#other than for tweaking out on speed its kind of boring music

[vvitchgrindergeneral]

I don't care for harsh noise

[lu-undy]

Chapter 81 - SBT

Here it is.

"Oh man, maths is so hard…"

"I know! But Prof L's nice."

"Yeah, makes it almost easy."

Lunch time came and Mundy smiled. He was on soup duty that day with the poor, and the kids were rushing out of their class with none other than Prof L. 

"Hey, M!" 

"Hey, guys. So how was it with L? Borin' again?" 

The kids laughed as they lined up and took a bowl each. 

"Non, it was not." Lucien went behind the counter and lent a hand to Mundy. "Was it?" He asked the children.

"Nah!" They answered as they were served by either Lucien or Mundy. 

"You see, M? My classes are never boring." 

"Pfff, of course you'd say that…!"

When the soup was served to everyone, Lucien and Mundy helped themselves and shared some bread together. Winter was gone and now was the time for spring. 

"How was it with the kids this mornin'?" Mundy asked as they both sat on plastic chairs not far from the tables that had the pots.

"Someone said it was boring." Lucien answered with a smile. 

"So I've heard, eh." 

"Pff…" Lucien nudged him with his elbow playfully and they both chuckled. 

"Nah, seriously, how was it?"

"As usual. I think some of them at least will become very good human beings, and maybe even more. Seeing them everyday fills me with joy."

"Alright then, I see you don't need me, eh?"

"Don't be jealous. I need you, you fill me with another kind of joy…" Lucien winked at his lover. 

"Not so loud. The kids are gonna hear you…!"

"They are far away and busy." Lucien answered with a chuckle. 

"Still have some classes this afternoon?" Mundy raised a bit of bread to his mouth.

"Oui." Lucien bent on his side and bit in the bit of bread before Mundy had the chance. 

"Oi!"

Lucien chuckled and left a quick kiss on his lover's cheek. 

"Someone told me that I looked like a thief."

"Whoever that is, they're right!"

"Ages ago, a lifetime ago. I was a different man back then, and I had come to meet with a scruffy - some would say dirty - hunter."

Mundy raised an eyebrow. 

"Back then, I used to have short hair and a clean shaven face."

"Now you're the scruffy one, eh?" Mundy joked and Lucien chuckled. 

"I guess so, oui. And back then, I used to wear a mask."

"Ah, yeah, the balala-thingy. I remember." 

"Oui. And the hunter said to me that I looked like a thief with my… balala-thing."

"Balala-thingy, not balala-thing, Professor Ski." 

Lucien's eyebrows jumped and he turned to look Mundy in the eye. 

"That's how I called you when we met, remember?" The Aussie asked. 

"Of course, I do." 

They finished their soup together and the time had come for afternoon classes. 

"I shall go."

"Yeah, don't wanna be late for your own classes, eh."

"It sets a bad example for the children." Lucien answered.

"Ooh, listen to you now, an example you are, eh?"

Lucien smirked proudly. 

"You should take notes, mon amour."

"Pfff, yeah, well, too late to change anything in me, eh."

Lucien stood up and took Mundy's hand. 

"It is never too late." He put Mundy's hand on his lips and left a kiss. The Aussie stood up and pulled Lucien's hand to his own lips.

"Go ahead, Prof L." He kissed it and Lucien blushed.

"Fine, I shall. Take care and see you tonight?" Lucien headed away.

"Yeah, see ya. And uh, Lu'?"

The Frenchman stopped and turned. 

"Je t'aime." Mundy said, with his own Australian twist to the pronunciation. 

[I love you.]

"Moi aussi, mon loup."

[Me too, my wolf.]

Mundy spent the afternoon going through donations. Clothes, toys, sometimes even pieces of furniture. Of course he wasn't alone and other volunteers helped. He took a break at some point and took a walk around the few blocks. But curiosity won over when he saw the silhouette of a man in his late forties with long, silver hair through a window. 

Mundy got closer and watched. Lucien was too absorbed explaining whatever bit of maths was on the blackboard for him to notice that he had an extra student outside, shyly observing him. Mundy saw him go to the kids, boys or girls, from one table to the next. He would crouch down to be at eye-level with them and spend a few seconds there. Sometimes he would take a pencil and scribble something on their copybook. But each time, he would finish his explanations with a smile and a pat on the shoulder or ruffling the blond or brown hair of the child he was addressing.

Mundy smiled. The cold-blooded snake of a spy did have something of a father's instinct. And even if his past job had tried to strip him off of his emotions, Lucien's heart always won. 

"Such a ball of repressed romance you are…" Mundy whispered to himself and chuckled before turning and heading back where Maurice needed him.

The afternoon flew by at the speed of light. 

"M, you can finish this tomorrow, it will start to get dark and L has finished classes a long time ago now. He will wonder why you come back home so late…!"

Maurice came to Mundy who was busy trying to repair a toy. He had a screwdriver in his hand and an allen key behind his ear. The king of beggars removed the allen key and tapped Mundy's shoulder.

"Oh, hey, Maurice."

"How is it going?"

"Alright. Just a few tweaks and a new battery ought to do the job on this little car."

"Great. Now, please, go back home or L will tell me off." Maurice chuckled. 

"Yeah, true." Mundy put away his tools and tidied up his working bench before standing. "Alright, thanks Maurice, I didn't see the time fly."

"It is alright. I should have a clock installed in this workshop. But yes, please, we'll see each other tomorrow." 

"Yeah, see ya."

They exited the workshop and Mundy locked it before heading home. His walk back home wasn't too long but as he put his hand on the front door handle, a noise surprised him. He leaned his ear on the wooden door to listen better. 

"Is that…?"

Yes, it was. It wasn't any odd noise. That particular kind Mundy could recognise anywhere. He unlocked the door and pushed it open as silently as possible before slipping in. He walked to the living-room and peeked through its door.

The flames of the fireplace made the Burgundy walls glow in warm shades of red and orange. Perle and Soot brushed themselves on Mundy's legs before slithering in the room. Lucien was sitting in the middle of it, on a piano. He had tied his hair in a messy bun but some locks of hair fell beautifully around his face. Mundy's heart swelled in his chest and he didn't even wonder where the piano had come from.

The halo of the dancing flames cut Lucien's black silhouette poetically. He was playing with the ivory keys confidently. Mundy removed his aviators to see him better.

{To the reader: the song is "Star Triste" [Sad Star] by Juliette Armanet. Some of the lyrics have been changed.}

"Accoudé à mon piano,

[Leaning on my piano]

Je fais le beau

[I play it cool]

Je veux qu'on m'aime,

[I want to be loved]

Qu'on m'aime dans la peau."

[To be so loved.]

Lucien was dancing on the piano, his hair followed the movement of his head that he swung in rhythm.

"J'voulais pas devenir chanteur,

[I didn't want to become a singer,]

Lady crooner,

[A lady crooner]

J'rêvais d'une vie plus claire,

[I dreamt of a more simple life]

Peut-être plus sincère."

[Maybe more true.]

Perle and Soot jumped on the piano seat and then on top of the piano itself and they laid there, spooning each other. Soot bathed the white cat and no doubt they were purring, even though Mundy couldn't hear them.

"J'sens que je vais finir en idole,

[I feel I'll end up an idol]

En bourreau des coeurs,

[A heartbreaker]

Le king des baby dolls,

[The king of baby dolls]

Le bureau des pleurs."

[The bureau of cries]

Gosh, what a sight. Mundy had almost forgotten that Lucien could sing that well. It was gentle, delicate waves of air that he blew between his thin lips. It was sensual and soft to the ear.

"Je cherche des yeux

[I look with my eyes]

Quelqu'un pour que le monde s'écroule

[For someone to make the world crumble and fall]

Quelqu'un pour être deux

[Someone to be two with]

Et là parmi toute la foule

[And there, amongst the crowd]

Je n'en vois pas deux

[I can't see two people]

J'suis seul pour lui tout entier

[I am alone for him entirely]

Seul sur la scène

[Alone on the stage]

Juste pour lui"

[Only for him]

Lucien raised his head off the black and white keys and looked at the door. Nothing. Hm. He could have sworn he felt as if he was being watched. 

"Il n'y a qu'un seul moyen de le savoir."

[There is only one way to find out.]

Lucien dived back in his bubble of concentration. He knew what he should play next, to lure his lover out of the shadows.

He placed his fingers on the keys and took a deep breath. Lucien started much slower than the original version. But he needed to remind himself of the chords and arpeggios. Ah, oui, it was coming back to him now, his fingers knew what they were doing and he started to sing. 

"Time can never mend

The careless whisper of a good friend.

To the heart and mind,

If your answer's kind,

There's no comfort in the truth.

Pain is all you'll find.

I should have known better, yeah."

Lucien looked at Perle and Soot. They were sleeping peacefully, their limbs were intertwined in a beautiful mix of black and white fur.

"I feel so unsure

As I take your hand and lead you to the dance floor.

As the music dies,

Something in your eyes

Calls to mind a silver screen,

And all is sad goodbyes."

A breathy line of saxophone resonated from the corridor and Lucien smiled. He went on with the music, nothing shall interrupt them!

"I'm never gonna dance again!

Guilty feet have got no rhythm!

Though it's easy to pretend,

I know you're not a fool!

I should have known better than to cheat a friend!

And waste a chance that I'd been given!

So I'm never gonna dance again,

The way I danced with you!"

Mundy had entered the living-room and was now playing that oh so famous saxophone tune from the well known 'Careless Whisper', by George Michael. He joined Lucien and leaned on the side of the piano. 

