2011 yearbook theme

One Direction

2012.01.24 03:37 One Direction

Vas happenin’? You’ve made it to OneDirection where we discuss anything and everything related to 1D & each of the guys’ solo careers! Think of us as a one stop shop 🍌🥑🐓🥄☘️
[link]


2011.08.28 19:51 darthrevan /r/kotor: for fans of KotOR I and II

A subreddit for fans of BioWare's classic 2003 RPG Star Wars: *Knights of the Old Republic*, Obsidian Entertainment's 2004 sequel *Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords*, and the upcoming *Knights of the Old Republic: Remake*
[link]


2011.05.08 17:19 Skuld Melodic Heavy Metal

Melodic heavy metal.
[link]


2024.05.07 10:18 Far-Elephant100 Connection themes

In the original human design book (Human Design: The Definitive Book of Human Design, The Science of Differentiation by Ra Uru Hu (2011-05-03) there is no info about the connection theme for relationships/friendships, or am I wrong? Why is that and where to find out more about it? What is your experience on the connection themes? How much do they matter?
submitted by Far-Elephant100 to humandesign [link] [comments]


2024.05.07 08:21 8BitSlasher An hhn original house I started working on in March while really stoned that I have no interest in finishing so here it is. (Read description)

I started working on this map awhile go back in March I think when I was first starting weed so I’ll try to explain my vague ideas I had for each house but my memory is rusty.
Major Sweets Presents: The Creepy Confectionery: I knew that they were most likely gonna do a sweet revenge house this year but my idea for this house was a horror parody house of Charlie and the Chocolate factory with leave it to cleaver elements. Kids getting turned into candy, gory scenes parodying scenes from Willy wonka, the Oompa Loompas are freaky orange goblin creatures and some of the factory workers wear creepy major sweets masks just like meets meats in leave it to cleaver.
Island of dolls: A house based on the irl island of dolls in Mexico kinda self explanatory
The Veil: A Celtic Halloween house similar to fiesta de chupacabras. Evil spirits on Samhain are tormenting a Celtic village in the 1700’s and villagers jump out in animal skin and bone costumes trying to fight off spirits.
Mutants vs Machines: a steampunk nightmare: This house would be based on a highly detailed story of a ww1-like steampunk city of Frankenstein-like mutant creatures that are oppressed and enslaved and experimented on by a dictatorship of mad scientists who rule the city and who created all the mutants with intentions of enslaving them and who plan on wiping them all out because the scientists are working on creating a “superior race” of robots they can control instead because they think metal is better than flesh and bone and there is a battle in the streets of the city between mutants and robots with all kinds of crazy sci-fi steampunk weapons and steampunk gore and you get to choose a side at the end and there are different endings. I’m out of my mind.
Escape from Atlantis: The story is your cruise ship crashes in the Bermuda Triangle and you end up in Atlantis where the people are vicious siren creatures who want to kill you because they can’t keep any witnesses of their city existing to protect it and so you’re trying to escape Atlantis.
Outbreak!: This was my craziest idea ever it’s a zombie apocalypse parody house that parodies the carona virus exept the virus microbes are critters-esc creatures with fangs and they attack in swarms (midnight snacks 2 style) and when they latch onto you they turn you into zombies. lmao.
The Weeknd: house of balloons: This is the second craziest idea i had in this lineup. This house is based off of The Weeknd’s mixtape from 2011 which is dark and moody and has themes of being trapped in a world of drug addiction and the house would be 100% in black and white and painted similar to dead exposure. The house would have the facade of the real house that The Weeknd based his mixtape on that he used to have drug filled parties in (I traced an outline of the house from a picture of it to make the logo). The house would be more abstract and have the theme/aesthetic of a creepy funhouse with weird bdsm nightmare fuel aesthetic and lots of balloons and monsters with no faces which is a nod to the lyrics in his song “house of balloons” where he talks about getting his girlfriend so high she can’t recognize his face.
Anarch-Cade: game over: I barely remember the ideas I had for this house basically I thought of something maybe that was like a play on both tron/80’s gamer culture and 80’s slashers. It would start with you going into an arcade and entering a cursed arcade console and the first section is you in this twisted tron world and the second half is the killers from the twisted tron world coming into our world and killing a bunch of people in slightly comedic ways in various stereotypical 80’s environments like a roller skate arena, a video store, a mall, a movie theater, etc.
The Killustrator: inked in blood: The same as the Killustrator house in hhn Singapore but the only color outside of black and white is red from blood.
Curse of the wendigo: This would take place in an old Wild West circus that captured a wendigo and is trying to show it off in their show and it goes horribly wrong and gets loose and kills a ton of people and spreads the curse to a bunch of people.
submitted by 8BitSlasher to HHN [link] [comments]


2024.05.07 03:35 Snoopdigglet [Online][Offline][5e][Sydney][Sunday][Everyone Welcome!] Looking for 2-4 players to join my homebrew game

Hello! I'm looking for 2-3 people to join my industrial-era (1850's esq) homebrew game. You'll be replacing a previous couple who had to leave due to commitments, the campaign only just started so you won't be missing out on much!
Premise: You are a new agent for the Fielding Detective Agency, you have been assigned to Lockstitch company which is currently tasked with exhuming the body of one "H. J. Miller" and bringing it back to the agency HQ in Fool's March, undetected, and no questions asked.
Depending on job performance future job opportunities may open up to you and Lockstitch company.
About me as a DM: I'd probably describe myself as "simulationist" in my DM style, I aim for a world with verisimilitude, I prefer a "realistic" world rather than a world that exists only when looked at, and I like to focus on the politics and intrigue of the word, I'll be dealing with non-sexual mature themes and expect a semi-serious tone (I'm by no means anti-fun or anti-funny, but please keep on some kind-of coherent track 🙏)
I work for the Military, hopefully that is not an issue.
Brief introduction to the campaign: you inhabit the world of Locus (Link to wiki), a fantasy world currently undergoing its industrial revolution, you are an operative of the Fielding Detective Agency under the "Lock Stitch" company. Currently, you are out on a job to exhume the body of one "H. J. Miller" which has led you to the Miller family tomb.
Game: DND 5e
Time and Date: Sunday, 11:00 to ~4:00 pm depending
Location: Either: (A) Potts Point, 2011, NSW, You will need a phone, tablet, or laptop (preferable) or (B) Online with FoundryVTT (if you can't meet in person)
Allowed Content: All official content with races limited to the races of the world (Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling, Nephroite, Automaton, and Mutated) and my homebrew
Please ask me any questions you have!
submitted by Snoopdigglet to lfg [link] [comments]


2024.05.07 03:28 Shayshulexe [PC][2005-2010] Topdown indie game about American siblings (?) searching for a demon (UPDATE - FOUND IT - "Voyage for Vengeance")

Reposting this request again, this time with some good news. Found the game on 08/2009 disk of CD-Action. As expected, it was during a brief time where they didn't put the titles of Freeware/Shareware games on the DVD case. I'll leave the rest of the post as is and add some notes on how well my memory worked. Another thing, this game has literally only one video on Youtube about it, 100 views and the only comment was from the game's developer himself. Breno 'Miroki123" Lino.
Platform(s): PC: late Win XP, Vista or early Windows 7 era - Correct here.
Genre: Free-roaming with map divided by screens, puzzle solving, maybe some action elements, people on the game's forum mentioned shooting back at the guards mentioned below. Not sure about exact genre. - more or less correct. Game has shooting.
Estimated year of release: Most likely 2005-2009. Played it around 2009-2011. - correct, made in 2008-2009, version on the CD-Action disk is 1.25, the latest one is 1.5 which introduces higher resolutions, tutorial and few other things
Graphics/art style: Top down, 2D, not RPG maker. Can't remember the graphics exactly, but they were flash-game simple, maybe some fancy lighting. Setting is in 1990's Midwest America, forest, game is set at night. The soundtrack of this game is a big clue: MIDI renditions of famous Rock/Metal songs. Protagonist's house played Metallica's "The Unforgiven" and the dream world's theme was The Police's "Every Breath You Take", the rest of music I did not recognize at the time. - Game begins in South Dakota in 1995, I was correct with both soundtracks. Game is made in 001 Game Creator. Despite the game being 2D there are some small elements such as doors which are 3D, you can also jump.
Notable characters: Can't recall anything about characters apart from the intro cutscene either showing or telling about a reawakened demon killing the father of the protagonist. Apart from the intro demon and fishy door asking riddles I can't remember anything paranormal happening. You played as a pair of characters, the main guy plus his sister or girlfriend. - Correct about main character plus his sister, demon is shown to kill the father by hijacking his car's controls in the flashback. In the flashback you hunt a semi-invisible Yeti, after the game begins you get attacked by a swarm of Zombies.
Notable gameplay mechanics: Protagonist has a cabin in the middle of a forest, you can sleep on the couch to enter a dream realm where you save game and maybe do some other things as well. The protagonist has a car you can manually drive that can take damage and has finite fuel. Few screens to the left of your cabin there was a huge building with a plot-important door that asked you a riddle about Shakespeare which stopped me from progressing when I was playing, since I didn't knew English well. There was a road going south somewhere as well, it had a fence gate blocking the way and behind it there were armed guards that shot you on sight. - Protagonist doesn't have a couch, you use beds to enter the dream world. In there you can raise your stats, see the current game meta-information (time played, amount of saves made etc.) and save the game. The rest I am not sure yet.
Other details: I found the game on a CD-Action disk around 2008 to 2010 in the Freeware section. Internet archive has issues up until end of 2007 with anything after that being spotty and I couldn't find it there. When looking for the answer to the door's riddle I found the developer had a website with a forum, but he was absolutely against anyone posting a direct answer to it.
In few months I'm heading back to my old house to look for it on the old CD's.
submitted by Shayshulexe to tipofmyjoystick [link] [comments]


2024.05.06 21:33 AdDecent5237 Who Had The Best Outfit For The Met Gala That Has Gone In The Cast!!

Who Had The Best Outfit For The Met Gala That Has Gone In The Cast!!
In honor of the Met Gala happening today I wanted to see what everyone’s opinions on the looks the glee cast has done over the years!
  1. Dianna Agron, Lea Michele, Darren Criss, and Corey Monteith at the 2012 Met Gala and theme was “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversation
  2. Matthew Morrison at the 2010 Met Gala and the theme was American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity
  3. Darren Criss at the 2013 Met Gala and the theme was Punk: Chaos to Couture
  4. Lea Michele and Dianna Agron, the 2014 Met Gala and the theme was Charles James: Beyond Fashion
  5. Darren Criss at the 2018 Met Gala and the theme was Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination
  6. Dianna Agron at the 2011 Met Gala and the theme was Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
  7. Dianna Agron and Matthew Morrison at the 2015 Met Gala and the theme was China: Through the Looking Glass
  8. Darren Criss at the 2019 Met Gala and the theme was Camp: Notes on Fashion
  9. Alex Newell, Lea Michelle and Johnathan Groff at the 2023 Met Gala and the theme was Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty
Personally my favorite is Alex, I love the drama in their outfit from huge peplum on the skirt and the hat absolutely amazing!!
submitted by AdDecent5237 to glee [link] [comments]


2024.05.06 20:17 API_professional Looking for a surreal, photorealistic, post-apocalyptic VN from 2011-2014 period. Forgot the name

I had downloaded this VN to my laptop, but my laptop died, and the data is presumed to be inaccessible. I don't remember the precise date that I downloaded this, only a time interval from the years 2011-2014.
I've scoured the Rockpapershotgun blog archives to no avail (Rockpapershotgun was the primary blog I used to find indie titles).
The premise of the VN is that you are the last known person alive on the planet and are looking for other people. I remember certain scenes like the MC listening to the radio in a car and picking up a phone call inside a deserted building. The graphics are photorealistic which I assume to be actual photos or composites of photos. There are multiple endings.
The VN could have been made as part of an apocalypse themed gamejam, but I'm not sure.
submitted by API_professional to RenPy [link] [comments]


2024.05.06 18:42 Shreiken_Demon People who won a competitive Oscar, and had a #1 hit on the Hot 100

Inspired by Tom Breihan's piece on “Dark Horse”, where both Juicy J’s #1 hit and his Oscar winning track “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”. I done some digging and wondered how rare that actually was
Excludes folks that only composed #1 hits without actually being a credited performer on them (John Barry, Michel Legrand, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Randy Newman, Quincy Jones, Will Jennings, Marvin Hamlisch, Carole Bayer Sager, Burt Bacharach, Giorgio Moroder, Alan Menken, James Horner, Reznor & Ross, Ludwig Gorranson and perhaps most surprisingly Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, whom never had #1 hit)
• Frank Sinatra - #1s (“Strangers in the Night” 1966, “Something Stupid 1967”)
• Henry Mancini - #1s (“Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet”). Oscars - Best Score 1961 “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, Best Original Song 1961 “Moon River”, Best Original Song 1963 “Days of Wine & Roses”, Best Score 1981 “VictoVictoria”
• The Four Beatles #1s (too many to list) - Oscar - Best Original Score 1970 “Let It Be”
• Issac Hayes - #1s (“Theme From Shaft”, 1971). Oscars - Best Original Song 1971 “Theme from Shaft”
• Barbra Streisand - #1s (“The Way We Were” 1974, “Evergreen” 1977, “No More Tears” 1979, “Woman In Love” 1980). Oscars - Best Actress 1968 “Funny Girl”, Best Original Song 1976 “Evergreen”
• Bill Conti - #1s (“Gonna Fly Now”, 1976). Oscars - Best Original Score 1983 - The Right Stuff
• Irene Cara - #1s (“Flashdance… What a Feeling” 1983). Oscar - Best Original Song 1983 “Flashdance…What a Feeling”
• Stevie Wonder - #1s (too many to list). Oscar - Best Original Song 1984, “I Just Called To Say I Love You”
• Prince - #1s (“When Doves Cry” 1984, “Let’s Go Crazy” 1984, “Kiss” 1986, Batdance” 1989, “Cream” 1991). Oscars - Best Original Score 1984 “Purple Rain”
• Cher - #1s (“I Got You Babe” 1965, “Gypsies Tramps and Thieves” 1971, Dark Lady” 1972, “Half Breed” 1973, “Believe” 1999). Oscar - Best Actress 1987 “Moonstruck”
• Carly Simon - #1s (“You’re So Vain” 1973). Oscar - Best Original Song 1988 “Let the River Run”)
• Phill Collins - #1s (“Against All Odds” 1984, “Sussudio” 1985, “One More Night” 1985, “Seperate Lives” 1985, “A Groovy Kind of Love” 1988, “Two Hearts” 1988, “Another Day In Paradise”, 1990). Oscars - Best Original Song 1999, “You’ll Be In My Heart”
• Eminem - #1s (“Lose Yourself” 2002, “Crack a Bottle” 2009, “Not Afraid” 2010, “Love The Way You Lie” 2010, “The Monster” 2013). Oscars - Best Original Song 2002, “Lose Yourself”
• Annnie Lennox - #1s (“Sweet Dreams” 1984). Oscars - Best Original Song 2003, “Into the West”
• Jamie Foxx - #1s (“Slow Jamz” 2003, “Gold Digger” 2005”). Oscars - Best Actor 2004, “Ray”.
• Adele - #1s (“Rolling in the Deep” 2011, “Someone Like You” 2011, “Set Fire to the Rain” 2012, “Hello” 2015, “Easy On Me” 2021”). Oscars - Best Original Song 2012 “Skyfall”
• Juicy J - #1s (“Dark Horse”, 2013). Oscars Best Original Song 2005, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”
• John Legend - #1s (“All of Me”, 2014). Oscars - Best Original Song 2015, “Glory”)
• Sam Smith - #1s (“Unholy”, 2022). Oscars - Best Original Song 2015, “The Writings On the Wall”
• Lady Gaga - #1s (“Just Dance” 2009, “Poker Face” 2009, “Born This Way” 2011, “Shallow 2019”, Rain On Me” 2020). Oscar - Best Original Song 2018 “Shallow”
• Billie Eilish - #1s (“Bad Guy”, 2019). Oscars Best Original Song 2021 “No Time to Die”, Best Original Song 2023 “What Was I Made For?”.
• Will Smith - #1s (“Getting Jiggy with It” 1998, “Wild Wild West 1999”). Oscar - Best Actor 2021 “King Richard”
Fun Facts
submitted by Shreiken_Demon to popheads [link] [comments]


2024.05.06 18:17 samsungjello Ranking the Top 52 Eurovision Countries since 1975: Getting to the OG's (#15-#11)

Happy ESC week! We are SO close to finding out the best ESC nations of all time. This edition will be the last before the top 10!! We are really in the heart of the countdown, so without further delay, here’s #15-#11!

The Countries

Placement Country Score
11 Germany 177318.767
12 Denmark 170388.676
13 Switzerland 160782.533
14 Netherlands 156379.576
15 Belgium 155913.214
We are now getting to the original 7 countries to participate in Eurovision! First of the bunch is Belgium, who was the last of the original countries to win their first contest, all the way back in 1986! Of course they have delivered some classics, and they also have one of the peculiar records in this competition! Above them is another OG in the Netherlands, who used to dominate this contest in its early years alongside France, but like France faced a 40+ year drought since their last victory. Of course, unlike France, they actually have broken that streak with one of the most popular ESC songs in history, the one that really started this contest and pushed it into the mainstream! Above them is Switzerland, the country that started it all, the country that won the very first edition, and the country who has one of the most famous wins in this contest’s history! Not bad considering they have only two victories to their name! At #12 is Denmark, the only non original 7 members on this list, but probably have some of the most underrated victories in this contest’s history! And if not for some underachieving in the last decade, they could easily be a part of this top 10! Speaking of, just outside the top 10 is Germany, the second to last original 7 members to claim their ESC crown, and who have two main people to thank for their victories! Of course they are a laughing stock now, but when they have their act together, they have produced some wonderful moments across multiple generations of this competition.
Some Notable Acts: Blanche (Belgium), Chanée (Denmark), Annie Cotton (Switzerland), Mélanie Cohl (Belgium), Céline Dion (Switzerland), Edsilia (Netherlands), Emmelie de Forest (Denmark), Luca Hänni (Switzerland), Gjon's Tears (Switzerland), Sandra Kim (Belgium), Duncan Laurence (Netherlands), Lena (Germany), N'evergreen (Denmark), Nicole (Germany), Loïc Nottet (Belgium), OG3NE (Netherlands), Olsen Brothers (Denmark), Rasmussen (Denmark), Rollo and King (Denmark), Michael Schulte (Germany), Daniela Simons (Switzerland), Sürpriz (Germany), Teach-In (Netherlands), The Common Linnets (Netherlands), Urban Trad (Belgium), Wind (Germany),

The Worst Years

Germany 2015 Ann Sophie - Black Smoke

Contest Ranking: 27th (0 pts) My Ranking: 40th (last, -3.9)
Germany’s success since 2010 has been… not great, to put it lightly. Four last place entries, with a combined 35 points between them, including a 0 point performance here. Think about like this, Germany before 2010 only had 5 last place finishes in total**, so safe to say they really just… stopped trying? I don’t even know if I can say that, because they have sent in some good songs in this time frame, but there seems to be a disconnect between them and the audience/juries. This song isn’t even that bad, a bit bland, but does that deserve 0 points?? Idk. In fact, I don’t know what’s going on with this country.
** In the Grand Final

Switzerland 2004 Piero and the MusicStars - Celebrate

Contest Ranking: DNQ (22nd Semi Final, 0 pts) My Ranking: 36th (last, -3.3)
There are some times where Switzerland sends in some absolute bangers, as we will talk about with their best entry. Then there’s this era for the Red Cross country. Ever since their 3rd place finish in 1993, ending their very successful 20 year period, it's been… ROUGH**. You know how bad it’s been? Switzerland has a zero point entry in the Grand Final (1998 entry), and they have a zero point entry in the Semifinals (this one). I genuinely have no idea how this won their national final. Yes, you saw that right, this song won a NATIONAL FINAL, it was not selected internally! This is some crap you would see a kid’s birthday party, not at the biggest song contest in the world. The 2000’s were a dark time man….
** You wanna know something else? Switzerland would only finish in the top 10 ONCE between 1994 and 2018(!) They would only make the grand finals 5 times from this entry (2004) to 2020(!!).

Belgium 2009 Copycat - Copycat

Contest Ranking: DNQ (17th 1st Semi Final, 1 pt) My Ranking: 41st (last, -0.282)
Belgium has won a contest with a 13 year old, have nearly won a contest with a song in an imaginary language, and are owners of one of the original troll entries. But this… man it seems like Belgium tries to find new and exciting ways to be weird, and you have to commend them for it, but this… why Elvis??

Denmark 2023 Reiley - Breaking My Heart

Contest Ranking: DNQ (14th 2nd Semi Final, 6 pts) My Ranking: 34th (0.496)
Denmark haven’t tried all that much since their win in 2013, which seems harsh, but man it sure seems like it. This is their lowest point total since 1982(!!), and well I can kinda see why. It’s go generic man, and what’s with the vocoder?? Sorry if it feels like I’m being more negative here, but man these songs do not do good things to my eardrums.

Netherlands 2023 Mia Nicolai and Dion Cooper - Burning Daylight

Contest Ranking: DNQ (13th 1st Semi Final, 7 pts) My Ranking: 33rd (0.789)
Another 2023 entry on the worst list! And I see why, it’s only the first time the Netherlands have failed to score double digits this millennium, and it’s with a song co-written by the artist that won it all for them just 4 years earlier. I’ve heard some of the issues that plagued this entry, but I don’t care enough to look into them right now. Dang I wonder what other countries achieved their worst performance in the last 5 years?

The Best Years

Switzerland 2021 Gjon's Tears - Tout l'univers

Contest Ranking: 3rd (432 pts) My Ranking: 4th (469.287**)
You would think with all the negativity I placed on these countries' more recent entries, the top songs would be from circa 1990, but that couldn’t be further from the truth! These countries, especially Switzerland, have proved that they can compete in the 21st century, and this is a shining example! Switzerland, for all of the hoopla of hosting and winning the first competition, haven’t done much in the 60ish years since, when compared to their other contemporaries. Of course they have probably one of the most famous victories of all time, with young Celine Dion squeaking gold in Dublin in ‘88 (avert your eyes UK fans). Since then, well, let me put it like this. Since 2004, when the semifinal format was introduced, Switzerlands have only qualified 7 times, and have only made the top 10 3 times in that period. Luckily, two of those entries were in the top 5, and one of those entries was this one! Gjon’s Tears, or Gjon Muharremaj, is another COVID participant who got his start on the show Albanians Got Talent. Gjon got his stage name at the age of 12, when he performed a beautiful rendition of Elvis’ song, “Can’t Help Falling In Love”, which moved his grandfather to tears. In 2019, he was in the singing competition The Voice: la plus belle voix, where he was on Team Mika (yes, that Mika). He was selected by the national broadcaster to compete in ESC 2020, but I don’t have to explain what happened. He got another chance in 2021, with a new song called “Tout l’univers”.
Eurovision 2021 was a stacked contest that year, wasn’t it? With all of the returning artists combined with some of the best talent at the time, it was really a show for the ages. The top 3 that year would have all deserved to win that year, and they were all non-english entries! This French song talks about yearning and longing to be reunited with a loved one, which is shown through its passionate live performance. Gjon himself is an excellent singer, with those high notes at the end of the song being a highlight! I say this a lot (and I just said it now), but in another year this would have won, I mean it placed first in its semifinal for crying out loud! The only two songs that placed above it were from the Big 5 (France and Italy), so really of all the songs that had to qualify, this one was the best. You know what’s funny? This entry marks 33 years since Celine Dion won, who herself won 32 years after Lys Assia took home the prize for Switzerland in 1956. It literally would have been near perfect if Switzerland had won. Oh well, guess we’ll have to wait until around 2053 for Switzerland to win their third title…
** This song is one of the Top 50 ESC entries since 1975. *** I think Switzerland is tied with Spain for having the lowest margin of victory for a multiple time winner (1 point, maybe Spain should take the title since we don’t know the full results of 1956)

Belgium 2017 Blanche - City Lights

Contest Ranking: 4th (363 pts) My Ranking: 3rd (477.742**)
Of all of the black aesthetic entries that Belgium tried, this was the one that did the best! I’m a tad bit surprised that this song was on top, but I feel that it is pretty representative of how well Belgium did in the mid 2010’s, with 2 top four finishes (3 top 10 placements overall). Meet Ellie Noa Blanche Delvaux, known mostly by her third name Blanche, who got her start through Belgium’s The Voice, singing a song by a well known dark aesthetic artist, Adele. She would eventually be called by RTBF (one of the Belgian broadcasters) to perform at ESC in Lisbon, with her song “City Lights”.
Boy does Belgium like them young! Their top three entries according to my formula are of course Blanche (17 at the time), Loïc Nottet (21 at the time), and most famously Sandra Kim (13 at the time). It seems like their young talent really does carry them at this competition, and it shows with this song. This song is very emotional, so much so that you can see the emotion on Blanche’s face at the final (go watch it if you can). There’s actually not much else I have to say for this song, it’s very solid and it was one of the highlights in a year where emotions would reign supreme (I realize that could be applied to a lot of years, but this one in particular). Like I said before, this entry was one of several in the Belgian black aesthetic wave, which honestly worked out for them more often than not. If not for this success in the 2010’s, I would be talking about Sandra Kim and how Belgium really peaked in 2003.
** This song is one of the Top 50 ESC entries since 1975.

