#danny's paid to be an enabler | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

legitimatesatanspawn · 6 months ago

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The funny part is that I have several completed and incomplete oneshots posted on Ao3 with this sort of idea (Nedzu meeting another sapient quirked animal rescued from a replica of his origin story). Granted, most wips were Nedzu clones made with stolen DNA sample and you can imagine how Thrilled he would've been.

Buuuut Danny? As a (double checks the prompt) okay the animal is left unnamed but something like Nedzu makes for easy comparisons and contrasts.

I have a very particular set of headcanons regarding Nedzu's origin story which I'm skipping over but regarding I Island, literally how many tech based heroes/villains do we see in canon? Few! VERY few! Most heroes are very dependent on their near-magical dna-given powers with maybe some supplementary gear. Power Loader is UNUSUAL. So.

It'd be hilarious to me if Danny made himself a mini-mecha ATAT Walker and he's 100% enabled with it. On one hand: it's not a that demolition nightmare Nedzu whipped out during the exams. On the other: do they really have to encourage this?

Nedzu peers at the young pup. The fur pattern resembles one of his littermates, although the eyes are unusual. Such a vibrant shade of green. Not implausible given the expanded range of colorations humans exhibit when compared to humans before quirks emerged. Yet...

The victim takes priority. The shutdown and en-masse arrests of the illicit quirk research facility is so very gratifying, but with the discovery of a young member of his family held captive within, Nedzu had to excuse himself from the process.

A chill clings to his nephew's fur and the faint stench of death. The air of a mausoleum rather than fresh rot. The reports Nedzu skimmed before discovering a surviving subject suggest the green eyes are a result of the substance the humans were experimenting with. The implications are quite obvious.

"Before you ferry him away, Nezu, we need to take a few more photos."

Even if it is... taxing to maintain calm so no one dares separate them.

Danny has no idea who this guy is but that suit looks way more expensive than anything the cheeseball would buy and that's saying something considering how pricey Sam's parents' outfits could get. Plus something about the texture looks different too, like it's stiffer.

But thanks to all the many MANY different ways ghosts look, he's gotten really good at deciphering nonhuman eye... looks, or whatever you want to call it.

Probably not a Vlad situation. The guy's too surprised to have paid someone off for a perfect son.

All that time as a dragon's paid off in helping Danny figure out quadrupedal movement. Although Maybe-Dad is walking around like a human and he unlike the yetis doesn't have the excuse of an ectoplasmic biology.

Looks kind of painful, actually. Yikes.

Can't think of anything else this second besides a few little blurbs but I'll likely get back to it when I'm more awake.

Danny, internally (dread): Oh no. It's a school. It's highschool. I'm related to the principal. Someone: "He looks excited." Nedzu, looks: "Hmm. Is that what you think?"

Danny, after figuring out how to phase through things. Teacher: "Principal Nedzu. How in the world is your nephew getting into the staff office?" Nedzu, too entertained to give it away: "I can tell you how he's not." Teacher: "ugh fine keep your secrets."

Also Nedzu 200% figures out that somehow Nephew has memories of a pre-quirk / early-quirk (depends on the timeline) human. Does this change his regard of the pup? Nope, it just explains some of the weird knowledge pools like how does a lab subject have detailed knowledge of astrology and NASA's tech.

Behold! o/ The Face Of Benevolent Evil!

Mr. Principle! A professional hero and educator!

Also possibly some sort of stoat hybrid! Certainly a chimera of Japanese fauna! With the Quirk High Specs, he is one of, if not THE, smartest beings on the planet of which he resides! With a background perfectly justifying a decent into hatred and villiany, he instead chose to channel his incredible world shaking intellect into the shaping of future generations!

He likes to fuck with people!

For FUNSIES~☆!

What can he say? It keeps a man young and mentally stimulated! Plus the hysterical screaming of his staff and students is HILARIOUS. He can even argue it makes for good reaction training! Unforseen situations, children! React!!! *psychotic chortling*

Mmmmm, yes. We all have our trauma responses. Ways we deal with them. He should probably find other means... but he won't! Tea and tormenting the student body make for good future heroes, you know! They adapt!

But! You may ask! Why am I introducing you to this... *polite yet somehow deeply threatening smile* c-completely sane and normal individual!? Esteemed educator that he is! Ha ha...

A good and not at a under threat question!

Villains? Are fuuuuuckin STUPID!

Doesn't matter how many PHDs you possess! In fact! That makes it WORSE! You moron! You absolute fool! No traveling circus would have you, you sub-rate CLOWN of a jingle jangle dunce jester! You have a god damn PHD! Possibly MULTIPLE PHD!

And you thought "ooooh I should go into cwiiiiime~☆"?

Do you hear yourself when you talk? DO YOU?! Ooooh boohoo. They won't let you study what you WANT to study. It's called an ETHICS BOARD. And YEAH, NO SHIT! Maybe get over it and keep you fucked up fantasies to your SELF.

Or? If you REALLY can't hold it in? Lay the ground work like EVERYONE FUCKING ELSE! You're not special! Everyone wants to play god! It's FUN! They let you have the COOL toys! But you have to EARN that shit! Not jump straight from graduation to "fucked up superscience"!

And? If it's NOT the Ethics Board? But just some bureaucrat on a power trip? You don't have to fucking STAY. This? This RIGHT HERE? Is why I-Island fucking EXSISTS.

APPLY.

They are SO MANY countries you could move too. SO MANY other labs. You actual DUMBASS.

But NO! You decided to commit to a fucked up underground Villian Lab. As though HUNTING THOSE isn't the PERSONAL fucking passion project of THE SMARTEST BEING IN JAPAN. Frankly? You deserve this. You deserve this and our school doesn't know you. Never heard of you. You whoms't?

Coulda changed the world. But instead all you did was piss of The Fuzzy White Demon Lord of UA. Rest in pieces. *click*

*sound of doors smashing open*

*violent Raid Upon Your Labs noises*

But! You may ask? What's IN the Lab?

What MAKES this a DP crossover?

I like your question asking spirit! Good one! And the answer? You know what's better then ONE(1) Nedzu? A second one that you can ACTUALLY control this time! After all! You could consider Mr. Principle a prototype. A proof of concept, if you will. If you were able to make ANOTHER.....

Well, you would set off EVERY. SINGLE. ALARM. Nedzu has set up!

All of them!

Because he don't PLAY THAT.

He has long last trauma from the labs and is the SOLE FUCKING SURVIVOR. There WERE others. They Did Not make it. And their slow agonizing deaths are carved into his brain for the rest of his life. Truely "The living shall envy the dead"; it was a place that made hell seem merciful.

When he declare Never Again?

He fucking MEANT Never Again. He will BURN your empires to ash, with you in them. No More Labs.

So :) You can IMAGINE :) HOW HAPPY HE IS :)

That someone out there is trying to RECREATE his SUPER traumatic childhood, on ANOTHER CHILD. Ha ha! Gonna be a second Nedzu huh? Planning to torture HIM like you did me, HUH? Shove him in a cage and treat him like an animal? Force him to watch as the others die? Collars and whips and cattle prods? Mazes?!

Nedzu may lose his shit.

Juuuuust a little bit.

But if anyone there knows what good for them? They saw NOTHING. What's a little PTSD flashback between friends? Now what is the baby?

Smashcut to said baby!

Because it was a TEAM effort, Danny was successful in "Nuh Uh!"ing out of Rulership. But NOT out of governance. Since he DID help. He's a Councilman now. It's? Not as bad as it could be, honestly. Since it's opened the Zone up to a more democratic system.

Still held by "kick the ass of the person you wanna replace" but still!

Babysteps.

Thing is? There was apparently this weird? Leak? Like a couple hundred years ago, in this one area, that was never addressed. Everyone just moved their doors and stuff. Treated it like the floors flooded. But now that they HAVE someone to complain too?

They all want their territories back.

"Go fix it!" What are we? Janitors?

Danny looses the rock, paper, scissors competition. He's pretty sure Boxy cheated. But like? Dude has a kid to go home too, so Danny doesn't fight him to hard on this. Uuuuuugh. Just remember the Spider-Man motto. Great power~ blah blah blaaaah~

And? Wow is it fucked out there.

The whole PLANET has to be limnal as FUCK. Yikes.

Problem is? When he and his team (Because YES, he HAS learned from his mistakes, Jazz.) get close to the... frankly the Zone here looks like distorted spiderwebbing. With him leading the charge, obviously.

....something happens.

It's... it's not a portal. Wrong color. It's like someone USED the weird spiderwebbing effect to... to reach INTO the Zone? But they are severally Limnal. Clawed hands, blue tint. But that's not the problem.

No, the problem.

The Horror.

The thing that his team can only watch on in agonized terror as it plays out... is that hand? It shoots out of nowhere. Ghostlike in the Zone. Meaning it must be living. And PLUNGES directly into Danny's chest to wrap around his core.

Time seems to slow.

He can't even scream in pain. At the violation. His team, acquaintances, yes, but friendly ones. Can not even cry out in horror, as they watch their friend and team lead be butchered before them. Before that uncaring hand is ripping back. Perfect ice and starlight in its uncaring grip.

For a terrible moment... he is in two places at once.

Then he is crushed in a burning grip. Like molten bars. Watching his own body dissolve into nothing in an instant, pain and horror still etched upon his face. The beginnings of screams ripping from his team as they jerk away from the nightmarish threat.

Then he can not think at all.

He... he TRIES. Knows he has been captured. Is certainly not the sort to give up easily. But... he's so tired. His body feels? Weird. Not wrong, per say. It's HIS. But... small and weird. Like he's shape shifted into a new form and hasn't adjusted yet.

....

.......

...........

He's getting really sick of all the goop against his whiskers and in his ears. It feels WEIRD against his fu- WAIT a second... did those assholes shove him into an animal? Why?! To contain him? Ha! Jokes on them! He's DONE THIS before!

For FUN!

He once spent a whole ass summer as a tiny dragon just 'CAUSE!

Unfortunately, said assholes notice him waking up. Dump him in a glorified hamster cage. But like.... a SHITTY "I don't care about the pet I bought" hamster cage. Dude. And he's naked.

Is that Japanese? Ooooh! It IS! Thank you, Tucker's Weeb phase.

......actually, never mind. Lotta dehumanizing language there, my guys. What is this? The GIW international? You couldn't even give me PANTS? Swear to God, call me an "it" ONE more time and the next time I have to go? I am going to aim through the bars at your-! *alarms going off*

....wasn't me.

I mean, be all means, ha ha and get fucked, but? Wasn't me. Oh hey! Some one exploded the doo-

AND? In Lab 4?

Nedzu finds a child with fluffy, ungroomed black and white fur, and the curious yet cautious eyes of a survivor. They are the most magnificent green, pale and luminous they glow in the laboratories lighting. Paws too big for his small frame, delicate ears on the swivel, equally large. Yet to grow into either. Adolescent, at best.

He watches the child take him in. Note his features and the chaos behind him. The injured scientist under his feet. Come to him conclusion. Nedzu will not rush him. Now that he... he stand the chance to be the hero he himself never had. It is a strange feeling. At once cathartic and unbearably painful.

He is given the equivalent of a cheerful grin, as the lad points the the lock on the cage. Is asked if he happened to bring a spare pair of pants. He can not help his amused chortle as he makes quick work of the lock. The unbearable RELIEF he feels.

He... he was not too late.

These monsters had no chance to crush the boy's light. To make a monster of him, like they did with him. He survived his laboratory, his hell. But not all of him left that terrible place. He knows that. Some innocence, some goodness, died alone in the dark. But here? He insured there would be no chance.

With amusement, he watches the boy turn the lab upside down until he finds spare scrubs. Triumphant, he then considers his own, tiny claws. Dismisses them. Attempts to hop up on a chair to retrieve something sharp. It? Is unbearably cute. To watch him rip and shred, problem solve. His little mind churning away. Whiskers twitching as his eyes dart around, considering his options.

Nedzu offers one of his spare knives.

Watches him light up.

Adorable~

@legitimatesatanspawn @hdgnj @nerdpoe @babbling-babull @lolottes

#reblog #my writing #danny phantom #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #nedzu #nezu mha #i'm too tired to focus

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thelastspeecher · 2 years ago

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Hi, to contribute to the HMU on the original Stanley McGucket, one thing in the sequel that I would like more light on is Fidds reintegrating with the family after escaping his cult. Especially Fidds with the kids. I remember liking an older short in the same verse with Danny time traveling and running into Fidds, I'd love more interactions between Fidds and his son, nieces & nephew. Both before and after the memory gun problem.

So...I got this ask over a year ago. I planned on doing a write for it, but that plan fell to the wayside after I got busy with other things. But then I felt like I wanted to do something for the 10 year Gravity Falls anniversary, and I felt like revisiting my OG AU, the Stanley McGucket AU, would be a good way to do so.

Anon, it took a year, but I finally wrote up some Fidds interacting with his nieces. Hope you enjoy it.

———————————————————————————————————–

Fiddleford carefully screwed the last screw in. He slapped the side of the air conditioning unit. With a shudder, it came back to life. Fiddleford sighed in relief and tucked his screwdriver into his back pocket.

‘Bout time. Summer’s comin’ up. Can’t have folks sweatin’ in the roadside attraction Stan decided to run fer some reason. He scowled. No, don’t think so negatively. His business is what enabled him and Angie to take care of Tate fer so long. In fact, Tate had only moved back in with Fiddleford last month, after Fiddleford managed to find a place and prove he could maintain it to Angie’s standards.

“Uncle Fidds?” Fiddleford turned around. Danny, the older of his eight-year-old twin nieces, stood before him. He smiled politely. Similar to how he had only just gotten custody of Tate again, he hadn’t been allowed to be around his nieces or nephews if they were alone until he stopped having his memory lapses. His nieces in particular were still getting used to him, so he felt the need to be on his best uncle behavior around them.

“Did ya want somethin’ from me, honey?” he asked. Danny clasped her hands in front of her.

“Daddy wants to know if the air conditioner is fixed yet,” she said dutifully. Fiddleford nodded.

“Sure is!”

“Oh, wow.” Danny’s rich brown eyes, which she had inherited from her father, widened. “Daddy’s been shouting at it for weeks and you got it fixed so fast!”

“Why didn’t he ask fer professional help sooner, if it’s been causin’ trouble fer so long?” Fiddleford asked. Danny shrugged.

“Daddy says he doesn’t wanna spend money on somethin’ he can do himself.”

“He still could’ve called me fer help. I’m more ‘n happy to do this work fer free. It’s the least I can do after yer parents took in Tate while I was…” Fiddleford cleared his throat. “Is yer dad plannin’ on payin’ me, then?”

“Mama wants to. Daddy doesn’t.”

“Sounds about right,” Fiddleford muttered to himself. One of the things Stan and Angie frequently butted heads over was Angie’s insistence on paying for things, versus Stan’s desire to spend as little money as possible. “Well, you can tell yer dad I don’t want to be paid. You can also tell ‘im that if yer ma tries to pay me, I’ll send the cash back.” Danny nodded. She cocked her head in a manner exactly like Angie.

“How’d you fix it?” she asked slowly.

“First, what I did was-” Fiddleford started. He cut himself off, an idea coming to him. “Do ya want me to tell ya or show ya?” Danny bounced on the balls of her feet excitedly.

“Both, please!” Danny paused. “Unless it ruins all yer work.”

“Aw.” Fiddleford gave her an affectionate noogie. Her hair wasn’t nearly as curly as her twin sister’s, but it was just as thick, catching on his fingers. He extracted his fingers carefully to avoid tugging. “Sweet potata, I already fixed it once. I can fix it again just as easy.” Danny beamed. Fiddleford took his screwdriver out of his pocket.

“That’s a screwdriver, right?” Danny blurted out.

“Yup. Want to look closer?”

“Yes!” Fiddleford handed his screwdriver to his niece. Danny looked it over with a careful eye.

A future engineer’s eye. Fiddleford could feel his heart swelling with pride. She’s always liked takin’ things apart and puttin’ ‘em back together. And the things she’s built with her blocks, why, they’re on par with what an adult could do.

“I thought screwdrivers had X’s on the point,” Danny said slowly.

“We call that kind of screwdriver a Phillips head screwdriver. What ya got right there is a regular ole screwdriver, so it’s a bit different. They work the same way, they just use dif’rent kinds of screws.”

“Oh. Okay!” Danny handed the screwdriver back to Fiddleford.

“Any other questions ‘fore we start?” Fiddleford asked. Danny shook her head. “Then I’ll go ahead and get started.”