One tapped ivory and ebony keys while the other played with gold. The flames of the fireplace lit the black varnished, grand piano and the golden saxophone beautifully. 

Both improvised on the piece and it lasted much longer than it should. The piano answered the saxophone and the saxophone answered the voice. Hammers hit strings more passionately as Mundy blew in his golden dragon, the flames of what his voice couldn't sing springing vividly to Lucien.

After a length of time that none of them knew precisely, they stopped. Mundy had ended up sitting next to Lucien on the piano seat. He put the saxophone on top of the piano next to the cats and took a deep breath. 

"That… was epic." He said and leaned his head on Lucien's shoulder. The latter chuckled. 

"We should do this more often." 

"What? Play Careless Whisper for hours?" Mundy asked as he dearly held Lucien's arm in his.

"Playing together. After all, that's all we've ever done, hm?" Lucien put his hand on Mundy's thigh and brushed it gently. He leaned his head on Mundy's. 

"Yeah… Playin' together weird games, eh?" 

"Oui, but I wouldn't change anything."

"I'd change the bit where you made me believe you were dead." Mundy teased. 

"Ah, oui, that. I almost forgot about it." Lucien found Mundy's hand and laced his fingers around his. 

"I didn't. It felt awful."

"To this day I am surprised that you did not beat me up for it." Lucien said. 

"To be honest with ya, I couldn't. It didn't even cross my mind."

"How come? I thought I was your favourite punching bag." Lucien kissed his lover's head and leaned on it again.

"Ha, yeah, 'course you are but…"

"But?" 

"But I was so happy to see you. I was over the moon…!" Mundy answered. "And uh… If you think about it, coming out of your hidin' is like refusing to lie. It's like you had the choice between continuing to lie or coming to me, and you chose to take the risks and come to me. Means a lot to me." 

Lucien smiled, albeit sadly. He wished he had met Mundy much earlier in life.

"Now, the more I think about it, the more I… Uh… I mean I love you." 

Lucien bit his lip. Something was gnawing him on the inside and had been for days now. 

"Mundy?"

"Yeah?"

"I have something to confess, yet again."

Mundy straightened his back and looked at his lover next to him. 

"What is it?"

"I fear you might want to beat me up after all." Lucien lowered his head. 

"Why?" Mundy took Lucien's hand in both of his. He looked him in the eye but Lucien was staring down at his thighs.

"Because there is a lie that I need to clear up."

"Go ahead."

Lucien took a deep breath. 

"Tomorrow I shall take you somewhere, if you agree. But you shall face it without me."

"Face what?" Mundy raised an eyebrow. 

"The lie that Maurice has been nurturing for years and that he shared with me for days now." 

Mundy frowned. 

"Alright… Uh… I must say it doesn't explain much but I guess that's all I'm gettin' for tonight?" 

"I am sorry." Lucien hid his face in his hands.

"Hey now, it's fine." Mundy hugged him.

"Non, it is not. You will hate me when you find out!"

"No! I can't hate you, luv', whatever it is, I won't hate you. I can't!"

"Mundy… Please…?" Lucien removed his hands off his face and looked up at Mundy. The Aussie saw the flames of the fireplace dance in the guilty pupils of his lover.

"Yeah?"

"I promised to stay with you and I will." Lucien said. "You will need to face this lie and look at it right in the eye. It will be painful and it will shock you beyond what you have lived so far."

Mundy's breath accelerated. His body was tense as he started to measure the seriousness of Lucien's words. 

"I will not be with you because you have to do this alone. But I will be nearby."

"Lu', you're startin' to scare me…"

"I will be nearby but…"

"But what?"

"But I will understand if you don't want to talk to me for a while, if looking at me hurts because I have overstepped the mark and did something wrong to you, again." 

"Lu', don't talk nonsense, I love you too much for that."

"Mundy…" Lucien headbutted Mundy's chest softly and buried himself there. "In my defense, please understand that since the day Maurice told me the truth, I have been unable to sleep soundly, I felt like I was lying to you and God knows that I never want that to happen again. It pained me so much that… I sometimes even found it hard to look at you in the eye because each time I did, I would hear a voice in my head screaming that I was lying to you. It was unbearable!" Lucien clawed Mundy's jumper on his chest. 

"Whatever it is, it's gonna be fine and I won't be mad at you. Don't find excuses like this. I… I'm sure that if you lied, you had good reasons to, eh?" Mundy cupped Lucien's face and made him look up. "Ok?"

"Non. I was just too cowardly to tell you the truth, and too afraid of your reaction." Lucien answered sadly. "And now I am ashamed." 

"Luv', there's no harm done, ok? I love you way too much to hold a grudge or anything." 

"You say that now, but tomorrow shall test your love for me brutally." 

Mundy hugged Lucien again. 

"Whatever it is, we've fought worse." The Aussie said. "We've fought worse and we made it. Every bloody time, however hard it was, we made it together. Now I don't know what you've been hiding from me and why you're so terrified of my reaction when I'll find it out. But I can't afford to lose you, not again. I know how hard it is to be without you. So don't worry, I won't let go of you." 

"I fear that you might reconsider everything tomorrow." 

"Don't. There's nothin' in the world that'll change the fact that I need you in my life." 

"So do I, mon amour, so do I…" 

Lucien closed his eyes and clung to Mundy. That hug lasted for minutes and to the Frenchman, it almost seemed as though it would be the last.

[jamesmcf88]