Germany 2010 Lena - Satellite

Contest Ranking: 1st (246 pts) My Ranking: 1st (492.531**)
This entry was a result of Germany wanting to host Eurovision 2011, that’s all. Germany in ESC is the ultimate form of consistency, only missing 1 contest in its 60+ year history. But they don’t have much to show for it, in terms of victories anyway, they have contributed to ESC in different ways. But when Nicole stummed her way into Europe’s heart in 1982, it was the culmination of several years of the work of Ralph SIgel, who composed many of the hits that had Germany in the Top 10, and eventually, in the winner’s circle. Germany (at least West Germany) was finally a winner! But after some solid entries in the following years, the country’s performance started to falter. That culminated in not only a last place finish, but also their only non qualification in their history. It was a bit dark for Germany, then came “Alf Igel”, really known as Stefan Raab, an entertainer, producer, and TV host, who shook up the formula that was slowly growing old for Germany. He delivered some top 10 placements as a writer and performer (you should look at 1998, 2000 and 2004 for those), but his magnum opus has to be 2010, when he initiated a national selection show for Germany to pick a song for ESC 2010, for the purposes of wanting to host Eurovision 2011. From that show came “Satellite” , sung by Lena Johanna Therese Meyer-Landrut, known simply as Lena.
This song is simple, it’s a song about love. The live performance was simple as well, with Lena in a simple black dress with four backing singers behind her. There’s nothing flashy about this performance, which is why I think it won. Coming off of the most extravagant Eurovision in the modern era, Oslo really scaled back the production for this one (it also might have been influenced by the recession at the time, but I digress). A LOT of people think that Turkey should have won this year, just look at the comments under the video, but I think that Lena deserved this one. If you look at the voting sequence, there’s a point where the hosts interview Manga, and the band said that they expected to be top 3, but I saw that as they were expecting to be winning at this point. Manga said that they crafted the perfect song for ESC, but Germany were doing the same, and Stefan Raab, despite the wacky exterior, knows what he is doing. He was the judge that selected Lena for this contest, probably because he saw someone who knows what they are doing, and Lena knows what she is doing. She takes a basic song about love and maxes out its potential, with her perfectly placing enough energy throughout the duration to capture the hearts of all of Europe. I think I’ll quote Cookie Fonster’s review of Eurovision 2010 to show you what I mean. “As a song, this can be summed up in two words: fresh and infectious.” This song just fills you up with happy energy, and at a time where people are down due to the widespread global recession, this song and performance works perfectly. It’s German efficiency at its finest, and it got them their first and only win since reunification . It’s just tragic that as more and more time passes, this entry seems like an outlier for Germany, as this success would be fleeting at best for the country in the years to follow. ** This song is one of the Top 50 ESC entries since 1975.

Netherlands 2019 Duncan Laurence - Arcade

Contest Ranking: 1st (498 pts) My Ranking: 2nd (522.93**)
The one that broke the drought, and the one that started the mainstream wave of ESC! The Netherlands were one of the early giants of Eurovision, but after Teach-In brought the country their fourth crown, tied for the most at the time, it would be a long time before they would sniff the mountaintop again. It’s not like there were close calls, they finished top 5 several times, and in 1998 they placed 4th, but it wouldn’t be until 2014*** that they would break into the top three, their first time since Teach-In. One of the members of that entry, Isle DeLange, would be a future coach for The Voice of Holland, and guess who would be one of the singers that she would coach? That’s right, it would be Duncan de Moor, more famously known as Duncan Laurance. Duncan started writing songs as an escape from being bullied, and he would eventually start playing in a couple of bands, including forming his own. He would then go on to be selected to perform at Eurovision in Tel Aviv, by none other than Isle DeLange! (It’s all connected, isn’t it?)
The song, called “Arcade”, details “the emotional journey of someone who is deeply in love but also grappling with the pain of a past relationship”, and boy do you feel that journey throughout the song. At ESC, all you see with Duncan’s performance is him, a piano, and a ball of light, I think. It makes you focus on him and the song, and that only adds to its benefits. Say what you want about the clunky metaphor of an “Arcade” (more of a Casino), but through it all this song’s main goal is to make you feel, and it does that in spades. This entry really could be the theme song of the Netherlands’ ESC journey since 1975, which makes it all the more appropriate that it was the one to break the country’s 45 year drought (At the time, only Spain had a longer drought for a country that still competed). When this song won, who knew the impact it would have in the few years since! In 2020, when the world was shut down due to COVID, this song took off through Tik Tok, which vaulted Duncan into international superstardom. This entry really did mark the start of the viral era of Euroviosn, with more songs in the coming years taking a similar path. As of now, it is the most streamed song in ESC history, and I don’t think it will be passed anytime soon. The Netherlands, who were known for being the rulers of early ESC, now are responsible for birthing the contest into a new age (mind the pun). Who knew that it was all set up with a country/folk group in 2014? And don’t worry, I will talk about the entry that finished 1st for me this year. This year’s stats showcase an… interesting trend in the post 2016 ESC landscape.
** This song is one of the Top 50 ESC entries since 1975. *** One of the most underrated songs in ESC history, if you ask me. If Austria didn’t send in Conchita, this one would have won for sure! This entry is ranked 51st of all ESC songs since 1975, which unfortunately seems fitting for how this song is remembered.

Denmark 2013 Emmelie de Forest - Only Teardrops

Contest Ranking: 1st (281 pts) My Ranking: 1st (624.715**)
In 2000, the Olsen Brothers competed and won for Denmark in Sweden (ranked 55th overall). Thirteen years later Emmelie de Forest would compete and win for Denmark in Sweden! Ever since Eurovision 2001, Denmark has been up and down in this contest. They actually were top 5 in 2010 and 2011, only to be 23rd in 2012. But in 2013, when Sweden hosted the contest for the 4th time, it would be this young artist that would claim Denmark's 3rd win at Eurovision.
Emmelie de Forest (not of English Royalty I’m afraid) had a rocky childhood, with her parents divorcing when she was young. She grew up in Denmark and in Sweden, performing at small festivals when she was a teenager. She won the chance to compete at ESC through Denmark’s national selection show, and as the odds on favorite, she would win and cement herself into ESC lore… kinda. See, I said at the top that this entry is one of the most underrated victories at ESC, especially in the last decade or so. It is seen as just radio pop, which no one has a problem with, considering the alternative optionthat year, but it kinda just… exists, which is a shame. Denmark’s winning songs have a common thread between them (besides having a prominent instrument in the song), which is that they are really nice to listen to. “Dansevise”is one of the few 60’s ESC songs that I enjoy, as the atmosphere of the song really lulls you in. “Fly On The WIngs Of Love” (ranked 55th of all songs since 1975) is just a nice song, even if it is more guitar pop “Only Teardrops” feels like a mix of the two, with the atmosphere of “Dansevise” combined with the poppy aspect of “Fly On The WIngs Of Love”, creating an instant classic in my eyes. I wish this song got more recognition, because even though I would have it 3rd of the three Denmark winners, it is like its more famous contemporaries, which is that it’s a really nice song.
** This song is one of the Top 50 ESC entries since 1975.

Final Thoughts

What do you think? Which song here is your favorite? Do you think the top entries here are underrated? Overrated? Which of these countries is most likely to win again? Will Germany ever get their groove back? Will Switzerland win before I reach retirement age? Well I guess we’ll find out.
submitted by samsungjello to eurovision [link] [comments]


2024.05.06 16:32 PhilsTriangle [NJ] [H] Consoles + Games - Nintendo DS/3DS, NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii, Playstation, PS2, PS3, Sega Genesis, Xbox, Xbox 360 [W] Venmo, PayPal

Here's some pictures of the N64 games: https://imgur.com/a/XfHzrF3
Let me know if you need pictures of any of the items listed below. Shipping is $5 flat for anything under one pound. I've got 400+ transactions on this board and accept payment via PayPal (F&F) or Venmo (F&F) only.
Consoles
GBA Indigo - $80 shipped
GBA SP (Silver CIB) - $125 shipped
GBA SP Lime Target Exclusive w/ charger - $130 shipped
Nintendo 2DS w/ charger - $85 shipped
Nintendo 3DS XL Pokemon X & Y Edition Console - $225 shipped
Nintendo 64 Console w/ hookups + OEM Controller - $90 shipped
Nintendo Wii Console (gamecube compatible) w/ hookups + Wii remote & numb chuck - $75 shipped
PS2 w/ hookups, OEM controller, OEM memory card - $100 shipped
Retron 5 Hyperkin (GBA/GBC/SNES/NES/Genesis) unused CIB - $120 shipped
Super Nintendo w/ hookups & OEM controller - $95 shipped
Xbox OG Console w/ hookups & OEM controller + Project Gotham Racing (CIB) - $110 Shipped
Controllers/Accessories
Gameboy OEM Clam Shells (lot of 32) - $75 shipped
Gamecube OEM Controller (Indigo) - $30 shipped
Gamecube OEM Wavebird Controller w/ receiver- $95 shipped
NES OEM 10-Cart Storage Case (3x avail) - $20 + shipping each
N64 OEM Expansion Pak - $50 shipped
N64 OEM Green Controller - $30 shipped
N64 Memory Card - $14 shipped
Pokemon Moon/Pokemon Sun Strategy Guide - $20 + shipping costs
Pokemon Ultra Moon/ Ultra Sun Strategy Guide - $20 + shipping costs
PS2 Logitech Wireless Controller (w/ dongle) - $35 shipped
PS2 OEM Memory Card- $14 shipped
Sega GameGear Super Wide Gear - $20 shipped
Wii U Wireless Controller (WUP-005) & charging cable - $35 shipped (2x avail)
Xbox 360 500GB OEM Hard Drive - $45 shipped
N64 Games
007 GoldenEye - $25
007 World is Not Enough - $14
Army Men Sarge's Heroes - $15
Automobil Lamborghini - $8
Backstage Assault - $12
Banjo Kazooie - $25
Bass Hunter 64 - $8
Beetle Adventure Racing - $17
Charlies Blasts - $40
Diddy Kong Racing - $25
Doom 64 - $30
Extreme G Racing - $10
Forsaken 64 - $10
Gex 64 - $16
Iggy's Reckin' Balls - $20
Killer Instinct Gold - $30
Knockout Kings 2000 - $6
Magical Tetris Challenge - $20
Mario Kart - $40
Monster Truck Madness - $15
MRC Multi Championship Racing - $10
Namco Museum 64 - $12
Nascar 99 - $7
Nascar 2000 - $7
NBA In the Zone 98 - $5
NBA Live 99 (CIB) - $20
NBA Showtime - $12
Polaris Sno-Cross -$30
Pokemon Snap - $20
Quest 64 - $25
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing - $12
Ridge Racer 64 - $15
San Francisco Rush - $15
Starfox 64 - $25
Star Wars Episode 1 Racer - $10
South Park Chef's Luv Shack - $25
Supercross 2000 - $7
Super Mario 64 - $35
Super Smash Bros. - $40
Tetrisphere - $12
Top Gear Rally - $10
Turok Dinosaur Hunter - $12
Turok 2 Seeds of Evil - $12
Vigilante 8 - $21
Virtual Pool - $13
Waialae Country Club - $6
War Gods - $10
Wave Race (Player's Choice) - $15
WCW Backstage Assault - $11
WCW NWO Revenge - $11
Wheel of Fortune - $11
Zelda Ocarina of Time (label wear) - $30
N64 Manuals
1080 Snowboarding - $7
Duke Nukem Manual - $10
Flying Dragon Manual - $40
Rush Extreme Racing - $8
Silicon Valley Space Station Manual - $40
Supercross 2000 - $6
Tony Hawk Pro Skater - $6
Nintendo Gamecube Games (CIB unless noted)
ATV Quad Power Racing 2 - $10
The Hobbit - $24
Enter the Matrix - $13
Eternal Darkness - $90
Fifa 2003 - $6
Fifa Street 2 - $25
Finding Nemo - $8
F-Zero GX - $90
Gun (missing manual) - $10
Harry Potter Chambers of Secret - $12
Killer 7 - $65
Luigi's Mansion - $60
Madden 2003 - $5
Madden 2007 - $8
Mario Golf Toadstool Tour - $27
Mario Kart Double Dash - $75
Monopoly Party - $10
Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena - $7
Nascar Thunder 2003 - $7
Pikmin - $50
Power Rangers Dino Thunder - $8
Resident Evil - $25
Resident Evil 2 - $100
Resident Evil 4 - $30
Resident Evil Zero - $18
The Sims Bustin Out - $12
Smuggler's Run (missing manual) - $12
Sonic Adventure Battle 2 (missing manual) - $45
Spiderman 2 - $15
Spyro A Hero's Tail (missing manual) - $15
SSX Tricky - $28
Starfox Assault - $45 (CIB; some wear to cover art)
Super Mario Sunshine (missing manual) -$35
Super Smash Brothers Melee - $60
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger (missing manual) - $12
WWE Crush Hour - $27
WWE Day of Reckoning 2 (missing manual) - $25
Nintendo DS Games (cart only unless CIB noted)
Avatar The Game - $6
Bionicle Matoran Adventures - $6
Build-A-Bear Workshop (CIB) - $6
Carnival (CIB) - $6
Deal or No Deal - $5
Guitar Hero On Tour Bundle (CIB) - $25
Happy Feet - $4
Horsez (CIB) - $6
Hot Wheels Beat That - $6
Kung Fu Panda (CIB) - $6
Mario Party DS - $13
Mario Kart DS (loose) - $15
Mario Kart DS (CIB) - $18
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (CIB) - $10
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (CIB) - $10
Megaman Starforce Dragon - $85 shipped
Metroid Hunters First Hunt - $6
Nacho Libre - $15
Namco Museum DS - $8
Naruto Ninja Council 3 - $6
New Super Mario Bros. (CIB) -$22
Nickelodeon Team Umizoomi - $6
Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney - $20
Picross 3D - $9
Ping Pals - $3
Planet Puzzle League - $10
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky (case & manual only, no game) - $55
Pokemon Ranger Shadows of Almia (cart only) - $30
Ratatouille - $5
Rayman DS - $10
Ridge Racer DS - $8
Shrek Superslam - $5
Spiderman 3 - $8
Star Wars II The Original Trilogy (LEGO) - $6
Super Money Ball Touch & Roll - $6
Transformers Animated - $11
Tron Evolution - $4
Zhu Zhu Pets - $3
Nintendo 3DS (cart only unless noted)
Animal Crossing: New Leaf (CIB) - $20
Lego Marvel Superheroes: Universe in Peril - $5
Mario Kart 7 - $12
Minecraft New Nintendo 3DS Edition - $18
Pilotwings Resort - $10
Pokemon X (CIB) - $30
Skylander Giants - $6
Skylander Swap Force - $16
Skylander Trap Team - $12
Super Mario Maker - $10
Super Smash Bros (CIB) - $15
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - $9
Wipeout: Create & Cash - $5
Wreck-it Ralph - $6
Yo-Kai Watch - $15
NES Games (cart only; unless noted)
8 Eyes - $11
A Boy and His Blob (cart, box, manual) - $40
Blades of Steel - $8
Bubble Bobble - $16
Burgertime - $15
Castlevania II Simon's Quest - $15
Castlevania III Dracula's Curse - $45
Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers (CIB) - $125
Contra - $40
Dick Tracy - $7
Double Dragon - $13
Double Dragon II - $12
Donkey Kong 3 - $20
Dr. Mario - $10
Duck Tales - (cart & box) - $100
Excite Bike - $11
Faxanadu - $11
GI Joe: A Real American Hero - $75
Golf - $3
Legend of Zelda - $30
Mickey Mousecapade - $7
Mike Tyson's Punch-out - $40
Paperboy - $16
Punch-Out - $20
Rad Racer - $6
RBI Baseball 3 (cart & box) - $25
Robocop - $10
Rollerball - $8
Skate or Die 2 (cart & box) - $65
Spy Hunter - $5
Street Fighter 2010 - $15
Super Glove Ball - $7
Super Mario Bros. 2 - $20
Super Off-Road - $12
Super Team Games - $7
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II - The Arcade Game (cart & box) - $80
Tiger Heli - $8
Wall Street Kid (cart, box, registration card, poster) - $45
WWF Wrestlemania - $6
SNES Games (cart only)
Aladdin - $15
Castlevania IV - $45
Clue - $5
Earthbound - $350
F-Zero (Player's Choice) - $20
Jungle Strike - $9
Ken Griffey Jr Major League Baseball - $11
Kirby's Avalanche - $15
Lion King - $11
Mario Paint - $6
Mega Man X - $32
Mickey Mania - $13
Mortal Kombat - $13
Ms. Pacman - $9
NBA All-Star Challenge - $5
Pilot Wings - $10
Scooby Doo Mystery - $11
Starfox - $15
Super Adventure Island - $16
Super Baseball 2020 - $13
Super Ghouls N Ghosts - $23
Super Mario All-Stars - $25
Super Mario Kart - $40
Super Mario World - $20
Super Punch Out - $28
Top Player Tennis - $8
WWF Raw - $13
Zombies Ate My Neighbors - $30
Gameboy
Super Mario Land - $20
Tetris - $12
GBA (cart only unless noted)
Aggravation/Sorry/Scrabble - $5
Barnyard - $8
Bratz - $4
Care Bears Care Quest (CIB) - $28
Cars - $5
Cars (CIB) - $16
Castlevania Double Pack - $85
Cho Makaimura R Super Ghouls N Ghost ( Japanese Import) - $95 Shipped
Crash Bandicoot 2 N-tranced - $10
Crash Huge Adventure - $11
Curious George (CIB) - $28
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 - $4
Disney Party - $10
Disney Princess (CIB) - $12
Donkey Kong Country (GBC/CIB) - $56
Dora Explorer's Pirate Pig's Treasure - $4
Dragon Ball Z Supersonic Warriors - $20
Elf - $10
ESPN Great Outdoor Games Bass 2002 - $5
F-14 Tomcat - $7
Finding Nemo - $5
Green Eggs & Ham (CIB) - $20
Incredibles (CIB) - $14
Kong 8th Wonder of the World - $5
Lost Vikings - $25
Madden 2005 - $5
Mario Kart Super Circuit (torn label) - $20
Metroid Zero Mission - $60
Monsters Inc - $4
Monster Jam Maximum Destruction - $6
Namco Museum - $6
Oddworld Munch's Oddysee - $12
Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse of the Black Pearl - $5
Pong Asterios Yar's Revenge - $4
Sonic Advance 3 - $25
Quad Desert Furty - $3
Shaun Palmers Pro Snowboarding (GBC/CIB) - $10
Shrek Swamp Kart Speedway - $5
Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron - $5
SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom - $7
Spongebob Squarepants Super Sponge - $6
SSX 3 - $7
The Incredibles - $3
Thunder Alley - $5
Top Gear GT Championship - $10
Sony PSP (all CIB)
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - $15
Gurumin A Monstrous Adventure - $42
LocoRoco - $10
Mega Man Powered Up - $38
Parappa the Rapper - $27
Sega Genesis Collection - $17
PS1 Games (CIB unless noted)
007 Tomorrow Never Dies - $7
Action Bass - $6
Andretti Racing (GH) - $5
Ball Breakers (sealed) - $10
Bass Championship - $7
Battle Arena Toshinden (GH) - $14
Bust A-Move 4 - $17
Driver 2 (GH) - $10
Fighting Force - $20
IHRA Drag Racing - $5
Missile Command - $6
MLB 2001 - $9
MLB 2003 - $9
Nascar Heat (CIB) - $7
NBA Live 2000 - $8
NBA Shootout 98 - $9
NHL 98 - $8
NHL Faceoff 97 (GH) - $5
PlayStation Underground Jampack Fall 2001 - $9
Resident Evil 2 (DualShock Edition) - $65
Rocket Power Team Rocket Rescue - $7
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie - $12
Spongebob SquarePants Super Pants - $7
Syphon Filter 2 (GH) - $10
Tecmo Super Bowl - $20
Tiger Woods 99 - $8
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 - $12
Twisted Metal 2 (Greatest Hits) - $32
Toy Story 2 - $22
Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour - $20
World Cup 98 - $12
PS2 Games (CIB unless noted)
All-Star Baseball 2005 - $5
Ape Escape 2 - $48
Ape Escape 3 - $43
ATV Offroad Fury 2 - $6
Avatar the Last Airbender - $8
Batman Begins - $13
Batman Vengeance - $19
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Chaos Bleeds - $28
Burnout Revenge - $11
Burnout 3 Takedown - $13
Buzz the Mega Quiz - $12
Capcom Classics Collection Volume 2 - $13
Castlevania Lament of Innocence -$25
Corvette - $5
Crash Bandicoot The Wrath of the Cortex - $12
Crash Nitro Kart (GH) - $9
Crazy Taxi - $10
Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 - $7
Dead to Rights - $6
Devil May Cry (GH) - $7
Enter the Matrix - $10
Eragon - $6
Family Feud - $5
Finding Nemo - $6
Fire Pro Wrestling Returns - $10
Ford Racing 3 - $5
Frogger the Great Quest - $7
Golden Compass - $5
GTA 3- $10
Gran Turismo 3 - $5
Godfather the Game - $14
Guitar Hero - $10
Guitar Hero Aerosmith - $7
Guitar Hero II - $7
Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock - $9
High Heat Major League Baseball 2004 - $5
Hot Wheels Velocity - $10
Hot Wheels World Race (missing manual) - $12
Hobbit - $10
Ice Age 2 The Meltdown - $7
Ironman - $6
Karaoke Revolution Party - $8
Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol - $5
Legends of Wrestling II - $12
Lego Star Wars The Original Trilogy - $6
Lego Star Wars The Video Game - $7
Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring - $10
Madden 2003 - $5
Madden 2004 - $5
Madden 2005 -$5
Madden 2007 - $5
Matt Hoffman's Pro BMX 2 - $10
Max Payne - $10
Metal Arms Glitch in the System - $16
Midway Arcade Treasures (1) - $12
Midway Arcade Treasures (2) - $12
MLB 07 the Show - $5
MLB Slugfest 2003 - $10
MLB Slugfest 2004 - $13
Namco Museum (GH) - $8
Nascar 2001 - $5
Nascar Thunder 2003 - $7
NBA Street - $12
Need for Speed Underground 2 (missing manual) - $20
NFL Blitz Pro - $10
NFL Street - $17
NFL Street 3 (missing manual) - $20
Onimusha 3 Demon Siege - $21
Pinball Hall of Fame - $5
Pirates - The Legend of Black Kat - $12
Power Rangers: Dino Thunder - $8
Reel Fishing III - $7
Resident Evil Code Veronica X - $13
Rise of Kasai - $8
Rocky - $11
Scarface the World is Yours - $45
Scooby Doo First Frights - $13
Sega Superstars - $10
Sega Superstar Tennis - $10
Shrek Superslam - $8
Simpson's Hit & Run (Greatest Hits) -$50
Spiderman - $10
Sprint Cars Road to Knoxville - $6
Spy Hunter - $7
Spy Hunter 2 (missing manual) - $7
Starsky & Hutch - $7
SSX - $7
SSX 3 - $9
SSX On Tour - $8
Superman Shadow of Apokolips - $14
Super Monkey Ball Adventure - $10
Summoner - $10
Taito Legends - $15
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battlenexus (missing manual) - $17
Teen Titans - $22
Theme Park Roller Coaster - $8
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 - $6
Thrillville - $6
Thrillville Off the Rails - $10
Time Crisis 3 - $23
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger - $11
Wheel of Fortune - $6
Virtua Fighter 4 (missing manual) - $6
Warriors of Might & Magic - $10
WWE Smackdown vs Raw - $11
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007 (Sealed) - $45
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007 - $17
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009 - $10
WWE Smackdown Shut Your Mouth - $15
PS3
Band Hero - $6
Battlefield 3 - $6
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare - $6
Call of Duty Ghosts - $6
Call of Duty Mordern Warfare 3 - $6
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare - $7
Call of Juarez Bound in Blood - $9
Crysis 2 - $7
Dirt 3 - $10
Driver San Francisco - $25
Fifa Soccer 11 - $5
Fight Night Champion - $13
GTA IV Complete Edition - $25
Heavy Fire: Afghanistan - $10
Infamous - $6
Infamous 2 - $8
Lego 3: Beyond Batman - $8
Lego The Hobbit - $9
LittleBigPlanet - $9
Madden 2011 - $5
Metro: Last Night - $8
Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition - $12
MLB the Show 10 - $4
MLB the Show 11 - $4
Monster Jam Path of Destruction - $20
NCAA Football 11 - $9
Sports Champions - $5
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 [Masters Historic Edition] - $23
Transformers Fall of Cybertron - $35
Transformers War for Cybertron - $35
Virtua Tennis 3 - $6
WWE 2K16 - $12
PS Vita
Lumines Electronic Symphony - $16
Need for Speed Most Wanted - $20
Sly Cooper Collection - $50
Sega 32X (all cart only)
Primal Rage - $50
Virtua Fighter - $24
Virtua Racing - $20
Sega Dreamcast Games (disc & manual only***; do not have original cases unless noted CIB)
Centipede - $7
Plasma Sword Night of Bilstein - $50
Psychic Force 2012 - $25
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing - $12
Resident Evil Code Veronica (CIB) - $40
Rippin Riders - $5
Sega Bass Fishing - $8
Sega Rally 2 Championship - $12
Speed Devils - $15
Sword of Berserk: Gut's Rage (game only) - $65
Trick Style - $7
Zombie Revenge - $30
Sega Genesis (**CIB unless noted)
Aladdin (cart + manual) - $10
Double Dragon (cart & box) - $45
Game Genie (loose + booklet) - $20
Hard Drivin' (Missing Manual) - $15
John Madden Football (cart + manual) - $20
Lemmings (CIB) - $30
MERCS (cart & box) - $35
NBA Jam T.E. (CIB) - $20
Prime Time NFL Football starring Deon Sanders (cart +manual) - $9
Ren & Stimpy Show: Stimpy's Intervention (CIB) - $20
Road Rash II (CIB) - $22
Robocop 3 (CIB) - $40
Streets of Rage (cart only) - $22
Super Off-Road (CIB) - $30
WWF Super Wrestlemania (CIB) - $20
X-Men (cart + manual) - $15
Zero Tolerance (CIB) - $35
Sega Master System (CIB unless noted)
Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars - $28
California Games (missing manual) - $20
Choplifter - $18
Ghostbusters - $25
Great Baseball - $10
Monopoly - $10
Parlour Games - $10
Pro Wrestling - $14
Rocky - $17
Space Harrier (missing manual) - $18
Shinobi (includes map; missing manual) - $30
Xbox (all CIB)
MechAssault 2 Lone Wolf (Limited Edition) - $8
Project Gotham Racing - $6
Xbox 360 (CIB)
Assassin's Creed - $6
Assasin's Creed II - $6
Asssasin's Creed III - $6
Battlefield Hardline Deluxe Edition - $10
Battlefield 3 Limited Edition - $6
Bioshock - $7
Bioshock Infinite - $5
Call of Duty World at War - $9
Call of Juarez: Blood Bound - $10
Civilization Revolution - $6
CSI Hard Evidence - $9
Fifa Soccer 10 - $5
Fifa Work Cup South Africa 2010 - $5
Game of Thrones - $11
Gears of War - $9
Halo 4 - $5
Injustice Gods Among Us - $5
L.A. Noire - $7
Mass Effect - $5
Mass Effect 2 - $5
N3 Ninety-Nine Nights - $20
NBA 2K12 - $5
NHL 10 - $3
NHL 14 - $6
Saints Row 2 - $10
Saints Row The Third - $5
Skate 3 - $6
Star Trek Legacy - $18
Star Wars Kinect - $7
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007 - $5
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 - $5
Top Spin 3 - $6
Walking Dead Survival Instinct - $8
Wheel of Fortune - $14
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire -$5
Nintendo Wii (all CIB unless noted)
Animal Crossing City Folk - $20 (includes inserts but missing manual)
Celebrity Sports Showdown - $6
Dragon Quest Swords The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors - $20
Guitar Hero World Tour - $18
Little League World Series Baseball 2008 - $10
Madden 2013 - $14
Mario Kart Wii - $35
Mario Party 8 - $30
Mario Sports Mix - $30
Mario Super Sluggers (disc only) - $25
Mario Strikers Charged (disc only) - $10
NBA Live 09 All-Play - $5
New Super Mario Bros - $26
Pokemon Battle Revolution - $25
PokePark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure - $35
Punch-Out - $35
Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz - $6
Super Smash Bros. Brawl - $20
Tony Hawk Downhill Jam - $5
Tony Hawk Shred Big Air - $5
Warioware Smooth Moves - $22
Wii Sports - $22
Wii Sports Resort - $30
Wheel of Fortune - $6
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009 - $7
submitted by PhilsTriangle to GameSale [link] [comments]


