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tepkunset · 4 years ago

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Are there any other indigenous people in X-men? Like islanders?

So here’s a list of every Indigenous mutant in Marvel Comics (Earth 616) that I know of. Unfortunately, some are just straight up offensive. But there are a number of underappreciated gems!

Dani Moonstar AKA Mirage (Obviously gotta start with my fave)

Cheyenne

Illusory powers (originally her powers were creating illusions of peoples’ fears. Overtime her illusions eventually expanded to pretty much anything she wants. After she gets fried by the High Evolutionary’s machinery, her illusions could become solid objects, but she could only have one at a time. And during her time undercover with the MLF she developed the ability to channel her illusions into psonic arrows that stun people, trapping them in their nightmares. This is what she mostly uses, currently. (TBH I’d really like to see writers remember her abilities have far more uses than just that... Like, remember that time she recreated Jimmy’s whole damn farm and family so he could ‘see’ them again?)

Dani is also a valkyrie with the ability to sense death

Original member of the New Mutants

Honestly the best character on this list IMO. I could ramble about how awesome Dani is for days...

Forge

Cheyenne

Superhuman mechanical ingenuity/genius (kind of a complicated power, but basically his mutation is that he can understand machines and create anything he can imagine. Like a mutant Tony Stark except better in every way, fight me.)

Back in the day he also dabbled in sorcery but turned out uh Not Good and he hasn’t since

He’s been a member of a bunch of different X-Men teams and none of them have ever given him the respect he deserves

I like Forge a lot TBH, especially after the sorcery thing was dropped and forgotten

A shame we will probably never get to know his real name

Lucas Bishop AKA Bishop

Indigenous Australian (Unknown Nation)

Energy absorption and redirection, subsequently super durability (if you blast him he will just blast you back)

Bishop isn’t technically from 616, being born in a dark future, but has existed in the main universe for as long as he’s been around. He’s been a team member in Uncanny X-Men and X-Treme X-Men but then went through a period as an enemy, mostly cause he has a That’s So Raven syndrome where he thinks he's shaping the future for the better and fucks things up. Can’t say I’m a fan in the way he was used as an inconvenience for Cable, but otherwise you can count on Bishop for being pretty damn cool.

Just a warning for anyone unfamiliar with him but wants to read up on him: His background may be triggering. The tattoo over his eye isn’t a choice, but a brand he received when put into the mutant concentration camp where he was born in.

Shard Bishop AKA Shard

Indigenous Australian (Unknown Nation)

Energy blasts from light

Shard is Bishop’s younger sister, and therefore also not technically from 616. She’s also not nearly as prominent a character, but was member of X-Factor for a while.

Honestly, Shard was never actually given a chance to do anything and her relationship with Fitzroy (green haired, slimy time travelling serial killer) is BS.

James Proudstar AKA Warpath

Apache

Super strength, speed, senses, stamina, reflexes, durability, healing, and flight (everyone forgets the flight)

Also he’s over 7 feet tall which is its own superpower

John Proudstar’s younger brother

Sadly, Jimmy chronically suffers from writers not having a sweet clue what to do with him or how to write him. Swear to god, no one should be allowed to touch him before reading X-Force vol 1 after Liefeld left. James appearing to be scary to people who don’t know him and actually being a sweetheart is the whole deal with his character. He is not a violent raging edgelord! Everyone at Marvel just collectively forgot he rejected the name Warpath after starting to come to terms with the death of his family, too.

Anyway, I love James with pure spite and venom and would love to fistfight all the writers who’ve done him dirty over the years...

John Proudstar AKA Thunderbird (speaking of getting done dirty)

Apache

Super strength, speed, senses, stamina, reflexes and durability

James Proudstar’s older brother

This poor bastard was created to die for shock value, and has been one of the few X-Men for which death has not been a revolving door. For the brief time he was around, he was portrayed as nothing but a jerk, too. It’s only in brief flashbacks that he’s ever been given more character. Also that one Chaos World mini.

Gloria Muñoz AKA Risque

Seminole

Can make objects implode (think the opposite of Gambit)

Risque was an anti-hero/anti-villain associated with the original X-Factor, and formerly James’ GF. She was a complicated character and deserved a redemption arc. That’s a hill I’m gonna die on.

John Greycrow AKA... I don’t even wanna say it

Unknown Nation

Technology manipulation (can like, turn a gun into a different gun for example), super healing

Scalphunter. His name is fucking scalphunter. And just like the other Indigenous Marauder member on this list, he’s been nothing but a lingering racist caricature. He is currently a protagonist in the running Hellions series and I honestly do not know what miracle Zeb Wells thinks he can pull to reinvent this character, but I guess we’ll just have to see.

