#but this should cover at least a good chunk of what is relevant to both of them together

[bluebudgie]

So... what's up with these two?

(I love recycling old pictures.png)

You may or may not have seen me draw these rats repeatedly and you may or may not care what's up with them.

Well, in case you do... buckle up, we'll be here for a while.

Just in case: very vague ableism mention. I'm cutting down on pretty much all details, but just so you know the general topic comes up at some point. Don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

Unrelated disclaimer: words are difficult.

It's probably smart to start with a general character introduction so you get an idea of who you're dealing with.

So, Petthri.

(Shared most of this stuff about him before, now it's gathered in one place at least.)

The outgoing guy, grew up in a supportive family, always been the popular kid among peers, and later a pretty popular professor with his students (less so with some other colleagues, but hey). Very passionate about animal bioacoustics. Very hands-on when it comes to research and teaching. Infodumps a lot.

He's got his heart in the right place, but he's obviously not flawless. Has his thoughts constantly drifting in twelve different directions at once, can definitely not read the room, and has absolutely said and done things that hurt others just because he didn't think (and probably never realized). Likely to nervously laugh his way through most dangerous situations, but does manage to pull himself together and get things done if things turn really bad.

He got – at some point (precise date TBA, sometime around PoF events) – kidnapped by the Inquest because they wanted some of his research but didn't manage to sort through his mess. So they just took the entire man to the CoE and decided to keep him. Niche knowledge could always be useful after all. They were even kind enough to gift him an additional facial scar during the welcome interrogation! (The other one was a field trip accident). True hospitality.

Not sure if it's incredible optimism or naivety, but he's generally been doing alright during this whole prisoner situation. He's not locked up, they let him work on things he actually cares about (albeit not for the right cause), and overall he's had enough hope to believe he'll get out of there one day. Make the best out of the present, it'll be fine somehow.

I'm sure if you were to dig deep enough he'd find out he's actually less alright than he thinks he is. Oh well.

Let's talk about the other guy. Lahpp.

Me. I created you. (I've said barely anything about this man on here so far bc while I could fill the 20k essay with him alone, writing about him intimidates me lol. Also in case you're ever asking yourself this, no I did not realize his name sounds like 'lab' until weeks after I created him. Unfortunate coincidence. So, anyway...)

Obedient Inquest scientist, questions but doesn't oppose orders, has been doing the same work for the better part of the last two decades. Day in, day out, getting up early and staying up late. Somewhere in the middle of the pyramid scheme, he's definitely got a bunch of heads above him but he's nowhere near the bottom end of the chain. Got his own little lab space. Enjoys music theory in the little free time he allocates. Assertive, lets people know when not to bother him, but very polite nonetheless. Has mastered the art of superficial small talk. The guy who holds open doors and pulls your chair back for you with an acted but convincing smile. Truly employee of the month material.

He's never known anything but this perfectly ordered working drone life so he's fairly content with his current position.

....

Yeeaah you guessed there's more below the surface.

So this man's life started with being the subject of a failed genetic dragon magic experiment, first one in a handful of infants that actually lived, but ultimately he got nothing out of it but a fair share of various health conditions and disabilities. The initial project was dropped after a few years of surveillance with no results, and instead he got handed over to one of the medical departments so they could "at least make use of him" and test some cutting-edge medical tech. No wasting ressources, am I right? (:

Fastforward some years, a miserable childhood full of abuse and ableism (and by extension just as much of it internalized) essentially left him with the obsession of wanting to fit in with everyone else, wanting to be like everyone else, never having anyone find out anything about his conditions and his past. Worked his ass off in college so it wouldn't be apparent he struggled when others didn't. Created a work environment for himself that he knew would be accommodating to him while not raising any possible questions.

He's been doing fine for some time now; while he definitely hasn't gotten rid of his insecurities he has somewhat accepted that he just... is who he is. Some days are worse and some days are better. His brain has done a very thorough job suppressing pretty much all his early childhood memories. He has also convinced himself that being a perfectly exploitable asset to the corporation that abused him for years is definitely the right way to stick it to the system. They said he'd never be useful for anything and die an early death? Ha, showed 'em! (I am saying this with a lot of sarcasm. He is genuine.)

He's definitely a product of the environment he grew up in, which is a shame because if he hadn't been indoctrinated by the Inquest since birth he would have probably turned out a pretty decent person. He doesn't have the absolute worst inner moral compass. Alas, as it is he has contributed to [some fucked up things] and has [some fucked up views]. And he's not about to change that.

So... at what point do the stories of these two actually connect?

Petthri and Lahpp first met within a larger group of mostly scientists from mixed divisions that were sent on a trip to Rata Primus.

I won't go into the full details of The Rata Primus Odyssey now because that is a whole different story arc involving a total of six of my characters, but the relevant information is that they arrived in the wrong place at the wrong time (A Bug In The System says hello!), and got trapped in the main complex together (alongside Phlish and my charr engineer Leto) when Awakened shit hit the fan.

In short, the following escape mission lasted way too long, and made for an incredibly exhausting 0/10 experience for everyone involved. Cooperation between our two relevant asura actually went surprisingly smooth for the most part, at least way better than with the rest of the small group.

(Bringing that old edit back. Two criminals actually getting shit done in the back while the others are about to snap each other's head off.)

I did once offhandedly mention that Lahpp held Petthri at gunpoint exactly one time – that was here. He was not going to risk getting onto HQ's watch list for letting a prisoner slip away while he's even remotely involved.

Ultimately exhaustion and having no access to important medication for a prolonged amount of time got the better end of Lahpp, and while the other two would have probably just left the "dead weight" behind, Petthri made sure he made it out with them. Not a great time for the little Inquest criminal, both physically and mentally given his inclination for secrecy regarding certain topics.

A few days after they returned to the CoE Petthri checked up on Lahpp to make sure he's recovering, but afterwards... radio silence from both sides for the next few years.

–

Fastforward, it's now Cantha time!

If Lahpp had a piece of gold for everytime HQ sent him away on a "business trip" that'll end up nearly killing him, and likewise Petthri had one for everytime he'd be witness to that, they'd both have... two pieces of gold, which isn't much, but it's still weird it happened twice.

Once again as part of a larger group, our criminals find themselves in New Kaineng City. And because I am a mere human being that is not above resorting to overused tropes, they do of course end up having to share the same room for the time of their stay. I never claimed to be a mastermind storywriter.

At least this time the trip starts out fairly unspectacular, with mostly guided group tours through the city and its labs. Lahpp is not feeling too great (understatement) during all of this for reasons he can't quite grasp, but he's got a really bad gut feeling. Petthri actually notices he's lingering a lot and falling behind, so he suggests they split off from the rest of the group and go back to their room early. Get some rest, the journey to Cantha was long after all.

The next days are pretty calm, the Inquest is snooping around while our two heroes actually have some time to talk and get to know each other a little more. Petthri finally gets to tell someone his whole 'and this is how I was kidnapped!' story. Petthri's questions are getting a little too personal for Lahpp's taste, but overall they get along alright. It's almost like two people that have been way too lonely for several years are actually finding a bit of comfort for a moment. (Side note: Petthri warms up to people very quickly, and he might be (without realizing it) getting a little too comfortable with the idea of having found someone "redeemable".)

Now wouldn't it be great if a nearby reactor blew up and an elder dragon escaped?

The event itself isn't really affecting them (yet) but I do think Lahpp must be questioning the Eternal Alchemy at this point. Thaumanova. Multiple near-meltdowns in the Crucible. Rata Primus. Now this. Seriously, at some point it's just ridiculous.

With each new information surfacing, the "bad gut feeling" is slowly but surely turning into mild but continuous panic. Something is off and it clearly has something to do with dragons. Now, Lahpp never really cared about the whole elder dragon business. Whatever sort of magic experiment he was used for, it's the outcome that affected his life, not the source of it. Still, the thoughts are starting to occupy his mind more than he'd like to admit. Petthri is entirely unaware of any of this.

Oh wait – what's this? A new unknown form of raw magic rapidly spreading and threatening to destroy Tyria? Obviously this is something to be investigated, so the larger group coordinates an excursion to Dragon's End. And obviously they end up getting into the battle for the jade sea.

I guess at this point you see where my art is coming from.

Petthri and Lahpp never get to fight Soo-Won herself (no canon meta participation alas), but they are busy enough fending off Void creatures on ground level anyway. It's unclear (to me) if or how much the Void actually affects Lahpp on a physical level, but regardless he is not having the best time being confronted with something that is so unknown to him and yet so closely connected to his very being.

Some resurfacing traumatic memories combined with a not-so-pretty panic attack (and the physical stress of fighting) later, it's poor Petthri's task to once again take a blacked out criminal to safety. Meanwhile he's got absolutely no idea what is going on, but he's definitely going to demand some explanations.

For some days after this Petthri's playing bedside vigil in a New Kaineng medical facility. The two have a lot of time to talk. Personal topics. Uncomfortable topics. Lahpp does tell Petthri to go back to Rata Sum, he's beyond caring at this point. Quite frankly he thinks HQ won't care either. Petthri refuses to leave just like that. Asks Lahpp to come with him, he'll be better off away from the Inquest. Obviously Lahpp is not having any of it, he's very well aware the Inquest is as corrupt as it gets, but so is Rata Sum. That's just how the world functions. The Inquest has the meds and tech he needs to survive. He's not leaving. And he certainly doesn't need anyone acting self-sacrificial out of pity. It's degrading.

He tells Petthri to sleep on it and make up his mind the next day.

–

Aaand that is pretty much where the somewhat coherently planned part of my current rat-timeline ends. A glimpse into vague concepts for the future:

Enter a third character to the roster! It's Luqqah, Inquest medic-turned-biochemist. She happened to be in Cantha for a while now, doing her own research. She gets involved treating the injured after the whole Void mess. Naturally she ends up finding Petthri and Lahpp. Lucky for the latter, because she obviously has better knowledge dealing with asura than any of the human medics. And... in fact... she has pretty detailed knowledge about what's up with Lahpp specifically. Dealt with his medical papers in the past. Oh, also... they're exes. Don't worry, parted on good terms. Haven't seen each other since shortly after the Thaumanova meltdown. What a reunion.

So... yeah. It's gonna be trio time from now on. I don't know yet for how long the three of them stay in Cantha, or if they're going to get involved with the whole Gyala Delve storyline (or whatever comes out of it). Lahpp's not doing great, he'll need a while recovering. If he ever fully recovers. Petthri has a few of his own inner demons to fight. Time will tell.

As a conclusion... Petthri's saviour complex sets him on a good path towards a corruption arc while Lahpp's as close to a redemption arc as he'll get. They're both questioning their life and views a lot. Spoiler from the Omniscient Narrator: Both of them will be back in the Crucible. But with more thoughts to think than before. And more time to spend together.

And that's what's currently up with the rats.

[nyandereneko]

Minor Tears 0f the Kingdom spoilers, my selfship involves Rauru who you go through the entire tutorial area with so I don’t think he’s as much of a spoiler at this point, but I ship with him in the context of the events at the very beginning of the game Diverging From Canon, so no real story spoilers for the story in the present of the game because I’m just borrowing the world and doing whatever I want lmao

Though I don’t intend to spoil anything story related, if you’d prefer to avoid any potential spoilers for the game in general just skip this post until you’ve found all the memories or something, that should cover most of the relevant info that would pertain to my ship stuff lol

Rather than the disaster that erupts below Hyrule Castle at the beginning of T0TK, what if Rauru’s arm and Zelda’s tear and the Master Sword were actually powerful enough to purify Ganon’s essence and maybe even restore him to his pre-Ganondorf form like everyone wanted?? I haven’t decided on as many details on the Ganon front because a good chunk of my development happens on the other side of the map lmao but alongside purifying Ganon or at least like not turning him into an evil beast necessarily, I thought it’d be neat if Rauru’s power resurrected not only him but his sister and the Champions as well because I want them to have their shot at life, I miss them especially Mipha and I want to be able to interact with them all too lol.

So in this verse/timeline Nova is a star fragment that fell into the Spring of Wisdom atop Mt. Lanayru and was granted sentience through soaking in its waters. She’s the Sage of Stars/Destiny, capable of healing ailments and maladies and assisting wayward souls in navigating their destined paths. Def friends with Naydra and she learned frost and water manipulation techniques from the dragon for the former and from her friends among the Zora for the latter.

She runs a business in Hateno Village, the Hylian settlement she migrated to after she started mingling with mortals more frequently and decided to acclimate to a new and less isolated way of life. It’s called the Three Springs Tavern/Cafe/What have you (often just referred to colloquially as “the Three Springs place in Hateno”) and per a number of the new ingredients in the game (FOOD SPOILER I’ll throw that out there because I didn’t know about any of these when I started playing and it was a happy surprise ToT) the establishment’s specialties include Starlight Tea and/or Cheesecake (assorted milk tea of your choice and cheesecake, both dishes concocted with powdered brightcap or glowing cave fish scales mixed in, a concentration that’s just fine enough to not give any real flavor but it produces a luminescent quality in whatever its mixed with) but they also sell a variety of Hateno’s other specialties and even some regional favorites! Namely Zora or Rito because she tends to prefer their dishes to the Gerudo or Goron diet.

She wears the Frostbite Armor minus the headdress, she knows it’s Zonai in design and she’s studied the ancient Zonai even if she isn’t necessarily ancient enough to have interacted with them personally, although I haven’t fully decided on that yet, and she wears the armor in honor of her friend ofc, and the spring which she still serves and visits frequently!

(Please excuse the horrible tv quality on these screenshots I took them with my phone instead of taking it straight from the switch orz orz)

She ends up meeting Rauru and co because Link/Zelda bring them to her because Nova knows about Zonai stuff and can get the handful of people set up temporarily in Hateno AND she knows the ancient Champions because they were only alive like a hundred years ago right?? And she’s DEFINITELY at least a couple thousand years old, just not necessarily “Hyrule’s Founding” ancient in this case.

But she and Rauru hit it off right away OH and where Sonia is concerned, I figure she can be revived and either they just. Part ways for whatever reason idk, or he can be poly and with me part of the time, because I love Sonia but I just don’t really want to be romantic with her necessarily I’m sorry queen ToT my heart def belongs to Mipha if it was gonna be with anyone in that case which is another reason why it’s not really on my radar to consider, but for now I’m just not even going to think about it because why should I :D

So yeah Rauru/Nova hit it off immediately and he thinks she’s so beautiful in that ceremonial garb and he’s captivated by her starlit radiance and SHE’S (very much just me projecting here) curious to know why he wears the Charged Armor of Farosh, esp when he’s the Sage of Light not Lightning but also it’s fine he just looks so good in it, and she’ll prob get him some comfy casual Hateno threads too ToT AND MINERU…and they crash in her cafe/loft apartment thing where she lives above the shop, and they get to reacclimatize to life in this new Hyrule together. I’m just obsessed with Rauru he’s wonderful and the Frostbite Armor was made for me and ofc Nova’s friends with the Satori and Koroks as well…

And I’ll be sure to add more as things develop :D

[she-who-fights-and-writes]

Read your post on dialogue, not sure if anything I missed answers this so sorry if this is answered! I was wondering if you had any advice for discussing background and a robbery plan, how that could be tackled without a massive paragraph of dialogue. Not sure if this is an actual technique but would starting with a line of dialogue and having the paragraphs after be not-dialogue be a good way to go about that? Apologies in advance for “not-dialogue”. I minored in English. Words are hard today.

How to Write Characters Planning/An Explanation of an In-Story Plan

Do you know what's even harder than making a plan?

Having to write about your characters making a plan.

Explaining plans, especially in action/adventure stories that have a lot of moving parts involved, can be a one-way ticket to info-dumping central. I have never written a "planning" scene that I didn't struggle with horrifically, because it always seems like I'm shoving into the readers' faces why they have to do it this way and not another way.

Here are some tips on how I've managed to defeat the much-dreaded In-Story Plan.

1. Give the Planning Its Own Scene

Planning scenes take time. They have a lot of moving parts, require a lot of thinking and outlining to make sure there aren't any plot holes, and take a lot of energy for a writer to power through.

Putting this kind of scene at a huge point of tension or excitement will completely dampen the momentum of the story. Planning scenes are slow and direct, requiring intricate intent and understanding from both the writer and the reader--otherwise, everything that comes after the planning scene will fall apart. Planning scenes are better at building tension and anticipation rather than being the culmination of that tension and anticipation.