2024.05.06 01:05 starry-blue Someone asked about her maiden name…

Someone asked about her maiden name…
Browsed through our very own copy of Socastee High’s 2011 yearbook. She was a sophomore then. I guess she was held back a year at some point, as she should have been a junior that year.
submitted by starry-blue to JusticeForMicaMiller [link] [comments]


2024.05.05 23:42 puppyglitch My gas station/duff brewery area I just finished

My gas station/duff brewery area I just finished
I just got the hooch city building from the yearbook and went along with the red/white theme. I wasn’t sure if the runways would work but pretty pleased with how it turned out!
submitted by puppyglitch to tappedout [link] [comments]


2024.05.05 23:05 Veronicaaaa___ Curiosity.

I'm curious about other people ambitions/interests so let me ask you all what would you add in the game if you had the chance to add things of your choice? Could be characters, buildings, anything.
Let's start with me: ◾ I wish we had more land. ◾ Options to turn the wintesummer theme. ◾ Adding sky and choose day time and night time. ◾ Cars, airplanes, bikes and motocycles going all around the town like the train does. ◾ Option to have a bigger yearbook with lots of new buildinds and characters as we got added one 2B building recently in road to billionares. ◾ Option to have a sky finger just for jobs and not only for collect incomes.
This is all I remember for now.
PS: This post is to talk about what we would like to add in the about game, this is not saying that I don't like something. Don't misunderstand the meaning of the post 😊
submitted by Veronicaaaa___ to tappedout [link] [comments]


2024.05.05 21:47 Usual_Brief_6787 I spent 30 hours studying how Canva reached $40B. Here's what I learnt:

In just over a decade Canva went from creating yearbooks for Australian high schools to over 135M users and a $40B valuation.
Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht (now husband and wife) founded Fusion Books in 2007 allowing Australian students to design their school yearbooks.
A few years later, they were the biggest supplier of yearbooks in Australia. And the foundations of Canva were put in place.
Then in 2013, the couple along with technical co-founder, Cameron Adams, launched Canva to a 50k-person waiting list.
Along with their mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere - the team had two ambitious goals in building Canva:
  1. Build one of the world’s most valuable companies. 💵
  2. To do the most good they can do. 🌱
Safe to say they achieved both. And in doing so, Canva has become one of the biggest success stories of the last decade - especially from a non-USA startup.
This is the story of how Canva went from Zero to One. 🚀 Click here to read the full deep dive.

Business model: How Canva makes money

Canva’s business model is simple - but slightly different from a typical SaaS.
Usually, SaaS businesses choose between Freemium and Free Trial (among others) to convert users to monetization.
But Canva uses both.
They have an awesome Free Plan that is sufficient for (probably) most people.
Then they have three paid plans: Canva Pro, Canva Teams, and Enterprise.
All of these offer more business features such as brand kits and more specialized features such as their background remover. With Enterprise offering a more tailored experience for companies that will have over 100 users.
And then lastly, although not making money, Canva also offers free premium features for educators and NPOs - in line with them doing good!

Canva’s Growth

Canva launched in 2013. But the idea for it started years before.
Melanie and her then-boyfriend Cliff were studying together at the University of Western Australia.
Melissa was studying Psychology and Commerce but was so passionate about design that she taught design programs to other students.
This is where she realized there was a problem.
It would take her students hours to learn the basics of the design tools on the market and the whole semester to become proficient.
A problem she felt was so obvious and needing to be filled that she dropped out of university to pursue it.
To build up some business acumen and money, as well as to test her hypothesis, she and Cliff started Fusion Books - a customizable yearbook tool for high school students in Australia.
Essentially an extremely niche testing ground for Canva.
The idea was a hit. It became the largest yearbook supplier in Australia and still runs profitably today.
This prompted them to go all-in on Canva.
They found a technical co-founder, Cameron Adams, to build the platform and raised $3M in Seed funding.
And so the journey began.
Canva built hype for their launch by creating a public waitlist - which reached 50k people by the time of launch in 2013.
By the end of 2014, Canva already had over 100k users, launched their iPad app, and had ~2M designs created on the platform.
In 2015, Canva launched Canva for Work (now Canva Pro), reached 50 Canvanauts (employees), surpassed 50M designs created, and reached a valuation of $165M.
In 2017 Canva became profitable and launched a bunch of new features and products, including animations, Canva Print, their Android app, and launched in 100 languages.
Canva became a Unicorn in 2018 with their $40M investment round. And made their first acquisition, buying Zeetings to double down on presentations. They also hit 1B designs.
Their acquisitions and new products continued and by the end of 2021, Canva had over 75M MAUs and was valued at $40B after raising an additional $200M.
As of now, Canva has over 135M MAUs, over 4,000 Canvanauts, and more than 15B designs in the last decade - over 200 new designs created per second.

Key Success Factors (KSFs)

There have been so many reasons for Canva’s rocketship success. Here are four that stood out to me, particularly for Canva’s earlier stages of growth:
🌍 1. Solved a BIG, Painful Problem
It seems a bit ridiculous that it took so long for a tool like Canva to exist.
And that’s exactly how Melanie felt, saying that the problem felt so obvious she feared someone else would beat her to it if she didn’t move fast enough.
But hindsight is always 20/20.
Back in the 2000s it probably seemed even more ridiculous that non-designers would need a tool for design.
But luckily for us, Melanie realized this counterintuitive nature of design tools from teaching design programs at university.
Her students struggled to learn the basics.
It took them entire semesters to proficiently learn a new tool.
Plus, for just about everything you wanted to create you needed another tool - which also took a semester to learn.
Think about Canva today - graphics, animations, videos, presentations, documents, graphs and visualizations, and more.
Before Canva you needed: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Powerpoint, Word, Excel, plus a whole bunch more.
Now I’m not suggesting that Canva does any one of these as well as the specialized tool - but it doesn’t need to - nor is it trying to.
Canva wants to be a suite of design tools hosted on one web-based platform. Giving you easier-to-use tools, simple templates, and more ways to collaborate.
Before Canva, this didn’t exist. Before Canva non-designers generally felt hopeless.
Before Canva even launched they had 50k people on their waitlist - this idea was going to be huge!
Now Canva has over 135M MAUs, in over 190 countries, and over 100 languages.
It’s often better to solve a deeply painful problem for a small group of people, than a meh problem for a large group of people.
Well… Canva does both.
Canva solves a deeply painful problem for a MASSIVE group of people.
👶 2. Simplified Everything
Most often, the best solutions are the simplest.
And Canva is a great example.
Canva is the simplest solution.
Canva creates what I like to call a Simplicity Flywheel. Canva is simple to:
Simple to find 🕵️
Google something like “how to design a logo” and guess what pops up on the first page?
Canva.
Try something like “how to choose brand colors”.
Canva.
Okay one more, Google “how to make a YouTube thumbnail”.
Two videos of some guy telling me I can make free thumbnails that convert? Huh?
Oh wait - guess what platform he uses?
Canva.
With the Canva thumbnail tutorial right underneath it by the way!
Canva has done an excellent job with content marketing - popping up on the first page for just about every use case imaginable, but more on this later.
Simple to get started 🌟
Canva has spent countless hours perfecting its onboarding process.
They identified that it wasn’t only the complexity of tools they needed to solve for, but also people’s confidence to design.
This is why they have structured their onboarding to get you to complete a design in a few minutes. If you don’t do it straight away, they make sure to remind you via email.
You get to see how quick and easy the platform is to use. And you make a cool design.
An instant confidence boost.
Canva also provides a ton of content on how to use their platform, how to achieve certain jobs (designs), and how to design better - making their users even more confident in getting started.
You may have noticed a common theme of content here - I promise its section is coming.
Simple to use 🧰
The core feature of Canva.
Create beautiful designs, without all the fuss of a highly technical tool like Photoshop.
It's simple to use - for everybody.
Canva has become their vision of an all-in-one design platform, where anyone can bring their creative visions to life.
No steep learning curves.
No need for more tools.
Simple to share 📢
One of the most critical parts of the flywheel is how simple Canva is to share.
Canva achieves this in a few ways.
The Canva Simplicity Flywheel then starts again.
🪴 3. Created Valuable Content
“The best marketing is education” - Regis McKenna, the key person behind marketing the first Apple Computer.
Canva is a prime example of this quote.
All of their content is made to help users create better designs - specifically on Canva.
Canva now dominates SEO by providing valuable content to their (potential) users.
In fact, Canva didn’t do any paid advertising until after 10M MAUs.
I’ve teased this part of the deep dive for a while now. So I guess I better deliver. Although Canva’s content strategy has been so incredible, I would have to actually try to not let it deliver value to you.
Strategy 🎯
Canva takes a wide-scope, but targeted, actionable approach to their content marketing.
Their key driver for content is creating value-adding pieces that help their users build up their design skills and get the most value out of Canva.
In fact, Canva launched with over one million templates, elements, and fonts.
This removes the friction to design - back to the simplicity.
How 📜
Canva does this by using a jobs-to-be-done intent strategy, i.e., solutions to tasks such as “how to create a LinkedIn carousel”.
They create for super-specific use cases.
But they create for all the use cases. And I mean ALL (the wide-scope part of their strategy).
Canva has six different blogs on just Wedding Photography - and how Canva can fit into it.
I mentioned above how Canva dominates Google searches. This is because they have just put out thousands of high-quality blog posts on just about every design topic imaginable.
They are experts in understanding their potential customers and their search intents - understanding what they could be trying to achieve and connecting them with a specific solution on Canva.
As in the earlier example: “how to choose brand colors” leads you to Canva’s article on their color palette generator, the psychology of color, how to choose colors for your business, and about eight of their YouTube videos on the same topic.
Safe to say I would be able to confidently choose my brand’s colors after this.
Canva gives each potential search intent its own landing page. Which in return builds backlinks for them (other websites linking to Canva). This is intentional.
Canva created tools and pages that can easily be referenced in journalists’ or bloggers’ content - giving Canva more domain authority and higher ranks.
To put this practically, imagine I’m a journalist writing about the rise of SMBs on social media.
I talk about how they’re creating unique content to build an audience. I want to help my readers as much as possible, so I find a tool that can create unique content for social media.
Guess what pops up as my first choice? (not this again… 🤣)
By now I hope you guessed it.
Canva.
And so I link Canva in my article. This not only boosts Canva’s domain authority, but also sends users directly to Canva.
Why 🧩
It’s simple.
Focusing on education and not selling brings your users closer to repeat value - and that’s the best sales tool out there.

Actions you can take to replicate Canva’s success

There is so much to learn from Canva - here are four key actions you can take and replicate into your business:
Introduce scarcity 🔢
One cool way Canva grew before even launching was to use a waitlist.
It’s nothing new nowadays - but still, a lot of people don’t use it.
A waitlist helps test for interest in an idea, but also by using it to limit access to your product, you get the benefit of scarcity.
Canva grew its waitlist super creatively.
They showed people the cool designs and templates from Canva - but you couldn’t get in.
However, you knew that some people were allowed in.
How you may ask?
Canva started to generate buzz within the design community and similar groups who needed design tools.
They reached out to the press, blogs, podcasts, and conferences to offer them early access for their audiences.
That’s how you got in early. That’s how you became a cool kid (at least I’m guessing it made you cool).
Also, anyone who Tweeted about Canva usually “coincidentally” reached the top of the waitlist.
Canva was awesome at generating hype through scarcity.
It shows. 50k people were on the waitlist at launch.
It’s a powerful tool to grow.
People want what they can’t have.
The key to scarcity is you want to be publicly oversubscribed.
You want people to see that others are interested. This makes them think that your product is something worth checking out.
So find a way that you can publicly limit access to your product or a new feature for it.
Find a desperate crowd 🫙
One of the key puzzle pieces to Canva’s success was finding an audience that was desperate for a product to solve their problem - simple and quick designs.
There are tens of millions of freelancers, SMBs, and solopreneurs who lack design skills but need to market themselves and their businesses. And Canva makes this easy.
Canva also entered when Facebook marketing was taking off like a rocketship and the above mentioned people not only needed content - but they needed loads of it.
Canva could do that.
So what does this mean for you?
It’s much harder to make a profitable business by solving a “cherry-on-the-top” problem.
You want to find a problem that people care deeply about. A “whole meal” problem.
Even if this means targeting a smaller group of people. It’s worth sacrificing at the beginning.
Because it will be much easier to market and sell to people who have a desperate need for a solution than people who would just sort of like one.
It becomes much easier to expand after you have your core users. Talking about your core users…
Find your entry wedge customer 🧀
Melanie, Cliff, and Cameron were super smart in recognizing they needed to find and leverage an entry point for Canva (from Fusion Books’ super niche audience).
They perfectly identified SMBs as this wedge to break in.
In 2013, SMBs were flocking to Facebook to market. But the problem once again came back to the complexity of design tools at the time.
These SMBs needed professional-looking designs - cover photos, social media posts, flyers, event banners, etc. - and they needed them quickly and easily.
In stepped Canva.
They positioned themselves to appeal to this huge pain point of SMBs. Specifically their marketing teams (sometimes this was the founders themselves or freelancers serving many SMBs).
Once Canva started to wedge itself in these SMBs, it became easier to convert these individual users into teams using Canva. As well as having the authority to expand to bigger enterprises.
Going to market is hard.
Don’t make it any harder for yourself by trying to target everyone at the beginning.
Find a subset or niche that will help open the door for you.
It also helps your messaging be more targeted, making customer acquisition a bit easier.
Leverage reciprocity 🎁
Refer one person you think would enjoy this newsletter to see this Action to Replicate (for all future deep dives).
I feel like in every one of these deep dives there’s been a consistent golden thread:
Give. Give. Give.
In business, those who give the most get the most.
Want to build trust with potential customers?
Provide real value.
Want to convert more free users to paid users?
Provide more value.
Want to keep users happy and not churning?
Just keep providing value.
Make it seem silly for them to stop using your product.
Build a relationship with your users to the point where they don’t want to stop using your product. And not just because it serves their needs.
But because they also like you and your brand.
And why does giving value through content achieve this so well?
Because not only does it build trust, loyalty, and authority.
But it also leverages reciprocity.
Your users will want to give something of value to you (a referral, a share, or a subscription) because you first gave something of value to them (articles, newsletter, tools, videos, free features)
Reciprocity is powerful. Use it.
submitted by Usual_Brief_6787 to Entrepreneur [link] [comments]


2024.05.05 20:42 Usual_Brief_6787 I spent 30 hours studying how Canva reached $40B. Here's what I learnt:

In just over a decade Canva went from creating yearbooks for Australian high schools to over 135M users and a $40B valuation.
Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht (now husband and wife) founded Fusion Books in 2007 allowing Australian students to design their school yearbooks.
A few years later, they were the biggest supplier of yearbooks in Australia. And the foundations of Canva were put in place.
Then in 2013, the couple along with technical co-founder, Cameron Adams, launched Canva to a 50k-person waiting list.
Along with their mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere - the team had two ambitious goals in building Canva:
  1. Build one of the world’s most valuable companies. 💵
  2. To do the most good they can do. 🌱
Safe to say they achieved both. And in doing so, Canva has become one of the biggest success stories of the last decade - especially from a non-USA startup.
This is the story of how Canva went from Zero to One. 🚀 Click here to read the full deep dive.

Business model: How Canva makes money

Canva’s business model is simple - but slightly different from a typical SaaS.
Usually, SaaS businesses choose between Freemium and Free Trial (among others) to convert users to monetization.
But Canva uses both.
They have an awesome Free Plan that is sufficient for (probably) most people.
Then they have three paid plans: Canva Pro, Canva Teams, and Enterprise.
All of these offer more business features such as brand kits and more specialized features such as their background remover. With Enterprise offering a more tailored experience for companies that will have over 100 users.
And then lastly, although not making money, Canva also offers free premium features for educators and NPOs - in line with them doing good!

Canva’s Growth

Canva launched in 2013. But the idea for it started years before.
Melanie and her then-boyfriend Cliff were studying together at the University of Western Australia.
Melissa was studying Psychology and Commerce but was so passionate about design that she taught design programs to other students.
This is where she realized there was a problem.
It would take her students hours to learn the basics of the design tools on the market and the whole semester to become proficient.
A problem she felt was so obvious and needing to be filled that she dropped out of university to pursue it.
To build up some business acumen and money, as well as to test her hypothesis, she and Cliff started Fusion Books - a customizable yearbook tool for high school students in Australia.
Essentially an extremely niche testing ground for Canva.
The idea was a hit. It became the largest yearbook supplier in Australia and still runs profitably today.
This prompted them to go all-in on Canva.
They found a technical co-founder, Cameron Adams, to build the platform and raised $3M in Seed funding.
And so the journey began.
Canva built hype for their launch by creating a public waitlist - which reached 50k people by the time of launch in 2013.
By the end of 2014, Canva already had over 100k users, launched their iPad app, and had ~2M designs created on the platform.
In 2015, Canva launched Canva for Work (now Canva Pro), reached 50 Canvanauts (employees), surpassed 50M designs created, and reached a valuation of $165M.
In 2017 Canva became profitable and launched a bunch of new features and products, including animations, Canva Print, their Android app, and launched in 100 languages.
Canva became a Unicorn in 2018 with their $40M investment round. And made their first acquisition, buying Zeetings to double down on presentations. They also hit 1B designs.
Their acquisitions and new products continued and by the end of 2021, Canva had over 75M MAUs and was valued at $40B after raising an additional $200M.
As of now, Canva has over 135M MAUs, over 4,000 Canvanauts, and more than 15B designs in the last decade - over 200 new designs created per second.

Key Success Factors (KSFs)

There have been so many reasons for Canva’s rocketship success. Here are four that stood out to me, particularly for Canva’s earlier stages of growth:
🌍 1. Solved a BIG, Painful Problem
It seems a bit ridiculous that it took so long for a tool like Canva to exist.
And that’s exactly how Melanie felt, saying that the problem felt so obvious she feared someone else would beat her to it if she didn’t move fast enough.
But hindsight is always 20/20.
Back in the 2000s it probably seemed even more ridiculous that non-designers would need a tool for design.
But luckily for us, Melanie realized this counterintuitive nature of design tools from teaching design programs at university.
Her students struggled to learn the basics.
It took them entire semesters to proficiently learn a new tool.
Plus, for just about everything you wanted to create you needed another tool - which also took a semester to learn.
Think about Canva today - graphics, animations, videos, presentations, documents, graphs and visualizations, and more.
Before Canva you needed: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Powerpoint, Word, Excel, plus a whole bunch more.
Now I’m not suggesting that Canva does any one of these as well as the specialized tool - but it doesn’t need to - nor is it trying to.
Canva wants to be a suite of design tools hosted on one web-based platform. Giving you easier-to-use tools, simple templates, and more ways to collaborate.
Before Canva, this didn’t exist. Before Canva non-designers generally felt hopeless.
Before Canva even launched they had 50k people on their waitlist - this idea was going to be huge!
Now Canva has over 135M MAUs, in over 190 countries, and over 100 languages.
It’s often better to solve a deeply painful problem for a small group of people, than a meh problem for a large group of people.
Well… Canva does both.
Canva solves a deeply painful problem for a MASSIVE group of people.
👶 2. Simplified Everything
Most often, the best solutions are the simplest.
And Canva is a great example.
Canva is the simplest solution.
Canva creates what I like to call a Simplicity Flywheel. Canva is simple to:
Simple to find 🕵️
Google something like “how to design a logo” and guess what pops up on the first page?
Canva.
Try something like “how to choose brand colors”.
Canva.
Okay one more, Google “how to make a YouTube thumbnail”.
Two videos of some guy telling me I can make free thumbnails that convert? Huh?
Oh wait - guess what platform he uses?
Canva.
With the Canva thumbnail tutorial right underneath it by the way!
Canva has done an excellent job with content marketing - popping up on the first page for just about every use case imaginable, but more on this later.
Simple to get started 🌟
Canva has spent countless hours perfecting its onboarding process.
They identified that it wasn’t only the complexity of tools they needed to solve for, but also people’s confidence to design.
This is why they have structured their onboarding to get you to complete a design in a few minutes. If you don’t do it straight away, they make sure to remind you via email.
You get to see how quick and easy the platform is to use. And you make a cool design.
An instant confidence boost.
Canva also provides a ton of content on how to use their platform, how to achieve certain jobs (designs), and how to design better - making their users even more confident in getting started.
You may have noticed a common theme of content here - I promise its section is coming.
Simple to use 🧰
The core feature of Canva.
Create beautiful designs, without all the fuss of a highly technical tool like Photoshop.
It's simple to use - for everybody.
Canva has become their vision of an all-in-one design platform, where anyone can bring their creative visions to life.
No steep learning curves.
No need for more tools.
Simple to share 📢
One of the most critical parts of the flywheel is how simple Canva is to share.
Canva achieves this in a few ways.
The Canva Simplicity Flywheel then starts again.
🪴 3. Created Valuable Content
“The best marketing is education” - Regis McKenna, the key person behind marketing the first Apple Computer.
Canva is a prime example of this quote.
All of their content is made to help users create better designs - specifically on Canva.
Canva now dominates SEO by providing valuable content to their (potential) users.
In fact, Canva didn’t do any paid advertising until after 10M MAUs.
I’ve teased this part of the deep dive for a while now. So I guess I better deliver. Although Canva’s content strategy has been so incredible, I would have to actually try to not let it deliver value to you.
Strategy 🎯
Canva takes a wide-scope, but targeted, actionable approach to their content marketing.
Their key driver for content is creating value-adding pieces that help their users build up their design skills and get the most value out of Canva.
In fact, Canva launched with over one million templates, elements, and fonts.
This removes the friction to design - back to the simplicity.
How 📜
Canva does this by using a jobs-to-be-done intent strategy, i.e., solutions to tasks such as “how to create a LinkedIn carousel”.
They create for super-specific use cases.
But they create for all the use cases. And I mean ALL (the wide-scope part of their strategy).
Canva has six different blogs on just Wedding Photography - and how Canva can fit into it.
I mentioned above how Canva dominates Google searches. This is because they have just put out thousands of high-quality blog posts on just about every design topic imaginable.
They are experts in understanding their potential customers and their search intents - understanding what they could be trying to achieve and connecting them with a specific solution on Canva.
As in the earlier example: “how to choose brand colors” leads you to Canva’s article on their color palette generator, the psychology of color, how to choose colors for your business, and about eight of their YouTube videos on the same topic.
Safe to say I would be able to confidently choose my brand’s colors after this.
Canva gives each potential search intent its own landing page. Which in return builds backlinks for them (other websites linking to Canva). This is intentional.
Canva created tools and pages that can easily be referenced in journalists’ or bloggers’ content - giving Canva more domain authority and higher ranks.
To put this practically, imagine I’m a journalist writing about the rise of SMBs on social media.
I talk about how they’re creating unique content to build an audience. I want to help my readers as much as possible, so I find a tool that can create unique content for social media.
Guess what pops up as my first choice? (not this again… 🤣)
By now I hope you guessed it.
Canva.
And so I link Canva in my article. This not only boosts Canva’s domain authority, but also sends users directly to Canva.
Why 🧩
It’s simple.
Focusing on education and not selling brings your users closer to repeat value - and that’s the best sales tool out there.

