#my manager told me that the customers who visit are mostly educated people

[autobahnmp3]

today was crazyyyyy at work

[what-big-teeth]

Reveal (Cambion Boyfriend, pt. 1)

Gender Neutral Reader x Male Monster [Part 2] [Part 3] tw: mentions of alcohol ; kidnapping White rum, mint leaves, soda water, lime juice, and sugar… “Your mojito on the rocks. Enjoy!”

The middle-aged diner gives you a hearty thanks and slaps a fresh 20 dollar bill on the counter with a brown hand. He yells for you to keep the change over the noisy weekend crowd, and you’re more than happy to take the offer. 

It’s another step closer to paying your way through graduate school. 

At first, the idea of becoming a bartender after college didn’t sit well with your parents. Not because of the job choice, however. Your aunt’s popular mixology book collection is something they’re rather proud of. No, according to your folks, taking a long break from school could lead to you never going back. 

They suggested taking out a few student loans to make ends meet. Live on campus to deal with a much lower residency fee. You agreed to staying in a dorm, but you couldn’t stomach being in near-perpetual debt for years to come. Very few people have gone through a higher educational career without incurring any debt. The odds of such a thing happening to you are astronomical. But damnit if you were at least going to try and curb whatever debt you could with your paychecks. 

It helped that your place of employment was one of the more popular restaurants in town. Owned by a local, African-American family, Papa Ruben’s gained acclaim with time and great customer service. Hell, you were one of the diner’s loyal customers before Ben helped you land your job. Since starting, you’ve seen many familiar faces at the bar, but also just as many newcomers. Mostly family members joined by an undergrad or graduate student. And with the quick, accurate service you provide, many customers tip handsomely. 

As you make a mental note to thank your aunt (who also served as your teacher), another rush of customers approach the barstools. All of them look at you expectantly, with the first customer who arrived dipping a pale hand into her purse. 

You grin and flex your fingers.

Two gin and tonics; a round of tequila shots, four daiquiris, six red eyes, a sex on the beach. Change, bills, and even a few slips with scrawled phone numbers pile into your tip jar. The former is more important than the latter. More so as your heart is set on someone already. Too bad he wasn’t able to come tonight…

“I’ll take a Black Velvet in a Pilsner if you’ve got one.”

You pause from wiping down a cleaned, glass tumbler, perking up. There’s only one person you know who heavily favors such a drink.

A Black woman with deep brown skin leans onto the counter with her jacketed forearms. She shoves her thick natural hair—pulled back into a long braid— over her shoulder. Then grins.

“How’s my favorite barkeep?”

Her smile is infectious. “Holy shit, Jacqui? Is that you?!”

“The one and only,” she says. “Well, the one Jacqui that really matters.”

You chuckle, setting aside the tumbler. “I can’t believe you’re here in the flesh. I haven’t seen you in, what, four months?”

Her painted, red lips tremble and her smile falters.

“Five, actually.” 

She goes quiet soon after and glances your way. For a moment, you think the odd light in her dark brown eyes is something akin to guilt. But it’s gone the next second, replaced by her usual confidence.

“But I’m back in town for a few days. You haven’t gone on break, have you?” 

You shake your head, already knowing what she plans to ask.

“Got a minute to catch up?”

“For you? More than. Cass will be here soon to start her shift. When she comes, I’ll go on break.”

Jacqui plasters another grin on her face while you get to work on her drink. Once it’s ready, you set it in front of her on a coaster. Her hand quickly replaces yours as she takes a long sip. 

“Thanks, babe. When it’s time, you know where to go.”

And with that, she slips off her barstool and past the bustling crowd gathering for more rounds. 

This isn’t the first time Jacqui’s made herself at home at the restaurant. Mainly because she and Ben go back to their teenage years and he’s always had a soft spot for her. He treats her like the older sister he never had, mainly as all his elder siblings are boys. In turn, she treats him like a little brother. 

It’s understandable; not having anyone around to claim you while growing up can get lonely. Ben will be just as pleased to see her, if he hasn’t already.

Cass arrives on time at a quarter ‘til nine, punctual as always. As she finishes tying her apron, she nods at you and effortlessly takes over once you finish making an appletini. 

You squeeze past the busy wait staff and their large trays, waving at a few regulars who greet you by name. By the time you reach the break room, your stiff legs are crying out for relief. And you swiftly provide it by plopping down onto the old couch opposite the door. 

The cushions are sunken and the fabric’s fading, but it’s part of Papa Ruben’s earlier days. The Moore family is wonderfully sentimental and this room is chock-full of older times. Photos of Papa Ruben himself, a younger snaggletoothed Ben and his two older brothers, their parents. There’s even a photo of a teenaged Jacqui surrounded by the Moore family. 

Speaking of, the door opens, revealing Jacqui carrying a large sleeve of fries. She hops onto the couch next to you, offering some of her food. You snag four piping hot fries, juggling them between your hands.

“Courtesy of Ben?” you ask.

“Of course! My little bro always looks out for me.”

You lick your fingertips free of salt and ‘secret seasoning’ to cool the surface burns. 

“Yeah,” you say. “Just like how the Moores would welcome you with open arms.”

She goes quiet, her expression turning neutral. She stares down at her food instead of replying. 

“Whenever you visit, you always say you haven’t found a place to put down your roots,” you say. “What if that place is here with the Moores? With me and Cam?”

“It can’t be.” She places the still warm sleeve between the two of you. “I’ve done some stupid shit in the past, and it always find me when I let my guard down. I don’t want Ben, the Moores, Cam or you to get dragged into my mess. It’s something I have to deal with myself.”

You’ve had inklings about Jacqui’s rough past, but never any of the details. This is the closest she’s ever come to emphasizing just how bad things are. You try to think of a way to reason with her, but the break room’s door opens again. 

Ben pokes his head inside, prompting Jacqui to slide a convincing smile onto her face. 

“Here to offer me more free food?” she says with humor. “How sweet!”

“And have you eat my family out of house and home? No thanks,” he says. 

You stifle a laugh, already used to their bickering. Ben rolls his eyes as Jacqui calls him a brat, opening the door fully while rubbing a golden brown hand over his bald head. 

“To answer your question, someone’s here to see you. He rushed right over after I told him you were back in town.”

“You’re making it sound like I committed vehicular terror on the way over.” 

A pleasant tingle runs down your spine at the familiar voice, in spite of the slight snark. 

“With the way you drive,” Ben says, stepping out of the doorway, “Can it be anything else?”

“What’s that? You don’t want to bum another ride in the future?”

At that, Ben’s mouth snaps shut. You all know he’d rather enjoy some peace and space in a car not shared with his brothers. Cam steps through the doorway, chuckling.

“That’s what I thought.”

It doesn’t matter how many times you see him. Every time is new and comparable to that quiet moment during a movie night in college when you realized your feelings for him. A charming smile stretches the rich, golden brown skin of Can’s face and his thick lips as he steps past Ben.

Before you’re able to calm your pulse, Jacqui hops off the couch. You’re able to save her lukewarm fries before they fall over as she pulls Cam into a tight hug. 

“Good luck dealing with her,” Ben says.

After reminding you of the end of your break, he heads out. Leaving you to watch Jacqui smack Cam on the back a few times while laughing.

“Look at you!” Jacqui pulls away from him, giving him a quick look over. “I see you decided to upgrade your fashion sense to show off your good looks. Finally. The red bomber jacket and Timbs look good, but the bottle coke glasses? Not so much.”

“Tell that to my eye doctor,” he says. 

You watch as they fall into a seamless conversation, filled with snark and laughter. Jacqui even reaches up to playfully tug at one of the short dreadlocks on top of his head. As she comments on how well they pair with his fade haircut, a heavy weight forms in your stomach at the sight. They’re just friends and you know this without a doubt. But that doesn’t stop the bitter jealousy from welling up inside. 

As if hearing your thoughts, Cam’s gaze finds yours and he smiles. His dark brown eyes make your stomach flutter in the best of ways.  

“I-I thought you had a test to study for,” you manage to say. 

“Still do,” Cam says. “But it’s kinda hard to think on an empty stomach. My brain needs some fuel and a break. Plus, I wanted to check on you since you mentioned tonight would be busy.”

Heat fills your cheeks as a small smile stretches your lips. 

“Thanks,” you say. The light in Cam’s eyes grows soft. 

Of course. We’re friends, after all.

”The moment between the two of you swiftly ends. Because that’s all you are. Just friends. You nod in reply, helping yourself to a few of Jacqui’s fries as she teases him about gunning for an anthropology degree. Cam just rolls his eyes at her before fishing his smartphone from his jacket. 

“Order’s ready. I should get back to studying.” He glances up at you with a caring smile. “Let me know if you want to cancel tomorrow’s trip to the bakery. I’ll understand if you’re too tired—”

“I’ll be fine,” you quickly say, “promise.”

“Cool. Have a good night, and be safe on your way home.”

As Cam heads out with one last wave, a gentle tug pulls the now crumpled sleeve of cold fries from your hands. Jacqui lifts a brow at the food then you, giving you a knowing look.

“Oh honey.”

You stiffen. Your brain attempts to think of any excuse or denial, but falls short. You lean back against the couch, sighing in defeat.

“Am I really that obvious?”

“Sure, to Ben and me. But to Cam? Not so much, which is ridiculous. You haven’t tried kissing the living daylights out of him yet?”

“Jacqui.”

“What? It’s a legitimate question. You guys grew up together, lost contact, then reconnected in college. What’s the hold up?”

You purse your lips, crossing your arms over your chest. 

“I don’t want to mess up things between us. Yeah, I may like him more as a friend, but I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”

A gentle touch grips your shoulder.

“Sweetheart, you wouldn’t ruin anything by letting him know. Seriously.”

You just shake your head, attempting to give Jacqui a reassuring smile. The concerned light in her eyes tells you it falls horribly short. 

“You should join us tomorrow morning after visiting the Moores,” you say, getting up. “Let me know if you want another Black Velvet, alright?”

You leave before Jacqui is able to get another word in. 

The rest of your shift is busy, but uneventful. You accrue a huge amount of tips from pleased customers and more slips bearing phone numbers. You and Cass split the money based on the number of hours you both work. When she offers to take some of the number off your hands, you let her. The rest, you crumple and toss into the trash. 

The doors to Papa Ruben’s closes at 11 PM sharp, with you, Cass, Ben, and the other staff members congratulating each other on a job immensely well done. After grabbing your belongings, you bid your co-workers a good night.

With the way your stiff legs are throbbing, you’re wishing you hadn’t parked down the way to avoid the early rush. You sigh with relief as your vehicle comes into view. Just a little bit more, and you’ll be on your way home. 

You aren’t able to take another step. 

The grip on your upper arm surprises you. It tightens to a painful vice and brings you to your knees. 

Quick as lightning, another hand swiftly grabs the back of your neck, forcing your nose to the concrete. 

“If you try and scream,” a feminine voice says, “that breath will be your last.”

There’s no hesitation in your assailant’s voice. Just a menacing promise laced with danger. You fight against your mounting fear and swallow audibly. Then go lax.

“Good.”

You barely hear the sound of shoes scraping against the sidewalk over your frantic pulse.

“Well?” an unfamiliar, male voice asks.

“You were right. This one’s got the pheromonal stink of a cambion on them. Strong, too.”

“Bear with it a bit longer.” You can hear a smile in the male’s voice. “It’ll be a scent relegated to your memories soon enough.”

One moment you hear shuffling. The next, your wrists are tightly bound together. A piece of cloth is forced past your teeth and tied tightly behind your neck.

Then, a sharp prick to your wrist. Your body seizes.

“Pleasant dreams,” the female voice mocks.

Black spots begin to overtake your vision as you’re lifted from the ground. 

“Let’s go. We’ve got a trap to set.”

It’s the last thing you hear before everything goes dark. 

[jungkookfeelz]

Not What You Expected 3

Description: After years of dating Min Yoongi and starting a life together, he ends your relationship out of nowhere. Will you finally find out why the love of your life left you in the cold?

Words: 4K

Genre: Ex-Lovers, Angst, Fluff, Famous BTS, “Ordinary” reader

Notes: This is a bit longer than the last ones, I wonder what the reader did to make Yoongi so upset 0.0. Let me know your thoughts! I wrote this all day so hopefully, you all like it

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's been a few days since your incident with Taehyung at the club, you haven't been able to forget that moment with him no matter how much you tried. The way his lips touched your neck, how his hand felt on your body, to those piercing dark eyes following your every move. By the way he looked at you, he knew how you were reacting to him and he loved it. But you couldn't help it, he was very attractive and you haven't been intimate with a man in so long since your issues with Yoongi. You tried to come up with any possible explanation as to why he acted that forward with you but you couldn't figure it out. It just made no sense. Thinking about Taehyung made you automatically think of Yoongi, did he know you were there? Did he see you with Taehyung? The thought made you shiver. If he did, you wonder if he was mad, was he jealous? You kind hoped he was, that would mean he still felt something for you.  

You started going back to work a few days ago, it was odd coming back after isolating yourself for so long. You were a waitress at a very prestige restaurant in the city, you first took this job to help you pay the bills for your university education but decided to keep working here after graduating since it paid better than most jobs you could find, plus it was close to your house so that was just a nice bonus. You never had the time to accomplish anything with your degree because you never thought you needed to. You liked being a waitress, you didn't mind the occasional snotty customer or bad tip, but also that your boyfriend was in a K-POP group and was gaining fame quickly, Yoongi always told you that you never had to worry about money, he would always be there for you and help you with anything you needed, you didn't want nor have a need for his money but he was always very generous. 

"Y/N, you got a table~" Seo-Joon sang grabbing you by the shoulders to stop you from cleaning the last few dishes you had in the sink from a previous table of yours. Being away made you feel very guilty and volunteered to do all of the dishes for the waitresses. You looked behind you and smiled at the familiar face. Even though you only met him on the job, you grew quite close to each other considering you worked many years together.

"Thanks, Joonie, I'll be right there" You dried your hand on the towel right beside you and checked your appearance in the mirror by the door since this was considered a more fancy restaurant in the area, you had a certain dress code that you had to follow, you wore a black jumpsuit that showed off your curves perfectly, with your hair, straight and in a tight high ponytail. You rubbed the bottom of your eye from the makeup that smudged. You had to make a funny face making Seo-Joon laugh behind you, you glared at him in the process. Satisfied with your appearance you turned around and heading out to the front of the restaurant, your heels clicking with every step. You looked at your table from across the room and noticed a petite girl sitting at a huge booth all alone. You furrowed your eyebrows, only big groups of four or more should be sitting there. 'Has it been this long since you last worked?', you thought in your head.

"Hey Joonie, isn't she sitting at the wrong table?" You looked at your friend who was behind the bar by the staff door that you had just come out of. Seo-Joon quickly glanced at whom you were referring to before making a noise of understanding

"No, she said she has some friends coming, didn't say anything else" Seo-Joon replied while getting a bottle of Gin and pouring it into a glass, no doubt for the drunk man in the corner that comes in twice a week for the alcohol. You hummed in appreciation before walking over to that said table

"Good evening, My name is Y/N and I will be taking care of you tonight, I heard that more people are accompanying you tonight so I can come back when you're ready?" You asked the girl, giving your best smile that you could muster. You have to admit, she is very pretty, with her black hair curled to perfection and the dress that probably cost more than your life was worth.

"Oh, yes thank you, if we could just have four glasses of champagne, that would be great" She looked up at you from her phone and gave you a sweet smile, her smile could light up a whole room, that's how bright she was. You couldn't help but smile back 

"I'll bring it right out" You turned around and headed to the bar to fill up the glasses with champagne, as soon as you fill-up the drinks, you immediately dropped off them off at the same table as before. Giving smiles, and greetings along the way to the other customers. The girl just smiled at you before diverting her attention to someone behind her. Her eyes lit up and she looked like she wanted to jump out of the booth but couldn't since you were in her way.

“Y/N" You froze, you didn't expect to hear the owner of this voice, you shivered involuntarily, hating the way he made you feel, so fragile. Why would he be here? Why does she look so happy to see him? You turned around so hastily that you felt dizzy but you didn't care, you just wanted to make sure you weren't dreaming.

"That's my seat" Yoongi stated in a snobbish manner, pointing at the seat directly behind you. He gave you a look that you never thought you would see, not since your horrendous trip to America, he looked at you in disgust, like you were a piece of gum that was stuck to the bottom of his shoes, it made your heart fall to the pits of your stomach. He did hate you, but for what reason? You still don't know, but from how he is acting towards you, you don't even think you want to know.

You had to toughen up or he would walk all over you, so you glared at him, how dare he come here knowing you work here and act like this in front of other people? Do you mean nothing to him? Because you didn't want to lose this job you angrily moved out of his way for him to be able to sit down in his seat beside the girl, only then you realized the two other boys that were behind you ex-lover, it was Taehyung and Jungkook. You still haven't talked to Taehyung since your moment in the club but seeing him now only added further embarrassment to yourself. They both looked out of place, uncomfortable almost with the way Yoongi acted towards you. Good, at least they get to feel bad for once, but why does it have to involve you.

"I'll be back when you are more familiar with the menu" You put out your best 'I hate you but need this job to survive' face directed mostly to Yoongi and briskly walked away from your ongoing problem. You walked into the staff room to see a few of the waitresses waiting around, they talked or complained about their customers, mostly snobby rich people not liking the way their steaks were cooked. You looked around till you saw Joonie. You ran towards him screaming "Joonie, I need your help!" You screeched, coming to a halt, putting your hands on his arms and shaking them, your eyes pleading. Seo-Joon stopped midway from biting into his sandwich, raising his one brow at you.

"Listen, I can't work that table, I will take care of all your dishes for a month but I really can't serve that table" 

"No can do sweetheart, he's done working, he worked over-time for you while you went on your short notice break" The manager intervened, eyes rolling at the same time "Now get going Seo-Joon before I kick you out myself" She gave us both a slap on the back before disappearing into her office.

"Why does this always happen to me" You whined burying your head into your hands. You wanted to cry, to throw up, to run away screaming, anything but serving them for the rest of the night. 

"What's wrong with the customers? Do you know them or something?" Joonie mumbled with a mouth full of food. If you weren't concerned with your issues at this very moment you would have giggled with how cute he looked, with his cheeks full, eyes wide open. Instead, you sighed, leaning back into the counter, you couldn't explain it to him, you couldn't tell him the reason that skipped out on work was because of a stupid idol who broke your heart and was too weak to do anything but laze around on the couch for weeks.

"Nothing, don't worry about me, I'll figure it out, I always do, go home and get some rest, I'll finish up here" You smiled at him and gave him a quick hug and a quick kiss on the cheek before disappearing out of the staff room. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "I want the lamb skewer dish," Yoongi said throwing the menu in your direction, giving you a look of irritation. Why does he look annoyed that you are here? He knows you work here, he has visited many times with the rest of the boys. From the corner of your eye, you see the boys visibly cringe from the older man's actions, the girl looks confused by her lovers' actions. Not that you knew they were together anyway.

"I'm sorry, but we don't have the lamb at the moment" You faked sincerity. "I don't care, I want it so go make it" 

"We don't have any available right now" Who does this guy think he is? He gets famous and then suddenly becomes a dick?

"Are you deaf? I said I don't care" "Bu-" You were interrupted by the manager stepping in front of you, great, she can get it through his thick skull.

"We will get right on it Mr. Min, I apologize for the inconvenience my staff had made for all of you" Your manager smiled weakly at the idols in front of her before grabbing onto your arm tighter than appreciated and dragged you back into the staff room.

What just happened?

You don't know why you're boss is mad. Yoongi was the one acting like a complete asshole but I guess being an idol has its perks, especially when arguing with ordinary people like me. 

"Ma'am, we don't have the-"

"I don't give a shit about what we don't have, those were one of the most famous idol groups in our country and you want to tell him we don't have his stupid lamb skewers?! Are you crazy!" Your manager grabbed onto her hair. To say the least, she was pissed, face red in rage, her eyes wild, looking at you with such outrage. She let out a huge groan before letting go of her hair and took a deep breath to calm her thoughts.

"You know what Y/N, you have caused more than enough issues in my restaurant, first with you leaving for a whole month, then asking the one person who fought for you to stay here to do your job for you, again. Now, this..." This isn't happening, you're not surprised about her decision but this seriously couldn't be at the worst time in your life, you were getting fired, you know you are. All because you didn't give Min fucking Yoongi his lamb skewers.

"I'm going to have to let you go Y/N, you worked here for a long time so I will give you three weeks instead of two to pack up your things, you can still work for the remaining time you have here but you need to go home right now, I will take care of your mess" You watched your manager walk over to the cooks behind a glass door to explain the situation at hand before leaving to the lounge, most likely to get the rest of the orders from your previous table. You couldn't help the tears that rushed up to your eyes. You sprinted into the bathroom before anyone can tell and got into the closest stall before breaking down. Why does this keep happening to you? What did you do that was so wrong for so many bad things to happen to you? You did everything for Yoongi, you did everything for his happiness so why aren't you getting rewarded? Why are you getting punished for taking care of him?  

"Y/N come on they are about to light the candles!" Hoseok screamed running in front of you, laughing when he realized that he was running way to fast for you to catch up. You weren't athletic, you worked at a restaurant, you ate more than you run. You could not believe it, you have been dating the Min Yoongi for a whole year, and today was his birthday. They got back to Korea right on time for you to be able to celebrate Yoongi's birthday.

