#give me my easy access to italicized right now

[it-spirk-to-me]

OKAY SO THIS

My partner- @spirk-my-love is fucking incredible. He writes *exclusively* on the phone for most times, and it's amazing- super fast writer, few mistakes(I love beta reading for him) and just overall- wow. We RP on occasion and what would take me 9 minutes on comp takes him like 3 on phone. Insanely fast

Put me on the phone and I struggle. I have a small phone, fat fingers, and way too much going on in my mind to not use all my fingers at once to type. So I exclusively stick to writing stories on comp. I can RP occasionally on my phone if I have to, and I can ramble(short back and forth responses with no formal writing style and just 'pfffft', keyspam, and 'gee wonder why that is' every so often- it's fun) just fine.

Write fic? My fingers shrivel into unusable sausages. I applaud those that can write fic on their phone

I could never write on my phone, but for some reason that changed this year and my word counts exploded, so it got me thinking about how everyone else is doing this.

Will be reading tags/replies in case you say how it's affected your word counts!

[killian-whump]

THE ONGOING SAGA...

So a wonderful friend of mine offered to pay my way to the Patreon content so I could, and I quote, “pirate tf out of it”. BLESS YOU, MY FRIEND.

She Chimed me the money, but I don’t have a debit card, so I can’t accept Chime payments. She had to send it again via Paypal, but she is a saintly saint and she did so <3

So off I went to Patreon to (begrudgingly) give them their $10 ransom to release the Colin Content to me... and they refused the payment.

THEY WOULD NOT TAKE MY TEN DOLLAH.

So I refunded my friend’s Paypal payment and looked into it. Turns out Patreon won’t take payment via Paypal accounts without a valid debit/credit card attached, because since it’s a subscription, they have to ensure that they can, you know, continue taking your money.

THEY DON’T WANT TEN DOLLAH, THEY WANT TEN DOLLAH+.

I italicized that + for emphasis, but I feel like it didn’t work.

ANYWAY! At this point, it’s now a feud between Patreon and me, only they don’t know they’re in a feud, but *I* do and that’s all that matters. My mom’s like, “I will GIVE you $10″ and the neighbor’s dog is like, “I’ll give you $20 if you shut up” and I’m like BUT I NEED A CREDIT CARD T_T and my Mom now, she wisely doesn’t trust me and “that pirate computer” of mine with her credit card number, but even SHE was like, “okay, maybe...” but then I remembered that I had a Visa gift card I got from MyPoints after, like, FIVE FUCKING YEARS of clicking on ads and doing surveys (I’m not even kidding, that’s how long it took) that happens to be... wait for it... TEN DOLLAH!!!

So I head back over to Patreon like “ten dollah ten dollah ten dollah” and enter the info and pay and... I’M HERE!!! I made it!!

LET THE PIRATING BEGIN!!!

...except it didn’t. Now look, I’m not a pirating expert by any means, but I’m pretty good at ripping and scraping shit off of websites that don’t want you to take their shit. I was pretty confident in my abilities here. Except none of the “easy mode” steps worked. None of the “medium mode” steps worked. “No problem,” I thought. “Some things need a little extra finessing to cough up the goods.”

But it didn’t cough up the goods. It coughed up blobs.

I PAID TEN DOLLAH FOR BLOBS. MFING BLOBS!!!

My additional programs were useless. My pirating pals could offer nothing more profound than, “Oh. Blobs. No, that won’t work with blobs.”

I feel it’s pertinent at this point to let you all know that “blobs” is not a euphemism here, either. They’re literally, actually called blobs.

See, Patreon serves video from exterior video sites in a lot of cases, but in other cases... they serve the video in blobs. There isn’t a file address to scrape, because it starts with “blob” before where the address would be - and the file itself is served in itty bitty teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikinis snippets of randomly named media files. Blobs. Sure, you can access the blobs, say to watch them in something like VLC, but you can’t do much of anything meaningful with them. I couldn’t convert them to a more useable format, and I wouldn’t even begin to know where to start with trying to compile them into one full file - which I’m sure would be a nightmare with the random names, as well.

So now I’m stuck with the rudimentary basic of... screen recording. That’s it. That’s my only feasible option for sharing this thing. I confess, I’ve never done this before. I don’t have an app or a program to do it with, aside from a small GIFing app that’s limited to recording a snippet of the screen for 3 minutes or so. Windows has a Game Bar, as it turns out, that has a screen recorder in it - but it seems to only be able to record my entire browser window... and at a rate of 1mb per second of video. That’s 60mb per minute. 40 minute video... 60 mb per minute...

THAT’S 2.4 GIGABYTES, YOU ASSHOLES.

I think my computer would die trying to record it, and I don’t wanna upload it, and no one in their right mind wants to download 2.4 gb of celebrities playing party games on motherfucking zoom.

So here I am now. Short $10 with nothing to show for it. I haven’t even watched the video, because I don’t feel right watching it when I’ve failed in my mission to make it accessible to everyone else as well. I’m thinking I’ll maybe watch it and do a transcript/write up of what’s going on, at least share it that way... maybe see if I can screen record parts of it to either GIF or upload for you guys, so you can see parts...

I don’t know. I’ve failed. I’m a failure. I feel awful.

AND THOSE PATREON FUCKERS HAVE MY TEN DOLLAH.

[jenroses]

Dear Good Omens Fandom *

*And others.

It’s time to talk about footnotes.

Okay, so there are a number of different ways to augment text in a print book to provide more information. When expanding on an idea, on a page, one often puts a footnote to a SHORT paragraph that appears on the same page. In digital versions, all the footnotes are often at the back of the text and linked to via some variant of a hyperlink. 

Functionally, in a print book, most people will read the paragraph or sentence the footnote is in, drop their glance to the bottom of the page, and look up again. Grade: B+, perfectly serviceable.

Functionally, in a properly coded digital document such as an Ebook or web page, one clicks the footnote symbol or number, reads, and then either clicks it again or hits the back button to get back to where they were. Grade: C-, if you exit on the bookmark you may never get back to where you started, if you hit a back button, the document may reload if your browser is being techy, but if it is coded right, you probably can usually get back to where you need to be. 

If it is not coded properly or at all, F-, not functional, will not read.

When providing references or receipts, one uses references, often a numerical list or alphabetical list at the back of the book, chapter or article. The point is that if someone wants more information, they can get it. In a nonfiction article, this works well. 

You provide your reference in whatever style is appropriate to the publication, people can find what they need, the document is rarely long enough to care about flipping back and forth. Online, even easier. People can click through, open in a new window, whatever.  Grade for nonfiction: A+. Provides extra information in an accessible way. 

Grade for fiction... eh. Just use an appendix in a print book, author’s note, end note, whatever. Footnotes for receipts pull me out of the story. Grade: B- (or C+)

And online? Use an end note or chapter note. You rarely need to provide links in the text in fiction, just use an end note and say, “By the way, if you were wondering about such and such, here’s where it came from and what it’s about.” Easy peasy, flow is fine. Grade: A

So in a fandom which grew up with a fully footnoted actual physical book such as Good Omens? The temptation is to stick with the original for style, but please, my darlings, I beg you, do not do this. YES, you can absolutely provide snarky asides, quips and expanded information. You can do it without interrupting yourself mid sentence. 

But it will be more functional in a digital environment, ESPECIALLY for people who use “whole work” viewing rather than chapters, people who download for reading later, and people who are visually impaired who need screen readers... if you use another method.* You do not have to send people on a wild goose chase to find footnotes, which many will simply give up on and ignore, and in which case, why did you bother? *It works like this. Put an asterisk in where you want your aside. Finish your paragraph. Break your paragraph. Add another asterisk and italicize your text. Voila.

Using this alternate method has multiple benefits. Your quip, witticism, background note or digression does not interrupt the flow of the writing. People read the footnote just about precisely where they need to. They do not get lost. They don’t have to follow links. Screen readers are 100% fluent with this method. And it copies from Google Docs to AO3 (if you use rich text paste and not html) seamlessly with nothing getting lost in the transition. 

The eye sees the asterisk,* scans down for another asterisk, finds it, reads, and scans back up a very short distance. 

*Like this.

Since pagination doesn’t happen in AO3 or google docs or websites or screen readers set on “scroll”... you simply do not have one of the components required for proper footnoting. Footnotes go at the foot of the page. And a 100,000 word fanfic doesn’t have pages. It has chapters.

And that’s a problem on Archive of Our Own. You see, people tend to upload one chapter at a time. Footnotes are often numbered within chapters starting from 1. But if you do that, and someone has loaded your entire story, the minute they get to chapter 2, those careful footnote links you crafted bounce them up to chapter 1′s footnotes. 

The Asterisk method completely avoids that. It removes the coding stage. It removes all bouncing around. It works no matter how people load your work. And that, mes anges,* is functional. And it looks fine. It’s intuitive. And it doesn’t make me want to throw my phone out of the window of a moving car because we’re out of cell range** and I’m having to follow hundreds of footnotes back and forth and I couldn’t load the whole document because the footnotes wouldn’t work that way and now I can’t get the next chapter of your fucking amazing writing.

*my angels, French **true story, happened today Nov. 24, 2019. The wanting. I didn’t actually do it because I’m a goddamn grownup.

Grade for using the asterisk method? Five huge sighs of relief, and an A+ from every single person who uses a screen reader or can just about manage a scroll but can’t deal with finding the back button in the dark for whatever reason*.

*rheumatoid arthritis, stiff hands, lotsa lying down reading here.    

The show did not have footnotes. It had occasional voiceovers. It’s okay to adapt your technique to the needs of the technology. 

Bless everyone who has painstakingly gone through and linked to footnotes and back again. I know you worked really hard on it. Please stop doing it. This method is so much easier. 

If you want to see how this works in a full fic, I happen to have one here. Mitzvah

End note

There is no real correlation between the quality of the story and the quality of the footnote method. I see a wide variety of methods in many stories throughout the fandom. You’re not wrong per se, if you don’t do it my way. But you’re doing more work than you need to, and wasting time you could be doing literally anything else. This is probably best taken as a “going forward” recommendation, because no one, literally no one expects you to go back and redo hundreds of footnotes. 

If you reread your own work, and you have a lot of footnotes, it is wise to read it on multiple devices and in multiple ways. Does it make sense without footnotes? Some people will never look at a single one. If someone tries to use the footnotes, do they work in subsequent chapters if they’re not in chapter by chapter mode? If someone just reads in order, text first, footnotes last, are they going to have any idea what the footnotes are referring to? I have done literally all of these things in different fics in the fandom.  

[khoicesbyk]

The Nanny Affair

Chapter 12.) The Gala. Part 4.

Author’s Note: This little fanfic rewrite of chapter 12 was a challenge thrown down by a skilled writer/sister friend. I accept! (Contains MAJOR Spoilers! If you don’t like to be spoiled or haven’t read the chapter; do NOT continue!) (All Characters and some of the dialogues are property of Pixelberry. This is just a fun little fanfic rewrite of chapter 12.). One more thing: this was written entirely on my iPhone.

***Rated: Mature 18+. Contains sexual content, nudity and strong language.

***Bolded and/or italicized words are conversations and thoughts of the characters.

***Characters: Sam Dalton (LI), Krystal Parker (MC), Mason, Mickey and Carter and Mr. and Mrs. Dalton (Side Characters).

Part 4 not only picks up where Part 3 left off but; it ends our story.

And I wrote this finale in one day! Yay me! 😁💃🏾👍🏾🙌🏾👏🏾

Current Word Count: 2,128 words.

It finally happened. Sam finally got Krystal right where he wanted her.

He’s been dying to fuck her, ever since the day she walked into his office. That damn interview. That’s what did it. That’s where it all started.

The black dress and jacket she wore that day; framed her delicious curves. The heels she wore that day, drove him insane. Her bright smile sends chills down his spine. Her brown eyes hypnotize him. He wanted to suck on her lips whenever she pouted. Her chocolate skin was incredibly soft. He’s not so secretly obsessed with her. Wherever he is; she HAS TO either be by his side or within close proximity to him; just for him to function properly.

She is this tall beautiful black woman. She had to be 5’9 or 5’10, he wasn’t exactly sure which.

And she loves his boys. Maybe even more than he does. She’s patient, loving, silly and caring with them. Even when they mess up or when their many “experiments” go HORRIBLY wrong; she never yells or gets angry. She simply shakes her head; then explains to them why they can’t do that again even though; there have been times that he just knew she’d quit; because they drove her past her breaking point. But no, she didn’t.

She tries to teach them as much as she can. He’s watched her and them stand in the driveway with the boy’s telescope; and gaze at the stars and point out constellations, or they’ll run around chasing and catching fireflies in mason jars. There have been days where he’s come back from the office; and the boys are curled up with her on the couch binging on whatever is on Disney+ and eating popcorn. She’ll smile, wave or throw the peace sign up and say, “pop a squat!”, beckoning him to sit with them and join in on the movie and popcorn.

He knew she wasn’t their mother; but he knew she definitely had that maternal feeling and instinct. She protected them. She nurtured them. She loved them. And that’s what he loves most about her.

Yes. You read that correctly. Loves. No, not likes; loves. To Sam Dalton; she’s everything he could’ve ever wanted in a woman. There’s just one problem. And no, it’s not his arranged engagement to Sofia.

It’s the fact that; he’s fallen in love with her. His feelings for her; weren’t something he was ready to acknowledge yet; much less confront. They terrify him like nothing else. Not because of her. But because of his wife Samina.

The last time he felt this way; was when she was alive. He locked his heart and feelings like that away, after she died. He just knew that he’d never love that way again. Hell; he convinced himself that he would never open his heart to another woman; the way he did with Samina. He convinced himself that, he would never be as vulnerable with another woman; the way he was with his wife.

Which made being engaged to Sofia, slightly more bearable.

There was no love involved. It was all business and vanity. She’s really just a means to an end for him. Harsh as that sounds; that’s the core reason why he agreed to her marriage proposal. He didn’t have to love her to be married to her. He certainly didn’t have to have sex with her. And he was fine with that. He was fine with never loving another woman ever again.

Until he met Krystal Parker. And everything he convinced himself that he’d never do again; went out the damn window. Because the minute she walked into his office and especially his life; he changed.

So why would an engaged billionaire businessman; be in an hotel suite fucking his nanny’s brains out? Answer: pure selfishness. He’s thinking that; if he gave into his lust for her then, whatever feelings of love that he’s developed for her and whatever she feels for him, will just simply go away and they can get back to some semblance of a normal life.

But he’s about to find out; that it’s not that simple nor easy.

So there he was; in a bed with her feet to the ceiling and him going deep inside her. His Krystal. His kitten. She belonged to him. And he confirmed it with every thrust of his hips, into her. Hearing her moans drove him insane. Because that’s what he wanted. He wanted to please her. He wanted to feel her vaginal muscles clenched around his throbbing dick; as he slammed into her again and again. He wanted her nails digging into his back. He wanted her cries of pleasure. And he wanted revenge for her nearly ruining him.

“That’s it kitten! Take it! Take this dick!”, he growled in her ear.

Jesus Christ! He felt good! He was hitting her G-spot with EVERY stroke. He started out slow, which she silently hated but; once they both got comfortable, it was on. He was 10X better than either one of her exes. And that’s saying something.

“Yesssssssssss! Fuuuuccccckkk yesssssssssss! Fuck me! Give it to me! Give it to me!”, she shouted back. When it came to GOOD sex, Krystal was not shy about being vocal about it.

Hearing her scream like that; made him shudder. She wanted him and it. And he was going to make extra sure that; she got both. This was going to be the biggest night of passion they’d both ever had.

With his right hand on the headboard; he snaked his left into her hair and pulled back gently. Doing so, once again exposed her neck to him. He couldn’t keep his lips off her skin. He HAD TO taste her. And to be honest; she loved it even more than he did. He dragged his tongue across her neck; which caused the fire inside her to burn hotter. Every stroke made her dizzy yet; always left her craving more. She needed him. She wanted him. She craved him. He turned this poor girl out and didn’t even realize it.

He realized that he wouldn’t last long; well at least not in this position anyway. So; he wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned back, which pulled her into his lap. He wanted her to ride him. Because; why not? Before she knew it; she was straddling his lap with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

Her riding on top; was a dream come true for the both of them. For him; he had unlimited access to her nipples, which he felt that he’d been neglecting and it meant leaving more handprints on her ass. And for her; what woman doesn’t like to ride a man’s dick? Being able to bounce up and down on him; was a pleasure was more than anything she could’ve ever imagined.

Between feeling him crashing into her, his mouth all over her breasts and his hands full of her ass; she was in heaven as the heat between them continued to rise.

“God you feel so good!”, he hissed against her skin. He was drunk off her. Her smile. Her skin. Her scent. And she was so close. Her body was hot and every time he touched her; she shivered. Not to mention; her orgasm was about to break her in half.

“Sam! I’m so close!”, she told him in between shaky breaths.

“Good! That means I can do one more thing to you…Shit! Before I make you pass out!”, he responds. He wasn’t too far behind her in terms of being close.

He wanted their combined climax to be as hot as it was about to be epic. So, what does he do? Simple! He switches to one last position. The one he loved best: doggystyle!

Sam figured that if he was gonna go out; might as well go out with a bang! Besides; having her on all fours is what wet dreams are made of. And there she was, face down, ass up and desperate for him.

“I am going to thoroughly enjoy this!”, he whispers in her ear.

“You know you talk too much, right?”, she snapped back.

“Ooh…kitten likes being feisty, I see”, he says.

“No…kitten has a bite! And if you don’t hurry up…”, she hissed.

After leaving a small kiss on the back of her right shoulder, he lines himself up with her very hot entrance, he closes his eyes and dives in so to speak. With his left hand planted firmly between the crease of her hips and the right one holding her wrists behind her back; Sam was indeed about to thoroughly enjoy her.

“Fuck! Yesssssssssss…”, he hissed.

In order to really savor the moment; he went slow at first. Which she absolutely hated.

“Sam please don’t go slow!”, she begged. But, with her wrists restrained behind her back…there wasn’t much she could do to make him go faster. This was like a game to him. And he was going to play it his way.

“Now, now kitten! I told you, I am going to thoroughly enjoy this and I meant that! Now you’ll get what you want. I promise. You know that I would never leave you unsatisfied.”, he replies as he continued his slow stroke.

She cried out in both desperation and protest but eventually after him not doing what she wanted; she gave in. That’s when he knew he truly had her. He wanted her submission and now that he had it; he could give her what she wanted.

When she felt his speed start to increase; she let out a groan of contentment.

“Does my kitten like that? Does it feel good?”, he asked her.

“Yesssssssssss…”, she moaned.

“Good! Very good! I told you, you’d get what you want kitten.”, he said as he let her wrists go and anchored his hand to her shoulder, “now I think it’s time to end this, don’t you?”

“Sam…finish me please!”, she begged.

He could tell she was getting tired. Exactly what he wanted. You see, when it came to sex Sam loves mind games. But even he was getting tired.

“Your wish is my command, kitten”, he whispered in her ear.

As his speed continued to increase; Krystal was going crazy. Not only was he giving her the best fuck she’d ever had in her life but; he was continuously hitting her G-spot with precision. She wasn’t going to last much longer.

“There! Right there! Ohhh God! Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!”, she cried out.

“Yeah! That’s it! Keep saying that you want it kitten!”, he replied.

The sound of their bodies coming together; gave way to the richest form of pleasure that either one of them had ever had. Her shrieks soon turned into screams; once he started rotating his hips with each thrust in.

“Ohhh God yesssssssssss! Do it again! Do it again! Yes! Yes! Yes!”, she screamed.

That’s all he needed to hear her say; before he started to truly pound her. She was truly at his mercy. She was getting dangerously closer and closer to her edge but; couldn’t seem to go over it.

