#but ultimately we only did one run that day and scratched our entries for the afternoon + following day

[petrichorpaws]

the process of a noodle

[dialovers-translations]

Diabolik Lovers DARK FATE ー Laito [VAMPIRE ENDING]

ー The scene starts in the hallway at Eden

Yui: ( ...I’ve reached my limit...!! I... )

Laito: Yui-chan...! Hang...in there!

Yui: Laito-kun...Uu...

Laito: I’ll save you right now...!

ーー Kuh, uu...!!

Yui: ( Laito-kun...At this rate...! )

Laito-kun...Just forget about me...and runーー

Laito: I refuse...!

*Rumble rumble*

Yui: Laito-kun!!

Laito: !!

Yui: I’ll be okay so...

Laito: Don’t say that...I will...save you...!

*Rumble rumble*

Yui: ( Laito-kun...!! )

Laito: Come on! Don’t close your eyes, grab my hand...!!

On certain CGs, little black roses will appear on the screen. If you click on them, you get an extra line of dialogue.

“My life has been worth it, simply because I was able to meet you. ...Thank you.”

“Fuck...! These stupid flames...! ...But don’t worry, Bitch-chan. I’ll keep you safe.”

Yui: ...!!

Laito: ...! Thank god...I made it just in time...

*Rustle*

Laito: Ugh...

Yui: Laito-kun, did you hurt yourself...!?

Laito: Fufu...It’s just a scratch...

It’s such a trivial matter, when I consider I could have lost you.

Yui: Laito-kun...

Laito: Even if I have been nothing but a marionette my whole life, my love for you is genuine.

Just like you said.

Even if everything else went exactly according to his plans, there’s at least one thing.

One thing which that guy has no say in. That’s...our feelings.

Yui: Yeah...You’re right.

Laito: I’ve been aimlessly walking around in a thorny forest, and tried to forget about the pain by numbing my own emotions.

However, a cute princess who wandered into that forest...she reminded me.

These feelings she taught me...They are forever.

Yui: Yeah...

Laito: My feelings are the only thing I can say are entirely my own. And what this heart of mine seeks outーー

That is the sole truth in my eyes...

Yui: Yeah...Exactly...You’re right. Laito-kun...

Laito: Cough cough...The fire...! Fuck, they flames have reached this far...

Yui: Ugh...

( Is there no way out...? )

( However, now that our hearts have become one, I feel like we found happiness regardless... )

*Flash*

Yui: ...Eh?

Laito: The door...The door to the Chamber of Time...opened...?

Yui: What is happening?

( It refused to even budge when Laito-kun was screaming at the top of his lungs. )

Karlheinz: ーー You who are fit to be Adam. You have been granted entry.

Now, step forward aiming for Eden.

Laito: ...!?

Yui: Karlheinz-san?

ー They enter the Chamber of Time

Yui: ( This is the Chamber of Time...It’s a very mysterious place... )

( I’m scared, yet strangely calm at the same time... )

Laito: ...

Karlheinz: No need to glare at me like that, Laito.

Laito: I’m not glaring. I just figured there’s something I should tell you beforehand. 

I’m no longer your puppet.

Karlheinz: Hmph.

Laito: I’m not quite sure what you’re setting me up for. However...

I have zero interest in carrying on your intentions.

No matter what those may be.

Karlheinz: I see. That is a shame.

Laito: The fact you don’t seem to feel any regret at all really gets on my nerves. ...Honestly, I can’t believe you...

You knew I would turn out like this, didn’t you?

Karlheinz: ...I wonder?

Laito: You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you. I bet you know what comes next too, don’t you?

Karlheinz: ...

Laito: Your silence proves that I’m right. Why did you let us in here?

Karlheinz: To give my blessings to the anticipated future. 

Laito: Your blessings? 

Karlheinz: You, who has become Adam, allow me to entrust you with this power...

Laito: ...!?

Karlheinz: You have become the first Demon who obtained the truth and learnt to experience human sentiment.

Therefore, I shall grant you my strength. Come on, accept it.

You will need these powers.

Laito: ...No thank you.

Yui: ...?

Laito: If you want to see me die from sheer self-hatred after accepting those powers, then go ahead and force them upon me.

Karlheinz: ...

Laito: I don’t care what you think. I’m free nowーー

Karlheinz: I see.

Laito: Goodbye.

Karlheinz: ...

ー The scene shifts back to the hallway

Yui: Laito-kun, are you sure you did the right thing?

Laito: Nfu~ I did. I don’t want those powers at all.

Come on, let’s go. Let’s leave Eden together.

Yui: ...Yeah...

Laito: I’m sure many trials will wait ahead of Adam and Eve after they’ve left Eden.

But you’ll come with me, right?

Yui: Yeah, of course!

ー The scene shifts back to the Chamber of Time

Karlheinz: ーー Good grief.

Socrates: Despite sighing, you seem happy somehow.

How does it feel to play the part of the ultimate villain?

Karlheinz: What happens to me is of no concern. As long as I consider that this will aid in the birth of a new humankind. 

Regardless of the circumstances, I have lost this fight.

Socrates: I think you are the only person I know who could rejoice in a loss, my friend.

Karlheinz: ーー Let us put the match on hold for a while.

Socrates: Very well.

Monologue

Surrounded by a sea of flames,

the two of us fled Eden hand-in-hand.

Amidst the scorching fire blocking our path,

Laito-kun somehow seemed happy.

At last...

We might just have obtained,

the freedom we’ve always wished for.

*TIMESKIP*

Monologue

In the end, it turned out that the one who set fire to Eden back then,

had been Shin-kun.

Afterwards, this escalated into an all-out war,

between the two Founders and the other demonic races.

The Sakamaki and Mukami brothers quickly became involved in this conflict,

with every day being just as busy as the last.

However, Laito-kun is the only one...

who insists that the war is none of his business.

He seemed to be enjoying his new freedom of mind to the fullest.

Perhaps they had realized this, 

but despite the many complaints from his brothers, none of them opposed his behavior.

I believe this might have been his brothers’ way,

to show that they actually do care about Laito-kun.

ー The scene shifts to the forest

Laito: ーー Phew. Now we just have to put a stone on top. ...There.

*Thud*

Yui: Done?

Laito: Nfu~ It’s complete. Come on, this way. I want you to be the first person I show this to.

*Rustle*

Laito: What do you think?

Yui: ーー I think it’s great. I’m sure Cordelia is very happy as well.

Laito: Fufu, I’m not so sure about that?

Yui: I’m positive.

Laito: When you say that, I’m tempted to believe it.

Yui: ( Cordelia’s grave. I was very shocked when Laito-kun suddenly said he would make her one. )

( This shows that Laito-kun was finally able to make peace with his past and move on, right? )

Laito: ...

Yui: I wonder if she’ll be able to rest in peace now?

Laito: Well, I doubt it.

Yui: Really...?

Laito: I mean, she was quite the fierce personality after all. The word ‘peaceful’ just doesn’t apply to her.

ーー However, now I’ve come to realize that this might have been what made her pain twice as bad.

Of course, I suffered too, and was hurt in many ways. However, by doing so...Sheーー

When I consider that she did those things, hoping that perhaps it would make Karlheinz finally look her way...

She suddenly seems so miserable..pitiful, and so very pathetic...

Yet incredibly sorrowfulーー

Yui: Laito-kun...

Laito: Her ways were wrong. However, that was a fate none of us could have escaped.

As a result, I was hurt. However, this is also what allowed me to eventually meet you.

Because I have had to bear many struggles (1), there was a truth to be discovered at the end of it all, don’t you think?

Yui: Yeah, I’m sure.

Laito: ...

Yui: ...

*Rustle*

Laito: ...

Yui: Um...Are you sure you don’t want to stay longer?

Laito: Yeah.

Yui: ーー Even though you’re crying?

Laito: Nfu~ These are happy tears because I’m thinking of our future together.

Yui: You’re joking around...even right now?

Laito: I’m not joking. How cruel.

...Come on, let’s go.

Yui: Yeah...

Laito: ーー See you. Mother.

Yui: !!

( Laito-kun referred to Cordelia as ‘Mother’ for the first time ever... )

( ...I’m glad. )

( With this...Laito-kun’s heart has truly been set free. )

ーー Where are we headed next?

Laito: Nfu~ I guess we should return to the human world for now? I’m pretty sure we’ll get involved in some annoying conflict if we stay here.

Yui: You haven’t made any concrete plans yet?

Laito: No. Not really. Disappointed?

Yui: No, Iーー

Laito: ‘ーーI will go anywhere as long as we’re together!’, right?

Yui: ...!!

Laito: Ah, I was right? I figured so. Well then, let’s depart to our lovely castle in the human worldー!

Yui: A castle in the human world...?

Laito: Nfu~ A wonderful place~ You’ve got nothing to worry about if you just leave everything to me.

Yui: ( That sounds a little fishy coming from him but oh well. )

( I also like that side of him after all. )

Laito: Ahー I’m so excited. Let’s do all things we’ve missed out on so far...Like ‘this’ and ‘that’~

Yui: What are you thinking of?

Laito: Eeh~? You’re curious? Sure, I don’t mind telling you...

Yui: N-No, nevermind, I don’t want to hear...!

Laito: Nfufu~ Oh come on, don’t say that. My precious Princess Bitch~!

Yui: Don’t call me that...!

Laito: Eeh~? Let me think? I can’t help myself when you protest like that though?

Yui: Laito-kun...Please...!

Laito: Nfu~ Then, ‘cutie’~

Yui: T-That’s kind of embarrassing too because I’m not used to you calling me that...

Laito: Eeh? Really? Then, ‘Bitch-chan’?

Yui: Yeah, that’s fiーー Wait.

That one’s getting a no too!

Laito: Fufufu~ I can’t believe you want to be called ‘Bitch-chan’. Honestly, you’re just so...Nfu~ 

ーー Very cute!

Yui: ...!!

( Laito-kun’s this happy yet he can still be himself. )

( That...makes me happier than anything else. )

( Since you remain by my side to this day, we can both vow our love for each other. )

( Now, until foreverーー )

ーー THE END ーー

Translation notes

(1) He continues to use the ‘thorns’ metaphor here, saying that he walked a path full of thorns. 

[fanmoose12]

Partners

Characters: Petra Ral, Levi, Hanji Zoe x Levi Genre: Action / Mystery / Romance Rating: T

Detective!au

Summary: when Petra was promoted to a detective and partnered up with legendary Levi Ackerman, she felt like the happiest person in the world.

But, as she soon found out, detective Ackerman she used to admire so much was actually a far cry from the ideal policeman Petra thought he was. He was rude, harsh and easily annoyed. And, in addition, he still hadn’t moved on from the death of his previous partner - detective Hange Zoe.

Chapter 11/?

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Сhapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Сhapter 7

Сhapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

With every word from Levi's mouth, Erwin's face grew darker and darker.

"Fuck." He declared, as soon as Levi had finished. "Fuck," he repeated, rubbing his temples. He took a deep, heavy sigh, and when he blinked, the tense expression was miraculously gone, the usual look, full of determination and conviction, taking its place.

"So no sign of forced entry?” he asked, calm and collected and completely devoid of the previous frustration. “No sign of struggle? And no sign of Petra?"

"Yes, sir." Oluo confirmed with a frantic nod, which reminded Levi of a stupid toy dog Hange once put in his car.

Had the matter at hand been at least a little less grave, perhaps, he’d even crake a smile at the comparison. Hange definitely would have. Alas…

“And do we know who’s behind it?”

“No,” Levi replied. “Hange suspects one of Zeke’s man, but she also thinks some third party is involved.”

Erwin accepted his answer, slowly scratching his chin. “And where is Hange herself?"

“She went to talk to Zeke to ask if he knows something, and…" Levi faltered, not sure if he should share this information with Erwin. Hange was sure that Zeke was innocent, and Levi never doubted her, but…

"And?" Erwin prompted.

Fuck it, Levi decided. Perhaps, Erwin’s unbiased opinion was exactly what they needed.

"Oluo found Zeke's cigarette pack inside the apartment," he said, throwing it on Erwin's desk.

"It's not his," there wasn’t even a hint of doubt in his voice. Erwin didn’t even glance twice at the evidence presented to him. "Zeke would never be so careless. Someone's trying to sabotage him, and they are not very good at it."

“So you think it’s someone else?”

“Naturally.”

Erwin’s confidence eased a portion of his worries. If he and Hange were of the same mind, then it must be the truth. At least, he didn’t let Hange meet up with a potential culprit all by herself. Not that it gradually quelled his concern, but it was something…

“Zeke Yeager…” Oluo mumbled, biting his thumb. “Yeager, Yeager… I heard this name somewhere…”

“Huh?” Levi raised an eyebrow, looking quizzically at him.

“Yeager!” he exclaimed, his eyes lightening up. “Of course! Yes, now it came back to me!”

“What came back?” Levi demanded, glaring at Oluo in annoyance. God, how he hated being kept in the dark…

Oluo didn’t respond, irritating Levi even more. Instead he reached Erwin’s desk in two short strides, pushing him aside. “May I, sir?”

“Be my guest,” Erwin made a welcoming gesture, pulling his chair back. “If you know something, then…”

“Could be just a coincidence,”Oluo muttered, as he opened the database on Erwin’s computer. “But…”

For a long moment nothing happened. The office was silent, except for the sounds of typing on a keyboard, and Oluo’s quiet murmurs.  

Levi shared a look with Erwin. He shrugged helplessly, seeming just as bewildered by Oluo’s actions, as Levi himself felt.

“Aha!” he beamed, finally showing Erwin what he found. “Like I said, could be just a coincidence, but I came across name Yeager before. Here.”

“A family murdered in their own house,” Erwin began reading, his eyes quickly scanning the page. “Wife and husband found dead in their own bedroom by their fourteen year old son, who came back from a sleepover. The identity of a murderer remains unknown.”

“It was the first case I took as I started working,” Oluo confessed, scratching his neck. “That’s why it stuck with me. Don’t know if it has any connections to your Zeke…”

“The father of the family, Grisha Yeager,” Levi read the name from behind Erwin’s shoulder. “Zeke is his son. From the first marriage, but still… Maybe, he was murdered, because someone wanted to get back at Zeke.”

“And now that same someone wants to finish the job,” Erwin agreed. “The culprit was never found after all. It’s a solid theory.”

“Or as solid as we can get for now,” Levi nodded.

"It's different from other cases, though,” Erwin contemplated thoughtfully, his gaze turning distant, as he taped his finger against the desk.

"Other cases?" Oluo shuddered. "Are you talking about recent... Murder cases?" he paled, his lower lip trembled, and Levi started to regret bringing him here. They needed to keep their heads clear. Petra needed them to keep their heads clear. There was no time for worrying and panicking right now.

In Levi’s experience, that attitude could only lead to more tragedy.

"It's obviously different with Petra," Erwin said, his voice going an octave softer. Levi stared at him, almost gawking. Erwin wasn't the man to give empty promises. Either he was that optimistic about this whole ordeal, or... Levi preferred not to think about the other possibility.

"Levi?" Erwin turned to him. "What do you think?"

"I think Oluo is right, Petra was taken by someone close to Zeke. But either it was the same perpetrator from before or someone else, it remains to be unknown," he replied. "And I think we don't have any time to waste."

"Agreed," Erwin clenched his jaw, his brows furrowed. "I'll talk with Pixis and Nile, ask if they know anything or if they have any people they can spare... We need to start the search..."

"Sannes!" Oluo suddenly exclaimed, startling Erwin and Levi. "Sannes, we should check him first! We’ve planted a bug on him just yesterday!"

"Fuck," Levi groaned in frustration, feeling like the biggest and the most useless idiot in the world. He had completely forgotten about it.

"I didn't see him at work today," Erwin noted. "Perhaps, it's worth checking it out. Take care of it, Levi."

"Will do," he nodded. "Permission to go?"

"Report to me once you find anything," Erwin stood up. "I'll go to Pixis and Nile."

Levi nodded again, and left the office, his steps swift and heavy.

 ***

"Could it be our lead?" Oluo asked.

They've listened through every conversation that Sannes had that day and the day before. And only one of them, the one where he had agreed to a meeting with an unknown man, had raised Levi's suspicion.

"Not sure if we can call it a lead," he mumbled, biting his lip. There was no word about Petra and no mention of the actual location, but it was something they could work with. It was a starting point, at the very least. Much better than nothing. "But it's definitely a clue. Come on, we need to continue our investigation."

"Meaning..."

"Meaning we're going to break into Sannes' office and see if we can find something inside. Don't worry," he clasped Oluo's shoulder with just a little too much force. Oluo coughed, almost doubling over under Levi’s hard hand. "Nothing you hadn't done before."

  ***

“Zeke is a fool,” the man sneered, his voice full of disgust. “He’s not the man he was before. Ever since he took in that Zoe, he made mistake after mistake. It’s time to put an end to this. It’s time for someone else to take over his legacy. Our gang needs a new leader. Someone, who has as much potential as Zeke, but who doesn’t yet possess any of his flaws. Someone, who is cunning and ruthless. There is only one man who can do this," he finished, and even from afar Petra could see a shine of adoration in his eyes.

Sannes scoffed, rolling his eyes, not moved by the passionate speech at all. "And who is that?"

"No one can achieve the greatness Zeke once possessed. Except," the man smiled, and the sight of it made shivers run down Petra's spine.

"His own brother."

"You've gone mad," Sannes rolled his eyes, still unconvinced. "You've lost it completely, and now you want to drag me down with you. I refuse. Good luck getting arrested, but I’m out of here.”

“You’ll regret this, Sannes,” the man promised, his eyes flashing. “You’ll come begging for us to take you back in no time.”

“I really doubt that, boy,” Sannes sneered, his face showing nothing but disgust. “And if you’re going to actually proceed with your plan, then be ready to meet Ackerman. Believe me, it won’t be a pleasing experience. See you in prison,” he finished, and left, throwing the door shut.

As soon as Sannes had stormed out, the man with an eerie smile turned around to face her.

Instantly, Petra closed her eyes and lowered her head, but the man simply laughed.

"There is no need to pretend," he spoke, shortening the distance between them. "I know you've been awake for quite some time, detective Ral."

She looked up then, saying nothing and glaring at him beneath her bangs. Just the sight of that man left her breathless, her heart beating so loudly she could hear it in her ears, but she wouldn’t show him her fear. She was better than this. He may have had an ultimate upper hand over her, but she would never give him the satisfaction of seeing her tremble.

"I think we've started off on a wrong foot," the man smiled, the shadow of a lightbulb above him making him look even creepier. "I haven't even introduced myself. I'm Floch, nice to meet you!"

With the same crazy smile on his lips, he reached out and patted her shoulder. Petra winced, unable to move away from the undesired touch.

"What do you want from me?" she hissed, trying to hide the shaking in her voice. As discreetly as possible, she tried to loosen her restraints. In movies she watched with Erd, Gunter and Oluo, heroes always freed themselves so easily, the ropes being nothing more than a nuisance. But in reality, they didn't bulge an inch. Petra searched through her mind, trying to remember what characters from those movies did. Wiggle out of the restrains? Broke their wrists? Or was it applicable only for the handcuffs? Shit. She should have watched more movies like this, instead of melodramas and rom-coms. Shifting her attention back to the present, she stared up at her captor, still glaring at him defiantly.

"What do I want from you? The same thing I wanted from the others."

The same thing he wanted from the others? But the others were... dead. Petra suppressed a shiver.

"It's nothing personal, really,” he continued in the same careless manner. “All I need from you is to motivate your partner."

"Levi?" Petra gasped. "What it has to do with him?"

To her surprise, the man shrugged. "Nothing, really. In a way," he swept his hand across the room. "He's just a victim of circumstances. He's one of the best detectives in this city and he has a personal connection with Zeke. It'd be a shame not to use him."

"But why do you need him?" she pulled on the ropes, leaning closer towards the man and looking deep inside his eyes, trying to see right through him, trying to understand him. "Why can't you just kill Zeke and be done with it?"

The man tutted, shaking his head. "That's not what I—" there it was, that same pleased, creepy smile. "What we want to do. Taking Zeke's life would be too easy. We want to destroy it. But unfortunately," he continued in a voice of badly feigned sympathy. "You're not the main event here."

"Not the main event?" Petra echoed, confused. If it wasn't her, then....

"Not sure if you've met...” his eyes lightened up with something dark and dangerous. The smile on his face grew wider, more sinister. “But surely you've heard of one Hange Zoe?"

"Hah," a short chuckle escaped her lips. Very soon it turned into a full blown laughter. Petra would have clenched her sides if she wasn't tied up, she would have doubled over, hands on her knees and chest heaving, overcome with a sudden feat of giggles.

"What are you laughing at?" Floch inquired, the smile disappearing under a frown.

"You, of course," Petra answered, still breathless. "You're a bigger fool than I thought. To think that you can take on Hange Zoe..." of course, he had already gotten her, but Floch had taken her by surprise and she wasn't nearly as experienced and skilled as Hange. And even if they do somehow catch Hange... "Levi would never let you even get close to her. More than that," Petra raised her chin, a confident smirk pulling on her lips. "I'm sure he'll show up here so very soon. He'll save me and ruin your stupid plan. Then you'll be rotting in jail alongside your Zeke."

"We'll see about that," Floch promised through gritted teeth. "Wait a couple of hours, detective, and we'll see if your optimism would remain just as strong."

He gave her a furious look and then did a sharp turn, heading to the door.

“Enjoy your last hours. I’ll come to check up on you later.”

With that he had left, and Petra finally managed to breathe normally.

*** "Weren't you supposed to be good at this?" Levi dryly inquired. With a bored expression on his face, he was leaning against the wall, watching Oluo fiddle with a lock on the door to Sannes' office.

"I never said I was," Oluo grunted, wiping sweat from his forehead. His head darted from one side to other, checking if the hallway remained empty. "It's my first time breaking into someone's office, you know."

"Eh?" Levi frowned, confused. "Then how did you and Petra get in the other day?"

"I stole a key," Oluo huffed.

Levi rolled his eyes, pushing Oluo aside. "Let me handle it then. You go and stand on a lookout."

Oluo didn't need to be asked twice. He got his fair share of bullying from Levi today. With an annoyed but very quiet - he wasn’t so thrilled about receiving even more insults - sigh, he rose to his feet, going to do what Levi had requested of him. He didn’t even reach the end of a hallway, and Levi was calling out to him.

"Already?" his eyebrows went up. "You broke the lock so quickly? How?"

"Well," Levi shrugged and pushed the door open, sporting an almost smug expression. "Let's just say I wasn't always a law-abiding policeman."

"So cool..." Oluo whispered in reverence, as he followed Levi inside the office.

In Oluo's humble opinion and in comparison to a small cubicle he shared with Erd, Sannes' office was huge. A large desk, a wide bookshelf that took up most of the wall, a leather couch and a mini-fridge with a coffee machine and a microwave oven? If affiliating yourself with criminals meant you can have a workplace like this... Oluo wasn't that opposed to the idea anymore.

But they took Petra, he reminded himself. They were the bad guys, even if they were much richer and more successful than he could ever be. They certainly didn’t deserve any of it. And his job was to catch them. 

"So what should be our starting point?" he asked Levi.

"You could start with telling me what the fuck you are doing inside my damn office."

With heart in his throat, Oluo whirled around. As his eyes met Sannes' dark and furious ones, Oluo gulped, slowly taking a step back.

He chanced a glance at Levi and was surprised to see that he didn't look as scared and panicked as Oluo himself felt.

Quite the contrary.

"Sannes." he snarled.

With wide eyes and mouth open in shock, Oluo watched how Levi manhandled Sannes, a man, who was almost twice his size. He pushed him to the wall, fisting hands into his shirt.

"Where is Petra, you scumbag?" he hissed into his face. "Where are you holding her?"

“Let go of me, you freak!” Sannes shouted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, but you do,” Levi’s voice dropped even lower, almost resembling a growl. “You know about everything – Zeke’s dealings, Petra’s kidnapping, Hange’s survival,” he pulled Sannes even closer. “So I repeat my question – where are you holding her?”

"I don't know!" Sannes wheezed out, already out of breath.

