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bonemarroww · 4 years

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Something Else - Trans!(O) Amajiki Tamaki x (A) F!Reader

Summary: “You’ll get there someday!” Mirio always says. “You’ll do bette next time.” Tamaki doesn’t want to get there someday. And if every Alpha always does, well, maybe he’s something else then.

Warnings: None.

Feedback is welcome!

(I do not own the picture)

AO3

————————— Epilogue

“Cheers!”

The loud sound of glass clinking against glass made Tamaki flinch, but to see Mirio and Nejire’s bright expressions, and his mate’s proud look, it was worth the slight discomfort.

Tonight was his leaving do from Fat gum’s agency. After four years of loyal service, he was finally creating his own agency with Mirio and Nejire. The thought was as exciting as it was frightening. He had gotten used to working with the Pro Hero, as the specifics of their quirks made them a nice pair. Still, the thought of working with his best friends was appealing, and when a few months ago, Mirio had brought up their childhood dream of becoming Pro Heroes working together... He had accepted.

Nejire had joined in their project with her usual enthusiasm, as her contract with the agency she worked at was coming to an end anyway. Tamaki knew his mate would have joined too, but she couldn’t for the time being, her work with Gang Orca slowly but surely coming to fruition . In a year or two, maybe .

The Omega had been a bit disappointed to hear that, but after a few days of sulking and a calm discussion, he had come around it. It was hard sometimes working with people you loved, and as long as she came back to him every night, he would be happy.

Tonight’s gathering was also the occasion to celebrate with his friends the three-year landmark since the beginning of his transition. By now, he no longer felt any of the after-effects that had plagued him for a year and a half after the treatment. His scent was now clear as that of any Omega, sweet enough for his mate to get drunk on it. Hearing people refer to him as an Alpha in the present tense had gotten rarer and rarer; and now that he was bonded to his ever-loving mate, and had a job he liked with his best friends as colleagues, it seemed nothing could get more perfect.

Being able to be true to himself had been a real awakening for Tamaki, who had gone a long way since his high school days in matters of self-esteem. While he was not the most assertive hero, and he still got shy around people he did not know, Tamaki was a whole lot more confident now than he had been as an Alpha. Confident in himself, in his abilities. Every time he looked at his mate, as she was engaging in a lively conversation with one of Fatgum’s Beta sidekicks, he saw the flash of purple, gold and white around her neck, and he was reminded of it.

As he had been injured and on medical leave for a while about a year ago, he had reluctantly tried crocheting again, hoping to kill some time until his Alpha could come home to him. Much to his surprise, now that he was free of the pressure and expectancy of him to craft a courting gift, he had found the activity much more enjoyable. After a few tries, he had been able to gift his Alpha a present he was actually proud of; a new scarf in his colors, that he had scented at her request –to motivate her to come back earlier, she had joked, but he knew it was because of how much his Omega’s scent calmed her whenever her Alpha went in a frenzy.

He had complied, secretly happy to have her wear his scent. Though much of her Alpha’s overzealousness was now channeled towards him, she was still known to show a lot of care towards any Omega she might find, fussing particularly over the civilians she was rescuing. Tamaki knew it to be her nature, and he loved her for it, but sometimes, he was a bit afraid these Omegas would get ideas and get attached to his mate. She was aware of his sentiments on the matter, of course, and often asked him to thoroughly scent her before she left for work, if only to bring peace to his mind.

“Excuse me, Suneater?”

Tamaki startled, looking away from his mate and to a girl wearing UA’s uniform. She looked young enough, probably in second year. Tamaki didn’t seek to breathe in her scent, a habit he found distasteful as he knew full well one’s identity was not dictated by their scent, but as he took an inspiration to calm his anxiety, it was the absence of any particular smell that made him tick. She was using scent blockers.

“Y-yes?”

In the background, Tamaki heard his mate end her conversation with the sidekick, and he felt her move closer to him. It comforted him slightly, as the bubbly student introduced herself.

“I am sorry to bother you, but I have something pretty important to ask you.” She didn’t beat around the bush, displaying an engaging grin. “I’m a second-year in UA, and I am j ust like you .”

In the way she emphasized the words, and coupled with the eerie lack scent emanating from her, the Pro Hero immediately understood what she meant.

While the shy boy didn’t go out of his way to let it know that he hadn’t always been an Omega, he hadn’t done anything to hide it either, and with some researches online, any fan could come across this information. Fans ; he had not always expected to have them. He didn’t shine by his personality like Lemillion , or by his feats like All Might. Still, he had been proven wrong when Fatgum’s agency had started receiving fan mail about him as well; a lot of praise, of thanks, some gifts –some of them profoundly inappropriate.

He had received some heartfelt letters, about how knowing he was one of ‘them’ had inspired a few into transitioning as well; or about how they dealt with their assigned second gender, not wanting the treatment. All of them moved to learn there was a Hero somewhat like them in the noticeable rankings.

“I am hosting an awareness event at the school in two weeks. You have been a huge inspiration to me, you’re a Pro Hero a lot of us can relate to, and seeing you being well on your way to the top makes me feel like maybe I have a chance too.”

Tamaki looked down in embarrassment, flattered yet nervous. One thing caught his attention, though, below the student’s neck. There, hooked to the strap of her bag, a vibrantly colored pin with the symbols of the Alpha, the Beta and the Omega artistically intertwined.

“I want to make it so that students like us in the Hero course, and all other classes, know they are not alone and that they are not freaks. I want all the others to listen too. We can’t have allies if they’re not even aware we exist!” She chuckled, Tamaki’s silence seemingly making her a bit unsure.

He felt his Alpha link her fingers with his, and caught her look of fond encouragement. She squeezed his hand, looking pointedly over to the teen and then at him again.

The shy young man cleared his throat, shaking slightly his head to try to stop his anxiety from taking over.

“It-it’s a great project.” He finally answered, his free hand fiddling with the fabric of his cape. “I hope many will come to listen. D-did principal Nezu give you access to the main lecture theater?”

The student smiled; her cheeks ever so tinted from joy to hear her idol approved of her initiative.

“He did. I hope it will be filled with fellow students. I have invited several Pro Heroes, whom I found to be overtly trans, to come share their story and point of view. So, I guess a number of students will come, if only out of curiosity.”

Tamaki nodded; it did not really matter the motivations that brought the students at this conference, so long as they stayed to hear the point of the meeting.

The student seemed to hesitate a bit, as if suddenly overcome with some shyness.

“It would mean a lot to me if you could come and share your experience too.”

She must have felt how much he tensed at the prospect, for she immediately looked to regret the anxiousness she had projected upon him.

“Your mate could come too, as an ally, of course!” She assured him, which only seemed to relax him a tiny bit.

Tamaki’s hand was so tight against his mate’s, he was surprised the Alpha didn’t pull from him. Instead, she let out a low purr, her other hand coming to rub his arm in slow movements of comfort. The Pro Hero closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, focusing on the agreeable sensation of her purrs vibrating through him.

When he opened his eyelids again, he exhaled and smiled hesitantly, gathering all of his courage.

“I’ll come.” He affirmed, not as loudly as he would have liked, but he had put the words out there and that was the only thing that mattered.

He knew he would not regret his decision until the moment he would have to speak in front of these students; but the knowledge that his past self would have most probably missed this opportunity out of shyness cemented his decision. He was sincerely interested in this event, felt honored and timidly pleased to have been invited. He would be afraid, but he would not regret.

The student’s face broke into a relieved grin.

“Thank you so much!” She opened her bag and rummaged through it for a few seconds, before coming up with a pastel colored paper. “Here’s a flyer for you. I won’t bother you any more than that. I’ll see you then!”

She bowed slightly to them, fully intent on leaving them to enjoy their night. Still, as she was closing her bag and turning away, Tamaki caught sight of something shiny in her bag, and yelped out a ‘wait!’.

By now, his hand was crushing his mate’s, but he timidly looked up at the younger girl. When he spoke, his tried to keep nervous stutter at bay; in vain.

“I-if you n-need an internship, o-or an agency to work with for Hero studies... F-feel free to c-contact me.” He felt his mate purr just a little louder in surprise, and in the way she squeezed his arm quickly, he knew he had her approbation. “Also...”

His trembling free hand left the abused fabric of his costume to shakily point at the pin on her bag’s strap.

“D-do you have more?” His cheeks set ablaze, and he immediately looked down, hoping his hair might hide his flaming cheeks.

There was a moment of silence, before the Alpha chuckled and nosed his shoulder tenderly, breaking the student’s shock. The younger girl opened her bag again with colored cheeks as she bashfully explained she made them herself; eyeing carefully the Alpha to know if it was okay for her to give it to the Omega.

When the young woman nodded with peaceful eyes, the student was extending one to Tamaki, visibly flattered.

The Hero slowly released his mate’s hand, and gingerly took the little object in both his hands.

“Thank you.” He whispered, still too embarrassed to properly face the creative student.

After a few words of goodbye and promise of seeing each other at the awareness event in UA, to which Tamaki knew his mate wouldn’t mind going, he sighed in relief.

Without a word, the Alpha led him to a quieter part of the hall, letting him rest from the social exhaustion.

“I’m proud of you.” She whispered in his ear as she treaded her hands through his hair while she leaned to kiss his cheek softly.

Tamaki purred contentedly, taking deep inhales of her scent. He was proud of himself, too.

Her hands trailed down to his, and she seized the little pin. It was similar to that the girl wore, in different colors, less vibrant, more appeasing. It suited him.

“Help me put it on?” He quietly asked.

His Alpha’s nimble fingers hooked the pin to the fabric of his cape, just above his heart. The colors fit nicely with the rest of his hero costume; discreet but present.

“There.”

She leaned back; eyes squinted ever so slightly in admiration, a fond smile on her lips, and a tender purr in the air.

“You’re perfect.”

——————

That’s it folks ! The epilogue to Something Else.

I hope you all liked it, if you did, feel free to leave a comment !

#amajiki tamaki x reader #trans amajiki tamaki #amajiki tamaki fluff #tamaki amajiki x reader #omega amajiki tamaki #my hero academia #something else

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365days365movies · 3 years

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April 10, 2021: The Graduate (1967) (Recap: Part One)

Some Like it Hot got Oscar-stiffed. So did this film!

This film got seven nominations at the 1968 Oscars, and took home Best Director and NOTHING else. It was nominated for Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, and Cinematography, and got NONE of them. Hot damn! That surprises me, because this film is RIDICULOUSLY iconic.

I mean, hell, The Simpsons has homaged it at least twice, which I know from the above GIF and the following GIF. And in that one, the teacher in the background is Dustin Hoffman, HOMAGING HIMSELF

There’s been a stage adaptation, AFI called it the 17th best movie of all time in 2007, while also putting it on 5 other lists, and but it on the Movie Quotes list TWICE! Leonard Maltin’s seen it before he dies, the Library of Congress has it in their collection, and it launched Dustin Hoffman’s career into the goddamn atmosphere! And that’s not even mentioning the one thing I’m looking forward to the most:

The music.

Look, I’m not exactly a big music nerd, by ANY means. I’ve heard songs, but can rarely identify the band or person playing them. I was in an acapella group, a steel band, and chamber orchestra, so I’m no foreigner to music. I’m just...not a big music nerd. But I DO know Simon and Garfunkel, and the more I hear of them, the more I like them.

Scarborough Fair/Canticle, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Mrs. Robinson, Cecilia, I Am a Rock, ALL of them are good classic folk rock songs that are easy to remember. AND I KNOW IT’S LAME TO LIKE FOLK ROCK I DO NOT CARE SUE ME IF YOU MUST. Oh, and I didn’t even mention the most famous of their songs, whose fame was aided by this film’s success. But, uh...I’ll hold onto it for now.

In fact, for now, let’s just jump into the film in and of itself! The Graduate is a classic, and it’s been on my list for a while. It’s more of a romantic comedy, but it’s primarily a comedy (from my understanding), so it’s fitting that I throw it in here. Let’s go!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

We start on a plane as it lands, joining Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), as he leaves the plane and walks through the airport. We also start right away with a BANGER, and the most iconic song on this film’s soundtrack: The Sound of Silence.

Classic. CLASSIC! One of their best! Not my favorite, but one of their best for sure! But OK, after that, we get to know Benjamin a bit more. He’s a recent college graduate and in a state of melancholy, not quite knowing what to do or how to feel about his new situation. This is to the confusion of his father, Mr. Braddock (William Daniels) and his mother, Mrs. Braddock (Elizabeth Wilson).

Urged to attend the party in his honor, he reluctantly goes downstairs, where he’s absolutely accosted (nearly assaulted) by all of his parents’ friends. One of these friends, Mr. Maguire (Walter Brooke), somewhat awkwardly pulls him to the side, and brings him out side. He wants to say one word to him. Just one word.

After that...interaction, Ben takes the opportunity to escape, as all of his accomplishments are being read out loud to the throngs. And I have to say, you can feel just how overwhelming all of this is for him. It’s a palpable anxiety. He goes back to his room to get away from everybody and just look at his fish tank. Just a celebration of the introvert’s experience right here, and I can dig it.

But this private reverie is interrupted by the barging in of one Mrs. Robinson (Katharine Ross), who pretends to have mistaken his room for the bathroom, but sits down and smokes anyway, despite his protests. She asks what making him upset, and notes that’s it’s more of a general feeling than a specific one. She understands and readies herself to leave, but not before asking him to give her a ride home. He reluctantly accepts, and takes her home. She invites him in through some subtle manipulation and...well, you know where this is headed.

An absolutely classic line and classic exchange, and I’m kind of surprised that it happens this soon into the movie, to be honest! She denies the accusation...kind of, and he asks her apology. But she brushes it off, and asks if he’d like to see the portrait of her daughter Elaine, which he’s quite enthusiastic about. But while there, in her room, things continue to get awkward as she basically undresses in front of him.

Mrs. Robinson continues to deny that she’s trying to seduce him, but it’s all basically gaslighting to get him to admit that he wants to be seduced. Damn, Mrs. Robinson, what the fuck? And it’s actually made WAY FUCKING WORSE when she tricks him into getting into a sealed room, where she traps him and tells him that she’s interested in sleeping with him, whenever he wants to. Ben is OBVIOUSLY frazzled as fuck, especially considering the basically near-rape situation he’s currently in.

Thankfully (maybe), the sound of Mr. Robinson’s car pulling up allows enough distraction (and adrenaline rush) for Ben to GET THE FUCK OUT of there, and he runs into Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) in the process. Noticing how frazzled he seems to be, Mr. Robinson tells Ben to relax in his youth, and having a few flings with the ladies while he can. He brushes off all of this, and gets out as soon as he can.

Soon after, summer begins, and not really in Ben’s favor. He’s used again as a prop for his parents and their friends, as his father got him a SCUBA suit that he demonstrates in their pool, despite his protests and wish to be heard. And people...people don’t listen to Ben, huh? I genuinely feel bad for the kid, because it really does seem like nobody attempts to listen to what he wants for how he feels, his parents included. But he seems to get the solitude he’s been seeking as he sits beneath the pool. But that’s overlaid with the realization that Ben actually WAS seduced by Mrs. Robinson, and he gives her a call to meet soon afterwards.

They meet at the Taft Hotel, where Ben is his typical nervous and awkward self, and goes to get a room for the two of them. And it’s now that I should mention that this dude is EXTREMELY twitchy, like goddamn. I know they were saying that he’s “the kind of guy who was to fight them off”, but I DO NOT see it, not gonna lie.

After a bit more awkwardness, they meet in a room at the hotel, where the clearly still quite nervous Ben struggles with the whole affair (pun intended), including the fact that she is one of his parent’s friends, and that this is a fast start to their relationship. But, Mrs. Robinson being Mrs. Robinson, she once again manipulates him into just getting on with it...and it works.

Once again, The Sound of Silence plays, as summer passes on and he lazes about the pool during the days, then goes to sleep with Mrs. Robinson in the nights. But he doesn’t seem to enjoy any of it, as the two halves of his life are so separate, and he separates them in his mind. And that’s done by some very clever camera work and production design, honestly.

This transitions into a version of the folk rock duo that I hadn’t heard before: April Come She Will, as the affair continues forth. This is interrupted by the frustrations of Ben’s father, who asks what he’s going to do after his collegiate career, tired of his lazing about and doing nothing for...a few weeks. Really? JESUS, DAD, LET ME RELAX!

His time with Mrs. Robinson is also a bit awkward, as he’s craving some sort of relationship outside of specifically sex, and she’s entirely uninterested in that kind of relationship with him. As he tries to start any form of conversation, she reluctantly enters one, which reveals some parts of her relationship with her husband. Specifically, they don’t really love each other, and were forced to marry because she became pregnant with Elaine. It also reveals that Mrs. Robinson is a somewhat broken woman, emotionally.

It’s also revealed during this conversation that Mrs. Robinson DOES FUCKING NOT want him to take Elaine out on a date, but won’t explain her reasons for that. After prying, she says that she doesn’t believe he’s good enough for her (although I don’t quite believe that, personally). This makes him upset, and leads to an argument that almost causes him to leave. But still, she forbids him to go out with Elaine.

That’s made even MORE complicated by the fact that Benjamin’s parents force him to ask her out on a date, and he does so reluctantly, which makes Mrs. Robinson VERY upset. And I gotta say...I don’t think I like anybody in this movie. Like...at all. I only kind of like Ben, although I really only feel bad for him because he has no agency in his life. Not a big fan of Mrs. Robinson, who’s upset by a situation she’s entirely responsible for, and is cheating on her husband. Ben’s parents are annoying, and Mr. Robinson...I dunno, sort of puts off these sleazy vibes, but that’s just a feeling I’m getting.