pt 2 - james mcfarlane

NEW — weird song (2016) the reaper, put the beat on hold, bones dug up just like the sunflowers in the snow, now deeper into the river of sight, if you go in that cave dont turn out the light, white light shines bright, no stars tonight, behind the vox stack, their singin heart is black, subwayswhislting over my head, thank god i climbed aboard instead, reap what you sew 4x (coda) Heart is black ive been had (ive been had) ive gone mad (ive gone mad) ths is war, (this is war) i told you all this before i beg you, i want you too, write me back heart is black face the facts, art is black, heart is black face the facts, art is black, oohicant stay, (ooh icant stay) cant go your way, (cant go your way) i felt you sweet smack, Your smoke is black (smoke is black) i beg you, i want you too, write me back heart is black face the facts, art is black, Beautiful face she thinks shes alright, butshes out of sight, swim in for a bite, underneath the white light, thining of fashons, and still looking smashing appealing to fools, out of all kinds of schools, lo frequency base, mixed with the acid taste, no it couldnt compare, to your beautiful face. you left a hole in my chest, a better shot than the rest, do you have five minutes, for a warhol screen test, at dawn i see a star burning not lie the rest, cant help but sit and wonder where its going next 4x cant help but sit and wonder where shes going next 4x Blue Haired BelleBlue Haired Belle, hangs around the gates of hellMorning stars get lost, in the flow of your blue sky locksDon’t despair, you’ve been on a track please take care, Come fly with me, its your blue sky that’s pure dont you see. Its alright You, me , everybody,we, see, only moonbeams,comets not so high,eathquakes in the sky,lalalight n short in hight and , nananight and it’s alright,lalalight n short in hight and , nananight and it’s alright, You light the way, through tunnels, try not the scrape, the gunnels,on the right a cave in sight, it’s alright not this timeon the right a cave in sight, it’s alright not this timelalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala lalalalaooooaaaaooooaaaaaooooooooooaaaaooooaaaaaooooooooooaaaaooooaaaaaooooooooooaaaaooooaaaaaoooooo Main Street When you called me up hereIdidnt feel like walkin, Now your sayin to me,youdidnt feel like talkinwhy are we so clumsy,so clumsy with our breadnow you tell me honey, how you keep your stomach fed, always lending yourself out, to the freaks that dot our lives,honey when you gunna shout, at those drones in out beehive,take a walk uptown, to the bucket where they drown,gunna tell them when they get out,to get theiur handouts downtown MorningAt the dawn of a new age,Sun comes up, smell the burning sage,take a step foreward, turn the pagesay goodbye to all those dark dark days, MAking a brew I stare a the fire,stir the pot, and then connect the wires,turn on the amp, the music inspires,got to free my mind from all the cheats and all the liars. Morningdrone You, you know what I mean, when isay,that nothings gunna happen today,and you, you know what imean,wheni tell you it’s just not my scene, you, yeees you, what the hell are we gunnado?and you, the only one you listen to, is a man, by the name of, Lou. We, yeees us three, could make it at a defferentpace,I, know that, it’s a discrace, Lord, take us to another place, So grab your stuff, your record albums,you take the wine, and ill take the guns, and into the ocean, we will go, cause you know, were headed, for the coast,so raise up your glasses, for a toast,ha, which one of us can drink the most,the father, theson, or the holy ghost,and you say that this car can race,but can it take us to that other place, a different side of mother natures face. take me to another place. Nothing drones honey comes from lots of work, sticky feet moving berserkpatterns form in crude beauty, drones fulfill a pointless duty, honey drips, from the hive, golden jkelly feeds their wife, pretty flowers messy home, nothing drones on like the cone, back and forth, in and out, dancing like we use our mouths,the pay is small and so are you, results of that sweetens my tooth, the task is never ending, constantly descending, dripping in the mouths of those not worth defending. Oppenheimer park Rolling down the open road, to the end of the line,end of the world, end of the illusion of time,I go down to the water, and feel the cool surf,hear music in the air and take it for what it’s worth, cant understand why people, could live on so little,when so much goes through them, and through the needle, so hasty, with the selling of their saved souls,the western downtown is bright, blunt, and bold. Walk up and down throughout the day, out of your mind,think of your home nevermore, till the end of timethe loop drones on and on like a broken clock,don’t need to climb the montain, cause your at the top Hastngs is not coming for you, your coming for it,like hell it bewccons like the incline of a pit,the east side, sits a nd people come from near and far,to sit, and sink, into the grass, in oppenheimer park oracle so your torched,your hanging by a thread,don’t scorch, your pretty little head,wishing through your lips that it worntpass,feels like your turning from a liquid to a gas, take a trip right to the edge of your mind, consciousness poured out and left behind,take a break from all the flats and all the sharpd,ride a cloud of nothing, and numb your broken heart To thew edge of your mind, distortion blurrs the line bettweenwhats out there and whats inside, deep in the cave, breath in the cold air,see shadows on the wall,… stare bring news just like homing pigeon,come down, and start a new religion, leave now, and speak out, littereally or metephorical,the knowledge you posess will make you the oracle. Pipe Dream A science experiment gone totally wronga weather balloon with some kind of evil about it,all the kids at school could see it above the horizon,my friends and i knew we’d be better off without it, king kong, walked along high street, where the freaks and thugs call home,if he could reach this floating disaster on time,he knew he would never have to die alone,hethough about it and realised the people wouldntunderstandhe knew their alien nation would turn this ape into a man, darkened minds turn on a dime, revolve in time along thin white linesyin and yang drip from a wolfs fang, one pulls the trigger the other goes band why can we get to the meaningof this philosophy of feeling, how do we break the silence of the checkerboard of violence. Darkened fool has lots of toolsd, dead at the deep end of the pool, boring times and pouring rhyme, the question, is this really mine? why can we get to the meaningof this philosophy of feeling, how do we break the silence of the checkerboard of violence. Psych em out Psychem out like rabid vermin, make em shout a phony sermon,see right through their simple game,right to their core their thoughts of shame, watchem blow upon the fire, rocks explode right on the liar, social change brings end to war, housewife trembles on the floor,backwardsforewards, up and downvoisc encircle all aorund, observeprecieve hear see know learn mirror be, identify possible flaws, of the menace with no causethe time is now, so try to learn how to bend the rules they use to keep you down. Rabbit hole Salvage you mind while it is illuminated, a fire out of control,a cabbage in ttime, right now it is fumigated, wired and housing a soul,badhabbits in line, schedualed to be terminated, inspire you out of your hole, A rabbit , redefined and underrated but higher than ever before, drink up while the tea is hot and bright blue, the flesh of the gods makes it so,3 caps and some stems is all i can do, to see shooting stars upon the snow, think sweetly of me, with emotions so true as yu stand and look through the window,think of thinkgs to do when im gone for good now, waving at the bus watching it go, Im down in the southland, with deep curving valleys and bridges all rusty and crumbling, with grasses all dying and rivers of green and subways whistling under me. a spot on the corner , a 30 dollar gutar, a case and a cigarette too, is all that i need to get usedd to my home and bring my mind closer to you. The last of this song, is all out of place, but the pace rings true to the rule, of the verses before i shut tight the door on the patterns lost and misconstrewen,becauseits all backwards and forewards like this, its in shambles but its not a ruin,the end of this 4 verse song has arrived, to the point you might not clue in. Sea of lights Rockj and rave, through the night,on speed in a sea of lights,jump spin contort thrust,black white pain lust,spent a week there last might, maybe more,steal yourself a holy death crouching by the door cause we all live in sin but it makes music sound new, go out on a limb, and let the world surround you, we rave through the atonal thrusts and the booms,tonight the flowers of evil are in full bloom, Standing there all in white, she sings in the spotlight, in darkness and style, we strum all the whilestanding all in black behind the vox stack, from behind sunglasses, we inspire the masses, cause we all live in sin but it makes music sound new, go out on a limb, and let the world surround you, we rave through the atonal thrusts and the booms,tonight the flowers of evil are in full bloom, Walk and talk it through the park,whiplashgirlchild in the darkrun run run, take a drag shoot your speed while you brag i’ve been orchestrating behind sunglasses,immitatingprodogy, and writer, man, tomboy and a throusand fans zeppelin spotlights on my brain exploding plastic in my veinhypnotyic tones as the propellers drone,mind bending sounds, resonate undreground, dak circles never weed, new york 1963, Chcmysic, velvet freak desensitize alter tweak, no money car moon or sun, sell your blood for heroin,if she ever comes now now, moe beat on that drum now now,pink perfume, mantra neumes silk screen factory tunes superstar test only the best wine coffee speed heroin rest,darkcircl;es never weep, new yourk 1963,theyve been up for weeks, in the white light the tweak, in 63 Skeleton Here we are again, moneys all been spent, you don’t know where hesbeen,hes trying to fend off things that dwell within, hes a skeleton. at the end of days hes been here before he says, narrow in mannyways,hes a skeleton,andidont know where hesgoin, or why he thinks itssnowin, he can see the wind thatsblowin, hes a skeleton, Spotlight Reap what you sew,snakes and poppys in her hair,sun flowers in the snow,make you look like your not so old,it had been so long i could not recall her face,she came outside to meet me though iwas’t her case,nowi sit and wonder if I’m out of place,the memories i had of her, are in outer space Standing all in white, she sings in the spotlight, in darkness and style, we strum all the while,on the odd days I could talk to her,harmony and dissonence, a modern venus in furs,up and down that hallway, rotating the earth,waiting there for hours and hours, for her the quench my thirst. Sweet grass summertime,see the star shine, and i don’t mind revisiting those times,although my mind is blown, i play the drone,saying goodbye while you’re getting stoned. Vicious lips oooooo what to do,iwanna see you too,i think imgoin mad, ooooim not that sad noooi wonder sometimes where you are,what moon what planet under what star,id like to think your not that far, but we both know that trip was hard your vicious lips, eard on the airwaves, waking the dead, from their graves,your sweet, but your toxic, been three weeks since you dropped itI found it in my pocket, your trains comin I cant stop it You Made Me the reaper, put the beat on hold, turns to dust when they turn to dope,promises, he couldntkeep,to save a life, only three feet deep,you’re my catalyst, myonliness, decemberbaby,im the creep you made me,you’re my catalyst, myonliness, decemberbaby,im the creep you made me,the reaper, put the beat on hold, turns to dust when they turn to dope,promises, he couldntkeep,to save a life, only three feet deep,you’re my catalyst, myonliness, decemberbaby,im the creep you made me, Come Back Around JAMES MCFARLANE·FRIDAY, MAY 13, 201610 Reads The process as a whole is always a learning experience like no other. Ultimately, like the brain has a recognition and physical atribute that corresponds with most chemicals in nature (possibly even synthetic chemicals) the psychological functions that a person can aquire are almostordaned and recieved in a timely fashion by the organ and im assuming the subconscious effortlessly and for evolutionary purpose. So I will assume everyones own, (however existential), growth experience is interesting. Having the atribute of spiking and deminishing of at least two of the brains most important chemicals related to experience, and behavior… and the awareness of the (most obvious to you) potential for not only chemical related occurances and their ripple effect, but the behavioral methods that the acute brain, manic brain, almost has a natural function to excercise and use usually either for a better survival or further expansion into astonishing existential and soon to be investigated parapsychological, social behaviors that tend to stick as long as they serve in a new type evolutionary (ie “Counter intuative”, productive and humanistic beavior that the mind eagerly draws in like an antennae recieving and storing up valueable energy. Setting this agenda and also surviving the early episodes, of bipolar, (which are usually the most drastic) are two hurdles to get over, let alone the crude, almost sickening archetectural features in our community hospitals, thats purpose cannot be desguised as heathcare to the human eye. A grossly overused assortment of bondage equipment and isolation chambers (not to mention your absence of any dignifying articles of clothing( also to be moved and set in place on occasion) nowadays plate glass walls, a whole dungeon setup designed by those people involved no less, who really probably care wheather the colour they chose or how their design would function better than the decaying sweat soaked ultimately in our home towns case, my favorite case, dried blood stained, apparenty approved for use by some dr, a single hallway, to alk up and down seemingly endlessly, untill not suprisedby the inevitable dread code white, that is the delight for the predominantly, …listen t me… dominated, by your average practicing as ferociously as they can with as little effort as possible, sociopath and more importantly to re ognise, violent violators psychopaths, who pretymch have the real pl working there stressin over what could possibly be these ppls capabilities, and are alienated inside by this evil thay cannot risk their ,,, virtully anything valuable, like a job or who knows, omg… thats why she left,,,,, so, yaa, these ppl rise like cream, annnnnd they have a really good time eeeehm, .. now nurse practitioners or legends, thir former dominator look like theyve aged, well lets say i was convinced they had beeen using prolongued use on heavy stimulents, like crack. iloldrewaout a blueprint with symboldsfr the patient advocate, neaysi mostly wantd to write and its alot of shit thats gone no doubt as home with ,,,lets say u know like fat cat. what, i was 15, and he was fat then, now hes the last one standing up there that i know of. oh yea… so i would say if u want out, and as of late i thing the design is perfect for the right ppl, socios included, fuckers, but, the dr, they are jst as careless as the security guards who cant hide haw stupid the really are and the odd couple who are revealing that their ok, still, idicovered, ,, maybe not in north bay, but in a proper community, like the city, ………..lost my train,,,, i think that i was getting at how just to be fair and …eyea 50 percent of the staff endowd with the ability to weildstrapps, and are encouraged by their no doubt under educated superiors, to always have the wrist ready to be broken if, now this brings me back,,,, they chokeyou, than comes the bondage that betty page would think is very unatractive, idk,,, the thing is,,, ya the drs, oh waut,, ok…. 1/3 of all of them are,,,, exculding the drs, and the janitors, who if ihaventdiscosedya are always there to pile up on a code white, and i know,, listen to me, no janitor ive met would grab my ass so hard on such a numerous a pile up, i have eyes in theback f my head,,,,,,, italalot,,,,,,, ppl that work so hard tp climb so not that far up the ladder in society, yes, sum of them are costume rocking witchcrftprodiges, who, will, 1 take the whole bunch of guys .. it may have been the forensic unit,,, this little thing is known by ,ppl, ive talked to about the psych who are inderectyl told by their others who work it, and ave stories about the oddity of us. iduno,, alot went down, but,, boring s yea she walks me throught e bysantine conduit iup to the floor, and the police have to walk somewhere behind to uncuff me and ta da, , y o iwanna bring up corporeal action when the best times,,, due to the conditios of bondage uuuuuuuuuuh were strictly through plate glass,,,,, ie. rare appearenced that are pretty much the only way. i really was bloody fucking thirsty 8percent and i mea ya,, when i was younngti chewed up braaaaan and drank my watttaaeer, and drew peace sighnsandd 7 days laterrrrr, after she sumhow managed to get an earbud into my head screaming for any colour you like by pink floyd, and playd the fungsonhggg, badassss. straight jacket. prolly day 4,,,,, i still think cough syrop is good for teenagerswhatver,,m took me to the top. ok… to get offf, the ward do as such; by Ultimately drawin on to no apparent end in crayons complete with nicotine gum (smokes,, the only freedom, not yet a right, that is so hard to get,,,,, and i learned to smoke in side the scarborough general hospitol,,, that room soon became the chamber, i would be locked in, for manny weeks, at different times,, thats where alot also hapened, is where the nude bondage asianfemaldr, ..whati mean i s theatwwhatwuldlou reed say… they never forgave us for nagasaki.,,, newaysive never spent more time in a i also a what appears to be and have bben told by assdocter of the north bay pstychwhi took to court at the hospitol and he got yelled at by a panel while my dad defended him and i ate cookies cus ii was really manic,,,, i also was 15 1/2… he later let me try and commit suicide,, thats a story of a different colour,, sounds like sprockets, idk,, idontwafe war with very real religiossympomatic shat, iuuuuuhm , so,,,, hereswahat krb8tujvcklwelbutrin.,,, ya, it istaken orally it shoul get right to work in three ad a half weeks, if suicidal,,,,, pray, oooir if u cant get dxedrine,, or sum speed beane drink a bottle of childrensgeapecoughsyrup once a day,,,, this acts as a seritonin reuptake inhibitor of a differrentcolour. 2 to 4 hours,,,iu get the mental stimulation,, it reall is a mellow buzz butttttyupppidecare fuck cough syrop…… dexedrineisnt out there and i know it couould really bbe used and they aslso do,, ie. jfk, addisons disease, dexedrine/anphetamine. so,, it will make y0ur 90 year old great aunt we all frogot about over in blind river get up from the abyss of alzheimers and dementia and sing thins is the day that the lord hath made,, ,but with real and concious interaction,,, without memory of course. however,,, she does that,,, did that anyway , but,,, im sure every month not every day,, at least one trial of … iuffingadhd adults can take it,,, why cant she. smeared into the grate of every window and the classy bubble rooom which actually was made with enough pride according to the regionnsid say, to have an even more, almost funny, and certainly battered scratched and spat on bubble for the head psychiatrist t poke his head into every few days. Lets not froget how that scene ended. like my father and grandfather before me who conditioned and alterred the correctiona institutions for fifty fife years now a conmfortablevacatin for psychopaths and whoever, not even the hole could stand up to point blank restraints naked, with your flimsy gown around your chest. at least in the bubble room there was lots of privacy, u know, to each institution their own, glass , bubble blood stained, probably 60 years of ppl that somehow said something that attracted the attention of their nurse, who no doubt vollynteered after printing your file which is most likely epic thick, there is no room for any of their creative stylings in that no, i did just smash the wall into pieces and ya all the insulatin is everywhere, high five and respect from my cute transference mistress, (and a couple others.)

