#i really need to boost up the numbers of dogs on this blog though the disparity between cats and dogs makes me sad

[robocracker]

I posted 1,864 times in 2022

That's 384 more posts than 2021!

54 posts created (3%)

1,810 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@medievalthymes

@ocopio

@stickyyong

@psikonauti

@pendraegon

I tagged 819 of my posts in 2022

#kinnporsche - 220 posts

#art - 168 posts

#cats - 98 posts

#killing eve - 55 posts

#his dark materials - 28 posts

#ygo dm - 25 posts

#all of us are dead - 20 posts

#sweet home - 17 posts

#dogs - 17 posts

#around the world in 80 days - 15 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#you probably also annoy your followers when you liveblog your discovery of a basic tumblr feature that they no doubt already know all about

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

okay so on one level i can appreciate that Casualty has Paula's baby taken in the same episode that Robyn finds out she's pregnant, especially with that moment on the two benches, with Dylan representing Paula's desire to keep her child, and Robyn so obviously not wanting to be pregnant...

but god, just once i'd like to see a character get pregnant, decide to abort, and be done with it. not every pregnancy on tv needs to be a drawn-out drama where the only inevitable option is keeping it!

17 notes - Posted February 7, 2022

#4

a really big part of me wants this kid to open the door to the roof - obviously, because i’ve spent seven episodes getting attached to this group, you can’t let them die now!

but then there’s another part of me that still vividly remembers being a 6-10 year old girl getting the shit kicked out of me on a regular basis, while the other students just laughed and let it happen.

would i have opened the door?

17 notes - Posted January 30, 2022

#3

finally started watching kinnporsche, and it’s only been a day but i already want five more seasons of this shit

30 notes - Posted June 25, 2022

#2

after all the shit he’s pulled, there’s something very lovely about watching gwinam lose his fucking mind from ear-ache

35 notes - Posted January 30, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

so my family’s got the funeral on (they’re not royalists), and while i’m not watching the ceremony, i did catch bits of the procession to the abbey. and i just...

look. i knew it was gonna be ridiculous. but i didn’t expect it to feel unsettling on two different fronts.

first there’s the obscene wealth and pageantry of the crown. ordinary people had their funerals cancelled today, out of ~respect~, and all i can think about is how much time and money those people had to pay in the middle of a cost of living crisis, that will now have to be done again because of rescheduling. there are people who might not be able to attend those rescheduled funerals because they could only get time off work/school for the original date. all of these ordinary people having to make time for logistics in the midst of their grieving. meanwhile, one family gets to take precedence over everyone else, on an unimaginable scale.

it’s insane to me how many people there were for the queen’s procession. not people attending the funeral, just people following the coffin to the doors. and all of these servicemen looking like robots, everything in perfect sync, from their steps to the goddamn removal of their hats.

but then there’s also the frequent close-up shots of the coffin. and it’s like. don’t get me wrong. i have no sympathy for the woman who was an active participant in the colonialist horrors that this country inflicted on the rest of the world.

but there’s something deeply grotesque to me about her funeral being a televised spectacle. especially with how many close-ups there are of the crown on top of the coffin. really hammers home, quite unintentionally, how utterly unnatural it is to elevate one family over everyone else. millions of people stamped down, and the people at the top are reduced to symbolic objects. whichever way you look at it, humanity loses.

171 notes - Posted September 19, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[dandelionflower]

I saw on one of your post that said to send you prompts sooo... can I request A childhood friend AU either Felix or Marinette moves away and then reuniting in college in France at age 14 in Felix's school with the Quantic Kids.

It was a pretty normal day, which probably meant something was going to happen. If it wasn’t a normal day, something was bound to happen as well; life in Paris hadn’t been normal in months. It being a normal day meant that Marinette was late. Super late. Way, way, so very late she might as well be early for the next thing kind of late. So late that- (oh, she’s beginning to catch onto why she’s so late.)

She knew even as she was shoving toothpaste into her bag for Tikki and brushing her teeth with frosting (wait, switch that) that she would be late, and her erratic movements were enough to convince her parents to write her an excuse. Not that anyone could blame her; she had to deal with three akumas in one night. Three akumas. Who could blame her, or anyone for that matter, for being late when there were three emotionally-stunted teens each wreaking havoc upon the city? It was a wonder that anyone else got to class on time, except for Alya, who Marinette was pretty sure didn’t sleep.

Marinette kissed both parents goodbye, thanking them again for the excuse note. They shoved a box of pastries into her hands, as was their habit whenever she didn’t leave school fast enough.

They had done it since her first day at her new school, when she was tiny and frightened of new people; having the same best friend since birth would do that. Her father had shoved a box of macaroons in her arms and her mother placed a bracing arm on her back. They told her what to do and she tried her hardest to follow their instructions, standing up straight at the front of the class, introducing herself, and offering cookies. Unfortunately, that was the same day Chloe Bourgeois was joining public school, and compared to cookies, her offer of money to ten year-olds wasn’t all that effective. And Chloe was excellent at holding a grudge.

Of course, she ended up with friends: Alya, Nino, Adrien, and everyone in art class, but it was hard to go about her first couple years of school without anyone in her corner. Becoming Ladybug really gave her the boost of confidence she needed to break out of her shell and make new friends, and now she had a whole class full.

She stopped in the classroom to put her stuff away, pausing for a second to breathe. How was she out of shape? She’s Ladybug, for heavens’ sakes! Those three akumas really took it out of her. Luckily enough, she had gym class up next. (Can you hear the sarcasm?)

“Girl! Where have you been?” Alya smiled up at her from where she was stretching her hamstrings.

“Sorry Alya, slept in too much.” She fell into place beside her, choosing one of the more advanced stretches to accomplish instead. “Three akumas yesterday; couldn’t get much sleep.”

“You need to get over yourself, Mari. Ladybug and Chat Noir always win against the akumas, this fear of yours is ridiculous.” Alya glanced at her with an incredulous look, but when she saw her intense yoga pose, the look shifted and she yelled over her shoulder. “Adrien! Get over here! Marinette’s doing her physics-defying stuff again!”

Adrien joined them, laughing at Alya’s exaggerated despair. “It’s really not that hard. You just have to-” He fell into the position easily and began matching her movements. “There.”

“How on EARTH?” Alya shrieked and threw herself to the right, toppling into Nino, who was in a shaky warrior two. They ended up in a heap on the floor, Alya staring in horror at the two still upright and Nino staring bewildered at his girlfriend. “How are you two doing that?”

“Well, I don’t know about Marinette,” Adrien moved into an upward dog, “but father insisted that I be physically active in some way and my mother used to do yoga. So I picked it up.”

Nino leaned close to Alya’s ear. “I’m not sure whether to add this to the ‘reasons Gabriel sucks’ list or be happy he has this thing with his mom.”

“Both I guess?”

“What about you Marinette?” He moved into a handstand-like position. “Why do you know all this stuff?”

My superhero moonlighting requires me to be as stretchy as a rubber band, so my partner, who is also a furry, taught me yoga. “My first best friend and I learned tai chi, and this just felt like the next step.” Not a lie, just not why she chose yoga.

“Okay, you’re fine.” Alya pointed a finger between them both. “But next time you do something weird, I’m starting a cryptid blog about you.”

“You don’t have the guts.” Marinette leaned in and Adrien flipped down to join her. It felt familiar, like deja vu; not her crush, she killed that with fire once he started dating Kagami.

“Heey!” Nino opened his arms in front of them. “Let’s change the subject, what about that new student?”

“There’s a new student?” Marinette turned to the rest of the class, who were all stretching dutifully. No new faces whatsoever. “Where are they?”

“Not here, he went to the office over a scheduling conflict. Seems like a jerk.” Alya pulled an arm behind her head, glaring with derision in the direction of the office.

“Alya, don’t.” Adrien nudged her with a foot. “First impressions don’t mean anything, right Marinette?” He shot her a playful glance.

“Don’t remind me.”

“That one was a misunderstanding. Mister Ice Cold over there doesn’t even say a word, just nods and walks into the back of the class. At least Adrien did something and he asked for forgiveness afterwards. Frosty doesn’t even look at us.” With that final comment, Alya joined the rest of the class in dodgeball.

“Is she alright?” Adrien side-eyed her.

“Yeah, she just really hates people acting superior to her. Let’s go.” Marinette shrugged it off and joined her in picking teams.

Dodgeball was a mess; it always was. The entirety of the class had been akumatized at one point, and some of the strategic prowess remained. Marinette’s team always won, which everyone attributed to her agility, but it was really that Ladybug had more practice in strategy. The only way the teams could be considered even was if Adrien was against her.

She still won; she always won. When it was all over, each team, sweating and exhausted, gravitated to the center line to shake hands and congratulate one another on a game well played. Adrien met her in the middle with a weary smirk. His hair was disheveled, but there was a spark in his eyes that made him seem more familiar than he already was.

“I almost got you that time.” He gripped her hand tight.

“All that training with Kagami is really upping your game.” She quipped, shaking his hand. “Better luck next time.”

With that promise of another match, everyone vacated the gym to the locker rooms, where Alya continued to warn Marinette against the new student.

“Even Chloe doesn’t like him and he seems like the kind of rich boy that would be right up her alley.”

“Alya, I get it. You aren’t the new guy’s biggest fan.”

“And the feeling’s mutual too.” She griped.

“So just don’t talk to him; it works with Chloe. Why not this guy too?” She wrapped an arm around her shoulder and led her to their desk.

“Fine, but I don’t have to like it.”

“You don’t have to like him either.” She pulled out her notebook and began writing down the date.

Before Alya could make another passive aggressive comment about the mystery new boy, Miss Bustier walked in, the usual skip in her step. “Class, I know I already introduced you to our new student but since some of us weren’t here for the first period,” Marinette ducked her head with a sheepish smile, “I’ve decided there’s nothing better than a redo. So, here’s Mister Culpa, introducing himself again.”

Culpa?

A boy with pale blond hair and paler skin strode into the room. He wore what could only be called business-casual, all monochrome. His eyes were a one-in-a-million breathtaking ice blue.

Culpa?

“Hello.” His eyes scanned the room emotionlessly. “As I previously said, my name is Felix Culpa and I am from-” He stopped when he reached her. “Nette?”

“Felix.” She breathed, barely even daring to say it louder, lest he disappear.

He was a blur, climbing the steps and reaching her in the time it took her to stand. There were no words when they hugged, other than the other’s name. She was on the tips of her toes, pressing her forehead to his collarbone. Felix got tall.

“I missed you.” He whispered, squeezing just a little tighter.

“I missed you too.” She laughed, pulling back to see his face. He was crying. She was crying.

“What in Ladybug’s name is happening?” Alya’s shout broke them from whatever pocket dimension they were inhabiting together. “You two know each other?”

“Alya, this is Felix.” She turned to look at her, hand still on Felix’s shoulder. “He was my best friend from birth to ten.”

“Was?” He bumped her hip with his. “Didn’t know I’ve been replaced, Netta.”

“I couldn’t contact you after I moved! I was ten and your mom never told us what her new number was.” She punched his elbow. “What are you doing here?”

“My family moved. I didn’t know you were in this area too; imagine my surprise when I see what the current events in Paris are and find out that there are superheroes and my best friend is now a borderline celebrity.” He chuckled, running a hand through his hair.

“We have to catch up some time.” She grabbed his arm.

“Certainly, maybe not here and now, though.” He gestures to the class around them, avidly watching the exchange.

“Right.” She released his arm and rubbed the back of her head awkwardly. “Coffee and macarons later then? My place?”

“I would like nothing more.” He quirked a smile that would seem tiny to anyone else, but to Marinette was as bright as the sun. “Until then.” Felix squeezed her hand and moved to the back of the class with a little wave.

She returned it, a goofy smile definitely on her face as she sat back down.

“Well,” Miss Bustier coughed, “since Felix has been so thoroughly introduced to everyone else, I suppose I should start the lesson.” And she dove into a spiel about the first World War.

“Dang, girl. Is it just me, or do you have a date after class?” Alya whispered to her from behind her textbook.

“It’s not a date! We’re just catching up.”

“Sure.”

She spared a quick glance at Felix, who was nose-deep in his book, just like when they were kids. He had such sharp features, and upon reconsideration, his eyes looked even more beautiful than she remembered. Felix grew up just fine without her. Really fine, in fact.

It took Marinette a couple seconds to realize she was staring, and when she did, her head turned back to the front of the room so fast she swore she heard a snap.

This was... going to be complicated.

[haikyuuscreaming]

omg hi! you started off your blog greatly, im so proud of you! do you think you can write an angsty scenario for akaashi? where his crush likes this guy and wants help from him and he feels all sad :( but she ends up confessing to him! i love your writing so far, keep it up!

UMM so i accidentally got really invested in this so it’s WAYY longer than a drabble and i often write long stuff bc of ao3 so this might sound a little more like that kinda fanfic style instead of a tumblr scenario? mainly cos im really a sucker for this stuff hehehe love you anon

also ! the request made it sound sort of akaashi-centric so i hope you dont mind? there will still be a lot of reader-chan here though! please dont leave yet and i hope u enjoy

again ALSO i wrote this half on my laptop half on my phone so please dont mind if it seems a lil clunky in some areas 

3092 words jesus ok here you go

-

Crushes weren’t necessarily a new sensation for Akaashi. Just an uncommon one. In fact, the last time he remembers even being attracted to someone was in first grade when everyone had a crush on this popular girl. He’s not even sure if he really liked her, or just found the idea of it interesting.

Now, second year of high school, Akaashi finds himself in trouble. Because for once, he really, really, really likes this girl. You. 

He can’t even fake himself out of this, because every damn time he looks at you, he feels all warm and tingly and his stomach feels less calm and he can hear his heart bump against his ribcage and god, his face even flushes a little bit.

(A little bit inconvenient when he accidentally finds himself staring at you and daydreaming.)

Akaashi doesn’t like this feeling.

I mean, yeah, Akaashi has somewhat of a sense of confidence in his looks, manners, and ability to make friends. He’s not exactly the top in each subject he thinks, but it lets him pass through high school without too much of a depressingly lonely life. He could easily befriend you and steal your heart, his inner ego-brat says.

But.. but what if you reject him?

He should become closer to you.

(For the record, he doesn’t not like the feeling. He kind of likes the serotonin boost you give him. But he definitely, more than kind of likes you.

A lot more.)

And one day, in the spring, he finds himself paired up with a special biology partner. With familiar, sparkling eyes and the cutest, most gorgeous voice he’s ever heard that always makes his heart fucking backflip.

Akaashi doesn’t think he can survive this.

His teacher blares, “Start brainstorming ideas for your science fair project! It’s due in a month, you know!”, but Akaashi blocks out the noise because all he can focus on is you, goddamn it. He can only focus on the way you push your hair out of your face, the way your lips upturn into the most stunning smile he’s ever had the fate of encountering, and he really hopes he doesn’t get h-

“Akaashi-kun?”

(Fuck you and your completely gorgeous voice that drives him up the wall and makes him want to kiss you.)

“Oh– sorry, yeah?” He kind of hates himself for how his voice lilted a pitch higher.

