#cause they want me to sell the logo at one solid price and not like getting any residuals

[maxellminidisc]

I do understand, as a creator, why you would be defensive of IP laws, these things you put out into the world are not only your babies, but like babies you put blood, sweat, and tears into. But in their current state, IP laws absolutely do more for corporations and creators who have these big companies behind them that own the IP/Copyright of BIGGER franchises they've purchased in part from said creators than smaller creators themselves.

Because let's face it, you have to have money to bring violations of IP Law to court. A majority of smaller creatives like independent authors, free lance artists, independent comic writers/artists, etc can barely live off of what they're making, let alone take someone to court for stealing their content, republishing it, and profiting off of it.

Not to mention, if you're a freelancer in say illustration, photography,videography, writing, etc and you get a BIG commission, by say a company who you working for would put you on the map, the contract you'd ultimately be signing would benefit said company in standings of IP Law. You could say shoot for a magazine, write for a national publication, and the majority of the profit and copyright of the work you're doing would be owned by these companies. You'd get pennies IF you even get residuals, and the "exposure" of being credited. But again, extensive compensation for the labor of your work through its residual profit would not be going to you despite you being fully responsible for the art being published. And again this is like THE standard course of action right now, arguing for your rights to bigger shares of IP would just end up with these companies going "Nevermind I'll hire someone willing to do it for exposure".

And on top of that securing the full extent of IP laws like say patents or copyrights costs money to register too so ultimately some people cant even afford to have their work ACTUALLY protected by IP laws (some would argue that it's not that expensive but like imagine the extent of which everyone's original work piles up, so that $40+ "registration" fee piles up as well). Because yes, you can have copyright for free, but having unregistered copyrights can prove much more difficult to argue in court when someone infringes upon them.

[justasmallbloginabigklainefandom]

So, Dan Howell, huh?

I went to the matinee performance of We’re All Doomed in Amsterdam with my friend Sammy. Originally, Sammy and I bought the cheapest balcony seats but the matinee didn’t sell as well as the evening show (which was fully sold out), so they closed the balcony completely and they moved us to row 8 from the stage, which was insane. We got an e-mail with the information, but on the day itself I led Sammy to our seats and I was shook when we passed so many other people. Later on we found out that we paid almost half the price from someone who’s on row 20. Woah.

Sammy and I went into this show with ZERO knowledge, entirely spoiler free. If you want that as well for your show, then stop reading here!

Some highlights, in no particular order:

When Dan appeared on stage with the elevator in the staircase, the person next to me said “wow, so boyband”

“Ik ben Dan!”

THE ENTIRE OPENING SONG I DID NOT SEE IT COMING.

He told us he invested our ticket sales into the lightning, but he also said he is losing money so “please buy a t-shirt” (I did not. I did not buy any merch.)

BUT I DID HAVE SOME “““MERCH”““ FRON ANNE @justgleekout WHO I MET THERE AND SHE HAS AMAZING BUTTONS AND CARDS AND IT WAS VERY NICE TO SEE HER AND SHE ALSO RECOGNISED SUNSHUNES’S ART CAUSE YES I HAVE A KLAINE BUTTON ON MY BAG.

Honestly the entire tech element was banging, although the sound was very high volume, but I loved the screen and the lights.

I have been told by @dnptheinfinity that this was probably scripted but the entire monologue that ended with Dan saying “I wanted to suck [Harry Style’s] cock” took me out because of the delivery of that line.

Dan, as any foreigner, kept mispronouncing stroopwafel to, idk, stroepwafful.

Not gonna lie, Dan, there was a missed opportunity. He talked about how orange made his stuff look like the pornhub logo and that Grindr should’ve sponsored it, and I was like “dude, you could’ve made such a good joke about how orange is the Dutch national colour”

Speaking of stroepwaffuls, he sort of kissed Ben during the bubbles (or bubbels, in Dutch, cause the box said bubbels) segment cause Ben arrived with a stroepwafful in his mouth and Dan took it from his mouth with his own. Then after he munched on his stroepwafful he mentioned that that was probably a HR violation. Not sure if it’s scripted, since Dan looked genuinely surprised when Ben came on stage with the cookie but @ evening people (hi Anne!) did this happen again?

Other Dutch stuff: Harry Styles (”ha suck it Taylor Swift fans, y’all weren’t swift enough”) and Dutch member of parliament Jesse Klaver have an affair where they suck on each other’s breasts and they have two kids: cactus and aubergine.

Other Dutch madlib: Phil is a cult member, operating from the HEMA basement. The tech person misspelled it as Hayma though.

One audience member yelled “dildo” when Dan asks what to buy in the HEMA. It didn’t end up being the madlib, but this was the awkward moment where I told Sammy that HEMA did recently partner with EasyToys, which is wild.

The audience was fun. Shout out to the person who without hesitation said they’d fuck Doug Bury Pillboy, whuch took Dan out.

Someone also yelled “furry” almost at the beginning of the show, after Dan first talks about Tony the Tiger and he was so taken aback by it and he started laughing. There were many moments where he’d just laugh, like when someone cheered for the polyamorous lesbian future!

When he took off his top and everyone cheered he yelled “I thought you were all lesbians? Bisexuals? Bisexuality isn’t real!”

The best audience moment is during the bubbles when he said “I am going to blow-” and the audience started cheering after “blow” so he couldn’t finish his sentence because of the cheers but also because he laughed for a solid 15 seconds when he realised that it is an unintentional blowjob joke.

OKAY another good one is when he asked whether he should be send to hell or heaven, aka fire or freedom, someone yelled “DAN IS NOT ON FIRE” and oh man, his face.

“I am unapologetically gay, maybe you’ve picked up on that during the show-” “ME TOO!” “Oh, hey, you too!”

There was also this older grandpa a few rows in front of me, but he genuinely seemed to enjoy it. He kept laughing at all the gay sex jokes.

There were so many gay sex jokes.

“I also feel safe when I am inside a bear.” bro

“It’s right. I am a cocksucker. Sorry, it’s rude to talk with my mouth full.”

He used the elevator for the beginning and the end of act 1, but for act two he just walked on stage with a chair and jumpscared the audience by saying “hi”, cause we were still in intermission. “Sit the fuck down. Thank you.” Lights went out. Show was back!

By the way, Sammy and I did not know there was going to be an interval. We were extremely unprepared. We thought the show would be, like, an hour or so, so at the act 1 end we thought “huh, this is a bold way to end a show”.

THE MASS BOOING WHEN DAN PUT J/K ROWLING ON SCREEN DURING THE JUDGING

Dan said he was reliving his Legally Blonde fantasy during that segment.

All the game segments were really fun.

And of course, the deep shit. I knew there was a deep shit segment, because Anthony Padilla said so in his interview (which is why the act 1 ending confused me so much). When he showed the emoji calendar so many people were shocked and saddened and one person loudly yelled “Jeezus!” and someone else shouted “Do you want a hug?”

Not gonna lie, when he said something among the lines of “Yes, death is inevitable, but you have to live first” I was like... dude.... DUDE... woah. He said a lot of good shit there in that segment, but that one stuck with me.

I didn’t know the show would end with a clipshow of happy moments and it was so fitting with Dan climbing up the stairs to get a better look at it 10/10 staging, Danny boi.

SOMEONE BROUGHT HIM TULIPS FOR THE FINAL BOW.

[davidmann95]

So... Crossover #1: any thoughts?

Anonymous said: You seemed not to think much of Crossover #1 on Twitter. Your full thoughts?

wcwit said: So Cates' Crossover #1, best bad comic of the year or just regular pretentious trash?

An incidental note upfront: What you’re seeing there is the apparently SUPER-RARE SECRET VARIANT COVER I unwittingly picked up at the store - at first glance indistinguishable from the standard cover, the kid getting four-color-fucked by mysterious comic book rays is in fact themselves reading a variant cover of the book, rather than the main cover again in an infinite painting-within-a-painting sort of deal that’s the standard.

So I wasn’t gonna get this: my initial post on the comic and what an obviously awful idea it was back when we only knew half the premise and it was known as Pray The Capes Away actually got some out-of-nowhere traction recently, and I’ve grown rapidly tired of Cates’ Marvel work. Even learning that it was going to be Image’s biggest debut in decades - Jesus fuck, how and why - mostly just made me wish it was Commanders in Crisis getting those kinds of numbers. But Sean Dillon/@deathchrist2000 and Ritesh Babu both got early looks at it and assured me that I, specifically, needed to see the last page, so in I dove. I’ll be posting my reaction to the last page below because I recorded it for their amusement, and below that I’ll talk about said last page. It may surprise you, however, that that wasn’t my main takeaway from the issue.

Let’s accentuate the positive first! This book is gorgeous. Geoff Shaw was terrific back with Thanos Wins, but this is an incredible stylistic level-up aided and abetted by Dee Cunniffe’s colors: it’s rote as hell to say “They mix the elevated and the mundane so well!”, but even beyond the obvious ben-day dots stuff there’s such a tangible sense that the comic book beings don’t belong here, that they’re of higher, misty, platonic stuff and we squishy non-paper-people inevitably crumble and break and bleed in their wake, communicating that big idea so much more powerfully than the actual loads of text on the subject. And if we’re talking good things, I’ll concede it’s possible that there could be subtleties that play out in more interesting ways as it goes on, and that not everything is meant to be taken at face value: a smart friend who actually did like it mentioned being interested in it as clumsy but potentially effective exploration of ‘what if the fun hobby you had inadvertently became contaminated and stigmatized by forces beyond your control?’ In a post-Comicsgate world where we recently ended up inches away from the Superman logo almost certainly becoming a fascist propaganda symbol ala the Punisher skull for at least a generation, that’s a defensible lens to view this book through.

For all Donny Cates’ legitimate talents however, I don’t think an expectation of subtlety is gonna work out with this one.

Okay first off getting into the rest of it the main characters’ name is Ellipsis because “Those three little dots...they can become anything”, so there’s that. More importantly, in the world of this story where comic fans face social oppression after superpeople materialize and fuck up Colorado, they face EVERY KIND OF OPPRESSION: there are clear parallels drawn in here to the violence and harassment faced by people persecuted for their religion, people seeking abortions, queer people, and people of color; this motherfucker even drops a “hates and fears” to let us know comic collecting basically makes you one of the goddamn X-Men. Which in theory could be a purely misjudged allegory rather than stemming from actual, obscenely inflated to the point of disgusting fears of ‘nerd oppression’, except that the book literally opens with a quote from Wertham. If Cates didn’t want to make the message “Hating comics? That’s bad. Like, racism bad”, he utterly, grotesquely failed by inextricably intermingling imagery of real-world bigotry with systemic, deluded fanboy paranoia, at least as of this first issue that’s supposed to meaningfully convey the premise. As a queer dude I think I’m somewhat in my lane to say it’s too blunt and broad and dopey to be particularly offensive, but the co-opting of oppression is what this is rooted in.

The idea of ‘comics good no matter what people think, ain’t it?’ extends to the last traditional local comic store standing in this world: much as superheroes are the primary cause of suffering in this world but the point of the story is still supposed to reveal the beauty in them, part of this is that the comics community isn’t perfect but it sure is great. Which is expressed here via Ellie’s boss Otto, a loveable asshole who yells at people coming in trying to sell the wrong kind of comics to fuck off, but at heart is we’re supposed to understand a good enough dude that the shop he runs is “the only home a lot of (the benighted nerds) have left” (because I guess in this alternate universe the physical stores are still the main hub through which comics fans talk with one another?).

So here’s a story of my very own! That’s me in 2013, it must’ve been some kind of special day because I’m wearing a shirt with a button. I’d at that point only frequented one of what would be my thus far four regular comic shops. The first was a great place, and while to say I had a sense of community there would be overstating it a bit, I was on really good terms with the owner and we regularly chatted when we had the time. When I left for college my store there wasn’t as well-stocked, and for some damn reason all variant covers were double-price, but I got along really well with the owner there too. The third I wasn’t so lucky; the guy regularly behind the desk was never overtly hostile, but clearly wanted to wring my neck every time I asked when a missing comic might get in or if I could update my pull list, and given I’m in the ‘ideal’ demographic for being a comic book store regular and was dropping a solid lump of money there every week, I wonder how others were treated there (the store nearly went under, was saved on the last day of operation by another store that wanted to incorporate it as part of its franchise, then shortly afterwards DID go under and is now I believe a beef jerky place). My current store is fine, I didn’t chat much with the folks behind the counter even before we all had medical incentive to get in and out of places fairly quickly but it almost always has what I’m looking for.

Just because those were my regular stores of course doesn’t mean those are the only ones I’ve ever gone to. About a year before that picture was taken - it’s the closest I could find - when I was 17 my store didn’t have something or another I was looking for, so I head across town to see if another place I had looked up had it. This other place didn’t have what I was looking for either, though I distinctly remember picking up a few issues of Hickman’s FF while I was there since I had foolishly fallen off, hence my remembering the year. I bought a couple issues, but hung around for a bit looking to see if I might grab something else out of a dollar box, setting my comics down. Without realizing it, I’d set my books down on top of another issue, and when I decided I wasn’t getting anything else, I just picked that up along with the rest of the pile and was about to walk out before the owner stopped me. He explained what I had done though assumed it had been deliberate, and because I was a good-hearted little geek I even recall thinking “Well, he’s gonna chew me out, but I guess I deserve it. I’ll try and take this to heart as a learning experience.”

Then he pulled up his shirt a little to show me the gun on his belt. He pointed at the security camera monitors at his desk, and explained to me that if I ever did something like that again, he would have it on tape, and he would pull that gun on me and hold me there while he called the cops.

As it turned out, the comic was free.

The whole thing was so sudden and bizarre and unexpected I didn’t actually freak out until the drive home. It wasn’t until weeks or maybe months later that I managed to tell my dad about the experience, because I *had* nearly stolen a (free) comic and my guilt was mixed in with my nerves and I guess I was somehow too close to register just how disproportionate his response was. It wasn’t until now, nearly a decade later and thinking about it for the first time in a long time as I write this, that I wondered if that might have gone differently - especially living in the midwest - if I hadn’t been a white, squeaky-voiced 17-year-old.

So, minor spoiler, when our cantankerous but well-meaning LCS owner yells to call the cops and grabs and yells at a small kid for pocketing a comic (and later displays fantasy racism towards said kid), I am not filled with nostalgic love for the brotherly safe space that is comic book stores, where this guy while not meant to be seen as perfect is still framed in part as a charming, witty representation of Why We Love These Places, And This Community, And This Genre, And This Medium. Cates is clearly drawing on real time at his local stores, but he equally clearly has a very different takeaway from those experiences than me. And I am, again, in a demographic - white, cis-male, abled, bi but more interested in women, disposable income, a lifelong collector - that the industry and a lot of the guys who sell it to us contort themselves around catering to, even if I had a single very negative experience and later an ongoing low-key uncomfortable one to help disabuse me of any notions of the purity of the dork community. In the world of Crossover as of #1, toxicity is intertwined, deliberately or not on the part of the creators, with what we love on the cosmic and small business scales alike, but at least in the latter case it’s the whole picture that’s beautiful, not any single kernel that needs to be worked on to be dug up.

So underneath is my video reaction to the last page of Crossover #1. Very minor spoilers because I mutter the last two words of the comic to myself, but under the video I discuss said final page and some other scattered thoughts. Whether you read that or not, my takeaway is this: I’m fascinated with wherever the hell this thing is going, I’m glad my dad liked it well enough to want to keep getting it because now I’ll get to see where it heads, but my first impression is that this is at heart meant as cheapass Oscar-bait for people who only read Batman. It’s big and high-concept but also small and intimate! It’s meta and about how great you, the reader are for your consumption, especially the consumption of this! It’s going to be in large part about a forbidden love between a couple divided across impermeable social lines (a couple where they’re a seemingly straight white man and woman, but one likes comics)! Maybe it’ll become Not That, and I’m sure it’ll do at least something interesting along the way because Cates has done good stuff before and there are some inherently interesting big ideas for him to play with here, but for the love of god if you’re thinking about getting this buy Commanders in Crisis too or instead, it’s another new book out of Image about superheroes dealing with the collapse of the multiverse but that one is really fucking good.

So the final page splash reveal is that when the comic book child discovered in here got out of Colorado, which has had an impenetrable energy shield erected around it by one of the heroes for years, she and others were ferried out of there...by Superman, as the narration declares that “This is a story...about hope.” They don’t say the word, but she sketches her savior, Ellie and Otto freak out and go “Is that---” when they see it, and on that last page we see that while a crude drawing it isn’t a rough analogue character, it’s a guy with a cape and trunks with an S on his chest. Surprisingly, I don’t have much to say: it’s just another blunt signifier that superheroes rule and are the best, paired with the most utterly devalued notion as of late of what makes Superman special in ‘hope’. I mean, I’m perversely excited to see whether this is building the entire series on a hook it can never deliver on, or if Cates actually has talked DC into an intercompany crossover; believable given they’ve done a bunch of those over the last several years, and why else would Mark Waid be supervising as ‘story editor’ on this? I guess it’ll shake out one way or another with #6 given Cates has said it “has one of the more epic and — I would argue historic — sequences in comic book history in it.” But I’m far less convinced this is gonna truly go into the meaty question of “What does Superman mean and what makes him unique in this world where superheroes in general are indisputably either failures or monstrous bastards given the scale of destruction their presence has brought about, and he himself failed to stop that?” than as some kind of holy grail of how great superheroes are despite how dang violent they’ve gotten these days for the crew to chase after, whatever additional twist will surely be placed upon it. At least he’s kinda helping an immigrant kid get over a wall, if that’s deliberate?

Random final thoughts:

* If I wrote the opening essay and turned it in in a college course, I would be expelled for plagiarizing Grant Morrison. This is not a joke.

* If mainstream American superhero comics ended January 2017 in this universe, its own last ‘crossover’ was Civil War II, which is hilarious.

* God, please tell me if it takes the dive after all that this isn’t somehow tied into whatever Waid’s Superman project is.

* I wouldn’t normally crap on issues with the finer details of worldbuilding, but A. This is rooted in a nominally ‘real’ world playing by recognizable rules, B. I’m ragging on this anyway so what’s the harm, and C. It’s really obvious. So: Why is one of the racists against the superheroes the guy who loves superheroes so much he’s the last holdout in the entire world still selling comic books about them? How does this modestly-sized shop exist long-term with apparently a significant regular customer base if there are no new comics or even reprints to restock with, ever? Who’s buying the serialized cop/cowboy comics that the U.S. government apparently created pretty much overnight (nobody, it’s just another Wertham dig)?

* The solicit for issue #3 proclaims “Don't miss this one, folks. If you do, it just might drive you...mad.”, so now I fear some kind of Ultra Comics riff.

* “Kids love chains” is the most metal-ass quote of all time and I hate that it’s being wasted as an arc title on this book.

[le-lex]

I love you in the morning when the blood runs to your cheeks

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Pairing: Keith/Lance Words: 15k

“Hey, do you want a croissant? Or a cookie? They’re really good! My ma makes them all. What are you into? Take anything, seriously, whatever you want!” Bakery Guy keeps waving him over at a faster pace the closer Keith gets and as Keith approaches the table he backs off from where he was hunched like a dragon over a pile of leftover pastries.

“Uh…” Keith has no idea what the fuck is going on right now and he knows that his eyebrows are furrowed in a way that always makes Shiro laugh, but he can’t help it. What is happening.

Bakery Guy shoots a ray of pure sunlight out of his face directly into Keith’s eyes with his smile and tries again, “We don’t always sell everything pastry and bread wise, so I try to hook up the other vendors with some treats before we take everything to the women’s shelter downtown. Do you want anything?”

*

In which Keith and Lance fall in love over a farmers market season the same way they do everything else: a little bit backward and a whole lot stupid.

AO3: (x)

Keith has to keep actively reminding himself to stop clenching his teeth so hard by opening his mouth and moving his jaw from side to side like an actual idiot. Each time he does it, he casts a quick glance to the booths on either side of him to make sure their occupants aren’t witnessing his stressed out dumbassery in real time. What the fuck is he doing here, truly.