[renaroo]

Double Time (11/24)

Disclaimer: Red vs Blue and related characters are the property of Rooster Teeth. Warnings: Language, Canon-typical violence Pairings: Tuckington, Chex Rating: T Synopsis: [Hero Time Sequel] After the events of Hero Time, the city and Blood Gulch are prepared for the true return of superheroes in a big way. But while Washington is attempting to adjust to a new relationship and a new living arrangement, the call of new heroes and a new mayor mean major changes for his professional life as well as his personal one. How will the balance of values fare when his new partners come to test everything he’s made of.

A/N: Long time no see, I apologize so much but I needed to take some time for a really tough situation and it brought me back to a thunder, hopefully giving you something enjoyable in the process!

Special thanks to @analiarvb, @secretlystephaniebrown, @notatroll7, @thepheonixqueen, @ashleystlawrence, @a-taller-tale, @mercuryblacksleg, @thesolesurvivormichael, @icefrozenover, @washingtonstub, and Yin on AO3 and tumblr for the wonderful feed back! I truly appreciate it more than you know.

Young Just Us

There was an ache to his bones and his joints that was leading Washington to wonder what sort of side effects his miraculous healing thanks to Doctor Grey may have had that she had neglected to inform him of. Or, at the very least, that she had informed him of but was lost in the quick speed at which every other bit of information she had given him and Tucker. 

Which was also making him regret telling the doctor that it was fine to share confidential information with Tucker in the room since, well...

“It’s too early for you to be out there! Did you forget that you almost died? That that Locus dude is still on the loose? Oh my god, you want me to just stand on the sidelines through all of this like some dudesel in distress! Joke’s on you, Wash! I’m no Church!”

A certain headache was growing right between Washington’s eyes that was making him reconsider the importance of everything.

“From my understanding, Church had some helpful advice to give and a few inventions,” Wash mused, crossing another rooftop despite having to hold a phone to his ear.

“Did you just say I’m lower than Church?” Tucker asked hysterically. “I’m... wow, I’m beyond offended.”

“And if that’s what I had meant, you should be. Fortunately for all of us, I actually was--” Wash stopped talking when he saw the next checkpoint coming up. “Tucker, I have to get back to this. You can yell at me later.”

“Oh, boy, can I yell at you later. I have enough in me to yell at you for the rest of the week!” he all but threatened.

“Right, love you too,” Wash said, pulling his phone away to hang up just as he could barely hear Tucker say What did you just say--

As much as he hated hanging up on Tucker (which he honestly didn’t under the circumstances but it was easier to tell himself that), Washington had other responsibilities to attend to. 

Like the sound of polka music gradually increasing from the distance with minor explosions and a few street lamps falling over not far behind it.

Starring expectantly at the distance, Wash took a deep breath and checked the time. 

Slower and just as destructive.

It was like they hadn’t been running this drill for weeks or something. Washington, with all his aches and groans in check, was slowly losing his patience with the young recruits. 

... and with the gleefulness the Reds took in causing more damage than absolutely necessary for their drills. But that was another battle for another time. 

Seeing the Reds’ jeep rounding the corner and coming onto the end street with his pupils nowhere in sight, Washington took drastic action and leaped down from the rooftop.

Aimed just right, Wash managed to land right between Grif and Simmons and onto the front console, causing the two to scream like banshees before realizing it was him. 

“Whoo, Wash! You sure know how to make an entrance!” Donut called from the back before turning toward Sarge. “Sarge! Load me up.”

“Firecracker engaged,” Sarge said gleefully before planting said firecracker in Donut’s hand.

“Wait!” Wash called out only to be drowned out by Donut’s screams of fire! before lobbing the firecracker. “Okay that’s enough! Too much public damage for one night!” 

“You said that tonight we weren’t stopping until those young’uns finally put an end to our reign on the streets themselves!” Sarge reminded him, beginning to hand another firecracker toward Donut.

“Yeah, which we basically took as free range from now ‘til the end of eternity,” Simmons added.

“Your call, dude,” Grif reminded Wash. “And if you dented anything in my car for cool points swear to god I’ll instruct my sister to make Tucker’s shifts living hell for the next few weeks. We’ll see who’s got the best payback--”

“Yeah, that’s going to be a real change up from what’s going on right now,” Wash remarked. “And I’m going back on my word. This ends now before the entire block goes up in smoke.”

And with that pronouncement, he grabbed the firecracker from Sarge’s hand and grabbed the gear shift and put them in park, which nearly sent all of them flying. 

“Holy shit, what the fuck, that was the dumbest, what the fuck, you’re trying to tear up my car, fuck fuck!” Grif cried out. 

“Please, your fifth member is a mechanic,” Wash responded, breaking the firecracker over his knee as he jumped out of the car. He then did a full double take on the team. “Wait... where is Lopez?”

“Señor Brown in public, Fancypants Hero!” Sarge barked back. “We use codenames in this crew.”

“Right, whatever, where is he?” Wash demanded. 

“On a daaaate,” Donut said gleefully. “I’m so proud of him. He’s come so far!”

“Alright, enough of this,” Wash said, waving his hand and walking toward the street where the out of breath heroes were coming their way. 

The young heroes nearly tripped over themselves as they cam barreling toward the Reds and Wash. Almost immediately, however, upon seeing Wash they all stumbled to a halt, grabbing their knees and heaving. 

“So... so close...” Jensen gasped. She then flinched with the others as Palomo wheezed and hit the pavement in a massive body flop. 

Wash temporarily glanced toward Palomo before looking to the rest of them. “No. You weren’t close. You weren’t even in the same ballpark as close and we’ve been running these drills repeatedly for over a week now.”