Kodiak Noatak AKA Harpoon

Inuit

Can supercharge his harpoon with energy

That’s right, the Marauders don’t have just one, but two racist as fuck caricatures! He also... for some reason... speaks... like this a lot... I sure... wonder why...

Gateway

Indigenous Australian (Unknown Nation)

Teleportation portal creation

Oh look, it’s the X-Men’s bus ticket. Seriously, Gateway is nothing but a silent teleporter for the X-Men to travel around by, and another racist caricature. However, there is one good thing to come out of Gateway’s existence, and that’s that without him, we may never have gotten...

Eden Fesi AKA Manifold

Indigenous Australian (Unknown Nation)

Teleportation portal creation (and some interesting ways of using it too)

I swear Hickman must have looked back at Gatway and thought, you know what, let’s try that again except not offensive. Eden is pretty cool, and one of the three reasons I read Avengers vol 5 (the other two being Bobby and Sam). It’s a shame he’s never gotten the chance to interact with the X-Men, what with being a mutant and all. I would love to see him on Krakoa. Given that Hickman is at the helm and Eden is a Hickman character, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched of a hope?

Yeah, that’s all I can think of, unfortunately. Really makes you wish there were more, huh.

BONUS:

Julio Richter AKA Rictor

Listen. I will fight to my last dying breath to defend what I have always seen as the obvious; Julio was created with the intention of him being an Indigenous Mexican boy. I legit have a half-done powerpoint presentation about it that I never finished upon realizing no one would take me seriously when I sound like this mapping out all the evidence -

#x men #marvel comics #long post #Anonymous #ask

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la-noche-cae · 4 years ago

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Nightfall Descriptions #2

Personality

⭐ In Superchargers gameplay, when she eats, she sometimes makes a strange dragged sound that doesn't appear as if she's eating at all. In my perception, she makes more struggle sounds than other skylanders, too. She might comment how verbally noisy Stormblade is, but Nightfall makes her share of non-verbal noises.

⭐ Nightfall is a go getter, she seems to be able to motivate herself well during missions in gameplay. She grunts and moans, sometimes sounding dragged but she also laughs loudly, in a proud, amused manner.

⭐ Nightfall seems careless about team building and sharing a group objective. Whether she thinks she can take on a problem herself, or that she doesn’t need other people at all, she isn’t too keen about keeping good relationships with her team members besides basic decency (which she sometimes trespasses *in canon).

I’m not implying Nightfall doesn’t care about her team members, I just observed she doesn’t want to get chummy with them.

She is in the Supercharger team to get things done, not to make friends. (Yet she expected better leadership from Spitfire, so she might not be all that ok with ‘just sticking to the mission objective’.

⭐ Still, Nightfall is described as “having a strong sense of justice”, which makes her unforgiving to villains (in contrast to a certain lark). Nightfall doesn’t worry about the rewarding side of good, but perhaps also rewards in general towards herself.

⭐ In RoH she was put off to have Stormblade celebrate her, through the episode and at the end. It appears Nightfall brushes off what people think of her, whether she receives positive attention or not.

What I get from that is, she isn't used to having off-time. She's probably not used to self care either, given she rejects compliments, help and comfort.

⭐ But also… I don’t think that Nightfall’s socializing problems has to do with her "strong self-esteem".

Stormblade and Spitfire are not put off because Nightfall is proud of her powers, they're more uncomfortable with her not connecting with them, her not opening up to them nor letting them open up to her (such as Stormblade being honest about how she feels and Nightfall deflects that).

Like I said, Nightfall doesn't take her role of protector lightly. This "got to act tough" attitude she has is likely to keep herself convinced to keep going regardless of how bad things get. That isn’t healthy, and, now with a team she can get support from (and she does), that isn't necessary.

⭐ One point I wanted to make about her dark powers is, Nightfall doesn’t use wit and lies and deceit or other ‘wicked’ attributes that the element of dark is given. She does keep secrets, likely about how much she can tolerate, but that isn’t ‘evil’.

Nightfall is upfront and she doesn’t play dirty, in fact, she is described as brave.

