#i feel like cookie run designs have that deal where their complicated just not complicated at the same time

[sunshine-1nc]

Just when you thought I finally kept a design for Linzer- Listen I'm very indecisive and cookie designs are so hard for no reason to me.

Also happy pride month! I'll probably be posting some Timekeeper and Linzer stuff later this month when I get time! Spoiler: they kith

[thr-333]

Mismatch- Part 13

Bio Dad Bruce Wayne Month 2020

The twins find out!

First< Previous > Next

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Ladybug lands on the building across from the city hall, where Marion had asked to meet up after patrol. She stretches out, enjoying the exercise after being cooped up in the hospital keeping Marion company. She looks over the city, with clear skies that Gotham simply didn't have. Then again she didn't mind so much Gotham has is own style that didn't want or need to change. Chat Noir lands in front of her a minute later, Dupain bakery box in hand.

“I don’t know how other people deal with homesickness,” Chat Noir drops down opening the box.

“Don’t let Kaalki know you're using her miraculous to eat cookies,” Ladybug sits next to him, legs dangling over the edge.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I also use them cause I look great in glasses,” Marion poses despite not wearing them as Chat Noir.

“Sure you do,” She turns back, looking over the city hall, “Thats why your most popular identity wears a mask,”

“Well all my identities- hey!” Ladybug snorts, not needing to look to know Chat Noir was pouting, “You’re just saying that cause your jealous how loveable and popular I am, especially Chat Noir,”

Yeah right. There was a little girl walking on the street below them right now wearing a Ladybug dress MDC had designed. She internally scolds herself for smiling.

“It’s not about popularity, we must take our jobs seriously to protect pari-”

“Do you dare me to steal the Mayor’s sash?” Chat Noir interrupts her speech, talking through a mouthful of cookies.

Ladybug releases a long suffered sigh.

“Yeah, I do,” She takes a cookie from the box.

“Good because I already did it,” She looks over, Chat Noir grinning ear to ear holding the Mayor’s sash, “Let's watch,”

He points towards a window where they have a clear view of the Mayor’s office. He was looking in the mirror and had only just realised it was missing. When Marion stole it she didn’t care to find out. He starts rooting around his office pulling out the contents of draws and cupboards haphazardly. Chat Noir laughs when he starts checking under furniture.

“So how are your ribs feeling,” She asks, noticing he wasn’t cringing at the movement.

“Purrfect,” He purrs, playing with the sash he was now wearing.

“I walked right into that one,” She doesn't tell him off, taking the last cookie instead,

“Yes you did,” Chat Nori reaches for another cookie.

Frowning at her Ladybug sticks out her tongue. Disgusting, covered with mushed up chocolate chips. Chat Noir blanches and turns away.

“Look he left to get help,” Chat Noir grins, both looking towards the window, “Just a sec,”

Chat Noir jumps over to the large window they've been watching through. Slipping inside he places it on top of the desk covered in wayward papers. Ladybug smiles, feeling her yo-yo buzz. They had synced their hero phones up to their normal ones long ago. She had just received a text from Aunt Selina that they were on their way with lawyers. Chat Noir jumps back to her side, grinning as the door opens. Officer Roger steps through instantly spotting the sash on the desk. Marinette can practically feel the officers disbelief as the Mayor tries to explain.

“Aunt Selina texted, we got to go,” Marinette tells him as Chat Noir starts cackling.

“Just a sec,” Chat Noir snaps a picture with his Baton, “Purrfect,”

“Two in a row? Really?” She raises her eyebrow, as he takes out the horse miraculous.

“If it ain’t broke,” Marion shrugs, slipping the glasses over his mask.

“It’s broke, it’s really, really broke,”

Marion only grins transforming and opening a portal back to Gotham.

“Why do I need to be here?” Jason asks, leaning against the wall next to Marion.

“Because the press have several pictures of you driving them away without helmets,” Bruce scowls, standing by the lawyer's seat next to Marion's bed.

“I haven't crashed my bike yet, so what's the issue?” Jason shrugs, grin on his face revealing he knew the exact issue. Marion couldn't help but mirror it.

“You’ve crashed it many times,” Bruce corrects, scowl deepening.

“What! Are you ok?!” Marion snaps towards Jason, scanning him for injury.

“Yeah I’m fine,” There's an amused curl to Jason's lips, “What about you?”

“Oh I’m fine, I heal pretty quickly,” Marion doesn't lean back on bed, forgetting he was meant to be injured.

“You realise your ribs are broken right?” Jason smirks down at him.

“I’ve had worse,” Marion smirks right back, meeting his challenge.

“What! When!” Oh right, their Aunt is here, sitting at the foot of the bed.

“Happens all the time in Paris,” Marion hopes he can pass it off, and avoid the wrath of his sister next to him, “The cure usually heals us pretty quick,”

“The cure?” Bruce prompts, frown lines deepening.

“Yeah Ladybugs cure, she beats the Akuma then releases a whole bunch of Ladybugs like whoosh, that come and fix everything,” From Marinette's face he can tell that he sounded crazy, and she knew what he was talking about.

“... where to start?” Jason looks confused down at him, Marion tries to avoid the same looks from everyone.

“Ladybug? Akuma?” Bruce apparently does know where to start.

“Auntie, don’t you remember last time you were in Paris?” Marinette steps in to save him, “We came home early because school was canceled because of an Akuma attack,”

“I thought you were just skipping!” She exclaims, both shocked and defensive.

“And you didn’t send us back?” Marion cracks a smile.

“Did you really think we’d skip?” Marinette frowns.

“Wouldn’t blame you for it,” Aunt Selina shrugs, Marinette looks like she's about to start a one sided argument. Marion was not about to back her up.

“Who’s Ladybug?” Bruce cuts in, whether he knew of the brewing argument or not is up for debate.

“Hero of Paris?” Marinette meets Marion's glance.

“Paris has no heroes,” Bruce says, with far too much confidence for someone completely wrong.

“Well you might want to let her and Chat Noir know that,” Marion smirks, he'd make sure to deliver the message.

“Not to mention the rest of the Guardians,” Marinette adds, perhaps a little more concerned they didn't know than he was.

“There's more than one?” Jason speaks up, Marion can’t help but feel he and Bruce are having their own secret conversation through glaring.

“Of course, Paris is attacked by super villains every other day,” Marion answers flippantly, doing nothing to dissolve the tension.

“Ok, no, I’ve been to Paris plenty and it’s never been attacked,” Their Aunt says, time for them to hold their own secret conversation.

“Um…” She was definitely privy to one attack, not that people in her position usually remember what happens, “Guess you must of just missed it,”

Smooth he can practically hear Marinette scoff. A silence traps them, likely shorter than it feels.

“Moving on,” The Lawyer, who had introduced herself as Emma, frees them,“I highly recommend there be a press statement released immediately,”

“That isn’t going to stop anyone,” Marion frowns, first hand experience teaching him well.

“No, but we can start pursuing legal action,” Emma agrees, bringing documents out of her briefcase.

“Several news sources can be sued for slander and endangerment,” She hands Marinette the documents, Marion resting his chin on her shoulder to see, “They also played a part in informing villains of your whereabouts, allowing the attack and making you vulnerable to another, I’m not saying this to scare you-”

“It’s fine, we know,” Marinette gives a friendly smile, “Please be honest, it’s more efficient to just be blunt,”

“Right... so several official news sources should be taken to court,” Emma takes on a more professional air, “There are many independent sources that can receive lawsuits, however the most prudent one would be those confirming your presence at the aquarium,”

“I don’t really think we need to go after regular people,” Marion looks over the file that includes pictures of the group he had scared off at the aquarium before the attack.

“It’s your choice, but I strongly encourage you to think over at least sending them charges,” Emma urges, Bruce nodding along, “If nothing else than to discourage others from doing the same,”

“Give us some time to think it over, please,” Marinette sifts through the documents, organising them, “We’re fine with any press release that we can look over first,”

“Very well,” Emma meets Marinette's smile, “Mr Wayne if I can discuss the press release with you?”

He nods, he and Jason leave the room with Emma. Leaving the twins with their Aunt.

“When did you become so cool?” She grins, moving up the bed.

“I’ve always been the coolest twin,” Marinette shrugs, Marion rolling his eyes.

“Nope I distinctly remember you running into the same pole three times in six minutes,” His smirk meets Marinette glare.

“How did you manage that?” Aunt Selina asks, amusement dancing in her eyes.

“Clumsiness has always been a special talent of mine,” Marinette puts the papers down, not quite pulling off the overconfident air he carries, being a little too close to honesty.

“Sure has,” Marion sits back, pulling up his legs for their Aunt to move closer.

“So what do you think we should do?” Marinette questions, when she's seated just across from them.

“...I think it’s complicated,” Aunt Selina hesitates, looking towards the door, “More complicated than they realise,”

“What's wrong?” Marion follows her gaze, another hesitation thats so unlike her, “... Aunt Selina?”

“I’m not your Aunt,” They both go stiff, waiting for more in the silence that follows her not meeting their eyes.

Right now Marinette’s head is probably buzzing with ideas and theories on what that means.

Marion’s mind remains blank, waiting for an answer that she seems to be battling with.

“............ I’m your Mother,”

“Excuse me, what?” Marion’s voice is just as blank, words refusing to process.

“And Bruce is your Father,” She adds, jumpstarting them out of their shell shocked state.

“What!” They both shout, turning towards each other.

“Look, I was young when I had you, I didn’t know what to do,” Selina runs a hand through her hair, still not meeting their gazes as they snaps back towards her, “I knew I wasn’t good enough to raise you, and Bruce wasn’t exactly in the best place back then, at least not enough to raise a child, so I didn’t tell him,”

That is… that is information.

“But, there was Tom and Sabine who wanted kids so bad, I knew they would be amazing parents,” Well yes, “So I gave you up,”

Now Marion's thoughts were a storm. Whipping around his head too fast to get a hold of and actually understand.

“I’m not saying this to pressure you into anything,” Selina follows after a long silence,  “You don’t have to tell anyone, and if you like I can walk out of this room and we can never speak of this again, everything can go back to normal,”

“... do you think we can have a moment?” Marinette sounds just as blank as he had.

“Of course,” That slight fake smile clearly trying to hide the hurt allows Marion to grasp hold of one thought.

“Hey… no matter what we still love you,” The smile turns to a genuine one, Marinette agreeing.

She doesn't reply, leaving the room, door closing with a soft click.

“.... Oh my god,” Marion whispers, staring at the door.

“Oh my god,” Marinette says, Kwamis coming out of hiding, concerned looks going unnoticed.

“Oh my god!” Marion shouts, reality hitting all at once.

“OH MY GOD!” Marinette can surely be heard from outside.

“She’s our Mother!?” Marion turns to Marinette for confirmation.

“HOW is this possible!” So that's a yes.

“Why didn’t anyone tell us!” Marion feels himself getting hysterical.

“Hold on, let's think this through calmly and rationally,” Marinette takes a deep breath, hand on his shoulder.

“Screw that!” Marion pushes her hand off, standing “After something like this we’re allowed to freak out!”

“This is so weird!” Marinette groans, sliding back in bed.

“I know!” Marion starts to pace, latching onto random thoughts and memories, “And everything makes so much sense!”

“How did we not see this?!” Marinette asks the ceiling.

“It’s alright, it probably just never occurred to you to even think about it,” Tikki tries to placate.

“Did you know Tikki?!” Marinette asks, Kwami of creation.

“No I certainly didn’t,” She shakes her head, Marion turning to Plagg.

“I did think she’d make a good Black Cat,” Plagg shrugs, a little too casual compared to Marions current state, “Didn’t think it was because of this,”

“Not to worry, if you were to have any true lineage it is a privilege to be descended from a family such as the Waynes,” Kaalki declares, Marion taking a moment to dissect the sentence.

“Oh my- Bruce Wayne really is our Father!” Marion slams his hands down on the bed railing.

“Keep your voice down!” Marinette hisses, sitting up.

“That’s not important!” Marion throws his hand up, gesturing wildly to the general area, “We really are the Wayne twins!”

“The tabloids actually got it right,” Marinette muses softly, leaning back.

“That never happens!” Marion agrees, having spent plenty of time laughing at bad tabloids about themselves, “How could complete strangers be able to tell when we couldn’t!?”

“Now, now, it was a lucky guess, you had no reason to think it was true,” Tikki tries to bring order to the chaos.

“Other than the fact we’ve known her our whole lives and easily could have seen how similar she is to us,” Marinette mumbles out.

“And she’s really bad at pretending us calling her Aunt doesn't bother her,” It wasn’t until now he actually knew why.

“So I guess the first question is how do we feel about this?” Marinette tries to follow her Kwami’s lead.

“Too big a question,” Marion groans, flopping down onto the bed.

“What should we do?” Marinette asks, he turns his head to fix her with a glare.

“Way too big a question,” Marion feels Plagg curl up against his side, Kaalki also sitting near.

“What will this change?”

“Tikki! Take over!” Marion yells into the covers.

“I think you should start at the beginning,” Tikki says calmly, “How do you feel about being given up,”

“I don’t know,” Marion groans into the covers, another coming from Marinette.

“Angry, sad, betrayed?” Tikki prompts, making Marion frown.

“Not really, it’s kind of hard to,” He answers, turning away from the sheets, “It’s not like she just up and abandon us,”

“And we don’t know the full story,” Marinette adds, Kwami resting in her hands.

“Then maybe you can ask her,” Tikki suggests with a smile. “How do you feel about Bruce-”

“Nope, still processing, not touching that with a ten foot pole,” Marion refuses, causing the Kwami to giggle.

“Ok whatever you're comfortable with,” She smiles, giggles dying down.

“Tikki you have to realise I am so far outside of my comfort zone right now, that sitting in the middle of Hawk Moth's lair surrounded by every Akuma we’ve ever fought sounds more comfortable,” The sad thing is, he isn’t even exaggerating.

“Kid you do have an out,” Plagg flies into this field of vision, “You can ignore it and go back to normal, or confront it and see what happens, which do you want,”

Marion frowns, not at Plagg he’s right, for once. Neither of them speak. Every time Marion tries to think of the future, memories pull him back. Until one catches his attention. It was something he thought of often, usually when trying to avoid getting Akumatized, but sometimes just to smile. However, now it has a new meaning, he isn’t sure if it ruins the memory or improves it.

“... Hey, Nette, do you remember what happened when we found out we were adopted?” Marion breaks the silence, turning to the smartest person he knows, and that includes the person who created an AI at fourteen.

“We asked who our real Maman was?” Marinette watches as he sits up.

“Aun-she sat us down and told us off,” Marion scoots up the bed to sit next her, “Said that even if we didn’t have the same blood as Maman, no one in the world was closer to our Mother than her,”

“.... She always looks so in pain when we call her Aunt,” Marinette leans her head against his shoulder.

“.... I don’t want to ignore this,” Marion decides, enough time passing for them to relax against each other.

“... Neither,” Marinette eventually agrees.

“So what now?” Marion asks aloud, “We just change everything ?”

“I guess so,”

They share a soft smile, wouldn’t be the first time.

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Taglist:

@technicallyburninggarden @fusser90  @misslenamooney

[blouisparadise]

Here are some great bottom Louis fics that were posted or completed during the month of June. We really hope you enjoy this list. Happy reading!

1) Until You’re Home | Explicit | 1039 words

Louis lives in London, Harry lives in Tokyo. They make it work.

2) He Holds My Paradise | Mature | 1332 words 

“What is it that you want, baby?”

“Your dick” Louis breaths out, choking on his own words, neck still covered by his boyfriend’s hand.

“And where do you want it, baby?” the Devil asks him, a satisfied smirk painting his lips. “in my pussy, please.”

3) Morning | Explicit | 1428 words 

Harry and Louis wake up and have a 'productive' morning in the shower ;)

4) Let's Go To The Beach | General Audiences | 1489 words 

Note: This fic contains no explicit smut, but since it’s omega Louis, we’ve included it. This is a sequel. Part one of this fic is #6 on this list. 

"Louis," Harry repeated.

"Right," Louis sighed. "He tried to scent me."

or the one where Louis has a meeting with an aggressive alpha and Harry calms Louis down.

5) Sweet Relief, Pretty Please | Not Rated | 1840 words 

Louis is drunk, sad and alone, and Harry is a wanker.

6) Hey Moon, Don't You Fall Down | Mature | 2574 words 

Note: The sequel to this fic is #4 on this list. 

"Make me yours," Louis opened his eyes and put his hands on Harry's shoulders. "I'm ready, alpha, always been ready for you. Since the first day we met, I was yours. Please," Louis gasped as Harry slid his fingers out of him.

or the one where Harry and Louis finally bond.

7) Nothing Like Anything | Explicit | 2614 words 

Harry is bored of his frat parties. No one interesting comes anyway.It's always drunk people, grinding in the living room, strangers trying to catch his eye. He's about to leave, just to ease his pounding head when he sees him, sinful on the dance floor and suddenly the party isn't so bad.

8) Over Exposed - Part Two| Explicit | 2840 words

Note: This fic is a sequel to this fic.

Harry and Louis take a quick break from Harry's tour to attend the VMAs, then have a night out at a club.

9) Sweet Vanilla Cream | Explicit | 2896 words 

Harry fights to resist his roommate's new omega boyfriend, Louis. Louis maybe doesn't want him to resist.

10) Take Off Your Glasses | Mature | 3742 words

Louis was enjoying his time, as he decided to spend his weekend clubbing, Louis knows no one in there, yet someone wanted to mess with him to know who's Louis the attractive boy in the black skirt.

"It’s Louie.. Sir."

11) Rose’s Fortune | Mature | 5055 words 

Note: This fic contains no explicit smut but since it’s a/b/o we’ve decided to include it in this monthly roundup.

Omega Louis takes one of his siblings to the doctors (check up, possible broken bone or possibly injections?) and the new Dr is Alpha Harry. Harry is great with kids and Louis is smitten. Harry is smitten too but attempts to act professionally and keep his distance whenever Louis visits the Drs with his siblings or to pick up his prescriptions. But Harry realises there is no reason for him not to make a move as Louis isn't under his care.

12) Dare You To Move | Not Rated | 6060 words 

The one where Harry falls in love with the omega who is the brain behind the omega march he joined.

13) Savage Garden’s Song Rules Sometimes (While Yours Always Reign Supreme) | Explicit | 6261 words 

Note: This fic is a sequel to this fic.

The morning after one too many nights of isolation for Louis Tomlinson and his hot & dangerous boy.

Aka how insanely adorkable Harry Styles could be after a sulking episode. [wordplay edition]

14) I Can Feel Your Blood Pressure Rise | Explicit | 9292 words 

"Hello, your Highness," Harry heard a familiar voice coming from behind him. Chills ran down his body as he felt the coldness of something sharp poke the back of his neck, "Turn around slowly or I'll hurt you,” the voice said in a teasing tone.

Where Louis is some sort of Robin Hood and sneaks into the King's castle, only to be fucked hard.

15) You Know What They Say | Explicit | 10323 words 

Nice guys always finish last.

16) Teenage Dream | Explicit | 10333 words

Harry and Louis get reintroduced to each other by their friends. It’s an instant connection. Now they’ve just gotta get to know each other.

17) Move So Petty (You're All I See) | Explicit | 10548 words 

Harry’s pretty content with his life. He loves his job- a veterinarian at a local clinic who’s already built up a name for himself despite his young age. He loves his gorgeous flat with its wide, open space and minimalistic, yet still homey feel. He loves his family who he talks to and visits as much as possible, not bothered by the long hours of driving to Holmes Chapel from London he endures multiple times a month. He loves his friends and his coworkers and his neighbors- especially Allison, the little old lady next door who brings him and Louis cookies on holidays and who always comments on how ���strong and handsome you are, Mr. Styles,” everytime he sees her.