You laugh, sounding like a goddess. He hopes that it means you don’t hate him. “Ahaha, I was just wondering if you have any ideas for the science fair? It’s a pretty big chunk of our grade, and I am… not the smartest when it comes to AP Bio..”

Akaashi thinks quite the opposite, but he isn’t currently in the position to contradict you.

“Um…” He pauses and thinks furiously. He comes up with some borderline generic idea that has enough room for a unique twist. And your eyes brighten.

“Waaaoo, Akaashi-kun’s a genius, hm?”

(God, he thinks he might have a little more than a crush on that teasing grin and glittering pair of eyes.)

He musters the courage to smile without looking stupid. “Of course.”

Two weeks later, he wants to sink into a hole.

Yes, it might have been his request that you two meet up to work on the project, but that was because he knew you were a procrastinator! You would start the project the night before if he’d let you!

But it was not his idea to do it at his house.

Now he has to live with the fact that you’re lying on HIS bed, spread-eagled in your sweater and shorts, complaining about how lazy you are.

(He wonders how you’re so comfortable about wearing shorts to a male classmate’s house. You two aren’t even that close, although you claim otherwise.)

“Come on, get up,” he rolls his eyes. “We have work to do.”

“But I’m so tiiiiiredddd… and lazyyyy…. wouldn’t it be such a gentlemanly act of Akaashi-kun to do the project for me?” You flash him a sweet smile while stretching out even more on the bed.

Snorting, he watches you sink into his mattress and roll around idly. “Hey, don’t you need the grade? You can’t pass if you make me do your work.”

Sighing, you hum in defeated content. “Well, it was worth a try.” You reach out your hand and tousle his wavy hair, and he almost flinches at the touch. He hates to say it but he loves it so much that you’re so affection with him, and Akaashi knows he would give anything to keep you teasing him with all this attention.

“Yeah.. yeah, it was,” he murmurs to himself before letting himself sit down next to you. He notices how you scrunch your body from a spread-eagle to a cute, curled up position to make room for him.

“Mm, so how are we gonna do this?” you ask, with a subtle mixture of bored and curious seeping into your tone. Then, he watches your features melt into a warm, mischievous smile as you hum, “Unless you just wanna nap and cuddle or something.”

(Holy fuck.)

Akaashi forces himself to scowl playfully and he shakes his head, sighing loudly in mock disappointment. “I don’t know what to do with you.” And equally as teasing, he adds, “I should just kick you out and not treat you to lunch if you’re going to be like this.”

“Noooooo!!!” you whine in this adorably frustrated and threatening voice. “Don’t you dare starve me or I’m feeding you to the rats.”

He chuckles. “See, that’s what I thought.”

But of course, your face wraps into a devilish grin as you say in a singsong voice and throw your arms around him (which makes him flush and makes his heart go WABAM), “It doesn’t matter though, ‘cause I got this whole-ass meal right here~”

“Shut up.”

(But you both know he never means it.)

Thanks to Akaashi (and your obliging albeit lazy participation), you two blow the science fair out of the way and get an A. He’s never seen you so delighted about a grade.

“I’m so happy~” you never shut up about how grateful you are for him, not that he’s complaining. “This is probably the highest mark I’ve ever gotten in this class.”

“Don’t over exaggerate. You’re not too bad at Bio,” Akaashi remarks. “You just need a tutor, probably, if you’re struggling.”

(By the way, he is ecstatic that you two are ACTUALLY FRIENDS!!! He’s even met your dog!!)

“Hmmmm…” You eye him warily before shrugging. “Whatever you say, Akaashi-kun.” Your eyes flit around before returning on him, and you start rambling about the newest anime you’ve gotten into and how it’s practically on-par with the manga, and how hot one of their characters are-

(For some reason Akaashi really zeroes in on that part.)

He really feels like he has to contribute something to the conversation, so he puts in, “Wow, [Name]-san, you’re such a fangirl.”

You snort loudly and put two peace-signs to your face like some kawaii anime girl, doing this mock-sweet smile. “Waaaooo, you’re rightttt. I’m Akaashi-kun’s number one fan!! He’s so cute when he’s yelling at me to do my work and super hot when he helps me with homew-”

He swears to god his face is radiating an inhuman amount of heat and he rolls his eyes before shaking his head and jabbing your side lightly. “Didn’t I tell you not to say that?”

“Ummm, maybe.” Your ‘innocent’ grin tells him otherwise. “But you know, you’re right, Akaashi-kun,” you cross your arms and give your cute little smirk again. “I am a genius, and I’m suuuper good at Bio. I just need someone to channel it.” And you lean forward until both your noses are touching, and Akaashi thinks he’s about to explode. “So maybe you could help me out?”

The subtle pleading undercurrent in your voice compels Akaashi to straighten up a little bit without flushing even redder. Keep cool, keep cool.

(He prays that his skill of keeping a poker face will hide the blood rushing around in his dick.)

“Well, what time?”

This time around, he finds himself at your house instead. You both are sitting at your desk, ‘working’ on your math and Bio homework. In other words, just talking.

He’s confident now in that the two of you are close friends. He’s learned that from afar, you were a sweet and confident yet perfectly kind girl. That was the girl he based his feelings off of. During your Bio project, he found the cheeky, sly and vibrant yet chill girl who always teased him but was still nonetheless sweet.

And now, under that facade, you were an anxious mess with a shit-ton of insecurities.

(He thinks it’s funny how you boast that you’re just like Shrek. You have layers.)

Akaashi glances at you, groaning with your head down onto the table. “I hate math..” he hears you grumble.

“Hey, you’re not too bad. You just have to be careful when plugging in your equations,” he counters.

“But what if I can’t remember my equations??”

“We both know you’re fine at remembering them.”

“I’m gonna fail.”

“Have faith in yourself, because I do.” And Akaashi is being completely honest. His confidence in you being just fine and being able to pass all your classes is strong because he’s seen you work (after procrastinating). “You just have to work on not putting things off until the last minute.”

You make a frustrated noise before resting your chin on your propped hand. “Sometimes I feel like I’m just.. destined to be set back, y’know? Like, everything I do is gonna somehow backfire on me.”

He knows the feeling, especially late at night in bed, stressing over what tomorrow might bring him.

“And like… I have this whole thing set up for me. When people know me as a classmate, I’m an average student, right? Then when we’re like… ‘friends’, I’m all weird and tease-y.” You let out a loud sigh. “And to the unlucky people who get to this stage, I’m a mess.”

“Stop.” Akaashi’s surprised at how firm he is. “I’m grateful to have met you and to have become your friend, [Name]. You’re going to be fine, you need to trust yourself more. Because I trust you more than anything.”

(Yes, he is on first-name basis with you!! Yes, he trusts you even more than he might even trust Bokuto!!)

Your lips twitch into a small smile, one that he’s grown to love and adore. He’s confident that he’s so fucking deep in love and he doesn’t know how to move on. “You really think so?”

“Of course I do.” He flicks some crumpled-up post-it at you. “Since we’re not doing any homework anytime soon, what else do you want to talk about?”

Your gaze becomes a little more shy and nervous. “Umm… Weeell, I need help.”

“I mean, why else would I be here?”

“No, seriously, Keiji-kun. Seriously!!” You throw mock-fit, despite obviously looking anxious.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m listening. Sorry.”

“Uh. Um, so…” You blink and pretend to look focused on doodling on the corner of your math paper. “There’s this dude I like. Like, I reaaally like him, which is surprising even for me.” You laugh a little bit, and as Akaashi feels his heart start to tear in half, he forces out a chuckle to match. “He’s suuuper pretty– I think that’s the word for it? Pretty. And he’s kinda funny in his own way, and he’s really sweet and listens to me all the time even when I don’t deserve his time. And I dunno, I think he might like me back? Also, I really really really like him. But I don’t really know how to confess…

“Because you know, I’m kinda wack like that, haha. I’ll probably screw up the confession and make things worse, and, well, I need help.” You finish your ramble with a loud breath and you collapse your head onto the table, groaning.

“Uh–” Fuck, oh fuck him, fuck his life. “I mean… I think just a heartfelt confession would do? Something simple and sweet that says you really like him, in case somehow your words don’t work.” Akaashi feels like he’s sweating, a lot, and he feels even more frustrated than ever. His heart is crashing against his ribcage, and his mind is a fucking mess.

You frown a little bit, and suddenly a gush of words fly out of your mouth like a stream bursting from a dam. “Oh my god, what if I’m reading the signs all wrong and he doesn’t at all like me back? I mean, I wouldn’t blame him because I’m kinda ugly and have this weird personality thing going on and I’m shit at math and Bio-”

“Stop.” Akaashi forces himself to intervene, mainly because 1) you’re literally the light of his life and 2) he feels like he has to leave really soon after dealing with the news. “Shut up, [Name]. You aren’t ugly at all, and I, for one, enjoy your weird personality. And I already told you, you’re fine with academics.” He makes himself make eye contact with you, peering up from your arm covering your face, and says, “If he rejects you, he isn’t worth your time at all and you should move on.”

(Preferably with me.)

He watches you exhale, like he just unwound a tight spring from inside of you, and your shoulders relax and you melt from your anxious state, just a little bit. “You’re right. If.. if he doesn’t feel the same, I’ll just forget about him.”

“Because you’re a genius.” Akaashi tries to hype you up, but he still feels like crumbling. Falsely checking his phone, he stretches and stands up. “I have to go now, sorry. My mom asked me to pick up my little sister from tutoring.”

“Huh, already?” Confusion flits across your face, and it hurts him even more to just leave you after you confided in him, but he knows he has to leave before he says something he might regret. “Oh, okaayy.. see you tomorrow then. Thanks for helping me out.” You yawn before standing up to hug him goodbye.

“No problem.” He says it casually, but Akaashi feels his mood drop faster and lower than ever. He hugs you back, but he breaks away fast.

After leaving your house and collapsing onto his bed in his locked bedroom (with his 11-year-old sister knocking on the door and curiously asking what’s wrong), he can’t help but feel hurt that you couldn’t even tell him who your mystery crush’s name was.

A week passes by, and neither of you mention the conversation at your house. It doesn’t matter either way, since you two are still so casually best friends. At the same time, he desperately wants to push the matter just to find out who it is.

Otherwise, Akaashi has noticeably been more quiet and moody to the point that he doesn’t know how to control it. Sure, he keeps up the same as he would before your conversation, but he can’t help but feel his heart sink everytime he sees you. His mind is ecstatic every time he talks to you, while simultaneously wanting to tear itself apart.

He’s tried getting rid of feelings for you, in literally every way possible. From avoiding thinking about you (which backfired horribly because he ended up thinking more about you) to focusing on other girls (ew, none of them were even capable of creating the same effect on him as you do), he’s tried it all and it’s all failed.

Akaashi realizes his silent slump has gotten so bad to the point that Bokuto made him sit out a few practice matches in the gym just because Akaashi was nowhere near the spot that any of the team expected him to be at.

After school, he meets with you near the vending machine as always. You buy two cans of coffee, one for you and one for him.

As soon as he takes the can gratefully, you clear your throat.

“Yeah, [Name]?”

Glancing around before staring him in the eye, you start, “Keiji-kun, before you run away, I just…. I just wanted to let you know I really really really like you. Like, a lot.” You start speaking kind of fast, so Akaashi can’t process what you’re saying.

“And I mean it. Ever since the Bio project, you’ve been so nice to me and you’ve been such a great friend even though I made it hard sometimes, and along the way I just caught feelings. You honestly mean everything to me, and I appreciate you so much for everything we’ve been through. I- I think, I love you, Keiji. And I hope you accept my feelings.” You smile, almost nervously but nonetheless sincere, and Akaashi thinks he’s about to explode.

“I- I,” Fuck, oh my fucking god, he thinks to himself. He’s shaking a little bit– that’s how happy he is. “[Name], I..” God fucking damn it, he can’t even express how happy he is. He feels his cheeks blossom and he feels his lips quirk into this goofy smile.

But then he watches you shy away a little bit as you hurriedly say, “I- I mean, sorry. It’s okay if you just wanna be friends-”

“No.” Finally, Akaashi can use his mouth and then he gently takes your cheeks in his hands and closes the gap between you two, lips connecting in a display of pining and affection.

He practically melts into the kiss, he’s never been so happy. He thinks he’s actually about to implode; he’s been dreaming about kissing you like this, against your soft, plush lips. And finally he’s able to call you his, to call you the one. When the two of you finally break away for air, he’s breathing hard and his mind is a mess, which is rare considering his usual stoic state.

Akaashi has also never seen you so flustered and blushy. He murmurs into your ear as he takes your hand, “Feelings are 100% reciprocated.”

“I can tell,” you laugh breathily, and he’s so happy to hear that some of your anxiety has dissolved in that sweet kiss. He’s absolutely infatuated with you in every aspect. He leans in for a soft, quicker kiss on the lips and savors the feeling of warmth he gets. “Dork.”, he whispers.

“Only for you.”

[4dorks-1windmage-1shadow]

The Links as D&D Characters, Part 5: Shadow Link

Inspired by a question I saw on @hauntinghyrule ‘s blog. My character analysis and thoughts on what character class the boys would be if they were D&D characters, and why. Also! @atinybitweird has been drawing the boys D&D designs, and she’s doing really great! I’ll link to her posts on the individual analysis as well as reblog them here so look out for those : D

Green / Red / Blue / Vio / Vaati / FS Zelda

As a preface, there won’t be any doubles on classes except in the case of dual-classing, and in those cases the first class I talk about my justifications for will be the primary class (i.e. the class they would have chosen at level one). My choices will be based on the character theming and personalities, even though at a base level it would be easy to say “they’re all paladins, duh” because of the implied “holy knight chosen by the gods to eradicate evil” concept. For Shadow, there are plenty of shadowy-themed D&D subclasses to choose from. Kaenith mentioned Way of the Shadow Monk in his initial answer on his blog which is actually not a bad pick for him. However, I wouldn’t initially say that Monk is the class for Shadow, because he’s shown relying on magic much more than martial arts (like a Monk would) or even swordplay (like the other Links). He has a sword in the manga, but I think it’s mostly for show- a visual parallel to Link, who does use his sword to fight. This is just a small part of the big reason why I’ve chosen the particular classes and subclasses I have for Shadow, so lets look at the reason as a whole: Shadow’s origin, and how it ties well into the Sorcerer class.