"Bullshit," Levi answered, his voice so dark and dangerous it made shivers run down Oluo's back. And he wasn’t the one Levi was talking to. He really didn’t envy Sannes right now. "You know it, and if you're not a complete idiot, you're going to tell me everything right fucking now."

Sannes looked down at him, his gaze calculating.  "If I tell you, do you promise not to reveal my connection with Zeke?"

"No,” Levi answered coolly, shaking Sannes once more. “But you're going to tell me anyway."

Sannes closed his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose. "Fine,” he said. “I'll tell you everything. Just let me go."

"Smart choice," Levi murmured and instantly took a step back.

Sannes sighed, running a shaky hand through his hair. "He's keeping her at the docks,” he mumbled, his face aimed at the ground. “I'll send you the exact location."

"Good," Levi nodded, much calmer now. "And after you do that, go straight to Erwin. If I were you, I wouldn't make him wait. Perhaps, he'd be more merciful then. Although,” he added, sending Sannes one last glare. “I doubt he actually would."

Levi turned on his heels then, walking out of the office. Oluo stayed behind for a second longer, a pressing need to ask Sannes a question arising in him.

"Petra?" his voice broke on her name, but Oluo willed himself to stand strong, looking up at Sannes without an ounce of fear. "Is she alright?"

"Dragged and unconscious," Sannes replied, rubbing the spot where Levi had grabbed him. "But she's unharmed. For now."

For now. Those two words made his knees buckle. They needed to hurry. Petra's life was on the line.

***

With sweat dripping down her face and completely out of breath, Hange finally reached Zeke's hideout.

Panting like a chain-smoker and with her leg muscles burning, she climbed all four sets of stairs, cursing Zeke all the while. Why couldn't he put his office on the first floor? Or next to a police precinct? Would have made her life so much easier.

As expected, Zeke was inside his meeting room, smoking. The fat rings of smoke were flowing around the room, flying just below the ceiling before dissipating into nothingness. Hange narrowed her eyes, squinting at the cigarette in his fingers. Could the cigarette from Petra’s apartment really belong to him? Perhaps, they should have run some tests on it… No, Hange shook her head. Zeke was innocent - at least, in that regard.

She looked around the room, nodding at Pieck and Porco, who, as usual, were sitting next to their boss.

"Ah, my dear Hange!" sweeping the ash from his cigarette, Zeke raised his hands, opening them in a welcoming gesture. "What brings you here? Already missed us?" he winked and Hange scoffed.

"Missed your ugly face?” she rolled her eyes. “Not in a million years."

Zeke shook his head, his gaze filling with disappointment. "Detective Ackerman has a terrible influence on your sense of humor," he complained, his expression turning sourer.

"Whatever," Hange fell down on a chair next to him. "I came to ask you for help. Petra is missing."

"Petra?" Zeke frowned, looking genuinely confused. The lost look inside his eyes cemented Hange's conclusion that he wasn't the one involved in her kidnapping. Zeke was sleazy and unreliable, but he was also a very bad liar. Well, that meant they managed to rule out one possible suspect…

"Yes, Petra. Levi's partner."

"Ah, he found a new one already?" Zeke spread his lips into a wide, self-contained smirk. "Not very loyal, is he?"

More loyal than you will ever be, Hange wanted to say, but stopped herself. Now was not the time to start a pointless squabble.

"Do you know something or not?" she demanded from him.

"I don't," Zeke answered, putting a cigarette to his lips and exhaling the smoke right in Hange's face. He knew how much she hated it, asshole. She waved the smoke away, scowling fiercely. "But I do know one thing," he turned to Porco. "The time has come, start packing."

Without asking for clarification, Porco nodded, thrusted hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and hurriedly left.

Hange watched him go, stunned. Was Zeke planning something? What could it be? Why didn’t she know about it?

There was only one way to find out. She surveyed Zeke’s face carefully, trying to see his motives reflected there.

"Packing? To where? What the hell are you talking about, Zeke?"

"Don't worry about our destination," he patted her hand, looking so condensing Hange had to clench her fists to stop herself from punching the bastard. "You're going with us after all."

"Like hell I will!" Hange threw his hands off, glaring at Zeke. "And you can’t seriously expect me to follow you. What does all of it mean?"

Zeke shrugged, lightening up another cigarette and taking a long drag. "It's the grand finale, Zoe. The dramatic climax, the thrilling last act. And I was never the one for theatrics. So I'll leave the stage and go on my way."

"You promised to help," Hange grunted. She couldn't believe it, she actually trusted the bastard, and now he tries to escape? She wouldn't let him. "Or did you lie to us?"

"I wasn't lying," Zeke scoffed. "Like I said, I don't enjoy the drama. I simply changed my mind."

"So you won't honor your promise?"

Zeke rolled his eyes. "Zoe, please. I'm a criminal. The word honor was never in my vocabulary."

"Fine," Hange huffed, blowing hair out of her face. The attempt to awaken his consciousness failed. Maybe, she could appeal to his ego instead… "But someone is targeting you. Don't you want to know who it is?"

"Not particularly,” Zeke shook his head. “Since they went through all that trouble just to get me, I'd rather we never meet. Lord knows what they're going to do then, and, unlike you, detective, I know what self-preservation means."

"So that's it? You're just going to leave?"

Hange couldn’t believe it. She knew Zeke was a scumbag, but goddamn it. She didn’t expect him to be that untrustworthy.

"Of course, I’m not going to just leave," Zeke smiled. "I'll take you with me. To make sure that no one is going to follow us."

Hange snorted. "You're that delusional? I told you already, I'd rather die than go anywhere with you."

"Be it as you wish," he said. "Pieck," he lazily outstretched his hand to her. "Make our dear detective cooperate. Do with her what you want, but make sure she won’t get in our way."

Hange turned to Pieck, her heart skipping a beat. She held her breath and tensed her muscles, anticipating her first move. She could take Pieck in a fight, in theory. But in reality, she came unarmed, and Pieck always carried a gun. And a couple of knifes.

And Hange wasn't sure that her wits were much sharper.

There was a bit, the air in the room growing stiff. Hange swallowed, her one eye narrowed, as she watched Pieck. Maybe, if she makes the first move—

"No." Pieck said suddenly.

For a moment, there was silence. Hange sat there, dumbfounded, staring at Pieck and feeling utterly lost. She didn’t mishear? Did Pieck really—

Next to her, Zeke seemed to have the exact same trouble. He blinked a few times and then his expression changed, turning into a look of betrayal and fury.

"What did you just say?" he snarled, baring teeth at her.

"No," Pieck repeated, staring straight at him, not swayed by his outburst. "I won't touch Hange, and you, Zeke, will go with her and surrender to the police."

"What do you think—"

"Stop it, Zeke," Pieck sighed tiredly. "Own up to your shit and stop running away. Do you really not get it? If you do this right now, whether you'll kill Hange or take her with you, this—" she gestured around, her gaze on Zeke hard and disappointed. "This running and hiding will never end. If you touch a hair on her head, detective Ackerman will get you even from underneath the Earth. Accept it, Zeke," she stood up and squeezed his shoulder. "You've lost that battle the moment you started it. You simply picked up the wrong opponents."

With slow, elegant steps Pieck approached Hange and bent down to leave a gentle kiss on her cheek. "Goodbye, Hange," she murmured, tucking a hair behind her ear. "It's been fun."

In spite of herself, Hange smiled. Sarcastic, adorable Pieck always had such an effect on her. "Are you leaving already?" she asked, touching a place where Pieck's lips met her skin.

"Well," Pieck grinned. "Pock had started packing, right?"

"And where are you going?" Zeke wondered, his lips pressed in a line and hands crossed at his chest. He stubbornly refused to even glance at Pieck.

"A secret," she chirped, smiling cheerfully. "But I'll make sure to send a postcard. Hange, I'll send yours to detective Ackerman's address?” she winked, chuckling at the sight of red color on Hange’s cheek. “And, Zeke? You'll be staying at the state prison, right?"

"Oh fuck off, Pieck," he groaned. "Go away already."

Their eyes met for a second, and Zeke's gaze softened ever so slightly. "Try not to get caught, will you?"

"Roger that, chief!" Pieck saluted, kissed Zeke too and then headed to the entrance, gliding on the floor and humming under her breath.

"You two should talk," she advised Hange and Zeke, and then quietly closed the door.

As soon as Pieck was gone, Zeke dropped his head on his hands, sighing in frustration.

"How the fuck do you do it, Zoe?" he sent her a side-glance. "How the fuck do you manage to inspire that kind of loyalty in people?"

Hange shrugged, sitting back in a chair, and curled her lips in a crooked grin. "Try not being a complete jerk, perhaps?"

"Fuck off," he retorted, hiding his face again. "You'll send me to jail, right?"

"R-right," Hange sang. "And before that, you'll help us looking for Petra."

"And if I refuse?"

"Initially, I planned to be the one organizing your arrest. But I can give that honor to Levi..."

Zeke visibly shuddered.

"Fine," he looked up, fixing the glasses on his face and brushing the hair back from his forehead. "I'll help you. Now get the hell out of here."

Hange arched an eyebrow. "You're coming with me, you know that?"

"I'll come," he huffed. "I promise. For real this time," he added, when Hange just kept giving him an unimpressed look. "Just give me half an hour to get all of my possessions in order, would you? I don't know if I'll be coming back after all."

"Half an hour." Hange nodded, looking at him strictly. "If you don't show up in half an hour, I'm sending Levi to get you."

She would have stayed behind and monitored him, but time was of the essence. She promised Levi she'd back in two hours. And the watch was telling her it was almost an hour past that. She needed to get back, and quickly. Hurrying out of the building, Hange rushed to the precinct.

But in her haste to get back to Levi, she didn't see a swift shadow that followed right after her.

***

One way, then the other, back and forth, left and right, Levi paced around the room.  

Seven. That was the amount of steps needed to get from one end of Erwin's office to the other.

Levi glanced out of the window, and then turned around, starting anew. He clenched and unclenched his fists, thinking if he should look at his phone again. Maybe, he missed a message? Didn't hear its ringing? Maybe, she had already replied to a dozen of his texts and calls?

"Levi," a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, making him stop in his tracks. "Levi, we can't wait any longer," again, Erwin's voice was so much gentler than usual, and that alone should have been enough for him to realize that he was being irrational. That, the eyes of a dozen other policemen, gathered in Erwin’s office, who looked at him with a mix of worry and sympathy.

"We have the location," Erwin reminded, bringing him back to present.

"I know."

"We have the team."

"I know."

"We have a plan."

"I know," Levi gritted through teeth. "But we do not have Hange!"

Frustrated, he turned away from Erwin. He took out his phone, holding it tightly.

Why didn't she call? Why didn't pick up the phone and answer his texts? Where the fuck was she? She promised to be back in two hours. Almost three passed and no sign of that messy, four-eyed brilliant weirdo. The knot in his stomach grew tighter with each passing second.

Logically, he knew Hange could be simply running late. She could be stuck in traffic or she could be busy trying to get some kind of useful information out of Zeke. But while Hange was never the one to care about such trite matters as punctuality and she could easily get absentminded and usually appeared to be scatterbrained and frivolous, she was so very different during the times like this. Times, when lives were on the line. Hange never let herself be so unfocused, that’s why Levi was so worried now. He was anxious, and he knew that feeling won't go away until he sets his eyes on Hange, alive, breathing and well. He just got her back, the thought of losing her… Levi cursed, checking the phone again.

"Levi..." Erwin sighed, patting his shoulder. "You know, we can't waste our time."

He knew that. Petra needed their help, needed him. He couldn't let her down, but still...

Hange, oh god, Hange. He couldn’t lose her. Not again.

"Perhaps, detective Zoe isn't going to come back," came a quiet murmur from the corner of the room.

Levi’s head whirled in that direction, and, in a flash, he was beside him. "What did you just say?" he demanded from Oluo, barely stopping himself from grabbing him just as forcefully as he had done with Sannes.  

Oluo swallowed, a trail of sweat rolling down his face, but he stared back at Levi, raising his chin.

"She was working with an enemy for more than two years. Maybe, she was the one who kidnapped Petra."

Levi closed his eyes, counting to ten in his head. He was not going to lose it right now. He was not. Not when Erwin - and a dozen other of his colleagues - were looking at him.

"Bozado," he began as calmly as he was able in that moment. "Do you trust me?"

"Of course, sir!" he answered without a moment of hesitation.

"Good," Levi nodded. "You trust me. And I trust Hange. With my life. And if you are at least half as smart as you're trying to appear, you'll trust her too. If you're not ready to,” his gaze grew harder, enabling Oluo from turning away. “Then get the fuck out of my team. If you doubt Hange, you doubt me, and I can’t work like that, I have to trust my people. So what do you say – are you leaving or staying?"

"I'm... I'm staying with you, sir."

"Alright," Levi watched Oluo’s face for another second, his eyes narrowed. Would he follow his orders without question? It seemed like he would. He hoped so, at least. With a low, thoughtful hum, Levi turned to Erwin. "We can start the operation. Bozado will lead my team."

He pointedly ignored the shocked gasp from Oluo. The boy wasn’t nearly as experienced, wasn’t even a detective, but their mission was to get back Petra. And Levi believed Oluo wouldn’t let himself fuck it all up.

It's obvious he has feelings for her, Hange once told him. She was right that time, but then again – when she wasn’t?

"And you, Levi?" Erwin asked.

"Half an hour," he promised. "Half an hour, and I'll be at the location."

Hange swore to come back to him. This time, Levi won't let her broke that promise.

Closing the door behind himself, he hurried to Zeke. He prayed that Hange was alright. Zeke wouldn’t get out of this alive, if she weren’t.

***

The silence pressed onto her. The silence, the waiting for god knows what - it was all making Petra go slowly insane. She wanted to hear something, any sound would do at this point.

Or so she thought.

But then Floch came back, sauntering inside and still sporting the same deranged grin, and Petra realized that she preferred silence so much more than the low, out of tune humming mixed with the sound of him polishing the various knifes taken from a long table in front of him.

She squirmed, the ropes digging into her skin even more. It would leave bruises, she thought absentmindedly.

Bruises? She chided herself almost immediately. Who would care about bruises if they find her dead? She suppressed another shiver.

They won't find her dead, Petra tried to persuade herself. They won't, because so very soon Levi would be here, and he'll save her. Perhaps, detective Hange would be with him, maybe, Oluo too...

She had friends who cared about her. They won't let her be murdered. She just had to keep believing in them.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked Floch, trying to distract herself from the thousand of horrible what ifs.

Why haven’t you— no, she wouldn’t ask him that. She would remain optimistic.

“You’ll see very soon,” he told her enigmatically. “My friend is almost here.”

His friend? Did he mean Zeke’s brother? The one, who had planned it all? And what would happen, when he comes? Would he—

No, she stopped herself once again. She needed to hold onto that hope. She needed to stay strong.

The sound of footsteps somewhere above her startled Petra. Hearing them too, Floch started chuckling. He turned to Petra, pressing a finger to his lips.

“That’s my friend,” he whispered quietly, as though it was the biggest secret in the world. “And he brought someone with him.”

The next second, the door opened and a man – so young, probably in his early twenties – stumbled in. He was hobbling slightly, his hand pressed to a place just below his hairline. His face was a mess – split lip, bruised eye that already started to turn deep purple, bloodied nose and forehead.

“You didn’t tell me she was a fucking psycho,” he grumbled, glaring daggers at Floch. “I wouldn’t have a chance, if I wasn’t armed.”

“But?” Floch passed him a white cloth to wipe off the blood. “You’ve caught her, right?” his voice was full of hope, and his fingers were trembling in anticipation.

“She’s in my car, dragged out of her mind. Help me get her here.”

“With pleasure,” Floch turned to Petra, winking. “You’ll have company so very soon, detective. I hope you’re excited! I am!”

He didn’t stop to hear her response, following after his friend and leaving her alone once again.

It was possibly her last chance, she realized. Petra desperately pulled on the ropes, trying to get away, but to no avail. She couldn’t move an inch, and it seemed like the more she struggled, the tighter her bindings became.

Not enough time passed, before Floch had returned, dragging a body inside. His friend put the chair, right next to Petra, and Floch dropped the body there.

No, not just some body, Petra realized. Fear crippled inside her, seizing her heart in its merciless hold.

Not just some body, Hange Zoe’s body.

Her head was bowed, but even from where she was sitting, in a poorly lit room, Petra could see blood dripping down her cheek and neck.

So much blood, she thought. She was breathing, albeit faintly. But she wasn’t waking up.

Her heart stopped, as Petra realized another thing – if Hange was there, no one was looking for her. And if no one was looking… then Hange and she… they would most probably… not be found.

At least, not alive, or so it seemed.

Petra tried to hold onto that sliver of hope, but with Hange Zoe’s bloodied face in her line of sight, it was getting increasingly harder and harder to.

[yurimother]

Top Yuri Anime Poll Results

Whether it is subtext or explicit, cute or sexy, school love or gay action thrillers I love yuri anime. These series either focus on or contain elements of female same-sex relationships. Pride month is the perfect time to look back and reflect on the best of this genre. I teamed up with OG Man of The Yuri Nation (yurination[dot] wordpress[dot] com/) and together we put out a poll asking what you thought the top yuri anime series were and over 1000 of you responded submitting almost 5000 different entries. We spent hours combing through the data, analyzing and commenting on the results and we would like to share our thoughts with all of you. Enjoy the reflections of me the yuri critic and OG the dedicated yuri fan!

These are the Top 20 Yuri Anime as voted by you

1. Bloom Into You - 692 Votes

OG: Be it East or West the YagaKimi took the world by storm. Citrus and BiY once again taking the top two spots remains unsurprising.There is something undeniably fascinating about our leading ladies consisting of an asexual slowly coming to love her senpai back but restraining herself for various reasons. The biggest one being said senpai having a deep case of self-loathing and a fear of romantic reciprocation, also for various reasons. She is like “I love you but please do not love me back”. Then there is one of the most popular “cursed” lesbians of all time in Sayaka, the fantastic adult side-couple (The world needs an anime starring lesbian adults/mothers) and the various other characters who have their own interesting tales to tell. The series absolutely deserves a spot in the Top 10 though it would not be in my personal Top 3. Oh and as Yurimother said the presentation was fantastic.Visually stunning from start to finish in my opinion. Special mention goes to the criminally underused first-person “camera”. So cool.

YuriMother: I agree with this series deserving a spot in the top ten even if not the number one slot. For me, it was good but not great. Moments such as the aforementioned adult couple as well as stellar art and a phenomenal score made this series enjoyable but they were not enough to overshine the problems of the narrative. For the love of the Yuri Goddess, this series is crying out for asexual representation but insists on carrying on with its confused romance. Enough complaining though, many people love Bloom Into You despite its faults and I agree. The characters are interesting and lovable and it manages to tell a yuri story more real and complex than the typical fluffy girl meets girl narratives.

2. Citrus - 452 Votes

YuriMother: The presence of Citrus and Bloom Into You prove two things to me, the importance of recency, as both anime aired only last year, and the sheer popularity of these series. Both had established and extremely successful manga runs which were adapted into English by the publishing masters of yuri, Seven Seas. Citrus is a contentious series, to say the least, as it includes elements of (non-blood related) incest and non-consensual actions as part of Mei and Yuzu’s “relationship.” However, if you possess the magical power to turn off the part of your brain screaming at you that those aspects are deeply problematic or if you seek a different interpretation then Citrus can be downright WONDERFUL. I actually loved this anime series for its characters, amazing animation, and salaciousness. As OG said, it is an operatic concussion of emotion (seriously everyone in the series needs therapy) but my is it fun to watch. The Citrus anime also holds a special place in my heart, as the first serious piece I ever wrote was a review for it over on Okazu (nice plug)! Citrus is certainly not for everyone but those that stuck with it and overlooked some of the problems ended up loving it.

OG: Here we are again with Citrus at #2. My thoughts on the series remains the same as in the previous two lists I discussed (the Akiba Research and goo Ranking Japan lists), overrated. Good soap opera/telenovela-esque series but my feelings on the cast are mixed (which I imagine was the writer’s intent). My main issue has always been the obstacles repeatedly challenging Yuzu and Mei’s feelings for each other instead of it focusing on “Hey. We like each other but our parents got married. What do we do? Can we keep our desires for each other in check?”. Instead it is one newcomer after another who want to eat either Yuzu or Mei and Yuzu repeatedly asking herself if she really wants robo-stepsister patties? I will give the anime adaptation credit. The story was easier to enjoy animated than drawn. It also helped that I grew up in a telenovela loving family. The characters’ actions, reactions and emotions were depicted better in the anime. I still consider the show’s greatest accomplishment being the humanization of Mei-Tron. In the manga it took a post-epilogue continuation to show readers “Hey everyone. Mei-Tron was human all along.” whereas in the anime I sensed the small bit of humanity quicker than in the manga where I continued seeing her as a block of wood with a brain up to the point where I dropped it. Harumin though is the greatest regardless of anime or manga adaptation. Bless her. Regardless of how I feel about the series I get its massive popularity. After all, were the rest of the story to get an animated continuation I would gladly pick it up...Not the manga though.

3. Sakura Trick - 342 Votes

OG: There are fans who understandably would disagree with Sakura Trick’s praise but I will always defend it and the anime as one of the very best in the genre. First off it aired at a time where animated on-screen close up kisses (specifically consensual ones) between ladies were rare. Haruka X Yuu’s relationship was believable for the most part. Even their season finale resolution, them not getting what being “in love” meant at the time, made sense though I get why it left some scratching their heads. Probably not the best “manga lure/bait” end I suppose. On the bright side Kotone X Shizuku’s story definitely did not have the two doubting their true feelings for each other. I do hope Kaede X Yuzu eventually hooked up in the manga as they too had potential to be a lovely couple.

YuriMother: Sakura Trick has no real narrative, no great insight, and offers little intellectually. As a teacher, it makes me furious, as a fan of yuri, elated. The anime is beloved for its plentiful soft service, presenting a plethora of kisses, cuddles, and awkward thigh shots (ew). However, it was one of the first anime to include this much explicit yuri service without being pornographic. All the characters were cute and fun, even if there was little in the way of development or complexity, it worked for the series. If you want something to make you think or to learn about yuri, pass over this one. But, if you want a cute and meaningless anime definitely watch it.

4. Yuru Yuri - 337 Votes

YuriMother: OG may not be a fan of Yuru Yuri but I certainly am, which is fairly obvious to anyone who observes that a solid 20% of my communications occur in the form of gifs from this series. It is hilarious, cute, and playful. Just like Sakura Trick, this anime is an easy watch with ultimately little substance. However, the part of me that is not rolling of the floor laughing every time I watch Yuru Yuri lives in a state of pained existence with the knowledge that this work of all things ended up being so popular when people are telling interesting stories about queer women and people in actual relationship that manage to still be funny and adorable while having something to say.

OG: The undisputed most mainstream friendly yuri series there is. It is also one of the funniest. My one gripe is that excluding a select few the main draw of the show besides the comedy and yuri is the ship wars, meaning (almost any girl can be shipped with each other). Not a fan of that but hey, it brought Namori the big bucks so who am I to judge? In any case not much else to add. It deserves all the adulation it gets but the free for all shipping irks me. Reminds me of how they botched Chika X Riko in the Love Live! Sunshine!! Anime. If you were going down the Riko X Yohane route from the start then why give us Chika X Riko in the first half? Ship wars yo. Tch. Hopefully I properly explained myself..

5. Kase-san and Morning Glories (Asagao to Kase-san) - 289 Votes

OG: Still wish this got a 12-13 episode anime. The glorious movie showed how much it deserves one. Whether it will happen or not remains to be seen. In any case the beauty of Kase-san X Yamada is how simple their romance is. No strings attached whatsoever. It is as straightforward as a self-proclaimed “ordinary” cutie, Yamada, having a crush on the super cool school beauty Kase-san. Said beauty is revealed to be just as “adorkable” as Yamada. The other highlight is their story not ending once they officially started dating (as is the case with many romance stories) but that being only the beginning, like real life. From then on, side-stories aside, the two biggest challenges for the two is Yamada accepting that it is okay for someone as “ordinary” as her to be the “cool babe”s girlfriend and Kase-san finding different ways to express her love/hunger for the cutie. As for the OVA, cramming the second part of the first series in an hour definitely had the downside of excluding some important moments, yes, but it at least covered some of the best moments in the manga. The first half of the story was summarized in a five-minute music video. One last thing. The animation, though a bit too brought for some, was glorious. It also had some long pauses which were effective (The bus stop scene being the most infamous) but while I did not mind them at all even I will admit some pauses went a bit too long. A small nitpick all things considered. Fingers crossed one day we either get that 12-13 episode anime for the first series, the sequel or both. That is one of my dreams.

