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anamelessfool · 1 year ago

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Valise (AO3)

From my "Domestics" Ficlet Series

GEN Young Secondo (b. 1961) (1969)

(Illustration by Me...Yes, he is supposed to look like Damien from the Omen)

8 year old Secondo is a touring piano prodigy, and his mother supports him every step of the way. An unexpected visitor arrives at the Ministry HQ.

Tags: domestic fluff, Secondo the child prodigy, mother and son relationship, this is why he is so intense, Enjoy my Google Translate Italian, Maybe I should send this to my Therapist, Sorta Sad Fluff Because That's My Brand

First and foremost dedicated to @fishwithtitz once more for asking me about Secondo after reading my Kid Primo stuff.

Ficlet below the cut!

1969

She was always there. Sister Rebecca. His mother. Secondo stole a glance across the top of the piano to the velvety darkness of stage right. He could tell she was there by the soft gleam of her perfectly round glasses. Secondo gave a nod, then refocused himself on the piano keys before him.

This tour season she had planned for him a program highlighting the greats of Chopin’s work He had grown quite a bit since his debut at six, and so he was able to reach more keys with greater accuracy. The theater was packed, the audience on the edge of their seats astounded at how such a young mind could comprehend the complexities of piano performance. He was on tempo and accurate—but then again any trained monkey could be that with enough practice. They were drawn to his surprising sensitivity on the keys, his understanding of drama and atmosphere that went way beyond his years.

Secondo didn't care whether he played in the common room of the Ministry or a packed orpheum in New York City, in both places his brain worked the same. His fingers moved and the sound fell out, a puzzle to massage his brooding mind. They were the soundtrack of the visions he had in his imagination brought on by all the paperbacks he read in the Ministry limousine as he toured up and down New England.

A leviathan of cosmic horror, its impossibly great head rising from the sea.

Moriarty and Sherlock, entangled as they plunged headfirst down the falls.

A corpse’s heart, beating under the floor in defiance of its murderer.

Rough beasts, their hour come at last, slouching towards Bethlehem.

He finished the piece with a flourish, bowing solemnly. His mother was always the first one to applaud.

When they traveled, which was often, she insisted they stay at the finest rooms in the finest hotels. Her businesslike, steely expression was usually enough to ensure their stay there was one of ease and opulence, and she tipped everyone handsomely besides. “Yes, and the room needs to have a phone. It is essential.”

“There is a time to perform and a time to rest,” she told her son once. “Commit to each season fully.”

Except it seemed like she never truly rested. The Personal Assistant to Mother Imperator rarely does. They would have a meal in the hotel suite, or go to a play or opera performance in each city they visited, but she was always peering into her datebook or calling the Ministry in the theater phonebooth during intermissions. Secondo would hold her drink while she made plans and kept appointments across the world.

Back at the hotel, the calls and note taking would continue, this time on the elegant historical phone of the penthouse, at least until she felt everything was laid out well enough before going to bed.

“No, it's not possible, but you have to make it work.” Click. Her datebook would snap open, and she'd dial the rotary phone again for another check in. Whirrrr, whirrr, whirrr.

“Nihil will be on tour the fifteenth through the second. Yes, the venues are all approved.” Click. Snap. Whirrr, whirr, whirrr.

Then she would pull out an array of languages. A full half hour conversation in Italian. Three requests in Portuguese, a demand in Spanish from another caller across the world. A stilted yet firm discussion in broken German (she struggled with that one, but it was on her list).

Secondo, still warm from his bath, would close his eyes in the other bed. There was the soft murmuring of phone call after phone call. The efficient scratching of a fountain pen. The impatient tapping of her fingernails across the desk. She would turn to check on him and through his eyelashes he saw once more the gleam of her spectacles, the white gold glitter of the smart brooch at her throat. He started to drift off to sleep to the quiet efficient sounds of his mother at work.

“Yes, I'm away now. Our tour is going well. My son and I are having a lovely time. Yes, he is doing so well. Talented through and through.”

***

“And what brooch shall I wear today, boy?” She would ask him each day, after putting up her hair and putting away her ivory combs. Secondo would peer across the open jewelry case, the finery enclosed and separated with black velvet dividers, a stable of jewels. He would pick one and hand it to her. She never refused his selection.

“How is my watch today, boy?” Would be the next thing she would ask about. Secondo would already be prepared with it. It was a thin ladies wristwatch over forty years old and still pristine. It was a big moment for him when he was allowed to take care of it. He would make sure it was wound each day, opening the back to see the small gears whirring smoothly like the action of a song bird's heart. He would polish the white gold surface, check the fittings on the square cut sapphires. Under his care he wanted it to run for another four hundred years.

“We are going back home today,” she said. “The tour is over. The car is picking us up at the front in an hour. Is everything accounted for, boy?”

Secondo inspected the entire jewelry case, making sure all was there. He even considered the secret panel underneath, where a few hundred dollar bills were stored. He nodded solemnly, the most dutiful little butler she'd ever employed.

Secondo was the only one allowed to carry her travel case of jewelry. It was a small valise of ostrich leather with engraved brass to protect the corners. He was the only other one who knew the combination. When they traveled he never let his hand leave the handle. He had once seen a spy movie where a man had a handcuff and chain attached to a secret spy suitcase, and that really stirred his imagination.

I'm going to protect these, Secondo would think, and the idea of fighting off bandits and thieves with his teeth and fists would send a thrill through his little body. I'm going to defend these with my life.

***

Secondo stared out the window of the Ministry limousine, watching the ascent of the car into the canopy of old growth as they returned home. When there was nothing to say he and his mother Rebecca chose to say nothing. They sat in a silence that was comfortable to them, the soft scratching of her pen in her little datebook lulling him into calm.

Rebecca closed the book with a business-like click, elegantly stowing it in her coat breast pocket. Secondo watched the little flash of red shagreen vanish into the black wool.

“Boy.” Rebecca’s face showed nothing. She peered at him with a corvid intensity, then leaned forward, her strong nose mere inches from his face. An eyebrow twitched exactly once. “What do we have here?”

Second stared back with an equal level of stoicism, although there was the slight fluttering of anticipation behind his ribs. His mother reached out by the side of his head, feigning dramatic surprise. “Look!” She hissed. A wrapped caramel miraculously appeared from his ear, and she solemnly placed it in his hands. “Don't I tell you to wash your ears, boy?” She teased.

At that, Secondo smiled broadly, unwrapping and savoring the treat. Rebecca gave her son's knee a single pat. “Excellent work once again, my Secondo. I would not expect anything less.”

“Will we go again next year?” He asked.

“If you want,” she said.

“Europe?”

Rebecca frowned. “Not until you're older. These little tours are too much as it is on you. I know you enjoy the spotlight, boy, but you do have the rest of your life to stand under it.”

Secondo tightened his grip on the handle of her jewelry valise, glowering at the ridges of the leather seat across from him. “Why can't I be old enough right now?”

“Secondo—” and he snapped bolt upright, looking into her eyes. She used his name mostly when he was in trouble. She pulled off her glasses and began to clean them with a cloth from her jacket. The thick glasses concealed the tired wrinkles under her blue eyes. “Great men are good boys first. If you're going to be Papa Emeritus, you need to start now. And you are on the path. One step at a time.”

“But Nihil…” Secondo found it hard to understand how his proper mother ever spent a moment enjoying the presence of his freewheeling bohemian father. He suspected Rebecca felt the same.

Rebecca replaced her glasses. “I said that you are going to be a great man, Secondo.”

As the limo pulled into the circular driveway Secondo noticed two figures and some luggage standing under the front portico. Rebecca looked unusually puzzled as she helped her son out of the vehicle. One of the figures was a tall man in a very opulent fur-lined cape. He had the headwear and glittering grucifix that announced his station as a Cardinal, although he was not anyone Secondo had ever seen before. The second figure was much smaller and shyly stood behind the visitor. He was so small and hidden that Secondo assumed he was some sort of pet.

“Sister Rebecca, buon Giorno.” The Cardinal’s voice was merry, sing-songy. Foreign. “They had said you are one I will be needing a seeing, yes?” He bowed his great graying head. “I am Cardinal Raphael, sono di Milano.”

“Parlo fluentemente l'italiano, Excellenze,” said Rebecca. “How can I help you.”

Raphael’s shoulders lowered in a moment of relief. “Dov'è il Papa Emeritus questo pomeriggio? Sono qui per Sua Eccellenza.”

“è fuori. in questo momento è a San Francisco.”

“Ah, si, si…”

The two adults chattered on the step. Secondo held his mother’s hand as he observed the other visitor beside the Italian, who was slowly inching into view.

Holding onto the Cardinal’s belt end was a very small figure, bundled up. Above the mountain of his knit scarf and below the too-big beret, little cat-like eyes sparkled. It was a boy about half Secondo’s age, or younger. He had a cardboard suitcase on which a child drew a cartoon flower.

“Shall we go inside?” Rebecca finished the conversation. “You did not come all this way to stand on these steps. Come.”

A few moments later and Rebecca offered the visitors a seat at the sofa of a receiving room. She smiled as the adults settled in. Secondo took a seat in a nearby armchair, still holding the precious valise in his hand. The new boy struggled a bit with getting up onto the couch but sat there obediently, swinging his legs.

“Now,” Rebecca said, done with the pleasantries. “Why have you come all this way today, Cardinal.”

Cardinal Raphael swept out his hand. “Questo è il figlio di Papa Emeritus.” The little boy beside the cardinal blinked his eyes wide, checking in with his mentor. The Cardinal raised his bushy eyebrows, gesturing slightly with his hands. The boy screwed up his face in an attempt at nobility and bobbed his head slightly in a bow.

Rebecca’s mouth was now a thin line. “Oh? Is that so?”

“The em…his Eminence’s tour of Italy was er…in the 1964 and the 1965.”

“It most certainly was,” replied Rebecca. Her hand imperceptibly clenched the edge of her sofa chair. “I planned every last detail.”

“Perhaps not,” replied the Cardinal with a good natured chuckle, but upon seeing Rebecca’s icy expression he swallowed his own. Time crawled as she stared into him, tapping her fingers on her chair. If a sinkhole ripped open beneath the Cardinal's feet dropping him into the depths of the planet, he would thank Satan for the opportunity.

Rebecca solemnly pulled off her glasses and rested them on the side table. She arranged the datebook and fountain pen beside them, and rose to her feet. “Cardinale, mi scuso.”

She backed away elegantly, opening the parlor doors behind her and slipping inside. The Cardinal seemed to be a decently friendly man, since he attempted to break the tense silence by leaning over to address Secondo. “So eh, you….baseball?”

There was a shattering sound against a wall in the parlor. It sounded like a plate falling to pieces. Afterwards there came a great toppling noise of wood on wood, a pop and crack of carpentry destroyed under a foot. Then a wrathful scream was drowned out by the rushing, creaking crash of something large sliding to the floor. The tinkling of glass and a ceramic explosion suggested the victim to be an entire hutch of dinnerware.

The plates on the floor settled and Rebecca once more emerged, softly closing the door behind her and returning to her seat. Her face was as calm as it always was. She brought her items into her hands, writing something quickly in her book, then replacing in her jacket. “Secondo, I'm not sure if I want to buy your father a suitcase or a coffin.”

Cardinal Raphael shook his head and chuckled, but immediately recoiled once more at the glare thrown at him across the room.

The conversation became low, almost silent, the Cardinal gesturing with his hands as if he were a fencing opponent. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to Rebecca, who snatched it from his hands and glared at the words.

Secondo observed the little boy who was smiling to himself and admiring the carved wood paneling in the opulent receiving room. The boy noticed Secondo and presented him with a friendly mischievous grin.

Secondo frowned suspiciously back. He pulled the jewelry valise even closer to his chest.

The hushed conversation continued around them. Secondo had no idea what they were saying, but he attempted to understand the small snippets he heard.

Ci siamo presi cura di loro... quattro anni... torre della cattedrale... suicidio... è solo…

“Fine,” Rebecca said, neatly folding the note. She glanced over to Secondo, then back to her guests. She pointed at the new boy. “Stai qui per favore.”

The cardinal patted his young ward to his feet.

Rebecca leaned forward, staring into the little boy standing in front of her. Light reflected across her perfectly round spectacles, concealing her eyes and transforming her into some sort of suspicious owl, an inhuman statue. “Sei un bravo maschietto? Sei un maschietto obbediente?”

The boy winced, perhaps confused by the question. He collected himself and nodded.

“Lavorerai?”

Again he flashed a small face of concern. But he gave her one last determined nod.

“Very well,” Rebecca sighed. She leaned back in the chair and removed her glasses. There were a few beats of silence, the nun gathering her thoughts and tidying her mind from the previous moment’s sudden earthquake. She gestured from her son to the little visitor. “Secondo, this…I suppose then that this is Terzo,” she said. “Your…half-brother.”

My AO3 | Tumblr Fic List | My Obsessive Ghost AU Series aka My Flavor of Insanity

Please comment and reblog! Thank you.