Of course, you can have your characters make a small plan in the middle of a fight, but big plans like heists, escapes, battle strategies, or other major character moves that require multiple pages and aren't just an exchange of dialogue and a paragraph or two should have its own section.

It is difficult to put a planning stage in the middle of something, so if you're having trouble figuring out where your planning scene should go, consider putting it at the start or end of a chapter or before/after a line break.

2. Explain Some Things Beforehand So You Don't Have to Cover Too Much

Plant some details surrounding the plan before the actual planning scene. This way, you don't have to worry about explaining each and every aspect of how it's going to go; even if you do have to reiterate some of these details, at least it won't be all new information for the readers.

These things could include:

1. Passing stand-out details about the places they will eventually infiltrate/rob/escape or the people they're going up against

Newspaper headline saying [Name of Corporation] just spent 9 million dollars on a new laser security system.

"Ugh, I hate walking by this place; it gives me the creeps! Rumor has it the statues come alive as an extra line of security."

Explain powers/influence enemy has

2. Magical Limitations

If your WIP includes magic, you might want to pre-explain all the reasons why they can't just use magic to solve the thing they want to do before the planning scene. Magical explanations are almost just as hard as plan explanations, and you don't want to have to burden yourself with combining the two.

There are more than just these two, but these were the ones I thought were the biggest!

3. Fight Back Info-Dumping by Balancing Description and Dialogue

How to Write Dialogue

How to Balance Description and Dialogue

If your planning scene is just one big chunk of text describing what they're gonna do, the readers will grow restless.

The key to writing a good planning scene is to give the characters props/staging, have interjections from other characters that may not be necessarily relevant to the planning, and include other aspects that make the scene important besides the planning.

Describe the space they're in before the start, pointing out interesting aspects.

Have the characters use a map, moving around pieces and pointing out specific areas.

Have some characters be more in the loop than others, interjecting their own input or asking questions.

Make the characters walk around, gesture, fidget, the whole nine yards! Break up that dialogue with visual cues the readers can latch onto to better envision the scene.

Have them joke around, maybe go off on some short tangents before quickly returning to the matter at hand.

Maybe the main character finds out one of their friends is a hacker, or into acrobatics! That contributes to both the furthering of the planning process and the building of that character!

You can also spice up that dialogue with some speech tags if it's feeling a bit stagnant! Here are some speech tags that could be useful in explaining a plan:

Asking

Asked, Demanded, Grated, Inquired, Insisted, Interrogated, Pried, Prompted, Quipped, Quizzed, Queried, Requested

Answering

Answered, Replied, Responded, Retorted

Explanations and Observations

Added, Advised, Affirmed, Alleged, Announced, Assumed, Began, Cautioned, Commented, Corrected, Deadpanned, Declared, Estimated, Explained, Guessed, Informed, Interrupted, Lectured, Mentioned, Noted, Observed, Pointed Out, Presumed, Proposed, Recommended, Remarked, Repeated, Revealed, Theorized, Told, Suggested, Supposed, Warned

Agreeing

Conceded, Confessed, Admitted, Affirmed, Agreed, Decided, Declared, Vowed

4. Use a Fresh Set of Eyes

The best way to make sure your planning scene doesn't come across as one big info-dump is to have your work be read by someone who's never laid eyes on it before.

You know your story better than anyone else. You know how the plan is supposed to go, and why they make some choices over other choices. A beta reader can be very, very important when it comes to not only picking out info-dumping, but also picking out possible plot holes.

The LAST thing you want is to have written a whole novel based around this plan, only to have a reader go "Well why didn't they just do [obvious option you didn't even think about]?"

Unfortunately...this has happened to me on multiple occasions with my current novel, which is why I've had to completely re-write it twice (these re-writes have improved the story for the better, of course, but have set me back years!)

5. Watch/Read Planning Scenes by Other Authors

Sometimes, watching or reading planning scenes can help you get a taste for the different rhythms and props used to keep it from being one big info-dump.

Of course, films and TV shows do have visuals and audio to keep watchers entertained in a way that us writers don't, but pay attention to the ways that the informative dialogue is broken up--with quips, with shots of different items, characters speaking up or moving around the room--and incorporate these narrative beats into your own storytelling!

Here are some planning scenes that you may want to look into to help spark your creativity!

Some of these are more intimate plans, some more elaborate, some involving more props/movement, and some involving more explanation!

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

Inception (2010)

The Martian (2015)

Next Three Days (2010)

The Fellowship of the Ring(2001)

Game of Thrones 7x02 (2017)

Game of Thrones 8x02 (2019)- Planning beings at 3:07

Game of Thrones has a lot of good battle strategy planning scenes, and the Ocean's franchise specializes in heist planning scenes!

Feel free to reblog and suggest more!

Hope this helped, and happy writing!

[shadowsong26fic]

Coming Attractions

First Monday of the month, trying to get back into the habit of doing these...

As always, I’m hanging around for Open Question Night--my askbox is always open, but tonight I’ll be keeping an active eye on it. Anything related to any of the fandoms I’ve posted here or on AO3 is fair game, or my original stuff if you’re familiar, etc. I do take prompts, but given how slow I’ve been at putting out content lately, I don’t guarantee filling any in anything approaching a timely manner, lol.

Probably a short update this month, but I still like doing these so here goes.

Star Wars:

Trying to get back into writing Protectors and/or Preludes, both of which are Way overdue for an update. Also starting to poke at possibilities for next year’s BB, because I do enjoy participating a lot. The Obi-Wan series didn’t spark as much inspiration as I’d hoped (although I did love it a lot!) so we’ll see how that goes.

Castlevania:

I ran into a roadblock with Incinctus faster than I expected. I forgot that Chapter 4 was only half-done, and I keep forgetting to actually finish it, lol. I know more or less what I’m doing, I just need to sit down and get the actual words on paper, so to speak. And then I should be able to get back to regular updates for a while.

Battlestar Galactica:

Having now watched all the stuff I actively Need for The Other Battlestar, I’m starting to put actual text together (beyond a couple of snippets I’ve already written here and there, a couple of which I’ve posted here, including the one that I wrote 10+ years ago). I’m going back and forth on whether or not I want to ignore a particular timeline detail from Razor, and toying with how I want to structure it (there’s a fair amount I need to cover in the miniseries, but a good chunk of it is establishing the relevant OCs for this AU and I know that’s not always the best place to start; but on the other hand, if I just jump into 33 and/or Pegasus encountering its civilian fleet, that...I feel like that wouldn’t really Work.)

Also need to work out an Official Title for this story, lol, but that can come when I actually get around to posting it.

I am enjoying fleshing out the I need--also going back and forth on whether or not to include a Four who will remain incognito until the end of the fic; there are some plot points that would be easier to get around if he’s there, plus I feel like there’s a lot to explore with Fours that we don’t get as much of as we could and I’d like the excuse to work with one extensively. That being said, I’m leaning towards no, I think he would cause more problems than he solved for me, but the idea refuses to die.) As a tangent to that, the senior medical officer on Pegasus is going to be fairly prominent, and figuring out how many subordinates/etc. I need to build for her is. Like. ...I googled what the medical department on an aircraft carrier is supposed to be and. It’s A Lot. (Cottle having...basically just him and Ishay and maybe a couple of corpsmen/I feel like there’s more than just the two of them in a couple of the surgery scenes...anyway, that’s justified in that Galactica was stripped down to a skeleton crew. Given that Pegasus had just docked for extended rehaul/shore leave/etc., I’m not sure that holds true there? But, then again, we don’t know the full makeup of the 700some people who died then...I’m overthinking this, lol. Anyway, I did decide that Daphne gets at least one additional doctor from the stripped civilian fleet, which is where the Four would come in if I do involve one, but that’s a separate conversation.)

Other Fanfic Projects:

Working on pod-together, this year’s project is a Leverage/Nikita crossover which is proving a lot of fun to work on! And my reader/partner likes what I’ve put together thus far so hopefully this’ll appeal to a general/broader audience as well.

Original Fic:

Thanks to a rainbowfic challenge, I’ll hopefully/probably/fingers crossed actually do some this month? We shall see...

I think that about covers it! Like I said, a fairly short one this month. What about you guys, what are you working on?

((Also, do y’all want to see me post more WIP snippets on here? And/or on my Discord, if you’re there? Obviously not for challenges like pod-together/big bang/etc., which have Rules about reveals, but for the other stuff. I don’t mind sharing (clearly; I’ve put things out before, lol), but.))

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep3

In which Higurashi reminds us all that it can be a really good dark comedy when it wants to be :)

Thoughts under the cut.

As expected, this was the final episode of this arc, and things ended up being a whole lot more straightforward than I thought they’d be even after the last two episodes. But it was still executed well enough to outweigh the almost complete lack of surprises.

Basically everything in this arc went the way most people thought it did, and the whole ending to it ended up being pretty much exactly as it was shown the first time around, with no apparent hallucination-based misdirection. Which is a little underwhelming, but it might have just made the story a bit too convoluted if they sprung that sorta stuff on us now.

In a lot of ways I think this arc is an example of how this entire new series really is designed with new fans in mind, with how so much of it is spent on stuff that’s just kinda obvious and predictable to old fans, but I also think this arc serves a somewhat unfortunate role of being an example of a loop going exactly the way Satoko wanted it to, which works out to be kinda boring in practice. But there’s all sorts of hints that starting from the next arc her plans start to veer out of control until eventually she gets completely desperate in Nekodamashi, so things will start getting shaken up a lot more in the next arc.

Though to be honest I kinda appreciated the relative simplicity of seeing exactly what happened in Onidamashi from Rena’s point of view, especially with how much they leaned into the self-aware dramatic irony and dark comedy of the entire situation. The idea of tragedy becoming comedy after it gets repeated enough times has always been a theme in the series, and this really focuses on that, with all of the misunderstandings and miscommunication being extremely obvious, while Satoko has the time of her life watching it all unfold.

In general the direction of this episode was really good at depicting the tragedy and irony of this whole situation, but in particular the part where it kept cutting between Rika thinking that she’d averted the events of Onikakushi and Keiichi and Rena beating each other to death was extremely funny in a really morbid way.

[Also, since a lot of people seemed to get confused by it, even though those two scenes were edited together like that, Rika left before the fight started, since we know that it took several minutes for it to get going. So it’s not like she just happened to not hear any of it while it was happening]

A lot of the episode was still directed really well in a straight up horror sense, though, even if it’s intentionally undercut by the fact that everyone watching it knows exactly what’s going on, and how all of the things people are getting scared about are basically just in their heads. Stuff like the scenes of Rena burying Rina’s corpse in the forest, and then moving it to different locations as she gets more and more paranoid, were really well done, and her voice-acting in this entire arc was incredible at showing how genuinely traumatized and afraid she was.

I thought they’d go over the part of Rena’s backstory where she moved away from Hinamizawa more than they actually did, but I guess they went over it already in Gou. As a reminder, she and her father moved out of the village after the divorce happened, and her existing stress mixed with leaving the village caused Rena to develop Hinamizawa Syndrome and have a total mental breakdown which ended with her going on a violent rampage at her school, and then she moved back to the village after that. I guess it’s not super relevant to what happened in this arc, but it was the cause of Rena believing so strongly in the idea that she’d been cursed by Oyashiro-sama, and Keiichi hearing about the incident was a big part of why he got so paranoid about her in this arc.

And on that note, I guess the idea is that Keiichi didn’t really hallucinate anything that happened in the fight, and the cliffhanger scene of him at the hospital probably wasn’t very important. I kinda expected that the hospital scene didn’t really mean anything, since it just came across as a relatively innocent situation that Keiichi got paranoid about, but it’s a little odd that the entire fight scene just went the way we saw it happen, down to the amount of bloodshed. I guess at this point we just have to accept that when the show starts having extreme amounts of blood splatters and screen filter effects, it’s basically just to make things more spooky, lol.

I don’t really think it’s that unbelievable that he got stabbed in the stomach that many times and survived, though. I don’t think the stabs were very deep to begin with, and in general people underestimate how lethal those sorts of wounds can be, and how long it’d actually take to die from them. On the other hand, they probably could have made Rena’s head injury a bit more intense, but basically any kind of head wound can be extremely fatal, even if it doesn’t look that bad at the time. It’s also still possible that Rena didn’t immediately die and ended up going L5 and scratching her neck out.

Other than that, we also found out exactly how Rika and Satoko died. Which was also really straightforward as soon as we found out about Satoko being the culprit, but it’s still satisfying to finally see how it played out.

There’s not really much to say about that scene, but it’s kinda interesting how different their methods of suicide are. One thing to keep in mind is that, until the end of Tataridamashi, Rika never actually remembers how she dies, so from her perspective, each time she has to kill herself is probably the first time she has to do it. Which would at least explain why she goes overboard with it to make sure that she dies, whereas Satoko has done this countless times, and remembers all of it, so she’s had the experience to figure out how to do it as quickly as possible.

I don’t want to get too much into it since it’s a touchy subject, but I also feel like Rika’s methods here are almost like a kind of self-harm, whereas Satoko is just doing it as a way to jump to the next loop.

And as a reminder, Satoko’s whole game plan here is to put Rika through a series of loops to wear her down until she accepts staying in the village, and to do that she has to make sure that she can link herself to the ‘same’ Rika across all the loops, which she does by having Rika die first so Satoko can follow her to the next loop. Otherwise I guess Satoko would end up in a loop where Rika doesn’t remember anything after the chandelier incident, and she has to start from scratch to try and mentally break her.

Anyway, I also thought it was potentially interesting that Satoko mentioned Rika being subjected to Oyashiro-sama’s curse at the end, even though nobody was there to hear her. It makes me wonder if, even after meeting Eua and witnessing how all of Rika’s loops went and what actually caused all the tragedies, she genuinely still believes in the existence of Oyashiro-sama, and the idea of being cursed by them. We know that in Nekodamashi she has a whole scene where she yells at Rika about how she’s being punished for wanting to leave the village, but I kinda figured that was just something she was saying to make Rika feel bad.

Now that this arc’s done, I guess we’ll be moving right into the Watadamashi answer arc, which should also be three episodes long going by the blu-ray volume contents. I’m really excited to see how that arc plays out, since compared to this one there’s a lot of stuff in Watadamashi that’s still unclear to me. But I guess we’ll get into that next week.

I know I said this last week, but with how fast the pacing in this arc was, I really wouldn’t be surprised if the third arc just covers Satoko’s perspective on both Tataridamashi and Nekodamashi in five episodes, and then the fourth arc just wraps everything up in four more episodes. It’s entirely possible there’s going to be some sort of secret fifth arc that hasn’t been revealed yet which will take the season to a more standard episode count, but I could also just see it only being 15 episodes long. I don’t think there’s actually a whole lot that needs to be shown from Tataridamashi and Nekodamashi if we just follow Satoko’s point of view, especially since Satokowashi spent a lot of time showing Teppei’s whole ‘redemption arc’, which will impact a lot of how Tataridamashi ended up playing out behind the scenes. And in Nekodamashi we really only need to see a quick montage of Satoko injecting everyone in each loop, and then ending it off with their confrontation in the classroom.

At the very least I think that the only real reason we’d get another full arc after all this, especially if it’s long enough to take Sotsu to around 24 episodes, would be if things start going in some totally unexpected directions once we loop back to the end of Nekodamashi. At that point it’s anyone’s guess what might happen, but if we get a whole chunk of the season that they’re going out of their way to hide, I could easily see it being along the lines of them even more explicitly connecting Sotsu’s story to Umineko, and maybe even Ciconia. I still hope they commit to the idea they seem to be going for with Satoko and Rika effectively becoming Lambda and Bern from Umineko, but I also don’t want it to get to the point where it feels like this stops being a Higurashi anime partway through and just becomes an Umineko anime for the final arc. I'd rather it just end in a way that sets up for a separate series that acts as an Umineko remake or something.

[pilferingapples]

Brick Club, 1.4 entire (retro)

Cosette's story often has such a fairy-tale feel, and it starts with this  section (what should I be calling these chunks of text? the X.X sections as a whole, not the X.X.X ones? Volumes?) .