“That’s it kitten! Cum for me! Let it all out! Cum just for me!”, he whispered encouragingly in her ear.

That was it. That’s what did it for her.

“Oh God…I…I…Yes! I’m about to—“, was all she could say; before her body took over, she shuddered, stars burst in her eyes and her juices began flowing like a waterfall.

And that, was all she wrote for him as well.

“That’s it! Oh fuck I’m about to cum! It’s all for you kitten! Just for you!”, he said before he plunged deep inside her and let out a roar that was both primal and carnal.

He shivered while holding her in place as he emptied himself inside her. All she could hear was their combined ragged breathing. They were both sweaty, exhausted and completely satisfied. He laid with his back to hers and within minutes he was fast asleep.

What’s done was done. But she couldn’t pretend that; she wasn’t effected by that night she spent with him. This went way too far. And she was responsible for it. She couldn’t erase the memory of their night together. But; she does have to face a VERY HARD reality; at the end of the day: he’s still engaged to be married to someone else.

“What the hell am I supposed to do now?”, was the question her brain kept asking as she silently cried herself to sleep.

Because as much she tried to tell herself that she wouldn’t fall in love with one Sam Dalton…that’s exactly what happened.

She had fallen madly in love with him.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my humble rewrite of The Nanny Affair Chapter 12. And I sincerely hope; that it’s inspired you to get out there and write your story or stories! Stay tuned for other stories from yours truly!

@txemrn @choicesficwriterscreations

😘

K.

[bleachintothemultiverse]

THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME. First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all have witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat Mun Name: Phoenix (Pho) (can also be called blaze-bc of my discord username. though i use that name for a oc)  Age: 17 (18 in august)     Contact: Discord, ims

Character(s) I rp: Aizen,grimmjow, Uryuu, renji, Byakuya, Kusaka, Hanataro Which muse(s) inspires you the most atm?(for MM):  Aizen, Grimmjow, Byakuya and Uryuu Current Fandom(s): Bleach, fullmetal alchemist,  Yugioh Fandom(s) you have an AU for:  Fullmetal alchemist : Brother hood, Yugioh My language(s): English, spanish //Kinda- im learning it// Themes I’m interested in for rp:   Fantasy / Science fiction / Horror / Western / Romance / Thriller / Mystery / Dystopia / Adventure / Modern / Erotic / Crime / Mythology / Classic / History / Renaissance / Medieval / Ancient / War / Family / Politics / Religion / School / Adulthood / Childhood / Apocalyptic / Gods / Sport / Music / Science / Fights / Angst / Smut / Drama / etc. Themes/Genres you have an AU for: Modern.

Preferred Thread length: one-liner / 1 para / 2 para / 3+ / novella. Asks can be send by: Mutuals / Non-Mutuals / Personals / Anons. Can Asks be continued?:   YES / NO    only by Mutuals?:  YES / NO. Preferred thread type: crack / casual nothing too deep / serious / deep as heck. Is realism / research important for you in certain themes?:   YES / NO. Are you atm open for new plots?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Do you handle your draft / ask - count well?:  YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. How long do you usually take to reply?:  24h / 1 week / 2 weeks / 3+ / months / years. I’m okay with interacting: original characters / a relative of my character (an oc) / duplicates / my fandom / crossovers / multi-muses / self-inserts / people with no AU verse for my fandom / canon-divergent portrayals / au-versions (as main or only verse). Do you post more ic or ooc?:  IC / OOC. Are you selective with following others?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS.  

Best ways to approach you for rp/plotting:  message me either on ims or discord. ^^ I am open up to any idea that you may have What expectations do you hold towards your plotting partner:   Uh knowing what muse they want to interact ahead of time.  Normally I can create a plot if they already know what Muse they want to rp with. How do you usually plot with others, do you give input or leave most work towards your partner?:   I say it kinda 50/50 I tried to build the plot equally with the rp partner.

When a partner drops the thread, do you wish to know?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS. - And why?:  I know some things happen- so its okay if you don’t want to tell me if you are- I normally figure it out after weeks of not responding. (Unless you are a low activity blog- then i figure you are just busy ^^) - Will you tell your partner?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS.

Is communication in the rpc important to you?   YES / NO. - And why?:  Because communication is important, especially for plots we are winging mostly. and if they have any questions about how i portray a certain character. - Are you okay with absolute honesty, even if it may means hearing something negative about you and/or portrayal?:  I wanna say Yes. It really depends-  If its about me. I want to know why you say that especially if you don’t know me well and we could possibly clear up a misunderstanding or something. But if it for a character Yea sure. As long as it done explaining what they don’t like on it or if  there is something I could improve.  - Do you think you can handle such situation in a mature way?  YES / NO.

Why do you rp again, is there a goal?:  to explore my muses and expand on the more complex ones. (Like Aizen for example) Wishlist, be it plots or scenarios:   TYBW stuff. more Pendulum arc stuff for Aizen.   Muken Aizen related things.  What Type of Starters do you prefer / dislike, can’t work with?:  I can work with basically any type of starters? As long as it has a clear way to make interaction happen.

What type of characters catch your interest the most?:   Characters i’m familiar with. Characters that is well done (Especially Oc’s).  What type of characters catch your interest the least?:  Characters that seem way to Mary or gary sue. (More Oc related things).  Characters who are just- evil because they can be.

What are your strong aspects as rp partner?:  willing to learn about different fandoms. Open to literally anything. gets invested in ships easily.  What are your weak aspects as rp partner?:  Being to anxious to communicate. Forgetfulness. Loosing track of threads (Because threadtracker hates me-) Do you rp smut?:  YES / NO. Do you prefer to go into detail?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Are you okay with black curtain?:  YES / NO. - When do you rp smut? More out of fun or character development?:  I don’t rp smut.  - Anything you would not want to rp there?:  N/A Are ships important to you?:  YES / NO.

Would you say your blog is ship-focused?:   YES / NO

.Do you use read more?:  YES / NO / SOMETIMES.

Are you:  Multi-Ship / Single-Ship / Dual-Ship  —  Multiverse / Singleverse.

- What do you love to explore the most in your ships?:  Relationship building. Having moments that can be expanded on between the characters. Having relationship conflict. Even know i don’t rp smut- There is so much that can explored with ships that is more then just sex related things.

- What is your smut tag?: N/A

Are you okay with pre-established relationships?: YES / NO. - And what kind of ones?:  Familial, Friendship. 

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

//you said to pick my favorite muse- so here we go xD// - What could possibly make your Muse interesting towards others, why should they rp with this particular character of yours now, what possible plots do they offer?:  Oh jeez- he is the main villian of the series. One of the most unpredictable muses that I have. Possible plots- depends on the time line. If its in the pendulum era. Literally anything can happen. There is a large gap of time (9 years) of things that could of happen but the anime or manga didn’t show. The same goes with his Captain era. We don’t really see much then or anything relating to his time in Muken. There is a lot of different situations that could happen with the right other muse.  

- With what type of Muses do you usually struggle to rp with?: muses who are hopelessely romantics. muses who don’t have much to work with in a plot.    - With what type of Muses do they usually work well with?:  muses who has similar mind set as him or could be as unpredictable. . Characters that could possibly catch him off guard or catch his interest because of the way they act.

- What interests your Muse(s) in general:  evolution, Science related things. hollowification experimenting. becoming a god.  - What do they desire, is their goal?:   Their goal . It depends most verses  its to gain access to the royal realm and become the one true god, and change the soul society. - What catches their interest first when meeting someone new?:  The way that they handle them selves, there intentional personally.   - What do they value in a person?:    Loyalty. Hard working.  - What themes do they like talking about?:  he likes when people talk about themselves. He can learn more about them. But he also likes talking philsophical debates about existence and morals.  Or anything that would relate to his mindset about life. - Which themes bore them?: anything to romantic. He does not like that.  like full on fliriting. He doesn’t do at all.   

- Did they ever went through something traumatic?:  Yes //though it can be debated what is consider traumatic to a adult who causes there own trauma mostly// //But like- he had to have seen some stuff in his childhood that would make him more desensitize to murder and killing fellow Shinigami// - What could possibly trigger them?:   Experiencing the feeling of dying. Sensory deprivation. //after his 20,000 years in Muken. Which is underground. away from most sounds and sights and feeling// - What could set them off, enrage them?:   Making him question his motives. Making him actually feel something. making him loose his goals.

- Is there someone /-thing they hate?:  Urahara, Shinji.  - Is there someone /-thing they love?:   //Romantically- in most verses no// Platonically : Hiyori (only in pendulum arc). Hougyoku.  his self.

Is your Muse easy to approach?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?:   catch their attention. Literally just talk to him. don’t go trying to challenge or question his ego.  Literally just talk to him with any amount of respect .  depending on the verse- his responses may very. but other then that- He is rather easy to approach depending on your intentions to be approaching him. - Where are they usually to find?: His office in division five, hueco mondo, (Specifically in Los Noches), Muken. The forest near rukongai (only really applies to pendulum verse).    

Something you may still want to point out about your muse?:  he is nerd with a god complex.  he deserves a more flesh out back story then what the Manga gave him.  I try to keep him as close to the manga, keeping all of the things that happen in the manga and anime as canon. Only changing his child hood and early divisions days- as that isn’t really shown and expanding his relationships with some of the visoreds.  I also portray him as Aro/ace in most verses so its very Awkward if you try to ship with him in most verses unless discussed in ims or discord.  tagged by @skyvar​ //thank you for the tag snow uwu// tagging @rukia-kuchiki-divided​ @redeyeschaosdragon​ @kaibacorpbros​ (any bro) @viciousvizard​ @hirako5hinji​ @bookofaion​ @gentleshinigami​ @goofyshinigami​ @windstormwielding​ @cxb3r​ @nightbeat-cat​ @world-duelists​ / @loyal-to-chaos​ (if you want ^^) and you! if you want to do this uwu. 

[ilguna]

hi- I’m not sure if you’re the right person to ask, but I wanted to know how to start a fanfic writing tumblr- I mean, I’m just not sure how to start since I’ve never posted anything on my account- I’m sorry if this is an inconvenience-

Don’t worry about it. I’m a little offended that you would think you’re coming to the wrong place 😂.

Imma break it down for you.

BTW this post is long bc I wanted to cover all bases

—

First of all, if you’re on tumblr mobile, then that’s fantastic and we’ll start with that first. If you’re on desktop, I would like to suggest getting it on your phone because it’s more accessible and easier to manage than doing it on the computer. The only time I go to the computer is when I’m going to post fics, but we’ll get there.

I know you said you’re wondering how to start posting fics but I gotta give you some advice before that. Because there are just some things I cannot stand when it comes to some fanfic blogs, alright?

Be easy on your color scheme. I wouldn’t put any bright colors because it could hurt someone’s eyes, and sometimes it looks really bad. Going along with that, you should be careful what your second color is on your blog (let’s say that your base color was a maroon, and then you’d choose a color similar to that/darker than that. It’ll be hard to read the things in your bio, and it’s frustrating)

This is obvious, but make sure you have a profile and header picture, it’s more appealing rather than tumblrs default.

Turn ON asks and then proceed to do it for anonymous questions, because that’s the only way you get requests. Some people do it off anon but that’s not as common.

You can do this on desktop and a safari browser. It’s not possible to do on mobile just yet. Open up safari > log in > little person icon in the top right > edit appearance. Scroll until you see “let people as questions” turn that on. Turn on anon, and edit the box to whatever you want. Keep it short

Turn off “share posts you like” and the following one below it. It’s a risky game to play when it comes to what you’re looking at and liking.

No submission posts, normally people don’t submit things anyway. Turn OFF “on blog advertising” and then that’s it. It automatically saves so you can just leave to the next screen imma bout to tell you about

IF you go to my blog on desktop, you’ll see that there’s a theme. My font is different, I have a different set up than most blogs, etc.

If you wanna mess around with that, scroll to the top of page (you should still be on the same page from the anon instructions) and tap “edit theme”

It might take a second to load, but you’ll get there.

THIS SCREEN IS VERY IMPORTANT.

Besides the fact that it lets you edit your theme, this is how you put in a Masterlist, and all other links you might want in your bio.

You said you haven’t written anything yet, so there isn’t a need for a Masterlist just yet. But when you DO start posting, please come back to me and I’ll let you know how to put one in your bio, okay? Nice and shiny for your future followers.

If you wanna change your theme go to browse themes, change it from “all themes” to “free themes”. If you like mine, it’s called “Accesible”. If you just want the font, get out of the theme screen and scroll the screen on the left. Turn ON “open dyslexic

Remember, you can do all of this on desktop too, it doesn’t have to be on safari

—

Now onto posting, I have some opinions that might offend my mutuals (oopsie)

I can’t tell the difference, but PERSONALLY, I think posting fics on tumblr from my phone is gross. But that’s also because I’m writing 1000+ words normally and it gets difficult to post

If you want to post fics with more than 100 paragraphs, then you have to go to desktop or maybe safari tumblr (I don’t post from safari tumblr so idk if it works) because tumblr says NO paragraphs after 100 on mobile. There is no restriction on computer

I write in Google Docs, because it’s neater and I’ve discovered some hate for Word after deleting some of the shit I wrote over and over. Plus it’s an app, and you can open it up on computer. Easy to use.

If you use Notes on your phone, or type directly onto a tumblr post, then that’s fine but you don’t know your word count and it’s a little difficult to navigate.

When it comes to formatting, I used to have it be really long. But I’ve narrowed it down to 3, sometimes 4 things.

Summary: this is where I put the request so the anon/person knows that it’s their request. (I copy n paste the entire request in the summary part, I don’t answer asks (requests) anymore because it’s easier to answer them after I posted).

Warnings: my permanent is swearing, and then I add on (what type) violence, murder, suic*de, gore, etc DEPENDING ON THE REQUEST

Word count: and I do this because I write long imagines sometimes and some people don’t want to sit through 5k words of boring shit

And the optional—Note: I put this if I thank someone for their patience on the request, if I say happy holidays or some shit like that. I don’t have notes on every post anymore because they just turn out being the same every time

Apart from that, give it a title (make it unique but not too long!) who it’s for and then copy and paste the fic in

I’m using my own posts as an example right here, okay. But I have the summary and all of that bolder because it’s easier to see, and I want it to be different from the actual post. Most fanfic writers do this.

I also put 2 —‘s between the authors note at the top and the fic to also make a difference there

Don’t have the entire fic italicized, it takes away the special part of italicizing a word

Finally, it’s tagging.

I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT tag things that have nothing to do with the post. It’s my biggest pet peeve and it’s because I can’t comprehend why people tag (for example) Katrina Stuart when it’s a fic OR A RANDOM POST about someone else

Instead, let’s keep it simple.

🌸 STOP 🌸

I forgot to mention this. But choose your username wisely. You can change it later on, but it’s a goddamn pain in the ass when you have 50+ fanfics you wrote and your Masterlist is nice and clean only to realize that you have to RELINK every post individually

Listen, I changed my username on my old blog, and it took me 8 hours ROUGHLY to relink and fix every individual Masterlist. I had to create new masterlists, with so many tabs open to fix it

Instead, change it before you start fics

If you wanna be a colby brock blog, I have a canon url (which means that it’s so fucking GOOD and I’m angry that i realized it was open only a month ago rather than when I created this account) and it’s colbysbrocks (it’s a plural canon url). And I have colbysecrets too. If you don’t like either of those, I have a couple of other ideas that I wrote down if you want them

🌸 okay continue 🌸

This is how you should tag:

(I’ll give an example after this)

Your username first, the person it’s about, the fandom (if it’s not Colby brock, then something like marvel, etc). Then the persons name, imagine, fanfic, x reader, and oneshot. Then if it was requested

EXAMPLE ONE:

Azurebrock, Colby brock, Colby brock imagine, Colby brock fanfic, Colby brock x reader, Colby brock oneshot, requested

Simple, right? You can even use this method for Wattpad too.

EXAMPLE TWO:

(This is Star Wars, im using my own username again)

Kylorenlovesyou, Kylo ren, Ben solo, kylo ren imagine, kylo ren fanfic, kylo ren x reader, kylo ren oneshot, Ben solo imagine, Ben solo fanfic, Ben solo x reader, Ben solo oneshot, Star Wars

Notice that I tagged both of his names. I do this because it draws more people in, and more people will be attracted to it (however, in the Star Wars fandom there’s a difference between Ben Solo and Kylo-Ren, so you would have to specify in the title Ex. Resistance (Ben Solo) or Struggle (Kylo-Ren). It would depend on which persona you’re using

This works for a couple of fandoms, like twilight and shit like that

EXAMPLE THREE:

(Final one, I just wanted to cover this base just in case)

If it’s a request for more than one person. Let’s say Colby Brock and Sam Golbach (like a Polyamorous relationship, if it’s just about a bunch of people, tag the people in it and don’t put the imagine, fanfic, x reader, oneshot after any of them, it doesn’t apply)

If it’s a poly relationship (or maybe more) then do everything you normally do for one person, and then just add on the second;

Azurebrock, Colby brock, Sam Golbach, Colby brock imagine, Sam Golbach imagine, etc

If you’re on desktop, I would suggest putting in a Read More (this goes BEFORE your fic but after the authors note, below the 2 —‘s). The way you do that is press enter, and hover over the new break in the fic.

Off to the right you’ll see a . . . Click that and then you have the read more. I would only suggest using this if there’s more than 500 words, so that if the fic is super long, it doesn’t take up the entire dash for the follower (it takes forever to scroll and it’s annoying

If you’re on mobile, it isn’t possible. Just post and you can go back and edit later if you have a computer

[marvel-redemption-omega]

No Need To Fear, The Ladies Are Here

A/N: This is my submission for @captain-kelli ’s 500 Fam Writing Challenge! I had so much fun writing this despite the mini panic attack I had when I thought it was due on the 1st…. and it varies greatly from my usual song prompt stories! I love doing song fics but I usually get too far gone with writing. It was nice to be able to step back and try a different style of writing. I hope you enjoy hun! Everyone else, please enjoy and remember that feedback and reblogs are much appreciated! And as always, this is beta’d by my babe: @kelseydactyl --Thank you for putting up with my delays and bouncing from story to story! I love you bby! <3

My Prompt: Salute by Little Mix (used in a couple parts, bolded and italicized for main use, italicized for the rest)

Word Count: 6158

Warnings: Cursing, mild violence, mentions of death/dead bodies

Pairing: Sam x F!Reader; Everyone x F!Reader (platonic)

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrat!

Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-ta-tat!

Zpppfting! Ziow!

Zpppfftiiiiing! Ziow ziow!

Brrrrrrrrrating!

Bullets rained around everyone; ricocheting off the metal sheets lining the sides of the walkways overhead, metal walls, and large, metal shipping crates scattered around the lower level.

Muffled swearing came across the comms. You quickly ducked behind a corner and glanced up to where Nat and Sharon were above on the walkway; meeting the red-head’s gaze, she nodded and took out the guy standing between you and the doorway. Sharon had her back to Natasha’s and stepped away from her as she pulled the trigger, dropping another agent.

“Y/n, take Loki and go as far as you can. We’ll meet you two once we finish cleaning up here,” Wanda’s calm voice came over the earpiece. Adjusting the M4A1 to a more comfortable grip, you nodded knowing full well she couldn’t see you.

“Copy that. Moving in with Lady Loki,” you shouted back over comms and moved towards the entryway, not bothering to spare a glance when you felt someone behind you. “Ready to kick some Hydra ass?”

“Always ready to torture those who aren’t me who do harm to my dumb brother,” Loki replied with a devious smirk. You snorted a scoff and motioned for her to cover you. Loki snapped and a force field materialized around you as you moved back out into the bullet shower. She tossed knives at two snipers when they popped their heads from behind their cover to survey the area. You nodded your thanks and gave her a smile.

“Do you think anyone’s coming?”