He’s currently sitting in his stupid, slightly rickety camping chair a cool hour after initially getting to the market and unpacking all of his things. He’d been awake for hours before he psyched himself up enough to actually drive to the market and he’d sat in his gently rumbling truck for ten minutes in the parking lot before he crow barred himself out of the cab into the fresh morning air to set up his market table and tools.

Hunching a little in his work jacket to brace himself against the early morning breeze, he looks down at his set up and has to physically prevent himself from sighing melodramatically. The table cloth he’s using to cover his folding table is an old red plaid one of his dad’s that Shiro always brutally makes fun of whenever he sees it. His toolbox is propped up and open with everything he needs handy and his two grinders are set up at an appropriately reachable distance from his shitty, unbalanced chair.

Just to be clear, he’s nervous as fuck. And he doesn’t really want to be here.

It’s his first day at this farmers market, his first day at a farmers market in general truly and he has essentially…zero idea what to expect. Obviously, he’s been at a farmers market before in his life, he doesn’t live under a fucking rock, but he’s never had his own booth at one and he thinks it may just be easier to climb back into his truck and fuck off into the sunrise and abandon this idea in its final hour.

But as he’s thinking this and as his hands are twitching to toss all of his utensils into his toolbox and haul ass out of here, he catches Shiro’s smile and wave from across the circular rotunda type structure the market is housed in and resolves himself to a morning of what is likely to be socially motivated torture. He’s not able to make a timely and quick escape if Shiro has already seen him, unfortunately.

Keith begrudgingly waves back to him and watches as Shiro hefts a pallet of cucumbers out of the farm truck he’s currently unpacking.

Shiro is dressed like every middle-aged white mother’s wet dream, wearing a flannel rolled up past his elbows over a t-shirt with his aunt’s farm’s logo on it and dark jeans tucked into his scuffed-up work boots. He’s such a beautiful, buff motherfucker that it makes Keith’s eyes roll into the back of his head, because honestly, who even looks like that. Who looks like that and works at a farmers market and hauls vegetables out of the bed of a truck with such a look of tranquility and contentment that it makes all the waiting regulars sigh a little watching him. Shiro, that’s fucking who, he supposes.

He catches the eye of Shiro’s tiny little aunt standing behind her table and setting up literal pyramids of vegetables and gives her a small smile as she waves across to him.

Shiro helps his elderly aunt out with her vegetable farm during the on season because he just truly is that good of a person. Thinking about it makes Keith a little ill.

Ignoring the sweatiness of his palms, he leans back in his chair and glances up at the sign that’s swinging lazily in the breeze where it’s attached to the front of his tent. It makes him laugh a little every time he sees it, even though it’s nicely made. That’s what patronage at the town UPS Store will get you. A quality sign with your bullshit name on it. It mostly makes him laugh because the name he decided on for his market booth is “Keith’s Knife Hut” solely because it causes Shiro to make a face that’s split between disbelief and actual pain every time he looks at it. Motivation, y’all.

Despite the growing dread over being present in this current situation, the knowledge that Shiro is going to be in his line of sight for most of the day and that he’ll likely wander over later is comforting enough.

The market hasn’t officially opened yet which Keith is grateful as fuck for, but early regulars mill about and later arrivals to the market are efficiently setting up their booths just in time for the sunrise.

He has his pricing spiel all planned out in his head and he turns it around and around in his mind as he sits there. He’s said it enough times to his commercial clients that he isn’t particularly worried, but this is a whole different setting than the back of a restaurant kitchen where he usually works and that’s enough to make him stumble over his words. Five dollars per knife, seven dollars for anything else. Including multitools, yard tools, and lawn mower blades.

Forcibly unclenching his teeth yet again, he chants his prices in his head and triumphantly thinks that even if he can’t always connect to the customers he has, he can sharpen anything. Let’s go, middle upper-class patrons of this bougie farmers market, give me your bladed tools to sharpen.

With a glance to his phone showing that it’s officially seven am and a final straighten of his sandpaper loops, he shoots a pleading request to whatever deity may be out there for today to go well and thinks, here goes nothing.

*

Three hours later and Keith is able to actually sit back in his chair and finally glance around the rest of the market.

It’s been…a day, surely. And it hadn’t gone as bad as Keith had been expecting, which is generally the way things play out. Being at the market was surprisingly fun and after the first few clipped conversations with inquiring customers where he had no idea what the tempo of the interactions was supposed to be, he was able to fluently and efficiently roll out his pricing bullshit for the next, like, fifteen people who stopped at his booth to chat.

Granted, he didn’t really sharpen anything aside from a few pocket knives and a multitool here and there, but mostly because people don’t carry around full sets of kitchen knives on them without a valid reason. A valid reason being…well, getting your kitchen knives sharpened.

He’d given his business card out to a lot of interested people and he figures that that’ll be enough to get him some real business when he’s back the following Tuesday. Just the thought has him feeling a little bit cheerful.

Truthfully, he really likes doing this in a way he doesn’t like doing a lot of things. Working with his hands and fixing something and making it more efficient and useful in a very tangible way. It feels purposeful, gives him a very clear outcome with just a little bit of action.

Plus, it’s not like sharpening knives is hard, if he’s going to be totally honest. Anyone could do it with the right equipment and knowledge, but, he supposes, that most people don’t really want to.

With his extensive background in tools and knives, he was able to cultivate a pretty solid customer base in the form of restaurants and specialty food stores when he first started, and he keeps up with a lot of those regulars on a pretty consistent basis. He can, however grudgingly, admit that Shiro was definitely right in the farmers market being a good side gig on the weekends and a few days during the week.

It’s not like he’s going to tell Shiro that. A thanks for the connection to the market manager for the booth space might be in order, though.

Keith struggles a little bit when shrugging out of his jacket and knocks a few of his own tools off his table before he’s able to really look around.

The way the market is set up is kind of odd, in his own humble architectural opinion. Which means absolutely fuck all nothing, but still. It’s a giant concentric circle with a lot of open space in the middle where the plant people congregate and sell giant potted flowers. All of the booths are set up inside the circular roofing at the outer edge of the biggest circle, so you can enter the market and walk all the way around in one direction until you end up right back where you started. He guesses it’s a pretty good business model, a trap that doesn’t really feel like one when you’re looking at artisanal cheeses and bird houses made out of refurbished cabinets or whatever the hell people sell here.

His booth is right next to the entrance, so he’s one of the first stalls that market patrons see upon arrival. Beside him to the left is another vegetable stand with a kindly middle-aged woman who runs it and across the way from him is a weird sounding combination goat cheese and mushroom stall that he doesn’t really understand at first inspection.

There’s a bakery next to that, and a honey and bee paraphernalia stall down the way a little bit the opposite way.

He could, potentially, make attempts to talk to these people, but also, he could literally do anything aside from that. For a bit this morning, he made polite small talk with the other vegetable woman before he began to feel like he was betraying Auntie Shirogane’s farm by fraternizing with the enemy. She was nice though, and she gave him a bag of snap peas that he has absolutely no idea what to do with, so he supposes that they can be market friends.

That was a big component of the market that Shiro had ranted on and on about when he was convincing Keith to “join the market family.” That right there was enough to make Keith think that it sounded a bit like a cult, but Shiro had adamantly championed that the younger market workers were “good friends” who “looked out for each other” and “gave each other a lot of free shit.”

When Keith had pointed out that he doesn’t really have a lot of free shit to give aside from free knife sharpenings and what millennial is going to want that, Shiro had cheerily told him to piss off and to submit his application for a market booth as soon as possible.

Which Keith did. Thus, explaining why he’s here.

But whatever.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by a lidded coffee cup being briskly set on his plaid tablecloth and sends a pair of pliers toppling to the floor with his full body flinch.

“What in the ever-loving fuck,” Keith hisses up at a very amused looking Shiro as he dips under his folding table for the rogue pliers.

“I brought you coffee. Stop swearing in this wholesome, family environment.”

“You literally told me when I got here that I had to try “the dope ass baklava” from that stall next to yours, so I don’t have to take orders from the likes of you.” He takes the coffee though, he’s not a dumbass.

Shiro’s eyes crinkle up in a smile that Keith knows is his I’m Proud of Keith for Doing Something That Really Wasn’t That Hard Smile, which only serves to make him grumble under his breath and adamantly avoid Shiro’s gaze.

“So, how’s it going so far?”

Keith actively evades his meaningful eye contact by staring at the bakery stall across from him and a little to the right, where two tall, vaguely attractive people flutter around behind the table and slide pastries and bread into little plastic bags. “It’s going. I’ve talked to a lot of people who seemed interested and wanted to know if I’d be here on Tuesday.”

One of the tall, fluttery people behind the bakery table is flapping his hands around as he talks to the customer he’s serving, his grin split wide across his face and so bright that it actually makes Keith squint a little.

“That’s awesome. I’m really glad to hear it. Auntie was worried about you earlier, she said you were scowling and that it mars your handsome face.”

Shiro is…definitely still talking, but all Keith can focus on is the frenetic movement of the bakery boy’s long fingered hands. He’s talking so fast that Keith can’t even make out any of the words from his spot about twenty feet away. He smiles wide again as the customer leaves, and Keith quite literally feels like he’s staring into the sun. What the fuck.

He cuts a quick glance back at Shiro, who is now involved in a conversation with the Other Vegetable Woman and makes a noncommittal noise that he knows Shiro will deem as an appropriate response simply from long term Keith exposure.

Keith picks up his pretentious farmers market coffee to take an experimental sip and his gaze slides back over to the butterfly-handed boy, who chooses that exact split second to raise his own face up to meet Keith’s eyes.

It takes a few seconds for Keith’s heart to restart after being caught staring across the market at this deadass stranger who is now looking back at him, and when it does, it’s basically a lost cause anyway.

Bakery boy meets his eyes and smiles that stupid solar powered smile back at Keith, lifting up his hand to waggle his stupid long fingers at him in a quick, little wave.

Keith forcibly resists the urge to look around to see if that wave is for him and clenches his teeth to stop from audibly groaning in socially fueled distress, he lifts up his coffee cup in an odd kind of salute before resolutely looking absolutely anywhere but the bakery stall.

Shiro is still talking about vegetable shelf life or something dumb like that when Keith returns to both Earth and the conversation they’re having. It’s like the sound of the market immediately floods back into his awareness and he has to ball up one of his hands against his thigh to reign himself back in.

What in the fuck.

For the next hour, Keith looks only straight ahead at inquiring customers, down at his table, or to the left of the circle.

*

This avoidance tactic only works for so long. Keith makes eye contact with the tall bakery boy across from his stall three more times before the afternoon comes to a lazy close. His heart essentially stops each time, usually because said bakery boy is looking back whenever Keith glances over at him.

He’s able to catch glimpses of the boy across the way a few times without making any reciprocal eye contact. He’s tall and lithe in a way that is annoying to Keith simply due to his own more compact build. What can Keith say, he’s got a low center of gravity.

Details of said boy, or more likely said man, are not able to be gleaned from his position at his own booth, but Keith can tell that he’s fairly good looking even from far away. Tall and dark skinned and in a constant state of motion. He’s also wearing fucking overalls. Not coveralls like Shiro sometimes wears out in the fields when it gets cold in the later part of the season, but actual jean overalls over a bright yellow tie-dye shirt with what Keith assumes is his bakery’s logo.

It’s all he’s able to take note of when he’s constantly glancing there and back under absolute duress.

The last time it happened, Keith had to physically clamp his own mouth shut to prevent any untoward exclamations because Tall Bakery Man smiled so widely at him that his eyes were practically closed. It was most enchanting thing Keith had ever seen. It can absolutely not happen again or it will put Keith straight into his grave.

At around one o’clock, Keith starts to pack up all of his shit. He sharpened around six pocket knives and a few multitools and has given out about thirty of his Keith’s Knife Hut business cards. He feels good. Satisfied in a way that he usually doesn’t after social interaction.

He figures that because he’s talking about something he’s more or less dedicated his life to is why it’s easier to talk to strangers about it. Hyper focusing is something that tends to happen to him and he’s got a lot of material in terms of talking about and around kitchen knives and gardening tools. It’s comfortable and comforting all at once, which is a very novel feeling after being exposed to upwards of hundreds of people for six hours.

Just as he’s finished taking the sandpaper loops off his grinders, he glances up to possibly catch Shiro’s eye to wave goodbye to him when he spots Bakery Boy behind his own table. He’s relatively still and not actually doing anything aside from smiling but it makes Keith’s breath stop. How the hell did this happen? Why is Keith acting this way in the face of one singular person looking at him a few times throughout the day? The guy is wearing overalls, for fuck’s sake.

From across the way, the bakery worker smiles even bigger and gives him another jaunty finger wiggle. Only this time, he gives Keith a thumbs up with one hand and winks at the same time. It’s charming in an annoyingly effortless way and it forces a truly pained noise through Keith’s teeth and has him aggressively tossing the few tools he has left into his toolbox. He has got to get the fuck out of here.

He packs up his table and tool box and grinders as quick as possible without spilling all of his shit all over the cement floor of the market. His truck rumbles to life after a few rushed attempts to jam his keys into the ignition, mostly because he’s still flustered as fuck.

Trying to take a step back from the experience and the staccato beating of his own heart, he carefully considers how his first attempt at being a farmers market vendor went. It was a good first day, in all honesty. He’s happy to be here. He may even like it here.

But Keith isn’t going to think about this interaction with the Tall Bakery Man ever again. He’s going to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this shit. He’s all good.

It’s fine.

*

He thinks about almost nothing but that five second interaction all weekend. It’s not fine.

*

It continues on in this way for the next few weeks. Keith’s business kicks up now that people know that he’s at the market and he finds himself sharpening upwards of 25-30 kitchen knives a day along with his usual pocket knives. He also sometimes gets scissors, a few handheld axes, and once a comically large pair of hedge shears.

Honestly, Keith would be lying if he said it wasn’t fun. It’s a good, friendly atmosphere and being out in the open air for most of the day a few times a week is probably good for him. He’s met the market manager, Coran, a few times now and quietly chats with the Vegetable Lady next to him most days. She’s still hooking him up with peas.

Coran is fascinating because he rules the market with an iron fist and a slightly unhinged sense of responsibility. His bright orange t-shirt says “Market Master” on the back and he spends a lot of his time chasing after dog owners who bring their pets under the covered portion of the market despite the copious signage stating otherwise.

It’s nice, even if he has to see Coran’s white ass thighs at seven am three days a week because the motherfucker refuses to wear anything aside from jean cutoffs and ridiculous white dad tennis shoes.

Shiro floats by most days and brings him coffee and makes small talk about the TV shows they’re both watching and Keith makes a few tentative attempts to talk to one of the goat cheese mushroom women about their stall and their goats, which don’t go totally horrible.

He likes it here, he supposes, at this slightly pretentious outdoor farmers market. Plus, he’s making a good chunk of cash on top of his commercial clients, so he’s absolutely not complaining.

Okay, well…actually, he’s complaining a little bit. Mostly just about the Bakery Boy and the weird eye contact impasse that they’ve cultivated from across the aisleway of their part of the market.

Tall Bakery Man has not let up in terms of his cheeky little waves and plentiful amounts of winking and Keith is pretty sure it’s made his blood pressure rise to dangerous levels.

He’s worried that it’s going to make him pass out one of these days.

But, it’s fine. It’s totally cool. It feels like camaraderie without speaking and that’s one of Keith’s sweet spots. They just smile and wave at each other a lot. Sometimes, when they both first get to the market to set up, the Bakery Man will send him a thumbs up as a sort of little check in and Keith will return it without hesitation.

It’s noncommittal and sweet and it makes Keith want to bang his head against the brick pillar his stall is next to until he falls unconscious amidst the market patrons because he’s a little attached to it now. To the interactions and to the knowledge that Tall Bakery Man will probably already be looking at him if Keith looks over that way throughout the day.

He wears those overalls a lot, Bakery Guy does. Keith doesn’t really see him out behind the tables that his bread and pastries are on, but he’s caught him walking to other vendors’ stalls and lingering at the mushroom goat cheese combo stall a few times.

When he does that, Keith looks resolutely at his feet as he weaves between patrons and tables and absolutely nowhere else, to appear like the exact opposite of the kind of weird creeper that he might be. The shoes Bakery Guy wears are usually some dumb kitschy patterned plimsoll shoes with no socks, his overalls cuffed up past his ankles. Last week they had little sunbathers on them, this week they’re covered in little Dachshunds and hot dogs. It makes Keith want to scream.

He feels like some fucking Victorian woman in ye olden times, in love with this boy’s ankles and getting light headed over it like it’s some big scandal. He’s legitimately stupid.

But yeah, it’s going well.

*

To say that the rest of the market noticed the Knife Guy on his first day would be an understatement.

They absolutely noticed. They all talked about it incessantly after Coran had mentioned a new vendor would be there the Thursday of the week previous.

Shiro had offhandedly mentioned that he was a friend of his and that he was a little quiet, but that they would all like him. Hunk and Lance had made meaningful eye contact and left it at that. Shiro liked everyone, so that didn’t mean shit. They weren’t going to accept a weird interloper into their fold without appropriate information.

But now, oh but now. Knife Guy is leaned back in a folding chair with one leg crossed and one heavy boot resting on his knee, looking for all the world like he doesn’t give a damn about anything.

Lance silently berates himself for being totally into that as he unloads his pastries from the van and heaves them into a tall stack just behind their stall.

Allura has already started setting up their tables and getting their cash register and display stands ready. He catches her eye and smiles at her a little as he heads back for yet another round of unloading. Even though they’re both morning people, they’ve been awake for a few hours already and aren’t fully into speaking territory yet.

Coran and Shiro both failed to mention that the new guy sharpens knives. Because that is some pertinent info. Who the hell sharpens knives at a farmers market?

As Lance thinks it around in circles, he guesses it makes some kind of sense. He’s just never seen it before and he’s worked at markets in the surrounding area for years. Someone who actually knows what they’re doing and has the tools to make your shit sharp, sure. It’s still weird though.

Plus, the dude looks intense. Long dark hair and heavy eyebrows combined with knives and all that plaid? He’s cultivating a very specific look. And now okay, Lance didn’t say it was a bad look, but it’s a look nonetheless. It’s going to scare the shit out of all the old women.

It takes a bit of time for he and Allura to get all of their shit set up, but they manage to before the market opens which in itself is a win for them. They always have bullshit old people regulars who show up at like 6:55 and demand their favorite loaves of bread before the market has even really opened. Lance rants on and on about entitlement and appreciating market hours to both Allura and his ma frequently, but they just roll their eyes and tell him to help the elderly out.

Whatever. It’s fine. He’s fine. He goes about his market day.

He just can’t stop glancing over at the Knife Guy.

From where their stall is situated, he can’t really see the sign that hangs from Knife Guy’s tent to tell what his stall is called. Even if he pitches over to one side like a dumbass, the brick pillar that his tent is pressed up against blocks it.

He’s cute, though. Real cute. And now that Lance has been watching him for a hot minute, he can see that Knife Guy looks a little bit nervous. He’s staring straight off into space and keeps rubbing his thumb against his pointer finger in a kind of repetitious, comforting sort of way.

Lance should probably go over and say hi, right? It’s been a few hours since they all got here. That’s what normal people would do. Miss Kelly from the vegetable stand next to Knife Guy’s has already talked to him a little earlier. It’s probably weird and hard to start at a market a few weeks into the season and not know anyone aside from fucken Shiro.

And speak of the devil. Lance glances up from putting raspberry danishes into a pleasing arrangement after they sold about half of them earlier to see Shiro slinking across the middle of the market where the plant people are to cut across the aisle way and sidle right up to Knife Guy’s table.

He smacks a coffee cup down against the cheesy plaid tablecloth and Knife Guy, on god, literally flails all of his limbs. Shit falls on the ground and he glares up at Shiro, and Lance…has the good sense to feel a little winded by that glare. It’s not even aimed at him. This dude is good looking, what the fuck.

Lance is still shuffling pastries and cookies around to appeal the most to market patrons, that shit is his life blood and what he’s best at, when he looks back up to see Shiro and Knife Guy chatting a little. He takes a break from organizing raisin croissants and just watches the easy way they both interact with each other.