Actions you can take to replicate Canva’s success

There is so much to learn from Canva - here are four key actions you can take and replicate into your business:
Introduce scarcity 🔢
One cool way Canva grew before even launching was to use a waitlist.
It’s nothing new nowadays - but still, a lot of people don’t use it.
A waitlist helps test for interest in an idea, but also by using it to limit access to your product, you get the benefit of scarcity.
Canva grew its waitlist super creatively.
They showed people the cool designs and templates from Canva - but you couldn’t get in.
However, you knew that some people were allowed in.
How you may ask?
Canva started to generate buzz within the design community and similar groups who needed design tools.
They reached out to the press, blogs, podcasts, and conferences to offer them early access for their audiences.
That’s how you got in early. That’s how you became a cool kid (at least I’m guessing it made you cool).
Also, anyone who Tweeted about Canva usually “coincidentally” reached the top of the waitlist.
Canva was awesome at generating hype through scarcity.
It shows. 50k people were on the waitlist at launch.
It’s a powerful tool to grow.
People want what they can’t have.
The key to scarcity is you want to be publicly oversubscribed.
You want people to see that others are interested. This makes them think that your product is something worth checking out.
So find a way that you can publicly limit access to your product or a new feature for it.
Find a desperate crowd 🫙
One of the key puzzle pieces to Canva’s success was finding an audience that was desperate for a product to solve their problem - simple and quick designs.
There are tens of millions of freelancers, SMBs, and solopreneurs who lack design skills but need to market themselves and their businesses. And Canva makes this easy.
Canva also entered when Facebook marketing was taking off like a rocketship and the above mentioned people not only needed content - but they needed loads of it.
Canva could do that.
So what does this mean for you?
It’s much harder to make a profitable business by solving a “cherry-on-the-top” problem.
You want to find a problem that people care deeply about. A “whole meal” problem.
Even if this means targeting a smaller group of people. It’s worth sacrificing at the beginning.
Because it will be much easier to market and sell to people who have a desperate need for a solution than people who would just sort of like one.
It becomes much easier to expand after you have your core users. Talking about your core users…
Find your entry wedge customer 🧀
Melanie, Cliff, and Cameron were super smart in recognizing they needed to find and leverage an entry point for Canva (from Fusion Books’ super niche audience).
They perfectly identified SMBs as this wedge to break in.
In 2013, SMBs were flocking to Facebook to market. But the problem once again came back to the complexity of design tools at the time.
These SMBs needed professional-looking designs - cover photos, social media posts, flyers, event banners, etc. - and they needed them quickly and easily.
In stepped Canva.
They positioned themselves to appeal to this huge pain point of SMBs. Specifically their marketing teams (sometimes this was the founders themselves or freelancers serving many SMBs).
Once Canva started to wedge itself in these SMBs, it became easier to convert these individual users into teams using Canva. As well as having the authority to expand to bigger enterprises.
Going to market is hard.
Don’t make it any harder for yourself by trying to target everyone at the beginning.
Find a subset or niche that will help open the door for you.
It also helps your messaging be more targeted, making customer acquisition a bit easier.
Leverage reciprocity 🎁
Refer one person you think would enjoy this newsletter to see this Action to Replicate (for all future deep dives).
I feel like in every one of these deep dives there’s been a consistent golden thread:
Give. Give. Give.
In business, those who give the most get the most.
Want to build trust with potential customers?
Provide real value.
Want to convert more free users to paid users?
Provide more value.
Want to keep users happy and not churning?
Just keep providing value.
Make it seem silly for them to stop using your product.
Build a relationship with your users to the point where they don’t want to stop using your product. And not just because it serves their needs.
But because they also like you and your brand.
And why does giving value through content achieve this so well?
Because not only does it build trust, loyalty, and authority.
But it also leverages reciprocity.
Your users will want to give something of value to you (a referral, a share, or a subscription) because you first gave something of value to them (articles, newsletter, tools, videos, free features)
Reciprocity is powerful. Use it.
submitted by Usual_Brief_6787 to EntrepreneurRideAlong [link] [comments]


2024.05.05 19:55 PcChip Installed pinta, 137 new certificates added to trust store

Hello, I just installed pinta because I wanted a simple paint program, but during the install process it said 137 new certificates were added to my trust store (!)

