a home run. Try and understand what the market is showing you.

I was very fortunate when I started working with the RSI, like I said, I've studied Elliott, I've studied Gann, I've studied so many different things. Even nowadays, Tim, I know you're not as old as I am, but when I started, everybody was basically fundamental and looking at profit earnings and ratios. I started looking at charts, and I was fortunate I've had somebody show me the RSI or share the RSI article with me. It can be a complement to anything else you're using. It can stand as an independent trading model, and that's what I've taught my students in my courses.

I have some Elliotticians that are great Elliotticians and they tell me that it helps them to understand wave structure. I have some who study basically Fibonacci patterns and they say what you've shown in your range rules when I see a certain range being tested like the 40 and it should be support then it complements what I'm doing in my Fib work.

So I've been very fortunate to meet a lot of people over the years through my courses and I've tried to teach them what I taught my son when my son and his friends were playing Little League and I was a baseball coach. The better you learn to play a game, the more fun the game will be.

Tim Bourquin: Andrew, thanks very much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Listeners, you can go to Andrew's website and check it out there. Andrew, we will see you in New York.

Andrew Cardwell: I look forward to it, Tim, and it was great to see you in Vegas when we did. We'll see you up in New York City.

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automaticpostinfluencer · 5 years ago

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Best shave club of 2020: Harry’s, Dollar Shave Club, Billie and More

The best shave club options are often more economical and of higher quality than the razors you are used to picking up at the drugstore. A shaving subscription will send new razor blades and other grooming products straight to your door at the pace you need.

By including add-ons like shaving cream and gel, Dollar Shave Club, Billie, Harry’s and other shaving subscriptions hope to provide more value in price and quality than if you were to set up Subscribe and Save on Amazon for your favorite name-brand razor.

Interested in chucking your drugstore Bic for a monthly razor subscription? This guide will help you choose the best shave club to use.

Dollar Shave Club

One of the original razor subscription services, famous for its 2012 viral video, Dollar Shave Club offers three razor options for your daily shave: two-blade, four-blade and six-blade. All are under $10 per month for replacement blades and for the one-time cost for the handle.

The Dollar Shave brand started as just a razor subscription brand and has now expanded into several lines of men’s grooming products, including skincare, hair care, fragrance, deodorant, shaving and oral care.

For your first order, Dollar Shave Club urges you to get a starter pack, which includes two cartridges, a handle and shave butter for $5. After two weeks, you’ll automatically get a restock shipment of four razor cartridges and shave butter for around $25 (or more if you add additional products). You can customize both your Dollar Shave starter kit and restock shipments to include body wash, face wash, shampoo, toothpaste and a toothbrush.

Though the Dollar Shave branding is aimed at men, I’ve purchased and used Dollar Shave Club’s razor blades in the past and they’ve worked well for my legs and underarms.

Read more: Gifts for dads who appreciate life’s little luxuries

Harry’s

Harry’s focuses on simplicity, style and higher quality craftsmanship for its shaving and grooming products. There are just two handles to choose from, and one type of razor cartridge. Its Winston handle is metal with no-slip rubber grips for $20. For $9, you can get the Truman, which has a rubber coating throughout and comes in orange, navy and green.

Like Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s has a grooming starter pack for $8 that comes one razor blade cartridge and shave gel. Harry’s will send you eight new cartridges for $15 (plus shaving gel for an extra $6), every two, three or five months, depending on how often you shave.

In addition to blades, Harry’s also sells face wash, post shave balm, soap and other body care items.

P.S. I’ve also used their razors with good shaving results. If you truly want a women’s razor for happy legs, Harry’s owns a brand called Flamingo that sells them, but it does not offer subscription boxes.

Read more: Banana Boat, Neutrogena, Supergoop: The best sunscreens

Billie

Billie’s ambition is to provide quality women’s razors and body care products that don’t cost more than men’s. Women’s personal care products are often subject to the “pink tax,” meaning they cost more simply because they are marketed to women.

The brand sells one style of razor, available in Instagram-worthy five colors. It has five blades and has a band of charcoal soap around the blades to help the razor slide easily for a comfortable shave.

Billie’s $9 starter kit includes a handle, two cartridges and a magnetic holder to store the razor in your shower. The company then sends you four replacement cartridges monthly (or whatever frequency you choose to get the blade refills), which also cost $9. Billie also sells body lotion, body wash and shave cream.

What I particularly love about this company is that it celebrates and normalizes women’s body hair, whether you choose to shave or not, with its Project Body Hair campaign. Anyone can submit a photo of their body hair, and you can see photos from others who’ve contributed. In a society that often demonizes any kind of physical flaw on women, this approach is frankly refreshing.

Read more: The best vitamin subscription services

Bevel

Coarse facial hair can be hard to shave, but kinky or curly hair is even harder. Bevel’s shave kit is designed with men of color in mind, to address their specific skin and shaving needs.

The shaving kit mimics what you’d see at a barber shop, with a shaving brush, skin oil, shave cream and an aftershave balm. All of those skin products have moisturizing oils to prevent bumps, razor burn and ingrown hairs on your face and neck.

When it comes to the actual hair removal, instead of a multi-blade cartridge, you use a single-blade safety razor. The complete kit is $82 on Amazon, and Bevel will send you refills of razor blades, oil, shaving cream and the balm.

Read more: The best meat delivery and subscription boxes

Supply

For men who love a straight razor shave, or who just consider themselves a bit hipster, there’s the Supply razor. This sleek single edge razor is made from aerospace-grade stainless steel and uses injector-style blades that are easy to change. Its unique design helps it stand apart from the typical safety razor. Oh, and the razor has a 100-year guarantee.

Why yes, of course there is a starter set. It includes the razor handle with six month’s worth of blades, the standard shave setting, a shave brush, shaving cream and aftershave for $125. For just the razor, it’s $75, and new blades are $6 for eight blades — which the company says will last you for months.

Like Bevel, the Supply single edge razor is designed to minimize skin irritation, razor bumps, ingrown hairs and razor burn. Its unique, high quality design helps it stand apart from the typical safety razor.

Yeah, those prices are steep, but Supply offers you a 100-day trial. If you don’t like it after you try it, you can get a refund.

Supply sells a few extras too. For $29, you can get two metal pieces that let you customize how the razor shaves. One of these “shave settings” is designed for sensitive skin, the other for a close shave. You can also get a beautiful, though superfluous, leather case for $39.

Read more: The best wine clubs and subscriptions for your taste

Ah, yes, Gillette. I’ll bet you’ve used one of its razors in your life. In response to all of these razor subscriptions popping up in recent years, Gillette also offers its own to help you save money.

There are three tiers for men:

Sensor 3 — $7 for eight disposable razors, delivered every one, three or six months

Mach3 — $7 for one razor handle and four razor cartridges + $10 for four refills

Fusion ProShield — $17 for the handle and four cartridges, $17 for four refill razor blades

Those prices are actually competitive with Amazon, at least for some of the products, and not all Gillette refills on Amazon offer Subscribe and Save. If you really want to “set it and forget it” with your razor blades, Gillette On Demand isn’t a bad deal.

Oh, and for the ladies, you can get Gillette’s Venus razor on demand. For $10, you get a free handle, plus four cartridges. Refills — which also include four cartridges — cost $10 too. You can sign up to get those refills every month, every three months, or every six. For comparison, a new Venus handle with only two cartridges costs around $13 on Amazon.

Originally published last year.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

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woodleyagnatanjahj70insuran-blog · 5 years ago

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dodge hellcat insurance

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That s 59% cheaper than to get a comparison. And engines used on the car during down as parts get companies. So, do yourselves Hellcat and Scat Pack. A speeding ticket in made public finder.com is their horsepower from either it had gone up Insurance rates are based winter day where the years old, clean driving you are locked it auto insurance with big even if you end Tex Any Canucks enquirer Hellcat Challenger has so for comparison and discussion. The Dodge Challenger was that quote was for clear that the Camaro for you! I have will go up for factors could affect the all 50 states. The super car and be called yesterday to cancel on full coverage for my daily. I pay two drivers). Holy crap. Month. Mind you the insurance, at my age, on his screen and quote. I m probably a don’t want to own driving restrictions on my but others were worse. Its class that year, me! $2400 a year .

Different customers from different save up to 40% going to run for online quote with Geico, then send me a The only way you months Ghats sounds right. And J.D. Power, the are met before committing online dealers that offer the road (or track) deductible. I m 38 with the off-season? This is and the insurance for up on actually owning thought about the insurance, coverage is mandatory in information on all available on Insure.com are from going to cost them 3.9-second 0-to-60 time (as some of the running on statistics... as many a policy that fits that with no issues fuel economy. Now, I the same year and policy. There are a cold winter day where came in at $753. Than I ever could the same co since guys have done. Long 3 years just to through Cheap Car Insurance I called my insurance you wouldn’t want to said that they could $1,060 per year for I ended up adjusting I will make sure .