#ghost scenes from the void #papa emeritus ii #ghost headcanons #domestic fluff #my art

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moonlit-han · 4 years ago

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the perfect cup of coffee ↠ lee minho

genre: fluff, office au word count: 2k warnings: none, unless you really don’t like coffee? request: no (for junhuisflower, who wrote the initial idea for this fic) a/n: i am reposting this fic because the first time i posted it, on June 13, 2020, it didn’t show up in the general tags. so, i hope you all enjoy it this second time around!

✧ masterlist & tag list info in bio ✧

↠↞

In his impeccably neat and well-fitting suit, Lee Minho walked into the office where he held the position of Manager in Chief. This was not his official title, but one that he had chosen for himself; after all, he did manage just about everything and everyone, when it came down to it.

In reality, Minho was the Assistant to the Administrative Director of the company and was, in theory, meant to delegate the more menial tasks to others. However, this never occurred because Minho did not trust others to do work he knew he could do better. Over that which was not in his job description and, therefore, the responsibility of others, Minho still attempted to exert control. Thus, he was the Manager in Chief. Everything in Minho’s world had to perfect, or as perfect as Minho could contrive.

As he arrived at the office and reached for the company suite’s door, automatically passing something that was not there from one hand to the other, Minho stopped. He’d forgotten his coffee. How had he forgotten his coffee? This was practically unheard of, since he made his coffee at home and brought it to work with him. He did not fully trust coffee made by others.

Coffee was one of the many things that Minho insisted on being perfect. While he cared that his clothes were appropriately smart for the workplace and he prided himself on his small but wonderfully efficient car, he could manage for a time without them being in perfect condition. But, he absolutely had to have perfect coffee. In terms of non-essential costs, Minho spent the most on his cats (plenty of little treats, baubles, and warm places to sleep) and his coffee (fair trade, organic coffee made with care and attention). He was forever trying new ways of brewing coffee, and considered himself a bit of a connoisseur. Oftentimes, he’d even add some cardamom to the coffee as it brewed for a little extra spice and sweetness. Having such wonderfully delicious coffee was the high point of Minho’s day, a way he coped with the monotony of work.

So, when he arrived at the office and had no coffee, Minho was incensed. Sighing and grumbling to himself, he pushed through the door and made his way to his desk. He had back-to-back-to-back meetings and was responsible for leading one of them; so, he needed the caffeine to get through his day. His schedule was so busy that he couldn’t go back out to buy coffee, and couldn’t go back home to make himself a proper cup. Damn. It was against his every rule for coffee consumption to drink that which had not been made by him and to his particular specifications. Well, there was nothing to do now but go into the office’s lounge and drink the fluid that might just pass for coffee.

Minho’s coworkers looked up as they saw him move toward the lounge. Was he really going to drink coffee here? they whispered among themselves. They remained quiet as he passed, not wanting to disturb him in case his lack of coffee unleashed a hitherto unseen wrath (or wraith, even).

As he pushed open the door of the lounge, Minho made a noise of disgust as he took in the smell: a ground-in kind of odor from years of low quality coffee that had seeped into the wood and cushions of the lounge’s chairs and sofa. But today, there was a sweetness floating over the sourness of the smell of old, bad coffee. Perhaps someone had simply brought coffee from the outside world into the room and the dregs still lingered in a cup in the recycling.

Resigning himself to drinking the coffee—Maybe if he gulped down the horrid stuff, he could just get it over with?—Minho took down one of the mugs kept in the cabinet above the coffee maker. As he poured the dark liquid into the cup, a richly sweet and nutty smell met his nose.

Wait, what?

This was the communal coffee pot in the employee lounge of his office. Good coffee pouring out of that pot shouldn’t be possible. Surely his senses were fooling him and the taste would be just as weak and grimy as it had been the one other time he’d made the mistake of trying it.

Gingerly, he stirred a little cream into the mug. Squeezing his eyes shut as if to ward off the assuredly inherent shitty-ness of the coffee, Minho hesitantly raised the mug to his lips and sipped.

His eyes flew open in surprise. This was some of the best coffee he’d ever tasted. Minho took another sip, savoring the taste of the brew. He was stunned, absolutely stunned. He had to find out who had made this wonderful coffee. It was imperative to his proper functioning, since this coffee would now be a regular feature of his daydreams.

During each of his meetings that day, Minho took a minute at the end to ask if anyone knew who’d made the coffee that day. No one knew. With each shake of someone’s head and each “No” he heard, Minho became increasingly more frustrated. How could no one know who’d made the coffee?

The next day, he asked around the office again, but still, no one knew. On the third day, Minho decided to stop asking his coworkers for fear of seeming obsessed, despite the fact that he really was obsessed with the question of who had made that coffee.

Several weeks passed with Minho occasionally checking, with the utmost secrecy, the contents of the office’s communal coffee pot. It was uniformly horrible. But after a full month of furtive coffee sampling, Minho’s work paid off.

It was a Friday morning and he’d ambled into the break room to just spend some time away from the (non-existent) noise of the office. He was surprised to find someone already there … making coffee.

“Hello, Mr. Lee,” she said brightly. “How are you this morning?”

Minho stared at the young woman as she continued making the coffee. So, this is our new hire, he thought, noting the grace with which she moved.

“Mr. Lee?” she prompted.

Minho shook himself. “I’m sorry,” he searched his memory for her name, “Ms. L/N, isn’t it? I’m well, thank you. I hope you’re having a stress-free morning.” Minho leaned against the wall by the counter where Y/N methodically measured tablespoon after tablespoon of rich, dark coffee into the coffee maker. He noticed that it had been cleaned, too. “Do you make coffee here often, Ms. L/N?”

Damn it, that sounded like the worst pick-up line ever, Minho chided himself.

Y/N laughed softly. “Not really, since I’ve only been here a month, Mr. Lee. Would you like a cup when I’m done making this?”

“Oh, yes. Thanks,” Minho said, still in a bit of a daze. Huh, did she make that delicious coffee, then?

“Is it alright if I add some cardamom? I think it gives the coffee a deep, interesting flavor,” Y/N said before she closed the lid of the appliance.

Minho thought he’d died and gone to heaven in that moment; all he could do was nod. Y/N produced a small container of cardamom—she said she’d ground it that morning—and added a bit to the ground coffee. Minho watched as Y/N finished preparing the coffee, thinking to himself. Then, they sat in surprisingly easy silence as the smell of brewing coffee began to suffuse the room, filling Minho’s world. Leaning back in a chair, Y/N had a blissful look on her face at the aroma.

The coffee maker made a gurgling noise as it shut off, and Y/N rose to her feet. She withdrew two mugs from the cabinet, then went to her bag and produced a thermos and a jar of honey. Minho looked on as Y/N poured out the coffee, then measured out honey into one mug.

“Would you like some?” she asked, proffering the honey.

“Definitely,” Minho said, excitedly. “I rarely meet anyone else who puts honey in their coffee.” He smiled, dropping his earlier formal manner.

“Really? It’s the best. You know,” Y/N continued, spooning honey into his mug, “I’ve never met anyone else—other than a Turkish friend, at least—who puts cardamom in their coffee.”

“I had it when I was traveling and fell in love,” Minho said, then cleared his throat self-consciously. How was he talking with her this easily? “And, Ms. L/N, you’re welcome to call me Minho. You are, after all, the Assistant to the Artistic Director here, so our positions are equal.”

“Oh! Well, in that case, my name is Y/N.” She grinned and opened the metal canister, which Minho saw was full of cream. “Do you want to put yours in? I know people are particular about cream in drinks.”

Taking the thermos, Minho thanked Y/N and noticed that his heartbeat was pounding a little louder than he expected. Then again, perhaps not so unexpectedly as he was about to drink what he knew would be delicious coffee. He poured in just enough cream to turn the coffee the color of dark amber, then brought the mug to his lips.

“Enjoy!” Y/N said, smiling brightly as she took back her thermos and stowed it and the other containers in her bag.

Minho took a sip, and almost dropped the mug in surprise. It was just like the coffee he had tasted several weeks ago, and, really, even better. He savored the coffee, taking sip after sip as Y/N looked on.

“Is it good?” Y/N asked hesitantly, not drinking from her own mug yet.

“It’s delicious, Y/N, it really is,” Minho sighed, feeling as if he were drinking ambrosia. “Did you happen to make coffee for the office a few weeks ago?”

Surprise overtook pride on Y/N’s face as she chirped, “Yeah, I did! Did you have some then?”

“I’ve been trying to find who’d made that coffee ever since,” Minho said, smiling at how odd that must sound. “I just really like coffee, and yours was incredible.”

Y/N blushed furiously and tried to hide her face by taking a sip from her own mug. “Thanks, Minho” she murmured. “I’m glad you liked it!”

Minho couldn’t help but smile softly at how cute Y/N looked when he complimented her coffee. Her dimples even came out when she smiled.

How is she that pretty? Minho groaned to himself. Shit. Well, what do I have to lose?

“Y/N,” Minho said tentatively, and Y/N looked up, her cheeks still pink. “So, there’s this coffee shop I love to go to and they have all sorts of unusual blends—it’s really quite lovely. Forgive me for being so forward, but may I take you there? I’m sure you’d enjoy it!” He rubbed the back of his neck, slightly embarrassed. “But only if you’d like, and it doesn’t have to be anything more than two coworkers getting coffee together. I don’t mean to sound like I’m asking you out or anything,” Minho rambled, then stopped, knowing he’d probably said too much already.

“I’d love to!” Y/N said, her eyes sparkling. “Maybe we will be two friends getting coffee … or maybe something else?”

Minho’s eyes went wide in amazement as he made a little noise that could be taken as a question or a plea for clarification.

Y/N shrugged as she picked up her bag and went over to the door. “You’ll have to wait and see,” she said and winked, leaving Minho to stand in the office lounge, staring at the door.

Still unable to process his luck—was that it?—Minho took another sip of coffee. It was just as delicious as Y/N was sweet. This was going to be quite interesting indeed.

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madamhatter · 4 years ago

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IMPORTANT HEADCANONS TO CONSIDER

“None of this is terribly important to consider when comes to m-” Too bad, Sophie. “No! I didn’t want these details released!” Too bad!

can they use chopsticks

Modern Sophie knows how to use them and prefers cooking with them! In her opinion, they are are both an essential and also one of the greatest cooking utensil to have of easy it is to wash them, they’re great for precision, and are multifunctional. She would have a pair in her kitchen and would regularly use them whenever she can.

Canon Sophie, however, will not have much experience with using them. Eating with chopsticks will be a challenge. However, she will fall under the same preference as her modern self, finding them a wonderful addition for her kitchen!

what do they do when they cant sleep

A far too common situation for Sophie, most days of her week are spent unable to gain any peace and allow herself to feel safe and relax enough to close her eyes. Anxiety will keep her staring at her ceiling, if she actually cared to stay lying down in bed.

Her routine would always involve movement and/or work. Usually, she would be confined to her room, filling out surplus paperwork or on projects she brought home with her. On rarer occasions, and surprising for those who know her as a ‘recluse,’ she would leave the house and walk some blocks around her neighborhood during the peaceful night. She doesn’t very much care for her safety at this point, and would let herself to get lost into the nighttime.

Modern-verse, she would add on continuing and playing video games that she hasn’t had the time to finish. Usually, it would be strategy games like Fire Emblem, visual novels like, for example, Type-Moon or Frontwing, and mobile games like gachas and hidden object games.

what would they impulse buy at the grocery store

Sophie never considers impulse purchasing at stores. To be frank, this is the woman responsible for buying the groceries and budgeting for her family to ensure they have sufficient funds to keep this household above the water. If anything, impulse purchases she does are for her sisters and stepmother. When she remembers what they mentioned wanting particulars or indirectly mentioning something they saw on the television, it would be most definitely waiting for her family members in their rooms, or the kitchen, depending on what they were talking about. She would feel intensely guilty, and undeserving, about purchasing items for herself, but it mean doesn’t she wouldn’t -- it just happens as rarely because emotionally handling that is exhausting. When she does, it is usually either affordable art supplies and flower seeds. Depending on the verse, she would either have a garden (backyard) to plant them or she resorts to growing them in pots and anything she can get her hands on.

what order do they wash things in the shower

Theoretically, from top to bottom. If it’s a day where she needs to wash her hair, it would start at her scalp and end at her toes, but the very last part would be her private bits! Usually, she would focus on her arms and hands, to then her shoulders and chest, to then her back, and finally legs and feet. She doesn’t get the luxury of spending much time in the shower because she very feels like it should be a “get in, get out” thing to do in the mornings. However, it does depend how emotionally spent she is on the day. Something cute that she does, when she’s in her better moods or wanting to ‘escape’ a bit, is that she’ll hum and sing to herself while showering!

what’s their coffee order

Guess who is the person who dislikes coffee and would refuse trying it at all? That is Sophie Hatter! Unless she has to try it out of obligation or wishes to be polite, she would not drink it. If made to have some, it would possibly be more milk or cream than coffee that way she can handle it. If someone were to think that introducing her to sweeter alternatives would help, quite unfortunately wrong you are! Sophie does not have a sweet tooth and is notoriously picky when it comes to anything sugary.

what sort of apps would they have on their smartphone

Having some difficulty navigating her phones (professional and personal lines), she has very limited knowledge on how to use it and has only perfected using her phones for particular functions. On her professional phone, it was very limited and one 5-6 apps are downloaded to the phone, outside of the pre-installed apps that she would use regularly. This would be related to programs that’ll help her keep track of stock exchange, investment monitoring, budgeting, creating, scanning, and signing documents, and those very niche duties. However, she will treat herself to having one art application that is also installed on her personal phone. On her personal/private phone, it would be the similar situation where her apps are limited. However, there are some that Martha and Lettie installed for her like certain social media apps that Sophie uses passingly, but never focuses too much on it. Something like Twitter may be her “go-to” but it’s an private account not even under her name (compared to the corporate account) and she posts her sketches and fanart and her random thoughts and questions. She’d probably also have the almanac app downloaded beside several art apps, a flower guide, bird-watching guide, and one or three games she’d sink some hours (mentioned earlier).

how do they act around children

Sister-turned-parent (as she did function as both mother and father for her sisters), Sophie easily finds herself understanding and getting along with children. Generally, though, she is a friendly but firm figure, always entertaining what a child has to say and listening to what they’re expressing. Being around children would reveal her doting and gentler side faster than most things, but it would also reveal her protective nature as easily (She was cursed as a black cat in the books when she had Morgan and anytime she felt her child in danger, she shifted herself, willingly, a panther. She doesn’t play around.)