⭐ Nightfall has special concern for civilians, in contrast to how much she critiques other skylanders. She always calls them ‘the people’ and was going after Spellslamzer as soon as she could.

~~~~~

“Why did you add *in canon?” (Post #2 & #3):

I choose to disregard some of these as something worth exploring because they fall into demonization of gnc/butch women and also of disabled & mentally ill people.

Nightfall, as the “angry” gnc female character cornering/intimidating Stormblade, the more feminine “happy” female character, is YIKES.

Nightfall also trespasses verbal boundaries like “...I much prefer this version of you, Stormblade, far less chirping.” As to suggest she wants Stormblade to be hopeless and quiet.

In the comic there’s a parallel of Stormblade/Spyro and Nightfall/Kaos, and Kaos is set as ‘being right’ and Spyro apologizes to him. Idk what shows off demonization more than having the villain be sympathetic and have Nightfall throw that comment at Stormblade right after, as in, antagonizing Nightfall further.

#skylanders #skylanders nightfall #skylanders superchargers #skylanders Stormblade #skylanders comic #Nightfall descriptions series #text post

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bisokubira1995 · 4 years ago

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New Rescue Build Reveal! - YouTube

Matt's Off-Road Recovery gets drivers out of tough trail situations in the Utah wilderness, but their recovery vehicle build project may just steal the show. Matt wanted something a little bit bigger than his XJ-generation Jeep Cherokee to handle bigger, gnarlier obstacles. Naturally, the answer was a 1961 Chevrolet Corvair wagon. Wait, what? Don't fret, launch creader 529. fans of General Motors' aircooled flat-six wonder. Matt's shell was in rough shape to start with and wasn't a preservation candidate anyway, so why not have fun with it? His goal is to have Utah's coolest build done by 2021, so now is the time to tune in. The Corvair wagon sadly isn't rear-engined anymore, but its new front-mounted LS V8 should be plenty powerful for whatever trails can throw at it. The wagon was dropped onto a custom-built frame meaty enough to handle some delightfully gargantuan wheels. There's Dana 60 axles up front and Dana 70s in the rear, and it should go without saying that it's going to be four-wheel drive. Right now, there's "just" a 5.3-liter LS under the hood, but Matt says he'd like to end up with a 6.0-liter supercharged version. That LS is mated to a TH400 transmission and an NP205 transfer case. Recently, Matt teamed up with the Fab Rats channel to go into an even deeper technical dive into their recent transmission rebuild thrash to get the Corvair ready to rescue by the end of the year. Thirty-six hours of wrenching on a big, bad frankencar-yee haw. There's a certain Grave Digger-like quality to a classic longroof sitting on big wheels, so it's hard not to love this project. Either way, I know I'd feel a little less terrible about screwing up in the wilderness if I got a tow out from such a cool rig. You can follow along with Matt's Corvair build (and other good, clean but dirty fun) on his YouTube channel here. [H/T r/cars!]

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noprepracing · 5 years ago

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It’s Sunday evening, a football game is on in the background, and Cody Baker is lying under his 1969 Camaro, affectionately named Shake N Bake. In just a couple days, his team will be headed to Palm Beach International Raceway in Jupiter, Florida for No Prep Kings. But for now, he’s content on the garage floor, freshening the bottom end of the motor and putting new rods in. Baker says doing work like this himself instead of paying someone else to do it is an important part of being able to afford competing in the grueling world of Discovery Channel’s hit television show.

“We leave for Florida Tuesday, and that’s probably a $4,000-5,000 trip,” Baker says. “I’m very blessed in terms of being able to go out and race, but everything that we do is out of pocket. So we have to save money where we can, do as much to the car as we can ourselves, and seek out sponsorships.”

And when it comes to sponsorships, Baker has a big surprise in store for the no prep world.

*****

Mike Janis Superchargers Jan-Cen Racing Engines

Meanwhile, just outside Buffalo, New York, Mike Janis Jr. is in the shop at Jan-Cen Racing Engines. Jan-Cen is the home of reigning NHRA Pro Mod world champion Mike Janis, and Mike Janis Superchargers, some of the most recognizable superchargers in the drag racing industry. But today, they’ve got something brewing besides pro mods.

Baker and Janis have partnered up for the final two No Prep Kings events this year, beginning in Florida, as well as for all of season four. Baker will be running a brand new Mike Janis supercharger with billet two-piece hat, sitting on top of his 526-cubic inch Alan Johnson billet Hemi.

“We’re finishing receiving all of Cody’s blower stuff right now,” Janis Jr. says. “The plan is, we’re gonna try to get it out of here today or tomorrow, so it’s sitting in Florida waiting for him Thursday. If everything goes right, he gets it bolted on, and he’ll be ready to go for the weekend.”

*****

Baker has already seen success this year, winning the Outlaw Big Tire class at No Prep Kings twice, as well as the Dirty South No Prep event in Odessa, Texas. But upgrading his roots blower combination remained a priority for him in order to become a contender in the highly competitive No Prep Kings Invitational class.

“I get asked all the time why I’m still running a roots blower,” Baker says. “Not very many people run blowers. I’m running a roots blower because I think it’s the best combination to run. But everybody has some type of sponsor or someone helping them out on the back end with other power combinations.”