Fiddleford had managed to re-break the air conditioner and was halfway through fixing it again when his impromptu lecture was interrupted by the arrival of Danny’s twin, Daisy.

“Daddy wants to know if the air conditioner’s fixed,” Daisy said dully. She stared at the partially disassembled air conditioner. “Guess not.”

“Oh, I fixed it,” Fiddleford said. Daisy blinked.

“But you’re still doing stuff,” she pointed out. She gasped. “Are you making it better? Like in Mama’s stories?” Fiddleford chuckled.

“Nope, I ain’t soupin’ it up like when I tried to upgrade things ‘round the house as a kidlet.”

“Oh, boo.” Daisy pouted. “Mama said you got fire to come from the sink instead of water.”

“Do ya want somethin’ like that?” Fiddleford asked. Daisy shrugged.

“Sometimes.”

She must get those tendencies from Stan. Angie was never destructive on purpose, she just was energetic and clumsy. Daisy seems like she wouldn’t mind burnin’ down the house just ‘cause she’s bored. Fiddleford smiled fondly. Lord above, Stan and Angie are goin’ to have their hands full when Daisy takes her first chemistry course.

“If you fixed it, why are you still doing things to it?” Daisy asked.

“I broke it again so’s I could show yer sister how to fix it.”

“Huh.” Daisy frowned thoughtfully. Her eyes, blue like Angie’s, lit up. “Can I watch, too?”

“Are ya sure?” Fiddleford asked. “I didn’t think ya had an interest in machinery like yer sister.”

“Nah.” Daisy sat down on the floor next to her twin. “But this is more interestin’ than playing with my brothers or helping Daddy.”

“You like helping Daddy,” Danny said. Daisy shrugged.

“With the taxid- tax- taxider-” She grunted in frustration.

“Taxidermy,” Fiddleford supplied. Daisy nodded.

“That. I like that. Daddy’s not doing it right now, though. He’s counting money.”

“That’s an important part of ownin’ a business, keepin’ track of what comes in,” Fiddleford said. Daisy rolled her eyes.

“Yeah. But it’s boring. This sounds better.” She grinned, the gap from her most recently lost baby tooth on full display. “Machines stink, but I like you, Uncle Fidds. You’re weird.” Fiddleford smiled.

“I reckon I like you too, sweetheart.”

#I've actually been rereading my Stanley McGucket fics on AO3 #(I got a couple comments on them recently and it made me want to reread them)#and rereading my flagship fic really helped inspire me to work on this ficlet #........anyways people should go read ''Stanley McGucket'' on AO3 if they haven't #it's probs my favorite fic I've done #Stanley McGucket AU #Fiddleford McGucket #Danica Pines #Daisy McGucket #Stangie Family #Gravity Falls #my writing #my stuff #ask #Anonymous

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punkranger · 2 years ago

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11, 19 and 41 for the lovely Antoine? 💜

11. How are they vocally expressive? What kind of voice, accent, tones, inflections, volume, phrases and slang, and manner of speaking do they use? Antoine has very much adopted local ways of speaking, so he has whatever the LD equivalent of an LA accent, including slang and common phrases. At least when he’s feeling comfortable, if he’s less sure of the situation he may revert to speaking without an accent at all. In general he speaks informally with most people, unless it’s someone he doesn’t like and wants to annoy, then he’ll either speak unnecessarily formally or extremely rudely depending on what he thinks would work best.

As for tone and volume his mood tends to reflect in his voice, becoming higher and louder the more excited he is - and lower if he’s in a bad mood.

19. How do they behave within a group? What role(s) do they take? Does this differ if they know and trust the group, versus finding themselves in a group of strangers? Why? He can be pretty quick at blending in with a new group if he wants to, either a temporary one or something more permanent like his little gang. With them he was of course the leader, an easy enough role to take being the one that paid them, but he never wanted to be entirely separated from them so he was the first to start joking around - something that took most of them by surprise I’m sure. He is of course still the leader, but he always takes suggestions even if he has the final say.

He doesn’t really spend much time in other groups these days, aside from the Rangers, but he is very aware that he is not a part of them - more someone who is associated with Ortega and Daniel separately. Which ofc makes that “group dynamic” interesting, since he does interact with all the Rangers though rarely all at once, but when he does he tends to take different roles; to Danny he is the teacher, to Ortega he is simultaneously the voice of reason and the enabler, to Chen he is as annoying as he can be, and as for Argent he both wants her attention and is annoyed by her not caring. Those few times they’re all together he tends to play up his familiarity with Chen and Ortega because he doesn’t like to feel left out.

41. What associations do they bring to mind? Words or phrases, images, metaphors or motifs? Why? Antoine is very much a night-time city person, so; concrete, neon and streetlights reflecting on wet asphalt, light pollution and smog obscuring the sky. To match that, the colours purple and orange and steely grey.

Other things that come to mind are scrap metal and, like his villain-persona, things associated with ruin; the ravaged coastline of Los Diablos, the scars in the landscape and the abandoned buildings - the nanovores and their ability to erode things to dust.

#asks #fallen hero #sidestep #antoine duman #thank you ginger ^^#just hoping these make sense #can't see my screen lol the sun's too bright

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Lilo and Stitch Crossover Arc: “Rufus” (Kim Possible) Better and Worse (Paid for by WeirdKev27)

Aloha all you happy people! It’s back to Kauai for the third of my look at LIlo and Stitch’s crossover episodes! This retrospective was made possible by WeirdKev27, who had the idea for it and paid for me to review these episodes. You too can buy reviews for only 5 bucks a pop. Just go to my ask, Direct Messages or discord.

Now with my plugging out of the way, this one, out of all four is the one I looked forward to the most, and out of the four shows in this crossoverathon to make the trip to the Kauai, this one is hands down my faviorite.

Kim Possible was just damn good and having rewatched a handful of episodes and the movie (Easily one of my faviorite Disney movies and the best DCOM, I will not back down on either), I can say it holds up every bit as good as it did in the early 2000′s. Frankly like Danny Phantom i’m surprised I never thought to get to it till now. But no time like the present: The show proper is a fun super spy sendup, but still feels unique: Instead of i’ts Teen Superspy working for some knockoff of MI6 or S.H.I.E.L.D., Kim is self employed, simply helping people because it’s the right thign to do and not for any reward with the help of her bumbling but loveable sidekick and future boyfriend Ron, though the romance angle wasn’t overplayed with the two, just hinted at here and there, enough to make it plausable for Ron to realize he has feelings in the movie and for Kim to return them and frankly it’s probably the best handled “Friends to lovers’ plot i’ve seen in a children’s cartoon. I”ll get more into that if I hit my stretch goal for it on patreon, more on that at the end of the review, but while it has no baring on this review I still felt it worth noting as that trope is NOT easy to pull off.

Point is, the show was smart, funny, engaging and had two great characters, a tremendously talented voice cast, and more anchoring it. It was a treasured part of my adolsence. It also had one of the only succesful “Save our show” campagins from fans i’ve ever seen. Despite So The Drama having been written as a finale and having reached Disney’s episode count, fan demand for a fourth season was so incredibly high we got one and it’s to this day one of the very few Disney shows to live past three seasons as a result. The show is in full on Disney Plus, along with the movie, which I HIGHLY recommend and hope I get to talk about, and the recent live action remake movie which .. is not bad. Not GREAT but the leads do make a good kim and ron, paticuarlly my boy Sean Gambone as Ron, and for a live action remake it really does get the spirit of the show.

But obviously we’re not here to talk about the show proper, though I REALLY want to now, but instead it’s crossover. So far the crossovers for Lilo and Stitch have been, much like said live action remake, OKAY, but nothing amazing, often shoving in sideplots related to Lilo and Stitch proper we didn’t need, forced morals and not really having a good amount of character intraction. The good news is this crossover DOES fix a lot of that.. the bad is that it also has some new problems, and still falls into some of the same traps the other episodes have. See what I mean with the full review under the cut!

We open at night, with Lilo and Stitch playing hide and seek. Adorably though Sttich dosen’t quite get the hang of it and proudly announces where he is. However things are quickly interupted when he’s kidnaped by a mystery ship out of the blue. It’s a good hook to start with, leaving us wondering who it could be...

And thus, if you hadn’t gone into this episode knwoing it was a crossover, giving us a hell of a reveal with a cut to Dr. Drakken being the one to kidnap stitch!

Look I love this Doofus. He’s easily one of John DiMaggio’s best roles, up there with Jake and Bender, and the one along with Bender that cemented his career. as one of voice acting’s finest. He’s just so loveably incompetent, over the top and quick to bicker with Sheego, which leads to some of the funneist moments in his home series as she’d either skewer him good or he’d shove his boot in his mouth and help her point instead of his own. He’s just such a great character and he not only fits neatly into Lilo and Stitch’s world, but the writers clearly get him perfectly. We get a hilarious bit where, fed up with Hamsterviel, who he’s teamed up with, he simply fakes the radio going out, adjusting the dials purposfully to make it come in buggy something I GUARANTEE he put in for SHeego and I gurantee she saw right through. His plan is to create a clone army of Stiches.. meaning Hamsterviel’s big evil plan.. is a copy of someone else’s.

Lilo goes to Jumb and Pleakly, the latter of whom has been collecting magazines adorably. Lilo plans to go after Stitch but Jumba says she can’t go on dangerous missions without him and to get a professional and this part.. does not work for me. Most of the time Jumba ENABLES Lilo’s behaviors and while not wanting an 8 year old to run out into the night is a good call, he also suggests getting help.. instead of you know GOING WITH HER WHEN IT’S LIGHT. It sounds more like Nani’s idea... it fits her more to not want Lilo to run out and to want to get help versus Jumba whose admant about keeping secrecy yet very lax on things, and you know would BE concerned that his prized creation was suddenly stolen and actually think about it. He’s just so horribly out of character it hurts.

And Nani’s absence really hurts the episode. See the last two, as much as I missed the lovely and talented Tia Carrere’s presence, didn’t really need her, though still could’ve included her: she could’ve made a cameo at the start since Lilo was there to visit her and she woul’dve made a better target for Spats than trudy, with Oscar fighting Jumba instead, allowing us some crossover interactions instead of having Jumba argue with a random asshole the episode wrote in. But it’s minor stuff. Here though? Her being the one to tell Lilo not to go would’ve made more sense: She’s protective by nature, and while she’s let go more since the movie, it’d make sense for her NOT to want Lilo to blindly chase after someone who beat stitch of all beings, as well as for her ot be the one to later tell Kim not to let lilo be involved. It’d be stronger coming from her sister and surrogate mother than Pleakly and it would’ve been a better arc to have Nani let Lilo off the leash so to speak and accept she needed to save kim. Instead she’s just gone for no reason and Jumba is grosly out of character and i’m disapointed.

That said the setup is the best and most intergrated so far: Pleakly sees an article about kim so he reaches out to her via a message on her site, while Lilo is stubborn about not being help.. obnoxiously so to the point it hurts the episode. While her being inscure about someone else saving Sttich would be fine, the episode never adresses that and instead just has her say she can because shut pu instead of accepting help. The episode would’ve flowed better if instead she accepted kim but Nani had Kim push her away, and thus create more problems. More on that in a bit.

But as I said this setup is great: it uses BOTH shows for once isntead of feeling like the first two, and honestly the next one judging by the blurb on the wiki, where its just “Hey x character visits Kauai”, here it blends both: The two main villians team up, and Kim is logically called for help since that’s what she does and they don’t want to risk lilo’s saftey. It’s good stuff.

So our other heroes enter the episode, on a ritzy jet as Kim’s dad had an old college friend with an airline. I admit the episode weirdly downplays Kim’s penchant for getting rides, getting a helicopter that appears to be a touring one and getting this one via her dad instead of the usual person who owes her a favor. IT was a neat part of her character: that she got help from people she already helped on adventure’s we hadn’t seen to establish she can’t drive herself yet and to show she’s an experinced heroine with a lot of history before the show started. I also like how a handful of episodes after season 1 had returns from people we HAD seen before or linked to them, a clever way of having callbacks.

It’s simple stuff Kim is ready for the wrold saving mision and ron hopes to get a vacation in. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

So the next day Lilo tries to go it solo but is spotted before she can leave, while Pleakly has built a.. photo colloage of Kim’s face on the wall...

... no wait i’m getting paid for this. Nevermind.

It is funny as it is unsettling though and Kim arrives and Pleakly faints.. Ron also arrives doing fake kung fu moves. This episode gets ron about half right... they overdo it a bit on the shenanigans, but Will Freidle’s natural charm and talent mean that even standard ron bits coughed up by a cat onto a page and used for this script still work simply because he’s that good at delivery.

We also get the who’s on first bit you all knew was coming as Kim asking what’s the Sitch confuses lilo and i’ts .. pretty funny. Again you could see it coming from a mile away, but Daveigh Chase and Christy Carlson Ramano really sell the hell out of it and we get a nice runner after of Kim misprouncing his name and trying NOT to say her usual catchphrase.

She also gets filled in on the alien thing... and while she admits i’ts a lot to swallow, she also admits she’s seen weirder. And given this episode would, by airdate (ignoring the one for So the Drama as that aired before the last batch of season 3 episodes but continuity wise takes place between seasons 3 and 4), take place around the same time as the season 3 intended finale “Team Impossible”, by this point she’s seen vengeful fishteens mutated by a horrifying summer camp, a rogue gentecist who basis her crimes against nature on a beanie baby knockoff, magical monkey based kung fu, a magican egyptian amulet, killer robot’s resembling teenage girls, a body swap episode, a plan using a barcode to destroy the internet, an attack on canada, a giant poodle, a complicated time travel plot, a trucker with a mullet, her sidekick getting turned into a surprisingly competent supervillian, and draken’s plan to use his rap career to promote brainwashing shampoo. And that’s just a handful of the things I was reminded of on the episode list. So yeah, this isn’t THAT much of a stretch. Oh and lest you think Kim never encountered aliens the series finale was an alien invasion by aliens Draken had pissed off earlier in the season. Suprised Lilo didn’t you know have Stitch and the family army pitch in. Maybe Leory and Stitch was going on at the same time?

Point is she’s in but goes with Pleakly in trying to keep Lilo out of it. And here’s yet another place the episode missteps: Kim’s REALLY patronizing to Lilo, treating her like she can’t do anything and later ignoring her advice when she brings up the current later, something that ends up getting Kim caught. The latter part especially bugs me since Kim normally listens to her clients pretty well, and had she doubted him could’ve at least asked Waid since she contacts him in the same scene. Speaking of which THAT’S why I feel her patronizing “not now kiddo” atittude dosen’t work: her spy master IS a child, her brothers have helped out multiple times, and the incident I mentioned from where she met her younger cousin who idolized her at an old west town was understandable: Her cousin was getting into dangerous stuff and throwing herself out there recklessly with no regards to her own saftey and impeding the mission with her well meant antics. Lilo.. knows who their looking for, knows the island well, and knows stitch’s weaknesses. And she goes from being annoyingly hostlile to kim to helpful, so it makes kim even more obnoxious for not accepting said help. It’s just.. draining as when this part of the plot ISN’T in play, Kim is fine. She’s her usual self.. not AS well written as the parent show, a bit too reliant on her catchphrases, but still not half bad and Christy Carlson Romanao, like Fredle helps paper over the weaker bits of the script. She’s not even out of character in her actions, as she does have a tendency to think she knows everything or undereistmate people.. the problem is it’s written poorly enough she comes across as insufferable, and unlike the show, where she actually learned something here.. she just learns to work as a team? When she does on a regular basis with Wade and Ron?

It’s just so frustrating because they almost had it just right, but instead just had to try and put some half assed moral about teamwork in there. They broke from the formula of having an experiment of the week but they still just HAD to keep to their own formula. And look Kim Possible has it’s own formula.. but it used that to great effect, often using the episode’s plot to shake it up in fun ways, and the plots were still diffrent enough and the villians bold and intrestin genough that it didn’t grate. This is starting to grate. And I do remember good and intresting episodes of the show.. but i’m starting tor ealize why I don’t remember NEARLY as much of Lilo and Stitch as I do the other shows it’s crossing over with: it’s so bolted to the formula they all just sorta blend together. It’s really fucking disheartning to realize something you loved so damn much as a kid just.. isn’t as good as you remember. And with these other shows.. I don’t have that as much. I accept proud family’s fault, Jake Long actually seems MORE intresting than it was at the time, and rewatching kim possible it’s excellent, same with recess coming up. I really need to watch more Recess. The most disheartining thing about this arc is the crossover just shows how BETTER the other shows were. Lilo and Stitch wasn’t a BAD show, and it isn’t here.. but it’s a mediroce one. it has a good premise. but it feels like they just don’t break away from the premise enough. This just... hurts a lot to type and realize. I really loved this show and movie as a kid and while the movie likely still holds up this.. this just dosen’t.