Elaine seems nice, though, as the two go on a date together. But in order to please Mrs. Robinson, Ben does his absolute damndest to sabotage the date. Starts off with reckless driving, then transitions into ignoring her almost entirely, and then takes her out to a strip club for the date. Which is all understandably extremely upsetting; again, it’s not exactly endearing me to Ben, and it’s not working on Elaine either, who’s convinced that Ben is doing this to punish her specifically, and I don’t fucking blame her!

She runs off crying, and he goes after her, realizing that he’s been a dick and that he really doesn’t want to be. They go get food at the A&W, which is making me both hungry AND nostalgic now...fuck, I really want some food from A&W. But with that, they actually have a good time when he opens up to her about how he’s felt since college ended, and she does something nobody else has: she listens to him.

OK, I’mma get some food, but this is a good place to pause for now! See you later for Part Two!

#the graduate #the graduate 1967 #mike nichols #charles webb #anne bancroft #dustin hoffman #katharine ross #william daniels #murray hamilton #elizabeth wilson #comedy april #user365 #365days365movies #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year

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chwrpg · 3 years

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What's happenin', hot stuff? -- Duk Barnes

A NOTE FROM ADMIN R: Can I just say, you knocked this completely out of the park, Kayla !!! I am so, so, so, so ready to see what you’ll be doing with Duk given the groundwork you put down in this application. Not just that, but Duk was simply missed on this dash. I love, love, love him and thank you for taking him up once more.

OOC NAME/ALIAS, PREFERRED PRONOUNS, AGE & TIMEZONE:

Your fave Kayla, she/her, 26, EST

DESIRED CHARACTER:

Donald “Duk” Barnes

HOW ACTIVE WILL YOU BE?

Okay so like I am always trying to be better for you guys, so let’s be optimistic and say 6 out of 10.

SECONDARY CHOICE:

N/A

DESCRIBE THE CHARACTER:

One of the things I’ve always loved about Duk is his kind heart. Like, underneath that very attractive exterior, there’s really a heart of gold. When I have written him before, I’ve always enjoyed how much he loves his family. It’s something I connect to and part of what draws me to him. He especially loves and is close to his sister, Sage. He never has seen her as weird, she’s just Sage. His relationship with his two younger siblings is different, of course, but I know he loves them and would do anything for them. It’s the same principle that I see in him with his friends. He’s very much ride or die, as the kids say. He’s also respectful and so funny. I love him so much and I’m forever grateful to be part of giving more depth to a character that was originally just a stereotype.

SAMPLE WRITING:

Adjusting his AirPod in his ear, Duk Barnes reached for his phone, hitting play on his coming to America playlist he had curated specifically for this moment when the pilot announced they had reached America and would reach their destination shortly.

In a second, he heard the familiar strains of his first track begin just before: “I hopped off the plane at LAX / With a dream and my cardigan / Welcome to the land of fame excess / Whoa, am I gonna fit in?”

It was a surprisingly apt song for having been released over ten years ago in what felt like an entirely different world. He could remember Sage playing this song over and over until he broke her CD in a moment of anger. He smiled to himself, thinking about how she’d laugh about how he was willingly listening to it now.

It had been over two months since he’d seen her in person. Or anyone in his big, loud, crazy American family. He’d talked to them through instant messaging, Skype, FaceTime. But that was it. For he had done something crazy on his own.

He’d gone to Singapore. To meet his biological family for the first time.

The thing was when Duk had turned 18, his mom had sat him down and presented him with a rather thick packet tucked inside a time-worn Manila envelope.

“This,” She had said with a shaky breath “Is everything I have about your biological family. You’re an adult now and your dad and I think that it’s time for you to have it.”

At the time, he didn’t know what to say. He’d taken the big envelope without a word, just nodding.

“You don’t have to do anything with the information if you don’t want to, of course.” His mom said rather quickly, having taken his surprised silence for disinterest. “But it’s yours. You used to always want to know more about your… your roots. At the time, I didn’t think it was right for me to share. But in there,” She nodded then to the packet where Duk was touching the golden brad holding the envelope shut. “In there, I think you’ll find the answers.”

In truth, he hadn’t opened it until a year later, He’d found it stashed in a neglected high school science textbook he had forgotten to return while preparing his things to return to college. Sitting at his desk, he finally pried it open. And his mom had been right, the answers to each question he could have wanted to ask were there.

There was also a letter. In a perfect script, on a fine soft-feeling stationery, written in English. It was from his mother’s mother. She wrote about her disappointment that Duk was given up for adoption, how she wished to raise him herself in Singapore, and gave some background about their family, how they were proudly Chinese and Malaysian and had such history that could be traced back over centuries. She wrote about how his mother had come to Chicago to study and fell in love with a white man. They’d broken up before Duk was even born and it was clear that the man didn’t want to be involved in raising the child. But his mother gave him up because she wanted to focus on her career and how the whole family had prayed that this baby would find a good home and a good family to love him as much as they all did.

However, most importantly, it said that Duk was, no matter what, part of the family and welcome to come to Singapore and meet them.

Using some of the names mentioned in the letter, Duk cautiously typed them into Google. The results were mostly in Mandarin, which he knew very little of, so he used the translate function to see what could be made of the articles. It looked like his maternal grandfather was something of a mogul. He had created a hotel and resort empire that spanned not only Singapore, but other countries in Asia and, apparently, a few in development in Europe. It felt unreal, and sat heavy in his chest. So much so that he had abruptly shut his laptop so hard he thought he would break it.

But it all had stirred up something in Duk. A yearning for something he couldn’t quite name. So, he took up learning Mandarin. He wanted to be able to communicate with his newfound biological family, on the off-chance that maybe some of them wouldn’t speak English. First with Duolingo, then borrowing Rosetta Stone from the local library. He wasn’t fluent, might not ever be so, but as he kept working on it, he realized he took to it almost naturally. The words felt right in his mouth. He saved money in a Tupperware container that he hid in the back of his sock drawer. He had given the adoption agency his information in the hopes that he would hear from his family and the first person to email him was his maternal grandmother. She was who he practiced writing Mandarin to, then, slowly, spoke to on Facetime. She was an adorable lady, with a big smile that reminded Duk of his own and the same shared love of the chaos and beauty of life. She encouraged him to come to Singapore and offered to help financially, but he told her it was okay. He could do it. He’d get there, he’d just need a place to stay.

“Well,” she said, a determined but amused look on her face. “That much I can do.”

Singapore was… beyond words. He would never be able to put words to the beauty of the country of his biological family and the feeling that settled in his chest when he stepped off the plane for the first time. It took his breath away, looking out across the tarmac, toward the trees and then the city skyline just beyond. It looked like something out of a movie about the future. If he didn’t know better, he would have been anticipating to see flying cars in the sky. It was amazing - and insanely scary - to meet the family, some of whom were eagerly awaiting him as he walked out of customs. It was kind of freaky, too, to notice how he could see himself, for the first time in real life, in other people. Grandma had given him the biggest hug and kissed both his cheeks. He wouldn’t remember all their names and how they were connected to him at first, his head felt full with information and tired from long hours whiled away in the air. He was, however, mildly surprised to discover that his family all seemed to speak English better than he could and playfully teased him with smiles on their faces about his choppy Mandarin.

Looking at his phone now, he flipped past photos of himself with cousins and various friends of the family, past the TikToks and other videos he had made of his travels (he had been surprised when his video of himself dancing in various airports on his way to Singapore to Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself” had begun raking in the likes). It made him smile and he knew already he couldn’t wait to go back. Grandma had begun hinting, toward the end of his time there, that he could try for dual citizenship and had outright offered him a job with the family company, even though Duk wasn’t sure if his uncle - the current CEO of the business - was certain of him. He stops on a video of himself doing one of the many TikTok dances with his cousins outside of a nightclub. They’d been the ones to show him the country’s nightlife, showed him what was what and brought him up to speed on the culture. They’d even managed to get him onto Weibo, the Chinese social media site, and looped him into their WhatsApp groupchat.

They had encouraged him, too, to meet his mother. Which was… easier said than done, it would turn out. He didn’t meet her until his last few days in Singapore. They’d texted a little before that, mostly just to set up a time and place. And when he had seen her, sitting by the window at the tea shop, it was like looking in a mirror. They had the same eyes, same mouth. And she had smiled at him like he was an old friend. Their meeting had been a little awkward, with pockets of nervous silence on both sides. But when they said goodbye, they hugged and Duk held his composure until he was back in his room, where he broke down into tears. Not sad tears, but tears of relief, of joy. It was all so much more than anything he could have expected.

The plane makes its final descent into O’Hare and Duk closes his eyes, uncomfortable still with the way the plane downshifts toward the ground, even though he knows it’s safe. He gets his things together once the plane settles on the tarmac, steering toward the gate. Turns off his AirPods, checks his phone for messages. He smiles at the notifications already popping up on his screen; friend requests on Facebook, new followers on Instagram, new likes on TikTok. Most are family, but he doesn’t recognize several of the new likes on TikTok or followers on Instagram. There’s also a text from his sister that just came through: Why is there a video of you dancing on TikTok?????

He shrugs it off, blowing up on social media doesn’t mean much since he’s still on cloud nine about his trip and eager to just get the hell off this plane already. He’s tired, almost running on fumes, but he still has a bounce in his step that always seems to be with him.

Then, once he makes his way through disembarking and through hectic customs, there’s the Barneses. Crowded right up to the metal barrier. They’re there to greet him, his mom waving her hands in the air as if he can’t see her in the crowd. His father is saying something to Michael, who is hoisting a big sign up into the air. Sara is picking at Mike, as usual and Sage is just looking around as though she would almost rather be anywhere else. But their eyes meet and she smiles. And he knows she is glad to see him, too. Duk tilts his head to one side, studying the simplified Hanzi type lettering on Michael’s sign. “You do know that the sign says ‘fried rice here’ right?” He asks the group. He didn’t expect this to be his first words to his family upon his prodigal return, but then again, normal to the Barnes family is always entirely subjective. Immediately, his mom shot a look at Mike, who is covering his face to hold back a burst of roaring laughter. “Michael!” She hisses and the boy finally lets loose peals of laughter. Sarah punches his shoulder and he grimaces as Sage rolls her eyes, turning her attention to her phone instead. It was the best welcome home he could have ever received.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Nothing! I love you all!!

#accepted #submission

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runeiisms · 4 years

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hi hello everyone !! i’m h , i haven’t been roleplaying for almost a year so apologies if i seem rusty ( that’s bc i am , lol ) ! i won’t be joining the dc server since group chats make me nervous but please feel free to hit me up to plot , or just give this post a ♡ and i’ll come say hi when i can ( which’ll probably be tomorrow morning since it’s almost midnight for me and i have the sleeping schedule of an old lady - or a baby ) !!

« lalisa manoban. female. she/her. » — ruthai sion just accepted the offer from impact and will be heading to the airport soon. rune is a twenty-two year old from seoul, south korea who creates conspiracy videos on youtube. when they’re not making videos they enjoy pulling pranks on friends and doing research and they dislike sharing too much personal details about herself. their subscribers will tell you they’re joyous, while their haters will tell you they’re unstable. a room that is completely dark except for the glow of a computer screen, a face with dark circles, a wide, lying smile and eyes devoid of light, and watching the stars through a blurry window.

THE BASICS

full name: ruthai sion

age: 22

zodiac: gemini

gender: cis female

pronouns: she/her

ethnicity: thai

nationality: south korea

mbti: entp

hogwarts: slytherin

orientation: bisexual & biromantic with a lean for women

language(s) spoken: thai , korean , english , and a little chinese

height: 5′ 6″

weight: 103 lbs

BACKGROUND

alright so !! i’ll try to keep this short bc i’m sleepy and i feel like if i let myself ramble i’ll have to deal with a million typos and grammar mistakes tomorrow dfgfd ( edit : i have failed )

rune was born into a very poor family ; an alcoholic single mom , a little sister who she had to take care of considering their mom was only interested in them when it came to snatching some money from their absent dad ( which , surprise , she spent on alcohol ) so ... yeah, your classic tragic backstory , haha ... ha ...

anyways it’d be cool if it all ended there but APPARENTLY i won’t rest until i make my characters suffer more ?? oh well .

rune would often escape from home in order to work at several places and bring food to her little sister . one time , a person she met during one of her escapades came to her with an offer . you see , this person was like an older brother figure for rune and he was looking for a way to get her out of that house - he offered to teach her how to hack , which’d take time , but if she learned well he could get her a position in the agency he works for . rune spent years reading books about computers , programming and such , having lessons from that guy , while also working her jobs but eventually she got much better at hacking than the guy predicted .

though she had to cut ties with her sister while working for the agency , so she had to leave her alone for a year while she tried to get enough money to find her a house where she could handle all the legal requirements and keep an eye on her while also ,,, staying away from her . rune still blames herself for leaving her alone with their mom for a year but eventually she got to make her plan happen , although it came with the cost of having her sister ( rightfully , if you asked rune ) resent her .

she spent years working in the agency under an anonymous nickname while trying to keep the persona of ‘rune’ in real life , although she never dared to get too close to anyone , scared of putting them in danger somehow .

however , being a good hacker came with the perks of being able to erase any and all suspicious traces of her online , so rune was able to start her youtube channel where she could make money , talk to people , and all without the risks of getting close to them .

eventually , with the help of the older brother figure i mentioned earlier , she was able to quit the agency . she still does jobs that specifically require her skillset from time to time ( because lbh , it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of them ) but since her online personality got more and more famous in years , everyone is aware of the risks of what’d happen if people found out , so she very rarely gets jobs at this point .

more about her channel !! rune loves , LOVES all the fantastic , dreamy concepts which includes everything from aliens and fairies to ghosts and myths , so she does several activities in her channel such as talking about myths and dressing up as the creature in the topic of that day’s video ( she even cosplayed big foot once , she just loves cosplaying ) and going ghost-hunting in the craziest places .

rune still sends half the money she earns from her channel to her sister , who still refuses to talk to her ( even if they’re finally able to ) .

there’s two versions of rune ; the jokester who’s energetic and almost overly enthusiastic . she displays a happy-go-lucky, outgoing, and very bizarre personality in front of other people and especially in front of the camera . she also likes playing pranks on her friends and making fun of them - all in good fun , of course . and , yeah , sarcasm is her BIGGEST defense mechanism .

however , the other version , the version rune believes to be the ‘real’ her ( and hates herself for it ) is the exact opposite . behind the humorous front she puts up , rune is actually quite depressed and serious , and she refuses to believe that anything good can happen to her due to everything she has done in the past . due to all the trauma she went through and having constant fear most of her life ( until the recent few years ) rune believes that not letting people get close is the safest way for everyone , maybe there’s no longer a danger worth mentioning , but she still gets these warning sirens in her head whenever she lets someone see too much of her , or when she gets just a bit too close to people . she has friends , she even has friends who she’d consider ‘close’ , but they’re close to the wall she puts around herself - not to the person behind the wall .

also !! rune has adhd , although she’s never been diagnosed and isn’t completely aware of it / doesn’t care enough to dig into it . ( and since i’m v paranoid when it comes to these stuff i just wanna say that i’ve been diagnosed with adhd so ik what i’m doing , you don’t have to worry !! )

she’s also always curious to learn the strangest and most absurd things and coming up with even crazier ideas ( like trying to build robots ) .

#impact.intro #sorry in advance for all the mistakes !!#abuse mention tw #alcoholism tw #depression tw #hacking tw #idk if this is how i should tag it but-

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unklarity · 4 years

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Critical Role: Beau

“Click “keep reading” for more photos and a description of my Beau magic box! :)

Over the course of CR2, I was totally blindsided by how much I grew to love Beau, so I was both excited and nervous to make a box for her. I actually made the whole box on paper first (which I have never done before). I think that on some level, I was procrastinating because if I never started, I couldn’t screw it up. After having numerous Beau conversations with some amazing people (special thank you to @alemongrenade, who helped me to turn my Beau feelings into real words), I was able to pin down some themes for her, but it took a while to flesh them out and really get to a point where I was comfortable with them. I ended up focusing on the difference between Beau’s perception of herself and how others perceive her, the way that perception influences her actions, and how that perception was developed.

I have a bad habit where I always feel the need to one-up myself, especially since I’m always learning new techniques and ways to do things, so I tend to want to incorporate all the things I learn into everything. With Beau, though, I wanted to keep it simple. “I’m a simple girl, simple needs,” to quote her introduction. I think Beau is very simple, on the outside, and I wanted the physical box to reflect that veneer of simplicity. Everyone always underestimates her, thinks there isn’t much more to her than a girl who has a problem with authority. So the box is plain, only decorated on the outside with the Cobalt Soul symbol, and yet the contents are varied and complex. (I love a good extended metaphor haha)

One of the reasons I struggled with Beau was her lack of concrete imagery at the beginning of the campaign. While I appreciated her simplicity from a fan standpoint, it was tough to come up with motifs to fit the box. I really wanted to reference her frustration with not being able to see in the dark and how much of a game-changer her Goggles of Night were. My first thought was a glow-in-the-dark message since I was having a hard time finding something more concrete, and even though I eventually did find a perfect pair of miniature silver goggles, I still wanted to include a glow-in-the-dark element, which ended up meshing perfectly with her jade All-Seeing Eye tattoo.

I painted the tattoo in the inside lid and added a clear, matte glow-in-the-dark paint over the top. You can see in the photo below how it looks in the light and in the dark! It’s one of my favorite parts of the box :)

Stones:

I wanted to stick to the Cobalt Soul color scheme of blues and greys as much as possible, so I wanted to use as many blue stones as I could. For a focus stone, I picked a gorgeous electric blue apatite tower. Apatite clears away guilt, confusion, apathy or negativity and helps expand one’s intellect and desire for knowledge and truth. It also represents positive use of personal power to achieve goals, encouraging you to accept yourself as you really are, and to gain greater self confidence. What I thought was interesting about this stone is that the meaning of the word Apatite relates to the Greek word 'apatao', which means 'to deceive'. Now, that’s probably due to the stone being mistaken for other minerals, but I thought it fit well with Beau not being easy to read, people thinking she’s shifty or lying even when she’s being honest, and her troubles with outwardly showing genuine emotions.