They’re definitely friends. Of course Shiro would have good looking friends. They’re both wearing plaid too, must be some sort of good-looking dude wavelength they’re both on. Lance only looks good in very certain colors of plaid and he likes wearing his overalls to avoid dressing himself at four am in the dark and getting to the market looking like an actual dumbass. Plus, yellow tie-dye is kind of hard to accessorize. He’ll stick with his denim and zip up hoodies, thank you very much.

He keeps watching them and notices the specific moment where Knife Guy zones out again and then they’re making eye contact. It takes a little bit for Knife Guy to even realize they’re looking at one another and by then Lance is already waving at him a little bit and smiling what he can totally feel is a huge, dorky smile.

Knife Guy…straight up turns pink. Blushes so bright that Lance can see it from across the way. It’s the cutest fucking thing. He can feel warmth curling in his stomach and he laughs a little as Knife Guy is startled into giving him a salute with his coffee cup.

It should look stupid. It doesn’t.

Knife Guy is now resolutely looking anywhere aside from Lance, which makes the warmth in his stomach rock back and forth like he’s on a boat out at sea. He keeps pushing his hands into his dark hair and messing it all up and it serves to makes Lance smile softly down at his pastries.

He should probably leave well enough alone and not embarrass the guy from across the aisle. He should probably go over there and actually speak to him. Introduce himself and Hunk and maybe Pidge and ask him what his name is, find out why in the hell he sharpens knives. How he knows Shiro and where he’s from and what he likes to do in his spare time. Maybe find out what his favorite pastry is.

He should probably do a lot of things.

And yet, he spends the rest of the day sweetly waving at Knife Guy and making his entire face turn red each time. Because this is who he is, not being able to leave well enough alone. He winks at him once right before he leaves and he’s pretty sure Knife Guy chokes as he lurches towards his weird pickup truck and tosses all of his supplies in.

Lance is absolutely not going to let this go.

*

It continues on in this way for the next few weeks. Lance mans his ma’s farmers market stall. He interacts with his regulars and gives them good deals because they’re nice to him. He chats with Hunk and Pidge and Coran. He makes Knife Guy blush.

They still haven’t spoken, but it’s become a thing. A capital T thing. Lance’s favorite kind of Thing.

It becomes a routine. A few times a day Lance will glance over to Knife Guy’s stall and smile at him, especially big if Knife Guy is already looking. He peppers these ten second interactions with a few thumbs ups, maybe a wink here or a finger guns there. Knife Guy never stops blushing. Lance might be a little bit in love with some random dude in a brown Carhartt jacket that he’s never spoken to.

It’s chill.

He and Hunk make a whole lot of jokes about the Murder Pickup Truck. Knife Guy drives a beat up cream and brown pickup that makes horrible noises when he starts it up and has a lot of weird shit in the back. Hunk is absolutely convinced that he’s a serial killer from the pickup alone, so the working with sharp bladed objects really doesn’t help.

It makes Lance laugh because he’s pretty sure Knife Guy is just a normal dude and once he and Hunk actually speak to him, it’ll be chill. But their jokes give him a hell of an excuse to look at Knife Guy a lot. Not that he wouldn’t anyway, but still.

Over the last few weeks, Lance has subtly watched Knife Guy get more comfortable at the market. Not a lot of people talk to him, usually just Shiro and Miss Kelly and occasionally Coran. But the difference in the way he holds himself in his folding chair a few weeks in compared to his first day is noticeable. It’s sweet, almost. He has a few regulars who bring him their knives and their tools and seems to be able to connect with them a lot more. Lance doesn’t even know him, but he’s proud of him anyway.

Lance had been watching covertly from behind a pyramid of their French bread when Knife Guy had made his first customer laugh. It was revelatory. Knife Guy had seemed surprised but then so, so pleased, smiling shyly from where he sat, and it had made that stirring warmth in Lance’s stomach spread out and fill his entire body.

He might be in trouble. He doesn’t really mind.

Talking to Knife Guy soon might be in the cards, though.

*

Hunk leans against the outside of the table that all of their bread is piled on and gestures vaguely towards the Knife Guy with the leftover half of his croissant, “I don’t know, man…I just think he’s weird. He puts off a vibe. A very specific vibe. Vibe with a capital V. And also, he may be an actual murderer? Who sharpens knives as a job?”

Reaching over the cash register to pick up fifty cents in change that the woman with the Can I Speak to the Manager Haircut didn’t deem appropriate enough to put in his hand instead of on the table, Lance considers this.

“Hm, okay, duly noted. But his hair is actually pretty nice?” With a cursory glance to be sure that Knife Guy’s head is ducked down focusing on whatever it is that he’s sharpening, Lance takes thorough note of his thick head of dark hair that he’s been appreciating three days every week for the last few weeks.

“It looks even better when it’s pulled back though, he’s done that a few times since he’s started.” Lance decides on after careful deliberation, turning his body back towards Hunk just in time to catch his mouth drop open.

“I- what, we were literally just talking about how he might be a serial killer? Not talking about how nice his hair looks! Do you care at all for our potential safety?”

“Hunk, please, you know I don’t want you to get mur-“ before Lance can even finish, Hunk is straightening up and frantically slapping Lance’s arm, motioning back toward Knife Guy’s stall.

“Look! He’s sharpening an axe right now! Is that not the perfect weapon for horror movie style decapitation?”

“Okay, valid, but it’s not his axe…I saw Mrs. Fitzsimmons drop it off at his stall when she got to the market.” Lance clearly had been keeping a very close eye on his neighbor across the way. So what? Sue him.

Hunk makes a noise of pure disbelief and finishes off his croissant before wandering back to his moms’ stall.

Even though Hunk isn’t looking his way anymore, Lance shrugs. Knife Guy is cute and gets very obviously worked up when Lance winks at him. Plus, he’s got a soft spot for guys in work jackets and plaid, what can he say?

*

It all comes to a head about a month after Keith first started at the market. Things have been going surprisingly well. He likes being at the market and likes the few friends he’s made. It’s something to look forward to every few days because it’s easy and chill and non-committal.

Shiro is very smug about it. Keith ignores the stupid faces he makes.

It’s a Thursday market day, so there weren’t as many people as there is on Saturdays, but Keith still did pretty well. He had a lot of bigger things to sharpen today, a few lawn mower blades and an actual deadass scythe that a tiny old woman brought him earlier.

It’s about one, so he’s packing up all of his stuff and looking forward to going home and melting into his couch and watching whatever show Adam and Shiro deem good enough to put on when they come over later.

As he’s tucking his finer grade sandpaper loop into his toolbox, he’s startled by what sounds like someone hissing. He whips around only to see Bakery Guy hunched over his front table and beckoning him over. He’s wearing an actually giant sun hat with his usual overall ensemble.

Keith wants to hate it. He, yet again, doesn’t.

“Psssst, Knife Guy, over here!” Bakery Guy makes pointed eye contact with him and waves him over in a flurry of hands.

Keith looks around to either side of him, but Vegetable Lady is gone and the soap booth on the other side of the entrance is just about packed up.

He glances back and makes eye contact with Bakery Guy, pointing at himself with what he knows is a stupid, bewildered look on his face.

Bakery Guy rolls his eyes with practically his whole body and points directly at him, “Uh, yes you, you’re the only knife guy around. Get over here.”

His voice is really nice, musical and fun. It wasn’t what Keith was expecting but absolutely should have been. This is the first time he’s heard it and absolutely the first time it’s been directed anywhere near him. He snaps his toolbox shut and edges around his table to make his way across the aisle.

“What’s…up?” Jesus Christ, is Keith an actual dumbass?

“Hey, do you want a croissant? Or a cookie? They’re really good! My ma makes them all. What are you into? Take anything, seriously, whatever you want!” Bakery Guy keeps waving him over at a faster pace the closer Keith gets and as Keith approaches the table he backs off from where he was hunched like a dragon over a pile of leftover pastries.

“Uh…” Keith has no idea what the fuck is going on right now and he knows that his eyebrows are furrowed in a way that always makes Shiro laugh, but he can’t help it. What is happening.

Bakery Guy shoots a ray of pure sunlight out of his face directly into Keith’s eyes with his smile and tries again, “We don’t always sell everything pastry and bread wise, so I try to hook up the other vendors with some treats before we take everything to the women’s shelter downtown. Do you want anything?”

Oh, okay. Yeah, Keith wants something. He’s been inadvertently staring at all of this stuff for the last month.

“Yes, please.” Has he never spoken to another human being in his entire life? Clearly not.

“Oh sweet, awesome. Cool cool cool. Take whatever! Do you like really sweet things? You don’t really seem like you do, but obviously that’s a totally unfounded assumption, so some of the less sweet stuff would be our pain au raisin, maybe a muffin, or a cream cheese danish!” Bakery Guy’s eyes are so fucking blue up close that Keith is pretty sure he’s going to close his own eyes tonight and see this color reflected on his eyelids when he goes to sleep.

“Um, a cream cheese danish…sounds good?”

Before he’s even finished, Bakery Guy is darting forward and closing Keith’s hands around an already plastic packaged danish. His hands are soft as fuck and Keith is going to drop dead.

“I’ll keep that in mind! I almost always try and go around before everybody leaves, but I don’t always get to it. Plus, you seem to leave pretty early and I’ve never been able to catch you before you’ve packed up.” The look Bakery Guy sends him makes his heart stop, because it’s sweet and a little flirty and an admission that he’s been watching Keith. Admitted like a secret that they both share.

His eyes scrunch up when he smiles, and Keith is composing sonnets in his head as he stares at this freckled son of bitch who’s wearing the biggest sun hat that Keith has literally ever seen. How is this his life?

“Well, thank you? I, uh, really appreciate a good danish. Also, what’s your name?” Keith has to struggle to get the words out of his mouth because he and this guy are still making really intense eye contact and his big ass hands are still curled around Keith’s, the danish sandwiched in the middle in a weird cradle.

Bakery Guy smiles even bigger and Keith literally has to shut his eyes in the face of that solar power.

“Oh shit, I totally forgot we’ve never been introduced! The name’s Lance! And you are?”

Does he have a name? Is he anything but an entity-less soul bouncing around in the ether? What the hell is going on here? Why are they still holding hands?

“Keith.” It’s literally the only thing he can say. At least he remembered his own name.

Lance is opening his mouth to start speaking again when someone reappears back beneath the tent of their stall.

“Are you done packing up yet?” comes from the other tall beautiful person that Keith has seen behind the table of the bakery stall. She’s tall and posh-sounding and also probably the third most good-looking person Keith has ever had the misfortune of standing next to, behind both Shiro and Lance.

She touches Lance on his shoulder lightly as she says it and in a way that suggests familiarity before she turns around to do something or other with the plastic wrapped brownies.

Lance and Keith both jump, and their hands immediately fall to their sides. Keith has to flex both of his hands to rid the sensation of Lance cradling them from his skin.

Great. Back on his Mr. Darcy bullshit. He has got to protest harder when Adam and Shiro binge watch period dramas.

Keith’s jams his hands into his pockets and Lance’s fall to rest on the assorted jumble of pastries.

“Almost done, ‘Lura.” He sends a little smile back her way and it’s so sweet and small that Keith can hear his own heartbeat echoing in his head.

Well, fuck. Maybe this incredibly good-looking tall person is dating the other incredibly good-looking tall person in front of him?

The thought almost strikes him dead. He knows next to nothing about Lance or this other ethereal person whose platinum hair seems to be reflecting the sunlight and fucking blinding him. What if they’re dating, oh god, or worse, what if they’re married? And Keith has been pining away uselessly from his Knife Hut for the last month over a married man?

Jesus H. Christ. They probably have kids. Beautiful brown children running around that are adorable and perfect in every way. They probably own the bakery together. Hell, and here Keith was mentally preparing to be a homewrecker.

Holy shit, death is the only option here. He may be getting ahead of himself, but the ball is already rolling and there’s no going back.

They’re all just kind of standing there looking at each other and the Kill Bill sirens are sounding in Keith’s head, but he doesn’t move to do anything.

Thankfully, Lance smiles his way again and snags another danish from his pile, handing it to Keith delicately.

“Here’s another for the road. I’ll see you on Saturday, yeah?”

All Keith can do is nod like a fucking bobble head and return the little wave Lance gives him before he about faces. As he’s hopping into his truck, he glances in his rear-view mirror to see the two bakery workers packing up all their things and laughing together. Probably talking about something cute that their two-year-old did last night. Dear lord.

Yep, the only solution here is death.

*

Friday night, Lance is so keyed up to get to the market that he’s practically vibrating. He succeeded in actually speaking to Knife Guy on Thursday, who he now knows is named Keith. Which is cute. Kind of dweeby and not entirely fitting, but still cute.

He also now knows that Keith is a little socially awkward but not in an unbearable way. In a way that Lance knows how to navigate, usually by asking specific questions and kind of talking a lot like he does anyway.

So, moral of the story, he’s hype to get back to the market to maybe actually talk to Keith a little bit more rather than just making fucking googly eyes at each other from across the aisle like they’ve been doing for the last four weeks.

But when Saturday morning arrives, he’s forgotten that Allura took the day off and is dismayed to realize that he’ll be running the entire stall by himself.

Packaging everything, packing everything into the van, unpacking everything, and then dealing with the weird old dudes and condescending soccer moms all day. By himself. He’s sufficiently less hype by the time he actually gets to the market at quarter to six.

Keith is in his Knife Hut, which makes Lance laugh a little every time he thinks about it, already unpacked and set up for the day. He’s fucking around with something on his phone and rubbing a chunk of his long hair between his thumb and pointer finger.

Lance kind of desperately wants to run his fingers through that hair. But first, he has to get through the day. Then he has to actually talk to Keith again. Then they have to fall in love. There’s a process to these things, you see.

And with that, he begins the arduous exercise of unpacking the van. Usually it’s not that big of a struggle, they’ve got about fifteen plastic pallets with all of their product in with weird little handles that he’s able to stack behind their tables but it’s a lot more work without Allura here to toss things around with her stupid buff arms.

He’s going to be late setting up, which flusters him, because then all the fucking early ass old people will bitch about how he’s not set up, which will prevent him even farther from being set up. Endless cycle of not being set up until like an hour in when he’s all good.

The days that Allura’s gone are the worst, but his ma is right to give her them off. She deserves a break once in a while. She’s a great general manager and helps out a whole lot when she doesn’t even really have to, so Lance doesn’t begrudge her her days off.

He might die today though.

Hefting huge trays of bread and pastries out of the van is kind of a bitch and he’s hyper focused on doing it as fast as he can without hurting himself, which is why he’s truly startled when someone clears their throat behind him.

It’s Knife Guy. Er, Keith. And he’s standing there in his brown work jacket layered over a maroon and gold plaid flannel that really brings out the grey of his eyes. He looks kind of...off balance and Lance sort of wants to kiss his face a little.

“Do you, uh, need some help?” Lance has been pleasantly surprised when he hears the raspy quality to Keith’s voice all like, four times he’s heard Keith speak.

Lance casts a quick look toward the empty Knife Hut, but nobody is really around yet and it’s safe to assume that Keith had been watching him flap around frantically for the last thirty minutes.

“If you’re offering? Absolutely.”

He gives Keith a few pointers on the easiest way to maneuver the unwieldy bakery trays and they make quick work of stacking them all up behind the tables. When he tosses the table cloths to Keith, they make even quicker work spreading them over the tables, making beautifully uncomfortable eye contact, so Lance can start placing all of the stuff he has today out.

They work in silence for a while, Keith handing him things and Lance setting them all up in the specific way he likes. After he gets everything set up, he’ll have to put all the little labels and signs out, but he’s feeling way better now that everything is at least out of the van. Thank god for Keith.

“So, uh...where’s your wife?”

When Lance glances over at him to see if it was really, truly Lance he was speaking to, Keith won’t look at him. Just keeps making laser eyes at a loaf of wheat bread he’s fondling.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Keith shifts uncomfortably, and Lance tracks his movements.

“Your, uh, wife?”

“Who?”

“The lady from Thursday? The one that’s normally here with you. The white-haired good looking one?”

Lance can feel his eyes practically bug out of his head as Keith trails off quietly. He glances around the market to make sure he’s not like...being Punk’d or something. What in the fuck.

“You mean Allura? British accent? Built like an actual goddess? Able to handle the most passive aggressive of patrons with a sense of poise and rationality?” Lance cannot fucking believe this. He wants to laugh in disbelief, but doubts that would go over well with Keith.

The group chat is going to blow up when he relays this information.

When Keith finally chances a quick look up at him, he looks brutally uncomfortable. Red dusts the tops of his cheeks and ears and he’s twisting the wrapper of yet another loaf of bread around his fingers so tightly that it’s turning his fingertips purple.

Lance reaches out to grab the loaf from him and their fingers touch. He smiles at the jolt it sends through them both.

“She’s not my wife, dude. She’s a lesbian, first of all. And she’s the general manager of my mom’s bakery. I wouldn’t even be allowed to look at her if my mom thought I was trying to get with her.”

He can visibly see the distress disappear from Keith, the tight way he was holding his shoulders all but melts out of him and the only thing Lance can do is smile like a dumbass until they make eye contact again.

“Was that a Panic! at The Disco lyric?” is the only thing Keith says back to him, his mouth curving up into a crooked smile.

“Shut up. Let’s finish setting up so I can set you free to sharpen knives, you little weirdo.”

*

After that morning and the wildly uncomfortable clarification that followed, Keith comes over to the bakery stall to help set up most days. Even if Allura is there.

Lance is a just and fair motherfucker, so he makes Allura, Hunk, and Pidge promise to not bring up the wife thing until Keith is actually like, cool with them. As to not embarrass him and ruin Lance’s chances of kissing his stupid face, mostly.

He gets along well with Allura, which is nice because Lance doesn’t fuck with people who don’t get along with Allura. They talk about shit that Lance doesn’t really care about, like, old books and Downton Abbey and Jane Austen or whatever the fuck and they have pointless, winding arguments about the architecture of the market.

Keith is a little quiet, like Shiro had said, but still funny and easy to get along with. He makes a lot of small pointed comments that have Allura and Lance cracking up, especially when they’re about some of the patrons they have.

He spends fifteen minutes one day ranting about a woman who wanted her blender blades sharpened. Which, Keith maintains, would have been fine, if the blender blades actually detached from her shitty old ass blender. He’d had to explicitly detail why he couldn’t sharpen the blades in the blender if the blades were still in the blender to this woman for upwards of twenty minutes and he’d come over to the bakery stall after she’d left red in the face.

At the end of market days, Lance usually moseys on over with leftover pastries and bread for him, now that he knows that Keith has a secret spot in his heart for the energy bars that the bakery makes. The smiles he gives Lance are enough to make the entire day and all the bullshit that comes with it worth it.

It takes a little bit of persuasion on Lance’s end to get Hunk to agree to actually talk to Keith. He spends a lot of time at his moms’ stall but always seems to vanish whenever Keith shows up in the morning to help Lance and Allura unpack. Probably because he still thought Keith was going to mcmurder them all.

“Did you really think I was a serial killer?” Keith is pouting a little at Hunk, who looks horribly offended that Lance just threw him under the bus like that.

They cluster in little groups at one person’s stall depending on the time and the day and right now Lance and Hunk are loitering in front of Keith’s Knife Hut while Allura mans the bakery stall. There aren’t that many people here yet so nobody feels that bad about abandoning work to troll the other vendors’ stalls.

Hunk is weak in the face of Keith’s naturally occurring puppy dog eyes and is actively trying to backtrack, “No, dude, no, of course not. I didn’t really think that. I was just, well, ya know…concerned.”

“You don’t think that now though, right?”

Lance can’t help it when he taps the knife that Keith has just sharpened and set down beside one of his grinders, “You better not think that still, because if Keith knew that you convinced everyone he was a serial killer when he first started here, that could be a pretty good motivator for him to actually start killing.”

This causes Hunk to flap his arms a little bit and whine, “It was just the truck, alright? It gives off really intense murder vibes.”

Keith is starting to look actually affronted, pressing his hand to his chest like one of the Victorian women he and Allura always go on about. It makes Lance outwardly laugh, he can’t help it.

“What’s wrong with my truck? I love that truck.”

“Dude, are you fucking me? It’s weird and old and makes creepy noises and is not one, but two, horrible colors.”

“So what? I’ve had it forever and I love it. It’s not weird.”