I need a moment... i’m breaking open the glass case containing my emergency patrick stewart clip excuse me...

youtube

That.. I needed that.

So before the bicker sisters can head off, we get our goofy comedy subplot: Jumba thinks Rufus is one of his experiments, one that could destroy the universe if not cancel and is highly unstable. As for why this one wouldn’t of worked out, I get why: it’s TOO powerful. Stitch is a weapon of mass distruction in a cuddly package, but he’s also easily deployable, kind of like Wolverine if he was in the body of a cartoon mascot. Having the THREAT of destroying ap lanet is fine and good for the long term but it does you no good if you can’t control it and i’td just destroy you too.

So he and Pleakly try to steal rufus without telling Ron why after Ron naturlaly refuses to sel land a chase insues. So while the boys and gender fluid person have their comedy plot, the girls head to where stitch was taken and find Draken’s glove.... they know it’s his because he put a note saying “return to dr. draken, his mother gave it to him”. That’s just.. fucking precious. And entirely in character. So kim aranges a ride, and dives into the ocean, but finds lilo in her parachute, and tries to send her back despite LIlo offering valuable advice both about the area , the current I mentioned earlier, and about stitch, i.e. Draken’s base is underwater (something Kim didn’t realize which feels odd for her), because Stitch can’t swim, something I genuinely forgot.

So while Kim sends Lilo back, or rather intercut with that but I choose to compress plots for my own convinence we cut back to Drakken and Shego. And I WAS worried that Shego wouldn’t show up, she wasn’t in the synopsis or anything and was delighted to find that nope she’s here. Drakken just isn’t the same without her.. I mean I liked the recurring subplot in season 4 where other villians would break her out, that was great, but in the end the two need each other. I may not ship them romantically but as a comedy team one just needs the other: Drakken needs Shego to cut down his ego and Shego needs someone to snark at and complain about. Sullivan and DiMaggio just had perfect chemistry and it’s easy to see why Drakken and Shego went from just another part of the Rogue’s Gallery to Kim’s arch enemies.

Which is why I am sad Gantu and 625 don’t show up for this one. I mean I can buy it: Hamsterviel likely is doing this on the sly to see if he can find a better minon, but the two sets of villians have similar dynamics and i’d love to see Shego and 625 dunk on their bosses together. It’s a really big missed opportunity but I do get it as they may of just nto been able to fit the two together or it may of been hard to block a lot of scenes iwth the human sized drakken and the giant sized gantu. So unlike a lot of missed opportunites in the other episodes, this one I at least can understand.

We get some GREAT banter with the two though. Out of the four guest characters in this one the crew really got Drakken and Shego down and the two bicker like any episode of Kim Possible, with Shego pointing out the massive bill on Stitch’s cage and how Drakken’s tried cloning about five times now and it’s never worked, and of course how he’s 50 50 splitting with a hamster bellow his station. Seriously why get rid of Gantu and 625 but keep the annoying rodent, I don’t get you episode.

Of course while they quack quack bicker bicker Stitch escapes and Shego gives chase. Sadly we don’t get a fight between the two like we did with Jake, another missed opprotunity but Stitch getting out of her grasp by licking her is objectively funny. Stitch finds he’s underwater though and gets recaptured.

Kim gets captured for the first time shortly after as the current caught her, but luckily she has kimunicator gloves and calls waid to call ron. Meanwhile Ron finally catches rufus back and Jumba explains the situation.. but Ron understandably dosen’t want to give up his buddy especially since Rufus has shown no signs of being a planet killer before. He’s not mooncake... althought i do think those two could hang. God now I just want a final space kim possible crossover to wash this out of my mouth.

So it’s down to Lilo, the really not all that ambigiously gay their pretty darn gay duo, and Ron to save the day. Lilo finally gets to do what she kept asking kim to do: use jumbas hot rod car spaceship thing to go down under the sea, and they send Lilo and Rufus in since hteir small enough to get in and suriive the pressures. Our heroes arrive and Drakken is nonplussed.. only for Lilo to prove WHY she can keep an alien in line by freeing stitch from teh leash drakken has him on using kim’s grapple gun, and then frees kim. The good guys win and the bad guys loose and the base starts to self destruct.. eh they’ll be fine. They still have the movie to get to.

So time for the wrap up: Stitch sniffs Rufus and confirms what the audience knew... that he’s a naked mole rat not an experiment. Which didn’t make sense to begin with for either show: Jumba’s archive should’ve been able to scan him or something (And if not he could build something to do that), and Kim Possible not only implied from day one Ron had Rufus a while, long before the rain of the pods, but A Stitch in Time outright confirms Ron bought him years ago in middle school. It just makes no sense and while it thankfully dosen’t take up a ton of the episode it still takes up too much.

But with that our heroes prepare to part on good terms but Pleakly decides to celebrate with Luau. Kim’s repsonse “Well I can do anything...”

And we get a gratuitous luau sequence! I do love a job that allows me to type the phrase “Gratuitous Luau Sequence’ They clearly ran short and we just get a good minute of everyone doing hula dances for no reason. I mean.. you could’ve done a quick gag with the experiment who was mistaken for Rufus... who I now realize given the finale was befriended by someone. I’m headcanoning now Kim and Ron came back for that one and Kim had him sent to space as part of one her dad’s projects where he and earth would be safer and he could help with space missions or something.

Final Thoughts: As you could tell I had mixed thoughts. As a crossover this melded things better, had a more original plot and the actors from Kim Possible brought their a-game.. but once again some disapointing characteteriztion and downright stupid decisions really let the episode down. These episodes just depress me every time and I’m looking forward to being done.. which given how excited I was going into this.. yeah. Like all of these despite their flaws I recommend checking it out if you like Kim Possible, if nothing else than for some extra drakken shego banter but.. keep your expectations low.

Next Time on Kim Possible: A team of spiteful assholes who are in a way repsonsible for Kim’s Career try to shut her down. It’s the intended finale episode outisde of hte movie people buckle up.. or you would if I was doing any of these. Though I should do “Team IMpossible” at some point.

On the finale of these crossovers: The Recess Gang are the final visitors to Kuai as Lilo must find and stop a lazy monster... no i’m not guest starring too.

Tommorow: Another kev one this time by patreon as I put two similar episodes of a show or franchise against each other and ask “Who Did It Better?” This time it’s two episodes of Celebrity Death Match, original versus revivial may the original.. probably win.

If you liked this review, please consider supporting my patreon, YOU CAN FIND THE LINK TO IT HERE. For just 2 bucks a month you get access to my discord, to pick a short each time I do one of my shortstravaganzas, and acess to my Patreon exclusive reviews! Next month I intend to do one for the show whose crossover gets the most likes within a week of it’s relase. Proud Family has already passed American Dragon so you have a week to get it ahed. And if you like Kim Possible, help me reach my 25 dollar stretch goal! At that i’ll review So The Drama, along with the Recess and Proud Family Movies. So check it out and i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#lilo and stitch the series #lilo and stitch #kim possible #ron stoppable #doctor drakken #shego #Lilo Pelekai #Stitch #experment 626 #jumba jookiba

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hedgefairy · 4 years ago

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Okay, I know, I know, it's already old news, everybody and their uncle in the costuming community has already talked it over, but anyhoo, I made notes when I crawled my way through effing Bridgerton and I will be damned if I don't vomit them onto this site. I have 32 pages of this shit, I'm not gonna throw that away.

I'm also typing this on my phone because I'm stuck on a trainride that's just doubled in length because this is the 2021 Northern German snow storm. What, there's snowflakes on the rails? We cannot possibly keep up our schedule, say goodbye to 90% of the connections.

Okay, on to Bridgerton, Episode 1

We're in Britain (oh, London, okay), allegedly 1813. I see people who are clearly meant to be asympatico, but is this size incusivity I spot there? Daring! Gasp! Me li...

Oh wait, no. The character is promptly shamed for her figure (which is mostly caused by the horrible cut of her dress. Every size can look great in Regency garb, but never mind, we need to make the "fat one" look bad!).

Also, no shifts under the stays. Why. There was obviously enough budget, don't tell me you couldn't afford a few strappy tops - it's not like the rest is historically accurate, so it would have sufficed to send some poor underpaid intern to H&M and get some. Nvm, that wouldn't be sexay.

Wait, is the garishly dressed (always a sign of a character of bad character in a costume drama) woman Delphine from Selfridge? Does she always have to play bitches? That's not nice, and just because she has a recognisable face, which by modern (read: americanised) standards is not favourable enough. Ugh. But I like the actress, so I'll let it slide (for now).

Lol, buttocks.

Not sure about the girls' dresses. Also, the Queen is a WOC, cool!

Oh no, one of the Featherington sisters faints! But that's okay because the Featheringtons are just comic relief and foil anyway.

I get weird incest vibes from the Bridgertons.

So the court is clearly 18th century and the show is set in the 1810s. I've by now seen several explanations for this decision, I still think it robs the Queen of reproductions of her actual historical gowns which were heavily inspired by the 18th century but so. Magnificently. Weird. It would have been so neat, and more of a "hey, I'm kinda out of touch with things" vibe, but hey, I'm not the one getting paid for making those taffeta gowns here (her hair is glorious, tho).

I'm very into the intro.

That Regency gossip girl is a real b, not unlike the Dowager Countess of Downton (unpopular opinion, I think she's pretty overrated, yes, I like Maggie Smith).

Again, no shifts.

Where do I know the "pragmatic" Bridgerton sister from? Ah, it's The Paradise. And Jonathan Strange. (Wait, she's my age. And she's supposed to be a teenager. Man, do I love a good Dawson casting. I like the actress, though, she has a face ™!).

Aaaah. We get it. She's the spirited one. She also doesn't care about dresses because she's not like other girls™. I really like her voice (but she still doesn't sound like a teenager).

The heck is up with Lady F's dress and that of her friend? Oh, yeah. Antagonist fashion.

Of course the Featheringtons are Horrid Hags™ aside from Penny who's nice, but the pudgy one (at least we don't get a case of "she's not conventionally attractive so she's bad").

Oooh, the cousin! Supposed to suck, but ofc she's a stunner, and only Penny (who's the nice one, remember!) is delighted to have her around. She's also a POC, which is nice but apparently that means she does not follow fashion, hair-wise. I would have loved to see some Regency hair on her, it would have been so pretty *cries in Greek updo*

Ugh, we're still in Ep. 1, typing this on my phone was a bad idea.

Lady Danbury and the Duke guy are delightful with each other (more POC! So neat!).

The girl the oldest Bridgerbro screws is apparently a singer, which isn't up to status for his doucheship, and she doesn't wear a shift.

The music at the ball sounds like something from the Top 40s, but I'm woefully ignorant of contemporary music charts so I can't tell what it is. I like it when they do that in historical-ish works, making well-known pop or rock stuff work for the ambience (ugh, that dance scene to Golden Years in Knight's Tale. My heart. In a good way.)

I dig the Ducktail hair of Penny's crush. Oh, wait, that's a Bridgerbro. I don't quite get why the hair trends of the time don't apply to the POC characters or extras, but seeing how most white characters also show a shameful disregard for the weirdnes and gloriosity (that's not a word) that is early 1800s hair (the 1830s take the cake, tho) despite those hairdos being basically designed for white people hair, I don't think I care much (well, I do, but about all of them). Overall the hair is horrid and not very 1810s. Let's just leave it at that.

Like a good old romance novel (I've since been told that Bridgerton is supposed to be a pastiche of such novels, but I really couldn't tell from the series, not at all, and I'm not inclined to read the books) we have

a pretty, kind, superpure daughter of the main family

the mean matriarch (could have been an aunt, too, but here she's the mum) of the rivalling or antagonist family

a spirited daughter of the main family (in most romance novels this would be our heroine but so far she refreshingly lacks a love interest and pretty daughter seems to get the most screen time)

a Horrid Suitor™

a Hot Suitor™ who doesn't want attention

a really good and doting good parent

Lol, misheard Greece for Grease with Ducktail Bridgerbro, whose name is Colin, apparently. This is funny because of his Danny Zuko memorial hair.

Overall a bit too much bling for my taste, and too few pearls. It looks like an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen with a Regency theme.

Of course the romance is going to be the Pretty One aka. Daphne and the Duke and he's even bros with her eldest bro. Wait, are they exes? I can haz bi? No? Aww, shucks. Maybe in another episode (spoiler: no).

Okay, WHAT is it with Lady F's dresses and hair. Like, she reminds me of Mars Attacks. Which, as you might remember, was not set in the Regency period.

Lord B (Bridgerbro the Eldest) sucks, he's screwing Opera Girl without any intention of marrying her but he's bitchy about his sister being ogled by his Eton (or wherever) bestie?

Oh, I'm in Hamburg now. And my train back home got canceled, so back to Berlin it is because there's not a single option to get to Hanover tonight, at least that's what the lady from the train station is saying, "oh well, you'll have to go back and try again tomorrow", so that's awesome...

Honestly, if it weren't so late and I didn't have things to do at home I'd find this terribly exciting.

Back to Bridgerton!

Where were we? Ah.

I can't even read my own annotation. Something about George III. I think I was upset about how they totally ignored that it's called Regency because George IV acted as the regent king, and he doesn't even feature in the series, I guess because they wanted to play up the Queen? Not a fan, because thanks to Horrible Histories I'm quite fond of that guy.

Again, no shifts.

Oh, look, it's Horrid Suitor™, destined for leftovers.

The Featherington cousin gets all the attention but no fleshed-out character.

Penny Featherington's dog is named Lord Byron, which ❤️

I like the Duke! He's there, drinking in his club (even though they're a patriarchal remnant of the past I have a weird appreciation for stuffy Gentlemen's Clubs, I blame Bertie Wooster and the Drones), calling Lord B out for his general fuckery.

Oh no, Ducktail Colin is more into the Cousin than Penny, who obviously pines for him!

Thank you, Lord B, for enabling Horrid Suitor™. Nobody asked you to be such a fucktwit.

The Queen is, of course, a bit of a bitch, but patronage from cool Lady *scrolls up for name* Danbury ensues for Protagonist Girl™ Daphne.

"I wish they had found a better trend language", what the heck did I even mean by that? That's what you get for just scribbling down notes while watching and simultaneously sewing. 18th century pants, in case you wanted to know.

Cousin is angry, probably because Lady F behaves like Cinderella's evil stepmother, because Cousin is prettier than her daughters and gets, like, all the suitors because Lord B bitched away everyone who wanted to get into Daphne's dowry ifyouknowwhatImeanwinkwinknudgenudge, right across the street into Cousins parlour.

The Bridgertons are annoyingly perfect. Ugh.

Oh look, it's "banter" between Daphne and Dukey! It's so Pride & Prejudice! It's almost a tiny bit Shakespeare! I put banter in parentheses because wow, nope, I'm not getting any chemistry here.

Uh, Lady B calls out Lord B (aka. her son aka. Bridgerbro the Eldest) for his screwery with Opera Girl and his outpimpery of his sister to Horrid Suitor™, buuuurrrrrnnn. He promptly calls of his affair with Opera Girl.

No shifts!

Penny gets to dance with Ducktail Colin at the thing! Good for her, but it's a country dance with jumping and fun, because she's a) the pudgy character and b) a Featherington, so it can't be something romantic and pretty (I personally like country dances, but they aren't protagonist dances).

Oooh, Cousin had her period, oh no, oh snap, oh she didn't, because she's PREGNANT! Shit, that's problematic, and not because she's an unmarried woman in the 1810s, but because she gets close to no lines at all so far, and suddenly she's pregnant and telling Lady F that she sucks for being privileged, violence ensues, this is ugly. Man, I get what some critics mean by "the POC actors*actresses get all the problems" and that not exactly being great.

Horrid Suitor™ makes property claims about Daphne, eeewwwww, thanks to Lord B's general suckiness, ewww, r@pe attempt ensues, was that really necessary? It doesn't really fit in with the rest of the series and generally nope, yay, broken nose! (which was indeed totally necessary). Nice one, and probably the only scene so far (spoiler: overall) in which I actually like Daphne. Dukey thinks a mean left hook is attractive, and, generally speaking, he's not wrong.

Daphne and Dukey come up with a pseudo-shakespearean plot to pretend to be totally into each other so she can attract suitors by being not available and he gets not to have fangirls by being not available, and as someone who has read a few too many historical-ish bodice rippers I know exactly where this is going. I mean, come on.

I can't see enough of the following choreography to complain about it. Man, I miss historical dance classes.

And that concludes Ep. 1! Finally! Thank you for getting this far, sorry for all of it (especially typos, it's the bane of unwanted autocorrect), I guess?

Update on the train situation: I've been told by the ticket control person that I shouldn't get my hopes up until noon tomorrow.

To be continued,

because I didn't take these 32 pages of notes for nothing.

#Bridgerton #Hedgewatch #historical costuming #Well not really because wow these costumes #Thank you for travelling with Deutsche Bahn #2021 norther Germany snow storm #Trainwriting #Snarky commentary #I wish I was better at captions but it's late and I've been wearing a mask for four hours straight now and I'm hungry #Bridgerbore

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aljamraalists · 4 years ago

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eastendies · 4 years ago

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Callum is not an innocent little cherub who can do no wrong and needs to be protected- he's made mistakes, said and done shitty things that he hasn't made up for. He doesn't deserve better than Ben.

OKAY HOLD UP ANON you're gonna get a long response on why you're wrong and you're gonna LIKE IT

First, I agree that Callum is not the best guy. The writers mangled his character and moral standing during the Keanu episode to make sure Ben could still have his cheap drama crime gig with Callum being an enabling love sick asshole who would cover up murder if it meant that he could have his happiness with Ben back. It was stupid at the time, it's stupid now. Callum HAS made mistakes, but some would argue that he paid for it when he was kidnapped and was taught a very thorough lesson about the dangers of having a boyfriend who helped with attempted murder and generally stayed in the criminal world. It's a source of conflict with his naturally caring personality and adversity to crime that he still loves Ben, and though it hasn't been resolved, Callum seems content for it to be out of mind in exchange for Ben being honest with him so he doesn't get kidnapped again, presumably. That kinda makes him a bad person, plus he's a cop, so he gets knocked down a few points just for that. But compared to a lot of other people on the square, he a decent person in retrospect of all the garbage in this show, ESPECIALLY Ben.

Putting aside the past fumbles, Callum had been shown to be an incredibly kind and understanding partner, as demonstrated time and time again by Ben being an absolute ass hat and Callum continuing to be supportive of him. Callum was the one who pushed Ben to learn BSL, reached out to Frankie, was Ben's vent sink, tolerated Ben's outbursts while he was in denial and even STILL has to deal with him lashing out when he's insecure (see ben listening to music), dealt with very little care from Ben when Callum came back from the hospital, constantly has to deal with Ben's emotional baggage, and probably more than I'm forgetting right now. And now Ben is lying to him.

So yeah, as I've discussed before, Ben is a bad boyfriend and Callum has gone through a lot up until now dealing with that fact. And though Callum has made mistakes and isn't the best person, those problems doesn't mean he DESERVES to be treated the way Ben treats him. Most of Callum's crappy decisions can be traced back to desperately trying to keep Ben close to him as Ben continues to lash out and try to distance himself away from the people who care about him and also REFUSE to improve as a person. That's the thing about the relationship: Ben is always the one with the emotional leverage and power in their relationship since he's willing to lash out and break it due to his insecurities but Callum will always be someone who tries to work it all out and save their relationship due to his more kind/nonconfrontational personality. Ben found someone who will always be there. Ben found someone who is willing to be a bad person for him.

Callum is still a decent person in the context of the show. Not the best, we can't all be Frankie Lewis, but still someone who is deeply empathetic and kind to those around him. To say he DESERVES to be treated the way he does because of how much he wants his relationship with Ben to work and twist his moral code around that is a HORRIBLE thing to say because NO half decent person deserves to be treated the way Ben treats Callum. No relationship should work the way their relationship does. Callum does NOT deserve Ben LYING to him and yelling at him and lashing out at him and making him cry. To say he does justifies Ben's behavior as one that doesn't need to improve since there's nothing intrinsically wrong with their relationship; everyone is being treated the way they should.

And no. Fuck that. What a TERRIBLE way to think of a relationship, that one DESERVES to be treated like that because of a compromised moral code forced onto you to justify a loved one's wrong doing. Callum does NOT deserve to be lied to when he presents the BARE MINIMUM of decency and honesty in a relationship. Watch the scene where Ben tries to negotiate with Danny and the aftermath, and tells me ANYONE deserves to be treated the way Callum treats Ben in that scene: using him as a vector to express his frustration and self hatred over being disabled because he knows its very unlikely that Callum will ever bite back.

If you honestly think that someone with the moral standing of Callum, in reference to the show, DOESN'T deserve better than Ben, take a look at yourself. Seriously. Because that is a dangerous frame of mind to be in in terms of enabling and justifying terrible behavior.

Send In Unpopular Opinions (Ask Game)!

#eastenders #ben mitchell #ballum #callum highway #anon #tw unhealthy relationship #ask #unpopular opinions #this is one of the few unpopular opinions that i have gotten where i just kinda sat back and stared at it #some of yall either need to start watching the show or going to therapy #god this response is long but hey i warned them at the beginning

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sukwhipp06-blog · 4 years ago

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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‘So much living to do’: stories of UK's latest named coronavirus victims

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/not-ready-to-go-tributes-paid-to-uk-first-named-victims-of-coronavirus?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Post_to_Tumblr

Though these deaths didn't occur in the United States, it's important to remember our brothers and sisters across the pond! They represent every walk of life, age, race and creed. Covid-19 does not recognize borders, religion, race, occupation or age.

SO MUCH LIVING TO DO’: STORIES OF UK's LATEST NAMED CORONAVIRUS VICTIMS.... Personal details have emerged of more than 50 people who have died in the Covid-19 pandemic

By Matthew Weaver, Helen Pidd and Simon Murphy | Published:12:19 Fri April 3, 2020 | The Guardian | Posted April 05, 2020 |

The oldest is 108, the youngest only 13. These are the faces of some of the country’s coronavirus victims, among them doctors, councillors, a D-day veteran, a diplomat, a comedian and an academic.

By 4pm on Thursday 2 April, 3,605 people admitted to hospital in the UK had died after contracting Covid-19. Many were elderly and had underlying health conditions. Some did not.

In several cases, family members and medical professionals have been keen to emphasise that victims had their lives cut short. Even if they were suffering underlying health conditions, they had been expected to live for many years, they said.

Of the deaths so far in the UK and those connected to the country, details have emerged in more than 50 cases. Here are their stories.

****

Lord Gordon of Strathblane, 83

James “Jimmy” Gordon was formerly political editor of STV and founded Radio Clyde. He is understood to have died of Covid-19 at Glasgow Royal Infirmary on Tuesday 31 March.

Outside the media, Gordon was a member of the Scottish Development Agency and chaired the Scottish Tourist Board – later VisitScotland – and was made a life peer by Labour in 1997. A statement from his family honoured “his generosity, his kindness and his enthusiasm for life”, adding that being “Papa” to his four grandchildren was the role that had brought him most pleasure. The former first minister Jack McConnell said Gordon had had “an outstanding career in business and public service” and had “transformed broadcasting”. The comedian and radio host Andy Cameron, who worked at Clyde for a number of years, said: “Another good guy gone. Jimmy Gordon, Lord Gordon Of Strathblane has passed on. What an absolute gentleman. RIP Jimmy.” He leaves behind his wife Anne, three children and four grandchildren.

****

Aimee O’Rourke, 38

O’Rourke was an NHS nurse and mother of three girls, Megan, Mollie and Maddie. She died on 2 April at the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate, Kent – the hospital where she worked. She studied at Canterbury Christ Church University before joining the NHS in 2017. She started showing symptoms of the coronavirus about two weeks ago before her condition deteriorated and she was taken into intensive care at the QEQM and put on a ventilator.

Her daughter, Megan Murphy, wrote on Facebook that it had always been “us 4 against the world!”, and said she and her sisters would now look after each other. “Look at all the lives you looked after and all the families you comforted when patients passed away … you are an angel and you will wear your NHS crown forever more because you earned that crown the very first day you started,” she wrote. Now a family friend has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for O’Rourke’s family.

A colleague, Lucy Page, wrote: “Aimee O’Rourke taught me to fight for what I believe in and gave me courage so many times to do it.” Another colleague, Soraya Zanders, said:“Aimee cared for many patients in her time as a nurse. She brought warmth and comfort to many.” On the evening of the day she died family and friends lit candles and clapped in her honour during the weekly Clap for Carers.

****

Areema Nasreen, 36

Nasreen was an NHS nurse who had worked for 16 years at Walsall Manor hospital in the West Midlands, where she died on 3 April after contracting the coronavirus. Nasreen, who had three children and was from Walsall, developed symptoms on 13 March, including aches, a high temperature and then a cough. Her family said she had no underlying health issues. Her sister Kazeema Nasreen, 22, a healthcare assistant at the same hospital, said Nasreen was “an amazing nurse” and urged others to take the virus seriously. In a tribute posted on Facebook, her friend Rubi Aktar said: “She was the most loveliest, genuine person you could ever meet, she went above and beyond for everyone she met. I’m so grateful that I had the honour to call her my best friend, she saw me at my best and my worst and accepted my every flaw. I am so broken that words can’t explain.”

A relative told Birmingham Live: “The immediate family are devastated. Everyone is in shock this morning. She was always so full of life. She was devoted to her job as a nurse, she absolutely loved it. She passed away doing what she loved. I’m really sad for the rest of the family, she was a fantastic person.”

****

Danny Sharma, 38

Sharma was an avid fan of Liverpool Football Club and devoted much of his time to amateur football. The 38-year-old was considered to be high-risk because of his diabetes and other health conditions, and he died on 26 March after battling with coronavirus in intensive care at Hammersmith hospital in London. On 24 March, Sharma posted a picture of himself making the thumbs-up sign, and wrote: “Day Four Update. Looks nice out from the window wish I was participating in the Vitamin D. Finding hard to breathe, still fighting.”

The 38-year-old attended St Paul’s College in Sunbury-on-Thames before studying computer applications at Kingston University. His brother Vinny said he wanted Sharma’s death to make people take the threat of the coronavirus seriously. “He was a fantastic guy with a big heart, and he is someone who we are going to miss a great deal. Hopefully he will find some peace,” he said. Luke Thompson called his friend the “most selfless individual I ever met.” Traditionally the Sharma family, who are of Indian heritage, would hold an open house for 12 days after a death to enable people to pay their respects – but both Sharma’s brother and mother, Parveen, had to self-isolate because of their close contact with the 38-year-old.

****

Danny Cairns, 68

Cairns was one of the first Scots to die after contracting the coronavirus to be named publicly. He had tried to self isolate at his home in Greenock in Renfrewshire but after a few days became so ill he was transferred to hospital, where he died on 26 March. His brother Hugh, who lives in the United States, said the experience was a “nightmare” for the family. “He wasn’t just my brother, he was my best friend,” he said. “From the time of going into hospital within three days he was dead. His last words to me were, ‘I’m on my way out mate’.”

****

Sheila French, 80

French from Broughty Ferry, a suburb of Dundee, died after six days in Ninewells hospital intensive care on 27 March. She had been admitted after becoming ill on a family holiday in Lanzarote to celebrate her 80th birthday. Her family spoke of the pain of not being able to visit her in hospital, but her son Colin said dedicated NHS staff were determined to ensure her “comfort and dignity right to the end”. Originally from Glasgow, she married Eric French in 1962. The couple were well-known figures in the local community and shared a lifelong love of tennis.

The 80-year-old sang in the Barnhill St Margaret’s parish church choir for more than four decades. Her son said she was “interested in so many things”, including music, singing and reciting poetry. “She was also always surrounded by wool for knitting and crochet,” he told the Dundee Courier. “Her main thing in recent years was crocheting blankets to raise money for charities including Chas, and she also collected for Save The Children.”

****

Dr Habib Zaidi, 76

Family GP Dr Zaidi is thought to be the first doctor in the UK to have been killed by the coronavirus. The 76-year-old, from Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, died on 25 March in intensive care just 24 hours after being taken ill. He and his wife, Dr Talat Zaidi, 70, were both managing partners of Eastwood group practice and had served three generations of families in the area for nearly 50 years. The couple’s four children all work in the medical profession. Daughter Dr Sarah Zaidi, also a GP, said his death was “reflective of his sacrifice. He had a vocational attitude to service.” She added: “We can’t mourn in the normal way. We can’t have a normal funeral. He left a gaping hole in our hearts, but a loss that is also felt within the community that he devoted almost his entire life to. We are praying for the safety of everyone right now.”

Dr Jose Garcia-Lobera, GP chair at NHS Southend clinical commissioning group, said Zaidi had left behind an “incredible legacy”. He said: “[He] was a “hugely respected, selfless man who dedicated his life to helping others. Dr Zaidi will always be remembered for his significant contribution to local health services through his long career as a GP.”

****

Mark Barnett, late 60s

Barnett was the headteacher at Westfield in Acomb, one of York’s biggest primary schools, for more than 17 years when he stepped down in 2008 aged 55 to work for the City of York council as a consultant headteacher. His family confirmed that he was taken into York hospital with breathing difficulties and died of Covid-19 on 1 April. Praised as a deeply committed teacher, he was a recipient of the Teacher Of The Year title at the Community Pride Awards.

Cllr Andrew Waller, a school governor at Westfield who knew Barnett well, said: “He was an inspirational headteacher and a legend in the community. Everyone knew Mark and he had a huge amount of respect.” Singer and former teacher Ian Donaghy said: “Mark was all about the children and not himself. You see a lot of career teachers out there, but Mark wasn’t one of them. The city has lost a big, big influence on children. His big thing was happy kids learn, it’s not about jumping through hoops or league tables. We could do with a few more like Mark.”

****

Eddie Large, 78

Large, best known as one half of the comedy duo Little and Large, died after contracting the coronavirus in hospital where he was being treated for heart failure, his son said.

The Glaswegian comedian, whose real name was Edward McGinnis, found fame alongside Syd Little in the 1970s and 80s, when their TV performances attracted millions of viewers.

His son, Ryan McGinnis, broke the news in a Facebook post on 2 April, explaining that his father had caught Covid-19 while in hospital. He wrote: “It is with great sadness that Mum and I need to announce that my dad passed away in the early hours of this morning. He had been suffering with heart failure and unfortunately, whilst in hospital, contracted the coronavirus, which his heart was sadly not strong enough to fight. Dad had fought bravely for so long. Due to this horrible disease we had been unable to visit him at the hospital, but all of the family and close friends spoke to him every day.

“We will miss him terribly and we are so proud of everything he achieved in his career with Syd and know that he was much loved by the millions that watched them each week.”

****

Caroline Saunby, 48

Saunby, a mother of two young boys, had no known underlying health conditions and started exhibiting Covid-19 symptoms on Thursday 26 March. By Sunday, she had died.

She collapsed at her home in New Marske, North Yorkshire, where she had begun to struggle for breath after initially having a sore throat, which she thought was tonsillitis. An air ambulance was dispatched and Saunby was put on a ventilator at home before being taken to James Cook University hospital in Middlesbrough, where she died the same day. She leaves behind her husband, Vic, and six-year-old twins, Joseph and Elliot.

Her twin sister, Sarah Jarvis, described her “unbearable heartbreak” as she pleaded with people to take the coronavirus seriously. She told the Northern Echo: “Caroline took every precaution under the sun. She was practising social distancing, she was washing her hands, took hers and everyone’s safety seriously, was healthy, yet she was taken from us in only four days. This virus does not discriminate.”

****

Paul Ramsden, 80

It was only when Ramsden’s wife, Jacky, struggled to wake him that it dawned on her something was seriously wrong. Paul was fit for his age and had no known underlying health conditions.

He fell ill soon after the couple returned from the Canary island of La Gomera. Jacky said Ramsden’s only obvious symptom was tiredness, but when she tried to rouse him from his sleep on 22 March, the penny dropped. He died five days later.

Jacky, from Lytham near Blackpool in Lancashire, told the Blackpool Gazette: “It’s very clear that while the vulnerable are susceptible to this virus, it also strikes down fit and healthy people. I wish people to take the government guidelines seriously and to abide by them so we can avoid further heartbreak. I feel lucky to have enjoyed 40 years of love and adventure with Paul, but I am saddened that our marriage has been cut short in this way.”