"We are here!" You screamed into the room that had Jimin and Taehyung in.

"Y/N!" Taehyung yelled and ran in for a hug. You giggled with joy. Jimin went and explained what was going to happen, you were apparently supposed to sing 'happy birthday' while walking into the room holding the lit cake. You tried to argue saying that there was a room full of six other men who could sing better than you can but in the end, you lost the argument when Jimin said;

"Yeah, but he would want to hear you sing, you're the only one for him" The three boys walked out of the other room wishing you luck before closing the door leaving you on your own. You sighed through your smile. You were nervous, you didn't want to mess up, like dropping the cake, or having a bad voice crack in the middle of the song, or...or if he didn't want you here to spend it with him. You shook your head, of course, he would want you to, he loves you. You took a deep breath and picked up the cake. You walked through the little tunnel to the next room where all the boys were talking and laughing. 

"Happy birthday to you" "Happy birthday to you" "Happy birthday, dear Yoongi" "Happy birthday to you" 

You sang as well as you could, interrupting the seven boys from their jokes. They all looked at you with proud smiles on their faces, they were probably thinking you'd mess up, you don't blame them though, you were sure you were going to as well. You kept eye contact with Yoongi the entire time, at first he was shocked but that overcame with pure happiness just from seeing you after a few weeks. He felt his heart flutter hearing your angelic voice singing, just for him. As soon as you put the cake down on the table Yoongi ran at you full speed tackling you in a hug, keeping you close so you wouldn't fall to the ground. You both staggered back before you regained your balance. 

He kissed you hard, he didn't care that his groupmates were in the same room, he missed you. The kiss was hard and full of passion, you moved your lips in sync with his, you put your hands on his neck and pulled him closer into you if it was even possible, while at the same time he put his arms around your waist. He licked your bottom lip asking for entrance but before you could accept the invitation you were interrupted

"Okay, I get you haven't seen each other in a while but holy shit get a room" Jin groaned covering his eyes with his hands while sitting on the couch that was in the corner of the room, you giggled getting out of Yoongi's grasp, cheeks red from your moment with Yoongi and the embarrassment of kissing him in front of all your friends. Yoongi pouted feeling you pull away and grabbed you again, hugging you before you walked away.

"I missed you so much baby" Yoongi mumbled into your hair, he was only taller by a few inches which made Jimin joke a lot, saying Yoongi was so short that his girlfriend was almost as tall as him, but then he always gets shot down since you and Jimin are practically the same height. Which brings in a dramatic Jimin. The boys never disappoint to make you laugh. 

"I missed you too, come on go have some cake before it's gone" You kissed his cheek and dragged him to the cake, cutting him a piece. He looked at you while you were concentrating on your cutting as to not cut hit a bad piece, he couldn't believe that he had you all to himself. 

He was so lucky

You walked out of the bathroom stall with mascara running down your face, making you cringe, you looked like either a sad clown or a scary-ass raccoon, which isn't pretty as you can imagine. You sighed and turned on the water, dabbing some paper towel to dampen it, you wiped the mascara of off your cheeks and touched up your eye makeup, you looked awful but not as bad as before. You threw the used paper towel in the trash and looked at yourself again, you looked pathetic, you let one man ruin your life, you were weak and totally let him walk all over you and you knew it, you could have fought, asked why he did what he did but you didn't, you let him ignore you, let all of them ignore you and hurt you deeply, but who should care if you loved him, who should care that you put him first for everything, who should care that you walked every day to the BigHit company building to give him a lunch because he wouldn't care enough to take care of himself, who should care that you spent months crying over him. He didn't care, nor love you back so why should any of this matter anymore. 

"Get a grip on yourself" You muttered to your reflection before turning around and walking out. You grabbed your jacket and purse from your locker before leaving the staff room. You wished Seo-Joon was still here so you could say goodbye, but you could always text him later on and explain yourself. You wanted him to go home and get some rest, hopefully, someone else can take your shifts after your three weeks, so Joonie won't have to take all the stress. You walked out the front doors of the restaurant and just about to open your car door when you heard his voice again.

"Leaving so soon Y/N?" You sighed in defeat, nothing ever goes your way apparently, you turn around slowly as to not become dizzy like last time, you almost feel before, you didn't really want to make a fool out of yourself. 

"What do you want Yoongi?" You were tired, you just wanted to go home and curl up in bed, you wanted to forget today, you wanted to forget him and everything he ever did to you.

"Oh nothing, just wanted to ask you, I  got you fired, right?"  Yoongi chuckled, his voice was deep, menacing. He wanted you to hurt, you weren't going to let him.

"It doesn't matter what happened tonight, just leave me alone" You went to turn around but a hand caught your wrist preventing you from moving any closer to your car. You were so close to disappearing. 

"Don't give me that bullshit attitude Y/N, you don't get to do that to me, not after what you did" He whispered, his hair falling over his eyes, casting a shadow. To be honest, you were kind of scared. You haven't seen him in a few months, you barely knew who he was anymore. But then you realized what he said, what you did to him? You furrowed your eyebrows in confusion, you didn't do anything wrong to him, you only wanted the best for him, maybe you were a bit clingy but that was only because you loved him and wanted to be with him to share experiences and memories. 

"What are you talking-" The girl from before ran towards both of you, no one lets you finish a sentence anymore. You raised your eyebrows in suspicion, not understanding why the girl was coming to you both. 

"Yoongi!" The girl ran up to Yoongi and wrapped both her arms around his right one. Oh. Now you get it. "Hey, you're the waitress!" You looked at her and smiled, she didn't do anything to you, so there is no point in being rude to her, you're not Yoongi. Your heart shattered when you realized that Yoongi moved on but there is nothing else you could do now. 

"Are you with her now?" You asked, no anger or sadness in your voice, just curiosity. You had to know, you looked at Yoongi without breaking eye contact. He didn't respond, just standing stiffly next to his new partner. It looked like he wasn't going to say anything, you sighed, ready to give up and turn around to leave hoping now that his new lover was there he would leave you be but before you could make the last-second decision, the girl spoke again

"Uh, do you two know each other?" The girl asked again, you looked at Yoongi, he looked at you.

"She's no one, just a bitch I fucked." Only the sound of a slap was heard, your hand was hovering in front of you, you didn't hesitate to slap him after accusing you, his long-term girlfriend to be no one to him. Yoongi's face turned to the side abruptly with a red handprint on his cheek. You could hear the girl gasp in shock at the action that was just made

"Y/N!" You hear Taehyung scream, both he and Jungkook saw what happened in the window by their booth and ran as soon as they saw you slap Yoongi. They reached the three of you but didn't dare intervene. They just stood wide-eyed behind Yoongi, watching, making sure nothing would escalate.

"Is that what you tell people about me? That I'm just a bitch you fucked...you're unbelievable" You mutter through gritted teeth, you have thought of this moment so many times but never thought that this is what he was going to say to you, all you wanted was an apology from him, an explanation to why he broke your heart. 

"You can go rot in hell asshole" You turned around and got in your car before anyone could stop you and drove as fast as you could out of the parking lot and to your home. You broke practically every law but that was the last concern on your mind, you couldn't believe that Yoongi said that about you like it was script...like he had said it many times before, it made you sick to your stomach imaging Yoongi telling this to every girl he spends time with. How many girls does he see? Does he like the girl from the restaurant? You don't know what you want the answer to be.

 As soon as you got home you slammed your door closed and threw your jacket and purse on the bench by the front door, you groaned and put your hands in your hair while trekking upstairs to your room. 

"I fucking hate you Min Yoongi" You screamed in your empty bedroom before collapsing on the floor, defeated.

Admin Min<3

[adoubleshotdepresso]

And so it began.

I saw the light, and decided to be born. Not really, but I assume that’s how it goes.

hi, hello, my name is Em. There’s a few more letters to the name, but all my friends call me Em, so I thought it was appropriate to introduce myself as that, to you, the reader, whoever you are and wherever the hell you may be.

I was born in 1993, in Busan, South Korea. And that’s basically all I know regarding where I’m from. I was put up for adoption, and my parents adopted me when I was 12 weeks old. I don’t really have much to say about my time abroad, mostly because I was an infant and don’t remember, but also because it doesn’t make me who I am, and has not had any influence on who I am today.

So, adoption hey. You’d be surprised how many people you know are actually adopted. I know a handful myself, and I think it’s a pretty amazing thing. The first question I always come across is; “Do you think you’ll ever want to go back?” And “do you miss or want to find your biological parents?”. And look, depending on the day and how I’m feeling, the answers may vary. Slightly. But realistically, the answer is absolutely not. I have the best family anyone could ever imagine, and my parents are my best friends. I have an older sister who was also adopted from South Korea, Seoul. She’s 6 years my senior and is also one of my best friends.

My family is tight, yo. And we’ve always been that way. My mum is the most dedicated person you will ever meet. She puts her heart and soul into absolutely everything she does. I might be completely biased here, but I’ve never met someone who loves her family so fiercely and would do absolutely everything possible to make sure we are happy and well. She’s always the first person I call when I feel myself go under. She’s a pretty great woman. I know I can always count on her to be there for me and my family no matter what, and one day I hope to repay everything she’s given to me.

I’m so lucky to have a father like mine. He has always supported my decisions and even though some of them have been dumb, he’s never judged me for them. I mean, I get the whole “I told you so” every now and then, but that’s understandable. When I first started having issues with my mental health, dad didn’t really understand what I was going through, as he never really grew up with it nor had any involvement in the area either. But as I got older he really made an effort to understand me more, and ended up being my biggest support beam in my adult life. He’s the sort of person who tells you “I’m just a message away” and actually means it. At my lowest times, it’s nice to know he’s always got my back.

I have one sibling, my oldest sister, who is YOU GUESSED IT, one of my best friends. Our relationship has not always been easy, and there have been times when we wanted to rip each others eyeballs out, but now we’re both a bit older and understand each other better, we couldn’t be closer than we are now. She moved overseas for a while, met the love of her life and married him while still living in America. I went over there a couple of times to visit her, and to be a part of her special day, She’s been back home for a couple of years now, and though we don’t see each other frequently, I know I can talk to her about my struggles too. She’s had her fair share of mental problems, and she still gets through every day, and for that, she’s my god damn hero.

Now we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way, lets get into it. My childhood was pretty normal to be honest. My parents both had stable jobs, weren’t addicts or assholes whatsoever, so we always had food, hot water and a sweet bed to sleep in. Between my parents and their parents, we always had somewhere to go and never had to use babysitters or after school care, which is pretty extraordinary.

Primary school was whatever. And that’s about it. Girls are assholes, and boys were the most fascinating thing in the world. It was average, nothing that bad happened, and nothing spectacular happened either. But shit got real when high school started. For the first year of high school I attended a fancy private all girls here in town, and that was honestly the worst. Not the worst of my life, but for “back then” Em, it was pretty damn bad. I dealt with the usually bullying thing, and I think that’s when all my problems started. Which is kind of crazy because I was probably only about 13 years old when I started to develop depression and anxiety disorders.

Not only did I lose trust in my “friends and peers”, I also lost faith in the teachers and the other adults who were supposed to be there for their students, and to protect them while on school grounds. Well, what a load of shit that was. After holding out for a year, my parents finally agreed I needed to move schools. I was accepted into another private school, but this time it was a co-ed school, and much smaller in size. All in all, it was a pretty good school, but unfortunately I was a very had teenager to please, and hated every single second I had to be there

I started skipping school, chucking sickies every week and avoiding homework, study and assignments. I found it very hard to concentrate, and because of the first year of high school education for myself was an absolute damn nightmare, I had zero interest in my education. I started smoking cigarettes and nicotine at some point in this time, and found it hilarious to drink until I vomited on myself. Looking back now, I should have realised it was something more than adolescent behaviour problems, but what kid goes, “wow, I’m extra cranky today, I must have clinical depression!”. So I kept on being an asshole to everyone around me, not caring about my studies and doing whatever the heck I wanted to do, which included going to parties, seeing boys and lying to my parents. I would tell them I’d be staying with a friend, but lets be real, I was really at a party, getting hammered and kissing lots of boys.

So, high school eventually came to an end. It felt like it was going for an eternity, but I look back now and I wonder where the time had gone. And I think that’s when I realised I was having some real mental health problems. I had a full time job at a chemist, and stayed there for many years, 10 to be exact. I loved my job for a very long time, and stayed there up until a couple of years ago. I don’t think it helped my mental stability, and close to where I resigned, I felt myself crying and having panic attacks in the back room of my work place. I wanted to call in sick every day, rather than go into work and have to face customers and certain staff. I wouldn’t blame work for what happened to me in the end, but I’m sure it didn’t really help either.

That brings us the last few years of my life. And did SHIT GET REAL, my friend. I’ve had the worst days of my life, but have also experienced some of the best. Some of the worst you say? How much time do you have? There’s been a few doozies, that’s for sure. I was in a relationship that started off beautiful, but ended up being the absolute downfall of my mental stability. So many things contributed to my depression, but I dare say the break up, and the loss of my grandmother definitely was the icing on the cake.

I’m not going to point fingers and blame someone else for what happened, but okay I am. The break up I experienced was enough for me to want to die. Literally. My grandma who I was very close with was dying, and my ex didn’t really care. We used to fight all the time, even at the beginning of our relationship, but it only got worse. And even evenB when I thought it wouldn’t get worse, it definitely did. I started drinking a lot, and abusing prescription medication, Valium mostly, but also some sleeping medication too. One day, I was feeling very low, and begged my ex to come back home. I told him every 10 minutes he didn’t respond to my calls or text, I’d take another pill. And I did. I also felt like it was necessary to extinguish cigarettes on myself. The physical pains of the burn was a welcoming distraction to the storm raging inside my head.

After that, it was all a blur. I overdosed a couple of times, some I was able to manage myself, but two more times to come I would need medical attention. The first time I was hospitalised, I called a bunch of friends for help because I thought I was about to die. I don’t remember making the call, and I hardly remember leaving my home in ambulance. Once I gained consciousness again, I was forced to go see a therapist even when I declined. And let’s just say, therapy is not my thing. I have tried again and again to go, and to find that connection with a therapist but never really got remotely close enough to ever trusting one.

The last few years have definitely had its up and downs. I bought a house a few years ago, the house my grandparents owned when I was growing up, and not long after I moved in, I met my parter. I had known him for a couple of years before we started seeing each other, and not long after that, I asked him to move in. It was only a few months into our relationship, but it felt right. You know when you know and I can’t really explain much more than that.

I’m not going to sit here and lie to you and say everything gets easier when you’re older, and your problems you experienced before seem to fade away, I’m here to tell you the truth what it’s like to live with a severe depressive and anxiety disorder. Not every day is easy, and sometimes, the bad days feel like they’re never going to end. It’s easy for some people to hop online, and talk about how easy it was to get out of their own heads, and all you have to do is look on the bright side of life.

Because no. It’s never as golden as what influencers try and tell you, and it’s definitely not as glamorous as you see and read online. Some of the worst days I have experienced have made me feel like there is no possible way out. So, hold onto your seatbelts, and grab your Kleenex, because shit is about to get real.

[ashandboneca]

Stories from the Bookshop

This post is inspired by my iTunes library, who decided tonight was the night, after years and years, to play the Best of Pagan Song. 

Once upon a time, I worked in an occult/pagan bookstore. I spent a little over 7 years there, and were they still open, I would likely still be there. 

I was hired when I was 25, and when I was 27 I was promoted to assistant manager. It was owned by a mother/daughter team. A lot of people talk about terrible retail jobs, talk about how much they hated their bosses and the customers, how boring it was, etc. Even people who worked at the same job prior warned me - the owners were mean and unreasonable, the job sucked, it was miserable.

I honestly cannot say this is the truth for me. I actively loved my job. I took a lot of pride in what I did. I got along well with my bosses - they were a particular sort, but so is everyone, and so was I. They seemed to value me. They took my ideas and implemented them, they supported me when I wanted to spread my wings, and they trusted me. 

Mostly, I viewed what I did as a service. I gave advice and recommendations, I listened to people’s needs. I got to know people, and got to know about their lives and their problems, and I actually cared a lot for the people I was helping. While my job was to sell, I didn’t recommend anything to someone that they didn’t need. I didn’t upsell. I didn’t cajole people into buying things they didn’t need. I acted as a resource, and encouraged people to educate themselves so they were better armed for their next visit. I dealt with prison chaplains who wanted us to fulfill orders and give recommendations for their incarcerated pagans, and sometimes spoke to prisoners over the phone to advise and build orders.

That said, there’s always a few who cross the line. These are their stories, based on my recollection. Don’t be these people.

 - There was the suave motherfucker, who tried to pick up on every woman younger than him. He was a handsome man, with Ted Bundy charisma. He’d walk around the corner of the stone area, and try to ‘run into’ his target. He’d do some bullshit PUA move to secure the woman’s Facebook info. He marketed himself as some kind of spiritual guru, but he always pissed all of us off. His particular brand of bullshit was super obvious to us veterans of festivals and public ritual. We constantly tried to run interference. My boss was savage, she would just walk up to the woman and him and tell him she didn’t want to talk to him, and maybe he should go finalize his (usually very small or non-existent) purchase. So many people got taken in my him. I don’t know what ever happened to him.

- There was the blind man who sexually harassed me, who was so taken with the sound of my voice over the phone that he told me (someone half his age) that he would like to ride me, and test my strength. He then would come in to buy his herbs and ask for me. Since he only knew my voice, I would hide in the back, and my boss would tell him I was gone for the day. He came in to ask for my schedule so he could come back and see if I was interested. I used to see him on the bus, but he never noticed me.

- There was the man who, seeing I was wearing a metal T-shirt, advised me that wearing that meant I wanted him to bend me over and fuck me in the ass. I kicked his ass out and banned him. Fuck off.

- There was the woman who borderline stalked all of the staff on Facebook. She would send friend requests once a week. I eventually had to block her, because it got borderline creepy.

- There was the man who advised me loudly that Beltane was a German holiday, and that they still sacrificed people to the fires. Really, sir? I’m pretty sure if Gunther or Hedwig didn’t come home from the Beltane fires, that would be in the news. 

- There was the woman, who on my third day on the job, told me that prior to chakra therapy she had a lot of vaginal dryness, but now she’s just gushing. All the time. And she went into great detail. Madam, I don’t recall the M.D after my name. I don’t need the wet, slick details. I work in a bookstore, not a gyno office.

- There was the woman who sang all the time. ALL. THE TIME. She would go around, and regardless of what was going on, she would sing. Loudly. Sometimes she would add interpretive dance. I get being taken in by the energy of a place, but there is a time and place. Don’t perform your ecstatic dance in the middle of my store, because it’s rude to all the people who came into the store not expecting your energy radiating all over the damn place. Plus, there are tarot readings going on at the back. Keep it down!

- There was the woman, who was the head of a local pagan group, asking if she could pay for prominent placement on our cork board of events, for her group’s ritual. She would constantly kick a stink up if we didn’t put it up in the middle of the board, regardless of what was there (including our own classes and events). My boss was flabbergasted. She also came in and allowed her small child to run around unchecked. She drove me fucking nuts. The woman turned out to be a massive white supremacist, so I don’t feel bad for often placing her flyer passive-aggressively at the bottom of the wall in the overflow area.

- Lastly, there was the large family of 1 mother and 7 children who came in. They started handling the fragile things, even with multiple signs up asking to ask for assistance. When I asked her not to allow the children to handle the fragile items as they may break, she stopped in place. She very slowly turned toward me, looking startled, and replied that I had now said it, so I would be at fault for it happening. Uh wut. Hard nope, lady. Eventually had to ask her to leave.

Retail workers in your local shops are generally not the following: doctors, therapists, probation officers, babysitters, libraries, or lawyers. Please behave like an adult. While generally alternative spirituality leads to alternative customers, it’s not an excuse to behave as strangely, abusively, or creepily as possible. Just don’t. Proprietors are often small business owners and often overworked. They barely have time to respond to emails, they are not in it for your bullshit.

There are more stories, of course. There were bad coworkers. The coworker who was legit unbalanced, tried to get me fired (backfired, as I was not fucking unbalanced) and left her husband and child to be with her online lover. The one who tried to start a shitload of drama and then quit via text message. The one who tried to constantly smack talk another worker so she would get more shifts (which didn’t work). The cranky tarot reader who got mad at me when I had a cold. The crazy reader who lost her shit at me on the phone, tried to get me fired, and then called in sick all the time at the last minute. 

There were also great stories; the dedicated workers we did have who put their heart and soul into what amounted to a retail job. The weekly customers who were a joy to talk to. The readers who had their regular customers. The joy expressed by so so many people at the shop’s very existence. The satisfaction I felt every single time someone told me I had helped them or made a difference.That is what made the job worth it.

[warmheartworldwide]

A Busy Gap Year - seeing through children’s eyes

The following blog comes from Rex Lin who is completing a six-week stay at Warm Heart:

I graduated from high school earlier this year and decided to take a gap year. Although I was a good student, I wanted to do something more than just studying all the time. I am not a typical Taiwanese teenager. My family lives in Homei township, in central Taiwan, and both my parents work in factories. My mother is ethnic Vietnamese and, like many others from southeast Asia, married my father and emigrated to Taiwan in the 1990s. She was very brave to leave her home in search of a better future and she encourages and inspires me a lot. I think that she has influenced me to become a more empathetic person. 

