#set up for Our Heroes to dramatically and demonstratively knock over

[dyde21]

Overnight Trip to Stark Industries 3

Link to the first part HERE (I mean it’s a field trip fic so the set up is the same, but the first two parts are only on AO3 right now xD)

I know I’m new to the fandom, and mostly post over on AO3 but I think I’ll start sharing some more One-shots over here because I freaking adore Spideychelle. Also, anyone who does REALLY needs to check out @premiere-pro They have one of the best writing styles I’ve seen in ages, and they have a series called “super cuts” that retells Iron Man 2, Avengers, and Iron Man 3 currently with Spidey in them and it’s amazing. I’m gonna reread them soon.

Anyway:

XxXxXxXxX

The air was practically vibrating in the elevator as everyone wondered what the first stop of the tour would be. Someone had even turned to their tour guide Ashe in the elevator their half was in. “What is the itinerary for today?”

Ashe looked at them, owlish for a moment. “Did… did your teachers not explain it? I believe it was on the paperwork as well.” Peter heard her voice drop to a whisper. “Did I not explain it?”

The student looked a little sheepish. “There was a lot of paperwork…”

Nodding, Ashe recovered smoothly. “I totally get that. Working here often comes with loads of paperwork. So many NDA’s, it’s easy to lose track of things. I’ll explain once we get to the first stop, just so I don’t have to repeat myself.” She offered with a crowd winning smile.

Peter saw her turn back to him and mouth “oops” and Peter snickered. Ashe was a very good PA, she could handle people better than pretty much anyone else Peter knew, aside from maybe Tony himself. But he also had heard she could be a bit distracted easily, which was why she always had a tablet to double check to keep her tasks organized and on track. Though it wasn’t like Peter could blame her, he forgot stuff constantly and Tony was even worse. It was honestly a miracle that Pepper had come into Stark Industries to help keep everything running smoothly.

Ned turned to Peter. “Do you know what’s happening first?”

Shaking his head, Peter sighed. “Like I said, Ned. I really know nothing about what’s going on this tour. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to go on it, and I kinda spend a lot of time here so I never took it myself. I just know that it’s supposed to be super memorable.”

Ned was still nodding, as if the plain explanation Peter was offering was super secret spoilers. MJ was just leaning against the wall, arms crossed as she watched them all with an amused expression. He was glad at least someone was amused. 

The elevator ended and they stepped out into… a plain hallway. 

Everyone seemed a bit confused. It was clear the expectations had been a bit more… grandeur. Ashe smiled as she made a broad motion, urging the group to gather around. 

“So I bet you all are wondering what we are doing on this trip. In case some of you did not properly read the itinerary, I thought it would be prudent to review our schedule!”

There was some excited murmur from the group of students. Peter just rolled his eyes. He met her eyes and mouthed “smooth” to her. Ashe turned to the group, but Peter saw her subtly raise a peace sign in his direction. 

“So! As you know, our trip is split into two days. The first day will explore the technology and R&D portion of Stark Industries, and the second day will cover the Avengers and affiliated programs.” Ashe quieted for a moment as a wave of cheers and very loud murmuring broke out. Ned was freaking out, grabbing Peter’s arm and shaking it. Peter barely noticed, because he felt his face pale. He was about to raise his arm, but someone else had gotten the idea first. 

“Yes, you!” Ashe said, pointing. 

“Will we be meeting any Avengers?” Cindy asked eagerly.

Pausing for dramatic effect, a massive grin crept on Ashe’s face. “Yes! You will be meeting multiple Avengers on this trip. While not all trips are afforded this opportunity, this trip has been lucky enough to be part of the September Foundations outreach program to help connect the future generation to both Stark Industries and the Avenger’s initiative, as at the core, the heroes serve the people and outreaches like this help close the gap and build bridges.” Ashe offered in a smooth, practiced flow. 

Another loud wave of cheers rang out from the group and Peter winced, covering his ears slightly. His enhanced senses were NOT as happy as they were at the moment. He felt MJ’s hand rub his back gently. 

“Dude! DUDE!” Ned practically shouted at him, wide eyes. Peter couldn’t help but grin at his friend despite the growing dread in his stomach. He was happy for Ned, even though Ned had met all the Avengers at least once by now. This was a rare chance for all of his friends and he was happy for them. 

But there was no way in hell this tour had been “randomly selected” for this. There was absolutely foul play here and it reeked of nepotism. 

“Lucky, my ass. I think this was Pepper’s idea of ‘helping me out’.” Peter muttered to Ned and MJ.

“GOOD.” Ned said unapologetically.

MJ shrugged. “Technically, they aren’t under any obligation to not choose this trip just because they know you. They have the right to choose whatever groups they want.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were against Nepotism.”

MJ offered him a sly grin. “Technically the entire class benefits from this experience, so you aren’t stealing all the benefit from others. You’re more of… an asset in our appeal to the process. It’s prudent to make use of the advantages we are offered.”

“So I’m an asset.” Peter deadpanned to her. “That’s how you see me.”

MJ shrugged. “You’re my favorite asset.”

“You just like me for my assets.” Peter mocked.

“It is a nice asset.” MJ replied cooley. Peter stared at her for a moment, blinking before his cheeks started to tint red. Did… did she just hit on him?

MJ grinned triumphantly, having won the exchange as the group tuned back into Ashe.

“Our first stop will be a brief history of the company, followed by a tech demonstration. There will be a surprise challenge, followed by lunch and the end of the challenge, then a chance for outreach and interaction with SI representatives to end the day before dinner and some free time. We will leave tomorrow’s plan for tomorrow, so make the most of today while you can!”

Another break where the group was too busy talking to each other for Ashe to have a hope of controlling them, but she didn’t seem particularly surprised or bothered by it, instead answering some question that Mr. Harrington was asking that Peter couldn’t hear over the roar of overly excited teenagers.

“So at least one day before the Avengers ruin my life.” Peter muttered mostly to himself. He winced as he felt MJ gently pinch his back where she had been rubbing it. 

“Stop being so dramatic, nerd. Things will workout fine.” She reassured, glancing towards her other nerd with a small smile as Ned was still freaking out with Abe.

Ashe checked the time on her starkpad before waving her arms a bit to gather attention back on her. “As much as I’m sure you’re having fun talking about how ‘hella cool’ this tour is gonna be, how about we actually start it?”

MJ raised at the expression and Ashe seemed to notice it and smirked in response.

Ashe led her gaggle of students towards a wide set of double doors that really didn’t look like anything special. Peter couldn’t quite place where he had seen them before though. They seemed… different. 

“First stop on our tour will be a brief history of Stark Industries. This is actually a rather brand new installation and vastly upgraded from our older lecture version. I think you all will be pretty pleased by it. Without further ado, let’s begin!” She said, earning a few hoots and cheers from the class as she dramatically pushed open the doors.

Students practically rushed into… a blank room. All the walls were either glass or another blank surface. In the center of the massive room was a circular pedestal with a device on top of it. Everyone looked around confused, and Peter could practically hear their disappointment. 

Ashe, however, was having far too much fun watching their expressions. “Just be patient. Is everyone in? Good! Okay, now everyone I suggest you stand back to start, and do keep in mind the center dias please.” She said before stepping back. After a moment the rest of the class stepped back too as murmurs of concern started to grow a little louder.

Peter, however, remembered <em>exactly</em> what this was and a massive grin crept on his face. He had no idea they had actually fully finished this project, it had been ages since he had helped out other interns with this. He had been involved in the development and the construction of the technology, not as much the final touches and execution of it. 

He gestured for MJ and Ned to step back a little more. “Ned, do your best not to freak out too much.”

Ned nodded a bit too eagerly as he stared at the console, already amazed even though nothing had happened yet. 

MJ seemed a bit skeptical, but scooted a little closer to him and crossed her arms, waiting to see what was in store. 

Ashe knocked her fist on one of the glass panes twice. “Alright, Ty. Start it up!” She said eagerly.

The lights of the room instantly shut off and the murmurs died instantly. Peter could hear the sharp intake of breath as everyone was suddenly waiting very eagerly. 

A voice rang out through the room. 

“Everything is achievable through technology...”

Peter recognized the voice, he had heard it a few times. 

Howard Stark.

Gasps rang out through the room because standing in the center of the room was Howard Stark. Or more accurate, a hologram of him. It stood there, looking around generically, but you couldn't help but feel like he was actually looking at you when his eyes happened to meet yours. 

“Is that a hologram?”

“Isn’t that the founder?”

A bunch more hushed whispers echoed out, followed by an almost equal number of “shhhhh”.

Ned was gaping like a fish as he stared at the man in the old suit who walked forward, continuing to talk. 

“Better living, robust health, and for the first time in human history, the possibility of world peace.”

He stopped and gently shoved his hands into his suit pockets. “I’m Howard Stark, and everything you’ll need in the future can be found right here.” He said with a sweeping motion of his arm. 

As he did though the room <em>changed</em>.

One second they were standing in a dark room with a holographic dead founder talking to them, and the next there was a rush of light of colors from all around and suddenly they were standing in a fairground. Students gasped, talking in hush whispers as they looked around. Peter saw Betty even hesitantly reach out and touch the wall, which was still very much there, but it looked like she was touching an invisible wall in the park. Almost. There was just enough of a discrepancy that you could see the edge without stumbling face first into it accidentally. Peter guessed that had been a lesson learned the hard way, knowing the interns.

There were displays in every direction. There was a general ambiance of futurism, but it was anachronistic with the old visions of the future, incredibly outdated despite their best guesses of the time, being displayed by technology they couldn’t dream of. Displays of imaginary space suits, flying cars, toasters. Everything was in the distance as the world around them began to move across the ground, as if they were on a guided tour.

Everyone was still mostly rooted in place, and as if to lead them, Ashe walked across the room, mumbling a bit about watching out for the center kiosk, but went deliberately to look at a display from the far end of the wall. Peter followed her suit, just to encourage people as he walked across it too. It was a bit disorienting, with the world moving at it’s own pace while you walk. Kind of like those automated walkways at the airport, but not too jarring thankfully. Again, he figured it was probably a product of trial and error and an uncomfortable number of nauseous interns testing it.

Crowds bustled around them, phasing through people as the holograms were interrupted by the actual people in the room, even though Peter saw a student or two from their class hurriedly avoiding them muttering out apologies. Peter couldn’t blame them, it almost looked real.

He knew how disorienting it could be to be surrounded by illusions. Just like… him… whenever.. He fought…

Peter’s attention was snapped back to the present as Howard continued finally.