“Blargh!” Junior argued, the only one seemingly not out of breath. 

“No excuses,” Wash argued, holding up his hand to stop the rest from joining in. “There is something about the dynamic of this team that needs to be tweaked. Something small, that if changed, would make the difference between mediocrity and excellence in your futures.”

Palomo, pushing himself up off the pavement, tilted his head in enthusiastic surprise. “You think we’re mediocre now!?”

“No,” Wash said with a scowl. “You’re on the road toward being that way.”

Bitters glanced to the rest of the team and then back to Wash. “Okay, I can’t be the only one who finds that insulting, right? I mean, I know we suck, but what kind of teacher admits it to us out loud?”

“The best!” Andersmith called out excitedly.

“Me,” Wash answered more directly.

“Who is the best!” Andersmith continued. 

“Well, if we’re on the road to mediocrity... isn’t mediocrity like halfway to decency? So can’t we just continue on it?” Palomo asked curiously.

“No, that’s not how we’re doing this,” Wash said. “We need direction. We need--”

“A leader.”

The voice sent a shock through them all, causing everyone to turn on their heels to face its origin. And, sure enough, Wash found himself facing his former saver and apparent fellow city hero, Felix. Smiling wide and invitingly. 

“How did you sneak up on us?” Wash demanded.

“Guess all you attention was directed elsewhere,” Felix shrugged as he walked closer to the young heroes. “Happens. Anyway, is this the young heroes that Kimball was telling me about? Training them up or something? Heard it was her idea. Guess your retirement was more eminent than I realized. You should’ve let me know if we’re going to be partners here, Washy.”

Washington couldn’t help the way his nose curled. “Washy? Really?”

Felix didn’t seem to even acknowledge the comments as he strolled over to where the young heroes were finally getting to their feet. They seemed more than impressed with his appearance, and were even bothering to dust themselves off and smile at him.

“Say, you know what this team is really lacking that would make all the difference in the world?” Felix asked.

“I was about to explain to them the new training regiment that would address that,” Wash said thinly. “Confidence-building exercises which will independently aid their growing comfort with their own powersets so they can learn new applications of them.”

“Ugh, so long and so boring,” Felix laughed. “We don’t know how quickly these natural-born heroes will be needed! It could be tomorrow!” The young ones gasped. “It could be today!” They gasped even louder. “We have to have the men prepared, don’t we?” 

“Um, and lady,” Jensen piped up with a timid hand up as if she was in a kindergarten classroom.

“There are no immediate preps for becoming a superhero,” Wash argued. “And these kids are not going into the field any time soon.”

“What!?” the kids all cried out at once while Junior honked. 

“You’re the barrier for entry?” Felix snorted before giving an exaggerated smile to the kids. “I think the whole country saw why that’s not exactly a high bar.”

Feeling the twitch return to his eye, Wash got in Felix’s face. “Right? And what exactly is your idea that would get things turned out sooner?”

“What you need here,” Felix said, rubbing his chin as he looked over the group, “Is a leader. And who better to be the leader than your most promising future hero?”

Everyone straightened up, delight in their eyes, but Wash could see that Felix’s gaze was only on one junior hero. 

And that junior hero happened to be Junior.

Wash tilted his chin back. “Oh no.”

[survivingart]

GETTING YOUR STORY ACROSS (MARKETING AND BRAND AWARENESS)

It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of a design studio, a student at the Academy or working retail by day and creating art by night — a day only has 24 hours. If then you want to make something out of your life, time management is imperative.

While all of the people who work a 9-5 job have time management enforced into their lives by their workplace, those of us who are self employed don’t have a boss to tell us when to work and when to have our lunch break. And with no HR person breathing down our neck and telling us what to do and when to do it, we have to do this ourselves. 

From calculating taxes, checking contracts, planning meetings to learning about our craft and following some sort of news platform so we actually know what’s happening in our field. Oh, and making art, right?! Sometimes freedom can be quite constraining.

But where in this incredibly dense equation of the-things-we-should-be-doing and having-no-time-to-do-them should we squeeze in the most important job of all — marketing?

Not as cool as being a bohemian artist, not as rewarding as making a sale or signing a new licensing deal but probably much more important than everything else mentioned, marketing our work is the only functional way to propagate our ideas into the world.

And today’s world is already quite full — full of people like us, doing things that are similar to ours — so saying we need to have a strong game would be an understatement.

But while many of us think we need to be creating Hollywood-like movies about what we do or making some blown-up statements on how our work will “change the world as we know it”, it really could and should be much simpler:

Make your art simple to understand by making your process transparent. 

Not by showing boring two hour videos of us mixing paints and priming our canvases, but by maybe sitting down in-between the drying coats of paint and speaking about our work. We should be documenting our process — not by defending our right to have one, but by explaining our motivations with simple language and a good story.

Give those who are interested in your work a glimpse into your mind and your process. Document how you clean your brushes (or how you never do), why you use a certain brand or type of canvas (even if it’s because it’s the cheapest — sincerity is gold) or show pictures and write about the books you like to read.

There is always time for a short piece of content.

When you don’t have time to set-up a video camera; why not take out your phone and make a short handheld IGTV video or Facebook video or even a story on any topic that you like — connected with your art or maybe even just about what makes you tick. Lots of content on the platforms you feel comfortable with is the best way to go if you can’t afford to run ads on Facebook or Instagram.

Your work, life or personality aren’t boring, and they surely aren’t unimportant!

Some people religiously reread a few books that are special to them every year (something I could never do), and the intentions and the drive behind doing so are actually fascinating to people like me, who after finishing a book usually toss it away and find another one to read. 

My point is; even the minuscule things that we do in our lives can be immensely interesting to some people and in reality, usually exactly these minuscule parts of our personalities give others the ability to connect with us on a personal level. 

You don’t become best buddies with someone just because they like art as much as you do, because liking art is too broad of a subject to be relatable. You get close because of having or liking the same kind of artists and their works and only if both of you understand them in approximately the same way. 

To get there, both need to first share their personal aspirations towards a certain topic, and be sincere about it. Otherwise it’s like opening your Facebook news feed and looking at vaguely interesting ads about pant tubes — you kinda like them, but just couldn’t care less about them being there. 

In the end, we shouldn’t just be painting pictures on canvases and Fabriano paper, we should be painting mental images onto the minds of our followers and soon-to-be-followers. Only so can we ever succeed in expanding our reach to the people who really care and genuinely like our work.

CREATING ATTENTION 

Art is obviously emotional and as such its value is determined absolutely subjectively. The big question though is how, because even though ambivalent, subjectivity can still give us a lot of various starting points to think about our target audience.

How people recognise a good story in objects and experiences differs from person to person — that’s why it’s subjective — but usually we can find basic guidelines that can help us define this perception. The main idea behind this exercise is to find what is most important for each person, that we are trying to understand.

What are their needs? What do they wish for? Do these wishes and needs have a certain urgency? Do they provide pain or discomfort for them and can our art elevate or even completely fix their issues?

Even though art is seen as the complete opposite of utilitarian — especially is we look at contemporary art — it could not be further from the truth. If nothing else, the baseline of what art can do is to catch attention. To intrigue and incite curiosity about itself in those that experience it.

Art has to be interesting. It can be either “avant-garde” or challenging, but at the same time it can be personal and quaint; there is no “standard” that defines what interesting is, except that whatever it is we are creating should stand out in the context of everything around it.

An apple on the ground of an orchard is about as interesting as a grain of sand on a beach, but that very apple, placed in a vineyard will catch people’s attention, because they ordinarily wouldn’t have expected it to be there. The same goes for art; anything we do should aim to be exceptional, compared to the environment it resides in.

But this doesn’t mean that we need to run naked in the streets while reciting the Yellowist manifesto, because there are much more subtle ways to stand out, and truly great art is always made in a subtle, but disruptive way. Think about all the one hit wonders in the music industry — they might have been successful with one song, but after the initial boom, they slowly fade into the background.

Their problem is, that they have been trying to impress and communicate to the kind of people that need constant novelty and excitement to give them their attention. And because they focused on people that needed cheap thrills, they themselves become one in the end.

Only those that build their novelty and intrigue with a long timeline in mind and cultivate the attention of the people as a friend or acquaintance, not a passing circus or magician, are able to find true success with their creative business.

Because, while a magician may be able to entice and amuse us for a few hours, after we’ve seen the show, there’s really no point in going back another time. We’ve seen all of her tricks, laughed at all of the jokes and it just wouldn’t have the same novel effect on us as it did the first time.

But comparing it to our favourite book, that we have reread a thousand times, or our favourite TV show, that we know by heart and still binge watch from time to time, these objects and experiences never seem to really get dull. 

Quite the opposite, they get better and better over time.

QUALITY AND QUANTITY

A lot of people today speak of quantity as the defining factor in getting your message into the world — with Gary Vaynerchuk being at the forefront of this movement. 

But I think we do need to take a closer look at this model.

I still think quantity plays an enormous role in content production — especially as the amount of blog posts, podcasts and images on the web is increasing exponentially — but there is one important truth that many of us may overlook in this conquest of trying to reach the eyes and ears of the masses. 

Quality is king and quantity is his servant.

I get why the amount of information is being pushed as the most important factor; too many of us focus endlessly on tweaking and re-editing our content, too many of us spend hours making our images, texts and videos “perfect” and thus miss a lot of opportunities of growth and consequently reach.

The 80/20 rule still applies to everything in the universe; 80% of effect is produced by 20% of our effort. Of course, we shouldn’t confuse this with the idea that we only have to do 20% of the work and get 80% of the rewards. 

