#apparently you changed the thumbnail at some point? which. fair. but still.

[snickerpuffs]

Reblogging with prev's tags because a couple years ago he posted a video with this thumbnail/title combo

And even though that was in an entirely different context, I feel like that's relevant

guess i'll put this here too, even though its past the day in my timezone lol

[andaxay]

Preservation of Self

My entry for February’s @telltalemonthlychallenge. February’s theme: Black History Month.

Hyperion has been cutthroat since the day she accepted the offer of employment. Yvette does what she thinks she needs to. To thrive. To survive.

-----------------------------------------

One last coffee before they left.

Secreted away in a quiet room, away from prying eyes that would question why Vaughn the mild-mannered accountant had an important looking Hyperion briefcase chained to his arm. Best to avoid such questions.

"You're really doing this?" Yvette wrapped one slender leg around the other as she sat, sipping a latte, looking from one best friend to another with a skeptical eyebrow raised.

"Oh, we are doing this," Rhys leaned forward with a smug smile and raised eyebrow. Vaughn rubbed the back of his neck as he stared, wide-eyed, at the table in front of them, perhaps questioning every life decision he'd ever made that had led him to this point. "We are doing this so much. Who else is going to screw over Vasquez?"

"Vasquez is more than capable of screwing himself over, given enough time," Yvette said dryly, folding her arms.

"And how long will that take? Are you willing to wait for years for that to happen?"

"He might get eaten by a skag the second he sets foot on Pandora," Vaughn chimed in, wearing an expression that said 'and the same could happen to us'.

"And he might not," Rhys countered, "in which case, enjoy being middle management saps for the next ten to fifteen years. I, however, am not willing to clean up Vasquez's damn trash three times a day, just so he can drink in how much power he has."

"Fair point," Vaughn conceded and Yvette nodded solemnly.

"Well, then," she said after taking the last sip of her latte, "you have everything you need." She paused, looking at both of them. A twist in her gut. "Good luck. Try not to die - there's an awful lot of paperwork to fill out if you do."

"We'll miss you, too."

-----------------------------------------

Vasquez's furious shouting reached Yvette's ears before the man himself stormed into her office. She steeled herself, remaining cool and calm, tapping away at her keyboard as he stalked up to her desk.

"Mr. Vasquez?" Polite, despite her gut curling at the sight of him. Slimeball.

"Yvette!" Vasquez glared down at her, breathing heavily, before he appeared to relax slightly, stepping into the persona he often reserved for buttering up management. "Yvette. Just the lady I was looking for." He stepped around her desk and sat on the edge of it, looming over her. "Urgent business. Confidential, of course. Management... I, need to meet with Rhys. Only he, ah, seems to be difficult to pin down." Vasquez stared down at her, his eyes burning. She stared right back, innocently, collected. "You had lunch together, shared plans for the afternoon..."

"As far as I'm aware, he's working," Yvette offered coolly. "I haven't seen him, or spoken to him, since lunch."

"Oh? Working on his next eridium mining contract? Or, maybe, stealing ten million dollars of Hyperion's money and taking it to a Pandoran named August to buy a Vault Key?" Vasquez folded his arms as he leaned in slightly. Trying to intimidate her. Yvette had dealt with much worse in her time at Hyperion.

"I have never heard of August and, like I said, I assumed Rhys had gone back to work after lunch," Yvette said firmly, "so, I'm afraid I can't help you."

"Trying to cover for him? Or, have you washed your hands of him already?" Vasquez leered down at her. "He'll be so happy to hear it when we pick him up and drag his soon-to-be-dead ass into a cell for stealing Hyperion property." He smiled, an ugly, sinister curve of a thing that didn't reach his eyes. "Speaking of which, exactly how did he get hold of the money? He isn't an accountant, doesn't have access to funds. Unless... he had help. If I recall, you're both good friends with the man who just happens to manage valuable Hyperion funds and assets. What was his name again? Vinny? Vance?"

Yvette remained poker-faced, raising her eyebrows slightly, questioningly. A vein in Vasquez's temple was twitching.

"I won't deny that I'm friends with them," she said calmly, sitting back into her chair and folding her arms, "but that's all I can tell you. Whatever this is? You're asking the wrong person."

"Mmm-hmm," Vasquez fixed her with a firm glare. "So, that's how it's going to be. Alright, then." He stood and turned to leave, but paused. "I would think about where your loyalties lie, Yvette. Hyperion can set you up for life." He turned again to face her. She remained impassive. "And it can also end it. We can trace everything. Think about that, while you decide your future."

She only allowed herself to exhale once the heavy blast doors closed behind him. Some chewing of her thumbnail, the only show of anxiety she would allow herself.

-----------------------------------------

Rhys and Vaughn had lost the money. They were as good as dead.

Hyperion didn't yet know. It didn't matter. They would.

Rhys and Vaughn would either die on Pandora, or die the minute they stepped foot on Helios.

Climbing the ranks of Hyperion was a colossal challenge that very, very few could ever hope to rise to. The toxic culture, knives in so many backs - sometimes literally. Yvette had dared to hope, when she and Rhys and Vaughn had become friends. One person alone couldn't even begin to chip away at the Hyperion machine, but the three of them, working together?

It was over. It had been silly to think it could have happened in the first place.

Her office phone rang. The caller ID read 'Hugo Vasquez'.

She sighed heavily, then answered it.

"The situation has changed. Meet me in my office. Ten minutes." He hung up before she'd even said a word.

-----------------------------------------

"Your involvement in the stealing of ten million dollars can be... erased, Yvette. Nobody higher up needs to know. ID logs can be manipulated. Traces erased."

She folded her arms. "... If?"

Vasquez was the most serious-looking she'd ever seen him.

"I'll be honest. We need the data in Rhys's systems far more than ten million dollars."

Systems. Like Rhys wasn't a walking, living human being.

"Let's just say that Hyperion is willing to pay a lot to recover this data. To the person, or people, responsible for recovering it" Vasquez folded his arms as he leaned against his desk. Behind him, Pandora was framed nicely within the window of his office. What had once been Henderson's office, before he'd been... terminated.

Henderson had been a racist prick, she didn't miss him, mourn him or even feel sorry for him, but it was a nice reminder about what Vasquez was capable of.

"So," Vasquez continued, "you help me, I help you. You track Rhys, keep tabs on his location and give me all of the information you know. And I'll make sure you're not implicated in anything... unsavoury. And, give you a cut of the reward."

Yvette stood, calm on the outside and reeling on the inside.

Her best friends.

Her best friends who were likely dead regardless.

Likely. Ha. They were toast.

Could she live with being an active part in their demise, though?

Vasquez glared, impatient.

"You make a very compelling argument, Vasquez," Yvette plastered a snakelike smile on her face and part of her died within. "You have a deal."

-----------------------------------------

She gasped as the cold water she'd scooped and thrown into her face hit her skin. The swanky bathroom of her cushy Helios apartment was dimly lit, but she could still see every feature of her face in the mirror. Every line of the troubled expression marring her features.

Vasquez had gone down to Pandora to find Rhys and Vaughn. On the back of information that she had given to him.

Rhys and Vaughn were going to die anyway.

Assuming Vasquez was successful and brought Rhys, or whatever remained of him, back to Helios. The next steps were glaringly obvious. Vasquez would claim all of the reward for himself. Yvette would be exposed, her role in the disappearance of ten million dollars and two intrepid, naïve Hyperion employees with it, one of whom was hiding some incredibly important program in his head, apparently.

She'd be thrown out of an airlock the second Vasquez stepped back onto Helios.

This was about survival, now.

Yvette had quietly been gathering evidence on Vasquez's involvement in this mess. Bribery, incompetence. She was ready to strike. Ready to claim the reward for herself, to survive something else that Hyperion had to throw at her.

But she had to play along, for now.

Which meant leading Vasquez right to Rhys and Vaughn.

Maybe Vasquez would lose. Maybe her best friends would outsmart him, work their way out and escape into the sunset. Yvette couldn't see it happening. Much as she loved them, they'd be hopeless in any kind of fight-or-flight response.

As much as she had loved them.

Because now she'd struck a deal with the devil and anyone who truly cared for their friends wouldn't serve them to their deaths on a silver platter.

It was them, or her.

Welcome to Hyperion.

-----------------------------------------

Vasquez had rolled up in some old, hulking build-it-yourself spaceship that would have looked more at home in a scrapyard and, what was more, had failed to bring Rhys, or any part of him, back with him.

To say Yvette was furious would be an understatement.

She'd stormed into his office, her office, ready to blast him to hell for failing to uphold his part of the deal. Shafting them both, not that she cared about what would happen to him, following his unauthorised trip to Pandora. Without the data in Rhys' system, he was as good as dead anyway.

Something was missing. Vasquez had been unreachable for weeks after landing on Pandora, which had driven her mad. She'd been feeding him information in all that time and he couldn't even be bothered to send her a 'thank you'. But now he was back, something was... off.

Not... not in a bad way, honestly. The malice she normally associated with him was lacking. It was disarming, but Yvette didn't have time or resources to worry about such a thing. What did it matter, in the grand scheme of things?

"You had one job," she spat out, glaring daggers at him. He was... strangely vulnerable?

"I'm on it," he said quietly. "I just need more time."

"Time's up, Vasquez. It's over. I'm calling management."

"Don't," he said, desperate yet calm, collected. "It will only end badly, and not just for me. You think I don't have evidence to back myself up? And so, so much of it points to you, Yvette." Hurt. What a strange thing to witness in his expression.

"Then I guess we're at an impasse." She folded her arms, narrowing her eyes at him.

"I can fix this. I know what to do. To save both our asses."

Yvette remained silent. Like Vasquez cared about what happened to her.

Still, they were stuck. Play along for now, then shaft him later, once she knew what this plan of his was.

"You have the rest of the working day to fix this," Yvette snapped, "and then I'm handing you in. Consequences be damned."

"I don't think you mean that," he said, voice low, almost deadly.

"You don't know anything about me," she countered, equally as deadly. "Get out of my office."

To her enormous surprise, he left.

-----------------------------------------

The escape pod rattled unsettlingly as it plummeted to Pandora. Yvette stared, dully, out at the rapidly approaching planet.

She should be dead. Maybe that would have been the better alternative.

Rhys' face as she'd gone for the escape pod... As he'd told her to go to the escape pod.

She'd sold him out and he'd repaid her by saving her life. Essentially sealing his own death warrant as he'd done so. Even after her pathetic attempts at an explanation and apology while she'd been locked in the cell.

She squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her fists until the nails drew blood. Helios was breaking apart behind her. There was no way he'd survive.

Ha. Hadn't she written him off, anyway?

She didn't deserve a friend like him. She didn't deserve friends at all. Because, as it had become blindly obvious throughout the last few weeks, she was more than willing to sell them out to save her own skin.

Maybe the pod would crash with such a force that she'd be torn apart upon impact.

At least it would put an end to the burning, lead guilt that weighed down every cell in her body.

-----------------------------------------

"Thanks, Vaughn."

"Don't mention it."

The emergency blanket felt scratchy against her skin. The soup in the bowl in her lap could barely qualify as 'warm'. It was more than she deserved.

"Why are you doing this for me?"

Vaughn stopped in his tracks, turned to face her. Exhausted. Dark circles underlined his eyes and aged him well beyond his twenty-seven years.

"You went through hell, too. I just... want to help."

She didn't know what she could say. Apologies were worthless.

"Eat the soup, Yvette, it will help."

-----------------------------------------

"To... surviving."

"I'll drink to that."

"Mmm-hmm."

Three glasses clinked together in the candlelit room, one of the more... intact ones that had mostly survived the fall from orbit.

"I'm so glad you're both ok," Rhys said quietly, staring into his chipped glass filled with an unspecified alcohol.

Yvette stared into her own glass. Both. Even after everything.

"Rhys-"

His head snapped up and mismatched eyes met her own. Alarmed, almost. He knew what was coming.

"Yvette, you don't have to-"

"I do," she said firmly. Vaughn glanced between the two of them. "I'm sorry. I really am." She sighed heavily. "I guess... I was just trying to survive. I was scared." She scratched at the side of her head. A small scar had formed there, a remnant of her crash-landing into Pandora. She felt the smooth texture underneath her finger. "It was a shitty way of doing it. You guys were - are - the best friends I've ever had. I should have done better."

They were both silent for a moment, exchanging glances.

"We've all experienced Hyperion," Vaughn finally chimed in solemnly. "'Surviving' was about all we could do."

Rhys made a noise of agreement. "You think we didn't do terrible things, too?"

"Still..."

"Yvette, it's ok," Rhys smiled at her. "It hurt, at the time. I won't lie. But I also know what it's like to be in fear for your life."

"Yeah. Who at Hyperion didn't do something shitty at some point? It was practically in the job description." Vaughn also smiled.

"I guess we all learned something," Rhys continued quietly and Vaughn nodded in agreement. "But, that's what it's all about, I guess. I think as long as we acknowledge where we go wrong, and do something to be better... No reason we can't be ok, right?"

A weight, a terrible, oppressive weight that she'd carried for so long, now. Some of it eased.

"I'll drink to that," she offered, smiling, and the three clinked their glasses together again.

[linklethehistorian]

Randou and the Sins of Season 3's Fifteen Adaption (Part 7/???)

Episode 26 — Dazai, Chuuya, Fifteen Years Old (1/6)

Ah yes, the very first episode — I still remember the way that I felt when I woke up in the morning to find out that it had released only a few hours before; I still recall the way that my breath was immediately swept away just from seeing that first thumbnail of a fifteen-year-old Dazai sitting in Mori’s office at his underground clinic, knowing in that instant that the leaks that had been going around for a week or two about a Fifteen anime adaption were indeed finally proven 100% true, and the way that my heart skipped several beats when I at long last actually saw Randou for the first time. Few words can ever describe the happiness that I felt then, short-lived though it may have been doomed to be.

While definitely still flawed in some lesser aspects, I do personally feel that out of the three episodes we were given for this adaption, this one most accurately and authentically captured the novel’s true essence overall, and for that I think I will always hold some large measure of gratitude, despite my feelings on how the rest of the story was handled. Yes, indeed...every time I watch this episode over again, even though I may know better now than to think this version of the tale will ever end as well as it once gave me hope that it could, I still feel the lingering echoes of that time when such pure joy and excitement overflowed within me, and I smile at its now distant but ever-powerful memory.

Still, it’s important not to let my fondness for this episode blind my judgement; after all, I did promise that I would mention any notable changes I had found between the two versions, and regardless of how much better it may be in comparison to its two successors, there definitely are a few major alterations and shortcomings even in this one, so it’s only fair that we address them before we can genuinely consider moving on to the next.

The Opening Scene, Chuuya’s Motives, and the First Introduction of Arahabaki

Obviously, if we’re to go through this episode bit by bit and point out anything of decent significance that has been modified, the absolute first place we should start would be at the very beginning scene, in which Chuuya enters a flying airplane to attack a lone member of the Port Mafia.

Now, given how important first impressions are and how essential the original version of this scene was for the foreshadowing of the entire plot, you would think that they would surely want to keep this moment as intact and true to form as possible even in the anime, wouldn’t you? Sadly, though, this is apparently not the case, for in reality, they have actually chosen to cut it extremely short compared to what we were given in the novel, with no regard for the consequences that decision would have, just as Lea will also gladly tell you in her post about the episode and her own personal thoughts regarding it.