“From all of us at Stark Industries, I would like to personally thank you for visiting us. For your interest in helping shape the world into a better future.” For a few more moments they continued to float through the imagined space. Old music playing over a staticy sound system, girls in rather revealing outfits dancing and parading themselves around displays, all before it settled near the center of the area where Howard was once again standing there, smiling at them. 

The world faded to black around them once more, and there were some groans of disappointment from the group as their apparent trip through time was cut short. Howard gave one last tip of his hat, before he faded. 

There was a beat of silence.

Two.

Three. 

“I’ve learned a great deal from my father, and clearly humility wasn’t one of them.” Tony Stark’s voice cut in as he suddenly walked forward, emerging from nothing and standing where Howard stood a moment ago. 

Peter was almost tempted to reach out and touch him because it was strange seeing him so clearly there, but not at the same time. Peter knew it was a hologram, but he could have sworn it was real.

He raised his arms and a massive Arc Reactor, the old prototype emerged from the ground, large, and humming with energy. It dwarfed their size, and it felt surreal standing so close to it.

“The Arc Reactor was one of my first successes in his company, outside of our military contracts.” Tony said. He smiled at the group and it looked genuine.

It looked real.

Too real. Like he had seen before. Illusions. But they never stayed pleasant like this. Peter stepped back, bumping his back against the wall. This was dangerous. He couldn’t tell if it was his spider sense or anxiety that was now gripping the lower part of his neck. His heart began to beat much faster.

Too fast. Was he dying? Maybe. Was this real? He kept waiting for it to change like it always did. Tony would pull a gun on him. Or melt into spiders. Or get shot. Maybe the other avengers would show up to die painfully. Or attack him. Or each other. Peter’s fists were clenched tightly at his side and they started to shake. 

Why wouldn’t he hurry the fuck up and kill Tony already. Peter didn’t have time for this. He didn’t want to see his mentor die again. He didn’t want to have to punch it just to make it go away. He just wanted to scream. He could see Tony’s lips moving, probably continuing the talk but Peter’s ears were ringing and he couldn’t hear anything. Why hadn’t the death come, was Myst-

MJ’s eyes filled his vision as she stepped directly in front of him. His eyes snapped to hers, and he felt her hand cup his cheek. It was warm. He swallowed thickly. 

“R-real?” He asked shakily.

MJ’s eyes were focused, and God were they beautiful. 

“Real.” She confirmed. “I’m right here, Tiger.” She whispered gently. She leaned in briefly, kissing him. 

It was the strangest sensation, it was like he dropped from the sky back into his body. Everything snapped into place at the feeling of her lips briskly on his. 

He could feel the pressure of her knee on the inside of his, one of her feet pressed against the inside heel of one of his as she had leaned into him. Her other hand gently holding his clenched fist as he forced it to relax and thread his fingers through hers. The sounds of Tony’s voice again.

“Under our new CEO, Pepper Potts, Stark Industries have moved on from our wartorn past and once again begun the long process of bringing tomorrow just a little bit closer.” Then the familiar sounds of “Shoot to Thrill” by ACDC started to echo throughout the room.

Peter’s eyes glanced around and saw most of the students now looking around as a new wide arrange of displays showed around them. Cindy had noticed him and had seemed a bit concerned, but saw MJ was handling him and went back to looking at the sights after a small smile. Ned also seemed worried, but Peter offered him a reassuring smile and a moment later Ned was next to Betty as they pointed at some Iron Man suits flying high above them.

Ashe had closed half the distance towards them, concern painting her features but he gave her a shaky thumbs up and she slowly nodded, stepping off to the side but clearly keeping an eye on him. 

His eyes fell back on MJ’s, finding them still locked on his patiently, a warm, if not slightly concerned smile on her face. 

“You’re okay. I’m right here.” She said softly, reaching up to move his hand under her neck to her pulse point, as he felt the steady throb of it. Life. Peter took a deep breath and slowly the panicked sensation in the back of his neck faded. 

“T-thank you.” He said.

MJ still examined his face, no doubt reading past anything he could ever try to hide from her in the moment before she seemed satisfied and smiled. Giving him the briefest peck on the lips before stepping next to him again. 

She dropped his hand, but reached over and slid hers under the back of his shirt,resting it directly on the base of his spine, her thumb making gentle strokes over it. A steady, warm, grounding presence. She was right here, and very <em>very</em> real.

Peter wrapped his now free arm around her waist and held her close as he took in the sights around them.

Now that all traces of his illusionist villain had been banished to the dark recesses of his mind, he had to admit it was pretty fucking awesome.

ACDC was blaring through the speakers, and everywhere you looked seemed like a technological dream. 

High up in the sky various suits of Iron Man armor were flying everywhere, both in formations and freely, firing at targets as they were thrown up and blasting them into pieces that fell into glitter before vanishing. 

Off to the side near Ned and Betty Peter saw a person waving at them, their entire arm made of a prosthesis that seemed to respond almost perfectly to their mind as it picked up and played with a coin dexterously. 

On the other side there was a clean energy generator that powered a trail of lights before they erupted into a massive city streat, all being powered by the small glowing blue generator. Peter wasn’t sure if it was a bit of an exaggeration, but it accomplished its intended effect based on Abe's and Cindy’s reaction.

Tony was still standing in the center, looking impossibly smug as he looked around a bit randomly to catch eyes potentially.

Glancing over at MJ, he saw her attention had finally moved from him and he saw her mouth opened ever so slightly in awe as she looked at the scene closest to them. The sleek fairground around them that had been housing most of the other displays crumbled to dirt as they were suddenly staring out over a large patch of ground, surrounded by forests that seemed to stretch off for miles. 

In the center of the clearing were a few robots that were transplanting sapling trees and some further down that were planting seeds. 

There was some floating text giving statistics on successfully replanted trees and reforesting that had happened over the past ten years.

Peter looked back at MJ, her face being illuminated by the green as he saw the faintest traces of wonder in her eyes. An emotion he knew she felt as much as everyone else did, but hid from the world to keep herself safe. But seeing that look in her eyes, the smallest smile on her face, the way her eyes shifted to his and her smile grew even more, made his chest feel warm. He realized, there was nothing in this world he wouldn’t do for her. Nothing he wouldn’t do to see that smile every day for as long as he lived. He would move mountains for her if she asked.

He rested his forehead against hers for a moment, a serene oasis in the loud ACDC played. Eventually the music started to quiet down and everyone looked back to where Tony was still standing. Behind him an Iron Man suit landed in the hero pose, before it stood up and opened up, encasing Tony in it. 

“Stark Industries is leading the world to the future. Try to keep up.” He said with one last smirk, before the helmet closed and he blasted off into the sky. 

A second later and the regular lights slowly turned on as they were gradually reintroduced to the plain chamber as all the holograms powered down.

Everyone just sort of stood still, letting out a few deep breaths. 

“Dude…” Abe said.

“That was…” Betty started.

“SO FUCKING AWESOME.” Jason said excitedly.

“Lonello!” Harrington snapped at the language, but seemed just as starstruck. 

There was a loud eruption of conversations as people started gushing about the experience. 

Ashe clearly leaned back, an almost maternal smile as she saw the excitement through the class and gave them a moment to process things. 

Peter glanced over to MJ, and Ned and Betty who had joined them. 

“Dude, that was insane!” Ned started out, practically shaking with how excited he was. 

“I can’t even imagine how they did that.” Betty offered. 

MJ smiled. “Yeah… that was pretty cool.” Everyone seemed a bit shocked by her honest confession, but no one was going to call her out on it. They knew she was working on being more open with others and the last thing they wanted to do was discourage her from it.

“Yeah, I’ve never seen this before. I knew they were working on it, even helped a bit, but it was nowhere near that… immersive.” He offered, hearing his own slight amazement and thankfully not  much of the fear that crept in. 

He felt a slight increase of the pressure on his back. MJ’s face portrayed nothing, but it was a clear reminder. 

<em>Im right here.</em>

He just squeezed her a little closer from his arm around her side.

“You worked on that?” Betty said, a little too loud of surprise.

The class looked over at Peter both surprised and a little skeptical. 

He raised his free hand in a sort of peace gesture. “Not like… the actual holograms. They must have… God, I don’t even know the level of artists and programmers that took. I just meant more of the basic technology.”

MJ snorted. “Basic. Sure.”

Peter rolled his eyes, tickling her side ever so slightly making her squirm before she kicked his shin in retaliation. “You know what I mean. I worked with the other interns on the back end.” He offered. He didn’t want to go into detail about working directly with Tony on it, or how it worked because he <em>really</em> didn’t wanna spoil the magic of something so fantastical. 

“Sure you did, Parker.” Flash said in disbelief. Before he could chime in with any more eloquent comments, Ashe clapped her hands together once. 

“Well then! You seem to have remembered which way is up, so how about we move on to the rest of the tour? I promise you there’s still plenty to be amazed by.” She said as she ushered them to the opposite of where they entered where there were more flush doors in the wall. 

She seemed to do a head count, before checking her tablet to verify that she did indeed not forget the number of people she was responsible, before she smiled and moved open the doors. 

Once again, the students burst into an excited murmur. 

There was a rather tall young man, sleeves rolled up on a simple blue dress shirt and jeans as he leaned against a little kiosk. He had shaggy black hair, and a calm smile as he watched the students.

But none of them were watching him because behind him it looked like an arcade from the future. It was a series of rooms, all displaying various holograms above the tables. Other machines littered the walls and the room was darker to allow the lights emitting from the machines to draw your eyes in even more. People stumbled forward a bit more, but none of them were willing to go past the man without permission. 

Peter glanced over at Ashe as she was staring at the guy in surprise. 

“Ashelyn.” He said simply, an almost smug look on his face as he raised an eyebrow.

“Tyler.” She replied professionally, but Peter could see the barely constrained snickers that both of them were trying to keep hidden.

MJ glanced between the two young adults before looking at Peter.

Peter just rolled his eyes. “You’ll see.”

The two young adults had locked eyes long enough and seemed to be having a silent discussion long enough for the incredibly impatient teenagers who were desperate to see the technological wonderland just out of their reach to feel a little awkward.

Peter cleared his throat a bit loudly and both Ashe and Tyler seemed to snap back to reality, the faintest hint of a blush on both of their cheeks. 

“Welcome…”

“Midtown.” Ashe supplied helpfully.

Tyler shot her a grateful look. “Welcome, Midtown. I hope you enjoyed our little introduction. A bit of a step up from our old lecture, I would say?” He asked, waiting for a chorus of replies.