“Whatever man, it’s weird.”

It’s fun, being friends with Keith, even if had taken a while. He drifts between them like a satellite, coming to talk with Lance and Allura and then down to Hunk’s moms’ stall to talk in depth about foraging for mushrooms, and over to Pidge’s parents’ stall to talk about bees and honey.

They tease him a lot, especially Hunk and Pidge, because he gets along really well with their moms. Shiro eventually gets wind of it and gives him mad shit for befriending all the older women at the market, including Miss Kelly and Auntie Shirogane. Apparently, it’s always been kind of a thing. Shiro’s mom loves Keith too.

For two market days, everyone makes wildly pointed jokes about Keith attracting cougars and being into older women until he loses his shit and practically shouts “I’m gay!” in the middle of yet another conversation about it, making a few of the market patrons stop and look at him.

He looks embarrassed for a few seconds after until he powers through and continues with, “So, no, I’m not a cougar hunter. Excuse me for getting along really well with older women. It’s more than I can say for the rest of you.”

And that’s that.

Except that it isn’t.

Because hearing that proclamation makes the warmth swirl around low in Lance’s stomach again and he’s reminded just how strongly he wants to kiss Keith’s stupid, red face.

*

Lance and Hunk hang out a decent amount when they aren’t at the market, perks of being best bros obviously, and occasionally Pidge will come out as well. A lot of the time they just hang out at one of the bars downtown but sometimes they go out and do fun things, like movies and apple orchards and seasonal shit like that.

They’ve been trying to get Shiro to come for literal seasons to no avail, but Keith may be their in.

It’s Hunk who actually verbally suggests they invite Keith to go out with them after the market the upcoming Saturday, but Lance has been thinking about it for, well, weeks.

Lance doesn’t even have to Hunk to get behind the bakery table and keep things running before he’s already doing it, he heads over towards Keith’s stall with a skip in his step.

Before he even gets there, he’s smiling like a dumbass bastard, because Keith is wearing the ridiculous magnifying headset type thing that he sometimes wears. It has a light in it to help him see better and it also serves as one of the best things Lance has ever seen in his dumb life.

“Good looks out here, Knife Guy.”

Keith starts and bats the magnifying headband up from his line of vision and is starting to blush before he even realizes that it’s Lance who’s giving him shit.

“Oh, get fucked.” His words sound dismissive but he’s setting the pocket knife he was working on aside and turning off his grinders, smirking up at Lance from the chair that he now knows is horribly off balance.

Keith lets him sit in it sometimes, while he quietly explains the intricacies of knife sharpening to Lance from over his shoulder. He lets Lance sharpen things occasionally, hand over handing him along so he doesn’t do anything stupid. Lance…truly doesn’t give a shit about knives, but he gives a shit about Keith and what Keith gives a shit about, so he shuts up and listens and presses close when he’s allowed.

“I’d sure like to get fucked, but only if you come with me.” He’s saying it before he really has a chance to think it through and then he’s just committing, leaning into it. Full speed ahead, boys.

It’s stupidly obvious that he and Keith have a bit of a thing going on. They don’t talk about it or confront it, but it’s very obviously there. He’s just waiting to see which one of them breaks first and makes the initial move.

He’s pretty sure the rest of them have bets on when it’ll happen but he doesn’t want to know any of proposals for fear of swaying a certain way. He wants this to happen naturally.

Keith is bright red and rolling his eyes so far back into his head that Lance is concerned that it hurts, but that’s all he does.

They watch each other for a few seconds before Keith uses the pocket knife to kind of make a “well, what do you want?” type of gesture at Lance. It’s kind of hot.

“Come out with us tonight.” It comes out softer than he intends, more of a request than the command he means for it to be and he leans up against the brick pillar to look down at Keith. It doesn’t feel like a power move, things feel perfectly balanced and Lance is caught in the intensity of Keith’s half lidded gaze.

“Where ya goin’?” The more comfortable Lance gets against the pillar, the farther down Keith slouches in his chair. His legs are spread wide and he looks comfortable and relaxed and just a little bit challenging and Lance wants to crawl in his fucking lap and cuddle up. This is absolute bullshit.

“Probably just Ryner’s. We usually go after the market and she lets us chill because we bring her free shit.” Please say yes, Lance is viciously wishing, chanting over and over in his head. Come hang out with us, you big idiot. Let me buy you a beer, let me see what you’re like when you aren’t at the market.

“Alright, I’ll be there.” Keith’s smiling up at him and Lance feels like his knees are going to give out and he’s going to collapse on the cement floor in a gooey, love struck pile.

It becomes a thing. Because of course it does.

They go every weekend. Lance buys Keith a whole lot of beers.

*

As the season progresses and the weather gets colder at the end of September, Lance starts to bitch more about his wardrobe.

It makes Keith laugh, mostly because of the overalls and the fact that Lance refuses to stop wearing them and also refuses to wear anything resembling socks. The big sun hat goes away for the season, unfortunately enough.

The plimsolls and the bare ankles stay, and Keith still can feel himself get pink when he thinks about how every part of Lance is nice. He’s a dumbass.

Their mornings stay dark and cold and Keith always brings as many layers as he can because he can’t sharpen knives if his fingers don’t work.

It’s six am one morning when Keith wanders over to the bakery stall after setting up all of his own stuff to see Lance shivering aggressively in only a zip up. He says nothing at first, but he takes note that Lance still seems cold after all of the manual labor of unpacking the van.

“I hate this stupid state. Why don’t we live somewhere where it’s eternally warm?”

Hunk rolls his eyes at Lance saying the same thing he says every morning of the market at six am and snags an old-fashioned donut from the display.

“I can’t feel my fucking hands. Weather below 60 degrees is cancelled. Fall, whomst? I don’t know her.” As Lance continues loudly damning the weather, he sneaks up beside Keith and under his arm to snuggle into his body heat.

It’s not the first time they’ve touched this close, but it still feels like the first time. Keith can actively feel the heat rushing up his face as he lets Lance tuck his taller self up against him.

He’s about ready to offer Lance the work jacket off his back and just suffer through the chill in the air when his mind flashes a picture of yet another jacket tucked in the backseat of his pickup. He ducks out from Lance’s octopus limbs and throws a quick “I’ll be right back.” to Allura, Hunk, and Lance.

As he’s shuffling past his own stall, he can hear Hunk crow “Look what you did!” and Lance squawk in offense. He smiles and ignores it, jogging to the parking lot to rummage around in his truck.

By the time he’s back, Lance and Hunk appear to be trying to put each other in headlocks and barely notice when Keith sticks his arm out and taps Lance with the hand the jacket is in.

“Here. Wear this.”

Lance is big eyed and silent as he glances over at Keith and it makes him resolutely look the other way to prevent a full-bodied blush from taking over. He doesn’t have time for this.

He doesn’t glance back over at Lance and Hunk until Lance has pushed his arms into both sleeves of the leather jacket and tugged it on. It looks kind of dumb, because Lance’s limbs are a lot longer than Keith’s, but his hoodie is long enough to cover his wrists and it’s warmer than nothing.

It causes something warm to unfurl in his chest and he can’t help but smile at Lance’s slightly reddened cheeks. He wants to do shit like this always.

Allura is looking on with an absolutely unimpressed expression and she turns to Hunk with an elbow to his solar plexus.

“Hunk, I’m cold as well. Where is your convenient leather jacket that you can give to me for the day?”

“Damn Allura, I can’t control the weather. Get off me.”

They’re so clearly making fun of Keith, but he barely even feels it, he’s too busy watching Lance’s dumbstruck face.

He feels tingly and alive and he’s so glad that he works at this stupid farmers market and that these are his stupid friends. He pushes his shoulder up against Lance’s and they spend a few seconds suspended in each other’s smiles and it’s, on god, one of the dumbest things that’s ever happened to him and Keith loves it.

*

Weeks pass like this, the four or five or six of them, depending on Shiro’s level of bullshittery that day, fucking around on market days and giving Coran grey hair and exchanging their wares for promises of beer on the weekends.

Keith learns that he actually really likes Pidge and that she actually really likes bees. Her parents are apiarists who do weird, complicated scientific research with bees which resulted in a farmers market stand and copious amounts of different flavored honey.

He goes over to her house one afternoon after the market closes to see her parents’ colonies and it’s one of the coolest things he’s ever witnessed. It feels like some sort of weird fantasy movie where he’s able to talk to bees and they don’t sting him, because the honey bees as Pidge says, are docile and sweet and only sting as the last resort.

Hunk’s moms take him out to forage for mushrooms with their special Italian mushroom dogs and Keith gets dirty and grimy and laughs more in one afternoon than he has in ages. He comes home with a little brown paper sack of some of the best mushrooms he’s ever had.

The five of them spend slow and lazy autumn evenings tucked into a copse of trees on the Shirogane farm and it feels good. Good in a way that Keith didn’t even know he was missing before this.

They meet Allura’s new girlfriend, a soft-spoken blonde named Romelle, who turns around and gives Lance a run for his money in terms of drinking him under the table. They love her.

He’s so pleased with how this random choice in his life turned out. He really does owe Shiro a thank you.

He’ll get around to it.

One crisp afternoon in the beginning of October, Lance invites him, just him, over to the bakery for a cookie making demonstration from Lance’s very own mother.

She’s sweet and shorter than Keith but takes up a perfectly appropriate amount of space in every room and Keith might be a little bit in love with her too. He’s forced into a dorky apron with the bakery logo on it and it makes Lance laugh so hard that he sprays flour everywhere with the force of it and Keith feels like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.

His ma, Lance explains to him after she heads to the front to work the register, started the bakery ten years ago on a whim. She didn’t know if it would work but it was something she had thought about for years and her culinary and baking background was sufficient enough to get it up off the ground.

“I love it here, and I love her, and I love that this is what she loves to do,” Lance is telling him as he frosts little cookies with a pastry bag with such concentration that it takes Keith’s breath away.

“Do you see yourself doing anything else?” Keith is hesitant to ask, but he’s also genuinely curious. His eyes keep catching on the flour that’s dusting over Lance’s freckles. He wants to reach out and brush it off, mostly for an excuse to feel Lance’s face, but he focuses back on poorly decorating his own cookie.

“I can see myself doing a lot of other things, but I’m not sure if I’d like anything as much as this, ya know?”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Ma will get, I don’t know, probably fifteen more years out of the bakery if she chooses to, and I think after that she’ll pass it along to me. I hope so, at least. My other siblings have all either moved out of town or aren’t interested in the bakery.” Lance glances up at him as he says it, a sweet little smile on his lips.

“Plus, the market part is one of my favorite things in the entire world. I like being there and I like the vibe and Coran giving me shit. I more or less run that entire part of the bakery and it’s a responsibility that I didn’t even know I was going to like so much.”

Keith is diligently trying to pipe icing out in the way that Lance’s mom showed him earlier when Lance bumps his hip into Keith’s to get him out of the way. He takes over and Keith just lets him, watching his long-fingered hands.

“Like, having regulars is one of the coolest things to me. I know these people and I know what they like and I can have their orders ready before they even tell me what they want. It’s rewarding in a way a lot of other things aren’t, ya know?” Lance is so close to him now and looking at him while piping at the same time and the knowledge that he’s choosing to share this with Keith, here, in this space, makes him warm from the crown of his head down to his toes in his boots.

“Mm, I get that. It’s not quite the same for me, but I definitely understand the familial ties to a specific craft.” Keith doesn’t really say much more than that, doesn’t want to bring the mood down out of his own volition.

“Yeah?” And Lance stops what he’s doing entirely, focuses his huge luminescent anime eyes on Keith and he just crumbles. Whatever normally stops him from talking about this part of his life kind of gives way in the face of how interested and genuine Lance seems to be.

So, Keith talks.

“My dad, he, uh, passed a way a few years ago. Around five or so now? I was young when it happened, about eighteen. So, it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happen, I could have been younger, but it wasn’t easy either.” He searches about for something to do with his hands so he’s not just standing here monologuing to a boy he likes about his dead father.

Finally, he spots a dish rag and sets about cleaning the gleaming chrome countertops of Lance’s mother’s kitchen.

“I don’t know how the hell he even got started sharpening things, but he’d done it for as long as I’d been alive. He had all of the tools and stuff, everything I have now is actually his. And when he died, I just had a surplus of what felt like useless knowledge about knives and tools and shit. And basically all the paraphernalia.”

Lance is still watching him as he turns lazy circles around the island that they’re working at. It doesn’t feel heavy or like Lance is making him speak, he just keeps looking.

“I had dropped out of college about a year after he died because I’d lost essentially the only structure I’d ever had and just kind of floated for a bit. I realized, eventually and only because one of my dad’s old restaurant contacts called looking to set him up with a new client, that everyone my dad had been working for had nobody taking care of their stuff. So I figured, okay, might as well take up the mantle. Be the knife sharpener I wanted to see in the world.”

He looks up from sweeping flour into his hands to toss in the trash to see Lance smiling at him. It’s soft and sweet and makes Keith want to kiss it off him.

“I like it a lot, though. More than I ever thought I would. It’s nice being able to do something with my hands. And now I’m here. Well, not physically here, but like…at the market. So, I figure it was worth it.” Keith should be legally required not to speak anymore.

“Thanks for sharing that with me, Keith.”

Normally something like that feels weird and forced and clichéd, but yet again, Lance just seems truly genuine to the point where Keith can’t look at him anymore.

“Uh, yeah, of course. Thanks for making me feel like I could.”

*

The market feels comfortable to Keith in a way that he never thought that it would.

He knows most of the vendors, by sight if not by name. He’s, by law, allowed to give Coran mad shit about just about anything.

When his grinders make horrific squealing noises during a particularly tricky knife sharpening, all of the other vendors ignore it while the patrons all act like he’s murdering someone in real time. At first Keith adamantly apologized to anyone who was around when it happened, now he just lets it go.

Sometimes people hover behind him and watch him sharpen like they’ve never seen a dude with a knife before. At first it made him tense, made him feel like he was being judged. But he realized after a while that people are just interested in something that doesn’t get done often enough.

And kids love to watch. They’ll stand beside him for the entire time it takes their parents to make a round of the market. Sometimes he lets them sit next to him and watch, answers their poorly phrased questions and let’s them look at his tools. He loves that it makes Lance blush from across the aisle.

He talks more in the last few months than he’s talked in the last six years. Mostly explanations for what he’s doing and why. He gets to talk about something he’s really passionate about to people who are occasionally equally as passionate three days a week.

If he looks up, about three quarters of the time he’ll catch Lance’s eye and they’ll smile at each other in a way that Pidge says should precede the chorus of a boyband’s Top 40 single.

It’s around this time in late October that Keith realizes that the season is ending soon. The market won’t be open after the first weekend in November.

He, predictably, freaks the fuck out.

How is he going to see Lance? And Hunk and Allura and Pidge? The main reason he sees them so much now is work and the odds that they’ll want to hang out with him when they don’t see him three times a week is slim.

What in the hell is he going to do?

A full two days between Tuesday and Thursday are spent going balls to the wall crazy with anxiety, but Keith can’t help it. He doesn’t want to lose this new-found friend group and go back to only watching Downton Abbey with Shiro and Adam on the weekends. He may not survive.

He can feel how weird he’s being when he gets to the market on Saturday and Lance picks up on it almost immediately.

Keith is so freaked out that he dumps the entirety of his toolbox on the floor when Lance pops into existence next to his table about half an hour before the market opens.

“Keith, dude, are you alright?” Lance’s eyebrows are well up his forehead and it makes Keith’s face flush so red he feels fluorescent.

“What. Yep, totally fine. So good. Just great. Thank you for asking.”

“That was like, five different responses. What’s going on?” Before Keith can come up with another evasion, Lance is reaching out and lightly touching his shoulder and it stops Keith in his anxiety driven tracks.

He must see the look on Keith’s face because before he really registers what’s happening, Lance is tugging him up out of his folding chair and ushering him into the weird little overhang that the market bathrooms are in.

“Keith, did something happen? Do you need help with something?” Lance’s brows are furrowed and his mouth is turned down in a frown and Keith wants to kiss him so badly he can barely think straight.

Both of his big hands are pressed firmly to Keith’s shoulders, which shouldn’t be as comforting as it is. They’re so warm that it feels like palm prints of sun. One leaves his shoulder to nudge Keith’s chin up so Lance can meaningfully meet his eyes.

Before Lance can start up again, Keith is blurting, “Does the bakery have knives I can sharpen? Like, when the market season ends?”

He feels like an actual dumbass as soon as the words fall out of his mouth. It’s a fabulous summation of every thought he’s had over the last two days, purely distilled anxious worry.

Lance tilts his head to one side in a way that’s so reminiscent of a Golden Retriever that Keith has to stop breathing in order to not kiss him. They’re so close that all Keith would have to do is lean in just a little bit. But that’s an entirely different thing to panic and obsess over than what’s happening right now.

“I mean, yeah. I guess. Why does that matter right now, though?” Lance is so clearly trying to think through the connection of his weird knives question and why he seems so weird and anxious about the market ending.

“Are you guys still going to hang out with me when the market ends?”

In between this thought and the next, Lance is lunging forward and wrapping his arms around Keith so tight that he can barely breathe. He’s a couple inches taller than Keith, so his head fits perfectly in the crook of Lance’s neck. It’s so comforting that it has him reeling, especially when Lance’s hands rub up and down the expanse of his back.

“Dude, are you kidding me? You aren’t going anywhere.” It’s said into Keith’s hair, so it’s kind of muffled.

“We aren’t going anywhere either. You’re in our group chat. This is a solid and unbreakable market bond, Keith. We’re ride or die now.”

It settles something that was swirling inside Keith almost instantly, hearing it from Lance’s mouth.

Lance pulls back to look at him and reaches out to tuck a piece of Keith’s unruly hair back behind his ear. It makes his breath catch in a way that he’s almost immediately annoyed by.

“Seriously, don’t worry. We aren’t letting you go.” It’s so soft, the way Lance says it, that Keith has to surge back up onto his toes and hug him again. He lets Lance press him back into the brick wall and relishes the feeling of the soft hair at the back of Lance’s neck and the uneven press of their chests when they breathe.

Instead of acknowledging this comfort like a regular person, all Keith can think about is when he’s going to see Lance like this next.

“Do you, uh, want to come over later? Like…to my apartment?”

Lance pulls back and smiles bright, it’s teasing and stupid and Keith has to thunk his head back against the brick wall in the face of it.

“Aw Keith, you just want to get me alone, don't ya? Get me to your creepy murder house so you can kill me?”

Keith shoves past him with a reluctant smile and heads back to his stall, ignoring Lance’s shout of “See you later tonight so you can kill me in the privacy of your own home, bud!”

*

Lance, admittedly, is a little worried about what Keith’s apartment is going to look like. Mostly curious, but a little worried.

From what he knows about Keith, there’s a lot of plaid and leather and knives and not much else on the wardrobe front. Keith acts like nobody can see the literal knife sheath that he has strapped to his belt, but everybody knows it’s there.

He follows behind Keith’s rumbly truck after the market closes to a sweet little brick apartment building above a pharmacy on a not-so-busy street downtown.

Keith is out and heading towards the door before Lance even has a chance to park, so he’s frantically catching up as Keith unlocks the door, running into his back and looping his arms around his waist in a way he’s trying to convince himself is friendly but ultimately misses the mark just a bit.

He’s led up a few flights of stairs into a brightly lit and open living room and it’s safe to say he’s pleasantly surprised.

There’s a lot of exposed brick and a few big windows and a decent amount of slightly weird but homey touches. Keith has an entire row of plants lined up along the top of a jam-packed bookshelf, which Lance inherently knows is filled with a weird mix of sci-fi, romance, and Austen and the Bronte sisters.

Keith bumbles into the kitchen after dropping off his market supplies in a chair by his dining room table, mumbling something about tea and giving Lance free reign of his living room.

Another book shelf has a line of knick-knacks and tchotchkes, mostly small animal figurines and little bowls filled with miscellaneous items like mismatching buttons and single screws. On his coffee table rests a few good smelling candles and a red lighthouse miniature that flickers with warm light when Lance clicks the switch. It’s sweet and so unassumingly Keith that Lance almost can’t breathe around it.