****

Linda Tuppen, 66

A former nursery nurse and teacher, Tuppen died from suspected coronavirus after caring for her son, who is also thought to have caught the disease. She was found lifeless by her son, Rob, on 28 March, a day after she had refused to speak to NHS’s 111 service when she fell ill, deciding to sleep instead.

Tuppen – who suffered from asthma – had been looking after Rob after he developed Covid-19 symptoms following his return from Krakow, Poland, earlier last month, but then began to feel unwell herself.

Her other son, 23-year-old James, was admitted to hospital a day later with coronavirus symptoms. In an interview with MEN, Rob recalled the moment he found his mother at her home in Bolton, Greater Manchester. “I was in a panic, she was just lay there, and I shouted ‘Mum, mum,’ but she didn’t answer,” the 28-year-old software engineer said. “I was doing chest compressions until the ambulance came. I was still in the room when he came over and said she was gone. It’s devastating. We lost our father in 2008, so we’re pretty much on our own now.

“She was a kind, loving lady who adored me and James and would have done anything for us. She always used to say that we were her lives. She would do anything for anyone.”

****

Thomas Harvey, 57

The NHS healthcare assistant caught coronavirus and died after treating patients with only gloves for protection, according to his family.

It is claimed Harvey fell ill after helping a patient who later tested positive for Covid-19 and eventually died on 29 March. He had been signed off work more than two weeks earlier when he developed symptoms including a cough, shortness of breath and body aches.

His family said that if he had had the correct personal protective equipment, he might still be alive. Goodmayes hospital in east London claims there were “no symptomatic patients on the ward”. But a former colleague told the BBC that Harvey contracted the virus after treating a patient who later tested positive.

Harvey’s daughter, 19-year-old Tamira, told the BBC: “It’s so sad. I feel like he was let down in so many ways. It’s an absolute tragedy and he didn’t deserve to lose his life in the way he did. If he had just had the right equipment, we wouldn’t be in this predicament and it wouldn’t have escalated in the way it did.”

****

Peter Sinclair, 73

Sinclair was a professor of economics and a former tutor to David Cameron. He taught the future prime minister during his time at Oxford before joining the University of Birmingham in 1994. He later became director of the Bank of England’s Centre for Central Banking Studies. Cameron described him as “one of the cleverest people I ever met” and said he had inspired “generations of students”. He added: “It was a complete privilege to know him.” Sinclair died in intensive care on 31 March after testing positive for coronavirus.

****

Alfa Saadu, 68

Saadu was a distinguished former medical director of Princess Alexandra hospital NHS trust in Harlow, Essex. He grew up in Nigeria and travelled to the UK to train as a doctor at University College London. He retired in 2016 after a 40-year career in the NHS. He was volunteering at his local hospital in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, one of the counties worst hit by coronavirus, when he became infected. He died after a two-week battle with the disease, according to his son Dani. Dani said: “My dad was a living legend, worked for the NHS for nearly 40 years, saving people’s lives here and in Africa. Up until he got sick he was still working part-time saving people.”

****

George Mason, 71

Mason and his twin brother, Malcolm, had been cutting hair in the same barber shop in Gosport, Hampshire, since they trained together as teenagers. In a statement, the Mason’s Barber Shop said he “always brought laughter and happiness and it will be so hard not working alongside him any more”. Speaking to Solent News, Malcolm said: “George was good fun – we had our moments like all brothers do, but got along brilliantly. He was a real family man and cared deeply about those around him.” As he began suffering from the virus, George told his brother he “wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy”. He was placed on a ventilator last weekend and never recovered. He is survived by his wife, Bobbie, his children Joanna and Natalie and grandchildren Hannah and Ben.

****

Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, 13

The rare death of someone so young from coronavirus has prompted widespread shock and concern. Ismail, who had no underlying health conditions, died on 30 March at King’s College hospital, London, after testing positive for Covid-19. Ismail, who had six siblings, lived in Brixton, south London. His family said they were “beyond devastated”. In a later statement they said: “Ismail was a loving son, brother, nephew to our family and a friend to many people who knew him. His smile was heartwarming and he was always gentle and kind.”

****

Luca Di Nicola, 19

Di Nicola was a chef from Nereto, near the Adriatic coast of Italy, who was living with his mother and her partner in Enfield, north London. He died on 24 March in North Middlesex hospital. His death was announced on the same day as Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab’s. A postmortem revealed that Luca had Covid-19. His aunt Giada told La Repubblica that a GP had prescribed him paracetamol for a cough and fever. She said the doctor had told him “he was young, strong and [had] nothing to worry about”.

****

Harold Pearsall, 97

Pearsall was a hero of the D-day landings who was awarded the Légion d’honneur for his part in the allied assault on Caen in 1944. He landed on Juno Beach along with the Royal Artillery. “We never fired a round. When that first shell came in, I could have crawled down a worm hole,” he said last year at an event to mark the 75th anniversary of D-day. His unit went on to suffer heavy losses as it was attacked with phosphorous bombs and grenades, he said of the Caen operation. He died in Birmingham’s Good Hope hospital on 27 March after testing positive for Covid-19. Pearsall had two sons and had been an active member of D-day veterans’ groups. “He was very proud and always clean, smart and tidy,” said Peter Lloyd, secretary of the 1944 Alliance Normandy-Market Garden veterans’ association.

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Andrew Jack, 76

Jack was a dialect coach and actor who appeared in three Star Wars films. He died in hospital in Surrey on 31 March. His wife, Gabrielle Rogers, also a dialect coach, tweeted: “We lost a man today. Andrew Jack was diagnosed with coronavirus two days ago. He was in no pain, and he slipped away peacefully knowing that his family were all ‘with’ him.” Jack lived on one of the oldest working houseboats on the Thames. According to his agent, Jill McCullough, he was fiercely independent but also madly in love with his wife. He appeared in Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi as General Ematt, as well as Solo: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. He had been working as dialect coach on a new Batman film. Sam Neill was among many actors to pay tribute. He said Jack was a “lovely man” and “joy to work with”.

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Maria Lawrence, 48

Lawrence ran a business selling gift bags in Derby. According to her son, Dan Clark, she was also a “community champion” in the city and founded a Secret Santa scheme which she ran for free. Speaking to the Derby Telegraph, he said: “She was like an angel and very well regarded in the community. She was selfless too. Nothing was done for herself. She ran all these things out of charity.” Lawrence was unaware she had any health problem until she was diagnosed with coronavirus. Further tests revealed she also had vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels, worsened by Covid-19. She died at Royal Derby hospital on 20 March.

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Frank Rust, 81

Rust was a Labour councillor for Rushmoor borough council for 28 years, and was due to serve a second stint as mayor next year. A passionate Spurs fan, he was a retired NHS manager and had also held senior posts in education. The former Labour cabinet minister Hazel Blears was among those sending tributes, describing him as a “lovely man”. His son Karl wrote: “Sorry dad you were added to the pandemic stats today but you were not a victim or casualty in these dark days. You lived life to the full never stopping learning new things, keeping active, helping people and the community you represented. You were a good dad. I am pleased you had enough time to enjoy being a grandad to Archie.” Rust died on 30 March at Frimley Park hospital, Camberley, Surrey.

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Pat Midgley, 82

Midgley was a Labour councillor in Sheffield for 33 years, and was described by her family as a “true woman of steel”. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, was among many figures in the Labour party to praise her years of service. In a message to her son Neil, McDonnell said: “The flood of tributes to your mum shows just how loved she was and how respected for her dedication to her community to the end.” Julie Dore, the leader of Sheffield city council, said: “I am heartbroken. This makes coronavirus all the more real.” Midgley was admitted to Sheffield general hospital on 24 March and was confirmed positive with Covid-19 a day later. She died on 29 March. She is survived by her husband of 60 years, three children and five grandchildren.

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Frank Hammond, 83

Hammond died in Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport on 26 March. He tested positive for coronavirus despite having no cough and only a mild temperature. His daughter, Trisha Conroy, paid tribute to a “lovely, funny man who always wanted to make people laugh”. He enjoyed art and making scraperboard images and loved walking in the nearby Peak District. A photography enthusiast who worked in a Jessops camera shop for many years, Frank had suffered from chronic lung disease and had reduced mobility but was otherwise in good health before he fell ill, Trisha said: “He used a walking frame in the house and a mobility scooter when he was out after he lost a lot of the strength in his legs but was otherwise in decent shape.” He is survived by his wife, Brenda, daughters Trisha and Claire, and four grandchildren.

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Christopher Vallely, 79

Vallely died in Belfast’s Mater hospital just hours after his wife, Isobel, passed away in the same hospital room. Earlier this year, he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He was admitted to hospital and placed in isolation after testing positive for Covid-19. Vallely, who was known as Arty, retired to his native Belfast in 2003 after working for decades in England. He lived near the Falls Road in west Belfast. He died on 29 March.

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Isobel Vallely, 77

Vallely died on 28 March, the day after the couple’s 53rd wedding anniversary. She had had a stroke last year, and was admitted to hospital on 26 March after testing positive for coronavirus. Her daughter Fiona said both Isobel and Christopher were “amazing parents”. She added: “They were fantastic people who did not deserve to go this way.”

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Amged El-Hawrani, 55

A respected ear, nose and throat consultant who worked at Queen’s hospital Burton in Derbyshire, El-Hawrani was the first confirmed hospital frontline worker to die in the UK after testing positive for coronavirus. His death prompted tributes from ministers and senior health leaders. In a statement, his family said: “His greatest passions were his family and his profession, and he dedicated his life to both. He was the rock of our family, incredibly strong, compassionate, caring and giving. He always put everyone else before himself.” He died on 28 March at Leicester Royal Infirmary.

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Hilda Churchill, 108

Believed to be oldest coronavirus victim in the UK, Churchill was a survivor of the 1918 Spanish flu. She died in a Salford care home on 28 March, hours after testing positive for Covid-19 and just eight days before what would have been her 109th birthday. Before she died, she had been reminiscing about the Spanish flu, according to her grandson Anthony Churchill. She and most of her family in their home in Crewe had become infected, including her father, who collapsed in the street with the flu, she recalled. They all survived apart from her 12-month-old baby sister. “Grandma said she remembered a small box being put in a carriage,” her grandson said. “She was saying how amazing it is that something you can’t see can be so devastating.” Hilda was a seamstress who moved to Salford during the depression to find work. She was known for her cooking skills, particularly her gravy. She had four children, 11 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.

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Adil El Tayar, 63

Tayar was the first working NHS surgeon known to have died from Covid-19 in the UK. He had been volunteering in A&E departments in the Midlands to help the NHS cope with the virus. “He wanted to be deployed where he would be most useful in the crisis,” said his cousin, the broadcaster Zeinab Badawi. “It had taken just 12 days for Adil to go from a seemingly fit and capable doctor working in a busy hospital to lying in a hospital morgue.” His former colleague Abbas Ghaznafar, a renal transplant surgeon at St George’s hospital in Tooting, described Tayar as a “noble human being” who was a “hardworking, dedicated surgeon”. He died on 25 March at West Middlesex University hospital, London.

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Pooja Sharma, 33

Sharma was a hospital pharmacist who died from the virus a day after it claimed the life of her father. She worked at Eastbourne District general hospital in East Sussex. Lara Stacey Young, a nurse in the area, said: “So many people will be devastated. She was such a lovely soul.” Amarjit Aujla, a friend from childhood, said: “Her laughter was contagious and her random calls made my day. From when we were in primary school until we last spoke two weeks ago, you gave me nothing but love, support and a tummy ache with all the laughter.” She died on 26 March.

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Sudhir Sharma, 61

Sharma was an immigration officer at Heathrow Terminal 3. He died on 25 March, a day before his daughter also succumbed to the virus. It is unclear whether the pair had any contact before both contracted the disease. Sharma had health problems and had not been on duty at Heathrow since early January. Nick Jariwalla, director of Border Force at Heathrow, said: “Sudhir was a very well-respected, kind and experienced officer. He will be greatly missed by everyone.”

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Adam Harkins Sullivan, 28

Harkins Sullivan, from Camden, north London, was a painter and decorator and father to a six-year-old son. He worked with his father who gave him his nickname, Spud. Speaking to the Camden New Journal, his mother, Jackie Harkins, said: “I’ve lost something very precious to me that can never be replaced. We are all just in shock because he was only a young man. He was healthy – you didn’t have to tell him to eat his greens, he was always like that.” An otherwise fit man, he had been taken to hospital with suspected pneumonia. He died on 24 March at University College hospital in London in an isolation ward for coronavirus patients.

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Doreen Hunt, 72

Hunt was born in 1947 in Canning Town, east London, into “extreme poverty”, said her son Steve Hunt, adding that she was brought up in “one of the poorest families in a poor area”. After leaving London for Dunstable in 1973, Hunt ran an insurance business for many years with her husband, John, in the Bedfordshire town. “She became as successful in business as she was as a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother,” her son said. “She travelled the world and enjoyed a rich and varied life.” Hunt had been on dialysis for kidney problems at Luton and Dunstable hospital but her condition deteriorated rapidly and she was admitted to intensive care last Friday. She died two days later, on Mother’s Day, her family said. After her death, tests results confirmed she had been infected by the coronavirus.

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Steven Dick, 37

Dick was the UK’s deputy ambassador to Hungary. He had been with the Foreign Office since 2008 and had previously served in Kabul and Riyadh. His parents, Steven and Carol Dick, said: “Steven was a much-loved son, grandson and nephew. He was kind, funny and generous. It was always his dream to work for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and he was very happy representing our country overseas.” Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, said: “He was a jovial, intellectually curious and extremely helpful person. He spoke fluent Hungarian, having undergone a year’s training before taking up his position last autumn. Early last week he helped coordinate arrangements for me to get back into the country, and mentioned that he had tested positive for coronavirus, but at that time said he was feeling fine.”

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Allan Oldcorn, 74

Oldcorn was a retired lorry driver for Bowater-Scott, which manufactured tissues and toilet rolls. Wendy Cavin, one of his three daughters, fondly remembers him leaving sweets for her and her sisters on the family mantelpiece in Flookburgh, Lancashire, when he was doing night shifts. Speaking to the Cumberland News and Star, she said: “He was the go-to man when it came to Flookburgh charter fair day, when everybody needed toilet rolls to make their float flowers.” She added: “He was an amazing husband, dad, grandad and great-grandad – the anchor of our family.” Oldcorn, who had been “fit and healthy”, died on 21 March, a day after being admitted to hospital with shortness of breath and backache. Doctors later confirmed he had tested positive for coronavirus, Cavin said on Facebook.

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Michael Gerard, 73

Gerard was a teacher, musician, campaigner and lifelong Guardian reader. His daughter, Sushila Moles, described him as “loving, kind and always supportive”. She said he made up daily limericks and entertained her with bizarre conversations. Gerard grew up in Shortlands in Bromley, south-east London. He met his wife, Caroline, at Durham University and the couple both worked as teachers in Leicester. Later Gerard specialised in teaching visually impaired children. Moles said: “He was a hoarder, which worked well for this occupation as he always had a boot full of noisy toys and tinsel that he used to help children.” He played many musical instruments but was most accomplished at the violin and founded several orchestras and bands near his home in Clarendon Park, Leicester. He was a Woodcraft Folk leader for 30 years, a former president of the Leicester Secular Society and a frequent attender of anti-war demonstrations. In later years he had a number of health problems including Crohn’s disease. He was diagnosed with Covid-19 on 18 March and died four days later at Leicester Royal Infirmary.

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Jon Jacob, 69

Jacob was a successful property lawyer and partner at the London firm Bower Cotton Hamilton, who lived in Chesham, Buckinghamshire. He was a stalwart of quiz leagues in London and the Chilterns, known for his formidable knowledge of classical music. A friend said Jacob “wore his knowledge lightly, and was very modest and self-effacing, always genuinely surprised to be told how good he was. He was also a lovely man: kind, generous and absolutely delightful company. He will be sorely missed by all his friends in the quizzing family.” Paddy Duffy, another fellow quizzer, tweeted: “Just a lovely man, brilliant fun and incredibly erudite. I’ll remember fondly our Sunday matches and our japes on the quiz holiday in Rhodes.” Jacob died on 23 March of complications from Covid-19.

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Ruth Burke, 82

Burke was the fourth victim of coronavirus in Northern Ireland, according to her daughter Brenda Doherty. She said her mother had “unbelievable strength and suffered many challenges in her life”, adding: “Unfortunately this was one that she was not going to overcome.” In an emotional video on Facebook she said: “We couldn’t be with her when she passed. We’ll not see her coffin, we’ll not get to kiss her.” Doherty urged the public to stop panic-buying and stay indoors. “My mum would not have believed how people are behaving. She would have thought better of society. My mum was a woman who loved life. If you value life, you will stay in and do as you’ve been asked.” Burke’s death was announced by Doherty on 24 March.