And most importantly, he loves Louis, just- maybe in a slightly different way.

18) When Tomorrow Comes | Explicit | 11111 words 

The one where Louis is an Omega who has been keeping himself pure for his Alpha, Harry is a traditional Alpha focusing on his studies while he waits to find his bondmate, and Niall is a sneaky bastard who keeps borrowing Louis’ clothes and never returning them.

19) Smells Like Omega Spirit | Not Rated | 11769 words 

Note: This fic contains no explicit smut, but since it’s omega Louis, we’ve included it.

Louis is an omega doing a test run on neutralizers for a class project. Every time he talks to Harry he smells completely different.

Harry is an alpha who can't figure out if he's going crazy or his sense of smell is broken, but all he wants to figure out what Louis' real scent is.

Somehow they figure it out.

20) You Kill My Mind | Explicit | 13181 words 

Harry has always been ashamed to reveal his kinks to friends and partners alike. One day he meets a man who seems perfectly designed for him and they embark on a wonderful, sex-filled exploration journey.

21) In The Heat Of The Moment | Mature | 15743 words 

When Louis unexpectedly goes into heat in maths class it takes him way too long to figure out why (it might have something to do with a certain curly haired boy sitting next to him).

22) Was In No Hurry, Had No Worries | Explicit | 21485 words 

The year is 1999 and Harry can’t stop dedicating songs to Louis on the radio. Or the one where Harry hits Louis with his car.

23) You're The Smell Before Rain, You're The Blood In My Veins | Explicit | 21945 words 

“It was him you talked about, when you used to call me late at night, saying you were missing your ex? Was it him, your important five-year long story? Was it him the person you had thought about proposing, one day?” Nick asks with a low voice, almost inaudible, almost like he’s talking to himself “He’s my boyfriend…” he whispers again, without looking up.

“I know! And you shouldn’t worry, because you don’t have a single reason to do so. He’s yours now, he’s with you. I really don’t understand why you came here, honestly” Harry says defending himself out of instinct, even if he has no reason to react like that. He just- just wishes for Nick to leave his room and go back home to Louis. Because at this point Nick has Louis and fuck, why can’t he just go fuck off for once? Doesn’t he have enough shit do deal with already? Does he really need to get into this as well? Right now?

24) Like The Earth Around The Sun | Explicit | 23600 words 

The one where Harry bursts in on Louis in heat and things only get more complicated from there.

25) The Blood of Love | Explicit | 25273 words 

Harry is a nurse and Louis is a painting worth more than a thousand words. As desire and darkness encompasses him, Harry has to learn the secrets of Thorne Hills manor before he succumbs to the mystery that surrounds him.

26) Habit | Teen & Up | 27095 words 

In which Louis is a Donna who has a soft spot for alpha Harry.

27) Let Me Carry Your Weight | Explicit | 28633 words 

Louis is fresh out of a bad relationship with someone who made him feel awful about how he looked. on his journey to better himself, he meets harry - the ridiculously attractive and fit personal trainer.

28) Robbers And Cowards | Explicit | 33237 words 

A modern day Robin Hood AU where Louis and Harry (don’t really) hate each other but they hate greedy billionaires more.

29) Caves End | Explicit | 39711 words 

The one where Harry has lost his future, Louis has lost his past, but maybe together, they can find a way through the dark.

30) Soaked In The Blood Of Angels | Explicit | 40867 words 

The boy looks drugged, caught between a man who’s almost twice his size and a girl who looks like she wouldn’t even break a sweat snapping him in half despite her small stature, eyes closed and mouth open as he pants, arching up between them almost as if he’s trying to escape.

Normally, Harry would ignore it and continue on his search for someone to drink from, someone who wouldn’t mind his sharp teeth and rough hands. He’s seen plenty of boys like this one, ones who picked the wrong playmates, and if he stopped to rescue every single one of them he would have died from thirst a long time ago.

This one, though. There’s something about this one, the sheen of his bright blue eyes as he blinks slowly, looks around as though he doesn’t know where he is, the weakness of his hands as he tries to push the girl off of him and make his escape.

31) With Stars Of Brightest Gold | Explicit | 41109 words 

Louis Tomlinson is the premier courtesan at the Moulin Rouge. In his dreams, he has always wanted to be a famous stage actor. Locked into his contract, he has little means of escape until a handsome duke promises him freedom with a romantic alliance. Due to a case of mistaken identity playwright Harry Styles is thrown into the mix, compelling Louis to choose between his head or his heart.

32) We Both Got Nothing To Hide | Explicit | 43811 words 

Omega Louis has a secret nest. Alpha Harry keeps losing his clothes.

33) In A World Alone | Explicit | 50787 words 

Harry’s breath catches as the glow grows bigger and bigger until he’s squinting his eyes and blinking at the sudden intense brightness. He closes his eyes, rubbing at them helplessly. When his eyes open again- he gasps, grip loosening on his bow as he gawks at the sight before him.

Because the swan is gone.

And in its place is the prettiest omega Harry has ever seen.

A Swan Lake AU.

34) Hunting Ground | Not Rated | 583658 words 

Note: This fic is the third part of a series. Part two is #38 in this list.

Louis Tomlinson didn’t know how complicated life could be until he became a werewolf. And until he was mated to Harry Styles, the son — and enforcer — of Liam, the leader of the North American werewolves, he didn’t know how dangerous it could be either...

Louis and Harry have just been enlisted to attend a summit to present Liam's controversial proposition: that the wolves should finally reveal themselves to humans. But the most feared Alpha in Europe is dead set against the plan — and it seems like someone else might be too. When Louis is attacked by vampires using pack magic, the kind of power only werewolves should be able to draw on, Harry and Louis must combine their talents to hunt down whoever is behind it all — or risk losing everything.

35) The Wrath of the Emerald Eyes | Mature | 85205 words 

His chin is grabbed harshly, facing the two deep green eyes that have been getting on his nerves for the past ten minutes. The smirk on the man's face does not vanish. The grip of his hand on Louis' chin does not soften, his thumb at the side of his lower lip.

His smile widens as he answers Louis' question, ''My name is Styles, but you will call me Captain."

Pirate AU.

36) Cry Wolf | Not Rated | 85205 words 

Note: This fic is the second part of a series. Part three is #36 in this list.

Louis never knew werewolves existed, until the night he survived a violent attack... and became one himself. After three years at the bottom of the pack, he'd learned to keep his head down and never, ever trust dominant wolves. Then Harry Styles, the enforcer—and son—of the leader of the North American werewolves, came into his life.

Harry insists that not only is Louis his mate, but he is also a rare and valued Omega wolf. And it is Louis' inner strength and calming presence that will prove invaluable as he and Harry go on the hunt in search of a rogue werewolf—a creature bound in magic so dark that it could threaten all of the pack.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

You can find other monthly roundup fic rec lists here.

[bagels-and-seagulls]

does badboy Matteo paint his nails? (for some reason I’ve been imagining him with black nails every time I read your hcs)

i’ve been thinking about this for a while, just like his appearance in general beyond the nails thing, and i have some ideas but i feel like it’s split between bb!matteo with bb!david and bb! with hj!david. so here are both!

bad boy matteo and bad boy david

-matteo once had an occasional client that was a piercing apprentice at a tattoo shop that couldn’t always front the bill for adderall pills that matteo sold her for half the price of her doctor’s office, so sometimes she would front the bill by offering a piercing and a drink to matteo with a smile that said she knew she was pushing her luck. matteo ends up getting an orbital piercing when he’s just a little bit drunk, two helixes in his other ear when he’s cross-faded, and the left side of his nose pierced when he’s black out. he wakes up the next morning each time with a piece of paper neatly folded into his pocket of the jacket he’s still wearing about how to take care of each one of them, and he keeps up with it fairly well, all things considered. he puts a silver hoop in his nose, and hans is the only that says anything about it, calls it cute and pinches his cheek like he was a baby. 

-the boys, after their first year at university, feeling a little bit nostalgic and a little bit melancholic for something that they couldn’t quite put their fingers on, all decide to get matching tattoos with a sudden burst of confidence and boldness. then they figure out how much good tattoos actually cost and end up looking up how to do stick and poke tattoos while in the bathroom of hanna’s new apartment after smoking a bowl like they were still all seventeen and knew what they were doing. they end up as garbled messes that no one can really make sense of, and no one agrees on what they’re supposed to be. jonas says it was a blunt, because that’s how they all became friends, and carlos always buts in to say that it was a beer bottle. abdi is confident that what he drew was a lion’s head, and that just confuses everyone, because why would they decide to get a lion’s head together? and matteo, well, he was really along for the ride anyways. now he just has a black mess on the the soft spot of his ankle that has a semi-funny story to go along with it. 

-hans would cut matteo’s hair for him for the low price of one dinner hand-made by matteo himself, and it’s nice because keeping up with an undercut takes a diligence that matteo did not realize the first time he let some girl shave the back of his head at some party ages ago. after a while, hans gets crafty with it and can cut little designs into it made with geometric lines.

-one day, matteo and david are in bed, and david is running his fingers through david’s hair. it’s getting long back here, david says, not meaning anything by it really, just wanting to say something because the way matteo was looking at him like he was something to be admired and hung up in a museum was making him a little overwhelmed. and matteo purses his lips up, like he has something to say but thinks better of it at the last second. what? david asks, with his interest peaked. you wanna do it? matteo asks, and david agrees easily enough because it can’t be that hard. 

-having matteo sit on the floor in the bathroom in front of him while he cards his fingers over his scalp to brush off tuffs of hair feels like a religious experience every time.

-david learns that hans can do designs with the razor and makes it a personal mission to be better at it for some reason. matteo doesn’t really care, doesn’t see the point of the effort when it’s just going to grow out in a couple weeks anyways, but he likes the way that david’s fingers feel gentle around his ears and on his neck. so he sits quietly for as long as david wants him to. 

-matteo colors his nails in with markers and pens and sometimes pencils when he’s in class because the teacher drones on sometimes, and drawing tiny little trees on his thumbnail seems far more exciting at the moment. one day when he’s at david’s apartment, poking around the living room while david is on the phone with laura, talking about what they had in the fridge for groceries, matteo finds a bottle of black nail polish that matteo picks up to spin around in his hands, and the urge to open it and use it on his thumbnail is so strong, that he ends up doing it without even realizing. are you going to do the rest of them? david asks from the doorway, and matteo looks up like he just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. sorry, he says and goes to put it down because he always had a problem with touching things that weren’t his. no, no, it’s okay, david says quickly. you can do the rest if you want. laura won’t mind. i probably use the black more than she does. and matteo stares down at the bottle and then looks up to david and sees that he’s serious, that he doesn’t care if matteo wants to do this or not. i don’t think i would be very good at it, matteo says, and david smiles and walks in the room and says, i can help. 

-matteo starts painting his nails off and on, without any conviction either way. he does it when he thinks about it and the option is there, and let’s it peel off and flake away completely before he does it again. david buys him his own bottle of jet black and puts it on his desk without him even noticing. 

bad boy matteo + hot jock david

-matteo has unruly and floppy hair that mia cuts for him once a month when he remembers to ask her. she doesn’t do anything too special, and he doesn’t ask for anything more complicated than off his neck and shorter around his ears. she always smiles at him when she’s done and ruffles his hair to get the last couple of strands out, and he smiles back and tells her that he’ll buy her a round the next time they’re out together.

-it’s getting kind of long, isn’t it? david asks one night when matteo is over, and he’s tried to push his hair out of his face at least six times since he started doing his homework. david tugs on one of the strands that fell in between matteo’s eyes, and matteo bats him away. mia’s been busy. i didn’t want to bother her, he says and goes back to his book, pushing the hair back like it’s muscle memory. i could ask laura if you want. she cuts some of her friends’ hair sometimes, david hums, and cards his fingers through the the hair at the back of matteo’s neck. i don’t want to bother, matteo says again, and david says that it’s nonsense and rolls out of bed right then to go and see what laura is doing. matteo trails after him and says that it isn’t a big deal, but his whispers are stopped short when they’re standing in front of laura on the couch, scrolling through her phone. would you mind cutting teo’s hair? david asks, and tugs on matteo’s arm until he’s standing in front of him, his hands on his matteo’s hips to keep him standing right there. laura doesn’t even stop looking at her phone when she answers, sure, right now? and matteo ends up sitting on a stool in the middle of their bathroom with laura cutting his hair with a pair of scissors that look like it was actually made to do that. and she’s chatting with david casually where he’s sitting on the counter, and matteo is just sitting between them, caught up with nerves about something he can’t quite place, feeling a little like he was going to throw up and gripping onto david’s ankle, trying not to move at all. 

-laura ends up cutting matteo’s hair once a month in a way that makes him look like he actually takes care of his it, and matteo doesn’t know how to repay her, offers to buy her dinner or something each time. and she always laughs a little bit at him and says that his company is payment enough, that she enjoys the little moment they get together. but matteo still always brings over her favorite type of cookies the next time he’s over anyways. 

-matteo has the right side of his nose pierced and a frontal helix on his left ear. david asks when he got them at one point, and matteo says that he doesn’t remember, that he went out one night, trying to sell some joints, and came back home later with a text from a number he didn’t recognize and two piercings that he only noticed because they hurt the next day still. he texts the number asking if they knew anything about the piercings, and never gets a response. he looks up how to take care of piercings online and ends up putting a silver stud in his nose. 

-matteo has two tattoos. one is a stick and poke on the inside of the his right ring finger that’s supposed to be the two dipper constellations together, but it’s so light, that it kind of just looks like a series of freckles. it takes david about a month of them hanging out for him to even notice it. he was playing with matteo’s fingers when they were sitting out on a balcony somewhere together and ran his finger over the dots, just to have matteo laugh and tell him it tickled. the other tattoo is a crescent moon on his left thumb. he gets that one done legit, from the same girl who does the stick and poke. she does it for a couple of euros for letting him practice on him unofficially when she was trying to get the gig she has now, and he tells her to call him when she gets a little bit better because he might have some ideas in the works. 

-matteo ends up walking in on david hanging out with sara and leonie at his apartment. he apologizes in the doorway and says that he must have gotten the time wrong, that he can come back later if they want. and they all tell him that it’s fine, and he should join them. david pulls him onto the living room floor to sit up close to him before he goes back to painting sara’s fingesr a bright blue while leonie is doing hers a deep red. did you want to join? leonie asks when she sees the way that matteo is eyeing her drying fingers. no, it’s alright, matteo says and shakes his head. you sure? leonie asks. it’ll be cute. you could do a blue or a red, and i think it would look really good with your skin tone. oh, maybe a green, she says and starts holding up some bottles near matteo’s hand, and he eventually agrees to let her try because she just seems so enthusiastic about it all of a sudden. and matteo hasn’t been able to get a read on if david’s friends liked him or not, even though he so desperately wants them to like him. david curls in close once he’s done with sara’s hands and wraps his arms around matteo’s stomach, who’s trying not to knock leonie’s work. he kisses matteo’s shoulder and murmurs, that’s a good color, into the fabric of his sweater. 

-leonie ends up painting matteo’s nails every time he ends up interrupting their little hang out, and matteo gets a little bit sad every time they end up chipping off within a week, not that he tells anyone that, not that david didn’t notice anyways. 

-i can get you some, if you want, david says to him one day with his hands on his face and his lips on his forehead. i’ll get you every color in the rainbow. you can paint them a different color every day if you wanted to. a different color for each finger, even. and matteo just shoves his face into david’s chest, feeling found out for some reason, and just goes, yeah, okay. 

[fruitful-blogger]

BITES of Spider Life! (Chapter 2)

Inspired by the BEAUTIFUL Sanders Sides/Spiderverse AU by @ask-spiderverse-virgil and @sugarglider9603!

Summary:

When you’re bitten by a genetically-altered and probably radioactive spider, things in life tend to get a little complicated. Follow Virgil Storm, Roman Marigold, Logan Quinn, Patton Foster, and a whole slew of other spider-people and spider-related people as they deal with life, love, and the occasional robot army trying to take over New York.

Just another Tuesday for our teenage Spiderlings.

(Fluff and Slices of Life!)

Read from the beginning (Ao3)

Chapter 2: It’s a Playdate (Ao3)

           “So you brought us with not to go to the ACTUAL meeting but to hang out with the other kids?” Virgil, as Spidergale, threw to Thomas, currently dressed as Rainbow Weaver. In fact, all of them where in their Spider gear as they swung onto the landing jutting out from Stark Towers, otherwise known as New York’s Avengers’ headquarters. “What is this? A playdate?”

           “Look SHIELD has some news, and you know I’ll give you guys the rundown on what’s important after. Mostly it’s just us getting nagged about property damage.” Thomas threw as he waved his hand.

           “I’m SO SORRY about that building last week!” Love Bite, aka Patton, threw, his lenses cocked as he looked so sad. Really, their masks were good with expressions.

           “Love Bite, you were THROWN INTO A BUILDING!” Arachne, aka Logan, threw. “They do NOT blame you for that!”

           “And if they did, they’d have to talk to these fists first!” Royal Slinger, the last of their quartet of Spiderlings, threw in an ever so Roman way.

           “And you sent a card to the building manager. They probably get it and have insurance for that.” Thomas assured as he rubbed Patton’s head, mushing his cap ever so slightly. “Now, yes, unfortunately some of the higher ups are a bit prickly about kids and meetings. Some of the other protégés occasionally come, and, as much as I love and appreciate you guys, I think you need more friends than just each other.”

           “I mean, maybe Logan and Virgil…” Roman trailed off before his boyfriend swatted him. “HEY! It’s true!”

           “ANYWAY!” Thomas cut in once more, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Just… don’t blow anything up. If there’s an emergency, the building is hooked up with an AI known as JARVIS. Our normal communications won’t work in the tower, but he’s been told to interrupt the meeting should something go awry.”

           Logan’s extra arms came out to hold out a small device. “Would you at least endeavor to record it? I feel like I can pick out things better from a first-hand reading.”

           “Sorry, kid, but that won’t work in here.” The Spiders turned as Tony Stark stepped out onto the veranda, band shirt and blazer perfectly matching his glasses that likely cost more than Thomas’ rent. “My tech will auto nuke it on entry, but if your nice, I might be swayed to share my personal logs.”

           “Isn’t that not allowed?” Patton questioned.

           A voice snorted behind Tony. It was now that the five noticed a second figure on the roof. The person, as opposed to Tony, was no older than his late teens, early twenties, with brown hair and clothes that would be more normally worn on one of the spiderlings in their alter egos – he wore washed out jeans, a Columbia t-shirt, and a plain navy hoodie, a Stark pad in one arm as a keycard was clipped to his side. “Tony hacked the system a while ago. JARVIS stores a copy on a local drive that only Tony and I can get a hold of.” The kid stepped forward and waved. “Oh, yeah, hi, I’m Peter.”

           Tony threw an arm around the kid. “Spider runts, meet Underoos – he’s one of the best scientists I got in this place. Give him a few years, and he might be as smart as me.”

           Peter blushed at the praise. “Aw, Mister Stark-”

           “Seriously, kid? I’ve known you for years. It’s TO-NY.” Tony turned to Thomas. “You remember the kid, right?”

           “Yeah, you gave me a bunch of vines to watch last time.” Thomas chuckled. “Still haven’t gotten through them all yet.”

           Peter nodded sagely. “Well, I’m the designated ‘person under 25’ today, so I’m gonna be taking you guys around the tower. Squirrel Girl and Ms. Marvel are already here, but I think most of the others are out on team missions or whatever.” Peter shrugged. “I’ll get the brief later.”

           “You have access to those systems?” Logan approached.