He puts his hands on his hips and stands in the middle of the room, turning so he can get a good feel for it and also so he can catch all of the paintings and posters on the wall in one go.

There’s an artisanal lunar calendar that looks like it may have been made by one of the artists at the market on one wall and vintage Star Trek posters that make Lance smile.

“Is this a Pride and Prejudice movie poster?”

Keith pokes his head around the entryway of the kitchen and glowers at him.

“Fuck off, it’s the 2005 version and it holds a very special place in my heart. Don’t talk shit or Allura will know and kill you.”

Lance has to stifle a snicker and throws himself back on the couch, ghosting his fingers along a throw blanket that he can tell has been hand knit.

“Hey,” he calls out in the vague direction of the kitchen, “who made this blanket?”

With two mugs of tea in hand, Keith emerges from his kitchen and takes a seat next to Lance. He folds his legs beneath him and hands one mug off to Lance.

“Oh, my mom did? A long time ago. I think when she was pregnant with me.” Lance leans into him a little bit, because they’re alone and just because he can. The mug he has is a reproduction of a summery looking landscape from the National Gallery of Art. He wants to know everything about Keith ever.

A vaguely committal noise is all it takes for Keith to keep talking.

“She’s traveling abroad right now for a few months. Her and my dad were like, stupidly in love even though she didn’t always live with us and she spent a few years feeling like she had to be here for me until I convinced her that she just…needed to go somewhere else for a while. I think she’s in Germany right now?”

“That’s cool as hell.” Lance chances a light brush of his fingertips against the back of Keith’s hand and is unmeasurably pleased when Keith twists his palm around and twines their fingers together. He doesn’t even have to look at Keith to know that he’s flushed red as hell.

“Yeah. Uh, you wanna watch something? I have the old BBC Pride and Prejudice on Amazon Prime. I know your uncultured ass hasn’t seen it.”

“Probably because it’s fucking old, dude.”

Lance begrudgingly agrees simply because he knows that Keith will mouth along to the proposal scene. He’s rewarded pleasantly when Keith doesn’t let his hand go for the entirety of the first few episodes.

*

It’s a different night later in the week but Lance and Keith are in the same position on the same couch. This time, they get Indian take out and burrito themselves in blankets and drink probably just a little bit too much of the mulled wine they got at one of the stalls before they left the market.

The twilight settles over them like another blanket and no one bothers to turn on a light after the sun slips under the horizon.

They’re both leaned back against the couch, looking at each other and not really moving. It’s soft and comforting and sweet in a way Lance isn’t always sure he deserves.

The last day of the market is next week and he’s pleased to say that Keith only seems sad in the expected way, not the I’m Going to Lose All My Friends kind of way that he was earlier in the week. They already have plans to go to the Shirogane farm next weekend to pick and carve pumpkins and have Auntie Shirogane make them too much pie.

“My dad and I used to live in this apartment when I was younger.” They’re talking slow, sharing bittersweet things between them in the same way they keep passing the mulled wine bottle back and forth.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We moved to a different house a few years before he died but he kept this apartment. I think because he knew I liked it so much.”

“It’s a good place. It feels like you.” Lance barely knows what that means, but he knows it’s true as soon as he says it.

“I forgot about it for a while but once I left school, I came back here. It feels like his, but in an echoey kind of way, where sometimes I see something that was so clearly belonged to him that I have to stop and breathe. But It feels like mine, too. So much of my shit is here, stuff that he wasn’t ever around to see but I’m pretty sure he’d like. It’s nice.” Keith’s voice is soft and quiet, like he’s just a few more minutes off from falling asleep.

The vulnerability of it makes Lance ache. He drags his fingers through Keith’s thick hair and leans over to press a quick kiss to the crown of his head.

“I’m glad you’re here to see it.” Keith says it quietly, but Lance still hears.

“I am too. Thanks for letting me be here with you.”

They sit there like that for a while and time passes strangely, thick and syrupy and good.

Lance is just about to drift off to sleep when Keith sits up slow and tangles their fingers together.

“Come to bed with me.”

He goes.

They fall asleep curled around each other like parentheses in Keith’s bed with his handmade quilts and in the morning, Lance wakes up to the sweetest blush on Keith’s face.

It feels like the best thing in a long time.

*

As expected, they’re too loud and stupid and rowdy at the Shirogane farm the next weekend. They’re not even drunk yet and Lance is atop Hunk’s shoulders and commanding him around the pumpkin patch like he’s a horse. He doesn't know why Hunk puts up with it.

It makes Keith roll his eyes but he’s not going to pretend he doesn’t love it. Adam and Shiro keep pointing out the ugliest pumpkins and loudly declaring “that’s you” like middle schoolers.

Auntie Shirogane is sitting on the back porch watching them all wild out and it feels right in a way that pulses out of Keith’s chest.

Romelle, Pidge, and Allura are taking the quest of finding the perfect pumpkin way too seriously and he’s pretty sure Pidge is incessantly chattering about the mathematical way to find the perfect pumpkin that doesn’t seem like it’s a real thing.

They carve pumpkins on the back porch and get the slimy innards everywhere and Auntie Shirogane serves them blisteringly hot apple and pumpkin pie. Hunk forces everyone to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown even though Halloween was last week.

It’s good, it’s so good and Keith gets to sit on the couch sardined in between all of these people that he loves and just radiate with how good it feels.

During what Keith now knows from Lance is "golden hour," he feels a light tap on his shoulder and a hand thread through his. He glances to the side and predictably, it’s Lance, a grin cut across his face that’s so bright Keith has to shut his eyes a little bit. He wonders if it will always be like this. He’d like to think that it will.

“Come with me, I have to show you something,” Lance all but whispers to him, excited and tugging him up from the couch. Everybody is doing their own thing, so no one really notices when they slip out of the living room onto the back porch.

“Come on, pick up the pace, Lil Knifey, let’s go.”

“Do not under any circumstances call me that ever again.”

He drags Keith bodily up the hill that bumps against the back of the pumpkin patch. He’s drenched in gold and it makes his hair shine coppery and his eyes look almost see through when he glances back to make sure that Keith is still attached to him.

“What are we even up here for?” Keith finally asks when they crest the hill. There’s a little red barn on the top of the hill that he casts a glance at before Lance is pulling them behind it, facing the setting sun.

“Look,” is all Lance says as he sweeps his hand over the vegetable fields that the Shirogane house is nested between. There’s a thick forest that surrounds the far ends of the fields and the setting sun makes the fall colors of the trees look like flames.

It’s beautiful in a very quotidian way and Keith belatedly thinks that he loves it, thinks that he may love Lance too, for bringing him up here.

Lance turns towards him and his eyes are shining and he’s smiling just as bright as the fiery trees, “I just wanted you to see this. It’s my favorite part of fall and I wanted you to know.” Keith is so fucking stupid for him.

He can only nod and reach out to tangle their fingers together, tugging Lance closer to him by the arm.

With a slight shuffle, Lance disengages from Keith’s clinging and wraps his arm around Keith’s shoulders, bringing him close. He presses a light kiss to Keith’s temple and all Keith wants to do is seal his mouth to Lance’s.

They stand there while the sun begins to drop below the horizon until Lance gets restless. He abruptly pulls away from Keith and turns his whole body toward him.

“Okay, well, really quick, before we go back inside, I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do pretty much since I met you. If you’re not down for it, just let me know, that’s totally fine. Totally good. Cool cool cool.”

“Just, here we go.”

And he presses his fingers so delicately to the side of Keith’s jaw and kisses him so sweetly that Keith is pretty sure that this is a vivid day dream that he fucking made up.

But it’s absolutely not, because Lance pulls back and gets a good look at Keith’s face and smiles so brightly that Keith just has to…kiss it off of him. It’s what he deserves, after five months of looking at his dumb happy face all the fucking time.

Lance backs him up against the rough wood of the little red barn and Keith belated sends a little thanks to whatever deity hooked him the fuck up when Lance presses his entire body against Keith’s.

Soft little open-mouthed kisses are being dropped along the side of his neck and his jawline and the only thing Keith can see is the very edge of the sun finally dropping below the horizon and he makes a noise that he is absolutely going to be embarrassed about later.

Lance’s mouth is so fucking soft and his big warm palms feel like brands against Keith’s slightly chilled skin and this is absolutely the best thing to have ever happened.

Between kisses pressed all over his face, Lance breathes out, “I’m so gone over you,” and Keith is pretty sure that all of the light from that sunset and the fiery trees is welling up inside of him and threatening to spill over.

He loops an arm around Lance’s neck and pulls him down to whisper “Me fucking too,” against his lips.

Things go wildly downhill from there, or uphill depending on which way you look at it. In a truly stunning turn of events, Lance is the one to reluctantly suggest they go back inside because it’s well and truly dark now. Keith has to unwrap his legs from around Lance’s waist after he’d been hoisted up and pressed back into the barn again. He’s fairly sure he has bits of wood all over the back of his jacket and a pretty vivid hickey on the soft spot just below his ear, but the look on Lance’s face and the wild state of his curly brown hair leaves him mostly unconcerned.

There’s a pointed chill in the air when they finally amble inside. Keith is normally a bit apprehensive about the winter, but he has a good feeling that he’ll be very warm this season.

*

When they get back inside and pointedly ignore all of the jeers from their friends and the money changing hands, Auntie Shirogane corners him in the kitchen.

She’s a slight woman, tiny but intense. She’s been in Keith’s life just as long as Shiro has and he has a fierce love for her that he doesn’t think will ever go away.

But it’s tested pretty thoroughly when she looks at him and smirks, “Glad whatever that boy did stopped your scowling. Your face is too handsome, I don’t want you to get wrinkles.”

*

Keith lets Lance drive him home and lead him up into his own apartment. Lets him press Keith up against the doorjamb of his bedroom, because, apparently, they’ve both got a thing for that. Lets him spoon up behind him when they finally get into bed and lets him steal all the covers, but only for a little bit until he kicks Lance awake and they kiss gently in the two am darkness.

And when he wakes up the next morning to see Lance looking at him through sleepy eyes, he blushes and doesn’t even feel bad, because Lance descends on him and kisses all over his face like an idiot.

And it’s good. It’s so good.

Thank god for Keith’s Knife Hut. He’s got to tell Shiro that.

He’ll do it tomorrow, for sure.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 172: Calvary Outnumbered is Outflanked

Matt Weeks is one of the most criminally underrated contributors to the ‘90s DIY hardcore scene. Aside from being a co-founder of the excellent label Council Records, Weeks was a member of Current (great Rites of Spring-style emo), Ottawa (easily one of my top 5 hardcore bands of all time), and .NEMA (brutal dark hardcore). Anything with Weeks’ name or the Council Records logo attached is worth pursuing.

I don’t want to sound like one of those cantankerous jaded old people that talks about the “good old days” of hardcore because every era had it’s peaks and valleys. But something definitely happened at the turn of the century where this underground community of cheap 7″s, basement tours, and xerox’d zines  fizzled out. Maybe it was oversaturation. Maybe the breakout popularity of At The Drive In brought in too many carpetbaggers. Maybe it was the rise of gas prices and its impact on touring bands’ budgets. Maybe it was the dawn of the mp3 and the death of cheap vinyl. Whatever the cause, things changed.

Calvary came out on the scene in 2002 with their excellent Outnumbered is Outflanked LP. Matt Weeks was on guitar and vocal duties. They churned out a mix of Fugazi’s gruff melodic urgency with a healthy dose of Gang of Four four-on-the-floor post-punk. If anything, it’s a pretty solid example of where the DIY hardcore scene was in the post-9/11 world. There was still this sense of frustration and anger in the music, but there was also this newfound notion that music should also be fun, danceable, maybe even a little bit sexy. Whereas the ‘90s had been all about being earnest and idealistic, the ‘00s were revealing themselves to be the new ‘80s, where the looming threat of destruction (now viewed as coming from Al-Qaeda instead of the Soviet Union) prompted a new kind of last-chance-to-dance escapism. It meant the rise of labels like DFA and the slow demise of hardcore staples like Ebullition and Council. Calvary were a lot like fellow Chicagoans Milemarker: they held onto their politics but embraced Emma Goldman’s famous quote “if I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.”

But it was a tough sell. Hell, even I didn’t pick up Calvary’s record at the time. The hardcore music I loved in the ‘90s had morphed into the gross commercialization of “screamo.” All the dance-punk stuff that seemed to be the hot new thing for aging hardcore kids reeked of cocaine and narcissism. I wish I had paid more attention to the members of the old guard who tried to navigate some sort of middle ground between honoring their roots while evolving their sound, but records like the Calvary LP weren’t speaking to me at the time. My apologies to Matt Weeks for being so late to the game. If the man ever makes music again, I’m all ears. 

I picked this up in a used record store in Portland, Maine last year.

[junker-town]

The WNBA is at a turning point, and the stakes could not be higher

Will a new TV deal and marketing strategy be enough to finally prove the long-term viability of an American professional women’s sports league?

About a half hour after Jackie Young became the No. 1-overall pick in the 2019 WNBA Draft, the 6’ guard gingerly descended a staircase at Nike HQ. Slippery and steep, it was much better suited to the company’s sneakers than the strappy stilettos Young sported for the occasion.

Approximately 72 hours prior, her Notre Dame Fighting Irish were one heartbreaking free throw away from a repeat NCAA title in Tampa, Florida; Young, a junior, had only a day following the loss to decide whether she was going to declare for the draft at all. The other top-ranked junior, Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu, had just revealed in a lengthy Player’s Tribune missive that she was going to stay in school, despite the fact that if she had declared Ionescu would have likely been drafted no. 1.

Now Young was in New York, gamely answering questions while trying not to fall down the stairs — even though she was only about halfway through a daunting post-draft junket. “It was a super hard decision,” Young said, a little fatigue in her voice. Would she have liked more time to choose whether to finish school or enter the league? “Definitely.”

Unfortunately, for those who follow the WNBA, Young’s chaotic week didn’t come as much of a surprise. The league is at what COO Christin Hedgpeth has repeatedly termed an “inflection point,” one way of saying that from the outside looking in, there are a fair amount of open questions for teams, players and fans.

As its 23rd season launches this week, the WNBA has entirely new leadership, a new logo and marketing strategy — and a number of its most visible stars, including Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Skylar Diggins-Smith, and Maya Moore, waylaid by injuries or off the court for personal reasons. Their colleagues are continuing a public fight for better pay that began in earnest last year, as they laid the groundwork to opt out of their collective bargaining agreement. The draft, which was officially announced just three weeks before it took place, is only one example of the many ways that the league still struggles to decisively carve out a space in the world of mainstream sports.

“For us, the tournament’s over, then we’re getting ready for the draft, then we’re getting ready for training camp,” said Kristine Anigwe just after she was picked ninth-overall by the Sparks. She and other prospects were only invited to New York the week before the draft; training camp started a few weeks later, part of an accelerated schedule meant to accommodate college basketball, players’ overseas schedules, and the league’s initial impetus to avoid scheduling conflicts with the NBA and NFL.

“It’s all fun, but when my mom was like, ‘Do you want to go shopping for a dress?’ I was like, ‘Can I ... rest for a day?’” Anigwe added, laughing. Anigwe’s mom wound up choosing her blue, off-the-shoulder dress for her, a far cry from the custom suits that have become de rigueur for NBA draftees.

This year’s WNBA Draft wound up having its lowest ratings since 2012, when it was held on a weekday afternoon. “A confluence of different factors led to what wasn’t the most ideal situation,” said Hedgpeth later. “We’ll be making sure that we coordinate with all the necessary entities to mitigate that next year.”

The draft’s disorganization is a minor grievance compared to issues like player pay and its corollary, the fact that WNBA players have to play year-round internationally to make their stateside careers sustainable — both of which have recently become headline fodder for the types of outlets that otherwise rarely cover the league. Its laundry list of current challenges, though, is only a popular talking point because the WNBA is in the midst of a modest upswing, rebounding from some of its least-watched seasons ever.

Three years ago, the league had little to show for its 20th anniversary besides record-low attendance and drooping ratings. For a moment, it seemed like the barrage of unapologetic sexism and systematic dismissal the league faced from fans and media alike had finally won out.

By most metrics, the WNBA has since turned a corner. In 2018, ratings across the league’s ESPN broadcasts were up, as were subscriptions to WNBA League Pass and merchandise sales. Attendance dropped 12 percent, but that statistic has been cited frequently without the important caveat that in 2018 the New York Liberty moved from Madison Square Garden to the 5,000-seat Westchester County Center (which, needless to say, is not in midtown Manhattan).

But questions persist: what needs to change about the WNBA so that people once and for all stop talking about what needs to change about the WNBA? When will the public’s focus shift from breathlessly checking the league’s vital signs to spotlighting the globally unmatched talent on the court? How can the league rectify the seemingly endless minor miscues and keep them from adding up to an organization that still often feels like an afterthought to players and fans?

“What’s interesting is that the product is at a zenith,” said Val Ackerman, current commissioner of the Big East conference, in a conversation with SB Nation. Ackerman was the first president of the WNBA, leading the league until 2005. “It should sell itself. The players have done everything asked of them, but promotion and scheduling remain critical.”

“I mean, we always brag that we’re the best league of professional women in the world,” said WNBPA president and Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike a few weeks before the season started. “If all of that is fine and dandy, why aren’t we where we think we should be right now? It has a lot to do with how we’re being run — with the relationship between the players and the league.”

The league’s solution focuses on the dollar signs — mostly the lack thereof. “We all want the same thing,” Hedgpeth told SB Nation. “We’re doing everything we can to get this league on really solid footing so that we can grow rapidly into the future. It’s not a gender issue, it’s just not. It’s an economic issue. Everyone wants players to get the recognition they deserve.”

NBA commissioner Adam Silver, for his part, hasn’t shied from emphasizing the league’s lack of revenue — even as he reiterates the NBA’s commitment to the women’s game. “Ultimately it’s a market economy,” Silver said in a recent interview with the Today Show by way of explaining WNBA players’ comparatively modest salaries. His response echoed the disingenuous retorts of so many armchair analysts (and right-wing blogs) who have embraced the idea that WNBA players deserve exactly as much as they make as something of a cause du jour, one that gained steam last summer when made-up quotes from players claiming their superiority over NBA players went viral.

”The tickets are very inexpensive, but even at low prices, we’re not selling enough tickets to run a viable business,” Silver told Bleacher Report. He reminded the Associated Press the league has lost an average of $10 million a year. (Last year, NBA revenue rose 25 percent to $7.4 billion.) Earlier this year, NBA PR tweeted seemingly without provocation (from a private account) that maximum WNBA salaries had been widely misreported as too low. This season’s WNBA rookie minimum salary is $41,965, and the veteran maximum is $117,500; the NBA’s number, it would seem, incorporated bonuses. “There’s no one in the NBA league office or no WNBA owner right now who’s saying they’re giving up,” Silver said in the Bleacher Report piece, an unnerving response to a question that no one was asking.

Silver undoubtedly has more faith in the league than the conservative trolls, which he’s taken care to make explicit by insisting that the NBA is “doubling down” on its investment in the WNBA. How that investment is served by his ongoing willingness to discuss the public’s lack of interest in the product — a topic that seems, on its face, to be a fairly transparent bid for leverage in negotiating the league’s new CBA — is unclear.

But there’s no question moves are being made: a new TV deal with CBS Sports that gets 40 more games on national TV, a glitzy rebrand (its second in the past decade, on top of the 20th anniversary “Watch Me Work” campaign) intended to capitalize on the diversity and panache that players have insisted all along was their biggest asset, and a new “marquee partnership” with AT&T are among the assets awaiting the league’s first commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, who will begin her tenure in the middle of the season. Her hiring was announced last week.

It’s the kind of work that the WNBA has long needed, and that should help continue the league’s rise — historically, when there have been more games on TV, the ratings grow accordingly. Silver, for one, is finally optimistic about the league’s potential. “I think we’re at a particular moment in society where there is enhanced opportunity to sell women’s basketball that definitely didn’t exist when we launched this league, and didn’t even exist five years ago,” Silver told Forbes late last year. The thing is, though, that’s not true.

Lisa Leslie and Rebecca Lobo, two of the marquee players from the WNBA’s first season.