“Yes!”

“Incredible!”

“Fucking amazing!”

“Lonello...” Harrington’s voice sounded more tired this time.

Tyler just smiled at them. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. It has been the product of months of hard labor, and many technological breakthroughs from all across Stark Industries to achieve. My name is Tyler, and I am one of the floor managers of the R&D department, with a specialty in audio development, though my floor covers a bit broader range as well. I have volunteered to serve as your specialist to answer any tech related questions you may have, if any happen to be beyond Ashe’s understanding.”

Ashe snorted out a laugh at that. “I appreciate the confidence Fros- Tyler but you know I leave the technology to you labrats down here. I appreciate the new headphones you guys released last month, but the most I know about them is I’m pretty sure they have a speaker in them somewhere.”

There were a few laughs from the group at that and the lovestruck look Tyler gave her made Peter wonder if he was that obvious when he looked at MJ.

(He was.)

Cindy raised her hand. 

“Yes?” Tyler asked, pointing at her patiently. 

“Are the tours usually led by floor managers? You seem a bit… important. Not that we aren’t incredibly grateful!” She added quickly, embarrassment creeping in after her brain caught up to her curiosity.

Tyler shrugged, not bothered by the question. “Usually no, we have mid level interns give these tours to gain experience in presenting their work though we are always available to help them when needed. This is more of an… exception.” He offered, his eyes flickering over to Ashe  who was hiding her laugher behind her fist as she tried to suppress her giggles. 

Peter laughed at that, apparently loud enough for Tyler’s eyes to lock onto his. He tilted his head slightly and Peter blushed. Oops. Busted.

“Pet-”

“Okay! How about we get started!” Ashe cut him off, giving him a look that apparently he understood to mean just follow her lead. 

“Right! So, there are three rooms behind us, and you’re free to interact with any of the displays there. Unfortunately we do have to ask you to not use your phones in these areas. While you will be free to discuss anything you see here, some of the technology is new and patent pending, and we would prefer visuals of it not be released ahead of our schedule. I must insist that this rule is rather strictly enforced, and FRIDAY will be keeping a close eye out.” He said, his voice calm and even. “Right Fri?”

“That is correct, Tyler. Upon the exit of the third room in the back, you will be able to use your devices again. Feel free to silence any devices or respond before you pass the ropes up ahead, but we ask you not to attempt to film the area from here either.”

A couple of students pulled out their phone and silenced them just to prevent any temptation. Peter actually did that himself, because while he was pretty sure he was actually an exception to the rule, since he knew way more sensitive technology than this, he wasn’t exactly looking to prove a point and he had a habit of forgetting. 

MJ, Ned, and Betty seemed to trust him and followed his lead. 

“Now that the lame rules are out of the way, let me explain a bit more. Feel free to explore any of the machines up ahead. All of the holographic displays are interactable, and feel free to engage with them to your heart's content. Common sense rules apply here too. Don’t steal anything. Don’t break anything. Don’t run around.” He offered, raising an eyebrow. “Midtown is a reputable school, so behave but beyond that have fun and find me or Ashe if you have any questions.”

With that, he stepped aside and the students rushed in, spreading out to all corners of the first room as they started looking around and fiddling with things. 

Ned and Betty went to the nearest display table and as Peter was about to lead MJ in, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Turning, he saw Ashe looking at him with a concerned expression.

“Are you okay? I saw your reaction in the holodeck. I know it can be disorienting.”

Peter nodded, smiling as he felt MJ increase the pressure again. “Just… caught me off guard.”

Ashe nodded, fidgeting slightly. “I… wasn’t sure if I should have cut it off. I was about to head over and ask you…” 

Peter shook his head quickly. “No! I’m glad you didn’t. It was incredible. I was fine.” He offered, even though the last bit was clearly a lie.

“It’s okay, that’s what I’m here for.” MJ chimed in, making Ashe laugh. 

“Yeah, you did distract him pretty well. I must say.” A teasing lilt in Ashe’s tone. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people make out when surrounded by cutting edge hologram tech.”

Peter’s face flushed red and he buried his face into MJ’s shoulder. MJ just shrugged, hoping to hide her own embarrassment. 

“Really? Cause I distinctly remember something similar.” Tyler’s voice chimed in, making everyone look at him as he reached out and squeezed Ashe’s hand.

Ashe flushed red and slapped his chest. 

“Frosty! Shut up.” She muttered, glancing around. 

MJ glanced at Peter, then the two. 

Peter was just laughing at the sweet revenge. “They uh… know each other.” He offered, not sure how much to reveal about their personal life.

Ashe rolled her eyes, and held up her hand where there was an engagement ring on it.

“I see.” MJ said, smirking. “Explains why Peter’s boss is crashing our tour group.”

Tyler shrugged. ”Ashe normally works so far away.” He whined uncharacteristically for the calm man, earning an eye roll from Ashe. “Plus I’m not Peter’s boss. Kinda. Technically?”

Peter and Tyler both looked at each other, confused.

“I… don’t know.” Peter confessed as both boys seemed to ponder the problem. 

“A well run organization, I see. Very cutting edge.” MJ offered and Ashe snorted a laugh at that. 

Peter nudged her side. “I mean I work for Tony directly. But I also spend time helping out the other interns where I’m needed, or wherever Tony gets the impulse to send me that day. So some days he is? But like, Tony is his boss so I don’t know.”

Tyler just shrugged. “I listen to Tony, and you listen to me while you’re here, but I think that’s just because you’re nice. So as long as nothing gets messed up we can all just agree Pepper is the boss of all of us.”

Peter nodded. “Probably the safest bet.”

Ashe and MJ both shared a look. “Are all tech nerds this much of a mess?” MJ deadpanned.

Ashe just nodded. “Our sample size seems to suggest so. At least they’re cute.” She offered, kissing Tyler on the cheek. 

MJ snickered. “True.” And squeezed Peter’s hand. 

“You’re taking a field trip to your job?” Tyler asked Peter, an amused expression on his face.

Peter let out a sigh that made him feel years older. “Yeah. Cause my life is a joke. Don’t make it worse?” He asked hopefully.

Tyler nodded. “Trust me, I get it. I still tell people I just work in the labs in SI. Attention sucks.”

Ashe sighed but wrapped an arm around him. “Even if you deserve it.”

Tyler sighed with a small smile and stepped away. “I guess I should do my job and not keep flirting with you. That’s why they banned you from my Lab. They kept saying I get nothing done.” He said without a single regret in his tone. He turned and disappeared farther in. 

Ashe just let out a dreamy sigh after him before her attention snapped back to Peter and MJ who were both judging her and snickering. She ushered them in. “Go be nerds.” 

Peter let out a laugh and dragged MJ by the hand over to Ned and Betty as they fumbled with the controls to the holo display. Ned was waving his hands around it and made a display of the latest Stark Phone expand and shrink. 

“Okay, that’s pretty cool.” MJ confessed as she hesitantly reached a hand out. Both Ned and Betty stepped back to let her interact with it for a moment. 

Peter was surprised as MJ seemed to be a bit of a natural at interacting with it. Her intuition let her pick up the general motion controls as she was able to move it around naturally, and soon started to separate it into pieces. There weren’t specifics to protect trade secrets, but you could see the general parts. She paused to tie her hair up, because it kept getting in her face when she would move for a larger movement.

Eventually MJ noticed Peter staring at her with a strange smile and she paused, having disassembled and enlarged the camera part she was playing with. “What?” She asked, a hint of self consciousness leaking into her tone.

Peter just gave her a shy smile. “You’re in a lab, playing with tech like this. It’s uh… really hot.” He confessed in a quiet tone.

MJ felt her own face flush. “Oh my God, Peter. You’re such a nerd.” She mumbled out, but also filed that fact safely away for potential future use.

“Aww.” Ned said dramatically as he looked between them. 

“That’s cute, but we really don’t need to know about your feti-” Betty was cut off as MJ interrupted, loudly. 

“Okay! So what else is there?” She said, turning away from the table, the same time Peter, bright red spoke too. 

“It’s not like that!” Peter looked about 30 seconds from running out of the room. 

Ned and Betty shared a look, but let the subject drop. For now.

They wandered over to a nearby machine that wasn’t occupied by the classmates. “What is this?” MJ asked, walking up behind Peter and resting her chin on his shoulder. 

Peter leaned his head against hers for a moment. “Surprisingly one of the most tame things here. It’s just a 3D printer. Just a lot faster and has more materials it can work with.

“But what can it print here?” Ned asked, brow furrowed.

Peter’s smile grew wider. “Oh, anything. You’re gonna love this.” He said before leading them to a nearby table. Clicking to the right program, MJ raised an eyebrow. “Is that photoshop?”

Peter shrugged, already deep in work mode. “Kinda. It’s a 3D modelling software we developed. But it’s a bit more interactive.”

Peter reached out towards and area of the holographic display and a clump of a material digitally appeared in his hand. He began to squash and stretch it, occasionally adding more. 

“See, you can copy and paste if you make this motion…” he mumbled out to them as they stepped back and watched him work with a fascination. A few other of his classmates even wandered over, starting to watch Peter work. Peter however, was too deep in thought as he worked on bringing the thought he had to life and MJ and Ned knew better than to try and snap him out of his zone. 

“You can change the material here. The program is also smart, so if you’re trying to select a part of it it will generally help you get what you need.” He said as he enlarged the form and with two fingers held together started to select the top part of it, before cycling through a few different materials and dragging it onto it as the form changed into a clear plastic.

“Dude… is that?” Ned asked as Peter just grinned.

“You are <em>such</em> a nerd.” MJ repeated, overly fond as she watched Peter put on some minor details. 

Shrinking it down a bit, Peter swiped his hand as the whole form began rotating a few times, showing off the final result. 

“It’s just a quick mockup to show you what you can do here. I didn’t really dig into details but I could have taken off the glass and added the seats to it. I also could have made the form hollow if I wanted to include some kind of engine in this, but I really only have a few minutes. But I know the X-wing is your favorite Ned so I thought I’d just…”

Peter trailed off as he owlishly blinked at the group of students who were all staring at his floating model of the X-Wing from star wars that he had just sculpted out roughly. “Uh… hi guys.” He muttered out. “When did…”

“Dude, you’ve been in your own world for like 10 minutes.” Ned said, nudging him, but still staring at the X-Wing.

“Peter, how do you know how to do this so well?” Cindy asked, tilting her head as she watched the model rotate slowly still. 