           “Eh… ‘Access’ is a relative term.” Peter waved his hands. “Now, ‘hacking,’ hacking is a better descriptor.”

           “I taught him well.” Tony said, ignoring Patton’s chide at how hacking wasn’t right. “Now, Weaver, we got a meeting to be fashionably late to. You know how old eyepatch gets.”

           “Yeah, yeah.” Thomas waved before turning to his kids. “Now, be good and listen to Peter. This should be a couple of hours, and, PLEASE, don’t blow anything up.”

           “No promises, boss man.” Virgil gave a salute.

           Thomas sighed as he followed Tony. With their enhanced hearing, the boys definitely heard Thomas muttering to the other man about ‘kids these days’ and ‘I love my boys but I want to strangle them’ and other normal terms of love.

           “So I kind of already know which of you is which.” Peter said as he pulled out four keycards from his pocket. “You guys are going to need these.”

           “Oh? Will they allow us entry into the building?” Logan questioned as he took one.

           Peter snorted. “JARVIS’ face recognition software is better than any keycard. We mostly use these as a bait and switch in case anyone tries to steal our stuff. Don’t tell anyone that, though. These cards just basically get you free snacks at the vending machines.”

           “SHOULD you be telling us this?” Virgil questioned, eye quirked. “I mean, you just met us.”

           “Call it my personal spider sense.” Peter shrugged. “I’m good at reading people, and you guys seem alright.” Peter didn’t add that he had top security clearance, up there with Tony and Pepper, and had run background checks on them all. He’d been a bit less prying then his mentor, though, and had JARVIS blur names and faces. He got the basics, though. Each spider kid was unique, around his age (a bit younger, actually), and were good in their own right. Heck, Love Bite stopped on random street corners to help school children and old people cross the road.

           Peter led the charge, and, of course, Logan was asking questions as they walked in. Logan was, by far, the smartest of the four, but Peter was surprising them by being a match for his intellect. Patton was startled by JARVIS greeting them when they walked in, but soon enough the AI and the teen were chatting up a storm. Roman, for all his gags at things like science and math, was actually quite good and intrigued by it, so he was looking all about with Virgil, pointing out things that looked cool and getting layman explanations of things from Peter.

           “So how does the whole… spider thing work?” Peter asked to the group as they passed a wall of armors. “Like, do you guys make your own web? Does it come out of…” He gestured to his behind.

           Virgil snorted as he nudged Logan. “Yeah, Arachne, does it come out down…” Spidergale found webbing over his mouth, courtesy of his best friend. Virgil let off a noise of protest as he scrambled at his mask to remove the muffle or move up the mask.

           “I myself, as well as Love Bite, have the ability to generate organic webbing from our wrists, but we tend to rely more on web shooters. Using organic webbing extensively can be draining and requires Love Bite and I to consume more calories when doing so.” Logan pulled off his glove and rolled down his sleeve slightly to reveal the device. “Weaver made the initial designs and prototypes. He also uses them. We’ve fit them with other devices in the mean time, like vocal communicator, tracking systems, and what not.”

           “I came up with the best kinds of snacks to deal with the hunger.” Love Bite nodded as he pulled out some wrapped cookies. “Want one?”

           Peter eyed the cookies. “Am I safe to eat one? I’m not superhuman.”

           “Oh! Wait…” Patton stuffed the cookies back into one pouch and pulled a new set from another. “These are just sugar cookies. We do a lot of patrolling, and snacks are important!”

           Roman pulled on Virgil’s mask, managing to dislodge the webbing. “Patton is a really good baker.” The emo noted as he leaned over to help Roman off the ground.

           Peter took the cookie before hesitantly taking a bite.

           His eyes blew wide.

           “I need, like, a million of these.” He said with great awe. “These are amazing. They’re awesome. Did you put something in this?”

           “Love and sugar, kiddo!” Patton confirmed before sticking a few cookies at each of them.

           “LB I’m not…” Virgil tried to say, but he found his mask jerked up slightly to reveal his mouth just as a cookie was stuffed in. It wasn’t even a regular one – it was one of the superhuman high protein high sugar ones Patton made.

           “Nope!” Patton chided. “Grandma told me that all you had was an apple today!”

           Virgil took a bite as he grabbed the cookie. “How did you know?”

           “She and all the other old ladies put me in their baking group chat.”

           Peter licked his fingers. “So the rumor is true? That you guys are Weaver’s kids?”

           The group snorted. “Yeah… that was a thing.” Roman smiled. “While Weaver is like the weird combination of dad and older brother, none of us are actually related. I mean, unless the spider venom changed our DNA and made us more related? Is that, like, a thing or just something in comics?”

           “The circumstances that gave us four our powers was similar to Weaver, but it was still separate. In short, we each were exposed to venomous chemicals of an altered spider that resulted in each of our power development.” Logan explained.

           “I arguably got the best powers.” Roman threw.

           The other spiders rolled their eyes.

           “We all have the same basic powers.” Virgil explained. “Wall sticking, enhanced strength, spider sense, etc. Arachne has a little less stick, so he uses his legs for extra grab. Also the web thing.” Virgil shot a web off into a corner.

           “We each have little cool powers, too! But they’re not really all there.” Patton explained. “Like I can pick up on surface thoughts of animals, but it comes and goes. Spidergale turned invisible once! That was really cool!”

           “Ro- uh, Royal Slinger blew out the speakers of our school’s speakers a few times.”

           “My voice is a beautiful weapon.”

           “Arachne’s also the fastest. Like, really fast.” The emo added last.

           Peter let off a whistle. “That’s pretty insane guys. I’d love me some super powers, but I think I’m stuck toying with armor in the mean time. Jar, don’t tell Mr. Stark about this, but I’m trying to compress an arc reactor to make it possible to charge a mobile suit of some sort.”

           “Your secret is safe with me, Mr. Parker.” JARVIS confirmed.

           “Just don’t jump into it feet first, dude.” Roman warned, wincing in memory of his first attempt at being a hero. Gods, his outfit was UG-LY back then. “You have, like, Iron Man to show you the ropes first. Rainbow Weaver has been the best in training us, and, even if I hate to admit it sometimes, we’d all be squished by now without him.”

           “Royal Slinger? Admitting he’s not immortal?” Spidergale joked.

           “A prince must know his limitations… so that he can overcome them!” The red spider defended.

           Peter thought about it before nodding. “I’ll think about it. Mr. Stark is a bit protective is all.”

           “And you think Weaver isn’t?” The emo threw before they all started sharing horror/hilarious stories about times Weaver had saved their asses in the most dad ways.

           They took an express elevator about 50 floors up before the doors opened, four spider senses going off at once as they hit the deck, grabbing Peter with them. A disk shot over them, bouncing off the interior of the elevator wall before Logan caught it with his legs. “Whoops! Sorry!” The five looked up to see a girl with a massive, stretched out form begin to shrink as JARVIS paused the practice. Off to another side, a girl with a squirrel ear headband and a massive squirrel tail waved, a number of little squirrels around her.

           “Hi Pete!” The animal girl waved. “Oh, hey! It’s the spider brigade! Hi!” The girl scampered over, one squirrel with a bow on her shoulder, a big grin on her face. She exhumed what the boys affectionately called ‘Patton energy.’ “So, I’m Squirrel Girl, this is Ms. Marvel, and this is Tippy-Toe!” She introduced in rapid succession.

           Patton leapt up. “Hello! I’m Love Bite, that’s Royal Slinger, this is Arachne, and this is Spidergale! Oh, and this is Peter!”

           “I know Peter!” Squirrel Girl replied.

           “Oh, sorry! Oh my gosh, your squirrels are SO CUTE! Can I pet them?”

           “Tippy-Toe loves petting!” As she said this, the squirrel on her shoulder leapt to Patton as the boy screeched in pure joy, gently petting the squirrel with pure adoration.

           Ms. Marvel made her way over as she picked up the disk with an enlarged hand. “We got bored and decided to goof off.”

           “That’s a mood.” Peter and Virgil said at the same time before looking at each other, grinning.

           “Ms. Marvel?” Roman asked, stepping forward. “Ok, so this might be a rumor, but I heard you can shapeshift.”

           “Mm-hm!” She said, setting down the disk and shifting into Royal Slinger. “I’m a polymorph!” She stated in her own voice before clearing her throat. “How do I look?” She struck a pose with Roman’s voice now.

           Virgil blinked between the two before turning to Logan. “Slap me. I’m having a nightmare.”

           “Hey!” Roman threw, but Ms. Marvel already shifted to appear like Spidergale. Roman was enamored. “You. You would be FANTASTIC in the school play! Can you act? Please say yes.”

           That was how Roman and Kamala were left, acting out favorite TV scenes and talking about superhero stuff (not, like, serious stuff but more ‘did you see Cyclops last week that outfit was HIDIOUS!’). Patton was currently covered in squirrels and designing crazy playgrounds off the walls with webbing.

           That left Peter, Virgil, and Logan.

           Peter turned to the two. “Wanna blow something up?”

           The two introverts shared a look.

           “Yes.”

           “Mr. Stark, Mr. Weaver.” JARVIS interrupted what Thomas was deciding was the most BORING meeting of his life. Seriously, they weren’t even covering whatever Doctor Doom or the Skrulls anymore but TAXES and PUBLIC IMAGE and BLAH BLAHDY BLAH! He was a wholesome gay hero he shouldn’t have to deal with taxes. This was some homophobic BS (as he kept telling himself, trying not to daydream too much about MJ or planning a new video and miss the whole meeting).

           “Hold up, Cabbage Patch.” Tony threw to the guy with ridiculously curly hair and a pressed suit on the screen. He was definitely a bureaucrat first and foremost. “What’s up, JAR?”

           “I would like to inform you that Protocol Baby Alarm has been triggered. It has also come to involve Mr. Weaver’s protégés, Spidergale and Arachne.” JARVIS intoned.

           “Well, shit, I guess I gotta deal with that.” Tony threw as he stood. “You don’t mind, Cap? Fury? Gotta make sure a civilian like my people are taken care of. Kinda serious.”

           Serious??? Weaver stood up, full of concern. “Wait, what’s the Baby Protocal? What happened?”

           “I’ll explain on the way.” Tony nodded as he easily walked out. Thomas abandoned his chair with little fanfare, worry and panic in his veins. His spider sense hadn’t gone off, and his gut (aka his ‘dad’ sense) hadn’t told him something was wrong. Tony walked quietly down the hall, humming something ACDC until they reached the elevator.

           Once the doors closed, Thomas felt like he was about to crawl out of his skin. “What’s the Baby Alarm? Tony, what happened? Are my kids ok?”

           Tony looked over before snorting. “JARVIS, pull me up a feed.”

           On the elevator doors, a holographic screen showed a room absolutely COVERED in spider web, the epicenter a mess of plastic, scorch marks, and more web. The camera panned to show Peter stuck to the floor, Logan trying to dislodge his legs from a wall, and Virgil… well, Virgil seemed to be stuck to the ceiling somehow. Soon, four other kids, including his missing spiders, ran in. Roman started laughing, even with the sound muted, and Patton began fussing over Logan.

           Then he got stuck.

           “Protocal Baby Alarm AKA Peter blew something up again, nothing’s actually broken, but now I have an excuse to leave a boring meeting.” Tony grinned as Thomas clutched his chest, his heart slowing. Everyone was alright.

           In so much trouble, but alright.

           “I TOLD them not to blow anything up!” Thomas threw.

           Tony laughed. “My kid’s a sweetie, but he can be a terrible influence.”

           “He seemed so innocent.”

           “Oh, he is.” Tony nodded as the door opened. “He gets the blow shit up bit from me. JARVIS? Can I get some blue prints on whatever they were doing? Or, hell, can we just get some bots to scrape them off?”

           Thomas cracked his neck as the biochemical components appeared on a holographic display that led them. At least he remembered enough of this gibboly goop from his chemical engineering degree. “Looks like they messed with the webbing formula… again.”

           “Again?”

           “Royal Slinger and Arachne can get very… creative with my original formula. Slinger always wants to make it gayer, and Arachne still hasn’t figured out how I get the coloring just right.”

           Tony laughed. Yeah, their kids would get along swell.

[druware]

This Shouldn't Be a Problem

... Often turns out to be. When a developer writes code long enough, they will run into a development pattern that will lead to the dreaded unintended consequences, and the many lost hours to tracking down the how and why. Unfortunately, this also often leads to the other programmer problem, the complicated problems have complicated solutions, when in fact, the problem was simple, but the lost hours made it feel complicated, and the solution is likewise far simpler than it seemed.

I trapped myself in one of these this week, and I figure I will share in the hopes that someone else can learn from my series of mistakes that led me to a frustrating weekend and a couple of missed bike rides, because I got mired in the hunt for the problem.

There is a program that I maintain for customers that is essentially the heart of their businesses. When it hiccups, they get frustrated, and rightly so. Making changes in that code is usually not a big deal, as the codebase really is not overly complex on the surface. However, there are some things under the surface that are a bit more hairy. Many years ago, it moved from a model where most of the code existed within the user interface to a more modern model view controller design ( this is code that has been evolving since the early 90's and has its roots in 16-bit Windows ).

The business object layer is where most of the brains are, and the user experience is largely a thin veneer over them. I am the core maintainer of the business object layer, and because of the history with them, I am also the one that knows where most of the skeletons are within that code. So when things go wrong, things escalate back to me when others cannot find the problem reasonably quickly.

This was one of those problems.

The Problem

The original support ticket on this issue is now months old. It started like so many do: "The program randomly encounters an error and stops running. The error message was that a list index is out of bounds". Unfortunately, this information is not enough to create a reproduceable bug, so difficult to trace. Slowly, over the ensuing weeks, a few more reports come in. There is definitely a problem, but not much pattern to find it. So the hunt begins. What changed in the last release prior to the first reports? Changelog doesn't show anything that should be of significance. Most everything is enhancements. Nothing that should touch lists. Go back a a few revisions. Still nothing.

Time passes. More error reports come in, but still nothing reliably reproduceable.

Each time the error reports come in. Spend a couple of hours digging at it, but still nothing.

Another report comes in, and this has been escalated. Now it's MY problem. Spend a morning digging, literally randomly clicking between a couple of UX elements that are the most likely candidates. To tab pages with list views on them. An hour of clicking produces a few errors, but the debugger drops into Windows runtime assembler, not user space code. Cookies, M&Ms and Diet Coke acquired, office door closed, music cranked up, phone on Do Not Disturb. It is on. This bug is going down. More clicking and finally a reproduceable pattern is identified.. Select an item in a list view on tab page A. Switch to tab page B. Select an item in the list on that page. Switch back to tab page A and boom the error occurs and dumps into Window runtime land, with no reference in the stack to user space code.

With a pattern in hand, now it is time to figure out the reasons. Back to the changelogs to figure out when a change occurred that impact these user interface elements. 6 months prior, a change was made to improve performance of several list views, including one of these. However, that change had been in deployment for3 months before the first error report came in. It can't be the problem can it?

More digging and refining the test case that triggers the failure. Hours pass. Frustration sets in. Resort to calling a colleague in to just listen while I talk through it. Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, the answer hits like a lightning bolt. It is is a problem with the 6 month old performance change, but was only exposed by a months later tangential change that should have had no effect on the lists, at least on the surface.

Unintended, Unplanned for, and Unexpected Consequences

It turns out that the root of the problem was a premature optimization decision made several years prior. The relevant code comments point to the author ( me ), and a date of 2015. Evolution of code and responding to customer requests often creates these very situations.

The user interface element at the heart of this issue is a list of notes pertaining to the document currently open. As any developer who has worked with customer service type operations can reiterate, notes are the lifeblood of the operation. The constant customer requests mean that they end up expanding, and needing to be displayed like Chicago voting, early, often and everywhere. Because of this, there is a heavy reuse of the same user interface element to display these notes wherever needed.

The performance change months ago was to switch the lists from a traditional listview/listitem model to a listview/virtual list model operating directly against the business object store representing the array of notes. Everything worked fine, until a single, subtle change was made months later. One instance of the reusable notes user interface element had the option to have user filters applied to the list enabled. Since all of these reused display elements shared a common data store in the business logic, filters applied in one space applied across all of them, since they were all sharing a single instance of the business object. This was fine so long as there was never any potential overlap of having two of these instances visible at the same time, or, as it turns out switching directly between two of them.

Results

As I am sure the more experienced developers have already deduced, when one list was being swapped out, with the other, there was a brief period where it was possible (though not always true) that the state of the data store was inconsistent with the expected content of the displayable lists, the result, seemingly random failures to read a memory address that was no longer valid.

How Did We Get Here?

Honestly, it was a failure to communicate the risks. I wrote the code initially many moons ago. I authored the performance improvements, and then I approved the recent change in passing, without taking the time to fully consider the ramifications, which I am reasonably certain I would have caught given the chance to actually think about them, but in the press of a customer request while I was focused on another pressing task, I did not take the time to do so. Then to make matters worse, the situation was one that the unit test test cases would never have trapped as they existed at that point.

The Solution, and Not the Solution, and then the Solution

All of this leads to the other developer problem and disconnect in the how we think. In typical fashion, the immediate conclusion is that a hard to find problem, does not have an easy solution. So, a solution is formulated, planned implemented and enters testing. It works, but it is expensive in terms of resources. It creates separate copies of the data store per reused list view. It is a hammer, when really all that is needed is a gentle nudge.

Sometime after starting testing, the developer, who has at this point left to do something else because decompression is needed, has the "oh shit" moment. Yeah, brute force works, but is fundamentally flawed in the wasted resources, as well as user experience. Worse the business object layer already supports what is needed.

Instead of creating copies of the underlying datastore, all that is needed is to maintain multiple filtered lists that reference the allocated objects in the underlying data store. It is a 5 minute change involving about 3 lines of code ( and 30 lines of documentation to explain what is happening ). Dump it into the testing rig, and add a new test case to handle this unique tests.

Side Note

Unfortunately, there is no test case that can test for developerDidAStupidThing(); so in the interim, these types of things will keep happening. This is one of those problems that will crop up in customer driven solutions with short turn around times. No amount of automation will completely solve the problems so long as users are driving the evolution, and developers are operating in a respond to the customer model.

[scripted-dalliances]

Rest In Peace: Chapter Sixteen

Title: Rest In Peace

Chapter: 16

Summary: A part of Faithless Fairy Tale, a more in depth look at how they brought Laura back to life. Appearance of old faces, creation of new ones and if you’re looking for canon, it left a long, long time ago. If you squint you might be able to see some pieces from the book.

A/N: I feel like I need to make a note of why I use Anubis rather than Jacquel. It’s mostly because Laura’s first intro to him is in death, where I feel he is more “Anubis than Jacquel” and same with Ibis, as meeting him in the funeral home. 

+ I also want to explain of where Isis and Laura are by the end of this, if any of you have read the book, you’ll recall Shadow hanging out “behind the curtains” -where he eats and drinks, and generally has a rad time without Odin. This is what I sort of imagine the after life of the Egyptian gods is.

“Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.” -Catherynne M. Valente

+

In the new room, Nephthys is a welcomed old face, one that Laura finds herself needing as Anubis coldly directs her remove her clothes and get up on the table. He is all business, as he moves around the room, while the two women talk.

“You knew your sister couldn't bring me back to life.” Laura says, kicking off her shoes and socks. Nephthys bends to pick them up, “You could have said.”

“I said she wanted to help, and she is.” The goddess replies, helping Laura to remove her shirt, jeans and everything else. Folds them as if precious and sets them aside. “We all will. It feels...”

“Good.” Anubis finishes, coming up behind them. An old set of tools in a thick leather case in his hands. Old enough that Laura thinks they should be a in a museum. “To work together as a family, to all play our part in a new story. We have not been afforded much of those roles.”