I also included a tiny Jade owl to represent wisdom, balance, perspective, and learning to be comfortable with showing your true self (and because I, too, wish Professor Thaddeus could have been Beau’s awesome owl sidekick).

The rest of the stones in the box are:

Fluorite- focus, intelligence, aids in meditation and helps with finding peace with oneself

Labradorite- transformation, becoming, being more true to who you are, help banishing fears/insecurities while enhancing faith and reliance in oneself;

Aquamarine - courage, freedom, and communication

Honey Calcite- clarity of insight/action, confidence, intellectual power

Rose quartz - forgiving oneself, learning to accept love, alleviating fear and sorrow/resentment

Blue aventurine - moving past trauma/letting go of emotional baggage, endurance, help saying what you mean, inner strength, passion/determination, gaining control of anger and emotion, using it to help you

Hematite- grounding, cooperation (fighting in cooperation with spellcasters), fighting up close and personal (associated with martial artists), help talking your way out of situations

Tourmalated Quartz- hardness/tough exterior, help when feeling trapped/cornered. provides security when there is fear of failure, courage and self-acceptance in the learning process. Help with self sabotaging. Good for discipline and meditation. Help dealing with anger/self loathing/bitterness

Sodalite-help being less critical of oneself and help calming internal conflict

Celestite- clarity, intuition, and openness to things out of your comfort zone (also divine energy as a reference to Caduceus’ Holy Weapon spell)

And that’s it for stones!

Potions:

There are 6 potions, each labeled with a number on the bottom. The first three are in the photo below, in order from left to right:

The first potion is centered around Beau’s perception of herself, and how that’s been influenced by her interactions with others. Inside the bottle are lemon balm and basil for self hatred, peony for shame and anger, yellow carnation for disdain, heather for solitude and only being able to rely on herself/carry burdens herself, marigold for feeling like she has to constantly fight to prove herself worthy of love (“love you have to fight for”), nettle for insecurity and perceived insincerity, pine for low self worth, lotus for rebelling against authority, purple hyacinth for guilt/feeling like she has to apologize for being herself, and yellow hyacinth for comparing yourself to others/not thinking you’re special. Sealed with silver wax and a lotus flower stamp with blue pigment.

The second potion is a direct contrast to the first, dealing with other people’s perception of Beau and how she really is. There’s acorn for wisdom despite youth, sunflower for wisdom/loyalty, nutmeg for intelligence/wit, cedar for resilience and strength, pansy for thoughtfulness, thyme for loyalty, affection, attracting the good opinion of others, and courage in the face of adversity, gladiolus for strength of character, faithfulness, and honor, and dogwood for deep devotion and keeping confidence. Sealed with silver wax and a sunflower stamp with blue pigment.

The third potion represents the Cobalt Soul and what it means to Beau at different points in the campaign. At the beginning, the Soul is just another cage, someone else trying to impose their will on Beau, but as the story goes on, her goals and theirs start to line up. Dairon is the first authority figure we see give Beau a real chance while also managing to earn her respect, making the Cobalt Soul something that Beau can be a part of instead of something she’s trying to run from. In this potion we have tarragon for struggling to regain independence, chamomile for shedding outside influence, anise for using knowledge as power/to protect yourself/to get what you want, gum arabic for meditation, lilac for wisdom/memory/unlocking potential, rosemary for mental alertness/perception, violet for guarding against deception, lily for freedom and no longer feeling trapped, green tourmaline for calming the mind and increasing abilities/confidence, chrysocolla chips for empowerment and adaptability, and jasmine for appreciation, calming, and developing confidence. Sealed with silver wax and a Cobalt Soul stamp with blue pigment.

The next photo shows potions four through six, in order from left to right.:

Potion number four represents Beau’s past and how it affects her life currently. Before meeting the Mighty Nein, Beau grew up with parents who constantly tried to make her into something she wasn’t; her criminal background was a direct result of Beau rebelling against that control, and we see throughout the campaign that her intense distrust of authority figures still follows her wherever she goes. As time goes on, she does do a lot of growing up and letting go, and yet the way she was treated in the past still informs many of her present decisions and actions. In this potion, there’s lavender for ingrained distrust and problems between parent & child, dandelion for overcoming hardship, sage & cypress for grief and loss, amaranth for help recovering from trauma, black salt for being controlled/told what to be, yellow rose for betrayal, yarrow for regaining agency, mint for trying to atone for the past (Specifically, her guilt and criminal background vs. adopting Molly’s philosophy of leaving places better than you find them after his death), and barberry for freeing oneself from the power/control of another. Sealed with silver wax and a rosemary with blue pigment.

The fifth potion centers around Beau’s fears and struggles (fear of people leaving her, of not being good enough, struggle with being friendly/charismatic, being soft, struggle with presentation). There’s rue for regrets and obsessing over past mistakes, poppy for carrying a traumatic period in your life with you and letting it affect your actions, hydrangea for apparent aggression and being “bad at people,” cinquefoil for desire to be eloquent/wise/self confident, snapdragon for feeling like she has to lie because that would be better than being herself, gardenia for difficulty trusting others/letting people in, violet for importance of outward appearance (being in control of your own presentation and aesthetic and how important that is for Beau), amethyst for fear of being abandoned, garnet for help shedding guilt/sharing burdens, redeeming oneself, and struggling with responsibility (taking so many of the M9’s failures as her own personal responsibility). Sealed with silver wax and a fists stamp with blue pigment.

The sixth and final potion deals with the people around Beau and how she grows by learning lessons from others, both members of the Mighty Nein and the people they cross paths with. Just as in all the rest of the M9 boxes I’ve done so far, there are cloves for camaraderie and being improved by friends, one for each member of the group. There’s also red carnation and basil for brother-sister bonds with Caleb and Fjord, skullcap for willful commitment (found family), zinnia for remembering absent friends (Molly), sweet pea for chaos and adventure (in particular the Jester-Nott-Beau “chaos crew”), magnolia for loyalty, rose quartz for learning to accept love, and bluebell for friendship and slowly growing to be comfortable with being more truthful/open with people. Sealed with silver wax and a rosemary stamp with blue pigment.

That’s it for the potions! Next are the rest of the box’s miscellaneous contents:

So before I even got a box for Beau, I knew there had to be ball bearings in it. There are about a hundred, minus any that managed to escape while I took this picture :)

In the tiny blue pouch, there are gold coins for Beau’s role initial role as group treasurer, along with aforementioned ball bearings, a worn out old Circus flyer, and a set of 21 miniature Major Arcana tarot cards - the 22nd card, the Moon, is in my Jester box. Attached to the tie of the pouch are a silver pair of goggles with purple lenses to represent her Goggles of Night.

Also in the box are Beau’s staff, and her super secret book of important monk notes. Tucked into the book’s closure is a tiny hand-stamped coin with one of my favorite serious Beau quotes, “I don’t want us to drive each other away.”

Below are some close ups of the wax seals so you can see them better:

Thanks so much for reading! That’s it for Beau. Below are some close ups of the whole box at different angles, plus the quote I engraved on the bottom: “You are a good friend to have and a terrible enemy to make.”

I really had a great time working on Beau and I hope you love her as much as I do!

You can check my “magic boxes” tag to see the rest of my M9 boxes, or you can see them on my website at unklarity (dot) com!

#magic boxes #critical role #beauregard lionett #mighty nein #critical role art #magic box

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loquaciousquark · 6 years

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Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E28 (July 31, 2018)

Tonight’s preshow: a tiny tea set with two tiny teacups and a single saucer. Dani has tea with Pillow!Matt and later with Taliesin, all of which is adorable. Dani then beats Taliesin in a thumb war, which is every bit as delightful as it sounds.

Tonight’s guests: Taliesin Jaffe and Sumalee Montano.

Tonight’s announcements: Dani!cam is down tonight. Everyone has a moment of silence. Except her audio’s still working, so not that silent, I guess! Taliesin has selected Brian’s outfit for GenCon and describes it as “extremely extra.” Brian warns us we might need sunglasses, and Tal tells BWF that he’ll have his “product” by showtime. Matt’s Fireside Chat and NPC Build will be Tuesday, August 7, at 5:00pm PST. Marisha’s Honey Heist 2: Electric Beargaloo will be Friday, August 10th at 7:00pm PST. All the original cast will return to reprise their characters. Next Wednesday Club is Batman books without Batman, focusing on all the other characters and Gotham herself, tomorrow at 7:00pm PST.

CR Stats! Nila smelled her bag regarding five decisions: Ophelia, letting Champ smell the bag, going to find the cleric, going to find the Taskers, and placing her spirit totem. Molly had 25 nat 20s (most in the M9), 11 nat ones (least in the M9), 21 kills (most in the M9), and 7 HDYWTDTs (most in the M9). BWF: “He died doing what he loved: making Crit Role Stats records.” Molly dealt 711 points of damage and took 325, his most-cast spell was Vicious Mockery (23 times), and his most used Blood Hunter ability was Rite of the Dawn (22 times). Caduceus healed 24 points in his first appearance.

How Sumalee ended on the show: she’s friends with Matt since they work for the same agency, but she only saw it pop up on her timeline tangentially. One day, they were both working on the same cartoon and she wanted to say congratulations to him afterwards for this wonderful thing he’d built, and as he told her about the backstory and the world he suggested she should come on the show sometime. She wasn’t quite sure if he meant it, but she was super interested even though she’d never played the game before. He suggested she watch the show a few times to see if she’d be interested; the next day she giddily told her agent he’d invited her. About three months later, Matt texted her and asked if she wanted to be on the show. Prior to the meeting, she felt like she had to pitch herself--she read a ton of the PHB and the basics of D&D and everything--but when she showed up to the diner, he was ready for her character creation with character sheets and books and dice and everything. She was overwhelmed and delighted--even a month later, her excitement is tangible. I love her more than life itself. She points out he was very good at giving little flavors of each race that were not overwhelming for someone so new to the game.

BWF decides to rename the show The Firbolg Fireside.

@skinnyghost (Adam Koebel on Twitter) asks Tal, “Where’s my money?” Everyone laughs; Tal tells us Matt actually pointed out Clay looks a lot like Koebel right after they first saw the character art.

Tal picked a firbolg because he’d ever done it before and they have some very interesting racial abilities and stats.

Sumalee had decided between a dragonborn and a half-orc before Matt showed her the book with the firbolg. Both she and Tal loved the picture of the firbolg in the book--a “Jim Henson” picture. Sumalee never gets to explore this kind of character in her jobs, so she was glad to be able to explore something that resonated with her so well personally in the game.

Of firbolg, cleric, or Grave Domain, which called to Tal first? “Everything was done in a semiconscious blaze of insanity.” Grave cleric was the first thing to hit as he was going through the new supplements to the PHB. He liked the gothy feel and was very concerned that the character death would make the rest of the party “gunshy,” which is more cautious than he likes in his D&D games. He likes that this class is a “risk reduction” for the rest of the party. He feels firbolgs work well for this and that the Jim Henson feeling was sufficiently different from both Percy & Molly.

The smell bag was not an actual magic item. Sumalee wracked her brains for two weeks trying to come up with a way to reconcile her INT of 8 and her WIS of 18, since Matt suggested leaning into a low stat instead of rerolling. She needed something like a “gut check,” which showed a certain innate intelligence that felt right even if it couldn’t be explained. She first thought about tea leaves, but thought it still felt too intelligent; then she latched onto the powerful smell scent idea of the bag. She loved the idea of it always being the same items in the bag, but the smell changing based on the choice she wanted to make.

A light overhead goes out. After Dark is NOW.

Tal, glancing over Sumalee’s character sheet, is amazed at how well she rolled. She only has one stat with a negative modifier.

In the smell bag are nuts, berries from trees she’d helped save, bark from her tribe’s sacred trees, bones from animals that she had befriended and cared for until they died, a small portion of her firbolg baby’s dried placenta, and a variety of mosses.

Nila was in charge of the mosses in her tribe (I LOVE THIS) because it’s the easiest-growing thing to care for--her tribe didn’t think she could handle a job more exciting or delicate, so they gave her something they didn’t need to really rely on her for.

Tal did consider the fact that he would be the person the M9 would seek out to resurrect Molly, and mostly left it open as an option for Matt.

Nila’s calming presence is due to regular meditation. Prior to the abduction, Nila had the perfect calm, idyllic life--but the horrible nature of the kidnapping brought out a deep need and driving force that balanced out her idyll. BWF points out she had to maintain her ability to think rationally, because if she broke down now, she’d be of no use to her partner or her child. Sumalee likens it to the autopilot she went on when her mother died, even through the grief, since she was her family’s sole provider at the time and could not let herself break down or be overwhelmed.

@vonnie_bee wins GIF of the Week for two weeks ago. It’s a lovely little thing of Sumalee casually stating she’d like to eat someone’s face off.

Runner up is @crivensfeegle with the reacharound bit. Oh, Sam.

The winner gets a purple CR hat that will go on sale at GenCon and later this year in the critrole.com store.

Tal didn’t ask Laura about having a second cleric in the party, but as he revealed the details both Laura and Travis were really excited. (BWF says it’s like having a Mercy & a Zenyatta in the party at the same time; BWF reveals himself as a D.Va main. Glorious.)

Sumalee never expected to become all critters’ fir-mom, but is honored that she’s been basically adopted.

Tal says Caduceus is basically goth-Fonz.

Caduceus is in his mid-twenties in firbolg years. Time moves weirdly in that part of the forest, so he’s really unconcerned with the passage of time. “He’s deep in navel contemplation.” Tal thinks he and Matt agreed on him being somewhere between 80-100.

BWF is shocked and appalled that Tal is wearing matching socks tonight. Ditto.

Sumalee was conscious of a lot of “nature-loving” tropes going into the game that she actively tried to avoid in her portrayal of Nila. She specifically avoided the trope-y broken speech of Dances With Wolves, as well as an almost Southern-Midwestern accent that was her first thought, even though she’s from Ohio and it felt fairly natural for her. She just felt like she wanted to make something grounded, something authentic, and something that left people with positive associations. BWF feels no one’s resonated with the community so well since Sprigg.

Caduceus hasn’t been with the party nearly long enough to form opinions about any of them. He finds the whole party interesting...as well as the building they broke into, several trees and rocks, some flora they passed on the way.

Tal was concerned about bringing up both Molly’s and his own preconceptions to this new character, but has found it much more pleasant to be a “blank slate” and act surprised at every bit of reveal.

Nila had a tough time leaving the M9 to find their friends without her, since they helped her find her family and she felt like she owed them. Sumalee is glad that Beau gave her that out--as a mother, all she wanted to do was be with her son, but she also knew she could help the M9 better once she knew that her partner was healed and she was stronger. She also 100% felt better because they had a firbolg with them in Clay.

Sumalee was more nervous coming on the show even than she’d anticipated because Molly had just died the week before. She never thought her entrance would be at such a momentous point in the story. She channeled Nila to calm her nerves pre-show.

Sumalee and Dani were watching the battle with the Iron Shepherds together and both gasped at the terrible cold damage to Nott. “Utter shock. This--this can’t be happening.” However, she felt that it was a good meeting point between Nila and the M9, since they’d both lost someone precious.

Fanart of the Week: @ravennowithtea with this beautiful, beautiful thing of Nila & the M9 for last week, and for this week, @agonethetic with a lovely portrait of Clay in the foreground and Molly in the background arising from Clay’s shadow.

“Clay’s chill is pretty deep.” Tal remembers a local Buddhist monk in Pasadena with a great camera obscura collection and an electric cart. “He’s the chillest guy I ever met.”

Clay’s voice was “literally a voice that was not Percy or Molly. It’s the sloppiest character I’ve made in so long.” Once he saw the size and found the chill, he felt that sliding into the bassy “more badass Pumat” vibe would work best. He loved finding out what Sumalee was doing since it worked so well with what he was planning.

In Sumalee’s SURELY INEVITABLE return, she’s most excited about Call Lightning and Flaming Sphere. She primarily focused on her healing powers when she picked her spells for the day, but would like to do more exciting offensive spells next time.

Clay’s had his bags packed for four months, ready for someone to find him. In the meantime, he was starting to have dreams and visions of “something that had gone wrong,” but didn’t feel like he could navigate the cursed forest on his own. A few people had come by before but “hadn’t been the right people.” Clearly our murderhobos were just in time.

Sumalee was very worried they wouldn’t reach her son & partner in time. She’d asked Matt how to make her exit; he told her to follow his lead but be guided by the story. She’d hoped that they’d reach them in time, but wasn’t sure. She thinks if they’d gone back for the Taskers they wouldn’t have made it in time. Tal reminds us that Matt does keep an internal timer and taking too long would have possibly been dangerous. Sumalee was also worried in the moment that if the Iron Shepherds had heard the racket, they’d have deliberately tortured or killed her husband & child as punishment for invading before they could be rescued.

Caduceus is “another strain of Ren Faire” that has flavors of Molly in a slightly different wrapping. Tal was also raised by hippies and references childhood memories at the Lakeshrine Self-Realization Fellowship Center, which Sumalee helpfully tells us is the only place outside of India that has some of Gandhi’s ashes.