I first got involved in activism in high school. There is a nearby chemical factory with 1000 workers which was still using three older power plants which emitted toxic gases. Some of my classmates campaigned for a month and succeeded in getting those plants shut down. None of the workers lost their jobs because the factory has newer power plants that are up to code but which are more expensive to operate.

Initially my parents were surprised about my gap year decision but after I told them about my plans, they supported me wholeheartedly. I first became aware of children’s rights in the eleventh grade when I was the leader of our student association. I looked into any matter involving students and advocated for their rights. Then I was chosen to represent Taiwan and speak at a review conference of national reports on the rights of children. After that I studied the subject more thoroughly and spoke at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

I consider myself to be quite outgoing. Since I was 10, I have seriously studied English and use it whenever I can at international events where I can meet and make foreign friends. Since I enjoy public speaking, my first gap year activity was to organize a two-month lecture tour targeting 50 engagements all over Taiwan. Most of the lectures were staged at schools, NGOs or other institutions. On average, about 30 people came to each lecture. Mostly I talked about student and children’s rights and how to protect them. I got a lot of support and feedback from the students and teachers who attended. Since I am not from a wealthy family, I think my story inspired some people and made them realize that they can also change their lives.

After my lecture tour, I realized there are still so many things that need changing, both in Taiwan and the rest of the world, and that’s what I want to work for. I understand that change might come slowly and only in gradual steps. I also realized that I am a good listener and always ready to learn more about people and their lives.

In Taiwan, students try to show in their college applications that they have previous volunteer experience both at home and abroad. I had never volunteered before so when a friend told me about Warm Heart and its involvement with children’s education, I decided to apply. I liked Warm Heart’s grassroot approach and its “helping people to help themselves” philosophy. I thought that working more closely with the Thai people would allow me to truly understand their problems. At the same time, I was also worried about Warm Heart’s location in the countryside, in the middle of nowhere.  

During the interview process with Evelind, when she asked me about my plan for my stay, I panicked. I had just graduated from high school and had no special skills, so how could I really help? Whatever I had learned about children’s rights during my past experiences in Taiwan, how could I transfer the knowledge if I didn’t speak Thai? Luckily Evelind said that we would find out what I could do after I got here. I was quite relieved because I really wanted to come.

My parents wondered why I didn’t choose to volunteer in Vietnam but I had already been there several times to visit my mother’s family and wanted to discover a new place. I managed to get a government subsidy which covered about half my expenses. The Taiwanese government is quite generous with students who require financial assistance for higher education and I will also be getting grants to cover my university education. My last activity before coming here was at the 7th Global Trend Youth Forum which was hosted this year by Taiwan and where I served as a youth pilot.

After getting here, I began by observing everything and trying to understand how Warm Heart works and everyone’s role. I saw how great the burden of constant fundraising is. I joined visits to the elderly and disabled in our community. One visit was to a grandfather who did not seem to be disabled. He had a wife and sons and his home was in good condition. At first I didn’t understand why he needed help. But after more visits, I realized our goal was to establish a good relationship, one of trust. Even though I needed to go with Noina, Warm Heart’s public health staff member, who translated for me, the residents really appreciate our visits and getting the attention.  

Fellow volunteer Malory says goodbye to local resident when she finishes her time at Warm Heart

Many of the elderly feel neglected because their family members are too busy working and unable to spend much time with them. Lying all day in bed by themselves, just watching television, without enough human interaction, they can get overcome with stress and other negative emotions. We pretend to be their sons and daughters for a short time. We ask them simple questions like “Did you sleep well last night?” or “Do you have enough blankets to keep you warm?” We show that we actually care.

Every project at Warm Heart is aimed at improving the welfare of the residents in the surrounding communities. At the same time, it is important to always respect the residents. I wondered how they perceive Warm Heart, an NGO set up by foreigners that uses foreign volunteers. Maybe they don’t really need us. But then I think that our role is to help them see the different possibilities of ways to improve their lives. If we can build up their trust in us, they will gradually accept us and the obstacles and walls will break down. So maybe sometimes we need to slow things down and work more on building the trust.

Biochar stand with other volunteers at Citylife Garden Fair in Chiang Mai

The most valuable lesson I´ve learned at Warm Heart is how to see the world through the eyes of children. Most of Warm Heart’s kids have had a difficult start. Some have parents who take drugs or risk imprisonment; others have dysfunctional families and have been neglected. I asked myself, what do these children really need? Do they really need more dull classroom lectures? In Taiwan, many people think that children from poor families just need to study hard to improve their lives. But there is a big difference between the opportunities for children who are supported by their families who have resources and those who are not.

Warm Heart kids share their photos with volunteer John (left)

I think the Warm Heart kids all know that education is important if they want to find meaningful work. Warm Heart cooperates with several hotels, restaurants and tourist agencies to involve the older kids who are interested in internships or apprenticeships leading towards decent jobs. But the kids lack creative activity that teaches them something about the world and themselves. With this in mind, I organized several activities during my stay. In Taiwan, kids welcome the coming of the winter solstice by making sweet rice balls. My goal was for the kids to feel a sense of achievement when eating the rice balls they had made themselves. Seeing their smiling faces when they tasted the rice balls for the first time, I knew that our bonds were closer.  

Warm Heart kids make sweet rice balls

Warm Heart has been in operation for over a decade. It takes a long time to build the trust which is needed to effect true change. As the Warm Heart kids grow up to be pillars of that trust, going into higher education and creating good lives for themselves and their families, we will gradually see the fruits of our hard work.

I now regard myself as a budding social anthropologist. Observing and learning more about everyone’s social and family contexts, their customs and living habits, helps me help them. As for working with children, I just want them to be able to evolve happily and in a carefree way. Our task is to provide a positive environment with sustainable economic support and stable educational resources. Without obstruction, hopefully each child will then be able to find their own path.

My busy gap year will continue after I leave Warm Heart. Before resuming my studies in sociology at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, I have a short-term paid contract with the Taiwan Alliance for the Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare, a large NGO. In collaboration with the Scottish children’s and youth parliaments, our committee will be creating a model children’s parliament to show the Taiwanese government how it works. There are many children’s parliaments across Europe but, as far as I know, there aren’t any yet in Asia. We will build the structure and encourage students and children to join and empower them accordingly. It's a tough task but I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Mali, Wonhui, Malory (front), John and me (back)

[treatian]

The Chronicles of the Dark One:  The Dark Curse

Chapter 46:  Beyond Their World

And so it began.

Regina was married. And as he'd watched her walk down the aisle, escorted by her father, and take the King's hand in her own while Snow White beamed, he'd had a vision. A beautiful vision. It was one that he hoped was not the doing of his own imagination but rather the result of the Seer that still lived in his very skin. The vision was of Regina, but not the scared little doe-eyed girl that was marrying the King if only to keep herself safe from persecution, no, certainly not. This Regina was older, darker. The white smile on her face was not one of true happiness but rather a smile of a trickster. She'd been dressed in black, her clothing showing off shapely curves, her hair twisted high into a knot on her head. In her hand was a heart, glowing red and beautiful and the name, the moniker that came to mind as he watched the priest pronounce them Man and Wife was not Queen Regina, but rather, The Evil Queen.

How reassuring.

And yet, there was still a long way to go before that vision was achieved; he simply knew it. The lessons that followed it confirmed it.

Regina was different than Cora in several ways, some good and some bad. Her strength, the magic that flowed through his new student, was powerful, far more than her mother's. But getting her to use it…now that was a tricky task. Cora had had such a difficult life she'd been determined to do anything she could to get ahead. That determination was her motivation, and Cora had taken in every lesson he'd ever taught her, taking it upon herself to quickly master what she'd never had access to before.

Regina had no such motivation. True, her childhood with Cora had not been an easy or enjoyable one. But where her father, Daniel, and even her horses were concerned, she'd had a much better life than Cora. The good had outweighed the bad. And now with Cora secure in Wonderland, the guards searching the Kingdom hopelessly for her after Regina had told them she'd stepped out and never returned, there was very little he had to work with. Her father was with her, happy and healthy, getting along splendidly with the King. Her horses were safe and at her disposal. And Daniel…he, or rather, his body was a problem. Still kept protected by Regina's preservation spell, she was often distracted by that body. It gave Regina hope, and he realized after a short amount of time that it wasn't for power or even protection she was learning magic, but rather with the hope that one day she might bring her love back to life. She was wrong, of course, in many ways. She needed hate and devastation to fuel her as he'd seen thus far. Not hope.

All he really had to work with after Cora's banishment, was Regina's current marriage. Being married to the King was not something Regina was happy about. There were perks, and what came with the union was why she'd ultimately followed through, but it wasn't what she'd hoped. And how could it have been? Married again barely a year after his wife had died?! Leopold was too attached to Snow to really care for his new wife the way a husband should. Regina knew it. And she felt it as well. He encouraged those emotions, not only because he knew what would come, but because it helped egg her on now.

Cora's spell over the mirrors turned out to have been sealed using blood magic, and he was quick to convince Regina that it would be smart to undo it, but the actual act had been something of a challenge.

"But then…if I do this…won't people be able to see in to me? Dressing or…or bathing?!"

"The answer to that is simple…" in midair, he conjured a blanket and threw it over the mirror they were working with. "No sight…no sound…but as it is, if you ever found yourself with a need to get in communication with someone, say…your teacher…you'd be able to see, but not hear…very poor way of communication if you ask me.

"But then…" he removed the blanket quickly. "What does it matter? If it makes you uncomfortable? It's not as if you're not already watched constantly by the King…by Snow White…the servants even…"

"But…I am watched by them. Constantly, it's as if they don't ever stop looking in on me."

Indeed, it was getting more and more difficult for them to find time and places to practice for even just a few minutes before someone stormed in to demand her time.

"So…wouldn't it be nice to have the upper hand, to give them a taste of their own medicine? To watch the King as he works? To overhear every last word dear Snow White says to everyone?"

A sneer grew over Regina's mouth. "Show me how!"

And with that, Cora's spell was undone. Sight and sound into Regina's life was restored. But it wasn't always easy. One problem Regina had that Cora never did was time. Engaged to her Prince in his castle, she'd always managed to find time for magic. But as the acting Queen, step-mother to a young girl, and wife to the King, her schedule was packed tight. In the end, the mirrors were helpful to communicate even if all they had was ten minutes or so. The rest of the time he spent back at his castle, waiting for the next summons, plotting his next lesson…and listening to Jefferson.

He had to admit that his own education was growing considerably as well, thanks to the boy. He was becoming something of a regular occurrence in his life. He never returned with news of the curse, but at least he never came back from an excursion empty-handed either. He often brought him strange and interesting items from other realms that he visited. Useless to him or not, money was never a concern, so he bought them from him just to hear the stories and absorb as much information as he could about these other places. Some of them had such strange customs and items.

"Stethoscope…" Jefferson explained as he sat upon the table, allowing him to examine the odd object in his hands now. "Pinched it from the Doc when he wasn't looking in the Land Without Color."

"A doctor, you say…"

"Yeah, about the only interesting part of that world if you ask me. He's trying to resurrect the dead. But I don't go there often; it's difficult to blend in during the daylight."

"And why might that be?"

"Well, I didn't name it the Land Without Color for its rainbows," he retorted from his place on top of the table. "It's without color…black, and white, and gray all over, and I'm…well, not without color."

"Yes, yes, I see, you needn't have added that last little bit," he growled as he paid him for the object.

On and on, he could talk about realms far from this singular one he lived in. Realms without end it sometimes seemed, though he did promise him that there was an end, an edge. One realm in particular, where time stood still and the sun hung in the sky in eternal sunset.

"Or maybe it's sunrise? Ah well, I don't like to go there either really so it doesn't really matter," he commented. "It's bad for my health! Time moves differently in all these realms and there especially it's incredibly fast. I spent a week there once, laying low after stealing a ruby from Agraba, I was really after some scissors, but it was a nice consolation prize. Anyway, when I went back to try and sell the thing they nearly killed me again, it was still the night I'd stolen it!"

"How curious…" he muttered absent-mindedly. On and on, Jefferson could talk about realms when he wanted him to and when he didn't want to. He was attempting to test the potion he was working on while Regina was out touring the Kingdom with her new family, and Jefferson was chattering on and on by his side. This was one of those times he really would rather have concentrated than listen. "Tell me, Jefferson, you don't like Wonderland, you don't like The Land Without Color, and you don't like this Edge of Realms…where do you prefer to go?"

Jefferson stared at him blankly for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. "Oz isn't bad. And the Land of Untold Stories is pretty interesting, not to mention all it requires is a key and not my hat to get there. London is quite profitable too. To be honest, I like anywhere I can make money easily!"

Cities of emerald, Wonderland, and at least three different realms that each had a very different copy of a city called "London", where magic was different in each one; he'd never admit it, but sometimes thinking about the realms made him dizzy. It was all fascinating, truly it was. He welcomed the information. What wasn't always welcomed was Jefferson's long stays at the castle between trips. He wasn't sure how the boy had gotten the invitation to stay at his castle like he was some kind of teenager who didn't want to go home to his parents, but he knew that he was growing accustomed to being at work and seeing Jefferson sudden appear seemingly out of nowhere and haunt the halls of his castle before he suddenly disappeared just as mysteriously as he'd arrived.

In truth his yammering was only a problem for his sanity. The boy did seem to recognize some boundaries, though he did have a habit of testing his luck.

"Any sign of my curse?"

"Nothing on that," he sighed, sounding disappointed himself. "I ask everywhere I go, but mostly all I get for it is blank stares. If you had more information…"

"If I had more information, I wouldn't need to send you out looking to and fro now, would I?"

"Just a suggestion. It's not like looking for curses is in my typical wheelhouse. I usually specialize in rare items that glitter and make me money. But I'll keep looking. Never know what you might find out there. Last week I actually discovered a world where pigs fly. If that's possible, anything is!"

As Jefferson muttered his last word his head snapped up. Someone had just come onto the castle grounds. Two souls, one human and the other...at the speed the individual was approaching it must have been a horse. The Seer said nothing about the unexpected visit. It was probably a nobody coming to make a deal. He hoped they were more interesting than Jefferson, or at the very least less annoying. They'd be to the door any second now.

"Wait here and stay out of sight!" he snapped at the boy when he finally heard the knock on the door. With a wave of his hand, the objects he had on the table in the great room vanished back up to his workstation.

"What you think I'm not used to the rules of your business by now?!" Jefferson hollered after him as he left the room. He didn't panic. Annoying as he was, Jefferson was a smart man and knew better than to stay around when he wasn't wanted. When he returned to the room with his "business", as Jefferson had called it, he knew the boy would be gone from sight. Or else he'd find someone else to work that hat for him.

[dippedanddripped]

One afternoon in 1999, when the designer Shayne Oliver was in the sixth grade, he came across a magazine ad for Dirty Denim, a line of “pre-soiled” jeans by Diesel. The ad featured a collage of faux paparazzi photographs documenting the meltdown of a fictional rock star. Oliver was struck by the campaign’s tagline: “The Luxury of Dirt.” “That blew my mind,” he told me recently. “Spending money on something that looks dirty? I was, like, ‘This is genius.’ ” He informed his mother, a schoolteacher from Trinidad named Anne-Marie, that he needed a pair immediately.

Oliver’s father had abandoned Anne-Marie before Shayne was born, and she had struggled to raise him on her own. They lived in a tiny apartment on Halsey Street, in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Oliver, who attended some rough schools—he witnessed knife fights in the halls—was highly intelligent, and Anne-Marie was determined to nurture his gifts. She stood up to people on the street who heckled him because he was effeminate, and fought with school officials who wrote him off as a rowdy black kid. She didn’t have the money for the jeans, which cost three hundred and seventy-five dollars, but she respected Shayne’s sense of urgency. “How are we going to afford Diesel clothes?” she asked herself. She soon began working evenings at the Diesel store at the corner of Sixtieth and Lexington. She got an employee discount, and her kid got his jeans.

Oliver began accompanying Anne-Marie on her shifts at Diesel, folding shirts, examining seams, and offering customers unsolicited style advice. Although his suggestions were impeccable, after a few weeks the management told him to stay home, noting that it was illegal for twelve-year-olds to work in retail. Undaunted, Oliver walked a few blocks to a Roberto Cavalli store. Employees there were so charmed that they offered him an unpaid internship. He didn’t take it, but he continued to visit the store—and pester the staff. “I would just be in the shop, hanging out all the time and talking shit,” he recalls. “It was fun.”

Oliver was a recent arrival in New York. He was born in 1987 in Minnesota, where Anne-Marie had immigrated to pursue a teaching degree, and he had spent his childhood shuttling among female relatives in St. Paul, St. Croix, and Trinidad, before settling with his mother in Brooklyn, in 1998. In St. Croix, at the age of five, he had begun making his own fashions out of scraps of fabric scavenged from his grandmother, a dressmaker. After moving to the United States, he started cutting up items in Anne-Marie’s wardrobe. In an effort to discourage this practice, she took him on regular trips to Jo-Ann Fabrics. He kept looting her closet.

When Anne-Marie rode the subway with Oliver, she noticed him staring at men who were wearing streetwear brands like Mecca and FUBU. “Why are you looking at all of these guys?” Anne-Marie asked him. “You’re all up in their Kool-Aid!” Oliver protested that he was inspecting them for their clothes, which was only half a lie. He began cutting up his jeans and ripping out the crotch, which made him a target at the Pentecostal church that he and his mother attended. “I was being expressive!” he recalls, adding that other parishioners expressed themselves by speaking in tongues. At thirteen, he quit the church.

That year, Anne-Marie sent Oliver to a public school in Long Island City which focusses on the arts. For weeks, he came to class wearing a head scarf, and was often mistaken for a Muslim girl. (“I should’ve played that up a little bit,” Oliver told me. “Muslim girls get a lot of attention.”) Shortly after he enrolled, Anne-Marie rented for him a videocassette of “Paris Is Burning,” the 1990 documentary about voguing competitions in New York. A year later, he became a member of the House of Ninja, one of the groups featured in the film. “The Ninja people were all offbeat and not glamour kids,” he recalls. They encouraged him to explore various looks, and in competitions, he said, he “swayed between ‘vogue femme’ and ‘runway.’ ”

As a teen-ager, Oliver began applying his ingenuity to his hair: “There was one point where I was mixing textures—it was, like, a mullet of dreads and then permed on the sides. I’m sorry, that hairstyle was so nasty! It was ridiculous. It was so good.” He went out most nights, commuting between the largely white electroclash scene centered on Club Luxx, in Williamsburg, and the mostly black and Latino scene on Christopher Street, where he liked to “smoke, go to the pier, and then vogue.”

Before entering the tenth grade, he transferred to Harvey Milk, the country’s first high school for L.G.B.T. youths. Many of the students there wore three outfits a day: one for their neighborhood, one for school, and one for going out. It could be dangerous to wear the wrong thing in the wrong place, so kids kept outré clothes in their backpacks and changed on the subway platform. Oliver, though, prided himself on assembling outfits that worked in all three environments: butch enough for Bed-Stuy, smart enough for school, glam enough for the club. He devised subtle, colorless ensembles, the drape and shape of which sent coded messages to the educated eye. “If you have on all-black, you can go unnoticed on the block,” Oliver explained. “Then you go intothe city, and someone who’s thinking about clothing in a different way notices all the cuts and layering.” Styling choices helped him adapt his look to different contexts. Oliver liked wearing tight poom-poom shorts, but on his way to school he pulled them low, so that they sagged “in a masculine way.”

At Harvey Milk, Oliver made friends with another boy who was obsessed with fashion, James Garland. Each was an only child, raised by an indulgent single mother who had given her son the master bedroom. They recorded television broadcasts of runway shows and pored over the designs. Garland liked the debonair luxury of Tom Ford; Oliver preferred the forbidding moodiness of Rick Owens. Before long, the boys began making clothes, conducting photo shoots in Fort Greene Park, and staging runway shows at school. They generated new pieces through collage, stitching together items from vintage shops, children’s jackets from thrift stores, and treasures from their mothers’ closets.

After creating their first line of T-shirts, named Ammo, and their first collection, Cazzy Calore, Garland and Oliver graduated from Harvey Milk and enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Garland flourished there, but Oliver chafed against the curricular constraints and dropped out in his freshman year. In 2006, he diverted the tuition money that Anne-Marie had saved for him, and launched a fashion line with his friend Raul López, who also hung out on Christopher Street. Oliver called the new line Hood By Air. The phrase suggested a style that was proudly ghetto and proudly élite (“putting on airs”). Within a few years, the label had become the most prominent high-fashion brand to have emerged authentically from street culture.

Oliver’s original mission with the label was to bring to fine menswear what he calls the “thug silhouette”: the shape created by a long T-shirt paired with saggy pants, as if the wearer had a very long torso and very short legs. He also believed that he could turn streetwear basics such as oversized hoodies and multipocketed jackets into high-concept luxury items.

By 2007, Hood By Air clothes had begun showing up in boutiques in downtown Manhattan. The collections cannily combined the audacious (trousers with a dozen pleats) and the accessible (silk-screened T-shirts). The first Hood By Air T-shirts featured bold graphics and slogans like “Back to the Hood.” Oliver and López had the shirts custom-made by Dominican tailors, and they were expensive: two hundred dollars apiece. From the start, they sold well.