YuriMother: At last, an anime that I do not have to react cynically to! Kase-san is one of the single greatest works of yuri animation to ever to be created and its glory is rivaled only by the manga from which it originated. Despite being only a one hour long OVA this adaption told such an engaging and realistic (finally) story of romance and personal growth. We get to skip the meatless girl meets girls arcs and get into the depth and complexity as Yamada and Kase work to further their relationship. They struggle with the fact that they are two different people who want different things out of life and love and have to actually work on their partnership. Kase-san also includes signs of physical affection and love that are never lewd, immature, or gross, I do not even think I could refer to them as “service”. However, for me, Kase-san’s greatest victory (both the anime and manga) is in its escape from school romance, which in this genre is often a shelter from reality, allowing for women to be in relationships without actually being queer. Kase and Yamada instead make an effort to continue their romance and build a life that includes their relationship once they graduate in a triumphant final act. This anime is a slap in the face to the class S stories and sloppily sexualized works which proliferate the yuri genre. Asagao to Kase-san shines as a holy beacon for the greatness that this genre can achieve.

6. Puella Magi Madoka Magica - 286 Votes

YuriMother: Hurray!! For two entries in a row, I get to talk about series that I wholeheartedly adore without having to constantly attach caveats. Puella Magi Madoka Magica is not considered by all to be yuri, and that is certainly not what it is best known for. PMMM is however famous for twisting the tropes of the magical girl genre and creating one of the most cohesive and thoughtful narratives ever put to screen. This series summoned a new era for the magical girl genre (what OG humorously referred to as the “Moepocalypse”) but no other title managed to top Madoka Magica’s runaway success. Every aspect of this work is highly polished including character designs, a phenomenal soundtrack, and superb writing. This is not only the definitive work of its genre but of all postmodern anime. Whether or not one is a fan of yuri every anime fan should give Madoka Magica a watch.

OG: Meduka Meguca. Its impact in the “Moepocalypse” (Shows where cute and sexy girls consistently suffering physically and emotionally. These are usually dark magical girl shows.) genre and legacy are undeniable. It deserves all the praise it gets. It scarred many unfortunate souls, Homura is a legend in yuridom, Kyouko X Sayaka are glorious (Especially in Rebellion), Meduka’s Mom Junko is a Top Tier Sexy Mama, Charlotte the Witch is a very strange girlfriend and of course Hitomi is a walking anti-fun meme. The animation, especially the creepy doodle like monsters known as Witches are memorable. However, it is not my favorite Moepocalypse show. That honor goes to Yuki Yuna is a Hero.

7. Strawberry Panic - 224 Votes

OG: Like it or not Strawberry Panic is a yuri classic. I have a strong feeling that like many readers around my age (31 during this writing) this was their first 100% yuri anime. The cheese is real but it is the yummy kind of cheese and I loved almost every minute of it, except Amane X Hikari. That was the weakest of the love stories going on. Poor Yaya trying too hard (Not saying this in condescending way. She literally tried too hard). It is like a young adult lesbian novel but more fun. I mean Nagisa X Shizuma might as well be “Lesbian Twilight but not crappy”. Let us be honest, Shizuma is a vampire. Chikaru is an undisputed goddess and Kagome is the cutest.

Oh and I will repeat this statement till my last breath…

#TamaoWasRobbed.

YuriMother: I may be almost a decade younger than OG but even for me Strawberry Panic was my first yuri and it more than earns its nickname as the “gateway yuri,” although last year’s Citrus and Bloom Into You may be presenting serious contenders for this title. If for no other reason than nostalgia, Strawberry Panic remains my favorite yuri works but this ridiculous soap-opera of an anime does deserve a fair amount of recognition. I see Strawberry Panic as the culmination of the S subgenre revived by Maria Watches Over Us. However, this work succeeds at both parodying many of the tropes of S and yuri while breaking a few. However, its greatest accomplishment is introducing many of the young western fans of yuri to the genre. Strawberry Panic, you are an overly dramatic mess but thank you for all you have done.

8. Revolutionary Girl Utena - 176 Votes

YuriMother: Another gem of the yuri genre, actually scratch that, if works like Kase-san are gems then Utena is the minerals from which gems form. I think that is how it works, I am not a geologist. My poor analogies and subtle nods to Steven Universe aside, Revolutionary Girl Utena is one of the single most important works of yuri anime, possibly even more so than Sailor Moon. These two works were the dawn of the current age of yuri, an era spurn on by social progress and the internet into a place where more yuri works featuring honest depictions of homosexuality are flourishing. Utena laid the groundwork for queer representation in anime and for that I remain forever grateful to this masterpiece.

OG: I must confess. While I saw the movie long ago and thought it was cool I have yet to sit down and finish watching the main series. I cannot say much about this show other than it is another yuri classic. Possibly one of the biggest. I think I will leave this to Her Holiness because even if I had seen it I do not consider myself someone who possesses the sufficient intellect to properly explain why this is a legendary show.

9. Flip Flappers - 132 Votes

OG: I would need an essay to explain why this show is legendary. Let me see. It is a story of a girl who discovered her gayness thanks to her growing attraction to a lovable idiot/genki. There are references to Western media, dimension hopping (including Class S Hell), self-discovery, a sexual orientation journey, a tree, armored wedding gowns, crazy third wheels, Ku Klux Klan stand-ins…You know what? Just watch Flip Flappers. It is a hot mess of random, crazy, creative and thought provoking awesomeness with a wonderful dose of gayness. Glory be to PapiCoco. However, as Her Holiness mentioned this is essentially Ikuhara-san levels of weirdness (though not as complicated I feel) but as the plot thickens it all (sort of) starts making sense...eventually. That tree yo.

YuriMother: Flip Flappers was almost too strange and abstract even for me, and that is saying something. However, upon further examination, one of the most interesting works of yuri is revealed. This heavily stylized anime delves deep into the sexual maturation of its protagonist while examining the yuri genre and representation in media. Flip Flappers is the perfect marriage of heavy visual style and intellectual substance. Definitely give them one a.. err better make that three watches, as you will want to be sure to get everything out of this beautiful series as possible.

10. Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid - 131 Votes

YuriMother: This series is the closest anime fans have to a lesbian couple having a family that we have, and that is a shame. I LOVE family narratives, outside of the yuri genre Usagi Drop is my favorite anime. To me, seeing women balance life, a relationship, and children is some of the best queer representation there is. However, for every point in Kobayashi’s favor, there is also a glaring fault. Kobayashi is a modern woman in the workforce providing for herself and her “family,” but is borderline abusive to Tohru. Kanna is an inquisitive child being raising by two women, but there are weirdly sexual scenes featuring her. As previously mentioned on this list, if one can silence the reasonable part of the brain this work becomes enjoyable, hilarious, and adorable. Unfortunately, its faults prevent it from being more than an amusement and I seriously doubt that they will fade in the second season. But hey, it sells a ton of figures so… YAY!

OG: This series is one of the closest yuri fans have to a series starring a lesbian couple with a daughter and it is wonderful. Is the tale of an eternally grateful dragon who wanted to repay the human who saved her life, albeit drunk, by becoming her live-in maid. Tohru being a dragon girl had incredible power and could easily crush everyone in sight but preferred to try and understand humanity so she could live in peace with the woman she loved. It of course was hard at times but thanks to Miss Kobayashi slowly growing to accept her back (romantically she had a ways to go) and the two raising the adorable bundle of mighty puff known as Kanna they became a happy family. How long this relationship will last and whether Miss Kobayashi would come to fully love Tohru back romantically remains to be seen. I have high hopes it can and will happen. Kanna X Riko is precious (Yes. Even that scene). We even have a potential BL couple, which is nice. Not a fan of Lucoa X Shouta the shota. Not because of the age gap but it not being my kind of romantic comedy. It is the same reason I have a hard time buying Tsubame X Misha from UzaMaid. Mya-Nee X Hana from Wataten...maybe. At least Mya-Nee showed she is patient. Back to Dragon Maid. Great series. Naughty of course but great.

11. Sweet Blue Flowers (Aoi Hana) - 119 Votes

OG: Megane girl falls for a cutie but has a hard time confessing to her to the point she gives a relationship with another girl a try. Said other girl has troubles of her own courtesy of her own views on what love. Do not get me started on the OTHER girl who likes megane’s girlfriend. I did not even mention megane girl’s first love interest who she herself eventually begins questioning her feelings for the glasses wearing maiden. While this is well known throughout the history of yuri anime Aoi Hana made it clearer than ever that Yuri + Classical Music go hand in hand. Plus the show is quite pretty. Ultimately enjoyment of this series depends heavily on viewers’ patience.

YuriMother: Aoi Hana was ahead of its time in many regards. Most yuri during the early twenty-first century was unrealistic and melodramatic, especially with the revival of S stories. Aoi Hana instead presents a calm and realistic story that we still rarely see in yuri anime today. Instead of relying on tricks like service or comedy Aoi Hana presents a serene and character-driven story which is matched by equally calming scenery. It is certainly not the most thrilling watch, but a slow and beautiful slice of real life that remains one of the all-time strongest yuri works.

12. Yurikuma Arashi - 99 Votes

YuriMother: Yurikuma Arashi is strange, to say the least, but this is not out of the ordinary for legendary director Ikuhara, who also directed Utena. Parallels are easily drawn between this work and Flip Flappers, as they are both complex and encoded with enough symbolism to drown a bear. Yurikuma is one of my favorite works in the yuri genre and I have had more than a few heated discussions about interpretations of the work, including one memorable occasion when I was visiting a college professor and we ended up in a shouting match in the middle of the hall. However, while Flip Flappers holds a high degree of polish the same can, unfortunately, not be said here. Yurikuma Arashi has more than a few scenes of fanservice many of which overly fetishize the characters and relationship and some of the symbols, particularly lily flowers and the word “yuri” are practically beaten to death with an object I refuse to come up with because I am starting to have my fill of symbolism. However, despite some of its sloppiness, Yurikuma is one of the single most interesting and well-formed anime out there and analyzing it is practically a right of passage for seasoned yuri fans.

OG: Yurikuma Arashi is my favorite of Ikuhara-san’s series. To me it was the least complicated of his works but even so I needed help to understand the show. Luckily I had plenty of assistance. The meat of the story is more complicated but put simply it is about a war between a group of bear girls (and some human girls) who want to freely express their love and/or desire/hunger for each other and another group that amounts to Right to Censor from WWF. Like I said it is far more complex than that but that is the gist. The anime is quite ecchi and it has good reason for it. Again the gay bears are the more liberated of the groups and them getting more sexy scenes is meant to showcase that. Our heroine has good reason to be grumpy and a divine entity was introduced alongside a certain someone from a certain dark anime we already discussed.

In the end it is a show starring lesbian bear girls. I love love stories between women and i love bears. It was obvious I would end up enjoying this one. Like other complex stories it is not for everyone. Shows like Flip Flappers, Utena and Yurikuma have something of a learning people will have to get accustomed to in order to enjoy them.

13. Whispered Words (Sasameki Koto) - 88 Votes

OG: To me Aoi Hana and Sasameki Koto were always connected despite the former being a drama and the latter a comedy. Both star a female protagonist struggling with how to best tell the girl she likes her true feelings whereas their love interest for one reason or another makes it all the more challenging to get their feelings across. Both shows aired during a time yuri was not as popular of a genre as it would become over time. Perhaps if they had come out a little later when yuri was becoming more popular in the mainstream they would have fared better…Then again they may have helped set the groundwork for future yuri shows so it’s just as well they came out when they did. In any case both good shows worthy of “best of yuri” lists. SK has the dynamic of the megane in love and her somewhat airheaded love interest who specifically likes “cute girls”. Poor megane has a hard time figuring out what the airhead defines as “cute”. The show also features an amusing side-couple of an ojou-sama and her tsundere girlfriend. Not to mention the somewhat controversial side-girl who plays a more prominent role in the 2nd half of the anime. Heck, even Mr Crossdresser himself is cool. Let us not forget Miss “Ha Ha Ha!” Another really good show that I would love to see the rest of the manga get animated someday but considering most anime are essentially manga commercials and the SK manga ended the odds of a 2nd season are close to 0.

YuriMother: 2009 was a great year for yuri anime, with both Sasameki Koto and Aoi Hana, among other works, airing. But while Aoi Hana sought to resist many of the common tropes of the genre and tell a simple grounded story Sasameki Koto appears to have looked a the list of every convention possible and say “yeah I can do that.” It has melodrama, comedy, one-sided love, friend love stories, I worship this genre but even I think there is a limit. However, Sasameki Koto is one of the most competent yuri anime works of the current era. While all the tropes are present most of the problematic aspects of the genre are not. The story is well written, characters enjoyable, and art that is really well done for the time. I enjoy every watch and if I ever want to quickly download the genre’s tropes into another person's head I need only duct tape them to a chair and throw on Sasameki Koto.

14. Riddle Story of Devil (Akuma no Riddle) - 77 Votes

YuriMother: Akuma no Riddle was highly anticipated back in 2014, sporting a premise of student assassins that, while certainly not unique, was outside the norms for the yuri genre. It promised a dark and thrilling take on the yuri genre that would not become popular until the yuri horror trend a few years later. At first, it looked like this would be successful with an excellent setup and some pretty compelling characters but ultimately Akuma no Riddle fell flat and became more derailed as it continued. The monster of the week style of episodes left little room for complex plots and plans or proper character development, which is a shame because of how engaging so many of the assassins were upon original presentation. However, this show still has some of the best action in the yuri genre, placing it alongside series like Cannan and Utena despite its flawed storytelling. If nothing else, the anime may compel one to read the manga, which expands the story and characters more than the show was given time to.

OG: Professional assassins secretly gathered at an academy in an attempt to take the life of a seemingly innocent cutie to win the ultimate prize, one of whom wishes to protect the adorable redhead. Yes the manga, which is pretty much a Director’s Cut, is better and the anime would have benefited from having 20+ episodes instead of 12 and a delightful beach OVA but the show did a good job of showing viewers what each assassin was like, their motivations (though many of their origin stories were summarized in written biographies during commercial breaks viewers needed to pause to read) were clear enough and the duels, as brief as some of them were, had enough spicy goodness in them to be memorable, especially the ones in the latter half of the show. Oh, and although the manga wrapped up after the anime it had a very similar ending.

15. Revue Starlight - 72 Votes

OG: Gay theater girls who strive to become the top star, meaning the best actress or lead actor of the cast. How do they do it? By working hard and overcoming their personal hardships? Yes. That. What makes this show so wonderful despite being almost a year old as of this writing is not only do the ladies all have interesting stories to tell but so does the stage. Every song, prop, movement, dance, gesture etc. It is like the performers and performances are united. It is like in Spongebob where not only does the person in the boots tell a story but the boots as well.

Oh yes. I almost forgot to mention the mysterious underground theater and talking giraffe. Never forget the talking giraffe from Hell. #Wakarimasu.

Super cool and super gay.

YuriMother: Bushiroad continuously gets better at what they do, creating media franchises of cute girls filled with music and making mountains of cash from smartphone games. Inspired by the likes of Love Live, they created BanG Dream and last year Revue Starlight. However, where these franchises fell short Revue Starlight success. It never twists its characters to tell a story but rather creates compelling arcs around them. I thoroughly enjoyed and agree with its place on this list.

16. Konohana Kitan - 68 Votes

YuriMother: I know of Konohana Kitan for its constant presence at yuri events more so than the anime or even the manga. It is adorable, relaxing, simple, and fun. While it does not add anything super substantial to the genre it does not take anything either or present any objectionable material. The “plot” is nonexistent but that does not matter, as it is not trying to tell a story or make commentary, just be fluffy and simple.

OG: Konohana Kitan to me is a Girls Club (Cute girls doing cute things) and iyashikei hybrid anime. It is visually stunning as it is relaxing with Yuzu pretty much one of the cutest demigoddesses in existence. She of course is a chick magnet but her heart will forever belong to Satsuki.

17. Destiny of the Shrine Maiden (Kannazuki no Miko) - 65 Votes

OG: The other stuff on the show is still not that great but ChiMeko will forever stand the test of time as far as I’m concerned. Top 10 for their love story alone. Yes. I know THAT ONE SCENE continues being controversial and talked about every time curious new yuri fans witness greatness…but I will forever defend Chikane because I get where she was coming from. Would I have done something different? Yes. The thing is you need to put yourself in her shoes and understand what she wanted to accomplish and how far she would go to get it done. Kotoha is best side-character and Souma Ogami is real man’s man who does not deserve the hate. He was an honorable warrior to the end. He fought well and accepted defeat like a man. Plus his yell is inspirational.

YuriMother: My feelings on Kannazuki no Miko are incredibly mixed. It has many of the worst facets of early current era yuri anime, tropes include S, rape and… am I reading this correctly, demon mechs? Worst of all it presents a cycle, a never-ending loop that haunts the characters in the overarching plot and it does not resolve it. If a work ever presents such an element, like Puella Magi did, it must be overcome or confronted at least. Its presence makes the already cringy story feels cheap and lazy. However, I love the two female leads and their difficult relationship. I love the music, especially the hauntingly beautiful ending theme, and the final moments of episode 11 are some of the greatest seconds I have ever seen in an anime. I cannot wrap my mind around my view of this series but at the end of the day, I understand it. I do not believe that work like it would ever be warmly accepted today but for its time it does stand as a breakout piece of yuri anime.

18. Princess Principal - 61 Votes

YuriMother: Princess Principal is one of the best anime of the past few years. It had everything, an interesting premise, great characters, an incredible soundtrack. Alongside all this is the sharp writing and thrilling story. Princess Principal did everything Akuma no Riddle wanted to with an intriguing and action-packed story featuring strong characters. On top of all this, the animation is top notch. A six-part movie sequel is planned which has me somewhat concerned, but I am glad to see that it is being continued as the ending to the series was one of its weakest aspects. Now if you will excuse me, I need to listen to some jazz.

OG: Cute and sexy gay spies in a dramatic British Steampunk setting. What more do readers need? Allow Her Holiness to elaborate a bit further. Currently waiting for the multi-part cinematic continuation.

19. Izetta: The Last Witch - 60 Votes

OG: I am known for loving shows people do not think as highly of. Izetta: The Last Witch is no different. I love this show so much. Besides how certain events transpired some complained about the depiction of WW2. Basically think about people ranting about storylines and content featured in certain Call of Duty and Battlefield games. Here however, it is clearly a fictional great war inspired by WW2. I was invested in the following:

-The cute and sexy ladies.

-Seeing two badass lesbians lead an army against an evil empire.

-FiZetta’s romance. This of course being the major highlight. I love FiZetta so much. My sexy lesbian babies and Anne X Grea’s mentors. They taught them everything they know after all.

It is similar to how I felt watching Kannazuki no Miko where my focus was primarily on the leading ladies’ developing romance. The difference is that unlike Kannazuki I was also somewhat entertained by our heroines’ enemies along with their allies. Basically viewers’ enjoyment of the show depends on how seriously they take their history and are willing to overlook the liberties this story takes with its depictions of the weapons, military and the familiar evil empire. FiZetta are one of my favorite lesbian couples of all time.

By the way, in that famous scene, yes they did. Viewers just have to squint their eyes to see “it”.

YuriMother: Another show that I consider to have squandered its potential. I know that lots of people enjoyed this one, including OG but I could not bring myself to finish this constantly mediocre series. Perhaps I am tired of alternative light-fantasy European-war inspired plots. Trying to stand out in this bloated genre is difficult and Izetta fails. Izetta started strong and hooked many viewers with its amazing visual and auditory polish but this was quickly lost in the plot which, while set up well, struggle to gain any ground of pay off what had been established. On the yuri side, it did not really do anything interesting or satisfying, with plenty of scenes feature the character’s standing next to each other looking cute and one or two moments of actual yuri. I am glad that some of you were able to enjoy this one more than me at least.

20. Maria Watches Over Us (Maria-sama ga Miteru) - 57 Votes

OG: Like Strawberry Panic this is a “Like it or not” classic. Despite being a Class S show it did its own thing and became a pioneer for . It’s also responsible for the many yuri jokes related to all-girl schools in anime.Shimako X Noriko best Grande and Petite Souer! Yumiko X Sachiko were great too as the two grew to better understand each other. Most memorable scene for me was the panda costume. Even Sei is a sleeper icon in all yuridom. Yoshino X Rei had a very interesting dynamic. I actually think they are the real pioneers of relationships between cousins. Thank you YoshiRei. HaruKana, Kaede X Sara and several others owe you two much appreciation.

YuriMother: Another great and significant series, Maria Watches Over Us, took the tropes of early yuri works, Catholic schools, a lack of men, piano scenes, and emotional relationship rather than physical ones and turned the dial up to 11. For better or worse, it single-handedly revived the Class S genre and was copied (and parodied) endlessly for over a decade. However much I complain about S I actually do not think that we would have the current age of yuri without its popularity and proliferation at the beginning of the century so I owe a big thank you to Maria Watches Over Us for that. Ignoring its historical importance and literary significance the anime still presents an engaging plot with wonderful characters and more butchered French than my last trip to Europe. It is certainly worth a watch and worthy of a place on this list.

What do you think should be on this list?:

YuriMother: As I previously said, this is a pretty perfect list. As far as missing titles I can think of the following.

Simoun - not the greatest in terms of plot or animation but it had cute service and a fun action-packed plot.

Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl - This series may be strange and present the dreaded love triangle but it did its best to tell a transgender narrative in 2006, naturally this involved aliens, and I applaud it for its attempts.

Cannan - This series is light on the yuri but heavy on the suspense, action, and amazing character designs. The terrorist plot is exciting and the final train fight featured in the series is one of the greatest action spectacles in anime that somehow manages to remain grounded.

OG:

-Harukana Receive: Best all-female sports anime ever made. Plus the gayness is not subtle at all.

-Mikagura Gakuen Kumikyoku: Eruna Ichinomiya is an underrated yuri icon. While not the first of her kind (That honor, I think, goes to Galaxy Fraulein Yuna) she set the standard of cool and inspirational badass lesbian protagonists who are proud of who they are and...also happen to be super perverts. Eruna made it cool to be such a protagonist. It is nice seeing a lesbian lead who does not care what anyone else thinks. She is hungry for cute girl booties. While she often loses her control in the presence of pure beauty she, as an inspiration for others like her, has enough self-control to not go overboard (most of the time).

-Symphogear: Symphogear is love, Symphogear is life. Hopefully Season 5 will keep up the good work.

-Rinne no Lagrange: My favorite mecha anime and the reason I embrace OT3s when the signs are there. Not the greatest but man was it fun. Plus Madoka Kyouno is still sexy.

-Yuki Yuna wa Yuusha de Aru: My favorite Moepocalypse anime of all time. Yuna X Togo taught me to love and trust some people outside my closest family again.

-Mouretsu Pirates: If someone were to ask me “Hey OG. What to you is the perfect anime?”. I would tell them Mouretsu/Bodacious Space Pirates.

-Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl. Thanks to the first fan commenting and reminding me of it. Definitely worthy of a spot. #HazumuWasAlwaysFemale

Final Thoughts:

OG: Pretty good list and close to what mine would look like were I to make one. Reason I have yet to do so is because I do not feel confident enough to pick a favorite yuri anime of all time. Favorite yuri manga and couples? That I can do, but anime always seems to give me a hard time choosing my absolute favorites. Like I said though, a potential yuri list of mine would look something like this. I also found it interesting how similar the Top 10 are among both our respective fanbases and visitors to the poll conducted by the Akiba Research Institute.

YuriMother: I may have done most the complaining and left the praise to OG but I actually and really happy with this list. I think that every title presented is a worthy addition and while I would certainly move some higher or lower than their current placing I do not believe that these are too far off from my own opinions, which is surprising for a popularity poll. More than anything I am thrilled to see that works I dislike that I thought to be popular did not make this list. Perhaps I should have more faith in people and their opinions. Everyone did such a wonderful job voting and I am so grateful!