The easiest part of the game for Sumalee was just playing with her friends, since they made it so fun for her. The most challenging thing was that she felt like she had to learn D&D at the same time as everyone was telling her not to worry about the rules and to bend them as she wanted. Her advice is to not make it harder for herself; don’t learn the box--just sit down with someone who knows how to play, tell them what you want to do, and get one-on-one instruction on how to do it. “Find comfort in the fact that the people you’re playing with will lead you through this.��

Remember, the next episode airs at GenCon on Friday and an hour earlier! Hope to see some of you guys there!

After Dark: Already Dark I Guess Edition

Sumalee was much more comfortable playing a druid since she sat next to Marisha, who could guide her through it. The goodberries were the first spell that she used once Marisha gave her okay.

Taliesin remembers the delight of watching Travis slowly realize he could do anything in their first home game.

Broadcasting comes through to mismatch Tal’s socks for him. Bless.

Tal says that the tea-drinking, the Arizona tea can, and Tealeaf are all just a complete coincidence. (:thinking:) He came up with the tea-drinking intro about eleven seconds before he entered--he’d been backstage taking notes on what the M9 looked at during their tour of the garden, and as Matt described the flowers and leaves over one of the gravestones, he had the thought that the tea was something he could do. He also says that he didn’t mean them to be cherry blossoms on his armor; they’re actually a form of lichen that gets really neon pink and red. However, he fully encourages everyone to keep drawing him however they like.

Tal would have liked a month to come up with the new character. Part of his rush was that the artist had to come up with the design; he’d like to share some early iterations later if the artist gives permission.

Sumalee deliberately avoided giving Ariana Orner (their artist) descriptions of her armor out of fear of stereotyping herself, and was delighted with the Mongolian-inspired armor she came up with.

Sumalee’s been frantically trying to scroll social media to keep up with all the Nila fanart and gifs that she loved & hadn’t expected at all. Tal offers to share their Liam to help curate her new collection.

This past weekend was the first time Sumalee felt the “click” of why D&D lends itself so well to character fanart.

Cassius Clay beats Caduceus Clay every time. Caduceus is from an old work-for-hire script that never got picked up. This is the third iteration of the character (first an adaptation pitch, then a brief pitch script for a video game, and now the D&D game). “It only took a decade and change.”

Sumalee tells us that her young son has insisted on replaying the firbolg rescue scene several times, including repeating what the DM said at certain points and him pretending to reach his hand out of the cage. It’s adorable and I die again.

For Sumalee, D&D was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Voiceover lends itself well to it because there’s something of a theatricality to it when you’re roleplaying, especially since the world is so fantastical compared to her on-camera work. “It’s totally unique...and I love it.” She likes that the dice guide you even through the scariness of total improv freedom. There’s a little bit of guidance and direction and structure, but the play within that structure is very free. “This was...intense. It was a fantastic introduction to something I’d never experienced, never done, and I could see why people loved it...The entire outside world disappeared. It was intoxicating.”

And that’s it for tonight! Is it Thursday Friday yet?

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers

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pitviperofdoom · 7 years

Text

a mountain inn murder

So! I’d like to thank you all for your patience throughout this past month. I have promised fic and worry not, fic is on its way. I hope to get a chapter out either today or tomorrow, but for now, there’s a little something I’d like to share with you.

On Thursday I saw a movie that I’ve been very excited to see, and it inspired a BNHA fic idea that I’ve decided I’m never going to write. But it’s still a rather delicious one, so I put together a detailed synopsis for your reading pleasure.

Warning: look full disclosure this is pretty goddamn depressing.

So to begin, it takes place in a slightly AU version of the BNHA world, so there are a few digressions from canon, such as Quirkless!GenEd!Midoriya who ends up working with heroes anyway as a strategist and consultant. But honestly that’s more background information than anything else, and the story itself doesn’t really focus much on him.

The story begins a year or two after what we know as Class 1-A would have graduated, so they’d all be around nineteen, maybe twenty. It takes place at a rather remote inn in the mountains during winter. Our main character is a Detective. I haven’t decided who that Detective might be, maybe an OC, I’m really not sure because I can’t think of a canon character that would fit super well in that role. The detective ends up at the inn while taking an impromptu vacation from work, hoping for a relaxing couple of days surrounded by pretty snow and scenery. There are others staying there for the holidays, specifically the new year, so their stay will be fairly brief but the detective doesn’t mind the company. Those at the inn are the following:

Makoto, the proprietress of the inn

Her coworker whose name the detective doesn’t catch, mainly because the man spends most of his time asleep or seemingly drunk.

The Iida brothers Tensei and Tenya, rather famous clientele for such a humble inn.

Yoarashi, a boisterous young man who gets along with very nearly everyone.

Momo, a pretty young woman who looks familiar but the detective can’t put their finger on why.

Chiyo, an elderly grandmotherly type.

Todoroki, a taciturn young man with rather prominent facial scarring—name rings a bell, though.

Inada, a large and forbidding man who treats everyone with the same level of unfriendly arrogance.

Akatani, a young man who works for Inada as a secretary. He’s a bit shy, but friendly and eager to please.

The detective settles in for their stay and gets to know the people around them. Ms. Makoto is friendly and seems to strike up a friendship with Momo and Chiyo, as ladies are wont to do. Her silent, sleepy coworker is surprisingly helpful in his own way, in spite of the drinking, the constant sleeping, and his need for a crutch. Yoarashi and the Iidas are cordial with everyone. For some reason, Todoroki seems determined to keep Inada from finding out he’s there, to the point where he wears a surgical mask, ostensibly to keep from catching cold. It’s difficult when they’re all so enclosed, but Inada’s secretary is very understanding and helps him avoid Inada’s notice.

At one point, on the second day of their stay, Inada pulls the detective aside and offers him a job. He’s a powerful man being hunted and followed, and is currently staying at this inn to take cover until the danger can be identified and properly dealt with. But the inn is more crowded than he thought it would be, so he would appreciate it if the detective could help him identify possible threats. He tries to subtly threaten the detective, but their instincts tell them it’s a bad idea, so they turn him down.

The next morning Inada is found murdered in his bed, and a blizzard in the mountains strands them at the inn until help can arrive.

Needless to say, the air about the inn is far more nervous and fearful the following day. Considering the blizzard, it is very likely that the killer is still among them, so the detective devotes themselves to solving the murder as quickly as possible. Poor Akatani is nearly in hysterics when he finds out about his employer’s death, and is utterly lost and on the verge of a panic attack until the detective helps him make himself useful. In spite of his agitation he still has a very efficient mind, and is quite useful in helping the detective organize their thoughts and run the investigation.

It’s a strange case from the start. Inada wasn’t just stabbed; he was stabbed nine times as if in a frenzy, and yet there is no sign of defensive wounds, on a big and strong-looking man who was fully aware that his life was in danger. (The answer to that comes when they find a cup, still wet with the dregs of drugged tea.) Beyond that, there is a flurry of evidence at the detective’s disposal, most of it confusing and contradictory. Chance encounters, noises they heard in the night, a watch stopped at the time of death. Objects at the scene of the crime that may or may not belong to several of the other guests. Evidence of several different quirk types.

The first person he interviews is Akatani himself, and the young man nervously reveals his employer’s true identity. “Inada” was none other than Todoroki Enji, the former Number One Hero Endeavor, who has been on sabbatical ever since the tragedy he suffered just last year. One of his children was murdered by villains, his ailing wife died of grief soon after, and his only daughter was in a fatal car accident. He’d been laying low lately because old enemies and villains were moving against him, trying to take advantage of his current leave to take revenge on him.

“Then you must have known,” the detective says. “The young Todoroki at this very inn…”

Akatani winces, and his jet-black hair falls further into his face. “Todoroki-kun and his father… don’t get along very well. They never have. Endeavor was… he was a highly successful hero. But that didn’t make him a good person.”

The detective interviews the rest one by one, and finds that they all have alibis for the supposed time of the murder. There is always someone who can vouch for someone else. Very frustrating.

And then they get to the inn’s second proprietor, the drunk with the limp, and they sigh. They ask him if he’s going to give up the farce. They can tell he isn’t really drunk, so why fake it? What is his real name, and what is his game?

The tired man sighs, sits a little straighter. His name is Aizawa Shouta, he says. Perhaps they’ve heard of him.

They have, vaguely. There was a news story about the underground hero Eraserhead. About his injury, and his forced retirement. Some villain got the better of him even without the use of their quirk, and forced him out of the game early. Ms. Makoto was a friend of a friend, kind enough to give him a job here until he got his head together again. It’s far away from people who might recognize him, as unlikely as that is. But apparently not far enough, he adds pointedly.

Akatani helps him take notes and comb through everything they know, and the evidence and witness accounts start pointing to a very frustrating possibility: that the killer is in fact not here at all. That they came in the night, committed the murder, and slipped away again. The blizzard doesn’t necessarily mean anything, because they have no idea what this hypothetical assassin’s quirk would have been. It’s the most convenient solution, to be sure. And yet…

Some of it doesn’t add up. There are too many inconsistencies. Too many coincidences. Too many connections. And those damned tragedies in Endeavor’s life keep coming up in them; Todoroki’s presence is just the start.

The proprietress Makoto, for example. Her full name, they discover, is Tsukauchi Makoto. Her older brother Tsukauchi Naomasa was a respected police officer until his career was ruined. He was said to have been investigating the death of Endeavor’s son. Aizawa Shouta? The battle that ended his career was with the very same villain guilty of the murder, after he tried and failed to prevent it. Yoarashi Inasa? Up and coming hero. His friend Keimi was killed in that same battle.

And most interesting are Iida Tenya and Yaoyorozu Momo, two more young heroes.

They had a friend and former classmate in common: Todoroki Shouto. Endeavor’s youngest son, a promising hero killed in the line of duty just a year ago.

The detective gathers them all together. He looks to Todoroki again, at the scarring on his face: burns over both eyes, lined with stitches. He takes off the surgical mask, and the burns continue down his lower jaw and neck. He’s Endeavor’s second son, a villain ex-convict released on parole, who went by the codename “Dabi”.

The former villain exchanges a look with Tsukauchi Makoto, and together they lay out the truth of Endeavor’s “tragedies”.

Shouto was always a rebel, but was forced into working at his father’s agency against his own wishes. Endeavor was always pushing him, testing him, forcing him to be better by any means necessary. And so, that day, when he was teamed up with the hero Eraserhead and Inasa’s friend Keimi, they ended up surrounded and horribly outnumbered. When all seemed hopeless, Shouto contacted his father to send reinforcements. But Endeavor misjudged the situation, wanted to punish and test his son for his rebelliousness, and did not. Shouto and Keimi were killed, and Aizawa was horribly wounded.

His mother did not die of grief; Dabi knows this. His younger brother had stubbornly taken him in during his parole, though the terms of said parole prevented him from visiting his mother. But he did anyway, and so he knows. When she heard the news that her youngest son was dead, she became frightened that her husband would return to her, to try to force another child out of her, so she got herself sterilized in secret. Endeavor did come for her, and flew into a rage when he found out what she had done.

In his defense, he did not mean to hit her so hard. But she was a fragile woman. Dabi was there to witness it but too slow to prevent it, and who would the courts believe? A renowned hero, or an ex-con breaking parole?

Fuyumi was never the same after this. The guilt was too much for her; Iida Tensei knows this, because he was the one she confided in. She languished, and her accident… well, who could say if it was an accident, or a suicide?

The guests are all quiet now.

There are two possible solutions to this crime. There’s the way the evidence points, to a villain assassin who crept in and escaped during the night. And there’s a second solution, one that follows all the connections between people.

Tsukauchi Makoto, the sister of the police officer who tried to get to the bottom of these deaths, whose career Endeavor purposely sabotaged to cover himself. The former “Dabi”, whose younger brother was killed because of their father’s negligence, who watched his mother die at his hand, who lost his sister before he had the chance to reconcile with her. Iida Tensei who had met Todoroki Fuyumi, who fell in love with her as he watched her suffer. Iida Tenya, who owed his life to his best friend Shouto. Yaoyorozu Momo who cared very deeply about Shouto, and was shocked when she found out about the abuse. Yoarashi Inasa, whose friend died as collateral damage to Endeavor’s cruelty. Shuuzenji Chiyo, who cared for Shouto as a school nurse, who was the very doctor that his mother went to for help. Aizawa Shouta, who watched his student die.

And as the detective finishes laying out these connections, they turn to Akatani. Helpful, eager, painfully earnest Akatani Mikumo, who fetched things, took thorough notes, offered insights, kept tempers cool throughout this ordeal. And now the young man won’t meet his eyes, but combs his black-dyed fringe out of his face and dries the tears from his face, wiping away the makeup that concealed his freckles and changed the shape and contouring of his face.

Midoriya Izuku, the up and coming strategist and consultant who has worked with almost every prominent hero from Eraserhead to Endeavor himself, who loved Todoroki Shouto with all his heart.

Nine suspects. Nine stab wounds.

Midoriya opens his mouth to take the blame for the plot he created and implemented, by gathering the conspirators and organizing the details and playing the devoted secretary just long enough to set up Enji’s stay at the inn, but Dabi beats him to it.

The only reason he’s here at all, he says, is because his little brother reached out to offer whatever help he could give. Tried to tell him that it wasn’t too late, that they didn’t have to let their father turn them into something they weren’t proud of. But he’s already made his choices. He’s already a villain, and the rest of these people—they aren’t villains. They aren’t even killers, not really. They’re just broken people who saw something terribly wrong and wanted to set it right.

The detective gives a thoughtful nod, and leaves the room.

When the police arrive, the detective delivers the evidence, and the witness statements, and the neat little first solution but not the second.

Half of them are heroes, after all, and the world needs its heroes, especially when men like Todoroki Enji exist in it. There is Law and there is Crime, but there is also Right and Wrong, and the two don’t always line up so neatly.

Sherlock Holmes is still my favorite detective but I frickin love Murder on the Orient Express and the critics can suck it because that movie was rad.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #murder mystery #what might have been fun #would be to set it in the second person #and at the end of the penultimate chapter #invite readers to vote on the final decision #tell the truth #give the false solution #or let the guiltiest of them take the fall #or even offer other choices beforehand #make it a choose your own adventure game

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lilydodge · 7 years

Photo

This is my favorite photo from the photo shoot I did with the incredibly talented Clare Bayley but you’ll probably be seeing a bunch of different ones because I just want to share them everywhere! The typographic art is by corgi enthusiast and brilliant artist Chris Pryor.

I want to update folks on exactly how this process has been the past few months, because I have left out some details in my posts until things resolved. I am not saying this to complain or criticize - just to give everyone a sense of how things have been behind the scenes, and how this sausage has been made, if you will.

In May, I had an appointment with my agency liaison to come down to her office. I’d been doing that a bunch - to check in about paperwork, mostly. It felt like having a personal assistant: someone to go down a long and complex list of things I needed to do, identify which ones had been done, which ones were next up, and what my exact next steps would be to get them done. I wish I had an agency liaison for everything in my life!

When I got there that day, though, she had more to chat about than my expanding binder of forms. She said there was a child who seemed like a perfect fit for me! I was totally thrilled - a placement on the horizon, already, in May!? She told me about this young woman and I got more and more excited. Then she said “the treatment team wants to meet you” and I started to get out my calendar to see when would work - but no, she meant now. The team was there now!

So we sat down together and chatted and I was already falling in love. This child and I had a ton in common, and her treatment goals sounded like the things I was most “excited” about working with. To be clear - I’m not ever going “yay, a traumatized child, how fun!” But in the trainings, they went over different scenarios, and I personally felt more drawn to work with, say, an older teen girl with abandonment and self esteem issues than a middle school boy with anger and aggression. And this young woman sounded like her needs would be well met by the skills most firmly situated in my wheelhouse.

I only knew her first name, her age, a bit of her background, and some of her interests. But I was falling in love. I thought about her all the time. The agency was very clear with me that this was all provisional - placements fall through all the time, and I wasn’t even licensed yet! But since they wanted to place this child asap, they were “fast-tracking” me. I worked so hard to stay in that paradoxical spot between open acceptance, que sera sera, and letting myself fall deeper in love with this kiddo.

At one point I saw some stuff on sale at Target that fit exactly with one of her specific interests. I told myself “don’t you dare buy that; nothing is guaranteed, and you will only be devastated if you buy it and don’t end up getting to give it to her. Don’t make this too real - don’t start physically preparing the room - relax and be patient.” Next thing I knew, I was in the checkout line purchasing them. I can only be so Zen. I ended up bringing her one of the items when I met her - on a Wednesday evening, during her treatment team meeting. I was so nervous! But after meeting her, I was even more in love, so beyond excited.

I kept this information pretty close to my chest, which was excruciating - I’m not at all a private person (with my own business; I can keep other people’s secrets like a vault). But I told myself “do not share this information with anyone you wouldn’t want to process the loss with.” I told my support caregivers and some other people I trust with my whole heart, and that’s about it. Some people got brief brushstrokes - “there’s a potential kid and they are trying to fast-track me!” During this time, the agency was really good about managing expectations and helping me stay clear-eyed during a very tough time, having to throw myself 100% into preparing for a child while recognizing that it is not at all guaranteed.

Then, I was going to spend an afternoon with her, to get to know her, show her my house, start building that relationship. I was getting a bit nervous because I’m a planner and preparer, but the evening before, I still hadn’t gotten the full details on where and when to pick her up. Then I got a call from my agency liaison. She let me know that this young woman had decided not to go through with the placement for a variety of reasons, all of which were totally understandable.

But it also felt like a great loss. I went into my room and cried pretty hard. I didn’t feel robbed - nothing had been ‘taken’ from me that I had any claim to - and I was so glad that this kid had choice and agency in such a tough situation. But it was a tough blow. I felt very sad. Chas was there when I got the call and he sat with me and held me for a little bit. I told myself that if I couldn’t handle this, then I should quit the program now. Big feelings, painful loss, frustration, changes, dashed expectations - that’s what I signed up for.