”I guess there’s a time and a place for everything, and the last few months have proven without a doubt that the time and place are here for women’s professional basketball in the United States,” Ackerman told reporters before the tip-off of the first WNBA title game in August 1997.

The league’s first season was a blockbuster success. An impressive 14,284 attended the WNBA’s debut, a Liberty and Sparks matchup at the Forum, where Tyra Banks, Arsenio Hall, and Penny Marshall (amidst what seemed like thousands of A League Of Their Own puns) sat courtside. A relentless TV schedule — which included a game every week on Lifetime, ESPN and NBC — paid off with good ratings, outdrawing the NHL on ESPN among others. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Anheuser-Busch were among the massive endorsers, and brought their own marketing heft to the league.

The primetime scheduling and A-list sponsors came onboard mostly because of the NBA’s nearly unprecedented investment in women’s basketball, which had begun before the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. “David [Stern] was our biggest champion,” says Ackerman of the then-NBA commissioner. “He put all the top people in the company on it; it was a priority project in the office.” That investment meant the WNBA was able to gain traction despite the fact that the product on the court was almost universally deemed superior in the rival American Basketball League, which folded after just two seasons.

By the end of its first season, WNBA average attendance was 9,804, more than double what Ackerman, chief marketing officer Rick Welts (now COO of the Golden State Warriors) and Stern had projected before the league launched. Ackerman and Welts were recognized as now-defunct AdWeek subsidiary BrandWeek’s marketers of the year: “Measured as a product launch alone, the WNBA clearly was one of the year’s most successful.”

“People were interested, it was something new,” Ackerman says now. “I do think in the next couple years, things kind of settled down. We were separating the curious from the truly concerned — moving more to the core fan.” Endorsers had signed three year deals, and games were regularly on NBC into the early 2000s. But the WNBA was never able to match its second-season attendance peak of 10,864 fans per game.

Some of the challenges of today’s league, though, were foreshadowed even within the WNBA’s massive early returns, including the most vital one. “Now that women’s professional basketball has established a niche in the marketplace, the future comes down to this,” Jill Dodson wrote in the Denver Post in 1997. “Can women’s professional sports join the mainstream based on appeal of the quality of play and not just the novelty of women playing professional sports?”

More than 20 years later, there’s still not a satisfying answer to that question.

Players in the early years of the league also dealt with pitiful pay, with the exception of Olympic stars like Lisa Leslie and Rebecca Lobo, who had commanded $250,000 salaries mostly because of the threat that they might join the higher-paying ABL. They all still played overseas, as they had prior to the formation of the W. “If I could ask Ackerman to do one thing, it would be to raise the salaries to the point where most of us wouldn’t feel like we have to go overseas anymore to play,” Sparks legend Penny Toler told the LA Times at the end of the WNBA’s debut season. Toler, who had scored the WNBA’s first basket, was about to leave for Israel, where she would play for significantly more money.

Nneka Ogwumike, president of the WNBPA.

Atlanta Dream center Elizabeth Williams says she’ll call after practice. The thing that makes that tricky is practice is in Turkey; two weeks before WNBA training camp starts, she’s still in the playoffs with her Turkish squad, Botas, which she’s been playing with since October. In the month between her postseason run with the Dream and her time in Turkey, she spent two weeks trying out for Team USA, trying to make the squad’s FIBA World Cup roster.

Her grueling schedule is standard in the WNBA, and nearly inevitable if players want to maximize their earning potential in professional basketball. All these years later, overseas leagues still pay more — in fact, several players are still fulfilling their contracts abroad as the 2019 WNBA season begins today. “People are like, you can make so much more overseas, why would you even want to play in the W?” says Ogwumike. “But it’s because players are committed to growing this league and making sure that it’s sustainable to the point where players can stay in market in the offseason, and continue to grow their own brands as well as their teams’.”

More than ever before, overseas play looks like a real threat to that sustainability. Stewart, the reigning WNBA MVP and leader of the league’s reigning champion Seattle Storm, tore her Achilles while playing in Russia — an injury that was almost certainly more likely because of just how much she had been playing. Victoria Vivians, the Indiana Fever’s 2018 first-round pick, tore her ACL while playing in Israel.

“One thing that [Stewart]’s injury shows is that the cause we’re fighting for is even more urgent now,” said Williams, who is the WNBPA secretary. “We’re seeing the league’s best player, arguably one of the world’s best players, go out because she’s playing in two leagues — which doesn’t happen in any other sport. I think the league has to reevaluate in these negotiations after seeing her and Victoria go down.”

Williams, Ogwumike, and the rest of the WNBPA executive committee have spent their “offseason” coordinating across timezones to discuss the CBA, which the union opted out of last fall. They even have a slogan: “Bet On Women,” which was the title of the Player’s Tribune piece in which Ogwumike announced the opt-out.

“We hope it’s a universal rallying cry not just for the players, but for women,” says WNBPA president Terri Jackson. “Bet On Women” T-shirts are now for sale, and have been handed out to other athlete unions — NFL players in particular have been flaunting them on social media. Jackson says she gave one to Oprah. “We may not be at the top of the sports news cycle, but I do believe that there are eyes on us, watching what degree of success that we have because this will ripple for girls and women generally.”

The union’s decision to opt out last year came after Jackson encouraged players to educate themselves about their contracts, telling them to read as much as they could of the 300-page CBA. Simultaneously, players started raising more questions publicly about not just pay, but also how they were treated — from the fact that they had to fly commercial to back to back games to the perceived lack of investment in marketing by the league. Headlines followed, mostly dwelling on any comparison to NBA salaries that a WNBA player might make.

“It’s good, honestly, just getting people talking,” says Ogwumike. “We obviously want to shift the conversation away from the people saying we’re trying to make what NBA players make, when it’s more about revenue and getting our fair share. Overall, we just want to feel like we’re being fully invested in.”

Until a new CBA is finalized, the league is making that investment on the marketing and TV booking side. A year ago, the WNBA hired strategy and design firm Sylvain Labs as consultants. Among their recommendations was a wide-reaching rebrand, which has so far been rolled out on the league’s site and social accounts via a new logo (the logowoman is out of the box, literally and presumably figuratively) and new slogan (“Make Way”). There’s also a new, edgier TV spot airing frequently during the NBA playoffs featuring players like the Mystics’ Natasha Cloud and Dream’s Renee Montgomery who haven’t previously been the faces of national marketing efforts.

“We have sent a shot across the bow,” says Hedgpeth. “We want to be growing faster, and we really believe that we can be. We have signaled that there’s something different going on with the WNBA, and we want people to take notice. Make way for us because we’re coming through.” Words like “bold” and “progressive” come up often when explaining the new angle.

“When it comes to gender, when it comes to race, when it comes to marginalized voices in general, how do you really bring those stories to life to the masses in a way that’s fair?” says Alain Sylvain, founder and CEO of Sylvain Labs. “It’s a real challenge. But we just thought it was a very interesting moment for the W in particular, because the level of play was at its best, and there was a new cultural appetite for women’s sports — there’s no secret that it’s a moment where there’s a greater sensitivity to matters involving sex and gender, discrimination, harassment and so on. Looking back at what the W was, it didn’t necessarily align with that cultural moment. I think it’s time to be unapologetic about what the WNBA is, and embrace that bolder stance.”

For the players, the rebrand is exciting because they were actually asked for their input — and feel like it was reflected in the results. “I’m ... cautiously optimistic,” says Williams, laughing. “They did follow through on this, and made things look pretty good. So I’m like, hey, maybe this time …”

Of course, its rollout was met with the usual chorus of sexist comments. “We got the ‘Where’s the apron on the logo?’” says Hedgpeth. “But we’re not going after those people. We’re going after people who embrace progressive values around the role of women.”

“You could write anything, and someone would still make a sandwich joke,” says Williams. “They’re trolls, it’s what they do. But the people who actually want to learn something or engage in a conversation, they’re on there too. We’re slowly seeing that shift.”

The question of whether the league is finally near a place where its sustainability or lack thereof will stop being its defining trait might not be answered this season. But it’s the idea that keeps the players pushing forward for more and better, and that they hope will inspire the NBA to truly double down on the women’s game — like Silver says they are, and like the league did so successfully when it first launched.

“Sue [Bird] has said this on multiple occasions: the fact of the matter is, she’s not going to be playing when [the new CBA] goes into effect,” Ogwumike says of the WNBA legend and WNBPA vice president. “Our players want to propel things forward, so that the league is much more viable longterm than it was when we entered it. That’s how we approach a lot of these conversations — and I think that provides some perspective for people who think we’re just asking for millions.”

“The fact that the league is 20-plus years in is actually a success story,” says Ackerman. “Don’t take the longevity lightly, because we had many naysayers who didn’t expect that to happen. I hope the players especially get the credit they deserve, because they’ve done everything asked and more in terms of their contribution to the sport.”

“Everything is on the table,” says Jackson — including pushing for enough pay that players won’t feel compelled to play abroad. “If the league is truly willing to see our players thrive, they absolutely have to be treated and valued as professional athletes. They’ve had all the pieces — the elite athletes, the fans, the competition — but now maybe in the current climate, with the spotlight on them and their support of women, they’ll lean in and work with us to find a winning model. We have to put pieces in place that ensure we have a WNBA today, and 20 times 20 years from today.”

“Everyone is so gung-ho to talk about the bad things about the WNBA, maybe because it validates their belief that they don’t feel the league is viable,” Ogwumike says, alluding to the fact issues around the sexism players face and the way they’re treated by the league get far more coverage than who is actually winning games.

“But that’s not true, the league is extremely viable,” she concludes. “If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be around. No one would be fighting for us. We know that where the league is now doesn’t match up with how it’s valued. Don’t get me wrong — we’re extremely grateful. But that doesn’t mean we have to settle.”

[jillianardrey-blog]

The Wine Industry: Does Branding Still Have Power?

To me, Heineken and the wine industry share a core branding issue: both are too focused on product quality and their superior heritage and aren’t listening to what actually attracts consumers. Although they are at least a little bit different - at least Heineken spent some money on branding and didn’t expect their superior product quality to speak for itself without any marketing support, where the wine industry has relied on their reputation and the superior scores that their products get from well-known wine tasters to get them sales.

I think that this decision to ignore marketing and branding is always the wrong one. Yes, wine quality has to be decent for it to succeed; it needs to show the customer value-for-money, especially since wine fights a stigma of being overpriced for what you get (not as cheap as beer, and much less alcoholic than hard alcohol). However, most people who are not wine connoisseurs do not really have the capacity to judge how much better one decent wine is than another decent wine. As long as you meet the minimum requirement to have a decent wine for your price point, you are good to go on the quality front.

What I think enables some wines to succeed, and others to fail, is their marketing and branding plan. This has several important components:

(1) Being from a reputable wine region and clearly communicating this on the bottle: As was mentioned in the article for this week, consumers automatically assume that a California wine must be better than a North Dakota wine, and so report this wine tasting better even if it is the exact same wine. This shows the impact that a consumer’s expectations/perception can have on the way they actually taste a wine.

(2) Associating the wine with other high-quality things: As was also mentioned in the article for this week, consumers may have a hard time separating the quality of different things they consume at the same time. In the article, consumers who were served the California wine consumed more food at a restaurant than those who were served the North Dakota wine. One possible explanation for this is assuming that the positive taste expectations of the wine also created positive taste expectations for the food, causing them to consume more of it. I think that this could also possibly work in the inverse, and so by positioning a wine brand exclusively in high-quality restaurants your wine brand can benefit from being assumed to also be high quality.

(3) Having a unique, recognizable brand name, logo and label: The wine industry is heavily fragmented and brand awareness and loyalty is low. I think this makes it easier to stand out, and also more critical to do so. Right now, consumers don’t really know how to identify quality wine brands other than looking for physical cues, such as a fancy-looking logo, whether or not the wine has been highly rated (if a sticker showing a rating is available at the P.O.S. location), and experimenting. However, I do not think that this means that wine brands cannot build awareness and loyalty. They just need to do what wineries to date have rarely done: invest in marketing, create a story for their brand to tell to consumers, tell their consumers that it is not cool to experiment but instead is cool to always drink the best wine option, and show that there can be other reasons to drink their wine other than product quality (e.g. show a commercial of someone’s fabulous life that you can aspire to, and they’re having fun while drinking wine). I am not saying that product quality is not important, just that once you provide the value-for-money that a consumer is looking for in a given category to stick out amongst your competitors you have to do more.

(4) Ensure that you have a healthy relationship with your major distributors and sell an appropriate volume: The case highlights that it is difficult to get shelf space, as a few large distributors and retails dominate the market; sales volume is key to product placement. This volume can come from building consumer demand through branding ad marketing, as mentioned above, in order to have large sales volumes for each wine product you sell, from working with your distributors and retailers to have attractive marketing and pricing at P.O.S., and from spending the time to create solid, loyal relationships with your distributors and retailers. It is critical not to ignore these relationships, and make sure that your distributors and retailers are involved in making sure that your branding stays consistent and authentic (and care about this!) and that your products are positioned with good product placement. It is also important to sell a range of products of various qualities and price points in order to balance volume and margin, and you can use your volume sellers to negotiate placement for your higher margin products with your distributors and retailers.

Because of the above, I recommend that Concha y Toro put 100% of their focus into creating a solid value-for-money brand and then use a “bottom-up” strategy to expand out of this lower end of the price spectrum. They should work together with other major Chilean wineries as well as the two winery trade associations and the Chilean government to brand/market Chilean wine as quality and also different. Chile is known for Malbecs, a bold “New World” style of wine, and I think that they can brand their wine as fun, bold, different, trendy, and cutting-edge, juxtaposed very starkly against the “Old World” (almost stuffy) quality-driven wineries from France, Spain, and Italy. They need to associate Chile with high-quality wine, but also a high-quality wine for a different kind of consumer than the consumers of “Old World” wine in order to find a unique customer niche to exploit. This can be helped by aesthetic cues, such as having fun and funky labels.

Once Chilean wine is associated as being high quality, Concha y Toro can focus on creating a brand for themselves (focusing on creating a story that their consumers want to hear, that can be aspirational to them in their lives) that is unique amongst Chilean wines, that will increase their consumer’s brand loyalty, and make sure that their product is placed in high-end on-premise establishments (to be associated with higher quality food) and utilizing their high volumes (driven through their strong marketing initiatives, where I recommend they spend their dollars) and strong distributor and retailer relationships to get the shelf space they need. In order to afford this, Concha y Toro needs to focus on a) cutting costs of production through standardization and best practices, and b) utilizing their distributor and retailer relationships to get their higher-end wine placed as well. I believe that their high-end wine could benefit through their marketing initiatives as well by sub-branding it as a “premium wine hand picked by Concha y Toro”; this wine could be wine from smaller vineyards that they have purchased, and marketed to consumers as a quality wine which has been validated by (passed the quality bar of the employees at) Concha y Toro to bring to their market as a premium option. Once customers are loyal to Concha y Toro because they have seen that the value-for-price is there and they like the identity of the brand that has been created, Concha y Toro can increase its margins by a) raising the price (slowly, steadily) of their core options once they have a loyal following, and b) expanding their sub-brand premium wine category.

[optometrist0]

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[templified]

Responsive Portfolio WordPress Themes | Templified

New Post has been published on https://templified.com/responsive-portfolio-wordpress-themes/

Responsive Portfolio WordPress Themes

These days, more and more people are surfing the internet on mobile devices. Whether it’s a smart phone or tablet, it’s important that you consider the user experience for all of your visitors. That’s never been more important than when you’re putting together your online portfolio. It’s critical to display your images, your video, posts and pages the right way, so everything looks just like you want it to look.

Considering how prevalent mobile devices are these days, it’s incredibly important to have a WordPress theme that’s completely mobile friendly, responsive and filled with all the features that a modern portfolio needs to have.

This is a collection of the best WordPress Mobile Portfolio themes, great for showing off your portfolio on any kind of device. No matter which one you select, you’re going to get a beautiful and professional theme that frames your creativity in a really positive way.

Airtifact

The Airtifact WordPress theme is a creative portfolio theme for WordPress and it’s got a really cool, simple and modern style.  Airtifact, that’s actually sort of hard to type for me. I’m not really sure why, I guess I just keep wanting to type artifact. But that’s not the name of this template, that’s a video game available on Steam. I’ve got to get my act together and make sure that I don’t have any more typos. My boss told me that if I get one more typo, I’m fired. And I work for myself, so that’s really troubling concept. Anyway, Airtifact is a great-looking, minimal style creative portfolio theme that I think will make your visitors turn somersaults with joy. I don’t think I’m going to stay in that, this theme is said to have caused hundreds of people recently to run through the streets naked, shouting for joy.

Honestly, it’s true.  I swear.

Careful don’t end up running around like an idiot, jumping up and down on one foot, running into traffic, acting like you are completely insane just because you took a look at the front page of this template. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

In all seriousness, this theme is one of the better looking than most portfolio themes I’ve seen in 2018, it’s going to Creative Design with masonry grid layout optional, it’s a minimal and original looking WordPress theme that also offer is Parallax scrolling. Great for photography portfolios, video & blogs alike, this unique and simple WordPress theme is a high-performance option if you want a modern end minimal portfolio, a journal or magazine template to help reach new audiences and a vibrant and readable experience for everyone. This is one of the better WordPress themes come out in September of 2018 and I think that the early sales are really represent that fact, it’s sold 26 times in just two days on the market, which isn’t a record, but it is awfully impressive. So, I think that this is certainly a theme that you should consider if you need a minimalist portfolio template to Showcase your creative works of art.

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Elegant

Minimalist themes don’t have to be plain and boring. Look at Elegant here, it’s a very stylish but minimal theme from Themify, who are one of my favorite theme developers anywhere.  Elegant is a simple, corporate influenced theme.  It’s a blog, a portfolio and an eCommerce theme with a simple minimalist style that’s great for any sort of website.  Minimalist themes do e fine job of letting you create any kind of content, since minimalist themes are so adaptable, they form fit themselves to your content, not the other way around.  There are no fancy animations, no graphic effects that call attention away from the content.  Elegant focuses the attention on your posts and you images, right where the attention should be focused.  I love the attention to the smallest details with Elegant, the typography is amazing too.  The responsive design of this theme makes it so it looks great on all devices.  You’ve got a bonus with the portfolio and team post types too, an image filter, masonry and grid layouts and a ton more.  And Themify is known for great support, so you’ll never run into problems using this theme.

Elegant is a theme from Themify.me, it’s a clean and multipurpose theme that has relatively few extra embellishments, the typography and clean layout is what really strikes you first. There’s a portfolio and a team post type, so I think this theme works well for creative companies who want to showcase a portfolio and promote whatever creative work you do. Themify works very hard on their themes so they’re as reliable as possible and Elegant is no exception. This theme is well supported, it’s well documented and it’s great for SEO, since it loads fast and it’s perfectly optimized for display on all types of devices.

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Incanto

This WordPress premium portfolio theme is called Incanto.  It’s clean, it’s modern and it’s packed with creative features, highly modifiable, very easy to use, reliable and gorgeous, it’s versatile, perfectly coded and responsive, amazing for online marketing companies, freelancers, design companies, advertising companies or photographers. You can create a wonderful first impression with a powerful, well-made WordPress portfolio theme.  With parallax style, video backgrounds from sites like YouTube, one page and multi page versions and more, this theme has a lot to offer just about any type of business.

If you need to work with a robust plugin to make a lovely site, you must consider the adaptable, simple to use drag and drop page builder plugin, Visual Composer.  Visual Composer works perfectly with the leading third party plugins like Contact Form 7, Essential Grid, popular forms plugins like Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms, Layer or Revolution Sliders and WooCommerce. That helps make this beautiful WordPress theme incredibly functional.  What people really love is the low cost, that it’s compatible with everything, the incredible powerful features, that it’s very user friendly and the adaptability to produce any variety of site.  Visual Composer offers the massive template library, incredible support, dozens of content elements, popular front end editor and responsive, professional design, and tons more.

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Reveal

A responsive WordPress portfolio theme, Reveal is intended to make your content look great regardless of the screen size or device it is viewed on. With its clean and minimal styling, coupled with project viewing powered by Ajax, the theme is designed to put your best work on display.