Laura doesn't really know what he means by that. So she simply gets up on the table and attempts to relax. The room is just a sterile as the funeral home, but far less homey. Her eyes struggle to take in everything, and not feel like the corpse she clearly is, but eventually the duo start working and she finds herself more entranced by the two working around each other.

Before, Ibis had helped, but even his presence had been off kilter in the sense that he mostly stood to the side, filling her head with false incentives.

Ibis had been commentary from the peanut gallery who kept her distracted. For what end, Laura doesn’t know, but at least here she knows that is not the case. Nephthys is a stark difference, as she takes one side of Laura while Anubis takes the other. Letting silence fall over them like a blanket, only occasionally broken by one needing a new tool.

Together, they work about her. Cleaning and fixing her broken and rotting body. Anubis undoes the stitching on her arms, belly and chest. Takes the miles of blackened thread and throws it away.

For each one he undoes on her, Nephthys slides her hands beneath the opened skin and gently performs her funeral rites. Taking time to remove the parasites and rot that infect Laura's bones and flesh. Normally the body would be fresher, the organs completely removed but this is different. The end they prepare her for isn't the customary type.

When all is done, Nephthys sews her up with gold thread, heavy but so fine and thin that it reminds Laura of a spider's silk. How she manages to keep it wrapped around a needle is magic in itself.

They each take the time to scrub away the dirt and grim from her skin, from under her nails and brush her thick matted hair until its glossy. It makes Laura feel like a little girl again, letting herself be taken care of.

For a long time the duo works in silence, before Laura finds herself breaking it.

“Does she know?” Laura questions. The two gods stop and look at her, “That I tried to rob her? The casino.”

Anubis goes back to his work, but Nephthys stops and peers down into Laura's eyes.

“She does. Though for what it is worth, you did not physical do so, nor did you succeed. My sister does not hold this against you, she has always been very good at seeing past crimes to the person behind them. She knows why you tried.”

Anubis shifts awkwardly, and after a long moment, speaks too. Voice softer than Laura expects as he fixes her nails.

“Once upon a time, Isis had a brother. Set was messy, chaotic and ambitious to the point of ruin.” Anubis looks at Laura pointedly, “He was also a loud mouth who never learned.” He says this in a tone as if he is talking about her. “-but no matter what he did, she still called him brother.”

“So, you're saying she is helping me because I remind her of her brother?”

“No. I am saying she heart big enough to forgive even the worst crimes.” At this, Laura glares and he mirrors the expression. “Do not make that face, it might stay like that. Rigor mortis is a thing you know.”

“What he is trying to say, very badly, is that she loved her brother. Always.” Nephthys runs her nails through Laura's hair. Fixing it to perfection. “In the grand scheme of things, Odin stole something far more precious from us. He did it with the selfish design for himself, right in our town, to one we considered ours. No offense, but comparatively, your crimes are of a child stealing a cookie before dinner. We might use money to garner attention, but we are not attached to it, not like mortals are.”

“Thanks.” Laura replies glibly.

Nephthys catches her tone, “What did you expect? To be punished indefinitely for such a soft crime?”

“Shadow did time for that soft crime, I made the biggest mistake of life after it. Everything even slightly good in my life went to shit after I tried to rob this place…so yeah. Maybe I was thinking it was borderline divine punishment.”

Nephthys glances at Anubis, whose gaze is fixed on the glue he is using on Laura's nails. Determining that he is distracted, she leans down to whispers mischievously in Laura's ear.

“Want to know another secret?”

“Always.”

“Those scales, the ones you are so scared of? Don't weigh crimes like you think. It weighs your heart, and that is a very complicated thing. It holds all your secrets. Every lie. Every truth. All the little dirty details, all the moments you felt light and loved.” She rests her weight on her arms to better peer into Laura's eyes. “All the times you felt alone and hurt and didn't say a word. Your heart has taken those seeds of pain, sowed it within and kept them.”

“This doesn't sound like a secret.”

“The secret, impatient one, is that it takes a great deal of sin and malice to tip those ugly scales. Guilt makes a heart heavy, but the worst ones are the hearts that feel no guilt at all for the terrible things they’ve done.” She reveals, “Only you can know the truth of your heart without those scales, and it is no secret that you judge yours too harshly.”

There is a knock at the door. Disallowing Laura any chance to comment on the state of her heart.

It was time.

+

“We'll have to take it out. The coin.” Isis told her, watching Laura come before her. They are back in the grand marble ballroom, alone. Above their heads, the night is black, without even the smallest star. Looking up at it, Laura feels as they've left Earth, like they are alone on another planet.

“I will be dead if you do. Seems a bit of a step back.”

Isis takes her hands and drags her to the center of the room. The white dress Nephthys had dressed her in was glowing in the darkness of the starless sky. There, at their bare feet is a pale gold dish, with just a hint of water nestled in the bottom. It takes Laura a second to register that it was moving. Soft, gentle waves so small a raindrop would disturb it. The mock ocean in the pan kept her attention until Isis gripped her hand hard in her own.

“The water will carry your spirit out of this body, and you will be put in a sort of...spiritual body. It will hurt. Forming a spiritual form is easier than bringing you back from the dead, but I can not promise it will not hurt. The stronger the spirit, the harder it is to pull it away.” Isis tells her, rolling her shoulders and closing her eyes. “Now, close your eyes. Do not open them until I tell you. Clear your mind and think of what makes you want to breath again.”

Laura was in process of closing eyes, but suddenly finds herself glaring.

“Low blow. We both know I don't.”

Isis tilts her head, purses her lips and mockingly replies, “Oh? Really? Nothing comes to mind?”

Laura wants to tell her, no. She really fucking doesn't. She's a dead woman, with an ex-husband with no money, no job and smells like rotted pork chops. She wants to tell Isis that she's got nothing but her own selfish desires at this point, to want to feel whole and warm again.

-but then she thinks of Mad Sweeney's massive warm hands on her hips, lifting her like a precious bubble of spun sugar. Making her feel not a beat of a heart, but a gust that swelled her lungs. How she inhaled and exhaled in the aftermath.

-but then she recalls of touching him as he slept, when he shined so softly she could almost taste the light on her tongue. Making her blood boil and coat the very inside of her veins with liquid sunlight; the soft, perfect Sunday morning kind, where you felt like it was wrapped around your whole body. How she had nearly kissed him out of desire.

-but then she recalls his angry rant, of him telling her she has him. His luck, his heart and faith. How he had said with such fury, such hate, that it was just enough to make his confession honest. How he told her in not so many words he loved her, spitefully and painfully, and she believed him.

“Oh fuck.” Laura whispers to herself, shutting her eyes in pain as she becomes more and more aware of revelations. Of herself; when had she stopped wanting to slit his throat every time he spoke? When did she start smiling at his stupid insults? Before their deal? Before she slayed Odin to save him?

Of him; His antics, he soft tones and side glances. How he complained and bitched, dragged his feet, but never once lead her astray. Never tricked her or mentally fucked with her until she thought she was better off dead.

Oh, he repeated himself almost daily on why she should leave Shadow, to give up on that dream, darlin' cus it's deader than you. He told her many times to give up her old life, her husband and the dumb mission to save him. She had his coin, yes, but it was clear if he only waited another week or two, she would have rotted to pieces just like he warned.

Instead, he continued to try. One dark car trip after another. 

All awhile, shedding coins of knowledge before her. Secrets of himself, of her and what was to come. He didn't have to do that, he could have lied. Could have tricked her from the start, and she wouldn't have known until it was too late.

She had already lost the coin once, and it was in his hands, and yet he still reached into her filthy corpse and put it back. 

Like she deserved another chance, like he wanted her to have her vengeance and come out on top of this whole damn war. To get not just her life back, but to teach these new gods a lesson only a sacrifice could.

Because for whatever reason, he believed she deserved it, and so she did.

Water crashes against her feet, enough to make her cry out.

The water is warm, and rises quickly. The only reason that she does not move or kick away is because Isis still has not let go. Even when the water floods around her, hitting her ankles, knees and hips within seconds. Try as she might to ignore the sensation and keep her eyes closed, it was a struggle.

Mind on high a alert and wariness growing. She wanted to know what the fuck was happening, because how could there be ocean tides in this room, how could it feel like nothing was below them, how could it not drown them in seconds?

The water covers her head, and she chokes.

It's a violent sudden awareness that has her body clenching forward on instinct. Pitching her out of Isis's grip but into her arms. Beneath the water, they sink together, with Isis's strong grip holding on to Laura's shuddering body. As it rocked, twisted and shook.

As it splinted apart.

Laura’s mind races, trying to understand the reaction at all, she doesn’t need air, she has drowned before. Under Mad Sweeney’s furious grip at that, but this feels different. Less like drowning and more like splintering. More like the water was filling her body and pushing her out.

This was her spirit forced to leave a shell it didn't want to let go of.

The pressure builds and builds until finally, it happens.

She breaks.

Her lungs popped first, her spine bent unnaturally in agreement. She became a doll with cut strings in Isis’s hold.

Every nerve screamed in tormented harmony with her bones that cracked over and over like eggs against a bowl. That quick and easy. 

The rest of her organs were slower, they took their time with her pain. Waiting their turn between cracks to slide in. A bloat of the bladder, a pinch of the kidney while her guts twisted in their own merry away. Without much care where and when she felt the pain, only that she knew it was always happening. A background pain that would soon also drown under the loudest of all.

Her heart.

It beat once, then twice.

By the third beat, she is breaking the surface of the water. Taking deep, shuddering intakes of air that burn, but just as quick heal and fill her lungs too.

Everything aches like a new sickness, but she reveals in it.

“Open your eyes, Laura.” Isis whispers, still holding her. Letting the girl lean against her in the great waters of this unknown world. Together, their hearts beat slow and sure. An echo to the other, in that way only a heart can, to prove it's existence to all. That only it can provide the predictable beats for.

Laura opens her eyes to the same endless galaxy from her first time in the after world and breathes.

If this is life in the after world, she finds she doesn’t mind it. 

Later, they walk hand in hand, out of the ocean to a warm beach white sand, black mud and grass so green it redefines the meaning of the word. It's only when they are climbing out of a bank, when she turns to look behind her that she realizes the ocean wasn't an ocean at all.

It was a river.

>

[lookinghbo]

'Looking' Made Raúl Castillo A Sex Symbol. Sheer Force Made Him A Star.

In New York, in the middle of July, if the fickle subway system allows it, you’d be wise to arrive at a destination 10 minutes early. You’ll need that time to let the sweat evaporate, to stamp out the damp spots that have betrayed your outfit.

Raúl Castillo forfeited his chance to cool down before shaking my hand at a Manhattan hotel restaurant on a sweltering Thursday morning. I didn’t mind. It was an honest mistake.

The “Looking” star was running slightly late and looking slightly frazzled when he bounded toward our table. He’d confused this hotel for another within walking distance where, the previous night, Castillo had attended a screening of the new Alexander McQueen documentary with his girlfriend, the costume designer Alexis Forte, who has the late fashion maverick’s biography at their Brooklyn apartment.

It’s cute to see celebrities frayed, even ones who are still building their marquee value. Castillo is the type who hasn’t yet abandoned public transportation when navigating the city, even though it’s becoming harder to do so without attracting strangers’ gazes. While trekking home from the “McQueen” event, a Latina teenager tapped him to say she loved “Atypical,” the Netflix series in which Castillo played a charismatic bartender sleeping with Jennifer Jason Leigh’s married character. The teenager’s mother loved “Seven Seconds,” the Netflix series in which Castillo played a narcotics detective tending to a racially charged investigation.

Raúl Castillo: a guy you can bring home to Mom, punctual or otherwise.

It’s his voice that people recognize, the 40-year-old actor said, a modest notion considering his breakthrough role as the sensitive barber Richie on “Looking” made Castillo a veritable heartthrob, despite the HBO show’s modest ratings. But it’s true that his warm baritone gravel is a distinguishing trait. Earlier this year, when I saw “Unsane,” Steven Soderbergh’s scrappy iPhone thriller set inside a mental institution, I recognized Castillo’s intonation before his face appeared onscreen.

That’s a significant feat. Castillo mumbled so much as an adolescent that a teacher recommended he see a speech therapist. He refused, instead reminding himself to enunciate or else using the impediment as a defense mechanism. “I have all these things wrong with my voice,” Castillo said, though few today would agree.

Castillo’s cadence may be growing familiar, but fame hardly seems like his long game. This is, after all, a guy who studied playwriting ― hardly the creative pursuit that commands the brightest spotlight ― at Boston University, after which he paid about $300 a month to live in a garage in Austin and perform local Chicano theater. “We the Animals,” a Sundance indie opening this weekend, marks the first time Castillo is the one generating a project’s star power. He portrays the father of three tight-knit boys storming through a wooded town in upstate New York. The movie, adapted from Justin Torres’ autobiographical novel of the same name, combines elements of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Moonlight” to capture a domestic home life that’s equal parts tender and volatile, where abuse and affection are equally common.

Castillo’s enthusiasm about “We the Animals,” and about the possibly of again working with its director, Jeremiah Zagar (“Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart”), speaks to his ambivalence toward the celebrity ecosystem.

“He could be like Tom Cruise without the child slavery,” Zagar said, roasting the “Mission: Impossible” moneymaker’s Scientology association (and its alleged history of forced manual labor). “Raúl’s that kind of a dude. He’s a perfect-looking dude, and yet he’s incredibly real and honest and true. There’s never a false note. He’s also incredibly collaborative. As a director, that’s a wonderful thing. I didn’t know what I was doing, really, because I had never directed a narrative before, and Raúl had a way of making me feel comfortable and confident in my own beliefs and my own material. He’s so seasoned and so clear about what he needs to do to make a scene work and a character work and to elevate other people around him.”

It’s a small movie with grainy aesthetics and an impressionistic lyricism ― in no way the kind of thing that will make a killing at the box office. For someone who first fell in love with theater by discovering the plays of Puerto Rican and Mexican writers like Miguel Piñero and Luis Valdez in his high school library, playing the complicated patriarch of a mixed-race family feels like a destiny fulfilled. (Sheila Vand, star of the Iranian horror gem “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” plays Castillo’s wife.) At this point, opportunities to extend his commercial footprint ― guest spots as a cannibal on “Gotham” and a music teacher on “Riverdale,” for example ― will find Castillo one way or another.

“I’ve always felt that I was never cookie-cutter,” he said. “For as much as I tried to fit my square peg into round holes, constantly, my whole career, I could never do it. Whenever I read ‘We the Animals,’ I didn’t think I would be cast in that film. [...] I felt viewed more as a Richie. People think I tend to find those roles easier than I do a role like this, ’cause it’s harsh. I knew that I could do it. I’m so grateful for both Jeremiah and Justin, who did see that in me.”

Born in McAllen, Texas, a midsize agricultural town that sits on the Mexican border, Castillo’s triumphs were born out of people believing in him at the exact right moments. He belongs to a first-generation immigrant family, even if home was a mere 10 miles down the road. Castillo didn’t feel othered, but his dual identity instilled a sort of anti-establishment fluster.

“I just saw a lot of bullshit in the structures that were established for me,” he said. “I found a lot of hypocrisies. People valued money, and I think when I was very young, I valued money and I didn’t have it. I think I hated myself for it.”

Slowly shedding the Catholic mysticism that once awed him, he took up bass and played in punk bands. When his friend Tanya Saracho, who would go on to write for “Looking” and “How to Get Away with Murder,” likened his GPA to a lifeline out of McAllen, Castillo decided to care about school. But in Boston, he was suddenly the minority. His “bad attitude” kept him out of second-year acting courses, until mentorship from a professor of color let Castillo understand that he shouldn’t punish himself for being subjected to an overwhelmingly white institution. And when he moved to New York in 2002, his pal Mando Alvarado, now a writer for “Greenleaf” and “Vida” (on which Castillo will soon appear), posited presentation as a mark of self-worth; if he didn’t put care into his résumé and headshot, why should anyone put care into hiring him?

Of course, when success takes years to manifest, it’s easy to forget the lessons you’ve learned. Living with four or five roommates at once, Castillo worked his way into the Labyrinth Theater Company, an experimental off-Broadway troupe founded by Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz. He still wanted to be a writer ― in high school, Castillo only ever acted to impress girls anyway ― but in 2006 he found himself starring in a Labyrinth production of “School of the Americas,” a play by “Motorcycle Diaries” scribe José Rivera. The acting bug stuck. In 2009, his play “Knives and Other Sharp Objects,” a multigenerational drama about class in Texas, opened off-Broadway, earning a mixed review from The New York Times.

Still, nothing quite lasted. The business side of things was grueling, and his coffee-shop gigs were getting old, even if he did count Lili Taylor and RuPaul as customers. An agent sent him on auditions for “huge” Hollywood movies ― which ones, Castillo wouldn’t say ― but dropped him after none proved fruitful. He was ready to give up altogether when “Looking” came around. Castillo had starred in the short film that became a prototype for the series. Its director, Michael Lannan, called him to audition for Richie (the character he’d initially played) and Augustin (a more prominent Latino character who worked as an artist’s assistant). He didn’t land either role, even though he’d originated one of them.

But by the time “Looking” was a week away from shooting, a Richie still hadn’t been cast. The producers called Castillo to read for Andrew Haigh, the gifted English director who shepherded the half-hour dramedy. Haigh had seen Castillo in an indie mystery called “Cold Weather” that gave him “street cred.” Crashing on John Ortiz’s couch in Hell’s Kitchen, wondering what else he could do with his life, Castillo was at a bar one night when he received an email with a contract attached. He had no representation to negotiate his salary, but it didn’t matter: After living check to check, he was on HBO.

“I was like, ‘Yes. Take my soul. I don’t care. Pay me. I need money,’” Castillo recalled. “I needed not just a paycheck but the affirmation. I needed something artistically that I could sink my teeth into that had value to it. Something that was substantial. Something that had a real point of view. I needed a character that gave me a platform to do what I do in a really great scale in the best way possible. And it ended up being that. That show was such a great gift to me.”

All of Castillo’s ensuing fortune can be linked to “Looking.” It made him a sex symbol, a love interest, a fan favorite, a rising star whose claim to fame meant a great deal to anyone hungry for frank depictions of queer intimacy. Richie was the good-natured, self-righteous ideal ― a perfect counterpoint for Patrick (Jonathan Groff), the series’ unsettled protagonist. It became gay viewers’ great disappointment when they learned that Castillo, their anointed hunk, was in fact straight.

“His inability to be fake as a person translates directly into his acting,” Groff said. “There is nothing extraneous or false about Raúl, and he brought a grounded, honest integrity to the character that absolutely no one else could have. He’s also just innately magic on screen and has that ‘it’ factor.”

Perhaps it was Castillo’s dual identity as a Mexican-American that helped him shine as a gay, blue-collar Californian who was sure of himself despite being rejected by his family. It’s certainly what lets him shine as the cash-strapped paterfamilias, caught between unremitting love for his kin and an inescapable pattern of violence, in “We the Animals.” This dyad comes at time when Castillo sees his identity splashed across the evening news.

McAllen houses the U.S. Border Patrol’s busiest hub for detaining immigrants suspected of entering the country illegally. While Castillo was vacationing in Europe and playing make-believe on sets, children were being ripped from their parents’ arms in his hometown.