“Do you think anyone’s coming?” Mocked Tony, voice a pitch too high and snarky as ever. “Don’t be stupid, Steve. Pepper knows I wouldn’t miss date night. Not to mention Peter was supposed to come by but he’s here too. Pep probably has Nat and Y/n looking for us if they aren’t already here.”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest and leveled a glare at Tony. The billionaire matched his pose and raised his brows, waiting for a challenge. Steve sighed and relaxed his posture after a moment, though he kept his arms crossed.

He leaned against the wall, chin resting on his chest. The cells were silent amongst the men after the brief exchange, sighs and groans of frustration and irritation being the only sounds heard aside from leaking pipes and constant dripping water.

“Pepper, what���s the status of the entrance?”

“Looks like Wanda, Okoye, Carol and I took care of everyone. Wanda’s coming in to help you and do an interior sweep. I’ll stay out here with Okoye and Carol to make sure everything stays secure,” came the reply.

“Mrs. Stark, the Van Dyne woman has reached the central control room and secured it, though she reports she could use some back up,” Friday relayed to Pepper.

“Gamora, Nebula, you guys get that from Friday?” Pepper called and lowered herself by the only accessible entrance to the abandoned warehouse. The facepiece separated and folded back as she made eye contact with the Wakandan warrior and blessed-by-an-Infinity-Stone pilot, giving a small nod of appreciation.

“Yeah, en route,” Gamora answered.

“Are we sure the girls are looking for us? I mean, what if they are finally relieved not to have to put up with us anymore?” Peter paced his cell and smacked the heel of his hand to his forehead. “I haven’t wooed this Gamora to fall for me yet!”

“Quit your whining would you? It’s annoying,” Bucky grumbled, shifting on the cell floor, glancing at his left shoulder. A sigh left him and he closed his eyes. “How the hell did we get in this situation?”

“Because you weren’t paying attention and were the first to get knocked out,” Sam snarked at him. When kicked-puppy blue eyes met his brown ones, he swallowed thickly and nodded. “Right, sorry, Buck. Look,” he lowered his voice and moved to sit with his back to Bucky’s, despite the cell bars separating them, “this is on all of us. We all rushed in without having the proper knowledge on what we were getting into. It’s not any one person’s fault. We’re all to blame here, alright?” Bucky glanced over his shoulder and smiled at Sam, nudging him with his right shoulder.

“I am Groot.”

“I know, Buddy. I’m sure they’re on their way to save us,” Rocket reassured Groot, paw on the adolescent tree’s shoulder. Thor looked at Groot and smiled, kneeling down beside him.

“Hey, don’t worry. I promise you Loki won’t let us sit here long. She’s got quite the temperament when it’s others picking on and being mean to those she loves and cares about,” he explained. Groot looked up at the Norse God and nodded, giving a soft “I am Groot” in reply.

“She? I thought Loki was your brother?” Drax inquired, head leaning back on the wall he sat against.

“Yes and no. Loki is gender-fluid.”

“I thought he was a God-human thing?”

“N-what? No. Gender-fluid means that when Loki feels more masculine, she’ll use he/him pronouns, but when she feels more feminine she will use she/her pronouns. So she doesn’t really feel solidly one gender but sometimes both or somewhere in between, in limbo kind of,” Thor tried his best to explain what Loki had once -a long time ago- explained to him. Everyone glanced at the powerless God before nodding and settling back into the uncomfortable silence.

“They have comms too, don’t they, Y/n?” Loki asked, eyes scanning the hall for anyone they might have missed. She ran her hand along the wall, pausing in wait for your answer.

“I think so, but I couldn’t tell you what channel they’re on,” you replied, M9 crossed with your flashlight as you lead her down an empty corridor that smelled of mildew. A glance to the corners where the wall meets the ceiling confirmed your suspicions of mold. You pulled a face and glanced back at Loki, admiring the black and green velvet battle dress she wore. “Why?”

“Just wondering if we could possibly find the right one and let them know we’re on our way with a plan,” her tone masked a deeper meaning but you didn’t want to push. Best to let her do what she wants and be done. She’s not hurting anyone, you reasoned with yourself.

You continued on down the seemingly endless hall until a cool hand on your shoulder stopped you. You turned to Loki, the force field dissolving from around you and appeared to dissipate at her hand.

“What? Did you find something? Someone?” You couldn’t help the hopefulness that leaked into your tone, you just wanted everyone back. She shook her head no but had a smile plastered to her face. She reached to you and fiddled with your ear piece a moment before many familiar voices came over the comms.

“Hey, Mr. Stark, Sir, do you really think they’re coming to get us? What if Mr. Quill is right? What if they are finally fed up with us and just leave us here?” The spider-boy’s anxious voice filtered in through the comms link. You breathed a sigh of relief, thankful at least one of the guys were safe, probably two if he was actually talking to Tony.

“Hey, Kid, come on. Breathe. Easy. Alright, settle down. I have no doubts that they’re coming for us. Much as we might annoy them, they love us, otherwise they wouldn’t put up with us,” Tony’s voice rang loud and clear over the ear piece. You exchanged smirks with Loki.

“Alpha, Wolf Strike, we have one way comms with our lost little soldiers. Not sure what Loki did but we’re gonna see if we can establish two way comms. Until then, switch to 7-Delta to hear them.” You called in over the comms to the rest of the team. Murmurs and whoops and cheers all deafened you for a moment and you couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled it’s way from your chest at your team.

“Wolf Strike, Command, I’ll try and hack the disabling system that’s bugging their equipment. It appears to be a simple jammer, should be simple enough. Give me 5 Mikes-10 tops,” Shuri called to you one way.

“Copy that, Command. Let me know when you get it. You have my location right?”

“Negative. Seems that whatever is jamming their comms is just in range enough to reach your tracker,” it was Hill who responded this time, furious clacking of a keyboard sounded in the background.

“I’ve got it. You go ahead and look for them. I won’t be long and you’re not alone,” Loki waved then was gone. You startled slightly at her magic display, suddenly questioning if she had ever even been there.

“Ahh, Brother. What a fine mess you seem to be in. Such a pity that it wasn't my doing though. Fortunately the craftsmanship is poor, the intellect weak, and the numbers few,” Loki walked down the cell block, tsk-ing at the use of old iron and aged cement.

“Loki! By Gods, you are here! You haven’t the faintest idea how pleased I am to see you!” Thor yelped in shock, moving to the cell door. “Our comms are shot, we’ve all lost what makes us each individuals, and we were all so worried you wouldn’t be able to find us!”

“That was your first mistake. Your second was doubting us. Now!” Your voice rang out through the men’s earpieces and their eyes lit up. Music started drifting into your ears via your comms and you couldn’t help but laugh. Leave it to Shuri to bring the music during a rescue mission. “Ladies all across the world, listen up we’re looking for recruits! If you’re with me, lemme see your hands, stand up, and salute!” you sang along softly and darted back to the corner hallway where Loki stood waiting; her apparition faded from Thor’s view on the other side of the locked metal door. His face twisted from happy to annoyed that Loki hadn’t actually been in the room.

Curse her and her stupid magic tricks, he thought with a huff.

Ba-boom!

Bucky and Sam jumped to their feet at the explosion. Bucky’s eyes wild with fear for a brief moment as memories flashed before his eyes. He shook his head and with the help of Peter, who had gotten tossed in his cell, pulled himself from his mind and readied himself for a fight. Everyone stood tense and on edge as the dust cleared.

“Miss me, Boys?” You tilted your head to the left and beamed at them, Loki walking up behind you. She rolled her eyes at your antics but slipped a key into your hand nonetheless.

“Let’s hurry. I didn’t see anyone but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t hiding out somewhere waiting to ambush us,” she hissed.

“Right. Alright, well, be prepared for the death of the king!” T’Challa raised a brow at you and crossed his arms.

“Did you just quote Scar from The Lion King?” Peter inquired as you open his and Bucky’s cell first. With a shrug and a lopsided grin you moved on to Cap and Tony while Loki broke out Thor, Strange, Vision, and the Guardians. The Wakandan King seemed to relax at the realization of your quote, courtesy of Parker, and shook his head.

“Purgatory maybe,” you sniggered and stepped up to the cell with people in it and curtly bowed your head. There were groans of protest from behind you at your reference to the Supernatural post you had shown everyone when it crossed your Tumblr dash. “King Panther,” you hummed and opened the door. T’Challa stepped out holding an unconscious Bruce, with Scott and Clint following him.

“They’ve sedated him to keep the Hulk at bay,” Clint answered your silent question, absentmindedly signing as well. “I also think some of the others have a similar serum. I saw them administering shots of a green-ish liquid into them.” He continued to sign as he spoke. You nodded and signed “thank you” back before ushering them towards Loki and continuing your investigation of the room. When you gave the all clear, Loki projected a malleable forcefield around the group as she led them back the way you two had come.

The guys all filed in line behind Loki, Thor taking over carrying Bruce, and you brought up the rear with Bucky and Sam in front of you. Between you and Loki, and the sassy comments from the rest on comms, you had given the basic escape plan to them and told them not to worry about their losses for now. It took about five minutes of reassurances from everyone that the others were fine aside from Bucky’s missing limb and some scratches, and nothing needing urgent care. Once that was done, everyone fell into a content silence, at least over comms.

“But how will you bring me Mjolnir if you cannot pick it up? Only those worthy can, and I cannot call it to me,” Thor questioned as he followed close behind Loki. She glanced at him over her shoulder and nodded to you and Peter, with whom you were in conversation with.

“Surely one of those two can do it, yeah? We’ll figure it out or you can come get it, but not until we’ve covered the grounds and cleared it out. You’re pretty useless right now,” she grinned and continued to backtrack through the halls leading back to the main entry point. It was quiet for a little longer.

“So tell me dear Brother, how did the mighty Black Panther get captured? Wakanda nonsense is that?!” Shuri chided T’Challa over comms after about ten minutes of silence. Laughter broke out from all ends at her pun and the King just groaned at his sister.

“Not right now, Shuri. Can’t this wait?” He pleaded, exhaustion seeping into his voice. “It’s bad enough I don’t have the necklace you gave me for the suit, I don’t need your chastising too. Don’t add insult to injury,” he sighed, defeated.

“You lost the necklace that contains the suit? Brother! What the hell were you thinking? It’s a good thing that not only did I program it specifically to you, but that no one else can get ahold of the Black Panther’s gifted flower!” Shuri yelled at him.

The laughter ceased and the line went silent at the berating of the King by the Princess. Everyone seemed to have the same thought, staying out of that, as they all lowered the volume or turned off their earpieces completely. It wasn’t their business what the Wakandans argued over nor was it their right to take sides. Especially not after the last time when Steve and Tony fought. Everyone remembered that.

“Hey, Loki, hold up. I think I heard something down this hall. I’m gonna go check it out. I still have that personal force field right?” You called and backtracked about three steps.

“Yes it’s still good, but don’t go alone. We haven’t scoped out anywhere else. Take someone else or wait and come back with Natasha and Pepper or something,” she suggested and halted, turning to look at you. The sound of metal buttons snapping was heard and you nodded to Sam, Bucky, and Steve.

“Come with me. You can shoot, right?” You rhetorically asked and passed them each a gun; Bucky your M9 pistol, Steve your .44 revolver, and Sam your M4A1 from your right shoulder, while you swung the Remington R4 from your left shoulder around to your hands. “I think I’m covered,” you beamed and lead the trio of soldiers down the damp hall.

“Come on, let's get out so we can get you lot patched up,” Loki heaved a sigh and touched the wall. It lit up in a bright green rune before disappearing as if nothing happened. Thor raised a brow but didn’t ask his sister why she had been marking the path with ancient Nordic runes.

“Everyone step back. I’m gonna blow the lock,” you ordered and pulled a small electronic gadget from your cargo pants pocket after shouldering her gun. Sam raised a brow and shook his head with a laugh. You pressed a couple buttons on the side and set it snug against the iron lock before pressing one more button and backing away quickly.

“Is that a variant of Tony’s repulsor from his suits?” He asked as you joined the group at the far end of the room, where you had blown off yet another door. You grinned and gave a subtle nod in his direction before covering your ears. They all followed suit.

“If it’s what I think Y/n is using, then yes it is. It’s similar, except that is a small bomb. Small and handy like a grenade but can be as explosive as ten C4 bombs if the setting is changed,” Shuri’s voice explained over the comms, music still played in the background, though it couldn’t be made out anymore.

Ba-BOOM!

You waved your hand in front of your face at the dirt and dust kicked up from the explosion. It took the guys a little longer to get reoriented with their senses, and by the time they had, you were on them with your arms full. You passed Steve his shield, Sam his wing pack, and you tugged Bucky towards the table where the rest of everyone else’s gear lay.

“Sit,” you ordered gently and waited until he was situated on it before you helped him remove the top half of his tactical gear so you could reattach his Vibranium arm. Sam and Steve collected the remaining gear while you worked silently. It took you all of five minutes to get Bucky back to being fully functional again.

“Arm up. Wiggle your fingers. Roll it. Twist it, does it feel off?” You instructed and watched to make sure nothing stuck or had been damaged.

“Thanks.” He smiled and shook his head no as he slid from the table, redressing himself while you hummed and busied yourself in double checking that Steve and Sam had collected everything. A flash of red caught your eye and you rounded to where you thought you saw it.

“What was that?” You pulled your flashlight out and shined it along the wall until the light landed on the -very dirty and wet- cloak. You recognized it immediately as Strange’s. “Oh no. You poor thing,” you cooed, as it seemed to flap anxiously, and you immediately began trying to pull the iron railway spike from the wall without ripping the cloak.

“Here. Allow me?” Steve offered and raised his shield. After a moment you nodded and stepped back, watching as the Captain wedged the shield between the wall and the spike and used it as a lever to pry the spike out. Bucky grabbed the spike as it came loose and gently pulled the cloak from the end. He tossed the spike to the side and held the soggy clump of cloth to you.

“You poor dear, let’s get you to Strange and then we’ll get you home and all cleaned up, ok?” You murmured softly to the cape and cradled it in one hand and grabbed the bag with everything else in your other. You slung the bag onto your shoulder and glanced around one last time. “Alright, looks like that’s everything. Let’s head back to the others.”

The trio had given you back your guns, Sam threatening to put them back in their holsters himself if you didn’t take them. You conceded to prevent that, at least under the circumstances, otherwise they knew you’d have taken off for them to play catch up. It was a silent walk back, though the happiness that radiated from the men was contagious and you couldn’t stop smiling if you wanted to. They seemed more relaxed and content now they had their belongings back.

It wasn’t long before you were stepping over downed soldiers and rubble and debris. You were trying to squeeze through a pile of -probably dead- Hydra agents and the wall when your knee connected with something sturdy. You let out a yelp and stumbled forward into more bodies. Sam rushed to you and helped you back to your feet as Steve and Bucky moved the pile to find what you had tripped on, or to see if it had been a survivor in hiding.

The blonde huffed and shook his head at the sight of Mjolnir resting on a guard’s chest at the bottom of the pile. Of course it wouldn’t have been knocked over or moved even with all the bodies piled on top. “Y/n,” Steve called to get your attention.

“Shit. How are we supposed to get Mjolnir back? We can’t pick it up,” you groaned inwardly at the conundrum as you glanced back over your shoulder. Steve stayed quiet as the realization of what hammer it was didn’t register with the other two.

“What do you mean? It’s just a hammer isn’t it?” Sam and Bucky asked in unison. They shot glares at the other before turning back to you and Steve. Steve chuckled and gestured to the God’s hammer.

“If you think you are worthy, then wield it,” he suggested and took a step back to watch the events unfold. You pursed your lips and joined the Captain while Sam and Bucky played Ro-Sham-Bo to see who would try to pick it up first.

“Hah!” Sam smirked, “Paper beats Rock!” With a minor adjustment of his wing pack on his back, he strutted to the table and grabbed the handle, “Watch and learn, Barnes.”

You rolled your eyes at their egos but hummed in contentment anyway. It was going to be fun watching Sam and Bucky fail to lift Thor’s hammer. There were only three people you knew could do so; Thor, himself, and Peter Parker, the Spiderling. You had opted to not embarrass yourself when everyone else was having a go at after Thanos’ end. Your eyes widened and jaw went slack as you remembered something. You turned to Steve.

“You!” you cried hysterically and pointed at him, realization dawning on you. You watched his face tinge pink and he laughed with a nod. “You just wanna see them try and fail, don’t you?” you hiss at him as Sam struggles -and fails- to even get the hammer to budge. Bucky almost doubled over in laughter.

“Maybe. Sometimes they both need to be taken down a peg or two,” he shrugged nonchalantly and watched as Bucky and Sam switched places. The second super soldier slipped his Vibranium hand through the holding strap so it rested on his wrist and gripped the handle. He flashed a smile before giving a tug to the hammer. It didn’t lift, but it did shift slightly as it had done once before with Steve. He tried again with the same results.

“Fuck, man, I don’t think we’ll be able to bring this back,” Bucky sighed and retreated to the group with a hit to his ego and his pride bruised. Sam nodded in agreement while you giggled at them. Steve sauntered up to Mjolnir and grabbed the handle.

“Or maybe,” he tugged and it moved as though it weighed nothing, “you’re just not worthy.” You groaned aloud as he quoted Thor from several years ago. He winked at you and nodded. “Let’s go, shall we?” He took the lead as you fell back into step behind him, leaving Sam and Bucky to fall in and follow. Bright green Nordic symbols lined the way and it wasn’t long before you regrouped with the whole team.

“Ladies all across the world, listen up we’re looking for recruits! If you’re with me, lemme see your hands, stand up, and salute! Get your killer heels, sneakers, pumps, or lace up your boots! Representing all the women, salute, salute!”

Steve trudges down the hall to the common room and kitchen in a worn out white tee and a pair of sweatpants. He tilts his head as the lyrics meet his ears. He hesitates before continuing into the kitchen for breakfast, deciding to skip his usual morning run.

“I’ve heard this song before, but I can’t place where?” He scrunches his face, brows furrowed as he tried his best to remember.

“Yeah. Y/n plays it all the time. It’s kind of her theme song. She always has it in her workout playlist and Shuri played it over our comms when we saved your ass just a couple weeks ago,” Nat smirks smugly from the island bar with a plate of bacon, eggs, sausage, hash browns, toast, and waffles.

“Language,” Steve startles at her voice, having not noticed her when he walked in. He gives a friendly wave and small smile before what she said registers and he scowls at her. His eyes scan the room and land on Wanda who is fixing a plate at the table, also smirking. “And you know that wasn’t our fault right?”

“Oh yeah. EVERYONE gets bad intel from time to time. Just, yanno, usually it’s not like over half the team,” your voice cuts through the song and Steve glances over to see you -making more waffles and bacon- swaying and shuffling to the song, stomping when the lyrics “lace up your boots” is said and mock saluting when “salute” is said. He shakes his head at you.

“That’s not funny. We thought the emails and intel came from Fury,” he counters and grabs a plate from the stack beside you. You raise a brow and cock your head to the side, smirk on your face.

“That is funny. I don’t recall Nick getting a gmail account,” You giggle and flip the waffle maker to evenly cook the batter through. “Or better yet, I didn’t know he was doing it differently by not making an appearance and scaring the ever-loving shit out of everyone,” you smile at the way Steve shifts uncomfortably at your cursing.

“Hey, stop making the Cap feel old, well older than he is. You know how much a lady swearing makes him feel even more out of place,” a teasing voice calls from the entrance. Natasha and Wanda smile while you try to ignore the male, but you can’t help but smile as you take out the waffle and start making another. You sense him before you feel his arms around your waist and his lips on your neck with a hushed “good morning, Beautiful” against your skin.