Baker reached out to multiple companies in an effort to upgrade his program, and found a perfect match with Janis Jr. Both men could see the absence of blowers in the no prep scene, and the need to revive the fan-favorite combination.

“I’m obviously excited to be a part of that world,” Janis Jr. says of his first foray into no prep racing. “Our biggest thing is surrounding ourselves with really good people. And talking to Cody, I can tell he was a really good, honest, legit person who wanted to step up his program.”

In addition to providing the new supercharger, Janis and his team will be helping with tuning duties and answering questions, both at the track and by phone. That type of knowledge is just what Baker believes he needs to gain the necessary edge in performance over other combinations.

“We outrun everybody to 300-400 feet on the race track,” Baker says. “Where we’re missing out is the last 200 feet, and that’s where we’ve gotta make a push to make power. Mike and those guys, they build one of the best superchargers on the planet. They haven’t done much in the no prep scene, but they know how to make a car haul ass, and that’s what our end goal is – to go out and win.”

With huge payouts and national audiences, the influx of more “professional” teams and tuners in no prep was only a matter of time. Names like Pat & Lizzy Musi, the Bruder Bros., and DeWayne Mills have already made waves. Even Ryan Martin and his famous Fireball Camaro made the move from radial racing. The days of lower budget street racers being serious contenders seem to be gone. It’s not something Baker is necessarily happy about, but he believes it is a necessary step with the current growth of the sport.

“Everybody’s hiring tuners, everybody’s got a professional guy on the other end of the phone or at the track,” Baker says. “And that’s because all of us want to win. We’re racing for a lot of money, and it costs us a lot of money to get there. So if you’re going to spend all the money to go, and to have a race car that’s capable of winning, you want to get the best person to put the best possible tune in the car.”

The partnership with Mike Janis Superchargers is the culmination of a lot of new sponsors joining Baker in 2019. After breaking his Powerglide in each of the first few No Prep Kings races this season, Baker reached out to renowned racing transmission expert Mark Micke, and made the switch to one of Micke’s Turbo 400 3-speeds. He also teamed up with Neal Chance Racing Converters, and will be unveiling a new partnership with Isky Cams at the Florida event. Getting those four major companies on board with his program is something Baker is especially proud of, and a strong foundation for future success.

“I credit this to us going for it and pushing ourselves as a brand, our race car, the Shake N Bake name, and myself,” Baker says. “People are noticing what we’re doing in the racing world, and want to come on board and get their names involved with us.”

Photo Credits: Luis Renova ( 405 Photo ), Adrian Berryhill, Randy Curtis, DW Photo & Media, Tracy Waters

Cody Baker Shake N Bake

Mike Janis Superchargers Jan-Cen Racing Engines

The post Cody Baker Ready to Shake Up the No Prep World this weekend appeared first on No Prep Racing NoPrep.com.

#IFTTT #WordPress

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samuelpboswell · 6 years ago

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How to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts By Planning Ahead

They say two heads are better than one, but we say the more the merrier — especially when it comes to bringing you actionable tips and insights to fuel your digital marketing efforts. That's why we're proud to announce our “Collective Wisdom” series. Throughout the series, we'll be bringing you insights, tips, and perspectives from some of the top marketing minds to help guide your content marketing strategy. With each entry, you’ll quickly learn proven methods, taking you from the very beginning of the content planning cycle to post-publication amplification and optimization. Where should we start? At the beginning, of course. In this piece, we explore the crucial planning stage that essential for content marketing success.

Planning Your Content — Get A Jump Ahead By Stepping Back

Having a solid plan in place is the foundation of any successful content marketing journey. There are several considerations you'll want to consider before jumping into creation, helping ensure that you have a well-thought-out and meaningful plan from beginning to end already in place.

via GIPHY

Tactic 1: Commit to Having a Plan

As the old saying goes, "A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step." For marketers, that single, first step is committing to developing and documenting your content editorial plan, even if it's not super sophisticated to begin with. Unfortunately, some digital marketers often skip this step entirely. And with 32% of marketers staying organized is a top content planning challenge. Documenting a content plan that you can consistently refer back to will most certainly help. If you don't know where to start, start with reading the DivvyHQ and TopRank Marketing report, which features marketers Michael Brenner, Tamsen Webster, Carla Johnson, Robert Rose, and others sharing methods for creating proper content calendars and involving team members in the content planning process.

Tactic 2: Build and Ask a List of Sharers Before Publication