Peter shrugged, a blush creeping up on his face. “I told you, I intern here. We uh… use this to help make mock-ups. It’s good for playing with visuals.”

“It’s true.” Tyler’s cool voice cut in, making the class turn to see him standing there, hands in pockets as he smiled. “Peter is correct. It’s often useful to have a visual model handy when either pitching an idea, or to help generate ideas because keeping things purely theoretical can get in the way of finding obvious solutions sometimes.”

The class nodded with murmurs of agreement. 

“Peter, the machine is fully stocked so feel free to print it off. Does anyone else want to try as well?” A bunch of hands shot up and Tyler nodded, glancing around. One of the displays of the Stark Tablet was pretty much empty so he walked over, typing in a password and switched the program to be another display of the modelling program to allow more people to mess around with it at once. 

“I’ll set it up over here as well. You will need to take turns with the printer, but feel free to print off a model if you want. Please be reasonable about the size though, due to time and costs.”

Peter quickly sent the print request to the machine as he stepped back, saving his project with a quick override for later use just in case, then brought up some blank models for people to try out. His cheeks were still flushed as he went over and collected the model, handing it to Ned as he watched Betty starting to sculpt a sort of old fashioned camera. 

“Dude! That’s incredible!” Ned marveled as he held up the mini ship, flying it through the air.

“That was pretty cool, Peter.” Cindy confirmed as Peter could only nod, flustering under the praise.

Tyler bounced between the people at the nearby tables, answering questions and helping them get comfortable with the program and soon most people had printed off little figurines. He saw MJ waiting on something, but she had told him to leave when he tried to see what she was working on, saying it was a surprise so he had settled for showing Ned and Betty some of the other nearby machines, various displays and robotics. It took all of his will power not to peak at whatever MJ had been working on.

Eventually though he saw Flash had taken her place and she was standing near the printer, waiting for the result. He wandered over while Ned and Betty were taking photos with a camera that hovered in place

“What did you make?” Peter asked, his tone a little more whinier than he had planned. He couldn’t help it though, the curiosity was killing him. 

She just rolled her eyes and patted his head patronizingly. “Soon.” 

Peter harrumphed and crossed his arms. 

“Hey, Penis!” Flash called out, and letting out a sigh, Peter turned slowly. 

“Really, Flash?” He asked, glancing over at Ashe who was frowning at Flash and whispering something to Tyler. Welp, that probably wasn’t good.

“Just wanted to show you what an actual good design looks like, unlike your stupid spaceship.” He said smugly as he enlarged his design and spun it around. It was… a suit of Iron Man armor. Kinda. Almost.

The proportions were way off, and it was almost aggressively lumpy despite the many smoothing tools available. Still, Peter figured it wasn’t the <em>worst</em> he’s seen.

“Real cool, Flash.” He offered, his tone dripping with sarcasm. 

Flash just sent him a smile as if he had been genuine. “You should pass it to Mr. Stark.” His voice said almost impressively condescending. “I made some cool changes I think he’d like.”

Peter glanced over it and grimaced slightly. He thought it would be cool to have a sort of back panel that looked kinda cool, but also dramatically limited the motion of the arms, which was not something Tony could do without. It also had enough solid panels wrapping around the body to prevent any easy access in and out of the suit. 

“Sure, I’ll do that.” Peter muttered as Flash highfived with his friends, as if he had put Peter in his place. 

His eyes flickered over to Ashe, who was not looking happy and even Tyler had a frown on his face now. 

“I gotta print this.” Flash said as he went to print it, only to see the queue. Frowning, he moved his to the top, cancelling the print in progress, which also deleted it. 

“Flash! What the fuck!” Cindy said, whirling around, fists clenched. 

“Oh shit.” Flash muttered, not realizing he had canceled it. 

“What happened?” Tyler asked as he approached, Harrington showing up as well.

“He canceled my print and now it’s gone!” Cindy said, a layer of hurt under her anger. 

Tyler’s brow furrowed. “Is this true?”

Flash looked a bit pale. “I was just trying to make sure mine got printed before we ran out of stuff.”

Cindy was trying to navigate the holotable. “I can’t find it… My spider.” She said, her voice dropping into a hint of heartbreak. 

“Flash, that is not okay.” Mr. Harrington started to scold Flash who only looked mildly bothered by it. 

MJ and Betty moved over to Cindy, consoling her as she pouted and glared at Flash.

Peter locked eyes with Tyler as they approached the table. “I think it got deleted as more people started working on their projects.” Tyler said as he searched all open files. 

Peter frowned, crossing his arms. He glanced over at Cindy as she looked at him with hopeful eyes, as if he could save her. MJ gave him a look expectantly. Like she had absolute faith in him to solve this problem. He felt a warmth in his chest and turned back. 

“Tyler, do these still have the same programs we use? Just in a display mode or something?”

Tyler nodded. “Yeah, these weren’t made specifically for this, we just locked out access to some of the features since the public would be using it. Why?” He asked, trying to figure out what Peter had realized.

Peter nodded. “Which means, they would have the same protocols, right?”

Tyler’s eyes widened, catching up. “It would.” He paused. “But this isn’t technically my department. I’m kinda crashing here to help out. I don’t know if I have access.”

Peter frowned, that was a good point. Depending on who set the restrictions, they could either out rank Tyler, or be at the same level. Still, there was someone above them all. 

“Hey, Fri?” Peter asked.

“Yes, Peter. How can I help?” The voice came from the table in front of them, making some of the nearby students jump. 

“This table still has all the normal protocols active, even if locked off, right?”

“That is correct.”

“Can you run one for us, please?”

“I’d need to override the access.”

“Ask Mr. Stark for permission, please.”

There was a moment of silence. 

“Do you seriously think you can just ask favors from Iron man, Peter? Just because you intern here?” Flash asked, as if he was embarrassed for Peter and looked apologetically to Tyler and Ashe. The audacity of him. 

“Please check your phone, Peter.” Fri chimed in after a moment. 

Peter looked to Tyler, and Tyler just shrugged. They both knew he actually had permission too, but he was trying to make it less of a show about wielding his privilege around here.

Pulling out his phone, he saw a text from Tony. 

<em>Fri requested an override. Pretty sure you can do that on your own. Everything OK?</em>

Peter responded quickly.

<em>Yeah. Just need to run a protocol to help a classmate. Trying not to be obvious about what I can do.

Lame, if you got it, flaunt it. 

So is that a yes?

Yeah, just try not to give away company secrets or something.</em>

Peter snorted out a laugh, earning an amused look from MJ. He passed her his phone while he turned back to the table. 

“What Protocol would you like to run, Peter?” Fri asked.

“Run ‘Shit, I should probably sleep’ please.”

Everyone except for Tyler looked at him confused. 

“Pulling up temporary back-ups now.” A few people understood and laughed. 

Tyler just grinned. “This isn’t the first time we’ve had to try and recover unsaved work. Thankfully we keep a temporary back-up of everything now.”

“That’s because your department is held together by caffeine, stubbornness, and concerned loved ones who are the only reason you guys ever eat and sleep.” Ashe chimed in happily.

Tyler rolled his eyes but didn’t offer any protest. Peter really couldn’t say anything either. Tony might be the worst of them all, but that didn’t mean the rest were particularly great at holding back when they felt inspired. Overtime wasn’t encouraged and actually discouraged because of that.

“Can you find a spider model from the past hour?”

“Right away.” Fri offered as the screen displayed various files being scanned through quickly.

Eventually a model popped up. “Is this it, Cindy?” Peter asked.

“Yes!” Cindy said, throwing her arms around Peter in a quick hug. Peter just grinned and returned the hug quickly, glancing at MJ who was giving him a proud smile. 

Flash was holding the model he printed out as if it was worth it’s weight in gold. Peter quickly moved Cindy’s order to the top of the list and it began printing. 

“Thank you Fri.” Peter offered as the program went back to its default state.

“My pleasure, Peter. Glad to be of help.”

There were some murmurs and people looking at Peter. He started to squirm a bit, not a huge fan of the attention he just drew to himself, but the look on Cindy’s face was worth it. He knew how devastating it was to lose something you worked on and were excited about, even if it was a smaller project.

MJ, sensing his distress, grabbed his hand and led him towards the second room of the area. “Come on, let’s explore more.” She offered and Peter just let her drag him along.

The next area was a bit similar to the last one. More tables with displays, but no printing machines around. Instead there were rough displays of a bunch of Avenger’s tech everywhere. No specifics were available, but there were a bunch of costumes you could look at different parts of, pull apart, mix and match.

Ned promptly freaked the fuck out and ran over to one of the tables with the shortest line. Betty, MJ, and him followed shortly behind. Peter watched him swipe through a bunch of different armors quickly, gasping with each one.

Peter turned to MJ, seeing her watching Cindy hold up the spider proudly. 

“You’re a nice guy.” MJ said, finally looking back at Peter. 

Peter shrugged. “I know how much it sucks to lose a project.”

MJ rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I mean. You wanted to avoid drawing any attention to yourself during this trip, but the second a classmate lost a project they worked on for a couple of minutes, you contacted Tony to ask for his help.” 

Peter was lost in her smile for a moment. “I mean… I could have used my override, but I was trying to act like just an intern.”

MJ nodded. “And if Tony ignored the request you would override it yourself. I know you would have.”

She was right. Peter just shrugged. “What did you make anyway?”

MJ pursed her lips, as if debating telling him. “I was gonna keep it a surprise till later but you deserve a treat for that.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small figure. It was a cartoonish looking spiderman, complete with him posing in his thwip motion. It was tiny, about the size of a keychain, but surprisingly well made and accurate to this usual suit.

MJ felt her heart fluttered as she saw his expression. His brown eyes had gone wide as she held up the dumb little figure she made. His eyes kept flicking between hers and the figure as he practically glowed with happiness. It was really unfair that such a little gesture could make her boyfriend look so adorable. 

MJ knew Spider-man meant the world to him, and that he was always afraid she’d hate it because of the drama it brought into their lives. But MJ was so proud of him, and while she wasn’t one to overly brag, heaven forbid he get Tony’s arrogance, she did think the world of him for doing it.

So if she could make his day by making a little trinket, she’d make them for the rest of her life.

Peter just leaned forward and kissed her quickly, knowing they had probably already shown more PDA than they usually would but he couldn’t help it. “You’re incredible.”

MJ scoffed. “It’s not that well done. It was quick.”

Shaking his head, Peter still met her eyes. “That’s not what I meant. I meant you. All of you. That too, but you.”