I felt pretty awful for a day or so, but then those things I knew intellectually started to take root emotionally, and by the end of the week, I felt better. I was glad that she as finding something that worked for her, and I was grateful that I’d been fast-tracked for a while anyway, and I knew there was another kid in my future who I would love with my whole heart. The rest of the stuff I’d bought for her made its way to her through my agency liaison, and I heard that she loved it. (I was worried about the appropriateness of sending gifts - I did not want her to feel like I was pressuring her, or wanting to make her feel bad or guilty about not “choosing” me - so I told the agency liaison that she could have the items be from her, but she decided to say that they were from me, and apparently kiddo was glad to hear that I was still thinking of and rooting for her.)

All this happened in June. I had been preparing to have a placement by July - I talked to my manager about taking a week off, since school would be out at the time and I wanted time to bond, figure out summer plans, etc. I talked to my support caregivers and boss at church about what to do if I was placed with a kid before going on the week long service trip. I deliberately made zero plans for the month of July and beyond, aside from the service trip. And here I was, staring down the second half of the summer, having geared my entire life up to start parenting asap, and now back to waiting it out.

I was also off the “fast track,” so my licensing hadn’t been completed, which was weighing on me. I did a fun photo shoot with Clare, but couldn’t post or share the photos until the last t was crossed and the last i dotted! July and August were pretty long months in this regard, though I did my best to take advantage of the continued freedom and had plenty of fun with my friends.

Skip ahead to the end of September. I got another call from my liaison about another potential placement - this one a much different situation - and I scheduled a time to meet with the kiddo, along with his caseworker and another agency liaison. We met on Monday at a pizza place. We ate pizza and talked about school. His favorite subject is Language Arts, which I used to teach! I knew he was checking out another potential placement on Wednesday so I figured I’d hear back after that.

My agency liaison also scheduled my final home walkthrough for that Thursday. This was the last step in the licensing process (but I wasn’t totally clear on that at this point). So on Monday I met kiddo. Tuesday and Wednesday went by like normal. On Thursday I met with the agency liaison at my house and she completed my home walkthrough paperwork. Then I got a phone call from the other agency liaison on Thursday afternoon saying that the other placement is far less ideal than mine, and caseworker wants to move forward with my placement. Did Friday work for move-in day?

I said wait - by Friday, do you mean tomorrow? He said yes, that would be tomorrow. I said yes, absolutely (while making a mental list of all the weekend plans I’d need to cancel). Then I told him that I was not technically licensed yet, is that an issue? He told me that I was licensed - the home walkthrough clinched it - and just because my licensed hadn’t been issued to me as a piece of paper, I was licensed. Of course the next thing I did was call some close loved ones to tell them in person, then post my announcement photos to Facebook.

At this point, it was 3:00 on Thursday. Agency liaison told me that the caseworker was still at court working things out - he called me as the process wound its way through - and that there was a “95% chance” that the placement would work out and kiddo would be at my house the next evening. He said he would call me back as soon as court was over within the hour. I got a call back at 6:30 saying that he hadn’t heard from the caseworker, but was still working on the 95% chance, and that I should be ready for kiddo to move in the next afternoon. He told me he’d text me first thing in the morning to confirm.

As I write this, it is now Friday at noon, and I’m still working with “95% certainty” that tonight I will be welcoming and settling in my new child. (Should that 5% fall-through happen, I will be sad, have a lot of weekend plans to un-cancel, and go back to waiting.) No one is in control of how chaotic the system is, how long court takes, and how tough it can be to get true certainty about anything. I can’t even imagine how it would feel as a child to be moved so abruptly and have so much of my life constantly up in the air. All I can do is hope and pray that I can start providing love, care, and stability immediately and make an impossibly painful situation as gentle as possible.

P.S. People keep asking me how they can help, and I am so grateful for that. In these first few days and weeks, the #1 thing I need is flexibility. Everyone has been so good about me abruptly canceling all my plans this weekend, but I’ll slowly start adding socializing back into my life once I get a sense for kiddo’s personality and how best to serve him with that kind of thing. Check out this document I made about how to behaviorally and emotionally support us. And keep an eye out for an updated Amazon list once I know what kiddo likes and needs!

#foster care #foster parenting #long post

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nowhere-hunch · 4 years

Text

I watched ‘Hamilton’ on Disney+

I’m not really a fandom person, but I would say I hang out online in a lot of “fandom-adjacent” spaces. Maybe a better word would be “lurker”. So although I was separated from it by many degrees, I’m aware of some of the insane stuff that came out of the Hamilton fandom during its heyday. Which makes me a teensy bit nervous about posting this on Tumblr - “the room where it happened” you could say (yes, I’m very funny, I know). But I’m hoping I have my blog settings right to make it hard for people to find and I won’t use any tags, so I should be fine, right? To be clear, I like Hamilton and this whole thing is positive toward it. It did get pretty long though.

First of all, I’m a little surprised that there’s a Hamilton fandom at all. Theatrical shows aren’t really the most accessible medium, especially for the demographics that we associate with fandom. The stage shows that I see with fandoms usually have other media associated with them as well, either that was based on them or that they were based on. For example, Les Mis has the book and multiple movies. That said, I’m not necessarily surprised that inaccessibility itself didn’t prevent the formation of a fandom. These days there’s plenty of ways to pirate things, plus you could argue that the cast CD of the musical that was released counts as an alternative media — since most of the dialogue is in fact part of a song.

But, being an inaccessible medium for so long has had an effect on the stories that are created for it. The demographics of people who are watching Broadway shows are probably different than those of people watching primetime TV. The historic events and people in Hamilton aren’t given much if any explanation or backstory. Several times a character is introduced that the audience is supposed to be excited about just because we already know the name: Alexander Hamilton or George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or whatever. For those specific examples, it kind of makes sense. Just by living in the U.S. you tend to get an idea of who those people are (they’re the people on the money). But people like John Laurens are given the same treatment (or lack thereof) in terms of backstory. I think I learned a little about John Laurens at some point in AP U.S. History but then I passed that test and literally never thought or heard about him for nine years until I watched Hamilton.

Hamilton is not a play that is meant to teach the story of Alexander Hamilton; it’s a play that is meant to use the story of Alexander Hamilton in order to teach something else. The historical people and events that are mentioned briefly are meant to provide context for what’s going on with the main characters. “OK I know that the Boston Tea Party happened in the lead up to the Revolution so if they’re talking about that now, I know where we are.” It seemed weird to me that it became so popular when it assumed a good deal of knowledge on the part of the viewer, but I think there are (at least) three factors that makes that not too much of an issue.

One, as I said earlier I did learn about John Laurens and other kind of minute details about the Revolutionary War in high school. If “fandom” is stereotypically mostly made up of students in middle school/high school/college, it might be the case that this background knowledge is actually more accessible to them than to the average Broadway patron, who would have been out of school for even longer than me. If this musical had been about some other figure that isn’t included in an integral part of the American public school curriculum, it probably wouldn’t have seen as much success. I believe that Linn Manuel Miranda had a goal of expanding and making more diverse the audience for these shows, so this choice of subject material makes sense.

Two, Hamilton is simply a solid musical. I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t see a lot of musicals and really isn’t and never was into theater that much, but that’s the point — to the untrained eye of someone fandom-adjacent, it’s a very enjoyable piece of media. The songs are catchy, the jokes are funny, the emotional parts are moving, there’s at least a couple of performers who sound really good to me, not that I have any idea how to tell. If you think about it for more than three seconds it’s hard not to get blown away considering how much skill it must have taken to write that entire story in rhyming verse! That’s the kind of thing Shakespeare did, or even Homer — both of whom produced works that had a big impact on their era’s version of “pop culture”. I wonder if this points to something in the human brain that makes us want to engage more with stories told in this way?

Three, I think fandom (in general) had been primed for stories like this by a series that had one of the largest fandoms during the time just before Hamilton came out: Hetalia. Hetalia is a comedy manga and anime series where each country in the world is personified by an immortal (kind of) human character. It deals a lot with history and real-world people and events— if you were a fan, your “canon” material was not only the manga and anime but also real-world facts about countries’ geography, culture, and history. Since the characters for “England” and “America” (the U.S.) were some of the most popular, the Revolutionary War specifically was the subject of a lot of fan works.

Unlike Hamilton though, Hetalia is presented in a format that was made for fandom and its story reflects that as well. It has a huge cast of characters, many of which are barely developed at all in “canon” but still have a reason for viewers to connect with them (“I’m from that country!”), opportunities for creating OCs, etc. that encourage fan activity. Through Hetalia, many people were introduced to the idea of using knowledge of history for fandom purposes, which was obviously a big part of the Hamilton fandom. What’s unfortunate is that, while there wasn’t much more to get from Hetalia beyond its fandom — in fact you could strongly argue that there was more “artistic merit” in a lot of fandom content than the series itself—for me the Hamilton fandom and all of its weirdness overshadowed anything that was said about the interesting things Hamilton had to say to its “traditional” audience.

I think one property of a good piece of media is that it has different messages and takeaways that are relevant to different people consuming it. Hamilton is like this. The central theme of the story is the idea of “legacy”, but there are several lenses it provides to investigate with. For example, it has many messages about race and national origin that may resonate most strongly with different people, including:

People of color are absent from the legacy of the founding of the country they live in. It’s weird to watch actors who are people of color talk about defending slavery, but it’s no more weird than having groups of all white people do the same (which is how it actually was).

Various founding fathers have a legacy of being people who valued freedom, but they owned slaves and/or supported the institution of slavery.

Alexander Hamilton’s legacy as an immigrant is celebrated, while immigrants today are regularly treated in horrifyingly inhumane ways.

I’m positive there are people who can write entire books about how the show addresses any one of these. For me though, the theme that resonated the most was the idea of legacy through a historical female perspective, as portrayed through the relationship between Alexander and Eliza Hamilton. The gist of it is this: Alexander Hamilton married Eliza Schuyler and frankly did not treat her well. His most obvious offense is cheating on her multiple times with a woman who “seduced” him (“Lord, show me how to say no to this” — dude you literally just did: “…no…”), but even this is actually a symptom of his fatal flaw: he cares about his legacy more than her. It is brought up multiple times that he chooses his work over his family responsibilities (there’s a whole song about it), and at the time he starts his “affair”, Eliza is actually away on a family trip that he decided to skip in order to keep working even more.

His obsession with legacy causes even more hurt for Eliza because it is inherited by their oldest son, Philip. Philip challenges someone to a duel who was criticizing his father. Based on how she talked to Alexander, saying she would rather have him alive and unknown than dead with a legacy, we can assume she would be against this. But Philip goes to his father for advice, and rather than discourage him, Alexander gives him advice on how to act that will make him look the best to people remembering it (shoot into the air, it’s a bad look to kill someone and if they have any honor they will do so as well). Philip is killed in this duel. Alexander cries at his bedside while Eliza next to him wails — the cheating has already been revealed at this point, and she and Alexander haven’t “made up”. Aaron Burr, who is a foil to Alexander Hamilton in many ways in the story, illustrates the differences in their priorities in a more subtle way. Before the final duel, in which Alexander himself is killed, Burr states as he works himself up that he must win because, “I won’t leave my daughter an orphan.”

Throughout, the viewer kind of overlooks Eliza. We know she is a woman living in the 1700s and so her agency is limited. She can’t divorce Alexander or really do anything to hold him accountable for the pain he has caused her. Her defining characteristics are things like “kind”, “gentle”, and “patient” — as described by her sister who sets her up with Hamilton in the first place. After the “Reynolds Pamphlet” is released (in which Hamilton publicly confesses to his affair), she sings a song about being sad, we’re told that there’s no record of how the real Eliza reacted to the information, and after a while she and Alexander make up. To us it seems like she just kind of takes what happens to her without resistance — it doesn’t really matter if that’s what she *wanted* to do because it’s what she *had* to do. We see a lot of female characters like this in media, especially media created or set in the past, and while there is now some backlash against them, there’s not much to complain about when it’s “historically accurate”.

But that all changes at the end. The climax of the play is the duel in which Hamilton is shot and killed. After that is the “big finale” song, but since Alexander Hamilton is dead, who sings it? Eliza. We are told that Hamilton dies with Eliza and her sister Angelica by his bedside, but we don’t see this. We see Eliza come back alone and sing about what she does for the remaining 50 years of her life. We learn that she is the one who gathered his writings, interviewed people who knew him, and did other research to share his life story. In effect, she wrote the story that the musical was based on. After seeing again and again that Hamilton cares about his legacy more than Eliza, it is revealed that Eliza is his legacy. Now we realize that when characters sing “You can’t control… who tells your story,” they don’t mean that in some philosophical or metaphorical way. The individual responsible for passing on your legacy after you die could literally be anyone, even the people you see as hindering it.

I cried during the final song. Actually these specific lines:

Eliza: I interview every soldier who fought by your side Soldiers in background: She tells our story … Eliza: I raise funds in D.C. for the Washington Monument Washington: She tells my story

Now, Washington in particular probably didn’t need her help to tell his story (I mean, he’s on money), but the way the lines are sung gives a sense of the kindness or love that is expressed when another person knows or tells your story. How many people have lived and died who are now totally forgotten about? Eliza did the work to save people from that fate. Alexander Hamilton I don’t think would be described as a “kind” person, even in this musical, but there is kindness in his legacy thanks to Eliza.

And, the final song contains the final plot point, the final part of the epilogue: after Alexander’s death, Eliza founds an orphanage.

I help to raise hundreds of children I get to see them growing up

Want to talk about legacy? Go to the memorial service for a teacher who worked for decades. Go to a birthday party for a 90-year-old who has 10 kids, 50 grandkids, and 150 great grandkids. They might not have their stories written down in books, but they get to enjoy legacy during their lifetimes. In the end, it turns out that in a way, Eliza is a foil to Alexander. While he makes himself and others miserable working to build a legacy that he won’t live to see, Eliza lives her life in service of people who she loves and who depend on her though she is not remembered now. Which of them made more of a difference? Which of them would you rather be?

This is kind of a radical message: that these two types of “legacy” are both valuable in some ways. For a long, long time in history, the kind of legacy that Alexander wanted was generally not available to women, people of color, etc. The “people in power” highly valued this type of legacy, so they reserved it for themselves. As the years went on, people fought for equality, and one of the issues was, although not necessarily stated explicitly, “We want to have valued legacies too!” It seems the response was a kind of reluctant “OK, I guess we’ll open up some opportunities for you to make contributions that will be recorded in history like ours.” For many women and other groups, this was actually great. Many people had wanted those opportunities for a long time, and it’s good that they are available to those who want them. So, it’s hard to say in absolute terms that this wasn’t a good thing. But at that point, we started to see a lot of media with “strong female characters” who are tough and sarcastic and ultra-skilled at combat or whatever that all add up to, “You will be admired and your legacy valued if you forget about girly stuff and just do what men have been doing all along.”

But encouraging everyone to value legacy in this way has created a culture where a lot of things send the message “Be more like Alexander Hamilton” while very few if any say “Be more like Eliza Hamilton.” It’s pretty radical to suggest that maybe the way that Eliza and people like her have been building legacies for all this time was actually good and beneficial and shouldn’t be completely abandoned for Alexander’s way that has always been presented as the most valid.

I think the reason that this resonates with me so loudly is that I am a middle class white woman and grew up as a “gifted” student, and in our modern “enlightened” world, I feel the pressure that historically has been on white men to create some tangible legacy that will live on after I die. But in media, in stories that are fundamental to my culture, in my own family tree before pretty recently, I don’t see women doing this. I have modern society saying to me “You need to make a legacy for yourself.” while the culture that has built up over centuries consistently sends the message “women don’t get legacies”. What Hamilton is saying is “They do have legacies, just not the kind society has taught you to value.”

And actually, I would argue, it goes further, showing how women have found power and agency by refusing to leave a legacy in the traditional sense. The only time in the musical where Eliza talks about her own legacy is in the song “Burn” that she sings after finding out Alexander cheated on her. It includes these lines:

I’m erasing myself from the narrative Let future historians wonder how Eliza Reacted when you broke her heart … The world has no right to my heart The world has no place in our bed They don’t get to know what I said I’m… burning the letters that might have redeemed you

The first time I watched it, I assumed that “erasing myself from the narrative” was a metaphor for her burning the letters. But after watching the ending and knowing that Eliza was actually the one who did the work of passing on “the narrative”, it’s clear that she meant it literally. She knows how much Alexander values his legacy as much as we the audience do, so she’s hitting him where it hurts. Normally, when perspectives are missing from historical narratives we are told it’s because of carelessness (either nobody asked or someone lost it) or external censorship. In Hamilton, we are told Eliza’s part of this story is missing because that’s the way she wanted it. In her time and place, she doesn’t have the opportunity to speak out against her husband or otherwise get justice, but she has still found a powerful way to “get back” at him. Her side of the story is missing because of her agency, not her lack of it.

Initially, Eliza telling Alexander’s story is interpreted as an act of love, very romantic. But thinking back to “Burn”, you have to remember that in the 50 years Eliza lived doing that work after he died, she never “redeemed” him for the bad things he did to her. In that light, you can almost see spite running subtly through the love. “I will do everything in my power to make sure people don’t forget you because I love you (and I want them to know what a jerk you were to me).” I don’t think Eliza hated Alexander. In the play it is clear that she does love him, but she does have reasons of her own for recording his legacy besides blind devotion or adoration. For this, in a way, Eliza herself is in a way redeemed by Washington and the soldiers in the final song, even though her motives aren’t completely “pure”, these men are benefitted by (and in the song appreciative of) her work.

As I said, there are a lot of themes in Hamilton that could be talked about at length, but this one is the most interesting to me, or at least the one that I’ve found myself thinking about the most since I watched the show. I want to talk about one more thing and bring us back to where this discussion started: the Hamilton fandom.