And yet I'm not at all sure why I get that feeling quite so strongly, in terms of narrative technique.  The initial namelessness of the cast, with Two Mothers echoing the way people in fairy tales are Mothers and Millers and Eldest Daughters?  But if Fantine is presented as if she was s stranger to us again, it's not different than what happens with JVJ, and his story never feels this way.  The  Three Sisters made by Cosette, Eponine , and Azelma maybe? That's a very fairy-tale motif indeed.   Something about the way the inn itself is described..?

Augh, I absolutely cannot put my finger on it.   Still,  something about this passage feels as ominous and certain and doomed  as if the inn was a gingerbread cottage and Fantine was vowing to keep silent for seven years while making shirts out of nettles.

Notes on Various Things under the cut:

-  love that the inn sign is really badly made. I've seen several attempts at it in various adaptations and they're always a disaster and it's excellent, I want a collection.

-  the cart is covered with "the same ugly yellow mud sometimes used to decorate cathedrals".  The cart that is A Metaphor for outdated social institutions.  I see you, Hugo. 

- I will FIGHT Hugo about peasant/working class women's clothing in this era, this outfit would be super charming!  But it's definitely more about utility and practical wear than Fantine's old outfits.   There are roughly a billion dissertations to be written about the way that things working class people do and use are , through history, treated as inherently ugly/undesirable, regardless of how much art and beauty might actually have gone into it; I feel like the classism kinda speaks for itself on that.  And then,since Hugo's already drawn a huge Romantic Aesthetic defining line between the Useful and the Beautiful  in this book, I think  I can fairly just quote Gautier's explanation of the issue -- "Nothing is really beautiful but that which cannot be made use of; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and the needs of man are vile and disgusting, like his poor, weak nature" -- and leave this for now.  I suspect it will come up again. 

- Fantine has been "marked by irony" --that is, scarred by her time with Tholomyes.  I do like the way  this new line on her face sounds almost like a dueling scar. Fantine's a fighter in her own way!

- ...Tholomyes is gonna make it to at least 1828, meaning he'll outlive everyone we love in this story except Cosette and Marius.    And he'll do it while being  "always a man of pleasure"--I feel like there's an implicit suggestion that Cosette has a lot of half-siblings in the world, all of them with a story as important as hers, if only people would take them seriously. 

- ...as a Somewhat Taller Than Average woman myself, I am rather delighted by Hugo's obvious terror of women who are Not Tiny.   ( And I realize I'm probably Reaching to think that Mme T might have been much happier and more well-adjusted if she weren't trying to cram her giant self into a tiny box of Ideal Femininity?  Maybe she'd have been much more ok if she'd  been able to go into showbiz and get famous as  a weightlifter or something. )

But I do think there's a real sort of sadness to her introductory chapters.  She had an ideal dream for her own life , and it wasn't even a particularly ambitious one--just a love story, really-- and it's fallen through as much as anyone else's hoped-for Ideal in the novel. She's still trying to hang onto it at this point, but we're already given a glimpse of the future  when she'll not only have given up on that ideal, but come to despise herself for it.  This is no way absolves her of her cruelty towards others, but I think she's a more complex villain (and she is  a villain) than she's sometimes treated as. 

- Fantine does try to lie about having been married, here! ...but she also comes right out and tells people she's making a financial Deal with exactly how much money she has, and how much she's able to give over, before it's all settled.  It's  painful how ill-prepared she is to deal with this kind of economic manipulation (and I think "prepared" is really relevant; she's had no one more naturally skilled or experienced to teach her how to handle these things, and business negotiations, which this is, are incredibly complicated) . 

Seeing how much money Mme T gets for Cosette's fine clothes makes me strongly suspect that Fantine was severely underpaid for pawning her own fancy things--unless, and I guess this is possible, her "putting all her finery" on Cosette  is meant to be literal, and Cosette's current clothes are directly made of Fantine's old fancy outfits. 

- Fantine tries to lie about having been married , and the neighbors *see* her crying as she leaves Cosette, and Cosette must have been well dressed and all for that first months or so...but still, everyone believes the Thenardiers when they start telling the town that Cosette is an abandoned, illegitimate child.  They believe it because Cosette looks the part, and Cosette looks the part because the Thenardiers force her into it.  In so many ways, Fantine is never in control of  the narrative about her child, and What People Say about them does indeed matter more than anything she does--no amount of effort, no show of love, can save her and Cosette when everyone else  has decided they're socially damned. 

...but on the less thematic and more practical side,how on earth are the Thenardiers learning about her marital status? Seriously, was this freely avaialable info?  This  issue is something that comes up several times in the novel and I really have no idea what access to people's family records was like? 

- we get our first negative association with a cat , hm 

- ...workers have "generous impulses", huh?  (also I am not at all sure if the corresponding Bourgeois Respectability is meant to be entirely a good thing, but I'm not sure it's NOT , like I would be with Some Writers? Agh) 

- The Thenardiers' animal souls are : 

French: écrevisses 

Hapgood: crab-like FMA: crabs Rose: crayfish  Donougher: lobsters

Google Translate agrees with Rose, but I wonder if this isn't one of those words that was colloquially used to mean a general category of creatures in its day --Things Like a Crayfish/lobster/crab-- and has come to mean something very specific now?

-  ..y'know, what really kills me about Cosette in this every time is how everyone , *everyone*  in this town really either believes she deserves her abuse, or thinks it's BETTER than she deserves.  This is not happening in secret, behind closed doors, in a private house; it's at the public inn and very blatant. Everyone knows she's out in the cold , first up every morning, starving and beaten, in a home where the other kids somehow have more than enough (because their parents steal it from Cosette, directly).  And not one person in this discount Omelas even thinks it's bad , much less intervenes. It's a point in the Thenardiers'  favor, socially.   This isn't just the gamins of Paris being brushed aside,this is a whole town actively citing horrible child abuse as the Moral and Good Option that elevates the people doing it.  

And in this, I suppose, Cosette shares a history with Valjean-- they're  both put through absolutely horrific abuse , which is not just societally ignored, or accepted with jaded apathy ,  but openly lauded as morally correct.   I hate Montfermeil so much-- but Montfermeil is not really different from Arras, or Digne, or any other place where people think that abuse of the "deserving" is a Good Thing. 

[hopeisour4letteredword]

proof of patience ch1

Summary: In which Flynn grows a beard, and Yuri tries really hard to be a good boyfriend, even when he’s tired. Flynn tries... a little less hard.

Read it here or check the notes for the link to AO3.

Yuri climbs in through Flynn's window just after dawn, and Flynn is nowhere to be seen. Shit. Yuri is on a healthy distraction mission. He was hoping he'd have time to ambush Flynn before he got started on his day.

"That dumbass better not be working at this hour," he says to himself, swinging his legs in from the windowsill to climb fully into the room.

"The dumbass is in the bathroom," Flynn calls, muffled through the door. Oh. Oops.

"Cool, thanks. I'll wait out here. Snoop through your stuff."

"You can come in," Flynn says. "I'm just about to shave."

"Shave away the hours of your youth?" Yuri opens the bathroom door enough to peek inside. Flynn, standing in front of the mirror, glances over to give him an indulgent smile that Yuri is going to stubbornly pretend does nothing to his heart, thank you very much. The contents of his shaving kit are spread haphazardly across the countertop. "Why are you shaving at dawn?"

"So I don't turn up at my morning meeting looking disheveled," Flynn says. He goes back to arranging his shaving setup. Yuri slips fully into the bathroom, closing the door behind himself, and hops up to sit on a clear space of counter. It leaves him in arm's reach of Flynn. He exercises this ability by reaching up to pat Flynn's jaw and scratch his fingernails through the short, stiff hair. Flynn's eyelashes flutter closed as he leans into the touch. "Mm. That's nice."

"You've missed a few days," Yuri says. Probably more like a week, at least. He doesn't like that, less because of how Flynn looks and more because... well. If Flynn isn't even finding the time to shave, what else is he skipping? "Busy, are you?"

Flynn cracks an eye open. "Did Hanks send you to yell at me again?"

"He didn't send me, but he might have tipped me off that you've been working too hard."

Flynn puts his shaving soap to the side; his arrangement is completed now, but instead of starting his shave, he turns to Yuri. He strokes his knuckles along Yuri's cheek. "Hanks knows damn well what he's doing when he makes you worry about me. Don't make excuses for him."

"Grouchy," Yuri murmurs. He lets his own hand fall from Flynn's face. "Who's worried? Not me."

Flynn makes the same soft, amused sound he always makes when Yuri tries to deflect accusations that he cares. He rubs a thumb over Yuri's cheekbone. "So you climbed through my window at dawn to check up on me for completely non-worried reasons?"

"Check up on you? Psh," Yuri says. He kicks out a leg, hooking it around the back of Flynn's thigh to try to pull him closer. "Nah. I'm just here to catch you alone so we can fool around. Totally for my own benefit."

"Uh-huh," Flynn says, unimpressed. He lets Yuri's heel drag uselessly across the back of his thigh, unmoved. "At dawn."

"I would say I just know what I'm dealing with, but I did actually think you'd be in bed for at least a little longer. So really you're even worse than I was accounting for."

"I've got a long day today," Flynn says. "I wanted to get a head start on it."

"When's your meeting?"

"...Eight. But I wanted to meet with the Captains before we—"

"At what time?"

"Seven thirty."

"You need two hours to shave?"

"Like you know anything about how long it takes to shave," Flynn huffs. He pinches Yuri's smooth cheek. "Babyface."

Yuri mock-snaps at his fingers. Flynn snatches his hand back. "Don't be jealous just because I don't need to worry about accidentally slitting my own throat."

"Those of us who are actually capable of patience don't have to worry about that," Flynn counters. Fucking finally, he leans in to give Yuri a gentle, chaste kiss on the mouth. Yuri closes his eyes as he presses back into it.

"Can be patient," he mumbles, against Flynn's lips. Flynn huffs a disbelieving laugh.

"Oh yeah?"

"Mm-hm."

"In that case," Flynn says, pulling back—when Yuri blinks his eyes back open, he's smirking. "You can wait until I'm done shaving to have your fun."

Yuri groans over-dramatically in defeat, letting himself slump back against the wall. He doesn't mind that much, really. He is tired from getting up for this. He wishes Flynn wasn't up so damn early, burning the candle at both ends, but he's definitely not about to go back to sleep now, so there's not much Yuri can do about that one. And Flynn saying he has to wait to have his fun is as good as a promise that he will be having his fun, which means Yuri can hack out whatever chunk of time before his meeting Flynn would have spent rereading every report under the sun that was even tangentially relevant. That's Yuri's time, now. He can force Flynn to relax for a few minutes.

Anyway, it's not all that bad to wait quietly in Flynn's space while he shaves. It's peaceful, and his soap and aftershave smell nice, and at least Flynn is doing something to take care of himself. Yuri won't admit it out loud, but he likes the slivers of domesticity they manage to wring out of their busy lives. He basks in Flynn's proximity, watching as he rinses and lathers his face. He might zone out a little. He doesn't think he dozes off; his eyes are open and he's awake. That's how he can appreciate the moment, after all. Aside from their breathing, the only sound is the splash of water whenever Flynn rinses the razor between strokes.

"Maybe I should just grow it out," Flynn says, thoughtfully, as he drags the razor along the curve of his jaw. Yuri's not really listening, nodding along as he watches the lather and stubble disappear and leave smooth, soft skin in their wake. "Not have to deal with shaving for a while. That might be more convenient."

Yuri makes an absentminded sound of agreement. After a second, his brain kicks back into gear, and he frowns. "Pretty sure people with beards still have to do some grooming."

"Hm. I suppose it depends on the look you're going for."

"Well, I'm pretty sure people with beards who want to look reputable have to do some grooming, oh great Commandant."

Flynn grins as he pauses to rinse his razor again. "I don't know, some people are into rugged beards, aren't they?"

Is he actually considering this?

"Are you serious?"

"Not about not grooming," Flynn says. He still has a faint smile as he resumes shaving. He's almost done with one side. "I might be serious about the beard. What's your opinion?"

"My opinion?"

"Yeah. Do you think it would be an improvement?"

What would Flynn look like with a beard? He never tried growing out his facial hair when they were teenagers, or ever, that Yuri knows of. The short fuzz he's shaving off right now is about as long as Yuri's ever seen on him. How would a full beard look? Would it be the lighter blond hair that's on the top of Flynn's head, or the dark gold of his eyelashes? How would it change the shape of his face? That probably depends on the style he would wear it in... Why would Flynn want to grow a beard? Is this another attempt to present himself as mature, as a young man in a position of high authority? Did Finath have a beard when they were kids and Yuri's just forgotten about it? At least if he had, Yuri would have some frame of reference for how it would look on Flynn. But no, he realizes abruptly, he doesn't actually want to think about Flynn's dad when he's trying to decide whether Flynn would look hot with a beard; that's no good at all.

Scrambling for a safe answer, Yuri manages, "I like your face just fine the way it is."

Flynn blinks, then beams at him and ducks close unexpectedly to rub his nose against Yuri's. Yuri's startled inhale gets him a mouthful of lather from the side Flynn hasn't shaved yet. "Aww, Yuri. That's sweet."

"Flynn—Flynn, ew—" Yuri splutters, shoving him away and leaning across the counter to spit in the sink. Turns out the mouthfeel and flavor of soap has not improved since Hanks washed out his mouth for swearing when he was a kid. "Bleh—you got soap in my mouth! Gross."

When Yuri glances up again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Flynn looks entirely too entertained. "I like your face the way it is, too."

"I like your face a lot fucking less right now," Yuri grumbles, retreating back to his corner of the counter with a scowl. "Jerk."

"Just trying to liven things up for you. I thought you were starting to look a little bored."

"Getting soap in my mouth is not a cure for boredom!" And he wasn't bored in the first place, but he's not about to tell Flynn he's content just to be enjoying his company.

"Seemed exciting to me."

"I'm leaving," Yuri complains, and makes no move to go anywhere at all. Flynn laughs and brings the razor back to his face. "You don't deserve my intervention."

"For my work habits or for the beard?"

"Grow a beard if you want a damned beard. You don't need my permission. It's your face."

"You're the one who has to kiss this face, though."

"I don't have to," Yuri says, and has no fucking idea whether he means that as a threat or a reassurance. Both, possibly. "And your dashing good looks don't hurt, but they aren't the primary reason I do it, so do what you want."

Flynn makes a face that suggests he wants to shower Yuri with more affection for that one, but he restrains himself. Thank the gods. Yuri doesn't want another mouthful of soap. He leans back against the wall and tries to ignore the faint aftertaste in his mouth as Flynn steadily shaves the other side of his face. At least he's not in danger of dozing off again. He feels fully awake now.

Finally, Flynn ducks down to thoroughly rinse away the last of the lather. Face still dripping into the sink, he reaches over to nudge Yuri without looking. "Pass me a towel?"

Yuri passes him the towel. Flynn carefully pats his face dry, and the next time he reaches over to nudge Yuri, Yuri shoves a new towelette into his hand before he can make contact. Flynn snorts fondly as he covers the bottle of aftershave with it and tips some out to soak into the fabric.

"Sure you aren't impatient?"

"I'm just being efficient," Yuri says, reasonably. "I already knew what you were going to do next. Why bother waiting for you to ask for it?"

"You've never been efficient a day in your life," Flynn says, wiping his jaw with the aftershave in easy, practiced motions. Then, in a spectacularly low blow, he says, "I mean, remember when you tried to fix the plumbing for the Lower Quarter?"

"Shut up, geez." Yuri kicks him, lightly. Like the ordeal with the aque blastia even counts. "I can't believe I got up early for you to be mean to me."

"I know. You could've just as easily waited until evening for me to be mean to you." Flynn tidies away the components of his shaving kit quickly, then sets it aside to give Yuri his full attention. As he leans in, he murmurs, "Glad you didn't, though."

"Oh?"

"Mm. Great start to my morning." He eases Yuri into a slow kiss, drawing back just enough to add, "Much nicer than shaving alone."

"I can think of some other more interesting ways to spend your morning than shaving alone," Yuri says, and when he hops down from the counter to pull Flynn back into the bedroom, Flynn follows easily.

Yuri's got other things to think about after that, and he forgets all about most of the conversation. Why would he remember it? He and Flynn say all kinds of nonsense to each other as banter. It's not like it will come up again, right?