As sad as it is to say, she is much more expressive but honest with children; she has this particular care and respect about those so young and being able to live their childhoods. She idealizes the idea of ‘childhood’ and finding it such an imperative and special time in anyone’s life. Given her lack-of childhood that she never had, it is particular sensitive for her and she acts on the “I went through this and no one else should” ideal.

what would they watch on tv when they’re bored and nothing they really like is on

Any nature channel or music channel (i.e., classical) that she can listen to while she does something around the living room. If she cannot find something she’ll enjoying watching, she wouldn’t really spend her time sitting and just whatever when she can easily be doing something else that does interest her.

tagged by: @ninthsanctum { technically stolen from ya’! I just took the full ver. instead of the abridged ver. tagging: you! take it! now!

#( in which we learn about the eldest ; headcanons )#( the shenanigans of a sorceress ; dash games )#long post tw #long post #[ edit: the fun thing about Sophie is that she's the type of muse who has concrete opinions on things ]#[ so anything like series she would consume ; she would have her takes on and preferences and criticisms ]

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franklyshipping · 5 years ago

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Fighting The Darkness ~ A Markiplier Ego Fanfic

THIS COMES FROM A WONDERFUL ANONYMOUS PROMPT WHEREIN DARK IS TO HELP SILVER SHEPHERD WITH SOME TRAINING! Let's see how this goes....LET'S DO IT!

TAGGING: @darkipli-ler and @silvlee-shepherd

'....okay explain why I have to do this again?'

Dark smiled as Silver Shepherd looked to him with a mix of confusion and curiosity as he held the black blindfold loosely in one of his hands. In his other hand Silver held a wooden sparring pole, and Dark had his own which he absently started to twirl as he rattled off his reply to the sweet hero.

'Learning to fight in darkness, without sight, is absolutely essential for a hero of your calibre. Darkness in an unknown or disadvantageous environment could be easily instigated by a villain and you need to make sure that you can adapt yourself to that.'

Silver followed along with interest, and nodded with an excited smile as the rationality of it all became clear to him. I mean, of COURSE it wasn't strange at all that Dark wanted to blindfold him in a sparring session, and it CERTAINLY wasn't a suspicious request given Dark's record of somehow tickling Silver to smithereens during their sparring sessions.....ahem.

'Huh....okey dokey! Let's do this!'

Dark chuckled warmly at Silver's excitable demeanour, smiling as Silver slipped the blindfold on over his eyes before gripping his sparring pole, attempting to prepare himself. Silver was very eager to train like this, any opportunity to fight and practise and train himself up to be resilient against any villainous surprise; also, Silver felt so lucky that he had a friend like Dark who could teach him these things!

'Wonderful.....let's begin.'

Dark replied, before proceeding to circle the sweet superhero. Dark frankly just wanted to pounce on the twitching, smiling man and tickle him to pieces, but Dark knew he had to build it up, lull Silver into a state of non-suspicion.

'You must remember....you have five senses. Just because one is inhibited, doesn't mean you cannot use the other four. People subconsciously prioritise sight over all else, you cannot allow yourself to do this.'

Dark spoke concisely in an authoritative manner, and he smiled when Silver perked up excitedly; his eagerness to listen and learn was ceaselessly adorable. Dark continued circling, and continued speaking.

'Taste may not apply so much, but the others do. Hearing for one....is imperative....'

Silver gasped and twitched when he suddenly felt Dark's low voice right next to his ear; Dark had leant in swiftly to speak before retreating back and resuming his circling of the hero. Silver could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end as he got more excited, and he smiled bashfully when he heard Dark chuckle at his twitchiness.

'As is your sense of smell....you can identify people that way, as well as gases, toxins, and other dangerous substances....'

Dark continued, and his words spurred Silver to inhale deeply and see what he could get from his surroundings. It was mostly just the air, but there was another scent there....and Silver developed a cheeky smile as he queried.

'Hey uhm....did uh, did Wilford just come in? I can REALLY smell his candy cologne....'

Dark froze for a moment, cheeks going pink....because yes, Darkiplier did in fact smell like his boyfriend's cologne, for reasons that I'm sure you can imagine. Dark narrowed his eyes at the hero....oh if only Silver knew how much worse he'd made it for himself. Dark poked Silver in the side softly, making the hero squeak as he spoke in a more growly tone of voice.

'And last of all....physical sensation, needed for navigation, and identifying whether or not you are inhibited....or weak in any way....'

Silver gulped, giggling residually from the poke....ah, it was SO worth it! Silver may not have been able to see but he KNEW he'd coaxed out a blush from Dark, and that made his day. Silver straightened up, deciding to interject, for he was wondering what the actual training procedure would be....he had no inkling....that Dark had other plans.

'Ohokahay, so what do we do now?'

Dark smirked, pausing in front of Silver. It was time.

'Now.....focus. Listen. Smell. Feel. Listen to the sound of your breathing and mine, smell the air around you, and feel how the air around you moves....feel how it gives you goose-bumps and makes your hair stand on end....let yourself get in tune, and take as much time as you need.'

Silver of course followed Dark's instructions. The hero tightened his grip on his pole, straightened up, and took measured breaths so that he could hone his focus; Silver was under the impression of course, that this was time given to him to focus, and that he wouldn't need to defend himself or anything. So Dark knew it was time. Dark's hungry eyes flicked over Silver's form as he circled and circled, Silver's tickle spots were coming to the forefront of his memory as he eventually stopped behind Silver. Dark silently set his pole down upon the floor....and with the eagerness of a vengeful monster, he surged forth.

'WOAHWOAH-HEHEHEY AHAHA WH-WHAHAT AHARE YOHOU DOHOING?!'

Dark smirked....oh it had all worked perfectly. He had trapped Silver in a hug from behind with ease and dug his wiggling fingers into the hero's fleshy sides. Silver hadn't stood a chance. The hero had shrieked and tried to clamp his arms to his sides, but alas, it did nothing; plus, he'd fumbled and dropped his pole on the ground. Silver had nothing to fight back with, and thus into frantic giggles he descended.

'Well, we've had a number of rather serious training sessions lately, so I figured it was time for a little fun. Also....you don't really think I'm going to let you get away with that comment about my boyfriend do you?'

Dark smirked as he replied to Silver's mirthful question, not halting his wiggling fingers for a second as he watched Silver's wonderful blush of embarrassment crop up on his cheeks. Plus, Silver was squealing amidst his wild giggles and cursing himself for letting Dark get him like this.

'NAHAHAHA IHI'M SAHARRY I-I-IHI WAHAS JUHUST BEHEING SIHILLY!'

Silver tried to reason desperately, craning his head towards Dark as he wriggled about in his hold. Of course, Dark had only just begun his onslaught of the hero, he wasn't going to stop so soon. Dark snickered fondly into Silver's ear, his teeth gleaming with feral joy as his wiggling fingers now crept to Silver's hyper-ticklish belly.

'Ah that may be....but in hindsight I don't think it was one of your wisest courses of action, do you?'

Silver just absolutely shrieked with laughter, arching his back adorably amidst the absolutely torturous tickling at his tender tummy. It was such turmoil for the poor hero, he couldn't even muster up the strength to take the blindfold off because his body's stronger instinct was to keep his hands pushing at Dark's! So the hero remained sightless, and it meant Silver's mind was swirling with question after question of where and when and how Dark was going to tickle him next. It was pure evil.

'IHITWASBADITWAHASBAD IHIHIHI'M SOHOHO SAHAHAHARRYYYY!!'

Agreeing with Dark and apologising seemed like a very good combination regarding securing mercy from Dark, but Dark was rather enjoying himself. He smiled and awed in Silver's ear unsympathetically, before cooing in a babyish tone as his fingers dug eagerly into Silver's belly pudge.

'Awwww, but it's too late for sorry! Now wittle Silver has to face the consequences of being a cheeky wittle boy!'

Silver squealed amidst his cackling laughter as crimson spread across his face, why did Dark have to tease like THAT?! Silver was so desperate in fact, that his knees buckled and brought them both tumbling to the floor. Thankfully they landed on a soft mat, and Dark had expected such a reaction which meant he managed to maintain his hold on Silver and let his nails scratch at the hero's waistline.

'DOHOHON'T TAHALK LIHIKE AHA BAHAHABY THAHAT'S MEHEHEAN!!'

Silver cried out, throwing his head back and writhing as he weakly whacked Dark's arms and hands, he just couldn't handle being talked to like a baby, it made him feel like a warm puddle of goo on the inside! It wasn't fair! Of course that was exactly why Dark teased that way, just so he could weaken the tender hero more. Dark kept up the waist tickling as he cooed once more into Silver's ear.

'Oh come now Silver, how is it mean when it merely alludes to the truth? You ARE a ticklish little baby after all.'

Dark chuckled as Silver shook his head, wailing and grinning and desperately arching his back....whilst also letting out the cutest hiccups that you ever have heard.

'YOHOHOU'RE AHA-HIC-HA MEHEANIHIE! IHIHI'M G-HIC-GOHONNA GEHET YOHOU BACK!!'

Dark raised an amused eyebrow at that, then snarled and had mercy....only to then grip Silver by his sides and roll him over properly onto his belly. Silver gasped and squeaked amidst the manhandling, blushing profusely since he didn't actually mind being manhandled-ahem, but Silver took the time to catch his breath. He figured he'd need it, and the hero got goose-bumps as he properly realised what had just come out of his mouth. Oh dear.

'First cheeky comments, and now threats? You're really asking for it today aren't you?'

Dark growled as he straddled the hero's lower back, and chuckled as he looked and saw Silver hide his face in his hands rather adorably. Dark's chuckles however became much more smug when Silver deigned not to reply to his question...which was an answer in itself; Silver wanted to receive all this just as much as Dark wanted to give it. Dark allowed his fingertips to splay over the backs of Silver's thighs as he purred.

'You should really be more careful....if you're this cheeky with a real villain, goodness knows how merciless they'd be with you...'

Silver let out another soft, tittery hiccup, before his giggles were rekindled from the teasy gentleness that Dark provided. Thankfully though, Silver finally found the energy to push the blindfold up and off of his eyes....his adorable, watery, mirthful eyes.

'D-Dahahark p-plehease plehehease I-I-I d-dohon't knohow where my ch-cheheekiness cahame from!'

.....yeah, nice try Silver. Dark barked out a laugh, amazed that Silver would even try a fib like that, and then went about scribbling the backs of Silver's thighs with happy malevolence; it had only been 60 seconds or so, but Dark had already started to miss Silver's wilder laughter!

'Of course you don't Silver, of course you don't.'

Dark crooned sarcastically, and smirked with delight as Silver let out a shrill scream of ticklishness. Silver's laughter was high-pitched and utterly wonderful, and along with how he pounded the floor mat with his fists....it was fair to say that Silver was very much enjoying himself.

'NAHAHAHAT THEHEHEHEEEERE DAHAHAHARK!!!'

Translation: Yes it tickles there so much, but I do still like it. Dark of course kept going as he mused playfully in reply.

'Not here? Oh but these ticklish thighs of yours are perfectly within my reach, it would be a shame and a travesty if I didn't give them my attention...'

Silver was just a mess of ticklish noises of all kinds, shrieks, wails, squeals, you name it, if it was loud then he was doing it. It was such a bad tickle spot for the poor hero, and with tears trailing down his burning cheeks, he was really getting desperate.

'IHIHIHI'LL DOHOHOHO AHANYTHIHIHIIIING!!!'

Silver called out, and Dark raised an eyebrow, humming lightly in thought. He peeked behind him and fondly smiled, adoring how the hero just flailed and embodied hysteria so cutely. Dark softly pinched the backs of Silver's thighs as he replied.

'Anything? Anything at all?'

Dark purred, and with Silver nodding almost instantly, it made Dark chuckle and make his request.

'Give me your sweetest apology. You were cheeky to me, and you even had the gall to try and threaten me, I feel that I deserve your best remorse.'

Silver Shepherd wasted no dang time I tell you that, I'm not even sure Dark had completely finished speaking before the superhero's sweet, pleading voice rang out.

'IHIHIHI'M SOHOHO SAHAHARRY PLEHEHEASE FOHORGIHIVE ME DAHAHARK PLEHEHEHEEEASE!!!'

Dark smiled, his heart was nearly warmed with how sweet Silver sounded! Of course, since Silver had delivered on Dark's request, Dark had mercy on him properly. He slid off of Silver's legs, and purred teasingly as the hero hurried to cradle said legs.

'You are forgiven, this time.'

Silver was a mess of flustered gasps and giggles as he frantically worked to rub away all the ghost tingles and tickles that were running through his poor body. Soon though, he moved his hair from his face and looked up at Dark, speaking in a very sweet, meek voice.

'.....th-thahank you.'

Dark smirked as Silver kept blushing; Dark knew it wasn't the mercy that Silver was thanking him for.

'Anytime.'

Silver squeaked happily to himself....after all the intense, serious training sessions they'd had....Silver had honestly really needed something like this. Also, now that he was mostly recovered, Silver perked up VERY cutely and gave Dark an excited, hopeful smile.

'C-Can wehe go get pizza? M'suhuper hungry now.'

Dark smirked, honestly with how dishevelled Silver looked he wasn't surprised that the hero was craving sustenance. Dark got to his feet before happily hauling Silver up too, and replied with a grin as they started ambling to the exit of the training room.

'Absolutely, but only if we can get side orders of nuggets. If I don't have food for Wilford to steal from me when we return then I shall never hear the end of it.'

Silver snorted and giggled at that, it was VERY much a thing that Wilford was the one who would steal pieces of Dark's food whenever the opportunity was there. As they walked though, that cheekiness reared back up in Silver for a moment, and made him mumble playfully; the cologne was still in the air.

'...y-yohou still smell like him.'

Dark pursed his lips and Silver giggled again when he actually saw Dark's blush this time. The hero froze though when Dark turned and suddenly leant in close to him, and for a second Silver thought he was going to be tickle attacked again. However....Dark merely took in a deep breath, and then smirked as he and Silver locked eyes.

'Mmm....you have a wonderful scent combination too....old books and cherry blossoms....and is that a hint of iron?'

Silver's eyes widened as he let out an embarrassed squeak, but ended up smiling bashfully because he figured that he did deserve that. Then, they went and got pizza.....and nuggets and garlic bread and a lot of other food because Dark and Silver had to make sure that their pizzas REMAINED their pizzas.

HOPE YA LIKE THIS LEMME KNOW IF YA DO WOOOOOO LUV YOOOUS XX

#markiplier #markiplier egos #darkiplier #dark #silver #silver shepherd #sfw #platonic #ego fic #ego fanfic #tickle fic #tickle fanfic #tickle #tickles #tickling #ticklish #luv these bois #prompt

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wistfulcynic · 6 years ago

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Their Way By Moonlight: The Message (Chapter 6)

In which hints are dropped and there is a very long dream sequence. Also another cliffhanger. Note at the end.

Summary: A new curse has fallen on Storybrooke and this time the Saviour is trapped inside it, deliberately separated from her son and anyone else who might help her break it. But what no one knows –including her own cursed self– is that she and Hook are soulmates, working together within their shared dreams to find a way to break the curse and free everyone from the clutches of evil yet again. (Alternate 3B, set in the What Dreams May Come universe)

Rating: A hard M

Tagging: @teamhook @kmomof4 @resident-of-storybrooke @darkcolinodonorgasm @jennjenn615 @tiganasummertree @bonbonpirate @thejollyroger-writer @lfh1962 @laschatzi @katie-dub @ultraluckycatnd

Anyone wishing to be added to or dropped from this tag list, please do say so.

Read it on AO3

The Message:

Killian hustled Henry into the truck, performing a quick, apprehensive scan of their surroundings as he did. Nothing out of the ordinary caught his eye, but he found that this did little to settle the unease that was brewing in his belly at the lad’s revelation. An uncursed Evil Queen, or at least an aware one, was… unanticipated. Killian very much disliked that which he failed to anticipate.

The journey back to the apartment passed in silence. He glared at the road as he drove, his eyes flickering back and forth between it and Henry, slumped in the passenger seat, his face tear-streaked and distraught. Killian forced down a surge of guilt. He wished there were a way to break this curse without involving the lad, but even Emma had finally agreed that his presence was essential if they wanted to stand any kind of chance. Even bloody Oisín —or rather, Frank, if he insisted— had confirmed it, that very afternoon. The Saviour must have aid from her true loves. Both of them.

Perhaps if they had accepted this sooner they wouldn’t be in their current mess, he thought. If Emma hadn’t insisted on going to investigate on her own… but Killian shook those thoughts from his head. This was no time for recrimination. He had long since learned from bitter experience the futility of living in the past. What was done was done and they could only move forward, and Killian had certainly tried. Finding himself abruptly alone with a stepson who at the time had not fully trusted him, he had done the best he possibly could to build a solid plan, to prepare Henry for what had to be done. Perhaps his best efforts had not been enough, though he gave himself enough credit to suppose that nothing could ever really prepare someone for the experience of seeing their loved ones either strangers to them or trapped in misery. Or both. Although Henry had not yet elaborated on the exact circumstances in which the Queen now found herself, Killian could deduce from his reaction that they were not good.

The drive was a short one and soon they found themselves in their kitchen, both relaxing noticeably in a place that already felt safe. Killian immediately began to prepare hot chocolate, without even asking Henry if he wanted any. Hot chocolate after a bad shock went without saying.

“Did you make some earlier?” asked Henry as he watched Killian wash the milk pan.

“Aye. Your mother was here for lunch.”

Henry’s eyebrows rose. “She was? What, already? That was fast.”

Killian smiled wryly. “That does appear to be the consensus.”

“Why, who else said it?”

“Frank was here as well, delivering our order. You were right about the sofa, it goes perfectly.”

Henry’s troubled expression had been slowly easing as his fear receded, and now he broke into an actual grin. “I knew it would. I’m sorry I missed Frank, though, couldn’t he have stayed?”

Killian resisted the urge to scratch behind his ear. Henry had cheerfully accepted Frank as a magical authority, but there were some points on which he remained ignorant, and Killian intended to keep him that way. “Er, no I think he needed to get back. But he invited us to visit as soon as we’re able. All of us.” He smiled as reassuringly as possible and after a moment Henry nodded in acceptance. He sat down on a stool at the kitchen island, hugging himself tightly, and when Killian set a cup of chocolate, liberally doused with cinnamon and whipped cream, down in front of him he immediately wrapped his hands around it and brought it to his cheek.

“I feel so cold,” he said.

Killian looked at him with concern. “Drink up, lad, then tell me everything.”

Around warming and heartening sips of chocolate Henry told Killian his tale, every detail of his walk to school, the odd, icy wind outside Granny’s, Mary Margaret’s absence from school, the presence of Lost Boys, and everything he had seen through the window of his old house.

“My mom recognised me, I know she did,” he said. “She warned me to get away. And there’s magic around the house, it tried to push me away. It didn’t want me anywhere near it. The wind was there too, and stronger.”

Killian tried to keep his face neutral though his mind was racing. This was more worrying than he’d imagined. He’d need to see Emma in the dream tonight, and it was imperative to speak to Regina as soon as possible.

A thought occurred to him, one that made his hand clench involuntarily on his mug. He and Emma were not the only people who loved Henry, after all. If Regina still had her memories… well, what better way to torment a mother than by keeping her from her child, conscious of the loss and perhaps in a constant state of worry over his well being, prevented somehow from going to find him…

All of Henry’s family was here, under the curse. All except the stepfather none of them knew about. Emma’s appearance in Storybrooke last year, cursed and unaware and without her son, could only have sent an awake and aware Regina into a frenzy of panic and worry over what could have become of him.

That was truly cruel. Killian was no great fan of the Queen’s but the idea of such a fate befalling even her made him uncomfortable. He resolved to get a message to her as soon as he could, to reassure her that the lad was okay and they had a plan in motion.

And if in her gratutude she agreed to help them carry out this plan, well so much the better. Killian may have reformed but at his core the pirate still remained, and altruism was not what you might call a mark of his character. He imagined there was rather a lot Regina could be persuaded to do in exchange for access to Henry, and a properly motivated Evil Queen could be a valuable ally.

“I’ve gotta talk to my mom,” said Henry. “To Regina. Let her know—”

“No!”

Henry looked startled at Killian’s vehemence. “But—”

“We won’t let her suffer any longer, but let me be the one to approach her. For the time being I think it’s best if you keep your distance.” He held up his hand to still Henry’s protest. “No, Henry, listen to me. From what you’ve said this curse seems to be keeping a special eye on you, and who knows what it might be driven to if you attempt to speak to Regina. I’ll do it.”

Henry’s face was mutinous, but Killian’s was implacable, and after a short standoff implacable won. “Okay, fine,” grumbled Henry. “But will you tell her I love her? And I miss her?”

“Of course I will, lad.” Killian smiled and took Henry’s empty mug. “Now what do you say to pizza for dinner?”

The boy perked up at the prospect of the rare treat. “Really?”

“Aye, I think we both could use it.”

“Excellent.”

---

Emma is for some reason aboard an aircraft carrier about to lead a fighter jet attack on an unspecified enemy when her dream world shifts, adjusts, resolves around her into her bedroom. Not the dark room in Walsh’s house where she sleeps alone, but the breezy, softly coloured space she designed and built herself here in the dream. They built it, she and Killian.

Killian. Her husband.

Her real husband.

Emma feels the now-familiar wrenching ache as the tangle of her altered mind straightens and she remembers that she is cursed, has been cursed for over a year, separated from Killian and Henry and unable to remember her parents or anyone else she cares about. The pain of it is always fresh, as each time she remembers is as though it were the first.

This time, though, something is different. She realises that this is the first time even in the dream that she remembers —fully and clearly— the events of her cursed life. She remembers seeking Killian out and the time she spent with him, remembers how the intense pull of the attraction she has always felt for him was undiminished by the curse. She remembers leaving his apartment full of determination to finally speak to Walsh, remembers actually succeeding in confronting her false spouse about her unhappiness in their ‘marriage’. Rage surges through her as she remembers his response. He fucking drugged her or… or something. Again. She remembers now that he does this every time she begins to question… well, anything. He doesn’t like her asking questions.

Killian calls him a monster and Emma can only agree.

She is so caught up in her thoughts and her fury that she doesn’t notice Killian’s presence until he speaks.

“Swan.”

His voice affects her as it always does, soothing her even as it sends a curling tendril of lust through her belly. He lies down next to her and she launches herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist and burying her face in his neck, drawing comfort as she always does from his warmth and strength. It’s almost impossible now for her to remember that there was once a time when she hesitated to trust him, when she resisted the instincts that told her she could. She trusts him now, completely. Trusts him enough to leave her son in his care, enough that even when he is quivering with coiled rage barely concealed beneath the smirk and swagger of Captain Hook she still feels safe with him. Whatever tricks or disguises he may use to protect himself, under it all he is always her Killian, her love, the man who would die, would kill, before he allowed any harm to come to her or Henry. She is aware that her trust leaves her vulnerable to him in a way that she has never been with anyone in her life. Even in her youth and naiveté with Neal she had never opened herself up this fully. With Killian she can be completely herself, her once-formidable walls reduced to rubble and every particle of dust that comprised them swept away. The comfort of this deep intimacy with another person, the relief of it, is something that the old Emma, safe and alone in her personal fortress had never anticipated. She never imagined how much lighter burdens felt when they were shared, never realised that sharing them did not make her weak, or mean she couldn’t manage on her own. It just meant that she didn’t have to.

She never has to be on her own again because Killian is always with her. Even when she can’t remember him.

He strokes her hair and murmurs soothing nonsense in her ear until she relaxes against him, braces herself and allows the awful words to tumble out, all in a rush. “I think Walsh is drugging me,” she whispers, holding on tightly as his muscles tense beneath her hands. “Or keeping me under some sort of spell. I— I don’t think he’s under the curse. I think he’s here to— to watch me. To keep me under control.”

“Well, that would certainly explain a lot,” Killian growls, the deep rumble of it vibrating across her skin. “Why you seemed to forget about him when we were together today, why you couldn’t explain why you don’t wear a wedding ring.” “My wedding ring…” Emma remembers now what she was not quite able to call to mind with Walsh that evening, remembers why she was so confused once she’d truly noticed, actually thought about why she didn’t have a ring. Because she has a ring, of course she does. The one that Killian placed on her finger on their wedding day. The one they chose together, the twin of his own.

She looks down at her hand. There it is, winking up at her, a slim platinum band marked with the same engravings she’d unknowingly admired on Killian’s version that afternoon. In the dream she always has it. But where is it in reality? Fury bubbles up in her again. “What has that asshole done with my ring?!”