The Four Swords manga and the Four Swords games don’t give us a lot of information about how Shadow Link was created (if he was born vs conjured like Dark Link) and also what exactly the Shadow Realm is. We never actually see the realm that Shadow came from (except for the Erune arc in the manga, and only a small town) so we have no idea if it is a true shadow version of Hyrule, like the Dark World/Lorule (if you believe they’re the same place) are. Furthermore we don’t see any evidence that there are others like Shadow Link, like we do with Lorule with Ravio being a parallel to Link and Hilda being a parallel to Princess Zelda. There’s nothing pointing to the idea that Shadow was born and raised the way a normal kid would be, and so the most logical conclusion canon-wise is that he was literally conjured from Link’s shadow. Magic would be weaved into every fiber of Shadow’s being, and we see this evidenced in the manga because he wields it naturally and easily against the Links. Sorcerers in D&D can be born as well as made, but the key thing that separates the magic sorcerers use from the magic used by wizards, bards, druids, clerics, and warlocks is that a sorcerers magic is innate, often carried through a bloodline or via transforming from the latent energy of a place. In this case, Shadow was literally made with the arcane magic he controls. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything introduced a Sorcerous Origin called Shadow Magic where the arcane magic is sourced from the Shadowfell (i.e. Shadow Realm for authenticity to Zelda), either through being exposed to and transformed by the energy of the place or from being descended from a denizen; neither of these situations are applicable to Shadow BUT I think being created from the source magic should and does count. The majority of Sorcerer abilities come from their Sorcerous Origin, but there are two features that all sorcerers regardless of origin gain that I think fit Shadow based on his story in the manga. Font of Magic and Metamagic can be linked to the Dark Mirror being Shadow’s source of life and magical power because of the abilities that Shadow is able to display while being linked to it. Font of Magic gives Shadow access to Sorcery Points, which he can spend to create new spell slots, or sacrifice spell slots to gain more sorcery points which effectively translates to giving himself more power to wield in battle. Metamagic lets him twist the magic of his spells to suit his own needs, using sorcery points to do so. It can let him double the range of spells, double the spells’ duration, potentially do more damage on a hit and target more than one opponent with a ranged spell that normally only targets one creature. I’m choosing to translate this as him getting a boost in power and flexibility that he normally wouldn’t have without the power of the Dark Mirror (though depending on your interpretation of post-manga shenanigans he could have these abilities anyway because of whatever method brought him back allowed him to have them). Back to Shadow Magic though. Thematically it makes the most sense: Shadow Link is created from shadow magic and thus is a Shadow Magic Sorcerer. But the abilities here are what we want to look at to see if it really fits. At 1st level, Shadow Magic gives Shadow a darkvision range of 120 feet, and the Strength of the Grave ability means he can charm his way out of death. That’s not entirely accurate- the actual text says he can take a Charisma saving throw and attempt to equal or exceed a target number equal to 5 + [amount of damage taken], and drop to 1 hit point instead of 0 if he succeeds. I think this makes sense- if he’s a shadow, he’d be able to slip out of battle or narrowly avoid life-threatening attacks just by the art of deception; this isn’t necessarily supported by the Sorcerer class itself, but if you mix the game canon into the manga canon, Shadow can technically clone himself and use those copies to his advantage. At 3rd level, he learns the Darkness spell without it counting against the amount of spells he knows, and he can cast it with either sorcery points or a spell slot (he can see through the effected area of the spell if he casts it using sorcery points). At 6th level, he can spend sorcery points to summon a shadow creature that effectively acts like an attack dog, which he can sic on a creature within 120 feet of him. Shadow is shown leading an army of monsters in the manga, so the Hound of Ill Omen feature actually lends itself well to that image- maybe one of the creatures he used to attack Hyrule Castle was his magically summoned shadow hound. It isn’t that far-fetched of an assumption to make. Shadow Walk lets him teleport through darkness and dim light up to a distance of 120 feet, which is an ability he already portrays in the manga and in the games. The only Shadow Magic ability he doesn’t get to benefit from is Umbral Form, and that’s because I want to call a parallel to Link that I think is fitting for Shadow’s role as his foil in the story. Shadow is not a copy of Link- I don’t want anyone to get confused by what I’m saying. However, he is still Link’s shadow, the reflection of everything Link could have become if he wasn’t the hero, didn’t grow up with all the people around him who loved him and supported him. Shadow’s main motivation in the story is loneliness and the desire to be recognized, but who is going to recognize him if he doesn’t make himself recognizable? I talked at length in my analysis of Green’s class about how Paladins take oaths that serve as pillars for their conduct and core beliefs as paladins, but what happens if you don’t have any of those beliefs or you did have them but chose to cast them away? In the Dungeon Master’s Guide, it describes a class option for Paladins called the Oathbreaker: essentially a paladin who has abandoned or broke their sacred oaths. Shadow probably never had any oaths to begin with, but he wanted to be recognized the way Link was, and so I think he chose to take the mantle of Paladin without really understanding what makes Link (Green) a true Paladin. He has to take at least 3 levels in Paladin to subclass as Oathbreaker, and that unlocks light and medium armor, shields and all weapons for him to use in combat. It also unlocks spells like Hellish Rebuke, Inflict Wounds, and if he takes up to 5th level in Paladin, the Crown of Madness spell. He still gets all of the normal Paladin abilities, but his Channel Divinity options are kind of the opposite of Green’s: He can control undead creatures with it, or use Dreadful Aspect to create an aura of fear around himself with a radius of up to 30 feet.  Depending on how you look at the option of Shadow being redeemable, there is an option for Oathbreaker Paladins to “atone” for their evil actions as an Oathbreaker. They lose the Oathbreaker features and gain the features of a Sacred Oath, and I can’t think of a more fitting tribute to his character journey than him becoming an Oath of Vengeance Paladin from the Player’s Handbook. It lets him fill a different niche of paladin than Green does, and takes his character into account in regards to the Tenets of Vengeance: Fight the Greater Evil (Faced with a choice of fighting my sworn foes or combating a lesser evil, I choose the greater evil). No Mercy for the Wicked (Ordinary foes might win my mercy, but my sworn enemies do not.) By Any Means Necessary (My qualms can’t get in the way of exterminating my foes) Restitution (If my foes wreak ruin on the world, it is because I failed to stop them. I must help those harmed by their misdeeds) Taking Oath of Vengeance in this way would replace Hellish Rebuke, Inflict Wounds and Crown of Madness with Bane, Hunter’s Mark, Hold Person and Misty Step, and the Channel Divinity features include Abjure Enemy (inflicting fear on a targeted creature) and Vow of Enmity (basically pointing at an enemy and saying “I choose you” and then he gets to attack them with advantage for a minute [10 rounds of combat]). In conclusion, Shadow ends up as a dual-classed Shadow Magic Sorcerer/Oathbreaker Paladin (later changing to Oath of Vengeance Paladin to account for character growth). 

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Myka and James Stauffer rehoming a disabled child--What more can you do?

I wrote this once, but then it wouldn’t post. So this is a second time, excuse it if it’s not as eloquent as it should be. I’m an international adoptee, so we’re more affected by this case than most because according to Reuters 2013 more of us are “rehomed” than others. Because of this, I’ve also been following the case since 2010. So all of the people “shocked” by this terminology needs to listen to adoptees. Over the last 10 years or so, I’ve been collecting resources and things YOU as non-adoptees can do to help. This has included listening to Birth Parents, Adoptees, Adoptive Parents, Former Foster Youth, and basically using my Anthropology training to collect a list. I have to remind you that going after the Stauffers alone isn’t enough. We have to go after the systems that enabled them to do this in the first place so this does not happen to another child. I get it. Vigilante justice feels good. It’s short, sweet and you get results and to see the face of the individual. A system doesn’t have a face you can gloat over. But if you really do care, you’d go after prevention and long term change, otherwise your outrage--and I’m including all of those youtubers I had to sort through (which was painful at best, but so goes advocacy), is empty. You only care about your own self-satisfaction rather than the long term cause or the people involved themselves. (My anti-Cancel Crew objections are along this line of thought.) Since I’ve been asked what this looks like and re-pasting it over and over is a pain, I decided to centralize the post with the levels of justification for the action. I get this post is longish, but take the part you need to make that change you want to advocate for.

If you want to take parts of this post, you can take the links without credit, but not the specific words. And don’t take credit for work you didn’t do.

What is Rehoming?

The often legal, but immoral act of placing a child without oversight of the state or government by placing them on the internet or doing backyard deals. We adoptees have been battling facebook pages for years to shut it down. I am not naming them, because I don’t want to encourage the behavior.

This is separate from dissolution of adoption. This is done with home study and legal oversight.

Why is this a Problem?

Adoptive parents go through a long, long process call home study this can take anywhere from a few months to a year. This has evolved over the years. Since this specific case involves international adoption, I’ll do a run down of the evolution of how home study has evolved in the International adoption community. I know it’s dry and boring, but it’s important to understand why the Stauffer case is egregious and why I am holding Holt responsible.

Home study used to be, “Are you Christian?” as done by the Holts. To be clear, social workers and his translator at the time objected to this. His reasoning? He thought all Christians are good people. (Though if you check the qualifiers for genocide by the UN, this is loosely on the list.) Adoptees were lucky to even get half a page.

This resulted in children being put into sex trafficking rings and child slavery. Social workers and Adoptees legislated against the Holts and the restrictions went up. (The whole list of immoral, yet not illegal crimes the organization has done as a whole, is a whole other story. I know it backwards and forwards as an adoptee with dates and countries since I’ve been in the adoptee community since roughly 1999.) This took 20 years from the first children in 1940′s and 1950′s. The home study in the 1970′s was still thin, but the amount of abuse cases went down. By the 1980′s, there was pressure to actually care about the children, so ESWS (one of the Korean agencies) and the other agencies in Korea started pushing for more extensive home studies (at the behest of Adoptees). The packet and requirements were thin. This included things like checking the financials of the family in question. Giving the parents language lessons, and then a packet usually about an inch thick. They would also get family statements and recommendations. A social worker would come and check the safety of the home. By about the 1990′s the packet has increased, and psychological evaluations started to be put into place. There were lists of books added to the list. (I asked Adoptive Parents to help me with this.) These were “suggestions” but no one tested if the prospective parents read them. So the packets given were about 6 inches deep, with the books about a foot. The in-class studies, several honest Adoptive Parents called “laughable” there was no race training at all and most of it was hanging out.

By the early 2000′s, they started to finally let parents of color adopt in larger numbers. (I know) The rehoming had gotten far more decent. The psych evaluations got deeper. They started to exclude criminal activity, do background checks on the parents, and do deeper psych evaluations, requiring deeper studies. But the Adoptive Parents I talked to said they were not getting the support they needed. The agencies weren’t listening on what they needed to parent their child. This is about the time I started collecting a wishlist and sending it to agencies. As far as I’m connected, nothing has really changed since then. The problem with rehoming is that it sets us back to 1950′s rules. All of this progress that Adoptees, Social workers, and well-meaning Adoptive Parents have fought hard for is done in an instant. There is no home study and the former parents get away with it because Adoptees and Foster Kids are not protected by the same laws that children from birth are.

What does this have to do with the Stauffers?

The Stauffers, a few years ago, decided to adopt a kid from China. They are social influencers. So they asked to fund their child’s adoption. They opted to have a child with special needs and by reports “checked 99% of them.” They paid zero for the adoption, and then used him to boost one of their channels and Instagram follower’s accounts. Their channel boosted by a ton of money, such that they could move into a mansion, their “dream home”, go on several large family vacations, made off of publicizing his story for their own “disability savior” points. Some of the videos, however, were problematic.

He was later said to have autism, and was in speech therapy, by Myka who wanted to “save” money on him by bringing him to a cheaper therapist. Despite this, the channel grew.

Then suddenly the boy disappeared from the channel. After months of pressuring her, they released a video saying they had “rehomed” him. The internet was enraged by this and went after her and James Stauffer. They tried to push Myka to receive all the blame to protect James Stauffer’s channel. All of the videos of this little boy were still up and monetized. They came up with a petition to force all of the videos down. The monetized videos came down and a new petition started: https://www.change.org/p/youtube-shut-down-myka-stauffer-s-youtube-account?signed=true

I also started a letter writing campaign to the governor to make sure it was getting investigated. Everyone else posting about it was trying to go after Myka Stauffer, but I wanted legal change. With me and my network, we worked three days straight to finally get an answer and make sure that the boy they had adopted and “rehomed” was safe.

Is Rehoming New?

Internet Amnesia is real. No. It’s been happening to public knowledge since 2010.

There was the NYC case which got turned into a Law and Order Special Victims Unit episode: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/svu-shines-a-light-on-the_b_4735153

There was the Justin Harris case.

There was the Hart case. (They rehomed once and were able to adopt two more times.)

And if you didn’t think it was covered before then there is also:

https://www.today.com/parents/it-takes-more-love-what-happens-when-adoption-fails-918076

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/11/children-who-have-second-adoptions/575902/

https://mljadoptions.com/blog/adoption-rehoming-disruption-dissolution-20140520

I’ve been riding my own state to institute laws against rehoming, and they finally did it, after the Governor vetoed it once, and I chased him about it. You could be a person that does this too.

So What Can I Do to be a Part of the Change? Here is a PDF of the current anti-rehoming laws. Press for the ones in your state to be cleaned up/invented. https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/custody_transfers.pdf Here's contacts for the city where they live if you want to make sure they get justice for him. http://www.delawareohio.net/agendas-motions-summaries-meeting-recordings/meet-city-council-2/ You can contact Governor Mike DeWine and ask him to do something similar to this law https://www.writing.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.writ.d7/files/sitefiles/publications/2010_Sho.pdf which would give Huxley 90% of the earnings in a trust fund and protect the other Stauffer kids: https://governor.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/governor/contact The petition to take down their videos is here (They shifted their channels, but still have Huxley's content up.): https://www.change.org/p/youtube-demand-the-stauffers-remove-all-monetized-content-ft-huxley-from-their-youtube-channel?recruiter=1095019618

There is a more strict petition here: https://www.change.org/p/youtube-shut-down-myka-stauffer-s-youtube-account?signed=true There is a federal law that's been in the works since about 2015, when the Justin Harris case broke. Langevin has been trying to get it passed. It has bipartisan support.  https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/bipartisan-bill-will-protect-adopted-children-rehoming He is the one that said that cats and dogs have more protections than adoptees or foster care youth have. 

https://willbrownsberger.com/rehoming-of-adopted-children/

Send them love and support for working on this for so long. I think if people really, really did care, they'd call their Senators and make sure they are supporting this bill (It has bipartisan support): https://www.senate.gov/senators/How_to_correspond_senators.htm

Why and How to Hold Holt Responsible

Holt wasn’t responsible for the placement of this young boy. However, he is still their charge. When they absorbed the other agency, they should have checked on their charges and made sure they were doing well. But they didn’t.

This seems like a mild crime in most people’s eyes, but case after case, their failure to give Adoptive Parents support and check on them has resulted in a huge list of them saying, “This is unfortunate.”, but then not changing their contracts and trying to clean up the system they perpetuate. Since they are the largest of the International Adoption agencies, they also could set an example, by say, not enabling people to adopt on repeat from them if they’ve rehomed a child. (Shouldn’t their records show that?) and creating a network of adoption agencies to prevent abuse and rehoming so the Hart case doesn’t repeat.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/nyregion/chinas-adoption-scandal-sends-chills-through-families-in-united-states.html https://books.google.com/books?id=ABEoAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA224&lpg=PA224&dq=Holt+International+abuse&source=bl&ots=3tvNla8X2x&sig=ACfU3U00GO4BzWMLUnU9dnI_EYqy1VwilA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi546nirOvpAhV3HzQIHWTwCow4ChDoATAFegQIDBAB#v=onepage&q=Holt%20International%20abuse&f=false And this is the complete list: http://poundpuplegacy.org/node/6194

Their contact:

https://www.holtinternational.org/contactus.php

But what do I ask for?

I compiled this list with the help of Adoptive Parents who have dealt with Holt before.

- Psych evaluations to take out the Narcissistic people (though stop selling it as a Savior Project would also help.) - Check their parenting styles--some styles do and some styles don't work for adoptees because of the initial trauma. - Minimum Foster Care training.

Many adopters go the rehoming route because they believe the Foster Care system is broken and listen to the news. It is, but they should work with Social Workers because Backyard deals are less than that. Obama (no matter how you feel about him) suggested Foster Care training for all Adoptive Parents which is more rigorous than home study for most states (though this also needs revision). - Make them learn the language of the adoptee they are adopting for at least one year (where it applies and they would have to pass with a C or better.) This is mostly so they learn the cultural standards of the country and it helps cement ideas about socialization as well that is hard to describe otherwise. - Holt specifically forbids Adoptive Parents from contacting Foster Parents after placement--reverse that.  Adoptive Parents had to work around them and those that did had better outcomes for their child. Often the Foster Parents were eager to help. - Adoption agencies would be required with any international adoption to give a run down from the foster parents of some basics of socialization (for the country), and maybe some basic training. This would be interactive. (as supposed to the next item)

- Give a basic rundown sheet of things to help the child transition from standard socialization practices. How to comfort the child? What specific foods was the child eating? Is there a brand of detergent that was used in their original home? Where does the child sleep? What are their sleeping hours? What type of clothes do they wear? Things people take for granted and think are universal. Anthropologists and Foster Parents could help with this. - For parents taking on disabilities, they should be required prior to encounter the disability and meet more seasoned parents currently dealing with the disability in question--especially adoptive parents. So they can ask questions, network and really, really see if they can handle it. Don't take their word for it. - Adoptees, PoC, etc and any other diversity labels involved with the child should be required to be in close contact with them. i.e. not the internet. Basic race, etc training should apply and they have to pass a test.

-Check on the Adoptee after placement.

After Adoption care. Several APs said they would have really liked this, but then they were left in the dark. In fact their agencies gave them zero support. And the baby would cry and cry and they were totally lost on what to do. They were lost on which experts to ask, and who they could contact. This is unacceptable. Dogs and cats get more checks and aftercare than human children.

On the consequences end,

Child trafficking and Abandonment--Holt should press for those laws. APs that care are for this. They said, why aren’t there these laws?

Also any adopters that rehome would be banned from adopting again, and they would be added to a general blacklist and spread that information to other agencies.

Through this dissolution of adoption should be the key.

If they break the contract, you can sue.

Lastly, don’t believe you are alone. Your anger can make change. At least let your anger last long enough to make this change to the laws so we adoptees don’t have to hear next year how people are shocked yet again by another rehoming case. Be the change the world needs. You aren’t helpless.

[wireraft0-blog]

Oxford Cryosystems.

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Normally, you do not need a General Practitioner recommendation to see a cosmetic surgeon for a preliminary consultation. Nevertheless, if you choose you wish to go on with the treatment, your cosmetic surgeon will call for even more in-depth info on your medical history. In this situation, they may contact your GP for this details, with your permission. We have actually compiled some of the most usual facelift Frequently asked questions regarding the procedure listed below. It is useful to review them via as there may be some inquiries that you had not thought about. On fat freezing service , if you still have further inquiries don't worry! Your BAAPS/BAPRAS specialist will enjoy to address them throughout your appointment.

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Resting as well as resting with your head propped up with cushions for the first 10 to 14 days can additionally help to lower any swelling. If you were put to sleep with a basic anaesthetic, you will gradually get up adhering to surgical treatment under close guidance. You will have dressings around your face and also you might also have water drainage tubes in position. The nurses will often eliminate any water drainage tubes prior to you go residence. If local anaesthetic was used, you might really feel a modification in experience in the treated area of the face. Your surgeon or the nurses in the recuperation space will offer you medicines which you can take if essential. As component of your facelift aftercare, your cosmetic surgeon will certainly likewise organise a follow-up consultation with you.

This tightens up the underlying muscular layer along with the skin, offering an increase in tone that is longer long lasting. As UK market leaders in plastic surgery, we provide recommendations you can trust, treatment based upon your individual needs, and support throughout your trip with us. When people check out us, the really initial thing they notice is our faces. So, if we're dissatisfied with the way our faces look, this can have a significant impact on our self-esteem. As we age we lose muscle mass tone, which can trigger the skin in our face and neck to sag. A facelift is a procedure whereby the skin is tightened to produce a firmer, smoother appearance. A facelift is an operation to remove excess facial skin and any type of unwanted fatty down payments.

The very first reported HIFU facelift treatment for visual usage remained in 2008.

20% of the result can be seen quickly after the treatment, nonetheless the full result of the facelift HIFU treatment are revealed 3-- 6 months later on.

A number of tiny medical trials have discovered HIFU to be risk-free and also efficient for face training and refining creases.

The HIFU facelift procedure includes very focused ultrasound waves penetrate deep into the skin and boost collagen as well as elastin production.

At Elite Visual appeals, it is not advised to receive energy-based therapies such as HIFU or radiofrequency skin tightening up while pregnant.

A lot of our clients only require 1 therapy as we utilize the most up to date type of HIFU modern technology by 3D Lipo.

Nevertheless this might be based upon the level of skin laxity, the biological action to ultrasound energy as well as the person's collagen-building process, some clients may take advantage of additional therapies.

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If the issue is extreme, i.e. a very serious turkey neck, full improvement may not be feasible. A facelift operation can turn around years of aging by smoothing out excess skin of the neck, under the chin, along the jawline and across the cheek. Fat is gotten rid of from below the jawline and also under the chin where it is undesirable however maintained as well as repositioned from the dewlap to the cheek to recover quantity where it has been shed.

What Does 'fat thawing' and Also 'fat Freezing' seem Like For customers?

This is common around the treated area for the first couple of weeks after a facelift surgical procedure. Typically, this will certainly go to its worst 3 to 4 days after the operation, and will certainly then progressively start to settle.

Can you poop out of your mouth?

It's possible to poop out of your mouth It's called fecal vomiting, and aside from being utterly disgusting and terrifying, it's an indicator of a major health problem. Though if you're vomiting your own poop, you probably know you have a major health problem.

For lots of people, combining a Face Raise with Neck Raise Surgical procedure guarantees that the general appearance is rejuvenated and also patients that undergo this mix of procedures have reported looking one decade younger. Facelift surgical procedure, additionally known as Rhytidectomy, is one of one of the most frequently asked for procedures by both males and females that want to look as young as they really feel. It is performed to remove or reduce the skin that has shed its all-natural elasticity - normally around the eyes, mouth and jaw line - smooth the skin, reduce lines and also wrinkles and rejuvenate a tired-looking look. All independent facilities and medical facilities that offer plastic surgery in England have to be signed up with the CQC. The CQC releases evaluation records and also efficiency ratings to help people select treatment.

Which is better for double chin Kybella or CoolSculpting?

Kybella and CoolSculpting each have their own set of benefits and drawbacks. Kybella can treat small areas of fat, does not require a capital investment, and can be done in a small exam room. CoolSculpting, by contrast, can debulk bigger necks, treat lateral areas, and involves less downtime than Kybella.

Clifton Park Medical facility is devoted to giving exceptional cosmetic surgery results for all of our patients. to better boost your outcomes you facelift may be integrated with a neck lift, blepharoplasty, rhinoplasty, and/or face implants such as chin implants. -- for people who have extreme facial sagging, as well as cheek and also neck ageing. Cuts are made under your Shallow Musculoaponeurotic System layer that regulates your facial expression as well as this muscle layer is lifted along with the fat and also skin.

Throughout this appointment, your surgeon will inspect your injuries to see exactly how they are healing, eliminate any kind of non-dissolvable stitches, and also remove or change any type of dressings if essential. Your Medbelle BAAPS/BAPRAS doctor might be able to provide you better facelift preparation ideas as well as even more details details on your surgical treatment, on the day of your assessment. Make sure you follow their instructions to accomplish the best arise from surgical treatment.

At what temperature do fat cells die?

The optimum temperature for fat cell death is actually just above freezing at 39 to 41 degrees Fahrenheit. The threshold for damage to your skin and other tissues is a much lower temperature that CoolSculpting machines will never reach.

It leaves only faintly visible fine lines to make sure that others will certainly not understand the reason that you 'look so well'. As we age the skin on our face and neck begins to droop from a loss of muscular tissue tone. A facelift is a procedure to tighten up the skin on the face, generating a firmer and smoother appearance. A fantastic immediate radiance as well as a much more defined jawline, raised brow and cheekbones. But because this is functioning from within the full-lifting as well as skin tightening up result shows up after concerning four weeks. Great deals of individuals state they do not need to top up their Botox as frequently when having this treatment, and also some individuals stop entirely. There's no requirement to." Surprisingly, because having a mix of these new treatments, she has stopped having Botox as she feels she does not require it.

[martiniblves]

mijoo and her iconic entrances DFKLSJGDF

yes, i really am recycling the intro some of you probably Just caught when you followed me DGSFLJLGSD

hey y’all, i’m kat, english student and an old hag :/ also slowly coming down from an anxiety moment, hence only deleting old shit now and potentially going rogue from my blog for the night after posting this ( aka, best if y'all send me your d*scord users bc it's much easier for me there ) sfdgjgfd i’m super excited for this group and can’t wait to read all about your muses !  and hoping you feel the same, i’ll get right to introducing avalon bay’s resident messy brat, dahlia !

[ lee mijoo ] dahlia kim, twenty-four, cis female, she/her, radio dj — a world-class traveler in the making, self-proclaimed “ reformed ” groupie, has been a tennant at avalon bay for two years, her cherry blaster obsession is the sweetest thing about her, she slept with an ex-best friend’s roommate and crush as revenge. [ kat, 22, nt, she/her ]

she often goes between dahlia and dia, first and foremost sdfglkj

came from a super small town in upstate new york where there wasn’t much to do or much to see, so growing up she had an adventurous streak that would run rampant when she was able to go off by herself, able to drive, and finally able to leave it behind

her family life was rather average, her parents scraped by financially but her and her two younger siblings never really went without — aside from a toy or two at christmas or a brand new car for their sixteenth birthdays sfgkljgdf

gets on fine with them, but her and her little/middle sister have had an on-and-off contentious relationship that, at the moment, is very much ON SDFGFG

small town life was.. okay overall, she was social Enough and polite but never really maintained any close relationships with her childhood pals once high school came and went, mostly bc the town was full of gossips so everyone thought poorly of each other and passed it onto their kids LSKFDGJGDFL

and yes, i’m kinda basing this off of the antics of adults from my hometown, what about it ??

she spent most of her formative years with her head in the clouds and music always around her or on her mind

so you bet she wound up taking guitar and piano lessons when she was a kid and well into her teens, and dare i say she was pretty good at it fsdglkjgdf

having that skill gave her the boost of confidence she needed from middle school onward, having been a tad reserved before then

idk what else to add bc i honestly can’t think of anything else about her past Before moving away. dull as hell probably, more than it’s already been said LKGSDF

upon moving to the city, she attended nyu just to keep her parents from completely losing their minds over her not.. wanting to go on a sure path, majoring in communications and spending much of her time as a dj for the campus radio station’s late night shows

soon began searching for dj gigs at major radio stations once she’d graduated and landed a spot as an intern to meet with artists the station wished to interview, etc, and even had an opportunity or two to interview them herself

through that job, she became more exposed to the groupie lifestyle and — having always been somewhat intrigued — soon became one ( of sorts ) 

sorry if you’re a fan of h*lsey bc this might come across as a dig, but this is where she becomes the chill version of groupie!h*lsey that h*lsey wishes she had been DFLSKJDGSFL

she liked the attention from drummers, singers and rappers alike — plus having sex with talented, rich people whenever they were in town didn’t hurt one bit — and she kept it all separate from her job, although it did help the station land more interviews, tickets for contests, etc

wasn’t big on hard drugs, but she never shied away from a bong being handed to her or a couple of xanax tablets, just so we’re clear here sdflkgjfdgk

however, the no-strings set-up quickly shifted for dahlia upon meeting a rising indie band’s lead singer

he was smooth as hell, which she already knew alongside his tendency to get bored easily with fangirls-turned-groupies like the rest of the musicians she’d met, so when she played along with his game, it didn’t take long for him to maintain an interest in her and for them to forge something of a friendship

she’d never admit it to anyone, but he was her first love as the initial sexual attraction very quickly became romantic after long conversations about music and aspirations, mundane happenings in their lives separate from their encounters and who should’ve won immunity on the recent ep of masterchef; dia knew he wouldn’t settle down now and she knew that while she was his number one at that point, she wasn’t the only one he had. a couple of months passed where it seemed like he was going only to her, that his interest rarely waned to the other girls that would swarm him, which led her to believe he was at least somewhat into her and to her confessing when they were both drunk one night — only to be shut down but not shut out

dejected and heartbroken, she still couldn’t quite distance herself from him like she knew she should and the front she put up — that she exaggerated her feelings and would get over it — made him none the wiser

however, he couldn’t get over the thought of his fwb still being in love with him and cut ties with her abruptly before his nth departure from nyc

it took her right out of her bubble, left a horrible taste in her mouth to even go back to being a groupie for others over how poorly it all went with him, so she abandoned the sexual aspect and potential intimacy of it — but not before taking herself completely out of that lifestyle for a few months to get over him

which.. lbr, she’s only 90% of the way there to this day sfdlkkdfsgl

upon going back, she showed up to shows and parties solely as a friend of the performer.... before that got old Quick and she realized how soul-sucking it was for her sexually frustrated And repressed ass KFSLJGS

though ask her pals and they’d think she’d given it up altogether, hence her supposedly being reformed

.. at least she isn’t indulging in drugs like she occasionally used to, so that counts for something lksdfjlgdf

as for her time in radio, she got promoted to a morning slot as a dj with a couple of co-hosts last year, though once an afternoon slot opened, she high-tailed it out of there

anything to get back to her chill, late night roots and this was the first step

lastly, she moved to avalon bay 2 years ago, after uni was done and she had to move out of the dorms. in that time, she’d become best friends with another girl and had a massive falling out bc the other was. well. changing for the worst sgfjgfd

she became selfish, judgmental, advantageous and disloyal, and soon dia had enough of her hypocritical and generally nasty antics ( and not without a brutal argument that left both of their egos bruised )

dahlia isn’t always one for petty revenge, but when the ex-bff’s roommate and crush — who dia had a slight interest in as well — bumped into her in the hallway of their dorm one night, she took her chance to knock the other down a peg by initiating a flirtatious conversation that quickly turned sexual

with her ex-bff being on the other side of the wall of said roommate’s room

safe to say that their ( final ) conversation in the morning was a fucking disaster SDFLGKJGFDK

it’s not something she’s entirely ashamed about, but dia doesn’t feel the need to disclose what happened

PERSONALITY AND OTHER SHIT

she loves her friends, would die for them, would kill for them. let’s get that straight first and foremost !

does that mean she’s the nicest or even the most tolerable person ?? fuck no SFGLJGKDF

i described her to one of my pals as a “ chaotic free-spirit with a mean streak when she doesn’t get her way, ” which. could also describe a couple of my bitchier muses tbh FLDKGJDS

but she’s stubborn, irritable and has a sense of high self-worth and self-preservation

she obviously has an attitude that can and will come out if you hurt her or someone she cares about/someone she thinks doesn’t deserve it

or if you think you’re a god or something

and it can get ugly.. as explained above dfskgdgkf

however, we love confident women on this blog and here you have one !

she’s chill for the most part, so you ( probably ) won’t have anything to worry about if you stay on her good side gfsdkljgfd

passionate af about radio and music as a career, wants to have a gig like zane lowe’s beats hosting job or even annie mac’s one day

although she also wishes to put out music of her own at least Once before she dies dfgsljdfgk

bit of a wild child, likes to party and just do her own thing — partially bc she’s scared of getting older and having to give that all up/being forced to act her age

doesn’t mean she doesn’t like her quiet nights in though !

closet romantic, just wants to be swept off of her feet..... but no one needs to know that, at least she doesn’t think so FSDJKGFD

won't let you see it anyways, at least unless she's Interested and knows you're not someone who's only useful for her in the short-term

also quietly doting, will never be the mom friend bc it’s too much responsibility and patience, but will always be a good shoulder to cry on who tells you your feelings are valid before she tells you to toughen the fuck up and amend a situation yourself, might even tell you how

some exceptions may apply FDLSJGSFLK

a bit vulgar at times, just warning you now fgldskf

wants to see the world and has travelled a little as it is bc of her connections. loves it

JFKDGS

has a pet succulent bc she Knows she can't look after the big fluffy dog of her dreams rn

named him bobby after one of the characters from the love island game DFLKGSJF

i honestly dk what else to add rn, plus i’m eager af to post this so we’ll end it here ! cute extras can always be posted later !