You know that once you release your content into the wild, you need to promote it. But do you spend time upfront locking down who could help you spread the word? If not, the upfront effort is worth it. You'll have a key next step built in your process, rather than scrambling last minute. Building a list of target sharers is a two-step process: 1) Reviewing your known contacts 2) Researching and qualifying others who would find your content relevant and share-worthy. When it comes to researching newbies to add to your list, EmailField’s Aman Thakur likes to use BuzzSumo to discover people who have a history of sharing content similar to what you plan to publish, by searching for keywords related to your piece. Thakur then recommends looking for relevant BuzzSumo articles that have over 200 or so Twitter shares, filtering the list by people, and exporting them to your sharer-contact spreadsheet or document, a technique he outlined for CMI. Moz contributor Isla McKetta is a fan of using Followerwonk to search through Twitter profile biographies to help build a list of influencers in your niche who may be well-suited to sharing your content, as she details in the Moz guide to content marketing.

Tactic 3: Plan Post Reuse In Advance

Actionable Marketing Guide’s Chief Content Officer Heidi Cohen takes the time to plan out content reuse and even the creation of ancillary works. She suggests:

When you write your post, craft related, tailored pieces at the same time. Present a different aspect of the same topic with each piece. Write two complete posts rather than having a single post in two parts.

Consider where your content will be most likely to fill the needs of those viewing it, and how that will best work when it comes time to reuse and rework your initial messaging. Doing this in the planning stage can both save time in the long run, and ensure that content reuse is done in a well-thought-out manner, instead of possibly being forgotten altogether. Cohen and others recommend fashioning a measured pace for doling out new versions of your initial content over time, each incorporating a new element or perspective on your original content, or perhaps using updated statistical data, all the while considering where new audiences for your work may exist. Our own Caitlin Burgess also explores the advantages of experimentation and the role of creativity when planning content reuse, in her helpful "A Tasty, Strategic Addition to the Content Marketing Table: ‘Repurposed Content Cobbler’."

"If there’s one thing that every content marketer has in spades, it’s a fully stocked content pantry," she says. "From white papers and eBooks to blog posts and original or third-party research, all of that robust and niche content has the potential to be sliced, diced, and repurposed into something new and fresh."

Tactic 4: Use Target Audience Personas to Supercharge Your Content Calendar

Understanding the pain points, needs, and attitudes of your target audience is critical if you want to develop a content strategy that wholly resonates. After all, how can you be the best answer for your audience if you don’t understand what questions they’re asking or what problems they’re trying to solve. Social Media Today Community Manager Emma Wiltshire knows how important it is to create marketing personas well before launching content. Knowing the search queries you want to show up for and how they align with the needs of your target audience should be fully understood before you begin creating new content.

Tactic 5: Find Your Best Distribution Options

Savvy marketers understand that the job has scarcely begun once they've hit publish on a piece of content, and recognize that amplification is crucial. Those who don't build distribution and sharing into the planning process risk losing out on a key element in the planning cycle. As Cathy McPhillips, Vice President of Marketing at Content Marketing Institute (CMI), said:

"You spend so much time creating epic content, so why not spend that same amount of time coming up with a plan for distribution and promotion? It can be a down and dirty spreadsheet — fill in dates, audience, messaging, and what you’re trying to achieve."

But where should you plan to share your content? Heidi Cohen also recognizes the advantages of finding the best distribution options for your content, and the time to make these decisions is before content has been completed. Owned, social, and third-party media all have specific uses, and finding out whether your campaign is best suited to using just one or all three is an important step in the content planning process, outlined nicely by Cohen in her “60+ Ways To Maximize Your Content Distribution” guide. Weigh the value of each publishing platform and channel, and when you’ve chosen those best-suited to your content, it’s helpful to document the plan and share it with all your team-members, so everyone knows what’s expected, including which key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics will be used throughout the lifetime of the campaign to reach your goals.

Don't Just Wish — Gain A Major Advantage By Planning Ahead

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said: "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan." Take her famous advice to heart, and focus your wishes and goals into creating an actionable content plan. By taking the time to follow these steps — documenting your plan, building a sharer list, incorporating reuse ahead of time, using audience personas, and finding your best distribution options — you'll gain a major advantage over those who skip over some or all of the planning stage. When you're confident in your content planning process, you can move on to the crafting and creation portion of your campaign, and we'll take a closer look at that stage in the next part of our Collective Wisdom series. Stay tuned! Ready to learn more? See Lee Odden present the latest best-answer marketing strategies at Pubcon Las Vegas 2018 on October 16 - 18, and MarketingProfs' B2B Marketing Forum in San Francisco on November 13 - 16, where Ashley Zeckman will also be sharing her digital marketing insight.