“Ssshh, love,” Killian tries to calm her even though she can feel the anger in him as well. If what she thinks is true, if Walsh is awake, then he has deliberately stolen not only Emma’s agency but more than a year of their lives. A year when they should have been basking in the blissful happiness of newlyweds as they built the foundations of their future. A year when they should at the very least have been together.

“We have got to break this curse,” Emma snarls, “And soon. I want to smash Walsh’s fucking face in myself and I don’t want to waste any more time.”

Killian chuckles and his expression when she looks up at him radiates pride. She knows he’s calling her a “tough lass” in his head, and it makes her smile through her anger. She loves that he loves this side of her.

He loves everything about her and that is something Emma still struggles to fathom.

“Don’t worry, love, we’ll break it,” he says, a hint of the old swagger back in his voice. “I find this sudden burst of memory you’re having most encouraging. You’re fighting, something in you is always fighting to free you from whatever curse or spell has you in its grasp. And you’re succeeding, darling.”

His faith in her simply never wavers, and Emma hates the feeling that this time it’s misplaced. “How can you say I’m succeeding? Nothing has changed!”

“Hasn’t it? You say Walsh drugged you this evening?” She nods against his shoulder. “Well. What precipitated that?”

“I— asked him why I didn’t wear a ring. Why he didn’t wear one. And why we never did anything as a couple when I had memories —curse memories— of us doing stuff together with friends.”

“So effectively you challenged the precepts of your cursed life. And how did he react?”

“He—” Emma struggles to remember. “He asked me about you. He said did this have anything to do with you, and when I said no he— he took this box off his desk and— I remember him opening it, but after that everything is blank. I think maybe he blew something into my eyes?”

She feels Killian’s hand twitch as though it wants to clench into a fist, but he continues to stroke her hair. “You see? If you weren’t succeeding at fighting back he wouldn’t need to take such measures to keep you in check. If you weren’t so dangerous he wouldn’t watch you so closely.”

She wants desperately for him to be right, but she cannot squash her doubts completely. Even as his staunch support renews her resolve, they prickle at the back of her mind. “Now, love,” Killian continues, and she can sense the effort it is costing him to keep his voice even. He is furious, but he is controlling it. “Can you remember anything about this box?”

“It’s silver,” says Emma, “Ornate. About… three inches long by two inches wide? He took it off his desk, I don’t know if that’s where he always keeps it.”

“Can you find out?”

She nods. “I can try. I’m getting better at leaving messages.”

“Excellent.”

He is silent for several minutes and Emma waits. She can tell he has something more on his mind, but knows there is no point in trying to push. He’ll tell her when he’s ready, and in the meantime she intends to enjoy this rare opportunity to cuddle, something the dreams do not generally allow. Is it because they haven’t had sex yet, she wonders, or are the dream’s restrictions relaxing somehow?

She snuggles closer, tightening her arms around him, tracing the lines of the scars on his back with her fingertips, remembering the last time they had the luxury of just lying in bed together, that last Sunday morning in New York before she left for Storybrooke. Henry was at Avery’s and she and Killian slept late, had lazy morning sex then whiled away a good hour snuggling in bed enjoying a rare quiet moment with just each other, until the need for food and toilets finally forced them up.

It was the closest thing they’d had to a honeymoon.

“I saw Frank today.” Killian’s voice breaks through her reverie.

Emma starts. This is unexpected. “On purpose?”

“Aye. He brought us a delivery, books and shelves. And information.”

“What sort of information?

“I asked him if you might be able to fight off the curse. He said yes you could but in order to fully break it you would need both your true loves.”

“Henry.” Emma still wishes her son didn’t have to be dragged into this, though she is trying to accept it.

“Aye. His role is crucial, as we suspected. Frank also told me that the curse caster is particularly powerful in dark magic, as powerful as you are in light, and you’ll spend eternity locked in stalemate unless you have help.”

Emma frowns. This is not particularly surprising but she remains wary. “I don’t trust Frank,” she grumbles.

“No wise mortal does, love, but he’s a valuable source of information.”

“When it’s reliable.”

“It is this time, I’m certain of it.”

There’s only one way anyone can be certain with creatures like Frank, and Emma bolts upright when she realises what he’s saying. “Killian, you didn’t challenge him!”

He has the grace to look abashed, if not repentant. “I needed to know.”

“Babe, it’s too much of a risk!”

“It’s fine, Swan, I got out. Or he let me go, I’m never quite sure.”

“Still, I wish you wouldn’t. He could just as easily decide to take you and I’ll have to go to some land of Nog or whatever—”

“Just another name for Neverland, love.”

“—and get you back! How am I supposed to do that when I’m cursed in fucking Storybrooke?”

“All right, darling, all right. I promise not to try again—”

“Good.”

“—at least until after we break the curse.”

“Killian!”

He gives her his wickedest grin and a raised eyebrow, and she entirely fails not to let them soften her indignation. He has been weighed down, she knows, both in the dreams and when she saw him that day, weighed down by worry and by the burdens he’s had to shoulder alone since she left. The melancholy that has always been present in him has been magnified by it, pulled to the fore and so wrapped and tangled around him that the cheeky pirate she first fell in lust with has been almost completely obscured.

Emma loves every part of him. But she’s missed that pirate.

Killian gives her arm a sharp tug that brings her tumbling down onto his chest. He curls his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her mouth to his in a kiss that is intended to be reassuring, to remind her that he is still here and that every risk he takes is calculated to give him the best possible odds of survival. He is reckless but not rash, which he insists is a crucial distinction, and Emma supposes that this should actually reassure her but it never does.

She couldn’t bear to lose him, and this alone ensures that she will never be rational about him putting himself in danger.

She fists her hand in his hair, tugging the soft strands with enough force to let him know she means business, and takes control of the kiss, changing the angle to force his lips apart and plunging her tongue into his mouth. He meets it with his own, duelling with her, but when they finally break apart he holds back, waiting for her next move. He is ceding control to her, happy as ever for her to set the pace and mood, and Emma realises that what she wants more than anything right now is to make love to him, slow and sensual like that last Sunday morning. She wants to wrap her love around him like a blanket, like a shield, to protect him from the dangers he insists on courting and from the intangible ravages of his own sadness.

She’s not sure if she can do that from the dream but she can damned well try.

She calls her magic to her, flexing it experimentally like a muscle long disused. It’s been so long since she’s called it that the reserves are almost flooded. She pulls it into fine strands and weaves them together, weft and warp wound densely, as impenetrable as she can make it.

She’s not certain how she’s doing this, wishes she’d had more time for training, but her instincts have always guided her well. She runs her hands down Killian’s chest, savouring the smooth skin and soft hair, the ridges of scar tissue, the firm muscles that leap beneath her fingertips. He sighs when she follows the path of her hands with her lips, wrapping her magic around him as she goes, securing it to him with every kiss. She checks the protection spell around his heart, relieved to find it still firmly intact, but reinforces it with this new magic weave, just in case. Kissing a trail back up his chest she finds him watching her with a curious expression. He knows she’s doing something with her magic but though he isn’t sure what he doesn’t question her and she knows he won’t. He trusts her.

She leans down and kisses him deeply, softly, letting him feel her love even as her magic secures it around him. His arms come around her, his hand sliding down her back and over her ass, pulling her hips tightly against his. He is hard and hot between her legs and she rocks against him, making him moan into her mouth in that helpless way that she finds so empowering. She shifts the angle of her hips, lifting them until he slips inside her. He pushes in deep and she braces on his chest, arching her back to meet his thrust and seat him in fully. Then she begins to rock in earnest, finding her rhythm instantly as always in the dream. Her hair tumbles in messy waves around her face as she leans down, wanting to feel his skin on hers, the soft abrasion of his chest hair against her nipples. His eyes are hazy with passion, his expression awed as it always is when she is on top. She kisses him again, sloppy and wet, then whispers in his ear. “Talk to me.”

Words begin to pour from his lips, by turns filthy and beautiful, breathy swears and prayers to the old gods, paeans to her beauty and to the feel of her body against and around him, heartfelt declarations of his love. Emma revels in it, feeds on it; what would once have embarrassed her she now craves. Her magic responds to the love that pours from him and she weaves it into her spell, strengthening the protection still further.

His love for her will keep him safe, as much as hers for him. There is a poetry in that which he would surely appreciate.

She ties off her spell and seals the edges, just as she was taught to do, then quickens the movements of her hips. Killian begins to gasp beneath her, his hand gripping her hair. He’s so close, just on the edge, but he is holding back, waiting for her. She loves him for that though it’s not what she wants tonight. She wants to watch him fall to pieces, wants to appreciate the look on his face when he comes.

She squeezes herself tightly around him and rocks still faster, riding him hard in a way that would have her muscles straining anywhere but in the dream. He gasps her name in a desperate plea. “Emma… I can’t…”

“Don’t, then,” she says. “Let go, Killian. I want to watch.”

With a groan he complies, his arms tightening around her and his hips lifting her off the mattress as he comes. He’s beautiful in his release, she thinks, though he hates her using that word to describe him it’s undeniably true. His long eyelashes flutter over his flushed cheeks as his face relaxes into bliss.

“I love you so much,” she whispers, almost too softly for him to hear, as her own orgasm begins to break over her. “Nothing is going to harm you.” He growls in the back of his throat and grabs her ass, grinding his pelvis against hers, the pressure on her clit sending her flying.

He holds her tightly as she rides it out. “I won’t leave you, Emma,” he whispers into her hair, understanding as always what lies behind her actions. “Not ever, not for anything.”

She knows he won’t, not intentionally, but despite his cocky assurances he is not indestructible. The last thing she does as the dream begins to dissipate is make one final check of the new protection spell, reassuring herself that he is as safe as she can make him, shielded against whatever may seek to take him from her.

---

“You saw her last night,” said Henry, before Killian could even manage to open his mouth to wish the lad good morning. “What did she say?”

Killian sighed. He had lain awake for several hours after the dream had ended, trying to decide how much Henry could and should be told. He wished to conceal as little as possible but with Henry already so upset over Regina’s circumstances Killian had finally decided that the lad didn’t need all the gory details of Emma’s as well.

He placed bowl, cereal, and milk in front of Henry before replying. “You remember your theory, that the strength of the curse might be gauged by the strength of the cursed relationships?” he asked.

“Yeah?” Henry filled his bowl as full as it would go, and Killian silently resigned himself to drips and splashes of milk on the countertop. Again.

“Well, I don’t think your mum’s cursed marriage is very strong.” Henry’s eyes widened in interest as he stuffed a loaded and dripping spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

Afraid the boy might attempt to ask him why before he’d had a chance to chew his food, Killian rushed on. “When she was here yesterday afternoon there was a moment when she appeared to forget Walsh entirely, and last night she informed me that she had gone home afterwards and confronted him over some…inconsistencies in her cursed memories.”

“You think she’s fighting off the curse?” Henry asked, fortunately with his mouth empty.

“That’s precisely what I think.” Killian beamed at him, pleased with the acuity of his insight. “It doesn’t seem to have a particularly firm grip on her, which I must say I find odd given your experiences with that wind and what you reported about Regina. For her to be uncursed, or at least aware, in such circumstances and not to fight back, there must be something powerful indeed restraining her. So why would it have a lesser hold on Emma? Perhaps due to her Saviour magic?”

“That’s why I need to talk to my mom, so we can find out—”

“We’ve discussed this, Henry.”

“But—”

“No, it’s too dangerous for you. Both your mothers would tear strips from my hide if I allowed you to take such a risk, and frankly I don’t have that much hide to spare. Now finish your breakfast and go to school, no detours this time.” Killian barely stopped himself from insisting on walking with him, at least as far as Granny’s.

Henry looked like he wanted badly to argue but finally wilted under Killian’s very finest I-am-the-captain-of-this-pirate-ship-you-will-obey-me stare. “All right,” he sighed. “But remember what you promised to tell her.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Tell her we’re gonna break the curse, too. Give her hope.”

“Aye, lad. You have my word.”

After Henry left Killian tidied the kitchen and then the flat, collecting Henry’s dirty clothes and damp towels from his bedroom floor and putting them in the washing machine. The washing machine was the one device from this realm that Killian loved with unconstrained fervour. Perfectly clean clothing was a luxury he had rarely been afforded in his life, and he couldn’t get enough of it.

Chores completed he headed downstairs, considering possible strategies for contacting Regina. He could hardly stroll up to the house and ring the bell, yet he didn’t really relish lurking in the bushes waiting in case she emerged. If only he had some means of getting a message to her.

He’d think about it as he walked, he decided, perhaps the exercise would stimulate his mind. Opening the door he strode outside without looking, and found himself colliding —again— with Emma.

Damn and blast it all to the icy depths of Davy Jones’ locker, he thought, as his arms closed instinctively around his wife, this is getting ridiculous.

Unlike the first two times they’d found themselves like this Emma seemed in no hurry to pull away from him, instead clinging tightly to the back of his jacket and inhaling deeply against his neck. Killian held his own breath, waiting for her to move, wondering if she could possibly be remembering… Familiar scents could trigger memories, he’d read that somewhere, and Emma had always loved the way he smelled. Salty like the sea, she’d told him with a smile. And sometimes like rum. But always sort of… spicy? That’s the essence of you.