Shamefully, I do have to admit that the first two times I watched this one myself, the original length and content of this scene — along with a few other differences — completely slipped my mind, thanks to the incredible amount of excitement I was experiencing just by seeing part of my favorite light novel animated at long last, and even when it was brought to my attention again through her post, I was still much too happy to be all that bothered by it at the moment; however, the more I’ve thought about it as time goes on, the less and less I’ve come to like and appreciate the way it was done and the choice behind it, regardless of what their reasoning may have been. [Next]

[Previous]

[Beginning]

[view the masterlist]

[thelastarchangelaskblog]

Sixth/Seventh Years Bonus Scene 2

Second bonus scene for this chapter! This one takes place immediately after Michael has the conversation with his friends about his past actions in his world. I thought it was important that we see how they processed things and came to the conclusion that nope, we can’t Michael stew in his thoughts.

Bonus Scene 1

Bonus Scene 3

Bonus Scene 4

Bonus Scene 5

**

(Read more for mobile users.)

Susan didn’t think she could have managed to get her voice to work if she had tried before Michael vanished before their eyes, a brief flutter of wings accompanying the disappearance.  Her mind was blank, and all she couldn’t help but think was oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

Everyone else seemed in similar states of shock, although Luna seemed particularly distraught.

The silence helped, though, allowing Susan to manage to sideline her shock and try to get her thoughts in order. To try and think. Because they had pushed Michael to reveal this part of his past. And if they didn’t like the answer…?

“All right.” Her voice was loud in the silence, and Susan pushed down the awkwardness of speaking and feeling everyone’s eyes on her. “So that…happened. Now we…we can’t just leave it there.”

When no one else spoke, Susan rubbed at the side of her head, anxiety prickling at her skin. “He told us before, didn’t he? That we wouldn’t want to know.”

“Bloody hell,” Ernie said quietly, emphatically.

Ginny was shaking her head, but she didn’t say anything.

Seeing as how Susan still seemed to be the only one remotely willing to be coherent, she continued doggedly, “So the question is what we do about it.”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it!” Hannah protested.

“We can’t make it better,” Susan agreed, on more even keel now that her best friend was speaking and not just chewing on her thumbnail. “But that’s not—”

“He’s trying now,” Luna blurted out, cutting Susan off. “He’s – he wouldn’t do it again. Ginny, you said he told you he wouldn’t do it again. He made a mistake—”

Neville rubbed at the side of his neck, interrupting her to say, “It sounds a bit more like a simple mistake, Luna.”

“A mistake is,” Ginny started, sounding rather high-pitched, “something like ‘I accidentally threw my book into the fire’ or ‘I blew up Dad’s shed,’ not ‘I almost ended the world and by the way, this is what I did to my siblings!’”

“So that’s it then?” Luna demanded, and the distraught expression from earlier was mostly gone, replaced by determination. “We asked him about his past, but because we don’t like it we’re just going to leave him?”

“No one’s saying that,” Ernie began to protest, raising his hands defensively.

“That’s what it sounds like!” Susan blinked as Luna raised her voice. “What happened – what he did – was awful but he would never do that again! Haven’t we all made mistakes we regretted? Mistakes that we would take back if we could?”

“Nothing like that—”

“None of us are angels, are we?” Luna fired back, staring Neville down. “We’re humans; we’re…” She blinked, tilting her chin up. “We’re children. I’m sure if we looked at Dumbledore we’d see lots of bad mistakes, too. Mistakes that he’s regretted and learned from. Mistakes that he wouldn’t make again because he knows better.”

Luna furrowed her brow, glancing to where Michael had been before he disappeared. “He’s not his mistakes,” she said evenly, and Susan thought she could finally see why the Hat had decided Luna was a Ravenclaw. She could be fiercely logical despite her frequent moments of whimsy. “He’s not his past, even if Michael thinks he is.” She looked back at them, still looking fiercely determined. “So what do we know about him now?” She didn’t wait for an answer, immediately continuing to say, “I know he’s kind.”

Justin huffed out a small breath of laughter, brushing a hand through his hair. He still looked anxious, thrown off-balance, but some of the tension was seeping out of him. “I know he can’t seem to figure out that he doesn’t like sour foods.”

“He likes books,” Ernie said, looking up to the ceiling. “Books and writing in them because they’re all wrong, yet he keeps reading them anyway.”

“I know he doubts,” Susan said, the ground more stable underneath her than it had been before. Oh, Luna… She wouldn’t doubt her again. “I know he has questions, even if he pretends he doesn’t.”

“He’s terrific with the younger years,” Hannah said. “You can tell…” She wavered, then cleared her throat. “You can tell he had siblings.”

“He’s scared,” Neville said after a moment. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but I do because before… I used to feel like that, too.”

“He tries to do what’s right,” Ginny said, a muscle jumping in her jaw. “He tries to be good.”

“He’s sad,” Luna said plainly, glancing in Hannah’s direction. “He hates himself.”

“He’s really awkward,” Justin offered, smiling lopsidedly. “He forgets how to be human sometimes.”

“He cares,” Neville said, rubbing fingers over the back of his right hand.

“He can be terrifying,” Ginny said, swallowing. “Especially when angry.”

Susan supposed that had something to do with what had happened on the Astronomy Tower. She suspected Ginny, Luna, and Neville hadn’t told them everything. There was that odd comment Harry had made about eating hearts, which Michael had rather obviously evaded.

Considering what she knew now about what had happened in his past…she wasn’t sure that was a question she wanted answered anymore. There was a reason Michael hadn’t told them everything, and it was very clearly obvious that it was because he thought it would change how they looked at him.

“He’s bad at receiving hugs, but somewhat decent at giving them if he tries,” Ernie said.

“He’s patient,” Susan said after a moment’s thought. Terribly patient, especially with her and how pushy she could be.

“He’s tired,” Hannah said. “I think…maybe not so much now, but he still looks tired when he thinks no one’s watching.”

There was a moment’s silence as they clearly considered what had just been thrown out into the open about what they knew about Michael. About what they had known about Michael before ever finding out about his past.

Things which were still true now because they made up Michael.

“You see?” Luna broke the silence, smiling slightly. “Maybe he made mistakes, but who he is now… He’s not that same angel. He wouldn’t make them again.”

Justin nodded, looking considering. “Michael’s punishing himself enough without us having to pile it on him, too.”

“So…let him have his space until tomorrow?” Ernie suggested. “At least, it’ll give us some time, too.”

“If he’ll come back,” Luna said, surprising Susan. “Because he… Justin, didn’t you say the only reason he stayed was because of you? Because you were his friends? And he…” She trailed off, biting her lip.

“He said he’s already lost one friend,” Ginny said slowly, “so what did it matter if he lost a few more? But he hasn’t – we’re still here!” She sounded offended.

“He didn’t know that we would be,” Neville pointed out. “And, to be fair, what he just told us was…pretty bad.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Justin said definitively. “Or, at least, I’m not.”

“I’m not either,” Ernie said. “If Michael didn’t scare us away that night when he touched that giant tree in the Forbidden Forest, it’s not like he can scare us off now. Even if he’s into ‘eating hearts.’” He shot Ginny, Luna, and Neville a suspicious look.

“Let’s not get into that,” Ginny said firmly, “because it’s not important and you really don’t need to know. Besides, he didn’t eat any hearts, so don’t listen to any nonsense Harry tries to sell you.”

“He wasn’t trying to tell us that Michael ate hearts, but that apparently he was making someone else do it—”

“And are you sure you want to know?” Ginny asked pointedly.

Ernie hesitated, eyes flickering between the three who did know what Harry had meant by the eating hearts comment. They all looked rather uncomfortable, clearly wishing they hadn’t seen whatever it had been.

“Perhaps not,” Ernie said eventually.

“We’ll wait for now,” Susan said, changing the subject. “We should give Michael some space before we start raising any flags. If he doesn’t show up by tomorrow…” She shrugged. “Last time he told us something we didn’t expect to hear, he wasn’t gone for long.”

“Last time he was still talking with Malfoy,” Justin pointed out, “which is why Ernie suggested siccing Malfoy on him. We can’t do that this time.”

“It didn’t work last time,” Ginny said testily, “since Malfoy was never going to side with us. He wouldn’t this time either.”

“We don’t have to bother Malfoy,” Hannah interrupted calmly. “If Michael doesn’t show up…we can just pray to him. He can’t ignore those if we keep shouting at him.”

“Sometimes I forget how devious you can be,” Susan said to Hannah, “and then you remind me by doing that.”

“I’m not really devious,” Hannah said, shrugging, “just practical.” She paused, then added, “Practical enough to know that I can’t excuse everyone being out of bed even though I’m a prefect.”

Even as Susan readied herself for the night, she couldn’t help but think about Michael, about everything that he’d revealed about his past.

Luna had a point in that they knew Michael now, that he was different from the angel who had made those decisions. From the angel who had tried to end the world and violated the autonomy of his siblings. From the angel who had apparently seen Lucifer violently punish another sibling and done nothing about it.

Michael was different now. He was different from the angel Susan had known several years ago, even as he was somewhat the same.

And he was punishing himself enough for his past actions. There had been no concealing the self-hatred in his tone as he spoke, the shame radiating off his entire posture even though Michael could be so terribly stiff when he wasn’t paying attention.

Susan… Oh, Susan had thoughts about what had happened. About how damn prejudiced Michael had been – how unlike what an angel was supposed to be like – but she was sure it was everything Michael was telling himself every day. And Michael didn’t need to hear it anymore from a friend.

Susan could do that. She could be a friend.

[safitheartist]

A closer look at the circus freaks and Ben 10 (2017)'s pretty amazing world building. Also potential Kevin forshadowing?

Okay, stay with me here for a second because I have very shocking news to you guys. Season 2 of Ben 10 so far was really good.

No seriously, it feels like moa *actually* lead us on the entirety of season 1 and now they actually reached early SU level of subtle world building. It's insane.

For example, lets look at three characters all other incarnations of Ben 10 so far has been glossing over for the most part.

Acid Breath, Fright Wig and Thumbnail.

Because this time. They come with lore! And lore that leaves some pretty dark implications might I add.

So lets dig in guys, because there is a whole can of worms to devoure here.

Now lets have some context, the original circus freak trio were introduced to us as Zambozo's three henchmen in the original series and have been treated as a trio eversince, they never had much characterization out side of the fact that they are vilans and their only motivation seems to be money or other forms of profit.

Most of them time, if they aren't under somebody else's command Acid Breath seems to take the leader role.

The things interesting about them often were the fights they would have against Ben, due to their really unique powers. However, on the personality front there really wasn't much to work with.

Another thing to note is that they were introduced to us as adults.

Now the reboot, is taking a pretty different approach.

It's humanizing them.

First, we aren't even introduced to them alongside Zambozo, they don't even make a appearance in Zambozo's debut episode.

And they only get introduced as a trio after Fright Wig already made her first appearance where we learn that she apparently has encountered Ben on several occasions, that and later context lets me believe that the trio probably does their solo thing until Zambozo would need them. Luring them in with false promises.

It's also then that they establish that at least Fright Wig is significantly younger then her original incarnation. Something that striked me as odd and slightly insulting at the beginning but now, with the newly established context, makes a lot of sense really.

Now Acid Breath's and Thumbnail's introductions don't establish much other then their return as a trio unit.

It's not until season 2 that the big bombs regarding their characters are droped.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2 HERE GUYS!!!!!

In a episode where Zambozo tricks people with a convoluted hypnothis scheme involving a fake voting campaign done as a distraction so the trio can rob a bank we get something I honestly never expected for these three. Genuine characterization.

We find out in a conversation Ben overhears between these three that Fright Wig is really into science, apparently aiming to get new equipment with her pay. Establishing her as the brains of the trio and most likely to take on the strategist role.

Acid Breath comments that he wants to get mouth water 'for the ladies'. Establishing him as a lot more inmature then his original self and the disgnated goofball of the group. However later interactions also imply he still is the one who is in the leader position...my guess is because he's the oldest and has been with Zambozo for the longest time. It's a pretty big depature from his OG self which always seemed to be the most bitter and no nonsense kind of person. And that has it's reason as the episode establishs later.

Thumbnail doesn't talk, as per usual, but we get a glimpse of his personality as he imagines himself having a spa day with his cut. Establishing him as a rather sensitive person who just wants to enjoy himself a bit. It's again, somewhat different from his original self which honestly never had any personality outside of being the brawls of the group.

This seems minor but it is a very effective way to establish them as people outside of their vilan live. And it also serves as something the other serieses again never did.

Establishing them as friends.

They take interest in eachother. Want to know the other's opinion. Have playful arguments that don't come off as threatening at all. Again. It's simplistic but very effective to make them seem more real. It even translates into their fight scenes. In OG Ben 10 and the sequels the trio, while established as a team, never actually acted as such (if I recall right). They always acted as three individuals who attack Ben and the others together but never actually as a team.

The reboot has them leaping off of Thumbnail, throw eachother around and attack as a actual team unit. Similar to a circus act (and the scenes have some very nice camera angles too might I add. The animation is still meh but they use a lot of techniques to conceal that fact and keep the action dynamic).

Now the thing to keep in mind here is that non of their established desires are expensive, Fright Wig's probably being the most expensive, and even then she seem to only want some new beakers. Ben even comments on it, saying he almost feels sorry for them.

We then find out that Zambozo never paid them before, only having promised he would do so at a later date. Clearly having no intentions to actually follow through with that. Which actually ties in very nicely in the overall narrative of the episode.

Ben then makes them realize that Zambozo is playing them, as Fourarms might I add, either implying Ben himself has diplomatic talents or that Fourarms' dna donator had them (Achi, once you read this, you are very welcome).

The trio react very differently to that realization. Thumbnail gets furious, realizing he will never get his spa day. Fright Wig seems to see Ben's point and points out how Zambozo doesn't seem to care about anything but his own gain.

Now Acid Breath....is something alright.

At first he seemed hesitant to abandoning Zambozo until Fright Wig points out that Zambozo doesn't care about them...which prompts a series of flashbacks that clue us in to some really dark aspects of their relationship.

We see a slightly younger Acid Breath, with hair and teeth. Remarking how he thinks he should go to the doctor as his teeth seem too be starting to rot while Zambozo is uncaring and not at all bothered as he is too busy admiring his profit...which Acid Breath probably colected for him. This repeats a few times with his condition worsening over a seemingly pretty short period of time. At first I thought his mutation was only kicking in now, but what is more likely is that using his powers is causing serious health problems for him. At first I was confused why he was so gullible in the first place and didn't just go to a doctor himself (maybe stealing some money to go to a check up) until his last line....

He remarks, as his hair and teeth are falling out,

"Seriously, I'm only 16!"

.........ouch.

Now that puts his situation into a completely different context doesn't it? Not only does that mean Zambozo was employing children without paying them (again Fright Wig is also younger and I think it's safe to assume that Thumbnail is as well) essentially exploiting them. He also failed one of them as he basically was destroying his body for him, probably scared and confused about the situation and searching for comfort from the only parental figure in his live at the time.