The most notorious example of “craziness in the Hamilton fandom” was the whole “hivliving”… thing. There’s a great video about it on YouTube that really does press that “gossip” button in my social primate brain just right. I highly recommend giving it a watch.

That may be… if not the culmination then the climax the of the insanity in the Hamilton fandom. If you didn’t watch the video, here is a very very brief synopsis:

Within the Hamilton fandom, there are two groups of people who support opposing “ships”: fans of Hamilton/Laurens and fans of Hamilton/Washington.

Members of the Hamilton/Laurens faction make a habit of harassing Hamilton/Washington fans using “social justice” rhetoric (i.e. “Your ship is problematic”). It seems agreed upon by those outside that most if not all of their accusations are baseless, but it persists.

One vocal member of the Hamilton/Laurens fans, claiming to be an HIV+, bisexual, bigender, muslim victim of sex trafficking living in India, also runs a blog called “hivliving” about, well, living with HIV. Since blogs like this are rare, the blog becomes a popular and well-loved resource.

Someone named Ursula discovers that the person running the “hivliving” blog is not in fact an HIV+, bisexual, bigender, muslim victim of sex trafficking living in India, but a white 18-year-old college student living in the U.S. When confronted and pressed, they come clean to their followers.

In the aftermath, someone realizes that Ursula is associated with people in the Hamilton/Washington faction of the Hamilton fandom, and so word starts spreading that Ursula investigated and confronted hivliving due to revenge over “shipping wars”.

More rumors come up and eventually, the story transforms so that the commonly known version is: “Hivliving was pretending to be an HIV+/etc. person and was exposed by someone who wanted revenge for them criticizing their cannibal-mermaid-AU fanfiction.” All the “normal” people have a fun time laughing about how insane people can be online.

Because of this negative attention, Ursula is forced to abandon fandom.

Seriously though, watch the video if you have time.

If there were a lesson to the hivliving story, it would be about legacy. It would be a cautionary tale about how a legacy built on good intentions and serious work can be turned completely around through no fault of your own. I don’t have much to add to that, besides noting that it is a weird coincidence that it happened in a fandom for a show that itself put so much focus on legacy. Hamilton fans, in telling the story of hivliving and Ursula, shaped it to serve their own ends (vilifying fans of a rival ship), much like Eliza shaped Alexander’s story in telling it for her own reasons. But the last thing I’ll note is this: the fans largely shaped the story by adding things, Eliza shaped the story by leaving things out.

#media

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kennethmontiveros · 4 years

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Creating Signup Pages That Convert (With 12 Examples)

“Attention!“

You’ve heard the word before. Marketers, copywriters, and salespeople talk about attention all the time. It’s like a nervous tic, always sitting on the tip of the tongue.

It’s curious, though, because another word that marketers don’t often use is “patience.” And patience is just as important.

Sure, our first objective is to gain the attention of our prospects. But with signup pages, it’s also about making that registration process as painless and as easy as possible. In other words, it’s not enough just to get your visitors’ attention⁠—you shouldn’t test their patience either. Not with additional questions. Not with confusing copy. Not with incongruent design. As UX expert Steve Krug once famously put it, “Don’t make me think.”

Today we’re going to cover 12 examples of signup pages that get both patience and attention right, with commentary by yours truly. But before we get our hands dirty, let’s take a closer look at what a signup page is.

What’s a Signup Page?

Simply put, a signup page is a type of landing page with a primary conversion goal to drive registrations. These can occur on the landing page itself, or the page can prime visitors before prompting them to enter an account creation flow.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “But I’m already driving traffic to my website. Do I really need a separate signup page?”

Let’s make a comparison.

When someone lands on your website’s homepage, they could have come from one of many channels (like an organic search or by clicking a backlink in someone else’s content.) They’re checking you out, yes, but they may not be there to buy. They might not even know what you’re offering or what you do. Your visitors are curious, maybe. Intrigued? Possibly. But will they fill out a contact form? Don’t count on it.

When you run ads, though, your main goal is often to get your visitors to convert. For this reason, it makes much more sense to send them to a landing page that is specifically designed to get them to sign up instead of a generic homepage full of links and other distractions.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

When should I use a signup page?

If you’re running paid ads, you should be using a signup page. That goes for PPC ads and social media ads like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, or if you’re running email campaigns. In all cases, using dedicated landing pages to drive traffic is an easy way to boost conversions.

With SaaS, especially, remember the importance of patience. It’s crucial here because testing your target audience’s patience will cost you—a lot. No one bounces faster than a first-time SaaS user. That’s why you must ease them in. Sequenced pages can help you achieve this goal by making the experience seamless, focused, and pleasant.

Two other elements are vital to keep in mind. First, grant your users small victories, in the beginning, to give them a sense of empowerment. And, second, be sure to show them tons of value early on. Have them perceive the value of your tool, specifically for them. How do you create these little Aha! moments? By having them apply what they learned easily, and by getting them to experience the results for themselves.

Wanna learn how other SaaS marketers use landing pages to connect with customers? See how you can get a handle on your business and achieve unprecedented growth in our guide for SaaS marketers from Talia Wolf.

Create a signup page that’ll knock their socks off.

Like most landing pages, a high-converting signup page must have some essential elements, like:

A clear benefit-driven headline

A subheading that drives home the point

A fantastic (and relevant) hero image

A compelling call-to-action

“But wait.” Yes, you there with your hand raised. “Where’s the form?” Exactly!

A great signup page is one that might as well be yelling, “Look, ma. No hands!” You want to keep the f-f-f-friction to a minimum, either by keeping your form as short as possible or even hiding it until the right might moment. (Some smart examples of this tactic below.)

You do this by having them click on the call-to-action, no fields. And voilà! A form appears, seemingly out of thin air. From there, you’ve got options. Will you lead them down a multi-page sequence? Or will you collect the email and get them to log onto your platform, where they’ll be prompted to follow dopamine-triggering queues? Or will you email them and start nurturing them that way?

The best way to learn is to see these principles in action, though. Let’s dig deeper into how to create a signup page by going over some Unbounce-certified examples below.

12 Great Signup Pages Created by Unbounce Customers

As the name suggests, an excellent registration page follows all the principles of a great landing page but uses them to get people to fill out your form. Since we have a dozen examples to review, let’s focus on actionable takeaways.

1. Ruby shows incredible focus.

Image courtesy of Ruby. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Ruby is a virtual receptionist and chat company that gets the power of branding. Their gorgeous above-the-fold setup for this landing page is a perfect example of signup done right.

First of all, the headline is direct. Make more sales when people reach out to you. They promise to help you create “happy customers” while you’re at it.

The body copy is equally clear. The first sentence (“Missed calls are costing you customers”) is a swift punch to the gut. Hit ‘em where the pain point is. Then, tie that to your offer, with a bow. Well done.

And look at that image. The yellow sticks out like a broken thumb, and the caller’s gripping the phone. There’s a clear gap between the caller and the target audience, symbolizing silence. Her expression. What is she thinking? This isn’t your typical stock image.

The two buttons? I’d probably A/B test this setup against a single button, since you can easily find their phone number on the top right-hand corner. It might yield higher conversion rates.

Also, comparing this signup page with Ruby’s homepage illustrates the different approach you need to take with your landing pages:

Fair headline, right? Unlike the signup page, though, it ain’t about the target audience at all. “Meet Ruby” sounds a lot like something you’d say when introducing someone at a party. The body copy focuses on the company too. And the CTA? “Watch OUR Video.”

But the most significant difference lies in all those menu options. Buttons are popping out at you from almost every corner. That’s five buttons I get exposed to even before I start scrolling. Everything is calling for my attention, and I’m more likely to begin exploring than to convert.

This works for a homepage, of course. It’s beckoning us to browse and get to know Ruby. But Ruby’s signup page had a much tighter focus in its messaging suited to converting traffic from a paid campaign.

2. GraphicsZoo stays true with a gorgeous landing page.

Image courtesy of GraphicsZoo. (Click to see the whole thing.)

GraphicsZoo offers white-label design services for agencies. Its signup page is sizzling hot in its simplicity. As a white-label graphic design service, they get landing page design. The GIF above gives you a sneak peek of the platform. That’s all you need to know that it’s got a gorgeous, useful, and intuitive UI.

The headline explains what the app is in simple terms. (That’s fine, but it might be worth testing a benefit-oriented headline. Something like, “Scaling white-label design services just got a whole lot easier.”) Finally, there are no menu items on this registration page. Just a single call-to-action, and it only wants your email address. Keeping the ask small makes it more likely that visitors will convert.

3. Flyhomes gets their signup forms to pop up.

Image courtesy of Flyhomes. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Flyhomes makes buying and selling your homes easy, and profitable. (Their website copy is a fun read as well.)

Mm mm mm! If there’s one thing that’ll make me do a double-take, which is a super weird thing to do by yourself, it’s a remarkable form. (No, seriously.) Just look at that CTA: Start Now. There’s not a misleading word in there. (For example, it’s not, “Sign up now,” which wouldn’t be quite true.) And when you click on it, you’re prompted with, “Let’s Get Started.”

Everything fades into the background when you click. All you need to do to get started is to give Flyhomes your email and whisper the sweet words every marketer wants to hear: “Nurture me.”

4. PointsBet delivers an irresistible offer.

Image courtesy of Zeller Media.

PointsBet is an online bookmaker for sports and entertainment, based out of New Jersey. Props to Zeller Media for putting this one together. The agency did a fantastic job creating this signup page.

This example shows that you don’t need a long-form landing page to convince prospects to convert. Think about this for a moment. Not only is this registration page asking you to sign up, but it’s also straight-up telling you that you need to make a $10 commitment.

So how do you do that without scaring off your target audience? Offer them 10 times the amount back. Literally.

Veteran copywriter Roy Furr calls this the irresistible offer. Even a non-gambler can see the appeal. And for a gambler? It’s a no-brainer. Slip me an easy $10, which is peanuts, and you get $100 back. That’s a $90 profit! I’m no math scientist, but that’s a hell of a deal.

Grow your agency with landing pages. Find out how Unbounce can help you win more conversions for your clients and extend your menu of services using landing pages—no coding required.

5. Heymarket double-dips with its call-to-action.

Image courtesy of Heymarket. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Heymarket is a powerful SaaS platform that lets teams collaborate in business text messaging with customers.

I like the headline in gray (“It’s not personal, it’s business”). It takes a saying that a villain in a movie might say to someone they’ve screwed over, and turns it on its head. This is business. Then the page tells you what the product is and ties it directly to the benefit in the headline.

The body copy simply expands upon this line, before presenting the initial pricing. The image is also immediately recognizable as a SaaS design, so there’s no mistaking where you are when you land.

Though sometimes multiple CTAs spell trouble, the double-dip on the calls-to-action here is a nice touch. This landing page puts the primary CTA under the body copy and the secondary CTA on the top right, space traditionally reserved for the menu. What I love about this is that the primary CTA invites the target audience to view a demo first, while the top-right button instead prompts the target to hop right into a free trial.

What I would test though is this type of design against variants with photos of people as well as copy. SaaS is getting competitive. It’s becoming an increasingly saturated market, one where visual branding will play a greater role. Beyond a single landing page, A/B testing can provide useful insights into which direction you should be guiding your brand.

6. Zire gets account creation flow right.

Image courtesy of Zire.

Zire is an advertising platform for musicians, and it’s thoroughly impressive in its ease of use. In terms of visual style, this signup page is my favourite. The branding is spot-on, and the button leads to a magical wonderland of awesome UI:

If you’re already on a platform like Spotify, as soon as you put your name in, your name, song, or album will pop up as a suggestion. When you click on it, the page prompts you to add relevant images and upload a clip of your song. Then, once you finish clicking a few buttons here and there, you end up with a summary of your efforts:

The GIF example above is sped up, by the way. The actual flow is a lot smoother, and it’s a pleasant experience through and through. Zire did a fantastic job with every aspect of this.

Wait! (Cue the record scratch.)

Are we missing something here?

Right. They haven’t asked for my email yet. But I’m engaged with their services, and ready to convert. Now that’s slick.

7. Intouch Insight dishes out a whoppin’ 60-day free trial.

Image courtesy of Intouch Insight. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Intouch Insight is a B2B company that provides software solutions for companies aiming to scale.

This registration page is straightforward and appealing. At first glance, there’s a lot of text, and the form is long. But if you’re offering me a 60-day trial, I’m intrigued enough to want to read through the copy and find out what I’m getting into. (Still, it’d be worth testing a variant with trimmed copy or a shorter form.)

My favorite thing about this page, though, is how they’ve managed to squeeze all this essential information into an easily digestible and clean landing page. The fine print under the CTA also does a good job of addressing common objections: when they offer a 60-day free trial with no commitment, the company means business.

Free-trial pages have been around since modems used to screech at you. This signup landing page is a solid example showing that the underlying principles behind high-converting landing pages have changed little since the good ole’ days.

8. reciProfity does pattern interrupters like a boss.

Image courtesy of reciProfity. (Click to see the whole thing.)

“Food costing software”? Never heard of it, but the target audience (professional chefs) certainly has. reciProfity—their name combines the words recipe, profit, and reciprocity—is an inventory management system for executive chefs who dream of being “home before midnight.” Notice how the headline and hero immediately signal the appeal of this software to busy executive chefs, like the one pictured above, and the brief supporting copy above the fold outlines the problem.

Even more effectively, the product shot that’s cut off at the bottom encourages visitors to scroll down further, without leaving the page. (And guess what you’ll find when you do? More pattern interrupters that keep you scrolling to the bottom of the page.) Finally, while the copy on this page works to convince visitors to try reciProfity, this landing page also takes advantage of the top-right menu space to describe their software in exact terms. If the eye drifts up to their menu, they see a succinct description of the software instead. It’s a small thing, but it helps keep visitors focused.

9. Nakisa stays true to its messaging by staying organized.

Image courtesy of Nakisa. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Nakisa helps companies visualize their organizational structure so that they can make better business decisions. On this signup page, Nakisa makes the wins for its prospects easy to understand, specific, and tangible.

This type of landing page can work well for SaaS B2B, in particular, for a couple of reasons: first, a B2B visitor is ready to buy because they’re actively shopping around for a solution. But the buyer journey isn’t linear because the B2B buyer tends to be research-savvy. They jump back and forth between the interest and consideration stages, and the consideration stage is much longer.

Second, B2B buyers also more interested in technical features than emotional appeals compared to B2C. That’s because they want to know all about the performance and return on their investment.

Nakisa understands this. For this target audience, the copy is direct and appealing to B2B buyers. The landing page includes a visually compelling clip of organizational design that shows how their software works. And the 14-day free trial offer lowers the barrier to test driving the product.

10. Targetable uses a testimonial to lure prospects in.

Image courtesy of Targetable. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Targetable is an advertising platform that uses AI to help restaurants make more money with data.

Look at the quote they use as a heading on this signup page. Are there many restaurant owners who believe their restaurant is “amazing”? Sure. But this quote isn’t functioning as a testimonial, per se. Instead, the bottom subheading (in red, which helps it stand out) asks if you share this common sentiment. Then it presents a list of benefits that address this pain point, with a simple visual showcasing a platform feature.

This page is an excellent example of using creativity to vary your copy, while pushing the boundaries. (It’s also a great opportunity to A/B test the different ways you can present a pain point.)

Here, they’ve gone with a quote, but maybe something more direct would be more effective? Or perhaps a touch of humour would work? And some audiences could respond better to one headline, while others respond better to another. (A/B testing or using a tool like Smart Traffic can help you find out what copy works best for winning new signups.)

11. Marley Spoon breaks the rules of signup pages, but smartly.

Image courtesy of Marley Spoon. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Marley Spoon is a meal plan delivery service with healthy food options, but that isn’t the only thing that’s tasty around here. Nom, nom, nom. This signup page does a couple of things extremely well.

Like including a menu. (!) I know, I know. Earlier, I noted that excluding the menu is the obvious move. (It’s certainly a landing page best practice.) But this menu here works, and here’s why I think it does: since Marley Spoon is a food subscription service, they provide a chance to look at the menu before taking advantage of the coupon.

The other thing it does well? Those buttons are in different colors.

You know, even without reading the call to action, that these two buttons have two separate appeals. One’s a simple signup button, whereas the main CTA is a clear benefit-driven one: Save $80 in 4 weeks. That’s a strong 1-2 copy punch combo. Achieve X in Y amount of time.

And would you look at that beautiful account creation flow? The steps are numbered and labeled, clearly managing visitor expectations every step of the way. All the visitor is required to do is click away at the options as they reach the last leg of the race (indicated in glowing gold!). Talk about giving the visitor a sense of satisfaction.

They make getting all that food delivered right to your doorstep to look effortless. (And tasty too.) Mwah! A chef’s kiss.

12. Libris/PhotoShelter breaks out the big guns.

Image courtesy of PhotoShelter. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Libris by PhotoShelter is the final boss of digital asset management tools. If you need a way to manage your visual assets, then you just can’t say no to Libris, and this landing page shows you why.

Let’s end this list of examples with Libris’ no-brainer offer, which ticks all the boxes:

60-day trial? Check.

Body copy explaining how Libris can make life a little easier for your marketing team? Check.

Two different-colored buttons hinting at different purposes? Check.

Awesome aerial shot of a beach with very few people to line this up with the “exclusive” feel and mention in the headline? Check.

A badge showcasing a super-recent award as a Top 100 software company from G2? Amazing!

If you’ve got it, flaunt it, especially if you’ve received a significant award and recognition from an industry leader in your space. The award from G2 is a major trust booster and signals indirectly to your visitors that they’re missing out if they don’t try Libris out.