“Go shower then you can have waffles,” you ignore the almost inaudible cries from Sam but you only shoo him from you. “Shower or no waffles, Samuel,” you grab the hand towel from the counter, wind it up, and pop his backside with it as he finally concedes defeat. He yelps in surprise and turns to see you with the towel over your shoulder, swaying to the last few lines of “Salute”. Nat and Wanda laugh behind their hands while Steve stared in bewilderment at what just took place. Sam rolls his eyes and heads to the bathroom to shower. He passes Tony with a “good morning” said between them.

“I think you’ve managed to confuse and startle everyone with not only your cunning wit, rivaling sass, but your knack for going Captain on them,” Tony teases and grabs a plate. You glance at him and shrug, offering him the just-done waffle.

“I learned a lot in the Navy. It’s how you survive,” you respond and set everything aside and get a plate to make for Sam. “Besides, the best way to prevent someone from being condescending is to establish dominance. I do that by going Drill Sergeant,” you explain and set the plate on the table.

“Ahh yes. I remember when you first met everyone. You had them all scared out of their pants! They all snapped to attention and looked ready to salute,” the billionaire laughs at the memory. “If I recall right, that was your theme song too, the one that was just playing? I remember Happy telling F.R.I.D.A.Y. to play it when you went to spar with Natasha.”

“Oh, yeah, that reminds me--how did y’all know we were all captured?” Steve pipes up from the table. Tony raises a brow while the other females smile. You busy yourself making your own plate before answering.

“Honestly? I just knew you, Sam, and Buck were out on a mission together. Then Nick dropped in and asked where Tony was, which sparked interest in Bruce, Scott, and Strange’s whereabouts. When I didn’t have an answer, we tried to look up any info we could manage. We didn’t think anything like a hostage situation until Shuri called to see if T’Challa was here. She said that she hadn’t heard from him in a few days and the last thing she got was a notification on her Kimoyo bead bracelet for T’Challa saying he lost signal about two hours prior. She thought maybe some Stark tech was jamming it but then when it didn’t come back on she decided to make some calls,” you recall and bring the orange juice jug to the table with your plate of food.

“That’s right. After Y/n got off the phone with Shuri I found Pepper to see if she knew where you were, Tony. That’s how we knew you were gone. She said you had promised to be here for dinner and when you didn’t show she got worried, then Parker called and said you had missed coming to his school and we knew we had to start looking. Then May showed up her that night saying he never came home from school and the school was saying he left around lunch,” Wanda adds as she moves to the table with Nat. Sam slides into the seat beside you, freshly showered.

“Then Loki showed up and she went off about Thor and we knew that something big had happened. When we called Nick to verify the missions he supposedly gave out he just gave us his bitch face and we knew something was very wrong,” you pour syrup over your strawberries and waffle. “You’re just lucky we got there when we did. Y’all owe Dr. Cho, Shuri, Hill, MJ, and May big time. They were holding it down here and giving us anything and everything we needed to know. Oh and for future reference? Nick will never email or send someone else in his place when giving orders. It’s proven to be too much of a security issue,” you state and dig into your breakfast so they won’t continue pestering you about the day you saved them.

It had been nonstop questions about how you had planned the rescue, who had been team leader in Cap’s place, who decided who went and who stayed, and so on and so forth. You were over it and your answer seemed sufficient enough for Steve and Tony as they began to eat their food, a comfortable silence settling over the compound for the first time since everyone got back.

“Hey, don’t forget we have some new S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to whip into shape,” Sam nudges your arm, making you pause with a piece of waffle halfway to your mouth.

“I completely forgot. Let’s hurry then,” you perk up and finish your bite.

“How is she not tired of this playlist yet?” Rhodey crosses his arm, standing beside Tony on the upstairs overhang in the gym. The same playlist you turn on every time you train loops through F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s speaker system.

“She’s crazy, that’s why,” Tony sasses and chuckles.

You and Wanda are grappling while you wait for Steve, Sam, and Bucky to get back from taking the new agents on a mile and a half run. Natasha watches from the sidelines, yelling pointers and reminders for certain techniques the two of you are trying to smooth and perfect. It’s when Wanda pins you to the mat, red encircling from her hands up her forearms, that you tap out with a huffed laugh.

“Using your powers is cheating. This is a spar for hand to hand only, no powers,” you tease and buck your hips so high that she rolls off you, over your shoulder. You both sit up and she gives you a large smile, wiping the sweat from her brow as the red dissipates.

“I’m working on it,” she shoots back. She nudges her shoulder against yours and nods to the door. “Looks like the kids are here. Want me to get them ready with stretches?”

“I think they need cool down stretches and a water break from the looks of their run. I think Steve and Buck went overboard again. Damn super soldiers,” you laugh and push yourself to your feet, offering Wanda a hand up. She accepts it and heads over to the group of barely standing recruits.

“Everyone go get some water and line back up. We’ll do some cool downs since our soldiers like to overwork you first thing in the morning,” Wanda jabs at the old soldiers before shooting them a wink. They both flush pink and duck their heads as they retreat to the boxing ring. Sam laughs and snatches his water bottle from the bleachers and gives the witch a questioning look. She tips her head to you on the far side of the gym, talking in quick, hush tones with Natasha.

“Look, it’ll be funny. You saw the video of when I first, officially, met the guys right? It’ll be kinda like that,” you grin and bump her hip with yours. Her eyes narrow slightly, a playful glint in them, and she nods.

“Fine. You can have this group. I’ll get the next ones. I’m recording this though,” the Russian quips and grabs her jacket and water bottle. She nods at Sam in passing, heading straight for Tony and Rhodey upstairs.

“What was that about?” Sam inquires and leans against you. You raise a brow at him, swipe his bottle, and take a sip. He pouts for a split second before you hand it back to him.

“Just some good ole’ pranks on the unsuspecting newbies,” you chuckle and lean away from him. He follows so half of his upper body weight is leaning on your left side. You give him a fake sigh. He pulls back slightly and goes to lean back once you give him a smile, but you side step just out of his reach and he stumbles.

“Hey!” He yelps and grabs your wrist, pulling you close once he has his balance back. His dark eyes are bright with mirth and mischief. “I thought the pranks were for the kids?”

You lean towards him, noses brushing. For a moment you both just stare into the others eyes, lost in contention. You break eye contact and giggle.

“I mean, aren’t you a kid?”

“Oh har har har. Very funny, Y/n.”

“Thanks! I was thinking of quitting the Avengers to do my dream job; be a comedian!” You cheer and give his shoulder a nudge. “You know I’m just playing. Anyway, time to go scare some new agents into shape! Oh, and tell the Soldiers to slow the pace or I’ll have them supervise the kids on treadmills instead.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am!” He salutes and takes a seat on the edge of the boxing ring where Steve and Bucky are stretching. “You two heard the lady.”

“Ladies all across the world, listen up we’re looking for recruits! If you’re with me, lemme see your hands, stand up, and salute! Get your killer heels, sneakers, pumps, or lace up your boots! Representing all the women, salute, salute!”

The music slowly fades in as Wanda addresses the recruits to get back in some formation. You slink up behind them, waiting for one of them to notice you and say something. When they don’t, you have F.R.I.D.A.Y. turn up the volume of the music just a little, waiting for the right moment, timing it with the lyrics of the song.

“ATTENTION!” You call, using your diaphragm and startling every single one of the new recruits. They all jump, stumble, and trip over each other in an attempt to turn and cower or push their way to the front. You grin at them, eyes brimming mischievously. The ones with previous military and junior ROTC are standing at attention but slowly stand easy again when they realize it was a joke. A Cheshire grin spreads across your face as you make eye contact with each and every one of them. “Time for the real training to begin. You will start by sparring with Natasha, Sam, Clint, and myself. Break up into even groups. Move it!”

[5eforgemaster]

Conversion Kit: The Assassin

Continuing my Conversion Kit series of articles, we discuss the Assassin subclass! Turn any character into a master of ambushes and terribly efficient killer with just three levels of Rogue.

Below the readmore, you can find Additional Support for this kit, as well as Pitfalls and Character Suggestions.

Kit Overview

Investment Type: Multiclass Dip

Minimum Investment: Take 3 Levels of Rogue, selecting the Assassin archetype at level 3.

Overall Impact: Your character now has the mechanical backing to follow through on clever schemes with lethal force.

Investment

Much like our last conversion kit, once you select the Assassin subclass, you can immediately set off to do what assassins do best. Once again, you'll need to satisfy the multiclassing requirement- just a score of 13 in Dexterity, plus a score of 13 in whatever attribute your other class of choice requires.

You don't necessarily need a Dexterity higher than this, but remember that your bonus to Stealth rolls keys off of it. You can mitigate the problems of a low Dexterity score by taking proficiency in Stealth and using the Rogue's Expertise feature to double your proficiency bonus.

Truth be told, you can abandon Stealth entirely if it doesn't fit your concept. However,  you'll want to keep in mind that the assassin's primary feature requires Surprise. While by the Rules as Written, Stealth is the only way to gain surprise, many GMs will allow betrayals or sudden strikes to grant surprise.

Perhaps you can take advantage of Deception or Persuasion to lure your target into a false sense of security, or use a spell like Dimension Door or Invisibility to suddenly appear behind (or even before) a foe and strike them down.

All that said, regardless of the method you'd like to use, you're very likely to want stealth proficiency. It's the least reliant on GM interpretation and applies to the greatest variety of situations.

Narrative Impact

Though the most apparent Narrative for a character using this kit is that of a professional murderer, it is by no means the only route you can take.   Your character is now mechanically incredibly reliant on first strikes. Hunters-turned-warriors (such as most rangers) gravitate to this approach to combat by default, but characters lacking the stomach for battle might turn to this path to end fights quickly. Elite warriors might prefer ambush tactics, and even certain paladins may find a swift death to be all that their foes deserve. In truth, you could utterly ignore this kit's narrative impact and carry on as if you had never taken a single level in another class. However, I'm inclined to see that as something of a wasted opportunity to set your character apart- where did your character learn to fight dirty? Do they see it as a necessary evil and regret their actions, or do they believe they're justified as there's no justice on the battlefield?

Mechanical Impact

From a mechanical perspective, the Assassin offers lethal first-strikes. Whatever your method of attack- a greatsword, a spell, thrown dagger- your Assassinate feature guarantees you a Critical Hit, as long as the attack hits a surprised target.

I cannot emphasize enough how unbelievably good a Guaranteed Critical Hit is in Fifth Edition D&D, and believe me, if I had a way to highlight that bolded, italicized, underlined phrase I would use it. I thought about including a gif of someone slapping a desk. I need you to see those words and realize what they mean.

A critical hit multiplies all of your damage dice. If you can find bonus dice, you're going to hit incredibly hard. If you have multiple attacks, they will all be critical hits. A critical hit on a Paladin's Smite or Rogue's sneak attack is a lucky break. A full round's worth of critical hits on a Fighter's attack routine or a Wizard's Scorching Ray is a dream. Get the drop on an enemy, and that dream is your reality.

The simple truth is, the Assassinate feature alone is enough to enable ambushes as a tactic.

Kit Support

There are several feats you can take advantage of to make this kit more effective. However, even if feats aren't allowed in your game, or all of yours are already accounted for, you're not out of luck. If you keep some rules of thumb in mind, you'll find yourself faring better than someone who approached their build haphazardly.

This list is in no particular order. This is not an optimization guide, and I don't want to commit to the math necessary to rank these options, nor do I want to limit your creativity. That said, as an Assassin, you want to look for:

More attacks. These are easy enough to get: engage in two weapon fighting, pick a class that has the Extra Attack feature, or find a way to get Haste applied to you.

Extra dice for your attacks: Smite and Sneak Attack are good examples. If you have your eyes on a higher level Rogue feature, the extra sneak attack dice will help with this (if you're using an appropriate weapon).

Similarly, spells that grant multiple attack rolls such as Eldritch Blast or spells that have large dice counts like Chaos Bolt. Both of those can be picked up by classes that can't normally access them using the Magic Initiate feat.

You might also consider certain feats, depending on your build and game:

Alert gives you a large bonus to initiative. Depending on how your GM runs Surprise, you may need to win initiative to take advantage of Assassinate- Alert all but guarantees that you'll move first, especially if your Dexterity is already high.

Lucky adds some reliability to your assassination attempts by letting you try again when you roll poorly. Lucky is good to the point of being considered 'cheese' by the community, and many games ban it, but there is objectively no better way to ensure you don't ruin your big moment.

Skulker is somewhat similar to Lucky for ranged characters, though not as effective. If you're a ranged Assassin, this keeps your position from being revealed. You'd be hard pressed to convince your DM that the enemy is still surprised, but maybe you can retreat and try again. The other miscellaneous stealth bonuses are a nice plus.

Spell Sniper doubles your range for attack roll based spells- it'll be easier to surprise foes from a couple of hundred feat away. As a bonus, you ignore all but total cover and even get access to an attack roll based cantrip if you didn't have one already.

Actor might improve your odds of pulling off a social skill based assassin, just check with your GM to make sure they'll rule in your favor before you invest too heavily in the approach.

Pitfalls

There's not a whole lot you can do as a player to make this kit go wrong. Your biggest obstacles are overspecialization and, potentially, your DM.

In the first case, there will be times when Assassinate will fail you. Perhaps the situation isn't right, perhaps you missed your attack, maybe the enemy got the drop on you. None of that matters though- just keep in mind when making choices about your character that not everything needs to improve their critical damage. Dealing hundreds of points of damage with your first strike only matters if you pull it off.

In the second case, some DMs are combative. You might have a DM that feels as though you're somehow "cheating" by assassinating big threats and coaxing your party towards ambush tactics. Some DMs will simply grumble about it and you may need to back off somewhat.

Others will attempt to sabotage you, either by presenting scenarios that make assassinations difficult or impossible, overwhelmingly pitting you against foes that are impossible to surprise or are immune to critical hits, or, in the most egregious cases, abusing their power and arbitrarily depriving you of surprise when you should have it.

The best thing you can do here is keep a level head and talk to your DM. They likely don't actively want to ruin the game for you, and perhaps they have a reasonable motive- maybe you're taking the spotlight away from other players or even making the game less fun for the DM themselves (believe it or not, this is a reasonable concern for the DM- they should have simply been honest with you in the first place, but berating them now won't help either of you).

Whatever your DM's reasons, you can likely compromise if they're honest with you. If your DM gives you any variation of "this is your fault for picking a specialized feature" or "it's just the way it is", you may need to ask if you can rebuild, as they're unlikely to sympathize with your position. Ultimately, your playstyle may just not align with the DM's or group's. There are hundreds of articles about conflict resolution, some specifically tailored for D&D groups, so for the moment I'll table the specifics and perhaps update this article with a link to a quality one at a later date.

A Few Suggestions

I don't want to leave this article on a low note, so I'll close with some classes you can combine with the Assassin subclass for some exciting (if somewhat obvious) character concepts:

Way of Shadow Monk: This monk path offers several supernatural abilities relating to darkness, silence, and hiding- not the least of which is the ability to teleport between patches of shadow. If that doesn't scream "ninja" to you, I don't know what will. The monk also has access to Flurry of Blows, which can make your assassinations quite potent.

Oath of Vengeance Paladin: The Paladin's Smite might be the easiest on-demand way to take advantage of your Assassinate feature. Very few of this Archetype's features synergize with this kit, but access to Haste and Hunter's Mark doesn't hurt, and the narrative of an avenger fits well with the style of combat you'll be employing. If you liked Pathfinder's inquisitor class, this may be for you.

Fiend Patron Warlock: Eldritch Blast is always good, but you have an extra edge with it. Honestly, there's not much too this other than having an easy on-demand ranged damage option, but something about being a contract killer for your Patron seems like an exciting narrative. Works just as well for other patrons, but the fiend seems most likely to employ contract killers. You can take the Blade Pact Boon and Eldritch Smite invocations if you want to step on the Paladin's turf.

With some examples out of the way, I'll take my leave. There's near limitless potential for this kit, as there's some synergy to be had with nearly every class, so you can experiment with confidence.

[carleighalpha]

Wolven Blood

{Y/N} begins to reminisces the memories of her life in the pack and how she found her Imprint, Emmett Cullen.

Imagine: Emotion, Fluff, Lemon, Slight Angst.

Warning: Language.

Word Count: 1,700

Notes: Flashbacks- Italicized & Third POV. Wolf Talk- Bold & Italicized. Alpha Talk- Caps Bold & Italicized.

I woke up carefully in the bed I was occupying, I didn't move, but turned to the bathroom, I heard the shower being runned. I smiled, but then my mind began to wonder into my memories.

{Y/N} {L/N} and the pack go to get Jacob, but at the house they find an angered Bella Swan coming at them.

" What did you do?" Bella yelled as she began to stride to them.

" What did you do? What did you do to him?" Bella yelled at Sam as she body checks him, an slightly irritated {Y/N} watched the girl.

" Watch it." {Y/N} growled, slightly shaking, Paul was edging on to attack.

" Easy!" Sam told them, {Y/N} feeling a bit relaxed, but Paul still wasn't calm.

" He didn't want this!" Bella screamed at the group, Sam was concerned by what she meant.

" But we do. What did he do? What did he tell you?" Paul said glaring at Bella, {Y/N} shook at this, but not in anger but annoyance.

" Both of you calm..."Sam ordered Paul and {Y/N}, the two watching Bella.

" Nothing! He told me nothing, because he's scared of you!" Bella said as {Y/N} let out a laugh, Bella then slapped her, {Y/N} shook her head and glared hard at the Swan.

" Too late, now."Embry said as {Y/N} was shaking and breathing heavily.

" Bella, get back." Sam tells her, {Y/N} watched as the Swan moved back.

" {Y/N}, calm down now." Sam ordered but {Y/N}'s anger got the best of her, shaking and growling, {Y/N} changed shape by turning into a large white and ginger wolf that growled and snarled at Bella.

You're dead Swan. {Y/N} thought as she began to stalk the Swan girl, who began to run to the house.

" Bella!" Jacob yelled at the Swan girl, who was running towards him.

" Run!" Bella screamed, {Y/N} was slowly stalking her, but Jacob wasn't slowing down.

" Jake run!" Bella screams at him, Jacob jumps over her and phases in midair into his Russet Wolf form, he snarled at {Y/N}.

{Y/N} calm down. Jacob growled and thought to the white ginger wolf.

Not till I claw into her. {Y/N} thought and growled back, this provoked Jacob and he charged at her, {Y/N} bites into Jacob's throat, but he throws her off.

Calm down. ​​​​​​​Jacob thought again to her, but {Y/N} wasn't having it, so she tackled Jacob and clawed at him, he tossed her off and the two go barreling into the woods, they find themselves in a clearing, but soon Sam's large black wolf comes in and growls at them.

CALM DO YOU TWO Sam thought at them, the Alpha tone affected them, but {Y/N} growled at him.

I don't need this. {Y/N} thought before leaving and getting to a place where she could phase back, once phased she got dressed and headed to Emily's, only to find Bella there.

" I'm sorry." Bella said to her, but {Y/N} shook her head.

" I'm not going to be here if she is." {Y/N} said before leaving, running to the woods and phasing.

I came back, but I got up, grabbing the silk robe on my side off the bed, putting it on my body, covering the tattoo on my shoulder. I walked to the window that had an amazing view of the forest and moon that shined brightly as clouds moves past it.

" Hmm." I hummed as I was taken in by its beauty, it pulled me into another memory.

{Y/N} moved through the woods, patrolling by herself under the light of the full moon, but a noise distracted her, she growled as she found herself in a clearing where a figure was over a dead mountain lion, she growled and it turned to him, but the two made eye contact and {Y/N} stopped growling.

I've imprinted {Y/N} thought to herself, the figure stood still. {Y/N} shifted back and saw that it was one of the Cullens.

" My Imprint is a Cullen?" {Y/N} asked as she walked over to him, she was naked and the figure took off his white long sleeve shirt and gave it to her.