[imthederpyfox]

Rant About YouTube Copyright.

by imthederpyfox, Moments ago

Journals / Personal

I know nobody's here anymore, hi, nobody~

But I need to take a minute to rant about YouTube's copyright system for a moment.

I know it's come a long way in the past few years, content creators never used to be able to defend their work with copyright under YouTube guidelines, and it's great that they now can. However, there is also the problem that as content creators can fairly and justly claim others videos that include misused content off their own, creators will also claim videos just because they don't like them. AKA 'foodybeauty' and 'Amber-Lynn Reid', to name a few...

Along with this, we also have major companies who think they should copyright any video posted about one of their shows or films or games, or anything really.

Now I know, full re-uploads of these things are against copyright law, well done YouTube, would you like a gold star? Well, guess what, you don't get one. Because not only can they claim these full videos, they have also been going on binges, where as soon as ANY kind of content related to their products comes out, it becomes copyrighted before the content creator can even so much as blink or press save.

I'm talking about videos where you can barely see what the creator's watching, i.e - an UNLISTED video I just posted of a review/reaction to a Netflix show called Haunted.

Now, I have posted another reaction for Riverdale, and spent months trying to figure out the best action to take. Bare in mind, these videos are 'unedited' for my patrons, and the links are only available to my patrons. But guess what? I HAVE NO PATRONS! First of all, HOW do these big companies find an unlisted video? Are they my patrons? I mean that'd be nice, but no. They Aren't.

Second of all, why the fuck would you block an UNLISTED video, when so many people upload full copyrighted re-uploads of films and TV with no issue?

Third of all, how did you even know my video contained any of your program when it's not even named after the show AT ALL because I KNOW you'll copyright it immediately if the title has so much of a WHISPER of the show included.

Now, I will admit, I understand why my first video got copyright claimed - despite being unlisted, which I'm still annoyed about - because most of the screen was taken up by the episode of Riverdale, rather than my reaction. I get it, fine. So, I edit it, I make myself the main focus - ew, I know - and I lower the opacity of the original video, and I cut out any songs that go on for too long, and I make sure that 1/4 of the video isn't even FUCKING VISIBLE!

Safe to say, this is not a re-upload of the original content. This is an upload of a reaction to said content. My reaction, in which I am constantly talking throughout, constantly cutting in, constantly ruining this series for everyone that decides to give me money to watch, what a good YouTuber I am indeed.

So, because I couldn't let sleeping dogs lie when I earned my SECOND COPYRIGHT CLAIM ON THIS UNLISTED PATREON VIDEO! I decided to look more into the company trying to claim it. Was it Netflix? Nope. Was it a TV company? Well, sort of? A french company that distributes TV shows, or so it claims. See what I did there? Good right? No, ok, moving on. So upon my research I happened to come across multiple videos, saying that the company was a scam, that they were fake and shouldn't even be copyrighting things.

SO, what did I do? Well, just to make sure I checked which part of my video was still listed under their 'copyrighted content' thing, because if you check it'll tell you time stamps and give you the option to trim. So, there was about 5-6 minutes of my video that for some reason was still being claimed as copyrighted, so I went in, and edited little bits out, where there was no dialogue, no important things, and then I saved it, and waited for it to process, and then I went into that copyright claims and I said, ya know what? I'm not taking this shit, I worked hard for this video, I made sure to do everything I needed to do, and since these videos fall under fair use due to the cutting and editing and the fact you can't SEE 1/4 OF THE VIDEO, I sent a dispute.

Now I have to admit, I was nervous. If the company that copyright claimed my video didn't like the fact that I'd done that, they could CHOOSE TO COPYRIGHT STRIKE ME. Like, no review from YouTube, nothing like that. If this company didn't like that a tiny channel with only 57 subscribers put in a dispute against them, they might get pissed. They might not like the fact that someone's done that, and they might turn around and say to YouTube, FUCK this channel, bye bye, bitch.

So I was worried to say the least, but I have never been one to back away from bullying, and in this case, I class it as bullying.

I filled in all the relevant details, including a very in depth explanation as to why my video was counted under fair use, and how my channel is tiny, how I don't have any Patrons to see the video, how my video was unlisted, and heavily edited to make sure the copyright did not count against me, including the use of disclaimers in both the video and the description.

I was professional.

I was right.

And I won the dispute.

A day later I get an email telling me the company decided to release my video of all claims and it is now available for all none of my viewers to watch! How exciting, right?

Well, today I decided that I'd upload my second reaction that I'd recorded, I did the same as with the last one, having learned something. I lowered opacity, I covered any nudity, I cut off 1/4 of the video, I made it so the focus would be on my ugly ass mug instead of the TV show itself. And I spent hours trying to upload it for it to fail and me have to do it again.

And low and behold, after all my troubles, all my trials and tribulations, all my blood, sweat and tears and turmoil... I got copyright claimed once again.

Now, it's safe to say, I'm a little bit pissed, ya know?

My video - much like last time - hadn't even fully been uploaded, around the 97% mark, and boom, claim. So I took a deep breath, ya home boi is NOT happy, and I see where exactly it thinks my video is not covered under copyright law. And this is where I think these companies don't care if you are actually covered under the law or not, because it's always a random part of the video, it's always about a 5 minute chunk of the video regardless of what you do.

Which leads me to my next conclusion, in order for these companies to be finding these videos - especially with them being in the unlisted category (needing a specific link to be able to view), and the title not being related, and the video being edited to make sure it isn't eligible for a copyright claim, they MUST have a bot, or a program running that searches YouTube for clips of their content, regardless of how it's presented, or whether it's a review or not.

Which I have to say, is unfair. Especially in the case of the unlisted thing. I know, YouTube can't help it if these companies have bots and programs and code, they can't stop that from happening. But what they can stop? What they SHOULD stop? Is these companies being able to claim videos that aren't even eligible for it.

YouTube, man, you gotta work on this.

We were rooting for you! We were ALL rooting for you!

Anyway, seriously, YouTube really needs to find a way to make sure copyright is fair and just and not maintained by just programs and bots. YouTube, why not create a part of your company that reviews these claims, checks the videos, guarantees that the claims only go to those ACTUALLY abusing the copyright system? Instead of those of us who just want to make fun content for our viewers, who strive to just make good reaction videos? Because that's what they are, REACTION videos. Not re-uploads, not someone else's content.

'Great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.'

Give a little back to the people that got you where you are today YouTube. None of these big companies had you raking in money to begin with, it was the little guys, the small content creators who now have millions of viewers, because they enjoy what they do. Well, most of 'em anyway...

Just think about your content creators, rather than appeasing the companies that give you a bit more money. I know they won't, because capitalism rules despite how shit it is.

Is it really a wonder that so many creators are turning to streaming through sites like Twitch.tv instead of uploading to YouTube? Even the other day, on a live stream I was doing myself, me and my friends talked about how much better streaming is, how you don't have to constantly be worried about making sure the video is friendly for 2 year olds. 2 YEAR OLDS SHOULDN'T EVEN BE WATCHING, OK?!

My goal has been to be a YouTuber since I was about 12. I'm now almost 22. That's just under 10 years of my life, where my goal, my one finish line, has been to become a YouTuber. But the more and more things like this happen, the more and more I want to listen to that voice in my head telling me to give it up and go to Twitch, become a streamer, not stress so much about copyright strikes and issues with monitisation, and having such UNREALISTIC goals in order to achieve being monitised and YouTube partner in the first place.

I have edited this video, the parts it told me to, I have made sure to cut out the music bits and make sure it's up to par with copyright based on where they claimed the video. But my issue with sending off this newest in what I assume will be a long line of copyright disputes, because someone, even as small a channel as mine, with my 57 subscribers and my 5 views a video (at a push), has to push back and say 'NO. THIS ISN'T OK.' and not let themselves be pushed around, my issue with this?

The company that claimed the video this time was Netflix itself. And we all know Netflix has money. And Netflix doesn't care if it shuts down a tiny little channel like mine. All my content? All my videos? All views and subs and likes I've somehow managed to accumulate? All gone. Like Thanos snapping his fucking fingers.

Regardless of what I do to make these videos fair use, big companies like this get the final say over them, and as far as they're concerned, us little creators who don't make YouTube money yet, but still hold onto that hope that, maybe, hopefully, one day we will be able to do it, we're the 50% they want to snap and get rid of.

And it'll stay that way for a long time, unless people actually stand up and talk about it. Heck, it'll probably end up staying that way even then, but at least we TRIED.

I have respect for Matpatt, I watched his video explaining the work he and other creators have done in bringing awareness to the higher ups in YouTube, using their platforms to help each other and millions of other creators, people who just want to make other people laugh or forget about their problems for a while, or just upload stupid, 2 minute clips because of inside jokes, or they find it funny, they enjoy doing it.

If we as humans have been taught anything recently during this quarantine, it's that a lot of our societal structures are flawed, some may even say broken. Big companies scam us, use us, and give nothing back in return. If peoples eyes aren't open now, when will they be?

This won't get views. This won't get likes or favourites or shared to other people because of some powerful message.

But maybe one day, someone from YouTube will be randomly scrolling through the internet, and find a random post on a crude fanart website amongst all the sonic and Mario at the Olympic fuck games art, and maybe they'll read it and take note.

But we all know that'll never happen.

So I'm gonna wait for the video to finish saving the changes I made to it, and I'm going to dispute the claim Netflix made against me. And I'm going to anxiously wait to see if I get to continue making content for another day, or whether I get taken down by the snap.

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

If you made it this far, thanks for listening to my rambling.

I feel strongly about a lot of things, and my friends often tell me that I should post about them, because I have such an... Eloquent way or wording things. Well, I finally decided to, because I need to vent as much as the next asshole. They're right, I AM eloquent!

Seriously though, thank you for reading, I know nobody would have but hey, maybe you're one of the 3 views I get on my YouTube videos!

I am blessed.

With like 50,000 curses going on at once.

Such a time to be alive.

Stay safe, look out for each other, and I may do another rant at some point, because this was fun I guess.

-Exza~

[no6secretsanta]

From @origami10 for @gyrthil. Happy holidays!

Note: I’m not sure what version of the names you’re familiar with, but Nezumi=Rat and Inukashi=Dogkeeper~

----------

A chill had crept into the air outside, so Shion was nestled on the sofa with his feet tucked up for warmth, as Nezumi stirred a pot of soup on the stove.

Shion closed the hardback book he had been reading. “Nezumi. You should do this as a play at your theater!”

Nezumi didn’t bother turning away from the soup to give his dry, sarcastic reply. “And what play would that be, Mr. Director?”

“A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. See, there used to be this holiday called ‘Christmas,’ which was all about giving things to other people instead of hoarding them all for yourself. I think it would be great if you could tell more people in West Block about it! It would be ideal if some people from No.6 could see it, because they have the most resources to share, but we could at least-“

“No.”

Nezumi had heard enough of Shion’s foolishness by now to let most of it slide in one ear and out the other, but this was beyond ridiculous. He had read A Christmas Carol, and it was a fine story, but hardly one with a moral that the residents of West Block could do anything more than jeer at.

“I’m not saying you’d need to recreate Victorian England. I think I could rewrite it and make it relevant for the people here!”

“You? Rewrite? Charles Dickens?”

“There’s no harm in trying, right? You’re always encouraging me to learn more about the world, and I think it would help me understand life in West Block to try and get in the mindset of the people who live here.”

Nezumi rolled his eyes, and kept stirring the soup. “Fine, I’m not stopping you. There’s even some scraps of paper you could use tucked back there behind that stack of books. But don’t let it make you late for work with Inukashi, or distracted when walking through town. West Block is no place for daydreaming.” He figured he’d have to trail Shion to work tomorrow, just to make sure he didn’t get lost in thought and wander into danger, as he was still prone to do.

——————

Only three short days later, when Nezumi was sitting in bed reading, Shion jumped up from the corner of the sofa where he had been madly scribbling for several hours not just tonight, but both of the previous evenings as well.

“Nezumi! It’s finished!”

Nezumi considered feigning that he had forgotten what Shion was working on, but that wouldn’t serve any purpose, and honestly he was a little interested to see if this boy from the bubble could put any semblance of creativity into words. He took the stack of papers that Shion offered him, and began to leaf through it.

The handwriting was easily legible (no surprise there), and without realizing it, Nezumi found himself lost in the story.

In place of Scrooge, a character representing No.6 itself was confronted by another character from the correctional facility, who took the place of Scrooge’s late business partner, Jacob Marley. The Marley character warned the No.6 character that unless it heeded the warnings from its past, present, and future, it would be the next to get thrown into the hell represented by the correctional facility.

Shion had used what little he knew about the land, town, and people living in West Block before No.6 was created to depict the ghosts that showed what mistakes No.6 had made in its past as it slowly shut out the people beyond the city walls.

The ghosts of the present were the current residents of West Block, some based on recognizable characters from town. They showed the No.6 character the starving children and freezing households that it ignored everyday just outside its walls.

Shion had been smart enough not to use the parasitic bees word-for-word in the story, but the ghosts of No.6’s future showed a similar kind of looming destruction if No.6 kept up its trend of looking only inward. Nezumi couldn’t help but notice that the character laughing in the face of the No.6 character about its imminent downfall wore a leather jacket and quoted some lines of Shakespeare....

Nezumi hadn’t meant to read all of what Shion had written in a single sitting, but when he reached the final curtain call, he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding.

He shoved the pages back at Shion. “Nope. Won’t work. They’ll never put it on.” He wriggled down into bed and pulled the covers up to his nose, hoping Shion hadn’t seen the way his mouth had hung open in amazement before he had remembered to put back on his usual sneer.

“But you liked it, didn’t you?” Shion flopped on the bed and said, close to Nezumi’s ear. “I think you could be in it. How many people do you usually have to do productions at the theater? Maybe I could get Mr, Rikuga to be in it. I bet he could at least help me look for costumes.”

“Shion, for the second and last time, the theater manager is not going to put on a play written by you.”

“But don’t you think it would lift people’s spirits in the cold, dark winter? We may not have Christmas anymore, but it could give them some hope, and remind them to look out for others.”

Nezumi rolled over and turned to stare coldly at Shion. It was so hard to maintain his severity every time he looked into those warm eyes that melted his heart even now as he spoke, but he reminded himself it was for Shion’s own good. “Hope is the last thing you should be giving people here. It’ll do them the opposite of good.”

“But-“

Nezumi sighed loudly and turned back away from Shion. “Enough buts. I’m trying to get some sleep, and you should too.” He closed his eyes for emphasis.

He could feel that Shion was a little miffed at his reaction and how abruptly he had cut short the conversation, but Shion must have been getting a better read on him than Nezumi dared allow himself to believe, because Shion simply straightened the pages, left them on the table, got ready for bed, crawled in beside Nezumi, and fell asleep.

Nezumi listened to his soft breathing for a long time before he finally sank into darkness.

——————

By the time Shion awoke the next morning, Nezumi was already gone. He looked briefly at the table, in case he had to make some edits, but as he had suspected, the papers were also gone. He fixed himself some breakfast and got ready to leave the house. He’d stop by the clothing store with Mr. Rikiga on the way home.

——————

“Mommy, pick me up, I want to see!”

The theater was packed with adults with children, adults without children, and children who acted like adults. It had been Shion’s idea to have the admission charge be an item of food that would be redistributed amongst the spectators once it was time to leave. It was standing room only.

It was unlike anything Nezumi had ever seen in the theater. Not that he was nervous with all these people here, of course not. But the atmosphere was charged with something he had never felt before. Could it be-? No. Still, soon a hush came over the audience, the lights went down, and it was time for A Christmas Carol to begin. 

——————

The curtains reopened for the final group bow, and Nezumi was amazed to see that even the people who had gotten a seat were now standing up, clapping. Maybe a story about revenge on the oppressor had more appeal to the masses than he had originally cared to consider. Even so, the expression on everyone’s faces wasn’t merely anger, but... joy?

The curtains closed again, and by the time Nezumi had taken off his costume and crept around to the theater entrance, Shion, the theater manager, and the bodyguards who had been hired to protect the admission foodstuffs during the duration of the show were giving out chunks of bread and dried meat from a dwindling stack to the last of the spectators leaving the building. “Great job, Nezumi! You were fantastic!” Shion grinned and nearly threw his arms around Nezumi for a hug, before seeing his glare and thinking better of it. Still, Nezumi’s expression softened slightly, and he threw one arm around Shion’s shoulders. “All thanks to our writer. We might just have more for you, if the pay is right.” He nodded to the theater manager. Shion visibly brightened. “You mean...”