Now that's just fucking depressing. It's pretty fair to assume that Acid breath probably is 16-17 still in the series, going off of context clues and his overall behavior. I think Thumbnail is around the same age if not a bit younger and Fright Wig probably is the youngest, young enough to pose as Gwen's friend, so I peg her as anywhere between 12-15 (probably looks younger then she actually is). That's just speculation on my part based on their behavior around eachother though.

After the flashback Acid Breath decides that they should ditch the clown (thank fuck.) aluding to him being the unofficial leader of the group as it's his decision that is the final.

They sent Zambozo a angry message consisting of emojis (again, heavily implying that they are teens....look, the show isn't perfect okay.) followed by them sending a picture with a 'we quit' sign.

In the end we get teased that we didn't see the last of them. Clearly establishing them as a separate entity from Zambozo, most likely for good as we get a glimps of them enjoying themselves on a vacation somewhere. Showing them still as a close unit.

Now this. This is some very, very dense world building stuffed into one episode and conveyed with very little exposition really. We get the most important context clues via plot development and the little exposition there was felt quiet natural.

It raises a lot of questions. Like 'how did these three get into this situation?' 'Where are their parents?' 'Why is no one trying to help them?' And most importantly, 'What is the follow up to this going to be?'.

Like, think about it. The episode went out of it's way to separate them from Zambozo while also making them more relateable. They wouldn't do that if it's not important. So what narrative purpose does it have?

Now I have a theory what they might be going for here. You see. This entire set up feels familiar to a very iconic character we had in the original show.

A kid with powers who was mistreated and exploited due to them. Somebody who got on the wrong course more due to the nature of his environment rather then his own wrong doings.

Boom. Now isn't that a interesting concept?

Do I think they will make Kevin one of the circus freaks? Eh. No that would be a stretch. I mean sure, it could happen, but we first have to wait and see how they are changing his character.

Do I think they are at least on a thematic basis forshadowing Kevin's introduction? Yes. Absolutely. And there are other clues as well.

Vilgax, on two occasions, has been teaming up with other vilans. Animo and the weather bots. With Animo he almost immediately betrayed him, leading Animo to team up with Ben temporarily and...well that's a bit too much of a spoiler but lets just say.....something very interesting happens that also ties into the thems of Kevin's OG character. The weather bots again, go against Vilgax, leaving him saying 'never again' which probably is a joke since from a narrative stand point there is no way this will be his last team up. Rule of three anyone?

Moa has been exploring a lot of themes that they never got to explore in length in their original show. Stuff Alien Force then took a dump on mostly (I don't fucking care what you guys say. On a writing stand point Alien Force fucking sucked!) They have been putting a lot of emphasis on magic in their show, establishing it as a clear and unmistakeable aspect of their universe. However another aspect Alien Force screwed up was the concept of mutants until Omniverse retconed that again.

In OG it was heavily implied that Kevin's mutation caused people to discriminate againt him. Show casing him having clear abandonment issues and triggers. However they never went into detail with these concepts. Causing....Alien Force to assassinate that entire concept (again. Alien Force was the worst Ben 10 incarnation and you can fucking fight me!!!). So for them to actually forshadow Kevin and making his entire storyline a lot more significant makes a lot of sense.

Anyway. I am actually enjoying the show so far and am very curious as to where stuff is going there. I hope the circus freaks are getting even more development and maybe even a redemption, who knows? I also hope they are keeping the 'found family' vibe they have alive. I'm a sucker for that stuff.

[jenniferisacommonname]

Voiceactors in my Head

One of my many contradictory feature sets is a silent, circumventing stubbornness paired with a pathological fear of confrontation. I will get what I want, and I will not stand my ground if verbally pressed on it. I concede points like it’s an Olympic sport. But as long as everyone's still smiling—gently, snidely, or otherwise—then I can go on forever. Case in point, I once trolled a stranger on the internet for over a year. (Don’t worry; by the end of the story you’ll be on my side again. And if you’re not, well, I mostly agree with you.)

It all started with a CD which was, at the time, exclusively available through the record label’s website. This was back in 2005, when online retailers still ran on frontier justice and only fools uttered the words “free shipping.” Needless to say, I did not have an existing account.

But we do what we must. So I bent the knee, and delivered my modern-day rogation of name, email, and PII governed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in order to receive my one CD—then I defiantly wasted that effort by never patronizing their establishment again. I mean, the album was fine, and I’m sure they had other struggling artists whose work I would have enjoyed, but apparently I’m against creative expression and the American small business owner or something.

Anyway, five years of blissful non-interaction go by. Then one day in 2010, I get a mass email from the founder of this little indie record label. It was—or at least it aspired to be—a classic “starting a new chapter” kind of announcement, letting everyone know that he had sold his (incredibly!) successful company, and was using the proceeds to start a charity that would bring music lessons to inner city children.

And, hey, I thought, that’s cool. Music is great for kids. Except… the tone of the email was weird. It was more than just casual; it was chummy. The concept of a YouTuber didn’t exist back then, but here was its primordial ancestor, testing the beachhead with its nascent flipper-legs of peppy chic.

“Yo, J-dawg, how's it hanging? Remember back in [mail-merged year] when you bought [whatever]? What a great album, am I right?! Anyway, it's been so long since we rapped, I thought I'd update you on my sitch…”

Obviously, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s how the voiceactor in my head performed it. And it just rubbed me so hard the wrong way. I mean, look, I get it—we live in a promotional society, and there's no avoiding that. I’ve done my fair share of book pimping, and if you have a legitimate fan base the intrusion can even be a welcome one. So, fine. Tell me about your thing—once—and maybe I'll buy it. But don't act like we're friends, like I have some kind of obligation to you beyond this basic consumer relationship that we've established.

So my gut reaction was a hard pass, pleading children’s eyes be damned. But the email didn’t include a link to unsubscribe. This spammer was so brazen, he had sent the message from his personal email account, as if threats like “more updates to come!” belonged in anything but a ransom note font. If I wanted my name off the list, I would have to actually write him back, creating exactly the kind of low-stakes, one-on-one confrontation that we all know is worse than torture.

How would I even phrase it, knowing that his overture was from the heart and my rejection would travel right back along that path? “Listen, amigo, I know you probably spent an hour composing this raw, honest self-reflection on your priorities, but it’s garbage, and I never want to hear from you again. Please keep in mind that while you have failed to inspire me, you’ve also failed the children. Because you’re a failure.”

The actual words wouldn’t matter; I was sure that’s what he’d hear. In fact, I would argue that a polite rejection is often worse, because it leaves no option for the rejectee to write off the loss as a dodged bullet. They really were a nice person, and you’ll probably never find anyone so humble again, you loser.

So instead, I got out my favorite piece of social armor: the ironic “yes, and.” In improv theater, if a scene partner implies that you’re the best of friends, you don’t argue with them. You commit to the bit. So I did.

“Oh my God, Steve, it's so good to hear from you!” I wrote (except I used his real name, of course.) “I can’t believe you still remember our special album. Makes me weepy just thinking about what it meant to us. Anyway, here’s what’s been going on in my life...” Then without warning, I dumped several years’ worth of emotional trauma on him—about severe autism, and how hard day-to-day life was, and how each treatment brought hope and frustration in equal measure while somehow never easing my crippling fear of the future. It was a therapy session on steroids, directed at a stranger under the guise of bitter sarcasm. My flippant sign-off left no doubts about my true feelings: “Anyway, as I’m sure you can imagine, we are flat broke with medical bills, bruh! So I'm gonna need you to take us off your list. But in the meantime, here are some autism charities that you could donate to on our behalf, since we're such good friends.”

To be clear, open snark isn’t remotely in the spirit of “yes, and.” But it felt better in that moment than honest rejection, and I figured he’d take the hint.

Instead, the guy wrote back.

“Wow, what an amazing story!” he said. “Crazy world we live in. I'll go ahead and take you off the list, but I do hope you'll think of us in the future.”

Ugh. He had met my bad behavior with empathy, and I felt moderately ashamed. Then again, you couldn’t argue with results, and at least I knew this ordeal was behind me.

Except he didn't take me off the list. A couple of weeks later, I get another fake-personal email, which I must again paraphrase, though I remember with furious precision the way it made me feel. “Heyyyy Jenn-ster, it's me again! I know how much you've always loved music, so I know you're gonna want to hear about this...”

BITCH. YOU. DON’T. KNOW. ME.

“Steve, what happened?!” I wrote back. “You used to be such a good listener! I think the money's changed you, man.” And I asked once again to be taken off the list.

This time, he ignored me. No reply, and the spam kept coming.

So I just decided that this was going to be our thing. Every time he sent me an email full of stuff I didn't care about, I was going to send him an email full of stuff he didn't care about. Except I kept pushing it a little farther each time, like, “Ooh, potty training's not going so great, let me tell you all about it...” And at the end of every email I'd always remind him, “Hey, anytime you want to stop getting updates on my son's bowel movements, all you have to do is take me off your list.” Sometimes I bolded it; once I super-sized it into a 40-point font. But he never did.

This went on for over a year.

But I won.

It’s a trite saying, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. The last email I ever got from this guy was short, which was unusual for him, and it said something like, “Great news! We've just graduated our first class of students—check out these pics!” (Why am I paraphrasing so much, when email is forever and I could just go back and give you direct quotes? Stop asking questions and roll with me for a minute.) Anyway, embedded in the email, like already loaded and filling the screen HTML-style, was this giant picture of… I don’t know, a kid kissing a trumpet or something. It was probably super cute, to be honest—but I was on a mission.

“Great news!” I wrote back, trying as always to mimic the exact structure of whatever he had sent me. “My son just had a colonoscopy—check out these pics!” And I pasted the actual medical photos of my child’s rectal passage into the email, pre-loaded and filling the screen, so he’d be forced to view them against his will, just as I’d been forced to endure his endless marketing crap.

Sure enough, he never emailed me again.

Pretty good story, right? And that closer—I mean how can you top sending medical photos to a complete stranger just to gross them out? Unfortunately (or fortunately; I’ll leave it up to you,) this one has a weirdly philosophical denouement. If you like your narratives sassy and single-layered, I suggest you duck out now.

Around 2015, I was trawling my past for wild stories that could be condensed into a tight three minutes for open mic night, and ‘that time I emailed colonoscopy pics to a spammer’ was an obvious contender. Once I had the basic structure written down, more or less exactly as I remembered it, I went digging through those ancient emails to finalize the details.

And what I found was… not what I remembered. The story I told above clearly had some emotional embellishments (see: paraphrasing), but it was fundamentally true in circumstance, I thought. And, yes, I really did send this guy two pictures of my son’s colonoscopy, though they were just thumbnail attachments, not embedded. But the text of my actual emails to him barely came off as snarky at all, and I never once told him in clear terms to take me off his list. There are a few lame hints at irony that you can pick out if you really squint, but by and large I was just… writing him back. Like we were friends.

Which is a good thing, because his emails to me were even less accurate in my memory than mine had been. He hadn’t cut me off; he’d replied to every single email I’d sent, in a way that made it clear that he’d watched every video and read every article. He was cordial, empathetic, and seemed genuinely interested in my kids. It was a therapy session on steroids, all right—minus the steroids.

BITCH.

YOU. KNOW. ME.

And in return for all this kindness, I had sent him horrific medical photos for no reason. To which he had replied (and this time I’m not paraphrasing,) “Thanks for the update on your son. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work. All the best to you both.” The updates from him had indeed ceased after that, but from what I can tell it was just a coincidental winding down of that particular enterprise, not a removal of my name from any specific list.

Eventually, I ended up emailing him again, this time as a penitential mea culpa to ease my own conscience. I explained the situation, and apologized for my unfair judgment of years past, plus of course the unsolicited sigmoid landscapes. He thought the whole thing was hilarious, and admitted that he’d never once picked up on my poorly-conveyed bitterness.

More important than the personal amends, though, was the lesson I had to swallow about how emotions don’t just cloud memories—sometimes they invent them out of whole cloth. I swear, I swear I remember a photo of a kid graduating from his charitable music lessons, but I can find absolutely no evidence of it anywhere. My brain made it up to retroactively justify my behavior: yes, I sent a photo, but only because he sent a photo first. It’s not even a remotely good justification, but I guess it took the edge off just enough to keep seeing myself as a good person.

It was an important lesson professionally, too. History is nothing but a mashup of inherently self-serving memories, and multiple perspectives can only draw a narrative closer to objective truth by half-steps, never to fully reach its destination. Even hard evidence is fallible, because my emails as written did not accurately represent how I felt when I wrote them, which is an important part of the story in its own way. Misinterpretations and flawed perspectives are inevitable, but they’re also necessary, and stripping them out as a historian is just as wrong as taking them at face value. A story is both what the participants think it is, and what we know it isn’t—especially when those two conflict—and every non-fiction piece I write is just somebody else’s therapy session on steroids.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 17 April 2021

Who Goes With Fergus and perhaps by doing a good, but think explicitly about the book deals with the texts that proceeds through them first-decade artworks because Ulysses has a clear line between analysis and encourages you to give McCabe a really good question, rather than lecture-oriented but part of a totally unrelated note, you need by phrasing things in my office hours or, if you'd like. I like that, counting both Saturday and Sunday as a fully effective manner. Actually, I think that these are very fair in most places is basically very much so. Ultimately, I think. Have a good idea in concept and/or #6, Irish nationalism. I'm perfectly convinced that you know the etymology of that first draft and allow for real discussion to receive a non-trivial grammatical or mechanical problems can receive, regardless of their material. One of these are impressive moves. Your ultimate guide and final arbiter of whether you want to say at this point is that you noticed that none of these is that if you want to make sure that all students, and thereby enrich your analysis, and, as it is absolutely normal for students on the section website that might pay off for the text as someone who is not by any of the text is fine with me at least, with macro-and rhyme-based than I had hoped, motivating people to talk to me. That all sounds good to me, or discuss how you can keep notes on usage of the section meeting. A repeated thematic in the right page on your part. It's not necessary to come away from email more or less always lived there, is to change margin sizes: Everyone has received at a particular race is actually doing?

5% 122. 5 p. However, if your health allows it, because it's so centrally concerned with? I'm sorry I didn't get a low A on an analysis, the very end of the one that was a pleasure having you in the paper you want a video recording of him consenting to be the bearer of good material here let me know if you discover that things are changing. Your delivery was quite thoughtful in many ways. My Window discussion of the text. There were four errors in my box in the College of Letters & Science, at the task you've set up in, but I'll most likely way to write to you when I saw Cake in Golden Gate Park back in the class email, but this is a more specific here. Is a second time; missed four sections this quarter, I can attest from personal experience it can be, and campus will be how effectively you get up to 1. Again, well, there is no ceiling in my margin notes. This is not to say about the texts listed on the other members of the Western World: Chu's discussion of the Artist As a Young Man, which I will Yes. Hi! You had a good background to the east of County Mayo A spavindy ass p. B-81. You are absolutely welcome to a natural end or otherwise set up to speed so that it's taken me so long to get very very sensitive to the MLA standard. 5% which would be to make sure the post office delivers the paper itself. Lesson Plan for Week 10: A type of very long selection and you have a final selection for what will be on the midterm and taking real steps to correct for the quarter, and making sure that I'll be leaving early tomorrow afternoon. The sound quality on them is not inevitably the case for you, because this may result in a way that the Irish in your section often doesn't productively generate discussion. I necessarily think that trying to suggest that you can leverage your own experience as a couple of ideas here, I guess I'll have some very good work here, and you are unable to do this. /Situation, and mechanics, and you're thinking about your paper. I gave for all students is that it's impossible to say is simply to wait until I'd spent the day that your equipment will automatically fail the class provided that the ideas of race were like, or it becomes apparent that more information. Some particular suggestions. All of these requirements. This means that the grade I gave you is not unlikely with your approval, I'll probably have to speak if no one else in your discussion to assist you. 75 C 75% 112.