" Thanks." {Y/N} said as she smiled, becoming like jelly in those molten pools of gold, the figure smiled at her then embraced her.

" No worries, my mate." The figure said in a husky voice.

I was pulled back to the presence as I felt a strong pair of arms wrapped around me.

" Hey." The husky voice said as I smiled, I turned my head to see a smiling yet naked Emmett Cullen.

" Hey." I replied as he then carefully kissed my neck.

" Can't sleep?" He asked as I slightly chuckled.

" No really." I said as I heard a familiar howl, but I was too distracted to answer it. I tilted my head to give him more access to my neck, soon feeling Emmett's cold lips upon my neck again, pulling me into another memory.

{Y/N} and the pack were chasing the red headed blood sucker, she jumped onto their side of the vervain, but Emmett jumped to go after her, but Paul blocked him, the two staring at one another.

Back off Paul. {Y/N} thought irritated as she snarled at the Lahote.

He was trying to get to our side. Paul thought angerly at her, but {Y/N} growled more, standing her true height.

He was trying to get Her damn it hothead. {Y/N} thought to Paul as the pack watched the two interact.

Why are you defending this fucking leech? Paul thought to {Y/N} , who saw red and tackled Paul to the ground.

You're dead Paul. {Y/N} thought, but snarled physically as the two began attacking one another, Sam snarled at them and they parted, but {Y/N} still snarling at Paul, whom was snarling back at her.

{Y/N} WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?  Sam thought to {Y/N}, she growled, but was clearly standing in front of Emmett.

I've imprinted on him, I've imprinted on Emmett Cullen. {Y/N} thought to the pack, they gasped using thought, but Paul snarled at her.

How could you let this happen? It's inhuman. Paul thought to her, he growled at her.

It's not my fault! {Y/N} thought and growled at Paul, her teeth bared at him.

PAUL COOL IT! Sam thought and growled at him, Paul backed up and turned to {Y/N.

{Y/N}? IS IT TRUE? Sam thought to {Y/N}, she let a slight growl out, but Emmett came to her side and rubbed her head, she let out a low purr, Sam watched the two interact.

I've imprinted on a Cullen, there is nothing you can do about it Sam. Nothing the elders or this pack can do about it. {Y/N} thought as Sam began to listen.

The Elders had tried to stop me from phasing because I was the first female shifter, but thanks to Leah, they stopped. {Y/N} continued, Sam watching as Emmett kept close to {Y/N}, but the pack wasn't believing the Imprint story, but {Y/N} showed the Imprinting to the whole pack including Sam.

Think of what they would do or try to do to Emmett or I if they found out. {Y/N} growled at Sam, but the pack began began growling at Emmett, but {Y/N} snarled.

ENOUGH, WE WILL RESPECT THEIR BOND, THEIR IMPRINT WILL BE RESPECTED. AS ALPHA OF THIS PACK, I MAKE IT SO THAT THIS WON'T BE KNOWN BY THE ELDERS Sam thought to the pack. {Y/N} nodded her head and the pack left them to return to Forks.

" Are you ok? {Y/N}?" Emmett asked making me come back to the present.

" I'm ok. I promise." I said as he smirked, he pulled me against his body and then kissed me. He holds me close and I feel his feeling my skin, his cold touch making my body want him so much more.

" Emmett take me. Please." I moaned as I could feel his smirk on me.

" As you wish." Emmett grinned, I felt him take my silk robe off and it falls to the floor revealing my naked body. I jumped as he went to lift me, I felt his hand go to my ass as I wrapped my legs around his waist.

" Please don't make me wait." I begged as he laid me on the bed, he kisses my body and comes up to my lips before I felt his harden cock on my core.

" I love you." I whispered against his lips, he kissed me hard and thrusted into me. I moaned loudly as I felt his length twitching.

" Please Emmett." I begged as I see his golden eyes staring back at me.

" Let me please you." Emmett whispered into my ear, I felt him pull back and slowly thrust into me, I wrapped my arms around his back and let my hands go down his cold perfect skin.

" So warm, {Y/N}." Emmett groaned as he thrusted faster, I felt his cock twitching more as I wrapped my legs around his waist, everything felt so right.

" Please." I cried out, Emmett flipped us and I began to ride him, his hands guiding my hips.

" I love seeing you like this." Emmett moaned as he jutted his hips, soon I cried out and felt my walls squeezing him, he groaned as I felt warmth enter me, I huff and fell onto his hard body, Emmett wrapped his arms around me, keeping me in place, but I didn't care.

" This is perfect. Em." I said in a tired voice.

" Of course it is. It's just us, and nothing can pull us apart." Emmett said as I chuckled.

" I love you so much Emmett." I said in a tired voice, Emmett kissed my forehead, I let a low groan out. 

" I love you." Emmett whispered as I smiled, I felt the silk blanket cover me and I smiled, closing my eyes and falling asleep.

[orangestar1]

GET UP AND KILL! Original Release

A little over 48 hours ago, it was not my birthday in Sweden, where Vargskelethor ( A.K.A. Joel from Vinesauce) uploaded the VOD featuring the Doom WAD I submitted for his contest. It was my birthday during that time here in The States. Time is fun.

I told everyone when he finally played it I would upload it for everyone to enjoy, and here it is, and then some.

Get Up And Kill! (Colloquially known around by me and my friends as “Guac” like Guacamole but pronounced by Joel as “GWEK” so I guess it’s “GWEK” now) is a single Doom level made with the intention of feeling like a semi-retro mod that could’ve been made with PrBoom+ and some DeHackEd patches.

More info + Release under the cut.

Features

Neon color Industrial-Punk aesthetic (Described by Joel as “Birthday Shake”)

Over-the-top enemy placement and humor

5 original 3D weapons and tons of replacement color-coded pickups to match (that look bad because I was strapped for time)

Grading system that goes from A, the lowest grade, to XXX EX GRAND MASTER, the highest.

New Zombiemen sounds from Ghost Squad (Wii)

Quadruple bass pedal drums that I liked but everyone seems to make fun of

Semi-Nonlinear level design

Transparent Swimmable 3D Floors

Dynamically lighted explosions

Easy difficulty for accessibility

Cooperative player starts

A finishing gauntlet featuring two cyberdemons and a boss battle with a double-health Spider Mastermind and his Arachnotron cohorts. Especially difficult if you’re going for 100% kills!

Known Bugs

If the Status Bar’s scaling options (Options > HUD Options > Scaling Options) aren’t set to 1 or using the defaults like this then your HUD will be ridiculously huge. This bug was introduced in the very version of GZDoom that Joel ended up using for the contest. Thanks, Graf.

Autosaves only trigger once, so it’s possible to use up an autosave and then not go through the portion it was intended for.

The invulnerability sphere was supposed to have been edited to have a golden colormap (seen here after applying a quick patch) but instead I appear to have uploaded and backed up the wrong wad so it’s the default inverse colormap which looks like hell on the neon-soaked textures.

I forgot to render the Handcannons with a right hand holding them so only the left hand is visible.

The title “Get Up And Kill” is incorrectly attributed to Bruno Mattei’s Hell of the Living Dead, a film about rats that transmit an infectious zombie virus. The line actually comes from Bruno Mattei’s Rats, a film about rats that transmit an infectious zombie virus.

Sometimes the EFX explosions will damage you. I don’t know why.

You can continue to control your character after winning. Using the console command Spynext will change the camera back to your player so you can see yourself. This does not change your ending stats.

The sound effect that plays when you get a secret is actually unecessarily long because I forgot to trim it, so after getting a secret you’ll still hear some really quiet crowd cheering noises and instrumental breaks.

Due to miscalculation on monsters in the level, you can only achieve a XXX rating for Demons Trashed by waiting for Pain Elementals to spawn over 30 Lost Souls or by killing any respawned demons on Nightmare!. (The level has 217 monsters on normal, and there are three Pain Elementals which will generate at least an additional 9 monsters. XXX grade requires you to kill 257 monsters.)

Onto the actual release, I actually have three versions of Get Up And Kill to give you today. Championship Edition, Director’s Cut, and Original Mix.

Championship Edition

CE is the warts-and-all WAD that was submitted directly to Joel’s contest. It features everything you see in the WAD as it showed up on the above-linked VOD and everything Joel missed as well. Untouched and preserved for archival and interest.

Get it here!

Director’s Cut

Obviously, I can’t say I made a patch and then not release it, right? DX is GUAK with a few post-release quirks mitigated and fixed, though still a little rough around the edges. Differences between CE and DX:

The bugs listed above that are in italics are fixed.

References to the “Chat” and other things specific to Vargskelethor’s Twitch stream have been removed.

Leftover debug code has been cleaned up and removed.

Deathmatch spawns and weapons have been added to the map, as per Joel’s suggestion.

Scripts have been tweaked to run automatically when a Deathmatch game is detected.

Leftover DECORATE actors and their corresponding sprites that were not used in the final product have been removed.

The unused Titlemap has been removed.

The requirements for achieving a XXX grade for Demons Trashed has been reduced to accommodate how many demons are actually in the level. (This is one of the italicized bugs but I wanted to elaborate.)

Grades for time have been sparsed out somewhat. While you are still required to achieve a time under 2 minutes for a XXX rating, most play sessions are usually 6 and a half minutes or higher: Far exceeding the lowest grade requirement (400 seconds or 6.6 minutes for an S).

Obviously these fixes actually make GUAK-DX smaller in filesize than GUAK. I highly recommend it.

Get it here!

Original Mix

The final version of GUAK is a very special one. During the video, Joel mentioned that he’d love to play through the entirety of Doom 2 with the weapons. Well, now you can. The WAD was designed from the start to easily mesh with other Doom wads because I’m insane, and Original Mix allows you to mix GUAK weapons with almost any level you desire. Some discrepancies between GUAK (DX), GUAK OM, and Doom 2:

In GUAK, Zombiemen and Shotguys dropped Jury Rifles (the Pistol replacement.) Since this was done by replacing the actors entirely, in GUAK OM they simply drop boxes of scrap (Clip replacements) and Scrapshoots (Shotgun replacements)

In a desperate attempt at balance, Scrapshoots and Handcannons will spawn differently from normal Shotguns and Chainguns. You’ll get used to it.

Boxes of Pistol ammo will instead spawn 2 charges of scrap and 2 charges of rounds.

Scrap charges give you 20 ammo instead of 10.

Since there is no Fusion Coolant equivalent for the Big Cell Packs, Big Cell Packs now just spawn a bunch of Fusion Coolant.

There is no BFG replacement. The BFG spawns as is and still uses its own ammo that does not spawn anymore, so you only get charges for your BFG by collecting other BFGs. Use it wisely.

The Scrapshoot now uses more ammo.

The Sonic Emitter will give you 5 charges on pickup instead of just 2.

The Fusion Rifle will give you 50 charges on pickup.

Guns now leave decals on walls.

The default status bar is used.

There is no Titlemap or M_DOOM replacement. Sorry.

GUAK OM should work with most level packs, and anything that doesn’t rely on changing the guns at all. If you find any bugs while playing it, please let me know! I’d love to make this playable in all kinds of level packs if possible.

Get it here!

If you’re wondering why I haven’t put it on the ZDoom forums... well they kind of have a rule against posting WADs with other people’s resources. This is listed as being only for people from the ZDoom community specifically, but since I used audio from Ghost Squad for Wii by Sega, a sound from Rockband 2 by Harmonix, sprites and textures from Duke Nukem 3D by 3D Realms, and graphics from Revolution X by Midway, I don’t want to take my chances. If this is fine to post please let me know and I’ll go ahead and do so.

In closing uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh, I think it’s funny that Joel referenced Meteor, one of my favorite DOS freeware games, when he first saw this wad. That’s really hilarious.

That’s it! That’s all! Please enjoy this thing I spent a lot of time on and tell all your friends.

[operationrainfall]

Title Dragon Marked for Death Developer INTI CREATES CO., LTD. Publisher INTI CREATES CO., LTD. Release Date January 31st, 2019 Genre Action RPG Platform Switch Age Rating T for Teen Official Website

Editor’s Note: For simplicity, the italicized sections represent Marisa’s impressions, while the regular ones represent Steve’s.

I recently spent some time with the latest offering from Inti Creates, Dragon Marked for Death. I went into this one expecting your standard Action RPG with some different classes and some ho hum missions. What we got was way beyond what I expected. You will hear from both myself and my partner in crime for this review, Marisa. We’ll answer the most important question of all, was this game fun?

In this game you take control of a member of the Dragonblood Clan. This was a group of humans that were caught up in the war between the Celestials and the Astral Dragons. They were saved by the blood of a dying dragon named Atruum. Why he decided to give them his blood is not known, but anyone born into the clan from this day forward would bear the Dragon Scar on their body and worship Atruum. In present day, your clan has sworn revenge on the Medius Empire for destroying your home, but first you will have to prove your place in this world as the clan isn’t seen in the best light.

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  When purchasing the game, you have a couple of different options. You can take the fighter pack which contains the Empress and Warrior, or play more strategically with the Shinobi and Witch. These packs cost $14.99 each and you can purchase both if you want to have access to all four different classes. I played with the Warrior mostly, but I did check out the Empress as well. They are very similar, but the Empress seems to be a bit faster than the Warrior. She also seems to do a little less damage, but that could’ve been because the weapon I had equipped wasn’t as good as his currently equipped axe.

In terms of raw gameplay, the game does a decent job in tailoring a smooth and quick experience. Combat moves typically don’t have huge amounts of delay and it’s simple enough to access the menu and use equipped items. Characters themselves are also easy enough to understand that with practice, using their abilities is basically second-nature. Even the Witch, which relies on incantations based on repeated button inputs, is not complicated to play as. Speaking of characters, there are four different characters, two designated as Frontline attackers and two as Advanced attackers. Each has a specific playstyle, ranging from brute force to utility. This means that a party of four has tailored roles to support the group.

After the tutorial mission you will find yourself in town. Here you can visit shops, take items out of your truck and take on quests. The shops in town will provide you with weapons, accessories and consumables that will be vital to your survival. You do need to watch out when purchasing equipment, as a certain level is required to use most of it. Once you setup all your gear, it’s time to take on a quest. The objectives of these are widely varied. They can be anything from clean out the monster dens to catching up with a floating balloon. While some of these are less fun than others, variety is the spice of life and this certainly works in the game’s favor.

Combat and exploration is perhaps the game’s best attribute. Quest areas typically have treasure chests to find, along with other secrets. As usual for Inti Creates games, enemies have specific reasons behind their attacks. Like the frog enemy may suddenly do a tongue attack at times, but will only do so if you are close enough for it to trigger. For bosses, they can either have a specific pattern for attacks or have a specific animation to tell what they are about to do. As such, fighting enemies and bosses is not typically a chore. Quests themselves also help to keep gameplay variety.

Quests are where the majority of EXP and gold are received from. They can range from merely going from point A to point B, to gathering a certain amount of items, and protecting civilians. For the most part, the requirements to complete a quest are lenient. The actual main concern is the time limit. For some quests, particularly if you are playing single-player, the time limit can be exceptionally tight. If you don’t rush for the goal, you might merely have a minute or so to spare. Combined with at times bulky enemies, this aspect of the game can be rather annoying.

Unfortunately, the game’s progression can require a bit of extra work. The EXP granted from defeating enemies is typically merely a fraction of the EXP gained in a quest. Even then, much of the time completing a quest typically won’t give a level up even if your level is that suggested for the quest. What makes the issue worse is that you can only keep accessories and weapons found if you have successfully completed the quest. If you are having a difficult time completing quests, either due to running out of lives or time, minimal progress will be made. Even if you can complete quests in one go, it feels like you have to do every quest available to even keep up with the level curve. It would be best if enemies gave better EXP as to not have players feel they have to grind slowly to level up or do every quest imaginable just to complete the game.

Graphically, this is one of the best looking sprite based titles I’ve seen in quite a while. This came as no surprise to me when I found that the character designer was Toru Nakayama, known for his work on the Megaman Zero franchise. Throw in graphics designer Hirokatsu Maeda, who worked on the Gunvolt series and Blaster Master Zero, and it’s no wonder Dragon Marked for Death looks amazing.

The character designs are richly detailed and you can customize your avatar with a few colors. Enemy models are equally impressive, especially some of the bosses. That first big ogre you fight is massive and he bites the head off some guy right off the bat. I think the most impressive thing are the actual levels themselves. Some span many areas, from forest to caves, and onward to castle interiors. They are all masterfully crafted and look amazing. It really makes you want to explore each level thoroughly, not to loot items, but to take in all the amazing level design.

The soundtrack here is top notch. Most of the tracks are a mix of something you’d find in a medieval fantasy movie and a classic samurai film. The two styles mix together very well, and I found myself humming along often as I laid waste to all of the foes before me. The sound effects are pretty much what you would expect for a title like this, and you can customize the voice of your created avatar. While a few more voice choices would’ve been welcome, there is enough here to get the job done.

Combat here is your typical side scrolling hack ‘n slash. You will run around slicing up all enemies in your path. You do have some dragon skills that will allow you to do things like guard attacks, gives you some buffs or restore a bit of HP. You can also hold down the attack button to charge up for larger attacks. These usually cover more ground and do lots of damage. The odds are very much stacked against you most of the time. This is where the items you brought with you really save your bacon. The enemies will also drop some items that may fix your status aliments, give buffs or maybe even restore a bit of HP. This is all about luck and ironically, your luck stat plays into how often you get drops.

Now, this game is meant to be played with other players. Indeed, the game is best played with other people as it makes the time limit and bulky enemies much less of an issue. Having played with another online, it’s safe to say that the game runs smoothly as ever with very few issues. There was rarely a hint of lag while playing, not to mention the game’s balance became much more appropriate. That said, there were times where the other player would just disappear from the screen but was still registered on the minimap. This hasn’t affected the gameplay at all, but it was a notable visual issue hinting at an improper connection. The main issue in the end however is not so much the multiplayer itself, but rather that the game is specifically balanced around multiplayer. This is why single player is not as balanced. What could’ve been done is that if played in single player, the game merely auto-adjusts values to level the playing field.

The problem I found with the fighter classes is they simply take too much damage. The weapons have little range, so you have to be up close and personal with monsters to take them out. You do way more damage than the ranged fighters, but item management and effective dodging are very much key to staying alive. Though in general, this game is not really all that much fun in single player because of the difficulty. I highly recommended you play this one with friends via local multiplayer or the internet. Having even just one more party member that is ranged class makes a huge difference. You basically cancel out each others weaknesses and can fight as one well-oiled machine. Marisa and I played this quite a bit online and there was zero lag, and we had no issues finding each other to party up. Honestly, this is one of the smoothest online experiences I’ve had.

While I think Dragon Marked for Death isn’t balanced very well for a single player game, I think the online play more than makes up for that. There is a ton of quest variety, the levels have tons of depth and the game is just simply a blast to play with a friend. I’m not even a big fan of multiplayer games like this, and if I had more time I’d still be playing right now. I think the amount of quests here and replay value more than justify the inexpensive entry price, and hack and slash fans should grab a friend and be all over this one.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4.0″]

Game provided by the publisher for review purposes.

REVIEW: Dragon Marked for Death Title Dragon Marked for Death

[jilliancares]

PLEASE POST THE NEW ONESHOT ON TUMBLR I’m stuck with ao3 blocked from the school WiFi and if I go off it my mom will kill me 😬 I really want to read it

Back to the Past

Summary: Lance winds up a couple years in the future, where Future Keith shows him he doesn’t always like being the one in control.

Word Count: 3.6k

Genre: smut

[fair warning none of the italicized things stayed italicized so just emphasize whatever you feel like emphasizing in your own head alrighty here it is enjoy goodbye]

~~

It wasn’t everyday you got sent a few years into the future, but Lance had learned by now to take pretty much everything that came at him in stride. After all, once you’d discovered magical robot lions and alternate realities were real, pretty much anything felt possible — including accidentally ending up in the future.

One moment, he’d been walking into the lab, saying, “Hey Pidge,” around the hardened, sugary kind of goo-vention Hunk had created, and the next he’d been here. He figured Pidge had been messing with something she shouldn’t have been and it was her fault that he was here now, but he also figured she’d be able to fix whatever she’d managed to mess up eventually, so he wasn’t too worried.

“What the hell?” said Keith, sitting in his bed. Except, it wasn’t Keith Keith. And by that Lance meant he looked different, maybe a year or two older.

“I think Pidge just messed with the space-time continuum, but hey, what’s up?” Lance shot him a pair of finger guns and Keith continued to gape. (Also, side note, future Keith was HOT. Like, not to say that current Keith wasn’t hot — they’d been dating for a few months now actually, so like, Lance told him that all the time — but Keith had only gotten hotter in however much time had passed. Damn.)

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Future Keith said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Don’t tell me you aren’t happy to see me!” Lance exclaimed, throwing his arms out wide with a grin. “I know you love the sight of me. Er — we are still dating, right?”

Keith laughed, something that wasn’t always very easy to do and made Lance grin in response. “We are,” he said. “It’s kind of nice that you’re here, actually, as you — future you, I guess — is away on a mission right now.”

“Solo-mission? Awesome,” Lance sighed, and then he threw himself onto Keith’s bed, something that always made Keith blush bright red and scramble to sit up straight. Lance looked at him expectantly, grin wide and cocky, except that… Well, it didn’t happen. Keith just raised an eyebrow at Lance.

See, Lance and Keith had had sex before, duh. They actually kind of did it a lot. They were young and defenders of the galaxy and had more stamina than most people, Lance was sure, because they went at it like rabbits.

They did it fast and hurried and pressed against walls, did it quietly in closets and panting into each other’s mouths, did it slow under their bed sheets, taking all the time in the world. But Lance could always make Keith blush. He could look at him the right way, touch him in the right place, say the right words into his ear, and he’d be bright red and pretending not to be. Lance loved it, love seeing Keith red and flustered and chuckling down at him, amping it all up.

But this Keith — some distance into the future, Keith — wasn’t reacting quite like his Keith. He would’ve been blushing by now, would’ve been trying to figure out without saying anything if Lance had jumped into his bed just to be in his bed or to have sex. This Keith wasn’t doing that. He was staring at Lance, an amused expression on his face, and he bookmarked the page of the book he’d been reading before Lance’s arrival and stretched out an arm on the pillows behind him, turning to give him his full attention.

He looked confident. He looked mature.

Slowly, Lance sat up, figuring maybe this wasn’t exactly his place. He couldn’t intimidate this future Keith by flirting with him, huh?

“I’m guessing we’ve only been dating for a few months, then?” Keith guessed, his eyebrows raised.

“Um, yeah,” said Lance.

Keith hummed considerably, and then he rearranged himself a bit, the hand behind Lance’s head coming down to settle on his thigh, real high up. And Lance — so unlike him — went bright red. He sat up rim-rod straight and glanced away, trying to conceal his complexion.

“Man, I forgot how cocky you were back then,” Keith sighed, and Lance cleared his throat, quickly glancing back at Keith.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said primly, and Keith chuckled.

“That was before I realized how much you liked it when I was in charge,” Keith said simply, and Lance felt his eyebrows furrow.

“What?” he said, turning to look at Keith head on. He even managed to forget the hand on his thigh. “I like to be in charge,” he said, before he floundered a bit, face heating up. “Um. We are talking about sex, right?”

Keith laughed, and Lance joined in a bit nervously. What the hell was in store for his future? Sure, he definitely wouldn’t mind if Keith wanted to try being “in charge”, so to say, but there was no way Lance would like it that way more than he did now. And Keith had never even showed any interest in switching things around, so.

“Yeah, we’re talking about sex,” Keith promised. “And I’m not wrong. You do like it.”

“Listen, mullet —”

Keith sat up, finally pulling his hand away from Lance’s thigh and letting him think a bit easier. He pulled his hair into a ponytail, raising an eyebrow at Lance as he did. Lance realized he’d cut himself off, distracted by Keith (which wasn’t a rare thing at all, to be honest).

“You were saying?”

Lance shook his head. “I was saying, I’m a top! Not that I wouldn’t bottom for you, I’d do anything for you — forget I said that — but this is the way I like it and —”

Hair sufficiently up in its ponytail, Keith turned and swung a leg over Lance’s hip. Lance couldn’t help shutting up his time, his lips just stopped moving and his mouth went dry — even his brain stopped thinking, he was pretty sure.

“I’m telling you, you like to bottom,” Keith promised. He was sitting on Lance. He — for the first time ever — was acting all bold and forward in the bedroom. And God — maybe he was right. This was really turning Lance on. He couldn’t breathe properly and his heart was pounding out of control.

“Um,” Lance said intelligently. For some reason he didn’t know what to do with his hands. They were balled in the sheets beside him. Was he even allowed to touch Keith? This was Future Keith, after all.

And Keith was sitting on him. He was sitting on him, and one hand was pressing against Lance’s chest, and Lance was leaning backwards and collapsing into the pillows, feeling his cheeks go pink as he looked up at Keith. “Oh,” he said, because that’s all he could really manage, and also because it kind of encompassed everything he was feeling. Keith seemed to get it, his smirk just growing wider.

He pushed his hands up under Lance’s shirt, one hand smoothing over the skin there and making Lance’s stomach jump, and the other curling around his waistband, fingers disappearing under his jeans.

“Is this allowed?” Lance squeaked, as Keith’s thumb continued to brush against his skin. Lance couldn't help it — he was getting hard, and there was no way Keith couldn’t tell.

“Is what allowed?” Keith said, frowning now. He’d pushed Lance’s shirt all the way up his chest. The cold air of the room — Keith’s room was always freezing, the heathen — had full accessibility to his skin, and goosebumps rose all along his stomach.

“You know,” Lance said vaguely. “This.”

“This,” Keith repeated, nodding slightly. “Do you have a problem with it?”

“Well, no not really, but I —”

“Then we’re fine,” Keith said easily. “If you’re fine with it, then so is present you. Future you, I guess. And I know /I’m/ fine with it, so…”

Lance breathed a great sigh of relief. “Awesome,” he said. “Cool cool cool. Awes — ah!”

Keith had pressed down on the bulge in his pants with the palm of his hand. He leaned forward then and caught Lance’s lips with his, moving them easily and expertly, unwinding Lance with the brush of his lips and the feel of his tongue. Lance didn’t even notice when Keith unbuttoned his pants, didn’t even realize he was trying to get them off him until he patted the side of his butt as they were kissing. Lance automatically lifted up and then Keith was tugging them off, Lance’s face flaring red as he realized what exactly had just happened.

They kept kissing. Lance didn’t even have a chance to try to encourage Keith to take his pants off or anything because he couldn’t speak. Not only because Keith’s tongue was in his mouth, God, doing that, but because he didn’t quite remember how to form words. Keith had immediately wrapped his hand around Lance, chuckling low in his throat when Lance’s breath hitched.

He moved his hand like an expert. Lance hadn’t thought there was a wrong way to give a hand job but now he was certain he was doing it all wrong. Keith tugged on him lightly but firmly, coaxing and encouraging his imminent orgasm. Lance’s shirt was shucked under his armpits and his hands were on Keith, in his hair and bunched in his shirt. Suddenly, Keith deviated from Lance’s mouth, leaving him panting and gasping for breath, and he was kissing along the side of his jaw, further and further back and behind his ear and—

“K-Keith,” Lance stuttered, his back arching off the bed a bit as he tried to thrust into Keith’s hand.

“Mmm?”

“I don’t know what kind of stamina you guys have now, but unless you’re trying to make me come in approximated two seconds —”

“Oh yeah, shit,” Keith said immediately, and he let go of Lance, making him arch upward uselessly towards Keith’s body, so close to his climax. “Sorry,” Keith murmured immediately, kissing a trail down Lance’s throat now, over his chest. “I really wasn’t trying to edge you.”

“S’okay,” Lance panted, dazed and sweaty and kind of throbbing all over. Keith was still touching him, just in different places. His hands were climbing up and down Lance’s sides, big and warm and almost tickling him — it was like he was thinking about doing it, not quite decided yet. He helped Lance the rest of the way out of his shirt too, neither of them doing anything when it inevitably messed up his hair.

Keith let Lance cool down a bit. He kept kissing him, over his chest and stomach, back up his neck, back to his lips. He kept touching him too, hands roaming everywhere they could manage. Keith even flipped them over, but instead of feeling suddenly in charge, suddenly on top, Lance felt just as submissive and taken care of. Keith’s legs were spread and Lance was laying in between them. One of Keith’s hands was just resting on his butt, squeezing occasionally as if he wasn’t even thinking about it, and the other was running up and down Lance’s back, sometimes dropping down to the other side of his ass, both hands squeezing in unison.

It felt good — really good, actually — but Lance was majorly aware of the fact that Keith was still entirely clothed. Thankfully, bringing attention to that had Keith fixing the problem, and then they were laying together in all their warm, naked glory, and Keith was tilting Lance’s chin up, looking into his eyes.

“You want to go further?” he asked, and a part of Lance wanted to prove something to Keith, wanted to flip him over and fuck him good and remind him how much he was supposed to like it, but a bigger part of Lance just wanted it to happen. He wanted Keith to keep putting his expert hands all over him, to make him feel as good as possible. And if he really liked this in the future, there must’ve been some damn good reason why.

“Yeah,” Lance said, nodding, and Keith reached over beside his bed, hitting a panel on his wall where a drawer popped open and wow that’s new. “Woah,” Lance said. “Future secret drawer.”

Keith laughed as he pulled a jar from the drawer. His eyes were lit up with the laugh and he grinned up at Lance. “You’re cute,” he sighed. “I miss you.”

“How long has future me been gone?” Lance asked, and Keith leaned forward and kissed his shoulder as he opened the tub behind his back.

“Almost a week,” Keith said. “You call every night, but I can’t wait for you to get back.”

“Oh my God, that’s so cute,” Lance said. “We’re so cute. I call you every night! You miss me!” He sighed happily, collapsing against Keith’s chest, which was probably a good thing because he most likely would’ve collapsed anyway. Keith’s fingers had taken to circling the sensitive skin of his entrance, making Lance tense where he was laying.

“Um — just, you should know, I’ve never done this before, so…”

“Don’t worry. I’ll make it good,” Keith promised, and Lance nodded. He was still laying between Keith’s legs — one of his legs hiked up, actually, spreading him open — with his face tucked into Keith’s neck as one of Keith’s arms wrapped around his waist, the other pressing slowly into him.

Lance held his breath, tensing against Keith.

“Relax,” Keith murmured. The hand on Lance’s back rubbed up and down, and Lance did so, breathing out and melting against Keith’s chest. It really didn’t feel that bad. It was a bit foreign and uncomfortable at first, but Keith was slow and careful, and it didn’t so much hurt as feel different. Not bad different, either.

Still, it not being bad wasn’t the same as it being great, and Lance couldn’t see what the big deal was all about. Keith had two fingers up his ass and Lance was clinging to the older man, waiting for it to get good. He couldn’t even tell if Keith had touched his prostate yet. He knew Keith — his Keith, past Keith — went wild whenever Lance touched it, and so Lance was intimately familiar with where it was located in Keith. All he had to do was crook his fingers a bit to the left and—

“Ohmygod,” Lance gasped, his entire body tensing as he clamped down around Keith’s fingers, currently pressed against something that was making his body sing. Keith chuckled in his ear and pulled his fingers out for a moment, making Lance relax back against him, panting. And then he was pressing back in, with a third finger this time, and he pressed right back against that spot, and Lance was dying.

“Fuck, Keith, fuck,” Lance panted, unconsciously bucking backwards against Keith’s hand.

“What’s that, Lance?” Keith said innocently. “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of you loving this.” God, when’d he get so cocky? What had Lance done to him over the years?!

“Shut up, you bastard,” Lance groaned, shuddering against him and gasping into his neck. “Fuck.”

Keith decided to show mercy on Lance. He carefully pulled his fingers out of him, making him sag into his body, and then Keith was flipping them over again. Lance’s head was barely even on the pillow, and his legs were on either side of Keith’s waist, Keith holding his legs at the knees from where he sat in between them.

“You ready?” he asked, reaching forward with one hand to stroke Lance, making his eyes flutter shut and his hips thrust upward. He could barely concentrate, but he managed to nod, huffing a much needed breath.

With this confirmation, Keith lined himself up. Lance stayed carefully still, suddenly nervous. After all, he’d never done this before. And Keith’s cock was quite a bit bigger than his fingers. And sure, Lance had seen his own dick disappear into Keith on many occasions, but he’d never really understood how it didn’t split him right open and make him cry out in pain.

“Relax,” Keith advised. He rubbed the outside of Lance’s thigh and Lance forced himself to relax, to stop tensing. Still lined up, Keith then started to push in, grabbing Lance’s cock when he started to hiss in pain.

It definitely hurt — it was a stretch, one that Lance’s body certainly wasn’t used to making — but it wasn’t exactly a bad hurt, if that made any sense. Kind of like pain with pleasure on the horizon. Plus, there was the whole distraction of Keith stroking him, which made it harder to concentrate on the pain. Lance remained relaxed, stayed still and calm as Keith continued to push into him slowly, stroking him and rubbing his thigh and doing everything he could to make it good.

“You’re so tight,” Keith groaned, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. He bottomed out, then, hips pressed flush against Lance’s ass — he felt so full.

For a moment, Keith stayed still, letting Lance adjust, and then he was moving again, after raising his eyebrows and getting a nod from Lance. He pulled out slowly, pushing in just a bit faster, and repeated it. He shifted around as he did this, changing his angle just the slightest bit, and then—

“Oh, fuck,” Lance cried out, clenching hard around Keith, who groaned. Lance yanked Keith’s hand away from his dick, afraid he’d make him come too early, and he just held onto it, their fingers intertwined as Keith continued to fuck into that same spot, making Lance see stars with every thrust.

Keith ended up using Lance’s flexibility against him. He hefted one of his legs until it was rested on Keith’s shoulder, and Lance was so open, so vulnerable and on display and God, that was fucking hot, okay? He moaned, squeezing Keith’s hand harder and arching his head back, trying to breathe the oxygen he was no longer certain even existed.

And then his mouth betrayed him. “Harder,” he said, and he opened his eyes in time to see Keith’s smirk.

“Thought you’d never ask,” he said.

Keith pounded into him, after that. No reserves, nothing held back — just hard and great and world-rocking. He was still angled perfectly, even with their recent change in position, and Lance’s entire body was shuddering with how close he was to tipping over the edge. He was panting, chest rising and falling quickly under a sheen of sweat as he tried to hold on, wanting it to happen at the same time as Keith.

“You holding back for me?” Keith asked, smiling knowingly, and Lance groaned.

“Can’t banter,” he gasped, throwing his head back once more with a moan. “Concentrating.”

Keith sped up just a bit more, chasing his own orgasm, and at the last moment he reached forward and took Lance in hand, stroking him just twice before Lance was coming with a cry, clenching around Keith and twitching and shaking all over, hot and sensitive everywhere. Keith was coming too, inside him, moaning low in his throat, his head pressed against Lance’s leg still flung over his shoulder, mouth absentmindedly pressing kisses to Lance’s calf.

Then they were panting, coming down from it and calming down too, turning soft and tired and melting against each other. Keith eased Lance’s leg down and carefully pulled out of him, only to climb back up the bed beside Lance to cuddle.

“I call little spoon,” he said, slotting himself against Lance, and Lance chuckled, wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him closer. It was good to know some things never changed, at least.

—

Lance woke up after a wonderful night’s sleep. Mid-day’s sleep? All he knew was that he’d cuddled a generous amount and was now starving. He kissed Future Keith on the forehead before standing up, eyes widening as his ass was revealed to be very sore, making him wince.

He pulled on his boxers and a t-shirt, shuffling towards the door with his stomach growling.

It slid open, revealing Future Pidge.

“Hi, Pidge,” said Lance. Pidge rolled her eyes and yanked him out of the room, the doors sliding back shut behind him.

“You need to go back to your time,” she said, and Lance nodded.

“Yeah, you really fucked up, didn’t you?”

“Shut up.”

She pointed something at him that looked alarmingly like a gun, and Lance said, “Wait!” Pidge raised an eyebrow.

“Um. Tell Keith thank you, for me? And that I love him?”

“Gross,” Pidge said. “But fine.” And then she raised the alarming-gun-look-alike once more and shot Lance.

Lance groaned, rubbing his head and opening his eyes, seeing Pidge standing before him.

“What the hell?” he said, looking around. “What happened?” He glanced to the ground, seeing his goo-vention on the floor. “Aw man! Pidge! You made me drop my goo-vention!”

“Stop calling them that,” Pidge groaned, and then she squinted at him. “Is that really all you remember?”

Lance blinked. “Um. Yeah? I’m gonna have to go get another one.” He spun around to march away only to immediately groan, his ass… sore? “Ow,” he said, and he starting walking with shuffling steps instead. “You messed me up, Pidge,” he called over his shoulder, glaring at her. She just shrugged, only looking mildly guilty.

“You were gone for a second and now you’re back. It was like a glitch.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lance huffed. “I didn’t go anywhere.”

With that, he shuffled all the way back to the kitchen for another goo lolly pop, wondering why he was so sore all over — and… where were his pants?

[loadgs850]

What Does Your Typeface Say About Your Brand?

Fonts perform a great role in your design, so you should know which fonts not to use in your designs. Either in typography or in web page design, the use of proper fonts is a great advantage. Sometimes, designs become disasters just because the font is not used properly or, in some sense, does not fit the occasion.

This calls for the proper selection. For decades, the Internet has constantly provided us with a vast database of fonts, all segregated by variety, style and use.

This lets us choose which to use. Because of this wide variety that we have, it is just fitting to say that nobody can have an excuse why they chose the wrong font. It’s also safe to say that with the liberty each designer has, he should pick the right fonts at the right time.

But some fonts, of course, tend to have become more popular because of their availability. Operating systems like Windows have provided default fonts for the user. It removes the hassle of choosing, downloading and installing them. This convenience has been good because of the easy access of readily available fonts but has become detrimental too because the fonts that were popularly used became cliché. Hence, they are to be avoided.

I tried to make a list of fonts that you should never use again. These were selected because they were too cliché and very hard to put into the design. The essence of this list is not to fully discriminate mainstream and cliché fonts but to properly use them for fitting occasions.

UNLIMITED DOWNLOADS: 400,000+ Fonts & Design Assets

Use of a sans serif signals to customers that your brand appreciates clean lines, has style and is easy to work with. Thinner stroke widths create a trendy vibe, while bolder strokes often feel important. Use a regular weight to take the emphasis off the type altogether, allowing it to fall into the rest of the design.

Sep 20, 2020 Fonts Help Building a Brand Personality. Brand personality refers to the personification of the brand. Adjectives like caring, cool, funny, luxurious, etc. Are associated with the brand because of their brand personality. Fonts have their very own personality and brands can capitalize on it if they use the right type of font for the right content.

Starting at only $16.50 per month!

Your visual brand consists of your colors, fonts, and the style of images you use on your website and in social media. Modernist brands will likely have to re-make their brand image more often than Classic brands to stay ahead of visual trends.

Comic Sans MS

Comic Sans MS is one of the basic Windows fonts installed in your computer as you boot up Windows. Microsoft first introduced this font in 1994. Comic Sans was designed by Vincent Connare as a child-oriented font. Its inspiration was mainly gotten from comic books in Connare’s office (they were Watchmen lettered by Dave Gibbons and The Dark Knight Returns lettered by John Costanza).