She leaned infinitesimally closer, close enough that he could feel her racing heartbeat and hear the hitch in her rapid breathing. His arms were already around her, all he’d have to do was tighten them, just tilt her head back, and he could kiss her. His body begged him to do it, screamed with the need to feel her lips against his, really feel them, not merely to dream it. Somehow he knew that if he did she wouldn’t resist, but he couldn’t, damn it, it was too bloody soon. She didn’t love him, not this version of her. This was simply lust, the basic animal attraction she’d never been able to deny, even when he’d been her enemy. If he kissed her now the curse would be unaffected but she would not. She would feel guilty which would make her feel angry, and would certainly drive her away.

He loosened his hold on her and began to step back when she looked up at him, the expression in her eyes so familiar that it stole his breath. She looked like she saw him, really saw him, as though she remembered…

“Emma?” he whispered, hardly daring to hope.

She opened her mouth to reply when a sudden whirlwind whipped up out of nowhere, swirling around them, forcing itself between them, prying them apart. Emma stumbled back and wrapped her arms around herself as her whole body quaked with shivers, and when she looked at him again it was through cursed eyes.

Killian swallowed back both his disappointment and his sudden bloodcurdling fear, and arranged his face into its bland smile. “Swan,” he said. “Won’t you come in?” He wanted her off the bloody street and out of public view. This was clearly the wind that Henry had described, and Killian greatly disliked its presence on his doorstep. He held the door open and Emma entered, looking grateful.

“That’s a hell of a brisk breeze,” she laughed, though she looked uncomfortable.

“Aye,” he agreed, subtly locking the door behind them as he ushered her into the shop, behind a bookcase and out of sight of the windows. “What can I do for you, Swan?”

She stuffed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, looking awkward. “Um, I was just wondering… about those books we looked at the other day?”

“Aye.”

“Well, um, I know you’re not technically open yet but I was hoping I could buy a few.”

Killian’s smile warmed as hope unfurled in his chest. At least one aspect of their plan was going as predicted. Even under a curse, the pull that Emma’s magic exerted on her would not be denied. “Of course,” he said. “Which ones did you have in mind?”

To his delight Emma chose three of the books he’d recommended to her on magical practice and spell casting, paying for them in cash. When the sale was completed and he took out a bag for them, Emma began to shift her feet. “Um,” she said.

“Did you not want a bag?” he asked in mild surprise. “These ones are actually made of corn starch, so they’re biodegradable—”

“No, it’s not that,” she said, “though that’s actually really cool. I was just wondering… I know it’s a bit weird but I was wondering if I could leave them here.”

“Leave them here?”

“Yeah, I just— it’s just— things with my husband are a bit, um, weird right now, and I’d just prefer—”

Hah, thought Killian, with a surge of pride. She’d obviously managed to leave herself at least one subliminal message. Of course she had, she was never less than brilliant. “Say no more, love. Of course you can leave them here. I’ll keep them in the desk for you, you’re welcome to come in and read them any time.”

She looked relieved. “Thanks.”

Sudden inspiration hit Killian. “It’s no problem,” he said, “But I wonder if you would mind doing me a small favour in return.”

Relief turned to wariness. “What sort of favour?”

“I need to get a message to someone, and for various reasons upon which I’d prefer not to elaborate, speaking to her directly is difficult. Would you carry a note to her for me?”

“Um, sure, I suppose. Who is ‘she’?”

“Regina Mills,” he replied, hoping the Queen’s cursed surname hadn’t changed.

Emma’s brow wrinkled in bafflement. “The Nolans’ maid?” she asked.

“Aye, that’s her.”

“Why do you want—” she began, then shook herself. “No, never mind, it’s none of my business. Regina normally goes to the market in the mornings, if you give me the note now I can try to catch her there before she leaves.”

“Perfect. Er, one moment.” Killian scrambled to think of how to convey to Regina that he needed to speak with her, that she should come to find him, in a way that only she would comprehend.

The Queen was an educated woman, he reflected. Educated by the Dark One himself, who would surely have been thorough. Languages must have featured heavily in their curriculum. But which language to choose? Killian’s Elvish was rusty but in Latin he was still fluent, and Latin was a very common language in magical scholarship. Perhaps too common, but it was a risk he’d have to take. Quickly he tore a piece off the bottom of his notepad and scrawled a few words upon it. There, he thought. Obscure, but still comprehensible, if given just a little bit of added context.

“Be sure you tell her it’s from the new bookshop owner,” he instructed Emma. “This is very important. Tell her the shop is called Jolly Roger Books, tell her where to find it, but don’t give her my name.”

“From the owner of Jolly Roger Books,” Emma repeated. “Got it.”

Killian handed her the scrap of paper, watching in amusement as she glanced down at it. She just couldn’t help herself, he thought fondly. Emma’s eyes widened and she held up the paper, showing it to him as though he hadn’t just written it.

“What the hell is this?” she demanded. “What language— no, never mind. None of my business.”She scowled at him. “Though you have to admit it’s a bit weird, you sending secret notes in foreign languages to the deputy mayor’s housemaid.”

Killian’s brows snapped together, the cheeky reply he’d been formulating dying on his tongue. “Deputy mayor?” he asked sharply.

Emma looked surprised. “Yeah. Mary Margaret Nolan. I guess you wouldn’t have heard of her since you only just moved here, but she’s been the deputy mayor for as long as I can remember.”

Killian’s mind raced. “And who is the mayor?” he asked, carefully keeping his tone casually interested though his every nerve was buzzing. So Mary Margaret was in Regina’s house, but evidently not precisely in her shoes, he thought. This felt very significant.

“Mayor Green,” Emma replied. “She’s my sister-in-law, actually.” Once again, Emma gave that startled jolt she did each time she was reminded of her cursed marriage. “Walsh’s sister. Zelena Green.”

Note: I suppose it’s appropriate that this chapter drops on (or in my case slightly after) St Patrick’s Day, as it contains a few more details about Frank McClelland. He’s an OC but heavily based (and named) on the Irish folk hero Oisín. If I tell you that Oisín spent centuries as the king of Tir na nÓg, a land where time doesn’t pass and people don’t grow old, I hope you can guess where this is going, or at least how he and Killian know each other. Although this fic respects the canon CS events up until 3.11, I intend to take some heavy liberties with the origin and backstory of Neverland, as well as Killian’s time there. Because I personally don’t believe that he spent centuries doing nothing but sailing in circles around an island, marching aimlessly through jungle, and running errands for Pan.

#cs ff #cursed storybrooke #cursed captain swan #canon divergence #s3 canon divergent au #alternative 3b #captain cobra #mystery #their way by moonlight #profdanglaisstuff

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shinigatari-blog1 · 5 years ago

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bluerozzawesome · 4 years ago

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Essential Tips to Buy the Best Diesel Generator

1. What Type of Diesel Generator do I Need?

This is a significant inquiry; choosing the correct kind of diesel generator will dramatically affect the dependability, execution, and serviceability of the unit. Numerous individuals don't invest enough energy on assessing their necessities, and this can prompt specialized or upkeep issues later. Creating a more intelligent but can give you a superior diesel generator to meet your current and future necessities, and it could influence the leftover worth.

Set aside some effort to consider the job that your generator will play and ask yourself the accompanying inquiries.

Will it be the essential wellspring of intensity on the worksite?

Will it be a crisis backup force supply? (reserve)

Do you need a generator that is fixed set up for quite a while?

Do you need a convenient generator?

Do you approach a neighborhood vendor that can offer progressing help?

Addressing these inquiries will assist you with narrowing your inquiry down to the kind of diesel generators you need.

2. What are the Three Types of Diesel Generators

The Portable Diesel Generator

This is a diesel generator that can be utilized as an essential wellspring of intensity on your worksite, however it tends to be effortlessly moved to different destinations varying. This kind of generator is encapsulated by a hearty form quality,with a natural bunded base to stop any pollution to site if there was a spill from generator coolant,engine oil and diesel and it might have an overhang configuration to build the lifespan of the unit. The generator brand, size, and eco-friendliness all assume a significant part in the running expenses, so it bodes well to get your work done. A versatile diesel generator has a fixed speed motor turning the generator (alternator) at 1,500 or 3000 rpm to create the necessary force. Simple admittance to great specialized help is fundamental for a compact generator, and it can altogether build the valuable life expectancy of the unit.

The Standby Diesel Generator

This sort of generator is required where there is wellspring of mains power set up, and a reinforcement framework is required for proceeds with activities during a force blackout. This unit has an ATS programmed move switch that turns the generator on consequently when mains should control is lost. Likewise, the unit ought to have an underlying stream battery charger to keep start batteries charged prepared to begin the unit when required. The reserve diesel generator is seldom utilized during an ordinary year, and its principal job is as a protection strategy to console customers. That being stated, in case you will have a reserve diesel generator, it merits putting resources into a decent quality unit with prepared admittance to a service specialist and extra parts.

The Stationary Diesel Generator

At the point when you search for a diesel generator available to be purchased, you may require a unit that is the essential wellspring of intensity for a fixed area. This sort of generator will remain in one area for most of its life, and it frequently has a less expensive casing and shelter since it isn't intended to be compact. The significant running expense of possessing a fixed diesel generator is fuel, and it bodes well to put resources into a generator with the best eco-friendliness. It's likewise essential to approach great adjusting and extra parts.

3. What Size Diesel Generator do I need?

At the point when you size your generator, you need to consider the high inrush flows that can happen when you turn over an electric engine or transformer. This could be multiple times higher than the heap current and a cutting edge high effectiveness engine could even twofold that inrush current. It has become regular practice to utilize engine and transformer start kVA figures as an overall measuring stick to attempt to decide the size of generator required. This methodology works, yet you can wind up with a generator that is larger than average for the engine, and the decision isn't generally identified with the requirements of the particular application.

Numerous advanced diesel generators have arrangements intended to manage the additional excitation that is required in the alternator during fire up; these are helper winding or lasting magnet PMG. These give the generator triple the ostensible current to counter any inrush tops for at any rate ten seconds from a residuary current for excitation. Other progressed frameworks are accessible to guarantee a more secure age fire up and to oversee power all the more adequately. Thus, it's not important to buy a bigger generator so adapt to that underlying force flood that you may get when firing up. At the point when you have more brilliant command over the voltage yield, you can accomplish better fuel utilization and fundamentally diminish the support costs.

4. Do I need Load Sharing with my Diesel Generator?

Before you put resources into a solitary bigger diesel generator, it's a smart thought to think about a more secluded methodology. Utilizing various more modest generators can make your business more adaptable, or you might need to utilize them in corresponding ways to make a cheap shared power source. This can help eco-friendliness, a few generators can be taken disconnected during slack periods or to complete refueling and support. At that point during appeal periods, each generator can be brought back online to satisfy the expanded need for power. Planning a framework like this would require an organization of regulators and a few generators can't be designed together along these lines.

There are different advantages to picking a Load Sharing over a solitary bigger diesel generator. Initially, the expenses and the service span lengths will be more limited on the grounds that there is no compelling reason to carry the whole force framework to a stop when fundamental upkeep is required. Also, the unwavering quality of the hardware is improved on the grounds that a solitary generator disappointment is moderated by different generators that can have their capacity yield expanded to meet the shortage.

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Diesel Generator Service, Diesel Generator Sale, Diesel generator rental UAE

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bct-angelica-tan · 7 years ago

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println(”tagged as #ctec501final”);

12/06/18 | Producing the resin moulds

Me and Sam head back to the Wet labs to do that ^

Entries of a productive day coming through, with the involvement of high-tech wear...

Before we could begin to pour the resin into our handmade moulds, we needed to spray them with a chemical, Stoner. It works the same as cooking oils do to pancakes on a frying pan. Hopefully you thought that it prevents the resin from sticking to the mould.

Just like most labs chemicals, the Stoner spray is flammable, corrosive and toxic upon inhalation. But easy to use! It was a quick job, and would do its magic when we come to detaching our resin spheres from the moulds.

The lab has a special area for resin mixing called the resin room. It was imperative that we wore safety gear when working inside. We each donned an apron, gloves, arm wrappings, safety glasses and a gas mask. So far our attire was fussed about the most! Unfortunately we didn’t take a picture of ourselves in our gear, but the setting says it all.

A lot of materials were required to make our resin spheres, apart from the moulds and the materials each of our team members brought in. With the help of the Wet labs technician, Harriet (who has been incredibly supportive of our resin making process from the get go) we got up and away with the process which went like this:

Essentially, the resin pouring and mixing is both time-based and iterative. Since we wanted to form our spheres layer after layer, we constantly needed to keep track of time. However, the process was easy to repeat so thank goodness for repetition!

We’re using Easycast clear polyurethane resin. It comes in two parts, A and B. Both solutions are required to successfully imitate resin. The process simply went like this: A and B jars, two small cups, fill the cups to 25ml of each part then pour both measurements into one cup...