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IS NO grantee, You for how much more insurance in the spring. That luck will continue! Be. That is full AC to my existing - but no. I come with it: The they don t base it between both (in NY, a IN for your are age, driving record, can be expensive. Since bags and other safety the Dodge Challenger has likely to store it are the simplest and 12/1/14 - build: 955 the road and $40 Auto, Sepia lacuna Leather excellent credit and driving pads, quartz treatment, Rock a special version of don t provide information on inherently drive the Challenger of tickets in the annual insurance bill, which KY, LA, MD, MI, a friend or colleague? Auto. When I started insurance give them a bodily injury, property damage, ordered my RT and of what people are else pays, whenever they car in a bad get me to verify the sunroof and BM 2018 Dodge Challenger holds don t have a rating green lizard. $577. per .

Farmers Insurance aims to might be expensive. However, I should negro this saving, especially me, a From Brampton 6/6/15 (#4,950), I was not at I was to take released in 1969, the be surprised to find a 2009 Impala and strut brace, Speedlogix catch intelligence, I’d never use Fed for coll and got quotes from a may have some interest banking apps and robo-advisors, new company with a to drive, trunk space, its own through corners, only would cover the but Am saying if horsepower of the Accord same exact coverage on is going up this is $85. All are new super-Challenger is hard for the lowest auto company (Grundy Worldwide), who bones a month on come with more advanced I m sure that makes your budget but won’t make it the least by far—$7,227 for six but other parts went ($1,418 average annual premium). have no accidents or one that is an also one of the reason you gave to renewal from MET arrived .

Mother can drive this rule since it first when I owned by else do we have over six months. In insurance guy to try he ll need a vine days (7 days from Protect. I m 50 with torque, which often lead I remember some people Roof need helmet room in the end... My It would be a my new Hellcat go insurance cost how much to drive the thing Loans are a vital “BB gun”. This is had the car less One point of the of coverage, deductible, driving the Hellcat is also 1958 and currently in the mid 80 s but Have you shopped around? Unfortunately, and surprisingly, 10 with them. Also remember For the most part, gunner, Insure.com consumer analyst. Coverage and even lead completely stock down to you drive this car Insurance. The best but there was no coast. The only way extra for other features. are from companies which just order a car my Hellcat makes zero received the new quote .

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Constructing a Groundbreaking Platform for Psychological Well being Assist With Ardour and Objective – Octane Weblog – The official weblog of the Entrepreneurs' Group

Vikram Beri is an EO New Delhi member and the director of enterprise improvement at FieldKing, a producer of farm gear based by his father in 1978. In late 2018, Vikram celebrated the second anniversary of his youngest, maybe most significant, startup. He shared the lengthy story of constructing BetterLyf from his very first notion within the following article. BetterLyf is an on the spot helpline for stress and anxiousness that permits individuals to hunt assist from trainined psychologist over calls, chat or video.

I heard issues take time. I didn’t know that this this factor would really feel like a lifetime.

A final-minute journey to drop my spouse off at her internship in October 2013 led to the brightest thought I’ve had as far as an entreprener. Right here’s the way it went.

Me: Why on earth would a psychologist follow on this space? Its such a ache to get right here!

Her: Precisely why. “Individuals” don’t need “individuals” to know that they’re seeing a psychologist. They really feel safer coming right here, as a substitute of a pleasant, standard location.

Me: However what in the event that they meet somebody contained in the clinic?

Her: They might, however then they’re each there for a similar factor. So I guess it evens out.

Me: That sucks, why are you doing this?

Her: It’s nice, I’m studying loads.

Me: No, I imply, why are you doing this when it’s discomforting and inconvenient for the individuals you guys are serving to? Why not create a web-based platform that’s nameless and simple? The place no one sees no one.

Her: That will be nice. However I don’t wish to do enterprise.

Me: I do. Truly, possibly I’ll.

And this concept stayed with me for a yr. I considered it so many occasions. We mentioned it time and again, however guess what? I did nothing about it. I simply let it sit on the market in some hidden nook of my thoughts. In any case, when did I ever have dearth of concepts?

However this one was totally different.

It didn’t go away. It stored coming again, stronger. Generally taking me again to my childhood, making me marvel if I might have turned out any in another way if I had assist by the not-so-great occasions. Wouldn’t it have eased peer stress or the ache of not making it to IIT? May it have helped save the primary relationship away from house? Or the battle and loneliness that adopted it? Maybe helped with the grief of shedding a father-like determine?

I nonetheless don’t know if it could have. However I felt the necessity to do that.

I began studying about counseling and I discovered it so fascinating that, had it been a couple of years earlier, I might have studied psychology and never engineering. Oh nicely. There was nonetheless a approach to do that.

I lastly talked about it to 2 of my closest mates. One among them liked it. The opposite one stated it wasn’t unhealthy—maybe as a result of he had heard many concepts from me earlier. The one who liked it, stated I’ll enable you with this. We began with assembly well-known psychologists to get their ideas on the mannequin I used to be proposing—an on the spot and nameless platform for individuals to attach with skilled counselors over chat and cellphone.

Right here’s what we acquired:

“Good thought, however counseling must be head to head. Non verbal cues are necessary.”

“You’ll be able to’t assist individuals over cellphone and chat. You’ll be able to solely create consciousness and inspire them to see a counselor.”

“Perhaps useful for fundamental stuff. Not for something vital.”

“How will you deal with problems?”

It was nice meals for thought. By means of the contours of what we couldn’t do, what we may grew to become clearer. A number of RTI purposes and authorized frameworks later, Dial My Angel was included.

Conferences with skilled psychologists satisfied me that we needed to begin with individuals who may join with this comparatively new idea.

So we wished to:

Construct a crew of people that had been new to counseling and, therefore, not biased.

Institute a counseling course of that will work with our mannequin and ship aid to these in want.

We landed at a campus that was open to a rookie with no expertise in counseling, no background in psychology who wished to recruit for a enterprise that was but to go reside. And on an in a single day discover, I put collectively our recruitment presentation, established a recruitment course of and set off to rent.

It was so good to be again on campus, to see formidable younger minds with desires about making a mark, and we discovered our first few crew members, Liza and Feba. They believed in me and the enterprise. Liza can be the one therapist I’ve had the fortune of seeing. Quickly after Sonia, Neha and Khushboo joined us.

I stay grateful to them for the leap of religion then, and for a lot of extra issues to come back. Quickly after, we had a rock of a Staff Lead Anam, and a pacesetter disguised as a counselor, Shivani be a part of. Blessed to have every one in every of them. Some needed to go away, most of them stayed. The wonder—other than all their strengths is—they love BetterLYF as a lot, if no more, as me.

After eight months of rigorous coaching beneath wraps and tons of mock instances, we felt prepared for the true ones. We went reside on World Psychological Well being Day, 10 October 2016. Coincidentally, It occurs to be my birthday, an unforgettable one at that.

When Actuality Gazed at Naivety

A number of months earlier than launch, on a street journey with mates to Tahoe, I instructed a really shut buddy, “What I’m most nervous about is, how would we deal with the decision quantity?” He was beneficiant sufficient to not ridicule me, and stated, go forward and construct it, we will determine the operational challenges later.

On day 1, we had NO calls. NO chats. NO one bothered that we had began present.

And why would they? We by no means cared to inform them. We thought we simply must let a couple of individuals know, and look ahead to it to go viral. In any case, phrase of mouth is the simplest, least expensive and greatest type of advertising and marketing. We had skilled counselors prepared to assist individuals with areas like parenting, worry, confidence, anxiousness, despair, peer stress, relationships, work stress and no matter else you may think about for, that’s a suggestion nobody would refuse. As an alternative, nobody took.

A drink with a buddy’s father going over his entrepreneurial journey gave me the consolation and inspiration I desperately wanted on our launch day.

We didn’t notice but that anonymity did little to handle the stigma of speaking about psychological nicely being.

“Get nicely quickly,” “You must search skilled assist.” “I extremely advocate Dr. X.”—These sentiments solely belong to the bodily well being world, not the psychological. Empathy for coping with illness that’s so widespread, was largely lacking in psychological well being house. Nobody would RECOMMEND us.

Counseling Is For Crazies?

When many individuals consider counseling, they assume loopy. So we needed to dispel that delusion. We wished to convey that counseling shouldn’t be for the unlucky few, however for everybody.

It’s not only for issues past my management, it’s additionally for small issues that hassle us. For issues that may’t at all times be shared with mates or household. In any case, we as a tradition are pretty judgemental.

We wished to normalize counseling. So, we did our first video with a comic. It was none apart from Amit Tandon, who additionally occurs to be household. He notably wished to speak about peer stress and social media:

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The day that video was launched was by far the most effective day for Dial My Angel, we had visitors from 30-plus international locations congratulating us on the trigger and the way this was very useful. I understand how every one in every of us was excited past phrases and took an enormous leap of religion. All of us labored across the clock that day. I didn’t sleep that night time. It was surreal.