In the aughts, Manhattan boutiques were awash in designer hoodies (many of them by Jeremy Scott and Raf Simons). Oliver judged their stitch too fine, their length too short, their colors too bright, their patterns too busy. He felt that designers who appropriated streetwear had a fascination with urban men but were also afraid of them—he considered their skittish engagement to be “peckish,” “gross,” and “disconnected from the real masculinity” driving street culture. He told me, “It’s, like, ‘I think that guy is really hot, but I don’t know how to approach him, so I’m going to put elements of myself in him.’ There’s a power play where you’re inspired by something but you don’t want to give it credit.” Turned off by these “fey” imitations of streetwear, Oliver made clothes that were aggressively harsh and masculine. The graphics on his T-shirts often played with urban-horror imagery: a panorama of a prison yard, red marks evoking blood spattered by gunfire. At the same time, instead of hinting at homoeroticism, he foregrounded it. The first Hood By Air editorial video, uploaded to YouTube in September, 2007, featured a model repeatedly grabbing his crotch.

Oliver also embarked on a conceptual exploration that he calls “formalizing sloppiness”—highlighting the transitional phases between dressed and undressed. “It’s like when someone is horny and in a T-shirt, and it’s dropping off the shoulder,” Oliver explained. He liked conjuring those alluringly awkward moments when an amorous couple still has a few items of clothing on: “The idea of that being so open and so vulnerable—it’s, like, ‘Where’s my pants? Where’s my underwear?’ ”

By the end of 2009, López and Oliver had put Hood By Air on hiatus. López founded his own clothing line, and Oliver focussed on hosting a new dance party called GHE20G0TH1K (Ghetto Gothic). Held in various spaces in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, the gatherings united disparate musical tribes—urban, goth, queer, punk. Oliver ran GHE20G0TH1K with his friends Jazmin Soto (a pansexual Latina) and Daniel Fisher (a straight white Jew). Soto was in charge, but Oliver sometimes took a turn as d.j., and he favored a dark sound. “At the time, no one was playing Marilyn Manson, and I was playing records that resonated that way—the idea of, like, fear of the world,” he recalls. “I was prying into my past—all my history of being provoked.” Many of the party’s charismatic attendees wore Hood By Air T-shirts. Interest in the brand was so strong that Oliver decided to relaunch it.

This time, he had crucial help from Leilah Weinraub, a filmmaker who was working on a documentary about a lesbian strip club in South Central Los Angeles. (The film, which she plans to release in 2017, comes off as a female-focussed update of “Paris Is Burning.”) Weinraub, who was Soto’s girlfriend at the time, began doing projects with Oliver, and one day they shot a look book for the designer Telfar, a mutual friend. Oliver was among the people cast, and Weinraub was unafraid of challenging him. She recalls, “He was wearing the wrong piece—a shawl—and he refused to be styled. He said, ‘Style me like a lady’—he had on this I’m-a-demure-woman voice. I asked, ‘Can you stand a little more like a man?’ The room stopped.”

In 2012, Oliver asked Weinraub to work alongside him on the relaunch of Hood By Air. (The partnership with López was completely dissolved.) She said yes. Weinraub, who is eight years older than Oliver, told me that she felt protective of Hood By Air. “It was at the point where other people started seeing it as a success,” she said. “And at that point people start to rob you—blind. They start to trick you.” She was wary of mainstream cultural figures looking for a quick way to acquire edge—of invitations to, say, “work on Katy Perry’s team.” Shortly after Weinraub became Oliver’s partner, investors offered to buy Hood By Air and put Oliver and Weinraub on fixed salaries. She was appalled. “This isn’t fucking Motown!” she said. Hood By Air, she declared, would remain closed to outside investors while it was in its “incubation period.” (To date, the company hasn’t accepted any outside investments—an arrangement that is virtually unheard of in the fashion industry.)

In order for Hood By Air to maintain control of its intellectual property, Weinraub believed, it had to grow quickly and attract media attention. Otherwise, the company’s designs would be pirated by bigger labels, which treated avant-garde street culture as a resource to be plundered. In a 2013 article in the Times, Guy Trebay suggested that Riccardo Tisci, the creative director of Givenchy, had referenced Hood By Air designs “without crediting them.” (A spokesperson for Givenchy said, “Hood By Air has never been a reference for our brand.”)

Around the time that Weinraub joined Hood By Air, it presented a runway show at Milk Studios, on Fifteenth Street. One of the models cast for the show was the rapper A$AP Rocky, a friend of Oliver’s at the time. Rocky’s participation helped the brand reach a wider audience, affording it a measure of protection against fashion-world vultures. Rocky also boosted Hood By Air’s reputation by incorporating endorsements of the label into his lyrics. His devotion eventually cooled, though, and in 2014 he released a diss track that included criticisms of the brand. He gloated to a reporter, “I birthed it, so I can kill it.” But Rocky was too late. Hood By Air had established a cult following among affluent teen-agers, avant-garde adults, and pop stars like Rihanna, Justin Bieber, and Kanye West. The label was critically acclaimed, too, winning the Swarovski Award for Menswear, from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and a six-figure prize from L.V.M.H. Although Hood By Air remained rigorously experimental, it also became profitable, as fans lined up to buy T-shirts with the H.B.A. logo, which cost as much as six hundred dollars each. According to Hood By Air, its sales have doubled every season since 2013. The brand’s reach remains unimpressive by Gucci standards, but business has been good enough to give Oliver “the ability to do whatever the hell I want” in the studio. (He still shares an apartment with his mother, in Prospect Heights.)

Last September, I visited a cramped office that Hood By Air was renting on Hester Street, on the Lower East Side. The space, crowded with garment racks, could have been mistaken for a costume shop, were it not for the giant poster boards propped against the walls, which were covered in mini-Polaroids of harsh, alluring faces. Attached to each photograph was a Post-it scrawled with a concept: “spanish hustlers,” “obscure fetish.”

A dozen men and women, including Leilah Weinraub, sat in a circle, with only one subtle sign of hierarchy: Oliver was the only person not taking notes. Since 2012, Hood By Air had grown into a small collective, and its members were meeting to finalize plans for the Spring/Summer 2016 runway show. They had been joined by an outsider, Rich Aybar, a freelance stylist. Born on the Upper West Side to Dominican parents, he looked like a cross between a Rastafarian and Rasputin.

Oliver was dressed in jeans, a black vest, and a Hood By Air necklace—a chunky chain and a padlock—that he never removes. “Ooooooh!” he said. He had just received a text. “Connie just got confirmed for the door.” He was referring to Connie Girl, a doorwoman who was famous for being impossible to get past and impossible to book. “Taste that,” he said. “Ta-a-a-aste.”

“What’s the lighting like at the space?” Akeem Smith, Hood By Air’s chief stylist, asked. His hair was in small braids gathered into pigtails, and he wore a T-shirt bearing the words “The Black Genius.”

“Bright,” Weinraub replied. “White-blue.”

“Clinical,” Oliver said, approvingly. The show was being held at Penn Plaza Pavilion, a cavernous, fluorescent-lit building, opposite Madison Square Garden, that was slated for demolition. Hood By Air shows are traditionally held in unglamorous spaces.

Several people got up to leave, and a smaller group began discussing the casting of models. Each season, labels compete to book them, and Cathy Horyn, a critic at large at New York, told me that Hood By Air had some of “the best casting of the season, and I mean anywhere.” The brand is known for “streetcasting”—enlisting people who aren’t professional models.

The group stood and went over to a casting board, which was crammed with photographs of prospects. “We have to edit,” Oliver declared, inspecting the images. “We have to be really hard right now.”

“I think your story up there is really strong,” Aybar said. “It’s, like, Undernourished Retards—in a beautiful way.” He liked the “living-under-the-bridge vibe.” Then Aybar started ripping photos off the board. One boy, a Ryan Lochte type, was deemed “too dopey—a white guy in the most boring way.” Oliver asked that another male model be removed for having a swishy walk that struck him as off-brand. “It’s gay-y-y-y-y,” he said. After thirty minutes, a dozen pictures had been taken off the board.

The designing of clothes follows a similar group dynamic. Paul Cupo, the brand’s fashion director, told me, “The top concept is Shayne’s concept, and there’s a very select group of people that are allowed to contribute to this concept. Shayne then comes up with some shapes and silhouettes he wants to show, and then I plug in fabrics and colors.”

Cupo, an Italian-American from Bensonhurst who favors loose tank tops and sneakers, showed me a creation for the upcoming show. “The basic idea is a bomber,” he said. Instead of using nylon for the shell, however, he had used taffeta—a material often fashioned into ball gowns and wedding dresses. It was a surprising choice, he acknowledged with a smile: “It’s sort of a weird fabric for ‘young edgy cool designers’ to be using.” A Hood By Air bomber jacket sells for nearly a thousand dollars.

few days later, at Penn Plaza Pavilion, Hood By Air sent a male model down the runway in a tight bun, a shirtdress, and black heels. The shirtdress, made with black silk, was divided into sections, which had been loosely lashed together with chainlike zippers. The bottom had a feminine band of ruffles, as one might find on a dress worn by Michelle Obama to a state dinner. The middle was a wraparound panel of fabric that, from a distance, resembled high-waisted athletic shorts. The top was a button-down shirt with a crisp collar and oversized chiffon sleeves. Like a chimera, the shirtdress was incongruous but beautiful.

The model, who had been spotted on Instagram, was a twenty-seven-year-old from West Harlem named Mello Santos. He had a thin mustache and a goatee, and as he walked down the runway he allowed the zippers holding the outfit together to start coming undone. Dark silk was peeling off his torso like a rotten-banana peel, and the garment threatened to self-destruct at any moment, revealing Santos’s many tattoos (and parts of his anatomy). From some angles, Santos looked like a cross-dressing gangster; from others, like a futuristic pop star.

Subsequent models showed off equally mongrel creations: bomber jackets recut into togas, backpacks made from tufted sofa pillows. Some models looked like bullies, others like prey. A recording of the Jamaican dancehall performer Buju Banton roared over glitchy speakers. “Circumstances made me what I am,” he sang. “Was I born a violent man?” For the finale, each model took a seat on a raised platform, as if posing for a class picture. Together, they looked scary but sexy, butch yet femme.

The collection was called Galvanize, and the idea for the runway show was to evoke the ramshackle school that Oliver briefly attended as a youth in Trinidad. To galvanize is to electrify—to shock and inspire. But it also means to coat scrap metal with a layer of zinc; it’s the poor man’s version of gilding. Galvanized steel is a common roofing material in Trinidad, and the show’s name suggested a duality about growing up in the West Indies: Oliver claimed that the education he received at the school was exceptional—“college-level English in fourth grade,” he said—but the building was decrepit. This duality extended to the students’ clothing. Oliver and his classmates modified tattered, hand-me-down uniforms so that they became fashionable looks. The Galvanize collection—manufactured in Italy from sumptuous materials but with roots in a Caribbean schoolyard—was gilded streetwear whose aim was to electrify the audience and inspire a new generation to carry the countercultural torch.

The show impressed many critics. Sally Singer, the creative digital director of Vogue, told me that Hood By Air had presented one of the season’s top collections. Cathy Horyn, the New York critic, who was seeing a Hood By Air show for the first time, wrote that the clothes represented a “shock from the future” and a “fist in your face.” She told me that Hood By Air’s startling designs were welcome mutations in an era in which high fashion is controlled by bland international conglomerates.

Several critics described the clothes in the Galvanize collection as “deconstructed.” Deconstruction—whether of a novel, a soufflé, or a shirt—means breaking down a concept into its constituent parts, often with an eye toward destabilizing our vision of the whole. In fashion, it’s traditionally associated with accentuating raw edges and functional elements like seams. Hood By Air’s collection, however, riffed on the modifications that wearersmake to those designs—details like slashing, cropping, and sagging, which typically define a look only after professionals have finished their work.

Galvanize was an homage to the expanding cohort of shoppers who use clothing to revise standard images of race and gender. (Weinraub calls such consumers “modern people.”) In blunt terms, a rich white woman can wear a Hood By Air garment and feel modern because it makes her look like a poor black man; a poor black man can wear it and feel modern because it makes him look like a rich white woman. Whereas other labels had merely broken down design, Hood By Air was breaking down identity.

A classic deconstructionist turns garments into sculptures and models into scaffolding; Martin Margiela often covered his models’ faces. In the show for the Galvanize collection, the models’ faces—adorned with splotchy, wraith-like makeup—were key visual elements. The splotches paid homage to YouTube makeup-contouring tutorials, evoking the moment just before blending tools transform a painted monster into a Kardashian.

Despite the show’s triumphant reception, it did not unfold without flaws. There was a monumental error in the execution of the choreography: the models failed to crisscross, as directed, along the venue’s multiple catwalks, with the result that much of the audience saw only half the collection. It was a mistake that might have sent a tyrant like Coco Chanel or Alexander McQueen into a rage. Oliver, though, was unfazed. After the show, he appeared briefly at a bar on the Lower East Side, and spent only fifteen seconds conferring with Weinraub about the mistake before moving on to a more vexing problem: someone had given Oliver’s mother the address of a rented penthouse where the Galvanize collection had been put together, and where a post-show gathering would be held. (The Hester Street office was too small to accommodate dozens of models.) Anne-Marie had just arrived at the penthouse with pink hair and an entourage of younger Afro-Caribbean women. Oliver was forlorn. “This is exactly the moment I want to turn up!” he moaned, rubbing his cherubic head, which was shaved, and clutching at a floor-length sweater-dress of his own design. “Now my mother is there with her friends!”

I happened to know the identity of the culprit who had supplied Anne-Marie with the party’s address. It was Weinraub, who enjoys seeing Anne-Marie at every runway show. Her own parents have never come to one.

In late March, items from the Galvanize collection began to arrive in stores. Barneys New York installed life-size silicon replicas of six Hood By Air models in its four windows on Madison Avenue. Two of the models were Hood By Air regulars named Chucky and Sunny—Angelenos whose bodies (and faces) are covered in tattoos. In the window, the fake Sunny wore a pleated pant-dress, and his mouth was held open by a guard typically used in dental surgery. Chucky wore a padlocked baby pacifier and a purple leather shroud that might look good on a Jedi. It was the first time that the windows had featured mannequins in menswear. When I stopped by to see the display, in April, crowds of tourists, joined by local one-per-centers, had gathered to gawk. Many observers reacted with baffled revulsion. Inside the store, meanwhile, none of the radical clothes worn by the mannequins were for sale. The Hood By Air racks were instead filled with logo tees. The runway pieces may have blown fashion critics’ minds, but it was the T-shirts that had changed the way people dressed.

Leilah Weinraub studied film as a graduate student at Bard. Before joining Hood By Air, she had no experience in business. Her official title is C.E.O., but she told me that the designation is “fictional.” She recoils at any suggestion that she is Oliver’s Pierre Bergé—the commanding executive who helped Yves Saint Laurent become an international brand. She took the title of C.E.O. in part so that she would be taken as seriously as a man would be: “If I were just Shayne’s friend, and a woman, and me, people would just be, like, ‘O.K., bitch, get the fuck out of the way.’ ”

As Hood By Air has expanded into a collective, she explained, everyone with authority is essentially a creative director—even if, like her, they don’t literally design clothes. The early phases of the label’s design process take place in group texts that unfurl over weeks. For the Galvanize collection, eight employees contributed to what she calls a “running personal diary.” In addition, the label has an iCloud folder for sharing found images—Hood By Air’s equivalent of a mood board. Weinraub wouldn’t let me examine the entire folder for the collection, but she sent me a selection of the materials. There were photographs of Ike and Tina Turner, a jpeg of Aunt Viv, from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” and a picture of a Chinese acupuncturist who stuck two thousand and eight needles in his head, in honor of the 2008 Summer Olympics. “It’s memes,” Paul Cupo, the fashion director, explained to me. “It’s never really literal—you’ll never see a jacket on our reference board.” In 2015, when Women’s Wear Dailyasked Hood By Air for an “inspiration photo,” the label sent back a screenshot of porn.

Weinraub is one of only a few lesbians in high fashion. (Others include Patricia Field and J. Crew’s Jenna Lyons.) She grew up in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles, the daughter of an African-American textile designer from Compton and a Jewish pediatrician from Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is small with squinty eyes, broad shoulders, and an almond-shaped face. The skin around her eyes is darker in tone; these raccoon-like circles are so formidable and stylish, and presented with such aplomb, that strangers often can’t decide whether the coloring is congenital or cosmetic.

Rebellious from the start, Weinraub ran away from home several times as a teen-ager. In response, she claims, her parents threatened to put her in foster care. (Her parents deny this.) As a compromise, Weinraub went to high school in Israel, through an exchange program.

After a year, Weinraub returned to L.A., legally emancipated herself, and looked for a job. Her uncle knew a buyer at Ron Herman, an upscale clothing store, and helped Weinraub secure a shopgirl position. “It was in Brentwood,” she recalls. “There would be kids shopping there that were my same age. I hated it.” She soon took a job at Maxfield, a boutique with a more progressive bent. Its owner asked her to help oversee the books section, where she befriended a regular who liked to linger in the store and discuss topics such as slavery, America, and Judaism. It was the director Tony Kaye, who had just made a film about a white supremacist, “American History X.”

One day, Weinraub saw Kaye’s face on the cover of a magazine. She read an interview inside and noticed something: many of Kaye’s answers borrowed language that she remembered using during their conversations at Maxfield. Weinraub sensed an opportunity. She called Kaye and said, “I want to do this for you full time. I’ll be your voice, I’ll answer all your questions, I’ll do your research.” There was a catch: Weinraub was feuding with her family again, and she needed money to pursue higher education. She told Kaye, “If you send me to college, I’ll be your professional student, and you can own all my papers.” Kaye agreed, and began paying her tuition when she enrolled at Antioch College, in Ohio. When Weinraub returned to L.A. for breaks, she assisted Kaye on commercial shoots and chauffeured him around the city. The arrangement lasted until Kaye got a girlfriend who demanded an end to the tuition payments.

Kaye famously lost control of “American History X” in the editing suite, when New Line Cinema allowed Ed Norton, the film’s lead actor, to do the final cut. (Kaye disavowed the version that was released.) The incident left a lasting impression on Weinraub: if you don’t control celebrities, they’ll end up controlling you. She was happy to leave people like A$AP Rocky behind. As she put it, she preferred to go it alone and make Hood By Air’s “own world happen.” She was adamant that she would not temper the label’s provocations. “People are into high concepts and respond well to them,” she assured me. “People want drama. They love it.”

The penthouse that Hood By Air rented in the weeks before the Galvanize show had cathedral ceilings, a vast terrace, and an eight-person hot tub overlooking the Lower East Side. An apparent extravagance, the penthouse was leased in order to save money on hotel rooms by providing a live-and-work space for collaborators flying to New York. This frugal-luxury strategy would succeed, though, only if the palatial digs survived the week intact. (The label has a history of losing hotel damage deposits.) To keep the proceedings professional, alcohol was banned from the penthouse until the work was finished.

Five days before the Penn Plaza Pavilion show, I visited the penthouse, which was fragrant with expensive leathers and gleaming with racks of lustrous silks. Models began to arrive, lining up like supplicants to be dressed by the label’s clergy. Hirakish, a twenty-two-year-old African-American artist and musician from New Orleans, was one of the season’s most charismatic new models. He was walleyed and skeletal—you could see every bone in his cranium. For the show, he was to be dressed in a slashed wedding gown and accessorized with a strip of gauze affixed to his forehead, as if he had just survived a street fight. He was in drag, but the effect wasn’t campy: he looked mutilated but threatening, like a zombie. Hirakish had moved to New York a month earlier, after breaking up with his girlfriend, and this was his first fashion show. “This is what I dreamed of,” he confided, gazing at the penthouse’s occupants, who included several d.j.s whom he followed on Instagram. “This is the modern-day Andy Warhol.” (I never heard the principals of Hood By Air compare their workplace to the Factory. Instead, they referred to the label as a “family company.”)

As evening fell, I spoke with Ian Isiah, Hood By Air’s “global brand ambassador” and an in-house muse. Isiah can pull off the label’s clothes with confidence—or, as Oliver puts it, with “a lot of swag.” Isiah wears the brand exclusively, and between runway shows one of his responsibilities is to attend events where he will be photographed. He also coaches celebrities on how to wear Hood By Air properly. Six feet tall, he shaves slits in his eyebrows and styles his hair in tendril-like dreads.

Isiah went out to the terrace. Disrobing and getting into the hot tub, he said, “Now, this is a fashion interview.”

Isiah had been helping to recruit other models for the Galvanize show. The label, he said, had sought to create a unique tableau: “Black doll-babies. Transgender babies. Little skater boyish-boys. Boys with rashes on their face—less albino, more scabs everywhere. Braces! There’s a braces girl on the board.”

Isiah told me that the more established fashion brands were trying to keep current by copying Hood By Air’s streetcasting (and, sometimes, by poaching models with the promise of more money). But he wasn’t worried about the competition. “All the grannies of the ten-year anniversaries”—he was disparaging Alexander Wang, who was celebrating his label’s decennial—“are trying to latch on to what’s happening now, which you can’t do by getting a random model. You need a culture behind it.”

Oliver appeared, and Isiah urged him to get in the tub.

“What, you want me to do Mariah?” Oliver asked, alluding to Mariah Carey’s passion for swimming fully clothed.

“Yas!” Isiah squealed. “We got a dryer.”

Oliver decided to forgo clothes. A casting associate named Walter Pearce walked onto the terrace. A frenetic twenty-year-old with sixteen thousand Instagram followers, Pearce looked like a member of the cast of “Kids,” but he had come to the Lower East Side by way of Chappaqua, where he graduated from Horace Greeley High School. Like Oliver, he had dropped out of F.I.T.

“I started interning for Shayne when I was fifteen,” Pearce said. “They literally raised me.” A gifted streetcaster, Pearce was responsible for bringing on Hirakish, the New Orleans model. “He’s a legend,” Pearce declared. “And it’s not only because his look is unreal; it’s because he lives the life—he’s a maniac.”

Oliver confirmed that Hirakish was “extremely H.B.A.” He grabbed a towel and took a seat on a nearby bench. “I have conversations with him, and I’m, like, ‘Whoa, his mind is so insane—I want to work with this person.’ ” Hirakish’s mind was so insane that, later that night, he urinated inside the penthouse elevator. The mishap panicked Oliver until he discovered that there were no security cameras to record the violation. Oliver admired Hirakish’s uninhibited spirit, and felt a duty to place people like him under Hood By Air’s wing: “It’s almost, like, not orphanage-y, but I want to see these energies succeed.” (Later, he added, “New energy is very intimidating—it rewrites what has been created. We all get jaded by experiences in life, but I try to create environments for younger kids.”)

Pearce, who is gaunt and pale, got into the hot tub, and Isiah cooed, “Oooh, we got trade in the water.”

Cupo and Akeem Smith, the stylist, joined the group, along with several interns. Weinraub eventually got in, too. Many of the people in the hot tub, if viewed from behind, would be hard to identify in terms of race and gender. Oliver and Weinraub had complained to me that fashion critics often described their work with terms like “unisex” and “gender-fluid,” which evoked shapeless androgynes. Oliver hated “unisex,” because the word was unsexy. Weinraub had a similar problem with “gender-fluid”—in her estimation, it was “not hot.” She had come up with a syntactical solution, though. “You can say it differently, and it could be hot,” she said. “Like, ‘Wait, I smell gender fluid.’ ‘I’d like a little gender for my coffee.’ ”

By now, more than a dozen Hood By Air employees were in the hot tub, and the gathering looked at once absurd and utopian: creative directors splashing and laughing alongside their junior associates. At one point, Weinraub spoke ruefully of how Hood By Air was perceived by outsiders. She said, “People are, like, ‘The super-gender-bending, nonconforming, all-day-all-night party that’s coming at you so windy! Who’s a boy? Who’s a girl?’ Then you’re embarrassed by your own life.” ♦

[your-dietician]

Primary care docs need to prepare for CGMs for type 2 diabetes

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/health/diabetes/primary-care-docs-need-to-prepare-for-cgms-for-type-2-diabetes/

Primary care docs need to prepare for CGMs for type 2 diabetes

In the last year, Jai Smith has cycled through 13 primary care doctors. Ever since being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1995, she’s tried her best to manage a disease that has devastated her family: Her grandmother and four uncles died from its complications.

But she’s struggled to find a doctor in her hometown of Little Rock, Ark., that will give her what she wants to manage the condition: a continuous glucose monitor. Like many patients with diabetes, Smith uses fingerprick glucose tests to help dose her medications. The 44-year-old was immediately interested when she heard about CGM, which uses an embedded sensor to collect a proxy for blood glucose around the clock.

“I’m already having to prick my finger three to four times a day,” she said. “Immediately I’m like, ‘OK, I should be a shoo-in, let me ask my doctor.’”

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But that doctor didn’t think it was a fit. Neither did the next one, or the one after that. Most, she said, gave her the same materials about nutrition and exercise, and occasionally tweaked her medications before sending her out the door with a follow-up appointment. Some told her that CGMs weren’t appropriate for people with type 2 diabetes; others told her there was no way the device would be covered by her Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance.

Smith’s frustration is becoming more common as CGM technology is exposed to patients with type 2 diabetes, the product of growing advertising budgets and a slowly growing evidence base. The job of fielding those requests falls mostly to primary care physicians, who lead care for patients with type 2 diabetes. But as demand grows, many of these doctors remain unprepared to interpret the evidence needed to prescribe them or navigate the minefield of securing insurance coverage.

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That’s because up until now, the devices have primarily been a tool of endocrinologists, specialists in hormone regulation who first used them to protect against dangerous dips in blood glucose in type 1 patients. Most patients with type 2 diabetes will never see an endocrinologist, though. In Smith’s long run of doctors, she’s only seen a specialist once.

“It’s just a numbers game,” said Steven Edelman, an endocrinologist at the University of California, San Diego. There are only 8,000 or so working endocrinologists in the United States, and 34 million Americans with diabetes — about 30 million of whom have type 2 diabetes. Like Smith, about 90% of them receive their care from a PCP. As the evidence and demand for CGMs in type 2 diabetes grows, those physicians will need the resources and tools to get sensors into the right arms and bellies.

It’s only in the last few years that doctors have even considered CGM a viable option for patients with type 2 diabetes.

The tides began to turn in 2017, with the publication of the Dexcom-funded DIAMOND randomized, controlled trial. It looked at the effect of real-time CGM use for people with type 2 diabetes who were on an intensive insulin regimen: daily background injections, plus extra doses at meal times. Their A1C levels, a measure of average blood glucose, dropped by 0.3% more than those using standard blood glucose strips over six months — a small but statistically significant change.

Around the same time, devices from Dexcom and Abbott were getting smaller, cheaper, and more convenient to use. Patients with type 1 diabetes, who are especially at risk of dangerous low bouts of blood sugar, had been willing to put up with the finicky technology because it could save their lives. But the easier the devices got to use, the more it made sense to test their use in type 2 diabetes.

Medicare started covering CGMs for patients on intensive insulin in 2017, and by now, many endocrinologists will prescribe CGMs for type 2 patients who take multiple daily injections of insulin or use an insulin pump. The devices seem to help these patients keep their A1Cs in a healthier range — and prevent acute complications, just like with type 1. Recent claims-based research funded by Abbott has shown that six months of the company’s FreeStyle Libre, a “flash” CGM that collects readings with a swipe over the sensor, can reduce emergency visits and hospitalizations for type 2 patients using insulin.

“The people with insulin are the low-hanging fruit,” said Irl Hirsch, an endocrinologist at the University of Washington.

Research is also beginning to show that CGM could help type 2 patients on longer-acting basal insulin, who take their medication just once or twice a day. Earlier this month, researchers reported results from the MOBILE study also funded by Dexcom, a randomized, controlled trial of CGMs for people with type 2 diabetes on basal insulin. Unlike past studies which looked at patients being treated by endocrinologists, this study recruited patients from primary care doctors, who were then advised by diabetes specialists.

“They drew the population from primary care, because that’s really where these people are being managed in the real world in America,” said Thomas Martens, medical director at the International Diabetes Center and lead author of the study, which saw a statistically significant decrease in A1C over eight months with CGM compared to traditional fingerstick monitoring — a 1.1% drop instead of 0.6%.

Another study this month looked at real-world outcomes and found that CGM use among patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes who used insulin was associated with lower A1C levels and lower rates of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for hypoglycemia.

“Perhaps most telling is that people with type 2 had greater improvement than those with type 1,” said Revital Nimri, an endocrinologist at Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel, during a session focused on primary care CGM use at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association. “Nevertheless, only 1% of the type 2 population got access to CGM, compared to 61% of those with type 1.”

But their effect in the real world will depend on whether — and how — primary care physicians are able to deploy them.

The first barrier is simply awareness. “I have some primary care colleagues who are very comfortable prescribing the FreeStyle Libre and telling patients the basic instructions to get it started, and I have some folks who have pretty much not even heard of a CGM or wouldn’t really know the first step,” said Tejaswi Kompala, an endocrinologist at UCSF and Livongo’s director of clinical products.

But the public is growing more familiar with CGMs, thanks in part to free device trials and ads like Dexcom’s multimillion-dollar Super Bowl spot featuring Nick Jonas.

“Even though this was geared toward patients, it was seen by doctors too,” Hirsch said, adding that he started getting emails from colleagues in primary care about prescribing CGMs; Kompala, too, began receiving more inquiries from patients before she could bring up CGMs herself in visits.

Companies are also ramping up direct outreach. Dexcom has targeted its education initiatives at primary care doctors who prescribe a lot of insulin to their patients with diabetes; more than half of patients on intensive insulin, type 1 or 2, are treated in a primary care setting. “[If] you look at the penetration of CGM in the endocrinologist community, it’s so much higher than the primary care community,” said Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer. “We are a business, so we’ve got to look for new customers, and that’s where a lot of the patients reside.”

Primary care physicians will also need to be confident in how to best prescribe and manage their patients’ care on CGMs. “It isn’t that you just stick a device on someone and they get better,” said Anne Peters, an endocrinologist at University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and co-author on the MOBILE study. “You put a device on someone, you work with them, and you improve outcomes.”

“The bad news is the primary care providers are not trained for this yet,” said Hirsch. “They don’t have a good infrastructure for looking at data. They don’t have a good infrastructure for dealing with all the hassles of getting the patients their devices.”

The problem isn’t so much that CGM data is inscrutable, but that primary care doctors aren’t often trained to read the standard format for the information, which is called an ambulatory glucose profile and shows several measures of a patient’s blood glucose activity. “If primary care doctors are educated on how to read a CGM, it’s amazing how much they can focus in on the major problem within 30 seconds,” said UCSC’s Edelman.

During the pandemic, Hirsch led a continuing medical education module on best practices for telecare in diabetes, including CGM use. After the session, 86% of the attendees said they intended to change elements of their practice — mostly by incorporating CGM data or advocating for coverage with insurance providers. But that kind of change requires an investment of time that PCPs rarely have.

“If you ask a primary care provider: Do you think that people with diabetes that you’re seeing in your clinic might benefit from CGM? They’d probably say, ‘Probably, but I don’t have the time,’” said Mahmood Kazemi, Abbott’s chief medical officer.

They also often don’t have the technical setup to easily ingest CGM data. Patients can share their data with physicians through the manufacturers’ portals or aggregators like Tidepool and Glooko, but that still requires toggling between screens during a visit that’s already short on time. To record that data in EHRs, providers still have to manually type in glucose metrics, and some resort to screenshots or even printouts to scan back in.

“The truth is endocrinology clinics, they’re set up to get access to the data; they’re sort of primed for this,” said Martens. “Primary care, not so much.”

Some providers and device manufacturers see a solution in better interoperability. Martens’ International Diabetes Center just launched a pilot with Abbott that directly integrates its data into the practice’s EHR. “This is really key for adoption in a primary care setting,” said Kazemi.

There’s only so much that simple data porting can do to help, though. “The thing that’s missing in a lot of these platforms is suggested therapeutic interventions,” said Edelman, which could help primary care providers navigate the ever-growing list of diabetes medications and nuanced insulin dose adjustments. Experts said it could be valuable to feed CGM data directly into EHRs to inform clinical decision support for primary care physicians. “The real dream is artificial intelligence to help guide insulin-based therapy,” Martens said.

Before all that, though, primary care doctors must jump a high hurdle: getting CGMs covered.

Currently, CGMs are easily reimbursed for patients with type 1 diabetes, but Medicare coverage for type 2 diabetes requires meeting a long list of criteria. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently stopped requiring patients to measure their blood glucose four times a day in order to qualify, but three-times-daily insulin injections are still a requirement. And primary care physicians have far less experience navigating the rules so their type 2 patients don’t get hit with hundreds of dollars in additional expenses each month.

Many patients, meanwhile, are relying on primary care providers to help jump through all those hoops and prescribe CGMs when appropriate, which they aren’t always willing to do.

“I know it’s probably a small chapter in the medical book about diabetes,” said Smith, who is still waiting for her monitor. “But if you were a doctor and you have 300 patients and 275 of them are diabetic, you don’t want to go a step further for your own patients? That’s the part that I just can’t understand.”

Six months ago, she finally found a doctor she’s willing to stick with, who took her off most of her medications, including insulin, to start from scratch. With most commercial insurance following Medicare’s lead, she won’t qualify for CGM coverage any time soon.

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[breakingasia-blog]

Grueling Journey to Kashmir's Remote Mountain Town to Get Online

The mountain town of fewer than 4,000 people has six internet cafes, which are booming due to a security clampdown by the Indian government. "The speed is very slow," admitted Irfan, manager of one of the cafes where customers pay up to 3,000 rupees ($40) an hour to link their laptop to the snail's-pace broadband. "Scores of Kashmiris, mostly students and income tax professionals, come visiting every day," said Irfan, who only gave one name. In early August New Delhi made a sudden move to axe Kashmir's semi-autonomous status, shutting down communications and sending tens of thousands of extra troops into what was already one of the world's most militarized zones. Banihal, a two-hour train ride from Kashmiri capital Srinagar, is the nearest town with internet access While phone calls and very limited text messages are now possible, the internet is still down. Forcing people offline has crippled the economy and made it impossible to pay utility bills, make applications or just send a message to family outside the stricken zone. Some Kashmiris make special trips to New Delhi or Jammu city - an eight-hour drive from the regional capital Srinagar -- to connect. Banihal, a two-hour train ride from Srinagar, is the nearest town with any access. Internet Trek The government said it cut phones and the internet to prevent unrest in Kashmir, where an insurgency in the past three decades has left tens of thousands dead. India blames Pakistan, which also claims Kashmir, for the troubles. To get to Banihal, students Bhat Musaddiq Reyaz and Aqeel Mukhtar fought their way onto a train at Awantipora -- a town more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, south of Srinagar in the Kashmir valley. "I tried getting internet at a government kiosk set up in my district but I waited for two hours on two different days and never got a turn," said Reyaz as he waited for the train. The 19-year-old wanted to register for exams to gain access to a graduate medicine course. Mukhtar, 25, recently completed a degree in education and wanted to apply online for scholarships. Student Bhat Musaddiq Reyaz (R) wanted to register for exams to gain access to a graduate medicine course "It is a complete hassle to have to travel so much just to send applications online," said Mukhtar. The two students took two hours on one train and then had to change to another which was another 90-minute standing trip to Banihal. They waited in the snow for a bus to take them from the station to the town and its prized internet cafes in a crowded lane. Reyaz was able to complete his task. But when the pair returned to the railway station for the long trip home they were told the last train had been canceled due to snow on the tracks. No taxis would take them but after a few hours, a truck driver heading to the Kashmir valley finally offered a lift. The truck also became stuck in the snow and the students had to sleep there for the night. The government said it cut phones and the internet to prevent unrest in Kashmir Traffic was still halted the next day and the students had to walk 10 kilometers past stranded cars and trucks to get back to Banihal railway station. There, they waited seven hours for the only train that left that day. Reyaz called his trek to make his application "unbelievable". "Something that would take me half an hour at home, took me two grueling days," he said. "I will never do this ever again in my life," added Mukhtar. Read the full article

[hellowallflowerfriend]

Dare to DREAM

“Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.” - Albert Einstein

    I first met a person without documentation when I was in high school. I was carrying hot, silver trays of pizza alongside her, sweat dripping off my brow, calling out a diner’s name with increasing urgency. We made eye contact, a quick word, as we hustled through all five dining sections. Once free of our burning delivery, we servers frantically rubbed our hands, hoping there wouldn’t be blisters following our quest to deliver food to an absorbed dinner party. We did not talk about the guest’s laughter, “Oh, that’s me! Hope you didn’t pass me too many times! Ha-ha-ha!” 

    We both waited tables every weekend together, no matter the holiday, no matter the weather, no matter the game we were missing or birthday we weren’t celebrating. We grimaced through cursing customers, kept our lips closed through suspect behavior in the back of the house, and kept our noses mostly down.

     But, there was a separation between us, large enough to be a schism. Even though we scraped gum off of the underside of tables side-by-side, even though we both swept away the greasy napkins and half-eaten pizza slices our peers or peers’ parents dropped and didn’t bother to pick up, my coworker seemed so much older than me. Don’t get me wrong, she was beautiful, and she looked her age, but she carried herself with a matter-of-fact-ness that I had only seen in adults up to that point. She seemed a little more reserved, less likely to engage in silly teenage behavior like truth-or-dare, or prank phone-calling a crush at a sleepover.

    I remember when I came in to apply for the job, eating a salad and some wings with some friends, that freedom in sitting at the table that I so took for granted at the time. I had not told any of my friends, but I was eating free lunch at the school and was applying for the job so I could buy some soccer cleats. My dad had stopped paying child support, and if I couldn’t get those shoes from my parents, then I sure as heck was going to find a way. After all, I had college to plan for, and the more athletics, clubs, leadership positions, and awards I could put on my application, the better my hard-earned GPA would look.

    At this point, I was, “passing,” as cut from the same cloth as my wealthier, higher-achieving friends. We still had the house and the nice car, and I knew how to bargain shop and find nice-looking things at thrift stores. I paid my friend to give me rides to and from soccer, gave treats to friends who were able to give me a ride to or from work, and managed to save up enough money to pay for my first semester of books out-of-pocket in college.

    I remember posting to Facebook about which college I decided to go to, using waived SAT fees and application fees along the way. I looked for my coworker’s brother’s post about college: he killed it in Honors Chemistry, and I knew he had a pretty GPA. But, the post never happened. His older sister, despite her beautiful singing voice, her awesome grades, her maturity, her ability to ALWAYS BE WORKING… Lord, that girl could work… She sort of disappeared too.

    So I began to wonder. Here I am, rubbing shoulders with kids who drive better cars than I could even entertain the idea of purchasing for myself, given as gifts from parent-s-. Here I am, moaning to myself that I have to go to work after classes and follow with homework. Here I am, biting my tongue as I admit that I can’t afford to go out to dinner, and my friend asks, “Why don’t you just ask your parents?” It’s not that I was ashamed, it just wasn’t worth the awkward response I would get in reply. As hard as this is, begging the student aid employees to help me apply for another loan, because now with working 40-50 hours of an unpaid internship, I can’t afford to work 15-20 hours a week on top. As hard as this all is, being the person who is “passing,” in this world I feel I don’t fully belong in, this world of new sundresses for every football game, this world of pledging to organizations that have monthly fees, this world of blonde hair and Rayban sunglasses… I am still here.

    And one day, I realized why my coworker smiled less, worked harder, and kept to herself. She was not going to leave this life like I got to. I waited my last table about one year and two months ago. She is still scrubbing, biting her tongue, burning her hands, on her feet for hours, having no healthcare, not being able to buy glasses like I once was unable to… and on top of that, she may not be able to live here much longer.

    My friend is able to stay here in America because of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, passed by President Obama through an executive order. This is supposed to have been because the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act was not being passed through Congress.

    Let me tell you something. I have, in the jobs where I have sweated most, been yelled at most, been treated the least like a human, have walked my legs numb… in these jobs, I have met all the non-citizen second-generation people I know. I have met these people who moved here as children. I myself was born in Ohio, but if someone told me I had to move back tomorrow, I wouldn’t know where to begin. I would lose my job, have to say goodbye to friends and family I hold dear, and God knows how I would be able to finance a new life in this new state.

    Now imagine this in an entirely different country.

    In this country, people may speak a language you heard around the house occasionally, but may not know as well as English. You do not know where the safe parts of the city are, where the cheapest rent is, where the most honest employers can be found. You may not know the culture, the religion, the societal norms as well here. You do not call this place home.

    The place you call home will employ you, but only in jobs where there is little to no room for growth. Landscaper. Housekeeper. Waitress. Receptionist if you’re lucky. Some of these jobs will pay you under the table, but it will likely be a little less than what a “”””normal”””” worker would be paid, because after all, who can you tattle-tale to? And don’t worry, no matter how hard you work your ass off, no matter how seriously you take school, no matter how well-rounded, well-spoken, intelligent, kind, and good you are… you sure as hell can’t go to school. Look at how hard it was for me, and I had federal aid on my side. Tell me whose mother or father can afford to send his or her son to college on landscaping or housekeeping or construction wages.

    As a friend to some of these individuals, I am enraged. How can my friends continue to suffer? DACA is the bare minimum a person deserves in this life. DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,) allows a child who immigrated here with his parents without papers to stay in America. DACA lets these individuals stay here, but at the cost of their own human rights. The right to fair and equal pay to peers. The right to healthcare offered through one’s career. The right to apply for federal monetary aid. The right for education to serve its intended purpose as THE GREAT EQUALIZER, meaning that if one works hard in school, s/he may use this hard work to pursue further education.

    My friends did not choose to come here without papers. My friends did not ask to toil their lives away. My friends did not ask to drive every two years to an office, to stand in line, to be shuffled through like cattle and stamped off as, “okay to continue to work,” as they obtain permits for their less-than careers that they know, in another life, they could have done better than.

    I did some research on how much it costs to obtain citizenship for one person in America. In 2017, the fee for ONE individual is $745. For a green card, it can cost about $1000, including fees. If someone is willing to leave all their family behind in pursuit of a better life, do you think they are able to afford this? If someone is willing to come here without following the proper steps, fleeing something or escaping poverty or suffering in some way, they live their lives as slaves to the land so that their children may have a better life. There is no luxury in being a person without papers.

    So Mother or Father suffers to obtain basic needs for the family, working hard hours, only for the cycle to REPEAT ITSELF despite said son- or daughter’s honest, hard work. The cycle repeats itself despite the fact that this son or daughter could literally not give consent to the move, and the son or daughter could not afford to live on his or her own.

    My fellow Americans, I think we can do better than DACA. I believe we can do better than letting children who were brought here stay here. I think we can give my friends, these humans who are worth so much more, have the basic rights that every documented American here reaps. I never chose to be American, just as my second-generation immigrant friends never chose not to be. The difference between us and me is that I have the right to go to college without paying the entire tuition out-of-pocket each month. I have the right to visit the hospital and know that my job offers benefits, so I will be okay. Myself, I am a DREAM-er, and my dream is to see my friends SB, SH, CR, JB, O(?), A(?) and VR have *half* the privilege I have inherited in my life. Maybe, just maybe, if I DREAM big enough, one day I’ll see their names finally written on that diploma they always deserved but were never allowed to receive.  

[shockcity]

Bagginshield #7 - baking

Rating: G Summary: for the 30 Day OTP Challenge. Bilbo brings a bit of the Shire to Erebor's kitchens. Consort!Bilbo. Fluff.

Note: this is so late and I'm sorry! Holidays ugh. But hey this is super long in comparison to the others! Woot. Now...prepare to be hunger-fied (???) by excessive descriptions of delicious baked goods! And consumed by fluff. There's a lot of sugar in this, people.

-------------

For hobbits, the kitchen is a sacred place. It is not for guests to use, nor roam around in, nor snoop into (this includes a hobbit's pantry, which is doubly off-limits) and it isn't just a peculiar quirk, for there are sensible reasons for this rule. The most important one being that the kitchen itself serves as the birth place of their greatest accomplishment, and their most coveted gift: good food.

Breakfast. Second breakfast. Elevensies. Lunch. Tea. Dinner. Supper. And, of course, dessert.

Bilbo's speciality.

There are other logical justifications for the kitchen being verboten, which include overcrowding, the ever present threat of hyperactive faunts, and the unwanted opinions of every hobbit ever on how to make this or that. But mostly (and this was Bilbo's main argument) the kitchen was forbidden because gifts should be a surprise, and gifts of food especially.

Hobbits did not cook or bake like most races of Middle Earth. The privilege of luxury and abundance had allowed for the evolution of particular tastes and favorite foods. Elves, too, could afford to be picky; but they were creatures of moderation and preferred light and simple fair, saving their decadence for their painstaking artwork and long-winded music.

Cooking, and the mastery of it, was therefore a hobbit's area of expertise (not that anyone knew about it, for as unfriendly as hobbits were, they did not share their food with outsiders). The only race that had an inkling of their talents were the Rhûn traders from the far east, who once a year made the trek to Eriador with rare spices and extracts. The hobbits were their best customers, and usually purchased wares regardless of price, and so their patronage was worth the long, treacherous journey west.

But visiting only once a year meant that their stock of essentials like vanilla pods, cocao powder, ginger, cardamom, and cinnamon, etc etc. had to be stretched until the traders returned the next thrimidge. It was therefore common for hobbits to trade spices for favors, or give jars of it in thanks. Being frugal with precious ingredients was a constant struggle for hobbits, but Bilbo was one of the best at budgeting the use of his spices (though he was never happy about it). He was therefore ecstatic when the markets of Erebor finally reopened, and he saw that the Rhûn traders set up shop once a week. Bilbo could scarcely imagine so much excess.

"Have you ever seen anything like it?!" Bilbo exclaimed to Dori, throwing a hand out to encompass the entirety of the spice market.

"Yes," Nori answered instead. He was looking at Bilbo rather dubiously.

Dori was more on the same page. "Our spice markets were always the best in Rhovanion, historically," he said proudly. "And before that nasty business with King Thror all sorts of people would show up on highday to sell or buy – it seems that those golden days have finally returned."

They both sighed happily, and Nori turned around and left.

As they shopped, Bilbo managed to keep from purchasing every ingredient under the sun. For each spice he saw – both rare and common – corresponding recipes floated through his head and the phantom tastes and smells of the Shire were sweet on his tongue. How he missed that familiar food! And simply the act of baking, really. Feeling suddenly homesick, he told as much to Dori.

"But why don't you use the kitchens?" Dori responded, bemused. "You are free to make whatever you like, you know. The mountain is technically half yours."

Bilbo ignored that last part (because despite what people said, he was a husband, a reluctant advisor and an insufferable busybody – not a ruler) and peered at his friend skeptically.

"It isn't right, cooking in another's kitchen. I would never do anything so offensive as that."

"What nonsense is this?" Dori wanted to know. "We cooked in your kitchen the very night we met! Why– oh. Oh dear."

"Oh no, don't worry," Bilbo rushed to say, but Dori had caught on quickly, and was fast becoming inconsolable.

"We've committed a grave injustice!" he said, so loudly that a few dwarrow ambled over to gawk. "Whyever did you not say so? However did you forgive us? Oh, Mahal you should cut off our hands–"

"What? No." Bilbo shook off his confusion and touched Dori's shoulder gently. "How about I make you something in the kitchens, hmm? Then we'll call it even. Though we'll have to make sure it's alright with the head cook...."

"Stuff! Flima won't mind! Why, she'll be thrilled to learn some hobbit recipes!"

Bilbo didn't dare point out that in the Shire, the sharing of recipes was only done by close family members, and even then it sometimes went to a vote. Instead, he and Dori traipsed up and down the market, gathering everything from rock salt to chili powder. They bought bags of flour and sugar, fresh fruits, eggs, still-warm milk, and perfectly aged cheese. Bilbo even picked up a particularly well-made mixing bowl (though he would give anything for the old Baggins one) and a very expensive (but entirely worth it) bag of coffee beans.

"What will you make?" Dori asked him excitedly as they wheeled their purchases up to the royal kitchens.

"Hmm," said Bilbo, thoughtfully.

There was one more secret talent of the hobbits, but this was one that they were always eager to show off. Shirelings, and Bilbo in particular, had the ability to guess a person's favorite dessert if not the first time, then always the second, and with startling accuracy.

"You'll be a tart, I think," said Bilbo absently. He turned and looked Dori up and down. "Rhubarb."

Dori wasn't sure what this meant, but trusted that Bilbo would make him something that was, at least, edible.

It was much more than that, of course.

------

It turned out that the head cook did not mind at all if Bilbo used her kitchen. She also pointed out that it technically wasn't her kitchen at all, but rather Thorin's and therefore Bilbo's by proxy. This was gamely ignored. Flima herself was a brilliant cook, and Bilbo was truly happy to meet the dwarrowdam behind his daily meals. He mentioned to her that he would have come to meet her sooner, but hobbits simply did not go into kitchens that were not theirs, and her surprise prompted Bilbo to explain a bit about hobbit culture.

"It is our custom to give away gifts on our birth-days; like sweets, or trifles, or mathoms for the elder hobbits. I've always just given baked treats, which I'm proud to say were quite famous in the Shire," he explained.

His hands were busy whisking his flour mix of cinnamon and salt, before setting the bowl aside to take up the sugar and butter. The batch of cream cheese he had strained overnight was thick and rich, and as he added it to the bowl, Flima reached in with the tip of her finger and tasted a bit, humming in appreciation.

"Some hobbits specialize in different dishes. My mother could do anything with pastry, which she filled with meats, veg, and potatoes. She was particularly fond of stuffed mushrooms as well, but just couldn't cook them as well as my father. Now he knew the right way to cook mushrooms, let me tell you–"

Once his mixture was complete, Bilbo poured the batter into the pastry-lined pan and set to trimming the fresh rhubarb to arrange on the top of the tart. He chattered away as he worked, with Flima watching from across the tabletop and occasionally nibbling on some of his ingredients.

Initially, her presence caused him some discomfort. Only family remained in the kitchen while food was cooking, and even then, conversation was mostly saved for around the dinner table. Bilbo had fond memories of his mother and father cooking together, but this was normal by hobbit standards, considering they were married and had Bilbo to look after (it was an unwritten rule that faunts should learn their cooking and baking from their parents, so preparing meals often had educational purposes for those with children).

But Flima was not family; she was a stranger in a strange kingdom– so far away from the Shire and their customs. Perhaps the distance was part of why Bilbo didn't mind breaking the rules for Flima. Or perhaps he just liked her, and found that he really liked having company while he cooked. Whatever the reason, Bilbo's rhubarb tart came out more beautiful than it ever had, and it wasn't his imagination that Flima's presence was what made the difference.

"My word!" said Dori, when he came in to receive his gift. "It smells wonderful in here."

The sweet citrus scent of the rhubarb had taken over the kitchen, accompanied by the buttery smell of warm, fluffy pastry straight from the oven. Bilbo sprinkled powdered sugar over the top of the tart, before garnishing it with a few edible violets. He placed the dessert in front of a somewhat overwhelmed Dori, and waited.

Dori gathered a bit onto his spoon, before carefully popping it into his mouth. His face went slack with pleasure, and the ever eloquent and refined dwarf that Bilbo once knew completely disappeared as he said, "Mahal's sodding balls."

Bilbo grinned at him happily.

------

After that, Bilbo got his own corner of the kitchen, and then after that (read: when Thorin found out) a kitchen on the same floor as his rooms was built just for him (he was at first sad to leave Flima, but she simply delegated more work to her underlings and followed Bilbo upstairs). Dori was so impressed by Bilbo's tart that he demanded a variety of desserts in the days to follow. He was also quite shocked to find that though he adored the vanilla poached pears, and the lemon-raspberry tartlets Bilbo made, nothing surpassed the wonder and magnificence of that first rhubarb tart.

"But of course," Bilbo said when Dori complimented him. "Rhubarb tart is, after all, your favorite. Hobbits usually guess right on the first try anyway. Though Saradoc always succeeded in guessing correctly the second time...so often in fact that we all called him Second-try Saradoc, and you know, I think he purposely made a mistake on that first go just so he could keep the name, that charlatan–"

"What's this now?" Flima cut him off. "You can guess our favorites, can you? Alright, what am I then?"

Bilbo peered at her. "Chocolate ganache," he announced after only a moment of thought.

Of course, to prove it to her, he made a chocolate ganache. She paused on her first bite, before calmly staring up at Bilbo.

"I almost want to tease you and say that this isn't the best thing I've ever eaten in my life," she told him. "But I don't have it in me. Bilbo, this is the best thing I've ever eaten in my life."

For a while Bilbo's baking was a closely kept secret. He had his little corner of the kitchens and Dori and Flima as his very enthusiastic taste-testers. He made for them the traditional dishes of the Shire; everything from the fanciest desserts like meringue pies and the always important comfort foods, like sweet rolls (which were a favorite of faunts, especially).

"What are these again?" Flima had asked, eating two of his pastries at once.

"Cinnamon rolls," Bilbo told her. "Our little hobbits love them. They're mostly just made for children, though."

Occasionally Dwarrow would wander in and have a taste of whatever Bilbo was making (usually when he wasn't looking) but Bilbo didn't mind and they didn't bother him while he was baking, so he paid little attention either way. All was therefore peaceable and serene in the royal kitchens. Which didn't last of course, and it was Bilbo himself who revealed his gifts to the rest of the Company (and Erebor, in general) when his heartstrings were tugged by a certain mischievous dwarfling.

Now Bilbo wouldn't say it out loud, but there was a special place in his heart for Kili. The dwarf was trouble, and a bit lacking in common sense, but at heart Kili was a singularly kind and well-meaning person. He reminded Bilbo a lot of his little cousins back in the Shire, and Bilbo did miss them, so it was no wonder he'd sort of adopted Kili in their stead.

One day, when the dwarf was looking particularly down, Bilbo asked him what was wrong, and Kili very sorrowfully said that he was hungry. So Bilbo naturally whisked him off to the kitchen and made him his favorite dessert.

"W-what is this?" asked Kili, pausing for a moment. He'd been stuffing food into his face faster than anyone Bilbo had ever seen, and that included the time Rollo Boffin broke the record for the most turnovers eaten in twelve minutes. "It's...it's so good. Bilbo. Bilbo. What."

Bilbo laughed. "Chocolate. Just chocolate really. We call it a double chocolate cake in the Shire, though we rarely ever make it –we can't waste the cocoa powder, you see. But there seems to be a steady supply here in Erebor, so I've been making everything with chocolate lately. Do you like it – oof."

"Thank you," Kili said into his ear. He was holding Bilbo tight and didn't seem like he planning on letting go. "Thank you so much."

"Of course, Kili! My word, there's no need to fuss! I'm glad...hey!"

He could hear chewing close to his ear, and realized that though Kili was draped over Bilbo still, he hadn't exactly stopped eating. "Kili!"

After that, Kili told Fili and the both of them told everyone. Bilbo's corner of the kitchen was immediately besieged by the Company, who thought it was terribly unfair that Dori and Kili had got their own desserts before anyone else.

First in line had been Dwalin, who had merely stood silently in front of Bilbo's cooking counter with a betrayed look on his face.

"Oh, Dwalin, I'm sorry," Bilbo told him, twisting his hands. "But I have made you something already, you know. I baked it just this morning with you in mind."

He gestured to the taste-testing chair across from him and brought out Dwalin's dessert. On a large plate there was a good sized slab of some kind of cake bar, which was artfully covered in what looked like caramel sauce and sliced banana. Dwalin loved caramel. Dwalin loved banana. How did Bilbo know?

"What is it?" Dwalin asked, gazing at the dessert with ravenous wonder. It looked so gooey and rich and perfect that he was almost tempted not to eat it. Almost.

"We call it sticky toffee pudding," Bilbo explained, wiping his hands on a dish cloth. "But I've made it differently this time – it's more of a cookie bar than a cake."

"C-cookie?" Dwalin whispered.

Bilbo only smiled.

Next up was Ori, who Bilbo had the most fun baking for. Ori had an insatiable sweet tooth, and the more sugar something had the better. So Bilbo brought out an old Chubb rabble-rouser which called for Bilbo's favorite thing to make ever: ice cream.

Ice cream was not something dwarrow had ever come across, and its introduction into the kitchens of Erebor caused a stir like no other (the dwarf Bilbo had commissioned to build a churner for him had actually opened up a manufacturing business and was now disgustingly rich. And Bilbo, hailed as a hero for bringing this cold treat to Mahal's children, took no praise and stubbornly credited Ori's sweet tooth for its existence.)

Bilbo enlisted Kili and Fili's help in making the ice cream, and they hovered around him curiously as he worked. He started with egg yokes, salt, and three quarters of a cup of sugar (which Kili had tried to stick a wet finger in) all topped vanilla beans, which Bilbo quickly split and scraped. He then added milk and cream into a pan and put it on over the flame. After telling Fili to watch for the bubbles in the cream which said it was done, he moved to his mixing bowl and stirred the eggs, salt, sugar, and vanilla all together. Once the cream was ready, he poured some over the mixture to heat it up, whisking all the while. He put it on the hot stove to thicken up.

Bilbo summoned Kili over to the churner, having him lift it closer to the counter top. He then sent Kili and Fili down to the lower levels for the stored ice, something Bilbo reckoned would take them long enough that Bilbo could put together the other ingredients for Ori's dessert. He had already made the cake base, which consisted of squeezed oranges, flour, sugar, milk, and butter, and now took those three layers out of the pantry. Next he took his left over oranges and skinned them into thin strips, the peels curling over his hands as their heavenly citrus scent drifted into the air. He carefully preserved the peels in their little curls and turned toward the stove, where he had filled a pan with cool water. He added the orange skins in and left it to boil, before draining them of water. They went into a warm pot of syrup next, where they simmered until they became tender and sweet. Lastly, Bilbo rolled the pieces in sugar and allowed them to cool.

By this time Fili and Kili had returned with the ice. He directed them toward the churner and came over with his custard. They added the ice to the bucket and sprinkled rock salt over the top, before pouring the mixture into the middle canister. It was Fili and Kili's job, now, to start churning. Bilbo let them do it (and squabble about taking turns) as he popped over to make his icing and shave off bits of chocolate. He may have waited to handle the chocolate until Fili and Kili were properly distracted and so could not eat it all every time he turned his back. Maybe.

After about thirty minutes, Bilbo called the churning to a halt and examined their efforts. Inside the canister, thick creamy ice cream swirled around the mixing paddle, and Bilbo could even still smell the fresh vanilla beans. The boys peered into the bucket dubiously, but lifted it over to the counter without argument. There Bilbo began to layer the cake with the ice cream. Once he was finished, he quickly put the cake together and added the orange icing. Then he packed it into the cold box, which would be stored down below with the ice.

"But we aren't going to eat it now?" asked Kili, looking sad.

"No, it's got to freeze," Bilbo told them. Their sad faces made his mouth twitch. "Come now, no sulking. I've made you a giant cookie."

This perked them right up and Bilbo sat them down and went to Flima's ovens in the next room. Inside, a large chocolate cookie in a pan was just about finished baking. He took it out, checking to see that it was properly gooey, and lugged it over to the boys. Their eyes went wide when he set it down.

"Hold on a moment," said Bilbo. He grabbed up the left over ice cream and scooped it onto the cookie, where it began to melt slowly. He then added the shaved chocolate bits, before handing them both a spoon.

"Dig in."

Two very happy boys slouched through the corridors to their mother's rooms an hour later, pleased as punch and full to the brim.

"What's the matter with you?" Dis wanted to know.

But Fili and Kili only collapsed onto the floor, and said, "ice cream!" as if it explained everything. Which it did.

The next day, Bilbo put the final touches on the orange ice cream cake, adding the whipped cream and the candied peels, before presenting it to a stunned Ori. There also happened to be a few more bystanders this time, and all were gazing at Ori's dessert enviously. Ori's reaction to the ice cream was excessive and overjoyed, and soon 'gave us ice cream' was tacked onto Bilbo's deeds alongside 'escaped from Thranduil's dungeons', 'riddled with a dragon', and 'saved the king and then actually married him. Wow'.

From then on Bilbo's desserts were famous, and Bilbo did his best to show the other cooks how he created them, so other dwarrow besides the royals could enjoy it too. But each of the Company was still gifted with their own personalized favorites, which Bilbo always got right on the first try.

Admittedly, most of them were easy: Balin, who was an avid lover of all things apple, consumed Bilbo's almond and liqueur baked apples (à la mode) at a frankly alarming pace. Fili, who had cried over not getting to try Kili's double chocolate cake, actually preferred strawberry cream puffs. Their mother was, funnily enough, partial to chocolate strawberries dipped in cream and coconut, which fell somewhere in the middle.

Then there was Nori, who loved his chili pepper truffles, and Oin with his stout cake, and Gloin, who could not get enough of Bilbo's cinnamon pecan turnovers (his son, Gimli, was the only dwarf Bilbo knew that liked marmalade tarts, which was good, because Bilbo liked them too, and that meant all the more for them).

Bofur was keen on blueberry crumple with brown sugar and ginger, and Bombur was ever pleased with a large plate of sweet cheese rolls. Bifur almost ruined his streak, being that he did not like dessert at all, but Bilbo had noticed the dwarf's aversion to sweets and his preference for meat, and had made him sausage and onion pasties with a curried gravy instead.

Altogether Bilbo's desserts were a hit, and Bilbo himself was incandescently happy, for hobbits were never so pleased as when their food was properly appreciated. With his dwarrow fed and happy, and his brand new kitchen stocked with every ingredient imaginable, it seemed as though the future looked very bright for Bilbo Baggins.

All that was needed was the final touch, which was in the form of the perfect dessert for his husband, whom he had saved for the very last. So with love and care, Bilbo finally took to his ovens and his stove and his beautiful new kitchen and started on Thorin's cake.

He baked the three layers, combining his usual sugar, milk, egg, flour, etc. but this time with the addition of spiced cocoa powder and rich, dark coffee. He baked them until the middle was moist and crumbly, and the tops of the cake bounced when touched. He left the layers to cool and began to make his ice cream.

This time his ice cream was flavored with black cherry, and when finished it tasted as gently sweet and as sharply tart as he recalled from those summery days spent eating it in the Shire. He left it in the store room to keep frozen overnight and came back the next day prepared to continue. This would be the hard part, and Bilbo made sure that he had everything ready before he began. He cut the layers into different sized circles, before placing the smallest layer at the bottom of the bowl.

Next he took his ice cream and let it melt for a few minutes. Once it was softened enough, Bilbo beat the ice cream until it was perfect for spreading, and then added it to the bottom layer. He quickly covered it with the bigger layer and then wrapped it up tight and put it into the cold box. He did the same with the next tier, which joined its other half into the box, and then put everything into the cold store room. He left it there to freeze overnight.

The following day, Bilbo took the layers out and assembled them into a half circle. He left it in the cold box again, before setting out his ingredients for the meringue. First he made the sugar syrup, which he carefully heated up. He then added egg and salt to a large bowl, and whisked it together until it twirled into peaks. Next he slowly added in the sugar, and then the vanilla, whisking steadily until his mixture was a beautiful, glossy white. When he was finished, Bilbo took the cake out and gathered up his piping bag, removing the meringue from the bowl and into position. Going from the bottom to the top, he carefully created flower-like shapes, covering the entire cake with white topping. When he had finished, he put the cake back into the cold box and let it sit.

On the day that Bilbo was to present his cake to Thorin, he sternly requested that Thorin make a point of going to dinner that night. Flima happened to let slip to Kili about Thorin's cake, and he promptly went off to invite the entire company to dinner, so that they too could witness the unveiling of the secret dessert. Bilbo didn't usually mind an audience, but he felt oddly nervous about presenting this particular gift. Or...nervous about who it was for and whether or not he would like it, to be precise.

Just as dinner was ending, Bilbo whipped up the sauce and popped the cake into the oven to brown a little. The sauce consisted of cream, chocolate, syrup, and rum, and gave off a lovely scent as it heated. He poured the sauce into a serving dish and put aside a cup of rum, along with his tinder box. By then the cake was out and ready to serve immediately, and Bilbo checked to make sure it wasn't melted and took a deep breath. He walked into the dining room, and once the Company saw him they oohed and awed over the cake.