Reveal comes with myriads of features. It is optimized for search engines that gives you a decided edge over your competitors. It is likewise bundled with a number of exclusive widgets that you can use to display adverts, display contents in the sidebar, and connect to your social network accounts.

The theme has clean coding that is easy to edit because the codes are organized and uncompressed. It complies with the best WordPress practices. Your audience can easily communicate with you because of the built-in contact form. All you have to do is enter your email and it is ready to go. Even better is the localization feature that allows you to translate the theme to the language that best suits your target visitors.

You can easily customize the theme with Reveal’s wide-ranging options. Everything you need is easily accessible. Likewise, you can easily display and sell your products online with WooCommerce. No installation or editing required.

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Hero

If you need a WordPress portfolio theme that is responsive but at the same time minimal, and will allow you to highlight the services you offer by showcasing your best work, then Hero is the theme for you. With the theme’s parallax home page banner combined with your creativity, you can display your primary message in a manner that will engage your viewers.

The shortcodes plugin that comes free with Hero can be used for creating engrossing slideshows and adding toggles, buttons, columns, and tabs. You can likewise add your logo, custom CSS, colors, and numerous other options that will help make your website unique.  Use the theme’s localization support to translate the theme into your preferred language. Hero is likewise built with a responsive layout design that will make your site look amazing on any device, regardless of the screen size.

Easily insert videos from your favorite sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and others via Hero’s video support feature. Smooth filtering and hover effects are available to create an amazing look for your project.  To create your contact form, use the highly functional Contact Form 7 that is fully compatible with Hero. You also have control over the typography of your content with the availability of numerous Google fonts.

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Create

Create, from ThemeTrust, is a really solid choice for developing a successful one page theme for WordPress.  This drag and drop page builder allows you to set up one page navigation to automatically scroll to each section of the page, even highlighting the navigation as you scroll down the page.  Create is works seamlessly with WooCommerce and can have you up and running with a new online shop in a few clicks.  Create comes bundled with Revolution slider and it supports unlimited widget areas, pricing tables and gives the option for a full width or boxed layout.  Your portfolio pages will look fantastic too with filtering animations, hover effects and Ajax loading that give off a truly premium look and feel.  We love this one as a one pager theme, but if you do want to use it as a multi page website template, Create allows you to customize each page with posts, pages and projects each having a slightly different look, like custom menus, headers, footers and more.

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CoupShop

For folks looking for a minimalistic eCommerce shop, CoupShop could do the trick.  Built with speed and style in equal measure, Coup Shop is a full featured WordPress eCommerce theme with a simple, modern look and a ton of great features to make it easy to run your online business.  Built by Themes Kingdom, Coup Shop is a great theme for promoting all kinds of products with a simple and straightforward presentation that makes whatever it is you’re selling look amazing.  The minimalist design is so flexible, it works for everything.  With support for Easy Digital Downloads as well as WooCommerce, you can even sell downloadable goods, if that’s what you’re into.  But don’t look for a lot of extra details, this theme is made to be simple, clean, fast loading and SEO friendly.  It’s also responsive, which should go without saying, but there are still some themes out there that aren’t responsive, so it’s worth noting.  CoupShop is from Themes Kingdom and it’s the eCommerce version of their popular Coup blogging theme. Both are simple and highly efficient WordPress themes, with bold and clean layouts, plenty of features and a focus on content. Responsive, compatible with all browsers and easy to customize, CoupShop is a great way to promote any sort of product you could imagine. One really nice thing about ThemesKingdom, you can get a 10% coupon if you sign up for their newsletter. Totally worth it.

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Weston

Weston is a premium, minimalist eCommerce theme with cool layouts, a simple design and a ton of features.  With Weston, you get a simple, elegant design with highly modern features that make it one of the best themes to come along in the last few years.  In terms of minimalist design, it’s right up there with the very best.  Minimalism doesn’t mean that it lacks features, this theme is powered by Visual Composer and that comes with a ton of pre-made functionality.  The basic, essential features include WooCommerce, beautiful portfolios, a delightful blog layout and more.  With Visual Composer, it’s a smooth and straightforward process to produce a site that has all the visual appeal that a contemporary and stylish website should have, with every tool you could possibly want to run your business.  With Visual Composer, it’s possible to create any sort of new and novel site for any type of business.  Weston is a Visual Composer based theme that’s clean and highly functional without the code bloat that you sometimes see with VC based themes. Weston has all the fundamental flexibility and functionality you need to build a really great website. Video backgrounds, portfolios, Google fonts and plenty more ensure that Weston can be adapted for any need. ThemeTrust offers a year of free support and updates to all of it’s themes, there are plenty of other great reasons to pick this theme, so take a look at more information below.

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Beatrix

Beatrix is a handmade WordPress theme for selling handmade products. Cool!  Selling handmade goods online is a great way to pursue your passion and earn some passive income. Designed especially for creative individuals who want to start a craft store business online, Beatrix is great for clothing stores, jewelry stores, and more. This trendy shopping theme enables you to display high quality images of your masterpieces in the Shop page. There, you can add detailed and effective product descriptions to convince clients to purchase your stuff. Additionally, previous customers can add their ratings and reviews. This is useful considering the effect of peer feedback on people’s buying decisions. Being WooCommerce-integrated, Beatrix allows your would-be clients to register and create their own accounts. From their individual account dashboards, they can easily manage their purchases and their shipping info. This way, they are provided with a hassle-free shopping experience. This, in turn, helps boosts your sales. Additionally, you get to manage everything from orders to shipping without leaving your WordPress Admin.

This theme includes free 1 hour customization so you end up with a unique online store that fits the theme of your business. In addition, you get the advantage of free theme updates. You can choose among multiple home page designs and unlimited colors. This theme is also compatible with most popular browsers, and its responsive design and load speed optimization provide a pleasant window-shopping and purchasing experience to customers even while they’re mobile. Beatrix lets you categorize your products according to type. The filterable portfolio lets shoppers view the items according to price, ratings, and newness. To further increase your sales, virtual shoppers will be shown a list of related products based on recently viewed items. Show your potential buyers how good they’ll look when they buy your products. You can use the Blog section of this theme to post articles and photos of fashion inspirations.

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You also may be interested in our original collection of portfolio themes for WordPress.  Great place to find some amazing stuff.

[saintouen-traverseedarts-blog1]

Company Beginning.

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Certified new investments likewise can consist of procedures connected to the e-commerce task, which include not only otherwise eligible tasks such as delivery or storage space facilities to satisfy orders developing from e-commerce, yet it would also reach management, technological, or other functions that are indispensable to the commercial or retail transactions that are carried out or supported through electronic commerce inside the assigned location. This t-shirt features a front letter logo design information with contrasting dots in a baggy shape. Kaleigh Moore is a scientist and also author for BigCommerce and also creator of Lumen Ventures, which assists to enlighten online sellers on the best ways to grow their organisations throughout the internet. Clients can involve with products by means of ingrained video clips, images, relevant items, and also more. In 2017, ecommerce growth breaks a new record with online sales breaking $6.5 billion on Cyber Monday - a 17% rise from the year before. The default setting will certainly be PayPal for your settlement methods -just how your clients spend for your services or products, and also the default shipping method will certainly be totally free delivery, which you'll want to alter if you are selling anything apart from services, and also need your customers to compensate you for shipping prices. Your Online Store product is mosting likely to come already secured with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), so it will not be an additional cost on you or your organisation to maintain your internet site secure. When looking at which social platforms drove the largest share of item discovery, Facebook led, with 78 percent of participants discovering items on the platform. Once I had the concept in my head I made use of the suggestions from the How you can Make a $1,000 a Month Business training course and also validated it by seeing if anyone would want to purchase my item before I spent at any time or loan into it. If I never actually obtained to manufacturing, I had 7 individuals in fact Paypal me $30 for an assurance that I would send them my very first deliveries OR their cash back. . When compared with getting retail in traditional commerce, the customer normally has even more info readily available in regards to useful material and also there is also an extensive idea that you'll be buying cheaper, without threatening a just as personalized customer care, as well as making sure quick handling as well as delivery of your order. Numerous B2B customers as well as customers will certainly experience their initial smooth, B2C-like purchasing and buying experience in 2018 as they continue transitioning their item exploration and also buying habits to online as well as mobile. He formerly acted as the CMO-- ecommerce & online for Sears Holdings, where he led all purchase, social advertising and marketing as well as online client interactions for the and shopping buildings. Deal with: 3.7 -> 3.8 Database Upgrade Regimen creates some items with variants to show a $0.00 rate. E-commerce retailers are feeling the pressure to keep as well as fulfill that demand visibility from the time their delivery leaves the satisfaction facility, through the last mile as well as right into the client's hands. Our robust on-line shop building contractor makes it simple to offer your products online. Need To the Information Privacy Notification develop component of a contract with CONSUMERS and COMPANIONS, SWAROVSKI could notify them of an upgrade or amendments by email or in one more ideal manner. Energetic Trip Shop has a big collection of guys's tees from your favorite brands! Genuine Disney Parks Tanks, t-shirts and also tops. In this post you'll find out the background of ecommerce, ecommerce statistics, platforms, popular ecommerce websites, and also extra. Ever since, the service has actually increased to extra ecommerce systems and also permits Instagram customers to promptly click a thing, and also go to that item's product web page for acquisition. Contextual business calls for a contemporary ecommerce platform. ( 3) Neighborhood law and the qualities of the Neighborhood legal order are an essential possession to allow European residents and drivers to take complete benefit, without factor to consider of boundaries, of the opportunities paid for by digital commerce; this Regulation for that reason has the purpose of making sure a high level of Community lawful assimilation in order to establish a real area without interior boundaries for info society services. Though Amazon alone is not causing insolvencies per se, they will certainly recover the customers stranded by dropped stores. In addition, you have complete control over the source code of your buying cart as well as can add new features any time. Oberlo permits you to easily import dropshipped products into your ecommerce store and also deliver them straight to your customers - in just a couple of clicks.

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Internet Marketing Tips to Get Traffic to Your Site

Planet Marketing Review – Is This Travel Company The Real Deal?

  So lately, I’ve been getting a few messages approximately a brand new Travel-primarily based Community Advertising and marketing organization called Planet Advertising and marketing. And chances are in case you’re analyzing this, you’re in all likelihood considering becoming a member of and you’re doing some remaining minute studies at the organization. If it’s the case, then look no similarly. In this Planet Advertising Evaluate, I will cover all of the critical details you’ll want before you join. With that stated, I do want to reveal that I am now not a Planet Advertising and marketing distributor. In all honesty, it surely would not matter to me one way or the alternative in case you join so that you recognize you will be getting a simply impartial Overview.

Who is Planet Advertising?

Planet Advertising is an organization that sells Tour through a Community Advertising commercial enterprise version. The agency is based out of Atlanta, Georgia and as of this writing, Plannet Marketing is just over 6 months vintage. The agency turned into based through Donald Bradley, formerly of YTB and Paycation Travel. Bradley brings with him twenty years of revel in in Network Advertising. before beginning Planet Advertising, Bradley was the Grasp Distributor and #1 Earnings Earner in Paycation Journey. He literally had each person in Paycation in his downline and was answerable for bringing inside the organization’s top leadership institution. I am no longer certain what befell, however around the time Craig Jerabeck and Barry Donalson left 5linx and joined Paycation was the same time Bradley determined to depart.

Maybe he didn’t experience desirable approximately those guys becoming a member of and being backed by using the organization whilst he changed into the Master Distributor. Who knows? And who certainly cares? Irrespective of the reason, it looks as if Bradley changed into inclined to walk far from the whole lot he built to start from scratch again. Common, the company appears quite solid. And while it is too early to inform if they may also be around for the lengthy haul due to the fact they are only some months vintage, Bradley and the opposite members of the Company group carry a ton of revel in in Community Marketing and Tour, which is a superb element.

How Do You are making Money With Planet Marketing?

The real compensation plan presents several ways for vendors to get paid. However, the crown jewel of the repayment plan is the 3X9 Matrix. With a Matrix model, it is vital that you get a spot early on in case you want to capitalize on spillover. in case you’re positioned beneath a sturdy builder, you could benefit from their efforts as they location humans under you even as they are filling up their Matrix. With a fully stuffed 3X9 Matrix, you may have 29,523 distributors under you. If they are all active and also you get $4 month-to-month from each distributor, you could make up to $118,092 monthly. In addition to your Matrix pay, you may additionally earn a 10% In shape on the Matrix pay of your, in my opinion, backed distributors.

Similarly to the Matrix, the organization gives month-to-month bonuses to Administrators. Here’s a simple breakdown of the way the Director bonuses work:

1 Superstar Director – a hundred active distributors – $500/month 2 Big name Director – three hundred lively distributors – $1,000/month 3 Big name Director – 500 active vendors – $2,000/month four Megastar Director – 1,500 lively vendors – $5,000/month 5 Famous person Director – 4,000 energetic distributors – $10,000/month 6 Superstar Director – 10,000 lively distributors – $16,000/month 7 Megastar Director – 25,000 active distributors – $30,000/month 8 Star Director – 50,000 energetic distributors – $50,000/month 9 Superstar Director – a hundred,000 lively vendors – $one hundred,000/month

Among the Matrix Pay, the 10% Healthy for your personals and the Director Bonuses, it’s quite clear that there is plenty of Cash on the again quit. in case you’re a sturdy team builder and you have a knack for developing appropriate lifestyle, Planet Advertising and marketing is probably a completely beneficial possibility for you.

Have to You join Planet Advertising?

Well, best you could truly solution that. The business enterprise virtually seems stable. Tour is a completely marketable career that’s smooth to talk about. And the compensation plan is generous and rewarding. All those matters together Need to assure achievement, proper? Lamentably, not anything may be in addition from the truth. On the cease of the day, it’s far your potential to sponsor people into your business on a consistent basis in order to cause your achievement. That is why I endorse that you study Appeal Advertising. If you can function yourself in the front of prospects which might be already seeking out what you are supplying, you will haven’t any hassle getting leads online. And when you have an abundance of high-quality leads, there’s no telling how successful you can be.

The Best Internet Business

  What is the Best Internet Enterprise?

There are several Net Host giants on the Internet that offer private label rebranding to small Business proprietors. This is probably the First-class opportunity to “piggyback” on nicely hooked up corporations if you are just starting out in Internet marketing. This gateway for limitless wealth is made possible because of the developing demand of virtual marketing in regions which can be outside the scope of these big businesses.

Which will advantage a share of the market, those corporate Web organizations offer reseller plans to small corporations which take their products and services, rebrand them and sell to Business owners at a profit. these merchandises consist of domain call offerings, Internet web hosting, online storage, Enterprise productivity software, and tools.

There’s quite a bonus in being a small Business store because one is capable of customizing their Enterprise on the neighborhood stage and meet the demands of their growing market on the arena Wide Web. Allow’s examine the definition of digital marketing to apprehend why the call for has grown extensively over the past a long time.

What is digital advertising

virtual advertising and marketing entail all functions which might be geared towards promoting online Commercial enterprise activities. This consists of but isn’t always constrained to services and products in subcategories including area name registration, Net hosting, electronic mail marketing, Net layout and development, software program applications, sales and marketing, social media marketing and consultation, and all medium through which organizations and people market it and market their merchandise online.

Retail marketing

Retail advertising refers to activities geared towards giving up customers of an internet-primarily based Commercial enterprise answer which include domains registration, Internet design services, software program apps for Business and personal use, social media control, Web web hosting and other activities that sell online communication.

As the need for Commercial enterprise solutions intensifies, Commercial enterprise people emerge as more and more concerned approximately meeting the demands of the web industry, and therefore the pros and Cons of the Net Business end up relevant.

The Cons of virtual advertising

One could assume that the greater customers you’ve got, is the extra earnings you’re likely to collect but the reality be told, the greater the Business will become more challenged due to competitors, need for online bandwidth, Web creativity, uniqueness, and need for customer service because of boom in patron queries and the need for technical help.

The pros of digital advertising

Fortunately, a few Net website hosting reseller marketing strategy come with independent customer support crew that manages concerns and queries of clients on their behalf. Any other positive component about being a domain reseller is the handling of bills and processing of income. As a web hosting reseller, you are given the opportunity to re-charge your products to earn commissions from your own Commercial enterprise.

Some other seasoned for being a reseller is the truth that starting your virtual advertising Business does no longer require an exorbitant startup cost nor high overhead fees to operate efficiently, nor initial merchandise, in comparison to different online ventures. merchandise are sold through the distributors but your private label is displayed discreetly inside the sales operation and consequently, your Commercial enterprise receives the credit score!

How Do I emerge as a web website hosting Reseller?

There are two ways to turn out to be an internet web hosting Reseller and domain call Registrar. You will sign up as an associate or a real reseller.

An affiliate gets a commission from advertising online merchandise that the Internet employer (suppliers) marketplace, using links and codes on authorized websites. Reseller uses their own emblem to marketplace the Web agency’s merchandise (dealer) and services at a higher price of returns. cease users see the reseller’s products and services as their agency’s logo and now not the Net company’s image. Associates show the name of the wholesaler or issuer (Net corporation) via banner advertisements and different sorts of Net marketing, just like a franchising arrangement. How A whole lot Does It value To Run a web hosting and domain call Enterprise?

It’s miles very alarming to find out the actual fee of beginning your personal Net Enterprise. The subscription for a reseller license varies from $89-$499 annually and it relies upon on the company or Internet agency. Maximum folks opt to do Enterprise with Web businesses that offer a selection of less costly services and products. Once a business plan is bought, You possibly can begin promoting at once online.

A few Net agencies offer a retail storefront with the area call search area. different functions encompass the subsequent:

Devoted customer support crew support on your client’s advertising software program to help in selling their emblem online. Resellers are anticipated to purchase their domain call to begin selling their retail Net Enterprise. start Up fee There’s no mandatory startup cost for an internet hosting Enterprise, but, It’s miles recommended, to begin with as a minimum $300-$500. This will encompass the price of the subscription plan, a website name in your Commercial enterprise concept, an internet fashion designer to personalize the storefront (optional), Commercial enterprise cards and different marketing paraphernalia to help provide extra get right of entry to your target market.

There is reseller’s support, network pages, manuals and online help to help you achieve making your Commercial enterprise worthwhile.

The procedure of beginning an internet Enterprise is easy, and at the same time as there may be demanding situations in securing a viable market for your place, there aren’t any geographical restrictions. Savvy Business operators stand a greater risk to earn real attractive residual earnings annually, in a surprisingly short time.

What to expect as internet tips hosting Marketing Reseller.

Commercial enterprise owners are capable of tap into the super wealth of the virtual marketing Commercial enterprise as It is one that by no means sleeps! It has frequently been said that you can earn money whilst you sleep, and because the Net generates over a billion greenbacks consistent with a day, increasingly humans have killed this fact. Currently, there are Net hosting Resellers who’re making $10-30K (USD) in keeping with a month.

When you are patient, open to exploring online Commercial enterprise opportunities, and enthusiastic about presenting Internet Enterprise solutions for people and corporations, then you definitely are geared up to build your virtual empire.

After analyzing this article, in case you are asked: “What is the Great Net Business?” I am pretty sure that you are in a better function to provide a logical answer. however, you have to comprehend that no matter how professional one is, or how many customers she or he has garnered to do Business with, actual fulfillment comes thru clever teamwork. The overdue Steve Jobs Once quoted; “Extremely good things in the Commercial enterprise are never accomplished with the aid of one character, they’re completed by a group of human beings.”

Rap Tips – 7 Quick Tips For Rappers

    Beneath are 7 crucial rap recommendations for the ones interested in learning to rap. These hints are crucial for rappers at any revel in stage!

Tip 1. One of the great rap recommendations is to listen to all varieties of rap which include east coast, west coast, and south. It will gain you to have a nicely-rounded history of the distinctive forms of rhyme schemes, terminology, float structures, and deliveries of all exceptional varieties of rap. Pay near interest to the elements of every fashion. Taking note of song intently might be THE single maximum critical rap tip to emerge as a better rapper.

Tip 2. Boom your vocabulary. Come upon an interesting word that you don’t know the meaning to? Appearance it up in a dictionary! In case you do no longer have a dictionary and word list, exit and put money into them. Discover an arsenal of comparable phrases along with your thesaurus to maintain your raps sparkling. Look at the dictionary occasionally to research new impressive words.