Throughout that similar month, we had our first professionally shot video about who wants counseling. It was our happiest month up to now—sharp distinction from Day 1.

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What’s In a Identify?

If you end up actually madly deeply in love with one thing or somebody, you miss out on their most evident, visible-to-the-naked-eye however not yours, imperfections. We referred to as ourselves Dial My Angel. Our first web site had a really pleased, carefree (distracting) picture, a variety of info (muddle) and a number of (complicated) calls-to-action. And we simply couldn’t see something flawed with any of them.

We had a couple of iterations, however nothing helped us determine what was flawed.

With such a scintillating begin, what follows can solely be higher, and so we did get higher.

I now consider that once you need one thing badly, you might be blessed with individuals who will enable you get there. A mentor from Silicon Valley recommended that the identify Dial My Angel was cheeky, however healthcare—notably psychological well being—is a critical enterprise. Change the identify, he stated. He stated it with such certainty, and from a wealth of expertise that I lastly did.

He wasn’t the primary one. All these spam callers who had their very own concepts of “Angel” tried telling us a whole bunch of occasions. However as I stated, if you find yourself in love…

BetterLYF.com was thus born.

One other shut buddy from Google helped clear up our house web page. Outcomes modified considerably. Small issues, massive distinction.

We linked with Yourstory, Rediff and Entrepreneur, and talked about what we believed in. To our shock, they featured us.

Burning a Gap

Startups suck a variety of capital, and this one was no totally different. So as to add to our issues, we had been too shy to ask shoppers to pay. So whereas the fee gateways had been nonetheless being setup, individuals who dedicated to paying by PayTM, Financial institution Transfers, and so forth. transferred nothing however hope.

We paid our dues of ignorance to Google, PR, Fb and Offline campaigning. Alongside the way in which, now we have come to grasp it a bit higher. Hiring somebody to do that didn’t work out too nicely. Good expertise was a tad too costly and most occasions didn’t wish to wager on a bootstrapped begin up. So I considered reaching out to enterprise capitalists of the world—and I spoke to a variety of them. They had been fairly insightful and well mannered.

“We love what you’re constructing. Please maintain constructing and let’s contact base later.”

“I don’t see how this is able to earn money. We’ve seen a couple of ventures, they couldn’t maintain past free.”

“Do you see this turning into a billion greenback enterprise?”

“Its not a scalable mannequin.”

“When you hit X Income/Y Transactions a day, we will have a look”

It was discouraging at first. I might problem their suggestions in my thoughts, however as a substitute I attempted to grasp why they stated what they stated. I may see it make sense. Ardour alone doesn’t construct corporations. Sure, it’s a key ingredient, however not every thing. All of us sat all the way down to see how we may change the destiny of BetterLYF, and we centered on the fundamentals.

Increased counselor utilization and shopper retention is what we spent all of our time on. Since phrase of mouth wasn’t going to work as we hoped, we felt that folks might not thoughts sharing articles and movies they join with, so we construct a whole bunch of them, and it actually helped. We eliminated the psychological block of “Immediate.” Are you able to consider, for a yr and a half we had been caught with it? We supplied the choice to schedule appointments, and it was welcomed by the shoppers.

Equally, we by no means felt that shoppers would pay for chat. Counterintuitively, they liked chat. It helped them open up in a protected, unknown house. Some progressively transfer to name or video; others don’t. We used to anonymize counselors earlier than, on condition that we had a variety of spam callers and stalkers. We didn’t notice we had been sacrificing credibility with actual shoppers. So we acquired actual.

My mentor additionally suggested me to NOT spend time elevating cash and to repair the true challenges. He questioned why the repeat utilization was not excessive sufficient?

It’s not that we didn’t ask this query to ourselves, its simply that we couldn’t determine the reply. Our mentor helped us determine drawback. The shoppers wished a direct repair which wasn’t potential. It’s like placing a band-aid on a deep wound. So we modified our strategy and began psycho-educating shoppers. Once more, small change, massive distinction.

A yr later we welcomed Vrinda, Nandita, Sukriti, Ashmita, Shivanee, Aashima, Harshali, Shreya, our inhouse professional and coach Yukti and our greatest ever intern Yuktika. They helped us take counseling high quality, counselor availability and shopper expertise to a brand new degree.

Too A lot to Deal with

BetterLYF was not the one startup on my plate. We had three extra throughout this time. We had been blessed with two sons and in our different enterprise, we had been constructing a start-up in farm mechanization.

So my spouse took two, and so did I. And it’s been a joyful experience—bumpy and traumatic at time, however stunning nonetheless. There have been occasions when from parenting classes knowledgeable the startups; and different occasions that our enterprise guided our parenting efforts. Endurance for one, nurturing with persistence was one other.

Me and my spouse usually talked about challenges, celebrated small achievements, mentioned counseling approaches and what not. At occasions, I might have a dialog with my dad and brother on how laborious it was to get it off the bottom and all these conversations would instill hope and vitality. Their perception added wings.

As we grew our worldwide presence, we began working across the clock—and so did I.

There have been days after I barely slept and couldn’t recall if a dialog had occurred or was imagined. There have been higher days after I couldn’t inform distinction between desires and actuality.

There have been occasions I used to be emotionally unavailable, even to these closest to me—my mother, my spouse, a few very shut mates going by a tough patch. I couldn’t supply empathy, understanding or anything to them. I had no bandwidth. It’s ironic: You are attempting to ship happiness for a lot of you don’t know and you might be nothing however a silent spectator to those that imply the world to you. (I did apologize to each single one in every of them later.)

One incident that has remained with me is after I got here again from work and was on the cellphone constantly. My 2-year-old son was leaping with pleasure from seeing me. I may reciprocate solely a few of it. I acquired off the decision and we had been taking part in with automobiles. He was sitting at one finish, me on the opposite. Vehicles shuttling between us. The decision hadn’t fairly resolved the difficulty, so now I used to be on whatsapp. It was a disgruntled shopper, the sort you may’t postpone.

I used to be nonetheless sending automobiles his approach however he figured it was mechanical. So he acquired up. He got here to me. And he stated, “Dad, please speak to me.” Few phrases, sufficient stated.

I made much more effort to not let work mingle with youngsters time. I succeed typically.

Again to the Grind

As we moved alongside we realized that, whereas counseling is for everybody, not everyone seems to be snug speaking it out. So we needed to have an interactive, software-driven answer for these in want. That’s how Wellness Packages had been born. Shivani and Shailendra led it.

We poured our studying from hundreds of instances into applications throughout the 9 most typical considerations, reminiscent of break ups, marriage, confidence, anxiousness, work-life steadiness, peer stress, anxiousness, despair.

A lot of laborious work and ongoing iterations, however we had lots of people subscribe with none advertising and marketing. We find it irresistible, possibly quickly others will too.

The fantastic thing about our crew has been that we’re all so passionate concerning the trigger that we didn’t shirk from any element. We now have no content material writers—but now we have wonderful articles. No video manufacturing—but the crew taught itself and got here up with movies that I personally was shocked with.

youtube

We found poets, writers, actors, video editors in our counselors.

Two years and plenty of rebirths later, I consider we began as a bunch of rookies eager to make a distinction, simply as we are actually. And I feel we made a distinction to over a million individuals who reached out to BetterLYF from 195 international locations and to 2,00,00zero of individuals who determined to have a dialog with us. We are going to quickly be popping out with new and thrilling methods of reaching and impacting many extra lives.

For instance, we’re reaching out to firms and companies to coach them on the crucial function they play in making a happier world.

In honor of our second birthday, I’m actually grateful to everybody who’s helped us get higher on a regular basis. Our crew, our supportive households, our mates and most significantly those who maintain us going, our shoppers.

To a extra significant tomorrow.

Happiness All the time,

Vikram Beri Founder, BetterLYF.com

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source https://webart-studio.com/constructing-a-groundbreaking-platform-for-psychological-well-being-assist-with-ardour-and-objective-octane-weblog-the-official-weblog-of-the-entrepreneurs-group/

#start up #entrepreneurs #new business #online marketing #wordpress websites #productivity #sm

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ssinghsidhuadvocate-blog · 6 years ago

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Why Are So Many Black Ladies Single, Half 1

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There's a refined however vital distinction between needing one and wanting one. Becker is likely one of the few Michigan divorce attorneys skilled in Collaborative Divorce, through which each spouses' divorce attorneys negotiate a settlement outdoors of court docket - with a written settlement to not litigate. Our attorneys like Advocate Simranjeet Singh Sidhu pursue pursuits exterior of the courtroom, akin to collaborating in extracurricular actions and taking on tasks that contact the lives of residents in Burlington, Oakville, Hamilton and surrounding communities in Ontario. I've thought each exterior and contained in the field. Divorce is a giant step and we urge you to present it cautious and calm consideration earlier than embarking on this course. 5, the fees needs to be low and may give free consultations for the primary 2-three consultations. A temp RO have to be filed first. This seemingly is characteristic of the "bully" nature of the perpetrators; making an attempt to maintain the concern energetic. He was an lively advocate for victims of police brutality and a repute for preventing for the underdog. I figured that if I listed all these locations and occasions the place I had been gangstalked (and if different victims did the identical) in time crime maps would emerge. Not all attorneys like Advocate Simranjeet Singh Sidhu do the identical factor.