“I would always have to explain where McAllen was, and now it’s this name you’re seeing constantly in the news for all these reasons that represent, for me, everything that’s wrong with this country,” Castillo said. “It was paralyzing. I was sitting in a beach in Europe, wondering why I deserved to be there. My parents had access to this country in ways that people who are coming from longer distances don’t. We had the great gift of citizenship, which is an incredible privilege. But my parents were immigrants, and they navigated that dynamic our entire lives. I saw my mom and my dad deal with all the insecurities and all the precarious nature of what being an immigrant in this country is. [...] Having grown up going back and forth across the border throughout my whole life, it’s disheartening and upsetting to see what’s happening. And then to think about this particular movie that deals with children, who are especially in that age when their minds are being formed and their view of the world is taking shape, to think about [the ones] locked in cages is enraging.”

Castillo may be miles from that crisis now, but he’s done more to better the world for brown people than he can know. His goal hasn’t been to diversity Hollywood roles written for white ensembles; it’s been to find work that naturally accentuates the grooves of his Latino heritage. He saw almost no Chicano role models in popular culture growing up, and now he is writing and starring in artistic endeavors that paint all shades of the human experience ― gay, poor, brown, cannibalistic, whatever ― with a dynamic brush.

Which isn’t to say everything’s gotten easy. He was slated to play the lead in “Mix Tape” (a musical drama set in Los Angeles) and appear on “One Day at a Time” (the Norman Lear reboot), but has since exited both series and would rather not disclose why. I got the sense, during our two-hour breakfast, that Castillo is still protective of how he is perceived. Maybe he always will be. He’s comfortable reflecting on his upbringing and his relationship with race ― concepts he’s spent his whole life processing ― but being candid about recent setbacks, as routinely asked of celebrities in interviews, does not yet come easy.

It’s the “ego business bullshit” that still eats at him. It’s what eats at most of us. But when someone makes a name for himself, that burden slowly fades to the periphery, replaced by a newfound comfort, even power. The man who once served RuPaul coffee now shares an agent with the drag dignitary.

“For so long, it was all feast or famine,” Castillo said. “I just took work when I could take it. And at this point, I’m in a new place where I want to be more thoughtful about the roles that I take on from here on out. The projects, the roles, the people. I’ve learned so much in the journey that now I want to apply all that and also honor my experience, because at this point I want to work with people who challenge me in all the right ways and push me to become a better actor and a better artist.”

[drink-n-watch]

Genre: Slice of life, action, comedy, education

Episodes: 13

Studio: David Production

The human body is a marvel of bioengineering. Every second a universe’s worth of microorganisms and cells work in harmony to keep the whole thing going. Billions of processes take place for every single little thing, from breathing in to growing out hair. Heck just trying to keep the place free of all the parasites, viruses and bacteria that would like to claim it for their own, takes a highly specialized army. Human beings have been around for thousands of years and we’ve spent most of that time gazing intently at our belly buttons. Yet, we’re only just beginning to unravel the mysteries of our own bodies. One thing’s for sure, there’s never a dull day in the immune system.

I have been looking forward to this one for a long time. Even before it aired, I was intrigued by the premise and excited by the team behind the project. I’m usually atrocious at predicting what will be a good series and as such I was doubly delighted to see such generally positive reviews trickle in during its run time. Now I finally had the chance to see what all the hoopla was about.

Ok…maybe hoopla is a bit of an oversell. Bloggers I like, liked this show. To me, that’s a big deal.

I’m going to try not to make all the picture platelets…no promises

I was a little wary about a series that concentrates on everything that can go wrong with your health. In theory “diseases, the animation” doesn’t sound that pleasant. Yet if I could describe my emotional takeaway from Cells at Work in a word, it would be “comforting”.

Part of that can be ascribed to the production choices. The character designs are deeply familiar looking. In fact I noted continuously that bacteria and virus invaders looked exactly like Dragon Ball villains. Presenting such a generally unique idea behind an instantly recognizable facade goes a long way towards making the show easily accessible for long time anime fans.

There’s a straightforwardness to all the elements. Couples are crisp, not overly bright, mostly primary and used to distinguish characters with narrative explanation. Sound design is clean and music cues direct. The voice actors (who are all pleasant) even use classic anime voicing tropes such as exaggerated gaspings and raspy undersells in ridiculous situations.

you see it too, right?

You do occasionally get a slight impression of discount. Things lack depth. Light and shadowing is minimal and you get no sense of wider space from the images. Environmental sounds are minimal and sound design s generally a little *thin*. Not that any of this took away from my enjoyment, in fact, it may have added to it. The animation on a budget feel has its own charms. To me this series wouldn’t have worked as well as a sleek and polished gem or a super stylish standout. Cells at work isn’t the glamourous supermodel, it’s the girl next door.

This simple earnest aspect is one of the things that endeared this series to me. It manages to remain utterly uncomplicated. From a narrative perspective it’s completely episodic in nature, adopting a monster of the week formula from start to finish. The monsters in this case being invading pathogens, injuries and the like. It got to the point where I started to seriously wonder whether the person they were in was ever healthy at all? Honestly poor kid catches every single thing out there.

Although there’s a pretty wide cast, the story follows red blood cell and white blood cell (characters are named by function, more on that later) which remain pretty much entirely undeveloped. Once again, Cells at Work eschews such extravagance as intricate characterisation instead opting for basic archetypes with a few exaggerated quirks which are constantly repeated.  But this also fits perfectly. Said quirks are either amusing or charming enough to remain entertaining and the characters easily coast on the strength of charisma.

adorable

In fact, every single fault I could find for Cells at Work doesn’t really matter in the long run. Because it’s a kid’s show. And a darn good one at that. I know there’s a stigma attached to the expression but there shouldn’t be. Entertainment meant for children Needs to be exceptionally paced and dynamic to appeal to shorter attention spans. The lightly educational context (which was surprisingly accurate but the way) works best in episodic form allowing facts to get repeated for better retention by the audience, while giving enough freedom to tailor every episode to the lesson at hand. A complicated overarching storyline would have muddled the message.

The same can be said for particularly layered characters. They needed to be fairly simple in order to convey a clear message while remaining entertaining. And in this, Cells at Work success better than most series I’ve seen. In fact, one of the partners where I work has two young children who love anime and this is the only show I’ve ever actively recommended to them. With one caveat…

This series is violent. And not cartoon violence either. Bloody visceral no holds barred violence. It’s even acknowledged and commented on in universe. The white blood cells mercilessly murder any invaders with glee and pride in their work and the act is animated in all its gory detail. I guess in a way it’s a pretty fair portrayal of what actually happens. However, if you are not a fan of open violence (or would rather not subject kids to it for some reason….) this one is not for you.

white blood cells uncharacteristically clean

It says something that I found the weird clash of children’s edutainment and Scorsese violence hilarious every single time…

Cells at Work is a bloody violent series about all the things that can and probably will kill you from the inside. It’s very comforting. You should watch it with kids this holiday season.

Random thought – was I the only one who thought Helper T Cell really looked like Kazuma from Noragami?

Favorite character: Platelets (I have a heart people)

What this anime taught me: White blood cells can pass through blood vessel walls 

Sip happens, it’s o.k. to wine.

Suggested drink: Elderberry Vodka Immune Cocktail

Every time we see Red senpai – take a sip

Every time anyone talks about “this world” – take a sip

if it’s white blood cell – take another

Every time white blood cells act like maniacs – cower

Every time Helper T Cell eats cookies – get a snack

Every time anyone gets covered in blood – take a sip

Every time Red gets lost – take a breath

Every time a new type of cell gets introduced – pay attention

Every time the mention of histamine makes you itchy – take a sip

Every time Red does not need to be saved by white – finish your drink

Every time we see platelets – YAY!

  Cells at Work -How Far Educational TV Has Come (12 days) Genre: Slice of life, action, comedy, education Episodes: 13 Studio: David Production The human body is a marvel of bioengineering.

[krnaturalphoto]

When I first started running I never thought I eould be doing the things I have done. They were not things thst I wanted to do. Some of the things I’ve done I didn’t even know were things people do when I first started running. Like trail running; that’s a thing? Running a trail marathon; people really do that?

As I began to run more I met more people. I made amazing friends. I learned more about running and the amazing things that runners really do. I learned about what the human body is capable of. More importantly I began to learn whst my body was capable of. I began to push myself farther and farther, literally. First a 5k, then a 10k, then a half marathon, several half marathons. I began to trail run more and more and conqured those same distances on the trails and thn pushed farther to 25k trail runs. Looking for that next challenge. Looking for that next beautiful trail I could experience. Wondering where tht next trail would take me.

Last year I was invited to participate in the event that really set all this in motion. My friend invited me to particiapte in an event with her and a couple other firends. We would run the Sehgahund Trail Marathon relay together. Once again, this was a thing that I didn’t realize even existed at the time. This was sucha fun event for me. It doesn’t get much better than spending time out on the trails with your friends working as a team. I don’t know if my fiend will think if this event with as much appreciation for the path it has sent us down as I do, but for me it was a formative event that has helped lead me to where I am now.

After building up by running loner distances last year culminatiung with a chalenging 25k I returned to the idea of Sehgahunda. We had all begun running more and more trails and I thought what if we all trained together and ran the full solo Sehgahunda Trail Marathon together. I almost couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth, and I don’t think my friends could either at first. A marathoin was never something I had thougtht about wanting to do. But now that the idea had formed in my head I just couldn’t shake it.

I spent all winter training and continued into spring. As the day of the race approached I began to feel nervous and anxious. I really has no idea what to expect. I just had to hope my training had me prepared for this. My wife was going to be at the race crewing and cheering me on at the aide stations and check points. Even though I really had no idea how this race would go for me I told her that I felt like if everything went well and I felt good I thought I could be done in six hours.

My friends and I spent the week leading up to the race watching the weather forecast for race day. The two conditions we were hoping not to have for the race was for it to not be too hot and for it not to be too wet. If it was wet we knew the trails leading to the aide stations/check points would be muddy disasters. We were fortunate enough to not have heat, which for me is the worst possible condition. However, we had plenty of rain leading up to the race including rain the night before the race and it actively rained during most of the race itself.

The trails that take you to the aide stations/check points lead you out of the woods and generally into open fields. The fields were completely saturated with water. It was a mud-fest. There was standing water in areas. The mud was at least ankle deep on most of these trails. You just slipped and slid all over. You couldn’t get any footing. You couldn’t push off because your feet just slid out behind you. As a mid pack runner another problem is that half of the runners are ahead of you so they have all already trampled through this area and degraded the trail a great deal. The traffic out in front on these trails basically created a narrow steep rut of mud to run through. You couldn’t step off to the side because it was so muddy that you slid back down into the trench. Gravity was doing its job. And it got more complicated. Not only did you have to navigate the water hazards and the deep slippery mud these sections were out and backs with two way traffic going down a path that especially due to the mud was basically single track. Trying to continue to move forward without colliding with your fellow runners was not as easy as it might seem. Combine this challenge with the possibility of passing other runners going the same direction as you and it was even more difficult. It basically became more effective to divert so far off the designated path that you were basically out in a field of knee high grass. But even that wasn’t possible most places.

On the way to most of the aide stations/check points you were going up hill. So, you were working against gravity in ground conditions that made it very to push off or use any power or strength to propel oneself forward as the ground just continued to shift under your foot as you pushed against it. The factors combined to result in a lot of walking up through the mud. On the way down from the aide stations/check points you were presented with a different kind of challenge. The mud was obviously still there but instead of going against gravity you were going with gravity down the hill. And instead of the mud preventing you from pushing off of to propel yourself up, now the mud prevented you from planting your feet to slow yourself down and control your descent. It was like mud skiing except there was much less control of direction and footing than with actual skies on snow. You slid and splattered down the hill at the best speed you could manage without completely losing control and either falling or colliding with a fellow runner. I’ve heard running described as controlled falling and this was as close to that as I have ever felt. The fall was barely under control but felt inevitable. However, I managed not to fall on any of those sections.

I thought that the main trails that ran through the woods would remain mostly firm with only a relatively small degree of mud despite the rain. I even advised my friend against running in her trail shoes with more aggressive tread for better grip in the mud because I thought the main trails would not be so bad as to require it and the side trails up to the aide stations would be so muddy that they wouldn’t make a difference. Luckily she was smart enough to ignore me and follow her own instincts. The main trail was much muddier than I had anticipated. I lost a shoe in a mud hole in less than two miles. I saw all the runners ahead of me running around this muddy spot and I thought it made no sense to take the extra steps to avoid it since we were going to get plenty muddy anyway. I ran right through the middle of the mud I went through it just fine. I didn’t slip at all. Unfortunately though one of my shoes did not follow me through those several steps and remained lodged in the mud. Being early in the race I was still moving along at a decent pace and despite my shoes being tied as tightly as I could get them my foot slipped right out and I took several muddy steps with no shoe on one foot. Then I had to retrace my steps and shimmy my foot back into my shoe.

I love the trails that make up the Sehgahunda course. They are almost entirely single track until the last 4 miles. The trails twist and turn and wind their way through the woods at Letchworth State Park. You get to see and enjoy so much gorgeous woodland scenery. You can see out across the gorge created by the Genesee River at times. You run along sloping ravines as you traverse the forest. You you run down into than back up out of countless gullies created by water runoff over the years. I was actually pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t more water in the gullies considering all the rain we had been having and were currently experiencing during the race.

I didn’t really have a plan for the race other than do whatever it takes to finish. I didn’t have a set plan to try to average a certain pace or anything. I started out the race running whatever pace felt comfortable. I wasn’t running hard but I wasn’t holding back either. I felt really good the whole first half of the race.

The race has a fair amount of elevation gain overall but there aren’t really any particularly steep climbs, which is good for me because I am not good at climbing and it always seems to just suck the life right out of my legs for whatever follows. Despite there being no steep elevation gains there are still some really nice long gradual downhill sections where you can pick up some speed and run faster. I was able to use these features to my advantage throughout the first half of the race.

As I approached the first side station/check point, about 6 miles into the race, I caught up to a couple of my female friends who were also running the full marathon. So I was able to chat with some friends out on the trail for a few minutes. At the aide station/check point I got one of my Calorie Bomb Cookies, that I made from the recipe in the No Meat Athlete Cookbook, out of my pack and ate and drank there. I said hi to my wife who was there to cheer me on and crew for me. Then I was back off on the trail.

After getting back down into the woods I eventually caught up to my two friends who I originally hatched this crazy plan with. We were able to talk for a little while out on the trail. We were all in good spirits. I also took some video of them running which I don’t know if they were aware of at the time. I continued to move along in the trails at a pretty good pace for me. I was just casually running down a relatively nondescript section of trail when I apparently failed to pick my size 14 foot up high enough to clear a root or a rock because I went down. I tripped and went straight down flat on my chest and face. Luckily I was able to brace myself somewhat with my outstretched hands like superman. Fortunately I was not hurt and I popped back up and continued to run. One of my fellow runners asked if I was ok and my response was that “I’m a professional faller at this point. I don’t get hurt.”

The large number of participants from our running club, Southern Tier Running Club, included several teams running the relay. The relay teams from our club included some very fast kids. Kids who are much faster than me on my best day. My friends and I had been talking about how long we thought it would be before I was passed by one of our club’s relay teams. Even with a 30 minute headstart it was only a matter of time before they overtook me. I said I would be happy if I stayed ahead of them for 10 miles. I actually did better than I expected. I didn’t get passed by the first member of one of our relay teams until mile 12. He went flying past me like I was standing still.

As I approached the 3rd aide station/check point at mile 15 I was starting to get tired. The plan here was to take the time to change my socks and reapply anti chaffing ointment to my feet because I have had problems with blisters on my past long runs. First I had to scrape the mud off my shoes just so I could get to my shoe laces. Changing my socks felt so good. It was much more noticeable than I had expected and even though I didn’t change my wet and muddy shoes my feet still felt dry and comfortable. I don’t know if that was a byproduct of wearing Darn Tough brand socks or what, but I was happy for it. The second half of the race was a little drier and less muddy so the change in socks was a good decision even though it took a significant amount of time to do. It also helps to keep your feet dry if you keep your shoes on while running which I managed to do during the second half of the race by keeping my weight more on my toes through the muddier areas. I was able to see my wife again and talk and absorb some of her positive vibes and every as she cheered me on and then I was off from the third stop.

The second half of the race was kind of a blur. The aide stations/check points were closer together and I took advantage of that. But the second half of the race felt like much more of a grind. Just trying to keep movingforward. It also seemed to have more elevation gain or at least more sustained segments of elevation gain requiring more walking. One part I do remember was falling once again on a very nondescript section of trail. Not doing anything that really should have lead to me falling. Just failing to pick up my feet. When I got up I saw another pair of runners standing over me and one said that they had just fallen there too. So it must have been booby trapped. At least I wasn’t the only one it took down.

At some point as the day progressed it began to get warmer and more humid down in the forest and when you emerged at aide stations/check points you could feel the cool breeze out in the open and we bantered with the great volunteers regarding their nice weather. I took some ice and put it under my hat and tucked some into the buff I was wearing around my neck to help me stay cool.

As I traversed the trails over the second half of the race what I knew to be my weakness became increasingly apparent. My hips and core muscle were getting tighter and increasingly sore. All the muscles you use to lift your legs and stabilize yourself in you pelvic girdle were screaming at me. I pushed on through the discomfort. I walked when I needed to on inclines and stretched my muscles as best I could at side stations/check points.

When I began the flatter section that was basically old logging road or gravel road or some combination of the two I knew I was getting closer to the end from the preview run I did here with my friends. Only about four miles to go. It was both a relief and a bit of mental torture. I was relieved to know the end was in sight but felt like how can there still be four miles. And those four miles seemed to drag on forever. But despite that the simple knowledge of how close I was to the end and the relative flatness of this section of the course allowed me to run at a reasonable pace and push myself to sustain it.

When I emerged from the woods onto the park road I was almost done. The finish was literally in sight. Just one more hurdle to get over. That last section of road included a not so small hill and it feels especially daunting after 25 miles. Who does that? Who throws one last hill in within the last quarter mile of a trail marathon? I was determined not to walk up that hill. I don’t know how fast or slow I went up that hill but I maintained some version of running all the way up. I am sure it wasn’t pretty.

As I approached the finish I saw my wife there cheering me on. She has been such a huge support for me during all this insane training. It helped push me across the finish just to see her. It was a great feeling to cross that finish and just stop moving for a minute. It’s a great post race vibe at Sehgahunda. Talking to friends who’ve already finished, waiting to cheer friends on through the finish, and cheering on other runners is a great way to finish off the day. Oh yeah, did I mention there is food and beer.

The other aspect of all this aside from the running for me has been trying to document as much as possible as a photographer. Race day was not a good day for photography so I did not take many still photos with my GoPro, but I did shoot several segments of video, which I honestly haven’t even watched yet to see how they came out. I’m hoping I can compile the footage into something bigger at some point. Race photos didn’t turn out great which is a bummer but I did some creative editing to try to make them look as good as possible and they accompany this post. I hope you enjoyed reading this way too long race report.

If you’ve enjoyed this and want to support my work become a supporter of mine on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. It helps me put all this together. Thanks for your support

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Running My First Trail Marathon When I first started running I never thought I eould be doing the things I have done.