One thing I would test is the “limited time offer” message. When something’s limited, you should indicate the period or the deadline. Don’t do it, and your message can feel somewhat generic and fall flat. Do it, and make your target audience perceive and feel the scarcity. Feeling inspired yet? (If you need even more inspiration, check out these examples of evergreen SaaS landing pages.)

Signing Up for Success

All right, time to saddle up on your business horse and show your chops by creating some high-converting signup pages. If you’re looking for a shortcut to launching your next campaign, drop by our template library.

Creating Signup Pages That Convert (With 12 Examples) published first on http://nickpontemktg.blogspot.com/

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laurelkrugerr · 4 years

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Stop Talking About Empathy, and Start Acting On It

July 13, 2020 15+ min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

During my last full-time job as an executive leader, my colleagues and I were asked to stand in front of the entire company and talk about which of the organization’s corporate values resonated with us the most. Our choices: self-awareness, positive energy, judgment, intellectual honesty, and empathy. These values, along with others like integrity, courage, passion, and fun, might look familiar. They’re the list of company values taped up in corner offices and corridors around the world, even if most employees never know they exist.

“Empathy,” said the woman two seats down from me. “Because people say I’m good at connecting with other people.” Several nods from the crowd of supportive employees. “Empathy,” said the guy next to her, one seat down from me. “I care about other people, and do my best to treat them as I want to be treated.” More nods, and a few spontaneous claps. “Intellectual honesty,” I said. “Because I’m pretty good at cutting through the bullshit.” I got a few smiles and nervous laughs but was mostly met with bewildered silence. I think I was supposed to say “empathy,” but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. As a branding and leadership executive, with a background as an academic psychologist, maybe I knew a little too much about what the word empathy means. Or, rather, how it can mean so many different things—yet absolutely nothing—at the same time.

For a word that didn’t exist in the English language until the 20th century, empathy has emerged as a linguistic superstar. Since 2004, Google searches for the word have risen steadily, with frequency more than doubling over the past decade alone. With the explosion of the global coronavirus pandemic—along with escalated racial tensions—empathy has embedded itself in the public discourse, often with reference to which political leaders have demonstrated it and which have not.

Outside the political ring, corporations, big and small, have become downright obsessed with empathy. Some leaders, like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, have a long track record of touting empathy as a central guiding force. “There is no way we are going to be able to succeed…if we don’t have a deep sense of empathy,” he has said. More recently, multiple news organizations heralded Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky as empathetic for the way in which he communicated staff layoffs due to COVID-19. “I have a deep feeling of love for all of you,” he wrote in an internal company memo. Leaders understand that this is good for business. A recent poll from Ipsos (on behalf of PepsiCo Beverages North America) reports that how brands respond to the coronavirus pandemic will impact shopping intentions of more than half of Americans, and that Americans see it as more important now for businesses “to demonstrate empathetic qualities.”

This all makes intuitive sense. Like puppies and rainbows, empathy is one of those things that seem like a pure, absolute positive. As professor Paul Bloom jokes in his book Against Empathy, “You can never be too rich or too thin…or too empathetic.” From my perspective, though, too much is lacking from this empathy discourse. As I felt when I stood in front of that room to talk about my favorite corporate value, I still don’t know exactly what everyone is talking about. Empathy sounds good, but how are we defining it? Empathy is ubiquitous, but are all businesses talking about the same thing? Does being an empathetic organization mean taking an action of some kind, or just having feelings?

In the corporate world, answers to these questions are hard to find. While empathy increasingly appears as a part of companies’ mission statements, hardly any define what they actually mean by it. The overriding assumption is that the word simply speaks for itself. (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.) The issue with companies touting empathetic messages is that while it’s easy to talk about doing good things for employees and customers, it is far more difficult to generate and sustain positive corporate behaviors. In the past, organizations might have gotten a pass, or even praise, for communicating empathetic messages internally and to the public. But set against the backdrop of uncertainty about the future of business, and of life in general, people are taking notice of how companies’ messages match up with their actions.

There is a tremendous amount of collective anxiety about what our individual futures hold. Some authors have pointed out that this particular period of time may be bringing up feelings of grief and trauma at scale. At a time when most of us are thinking about roughly the same things and having many of the same conversations, the concept of widespread empathy is imperative. So it is no surprise that businesses, as part of our cultural fabric, are striving to be part of the conversation. Most of them use social media channels to tell us that they care about us as employees and customers, and that they are there for all of us during times of crisis. But often those messages are unsubstantiated, and the intentions behind them are frequently muddied.

What is becoming clear is that the risk of companies simply talking about empathy without translating those words to measurable, tangible outcomes can result in catastrophe. Study after study has shown that employees, especially younger ones, will quit to work for companies that better align with their personal values. And, similarly, customers are more than happy to spend their money elsewhere, choosing to align with organizations that are willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Empathy might be one of the most popular topics of scientific inquiry of our time. Within the past decade, Google Scholar—which indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across formats and disciplines—gives nearly 600,000 citations for just the term empathy. Most of the academic curiosity around empathy focuses on exactly what it is and, correspondingly, how to measure it.

In their effort to make sense of the scientific characterization of empathy, social psychologist Judith Hall and research scientist Rachel Schwartz published an article in 2019 that analyzed the state of the concept across nearly 500 independent studies. What they concluded is that often the word empathy should be bypassed altogether because there is widespread disagreement about what it means. Instead, they argue, people should refer to what they are actually talking about, be it feeling another’s feelings, reading their emotional cues, caring about others’ distress, listening to their stories, or any of the other various elements that comprise the empathy laundry list. “Our point was not to find fault,” write Hall and Schwartz, “but to illustrate the many ways authors attempt to deal with a construct that is essentially intractable. The challenge to theoryis compounded by the fact that empathy is alternatively treated as a process, a trait, a capacity or competency, a response or reaction to observing another’s experiences, and interpersonal behavior itself.” In other words, the research overwhelmingly shows that it’s dangerous to assume that we know exactly what anyone is talking about when they talk about empathy.

The business world is hardly clarifying things. The word is applied liberally to what companies are saying and doing, especially as we all continue to grapple with the ambiguity that lies ahead.

Companies are blasting messages about caring about each other during uncertain times, with the common refrain that “we’re here for you” and that, above all, “we are in this together!” In response to the senseless police murder of George Floyd, along with many more, other companies are following similar templates to talk about how they “stand in solidarity,” “stand up against racism,” and “show support for the Black community.” In a viral tweet, video game writer Chris Franklin poked fun at the deep uniformity of brand messages:

“We at [Brand] are committed to fighting injustice by posting images to Twitter that express our commitment to fighting injustice. To that end, we offer this solemn white-on-black .jpeg that expresses vague solidarity with the Black community, but will quietly elide the specifics of what is wrong, what needs to change, or in what ways we will do anything about it…We hope this action encourages you to view [Brand] positively without, you know, expecting anything from us.”

Within a few minutes of spotting that tweet, I saw another from CBS telling me that they “stand in solidarity with our Black colleagues, creators, partners, and audiences and condemn all acts of racism, discrimination, and senseless acts of violence.” And another from Pixar letting me know that they “stand for inclusion.” Fantastic. But what does it mean?

Don’t get me wrong; some companies are doing more. Several organizations have committed to donating real money to fuel the fight against injustice. Walmart, as one example, announced that it will contribute $100 million over five years to create a new center for racial equity. Others, like Ben & Jerry’s, created useful resources for employees and consumers to get involved with political movements. This is progress. Still, the vast majority of organizations seem satisfied with lip service alone—and they do so at their own peril.

This is not the first time that corporations have found themselves in this position. The term greenwashing emerged in 1986, back when consumers first began gravitating toward environmentally friendly companies. The term described an organization that spends more time and money on marketing agency itself as eco-conscious than it actually works to minimize its environmental impact. Mega conglomerate Nestlé, for example, has faced wide-scale criticism—and a growing pile of expensive lawsuits—for contributing to human rights violations and global plastic pollution. Yet the company has spent millions marketing agency itself as creating positive impact and “shared value,” without sufficiently addressing its core business practices.

Similarly, we’re now seeing a version of this we can call kindwashing: It’s when an organization spends more time and money on marketing agency itself as empathetic than it does on minimizing practices that alienate or take advantage of employees and consumers. And in a strange way, the word empathy enables this because it is so ill-defined. If nobody can pin down exactly what the word means or what it looks like, then businesses don’t have to worry about managing employee or consumer expectations. Words and actions are left up to interpretation.

But people are watching, and a gulf is growing between corporate leaders and the people who make businesses run. For the past four years, the corporate benefits company Businessolver has released annual reports on the state of workplace empathy. Results from its 2019 study point to a notable trend: While 92 percent of CEOs say that their organizations are empathetic, only 72 percent of employees agree. Meanwhile, employees are clear about where their priorities lie: Ninety-three percent of employees are likely to stay with an empathetic employer, and 82 percent would consider leaving a job for a more empathetic organization.

Businessolver’s authors skirt around clear definitions of what they mean by empathy—it is, after all, such a slippery word. But employees are clearly recognizing the absence of it. Within the past year alone, several high-profile companies—from WeWork and Away to Outdoor Voices and Pinterest—have endured employee outrage and worker attrition due to unempathetic business practices that contribute to work environments that have frequently been described as toxic.

The message to organizational leaders is that they need to invest more care and effort to engage their employees. This makes good business sense because research shows that taking care of employees is a necessary precondition for building and sustaining a customer–first culture. This can’t happen until leaders commit to defining what empathy means to them, and how that leads to specific, observable actions.

This is what it means to stop kindwashing, and to start being kind.

Throughout the global pandemic and the escalating Black Lives Matter movement, we have heard from hundreds of companies expressing empathy across every known medium. For the most part, though, organizations are reacting—perhaps because they feel compelled to, but perhaps also because “empathy” (of any definition!) isn’t an honest part of their core. Without a clear understanding of who they are or why they exist, business leaders’ words will always ring hollow, and their operations will become disorganized and ad hoc. A crisis will only magnify those problems.

How does an organization fix this? It doesn’t react to the moment. It looks deeply inward.

Organizations need to build and install what I call a human operating system. In technology, an operating system (OS) supports basic functions that enable more complex tasks to happen. Without iOS or Android, we can’t play Candy Crush. Similarly, a human OS serves as the structural glue that encodes how values like empathy propagate through all organizational operations, from internal behaviors, processes, and communication to external messages and actions.

At the heart of a human OS is a core essence, a central idea. It’s what that company or person is about—and it’s critical for flawless execution at all levels, during a time of crisis or not. From that central idea, an operating system has space to grow. Building a human OS fortifies the connective thread from that core to an organization’s vision, mission, and values. This requires business leaders and their companies to commit to articulating a clear purpose and point of view that results in more than words in a presentation or on a corporate website.

After codifying these foundational elements, installing a human OS translates words into action, ensuring that every aspect of an organization’s efforts is synchronized and consistent. Just as a technology operating system controls every part of a computer, a human OS drives business actions holistically—from hiring and performance management evaluation to programs, offerings, services, thought leadership, partnerships, customer experiences, brand expression, and external communications. Building and installing a human OS is what allows businesses and their leaders to align what they say they’re going to do with what they actually do. This is a first step to putting a stop to kindwashing.

Organizations that talk about the concept of empathy typically do so because a senior leader in the company—usually the founder or the CEO—believes that caring about employees and customers is not mutually exclusive with making a profit. At the very least, that should be their ambition. So, a challenge to organizational leaders across companies of all sizes: If your HR or marketing agency team is going to express empathy as a company value, it is incumbent on a leader to model that behavior. This asks leaders to do the work of explicitly clarifying what empathy means to them, and then laying out specific actions that they’re going to take for employees and customers to demonstrate their commitment to those actions.

In a recent LinkedIn article, for instance, H&R Block’s president and CEO, Jeff Jones, responded to the Black Lives Matter movement on behalf of the senior leadership team, by pledging action. “This is much more than a moment—this is a movement,” he wrote, and promised, among other fixes, to expand the company’s hiring practices. I called him to ask about H&R Block’s process, and he said it begins with an honest review of where the company has gaps. “Filling those gaps means going deep on where the issues are,” he says, “and setting clear, specific goals by function. It’s not political; it’s about focusing on people, individuals.” That last part is key. Jones is demonstrating that the best way to model behavior is to do what most of us were taught back in first grade: Listen. No, really. Listen.

Carl Rogers and Richard Farson coined the term active listening in 1957, writing that “active listening is an important way to bring about changes in people…[it] brings about changes in peoples’ attitudes toward themselves and others; it also brings about changes in their basic values and personal philosophy.” Hearing someone is easy; active listening is hard work. It requires our full mental capacity, so active listening is as draining as it is rewarding. Yet at a time when companies are confused about how to behave, it is important to remember something so simple, so basic. Active listening means paying deep and close attention to how employees and customers are doing. It means taking the deliberate time to understand how they might be feeling, and why they might be feeling that way. This isn’t about investing shrinking budgets into big research studies. It’s about taking the time required to understand what problem empathy is trying to solve before jumping to a presumed solution.

When massive cultural moments take hold, brands are quick to react, respond, and post. There almost seems to be a hidden, driving belief that moving the fastest will win the grand prize of higher employee retention and deeper customer loyalty. That’s why we got all those “We’re here for you” emails from brands we hadn’t interacted with in years during the initial spread of COVID-19. The reality is that active listening requires deliberate time and effort. It means having difficult conversations with employees and customers. Intention, discussion, and commitment are all at the heart of what it means to engage in active listening for employees and consumers alike.

Not only that, but active listening is at the core of what it means to build, install, and activate a human OS for an organization or an organization’s leader. News across the past several months has left behind a trail of cautionary tales. One is of Elon Musk, who repeatedly made decisions against the will of his employees. In one case, he reopened a California Tesla factory in defiance of local health officials. He said employees weren’t obligated to return if they were uncomfortable, but two Tesla employees claimed they were fired when they chose not to return. Later, when Musk was uncharacteristically silent as the Black Lives Matter demonstrations began, Tesla employees threatened to stage a peaceful rally to commemorate Juneteenth. This prompted Musk to announce that Juneteenth “is henceforth considered a U.S. holiday at Tesla and SpaceX”—but unlike at major companies like Nike, Target, Adobe, Lyft, and Spotify, which simply gave employees the day off, Musk said his employees would have to take a vacation day to commemorate Juneteenth.

Musk is well-known for his eclectic views on a wide range of topics, but his actions as a leader are under scrutiny because he demonstrates a failure to listen—to healthcare experts, workers, and consumers. Musk may have conviction in his beliefs, but he’s holding on to an outdated OS that clashes with employer and customer values because he is not taking the time to understand what other people are feeling. Failure to do this may or may not impact Tesla’s financial performance, but it will result in more employees speaking out and leaving his companies for ones that better align to their personal values.

Compare Musk’s leadership style with that of Kenneth Chenault, who served as the CEO and chairman of American Express until 2018. He was said to consult often with his teams, asking questions like: “Who is listening to you? How many people respect you?” He applied a similar method toward listening to American Express customers, often organizing impromptu listening tours and engaging with customer service teams to better understand the quality of service and support that consumers would receive, and how to continually improve it. This is what allowed him to demonstrate kindness and care through measurable, observable, outcome-driven actions—and the company thrived during his 17-year tenure as the company’s leader.

Sometimes I reflect back on corporate life, and I think about that meeting where I was asked to explain my favorite company value. If I had been given the proper time to think about it, I might have answered differently instead of trying to make an unmemorable joke. I might have said “empathy.” Then, I might have gone on to say something like: “I’m going to say empathy because I think it’s really important. But I don’t know—because I’m not sure what we really mean when we say it. I wonder if this would be a good time for us to define what empathy means to us, and then discuss how we’re going to hold ourselves accountable to it.”

That response may not have earned much empathy from my colleagues. But at least it would have come from a good place.

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source http://www.scpie.org/stop-talking-about-empathy-and-start-acting-on-it/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/07/stop-talking-about-empathy-and-start.html

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jjonassevilla · 4 years

Text

Creating Signup Pages That Convert (With 12 Examples)

“Attention!“

You’ve heard the word before. Marketers, copywriters, and salespeople talk about attention all the time. It’s like a nervous tic, always sitting on the tip of the tongue.

It’s curious, though, because another word that marketers don’t often use is “patience.” And patience is just as important.

What’s a Signup Page?

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “But I’m already driving traffic to my website. Do I really need a separate signup page?”

Let’s make a comparison.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

When should I use a signup page?

Create a signup page that’ll knock their socks off.

Like most landing pages, a high-converting signup page must have some essential elements, like:

A clear benefit-driven headline

A subheading that drives home the point

A fantastic (and relevant) hero image

A compelling call-to-action

“But wait.” Yes, you there with your hand raised. “Where’s the form?” Exactly!

The best way to learn is to see these principles in action, though. Let’s dig deeper into how to create a signup page by going over some Unbounce-certified examples below.

12 Great Signup Pages Created by Unbounce Customers

1. Ruby shows incredible focus.

Image courtesy of Ruby. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Ruby is a virtual receptionist and chat company that gets the power of branding. Their gorgeous above-the-fold setup for this landing page is a perfect example of signup done right.

First of all, the headline is direct. Make more sales when people reach out to you. They promise to help you create “happy customers” while you’re at it.

The two buttons? I’d probably A/B test this setup against a single button, since you can easily find their phone number on the top right-hand corner. It might yield higher conversion rates.

Also, comparing this signup page with Ruby’s homepage illustrates the different approach you need to take with your landing pages:

2. GraphicsZoo stays true with a gorgeous landing page.

Image courtesy of GraphicsZoo. (Click to see the whole thing.)

3. Flyhomes gets their signup forms to pop up.

Image courtesy of Flyhomes. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Flyhomes makes buying and selling your homes easy, and profitable. (Their website copy is a fun read as well.)

Everything fades into the background when you click. All you need to do to get started is to give Flyhomes your email and whisper the sweet words every marketer wants to hear: “Nurture me.”

4. PointsBet delivers an irresistible offer.

Image courtesy of Zeller Media.

PointsBet is an online bookmaker for sports and entertainment, based out of New Jersey. Props to Zeller Media for putting this one together. The agency did a fantastic job creating this signup page.

So how do you do that without scaring off your target audience? Offer them 10 times the amount back. Literally.

Grow your agency with landing pages. Find out how Unbounce can help you win more conversions for your clients and extend your menu of services using landing pages—no coding required.

5. Heymarket double-dips with its call-to-action.

Image courtesy of Heymarket. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Heymarket is a powerful SaaS platform that lets teams collaborate in business text messaging with customers.

The body copy simply expands upon this line, before presenting the initial pricing. The image is also immediately recognizable as a SaaS design, so there’s no mistaking where you are when you land.

6. Zire gets account creation flow right.

Image courtesy of Zire.

The GIF example above is sped up, by the way. The actual flow is a lot smoother, and it’s a pleasant experience through and through. Zire did a fantastic job with every aspect of this.

Wait! (Cue the record scratch.)

Are we missing something here?

Right. They haven’t asked for my email yet. But I’m engaged with their services, and ready to convert. Now that’s slick.

7. Intouch Insight dishes out a whoppin’ 60-day free trial.

Image courtesy of Intouch Insight. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Intouch Insight is a B2B company that provides software solutions for companies aiming to scale.

8. reciProfity does pattern interrupters like a boss.

Image courtesy of reciProfity. (Click to see the whole thing.)

9. Nakisa stays true to its messaging by staying organized.

Image courtesy of Nakisa. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Second, B2B buyers also more interested in technical features than emotional appeals compared to B2C. That’s because they want to know all about the performance and return on their investment.

10. Targetable uses a testimonial to lure prospects in.

Image courtesy of Targetable. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Targetable is an advertising platform that uses AI to help restaurants make more money with data.

This page is an excellent example of using creativity to vary your copy, while pushing the boundaries. (It’s also a great opportunity to A/B test the different ways you can present a pain point.)

11. Marley Spoon breaks the rules of signup pages, but smartly.

Image courtesy of Marley Spoon. (Click to see the whole thing.)

The other thing it does well? Those buttons are in different colors.

They make getting all that food delivered right to your doorstep to look effortless. (And tasty too.) Mwah! A chef’s kiss.

12. Libris/PhotoShelter breaks out the big guns.

Image courtesy of PhotoShelter. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Let’s end this list of examples with Libris’ no-brainer offer, which ticks all the boxes:

60-day trial? Check.

Body copy explaining how Libris can make life a little easier for your marketing team? Check.

Two different-colored buttons hinting at different purposes? Check.

Awesome aerial shot of a beach with very few people to line this up with the “exclusive” feel and mention in the headline? Check.

A badge showcasing a super-recent award as a Top 100 software company from G2? Amazing!

Signing Up for Success

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/signup-pages-that-convert/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#SEO

0 notes

itsjessicaisreal · 4 years

Text

Creating Signup Pages That Convert (With 12 Examples)

“Attention!“

You’ve heard the word before. Marketers, copywriters, and salespeople talk about attention all the time. It’s like a nervous tic, always sitting on the tip of the tongue.

It’s curious, though, because another word that marketers don’t often use is “patience.” And patience is just as important.

What’s a Signup Page?

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “But I’m already driving traffic to my website. Do I really need a separate signup page?”

Let’s make a comparison.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

When should I use a signup page?

Create a signup page that’ll knock their socks off.

Like most landing pages, a high-converting signup page must have some essential elements, like:

A clear benefit-driven headline

A subheading that drives home the point

A fantastic (and relevant) hero image

A compelling call-to-action

“But wait.” Yes, you there with your hand raised. “Where’s the form?” Exactly!

The best way to learn is to see these principles in action, though. Let’s dig deeper into how to create a signup page by going over some Unbounce-certified examples below.

12 Great Signup Pages Created by Unbounce Customers

1. Ruby shows incredible focus.

Image courtesy of Ruby. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Ruby is a virtual receptionist and chat company that gets the power of branding. Their gorgeous above-the-fold setup for this landing page is a perfect example of signup done right.

First of all, the headline is direct. Make more sales when people reach out to you. They promise to help you create “happy customers” while you’re at it.

The two buttons? I’d probably A/B test this setup against a single button, since you can easily find their phone number on the top right-hand corner. It might yield higher conversion rates.

Also, comparing this signup page with Ruby’s homepage illustrates the different approach you need to take with your landing pages:

2. GraphicsZoo stays true with a gorgeous landing page.

Image courtesy of GraphicsZoo. (Click to see the whole thing.)

3. Flyhomes gets their signup forms to pop up.

Image courtesy of Flyhomes. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Flyhomes makes buying and selling your homes easy, and profitable. (Their website copy is a fun read as well.)

Everything fades into the background when you click. All you need to do to get started is to give Flyhomes your email and whisper the sweet words every marketer wants to hear: “Nurture me.”

4. PointsBet delivers an irresistible offer.

Image courtesy of Zeller Media.

PointsBet is an online bookmaker for sports and entertainment, based out of New Jersey. Props to Zeller Media for putting this one together. The agency did a fantastic job creating this signup page.

So how do you do that without scaring off your target audience? Offer them 10 times the amount back. Literally.

Grow your agency with landing pages. Find out how Unbounce can help you win more conversions for your clients and extend your menu of services using landing pages—no coding required.

5. Heymarket double-dips with its call-to-action.

Image courtesy of Heymarket. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Heymarket is a powerful SaaS platform that lets teams collaborate in business text messaging with customers.

The body copy simply expands upon this line, before presenting the initial pricing. The image is also immediately recognizable as a SaaS design, so there’s no mistaking where you are when you land.

6. Zire gets account creation flow right.

Image courtesy of Zire.

The GIF example above is sped up, by the way. The actual flow is a lot smoother, and it’s a pleasant experience through and through. Zire did a fantastic job with every aspect of this.

Wait! (Cue the record scratch.)

Are we missing something here?

Right. They haven’t asked for my email yet. But I’m engaged with their services, and ready to convert. Now that’s slick.

7. Intouch Insight dishes out a whoppin’ 60-day free trial.

Image courtesy of Intouch Insight. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Intouch Insight is a B2B company that provides software solutions for companies aiming to scale.

8. reciProfity does pattern interrupters like a boss.

Image courtesy of reciProfity. (Click to see the whole thing.)

9. Nakisa stays true to its messaging by staying organized.

Image courtesy of Nakisa. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Second, B2B buyers also more interested in technical features than emotional appeals compared to B2C. That’s because they want to know all about the performance and return on their investment.

10. Targetable uses a testimonial to lure prospects in.

Image courtesy of Targetable. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Targetable is an advertising platform that uses AI to help restaurants make more money with data.

This page is an excellent example of using creativity to vary your copy, while pushing the boundaries. (It’s also a great opportunity to A/B test the different ways you can present a pain point.)

11. Marley Spoon breaks the rules of signup pages, but smartly.

Image courtesy of Marley Spoon. (Click to see the whole thing.)

The other thing it does well? Those buttons are in different colors.

They make getting all that food delivered right to your doorstep to look effortless. (And tasty too.) Mwah! A chef’s kiss.

12. Libris/PhotoShelter breaks out the big guns.

Image courtesy of PhotoShelter. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Let’s end this list of examples with Libris’ no-brainer offer, which ticks all the boxes:

60-day trial? Check.

Body copy explaining how Libris can make life a little easier for your marketing team? Check.

Two different-colored buttons hinting at different purposes? Check.

Awesome aerial shot of a beach with very few people to line this up with the “exclusive” feel and mention in the headline? Check.

A badge showcasing a super-recent award as a Top 100 software company from G2? Amazing!

Signing Up for Success

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/signup-pages-that-convert/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

josephkchoi · 4 years

Text

Creating Signup Pages That Convert (With 12 Examples)

“Attention!“

You’ve heard the word before. Marketers, copywriters, and salespeople talk about attention all the time. It’s like a nervous tic, always sitting on the tip of the tongue.

It’s curious, though, because another word that marketers don’t often use is “patience.” And patience is just as important.

What’s a Signup Page?

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “But I’m already driving traffic to my website. Do I really need a separate signup page?”

Let’s make a comparison.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

When should I use a signup page?

Create a signup page that’ll knock their socks off.

Like most landing pages, a high-converting signup page must have some essential elements, like:

A clear benefit-driven headline

A subheading that drives home the point

A fantastic (and relevant) hero image

A compelling call-to-action

“But wait.” Yes, you there with your hand raised. “Where’s the form?” Exactly!

The best way to learn is to see these principles in action, though. Let’s dig deeper into how to create a signup page by going over some Unbounce-certified examples below.

12 Great Signup Pages Created by Unbounce Customers

1. Ruby shows incredible focus.

Image courtesy of Ruby. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Ruby is a virtual receptionist and chat company that gets the power of branding. Their gorgeous above-the-fold setup for this landing page is a perfect example of signup done right.

First of all, the headline is direct. Make more sales when people reach out to you. They promise to help you create “happy customers” while you’re at it.

The two buttons? I’d probably A/B test this setup against a single button, since you can easily find their phone number on the top right-hand corner. It might yield higher conversion rates.

Also, comparing this signup page with Ruby’s homepage illustrates the different approach you need to take with your landing pages:

2. GraphicsZoo stays true with a gorgeous landing page.

Image courtesy of GraphicsZoo. (Click to see the whole thing.)

3. Flyhomes gets their signup forms to pop up.

Image courtesy of Flyhomes. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Flyhomes makes buying and selling your homes easy, and profitable. (Their website copy is a fun read as well.)

Everything fades into the background when you click. All you need to do to get started is to give Flyhomes your email and whisper the sweet words every marketer wants to hear: “Nurture me.”

4. PointsBet delivers an irresistible offer.

Image courtesy of Zeller Media.

PointsBet is an online bookmaker for sports and entertainment, based out of New Jersey. Props to Zeller Media for putting this one together. The agency did a fantastic job creating this signup page.

So how do you do that without scaring off your target audience? Offer them 10 times the amount back. Literally.

Grow your agency with landing pages. Find out how Unbounce can help you win more conversions for your clients and extend your menu of services using landing pages—no coding required.

5. Heymarket double-dips with its call-to-action.

Image courtesy of Heymarket. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Heymarket is a powerful SaaS platform that lets teams collaborate in business text messaging with customers.

The body copy simply expands upon this line, before presenting the initial pricing. The image is also immediately recognizable as a SaaS design, so there’s no mistaking where you are when you land.

6. Zire gets account creation flow right.

Image courtesy of Zire.

The GIF example above is sped up, by the way. The actual flow is a lot smoother, and it’s a pleasant experience through and through. Zire did a fantastic job with every aspect of this.

Wait! (Cue the record scratch.)

Are we missing something here?

Right. They haven’t asked for my email yet. But I’m engaged with their services, and ready to convert. Now that’s slick.

7. Intouch Insight dishes out a whoppin’ 60-day free trial.

Image courtesy of Intouch Insight. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Intouch Insight is a B2B company that provides software solutions for companies aiming to scale.

8. reciProfity does pattern interrupters like a boss.

Image courtesy of reciProfity. (Click to see the whole thing.)

9. Nakisa stays true to its messaging by staying organized.

Image courtesy of Nakisa. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Second, B2B buyers also more interested in technical features than emotional appeals compared to B2C. That’s because they want to know all about the performance and return on their investment.

10. Targetable uses a testimonial to lure prospects in.

Image courtesy of Targetable. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Targetable is an advertising platform that uses AI to help restaurants make more money with data.

This page is an excellent example of using creativity to vary your copy, while pushing the boundaries. (It’s also a great opportunity to A/B test the different ways you can present a pain point.)

11. Marley Spoon breaks the rules of signup pages, but smartly.

Image courtesy of Marley Spoon. (Click to see the whole thing.)

The other thing it does well? Those buttons are in different colors.

They make getting all that food delivered right to your doorstep to look effortless. (And tasty too.) Mwah! A chef’s kiss.

12. Libris/PhotoShelter breaks out the big guns.

Image courtesy of PhotoShelter. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Let’s end this list of examples with Libris’ no-brainer offer, which ticks all the boxes:

60-day trial? Check.

Body copy explaining how Libris can make life a little easier for your marketing team? Check.

Two different-colored buttons hinting at different purposes? Check.

Awesome aerial shot of a beach with very few people to line this up with the “exclusive” feel and mention in the headline? Check.

A badge showcasing a super-recent award as a Top 100 software company from G2? Amazing!

Signing Up for Success

Creating Signup Pages That Convert (With 12 Examples) published first on https://nickpontemrktg.wordpress.com/

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roypstickney · 4 years

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Creating Signup Pages That Convert (With 12 Examples)

“Attention!“

You’ve heard the word before. Marketers, copywriters, and salespeople talk about attention all the time. It’s like a nervous tic, always sitting on the tip of the tongue.

It’s curious, though, because another word that marketers don’t often use is “patience.” And patience is just as important.

What’s a Signup Page?

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “But I’m already driving traffic to my website. Do I really need a separate signup page?”

Let’s make a comparison.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

When should I use a signup page?

Create a signup page that’ll knock their socks off.

Like most landing pages, a high-converting signup page must have some essential elements, like:

A clear benefit-driven headline

A subheading that drives home the point

A fantastic (and relevant) hero image

A compelling call-to-action

“But wait.” Yes, you there with your hand raised. “Where’s the form?” Exactly!

The best way to learn is to see these principles in action, though. Let’s dig deeper into how to create a signup page by going over some Unbounce-certified examples below.

12 Great Signup Pages Created by Unbounce Customers

1. Ruby shows incredible focus.

Image courtesy of Ruby. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Ruby is a virtual receptionist and chat company that gets the power of branding. Their gorgeous above-the-fold setup for this landing page is a perfect example of signup done right.

First of all, the headline is direct. Make more sales when people reach out to you. They promise to help you create “happy customers” while you’re at it.

The two buttons? I’d probably A/B test this setup against a single button, since you can easily find their phone number on the top right-hand corner. It might yield higher conversion rates.

Also, comparing this signup page with Ruby’s homepage illustrates the different approach you need to take with your landing pages:

2. GraphicsZoo stays true with a gorgeous landing page.

Image courtesy of GraphicsZoo. (Click to see the whole thing.)

3. Flyhomes gets their signup forms to pop up.

Image courtesy of Flyhomes. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Flyhomes makes buying and selling your homes easy, and profitable. (Their website copy is a fun read as well.)

Everything fades into the background when you click. All you need to do to get started is to give Flyhomes your email and whisper the sweet words every marketer wants to hear: “Nurture me.”

4. PointsBet delivers an irresistible offer.

Image courtesy of Zeller Media.

PointsBet is an online bookmaker for sports and entertainment, based out of New Jersey. Props to Zeller Media for putting this one together. The agency did a fantastic job creating this signup page.

So how do you do that without scaring off your target audience? Offer them 10 times the amount back. Literally.

Grow your agency with landing pages. Find out how Unbounce can help you win more conversions for your clients and extend your menu of services using landing pages—no coding required.

5. Heymarket double-dips with its call-to-action.

Image courtesy of Heymarket. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Heymarket is a powerful SaaS platform that lets teams collaborate in business text messaging with customers.

The body copy simply expands upon this line, before presenting the initial pricing. The image is also immediately recognizable as a SaaS design, so there’s no mistaking where you are when you land.

6. Zire gets account creation flow right.

Image courtesy of Zire.

The GIF example above is sped up, by the way. The actual flow is a lot smoother, and it’s a pleasant experience through and through. Zire did a fantastic job with every aspect of this.

Wait! (Cue the record scratch.)

Are we missing something here?

Right. They haven’t asked for my email yet. But I’m engaged with their services, and ready to convert. Now that’s slick.

7. Intouch Insight dishes out a whoppin’ 60-day free trial.

Image courtesy of Intouch Insight. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Intouch Insight is a B2B company that provides software solutions for companies aiming to scale.

8. reciProfity does pattern interrupters like a boss.

Image courtesy of reciProfity. (Click to see the whole thing.)

9. Nakisa stays true to its messaging by staying organized.

Image courtesy of Nakisa. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Second, B2B buyers also more interested in technical features than emotional appeals compared to B2C. That’s because they want to know all about the performance and return on their investment.

10. Targetable uses a testimonial to lure prospects in.

Image courtesy of Targetable. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Targetable is an advertising platform that uses AI to help restaurants make more money with data.

This page is an excellent example of using creativity to vary your copy, while pushing the boundaries. (It’s also a great opportunity to A/B test the different ways you can present a pain point.)

11. Marley Spoon breaks the rules of signup pages, but smartly.

Image courtesy of Marley Spoon. (Click to see the whole thing.)

The other thing it does well? Those buttons are in different colors.

They make getting all that food delivered right to your doorstep to look effortless. (And tasty too.) Mwah! A chef’s kiss.

12. Libris/PhotoShelter breaks out the big guns.

Image courtesy of PhotoShelter. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Let’s end this list of examples with Libris’ no-brainer offer, which ticks all the boxes:

60-day trial? Check.

Body copy explaining how Libris can make life a little easier for your marketing team? Check.

Two different-colored buttons hinting at different purposes? Check.

Awesome aerial shot of a beach with very few people to line this up with the “exclusive” feel and mention in the headline? Check.

A badge showcasing a super-recent award as a Top 100 software company from G2? Amazing!

Signing Up for Success

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