The post How to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts By Planning Ahead appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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befoundonlinemarketing · 6 years ago

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How to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts By Planning Ahead

Planning Your Content — Get A Jump Ahead By Stepping Back

via GIPHY

Tactic 1: Commit to Having a Plan

Tactic 2: Build and Ask a List of Sharers Before Publication

Tactic 3: Plan Post Reuse In Advance

Actionable Marketing Guide’s Chief Content Officer Heidi Cohen takes the time to plan out content reuse and even the creation of ancillary works. She suggests:

Tactic 4: Use Target Audience Personas to Supercharge Your Content Calendar

Tactic 5: Find Your Best Distribution Options

Don't Just Wish — Gain A Major Advantage By Planning Ahead

The post How to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts By Planning Ahead appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

How to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts By Planning Ahead posted first on http://www.toprankblog.com/

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itsworn · 6 years ago

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Datzen and the Art of Project Cars – LS-Powered 280Z!

Building a YouTube show is not unlike building a project car: they’re both seen by many, judged by all, and take more work to assemble than anyone can imagine. These things engulf people in the pursuit of perfection and creativity, as both machines are often a doppelgänger for the personalities behind them. Maybe that’s why folks have become endeared with Emily and Aaron Reeves’ Flyin’ Sparks Garage, a YouTube channel that’s dedicated to the seeds and soil of grassroots hot rodding. The show is produced in their home shop in Mabank, Texas – just an hour outside of Dallas – and their projects are centered on honest, low-buck swaps and upgrades on everything from 2005 Pontiac GTOs to 1978 Datsun 280Zs. The channel has a dedicated following, with over 3.2-million views since the channel’s launch in 2013, and recently the duo announced their upcoming Velocity Channel show, Live, Love, Wrench.

But for Emily and Aaron, this story goes back 18 years to a mechanical fail that left the “Datzen” on the back burner as Aaron and Emily grew up. The Datzen was there when the duo met in church; it was Aaron’s first car. As they dated and grew up together, however, it became something of an albatross.

“Didn’t you pay $50 a week for it?” Emily asked as our interview began. “Yeah. I couldn’t afford it, it was 1,500 bucks,” Aaron recalled. “This was 18 years ago and I made payments on it for about two months to pay for it. Originally the car was parked just because we were kids and didn’t have any money. It was a very old fuel injection system that I didn’t understand. I didn’t have the skills to deal with it, and as a young man, there are a lot of things you go through that build the pieces of your view of yourself. And this one did not do me any favors, this entire car.” The Datzen’s archaic fuel-injection wiring was ultimately failing, and they parked the car while moving on down life’s road while the two found their own careers in diesel repair and fashion modeling (we’ll let you guess who did what).

They continued building a few project cars, like Emily’s “Roxy” GTO, but the Datzen sat with no plan in sight. While it hit Aaron hard personally, it’s one of the most venerable and relatable stories out there – short of the ones that “should’ve never been sold.” That first project car, especially as a young adult, is one of the first things someone wholly owns, but that personal investment can really hurt when yet-to-be-had wisdom and experience is met with seemingly unsolvable hurdles.

Then in 2013, the Texas couple launched Flyin’ Sparks Garage on YouTube. It came out of a dream for sharing what they felt was the reality of spinning wrenches at the home shop. The cable TV car shows, to their credit, focused on dramatic “one-week” builds, dream team parts combinations, and a departure from what they felt was how folks really experienced their own projects.

“One of the coolest things is hearing people say, ‘Man, I watched some of these shows, and the car is built in a half-hour and I think, ‘I could never do that. When I go out, I have problems with every little thing!’” Emily explained. “We show the obstacles and overcoming them — and in doing it, having fun. This is part of hot rodding, and part of building stuff is overcoming problems. Nothing’s gonna be perfect.

“It’s very back country — just make it work — and that was a huge insecurity of ours, but we realized that the bulk of our audience likes it. ” Aaron continued, “It struck a chord with them, and it became more interesting than if we had given them lots of technical advice, so we were able to settle into that place and just what we do.”

In 2016, with for their 10th wedding anniversary approaching, they were looking for a way to pull all the tangents of their lives together to celebrate and began thinking about Datzen. There was roughly a year to rebuild it before the 2017 HOT ROD Power Tour, and they wanted it to be there because the Power Tour is where they spent their honeymoon ten years prior. If they were to make the 2017 Power Tour, they’d be committing to a complete re-think of the car. Though electrical issues had side-lined it, the car had also rotted while sitting in project purgatory.