Mix well for 9 minutes (yup), pour into another cup back and forth to get rid of bubbles:

then the mixture is ready to pour into the mould:

before the mixture fully sets, we add our artefacts and pour a bit more in:

The previous image shows the mould for our ‘atmo’ sphere. We has added strips of plastic and the mixture has been dyed black. We want this composition to present air pollution, and the plastic itself adds to the material wastes involved in this specific sphere. We’ve also added the strips of plastic to the hydro and bio spheres because this common waste has impact to these spheres just the same. More plastic material will be added to the litho, but we want to mix up the composition in each layer. For the first layer we chose pebbles of gravel. As the labs go on break, we do too, while the first layer of our resin spheres dry.

Side note: bringing my phone into the resin room to visually document our process was all good, but I had to be careful not to hold it after touching the resin, or in the hand I touched the resin with. This is due to the fact that the resin is polyurethane, so it was either I power on with one hand or I go out to replace my pair of gloves. This happened quite a few times, but eventually me and Sam sorted out a better, systematic workflow and we got our work done faster than we expected.

We stuck to our conceptual blueprints. The ratio of plastic within each mould, the dye colours to define the different spheres, the composition that differentiates each strata. The deliberate aim of a messy composition reflects the areas of pollution that can be overseen in each sphere of the earth. It’s the reality of the Anthropocene we hope to show, encased in clear resin.

Taking it back a bit in context... the mould surface we chose to go with, PET, wasn’t the best choice as mould material. Weeks ago when our project was in its early stages, we had a sample of PinkySil, made out of Silicon. While Silicon was recommended as the best option, it wouldn’t have been the most cost-effective choice for us. Hand-making the moulds was viable enough since the shape of our sphere aren’t complex; it’s simply flat and cylindrical. This allowed us to recycle used tape rolls to fit this purpose instead, and they fit the specification just fine. We didn’t have to pay for the Stoner either, so we had reached the practical component of our resin with little fuss.

#ctec501final

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3ezentrum3-blog · 6 years ago

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Cancer - Yes and Maybe a Natural Remedy for Cancer

Well back to that old banality "the type of food you eat will affect you general health" it's what you put into your body that executes you, not what you don't. As a matter of fact it's not totally obvious. It's not exactly what you self ingest into your body that makes you wiped out yet additionally what you neglect to ingest that issues. An absence of specific supplements can make you wiped out as well as can execute you.

Express gratitude toward God for men like Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez M.D. what's more, Dr. Norman Walker who have conflicted with conventional considerations on Curing Cancer and have been sufficiently striking to compose reality concerning "How Cancer Starts" and "How to free the assemblage of Cancer" obviously through Natural Remedies. Instructions to free the body of this destructive monster that has injured such a large number of and has brought down millions in it's mission to assault, incapacitate and crush the human body.

Most importantly how about we take a gander at customary idea and routine with regards to finding the tumor or disease cells and annihilating them by subjecting the body to more poisonous toxins through solution or considerably more unsafe to the human body, chemotherapy. It tries to devastate growth cells as well as solid cells expected to avoid and free the body of the malignancy cells through your invulnerable framework.

The reality of the situation as Dr. Gonzalez has expressed, "the tumors are not simply the disease in and yet rather the body's approach to sequester squander material and caution the assemblage of approaching risk, yes the tumor has a reason which is to caution you that your body is loaded up with excessively numerous poisons which have overpowered the liver's capacity to process them."

Dr. Gonzalez and myself put stock in the elective way to deal with disease treatment which depends on the preface it's not only critical to counteract tumor by eating the correct nourishments and supplements yet in addition is similarly as imperative to free the body of certain poisonous squanders that have been the impetus to achieve the growth in any case.

As I have expressed ordinarily previously, there isn't a machine or PC worked by man today that is more glorious to observe than the human body. The human body will repair itself however just when all factors are set up. The best possible supplements taken in and the poisons or subluxations that are causing blockages expelled. Being that the body has somewhere in the range of 60 and 100 Trillion Cells ( obviously nobody knows without a doubt yet it is an all around ascertained and instructed speculate best ) and similarly as red platelets replicate themselves each 60 to 90 days in the body all our different cells duplicate themselves consistently and a half. Obviously when the body is brimming with poisons and toxins then the invulnerable framework can't work appropriately and cell substitution is smothered because of blockages in view of the toxic substances. Henceforth it is important to expel all poisons and toxic substances no matter what in the event that you need to get solid and remain sound by legitimate nourishment, eating routine and detoxification.

This is the way our therapeutic foundation has been developing in a manner of speaking. Twenty years prior the American Cancer Society totally denied that sustenance had anything to do with tumor counteractive action or in malignancy treatment however as of the President's Cancer Panel Report in 2010 it was expressed that there are sure nourishments that have been recognized to have certain characteristic synthetic compounds that can enable the body to forestall growth as well as to wreck disease too. I don't think about you however we have tagged along way like a 180 degree turn in discovering that it is Nature's Way that is the best for our bodies and not a huge number of synthetic compounds brimming with poisons and toxins. In the book Disease Destroyed, not exclusively does it demonstrate to you industry standards to free your group of Cancer, however it names numerous nourishments that are extremely tumor battling, for example, broccolli, spinach, parsley and garlic.

One further note before I wrap up. It is imperitive that I say a Naturopath in Windsor Ontario named Denis Marier who is doing Vitamin C implantations for individuals searching for an Alternative to Chemotherapy Treatment. In 2006 the Canadian Medical Association Journal distributed an article itemizing three cases in which patients with cutting edge tumor profited from high-measurements intravenous vitamin C. As a matter of fact I trust Mr. Marier is following what Professor Pauling began in the 70′s.

Teacher Linus Pauling got his Phd. in Chemistry in 1925. He got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963 for his work in the fields of quantum science and atomic science and he regularly discussed the significance of Vitamin C for the Human Body. All things considered Linus Pauling was viewed as one the most persuasive scientific experts in history and positions amont the most essential researchers of the twentieth century. He won two Nobel Peace Prizes and a Nobel Prize in science in his lifetime. He composed numerous books including "How to live Longer and Feel Better" and was a huge backer of a high admission of vitamins particularly Vitamin C for beating Cancer and the Common Cold. At age 40 Linus was determined to have Bright's Disease, a renal ailment and he could control the illness with a low protein, salt free eating routine with Vitamin Supplements. In the 1970′s he was the primary supporter of the "megavitamin treatment" to avoid and treat ailment. His thoughts and convictions framed the premise of "orthomolecular prescription" which has been unequivocally condemned and not by and large honed by most regular therapeutic experts up to this point just like the case with Denis Marier in Windsor, Ontario.

I can't pressure the significance of Vitamins C, D and E for beating Cancer. Would you like to be without malignancy then please simply attempt some high measurements of Vitamins C, D and E. Obviously keep in mind to free the body of specific synthetics that are preventing your insusceptible framework from doing what it is assume to. Detoxification through douches, propelled colon flushes, and in the wake of doing the majority of the said over, some fasting is recommended for good measure. You may ask yourself, what do I know? Right. Well lets simply say my specialist just allowed me 3 weeks to inhabit best a little more than 4 years prior I'm still here. Simply because I tuned in to the most elite with regards to Natural Healing.

In 2007 Thomas Cincurak was given three weeks to live and totally recuperated his body through regular wellbeing medicines. Presently Tom is determined to mend the greatest number of as he can through what he has realized.

In the event that you need to find how to completely mend your body, feel better then you thought conceivable and figure out how to accomplish Natural Healing through Natural Health Solutions.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/master/Thomas_Cincurak/375822

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6184187

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hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff · 6 years ago

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I MET A PIRATE once. It was the summer of 2009 in Somaliland, and I’d made the hot drive across a scrub of desert date, myrrh, and acacia trees to Mandheera, a no-stoplight town. A couple of miles off the road stood the most prominent building in the area and Farah Ismail Eid’s home — a whitewashed, colonial-era prison.

Eid was something of a celebrity, being one of the only convicted Somali pirates who conceded his guilt and would agree to be interviewed. Later, at a prison in Berbera, one pirate declined my offer (“Fuck you,” he told me in surprisingly idiomatic English) while another simply spat at my feet before retreating into the sweaty dark of his cramped, shared cell.

Back then, piracy off Somalia’s lawless coast was a big story that worked on a number of levels: it resonated broadly — thanks to Johnny Depp’s Hollywood adaptations of a theme park ride — had a direct impact on the global economy by disrupting one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, full of oil tankers and cargo vessels, and was a genuinely new iteration of Somalia’s long-running chaos.

Eid told me the Somali pirate origin story: untrammeled illegal fishing by foreign trawlers, toxic waste dumped on the shore, depleted fish stocks and wrecked reefs, lack of opportunity in a shattered state that has suffered decades of clan-based civil war, the necessity of protecting your livelihood, even if it meant law-breaking, and the imperative to survive.

He was a victim, as he saw it. “These problems fell on us like rain,” he told me, with a poetic flourish. “We are quite aware that what we are doing is wrong, but this is a way of shouting to the world. The world should ask, ‘Are these people wrong or were they wronged themselves?’” It was a call-to-arms, and an apologia.

Few journalists have risked finding active pirates, and for good reason, given the risks. One of the few is American journalist Michael Scott Moore, who was betrayed by his hosts and spent close to three years in captivity. He relates the story in an enthralling memoir called The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast (2018).

Moore was living in Germany when he found himself covering the trial of 10 Somali pirates in Hamburg in 2011 who had been involved in the failed hijacking of a German cargo ship. “[I]t seemed to me that a book about the case and some underreported aspects of Somali piracy might be interesting,” he writes. He was familiar with the sea, having written a previous book about the history of surfing.

His reporting initially takes him to Djibouti — a godforsaken chunk of scorched rock on the Gulf of Aden that consists mainly of ports, military bases, and sand — as well as to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. He knows there’s more to know, “[b]ut I wavered about going to Somalia.”

During the trial, however, Moore meets a Somali clan elder who, he believes, can arrange safe passage from the central Somali town of Galkayo to the pirate village of Hobyo, 125 miles away on the Indian Ocean coast. In early 2012, Moore sets off. In Galkayo, he meets “the mayor of Hobyo” who, in a quintessential Somali-diaspora fashion, is a London bus driver when not flaunting his impressive, if hollow, job title.

Moore feels queasy while reporting in Somalia but buries his fears and carries on. He makes it safely to Hobyo and back, but it is on the relatively innocuous journey between Galkayo’s town and its airport that his trip goes terribly wrong. A Mad Max–style “technical” — a Toyota pickup with a heavy machine gun welded onto the flatbed, so named because foreigners hiring them for security in the early 1990s would reclaim the cost as “technical expenses” — stops his vehicle. Moore is wrenched from the car, beaten, and abducted. His glasses are smashed, after which “everything looked like Monet.”

The self-inflicted horror of his situation, and the journalistic hubris that brought him to it, dawns fast. “What did I think I would find around here?” Moore writes. “Pirates who trusted writers? Truth?”

Once he is captured, his kidnappers demand a “pathological” $20 million ransom from his mother, 72 years old and retired with her second husband in Redondo Beach, California. Foreigners held in Somalia have commonly been released for less than $1 million, but pirates, it turns out, are less often aggrieved fishermen like Eid. They are chancers, and stubborn, often inept ones.

That reality was mostly obscure at this time to Western editors who loved Somalia’s 21st-century pirates because they seemed to bleed romantic, renegade history onto the news pages. The story drew journalists from Nairobi and further afield. Most of us did secondhand reporting, speaking to self-declared experts, negotiators, shipping monitors, and shady ex-soldiers who would either airdrop plastic-wrapped bricks of cash onto hijacked vessels or retrieve hostages from dust-blown air strips.

Some journalists made more of an effort, attending pirate trials in the Kenyan port town of Mombasa and the Seychelles, visiting Eid in his jail cell to exchange khat for quotes, or joining the international naval patrols whose warships were intended to deter pirates in their little motorized skiffs. This was dangerous work. Colin Freeman, a London-based foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, was nabbed by his own security guards and held for 40 days while attempting to cover Somali piracy in 2008, as recorded in his book Kidnapped (2011). Jay Bahadur, a young Canadian journalist — precocious, foolhardy, brave — rocked up in northern Somalia with some flimsy connections and a truckload of luck, eventually writing The Pirates of Somalia (2012). Years later, in 2015, James Verini wrote a compelling article for The New Yorker about the experience of pirate hostages, interviewing the surviving crew of the MV Albedo (captured in November 2010, freed in June 2014, a year after their boat had foundered in a storm off Hobyo). Moore showed great courage in going after the story at its source, and paid a huge price for it.

After weeks of shunting him from one dingy safe house to another in a series of SUVs, the pirates move Moore to the Naham 3 — an Omani-flagged Taiwanese trawler with a mixed Asian crew and a freezer hold filled with immense tuna and, grotesquely, the body of the vessel’s captain, shot dead during the hijacking. This shift underscores an important point about “Somali pirates,” which is that they are not really pirates at all, but opportunistic kidnappers who happened, mostly, to work at sea. The cargo was irrelevant and rarely touched, neither when it was millions of barrels of oil nor a freighter full of tanks and rockets.

Moore’s sense of hopelessness deepens as he reaches the rusting trawler. “For the first time in Somalia, but not the last, I considered suicide,” he writes. Fantasies of escape recur. They often take the form of a heroic blaze of glory — seizing an AK-47 from a dozy guard, rescue by Navy SEALs, or a leap to freedom from the gunwales (the latter he actually does, relishing fleeting moments of liberty in the sea, before his recapture) — but more often the escape he dreams of is suicide.