[themostrandomfandom]

hello! I don't know if you're still on the blog or will be in some time, but I still have to at least try. I just had my rewatch of glee for the first time in 4 years, and it woke some buried feelings up again lmao. One of the things i most strongly feel for is Britt's class president run. I know she would've done more things during it, yknow? Like she prepared for the position and had a solid plan for it. I really feel like they wasted her potential in s3. Do you think you would rewrite it?

Hey, @randomizepersonality!

Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply to you. Limited internet these days.

I, too, am one who is completely disappointed by Brittany’s S3 storyline and how the writers absolutely dropped the ball when it came to her class presidency. 

Negativity about Glee writing under the cut.

______

In episode 3x02, the writers clearly establish that Brittany’s interest in the class presidency isn’t a lark or something she is doing just for the hell of it. The platform she pushes for Kurt is anti-bullying, pro-inclusion—and she has a dog in the fight, because she wants herself, Santana, Kurt, and all the other LGBTQ kids at the school(plus anyone else who qualifies as “different”) to feel safe being themselves. 

Baby Girl has a clear, focused goal, and she feels it is important for her to achieve that goal. As she tells Kurt, “What’s wrong with [being gay]? Look: Ninety-nine percent of the kids at this school are either freaks or closet freaks. The captain of the football squad? He gets the job, but he doesn’t represent the people. That’s why we need a unicorn.” She isn’t just talking out of her ass or viewing the presidency as a way to boost Kurt’s (or her own) popularity. She actually wants to accomplish something.

That’s why when Kurt declines to run on her “Project Unicorn” platform, she picks up the banner herself, proudly declaring, “I’m also a unicorn.” The values she’s supporting are ones that are near and dear to her heart, as she knows from personal experience (particularly in regards to her relationship with Santana and Santana’s fears about coming out) how vital it is for kids to feel comfortable in their own skin and how damaging it is when they don’t.

Honestly, what she’s talking about is an extension of the things she both learned for herself and taught to Santana during the Back Six of S2. She’s talking about “embracing all the awesomeness” that one is, promoting acceptance, and spreading love because love makes everything possible. It’s all big time stuff, and even though she’s couching it in unicorn metaphors and glitter, she is serious about what she wants to do.

—which is why it’s so fucking unbelievable that she would completely slack off from that position the second she won the election.

I mean, seriously, the Glee writers, you’re telling me that at the exact time when she and her girlfriend are facing the reprecussions of a vicious public outing, being bullied in the hallways for showing any sort of affection to each other, having to deal with pressure not only coming from their fellow students but even from members of the faculty and administration—I’m looking at you, Will and Figgins—facing up to the Finn Hudsons and Josh Colemans of the world, Brittany would just fuck right off and fail to enact any of the policies or programs she had clearly thought about before? You’re saying that she wouldn’t try to use her power and popularity to try to improve the situation?

Bullshit.

—and especially “bullshit” to then try to make a joke out of her failure, as they do later in the season, when she tells Figgins, “Okay. I now realize I wasted an entire year belaboring the nuances of my fluid teen sexuality, and getting caught up in Lord Tubbington’s Ponzi schemes, and then for a while, I stopped talking, but I don’t want my presidency to be the last one at McKinley! I don’t want that to be my legacy.”

There’s no excuse for them wasting this storyline.

Ideally, they should have allowed her to succeed in what she was trying to do. She could have hosted an anti-bullying rally and brought in Holly Holliday to sing to the student body about how it’s okay to be gay. She could have used her own coolness to shift paradigms, because, after all, she is both the senior class president and most popular girl in school AND a fabulous, bisexual unicorn. She could have organized a “kiss-in” in protest against Figgins’s homophobic PDA policies. 

I mean, really, with her creativity and zany genius, the writers could have absolutely gone wild and had her do any number of things to make her world a better place.

Even if they were dead set on having her fail, then they at least could have actually showed her failing—giving her a storyline where balancing academics, extracurriculars, and dealing with the fallout of being outed becomes too much for her to handle, and her ambitions for the class presidency fall by the wayside; letting Kurt confront her about wasting the opportunity she won over him; having her break down and admit that maybe the problem she took on was too big for her to tackle herself and that the world is a worse place than she initially thought; allowing her to display the same kind of depth and humanity that she was afforded in S2.

But instead they muted her for half a season and pushed her into the background at a time when she should have been getting foreground attention, and then they tried to pass off their act of forgetting about Brittany as Brittany forgetting to do anything herself.

That Brittany wasn’t allowed to speak throughout Santana’s outing arc was an indefensible narrative choice. That the writers waited until the very end of the season to come out of nowhere and say, “Guess what? Brittany failed at everything, and y’all should just laugh about it!” was meanspirited and unfunny. Her whole S3 storyline was an exercise in bad writing. TPTB laid narrative threads for her at the beginning of the season but then didn’t weave them into anything. They wasted all of her potential. 

So, yeah, all of this going-on is to say that I would absolutely rewrite Brittany’s S3 storyline if given the chance. 

I mean, in the Mouseverse, S3 is where I diverge from canon, and there’s a reason for that.

Anyway, thanks for the question! I’m right there with you.

[sanantonioswebdesign]

What is seo

A quick google search will tell you that wikipedia.com defines SEO as follows:

“ Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic, increasing visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine.. “

If you’ve ever started an online business or If you’ve ever even discussed marketing or spoken to a web designer you’ve heard this term.

But what is it? Why is everyone talking about SEO? How Do you I get it? Can I buy it? Is there a gatekeeper? How much does it cost? I’m sure you have a lot of questions and that is okay. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to help you. We’re here to Teach you what you need to know, so before you even speak to a web designer or marketing agency or anything you will have a firm grasp of the basics. We don’t want you to feel like you walked into a dealership and got took.  We simply want to help your site rank. We want you to get more clients and most of all we want you to get paid! So let’s jump into it shall we!!

                                 Why do you need SEO

So, basically having good Seo is the internet equivalent of having a good brand or product.

The better your seo is the more popular your content will be. This is exactly what you want. You want your SEO to be as good as possible so your content can be found, so your website, or youtube channel or what have you is findable. If your website has really good seo your website will show up at the top of google’s page listings. Basically, when someone searches for something like San antonio’s Web Design. The website with the is optimized the most for those keywords will show up first. The websites that are least optimized for those keywords will show up farther away from the first page.  So now you understand that you need SEO so that your content can be found let us dive deeper into what this actually means.

                                          SEO Basics

Search Engine optimization is exactly how it sounds. Setting up your SEO Properly will allow Google to Search your website. Google is a Search Engine that San Antonio and beyond are using.

In order to optimize  your website to show up or rank on a Search Engine you have to know exactly what the top Search Engine is. Right now in 2019 that Search Engine is google. So, this means we need to optimize our website for Google’s  Search Engine.How do we do that? Well, I’m glad you asked! The next Paragraph is going to break down “keywords” which is one of the biggest tools that You will use when focusing on your websites SEO.

                                                Keywords

Keywords are pretty much how they sound. Keywords are words you use in your content      

(These are things like a blog, a video, an image or even an infographic.) So let’s go over a way you can use keywords to help your seo. I want to really break this down so basically anyone can find this blog article, read it and know a good amount of information about SEO, keywords and everything I’m writing about in this blog post. So, first of all when you are trying to use a keyword to help boost your seo you need to make sure you’re using a keyword that is regularly being searched. Since, I run a web design and marketing company in San Antonio , Texas, I need to make sure that I try to use keywords that entail this. So, basically I would use words like Web Design or words like marketing, I would even use words like San Antonio, Texas. The reason I want to include these keywords, is again so that the top used search engine will show my site as popular by using these keywords on my site so that when google crawls my website it can really understand what my website is about.  By the way, web crawling is another way of saying searching for things. Basically google crawls the web to find certain words ,items or pieces of information. It returns that data and then uses that data to adjust what it show’s first and last.

Using the right keywords allows google to understand what your site is about. So,when I use words like “ San Antonio’s Web Design” on my website it tells google that my site is about just that! Your site might be about something else. Your website might be about computer repair or barber shops or what have you. So let’s say you have a website about hair and you are a barber. You would want to make sure your website includes words like hair, barber, scissors, barbershop, etc.

                                  Long tail keywords

“Long tail keywords are basically keywords that are enclosed in phrases or key phrases.” -San  Antonio’s Web Design

An example of a long tail keyword, for a barbershop would be something like “ Great barber shops in the san antonio area.” or “How do barbers make swag lines” For a Web Designers website you could use something like “ The best website designer in San Antonio Texas” or something like “What is Seo?” or even “What are Long Tail keywords?”. In other words, you want to use “key” “Phrases” that are relative to your topic.  A Youtube channel that is all about “How to become a Professional Barber” would not use long tail keywords like “ what color is my dog” or “ My web Designer is in San Antonio” He would use something more like “Top ten places to buy barber scissors” or “ How do I find a good barber college” or how much do Professional barbers make”. It is USUALLY, easier to rank on google with long tail keywords. However, if your competitor knows what they are doing than they will most likely try to rank for long tail keywords as well as regular or short tail keywords.

                                   How to find keywords

So, now you know you need keywords on your website to help your SEO. Great, but how do you find them? Well, There are a few ways you can do this.  First you can use google’s keyword planner. You can watch the video below to learn more about that. But basically, you just go to https://ads.google.com/intl/en_us/home/tools/keyword-planner/ and google will help you find the right keywords to use to boost your seo by utilizing it’s resources to recommend words you can use that your target audience in  your niche are already using. You just put in a word or two and google recommends several related words that are searched most often on google. keyword planner will even tell you who is ranking number one currently for certain keywords.

will help with your citations/ online real estate.

For instance, let’s say you wanted to optimize your coffee website to show up on Google’s first page for words like coffee, or cappuccino. You can look at google’s keyword planner and see that the top website ranking for that word is starbucks and pretty much all the related words. So if you were to start a small niche website about coffee it might fail horribly unless you really put into the work. You would have to work really hard to rank high for the word “coffee”. You can try, but that’s why it is so important to do your keyword research and to use long tail keywords. Even though starbucks might be the top ranking site for the keyword coffee, you can still optimize your seo for long tail keywords like “how much coffee is too much”.

The second way to find keywords. This is something I found recently works really well for me as I have a pretty extensive history as a writer. Before I became a developer I was very much interested in being a professional writer. Anyway, another thing you can do is look at your local competitors websites. Read their blog section. If they have a blog article about  SEO but it is only say “666 words and 3,873 characters” Than chances are you could probably write an article that would crush their blog article. By the way you can check your competitors word count by using a site like “https://wordcounter.net/” Which is what I usually use when I am thinking about crushing a competitor in SEO.

A third way kind of requires you to have already had some keywords on your website.

You can pretty much Check which keywords on your website is ranking the best by using google search control.

You would of course click performance and than queries.

Under queries you will see something similar to the following.

Hopefully, you have more clicks and impressions than we did at the time this photo was taken.

Anyways, once you load the tool you can see which keywords were searched and how well your website ranked for each keyword. It seems like we ranked  best for web design san antonio and worst for content strategy for web development in san antonio. However, I’m sure with a few minor adjustments we could easily rank for the “content strategy for web development in san Antonio if we just focused a few highly targeted keyword articles for that long tail keyword. We would simply have to write an article that would grab our users attention whilst using the long tail keyword several times. However, we would also need to make sure the article is relevant  to a “content strategy for web development in san antonio” We could also go the route of writing several elaborate articles for that specific long tail keywords and rank that way as long as each article contains useful information that engaged the user for a significant amount of time. You see google will rank a website higher if users click on a link or go to a page and stay on that page for long periods of time. This is because google interprets this as engagement and a high engagement rate tells google that a website is doing well and is providing quality content.

                                                  HTML

Your websites HTML or (Hyper Text Markup Lanuage) Has a lot to do with your SEO.

For example, The way you write an article will affect the way google and other Search Engines will Crawl your website.  If you don’t use The proper heading tag in the correct spot than google’s Search Engine will not properly read your site. This can be problematic when trying to rank for certain things. Luckily google’s algorithms have gotten better to prevent this. However, it is always wise to be safe than sorry.

Your websites P tags can also affect your Seo in the same way. Google needs to know what content is being used where. If you type if your content as “ <h4>” instead of “<p>” Google will notice and won’t crawl your website properly. Which will cause you to lose traffic and thus lose revenue.

Another thing that will affect your Seo which still falls under html is your meta tags. There are several meta tags that will affect your seo ranking.Such as your title tag, which goes in your header section of your websites code. Your description tag will also affect your seo as well. Both of these tags are what google show’s when your website is shown on google’s website.

For instance, if you look below you can see how our website is currently showing our description when you look us up on google.

Do you notice anything strange?

That’s right! Our Descriptions not matching on Facebook and our website!

If  you didn’t catch it don’t worry. We’ll cover that too.

Back to meta tags.. Other than the meta tags for your description and for your title you also need to make sure you have the google site verification tag. You can also find this with-in google search console. You have to upload a file that they give you to your website so that google can verify your website.

Additionally, you can use the geolocation tag however, google has publicly stated they are not longer using this as a ranking factor as of june 2016.However, if you are using google maps snack pack to help your google maps ranking it could still be beneficial if you need to be found in a certain location.

                               Optimize your website

You need to make sure your site loads quickly and look good on all devices. This means you need to make your site responsive. Your videos need to load on all devices from desktops to mobile phones to tablets. You can’t just have a website that loads slowly on a desktop and expect your desktop users to just stay on your website when they can just go to the next similar website that loads quickly . The same goes for phones and tablets. Most people are in a hurry and don’t have time to wait for a slow website to load when they can just get the same information faster somewhere else.Google simply won’t allow a website to rank high on the serps if the website is not user friendly. Google’s ranking factors  now – nowadays are all  about user experience.

                                       Social Media

You want to be on social media sites like pinterest twitter, instagram, Facebook, tumblr etc.

You also want links coming to your website from your social media and to your social media from your website. This works by creating real estate across the internet. You’re creating citations across the web which google sees are references. That being said you need to keep in mind  that there are do follow links and no follow links the only two social media sites right now that allow do follow links are twitter and tumblr. Which means links from those websites will help you rank higher in google Then non follow social media sites.

[olive-wood]

Natural Birth. VBAC.

It's taken me longer than expected to write this post. Partly because having two, under twos is much harder than my original over active ego allowed me to think it would be. But also, because i needed to take the time to reflect over parts of my birth experience that i originally felt disappointed with.

Firstly though, some context or my previous birth experience with our little girl Ethel. In May of 2017 I was deeply under the allusion that birth would come easy to me. I felt I had a strong pain threshold having taken many equestrian blows, i believed that as my body was built for birthing children it would be an (albeit painful) doddle, after all "women have been doing it for 1000s of years". No preparation necessary.

However, a word of advice to all pregnant ladies falling for the tight lipped, patriarchally driven society view of child birth.... the above couldn't be further from the reality you will face, if you don't prepare for the greatest and hardest job you're likely to ever experience.

With Ethel I couldn't cope with even the first contraction. The power felt as my uterus worked hard to bring our girl into the world overwhelmed me and I wanted it taken away at only 2cm of dilation. I exhausted myself, mind and body, and stopped progressing at 8cm after 22hours of hard labour, copious amounts of drugs and many, many hands checking position and progress. The end result: emergency c.section. Though Ethel was not stressed and remained safe and content inside me... I had given up. I didn't understand what happening. Why I wasn't sneezing her out as I had hoped. Why the pain was all too much even with ALL the drugs the NHS had to offer. On May the 25th 2017 jumping the queue of the planned c.sections booked in that day, Ethel was born via the sunroof. By a wonderful surgeon whose humour and skill kept me calm and with very little to recover from afterwards.

Fast forward, to 16 months later. Arthur's arrival. How time changes people, how experience can empower and guide you. I had learnt ALOT from how I reacted during Ethel's birth and i was determined to ensure a different outcome this time. I read a great book by Juju Sundin and would suggest everyone who is involved in birth give it a read. It predates the current hypnobirthing trend, though follows a similar respect for the power of your mind but provides more physical exercises in order to control your reaction to labour. I also, followed birth bloggers on Insta that promote and advocate a more open understanding of birth. Showing full uncensored videos of labour. Something of which I think should be shared with all women, men and children alike, allowing for a gentle, natural appreciation of the powerful experience that is child birth.

I also prepped my husband with how best he could actively support me, forwarned him of how I intended to become vocal and not hold back this time round and my wishes for a natural unmedicated birth.

On the 5th of November, a week before my due date at 10am whilst playing with Ethel I felt the first uncomfortable twinge. I called my midwifery friend, who was to act as my doula. Unfortunately she was enjoying a wedding in Portugal at the time. She confirmed for me that labor had started.. boosted my confidence and encouraged my excitement whilst reminding me to eat and rest whilst I could. My last labor having been such a long one, I knew I needed to reserve my energy.

However, a long labor wasn't to be. By 1030am, having managed to put a jumper and wellies on Ethel (trousers were proving too difficult), I decided walk the collies to find my husband Mark who was mucking out the cow shed. I found the fresh air and repetitive movement of a swaying walk distracted me from each growing contraction. Having Ethel to concern myself over was also a great help and I soon found I was singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" whilst rocking her on my hip as we walked... (song choice is still a mystery to me?!)

By the time we reached the back of the shed I could see my husband had moved to the front and I began to grow weary of holding Ethel. Knowing I couldn't cross through the cows with dogs I began to wander back... toddler, reluctantly doddering along side. During what should have been a mere 2min walk i felt that my contractions had ramped up a notch and I was grateful to see my father in law driving up the track. I explained that Arthur was on route and asked if he'd mind taking Ethel whilst i organised child care and informed Mark. By this time I needed to keep reminding myself that the pain i was feeling was a "good pain" a "healthy pain" it was my uterus muscle, a muscle rarely in use, aching at its efforts at bringing my 2nd born into the world.

I finally managed to reach Mark who (in true farmer style) informed me he'd be in at brew time and if he thought we'd have time to finish off the rest of the mornings jobs. By this point I was struggling to stay standing and knew I needed to rest and time my contractions. So I headed back to the house and put in a phone call to my parents.

It took my parents 45 minutes to get to our farm, by that time I was sat on a hard back dining chair at the front of our farm house wearing only my jogging shorts and a bikini top keeping cool from the overwhelming heat my body was producing. The songs of Mr Tumble keeping my toddler from breaking my concentration on my guttural moans and the repetitive (though admittedly not for everyone) comfort of one of our dogs licking my leg. I swear our usually quiet lane was busiest in that hour of me sat there.

The contractions were powerful to say the least, but I felt I had good control over my perspective of what my body was doing. Staying positive is key. I knew panic founded on negativity must be avoided at all costs.

Mark was with me at this stage and I found I could only shout the word TIME at the beginning and end of each contraction whilst concentrating on staying in control. Fortunately, Mark understood and would take note of how far apart they were and most importantly let me know when I was around half way through each one. Contractions generally last around 60 seconds, and begin to peak as you come around the 30 second mark... having someone tell you at this point you've broken the back of that particular contraction can really help you keep focus for its descent. Humorously, my parents didn't quite understand my one word language and kept telling me minute by minute the actual time of day- believing it to be something i was determined to focus on.

By around 11.45, after only 15 miniutes of my parents arriving it was time to leave. I was concerned that it was too soon and id be in for a long hospital stay, but my contractions were now less that 2 minutes apart and I was struggling to distinguish between each one.

The car journey was an ordeal that required alot of LOUD singing to help me focus on something other than painful surges that were being amplified by each pothole and tight country lane turn. I surprised myself at my own vocal range and began what i can only describe as an attempt at Opera. I quivered each note for as long as I could: matching the noise level to the strength of each contraction.

By the time we reached the hospital just after 1230 I new things were progressing well as I struggled to move from the uncomfortable position within the car to the doors of the birth centre. I took comfort in this though. I knew that with each increase in pain and discomfort, I was closer to meeting our little boy. I also clung to the knowledge that once he reached my birth canal this pain would ease, and that many women who are aware of the change at that stage of labor would be afforded a rest bite before the big push.

Mark went to the doors before me and left me in the car. We hadn't been able to get through to birth centre to inform them we were coming (I know now that Mark had been dialing the community midwife number which was written next to the Labour ward number!) and I didn't fancy standing with my bags before I could see those doors were open. On arrival we were greeted by a number of midwives and various questions of which I was so grateful to Mark for answering, as by this point I was enjoying sharing my new found operatic skills to every other birthing mother at the centre that day.

We were shown into a large, airy room with a birthing pool. I knew I wouldnt be using the pool after my experience with Ethel. I'd never been comfortable being in a bath for too long and I enjoy my bathing water hotter than is safe for birthing in. One of the midwives kindly removed the bed that was in the room and replaced it with a birth bed. Something I thought I wouldnt have felt comfortable with after reading so many hard opinions about how unnatural lying on your back is as a birthing position. But I wanted to sit, I needed to sit. I needed to focus. Not march on the spot, bounce on a ball or dance around the room like I assumed I would.

After what I believe to be around 1pm my midwife introduced herself to me. Other than the rearrangement of furniture I hadn't noticed her presence. Her name was Helen. And I hope that she doesn't mind me sharing her name and her part in my story... but without her and her perfectly instinctive ways I believe this blog wouldn't be about the postive and enjoyable birth that I can now reflect on.

I purposefully mention how I never noticed her until her gentle introduction as this was key, I believe, to our success as a team in my labor. She knew instinctively, even without the help of my notes (that on account of us not calling before arriving hadnt been sent yet) what my birth plan hopes were. She knew her role would be best served as unobtrusive as possible. I felt her trust in me and my abilities every time I broke from my focus, which had become a form of unintended mediation (Mark told me later: I looked like I was "off my face of Spice" and "groaning like an animal") to see her smiling at me, letting me know she was there if I needed her.

After sometime Helen asked if I wanted her to check my dilation. This level of respect for the autonomy over my own body secured my belief that I was in the right place. That unassisted birth doesn't have to be at home alone. Having your cervix checked is an uncomfortable feeling, ive heard some women describe it as painful, but a good tip during labor is to take these moments as more positive distractions. Its a discomfort you can confidently understand, it brings you knowledge of progress, it allows you to make decisions and be better informed (should you so wish to be). Helen announced I was 8cm, the stage I reached with Ethel after almost 7 times the length of time. 8cm the magical number of transition. 8cm... only 2cm to go. At this point my confidence began to grow beyond anything the pain my body was feeling could touch. I began to chant in my head "I can do this".

Not long after I requested fluids. The need for these (as well as a safety precaution after my first birth) was the reason why I wouldn't feel comfortable birthing at home. I know my body, and I know I dehydrate quickly. Mark had been consistently feeding me sips of water throughout my contractions but I knew if I didn't boost my fluids my energy levels could dip before then end. Something of which was noted when labouring Ethel. Mark stepped up again and convinced a senior midwife that fluids were needed and she checked my urine by placing a catheter at my request as I was beyond relaxing enough to pee. The results showed a high number ketones and fluids were given.

Around this time my notes must have come through. As I was paid a visit by a consultant. Non other than the same consultant whom was the surgeon to my c.section the previous year. It is at this part of my birth journey that I have found most worth learning. Learning about how easily birth experiences can change, how important it is to be clear about your wishes before labour takes over and you are unable to do so for yourself, a need for better awareness on how common intervention can take labour in a new direction and also why these intervention of take place.

My consultant didn't have the same knowledgeable approach as my midwife Helen, as to the importance of unassisted, natural birthing means to a birthing mother. I recall him asking what pain relief i had taken, his need for me to focus on his questions, forcing me to loose focus on my concentration as he was concerned my relaxed exterior was a sign of me weakening. He then, albeit politely, told me he was going to check my progress and announced the crushing news he believed me to be 6cm dilated not the magical 8cm and that he was going to brake my waters. My plans for a unassisted birth was slipping out of my reach, I could feel the panic rising in me, the amount of people in the room came to light. I began to feel less of a simple mother birthing her miracle and more of person in need of medical aid.

The feeling of my waters breaking was more than intense. The contractions that came soon after did exactly as the consultant, with all his best intentions, had intended. I was catapulted forward into my labor and my mind had no chance to catch up. My meditational skills had gone... no amount of opera could bring it back. My body wanted Arthur out. My mind and body were separated. My body began to push as my mind along side my husband and Helen tried to command it stop. I won't lie to anyone reading this looking for a positive birth read: this stage of being so quickly advancing in labor was too much for me. I lost all control. The pain was sickening. The contractions all consuming. I had hit transition with no real build up to it. I wasn't prepared and I needed help.

As each contraction came my body would lurch forward and begin to push. I remember my husband pinning back to the bed nose to nose telling me to breath with him. I could see the concern in his face and I could hear it in Helen's voice. I needed to relax, baby wasn't ready. My body wasn't ready. My old scar certainly wasn't ready. I had been labouring well from the very first twinge for only 5 hours, yet on seeing the gentleman that had performed my c.section and coping so abysmally with this new direction my birth had taken I wanted rest bite. The rest bite i had forgotten comes soon after transition. Your whole labor is very much like one contraction: it reaches a peak (at transition) but once you've reached that peak it settles down and you can some what rest (When your baby reaches your canal). I wish I had remembered that. But I never... and demanded an epidural. I remember the words leaving my mouth. I remember more so Mark's quick reaction at telling me I didn't mean it... and how even quicker i retorted I did. I remember how Helen tried to buy some time in the hope I'd change my mind. And I remember how inside I knew how much I didn't want that type of help. But I was desperate and it was my wishes that were acted upon. If only I had been so confident in requesting to having no intervention then perhaps I wouldn't have had one.

At around 430pm the anesthetist arrived with my epidural. He had to wait for my contractions to pass before he could set up the injection. During this time Helen had sat me up on the bed and was allowing me to squeeze the life out of her arms whilst guiding me in my breathing. I was transfixed on the movement of her mouth as she spoke words of confidence to me... I felt the control I lost returning and the disappointment of what I had asked for.

My characters greatest failing is my fear of upsetting people. I had asked for an epidural... I had demanded one. This man had taken the time to come to the birth centre from his own ward to give me it. The package was open.. the drug would be wasted, as well as everyone involveds time. So, just like staying in the warm birthing bath with Ethel, when I all I wanted to do was get out after only 5 minutes of being in... I didn't say anything.

At this point i must say I'm not against expectant mothers taking any form of pain relief during birth. Birth is as unique as the individual going through it. But birth control is something that wasn't on my dream plan. After feeling a remembering very little of my daughter's birth, I wanted to feel and remember every second of my son entering into the world. And fortunately...by the grace of God I did.

An epidural can take anywhere between 15-30mins to take effect and soon after the doctors had left and the room was clear of anyone other than my supreme birth team, I felt then sensation I had hoped to experience.... a drop. The passage of my baby boy from my uterus into my birth canal. Helen had told Mark I was ready, though I heard him say to give me a moment before telling me. He knows me so well I thought. He knew how important this part was for me. He knew how upset I was inside after the inventions. I needed to take this slow. I needed this to be a calm moment. Not the drama of tv births. I wanted to enjoy this.

And I did.

Helen told me it was time whenever i was ready. I remember her smiling and I knew I was back where I wanted to be. My epidural hadn't kicked yet I still had all feeling and the urge came to push and I followed it. Not like before-this felt powerful but not painful. My pushing at first was feeble to say the least. I remember reading about people breathing out their babies. I wanted that experience... but I still needed to push hard to help move Arthur down. At first my efforts were accompanied by grunts that would escalate into shouts.. not of pain but of release. But Helen instructed me that this was wasting much needed energy. I needed to focus in pushing down and out from below. No vocals needed. Just concentrate on what my body was already doing. Her words were so clear and calm I couldn't help but fall into them. And I felt my mind become perfectly one with the physical aspects of my body. With in what felt like only moments he was crowning. It was amazing. I knew soon I'd be meeting my little boy and I wanted this moment to last. With every push I'd allow him to hover almost between world's. The only pain i felt was a hot sensation as my skin stretched to accommodate my progress as I was close to the end. I knew if I wanted to avoid any tears I had to take my time and allow my body to bring Arthur into the world. So I began to breath deeply and slowly. Enjoying every second. His head appeared to my husband with one deep outward breath....followed by his perfect 7.9lb and into my waiting arms.

We had done it. And it was all and more than I could have hoped for.

My beautiful boy was taking sustenance from my breast as we waited for the placenta to pulsate the final drops of goodness that had allowed him to thrive inside me those past 9 months. After only 6.5 hours from start to finish...to the lights and sounds of fireworks he arrived.

The End.

To my husband Mark I thank you for being my rock. For understanding my needs and not leaving my side (even in the face of off key opera). You are my world and the children you have given me our the stars.

To Helen: there arent words to fully describe the appreciation and gratitude to you for being my midwife and my unintentional doula. And if I can ask one favour from you, after all you have done, is that you are there for next children I bring into this world.

[vickisventures]

Proud to be an American!

(The river that runs through the city park/campground in St. Hilaire.)

Happy 4th!  We are sitting at 92 degrees at 12:15 pm and it’s HOT!  I know most of the country is experiencing a heat wave and even if we were still in Colorado, I doubt it’d be much better.  So we sit in the A/C (except for Steve who is out grilling our lunch) and pretend it’s nicer outside. 

We have already finished one week of our Digi-Key training.  It was a tiring week but busy. We have training from 8:30am-5pm every day.  Thankfully, we have not spent all of that time in the classroom.  I have spent a lot of time sitting in training/in-service and it never gets more fun.  There’s always the same personalities that test your patience and there’s always times when you want to beat your head against a wall.   Both Steve and I got stuck in the last 2 rows.  Neither of us prefer that location in a classroom setting.  Our instructor is not the best at teaching a room of 33.  He knows his stuff, without a doubt, but there are times when it feels like he’s only teaching the front row and times when he seems to be having a conversation with himself and we can’t hear what he’s saying. Wednesday they went to no masks IF you’ve been vaccinated and that has helped.  We can understand him better now, but that doesn’t help when he seems to forget he’s teaching to a whole room.  We have 2 other trainers in the room who we can ask questions to and sometimes it seems like there are 3 training sessions going on in 1 room and my head starts to spin.  There is sooo much to learn.  We get most of our training on the floor though.  The last 2 days, we probably only spent 1 hour in the classroom and the rest of the time on the floor.  Lance, our head trainer, keeps saying that 80% of our orders/picks are easy and 20% have some challenge or issue.  After a week, I’m thinking he got the numbers switched.  But they basically gave us some key instructions and and then sent us all to a few bays to “pick.”  We go to a printer, rip off the next order label and set off to fulfill the order.  We each have a hand-held scanner that we scan the order into and use to help us through the picking process.  It tells us what to look for and will either give us a nice tone that tells us we are doing it right, or it gives us an annoying buzz telling us we have an issue.  Sounds easy, right?  Uhh, if it were Amazon, maybe, but this is an electronic parts warehouse and some customers want 3000 tiny parts and others want 1.  Obviously, the 1 is easy to fulfill...most of the time, but the 3000 can be a little trickier.  Some customers require that the manufacturer date be before a certain time.  For example, they may require the part(s) to not be older than 24 months.  So you have to dig through the bin trying to find 3000 that have a date code within 24 months.  You may find 500 but that won’t work so you have to get on the computer and see if there are more somewhere in the system and if so, send out an order for them.  If not, then you have to indicate that the dates weren’t available and someone else will contact the customer to see if they will accept what we have.  Confused yet?  Then there are all sorts of messages you get on your scanner that a newbie has no idea what to do with.  I felt like I was constantly looking for one of our trainers to ask questions and then the other 32 trainees were doing the same thing so you’d just stand and wait your turn.  Once we have the order, we have to pack it so that it will not be damaged as it goes to the packer. There are rules to that also.  It really is a lot more complicated than one would think but I’m hoping that after another month, we’ll know how to handle most issues and things will run smoothly 80% of the time.  The time does go quickly though because there’s always another order coming out of the printer.  Week 2, we are going to be working in some other areas to get a feel for them. Then they’ll put us with mentors a week at at time for 3 weeks to work in different areas. So far we were in the “regular” area and the cut/tape area (this is where the parts are all on a tape like surface on reels).   Neither Steve nor I really liked the cut/tape area.  We’ll see what this week holds.  We are supposed to be in the moisture sensitive area and the electric static discharge area.  We already have to wear something on our shoes to discharge any static you might have on you.  You slip them around the heel of your shoe and then there’s a string that looks like a shoe string that you have to put underneath your foot in the shoe.  I’m going to try to upload a picture of this on my blog but due to serious WiFi challenges, I may not be able to.  We are supposed to check our shoe strips at least 4 times a day (after breaks and such) to make sure they “pass.”  There’s a machine that we step up on that checks to see if we are static free.  If they don’t pass, you have to find the issue before you can go on the floor no matter what area you are working in. A lot of things to remember and learn, but so far, I think we’re going to like working here. 

Our neighbors arrived on the 1st.  So far we are not impressed.  They seem nice, but they have pretty much spread out on our side of the lot where there’s more shade.  For you that aren’t RVers, the perimeters of a site is determined by your hook ups.  That makes it easy to determine what’s yours and what belongs to your neighbors since there’s no literal lines drawn.  Not sure where they missed that but they have been working as gate guards in the oil fields of South Texas and I know you don’t have to share space there.  Also they let their dog run off leash and it wanders into others’ sites.  We may put up with the site encroachment but we won’t put up with that   There are several around that don’t keep their dogs on a tether/leash and we may have to speak to the camp host about it if it becomes a problem.  That’s one of those camping rules that people think only apply to other people.  They don’t need to comply because their sweet “Lassie” is a perfect angel and would never annoy other people or dogs.  Not so!  Otherwise, our site is working out fine.  They are doing some pipeline work down the road so sometimes we get stopped by the work and have to wait before they release us.  Makes it a bit of a challenge to know exactly how long it will take us to get to work but we usually just leave 30 minutes before work and have plenty of time to get logged in and ready for class/work.  

Saturday night we decided to treat ourselves to dinner out.  I knew since it was a holiday weekend, my first choice might be closed but figured we could just go to another restaurant nearby.  Guess I forgot what small towns were like.  After trying 4 different places, all closed, we ended up at Dairy Queen.  Not sure what we’ll do if we want to eat out again tomorrow night!  Guess A&W...(those are the only 2 chains that exist in Thief River Falls that are allowing dine-in!).

We tried out a church in town last Sunday.  It was a non-denominational church since there’s no church of Christ here.  People were somewhat friendly but they only sang 2 songs (led by a music video on a screen).  I can’t do only 2 songs...I don’t think we’ll be back.  I found a church of Christ about 40 minutes from here but when I after seeing their live stream video on Facebook, realized it’s not your typical church of Christ, so that leaves Grand Forks which is 55 minutes away.  I was kind of down about the church situation but Steve and I were able to stream our Amarillo church on my phone this morning so I feel much better.  It did stop and buffer 4 times but we were at least able to catch it all.  I really wasn’t sure we would since we have such trouble with Verizon here. Guess God knew we needed it and gave it a little boost for us!  

[sanantonioswebdesign]

What is Seo

A quick google search will tell you that wikipedia.com defines SEO as follows:

“ Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic, increasing visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine.. “

If you’ve ever started an online business or If you’ve ever even discussed marketing or spoken to a web designer you’ve heard this term.

But what is it? Why is everyone talking about SEO? How Do you I get it? Can I buy it? Is there a gatekeeper? How much does it cost? I’m sure you have a lot of questions and that is okay. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to help you. We’re here to Teach you what you need to know, so before you even speak to a web designer or marketing agency or anything you will have a firm grasp of the basics. We don’t want you to feel like you walked into a dealership and got took.  We simply want to help your site rank. We want you to get more clients and most of all we want you to get paid! So let’s jump into it shall we!!

                                  Why do you need SEO

So, basically having good Seo is the internet equivalent of having a good brand or product.

The better your seo is the more popular your content will be. This is exactly what you want. You want your SEO to be as good as possible so your content can be found, so your website, or youtube channel or what have you is findable. If your website has really good seo your website will show up at the top of google’s page listings. Basically, when someone searches for something like San antonio’s Web Design. The website with the is optimized the most for those keywords will show up first. The websites that are least optimized for those keywords will show up farther away from the first page.  So now you understand that you need SEO so that your content can be found let us dive deeper into what this actually means.

                                           SEO Basics

Search Engine optimization is exactly how it sounds. Setting up your SEO Properly will allow Google to Search your website. Google is a Search Engine that San Antonio and beyond are using.

In order to optimize  your website to show up or rank on a Search Engine you have to know exactly what the top Search Engine is. Right now in 2019 that Search Engine is google. So, this means we need to optimize our website for Google’s  Search Engine.How do we do that? Well, I’m glad you asked! The next Paragraph is going to break down “keywords” which is one of the biggest tools that You will use when focusing on your websites SEO.

                                                 Keywords

Keywords are pretty much how they sound. Keywords are words you use in your content      

(These are things like a blog, a video, an image or even an infographic.) So let’s go over a way you can use keywords to help your seo. I want to really break this down so basically anyone can find this blog article, read it and know a good amount of information about SEO, keywords and everything I’m writing about in this blog post. So, first of all when you are trying to use a keyword to help boost your seo you need to make sure you’re using a keyword that is regularly being searched. Since, I run a web design and marketing company in San Antonio , Texas, I need to make sure that I try to use keywords that entail this. So, basically I would use words like Web Design or words like marketing, I would even use words like San Antonio, Texas. The reason I want to include these keywords, is again so that the top used search engine will show my site as popular by using these keywords on my site so that when google crawls my website it can really understand what my website is about.  By the way, web crawling is another way of saying searching for things. Basically google crawls the web to find certain words ,items or pieces of information. It returns that data and then uses that data to adjust what it show’s first and last.

Using the right keywords allows google to understand what your site is about. So,when I use words like “ San Antonio’s Web Design” on my website it tells google that my site is about just that! Your site might be about something else. Your website might be about computer repair or barber shops or what have you. So let’s say you have a website about hair and you are a barber. You would want to make sure your website includes words like hair, barber, scissors, barbershop, etc.

                                   Long tail keywords 

“Long tail keywords are basically keywords that are enclosed in phrases or key phrases.” -San  Antonio’s Web Design

An example of a long tail keyword, for a barbershop would be something like “ Great barber shops in the san antonio area.” or “How do barbers make swag lines” For a Web Designers website you could use something like “ The best website designer in San Antonio Texas” or something like “What is Seo?” or even “What are Long Tail keywords?”. In other words, you want to use “key” “Phrases” that are relative to your topic.  A Youtube channel that is all about “How to become a Professional Barber” would not use long tail keywords like “ what color is my dog” or “ My web Designer is in San Antonio” He would use something more like “Top ten places to buy barber scissors” or “ How do I find a good barber college” or how much do Professional barbers make”. It is USUALLY, easier to rank on google with long tail keywords. However, if your competitor knows what they are doing than they will most likely try to rank for long tail keywords as well as regular or short tail keywords.

                                    How to find keywords

So, now you know you need keywords on your website to help your SEO. Great, but how do you find them? Well, There are a few ways you can do this.  First you can use google’s keyword planner. You can watch the video below to learn more about that. But basically, you just go to https://ads.google.com/intl/en_us/home/tools/keyword-planner/ and google will help you find the right keywords to use to boost your seo by utilizing it’s resources to recommend words you can use that your target audience in  your niche are already using. You just put in a word or two and google recommends several related words that are searched most often on google. keyword planner will even tell you who is ranking number one currently for certain keywords.

will help with your citations/ online real estate.

For instance, let’s say you wanted to optimize your coffee website to show up on Google’s first page for words like coffee, or cappuccino. You can look at google’s keyword planner and see that the top website ranking for that word is starbucks and pretty much all the related words. So if you were to start a small niche website about coffee it might fail horribly unless you really put into the work. You would have to work really hard to rank high for the word “coffee”. You can try, but that’s why it is so important to do your keyword research and to use long tail keywords. Even though starbucks might be the top ranking site for the keyword coffee, you can still optimize your seo for long tail keywords like “how much coffee is too much”.

The second way to find keywords. This is something I found recently works really well for me as I have a pretty extensive history as a writer. Before I became a developer I was very much interested in being a professional writer. Anyway, another thing you can do is look at your local competitors websites. Read their blog section. If they have a blog article about  SEO but it is only say “666 words and 3,873 characters” Than chances are you could probably write an article that would crush their blog article. By the way you can check your competitors word count by using a site like “https://wordcounter.net/” Which is what I usually use when I am thinking about crushing a competitor in SEO.

A third way kind of requires you to have already had some keywords on your website.

You can pretty much Check which keywords on your website is ranking the best by using google search control.

You would of course click performance and than queries.

Under queries you will see something similar to the following.

Hopefully, you have more clicks and impressions than we did at the time this photo was taken.

Anyways, once you load the tool you can see which keywords were searched and how well your website ranked for each keyword. It seems like we ranked  best for web design san antonio and worst for content strategy for web development in san antonio. However, I’m sure with a few minor adjustments we could easily rank for the “content strategy for web development in san Antonio if we just focused a few highly targeted keyword articles for that long tail keyword. We would simply have to write an article that would grab our users attention whilst using the long tail keyword several times. However, we would also need to make sure the article is relevant  to a “content strategy for web development in san antonio” We could also go the route of writing several elaborate articles for that specific long tail keywords and rank that way as long as each article contains useful information that engaged the user for a significant amount of time. You see google will rank a website higher if users click on a link or go to a page and stay on that page for long periods of time. This is because google interprets this as engagement and a high engagement rate tells google that a website is doing well and is providing quality content.

                                                   HTML

Your websites HTML or (Hyper Text Markup Lanuage) Has a lot to do with your SEO.

For example, The way you write an article will affect the way google and other Search Engines will Crawl your website.  If you don’t use The proper heading tag in the correct spot than google’s Search Engine will not properly read your site. This can be problematic when trying to rank for certain things. Luckily google’s algorithms have gotten better to prevent this. However, it is always wise to be safe than sorry.

Your websites P tags can also affect your Seo in the same way. Google needs to know what content is being used where. If you type if your content as “ <h4>” instead of “<p>” Google will notice and won’t crawl your website properly. Which will cause you to lose traffic and thus lose revenue.

Another thing that will affect your Seo which still falls under html is your meta tags. There are several meta tags that will affect your seo ranking.Such as your title tag, which goes in your header section of your websites code. Your description tag will also affect your seo as well. Both of these tags are what google show’s when your website is shown on google’s website.

For instance, if you look below you can see how our website is currently showing our description when you look us up on google.

Do you notice anything strange?

That’s right! Our Descriptions not matching on Facebook and our website!

If  you didn’t catch it don’t worry. We’ll cover that too.

Back to meta tags.. Other than the meta tags for your description and for your title you also need to make sure you have the google site verification tag. You can also find this with-in google search console. You have to upload a file that they give you to your website so that google can verify your website.

Additionally, you can use the geolocation tag however, google has publicly stated they are not longer using this as a ranking factor as of june 2016.However, if you are using google maps snack pack to help your google maps ranking it could still be beneficial if you need to be found in a certain location.

                                Optimize your website

You need to make sure your site loads quickly and look good on all devices. This means you need to make your site responsive. Your videos need to load on all devices from desktops to mobile phones to tablets. You can’t just have a website that loads slowly on a desktop and expect your desktop users to just stay on your website when they can just go to the next similar website that loads quickly . The same goes for phones and tablets. Most people are in a hurry and don’t have time to wait for a slow website to load when they can just get the same information faster somewhere else.Google simply won’t allow a website to rank high on the serps if the website is not user friendly. Google’s ranking factors  now – nowadays are all  about user experience.

                                        Social Media

You want to be on social media sites like pinterest twitter, instagram, Facebook, tumblr etc.

You also want links coming to your website from your social media and to your social media from your website. This works by creating real estate across the internet. You’re creating citations across the web which google sees are references. That being said you need to keep in mind  that there are do follow links and no follow links the only two social media sites right now that allow do follow links are twitter and tumblr. Which means links from those websites will help you rank higher in google. The non follow social media sites.

[trbl-will-find-me]

Every Exit, An Entrance (12/?)

There are two (and only two) possibilities: either she led XCOM to victory and they are now engaged in a clean up operation of alien forces, or XCOM was overrun, clearing the way for an alien-controlled puppet government to seize control of the planet.

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option.

She’s in her office when Royston knocks. “Commander? You got a minute?”

“Door’s open.”

Steph settles heavily in a chair on the other side of the desk. “Is that offer to hold the wedding here still good?” “Yeah,” she says, looking up from her papers. “I can’t lift the safety restrictions, so you’re stuck with us as photographers, but I see no reason why we couldn’t have it here.”

“Central alright with it?” “He’s more sympathetic than you’d think.”

The tension drains from the sniper’s shoulders. “Oh, thank god.” “Martin’s fine with it?”

She nods. “To put it lightly.”

“Your folks really put you two through the ringer, huh?”

“I can’t call home without it being an issue. Used to be it was just mom, but now she’s got dad roped in, too. At this point, I could pierce my nose, cover myself in tattoos, and I still think they’d be more interested in ‘how could you marry someone you haven’t even known a year?’”

The Commander grimaces. “Ouch.”

She nods. “It’s not much better for Martin. His mom’s made peace with it, but his dad’s a … big personality. He tends to dominate the conversation. And,” she adds, lowering her voice. “He doesn’t really believe I speak the language, so.”

“So, you get to hear the whole ugly, unfiltered version.”

She nods. “I try to make myself scarce when those calls happen. On the upside, now I’ve got something to do with that time.”

“You have a time frame for it?”

She shrugs. “Molchetti keeps sending me wedding blogs. I guess we’ll figure out a … thing and go from there. So, end of January? Maybe?”

The Commander nods. “That’s fine. We can requisition most things quickly these days. I just need to know what they are.”

Royston cracks a grin. “Don’t think you can requisition lifetime supplies of Xanax, ma’am.”

She laughs. “Unfortunately, not. But ear plugs? Those, we can get.”

The sniper groans and buries her face in her hands. “It’s not like we’re seventeen with a crush. We went to war, for crying out loud. Holy shit,” she says, quietly. “We went to war. Sorry,” she shakes her head. “That’s still feels weird to, you know, acknowledge.”

“Aliens invaded the planet. We went to war from a secret base under the Kansas cornfields. They turned our friends against us, tried to use them to kill us, and we responded by knocking their ship out of existence. I’d be concerned if those things didn’t feel weird. I don’t think most of us have really had the time to process it.”

“I dunno. Bernard seems okay. Central seems … alright. Dr. Vahlen’s practically chipper.”

“Moira Vahlen is a woman whom I both deeply respect and about whom I have serious concerns. Try not to use her as a gauge. As for Bernard and Central, they’re career military. They expect to say ‘I went to war.’ Most CIA case officers aren’t quite in that boat, Royston.”

“I didn’t even believe in aliens before all of this. So, when the offer came through,” she shrugs.

“Do you regret it?”

Royston shakes her head. “Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to make it through the night without high-def, surround sound nightmares, but no. I wouldn’t trade what I did or who I met here for anything. I mean, we saved the world.”

The Commander’s gut twists. Don’t jump the gun on that, she wants to say. There could always be something coming down the pipeline. The Pods. There’s something there, but I don’t know what, and I know it’s coming for us all. Royston doesn’t need to hear that, though. Not now, anyway.

“Yeah,” she finally offers. “We did.”

--

They spend that first day digging graves. There are enough survivors to keep the haven running, yes, but the toll is still high. The dead lie, like fallen toy soldiers, on the southern edge of the shantytown, waiting for a final resting place, growing cold and stiff as night falls. There are whole families in their numbers, the old and the young alike. If she looks too quickly, she thinks she can see the faces of Strike One. But, of course, that’s ridiculous --- they are all long gone.

She wonders who buried them, if anyone gave them that courtesy. They had given their all; each and every one had deserved a proper memorial.  She realizes, sadly, that their names are almost certainly forgotten to all but a handful of people. She doubts the dead before her will be remembered much longer.

They break for dinner, a quiet, somber affair consisting of whatever they can carry out from the Avenger and cook over campfires. Her men break into small groups, save for Krieger, who takes her dinner on the ship; she has a job to do, yes, but also a vigil to keep.  The Commander couldn’t deny the request.

Her remaining soldiers split into two groups: Wallace, Kelly, and Sally in one and Thomas and Moon in the other. Science and engineering clump together. Tygan takes dinner in his lab while Lily eats quickly, then turns her attention back to repairing the damaged water purifier.

Central doesn’t eat, just takes a nip off of the flask he carries in his side pocket, and keeps his attention on the local Resistance leaders, and the matter of what to do going forward.

She looks around for a moment, watching, taking in the life among the carnage, then sets her unused bowl near the others. She never liked stew anyway.

Digging is hard. The ground is rocky and the shovel awkward in her hands. Her back hurts, her arms hurt, and she’d give her left kidney for a backhoe, or even a pair of work gloves.

It doesn’t matter, though. The holes have to be dug if they expect any chance of funerals tomorrow.

Sally makes her way back next, her own shovel in hand, and begins working from the other side of the grave.

“Sal,” the Commander begins. “About what happened on the bridge today…” “I’m sorry, ma’am,” she says. “It won’t happen again.”

“No, that’s not it,” she says, tightening her grip on the handle. “I mean, that’s …” She heaves a sigh. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do, but I’d appreciate it if you’d consider staying with us once you hit eighteen.”

Sally brushes a stray hair back with her shoulder. ”I’m not,” she groans, heaving a pile of dirt to the side. “I’m not planning on leaving, ma’am.”

“Wasn’t sure after today.”

She can make out the silhouette of the girl shaking her head by the light of the portable lantern. “That’s just …” She heaves another pile of dirt out. “I dunno. Something to say, I guess. Ugh,” she intones, removing a worm from her pants. “I like to remind him he’s not the only one who can make threats.”

“Uh-huh,” the Commander nods, hefting another shovelful of dirt out.

“It wasn’t always like this,” Sally offers. “I can feel you wondering, so I’ll spare you asking. No, things were not always this fucked up.”

“So, I really did put you in a shitty position the other day.”

Sally shakes her head, driving her shovel into the dirt again. “Nah. I’ve been with him long enough to know when a bad episode’s coming --- you were fine. And he was too distracted to notice me dumping things out. Besides, I’d already been on his case about you two. Part of the job description.”

“What’s the job?”

“Professional tragic waif.”

The Commander almost laughs. “You’ve got some sense of humor.”

Sally pauses for a moment, leaning on her shovel. “Laugh or cry, Commander. And if I start crying, I don’t know how I’m gonna stop.”

“Yeah,” she says, depositing another pile of dirt. “I can appreciate that sentiment.”

--

“Commander,” Central’s voice sounds in her ear. “When you get a minute, it seems we have a situation.”

She pushes herself up on one hand. “Could you elaborate on that, Central?”

“Entirely terrestrial in nature, ma’am. We’re not looking at hostile contact. But, beyond that, you’ll have to come see.”

“I’m on my way.”

She slides out of her bunk and crosses the floor from her small room out into the Common Room and on toward Mission Control.

From the hallway, she hears a bark, and picks up her pace.

Central is standing in front of the Hologlobe, staring bemusedly at a SHIV. Something barks, and he shakes his head.

“Alright. Where’s the dog?” She asks. “I’m assuming that’s why you called me in.”

“It would seem our engineers are starting to run low on work, Commander. Meet ROV-R.”

“ROV-R?”

He gestures down towards the SHIV. “ROV-R.”

The SHIV rolls towards her, the sound of panting playing from its speaker. It tilts its gun mount, now retrofitted with a camera, up at her, as if asking for affection. The impression of a small, flying drone tickles the back of her mind. It’s familiar, so familiar, but she can’t put a finger on where’s it’s from. Her heart swells with fondness for the little character, though, and she almost turns to Central to ask if he remembers its origin.

Something stops her, though, a voice she’d almost swear wasn’t her own.

He won’t know.

It’s a ridiculous idea, though. Who else would be in her head? She’d notice if someone else had decided to move in. God knows she spends enough time with her thoughts.

She kneels down and pats its chassis. “Dr. Shen,” she asks, pressing a finger to her comm. “We have a robot-dog now?”

“My apologies, Commander.”

“No apologies needed, but, one question: how advanced is the AI?”

“It’s largely autonomous; we were developing the unit for search and rescue work. The men decided that some … ancillary features would be a boost to morale.”

“So, yes, we can teach him tricks.”

Behind her, she hears Central trying to stifle a laugh.

“At a minimum. As we work to decode more of the alien systems, we hope to repurpose them for our own uses. ROV-R serves as a kind of test unit.”

She nods, though she realizes the gesture won’t carry over the comm. “Right. Well, in that case, carry on.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

She rises, and offers the robot a few affectionate pats on the head. It’s rear antenna begins swaying from side to side, a rough approximation of a tail wag.

“Well,” her XO offers. “We did need a mascot.”

“A robot dog powered by alien tech. Somehow, it’s fitting.”

ROV-R emits another prerecorded bark and rolls off, eager to explore more of the base, panting all the way.

“On the positive side, we won’t have to take him out in the morning.”

She watches the robot go, and runs a hand through her hair. “Probably shouldn’t ask Shen about making him fluffy.”

“Absolutely not.”

--

It’s late when they finish digging, and even later by the time she’s finished her check-ins with Shen and Tygan, and taken a shower. Still, she pads down to the bar, wet hair braided back. They’ve come this far; she’s not willing to risk losing the progress they’ve made.

“He filled a flask and headed out,” Kelly says from her spot. “If you’re looking for Central, that is.”

The Commander nods. “Thanks. How are … how are you holding up?”

The ranger stares at her beer bottle. “It’s not my first go with ADVENT, so I should have known what to expect. And, all things considered, we did … well, okay. But those people could have been my parents. They’re still someone’s family.” She shakes her head. “And that’s not even counting what happened to Gunda. She’s got a son, you know. He’s five. He’s probably never gonna know his mom.”

The Commander sighs. “We can still hope.”

“You don’t look like someone who got good news, ma’am.”

She shakes her head. “Not at the moment. But, there’s always a chance. We never know what tech we’ll salvage, where it might take us.” “What do we do in the meantime?”

“The only thing we can,” she sighs. “Keep her comfortable.” She crosses behind the bar, filling her bottle with water. “I’m gonna go find where he went. Comms are on if anything happens.”

Kelly nods. “Good luck.”

ROV-R chirps as she heads down through engineering, and she offers Lily a wave. The night air is damp around her, and she pulls the shell closer around her shoulders.

Central’s not hard to find, the small glow of one of the lanterns giving his position away in the dark. She’s careful to approach from the front, not wanting to startle him.

“You want company?”

He offers her his flask in response.

She settles down next to him, against the same tree trunk, shoulders almost touching. She can feel the warmth radiating off of him, and has to fight the urge to lean her head on his shoulder. She wouldn’t have thought twice about it in the days before the invasion, assuming they didn’t have an audience --- it would have been expected. He would have threaded an arm around her waist, his hand curled over her hip.

But they aren’t those people any more.

She downs a drink and wrinkles her nose. “Didn’t know you were a bourbon drinker.”

“Beats wood alcohol.”

Her eyebrows shoot up as she passes him the flask.

“Kidding,” he says, “Still got some sense.” He pauses a moment. “You weren’t who I was expecting.”

“Think Kelly would have made it eventually, but, between you and me, she’s pretty rattled.”

“News from Tygan wasn’t good,” he asks, though it ‘s more a statement than a question.

She shakes her head. “Pretty grim, actually.”

He downs a drink, and passes the flask back to her. “So, what do we do?”

She shrugs.  “Cross our fingers? Hope for some kind of insight off whatever tech we can steal? Honestly, I don’t know.” She takes another shot. “Keeping her comfortable seems like the only real option.”

She passes him the flask, and they sit in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says, “about the datapad. And Sally. That wasn’t … it wasn’t the best way to have handled it.” She pauses, chewing on her lip.” But I don’t know how to do this without you and, at the time,” she trails off. “Doesn’t excuse it.”

He takes a drink. “It worked. That’s all that matters.”

“I wouldn’t have roped Sally in, if I’d realized things were that bad.”

He sighs. “As far as messengers, you couldn’t have picked a better one. She’s persuasive when she needs to be.”

“I could have gone myself.” She shakes her head. “I should have gone myself but I was mad at you, and well. Point is, I’m old enough to know better.”

“We didn’t need a round two of shouting.”

“You really think that’s where it would have gone?” “I wasn’t real happy with you, either.

She nods. “Probably already enough scuttlebutt.”

“Your story time the other day certainly added to it.”

She chuckles. “They wanted to take bets on who’d win in a fist fight between you and Shen.”

“What?” He asks, furrowing his brow. “I’m not fighting Shen.”

The Commander nods. “That was Sally’s point.”

“Why the hell did that even come up?”

“…The odds of Shen allowing you to muss up her workspace as you dragged someone out the airlock, if I recall correctly.”

She can feel Central’s eyes on her. “First of all, it wouldn’t be a drag, it would be a throw. And second, odds are good Shen would help.” He takes another drink, then passes her the flask. “If Thomas keeps it up, he’s gonna find out.”

She takes a sip. “Getting tired of the booty shorts?”

“Shit-giving is its own kind of bonding, especially in tight quarters, but there’s a limit.”

“You mean Sal,” she says, as he takes the flask.

He raises his eyebrows in silent admission as he downs another drink.

“What even set that off?”

“His arrogance, her impatience, my crappy parenting: take your pick.”

She quirks an eyebrow at him. “From what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t call your parenting crappy. She’s a good kid.”

“She had her mother for the important things.”

“Loyalty, resourcefulness, dedication, sense of humor,” she says, ticking traits off on her fingers. “Sorry to tell you, Central, but that’s you.”

He offers her the smallest of smiles, but shakes his head. “So’s her aversion to this,” he says, tapping the flask, and downing another drink.

“Not the worst thing to pass on.”

“Only if she keeps it up.”

“Have some faith,” she says as she leans back against the trunk. “You got her this far.”