First the original 2.8L L28E inline-six with its tiny manual gearbox were yanked out before the car was set back on the ground to have its floor pans punched out. New sheet metal was hammered and stitched into place by Emily while Aaron reinforced the chassis rails with box tubing.

A set of CX Racing coil-overs were installed to get the car into the weeds, while a Silvermine Motors Stage 4 big-brake kit clamp down on a custom four-lug set of American Racing’s 18-inch VF502, 8-inches-wide up front and 10 inches out back. To huddle over those big meats, a venerable set of pocket flares were bolted on.

This work was all done to pour a new foundation for an LS2-based build that packed CP pistons, a Comp cam, and the set of Patriot heads from her previous GTO project. To keep it from being “just another” LS swap, they decided to fabricate a set of 180-degree cross-over headers (for a unique engine note) and topped everything off with an eight-stack Inglese intake backed by FAST’s XFI fuel-injection. A T-56 six-speed was bolted up behind the combo, and a custom mount was fabricated to hold it while a set of mounts from Dirty Dingo suspended the engine block.

A friend of theirs, Aaron Sellers of Pac Fab, CNC milled a custom set of valve covers for the build.

And then it happened — Murphy and his maligned laws visited the Flyin’ Sparks Garage. A miscalculation in their custom pistons meant that it didn’t take much for the new CP bullets to tap the freshly-installed Patriot heads, bending valves in cylinder six and killing compression shortly after firing up the motor and getting it dialed-in. They had checked for valve clearance during the build, but the pistons were too tight to the combustion chamber and still made contact while running. This meant a last-millisecond long-block swap with a 5.3, giving Datzen a functional heart for their odyssey.

They were able to slam it together in the days leading up to the tour, but like any project, there were teething issues. “I was at Texas Motor speedway doing a job, so I couldn’t leave until the races were done. Aaron picked me up at the speedway, left Roxy there, and we headed out,” Emily recalled. “The build was messed up, like the alternator wasn’t charging. So we ended up stopping the car in a parking lot. I jumped in Roxy and got another alternator. I had to go to South Dallas to the only 24-hour Auto Zone!” With a healthy 14 volts coursing through Datzen’s wired veins, they were able to cannonball it 18 hours to Kansas City, MS for the start of last year’s Power Tour.

Aaron continued, “I’ll never forget when we actually rolled in to the hotel, I think it was like 10:30 at night, and we finally made it to a place where we could rest — albeit it was a few hours until we got up and went to the next venue — but I mean it was a year of dreaming and then a couple months of just complete thrashing and we rolled in there, set our chairs out, had a few beers and it was just like, ‘Okay, we’ve made it to this point. Anything that goes wrong beyond now is manageable, we can make it to the next venue.’ And that was huge.”

American Racing drilled a custom bolt pattern into their VF-502s for this project, and you can now find a Datsun fitment in the catalog. The stance is locked-in with 18x8s up front, and 18x10s in the rear.

Indeed, it made it the next stop in Newton, IA; then it made it to Davenport, IL, and to every day of the 2017 Tour with the worries behind it. Slowly, the stress of that last minute thrash burned away like fuel in their tank as they made their way to Bowling Green, KY. In fact, one of the few worries left was just over how people would react to a Datsun at Power Tour. Our arms are open to imports, but the event is largely dominated by Detroit-bleeding hot rodders, and the duo weren’t sure what to expect. “People freaking loved it! Everybody had a story. Either they had a Datsun or they had a car that always got beat by a Datsun,” Emily said. “We all have opinions about different people’s style and how they mod stuff, but when it comes down to it, we’re just all gearheads and that was the coolest feeling — to feel so appreciated for our hard work.”

Building a YouTube channel has grown from hobbies to full-time gigs for many, but what’s been beautiful about this era of programming is it allows many niches of the automotive culture to find a home. With their humble roots, Aaron and Emily chose to focus on their channel on attainable, home-built projects. “It doesn’t make sense to only promote $8,000 superchargers,” Aaron mentioned. “Because what Emily and I want is for you to go and work on your stuff and enjoy it, and have adventures. So it only makes sense to direct people in a way that they can afford and enjoy it.” In essence, it was a response to the shows didn’t have the garage-built hot rod in mind, where money is socked over months and years to grab a carefully-selected list of parts that aren’t just set by dreams of horsepower, but also a realistic budget.

This git-er-done attitude eventually caught the Velocity Channel’s attention with Live, Laugh, Wrench, Emily and Aaron’s upcoming TV show. While they might’ve had to change shops, the home-grown philosophy of the Flyin’ Sparks Garage back in Texas is kept as they tackle new builds and carry their persistent spirit. “Rod Rutledge is a friend of ours who died on a motorcycle, but we met years earlier on Power Tour. He basically taught me how to not worry about life. Just roll with the punches, it doesn’t have to be right,” Aaron explained. “Enjoy the process of life and don’t be so uptight about it. It’s changed me, if you met me 10 years ago you would not want to hang out with me because I was just so worried about all the details and what people think. He taught me that even if everything’s going wrong, laugh and just have fun.”