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Marita Edwards, 80

She was a very gentle loving woman and a friend to everybody,” Edwards’s son Stuart Loud said. She grew up in the village of Mangotsfield near Bristol. She worked as a cleaner in a factory in the city and brought up two children with her first husband. She found a new life with her second husband on the other side of the Bristol channel in the village of Bulwark in Monmouthshire. She was a regular at the Conservative Club in Chepstow, where she enjoyed dancing. “She had a very rich social life, much better than mine,” said Loud. Edwards was a former captain of the women’s golf team at St Pierre country club in Chepstow, and continued to play golf until she was admitted to hospital for a routine operation in February. She died three weeks later of hospital-acquired Covid-19 a day after testing positive for the virus. Loud said: “She was a lovely lady and it was just a horrendous way to go. I just want to make people aware of that.”

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Peter Myles, 77

Myles’s struggles with Covid-19 were documented on social media by his daughter, the actor Sophia Myles. She said she had done it to show the “harsh reality of the coronavirus”. In 2018 she tweeted about her father’s diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease. Before he retired in 2008, Myles was an Anglican vicar at St John’s church in Isleworth, west London, where he was described as a “liberal soul”. After being ordained in 1971, his first job as curate was in Tideswell in Derbyshire. He spent the rest of his career in west London, including stints as a priest at St Peter’s church in Notting Hill and as chaplain to the bishop of Kensington. In his final years he lived in a care home close to St John’s. He died on 21 March.

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Wendy Jacobs

Jacobs was the headteacher of Roose primary school in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. Her leadership of the school was repeatedly praised by inspectors. “This vibrant school provides a good quality of education with outstanding features,” they said in a recent report. The school’s chair of governors, Fred Chatfield, said her death was devastating for the school and the community. “This is a huge loss,” he said. Jacobs died on 22 March.

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William Stern, 85

Born Vilmos György Stern in Budapest, Hungary, on 2 July 1935, Stern was imprisoned as a child in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the second world war. He shared his memories of Torah readings in the camp on the Shoah website. After the war he settled in London and went on to build a successful property empire. Stern Holdings collapsed in 1973 and in 1978 Stern was declared bankrupt with debts of £118m, a record that stood for 14 years. He was a member of the ultra-Orthodox Haredi community in London.

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Rina Feldman, 97

Like Stern, Feldman was a member of the ultra-orthodox Haredi community. No other details about her have been reported.

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Jean Bradford Nutter

Bradford Nutter was the aunt of the former England rugby player Will Greenwood. In an Instagram post he said she “never did anything but bring sunshine into my life”. Greenwood said his aunt lived near his boarding school in Sedbergh, Cumbria. He said she was the eldest of three sisters and was in her 80s “but had so much living to do”. She died on 21 March.

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Hassan Milani

Councillor Ali Milani, who was Labour’s parliamentary contender against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the 2019 general election, revealed that his father, Hassan, had died after contracting the coronavirus on a trip to Iran. “In the early hours of this morning,” he said on Saturday, “my father tragically passed away after having contracted Covid-19. Please keep him in your prayers. This virus is taking millions all across the world.”

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Craig Ruston, 45

Ruston, a rugby fan and father of two from Kettering, Northamptonshire, had been a footwear designer, including at Dr Martens, before being diagnosed with motor neurone disease. He had been writing about his struggle with the condition before he tested positive for Covid-19. But his posts became less frequent as he began losing the strength in his upper body. In one of his last, he wrote about a dream he had of standing beside his wife and daughters at his own funeral. He wrote: “I don’t fear death, but I can tear myself to pieces if I dwell too long on what happens when I’m gone.” His family said he was “not ready to go”. He died on 16 March.

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Leonard Gibson, 78

Described by his family as a “typical jolly Irishman”, Gibson died on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March. He was born in County Tyrone and had 12 siblings. After moving to South Yorkshire aged 26, he worked at the coking plant at Orgreave. In retirement he enjoyed gardening, but problems with his lungs forced him to move into a sheltered housing flat in Oughtibridge, near Sheffield. He died in Sheffield Northern general hospital after being diagnosed with Covid-19. His daughters, Lisa, an NHS worker, and Michelle, a teaching assistant, were not allowed to visit him in hospital. Lisa said: “It is sad that we weren’t able to be with Daddy, but the nurses were there for us.”

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Nick Matthews, 59

Described as a “true legend” of the Avon and Somerset police, Matthews retired as an officer in 2010 after a heart attack. He and his wife, Mary, from Nailsea in Somerset, had a week’s holiday on the Canary island of Fuerteventura at the end of February. Matthews was taken to Bristol Royal Infirmary after complaining of breathing difficulties on 12 March. He died on 14 March after testing positive for Covid-19.

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Darrell Blakeley, 88

Blakeley was a churchgoer from Middleton in Rochdale and sang in the choir. He had a beautiful voice, according to a spokeswoman for St Michael’s church. He was also regarded as a “gracious gentleman”, she said. He had underlying health conditions and fell ill after coming into contact with someone who had travelled to Italy. Blakeley was admitted to North Manchester general hospital on 3 March with sepsis. He tested positive for Covid-19 on 10 March and died three days later.

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Kimberley Finlayson, 53

Finlayson was the first British victim of coronavirus to be named after she died on holiday on the island of Bali in Indonesia on 11 March. She was the founder of a dental communication business based in Shenley, Hertfordshire, one of the counties worst hit at the start of the outbreak in the UK. She had four children. Her colleagues paid tribute to her “passion, creativity and determination”. Finlayson had lung disease and diabetes.

🕊️🙏🕊️🙏🕊️🙏🕊️🙏

#u.s. news #politics #politics and government #uknews #uk news #uk #covidー19 #covid 19 #covid19 #covid2019 #covid2020 #corona virüsü #coronavirus #world news #worldpolitics

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socialb1ogweb-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Your Guide to Social Signals for SEO

Online networking

This post was advanced from YouMoz. The creator’s perspectives are altogether their own (barring an improbable instance of entrancing) and may not mirror the perspectives on Moz.

Social Signals Explained:

Social sign are human communication measurements on social stages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Medium, and so forth. A few instances of social sign are: likes, loathes, shares, cast a ballot, pins, sees, and so on which regularly help to exhibit prevalence and liking for a particular bit of substance.

A concise history of social flag as a positioning element

Right around two years back, in December 2010, Danny Sullivan composed a quick piece on social sign and their effect on web crawler rankings. The article investigated the probability of social sign influencing rankings, however was right on time for now is the ideal time; versatile third party referencing strategies were extremely popular (in light of the fact that they worked), and very little consideration was paid to social flag over a huge bit of the business. Sullivan offered the conversation starter:

“… are both of the significant web crawlers really utilizing those social sign to rank customary query items?”

He inferred that information from Facebook was to a great extent unused by Google (due to not approaching individual divider information from Facebook), yet that “retweets fill in as another type of third party referencing. Get your page referenced in tweets by definitive individuals, and that can help your positioning in standard query items, to a certain extent.”

Around about fourteen days after the fact, Matt Cutts discharged a Webmaster video where he affirmed that social sign do, truth be told, assume a job in natural SEO.

Today…

Despite everything we’re attempting to make sense of exactly how solid of a job social sign play in natural SEO rankings: various investigations have been directed to decide the careful connection of social sign and SEO rankings, with shifting outcomes. Nonetheless, plainly the significance of social sign is expanding with time, and that asks a few inquiries:

How and for what reason do social sign improve rankings?

What’s the eventual fate of social sign as to SEO?

What steps ought to be taken right currently to improve my site’s social sign?

I will probably investigate every one of these inquiries to enable perusers to build up a major information of the basic components of social flag as they identify with SEO, yet to the genuine objective of web based promoting: expanded site traffic and, at last, income.

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thesocialb1og-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Your Guide to Social Signals for SEO

Social Signals Explained:

Social sign are human cooperation measurements on social stages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Medium, and so on. A few instances of social sign are: likes, detests, shares, cast a ballot, pins, sees, and so forth which normally help to grandstand notoriety and fondness for a particular bit of substance.

A short history of social flag as a positioning element

Right around two years prior, in December 2010, Danny Sullivan composed an adroit piece on social sign and their impact on web crawler rankings. The article investigated the likelihood of social sign influencing rankings, however was ahead of schedule for now is the ideal time; adaptable external link establishment techniques were extremely popular (on the grounds that they worked), and very little consideration was paid to social flag over a huge bit of the business. Sullivan offered the conversation starter:

"… are both of the significant web crawlers really utilizing those social sign to rank standard indexed lists?"

He presumed that information from Facebook was to a great extent unused by Google (due to not approaching individual divider information from Facebook), yet that "retweets fill in as another type of third party referencing. Get your page referenced in tweets by legitimate individuals, and that can help your positioning in customary query items, to a certain extent."

Around about fourteen days after the fact, Matt Cutts discharged a Webmaster video where he affirmed that social sign do, indeed, assume a job in natural SEO.

Today…

Regardless we're attempting to make sense of exactly how solid of a job social sign play in natural SEO rankings: numerous investigations have been led to decide the precise relationship of social sign and SEO rankings, with changing outcomes. In any case, unmistakably the significance of social sign is expanding with time, and that asks a few inquiries:

How and for what reason do social sign improve rankings?

What's the eventual fate of social sign as to SEO?

What steps ought to be taken right currently to improve my site's social sign?

I will likely investigate every one of these inquiries to enable perusers to build up a principal learning of the basic components of social flag as they identify with SEO, yet to the genuine objective of web based promoting: expanded site traffic and, at last, income.

How and for what reason do social sign improve rankings?

While any response to this inquiry is exceptionally easily proven wrong, I accept that social sign have both an immediate and aberrant effect on natural hunt rankings. Direct effect originates from:

Number of individuals that like your image on Facebook

Number of Facebook shares

Number of Twitter supporters

Number of tweets referencing your image name or including a connection to your site

Expanded inbound connections and references because of improved online perceivability/brand mindfulness

Expanded positive surveys (in Google Local , Yelp, and so forth.) because of more joyful clients

Cutts stated, "Thus, there's this recognition that, indeed, everything will go social, or connections are totally outdated, and I believe it's untimely to arrive at that resolution. I don't question that in ten years things will be increasingly social, and those will be all the more dominant sign, yet I wouldn't compose the tribute for connections yet."

Expanded positive audits (in Google Local, Yelp, and so on.) because of more joyful clients: Social media is regularly being utilized nowadays as an augmentation of an organization's client administration division. Clients can tweet to an organization and anticipate that their tweet should be replied. In like manner, clients can get support for another item on an organization's Facebook page, sparing them from irritating robotized telephone menus and unhelpful redistributed client administration divisions.

This simple access to an organization enables clients to feel a closer, natural association with the brand, expands client faithfulness, and assembles shopper trust, all of which lead to more and better audits on survey destinations like Google Local and Yelp. Taking an interest in internet based life (which even CEOs can do) channels brings marks nearer to clients and potential clients. A brand's internet based life "voice" characterizes its picture and recognizes it from an inaccessible element to a hip, in vogue, brand. Consider what Apple did with its well known "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" plugs.

As indicated by Sam McRoberts, CEO of Vudu Marketing, the quantity of audits and the inspiration of those surveys are two of the three greatest factors in nearby search rankings. In the event that that is the situation, at that point it is anything but a stretch to accept that Google utilizes that data in its national rankings also.

Time nearby, be that as it may, can be utilized as a measurement for natural pursuit positioning. By timing to what extent it takes for a client to come back to the pursuit page in the wake of clicking an item, at that point dissecting the new search inquiry contribution by the client, Google can quantify whether the visited site furnished the client the response or data they were searching for. Additionally, Google tracks rehash visits to a similar site, regularly demonstrating habitually visited sites exceptionally in customized list items (for example results appeared to signed in clients).

All in all, we realize Google tracks these measurements, however do they use them for positioning purposes? There's no reading material answer, however I accept they do.

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bluerighthand · 6 years ago

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Growing Up A Shelby - Chapter 3: 1901

Previous Chapters: one two three /?

Chapter Summary: Ada starts school, Tommy thinks about girls…and boys, and a furry friend is introduced to the family (much to Polly’s distress).

This chapter is basically a load of domestic things strung together. Fluff, family shenanigans, minimal angst (but there is a whole storm of angst heading your way).

Notes: Due to recent events I’m taking a break from tumblr/the internet, but here’s me resurfacing to post a new chapter and add more stuff to my queue. I’m really sorry for the wait, but I hope you enjoy <3

Words: 5,654

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15542805/chapters/38607311

Warnings: homophobia, brief mentions of death, gun violence and child abuse

“Oh, will you sit still” Polly groaned, smacking the back of John’s head. He stopped wriggling, for a grand total of five seconds, before resuming his task of trying to kick Arthur under the kitchen table. “John. I will shave your head right off I swear to God” said Polly, attempting to guide the razor across the back of his head.

“I am sitting still!” he protested, bringing his feet behind the chair legs to prove his innocence. Arthur’s legs could still reach however, and he waited until Polly was deep in concentration before sending a hard kick to John’s shin. At his cry, Polly slammed the razor down onto the table.

“Out” she said, pointing Arthur towards the door. She didn’t want to actually cut anyone, despite them both driving her absolutely mad. “Acting like a bloody child”.

“That’s a bad word” John informed her. Not as bad as the ones she wanted to use. Arthur took his time, dragging his feet along the floor and ‘accidentally’ knocking John’s arm on the way out.

She needed wine. And whiskey. In the same glass.

Ten minutes later, John’s hair was done. He scurried off immediately, leaving Polly’s warning about kicking his brother hanging in the kitchen. Cleaning the razor, she called for Tommy, but there was no answer. The imminent return to school (signified by the fresh haircut) must have him up to his neck in summer homework, she thought optimistically. Who was she kidding…

Cutting Tommy’s hair in the past had been a long and arduous task. It was easier now he was older, but he still hadn’t fully recovered his dignity from the baldness incident of 1896, and was therefore extremely cautious when it came to having his head shaved.

She entered the boys’ room to see Tommy leaning out of the window, arms resting on the sill. Thin wisps of smoke curled above his head, and Polly shivered, the autumn air from outside chilling the room.

“Thomas” she said warningly. He jumped, quickly flinging his cigarette down onto the street below, and spinning round. She glared at him in frustration. “Where do you keep getting those from?”. He shrugged, but at least had the decency to look sheepish under her gaze.

“It’s bloody freezing” said Polly, tugging the window down and flicking the latch. “Let’s get your hair sorted and you can go and play”. Tommy followed her out of the room.

“I’m too old for playing” he lied, eyes falling on his wooden horses on the landing even as he spoke. Polly shook her head, remembering a time when nothing could prise Tommy away from his toys. She’d seen the way he stared at older gangs on the streets, his natural curiosity pulling him into something that was very hard to get out of. She pushed the thought away. Tommy was only eleven for God’s sake, he had years before his father’s devilment emerged.

Haircut done and school bag packed for the following day, Tommy returned to his spot on the window sill. Arthur was on the street below, and having tired of annoying John, was throwing a deflated ball up for Tommy to catch. Arthur didn’t play with him as much as he used to, so Tommy was happy to join in, missing the hours they used to spend dreaming up worlds together. Tommy was the first to see Ada and Uncle Charlie heading down the lane, and he waved, grinning as Ada held her new school bag aloft. She spent the rest of the evening buckling and unbuckling the thing in excitement, and hardly slept a wink that night. Tommy didn’t have the heart to tell her school wasn’t nearly as fantastical as she was imagining.

The morning arrived, bright and chilly, and the family gathered in the kitchen for breakfast.

“Our Ada, all grown up” said Arthur, holding Ada’s hand as she twirled, crumpled pinafore fanning out. Not quite a ball gown, but it could have been for the way everyone cheered.

“And you’re going to be in my class Ada!” John cried.

“God help their poor teacher” said Polly under her breath. Tommy laughed, pulling on his jacket. After Polly had extracted three cuddly toys and a plate from Ada’s bag, they left the house, Arthur and Polly waving them off at the door. Arthur had finished school in the summer, and now worked in Charlie’s yard, chopping wood, hammering nails, fixing things. He was good at all that stuff. He wasn’t paid much, but earning three pennies a week was a lot more than others his age were doing for their families.