Nezumi raised his eyebrows and looked down at Shion. “All I’m saying is that there are a lot more books like the one this came from.” He grabbed some food from the pile, shoved some into Shion’s hands, and then grabbed Shion’s right hand with his left, heading into the crowd towards home. “West Block could be the birthplace for all kinds of stories yet to come.”

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

Fic author ask meme

haha so @veliseraptor​ tagged me literally months ago, as in so long ago I have no idea when it actually was, and I didn’t get all my answers typed up until...now. actually a lot of them were typed up a few months ago and then I finally finished this yesterday on the plane home. no, I don’t know why either

Author Name: 100indecisions on AO3

Fandoms You Write For: it's pretty much all Loki at the moment and has been for the last several years. I've written for other fandoms in the past and I have others on my WIP list, but yeah, it's like 95% Loki.

Where You Post: everything is on AO3, and I do mean "everything" because I get obsessive about that sort of thing. I do still have an FFN account under ladymoriel and most of my fics are reposted there, although none of my most recent fics are because I haven't gotten around to digging up cover images for them. also FFN sucks but I crave attention/validation and there are still some people who only use FFN, so I'll get around to it at some point.

Most Popular One-Shot: for some reason “the state of my head” has 1,157 kudos on AO3, so I guess it would be that one.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: technically “the adventures of tiny Loki and Thor (and friends),” because it’s a multi-chapter fic (boy is it ever) and it has 1,020 kudos, but if we’re talking actual planned fic it would be “the kindness of strangers” at 623.

Favorite Story You Wrote: man, I don’t know. I’m partial to “I am a time bomb ticking away the hours to blow your world apart” because I like my headcanon and I think I structured it well, and “all this that is more than a wish is a memory” gets points for being the longest thing I’ve actually finished. but honestly I don’t know that I have a single favorite.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: haha well I'm sure there's been more than one, but if we're talking about the fic I was most nervous to post, I think that honor would go to my Grandthorki fic "I will kiss you till your breath is found," which is the most explicit AND most fucked-up fic I've written so far. I was nervous about...so many things with that one.

How Do You Pick Your Titles: probably 99% of them are song lyrics. sometimes I'll start with a specific song that's relevant to the fic itself in some way, but I also have a whole list of song lyrics that sound like good titles to me whether the rest of the song has anything to do with the subject of the fic. often I'll come up with a good lyric early in the process, just like "oh yeah I've had this hanging around in my list for ages and it works here"; otherwise, once I've finished or nearly finished a fic (or much earlier, actually, if I'm obsessing over an aspect of writing it that is...not actually writing, which happens a lot), if I still don't have a title I read through my whole list and make a much shorter list of titles that seem to fit this fic. if nothing from there seems just right, I’ll go hunting through my iTunes library and then Google for semi-relevant song lyrics. on occasion, though, the title comes first or otherwise shapes the direction of the fic, like with "I will kiss you till your breath is found"--I had a vague idea of what I might want to do, but it was very vague and I hadn't committed to it, and then I just happened to listen to some Sufjan Stevens and went "heyyyyy I know exactly what to do and it's terrible and I'm gonna do it, I have a title now, I have to do it"

Do You Outline: it depends on the fic. for long ones, at a minimum I'll write a bulleted list of plot points I need to hit, which often ends up being basically two or three pages of a zero draft that I then struggle to turn into actual prose...and then I often re-do the outline at least once or twice as I go along so I can compress it into something more useful that fits on one page and I can cross stuff out as I go. (if a list can’t fit on one page/view, there’s basically no way I can hold all of it in my head at once.) I often end up with shorter lists of scenes I still need to write and specific things to hit during revisions, too. for short fics it's not really necessary, although I often do still write up something similar if I've let it drag out over way too much time and I can't keep straight what I wanted to do with it. (don't be me.)

How Many of Your Stories are complete: welllll, as a rule I don't post WIPs because I know myself well enough to know that that way lies several different kinds of madness, so in general, my only completed fics are what's up on AO3, and everything there is complete. in practice that's not 100% true because I'm very bad at deadlines and I have a few different fics where I couldn't finish in time and I either posted the first chunk of the fic that still functioned as a self-contained story even if it wasn't the full story I'd planned to write, with the intention of properly finishing it later, or I did the same thing but worse because the part I posted was...not really a complete story. in my defense I've only done the latter a couple times, and in the case of "going down to nowhere" I really thought I'd be posting the rest soon because it was all written, it was just extremely rough, and for various reasons I still haven't gotten around to revising and posting the remaining 80% of the fic. (as far as the opposite issue goes, I have 0 finished fics that I haven't posted anywhere, because I'm too obsessive about being complete to do anything else. I think I do have one old, extremely short, very bad Lost fic on FFN that I never reposted to AO3 because I decided it sucked...and if we're being completely technical about it, I have some stories I wrote as a little kid that are technically fanfic because they featured licensed characters, but nobody wants to see those. all the other old stuff I haven't posted, including at least two Neopets fics, never got finished and that's the only reason I never posted them anywhere.)  

In-Progress: uhhhh. well, this made me realize my posted WIP list is out of date, not because I've finished anything on it but because I have MULTIPLE short fics that were supposed to be QUICK so I figured I didn't need to bother putting them on the list and then they weren't quick because I am so fucking bad at 1) sitting down and actually writing and 2) finishing anything. But yeah, basically what’s on there.

Coming Soon: fuck, I don’t know. Half the fics on my WIPs list are ones I thought I could crank out in one or two sittings, AND YET. But I’d like to finish the rest of my Whumptober fic soon, because that one really should be pretty easy...and I’d also like to finish the short little Endgame fix-it I thought of on my way out of the theater, where 2012!Loki hops universes and revives IW!Loki...and then there’s the even older IW/Endgame fix-it that’s basically just “everything is fine because I say so, let’s have a little recovery”, especially because I’m like 90% sure that one’s almost done but probably some of it needs typing up and then it all needs stitching together...oh, and finally getting around to finishing typing one of two notebooks reminded me that the other theoretically short fix-it where the Guardians pick up both Thor and Loki is also nearly done, I just need to finish typing it. so...one of those, probably.

Do You Accept Prompts: in theory, although I...don't think I get prompts often enough to know one way or another? plus my brain is The Worst, so my general reaction to actually getting a prompt is basically "that's interesting but I have never had an idea in my life, ever, and apparently I'm not starting now", with an added element of social anxiety or something because it's Somebody Else's Idea and that puts a mental block on my ability to develop it as my own idea. so...anyone's welcome to send me prompts, with the understanding that I might well never do anything with it and if I do, it might take literal years.

Upcoming Story You’re the Most Excited For: I also don’t know. I mean, in recently typing up some older stuff (like the one where the Grandmaster decides publicly executing Loki sounds like a fun idea, from which I posted a couple excerpts recently) I got excited about those again, which is a good reminder of why I want to stay on top of my typing, but I don’t know if I’m more excited for one specific fic than others.

Tag Five Fanfic Authors to Answer These Questions: I have no idea who might have answered this months ago so I’ll just say that if you read this post and you want to answer these questions, please consider yourself tagged. yes, that means you.

[phcking-detective]

1. Caught Dead with a Beretta

Fic Title: First Blood

Rating: E

Length: 1/33 chapters, ~128k

Tags: Slow Burn, Idiots to Lovers, Trans Character (gavin), Autistic / Asexual / Non-binary Character (nines), BDSM, learning to use good etiquette and safe words, Dom Nines / Sub Gavin, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort

Chapter Tags: suicide, death / murder, verbal hazing

Link on AO3

***

Gavin's sick of working suicides—they're depressing as hell and aren't going to do anything for his promotion. He's just got to the crime scene already wants to go home. It's fucking ass'o'clock in the morning, and he hasn't slept worth shit, so of course Nines texted to let him know about the scene the second he'd finally dozed off. 

The elevator ride up to the two thousand square foot loft gives him enough time to get hit with shit, did I take my meds before I left home? Fuck. Maybe? 

Goddammit. Maybe he should switch to those patches and gels instead of a weekly injection. Taking his T is the one thing he never, ever forgets, so if he switched to something he could do daily and took his meds for the BPD and ADHD at the same time … 

The elevator doors ding open, ruining his train of thought. Nines is here already because he doesn't fucking sleep, apparently. That hot fuckboy he sucked off once—and the beat cop for this side of town—Brayden, is in there too, but Gavin's most recent bout of soul-crippling insomnia has actually worn him down too much to be horny. 

Well, too much to put forth the effort for flirting, at least. 

"—huh, Nine Thousand?" Brayden says as Gavin walks up. 

Nines doesn't respond. 

"He's RK nine hundred," Gavin says. "Not like the meme. Super disappointing." 

Brayden grins. "Yeah, but I mean like, the movie." 

"Nine thousand?" 

Gavin frowns, trying to force his stupid idiot brain to think. All he can come up with is 300. Maybe it's a movie based off of that one book? The like, underwater … and submarines. Something-number thousand leagues under the sea? No fuck, that's not nine thousand. 

"Two thousand," Brayden says. "And one." 

Shit, is that the number of leagues or the title of the movie? 

"Man, I am way too fucking tired." Gavin waves him off. "I'm not even into that film shit. I just like action movies." 

Brayden heaves a deep sigh. "I've seen your file, Gavin. You're too smart to willingly lump yourself in with the uneducated masses." 

"May we proceed with the crime scene, detective?" Nines asks before Gavin can reply. 

Brayden flinches a little. The only reason Gavin doesn't get scared himself is because he's gotten used to Nines not breathing or moving—until he suddenly does. Makes people jumpy as shit to realize they forgot about the giant fucking android just standing there.  

Not blinking. Or breathing. 

"Go ahead," Brayden says with a sweep of his hand, like he didn't just jump half a foot. 

"May we proceed with the crime scene, detective?" Nines asks instead of complying. 

"Yeah, sure," Gavin grants permission. 

Nines proceeds. Gavin tries to hold back a smirk. Brayden's the pretentious kind of asshole who loves explaining shit no one cares about, but he's pretty hot too, and Gavin's not quite ready to burn that bridge to Terra-dick-bia by pissing him off. No, that sounds terrible. The bridge to … mm, dick. 

Damn, he's tired. 

He follows after Nines, a little worried he might wander off in his sleep-deprived state and get lost in all this square footage of prime fucking real estate. Even saints would have to work to feel sorry for dead people as rich as this. 

Finally, he stumbles into a section of the open floor plan that seems to function as the living room. There's a flat screen tv nearly as big as the wall it's mounted on, a coffee table made from a whole chunk of mahogany with a half-full tumbler, and a dead guy sitting in a chair with a gun in his hand and a hole in his head. 

The TV still blares out the news, and the vic's own face flashes out at them. 

"This the Ponzi scheme guy?" Gavin asks. 

"Maverick Russell, age forty-seven." Nines shoves a finger inside the vic's mouth with no shame or preamble. "Blood alcohol level point-oh-nine-seven. The entry wound in his head appears to be consistent with a nine millimeter Beretta." 

He takes a small packet out of his Cyberlife jacket pocket and somehow has the coordination to open it one-handed. Gavin wrinkles his nose at the antiseptic smell as Nines sanitizes both hands with the wipe, even though he only touched the vic with one finger. Then he lifts that same finger to the victim's head. 

"Hey!" Gavin barks. "What have I told you about that shit?" 

Nines stares back at him with that unblinking, lizard-eye look. He touches his finger to the entry wound but doesn't push it in. Just brushes it back and forth, which is somehow way freakier. 

"The entry wound in his head is consistent with a nine millimeter Beretta," Nines says. 

"Great." 

Gavin walks a perimeter around the designated living room space. At first it's just to keep himself awake, but by the second circle, he's got one of those gut feelings. Something about this scene is off. Fuck if he can tell what though, 'cause the victim was drunk, watching his own demise on the news, and has a bullet in his head from the gun in his hand. 

"You feel that?" He asks. 

Nines cocks his head to the side. "The circulating air temperature is seventy--" 

"No." Gavin huffs and starts on another circle. "Do you like … you feel what I’m feeling?" 

"Your question is incomprehensible." 

Gavin sighs and grinds the heels of his palms against his eyes. He bites back a comment about this being why androids can't make good cops. Fuck knows why he's bothering to be nice now. He just wants to get this shit done and go home. 

When he opens his eyes, everything swirls with black spots in front of him. What's bugging him about this? The guy is dead, the gun is in his hand, the news says—

Gavin blinks the spots away and stands in front of the vic. Fake tan, but high enough quality that it'd look real if he didn't live in fucking Detroit. Decently fit, and the open kitchen on the other side of the room has one of those blenders that cost more than his car. The loft's decorated in masculine colors, all brown and navy and black leather. 

"Go check out the kitchen," Gavin tells Nines. "Tell me what's in the fridge." 

Nines does as he's told, but only after considering it. Gavin takes back the lizard comparisons. He's like a cat. One of those big jungle cats that's smart enough to eat the humans hunting them. 

"Dannon Oikos triple blended greek nonfat yogurt, coffee, four pack, five-point-three ounce cups," Nines says. "Dannon Oikos trippled blended greek nonfat yogurt, peanut butter banana, four—" 

Gavin rolls his eyes. "Just say yogurt. What else does he got?" 

"Yogurt. Eggs. Milk. Sparkling water. Chicken breast. Mayonnaise. Sliced ham. Apples. Protein shakes." Nines opens the freezer. "Chicken breast. Chicken breast. Chicken breast. Chi—" 

Gavin starts giggling. He can't help it. Nines turns around and glares at him, deliberately flashing his LED red for a second. 

"OK, fuck off, it's late," he says. "I'm like, super tired. Just analyze that shit or whatever and tell me if his food matches any of the latest high protein fad diets." 

"Yes," Nines replies so instantly Gavin wonders if he actually even looked it up at all. "The victim's food intake matches the Eight Step Enligh—" 

Gavin waves him off. "Yeah, yeah. Cool. Does the bar have gin, vodka, and vermouth?" 

Maverick Russell, definitely confirmed for one of those ultra-rich masculine gym types. Not like, an actual gym rat, just that generic rich person level of fitness achieved through liposuction, personal fitness trainers, and the latest fad diet. 

"Yes, along with seven other distinct liqueurs." Nines finishes checking the bar and returns to the living room. "How is this information relevant, detective?" 

"This drink and that gun don't match," Gavin says when Nines returns. 

Nines cocks his head again. "Match." 

"Yeah. I don't see any Bond memorabilia in here." Gavin takes another quick glance around, but the entertainment center doesn't display any vintage DVDs, and rich film buffs are not subtle about displaying their collections. "He ever purchased anything like that?" 

Nines's LED spins yellow for about half a second this time before he replies. "No. There are no significant purchases of memorabilia relating to the James Bond books or movies present in Maverick Russell's finances." 

"OK, then why the fuck does he have a Beretta?" Gavin asks. 

Nines looks at the victim, and then back at him. "That is what he shot himself with." 

"Yeah, but why," he stresses. "Would this guy—this self-obsessed, rich guy masc, desperate-to-be-cool motherfucker—have a Beretta?" 

"It is the tool he used to complete suicide." Nines frowns. "Is there a reason he would not have a Beretta?" 

"Because it's a ladies' handgun," Gavin says. "This guy's got three different TV remotes, a flat screen covering an entire wall, jesus, how old is that scotch?" 

Nines sticks his finger in it, because of course he does. "One hundred and twenty-three years old, consistent with—" 

"Shit, I would've thought this guy was trying too hard when I was twenty and desperate to be cis," Gavin mutters. "Look, I fucking promise you, this particular man literally wouldn't be caught dead with a Beretta—unless he's a James Bond fan. Even then … hey, Brayden!" 

"His input is unnecessary, detective." Nines cleans his hands with another sanitary wipe. "If you would be more clear—" 

His jaw shuts with a click as Brayden jogs over. 

"Hey, you like the Bond movies?" Gavin asks. 

Brayden heaves a tortured sigh. "I really prefer foreign movies, but for an American—" 

"All right, sure. Would you ever kick it with a Beretta?" 

Brayden bites the inside of his cheek, opens his mouth, then closes it with a frown as he thinks about it. 

"What if you were like, a super fan?" 