I'm not okay with this at all, any idea how or why this happened, and how to remove them?
I uninstalled pinta but didn't get any messages about these being removed
log:
```
Setting up pinta (1.6-2.1) ... Processing triggers for mailcap (3.70+nmu1ubuntu1) ... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.26-1ubuntu5) ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.17-2) ... Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.38-1ubuntu6.2) ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.11.2-3) ... Processing triggers for ca-certificates (20230311ubuntu1) ... Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs... 0 added, 0 removed; done. Running hooks in /etc/ca-certificates/update.d... Updating Mono key store Mono Certificate Store Sync - version 6.8.0.105 Populate Mono certificate store from a concatenated list of certificates. Copyright 2002, 2003 Motus Technologies. Copyright 2004-2008 Novell. BSD licensed.
Importing into legacy system store: I already trust 0, your new list has 137 Certificate added: CN=ACCVRAIZ1, OU=PKIACCV, O=ACCV, C=ES Certificate added: C=ES, O=FNMT-RCM, OU=AC RAIZ FNMT-RCM Certificate added: C=ES, O=FNMT-RCM, OU=Ceres, OID.2.5.4.97=VATES-Q2826004J, CN=AC RAIZ FNMT-RCM SERVIDORES SEGUROS Certificate added: SERIALNUMBER=G63287510, C=ES, O=ANF Autoridad de Certificacion, OU=ANF CA Raiz, CN=ANF Secure Server Root CA Certificate added: C=IT, L=Milan, O=Actalis S.p.A./03358520967, CN=Actalis Authentication Root CA Certificate added: C=US, O=AffirmTrust, CN=AffirmTrust Commercial Certificate added: C=US, O=AffirmTrust, CN=AffirmTrust Networking Certificate added: C=US, O=AffirmTrust, CN=AffirmTrust Premium Certificate added: C=US, O=AffirmTrust, CN=AffirmTrust Premium ECC Certificate added: C=US, O=Amazon, CN=Amazon Root CA 1 Certificate added: C=US, O=Amazon, CN=Amazon Root CA 2 Certificate added: C=US, O=Amazon, CN=Amazon Root CA 3 Certificate added: C=US, O=Amazon, CN=Amazon Root CA 4 Certificate added: CN=Atos TrustedRoot 2011, O=Atos, C=DE Certificate added: C=ES, CN=Autoridad de Certificacion Firmaprofesional CIF A62634068 Certificate added: C=ES, CN=Autoridad de Certificacion Firmaprofesional CIF A62634068 Certificate added: C=IE, O=Baltimore, OU=CyberTrust, CN=Baltimore CyberTrust Root Certificate added: C=NO, O=Buypass AS-983163327, CN=Buypass Class 2 Root CA Certificate added: C=NO, O=Buypass AS-983163327, CN=Buypass Class 3 Root CA Certificate added: C=SK, L=Bratislava, O=Disig a.s., CN=CA Disig Root R2 Certificate added: C=CN, O=China Financial Certification Authority, CN=CFCA EV ROOT Certificate added: C=GB, S=Greater Manchester, L=Salford, O=COMODO CA Limited, CN=COMODO Certification Authority Certificate added: C=GB, S=Greater Manchester, L=Salford, O=COMODO CA Limited, CN=COMODO ECC Certification Authority Certificate added: C=GB, S=Greater Manchester, L=Salford, O=COMODO CA Limited, CN=COMODO RSA Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, O=Certainly, CN=Certainly Root E1 Certificate added: C=US, O=Certainly, CN=Certainly Root R1 Certificate added: C=FR, O=Dhimyotis, CN=Certigna Certificate added: C=FR, O=Dhimyotis, OU=0002 48146308100036, CN=Certigna Root CA Certificate added: C=PL, O=Asseco Data Systems S.A., OU=Certum Certification Authority, CN=Certum EC-384 CA Certificate added: C=PL, O=Unizeto Technologies S.A., OU=Certum Certification Authority, CN=Certum Trusted Network CA Certificate added: C=PL, O=Unizeto Technologies S.A., OU=Certum Certification Authority, CN=Certum Trusted Network CA 2 Certificate added: C=PL, O=Asseco Data Systems S.A., OU=Certum Certification Authority, CN=Certum Trusted Root CA Certificate added: C=GB, S=Greater Manchester, L=Salford, O=Comodo CA Limited, CN=AAA Certificate Services Certificate added: C=DE, O=D-Trust GmbH, CN=D-TRUST BR Root CA 1 2020 Certificate added: C=DE, O=D-Trust GmbH, CN=D-TRUST EV Root CA 1 2020 Certificate added: C=DE, O=D-Trust GmbH, CN=D-TRUST Root Class 3 CA 2 2009 Certificate added: C=DE, O=D-Trust GmbH, CN=D-TRUST Root Class 3 CA 2 EV 2009 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Assured ID Root CA Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Assured ID Root G2 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Assured ID Root G3 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Global Root CA Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Global Root G2 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Global Root G3 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA Certificate added: C=US, O="DigiCert, Inc.", CN=DigiCert TLS ECC P384 Root G5 Certificate added: C=US, O="DigiCert, Inc.", CN=DigiCert TLS RSA4096 Root G5 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Trusted Root G4 Certificate added: C=TR, L=Ankara, O=E-Tuğra EBG Bilişim Teknolojileri ve Hizmetleri A.Ş., OU=E-Tugra Sertifikasyon Merkezi, CN=E-Tugra Certification Authority Certificate added: C=TR, L=Ankara, O=E-Tugra EBG A.S., OU=E-Tugra Trust Center, CN=E-Tugra Global Root CA ECC v3 Certificate added: C=TR, L=Ankara, O=E-Tugra EBG A.S., OU=E-Tugra Trust Center, CN=E-Tugra Global Root CA RSA v3 Certificate added: O=Entrust.net, OU=www.entrust.net/CPS\_2048 incorp. by ref. (limits liab.), OU=(c) 1999 Entrust.net Limited, CN=Entrust.net Certification Authority (2048) Certificate added: C=US, O="Entrust, Inc.", OU=www.entrust.net/CPS is incorporated by reference, OU="(c) 2006 Entrust, Inc.", CN=Entrust Root Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, O="Entrust, Inc.", OU=See www.entrust.net/legal-terms, OU="(c) 2012 Entrust, Inc. - for authorized use only", CN=Entrust Root Certification Authority - EC1 Certificate added: C=US, O="Entrust, Inc.", OU=See www.entrust.net/legal-terms, OU="(c) 2009 Entrust, Inc. - for authorized use only", CN=Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2 Certificate added: C=US, O="Entrust, Inc.", OU=See www.entrust.net/legal-terms, OU="(c) 2015 Entrust, Inc. - for authorized use only", CN=Entrust Root Certification Authority - G4 Certificate added: C=CN, O="GUANG DONG CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY CO.,LTD.", CN=GDCA TrustAUTH R5 ROOT Certificate added: C=AT, O=e-commerce monitoring GmbH, CN=GLOBALTRUST 2020 Certificate added: C=US, O=Google Trust Services LLC, CN=GTS Root R1 Certificate added: C=US, O=Google Trust Services LLC, CN=GTS Root R2 Certificate added: C=US, O=Google Trust Services LLC, CN=GTS Root R3 Certificate added: C=US, O=Google Trust Services LLC, CN=GTS Root R4 Certificate added: OU=GlobalSign ECC Root CA - R4, O=GlobalSign, CN=GlobalSign Certificate added: OU=GlobalSign ECC Root CA - R5, O=GlobalSign, CN=GlobalSign Certificate added: C=BE, O=GlobalSign nv-sa, OU=Root CA, CN=GlobalSign Root CA Certificate added: OU=GlobalSign Root CA - R3, O=GlobalSign, CN=GlobalSign Certificate added: OU=GlobalSign Root CA - R6, O=GlobalSign, CN=GlobalSign Certificate added: C=BE, O=GlobalSign nv-sa, CN=GlobalSign Root E46 Certificate added: C=BE, O=GlobalSign nv-sa, CN=GlobalSign Root R46 Certificate added: C=US, O="The Go Daddy Group, Inc.", OU=Go Daddy Class 2 Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=Arizona, L=Scottsdale, O="GoDaddy.com, Inc.", CN=Go Daddy Root Certificate Authority - G2 Certificate added: C=GR, O=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions CA, CN=HARICA TLS ECC Root CA 2021 Certificate added: C=GR, O=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions CA, CN=HARICA TLS RSA Root CA 2021 Certificate added: C=GR, L=Athens, O=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions Cert. Authority, CN=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions ECC RootCA 2015 Certificate added: C=GR, L=Athens, O=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions Cert. Authority, CN=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions RootCA 2015 Certificate added: C=TW, O="Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd.", CN=HiPKI Root CA - G1 Certificate added: C=HK, O=Hongkong Post, CN=Hongkong Post Root CA 1 Certificate added: C=HK, S=Hong Kong, L=Hong Kong, O=Hongkong Post, CN=Hongkong Post Root CA 3 Certificate added: C=US, O=Internet Security Research Group, CN=ISRG Root X1 Certificate added: C=US, O=Internet Security Research Group, CN=ISRG Root X2 Certificate added: C=US, O=IdenTrust, CN=IdenTrust Commercial Root CA 1 Certificate added: C=US, O=IdenTrust, CN=IdenTrust Public Sector Root CA 1 Certificate added: C=ES, O=IZENPE S.A., CN=Izenpe.com Certificate added: C=HU, L=Budapest, O=Microsec Ltd., CN=Microsec e-Szigno Root CA 2009, E=info@e-szigno.hu Certificate added: C=US, O=Microsoft Corporation, CN=Microsoft ECC Root Certificate Authority 2017 Certificate added: C=US, O=Microsoft Corporation, CN=Microsoft RSA Root Certificate Authority 2017 Certificate added: C=KR, O=NAVER BUSINESS PLATFORM Corp., CN=NAVER Global Root Certification Authority Certificate added: C=HU, L=Budapest, O=NetLock Kft., OU=Tanúsítványkiadók (Certification Services), CN=NetLock Arany (Class Gold) Főtanúsítvány Certificate added: C=CH, O=WISeKey, OU=OISTE Foundation Endorsed, CN=OISTE WISeKey Global Root GB CA Certificate added: C=CH, O=WISeKey, OU=OISTE Foundation Endorsed, CN=OISTE WISeKey Global Root GC CA Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 1 G3 Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 2 Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 2 G3 Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 3 Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 3 G3 Certificate added: C=US, S=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corporation, CN=SSL.com EV Root Certification Authority ECC Certificate added: C=US, S=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corporation, CN=SSL.com EV Root Certification Authority RSA R2 Certificate added: C=US, S=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corporation, CN=SSL.com Root Certification Authority ECC Certificate added: C=US, S=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corporation, CN=SSL.com Root Certification Authority RSA Certificate added: C=PL, O=Krajowa Izba Rozliczeniowa S.A., CN=SZAFIR ROOT CA2 Certificate added: C=JP, O="Japan Certification Services, Inc.", CN=SecureSign RootCA11 Certificate added: C=US, O=SecureTrust Corporation, CN=SecureTrust CA Certificate added: C=US, O=SecureTrust Corporation, CN=Secure Global CA Certificate added: C=JP, O="SECOM Trust Systems CO.,LTD.", CN=Security Communication ECC RootCA1 Certificate added: C=JP, O="SECOM Trust Systems CO.,LTD.", OU=Security Communication RootCA2 Certificate added: C=JP, O="SECOM Trust Systems CO.,LTD.", CN=Security Communication RootCA3 Certificate added: C=JP, O=SECOM Trust.net, OU=Security Communication RootCA1 Certificate added: C=US, O="Starfield Technologies, Inc.", OU=Starfield Class 2 Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=Arizona, L=Scottsdale, O="Starfield Technologies, Inc.", CN=Starfield Root Certificate Authority - G2 Certificate added: C=US, S=Arizona, L=Scottsdale, O="Starfield Technologies, Inc.", CN=Starfield Services Root Certificate Authority - G2 Certificate added: C=CH, O=SwissSign AG, CN=SwissSign Gold CA - G2 Certificate added: C=CH, O=SwissSign AG, CN=SwissSign Silver CA - G2 Certificate added: C=DE, O=T-Systems Enterprise Services GmbH, OU=T-Systems Trust Center, CN=T-TeleSec GlobalRoot Class 2 Certificate added: C=DE, O=T-Systems Enterprise Services GmbH, OU=T-Systems Trust Center, CN=T-TeleSec GlobalRoot Class 3 Certificate added: C=TR, L=Gebze - Kocaeli, O=Turkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu - TUBITAK, OU=Kamu Sertifikasyon Merkezi - Kamu SM, CN=TUBITAK Kamu SM SSL Kok Sertifik asi - Surum 1 Certificate added: C=TW, O=TAIWAN-CA, OU=Root CA, CN=TWCA Global Root CA Certificate added: C=TW, O=TAIWAN-CA, OU=Root CA, CN=TWCA Root Certification Authority Certificate added: O=TeliaSonera, CN=TeliaSonera Root CA v1 Certificate added: C=FI, O=Telia Finland Oyj, CN=Telia Root CA v2 Certificate added: C=US, S=Illinois, L=Chicago, O="Trustwave Holdings, Inc.", CN=Trustwave Global Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=Illinois, L=Chicago, O="Trustwave Holdings, Inc.", CN=Trustwave Global ECC P256 Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=Illinois, L=Chicago, O="Trustwave Holdings, Inc.", CN=Trustwave Global ECC P384 Certification Authority Certificate added: C=TN, O=Agence Nationale de Certification Electronique, CN=TunTrust Root CA Certificate added: C=CN, O=UniTrust, CN=UCA Extended Validation Root Certificate added: C=CN, O=UniTrust, CN=UCA Global G2 Root Certificate added: C=US, S=New Jersey, L=Jersey City, O=The USERTRUST Network, CN=USERTrust ECC Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=New Jersey, L=Jersey City, O=The USERTRUST Network, CN=USERTrust RSA Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, OU=www.xrampsecurity.com, O=XRamp Security Services Inc, CN=XRamp Global Certification Authority Certificate added: C=RO, O=certSIGN, OU=certSIGN ROOT CA Certificate added: C=RO, O=CERTSIGN SA, OU=certSIGN ROOT CA G2 Certificate added: C=HU, L=Budapest, O=Microsec Ltd., OID.2.5.4.97=VATHU-23584497, CN=e-Szigno Root CA 2017 Certificate added: C=TW, O="Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd.", OU=ePKI Root Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, OU=emSign PKI, O=eMudhra Inc, CN=emSign ECC Root CA - C3 Certificate added: C=IN, OU=emSign PKI, O=eMudhra Technologies Limited, CN=emSign ECC Root CA - G3 Certificate added: C=US, OU=emSign PKI, O=eMudhra Inc, CN=emSign Root CA - C1 Certificate added: C=IN, OU=emSign PKI, O=eMudhra Technologies Limited, CN=emSign Root CA - G1 Certificate added: C=CN, O="iTrusChina Co.,Ltd.", CN=vTrus ECC Root CA Certificate added: C=CN, O="iTrusChina Co.,Ltd.", CN=vTrus Root CA 137 new root certificates were added to your trust store. Import process completed.
Importing into BTLS system store: I already trust 0, your new list has 137 Certificate added: CN=ACCVRAIZ1, OU=PKIACCV, O=ACCV, C=ES Certificate added: C=ES, O=FNMT-RCM, OU=AC RAIZ FNMT-RCM Certificate added: C=ES, O=FNMT-RCM, OU=Ceres, OID.2.5.4.97=VATES-Q2826004J, CN=AC RAIZ FNMT-RCM SERVIDORES SEGUROS Certificate added: SERIALNUMBER=G63287510, C=ES, O=ANF Autoridad de Certificacion, OU=ANF CA Raiz, CN=ANF Secure Server Root CA Certificate added: C=IT, L=Milan, O=Actalis S.p.A./03358520967, CN=Actalis Authentication Root CA Certificate added: C=US, O=AffirmTrust, CN=AffirmTrust Commercial Certificate added: C=US, O=AffirmTrust, CN=AffirmTrust Networking Certificate added: C=US, O=AffirmTrust, CN=AffirmTrust Premium Certificate added: C=US, O=AffirmTrust, CN=AffirmTrust Premium ECC Certificate added: C=US, O=Amazon, CN=Amazon Root CA 1 Certificate added: C=US, O=Amazon, CN=Amazon Root CA 2 Certificate added: C=US, O=Amazon, CN=Amazon Root CA 3 Certificate added: C=US, O=Amazon, CN=Amazon Root CA 4 Certificate added: CN=Atos TrustedRoot 2011, O=Atos, C=DE Certificate added: C=ES, CN=Autoridad de Certificacion Firmaprofesional CIF A62634068 Certificate added: C=ES, CN=Autoridad de Certificacion Firmaprofesional CIF A62634068 Certificate added: C=IE, O=Baltimore, OU=CyberTrust, CN=Baltimore CyberTrust Root Certificate added: C=NO, O=Buypass AS-983163327, CN=Buypass Class 2 Root CA Certificate added: C=NO, O=Buypass AS-983163327, CN=Buypass Class 3 Root CA Certificate added: C=SK, L=Bratislava, O=Disig a.s., CN=CA Disig Root R2 Certificate added: C=CN, O=China Financial Certification Authority, CN=CFCA EV ROOT Certificate added: C=GB, S=Greater Manchester, L=Salford, O=COMODO CA Limited, CN=COMODO Certification Authority Certificate added: C=GB, S=Greater Manchester, L=Salford, O=COMODO CA Limited, CN=COMODO ECC Certification Authority Certificate added: C=GB, S=Greater Manchester, L=Salford, O=COMODO CA Limited, CN=COMODO RSA Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, O=Certainly, CN=Certainly Root E1 Certificate added: C=US, O=Certainly, CN=Certainly Root R1 Certificate added: C=FR, O=Dhimyotis, CN=Certigna Certificate added: C=FR, O=Dhimyotis, OU=0002 48146308100036, CN=Certigna Root CA Certificate added: C=PL, O=Asseco Data Systems S.A., OU=Certum Certification Authority, CN=Certum EC-384 CA Certificate added: C=PL, O=Unizeto Technologies S.A., OU=Certum Certification Authority, CN=Certum Trusted Network CA Certificate added: C=PL, O=Unizeto Technologies S.A., OU=Certum Certification Authority, CN=Certum Trusted Network CA 2 Certificate added: C=PL, O=Asseco Data Systems S.A., OU=Certum Certification Authority, CN=Certum Trusted Root CA Certificate added: C=GB, S=Greater Manchester, L=Salford, O=Comodo CA Limited, CN=AAA Certificate Services Certificate added: C=DE, O=D-Trust GmbH, CN=D-TRUST BR Root CA 1 2020 Certificate added: C=DE, O=D-Trust GmbH, CN=D-TRUST EV Root CA 1 2020 Certificate added: C=DE, O=D-Trust GmbH, CN=D-TRUST Root Class 3 CA 2 2009 Certificate added: C=DE, O=D-Trust GmbH, CN=D-TRUST Root Class 3 CA 2 EV 2009 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Assured ID Root CA Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Assured ID Root G2 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Assured ID Root G3 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Global Root CA Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Global Root G2 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Global Root G3 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA Certificate added: C=US, O="DigiCert, Inc.", CN=DigiCert TLS ECC P384 Root G5 Certificate added: C=US, O="DigiCert, Inc.", CN=DigiCert TLS RSA4096 Root G5 Certificate added: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, OU=www.digicert.com, CN=DigiCert Trusted Root G4 Certificate added: C=TR, L=Ankara, O=E-Tuğra EBG Bilişim Teknolojileri ve Hizmetleri A.Ş., OU=E-Tugra Sertifikasyon Merkezi, CN=E-Tugra Certification Authority Certificate added: C=TR, L=Ankara, O=E-Tugra EBG A.S., OU=E-Tugra Trust Center, CN=E-Tugra Global Root CA ECC v3 Certificate added: C=TR, L=Ankara, O=E-Tugra EBG A.S., OU=E-Tugra Trust Center, CN=E-Tugra Global Root CA RSA v3 Certificate added: O=Entrust.net, OU=www.entrust.net/CPS\_2048 incorp. by ref. (limits liab.), OU=(c) 1999 Entrust.net Limited, CN=Entrust.net Certification Authority (2048) Certificate added: C=US, O="Entrust, Inc.", OU=www.entrust.net/CPS is incorporated by reference, OU="(c) 2006 Entrust, Inc.", CN=Entrust Root Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, O="Entrust, Inc.", OU=See www.entrust.net/legal-terms, OU="(c) 2012 Entrust, Inc. - for authorized use only", CN=Entrust Root Certification Authority - EC1 Certificate added: C=US, O="Entrust, Inc.", OU=See www.entrust.net/legal-terms, OU="(c) 2009 Entrust, Inc. - for authorized use only", CN=Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2 Certificate added: C=US, O="Entrust, Inc.", OU=See www.entrust.net/legal-terms, OU="(c) 2015 Entrust, Inc. - for authorized use only", CN=Entrust Root Certification Authority - G4 Certificate added: C=CN, O="GUANG DONG CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY CO.,LTD.", CN=GDCA TrustAUTH R5 ROOT Certificate added: C=AT, O=e-commerce monitoring GmbH, CN=GLOBALTRUST 2020 Certificate added: C=US, O=Google Trust Services LLC, CN=GTS Root R1 Certificate added: C=US, O=Google Trust Services LLC, CN=GTS Root R2 Certificate added: C=US, O=Google Trust Services LLC, CN=GTS Root R3 Certificate added: C=US, O=Google Trust Services LLC, CN=GTS Root R4 Certificate added: OU=GlobalSign ECC Root CA - R4, O=GlobalSign, CN=GlobalSign Certificate added: OU=GlobalSign ECC Root CA - R5, O=GlobalSign, CN=GlobalSign Certificate added: C=BE, O=GlobalSign nv-sa, OU=Root CA, CN=GlobalSign Root CA Certificate added: OU=GlobalSign Root CA - R3, O=GlobalSign, CN=GlobalSign Certificate added: OU=GlobalSign Root CA - R6, O=GlobalSign, CN=GlobalSign Certificate added: C=BE, O=GlobalSign nv-sa, CN=GlobalSign Root E46 Certificate added: C=BE, O=GlobalSign nv-sa, CN=GlobalSign Root R46 Certificate added: C=US, O="The Go Daddy Group, Inc.", OU=Go Daddy Class 2 Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=Arizona, L=Scottsdale, O="GoDaddy.com, Inc.", CN=Go Daddy Root Certificate Authority - G2 Certificate added: C=GR, O=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions CA, CN=HARICA TLS ECC Root CA 2021 Certificate added: C=GR, O=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions CA, CN=HARICA TLS RSA Root CA 2021 Certificate added: C=GR, L=Athens, O=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions Cert. Authority, CN=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions ECC RootCA 2015 Certificate added: C=GR, L=Athens, O=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions Cert. Authority, CN=Hellenic Academic and Research Institutions RootCA 2015 Certificate added: C=TW, O="Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd.", CN=HiPKI Root CA - G1 Certificate added: C=HK, O=Hongkong Post, CN=Hongkong Post Root CA 1 Certificate added: C=HK, S=Hong Kong, L=Hong Kong, O=Hongkong Post, CN=Hongkong Post Root CA 3 Certificate added: C=US, O=Internet Security Research Group, CN=ISRG Root X1 Certificate added: C=US, O=Internet Security Research Group, CN=ISRG Root X2 Certificate added: C=US, O=IdenTrust, CN=IdenTrust Commercial Root CA 1 Certificate added: C=US, O=IdenTrust, CN=IdenTrust Public Sector Root CA 1 Certificate added: C=ES, O=IZENPE S.A., CN=Izenpe.com Certificate added: C=HU, L=Budapest, O=Microsec Ltd., CN=Microsec e-Szigno Root CA 2009, E=info@e-szigno.hu Certificate added: C=US, O=Microsoft Corporation, CN=Microsoft ECC Root Certificate Authority 2017 Certificate added: C=US, O=Microsoft Corporation, CN=Microsoft RSA Root Certificate Authority 2017 Certificate added: C=KR, O=NAVER BUSINESS PLATFORM Corp., CN=NAVER Global Root Certification Authority Certificate added: C=HU, L=Budapest, O=NetLock Kft., OU=Tanúsítványkiadók (Certification Services), CN=NetLock Arany (Class Gold) Főtanúsítvány Certificate added: C=CH, O=WISeKey, OU=OISTE Foundation Endorsed, CN=OISTE WISeKey Global Root GB CA Certificate added: C=CH, O=WISeKey, OU=OISTE Foundation Endorsed, CN=OISTE WISeKey Global Root GC CA Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 1 G3 Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 2 Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 2 G3 Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 3 Certificate added: C=BM, O=QuoVadis Limited, CN=QuoVadis Root CA 3 G3 Certificate added: C=US, S=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corporation, CN=SSL.com EV Root Certification Authority ECC Certificate added: C=US, S=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corporation, CN=SSL.com EV Root Certification Authority RSA R2 Certificate added: C=US, S=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corporation, CN=SSL.com Root Certification Authority ECC Certificate added: C=US, S=Texas, L=Houston, O=SSL Corporation, CN=SSL.com Root Certification Authority RSA Certificate added: C=PL, O=Krajowa Izba Rozliczeniowa S.A., CN=SZAFIR ROOT CA2 Certificate added: C=JP, O="Japan Certification Services, Inc.", CN=SecureSign RootCA11 Certificate added: C=US, O=SecureTrust Corporation, CN=SecureTrust CA Certificate added: C=US, O=SecureTrust Corporation, CN=Secure Global CA Certificate added: C=JP, O="SECOM Trust Systems CO.,LTD.", CN=Security Communication ECC RootCA1 Certificate added: C=JP, O="SECOM Trust Systems CO.,LTD.", OU=Security Communication RootCA2 Certificate added: C=JP, O="SECOM Trust Systems CO.,LTD.", CN=Security Communication RootCA3 Certificate added: C=JP, O=SECOM Trust.net, OU=Security Communication RootCA1 Certificate added: C=US, O="Starfield Technologies, Inc.", OU=Starfield Class 2 Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=Arizona, L=Scottsdale, O="Starfield Technologies, Inc.", CN=Starfield Root Certificate Authority - G2 Certificate added: C=US, S=Arizona, L=Scottsdale, O="Starfield Technologies, Inc.", CN=Starfield Services Root Certificate Authority - G2 Certificate added: C=CH, O=SwissSign AG, CN=SwissSign Gold CA - G2 Certificate added: C=CH, O=SwissSign AG, CN=SwissSign Silver CA - G2 Certificate added: C=DE, O=T-Systems Enterprise Services GmbH, OU=T-Systems Trust Center, CN=T-TeleSec GlobalRoot Class 2 Certificate added: C=DE, O=T-Systems Enterprise Services GmbH, OU=T-Systems Trust Center, CN=T-TeleSec GlobalRoot Class 3 Certificate added: C=TR, L=Gebze - Kocaeli, O=Turkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu - TUBITAK, OU=Kamu Sertifikasyon Merkezi - Kamu SM, CN=TUBITAK Kamu SM SSL Kok Sertifik asi - Surum 1 Certificate added: C=TW, O=TAIWAN-CA, OU=Root CA, CN=TWCA Global Root CA Certificate added: C=TW, O=TAIWAN-CA, OU=Root CA, CN=TWCA Root Certification Authority Certificate added: O=TeliaSonera, CN=TeliaSonera Root CA v1 Certificate added: C=FI, O=Telia Finland Oyj, CN=Telia Root CA v2 Certificate added: C=US, S=Illinois, L=Chicago, O="Trustwave Holdings, Inc.", CN=Trustwave Global Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=Illinois, L=Chicago, O="Trustwave Holdings, Inc.", CN=Trustwave Global ECC P256 Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=Illinois, L=Chicago, O="Trustwave Holdings, Inc.", CN=Trustwave Global ECC P384 Certification Authority Certificate added: C=TN, O=Agence Nationale de Certification Electronique, CN=TunTrust Root CA Certificate added: C=CN, O=UniTrust, CN=UCA Extended Validation Root Certificate added: C=CN, O=UniTrust, CN=UCA Global G2 Root Certificate added: C=US, S=New Jersey, L=Jersey City, O=The USERTRUST Network, CN=USERTrust ECC Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, S=New Jersey, L=Jersey City, O=The USERTRUST Network, CN=USERTrust RSA Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, OU=www.xrampsecurity.com, O=XRamp Security Services Inc, CN=XRamp Global Certification Authority Certificate added: C=RO, O=certSIGN, OU=certSIGN ROOT CA Certificate added: C=RO, O=CERTSIGN SA, OU=certSIGN ROOT CA G2 Certificate added: C=HU, L=Budapest, O=Microsec Ltd., OID.2.5.4.97=VATHU-23584497, CN=e-Szigno Root CA 2017 Certificate added: C=TW, O="Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd.", OU=ePKI Root Certification Authority Certificate added: C=US, OU=emSign PKI, O=eMudhra Inc, CN=emSign ECC Root CA - C3 Certificate added: C=IN, OU=emSign PKI, O=eMudhra Technologies Limited, CN=emSign ECC Root CA - G3 Certificate added: C=US, OU=emSign PKI, O=eMudhra Inc, CN=emSign Root CA - C1 Certificate added: C=IN, OU=emSign PKI, O=eMudhra Technologies Limited, CN=emSign Root CA - G1 Certificate added: C=CN, O="iTrusChina Co.,Ltd.", CN=vTrus ECC Root CA Certificate added: C=CN, O="iTrusChina Co.,Ltd.", CN=vTrus Root CA 137 new root certificates were added to your trust store. ```
submitted by PcChip to linux4noobs [link] [comments]


2024.05.05 15:01 ibid-11962 Movies and Adaptations [Post Murtagh Christopher Paolini Q&A Wrap Up #2]

As discussed in the first post, this is my ongoing compilation of the remaining questions Christopher has answered online between August 1st 2023 and April 30th 2024 which I've not already covered in other compilations.
As always, questions are sorted by topic, and each Q&A is annotated with a bracketed source number. Links to every source used and to the other parts of this compilation will be provided in a comment below.
The previous post focused on Future Publications, though it skipped over the future projects which aren't really books. This installment will therefore focus on Movies and Adaptations, including of course, the Disney+ Eragon adaptation that is currently being worked on. The next post will focus on In-Universe Lore.

Movies and Adaptations

Low Budget Movie
I actually haven't spoken about this part publicly. I have this sort of bee in my bonnet that I've wanted to do for years, which is I want to try to write and direct a low budget film, there's a lot of talent here in the area in Montana where I live, and it's something I've always wanted to do, and I kinda of figure I'm at the age where if I don't try to do it it'll never happen. The barometer as to whether or not this happens will be entirely as to whether or not I can write a script that I'm happy with and that other people would be interested in helping make. If I can manage to write a script that works then I'm going to give it a real shot, if not I'll go back and write another book. [1]
It's very interesting that one of the first storytelling books that comes to your mind is the Robert McKee one. I've always been fascinated with film and I would love to make film at some point. I might actually make a real effort in that direction this year, we shall see. The thing is, we didn't have television reception growing up but we would rent movies and we would watch a film every evening with dinner. We did that for years and years and years. I have seen a lot of movies. In films, if you read scripts, scripts are almost entirely structure and outline. They're a plan, a guideline for the story that is to be made into a film. [25]
Etsy Merch
You don't happen to sell bookmarks on your Etsy, would you? I'm in need of a few bookmarks and would love some Alagaësia or Fractalverse themed ones. Ha! We’re actually going to have some up in the nearish future. [T]
TTRPG
If you were to create a game of Eragon or any of your other books, which book would it be and what would be the winning state of that game? Well, the funny thing is I've been developing a tabletop RPG for the World of Eragon. And I'm currently waiting to hear back from a publisher if they want to move forward with it or if we need to find another home for it. The slight difficulty I've had, the reason it hasn't come out sooner, is that Disney and Fox already owns the merch rights for the World of Eragon. So we can do a rule book and we can do other stuff, but we can't do figurines or some other stuff. So it's a little tricky. But Eragon was the natural answer for me to develop that world and to not do a D&D based system, but to come up with a completely new game engine based around my ancient language and the rules of my magic and being a dragon rider and all of that. As far as what are the winning conditions, that depends on the individual campaign. How the players want to play. What kind of things would motivate a player in an Eragon campaign? Probably to be a dragon rider and to be cool. But I'm structuring the campaigns around, the guidance that I'm hoping to provide is to, just like with the books, send the players in the direction of achieving peace in the land, of having a positive influence. With the full knowledge that the players are probably going to disregard that and rampage across the land, but you know, you do your best. [23]
Writing a video game
We have a lot of writers who are engaging in the video game industry. For example, Elden Ring. Would you consider writing for a game in the future? I would love to do that someday. It would really depend on the project though and my time. [32]
Mechanical Keyboard Video
You might find a Bluetooth keyboard helpful for ipads and tablets. You can get folding ones too for travel. Already have one. I'm going to do a video on how to hack together an awesome mechanical keyboard for cheap. [T]
Illustrated Books
Along with the release of Murtagh we have the illustrated edition which came out at the same time. There is a new map here, from a fan. He did a version of this and posted it online, and I liked it so much I contacted him and said "well let's make a few tweaks, and if you are okay licensing it, let's do it", and so that's where this came from. So thank you Spencer. Oh that's cool. And do you have a favourite illustration? There's a couple of ones I really love. Hard to pick a favorite. I love the cover one. I love The Ra'zac in the cathedral at Dras Leona. There's one where it's multiple images that are sort of shattered of Brom and Saphira. There's Saphira in a snowy tree chasing a bird with Eragon near the beginning. It's really a lovely lovely book. [15]
It looks great. There is a kind of optimism in his art. A brilliance and joy that I like. [21]
I want a background for my PC created from the Battle under Farthen Dûr illustrated edition art. Would anybody know how to get a hi-res version of it? Even if I have to pay. I love the artwork for the scene so much. You could ping the artist on Instagram and see if he has an image you could use. He's usually pretty responsive. [R]
The first book that you released after your dry spell was not To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, it was an official Eragon coloring book. Yeah. Do you know how long it took to write that as well? I mean my God that was like 3 years of solid work. I didn't have to do the art, but just figuring out the words for a coloring book, it hurts. Do you think that coloring books are the key to curing writer's block, and do you recommend other bestselling fantasy authors struggling to publish a new book for the last decade to try this approach as well? Absolutely. Although, the thing is, is like I said, it was hard to write. If you're having trouble writing in general, you might find that tackling a coloring book actually sets you back even further, especially since some authors, not going to name names, don't have any discipline and would probably start doing a 10 book series in coloring books. But it was a rewarding experience. I really learned a lot as an author. And I've been able to apply that knowledge from the coloring book to my future books. Yeah, it's such a shame that Tolkien published so few books. Imagine what he could have accomplished if he put out a coloring book. Exactly, exactly. Of course, the problem with coloring books is they tend to be all black and white so it's very hard to get any shades of gray in your characters. [28]
Audiobooks and Malte Wegmann's Music
In the acknowledgements section you also talk about the soundtrack for the audiobook of "Murtagh", which is available online. I've listened to it. It's good isn't, it? It's pretty cool! Do you have a favourite track? I think the main theme actually. Although I saw that apparently the most played track off of that is actually the Nal Gorgoth theme, the village. But I love the main theme because it has a sort of ache to it, a bittersweet ache, which feels very appropriate for Murtagh and Thorn. I've worked with the composer Malte Wegmann a couple of times, he did music for the audiobook for To sleep in a Sea of Stars and then Fractal Noise. Fractal Noise might actually work better as an audiobook versus in print, because the whole concept of the story is that there's a repetitive sound being emitted by this artifact on the planet and the audiobook can capture that in ways that a book can't. Malte has really evolved as a composer. He started as a fan, he was composing little pieces of fan music for the Inheritance Cycle and releasing it online as part of what he called "The Inheritance Project". I heard bits and pieces and I loved it and he was willing to collaborate and work. Of course, we paid him. I don't take fan work for free. And now we've done this for three books in a row. [15]