We still need to do all of the work. And regardless of how much “all of the work” actually is — 5 min or 5 years of input, it doesn’t really matter — the effect is always more or less the same; most of what we do will not bear any fruits, but a fraction will. And that fraction will create the most effect.

Here the real argument for quality begins to take shape; if 100% of what I did was only average or “merely” good, the effects of it will embody the same kind of qualitative force. Good things lead to good results, average work produces average products and services, but excellence, excellence can’t but create exceptionality.

In order for any one of us to reach excellence, we have to first begin our path with average tools, common techniques and boring (and many times tedious) practice. But after such a rhythm has been established, after the almost masochistic pleasures of repetition and rigorous practice become part of our being, I believe all of us need to again venture further into the unknown.

And this means reevaluating everything we have been doing up to this point. A child may have enormous dependence on his training wheels when learning how to ride his bike, but after they succeed in mastering balance, speed and manoeuvring, the support has to be taken away, exposing the reality that all they have done up to that point was mere practice for the real thing.

In the end, all we do — regardless of whether we write, sing, paint or dance — we do so as a form of diary, a succession of traces that we leave upon the world. It doesn’t matter if our creations ever get exposed to the public; even those of us that never publish our creations and keep our diaries, paintings and songs to ourselves , we inevitably all do the same. 

We create marks upon the world, knowingly or not, by accident or in order to be remembered. Regardless though of why we do what we do, I believe one thing is for certain. 

Such marks should be born out of the highest efforts that we can endure, if not to grow, at least to know that whatever we did mattered, perhaps to some, or maybe none, but always to ourselves.

from Surviving Art https://ift.tt/2OGteVE via IFTTT

[shukrant25]

So You Probably Must Have Heard About All The Cliche Talks on How to Rank on Google Without Backlinks.

There are exactly “1,27,00,000” Results Right Now on Google Which  Are Talking About How To Rank w/o Backlinks, But none of them has any type of practicals examples included.

I know, I know …… You want to see the proof of the traffic that I’m talking about.

So look at it first.

Satisfied Now?

Now let’s talk about how I actually got there.

Before starting, I’m not going to share the website’s URL here. You can leave if you’re only here for the name.

I registered this domain name in July this year. For those who’re curious to that from where did I register the domain? I got it for 200 INR from Bigrock. Also, It doesn’t matter where you buy the domain from. #CouponsRock

The site is based on WordPress. It’s the best CMS for personal websites.

For those of you who’re thinking that I am lying about backlinks, then here is the data on top linking domains from Google Search Console.

Most of them are Social Media Sites for which I set up IFTTT to post content automatically. You can not consider them as direct backlinks.

Still not satisfied with the data?

Look at this ahrefs report.

Now I can not convince you more than this. You can stop reading if you don’t believe me.

Still here? ……. Let’s Jump into the real deal.

So you must be wondering what special things I did to this website.

I’ll be breaking all the things pointwise so that they become easier to navigate.

#1 Site Structure

This may be the most important thing, that’s why I kept it on top.

We all know about creating categories on our website, but we forget about the real meaning of it. They are made to make your website’s navigation better.

Don’t just create categories and forget about them. Instead, work on them. Wondering How?

First of all, create as many in-depth categories as you can create. This gives a much better signal to Google of what the content is all about.

Now create a menu around your categories and add them to the header. This way it creates much better navigation around your website.

Enough of categories, now jumping on to internal linking.

Internal Linking is sooo sooo powerful that it can change your entire rankings by 180 degrees if implemented the right way.

Wondering how I internal linked in this website?

I basically Internal link 2-3 RELEVANT web pages from the website or you can say that the pages that come under the same category.

I’m not a huge fan of internal linking any post just for the sake of doing it. Google’s much smarter than you. Don’t try to fool anyone.

Only Internal Link relevant posts on your website under the same category. This creates a huge impact on seeing your site from the top.

You can also link relevant category pages as well. No doubt that it works.

#2 Bombard Content

As much cliche as it sounds, It is THE THING If you aren’t willing to make a ton of backlinks.

No matter which niche you’re working on, There’s always some content that you can put up there on the Internet.

Let me talk about my approach to publishing new content every single day.

First & foremost, Make a structure for your posts. In my niche, Every article kinda followed the same post structure. So before publishing my first article on the site, I made a post structure on Google Keep. I wrote all the Sub Headings, Content Structure there and whenever I needed to publish new content I just copy pasted the structure from G Keep, Edited a few things here and there, Sprinkled with some on-page optimization.

With that said, you’re good to go.

At least publish 1 new article every single day.

I went a little hardcore by publishing around 4-5 articles per day.

Because you don’t know which article make your site boom. Try to cover every single bit in your niche.

Google will start loving you if you update content frequently then your competitors, This way the crawler will come more often to your website because it saves crawler the budget. Your content will start indexing in a lesser amount of time.

Also, Internal linking also plays a huge role in indexing. I noticed that content with internal linkings of famous posts indexed way faster than content without internal links.

One thing to keep in mind is that Bombarding content doesn’t mean that you start copying other’s content or start spinning it.

I know writing that much content could be boring for a lot of people and coming up new ideas every single day is a difficult task in its own.

For that, you can look at what your competitors are doing, Get some idea from there content and structure it in your words. Do anything you want just DON’T COPY THE COMPLETE THING.

You can hire a content writer if you’re too busy or just not interested in writing. or Make a friend who loves writing

Are you thinking about how long that content should be?

Ideally, Anything about 1000 words has the potential to rank if optimized decently. Try to break down your content in as much heading and questions as you can. It just works.

#3 On-Site SEO Optimization

When you aren’t working on your Off-site SEO, You need to make sure that you’re doing everything right on your On-Page Tweaks.

As the matter of fact, You can use any SEO plugin that you want to use.

Personally, I Like Yoast.

A few days back a new plugin was also released named “Rank Math SEO“. I recently started liking this plugin only because it has an In-built schema feature. I like it’s SERP Preview as well. LOL!

Plugins are not going to help you if you don’t set up them the right way.

One thing that I want to tell everyone is that I feel like you don’t need to incorporate your categories, tags & author pages in the sitemap. I only keep Pages & Posts in it. Try to make it as much clean as possible. Don’t create a complete mess out of it.

Now talking about your SEO title and Meta Description.

Try to add your targeted keyword at least once in both of them. Also, try to make a clickbaity type of title, It will help you increase your CTR.

Adding Numbers to your title also tends to increase their CTR. Check what the Person on No. 1 is doing. Try to learn from it. There’s a reason why he’s on No. 1 & you aren’t.

Big DISCLAIMER – Stop giving a shit about those Green ticks in your SEO Plugins. They don’t mean anything.

Now If we’re talking about CTRs, Let’s talk about a thing that actually helps you increase it.

This.

Wondering How to get these for your articles?

Install this plugin

Easy Table of Contents

Show the TOC on top of your content and wait till Google crawls & start showing it.

Now You must be wondering How to optimize images to rank higher? 

Don’t apply any rocket science to it.

Just add your targeted keyword with different prefixes & suffixes to your Image’s Title & ALT Text. With this You’re good to go.

Your main aim with On-Page optimization is to tell Google that what your content is all about.

Schema helps you doing that much easier and I know for that fact that you aren’t doing it on point.

No matter what your niche is there’s a schema structure for you.

Confused about what’s good for your blog?

Go to schema.org

Search anything your niche or article is about. Whether it be reviews or games or music or anything, You’ll get an answer.

Still aren’t able to find?

Take your 5 competitors for a particular article.

Take their URLs & put it into Structured data testing tool.

Check what kind of schema they are using and learn from them.

That’s It, Bud.

And Yes, You can get those stars in SERPs with the help of it. It Helps in Increasing the CTR.

Now as we are talking about ON PAGE SEO, a lot of you think that putting in your keywords “X” number of times in your article will help you rank higher in SERPs.

I won’t lie, It actually would help a bit but only for some short period of time. At the end of the day, Your site will get vanished and you can also receive a manual penalty from Google. I know you don’t want to get your site vanished from Google. So STOP playing those dirty tricks NOW.

#4 Site’s Loading Speed

Now It’s a Ranking Signal from Google as well. So Don’t take it for granted.

It plays a major role in rankings & acts as a backbone for user experience.

Poor site speed can result in making your site’s experience worse. It tends to increase the bounce rate, which tells Google that people aren’t interested in your content.

Even if your content is excellent but lacks speed then people will start leaving your content straight away.

A major role is played by the server on which your site is hosted.

I am not a big fan of shared hosting servers but if you’re just starting or have little to no traffic, You can use it. No issues with that.

But with time you should upgrade your server.

I personally use cloud hosting servers.

Also, you can make tweaks to your website as well which will increase your site’s speed.

Use caching plugins to boost your speed and try to minify your code as much as you can.

I use WP Rocket for optimizing my website. You can use pretty much anything which goes with your hosting server.

When talking about speed, The page size is the most important aspect of it and Images are the one dominating the size.

Which clearly suggests that you need to optimize your images to get much faster speeds.

I use TinyPNG to optimize my images before uploading to WordPress. Then After that, I use the SMUSH Plugin to optimize the images much further. Even after doing both of them if the images are not getting compressed, Then I use Adobe PhotoShop to compress them. This method works best for me and I’m using it for a long time.

After doing all the tweaks make sure your website is loading under 4 secs in GTMetrix Dashboard in your desired locations.

Create a Free account on GTMetrix with the help of which you can check your site’s speed in different countries from different devices and browsers.

#5 Content Sharing

Sharing is caring.