"Why?" Brayden glances around the loft with an interested look. "This guy have some collector's memorabilia?" 

Gavin shakes his head. "Nah. But why else he's got a fucking Beretta?" 

"Well that's not the drink for it," Brayden says immediately, then scoffs. "A scotch?" 

"Yeah, and he had the shit to make a martini too." 

"Weird. You thinking …" Brayden trails off, then winces. "Ah, shit. We uh, we got a guy a floor down. Said he heard the shot that, you know. But he said it was two bangs. And you know how shit witnesses are about getting anything right, and the TV was on and—" 

"That's shit I need to know," Gavin snaps. "Doesn't matter how stupid you think it is, you're the first officer on the scene, you report every-fucking-thing to the responding detective." 

"Yeah." Brayden clears his throat. "My bad." 

Gavin lets it slide only because now he has something to go on. "Whatever. Check me on the precon for this, RK." 

"Preconstruction running, detective." 

"So we got two shots." Gavin backs up so he's approaching the living room from twenty feet away. "So we should have two guns. The perp, coming in here, gets shot 'cause the vic's only got the one entry wound, but—" 

Nines touches the victim's hand, and then his cellphone buzzes. 

The distribution of gunshot residue on Maverick Russell's right hand is not consistent with a Beretta. The gun he fired has a longer muzzle and larger caliber. My preliminary preconstruction matches it to a .500 S&W Magnum. The victim has four registered in his name.

Gavin closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose. Would it fucking kill him to send that in five separate texts like a normal person? Now he's going to look dumb as fuck staring at the screen for five minutes trying to read one paragraph. 

OK, he’s got the fifty caliber Magnum, that's easy to read. Longer muzzle, larger caliber, right. 

"So the vic has a fifty caliber Magnum instead of a dinky Beretta, makes a lot more sense." 

Nines doesn't correct him, so that must have been the gist of the message. 

"The perp gets shot—" 

"Where's the blood though?" Brayden asks. 

Gavin glares at him. "Can you let me fucking work?" 

Shit, he's doing it again and this is why no one wants to work with him because they fuck up--everyone fucks up, he knows this, he fucking knows this--and then he just can't let it go but why the hell does Brayden think he's allowed to speak right now when—

He's not in trouble. He's not in trouble, it's just the loft, being in another rich empty room again. None of them are children and he's not in trouble. 

His cellphone buzzes. 

The floor has been scrubbed clean throughout the loft. I did not realize that was relevant information. I will give you full reports of my analysis moving forward.

That's not too bad to read, and concentrating on making the letters stay still actually helps him cool off a bit for once. Gives him something to look at other than Brayden's pretty, hurt face or the perfect fucking interior design that still feels like when he was thirteen and— 

Gavin shoves those memories aside and starts typing out a reply. 

just text me that shit

I'll prolly yell if u try telling me about the floors at every crime scene

"Am I dismissed then?" Brayden asks. 

Gavin looks up from his phone and can't force out any sort of apology. He never can. And anyway, fuck him. If Brayden wants to get pissy about getting snapped at twice after a legitimate fuck up and interrupting a senior detective mid-sentence, then sure. He can fuck right off. 

"Go get the maid," Gavin tells him. 

"The … android?" Brayden asks. 

"No, the roomba. Yes, the fucking android maid. Someone scrubbed the floors clean." 

And the side table.

Gavin doesn't bother with texting back this time. "That where the blood splatter would have hit?" 

"Yes, detective," Nines answers out loud. 

Gavin turns back to Brayden. "So there's your answer. Get the maid, 'cause I doubt the perp stuck around himself to clean the entire two-thousand square foot floor." 

Brayden hesitates. 

"She's still here," Gavin asks. "Right, Officer Burton?" 

Brayden gives a curt nod, but he breaks into a run as he leaves. 

AP700 #480 913 876 is located in the foyer of the building, along with Officers Miller and Abrahamson. I have sent alerts to their cellphones that the AP model is needed for questioning.

Gavin starts to ask how Nines knows that but … isn't this what he was literally designed to do? 

"She's not a suspect yet," he says instead. "So cool it, Terminator. And don't hack peoples' phones. That's what the officers have walkie talkies for." 

Nines makes a face like Gavin just suggested they all start using smoke signals. He's not exactly the type to go all buddy-buddy on witnesses himself, but they're definitely not going to get anywhere with Nines scaring the thirium out of their one lead. 

Gavin takes a moment to wallow in how much he hates this before he calls Hank. At least if he has to be up before dawn, so will that motherfucker. 

"We do not need assistance from Lieutenant Anderson," Nines says, his expression souring even further. "Or my predecessor. I recognize that I did not meet the necessary level of efficiency when I neglected to—" 

"Hey, this isn't a punishment," Gavin says, tilting the phone down away from his mouth. "I fucking hate Connor too, and when we have an android suspect, I get that's your thing. But right now we have an android witness, and that's his." 

"Ahh, fuck," Hank's voice comes out of the phone. "Sun's not even fucking—goddammit, Reed." 

"We will be at your location in twenty minutes, Detective Reed," Connor's voice says next. 

Gavin stares out into space as what's left of his soul collapses in on itself at the confirmation that those two really are fucking. Not even just fucking, they're sleeping together. In bed, for literal sleep. 

"Nines, tell them they're disgusting," Gavin orders. "You can put way more hate into it than me." 

 "Disgusting," Nines says with a sneer that would put Gavin's mother to shame. 

Gavin hangs up before Hank can reply. "I know you lack the capacity and all that shit, but if it makes you not-feel any better, I bet you five bucks the perp's android." 

"Based off of what evidence?" Nines asks. 

"Took a bullet and kept going." Gavin steps back into place where the perp probably walked in. "He's got the Beretta, but it's just a gun to him. He grabs the vic's gun, maybe disarms him, maybe doesn't even have to after the first shot." 

"The blood vessels on the victim's wrist have not been damaged." Nines starts cleaning his hands again even though he hasn't even touched anything this time. "Why would the human stop shooting?" 

"TV's on, he's drinking, has a gun out already." Gavin shrugs. "Might have been a suicide interrupted by a murder. Might've fired the first shot just being scared, y'know, gut instinct." 

Nines just looks at him. 

"Or you don't know, whatever." Gavin rolls his eyes. "But once he realizes what's happening—maybe he couldn't pull the trigger himself, but now here's someone gonna do it for him. Maybe he just sits back down. That still work with your preconstruction?" 

"Yes," Nines says. "Along with two thousand, one hundred and fifty-eight other scenarios." 

"Whatever. And just like, for the record, don't ask Hank about how this suicidal shit works," Gavin tells him. "Hank might not care, but those are fighting words with Connor." 

Nines doesn't move a single centimeter as he stares silently at him. 

"And don't fucking fight with Connor, we don't have time for it. Anyway, if anyone gets to pick a fight at a murder scene, it's me. So." Gavin walks up to the chair with his hand pointed like a gun. "The perp gets him back down, shoots him in the side of the head, then switches the guns so the ballistics will match." 

"He could have taken the victim's gun." Nines's LED spins a few yellow cycles. "It is registered in his name. The suicide would have looked more authentic." 

"And that's why I'm thinking our guy's an android," Gavin replies. "Someone who hasn't ever seen a movie before in his whole life. Thinks a gun is a gun is a gun. I mean, you didn't know why the Beretta was weird, and if you made A Plan to kill a guy with this gun, would you switch it up in the middle?" 

Nines's LED immediately hits blue, but it's that fake-blue that means he's really covering up a red. Gavin almost kind of … has a feeling about it? 

But then the elevator doors open with Brayden and the android maid inside. Gavin's got a burned bridge, a possible eye witness, and an a murder to deal with. Worrying about his partner's not-feelings will have to wait. 

***

***

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 / 31 / 32 / 33

This fic is also available on my Patreon! $1 tier gets you each chapter a week early, so you could be reading chapter two right now~

$2 tier gets you deleted scenes and bonus content--this week, it’s extra scenes about how Nines was found at Cyberlife and how he gets his first apartment

$3 tier gets you access to the first chapters of two new AUs I’m currently writing--an A/B/O universe in which Gavin is a bitter omega and Nines is his android partner determined to help him during his heat; and a Reverse AU where GV200 “Gavin” is assigned as Detective Richard Stern’s sobriety companion

[sweet-star-storybook]

Current Project Talk [August 2019]: Part 1 - Starglass Zodiac

Hey all, I’m back with another talk post! This time I will be discussing what I’m working on project wise. I have two projects on the go at the time of this post, hence the split into two parts (Part 2 is here!). Most people who follow my work already know what I’m working on right now (at least when it comes to Starglass Zodiac), but I figured I’d talk about it a bit anyway for clarity’s sake. And it’s fun to talk about in general. :’D

I consider a current project as something that I’m actively working on, as in scripting, drawing, and/or completing in some sort of order. I have numerous story projects tumbling around in this brain of mine that I do make art for in my free time, but they are not active projects as a whole yet, if that makes sense. I also have some that I specifically will not tackle until I get more experience making stories/comics overall.

I likely will not make more posts like these unless I switch and/or finish projects and announce new ones, but I put the date of posting in the titles just in case. I will continue the OC Design Talks for any series I have, regardless if the project they are from is in active status. But for now, let’s talk about Starglass Zodiac! :D

For this part I’ll focus more on what I want out of the project as a whole and discuss the progression of it so far. If you are curious about the comic itself and what it’s about, you can check it out here!

Alright here we go!

Starglass Zodiac is my first comic project, and I consider it my “big” comic project at the moment, with Moth to the Flame being the “small” one (I cover that in Part 2). By big I mean that the story, world and characters are quite large in scope overall, at least compared to MttF.

I knew this fact going into the project, as with a zodiac theme one is guaranteed at least 12 more characters in the roster outside of the protagonist. This story’s setting has a lot of lore potential and I plan to explore a good chunk of that with the main plot, and perhaps even more with supplementary comics in the future.

And with a larger scope not only comes with more characters and character development, but also quite a bit of worldbuilding. This story keeps a delicate balance between Earth and the Astral Plane, and both need a good amount of “screen time” in order to be established properly in the comic, especially in how relevant they are to the main protagonist. This, in turn, makes the story much longer, and I’ve had to make many decisions on what will be shown and when. The same goes for the characters themselves, as I had to decide the relationships and interactions of each character, and how many of those were plot relevant.

Actually developing these concepts, especially for the backgrounds / environments, is a whole battle field in and of itself. I still have quite a bit of it to do even though I’ve started the comic already. I am far less skilled in background design compared to character design, so I’m hoping that the backgrounds will develop their own unique style over time, similar to how an animated show or movie does.

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, so with the experience I have now I might not have started my comic career with a project this big, but the development of SGZ kind of led that way anyway. I won’t cover the whole story of how I came up with this comic, but I’ll say a little bit about it.

I started developing the idea for Starglass Zodiac in the summer before I went to animation school, and during my time there I was able to bolster my skills as not only an artist but a visual storyteller. In turn, my second year of animation school gave me an opportunity to develop this story and complete work for my character design class simultaneously. I would not have had nearly as much of the design work done without that opportunity, and this is why I was able to have the initial launch of the comic in July of 2017.

I definitely don’t regret starting SGZ when I did (nor do I regret revamping it two years later), but I also understand just how much effort I’ll need to put into it. This comic will take (and already has taken) years for me to complete, and I am content with that. But, I must find a balance between burnout and motivation in order to keep up with it for the long haul.

My main goal with Starglass Zodiac is similar to that of my other story projects: I want to publish it when it is finished. However, with SGZ being my first comic it has the dubious honour of being what I call my “learning” comic. I have never attempted a comic project like this before, and I didn’t really grow up with comics either, so this is still new territory for me. I’m still learning the nuances of character interaction, dialogue, shot composition, page setup, and numerous other aspects that are unique to comics. These are things that I am excited to learn about, but I need to remind myself not to put too much pressure on myself when something doesn’t turn out the way it should the first time around.

Overall I love the story and I love the characters, and that will never change. I just fear that, with the illnesses I’m fighting and the general struggle of being creative right now, I won’t be satisfied with it in the end. But, I need to have more faith in myself overall, and remind myself that I need to finish the project before I can assess its outcome. And because this is my learning comic, I fully expect to look back on these early pages and make improvements afterwards, perhaps even doing a full remaster before publishing.

I hope that with having two projects on the go I can switch between them well enough to not get burnt out on one or the other, but rather use the combined skill and practice to make them better simultaneously. That’s the goal, anyway. In any case, I hope that I can continue to share the stories I love with everyone in a way that makes me proud to call them my own. For now I’ll keep plugging away as best I can. :’)

[shadowsong26fic]

Coming Attractions!

Yes, I know it’s Friday, not Monday. <.< ANYWAY.

Before we get started, plugging my Discord server (which is p. quiet lately but it’s there if you want to talk somewhere other than here!); and also we’ll do another Open Question Night because Why Not!

As I said last month, while my askbox is always open, tonight I’ll be actively around to answer questions--about writing in general, anything I’ve posted about here on tumblr; anything on my AO3...let me know what’s on your mind!

Star Wars:

SWBB:

Take a Bond of Fate is officially up! (Previously referred to as just SWBB 2021 or the Dragonshifters AU because I literally titled it less than twelve hours before posting <.<) Well, the first 20k are up, anyway. I will be updating throughout the month and the fic will be complete by the end of the month, per the event rules. (I originally planned to do updates on Tuesdays and Fridays; tonight’s update will be delayed and who knows how well I’ll actually stick to it after tonight but it Will be posted in full by the end of May, I can say that much for sure XD)

As always, I think there are a few things I could’ve handled better/that feel a little rushed, but I think it turned out pretty good! There are some upcoming scenes I’m particularly fond of, but we’ll see if everyone else agrees. The core of this actually ended up being Bo and Padme? Which I was not expecting--I was expecting it to lean hard on the Bo and Anakin parallels, but here we are.

Anyway, there’s some fun bits to come!

Precipice:

No solid update ATM. Uh. Various Life things got bonkers over the past month or two, so TaBoF took pretty much all of my fic brain. However, since that project is essentially finished other than finalizing/polishing each update chunk as I post, I should be able to turn my attention here this month. Which means, fingers crossed, we’ll have a start date sometime in June for Protectors. I’ll post the first Preludes segment at the same time; it will involve Kallus, Lavinia, and Mara Jade, set just before Kallus is reassigned to Lothal.

(Others that I have planned will involve: 1) some combination of Kanan, Ezra, Hondo, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and Anakin; 2) Hera and whoever her contact is in this AU, as Ahsoka is otherwise occupied; 3) Whatever Maul is up to in this timeline; 4) Something to do with Palpatine’s fifth apprentice; and two more I haven’t decided on. I am taking suggestions! The purpose of Preludes is to patch some holes now that I’ve decided to write Rebels into the canon, which was not part of my original plan as I hadn’t yet seen it when I started planning/posting this AU. So these are more plot-relevant than the things that turn up in Bonus Content, which is why they’re in a separate fic, but not really enough to make a full arc between Milestones and Escalation, so, there it is.)

our faces like a mirror:

I’m now leaning towards sitting on this and using it for next year’s Big Bang? Because then maybe I’ll finally finish it, lol...anyway, I’m also going to see how people respond to stuff in TaBoF, because that will either Boost my enthusiasm for the project or, uh, the opposite, depending on how people respond to how I write Bo-Katan. So that may change, and I may finally get it out this year instead of next. We’ll see how that goes XD

Other SW Projects:

One of the SW discords I’m on has revived a prompt game we did last summer. I pulled my first prompt but haven’t actually, uh, done anything with it yet. <.< I’ll do that at some point.

As for various outlines or extant AUs I haven’t updated in forever...well, like I said, what little fic brain hasn’t been on BB the past month or two has been drifting back towards Precipice or occasionally co-opted by OFLAM so...yeah, nothing serious to report on that front, lol.

AtLA Projects:

I’m semi-planning/hoping to start posting At Least one of the two longfics I’ve been poking at sometime this summer. I’ve mentioned them here before, but one is long and tragic and focuses on Lu Ten; the other is an Avatar Zuko AU. Not sure which will draw my focus and get up first, but I do plan to write both of them! And possibly more. Because this fandom just Does That to me, lol.