MJ blushed and turned her head, unable to handle the compliments. She just pocketed the figurine for safety before taking his hand and turned them back to where Betty was examining Black Widow’s outfit. 

“These Widow Bites are pretty sweet.”

Peter nodded. “They’re terrifying.”

MJ laughed. “Spider-man should get some then. Maybe she’d lend him one then, they have to spider pals or something.” She offered a teasing glance at Peter. 

Peter knew MJ knew he was friends with Natasha. She also knew Nat would never let him try them out, because that was a horrible idea that would end up with probably at least two different people hurt.

Betty stepped back and Peter thought for a moment. “What, like spider fangs?” Then he paused. “Actually…” He suddenly pulled up both the suits for Spider-man and Black Widow. The suits were old and out of date, but he just wanted to test an idea so it didn’t matter.

He quickly grabbed a widow bite and enlarged it, tossing away most of the arm mount, and flicking away different launchers from it till only a few remained. 

“Now pull up the web shooters.” Peter asked the holotable as they flicked up. He tossed away some of the other features on the suit. “Actually, bring up a repulsor too.” He muttered as he started stripping away parts from it to just have the glove.

MJ watched in admiration as she saw Peter in his natural habitat. Even more so than when he was sculpting, this was him at his best. She saw how tall he stood, his eyes focused but his face in a bright smile. She could practically hear the hum of the gears in his head as he gracefully navigated the menu, pulling apart holograms and attaching them with ease to form something new. He looked confident and in his element and she felt her face flush.

“I kinda get why he found it hot now.” MJ muttered to Betty quietly. 

Betty laughed and just patted her shoulder. “You two were made for each other.”

MJ rolled her eyes, but Peter was waving her over. He had the hologram in his hands, but made her stick her arm out. He moved it so now the hologram was floating around her arm. It was a simple gauntlet, with the web shooters underneath but two widowbites on top as he rambled about the possibility of webbing someone up then being to launch a taser at them without electrifying the whole web necessarily. 

“It’d look cooler if it was black with red highlights…” She offered and soon they were going back and forth as she posted with the holo weapon while Peter tweaked it to her suggestions. 

“Hey Fri, take some pictures please.” Ashe said as she leaned against the wall near Ned and Betty. 

MJ and Peter were too busy laughing with each other and playing around to notice.

“Are they always this adorable?” Ashe asked.

Ned nodded. “Yeah it’s kinda gross.” He said fondly. 

Betty sighed. “It’s better since they actually asked each other out. They danced around each other for ages, it was torture to watch. We were about to lock them in the broom closet until they got together. We had made plans for it too.”

Ashe laughed and watched them fondly. She had met Peter a few times through Pepper, and seen him in the lab with Tony whenever she had been sent over there with some work for him. Peter seemed like a good kid and reminded her of her fiance when he was younger. She was glad Peter had found someone that brought out a smile like that from him. He was always smiling, but that one was different. Warmer, somehow.

Eventually the two teens seemed to realize they were getting carried away and they stepped back from the holotable to let others have a chance.

“What?” Peter asked, tilting his head. 

Ashe just pulled out her phone and showed them a picture Friday had sent her.

MJ had her hand outstretched with a faint blue glow around it as the weapon hovered over her arm, Peter attaching another widow bite to it. They were looking at each other, Peter grinning while MJ had a deep warm smile.

Both of the teens blushed and didn’t say anything, but held each other’s hands. 

“Fri, send that to Peter. That deserves to be printed out.”

Peter blushed more, but nodded. It was an amazing photo. 

“Right away, Ashe.” Fri said. “I have cleared it of any sensitive information as well, so might I recommend adding it to your social media.”

“Thanks Fri.” Peter mumbled, blushing even more. 

MJ just laughed and squeezed his hand tighter. “I needed a new screensaver anyway.”

Eventually the group made their way to the third room and everyone’s jaw dropped except for Peter. “I was waiting for this.”

[lessthanagodmorethanaman]

BAH!

Working in a visual medium is such a headache. Let me tell you about it! I’m stuck on a problem I need to solve, so taking a moment to put my thoughts down will help.

You think comedy is the easy way out? WRONG! It’s hard, bitterly so! Easier to do dark, meandering meditations on mortality, you never have to have any answers then. Comedy is hard- every page has to do the heavy lifting of propelling something forward, and also crack a joke.

Then you add in the difficulty of working visually. Take page five of this current arc- need to move the action back to the unicorns, normally I’d start with a dramatic image of their fortress with lightning, always got to have lightning. Plus, rain is piss easy and looks good. But there’s no space for that, this page has a lot to do. How do we move back to them? Easy- Smetterling arrives with sandwiches, thus demonstrating that they are in the middle of something, and we’re back in the castle.

The unicorns are watching what’s going on- that’s good, makes them part of events. But how? Ah yes, awesome bubbly cauldron viewer, classic, Time Bandits, can’t go wrong. That means we have to actually look into the thing to demonstrate what is happening- tricky, more page real-estate being taken up, but it’s worth it because it links them to the real action going on, plus a little exposition from Pixiepouf and we now know that there’s a fortress atop the volcano. Perfect.

We have a view from a distance, but need to establish that there’s a big huge door in the way of our heroes. There’s no room to draw in a distance shot though, how to do it? Aha- hand knocks on door, spikes on door visible next to hand, next shot shows the door with multiple spikes in perspective. Now the viewer has an idea of the scale involved, and it didn’t take much room.

That’s just about left enough room for the joke- I love Hercules, any time that damn cat can turn up and do something riotous is gold. So he’s going to knock that door down, but any explosion needs three parts- before, the big bang, and the aftermath. Okay, I have enough room for that. Trouble is, it means that there must be two shots in the same spot, one showing the interior, one showing the explosion.

Two shots like that are a killer, it’s a nightmare getting it right, but they make for excellent comedy timing. So, how to reduce the work load? Simple, shot one has lots of vertical and horizontal lines, simple and easy to reproduce. The actual monsters only need to appear once, so I can afford to take some time on them. A lot of detail there will hide the limited background detail showing. Besides, the second shot is mostly smoke and smoke is our friend- it’s easy to draw and covers a lot of messy detail.

Then a punchline- “the cat wants letting in,” love it. Cats always want to either enter or exit a location, oh Hercules you scamp, got to put that in there. But need to give Denise a line too, she’s a very taciturn character so it’s important to give her something to do or she’ll just want to stand there glaring. Give her a line too. More smoke, easy shot.

Finally we need to see Hercules atop his howitzer. Howitzer is a naturally funny word, always add a howitzer. Should the unicorns say something like “they’d need a howitzer to bring that down!!” to set it up? No, too on-the-nose. Besides I spent a good bloody while on that cauldron viewer, don’t want to cover it up.

Finally give the narrator a punchline- love that narrator, what a strong and sterling presence, oh how the narrator is beloved. Can’t get “kitty kitty bang bang” out of my head. Will the Kids Nowadays even get the reference to a sixties musical? Don’t overthink it, Dick Van Dyke is a treasure and there’s no denying it.

All that just to get across the idea that 1) there’s a fortress now 2) the heroes are assaulting it and 3) the unicorns are involved. Took three evenings to iron all that out! Need to cut down on the whiskey and Fernet-Branca cocktails. No, too delicious, need the go-go juice.

Now I just need to solve my next problem- what’s the funniest over-the-top thing Denise could do with her magic- need to give her a Moment, can feel some comedy in it. Maybe something with snakes? 

[hp-rbiim]

Drarry prompt, (powerful) harry gets upset and loses control over his magic. Draco stops him before he blows. (Maybe in eighth year)

Thank you for the prompt nonnie! I was excited to do this one! Thank you to my betas keyflight790 and orpheus87! 

Read on Ao3

_______________________________

Chapter one

So, the day goes like this:

‘Potter.’

‘Malfoy.’

‘Both of you, stop it.’

A day like any other.

And just like any other day, it was par for the course of ending in altercation. Malfoy had allowed Harry first access to the vervain in Potions class, which consequently made Harry stare (very suspiciously), which of course grated on Malfoy’s nerves, which resulted in a venomous what, which started the day…. well, with a decidedly angry traction.

‘You’re really good at this, mate.’ Ron had said. He was chewing on a quill, although there was a hint of nervousness in his remark, there was a much larger humour hiding behind his pearly white teeth.

‘Thanks, Ron. This potion—, Harry redirected, knowing full well that Ron had meant his interaction with Malfoy, ‘—is going brilliantly.’

Ron had laughed at that, and Harry had told him to—

‘—just stir the damn cauldron.’

The second bout came along during Defence against the Dark Arts. Harry had been called up by Bill Weasley — the very cool interim professor that McGonagall took on whilst she located an apt not-Gilderoy-Lockhart to permanently fill the position — up onto the stage to “demonstrate” a Patronus charm. Most, though not Malfoy, cheered enthusiastically at the wispy spiraling stag dancing about the room.

Malfoy had clapped, very reluctantly, a slog of hands as they moved to meet their counterpart in the middle. His pale grey eyes assessed the ceiling, rather than Harry’s demonstration, as if a Patronus wasn’t at all that impressive to look at, most especially to someone like Malfoy!

Harry’s grip on his wand had tightened, he was indignant — an ugly feeling welling up in his chest out of his control. Which made his subsequent Bombarda demonstration forceful enough to warrant Bill trying to placate him with a ‘now, now, don’t get too excited, Harry,’ lecture, which made his stage embarrassment much more monumental than it should have been.

‘You go, Harry! Don’t let Bill stop you!’ was Ginny’s response. The eighth years had been boxed in with the seventh years, due to lack of staff. Bill accused Ginny of abusing family relations to talk back to her professor. She probably hoped she could wink out of trouble, because she did so with a devilish grin reminiscent of the twins. Harry wished he could have been as light-hearted about things as she was. 

Instead, Harry wished he could slam his head against the Boggart cabinet.

They had begun pairing up for duelling exercises — Bill had enforced a rotation system so everyone had a fair chance against different levels of skill. When it was his turn to pair with Malfoy, Malfoy sighed. Sighed! He sighed at him, great big inhale and exhale like it was the worst thing to ever happen to him. What was Malfoy’s problem? They were supposed to make up for the sake of inter-house unity, for the sake of life-debts, for the sake of, well — of everything else that happened in the war!

‘Excuse me?’ Malfoy gallivanted a wounded hand gesture on his chest with theatrical gusto. Harry shot a Stunning Charm at him, which he sidestepped with equal dramatics. ‘Problem, have I? Salazar, Potter, grow up. You’re the one whinging about it.’