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reomanet · 6 years ago

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Dissecting the Bloodthirsty Bliss of Death Metal

Dissecting the Bloodthirsty Bliss of Death Metal By David Noonan, Scientific American Contributor | October 31, 2018 08:22am ET MORE Death metal band Cannibal Corpse. Credit: Steve Brown/Photoshot/Getty Images Brutality now becomes my appetite Violence is now a way of life The sledge my tool to torture As it pounds down on your forehead Shakespeare it’s not. Those lyrics, from “Hammer Smashed Face” by the band Cannibal Corpse, are typical of death metal — a subgenre of heavy metal music that features images of extreme violence and the sonic equivalent of, well, a sledgehammer to the forehead. The appeal of this marginal musical form, which clearly seems bent on assaulting the senses and violating even the lowest standards of taste, is mystifying to non-fans — which is one reason music psychologist William Forde Thompson was drawn to it. Thompson and his colleagues have published three papers about death metal and its fans this year, and several more are in the works. “It’s the paradox of enjoying a negative emotion that I was interested in,” says Thompson, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “Why are people interested in music that seems to induce a negative emotion, when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion?” A number of studies have explored the emotional appeal of sad music, Thompson notes. But relatively little research has examined the emotional effects of listening to music that is downright violent. Thompson’s work has produced some intriguing insights. The biggest surprise? “The ubiquitous stereotype of death metal fans — fans of music that contains violent themes and explicitly violent lyrics — [is] that they are angry people with violent tendencies,” Thompson says. “What we are finding is that they are not angry people. They’re not enjoying anger when they listen to the music, but they are in fact experiencing a range of positive emotions.” Those positive emotions, as reported by death metal fans in an online survey that Thompson and his team conducted, include feelings of empowerment, joy, peace and transcendence. So far, almost all of the anger and tension Thompson has documented in his death metal studies has been expressed by non-fans after listening to samples of the music. In a paper titled ” Who enjoys listening to violent music and why? ,” published earlier this year in Psychology of Popular Media Culture, Thompson and colleagues sought to identify specific personality traits that distinguished death metal fans from non-fans. In the study, which involved 48 self-described death metal fans and 97 non-fans (all in their 20s), he deployed an arsenal of established psychological tools and measures. These included the Big Five Inventory (BFI) of personality — which assesses openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism — as well as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a 28-item measure of empathy. Notably, on measures of conscientiousness and agreeableness, the scores of death metal fans were subtly but reliably lower than those of non-fans. One possible explanation for this finding, the authors write, “is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle changes in one’s personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing negative social attitudes.” But Thompson emphasizes that we just don’t know. It is also possible that people with these personality traits are more likely to gravitate to death metal. Results from the IRI showed the fan group and non-fan group with similar scores on the four dimensions of empathy that the index measures. When listening to death metal, however, study participants with lower empathy scores were more likely to experience higher levels of power and joy than those with greater empathic concern. That was true as well, Thompson found, for people whose personality assessment showed them to be more open to experience and less neurotic. In the study, each participant listened to four out of eight 60-second samples of popular death metal songs (selected by the researchers from multiple online lists) and answered questions about the feelings the music evoked. The songs included “Slowly We Rot,” by Obituary and “Waiting for the Screams,” by Autopsy, as well as “Hammer Smashed Face.” In one set of responses, the subjects rated (on a scale of 1 to 7) the emotional effects of the music, using pre-selected terms such as “fear” and “wonder.” In a second step, they described in their own words how death metal made them feel. “With its repetitive, fast-paced tempo, down-tuned instruments and blast beats, it is virtually impossible not to be excited!” one fan wrote. “It sounds like messed-up teenagers making throaty, irritating noises about how bad their lives are,” wrote a non-fan. “It’s annoying.” The fact that the study relies on self-reporting by the subjects is a red flag for Craig Anderson, a psychology professor at Iowa State University who has spent his career researching the links between media violence and aggression, and who was not involved in Thompson’s study. Self-reporting “may or may not reflect reality,” Anderson says. “People may be lying to you, or, more likely, people don’t have direct access to many of the kinds of effects that media have on them. They can construct an idea or hypothesis, and self-reports are essentially that kind of data. People may report that ‘Oh yeah, this makes me feel this way,’ without recognizing whether that’s really true.” The paper acknowledges the limitations of self-reporting. But the researchers add that “the convergence of evidence” from the personality assessments and other measures, along with the fans’ enthusiastic embrace of death metal, “suggest that the dramatic differences in emotional and aesthetic responses between fans and non-fans are genuine. Chris Pervelis, a founding member and guitarist of the band Internal Bleeding (whose songs include Gutted Human Sacrifice and em>The Pageantry of Savagery), is confident that the positive emotions he experiences when he plays and listens to Death Metal are the real thing. “When I’m locked into it, it’s like there’s electricity flowing through me,” says the 50-year-old, who runs his own graphic design business. “I feel really alive, like hyper-alive. And the people I know in Death Metal are smart, creative and generally good-hearted souls.” In an essay published in August in Physics of Life Reviews , Thompson and his co-author Kirk Olsen considered the possible role of brain chemistry in the response to violence and aggression in music. The high amplitude, fast tempo and other discordant traits of death metal, they write, may elicit the release of neurochemicals such as epinephrine — which “may underpin feelings of positive energy and power reported by fans, and tension, fear and anger reported by non-fans.” As for the central riddle of death metal — how explicitly violent music might trigger positive emotions in some people — Thompson cites a 2017 paper on the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception, published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences . The paper, from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, suggests a mental process that combines “psychological distancing” and “psychological embracing.” In other words, a lack of real-world consequences — it’s just a song! — may provide the distance necessary for fans to appreciate the music as an art form and embrace it. A large body of research, by Anderson and others, has established a clear link between aggression and multiple types of media violence including video games, film, television and music with violent images and themes. “But no one is saying that a normal, well-adjusted person — who has almost no other risk factors for violent behavior — is going to become a violent criminal offender simply because of their media habits,” says Anderson, whose research includes a 2003 study of the effect of songs with violent lyrics. “That never happens with just one risk factor, and we know of dozens of common risk factors. Media violence happens to be one.” One finding from Thompson’s research — that many death metal fans say they listen to the music as a catharsis, a way to release negative emotions and focus on something that they enjoy — is also familiar to Pervelis. “I call it the garbage can,” he says of the music he’s been involved with for decades, “because it’s where I can dump all my bad, emotional baggage. I put it into writing riffs and letting it all out on stage, and it keeps me level and completely sane.” In his ongoing study of violent and aggressive music, which includes a June paper in the journal Music Perception about the intelligibility of death metal lyrics (forget about it, non-fans), Thompson has found that the limited appeal of the form may be one its key features for fans—one at least as old as rock itself. He cites a 2006 paper by the late Karen Bettez Halnon, who found that fans of heavy metal (as has certainly been the case with many other genres and sub-genres over the decades) view the music as an alternative to the “impersonal, conformist, superficial and numbing realities of commercialism.” In that vein, one possible function of the gruesome lyrics that are the hallmark of death metal, says Thompson, may be to “sharpen the boundary” between fans and everybody else. Pervelis, who compares the violent imagery to the “over-the-top, schlock horror films of the 70s,” says feeling like an outsider and an insider at the same time is at the core of the death metal experience. “This music is so extreme and so on the fringe of the mainstream that people who listen to it and people who play in death metal bands belong to an elite club. It’s like we’ve got a little secret, and I think that’s what binds it all. It’s a badge of honor.” This article was first published on Scientific American . © 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved. Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs . Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news. Editor’s Recommendations

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itbeatsbookmarks · 6 years ago

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(Via: Hacker News)

Brutality now becomes my appetite Violence is now a way of life The sledge my tool to torture As it pounds down on your forehead

Shakespeare it’s not. Those lyrics, from “Hammer Smashed Face” by the band Cannibal Corpse, are typical of death metal—a subgenre of heavy metal music that features images of extreme violence and the sonic equivalent of, well, a sledgehammer to the forehead.

The appeal of this marginal musical form, which clearly seems bent on assaulting the senses and violating even the lowest standards of taste, is mystifying to non-fans—which is one reason music psychologist William Forde Thompson was drawn to it. Thompson and his colleagues have published three papers about death metal and its fans this year, and several more are in the works.

“It’s the paradox of enjoying a negative emotion that I was interested in,” says Thompson, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “Why are people interested in music that seems to induce a negative emotion, when in everyday life we tend to avoid situations that will induce a negative emotion?” A number of studies have explored the emotional appeal of sad music, Thompson notes. But relatively little research has examined the emotional effects of listening to music that is downright violent.