Emily went on to explain it a little further, recalling the first time she built an engine with Aaron. Back then as teenagers, they were rebuilding the engine of her family’s F-150. Aaron had her building the other half of its V8 to learn, working through each step together in torquing down the heads and valvetrain. As the parts on the table dwindled, she could tell things were about to wrap up and nervously asked Aaron to check her work. “And he was like, ‘No, you need to feel the feeling. If you mess something up, you need to feel that feeling,’” she recited. “‘And if you did it all right, you need to feel that feeling. If I check your work, you won’t have any feelings. You know when this engine cranks up and it runs great, you will own that.’ I didn’t know any other girls who were doing that.”

Really, it’s that infectious persistence that’s at the heart of Datzen, and everything they’ve built on screen. Regular viewers of their show will remember that Datzen was named in spirit of The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig’s introspective look at the human condition from the perch of a Honda CB77. “It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top,” he once wrote.

“Say a girl wants to get into cars ,and she doesn’t really know where to start — her power steering’s making a crazy noise. She could go get a basic tool kit, research online, and she can have the most amazing experience overcoming something,” Emily reinforced. “But if people have too much judgment about the results or about having to ask people for help, someone could totally be debilitated. I know it’s not always easy, but you have to look at the big picture and think that there’s a goal here and it’s going to feel really cool on the other side of it. There might be a lot of mountains to climb to get to the peak of that one that I’m looking at… but it’s worth it.”

The post Datzen and the Art of Project Cars – LS-Powered 280Z! appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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bizzyweb · 7 years ago

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6 Ways to Effectively Motivate Your Employees

Every team, no matter how well-oiled and talented, goes through dry spells. Every manager has experienced employees hitting a dreaded plateau and just going through the motions without bringing their usual spark.

When this happens, it’s time to recharge your team with motivation. There are a few simple ways you can effectively motivate your employees, without overhauling your current processes.

1. Reward Them Creatively

Rewarding your employees for a good job done should be something you’re already doing – but there are a few ways other than verbally acknowledging work that you can motivate your employees. And let’s face it – while financial reward is a good motivator, you can’t always pass out bonuses like candy. Instead, try getting creative with your rewards: keep it simple by offering to take on a difficult task for them, or go bold and offer your team an outing to a movie, game or other group activity if they reach certain goals. If you’re brave, you can also get silly with rewards and take on a dare in exchange for good work (such as shaving your head or wearing an ugly sweater all day).

2. Give Your Team Control

No one likes a micromanager. If your team is grinding to a halt, the solution may be to take a few steps back and empower them to motivate themselves. Giving your team autonomy shows them that you trust them and encourages them to problem-solve on their own. Resist the urge to swoop in and help and you may be surprised how well your team can manage themselves.

3. Cultivate a Calm Environment

You can’t force anyway to be happy, but there are a few steps you can to ensure that your office culture stays calm and welcoming. Work on strengthening relationships between team members (that means nipping water cooler complaining in the bud) and create a culture that’s cooperative, not competitive. Atmosphere is also important – no one wants to work in a dungy, dirty office. Even if you can’t fully renovate, you can still update the workspace to feel fresh – try rearranging furniture and adding new decorative pieces for a quick refresh.

4. Give Your Employees a Purpose

Everyone wants to feel like they’re an important part of something. Sit down with your employees and review your mission statement and how they each play a specific part in that mission. Your employees want to know that they have a sense of purpose at your company and are not just a replaceable cog in the machine.

5. Really Know Your Employees

All of your employees are different – some are boisterous extroverts and some are reserved introverts. Some love watching sports and some prefer a good book. A one-size-fits-all motivator isn’t going to work. Take the time to get to know each of your employees and what makes them tick. Set aside time to meet one-on-one and find out what motivates them so you can offer the perfect reward.

6. Create Stretch Goals

We all know how important goals are, but stretch goals are just as important. These are the aspirational goals – set just out of your current reach. Let’s say for example you expect to see a 20% increase in business after starting a new sales strategy, a stretch goal might be hitting 25% or 30%. Stretch goals are a great way to motivate your employees – especially when they’re tied to a creative reward like mentioned above.

Using these simple tricks will help reenergize your team and keep them motivated and doing their best.

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