So Start caring for the people who are interested in your content which means start sharing your content more often.

With that being said, I’m not asking you to share every single piece content manually on different sites.

Let’s talk about how to fully automate this process for FREE.

For this task, there are different tools in the market that you can use for FREE.

On this website I use IFTTT, This is the best service that I know till date.

You can attach your WordPress website to it and create different applets that will automatically run whenever you’ll hit that “Publish” button.

Keep in mind that I’m not asking to just share the link. It looks spammy.

Show some creativity and use IFTTT’s Feature to the fullest. You can make some serious damage with it.

Make sure that you’re sharing it on all the famous social media’s such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Quora, Instagram, Medium.

If you don’t like IFTTT for some reason, Then here’s a WP plugin that can work as an alternative for you.

NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster

It Just takes a little bit more time to set up but then you can manage the post sharing from your website as well. Also, In addition, It can impact your site’s speed as well.

But you need to understand that you have to share posts on Social Media Sites. It gives a positive signal to SEs & makes your content look more engaging.

#6 Making Your Own User Base

This is a thing that I want to start a conversation around.

I’m pretty sure that you must be knowing about PUSH NOTIFICATIONS.

It is very important to have push notifications integrated with your blog. There are several reasons that why you should do it today.

You should not be totally dependent on any single type of source for your traffic. Maybe Tomorrow Google makes changes to its algorithm and you lose all your traffic because of it. So building your own audience is a pretty amazing idea!

It helps your audience to get updated regularly with all the updates that you’re making to your blog because search engines take some time to reflect these changes while with push notifications you can let them know instantly about them!

If you know how to play with your visitor’s mind then you can do a hell lot of damage to the market!

Over these months I grew my subscription list to over 15k subscribers with the help of push notifications.

The best part is that all these people have an interest in the niche that I’m targeting, So I can also target them later on with some other content.

ONESIGNAL is the best Free push notifications add-on that’s available right now according to my POV.

You can do the same thing with E-mail marketing as well. I like Push Notifications much more as it gives me direct access to their phone’s notifications.

What’s Your take on it?

Jump into the comments if you feel I’ve missed something important or you want to ask something.

Peace Out.

The post Ranking Without Backlinks: How I Got 1,055,811 Visitors In Just 90 Days! appeared first on Shukrant Tanwar.

[smasheverythinggame]

Smash Everything Post Mortem

The most important thing to remember is that Smash Everything is a game made by students. It’s a unit, and it’s graded. As such, levels of involvement, commitment, and effort vary. Some students invest great amounts of time, some are looking to do bare minimum. Which is not a complaint, merely an acknowledgement of differing priorities and circumstances, and it is the most important thing to figure out early and manage.

Despite internal issues, the project was well-managed and, although the game is not complete, turned out pretty well for a group of people who had mostly never done a project like this, who were just taking their skills learned at uni and putting them into practice.

Things that went well:

1. Character Concepts

This was the group’s first task at the beginning of the semester when motivation and interest were still high, group members were keen, and everyone still had time. We were fortunate that from the concepting there was one idea that we all liked and agreed upon.

2. Smashing

We had a prototype up and running early in order to help us decide on a definitive direction as well as test out our core mechanic – smashing - to ensure that it felt fun. This is a great way to test and prototype mechanics – make sure they feel fun on their own and then build around them. The smashing didn’t really change from its early iteration.

3. Enemy Concepts

After some struggle to get other concepts and group agreement on other aspects of the game, enemy concepting had the benefit of being streamlined based on the knowledge gained from previous pitfalls. There was a simple template made that displayed exactly what was wanted from it: 4 empty boxes, asking for a sketch in each and one potential ability that this enemy would have. All the sketches were gathered and put into a Google form to get voted on by team members. Ones with the most votes were implemented. This could have potentially gone poorly had the group liked wildly different designs, but thankfully while there were some outliers most of the votes went into the same designs.

4. Enemy Models

By the time we got to this stage, we were a bit behind in the development process from where we wanted to be and decided to simplify our enemy models to save time. It worked out really well. Rather than being detailed models with texture maps, they become blocky, solid color shapes that were still surprisingly cute and worked well within our toy theme to seem like little plastic toys.

5. Animation

There had been 2-3 weeks allotted to animation, with another 1-2 weeks as a potential backup, as we had at least 7 models and 2 animations for each enemy and 5 animations for the main character planned. Enemy animations were smashed out in a week; they were simple, but they worked and looked great. Animations for the character took a couple weeks, which was within the budgeted time, but hit a couple snags (problems with the rig, some redos, and some animations were cut entirely).

6. Music

Some groups were lucky enough to get a sound student on board for their projects, but we were not such a group. I think that may have worked out a bit in our favor regarding music, as we were able to include several different songs from a cool royalty-free library. Deciding on the style/genre of music for the game was a breeze – we all agreed we wanted something upbeat, maybe techno or K-pop-py – and song selections were spot on.

 Struggles:

1. Communication

A surprisingly big issue, despite using Discord, Trello, and having in-class discussions. This issue existed for a few reasons: disagreements on the second item on this list – the vision for the game, missed information, a lack of clarity and notes. The missed information was frustrating, as there’s no easy fix for either willfully or accidentally missing information – documents not being read was a big culprit, as they tend to be dry and boring to read, even if they do contain important information. Meetings likely would have benefitted from minutes and better note-taking, and definitely from being hard-copied and shared with everyone. Disagreements are harder, as communication is only going to continue to breakdown until everyone can get on the same page, and they aren’t necessarily easy to solve.

This could be a very long dissection of each communication issue, but instead here is how to try and avoid it: many students are shy or uncomfortable sharing with relative strangers – don’t be or force them to talk by specifically asking for their opinion. That being said, this is a course comprised of a lot of gamers and some of them have been molded by toxic communities – remind them to be respectful and considerate. If the team can’t come to an agreement, it’s up to the project manager to make a call – if the team really can’t abide by it, take it up with a higher authority, otherwise suck it up and move on, but still try to incorporate ideas from every member where possible.

2. Vision

Not being able to agree on a clear vision for the game was a long struggle that made progression a bit of a slog; unfortunately, it wasn’t an easy solve since there was no majority, just a lot of different ideas. In the end, a few different game concepts were drawn up and the team just had to pick one. It wasn’t possible to please everyone, and trying to was ultimately just wasting time.

3. Character Design

Concepts went so well it was a shock that the actual character design wasn’t smooth sailing. Once we had the concept we liked, a character turnaround came in, and suddenly it was clear that there was a big problem because the turnaround looked nothing like the concept art. There were two problems here: we didn’t have a definitive art style yet and we had skipped over some crucial steps in the design process (as going from concept to turnaround is generally a big no-no, there’s meant to be iterations in between to decide on a final look). This actually took weeks to resolve with character exploration, nailing down a look, color testing, and outfit designs. It was worth it in the end to have spent the time to do it right – no skipping steps! – as we had a character we and others really loved.

4. Levels

No one on the team was really a level designer, and our level concepts weren’t as clear as they could have been. That meant the whole level design process ended up being longer than it should have been. Concept art seemed to go better with some explanation text. Started looking at toy shop layouts and the kind of stuff that would be found in them, but realized that putting in shelves was going to be a bit problematic with our camera angle. Ultimately this was solved with a new/tweaked gameplay concept that ultimately ended up scrapped, but it introduced jumping and platforms and that stayed.

5. UI

No one on the team was really a designer or a UI designer, not even the person assigned to be the Design Lead. So we either fudged our way through it or left it really basic, where functionality exists but it could definitely use a makeover.

There was also some contention over how to structure the in-game UI. Early playtesters thought the game was something they had to do as quickly as possible and we wanted to try and correct that perception. Suspecting that the timer countdown being in the top center and therefore at the top of the visual hierarchy may have been a contributing factor, the score got moved central and the timer to the side. Players were no longer trying to speed through, but now some weren’t noticing the timer at all. This may still be solved by placing both items central, and using size to indicate hierarchy importance.

 Problems, Failures, and Scraps:

1. Pipeline Processes

As mentioned earlier, students tend to want to put in the minimum amount of work required, and so one of the things that got lost in the process was the process. Workflow follows the same structure, if not always the same order, but generally looks something like references, moodboards, concepts, iterations, design polish, turnaround, final model. References and moodboards were rare to nonexistent for concepts and animation, as were iterations, polish, and turnarounds. Even enemy designs went straight from concept to final model; they turned out great, but that was truly just fortunate, and it could have gone very poorly.

2. 2D

Before Smash Everything had any kind of real identity, one of the things to decide was whether the game would be 2D, 3D, or some 2.5D mix. We had really only learned about 3D modeling and animation through our uni course, so there was good reason to go that direction. The downside being is 3D modeling, texturing, and animating can be quite lengthy – we obviously trimmed that work down to make it work. But before that was an idea, 2D was a fair solution for being quicker, especially for the amount of stuff we wanted to include. The downside being is that it meant learning new processes and software.

Compromised on 2.5D, a 2D sprite in 3D space, but ultimately it didn’t look great so 2D was scrapped altogether.

3. Enemy Behavior

Enemies were going to have all kinds of cool abilities when we were still young and naïve, like AoE slows, charges, stuns, whirlwinds, etc. That got cut pretty quick at the implementation stage, generally sticking with simple melee or ranged attacks.

One enemy had to have some drastic changes and cuts, the Snail, as originally he was meant to leave behind a trail of gas – that maybe dissipated or maybe lingered – that initially did a slow but since slows were gone it was just going to be another damaging ability of players ran through it… we just had no idea how to do it. So now he’s just harmless hammer-fodder that does his best to run away from your hammer. Slowly.

4. Skybox

This is one of those things where there is a surprising lack of tutorials on how to make one of these. Made an early skybox that was meant to be temporary as it was a bit of a fudge – made it seamless just by making a repeatable texture rather than through any skill, proper technique, or software.

5. Saving Scores

This was something mentioned in a previous blog post. Score counter, no problem. Saving scores and names, apparently not so easy. No one really knew how to do this, but for this there are tutorials, and so it should have been okay from there. Except it wasn’t. Unity allows input fields and character limits on them, so creating an input field with a 3-character limit for initials was no problem. Rather than use JSON, which may have been a bit out of our depth, went with saving scores and names in player prefs and then allowing the high score list to read from player prefs and adjust accordingly. And it worked… in the Unity editor. Once it was built, though, it was broken. Sometimes the score would save and write, sometimes, and names definitely weren’t being saved and/or written. Tried to even hardcore a cheeky fix in, but to no avail.

Not having scores save properly was a big disappointment, as scoring was kind of a big deal.

6. Smashables

Early in the game design process, Smashables were something that existed. Before we knew what we wanted to smash, it was just going to be a slew of items and inanimate objects. Even after we decided to include enemies, the Smashables idea persisted... until it didn’t. It just kind of slowly faded out of the game design as enemies were implemented, made a brief resurgence, and then just disappeared completed. No one missed them, they didn’t feel necessary, but they are one of those things that could easily fit back into the game - perhaps as a future addition.

[ntrending]

12 tricks for improving your computer's appearance and sound

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/12-tricks-for-improving-your-computers-appearance-and-sound/

12 tricks for improving your computer's appearance and sound

When you boot up a brand-new computer, you expect it to deliver the most up-to-date technology, from gorgeous visuals to perfectly clear audio. While your experience will be pretty good right out of the box, desktop operating systems like Windows and macOS cater to the tastes and preferences of most users, which won’t necessarily match your personal preferences.

To make the software work just right for you, you can tweak a variety of visual and audio settings. From transforming the appearance of your operating system to enabling all of your connected speakers, these 12 tricks for PCs and Macs will give you full control over the look and the sound of your computer.

1. Transform the theme

Bored of the same old Windows colors and wallpapers? Change the theme: the operating system’s prepackaged look. A single theme can include a wallpaper image, color scheme, cursor icon, and even associated sounds.

To switch between themes, hit the Start menu and click the cog icon to open Settings. Then choose Personalization and Themes. At first, you’ll only see a handful of themes on the screen, but you can access a whole lot more by clicking Get more themes in the Store. To download a theme from the Store, select it and click Get.

Once you’ve chosen your favorite theme (and downloaded it if it wasn’t immediately available), choose it from the Themes dialogue. If you like most aspects of the theme, but, say, the wallpaper isn’t your favorite, then relax—you can customize each element individually. Just click on any element to change it.

2. Adjust colors and transparency

If you don’t want to make wholesale visual changes with a new theme, you can instead tweak the colors, accents, and transparency. The accents settings control how frequently an accent color appears, for example, whether you see it on the title bars of windows or on the Start menu. Transparency settings determine effects such as whether you can see the wallpaper through the taskbar.

Again, open settings by hitting the cog icon on the Start menu. Then choose Personalization and Colors. Want to base your new color scheme on your wallpaper? Tick the box marked Automatically pick an accent color from my background. Otherwise, choose a color from the palette. Any changes you make will appear immediately, so you can look at the effect and adjust it as needed.

Underneath the color picker, you’ll see options that let you add a custom color of your own, set how extensively an accent color is used, or turn transparency effects on and off.

3. Turn off visual effects

Windows comes with visual flourishes, such as shadows under the mouse pointer and having menus fade in and out of view, that make the operating system easy on the eye. If you don’t like these effects, you can turn off any or all of them. As well as cutting down on the eye candy, this can also improve the computer’s speed slightly, because the machine won’t have to do as much work processing all those visuals.

In the taskbar search box, start typing “adjust the appearance…” and you should see an option that reads Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows. Click it, and then open up the Visual Effects tab. Here, you have three choices: let Windows choose these options, optimize them for the best appearance, or optimize them for the best performance.

For more granular control, select Custom to turn individual visual effects on or off using the tick boxes. Pick whichever set of options suit your tastes best.

4. Hook up your speakers

If your computer has a beautiful 5.1 surround sound setup, then you want to make sure your operating system and all your applications take advantage of it. Here’s how to coordinate your software with your speakers.

Type “sound” into the search box on the taskbar, and when the Control Panel option appears, choose Sound. Under the Playback tab, you should see a list of devices. Choose your speakers from the list, click Configure, and a drop-down list will appear. Based on the number of speakers you’ve connected, select the correct setup from this menu.

Once you choose your speakers, you’ll see a diagram of the audio configuration on the right side of the screen. Click the Test button to make sure it’s working. To complete the process, hit Next and then Finish.

5. Customize your notifications

Don’t like the low-battery warning sound, or the shuffling effect that accompanies the emptying of the Recycle Bin, or any other random noise your computer emits? You can customize all of these notifications.

Type “sound” into the search box on the taskbar and choose the Sound option that appears above it. Then open the Sounds tab and select any of the notifications to disable the sound completely, or merely pick a different sound file from the drop-down menu.

From this menu, you can perform a few other tasks. If you have specific sound clips in mind for events, click Browse. To turn off sounds altogether, open the Sound Scheme drop-down menu and choose No Sounds. You can even enable or disable the Windows startup sound with its own individual checkbox.

6. Switch to mono audio

If you only want to listen to music through one earphone, or you need to pay attention to the outside world while watching movies on your computer, consider switching Windows to mono rather than stereo sound.

To do this, open Settings by clicking the cog icon within the Start menu. Then choose Ease of Access and Other options. You’ll find the Mono audio toggle switch under the Audio options heading. Once you turn it on, all of the applications on your system will emit sound in mono. To change back to stereo, simply toggle the switch off again.

7. Change the color scheme

The macOS interface uses set colors to accent the elements you see on the screen, including dialogue boxes and the menu bar. You can adjust these hues to change your view and emphasize your favorite shades.

To do so, open the Apple menu, choose System Preferences, and go to the General section. Here, you can choose a new accent color for menus and highlights, as well as changing the menu and dock from light to dark by clicking Use dark menu bar and Dock. On the same screen, you can also adjust the size of sidebar items and opt to show or hide scroll bars.

8. Pick the perfect wallpaper

When it comes to the overall look of your computer screen, your choice of wallpaper dominates the appearance (particularly when you’ve closed or minimized all your applications). While picking a good wallpaper is important, Apple also lets you choose to cycle through a set of images, giving your screen an ever-changing backdrop.

To set the wallpaper, click the Apple menu, then System Preferences, then Desktop & Screen Saver. Open up the Desktop tab to choose a picture. Apple offers its own selection under the Apple heading, or you can pick your own from the hard drive by clicking the plus icon.

If you want your wallpaper to change regularly, then create a folder of pretty images and decide how frequently you want them to switch. Then go back to the Desktop & Screen Saver menu, select your folder, tick the Change picture box, and specify a time schedule. Now macOS will cycle through all the wallpapers in that folder.

9. Tweak the Dock

As they launch and switch between your favorite applications, macOS users find themselves visiting the Dock a lot. So make sure you customize it to suit your personal preferences. Open the Apple menu and select System Preferences, then Dock, to adjust the app launcher’s appearance.

Start with the Size slider at the top, which changes how big or small the Dock is. Then toggle the Magnification option to set whether Dock items will grow and shrink as you move the mouse cursor over them. The Position on screen checkboxes let you shift the Dock from its usual place at the bottom of the display to the left or right sides of the screen. Finally, you can decide whether the Dock will automatically hide when it’s not in use and control the animations that applications perform when they open.

10. Browse better

Finder is your window into the contents of your macOS machine. And it comes with all kinds of customization options to make it easier on the eyes—whatever you consider “easy on the eyes” to be.

Start by opening a Finder window. Click on the cog icon at the top of the window, then choose Show View Options from the menu that appears. Here, you can adjust settings such as the size of the icons and the grid on which they sit, the text size, and the positioning of labels. The drop-down menus at the top of the window also let you alter the way files are listed and sorted: by date, size, name, and so on.

11. Customize sound effects

As you interact with macOS, you hear a variety of sound effects. While some people will be happy with these default alerts, you may be interested in customizing them to suit your own preferences.

You’ll find most of these options by clicking the Apple menu, then System Preferences, then Sound. Under Sound Effects, you can see all of the different clips macOS uses to alert you about an update or warn you about a problem. Click on any item on this list to hear the sound. You can also individually adjust the volume level of each effect using the slider below it. Finally, you can turn all audible notifications off by unticking the Play user interface sound effects box.

12. Configure external speakers

If you’ve want to play the audio from your macOS machine on multiple external speakers, then you need to configure them correctly. The best way to do this is through the Audio MIDI Setup app.

You can find this app by searching for it in Spotlight: Click the magnifying glass icon on the menu bar or hit the Cmd+Space keyboard shortcut. If you’ve set up your speakers properly (by following the instructions that came with the hardware), then they should appear in the list on the left. Click on the speakers’ names, then choose Configure Speakers. At this point, you can tell macOS how they’re arranged so it knows the right configuration in which to pipe audio out to them. When you’re finished, click Apply and then Done.

Audio MIDI Setup also lets you make your settings even more specific, if necessary: You can adjust the volume of each individual speaker.

Written By David Nield