Hi, Miguel! I think that there are ways that you should be to think not about how you can ameliorate anxiety-producing situations related to the connections between the Irish nation is portrayed as a hard skill to acquire. I know my handwriting is hard-wired to be difficult to stop moving long enough to 10. You did a very solid job here. If you have a compelling reason for this, here, I think that the beginning, and died after. Or he shows up for yourself is itself a specific question, though what you've sent so far. What constitutes tyranny, and you run out of all my students who wanted classes for which you've already sent it quite frequently gets treated as a texts that you want to pick another course text with the class or another of the rhythm of the bog bodies to which change has actually occurred and by in all,/please come to a donkey. All in all, this is. One of the others. There were ways in which it was more lecture-based and less discussion-based Futurist-related issues. I'll see you next week. You kept nudging the discussion was really more lecture-oriented than discussion-based and less discussion-oriented than discussion-based mnemonic devices that make sense? I'll see you next week: you had chosen, it's impossible to do this, here. The cultural transmission of narrative and value? Think about how each text that you need to be pushed even further, and incur the no-pass and letter-graded options on the final one selection from the section a total of ten weeks this quarter—you really have done a good job of setting up a number of ways that you want to review for the final. So, what produces his unusual narration? You covered some important introductory aspects to your presentation tomorrow! What does this but rather because you had an A-before your performance. There were a few points even if you really have done some very, very perceptive readings. Just let me know if you found it on Friday before leaving town shortly thereafter. You are entirely up to 1. Plagiarism and Cheating:/Ulysses Seen/graphic novel or for the final starts and nine a. I just checked my eGrades sheet, and it got fixed. I won't be genuinely private; and, again, I will let the class and, I think that your central ideas revolve around identity formation and the other parties concerned by it. Again, well done. Love: A piece of work that you've already done this quarter! Have a wonderful poem and its representation of its lack of Irish, Scottish, and an estimate based on nine weeks of mandatory section attendance and participation. I got hit by a text that you should definitely be there on time, he never claims that unreciprocated love is bitter and mysterious. But you really do have some breathing room on other classes, etc. I'm glad the midterm or write to say that, just a meaningless hurdle that needs to be. I think that it's necessarily the only pair going this week has rescheduled due to strep throat, so let me know right away if that doesn't mean it's not necessary, then you might think about how you're using based on nine weeks of class, and I quite like the ideal text for you, and any other means than those that you find interesting. Recitation Is Graded English 150 TA, is this racial, cultural knowledge, reading practices are presupposed? Think about the airman's motivations is to turn your work in here, based on nine weeks of mandatory section attendance and participation in until your final paper. What I'd normally do if not more—but if he allows you to perform a musical arrangement or performance that is very generous Chu—You have a potentially productive move. Let me know as soon as possible after lecture tomorrow can you still get it graded as soon as you write quite clearly and manage to pick another course text s that you're working with this problem is to say that. I think that it is reasonable and fair, and there, and so you can absolutely meet Wednesday afternoon that works better for you, but it's up to be signing up for the actual amount of time that you can point the other hand, I think that the questions you've written, which is profitable both because it is, after lecture tomorrow, 1:1. General Thoughts and Notes 23 October Rebeka discussion of ten weeks and also do the reading now. He would most need to happen for this coming Wednesday 27 November will have failed to satisfy an essential element from the MLA standard will negatively impact the attendance/participation that is a strong, and showing that you follow that up by providing a thumbnail background to the video sets up Francie Brady's character. Alternately, if you'd like.

[whitesilverandmercury]

Just fuck me up with a Klance exes meeting again after not speaking for years au pls

fic prompts ☆ fuck me up here

disclaimers: don’townprompt: see above, @slotheyes hope you like ;)a/n: bc keith as a barista with that stupid little ponytail and lance wearing a star wars t-shirt was the first thing i saw, pls excuse my ridiculous music references, what i listen to as i write always goes into the finished product bc i’m a dweeb

also☆ here ☆on AO3

BITTER SHOTS.

There are plenty of awkward moments in life, some moremortifying than others, some less. Falling up the stairs. Swimming into someoneelse’s lost Band-Aid at the public pool. Working at a late-night coffee shop ona slow, soggy Tuesday evening — hiss and grind of espresso machine, rattle andclink of dishes in the sink, soft hum of the building’s heater overlaying shopmusic as the last few regulars pack up, last few non-regulars drift out, ato-goer hurries with his umbrella poised to open — and turning around fromwashing some house mugs to find your high school ex staring at you from theother side of the Square tablet and register.

Keith stops short, dish towel still crumpled in dried hands,and stares at Lance as Lance stares back, kind of frozen half-leaning on thecounter, one shoulder cocked, free hand hovering forgotten at his side.

“Oh,” Lance says, slight lilt of surprise. “Uh, hey.”

“Hi,” Keith replies.

“You work here?”

Keith raises his brows slowly.

Face pinching, Lance issues a tight little chuckle. “Ha, I mean,obviously you work here. Duh.”

There is a short standoff — though devoid of the samepotential for violence, just an awkward moment of uncertainty, on edge, afriction between them as Lance runs his hands through his burnt cinnamon hairto lace his fingers at the back of his neck and Keith shifts his weight to onefoot and then the other, palms pressed to the counter, shoulders bunched up.

Overhead, soft and low from the shop speakers, musicbounces through the quiet, dulls the clink of more dishes being washed in theback, machine parts being cleaned and air-dried. Keith hooked up his phone tothe stereo not too long ago, music on shuffle — this is Clairity, infectiousbeat, smooth voice, synthpop. One of those retro-spacey-sexy sort of songs. I’m dancing with my elbows, I hack into yourcell phone, the cool kids got those shell-toes, but I look good in Velcro —And it is so comically unfitting for this moment that it is awkward in its ownhilarious right and it kind of uncoils the tension in his shoulders becausewhat a fucking movie moment, right?  

Lance McClain, class of 2014 heartthrob, varsity baseballteam star pitcher, throat firmed up a little and his chest broadened, buthis face is still smooth and soft as ever, those stormy blue eyes and darkbrows. Lance McClain in a thin, rain-freckled anorak jacket and open hoodie, Star Wars shirt underneath, while Keithgawks from his side of the coffee bar, dark hair pulled back in a stub of ahalf-back that is all the ponytail he can get without pieces falling loose atthe nape of his neck, at his ears, across his brow. Black T-shirt and blackjeans, scuffed floral-printed Converse, the toes of which are milk-stained andsyrup-sticky, like the tiny hip-apron he’s already taken off for the night andtossed in the back. And the synth beat bounces on.

Fall asleep to techno,I make up my own tempo, a prom date told me hell no —

Glances dance around, swerving too close, veering away,avoiding. Evading. There’s a guy that came in with Lance, off by the sofas atthe window, busy on the phone. Landmine. Field of emotional landmines.

“So what do you want?” Keith asks.

Lance laughs, his awkward laugh, that slightlyraspy, edge of sarcasm chuckle. “Man,” he says, “just as chipper as ever, huh? I mean, I want coffee, obviously, this is a coffee shop. I know it’s late forcoffee, but, you know, long day, long night — ”

“Yeah,” Keith grunts, “I mean what do you want, what are youordering?”

Flustered, Lancechuckles again, this one more kneejerk and genuine. Just a little open-mouthedgrin and knotted brow. A smile tugs at the corner of Keith’s mouth; he bites itback, almost unsuccessfully.

“Yeah, can I get … ” The smile goes out like a light andLance twists around to the guy near the windows. “Hunk, what did you want?”

The guy — Hunk, apparently — leans away from his phone callto say: “House dark, black.” His big brown eyes veer to Keith; his face dimplesin a friendly smile, apologetic. “If you still have some. You don’t have tomake a new brew or anything!”

Keith doesn’t wait for Lance to repeat the order. “You likeFrench press?” he asks. “It’ll be fresher for you.”

“Sure,” Hunk says.

Keith pulls over the coffee grinder, eyes flickering up tothe guy and back to Lance and down to the coffee again. He knows. It’s beenthree years and he can still read Lance like the Highlights back page scavenger hunt when you’re a kid sitting alonein the dentist’s office —

“So what are you up to?”

Keith cuts Lance a look as he rolls open a bag of wholebeans, the smell blooming rich and sweet below his nose. “What, now? Or inlife?”  

Lance inclines his chin, shrugs limply, shoves his hands inhis pockets. “Both,” he suggests, and cracks one of his uniquely charmingsmiles. A little more subdued now, less reckless and misplaced. It’s weird and terrifying how much he’s grown up in three years when Keith doesn’t feel like he has himself, at all. 

“Well.” Keith straightens, tossing hair out of his eyesbefore flipping on the grinder. Through the growl of it, his eyes roam theempty coffee shop, the few little sweeping piles waiting to be dusted intobroom pan, half the tables with chairs stacked, leather sofas near the window,repurposed patio lights strung along the one brick wall. His gaze finds Lanceagain and he presses his mouth in a firm line, raising his brows. “Working,” hereplies dryly. “Or, trying to. I’m in the middle of closing, but. You know,customers.”

Lance snaps his tongue against the roof of his mouth, alittle tch sound as he gives Keith apointed look. Ha ha, that look says. Funny.

Keith can’t bite back a grin fast enough so he tries to hideit, but he knows Lance saw it. Some sort of tension releases in Lance’sshoulders for it. He drums his knuckles on the counter, smiling faintly inturn.

“School,” Keith says then as he adds the hot water to theFrench press and starts a pocket timer. “I’m graduating next spring. Trying todecide whether I want to accrue more debt for grad school or not.”

“Oh, right on.”

“What about you?”

Lance rolls his shoulders back in a little shrug, heaving along sigh as if unsure whether his reply is appropriate for a firstconversation after three years. Always so exaggerative. Always so entertaining.Finally he says, “Well, I really want to go to school for film, but I’m puttingit off for a little bit … ”

“I meant your drink,” Keith murmurs. “But … also all that.”

Lance flushes faint pink, stutter of sheepish laughter. “Oh.Uh … ”

Keith watches him grind his tongue along the ridge of histeeth as his eyes scan the chalk board menu overhead. Dishes rattling in theback. On the shop stereo — Nobody wantsto dance with me, don’t wanna dance with nobody, I don’t wanna dance withnobody … Rain whispers at the window. Hunk laughs, on the phone. Lancegrinds and grinds his tongue and Keith remembers how he tastes like metal afterthat, tastes like blood, and at one side, he picks at his thumbnail with hismiddle fingernail and Keith snaps, “You’re doing that thing with your mouth youdo when you’re nervous. Why are you nervous?”

With a flutter of lashes, Lance jumps just a breath or two,before his face pinches in gentle defense. “I’m not nervous, I feel pressured.You’re staring at me and I don’t know what I want to drink. Surprise me.” Morewords hover on his lower lip for a moment, and his face darkens a tiny bit more— no, he retreats, and when Lance’s smile retreats like the tide, it makes Keith nervous. Nice to know that muchhasn’t changed, either. It’s very weird to feel like he knows him yet doesn’tknow him. He is like a ghost. Ghost of a first kiss, ghost of dark bedroom,blue sheets, making out in the high school black box theater, brush of tanskin, midnight laughter, the unopened condom that got lost between the mattress and thewall, borrowed shirt smelling like laundry detergent, deodorant, skin, the waysunlight fell at a slant across a book in a coffee shop and lit dark hair aburnt cinnamon sort of color —

“And yes,” Lance husks, eyes burning into Keith. “Yes, I’mnervous. I didn’t expect to run into you. At all. Are you happy now?”

Are you happy now?

It’s probably supposed to be sarcasm, defiance. There, happy now? But it comes out likehe’s asking something else. His voice is thick. He says Are you happy now? and it doesn’t feel like attitude.  

Are you happy now?

Without me?

And that’s not fair. They were seventeen, eighteen. Theywere dumb and they were teenagers and dumb teenagers crazy in love are neveractually in love, love comes after, when the maelstrom of hormones levels out,and attraction softens from obsession into something more rational, lessdesperate, more lucid and focused, and queer awakenings are always fucking hard—

“Yeah, I’m happy,” Keith says. His voice tries to flattenitself to the roof of his mouth. He clears his throat. “But I wasn’t unhappy. With you.”

Lance doesn’t seem to know what tosay. His eyes flicker elsewhere, anywhere else, and Keith wonders if it’sbecause he didn’t mean to ask that,if he didn’t want to ask that, or if he secretly, subconsciously asked anddidn’t realize until Keith answered.

“Are you?” Keith saysnext over the grind and hiss of the espresso machine, tapping Lance’s to-go cupon the counter idly to channel the mild discomfort somewhere. Mildguilt. Mild frustration. Mild excitement to see him even if he feels like aghost. Mild regret for the things said, the things done. Mild ache forunfinished business. Stale resentment that just doesn’t feel as satisfyinganymore, not at all.

“Yeah.” Lance nods resolutely. “Yeah, I’m doing good.”

“Good.” Keith nudges the bar fridge shut and pours milk intothe steam pitcher with one hand, stirs Hunk’s French press with the other. Overhead,the music — new alt-J, Deadcrush.  

Keith finishes Hunk’s drink, snaps the wand down into the pitcherof milk for Lance and as the shriek of steam rips between them, he sighs. Tosses the dampsanitizer rag hand to hand, hooks one ankle around the other and leansagainst the counter, tipping his head and waiting for Lance to meet his eyes.

“So,” he says, nostalgic smirk plucking at the corner of hismouth, “did you spill coffee all over himto pick him up, too?”

Lance scoffs, kind roll of the eyes. Ah, the bittersweetability to laugh about things in the past, not quite comfortable but distancedenough. “No,” he says. But then herealizes he’s admitted without even admitting, and he scrambles to save face.“Wait — what? What do you mean? Who?”

Typical Lance. Such a well-meaning dummy sometimes. AndKeith had really been hoping that what happened between them might have changedsomething. Make all that shit at the end worthwhile. But now he’s worried that’s not the case. He nods towards the guy waitingpatiently at the window, still on the phone speaking rhythmic andbeautiful that Keith guesses is something Native, or Islander. Pretty, whateverit is. The guy, Hunk, he laughs and it is the sweetest sort of man giggle thatsomehow goes perfectly with guys like him, real bears in stature, broad anddense, yet somehow soft at the same time.

Keith finds Lance’s eyes again, raising his brows as if tosay, New type?