Harry told him to stop using Salazar’s name like he was god, because he was a right bastard setting off Basilisks against innocent people, that he and his friends had to bloody stop in second year. At great risk too. Hermione had been petrified for fuck’s sake!

This only seemed to spur Malfoy on as he hid behind a Protego with wide eyes. When the smoke of Harry’s Dust Blasting charm had eased, Malfoy’s pale grey eyes had morphed from understanding to a calculating glint.

‘Ah.’ Malfoy started, ‘I’m sorry.’ Harry had never heard him apologise before. ‘So, let’s get this straight, shall we? You wish to banish my House Founder and make me applaud you for it. Right. Why, if I knew you were going to get this upset over my lacklustre applauding earlier, I certainly would have clapped harder, just for you. Our Hero.’

Malfoy had said it in such a bored, slow and patronising drawl, even amidst their duel, that it made him red in the face. ‘Fuck you, Malfoy.’ The subsequent Stupefy from Harry was so powerful, it blasted Malfoy several steps back, even with his Protego still up.

Leaving Malfoy a little less immaculate than before gave Harry a satisfaction he wished he didn’t revel so much in. 

Hermione didn’t say anything during lunch, but he knew she was judging. It was only when the chatter of the Great Hall filled in the space for Harry, that he realised Malfoy hadn’t used any offensive spells on him. The peas on his plate may have suffered the wrath of his fork.

Malfoy was looking down at him. This was supposed to be a year for inter-house unity, and Malfoy was ruining everything.

‘If you must know,’ Hermione was balancing a newspaper and pumpkin juice on the table, the only part of her visible being her signature bushy brown hair, ‘Malfoy has been quite un-nefarious this year.’

Ron had hummed an easy-going agreement behind his chicken, Dean shrugged a ‘no clue’, Seamus nodded a ‘he’s nefarious alright’ clearly missing Hermione’s operative “un” remark and Neville, who was the most surprising of all said, ‘he’s not bad, actually.’

Hermione told him flies would enter his gaping mouth. Harry couldn’t understand how Hermione had been able to tell that his mouth had fallen open from behind her newspaper. Said newspaper dropped from her face only for herto give him a look that read suspiciously like a very long ‘we’ve been friends for seven years and you think I don’t know—‘ lecture, which Harry cut short by departing from lunch with the excuse of “Quidditch practice”.

There was no Quidditch practice, Harry had been fibbing. He just needed to get away. Flying had always managed to lift his mood, and he hoped it would again today.

Except, Harry’s mood instead took a sharp cliff dive when his Firebolt exploded. That’s right, exploded. In his hands. ‘What the fuck— what the fuck—‘ Scorch marks had etched grooves into his skin, the leftover soot decorating the depressions in his hand. 

Harry knocked his equally-sooted glasses off with the part of his arm that didn’t sting with burns. There was a bitterness that made his eyes water, but it wasn’t because of the soot, or the burns. There, on the ground, blurry as it was, unmistakable, was his Firebolt, or ex-Firebolt really, seeing as it was a scattering of charred wood, debris and whatever else. One of the last reminders of Sirius, in serious smithereens.

‘Brilliant. You’ve outdone yourself. You really, really have outdone yourself.’

There were a few sparks setting off the wood, a tell-tale trace of magic still alive, still kicking, which gave Harry hope enough to gather the remnants of his Firebolt. It hadn’t started this way. He’d brought the Firebolt down from his dorm room, made it all the way to the pitch (or really, whatever was left of the pitch), hadn’t even gotten on his broom. He was about to, sure, felt the excitement surge through his bones as he was preparing for liftoff. That’s when it exploded.

The wind started picking up, Harry could barely make out the gathering of clouds in one corner of the sky to register what was going to happen next.

‘Accio glasses! Accio Firebolt!’ It didn’t work. ‘Accio Firebolt shards! Accio Firebolt shards! Accio Firebolt shards! Which worked better, but not enough. Harry could count the pieces he had retrieved with the fingers in his hand. It wasn’t enough. The rest of his Firebolt had scattered away into the wind.

Harry was breathless. The pounding tattoo of his heart in his chest had become loud and unforgiving. He couldn’t hear, couldn’t think. The dirt soaked into the fabric at his knees. He could feel that at least. His arms cradled the Firebolt remnants in his arms, eyes closed shut, wishing. Wishing for what exactly? Harry wasn’t sure, but it was clear, it wasn’t this.

He might have screamed, and a few bleachers may have subsequently exploded, but it mattered little. The Quidditch Pitch was ruined from the war anyway. No one would notice. No one came around the unrepaired sections of Hogwarts after the war.

Except Malfoy, apparently. When Harry turned around, he was there, there in the middle of the grass, staring at him. His fair blonde hair was whisking in the wind, a knit was present in the center of his furrowed brows, a face, Harry recognised, was of consternation, like Malfoy didn’t know what to do with himself. Harry was the one that didn’t know what to do with himself. Malfoy shouldn’t even be here. Malfoy’s hands were empty, open. He didn’t have a broom with him, he wasn’t here to fly. Malfoy, Harry concluded, was bloody stalking him.

Perfect. Just what he needed. An awful rage reared its head at the perfect target to direct his sense of loss. 

Malfoy paled as he sensed the change in atmosphere.

‘Potter…’ He said, drawing out the R sound, like he was stalling.

‘Malfoy,’ Harry responded, he was quick to cut the gap between them. This time, no one was there to tell Harry to stop. ‘Keep stalking me, and I promise you’ll end up just like those benches.’

Malfoy gasped, affronted. His demeanor was quick to changing to a seething anger. ‘Careful, Potter. If you persist in assuming the world still revolves around you with your capacity for emotional restraint, you may as well end up like your precious Firebolt!’

‘Say that again, Malfoy, I dare you.’ 

‘You first.’ Malfoy was quick to draw out his wand, once he saw Harry’s rapid approach. Malfoy had shouted the disarming spell before Harry could — for his arms were still occupied by cradling the Firebolt remnants. Harry saw it coming, and just like that, his Holly wand popped out of his hand for the first time in never.

Enraged, Harry barreled shoulder first into Malfoy’s chest. Shouting, Malfoy tried to angle away from him with a kick, to which Harry retaliated with a hook to his face. The Firebolt remnants scattered from his grip, while the two clambered at each other, yanking their opposing robes. 

Malfoy was still holding Harry’s wand. Harry demanded he give it back. Malfoy had refused, on grounds that it was positively ridiculous. Apparently, Harry was a volatile menace, and would probably murder him if he got the chance. Malfoy was right of course, but that didn’t stop Harry from slamming him against the dirt in a bid for the wands. Malfoy tossed them both out of his reach, and they rolled away from their scuffle, clattering along the overgrown grass.

Malfoy might have had the advantage of longer limbs, but Harry was stronger. After a dozen knees to the stomach, angry clutching of hair, sharp elbows, fists and headbutts on every imaginable surface of their bodies; Harry had managed to gain the upperhand and proceeded to pin Malfoy’s wrists to the dirt.

Malfoy scowled. His face was covered in stains, immaculate hair was mussed, loose grass woven into fair blonde locks, the corner of his lip was torn. So, maybe the sight of winning against Malfoy made the pounding of his heart a little loud, and his blood rush to inappropriate places. It mattered little. The whole point was that Harry was exceptionally angry and Malfoy was a tosser.

Malfoy told him to get off, Harry had refused, on the grounds that it was positively ridiculous, because apparently, Malfoy was a volatile menace, a stalker — and — would probably murder him if he got the chance. Malfoy looked scandalised at having his words tossed back at him.

‘Ha, bloody ha. Potter. You can twist my words all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re the one that accosted me for what — stalking you, as you say, which, by the way — I wasn’t, on this particular occasion, though true on prior accounts — this, was, I assure you, a coincidence on my part.’ Malfoy paused to take a breath, only to resume with a scathing, 'Though, I can’t say the same for you.’

Annoyed and exhausted, Harry shot him a withering glare. Malfoy flinched. Coward. Feeling a little guilty, and a little less angry, Harry let his grip fall lax. Malfoy, of course, took the chance and kneed him straight in the bollocks. ‘Fuck!’ In a litany of swears and curses, Harry fell to the side and wheezed, while Malfoy quickly scrambled away to safety.

‘Just— Just stay away from me!’ said Harry, furiously.

Malfoy hurled his hands in the air, equally exasperated, ‘You steal my words, Potter!’

Not a minute later, Harry’s Holly wand came spiralling out of the air, whacking him on his forehead with an audible thonk. ‘Ow!’ He cried as the wand clattered beside of him, rolling back and forth as gusts of air fluttered around him. Occasionally, the wind was strong enough to carry another piece of his Firebolt with it, and a part of him with it too. ‘Fuck!’

A barrage of curses continued to fall from his mouth, for Harry failed to retrieve the disappearing fragments of his Firebolt.

‘Fuck…’ 

When his curses had lost their energy, so did his body. The time he spent curled up in the grass felt like infinity, and it was only when he arrived at Madam Pomfrey’s that he realised it had gotten dark.

Goodness, she had started, Mister Potter she would continue, and then she went off about his injuries, pestering him with questions, rambling about rambunctious teenagers, about all sorts of things, really. Harry stayed quiet, offering little explanation. Madam Pomfrey looked at him with a mix of displeasure and worry, but his silence worked — she pestered him no more.

Sure, she fixed him up, Harry was grateful for that, but she couldn’t bring back Sirius, and she doubted she could make a Firebolt out of three chips of charred wood. Nobody could.

Ron and Hermione found him after dinner. Harry showed them the chips, then wordlessly went to bed, fists clenched with an anger he didn’t know what to do with.

‘Stupid Malfoy.’ Harry muttered. Perhaps Malfoy had managed to curse his Firebolt, perhaps he was there to watch it happen because he was the one that did it. Harry couldn’t be confident that Malfoy was the one that did it, but the ability to shift blame to Malfoy was his one and only consolation.

‘Stupid Malfoy…’ He repeated, before sleep tugged him into the darkness.

____

chapter one end

[calliecat93]

So to recap briefly, the heroes made it Atlas! But they are now going to jail! Is that the fastest that everything has gone wrong in a volume? Anyways! We’re now going from the grimy city of Mantle, to the so-called utopia in the sky. What will happen now? Will our heroes become jailbirds and we get the RWBY rendition of Jailhouse Rock? Or will ironwood be able to bail them out… although if he does, I still would love a RWBY version of Jailhouse Rock. Someone tell Jeff Williams to get on that! But I guess we better answer the question, so to the review!

Overview

Atlas personnel are airlifting RWBYJNRQO to Atlas along with some random guy. As Nora tries to chew her way out like I do when I can’t get a bag of chips open, Jaune complains about how easily they got taken down with Weiss confirming that the Ace-Ops are Ironwood’s specialized forces. This catches random guy’s, who the credits reveal is named Forest, attention. He’s surprised since, in his own words, they are Ironwoods personal attack dogs so them going after anyone is kind of a big deal. He himself got arrested for protesting about the mistreatment of Mantle… well okay, it was because he threw a brick at a ship, but same deal! But from him, we learn of a woman named Robyn Hill and the Happy Huntresses, who are graduates of Atlas who stayed in Mantle to defend the people and try to make those people’s lives better. Robyn’s fighting for a seat on the council to end Ironwood’s ‘tyranny’. Weiss questions that last bit as dramatic, with Forest calling her out for living a cushiony life due to being a Schnee. To which Weiss can only reply that she isn’t anymore.

Things take a turn, however, as the gang isn’t taken to jail. Instead, they are taken to Atlas Academy. As they’re taken inside, Ruby isn’t sure what to do but says that they should be careful with that they say and Blake says that they’ll all follow her lead. Everyone is led to Ironwood and, to the surprise of Weiss, Winter. Oh, and Penny’s there too! Yay!!!  Winter has the guards free them, or she will start hurting them. Ironwood apologizes as he leads everyone into his office, having assumed that the ship was stolen… and Ruby confirms that’s the case. Winter gets angry due to how dangerous and irresponsible that was… but she’s stopped when Weiss hugs her. Weiss explains that they had to, to which Winter calms down and hugs back. Aww~ That being said, she’s not happy that Qrow allowed it, which leads us to the topic at hand. Qrow says that they have confidential intel to give… but to his and everyone’s surprise, both Penny and Winter are fully aware of the Relics and Maidens. Yep, Ironwood told them as well as Ace-Ops, but he does have a reason.

He explains that when Oz died, he had to formulate his own plans in order to ensure Atlas’ safety against Salem. Ace-Ops gave him the Relic of Knowledge after the arrest, with the Staff of Creation safely sealed in the Vault and the Winter Maiden is in stable condition. But now we get to the topic of Atlas’ current image due to the Embargo, the troop recall, the closed-off borders, and as the teens point out, the discourse and poor treatment of Mantle. This makes Ironwood look… well, bad, and he knows it. But again, he explains the reason why. Remember Amity Colosseum? The location for the Vytal Festival? Well, the plan is to turn it into essentially a satellite and with its launch, they can re-establish global communications and as such, even if another CCT were to fall then they can avoid that issue again. Which… is a good thing! It is a huge handicap for everyone across Remnant that locks them from the rest of the world, and fixing that is a very good idea. The problem? Well…

The second part of the plan is to go public about Salem. Let me repeat: the plan is to GO PUBLIC about SALEM. You see the problem with that, right?! Well, this is why Ironwood has his troops on high alert. He knows that this will cause mass panic and thus mass Grimm attacks. So he has all of his forces on standby to be ready when all Hell breaks loose. After everything is secure, then he’ll go global with the reveal. Essentially, Ironwood thinks that keeping the fight secret is now outdated, especially after the Fall, and as the title suggests, it’s time for a new approach. With Ozpin not there to guide them, Ironwood is doing what he feels is best despite knowing how many lives that Oz spent keeping the secret.  It’s at this point, however, that they reveal that Oscar is the new Ozpin. He’s happy to hear this and begins to express this to Oz… until Oscar breaks it to him that Oz is currently gone. Which naturally gets Ironwood to question how that is.

Before Oscar can say anything, Ruby steps in and answers the question… by saying that after the train crash, he was just gone. Nothing about Jinn. Nothing about Salem and Oz’s history. Nothing about Salem’s immortality. Oz was just gone, and they don’t know the reason why. When pushed about what Oz said about the Relics, she says what Oz originally told them; that the questions had all been used up, which she fully well knows is not the case. Ironwood seems to accept this and assures Oscar that he’s safe in Atlas. He then gives Ruby back the Relic of Knowledge as a sign of trust before offering the resources of the Atlas Military to help get the gang upgraded and ready for the fight ahead.

Everyone is free to go, and they briefly encounter the Ace-Ops. Clover apologizes for what happened earlier and that he and the others are looking forward to fighting alongside them. We also get to see and hear the other four and the credits reveal their names as Elm Ederne, Marrow Amin, Harriet Bree, and Vine Zeki. Harriet seems to be clearly based on The Hare from Tortoise and the Hare and Marrow could be one of many things since Aesop had a lot of wolf-inspired stories. But due to his brief fib about not looking forward to working with the team, I’ll say The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Not 100% sure about Elm and Vine, though there is a fable called The Elm and the Vine so that could be the inspiration, but we’ll see when we learn more about them. As Penny goes to give the gang a tour, despite their exhaustion and just wanting to go to bed… and not being pleased that they have to stay in dorms like the Beacon days, Ironwood stops Qrow. Why? Just to tell him that he is genuinely happy to see him again. He even hugs him! Aww~ Hopefully, THAT won’t lead to anything horrible later!

Speaking of horrible, remember in V6 when Tyrian revealed that he and Watts were being sent to Atlas? Weeeeellllll… 

We cut to Watts, a suitcase with who knows what in hand, walking through Mantle during a rainy evening. He and Tyrian are using mobile communications since being in one location makes it easier for them to be found out. He seems to have full control over the security tech of Mantle since unlike Atlas, the coding is never updated and we learn that he helped write said coding. He demonstrates this by knocking out the cameras and we end with Tyrian (with his fancy V4 coat back!) exiting a building. He walks away, a pool of blood spilling out from the cracks, and the cameras fail to see the man who caused it. A dark sign of what’s to come…

Review

HO BOY, do we have a LOOOT to talk about. So, we’re not gonna waste any time. Let's talk about Ironwood and his current plan.

Let's weigh both sides here. On the one hand, Ironwood’s plan… makes sense. At least logically. The plan to use Amity Colosseum to reestablish global communications is a sound one, and is something that should be done. Doing so could also help clean up Atlas’ tarnished image after all the recent decisions and after being painted as the bad guys at the Fall of Beacon. His plan about going public also does have a legitimately good point. What has keeping the fight secret solved? All they’ve ever been able to do is push Salem back, never stop her. The people deserve to know what’s actually happening, especially after the Fall where many got killed because of it. Ironwood is keeping it secluded to Atlas first and needs his forces ready for the fallout as well as all the ammo and safety precautions needed. It explains the Embargo. It explains the police state. It explains the closed borders. You can look at all of Ironwood’s actions, and it makes sense when you look at his plan. Chaos is going to break out, and he has to be ready for it.

But, of course, we have the other hand. For one, he’s depriving other kingdoms of safety and resources due to his actions, making it harder for them to protect themselves. And even then, Mantle is being treated like garbage, even though Ironwood should also be keeping them safe instead of acting like a dictator. Even if he accepts that as a necessary evil, there are better ways to help Mantle without making them terrified or feel like lower class. We saw last chapter that even children are fighting back against the drones and hanging up political posters. Children. That… is not a state that any city should be in. As Qrow said, they don't need the whole military for the Amity Colosseum, and there are better ways to prep troops without causing panic. Ironwood did this at the Fall when the Vale Council gave him control, and he had a huge army set out. The result? Well… I don’t think I need to recap that. He is doing the exact same as before, but without anyone there either capable or willing to talk back against him.

But now we get to the public plan. This is a horrible plan. As they said in V3, this breaks pretty much everything that the world ever knew and is going to cause mass panic. IDC if the army is ready for it, they are severely underestimating the results of this decision. Ones that are going to cost the kingdom. Badly. Like… brink of destruction levels of badly. Plus again, Ironwood is doing exactly what he did the last time. He’s opening the floor up for the exact same results. Even if they updated their coding, Watts will likely find a way through it. Look at how easily he did it in V3 with the virus he supplied Cinder. The same thing is bound to happen again, only this time I highly doubt that they’re going to get things under control until… well, there’s nothing left to take back.

This is insanely risky. Too risky. Now, could there be a way to break the news to the world without the same risks? I don’t know. But I do know that this is the wrong way to do it. It has too much room for error and doesn’t take into account any of the things that went wrong so badly last time. Then again, with Ironwood’s paranoia, who knows what else is going on that he just hasn’t said yet? Trust seems to be the theme of this volume, and Ironwood seem willing to give the gang his. But… IDK. Something feels off. There are some theories going around about him using the hug to bug Qrow, or bugging the Relic. IDK if I belive that, but I’m not ruling it out either. Maybe he does trust them, but the ‘what-ifs’ are too much in his mind and he can’t help himself. After all, as he said in V4, Oz didn’t listen to him. What’s going to stop anyone else from doing the same?

This is why I don’t blame Ruby for lying. Anyone can tell that Ironwood is on edge. How dangerous and reckless his current plans are. Ruby’s in no real position to argue, nor does she likely have an argument. So the best thing to do, until she can think of something better, is to go along with it and try to help the people. Yes, she is lying as Ozpin did. Some have argued how she didn’t technically lie since the train crash did happen and she did tell Ironwood what Ozpin told them, just as he asked. But it’s STILL not being truthful. She’s telling half-truths. She’s giving answers that she knows are false. Now I will say that this isn’t exactly like with Oz. Ruby is only lying to Ironwood and has a valid reason to do so, along with having very little time to think of much else. As she said before going in, they had to be careful with what they said, and she was. Oz lied and it wasn’t without reason, but he did so even without reason and to the people risking their lives for his quest that he didn’t explain the full extent of. Plus unlike Ruby, Oz had years to master the facade. Ruby had to make a split-second choice, and she was clearly uncertain about it in her body movement and in Lindsay’s performance. There is a big difference in this instance and in Ozpin’s instances.

But it’s a slippery slope, isn’t it?

No matter how much you justify it, it’s still lying. It’s doing the same thing that they called Oz out for in V6. I’m not calling Ruby a hypocrite though. Why? Because them doing this? This is a good thing. This is what I wanted to happen. Ruby is now the leader. She has to make difficult choices and face the consequences due to said choices. Previously, she only lead Team RWBY and she didn’t have to make many hard choices then. With Team RNJR, it was more or less the same except not as much since it wasn’t her team technically and when Qrow and Oz came into the picture, she didn’t have to make choices at all. She did as she was told because those who supposedly knew what they were doing were there, But then they were either gone or incapable of doing the job, so she stepped up and despite the setbacks, got them to Atlas with minimal consequence. I mean we just saw here that Ironwood let them free, so that solves that issue.

That’s not going to be so easy now. These choices are going to cause problems. Maybe Ironwood will find out on his own or if he did infact bug them. Maybe Ruby or someone else like Oscar will tell him the truth and he takes it badly. Maybe Ruby says nothing, and it leads to a disaster that she could have prevented if she had spoken up. No matter what route the show goes down, Ruby is about to get another harsh reality lesson, and that is how difficult leadership can be. This isn’t like at Beacon where if she messed up, they could solve it easily. No, this time she’s part of something much more complicated. She has to make the choices that Oz has had to make for centuries. I think that this will help her see where Oz is coming from and allow them to reconcile, but also allow Ruby to see where Oz went wrong and better herself. She’s not just going to understand Oz, but she’s going to become better than Oz. But that’s going to come with a lot of hardship, and it is something that she will have to deal with. Not just with herself, but chances are, with her team as well…

Okay, that’s enough on harsh and complicated topics. This is our general set-up episode, and it does a very good job! We have the plan for the arc established, setting up Amity Colosseum for launch and in the meantime doing work around Atlas and Mantle with Ace-Ops. We get to see Atlas Academy, and it looks gorgeous. We get to properly see Winter again, and Weiss hugging her just melted my heart. Makes me worry about later considering Winter’s loyalty to Ironwood and Weiss clearly not liking what’s happening, but still, I’ll take the happy for now. Penny was a delight, especially with the tour, which excellent animation there! Man, it’s just a joy to have her back~! Forest was fun and we learn about Robyn Hill and her group from him, which will likely come into play later. Especially since we can confirm that she’s going up against Jaques for council. That’s… gonna be interesting, to put it lightly.

This was Kiersi Buckhart’s first episode as a writer, and she nailed it! The exposition wasn’t boring and the characters felt very strong here, Ironwood especially. You know that he’s making bad choices, but the writing makes you understand why and that and Jason Rose’s’ performance as Ironwood was genuine with his views. I could understand all of these decisions, even if I don’t agree, and that’s what makes for good and compelling drama. It was strong in the character department and the pacing, os good job Kiersi! Connor Pickens directed the episode, and it looks excellent! Especially for all the camera angles as Watts walks through Mantle. Like when he steps into a puddle with the reflection of Ironwood on screen? Excellence!. Great job Connor~!

Speaking of that scene though… yeah, that was dark. No idea who Tyrian killed, maybe some kind of informant or something that's no longer needed. But man, what a grim (no pun intended) scene to end on. But it establishes the threat very well. Tyrian we all know is not a force to be taken lightly. But neither is Watts. He did his job in Mistral perfectly, and that only failed because of Cinder taking control and keeping Watts out of it after the new plan was made. But he’s the one in charge now and he is in his wheelhouse now. He has control over Mantle’s security, and if he could break Atlas’ before, he can probably do it again. And remember the Election Map that he had in the opening. IDK what the plan is, but with Watts heading it, it's gonna be bad. Add that with Tyrian, and we indeed have a lethal combination. Will our heroes be able to stop it? Only time will tell…

Chapter Three Predictions

It’s all but guaranteed that this is when we’ll get the new outfits, the haircuts, ad the new gear. It’ll probably be a bit of a lighter episode and maybe allow some nice character stuff and maybe even see the Ace-Ops more or see more around the Academy. But I do think that Ruby may have a bit of conflict as a follow-up to here. Remember the line in the trailer about her being uncertain about if the best thing is right? Well… IDK who she was talking to. Could be Oscar. Could be her team. Could be Qrow. IDK, but I imagine that it may very well bein this episode. Either someone confronts her (which judging by his expressions might be Oscar) or someone sees that something is wrong and get her to talk. Maybe it’s even part of some talk where Ruby expresses her uncertainty but tries to get spirits lifted and ignore her own conflicts as she normally does. Either scenario is possible.

Still, I imagine that it will be a lighter episode with some fun hijinks and maybe some emotional like Blake getting her haircut… or hilarious if they play up Jaune’s horrible haircut. Maybe we could get a bit of a glimpse into stuff with Robyn and the election or we see the Schnees again or something else. I think that it might end with the scenes in the trailer of the girls jumping out of the plane, ready for a mission, and it will lead to the scenes of everyone fighting in the mines that’ll cross into Chapter 4. Either way, as I said, we’re at least guaranteed the upgrades next volume and those are gonna be fun~! I can’t wait~!!!

Episode Stats

Favorite Character: Ruby Rose  Favorite Scene: Penny’s Tour Least Favorite Scene: The airlift to Atlas, the lighting looked kinda off to me… Forest was a delight though. Favorite Voice Actor: Jason Rose (James Ironwood) Favorite Animation: Final scene in Mantle. The camera angle when Watts is walking through Mantle in the rain were amazingly done, especially with Ironwood's reflection in the puddle. Final Ranking: 9/10

Final Thoughts

This chapter was fantastic! It’s a setup episode done very well. We learn all that we need to know for now, and it works with strong character personalities. It was funny, it was heartwarming, but most of all it was intense. THere’s a lot of good, compelling drama here and sets up so much for later on with Ruby, Ironwood, the villains, and the plans for Atlas. There’s a lot that’s coming, and if it’s already this intense then I can’t imagine how the remaining 11 chapters are gonna be. But I’m ready for it… I hope… still, great chapter!

[luna-is-a-main-now]

See You Again ch.3

Keith had found himself visiting Lance's room almost too often as the days passed. Usually it was empty, and he was the only visitor. Occasionally Pidge would join him, and most days they would tell stories and recite Lance's jokes, anything to remember him in a positive light to ease the crushing reality that he was dead. However, Keith was surprised when he walked into Lance's room, and found that Hunk was already there, sitting on the bed and staring at a framed picture dejectedly. Keith already knew what the picture was. He'd seen it a hundred times. Lance had insisted one day that the whole team gather up for a picture, and he was so excited about it that no one could really bring themselves to say no. It was the only picture they had that contained the whole team, and everyone had a copy of it. 

"Hey, Hunk." Keith greeted awkwardly as the latter looked up at him. "How… how are you?" Keith mentally slapped himself. That was a really dumb question under the circumstances. Hunk grimaced at the words, answering the question easily enough.

"He was my best friend, Keith. I just want him to come back, for him to call or walk in here right now and say it was some awful prank or something and that none of it was real. Then we could be mad about it for a bit but ultimately relieved that he’s okay, but he’s not, he’s gone and there’s nothing that can make this feel okay again." Hunk cried bitterly. "I should have gone with you guys. If I had gone too, if I had insisted, he would've been okay. Everything would be okay." Keith instantly walked over and gave Hunk an awkward hug. 

"No, don’t do that. Do not blame yourself. No one could have known what that mission would entail. I was there and I couldn't stop it, even though he was right next to me, so please, Hunk, it's not your fault so don't blame yourself." Keith vehemently stated, staring at Hunk in the eyes to make himself extremely clear. Hunk slowly nodded, and let his gaze fall back to the picture.

"I still wish I could have at least done something." Hunk whispered softly, voice breaking a little. Keith sighed heavily, exhaustion creeping in with the intake of air.

"Me too, Hunk. Me too." He muttered, as he sat beside him. “Can you… tell me about how you and Lance met?” Keith asked hesitantly, and Hunk looked over with a surprised expression that quickly morphed into a gentle smile as he placed the picture back on Lance’s nightstand.

“Oh man, you’re gonna love this. Settle in, Keith, because this story is a long one, full of the classic Lance shenanigans we all know and love.” Hunk smirked. “I’ve known Lance for years, ever since middle school. We had both just moved…” Keith smiled as Hunk animatedly continued his story, and he soaked up all the new information he was gaining about Lance and his relationship with Hunk. 

By the time the pair decided to leave the room, both were smiling as they had each exchanged story after story about Lance. It was the first time Keith had felt even slightly okay in the weeks after Lance’s death. Not to mention, he was finally talking to Hunk comfortably, something Keith had been trying to do for a long time. While things were still not okay, Keith could see that it wasn’t all bad anymore. That didn’t stop him from desperately wishing that Lance was still alive, though.

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

Lance wanted to scream. None of these aliens were being remotely helpful. The most he figured out was that there was a freedom fighting party or camp or group on this planet, but no one would tell him who the leader was, how to find them, how to join them, nothing. Every single one of them accused him of being a Galra spy, that he wanted to find them just to wipe them out. It really ticked Lance off. Of course his mission would be downright nearly impossible, and Lance was betting it was simply because he just wanted to go home as soon as possible. He wished his team would somehow find out he was alive and come grab him now, get him off this planet full of angry people.

 He knew they had a right to be wary, but it was honestly getting ridiculous; he’d been searching for information for weeks and hadn’t gotten anywhere. He felt like he was wasting time that could have been used getting back to his team. He didn’t really want to do this stupid quest anymore. He sighed angrily through his nose, and brought his hands to his face to rub the frustration away. Unfortunately, while he wasn't looking where he was going, he crashed right into someone.

"Oh, shit, I'm sor-" Lance started to say, until he realized he'd crashed into a  tall Galran Officer, one who liked to patrol the town and demonstrate his so called power to the citizens, often consisting of beating them, enslaving them to be gladiators, or straight up killing them when someone dared to tick him off in the slightest. And boy, he did not look happy with Lance. 

"Ah shit." Lance sighed dramatically as the officer reached for the sword at his waist, clearly wanting to cut Lance down. "I guess we're really gonna do this now, huh? Jeez you make my job so difficult." He grumbled as he grabbed his bayard and let it shift to its sword form. He really wasn’t interested in fighting this guy right now, but it appeared like he wasn’t getting much of a choice as the officer stalked towards him with a cocky smirk.

"An Altean bayard? How interesting. I thought only paladins of voltron owned such technology." The officer sneered as he slashed at Lance violently with his glowing purple sword. Lance quickly blocked with his blue energy shield and returned the favor. 

"You would be correct in that assumption, asshole." Lance smirked at him as he ducked another strike. When he slashed at the officer this time, he made a hum of satisfaction as he was able to give the surprised galran a nice long gash on his arm. The galran officer looked behind him and made a quick hand signal, and a drone came into view from behind the nearest building.

"Go back to base. Alert everyone; