#maybe flowchart was the wrong word. it's more like a.

[stuckyfingers]

I'm just thinking about autistic Steve...

(I'm not as well educated about autism as I'd like to be so do correct me if I'm wrong)

Like, he's always been 'weird' even apart from his physical disabilities. He's felt a kind of self hatred over how sensitive he is to little things that are wrong but he can't explain why.

He hated talking but also loved talking about one specific thing that noone had any idea why he liked. (If someone can headcanon his hyperfixation, that'd be great). Either way, it didn't make him very popular among his peers. As a child he'd get bullied for just about anything because of how many faux pas-es he made.

He'd try to get home as soon as possible from school and shut himself into his plywood cabin of a room and cry. Bucky theorized that he was a vampire because of how much he liked fabric lined dark places.

He never guessed it wasn't normal to hate wearing clothes, so he continued living in constant discomfort and caution. Sarah had caught on to the specificities of how he needed his food and tried her best to get his safe foods on the table despite being poor. (Yes, she even called it that.)

Did I mention he also starts crying when he can't predict his day. And when things get more and more uncertain with the Depression swinging in, he gets so stressed that his heart problems worsen.

But having Bucky as a friend helps them both survive the times. Bucky was the only person who seemed unconcerned and unjudgmental about Steve's 'moodiness' and 'fidgeting'. He tried to understand when Steve described sensory overloads to him, and though he couldn't relate he accommodated Steve as much as he could.

Steve was frighteningly smart and picked up on every social cue he found, organizing them into a mental flowchart, assuming that this was what everyone did. But for most of his childhood he saw himself as less smart because Bucky seemed to be able to tell him things that he somehow still missed.

"Well how the fuck am I supposed to know that if they don't give any indication of being sarcastic?"

"Because it's not sarcasm, Steve... It's just- talking shop. A fake nice word, just because."

"How am I supposed to tell the difference?"

"Well, you just do. I don't know how you could... consciously do it."

By the miracle of God (and Bucky) he pushes through Eugenics era until 1943.

The Serum brings color to his eyes and more sound to his bad ear.

And he hates it.

But what's new is how much more physical energy he has to mask it.

It feels comparatively better to be able to mask without getting exhausted so fast, so he assumes his 'weirdness' has been cured and goes to war. In his line of work, however, he never gets a day's rest for his brain that craved routine, and because of how he's now able to push the feeling deep down and cover it up, Bucky can hardly recognize him.

And when he's out of the ice, his brain is turned to mush at having to learn new cues along with being autistic but anyone in that situation would have found it as difficult, so he passes it off.

One day he sees one of the people at Sam's VA talked about how their autism shaped their experience of PTSD differently, and Steve did the customary google search to learn more about it.

It said 'can't make eye contact'. But he knew the correct ratio of eye contact / looking away and what part of the eye he could look at so that it wouldn't drive him mad.

It said 'sensory issues' and he felt bad for those who actually had it because that must be horrible.

'Black and White thinking' okay but that doesn't mean- but see, he did know that illegal things weren't necessarily bad, right? He was ready to accept the criminality of something if it was a means to a moral end. And maybe there were some things that he could not see any nuance in but there were so many things he could. He couldn't have believed in Bucky if his thinking was Black and White right?

'Lack of empathy' No. Steve didn't understand people's feelings immediately, but he always logically guessed when they needed help. He kept note of the things that people found comforting so that he could be of comfort when they were down. He was empathetic, right?

He knew he wasn't autistic. (spoiler alert, he's just reading the symptoms from an outside perspective)

It's when he starts following more and more autistic creators that he felt less wrong for those weird things he did as a kid. He chuckles nervously scrolling through the tiktoks like "Ha ha why are ya'll so relatable"

He's not immune to the stigma but comes to terms with it. It feels a lot like how he came to terms with being queer. He's even surprised when he realizes that he was also wrongly assuming that it was gone because of the serum when it just became more manageable (for others) when he did.

Bucky listens like he always did when Steve explains things to him. And after a long while of living his truth with Bucky, Steve gets more comfortable describing himself as autistic to other people as well.

He starts experimenting with stimming, which already feels MILES better than forcing himself into a 'calm' and steady Captain's body language. Once he retires after Endgame, he surrounds himself with comfort and accommodations in his apartment and builds a routine he can finally be at peace with.

[cdroloisms]

i wanna know more about p!sam he's so awooga to me. semi reformed abuser wet paper bag went to therapy but not enough. sing to me about he and j!dream's chivalric love story or however it was you phrased it

HAHAHAHA angela always says they are so courtly love and i'mtagging him here bc pjs @cgogs

birdhouse pjs are so funny to me like most of their early interactions are so many different flavors of miscommunication swag. j!Dream heard "I married my Dream" and is trying to know more to reverse engineer it and meanwhile p!Sam is breathing in and out of a paper bag bc c!awesamdream is Morally Wrong. have this really really early pjs doodle from angela that summarizes like, all of it:

when p!Sam first arrives, he has been. In Therapy! And he uses his newly gained therapy knowledge for attempted good a lot.and it uhm well it doesn't go great for him honestly

so they're starting off really strong, honestly.

when p!Sam first arrives in birdhouse ... he has a nice enough conversation with the two Sams. yeah this house sounds like an interestingsituation um. Uhm hm that child sure looks like Dream haha wow maybe in this ...? place we did it rihgt. Oh hey who's that coming out of that room and why is he swaying like that. he then proceeds to convince himself that this whole house is a psychosis fueled nightmare, or maybe purgatory, where every element is symbolic and all meant to punish him for his sins ...

so p!Sam's just having the worst time. j!Dream, on the other hand, is curious. p!Sam sets himself apart very clearly from the status quo from day one largely by being Weird As Fuck, and he keeps trying to therapy word the Sams which literally no one knows how to respond to, and j!Dream is trying to build the newest Sam-flowchart to figure out how to deal with the new guy and none of the math is mathing, and p!Sam mentions Marrying His Dream and welellelelel. j!Dream wants to figure this out. surely this Sam knows things! he married his Dream! even though he's probably dead now or whatever

and then this conversation happens:

AND ITS JUSTJLKJSADLFds . p!Sam arrives during a time when the birdhouse has stagnated into an awful and ultimately unsustainable status quo, a constant, neverending cycle of chores-sex-more chores-warden-prisoner-progress-mistake-punishment-more sex-drugs-more fucking chores, and he's nice. He's nice, and he loved his Dream. j!Dream wants to understand, sees something like a light at the end of the tunnel, some kind of hope that there's actually a goddamn way out of this place--and meanwhile d!Sam is looking at someone almost twenty years too young and so thin and hurt and fearful and wanting to give him better, do better by him the way he never did with his own...

p!Sam gives him cinnamon rolls :(

LIKE !!!! AUGH

[theladyragnell]

i have my first ever dnd session next week and i’m. nervous-excited! any tips?

Oh, wonderful! I was about to demur and say I'm not an expert and take everything with a grain of salt, and then remembered I've been playing a game most weeks for most of the past decade and played two 1-20 campaigns and am now DMing another. So I guess maybe I do have some right to give advice?

Engage! Truly, this is the biggest piece of advice I can give you. You and your table are telling a story together, and it's a better story the more engaged people are. Be the kind of character who picks up plot threads the DM leaves dangling and chats with NPCs, be the kind of character who asks their party members about themselves, even if your charisma score isn't high. It doesn't take improv skills unless you're playing at a table that's recording a podcast or something, just a willingness to be curious, and it makes a huge difference.

Communicate. With your DM especially, but with your fellow players too. Let them know you're feeling nervous and might be a little shy but that you want to engage! If someone tries to engage you in roleplay, go for it and don't worry if you feel a little silly doing it. If you aren't having fun with an aspect of your character ("whoops, I should have taken a different rogue subclass") or the game ("heyyy, I didn't realize that killing wolves and elk would bother me so much, is there a plan to fight more magical monsters I'll feel less guilty about in the future?"), chat with your DM before it gets to be a bigger problem. And hopefully your table has chatted about triggers and systems to make sure you're all safe around that, a lot of tables do these days, but don't be shy about your needs.

Try to go with the tone presented! Hopefully your DM has told you what kind of game you're in, but a lot of table frictions can come when one player is playing Smeef Smeekle, jolly halfling weed dealer whose goal is to get into as much trouble as possible, and everyone else is playing A Team Of Heroes. Or, for that matter, when one person is playing Bluhdborne Pahth'ojenn, world's angstiest rogue, and everyone else is a fantasy k(obold)-pop band that fell into a dungeon (though comedy games do love a straight man, so that's mostly not fun for Bluhdborne).

Give kudos! When the DM or another player does something cool or creative, improvs a line that gives you chills, anything like that, let them know it! Either in the moment quickly, or after the session in some way. It can be a bit of an emotionally intense hobby, and it's nice to check in with your fellow players and tell them how awesome they are.

And last, some Common D&D Good Manners Things: in combat, have some idea of what your action is going to be before your turn comes around (some players make flowcharts, which I have never tried but might be your jam). Know your abilities as much as is realistic, and have descriptions of abilities and spells close to hand so your DM can ask you instead of looking them up. Take notes if you're playing longer than a one-shot, even if it's only a few words, both to keep yourself engaged and to give yourself the assist later when you need to remember whether this shopkeeper likes you or hates you.

Okay, that got very wordy! But really, just jump into the story, communicate with your table, and come at it with curiosity and collaboration, and it's hard to go wrong if your table is on the same page as you.

Enjoy!

[queer-100-days-of-code]

Day 7: Hangman, and everything so far

Today’s assignment was solely focused on practising the things I had already learned in the course, which I used to make a game of hangman. Here is a picture of the working program: 

Some things I noticed today under the cut -- 

I noticed that now that I remember a little more of the code and how it works, it’s really easy to just try to skip ahead in the lessons and maybe try to figure out my own way of doing things ahead of the course. This is great from a coding and learning standpoint, because I’m self-motivated and interested and so I just keep trying stuff, but it has meant that I get things wrong a couple of times before I get it right. To be fair, this is also part of the learning process, but I think I’m going to try to slow down a bit and really pay attention to each of the lesson videos, even if I feel like I know what’s going on beforehand. 

Other than that, I was reexposed to the concept of modules today, the word bank for hangman had its own module (so it wouldn’t take up dozens of lines of code in the main body), and the hangman art sprites had their own module (they’re all actually an arrangement of strings, and it was useful to have them in their own separate ‘container’ so that it wouldn’t get messed up). 

Other than that, today was the first project I’ve actually had to make a flowchart for before I started it, Hangman is one of those games that is second nature to humans playing it, but there are a lot of things like the win and lose conditions, and how many lives you have left that need to be accounted for in the code, which was tricky. 

See you tomorrow! :))

[jadedadultritsu]

👎 Thoughts on Seungho distancing himself from our bb Nakyum (Ch 51) 👎

While we can all agree that ch 51 was SH basically plotting something against Inhun the most perfect revenge imagineable as primary goal and it's a prerequisite of him to give NK the undeserving cold shoulders while doing so, I'm gonna try to deep dive into his possible secondary intention. Bc SH rlly thought, sure, why the hell can I not hit two birds with one stone? In this way, I can also get a response from NK by making it seem like I'm throwing a lil tantrum. This plan's so perfect. I'm a genius lmao." - pffft no you ain't.

What makes me sad abt all these is that SH is still playing mind games instead of confronting his feelings for NK. He wants NK to be bothered by it like, "what even went wrong last night? I thought that ended perfectly? Wait, was it cuz I fell asleep? Is it a bad thing? Offending? Oh no don't tell me, my words creeped him out?? B-but I thought he likes hearing such things? At least, that's how it felt like, judging the way he touched and embraced me last night. Am I wrong this whole time? Am I rlly useless now as they say?" ;-; POOR NK. I'M MORE WORRIED ABT ITS EFFECTS ON HIS SELF-ESTEEM NOW. And while yes, he might begin to question his feelings now for SH, but the more questions keep piling up, the more NK is gonna bury these feelings deep within him cuz he rlly thinks SH doesn't and wouldn't even harbour any feelings for a "lowly prostitute" like him. Ever. Unless NK has the courage to initiate a talk with SH abt him regressing back to his old habits. And then SH would say, "why do you ask? You've been strangely submissive in our nightly activities yourself, yet you have the nerve to demand an answer on why I've been coming in and out of the manor as I like? Does it bother you this much? Are you perhaps...?". NK realizing his love depends on how the conversation would play out. SH is testing the waters and we can't expect him to simply just lay his true feelings on the table bc he has nvr done that before. So knowing his character being a SeungHoe, he would most prolly use a v. complicated method of: Yes, No, Maybe flowchart 🤦🏻‍♀🤦🏻‍♀🤦🏻‍♀, until he gets that desirable answer, and when NK's at the dead end already. Why do I even keep shipping emotionally constipated babies. ._.

Tho a huge part of me still thinks one of them would finally realize it aftr an attempted murder by Nameless and a blood splat on the floor added to that scene. It wouldn't be complete without a blood splat, Byeonduck said so herself lmao.

[painted-crow]

What made you decide you were a Bird Primary and not a Lion Primary ? It seems like lots of people struggle to tell the difference .

Oh, I know I'm a Bird--intuitively!

(Kidding.)

Good question! And a fair thing to poke at, because although I'm an obvious Bird primary in my own eyes, I'm pretty confusing to the quiz and to other people, and a lot of the reason why is that I don't totally dismiss intuition. Birds don't have to. The difference is how you treat the information.

A Bird approach

I see intuition as a pointed finger. It's telling me to look closely at something. Whenever we make decisions, our information is limited by the things we notice; we can't act on info we haven't learned, and we can't learn it without paying attention to the right things.

But there's so much info available to us at any given time that our brains automatically filter most of it out! We have to choose what to pay attention to, deliberately. Intuition is your subconscious covering those bases, telling you, "this is important--focus on it."

A Bird applying this to a moral issue works like this: you have a gut reaction to a situation that says, for example, "this isn't right"; then you try to figure out why it reads that way to you. Does it make sense? Does this reaction mesh with your other beliefs? If it doesn't, which one is wrong, your current reaction or the old belief? --Or are there extenuating circumstances that make the comparison invalid?

This questioning sounds like a lot of work, but Birds do it automatically, on a regular basis, so we're pretty fast.

(Having my intuition consistently clash with other information I have about something is the worst feeling. It's like finding hypocrisy in a theory but not knowing how to pull it apart. In the end I'll act on my information, but I'll be on the lookout for signs that my decision was wrong--if it was, I want to catch it early.)

Lion approach

Lions don't go through this whole process. They don't use intuition as a means of getting data on which to base their decisions. Their intuition IS the base for their decisions. Something is right or it's wrong--you don't have to fit it into a jigsaw puzzle. Stopping to analyze the data and the context and the precedents you've decided on before is a waste of time at best, and at worst feels like you're trying to rationalize your way out of doing what you already know is right.

Lions do value mulling things over and collecting life experiences that hone their intuition so they know what's right more accurately. They're not just making things up. Birds build a machine to understand morality and make decisions; Lions are their machine, it comes from who they are and is honed by experience, and they don't have to question its inner workings. This is a very Bird way of putting it, but you get the idea.

Burned Lion vs Bird

I know that my intuition is right more than I give it credit for, but I'm not comfortable trusting it completely. I'm not a burned Lion, though; I'm happy with my Bird.

Burned Lions are like "this is awful, I can't trust myself, I guess I have to use this other way to decide," but Birds don't usually identify with their intuition that closely. We're more like "yeah, this is the way I've decided to decide, and if I decide it's wrong or inconsistent I'll change it. That process is part of me. Intuition? Maybe I'll listen to it... when it starts citing its sources."

But remember

Not all Birds interact with intuition the way I do. Many just dismiss it as biased and not worth bothering with. That's fine--maybe they're more naturally observant than I trust myself to be. It's possible that I have a Lion model (my mom's a Lion and we're really close), or maybe I've just integrated it into my system.

(What's the difference? Got me, let's poke it.)

Maybe someone with a Lion model would trust it more than I do, and be comfortable not going through that whole flowchart of internal consistency every time. I've decided what part intuition plays in developing my philosophy, and maybe that's too indirect for a model. But maybe a Bird without a Lion model wouldn't feel so conflicted when intuition and data pointed in different directions. I'm not sure if Lion is as important to me as my Badger primary model, which has influenced a lot of the contents of my system--but then again, Lion's influence is something I filter through my Bird so heavily that it's hard to see in the end, and models can have varying levels of importance to you.

Our current definition of a model is very "you know it when you see it," isn't it? Huh. I don't know how established a construct has to be before it can be considered a model. Is drawing that line useful? Maybe "you know it when you see it" is enough.

Anyway, if I do have a baby Lion model, it's definitely a model--I'm a loud Bird. I mean, look at this whole post. You're reading my thought process, if you look at it in a meta kind of way, and your thought process is probably different. I'm a perfectionist and I edit posts before putting them up (that's why these aren't even longer), so maybe the data isn't as pure as it might be, but any kind of essay I write will inevitably have a strong Bird flavor because that's just how I think.

Regardless, the official quiz often suggests Lion for my primary. And Badger. I've yet to have it or anyone else think I'm a Snake.* Once, it gave up on me as a complete hatstall! But yeah, I'm a Bird, I just borrow a lot of different stuff for my system.

---

* In the words of my friends a while back:

I guess I'm not fooling anyone. 😂

[heart-eyes-kippen]

A Horror Movie ‘Hang-out’

Hello! I was in the mood to write fluff after 3x15 so this happened.

Summary:

Cyrus watched as the boy’s eyes scanned the board for a moment, before widening slightly. “Hey - they have a ‘limited time only’ discount for couples!” 

His eyebrows furrowed slightly in confusion at that, and he looked up at the sign before looking back over at TJ. “Okay...and?” 

~

Or the the one where Cyrus and TJ pretend to be a couple so they can get a discount on movie tickets. What could possibly go wrong?

Word count:  3786

~

(Keep reading for the fic, AO3 link in the reblog)

“Hey, underdog!” 

 Cyrus, who had been somewhat preoccupied with attempting to pry open in locker, spun around his surprise. 

 “TJ! How’s it going?” he asked, voice slightly higher than he would’ve liked. 

 He was going for nonchalance, but when Cyrus reached out to place a hand against his locker he missed completely and ended up stumbling to the side slightly. 

 Yikes.

 TJ just smiled though, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I was wondering if you wanted to hang out tomorrow?” 

 Cyrus’ face still felt warm as he leant back against the metal, taking a few long moments to consider the offer. TJ gave his arm a playful shove, smiling when the boy began to laugh.

 “No TJ, I definitely don’t wanna hang out with you.” 

 He gasped. “Fine then! I guess I’ll go.” 

 TJ made to walk away, but Cyrus pushed himself off of the locker and grabbed his arm, still smiling. 

 “No wait don’t go! I’m sorry!” 

 The boy glanced down at their arms, expression softening slightly. “How would you feel about seeing a movie with me?” 

 Cyrus reluctantly dropped his hand, forgetting for a brief moment how exactly to form words. When he looked up his face was ridiculously close to TJ’s, and that had him panicking and taking a step back. 

 “That sounds fun,” he managed, “what time?” 

 “Um...” TJ paused for a moment, face reddening slightly, “well there’s a new horror playing tomorrow at 7?” 

 “7 is good!” 

 “Cool,” TJ nodded, giving Cyrus a small smile. “I’ll text you the rest of the details this afternoon.” 

 He glanced over Cyrus’ shoulder at his locker, before letting out an amused huff. “Need help with that?” 

 “Psh, no...okay, maybe.” 

 Cyrus stepped aside, allowing TJ to move forward and reach for the top of the locker door, prying it open after a few small tugs. He watched with an embarrassed smile as the boy stepped back again, giving his shoulder a pat. 

 “See you, Cy.” 

 TJ was off after that, swallowed up by the crowds moving between classes. He let out a  love-sick sounding sigh, adjusting his shirt as turned back to his locker and grabbed his books. Not even the pouring rain outside could dampen his mood at that moment. 

 “You did it again,” came Buffy’s voice from behind him.

 Cyrus turned around again, an eyebrow raised in question. “Did what again?” 

 She gave the boy an exasperated look before adjusted her shirt, tugging at the fabric in an exaggerated fashion. Cyrus let out a huff and turned back to his locker.

 “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted.

 Buffy began rustling around in her pockets for a moment, before pulling out a small piece of paper. She shoved it into Cyrus’ hands.

 “Here’s a flowchart, then.” 

 The boy looked over it for a moment, shaking his head in disbelief.

 Cyrus talks to TJ -> TJ does something ‘cute’ and/or walks away -> Cyrus nervously adjusts his shirt (because he’s in love) 

 He laughed slightly and turned back to the girl, handing her the paper. “I adjust my shirt all the time, not just around TJ. And I’m not in love with him!” 

 Buffy just nodded, pressing her lips together as she pocketed the paper again. She gave the boy a sympathetic pat on the back, unable to keep herself from smiling. “Okay, Cyrus.”

 He rolled his eyes. “How’s Marty going, again?”

 Buffy’s eyes widened for a split second. “Okay, well I have places to be now. Bye!” 

 Cyrus watched in amusement as the girl headed off in the opposite direction, before closing his locker and making his way towards Math. 

 ~

 “Cyruses first,” said TJ as he held the glass door open. 

 The boy couldn’t help but smile, walking through into the darkened cinema lobby. It was late evening and the sun was on the verge of setting, bringing shadows with it. As dusk approached, he and TJ had made their way to their local shopping mall. 

 The large lights above their heads were dimmed, and with each step towards the counter, the room seemed to grow darker. There was soft light emanating from the screen displaying the various movies that were playing, illuminating their face as they came to a halt. 

 “We’re early,” Cyrus pointed out.

 TJ shrugged and nodded. “No harm in getting tickets now though, I guess.” 

 Cyrus watched as the boy’s eyes scanned the board for a moment, before widening slightly. “Hey - they have a ‘limited time only’ discount for couples!” 

 His eyebrows furrowed slightly in confusion at that, and he looked up at the sign before looking back over at TJ. “Okay...and?” 

 TJ looked nervous all of a sudden, the pink dusting his cheeks only barely visible in the dimly lit lobby. “Well...its ten dollars,” he continued, “that’s uh...pretty significant.” 

 Cyrus laughed uncertainly, not entirely sure where the boy was taking this. “May I remind you that we’re not a couple?” 

 TJ bit his lip, and Cyrus’ traitorous heart skipped a beat. He hesitated for a moment before speaking again, voice cracking slightly. 

 “What is it?” 

 They were already garnering a few looks from the people queuing up for tickets as they stood there, staring up at the board, but Cyrus couldn’t find it within himself to care at that moment. He glanced over at TJ again, eyebrows raised. 

 “The uh...the guy at the counter doesn’t know that.” 

 Cyrus’ eyes widened. He looked over at TJ in alarm. “Are you saying...?” 

 “We could pretend,” the boy rushed out nervously. “Or...or not! Either way is fine, but you know...10 dollars is dollars.”

 Cyrus contemplated the idea for a moment, still in slight disbelief that TJ would suggest such a thing. Everything within him was practically screaming at him that this was an awful idea, and that’d it’d only end up hurting him to have a taste of what he could never have. He supposed that was logical, but really, since when were things ever logical when it came to TJ? 

 He hesitated for a moment longer before giving a quick, nervous nod. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

 TJ took in a sharp breath. “Okay! Cool.” 

 They stood there for a moment, unsure of what exactly to do. A certain tension had appeared in the air around them, and Cyrus could feel his stomach tying itself into knots. 

 TJ turned to face him. “Can I um...Can I-“

 “You can do whatever you want,” Cyrus assured him. “Except kiss me. That’s off the table.”

 Yeah, because you’re afraid you’d like it too much, his brain supplied unhelpfully. 

 He brushed aside the thought and focused on breathing normally as TJ wrapped an arm around his shoulders and gently pulled him in. 

 “Okay, you’re gonna have to act like you’re super into me. Think you can do that?” 

 Cyrus laughed nervously. “Um...yeah. I can do that.” 

 They headed over to join the queue, marked out by small metal poles and velvet red ropes. There were only a few people in front of them, and none of them seemed to pay them much mind now. The entry to the theatres was to their left, and the entrance they’d come from was to their right, with windows displaying the setting sun. 

 “Brave of you to suggest a horror movie,” Cyrus teased. “Considering that last time you had your face buried in a pillow half the time.”

 TJ huffed. “Okay, half the time is an overstatement.” 

 “It really isn’t!” Cyrus laughed.

 “It really is!” 

 A wide smile was lighting TJ’s face up now, and Cyrus felt his heart skip a beat. His gaze travelled from the plain white he was wearing, to the (unfairly adorable) basketball necklace around his neck, to his green eyes, and the way they sparkled. For a moment, he began to doubt if this fake relationship thing was such a good idea after all. Not that it had been in the first place.

 “It’s okay, I’ll be there to protect you from the dolls,” Cyrus assured playfully, laughing slightly when TJ just rolled his eyes. 

 “You really think you’d win against a possessed demon doll?” 

 “Nope! For some strange reason, I think I’d survive longer than you though.” 

 TJ shrugged. “That’s probably true. My first instinct would be to hide under the covers.” 

 “Ah, yes - it’s a well-known fact that you’re invincible under the covers,” Cyrus said, nodding wisely. 

 TJ opened his mouth to respond, but they were called over at that moment by a tired-looking guy behind the front counter. Cyrus felt the boy’s grip on him tighten ever so slightly as they made their way over. 

 “Um, a couple for the Annabelle movie, please,” TJ told him. 

 The guy didn’t bat an eye at the request, although his gaze did briefly flicker from TJ to the arm he had wrapped around Cyrus. 

 “That’ll be fifteen dollars, thanks.”

 TJ grabbed his wallet from his pocket before Cyrus could, placing the cash down on the counter. 

 Once they’d successfully gotten their tickets, along with two raspberry slushies, they made their way over to a cushy-looking seat by the entrance to their cinema, waiting for the double doors to open. It was even darker in this section of the building, with the faint glow from the door numbers illuminating the people that walked past. TJ still had an arm thrown over his shoulders for safe measure, and Cyrus was still forgetting how to breathe every now and again.

 “You didn’t have to pay,” Cyrus murmured after a moment.

 TJ smiled. “Hey, it’s what boyfriends do, right?” 

 Cyrus had to look away to hide the blush on his face. This whole fake relationship thing was already getting to him and it had only been about ten minutes. A glance down at his phone confirmed they had about ten more minutes to waste before the doors would open, so, after some hesitation, he gently rested his head on the boy’s shoulder.

 TJ took another sharp inhale, before moving his arm to Cyrus’ waist and drawing him in.

 “How um...how was your biology test yesterday?” he asked softly. 

 Cyrus smiled. He’d spent an embarrassing amount of time texting TJ his worries about that particular test.

 He looked up at the boy, whose face was being illuminated faintly, and couldn’t help but pause for a moment to take him in. His features looked soft in this lighting, and Cyrus had another brief thought that yeah, maybe this really wasn’t something his heart could take. Why had he even agreed to this in the first place? 

 “Cyrus?” 

 “Oh! Right, sorry, um, it was okay! There was one question that I had no idea but um...the rest were pretty good.” 

 He placed his head back on TJ’s shoulder, and his heart leapt when the boy began to gently trace circles into his arm with his thumb. 

 Shit. 

 “How was maths?” he asked quickly. 

 TJ’s actions paused for a moment, before starting up again. “It was okay...I hope.” 

 Cyrus nodded, tilting his head to look up at the boy again just as TJ was looking down.

 “Are you okay?” he asked suddenly. 

 The question took Cyrus slightly aback. “Yeah,” he responded quickly, “why wouldn’t I be?” 

 TJ hesitated. “It’s just...you feel kind of tense. We probably don’t have to keep acting like a couple now that we have tickets-“

 “It’s okay,” Cyrus assured him. “I don’t mind. I’m just...always a little tense.”

 TJ nodded, resuming the patterns he was tracing into Cyrus’ arm. The boy took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself slightly, doing his best to relax into TJ’s side. 

 “It’s just until we’re out of his sight,” TJ said, looking towards the guy that had sold them their tickets.

 Cyrus nodded, pausing for a moment before blurting “did I tell you that I held a python over the weekend?” 

 TJ looked down at him in alarm, looking vaguely impressed despite his obvious shock. “What the hell? Where?”

 “At the local wildlife sanctuary. I have photos to prove it,” Cyrus told him proudly, taking his phone from his pocket and bringing up his camera roll. 

 TJ looked down at them for a moment, before laughing slightly. “You look so small!” 

 That earnt him a playful shove.

 “Not that small!” 

 The boy just smiled. “Cyrus the snake wrangler. I never thought I’d see the day.” 

 “I know, right? I thought my experiences with snakes would be limited to documentaries my whole life.” 

 When the double doors in front of them swung open after a few moments, and a staff member announced that they were allowed to head inside, TJ removed his arm from Cyrus’ shoulders and stood up, sending him a small smile. Something about his expression almost seemed disappointed, but there was a very high chance that Cyrus was just getting his hopes up. 

 The lights were on in the theatre as commercials played, meaning it was relatively easy for the pair to find their spots amongst the rows of cushy red seats and sit down, slushies in the cup holders beside them. They ended up having seats towards the back of the theatre, almost all the way up the stairs.

 TJ looked over at him with a smile. “Ready to get spooked?” 

 Cyrus raised an eyebrow. “By commercials?” 

 TJ let out an amused huff. “Yeah, sure - by commercials.” 

 “Commercials are kind of scary,” Cyrus shrugged, “they can have subliminal messages and stuff.” 

 TJ glanced up at the screen, where a McDonald's advertisement was playing. “Think we’ll be influenced to buy Mcdonald’s after this?” 

 “Not if we fight against it!” 

 TJ laughed, taking a small sip of his slushie. “Can’t be that hard, right?” 

 The pair continued to chatter as the commercials played and people gradually filtered inside, taking their respective seats. Surprisingly, they still seemed to have the row to themselves as the lights dimmed and the room darkened, indicating that the movie was about to start playing. 

 His phone lit up with a notification as he was reaching down to turn it off. 

 Andi: how’s your movie date with TJ going? ;) 

 Cyrus could feel himself blushing as he read over it, sending back a quick ‘aNDI it’s not a date!!’ before turning it to silent and pocketing it.

 He looked over at TJ, biting his lip slightly. Why did he have to be so cute? 

 The opening credits began rolling then, so he settled back into his seat.

 Throughout the movie, TJ (as expected) repeatedly brought his hands up to shield his face whenever he thought a jump scare was coming. Cyrus had seen his fair share of horror movies at this point from hanging out with Buffy, so he was slightly less terrified than the other boy seemed to be. 

 At one point, when the characters were all deciding what their course of action would be, TJ placed a hand on the armrest next to Cyrus’. He didn’t think anything of it at first, keeping his hand rested beside the boy’s, but his heart leapt when he felt their hands brush. He shifted in his seat, chancing a glance over at TJ, only to find that his gaze was fixated intently on the screen. Almost too intently, if you asked Cyrus. 

 He took a deep breath, before thinking ‘Screw it,’ and moving his hand closer ever so slightly. The movement had been subtle, but TJ seemed to pick up on it if the faint smile on his lips was anything to go by.

 What were they even doing? 

 “You know we don’t have to act like a couple anymore, right?” he whispered. 

 TJ hesitated. “I know,” he whispered back, barely meeting Cyrus’ gaze.

 Cyrus’ took in a sharp breath. He officially wasn’t paying attention to the movie anymore.

 He looked over at TJ, not even aiming for subtly this time. The light from the screen was the only thing illuminating his face, so the only time he could fully take the boy in was when there was a scene with good lighting. This happened to be one of those, funnily enough.

 TJ glanced over him, and a smile ghosted over his lips. “What’s up?” he asked casually. 

 Cyrus was on the verge of losing it, so he decided against saying anything. Instead, he attempted to shift his focus to the movie again. Just when he began to feel comfortable with their hands brushing the way they were, TJ gently placed his on top of Cyrus’. 

 A glance over at the boy confirmed his gaze was still on the screen, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere because he didn’t look scared at all. In fact - he seemed nervous more than anything.

 Cyrus took a deep breath and somehow managed to muster up the courage to turn his hand over. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw TJ smile, and he felt the boy intertwine their fingers. 

 Holy shit. He was holding hands with TJ. 

 He eventually managed to focus on the movie again, but his heart was still racing. Whenever there was a jump scare he’d feel TJ’s grip tighten, and he would give the boy a reassuring squeeze. It began to feel natural after a while, which was surprising to say the least. 

 When the lights came on again the end of the movie, flooding the room, Cyrus hesitantly pulled his hand away from TJ’s grip and stood up. The boy followed suit, looking anywhere but him as they grabbed their slushie cups and made their way towards the exit. 

 They didn’t exchange a single word as they made their way through the darkened lobby. Cyrus looked over at him as they stepped out into the cool evening air. 

 “What was that?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

 TJ sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know...whatever you want it to be?” 

 Cyrus gave him a hesitant look. “I mean...we held hands. That’s usually a couple thing, right?” 

 TJ shoved his hands in his pockets. “Right,” he confirmed.

 When he didn’t say anything anymore, Cyrus let out a small sigh. The sky had fully darkened by now, with only a few larger stars visible, and a cold breeze was beginning to set in. He tugged on his hoodie, shivering slightly. 

 “What um...what do you want it to be?” he eventually settled on saying. 

 TJ glanced over at him, taking a few moments to think about it as they crossed the parking lot. various coloured lights from traffic signals and storefronts lit up the street they were on, with cars passing by, clearly on their way home. The street lamps above them cast shadows across TJ’s face, but Cyrus could clearly see that he looked nervous. 

 “I don’t know,” the boy said eventually, voice soft. 

 Cyrus nodded and looked away, trying hard to conceal his disappointment. Silence fell for a few moments as they began to make their way back to TJ’s house.

 “Are you cold?” TJ asked, out of the blue. 

 Cyrus looked down at his hands, which had become numb from the icy winds, then back up at TJ. 

 He shrugged. “Yeah, kind of.” 

 TJ hesitated, before shrugging off the coat he’d brought along with him. Cyrus opened his mouth to protest, but before he could TJ was placing it over his shoulders with a smile.

 “I’ll be fine, I promise.” 

 Cyrus bit his lip, before giving in with a small, amused sigh. “Okay. Thanks.” 

 The coat smelt faintly of TJ’s cologne, and somehow that in itself had Cyrus feeling slightly giddy. He placed his hands in the pockets, giving TJ a confused smile when the boy began glancing over at him. 

 “What?” 

 “Nothing,” he said, looking down bashfully. 

 He hesitated for a moment longer, Cyrus still watching on in confusion. 

 “You uh...you look cute.” 

 Cyrus really wasn’t sure how much more of this boy his heart could handle. 

 He smiled, hoping desperately that the streetlamps wouldn’t expose the blush on his face. “Thanks.”

 Silence fell between them again, but somehow it didn’t feel so tense this time. They were walking a lot closer than they had previously by the time they reached TJ’s house, approaching the front gate.

 “Wait - um - Cyrus.” 

 Cyrus turned around, confusion written all over his face. TJ had stopped walking, and he was stood there nervously now, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. His hair was wind-swept and his gaze was hesitant, flicking between Cyrus and the ground. 

 “I like you,” he rushed out, “if that wasn’t obvious already. I wanna be together. If - if you want that too, obviously.” 

 Cyrus smiled and tipped his head slightly to the side. “I like you too,” he said softly.

 For a few moments neither of them said anything, then Cyrus was taking a step back towards the house.

 “Could we take this inside? I’m still kind of freezing.”

 TJ laughed slightly and nodded, moving forward to hold open the gate for Cyrus. They both left their shoes by the front door, making their way down the warmly-lit hallway towards TJ’s bedroom. 

 “We’re home, Ambs!” TJ called, to which he received a muffled “thanks for the announcement, TJ!” 

 He rolled his eyes, sending Cyrus an exasperated glance as they entered his room. Moonlight was filtering in through his blinds, falling onto the boy’s bed covers in strips. From the looks of things, the room had clearly been tidied beforehand. Varying statues were placed in an orderly fashion on top of his wardrobe, and his stationery was packed away neatly in the small boxes on his desk. 

 TJ sat down on his bed, looking up at Cyrus with a smile. “So...you like me?” 

 Cyrus smiled, moving to sit down beside him. “I thought it was obvious,” he teased.

 “Not to me,” TJ responded, looking down at the boy. 

 Cyrus leaned into TJ’s side, wrapping an arm around his waist. “Was that discount thing part of a genius plan, or what?” 

 TJ laughed. “No - I really did want that discount. This,” he paused for a moment to gesture between them, “was just...a very welcome side effect.” 

 Cyrus smiled down at his lap, before looking up hesitantly to meet TJ’s gaze. He swallowed, feeling a small army of butterflies begin to fill his stomach. TJ’s eyes not-so-subtly left his, flickering down to his lips. 

 “Is kissing still off the tables?” he asked softly.

 Cyrus huffed out a laugh. “What do you think?” 

 TJ shrugged. “Yes?” 

 The boy rolled his eyes, smiling fondly as he pulled TJ in. “No. It’s not. You can kiss me.” 

 A smile came to TJ’s lips, and he leaned down to do exactly that.

[armsdealing]

@neotropical​ said:  3, 6, 10 & 25 for charles 13, 14, 15 & 38 for marce

CHARLES.

3. how do they position themselves in a group? do they like to be the center of attention, or do they hang back at the edges of a crowd?

charles prefers to stay in the background, and preferably, not a part of the group at all. he dislikes crowds, hates drawing attention to himself more than necessary (since he's the sort of person that commands authority just by manner of physical presence), and he'd rather be on his own. if he must be part of some group, though, he'll stay in the back, let people focus on anything but him, only provide his input if it's absolutely necessary.

6. what are they like in motion – in different environments, and in different activities? what causes the differences between these?

so this question is a bit vague. but as a general rule of thumb, charles moves very gracefully, much like a feline. he's an animal shapeshifter, and some animal characteristics rub off on him, so despite his size, he moves as though he wouldn't be able to stumble even if he tried to. he's quite casual and lax about his mannerisms, but also purposeful. when he's working, he's completely in that moment, seamless in a way that can almost be absorbing to look at, and when he's sparring or training or fighting, there's a lot of decisiveness to his every movement too. basically, charles in motion is completely devoid of self-doubt or awkwardness, even when he moves in a sluggish fashion. this wasn't born randomly; it's a result of his mutation, his physical skillset, his experience and his overall personality.

10. what energizes and drains them most?

charles is an introvert. so circling back to the initial question — people drain him the most, and that's why he does not like being around them. he does not like having to talk at length, and does not like being the center of attention. any kind of socialization, when prolongued, really tires him. and when i say any, i mean any and all — even romantic interactions. after spending a certain amount of time with a significant other, he needs some time for himself, to decompress. none of this is personal, really, he just gets overwhelmed easily and that sensation can trigger his dissociative episodes.

similarly, what energizes him most is being alone. he likes to exercise too and that keeps him physically energized. likes to occupy his mind with work and solving problems, even small every day problems like fixing people's appliances. he seems lazy sometimes, but he's got a curious mind and he likes to keep busy in some way.

25. what do they need and want out of relationships, and how do they go about getting it?

when it comes to friendships and romantic relationships, charles is very practical. he wants maturity and he needs patience and he needs space, and little more than that. naturally, he gravitates toward independent, autonomous people. charles doesn't do well with clinginess, with insecurity, and emotionally demanding relationships and people that need a lot of reassurance about his feelings toward them. his love languages are acts of service (doing things for you, helping you when you need it, defending you, etc) and physical affection, and he's not one to put into words how much he cares — you might not ever hear it, or you might hear it very rarely, and you need to be okay with that. and if you're not okay with that, then that is fine, but that's what you need to keep in mind if you aspire to a relationship with him of any sort.

he's pretty straight up about this. he will never mislead you and he will be honest about his terms and how he functions, and he's a very "what you see is what you get" type of person. if he notices that any of this makes you unhappy, then he will simply end the relationship in the most cordial but straightforward manner possible.

MARCELO.

13. how do they greet the world — what is their typical attitude towards life? how does it differ in different circumstances, or towards different subjects? why do they take these attitudes, and why do they change? how do these tend to be expressed?

overall, marcelo is pretty optimistic. he would much rather focus on the positives and the things that go right, rather than the things that go wrong. he's also very aware that the world is a shitty place full of injustice and bigotry but he firmly believes there's ways to make it better and it's just a matter of putting in the work and helping those around you (and those that need it most) and being constant and vigilant. it's often not easy but it's what must be done. marcelo is always striving toward progress, he believes almost every problem has a solution and those that don't one can be alleviated in some form. overall marcelo makes an active choice to believe in goodness and that most people are good — even if that good is very relative, or it doesn't abide by conditions such as laws. morally speaking, he's a well established neutral good, leaning toward chaotic good.

this attitude doesn't tend to differ from person to person or the circumstance. sure there's times his mood may waver and his view of the world may become less benevolent but once he recovers he goes back to believing this. the source of this belief is his love towards others, and the love other people have for him. and his realistic views on the world come from his own experiences, the experiences of those around him. so there's a certain degree of "caution" to his optimism, he believes in keeping one (and those around you) safe from harm above all else too.

it all ends up expressed in the things he does, how he acts toward others. marcelo shows his caring disposition very freely, he's a very helpful person, very quick to smile, very quick to defend others. kindness is a choice and he makes that choice every day.

14. what do they care deeply about? what kind of loyalties, commitments, moral codes, life philosophies, passions, callings, or spirituality and faith do they have? how do these tend to be expressed?

well, i think a lot of what i said above can also apply here (maybe im just too stupid for these questions!). but — marcelo's loyalty lies with his family (the reyes more so than the marconis, really), and with his friends/loved ones. all of these loyalties were choices for him, and not something he considers himself forced to — something he wants to do, rather than has to. his life philosophy is more or less what i described above. spirituality or faith is a more complex matter; in his canon verse he was raised catholic and as he's gotten older he's become less and less inclined to believe in it especially following traumatic experiences such as the deaths of his parents. he is still spiritual but his religion, his personal relationship to god isn't really a source of comfort anymore, he does not practice it and he spends a lot of thought on it but not much comes from it because it's a complex problem.

in contrast with his "loyalties" and "moral codes", which color every aspect of his life, his religion — or lack thereof — is much more of a private affair. he does not talk about it and it's one of those topics that are simply off limits. this answer would be no doubt different if i was talking about Nueva Religión's marcelo, but this applies exclusively to canon marcelo only.

15. what kind of inner life do they have — rich and imaginative? calculating and practical? full of doubts and fears? does it find any sort of outlet in their lives?

marcelo is creative and imaginative but there's a sense of practicality to how he thinks. he is the kind of person that needs organization, structure, and order not just outwardly but inwardly as well. so his thoughts follow a very rational pattern, a calculating approach. it's no surprise he enjoys planners, flowcharts and spreadsheets. he's a perfectionist; a precisionist that likes to make effective use of every portion of his time.

in a way, the sheer whirlwind of activity that characterizes his life is the outlet. marcelo is very confident on this level, he's at his best when he's focusing on something (be it getting a choreography perfect or reorganizing his closet) and not having something to do is when he begins to feel unhappy or unsure. because there's a lot of unresolved concerns festering inside his mind, but he does not think about them much unless he really has to.

38. is there anything they wish they could change about their worldview or thought processes? what, and why?

sure. i think he would make himself less tightly wound when it comes to the things that affect him, the deep things he does not share with just anyone; he wishes he could voice them out loud and ask for help with them, and that asking for help didn't feel so difficult. he wishes he could be vulnerable more freely. this is something he might be able to achieve over time, or it might remain unsolved, it depends on how things unfold.

[romanticsuspense]

Rogergate: An Analysis

“What gets interesting about a story isn’t when some Big External Plot is set into motion. What’s interesting is when the agency possessed by multiple characters competes. This push-and-pull of character motivations, decisions and reactions is how stories that matter are created. Because they’re stories about people, not about events, and people are why we read stories.”—Chuck Wendig

Rogergate is one of the most frustrating, ridiculous, contrived plots in the entire Outlander series.  And it’s even more frustrating in the book, because there are a few more layers of misunderstandings.  I would argue that Gabaldon let the Rogergate plot dictate her character’s actions in Drums of Autumn.  In my opinion, the show writers did a decent job of simplifying the Rogergate plot for the screen in a way that makes almost all of the character’s choices and motivations understandable and believable.  Analyzing Rogergate in the book would be a lot harder to do, because the characters make some really nonsensical choices, in service to the plot, that I would find very difficult to rationalize.  For example, it doesn’t make sense that Brianna wouldn’t tell everyone that Roger goes by Wakefield and MacKenzie.  It doesn’t make sense that Brianna wouldn’t have described what Roger looked like much sooner than she did.  It doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t have thought to draw up a broadsheet with Roger’s face long before they did.  It doesn’t make sense that, when they’ve been waiting around for Roger for months, Jamie doesn’t think to ask the stranger, who just arrived at the Ridge asking about Brianna, if maybe he’s Roger Wakefield.  And even though I hate that Brianna had to go through the rape on the same night of the handfasting on the show, it does make it more understandable that Lizzie would make the assumptions she does about Roger.  It is for these reasons that, in this post, I will only be discussing Rogergate as it happened in the show, not the book.

When I first read Drums of Autumn back in 2014, I blamed Lizzie for what happened to Roger.  I thought by making assumptions about what happened to Bree and misidentifying Roger as Bree’s rapist, she set in motion Roger’s beating and subsequent enslavement. Her character is framed as a plot device in the book.  She’s given her own storylines in later books, but in Drums, once she’s served her purpose, she’s mostly shunted to the background.  I thought of her as the Briony Tallis (Atonement) of Outlander. Briony and Lizzie even have identical lines—“I saw him with my own eyes.”!

But, since rereading Drums in 2018 and seeing everything play out on screen, I have reevaluated my stance on who, exactly, is to blame for Rogergate.  In a response to this post, I made the assertion “Brianna has been wronged, and Jamie is the one who wronged her.” Which sparked a debate in the comments about blame.  The wheels started turning, and I decided to write this post partly as a response to some of those comments and partly because I love over-analyzing the shit out of things.

[Warning: This is a “long ass post” (6500 words to be exact). I realize that we’re in the middle of Droughtlander, and probably no one cares to read a ridiculously long essay on Rogergate but I hope you read it, enjoy it, and comment on it—I love discussion!  There’s a colorful flowchart about halfway through, if that is at all enticing to you!]

 WHAT HAPPENED

 Brianna

‘The Birds and the Bees’ opens with one of the most heart-wrenching scenes of the season.  Brianna returns to her room at the tavern after her assault, trembling, and in a state of shock.  In her daze, I’m not sure she even fully comprehends Lizzie’s questions.  When Lizzie asks if she’s been with “that man,” Brianna replies “Yes.”  She crawls into bed, exhausted, has no interest in Lizzie’s offer of comfort. She just wants to forget what has happened to her.  Compartmentalizing, she pushes the assault to the back of her mind.  She’s on a mission.  She needs to find her parents, and does.  

Alone with her mother for the first time since their reunion, she confides in Claire about Roger and their handfasting, but keeps quiet about her assault.  Ian tells her about how Jamie saved the life of a man named Stephen Bonnet, only for Bonnet to turn around and rob them, kill their friend, and steal Claire’s wedding ring.  Brianna rightly concludes that Stephen Bonnet is the man who assaulted her.  She pulls Claire’s ring out of her pocket, and contemplates the villainy of Stephen Bonnet: rapist, murderer, and thief. This man is dangerous.  But, Brianna does not intend to tell anyone about her assault (remember she’s still compartmentalizing), let alone the identity of the man who assaulted her, so she keeps these revelations to herself. It’s not until she discovers that she’s pregnant, she realizes she has to tell someone.  And that someone is her mother, Claire.  In an attempt to shield Claire and Jamie from guilt, she tells Claire that she doesn’t know who the man was.  Later, when Claire finds the ring, and confronts Brianna about it, Brianna elaborates further:

“Ian told me about what happened on the river.  And I knew that you would feel awful for what happened to me because of the ring and Jamie would blame himself because he helped Bonnet escape.  If he knows, he’ll try to find Bonnet.  And I can’t let him do that.  You’ve met the man, Mamma.  You know what he’s like.”

Brianna doesn’t want Jamie to feel guilty about her assault, and she doesn’t want Jamie to confront Bonnet, because he could end up hurt or dead. Brianna is demonstrating great compassion here.  After everything she’s been through, she’s thinking of her parents’ hurt and pain, and trying to prevent more of it.  She asks Claire to keep this a secret from Jamie, and Claire reluctantly agrees.

Claire

In Wilmington, Claire, tells Marsali that ‘you can’t protect [your children] from everyone and everything,’ a foreshadowing of what would happen to Brianna later in the same episode.  How helpless Claire must have felt when Brianna tells her that she’s been raped, she’s pregnant, and she doesn’t know who the father is.  Claire is horrified.  And quickly tries to reassure Brianna, saying, “It’s not your fault.”  The scene where she tells Jamie is short, and I’m not sure how much detail, if any, Claire gives him.  The gist is that Brianna’s been raped and she’s pregnant.  Later, while doing laundry, Claire finds her ring in one of Brianna’s dresses, and rightly concludes that Bonnet assaulted Bree. She confronts Bree and the truth comes out.  Bree asks Claire to keep this a secret from Jamie.  Jamie and Claire don’t lie to each other, but they do keep secrets.

“But what I would ask of ye—when you do tell me something, let it be the truth.  And I’ll promise ye the same.  We have nothing now between us, save—respect, perhaps.  And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies.”—Outlander

Putting her daughter’s needs above her own, respecting her daughters wishes, and understanding why Bree is asking this of her (to protect Jamie from guilt and physical harm), Claire reluctantly agrees to keep the secret.

Lizzie

In ‘Wilmington’, Lizzie walks into the front room of the tavern, sees Brianna being pulled outside by a strange man, and rushes to the window.  It appears Brianna and the man are arguing.  He grabs Brianna by the shoulders and Bree pushes him.  He yanks Bree down the street and away, out of sight. Paralyzed by fear, Lizzie does nothing to intervene.  She walks back up to her room.  Concerned when, many hours later, Bree has still not returned, she walks downstairs and asks the barkeep if he’s seen her.  It seems Brianna is still away with the strange man, but what can she do? She doesn’t know where he’s taken her, and she has no male companion to aid in a rescue.  She heads back up to bed and waits.  

Close to dawn, Brianna returns.  She’s obviously been through some kind of trauma—she’s trembling and her nose is bleeding.  Lizzie suspects the worst, and asks Brianna if she’s been with “that man.”  When Brianna replies “Yes,” Lizzie’s suspicions are confirmed.  Brianna begins to undress, and Lizzie sees the blood and the bruises.  This has been a very violent assault.  Lizzie tries to offer comfort.  “Ye have my hand here, and my ear if ye need it.”  But Brianna deflects, telling her to “please, go to sleep.” Lizzie doesn’t probe further. It’s obvious Brianna doesn’t want to talk about it.  

Later on the Ridge, Brianna’s been having nightmares and crying in her sleep, and Lizzie knows that she’s suffering.  When Lizzie sees “that man” near the road, she’s terrified and worried about Bree.  What is he doing here?  How did he find Brianna?  Ian, seeing how frightened she is, takes her to Jamie.  Memories of that morning have come flooding back.  Almost as if she can’t keep it all to herself any longer, the details spill out of her in a rush—the bruises, the blood, even the smell of “his seed” on her.  Jamie asks if she’s sure this is the man who violated Bree.  She witnessed “that man” take Bree away, and Brianna herself confirmed she had been with him that night.  She says she’s sure.  Then she sees the look on Jamie’s face and realization hits her—Jamie intends to act on this information, and she wonders aloud, “What have I done?”  

[Side Note: I’m not sure how much Jamie knows about Roger and Brianna’s night together, and I don’t think the show makes this very clear. I’m assuming that he was not made aware that Roger and Brianna were handfast and consummated the marriage. My assumption is based on two observations: (1) He doesn’t question Lizzie’s assertion that “She was a virgin when he took her.”  (2) Jamie is confused when the truth comes out in ‘The Deep Heart’s Core,’ and Brianna has to explain that she and Roger were handfast and then had sex.  So, when Claire tells Jamie that Brianna was raped “after Roger left” and she’s pregnant, he doesn’t know that Brianna had her first time with Roger earlier that night and the baby could be his. I’m guessing that Claire didn’t share these details with Jamie both to protect Brianna’s privacy, and because she knew he wouldn’t approve of his daughter’s hasty marriage and modern views of sex.]  

Jamie

Jamie, upon hearing that his daughter has been raped and is now pregnant, becomes contemplative.  He’s obviously shocked and disturbed, but Claire gives him time and space to process.  Later, at the whisky still, Lizzie and Ian run up and tell him that a man is here who gave Lizzie a fright.  Lizzie recounts what she witnessed in Wilmington.  The details are horrific.  He knew his daughter had been violated, but hearing about the blood, the bruises, he becomes outraged, no doubt remembering his own past trauma at the hands of Black Jack Randall.  The man who violently assaulted his daughter is here…now.  Ian asks if it’s possible the man has come to claim Brianna.  Jamie doesn’t answer.  If it’s true, and the man has come for Brianna, he has to do something, and he has to do it now.  Is Lizzie sure this is the man responsible?  Lizzie assures him he is.  Jamie makes the rash decision to act on his rage.  He stomps all the way to the road, fists clenched, intent on avenging his daughter.  Without preamble, he throws a massive punch right into Roger’s face.  Then another.  Then another.  Then another. Ian has caught up to him, yanks on his arm and tells him someone is coming, which finally pulls him out of his violence.  “Get rid of him” he tells Ian.  “Get him out of my sight.”

Here is where Jamie’s motivations become murkier.  I struggle to understand why he would choose not to tell Brianna or Claire about what he’s done. [see ENDNOTE]  Is part of him ashamed that he acted with such brutality?  Or is it impossible to rationalize because the secret is necessary for the rest of the contrived plot to unfold as Gabaldon intended, for maximum dramatic effect?  For whatever reason, Jamie doesn’t tell Claire or Brianna (the one person who deserves to know).  Not even when he has a deep conversation with Brianna about vengeance, which would have been the perfect opportunity to fess up—“Dinna fash about him anymore.  I beat him to a pulp yesterday, and ye’ll never see him again.”  He then lies to Claire and tells her he hit a tree.  Remember that quote from Outlander about secrets and lies?  Claire kept a secret.  Jamie told a lie. 

Young Ian

Lizzie spots a man by the road and becomes agitated and scared. Ian takes Lizzie to the person he trusts the most: Jamie.  Jamie would know what to do.  He listens as Lizzie tells Jamie what happened to Brianna in Wilmington.  He wonders aloud if the man has come to claim Brianna.  Jamie doesn’t answer, but it’s obvious he’s mulling over that very question.  The look on Jamie’s face turns from confused rage to fierce determination.  He’s decided to take action.  Ian takes Lizzie back to the house, then rides out to meet Jamie at the road. Jamie hasn’t noticed that a wagon is coming.  Ian gets Jamie’s attention and they hide Roger’s limp body behind the tree.  Jamie instructs Ian to get rid of him.  But how?  Does Jamie want Ian to kill him?  No, but he leaves it up to Ian to decide what to do next.  Ian rides off with Roger in tow, finds a group of Mohawk travelling through, and sells Roger into slavery—a fitting punishment for violating his cousin.

IN WHICH ALL IS REVEALED

Lizzie wakes Brianna from another terrible nightmare.  She can’t stand seeing Brianna suffer.  So, she breaks down and tells Brianna “he was here,” at Fraser’s Ridge.  Brianna’s confused.  How does Lizzie know Stephen Bonnet raped her?  The truth is out.  Lizzie thought Roger raped her.  And now Brianna knows that Roger was here and Jamie beat him.  Where is Roger now?  

Enraged, she storms into the cabin and demands to know what Jamie did with him.  Jamie’s confused.  He thought Roger left, so did Claire.  Claire looks at Jamie’s bruised hand and puts the puzzle pieces together.  What did Jamie do?  Jamie admits to giving a man a beating, but he didn’t know it was Bree’s historian (side note: I know that this is a moment of turmoil for the Fraser family, but I couldn’t help but smile when Jamie said “Yer historian”). Bree explains that her and Roger were handfast and had sex before he left.  Jamie becomes defensive and starts jumping to conclusions.  He accuses Brianna of lying about the rape once she found out she was pregnant.  By accusing her of such a heinous lie, Jamie is calling her integrity and moral character into question.  Hurt by Jamie’s words, Bree gives him a well-deserved slap on the face, and corrects his assumptions—“I was violated, you self-righteous bastard!”  Jamie, realizing for the first time that he’s made a huge mistake, tells Brianna “I’m so sorry, Lass.  I’ll make it right, you have my word as your father.”  But Bree, still hurt and processing, isn’t ready to hear an apology.  She calls Jamie a savage and claims Frank “would never have said the things you said to me.” By this point in the proceedings, Claire has moved to stand next to Bree, ready to offer support.  In the aftermath of Bree’s trauma, Claire has continually put Brianna’s needs above her own, and she behaves no differently here. Though Claire is torn and distressed seeing the two people she loves most fighting, Claire embraces Bree and comforts her because Brianna needs her mother more than Jamie needs his wife.

But there’s still one last secret to be revealed.  If it wasn’t Roger, who was it?  Claire looks to Brianna and waits for her nod of consent before pulling the ring out of her pocket, thereby revealing Stephen Bonnet to be the rapist.  Now everyone is in the know.  Almost. Brianna still wants to know “Where is Roger?”  Ian admits to selling him to the Mohawk.  Bree gives him a well-deserved punch to the face.  Her husband is 700 miles away, and could be dead.  Bree is devastated.  Hurt by Bree’s earlier reproach, but most of all angry at himself (for letting Bonnet go and for beating Roger), Jamie lashes out and knocks over a chair.  When Brianna tells him that he doesn’t get to be more angry than her, she’s reminding him that she is the wronged party, and he is the one who inflicted that wrong on her.  She thought Roger had gone back through the stones, but he didn’t. He came back for her!  And now the man she loves, the father of her child (she hopes), has been beaten near to death by her own father.  Bree is justifiably hurt and distraught, and angry at the man who wronged her: Jamie.  Jamie is angry as well, but not because he’s been wronged; his anger is born of guilt.

THE BLAME GAME

“The way that the bulk of the blame for Roger’s situation was put on Jamie felt a bit unfair.” … “I just don’t think you can justifiably say the blame for this rests solely on Jamie’s shoulders and Jamie is the one who wronged Bree.” … “He believed-because no one bothered to name the rapist-even though they could have-that Roger had raped his daughter.  Lizzie made a mistake, Bree and Claire lied by omission and Ian stood by his uncle.  Just who wronged who here?”

During the course of the discussion on this post, it was posited that Rogergate was a result of a domino effect.  In this “Rogergate as dominoes” scenario, the first domino to fall is Brianna withholding the identity of her rapist. The other dominoes in the lineup are Lizzie mistaking Roger for Bree’s rapist, Claire not telling Jamie about Bonnet, Jamie beating up Roger, and Ian selling Roger to the Mohawk.  This explanation is neat and tidy, with each domino directly causing the next domino to fall.  The problem that I have with this dominoes analogy is that it makes it seem like Jamie beating up Roger is a foregone conclusion.  Rogergate is not as simple as a lineup of dominoes, with each domino inevitably causing the next domino to fall.  In my opinion, the domino effect is an overly simplistic, black and white explanation for what happened, and disregards characters’ agency. How can blame be assigned if characters aren’t in control of their own choices and actions?

“Character agency is, to me, a demonstration of the character’s ability to make decisions and affect the story. This character has motivations all [their] own. [They are] active more than [they are] reactive. [They push] on the plot more than the plot pushes on [them]. Even better, the plot exists as a direct result of the character’s actions. […] Characters with agency do things and say things that create narrative. Plot is spun out of the words and actions of these characters. And their words and actions continue to push on the plot created by other characters, because no character has agency in a vacuum.”—Chuck Wendig

The figure below is a visual representation of how I rationalize Rogergate in my head.  I’ve color coded it, to indicate which parts I see as benign (blue) and which I see as harmful (orange).  The green boxes around Jamie are his motivations—his reasons for doing what he did.

Figure 1: Rogergate Flowchart 

I’m going to start with an explanation of the green boxes, because I want to make something clear from the get-go.  When I assigned blame to Jamie for Rogergate in a previous post, I was accused of disregarding that: (1) Jamie himself is a rape victim; (2) “Jamie lives in a time when you defend your family against such wrongs with action against the aggressor”; and (3) “We are talking about a Highland warrior in the 17th century.”

I am not disregarding Jamie’s past trauma, values and beliefs (which are shaped by the time in which he lives), or his desire to protect and avenge his daughter.  I believe that these are Jamie’s motivations, and do not assuage his guilt.  A murderer with a motive is still a murderer.  Just because Jamie has valid reasons and motivations behind his actions, doesn’t mean that he is not liable for the consequences of his actions.   So, I don’t think that his motivations have any bearing on how much blame he should carry.  I do believe, however, that Brianna coming to understand his motivations (as well as time and Jamie’s letter) will be instrumental in her deciding to forgive him.

Next, is the blue MISINFORMATION box.

Even though this box is full of secrets, assumptions and misunderstandings, I would argue that this MISINFORMATION is not harmful in and of itself.

Bree suspects that if Jamie knows about Bonnet, he’ll confront him, and she doesn’t want that to happen, because she doesn’t want Jamie hurt or killed.  So, when Bree decides not to tell anyone the identity of her rapist, her intent is to protect Jamie and Claire from guilt and to keep Jamie from confronting Bonnet. Bree keeping this information to herself and Claire keeping Bree’s secret does no harm to anyone.  I also want to point out here that Claire finds out about Bonnet at the same time that Jamie is attacking Roger (on the show at least).  So, even if she had told Jamie about Bonnet, it would have been after the attack, and too late to prevent the beating.  It maybe would have saved them some time, and they possibly could have rescued Roger a lot sooner.  But, that’s getting into a hypothetical tangent.  Neither Claire nor Brianna are acting on this information, and they keep it to themselves precisely because they want to prevent any fallout.  So, Bree and Claire are both in blue boxes. Their inaction is benign.

Lizzie is a bit more complicated.  As you can see, her name appears in both blue and orange.  That’s because Lizzie mistaking Roger for a rapist didn’t become harmful until she shared that misinformation with Jamie and Ian, who then acted on that misinformation.  Therefore, Lizzie is the orange arrow connecting MISINFORMATION with JAMIE.  I debated whether to make Lizzie’s arrow a third color, because sharing the misinformation does not directly harm Brianna, and yet it isn’t a “benign” action either. Lizzie is guilty only of passing on misinformation, albeit unknowingly, to Jamie.  For that reason, I can’t bring myself to assign too much blame to Lizzie. She is merely the messenger.

I’m going to use a random example to illustrate my point here.  Let’s look at this work-related conundrum presented on the advice blog Ask a Manager. In this scenario, a manager finds documents in the copier that she interprets to mean that layoffs are coming for her staff.  So, she holds a meeting letting her employees know so they can get a head start on job searching.  Well, it turns out that the documents were wrong, the boss misinterpreted it, and by the time all of this was revealed, her employees had already left for new jobs and they weren’t allowed to return to their old jobs.  In this scenario, the documents themselves do not harm anyone.  The documents do not actively lay off any employees.  It’s only when the boss acts on the misinformation in the documents that trouble ensues.  Now, imagine that it wasn’t the boss herself that found the documents, but her assistant. And that assistant passed the documents on to her boss, not knowing that the information contained in them was false. I see the documents as the MISINFORMATION.  I see the boss as JAMIE. And I see the assistant as Lizzie.  If I was one of the employees who lost their job because of this boss’s actions would I be blaming the assistant who passed along the documents? No, I wouldn’t.  (I couldn’t find a way to incorporate Ian into this scenario, but I’ll get to him in a second.)

Figure 2: Rogergate Flowchart, Simplified 

So, now we’ve made it to JAMIE, the person I feel should shoulder the majority of the blame for Rogergate. 

I’m going to return to the Ask a Manager scenario again to illustrate my point and tie this back to character agency and choice.  When that boss was handed those documents by her assistant, she had 3 choices: (1) Keep the information to herself; (2) Go to her own boss and ask what she should do about it; or (3) Let her staff know that layoffs are coming, so they can get a head start on job searching.  The boss chooses option 3.  She has good intentions by choosing this option, because she doesn’t want her staff to be unemployed.  But, when she acted on the information, she made a mistake.

Similarly, when Jamie is given information by Lizzie, he has 3 choices: (1) Keep the information to himself and not act on it. (2) Go to Brianna and ask her what she would want him to do; or (3) Take justice into his own hands.  Jamie chooses option 3.  He has good intentions by choosing this option, because he wants to avenge his daughter.  But when he acted on the information, he made a mistake.

Some fans are bending over backwards to find a way to shift the blame away from Jamie (It’s all Lizzie’s fault!  If only Brianna had told everyone about Bonnet, none of this would have happened!  Claire should have told Jamie about Bonnet!).  But if you theoretically were to ask Jamie “Who’s to blame for Rogergate?” I believe he likely would answer “Oh, yeah, that was me.  I fucked up big time.”  Jamie, being the honorable man that he is, is not afraid to admit when he’s made a mistake, take responsibility, shoulder the blame, face the consequences, and then fix it.  In the heat of the moment, he gets defensive (“You said he’d already left here.”), he accuses Bree of lying (“…and now I come to find ye claim yourself violated upon finding yourself with child!”) but then as soon as he realizes that it was he who made a mistake he apologizes and assures Bree that he intends to fix it (“I’m so sorry, Lass.  I’ll make it right.  You have my word as your father.”).  Jamie clearly blames himself.  He knows he’s culpable.  He knows he made a huge mistake that has directly harmed Brianna.  He knows he has to make it right.  Jamie is the “King of Men” not just because of the way he leapt to defend his daughter’s honor, but because he owns his mistakes and is able to recognize when he’s brought harm to someone.  “I will find him, lass.  I wilna rest until I do.  Ye have my word.”  If Jamie can recognize and admit his own culpability, why can’t these fans who are trying to shift the blame away from him?  (Remember also that Jamie feels so guilty for what he’s done that he volunteers himself in exchange for Roger at the Mohawk village.)

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM?” she screamed.  Jamie blinked and Ian flinched.  They exchanged haunted glances.  I put a hand on Jamie’s arm, squeezing tight.  I couldn’t keep the quaver out of my own voice as I asked the necessary questions.  “Jamie—did you kill him?”  He glanced at me, and the tension in his face relaxed, if only marginally.  “Ah…no,” he said.  “I gave him to the Iroquois.”

So, Jamie tells Ian to “get rid of him” but doesn’t tell him how, as long as it’s not murder.  Ian, being the loyal nephew that he is, obeys Jamie’s command and “gets rid of him” by selling him into slavery.  From the book, as you can see from the quote above, it can be inferred that Jamie was the one who gave Roger to the Mohawk.  [see END NOTE] I suspect that the writers made this change so that Ian would feel guiltier for his part in Rogergate, and his sacrifice in the finale would make more sense.  Both Jamie and Ian know they have wronged Brianna and need to make it right.  So, when the opportunity presents itself for Ian to make amends, he does so.  If he had only a small part to play in Rogergate, then his sacrifice would be less understandable.  Why would he trade himself for Roger, if he didn’t feel he was responsible for Roger being there in the first place?  But, Ian does feel responsible, and rightly so.  

If Jamie is responsible for 50% of Rogergate (by beating Roger), and Ian responsible for the other 50% (by selling Roger into slavery), why am I not assigning blame with an even 50/50 split as well?  Why do I insist that Jamie shoulder the majority of the blame?  For three reasons: (1) Jamie instructed Ian to “get rid of him”; (2) Ian is cleaning up Jamie’s mess; and (3) Jamie is the older, more mature adult in this scenario, and a father-figure to Ian—Ian would do whatever Jamie asked of him, and Jamie knows this.  Sure, Ian could choose to refuse to “get rid of him.”  But, because of the power dynamics at play here, I doubt that Ian really even considers refusal an option at this point.  It actually makes me pretty uncomfortable that Jamie would allow Ian to be involved in this violent act, but I think Jamie is letting his rage overtake his rational thinking processes, and he isn’t considering how his actions may affect Ian (or Brianna, or Claire, or anyone else for that matter).

So, to answer the question “Just who wronged who here?” — Lizzie wronged Brianna when she shared details about her assault with her father and misidentified Roger as the rapist.  Jamie wronged Brianna when he beat Roger nearly to death and instructed Ian to get rid of him.  Ian wronged Brianna when he sold Roger to the Mohawk.  Jamie wronged Claire when he lied to her about what he had done. Jamie wronged Brianna when he didn’t tell her about what he had done.[see END NOTE]

I’m not a fan of the domino analogy but I’ll try a different one: If Rogergate were to go to trial, Jamie would be the perpetrator and would be charged with assault and battery and attempted murder.  The prosecutors would say that Jamie’s motive was to avenge his daughter.  I believe Jamie would likely plead guilty and accept his sentence.  Ian would be charged as an accessory after the fact.  Lizzie would be an accomplice? (I honestly don’t know what crime, if any, Lizzie could be charged with.)  

ANGER FIRST, THEN FORGIVENESS

“I guess I just thought that Brianna shouldn’t be so harsh on Jamie considering Jamie himself was raped.  I never had a problem with her being angry.  I just felt it went overboard in some ways.” … “Brianna focuses her anger at everyone on Jamie.  It gives her a place to put her frustration and her feelings of helplessness at the situation.” … “Jamie is a convenient scapegoat.  Being mad at him gives her a place to focus her anger and gives her the satisfaction of feeling like she’s doing the ‘right’ thing by Frank.”

Whether you feel that Brianna’s anger at Jamie is justified or out of proportion to the wrong committed against her is largely subjective and dependent on whether or not you believe Jamie is to blame for his own actions. As I hope I have sufficiently explained in this extremely long-winded post, I personally believe that Jamie is the most culpable for Rogergate.  Therefore, Brianna’s anger is directed at exactly the right person.  Brianna has been wronged and Jamie is the one who wronged her.  Furthermore, I don’t believe that Brianna is overreacting.  Those who disagree with me (and are trying to shift the blame away from Jamie), will likely say that Brianna is overreacting and that her slapping Jamie was taking things too far.

So, why did Brianna slap Jamie?  Let’s revisit what exactly Jamie said to her to incite the slap.  When Jamie finds out that he mistakenly beat Roger nearly to death, he makes the very hurtful accusation that Brianna had lied about being raped when she found out she was pregnant.  Let that sink in for a second.  By accusing Bree of such a heinous lie, Jamie is (1) calling Bree a liar; (2) accusing Bree of being manipulative (3) accusing Bree of taking advantage of their new relationship for her own personal gain; and (4) calling into question Bree’s integrity.

It’s understandable to me that when faced with such an insulting accusation that Bree would slap him, call him a self-righteous bastard and a savage and claim that Frank would never have said the things Jamie said to her. Jamie and Brianna both have a temper, and Bree is responding to an insult with another insult.

I also want to address this idea that Brianna shouldn’t be so angry at Jamie because she knows he’s been a victim of sexual assault as well. This may sound insensitive, but rape victims are capable of doing bad things and making mistakes and shouldn’t be excused from taking responsibility for their own harmful actions because of their past trauma.  Nobody’s perfect.  If we were to find perpetrators not guilty of their crimes, on the basis that they had previously been victims themselves, then our prisons would be nearly empty. Jamie’s past trauma does not excuse him from facing the consequences of his actions.  Claire certainly blames Jamie for the wrongs he’s committed against her since his trauma (one notable example being his duel with Randall in Season 2).  

I don’t think that it’s fair to expect Brianna to temper her own reactions or emotions because of Jamie’s past trauma.  Jamie’s past suffering is not more important than Brianna’s current suffering.  The hurt and pain and anger that she is feeling is very fresh and very real and very immediate.  This moment, this fight, is not about Jamie being raped.  It’s not even about Brianna being raped.  It’s about Jamie committing a great wrong against Brianna.  Jamie may have suffered in the past, but Brianna is suffering in the present.

I feel that Brianna taking a few months at River Run to process and heal before she forgives Jamie is reasonable.  But, why do so many fans think that she’s holding a grudge?  I think part of it is that these fans don’t blame Jamie for Rogergate, so they don’t believe Brianna should either.  They wonder why Brianna could forgive Lizzie before she could forgive Jamie because to them, Lizzie is just as much to blame as Jamie is.  Some fans also put Jamie on a pedestal.  Whenever another character’s actions or words are perceived to emasculate or infantilize Jamie, or if that character is not giving Jamie the affection and adoration these fans believe he deserves, that character is vilified.  But, that’s just my theory, anyway.  

HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING

“If Jamie had beaten Bonnet to a pulp and sold him would he have been wrong??” … “I don’t believe for a minute that people would blame Jamie’s actions if he’d beat the shit out of Bonnet.  Even Bree asks him if killing her rapist would help.”

I’m not really a fan of these types of hypothetical questions because my answer will depend heavily on my own assumptions and my assumptions won’t necessarily align with someone else’s.  But, I’ve seen this question pop up quite a few times, so I thought I’d attempt to tackle it.  Keep in mind that my answer is based on my own perceptions of these characters, and I have my own ideas about what is in or out of character for them.

Brianna is trying to process her trauma and move past it.  Her first method of coping is compartmentalizing. We see evidence of this when she doesn’t tell anyone about her assault until she absolutely has to (when she finds out she’s pregnant).  But she’s still having nightmares, she’s still struggling to cope.  So, she begins to wonder if killing Bonnet would help. When she tells Jamie this, she’s not just saying that she wants Bonnet dead.  She’s saying that she wants him dead by her own hand.  She’s not asking Jamie to seek vengeance for her.  She wants to seek vengeance for herself.

Given these assumptions about Brianna’s headspace, I believe that Brianna would be justified in being angry with Jamie if she found out he had beaten Bonnet.  Because, at this time, she still believes that vengeance may be the path forward, and when Jamie sought vengeance in her stead, he took her agency.

I agree with @the-outlander-life, who made this comment on this post: “Even if the man Jamie beat up had been Bonnet he should have consulted Bree on what to do with him instead of trying to beat him to death, it was Brianna’s decision to make, not his.”

But there’s another part of this, too, that Brianna would be angry about: Jamie didn’t tell her what he had done.  He beat her alleged rapist nearly to death, then had the gall to have a heart-to-heart talk with her about vengeance and advise her not to go down that path, when he just took action to avenge her.  I guess it’s a matter of “do as I say, not as I do”?  As I said above under WHAT HAPPENED, this is one of Jamie’s most baffling choices in this whole Rogergate debacle.  When he sees that Brianna is struggling to move forward, why wouldn’t he tell her what he’d done? [see END NOTE]

So, if Jamie were to beat Bonnet, I don’t think that Brianna would be just as angry at Jamie.  But, I also don’t think that Brianna wouldn’t have anything to be angry at Jamie about. He still would have taken vengeance on her behalf without talking to her about it first, and he still would have lied to her about it.  I think Brianna would be justified in being angry at Jamie about those things.  It might be a lot easier for her to move past it and forgive Jamie, and maybe even one day be grateful for what he’d done. But, at least at first, anger at Jamie would be warranted.

END NOTE

I recently (after I had finished writing this post, and it was sitting in my queue, ready to be published) joined TheLitForum, the online discussion thread that Diana Gabaldon frequents.  And on that forum, there’s a very interesting ongoing thread on the topic of lies and deceit in the Outlander series: Let it be the truth.  I gleaned some new information from perusing the thread.  But, rather than go back and reevaluate and rewrite what I’ve written here, I’m adding this new information as an end note.  

One user brought up Jamie not telling Claire or Brianna about beating Roger and Diana chimed in to provide insight into what Jamie was thinking and feeling at the time:

“She's upset, Bree's upset--and telling them that THIS just happened a couple of hours ago wouldn't calm them down any. Also--since he _didn't_ kill the guy, he doesn't want to tell Brianna that the man got that close to her...and he's still walking around. He hopes that Ian got rid of him in a way that will keep him from coming back, but as he doesn't yet know that for sure, naturally he isn't going to alarm Bree by telling her about it. And he isn't going to tell Claire yet, either, because she can't keep secrets from _anyone_ who knows her.”

I’m not sure if Diana’s insights really change too much of what I’ve said in this analysis.  I still think that Jamie should have told Bree, especially when they had their chat about vengeance.  But, I also understand that Jamie would believe he’s protecting Bree from worry that the man who raped her knows where she lives and isn’t dead.  Diana also points out: 

I don't know how one would see "evidence" as to whether or not Jamie would tell Claire or Brianna in future what he'd done--given that we aren't in his head, we have no way (other than Claire's observations of him) to tell _what_ he's thinking. He might well tell Claire about it later, and ask her whether he should tell Brianna. 

But, didn’t weeks go by between the beating and the Reveal?  Surely Claire and Brianna would have calmed down enough at some point during those few weeks for him to “break the news.”  I understand why Jamie would keep this to himself initially (to protect Claire and Bree from worry, similar to how they protected Jamie with their secret), but I still don’t understand why he wouldn’t tell Claire or Brianna once things at the Ridge had calmed down.  And things were relatively calm by the time All was Revealed.

Within that same discussion thread, I asked Diana to clarify what she meant by  “[Jamie] hopes that Ian got rid of him in a way that will keep him from coming back, but as he doesn't yet know that for sure, naturally he isn't going to alarm Bree by telling her about it.”  The wording of this made it sound like Ian sold Roger, which seemed to contradict Jamie’s statement “I gave him to the Iroquois” in Chapter 50, during the Reveal.  I asked Diana whether, in the book,  it was Jamie, Ian, or both of them who gave Roger to the Iroquois and she answered:

No, Ian did it, but at Jamie's instigation.  In actuality, Ian gave Roger to the Tuscarora, who in turn sold him to the Mohawk.  So Jamie didn't know immediately where he'd gone, but did know (from Ian) by the time Brianna drew her picture and All was Revealed.  Jamie's just shouldering the blame here, feeling that this is all his fault.

So, there you have it.  The show writers didn’t change anything by having Ian "get rid of him.”  and...ahem...

Jamie's just shouldering the blame here, feeling that this is all his fault.

[neveralarch]

ohhhh please do allez. star emoji

Allez is the fic that nearly fucking killed me, it was soooo frustrating. But successful in the end I think! Thank you for asking about it, apparently I desperately wanted to spill out the process behind writing it. Very long response under the cut, including a NSFW/adult excerpt from a previous version of the fic. If you have any questions about specific lines in the fic definitely lmk, bc I basically just yelled about writing here and very little about the actual plot or anything haha.

It's very weird for me to have a long fic or a series that I actually WANT to continue - usually I write a thing and then I'm done with it (and sometimes just done with the fandom altogether), which I know can be kind of frustrating to the readers who were hoping for more. But fencing fic is just like this WELL, I have all of this stuff from it I want to splash out on the pavement for people to look at, and it's been super fun to just invite those questions and prompts that people have and see if I can get anything out of the well for those.

Neery left a comment on Passe (the last main fic) that said in part "If you're taking prompts for this universe, I'd love to see more of Wheeljack's and Starscream's relationship, especially their first time (because you can't tell me Starscream wasn't a neurotic mess about it)." And I went YEAH and then hopped into chat with Dez ( @sauntervaguelydown ) and basically just banged out the whole plot while a) tipsy after a party and then b) the next morning in between refereeing at a fencing tournament. Which was probably a good set of states to be thinking about this fic.

At first I was thinking of this as a short five times fic, basically showing a set of sex failures followed by sex success, because I love bad sex becoming good sex in fic. But the more I thought about it the more serious it got, because it was so tangled up in my head with this idea of what 'good' sex actually is and who gets to decide if you're having good sex. This is a little TMI but I also became sexually active in the last couple years and I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what the difference between fantasy and physical desire is as a person who used to be and maybe still is on the ace spectrum somewhere. And (again) what the distinction is between 'good sex' and 'sex I want to have.' So the more I worked on this the more all of that started spilling onto the page.

I also felt a little uncertain about where I left Starscream and Wheeljack in the main fics. I think they can and will be happy, but the undercurrent in the series is that Starscream is still really hung up on Megatron while also recognizing how much Megatron fucked him over, while Wheeljack is furious at Megatron both for what he did to Starscream and for what he perceives Megatron to have done to fencing in general. Starscream's half of that undercurrent gets resolved in the main series, but Wheeljack's half doesn't and it felt like I needed to tackle that in Allez.

I figured this would be an easy fic to write even though I wanted it to be more serious because I knew exactly what the goals were and exactly what the plot was. And then I started writing it and walked straight into a wall. I wrote 2600 words from Starscream's pov, which was FUN but meant that Wheeljack was just... there. Hanging around and being a Good Boyfriend while Starscream panicked.

Starscream flashed a grin, trying to look like a confident mech-about-town who you could trust with your connectors. He could do this. It would be slow and soft and nice, everything you were supposed to do with your sweetspark. And it would feel amazing, because he liked Wheeljack and he wanted to be with him.

"Starscream?" Wheeljack was leaning back a little. "What's that look about?"

"Nothing." Starscream snapped his panel back, transforming his array so the plug was uppermost. "Just thinking about how much I want you."

Wheeljack's optics softened, and his panel opened. His own array transformed into the compatible configuration, plug below his socket. Frag, this was going to be good. Starscream wanted to shove Wheeljack down and slam their arrays together, or for Wheeljack to shove Starscream on his back and ride Starscream's plug until Starscream was begging for the reciprocal connection, desperate for charge.

But Starscream didn't do any of those things, because he was trying to do this right. Instead he leaned back and spread his legs, pulling Wheeljack in by his shoulder to rest between them. Wheeljack's optics were glistening as he eased forward, and they both gasped as their arrays met. The tips of their prongs breached their sockets, and that first tingle of charge was everything Starscream had wanted.

Wheeljack was careful, so careful as he pressed forward, micrometer by micrometer. The charge was a teasing tingle crawling from Starscream's array to the tips of his wings. Wheeljack leaned forward and kissed Starscream as they slipped a little closer together, and it was all perfectly dull.

No. Perfect, it was perfect. The charge wasn't supposed to come in rolling waves that nearly knocked you offline, and your partner wasn't supposed to wrestle you down to the berth while you tried to throw them off. This was the way good mechs fragged. Good mechs like Wheeljack, and like the mech Starscream was pretending to be.

"Starscream," murmured Wheeljack.

Starscream squeezed his optics shut and arched his back a little, forcing the connection deeper before he remembered that he was trying to let Wheeljack control the pace. Wheeljack's frame was hovering over Starscream's, not covering him. He was still modulating his charge to match the chaste little trickle Starscream was allowing through. His mask was still pressed against Starscream's lips. It was straight out of a romance holo.

It wasn't supposed to be boring.

"Starscream," said Wheeljack again. "Starscream, are you okay? I'm gonna disconnect."

"No!" Starscream tightened his grip on Wheeljack's shoulder.

"You're obviously not having a good time." Wheeljack pulled back, able to resist Starscream with his better leverage. "We don't have to connect, it's fine."

"It's not fine!" Starscream tried to tighten his socket to keep Wheeljack there, but Wheeljack's prongs were too thin and smooth for Starscream to catch. "I want to connect, I want to be with you."

"You are with me." Wheeljack laid a hand against Starscream's cheek and pulled their arrays apart. "You don't have to-"

"I hate you," hissed Starscream. "Why can't you just do it? Why can't you just show some bearings and let me worry about myself?"

You see? Fun to write but Wheeljack is just this thing for Starscream to react against.

I chatted with Dez about the problem and decided to rewrite the fic in Wheeljack pov so the exact source of Starscream's neuroticism would be more of a reveal and so I could get further into Wheeljack's head. I got a few hundred words into the new version and just COULD NOT do it, Wheeljack's voice felt all wrong, like I was writing Starscream again but putting Wheeljack's name on it. I talked to Dez about it AGAIN and finally hit on the idea of Wheeljack trying to feel his way through a relationship on trial and error (because Starscream is incapable of communicating) and the amazingly romantic gesture of flowcharts. After that I mostly had it. Until I hit the ending and slammed into ANOTHER wall and had to go back to Dez and be like. Please. Read this. Tell me how to be free.

Dez suggested Starscream and Wheeljack actually having A Conversation after they manage to have sex - basically that they had earned some emotional honesty after all that. This REALLY helped, and I managed to get it the rest of the way to the ending from here, although it took two more rewrites and a whole other ending scene. Total time from conception to post: about 6 weeks, which isn't that much except I felt like I was banging my head against it the entire time haha. And it took about five rewrites, which is two more than I usually do.

Thank god for Dez. I'm usually a pretty isolated writer? I ask for betas on big fics, but that's typically when I have a polished version or when 'm running up against a deadline. It's been really amazing to have someone to bounce fic ideas off of and to pass drafts back and forth with and just to complain when the struggle is getting especially real. I think I would've gotten really sick of this fic without Dez's help and enthusiasm. It probably wouldn't have gotten done at all. As it is, I'm really happy with how it all turned out :)

Some other little bits:

Allez means 'let's go' or 'go' and is also how you start each touch in a fencing bout if you're refereeing in the internation standard (ie French). English: on guard, ready, fence. French: en garde, pret, allez. It's also what French speakers will sometimes yell at a sabre fencer in between touches or while they're charging down the strip. I was thinking here that it's kind of fun to imagine Starscream and Wheeljack's friends shouting 'allez' at them, cheering them on but also hoping they'll get on with it already. Also, I kind of think of this fic as the beginning of a new set of fics - we're out of the main Megatron arc and into more slice of life stuff - so it felt appropriate as a new start to the bout.

When I originally conceived of the Attaque Composee series, I wanted it all to be T rated because I wanted it to be available to most readers and also if someone ever connects meatspace me with this series (a terrifying possibility) I don't really want the conversation to be 'hey I saw you wrote a robot fencing porn fic.' But I also REALLY wanted to write this story and I decided to just roll with it - it's easy to skip this one and read the rest of the series, and I've written plenty of other robot porn fics at this point.

Last thing: over nine fucking years ago I wrote a Scream of Shalka Doctor Who fic where the Master climbed over a table to yell at the Doctor, and my beta completely correctly pointed out that Shalka!Master isn't physically dramatic like that. I have a tendency toward overblown physical comedy and drama that I've had to rein in for years and it is SO RELAXING to be in a fandom where I can write Starscream standing on the berth, nearly falling over while shrieking at Wheeljack and everyone's reaction is 'yep. Yeah. He likes to be tall.'

Thank you for asking about this!!

[fics-for-my-heart]

Convention handling (p.1)

Summary: working a convention is always a bit stressful, but what happens when you’re asked to be your celebrity crushes handler

Words: roughly 2,673

Warning: some swearing, a bit of a slow burner

A/N: This got outta hand FAST. I’ll upload it in two parts so that my app doesn’t thrown a tantrum. I did some editing after putting it on here so the work count isn’t exact. My apologies.

Masterlist

Part One  Part Two.1  Part Two.2  Part Three

“Alright guys, any more questions?” Dad asked, looking around at the faces. “Set up starts tomorrow at eight in the morning. Please try and be on time.” The murmurs of “yess” filled the room. “Also, my phone will be on 24/7 starting tonight till the end of the event. If anyone needs anything call.” He lifted his arms. “See you guys bright and early.”

Convention season is always busy with getting talent, and setting up sellers for booths. But two days before and after are always the busiest. Some talent like to show up a day early and do some sight seeing, others only show up an hour before they are set to be out. With the crowds from previous conventions growing steadily, your family’s company that puts the event together extend it from three to five days. This meant more talent, and much more planning.

“Y/N!” Your dad called before you reached the door. “Can we go over the weeks plans just one more time, I want to make sure everything is perfect.”

“Sure.” You sat back in your seat and pulled out the floor map and flowchart of times and locations.

It’s going to be a long night.

—

Eight came early, and in the blink of an eye it was the last day of set up. Some of the talent had started to arrive, and as they did, their handlers left the set up to assist them.

You had just finished setting up the line barrier for a voice actor when you heard your name.

“Y/N!” There was a frantic edge to it.

“What’s wrong?” You turned to find your dad, eyes wide with worry.

“Aiden called, his kid is sick and he won’t be able to work this year. He was suppose to be a handler and he called last minute and I need someone to cover for him.”

“I might be able to pull some strings?” You pull your phone out to start making called.

He shakes his head. “It’s too late. He called legit last minute. The actor he was suppose to assist is already here. I’m going to need you to please be his handler.”

Your jaw dropped. Last time you were a handler the guy was a complete ass. Felt like rules didn’t apply to him, not to mention he liked to drink too much. “I..I don’t know. You remember last time.”

“I do.” He bowed his head slightly. “But this time is different. He is a younger actor. Your age actually. And he is one of the bigger ones we were able to snag for the entire week. I’ll give you a bonus. And the moment you feel uncomfortable I’ll take over.” His eyes were sincere, and you knew he was serious.

“Alright. Alright. But I’m holding you too that bonus.” You pointed a finger at him and laughed. “What room is he in?”

“You are a blessing. Thank you so much. He is in room 504.” He handed you the folder and jogged off to take your place on the set up crew.

The venue that was used for the convention is conveniently connected to a hotel. So an entire floor gets closed off just for the actors and actresses that attend. You made your way up to the fifth floor, silently hoping that whoever you are stuck with this week doesn’t go crazy.

When you got to the floor, it was crowded with security and people moving into their rooms. Along the way you stopped to answer questions and say hello to a few familiar faces so it took almost ten minutes to get to the door.

You knocked, but no one responded. Knock. No response. Finally opening the folder to fetch the room key you froze when you saw the name at the top of the schedule. Tom Holland: Spider-Man, Avengers Infinity War, Chaos Walking.

“No way.” You whispered under your breath. Before you could question it any more, the door opened. Your eyes slowly travels up to the persons face. Socks. Sweats. Hoodie. Tom fricken Holland. Hair still dripping from a shower. Your voice was stuck in your throat. Dad totally planned this.

“Alright there?” His voice was like angels singing.

You clear your throat, shaking your head hoping to clear it like an etch-a-Sketch. “Sorry, sorry.” You extended a hand. “I’m Y/N Y/L/N. I’m going to be your guide this week.”

Tom took your hand softly in his. “Nice to meet you.” Then his brow furrowed in confusion. “I thought someone named Aiden was to be my handler?”

“His daughter is sick so he had to cancel this week.” You shift awkwardly. “My father can arrange someone else if you’d like.”

“No. No. No. It’s alright! Please come in.” He stood to the side, allowing you entry to the rather large hotel room. The comfort of the actors attending was always the most important thing to you guys. Tom closed the door, making his way to the couch. “So are there any other changes? I like to try and be a little prepared.” He smiled softly. “At least when it comes to doing cons like this. Things can be so hectic that it’s easier to have a play by play.” He was rambling, eyes darting between yours as you made your way to the couch.

“Um, I don’t believe so. I haven’t had a chance to look over your folder specifically. Do you have yours? I can compare them to make sure.” You took a seat beside him, opening the folder on the table.

He reached in his bag, pulling out a similar folder and made his way to the couch beside you. “I do. There’s a few things I highlighted to make sure I remember them.”

You took found the schedule sheet and held it beside yours. Scanning back and forth between the two. Tom watched as your lips moved slightly and your head nodded as you read.

“Everything seems to still be the same.” You smile, pushing your glasses up. “We still have the rest of the day before the convention. Do you have any questions?”

Tom brows went together as he thought. “Hm.” He sat his back against the couch. “Your number maybe?” Then quickly added. “I had Aidens for emergencies I figured since you are my current handler I’d uh be better off with yours.” He stumbles a little over his words. Causing you to laught a little.

“Of course.” You stick your hand out for his phone, keying your number in and texting yourself so you could have his. This is wild.

“Also. Where’s the best place for a burger around here?” He patted his stomach. “I haven’t eaten since take off and the flight was so long.”

“There’s a diner down the road. Best burgers and shakes in town. Would you like me to join you? Or I can have on of our security members tag along.”

He jumped up. “You can go. Let me dry my hair a little and I’ll be ready.” With a soft smile he turned on his toes back to the bathroom.

A few hours later, the two of you sat across from each other, talking about random things and getting to know one another.

“Shit. That really was one of the best burgers I’ve had.” He dropped his napkin on the empty plate and patted his stomach.

You smiled, starting to pre bus the table. “Told you. Best burgers in town.” You glanced at your watch. “Is there anything else you’d like to do?”

“Not really.” He stretched. “I’m rather stuffed and sleepy.”

You nod. “I’ll take you back to your room and you can get some rest. Tomorrow you don’t have to be out till around twelve so I’ll be by a little after eleven?”

He grabbed the bill, against your protest, and nodded. “Sounds good.”

-

“Tom!” You hit the door again with your palm. “Boy swear. I’m coming in.” You warn before pulling the key card out. It was 11:15 and he hadn’t answered. You swiped the key card and opened with the beep. “Tom?” You whisper. The room was quiet as you tiptoe in.

Toms sleeping figure was laying peaceful in the bed. One leg out of the covers and his arm draped over a pillow. His face was pressed against the pillow under his head.

You slowly put your hand on his. “Tom. It’s Y/N. It’s time to get up.”

With a gentle shake his face scrunches and one eye opens. “This is a lovely wake up call.” His voice is muffled with his face still firmly on the pillow.

You blush a bit. “Well good. Now get up or we’ll be late.” You poke his hand again before turning to the couch to give him some privacy.

A few minutes later Tom cleared his throat. “Ready?”

“Yup.”

You knew Tom was amazing. With all the videos and post about him going around it wasn’t a secret. But seeing him with everyone really brought the man behind the screen to light. He hugged and shook everyone’s hands. Got down at eye level with the kids and even let them “beat him up”. Your heart swooned with ever bright smile that walked away from his booth.

When it came time for his lunch, the line was still long.

“I’m not really hungry, do I have to leave right now?” He asked, eyes soft with the worry of having to leave these people standing here while he left.

You shook your head. “I’ll have someone bring you something.”

The light behind his eyes returned as he smiled brightly at you. “Thanks, love.”

In all your time working the conventions, the days never went this fast. It felt like you blinked and it was time to close off the line and then the last of today’s guest tricked out.

“I swear, doing this gets better with every smile.” Tom sighed, leaning back in his chair to stretch. “I love this part of my job.”

“It was something. You are amazing with the kids.” The two of you had started waking the back way to the hotel.

“I think it’s because I remember feeling that excitement. Knowing that someone I look up to shook my hand and was real. Knowing I’m that person for the kids. Warms my heart.” He was practically bouncing beside you, and placed both hands over his heart.

You gave him a soft smile. “Would you like me to order you something for dinner? There are some take out menus in your folder.”

He shrugged, reaching in his back pocket for his key as you approached his door. “Sure. Will you stay?” He slid the key through the reader, looking over at you as he opened the door, then rushed to add. “Tomorrow is kinda busier and I wanna map everything out.” A slight blush has made its way to his face.

“Sure.”

He smiled. “Awesome. You can pick the food, you know this place better than I do.”

-

“You will get an hour break between your panel and when the line for your booth will open back up. You can hang out, eat, freshen up or go back down to your booth.” You glance at him over your glasses. The two of you agreed on Chinese, which was currently sitting almost empty on the table. “Are you paying attention?”

“Hm?” He looked up from his distraction, a fortune cookie. “Yeah. Sorry. Hour break to do whatever. This fortune is odd.” He shrugged, putting it safely in his wallet.

“Are you going to let me read it?” Your eyebrow is raised as he slowly looks at you. A soft pink tint to his cheeks.

“Nope.” He swiftly picks up the folder from between you. “So just to be clear. Tomorrow I’ll be at my booth for an hour and a half. Then I have a panel for another hour and a half. A break. Then back to my booth?” You nod, taking another bite of your food. “Then the next day, no booth, just photos?”

“Yeah, we realized it’s easier to set an entire day aside for people to get the professional photos taken. It’s less stressful and people get a little more time to go through. It was actually an idea I threw out there after talking with some people. They didn’t like how it was so rushed so they could get everyone in.”

“That’s such a smart idea. The pictures are always fun. Everyone asking for different poses. Oh this will be a blast.”

“Thanks.” You shyly say, glancing at the time. “Holy shit. It’s almost twelve.” You close the folder and pack up your leftovers. “I should go. It’ll be another early day tomorrow.”

Tom walks you to the door. “Well, I look forward to my wake up call.” He give you a hug hiding his warm cheeks, warning a yip from you. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

-

The next morning, you had to wake Tom again, warning more grunting and a “shouldn’t have stayed up so late” groan. The day quickly went to shit. The panel before Toms took longer so he stayed at his table for almost another hour which was fine. But everything was pushed back and they moved his panel room. Just lots of running around and by the time you walked him back to his room he was out before his head hit the pillow.

The morning of the photos you told him you would be by a bit earlier so he could get ready. Of course, you had to let yourself in a wake him up. To be honest, it was becoming one of you favorite parts of the day. Seeing him with a soft face and bed head. Sometimes snoring a little. All it did was make your crush stronger, but you weren’t complaining.

“Tom. It’s time to get ready.” He rubbed his face deeper into the pillow, but did wake. “Tom.” You spoke a little louder, poking his hand. Still nothing. “Ugh. Thomas.” Your fingers found their way to his messy brown locks, gently scratching at his head. This time he pushed his head toward your hands. “Wake up sleepy head.”

“No.” He whispered, leaning even more toward your hand, which you swiftly removed. “Nooooo. Come back.” He made grabby hands in your direction.

Your face was so warm. He is just half awake. It was nothing.

“It’s photo op day, you gotta look presentable.” You voice was soft as you watched him open one eye.

He frowned. “It’s so early, but fiiiine.” He slowly rolled over and stretched, showing that he was shirtless under the blankets. You quickly jump around, eyes wide. “Oops.” He chuckled, realizing he wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Give me like ten minutes and I’ll be ready.”

Sure enough, ten minutes later he came walking out of the bathroom. Hair styled and fully clothed. “Alright let’s get this show on the road! But first I need some coffee.”

-

Once again, you were mesmerized by the amount of care Tom put into every interaction with fans. He let them choose the pose, asked them how they were and if they were having fun, always gave hugs. It was so easy to get lost in the way he was that he caught staring a few times, but you caught him staring at you just as much.

About halfway through Tom was able to take a lunch break, which consisted of the two of you throwing chips at each other. The rest of the day moved faster, with an equal amount of stolen glances between you.

“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Tom asked while he helped the photographer pack.

You look up from your phone. “Sure. Pick the place and I’ll order it.”

“No. No. I mean like let’s go out and eat.” His ears had turned pink.

You fake shock, wanting to see the pink rise more. “Are you asking me on a date, Holland?”

Just as you hopped, the blush grew more. “Maybe? Is that a yes?”

“Of course I’ll go to dinner with you.”

A/N2: the second part will be up tomorrow.

[willczek-art]

Chapter - Public Enemy Ending - Connor is traumatized

I. love. this. scene. way. more. than. I. should. I don’t even know why, there’s so many things that happened in this game (I haven’t seen the end yet), chases, fights, SO MANY THINGS and yet the one that my mind is stuck on is that one. And for once I, the person who rarely if ever makes theories/analyses and never shares them, have my own thought on possible consequences of this scene and just... I don’t know.

It’s super long. Like...600 words of my-english long. I wrote it on DA and will just paste it below if you wanna read it. Really happy to discuss it further :V ALSO if anyone makes fanarts related to this scene PLEASE let me know! C:

So, in Jack's playthrough Simon is left on the rooftop, wounded/in pain (deviants feel pain?). He's been there for a while, he's scared as hell, desperate and about to die. Connor at this point is still just a machine, trying to get information that can move his investigation forward. he gets much more - whole load of emotions that he a)never felt before b)SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO FEEL c)has no idea how to deal with. Just think about it, it's like demo of feeling with all of the worst emotions packed inside, including actual feeling of death! Technically Connor died before, but since he loses bits of his memory when he comes back I think it's safe to assume that they wouldn't keep that moment in there, because why would they? What hits me the most is the fact that Connor, an android, who is just superior to people on so many levels is holding on to thing behind him in shock. Red light's flashing, hands clenched to that thing, empty stare and the way he answers Hank...!! You can see him being traumatized and not knowing how to react with overload of information, it's just... Heardbreaking-ly fascinating. So he does the only thing he can, shares information about Jericho. Chapter ends, but what leaves me wondering is what happens between this moment and beginning of next chapter? How does Connor deal with it, if he does at all? Will it be brought up by Hank in conversation during car ride? What are the consequences?? I haven't seen the whole game yet, so I have no idea if it actually influences further actions, but Connor is obviously traumatized, flowchart says so. So the way I see it there are two ways it could influence him. A base for both of them is him being scared of becoming a deviant, terrified even. That could also include fun things like avoiding touching other androids in general (irrational fear of connecting with them and getting more unwanted emotions?), especially PL600 models (which could also cause... Idk how to call it, twinge of heart, like a sudden phantom pain/flashback?)... And first way of trying to deal with that is going full-on machine. Think: Fake!Connor at Cyberlife Tower, but just as cold as can be. A bit of paradox, since he would be completely emotionless (removing a bit of memory maybe?) with exception of fear of becoming a deviant. Second way would be internal struggle at it's finest. What I mean is that he would be terrified of becoming a deviand and experiencing what Simon felt, so he tries to convince himself he's not a deviant and would never become one... While continuing to do deviant things (sparing Chloe for example), which just make him feel worse. I feel like during that car ride to Kamski Connor would act more machine-like than before, making Hank suspicious to the point of asking what's wrong and... Answer would be based on their relations, but then remember how upset Connor was after Kamski's Test? That's kind of a giveaway, isn't it? Later on there's that conversation with Markus, where I don't think Connor would admit to being a deviant? I mean even if you skip past what I think about him being traumatized, I feel like he would say he's a machine as a way of trying to convince himself one last time, but then proceed to help Marcus, because alternative is shooting him and he won't do that. (actually I don't know what are consecuences of choosing to 'Stay a machine', but I just hope that it wouldn't just... turn him into fake!Connor, I guess?) Also just a random Information, I was listening to The Interrogation track from DBH soundtrack while doodling this and not only it's probably my favourite track from whole soundtrack, but also it jsut makes me think about this scene a lot... These hits from the beginning building a tense atmosphere as we find Simon, hide from shooting, run towards him and that deep drop around 1:50 when Simon dies, then whole trauma kicks in Connor's mentality....

[wickedbananas]

Using the Flowchart Method for Diagnosing Ranking Drops - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by KameronJenkins

Being able to pinpoint the reason for a ranking drop is one of our most perennial and potentially frustrating tasks as SEOs. There are an unknowable number of factors that go into ranking these days, but luckily the methodology for diagnosing those fluctuations is readily at hand. In today's Whiteboard Friday, we welcome the wonderful Kameron Jenkins to show us a structured way to diagnose ranking drops using a flowchart method and critical thinking.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Kameron Jenkins. I am the new SEO Wordsmith here at Moz, and I'm so excited to be here. Before this, I worked at an agency for about six and a half years. I worked in the SEO department, and really a common thing we encountered was a client's rankings dropped. What do we do?

This flowchart was kind of built out of that mentality of we need a logical workflow to be able to diagnose exactly what happened so we can make really pointed recommendations for how to fix it, how to get our client's rankings back. So let's dive right in. It's going to be a flowchart, so it's a little nonlinear, but hopefully this makes sense and helps you work smarter rather than harder.

Was it a major ranking drop?: No

The first question I'd want to ask is: Was their rankings drop major? By major, I would say that's something like page 1 to page 5 overnight. Minor would be something like it just fell a couple positions, like position 3 to position 5.

We're going to take this path first. It was minor.

Has there been a pattern of decline lasting about a month or greater?

That's not a magic number. A month is something that you can use as a benchmark. But if there's been a steady decline and it's been one week it's position 3 and then it's position 5 and then position 7, and it just keeps dropping over time, I would consider that a pattern of decline.

So if no, I would actually say wait.

Volatility is normal, especially if you're at the bottom of page 1, maybe page 2 plus. There's going to be a lot more shifting of the search results in those positions. So volatility is normal.

Keep your eyes on it, though. It's really good to just take note of it like, "Hey, we dropped. Okay, I'm going to check that again next week and see if it continues to drop, then maybe we'll take action."

Wait it out. At this point, I would just caution against making big website updates if it hasn't really been warranted yet. So volatility is normal. Expect that. Keep your finger on the pulse, but just wait it out at this point.

If there has been a pattern of decline though, I'm going to have you jump to the algorithm update section. We're going to get there in a second. But for now, we're going to go take the major rankings drop path.

Was it a major ranking drop?: Yes

The first question on this path that I'd want to ask is:

Was there a rank tracking issue?

Now, some of these are going seem pretty basic, like how would that ever happen, but believe me it happens every once in a while. So just before we make major updates to the website, I'd want to check the rank tracking.

I. The wrong domain or URL.

That can be something that happens a lot. A site maybe you change domains or maybe you move a page and that old page of that old domain is still listed in your ranking tracker. If that's the case, then the rank tracking tool doesn't know which URL to judge the rankings off of. So it's going to look like maybe you dropped to position 10 overnight from position 1, and that's like, whoa, that's a huge update. But it's actually just that you have the wrong URL in there. So just check that. If there's been a page update, a domain update, check to make sure that you've updated your rank tracker.

II. Glitches.

So it's software, it can break. There are things that could cause it to be off for whatever reason. I don't know how common that is. It probably is totally dependent on which kind of software you use. But glitches do happen, so I would manually check your rankings.

III. Manually check rankings.

One way I would do that is...

Go to incognito in Google and make sure you're logged out so it's not personalized. I would search the term that you're wanting to rank for and see where you're actually ranking.

Google's Ad Preview tool. That one is really good too if you want to search where you're ranking locally so you can set your geolocation. You could do mobile versus desktop rankings. So it could be really good for things like that.

Crosscheck with another tool, like Moz's tool for rank tracking. You can pop in your URLs, see where you're ranking, and cross-check that with your own tool.

So back to this. Rank tracking issues. Yes, you found your problem. If it was just a rank tracking tool issue, that's actually great, because it means you don't have to make a lot of changes. Your rankings actually haven't dropped. But if that's not the issue, if there is no rank tracking issue that you can pinpoint, then I would move on to Google Search Console.

Problems in Google Search Console?

So Google Search Console is really helpful for checking site health matters. One of the main things I would want to check in there, if you experience a major drop especially, is...

I. Manual actions.

If you navigate to Manual Actions, you could see notes in there like unnatural links pointing to your site. Or maybe you have thin or low-quality content on your site. If those things are present in your Manual Actions, then you have a reference point. You have something to go off of. There's a lot of work involved in lifting a manual penalty that we can't get into here unfortunately. Some things that you can do to focus on manual penalty lifting...

Moz's Link Explorer. You can check your inbound links and see their spam score. You could look at things like anchor text to see if maybe the links pointing to your site are keyword stuffed. So you can use tools like that.

There are a lot of good articles too, in the industry, just on getting penalties lifted. Marie Haynes especially has some really good ones. So I would check that out.

But you have found your problem if there's a manual action in there. So focus on getting that penalty lifted.

II. Indexation issues.

Before you move out of Search Console, though, I would check indexation issues as well. Maybe you don't have a manual penalty. But go to your index coverage report and you can see if anything you submitted in your sitemap is maybe experiencing issues. Maybe it's blocked by robots.txt, or maybe you accidentally no indexed it. You could probably see that in the index coverage report. Search Console, okay. So yes, you found your problem. No, you're going to move on to algorithm updates.

Algorithm updates

Algorithm updates happen all the time. Google says that maybe one to two happen per day. Not all of those are going to be major. The major ones, though, are listed. They're documented in multiple different places. Moz has a really good list of algorithm updates over time. You can for sure reference that. There are going to be a lot of good ones. You can navigate to the exact year and month that your site experienced a rankings drop and see if it maybe correlates with any algorithm update.

For example, say your site lost rankings in about January 2017. That's about the time that Google released its Intrusive Interstitials Update, and so I would look on my site, if that was the issue, and say, "Do I have intrusive interstitials? Is this something that's affecting my website?"

If you can match up an algorithm update with the time that your rankings started to drop, you have direction. You found an issue. If you can't match it up to any algorithm updates, it's finally time to move on to site updates.

Site updates

What changes happened to your website recently? There are a lot of different things that could have happened to your website. Just keep in mind too that maybe you're not the only one who has access to your website. You're the SEO, but maybe tech support has access. Maybe even your paid ad manager has access. There are a lot of different people who could be making changes to the website. So just keep that in mind when you're looking into it. It's not just the changes that you made, but changes that anyone made could affect the website's ranking. Just look into all possible factors.

Other factors that can impact rankings

A lot of different things, like I said, can influence your site's rankings. A lot of things can inadvertently happen that you can pinpoint and say, "Oh, that's definitely the cause."

Some examples of things that I've personally experienced on my clients' websites...

I. Renaming pages and letting them 404 without updating with a 301 redirect.

There was one situation where a client had a blog. They had hundreds of really good blog posts. They were all ranking for nice, long tail terms. A client emailed into tech support to change the name of the blog. Unfortunately, all of the posts lived under the blog, and when he did that, he didn't update it with a 301 redirect, so all of those pages, that were ranking really nicely, they started to fall out of the index. The rankings went with it. There's your problem. It was unfortunate, but at least we were able to diagnose what happened.

II. Content cutting.

Maybe you're working with a UX team, a design team, someone who is looking at the website from a visual, a user experience perspective. A lot of times in these situations they might take a page that's full of really good, valuable content and they might say, "Oh, this is too clunky. It's too bulky. It has too many words. So we're going to replace it with an image, or we're going to take some of the content out."

When this happens, if the content was the thing that was making your page rank and you cut that, that's probably something that's going to affect your rankings negatively. By the way, if that's happening to you, Rand has a really good Whiteboard Friday on kind of how to marry user experience and SEO. You should definitely check that out if that's an issue for you.

III. Valuable backlinks lost.

Another situation I was diagnosing a client and one of their backlinks dropped. It just so happened to be like the only thing that changed over this course of time. It was a really valuable backlink, and we found out that they just dropped it for whatever reason, and the client's rankings started to decline after that time. Things like Moz's tools, Link Explorer, you can go in there and see gained and lost backlinks over time. So I would check that out if maybe that might be an issue for you.

IV. Accidental no index.

Depending on what type of CMS you work with, it might be really, really easy to accidentally check No Index on this page. If you no index a really important page, Google takes it out of its index. That could happen. Your rankings could drop.So those are just some examples of things that can happen. Like I said, hundreds and hundreds of things could have been changed on your site, but it's just really important to try to pinpoint exactly what those changes were and if they coincided with when your rankings started to drop.

SERP landscape

So we got all the way to the bottom. If you're at the point where you've looked at all of the site updates and you still haven't found anything that would have caused a rankings drop, I would say finally look at the SERP landscape.

What I mean by that is just Google your keyword that you want to rank for or your group of keywords that you want to rank for and see which websites are ranking on page 1. I would get a lay of the land and just see:

What are these pages doing?

How many backlinks do they have?

How much content do they have?

Do they load fast?

What's the experience?

Then make content better than that. To rank, so many people just think avoid being spammy and avoid having things broken on your site. But that's not SEO. That's really just helping you be able to compete. You have to have content that's the best answer to searchers' questions, and that's going to get you ranking.

I hope that was helpful. This is a really good way to just kind of work through a ranking drop diagnosis. If you have methods, by the way, that work for you, I'd love to hear from you and see what worked for you in the past. Let me know, drop it in the comments below.

Thanks, everyone. Come back next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Using the Flowchart Method for Diagnosing Ranking Drops — Best of Whiteboard Friday

Posted by KameronJenkins

Being able to pinpoint the reason for a ranking drop is one of our most perennial and potentially frustrating tasks as SEOs, especially in 2020. There are an unknowable number of factors that go into ranking these days, but luckily the methodology for diagnosing those fluctuations is readily at hand. In this popular Whiteboard Friday, the wonderful Kameron Jenkins shows us a structured way to diagnose ranking drops using a flowchart method and critical thinking.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Kameron Jenkins. I am the new SEO Wordsmith here at Moz, and I'm so excited to be here. Before this, I worked at an agency for about six and a half years. I worked in the SEO department, and really a common thing we encountered was a client's rankings dropped. What do we do?

This flowchart was kind of built out of that mentality of we need a logical workflow to be able to diagnose exactly what happened so we can make really pointed recommendations for how to fix it, how to get our client's rankings back. So let's dive right in. It's going to be a flowchart, so it's a little nonlinear, but hopefully this makes sense and helps you work smarter rather than harder.

Was it a major ranking drop?: No

The first question I'd want to ask is: Was their rankings drop major? By major, I would say that's something like page 1 to page 5 overnight. Minor would be something like it just fell a couple positions, like position 3 to position 5.

We're going to take this path first. It was minor.

Has there been a pattern of decline lasting about a month or greater?

That's not a magic number. A month is something that you can use as a benchmark. But if there's been a steady decline and it's been one week it's position 3 and then it's position 5 and then position 7, and it just keeps dropping over time, I would consider that a pattern of decline.

So if no, I would actually say wait.

Volatility is normal, especially if you're at the bottom of page 1, maybe page 2 plus. There's going to be a lot more shifting of the search results in those positions. So volatility is normal.

Keep your eyes on it, though. It's really good to just take note of it like, "Hey, we dropped. Okay, I'm going to check that again next week and see if it continues to drop, then maybe we'll take action."

Wait it out. At this point, I would just caution against making big website updates if it hasn't really been warranted yet. So volatility is normal. Expect that. Keep your finger on the pulse, but just wait it out at this point.

If there has been a pattern of decline though, I'm going to have you jump to the algorithm update section. We're going to get there in a second. But for now, we're going to go take the major rankings drop path.

Was it a major ranking drop?: Yes

The first question on this path that I'd want to ask is:

Was there a rank tracking issue?

Now, some of these are going seem pretty basic, like how would that ever happen, but believe me it happens every once in a while. So just before we make major updates to the website, I'd want to check the rank tracking.

I. The wrong domain or URL.

That can be something that happens a lot. A site maybe you change domains or maybe you move a page and that old page of that old domain is still listed in your ranking tracker. If that's the case, then the rank tracking tool doesn't know which URL to judge the rankings off of. So it's going to look like maybe you dropped to position 10 overnight from position 1, and that's like, whoa, that's a huge update. But it's actually just that you have the wrong URL in there. So just check that. If there's been a page update, a domain update, check to make sure that you've updated your rank tracker.

II. Glitches.

So it's software, it can break. There are things that could cause it to be off for whatever reason. I don't know how common that is. It probably is totally dependent on which kind of software you use. But glitches do happen, so I would manually check your rankings.

III. Manually check rankings.

One way I would do that is...

Go to incognito in Google and make sure you're logged out so it's not personalized. I would search the term that you're wanting to rank for and see where you're actually ranking.

Google's Ad Preview tool. That one is really good too if you want to search where you're ranking locally so you can set your geolocation. You could do mobile versus desktop rankings. So it could be really good for things like that.

Crosscheck with another tool, like Moz's tool for rank tracking. You can pop in your URLs, see where you're ranking, and cross-check that with your own tool.

So back to this. Rank tracking issues. Yes, you found your problem. If it was just a rank tracking tool issue, that's actually great, because it means you don't have to make a lot of changes. Your rankings actually haven't dropped. But if that's not the issue, if there is no rank tracking issue that you can pinpoint, then I would move on to Google Search Console.

Problems in Google Search Console?

So Google Search Console is really helpful for checking site health matters. One of the main things I would want to check in there, if you experience a major drop especially, is...

I. Manual actions.

If you navigate to Manual Actions, you could see notes in there like unnatural links pointing to your site. Or maybe you have thin or low-quality content on your site. If those things are present in your Manual Actions, then you have a reference point. You have something to go off of. There's a lot of work involved in lifting a manual penalty that we can't get into here unfortunately. Some things that you can do to focus on manual penalty lifting...

Moz's Link Explorer. You can check your inbound links and see their spam score. You could look at things like anchor text to see if maybe the links pointing to your site are keyword stuffed. So you can use tools like that.

There are a lot of good articles too, in the industry, just on getting penalties lifted. Marie Haynes especially has some really good ones. So I would check that out.

But you have found your problem if there's a manual action in there. So focus on getting that penalty lifted.

II. Indexation issues.

Before you move out of Search Console, though, I would check indexation issues as well. Maybe you don't have a manual penalty. But go to your index coverage report and you can see if anything you submitted in your sitemap is maybe experiencing issues. Maybe it's blocked by robots.txt, or maybe you accidentally no indexed it. You could probably see that in the index coverage report. Search Console, okay. So yes, you found your problem. No, you're going to move on to algorithm updates.

Algorithm updates

Algorithm updates happen all the time. Google says that maybe one to two happen per day. Not all of those are going to be major. The major ones, though, are listed. They're documented in multiple different places. Moz has a really good list of algorithm updates over time. You can for sure reference that. There are going to be a lot of good ones. You can navigate to the exact year and month that your site experienced a rankings drop and see if it maybe correlates with any algorithm update.

For example, say your site lost rankings in about January 2017. That's about the time that Google released its Intrusive Interstitials Update, and so I would look on my site, if that was the issue, and say, "Do I have intrusive interstitials? Is this something that's affecting my website?"

If you can match up an algorithm update with the time that your rankings started to drop, you have direction. You found an issue. If you can't match it up to any algorithm updates, it's finally time to move on to site updates.

Site updates

What changes happened to your website recently? There are a lot of different things that could have happened to your website. Just keep in mind too that maybe you're not the only one who has access to your website. You're the SEO, but maybe tech support has access. Maybe even your paid ad manager has access. There are a lot of different people who could be making changes to the website. So just keep that in mind when you're looking into it. It's not just the changes that you made, but changes that anyone made could affect the website's ranking. Just look into all possible factors.

Other factors that can impact rankings

A lot of different things, like I said, can influence your site's rankings. A lot of things can inadvertently happen that you can pinpoint and say, "Oh, that's definitely the cause."

Some examples of things that I've personally experienced on my clients' websites...

I. Renaming pages and letting them 404 without updating with a 301 redirect.

There was one situation where a client had a blog. They had hundreds of really good blog posts. They were all ranking for nice, long tail terms. A client emailed into tech support to change the name of the blog. Unfortunately, all of the posts lived under the blog, and when he did that, he didn't update it with a 301 redirect, so all of those pages, that were ranking really nicely, they started to fall out of the index. The rankings went with it. There's your problem. It was unfortunate, but at least we were able to diagnose what happened.

II. Content cutting.

Maybe you're working with a UX team, a design team, someone who is looking at the website from a visual, a user experience perspective. A lot of times in these situations they might take a page that's full of really good, valuable content and they might say, "Oh, this is too clunky. It's too bulky. It has too many words. So we're going to replace it with an image, or we're going to take some of the content out."

When this happens, if the content was the thing that was making your page rank and you cut that, that's probably something that's going to affect your rankings negatively. By the way, if that's happening to you, Rand has a really good Whiteboard Friday on kind of how to marry user experience and SEO. You should definitely check that out if that's an issue for you.

III. Valuable backlinks lost.

Another situation I was diagnosing a client and one of their backlinks dropped. It just so happened to be like the only thing that changed over this course of time. It was a really valuable backlink, and we found out that they just dropped it for whatever reason, and the client's rankings started to decline after that time. Things like Moz's tools, Link Explorer, you can go in there and see gained and lost backlinks over time. So I would check that out if maybe that might be an issue for you.

IV. Accidental no index.

Depending on what type of CMS you work with, it might be really, really easy to accidentally check No Index on this page. If you no index a really important page, Google takes it out of its index. That could happen. Your rankings could drop.So those are just some examples of things that can happen. Like I said, hundreds and hundreds of things could have been changed on your site, but it's just really important to try to pinpoint exactly what those changes were and if they coincided with when your rankings started to drop.

SERP landscape

So we got all the way to the bottom. If you're at the point where you've looked at all of the site updates and you still haven't found anything that would have caused a rankings drop, I would say finally look at the SERP landscape.

What I mean by that is just Google your keyword that you want to rank for or your group of keywords that you want to rank for and see which websites are ranking on page 1. I would get a lay of the land and just see:

What are these pages doing?

How many backlinks do they have?

How much content do they have?

Do they load fast?

What's the experience?

Then make content better than that. To rank, so many people just think avoid being spammy and avoid having things broken on your site. But that's not SEO. That's really just helping you be able to compete. You have to have content that's the best answer to searchers' questions, and that's going to get you ranking.

I hope that was helpful. This is a really good way to just kind of work through a ranking drop diagnosis. If you have methods, by the way, that work for you, I'd love to hear from you and see what worked for you in the past. Let me know, drop it in the comments below.

Thanks, everyone. Come back next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[epackingvietnam]

Using the Flowchart Method for Diagnosing Ranking Drops — Best of Whiteboard Friday

Posted by KameronJenkins

Being able to pinpoint the reason for a ranking drop is one of our most perennial and potentially frustrating tasks as SEOs, especially in 2020. There are an unknowable number of factors that go into ranking these days, but luckily the methodology for diagnosing those fluctuations is readily at hand. In this popular Whiteboard Friday, the wonderful Kameron Jenkins shows us a structured way to diagnose ranking drops using a flowchart method and critical thinking.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Kameron Jenkins. I am the new SEO Wordsmith here at Moz, and I'm so excited to be here. Before this, I worked at an agency for about six and a half years. I worked in the SEO department, and really a common thing we encountered was a client's rankings dropped. What do we do?

This flowchart was kind of built out of that mentality of we need a logical workflow to be able to diagnose exactly what happened so we can make really pointed recommendations for how to fix it, how to get our client's rankings back. So let's dive right in. It's going to be a flowchart, so it's a little nonlinear, but hopefully this makes sense and helps you work smarter rather than harder.

Was it a major ranking drop?: No

The first question I'd want to ask is: Was their rankings drop major? By major, I would say that's something like page 1 to page 5 overnight. Minor would be something like it just fell a couple positions, like position 3 to position 5.

We're going to take this path first. It was minor.

Has there been a pattern of decline lasting about a month or greater?

That's not a magic number. A month is something that you can use as a benchmark. But if there's been a steady decline and it's been one week it's position 3 and then it's position 5 and then position 7, and it just keeps dropping over time, I would consider that a pattern of decline.

So if no, I would actually say wait.

Volatility is normal, especially if you're at the bottom of page 1, maybe page 2 plus. There's going to be a lot more shifting of the search results in those positions. So volatility is normal.

Keep your eyes on it, though. It's really good to just take note of it like, "Hey, we dropped. Okay, I'm going to check that again next week and see if it continues to drop, then maybe we'll take action."

Wait it out. At this point, I would just caution against making big website updates if it hasn't really been warranted yet. So volatility is normal. Expect that. Keep your finger on the pulse, but just wait it out at this point.

If there has been a pattern of decline though, I'm going to have you jump to the algorithm update section. We're going to get there in a second. But for now, we're going to go take the major rankings drop path.

Was it a major ranking drop?: Yes

The first question on this path that I'd want to ask is:

Was there a rank tracking issue?

Now, some of these are going seem pretty basic, like how would that ever happen, but believe me it happens every once in a while. So just before we make major updates to the website, I'd want to check the rank tracking.

I. The wrong domain or URL.

That can be something that happens a lot. A site maybe you change domains or maybe you move a page and that old page of that old domain is still listed in your ranking tracker. If that's the case, then the rank tracking tool doesn't know which URL to judge the rankings off of. So it's going to look like maybe you dropped to position 10 overnight from position 1, and that's like, whoa, that's a huge update. But it's actually just that you have the wrong URL in there. So just check that. If there's been a page update, a domain update, check to make sure that you've updated your rank tracker.

II. Glitches.

So it's software, it can break. There are things that could cause it to be off for whatever reason. I don't know how common that is. It probably is totally dependent on which kind of software you use. But glitches do happen, so I would manually check your rankings.

III. Manually check rankings.

One way I would do that is...

Go to incognito in Google and make sure you're logged out so it's not personalized. I would search the term that you're wanting to rank for and see where you're actually ranking.

Google's Ad Preview tool. That one is really good too if you want to search where you're ranking locally so you can set your geolocation. You could do mobile versus desktop rankings. So it could be really good for things like that.

Crosscheck with another tool, like Moz's tool for rank tracking. You can pop in your URLs, see where you're ranking, and cross-check that with your own tool.

So back to this. Rank tracking issues. Yes, you found your problem. If it was just a rank tracking tool issue, that's actually great, because it means you don't have to make a lot of changes. Your rankings actually haven't dropped. But if that's not the issue, if there is no rank tracking issue that you can pinpoint, then I would move on to Google Search Console.

Problems in Google Search Console?

So Google Search Console is really helpful for checking site health matters. One of the main things I would want to check in there, if you experience a major drop especially, is...

I. Manual actions.

If you navigate to Manual Actions, you could see notes in there like unnatural links pointing to your site. Or maybe you have thin or low-quality content on your site. If those things are present in your Manual Actions, then you have a reference point. You have something to go off of. There's a lot of work involved in lifting a manual penalty that we can't get into here unfortunately. Some things that you can do to focus on manual penalty lifting...

Moz's Link Explorer. You can check your inbound links and see their spam score. You could look at things like anchor text to see if maybe the links pointing to your site are keyword stuffed. So you can use tools like that.

There are a lot of good articles too, in the industry, just on getting penalties lifted. Marie Haynes especially has some really good ones. So I would check that out.

But you have found your problem if there's a manual action in there. So focus on getting that penalty lifted.

II. Indexation issues.

Before you move out of Search Console, though, I would check indexation issues as well. Maybe you don't have a manual penalty. But go to your index coverage report and you can see if anything you submitted in your sitemap is maybe experiencing issues. Maybe it's blocked by robots.txt, or maybe you accidentally no indexed it. You could probably see that in the index coverage report. Search Console, okay. So yes, you found your problem. No, you're going to move on to algorithm updates.

Algorithm updates

Algorithm updates happen all the time. Google says that maybe one to two happen per day. Not all of those are going to be major. The major ones, though, are listed. They're documented in multiple different places. Moz has a really good list of algorithm updates over time. You can for sure reference that. There are going to be a lot of good ones. You can navigate to the exact year and month that your site experienced a rankings drop and see if it maybe correlates with any algorithm update.

For example, say your site lost rankings in about January 2017. That's about the time that Google released its Intrusive Interstitials Update, and so I would look on my site, if that was the issue, and say, "Do I have intrusive interstitials? Is this something that's affecting my website?"

If you can match up an algorithm update with the time that your rankings started to drop, you have direction. You found an issue. If you can't match it up to any algorithm updates, it's finally time to move on to site updates.

Site updates

What changes happened to your website recently? There are a lot of different things that could have happened to your website. Just keep in mind too that maybe you're not the only one who has access to your website. You're the SEO, but maybe tech support has access. Maybe even your paid ad manager has access. There are a lot of different people who could be making changes to the website. So just keep that in mind when you're looking into it. It's not just the changes that you made, but changes that anyone made could affect the website's ranking. Just look into all possible factors.

Other factors that can impact rankings

A lot of different things, like I said, can influence your site's rankings. A lot of things can inadvertently happen that you can pinpoint and say, "Oh, that's definitely the cause."

Some examples of things that I've personally experienced on my clients' websites...

I. Renaming pages and letting them 404 without updating with a 301 redirect.

There was one situation where a client had a blog. They had hundreds of really good blog posts. They were all ranking for nice, long tail terms. A client emailed into tech support to change the name of the blog. Unfortunately, all of the posts lived under the blog, and when he did that, he didn't update it with a 301 redirect, so all of those pages, that were ranking really nicely, they started to fall out of the index. The rankings went with it. There's your problem. It was unfortunate, but at least we were able to diagnose what happened.

II. Content cutting.

Maybe you're working with a UX team, a design team, someone who is looking at the website from a visual, a user experience perspective. A lot of times in these situations they might take a page that's full of really good, valuable content and they might say, "Oh, this is too clunky. It's too bulky. It has too many words. So we're going to replace it with an image, or we're going to take some of the content out."

When this happens, if the content was the thing that was making your page rank and you cut that, that's probably something that's going to affect your rankings negatively. By the way, if that's happening to you, Rand has a really good Whiteboard Friday on kind of how to marry user experience and SEO. You should definitely check that out if that's an issue for you.

III. Valuable backlinks lost.

Another situation I was diagnosing a client and one of their backlinks dropped. It just so happened to be like the only thing that changed over this course of time. It was a really valuable backlink, and we found out that they just dropped it for whatever reason, and the client's rankings started to decline after that time. Things like Moz's tools, Link Explorer, you can go in there and see gained and lost backlinks over time. So I would check that out if maybe that might be an issue for you.

IV. Accidental no index.

Depending on what type of CMS you work with, it might be really, really easy to accidentally check No Index on this page. If you no index a really important page, Google takes it out of its index. That could happen. Your rankings could drop.So those are just some examples of things that can happen. Like I said, hundreds and hundreds of things could have been changed on your site, but it's just really important to try to pinpoint exactly what those changes were and if they coincided with when your rankings started to drop.

SERP landscape

So we got all the way to the bottom. If you're at the point where you've looked at all of the site updates and you still haven't found anything that would have caused a rankings drop, I would say finally look at the SERP landscape.

What I mean by that is just Google your keyword that you want to rank for or your group of keywords that you want to rank for and see which websites are ranking on page 1. I would get a lay of the land and just see:

What are these pages doing?

How many backlinks do they have?

How much content do they have?

Do they load fast?

What's the experience?

Then make content better than that. To rank, so many people just think avoid being spammy and avoid having things broken on your site. But that's not SEO. That's really just helping you be able to compete. You have to have content that's the best answer to searchers' questions, and that's going to get you ranking.

I hope that was helpful. This is a really good way to just kind of work through a ranking drop diagnosis. If you have methods, by the way, that work for you, I'd love to hear from you and see what worked for you in the past. Let me know, drop it in the comments below.

Thanks, everyone. Come back next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Using the Flowchart Method for Diagnosing Ranking Drops — Best of Whiteboard Friday

Posted by KameronJenkins

Being able to pinpoint the reason for a ranking drop is one of our most perennial and potentially frustrating tasks as SEOs, especially in 2020. There are an unknowable number of factors that go into ranking these days, but luckily the methodology for diagnosing those fluctuations is readily at hand. In this popular Whiteboard Friday, the wonderful Kameron Jenkins shows us a structured way to diagnose ranking drops using a flowchart method and critical thinking.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Kameron Jenkins. I am the new SEO Wordsmith here at Moz, and I'm so excited to be here. Before this, I worked at an agency for about six and a half years. I worked in the SEO department, and really a common thing we encountered was a client's rankings dropped. What do we do?

This flowchart was kind of built out of that mentality of we need a logical workflow to be able to diagnose exactly what happened so we can make really pointed recommendations for how to fix it, how to get our client's rankings back. So let's dive right in. It's going to be a flowchart, so it's a little nonlinear, but hopefully this makes sense and helps you work smarter rather than harder.

Was it a major ranking drop?: No

The first question I'd want to ask is: Was their rankings drop major? By major, I would say that's something like page 1 to page 5 overnight. Minor would be something like it just fell a couple positions, like position 3 to position 5.

We're going to take this path first. It was minor.

Has there been a pattern of decline lasting about a month or greater?

That's not a magic number. A month is something that you can use as a benchmark. But if there's been a steady decline and it's been one week it's position 3 and then it's position 5 and then position 7, and it just keeps dropping over time, I would consider that a pattern of decline.

So if no, I would actually say wait.

Volatility is normal, especially if you're at the bottom of page 1, maybe page 2 plus. There's going to be a lot more shifting of the search results in those positions. So volatility is normal.

Keep your eyes on it, though. It's really good to just take note of it like, "Hey, we dropped. Okay, I'm going to check that again next week and see if it continues to drop, then maybe we'll take action."

Wait it out. At this point, I would just caution against making big website updates if it hasn't really been warranted yet. So volatility is normal. Expect that. Keep your finger on the pulse, but just wait it out at this point.

If there has been a pattern of decline though, I'm going to have you jump to the algorithm update section. We're going to get there in a second. But for now, we're going to go take the major rankings drop path.

Was it a major ranking drop?: Yes

The first question on this path that I'd want to ask is:

Was there a rank tracking issue?

Now, some of these are going seem pretty basic, like how would that ever happen, but believe me it happens every once in a while. So just before we make major updates to the website, I'd want to check the rank tracking.

I. The wrong domain or URL.

That can be something that happens a lot. A site maybe you change domains or maybe you move a page and that old page of that old domain is still listed in your ranking tracker. If that's the case, then the rank tracking tool doesn't know which URL to judge the rankings off of. So it's going to look like maybe you dropped to position 10 overnight from position 1, and that's like, whoa, that's a huge update. But it's actually just that you have the wrong URL in there. So just check that. If there's been a page update, a domain update, check to make sure that you've updated your rank tracker.

II. Glitches.

So it's software, it can break. There are things that could cause it to be off for whatever reason. I don't know how common that is. It probably is totally dependent on which kind of software you use. But glitches do happen, so I would manually check your rankings.

III. Manually check rankings.

One way I would do that is...

Go to incognito in Google and make sure you're logged out so it's not personalized. I would search the term that you're wanting to rank for and see where you're actually ranking.

Google's Ad Preview tool. That one is really good too if you want to search where you're ranking locally so you can set your geolocation. You could do mobile versus desktop rankings. So it could be really good for things like that.

Crosscheck with another tool, like Moz's tool for rank tracking. You can pop in your URLs, see where you're ranking, and cross-check that with your own tool.

So back to this. Rank tracking issues. Yes, you found your problem. If it was just a rank tracking tool issue, that's actually great, because it means you don't have to make a lot of changes. Your rankings actually haven't dropped. But if that's not the issue, if there is no rank tracking issue that you can pinpoint, then I would move on to Google Search Console.

Problems in Google Search Console?

So Google Search Console is really helpful for checking site health matters. One of the main things I would want to check in there, if you experience a major drop especially, is...

I. Manual actions.

If you navigate to Manual Actions, you could see notes in there like unnatural links pointing to your site. Or maybe you have thin or low-quality content on your site. If those things are present in your Manual Actions, then you have a reference point. You have something to go off of. There's a lot of work involved in lifting a manual penalty that we can't get into here unfortunately. Some things that you can do to focus on manual penalty lifting...

Moz's Link Explorer. You can check your inbound links and see their spam score. You could look at things like anchor text to see if maybe the links pointing to your site are keyword stuffed. So you can use tools like that.

There are a lot of good articles too, in the industry, just on getting penalties lifted. Marie Haynes especially has some really good ones. So I would check that out.

But you have found your problem if there's a manual action in there. So focus on getting that penalty lifted.

II. Indexation issues.

Before you move out of Search Console, though, I would check indexation issues as well. Maybe you don't have a manual penalty. But go to your index coverage report and you can see if anything you submitted in your sitemap is maybe experiencing issues. Maybe it's blocked by robots.txt, or maybe you accidentally no indexed it. You could probably see that in the index coverage report. Search Console, okay. So yes, you found your problem. No, you're going to move on to algorithm updates.

Algorithm updates

Algorithm updates happen all the time. Google says that maybe one to two happen per day. Not all of those are going to be major. The major ones, though, are listed. They're documented in multiple different places. Moz has a really good list of algorithm updates over time. You can for sure reference that. There are going to be a lot of good ones. You can navigate to the exact year and month that your site experienced a rankings drop and see if it maybe correlates with any algorithm update.

For example, say your site lost rankings in about January 2017. That's about the time that Google released its Intrusive Interstitials Update, and so I would look on my site, if that was the issue, and say, "Do I have intrusive interstitials? Is this something that's affecting my website?"

If you can match up an algorithm update with the time that your rankings started to drop, you have direction. You found an issue. If you can't match it up to any algorithm updates, it's finally time to move on to site updates.

Site updates

What changes happened to your website recently? There are a lot of different things that could have happened to your website. Just keep in mind too that maybe you're not the only one who has access to your website. You're the SEO, but maybe tech support has access. Maybe even your paid ad manager has access. There are a lot of different people who could be making changes to the website. So just keep that in mind when you're looking into it. It's not just the changes that you made, but changes that anyone made could affect the website's ranking. Just look into all possible factors.

Other factors that can impact rankings

A lot of different things, like I said, can influence your site's rankings. A lot of things can inadvertently happen that you can pinpoint and say, "Oh, that's definitely the cause."

Some examples of things that I've personally experienced on my clients' websites...

I. Renaming pages and letting them 404 without updating with a 301 redirect.

There was one situation where a client had a blog. They had hundreds of really good blog posts. They were all ranking for nice, long tail terms. A client emailed into tech support to change the name of the blog. Unfortunately, all of the posts lived under the blog, and when he did that, he didn't update it with a 301 redirect, so all of those pages, that were ranking really nicely, they started to fall out of the index. The rankings went with it. There's your problem. It was unfortunate, but at least we were able to diagnose what happened.

II. Content cutting.

Maybe you're working with a UX team, a design team, someone who is looking at the website from a visual, a user experience perspective. A lot of times in these situations they might take a page that's full of really good, valuable content and they might say, "Oh, this is too clunky. It's too bulky. It has too many words. So we're going to replace it with an image, or we're going to take some of the content out."

When this happens, if the content was the thing that was making your page rank and you cut that, that's probably something that's going to affect your rankings negatively. By the way, if that's happening to you, Rand has a really good Whiteboard Friday on kind of how to marry user experience and SEO. You should definitely check that out if that's an issue for you.

III. Valuable backlinks lost.

Another situation I was diagnosing a client and one of their backlinks dropped. It just so happened to be like the only thing that changed over this course of time. It was a really valuable backlink, and we found out that they just dropped it for whatever reason, and the client's rankings started to decline after that time. Things like Moz's tools, Link Explorer, you can go in there and see gained and lost backlinks over time. So I would check that out if maybe that might be an issue for you.

IV. Accidental no index.

Depending on what type of CMS you work with, it might be really, really easy to accidentally check No Index on this page. If you no index a really important page, Google takes it out of its index. That could happen. Your rankings could drop.So those are just some examples of things that can happen. Like I said, hundreds and hundreds of things could have been changed on your site, but it's just really important to try to pinpoint exactly what those changes were and if they coincided with when your rankings started to drop.

SERP landscape

So we got all the way to the bottom. If you're at the point where you've looked at all of the site updates and you still haven't found anything that would have caused a rankings drop, I would say finally look at the SERP landscape.

What I mean by that is just Google your keyword that you want to rank for or your group of keywords that you want to rank for and see which websites are ranking on page 1. I would get a lay of the land and just see:

What are these pages doing?

How many backlinks do they have?

How much content do they have?

Do they load fast?

What's the experience?

Then make content better than that. To rank, so many people just think avoid being spammy and avoid having things broken on your site. But that's not SEO. That's really just helping you be able to compete. You have to have content that's the best answer to searchers' questions, and that's going to get you ranking.

I hope that was helpful. This is a really good way to just kind of work through a ranking drop diagnosis. If you have methods, by the way, that work for you, I'd love to hear from you and see what worked for you in the past. Let me know, drop it in the comments below.

Thanks, everyone. Come back next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!