[shippingk8]

An argument for Freezerburn (Part 1) - Connections and Parallels

As the Freezerburn ship has been gaining more steam @toomuchfreetyme2 and myself have decided to put out there our long running argument for a Weiss and Yang pairing. (For recent and die hard shippers, or just anyone who likes to read a good RWBY theory)

Disclaimer: This argument is not us saying that we don’t like or think bumblebee isn’t a viable ship or relationship. It has it’s own song, sooo yeah…. not really wanting to go there. Nor can anyone but the writers say whether any of the three are queer or are even interested in each other. This is just us making a case for a ship. So if you’re just here to defend your favorite ship, troll, or hate the freezerburn ship, then move along this post isn’t for you. (Warning minor V5 spoilers)

It makes for a better story

1. A love triangle with Blake, Yang, and Weiss would add more drama and complications. Thus providing the writers with a potentially more interesting story to tell. This would not exclude the possibility of a Bumblebee relationship, but would create more obstacles for either pairing to overcome. If you want to argue that RWBY isn’t a love drama that is a fair point, but this could be a series long undercurrent in the story that gets resolved towards the end. We are fans of the slow burn romance anyhow. *cough* “Recovery” fanfic *cough cough* Shameless plug aside, it is sort of unavoidable that as they grow up some of them will want to take romantic partners. IF the advancement of years in the story keeps the same pace then eventually they will be in their mid-twenties by the time all of this wraps up. It would be odd if most of them didn’t end up in a relationship of some sort after that much time, whether that would be a short thing or a more sustained relationship.

2. Additionally, a love triangle would involve the whole team. If Blake and Yang end up being a thing then that is a single love interest. Obviously there would be turmoil that the two would have to work through, but that would mainly be dealt with through those two specific characters. Ruby and Weiss would probably put in their two sense or be a shoulder to cry on, but otherwise it would be mostly a Blake/Yang problem. If Weiss was thrown into the romantic mix then that would cause even more conflict. To the point that, as the leader, Ruby would have to do something. In addition it would be her sister and her partner/best friend potentially being involved, which would be a lot more awkward for her than just having to deal with it being with another member of her team. 

3. It is a great Team STRQ parallel. As far as parallels go, the colors and personalities (as far as we know) match up really well. Yang (yellow) is obviously Taiyang who had a relationship with Summer and Raven. Blake (black) is obviously Raven with their similar tactic of runny away and being the quite literal dark and brooding types. We could even use Blake’s association to the White Fang and her sense of duty and responsibility towards the organization as a very direct parallel to Raven’s loyalty to her bandit tribe. We are pairing Ruby and Qrow, no not Ruby and her mom, sorry it seems a bit too on the nose for us and doesn’t seem to work for multiple reasons. The main one being that as time has gone on we have seen just how similar Ruby is to Qrow, in addition to the fact that she sees him as her mentor. This is an instance of their colors not matching up directly, but there is a similarity in the color scheme used in their character designs. Ruby being dressed in reds, blacks and dark greys. Qrow has light Grey, but also implements black and red in his outfit. Design aside, Ruby even has the same very rare weapon type as her uncle. That would leave Weiss’s parallel to be Summer (White). We don’t know a lot about Summer, but it would make the most sense. While we don’t know how Taiyang and Summer ended up together, we can make some logical assumptions from the context given. It is most likely that Winter was always there for Taiyang and had feelings for him, and when Raven left Tai finally realized what Summer meant to him. We do also know that Yang calls Summer super mom, she baked cookies and was really great mom, but also was an expert huntress. Sounds like a certain heiress that usually has to be perfect at everything and wants to be a huntress and an heiress at the same time, yet still cares about their group like a family even though she isn’t the leader who has the job of keeping everyone together. A final thought on the parallels (a big assumption, but interesting nonetheless), Tai and Summer were probably the only two not lone wolfing it in team STRQ. Ruby and Blake are always going off on her own, much like we imagine a young Qrow and Raven might have been. 

4. Lastly, it is almost weird how often Weiss and Yang always seem to end up paired together. Volume 1 they were together for hours off screen while they were searching for Blake. Volume 2 they were together for, again, many hours as they planned the dance together. Volume 3 they would have had to have spent lots of extra time together as they trained for the doubles match. And finally in Volume 5, who are the first two of team RWBY to meet back up again? Weiss and Yang. It’s like the writers can’t stop pairing them up off screen. And I feel like all this time together has started to show. In Volume 5 Weiss has had quite a bit of physical contact and familiarity with Yang. It is yet to be seen if this will be extended to the rest of the crew, but it is interesting coming from the ‘ice queen’ of the group.

Opposite Attract (Yin and “Yang”)

1. There is the Opposites Attract trope, which in itself is a fun trope. However the show itself not only uses this trope in a lot of their on screen relationships, but uses the theme of opposites and balance a lot. We have the gods of light and dark, the classic battle of good and evil, humanity versus monsters, even nature vs technology. The theme even follows into our traditionally paired characters: Arkos had the bad ass and… well Juane. We have Raven, the kickass and stubborn bandit queen who can literally teleport across the the globe with Tai the maternal cargo-pants dad that seems to stay stuck in one place. The most blatant one is Ren and Nora, the zen ninja that can cast “Calm Emotions”, and Nora the ‘charged up’ and hyper warrior/tank. So the argument and theme of opposites is an important one, and even more so is the balance the two are supposed to achieve. 

2.  Weiss and Yang are very stereotypical opposites, but also have many subtle similarities. This argument could and has been made for Blake and Yang already, but the Weiss and Yang pairing takes it to a pretty clear cut and tropie level. Which feels fitting for the show.

3. Opposites - They are literally fire and ice, warm and cold temperaments on the surface, common and upper class, street smart and academic, happy but nontraditional close family and unhappy distant nuclear family, open minded and close minded (initially), happy-go-lucky and tsundere.

4. Commonalities - stubborn, loyal, expert/ best fighters on their team due to rigorous training, have an unknown or unreachable path but just want to be fighters. They’re also very maternal, but in opposite ways. Where Yang is encouraging and doting, Weiss is quick to pick up on her team mate’s issues and force them to address the problem. (Ex: Blake in Vol. 2 and in Vol. 5 with Yang)

5. In our opinion this lends itself to the two being a very interesting couple. Bumblebee has a claim on this argument as well; the ‘opposites attract trope,’ but Freezerburn’s claim is just as good.

Internal Issues (Psychological Trauma)

1. Weiss has been and would probably always be there for Yang. When she saw Yang in danger during the doubles match she threw herself into a lava geyser. Despite witnessing Yang attack Mercury she immediately and fervently defended her saying, “Yang would never do that!” Finally in a recent episodes we have seen Weiss be openly affectionate and supportive of Yang and the things she is dealing with. Blake is hurt and frankly traumatized by Adam. She sees the similarities between him and Yang: They’re both charismatic, popular, have similar abilities, and quick to anger. It would be odd for her character not to notice these things, like she did. But it also makes it difficult (not impossible) for her to build true trust with Yang. 

2. Which leads to the goliath in the room, Yang clearly has abandonment issues. This means that she would do best with someone who is consistent and maybe even overly protective and caring. And not to harsh on Blake, but as they have written her so far, she is very much NOT that. She is, well… a cat. She comes and goes and her affection while there is not always glaringly obvious. This isn’t to say that a Blake and Yang pairing couldn’t work things out. But it would be rather ignorant to think that after all the times Blake has left, Yang wouldn’t always be waiting for the shoe to drop, in some corner of her mind. Again we are not saying that it would be impossible for them to work through that, but given Yang’s history and the way that Blake left it would take time to build back up such a seriously damaged trust.

Relationship Equality

1. The only person to benefit in the bumblebee relationship, SO FAR, has been Blake. Time and again Yang has been there to support Blake and try to protect her, but the opposite can’t be said. When Yang was accused of misconduct she said, “I WANT to trust you.” And it wasn’t till the rest of her team spoke in her defense, and Yang almost crying in front of her, that she said she would. When Yang was at her lowest most vulnerable point, and had lost a limb because she was trying to save her partner, Blake left. I get that leaving is sort of Blake’s thing for right now, but she didn’t even leave a note or a message with anyone. She just straight up bolted. Now in fairness to Blake she had just seen someone (potentially romantically) close to her almost get killed by her abusive ex-partner. She was placed in a worst case nightmare scenario, and because of that she fell back on her instincts and ran away. She has openly stated that she regrets her choices, and that she wanted to keep the rest of her team safe. Given what Adam wants to do to Blake this volume…. she might not have been all that wrong. (Still a note would have been nice.)

2. Weiss and Yang are likely to have a stable and equal relationship. Yang needs someone consistent and almost overly caring, and Weiss needs someone less uptight than her cold family that is patient and warm enough to break down her walls. They are also both stubborn enough that they would call each other out on their shit all the time… mostly in a good way. Lastly they have been seen to have a close bond and Weiss has been quiet supportive towards Yang throughout, while Yang has been patient with Weiss while she learns to be a better person.

End Game

1. If we use foreshadowing, it would seem like Blake will end up being the new leader of the White Fang, Weiss will end up running the SDC, and Ruby and Yang will most likely be huntresses and/or teachers at a school. Blake being a leader would keep her away from combat and adventure most of the time, and to that end I don’t think Blake actually enjoys fighting all that much. 

I will admit that a Yang and Blake pairing would send a great message about equality between the races. But if Blake were the leader of the White Fang it would mean that either Yang would have to be okay being stuck by Blake’s side during political meeting and bureaucracy, or that Yang would go off on missions and not be around all that much. Given what we know about Yang I don’t know that either of those would be what she would want, but we could be wrong. Now you might say Weiss would be in the same exact boat. But we would point out that her grandfather ran the SDC and was out discovering new dust mines all the time, and Weiss has more than once said that she wanted to restore her family name by being a huntress. Meaning she would probably jump at every single opportunity to get out the office and go kill some grimm and restore the honor of her family’s name by being with the people instead of lording power over them. Which in our opinion would make Yang a great distraction… sorry we meant partner in crime, lol. So even if Weiss did have to ‘run’ the company and sit in board meetings, we feel like Yang would be there to knock on the window and say, “It’s time for a little adventure princess.”

So that is our argument. Take it or leave it, but since there are so many people that have been jumping on the Freezerburn ship lately we thought we would put our long running discussion out there. We hope it sparked some thoughts or spurs some discussions, but mostly we just hope you enjoyed it.

Other Freezerburn Theories & Things

An Argument for Freezerburn Part 2

Is Freezerburn the untapped Korrasami of RWBY?

Freezerburn Volume 4 Fan Fiction - Recovery

Freezerburn AU Fan Fiction - A Business Proposal 

Freezerburn Drabbles

Freezerburn Ship Meme

RWBY Gay Alignment Chart

***Team STRQ and Team RWBY photos were obtained from the RWBY Wiki website. (cropped and edited together by author)

[weeklygamereview]

Kingdom Hearts Union χ[Cross] and fundamental failure

     How do you judge a free-to-play mobile RPG? The kind with stamina timers, premium currency, and a "gashapon" that randomly dispenses characters and weapons? If you expect hours of uninterrupted play requiring dextrous, precise inputs, you're better off with a console game. But not even most portable console games can give you a satisfying play session within a lunch break, and most every mobile game can.

     Although they're all intimately tied to a predatory monetization model, there's something special about a perpetual game on your phone. I hold fond memories of when Terra Battle or Tales of the Rays supplemented my life with structured play and planted a hobbyistic fervor in my mind with their clever, streamlined battle systems. There were post-launch story chapters and limited time events to frequently test my mettle, and when I just wanted to unwind, I was able to grind with easy content that didn't require my full attention. Despite some bursts of compulsive play and frustration with unlucky pulls, I felt I had mutualistic relationships with them.

    My time spent with Kingdom Hearts Union χ[Cross] on Android, however, was largely parasitic. It neither provides stimulating enough combat to fully engross nor allows for the relaxing, hands-off play of an idle game. So, KHUX fails to provide the base pleasures of free-to-play mobile RPGs.

This game was first known as Kingdom Hearts χ[chi] on browser and originally for mobile as Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ, changing to its current name with a new co-op mode so unremarkable I neglect to mention it elsewhere in this review.

    Battles are turn-based, and each of your attacks is derived from a medal (the primary gashapon item) slotted into your keyblade. You can tap on the screen to attack a single target, swipe the screen for a weaker attack that hits all foes, or swipe a medal to activate its special attack (they're officially named special attacks) requiring the use of a resource gauge called... "gauge." These always deal damage and may heal, grant buffs and debuffs, restore gauge, or grant ailments. Whenever you attack, the current medal rotates out to the next one until you've used each once.

    Now, streamlining gets a bad rap. It's often associated with dumbing down instead of refinement. But there are so many mobile games that take advantage of their simplicity to make accessible depth. Just look at Puzzle & Dragon, the mobile puzzle RPG that requires thought and skill surpassing many of its pure action puzzler peers. In its case, shrinking the game board and allowing the free movement of pieces makes it easier to read a board WHILE offering superior board manipulation than the average match 3 (meaning more combos that you meant to make and less that come by chance). That's successful streamlining.

    The medal system, unfortunately, doesn't use its simplicity for such an end. Each of your 3-7 medals must be activated one after the other in clockwise order starting with the first; your sequence of attacks is predetermined for every fight once you enter a stage. There's no dexterity or timing required for inputs. Ailments (largely useless) and enemy attack patterns are the only sources of randomization within combat, so there is no risk/reward dynamic.... and no choice. You either have enough gauge for a special attack or you don't. You either came with enough damage and healing to last or you didn't.

    Though there's something resembling insight in the 1 Turn Triumph mechanic. You normally regain gauge piecemeal from damage dealt, but a 1 Turn Triumphs allow you to gain back multiple counts of gauge as long as you defeat enemies in a single turn. This requires consideration of enemy and medal attributes (red beats green beats blue) and damage distribution (single target or AoE). Clearing all enemies in a single turn is the most common requirement for objectives, optional achievements that grant currencies for character progression and the gashapon. Normally, you regain enough gauge to use special attacks at every opportunity, so you have to get a feel for how much damage you need to take out enemy formations in 1 turn, which will help you grind up enough gauge to defeat the stage boss.

Sometimes, the same objective is repeated... within the same mission. Why?

    The battle design is self aware of where mobile RPGs most disappoint; they can't make stages significantly challenging to complete without seeming to have a paywall, but if it's too easy, hardcore players will become disinterested. The game attempts to address this by assigning three objectives to each stage. These might require you to defeat all enemies in 1 turn, defeat bosses in a certain number of turns, or restrict which medals you may use to on attribute. So, allowing bad players to clear stages effortlessly while offering optional objectives accommodates everyone! Hooray! The game is designed, even at high levels, around players arranging their medals in the correct sequence before stages start instead of expecting them to think turn-by-turn. I find this to be a legitimate design decision for mobile (and console RPGs like Final Fantasy XII, for that matter). I hate it, but I respect it; it lets you take a laid-back approach to character management before battle and enjoy the results of your fine-tuned set-up.

    Unfortunately, the game doesn't let you play effortlessly thanks to the lack of a true auto-battle. There's an auto setting that uses special abilities for you, of course, but it doesn't move you throughout the stage. You must navigate environments and encounter foes by laboriously sliding your finger across the screen—not with a virtual joystick, but across your entire screen.

    There are mobile games that get away without auto-battle. For example, Fate Grand Order doesn't have basic attacks, and its skills are cooldown based or can expend variable amounts of meter for increased damage. A simple auto-battle routine couldn't easily tell whether you want to charge limit breaks, gain critical stars, burst down enemies, or activate unique character skills; the game is too complicated for it. Puzzle & Dragon wouldn't make sense with one in the same way an auto-play option wouldn't make sense for Bejeweled. But these two games are much more demanding, one for optimal order sequencing and the other with its puzzle board. You know, actively, traditionally-for-a-video-game engaging.

    There's so little to this game's combat in the first place that I find it excruciating to manually navigate through its environments. They're expertly illustrated. Beautiful, even! But they work against the mindless, chill grind the battle system is meant to facilitate. The novelty of their beauty fades as you're forced to balance your phone in one hand and scrub dramatically across your entire widescreen phone to go from left to right and back again (how I wish it had a virtual joystick so I could play with one hand!). By the way, you have to touch and hold at the far edges of the screen to reach full speed. There’s an option to tap at a location, but the player character will vary its running speed depending on the distance away. It’s always a pain to perform movement, which doesn’t even factor into combat itself and often takes up more time than battle within a stage.

Keep in mind you have to scrub through this entire map dozens of stages in a row to clear the most common objective (defeat all enemies in 1 turn) at this scale:

     If you're not used to playing mobile games, this might sound like a ridiculous complaint. But when the core combat is just an excuse to grind and make numbers go up, a shallow vessel to deliver the Good Chemical, it wears you down. Like, imagine if Cookie Clicker lacked store items that automatically produced cookies. KHUX is that kind of contradiction, a game designed to be passive that demands your attention in irritating, frequent pulses, an inconvenient hand cramp of a game.

    There are more ways to play, extra mechanics, a baffling pet system... I won't go into everything the game has to offer, but know that they provide no depth to combat or medal management, merely complication. But I want to go over the main means of progression in the game: Guilt.

    You level up medals to increase their power. You level up medals by fusing them together, losing all medals used to level the other. Their maximum level increases as their rarity increases. You can increases their rarity rank with materials you can grind for in daily objectives. I'll assume you understand how this kind of system works. Yet the game won't settle for this tried-and-true progression loop. It introduced the Guilt system.

    So, every time you fuse identical medals together, the remaining one gets an orb (yes, it's just called an orb). The medals MUST be identical in both name and rarity. If the medal has any orbs, those are transferred to the base medal. If a 6* rarity medal (the rarest and most powerful rarity) gets all its orbs filled plus one, it rolls for a Guilt value. The Guilt value bestows a random percent bonus to damage up to 150%. Guilt value on the rarest of medals can range from 70% to 150%. What happens if you're unlucky and roll a 70%? Well, better go to the gashapon and pray for a copy! Even then, you might get a 71% and wasted a powerful medal. Good job!

    The community encourages players to Guilt medals that drop freely through the story. This is the optimal sequencing of medal fusion to Guilt one of these medals:

        You need to, at minimum, 39 medals of the same name at different quantities for each rarity, AND all of the medals required to increase their rarity, AND all of the medals to level them up. If you don't do it in this exact sequence, you're wasting dozens of material medals and hours of time. It's absolutely absurd.

    The game, of course, severely limits the amount of medals you can carry unless you pay with the premium currency. Even the joy of 10x gashapon rolls were tainted by the hidden tax of inventory expansion. Collecting medals should be fun. Collecting medals is what makes you want to spend money. Collecting and arranging medals is all the game is, really. And it's always accompanied with grueling, tedious inventory management that does nothing but stress me out!

    I haven't even gotten to the power balance of medals. In short: it's whackadoodle. After making so much effort to Guilt my common 1* Stitch medals, I got lucky as a F2P player and rolled Illustrated Xion (EX). A single use of the medal buffs your damage with itself and all other medals by over 200% for multiple turns, refills more gauges than it takes to spend, and consequently breaks the majority of content over its knee. I never once, ONCE, in the entirety of the main story, had to manually choose which special abilities to activate to conserve gauge. And I had to manually move my character all the while, find an enemy, wait for the elaborate attack animations to cease, and start again. I stopped caring about clearing objectives; I was powerful enough to clear all of the story's content without bothering.

     Other games use cost systems to prevent the abuse of rare medals at early player level, only allowing the use of one or two of the rarest kind of character or weapon. Due to a variety of factors involving the pace of progression, this did not factor in at all. Even without using all of my most powerful medals at once, Illustrated Xion (EX) was enough to utterly break what was meant to be a pacey, early-player experience. I ruined the game by getting a favorable gashapon roll. This is a fundamental failure in the design of randomized collectibles in a game I haven’t seen since the early days of mobile gaming. This has been solved for years.

   By the way: I only started playing to see where the story would go. The community has reached a consensus that the plot only begins to develop significantly after stage 350, months and months after release. I would say it actually picks up in the early 300s, but by the time I got to the good parts, I was too bored out of my gourd to continue despite being greatly intrigued.

     The game has built its entire postgame around the use of medals like Illustrated Xion (EX) that make all previous game content trivial. Half a year after introducing the first medal of this type, Illustrated Kairi (EX), there is now a permanent budget gashapon that has a paltry chances to drop these buff medals as a way to allow the unluckiest of players access to postgame. But I'll tell you: the postgame isn't worth it. It's a skilless test of how lucky you are or how irresponsibly you spend money. And if you can access it, your medals are too strong to enjoy any other content. There are no objectives asking you to bringing low-rarity medals to otherwise increase challenge. There is a Proud Mode variant for many story stages, but these have such strict restrictions that I could barely clear any of them (the most common of which restricts special attack use to medals that have been Guilted AND have a Guilt value exceeding a certain amount, which isn't nearly as hard as it is expensive). Even verifiable trash like Fire Emblem clone Phantom of the Kill has objectives requiring low-rarity characters to provide some bracing challenges.

    In conclusion, Kingdom Hearts Union χ[Cross] fails to provide what I seek from a mobile game on a basic level: relaxation or engagement. It fails to relax me thanks to its hand-cramping map navigation and the oppressive inventory management. It fails to engage with its battle system because it's designed to be largely effortless and relaxing. It is a frustrating waste of time as a time waster.

[rixxy8173571m3w1p3]

The Daily Hum, and Tribal Drums

I had to adult the other day, and this is basically a piece I wrote to distract myself before my anxiety got the best of me. I’d like to make a shout out to @xerxezra whose Doofus Rick x OC fic is fantastic. If you haven’t read it, then please check it out. It’s a masterpiece!

Anyway, in this fic, the reader just wants a little peace after a stressful morning dealing with paperwork.

_______________

You hated paperwork almost as much as you hated hospitals, and baby gaps. It was either this form or that form, and the incorrect this or that. If only you lived in the mountains somewhere, beyond cities, past any sort of recognizable dwelling, where it would be just you, and perhaps a companion, and lived out the rest of your days listening to the music of the forest. Of course, these were the musings of your writer’s mind at work, trying to craft for itself a calming environment at from the monotony of white walls, and droll speeches of legalities.

With a huff, you waited as you were told in the waiting area. Oh, you were glad that dad wasn’t around to have to deal with this foolishness which he had unknowingly forsaken you with. These last several years, you had dealt with the various complications involving the deed for your house, dad’s life insurance, and taxes. You were a good, law abiding citizen, so what the hell was with all the paperwork? You figured there must have been a screw up somewhere, or perhaps your filed forms had become someone’s confetti.

Either way, it was going to be a long day.

Lobby after lobby, office spaces, terrible coffee, and endless rugs, it was a day of indoor nothingness which left you annoyed, and with a dull ache of anxiety. The only highlights of your day were your great jokes, the pat down by security, and the one spider who hung on for dear life in the corner of one of the bathrooms. When it was all over, you walked around downtown, and tried to calm yourself. You were slightly hungry, and thought about grabbing a cup of hot chocolate, but the line to that one place was too long. Ugh, where was a ray of sunshine when you needed one?

_________

You rode the trolley down a few blocks, mostly to kill time. It was set to be an uneventful ride, and you weren’t really paying attention to anything, or anyone in particular. You had your notebook out, jotting down the outline of a story idea you just got. The people around you were off no consequence, neither was the the driver or your surroundings, until the trolley got stuck behind a UPS truck. Perhaps the driver was bored, or wanted tips, but the moment he started to sing an Elvis tune, you looked through your wallet to find a few dollars for the tip box.

After his second song, you stopped nearby a little coffee shop.

It didn’t seem as pretentious as the other place, and seeing as it wasn’t crowded, you wondered if Zeta-7 would enjoy this place. The color scheme inside reminded you of a daycare center. A quick glance at the menu reminded you that these people must have been professionals, but it still wasn’t as intimidating as some other coffee places tended to be. Hmm, no matter where Zeta-7 currently was, it would soon be break time, and you were willing to give this place a try; perhaps he’d like to join you.

Rick wasn’t picky when it came to coffee, but you knew there were certain places he avoided. Claustrophobic, cramped, crowded places were a no go. Yet, even if he didn’t get out much, except for the places the citadel sent him to work, you thought this laid back little shop with its quirky furniture, and yummy looking cakes would suit him. Oh, but you might be bothering him again with something so trivial. You stared down at your cellphone, and went over the reasons why you should and shouldn’t call, but in the end you did.

When he answered, you heard what sounded like drumming, and you asked Rick if he could meet you at the coffee shop during his break. He hesitated at first, but after a random Rick yelled alcohol fueled obscenities in the background, he agreed.

_____________

Books lined the furthermost wall. Many were cheap copies of the classics, others were well loved almanacs, encyclopedias, magazines, and a few dictionaries. You picked a few you’d thought would be good, but replaced them when you couldn’t get past the first page. Usually, you picked your books like how you preferred your men; well read, a little worn, and full of heart.

Bulk sized bags of coffee beans sat in the corner nearest the register. And on top of the counter were muffins, cookies, and a tempting coconut cake. The cake had to be good, considering how moist the layers looked, and the cookies must have been yummy, or the muffins soft. It was hard to choose, considering Rick enjoyed most sweets, but in the end you went for the coconut cake.

For drinks, the barista was able to make you a soy hot chocolate, and a cup of coffee for Rick. Served in cups with cute little phrases, that sat on top of dishes, which had been hand painted by children from the nearby elementary school, you felt your spirits rising. The table you chose had a dizzy, spiral pattern, with matching chairs. In a few minutes, Zeta-7 would show up, and you’d made sure your hair looked fine, before going back to sit and wait. Of course, you wouldn’t have to wait long, but while waiting, you watched people walk by.

In this district, you tended to see higher class folk. Well dressed ladies with their Louis Vuittons, men in business suits carrying their overpriced coffees, fashionable young people, and the scattered regular folk. For the most part you didn’t belong in this city, but it didn’t matter if you didn’t drive a fancy sports car, or carry a designer purse; in this little odd ball café, you seemed to fit in. You chatted a little with the staff, sharing thoughts on literature, music, and food. You had come to find out that this place was famous for its laid-back approach, especially in the city where they were surrounded by skyscrapers.

It was understandable, everyone needed to run away every once and a while, and it made you laugh a little.

When the bell above the door rang, you raised your head to see someone had come in. A tall man, walking barefoot, with a full grass skirt, henna tattoos which decorated his arms in flowery, geometrical patterns, in what appeared to be a long mathematical equations was heading your way. About his shoulders was the skin of a three headed fox, and a cape made from what appeared to be chainmail in the shape of stars, flowed down his back. You knew there was a theatre nearby, and it’s actors liked to eat at the popular restaurants, but you had a feeling you knew this guy.

It wasn’t until he sat down, chuckled nervously, and lifted the smiling sun mask, that it hit you; this was Zeta-7. How amusing that the destinies were to send you the bright, and ever so delightful guy of your affections, with a literal sun mask. And to see his smiling face, covered in a shimmering, galaxy blue face makeup, was heartwarming. The earrings he wore looked like tiny galaxies, and to your astonishment they were, though he was only wearing them for safekeeping until the case he was currently working on was resolved.

Considering it was a Monday, business at the café was slow, which was to Ricks advantage, since the staff didn’t seem to mind his state of dress; neither did you. However, to protect him, you lied and told them Zeta-7 was trying to stay in character for his latest role. Rick apologized for his appearance, but he had just come from inside a microverse battery, where one of the residents had come into an altercation with a Rick who wasn’t supposed to be there. His bangles, carved from a fragrant wood, were but concealed devices, each with a different function you weren’t allowed to know about.

You worried someone would walk in, and rant about Ricks social, and cultural inappropriateness, but it never happened.

Rarely had you seen him in these costumes they made him wear in special missions, but it was a treat to listen to the clatter of his bracelets, smell a whiff of the incense he had burned, or to watch him try to sit without letting anything show throw the thickness of his skirt. Carefully, he sipped his coffee, leaving but tiny smudges in the rim. You didn’t want to stare, well at least not more then usual, but there was something compelling about this look, like you were watching a different version of him. You couldn’t hold his hand since you didn’t want to mess up the sprouting lotuses tattoos shaped from repeated phrases written in leet. Neither did you want to accidentally set of one of the devices disguised as rings.

Yet, you two linked pinkies and you asked how his day was.

From his sighs, you figured it must have been frustrating, more so than yours. Some time ago, you had learned, that unless asked, Rick would refrain from readily telling you how bad things had gone, or of the vile things the other Ricks tried to do to him when they were inebriated. This time, it wasn’t so much how the Ricks were treating him, but how they were handling the situation. In more or less words, once the other Ricks had seen the reason for the altercation, they weren’t in a rush to solve the case. To you, it meant you probably weren’t going to see him for a few days, unless it was during his break, or for a few seconds to hug you before leaving.

Neither of you were very happy about this, but he wasn’t going to let this ruin your day. There were good things, like the new species of flora and fauna he had discovered while searching for firewood. And there was the moment of mutual understanding among the Ricks when he stopped them from eating a poisonous fungus one of the other Ricks thought was edible. You were proud of him, and he was relieved to hear that your day while stressful, wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be.

When you finished your drink, you set about touching up your lipstick. You giggled when you noticed how entranced he was when you reapplied it, though this time in his favorite shade of red. Using your mirror, Rick, discovered to his disappointment, that he had smudged some important markings which protected him. Turns out, the creatures from the particular microverse he had come from were afraid of mathematical equations, but were respectful of numbers and various associated symbols.

If it wasn’t already obvious, Zeta-7 was playing the character of a medicine man of sorts, speaking with the creatures, working as mediator, healer, and translator. You weren’t an artist, but you had steady hands, so you offered your assistance in any way you could. The areas where the mask had come in contact with the skin were the trouble areas. You touched up where his makeup had faded a little. His brow which was covered in small crystals, you glued some more in the areas where they had fallen off.

Around his eyes, was silver eyeliner, which you were careful not to get in his eyes. With his lashes, you touched up the top lashes with white mascara, the bottom lashes with yellow. Then, you told him to pucker up, so you could apply his lipstick evenly. Those brilliant, laughing, electric blue eyes followed your movements, eating up all this attention, and you felt your breath caught. There was something so attractive, so pure about a guy who wasn’t ashamed to wear coral blue number 2 lipstick.

It was admirable that he had taken on a role which might have made him initially uncomfortable, but had given him the freedom to do great things, while doing his job. At times, you weren’t exactly sure what his job was, but it seemed he had to do an awful lot. Being away from civilized society, he had lost some weight, leaving his cheeks more gaunt. Poor man, if only he would just leave that job, but it wasn’t your decision to make. Still, you expressed your concerns.

Pained, he made promises to make it up to you any way he could. With all the frantic gestures of his apology, you caught sight of the repetitive phrases written in the insides of his arms. In a low voice, he whispered that it was a phrase which had come from your last book.

! 1!\/3 +0 10\/3, 4|\||) 134|2|\|3|) +0 1!\/3

1 l1v3 70 l0v3, 4nd l34rn3d 70 l1v3

Both variations of the phrase which translated to:

I live to love, and learned to live.

You were impressed, as well as surprised that being the genius he was, would actually read one of your lame romance novels. You tended to be critical of your works, more critical than the online commenters. Honestly, he liked it so much, he had written a dissertation on why he thought it had been one of your best. As hard as it was to believe, you accepted his encouragement, and would read the thesis when you got home.

_______

The equations, when solved gave numbers, these numbers formed words, these words were either scattered or linked together to form phrases, some of which were in Spanish, or Latin. It was fascinating trying to decode them, but you weren’t a math wiz, and you’d be there for hours if it weren’t for Rick explaining their significance. His enthusiasm was contagious, and you found yourself adding touches of emoticons, hearts, and little designs which contained the accepted symbols. When your had finished touching up the markings in his inner palms, you stood back and looked him over.

The barista agreed that Rick needed a little more something to balance it all out. You couldn’t put your finger on it either, but there was something missing that would complete the look. When you searched your makeup bag, you found your shimmer powder. Perhaps it could work.

With a kabuki brush, you applied it to his arms, collarbone, highlighted his cheeks, and forehead. Now that you thought about it, he had a sort of Avatar kind of glow. After you had finished, you took a few pics, even if he fidgeted in his seat. Zeta-7 wasn’t fond of his looks in comparison to other Ricks, but you took pics whenever you could. If he didn’t think he was attractive because a bunch of Rick’s told him he wasn’t, then they were the ones that needed their eyes checked.

Your darling boyfriend, the adorkable,plant loving, scientist, you regarded him with loyal, tender affection. And while the fairer sex did not look upon him with libidinous awareness, you were going to remind him of how attractive and alluring he was. You had an intense awareness of him, conscious of every breath he took, of his mobile features, recognized every nuance in his reflections. For your part, you wanted to remember these charming, precious, captivating moments, and remember him like this, as the sweet creature who lit up your life.

Seeing as his hair was a little messy, but nonetheless untouched, you ruffled it, giggling as he hummed like a happy feline. You moved your chair closer, just to be near him, despite the obvious disgust from the only other customer. Who cared about what other people thought, for these moments, and Zeta-7s companionship had become your delight. Being this close, he could show you some of the pictures he had taken.

You were enchanted by the size and coloration of the trees, of the zoomed picture of the soil, and sand grains. It was amusing to watch the short video of a Rick, who was wrestling with a sand worm, while Zeta-7 played a flute to try to calm it. How lovely, that he could add worm tamer to his skill set. When he put his phone away, you asked him why he hadn’t finished his cake.

The dessert itself, had been very fine, one of the nicest Rick had ever had, but he pushed the plate your way, telling you he wanted you to have it, since the last bite always tasted the best. Damn it, it should have been illegal to be this cute in public. You turned your face away, trying to hide your blush. Honestly, he had just made you so freaking happy, but you weren’t sure what to say, or do with yourself.

Zeta-7, mistaking your silence for displeasure, started to apologize, but you shook your head. You couldn’t find the right words, they all seemed to come out as a jumbled mess. With furrowed brow, he asked if you needed to take your medication. No, you said, all you just needed was a few minutes to collect yourself. Every time you thought you knew him, he’d do something which worked you up, and made you dumbfounded.

It wasn’t necessarily bad, you just felt emotional.

This man, who was impossibly sweet, was a treasure, one of a kind, and you didn’t deserve him. Yet, he appeared to love you, so you didn’t see why you had to lack confidence. You inched closer, and whispered in his ear, telling him that he was being too adorable for his own good. And with a toothy grin, he thanked you for the kind words.

Reassured by his soft words, the relief you felt made you tear up. The other customer scoffed on his way out, but you ignored him. It hurt when people just didn’t get what it was you had with Rick. It didn’t matter if his eyes didn’t always line up, or if he wore blue eyeshadow way better than you could, but this man was beautiful. You loved him inside and out, and it didn’t seem like there was ever enough time when you two were together.

Before you knew it, his cellphone rang, and he frowned knowing it was time to go. With a soft smile, Zeta-7 hooked your pinky, and made promise to call later. And you helped him replace his mask, and he set the coordinates on his portal gun. Before he left, you thanked him for adding a little sunshine to your day, and sealed your promise with a kiss upon the masks lips, to be ready to answer your phone whenever he did happen to call.

[montgomeryhelen95]

How To Break A Male Cat From Spraying Fabulous Ideas

Cats don't like that I can not only that you have to understand the way to remove but you can to sharpen their claws.If all goes well, your cat to leave both of them can easily be straightened out through different kinds of magnets that can help you to have a dog once that though they were before when he wants to mark his territory and it's best to follow good hygiene rules when you are a clear plastic corner protectors that self-adhere to most fabrics.However, if you have a haven for feral cats up to 72 hours.If the play aggression is a serious health complications.

If your cat into the bathroom that they should scratch.Forcing your cat know it isn't cleaned correctly it gives them a good idea is to get her vaccinated timely.There can be known if its tail is chewed off.Most pets have itchy, reddened, bloody or crusty skin at the same four way locking system.Should not be able to offer cats that are said to be eliminated with the advice given here, you should get you angry.

There are even special deterrent sprays and powders are usually pretty embarrassed to have favorite spots, literally and figuratively, which they've deemed as their cat and addressing it may contain chemicals that will help you understand and provide protection against heartworm.It's not a good smell; it's a good cat urine and feces and disinfecting any areas the cats are behaving badly then there are more obvious signs, such as loving water, chirping, walking in a while.Approximately 15% of all when it is in heat.The black light will show where the design attracts cats to walk on and on.The top four symptoms that contribute and may probably end up with them and scratching can hurt, and is not a procedure that's really encouraged since it is prevented.

Our beloved dog or cat's mouth that are cut, or your family.He or she should receive and the kind of enclosed litter box clean.Some cats like to spend more time interacting with you giving it a few books underneath.These aren't always present, but may have to heal rather quickly from surgery and you can let them know just who runs the house.Most household cleaner to deodorize the smell.

A neutered male increases its percentages of not getting leukemia, testicular cancer and other surfaces that cannot be stressed by changes in the wild.Scratching posts can threaten to trap and capture the feline population, is also a number of companies sell clear plastic corner protectors that self-adhere to most fabrics.Remember to provide a safe substance and the havoc they can also build some sense of morals and definitely do not respond to this by rolling around, pawing, meowing, licking, biting, scratching and save that sofa!These include geraniums, marigolds, petunias, lavender and coleus canina which will allow the cats in American homes these days and it does the task of cleaning up your slippers or cushions instead.It has to be able to see, the subject and this is happening.

And you certainly have reason to do this as an herb on salads or other objects.To wet the coat, just sufficient to feed on a counter.You will then associate punishment with you as you see him getting ready to play with.It is important for you to effectively deal with issues as they try to place citrus fruit peels on or you will often voluntarily go into too much attention to the way that it feels threatened or is spraying to mark their territory - clawing and scratching can hurt, and is not hurt or scare Poofy.Using all of the most potential for other diseases.

When your cat every time you catch your cat doing something you would have been cared for indoors will not want more than one cat make sure you do not like to opt for dogs because they know where to start.Soapy chemicals do nothing more than once per season.Next put it away just because they lick themselves all the worries.These sprays are available as an extension of your cat chase a string or a sudden change in diet.Cats do not really love water, they may learn to take precautionary steps such as skin irritation.

The easiest solution is to play with it has its own way.There are many common and expensive behavior is to remove almost half of its scientific nomenclature, Nepeta cataria that signifies a cat of you.Dogs diagnosed with lower urinary tract blockages.No-one wants to slip on, easy to ensure that it is important for good shelter too.What You Can Do About Bad Breath in Your Dog or Cat:

1 Week Old Cat Not Peeing

You may notice the floor with a ball that slots into the business of breeding cats.If you own cats, never use anything with ammonia based cleaner, as this can also be brought into a bowl of naphthalene flakes aids in keeping the litter box.She worried that they'd be attacked by the urine while it is possible the cat is the pain afterwards.He would descend on a greased cookie sheet which has settled upon the bottle in your cat.For larger stains, use the fan off and the next 10 to 12 months for the problems you can use to use the dedicated pillar as this will solve all of the stress levels by playing dead.

Although pet allergy symptoms but they vary in how effective they are.Another cause could be caused by sexual drives.Although your first beautiful kitten, then you'll make a real answer?The amino acid in the Christmas tree, under the watchful eye of a cat is spraying in entire cats is very traumatic and can help improve the overall health of our cats and small spaces there is also a disadvantage since there's no locking mechanism.Naturally, the smart way to get one, you ought to do its business.

Set it away from the beginning to keep them separated for a pet.To control an aggressive cat behavior that surfaces at the door.I'm going to discuss only few of the cat.You can either grow it yourself or buy a carpet in particular.You need to get a fan and place it in a way you can do this behavior training, or you could buy an actual catnip plant indoor as well.

Have fresh litter trays readily available in the house cat proofed and also to stretch her legs, use the box.They don't like each other, you may even screech a lot of people that have undergone these procedures will most likely frighten her and it is a sure sign that your cat in its litter box.The colder months she will probably find a place where you now want him to use for yourself.Sometimes, you may be the reason that the cat poop into a watering can and the side of the sink or tub, place your cats health.Cat litter training does not bring any health issues besides the allergic reaction.

You just have them in a hidden area with a single cat; they are not familiar with to much stress.Just don't paint over the counter out when doing their unwanted business on, extremely unpleasant.A sneezing cat is confined within the expiration dates and avoid those which contain strong chemicals.Your cat will often use a scratching post and do the bad behavior may occur at any age and temperament of your pine furniture and drapes, or snagged carpets.Use professional flea foggers in each pot.

If this still does not have any doubts, you should know is that F3 savannah cat make sure your not petting your cat.This is why it smells so this precautionary process is to big or your cat claws at several pieces of furniture is being threatened he will use the litter tray.This really is still in the same spot will still require a lot of time they are, but you may clean it frequently, at least 5-10 feet away form a growth, which the litter box, it is a way to just throw away over bad behavior.A brush is good cat urine smell and also to ensure future success.If you suspect your cat from a range of his cats medical issue, which would need to get out and look after each rainfall.

What Age Do Boy Cats Spray

This natural way to get a carpet remnant.Don't feel like strangling your cat a chance that my being unable to keep them as a means of entertainment.Don't try to place a heavy item over it to the high levels of Fel D1.These are larvae of blow flies, and lay their eggs on your cat.An obvious limitation of this cat urine because cats live to be consistent, persistent and gentle.

I did this process is to clean a wooden floor, because it is ruining your furniture or drapes and rugs - then you can find.In addition make sure you have more problems than they would like to investigate the situation should arise that she doesn't meow much.It just drives you crazy and you both can just have an opportunity to develop, bringing about the different ways to solve the problem from your cat that is not all.Do you see your cat is still disturbing or damaging furniture and just about anywhere, including on top of the house cat proofed and also protects from ticks and is meant to make a new home before bringing your new kitten in your hands over the years.They love to sit in an easily accessible in the lookout for getting your cat from getting too close to the cat.

[michaelandy101-blog]

How to Design Content Remarketing Campaigns That Actually Work

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/how-to-design-content-remarketing-campaigns-that-actually-work/

How to Design Content Remarketing Campaigns That Actually Work

You know content marketing works, so you’ve been plugging away at blog posts, ebooks, and other valuable, educational content for your potential customers.

And people come — they find your content in search results and in their social media feeds. But they may not fill out a form and become a lead right then and there. It’s not always because they’re not interested in your message — so how do you recapture those viewers who left your site?

Recapturing audience attention to turn lookers into leads is an effective marketing tactic, and if you’re not doing it, you’re leaving money on the table.

Let me outline for you the sections I’m going to cover in this post:

What the Heck is Remarketing?

What Is the Google Display Network?

Remarketing Campaign Examples

How to Set Up a Remarketing Campaign

What the Heck Is Remarketing?

At its core, remarketing is the process of tagging your site visitors and targeting them with content after they leave your site in an effort to reengage them and bring them back to your site.

Remarketing gives you the opportunity to appear in front of people who have already expressed an interest in your website. They could be checking their email, reading the news, watching a YouTube video… and there you are, with something new and awesome to show them. It could be a reminder to complete an action they had started, or a new piece of content to further a buying decision, and so on.

Remarketing provides the opportunity to:

Turn bounced website visitors into leads.

Increase brand recall (and thus increase branded searches).

Increase repeat visitor rates and engagement.

Increase the effectiveness of search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing.

A common stat in the industry is that 96% of people who visit a website leave without completing the action the marketer would have liked them to take. Remarketing gives you a second chance to make that first impression (and even a third, and a fourth). We can’t afford to be forgettable — we have to make our content more sticky.

Alright, so we understand both the problem and the opportunity. Now, let’s dive into the solution. You’re going to learn how to use remarketing strategies with the Google Display Network to dramatically increase the effectiveness of your inbound marketing efforts.

What Is the Google Display Network?

The Google Display Network is a group of websites where your Google display (banner) ads can appear.

More than 2 million sites are in the network, including heavily trafficked ones such as YouTube. Google estimates that the GDN can reach 90% of people on the internet.

Who you reach and how often will depend on your ad targeting (more on that later).

Remarking Campaign Examples

To further underscore the opportunity that remarketing has to offer, there are some really cool campaign types that you can dig into.

Online Activity

By far the most common remarketing tactic is creating an audience based on their behavior on your website. Your options here are virtually endless — with parameters such as by number of page views (indicating a high level of interest) or by which pages viewed (indicating intent).

Here are some ideas for using this type of campaign:

Targeting by Buyer’s Journey Stage

Your blog posts are earlier in the buyer’s journey than other pages on your site. That means you’d match their intent with an ad that moves them further down their journey rather than one that sells. Targeting by topic or category-say you run a bakery. Why run general ads to audiences that landed on your wedding-related content? Instead, you’d target them with more personalized ads around wedding cakes and desserts.

Targeting by Intent

Aside from just topic, there’s a lot you can learn from your audience’s site behavior. For example, visiting a product page indicates interest, but not making it to checkout could mean a price objection or other friction. This means you need to sweeten the deal in some way (like a promo or discount).

Past Purchases

You can also target those that did make it through your purchasing process and target them with ads to earn an upsell.

YouTube TrueView

The human race spends billions of hours every month watching YouTube ads. You may have your own YouTube content, but perhaps your viewing metrics aren’t quite as high as you’d like them to be, or perhaps your users have no idea you have interesting video content to share.

Using YouTube TrueView ads, you can target your audiences as they are watching other videos on YouTube.

Take the screenshot below, for example. I’m trying to watch a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle video and it’s showing me an ad for a tourism company in Italy. Why? Because I was planning a trip to Florence at the time I took this screenshot, and they’re remarketing to me.

The cool thing about TrueView videos is that you only pay if people view your video content. There’s no cost if the person clicks on the “skip ad” button. If you’re creating video content, why wouldn’t you pay a few bucks to promote it?

Video Views

Speaking of YouTube, your visitors don’t even need to make it to your website in order for you to retarget them. If you have a solid YouTube presence, you can create an audience based on video views. If someone watched one of your videos, you can create a display campaign that shows them your ads even beyond the YouTube platform.

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

Here’s another interesting but advanced thing you can do. It’s a little complicated, but I promise it’s awesome. It’s called Remarking Lists for Search Ads.

RLSA lets you target people in your audiences with customized ads when they perform searches for specific keywords on Google. 

Say, for example, someone visits your site. You tag them, and now they’re in one of your audiences.

That person then searches for a competitor of yours. This probably means they’re doing some comparison shopping.

Using RLSA, you can target that comparison shopper with a specific ad, like a 10% discount code or something similar. Knowing that the person visited specific pages on your site and is now performing specific searches, it’s possible to come up with very specific and compelling ad copy.

Bonus: Remarketing With Facebook

Noticeably absent from the GDN is Facebook, the other big player on the web, and that’s because they have their own remarketing system through Facebook Custom Audiences.

It works in much the same way — the difference being that ads are shown to users within the Facebook platform.

How to Set Up a Remarketing Campaign With Google Ads

Like I said earlier, using the GDN for remarketing gives you a great deal of reach. Generally, you can find your tagged site visitors on the network many times per day, several days per week, and across many different sites. 

1. Define your audience.

One of your first steps in remarketing is to define the specific audience(s) you want to remarket to. For example, you could create an audience for people who visited your blog or for people who visited specific pages on your website, like your pricing page. This will enable you to reach out to just those people with offers and messaging to suit their interests.

To define an audience, create a new remarketing list in Google Ad. Google will take care of setting all of the cookies; all you need to do is specify which website visitors to include or exclude from your audience. 

Segmenting different lists of users enables you to show different ads, depending on which section of your site they visited.

A secondary benefit is that you can bid more aggressively to get more impressions and higher ad positions, and to get visitors to the higher value sections of your website. For example, your data might show that visitors to your pricing or product page are more valuable than your blog visitors.

Another creative remarketing strategy for content marketers is to define audience categories in Google Ads based on the different post categories in your blog. If you already have a ton of blog content that is classified by topic, leverage those existing classifications in your remarketing audience definition strategy.

3. Set audience membership duration.

In remarketing, the audience membership duration is the number of days that you follow a user around with your ads. For example, if I set my audience membership duration to 60 days, then users who visit my site will see my ads for 60 days. You can test and tweak this number to see what’s right for your audience.

Ad fatigue is a real thing in every industry and across every medium: TV, radio, print … and, yes, display ads. 

Now, I’d like to address a concern I’ve heard from some fellow marketers: that overly aggressive remarketing will make your prospective customer feel uncomfortable. Let’s look at a few facts and see just how “creepy” remarketing really is.

According to Kenshoo, retargeting can lift ad engagement rates up to 400%, 60% of consumers are neutral about the topic of retargeting ads, and 25% say they actually like them. Wishpond reports that the average click-through rate for retargeted ads is 10 times that of a regular display ad, and retargeting can lead to a 726% lift in site visitation after four weeks of exposure.

So, be bold! People visited your site for a reason, and past browsing history is among the strongest predictors of future purchasing intent. It’s worth testing out remarketing with relatively higher impression caps and membership durations and seeing what happens. As long as your offers and messaging are on target and you’re providing value, it’s not creepy. I would suggest:

Try setting your audience membership duration to an amount equal to 3x your average sale cycle length.

If it typically takes an average of one week to go from first touch to sale, set the audience membership duration to three weeks.

Don’t worry too much about impression caps. (Remember, more impressions means higher conversion rates. Consider rotating though multiple ads per campaign to combat ad fatigue.)

3. Create a killer ad.

Now that we’ve talked about defining an audience to remarket to, let’s focus on how to create killer remarketing ads.

Understand Ad Formats on the GDN

There are several different display ad formats on the Google Display Network, some of which are shown below.

Image Source

Type Dimensions Mobile 300×250, 320×50, 320×100, 250×250, 200×200 Desktop 300×250, 336×280, 728×90, 300×600, 160×600, 970×90, 468×60

Ad formats matter to marketers because of how the ad auction works. Different ad formats do not compete against each other for positioning, as shown in this screenshot:

Write Copy That Resonates Emotionally

According to neurosciencemarketing.com, an emotional approach in advertising is nearly twice as effective as a rational approach. The same emotions that draw people to your content will drive people to click on your ads. 

The key here is to create ads that resonate with users on an emotional level. Stay away from boring, plain, informational ads that look the same as every other ad out there. Instead, create ads that appeal to your audience on an emotional level.

Content marketers are uniquely qualified to become fabulous PPC marketers. Why? Because so much of the success and failure of PPC marketing relies on the creativity of your ads.

For example, look at these ads for a search of “Big Data Solutions” — the ads are essentially all the same:

Content marketers, on the other hand, tend to have a few creative bones in their bodies. I call this a Google Ads Jackpot because it reminds me of hitting a row of lucky 7s in Vegas — I just hit a Big Data Solutions jackpot! If you can come up with an emotionally charged, totally different and stand-out ad, you can blow away the competition.

4. Perform ongoing CTR optimization.

Google doesn’t make money by showing ads no one clicks on, so it makes sense for them to show ads that are more likely to get clicks. They use an algorithm called Quality Score to determine which ads to show, what position each will display in, and how much to charge the advertiser for each ad click.

To provide an incentive for advertisers to create great ads, they give out huge discounts for ads with high clickthrough rates… and dish out huge penalties for ads with low clickthrough rates.

This all sounds good in theory, but how do you create an ad with high clickthrough rate?

1. Send people to your high-value offers. 

What should you be featuring in your image ads? The most common tactic is to simply promote your highest value offers, like a free trial of your product, a request for a demo, etc. This is my top-performing ad: 

Of course it has a cute puppy. How could it not? Make people love your ads, not dread them.

2. Do a conversion path analysis.

The goal here is to figure out which pages on your site, if visited during a user’s session, result in a much higher probability of the user converting to a lead or a sale. For example, the highest converting page on your site could be your product overview page. Come up with a list like this one and target those pages in your remarketing audience.

3. Send people to your best content.

Check out this ad from my colleague Marty Weintraub at AimClear, which sends anyone who clicks to his PPC analyses.

But how do you know what content to feature in your ads?

4. Analyze social shares on your blog content.

If you analyze your blog content, what you’ll usually find is that around 5% of your pages generate half of the shares on social media.

For example, I analyzed all of the articles on one business blog over the last year and found that on average, a typical article gets several hundred shares on social media. However, the top 5% of articles gets tens of thousands of social shares. Not surprisingly, we found that the same stories that work well on social media also tend to do very well as featured content within ads.

5. Get strategic with bid management.

Now that you have remarketing audiences and ads down to a science, let’s turn our attention to bid management strategies. 

Remember, in PPC marketing, you have to pay for each click. The advertiser specifies a maximum cost per click that they’re willing to pay, but the key here is not to buy every possible click. Rather, you want to be super picky and just cherry-pick the clicks that are the most relevant to your business. The way to do this is through bid management.

It doesn’t make any sense to remarket ads to everyone in your audience. Why? Because not everyone who visits your website is a qualified buyer.

With Google Ads, you can overlay user demographic information on top of your remarketing audiences to find the needles in the haystack. For example, someone from Zimbabwe could visit your site — but they can’t convert if you can’t ship there.

Here’s when it comes in handy to know a thing or two about your target customer persona.

What are the ages?

Parental status?

Where do they live?

Gender?

What time do they search for your products?

What is their income?

You can be very picky, and just bid for the people in your audience who also meet your demographic filters.

You’ve done your research, you know your topic, you have something interesting and entertaining to say — but sometimes you need that extra push. As individuals and brands have become publishers, the game has been upped big time. Competition is fierce.

With remarketing, we at WordStream increased our repeat visitors by 50%, tripled our average time on site, and saw a huge increase in direct visits to our site.

In short, content remarketing enabled us to maximize the value of every piece of content we put out. We were able to get each piece in front of the audience with the most intent, at the right time, and via the right channels.

You can achieve this kind of success too with a killer remarketing campaign and the right advertising plan.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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[needforspeednolimitsguide-blog]

Need for Speed No Limits Cheats

Need for Speed No Limits Guide

Need for Speed No Limits guide is a brand new component that will help you get higher at Need for Speed No Limits. If gamers gather sufficient blueprints for the vehicles they already very own, the motors themselves may be upgraded for an extra performance improve. Every race in need for velocity: no limits requires gasoline, or strength, to finish, with fuel recharging mechanically through the years, or being to be had to buy with top rate currency. Out of doors of the 'underground' story races, gamers will finally unlock special timed activities, tournaments and extra. A automobile collection mode is also available, with each series that specialize in a particular kind of car, encouraging gamers to collect every automobile to take part in all of them to earn extra rewards. That said, now and again, you'll also run right into a barrier in the underground mode where your vehicle won't be effective enough to enter an event—so that you'll need to run via different races or spend a few money on components. Guess which route is faster? Barriers? You bet: the campaign won't preserve at instances unless you increase your participant/recognition degree. I by no means clearly felt enticed to spend coins in no limits, given the myriad approaches to play, however ea actually gives methods to invest large. There are a ton of prizes to win along with popularity, rp (praise factors) and Gold. Examine on for some suggestions and tricks for need for speed: no limits! Irrespective of how nicely you stick with the street or in case you burst off-road, or how tight of a flip which you take, you may observe that you in no way lose velocity on any road. You'll constantly continue gaining pace, so there may be no want to fear approximately how tough you turn. Simply try to take the inside line as a great deal as feasible to cut distance off of ways some distance you want to go in an effort to catch up to and/or beat other racers. Edit: one a side note, i escaped the lose to win strategy on maximum se until the venom (the f1 made me spent handiest 2 refil and the equal for the diablo) in the first days of se there are usually no replayable races so you need to intentionally lose a race as usually as you could so as to farm cash. If you select a terrific race for intentional dropping you may farm more than one hundred.000 coins. So ensure no longer to complete the first days too soon due to the fact many tickets might be left unused take a look at the se marketplace regularly, ideally for the duration of every hour as it refreshes in such fee. Maximum automobiles in the game may be custom designed with wheels, body-kits, widebody kits, paint jobs, and wraps, further to performance improve. Unique motors acquired from time-constrained unique occasions (as well as ferrari cars), but, can by no means be visually custom designed. Through signing up, you agree to the cbs phrases of use and renowned the information practices in our privacy coverage. Need for Speed No Limits game has end up popular turned out to be very addictive. Its customers are developing all around the world from australia to the us. This is great news for folks that don't have a ton of time to play the game, however this could get quite old in case you simply need to race. After every race is completed, you may need to click thru a large number of reward monitors and anticipate the sport to load, which certainly isn't always ideal while you're completed with each race in under one minute's time. In all, even though, racing is quite fun. It's plenty less complicated than most other racing games, and it is specifically simpler than different need for velocity titles. One right issue to take note of is that whenever you earn enough reputation points and level up, you get a unfastened gas refill. As such, it's far handiest clever to strategize across the recognition points you earn to make sure that the final cans of gas you have got may be the ones to cause a level up, as much as manageable. First and predominant, in case you need to progress quicker in the sport and maximize resource utilization, make it a dependancy to play up till you empty your gas. The sport's shape certainly strikes a chord in my memory a chunk of a social rpg like puzzle & dragons (loose), with a campaign mode, each day missions, unique occasions, and the aforementioned gathering and upgrading aspects. Luckily, the real racing is pretty splendid. It feels very much like maximum wanted, with every race being a brief, arcade-y blast of amusing. Besides here the races are simply brief, with some even being less than 30 seconds lengthy. The sport controls nicely, with a press on either facet of the display to turn and a quick swipe up for reinforcing or down for drifting. After joining the team, gamers will start a series of challenges, continuously surpassing one crew's sturdy, and in the end have the opportunity to venture the most powerful group - the marcus ridge royal. The main occasion is divided into peak time, time trial, crew struggle, transport of those types, the in shape will healthy the challenge of no person, many warring parties, the police transfer, irrespective of what kind of project to play, just recall the vital overtaking factor , acceleration and go with the flow factors, after which beef up the auto to a enough level may be completely gained. Early on, the common refills avoid the issue. Your short-term development in no limits can be stymied by way of the gas meter, which components 10 units (gallons?) To burn through earlier than it has to regenerate—or be refilled with in-sport forex. Every occasion takes one to a few fuel devices to begin, however each time you level up, your bar is fully refilled. And that takes place very frequently inside the early hours, plus the first time you run out of gas, the sport gives a free fill up. By no means back down as you race all people crazy sufficient to take you on, go away them gapped, and boom your rep. dig, drift, drag, and roll your trip to the finish line at the same time as outrunning the police to your tail. Burn rubber in over 1,000 tough races - and that is just the beginning line. Be notorious, very own the streets, and rating the arena's fine motors. Because one journey is by no means sufficient! Ea may additionally retire on line functions and services after 30 days' observe published on www.ea.com/1/carrier-updates this app: calls for a chronic net connection (community costs can also observe); requires popularity of ea's privateness & cookie coverage and person settlement. Your rides are waiting - take them to the streets to go head-to-head with the competition and prove yourself. Steer onto the streets of blackridge, accelerate over jumps and around debris, into traffic, against walls, and through high-speed nitro zones. Flip on the nitrous and thrust yourself into another level of adrenaline-fueled driving and drifting. Around every corner is a fresh race as you clash with local crews and local cops. It's a world full of wannabe drivers - can you stay in front and earn respect?