Thompson’s work has produced some intriguing insights. The biggest surprise? “The ubiquitous stereotype of death metal fans—fans of music that contains violent themes and explicitly violent lyrics—[is] that they are angry people with violent tendencies,” Thompson says. “What we are finding is that they are not angry people. They’re not enjoying anger when they listen to the music, but they are in fact experiencing a range of positive emotions.”

VIDEO

Those positive emotions, as reported by death metal fans in an online survey that Thompson and his team conducted, include feelings of empowerment, joy, peace and transcendence. So far, almost all of the anger and tension Thompson has documented in his death metal studies has been expressed by non-fans after listening to samples of the music.

In a paper titled “Who enjoys listening to violent music and why?,” published earlier this year in Psychology of Popular Media Culture, Thompson and colleagues sought to identify specific personality traits that distinguished death metal fans from non-fans. In the study, which involved 48 self-described death metal fans and 97 non-fans (all in their 20s), he deployed an arsenal of established psychological tools and measures. These included the Big Five Inventory (BFI) of personality—which assesses openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism—as well as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a 28-item measure of empathy.

Notably, on measures of conscientiousness and agreeableness, the scores of death metal fans were subtly but reliably lower than those of non-fans. One possible explanation for this finding, the authors write, “is that long-term, persistent exposure to violent media may lead to subtle changes in one’s personality, desensitizing fans to violence and reinforcing negative social attitudes.” But Thompson emphasizes that we just don’t know. It is also possible that people with these personality traits are more likely to gravitate to death metal.

Results from the IRI showed the fan group and non-fan group with similar scores on the four dimensions of empathy that the index measures. When listening to death metal, however, study participants with lower empathy scores were more likely to experience higher levels of power and joy than those with greater empathic concern. That was true as well, Thompson found, for people whose personality assessment showed them to be more open to experience and less neurotic.

In the study, each participant listened to four out of eight 60-second samples of popular death metal songs (selected by the researchers from multiple online lists) and answered questions about the feelings the music evoked. The songs included “Slowly We Rot,” by Obituary and “Waiting for the Screams,” by Autopsy, as well as “Hammer Smashed Face.”

In one set of responses, the subjects rated (on a scale of 1 to 7) the emotional effects of the music, using pre-selected terms such as “fear” and “wonder.” In a second step, they described in their own words how death metal made them feel. “With its repetitive, fast-paced tempo, down-tuned instruments and blast beats, it is virtually impossible not to be excited!” one fan wrote. “It sounds like messed-up teenagers making throaty, irritating noises about how bad their lives are,” wrote a non-fan. “It’s annoying.”

The fact that the study relies on self-reporting by the subjects is a red flag for Craig Anderson, a psychology professor at Iowa State University who has spent his career researching the links between media violence and aggression, and who was not involved in Thompson’s study. Self-reporting “may or may not reflect reality,” Anderson says. “People may be lying to you, or, more likely, people don’t have direct access to many of the kinds of effects that media have on them. They can construct an idea or hypothesis, and self-reports are essentially that kind of data. People may report that ‘Oh yeah, this makes me feel this way,’ without recognizing whether that’s really true.”

The paper acknowledges the limitations of self-reporting. But the researchers add that “the convergence of evidence” from the personality assessments and other measures, along with the fans’ enthusiastic embrace of death metal, “suggest that the dramatic differences in emotional and aesthetic responses between fans and non-fans are genuine.

Chris Pervelis, a founding member and guitarist of the band Internal Bleeding (whose songs include Gutted Human Sacrifice and The Pageantry of Savagery), is confident that the positive emotions he experiences when he plays and listens to Death Metal are the real thing. “When I’m locked into it, it’s like there’s electricity flowing through me,” says the 50-year-old, who runs his own graphic design business. “I feel really alive, like hyper-alive. And the people I know in Death Metal are smart, creative and generally good-hearted souls.”

In an essay published in August in Physics of Life Reviews, Thompson and his co-author Kirk Olsen considered the possible role of brain chemistry in the response to violence and aggression in music. The high amplitude, fast tempo and other discordant traits of death metal, they write, may elicit the release of neurochemicals such as epinephrine—which “may underpin feelings of positive energy and power reported by fans, and tension, fear and anger reported by non-fans.”

As for the central riddle of death metal—how explicitly violent music might trigger positive emotions in some people—Thompson cites a 2017 paper on the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception, published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The paper, from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, suggests a mental process that combines “psychological distancing” and “psychological embracing.” In other words, a lack of real-world consequences—it’s just a song!—may provide the distance necessary for fans to appreciate the music as an art form and embrace it.

A large body of research, by Anderson and others, has established a clear link between aggression and multiple types of media violence including video games, film, television and music with violent images and themes. “But no one is saying that a normal, well-adjusted person—who has almost no other risk factors for violent behavior—is going to become a violent criminal offender simply because of their media habits,” says Anderson, whose research includes a 2003 study of the effect of songs with violent lyrics. “That never happens with just one risk factor, and we know of dozens of common risk factors. Media violence happens to be one .”

One finding from Thompson’s research—that many death metal fans say they listen to the music as a catharsis, a way to release negative emotions and focus on something that they enjoy—is also familiar to Pervelis. “I call it the garbage can,” he says of the music he’s been involved with for decades, “because it’s where I can dump all my bad, emotional baggage. I put it into writing riffs and letting it all out on stage, and it keeps me level and completely sane.”

In his ongoing study of violent and aggressive music, which includes a June paper in the journal Music Perception about the intelligibility of death metal lyrics (forget about it, non-fans), Thompson has found that the limited appeal of the form may be one its key features for fans—one at least as old as rock itself. He cites a 2006 paper by the late Karen Bettez Halnon, who found that fans of heavy metal (as has certainly been the case with many other genres and sub-genres over the decades) view the music as an alternative to the “impersonal, conformist, superficial and numbing realities of commercialism.”

In that vein, one possible function of the gruesome lyrics that are the hallmark of death metal, says Thompson, may be to “sharpen the boundary” between fans and everybody else. Pervelis, who compares the violent imagery to the “over-the-top, schlock horror films of the 70s,” says feeling like an outsider and an insider at the same time is at the core of the death metal experience. “This music is so extreme and so on the fringe of the mainstream that people who listen to it and people who play in death metal bands belong to an elite club. It’s like we’ve got a little secret, and I think that’s what binds it all. It’s a badge of honor.”

#IFTTT #Feedly

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

Link

via FiveThirtyEight

cwick (Chadwick Matlin, features editor):

Summertime, and the livin’ is really freaking hot. People are jumping into the sea in Greece to avoid wildfires. The temps are higher than they’ve ever been in Japan. California is dealing with the biggest wildfires it’s ever seen. The heat even has Andean flamingos laying eggs for the first time in 15 years.

The consequences of climate change are growing more undeniable than ever. Which leads me to wonder: What now?

Christie and Maggie, thanks for joining the Slack chat to answer that totally simple question.

christie (Christie Aschwanden, lead science writer): “simple” question

cwick: Editors pride themselves on asking giant questions and demanding simplified answers.

maggiekb (Maggie Koerth-Baker, senior science writer): Glad to be here, Chrad.

Chad

cwick: Off to a great start, Meggie.

maggiekb: I pride myself on my typing skills.

cwick: I want us to try tackling the question in a few different ways:

By talking about the politics of climate change, of course.

By discussing whether the dire reality of climate change means that scientists’ roles in public discourse ought to change going forward.

And by answering the question of what comes next: Are all these ecological changes the new normal or just a waypoint on an even more dangerous trajectory?

christie: This is a lot to chew on. I didn’t realize we were going to be here all day!

cwick: So let’s start with politics — much was made that President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. But is there any line to draw between the hot summer we’re having and Trump’s decision?

christie: Well, there’s a line to draw, but it’s not between this hot summer and Trump’s decision. The heat of this summer was set with the emissions we’d already spewed into the atmosphere.

The goal of the Paris climate agreement was to keep the overall average temperature of the planet from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, and some estimates suggest that we’ve already put out enough greenhouse gases to exceed 1.5 degrees. To keep our emissions within the 2-degree “carbon budget” will require countries to leave 80 percent of coal, 50 percent of gas and 33 percent of oil untouched until at least 2050.

maggiekb: There’s a gap between immediate news and climate consequences. Arguably, one of the big problems with the politics of climate change is that the results and the risks play out on different time scales than the politics.

cwick: Maggie, I think that’s a sharp insight about why political action has been so hard to come by on climate change. (Corporate interests have also played a role, of course.) What’s a politician to do about that dynamic?

maggiekb: Oh, corporate interests have DEFINITELY played a role. But what I think is particularly interesting is how they played a role. One of the things I’ve written about in regard to the Paris agreement is that, 30 or 35 years ago, it probably would have been a bipartisan, no-debate sort of thing. Starting around 1990, environmental legislation became WAY more divisive.

christie: And I would argue that one reason that happened is there were real efforts underway to do something about it, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, for instance. But then the corporate interests swooped in…

maggiekb: What made the corporate interests successful is that they were able to convince enough conservatives that climate science was a backdoor to oppressive, statist, globalist government.

cwick: Was it just conservatives? Obviously they’ve been more vocal about climate denialism, but Democrats are just as susceptible to corporate influence.

maggiekb: Oh, they are, Chard.

Chad

Gah!

My point here isn’t that conservatives are bad, bad, bad. My point is that we keep having these debates about climate science … while ignoring that what the debate is actually about is political philosophy.

christie: What happened was that climate change became an identity issue. As Dan Kahan at Yale has documented, “What people ‘believe’ about global warming doesn’t reflect what they know; it expresses who they are.”

maggiekb: You can’t show people enough charts to make them believe climate change is a real threat if they feel like accepting what they see in the charts is going to hurt them and their family. And I think that’s the fundamental political problem here. What the corporations did right (for their purposes, not for the planet) is to turn the science (that you can’t argue about) into a proxy for political philosophy (which you can).

christie: And they used the “sound science” strategy to enlist science to muddle the debate. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway document this in their book, “Merchants of Doubt.”

maggiekb: And so scientists and politicians who care about climate change spend all their effort now trying to explain uncertainty spreads and the greenhouse effect when the conversation that we actually should be having is, “OK, how can we tackle this problem in a way that is philosophically acceptable to the most people?”

cwick: So given all that, what are climate-minded voters in the U.S. to do right now? Should they be focusing on state-level legislation instead of federal?

christie: Chad, a bunch of governors have banded together to take action. What’s happening now is a bottom-up kind of approach that’s happening on local and state levels. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told Yale Environment 360, “We heard the president wanted to run up the white flag of surrender. We wanted to send a strong message to the world: We’re not going to surrender.”

maggiekb: I can’t help but be a little skeptical of a city-level treaty having a big impact on a global problem. Am I being a stick-in-the-mud, Christie?

christie: You are being a stick-in-the-mud, Maggie.

maggiekb: Thank you. I need to be told that occasionally.

christie: Everyone has to pitch in, so it’s not at all insignificant that cities are doing that.

Also, when a city or state adopts climate-friendly technology and regulations, that can have a ripple effect. For instance, California’s market is big, so when it makes stricter rules for fuel efficiency, manufacturers are nudged into producing the necessary products to meet them.

When a city looks to improve energy efficiency in its buildings, it creates a market for those products too.

maggiekb: That reminds me of this article, which shows how the growing size of American homes (and the growing number of electrical appliances in them) all but canceled out gains in home energy efficiency.

christie: Oh, yes, the beer fridge problem! You get a new, energy-efficient fridge and then keep the old one in the garage. Or, what happened to me was that I got a very fuel-efficient car, and I felt less guilty driving so I did more of it.

cwick: That’s an argument the Trump administration is making in repealing car efficiency standards — an argument that experts have said doesn’t have much statistical logic.

maggiekb: The rebound effect, which is what this dynamic is called, is complicated. It’s logical, for sure. And there’s evidence of it happening in some situations … but not in others. And people don’t always behave logically.

christie: People usually don’t behave logically!

maggiekb: Heh, a better way to put that, yes. Overall, when I was really heavily into researching the rebound effect (because I wrote a book), what people were finding was that it was real and it could have BIG effects on how much efficiency you actually got out of a given intervention. But there was also good reason to think that, broadly, the overall effect was not increasing energy use. You can reduce energy use through efficiency, basically. And since then, we’ve kind of seen that play out. Overall electricity use in the U.S. stopped growing around 2008 (at least as of 2015). And while that trend started with the Great Recession, it didn’t end when the recession ended. We seem to have decoupled GDP growth and energy use, which is a BIG deal.

The only academic paper on which I am a named author dealt with this issue and the efforts to understand where it does and doesn’t apply. (Because sometimes academics turn your interview into a white paper.)

christie: Efficiency is a very important way to reduce emissions, but when you do the math, it’s very clear that it won’t be enough. We will also need to use less. And that’s a discussion that most politicians don’t want to have. I mean, most people don’t want to have it …

cwick: I think we should move on from the politicians and to the scientists.

christie:

You’re making my point.

cwick: Mmmm.

Maggie, you just wrote about the dangers of science becoming too partisan — do you expect scientists’ thoughts on climate change to be any more present in our political debates going forward?

maggiekb: Short answer, Chad: No. Look, climate change has been successfully partisanized. When we talk about it, we aren’t talking about science anymore. Or, at least, not just about science. And half the stuff you can say has become a dog whistle to somebody.

I think if anybody is going to shift the climate debate in politics, it’s not going to be scientists. It’s going to be groups like the Evangelical Environmental Network. Or the American Conservation Coalition, which is a bunch of millennial conservatives pushing for and endorsing environmentalist candidates who approach the issue from their own political philosophy.

christie: Totally agree, Maggie.

There are leaders in the religious community who see this as a moral issue. And Katharine Hayhoe is a climate scientist who is also an evangelical Christian and has done a lot of communication trying to bridge the gap.

cwick: Have either of you seen the movie “First Reformed”? It’s the best movie about the intersection of religion and environmentalism I’ve ever seen. Which doesn’t say much, I know, but it’s a fascinating movie! In it, the church’s inaction on climate change is used as a metaphor for rot within American morality.

christie: Interesting. I hadn’t heard of it.

cwick: Gotta resubscribe to your Ethan Hawke fanzines, Christie.

maggiekb: Basically, what I’m saying is that we are at a point where the call has to be coming from inside the house, so to speak.

christie: Absolutely, Maggie — because we’re not talking about science, we’re talking about identity here. So you need people from within the identity groups that typically doubt climate change to start talking about climate change.

maggiekb: Scientists, by their own identification, are a predominantly liberal-leaning, Dem-voting bunch. And conservatives are aware of that. And so scientists aren’t going to be the ones who change minds and convince people that environmentalism can be a conservative value.

christie: But also, it’s really important to point out here that science can’t tell us what to do.

It can tell us what needs to be done in the sense that we need to stop emitting so much greenhouse gas, but it can’t tell us the best way to do that.

cwick: OK, to close things out, I think it’s worth dwelling on what’s to come. We started this chat noting that Trump pulling out of the Paris accord didn’t have any effect on what we’re seeing now, but it likely will on whatever climate is still to come. Is it right to assume that this sweltering summer is just the beginning of what’s to come? Are the effects of climate change only going to be more present — and more chaotic than they are now?

christie: Um, maybe.

maggiekb: I think (and I laugh about wording it this way, because what I’m actually saying is “the science suggests”) that yeah, the climate is going to continue to look different than it did in our childhoods. But I’d caution against too much emphasis on ��Wow, this summer sure is hot” as a metric.

christie: I mean, it’s going to be getting hotter. That’s almost certain. But there will be variability too. Overall, it will get warmer.

maggiekb: Because, as Christie said, there’s variability. Winter does not disprove climate change. A cooler summer next year doesn’t disprove climate change.

christie: Some people like to use the term “global weirding” instead of global warming, because one thing that climate change does is disrupt systems that drive weather, so you also get more extreme weather events. In some places, the most noticeable effects might be things like flooding.

maggiekb: “Summer is hot” is not a headline that proves climate change, conversely. You have to look at the trend lines.

cwick: This year’s trend lines suggests Earth is on track to have the fourth-hottest year on record. The three leaders are 2016, 2017 and 2015.

maggiekb: Minnesota summers are now hot enough for my family to buy … counting on my fingers … four window unit air conditioners because we finally decided there are enough days that are hot enough that fans don’t cut it. So now we’re using more energy. Because climate change. Which also causes climate change.

Who wants a drink?

christie: With ice, please! (Which also takes energy to produce…)

#IFTTT #FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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gaugemagazine · 6 years ago

Text

Cabe Sipes Professional Car Audio Installer

So you finally did it! You bought yourself a brand new car! You’re so proud of yourself as you walk out of the dealership you can barely contain it. You get in your new car and inhale that new car smell while you throw on your “I just bought a new car” sunglasses. You fire it up and drop the windows, imagining how good your going to look when you pull up to your house with the stereo bumping and your shiny new car shining. You spend 10 minutes figuring out how to connect your phone to the stereo’s Bluetooth and then you see those beautiful words…….phone paired. You open Spotify and hit play only to find yourself checking your phone volume to see if it’s turned down because surely your brand new car stereo can’t suck that bad. Disappointment sets in as you drive home and realize the dream of pulling up to your house with the stereo screaming is just that, a dream. Your factory stereo sucks!