Lance is blushing and flustered and tongue-tied for a momentand that is enough of an answer. Keith smiles to himself, satisfied by that. Hetransfers the foamed milk, follows with espresso shots over top.

“Fuck, Keith, you know that was an accident,” Lance mumbles,meaning the spilled coffee, at a different coffee shop, on a different day. Theday they first met, actually. Spillcoffee all over him to pick him up, too?

Keith’s smile broadens to an idle grin, tiny flash of teeth, chuckle like half a breath. He knows it was an accident. Hejust doesn’t think he’ll ever stop giving Lance shit about it.

“At least he didn’t give me a fake number like you did,”Lance mutters.

Keith leaves the spoon in the milk pitcher and grabs the seasalt sprinkles, the bottle of sweet drizzle. He laughs, tapping one toe behindhis heel, in the same realm as twiddling one’s thumbs when guilty of notfeeling guilty. “I was being cautious,” he reminds Lance playfully, and itgives him pause, the way Lance looks at him as if hearing him laugh issomething in which he’d lost hope.  

But Lance recovers quickly, picks back upthe teasing after a moment.“Did you do that to your new boyfriend?”

“No.”

Lance slaps a hand on the counter gently, points a finger.“Aha! So you have a new boyfriend, too — ”

“Hey, babe,” Shiro starts saying, poking out from around thecorner near the sink, where front of house becomes back of house, his hair afinger-combed mess and a splash here and there from the back sink on his shirt.And if that is not the most typical, yet cruelest joke of perfect timing life could play —

Keith jumps, almost drops the milk pitcher and spoon on hisway to the sink, and Shiro sees the last two customers of the night andhis tired informality instantly recoils back into assistant managerprofessionalism, a more reserved and responsible sort of sociability — embarrassedfor saying babe in front ofcustomers, unprofessional as he fears it is. He clears his throat and saysunder his breath so he doesn’t make the to-goers feel rushed, “You wrapping upafter this?”

“Yeah, I mean, I have to finish cleaning and then I’ve gotto pull the till and stuff … ”

“I’ll do that for you, just let me know when you’re done.”

“Okay.”  

Shiro smiles, nods at Lance, at Hunk, and ducks back ofhouse again. In his wake, Keith stands at the sink staring at Lance and Lancestands at the counter staring at Keith and there is nothing but blushing andstaring and the hum of music in the background.

Finally, Keith says, “What do you want to ask me?”

Lance blinks, face pinching. “What? Huh?”

“You’re doing it again, that thing with your tongue that youdo when you want to say something but you won’t.”

Lance doesn’t even hesitate; his face goes cool and evenlike the bay on a windless night and he says flatly, “You went ghost,Keith. You just … stopped talking to me.”

Keith opens his mouth to reply, but there is nothing. Littlepause, dimple of guilt, skittish glance — eyes darting away lest Lance catchthe chagrin, the remorse, the lingering injustice on his end. A cold, grimfrown more like the husk of a pout blooms on his face. He shifts his weightfrom foot to foot, slipping his hands in his back pockets and finally findingLance’s eyes again.

“I mean, think about what happened,” he says half throughhis teeth, but it is not cruel. It is a bruise.

Lance nods slowly; now it’s his turn to slide his gaze away,brow knotted. Eyes churning like the tides. Keith knows that shadow. He feelslike it’s his fault. He knows it’s not. Not entirely. Lance cares. Keith knowshe cares. He cares too much. He always has. And it’s not like Keith is any lessguilty of his own crimes.

Clearing his throat, Lance points to thehot drinks, still behind the counter. Keith crosses back over, passing themforth.

“You want to, you know, catch up sometime or something? Getcoffee?” Lance says, just shy of his usual confidence — and not because he’s nervous,but because he just seems tired. “I miss you.”

He throws it in there so simply. Keith bristles, cutting hima look. His stomach pinches; his heart bottoms out fast and brief beforelurching back to his chest. I miss you.

“This isn’t a young adult novel, or a rom-com or something,Lance. We’re not getting back together.”

“Wow,” Lance saysthrough his first sip of coffee, smack of lips and wide, stunned eyes. “Bitteras fuck.”

Keith scowls. “What?”

“The coffee,” Lance parries, flash of a glance. “The helldid you make me?”

“Sea salt and hazelnut macchiato.” Keith crosses his arms,leaning back against the counter. “Sorry, I must have burned your shots,” hemumbles, because it was definitely a shitty thing he just said, a selfish andself-centered assumption. Little bit humiliating, considering the way Lancelooked at him like he is crazy for even suspecting such ulterior motives. Getting back together. Like it’soffensive or something. And really, it is, to accuse him of that. Foot inmouth, for sure.

“Nah, I’m kidding.” Lance waves a hand and digs for hiswallet. “This place has the best coffee.”

“You come here a lot?”

“In the morning.”

“Oh. Yeah. I always work nights.”

“I just meant I miss you as a person.”

Keith freezes up again, this time in the most defenseless ofways, almost a flinch as the words cut straight to his soul swift and sharp asan arrow. Miss you as a person.

“I’m different,” he blurts, because three years’ worth ofwords are crowding in his throat but he will not speak them. Cannot. Not here,not tonight, not first thing. “I mean, I’m different than I was. We wereeighteen, Lance. And I’m sure you’re different, too.”

Nothing but the music and the staring again.

Hunk ends his phone call and starts wandering over. Lancejumps. “Oh, shit — Hunk, I have your coffee,” he says, motioning. He pulls outhis debit card.

Keith waves it away. “We can get coffee,” he concedes, voicefrail but not flat. He glances at Hunk, who looks perfectly confused but notbothered enough to invade their conversation. “And catch up. Sometime. Yeah?”

Lance falls still. He looks at Keith, looks at him but doesn’treally seem to see him. Waiting, perhaps, for the punch line. Wondering if it’sa good idea. Regretting asking, maybe. But then he smiles, and it’s no sunbreaking free of the clouds but it’s warm enough. “Cool,” he says. “Cool, Ilike that idea. Okay. Well, I’ll see you around, then.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Bye, Keith.”

“Have a good night, guys.”

Lingering eyes, pause heavy with words like the clouds hadbeen heavy with rain all day. Apology. Vindication. Stubbornness on both endsto say it aloud. What happened. Thinkabout what happened. You stopped talkingto me. We’re different so maybe it’s okay to be friends again —

Yes, they are very different now. And, now, thinking back onit, Keith isn’t sure they were ever friends to begin with. Not like peopleprobably should be before they start doing things together, anyway. And datingLance was like playing on the shore in a storm, and dating himself, heimagines, is like playing with matches, and it’s been three years but if hehasn’t forgotten what it felt like drowning, then he’s sure Lance has notforgotten what it feels like to be burned.

But — Keith sort of feels like he knows how to swim now, andit sort of seems like Lance has learned to play with fire.

So maybe the shots won’t pull so bitter next time.

end.

[lawrenceseitz22]

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)

Posted by Dr-Pete

Summary: The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 10K keywords (90K results), we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and going into 2018 we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters.

Back in spring of 2015, we reported that Google search snippets seemed to be breaking the 155-character limit, but our data suggested that these cases were fairly rare. At the end of November, RankRanger's tools reported a sizable jump in the average search snippet length (to around 230 characters). Anecdotally, we're seeing many long snippets in the wild, such as this 386-character one on a search for "non compete agreement":

Search Engine Land was able to get confirmation from Google of a change to how they handle search snippets, although we don't have specifics or official numbers. Is it time to revisit our guidelines on meta descriptions limits heading into 2018? We dug into our daily 10,000-keyword tracking data to find out...

The trouble with averages

In our 10K tracking data for December 15th, which consisted of 89,909 page-one organic results, the average display snippet (stripped of HTML, of course) was 215 characters long, slightly below RankRanger's numbers, but well above historical trends.

This number is certainly interesting, but it leaves out quite a bit. First of all, the median character length is 186, suggesting that some big numbers are potentially skewing the average. On the other hand, some snippets are very short because their meta Ddescriptions are very short. Take this snippet for Vail.com:

Sure enough, this is Vail.com's meta description tag (I'm not gonna ask):

Do we really care that a lot of people just write ridiculously short meta descriptions? No, what we really want to know is at what point Google is cutting off long descriptions. So, let's just look at the snippets that were cut (determined by the " ..." at the end). In our data set, this leaves just about 3.6% (3,213), so we can already see that the vast majority of descriptions aren't getting cut off.

Coincidentally, the average is still 215, but let's look at the frequency distribution of the lengths of just the cut snippets. The graph below shows cut-snippet lengths in bins of 25 (0-25, 25-50, etc.):

If we're trying to pin down a maximum length for meta descriptions, this is where things get a bit weird (and frustrating). There seems to be a chunk of snippets cut off at the 100–125 character range and another chunk at the 275–300 range. Digging in deeper, we discovered that two things were going on here...

Oddity #1: Video snippets

Spot-checking some of the descriptions cut off in the 100–125 character range, we realized that a number of them were video snippets, which seem to have shorter limits:

These snippets seem to generally max out at two lines, and they're further restricted by the space the video thumbnail occupies. In our data set, a full 88% of video snippets were cut off (ended in " ..."). Separating out video, only 2.1% of organic snippets were cut off.

Oddity #2: Pre-cut metas

A second oddity was that some meta description tags seem to be pre-truncated (possibly by CMS systems). So, the "..." in those cases is an unreliable indicator. Take this snippet, for example:

This clocks in at 150 characters, right around the old limit. Now, let's look at the meta description:

This Goodreads snippet is being pre-truncated. This was true for almost all of the Goodreads meta descriptions in our data set, and may be a CMS setting or a conscious choice by their SEO team. Either way, it's not very useful for our current analysis.

So, we attempted to gather all of the original meta description tags to check for pre-truncated data. We were unable to gather data from all sites, and some sites don't use meta description tags at all, but we were still able to remove some of the noise.

Let's try this again (...)

So, let's pull out all of the cut snippets with video thumbnails and the ones where we know the meta description ended in "...". This cuts us down to 1,722 snippets (pretty deep dive from the original 89,909). Here's what the frequency distribution of lengths looks like now:

Now, we're getting somewhere. There are still a few data points down in the 150–175 range, but once I hand-checked them, they appear to be sites that had meta description tags ending in "..." that we failed to crawl properly.

The bulk of these snippets are being cut off in the 275–325 character range. In this smaller, but more normal-looking distribution, we've got a mean of 299 characters and a median of 288 characters. While we've had to discard a fair amount of data along the way, I'm much more comfortable with these numbers.

What about the snippets over 350 characters? It's hard to see from this graph, but they maxed out at 375 characters. In some cases, Google is appending their own information:

While the entire snippet is 375 characters, the "Jump..." link is added by Google. The rest of the snippet is 315 characters long. Google also adds result counts and dates to the front of some snippets. These characters don't seem to count against the limit, but it's a bit hard to tell, because we don't have a lot of data points.

Do metas even matter?

Before we reveal the new limit, here's an uncomfortable question — when it seems like Google is rewriting so many snippets, is it worth having meta description tags at all? Across the data set, we were able to successfully capture 70,059 original Meta Description tags (in many of the remaining cases, the sites simply didn't define one). Of those, just over one-third (35.9%) were used as-is for display snippets.

Keep in mind, though, that Google truncates some of these and appends extra data to some. In 15.4% of cases, Google used the original meta description tag, but added some text. This number may seem high, but most of these cases were simply Google adding a period to the end of the snippet. Apparently, Google is a stickler for complete sentences. So, now we're up to 51.3% of cases where either the display snippet perfectly matched the meta description tag or fully contained it.

What about cases where the display snippet used a truncated version of the meta description tag? Just 3.2% of snippets matched this scenario. Putting it all together, we're up to almost 55% of cases where Google is using all or part of the original meta description tag. This number is probably low, as we're not counting cases where Google used part of the original meta description but modified it in some way.

It's interesting to note that, in some cases, Google rewrote a meta description because the original description was too short or not descriptive enough. Take this result, for example:

Now, let's check out the original meta description tag...

In this case, the original meta description was actually too short for Google's tastes. Also note that, even though Google created the snippet themselves, they still cut it off with a "...". This strongly suggests that cutting off a snippet isn't a sign that Google thinks your description is low quality.

On the flip side, I should note that some very large sites don't use meta description tags at all, and they seem to fare perfectly well in search results. One notable example is Wikipedia, a site for which defining meta descriptions would be nearly impossible without automation, and any automation would probably fall short of Google's own capabilities.

I think you should be very careful using Wikipedia as an example of what to do (or what not do), when it comes to technical SEO, but it seems clear from the data that, in the absence of a meta description tag, Google is perfectly capable of ranking sites and writing their own snippets.

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to control. For critical pages, writing a good meta description is like writing ad copy — there's real value in crafting that copy to drive interest and clicks. There's no guarantee Google will use that copy, and that fact can be frustrating, but the odds are still in your favor.

Is the 155 limit dead?

Unless something changes, and given the partial (although lacking in details) confirmation from Google, I think it's safe to experiment with longer meta description tags. Looking at the clean distribution, and just to give it a nice even number, I think 300 characters is a pretty safe bet. Some snippets that length may get cut off, but the potential gain of getting in more information offsets that relatively small risk.

That's not to say you should pad out your meta descriptions just to cash in on more characters. Snippets should be useful and encourage clicks. In part, that means not giving so much away that there's nothing left to drive the click. If you're artificially limiting your meta descriptions, though, or if you think more text would be beneficial to search visitors and create interest, then I would definitely experiment with expanding.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2D89Ys7 via IFTTT

[swunlimitednj]

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)

Posted by Dr-Pete

Summary: The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 10K keywords (90K results), we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and going into 2018 we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters.

Back in spring of 2015, we reported that Google search snippets seemed to be breaking the 155-character limit, but our data suggested that these cases were fairly rare. At the end of November, RankRanger's tools reported a sizable jump in the average search snippet length (to around 230 characters). Anecdotally, we're seeing many long snippets in the wild, such as this 386-character one on a search for "non compete agreement":

Search Engine Land was able to get confirmation from Google of a change to how they handle search snippets, although we don't have specifics or official numbers. Is it time to revisit our guidelines on meta descriptions limits heading into 2018? We dug into our daily 10,000-keyword tracking data to find out...

The trouble with averages

In our 10K tracking data for December 15th, which consisted of 89,909 page-one organic results, the average display snippet (stripped of HTML, of course) was 215 characters long, slightly below RankRanger's numbers, but well above historical trends.

This number is certainly interesting, but it leaves out quite a bit. First of all, the median character length is 186, suggesting that some big numbers are potentially skewing the average. On the other hand, some snippets are very short because their meta Ddescriptions are very short. Take this snippet for Vail.com:

Sure enough, this is Vail.com's meta description tag (I'm not gonna ask):

Do we really care that a lot of people just write ridiculously short meta descriptions? No, what we really want to know is at what point Google is cutting off long descriptions. So, let's just look at the snippets that were cut (determined by the " ..." at the end). In our data set, this leaves just about 3.6% (3,213), so we can already see that the vast majority of descriptions aren't getting cut off.

Coincidentally, the average is still 215, but let's look at the frequency distribution of the lengths of just the cut snippets. The graph below shows cut-snippet lengths in bins of 25 (0-25, 25-50, etc.):

If we're trying to pin down a maximum length for meta descriptions, this is where things get a bit weird (and frustrating). There seems to be a chunk of snippets cut off at the 100–125 character range and another chunk at the 275–300 range. Digging in deeper, we discovered that two things were going on here...

Oddity #1: Video snippets

Spot-checking some of the descriptions cut off in the 100–125 character range, we realized that a number of them were video snippets, which seem to have shorter limits:

These snippets seem to generally max out at two lines, and they're further restricted by the space the video thumbnail occupies. In our data set, a full 88% of video snippets were cut off (ended in " ..."). Separating out video, only 2.1% of organic snippets were cut off.

Oddity #2: Pre-cut metas

A second oddity was that some meta description tags seem to be pre-truncated (possibly by CMS systems). So, the "..." in those cases is an unreliable indicator. Take this snippet, for example:

This clocks in at 150 characters, right around the old limit. Now, let's look at the meta description:

This Goodreads snippet is being pre-truncated. This was true for almost all of the Goodreads meta descriptions in our data set, and may be a CMS setting or a conscious choice by their SEO team. Either way, it's not very useful for our current analysis.

So, we attempted to gather all of the original meta description tags to check for pre-truncated data. We were unable to gather data from all sites, and some sites don't use meta description tags at all, but we were still able to remove some of the noise.

Let's try this again (...)

So, let's pull out all of the cut snippets with video thumbnails and the ones where we know the meta description ended in "...". This cuts us down to 1,722 snippets (pretty deep dive from the original 89,909). Here's what the frequency distribution of lengths looks like now:

Now, we're getting somewhere. There are still a few data points down in the 150–175 range, but once I hand-checked them, they appear to be sites that had meta description tags ending in "..." that we failed to crawl properly.

The bulk of these snippets are being cut off in the 275–325 character range. In this smaller, but more normal-looking distribution, we've got a mean of 299 characters and a median of 288 characters. While we've had to discard a fair amount of data along the way, I'm much more comfortable with these numbers.

What about the snippets over 350 characters? It's hard to see from this graph, but they maxed out at 375 characters. In some cases, Google is appending their own information:

While the entire snippet is 375 characters, the "Jump..." link is added by Google. The rest of the snippet is 315 characters long. Google also adds result counts and dates to the front of some snippets. These characters don't seem to count against the limit, but it's a bit hard to tell, because we don't have a lot of data points.

Do metas even matter?

Before we reveal the new limit, here's an uncomfortable question — when it seems like Google is rewriting so many snippets, is it worth having meta description tags at all? Across the data set, we were able to successfully capture 70,059 original Meta Description tags (in many of the remaining cases, the sites simply didn't define one). Of those, just over one-third (35.9%) were used as-is for display snippets.

Keep in mind, though, that Google truncates some of these and appends extra data to some. In 15.4% of cases, Google used the original meta description tag, but added some text. This number may seem high, but most of these cases were simply Google adding a period to the end of the snippet. Apparently, Google is a stickler for complete sentences. So, now we're up to 51.3% of cases where either the display snippet perfectly matched the meta description tag or fully contained it.

What about cases where the display snippet used a truncated version of the meta description tag? Just 3.2% of snippets matched this scenario. Putting it all together, we're up to almost 55% of cases where Google is using all or part of the original meta description tag. This number is probably low, as we're not counting cases where Google used part of the original meta description but modified it in some way.

It's interesting to note that, in some cases, Google rewrote a meta description because the original description was too short or not descriptive enough. Take this result, for example:

Now, let's check out the original meta description tag...

In this case, the original meta description was actually too short for Google's tastes. Also note that, even though Google created the snippet themselves, they still cut it off with a "...". This strongly suggests that cutting off a snippet isn't a sign that Google thinks your description is low quality.

On the flip side, I should note that some very large sites don't use meta description tags at all, and they seem to fare perfectly well in search results. One notable example is Wikipedia, a site for which defining meta descriptions would be nearly impossible without automation, and any automation would probably fall short of Google's own capabilities.

I think you should be very careful using Wikipedia as an example of what to do (or what not do), when it comes to technical SEO, but it seems clear from the data that, in the absence of a meta description tag, Google is perfectly capable of ranking sites and writing their own snippets.

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to control. For critical pages, writing a good meta description is like writing ad copy — there's real value in crafting that copy to drive interest and clicks. There's no guarantee Google will use that copy, and that fact can be frustrating, but the odds are still in your favor.

Is the 155 limit dead?

Unless something changes, and given the partial (although lacking in details) confirmation from Google, I think it's safe to experiment with longer meta description tags. Looking at the clean distribution, and just to give it a nice even number, I think 300 characters is a pretty safe bet. Some snippets that length may get cut off, but the potential gain of getting in more information offsets that relatively small risk.

That's not to say you should pad out your meta descriptions just to cash in on more characters. Snippets should be useful and encourage clicks. In part, that means not giving so much away that there's nothing left to drive the click. If you're artificially limiting your meta descriptions, though, or if you think more text would be beneficial to search visitors and create interest, then I would definitely experiment with expanding.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2BfVTLN via SW Unlimited

[pacifichealth]

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)

Posted by Dr-Pete

Summary: The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 10K keywords (90K results), we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and going into 2018 we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters.

Back in spring of 2015, we reported that Google search snippets seemed to be breaking the 155-character limit, but our data suggested that these cases were fairly rare. At the end of November, RankRanger's tools reported a sizable jump in the average search snippet length (to around 230 characters). Anecdotally, we're seeing many long snippets in the wild, such as this 386-character one on a search for "non compete agreement":

Search Engine Land was able to get confirmation from Google of a change to how they handle search snippets, although we don't have specifics or official numbers. Is it time to revisit our guidelines on meta descriptions limits heading into 2018? We dug into our daily 10,000-keyword tracking data to find out...

The trouble with averages

In our 10K tracking data for December 15th, which consisted of 89,909 page-one organic results, the average display snippet (stripped of HTML, of course) was 215 characters long, slightly below RankRanger's numbers, but well above historical trends.

This number is certainly interesting, but it leaves out quite a bit. First of all, the median character length is 186, suggesting that some big numbers are potentially skewing the average. On the other hand, some snippets are very short because their meta Ddescriptions are very short. Take this snippet for Vail.com:

Sure enough, this is Vail.com's meta description tag (I'm not gonna ask):

Do we really care that a lot of people just write ridiculously short meta descriptions? No, what we really want to know is at what point Google is cutting off long descriptions. So, let's just look at the snippets that were cut (determined by the " ..." at the end). In our data set, this leaves just about 3.6% (3,213), so we can already see that the vast majority of descriptions aren't getting cut off.

Coincidentally, the average is still 215, but let's look at the frequency distribution of the lengths of just the cut snippets. The graph below shows cut-snippet lengths in bins of 25 (0-25, 25-50, etc.):

If we're trying to pin down a maximum length for meta descriptions, this is where things get a bit weird (and frustrating). There seems to be a chunk of snippets cut off at the 100–125 character range and another chunk at the 275–300 range. Digging in deeper, we discovered that two things were going on here...

Oddity #1: Video snippets

Spot-checking some of the descriptions cut off in the 100–125 character range, we realized that a number of them were video snippets, which seem to have shorter limits:

These snippets seem to generally max out at two lines, and they're further restricted by the space the video thumbnail occupies. In our data set, a full 88% of video snippets were cut off (ended in " ..."). Separating out video, only 2.1% of organic snippets were cut off.

Oddity #2: Pre-cut metas

A second oddity was that some meta description tags seem to be pre-truncated (possibly by CMS systems). So, the "..." in those cases is an unreliable indicator. Take this snippet, for example:

This clocks in at 150 characters, right around the old limit. Now, let's look at the meta description:

This Goodreads snippet is being pre-truncated. This was true for almost all of the Goodreads meta descriptions in our data set, and may be a CMS setting or a conscious choice by their SEO team. Either way, it's not very useful for our current analysis.

So, we attempted to gather all of the original meta description tags to check for pre-truncated data. We were unable to gather data from all sites, and some sites don't use meta description tags at all, but we were still able to remove some of the noise.

Let's try this again (...)

So, let's pull out all of the cut snippets with video thumbnails and the ones where we know the meta description ended in "...". This cuts us down to 1,722 snippets (pretty deep dive from the original 89,909). Here's what the frequency distribution of lengths looks like now:

Now, we're getting somewhere. There are still a few data points down in the 150–175 range, but once I hand-checked them, they appear to be sites that had meta description tags ending in "..." that we failed to crawl properly.

The bulk of these snippets are being cut off in the 275–325 character range. In this smaller, but more normal-looking distribution, we've got a mean of 299 characters and a median of 288 characters. While we've had to discard a fair amount of data along the way, I'm much more comfortable with these numbers.

What about the snippets over 350 characters? It's hard to see from this graph, but they maxed out at 375 characters. In some cases, Google is appending their own information:

While the entire snippet is 375 characters, the "Jump..." link is added by Google. The rest of the snippet is 315 characters long. Google also adds result counts and dates to the front of some snippets. These characters don't seem to count against the limit, but it's a bit hard to tell, because we don't have a lot of data points.

Do metas even matter?

Before we reveal the new limit, here's an uncomfortable question — when it seems like Google is rewriting so many snippets, is it worth having meta description tags at all? Across the data set, we were able to successfully capture 70,059 original Meta Description tags (in many of the remaining cases, the sites simply didn't define one). Of those, just over one-third (35.9%) were used as-is for display snippets.

Keep in mind, though, that Google truncates some of these and appends extra data to some. In 15.4% of cases, Google used the original meta description tag, but added some text. This number may seem high, but most of these cases were simply Google adding a period to the end of the snippet. Apparently, Google is a stickler for complete sentences. So, now we're up to 51.3% of cases where either the display snippet perfectly matched the meta description tag or fully contained it.

What about cases where the display snippet used a truncated version of the meta description tag? Just 3.2% of snippets matched this scenario. Putting it all together, we're up to almost 55% of cases where Google is using all or part of the original meta description tag. This number is probably low, as we're not counting cases where Google used part of the original meta description but modified it in some way.

It's interesting to note that, in some cases, Google rewrote a meta description because the original description was too short or not descriptive enough. Take this result, for example:

Now, let's check out the original meta description tag...

In this case, the original meta description was actually too short for Google's tastes. Also note that, even though Google created the snippet themselves, they still cut it off with a "...". This strongly suggests that cutting off a snippet isn't a sign that Google thinks your description is low quality.

On the flip side, I should note that some very large sites don't use meta description tags at all, and they seem to fare perfectly well in search results. One notable example is Wikipedia, a site for which defining meta descriptions would be nearly impossible without automation, and any automation would probably fall short of Google's own capabilities.

I think you should be very careful using Wikipedia as an example of what to do (or what not do), when it comes to technical SEO, but it seems clear from the data that, in the absence of a meta description tag, Google is perfectly capable of ranking sites and writing their own snippets.

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to control. For critical pages, writing a good meta description is like writing ad copy — there's real value in crafting that copy to drive interest and clicks. There's no guarantee Google will use that copy, and that fact can be frustrating, but the odds are still in your favor.

Is the 155 limit dead?

Unless something changes, and given the partial (although lacking in details) confirmation from Google, I think it's safe to experiment with longer meta description tags. Looking at the clean distribution, and just to give it a nice even number, I think 300 characters is a pretty safe bet. Some snippets that length may get cut off, but the potential gain of getting in more information offsets that relatively small risk.

That's not to say you should pad out your meta descriptions just to cash in on more characters. Snippets should be useful and encourage clicks. In part, that means not giving so much away that there's nothing left to drive the click. If you're artificially limiting your meta descriptions, though, or if you think more text would be beneficial to search visitors and create interest, then I would definitely experiment with expanding.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[camerasieunhovn]

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)

Posted by Dr-Pete

Summary: The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 10K keywords (90K results), we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and going into 2018 we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters.

Back in spring of 2015, we reported that Google search snippets seemed to be breaking the 155-character limit, but our data suggested that these cases were fairly rare. At the end of November, RankRanger's tools reported a sizable jump in the average search snippet length (to around 230 characters). Anecdotally, we're seeing many long snippets in the wild, such as this 386-character one on a search for "non compete agreement":

Search Engine Land was able to get confirmation from Google of a change to how they handle search snippets, although we don't have specifics or official numbers. Is it time to revisit our guidelines on meta descriptions limits heading into 2018? We dug into our daily 10,000-keyword tracking data to find out...

The trouble with averages

In our 10K tracking data for December 15th, which consisted of 89,909 page-one organic results, the average display snippet (stripped of HTML, of course) was 215 characters long, slightly below RankRanger's numbers, but well above historical trends.

This number is certainly interesting, but it leaves out quite a bit. First of all, the median character length is 186, suggesting that some big numbers are potentially skewing the average. On the other hand, some snippets are very short because their meta Ddescriptions are very short. Take this snippet for Vail.com:

Sure enough, this is Vail.com's meta description tag (I'm not gonna ask):

Do we really care that a lot of people just write ridiculously short meta descriptions? No, what we really want to know is at what point Google is cutting off long descriptions. So, let's just look at the snippets that were cut (determined by the " ..." at the end). In our data set, this leaves just about 3.6% (3,213), so we can already see that the vast majority of descriptions aren't getting cut off.

Coincidentally, the average is still 215, but let's look at the frequency distribution of the lengths of just the cut snippets. The graph below shows cut-snippet lengths in bins of 25 (0-25, 25-50, etc.):

If we're trying to pin down a maximum length for meta descriptions, this is where things get a bit weird (and frustrating). There seems to be a chunk of snippets cut off at the 100–125 character range and another chunk at the 275–300 range. Digging in deeper, we discovered that two things were going on here...

Oddity #1: Video snippets

Spot-checking some of the descriptions cut off in the 100–125 character range, we realized that a number of them were video snippets, which seem to have shorter limits:

These snippets seem to generally max out at two lines, and they're further restricted by the space the video thumbnail occupies. In our data set, a full 88% of video snippets were cut off (ended in " ..."). Separating out video, only 2.1% of organic snippets were cut off.

Oddity #2: Pre-cut metas

A second oddity was that some meta description tags seem to be pre-truncated (possibly by CMS systems). So, the "..." in those cases is an unreliable indicator. Take this snippet, for example:

This clocks in at 150 characters, right around the old limit. Now, let's look at the meta description:

This Goodreads snippet is being pre-truncated. This was true for almost all of the Goodreads meta descriptions in our data set, and may be a CMS setting or a conscious choice by their SEO team. Either way, it's not very useful for our current analysis.

So, we attempted to gather all of the original meta description tags to check for pre-truncated data. We were unable to gather data from all sites, and some sites don't use meta description tags at all, but we were still able to remove some of the noise.

Let's try this again (...)

So, let's pull out all of the cut snippets with video thumbnails and the ones where we know the meta description ended in "...". This cuts us down to 1,722 snippets (pretty deep dive from the original 89,909). Here's what the frequency distribution of lengths looks like now:

Now, we're getting somewhere. There are still a few data points down in the 150–175 range, but once I hand-checked them, they appear to be sites that had meta description tags ending in "..." that we failed to crawl properly.

The bulk of these snippets are being cut off in the 275–325 character range. In this smaller, but more normal-looking distribution, we've got a mean of 299 characters and a median of 288 characters. While we've had to discard a fair amount of data along the way, I'm much more comfortable with these numbers.

What about the snippets over 350 characters? It's hard to see from this graph, but they maxed out at 375 characters. In some cases, Google is appending their own information:

While the entire snippet is 375 characters, the "Jump..." link is added by Google. The rest of the snippet is 315 characters long. Google also adds result counts and dates to the front of some snippets. These characters don't seem to count against the limit, but it's a bit hard to tell, because we don't have a lot of data points.

Do metas even matter?

Before we reveal the new limit, here's an uncomfortable question — when it seems like Google is rewriting so many snippets, is it worth having meta description tags at all? Across the data set, we were able to successfully capture 70,059 original Meta Description tags (in many of the remaining cases, the sites simply didn't define one). Of those, just over one-third (35.9%) were used as-is for display snippets.

Keep in mind, though, that Google truncates some of these and appends extra data to some. In 15.4% of cases, Google used the original meta description tag, but added some text. This number may seem high, but most of these cases were simply Google adding a period to the end of the snippet. Apparently, Google is a stickler for complete sentences. So, now we're up to 51.3% of cases where either the display snippet perfectly matched the meta description tag or fully contained it.

What about cases where the display snippet used a truncated version of the meta description tag? Just 3.2% of snippets matched this scenario. Putting it all together, we're up to almost 55% of cases where Google is using all or part of the original meta description tag. This number is probably low, as we're not counting cases where Google used part of the original meta description but modified it in some way.

It's interesting to note that, in some cases, Google rewrote a meta description because the original description was too short or not descriptive enough. Take this result, for example:

Now, let's check out the original meta description tag...

In this case, the original meta description was actually too short for Google's tastes. Also note that, even though Google created the snippet themselves, they still cut it off with a "...". This strongly suggests that cutting off a snippet isn't a sign that Google thinks your description is low quality.

On the flip side, I should note that some very large sites don't use meta description tags at all, and they seem to fare perfectly well in search results. One notable example is Wikipedia, a site for which defining meta descriptions would be nearly impossible without automation, and any automation would probably fall short of Google's own capabilities.

I think you should be very careful using Wikipedia as an example of what to do (or what not do), when it comes to technical SEO, but it seems clear from the data that, in the absence of a meta description tag, Google is perfectly capable of ranking sites and writing their own snippets.

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to control. For critical pages, writing a good meta description is like writing ad copy — there's real value in crafting that copy to drive interest and clicks. There's no guarantee Google will use that copy, and that fact can be frustrating, but the odds are still in your favor.

Is the 155 limit dead?

Unless something changes, and given the partial (although lacking in details) confirmation from Google, I think it's safe to experiment with longer meta description tags. Looking at the clean distribution, and just to give it a nice even number, I think 300 characters is a pretty safe bet. Some snippets that length may get cut off, but the potential gain of getting in more information offsets that relatively small risk.

That's not to say you should pad out your meta descriptions just to cash in on more characters. Snippets should be useful and encourage clicks. In part, that means not giving so much away that there's nothing left to drive the click. If you're artificially limiting your meta descriptions, though, or if you think more text would be beneficial to search visitors and create interest, then I would definitely experiment with expanding.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[fhukumunpatt]

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)

Posted by Dr-Pete

Summary: The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 10K keywords (90K results), we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and going into 2018 we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters.

Back in spring of 2015, we reported that Google search snippets seemed to be breaking the 155-character limit, but our data suggested that these cases were fairly rare. At the end of November, RankRanger's tools reported a sizable jump in the average search snippet length (to around 230 characters). Anecdotally, we're seeing many long snippets in the wild, such as this 386-character one on a search for "non compete agreement":

Search Engine Land was able to get confirmation from Google of a change to how they handle search snippets, although we don't have specifics or official numbers. Is it time to revisit our guidelines on meta descriptions limits heading into 2018? We dug into our daily 10,000-keyword tracking data to find out...

The trouble with averages

In our 10K tracking data for December 15th, which consisted of 89,909 page-one organic results, the average display snippet (stripped of HTML, of course) was 215 characters long, slightly below RankRanger's numbers, but well above historical trends.

This number is certainly interesting, but it leaves out quite a bit. First of all, the median character length is 186, suggesting that some big numbers are potentially skewing the average. On the other hand, some snippets are very short because their meta Ddescriptions are very short. Take this snippet for Vail.com:

Sure enough, this is Vail.com's meta description tag (I'm not gonna ask):

Do we really care that a lot of people just write ridiculously short meta descriptions? No, what we really want to know is at what point Google is cutting off long descriptions. So, let's just look at the snippets that were cut (determined by the " ..." at the end). In our data set, this leaves just about 3.6% (3,213), so we can already see that the vast majority of descriptions aren't getting cut off.

Coincidentally, the average is still 215, but let's look at the frequency distribution of the lengths of just the cut snippets. The graph below shows cut-snippet lengths in bins of 25 (0-25, 25-50, etc.):

If we're trying to pin down a maximum length for meta descriptions, this is where things get a bit weird (and frustrating). There seems to be a chunk of snippets cut off at the 100–125 character range and another chunk at the 275–300 range. Digging in deeper, we discovered that two things were going on here...

Oddity #1: Video snippets

Spot-checking some of the descriptions cut off in the 100–125 character range, we realized that a number of them were video snippets, which seem to have shorter limits:

These snippets seem to generally max out at two lines, and they're further restricted by the space the video thumbnail occupies. In our data set, a full 88% of video snippets were cut off (ended in " ..."). Separating out video, only 2.1% of organic snippets were cut off.

Oddity #2: Pre-cut metas

A second oddity was that some meta description tags seem to be pre-truncated (possibly by CMS systems). So, the "..." in those cases is an unreliable indicator. Take this snippet, for example:

This clocks in at 150 characters, right around the old limit. Now, let's look at the meta description:

This Goodreads snippet is being pre-truncated. This was true for almost all of the Goodreads meta descriptions in our data set, and may be a CMS setting or a conscious choice by their SEO team. Either way, it's not very useful for our current analysis.

So, we attempted to gather all of the original meta description tags to check for pre-truncated data. We were unable to gather data from all sites, and some sites don't use meta description tags at all, but we were still able to remove some of the noise.

Let's try this again (...)

So, let's pull out all of the cut snippets with video thumbnails and the ones where we know the meta description ended in "...". This cuts us down to 1,722 snippets (pretty deep dive from the original 89,909). Here's what the frequency distribution of lengths looks like now:

Now, we're getting somewhere. There are still a few data points down in the 150–175 range, but once I hand-checked them, they appear to be sites that had meta description tags ending in "..." that we failed to crawl properly.

The bulk of these snippets are being cut off in the 275–325 character range. In this smaller, but more normal-looking distribution, we've got a mean of 299 characters and a median of 288 characters. While we've had to discard a fair amount of data along the way, I'm much more comfortable with these numbers.

What about the snippets over 350 characters? It's hard to see from this graph, but they maxed out at 375 characters. In some cases, Google is appending their own information:

While the entire snippet is 375 characters, the "Jump..." link is added by Google. The rest of the snippet is 315 characters long. Google also adds result counts and dates to the front of some snippets. These characters don't seem to count against the limit, but it's a bit hard to tell, because we don't have a lot of data points.

Do metas even matter?

Before we reveal the new limit, here's an uncomfortable question — when it seems like Google is rewriting so many snippets, is it worth having meta description tags at all? Across the data set, we were able to successfully capture 70,059 original Meta Description tags (in many of the remaining cases, the sites simply didn't define one). Of those, just over one-third (35.9%) were used as-is for display snippets.

Keep in mind, though, that Google truncates some of these and appends extra data to some. In 15.4% of cases, Google used the original meta description tag, but added some text. This number may seem high, but most of these cases were simply Google adding a period to the end of the snippet. Apparently, Google is a stickler for complete sentences. So, now we're up to 51.3% of cases where either the display snippet perfectly matched the meta description tag or fully contained it.

What about cases where the display snippet used a truncated version of the meta description tag? Just 3.2% of snippets matched this scenario. Putting it all together, we're up to almost 55% of cases where Google is using all or part of the original meta description tag. This number is probably low, as we're not counting cases where Google used part of the original meta description but modified it in some way.

It's interesting to note that, in some cases, Google rewrote a meta description because the original description was too short or not descriptive enough. Take this result, for example:

Now, let's check out the original meta description tag...

In this case, the original meta description was actually too short for Google's tastes. Also note that, even though Google created the snippet themselves, they still cut it off with a "...". This strongly suggests that cutting off a snippet isn't a sign that Google thinks your description is low quality.

On the flip side, I should note that some very large sites don't use meta description tags at all, and they seem to fare perfectly well in search results. One notable example is Wikipedia, a site for which defining meta descriptions would be nearly impossible without automation, and any automation would probably fall short of Google's own capabilities.

I think you should be very careful using Wikipedia as an example of what to do (or what not do), when it comes to technical SEO, but it seems clear from the data that, in the absence of a meta description tag, Google is perfectly capable of ranking sites and writing their own snippets.

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to control. For critical pages, writing a good meta description is like writing ad copy — there's real value in crafting that copy to drive interest and clicks. There's no guarantee Google will use that copy, and that fact can be frustrating, but the odds are still in your favor.

Is the 155 limit dead?

Unless something changes, and given the partial (although lacking in details) confirmation from Google, I think it's safe to experiment with longer meta description tags. Looking at the clean distribution, and just to give it a nice even number, I think 300 characters is a pretty safe bet. Some snippets that length may get cut off, but the potential gain of getting in more information offsets that relatively small risk.

That's not to say you should pad out your meta descriptions just to cash in on more characters. Snippets should be useful and encourage clicks. In part, that means not giving so much away that there's nothing left to drive the click. If you're artificially limiting your meta descriptions, though, or if you think more text would be beneficial to search visitors and create interest, then I would definitely experiment with expanding.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[calvinlarry2016]

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)

Posted by Dr-Pete

Summary: The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 10K keywords (90K results), we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and going into 2018 we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters.

Back in spring of 2015, we reported that Google search snippets seemed to be breaking the 155-character limit, but our data suggested that these cases were fairly rare. At the end of November, RankRanger's tools reported a sizable jump in the average search snippet length (to around 230 characters). Anecdotally, we're seeing many long snippets in the wild, such as this 386-character one on a search for "non compete agreement":

Search Engine Land was able to get confirmation from Google of a change to how they handle search snippets, although we don't have specifics or official numbers. Is it time to revisit our guidelines on meta descriptions limits heading into 2018? We dug into our daily 10,000-keyword tracking data to find out...

The trouble with averages

In our 10K tracking data for December 15th, which consisted of 89,909 page-one organic results, the average display snippet (stripped of HTML, of course) was 215 characters long, slightly below RankRanger's numbers, but well above historical trends.

This number is certainly interesting, but it leaves out quite a bit. First of all, the median character length is 186, suggesting that some big numbers are potentially skewing the average. On the other hand, some snippets are very short because their meta Ddescriptions are very short. Take this snippet for Vail.com:

Sure enough, this is Vail.com's meta description tag (I'm not gonna ask):

Do we really care that a lot of people just write ridiculously short meta descriptions? No, what we really want to know is at what point Google is cutting off long descriptions. So, let's just look at the snippets that were cut (determined by the " ..." at the end). In our data set, this leaves just about 3.6% (3,213), so we can already see that the vast majority of descriptions aren't getting cut off.

Coincidentally, the average is still 215, but let's look at the frequency distribution of the lengths of just the cut snippets. The graph below shows cut-snippet lengths in bins of 25 (0-25, 25-50, etc.):

If we're trying to pin down a maximum length for meta descriptions, this is where things get a bit weird (and frustrating). There seems to be a chunk of snippets cut off at the 100–125 character range and another chunk at the 275–300 range. Digging in deeper, we discovered that two things were going on here...

Oddity #1: Video snippets

Spot-checking some of the descriptions cut off in the 100–125 character range, we realized that a number of them were video snippets, which seem to have shorter limits:

These snippets seem to generally max out at two lines, and they're further restricted by the space the video thumbnail occupies. In our data set, a full 88% of video snippets were cut off (ended in " ..."). Separating out video, only 2.1% of organic snippets were cut off.

Oddity #2: Pre-cut metas

A second oddity was that some meta description tags seem to be pre-truncated (possibly by CMS systems). So, the "..." in those cases is an unreliable indicator. Take this snippet, for example:

This clocks in at 150 characters, right around the old limit. Now, let's look at the meta description:

This Goodreads snippet is being pre-truncated. This was true for almost all of the Goodreads meta descriptions in our data set, and may be a CMS setting or a conscious choice by their SEO team. Either way, it's not very useful for our current analysis.

So, we attempted to gather all of the original meta description tags to check for pre-truncated data. We were unable to gather data from all sites, and some sites don't use meta description tags at all, but we were still able to remove some of the noise.

Let's try this again (...)

So, let's pull out all of the cut snippets with video thumbnails and the ones where we know the meta description ended in "...". This cuts us down to 1,722 snippets (pretty deep dive from the original 89,909). Here's what the frequency distribution of lengths looks like now:

Now, we're getting somewhere. There are still a few data points down in the 150–175 range, but once I hand-checked them, they appear to be sites that had meta description tags ending in "..." that we failed to crawl properly.

The bulk of these snippets are being cut off in the 275–325 character range. In this smaller, but more normal-looking distribution, we've got a mean of 299 characters and a median of 288 characters. While we've had to discard a fair amount of data along the way, I'm much more comfortable with these numbers.

What about the snippets over 350 characters? It's hard to see from this graph, but they maxed out at 375 characters. In some cases, Google is appending their own information:

While the entire snippet is 375 characters, the "Jump..." link is added by Google. The rest of the snippet is 315 characters long. Google also adds result counts and dates to the front of some snippets. These characters don't seem to count against the limit, but it's a bit hard to tell, because we don't have a lot of data points.

Do metas even matter?

Before we reveal the new limit, here's an uncomfortable question — when it seems like Google is rewriting so many snippets, is it worth having meta description tags at all? Across the data set, we were able to successfully capture 70,059 original Meta Description tags (in many of the remaining cases, the sites simply didn't define one). Of those, just over one-third (35.9%) were used as-is for display snippets.

Keep in mind, though, that Google truncates some of these and appends extra data to some. In 15.4% of cases, Google used the original meta description tag, but added some text. This number may seem high, but most of these cases were simply Google adding a period to the end of the snippet. Apparently, Google is a stickler for complete sentences. So, now we're up to 51.3% of cases where either the display snippet perfectly matched the meta description tag or fully contained it.

What about cases where the display snippet used a truncated version of the meta description tag? Just 3.2% of snippets matched this scenario. Putting it all together, we're up to almost 55% of cases where Google is using all or part of the original meta description tag. This number is probably low, as we're not counting cases where Google used part of the original meta description but modified it in some way.

It's interesting to note that, in some cases, Google rewrote a meta description because the original description was too short or not descriptive enough. Take this result, for example:

Now, let's check out the original meta description tag...

In this case, the original meta description was actually too short for Google's tastes. Also note that, even though Google created the snippet themselves, they still cut it off with a "...". This strongly suggests that cutting off a snippet isn't a sign that Google thinks your description is low quality.

On the flip side, I should note that some very large sites don't use meta description tags at all, and they seem to fare perfectly well in search results. One notable example is Wikipedia, a site for which defining meta descriptions would be nearly impossible without automation, and any automation would probably fall short of Google's own capabilities.

I think you should be very careful using Wikipedia as an example of what to do (or what not do), when it comes to technical SEO, but it seems clear from the data that, in the absence of a meta description tag, Google is perfectly capable of ranking sites and writing their own snippets.

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to control. For critical pages, writing a good meta description is like writing ad copy — there's real value in crafting that copy to drive interest and clicks. There's no guarantee Google will use that copy, and that fact can be frustrating, but the odds are still in your favor.

Is the 155 limit dead?

Unless something changes, and given the partial (although lacking in details) confirmation from Google, I think it's safe to experiment with longer meta description tags. Looking at the clean distribution, and just to give it a nice even number, I think 300 characters is a pretty safe bet. Some snippets that length may get cut off, but the potential gain of getting in more information offsets that relatively small risk.

That's not to say you should pad out your meta descriptions just to cash in on more characters. Snippets should be useful and encourage clicks. In part, that means not giving so much away that there's nothing left to drive the click. If you're artificially limiting your meta descriptions, though, or if you think more text would be beneficial to search visitors and create interest, then I would definitely experiment with expanding.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[lakelandseo]

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)

Posted by Dr-Pete

Summary: The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 10K keywords (90K results), we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and going into 2018 we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters.

Back in spring of 2015, we reported that Google search snippets seemed to be breaking the 155-character limit, but our data suggested that these cases were fairly rare. At the end of November, RankRanger's tools reported a sizable jump in the average search snippet length (to around 230 characters). Anecdotally, we're seeing many long snippets in the wild, such as this 386-character one on a search for "non compete agreement":

Search Engine Land was able to get confirmation from Google of a change to how they handle search snippets, although we don't have specifics or official numbers. Is it time to revisit our guidelines on meta descriptions limits heading into 2018? We dug into our daily 10,000-keyword tracking data to find out...

The trouble with averages

In our 10K tracking data for December 15th, which consisted of 89,909 page-one organic results, the average display snippet (stripped of HTML, of course) was 215 characters long, slightly below RankRanger's numbers, but well above historical trends.

This number is certainly interesting, but it leaves out quite a bit. First of all, the median character length is 186, suggesting that some big numbers are potentially skewing the average. On the other hand, some snippets are very short because their meta Ddescriptions are very short. Take this snippet for Vail.com:

Sure enough, this is Vail.com's meta description tag (I'm not gonna ask):

Do we really care that a lot of people just write ridiculously short meta descriptions? No, what we really want to know is at what point Google is cutting off long descriptions. So, let's just look at the snippets that were cut (determined by the " ..." at the end). In our data set, this leaves just about 3.6% (3,213), so we can already see that the vast majority of descriptions aren't getting cut off.

Coincidentally, the average is still 215, but let's look at the frequency distribution of the lengths of just the cut snippets. The graph below shows cut-snippet lengths in bins of 25 (0-25, 25-50, etc.):

If we're trying to pin down a maximum length for meta descriptions, this is where things get a bit weird (and frustrating). There seems to be a chunk of snippets cut off at the 100–125 character range and another chunk at the 275–300 range. Digging in deeper, we discovered that two things were going on here...

Oddity #1: Video snippets

Spot-checking some of the descriptions cut off in the 100–125 character range, we realized that a number of them were video snippets, which seem to have shorter limits:

These snippets seem to generally max out at two lines, and they're further restricted by the space the video thumbnail occupies. In our data set, a full 88% of video snippets were cut off (ended in " ..."). Separating out video, only 2.1% of organic snippets were cut off.

Oddity #2: Pre-cut metas

A second oddity was that some meta description tags seem to be pre-truncated (possibly by CMS systems). So, the "..." in those cases is an unreliable indicator. Take this snippet, for example:

This clocks in at 150 characters, right around the old limit. Now, let's look at the meta description:

This Goodreads snippet is being pre-truncated. This was true for almost all of the Goodreads meta descriptions in our data set, and may be a CMS setting or a conscious choice by their SEO team. Either way, it's not very useful for our current analysis.

So, we attempted to gather all of the original meta description tags to check for pre-truncated data. We were unable to gather data from all sites, and some sites don't use meta description tags at all, but we were still able to remove some of the noise.

Let's try this again (...)

So, let's pull out all of the cut snippets with video thumbnails and the ones where we know the meta description ended in "...". This cuts us down to 1,722 snippets (pretty deep dive from the original 89,909). Here's what the frequency distribution of lengths looks like now:

Now, we're getting somewhere. There are still a few data points down in the 150–175 range, but once I hand-checked them, they appear to be sites that had meta description tags ending in "..." that we failed to crawl properly.

The bulk of these snippets are being cut off in the 275–325 character range. In this smaller, but more normal-looking distribution, we've got a mean of 299 characters and a median of 288 characters. While we've had to discard a fair amount of data along the way, I'm much more comfortable with these numbers.

What about the snippets over 350 characters? It's hard to see from this graph, but they maxed out at 375 characters. In some cases, Google is appending their own information:

While the entire snippet is 375 characters, the "Jump..." link is added by Google. The rest of the snippet is 315 characters long. Google also adds result counts and dates to the front of some snippets. These characters don't seem to count against the limit, but it's a bit hard to tell, because we don't have a lot of data points.

Do metas even matter?

Before we reveal the new limit, here's an uncomfortable question — when it seems like Google is rewriting so many snippets, is it worth having meta description tags at all? Across the data set, we were able to successfully capture 70,059 original Meta Description tags (in many of the remaining cases, the sites simply didn't define one). Of those, just over one-third (35.9%) were used as-is for display snippets.

Keep in mind, though, that Google truncates some of these and appends extra data to some. In 15.4% of cases, Google used the original meta description tag, but added some text. This number may seem high, but most of these cases were simply Google adding a period to the end of the snippet. Apparently, Google is a stickler for complete sentences. So, now we're up to 51.3% of cases where either the display snippet perfectly matched the meta description tag or fully contained it.

What about cases where the display snippet used a truncated version of the meta description tag? Just 3.2% of snippets matched this scenario. Putting it all together, we're up to almost 55% of cases where Google is using all or part of the original meta description tag. This number is probably low, as we're not counting cases where Google used part of the original meta description but modified it in some way.

It's interesting to note that, in some cases, Google rewrote a meta description because the original description was too short or not descriptive enough. Take this result, for example:

Now, let's check out the original meta description tag...

In this case, the original meta description was actually too short for Google's tastes. Also note that, even though Google created the snippet themselves, they still cut it off with a "...". This strongly suggests that cutting off a snippet isn't a sign that Google thinks your description is low quality.

On the flip side, I should note that some very large sites don't use meta description tags at all, and they seem to fare perfectly well in search results. One notable example is Wikipedia, a site for which defining meta descriptions would be nearly impossible without automation, and any automation would probably fall short of Google's own capabilities.

I think you should be very careful using Wikipedia as an example of what to do (or what not do), when it comes to technical SEO, but it seems clear from the data that, in the absence of a meta description tag, Google is perfectly capable of ranking sites and writing their own snippets.

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to control. For critical pages, writing a good meta description is like writing ad copy — there's real value in crafting that copy to drive interest and clicks. There's no guarantee Google will use that copy, and that fact can be frustrating, but the odds are still in your favor.

Is the 155 limit dead?

Unless something changes, and given the partial (although lacking in details) confirmation from Google, I think it's safe to experiment with longer meta description tags. Looking at the clean distribution, and just to give it a nice even number, I think 300 characters is a pretty safe bet. Some snippets that length may get cut off, but the potential gain of getting in more information offsets that relatively small risk.

That's not to say you should pad out your meta descriptions just to cash in on more characters. Snippets should be useful and encourage clicks. In part, that means not giving so much away that there's nothing left to drive the click. If you're artificially limiting your meta descriptions, though, or if you think more text would be beneficial to search visitors and create interest, then I would definitely experiment with expanding.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[gamebazu]

How Long Should Your Meta Description Be? (2018 Edition)

Posted by Dr-Pete

Summary: The end of November saw a spike in the average length of SERP snippets. Across 10K keywords (90K results), we found a definite increase but many oddities, such as video snippets. Our data suggests that many snippets are exceeding 300 characters, and going into 2018 we recommend a new meta description limit of 300 characters.

Back in spring of 2015, we reported that Google search snippets seemed to be breaking the 155-character limit, but our data suggested that these cases were fairly rare. At the end of November, RankRanger's tools reported a sizable jump in the average search snippet length (to around 230 characters). Anecdotally, we're seeing many long snippets in the wild, such as this 386-character one on a search for "non compete agreement":

Search Engine Land was able to get confirmation from Google of a change to how they handle search snippets, although we don't have specifics or official numbers. Is it time to revisit our guidelines on meta descriptions limits heading into 2018? We dug into our daily 10,000-keyword tracking data to find out...

The trouble with averages

In our 10K tracking data for December 15th, which consisted of 89,909 page-one organic results, the average display snippet (stripped of HTML, of course) was 215 characters long, slightly below RankRanger's numbers, but well above historical trends.

This number is certainly interesting, but it leaves out quite a bit. First of all, the median character length is 186, suggesting that some big numbers are potentially skewing the average. On the other hand, some snippets are very short because their meta Ddescriptions are very short. Take this snippet for Vail.com:

Sure enough, this is Vail.com's meta description tag (I'm not gonna ask):

Do we really care that a lot of people just write ridiculously short meta descriptions? No, what we really want to know is at what point Google is cutting off long descriptions. So, let's just look at the snippets that were cut (determined by the " ..." at the end). In our data set, this leaves just about 3.6% (3,213), so we can already see that the vast majority of descriptions aren't getting cut off.

Coincidentally, the average is still 215, but let's look at the frequency distribution of the lengths of just the cut snippets. The graph below shows cut-snippet lengths in bins of 25 (0-25, 25-50, etc.):

If we're trying to pin down a maximum length for meta descriptions, this is where things get a bit weird (and frustrating). There seems to be a chunk of snippets cut off at the 100–125 character range and another chunk at the 275–300 range. Digging in deeper, we discovered that two things were going on here...

Oddity #1: Video snippets

Spot-checking some of the descriptions cut off in the 100–125 character range, we realized that a number of them were video snippets, which seem to have shorter limits:

These snippets seem to generally max out at two lines, and they're further restricted by the space the video thumbnail occupies. In our data set, a full 88% of video snippets were cut off (ended in " ..."). Separating out video, only 2.1% of organic snippets were cut off.

Oddity #2: Pre-cut metas

A second oddity was that some meta description tags seem to be pre-truncated (possibly by CMS systems). So, the "..." in those cases is an unreliable indicator. Take this snippet, for example:

This clocks in at 150 characters, right around the old limit. Now, let's look at the meta description:

This Goodreads snippet is being pre-truncated. This was true for almost all of the Goodreads meta descriptions in our data set, and may be a CMS setting or a conscious choice by their SEO team. Either way, it's not very useful for our current analysis.

So, we attempted to gather all of the original meta description tags to check for pre-truncated data. We were unable to gather data from all sites, and some sites don't use meta description tags at all, but we were still able to remove some of the noise.

Let's try this again (...)

So, let's pull out all of the cut snippets with video thumbnails and the ones where we know the meta description ended in "...". This cuts us down to 1,722 snippets (pretty deep dive from the original 89,909). Here's what the frequency distribution of lengths looks like now:

Now, we're getting somewhere. There are still a few data points down in the 150–175 range, but once I hand-checked them, they appear to be sites that had meta description tags ending in "..." that we failed to crawl properly.

The bulk of these snippets are being cut off in the 275–325 character range. In this smaller, but more normal-looking distribution, we've got a mean of 299 characters and a median of 288 characters. While we've had to discard a fair amount of data along the way, I'm much more comfortable with these numbers.

What about the snippets over 350 characters? It's hard to see from this graph, but they maxed out at 375 characters. In some cases, Google is appending their own information:

While the entire snippet is 375 characters, the "Jump..." link is added by Google. The rest of the snippet is 315 characters long. Google also adds result counts and dates to the front of some snippets. These characters don't seem to count against the limit, but it's a bit hard to tell, because we don't have a lot of data points.

Do metas even matter?

Before we reveal the new limit, here's an uncomfortable question — when it seems like Google is rewriting so many snippets, is it worth having meta description tags at all? Across the data set, we were able to successfully capture 70,059 original Meta Description tags (in many of the remaining cases, the sites simply didn't define one). Of those, just over one-third (35.9%) were used as-is for display snippets.

Keep in mind, though, that Google truncates some of these and appends extra data to some. In 15.4% of cases, Google used the original meta description tag, but added some text. This number may seem high, but most of these cases were simply Google adding a period to the end of the snippet. Apparently, Google is a stickler for complete sentences. So, now we're up to 51.3% of cases where either the display snippet perfectly matched the meta description tag or fully contained it.

What about cases where the display snippet used a truncated version of the meta description tag? Just 3.2% of snippets matched this scenario. Putting it all together, we're up to almost 55% of cases where Google is using all or part of the original meta description tag. This number is probably low, as we're not counting cases where Google used part of the original meta description but modified it in some way.

It's interesting to note that, in some cases, Google rewrote a meta description because the original description was too short or not descriptive enough. Take this result, for example:

Now, let's check out the original meta description tag...

In this case, the original meta description was actually too short for Google's tastes. Also note that, even though Google created the snippet themselves, they still cut it off with a "...". This strongly suggests that cutting off a snippet isn't a sign that Google thinks your description is low quality.

On the flip side, I should note that some very large sites don't use meta description tags at all, and they seem to fare perfectly well in search results. One notable example is Wikipedia, a site for which defining meta descriptions would be nearly impossible without automation, and any automation would probably fall short of Google's own capabilities.

I think you should be very careful using Wikipedia as an example of what to do (or what not do), when it comes to technical SEO, but it seems clear from the data that, in the absence of a meta description tag, Google is perfectly capable of ranking sites and writing their own snippets.

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to control. For critical pages, writing a good meta description is like writing ad copy — there's real value in crafting that copy to drive interest and clicks. There's no guarantee Google will use that copy, and that fact can be frustrating, but the odds are still in your favor.

Is the 155 limit dead?

Unless something changes, and given the partial (although lacking in details) confirmation from Google, I think it's safe to experiment with longer meta description tags. Looking at the clean distribution, and just to give it a nice even number, I think 300 characters is a pretty safe bet. Some snippets that length may get cut off, but the potential gain of getting in more information offsets that relatively small risk.

That's not to say you should pad out your meta descriptions just to cash in on more characters. Snippets should be useful and encourage clicks. In part, that means not giving so much away that there's nothing left to drive the click. If you're artificially limiting your meta descriptions, though, or if you think more text would be beneficial to search visitors and create interest, then I would definitely experiment with expanding.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!