Polly was ecstatic either way, as Arthur’s income enabled her to quit her cleaning job in the evenings, and enrol in an accountancy class at a night school across town. The first class wasn't for a month or two, but she was already beside herself with excitement. Finally, finally, her life was starting. She was slightly apprehensive about leaving the kids on a regular basis; who knows what trouble they’d get up to, but she’d given Arthur a nice long talk about responsibility, some of which had hopefully stuck.

Jane was there of course, but she’d spent the vast majority of the past few months’ asleep upstairs, which unfortunately Polly didn’t see changing anytime soon. At least there was an adult in the home, in case Arthur decided his friends were more important than babysitting.

Ada kept up a constant stream of chatter on the way to school, about exactly what she should learn and exactly how it should be taught to her. Tommy tried to cut in with some brotherly advice; listen, do your homework, don’t punch anyone with these surnames or I’ll be the one to get it in the neck etc., which was naturally ignored. It would be okay though. Ada could look out for herself, and already had a mean right hook on her if anyone got nasty, much to Polly’s delight and their mother’s horror.

By the time they arrived, the yard was bustling with kids, and Tommy quickly lost sight of his siblings as John pulled Ada off towards the schoolhouse. Spying Freddie and Danny amongst their classmates, he elbowed his way through the crowd to reach them.

“Alright Tommy” greeted Freddie, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “You’ll never guess what Danny’s got”. Tommy looked to Danny, who grinned widely as he pulled him close to whisper in his ear.

“No way” Tommy said when he pulled back, in an equally hushed tone.

“Found it in me dad’s coat last night. He’s gonna sort that Whitton out I reckon” said Danny.

“Or that mad horse of yours” said Freddie, laughing at his friends’ matching frowns.

“Jus’ cause you don’t even have a horse” said Danny.

“When can we see it?” asked Tommy eagerly. Guns were not uncommon in Small Heath, far from it in fact, but he’d never actually held one, never fired one. Blades were far easier to steal, so staring at the outline of his father’s gun through his jacket was the closest he’d got thus far. Arthur Snr had never let his gun out of his sight, even when he was drunk, and Polly used to joke that it was the only thing he could be relied upon for. He’d taken Arthur out shooting once, to Tommy’s jealousy, but his rather graphic descriptions of what he’d do to anyone who stole his gun was enough to put Tommy off.

Danny’s dad was as forgetful as anything, much like his son, making this gun a far easier target.

Before they could make plans however, the bell rang, and the boys reluctantly made their way towards the extension. This building, made for the older kids, was far more makeshift and patchwork than the main schoolhouse, and Tommy wasn’t looking forward to their winter classes. Other than that, things were looking up if Arthur’s time in the top class was anything to go by.

He’d hardly turned up for one thing, and whenever he caused trouble a sweet smile was enough for Mrs Changretta to look the other way. Unfortunately, school restructuring meant that Tommy missed out on Mrs Changretta altogether, and instead ended up with a rather frail looking elderly man called Mr Pearson.

He seemed to live in a constant state of exhaustion, and also looked partially sighted, meaning Tommy was looking forward to bunking off without Pearson even noticing his absence. After ten minutes of silent work only disturbed by the whizz of paper balls Billy was lobbing at the back of Tommy’s head, Pearson went so still in his chair that they all began to speculate whether he was still breathing or not.

Turns out, he was, and Tommy let his daydreams carry him off for the rest of the morning rather than listen to any more drivel about algebra. Lunchtime rolled around, and he, Danny and Freddie entertained themselves by acting out what would likely happen to poor Whitton at the hands of Mr Owens’ gun.

It was strange to see Ada running around the yard. She’d never liked being left behind while her brothers went off to school. And now here she was with them, wearing an oversized pinafore that used to be Polly’s, a wide gap toothed smile on her face and her freshly cut bob dancing around her shoulders. She bounded up to Tommy a few minutes later, holding hands with another girl, and Tommy just managed to catch that her name was Jessie before the two ran off again.

After school, Danny’s mother was waiting by the gates, Danny turning back to shrug apologetically at his friends as he was pulled away. Tommy and Freddie glanced at each other uneasily. They decided to go the pasture that afternoon, instead of playing in the streets…not that they were scared or anything. And if they walked John and Ada home first, nobody had to know.

An hour later, Tommy and Freddie were stretched out on their backs in the field, horses galloping around the paddock nearby as clouds meandered across the sky. It was almost too cold for this now, and Tommy wanted to be outdoors as much as possible before he was forced into Arthur’s old winter coat every time he left the house, which was too thin to keep him from the chill, and merely stopped the free feel of the breeze against his skin.

“Do you like anyone?” asked Freddie. The question came out of the blue, they’d been discussing Danny’s father a second ago, and Tommy turned his head to look at Freddie, his profile clear against the sky.

“I’m not that cold am I?”.

“Not like that” Freddie laughed. “I mean a girl. Do you like any girls?”. Tommy had known what he’d meant. All he heard from Arthur these days was ‘girl talk’, when he wasn’t ignoring him in favour of Irene, or Erin, or…who was it now?

“Do you?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah” said Freddie sadly, “but she doesn’t like me back”.

“How do you know?” said Tommy, propping himself up on an elbow. He didn’t like the sound of this. It was the first he’d heard about it, and he and Freddie told each other everything, didn’t they? Freddie turned his head away before he spoke.

“Because she likes you Tommy” he said, the intonation giving away his annoyance. Tommy frowned, before sitting up fully.

“Is it Greta?” he asked. She was the only girl who ever played with him, other than Ada of course. She was funny, smart, and pretty too. Freddie nodded, not moving from his spot on the grass. “Freddie” groaned Tommy, poking his friend in the shoulder. “She probably only likes me cause I’m the only boy that talks to her”. Freddie shrugged.

“Are you going to kiss her?” he asked.

“What? No!” cried Tommy, realising too late that his reaction was far more opinionated than Freddie was expecting. “I mean” he tried again, “she’d like you much more if you only tried speaking to her instead of putting worms in her desk”.

“Hey” protested Freddie, “how was I to know Billy had moved seats while I was ill?”. They laughed for a while at the memory, before Freddie spoke again.

“I’d like to kiss her”. Tommy felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. Maybe he was getting ill. But as his eyes flicked down to Freddie’s lips as he smiled, Tommy wondered if there was another reason his insides were full of butterflies.

He’d pondered this matter rather a lot lately.

The first thing he’d heard about homosexuals had been from his father. They’d been walking home from the boxing ring a few years ago, Arthur Snr having had one too many whiskeys, and come across two young men in an alleyway shortcut to Watery Lane. One was leaning against the wall, whilst the other rested his hand on the bricks behind his head, leaning in close. They were just laughing and talking, and Tommy wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought if his father hadn’t stopped dead in the street, turning down the alley.

The men were already long gone by the time his father had staggered to their spot, but he spent the rest of the trip home muttering about them, and it was the most Tommy had ever heard him speak of the Bible. He’d been too young to understand it then, but now?

He sighed.

He probably didn’t need to worry much about what his father thought anyway. They’d only seen him once since their disastrous trip to London, when he’d turned up one weekend at the boxing ring. He’d bullied Arthur into fighting him, and then left whilst his son was still bleeding on the ground. He hadn’t even gone to see their mother, nor Polly.

Tommy had been close to confronting him, but Arthur wouldn’t let him, holding firmly onto his wrist as blood dripped down his chin. Tommy thought about him sometimes, wondered where he was, but was nevertheless glad to have him out of the way.

The walk home was quiet, both Tommy and Freddie lost in thought. A dark raincloud had settled over Small Heath, and didn’t let up for weeks, sending everyone into an irritable mood. Danny’s father had died in hospital, from multiple gunshot wounds. Of course Tommy knew guns could kill; that was the point of them, but…weren’t they only supposed to kill bad people? The hero never died in his storybooks. Maybe Mr Owens had been a villain after all.

The approach of Christmas and the school holidays cheered everyone up a bit, as did Danny’s return to school at the end of November.

Tommy also had a new hobby; dancing. Smoking around the back of the town hall at night had become something of a habit. It was quiet, as quiet as you could get in Small Heath, as the majority of the pubs and gambling dens were on the opposite side of the town. Tommy liked to lean against the brick wall and smoke, gazing up at the night sky. In the summer, they opened the windows, and Tommy could hear violins and cellos and countless other instruments from within, tapping his foot along with the rhythm.

Freddie often accompanied him, but Tommy wasn’t sure how he felt about Freddie these days. It was nice to spend the evening alone sometimes, away from his siblings and friends. Tommy had wandered across to the hall, hoping to hear the music, but the chill of autumn had been supplanted by a bitterly cold winter, and the windows remained firmly shut. He shivered, regretting this decision somewhat as he saw a mother and son cross the street ahead of him, both decked out in thick fluffy coats and scarves. Night had fallen, and he could feel his fingertips going numb as he deliberated what to do.

The large clock on the building opposite chimed nine, and Tommy made his decision, slipping in behind an elderly couple entering the hall. He ducked behind a column, watching people in their fineries enter the main auditorium. There was a door on the right, marked with that tempting ‘Do not enter, staff only’ sign and when there was a lull in arrivals Tommy crossed the empty hallway and pulled open the door to reveal a staircase.

Pleasantly surprised it wasn’t just a cupboard, or something equally boring, he climbed the stairs to the top. Judging by the amount of dust on the handle, nobody had been up here for a long time. Tommy blew the cloud of fluff away, pushing open the door to reveal the loft. Boxes littered the floor, the sad remains of bent flutes and snapped violin strings poking out. There was a dusty old gramophone, and a few cracked records strewn about the place, but other than that it was all beams and lead pipes and spider’s webs.

The building was old, and the boards creaked dangerously under Tommy’s feet as he made his way across the attic. The screws in the floorboards looked loose and rusty, and Tommy could see gaps where they’d fallen away up ahead, providing chinks of light where the missing tiles in the ceiling offered only black.

Not stopping to consider the fact that this could be a very bad idea, Tommy continued walking, swinging around a beam and crouching down at its base. Through a small gap, he could see the orchestra far below, a few metres ahead. The rows of seats to the side of the dancefloor were mostly full, and Tommy was surprised to see what he assumed were people of standing in the audience. Small Heath wasn’t exactly known as a cultural centre.

He moved further into the room, and decided a stronger looking horizontal beam would be a good place to sit and listen to the music. He clung to a dusty pipe for support, swinging his legs across and pushing himself up onto the beam.

It wasn’t the most comfortable; in order to balance himself he had to twist around awkwardly to grab the post behind him, but when the music started up again and he caught glimpses of the dancers swirling below him, it was worth it.

The sound here was much better than from outside, and the protection of the mostly formed roof prevented the bite of that chilling cold that numbed his fingers and wound its way down to his bones. He swung his feet in time to the music, the thrill of being somewhere he definitely shouldn’t and nobody knowing it putting a giddy smile on his face.

“What are you doing?” came a voice. Tommy started, craning his neck to see a girl standing in the doorway. She was dressed well, too well to be a Small Heath kid, buttoned into a crisp white blouse and a navy petticoat. The long blond hair trailing down to her waist made her look like the princess in Ada’s storybook.

“The door was open” she said. Shit. “It’s staff only, so I thought I should take a look”.

“You’re staff?” said Tommy, disbelievingly. She had to be at least three years younger than he was.

“My mum’s performing” she said proudly. “I can go where I want”.

“What does she play?” asked Tommy, peeking back through the gap in the floor, relieving the strain on his neck.

“Don’t you think we should talk about this after I’ve rescued you?” she said, exasperated. Tommy squawked indignantly.

“I don’t need rescuing!” he insisted, trying to look relaxed in his precarious position. The girl looked at him expectantly. Right, of course. Time to get back without falling through the floor. Tommy scanned the area, noting the spots he’d used to get here, and the surrounding beams. It suddenly looked a lot more complicated than it had ten minutes ago. Steeling himself, and slightly annoyed that this girl had interrupted a perfectly enjoyable evening, he slid off the beam and began to make his way back across the floor. The girl was shifting nervously, and brought a hand up to bite at her nails when a board gave a particularly loud creak.

“Not there!” she cried suddenly, and Tommy flung an arm out to stop himself instinctively, glaring at her.

“You’re not helping” he said. She fell silent for a moment, watching him right himself and manoeuvre around a couple more beams.

“I’m Grace, by the way”. Tommy didn’t answer, more focused on removing his foot from a floorboard that looked as if it had mere moments before it snapped. “What’s your name?”. Tommy jumped, swinging from an overhead pipe for a second, which protested loudly at his weight, and landed in front of Grace. He did a mock bow, and she laughed.

“Tommy”. A smile.

“Your clothes are filthy” she said, gesturing to his dusty attire.

“Yours aren’t, rich girl”. Brushing himself down, he leant against the doorframe. She held out her hand.

“Do you want to dance?”. Tommy was slightly taken aback by this.

“I don’t know how” he said after a moment.

“I’ll teach you. It’s easy, come on!”.

“Which one’s your mum?” asked Tommy, once Grace had pulled him through the hall, on the right floor this time, and up to the stage.

“The singer, right at the front” said Grace, beaming. “We’re staying in hotels and travelling around England so she can perform. Isn’t she brilliant? They say I could be a singer myself someday”.

“I’d like to see that” said Tommy.

“Come on, let’s dance” she said, pulling him into the crowd. Tommy was stiff and self-conscious at first, treading on Grace’s feet and glancing around the room for any familiar faces. Grace laughed when they stumbled, but not in a cruel way, and Tommy soon found himself smiling and pulled into the rhythm of the music. By the time the orchestra took a break, Grace had taught Tommy some basic steps, and they twirled amongst the other dancers for an hour or so until they collapsed, exhausted, into chairs next to the stage. Grace’s mum came down from the platform to greet them, eyes widening as she glanced at her watch.

“Say goodbye, Grace” her mother instructed, glancing at Tommy distractedly, and waving over a friend to take Grace back to the room.

“There’s another concert next Friday” she said, “this is our last stop before we go back to Ireland. Would you like to come?”. They made plans, and Tommy waved goodbye and slipped out of the door before Grace’s mother could ask any questions.

His walk home turned into a run in an attempt to warm his blood, but his fingers were still shaking by the time he slid his key into the door. Polly had finally been persuaded to get him one cut after she’d found him half way up the house, clinging to several knotted sheets at three am, Arthur half hanging out of the window in an attempt to pull him up. Avoiding the creaky stair, he crept past Polly’s door and into his room.

John was fast asleep under the covers, but Arthur wasn’t home. It wasn’t uncommon these days for him to be gone, but Tommy usually lay awake until he heard his brother’s footsteps on the landing, or the rustle of the sheets as he slid into bed. He didn’t come back at all that night. Tommy caught a few winks of sleep, but woke whilst the sky was still dark, watching the street from his window until the orange sunrise dragged itself wearily over Small Heath, the dark clouds finally dissipating.

Arthur turned up around lunchtime, mostly sober, and Polly, having had quite enough of the lot of them pressed a few pennies into their hands for the fair. Charlie came round in the afternoon to visit his sister, and enjoy a hot cup tea away from the yard.

Polly took advantage of his visit, enacting her plans to rearrange the sleeping arrangements in the house without the hindrance of her nephews and niece. The boys were getting far too old to be cramped up in one room together. In the past year, Arthur had started growing at a slightly alarming rate, much to Tommy’s distress. He could wear his father’s old clothing now, which was useful, but his long limbs were also causing some problems. He'd been shaken awake by an indignant Tommy on more than one occasion, having accidentally smacked him as he rolled over in bed.

But Tommy’s nighttime wanderings and susceptibility to nightmares made it clear he still needed his older brother. However much he’d deny it. John, although small, was extremely messy, and seemed to relocate every single toy in the house to their bedroom floor on a regular basis, which infuriated his brothers to no end. Despite John and Ada bickering at least five times a day, they were inseparable, and so close in age it only made sense for them to share a room.

Polly felt no remorse in chucking out her brother’s old boxes of files, endless sheets of paper and grand business plans, which took up an entire room on the landing. Who the hell needed two offices? Especially if they were never even home to use them?

Curly was called in from the stables to help, and soon John’s bed was squeezed through the doorway and moved into the now clean and empty room down the hall. Ada’s new bed, courtesy of Charlie, followed, and Polly inwardly cheered about having her own space back after four years of sharing with the youngest Shelby. Jane managed to make it downstairs to see the new arrangement, and say a sentimental goodbye to the Shelby cot.