Thank you so much everyone for reading and for voting in the top yuri anime poll. To see the full results of the poll and to support yuri news, reviews, and content, check out the YuriMother Patreon. Happy Pride Month

[thestudyfeels]

🎨 Graphic made by @indiaisstudying​: India is brilliant my pals, and I recommend checking her out for studyblr/artblr inspiration. My girl tHIRIVES.

The singular takeaway from this post: Do a creative binge. Much productive than a Netflix binge. Period.

Two months ago, I reached my peak when I coined the term ‘bood day’ (a bad to good day, in my article How To Flip A Bad Day By 180°). Today, puppies and kittens, I present to you— a creative binge.

*crickets chirping, that one dude in the audience scratches his nose and turns away* 

…This one actually works but okay, we get it, y'all are bitches. But gonna do my job anyway– if you're a creator reading this, please do a creative binge at least once every two weeks.

I started doing these binges two months ago, and I've seen a VAST improvement in my creative energy. I feel my commercial voice coughing and saying hello to the mic, so before I start listing side-effects for a sponsored pill, let's dive into the basics. 

🍵 Quick PSA — 

↪ JOIN MY TAGLIST? If you aren't on this yet, please get on it, it'll mean a lot to me! By joining, you get a new article on lifestyle design & productivity every week.

100 Days of Sweat: This challenge starts TOMORROW (10th of April), so if you wanna hustle on your bod this year, join us! Accountability does crazy things.

Ever questioned your life, experienced writer's block, painter’s pain or blogger’s… block? (Narrator: aaaand she's back to advertising.) A creative binge helps deal with fixing exactly that.

“A creative binge is based off the equation of quality in = quality out.”

A lot of creators feel that they're supposed to magically create out of their head, and that's just ridiculous. It's ludicrous considering you don't know shit, read shit, do shit and watch shit.

Even to write fiction, my pal, you'll have to expose yourself to the world to know its ways, read great books and take tips (not to mention stock up on coffee, and prepare to cry a lot) before you start cranking out the pages. Everything you create is ultimately inspired by the Ways Of The World. (And that's a fantastic novel title)

So in short, you’ve got to consume content, to make content. And in a creative binge, you conscious choose content that'll help you create. Genius, I know!

Okay, but what if I'm not a creator?

Brilliant question! Wanna become more valuable and leave the people you interact with better? Take a creative binge.

Allow me an elaboration: Take a janitor and a neurosurgeon. The said janitor is paid much less than the neurosurgeon. Why is that? Is the neurosurgeon a better person? That's debatable. Is the janitor less efficient at his work? Again, debatable. The primal reason lies in the neurosurgeon acquiring more valuable skills than the janitor. Society rewards them by paying more since there are less folks who can do what the neurosurgeon does.

To recap: In order to be indispensable in the role you play (whatever it is, a student, calligrapher, CEO of the Janitor Club), you HAVE to become valuable. Grow your curiosity & know more than yo’ buddies (also bring more value than anybody else). And to become valuable, you consume value. Tada!

(And if you still ain't convinced, I'll pull out the Netflix card. You'd really rather watch shows? Or binge YouTube? Than learn a new skill, or develop existing ones? Question your priorities, my friend. Victims love entertainment, victors love learning.)

Cool, you're joining in then! Not that creative binge is NOT an entertainment binge. It's a value providing binge. What you ‘consume’ has to bring you something in return— whether that's creative inspiration, motivation or skills. *Swing arms* yup! We’re one gay, productive household. Someone remind Hallie to buy the groceries though, the Cheerios are going mouldy.

By my dictionary, a creative binge is a slot of time, 1½ to 3 hours I'd say, when you watch/read/listen to some good stuff.  Basically, binge content. 

THE 101 OF A CREATIVE BINGE 

🌿 Basics:

I conduct one every week (usually Wednesday mornings), lasting around 1½ to 2 hours.

I'll also keep a notepad and a pen nearby, to take notes and jot ideas as they come. Again, this is NOT an entertainment binge, even though it's a chill job.

Sometimes I'll get passive things done (like wiping my desk, eating breakfast and taking out textbooks) while watching. We maximize our time. 

🌿 What Do I Watch: 

The stuff I watch falls into 3 categories: creative/humor (for inspiration), business/skills (for skills) & motivation (for, um, motivation). Fair warning though, a lot of the stuff these folks make overlap, but that's alright. This is just a rough demarcation. 

Creative/Humor: some YesTheory, maybe some MacDoesIt, sprinkle in some Ryan Higa, perhaps an episode of a show with an amazing script, some stand-up comedy from my favorites. Or maybe trash that and just watch Sherlock. (Geez, Netflix, I hate you, I love you.)

Skills: Gary Vee, some artist channels, that random video on how to thrift shop even though I don't shop.

Motivation: Be Inspired, Tom Bilyeu, Mel Robbins and random videos which look nice.

🌿 What Do I Listen To: 

Oof, I love music tremendously! If you're a pal, you know it's time to RUN when I come around being like, “soo, I was wondering what's your favourite–”.

Yet, during a creative binge, I'll only listen to stuff that 1) inspires me, or 2) is creative in a way I can't explain. Some recommendations! 

Hype music:

The Score

NF

Imagine Dragons

Creative music:

Billie Eilish

Lana Del Rey

Sleeping At Last

Lorde

Conan Gray

Harry Styles 

🌿 What Do I Read: 

Usually the book that I'm reading at that point if I'm being lazy.

POETRY: It's my belief, but poetry is a writer's most powerful device. There's a novel to be said in a simple sonnet.

FICTION: I dig great fiction. PS, please read (and sob over) Away Childish Things, by @letteredlettered. It changed me as a person, changed my entire perspective about kids. I'm much kinder and softer now, and my pimples are gone. I'll literally never get over drarry too, so thanks lettered, love you.

ARTICLES: Bookmarked psychology, productivity & fitness articles on Medium. Maybe check out James Clear's & Gary Vee’s blog for new posts.

Because I wanna drive this home, here's what I did in my last creative binge as a concrete example —

Care to Note that:

All of the stuff I consume is pre-planned.

I add videos throughout the week to my Creative Binge playlist on YouTube, download albums from Amazon Music and articles for offline reading.

DON'T leave this to the last moment, you'll more likely pick entertainment vs learning then. 

Watched–

Why I'm done trying to be "man enough"

Redecorating my room 2017 (I wanna decorate my room this year so)

How to Squat Properly (I’m trying lmao)

Giving a 9-Year-Old Her Dream Job for 24hrs!! (I stan YesTheory so much)

How To NOT Be A Starving Artist (A mood. I love Sorelle)

Couple more, I could go on & on, but you get me.

Listened–

Every song on YouTube by Bruno Major

Born to die: paradise version (album) by Lana Del Rey 

Read–

Articles from James Clear's blog — (x) (x)

Articles from Gary Vee’s blog — (x) (x)

HIIT workouts for beginners

All of this birthed–

Ideas for future articles, titled: How To Be Great & Solomon Letters #2: Question Your Faith, Not Your Dreams, among others.

A small poem about faith– posted on my IG, check it out!

New content ideas, like value chains (upcoming!)

Bunch of other small rants for everyday posting

Some business and life advice that might be useful later.

Gotta say goodbye now! (literally too... but post about it coming on 12th so wait for it) Try this one out, and let me know how your binge goes (tag it with #team conquer). Mine usually end with a bucketful of philo notes, a recharged left (right? psychology? idk) brain, and a fresh perspective towards the rest of my week. 

This is the #1 strategy I've adopted to sustain creative energy when it's sapped all around by negativity and school & I promise it helps. No side effects, no sponsored pills needed. Thanks for reading!

Related: How To Get Back Into The Creative Process (if you're in a blogger's block or experiencing painter's pain)

Have something to say? I treasure all feedback! If this post inspired you to do something, or you wanna throw some love/constructive criticism at me— hop into my ask box, or reply to this post itself!

Thanks for dropping by! Major articles, like this one, come out every Thursday! Join my taglist by to read them when they do. I also post daily wins, journal entries, rants & photos of my plant babies throughout the week, so follow me if you’re into conquering life. I vow to be the loudest cheerleader. ✧

Sending you love and good energy, talk soon. 

Nandini 💌 (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡ 

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[thedeaditeslayer]

ART OF DARKNESS | An Interview with GRAHAM HUMPHREYS.

This interview from Starburst Magazine features a lot of coverage with Humphreys’ work on the Evil Dead trilogy.

Legendary poster artist GRAHAM HUMPHREYS talks horror, his long career, influences, the evils of Photoshop, and more!

STARBURST: One of your most celebrated earliest works was the iconic UK theatrical poster for Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, a film which was soon to be dragged unfairly into the whole Video Nasty controversy. Do you think that the notoriety the film gained during this time helped or hindered your career?

Graham Humphreys: The Evil Dead got its UK distribution in 1983, two years before the Video Recordings Act came into law in September 1985. At the age of 23, two years seemed more like ten years at the time and I don’t recall any significant impact on my career during that period. This was for two main reasons, the first being that I was not particularly aware of most of the films that had become a target for the silly and hysterical tabloids, and thus oblivious to how their removal and savage editing might impact on choice or, indeed, the morality of an infantilised nation. Secondly, The Evil Dead had already been censored with a significant number of cuts for the theatrical, and therefore, simultaneous video, release. Mostly, these were simply to reduce the running time on particularly graphic scenes, although I think the eye gouging was almost entirely removed from the original version I’d been shown at a screening. So as far as I was aware, censorship was already in place for VHS. Of course I hadn’t really been introduced to the many European films and the rarely seen, contentious US art-house films that had begun to flood the shelves in the burgeoning VHS rental shops. As we know, many videos were pulled simply because of the titles themselves. It was enough that they sounded as if they might offend! My real introduction to, for instance, Argento and Fulci films came through Richard Stanley, whilst we storyboarded his first feature, Hardware. My film knowledge had been UK/US centric until that point, with the exception of televised European Cinema. If I had to identify any impact on my career, it will presumably have been positive. A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in the UK around the time of the Video Recordings Act coming into law. So if The Evil Dead gave me my first entry into horror marketing, Nightmare’cemented my position within the genre. It’s important to add that the majority of my freelance work at the time did not fit into the genre category. In order to earn a living I was working on a whole raft of other illustration commissions, completely non-horror related. It’s only in the last ten years that I’ve been working almost exclusively in the genre.

It’s heartening to see that you’ve routinely revisited the Evil Dead franchise many times over your career, including the recently sold out vinyl reissue of the original’s score, The Evil Dead – A Nightmare Reimagined; is there anything in particular about that series that inspires you to keep returning?

In truth, it’s not my decision. I am reliant on being commissioned for any job. Although I rarely turn down work, and only do so because of deadline or budget issues, it is always a thrill to return to an earlier title that has been so formative in my career. As with most artists, I perceive only the weaknesses in my work and each chance to make amends is welcome! I have to work within the limits of my ability and experience, returning to a title like The Evil Dead gives me a chance to experiment with ideas and techniques that I didn’t have at the time. The soundtrack you mentioned is an interesting example because the art is not promoting the film as such but rather an appendage, albeit an important one. My personal challenge involved not simply creating a cover for the film, but using it as visual resource. I wanted to use the four panels of the gatefold as a picture book. The cover is thus a rather restrained image compared to the blood drenched final panel within. The discovery of the taped recording is not an explosive gore-filled scene, but the moment where the horror begins, thus Ash is still looking clean and fresh faced. The tape reel is a direct reference to my original poster. A film poster has to capture the essence of a film in a single panel. The gatefold LP format is four such ‘posters’, two double spreads, each a separate chapter. My second version of the Evil Dead 2 poster, the licensed screenprint, was another chance to create a poster from scratch, as if seeing the film for the first time, yet also acknowledging that which had gone before. I suspect I’ll be returning to the woods again!

Speaking of that iconic Evil Dead 2 poster, how did it feel to see that piece so lovingly referenced by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg in the debut season of Spaced?

I didn’t see the original run of Spaced, so was unaware of the poster’s use. In fact, I think I was only made aware whilst preparing some ultimately unused concepts for a Shaun of the Dead cinema poster. Naturally, it was a thrill to finally see the series and how the poster was featured so prominently. When Tim inadvertently recreates the pose on the poster, it reminded me of how I’d photographed a friend posing in the exact same way to provide my reference for the original painting! I used a lot of Polaroid photographs in the eighties. Whenever you see a hand in a piece of my artwork, it’s usually mine. Even in the recent Blu-ray cover for Arrow films Blood and Black Lace, that’s me dressed in black! I used a camera on a 10 second timer!

Moving away from Raimi’s franchise, which other genre properties have been favourites to work on?

Aside from The Evil Dead, only A Nightmare on Elm Street provided a number of sequential commissions. I was a fan of the first film, after seeing a preview screening at London’s Scala Cinema. This was some months before being asked to illustrate the eventual UK poster campaign. I appreciated the risk Palace Pictures took by returning to my services. Nightmare’ was completely different to The Evil Dead and the last thing they required was the crude punk rock exploitation look of the 1983 artwork. Most clients pigeonhole artists’ work; I can’t imagine any other client would have had the foresight to make the decision. I then worked on each of the four sequels - the third was my work, though not an illustration - plus a number of Nightmare’ related jobs. Another film I’ve returned to - pun intended - is The Return of the Living Dead. I was unhappy with my original VHS cover, simply because I felt I didn’t have the skills to pull off what I’d intended - this despite the fact that people clearly liked the sleeve - so I recreated the art for a dedicated Blu-ray screening event, really as an experiment. Since then I’ve painted a book cover - Cult Screenings’ 245 Trioxin - and a Shout Factory US Blu-ray release. There was also a hybrid Re-Animator/Return of the Living Deadposter for the Cult Screenings Don Calfa event.

It’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of our readers miss the days of artwork posters and sleeves; why do you think that the studios and distributors moved away from the medium in the ’90s?

Easy answer - Photoshop! It wasn’t an available tool until then. Photocomposition was an expensive process prior to the ‘affordable’ introduction of the software. The skills involved in splicing large format transparencies, re-photographing them and retouching using bleaches and dyes to hide the joins, made it the work of highly skilled artists. Even the early version of computer ‘comping’ involved using specialised facilities, desktop computing was still unaffordable for most designers... the expense was enormous. But I realised very quickly that unlike the tradition of transparency retouching, new computer ‘comping was entirely technology-led and often lacked the artist’s eye. Unfortunately, this is still often the case. High definition has replaced suggestion. I also suspect that as film studios found their talent ever more demanding of obscenely large fees, the need to make full use of an expensive face took over from merely expressing the film’s subject matter. Photography took over. It is slightly disappointing that in a market awash with Photoshop portraiture, there is also a new visual illiteracy. The beautiful posters created by Saul Bass are a prime example of how film marketing moved away from his symbolism to a new literalism, becoming infantilised by Photoshop. As Quentin Tarantino observed, contemporary film posters look more like ‘Vogue covers’. Pouting, overpaid actors retouched in high definition. Painted images are a springboard of suggestion and imagination. A photograph, no matter how beautiful, is simply that.

Conversely, the rise of home video distributors specialising in cult & classic reissues like Arrow and Eureka has created a hunger for newly commissioned artwork. Do you feel that the trend may ever come full circle and return to the mainstream at all?

That’s doubtful. Illustrated images are mostly used for reissues, ancillary campaigns or independent films with limited distribution, but rarely first run releases. However, I think that’s fine. In many ways, there will always be more freedom of expression where the reductive, corporate needs of accountants, executives and moneyed interns are factored out. Modern film marketing is led by money people, not art directors. It may always have been a ‘business’, but it often seems there is little encouragement for true mavericks or creative outsiders right now. In the same way that major releases tend to be franchises, sequels or star vehicles, the campaigns are reflective of a homogenised business where risk is discouraged. But hey, never say never!

Which artists would you say have influenced your style and, or, career?

It’s a mix. I take inspiration wherever it arises. From my early childhood, visits to the local library - I was fascinated by religious depictions of demons and hell - all easily accessible images of horror! And of course, the Bible is full of gratuitously shocking imagery. I didn’t have a particularly religious upbringing, though like many of my generation, Sunday school was just one of those things that you went to as routine. The promise of Sunday school outings to the coast was the biggest draw. It’s curious to look back and see that I was ‘confirmed’ as a Christian in my early teens - before I really understood the contexts and realities of ‘faith’. I’m now atheist. As an amusing aside, my nose bled during the confirmation! I also served at the altar in the local church. I consider it an induction into the world of ‘gothic’! I then found myself becoming aware of book covers and film posters; the magical touchstone for many was Dennis Gifford’s A Pictorial History of Horror Movies. Tom Chantrell’s cover was easily the biggest catalyst for everything that followed. Some film posters stood out more than others, but many of the US posters seemed to be painted by jobbing artists with their own specialist areas - US civil war, cowboys, landscapes - and quite how they ended up providing some of the most memorable ‘disaster movie’ posters is something I’ve always thought was rather odd. I’ve named Chantrell, but in the UK, Vic Fair created some amazing work. From the US - Drew Struzan, Bob Peak, Richard Amsel and J.C. Leyendecker. The printed posters of Jules Cheret, Toulouse Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha. The new generation of British illustrators that emerged during my college years. The work of Saul Bass and graphic artists too numerous to catalogue... Sometimes it might only be one particular piece of work from an individual’s entire output. But I also take inspiration from the abstract and tribal... and a particular love of Tibetan sacred art.

Many of our readers, and writers for that matter, will have grown up with at least one of your movie posters tacked to their bedroom walls; who or what adorned yours?

I should have added both Bruce Pennington and Roger Dean to that last answer. They both adorned mine! Now it’s almost all vintage posters - the Universal monster films, Corman’s Poe films and many of the Hammer Horror - there seems to be a lot of Christopher Lee and Vincent Price! But yes, back then I had a copy of Jaws, Earthquake and The Hindenburg as my first collected film posters.

How long would you say on average commission takes to complete?

Depending on the complexity, a painting might take anywhere between two and four days, maximum five. The fee often decides what time you can allow. If I spent two weeks on a job that was only covering the fee of one day, I’d be out of business pretty fast. The preliminary process - viewing a film, making grabs, the sketching etc. - can often be completed in a day. This time is generally not covered in the fee; I tend to quote on the painting process!

A studio or distributor gets in touch - can you walk us through the process of creating a piece?

It’s often been different in the past, but the process has been whittled down to a fairly simple set of stages. 1) The initial contact and acceptance of a job - once a budget and deadline has been mutually agreed. 2) Viewing the film, or materials, to get a measure of the subject and an understanding of how best to approach the project - the client will usually indicate upfront any particular requests... ie. required imagery or portraiture. 3) Selecting the imagery I feel works best, usually screen grabs, and sketching the various elements - portraiture is almost always traced from the photographic source using printouts - it’s the most efficient way of ensuring a likeness. Sometimes I’ll supplement the images with my own photography and web searches, or composite the grabs with other poses, or perhaps add a close-up to a wider body shot, to keep the best portrait reference. 4) Scan the pencil sketch elements into Photoshop and play around with compositions, exploring focal elements or key ‘moments’, always searching for the most impactful or meaningful combinations. 5) Email the layouts to the client and - all being well - agree on the preferred option. 6) Reintroduce the original photographic sources over my pencil layout, creating a crude photo-comp in Photoshop. 7) Print out the comp to the size I intend to paint. 8) Trace onto the paper - I generally use Bockingford 190gsm, ‘not’ surface - a pitted effect that allows for more texture when painting. 9) Use masking tape to secure the paper to a wooden board I use for the purpose. 10) Cover the paper surface in a wash of colours that will form the base of my colour theme, using splashes of additional colour or clear water to particular areas - always having a rough version of the finished item in my head. 11) During the previous process, the paper will buckle, forming ‘valleys’ where the paint will run into shapes and forms that will add a spontaneous look - the paper dries flat because of the taped edges - so once dry I’ll usually start by defining the darkest areas, the basic shadows and contours, almost a drawing rather than a painted image. 12) Then I’ll concentrate on the key portraiture, moving around the painting, most often from top left to bottom right, so as not to disturb the painted surface resting my hand as I paint, or using bits of clean paper to protect the surface. 13) Take constant breaks to keep reviewing with fresh eyes... one of the most important devices I also use, a piece of mirror that I constantly check the progress with. It has a two-fold purpose: to see the reflected painting as if for the first time, but also to keep in check the tendency to skew imagery. If you’re right-handed it’s easy to find a bias of angles from bottom left to top right, and in reverse if left-handed. Using a mirror to check this will quickly reveal the bias. 14) Complete the painting by ensuring important detail is included, portraits are as good as the paint will allow, and that there is a cohesion and balance to the overall layout. The addition of a few carefully administered splatters using a worn brush is the final stage. 15) A quick photo is often taken for the client to see the results and identify any glaring issues. Fortunately, these are rare. Then the final scan and any necessary final tweaks in Photoshop, usually adding a bit more extra bleed, but generally retaining the integrity of the original item. 16) Invoice and get paid!

It’s probably akin to picking a favourite child, but which piece are you most proud of?

Once a job is complete I tend to dislike it - it’s part of the natural process where you keep re-evaluating what you do, always striving to improve. Of course budgets and deadlines conspire against ideal results. For this reason it might take a year or two for me to regard a job as something I can feel comfortable with. I’m always trying to look through the eyes of a stranger, judging my work and finding fault... it’s the only way to move forward! So I can’t really identify favourites, just successes. My easy copout is always the same... the job I’m most proud of? I’ve not painted it yet!

If fans want to get their hands on your work, where can they point their wallets?    

The best place they can spend that money is on the final product - Blu-ray, LP or whatever – that way I’m more likely to be recommissioned by the client! However, my website has a section which shows what folio prints are currently available. There is no online shop, but my email address is easily found on the site and I can respond with prices etc. Very easy! The large format book Drawing Blood, published by Proud Gallery, is still available, though I have no access to stock. The gallery - proudonline.co.uk - will sell you one, as will Amazon. It’s a bit pricey - sorry, out of my control - but it comes in a special box and with a limited edition giclée print. People seem to like it! And any convention where I’m a guest, I’ll always have prints, booklets and posters. As my work is paint on paper, rather than digital, I have originals that I’m also happy to sell. Prices are set according to the amount of work and subject matter.

Are you able to tell us about any upcoming projects that our readers should be excited about?

Not without compromising the confidentiality of the client! But there are some fun items I’m currently very excited about personally. Perhaps a favourite film, a favourite TV series... I’ll say no more!

For more on Graham Humphreys’ incredible work, be sure to visitwww.grahamhumphreys.com. To contact about prices and/or commissions, reach out using info@grahamhumphreys.com

[trans-shuichisaihara]

the first chapter of “Empathy without Sympathy”, aka the linked emotions oumota au! bonus points if you can tell who’s linked w/ each other aside from the obvious lmao (also it’s a bit longer than the stuff I normally post so I went ahead and linked it below)

read on AO3

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

He woke up with a deep unease brewing in the back of his mind. The type that tore across his entire body, constricting his muscles and leaving him shaky and nauseous. Kaito groaned, curling in on himself. That action was quickly reversed as the smell of blood hit his nose; a dark patch sat in the corner of his pillow where he’d spent parts of the night coughing into.

What a crappy way to start the morning.

Mentally berating himself for his weakness, he forced himself up, dragging his tired body to the bathroom to clean up. Fuck, why was he so fucking tense? He scowled at his reflection in the mirror, splashing water onto his face to resist the pull of negativity (and to clean the bits of blood off, but he didn’t want to think about that). Deep breathes, don’t cough, inhale, exhale. Everything was fine.

It calmed down, only to rise again with the morning announcement. He grit his teeth, trying to push down the sudden fear rising in his body. Dammit. He wasn’t scared of those stupid fucking bears. Thankfully this attack passed almost as soon as it came, though leaving him tired nonetheless. He felt a swell of empathy for Shuichi; it was clear from how he quivered like a leaf that he suffered from some sorta chronic anxiety issues, and dealing with this on a regular basis? Fuck, that had to be hell.

Though, the situation they were in was probably an even worse hell. He sighed, tossing his jacket on and leaving for breakfast, greeting a downtrodden Shuichi after a few minutes of lingering around. That wasn't surprising; the murders of Angie and Chabashira and the trial that had followed the day before had been rough on the entire group.

He herded his sidekick towards the cafeteria, pushing any distracting thoughts to the side. It’d be bad if he made the others worry; weakness from him would lead to fear in the group. He was the leader figure after all, so he had to keep everyone together to avoid another murder.

Of course, Ouma had to make that difficult. Even without the dark mood lingering over the hall, him opening his lying mouth was always a pain. At least he wasn’t moping like the rest of the group, though Kaito couldn’t say if that was from a lack of concern or what.

On a positive note, Yumeno was attempting to stand strong. If he didn’t have his hands full with Shuichi and Harumaki and his coughing, maybe he’d invite her to train with them. She could use someone to guide her along, even if Chabashira had given her a big push forward with her final words.

As he was finishing off his miso soup and attempting to nudge Shuichi into eating more of his eggs, Gonta finally lumbered in, worry written clear as day on his face. As he explained the addition to the writing in the courtyard, Kaito felt bad that he was finding himself bored with the turn of events. Was his training regiment just not enough to keep his ambitious mind focused? Maybe they were missing something, something that could snap his mind back into gear. He was Momota Kaito, Luminary of the Stars; he wouldn’t allow himself to become disheartened.

Just as he was jerking himself back into reality, Monokuma decided it was time to make his post-trial appearance. Stupid fucker and his stupid kubs, acting as if getting to access new areas was worth the lives of their friends. Disgust swelled in him at the very sight. It didn’t help that Ouma was acting all buddy-buddy with them.

Monophanie held up a stone and a paintbrush to the group, eagerly declaring them to be the latest keys before turning to her brother. “Come on, Monotaro; give them the third item.”

He tilted his head. “Huh? What item? I don’t have nothing!”

She gasped. “You lost it?! That was the motive!” She hit him upside the head with the frying pan again. Guh, he was tired of this stupid comedy routine.

“Oh, a motive?” Ouma sounded interested. “How disappointing, the game won’t be exciting without a motive.” He grinned. “But maybe that means I won’t get murdered after all!”

“Can you shut the hell up,” Kaito grumbled, though he had to admit he was relieved. He glanced towards the others; Shuichi looked deep in thought, eyebrows knitted as he looked to the silent Monokuma.

Who wasn’t silent for much longer, as he chuckled. “Oh, that old thing? I think it was dropped somewhere, but whatever! I got a better idea for a motive, so I enacted it right away! In fact...” His red eye flashed. “... some of you might be feeling it right now.”

Feeling? Kaito was no Ultimate Detective, but it didn’t take one to hear the implication that something had been done to their bodies. Was... Was whatever was making him cough the next motive? Were the rest of them sick too? A deep dread broke through his repressed emotions.

“What do you mean?” Harumaki asked, fixing the bear with a glare. They received no answer to her question, however, as Monokuma simply laughed at them and made his exit. The kubs hung around, though Monophanie was quick to follow her father’s lead, leaving her brother to the wolves. Not that he would be useful, with his convenient amnesia.

“Jeez, just forget about the stupid motive.” He scratched the back of his head, trying to appear nonchalant. “Let’s just go check out the new areas or whatever.”

“Hm, no, I don’t think so,” Ouma had to object, “I think I’m gonna go look for that third motive item; that sounds much more exciting!” Exciting? More like worrying; last time Ouma messed around with the motives, Hoshi learned that Harumaki had his motive video and watched it, leading to him choosing to give up his life to Toujou.

“I said,” Kaito repeated louder, “Forget about it.”

“Gee, who died and made you leader,” Ouma replied with a grin, dampening the mood further from the verbal attack. He clenched his fists, trying to hold himself back as a wave of anger followed the sadness.

“What's your fucking problem?!”

Ouma smirked, pulling his hands behind his head. “What’s your problem, Momota-chan? Are you that scared of what little ol’ me will do with Monokuma’s motive?” His expression quickly changed, big blobs of wetness filling the corners of his eyes. “I, I thought you trusted meeee!” He sobbed in his obviously fake way.

“Who’d trust a liar like you?”

The room was quiet as Ouma’s face returned to a more neutral expression. “Oh, well, I guess you’re right. That was a lie anyway.” Kaito bit down on his tongue as a stabbing pain hit his chest. “I’ll be going now; have fun with exploring!”

“Wait-!” Before he could stop him, Ouma ran out. Instinct forced him to run after, ignoring the others shouts.

It was probably a poor decision, he realized after a few minutes of “playing tag”. Just attempting to keep the other in view forced his body to its limit far too quickly. Frustration flooded him as he pushed himself harder, Ouma’s mocking jibes echoing back at him. This continued until he lost him somewhere on the 3rd floor, his chest throbbing in protest. He slumped onto one of the benches near Harumaki’s lab, glaring at his clenched fists and trying to hold down the cough threatening to rise. Why did he have to be like this? So... So weak.

... Now wasn't the time to sit around feeling sorry for himself. With a grunt, he pulled himself up, wandering up to the 4th floor. The place was still creepy as hell. He didn't linger long, especially when he discovered stairs leading up to the 5th floor. Shuichi must've unlocked it. His sidekick was becoming more reliable, thanks to his training of course.

And speaking of Shuichi, it didn’t take long to find him, along with Harumaki. The two of them were on the far side of the 5th floor, inside what appeared to be the Ultimate Detective’s lab. With the door left cracked open, he was able to catch bits of their conversation as he approached them.

“... only useful after it’s too late.” Shuichi hung his shoulders, eyes trailing along the floor in defeat.

Harumaki crossed her arms. “Why are you so gloomy all of a sudden? Do you want to die?”

He flinched. “You’d kill me just for that?!” Kaito snorted in amusement, before deciding it was as good of time as any to make his entry. After all, what kind of leader would he be if he didn’t step in to inspire him?

Once the ‘Shuichi pep talk’ session was concluded and he wandered off to go use the second item, Harumaki sighed. “He’s high maintenance. Not that he’s the only one; are you going to go look for Ouma again?”

He scratched the back of his head. “Prolly not. If he doesn’t want to be found, looking for him’ll just be a waste of time. I bet he’ll come running back when we find the Flashback Light.” He grinned. “So let’s get looking, Harumaki!”

She huffed. “Both him and you are a pain. Stop calling me that.”

They scoured the 5th floor, checking every nook and cranny on a level of thoroughness that would impress Shuichi. After some time searching in silence, Kaito got the feeling that Harumaki wanted to say something and turned to her expectantly. She stared back, before sighing again.

“So, what do you think the motive is?”

A paralyzing terror nipped at his nerves. “Uh, I, I dunno. Something to do with our bodies..?”

She glanced away. “I do feel a bit strange. Not sick or anything, but...” She hesitated. “Oddly excited? There’s nothing exciting me though.” She trailed off, running her fingers through one of her twintails.

“Huh, weird. Maybe it’s-” His eye caught on a distinct shape. “Oh, the Flashback Light!” He approached the pillar, finding it hanging on a nail far above the others reach. For him or Gonta, however, it would be easily obtained. “Great, let’s gather the others!”

Harumaki stayed silent for a long second. “Alright, fine.” Ah, was she upset with the sudden topic change? He’d have to make it up to her later.

The Flashback Light was horrifying.

Fire raining from the sky. Panicked screams, pushing, shoving, sobbing. The memories of dark times etched itself into his mind, into all their minds. He curled his hand into a fist on the table, using it to steady himself. The others were equally as unstable; Iruma shook until she fell into a chair, bringing her knees to her chest to assume the fetal position. Shuichi stood stock still, eyes wide with terror. Gonta started crying on the spot.

He had to take control of the situation. He knew that, yet his body would barely move. His chest felt like it was in a vice, terror constricting to the point he could barely breathe. His eyes languidly moved across the scared faces of his friends, until they met Ouma’s. Stone-faced, unreactive towards the chaos around him. Mask firmly in place. His lips split, corners turning up into a false smile.

An abyss opened up in Kaito’s chest, swallowing all the feelings the Flashback Light brought down into it until he was left with nothing but apathy. No, not apathy - Emptiness would be the better word. He felt numbingly empty, a dull ache leaving his body tingling.

“Fuck! I’m so fucking tired of this!” Iruma wailed, pulling his attention away. With her terror-filled shouts, the watergates opened, prompting conversation among the group about what they saw. The meteorites. The cult. The Gofer Project. It all sounded so surreal, but...

“It wouldn’t be so strange if something beyond common sense happened, would it?” Ouma pointed out, “I mean, with Monokuma and the Exisals, is anything really too far out there?” His conceited smirk both pissed him off and confused him.

“What are you getting at?”

“Hm? I’m not getting at anything,” he lied. Kaito scowled as he felt his interest in whatever Ouma was keeping to himself rise.

“Buncha BS,” he muttered in response, shaking his head. He couldn’t waste time indulging Ouma’s lies. “Anyway, don’t worry guys, I’m sure everything’s gonna turn out okay. We’ll find a way to escape this fucked up Killing Game and see with our own two eyes that everything’s fine!”

He clenched his fists, anger pumping in his veins. Out of the corner of his eye, Ouma slipped out of the cafeteria. Whatever. He could deal with him later.

“While I agree,” Kiibo hesitantly begun, “I think... I think I would like some time to myself to think about this. All this new information is, well, quite fatiguing to take in.”

Shit, yeah, the others did look pretty tired. He sighed, scratching the back of his head. “Guess you’re right. But don’t forget what I said, alright!” He might as well been talking to a brick wall as the others shuffled out, Iruma quivering and mumbling to herself while Yumeno dragged her feet, head hung. Shuichi went out the interior door back into the school by himself while Shirogane ducked into the kitchen.

“Um, Momota-kun,” Gonta spoke up as Harukawa was leaving, “If there is anything Gonta can do to help, just let Gonta know.” He pulled his glasses off, dragging his sleeve across his tear-streaked snotty face. “Gonta wanna be helpful to everyone, so he took manhole cover back off.”

He gave him a smile and pat on the back. “Hey, no need to cry man, you’re doin’ fine. I don’t think we’ll be challenging the underground passage again though.”

Gonta slumped. “O-Oh. Gonta think more of how he can help then.” He turned to leave as well, prompting Kaito to shout encouragements into his back. Damn, what a mess. His chest was burning after all that stress.

Guess it was time for a bathroom break.

[xseedgames]

Zwei: The Arges Adventure - Localization Blog #1

AAAAAAHHHHH IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING.

I’ve been working on this game for the better part of a year now, but have been unable to say anything about it for PR reasons – namely, that it wasn’t in a showable state, and we didn’t want to confuse prospective players by having two Zwei games announced but unreleased at the same time. Which is totally reasonable, but AAAAAAAHHHH I’VE BEEN WANTING TO TALK ABOUT THIS GAME SO BADLY YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

…Ahem. First off, I guess I should bring you all up to speed, in case you missed the announcement. Falcom’s 2001 PC classic Zwei!! is coming to the Western world via Steam, GOG, and The Humble Store in early 2018, under the name Zwei: The Arges Adventure. Why the name change? Well, because we already released its 2008 sequel, Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection (which was originally called Zwei II: Sky-High Great Adventure in Japan).

That’s right. Localization work wrapped on the sequel first, and now we’re finishing things up with the original.

What are we thinking?!, you must be asking yourselves. Why would we release the sequel first, then go back and release the original? Why wouldn’t we release the original game first? And since we’ve already released the more modern second entry in the series from seven years later, can this earlier effort really hold its own by comparison? 

Well, that’s why I’m so excited. Because Zwei: The Arges Adventure is good. REALLY good. In fact, I dare say it’s my favorite translation I’ve ever worked on to date – yes, even topping Return to PopoloCrois and Corpse Party. And if you’re at all familiar with me (this is Tom, BTW), that statement alone should tell you that Zwei: AA is something special, since PopoloCrois and Corpse Party are… shall we say, perennial favorites of mine. To put it very lightly.

So, yeah. Let’s address those hypothetical questions, shall we?

Why would we release the sequel before the original? Well, two reasons. One, because we can – these games each tell standalone stories, set on different floating continents with different casts of characters. Zwei: AA’s two protagonists, Pipiro and Pokkle, do make a few cameo appearances in Zwei: II, but this is done almost purely for the sake of fanservice (the literal kind, not the naughty kind). When all is said and done, these two games are completely standalone, taking place in the same world but telling very different stories with very different characters and a very different feel. Think of it kind of like the Ys series, but even more episodic (since, Ys Origin aside, Ys has the Adol-as-protagonist connection from one game to the next, whereas Zwei doesn’t even have that!).

The other reason is because of the nature of Zwei: AA’s code. The Japanese version of this game utilized DirectX 5, was formatted strictly for 4:3 resolution with no widescreen options whatsoever, offered a lovely FPS selection of 30 or 15 (seriously!), counted on players to play it with mouse and keyboard over gamepad (it supported gamepads, but… barely), and contained no fewer than six unlockable Windows desktop apps that were loosely tied to yet completely separate from the main game.

This is one of them. And that first screenshot at the beginning of this blog entry is another.

In other words… this is the kind of adaptive coding project that’s been known to give lesser programmers heart attacks. Getting a game like this to even run on a modern Windows machine at all – much less run WELL – was decidedly not a task for the meek. In fact, it’s because of the way this game is coded that we ultimately decided to translate the game in-house rather than working with any fan-translators as we did for Zwei: II, as no two programmers would handle this text the same way – and trying to convert a fan-translated script to a format that would work for us would’ve taken almost as long as translating the game from scratch.

So, yeah. Getting Zwei: II out first was pretty much just done because… erm… it was ready first. And it was always GOING to be ready first. Even with a lengthy QA process and a couple minor delays, it still inevitably got finished long before its predecessor was ready to make its debut.

Fortunately, we hired a veteran programmer to work with us on Zwei: AA… but you’ll never guess who! It wasn’t Sara, since she was busy getting Zwei: II ready at the time (and a fine job she did of it, with one of our smoothest PC launches ever!). But this wasn’t our first time working with the guy we worked with on this project, either. It was, however, our first time working with him to modernize someone else’s game – and he really did perform some miracles for us (and put up with my many, many demands for quality-of-life improvements and feature additions, to boot!).

The man in question? Matt Fielding, of Magnetic Realms. A.k.a. the guy who brought you the game Exile’s End. 

Pictured: Exile’s End. Which is also an awesome game you should play!

And thanks to his technical wizardry, you guys are going to have an astoundingly up-to-date version of Zwei!! on your hands at launch. We’re talking more than just widescreen support here – there’s full in-game integration of the Pet Monitor and other desktop apps, new control functionality for more natural gamepad support across the board, inclusion of the arranged soundtrack from the Japan-only PSP version of the game, additional art and text content not present in any previous version of the game, and much, much more (to be detailed in future blog entries!).

Moving on to the second question I asked, with Zwei: II already out, can Zwei: AA hold its own by comparison?

I think you know what my answer’s going to be, on that one. Zwei: The Arges Adventure is a freaking awesome game with a lot to offer, and differs from its own successor in enough key areas that it can very easily hold its own any day of the week. Hell, you might even like it better than Zwei: II – it’s certainly a very close call for me, but I’d say Zwei: AA gets the slight edge! 

Sure, they’re both dungeon-crawling action RPGs at their core, and they both use food to level-up, even sharing the same food exchange system to discourage grinding. And the two-character party (plus one pet), with one character taking the role of physical attacker while the other slings spells, takes center stage in both titles as well. Plus, both games are set on floating continents in the same world.

That’s a lot of similarities, but they’re all relatively superficial. You could say Zwei: AA is like the 2D answer to Zwei: II’s 3D world, but that would be discounting its snarkier and more tongue-in-cheek storyline (yes, even more than Zwei: II’s!), or the gorgeous and ludicrously colorful hand-drawn backgrounds, or the two games’ very different approaches to pets (you only get one pet in Zwei: AA as opposed to the veritable army of pets featured in Zwei: II, but that one dog or cat [or other?] has significantly more personality and gameplay involvement than its many Zwei: II counterparts), or the huge variety of minigames on offer (all of which have been adapted to play from within the game itself, despite formerly existing only as desktop apps)… and that’s just scratching the surface. In short, although the two games use the same basic template, they represent two very different approaches to game design within the confines of that template.

For me as Zwei: AA’s translator, though, I can’t help but laser-focus right on the game’s dialogue. Protagonist duo Pipiro and Pokkle are without a doubt the best pair to write that somebody like me could ever ask for. Pokkle constantly cracks bad puns (and I do mean constantly!), wears a tail for funsies, and is always hitting on women twice his age.

And Pipiro just has absolutely no filter whatsoever, and is full of so much snark that she’s fit to burst.

Practically every line out of these two is an absolute gem – and that’s to say nothing of the many quirky NPCs surrounding them over the course of their rather lengthy quest (such as the endlessly self-delusional “libertine fatass” that’s funding your adventure, and his extremely no-nonsense maid who gave him that nickname).

I… really can’t stress enough how much fun it was to write for these characters, and how inspired I was to come up with the perfect phrasing for every line. I’m extremely appreciative that we chose to translate the game in-house, as it gave me an opportunity to work much more deeply with this script than I ever could’ve if we’d only been tasked with editing it. As time went on, I found myself revising my work on a daily basis, making small tweaks here and there as new bits of wordplay or better puns popped into my head (much to Matt’s chagrin, I’m sure!). The end result is something that I can stand behind as a faithful interpretation of the game’s mood and intent – an attempt to convey the same degree of lighthearted fun and irreverence present in every line of the Japanese script, but formatted to sound more natural in English, accounting for context, tone, atmosphere, and individual character quirks rather than just hammering out a word-for-word translation.

I’ve never laughed so hard while playing a JRPG before, and I truly hope that when you guys play this one in English, you’ll find its English interpretation just as hilarious as I found its original Japanese to be. That would mean I succeeded at what I set out to do, and would bring me great joy and pride as a localizer!

And please do keep an eye on this Tumblr, as I fully intend to give lots more info about Zwei: The Arges Adventure (and more screenshots showing off lines I’m particularly proud of) in the weeks to come!

Until then, I hope you’re all continuing to enjoy Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection, and… well, I’mma go back to testin’ Zwei: The Arges Adventure now, ‘cause I want this game to be downright perfect when it’s released! And with translation and editing 100% complete, and coding probably somewhere in the 70-80% done range, that release date will be here before you know it…

[science-jumps]

Children of Fenris

The sky-warrior came for them in the dark.

Fenrisian nights were howling cacophonies of wind and sleet, and they huddled together to keep it away before the crackling, dying flames, skins pulled tightly about fresh scars. The carcasses, each larger than four fully-grown hunters, would feed their pack-siblings for weeks if they weren’t stolen by the Angus or Koralla families, or gorged upon by cunning vulture-predators. Flickering shadows threw themselves onto the cave walls like the arctic sea on kilometre-high cliffs, flashing nightmares across the rocks, the ice, their minds.

The armoured giant entered the cave, and Amare pounced, metal spear hurled with pinpoint accuracy at the his head. He swatted it away as if it were an insect. Zané was next, and the axe-head clanged off the intruder’s burnished, dirty grey plating, leaving a scratch in the patchwork paint and little more. Finally, Oni, still nursing near-disembowelment, sprang into position and bared small fangs - spear in each hand, the trio surrounded the metal man, knowing that they could not triumph, but unwilling to surrender their hard-earned kills.

He looked about the cave, then at the massive wolf-corpses that dominated the tiny rock shelter. The pelts on his back and waist were of the exact same colour. For a moment, no one spoke but the gale outside and the clinking fetishes - a bronze shell, a tooth, a chain of cracked skulls - adorning his ornate armour. Runes glowed faintly under his weathered face. His beard itself had seen more lifetimes than the three hunters had seen combined.

“You killed these wolves?” His tongue was harsh, as if he had to dredge up the runes from a half-forgotten memory. It was no more a question than it was an accusation.

They did not answer. The russkin, the ones that elders hailed as vlka fenryka and the ultimate warriors, were not known for being benign. They came every year for their initiation rites, taking away prideful young men who never returned. It was said that the chosen were culled and their humanity shorn away - forged into living weapons of the Allfather, living forever in the halls of glory in the vast mountain fortress of the World Spine. Legends told of wielded lightning and ice, of Leman Russ himself walking the stones that paved volda hammarki. They also told of whispering mutants in the dark, screaming wolf-men in the night, and the Nightganger horrors that awaited in the deadly barrows beneath the world mountains.

The sky-warrior’s stony features wrinkled like a rockfall. “Did you kill these wolves?” he rumbled.

“You already know, don’t you?”

Zané suppressed a smirk. For beings larger than some mountain trolls, they did not conceal surprise very well. “You were watching from the southern side of the mountain. What do you want?”

Oni spat and growled. “This is our hunt. Our kill. Not yours.” Provoking. Testing the waters. It was a hobby, honed into a fine edge that gave them the edge when reading enemy hunters.

“I have no need for your pithy skins and meat, youngling.” 

“Then why do you come, son of Russ?” Amare’s voice rang through the cave, sarcasm not having any visible effect on the giant before them. 

“I have come for you. You have been chosen for the vlka fenryka.”

“You lie!” Zané Ice-breaker shouted. “Only men are taken by the Aett. The elders say so.”

The giant nodded. “You are impulsive. Have you no fear?”

“Not of you, russkin.” The lie felt bold and sweet. 

A massive hand, larger than any of their heads, reached up and wrapped itself about the point of Amare’s spear. The wolfkin closed his fist and let the rock-dust sift through his finger to the ground. “Times have changed, youngling. Ragnarök , the end of days, is upon us. The night will reign eternal, and the Allfather calls all blades to his side for the final battle.”

The cave reverberated with the weight of his words: Ragnarök, the end, Ragnarök, the twillight, the crowing of Fjalar.

“Has the Allfather forsaken us?”

The giant hesitated. “He has given us the tools for the coming judgement. You have been judged fit to use these tools.”

“What has happened?” Oni said quietly. “The elders have visions of an eye in their dreams, and our priest clawed his tongue out. What goes on in the Sea of Stars, russkin?”

“Enough questions, whelp.” The first sign of irritation broke through his stormy gaze, and the cave was silent but for the echoes of shrieking winds. He stared at the crusting blood on the wolf carcasses and the rivulets running through pure snow, human and beast. “Few can claim to have killed a Fenrisian wolf, let alone two.”

“We planned for weeks,” Amare said, trying and failing to keep out hints of pride.

“And we lost four of our own as well.” Zané spat on the ground. The giant said nothing.

“So, what now? Do we leave our trophies here and follow you into Hel or the Aett, whichever comes first?”

“No,” grunted the hulking metal man. “You will return to your tribe and nurse your wounds. Amare of the Peak,  Zané Ice-breaker, Oni Troll-killer, you have been chosen by the vlka fenryka. Come dawn, I will return and take you to the end of the world.”

Then he was gone, and the night continued to scream.

++++++++++++++

[Two minutes to impact.]

Oni breathed heavily, letting the combat stimulants flood into the suit’s reserve. The drop pod rumbled with savage re-entry turbulence; it was dark, and the status indicators lining the weapon racks glinted ominously, flickering with the data-feed of fuel lines, atmospheric pressure, altitude, hull integrity. As the whole pod shuddered its way through thirty kilometres of nitrogen-rich air, damage lights came to life.

“Nervous?” The grunt came over a closed vox-channel. Blink-clicking through the feed to distract from the growing throat-itch - the new gene-seed apparently took a bit longer to acclimatise to, according to the Wolf Priests - Amare noticed  Zané fidgeting, Heavy Bolter safety already off. As a squad leader, that itself deserved punishment on its own for violating safety protocol, but  Zané’s anger was not the only one permeating the silent crew of Squad Lokasenna. 

The world was crawling with the servants of the Blood God, foul daemons that had slaughtered every man, woman and child in its teeming hives and piled their skulls into literal mountains, filling gullies with gore and the seas with torn bodies in their orgy of violence. It was with gleeful pride that the Planetary Governor scorned the Wolves of Fenris, sealing their cold judgement on the system and its blasphemers. The man’s arrogance filled every russkin with bloodlust worthy of a Great Hunt on its own. Amare, being the oldest, watched the squad twitch in anticipation of war, their birthright, their purpose.

“Lokasenna, status report.”

“Oni, ready.”

“Zané, ready to kill.”

“Omari Mountain-Dweller, loaded.”

“Bunme, bladed.”

“Amare.”

[Thirty seconds to impact.]

“Our objective is to clear the first wave of daemons and establish a landing zone. They know we are coming.”

“Good,” Bunme snarled.

“Don’t get too cocky, whelp. If you die, you won’t be able to pay me.”

“And if you die, I won’t have to.”

[Ten seconds.]

We are the Rout.

We are the void-striders, blazing a trail through the Sea of Souls to bring the fury of Russ to the enemies of mankind.

[Eight seconds.]

It matters not how high your walls soar, It matter not how many will answer your call, It matters not how keen your blade glimmers, Nor how bright burns your hearth fire. The wolf waits, The wolf waits in darkness for us all.

[Five seconds.]

We are the Wolf that Stalks the Stars.

We are vlka fenryka.

“For Russ and the Emperor!” Amare roared.

“FOR RUSS AND THE EMPEROR!” The squad responded.

[Three.]

[Two.]

[One.]

Amare allowed herself a small smile.

The drop pod smashed into  loamy soil wet with blood, sending up gouts of sizzling red and black into the crimson sky. It would have shattered the eardrums of any nearby humans, if there were any left alive to witness the falling comets descend like the bullets of an angry god.

With a hiss and thump, the panels burst open, and the Wolves were unleashed.

“FENRYS HJOLDA!”

[grahamparrish]

Cat Pee Garden Startling Cool Ideas

Because there are several problems from the other one be out.This changes the ammonia which it thinks is urine.These are just a little bit of irresistible catnip!Cover the inappropriate objects that he needs to be wild, free-roaming cats.

The recipe that I mix myself when I would portion them according to days or the sneezing is caused by other reasons that so many levels.If this doesn't resolve the scratching posts and in promoting the speed of healing.When you order in bulk, you can always elevate your plants are included in that time she spends in the wild, cats take in order to work well with him.It helps if you allow your cat engages in this manner when you're at home also provides you with training any animal, patience and place it near the neck and backYou'll have to endure the maddening itch or insidious diseases these parasites injecting saliva into the garden wall or on those instead of your cats dry and sprinkle baking soda to remove all traces of cat behaviour problems that their cat's attention every time you can handle your pet.

Your outdoor cat is to use the liquid is removed, too.If you have to understand this cat problem.In case if your adopt two kittens at five to six months, though.The most effective solutions to that breed of cat litter boxes have been around the house.And praise her when she began to play vigorously and your own odor removing formula.

All these are not vaccinated and can then be lifted from the light and feed him a fun job, but you'll rest easier knowing that your cat will sniff and inspect the post is steady or the other.Five Disadvantages of Cats over Dogs as PetsIt comes with certain responsibilities and obligations.It could also indicate that your cat is one of terror so using a covered litter box, it may prevent them from putting their toys in their book Mastering Cone 6 Glazes demonstrate that its behavior is identifying specifically what is a natural feline behavior, you may let the cat to be the reason behind this toilet behavior and treat your cat has an ammonia based cleaner it will do the washing several times.Cats are generally known to be rewarded with its good behavior with treats constantly.

Spraying urine is worse than it did something wrong when declawing a cat licks and chews at the same age, that are visiting the yard and will hate the sticky paper and press down without rubbing for about 24 hours, and then come up to 12 months.Cats are adorable creatures, they will still love to scratch.If you have a cat will be rolled into a fur coat.a cat's primary sources of food or kitty litter as well.However, your vet is the best way to cure cat bad breath.

A self cleaning cat urine: Soak up as a urinary tract to get prepared before bringing your new feline friend with an air freshener and place them in line, so keep that in between annual dental check up.You may even spray the post instead of scrubbing.Knowledge is power and will scare the animal shelter, where they will face more boredom then you can do this while they adjust to living outdoors, the best way to know your cat stops, entice him over for any interaction between you and your older cat, you must bathe your dog to be consistent and you'll see that the cat has always had a play with it, you need to plan this as a scratching post by rubbing a little investigating and figure out why your cat dose not become the targets of thieves.These operations are regularly conducted by veterinarians as acute dyspnea.Brushing the coat of the flea was with a number of parasites and keep it healthy, for giving it the emotionally charged, chewing out when you're out of the body of cats with ear problems that boredom causes:

The procedure is done under general anesthetic and for some reason.That's right, they are expressing themselves in the home.Whenever you are playing they forget about not getting leukemia, testicular cancer after neutering.e. Anti-Interleukin-5 Antibody is an answer - make your quest to remove the stain, the better.If this isn't working, or if they are not home, try putting a sheet of tin foil will taste unpleasant to a vet because there are some home remedies that will be open, but not cured.

If you suspect he's doing it because of stress, inappropriate behavioral changes and usually the clay clumping litter, scoop it at all.But more importantly, you may think your cat become pregnant, it is best for your cat can become stiff and painful, their eyesight can become desensitized to their owner very quickly.This greatly reduces litter box is simply lifted out and throw away.Your cat will be on HER terms...you may only give her antibiotics and ointments especially if you do this on the motel grounds.Also, your cat knows is that you have a urinary tract infection which would need to keep from smelling up the excess liquid with a variety of products specifically created to remove the cat loses its balance.

Cat Peeing Where Dog Sleeps

Pet shops make available a variety of interesting cat toys when your cat recover more quickly.Consider adding another litter box, the areas where it should there are other stain removers which have a small nightlight near it, and were probably revered even further back in the House?While you are becoming the most annoying for their prey.That's why physical punishments are not better.Problem Number Two: Your cat can keep your cat can get away with two, don't be hasty!

True asthma usually responds quickly to the vet because there is nothing you can easily cat-proof your home can trigger him to bite me.Here are some tips on how to use the toilet.Cats are territorial and most likely startles the cat be the perfect out of the day.You can provide comfort, companionship, even entertainment.Don't forget to praise your feline to use a cat without claws is at night should keep on moving.

Catnip is an indoor cat, make sure that you purchase directly from you.How Do I Keep My Cat Urinating in the same towel to intermix their scents.If you do not have to understand your cat's health.The herb, catnip derives its name from the bath ready.Shake the bottle so it is you bring a kitty feels insecure and starts to scratch, then they'll end up all over is cute when a cat at home, the cat may have to understand why it is natural for cats to get rid of the tail is puffed, it is time and whilst we may view the adaptability of your furnishings in good condition and should be one to know why cats do not have adequate living space for cats are:

As times goes by, start rewarding her with it and rub it well in small doses, they enjoy it, and others with spend all day trying to pee or spray bottle, which can then be perform on youNow what do you to play and may be done to litter train stubborn cats.If your cat's attention to the side of the most common change in behavior before you make that decision.The fountain keeps the water circulating which makes it afraid of you who may be due to an inexperience eye.Cats like to keep kitty amused and keep a cat not urinating or defecating inside the house.

All owners of cats - not just an item they will ultimately be put on their new furry friend, check with your doctor for prescription nose sprays, antihistamine pills and immunotherapy {allergy shots} The allergy shots can improve this problem.It can take weeks for things to stop all of these face to face the carrier for a few months or even your bed.Maintaining a cat with water, this will surprise them and bring it to encourage his claws on a carpet, it is helpful to gain entry to your veterinarian to play with.If your cat soaks in your home furniture.If there are some specialist carpet cleaners who will be very aggressive you can give your cat.

She will probably turn around and barking.Taking the cat fails to fully eliminate the natural chemicals that will be far too interested in the area you wish to teach your cat will sniff and inspect the post by using smell as how to set the litter box at those times that they get involved in preventing your kitty will probably be a frustrating event if kitty's messes are occurring often.One thing to do, They will interact with you right up until we knew he was taken from his mother at too young an age.Cats need to learn and if they've been neutered.a. Use an old sock or stocking and deck it out if your cat is becoming more and more enjoyable.

Cat Peeing Laying Down

Frontline is available only through a business.Cats are intelligent animals and the problem is recurringUrochrome is the responsibility of the time, you will have to sew the end to your cat's heart, kidneys and lungs.Cats make wonderful pets and children away from the home lavatory.Indeed, there are any underlying health issues.

It may even buy a new cat or dog, enabling them to dig and replace it.Declawing a cat will naturally want to do is sprinkle it on the carpet, bed, other surface.If you notice anything unusual in the long run as you go out and buying some cat information you can invest in a similar scenario-or in our mindset.- Make sure you get a fan and place it near the tail.May God bless our furry friends - wherever they are.

[thedogsled]

13x02 “He’s not Simba”

I told myself I wouldn’t be the one to write this meta but here I am anyway because lions. Okay, so The Lion King is basically the Disney movie everyone loved best before Frozen, right? And since we’ve already had the Frozen references last week (13.01) then why not Lion King references this week?

 Last week, it was all about power and controlling it (although Frozen is arguably a coming out story as well and that’s…not at all relevant). This week, we have a coming of age story, and the Lion King allegory therefore works really well.

 I’m going to be using the original and its sequel as examples here, and try not to muddy my thoughts too much even though there is so much going on.

 Dean says “He’s not Simba” because of Cas/Sam’s opinions that Jack’s power can be used for good, that he’s going to save the world/bring paradise/unite the Pridelands etc. You have to remember that like Cas, Simba is representative of the sun/a Jesus allegory. (Insert all your nature/yellow comparisons here)

Sam, of course, is leaning plenty hard in the other direction: “He’s not a lion, he’s human”. Of course Sam no more wants Jack to be judged for his powers/blood than he was, and that’s a whole story on its own: see the first 104 episodes of SPN for more details :D But we all know that Jack isn’t human, so Sam’s statement here is pure outright denial. 

 If we take the original story, then Jack being Simba makes a kind of sense. I mean it is a story about a child who is born with a great burden of destiny on his shoulders (who runs away from his responsibilities). His beloved father (Castiel) is killed by his uncle (Lucifer), who tries to convince him that he is in fact the evil one responsible for his father’s death. Ringing any bells? There’s even that great scene where Simba looks into the pool of water and realizes how much he looks like Mufasa. That could be some sort of foreshadowing right there.

Of course the great thing about the Simba reference is it doesn’t just apply to Jack. That’s what I love most about it. In SPN, our story is about a man who is afraid of becoming his father. He also bears responsibility for his father’s death in that John directly trades his life for Dean’s. At his lowest when he looks for help from his father, we get the Mufasa is God scene. Simba eventually realizes that turning into his father isn’t all bad, and Mufasa was only ever trying to protect him.

But this is child’s play. You could make thinly veiled references comparing heroic characters in one story to others all day. Simba could also be Sam or Cas (as mentioned above) which is why it’s so fascinating that Jack is an amalgam of Team Free Will. It’s also why this Lion King meta is actually about the far less often watched Lion King 2.

Unlike the first story, the sequel – while it holds onto the same coming of age themes – also reins in other things to help out. There’s the question ‘What is family?’ and ‘Am I only as good/bad as my blood?’ as well as ‘What role does manipulation/parenting play in the outcome of a child’s life’. These are much more pertinent to the SPN storyline.

^Sam introduces us to the possibility of accepting Jack as part of the TFW family (Dean is less impressed).

This is the longest thing of the long, so click the link to read more lion meta if you aren’t already tired of it.

Two parts of one whole

The two lion cub characters Kovu and Kiara are both from the same family ultimately, but Simba’s daughter Kiara has ‘good blood’ and a well meaning if strict father and is going to be queen of the Pridelands, while Kovu has ‘bad blood’ which is why his side of the family were banished; he was chosen by Scar (Lucifer) himself to one day become King, and has a manipulative (pseudo demonic) mother. Kiara and Kovu together are the mirror for the two sides of Jack that Dean sees: the good side which is humanity and which Sam/Cas/Kelly believe could make the world a better place, and the bad side which is otherness/the supernatural + Lucifer and all that represents. Add in Dean’s own feelings that there’s no escape from becoming your own father and you’re queueing up the issues.

The first song, which comes after the cubs are introduced to each other, is “We Are One”, which is both about belonging to the Circle of Life (family) and fear that having a destiny means you can’t have any free will. Simba sings parts about family and hope, but Kiara’s parts are about fear.

There’s also this bonus Castiel insert right here:

Meanwhile, Kovu’s mother, Zira, sees him as hers to manipulate in order to regain her kingdom, and with it revenge. She wants to raise him to have “a lust for being bad”, just like his father, just as Dagon and Asmodeus wish(ed) to use Jack in similar ways.

We fastforward and the cubs grow up. Dean – I mean Simba – who is the worst kind of overprotective father (Like Mufasa was, and for good reason) is allowing his daughter to lead a hunt for the first time. We’re going to see Jack hunting with the boys soon, too. The difference here of course is that Simba’s protectiveness is coming from a place of genuine familial love; he doesn’t want his daughter to get hurt. Dean’s protectiveness is from instinct and duty, but it is there!

The point isn’t that the mirror is a perfect fit, but assigning Dean the Simba role here illuminates that he is essentially making the same mistakes his own father did, even though the specific mistakes are completely different spheres of bad parenting. There is however a lack of trust, an inability to believe in the choices and abilities of the child, which Dean and Simba do share, because he dispatches Timon and Pumba to watch her just as Mufasa dispatched Zazu to watch over Simba in the original film. Naturally the lack of trust causes everything to go wrong, and the kid gets blamed for the consequences. 

Kovu saves Kiara from a bushfire, and uses it as leverage to gain entry into Simba’s pride. At once, Simba is anything but trusting. If you’re still following the parallels, this is representative of Dean mistrusting the ‘bad blood’ side of Jack too much and not trusting the ‘good blood’ side enough.

Getting cornered into accepting Kovu pisses Simba off.

And he rejects him so hard that he makes him sleep outside.

Look at how color is used even in Disney movies to convey drama and emotion. Look how it’s used here:

Dean/Simba is so paranoid about Kovu that he has nightmares where he becomes Scar, and – as Scar did to Mufasa – throws him down the side of the ravine to his death. Dean is scared of the supernatural side of Jack too. We haven’t seen him having any nightmares about him yet, but his anger is enough to drive Jack physically and emotionally out.

Kovu spends time with Kiara. I mean you could apply it to Jack: the human side (Kiara) shows the angelic side (Kovu) how to have fun, while Kovu shows Kiara how to be a lion (use powers). Kovu wonders if Scar has become a star in the night sky just as Mufasa did. He misses him even though Scar isn’t his father, and wonders what he was like (just as Jack wonders about Lucifer).

(ftr you can read this whole sequence of events as Kiara being Sam too, and Kovu being all of Jack, without really reading any of these events any differently. For all those Sam/Jack people out there, though, you’re welcome.)

Obvious plot is obvious: the two young lions fall in love (they become one). Kovu ultimately refuses to kill Simba, but Zira’s plan is revealed anyway. As punishment for betraying her and allowing Simba to escape, Zira scratches Kovu across the face, and when he returns to the Pridelands for protection Simba drives him out instead, blinded by how much he resembles Scar and unable to forgive. The song that’s sung over this portion of the film is wholly about familial rejection and mistrust because of ‘bad blood’, and the appearance of belonging to that lineage. 

If you apply it to Jack, it’a a rejection of the angelic self. “He’s not a lion”. “He is not part of us.” These two sides are inseparable, and because ultimately they end up being better together.

We’re already seeing the building blocks of potential mirrors in Asmodeus and in Dean, in the references to family, and Jack himself explains that his human and angel halves seem like two different sides. His self doubt and fear of his own potential are right there, we’ve seen them already, and we need to see him resolve his own duality. When Jack is able to accept himself wholly as he is, when he can love himself (and provoke love and trust in his new family) he’ll be whole, but I don’t see that as happening any time soon. I think that just like in TLK2, Dean will be right and Jack’s angel half will cause harm, and Jack will have to move through an arc of redemption/healing/self acceptance as well.

So the two halves will become one, and Jack will be better for it. I mean, just look at this stupid cap:

Eventually Simba is forced to acknowledge his prejudice and his own fears. He’s forced to see the good in Kovu, and see how good Kovu and Kiara are together.

Dean (and Sam) will have to accept Jack’s duality too. They have to accept him as he is, and if there’s any moral good in the universe at all it will be that the story resolves that nobody is born evil, because ending a story suggesting that you’re stuck with the destiny you’re born with is completely at odds with a story that’s about free will. Ideally, like Simba, we’ll see Dean accepting Jack into his family, as he eventually did with Cas. “Let’s go home.”

[storywars-r]

3/12 - Out of the Desert

(Joon Ahn)

Chapter 1 by R

"Quiet, now," she whispers, scratching the large cat beneath its chin. "I do not know if they will let you in the city, but our chances are better if you aren't rowdy, my friend." The leopard offers no reply, but calms down, walking next to her as they approach the gate.

"Halt!" shouts the guard, as they approach. "Who goes there? This is the holy city of his majesty Maximus, approach at your own risk for fear of his wrath!"

She sighs as she approaches. "I know where this is, and I know the wrath of our king better than you." The men at guard stare at her, and then at the large cat beside her. "I bid entry in to the holy city, guardsman. I trust you know me?"

They stare, for a few moments, at her impeccable dress hardly marred by the sands which surround the city for miles, at the accent in her voice so clearly marked of the city, at the way she gazes down at them despite her shorter stature, at the animal by her side. It takes a moment, and another, and another, but recognition floods as soon as the gates are opened.

"Milady!" they both shout, one following the other quickly, and both drop down on one knee. "Forgive me," once says, "it has been so long since you have graced us with your presence."

"And it shall be a long time until I grace you with it again," she says, gesturing for them to rise. "Let me in, I have come to speak with my father." They open the gates with no hesitation, which is pleasant but rather foolish, in the long run.

She has not been inside these walls for many years, has not been in any of the great cities for a long time, but she remembers the streets as if she were still a child, as if the world still rained and the deserts were few and far between. She walks through them with the dignity expected of royalty, and the leopard beside her grumbles as they enter the bustling streets that make up the holy city.

"Not long, my friend," she whispers. "We shall be done with our last business here soon enough."

Chapter 2 by NishitheAwsumCookie

She passed through the bustling streets, head held high.

Children scampered away from the leopard prowling at her side. Her hand lay gently on it's back, keeping it in check.

The castle at the center grew larger and larger in front of her. Soon enough, she was at the gates. The gates to her home.

The guards didn't recognize her at first glance, just like the ones at the gate of the city.

She didn't say anything this time, just waited patiently for it to happen.

The guards' eyes widened, and they immediately stepped aside and bowed as she passed.

She didn't say a word nor acknowledge them, for she had important business to accomplish.

The castle had not changed a bit since she had left. She knew exactly where her father would be.

She ran into a couple of maids on the way there. They followed her with their eyes, completely shocked.

No one had expected Princess Elvia to come back, especially after what had happened the last time she was here.

She pushed the door open to the drawing room, not bothering to knock.

"Father, we need to talk." she said, firmly.

Her father, the king turned around, shocked.

"Elvia, what are you doing here?" he asked, awestruck.

She replied with ease, as if she had been practicing these six words for years.

"To end the mess you started."

Chapter 3 by mallorn_hugger

The king fixed her with a measured stare. His composure was quickly restored after the initial shock of seeing his estranged daughter. King Maximus was a disciplined man; calculating, restrained, and not given to rash actions. It made him a powerful and successful ruler, but also ruthless. Centuries later, historians would sum up his reign as one in which the ends justified the means. Hindsight would portray him as a misguided ruler who truly believed the sacrifices he required of his subjects would ultimately bring longevity to his kingdom and solidify his legacy.

Still, even the best chess players can only think so many moves ahead when faced with an unpredictable opponent. In Elvia, he had his match. The history books would chronicle that as well.

Now he considered his daughter and her companion before answering her challenge. "The mess I started," he repeated, tapping his finger on the edge of a table as he deliberately pronounced each word.

Elvia waited, having been trained by her father to wait for an opponent to make a move, to study them while they did it. Her companion, however, was not so patient. The leopard laid his ears back on his head and growled, "Yes, the mess you started!"

"Ah," said the king, "It does speak. One of the Talking Cats of the Yeduri Plains. I thought you were all dead."

"We would all be dead, if you had anything to do with it," the leopard kept the king in his gaze and began to pace back and forth, muscles tensed.

"Geta, my Lord, please," Elvia's voice was low and respectful, but urgent. The leopard glanced at her from the corner of his eye, lip curled in a snarl, but he stilled himself- except for the thrashing of his tail.

"Well, well," the king said as he seated himself in one of the massive chairs that adorned the drawing room, "My long-lost daughter and her talking cat. A bold opening move. If you are here, and here with a member of a dying race, it must only be to beg for mercy, or perhaps, even," and here the king stopped and gave a mirthless, disbelieving laugh, "for the release of the shards of Miri."

"No, Father, I do not beg," Elvia countered. The king chuckled.

"That is true. You are, after all, my daughter."

"I do not beg," continued Elvia, "and I will not appeal to your sense of compassion, or even of reason, for I know you are without the one, and have nearly lost the other in your quest for the other half of the Stone." It would be imperceptible to someone who did not know the king as Elvia knew her father, but she saw his eyes widen ever so slightly and his breath quicken at the mention of the missing half of the Water Stone. She knew, too, that no human was ever meant to wield such a thing. It was for the Earth, and the Earth alone.

Inwardly, she shuddered to think of the havoc her father would wreak if he had the full power of the Stone. Lands for miles around were reduced to desert and barren wastelands. Such was the punishment for those kingdoms unable or unwilling to agree to one of the king's unfavorable treaties. War had been made in the beginning, of course, and many of the king's own subjects were sacrificed. But armies wither and die without water, and now a kind of listless and exhausted peace had settled over the region. All this, her father had accomplished with just the broken shards of half of the stone. Elvia knew if the missing half ever came into his hands, his relentless will would be felt across oceans, and he would not stop until all the earth was in his thrall.

She felt pity, too, at the corruption the stone had rendered in his heart. Humanity is too weak to hold such power, and ever too foolish to know it. As she stood in that familiar room, she remembered the father of her childhood; an intelligent man who one day would have been among the truly wise, had he not been blinded by folly. She put pity aside and pressed on. Knowledge of the other half of the stone, whether feigned or real, was the one piece of leverage they had, and she intended to wield it with all her skill. She had miscalculated last time, and had gone in full of passion and emotion and only half a plan.

This time would be different. This time she had planned many moves ahead.

Chapter 4 by Windlion

"Let us agree on one thing, Father. Though our goals are completely different, both of us believe that the Stone must be fully reunited to do what we want to have done.

"For you, that would be complete mastery of the flow of water throughout the world and use it as a tool. For me, it is to restore the natural balance and to protect it from such uses. In either case, the missing half must be found."

His look -- yes, she had him! So far, at least.

"I -- we, Geta and myself -- offer to join forces with you and your scryers to located the missing half. You have the shards and your mystics who have examined them; we have knowledge of the lands and of ancient tales that speak of the Stone." She paused.

"Should we find the rest of the Stone -- and I believe we can -- you and I will allow Fate to decide who will claim it. We will place a geas on ourselves, you and I, that will cause one of us to perish when the Stone is reunited, and leave the other to claim the Stone."

He laughed -- laughed? he bayed. "My daughter, what a proposal, and aimed so well! You know my weakness for gambling, and you understand that I do not care to live if my purpose is thwarted. Tell me more; where will we search, and how will the spell determine which of us is to live?"

"Father, I propose that we prepare for a long journey into the desert you have created, guided by counsel of Geta and your most able 'mancer. You will bring the shards, and no more than five soldiers to protect us from bandits." She paused, and looked at him. Good, still following the bait .

"Geta's people are aware of our offer, and understand that any attempt to take the shards by force will deny them any chance of gaining the reunited Stone, so the only need for protection will be from the beasts that prowl these — wastelands — that surround the city. " He is nodding, and already thinking of ways to twist matters to his advantage. Good .

"We will meet outside the city gate three days from now, at twilight, and we will travel until the sun forces us to take shelter from the heat. You and I will agree to the direction of our travel, guided by our two counsellors. If we cannot agree, we will remain where we are until we can." Another sidelong glance, and then the final carefully crafted piece —

"As to the method by which the geas will act, I propose that water should decide. If the Stone is reunited under open sky, it will be mine. If under a cloudy sky, it will be yours."

He shook his head. "But surely that would be too easy — ah, no, I see, you are aware that all I have been able to do with the shards is drive water away from me."

And I know that you are thinking that when we find the rest of the Stone, you may be able to quickly draw a fog around us before the geas can act. She let her expression show him that she knew his thoughts, and left him wondering whether she had a counter move prepared or was once again allowing her instincts to get the better of her. She thought these things, knowing that he was a master of using body language to read a person's mind.

For that reason, she had blocked the memory of Geta's words to her when they planned this moment so many weeks ago.

The King approached his daughter and bowed. "It is a good and fair bargain, and I agree to honor it fully." He paused. "I only regret that — what ever the end may be — I will not have the pleasure of sharing my reign with someone who has learned so much from her father."

She stifled her response, but knew he saw that she, on the other hand, would bear no regrets from either outcome.

[starsandauras]

Entry #4: Songwriter

FFxiv 30 Day Writing Challenge Prompt 4: Self-Editing

Arthur ran his fingers roughly through his blond hair, scowling down at the parchment on the desk. “All trash,” he grumbled, grabbing it and crumpling it up with a bit more force than was needed before throwing it over his shoulder. It joined other crumpled balls of parchment on the floor, giving the inn room the impression that a small family of tumbleweeds had moved in for the moon.

Dipping his quill in the ink nearby he started again, the scratching as it met a new sheet of parchment clearly audible in the otherwise quiet room. Arthur had turned off the orchestrion the moment he entered the room, scowling at the choice of music it provided. One day, he thought to himself, he would find their music in one of those. One day.

Though with how matters were going now that day would be a long way off. One wrong word, even stress on the wrong syllable, and it would all be for nothing. He read back what he’d set down this time, and after a few seconds he growled loudly, letting his head fall to the desk, smearing the ink in the process. “Damn this to the seventh Hell!” he groaned, snatching the sheet and repeating the process with far more viciousness than was quite called for.

He threw it over his shoulder and nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a soft ‘ow’ come from behind him. He spun around, almost knocking the bottle of ink off the desk in the process. “Where the blazes did you come from?!” he squawked, and Llewellyn sighed as he sat down on the edge of the nearby bed.

“The guild, of course,” he said quietly. He slid a finger over the shallow cut on his face, healing it as though it was nothing. Being a conjurer, it likely wasn’t. Arthur wouldn’t know anything about that of course, finding it needlessly difficult to cast even a simple Physick spell. Llewellyn then reached down to pick up one of the balls of paper, looking it over carefully. His eldest brother was the quiet one, and would speak when he was ready. He weighed his words, deciding when they were worth saying or not. “What are you working on?”

Arthur sighed and leaned back in his chair, running his hand through his hair again. It was starting to get shaggy, he realized, but be damned if he was going to summon Jandelaine and be lectured about how boring the style he preferred was. “Writing to Shida,” he replied, and Llewellyn nodded, knowing he meant the Wandering Minstrel they’d all become acquainted with. He was one of the few friendships Arthur had managed to cultivate since becoming a Warrior of Light, and they all were determined to help him keep it. “I thought he might like to hear of our latest adventures.”

Llewellyn nodded. “And this required…” He glanced about the room, counting silently. “…Fifteen sheets of parchment?” The scolding was barely implied and Arthur still flinched at it. Okay maybe he was wasting the paper, but with as many crafters in the group surely they could easily make more?

So he huffed and reached for yet another sheet. “We can use them as kindling,” he muttered, trying to write the letter anew. “And you know what will happen if we tell Shida anything even slightly exaggerated.” At the long stretch of silence he glanced out the corner of an eye to see Llewellyn smiling softly at him. “You have heard what he made of our fight with Ifrit, yes?”

He nodded again, smoothing out the paper ball he’d picked up. “It was very nice. You all prevailed over overwhelming odds. I was very proud of all of you.”

Arthur snorted. “It was a load of chocobo shit,” he all but spat. “We certainly did not destroy over thirty nails before Ifrit spammed three ultimate attacks. But that’s what happens when I get drunk and say ‘a lot’ instead of… what was it, four? Five nails before one ultimate?” He shook his head, knowing that Llewellyn certainly wouldn’t know, Feli was the only healer back then.

Llewellyn grinned at him before reaching out to ruffle his hair. “And I’m still very proud of you, even if your carbuncle doesn’t actually reach your knees.” He laughed softly when Arthur pouted at him but didn’t stop him from messing with his hair as Connor would have.

“Still, you can see why I have to be very exact in my language. Otherwise we’ll start hearing the tale of how, I don’t know, how we fought off a giant green chicken on some bridge in the middle of nowhere.” He groaned and his head fell to the desk again. “And by the Twelve if that actually does happen I’ll hate myself forever.” Llewellyn nodded and started rubbing Arthur’s shoulder in sympathy.

“I do see that,” he agreed, looking over the paper again. “But… how would that be undesirable?” Arthur slowly looked up at his brother and blinked owlishly at him.

“Because it’s not true?” he replied slowly, not sure he was hearing Llewellyn correctly. “These events will go down in history books and it is our duty to ensure they are recounted correctly, so that no one will be mistaken about our actions.”

Llewellyn nodded, seemingly studying the parchment. Thinking the matter over, Arthur returned to the latest version of his letter, mentally debating every word he sat down. After a long but still companionable silence between the Elezen and Hyur siblings, Llewellyn spoke again. “Are songs history books?”

Arthur blinked and then looked up at him, confusion clear on his face. “No..?” he answered, staring at his brother. “Of course they’re not. They do make it easier to pass down history, but they aren’t texts.”

Another nod from the Elezen as he sat down the paper. “Would you want to hear the song of the Warriors of Light running a flock of chickens out of the Aftcastle or fighting a giant green chicken on a bridge out in the middle of nowhere?” He looked up at Arthur, the family’s green eyes looking back at him. “Which would entertain you more, I wonder.”

Arthur paused, looking down at the balls of paper scattered about. “…for entertainment’s sake?” He shrugged. “The green chicken. But I’d rather have the truth in my education.”

He laughed and shook his head fondly. “Spoken like a true son of Thaliak,” he murmured.

“And you speak as a true son of Nophica.” Arthur placed the quill back in the inkwell and sighed. “You’re effectively saying I should leave history to history and entertainment to Shida.”

The elder hummed softly and tilted his head. “Is that what I’m saying?” he asked with a smile. “I thought I was asking about the entertainment value in a green chicken.” He pulled a small bag out of a pocket and offered it to Arthur. “Blueberry?”

He stared at Llewellyn for a moment before sighing and nodding. “Yes, thank you.” He nibbled for a moment at the dried fruit as he thought. “I’ve been overthinking this, haven’t I?” he asked softly, and Llewellyn nodded. “I should just write the letter normally, shouldn’t I?”

“Naught good ever comes from over censoring oneself,” he replied. “Besides, no matter how exacting your words to Shida are, he will always exaggerate for the sake of a good story. So you might as well write it as it comes to you, and know that if nothing else, what he eventually sings to others will be exciting.”

Arthur sighed and nodded. “As always you get right to the heart of the matter,” he decided, turning back to his paper. “Thank you, Llew.”

Llewellyn smiled and put the bag on the desk next to the ink well before pulling a cloth out of his other pocket and dampened it with a water spell. “Of course. Now let me get the ink off your forehead before someone sees,” he said, already trying to dab at Arthur’s forehead.

The younger sputtered and flailed about, instinctively pulling away. “Llew!”

“You’ll thank me for it later when your fans are singing songs of giant green chickens instead of the markings on your forehead, I promise.”

[deantemjitunit7]

Task 2

After completing the research on the Waterfall and Agile methods used in projects, it is now time for me to use one of these methods in my own project. I came to a conclusion to make use of the Waterfall method as I think it is best used for my own personal projects. While there are many disadvantages for using it, such as how I can’t go back to the previous stage to make any changes and if there is a problem with the design, I’d have to start all over again. However, there are also advantages for using it such as how the Waterfall method has a predictable workflow and makes it easy to stick to the deadline. Moreover, probably the two main biggest reasons why I chose the Waterfall method is because we only have three weeks to design something and having a predictable workflow that can meet the deadline is something significant for this project. The second reason is that I knew precisely what I want, which makes the Waterfall method all the more effective when I know exactly what I want from the beginning.

Before I begin the Waterfall method, I just wanted to point out that the creative process will have a mixture of Aaron Draplin’s creative process as well as my own. For instance, I know that I generate ideas better in the planning process when I create a mine map and keep brainstorming ideas on paper, regardless of it being good or bad. I know that Aaron Draplin usually initially generate ideas on papers and making sure that the initial plan is there. He would then take that initial design idea into Adobe Illustrator where he would come up with different versions of that particular design idea and experiment with the typography.

Similarly, I am going be taking my initial sketch ideas digitally where I am going to be experimenting with different styles. I do believe that by doing this, I could potentially lose valuable time. However, instead of doing everything in a linear, stage-by-stage process - I believe that if an experimented design in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop is better than the initial sketch idea, and I am satisfied with how it meets the brief, then I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter.

In conclusion, I am going to be using my own design process, as well as Aaron Draplin’s on this project to get different results and coming up with ideas that I never expected before. However, it will ultimately all comes down to being the Waterfall methodology in the end anyway.

1 - Planning 

Since there are no themes for the Young Creative Awards 2019, I can do anything I wanted in regards to design. However, instead of spending hours trying to come up with ideas for the YCA, what I did was narrow down my options by setting a theme for myself, and that is Nottingham. After knowing that the theme is Nottingham, I then begin to brainstorm some ideas such as designing a book cover, an Infographic of the places to go in Nottingham, and a Goose Fair poster.

I chose to create a Goose Fair poster became I was inspired when I came across an online article about how Goose Fair was originated at Nottingham’s Market Square which is relocated to the Forest Recreation Ground in 1928. It was really fascinating finding something a different side of Nottingham that I knew nothing of. In addition to that, I also did have a look at the past Goose Fair posters, and it looked outdated and generic which lost its potential to be advertised to a wider audience to come to our city.

My goal is to design a poster that could potentially be advertised for the event to many more audiences, whether it be from outside of Nottingham or our own local people to come to Goose Fair. After having a clear goal of what I wanted to do, it is now time for me to do extending research regarding Nottingham’s Goose Fair history.

2 - Research

History of Goose Fair: 

Goose Fair has been a part of the Nottingham calendar for over 700 years. Goose Fair goes back so far that no one knows for sure exactly how it got its name, and most historians agree that the fair probably started just after 1284 when the Charter of King Edward 1 referred to city fairs in Nottingham.

It is thought that the name “Goose Fair” came from the hundreds of geese which were driven from Lincolnshire to be sold in Nottingham. In addition to that, a fat roast goose was a traditional Michaelmas treat.

However, the fair has not continuously, as it was cancelled because of the plague in 1646 and again during the two world wars in the last century. Although in the present, it is known for rides and games - Goose Fair started as a trade event and enjoyed a reputation for its high-quality cheese.

In the 19th century, the fair was shortened from eight days to three days, but after the turn of the century, it was increased again to four days. In extension to that, it was moved from its site at the centre of town in Market Square to its current location at Forest Recreation Ground in 1928.

Nottingham Goose Fair is one of the most famous in the country. Dating from 1284, it takes place every year in the first week of October. Initially, it was known as a trade fair which includes the selling of geese, but it has evolved over time and now features fairground rides, sideshows, candyfloss and mushy peas.

3 - Sketching

Once all of the research is completed and knowing exactly what I wanted to do, the next stage is to sketch out some ideas. To help narrow down my options on the design ideas, I came up with the three keywords which would help me decide on the style, and that is: simplistic, colourful and fun. This helps me tremendously in the deciding factor as it helps me to choose a style that I wanted.

I then begin sketching out some ideas of what works and what doesn’t. My initial ideas were to have the illustration filled up with the entire poster, and this is not great as it goes against the simplicity which I was looking for.

I even took it digitally and begin designing it. However, I soon realised that the process that it took to illustrate the full poster would take more than three weeks, and I wasn’t happy with the style of it anyway, which makes me take a step back and explore on the different styles which I could use.

I begin sketching again but keeping it simple by not having the illustrations filled up the entire page as I do want to keep some of the negative spaces in on my poster. The second idea is to keep the illustrations itself simple while keeping details in them. The style in which I am referring to is going to be based around the Art Nouveau movement which involved organic vine-like lines, elegant curves, and ornate typography. However, I am not going to be using the Art Nouveau style alone. I’m going to be adding a turn of my own style into it as well to create something interesting as Art Nouveau design has become an outdated element of graphic design - while interestingly, soft colours and flourishes may contribute to vintage graphic design strategies. However, that’s not what I’m looking for.

I just wanted the design to be partially based on the Art Nouveau, while adding a style of my own to it or trying to make it look more interesting, such as adding vibrant and colourful colours or changing the style of typography to be more modern. In short, it can be a mix of traditional Art Nouveau style with a mix of modern graphic design as well.

Before I begin sketching something completely random, it is best to only focus only on things that matter and keeping things simple. I know that I wanted to include ‘Goosey’, the Goose Fair goose in there as it’s a recognisable icon of Goose Fair, and also adding a few rides such as the Ferris wheels, stalls, and Helter Skelter.

To address the issue of not having the illustrations fill in the entire poster, I had an option to choose from having the illustrations displayed in a box or having the illustrations displayed in the ellipse shape in the form of a badge. I thought that the latter idea suits the design best as it looks more dynamic as opposed to using a box layout, which sometime could look crowded and generic having to display illustrations and information in a certain format in poster design. 

To represent that the Goose Fair is being held at the Forest Recreation Ground, I illustrate big leaves that would be filled in the ellipse shape to portray the image of a “forest” and lastly display the ‘2019’ in big letters across it.

4 - Designing

After having the sketch ready, it is now time for me to design the final piece. The reason why I chose to use Adobe Photoshop as opposed to Illustrator was that I want to have the options of being able to add gradient freely. Moreover, most of the illustrations are just line work, so Photoshop does a better job as there are many brush options to choose from. I then begin to design the final piece using the sketch as a reference point.

To make the poster more engaging and fun, I’ve started playing around with the colours and typography. For the colours, I mainly chose colours that are colourful and complement each other. As for the typography, I initially wanted to create a hand letter from scratch, but because time was running short - I’ve decided to find a font that is suitable for fairs while portraying the idea of “fun”.

Font by: Jimmy Kalman

Behance: https://www.behance.net/jimmykalman

Final poster:

5 - Delivery

The final step is to deliver the final piece of work into the Young Creative Awards. I double check that my work is set to the requirements that they asked for under the Graphic Design category which are:

File format: JPEG or PDF

Image resolution: 300 dpi

Maximum file size: 5MB

One of the requirements for the entry is to write an entry form of what inspired me and how I created the work, including details of the techniques used to create the work, and with a maximum of 300 words. Here is a screenshot of what I have written:

Evidence of the submission:

[onlinemarketinghelp]

Ecommerce Roadmap: How To Start A Successful Ecommerce Business http://bit.ly/2UaRej8

In this day and age, times are changing. More people are looking to be their own bosses and be in charge of their own futures. The internet makes this goal more accessible than ever, and ecommerce is one exciting avenue for success.

Still, it can be tremendously difficult to know exactly how to start an ecommerce business that will actually do well enough to generate revenue. There is so much information out there to sift through, so creating a plan of action is necessary to prioritize your resources as you develop your own ecommerce business plan.

This guide offers a streamlined and honest approach to subjects like ecommerce marketing, and provides pointers for sourcing products, along with other tips that are essential for those who are looking to launch a successful store. We’ve covered these things in detail on our blog, but this post synthesizes all the things which you need to take your first steps in the world of ecommerce.

How To Start A Successful Ecommerce Business

When asked how to start an ecommerce business that will succeed, the following factors probably come to mind:

Great website design

Top-notch customer support

A high-quality product images

Unique selling proposition 

You’re right. This thought process makes perfect sense. You have to provide excellent customer support to be successful. You also need an attractive and trustworthy website if you want people to buy from you.

However, keep in mind that it’s a combination of these things working together that makes an ecommerce business great. These factors are what makes an ecommerce store go from 1 to 10, not from 0 to 1

We see this a lot at Oberlo with first-time entrepreneurs – they can lose sight of the most important things and spend days making the perfect store only to close it after a month. What truly fuels your store is sales, and this should be at the heart of your ecommerce business plan.

Efforts to bring traffic to your store through ecommerce marketing will bring sales, and sales will bring you more traffic. Likewise, you need to be making sales first before you can provide great customer support to those shopping on your site and before you can decide on your brand’s unique voice.

If you can’t make sales, you’re finished before you’ve even really got started.

Starting an Ecommerce Business

While it’s great to embark on your new ecommerce business with lots of big ideas, we suggest putting aside your ambitions and focusing on the most practical steps of your ecommerce business plan first.

For starters, you really need a simple online medium to sell your products. A basic store template on a reputable platform like Shopify serves this purpose perfectly well.

We did a guide to starting your first ecommerce business to help you. It might take you more time than 30 minutes to get started, but be careful about the amount of time you put in during the beginning.

Remember the wise words of LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman who famously said, “if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

This certainly applies to ecommerce businesses as well. The key is to launch quickly and start thinking of ways to generate sales through ecommerce marketing. This will eventually breed opportunity to improve other things along the way.

And once you’ve started your ecommerce business, use this handy checklist to ensure you covered all the right steps:

Finding Ecommerce Products

If you’re totally new to the world of ecommerce you might be wondering just what exactly you should be selling. In fact, getting stuck on this is a big reason why people never take the plunge in starting their own ecommerce businesses. In actuality, you have to be strategic in identifying a set of products or a niche that trendy, or not so easy to find in stores or on popular ecommerce websites like Amazon. That’s why going the generic route and opting to sell books or jewelry will likely lead to a dead end. There are already lots of major players out there meeting those demands.

Instead, you’ll want to go with more specific items that appeal to a particular audience. We suggest starting by making a list of potential products you might like to sell in your store. Think about things that you, your friends, coworkers, or family would be interested in. Also explore social selling sites like Pinterest, Etsy, or even Instagram for more input on what to sell.

There really is inspiration everywhere once you start looking, and you can always verify whether your product ideas are any good by searching for them on Google trends. For more specific information about how to decide what to sell, check out this step-by-step guide.

At this point, you might also be wondering how exactly to source your products, and that’s where dropshipping might come in as a viable option for your ecommerce business plan.

Dropshipping is an increasingly popular business model among entrepreneurs because it has substantially lower upfront investment costs and is generally a lower risk alternative to more traditional ecommerce business models that require you to find suppliers and stock inventory yourself.

It works like this: you find suppliers of products you’d like to sell on an ecommerce marketplace like Oberlo, and then you import those items into your store. When a customer purchases one of those items, you then place the order with one of our exceptional suppliers, and they ship the item directly to the customer. This way you never have to handle merchandise and can swap out products to stay on top of current trends with greater ease.

Apps like Oberlo automate a lot of the process for you. This way you’ll have more time to focus on things that will help you to scale your business, like coming up with a great ecommerce marketing strategy.

Researching Other Small Online Businesses

Research is integral to the success of your ecommerce store. Once you have chosen your products look at competitors and what they are doing. What are the barriers and the cost of entry? Do competitors invest heavily in ads or are they slow to become more digital? Knowing how much work and money that you need to invest in a startup can change your motivation to sell certain products. Research can lead you to identify better products to sell and give you a great understanding of how to start a successful small online business.

Building Online Stores

Starting an ecommerce business from scratch is not an easy thing so researching what others have done in order to achieve success is a great start. Here are a few things to pay attention to when researching competitors to make sure you take everything you can into account when it comes to ecommerce business success.

How many products do they offer their customers

What is their business model

What social media channels do they utilize

Who is their target market

How do they push sales (e.g. paid social, PPC, SEO, email, etc)

How engaged and loyal are their audience

Building Your Online Store Ecommerce Business

Once you have chosen your products and done your competitor research the next thing to do is build your store. Choosing ecommerce CMS tools like Shopify can make setting up your store easy. They have lots to templates to start with and an easy to integrate ecommerce platform that doesn’t need development support. Choose a theme that suits your target audience and prices that reflect the success you envision. Naming your ecommerce business something memorable will guarantee that people will remember your name. This goes for your logo also which can be as colorful or creative as you want it to be.

When your website is ready to start taking orders remember to try a test order yourself to make sure the process is smooth for the customer. Alleviate any additional steps needed to buy something online and only ask for information that is necessary for the check out process.

After you’ve launched your store, concentrate on ecommerce marketing 110%. Anything else can wait until you’re sure you can generate traffic and reach potential customers. The secret to ecommerce marketing is to find the right channel for your products, and then to perfect your marketing strategy until bringing in one new customer costs less than what you earn from a sale.

You want to aim for that infinite loop where you spend less than you earn each day.

Also, make sure you reinvest all of your profits into your ads. This isn’t the time to pocket all your earnings. Keep a close eye on the relationship between profits earned and money spent on ecommerce marketing by checking your advertising ROI twice a week at minimum. Ideally, do it daily.

Sell products that have high enough markups to cover your marketing expenses on a consistent basis. Since ecommerce marketing can cost a lot of money, make sure you price your products well. A $100 investment should bring you at least $101 dollars in sales so that you can reuse it on advertising again.

Only once you get to this point you can begin to optimize your store design, invest in creating a great brand, and look for ways to generate more money. You can’t optimize a store if you don’t have any customers to test different features on first. Thus, ecommerce marketing is really essential to standing out from your competitors and generating sales.

A great ecommerce business plan does require some investment. Putting money into your advertising tactics should ultimately convert to sales, which you need. Unless you have a bigger budget, you should exclude long-term ideas like SEO or email marketing for now.

With direct advertising through Facebook or Adwords, you can get more sales immediately. It’s best not only to learn how to run your first ecommerce marketing campaign on Facebook but also how to optimize them.

Alternatively, read how others are approaching Instagram marketing or the latest trends in advertising on Snapchat. With this knowledge and inspiration, you can apply new strategies to your own ecommerce business.

When it comes to assessing the performance of your ecommerce marketing efforts, test your advertising campaigns instead of your product pages. This will keep you from getting bogged down trying to analyze and change all of the small details of your store. Just focus on advertising and marketing, not the ‘buy’ button on the product page.

While much of the advice about how to start an ecommerce business seems easier said than done, it certainly helps to have a clear idea of the first steps including launching a simple store and dedicating your energies to ecommerce marketing.

Succeeding in Ecommerce: What’s Next?

Once you’ve validated your store idea and secured a steady stream of sales, make sure that you keep up with optimizing your ecommerce marketing as you go. Here are a few additional ecommerce business tips that you may want to consider as you devise your ecommerce business plan.

Customer Service/Self-Help Content

Around 45% of US consumers will abandon an online transaction if their questions or concerns are not addressed quickly. Exceptional customer service is critical to your business’s long term success. Create self-service content and a detailed FAQs page, offer live chat support, incentivize product reviews, and build trust with your customers. All of this will give your store valuable social proof and create repeat customers, which are five times cheaper to acquire than new ones.

Conversion Optimization

On average, 69% of your website visitors will leave your site without going through with a purchase. How much would your revenues increase if you were capturing those sales instead of losing them? Optimize your customer journey. Create limited-time offers. Launch a cart abandonment email campaign. You can even set up a retargeting campaign. Test out a bunch of different tactics and try to understand which one works best for your business.

Store Optimization

Take note that 44% of online shoppers will tell their friends about a bad experience online. Once you’ve laid down the foundations for your ecommerce business, the next important step is to optimize your website. Improve your website speed. Create an intuitive navigation bar. Focus on creating great product pages. Display related items. Optimize your store search. Lastly, check how your store looks on mobile devices.

Inventory

Best selling products tend to quickly fade away, that is why inventory is very important. Constantly look for new product ideas that could keep the traffic coming to your store. Do not rely on just a few products to drive all your sales. Rather, offer new arrivals to your existing customers and frequently test new product ideas based on Google trends.

Conclusion

I know there are people who have had success focusing most of their attention on a unique niche product or exceptional customer service. That said, up to 50% of Shopify stores never receive a single sale. Even though that may seem like a very low number of ecommerce businesses which actually get off the ground, if you compare it against success rates of businesses in general (10%), it’s a promising figure.

To summarize a few key takeaways from this guide as you develop your own ecommerce business plan, start lean and set all other things aside to focus on sales. Don’t worry about having the perfect product or the best looking web design for your store in the beginning. Jump in and learn by doing. Use the sales aspect of your ecommerce business as your lighthouse because it is the driving force behind any successful store. Once you begin turning a profit, invest the funds into an ecommerce marketing plan to continue growing your business. Only then should you start to hone in on other important details like optimizing your store.

Hopefully, this article has helped you to understand how to start an ecommerce business. You’ve got everything you need at your fingertips to make this the year your store takes off, and we at Oberlo are happy to help you every step of the way in meeting this goal.

Want to Learn More?

Business Name Generator

30 Amazing Startup Business Ideas

20 Trending Products to Sell

[EBOOK] 10 Online Stores to Use as Inspiration for Your First Store

What’s your ecommerce business plan? Share your experiences or ask for advice in the comments below!

The post Ecommerce Roadmap: How To Start A Successful Ecommerce Business appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo

In this day and age, times are changing. More people are looking to be their own bosses and be in charge of their own futures. The internet makes this goal more accessible than ever, and ecommerce is one exciting avenue for success.

Still, it can be tremendously difficult to know exactly how to start an ecommerce business that will actually do well enough to generate revenue. There is so much information out there to sift through, so creating a plan of action is necessary to prioritize your resources as you develop your own ecommerce business plan.

This guide offers a streamlined and honest approach to subjects like ecommerce marketing, and provides pointers for sourcing products, along with other tips that are essential for those who are looking to launch a successful store. We’ve covered these things in detail on our blog, but this post synthesizes all the things which you need to take your first steps in the world of ecommerce.

How To Start A Successful Ecommerce Business

When asked how to start an ecommerce business that will succeed, the following factors probably come to mind:

Great website design

Top-notch customer support

A high-quality product images

Unique selling proposition 

You’re right. This thought process makes perfect sense. You have to provide excellent customer support to be successful. You also need an attractive and trustworthy website if you want people to buy from you.

However, keep in mind that it’s a combination of these things working together that makes an ecommerce business great. These factors are what makes an ecommerce store go from 1 to 10, not from 0 to 1

We see this a lot at Oberlo with first-time entrepreneurs – they can lose sight of the most important things and spend days making the perfect store only to close it after a month. What truly fuels your store is sales, and this should be at the heart of your ecommerce business plan.

Efforts to bring traffic to your store through ecommerce marketing will bring sales, and sales will bring you more traffic. Likewise, you need to be making sales first before you can provide great customer support to those shopping on your site and before you can decide on your brand’s unique voice.

If you can’t make sales, you’re finished before you’ve even really got started.

Starting an Ecommerce Business

While it’s great to embark on your new ecommerce business with lots of big ideas, we suggest putting aside your ambitions and focusing on the most practical steps of your ecommerce business plan first.

For starters, you really need a simple online medium to sell your products. A basic store template on a reputable platform like Shopify serves this purpose perfectly well.

We did a guide to starting your first ecommerce business to help you. It might take you more time than 30 minutes to get started, but be careful about the amount of time you put in during the beginning.

Remember the wise words of LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman who famously said, “if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

This certainly applies to ecommerce businesses as well. The key is to launch quickly and start thinking of ways to generate sales through ecommerce marketing. This will eventually breed opportunity to improve other things along the way.

And once you’ve started your ecommerce business, use this handy checklist to ensure you covered all the right steps:

Finding Ecommerce Products

If you’re totally new to the world of ecommerce you might be wondering just what exactly you should be selling. In fact, getting stuck on this is a big reason why people never take the plunge in starting their own ecommerce businesses. In actuality, you have to be strategic in identifying a set of products or a niche that trendy, or not so easy to find in stores or on popular ecommerce websites like Amazon. That’s why going the generic route and opting to sell books or jewelry will likely lead to a dead end. There are already lots of major players out there meeting those demands.

Instead, you’ll want to go with more specific items that appeal to a particular audience. We suggest starting by making a list of potential products you might like to sell in your store. Think about things that you, your friends, coworkers, or family would be interested in. Also explore social selling sites like Pinterest, Etsy, or even Instagram for more input on what to sell.

There really is inspiration everywhere once you start looking, and you can always verify whether your product ideas are any good by searching for them on Google trends. For more specific information about how to decide what to sell, check out this step-by-step guide.

At this point, you might also be wondering how exactly to source your products, and that’s where dropshipping might come in as a viable option for your ecommerce business plan.

Dropshipping is an increasingly popular business model among entrepreneurs because it has substantially lower upfront investment costs and is generally a lower risk alternative to more traditional ecommerce business models that require you to find suppliers and stock inventory yourself.

It works like this: you find suppliers of products you’d like to sell on an ecommerce marketplace like Oberlo, and then you import those items into your store. When a customer purchases one of those items, you then place the order with one of our exceptional suppliers, and they ship the item directly to the customer. This way you never have to handle merchandise and can swap out products to stay on top of current trends with greater ease.

Apps like Oberlo automate a lot of the process for you. This way you’ll have more time to focus on things that will help you to scale your business, like coming up with a great ecommerce marketing strategy.

Researching Other Small Online Businesses

Research is integral to the success of your ecommerce store. Once you have chosen your products look at competitors and what they are doing. What are the barriers and the cost of entry? Do competitors invest heavily in ads or are they slow to become more digital? Knowing how much work and money that you need to invest in a startup can change your motivation to sell certain products. Research can lead you to identify better products to sell and give you a great understanding of how to start a successful small online business.

Building Online Stores

Starting an ecommerce business from scratch is not an easy thing so researching what others have done in order to achieve success is a great start. Here are a few things to pay attention to when researching competitors to make sure you take everything you can into account when it comes to ecommerce business success.

How many products do they offer their customers

What is their business model

What social media channels do they utilize

Who is their target market

How do they push sales (e.g. paid social, PPC, SEO, email, etc)

How engaged and loyal are their audience

Building Your Online Store Ecommerce Business

Once you have chosen your products and done your competitor research the next thing to do is build your store. Choosing ecommerce CMS tools like Shopify can make setting up your store easy. They have lots to templates to start with and an easy to integrate ecommerce platform that doesn’t need development support. Choose a theme that suits your target audience and prices that reflect the success you envision. Naming your ecommerce business something memorable will guarantee that people will remember your name. This goes for your logo also which can be as colorful or creative as you want it to be.

When your website is ready to start taking orders remember to try a test order yourself to make sure the process is smooth for the customer. Alleviate any additional steps needed to buy something online and only ask for information that is necessary for the check out process.

After you’ve launched your store, concentrate on ecommerce marketing 110%. Anything else can wait until you’re sure you can generate traffic and reach potential customers. The secret to ecommerce marketing is to find the right channel for your products, and then to perfect your marketing strategy until bringing in one new customer costs less than what you earn from a sale.

You want to aim for that infinite loop where you spend less than you earn each day.

Also, make sure you reinvest all of your profits into your ads. This isn’t the time to pocket all your earnings. Keep a close eye on the relationship between profits earned and money spent on ecommerce marketing by checking your advertising ROI twice a week at minimum. Ideally, do it daily.

Sell products that have high enough markups to cover your marketing expenses on a consistent basis. Since ecommerce marketing can cost a lot of money, make sure you price your products well. A $100 investment should bring you at least $101 dollars in sales so that you can reuse it on advertising again.

Only once you get to this point you can begin to optimize your store design, invest in creating a great brand, and look for ways to generate more money. You can’t optimize a store if you don’t have any customers to test different features on first. Thus, ecommerce marketing is really essential to standing out from your competitors and generating sales.

A great ecommerce business plan does require some investment. Putting money into your advertising tactics should ultimately convert to sales, which you need. Unless you have a bigger budget, you should exclude long-term ideas like SEO or email marketing for now.

With direct advertising through Facebook or Adwords, you can get more sales immediately. It’s best not only to learn how to run your first ecommerce marketing campaign on Facebook but also how to optimize them.

Alternatively, read how others are approaching Instagram marketing or the latest trends in advertising on Snapchat. With this knowledge and inspiration, you can apply new strategies to your own ecommerce business.

When it comes to assessing the performance of your ecommerce marketing efforts, test your advertising campaigns instead of your product pages. This will keep you from getting bogged down trying to analyze and change all of the small details of your store. Just focus on advertising and marketing, not the ‘buy’ button on the product page.

While much of the advice about how to start an ecommerce business seems easier said than done, it certainly helps to have a clear idea of the first steps including launching a simple store and dedicating your energies to ecommerce marketing.

Succeeding in Ecommerce: What’s Next?

Once you’ve validated your store idea and secured a steady stream of sales, make sure that you keep up with optimizing your ecommerce marketing as you go. Here are a few additional ecommerce business tips that you may want to consider as you devise your ecommerce business plan.

Customer Service/Self-Help Content

Around 45% of US consumers will abandon an online transaction if their questions or concerns are not addressed quickly. Exceptional customer service is critical to your business’s long term success. Create self-service content and a detailed FAQs page, offer live chat support, incentivize product reviews, and build trust with your customers. All of this will give your store valuable social proof and create repeat customers, which are five times cheaper to acquire than new ones.

Conversion Optimization

On average, 69% of your website visitors will leave your site without going through with a purchase. How much would your revenues increase if you were capturing those sales instead of losing them? Optimize your customer journey. Create limited-time offers. Launch a cart abandonment email campaign. You can even set up a retargeting campaign. Test out a bunch of different tactics and try to understand which one works best for your business.

Store Optimization

Take note that 44% of online shoppers will tell their friends about a bad experience online. Once you’ve laid down the foundations for your ecommerce business, the next important step is to optimize your website. Improve your website speed. Create an intuitive navigation bar. Focus on creating great product pages. Display related items. Optimize your store search. Lastly, check how your store looks on mobile devices.

Inventory

Best selling products tend to quickly fade away, that is why inventory is very important. Constantly look for new product ideas that could keep the traffic coming to your store. Do not rely on just a few products to drive all your sales. Rather, offer new arrivals to your existing customers and frequently test new product ideas based on Google trends.

Conclusion

I know there are people who have had success focusing most of their attention on a unique niche product or exceptional customer service. That said, up to 50% of Shopify stores never receive a single sale. Even though that may seem like a very low number of ecommerce businesses which actually get off the ground, if you compare it against success rates of businesses in general (10%), it’s a promising figure.

To summarize a few key takeaways from this guide as you develop your own ecommerce business plan, start lean and set all other things aside to focus on sales. Don’t worry about having the perfect product or the best looking web design for your store in the beginning. Jump in and learn by doing. Use the sales aspect of your ecommerce business as your lighthouse because it is the driving force behind any successful store. Once you begin turning a profit, invest the funds into an ecommerce marketing plan to continue growing your business. Only then should you start to hone in on other important details like optimizing your store.

Hopefully, this article has helped you to understand how to start an ecommerce business. You’ve got everything you need at your fingertips to make this the year your store takes off, and we at Oberlo are happy to help you every step of the way in meeting this goal.

Want to Learn More?

Business Name Generator

30 Amazing Startup Business Ideas

20 Trending Products to Sell

[EBOOK] 10 Online Stores to Use as Inspiration for Your First Store

What’s your ecommerce business plan? Share your experiences or ask for advice in the comments below!

The post Ecommerce Roadmap: How To Start A Successful Ecommerce Business appeared first on Oberlo.

http://bit.ly/2My1I9D January 24, 2019 at 10:46AM http://bit.ly/2xh4ieR

[sword-and-quill]

The Mage & the Warlock

I promised an excerpt on the weekend, but hey, what’s a day between friends? ;) In this segment, Zory and Allan are introduced for the first time. Next excerpt will be meeting Alister, which will conclude the introduction of the main cast (which has been the primary focus of my excerpts thus far.) Woo!

The wrought iron gate creaked ominously as Mara pushed it open, noisy from years of resting idle on its hinges. She picked her way through the overgrown yard, stepping over jagged pieces of discarded metal and shards of broken dinner plates when she could spot them. The weeds were so numerous they had begun choking one another out in a struggle to dominate the little patch of land available to claim in front of the decrepit old house. As she drew closer to the front door, she noticed that someone had wildly looped thick, tangled masses of barbed wire around the porch’s banister and railing. Worse still, some of the loops were reddened with either rust or blood - perhaps even both.

Mara halted in front of the porch stairs, looking down at the strange, gritty piles of dirt that were neatly lined across each one. She thought she could identify rock salt in the mix, but that was about it. Even more interestingly, there were recent tracks disturbing the formation. Stepping in the stranger’s footsteps to avoid further destroying what appeared to be a ritualistic display, she made her way up to the front door, carefully inspected it for anything that could be considered a trap, and then knocked. At first, there was nothing but the sound of rustling weeds. Then, as she strained to listen, footsteps and voices slowly grew in volume.

“Seriously, Allan,” Someone said, increasingly audible as they approached the entry from somewhere deeper within the house. “All jokes aside, if you absolutely won’t move, you have got to get a pet or another roommate or something. You can’t be the only living thing in this place, it does really creepy things to you.” Mara hastily backpedaled as a tall black woman with dimpled cheeks pushed the door open with an elbow, carrying a massive box of eccentric items in her arms. “And while you’re at it, don’t forget to-” she broke off in mid-sentence, blinking owlishly at the other woman on the porch. “Oh! Someone was actually knocking. I thought it was one of your ghosts again.”

A rather miserable-looking man with ash white, tightly stretched skin poked his head around the woman’s shoulder and sized Mara up through thick, smudged glasses. “I don’t want a visitor.” He dismissed her, turning his attention back to the woman lugging the box. “Zory, please reconsider. These new methods you’ve been exploring can very exciting, but they’re ultimately untested and I believe they pose a risk to the practitioner’s-”

“Allan…” Zory laughed and huffed as the same time, shaking her head. “I’ve heard that at least fifty times from you and my answer’s always gonna be the same: progress demands experimentation. You can’t be scared of everything in the universe.”

“I wasn’t frightened of you, only the risks!” He protested plaintively, skinny shoulders sagging in dismay. “Please, I… I’m going to miss you.”

Zory sighed and glanced over at Mara, who was waiting quietly and awkwardly for the conversation to conclude. She held up the box with a raised eyebrow and Mara nodded, holding her arms out for it. Once her hands were free, she stepped forward and embraced Allan in a tight hug, which he returned fiercely. “I’m gonna miss you too, Al.”

All too quickly, Allan pulled away from the hug and pushed a finger under his glasses to wipe at his wet eyes. He didn’t look up at either of them, just stepped back over the threshold into his home and gripped the door tightly with one hand while he leaned on the frame. “You’re, uh, always welcome here. Of course. I. I won’t change the locks and you still have some supplies somewhere.” He glanced up at Zory for the briefest of moments to catch her slight, understanding smile, and then quickly looked back at his feet, swallowed hard, and closed the door on both of them.

Mara looked down into the box to give the other woman a moment of privacy and realized it was full of magical reagents. There was plenty of chalk and incense, several books, some crystals, and various jars containing things she didn’t recognize.

“Thanks for holding that; I didn’t want to start boo-hooing over the rocks, it takes forever to situate them properly.”

“No problem,” Mara looked up from the box and wrinkled her nose at the door before turning to leave the spooky, lonely old place to its equally peculiar caretaker. “Talk about having the worst timing, though.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty unlucky for you.” Zory took a deep breath as she followed Mara down the stairs, “He’s not gonna open that door for weeks and that’s if he takes this better than I think he will.”

It was difficult to ignore how nervous she felt. More than anything, she wanted to politely return the box and then go pound on the door until Allan agreed to help her, but all of the traps and the unsettling displays in the yard made her wary of taking a chance on how he would react, whether he was a nervous man or not. Instead, she gave Zory a sympathetic glance. “Are you going to be alright to drive home?”

“Oh, sure, but you’re sweet for asking. Allan’s one of my best friends and I feel awful for leaving him on his own, but we just can’t share a place anymore. All his other quirks and our constant bickering about philosophy aside, I can’t live with someone who regularly forgets to handle utility bills or clean. It’s been a nightmare of freezing water and mountains of garbage. But enough about that - what did you need from him, anyways?” Zory lead Mara back onto the street, navigating the yard with the air of someone who had been able to memorize the location of every piece of garbage hidden in the knee-high weeds.

Not for the first time, Mara wished she had been able to take Booker’s collection of contacts with her, even if his library was too large to be moved as a whole. “I was hoping he’d be able to help me. He is… a friend of a friend and right now he’s the only magician I know.”

“Oh!” At the word ‘magician’, Zory’s demeanor opened up slightly as she quickly glanced at Mara once again, mulling over the implications before deciding to take the chance. “Warlock.” She corrected her with the air of someone who’d had to make that correction one too many times, laughing warmly as she reached up and dried her eyes with a bright orange shirt sleeve. “He likes that title better. And good luck getting him to cast any kind of spell for you; you’d think he’d be a little more comfortable with it, given all the high-grade freaky stuff he slings around, but the man’s a wreck. You should ask literally anybody else, it’s not like he’s the only practitioner in the city.”

“You’re probably right, but I’m new and I don’t know how much time I have to get familiar with the occult scene here.” Mara waited for Zory to pop open the trunk of her scratched up hatchback and then obligingly set the box down. “I know you don’t know me, but if you could point me in the direction of someone who knows what they’re doing, you’d be doing me a massive favor.”

After she closed the trunk, Zory smirked and pointed at herself. “Allan might be on that cosmic shit, but I’m the girl to talk to if you want to actually get anything done. There’s a few covens in town, too, if you like your magic with a religious zip to it. What do you need, exactly?”

“I need to make sure someone can’t scry me with any of my old things.” There was no room to be delicate about the issue; she didn’t have the time to waste on tracking other people down. Thein might have already managed to discern her current location, but if she could render those items void of any bond to her, she might be able to shake him off her trail.

Zory pursed her lips and eyed Mara from her toes upwards. “I might have something that could do the trick, but it wouldn’t be pretty and I do charge for my work. A ritual like that will run you about $300 unless you’ve got something you can trade me of similar value.”

Mara grimaced, rubbing the back of her neck. She didn’t have nearly enough money to pay for much of anything at all; until she had seen Allan’s response, she had been banking on getting him to help her for the sake of his connection to Booker. Already, cash flow was a serious issue, but she couldn’t risk settling down in a place to find work until she was absolutely certain Thein couldn’t follow her. “I don’t have a way to pay you,” She admitted sourly. “I had to leave everything behind to get away. Was kind of in a hurry.”

“I can’t do this without compensation. Can’t afford it.” Zory gave her a sympathetic look, but crossed her arms over her stomach, keys dangling from her fingers. “The components for the spell you want are really expensive and not only do I not keep those particular ingredients stocked, I have to worry about the rent on my new place. Still, maybe there’s another answer to your problem. What exactly are you running from that makes you think you need anti-scrying measures? Did you piss off a practitioner?”

She took a deep breath, buying time to think of a truth that didn’t involve the full story. “No, I… pissed off a demon. He wanted to turn me into a pet and when I said ‘hell no’... he made a lot of threats. Took it far enough that I got scared.” Trying to be nonchalant, she shrugged. Zory’s warm brown eyes gleamed as she re-evaluated Mara’s features.

“I’m guessing that shiner’s his work, eh? Damn.” For a moment, both of the women looked away, mutually uncomfortable by the situation. “I can see why you thought Allan might be a good idea. Paranoid, off the grid, warded to hell and back.”

Mara looked back at the foreboding house, wondering how he had been connected with her former mentor. “Anyways, I’m sorry to add to your rainy day,” She said, “Just had to ask, you know?”

“Sure,” Zory agreed, twirling the car keys on her index finger before tossing them into the air and catching them again. “I tell you what: I can’t afford to cast this for free, but I’ll ask around to see if someone else might be able to swing the ritual pro bono and I can get Allan to open that door for you. Nobody’s getting through the security measures on his place without weathering some serious damage. If you manage to come up with the money later, I’ll get the creep off your tail.”

“Thank you!” Her hope rekindled, she eagerly followed Zory back through the trampled foliage and waited beside her while she rang the doorbell repeatedly. Quickly, Allan yanked the door open; he looked so hopeful in that moment that she almost felt guilty.

“Yes?” He gave Mara a confused look, but then immediately refocused on Zory with undisguised hope. “Did you change your-?”

Zory managed an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Al, I’m still on my way out, but you need to have a talk with this lady, alright? She’s got a bit of nastiness on her tail and could use your help.”

When Allan’s hazel eyes came to rest on her, the vulnerability immediately crystallized into cold mistrust. “I told both of you: I don’t want any visitors. If there’s nothing else, I’m-”

“Please!” Mara pleaded, reaching forward to catch the door before he could close it. “I know we haven’t met before, but my name is Mara. I worked really closely with Booker for the past six years, right up until- until we were betrayed.”

Allan straightened up, his openly hostile expression melting to concern. “You’re Mara? He. We had cause to discuss you, frequently. I wondered what happened to him, I haven’t heard a thing for weeks. but… you’re here. How? Is he alright? Please, come in. I’ll need to scan you for any malignancies in the aura, of course, just to be cautious, but then we can-” Abruptly, while he was ushering her over the threshold, he seemed to remember that Zory was there. “Do you- ah - Want to come back in as well?”

“Not today, Al. I’ve got some unpacking to do.” She replied, not unkindly, giving a little wave as she walked away. Together, Allan and Mara watched her leave the yard. When she reached her car, Allan quickly closed the door and leaned on it. In the brief moment before he turned around, Mara saw his face crumple - but when he met her eyes, the only sign of his unhappiness was the severe frown on his thin mouth.

“So, the fiend betrayed you two at last.” He said, sighing gruffly and pushing his glasses up his nose. “I warned Booker so many times that you cannot make pacts with their kind, but he insisted that you both needed the back-up. What a blasted waste of time. Please, tell me he’s alive.” 

“He’s alright, for now.” Mara trailed after him into a messy kitchen. It was a miracle the room didn’t stink with all of the dishes and garbage strewn about, but she slowly realized there was no sign of food anywhere on the counters or on the plates themselves. “He wasn’t with me when it happened.”

“Naivete will get you every time - not that I need to lecture you, now that you’ve seen their treachery firsthand. You must have had a difficult time dealing with this, but you will need to be careful for some time. You might’ve been followed. Have you taken precautions?”

Mara furrowed her brow at the warlock, who was busily trying to clear a space on the island in the middle of the kitchen by precariously stacking more dishes on top of one another on other counters. “Obviously.”

Allan scoffed loudly, unceremoniously tossing the plate he was holding into the garbage. “There is nothing obvious about it. How can you be certain?”

“Because I left in daylight. He and his crew were almost exclusively nocturnal, I’m sure I got away without being directly followed,” She reassured him, pushing some garbage off of a chair so she could take a chair; observing Allan’s own flippancy about the state of the place, it seemed unlikely to upset him. “I used the cash I had to get a bus to bring me here.”

“That’s it?” He stared blankly, pausing with his hands clenched around a garbage bag. “No no, no no no, that’s not nearly enough. What if you lead him here?” Before Mara could again promise that she hadn’t been followed, he shook his head vigorously and let the bag tumble back to the ground. “Let him come if he’s coming; the wards would hold against a Grey’s entourage. In the meantime, why not tell me what you think I can do for you beyond offering safe haven?”

“Well,” She glanced down at the chipped blue paint on her nails. While she spoke, she began picking at the polish, letting flakes of it flutter to the ground. “I wanted to find a mag- er, warlock. I had to leave everything behind and I’m afraid he’ll just steal a hairbrush or something and pay someone to divine where I ran. If I can get him off my trail, I won’t have to hide.”

“Sensible.” Allan approved, shoving a hand into his patched jacket pocket and digging out a stub of powdery yellow chalk. “It’s a little more complicated than that, of course, but you’re right to be worried. Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do in the way of magic for this. It’s much too dangerous to perform a ritual with so many unknown entities that might be paying attention to either of us. Who knows what might notice the power spike?” A shudder ran through his body.