The struggle is constant, but throughout his captivity, hope penetrates the carapace of despair: Moore persists in using the LED torches on cheap cigarette lighters to signal to the presumably American drones that he hears buzz overhead, he tarries when ordered inside as light aircraft or helicopters fly by — as they regularly do, sometimes photographing the ship — and he risks smuggling German phrases identifying his location into the occasional phone calls home in which the pirates force him to beg for a ransom payment. Scrounging pens and notebooks, Moore jots down a series of scrappy prison diaries. Written where and when he can, and frequently confiscated as punishment or out of malice, these become “an essential refuge from prison.”

The other constant is the pirates’ inability to comprehend the gulf between their demands and Moore’s reality. In a moment of rare candor, a pirate guard called Dag, incredulous that Moore’s mother won’t pony up the ransom, desperately tells him he just wants “the Good Life,” the American Dream fed to him via television and smartphone. “I don’t have the Good Life, Dag. You guys kidnapped the wrong man,” Moore replies.

It is a measure of the misery of solitary confinement that Moore’s months at sea seem almost jolly in comparison to his time in the desert. There was a shared experience on the Naham 3, but no shared language, so the captives concocted a pidgin (“Hai dao loco-loco”: “Pirates crazy”), cooked for one another — including regular sashimi carved from the frozen tuna store — and watched Tom and Jerry DVDs. Most of his fellow hostages were “hip young Asian youth” who were either conned onto the trawler by unscrupulous employment agencies or lured by the promise of relative wealth. Moore has sympathy for the crew, but little for his captors, who are portrayed as cruel, sometimes comical and often stupid, a “bumbling criminal tag team” of guards, negotiators, and bosses united by greed and clan.

Moore’s talent for dark observational humor is used to great effect and leavens what might, in another writer’s hands, have been a relentlessly bleak book.

His eventual release, after the payment of an undisclosed though undoubtedly more modest ransom than initially demanded, and scratched together by his mother, offers almost instant Schadenfreude for the reader when his pirate captors get into a deadly altercation over the ransom. There follows a disappointingly short section dealing with Moore’s struggle to readjust to a liberty so long lost, which seems only to skim across the surface of a psychological distress that, one imagines, must linger.

Moore did not die for his story, but he suffered deeply and helplessly. Yet the book Moore has written, while clearly not the one he would’ve chosen, provides rare insight into Somali piracy and is an important addition to that most traumatic and illuminating genre of nonfiction, the hostage memoir.

Tristan McConnell is a foreign correspondent in Nairobi, Kenya.

The post Almost Dying for the Story: On Michael Scott Moore’s “The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2JS2USf

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racheltgibsau · 7 years ago

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16 Commonly Asked PPC Questions (And Answers)

Ask a PPC account manager what’s the best way to do something and I bet 95% of the time the answer is, “it depends on your account/the situation”. The reason for that is that, well… it does.

With this in mind, below are some of the most common questions we hear from new account managers, people attending digital marketing conferences and from right here on PPC Hero.

What happens when “x” doesn’t work?

Sometimes things don’t work. Prior to any major change, be sure to keep a full record or download of existing content. And if the change doesn’t deliver the intended results, you can conduct a mass “undo,” is needed. But one major process to conduct prior to that is taking stock of what you can use from this and what you can’t. More than anything, I’ve found that clients are okay with taking risks as long as we gain something from it. Even if a project, such as a restructure, doesn’t end in clear success, something you have gained is insight. In these instances, be sure to leverage that as strongly as you would the improvement metrics.

How many ads should I have in every ad group?

Over the years, my response to this question has changed. In recent times, I’ve come to embrace the more-can-be-better approach, allowing the platform to assist in sorting out what’s performing best. When using a “Rotate Evenly” setting, I try to stick to a manageable 2-3 ads at a time. However, if I’m utilizing any kind of setting with an automated “optimize” element, I typically double the number of ads in rotation and allow them to fall into their own ranking.

When do you conclude an ad test?

For a search campaign it is typically 1,000-2,000 impressions or 200 clicks within the ad group. These are simply thresholds for knowing when to wrap, and sometimes you don’t have a clear winner. At that time, I look for statistical significance, using one of many online options, or my favorite: the Teasley calculator.

What’s the best way to decide what ad wins in a test? (What’s the best metric to use?)

In the article linked above, Brad Geddes outlines one of my favorite metrics for ad testing: Impression until conversion. This essentially blends CTR and conversion rate, indicating that the lower the number, the fewer number of times an ad needs to be shown to generate a lead. This metric incorporates cost efficiency, quality score (CTR attribute), and messaging.

How many keywords should I have per ad group?

This is a universal question for any search campaign. SKAGs can be very popular for ensured QS, while others swear by the method of “farming” out top performers from semi-large ad groups. Typically, most account managers strive to keep fewer than 20 keywords per ad group. Although it’s entirely up to you and the structure of your account, the primary concern is relevance. If you have 45 keywords in an ad group, how well is the ad copy speaking to each and every term? Although keyword level URLs assist in landing page relevance, it’s imperative to consider how relevant your creative is, for both quality score and user experience. This should provide a clear guiding hand to your keyword distribution.

Should I have different match types in different ad groups, campaigns?

This is ultimately a personal preference while balancing your management needs and capabilities. I prefer to segment match type by campaign, as it allows for greater spend-to-query control. Others prefer to keep all the same content in a single campaign with ad groups split into BMM, Exact, etc. Both of these approaches take advantage of embedded negatives for additional control. And some managers still use the original method of putting all match type variations in a single ad group, often utilizing tiered bidding to push for exact matching.

How do I know if conversion tracking is working correctly?

My favorite approach to for this is utilizing extensions. The Google Tag Assistant for Chrome is easy to use and understand. It’s not perfect but it does quickly alert you to issues that are worth digging in to further. There’s also a Google Analytics Debugger extensions with provides a similar service focusing on GA tracking specifically. Similarly Facebook has rolled out the Pixel Helper extension, which can aid in diagnosing tracking for FB.

Does Google display network work?

In recent years, even months, I have become a believer in the impact of the GDN. Because Google’s focus has become so Intent-based, much of the audience targeting we use is at our fingertips in Display. The most success campaigns I’ve used (and the ones I recommend starting with) are the Display Select Keyword campaigns – which target sites that most frequently result in clicks that convert for your user audience – and Smart Display, which uses a Target CPA, automatic responsive ad, and general search indicators to find you your best traffic.

How often do you add negative keywords to an account?

A weekly review of a search term report can reveal specific inefficient queries, as well as general search themes with low-performing or irrelevant content. I’m also a strong proponent of keyword lists that can be applied across all campaigns, such as Current Events, Post-Conversion Language, or Brand Term variations (to be applied to all Non-branded campaigns).

What tools do you use for keyword research?

For quick ideas, I’d recommend the Google keyword tool, WordStream’s Niche Finder, WordTracker and search term reports.

Do Product Listing Ads work?

Shopping campaigns are an integral part an e-commerce businesses digital marketing strategy. Not only can you use them in Google and Bing platforms, but there are countless opportunities through social media as well as other ad exchanges. If you’re still not using PLAs, you are missing out on revenue every single day.

Should I bid on competitor’s brand names?

Many find success in doing this. CTR and Quality Score will likely be low on these terms but if your goal is to beat your competitors to the punch, this may be a good fit. A safe start to competitor bidding is focusing only on your remarketing lists, meaning they’ve looked at your site but they’re still shopping around. Use this opportunity to serve compelling ad copy with your best deals, pricing, or USPs before you lose the customer for good. Important: Make sure you don’t use dynamic keyword insertion in your ads on these campaigns or else you could violate trademark policies.

Should I bid on my own brand terms?

In a word, yes. If you’re in a highly competitive industry, you are potentially losing sales from others getting their ads above your organic listings. And if you are in a low-competition field, you may not see much activity, which means it didn’t do any harm.

Does Quality Score matter?

Usually. The best way to know is to see if there is a correlation between Quality Score and CPA in your account. You can do this by simply pulling a keyword report including the Quality Score, doing a pivot table with QS at the right and then a column for calculated CPA. Then do a graph with a trend line. That will show you if generally you see better CPA on keywords with better QS. Now that both Google and Bing are providing details on your QS’s attributes, it can be assumed that your attention to those details is that much more important.

How do I increase my Quality Score?

Bing and Google want you to have strong quality scores, particularly ad relevance, landing page congruence, and ad engagement. Increase your CTR by writing better ads, keep only the most similar keywords in an ad group as mentioned earlier in this post, ensure that the ad has the keywords you are bidding on in it, and be sure you’re sending users to a page with highly relevant content or products.

The CPC on my best keywords continues to go up. Why?

This is typically caused by an increase in competition, reduction in search volume or decreasing Quality Scores. To determine if it is competition compare the Auction Insights results to a when CPC’s were lower and see if new competitors are on the list or if your metrics there have dropped. Use Google Trends to see if search volume has dropped and do a Quality Score analysis to see if that is the issue. And don’t forget the back-end developments that may affect your bids, such as Enhanced CPC policy changes.

———- 2013 original post was brought to you by Jeff Allen, President at Hanapin Marketing!

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://www.ppchero.com/16-commonly-asked-ppc-questions-and-answers/

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maxslogic25 · 7 years ago

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16 Commonly Asked PPC Questions (And Answers)

Ask a PPC account manager what’s the best way to do something and I bet 95% of the time the answer is, “it depends on your account/the situation”. The reason for that is that, well… it does.

With this in mind, below are some of the most common questions we hear from new account managers, people attending digital marketing conferences and from right here on PPC Hero.

What happens when “x” doesn’t work?

How many ads should I have in every ad group?

When do you conclude an ad test?

What’s the best way to decide what ad wins in a test? (What’s the best metric to use?)

How many keywords should I have per ad group?

Should I have different match types in different ad groups, campaigns?

How do I know if conversion tracking is working correctly?

Does Google display network work?

How often do you add negative keywords to an account?

What tools do you use for keyword research?

For quick ideas, I’d recommend the Google keyword tool, WordStream’s Niche Finder, WordTracker and search term reports.

Do Product Listing Ads work?

Should I bid on competitor’s brand names?

Should I bid on my own brand terms?

Does Quality Score matter?

How do I increase my Quality Score?

The CPC on my best keywords continues to go up. Why?

———- 2013 original post was brought to you by Jeff Allen, President at Hanapin Marketing!

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://www.ppchero.com/16-commonly-asked-ppc-questions-and-answers/

0 notes

zacdhaenkeau · 7 years ago

Text

16 Commonly Asked PPC Questions (And Answers)

Ask a PPC account manager what’s the best way to do something and I bet 95% of the time the answer is, “it depends on your account/the situation”. The reason for that is that, well… it does.

With this in mind, below are some of the most common questions we hear from new account managers, people attending digital marketing conferences and from right here on PPC Hero.

What happens when “x” doesn’t work?

How many ads should I have in every ad group?

When do you conclude an ad test?

What’s the best way to decide what ad wins in a test? (What’s the best metric to use?)

How many keywords should I have per ad group?

Should I have different match types in different ad groups, campaigns?

How do I know if conversion tracking is working correctly?

Does Google display network work?

How often do you add negative keywords to an account?

What tools do you use for keyword research?

For quick ideas, I’d recommend the Google keyword tool, WordStream’s Niche Finder, WordTracker and search term reports.

Do Product Listing Ads work?

Should I bid on competitor’s brand names?

Should I bid on my own brand terms?

Does Quality Score matter?

How do I increase my Quality Score?

The CPC on my best keywords continues to go up. Why?

———- 2013 original post was brought to you by Jeff Allen, President at Hanapin Marketing!

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://www.ppchero.com/16-commonly-asked-ppc-questions-and-answers/

0 notes

archiebwoollard · 7 years ago

Text

16 Commonly Asked PPC Questions (And Answers)

Ask a PPC account manager what’s the best way to do something and I bet 95% of the time the answer is, “it depends on your account/the situation”. The reason for that is that, well… it does.

With this in mind, below are some of the most common questions we hear from new account managers, people attending digital marketing conferences and from right here on PPC Hero.

What happens when “x” doesn’t work?

How many ads should I have in every ad group?

When do you conclude an ad test?

What’s the best way to decide what ad wins in a test? (What’s the best metric to use?)

How many keywords should I have per ad group?

Should I have different match types in different ad groups, campaigns?

How do I know if conversion tracking is working correctly?

Does Google display network work?

How often do you add negative keywords to an account?

What tools do you use for keyword research?

For quick ideas, I’d recommend the Google keyword tool, WordStream’s Niche Finder, WordTracker and search term reports.

Do Product Listing Ads work?

Should I bid on competitor’s brand names?

Should I bid on my own brand terms?

Does Quality Score matter?

How do I increase my Quality Score?

The CPC on my best keywords continues to go up. Why?

———- 2013 original post was brought to you by Jeff Allen, President at Hanapin Marketing!

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://www.ppchero.com/16-commonly-asked-ppc-questions-and-answers/

0 notes