“I remember putting little Arthur in here” she said, running her hand across the wood. Polly smiled at the memory. She was only seven at the time, and was beyond excited to have a baby to look after.

“I reached through and he gripped onto my finger” said Polly fondly. Little teeth marks, John’s handiwork, covered the posts, and Polly had an exasperated smile on her face as she observed the marks where Tommy had actually removed two of the posts and wiggled out. She’d found the empty cot and loose posts on the floor the next morning, and was in complete panic until she found him curled up on the floor under Jane’s bed. God knows how he’d done it.

“I’ll keep it out the back” said Charlie, “then you can have it again if you need it”. He quietened, a deep crease in his forehead.

“We won’t need it” said Polly, firmly.

Jane nodded sadly, before giving Polly a teasing smile.

“Maybe for children of your own, ey Pol?”.

“Give over” she laughed. She’d had quite enough of putting children before her career for the time being. But…maybe one day they’d use the cot again.

The boys’ room looked huge without John’s bed, and they spread out Arthur and Tommy’s, Charlie surprising Polly later that afternoon by delivering a small desk he’d been working on. It slid neatly between the beds, making the room look cosy and far more practical than before.

It was a far cry from a few winters past, where the cold had been so bad, and the price of wood so high, they’d chopped up the beds to burn in the fireplace. They spared the cot; John was only a baby, and Jane’s bed, but the boys and Polly were on mattresses until the following summer. She’d tried to make it fun, like a camping game, but the novelty wore off after a few nights. Even when they had beds again, Tommy would wake up in a cold sweat more often than not, thinking he could feel bugs crawling over his skin.

Later that evening, Polly glanced over her library books one last time. It had been hard to remind her brain how to do calculations after such a long time, but she felt more confident now she’d got some practice in. She couldn’t believe it was finally happening. Practically jumping with excitement, Polly entered the kitchen to grab her bag, stopping in her tracks at the scene within.

The entire floor was covered in hay. Her first thought was that Tommy had brought one of the horses into the house again, but this time the culprits were Ada and John. They were sprawled in the middle of the floor, heads together, giggling at something Polly couldn’t see. Their heads snapped up when she coughed pointedly, gesturing at the mess.

Curled up in Ada’s lap, was a small shivering rabbit. It was white in places, but its paws and sides were a dirty grey, the fur matted and unkempt.

“Ada” Polly said calmly. “Why is there a rabbit in our kitchen?”.

“Because she’s cold”.

“It’s a boy” said John.

“Is not” retorted Ada, cuddling the animal close. To its credit, it didn’t seem to mind. Any other being that could tolerate the Shelby children should be given a medal in her view. That being said, it was still a dirty rabbit, and it was still in her kitchen.

“I don’t care if it’s cold, put it back where you found it. And look at the mess you’ve made” said Polly, moving some hay out of her path with her shoe.

“Aunt Pol, you just destroyed the turret” whined John.

“Turret?”

“We made her a castle to live in” said Ada. “Out of hay”.

“For God’s sake! Get it out, now”.

“No!” Ada cried, “we found her all alone outside, she doesn’t want to go back out there”. Polly pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn’t have time for this. And she would not have her good mood ruined a by a bloody rabbit.

“Ada Jane Shelby, you listen to me. If that rabbit is still in this house when I get home tonight, you’ll not sit down for a week”. Ada glared right back, and would have likely folded her arms if they weren’t full of fluff. John leaned over, holding something orange out to the creature. It sniffed the air, nose twitching, before tucking in.

“That’s not the carrot I bought from the market today is it?” Polly asked in a low voice. John shook his head, the lie written all over his face.

Slamming the door, Polly marched down the lane. Let Arthur deal with the bloody thing, just think about the class, she told herself. Despite her anger about the mess and the wasted food, she was still excited. It was quite a trek to the school, but Polly supposed accountants in training didn’t want drunkards bursting in on them halfway through a lesson. She arrived right on time, and swiftly closed the door on the frigid air she’d left behind.

By the time the lecturer arrived, there were around twenty students, most of whom had clearly travelled from out of town. She was the only girl, which she had been expecting, but it still sent a shiver of unease down her spine as the men turned to stare at her. No worries, she calmed herself, it would only take one woman to put this lot to shame. Deliberately busying herself with her books, she avoided their gazes and glanced over the course overview once again, trying to concentrate. Bloody rabbit. Arthur had better get rid of it.

“Something troubling you?”.

Polly started slightly, and looked to her left. A man had slid into the seat next to her, leaning on the desk as he smiled. His eyes were a deep blue-green colour, and his dark hair was styled upwards, a few strands falling around his face.

“Just- just a rabbit” she said. He laughed, and Polly faced the front quickly as the tutor called for their attention. If this stupidly attractive boy made her mince her words, she’d have nothing to do with him. She’d learnt that lesson four years ago.

The class was just as she’d hoped. She couldn’t quite process that she was actually here, and the life she’d dreamed up for herself when she was just thirteen was finally starting. Polly was pretty sure she spent the entire two hours with a deranged smile on her face, but she didn’t care. She caught the man’s eye from time to time when he smiled at her, and became more confident, even leaning over at one point and correcting a mistake he’d made. She wasn’t sure how he’d react and could imagine the earful she’d get from her brother if she did such a thing to him, but the man just nodded and listened, eager to learn. She liked that.

The class ended far too soon, but Polly packed up quickly, thoughts of what the kids could be getting up to in her absence taking precedence. She paused near the door, glancing back at the man she’d sat beside. He was engaged in conversation with some friends, and Polly smiled before ducking out of the room.

She was already anticipating the following week, planning to get some practice at the harder problems before the next class. She made it halfway down the dark street, before she heard loud footsteps behind her, instinctively reaching for the pocketknife hidden within her coat. Spinning around, the man from the class had caught up with her. At her expression, he waved his hands in apology.

“I didn’t mean to alarm you” he said, “I just-”

“I should be going” said Polly reluctantly, thinking of the children.

“Stay” he said, reaching for her hand, “have a drink with me. If not tonight, perhaps some other time?”. She bit her lip, enjoying the feeling of his fingers intertwining with hers. Should she go for this?

“I don’t even know your name” she said.

“Edward” he replied, kissing her hand. “Edward Gray”.

#my writing #growing up a shelby #guas au #peaky blinders fanfiction

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searchenginemarketinggurgao-blog · 6 years ago

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Part of a series on

Internet marketing

Search engine optimization

Local search engine optimisation

Social media marketing

Email marketing

Referral marketing

Content marketing

Native advertising

Search engine marketing

Pay-per-click

Cost per impression

Search analytics

Web analytics

Display advertising

Ad blocking (history)

Contextual advertising

Behavioral targeting

Affiliate marketing

Cost per action

Revenue sharing

Mobile advertising

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising.[1] SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.[2]

Contents

1Market

2History

3Methods and metrics

4Paid inclusion

5Comparison with SEO

6Ethical questions

7Examples

8See also

9References

Market

In 2007, U.S. advertisers spent US $24.6 billion on search engine marketing.[3] In Q2 2015, Google (73.7%) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3%) partnership accounted for almost 100% of U.S. search engine spend.[4] As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[5] Managing search campaigns is either done directly with the SEM vendor or through an SEM tool provider. It may also be self-serve or through an advertising agency. As of October 2016, Google leads the global search engine market with a market share of 89.3%. Bing comes second with a market share of 4.36%, Yahoo comes third with a market share of 3.3%, and Chinese search engine Baidu is fourth globally with a share of about 0.68%.[6]

History

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 1990s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[7] in 1996 and then Goto.com[8] in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name[9] to Overture in 2001, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary moneymakers[10] for search engines. In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an alliance. The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and Europe in February 2010.[11]

Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term "search engine marketing" was popularized by Danny Sullivan in 2001[12] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Methods and metrics

Search engine marketing uses at least five methods and metrics to optimize websites.[citation needed]

Keyword research and analysis involves three "steps": ensuring the site can be indexed in the search engines, finding the most relevant and popular keywords for the site and its products, and using those keywords on the site in a way that will generate and convert traffic. A follow-on effect of keyword analysis and research is the search perception impact.[13] Search perception impact describes the identified impact of a brand's search results on consumer perception, including title and meta tags, site indexing, and keyword focus. As online searching is often the first step for potential consumers/customers, the search perception impact shapes the brand impression for each individual.

Website saturation and popularity, or how much presence a website has on search engines, can be analyzed through the number of pages of the site that are indexed by search engines (saturation) and how many backlinks the site has (popularity). It requires pages to contain keywords people are looking for and ensure that they rank high enough in search engine rankings. Most search engines include some form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms. The following are major tools measuring various aspects of saturation and link popularity: Link Popularity, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Marketleap's Link Popularity and Search Engine Saturation.

Back end tools, including Web analytic tools and HTML validators, provide data on a website and its visitors and allow the success of a website to be measured. They range from simple traffic counters to tools that work with log files and to more sophisticated tools that are based on page tagging (putting JavaScript or an image on a page to track actions). These tools can deliver conversion-related information. There are three major tools used by EBSCO: (a) log file analyzing tool: WebTrends by NetiQ; (b) tag-based analytic tool: WebSideStory's Hitbox; and (c) transaction-based tool: TeaLeaf RealiTea. Validators check the invisible parts of websites, highlighting potential problems and many usability issues and ensuring websites meet W3C code standards. Try to use more than one HTML validator or spider simulator because each one tests, highlights, and reports on slightly different aspects of your website.

Whois tools reveal the owners of various websites and can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues.

Google Mobile-Friendly Website Checker: This test will analyze a URL and report if the page has a mobile-friendly design.[14]

Search engine marketing is a way to create and edit a website so that search engines rank it higher than other pages. It should be also focused on keyword marketing or pay-per-click advertising (PPC). The technology enables advertisers to bid on specific keywords or phrases and ensures ads appear with the results of search engines.

With the development of this system, the price is growing under the high level of competition. Many advertisers prefer to expand their activities, including increasing search engines and adding more keywords. The more advertisers are willing to pay for clicks, the higher the ranking for advertising, which leads to higher traffic.[15] PPC comes at a cost. The higher position is likely to cost $5 for a given keyword, and $4.50 for a third location. A third advertiser earns 10% less than the top advertiser, while reducing traffic by 50%.[15] The investors must consider their return on investment and then determine whether the increase in traffic is worth the increase.

There are many reasons explaining why advertisers choose the SEM strategy. First, creating a SEM account is easy and can build traffic quickly based on the degree of competition. The shopper who uses the search engine to find information tends to trust and focus on the links showed in the results pages. However, a large number of online sellers do not buy search engine optimization to obtain higher ranking lists of search results, but prefer paid links. A growing number of online publishers are allowing search engines such as Google to crawl content on their pages and place relevant ads on it.[16] From an online seller's point of view, this is an extension of the payment settlement and an additional incentive to invest in paid advertising projects. Therefore, it is virtually impossible for advertisers with limited budgets to maintain the highest rankings in the increasingly competitive search market.

Google's search engine marketing is one of the western world's marketing leaders, while its search engine marketing is its biggest source of profit.[17] Google's search engine providers are clearly ahead of the Yahoo and Bing network. The display of unknown search results is free, while advertisers are willing to pay for each click of the ad in the sponsored search results.

Paid inclusion

Paid inclusion involves a search engine company charging fees for the inclusion of a website in their results pages. Also known as sponsored listings, paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies either in the main results area or as a separately identified advertising area.

The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator. Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage, which will automatically be catalogued on a regular basis. However, some companies are experimenting with non-subscription based fee structures where purchased listings are displayed permanently. A per-click fee may also apply. Each search engine is different. Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success. More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!,[18] mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling. Others, like Google (and as of 2006, Ask.com[19][20]), do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing (advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such).

Some detractors of paid inclusion allege that it causes searches to return results based more on the economic standing of the interests of a web site, and less on the relevancy of that site to end-users.

Often the line between pay per click advertising and paid inclusion is debatable. Some have lobbied for any paid listings to be labeled as an advertisement, while defenders insist they are not actually ads since the webmasters do not control the content of the listing, its ranking, or even whether it is shown to any users. Another advantage of paid inclusion is that it allows site owners to specify particular schedules for crawling pages. In the general case, one has no control as to when their page will be crawled or added to a search engine index. Paid inclusion proves to be particularly useful for cases where pages are dynamically generated and frequently modified.

Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization, since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months. Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

Comparison with SEO

SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO. SEM includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) and organic search results (SEO). SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click (particularly beneficial for local providers as it enables potential consumers to contact a company directly with one click), article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done. A keyword analysis is performed for both SEO and SEM, but not necessarily at the same time. SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.

In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising,[2] particularly in the commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition. Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine optimization and search retargeting.

Creating the link between SEO and PPC represents an integral part of the SEM concept. Sometimes, especially when separate teams work on SEO and PPC and the efforts are not synced, positive results of aligning their strategies can be lost. The aim of both SEO and PPC is maximizing the visibility in search and thus, their actions to achieve it should be centrally coordinated. Both teams can benefit from setting shared goals and combined metrics, evaluating data together to determine future strategy or discuss which of the tools works better to get the traffic for selected keywords in the national and local search results. Thanks to this, the search visibility can be increased along with optimizing both conversions and costs.[21]

Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM). SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.[22] Some of the latest theoretical advances include search engine marketing management (SEMM). SEMM relates to activities including SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of mainstream SEO). SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means to achieve it, and pay per click SEO. For example, some of the attention is placed on the web page layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor. SEO & SEM are two pillars of one marketing job and they both run side by side to produce much better results than focusing on only one pillar.

Ethical questions

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[23][24][25] by Consumer Reports WebWatch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter[26] in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.

Another ethical controversy associated with search marketing has been the issue of trademark infringement. The debate as to whether third parties should have the right to bid on their competitors' brand names has been underway for years. In 2009 Google changed their policy, which formerly prohibited these tactics, allowing 3rd parties to bid on branded terms as long as their landing page in fact provides information on the trademarked term.[27] Though the policy has been changed this continues to be a source of heated debate.[28]

On April 24, 2012 many started to see that Google has started to penalize companies that are buying links for the purpose of passing off the rank. The Google Update was called Penguin. Since then, there have been several different Penguin/Panda updates rolled out by Google. SEM has, however, nothing to do with link buying and focuses on organic SEOand PPC management. As of October 20, 2014 Google has released three official revisions of their Penguin Update.

In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Lens.com, Inc. v. 1-800 Contacts, Inc. that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword. In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commissionfiled an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its trademark enforcement practices in the search engine marketing space have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act. 1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and is scheduled to appear before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.[29]

Examples

AdWords is recognized as a web-based advertising utensil since it adopts keywords which can deliver adverts explicitly to web users looking for information in respect to a certain product or service. It is flexible and provides customizable options like Ad Extensions, access to non-search sites, leveraging the display network to help increase brand awareness. The project hinges on cost per click (CPC) pricing where the maximum cost per day for the campaign can be chosen, thus the payment of the service only applies if the advert has been clicked. SEM companies have embarked on AdWords projects as a way to publicize their SEM and SEO services. One of the most successful approaches to the strategy of this project was to focus on making sure that PPC advertising funds were prudently invested. Moreover, SEM companies have described AdWords as a practical tool for increasing a consumer’s investment earnings on Internet advertising. The use of conversion tracking and Google Analytics tools was deemed to be practical for presenting to clients the performance of their canvas from click to conversion. AdWords project has enabled SEM companies to train their clients on the utensil and delivers better performance to the canvass. The assistance of AdWord canvass could contribute to the growth of web traffic for a number of its consumer’s websites, by as much as 250% in only nine months.[30]

Another way search engine marketing is managed is by contextual advertising. Here marketers place ads on other sites or portals that carry information relevant to their products so that the ads jump into the circle of vision of browsers who are seeking information from those sites. A successful SEM plan is the approach to capture the relationships amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines. Search engines were not important to some industries in the past, but over the past years the use of search engines for accessing information has become vital to increase business opportunities.[31] The use of SEM strategic tools for businesses such as tourism can attract potential consumers to view their products, but it could also pose various challenges.[32] These challenges could be the competition that companies face amongst their industry and other sources of information that could draw the attention of online consumers.[31] To assist the combat of challenges, the main objective for businesses applying SEM is to improve and maintain their ranking as high as possible on SERPs so that they can gain visibility. Therefore, search engines are adjusting and developing algorithms and the shifting criteria by which web pages are ranked sequentially to combat against search engine misuse and spamming, and to supply the most relevant information to searchers.[31] This could enhance the relationship amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines by understanding the strategies of marketing to attract business.

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