I loved Murtagh. In fact, I'm listening to Malte Wegmann's work for the audiobook music right now, and it's really amazing. It both confirms and expands my understanding of the book. I don't know how much of a hand you had and how the pieces turned out in the end, but if you did, can you share what the collaboration process was like? Malte is a fan, and he started releasing Inheritance-inspired music even before To Sleep in a Sea of Stars came out. I saw it, I enjoyed it, and I saw him developing as a composer as he was going along. With To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, we really worked on making that a beautiful package, both in the print version and the audiobook. So I reached out to Malte and asked if he'd be interested in doing some music for the audiobook, which he did. And he's now done music for every book since then. So To Sleep, Fractal Noise, and now, Murtagh. The Fractal Noise audiobook is fantastic. There's sound effects through the whole thing. There's music. It's really quite the production. With Murtagh, Random House does not normally use music in their audiobooks, and they haven't really done it with the Inheritance Cycle. I think they might've used a little outro music in the past, but that's about it. So I told them, "I want to do this", and Malte came up with some initial sketches for pieces for each of the different sections in the book. And then I gave him my feedback. Some of them, he nailed them right off the bat. Others, he was in the general ballpark, and then I wanted to work with him to get it right where I wanted it for the world. I think one or two pieces we had to go around with quite a few times, like the main theme for Murtagh himself. I wanted something that felt both noble and yet aching at the same time, and also masculine, which felt important. Just kind of getting the right tone, the right feel, that was tricky, and Malte did it. He really did it. So I got to hand it to him. It's great feeling throughout. And assuming he's available and interested, I look forward to continuing to have his music in my audio books. [31]
Ah! Been hearing pieces of the music that Malte Wegmann is composing for the Murtagh audiobook. It's SO GOOD. I'm half tempted to listen to the audiobook myself! Have you ever listened to one of your audiobooks before? Only extracts. [T]
Close your eyes and listen to the main theme that Malte Wegmann composed for the Murtagh audiobook. And yes, he really captured the feel. (There's a lot more music throughout, btw.). [T]
The Original Movie
What was your favorite moment to see played out on the big screen? Well, none of my favorite moments made it onto the big screen, so... What I wanted to see was Saphira breaking the star sapphire in Tronjheim during the great battle. And that does not exist in the film that does not exist. That said, I'm an executive producer and co-writer on the show. So I've got my fingers in the pot pretty deeply. [30]
For all for all the jokes about the film, and I've said my share of them, it's not the worst film in the world. The problem is it's not a particularly good adaptation of Eragon, and that's where the disconnect happens. The budget on the film was actually ridiculously bigger than you would think watching the film. They spent a lot of money on the movie. It was huge. But behind the scenes it was a very difficult process with a lot of upheaval behind the scenes. It was the largest budget that that sub-studio of fox had ever worked with before. The biggest budget they'd worked with before that was Castaway, which I think was 80 million at the time, and most of that was Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks' salaries. It was something outside their wheelhouse. There was no one involved in the project who really loved the material. Perhaps it's unfair to have expected that. Because Eragon was so new, there wasn't the fan base that had grown up the way there is now. People didn't know where the story was going and the lore of Alagaësia did not exist to the degree it does now. But still, no one was ultimately in charge of the project who really liked the book on a deep level and I think that shows on the final product. Not enough to put you off trying again, which I think is very admirable. What's the alternative? You could just give up. You have to try. You have to try writing a book even if it doesn't work. You have to try making an adaptation even if it doesn't work. That's life. You fall flat on your face, you get up, you do it again. Was it always something that you wanted to see? Of course. I originally envisioned Eragon as a movie but there was no possible way to get that made as a kid, so I wrote it. [25]
What do you think of the film version of Eragon? It’s not a horrible film . . . but it's not a particularly good adaptation, and ultimately, that's the problem. Few of the things that people enjoy in my books are in the film. (As one example: you wouldn't even know that the books contained elves and dwarves, if you just watched the movie.) [20]
It was quite soon after Eragon became a success and I had little input. I think I had two phone calls from the director. I don't think it's a bad movie; it made good money. But the movie does not do justice to the book. [16]
We're going back. I just can't in good conscience dedicate a whole subreddit to the movie and leave the books to the wayside! Hope everyone had a fun April Fool's day! Well darn. Focusing on the movie was the best thing that could have happened! :D [R]
The Movie was so inspirational, Christopher released multiple books in its image. Hey, ripping off a masterpiece such as that movie was my best career path. Don't judge. [R]

The Eragon Disney Plus Show

News
Any news on the Eragon show? Yes, but I can't tell you. :D [T]
Loosing the showrunner
The TV show for Eragon is in development at Disney. Hopefully we'll be having some news on that fairly soon. Can't say anything about some of these things until you can, but it is still in the works. It's hard to sit on stuff. It is. We had a showrunner lined up for Eragon and then the strike happened and everyone parted ways because the strike. Everyone's going off and doing different things. So it goes. [30]
So we're waiting for Disney to greenlight it, are we? What we're waiting for is some key personnel to get into place, specifically we need the showrunner. We had a number of people interested and we were talking with people and there was one person in particular that I thought was going to be a good fit, and then the writer strike happened. Now we're having to restart the process. [25]
Showrunner search
The TV show is in early development. We got stalled out because of the writers' strike. Basically we're looking for the showrunner. If we can't find the showrunner of the show won't happen. And it's a very short list of people who would qualify. Because you need someone who can run a big budget television show. Of which there are not many people. Someone who likes the subject material and wants to adapt it in a way that seems faithful. And someone who gets along with me and that I get along with them. Oh, and who is available. Because a lot of people who might qualify are under contract with that studio or that show. So we're looking and once we get that person hopefully then the show will actually start moving forward. [15]
And the thing is, it's a very short list of people who can take that position. For those who don't know, showrunners oversee an entire show. They may or may not direct any episodes, but they usually oversee the production and the writing. They often write many of the episodes or at least help. The list of people who can do that is A, small. There's only so many people who have the experience to run a big budget television show. B, it needs to be someone who likes the material and actually wants to adapt it in a way that is faithful to it. And C, gets along with me and I get along with them since we have to work together. So yeah, that's what we need to find. [25]
Timeline
When and if we get showrunner in place, and of course, everything's shut down in Hollywood because of the holidays right now, so hopefully beginning of the year we will actually be able to nail something down. When and if we get a showrunner on the show, then that person and I will write probably the pilot and maybe the first two episodes, or at least the pilot and the first episode. And then Disney will look at that and that's what they'll make the decision on whether or not to commit to a first season. And if they commit to the first season, they pull the lever on that, then we go full speed ahead. And then the whole machine kicks in in terms of pre-production and design and costumes and casting and music and directors and all of that. So getting to that point is the first big pump if you will, the first week the first big hill to climb. [17]
Writing Scripts
I'm currently working on a giant map and as for what I'm writing next, not quite sure. I'll decide once I'm done with the map. But it'll either be something in the World of Eragon or the Fractalverse, and I may have a screenplay I need to write posthaste so we shall see, but exciting stuff. [22]
I'm currently writing and have been for a couple of weeks now. And I can't tell you what I'm working on because it's for- it's for someone I can't talk-, it's something I can't talk about. So hopefully I will be able to talk about it. I can't talk about it quite yet, but y'all would be excited with it if I could tell you. As far as upcoming plans, what I'm working on now is not actually a book, but I hope to have a book out next year. [29]
The big monkey wrench in that is that the television show for Eragon and the television show for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars are both still alive and kicking. And more than, in fact. So I have contractual - Now I think I know what you're up to. To quote a wonderful British show, you might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment. I have contractual obligations on both of those shows, so I have to basically drop everything and do writing on them if required, which is a wonderful opportunity, of course, and it's one I want, but it does come with a price on the book side of things. It does, but it also comes with a lot of reassurance for readers and fans like me. What they did do with their recent Percy Jackson series I thought was pretty great. Bert Salke, who produces Percy Jackson, is also the producer on the Eragon adaptation. And he and Percy just got picked up for a second season. So we're all very happy with how that's done. You're like, "I can't talk about it. I can't talk about it." Well, we wish that you could. [29]
Were I to go back and re-edit or tweak those first two books, there's definitely some things that could use a little ironing out. I've been looking at the first book in depth for a project I'm currently working on which I can't talk about. And I can definitely see that was my first book. But at the same time, it's my best-selling book. [30]
Cancel Risk
Is this show still safe given the state of Hollywood and all the cuts and cancellations of projects we're seeing at the moment? It's tough times in Hollywood at the moment, but Eragon is safer than, say, Spiderwick. Unlike Spiderwick, Disney owns 100% of Eragon, and -- so far -- Disney isn't selling or cancelling stuff that they outright own. [R]
Making Changes
Do you feel because of your last previous experience, you have more of a determination to see your favorite parts come to life in this adaptation? Well, two things. Yes. More determination to see it be faithful to what made the story popular in the first place, because I wrote it for certain things and people responded to those things, so those things need to be in the story. But part two is that also having more time away from the actual writing of the books, I've had years and years to think about the story, and as a result, I've thought of a number of ways to streamline, condense, actually adapt it. And those thoughts that I've had, it only comes with time, no subsitute for that. So having some distance from the writing has actually helped in terms of figuring out how to actually adapt it in a successful manner. [30]
With TV, especially nowadays, you've got so much room to explore and actually explore the universe that you've created. Yes. The difficult thing with adapting a book is that books can show you very easily what's going on inside someone's head. Film and television are all external and so, even if I were 100% in charge of an adaptation and I had all the money in the world and all the time in the world and I could make it exactly the way I wanted to make it, there is no way to make it exactly the way it is in the book because you just can't. Then on top of that, the way I envision and see the characters and the world is probably different from how a lot of readers envision and see it, and that's something also that people don't always think about when they say "oh I wish the creator was in charge of the project". It's like when I first met Terry Brooks, the author of The Sword of Shanara, except he says it shan-ara. Which is his right and I totally respect that he wants to say it The Sword of Shan-ara, but no it’s The Sword of Sha-nara. [25]
Given your history with adaptations of your work, what's your current opinion on, especially recently with the Wheel of Time adaptation, of great Hollywood studios' relationship with creators, how they treat fantasy authors when it comes to the creative process of adaptation? I have to say the Wheel of Time adaptation was not successful for me personally. But Robert Jordan is also not alive. He was not there to participate in that adaptation. And there's a lot of difficulties with adaptation that apply to any project, not just sci-fi fantasy. One of them is that when you write a story, you go through this entire chain of thought that allows you to build the plot and the world and the characters. You explore a lot of avenues that don't work. And as a result, you end up creating whatever it is you create, and you have a whole list of reasons for why you create what you did create. When someone comes in to adapt your work, they haven't gone through that whole chain of thought. They're starting from the outside working in instead of starting from the inside working out. And thus, it can be very easy for someone adapting a book to say, "Well, why don't we change XY? Why don't we just do this?" Because they don't understand why that wouldn't work, because they haven't put in sometimes literally years of thought into why XYZ wouldn't work in this world or with these characters. So adaptation is difficult at best. Fantasy, I think is the hardest genre along with comedy in order to do successfully because if it's fantasy set in a fictitious world, you need to create the feeling in your audience that this is a different world. So accents need to be different. The costumes need to be appropriate. It needs to feel real, while also perhaps magical and mythical if you're going for a Tolkien-esque feel. Game of Thrones was successful because it was fairly realistic, and they stuck with that for the most part. The Rings of Power is a completely different approach. They went for the mythic, epic feel in a way that Game of Thrones really didn't. So it's difficult and some adaptations are more successful than others. I'm currently watching the Percy Jackson show. The main producer for Percy Jackson, Bert Salke, is also the producer on the Eragon show. And Rick Riordan has been very, very deeply involved with that adaptation. And my understanding is that it's very close to the books and it's been very successful so far. And then, of course, there are film examples of Twilight and Hunger Games and Harry Potter, which stuck to the books fairly closely and thus had quite a bit of success with the audience. Hopefully, that's the model for Eragon. And part of why I am going to be co-writing, is to make sure that the person I'm working with understands who the characters are, what's important to them, what's important to the world. And even if some things have to change in order to best present the story in a different medium, which is television, that feeling and that core of meaning is maintained, but it is a major challenge. [32]
Brom
There is a Disney Plus series that is in the very, very early stages. If you had all the power in the world, would you give Brom a little bit more time in the Disney Plus series? Probably. I've been joking we should cast Sean Bean because then he can meet an early demise. Originally, I wanted Sean Connery or Patrick Stewart. But I think we need someone a little more robust at the moment. I do love how different their vibes are. They are. Actually, Karl Urban could do it easy. He's getting crusty. [9]
Casting
Do you have any dream casting for the main characters? I had a couple of people I would have liked to have seen in certain roles, but they've aged out of those roles at this point. And I'm a little bit behind on the current crop of actors because of young kids and work. I'll say this, and this might sound a little woo-woo, but the hardest part with an adaptation is capturing a vibe. Because a story or a character gives you a certain feeling, and everyone gets a different feeling from it perhaps. But replicating that feeling in a different medium is extraordinarily difficult. And so I think that's why, especially when it comes to casting, you go in with a preconceived notion, but someone else comes in and auditions and if they have the right vibe for the character, the right feel for the character, it's like, okay, they're six inches taller than I thought and a hundred pounds heavier, but it doesn't matter because they feel like the character. That said, you wanna be generally in the ballpark, but there's a reason why they cast Hugh Jackman as Wolverine even though he's like a foot taller than the character in the comic books. Hugh could do anything. I love him. Sing, dance, everything. I'm not sure I'd cast him as a hobbit, but he could probably do it. Very difficult. He'd make a better wizard. Or Ranger. Hugh Jackman as Aragorn, that'd be interesting. I actually was at Comic-Con one time when he was walking around dressed as Wolverine and everyone thought he was just a cosplayer at first. And my God, in person, the guy was ripped to the bone, tall, very, very imposing person in person. [30]
Regarding the Disney adaptation, if I am only asking you personally and if you have all the liberties in the world, what qualities will you be looking for in the person incarnating Eragon, beyond of course a resemblance and good acting? Is there anything more? I'm not sure I'm willing to commit to an answer for that at the moment, because it's such a particular thing, and there are probably a number of people who could do a good job in the role, and it's a hard role to cast because it needs to be someone who can capture youth, but at the same time be old enough to be convincing in terms of wielding a sword and having adventures. I remember when I was 15 and I thought I was so grown up and now I see 15 year olds and I look at them and go, "they're babies! they're babies!" But they're not. Because you are in many ways mostly a grown up at that point, you're just not entirely grown up. So I don't know, I think it's gonna be a long conversation to have with the producers about exactly who we're looking for and what we're looking for and then we have to see who's available. Since you mentioned that you would like to have a new face for this role, do you think it would be a good thing, if possible, to make an open casting, even in Europe, as to find the best Eragon possible? I have no idea how Disney would want to handle this, so this may be completely out of my control. I know that when Fox was looking for an actor to play Eragon, and I again, I wasn't part of the process back then, and I only found out about this after the fact, but they auditioned some insane number of young actors for the role. It was well over 1,000, it might have been more like 10,000. It was just some insane number of actors and I know they were kind of despairing. So I think an open casting would be a great idea just to attract talent from around the world. I actually think an actor from Europe might be a good pick because one of the problems with casting actors from the US unfortunately is you get the American accent, which for good or for ill, none of us really associate with an old world style fantasy story. But again, all of this is going to have be in collaboration with the producers, with whoever the show runner is, and I will have my say, but that's one say out of at least three and possibly more people. [17]
Hear me out… Danny DeVito as Galbatorix. Danny DeVito as Arya. . Odd note: DeVito and I share a birthday. [R]
Cameos
When the movie that doesn't exist was not being made, they invited me out to the filming in Budapest. But I was on book tour at the time, so I couldn't do that. But they offered me a cameo, and I asked and they agreed that I could appear in the final battle as an Urgal, as the shortest Urgal ever, and that I could have my head chopped off on screen by Eragon. So that never happened, but maybe that'll get to happen with the television show. [32]
Disney Princess
Would Arya make the best Disney Princess? Yes! [Y]
Rides
If Disney built a ride based off the Inheritance Cycle, what would want it to be called? Dragonflight. [R]
Special Effects
Disney Plus for Eragon. I cannot wait. The only advantage with it taking this long to get an Eragon adaptation made after all these years is that every year that goes by, it becomes more and more possible to actually do justice to the material in terms of the special effects. We could not even have been having the conversation about a proper television show of Eragon in 2011, for example. When Game of Thrones started coming out, doing a dragon on television with any sort of realism was just incredibly expensive. And it's still expensive, but we can do that plus more for the same amount of money. So yeah. So definitely the special effects are going to be slick. They have to be. There's two ways you go in Hollywood these days. You can either go micro budget, or you really just have to go so big that it's sort of a tent pole, and you can actually get it made. The mid-budget stuff has all been relegated to television. But there is no way to do Eragon low budget and do it any justice. So it's one of those things where the studio has to buy in and say, we like the scripts, the fan base is there we're willing to spend a god-awful amount of money to make this happen. And to be fair, that's what they did with Percy Jackson. I've heard numbers, I don't think I can share them, but it was an extremely expensive show to make, as you might imagine, and special effects look great. [29]
J. Michael Straczynski
One of my other favorite properties would be Babylon 5, which managed to blend space elves and mythology with science fiction. It was one of those things where I bounced off it once or twice, and it's because it's so arc-based, and it was one of the first big shows to do that, you really have to sort of invest in it and really sign up for the long haul. And then the development of the characters and the world is surprisingly consistent. And that shouldn't be a surprise because J. Michael Straczynski wrote the vast majority of episodes himself, which has never been done before or since for a major show like that because it'd be insane to write all the episodes yourself. But I love the world building and I love the characters. And I think that one of the things that holds it back from perhaps a wider audience these days is the effects. They weren't preserved by the studio, so they looked better than they actually do now when they first aired. [Brandon Sanderson:] I almost got to make a show with Joe Michael Straczynski. Same, actually. I'll tell you the story off stage. Yeah, we don't have time for it right now, but got close. But things in Hollywood, everything's close. It may not have actually been that close. Everything's close, but nothing ever gets made. By the way, there are space wizards in Babylon 5. They're techno mages. [19]

The To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Show

Where can one keep up with the upcoming TSiaSoS show? No real news at the moment. Development got stalled out during the writers' strike. However, the project is still alive and moving forward. Things just take time in Hollywood. Lol. Also, switching from a film to a TV show took a lot more legal wrangling than we originally expected. [R]
To Sleep has been picked up as well, right? That was picked up even before it was published. Things often move slowly in Hollywood. And what happened was I worked on an adaptation for a film version of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. And it was like ten pounds stuffed in a one pound sack. The script was not horrible, but it was unwieldy. It just couldn't work as one story. So we decided to shift to a television adaptation, and that seems to suit the material quite well. But then we had to take a very large, complicated contract that had already been negotiated and renegotiate, not from scratch, but renegotiate to shift it into television format. And that's just complicated. There were a lot of moving pieces, and it just took a long time. My lawyer has to look at it, their lawyers have to look at it. They have to talk about this. It goes back, it goes forth. And then, of course, we had the writer's strike and other stuff. So I did write the pilot for that and the second episode. So those are actually in fairly good shape. I think the next step would be we're going to be starting to look for a director to package it with then hopefully that could actually start moving forward. So yeah, along with the books and the kids, I've been rather busy. I can imagine. Are we allowed to know what platform To Sleep is going to be on? We don't know yet at the moment. [29]
The Eragon TV show is under development at Disney Plus, and I'm hopeful we're going to have some news on that front before too long here. I think things are moving along there. And I'm actually revising episode two of the television show for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which is also in development. Hopefully there's gonna be some news on both of those before too long. I hadn't heard about To Sleep in a Sea of Stars development. Yeah, it's been slow for a couple of reasons, but now the slowness has shifted, and now it's moving along pretty fast. [31]
I'm currently working on revisions for the second episode for television adaptation of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which is my big sci-fi novel [32]
With all of the success and attention that Dune has had, has there been any interest in adapting To Sleep in a Sea of Stars? I'm currently editing/revising the script for episode #2 for the TV adaptation of To Sleep. [T]
Christopher what are you working on? I'm actually revising the second episode of the television show for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. Still in early days but it is moving forward. [Y]
submitted by ibid-11962 to Eragon [link] [comments]


2024.05.05 13:23 pillowcase-of-eels [Music/Book] Emilie Autumn's Asylum, pt. 4 CONTINUED

[Note to mods: I am SO SORRY to break the rules, but my comments are too formatting-heavy - Reddit keeps giving me error messages when I try to post them, splitting the length changes nothing, and the formatting (embedded links, etc) DOES NOT carry over when I copy-paste and try again. I've been at it for an hour. I decided to just make a separate post before I lose my mind - hope that's alright.]

“MIXED MEDIA AND ACRYLIC PAINT ON CANVAS”

You're so easy to read But the book is boring me (“Misery Loves Company”, 2006 🎵)
It is June 2023. An alert pings on your Instagram. Butter my muffins – your problematic teenage fave just posted! What has she been up to?
It's been almost a full year since EA's last communiqué. She was going to do an AMA on her new blog, Stark Raving Sane. Fans would submit their burning questions, and she would select twenty of them to answer in her next post. You could fill out a form with your name and email and question. Clearly, she didn't like some of the questions.
(Since then, the one interesting that's happened in the Asylum was when EA was listed as the opening act for one single Maroon 5 show in the Netherlands 📝, but that turned out to be – most likely – a Spotify glitch.)
You tap the notification to check out EA's comeback post. The caption reads:
Introducing 'My Heart Is A Weapon Of War,' and I painted her and I love her. Medium: Mixed media - digital (Procreate, Maya 3D Sculpting) and acrylic paint on canvas.” 🪞📝
The art style is yassified-oil-portrait-realistic, unlike anything EA has ever drawn or painted before.🪞 It's a pastel-colored portrait of a button-nosed, elven-faced woman shaped like a Rococo centerpiece. She's got an ethereal smile, a sheer pink heart on her cheek, flowers in her towering hair, and rockin' anime titties. The gold lamé of her skin-tight top blends with her actual skin at the neck, and her arms are non-existent.
You rub your eyes. This surely isn't... no. She can't possibly be serious.People in the comments are trying to be diplomatic:
EA, I've always loved and defended you, but this is clearly AI.
EA does not respond to the diplomatic people in the comments. Instead, she posts another portrait of a diaphanous woman with a cheek-heart and a weirdly levitating necklace. In another post:
Oh, if anyone is curious about my general process, I'm happy to share, as I'd love to see other artists try it. It is thus: I start in Procreate with an Apple pencil, move over to Maya/Zbrush and do some 3D sculpting and lighting to flesh things out and create otherworldly elements in incredible detail, go back to Procreate and... 📝
Commenters are now having mostly civilized back-and-forths over the ethical implications of AI. Many hope EA is reading, wondering if she is aware of those issues. Many say everything would probably be fine if EA would just admit to using AI.
EA admits to nothing and apologizes to no one. No: EA posts more art, in a slightly different, less generic style, that still looks nothing like her own. “Digital painting”, she maintains. Many are imploring EA to please end this charade and stop insulting her fans' intelligence. But then again, some fans are defending her (“She literally just explained that it was digital painting!”), so maybe she's right to do it...?
EA posts a picture of a “buried treasure” that she just randomly chanced upon – a pencil drawing from her teens, once posted on her website in the early 2000s. (It's the one I linked to earlier – the one with the “EAF” signature, and the false age, and the fire reference. Yes, this is the context in which she was posting that.) She's posting it, à propos nothing, because she literally just noticed that she still draws eyebrows the exact same way to this day! In fact, you can clearly, definitely, unmistakably see a very similar eyebrow shape in her most recent art! See?
People are gobsmacked, and dragging her to filth. Desperate loyalists are gently pressing EA to please just post a Procreate timelapse of one of her new “digital paintings”, so that people will stop calling her a fraud.
EA is happy to oblige, and posts a mini-timelapse 📺📝 of what looks like color splotches and blurs being removed from the top layer of a finished piece with the eraser tool.
I'm shriveling with second-hand embarrassment on her behalf. How is she not mortified...? 🐀
EA keeps posting. More generic AI girlies with pale skin and sad eyes, more abstract sploshes that she calls her “morning pages”, but also more Asylum member-berries (“...the original Unlaced violin part... someone please learn this!” 📝) – and more of the massive, medical-themed mixed-media sculptures that she started making the year before, even presenting a few pieces at Art Basel 2022. The difference in style is obvious to everyone but her.
She ignores the peasants screeching about AI, won't even deign address the existence of such a thing; it's all EA, OK? OK. She makes it look easy, because it is to her:
4 hours start to finish in Procreate only with Apple pencil. Did you know that [the art for a card deck she released in 2019] was the first thing I drew on an iPad, because I was recovering from a disastrous TMJ jaw surgery and my face was bandaged and I couldn't get out of bed? I didn't either until just now. 📝
...Because... because you just made it up...??
People are going full tinfoil hat now – she has to be doing this on purpose, right? She just has to.
I can’t help but find it extremely suspicious that she came back after a year of inactivity just to drop the very obviously AI-generated art pieces, refuse to forwardly acknowledge the controversy, and then immediately move on to posting a bunch of artwork that is very clearly hers. A part of me is genuinely convinced that this is some sort of publicity stunt... 🐀
What other explanation could there be to this madness?
Not everyone loves the modern art sculptures, but those are definitely her work. Some of them really have The Vibe. About a piece entitled “Manic Phase” 📺📝:
This is (...) a blueprint of brain activity during a very... interesting period. Just one of many over several years, until a very particular combination of chemicals conspired to bury them just below the surface (...) Every single day, right now, I am afraid of going back there.
Hoop, there it is. Girl... you just spent days covering every inch of a canvas the size of a patio table with spirals of text from your decade-old journals written in minuscule all-caps, after a disastrous three-week bender of trying to pass off obvious AI art as your own. Is it perhaps possible that you may be “there” already...?