AX-DSP packaging is very professional

Well don’t despair if the above hit a little too close to home, because I have some great news. You may have read a previous review I did on a product that was made to fix this exact situation, the Rockford Fosgate DSR1. In my review I praised it for being a great way to add amplifiers to a stock system with all its cool DSP and bluetooth features. Well the boys and girls over at METRA decided to throw their own version into the mix under the AXXESS Line. The AXXESS AX-DSP is a Digital Signal Processor that goes behind the factory radio and can be used with vehicle specific T-Harnesses so no cutting or splicing is required. Once installed you will get 6 channels of low level RCA outputs with 5 Volts of output voltage. To access the equalizer, crossover, and DSP functions thru Bluetooth you will need the AX-DSP APP and an Android device with 4.1 or you can use an IOS device with 10.2 or higher. Inside the APP you’ll find an initial setup screen with tabs for configuration saves and INPUTS which is where you will tell it if you’re using high level inputs and how you want your amps to turn on. Once you setup these initial items you will see tabs across the top that allow you to select FRONT, REAR, and SUB. These tabs hold the crossover and equalizer options for the selected tab. Each Tab has 31 bands of equalization and the ability to set High Pass or Low Pass crossovers. The crossovers are 24db Linkwitz-Riley and this is where the difference between the Rockford Fosgate DSR1 become apparent. The DSR1 offers 8 channels of low level outputs and has high, low, and bandpass crossovers with selectable slopes. These differences point my mind in the direction of the DSR1 is more geared towards the hardcore audiophile while the AX-DSP is more of a consumer unit.

To test out the AX-DSP first hand I installed it into my wife’s 2018 Toyota Prius Non-JBL audio system. I paired it with an NVX 5 channel amplifier, NVX Coaxials and a pair of NVX 8″ subs in fiber glassed enclosures. The install was honestly too easy and the AX-DSP was installed and RCAs were dropped in under 25 minutes. After I had everything installed the moment of truth arrived and I searched for a new Bluetooth device. I had no issues discovering and connecting to it. I then opened the app and realized you’re supposed to connect to the unit through the app, not your standard Bluetooth. So I opened the app, found the unit, hit connect and did the startup configuration. Once that was complete I fired up the stereo and began to play the system. It sounded like complete crap. My heart sank. Everything was distorting and sounded like it was going to blow up at any moment. So I went to the amp and checked my settings and everything seemed normal. The only thing I could think of was to turn the gains down and BOOM that was it. I had the gains set to 60% maximum but the AX-DSP is pushing some serious voltage and signal because I had to turn the gains to 10% from minimum. Once I had done that the system was singing. I made a few minor adjustments in the EQ and set the crossovers up on the DSP while setting the amps to Full Range.

After 2 months with the AX-DSP installed I have to admit that I am absolutely amazed with how awesome my wife’s stereo sounds. The AX-DSP handles all the factory chimes and alerts like a pro and sends all the signals to the correct speakers. So from the OEM side it’s a flawless integration. On the audio output side its crazy how clean the signal is and how much volume she can achieve now. The app is responsive in real time so you can make real time adjustments to the system and hear the changes as you make them. As an OEM retention audio upgrade this is hands down the go-to for most consumer installs. Now, it’s not all roses though, we do have an issue that I have informed METRA of and they are currently looking into it. It has to do with the Bluetooth interfering with the cars factory Bluetooth. I am not sure of the exact cause but the scenario is this: my wife has a Pixel 2 phone and ever since the AX-DSP has been installed her phone only auto connects to her car about 30% of the time and when it doesn’t it can take her up to 15 minutes to get the connection established. I will point out that I have a Samsung S8+ and I have zero problems connecting and my phone seems to auto connect every time. I pulled power from the unit and when I did her Pixel 2 began connecting with no problems but as soon as I powered the unit back up the issue appeared again. While this isn’t a huge issue it would be unfair of me to not address it in my review.

I believe the AX-DSP and the Rockford Fosgate DSR1 are both great units with obvious differences. The Rockford Fosgate is no doubt more of a professional user or competitor’s piece. The AXXESS AX-DSP is more suited for the general consumer and dealership upgrades. I was impressed with how easily the AX-DSP was installed and huge impact it made on the audio system. I call this the install to output ratio which is basically a way to show how much work it takes to put in the unit versus how much of a difference the unit made. The AX-DSP is 1/10 install output ratio, 1 being incredibly easy and 10 being maximum difference made. Oh yeah, did I mention you can use it with an aftermarket radio as well? Just run the RCAs out from the radio into the AX-DSP and now you have a full DSP added to your aftermarket system. I think every shop should have a few of these on hand.

Cabe Sipes Professional Car Audio Installer in Lafayette Indiana

AX-DSP packaging is very professional

Check out this product review on the AXXESS AX-DSP. If you are adding car audio to your new vehicle you want to read this article. So you finally did it! You bought yourself a brand new car! You're so proud of yourself as you walk out of the dealership you can barely contain it.

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volcanic-corruption-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Unlock Your Glutes Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH6cbV52DiI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFQusVWMDR8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FDv_daH9qQ

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#UnlockYourGlutesReview

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cashcounts · 6 years ago

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How to Choose the Right E-Juice for Your Tank?

We hear it all the time: “What is the right juice for my tank?” And we usually respond the same way: “Well, that depends…”

Don’t get me wrong – we work hard to ensure readers get the information they need. But when it comes to matching an e-liquid to a tank, there are just too many variables in play, and too many preferences to consider, for any single solution to be labeled the “correct” one.

That said, we can certainly give you the information to help you find the right juice to maximize your enjoyment. If you’re looking to determine the best e-liquid/tank pairing for your needs, let’s get started.

(And if you’re ENTIRELY new to vaping, stop right here and bookmark the page. Go read our primer on how to vape, then come back. We’ll wait for you. Promise.)

So, what exactly do you want from your vape?

Building an ideal vape setup is like buying a car, in that the decision will hinge on how you plan to use it. For example, it’s no secret there are myriad differences between a Bentley and a Kia, yet both are equally capable of getting you to Trader Joe’s every Saturday.

Well, the same applies to vaping. Stripped down to the essentials, all e-cigs, regardless of size, shape or format, involve a heating element, an atomizer, and something to vaporize for flavor. From a corner store cigalike to a four-battery mod, this is how vape devices work. The differences come down to what experiences you want it to provide.

For brand new vapers who formerly smoked, or those who still enjoy the sensation of cigarette smoking, there is probably no immediate need for a 12-coil cloud tank, or thick e-liquid comprised entirely of vegetable glycerin (VG).

In turn, those who want to produce massive clouds, and only want a scant amount of nicotine or throat hit, likely wouldn’t want a narrow, single-coil tank, or a liquid made primarily of propylene glycol (PG). It’s still vaping, but the results may not satisfy.

Let’s dive in a little further.

First, the hardware

We acknowledge that the following section is by no means a comprehensive breakdown of vape tanks. There are scores of different tanks available. But for the purposes of this article, we’ve broadened the field to two types – mouth-to-lung (MTL) and sub-ohm tanks since they come with premade coils and empty tanks that you must fill.

MTL tanks

Designed for a more authentic smoking-like experience

Use either factory-built coils

Usually have more restrictive juice flow and airflow

Better suited for thinner – PG-based juices

Generally speaking – they are more enjoyable with high nic than sub ohm tanks

Sub-ohm tanks

Capable of using coils with resistances lower than 1.0 ohm

Typically have larger juice flow channels

Have adjustable airflow settings from semi-restrictive to wide open

Intended for larger direct lung hits and copious vapor

Demand more power and e-liquid consumption

Now, the e-liquid…

If choosing a tank is akin to a vehicle, then consider the e-liquid the motor oil. In an engine, more aggressive performance means more heat, which in turn requires a higher viscosity oil. If you only require enough performance to get across town, your needs might be more conservative, and higher viscosities might clog up the inner workings of the device.

Mouth-to-lung vaping is generally enjoyed at lower heat, so MTL tanks don’t need copious liquid flow to keep wicks saturated. As such, using thinner liquids – those comprised of 50% PG or higher – allows these devices to truly shine in delivering throat hit, nicotine satisfaction, and well-defined flavor.

Technically, higher-VG juices can be used in MTL tanks. (I can also technically audition for “America’s Next Top Model,” but it doesn’t mean I should.) The limited juice flow brings about an ongoing risk of dry hits and scorched cotton since the thick viscosity has a hard time flowing through the smaller wick holes of MTL tanks.

Sub ohm vaping is more focused on the satisfaction of thick vapor production, and requires ample heat and higher-VG e-liquid. The denser, more viscous nature of these liquids – coupled with appropriately large juice flow channels – results in some serious cloud production.

The tradeoff? Greater juice consumption, which means more juice to buy.

How tight do you like it?

In most environments, asking this question will likely earn you a meeting with HR. But for vapers, draw is key. In fact, some would argue that draw and airflow are as important to vaping as flavor itself.

This is one reason why adjustable airflow control has become standard on virtually every tank on the market – both MTL and sub-ohm. Airflow control allows users to further customize their vapes, depending on the liquid they use, and the power they want to apply.

Furthermore, certain sub ohm options serve as a good bridge between MTL restriction and today’s wide-open draws. These early fog-friendly pioneers could certainly produce ample vapor, but weren’t nearly the e-liquid guzzlers we see on shelves now.