Also, as I’ve mentioned in various times and places--I am pathologically incapable of not creating a bunch of OCs when I seriously fall into a fandom, and my AtLA work, in particular, will probably reflect that. I don’t super plan to write anything really centered on any OCs (I mean, apart from characters who Exist but have very little Canon Characterization (i.e., Lu Ten himself for that one fic, lol); and Lu Ten’s love interest because that’s an important part of the story), but they will be There and Prominent Characters. This is mostly mentioned because I know OCs aren’t for everyone, so that might put you off of my AtLA fic and I figured it was fair to give you a head’s up.

(...although actually I think none of my old fic that I crossposted to AO3 had significant OC involvement except for Glory...but then again that’s all oneshots and a little different.)

Other Fandoms:

BSG/SG-1 (BSG1?) crossover AU is still coming; I keep getting sidetracked from actually finishing it <.< I haven’t even finished the New Caprica and Haven section, I still have to get to the algae planet and then the Resurrection ship and...maybe I’ll end up posting this in chunks...

Uh, nothing else super planned, but as I mentioned last month, this outline might draw me back into BSG fandom a little more actively because it’s another forever fandom of mine.

Original Fiction:

I’m actually really proud of the Regency AU I wrote for a challenge last month, based on my Apocalypse In SPACE ‘verse Lux.

I need to update the Lux and Farglass Cycle archives still, and will hopefully be posting at least one other thing to RF this month, but we’ll see how that goes. I also might or might not be diving into Arthuriana in all its weirdness and glory this summer to prep for actually writing that Lady Mordred idea I had. And there are always other projects on the back burner, but that’s where things stand here.

...I think that pretty much covers it! Not all that much of an update, but as I said, Life got all...Lifey at me, plus BB had a hard deadline, so that’s where the most detail is.

But what about you guys? What are you working on/what do you have in the pipeline? Like I said, it’s an Open Question Night, and I’d love to hear what’s on your mind!

[disgrays-on]

ever thine, ever mine

Word Count: 3.3k

Pairing: Jason Todd // Reader

A/N: After I finished writing a huge part of this royal AU and cut out a huge chunk of it out during editing, I realised nothing really happened in this fic, nothing was truly resolved, nothing makes sense and everything is rushed but this will have to do bc I’ve come so far to just scrap this whole thing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

The thing is you've always sort of known that there was something...not right about all of this, something that just didn't sit too well with you. Jason had been more than charming when you had first met him. He was attractive and he knew it, flaunted it around with a knowing gaze and a boyish grin. He was passionate - you couldn’t get him to shut up once he started talking about something that he was really into - and it made him all the more endearing, really.

It only took you about ten minutes into a conversation with him to realise that there was more to him than what met the eyes. For one, his confident facade and cocky attitude were flimsy, at best, under critical scrutiny. If you hadn’t been closely observing him that first time, you would have missed the shifting eyes and the constant calculating gaze that made you think that he was far less extroverted than he wanted people to think.

There was just something about him, something you couldn’t quite put your finger on even after knowing him for as long as you have. Him being a crazy axe murderer was out of the question or at least, you hoped so. (You had brought it up once and he had laughed so hard until he was red in the face, grinning up at you once he was finished and fondly patting you on the back.)

He had his bad days, definitely not the most mentally sound, but you didn’t think you could name anyone who was in this day and age. Add that to the fact that you had seen the formal garb and the medals that he had hastily shoved into a crumbling box when you burst into his room one day, unannounced. He pushed it carelessly to the very back of his wardrobe, remaining silent as he did, but you didn’t need to be a detective to figure out he had been some sort of soldier. That had been enough of an explanation for his fidgety self and the odd habits that he seemed to unconsciously have.

He was mysterious, if not secretive. Navigating through his past was like navigating through a minefield. It was difficult to know what would get him to open up, get that shy little happiness to creep up around his eyes or what would get him to shut down faster than you could blink, get him drawing back further into the hollow shell that he had been in once. He’d get wistful looks sometimes when he thought you weren’t looking and it was always over the most random things. You didn’t want to push the issue because you understood the need for space, because you needed it too sometimes.

He was incredibly brilliant too, maybe not in the most conventional of ways but so clever in the way that always made you stop and think. He had a thorough knowledge of the inner workings of politics but always seemed to curl his nose up whenever you brought up anything of that sort. He didn’t own a television, didn’t like the news too much either. His curtains were always pulled shut until one day when he would feel suffocated enough, at which point they would be drawn back and the windows would be thrown wide open.

You didn’t know what he did but he had money and quite a bit of it too. You were quite content not knowing, really. As long as it wasn’t hurting anyone and not hurting you, it was fine that he was so distant about his past. You had things you didn’t want to talk about too. You didn’t think anything he could hide would be too devastating anyways.

That particular morning had started out as it normally would have, nothing terribly remarkable at all. You had work so you had slipped out of bed pretty early on, had a quick breakfast and had gotten ready as you normally would have, not forgetting to drop a small kiss on a bleary Jason’s forehead before leaving.

The small yet still monstrous army of tiny children that you had for students was already dutifully waiting for you when school time began and everything proceeded as it should have. At least, it seemed so. It wasn’t until you had to dismiss the kids that everything seemed to move downhill at an alarmingly rapid pace.

“Is it true?” One of your students had asked, her eyes wide and shiny, “Are you really friends with a Prince?”

The question had confused you more than anything else, truly. She had whispered her question with the awe and wonder of a completely lovestruck child that you had simply assumed that she must have been confusing reality with the tales you’ve been regaling to the kids for the past few days.

“What do you mean?” You had asked then, foolishly unaware of what toils and troubles lied ahead of you.

“Well, are you?” She asked again, eyebrows furrowing and soft cheeks puffing up, “Mommy said you were!”

You definitely weren’t, that much you were sure of. It didn’t even seem like a possibility to you. The only royal family you knew of was the one from Gotham and they were thousands of miles away from where you were. They’ve just never been relevant to your life enough for you to have cared about them so you weren’t sure where she could have gotten that from.

You laughed nervously because denying young children anything would only unleash the seemingly never-ending barrage of questions that they had ready specifically for moments like this one. You shook your head, “No, definitely not, sweetheart.”

“Well, my mommy said so.” She huffed, crossing her arms, “She said she saw you on TV with a Prince on that show that she always watches, the one with all the people saying the mean words!” The bell had conveniently rung at that point, saving you from having to answer her, but it had also just thrown you into a different form of hell. Out of the frying pan into the fire. Except it wasn't just a small tiny baby fire, no, it was a huge wild uncontrollable forest fire. As if set off by the school bell, shit had promptly decided it was the right time to go down then. You didn't know if you were to feel thankful or disgruntled over the fact that everything had only begun to fall apart after the working day was over. You had been seeing some of your students off when you were stopped in your tracks by a frazzled coworker, panting and sweating as she ran up to you. “It’s crazy out there!” She had said, looking severely dishevelled and alarmed as she led you to a window overlooking the front yard of the school, “Apparently they’re all here looking for you!” The sight that you were greeted with was enough to send your heartbeat into overdrive, pounding hard against your ribcage. Your mouth had dried up, all words and thoughts suddenly lost to the abyss that was your confusion and fright. You had no idea what was happening and why it was happening but this didn't seem good. The entire front area of your workplace was covered with hundreds of people. Sprawled across the yard were the paparazzi and journalists and news reporters and people with their cameras and recording equipment.

The sheer number of people present was terrifying, and not to mention, dangerous. And they were here for you? It made no sense. You didn't think you had done anything incriminating lately but you could always be wrong. Maybe all those years that you’d spent illegally downloading music was catching up to you. But that didn't explain the amount of press outside, waiting for you.

A quick check of your phone that you had silenced for work revealed that almost everyone you knew had been trying to contact you for the last few hours. That definitely wasn’t good. A big portion of the missed phone calls and unanswered text messages you received had been from Jason. A burst of yearning coursed through you. Jason. If he were here, you would have long ago submitted yourself to the comfort and warmth and safety of his arms. He would make this all go away somehow, he’d take care of all this and make it all better. How badly you wished he was here. He’d sent quite a few but the one that stood out to you the most was the first one he sent.

I don't know how they found out. I’m so sorry.

You didn’t think it was possible but your heart screeched to a halt at that. Found out what? Could he have been anymore cryptic? Whatever it was, he seemed to be convinced that all of this was his fault. The sudden urge to open the news app was unbearable so you booted it up, scrolling through. It didn’t take long for you to find exactly what you were looking for. Any more surprises today and you were sure your heart would stop for real.

ROYAL RUMOUR: LOST GOTHAM PRINCE FOUND IN A SECRET LOVE AFFAIR?

LOVE STORY FOR THE AGES! PRINCE JASON OF GOTHAM AND COMMONER!

ROYAL HOUSE ISSUES FORMAL STATEMENT

Suddenly, crazy axe murderer didn’t sound so bad. You scrolled through a couple more, feeling more and more dazed after each one. There were so many pictures of you and Jason - all from the same night, it seemed - and there was no room to deny it either. It was so clearly you and so clearly Jason, holding hands and eating dinner and laughing together and kissing.

You remembered that night clearly, Jason had dragged you to one of his favourite fast food restaurants for some ‘real good food’ and the two of you had a blast. The amount of information that the press had already managed to gather on you was terrifying. Even with the short amount of time, they had found out who you were, where you worked, where you lived, even the cafe that you often frequented.

When your instincts had told you that something wasn’t entirely right, you had expected some kind of family issue. Maybe Jason’s parents were both dead or maybe his family was unaccepting and they didn't like him very much. Maybe he never had a family to begin with or maybe he was running away from something, someone. But this was absolutely not it. You couldn't have predicted this outcome.

Jason, your Jason, was a Prince. Second-in-line to the throne after his older brother, the same Jason who rarely ever appeared in public when he was younger but when he was, he was always so bright. The Jason who was reported to have literally disappeared off of the face of the Earth after he was kidnapped and tortured during his deployment.

His sudden reappearance would definitely explain all this attention and you just happened to have been caught in all of it. How could you have missed it? No wonder he had seemed so familiar to you. You mentally berated yourself for being careless enough to not have recognised him. But the royal family had always been a private bunch of people, understandably so, and you simply didn’t care enough about them to have updated yourself with everything they did over the years.

You knew the Gotham royal family were made of mostly the King’s wards, that was until a few years back when a blood son was introduced to the court. Everyone had talked about it for a couple of months, matters regarding claim over the throne being one of the more controversial topics, but everything settled down as rumours often do. You saw articles or heard news of them in passing but you’ve never really ever truly looked into them.

And despite the fact that this couldn’t have possibly changed a thing for you - because you adored the Jason that you had fallen for, the one who often made you delicious meals, who grumbled over bad movie adaptations of books, who had sulked for about a day because he couldn’t keep a dog in his apartment - it didn’t change the fact that Jason had lied to you for so long. That realisation had hurt more than anything else but it also pissed you off a bit. Why didn’t he just tell you? You wouldn’t have been too upset but at least, this wouldn’t have happened.

I’ll explain everything when you get back. Alfred will pick you up. Stay safe.

His latest message had been sent a few hours ago and then not another word from him. You’d always prided yourself as quite the eloquent person, even in your text messages, but it was seemingly unavoidable for your response to have only been a string of question marks. Left unread, of course. If it was this bad for you, it was probably even worse for him. You had so many questions that no one seemed to have the answers to and you were feeling so many emotions that you weren’t exactly sure which one you should be feeling. Anger seemed to be winning over though so maybe anger. 

Getting home was an extremely trying process in itself. Going outside had resulted in a lot of chaos, yelling and shoving and flashes of pictures, and that didn’t get you anywhere. This was something that you expected to only happen in the movies or to other people who were definitely more important and more influential. Certainly not to you. You didn’t think you did anything important enough to garner this much attention.

But you needed to get home, to get to Jason. You needed to hear him out, needed an explanation as to why he thought hiding this from you was such a brilliant idea. Your being foolishly naive and blind to it probably helped him out though. You still couldn’t get over the fact that you didn’t make the connection.

Alfred, the person that Jason said would pick you up, was an old gentleman who appeared to be way too unperturbed for this to have been the first time. He offered his services, along with a handful of burly guards in pristine suits, to escort you to Jason’s apartment. The journey was thankfully less hectic than the situation had been at your workplace, at least. Alfred’s sarcastic remarks was a very welcome distraction to your situation, you found your nerves settling slightly. For a while, you had room to breathe and to process everything that happened.

When you arrived, Jason had welcomed you with a tight embrace, muttering a quick apology against your temple before pulling away. He looked worse for wear, exhaustion rolling off of him in waves even though he was fine this morning. All your anger dissipated at once. You could wait to reprimand him, he was already bad enough as it was. You reached up to cup his face, brushing your thumb against his cheekbone. A small smile flittered at the corners of his lips. This was the side he only wore around you, the side that rarely ever came out save for when the both of you were alone in the safety and comfort of a bedroom.

He only had a moment to spare before a knock on the door sounded through the apartment. A young man, Jason’s older brother - annoyingly enough, your brain is quick to recognise this royal this time - stood at the door, a soft smile breaking on his face as soon as his eyes land on Jason.

Jason frowned, dismayed, “What are you doing here?”

Richard, who you had to admit was beautiful, had promptly pulled Jason into a big hug. Jason had sighed in return but let himself be hugged, though their sweet greeting is cut short by Alfred’s stern corralling. Though their meeting had been pleasant, the moments afterwards felt far from that. It didn’t take long for Richard to speak his mind out, anger and distress in his every word.

“Why didn’t you come home, Jay?” He asked after a few minutes of ranting, voice finally quieting down. He looked shaken, heartbroken as he turned to his younger brother.

It seemed as good a time as any to give them privacy so you joined Alfred who was bustling around in Jason’s kitchen. From the kitchen, you could hear the yelling and the rough grunts but it stopped as quickly as it started. Jason came out a bit shaky and red around the eyes but it seemed like a huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. The easygoing atmosphere returned easily after that, the silence of the apartment easily replaced by their light banter as if they hadn’t just seen each other for the first time in a long time a few minutes ago.

“I came as soon as I could.” Richard admitted sheepishly, letting out a sigh of relief as he sunk into one of the sofas in Jason’s sitting room, “B didn’t want us all overwhelming you but we couldn’t just stay away.”

“We?” Jason parroted, a frown on his face, more resigned than anything.  

He shrugged, not in the slightest bit apologetic as he replied, “We missed you, Jason.”

Jason didn’t seem all too pleased at the sound of more people coming but Richard had said that there was no stopping them, not when they’d finally found Jason and were determined to bring him back home. Their father, on the other hand, would be joining them the next, not at all because he wanted to but because he had to do things properly, more officially. After all, it wasn’t always that a prince thought missing showed up in a whole different city altogether, so far away from home.

Something told you he was more than thrilled that his family were coming around though. He didn’t need to say it, his despondency before all of this occurred told you much about how much he actually missed his family. Seeing him with his siblings was like seeing a new side of him - he was more relaxed, more content even if he didn’t see it for himself. Seeing him settling into the family dynamic without much effort made your heart flutter in your chest.

“It was nice meeting you,” His older brother had said before he left, smiling at you so earnestly b “Thanks for taking care of Jay for us.”

And that had been enough to jar you. Everything made sense but at the same time, nothing made sense like everything were pieces of puzzles but none of them fit together perfectly. Jason had taken the time to explain it all to you and you’d pieced enough through the conversation happening around you but it was still overwhelming and sitting around, listening to Jason and his family didn’t help at all. You’d been stewing in your anxiety, thinking of what this could possibly mean for you and for him and for everything. He was a real prince, an actual member of the royal family. What the hell.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” You asked as soon as the door closed behind his family, the anger sneaking up on you and growing by the minute.

“I was going to.” He grumbled.

“But you didn’t!”

And maybe you had yelled a lot of things then that you didn’t mean now and things you regretted but honestly, you deserved it just a bit after all that you’d been through today. You didn’t have any doubts that you’d soon make up with him but for now, you were still ticked off and feeling a little petty. You wondered how much you could sell all the hoodies you've stolen from him for. Probably a lot. Maybe you'd go on eBay. Maybe you'd put one up tonight and see.

(The bids climbed faster than you could even comprehend, hundreds to thousands to a few hundred thousand. You might have yelled a bit. Jason, who had been sitting next to you at the time, had given you a confused look before peering over to look at your laptop. He had laughed so hard then and told you that his dad would definitely not be happy about this.)