Bilbo placed it in front of Thorin, his expression anxious and hopeful, and his husband looked up at him with soft, affectionate eyes. "What have you made me, Bilbo?" he said softly.  

"A c-cake," Bilbo stuttered humiliatingly. Thorin always did this to him. "A cake," he repeated firmly. "But there's more."

He took up his tinderbox and struck it, igniting the warm cup of rum. Thorin's eyebrows rose in shock, and Kili shouted excitedly. Bilbo poured the rum over the cake, which was soon covered in beautiful blue flames.

The company cheered, and Thorin laughed, and Bilbo, reassured, set about serving Thorin his very special cake.

The first bite was met with pleased noises, but Bilbo's eyes were on Thorin, who seemed to be enjoying his dessert quite a lot.

But.

It was only quite a lot.

"I love it," Thorin told him, holding onto his hand tightly. "You are a hobbit of many talents."

"Yes," said Bilbo, somewhat distractedly. He sat very close to Thorin for the rest of the night, watching his expression carefully. Thorin caught him looking a few times, and Bilbo was soundly kissed each time it happened.

Yet even his husband's soft and steadfast affection for him could not settle his turning stomach. For all that Thorin had enjoyed his dessert, it became apparent to Bilbo that he had, for the first time, gotten it wrong. For Thorin may have indeed loved Bilbo's cake, but...

...it wasn't his favorite.

-------

In the days after he presented the 'fire cake' (as the dwarrow were calling it), Bilbo took a break from baking. Flima was the first to notice his depressed mood, and persuaded him to accompany her on a walk outside the mountain. She claimed that he needed to be away from the kitchens for a while, and Bilbo did admittedly feel much better once out in the open air. It also took some convincing, but Bilbo eventually told her what was troubling him.

"But how could you tell it wasn't his favorite?" she asked when she'd heard everything.

Bilbo shrugged. "The same way I could tell that yours was chocolate ganache."

Flima hummed thoughtfully. "Well, couldn't you try again? I know it's...not what you wanted, and that you hobbits have a thing about food, but the King will enjoy anything you give him, you know. I think he just enjoys you in general."

"Don't tease," Bilbo grinned, but he sobered quickly. "I know he loves me. I know he'd love anything I put in front of him. But I feel like I missed something about him...that I don't know him as well as I thought I did. And I do feel hurt that he didn't like my gift as much as I wanted him to, however stupid that sounds."

He shook his head self-deprecatingly, casting her a fleeting, anxious glance. "I know it seems silly to a dwarf, Flima, but for hobbits.... Let's just say that if we weren't already married, my failure to pick the right dessert, well...it would be seen as a sign that we weren't meant to be together."

Flima was quiet for a moment, and Bilbo cast his eyes down at his feet.

Finally, she took a breath and said, "what a load of pig shit."

Bilbo's head popped up. "Sorry?"

"Come on, let's go back," she said, pushing him toward the mountain.

"B-but Flima!"

"No buts." She turned and pointed at him crossly. "You're going to bake him every dessert you know until he makes that face you're looking for, and when you see it I really hope you'll realize that it was there all along. But I won't hold my breath. Now let's go."

Bilbo let himself be pushed along, all the while considering Flima's words. He felt a new determination spread through him, and decided that he would overcome this setback and guess Thorin's favorite dessert correctly, and then he would succeed in making his husband happy... he would.

-------

Bilbo started with his second choice: the Banoffee pie. Bananas, toffee, nuts, cinnamon, and a side of vanilla ice cream. How could he go wrong?

"This is lovely, dearest, what is it?"

Failed again.

Bilbo stubbornly pressed on, this time making Thorin a gateau with chocolate, cherries, and a plethora of whipped cream.

"You're not going to finish it?" Bilbo asked, appalled.

"I'm just so full," said Thorin, patting his stomach. "I couldn't eat another bite."

Flima had barely kept him from crying his little heart out in the sweet smelling safety of the kitchens. But despite his third failure (third!) Bilbo decided not to give up just yet. He brought out his mental cookbook and buckled down, and every night Thorin was presented with something new.

Custard cream with a caramelized hard shell with berries and powdered sugar on top? No. Chocolate hazelnut crepe cake with raspberry sauce? Nope. Lemon cream sponge cake? Spiced citrus bundt? Apple pie? A trifle?! Nope. Sorry. Not having it. Wrong.

At his wit's end, Bilbo began to think that Thorin just didn't have a favorite dessert. Perhaps he was like Bifur, and preferred the savory over the sweet? Yet those meals failed to inspire as well, and after a while not even Flima's pep talks were working to keep him motivated. Bilbo fell into a sort of funk then, though he tried hard not to let it show.

Thorin noticed anyway, of course.

In the warm firelight of their rooms, Bilbo was slouched in his reading chair with an open book on his blanket-covered legs. He was not reading though; instead he sat deep in thought and stared into space. Thorin came in from the washroom, his braids out of their clasps and his long hair tumbling free. He stood in the doorway and simply stared at Bilbo.

"What?" Bilbo asked with a shy smile.

Thorin's expression, in that moment, was both fond and utterly content. He walked over to Bilbo and grabbed his hand, pulling him up without a word. Thorin lead them over to the long sofa and tucked them into a corner. He took the blanket Bilbo had dragged behind him and gently covered their legs. He put his arm around Bilbo, who rested his head on Thorin's chest with a sigh.

"What's wrong, my hobbit?" Thorin asked him softly. "Have I made you unhappy?"

Thorin already knew the answer to that question, and Bilbo firmly nudged him with his head as punishment. "Never," he denied. "I'm only being silly."

"You're never silly," Thorin retorted, managing to keep a straight face.

Bilbo smiled, listening to the rumbling of his husband's voice deep inside his chest. "I do love you," he announced. "And I am happy enough to be near you. I love you stupidly."

"Yes?"

"Yes." Bilbo shifted, and sighed again. "Tell me something. Tell me something secret about yourself, that no one else knows."

Thorin raised his eyebrows, but complied. "When I was little, I stole from my father."

Surprised, Bilbo looked up at him. "What did you take?"

"He owned a collection of fine gems, mined from Khazad Dum before it fell into darkness. There was one piece in particular that I was attracted to; an emerald, about the size of our acorn." Thorin gestured to the acorn Bilbo had taken from Beorn's garden. It sat on their mantelpiece, unplanted, for now.

"I wanted that emerald, Bilbo. At the time I even thought I wanted it more than anything. So I snuck into his rooms one day and took it. I stashed it in my dolek, with the other treasures I had gathered as a child, and I reasoned that my father would not notice. That he had many gems already, and so he would not care."

"Dolek?"

"Dolek, yes. Udolek – for a gift. Dwarrow collect stones and gems for their future lovers and friends, which are gifted when they wish to show interest in one another. It is an old custom which is now dying out. But when I was young, the dolek was very important, and what you chose to put inside of it was said to symbolize your future love."

Bilbo blinked a bit, rubbing his cheek against Thorin shirt. He was warm. "What happened to the emerald?"

"It was lost when the dragon came."

"Hmm."

They lay for a time, silent, pressed together and pensive – until Thorin suddenly inhaled somewhat anxiously.

"I wouldn't have given you that emerald, Bilbo," he said, face scrunched in a solemn frown. "It may have been meant for my spouse of the future, but you were not meant for it. You deserve more than a stolen relic of my father, or any simple gem or pretty bauble that perhaps would suit so many others. It would have been an insult to give it to you."

"Thorin...."

He stared at Bilbo tenderly. "But I cannot deny that I wish I had had a proper dolek for you, to show how much I wanted you. How much I still want you for all of my days."

Bilbo shook his head. "You're enough, Thorin. I don't need need anything else."

And that was when Bilbo understood what Flima was trying to say. How stupid he felt! And how relieved.... He turned his head and laughed into his husband's chest.

"What is so funny?" Thorin wanted to know, his lips twitching.

"Shall I tell you something you don't know about me?"

Thorin chuckled and humored him. "Go on, then."

He licked his lips, thinking for a moment of how to express what he wanted to say. "I am terribly stupid," he finally blurted, smiling. "I was all up in arms about you not having a favorite dessert, about my not guessing right the first time, that for a moment I doubted that we were meant for each other. Can you believe that? It's completely ridiculous!"

Thorin was frowning. "What do you mean I don't have a favorite dessert?"

Bilbo's smile wilted a bit. "So you do? Oh no, and I still haven't got it right?"

"Bilbo." Thorin sat up now. "That delicious fire cake was not the first time I ate your baking."

"What?" he squeaked, siting up too. "When was this?"

Thorin raised a shoulder. "I don't know, precisely. One day I was looking for you, and I found you in the kitchens. But you were baking, so I didn't want to bother you."

Bilbo recalled that in the early days when he'd been in the kitchens with Flima, there had been a number of dwarrow wandering in and out, and that many of them had taken bits of whatever he was making at the time.  

"My word," he gasped, running a hand through his curly hair. "But what did you eat?"

"My favorite," Thorin said, a slow smile creeping onto his face. "Cinnamon rolls."

Bilbo gaped. "Cinnamon rolls."

"Yes," his husband grinned. "Cinnamon rolls."

Having no idea what to say to that, or if he should laugh or cry, Bilbo did a bit of both and tumbled into Thorin's chest. "So I did get it right."

"Yes, you did, beloved."

"I just didn't see it. Oh, drat."

Thorin ran his hands across Bilbo's cheeks, holding his head gently. "You can always make it for me again," he pointed out. "I'm not going anywhere, after all."

"That's true," Bilbo said. His husband kissed him, soft and sweet.

"You're enough too, Bilbo." Another sugared kiss on the side of his mouth. "You're all I could ever want."

"More than cinnamon rolls?" Bilbo whispered.

Thorin laughed a little, and tenderly kissed his forehead. "Much more than."

[itsjessicaisreal]

Learn How These Brands Are Using AI to Crank Up Their Landing Page Conversions

We want to support you as much as we can during this uncertain time. Check out the COVID-19 Small Business Care Package for a roundup of useful resources—including tech discounts, government subsidies, and marketing tips to help lessen the impact on your business.

Let’s face it: a lot of landing page optimization is guesswork.

Educated guesswork, sure. You know the best practices—copy and design techniques that, by and large, get more of your visitors to convert. And you know your customers. Looking at the results of past campaigns, you’ve got a pretty good sense of what will (and won’t) resonate with your audience. Like a hardboiled detective who’s about to accuse the police chief of having been dirty from the start, you’ve “got a hunch.”

That’s supposed to be where A/B testing comes in, right? You can create landing page variants and see which performs better to validate your hunches. The problem is A/B testing takes an either-or approach to optimization, aiming to find the one page that’ll appeal to as many people as possible. Not all visitors are the same, though, and even your highest-converting variant won’t click for everyone.

That means a lot of your hunches—optimizations that are probably great for some of your visitors, but not enough of ’em—get canned.

We first revealed our AI-powered conversion tool Smart Traffic at CTAConf 2019, where Unbounce co-founder Carl Schmidt made the case for using artificial intelligence to direct visitors to the landing page that’s most likely to convert. That means marketers can follow all of their hunches, using them to create relevant variants for different types of visitors. Rather than either-or, Smart Traffic is either-and… and-and-and-and.

Check out Carl’s full talk (and all the other recordings from CTAConf 2019) here.

We’ve already told you how Smart Traffic works. Now that hundreds of Unbounce customers are using it, we want to tell you about some of the marketers already optimizing their landing pages with AI.

ConstructConnect: Experimenting with Colors & Imagery

Meet ConstructConnect, a project management tool for contractors and manufacturers that helps them win more bids and grow their businesses. ConstructConnect has only been using Unbounce for a few months, and Smart Traffic was one of the big reasons they gave the platform a go.

We checked in with Tim LaBarge, Marketing Director of Campaigns, and Steven Keyser, ConstructConnect’s Inbound Marketing Director, to see how Smart Traffic is working for them. As Steven explains, they were both eager to take the feature for a spin:

Smart Traffic made sense from the first minute we heard about it. And that’s really why we bought into Unbounce. If you looked at our account, you’d go, “Gosh, these guys hardly put anything in here for four or five months.” That’s because we were waiting for Smart Traffic.

ConstructConnect had only built a handful of landing pages with Unbounce before using Smart Traffic. Tim was running an email promo that pointed recipients at the page below, prompting them to sign up for a demo:

This is one of the original pages ConstructConnect created pre-Smart Traffic. (Click to see the whole thing.)

When Smart Traffic launched, this page was converting an impressive 17% of all visitors. Tim was eager to see if Unbounce’s AI could push that number even higher, so he got working on some variants. And since the page had already been running for a little while, he could compare the results to his existing conversion rate.

For the first variant, Tim experimented with the page imagery. He replaced the background image and swapped the color overlay from blue to orange.

I wanted to test whether color and imagery have any effect on how captivating or engaging the page is. Everything else is the same as the original.

It didn’t take more than a couple minutes to whip up this page variant with new visuals. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Next, Tim wanted to try different messaging. He created two more variants—one in each of the new visuals—and changed the page headline from a statement (“Get Access to Private Projects in Your Area”) to a question (“How Many Private Projects Are Bidding in Your Area?”).

Creating variants for Smart Traffic doesn’t have to be big work—it can just be little tweaks. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Then he turned on Smart Traffic.

It wasn’t long (only about 50 visits) before Smart Traffic started “learning” and ConstructConnect got results. Two of the three variants immediately started converting between 23 and 24%—about 7% higher than before. The third variant slightly underperformed at 14%, so Smart Traffic started routing more visitors to the higher-converting pages automatically.

Not only that, but optimized traffic meant that the original page started seeing more conversions, too.

That was really cool to see. It wasn’t just the variants contributing to a higher conversion rate. Smart Traffic actually helped increase the conversion rate of the control page as well.

One month later, Smart Traffic had created an overall conversion rate lift of more than 35%. That’s translated into a ton of valuable leads for the ConstructConnect crew.

Smart Traffic added about 150 form fills in this [demo] campaign. We’ve got some duplicates, but that’s probably 125 more leads going through to our sales team. That’s significant.

Smart Traffic has continued to boost this page’s conversion rate since we spoke with ConstructConnect.

Now that they’ve had a chance to take Smart Traffic for a spin, Tim and Steven plan to use it in all of their campaigns going forward. That includes rebuilding a number of high-traffic landing pages (we’re talkin’ thousands of visitors) in Unbounce so they can take advantage of the feature.

To have an effective A/B test, you need to go slow—just crazy small steps. With Smart Traffic, you can just create a totally different page.

That means ConstructConnect can optimize their pages faster than ever. And since Smart Traffic is constantly re-assessing which visitors are converting where, there’s no need to pick a champion.

Dooly: Using Variants to Target Different Benefits

Next up is Dooly, a CRM automation tool for Salesforce. Though it’s only been around a few years, Dooly has quickly become a must-have for tons of sales teams around the world.

Mark Jung, Dooly’s Head of Marketing, explained the tool’s popularity:

Dooly makes updating Salesforce fast and easy, saving reps up to 20 hours of CRM busy work every month so that they can sell smarter.

Lots of Dooly users discover the tool on their own, then refer it to coworkers at their company. One user becomes two, then four. Before long, the whole sales team is using it.

The viral nature of the product inspired Dooly to create its referral program. It’s super simple: the company assigns each user a unique referral link that they can share with their network. When someone signs up for Dooly using that link (or within 90 days of being cookied), the referrer gets 20% of the revenue—forever, uncapped.

Mark and his team created the promo campaign for the referral program in Unbounce. The plan was to send an email to their customer list, directing them to a landing page that explained how the program worked. But the question came: what messaging would best convince users to participate?

Mark found there were two main motivations for referrals. One was the financial incentive, obviously. (Speaking of which, wanna try Dooly? Lemme grab my referral link.) The second was about helping other people escape the time-suck of plugging data into their CRM.

While an A/B test of the landing page would’ve let Mark figure out which messaging generally resonated better with his whole audience, he knew that highlighting the right incentive for different visitors would help him convert better overall. So, he decided to try Smart Traffic.

For me, Smart Traffic made sense out of the gate. I’ve used Unbounce for years, so I’m used to building page variants, running tests. It’s kind of a natural stepping stone.

Mark built two page variants, with the messaging of each targeting a particular motivation.

One was mostly about the financial benefit: “Refer, earn 20%.” But we’ve also seen a lot of positive mentions in the community about the emotional benefit of Dooly—the pain it saves them every day.

The messaging in the second variant was more about helping your friends stop their CRM suffering. That’s translated really well for our audience.

This variant page for the Dooly referral program is all about that dolla. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Just by swapping the headers, Dooly emphasizes the opportunity to help friends. (Click to see the whole thing.)

When Mark turned on Smart Traffic, he saw results almost immediately.

We had about a 30% lift in conversion rate from Smart Traffic on day one. We’ve also had a ton of conversions that didn’t necessarily convert on the Unbounce page but went to the referrals page in the product. So we’re looking at close to 45 or 50% conversion rate on the campaign.

Of the roughly 100 visitors who hit the landing page on the first day, almost 30 clicked through to get their referral code. Compared with the results Mark would’ve had in a standard split test, about 5 of those conversions are attributable to Smart Traffic.

Since then, Smart Traffic has continued to provide an overall lift of more than 10%. And remember: the virality of the tool means any single new user could win Dooly an entire organization.

One example of the sorta response Dooly’s referral program has gotten on social.

Get Better Results Faster with AI-Powered Optimization

Smart Traffic isn’t a replacement for A/B testing. Instead, think of it as another tool in your arsenal. But when you want to deliver the best conversion experience for each visitor (rather than your average visitor), there’s really no comparison.

With Smart Traffic, I can test more things. Just the speed at which the tool is able to start adapting and sending people to different pages, and how quickly you see real gains—more form fills, more leads going through to sales—is impressive.

Start converting on more of your hunches. Build some landing page variants (using these tips), turn on Smart Traffic, and let AI do the rest.

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/marketing-ai/converting-with-smart-traffic-constructconnect-dooly/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[kennethmontiveros]

Learn How These Brands Are Using AI to Crank Up Their Landing Page Conversions

We want to support you as much as we can during this uncertain time. Check out the COVID-19 Small Business Care Package for a roundup of useful resources—including tech discounts, government subsidies, and marketing tips to help lessen the impact on your business.

Let’s face it: a lot of landing page optimization is guesswork.

Educated guesswork, sure. You know the best practices—copy and design techniques that, by and large, get more of your visitors to convert. And you know your customers. Looking at the results of past campaigns, you’ve got a pretty good sense of what will (and won’t) resonate with your audience. Like a hardboiled detective who’s about to accuse the police chief of having been dirty from the start, you’ve “got a hunch.”

That’s supposed to be where A/B testing comes in, right? You can create landing page variants and see which performs better to validate your hunches. The problem is A/B testing takes an either-or approach to optimization, aiming to find the one page that’ll appeal to as many people as possible. Not all visitors are the same, though, and even your highest-converting variant won’t click for everyone.

That means a lot of your hunches—optimizations that are probably great for some of your visitors, but not enough of ’em—get canned.

We first revealed our AI-powered conversion tool Smart Traffic at CTAConf 2019, where Unbounce co-founder Carl Schmidt made the case for using artificial intelligence to direct visitors to the landing page that’s most likely to convert. That means marketers can follow all of their hunches, using them to create relevant variants for different types of visitors. Rather than either-or, Smart Traffic is either-and… and-and-and-and.

Check out Carl’s full talk (and all the other recordings from CTAConf 2019) here.

We’ve already told you how Smart Traffic works. Now that hundreds of Unbounce customers are using it, we want to tell you about some of the marketers already optimizing their landing pages with AI.

ConstructConnect: Experimenting with Colors & Imagery

Meet ConstructConnect, a project management tool for contractors and manufacturers that helps them win more bids and grow their businesses. ConstructConnect has only been using Unbounce for a few months, and Smart Traffic was one of the big reasons they gave the platform a go.

We checked in with Tim LaBarge, Marketing Director of Campaigns, and Steven Keyser, ConstructConnect’s Inbound Marketing Director, to see how Smart Traffic is working for them. As Steven explains, they were both eager to take the feature for a spin:

Smart Traffic made sense from the first minute we heard about it. And that’s really why we bought into Unbounce. If you looked at our account, you’d go, “Gosh, these guys hardly put anything in here for four or five months.” That’s because we were waiting for Smart Traffic.

ConstructConnect had only built a handful of landing pages with Unbounce before using Smart Traffic. Tim was running an email promo that pointed recipients at the page below, prompting them to sign up for a demo:

This is one of the original pages ConstructConnect created pre-Smart Traffic. (Click to see the whole thing.)

When Smart Traffic launched, this page was converting an impressive 17% of all visitors. Tim was eager to see if Unbounce’s AI could push that number even higher, so he got working on some variants. And since the page had already been running for a little while, he could compare the results to his existing conversion rate.

For the first variant, Tim experimented with the page imagery. He replaced the background image and swapped the color overlay from blue to orange.

I wanted to test whether color and imagery have any effect on how captivating or engaging the page is. Everything else is the same as the original.

It didn’t take more than a couple minutes to whip up this page variant with new visuals. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Next, Tim wanted to try different messaging. He created two more variants—one in each of the new visuals—and changed the page headline from a statement (“Get Access to Private Projects in Your Area”) to a question (“How Many Private Projects Are Bidding in Your Area?”).