According to him, he originally designed the font to be used with speech bubbles and not for general use. But since then a lot of people have fallen in love with this font and it became a cliché.

One main reason why you should stop using this font is it is childish. It lacks formality, though it is used for formal events and announcements (doing facepalm right there). Unless of course you’re running a website for kids, or designing a first-birthday invitation, you could use these kinds of fonts (I said these kinds because you have other choices than Comic Sans).

Never use it for swimming pool rules signboards, grave epitaphs, commemorative plaques, hospitals, government job applications, heart transplant activities, and books.

Never use this font when you are designing for business sites, or warning signs. It might give people an impression that your client is childish and might not take them seriously. Never write DO NOT ENTER in Comic Sans, else, the reader might see it as “Do not enter says stupid childish whoever”.

Use Comic Sans MS only when your audience are below 6 years old (parent-letters not included), when you’re writing speech bubble contents for comics, and when you’re client is dying and his last will and testament said so.

Visit: Comics Sans Criminal

Subtitute Fonts:

Lexia Readable

P22 Kaz Pro

JM Doodle Medium

FF Friday Regular

Sharktooth Regular

Comic Strip

Papyrus

Remember that term paper about Egypt your teacher told you to write? I bet you used Papyrus back then! And I bet too, that you might as well, if you can, forget that shameful design experience.

Papyrus came out in 1983. Chris Costello successfully managed to design it after six months of manual hand-drawing. According to him, it was designed to imitate the pre-modern writing in papyrus leaves.

Be that as it is nobly designed, this font wasn’t really seen in papyrus rolls alone. You can now see it in captchas, advertisements, signboards, banners, books, and even in most typographic designs! It seemed to have been seen everywhere to the point that you might even vomit if you see it again in your page.

This saturation resulted to people hating the font. (For proof, find iheartpapyrus.com.)

Travis Estvold once wrote via blog.echoenduring.com:

“I, myself, hate when people use Papyrus—the font, that is, not the plant or the paper. I’ll be the first to admit it’s a strange thing to detest but whether it’s justified, this loathing is my constant companion. Surely, if someone proclaims the most bothersome part of his day is unearthing new and terrible ways in which locals have used and displayed a particular typeface, he must also be a designer. This is true… I’m not sure when my obsession with the font began, but my poor girlfriend, who has been a party to most of my Papyrus sightings over the past two years, can tell you it’s been building for some time.”

Truly, Papyrus is one of the ‘I-was-used-repeatedly-until-I-became-useless’ type of fonts.

Curlz MT

Okay, I personally loathe this font. Once a classmate of mine used this font in a letter sent to me and I went nuts. My eyes had a hard time reading and I got dizzy and nauseous! To my anger, I wrote him back. Guess what font I used, WINGDINGS! Imagine the hate in his face.

Curlz was originally designed by Carl Corssgrove and Steve Matteson in 1995. They were added into the default Windows fonts and were also originally created for party invitations. This font copied what happened to the Comic Sans Font, it became to mainstream to a point that people got sick and tired of them.

Aside from that, it lacks formality and authority. You can never use it in coat-and-tie events, warning signs and many more because it will just give your readers an impression of a joke. Curlz also has big issues with legibility. Imagine writing a book with Curlz MT font. People who read your book might sing, ‘You spin my head right round right round’. If you want to make your body readable, do not, not even in your drunk days, use this font in the body.

Now this font, too, has become overused. It’s almost everywhere too! Most people think that just because your website caters to women, you have all the right and privilege in the world to use this font.

Actually, the female target market does not oblige you to use Curlz MT. It is very wrong to think that women will fall for cute and curly letters. No, that would never happen. Well you might be able to attract middle-aged ex-cheerleaders who think they are still in middle school. I guess that would make an audience.

Arial

A designer friend of mine once said, if you have Helvetica, use it. Don’t settle for Arial.

According to designworkplan.com, Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders originally designed Arial in 1982. It was widely used as the standard typeface for normal computer usage. It became popular after the release of Windows 3.1 where it was installed as free. After that boom, the usage of the Arial font spread like wildfire across the globe.

People may have liked Arial because it is readily available in the operating system. Of course, the mentality is, why buy an expensive font if you could make do with what you have. The result? Arial explosion. Arial on magazines, on street signs, on banners on advertisements and even in TV! Of course this made most designers sick of it. Also, Arial has no proper and true Italics, which made it difficult for body texts to italicize with style.

Good thing, we can have substitutes for Arial nowadays. We can easily swap this ubiquitous font to make your body texts look new.

First is Verdana. Released in 1996, Verdana is one of the more popular substitutes to Arial because aside from its ready availability, Verdana is easier to read. Second is Tahoma. The Tahoma font was released with Win95 as part of the MS Office. It’s also readily available as Verdana is. Third is Trebuchet MS. Trebuchet MS was released with Windows 2000 and looks more like Verdana.

Courier New

Ever remembered the typewriter? Do you notice the resemblance of the typeface your typewriter produces and the font Courier New? Well, it’s supposed to look like it because it was how Howard “Bud” Kettler thought it to be in 1955. Courier is a slab serif type of font that was originally sold to IBM. It was made to look like a typewriter print because IBM originally made typewriters.

Kettler says that the font was called courier because instead of being a messenger, “a letter can can be the courier, which radiates dignity, prestige, and stability.”

Had it radiated dignity and prestige? I don’t think so. Courier’s stability as a font has been questioned a lot of times. All we know about the courier font is that it is a serif font. But aside from that, nothing. Courier had been suffixed with ‘New’ but I still see nothing new in it.

Courier are used for certain occasions like film scripts, codes and plain text documents. Web designers avoid courier because its lettering is not properly measured and it suggests a more ancient design. Also, because it was originally designed for typewriters, courier font letters have low-resolution and cannot be placed in the body artistically but it does look good with a green background.

What Does Your Typeface Say About Your Brand Name

The Courier font is used on movie scripts, novel manuscripts and other forms of literary art. But in web design it has no place, unless you want your website to look like it’s fresh out of the typewriter.

For font alternatives, try Cousine.

Cousine was designed by Steve Matteson as an innovative, refreshing sans serif design that is metrically compatible with Courier New™. Cousine offers improved on-screen readability characteristics and the pan-European WGL character set and solves the needs of developers looking for width-compatible fonts to address document portability across platforms.

Times New Roman

One of the best updates Microsoft Word had in the past years is its use of a new default font. In previous version, I recall that Times New Roman was the default font used. I personally didn’t like Times New Roman because it’s very hard to read and suggests a mood of laziness in it.

For a fact, Times New Roman was named after the Times of London, a British newspaper. They needed a new body text font for their paper in 1929. They hired a guy named Stanley Morison of Monotyope, a British company. Morison did the job with Victor Lardent as supervisor and eventually named it Times New Roman.

Then on, the font was used in most body texts and has been popularized as it became Microsoft Office’s default font. This led to its status of being cliché. It became so overly used to a point when people found it disgusting and insulting to use.

Most designers see the Times New Roman font as narrow-spaced because they are originally designed for newspapers and though it is formal in nature, Times New Roman’s bold typeface makes it hard to read and thus loses its formality. Spacing has also been a problem for Times.

If you can avoid it, please do. You can substitute with fonts like Concourse, which is a sans serif font which can be used for more formal situations and legalities. Equity is also a good font as it is a combination of classic and convenient designs. Book Antiqua is also a good candidate and has better spacing flexibility than Times.

Bradel Hand ITC

It might come to his senses that Richard Bradley might soon be sick and tired of seeing his handwriting. I mean, it’s literally everywhere. It might even cause him a very serious headache to even see his penmanship!

Richard Bradley is the designer of the seemingly abused Bradley Hand ITC font. According to Microsoft, this font is an informal script- based font. It is characterized as warm and familiar in nature and has a relaxed rhythm typical to the real handwriting.

Being a readily available font, this font has been used to convey a personal touch in the sans-serif font because fonts like Arial and Helvetica cannot do this. Producing a handwritten-like design will make it look like the designer himself bothered to personally write. That is why it was used in a lot of occasions like posters, school announcements, bulletin boards, cards, invitations and even in story books.

But this, sadly, all resulted into chaos as it was turned into a cliché. Aside from this, the Bradley Hand ITC font is ineligible. If you’ll use it for headings and announcements, which should be seen from afar, it will not become visible as it is thin, even if emphasized. Meanwhile, if you’ll use it in the body, your reader will probably go mad because he would not understand the text properly because Bradley Hand’s readability goes lower as it size decreases.

Personally, I wound not suggest any alternative for handwritten fonts because I totally don’t want to use them as they are difficult to place together with other elements in the design. So might as well stick to your Helvetica.

Vivaldi

A guy named Freidrich Peter designed this intricate script typeface. It is very calligraphic and copperplate-ish. Because it is a script font, Vivaldi is commonly used in wedding invitations and other formal events.

Vivaldi is pretty formal and good except that it has problems in spacing. Vivaldi characters tend to get crowded because they are not full scripts, meaning their characters are not woven into one stroke only. For a semi-script, it is very much condensed.

This results to difficulty in reading. Yes, you may adjust the spacing between letters, but I won’t even think of that in semi-scripts. Expanding the spaces will result to inconsistency in the font design.

One more problem I see with Vivaldi is its caps. When you capitalize a whole word in the Vivaldi font, it would be pretty difficult to read and discern the difference between letters. I tell you. Try it if you don’t believe me.

Kristen ITC

Kristen ITC is one of the cutie-patootie fonts. It was designed by George Ryan for the International Typeface Corporation. It consist of two weights and was inspired by a handwritten menu at a Cambridge restaurant. This font is asymmetric and resembles the handwriting of a toddler. Like Comic Sans, this font is targeted to the child target market and was impliedly drawn to attract little children.

Kristen font users are usually grade schoolers, gradeschool teachers, child psychologists, and other people who work for kids. The font is playful in nature. You can almost see it in your children’s classrooms all saying how life should be good and that they eat a lot of vegetables.

What Does Your Typeface Say About Your Brand Say

But Kristen should be pretty much avoided. A designer should always think of the issues this font poses. First is that it is has no formality. Using this font in a legal document could make you lose a case. Second thing, is that Kristen’s non-caps are placed in the middle part of the caps. Unlike other fonts that place the non-cap characters as where the cap character baseline are.

Manual spacing could also be a problem as the spacing of the capitals of the font are difficult to measure since the characters are a little bit curved.

Viner Hand

Viner hand is an informal script font developed from the handwriting of John Viner. I’m pretty sure this font sucks because it has been overused, like the others in this list. Commonly, this font has been abused by angsty teenagers and goth wannabes.

Other Fonts to Avoid Using

Mistral

Impact

Symbol

Stencil

What Does Your Typeface Say About Your Brand Say

Wide Latin

Conclusion

For a designer, originality is everything. Fresh designs should always be produced by his rather queer mind. He should always be innovative with the design trends that happen around him. He should also be experimental in the trends he use for designing.

That is why one must not be satisfied by the fonts present in his computer. He should look and look and look until he finds that font that suits him.

Remember, a good designer has no go-to fonts.

This post may contain affiliate links. See our disclosure about affiliate links here.

[suzanneshannon]

Quoting in HTML: Quotations, Citations, and Blockquotes

It’s all too common to see the incorrect HTML used for quotes in markup. In this article, let’s dig into all this, looking at different situations and different HTML tags to handle those situations.

There are three major HTML elements involved in quotations:

<blockquote>

<q>

<cite>

Let’s take a look.

Blockquotes

Blockquote tags are used for distinguishing quoted text from the rest of the content. My tenth grade English teacher drilled it into my head that any quote of four lines or longer should be set apart this way. The HTML spec has no such requirement, but as long as the text is a quote and you want it to be set apart from the surrounding text and tags, a blockquote is the semantic choice.

By default, browsers indent blockquotes by adding margin on each side.

See the Pen The Blockquote Tag by Undead Institute (@undeadinstitute) on CodePen.

As a flow element (i.e. “block level” element), blockquote can contain other elements inside it. For example, we can drop paragraphs in there with no problem:

<blockquote> <p></p> <p></p> </blockquote>

But it could be other elements, too, like a heading or an unordered list:

<blockquote> <h2></h2> <ul> <li></li> <li></li> </ul> </blockquote>

It’s important to note that blockquotes should only be used for quotations rather than as a decorative element in a design. This also aids accessibility as screen reader users can jump between blockquotes. Thus a blockquote element used solely for aesthetics could really confuse those users. If you need something more decorative that falls outside the bounds of extended quotations, then perhaps a div with a class is the way to go.

blockquote, .callout-block { /* These could share styling */ }

Quoting with Q

Q tags (<q>) are for inline quotes, or what my tenth grade teacher would say are those under four lines. Many modern browsers will automatically add quotation marks to the quote as pseudo elements but you may need a backup solution for older browsers.

See the Pen The Q Tag by CSS-Tricks (@css-tricks) on CodePen.

Typical quotation marks are just as valid for inline quotes as the <q> element. The benefits of using <q>, however, are that it includes a cite attribute, automatic handling of quotation marks, and automatic handling of quote levels. <q> elements should not used for sarcasm (e.g. “you would use a <q> tag for sarcasm, wouldn’t you?”), or signifying a word with air quotes (e.g. “awesome” is an “accurate” description of the author). But if you can figure out how to mark up air quotes, please let me know. Because that would be “awesome.”

The citation attribute

Both <q> and blockquotes can use a citation (cite) attribute. This attribute holds a URL that provides context and/or a reference for the quoted material. The spec makes a point of saying that the URL can be surrounded by spaces. (I’m not sure why that’s pointed out, but if you want to anger the semantic code deities, you’ll have to do more than throw spaces around.)

<p>The officer left a note saying <q cite="https://johnrhea.com/summons">You have been summoned to appear on the 4th day of January on charges of attempted reader bribery.</q></p>

That cite attribute isn’t visible to the user by default. You could add it in with a sprinkle of CSS magic like the following demo. You could even fiddle with it further to make the citation appear on hover.

See the Pen Attributable citations by CSS-Tricks (@css-tricks) on CodePen.

Neither of those options are particularly great. If you need to cite a source such that users can see it and go to it, you should do it in HTML and probably with the <cite> element, which we’ll cover next.

The citation element

The <cite> tag should be used for referencing creative work rather than the person who said or wrote the quote. In other words, it’s not for quotes. Here are the examples from the spec:

<p>My favorite book is <cite>The Reality Dysfunction</cite> by Peter F. Hamilton. My favorite comic is <cite>Pearls Before Swine</cite> by Stephan Pastis. My favorite track is <cite>Jive Samba</cite> by the Cannonball Adderley Sextet.</p>

Here’s another example:

See the Pen Cite This! by CSS-Tricks (@css-tricks) on CodePen.

If the author of this article told you he’d give you a cupcake, and you <cite> him by name, that would be semantically incorrect. Thus no cupcakes would change hands. If you cited the article in which he offered you a cupcake, that would be semantically correct, but since the author wouldn’t do that, you still wouldn’t get a cupcake. Sorry.

By default, browsers italicize cite tags and there’s no requirement that a <q> or <blockquote> be present to use the cite element. If you want to cite a book or other creative work, then slap it in the cite element. The semantic deities will smile on you for not using either <i> or <em> elements.

But where to put the cite element? Inside? Outside? The upside down? If we put it inside the <blockquote> or the <q>, we’re making it part of the quote. That's forbidden by the spec for just that reason.

<!-- This is apparently wrong --> <blockquote> Quote about cupcake distribution from an article <cite>The Article</cite> </blockquote>

Putting it outside just feels wrong and also requires you to have an enclosing element like a <div> if you wanted to style them together.

<div class="need-to-style-together"> <blockquote> Quote about cupcake distribution from an article </blockquote> <cite>The Article</cite> </div>

N.B. If you google this issue you may come across an HTML5 Doctor article from 2013 that contradicts much of what's laid out here. That said, every time it links to the docs for support, the docs agree with the article you're currently reading rather than the HTML5 Doctor article. Most likely the docs have changed since that article was written.

Hey, what about the figure element?

One way to mark up a quotation — and in a way that pleases the semantic code deities — is to put the blockquote within a figure element. Then, put the cite element and any other author or citation information in a figcaption.

<figure class="quote"> <blockquote> But web browsers aren’t like web servers. If your back-end code is getting so big that it’s starting to run noticably slowly, you can throw more computing power at it by scaling up your server. That’s not an option on the front-end where you don’t really have one run-time environment—your end users have their own run-time environment with its own constraints around computing power and network connectivity. </blockquote> <figcaption> — Jeremy Keith, <cite>Mental models</cite> </figcaption> </figure>

While this doubles the number of elements needed, there are several benefits:

It’s semantically correct for all four elements.

It allows you to both include and encapsulate author information beyond citing the name of the work.

It gives you an easy way to style the quote without resorting to divs, spans or wretchedness.

See the Pen It Figures You'd Say That by CSS-Tricks (@css-tricks) on CodePen.

None of this is for dialogue

Not <dialog>! Those are for attention-grabbing modals. Dialogue, as in, conversational exchanges between people speaking or typing to each other.

Neither <blockquote> nor <q> nor <cite> are to be used for dialogue and similar exchanges between speakers. If you’re marking up dialogue, you can use whatever makes the most sense to you. There’s no semantic way to do it. That said, the spec suggests <p> tags and punctuation with <span> or <b> tags to designate the speaker and <i> tags to mark stage directions.

Accessibility of quotes

From the research I’ve done, screen readers should not have any issue with understanding semantic-deity-approved <q>, <blockquote>, or <cite> tags.

[VIDEO]

More “ways” to “quote”

You can add quotation marks to a <blockquote> using CSS pseudo elements. The <q> element comes with quotation marks baked in so they need not be added, however adding them as pseudo-elements can be a workaround for older browsers that don’t automatically add them. Since this is how modern browsers add the quotation marks there's no danger of adding duplicate quotes. New browsers will overwrite the default pseudo elements, and older browsers that support pseudo elements will add the quotes.

But you can’t, like I did, assume that the above will always give you smart opening and closing quotes. Even if the font supports smart quotes, sometimes straight quotes will be displayed. To be safe, it’s better to use the quotes CSS property to up the intelligence on those quotation marks.

blockquote { quotes: "“" "”" "‘" "’"; }

See the Pen "Quot-a-tizing" the blockquote by CSS-Tricks (@css-tricks) on CodePen.

Multi-level quoting

Now let’s look at quote levels. The <q> tag will automatically adjust quote levels.

Let’s say you’re in an area that uses the British convention of using single quotes. You could use the CSS quotes rule to put the opening and closing single quotes first in the list. Here’s an example of both ways:

See the Pen Quote Within a Quote by CSS-Tricks (@css-tricks) on CodePen.

There is no limit to nesting. Those nested <q> elements could even be within a blockquote that’s within a blockquote.

If you add quotation marks to a blockquote, know that the blockquote does not change the quote level the way a <q> tag does. If you expect to have quotes within a blockquote, you may want to add a descendant selector rule to start <q> elements within a blockquote at the single quote level (or double quotes if you follow British conventions).

blockquote q { quotes: "‘" "’" "“" "”"; }

The last quote level you put in will continue through subsequent levels of quotation. To use the double, single, double, single… convention, add more levels to the CSS quotes property.

q { quotes: "“" "”" "‘" "’" "“" "”" "‘" "’" "“" "”"; }

Hanging punctuation

Many typography experts will tell you that hanging the quotation marks on blockquotes looks better (and they’re right). Hanging punctuation is, in this case, quotation marks that are pushed out from the text so that the characters of the text line up vertically.