The more art EA posts, the angrier people get, and the harder she doubles down. Some AI pieces are accompanied by lengthy blog posts where she elaborates on their meanings. Mostly old Asylum talking points and metaphysical ramblings (that, in some cases, only seem loosely related to the art), but also some concerning news... and another spoonful of denial for the road:
Biscuits has no tits and neither do I at present. I’ve lost them, along with my arse, and most of my muscle mass, because that’s what happens when you’ve got an auto-immune issue and it hurts to eat because your body is attacking itself. (I never say auto-immune “disease” because it’s an ugly brown and I don’t like the way the “s” that is really a “z” feels in my mouth, and it also sounds unnecessarily dramatic and that embarrasses me). I prefer not to talk about this. With anyone. I will fix it. I am fixing it. And I will be able to sing and dance. And that is all.” (“Biscuits” - Blog entry 📝)
...Well shit.
Despite her track record and the context of this disclosure, not many fans accuse EA of malingering (well, okay, some are really pissed and they do 🐀). An auto-immune disease does line up with things she has mentioned in passing for years (bad blood-works, diet restrictions, hospital visits...) – and she did look so thin in those Art Basel pictures that some people accused her covertly creating thinspo.
In light of this, some fans choose to cut EA some slack, or at least temper their disappointment with earnest sympathy and concern, as she is clearly struggling in more ways than one, and has been for some time. Others are less forgiving, pointing out that it's pretty manipulative of her to pull out the chronic illness card in the midst of the ongoing AI controversy. Everyone, everywhere, is shaking their head in sadness and disbelief.
And by everyone, I do mean a few dozen people tops. It's pretty echo-y in the Asylum halls these days.
This goes on for two months, into August 2023. The AI art drops eventually stop, but the controversy does not. EA soon restricts the comments on her Instagram. For two weeks, she shares more artworks made from old lyrics 📝 and partially melted medical supplies. Using a syringe, she glues a bazillion crystals onto a pink hospital gown. Then, one day, mid-project, she stops posting.
And as of this writing, that was the last we heard of singer-songwriter, author, actor, visual artist, and world-class violinist Emilie Autumn.

AFTERMATH

Other than broken hearts, bad health, and dwindling career prospects...?
I mean, what usually happens when a semi-obscure solo artist tells tall(ish) tales about... mainly their age and name? It took me three write-ups to explain why EA's absurd but ultimately harmless lies are relevant to anyone on Earth at all. TMZ is not interested.
Because most of EA's fabrications were so self-contained and irrelevant to anyone but her fans, most of the “consequences” remained strictly internal to the fandom. They never (as far as I'm aware) affected her interactions with the press, for instance.
In fact, there was a weird overlap between 2011 and 2014 when she still got a fair amount of new and positive media coverage, but it had become common and accepted knowledge within the active fanbase that she made stuff up. And no one beyond the walls of the Asylum cared, because why would they? Overall, EA is great at interviews: she's charming, funny, and gives amazing soundbites. Sympathetic outsiders were happy to print whatever wondrous things the dazzling lady had to say – about her connection to Alice Liddell, her artistic process, her larger-than-life projects, whatever – without much critical distance. She wasn't famous enough to fact-check or call out, and her creative license with truth made for exciting interviews. It was a frustrating time to be a grumpy EA fan!
Since the press was in on it, and the Asylum forum was strictly under EA's thumb, bitter Plague Rats took their whistleblowing elsewhere. Unofficial forums opened in the name of free speech; anonymous confessions, receipts, and snarky meme blogs started blowing up on Tumblr. But that wasn't public enough for some fans, who felt that EA should be shamed and exposed, lest anyone else “fall for her lies” like they had. So eventually, among other things, they took to Goodreads.
During the never-ending delay of the Asylum audiobook (okay, it was two years; but it felt really long) there was a noticeable influx of one-star reviews, some of which barely addressed the book at all, but went into great detail about the lies and crimes (and personal info) of its dastardly author. I don't have solid receipts for these, there aren't any screenshots – possibly because most of those reviews, while they were ad hominem attacks more than book critiques, weren't quite abusive enough 🐀 to go against Goodreads TOS. But things did escalate enough that Anne Rice felt the need to step in.
In 2015, the author of “Interview with a Vampire” – who takes cyber-bullying against novelists rather seriously... no matter what kind of novels they write 🔍 – shared someone's Facebook post 📝 about the “conspicuous, blatant personal attacks” targeted at author Emilie Autumn, along with a direct link to one such egregious review.
And that, my friends, is how EA's Goodreads page was durably purged of the really pissed-off comments, and TAFWVG's rating stabilized at a cozy 4-star-something. A bunch of indignant Anne Rice fans (or should I say, fangs? (no)) swooped in to mass-report the Asylum's most virulent escapees 🐀, while loyal Plague Rats flocked in with the 5-star reviews. Truly a bizarre week in the greater goth community.
As far as her fabrications go, that's about as intense as “open” fan retaliation against EA ever got. But it is sadly clear that ten years of successive call-out waves from her own supporters (and the mental gymnastics it must have taken to shut them out and not admit to anything, ever) have taken a toll on her general well-being, to a point where she no longer feels safe online... and seemingly can't engage with her audience, at all, in a healthy and honest way.
Slander and dissension They're parlor games to me Papers overrun with lies too mad to mention You say they never hurt you? No consequence, I'm happy We're much too far above it all – But oh no, that's not true! These wicked pastimes take their toll These tyrant vices break your soul Deliver me from all I am And all I never want to be I love you, doubt me not Re-write this plot for all to see (“Willow”, 2004 🎵)
As you can surely guess, it takes more than a handful of unsavory book reviews and anonymous call-out blogs to kill a fandom (and an artist's fighting spirit). In truth, I don't think that many people turned their backs on EA solely for her fabrications; a lot of fans were just low-key annoyed by them for years, and then it was something else that finally broke the camel's back.
There were so many something-else's to choose from.See, while EA's phony stories were an unending source of frustration, they were a mere backdrop to the years of actual, hands-on, ever-evolving drama that eventually brought the Asylum down.
And that's where we're headed in our final installments. Hope to see you there.
submitted by pillowcase-of-eels to HobbyDrama [link] [comments]


2024.05.05 13:03 pillowcase-of-eels [Music/Book] Emilie Autumn's Asylum, pt. 4 – The Great Biographical Bamboozling: a fanbase's quest to systematically debunk their idol's fantastical claims

🫖 Welcome back to the Asylum write-up. This is where you live now. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
In this installment, we finally take a closer look at how Emilie Autumn's hyper-loyal fanbase gradually started losing faith in her as, among other things, it became more and more apparent that she... wasn't exactly a reliable narrator – in her semi-autobiographical book, or in general.

HOW IT STARTED: A WOMAN OF MYSTERY

Willow, weep for me Don't think I don't see This life I'm living in two But still it's something I must do I'm not unique in this Nor am I special, sweet, or kind I court a thousand smiles Yet I keep my own to hide behind (“Willow”, 2004 🎵)
I've previously referred to EA as an “expert vagueposter”, and this is relevant here.
For an artist who built her brand on a pledge of raw, rats-and-all honesty, EA has always been quite guarded about the specifics of her personal life. (Until her current partner, for instance, she always danced around calling anyone a boyfriend, even when the nature of the relationship was pretty obvious.) Her whole angle is telling “the truth”, but through whimsical fantasy. As early as the fairy-themed Enchant era, she had her own world, her own vernacular; she spoke in metaphors, in-jokes, and quirky anachronisms. Taxis were carriages, her electric keyboard was a harpsichord, she always capitalized Time and Art like Shakespeare does. On the Asylum forum, automatic word filters would change “fan” to “muffin”, “fairy” to “faerie”, “bra” to “teacup holder”, and “responsibility” to “ratsponsibility”.
She's a chatterbox who loves to share memories and funny anecdotes, but she usually keeps them short and sweet, Snapple-facts style. 📝 She's great at painting by touches in her storytelling, revealing just enough to let your imagination auto-complete the rest. 🔍 Even the most banal tidbits are very artfully told, very “on brand”, often dense with symbolism and foreshadowing – but also very abstracted.
She is especially elusive when it comes to her background and formative years. See the way she catches herself in this interview 📺📝 while describing her “favorite scar”, which is from an eel bite: “My – well, someone I knew... [gasp-laugh] had it as a pet, and...” (She was about to say “my sister”.)
In short, the way EA talks about her life is often very personal, but not all that candid – and sounds more like it's meant to provide a curated, coherent backstory for Emilie Autumn the character, rather than Emilie Autumn the person.
I'll tell the truth, all my songs Are pretty much the fucking same I'm not a fairy but I need More than this life, so I became This creature representing more to you Than just another girl... (“Swallow”, 2006 🎵)
In the beginning, this guardedness naturally contributed to the mystique. It made it all the more special when, once in a while, she would briefly drop the theatrics to share something earnest and relatively unfiltered. Like this composed, but vulnerable post from 2004 📝 about her father losing his battle to cancer, and her attempts at closure over their tense relationship. Or this 2012 anti-bullying campaign thing 📺 in which she opens up about being a target of intense physical bullying in elementary school, to a point that contributed to her being homeschooled at 9.
Fans in the early years were curious about her backstory, of course – but not too prodding or invasive, to my knowledge. I think there was an understanding that EA, like many performers, wanted to come across as human and approachable, while still cultivating an “aura” and retaining some privacy. But obviously, when she announced that she was writing a Tell-All Memoir in 2007, everyone was dying to read it. TEA TIME!

HOW IT'S GOING: A WOMAN OF... MALARKEY???

LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! (“Liar”, 2006 🎵)
As we've learned, the original 2009 release of EA's book was highly anticipated, but somewhat tainted by a bunch of shipping delays and unfulfilled promises. From the start of her career, EA had always cultivated a close parasocial involvement with her audience; many fans had as deep an attachment to her, personally, as they did to her art. So, for instance, when EA tweeted about all the personal dedications she was lovingly writing in overdue books, only for the books to arrive many months later and unsigned with no tangible explanation, it wasn't simply frustrating: it was betrayal amongst kin!
Really, it wasn't so much about fans not getting what they paid for – it was about the lack of clear communication or genuine accountability. This is pure speculation on my part, but the poppycock that EA tweeted about signing the books strikes me as the panic-lie of someone who hadn't realized just how many heartfelt, personalized dedications she would actually have to write when she came home from tour. And then she just couldn't do it, because she was overworked, paralyzed, distracted, depressed, procrastinating, whatever. Which... you know... is unfortunate, but probably not unforgivable. Especially for a touring performer who is open and vocal about their mental health issues.
I'm confident that most fans would have been happy to tell her that her well-being meant more to them than an autograph, or something along those lines. Instead, EA's cagey and avoidant demeanor around this issue left fans very salty – and newly suspicious of their favorite artist's word.
Which was regrettable timing for EA, because they had just received their copies of her memoir.
Here's a cursory look at some key biographical points that didn't hold up to scrutiny when more and more vexed fans, over the years, started looking into them.
Content warning until end of post: family estrangement, death by fire, worsening physical health issues, mention of disordered eating / weight loss / thinspiration, and LIES! LIES! LIIIIIES!

“EMILIE AUTUMN LIDDELL (BORN SEPTEMBER 22, 1979) IS AN AMERICAN SINGER-SONGWRITER...” (Wikipedia)

Every fandom has its Holy Grail. Because a number of EA's early releases were limited pressings put out through now-defunct record labels, the EA fandom in its heyday was a collector's wonderland. 📝🦠 At the height of her popularity, the original Enchant jewelcase (the one with the puzzle-poster) could easily fetch around $500 dollars on eBay, unsigned. The handwritten lyrics of an Opheliac B-side went for $940 in 2009. Don't even ask me about the hard copies of her two poetry books: those never even popped up over the five or six years that I had various alerts set up for all EA-related listings.
But the true crown jewel of EA rarities is the untitled promo version of her (also virtually unfindable) 2001 instrumental debut On a Day... No one knows how many copies exist. The darn thing is so rare that it's not even listed on Discogs. For a while, the only picture of the elusive “Violin” promo CD that was circulated online was this one.🪞 Go ahead, click the link. Notice anything odd? That black box where one composer's birth year should be?
I'm not sure why the notorious hyper-fan who originally shared this picture on the forum in the early 2010s took it upon himself to censor it before posting. I wasn't able to pinpoint when or why people started questioning EA's age, but clearly, something had already transpired to let him know that not redacting said birth year might, uh... cause an upset. In any case: at some point, people started digging – and eventually, the unredacted version of the “Violin” tracklist (as well as public records and literal receipts from eBay auctions) would be brandished as one more piece of damning evidence that EA was indeed (gasp!) two years older than she claimed to be.
“Okay, and?” you shrug. “What's the big deal?” I'm shrugging too! What can I say? People don't like realizing they've been fooled, even about something stupid. I will note that EA's fall equinox birthday (hence her middle name “Autumn”, yes) had been somewhat significant in the fandom. Over the years, EA's birthdays had been marked by online release parties, Q&A's, community events, special merch sales... A number of fans liked donning her trademark cheek heart on September 22. It felt a bit uncanny to realize that she had been announcing a false age on those occasions. It wasn't “a big deal” so much as it was incredibly odd.
Other than being appalled that Self-Proclaimed Staunch Feminist EA would give in to the cult of youth and not cop up to her real age, many fans were just plain bewildered: who would commit so stubbornly to such an inconsequential lie? What was even the point of lying by two years only? Why did she think anyone would care that she was 28 rather than 26 when Opheliac came out? What was she possibly getting out of this...??
My completely speculative theory is that, whether it was her idea or her then-manager's, the lie originated as a marketing strategy early on in her career. The “Violin” demo was recorded in 1997, when EA was 19-going-on-20. Per the liner notes of On a Day... 📝, which came out when she was 22, the demo's purpose was to be “a sort of calling card in the classical music industry”. Evidently, that didn't work out; EA claims, in the same paragraph, to have walked out on a classical recording deal at 18 because they wouldn't give her enough creative control.
Talented and unique as she was, she was trying to break out in a notoriously elitist and innovation-resistant milieu – and unlike her, most of the 22-year-old classical violinists she was in competition with had actually graduated from their prestigious music schools. But you know what sells better than an ambitious college dropout in her early twenties? Tweaking the truth just so to market yourself as an unconventional wunderkind, barely out of her teens! Any rendition of a complex, learnèd musical piece sounds more intriguing and impressive if you think it was played by an especially young (and beautiful) person. 20 was plausible, close enough to her real age, barely a lie at all, and such a nice, round number for a debut album.
Notice how much of the On a Day... liner notes, linked above, center on her precociousness, her uniqueness, and her savant-like dedication to her craft – a focus that seems absent from the promo version (from what I can decipher in those potato-quality pictures, anyway). These talking points would provide the basis for a lot of her early self-promotion and budding stage persona in the Enchant years. Even though the EP failed to make EA a household name in the classical world, the wunderkind narrative was her “in” to grab the attention and heart of a broader audience.
And I guess she's been running with it ever since.

“MY ANCESTRY IS POSITIVELY LITTERED WITH LUNATICS AND GIRLS WHO FALL DOWN RABBIT HOLES ... MY NAME IS EMILIE AUTUMN LIDDELL. YES, THAT LIDDELL.”

Oh, come on. Much as a fan may want to believe, isn't that a little on the nose? The anglophile with an obsession for tea, clocks, and madness... is literally related to Alice in Wonderland? 🔍 Curiouser and curiouser indeed.
EA came out as Emilie Autumn Liddell in The Book – of course – in a passage where she describes an interaction with a nurse. 📝 Note how she stresses the authenticity of her name, and how not-chosen it is (and the Alice connection, which just comes up organically) by disclosing it in a scene where she's filling out paperwork.
I'm pointing this out, because it would be tempting to allow room for creative license (and the slightest cringe) in a work of creative fiction based on personal experience. Buuut... TAFWG was not marketed as fiction. The main narrative in TAFWG, according to EA, is an actual fac-simile of the journals she kept during a harrowing stay at a Los Angeles psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt. This is something that EA has stressed from the inception of the book (and throughout all subsequents re-issues, even as the main narrative was altered and reworked), even claiming that a legal team had advised her to redact some names to avoid potential lawsuits. So, no, she's not doing a bit there.
When, after it made the rounds a few times, it became apparent that the claim didn't really make sense 📝🔍, reactions were mixed. Some older, diplomatic fans downplayed it as a somewhat embarrassing, but harmless self-mythologizing – similar in nature to her insistence on calling her electric keyboard a “harpsichord”. Devout EA apologists (commonly referred to as “bootlickers” in an increasingly polarized fandom – oh, don't worry, we're getting to that!) invoked the “life as performance art” defense: when she said it was literally her first name, she meant it metaphorically, duh! And either way, she probably had her reasons.
But others took offense at the boldness of the lie, or simply became curious. Was Liddell even her name at all?
If you've checked the link just above, you already know the answer. Per the public California birth log (a somewhat demented invasion of privacy that could well have been avoided by... not repeatedly drawing attention to a name that someone in the book calls “right out of a movie”?) : yes, no, kind of.
EA was born Emily Autumn Fischkopf* on September 22, 1977. The name came from her father, a first-generation immigrant from Germany. Her maternal grandmother's maiden name was Liddell (but no, not that Liddell, or so remotely that it doesn't matter). EA may have had it legally changed at some point in the last decade, but as of 2012, based on the public log of foreign visitors to Brazil (where she toured that year), her passport still bore the name “Emily Autumn Fischkopf”.
*No, EA's birth name is not literally “Fischkopf”. It's a non-silly German name that begins with an F. I know that it's ridiculous to clutch my pearls about EA's peace of mind now, but triggering new and disquieting Google alerts for a name she clearly wants nothing to do with (and that you don't care about) just feels... distasteful? I don't know. That info has been floating around long enough, the point has been made; this write-up is not about EA's last name, but about the fiends we made along the way! So Fischkopf it is.
Let's track the evolution here! It appears that she went by “Autumn Fischkopf” for at least part of her formative years, if we are to believe the credits from Mark Ruffalo's middling film debut 📺 (she was the child actor's violin-playing body double) and this random article about a Nigel Kennedy performance in 1997. 🔍 (That last link – possibly her first ever mention in the press? – is a niche favorite of mine. Violin superstar Nigel Kennedy calls her a “talented fiddler”, which suggests that she did have some cred and promise in the classical milieu at a young age, and that there is at least some truth to her claims of being a wunderkind. It also cracks me up that, out of all the things she's reiterated over the years, “I was born in '79” was a lie, but “I was attacked by a pet eel” was fact-checked by Nigel Kennedy.)
At some point in her late teens, she dropped the Teutonic surname and adopted the French ending of her given name (she made it a “LIE”! how poetic) to form the moniker “Emilie Autumn”. I assume that's also when she started privately going by Emilie / EA for short.
So there you have it. The damning evidence. A performing artist... changed her name. To her grandmother's name. Riveting stuff!
And to think that her fans could have carried on naively believing “Autumn” was her last name, or assuming it was a romantic nom de scène she picked during her Ren Fair phase. Or perhaps, even, not thinking much about her name at all, like normal people.
But nooo, she just had to poke the hornet's nest by making a whole thing out of it.

“MY ENTIRE FAMILY DIED IN A FIRE.”

If you've never encountered a method-acting con artist or a person who struggles with pathological lying (I'll let you decide for yourself which of these, if either, applies to EA), you probably believe that you'd spot them a mile away. And in my experience, that's exactly why you wouldn't! Whether it's compulsion or calculated strategy, successful fibbers rely on people's natural social cues (like their assumption of good faith, their confirmation bias, their empathy, their desire for validation, their fear of awkwardness, ...) to subtly direct the flow and tone of the conversation. This allows them to short-circuit potential questioning of their claims.
One such strategy, for instance, I call the “I-will-not-further-speak-about-the-incident maneuver”. Out of the blue, you drop a graphic and incisive one-liner about something horrific that happened to you, in a curt or flippant tone that throws the listener off and usually shuts them up – thus sparing you from having to back up your claim with any convincing specifics. I'm not saying that every person who does this is a liar. Horrific stuff does happen to people, and I'm not here to police how they're supposed to disclose it. I'm just saying that if you wanted to fabricate an obvious Tragic Backstory™ and smuggle it past otherwise rational, discerning and reasonably intelligent people, that would be one way to do it. Full disclosure: it does work better in person than it does over the internet, especially when you've kept a blog.
When EA curtly dropped this bomb on Twitter (in response to an innocuous fan question that mentioned her parents – the receipt has sadly been X'd out of existence), and every subsequent time a new fan found out about her family's tragic demise (“I had no idea!”), the response was typically one of shock and sadness – and, in a few heartbreaking cases, commiseration from other survivors of family-annihilating events.
Many fans already had a hunch that something was up with her family, of course. She hinted at neglect and possible abuse in her book and lyrics. A number of her fans also came from dysfunctional households, so her not wishing to elaborate on the topic would probably have been a non-issue. But now she's saying they're dead? All of them? In a FIRE?! Holy macaroni! And you know it must have been awful, because EA – the same woman who got a dozen bangers out of a three-month-long toxic relationship, and based over a decade of her work on one bad hospital stay – had never, not once, felt called to share a song or poem about how it might affect a person to... lose all of their entire immediate family to a fire. Hmm. Meanwhile, the handful of older fans who had been following her since Enchant and remembered her dad passing in 2004 gritted their teeth and rolled their eyes. “Do your research. That's all I can say.” (We'll get into the culture of censorship free speech regulation on the Asylum forum in due time.)
Before more and more embittered ex-fans started compiling and circulating the receipts in the early-mid-2010s, investigating the whole “dead family” thing was a lonely journey – a coming-of-age expedition for the critical-minded Plague Rat, trawling through free background check websites and old Wayback Machine archives, until you went “Welp, there it is, I guess” and suddenly felt older, stupider, and a little bit hollow inside.
Although I don't remember how I personally made my way to The Truth (lol) back in the day, I still have a vivid memory of the moment I found the Facebook profile of EA's Very Much Non-Deceased Mother. It was mostly posts about her costume design work. A few candid pictures with EA's siblings and their kids. Christmas, birthdays, a wedding. Just... aggressively normal stuff. It was bizarre, looking in on this family of cheerful strangers with familiar cheekbones. Knowing that, somewhere out there, was an estranged eldest daughter, who had run off years ago to become a fiddle-wielding rockstar – and was now passing them off as having all died a gruesome death, while her fans secretly stalked their family photos. (Because I know you'll be asking in the comments: yes, EA's family is aware. Her mother once posted a picture of young EA and her siblings on Pinterest, sarcastically captioned “After most of us were killed in the fire.” 📝)
Again, it's tempting to discount EA's remark as a metaphor for family estrangement, taken too literally by neurodivergent minors who just didn't understand performance art. Well. First of all, even as a metaphor... let's admit, once again, that that 2000s edginess has aged like fine milk. It's a little crass to make a “metaphor” out of a plausible, life-shattering trauma that other people actually have to live with. (Veronica lost a beloved house to a literal fire 🔍 during her tenure as a Crumpet, for instance; no one died, but that alone seemed pretty rough.)
But, more to the point, evidence suggests that EA also told this to real people in her real, off-stage life – such as her Trisol manager, who backed the claim on the official Asylum Forum in 2007. 📝 When questioned about this post on a renegade forum in 2013, he had this to say:
I was the fool in this case. EA made that up of course. It’s just one thing on a long list of things she made up. Let’s agree she’s very creative with facts if she wants people to believe a story. (...) I once had a short chat with [EA's mom] and I got the strong impression she wasn’t dead at the time. Haha.
(OK, dude, but did you or did you not sell fake EA tickets on a scammy website in 2008? Because we never did get the skinny on that.)
Fifteens years on, EA continues to insist, unprompted, that “the fire” destroyed her childhood drawings and baby pictures. 📝 This more recent Instagram post is like a Greatest Hits of her most notorious yarns, to a degree that's either premeditated trolling or a subconscious call for help. She casually, yet pointedly mentions her age in relation to a specific year... and specifically draws attention to the signature, one that she used well into the Enchant era. In doing so, she made me notice, for the first time, that the A blends into an F. As one could expect from an artsy, Renaissance-obsessed teenager, her OG signature was a freaking monogram for Emily Autumn Fischkopf. It's like “The Tell-Tale Heart” for the digital age! AM I THE ONLY ONE SEEING THIS?? 🦠

A BIT O' THIS & THAT: MISCELLANEOUS CLAIMS

Just for fun, here are other sundry “citation needed” facts that EA has claimed over the years. All are originally from the book unless sourced otherwise. Some of them may have been jokes, some of them might even be true! Whatever that word still means!

ELECTRIC VIOLIN: UNPLUGGED

You know how whenever a musician starts behaving obnoxiously, old sages will come down from Mount Wisdom to advise disgruntled fans to “simply ignore [behavior]” and “just focus on the music”? Well, in the Asylum, “just focusing on the music” won't always preserve you from EA's shenanigans. This “claim” is a little different, but I've decided to include it because it is so odd, emblematic, and ultimately tragic. I also count it as “biographical”, because it involves a key tenet of EA's character sheet: the violin.
Being a kickass fiddler is one of EA's trademarks, and has always been central to her narrative; as of 2024, “world-class violinist” is still the first claim to fame she lists in the “Story” section of her official website. Which beggars the question: why won't she play it? And why won't she acknowledge that she's not playing it?
We got our hopes up in 2020, with that one post 📝 about her iconic 1885 Gand & Bernardel getting refurbished by a luthier – a thoughtful birthday surprise from her boyfriend – but despite the promising “More to come...” at the end of the caption, that turned out to be a false alarm. In truth, it may well have been over a decade since anyone has witnessed EA draw a single note from her cherished instrument.
The fact that Lord Autumn was able to sneak it out during lockdown without the Lady noticing tends to confirm that she hadn't been playing much behind the scenes. She seems to be under the impression that e-violin manufacturer Zeta is no longer in business (they did close down in 2010 🔍, but reopened under new management in 2012), which suggests that she hasn't been keeping up with the violin scene for a while. Besides, the fingernails don't lie. 🐀
As the live shows veered more theatrical with the release of Opheliac, the extended violin features from the Enchant era were cut to two main appearances per concert: “Face the Wall”, a seven-minute-short, Hendrixesque take on Arcangelo Corelli's “La Folia” – and “Unlaced”, an arpeggio-ed frenzy that was originally paired with a stilt-walking and ballet performance by the Crumpets. These two instrumental tracks remained a fixture on four successive tours. And on four successive tours, “Unlaced” was... well... clearly dubbed. 📺 She was holding her e-violin, her hands were playing the notes, but what was coming out of the speakers was indubitably the studio version.
There were possible explanations, of course. Some sound buffs pointed out that “Unlaced” has multiple violin layers, and that a live violin solo would have sounded harsh and unbalanced over the supporting tracks 🔍 – but then, why pick an unplayable song as a staple of the show?
The violin-miming wasn't even very hush-hush, she didn't try that hard to hide it – it was just never addressed or acknowledged. On “Unlaced”, Veronica was usually summoned to “play” the keyboard – and we knew that was make-believe, they had a whole skit about it. 📺 Ditto when EA would play the intro to a song, then get up from the keyboard as she started singing, and the harpsichord track just kept going. It was part of the theatrics, the suspension of disbelief; live playing just wasn't the focus.
Still, because playing two songs should have been in her wheelhouse, EA's choice to stand on stage and mime along with her own world-class violin skills was puzzling. We knew EA was capable of playing “Unlaced”: “Face the Wall” was proof enough that she could still shred like nobody's business, and some lucky fans got to hear her nerd out about pitch standards and rock some Bach at VIP showcases in 2011 (though it was always the same piece, and reportedly not always on point: “she made beginner mistakes, like weird jaw, wrist, elbow placement and tension...” 🐀). And sure, “Face the Wall” was an intense piece, but... it was one of two in the show. The same two, always. She was supposed to be classically trained...!
As EA's fabrications became more common knowledge among the fanbase, people took increasing issue with this odd staging choice – particularly after “Face the Wall” was retired partway through the 2011 tour, leaving only the pantomime, with nothing else happening on stage to distract from it. 📺 People started fixating on her constant and inexplicable tweaking of the truth. Fake name, fake age, fake promises, and now she was fake-fiddling and making a grand show of it? Was she outright mocking her audience, daring them to call her out? Milking a skill she had grown bored with, in the lowest-effort way possible, knowing that goo-goo-eyed fans would still pay to see it? Playing them the world's saddest song on the world's quietest e-violin?