Creating variants for Smart Traffic doesn’t have to be big work—it can just be little tweaks. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Then he turned on Smart Traffic.

It wasn’t long (only about 50 visits) before Smart Traffic started “learning” and ConstructConnect got results. Two of the three variants immediately started converting between 23 and 24%—about 7% higher than before. The third variant slightly underperformed at 14%, so Smart Traffic started routing more visitors to the higher-converting pages automatically.

Not only that, but optimized traffic meant that the original page started seeing more conversions, too.

That was really cool to see. It wasn’t just the variants contributing to a higher conversion rate. Smart Traffic actually helped increase the conversion rate of the control page as well.

One month later, Smart Traffic had created an overall conversion rate lift of more than 35%. That’s translated into a ton of valuable leads for the ConstructConnect crew.

Smart Traffic added about 150 form fills in this [demo] campaign. We’ve got some duplicates, but that’s probably 125 more leads going through to our sales team. That’s significant.

Smart Traffic has continued to boost this page’s conversion rate since we spoke with ConstructConnect.

Now that they’ve had a chance to take Smart Traffic for a spin, Tim and Steven plan to use it in all of their campaigns going forward. That includes rebuilding a number of high-traffic landing pages (we’re talkin’ thousands of visitors) in Unbounce so they can take advantage of the feature.

To have an effective A/B test, you need to go slow—just crazy small steps. With Smart Traffic, you can just create a totally different page.

That means ConstructConnect can optimize their pages faster than ever. And since Smart Traffic is constantly re-assessing which visitors are converting where, there’s no need to pick a champion.

Dooly: Using Variants to Target Different Benefits

Next up is Dooly, a CRM automation tool for Salesforce. Though it’s only been around a few years, Dooly has quickly become a must-have for tons of sales teams around the world.

Mark Jung, Dooly’s Head of Marketing, explained the tool’s popularity:

Dooly makes updating Salesforce fast and easy, saving reps up to 20 hours of CRM busy work every month so that they can sell smarter.

Lots of Dooly users discover the tool on their own, then refer it to coworkers at their company. One user becomes two, then four. Before long, the whole sales team is using it.

The viral nature of the product inspired Dooly to create its referral program. It’s super simple: the company assigns each user a unique referral link that they can share with their network. When someone signs up for Dooly using that link (or within 90 days of being cookied), the referrer gets 20% of the revenue—forever, uncapped.

Mark and his team created the promo campaign for the referral program in Unbounce. The plan was to send an email to their customer list, directing them to a landing page that explained how the program worked. But the question came: what messaging would best convince users to participate?

Mark found there were two main motivations for referrals. One was the financial incentive, obviously. (Speaking of which, wanna try Dooly? Lemme grab my referral link.) The second was about helping other people escape the time-suck of plugging data into their CRM.

While an A/B test of the landing page would’ve let Mark figure out which messaging generally resonated better with his whole audience, he knew that highlighting the right incentive for different visitors would help him convert better overall. So, he decided to try Smart Traffic.

For me, Smart Traffic made sense out of the gate. I’ve used Unbounce for years, so I’m used to building page variants, running tests. It’s kind of a natural stepping stone.

Mark built two page variants, with the messaging of each targeting a particular motivation.

One was mostly about the financial benefit: “Refer, earn 20%.” But we’ve also seen a lot of positive mentions in the community about the emotional benefit of Dooly—the pain it saves them every day.

The messaging in the second variant was more about helping your friends stop their CRM suffering. That’s translated really well for our audience.

This variant page for the Dooly referral program is all about that dolla. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Just by swapping the headers, Dooly emphasizes the opportunity to help friends. (Click to see the whole thing.)

When Mark turned on Smart Traffic, he saw results almost immediately.

We had about a 30% lift in conversion rate from Smart Traffic on day one. We’ve also had a ton of conversions that didn’t necessarily convert on the Unbounce page but went to the referrals page in the product. So we’re looking at close to 45 or 50% conversion rate on the campaign.

Of the roughly 100 visitors who hit the landing page on the first day, almost 30 clicked through to get their referral code. Compared with the results Mark would’ve had in a standard split test, about 5 of those conversions are attributable to Smart Traffic.

Since then, Smart Traffic has continued to provide an overall lift of more than 10%. And remember: the virality of the tool means any single new user could win Dooly an entire organization.

One example of the sorta response Dooly’s referral program has gotten on social.

Get Better Results Faster with AI-Powered Optimization

Smart Traffic isn’t a replacement for A/B testing. Instead, think of it as another tool in your arsenal. But when you want to deliver the best conversion experience for each visitor (rather than your average visitor), there’s really no comparison.

With Smart Traffic, I can test more things. Just the speed at which the tool is able to start adapting and sending people to different pages, and how quickly you see real gains—more form fills, more leads going through to sales—is impressive.

Start converting on more of your hunches. Build some landing page variants (using these tips), turn on Smart Traffic, and let AI do the rest.

Learn How These Brands Are Using AI to Crank Up Their Landing Page Conversions published first on http://nickpontemktg.blogspot.com/

[samanthasmeyers]

Learn How These Brands Are Using AI to Crank Up Their Landing Page Conversions

We want to support you as much as we can during this uncertain time. Check out the COVID-19 Small Business Care Package for a roundup of useful resources—including tech discounts, government subsidies, and marketing tips to help lessen the impact on your business.

Let’s face it: a lot of landing page optimization is guesswork.

Educated guesswork, sure. You know the best practices—copy and design techniques that, by and large, get more of your visitors to convert. And you know your customers. Looking at the results of past campaigns, you’ve got a pretty good sense of what will (and won’t) resonate with your audience. Like a hardboiled detective who’s about to accuse the police chief of having been dirty from the start, you’ve “got a hunch.”

That’s supposed to be where A/B testing comes in, right? You can create landing page variants and see which performs better to validate your hunches. The problem is A/B testing takes an either-or approach to optimization, aiming to find the one page that’ll appeal to as many people as possible. Not all visitors are the same, though, and even your highest-converting variant won’t click for everyone.

That means a lot of your hunches—optimizations that are probably great for some of your visitors, but not enough of ’em—get canned.

We first revealed our AI-powered conversion tool Smart Traffic at CTAConf 2019, where Unbounce co-founder Carl Schmidt made the case for using artificial intelligence to direct visitors to the landing page that’s most likely to convert. That means marketers can follow all of their hunches, using them to create relevant variants for different types of visitors. Rather than either-or, Smart Traffic is either-and… and-and-and-and.

Check out Carl’s full talk (and all the other recordings from CTAConf 2019) here.

We’ve already told you how Smart Traffic works. Now that hundreds of Unbounce customers are using it, we want to tell you about some of the marketers already optimizing their landing pages with AI.

ConstructConnect: Experimenting with Colors & Imagery

Meet ConstructConnect, a project management tool for contractors and manufacturers that helps them win more bids and grow their businesses. ConstructConnect has only been using Unbounce for a few months, and Smart Traffic was one of the big reasons they gave the platform a go.

We checked in with Tim LaBarge, Marketing Director of Campaigns, and Steven Keyser, ConstructConnect’s Inbound Marketing Director, to see how Smart Traffic is working for them. As Steven explains, they were both eager to take the feature for a spin:

Smart Traffic made sense from the first minute we heard about it. And that’s really why we bought into Unbounce. If you looked at our account, you’d go, “Gosh, these guys hardly put anything in here for four or five months.” That’s because we were waiting for Smart Traffic.

ConstructConnect had only built a handful of landing pages with Unbounce before using Smart Traffic. Tim was running an email promo that pointed recipients at the page below, prompting them to sign up for a demo:

This is one of the original pages ConstructConnect created pre-Smart Traffic. (Click to see the whole thing.)

When Smart Traffic launched, this page was converting an impressive 17% of all visitors. Tim was eager to see if Unbounce’s AI could push that number even higher, so he got working on some variants. And since the page had already been running for a little while, he could compare the results to his existing conversion rate.

For the first variant, Tim experimented with the page imagery. He replaced the background image and swapped the color overlay from blue to orange.

I wanted to test whether color and imagery have any effect on how captivating or engaging the page is. Everything else is the same as the original.

It didn’t take more than a couple minutes to whip up this page variant with new visuals. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Next, Tim wanted to try different messaging. He created two more variants—one in each of the new visuals—and changed the page headline from a statement (“Get Access to Private Projects in Your Area”) to a question (“How Many Private Projects Are Bidding in Your Area?”).

Creating variants for Smart Traffic doesn’t have to be big work—it can just be little tweaks. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Then he turned on Smart Traffic.

It wasn’t long (only about 50 visits) before Smart Traffic started “learning” and ConstructConnect got results. Two of the three variants immediately started converting between 23 and 24%—about 7% higher than before. The third variant slightly underperformed at 14%, so Smart Traffic started routing more visitors to the higher-converting pages automatically.

Not only that, but optimized traffic meant that the original page started seeing more conversions, too.

That was really cool to see. It wasn’t just the variants contributing to a higher conversion rate. Smart Traffic actually helped increase the conversion rate of the control page as well.

One month later, Smart Traffic had created an overall conversion rate lift of more than 35%. That’s translated into a ton of valuable leads for the ConstructConnect crew.

Smart Traffic added about 150 form fills in this [demo] campaign. We’ve got some duplicates, but that’s probably 125 more leads going through to our sales team. That’s significant.

Smart Traffic has continued to boost this page’s conversion rate since we spoke with ConstructConnect.

Now that they’ve had a chance to take Smart Traffic for a spin, Tim and Steven plan to use it in all of their campaigns going forward. That includes rebuilding a number of high-traffic landing pages (we’re talkin’ thousands of visitors) in Unbounce so they can take advantage of the feature.

To have an effective A/B test, you need to go slow—just crazy small steps. With Smart Traffic, you can just create a totally different page.

That means ConstructConnect can optimize their pages faster than ever. And since Smart Traffic is constantly re-assessing which visitors are converting where, there’s no need to pick a champion.

Dooly: Using Variants to Target Different Benefits

Next up is Dooly, a CRM automation tool for Salesforce. Though it’s only been around a few years, Dooly has quickly become a must-have for tons of sales teams around the world.

Mark Jung, Dooly’s Head of Marketing, explained the tool’s popularity:

Dooly makes updating Salesforce fast and easy, saving reps up to 20 hours of CRM busy work every month so that they can sell smarter.

Lots of Dooly users discover the tool on their own, then refer it to coworkers at their company. One user becomes two, then four. Before long, the whole sales team is using it.

The viral nature of the product inspired Dooly to create its referral program. It’s super simple: the company assigns each user a unique referral link that they can share with their network. When someone signs up for Dooly using that link (or within 90 days of being cookied), the referrer gets 20% of the revenue—forever, uncapped.

Mark and his team created the promo campaign for the referral program in Unbounce. The plan was to send an email to their customer list, directing them to a landing page that explained how the program worked. But the question came: what messaging would best convince users to participate?

Mark found there were two main motivations for referrals. One was the financial incentive, obviously. (Speaking of which, wanna try Dooly? Lemme grab my referral link.) The second was about helping other people escape the time-suck of plugging data into their CRM.

While an A/B test of the landing page would’ve let Mark figure out which messaging generally resonated better with his whole audience, he knew that highlighting the right incentive for different visitors would help him convert better overall. So, he decided to try Smart Traffic.

For me, Smart Traffic made sense out of the gate. I’ve used Unbounce for years, so I’m used to building page variants, running tests. It’s kind of a natural stepping stone.

Mark built two page variants, with the messaging of each targeting a particular motivation.

One was mostly about the financial benefit: “Refer, earn 20%.” But we’ve also seen a lot of positive mentions in the community about the emotional benefit of Dooly—the pain it saves them every day.

The messaging in the second variant was more about helping your friends stop their CRM suffering. That’s translated really well for our audience.

This variant page for the Dooly referral program is all about that dolla. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Just by swapping the headers, Dooly emphasizes the opportunity to help friends. (Click to see the whole thing.)

When Mark turned on Smart Traffic, he saw results almost immediately.

We had about a 30% lift in conversion rate from Smart Traffic on day one. We’ve also had a ton of conversions that didn’t necessarily convert on the Unbounce page but went to the referrals page in the product. So we’re looking at close to 45 or 50% conversion rate on the campaign.

Of the roughly 100 visitors who hit the landing page on the first day, almost 30 clicked through to get their referral code. Compared with the results Mark would’ve had in a standard split test, about 5 of those conversions are attributable to Smart Traffic.

Since then, Smart Traffic has continued to provide an overall lift of more than 10%. And remember: the virality of the tool means any single new user could win Dooly an entire organization.

One example of the sorta response Dooly’s referral program has gotten on social.

Get Better Results Faster with AI-Powered Optimization

Smart Traffic isn’t a replacement for A/B testing. Instead, think of it as another tool in your arsenal. But when you want to deliver the best conversion experience for each visitor (rather than your average visitor), there’s really no comparison.

With Smart Traffic, I can test more things. Just the speed at which the tool is able to start adapting and sending people to different pages, and how quickly you see real gains—more form fills, more leads going through to sales—is impressive.

Start converting on more of your hunches. Build some landing page variants (using these tips), turn on Smart Traffic, and let AI do the rest.

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/marketing-ai/converting-with-smart-traffic-constructconnect-dooly/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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Learn How These Brands Are Using AI to Crank Up Their Landing Page Conversions

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Let’s face it: a lot of landing page optimization is guesswork.

Educated guesswork, sure. You know the best practices—copy and design techniques that, by and large, get more of your visitors to convert. And you know your customers. Looking at the results of past campaigns, you’ve got a pretty good sense of what will (and won’t) resonate with your audience. Like a hardboiled detective who’s about to accuse the police chief of having been dirty from the start, you’ve “got a hunch.”

That’s supposed to be where A/B testing comes in, right? You can create landing page variants and see which performs better to validate your hunches. The problem is A/B testing takes an either-or approach to optimization, aiming to find the one page that’ll appeal to as many people as possible. Not all visitors are the same, though, and even your highest-converting variant won’t click for everyone.

That means a lot of your hunches—optimizations that are probably great for some of your visitors, but not enough of ’em—get canned.

We first revealed our AI-powered conversion tool Smart Traffic at CTAConf 2019, where Unbounce co-founder Carl Schmidt made the case for using artificial intelligence to direct visitors to the landing page that’s most likely to convert. That means marketers can follow all of their hunches, using them to create relevant variants for different types of visitors. Rather than either-or, Smart Traffic is either-and… and-and-and-and.

Check out Carl’s full talk (and all the other recordings from CTAConf 2019) here.

We’ve already told you how Smart Traffic works. Now that hundreds of Unbounce customers are using it, we want to tell you about some of the marketers already optimizing their landing pages with AI.

ConstructConnect: Experimenting with Colors & Imagery

Meet ConstructConnect, a project management tool for contractors and manufacturers that helps them win more bids and grow their businesses. ConstructConnect has only been using Unbounce for a few months, and Smart Traffic was one of the big reasons they gave the platform a go.

We checked in with Tim LaBarge, Marketing Director of Campaigns, and Steven Keyser, ConstructConnect’s Inbound Marketing Director, to see how Smart Traffic is working for them. As Steven explains, they were both eager to take the feature for a spin:

Smart Traffic made sense from the first minute we heard about it. And that’s really why we bought into Unbounce. If you looked at our account, you’d go, “Gosh, these guys hardly put anything in here for four or five months.” That’s because we were waiting for Smart Traffic.

ConstructConnect had only built a handful of landing pages with Unbounce before using Smart Traffic. Tim was running an email promo that pointed recipients at the page below, prompting them to sign up for a demo:

This is one of the original pages ConstructConnect created pre-Smart Traffic. (Click to see the whole thing.)

When Smart Traffic launched, this page was converting an impressive 17% of all visitors. Tim was eager to see if Unbounce’s AI could push that number even higher, so he got working on some variants. And since the page had already been running for a little while, he could compare the results to his existing conversion rate.

For the first variant, Tim experimented with the page imagery. He replaced the background image and swapped the color overlay from blue to orange.

I wanted to test whether color and imagery have any effect on how captivating or engaging the page is. Everything else is the same as the original.

It didn’t take more than a couple minutes to whip up this page variant with new visuals. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Next, Tim wanted to try different messaging. He created two more variants—one in each of the new visuals—and changed the page headline from a statement (“Get Access to Private Projects in Your Area”) to a question (“How Many Private Projects Are Bidding in Your Area?”).

Creating variants for Smart Traffic doesn’t have to be big work—it can just be little tweaks. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Then he turned on Smart Traffic.

It wasn’t long (only about 50 visits) before Smart Traffic started “learning” and ConstructConnect got results. Two of the three variants immediately started converting between 23 and 24%—about 7% higher than before. The third variant slightly underperformed at 14%, so Smart Traffic started routing more visitors to the higher-converting pages automatically.

Not only that, but optimized traffic meant that the original page started seeing more conversions, too.

That was really cool to see. It wasn’t just the variants contributing to a higher conversion rate. Smart Traffic actually helped increase the conversion rate of the control page as well.

One month later, Smart Traffic had created an overall conversion rate lift of more than 35%. That’s translated into a ton of valuable leads for the ConstructConnect crew.

Smart Traffic added about 150 form fills in this [demo] campaign. We’ve got some duplicates, but that’s probably 125 more leads going through to our sales team. That’s significant.

Smart Traffic has continued to boost this page’s conversion rate since we spoke with ConstructConnect.

Now that they’ve had a chance to take Smart Traffic for a spin, Tim and Steven plan to use it in all of their campaigns going forward. That includes rebuilding a number of high-traffic landing pages (we’re talkin’ thousands of visitors) in Unbounce so they can take advantage of the feature.

To have an effective A/B test, you need to go slow—just crazy small steps. With Smart Traffic, you can just create a totally different page.

That means ConstructConnect can optimize their pages faster than ever. And since Smart Traffic is constantly re-assessing which visitors are converting where, there’s no need to pick a champion.

Dooly: Using Variants to Target Different Benefits

Next up is Dooly, a CRM automation tool for Salesforce. Though it’s only been around a few years, Dooly has quickly become a must-have for tons of sales teams around the world.

Mark Jung, Dooly’s Head of Marketing, explained the tool’s popularity:

Dooly makes updating Salesforce fast and easy, saving reps up to 20 hours of CRM busy work every month so that they can sell smarter.

Lots of Dooly users discover the tool on their own, then refer it to coworkers at their company. One user becomes two, then four. Before long, the whole sales team is using it.

The viral nature of the product inspired Dooly to create its referral program. It’s super simple: the company assigns each user a unique referral link that they can share with their network. When someone signs up for Dooly using that link (or within 90 days of being cookied), the referrer gets 20% of the revenue—forever, uncapped.

Mark and his team created the promo campaign for the referral program in Unbounce. The plan was to send an email to their customer list, directing them to a landing page that explained how the program worked. But the question came: what messaging would best convince users to participate?

Mark found there were two main motivations for referrals. One was the financial incentive, obviously. (Speaking of which, wanna try Dooly? Lemme grab my referral link.) The second was about helping other people escape the time-suck of plugging data into their CRM.

While an A/B test of the landing page would’ve let Mark figure out which messaging generally resonated better with his whole audience, he knew that highlighting the right incentive for different visitors would help him convert better overall. So, he decided to try Smart Traffic.

For me, Smart Traffic made sense out of the gate. I’ve used Unbounce for years, so I’m used to building page variants, running tests. It’s kind of a natural stepping stone.

Mark built two page variants, with the messaging of each targeting a particular motivation.

One was mostly about the financial benefit: “Refer, earn 20%.” But we’ve also seen a lot of positive mentions in the community about the emotional benefit of Dooly—the pain it saves them every day.

The messaging in the second variant was more about helping your friends stop their CRM suffering. That’s translated really well for our audience.

This variant page for the Dooly referral program is all about that dolla. (Click to see the whole thing.)

Just by swapping the headers, Dooly emphasizes the opportunity to help friends. (Click to see the whole thing.)

When Mark turned on Smart Traffic, he saw results almost immediately.

We had about a 30% lift in conversion rate from Smart Traffic on day one. We’ve also had a ton of conversions that didn’t necessarily convert on the Unbounce page but went to the referrals page in the product. So we’re looking at close to 45 or 50% conversion rate on the campaign.

Of the roughly 100 visitors who hit the landing page on the first day, almost 30 clicked through to get their referral code. Compared with the results Mark would’ve had in a standard split test, about 5 of those conversions are attributable to Smart Traffic.

Since then, Smart Traffic has continued to provide an overall lift of more than 10%. And remember: the virality of the tool means any single new user could win Dooly an entire organization.

One example of the sorta response Dooly’s referral program has gotten on social.

Get Better Results Faster with AI-Powered Optimization

Smart Traffic isn’t a replacement for A/B testing. Instead, think of it as another tool in your arsenal. But when you want to deliver the best conversion experience for each visitor (rather than your average visitor), there’s really no comparison.

With Smart Traffic, I can test more things. Just the speed at which the tool is able to start adapting and sending people to different pages, and how quickly you see real gains—more form fills, more leads going through to sales—is impressive.

Start converting on more of your hunches. Build some landing page variants (using these tips), turn on Smart Traffic, and let AI do the rest.

Learn How These Brands Are Using AI to Crank Up Their Landing Page Conversions published first on https://nickpontemrktg.wordpress.com/