One possibility in CSS is using a slightly negative value on the text-indent property. The exact negative indentation will vary by font, so be sure to double check the spacing with the font you end up using.

blockquote { text-indent: -0.45em; }

There is a nicer way to handle this by using the hanging-punctuation CSS property. It’s only supported in Safari at the time of this writing, so we’ll have to progressively enhance:

/* Fallback */ blockquote { text-indent: -0.45em; } /* If there's support, erase the indent and use the property instead */ @supports ( hanging-punctuation: first) { blockquote { text-indent: 0; hanging-punctuation: first; } }

Using hanging-punctuation is better because it’s less fiddly. It’ll just work when it can.

See the Pen Hanging Your Punctuation by CSS-Tricks (@css-tricks) on CodePen.

Can we animate quotation marks?

Of course we can.

See the Pen Dancing Quotes by CSS-Tricks (@css-tricks) on CodePen.

Why you’d need to do this, I’m not totally sure, but the quotation marks in a <q> tag are added are pseudo elements in the UA stylesheet, so we’re able to select and style them — including animation — if we need to.

Wait, maybe we just solved the air quotes thing after all.

The post Quoting in HTML: Quotations, Citations, and Blockquotes appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Quoting in HTML: Quotations, Citations, and Blockquotes published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[moontemple85-blog]

NPC Note Card database - Tutorial

Want to have a simple, yet potentially very extensible NPC database? This tutorial will show you how to use Google Sheets and Google Forms to make one, accessible from any device that can handle Google Drive.

Last year, I made mention of a NPC database that I wrote in Microsoft Access that would allow me to not only track the various NPCs, but also automate the generation of "events" that would affect the NPCs.

This approach to tracking NPCs was inspired by Tony Bath's Hyborea campaign and his book "Setting Up a Wargames Campaign". Tony recommended the use of index cards (this was written in the 1960s!) for tracking NPCs ("generals and personas") in the campaign. This was the method that Professor M.A.R. Barker used in his Tekumel campaign in the 1970s. According to Jeff Berry/Chirine Ba Kal, Barker had over 1,200 notecards of NPCs!

I've tried Obsidian Portal's NPC/Character tool. I tried using a homebrew Microsoft Access database solution. But neither really met my needs for something that was simple as a Rolodex of note cards.

Enter Google - specifically, using Google Sheets and Google Forms. It's not a perfect solution, but given that I use Google Docs extensively already for my campaign, it fits into the flow. And it is simple like the note cards!

This tutorial is going to show you how I did this - maybe you'll like it! It's pretty simple to set up, and aside from a couple of restrictions, I see a lot of possibilities! I hope you'll try it out and let me know what you think.

1. Go to Google Drive and create a spreadsheet (Google Sheet). (If you don't have a Google Drive account, it's pretty easy to set up.)

2. With the spreadsheet open, rename it to what you want to call your file. I called mine "NPC/PC Card File".

3. Now click on the Tools menu and choose the "Create a Form" option. A new tab will pop up in your browser with a Form created that has the same title.

4. Now you're going to create your card file fields. I wanted to keep this simple, so for now, I'm creating three fields - Name, Location and Notes. I want Notes to give me lots of room for free form text, but the other fields don't have to be too large.

5. For your first field, change the title to "Name" and the type to "Short Answer".

6. For the second field, click the "+" to the right of the form. In the new question, change the title to "Location" and the type to "Short Answer".

7. For the third field, click the "+" again. This question's title is "Notes" and the type is "Paragraph". This allows you to type in a lot more information.

NOTE: Before you close this form editor tab, see the URL in the browser address bar? Go ahead and select that and copy it somewhere, maybe to a Notepad or a document somewhere. You're going to need this URL in a minute.

8. Close the Edit Form tab and switch back to the spreadsheet. You will see that a new tab has been added to your spreadsheet, called "Form Responses 1". Go ahead and click on that tab and you'll see three columns named after the form fields you've created, plus a column called "Timestamp".

9. To test this out, refresh the page. Click the Form menu and select "Go to live form." A new tab will open with the form you just created! You'll be able to fill out your note card and submit it.

10. Go ahead and do so, then come back to the spreadsheet. If the entries aren't already there, they will appear in a few minutes as Google updates the response. Viola! You have created and tested your new card file.

Now this is pretty cool, but there are some immediate limitations. How can you go back and update existing cards? Can you modify the form to add additional fields, if you want? Can you modify the order of things, both on the form and spreadsheet? How can you use the data?

So I'll cover a couple of these right now. And another blog post to cover how to use the data.

You can go back and update existing cards... but it requires a bit of additional work to set that up. It's not quite as easy as just updating the spreadsheet itself.

Google allows people to go back and edit/update form responses, but they don't make it easy. You can't just modify the data in the spreadsheet. For whatever reason, Google has the responses stored elsewhere and uses that as the source of truth, even though you can see the responses in the sheet.

To do this in a simple way, we have to use some scripting that will automatically add a link to each row that allows you to click it and come back to the form to update the note card!

If you are familiar with programming, this will not be too difficult. If you are completely unfamiliar with coding, you can copy and paste all this and follow step-by-step to get you to where you need to be.

11. Insert a column between the Timestamp and Name columns. Title it "Update".

12. Click on the Tools menu and select "Script Editor". A new tab will open in your browser to a screen that looks like what you see in step 13.

13. On the right side is the editor area.

There's some code already there. Select all of that and delete it. Then copy what is below and paste it into the editor area.

var formURL = 'https://docs.google.com/forms/d/FORMID/viewform'; var sheetName = 'Form Responses 1'; var columnIndex = 2 ; 

function getEditResponseUrls()   var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName(sheetName);   var data = sheet.getDataRange().getValues();   var form = FormApp.openByUrl(formURL);   for(var i = 2; i < data.length; i++)     if (data[i][0] != '' && data[i][columnIndex-1] == '')       var timestamp = data[i][0];       var formSubmitted = form.getResponses(timestamp);       if (formSubmitted.length < 1) continue;       var editResponseUrl = '=HYPERLINK("' + formSubmitted[0].getEditResponseUrl() + '","Update")'       // var editResponseUrl = formSubmitted[0].getEditResponseUrl()       sheet.getRange(i+1, columnIndex).setValue(editResponseUrl);      

Once you've pasted this, you have one thing to change. Remember that URL we saved earlier in step 7? It probably looks something like this: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/9abcb8NrHyezqnZ0q4IYfrGKo3KGn5vc_3b5FA3KDZxI/edit

The part of the URL in my example that is bolded/italicized is a form ID. It's between the slashes. You have to copy that form ID and in the code you just pasted, line #1, there's some text that says FORMID - replace that bit with the form ID.

So you go from this: var formURL = 'https://docs.google.com/forms/d/FORMID/viewform';

To this: var formURL = 'https://docs.google.com/forms/d/9abcb8NrHyezqnZ0q4IYfrGKo3KGn5vc_3b5FA3KDZxI/viewform';

(or whatever your form ID is... it's going to be different).

14. Click the File menu and choose the "Save" option. You will be asked to give a name to the project. I called mine by the same name as the spreadsheet/form: "NPC/PC Card File". Click the OK button with the new name and now the code is saved.

15. Now this next bit is a pain the rear. What we need to do now is to set up the function so that it can be used by the form and spreadsheet.

These next steps are what I had to do using Chrome as my browser. I don't know if you'll get the exact same thing in another browser, but hopefully something similar.

a. Click the Run menu, select the "Run Function" option and select "getEditResponseUrls". You should see a message pop up with something like below.

b. Now comes the weird part. Click "Review Permissions". A new browser window will open up and ask you to sign into your Google account.

c. Once you do, you'll get this big ugly message! Google tries to help people with security and warns them when they're doing risky things. Because you're probably not a verified developer through Google's services, you'll see this. But don't worry, we can continue!

d. Click the "Advanced" link. The warning window will expand a bit (you might have to scroll down). Now, click the "Go to NPC/PC Card File (unsafe)."

e. You will see a permissions window letting you know that this script will edit your spreadsheet (which we want, so we can can edit the data) and it will view/manage your form (which we want so we can show the form.). Click "Allow".

f. The window will close. You might see some quick updates as the function runs.. but nothing happens. That's OK! We're almost done!

16. We have to make it so that this script runs when you submit the form. To do that, we have to create a "trigger".

a. From the script tab, click the Edit menu and select the "Current Project's Triggers" option. A new tab will open up.

b. This new tab has a lot in it, but what you want to do is click the "create a new trigger" link or the "Add Trigger" button.

c. A form will pop up. Select "getEditResponseUrls" for function. Select "On form submit" for event type. The other fields should say "Head" and "From Spreadsheet". If not, make sure your form looks like below. Click "Save". It may take a few minutes, but you'll come back to the triggers tab and you'll see your new trigger.

17. OK, we are done with all the hard stuff! You can close the triggers tab and script tab. Go back to the spreadsheet. Click the Form menu and select "Edit form". A new tab will open with the form in it.

18. To the right on the form tab is a gear. Click it and you should see the Settings. Check the "Edit after submit" option and click save.

19. Now let's test this out! On the spreadsheet tab, click the Form menu and select "Go to live form" option. On the form, enter a new NPC and submit it. When you click back to the spreadsheet tab, you should see the following:

20. You should see the underlined "Update" link, click it - and you'll be able to go back and edit that NPC's card.

OK, now you have something useful! You can create and edit NPC cards. Just by using this spreadsheet and the attached form.

To add a new NPC record - just click Form/Go to live form menu, from the spreadsheet. To edit an existing NPC record - just click the "Update" link on the row of the NPC in the spreadsheet..

A couple of caveats:

1. You can go ahead and delete the first NPC record (without the link) - there's no easy way to go back and edit it so that the update link will appear. To do that, just right-click on the row number and select "Delete row".

2. If you edit the spreadsheet directly, those changes do NOT flow to the form or vice versa. You have to use the form to make edits. This is a limitation that I'm OK with, but keep that in mind.

Now, if you're like me, you'll probably think of a couple of other fields you might want to add that you want to track. Fortunately, with the form, you can do that.

Just remember - you have to make changes through the form. You can safely, add, edit, reorder the fields on the form. You'll see added fields back on the spreadsheet. Deleted fields or reordered fields won't make changes to the spreadsheet. You'll have to do that in the spreadsheet itself if you want.

You can also "hide" the Timestamp column. I did and everything still works OK. It just looks nice and the "Update" links are the left-most column.

I hope you'll give this a try and let me know what you think!

Source: https://chgowiz-games.blogspot.com/2018/11/npc-note-card-database-tutorial.html

[kensingtonseo]

Local Security Company SEO Audit

SEO Audit Example Of A Local Security Business

00:01 Hello, this is an SEO site audit for the Three Lion Security Limited, so we met at the networking meeting in Thrapston, and he asked me to have a quick look over his site. So I’ve gone through and done what I would call a simple SEO audit for you, which will highlight a number of the issues you have with the website and I’m listing things that you need to do, a checklist of things that you need to get done to help you improve your ranking. So hopefully you find it useful.

00:58 So I’m just going to take you through your website and show you some of the issues. I’ve got a notepad here where I’ve just taken some notes of some of the issues with the site. I expect this will take about 15 to 20 minutes, so start off with. It’s a, it’s a nice little site. It’s functional, it’s on WordPress, which is good. There are a few kinds of legal things that need to happen. You need to have an EU cookie consent pop up. You’ve probably seen those annoying popups on other websites where you need to have one on here so that you can, you can do that via a WordPress plugin. There are plenty of those. Um, and also you need to have, I can’t find them anywhere, some privacy pages and your terms and conditions pages, especially as a limited company.

01:59 You should really have those on the website as well and you can just pop them in the footer bar here, the footer menu here to keep them out of the way that they really ought to be there. One comment on the homepage is there isn’t really a lot of information and to improve your rankings it will be a good idea to add some more content. One of the biggest issues I see with websites these days is they try and look better than they are useful to Google. So, you know, it looks nice. You got a big header image here and you’ve got the three content boxes here, but the only real content is this a little bit here and it’s not really enough for Google to be able to understand what your site is all about. So let’s just have a quick look at the Moz toolbar.

02:54 This is something that just gives us some information about the page and you’ll see as we go through this that there are some reoccurring themes. A page title, this should be around about 75 characters and yours is 133. And for most of the pages, the page title is too long. So we need to look at reducing the page titles, the Meta description as well, which is here. This is the snippet that shows when somebody does a search and Google, this is too long as well. There should be shorter than this, otherwise, it gets truncated and it doesn’t make sense for the searcher. So we need to look at shortening those on the page. One of the things that most of your pages have is these Meta keywords, now this has been dropped by Google.

03:52 I would remove those keyword tags has probably been done by the Yoast plugin, but you can disable that. So I would get rid of those. We’ve got an H1 tag here. There’s no H1 tag. It will be good and helpful to have an H1 tag, although we’ve got an H2 tag. It was possibly something to do with the theme or it might just be the way in which the text has been formatted, but you would certainly want to have an H1 tag not having an H1 and just having an H2 wouldn’t make any sense to Googlebot. So that needs to be looked at and there’s no bold words or Italics. Ideally, you want to bold your main keyword and italicize some of your main keywords throughout the content, preferably in the first paragraph.

SEO Audit Checklist – Image Optimisation

04:46 This is the ALT tag, a little explanation that you can add to any images that you’ve got on the page so that a web browser can read them and understand what the image is about. And also screen readers use this for the visually impaired. If you’ve got people with accessibility problems, shortsightedness, those kinds of things, then the screen readers will be able to tell them what the images are and all throughout your site, your ALT tags really could do with being better optimised. This is pretty much the standard that we’ve got on every single page. That’s mainly due to the logos and that in the footer. So it will be better to look at improving the ALT tag and again, through WordPress, that’s reasonably straightforward because each image has the facility to add an ALT tag text to it using the media library.

SEO Audit Checklist – Schema Markup

05:51 There isn’t any Schema markup on any of the site. Schema Markup is something that is a code that you put into the site which will tell Google exactly what your page is about in an easy to understand machine language. You should, as a local business, have at least local business markup you can use. You can use a plugin to help you with this and it should ideally be in JSON LD, but it could also be in microdata format, but really it tells Google what your business is, where it is, and also helps to link together your social profiles so it can start to build up an idea of who your business is on the web and start linking those properties together so that when you tweet something or you share something on Facebook, Google can understand that it actually is about your website entity.

SEO Audit Checklist – Secure Website With SSL (https)

06:50 One last issue on the home page, something that is a ranking factor these days, which again now isn’t that difficult to do, is to switch to an https website, a secure website. You’ll need to make sure that you do any redirects from the old site to the new site, but that would also help to give your site a little ranking boost. So, just looking at, these other pages, we’ve got things like security guarding and again, it’s a fairly similar thing. We’ve not got anywhere near enough content on these pages. There should be at least 300 words as a very minimum. And if you’re looking to outrank competitors, then you need to make sure that you’ve got more and better quality content for your pages to make sure that you rank for these. Again, looking at the on-page stuff, we’ve got a page title too long meta-description this a little bit too long.

SEO Audit Checklist – On-Page Elements

08:02 We’ve got meta keywords that need to be removed. We’ve got H1 tag, but really we could do with better optimising that so that it’s more keyword rich. And we’ve got an H2 tag with the content “why use us?” That’s a bit of a waste of a keyword in the H2 tag. Again, no bolding or Italics to identify or highlight the keywords that this page is about. So in an ideal world, you have, for each of these pages, this is your security services page. Your title will reflect that your meta-description will reflect the keywords, the keywords that are bolded in the text reflects that the H1 tags reflect that the H2 tags, the images, the images, ALT tag text on the images reflect that as well. So the whole page is themed around these, the main keyword.

09:03 So I won’t go through the rest of them because they’re all pretty much the same. I’m just moving over to here. Accreditation’s again, it’s just a similar theme. There’s just not much content and Google really doesn’t like what’s known as thin content pages, ones that don’t have much content. So you need to look at putting more information on your pages or combining the pages so that it’s. I said that they’re kind of better laid out. On the meet the team. I thought it was a bit odd because I was expecting to see staff images and that kind of thing and I got an About Us page essentially, so we might want to look at kind of rewording that or doing something so that it seems to make more sense and it looks as if there’s been some copying and pasting as gone on because there’s a lot throughout the whole site.

10:02 There are these areas here where you’ve got odd characters and these are ‘dot formatted’, character’s usually where something’s been copied and paste from word and it’s gone in and WordPress hasn’t quite understood the character and coding that’s gone through, so this all needs to be attended to. It should be fairly straightforward just to go through the text and make the changes so that we get rid of these odd characters. I noticed there was a lot of it on the job vacancies page as well. I’m down here. We’ve got kind of odd characters around here and here, here and various others here and I think on one of the pages right at the bottom where it was it. One of the pages contact us, one of the pages that have got a big banner at the bottom, which is kind of got your motto and that was messed up as well. So let me just see if I can quickly find that for you whilst we’re flicking through.

11:17 The other thing that we can do to the site is what’s called siloing, this is about building buckets of related content. The other thing is to do with silo in and that is where we create content stacks if you like, and where we start linking from our content to relevant content within our site. So we haven’t got any of that at all. So we’re not helping google to understand what the site is about. The other issues looking through my little list here is that we’re looking at targeting these local areas, which is absolutely fine, but there’s nothing on the site other than the keywords that have been put in which needs to be got rid of. That really indicates that you are a local site targeting these areas.

SEO Audit Checklist – Location pages

12:11 So really to do this properly and efficiently it will be a good idea to have a locations page tab here with the various locations and the services that you provide in those locations. And then build out content within each of those that let’s say for Wellingborough. So let’s say you want to provide these four services within Wellingborough where you recreate these pages within the Wellingborough location tab and you then put the content in there and you make the content relevant to, to Wellingborough. If you want to rank locally, you really need to look at doing more about optimising your site for local search intent because at the moment you’re not really taken advantage of that. Although the keywords seem to suggest that that’s what you want. So overall, there are quite a few things from an on-page point of view that need to be looked at.

SEO Audit Checklist – Google My Business Optimisation

13:17 Your Google my business page. That’s an important element because it kinda tells Google that about your business. And really that kind of ties everything together. And the one of the ways, the main ways that Google will tie that together is by using what’s known as the NAPW, which is your name, address, phone number and website, and these details need to be the same across all of your web properties and directory listings. So on your Twitter, on your Facebook, on your Google, My Business page, on your Yelp or Yell.com listings, or any of the free listings that you can get. These all need to be exactly the same and they need to be the same as what is on your Google My Business page, which at the moment is showing this address which is slightly different to what you’ve got is different to what you’ve got on your website and different to what you’ve got.

14:11 Because as we see down here, we’ve got your Registered Address. So it might be better if you put the registered address in your, say your terms and conditions page. And then you had your address down here, which would then match up with what was on the contact page. And the contact page addresses, again, slightly different to this. So that would need to be changed up so that it actually matched the address because it needs to be exact. Say they haven’t got that in the Google My Business listing and the postcode is, is formatted slightly as well. So there’s a little thing, it might not seem much, but in Google’s eyes, they’re as different as chalk and cheese. So you need to make sure that the address is laid out correctly and is the same and consistently the same. Otherwise, you won’t benefit from those mentions, what are known as citations from across the web.

Local Security Company SEO Audit – Call Us For You Own Audit

15:12 So I think we’ve got a good deal of things that we can target to improve your website on-page, you’ve got a lot of keywords here and you have got the opportunity to make some really good content written about this. So a content marketing campaign, creating interesting posts about all of these topics and then getting people to link back to those articles locally will really help you to start to boost the authority of this website and really help to improve your rankings, which will, of course, get you more calls, enquiries and generate more business. So I hope you found that useful I’ve got a separate report which I shall include with the email to you and I’ll send this all over with a link to this video so that you can watch it and if you need to, you can obviously watch it a couple times. So feel free to get in touch if you want some advice on how to get all of this done on the implementation.

The post Local Security Company SEO Audit appeared first on Kensington SEO.