The release of new album Fight Like a Girl in 2012 did little to soothe the Plague Rats' fiddle blues. The violin was much less prominent on FLAG than it had been on Opheliac and Enchant. There were almost no solos, which provided fewer opportunities for playing or miming on stage. “Unlaced” was retired from the touring setlist. One night in Texas during the 2012 tour, due to being on vocal rest, EA played the melody line of “Liar” on the violin. 📺 And that was pretty much the last time world-class violinist Emilie Autumn was heard playing her instrument, on stage or in recording – to the dismay of many fans who had loved her for it.
Can someone please grab this woman by her hand, lead her across her livingroom/bedroom/study, and point at that lonely forgotten dusty violin in a corner of hers so she remembers that she actually owns it? (🐀)
It was yet another bizarre, glaring inconsistency in EA's narrative that fans seemed expected to ignore. Another elephant in the padded room. (Personal anecdote that I don't have a receipt for: in early 2012, when I asked if there was a possibility of EA playing another baroque set for the VIP events on the upcoming tour, her then-manager responded that that wouldn't be possible because venues didn't have the proper acoustics.)
Through some her posts over the years , attentive fans pieced together the likely truth of EA's effective retirement as a violinist. It's actually quite sad, and may cast a different light on EA's artistic shift.
The 2011 tour was initially scheduled for late 2010. It was postponed because EA had been neglecting a jaw injury for years, and needed emergency surgery to avoid “serious and irreversible damage” to her one violin-holding jaw. 📝 She had the surgery early in September; in late November, she performed all over Latin America for six nights straight, and by January, she was back on tour. The same tour during which she made “beginner's mistakes” on the Bach partita, and retired “Face the Wall” for good after a few shows.
She underwent jaw surgery again in 2018, after three years of orthodontic treatment which she said had “prevented [her] from performing”. It was the first anyone was hearing of this (she said she hadn't been touring because she was writing the musical!), and it's as far as EA ever got in terms of half-addressing the obvious: that after dedicating a third of her time on Earth to her craft, after years of pushing through the pain night after night, rushing through recovery periods, and making compromises so the show could go on... she may not be physically able to play concert-level violin anymore.
Once again, something that should (and would) have elicited empathy and support from most fans turned into a point of frustration, speculation and mockery, for years – because EA continued to favor pretend-play and fantasy over the sobering, unglamorous truth. Well, at least everyone's unhappy.

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS


submitted by pillowcase-of-eels to HobbyDrama [link] [comments]


2024.05.05 10:45 vovXndrius Слушали бы такой плейлист?

Слушали бы такой плейлист? submitted by vovXndrius to rusAskReddit [link] [comments]


2024.05.04 23:34 catsadthrowaway AITAH for abandoning my mom and ex bf?

warning: long ass post,>! suicide idealization, NSFW themes, drug addiction, trauma, mental illness!<
Title is how I feel right now. So I've (30NB) been living with my ex boyfriend/best friend/roommate (31M) for nearly a decade now. My mom (61F)? Most of my life.
We started dating in late 2013. Eventually he moved in with me, my mom, and her ex bf - let's call him Slum (60M). My ex's family were moving across the state and he didn't want to go with them. I didn't want him to either. Initially, I tried to help him find a place, but it didn't seem like he wanted to look around so I just let him move in with me. This started the habit of me doing all this research into literally everything I do for him because he couldn't be bothered to do it himself.
It was a very unhealthy relationship. So many arguments, mental breakdowns, traumatic memories, me depending on him to do so much for me and him doing it because he cares about me. It also started another bad habit of me trying to get away from him. Whether it's running away from home to stay at a hotel, trying to break up, or mental escapism, dreaming of the day I find my own place so I can be free.
I'm mentally unstable and didn't take therapy seriously. I'd be in and out of therapy, lack of/shitty public transportation being one of the reasons I kept doing that besides feeling hopeless. I can't drive, I get massive anxiety and feel like I can't concentrate on driving. Every time I paid for expensive driving classes, driving was terrifying but the driving instructors always said I was actually a decent driver but my anxiety was holding me back. That, and how impossible it felt to do simple shit like park a car (Visual processing disorder ftw).
My city also has garbage public transportation. Whenever I caught the bus, it used to take me 2-4 hours to get to therapy that was probably like a 15-20 minute drive away. This was before Uber was available in my city and taxis were overpriced. Sometimes my ex would drive me to my appointments - when he felt like it. Other times he had to work or I just didn't want to bother him while he was sleeping anymore. I'd be late to therapy waiting for him to wake up and take me (that's my fault, though).
I also didn't take my meds properly. I'd quit them cold turkey because I hated the side effects and didn't see a point if I felt like I was never gonna get better. The sexual side effects scared me the most because I didn't want my antidepressants/anti-psychotics to kill my already nonexistent libido. Not enough intimacy was a HUGE problem in our relationship. I didn't really like kissing, making out, or hugging for too long. Cuddles were okay though. Sex stressed me out because it was either painful as fuck or I just didn't want to do it (this was before I found out I was on the ace spectrum). I'd force myself to do it because I thought it was expected of me, as if having a sexless relationship wasn't an option.
The arguments we'd have made me feel so distressed that I would sometimes dissociate to escape the pain, hurt myself, or run away - as if walking alone at night is safer than being at home. I was suicidal and felt like I had zero control. Talking to him felt like I was trying to avoid landmines or dodge bullets, one wrong sentence and he shuts down and doesn't talk to me for days. To be fair, I said and did a lot of stupid shit and didn't consider his feelings at times.
He makes way more money than me. It feels like some kind of power imbalance - he'd be able to afford living alone, meanwhile that'd be impossible for me because I'm disabled and can only work part time while receiving disability monthly. Leaving meant I had no one in my life. I didn't have any other friends or family members to help me. I was scared of breaking up because I knew we'd stop being friends. He always said that if I moved out, he'd eventually stop talking to me (because he barely talked to his friends).
AND WHILE most of this was happening, I was dealing with my mom and Slum. My dad left and divorced her in 2011, basically disappearing from our lives (honestly don't blame him, but it hurts), so it's been an unstable environment since I was 17. After my childhood home went into foreclosure, we moved in an apartment but didn't stay long because my mom lost her job and couldn't pay rent. Before we got evicted, she met Slum in 2012 (she met this loser before she got fired). So I've been in between living with my verbally abusive sister and her bf at the time and hotels with my mom and Slum until I got a job and started receiving disability and was able to rent an apartment for us.
I hate my mom. There's so much anger and resentment. From an early age it felt like I was programmed to pity my mom and this intensified when my parents divorced. When I got my first job as a hotel housekeeper in 2013 at 19, all I ever thought about was making money to make sure we can have a roof over our heads. If I fucked up at work I'd literally have a nervous breakdown because I put a ton of pressure on myself. I feel like I'm stuck with her because she couldn't afford her own place ever since my dad left. She's a drug addict and has untreated bipolar disorder and possibly schizophrenia (because I have schizoaffective disorder). Every time she received a lot of money - tax refunds, stimulus checks, disability back pay, etc - she'd run away to waste all of it on drugs. I hate living with her because it feels like my ex and I have to do EVERYTHING for her - buy her food, pick up her meds, go shopping for her, and other stuff after she stopped working and Slum barely worked.
It was almost impossible for Slum to find a job because he had a "criminal record" which my mom refused to elaborate on by the way. I HAD TO look it up myself. Not only was this waste of space a sex offender, it meant I could get in trouble (because it's just MY NAME on the lease) if anyone found out he lived with us (he'd lie to his parole officer and said he was homeless). We actually got kicked out of a hotel we were living at because of it (before I got my second apartment. We had to leave the first one because it had bed bugs. More trauma).
Both her and Slum worked low paying temp jobs and acted like they were too broke to pay their part of the rent. Every time they gave me rent money, they'd ask for it back for xyz. I'd cry whenever it was time to pay rent because I was paying for MOST of it. Asking my ex to split it with me when he moved in was understandably out of the question, so I had to pay 3/4th of the rent. During this time, my mom stole my prescription meds, food, drinks, money (she's been stealing money from me since I was a little fucking kid).
After YEARS of dealing with this bullshit I finally kicked them out. It was the best decision I've ever made... but also one of the worst nights of my life. She said it was my fault my dad divorced her and he wanted to dump me in a mental hospital in another state - things that she conveniently doesn't remember saying. After she and Slum left, I only talked to her to ask when she was getting the rest of their shit. Eventually I stopped talking to her and threw their stuff out (I actually regret doing this) because she kept making excuses and said she had nowhere to put it in her current home (they were living in someone's trailer or something).
I thought things would get better when it was just me and my ex, but not really? I quit my first job in 2017 because I was sick of it, way too much work and the stress of moving fast got to me because I was a slow ass perfectionist. I became an unemployed shut-in for a year and a half, barely able to survive with just disability but that was my choice. My ex had enough and was ready to break up. I begged him not to and freaked out - I started volunteering at an animal shelter just to get out the house and eventually found my second job in 2019. I even started attending community college and went back to therapy...But none of it was genuine. I only did that stuff to make him happy. I didn't want to do any of this shit.
When I dropped out a year later in 2020 because I was unhappy with the major I chose and didn't know what else I wanted to do, he broke up with me right then are there. I didn't take it well AT ALL. I cried for weeks, I quit therapy, and quit my job to go back to doing housekeeping so I can make more money. After being single for most of the year, I tried to move on and started seeing someone - calling him Biff. Then out of nowhere my ex tells me that he's still in love with me and wants to get back together. When he broke up with me earlier that year, we were still roommates, but he refused to live with me if I continued seeing Biff.
At first I chose him (stupid fucking mistake, but was scared of being homeless), but Biff got in my head about this being wrong and it'd be a mistake going back to him so then I chose him instead (Honestly he was right, but he was kind of an asshole and our relationship lasted for only about a month). My ex decided to move out because I didn't want to be with him.
I became scared and desperate and ended up asking my mom (who dumped Slum and recently started receiving disability and was living in a hotel at the time) to move back in because I couldn't afford the rent by myself. Biggest mistake of my ENTIRE LIFE. I've been stuck with her ever since and - surprise surprise, she was still terrible. Sure, she paid her rent, but then she'd complain about barely having anything left afterwards despite having a couple hundred bucks and it'd be up to me to do everything else for her.
Literally a month after my ex moved out, I went crawling back to him. He took me back but proceeded to resent me for most of 2021, reminding me how I chose another guy over him and he's second best. We tried couples therapy - didn't do much. I found him a therapist to talk to because he started to hate and resent me but refused to find someone to talk to about his mental health and feelings over this entire event. He then moved back in with me and my mom in sometime later in 2021.
When his dad died in early 2022, we had to move to a bigger apartment last year because his college graduate sister needed somewhere to live because their step-mom kicked her as soon after their dad died. I honestly can't stand her. She's messy and very bigoted. Literally the first full day we lived in our new apartment she called my gender identity a mental illness while arguing with my ex about politics. I also got a hernia from pushing myself way too hard to help us move our stuff and I guess that was the final straw for me. I broke up with my ex last year because I couldn't take any of this shit anymore. We were constantly arguing about his shitty sister and my shitty mom to the point it pretty much ruined our already messed up relationship.
When we got into a really terrible argument, he told me he was gonna move out and buy a house, leaving me with my mom. I freaked out and started applying for places, including income based apartments for disabled people (I was recently diagnosed as autistic and had adhd as well). Months later I get a reply, not expecting that AT ALL because wait lists for subsidized apartments are usually extremely long. They found me a place that's in a tiny town 45 minutes away.
When I got approved, I was really excited but also fucking terrified. because I knew mom and ex would react poorly to the news. My mom freaked out because she has no idea where she's gonna go because she cant afford jack shit. My ex broke down like he did in 2020 when I found someone and begs me not to go, that he was only angry when he said what he said. A part of me wants to stay - he's still my best friend, hell, my ONLY friend (Especially after not wanting to make friends because he complained I was talking to them more than him). But I feel like I'd regret turning this down.
Since then our friendship has been permanently fractured, and he acts like we will no longer be friends if I leave. My mom is freaking out and going on her suicidal spiel. I can't handle this. I feel like I'm losing my mind, I feel guilty as hell, I feel like I'm hurting people for no reason when I could just stay. I know I sound terrible, and I feel like I've done a lot of messed up shit to them. AITAH for wanting to have my own place that I can actually afford?
submitted by catsadthrowaway to AITAH [link] [comments]


2024.05.04 23:01 Usual_Brief_6787 I spent 30 hours studying how Canva grew to $40B. Here's what I learnt:

In just over a decade Canva went from creating yearbooks for Australian high schools to over 135M users and a $40B valuation.
Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht (now husband and wife) founded Fusion Books in 2007 allowing Australian students to design their school yearbooks.
A few years later, they were the biggest supplier of yearbooks in Australia. And the foundations of Canva were put in place.
Then in 2013, the couple along with technical co-founder, Cameron Adams, launched Canva to a 50k-person waiting list.
Along with their mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere - the team had two ambitious goals in building Canva:
  1. Build one of the world’s most valuable companies. 💵
  2. To do the most good they can do. 🌱
Safe to say they achieved both. And in doing so, Canva has become one of the biggest success stories of the last decade - especially from a non-USA startup.
This is the story of how Canva went from Zero to One. 🚀 Click here to read the full deep dive.

Business model: How Canva makes money

Canva’s business model is simple - but slightly different from a typical SaaS.
Usually, SaaS businesses choose between Freemium and Free Trial (among others) to convert users to monetization.
But Canva uses both.
They have an awesome Free Plan that is sufficient for (probably) most people.
Then they have three paid plans: Canva Pro, Canva Teams, and Enterprise.
All of these offer more business features such as brand kits and more specialized features such as their background remover. With Enterprise offering a more tailored experience for companies that will have over 100 users.
And then lastly, although not making money, Canva also offers free premium features for educators and NPOs - in line with them doing good!

Canva’s Growth

Canva launched in 2013. But the idea for it started years before.
Melanie and her then-boyfriend Cliff were studying together at the University of Western Australia.
Melissa was studying Psychology and Commerce but was so passionate about design that she taught design programs to other students.
This is where she realized there was a problem.
It would take her students hours to learn the basics of the design tools on the market and the whole semester to become proficient.
A problem she felt was so obvious and needing to be filled that she dropped out of university to pursue it.
To build up some business acumen and money, as well as to test her hypothesis, she and Cliff started Fusion Books - a customizable yearbook tool for high school students in Australia.
Essentially an extremely niche testing ground for Canva.
The idea was a hit. It became the largest yearbook supplier in Australia and still runs profitably today.
This prompted them to go all-in on Canva.
They found a technical co-founder, Cameron Adams, to build the platform and raised $3M in Seed funding.
And so the journey began.
Canva built hype for their launch by creating a public waitlist - which reached 50k people by the time of launch in 2013.
By the end of 2014, Canva already had over 100k users, launched their iPad app, and had ~2M designs created on the platform.
In 2015, Canva launched Canva for Work (now Canva Pro), reached 50 Canvanauts (employees), surpassed 50M designs created, and reached a valuation of $165M.
In 2017 Canva became profitable and launched a bunch of new features and products, including animations, Canva Print, their Android app, and launched in 100 languages.
Canva became a Unicorn in 2018 with their $40M investment round. And made their first acquisition, buying Zeetings to double down on presentations. They also hit 1B designs.
Their acquisitions and new products continued and by the end of 2021, Canva had over 75M MAUs and was valued at $40B after raising an additional $200M.
As of now, Canva has over 135M MAUs, over 4,000 Canvanauts, and more than 15B designs in the last decade - over 200 new designs created per second.

Key Success Factors (KSFs)

There have been so many reasons for Canva’s rocketship success. Here are four that stood out to me, particularly for Canva’s earlier stages of growth:
🌍 1. Solved a BIG, Painful Problem
It seems a bit ridiculous that it took so long for a tool like Canva to exist.
And that’s exactly how Melanie felt, saying that the problem felt so obvious she feared someone else would beat her to it if she didn’t move fast enough.
But hindsight is always 20/20.
Back in the 2000s it probably seemed even more ridiculous that non-designers would need a tool for design.
But luckily for us, Melanie realized this counterintuitive nature of design tools from teaching design programs at university.
Her students struggled to learn the basics.
It took them entire semesters to proficiently learn a new tool.
Plus, for just about everything you wanted to create you needed another tool - which also took a semester to learn.
Think about Canva today - graphics, animations, videos, presentations, documents, graphs and visualizations, and more.
Before Canva you needed: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Powerpoint, Word, Excel, plus a whole bunch more.
Now I’m not suggesting that Canva does any one of these as well as the specialized tool - but it doesn’t need to - nor is it trying to.
Canva wants to be a suite of design tools hosted on one web-based platform. Giving you easier-to-use tools, simple templates, and more ways to collaborate.
Before Canva, this didn’t exist. Before Canva non-designers generally felt hopeless.
Before Canva even launched they had 50k people on their waitlist - this idea was going to be huge!
Now Canva has over 135M MAUs, in over 190 countries, and over 100 languages.
It’s often better to solve a deeply painful problem for a small group of people, than a meh problem for a large group of people.
Well… Canva does both.
Canva solves a deeply painful problem for a MASSIVE group of people.
👶 2. Simplified Everything
Most often, the best solutions are the simplest.
And Canva is a great example.
Canva is the simplest solution.
Canva creates what I like to call a Simplicity Flywheel. Canva is simple to:
Simple to find 🕵️
Google something like “how to design a logo” and guess what pops up on the first page?
Canva.
Try something like “how to choose brand colors”.
Canva.
Okay one more, Google “how to make a YouTube thumbnail”.
Two videos of some guy telling me I can make free thumbnails that convert? Huh?
Oh wait - guess what platform he uses?
Canva.
With the Canva thumbnail tutorial right underneath it by the way!
Canva has done an excellent job with content marketing - popping up on the first page for just about every use case imaginable, but more on this later.
Simple to get started 🌟
Canva has spent countless hours perfecting its onboarding process.
They identified that it wasn’t only the complexity of tools they needed to solve for, but also people’s confidence to design.
This is why they have structured their onboarding to get you to complete a design in a few minutes. If you don’t do it straight away, they make sure to remind you via email.
You get to see how quick and easy the platform is to use. And you make a cool design.
An instant confidence boost.
Canva also provides a ton of content on how to use their platform, how to achieve certain jobs (designs), and how to design better - making their users even more confident in getting started.
You may have noticed a common theme of content here - I promise its section is coming.
Simple to use 🧰
The core feature of Canva.
Create beautiful designs, without all the fuss of a highly technical tool like Photoshop.
It's simple to use - for everybody.
Canva has become their vision of an all-in-one design platform, where anyone can bring their creative visions to life.
No steep learning curves.
No need for more tools.
Simple to share 📢
One of the most critical parts of the flywheel is how simple Canva is to share.
Canva achieves this in a few ways.
The Canva Simplicity Flywheel then starts again.
🪴 3. Created Valuable Content
“The best marketing is education” - Regis McKenna, the key person behind marketing the first Apple Computer.
Canva is a prime example of this quote.
All of their content is made to help users create better designs - specifically on Canva.
Canva now dominates SEO by providing valuable content to their (potential) users.
In fact, Canva didn’t do any paid advertising until after 10M MAUs.
I’ve teased this part of the deep dive for a while now. So I guess I better deliver. Although Canva’s content strategy has been so incredible, I would have to actually try to not let it deliver value to you.
Strategy 🎯
Canva takes a wide-scope, but targeted, actionable approach to their content marketing.
Their key driver for content is creating value-adding pieces that help their users build up their design skills and get the most value out of Canva.
In fact, Canva launched with over one million templates, elements, and fonts.
This removes the friction to design - back to the simplicity.
How 📜
Canva does this by using a jobs-to-be-done intent strategy, i.e., solutions to tasks such as “how to create a LinkedIn carousel”.
They create for super-specific use cases.
But they create for all the use cases. And I mean ALL (the wide-scope part of their strategy).
Canva has six different blogs on just Wedding Photography - and how Canva can fit into it.
I mentioned above how Canva dominates Google searches. This is because they have just put out thousands of high-quality blog posts on just about every design topic imaginable.
They are experts in understanding their potential customers and their search intents - understanding what they could be trying to achieve and connecting them with a specific solution on Canva.
As in the earlier example: “how to choose brand colors” leads you to Canva’s article on their color palette generator, the psychology of color, how to choose colors for your business, and about eight of their YouTube videos on the same topic.
Safe to say I would be able to confidently choose my brand’s colors after this.
Canva gives each potential search intent its own landing page. Which in return builds backlinks for them (other websites linking to Canva). This is intentional.
Canva created tools and pages that can easily be referenced in journalists’ or bloggers’ content - giving Canva more domain authority and higher ranks.
To put this practically, imagine I’m a journalist writing about the rise of SMBs on social media.
I talk about how they’re creating unique content to build an audience. I want to help my readers as much as possible, so I find a tool that can create unique content for social media.
Guess what pops up as my first choice? (not this again… 🤣)
By now I hope you guessed it.
Canva.
And so I link Canva in my article. This not only boosts Canva’s domain authority, but also sends users directly to Canva.
Why 🧩
It’s simple.
Focusing on education and not selling brings your users closer to repeat value - and that’s the best sales tool out there.

Actions you can take to replicate Canva’s success

There is so much to learn from Canva - here are four key actions you can take and replicate into your business:
Introduce scarcity 🔢
One cool way Canva grew before even launching was to use a waitlist.
It’s nothing new nowadays - but still, a lot of people don’t use it.
A waitlist helps test for interest in an idea, but also by using it to limit access to your product, you get the benefit of scarcity.
Canva grew its waitlist super creatively.
They showed people the cool designs and templates from Canva - but you couldn’t get in.
However, you knew that some people were allowed in.
How you may ask?
Canva started to generate buzz within the design community and similar groups who needed design tools.
They reached out to the press, blogs, podcasts, and conferences to offer them early access for their audiences.
That’s how you got in early. That’s how you became a cool kid (at least I’m guessing it made you cool).
Also, anyone who Tweeted about Canva usually “coincidentally” reached the top of the waitlist.
Canva was awesome at generating hype through scarcity.
It shows. 50k people were on the waitlist at launch.
It’s a powerful tool to grow.
People want what they can’t have.
The key to scarcity is you want to be publicly oversubscribed.
You want people to see that others are interested. This makes them think that your product is something worth checking out.
So find a way that you can publicly limit access to your product or a new feature for it.
Find a desperate crowd 🫙
One of the key puzzle pieces to Canva’s success was finding an audience that was desperate for a product to solve their problem - simple and quick designs.
There are tens of millions of freelancers, SMBs, and solopreneurs who lack design skills but need to market themselves and their businesses. And Canva makes this easy.
Canva also entered when Facebook marketing was taking off like a rocketship and the above mentioned people not only needed content - but they needed loads of it.
Canva could do that.
So what does this mean for you?
It’s much harder to make a profitable business by solving a “cherry-on-the-top” problem.
You want to find a problem that people care deeply about. A “whole meal” problem.
Even if this means targeting a smaller group of people. It’s worth sacrificing at the beginning.
Because it will be much easier to market and sell to people who have a desperate need for a solution than people who would just sort of like one.
It becomes much easier to expand after you have your core users. Talking about your core users…
Find your entry wedge customer 🧀
Melanie, Cliff, and Cameron were super smart in recognizing they needed to find and leverage an entry point for Canva (from Fusion Books’ super niche audience).
They perfectly identified SMBs as this wedge to break in.
In 2013, SMBs were flocking to Facebook to market. But the problem once again came back to the complexity of design tools at the time.
These SMBs needed professional-looking designs - cover photos, social media posts, flyers, event banners, etc. - and they needed them quickly and easily.
In stepped Canva.
They positioned themselves to appeal to this huge pain point of SMBs. Specifically their marketing teams (sometimes this was the founders themselves or freelancers serving many SMBs).
Once Canva started to wedge itself in these SMBs, it became easier to convert these individual users into teams using Canva. As well as having the authority to expand to bigger enterprises.
Going to market is hard.
Don’t make it any harder for yourself by trying to target everyone at the beginning.
Find a subset or niche that will help open the door for you.
It also helps your messaging be more targeted, making customer acquisition a bit easier.
Leverage reciprocity 🎁
Refer one person you think would enjoy this newsletter to see this Action to Replicate (for all future deep dives).
I feel like in every one of these deep dives there’s been a consistent golden thread:
Give. Give. Give.
In business, those who give the most get the most.
Want to build trust with potential customers?
Provide real value.
Want to convert more free users to paid users?
Provide more value.
Want to keep users happy and not churning?
Just keep providing value.
Make it seem silly for them to stop using your product.
Build a relationship with your users to the point where they don’t want to stop using your product. And not just because it serves their needs.
But because they also like you and your brand.
And why does giving value through content achieve this so well?
Because not only does it build trust, loyalty, and authority.
But it also leverages reciprocity.
Your users will want to give something of value to you (a referral, a share, or a subscription) because you first gave something of value to them (articles, newsletter, tools, videos, free features)
Reciprocity is powerful. Use it.
submitted by Usual_Brief_6787 to SaaS [link] [comments]


2024.05.04 20:08 Deep-Mix-2274 (Backlash 2024 Spoilers) Small guide on the debuting Superstar

Well, I didn't see this coming, but here we are. Just like I did with Tama Tonga himself, here's a small guide on Tanga Loa.
As Michael Cole already said, Loa is indeed Tama's brother. Over 15 years ago, both brothers had a tryout at WWE, but unfortunately WWE only took Loa. This lead to Tama going to New Japan, while Loa stayed in FCW, the developmental system at the time, and grinded for 2 years. He had a couple of weird gimmicks down there, including being a secret service agent, and Juice Robinson's wild tag team partner.
Fast forward to 2011, Loa gets called up to the main roster as Camacho, Hunico's childhood friend. Yes, the old "let's change his nationality, nobody will notice" trick worked here, as Loa, a Tongan, was presented as a Mexican thug, that supposedly saved Hunico's life by biting an assailant's nose off. Naturally, this was a reference to one of Haku's (Loa's father) legendary escapades. Loa and Hunico weren't used that much, and Loa spent the next 3 years either doing the ocassional job on the main roster, or squashing people in NXT.
After WWE let him go in 2014, Loa went to TNA, where he formed a stable called The Rising... with Drew McIntyre and LA Knight. Yap, expect that to be revisited somehow down the road. Presented as a group of rebels with a cause, Rising had all the potential to be a top babyface group, but were constantly fed to BDC, TNA's equivalent to Bloodline in terms of violence. After a year of doing nothing, Loa left TNA and went to New Japan to finally reunite with his brother.
My Tama post already mentioned this, but Loa and him dominated the tag division, as a team called GOD - Guerillas of Destiny, a pair of dominant and wild alpha male heavyweights. Loa and Tama even lead a mutiny against The Elite (Kenny Omega, Young Bucks, CODY RHODES and a couple other guys), but nothing came of it due to apparent backstage politics. Following that storyline, the brothers continued tagging, until Tama went on a singles path in 2022, leaving Loa to do the same, although he didn't have as much success, because he suffered a devastating knee injury that year.
Upon his return, Loa lost a lot of his explosiveness and power, leading to some pretty hysterical moments of him doing "devastating" chops, failing to do a 619, and just looking slow in general. Loa did decent as a singles wrestler, but he wasn't pushed to the level his brother was. Gimmick wise, Loa is the calm and collected brother, who doesn't curse or swear as much, and is instead much more relaxed. Loa is nonetheless dominant in the ring, and very eager to fight, but definitely doesn't lack in the intellectual department either. Ring wise, Loa is a decent powerhouse performer, although not incredible, his finisher being Apeshit, a Rikishi Driver.
There you go, hope this guide helps, as we all rejoice the reuniting of one bad MF team. One final thing - the brothers had an absolute banger of a theme song in New Japan, and everyone who followed their careers hopes they can use it in WWE. Guerilla Tactics, WHOA, YOU KNOW WE ABOUT ACTION, WOAH!!
submitted by Deep-Mix-2274 to SquaredCircle [link] [comments]


http://rodzice.org/