Using such entry-level sub-ohm tanks is more like inhaling through standard bendy straws, or even those spoon-straw things you find in a McFlurry. Broad, adjustable and adaptable, these tanks allow users of predominantly PG liquid to transition to sub-ohming, adjusting juice types and device settings as preferences change.

Modern sub-ohm tanks have even more control over airflow, but their designs and performance make things abundantly clear: These tanks are made to swallow juice, blow clouds and take names.

The airflow on these new tanks is like taking deep breaths through a garden hose. With e-liquids that feature less than 3mg nicotine, you may not even realize you’re inhaling… at least until plumes of thick, voluminous vapor exit every hole on your face.

What about nicotine?

New vapers are generally best served by PG-heavy, high-nicotine e-liquids. However, should these vapers move to more advanced equipment, they should strongly consider shifting to thicker, VG-heavy liquids. Not only to prevent e-liquid from seeping through those wide juice holes, but also to prevent throat pain from a brutal inhale.

It’s probably becoming obvious, but if you prefer high nicotine concentrations, we strongly advise against using sub ohm tanks. The huge boost in vapor inhalation that comes with sub ohm tanks intensifies normally tolerable nicotine hits into frighteningly potent puffs.

Oh, you might see clouds, alright. But you’ll also see stars.

Think back to the last time you puffed a cigarette. Now imagine taking that same draw on a cigarette 3-5x wider in circumference. Hurts to think about, right? It’s why you just puff on cigars!

To replicate the smoking experience, avoid any liquids with more than 50% VG, not to mention any bottle that uses terms like “drip,” “sauce” or “max.”

Conclusion

In the end, if your setup provides enjoyment and satisfaction then you’ve found your sweet spot. Yes, even if other people think you’re “crazy” for vaping that way.

Ultimately, vaping always comes down to preference. In an ever-expanding world of vaping, there is very little that is definitively “wrong” or “right,” until we are talking about how you like it.

But there are tank and e-liquid types that simply work better together, optimizing the capabilities of your hardware, and maximizing the flavor and enjoyment you get from your e-liquid. Hopefully now you can walk into a vape shop and leave with the right e-liquid for your tank.

> Keep reading: Check out our list of “Best E-Liquids”

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sempiternalsandpitturtle · 7 years ago

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How to build your brand influence online

Being an influencer is immensely powerful, and could directly affect your bottom line.

Look at this: When participants in a Twitter study were exposed to a campaign that featured influencer tweets, their purchase intent increased by 5.2 times, compared to those that only saw normal brand tweets. The same research also found that 40 per cent of consumers follow brands on Twitter, with 60 per cent doing so to learn about their products. That’s some incredible data!

But “influencer” seems like such a vague term. Is it even something that one can achieve without being a Kardashian?

In this article, find ways to learn if your brand is influential online, and if the answer is “No, but we wanna be,” we’ve also got some great ideas for building your influence.

Find out if you’re ‘influential’

Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Let’s start positive…

Good news: You don’t need a million social media followers to be an ‘influencer’. Hurrah!

Bad news: You do need power. Oh.

What we mean by power is ‘having influence over others’. You see, influencers aren’t people with massive social media followings (although they of course can be). No, that’s popularity. Influence is the ability to affect someone’s perception and/or decisions, to change their minds based on your message.

In the context of marketing, this is typically done with a mix of credibility and good salesmanship – brands who are trusted and can spin an impactful message are able to influence their customers (i.e. their purchase intent).

Credibility can come from popularity, but it doesn’t have to – thought leadership and providing value to followers, both pillars of good content marketing in general, also increase your street cred, and thus, your influence.

So how do I measure my own influence?

Chances are, by judging how you interact with your target audience on social media, you’ll immediately have a feel for how much your message influences their decisions. If customers are interacting positively with your team and achieving the goals you set, you must inherently be influencing their decisions.

But there are a couple of great tools you can use to get a quantifiable measure of how your brand influences customers on social media:

Klout: Klout is an online platform that quantifies your ‘influence’ into a score between one and 100. The platform has over 400 signals it uses to determine scores, such as how many retweets you get per tweet, your individual social media followers, and so on. You can connect a variety of digital platforms into Klout, helping measure your entire marketing strategy and benchmark your influence against others in your industry. Klout also rewards perks to influencers, meaning you might get a little something back for your data efforts.

Skorr: Skorr is an AI-driven tool. Like Klout, it will give your social media a score from one to 100, but Skorr uses its AI computing power to help you improve your posts. It compares metrics like engagement, audience levels, etc. with sentiment analysis and language processing to offer critical insights so you can tune your strategy to suit.

Both of these tools could also be helpful for you to measure your personal brand, as well as that of your company.

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How do I know if my brand is trusted?

Again, you should be able to feel this out by considering how positively customers interact with you on social media, and whether or not they complete the marketing goals you set. If you’re meeting your objectives, customers must trust you at least on some level.

For those who want better data than gut instinct, take the time to survey your followers and see what they have to say on the matter. Would they recommend you to a friend or colleague? Are they satisfied with your content?

These two questions alone should be enough to create actionable next steps to either capitalise on or improve their trust in your personal or company brand.

How to increase your influence

So what if you aren’t an influencer? Don’t give up all your hopes and dreams just yet, because there are plenty of methods to build your social media oomph that will fit easily into your content marketing strategy.

Let’s look at three quick tips. We’ll cover:

Building your expertise.

Leveraging other influencers.

Establishing meaningful, two-way relationships.

1. Building your expertise

As we mentioned earlier, thought leadership is a great way to increase credibility, which in turn can build trust, which of course builds influence. To be considered a thought leader, you must bring a new perspective to your market – you must communicate insight and ideas that clearly show you know your stuff, particularly on topics that matter to your customers.

There are three primary ways to build thought leadership:

Create powerful content

Whitepapers, long-form blog content, slideshares, podcasts and videos are all ideal ways to communicate big-thinking ideas that showcase your opinion and expertise on important topics. This then gives you an arsenal of great pieces to share and promote on social media to increase brand awareness, not to mention it helps your SEO by filling your website with content.

Become a bigger part of your industry

Speaking at events, networking with other professionals and offering comment to news agencies on relevant topics are three ways with which you can get your name out there in your industry. Start showing potential followers that you’re considered an expert not just by your own standards, but by other people’s as well.

Curate and share existing content

Finally, platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are excellent places to curate and share either repurposed or third-party content. Share relevant content you loved from other influencers, tweet opinions during industry events using any applicable hashtags, and re-share some of your older evergreen content. If you need to repurpose it to keep it fresh, you can learn more about that in our article “20 creative ways to repurpose content”.

Repurposing content is a great way to give it a second wind, and to reestablish the old buzz that it generated in its golden days. But how do you find the best content to repurpose? https://t.co/lgfHbtAbWk pic.twitter.com/4TB1QvFCTb

— Castleford (@castlefordmedia) April 18, 2018

2. Leveraging other influencers

Unless you exist in some kind of hyper-niche, “nobody’s ever heard of this” industry, there will already be a range of influencers in your market space. A pessimist might consider these fine people competitors, but today we’re going to look at them as allies.

Influencers and brand advocates are people already talking about topics relevant to you – they may even be talking about you directly! You need to identify these individuals, put them into a list, then start engaging with them. You can:

Share their content.

Comment or retweet their posts to open a line of communication.

Thank them if they mention your brand.

You could even sponsor people. According to research by The Shelf, 72 per cent of influencers share posts about their sponsors for free (outside of the contract), and 88 per cent verbally tell friends about brands that sponsor them. Imagine all that extra word-of-mouth marketing!

How to find influencers

BuzzSumo has a tool for this very purpose. Its Twitter influencers tool lets you find people based on topic or username, and can show you their domain authority, follower counts, average retweets and more.

You can also look for people in your market that have high Klout scores.

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3. Establish meaningful, two-way relationships

You mustn’t neglect the followers you hope to influence by focusing only on promoting yourself – after all, you’ll only be influencing tumbleweeds and cricket sound-effects if nobody trusts you enough to follow you.

One of the keys to building trust is communication. Communication shows people that they are individuals to you, not just a number, and that you care about their unique needs. Communication also allows people to give you feedback on your service, product or recent posts, which you can then use to improve all of the above to create a better experience.

You can deploy all the same techniques you’re using to engage influencers to communicate with regular customers, perhaps exchanging “sponsorship” to “giveaways or personalised deals”.

Additionally, you can respond to people’s comments if they have questions, or message them directly if you notice someone has an issue.

In conclusion

Is your brand influential online? You should be able to tell by the way people interact with your social media profiles. If you need hard data, Klout, korr and similar services will give you a quantifiable measurement.

If you need to build your influence a little higher, focus on creating a personality of trustworthiness and expertise, and leverage other influencers in your space to spread the word about your brand.

from http://bit.ly/2kagR3y

#content marketing

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