Tip three. Make lists of rhyming phrases. This will be a greatly useful rap tip in your writing process! Make lists of words that rhyme with each different, along with unmarried phrases and businesses of words. Continually upload on your listing each time you discover new words that rhyme in a few manner. maintain the listing to hand while writing raps and refer to it when you need some short ideas. That is a first-rate rap tip to conquer writer’s block too. while you see lists of rhyming words, It’ll spark new thoughts and permit you to move forward.

Tip four. Experiment with distinct approaches of starting the writing process. In case you are having problem starting writing your rap verses, try writing the hook (refrain) FIRST. Ensure your hook portrays the main concept of the song you’re writing. Once you’ve got the hook idea completed, writing the verses may be loads easier!

Tip 5. Exercise your timing. Right here is One of the splendid little rap tips that I’ve used in the past. First, discover an instrumental beat to rap to. Make certain it’s far something that you could vibe to and sense at ease with. Now, begin freestyling over the beat EVEN If your LYRICS Do not MAKE Feel! Simply wrap random phrases and try and make them rhyme. Come up with unique styles of flows and awareness on nailing your timing. You notice, this exercising is not about your words, it’s miles approximately running on enhancing the accuracy of your rhythm and “glide” to the beat.

Tip 6. study intricate verses from your favorite rappers, and Exercise them. Come across a wonderful but tricky verse from an aspiring rapper? learn the words (this have to be clean to do due to the fact you probably listen to the tune frequently anyway) and try to push yourself to mimic it. begin slow and piece by using piece until you can wrap the whole factor. This rap tip will assist to build your memory, timing, stamina, and likely velocity (if it’s miles a fast verse).

Tip 7. Report yourself regularly. In case you do not already have it, invest in a few recording equipment (a cheap mic and recording software program will do). Record yourself rapping so that you can concentrate on what areas need improvement. it is very vital to hear yourself as you sound to others so that you can analyze your faults and grow to be a better rapper!

I’m hoping this rap tips article become of use to you! Suitable success and Appearance out for extra rap guidelines coming quickly.

[automationgeeks]

What You Must Know: Essentials For Blogging Success: (Imagine Seeing A Building Covered In Graffiti And Scrappy Posters

Learning blogging in very simple explanations is very interesting.

Personally I searched this website wanting to know, what really is blogging?, how do I start blogging?

Thanks guys. Generally, I am getting enlightened.! Plenty of themes are free.

You can also pay a WordPress designer to create an unique theme for you, or modify your existing one.

Premium themes are ones that you pay for -typically around $ 50- $ These have extra features, and may well allow for a bit of a bit of customization without you needing to uch any CSS code. More links you have coming into the website, more important website will appear to Google. With keywords, links are a powerful ol for SEO. Links from big sites like Social Media Examiner count for almost links from your friend's blog about his cat. Some work behind toscenes. Basically, plugins allow you to add new features to your WordPress blog. However, others change look and feel of your web site for readers -for instance, CommentLuv plugin adds a link to any commenter's most recent blog post. Or fiddle around to zoom in on your teenytiny text, they may well surf elsewhere, Therefore in case they have to wait ages while your header and sidebar images download.

More readers are consuming blog content on their phones rather than on a fullsize computer screen.

Strong, engaging content is hugely important, certainly -but if your post looks difficult to read, or if your blog's design screams amateur, consequently visitors may not even get to first line.

You only one thing that matters in blogging is tocontent. Accordingly the opening of your blog post is almost as crucial as toheadline. Actually, while setting up their expectations for a valuable post, a great opening will seize toreaders' attention. Did you know that a poor opening will have readers yawning and clicking away. It is a helpful post.

I still go out of my way to avoid such leads in every blog post for awhile being that as a writer and especially a reader, Know what, I find myself rolling my eyes at them.

Just sharing my experience.

Questions, may buts, quotes, to'When I started, Know what guys, I had no clue were all frowned up. For ages because blog intro suggestions mentioned here and in additional reading linked to go against everything I learned about writing as a journalist and should be considered poor leads that a desker will readily change or an editor would happily tell you to take another shot at, it's interesting. Not writing this to be critical. Even if you only need one or two of its features, it's currently free, it's worth installing. It's quite obvious that you'll need a WordPress account with an eye to use toplugin. With that said, jetpack is a plugin for self hosted WordPress blogs that gives access to features that hosted WordPress blogs have automatically. Now pay attention please. Another is to keep your personal plugins uptodate. I will almost suggest not even offering a simple RSS button, and only offering email subscription option, to keep my readers from subscribing RSS, only to later stop for any longer being that they got bogged down.

I tried to set up Feedburner to send out emails this summer and learned that Google does not support this option anymore.

I thought about using Feedblitz.

You have any other suggestions, right? Eventually, this means providing content that offers something genuinely useful for your audience -not just content that exists to boost your Search Engine promotion or promote your products. In blogging world, you'll often hear people talk about giving value to readers. This is where it starts getting very interesting. Though, nearly as good option is to use WordPress, if that sounds a bit your personal. It's a well need to reach out by leaving thoughtful, valuable comments on their posts.

The actual question is. Anyone else got suggestions?

Free for first 2000 subscribers.

Excellent article Ali! You can feed out daily or weekly and ask people to nominate what kinds of info types they need fed to them. Mailchimp works for me. It's also a powerful technique for prompting existing customers to buy again. Remember, while running a sale on a particular product or service can be a great way to tempt prospective customers to make their first purchase from you, whatever line of business you have. We all love bargains -blog readers are definitely no exception! Here Whether you are you been blogging for years,, or new to blogging.

In any kind of business, your reputation matters.

Your community would quickly learn about it, and avoid you, Therefore in case you ran a local store and ripped off customers or provided shoddy goods.

With a smile -and customers will tell their friends. You'd offer quality products at a decent price. You might look for to think beyond news stories or major world events to look at points of local interest, or at what's being talked about among a particular online community that relates to your business pic or niche. Posts that link with what people are already interested in do have an instant advantage, while it can get gimmicky to tie each post on your blog into a current event or talking point. Generally, for complacency, I use Sucuri but I've found it really awesome. Twitter profile, Facebook Page or positive articles about you, you're fine, if you get links to your blog. However, it could also be a perfect idea to establish a presence on a few social media sites, as these typically rank highly for your company name on Google. Then, google your company name and see what comes up on first few pages. I fell in love with Google Reader a couple of years ago, and started adding my favorite blogs until there were so many that I either wasted enormous time going through them, or skipping through vast quantities of posts I had delayed for a while as I didn't seek for to block out totime.

One problem that each blog faces is spam. Shady Internet marketers will attempt to promote their products through spam comments and trackbacks, that create a poor impression for your readers. Akismet, a powerful antispam plugin, will do all hard work for you. Any month deleting a 'neverending' stream of spam. By stopping spam comments and trackbacks, Akismet ensures that your blog comments section always looks attractive and welcoming to readers. As they explain. We know all about their spambots, comment factories, buffer sites and social engineering tricks. To most powerful factors influencing your online success is whether you have support from other bloggers. While watching methods and tricks used by spammers in real time, akismet monitors millions of blogs and forums. See them as potential allies, instead of seeing other blogs in your niche as competitors. Premise plugin from Copyblogger, as an example, comes handy when you want to create slick landing pages and even turn your blog into a membership site.

Offer extensive new functionality, others cost money.a lot of plugins are free. You'll need to attribute image -this means providing a link back to toimage's creator. So, or if you intend to make some solid income, you'd better find images that are licensed for commercial use I'd say if your blog makes money. Or if you picked a theme more or less at random, you might seek for to look for something that's suited to your brand or your blogging needs, if your blog is still using default theme that it came with.a lot of people prefer to watch a video instead of reading a blog post, and video content is also a great way to build stronger connections with your existing readers. Also, so it's where YouTube comes in handy. It can be tricky to get video files onto your blog. You can use a plugin like WPtouch to create a fast mobile theme without affecting your site's regular theme, intention to make your blog mobilefriendly.

Plugins do have a couple of drawbacks.

More plugins you install, slower your blog will be.

For both of these reasons, it's essential to deactivate and delete plugins that you're not using, and to regularly update those you do use. Needless to say, outdated or badly coded ones can cause security problems for your blog, potentially letting hackers get in. Think about other promotions you could run, So in case you don't look for to discount your product or service. Actually, bundle it with something extra like an ebook or a series of videos, for the sake of example, you might sell your usual service at usual price.

Do go though, if what you're doing works for you.

There were many suggestions that I did not think of.

So it is a great post to next year. I am always looking for ways to take my blogging to next level, and these will definitely any blog post, in order to as a platform or build my own site/domain? As a result, you can need.

Whenever you leave a comment,, your Gravatar photo, logo for awhileside, You can sign up for a Gravatar account for free.

Rather than a newbie, you also look like an established blogger, that will encourage for any longerside your comment to make sure more about you.

By attaching your face to your comments, you a tally new line in your post editor and paste in link to tovideo's page on YouTube. You can easily embed a link to your YouTube video -or anyone else's video that you seek for to share -in WordPress. Certainly, while talking about or taking an interest in at present, word zeitgeist means spirit of times -what are people concerned with.

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Responsive Portfolio WordPress Themes | Templified

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Responsive Portfolio WordPress Themes

These days, more and more people are surfing the internet on mobile devices. Whether it’s a smart phone or tablet, it’s important that you consider the user experience for all of your visitors. That’s never been more important than when you’re putting together your online portfolio. It’s critical to display your images, your video, posts and pages the right way, so everything looks just like you want it to look.

Considering how prevalent mobile devices are these days, it’s incredibly important to have a WordPress theme that’s completely mobile friendly, responsive and filled with all the features that a modern portfolio needs to have.

This is a collection of the best WordPress Mobile Portfolio themes, great for showing off your portfolio on any kind of device. No matter which one you select, you’re going to get a beautiful and professional theme that frames your creativity in a really positive way.

Airtifact

The Airtifact WordPress theme is a creative portfolio theme for WordPress and it’s got a really cool, simple and modern style.  Airtifact, that’s actually sort of hard to type for me. I’m not really sure why, I guess I just keep wanting to type artifact. But that’s not the name of this template, that’s a video game available on Steam. I’ve got to get my act together and make sure that I don’t have any more typos. My boss told me that if I get one more typo, I’m fired. And I work for myself, so that’s really troubling concept. Anyway, Airtifact is a great-looking, minimal style creative portfolio theme that I think will make your visitors turn somersaults with joy. I don’t think I’m going to stay in that, this theme is said to have caused hundreds of people recently to run through the streets naked, shouting for joy.

Honestly, it’s true.  I swear.

Careful don’t end up running around like an idiot, jumping up and down on one foot, running into traffic, acting like you are completely insane just because you took a look at the front page of this template. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

In all seriousness, this theme is one of the better looking than most portfolio themes I’ve seen in 2018, it’s going to Creative Design with masonry grid layout optional, it’s a minimal and original looking WordPress theme that also offer is Parallax scrolling. Great for photography portfolios, video & blogs alike, this unique and simple WordPress theme is a high-performance option if you want a modern end minimal portfolio, a journal or magazine template to help reach new audiences and a vibrant and readable experience for everyone. This is one of the better WordPress themes come out in September of 2018 and I think that the early sales are really represent that fact, it’s sold 26 times in just two days on the market, which isn’t a record, but it is awfully impressive. So, I think that this is certainly a theme that you should consider if you need a minimalist portfolio template to Showcase your creative works of art.

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Elegant

Minimalist themes don’t have to be plain and boring. Look at Elegant here, it’s a very stylish but minimal theme from Themify, who are one of my favorite theme developers anywhere.  Elegant is a simple, corporate influenced theme.  It’s a blog, a portfolio and an eCommerce theme with a simple minimalist style that’s great for any sort of website.  Minimalist themes do e fine job of letting you create any kind of content, since minimalist themes are so adaptable, they form fit themselves to your content, not the other way around.  There are no fancy animations, no graphic effects that call attention away from the content.  Elegant focuses the attention on your posts and you images, right where the attention should be focused.  I love the attention to the smallest details with Elegant, the typography is amazing too.  The responsive design of this theme makes it so it looks great on all devices.  You’ve got a bonus with the portfolio and team post types too, an image filter, masonry and grid layouts and a ton more.  And Themify is known for great support, so you’ll never run into problems using this theme.

Elegant is a theme from Themify.me, it’s a clean and multipurpose theme that has relatively few extra embellishments, the typography and clean layout is what really strikes you first. There’s a portfolio and a team post type, so I think this theme works well for creative companies who want to showcase a portfolio and promote whatever creative work you do. Themify works very hard on their themes so they’re as reliable as possible and Elegant is no exception. This theme is well supported, it’s well documented and it’s great for SEO, since it loads fast and it’s perfectly optimized for display on all types of devices.

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Incanto

This WordPress premium portfolio theme is called Incanto.  It’s clean, it’s modern and it’s packed with creative features, highly modifiable, very easy to use, reliable and gorgeous, it’s versatile, perfectly coded and responsive, amazing for online marketing companies, freelancers, design companies, advertising companies or photographers. You can create a wonderful first impression with a powerful, well-made WordPress portfolio theme.  With parallax style, video backgrounds from sites like YouTube, one page and multi page versions and more, this theme has a lot to offer just about any type of business.

If you need to work with a robust plugin to make a lovely site, you must consider the adaptable, simple to use drag and drop page builder plugin, Visual Composer.  Visual Composer works perfectly with the leading third party plugins like Contact Form 7, Essential Grid, popular forms plugins like Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms, Layer or Revolution Sliders and WooCommerce. That helps make this beautiful WordPress theme incredibly functional.  What people really love is the low cost, that it’s compatible with everything, the incredible powerful features, that it’s very user friendly and the adaptability to produce any variety of site.  Visual Composer offers the massive template library, incredible support, dozens of content elements, popular front end editor and responsive, professional design, and tons more.

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Reveal

A responsive WordPress portfolio theme, Reveal is intended to make your content look great regardless of the screen size or device it is viewed on. With its clean and minimal styling, coupled with project viewing powered by Ajax, the theme is designed to put your best work on display.

Reveal comes with myriads of features. It is optimized for search engines that gives you a decided edge over your competitors. It is likewise bundled with a number of exclusive widgets that you can use to display adverts, display contents in the sidebar, and connect to your social network accounts.

The theme has clean coding that is easy to edit because the codes are organized and uncompressed. It complies with the best WordPress practices. Your audience can easily communicate with you because of the built-in contact form. All you have to do is enter your email and it is ready to go. Even better is the localization feature that allows you to translate the theme to the language that best suits your target visitors.

You can easily customize the theme with Reveal’s wide-ranging options. Everything you need is easily accessible. Likewise, you can easily display and sell your products online with WooCommerce. No installation or editing required.

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Hero

If you need a WordPress portfolio theme that is responsive but at the same time minimal, and will allow you to highlight the services you offer by showcasing your best work, then Hero is the theme for you. With the theme’s parallax home page banner combined with your creativity, you can display your primary message in a manner that will engage your viewers.

The shortcodes plugin that comes free with Hero can be used for creating engrossing slideshows and adding toggles, buttons, columns, and tabs. You can likewise add your logo, custom CSS, colors, and numerous other options that will help make your website unique.  Use the theme’s localization support to translate the theme into your preferred language. Hero is likewise built with a responsive layout design that will make your site look amazing on any device, regardless of the screen size.

Easily insert videos from your favorite sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and others via Hero’s video support feature. Smooth filtering and hover effects are available to create an amazing look for your project.  To create your contact form, use the highly functional Contact Form 7 that is fully compatible with Hero. You also have control over the typography of your content with the availability of numerous Google fonts.

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Create

Create, from ThemeTrust, is a really solid choice for developing a successful one page theme for WordPress.  This drag and drop page builder allows you to set up one page navigation to automatically scroll to each section of the page, even highlighting the navigation as you scroll down the page.  Create is works seamlessly with WooCommerce and can have you up and running with a new online shop in a few clicks.  Create comes bundled with Revolution slider and it supports unlimited widget areas, pricing tables and gives the option for a full width or boxed layout.  Your portfolio pages will look fantastic too with filtering animations, hover effects and Ajax loading that give off a truly premium look and feel.  We love this one as a one pager theme, but if you do want to use it as a multi page website template, Create allows you to customize each page with posts, pages and projects each having a slightly different look, like custom menus, headers, footers and more.

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CoupShop

For folks looking for a minimalistic eCommerce shop, CoupShop could do the trick.  Built with speed and style in equal measure, Coup Shop is a full featured WordPress eCommerce theme with a simple, modern look and a ton of great features to make it easy to run your online business.  Built by Themes Kingdom, Coup Shop is a great theme for promoting all kinds of products with a simple and straightforward presentation that makes whatever it is you’re selling look amazing.  The minimalist design is so flexible, it works for everything.  With support for Easy Digital Downloads as well as WooCommerce, you can even sell downloadable goods, if that’s what you’re into.  But don’t look for a lot of extra details, this theme is made to be simple, clean, fast loading and SEO friendly.  It’s also responsive, which should go without saying, but there are still some themes out there that aren’t responsive, so it’s worth noting.  CoupShop is from Themes Kingdom and it’s the eCommerce version of their popular Coup blogging theme. Both are simple and highly efficient WordPress themes, with bold and clean layouts, plenty of features and a focus on content. Responsive, compatible with all browsers and easy to customize, CoupShop is a great way to promote any sort of product you could imagine. One really nice thing about ThemesKingdom, you can get a 10% coupon if you sign up for their newsletter. Totally worth it.

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Weston

Weston is a premium, minimalist eCommerce theme with cool layouts, a simple design and a ton of features.  With Weston, you get a simple, elegant design with highly modern features that make it one of the best themes to come along in the last few years.  In terms of minimalist design, it’s right up there with the very best.  Minimalism doesn’t mean that it lacks features, this theme is powered by Visual Composer and that comes with a ton of pre-made functionality.  The basic, essential features include WooCommerce, beautiful portfolios, a delightful blog layout and more.  With Visual Composer, it’s a smooth and straightforward process to produce a site that has all the visual appeal that a contemporary and stylish website should have, with every tool you could possibly want to run your business.  With Visual Composer, it’s possible to create any sort of new and novel site for any type of business.  Weston is a Visual Composer based theme that’s clean and highly functional without the code bloat that you sometimes see with VC based themes. Weston has all the fundamental flexibility and functionality you need to build a really great website. Video backgrounds, portfolios, Google fonts and plenty more ensure that Weston can be adapted for any need. ThemeTrust offers a year of free support and updates to all of it’s themes, there are plenty of other great reasons to pick this theme, so take a look at more information below.

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Beatrix

Beatrix is a handmade WordPress theme for selling handmade products. Cool!  Selling handmade goods online is a great way to pursue your passion and earn some passive income. Designed especially for creative individuals who want to start a craft store business online, Beatrix is great for clothing stores, jewelry stores, and more. This trendy shopping theme enables you to display high quality images of your masterpieces in the Shop page. There, you can add detailed and effective product descriptions to convince clients to purchase your stuff. Additionally, previous customers can add their ratings and reviews. This is useful considering the effect of peer feedback on people’s buying decisions. Being WooCommerce-integrated, Beatrix allows your would-be clients to register and create their own accounts. From their individual account dashboards, they can easily manage their purchases and their shipping info. This way, they are provided with a hassle-free shopping experience. This, in turn, helps boosts your sales. Additionally, you get to manage everything from orders to shipping without leaving your WordPress Admin.

This theme includes free 1 hour customization so you end up with a unique online store that fits the theme of your business. In addition, you get the advantage of free theme updates. You can choose among multiple home page designs and unlimited colors. This theme is also compatible with most popular browsers, and its responsive design and load speed optimization provide a pleasant window-shopping and purchasing experience to customers even while they’re mobile. Beatrix lets you categorize your products according to type. The filterable portfolio lets shoppers view the items according to price, ratings, and newness. To further increase your sales, virtual shoppers will be shown a list of related products based on recently viewed items. Show your potential buyers how good they’ll look when they buy your products. You can use the Blog section of this theme to post articles and photos of fashion inspirations.

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You also may be interested in our original collection of portfolio themes for WordPress.  Great place to find some amazing stuff.