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 Episode 18: “What’s Important Is . . . “

Eat your heart out, Disney, ‘cause TMS Entertainment is out here with cute and emotive 2D-animated tigers :^)

Seriously though, this was another great episode and I’m glad new fans can now appreciate Kisa and how much of a good sweet bean she is.

Thoughts under the cut. [Potential spoiler warning for the whole manga. Also I ended up talking a lot about bullying and anxiety and stuff so, y’know, content warning]

After taking a bit of a detour into Uo’s backstory for a few episodes, this episode goes back a bit and covers Kisa’s introduction arc, which was chapters 27 and 28 of the manga.

For comparison, episode 17 of the 2001 anime covered this exact same material, and in pretty much the exact same way, too. I don’t think there was anything particularly relevant that the 2001 anime cut from this episode. If I remember right, they at least kept the detail of him accepting the role of being the new student council president, even though it ultimately didn’t go much of anywhere because they didn’t get that far into the story.

Anyway, I knew this would be a really good episode because it was already a good arc in the manga, and the 2019 anime’s done a great job with the more serious episodes, but even then, it was still better than I expected. I don’t think they added or changed anything, they just adapted it really well.

One of the things that immediately stood out to me from the first scene and stayed throughout the whole episode was how good and detailed the background art and cinematography were, but I feel like I’ve said that about most episodes so I really should stop being surprised that this show’s directed well, lol. I just think it does a notably good job of elevating an already good script. But that first scene with Tohru and Yuki out in the streets while it was raining was really beautiful. And on the other end of the spectrum we got some more worrying glimpses of Yuki’s childhood. I still really like the fuzzy, black and white sorta atmosphere those scenes have.

Given that this episode is at the end of the day all about middle school bullying, it’d naturally run the risk of seeming like a bit of an after-school special, and even though some people might see it that way, I think it mostly avoids that by being a more realistic and empathetic take on the subject than most ‘episodes about bullying’ you get in TV shows. And thankfully most people, both new and old fans, seem to be totally on board with how the topic was handled in this episode.

I think it all boils down to how a big part of this episode’s message is that telling someone to effectively pick themselves up with their bootstraps and learn how to love themselves all on their own is deeply unhelpful and tends to just make the bullying victim feel worse about themselves for being unable to do that.

At least for the most part, I totally agree with the fact that people can’t just learn how to love themselves when they live in a loveless environment, especially when you think about where Yuki specifically is coming from with his speech about it, since he was literally raised in a cult. But you don’t even need to be born into a cult to relate to the general idea. Especially when you’re a kid, you’re just literally unable to do the sort of emotional introspection and self-care that’s expected of you because you just don’t have the life experience for it. People don’t just start out fully formed on an emotional level. Someone who has a healthy family environment growing up can learn certain skills earlier, but someone in a more abusive or even just emotionally distant family can struggle emotionally because they’re not being given the ‘emotional education’ they need. If that makes sense.

Like Yuki said, it can feel impossible to love yourself no matter how much you search your soul, because you have such a fundamentally warped and biased perspective of yourself that it’ll all loop back into self-hatred unless you can get a second opinion. It doesn’t exactly help that children are bullied for having traits that are genuinely good to have, which makes the idea of expecting them to love themselves for it even more unreasonable. People are even bullied for being ‘too full of themselves’ if they have even a mild amount of self-esteem, so really it’s just one of those ‘welcome to hell! welcome to hell! welcome to hell! :)’ catch-22s.

I was only mildly bullied during my school years, but I’ve always struggled with severe social anxiety, which was enough to slowly but surely ruin my education. It got more and more irrational and baseless as I got older and went to a high-school where nobody even interacted with me at all, but I still spent a good chunk of my high-school years being physically and emotionally incapable of attending.

I’ve also always had a bad habit of coping with any type of anxiety or stress or trauma by mentally shutting down and hiding away, and I still struggle with having a fairly bad stutter that’s mostly caused by my anxiety, even in stress-free environments, so I can’t help but really relate to both Kisa and Yuki in this whole sense. Once you start withdrawing into yourself, it gets harder and harder to stop, and the prospect of speaking up and putting yourself out there becomes more and more daunting, until even harmless and simple things in your day to day life start feeling overwhelming and impossible.

One thing that really gets me about this episode is how, even though we still have Tohru being her usual self and basically being the Soma family therapist, we also get a lot of focus on how Yuki and Hatsuharu are doing their best to try and support Kisa in ways that they weren’t properly supported when they were younger. It’s not like Tohru can’t relate to Kisa’s problems either, but I think it’s important that this is one of the first times we really see how the Soma members that Tohru is helping in her own way are becoming stronger and able to help others.

We also get another glimpse at one variation of a parent-child relationship in the Soma family, with how Kisa’s mother isn’t overprotective of her, but she isn’t full-on abusive or anything. She genuinely loves her daughter, but she’s becoming worn down by Kisa’s issues. I don’t think Momiji was wrong to say that Soma parents tend to fall into two categories, but it’s more like a spectrum between two points. And since the story is so long and there’s so many different Somas in it, we get to see that whole spectrum of how the zodiac curse can effect families, which in the long run makes the writing feel more realistic and nuanced than if it only ever acknowledged two extremes.

Anyway I think that’s about all I have to say about this episode. There’s some stuff here that vaguely sets up future plot points and character development, but we’ll get to that when we get to that.

In the mean-time, as I expected from having seen that one screenshot of Caitlin Glass’ notes, the next episode is going to be jumping forward in time again, but even further than the Uo episodes did, in order to adapt Ritsu’s intro episode. Which I think is for the best, considering how it looks like the rest of the season will be structured. It’s best to bundle these three character intro episodes together back to back. Though I’m a bit surprised that they’re choosing to have Ritsu’s episode be between the Kisa and Hiro episodes, rather than having those two happen back to back. I don’t think either of them would even be mentioned in the Ritsu episode, so it might feel like a bit of an odd diversion. But we’ll see.

Either way I’m already expecting to not really be a fan of the next episode since Ritsu is the absolute peak of grating shouty comedy which I just don’t like. Oh well.

[web2-0rankingstrategy-blog]

The Fundamental Guide To SEO In 2019

Keyword Research

In my Definitive Guide to SEO in 2014, I made the following statement: “Although much has changed over the past year when it comes to SEO, the principles of keyword research have remained relatively stable.” To some extent, this is still true today.

The fundamentals of performing keyword research have not changed. We still want to find words and phrases that our prospects are using to seek out our business and products. There are a variety of ways we can do this effectively:

Using keyword research tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, SEMrush and Searchmetrics’ Keyword Analysis tool to find popular keywords and phrases that aren’t hyper-competitive. Analyzing your Web 2.0 Ranking Strategy analytics to find out which keywords are already generating traffic and sales. You can use this data to find new, related keywords, or to build additional content based on these terms. Looking at your competitors’ top-ranking pages to determine which keywords they’re targeting Focusing on long-tail keywords as natural language search becomes more popular and pervasive. While these strategies can all be very effective at finding relevant keywords, we have definitely seen a shift away from the one-to-one relationship between using these keywords and achieving high rankings.

When performing keyword research, focus on finding relevant topics and themes to structure your content around. Instead of going through the process in order to choose one or two words or phrases to write about, use your findings to learn more about your audience and their needs and interests.

The Rise of the Long-tail Keyword for SEO How to Identify Long-tail Keywords for Your SEO Campaign 5 Tools for Finding High-Value Long-tail Keywords Why Your Keyword Strategy is Incomplete without User Intent

On-Page SEO

So, if this one-to-one relationship between specific keywords, user queries and search rankings is gone (or at least significantly diminished), how does on-page SEO work in 2016? Without keywords, which on-page strategies and tactics are still relevant?

Searchmetrics’ 2015 Ranking Factors report provides us with important insights into how we should be structuring our content in order to rank. Following are some key findings from the report, along with how you can incorporate them into your own content.

Word Count: We have known for some time that Google shows a preference for longer, more comprehensive content. According to the report, the average word count for top-ranking content is in the range of 1,140-1,285 words. This is up from 902 words in 2014. When creating content, focus on providing comprehensive coverage of your topic, rather than writing shorter content that only brushes the surface of your topic.

Proof and relevant terms: These are terms that support and ‘prove’ relevance to the main topic of your content. Using them indicates to Google and to your readers that you’re comprehensively covering the topic. Proof terms are words and phrases that essentially must be used for a particular topic; for instance, ‘search’ will almost always be used when writing about ‘SEO’. Relevant terms, on the other hand, are words that are often used alongside a primary keyword in order to provide holistic coverage of the topic. When discussing ‘SEO’, relevant words might be ‘Google’, ‘Panda’ or ‘rankings’.  Years ago, SEO professionals used the term “LSI Keywords” (Latent Semantic Indexing) to refer to these types of keywords, but I haven’t seen that term used widely in a couple years.

Keywords within content: Keywords should still be incorporated into your content; especially in the title, header and subheaders, introduction paragraph, and conclusion paragraph. Overall, according to the Searchmetrics report, top-ranking pages saw an increase in the total number of keywords used in the body of the text; however, this did not apply to the very highest-ranking pages. Continue to use your desired keywords throughout your content.

Internal links: The number of internal links on high-ranking pages has increased since 2014. According to the report authors, the number of links you include in your content isn’t as important as optimizing your overall link structure: “What counts is not the total number of internal links, but rather the optimization of the internal structure and page information so that the user (and also the search engine) is optimally guided through the provider’s content and to ensure that the user stays on the page and is satisfied.”

Use of header and meta-tags: 99% of top 10 pages had a meta-description, and 80% used an H1 tag. While the meta-description won’t necessarily help your content rank higher, it does act as a sort of ‘ad copy’ in the search engine results (SERPs). As much as possible, ensure your H1 tags and descriptions are unique and accurately describe the main topic of your page.

Site-Wide SEO

Ensuring each piece of content is properly optimized is key; however, without the proper site-wide elements in place, your on-page SEO won’t do much good. This section will cover important site-wide elements you should have in place in order to rank well in organic search results.

A mobile-friendly site: Since Google’s mobile-friendly update earlier this year (commonly referred to as Mobilegeddon), mobile-friendliness has become a significant ranking factor. If you haven’t already, ensure your site uses a responsive design, or that you have a dedicated mobile site or app in place.

Quick loading times: Your site needs to load quickly on all devices; however, with the significant increase in mobile usage, it’s particularly critical your site loads quickly on mobile devices. Searchmetrics found that the top-ranking pages loaded in an average of 1.16 seconds for desktop results and 1.10 seconds for mobile. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can help you figure out how quickly your site is loading (just keep in mind this tool works on a page-by-page basis, not on a site-wide basis). Pingdom provides another reliable tool.

Proper content structure: Structuring your content in a logical way is great both for rankings and for user experience. There are a number of ways you can provide an optimal structure for your content:

Use interactive elements such as menus and buttons Use unordered lists (bullets) to break up content into manageable chunks As already mentioned, use internal links to guide users and search engines through relevant content on your site. Using external links may also be beneficial, since it may align your site within what Google considers to be a good or relevant neighborhood of similar-themed sites. Mobile SEO

We’ve already touched briefly on the importance of optimizing your site for mobile. It’s no longer enough to optimize for desktop and ignore mobile users. In fact, Google recently announced that more searches happen on mobile devices than on desktop devices. So if you ignore mobile optimization, you potentially alienate over half your site’s visitors.

Apart from having a mobile-friendly, responsive site design, what other factors are important for ranking in mobile search? This next section will provide some key insights from Searchmetrics’ 2015 Mobile Ranking Factors report.

File size and site speed: Not surprisingly, these are both important factors for ranking in mobile search. Mobile pages need to load quicker, and should be smaller in size than their desktop counterparts.

Mobile-friendly format and structure: Because mobile users are often accessing the web while ‘on the go’, your content should be structured in a way that makes it easy to read and understand. Using bulleted lists can help with this, as can using slightly larger font sizes (top-ranking mobile pages used an average font size of 15.63 above the fold and 11.44 in central areas).

Keywords in content: As with desktop content, continue to incorporate your keywords into your content. Proof and relevant terms are also important for your mobile content, although their usage is slightly lower than in their desktop counterparts. This is likely due to the fact that desktop content is typically longer than mobile content.

Word count: Generally speaking, mobile content should be shorter than desktop content.The average word count for top-ranking mobile pages in 2015 was 868, compared with just 687 the year before. However, these numbers are far lower than the average word count for top-ranking desktop pages.

Ads: If you’re using ads within your mobile-optimized content, keep in mind that high-ranking mobile pages tend to have significantly fewer ads than their desktop counterparts. Ads can slow down loading times even more significantly on mobile devices, so keep your ads to a minimum.

Link Building

The old school concept of link building – reaching out to other webmasters to exchange links, manually submitting your site to web directories, posting links to your site in articles on Web 2.0 sites that have no editorial review process, and leaving spammy comment and forum links – is long gone.

Most savvy business owners know that these link building tactics are not only ineffective, but that they can cause ranking penalties to their site. However, the emergence of evidence that non-linked mentions and citations (so called “implied links”) are considered in the ranking algorithm has changed the perspective across the industry on link building; it has become apparent that building a brand results in the kind of links that bring the most value from an SEO perspective. Rather than building links, business owners and marketers should be working towards earning links through publishing high-quality content.

In their ranking factors report, Searchmetrics articulates this shift nicely: “For many years, links formed the absolute basis for search engine rankings, for SEO’s, and for the analysis of ranking factors. This was also the reason for the highly tactical manipulations in this sector over a long period. These times have largely passed. We are also convinced that links will continue to lose relevance in the age of semantic contexts and machine learning with a user focus. For search engines it is a question of ranking the best and most relevant content. In the capability to determine this, they are continually improving – especially Google, as the data in this study shows.”

While the significance of links as a ranking factor is changing, they remain a significant ranking factor.  In a recent analysis performed by Moz and BuzzSumo, they were able to identify the content types that are most likely to accumulate a high number of links. These are:

So, what tactics remain viable for link building aside from publishing great content and then hoping it attracts links?

Guest blogging remains an effective strategy, not only for building inbound links, but for reaching a new, targeted audience.

Promoting your content on social media is also an extremely effective strategy, but not for the reason you might think. You may have heard buzz around the term ‘social signals’. This is the idea that likes, shares and retweets on social media count as links, and therefore pass on ‘link juice’ to your site and content. However, Google has explicitly stated that they do not count likes and shares from Facebook or Twitter as links.

So, does that mean getting traction on social media is useless in terms of SEO? Not at all. As I detailed in How social signals really affect your search rankings, there is most definitely an indirect relationship between social likes and shares and high rankings. Excellent content that gets liked and shared gets in front of a larger audience. As more people see and appreciate that content, it begins to accumulate more links. And content that gets more links still tends to rank higher in search.

There are many other tactics for link building, such as broken link building, submission-based link building, and even setting up a scholarship then conducting outreach to various colleges to promote your scholarship (with a link back to your site). PointBlankSEO has a nice guide that includes plenty of other tactics. Neil Patel’s advice on link building is also worth the read.

See how great content attracts links? Those last two links are proof-in-the-pudding examples!

Content Marketing

I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on the importance of content marketing for SEO. More than ever before, content is at the very heart of the practice of achieving high rankings in search. Neil Patel called content marketing “The New SEO” as far back as 2012.

Tactics that used to be effective at achieving rankings – such as writing short content with a very high keyword density – no longer work. The key to high rankings in 2016 is publishing long-form, comprehensive content that meets the needs of users. Above all, it must provide value. For a checklist of whether your content is high-quality, see The 12 Essential Elements of High-Quality Content.

This type of content will often naturally rank well in search results, because it attracts shares and links. Additionally, content that does a thorough job of covering a particular topic will naturally incorporate many of the elements that we know are important for rankings; they will naturally use proof and relevant terms, they will tend to be longer, and they will incorporate helpful internal and external links.

With a proper distribution strategy for your content, your content is far more likely to gain traction; through social shares, links and through increased search rankings. Creating useful, thorough, well-optimized content is key, but so is having a plan in place for getting that content in front of a wider audience.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve found this SEO guide helpful, and that you can use these strategies to boost your own rankings. But perhaps even more importantly, I hope you can use these findings to inform your content creation process; providing the best possible user experience, while naturally gaining increased traction and rankings for your content.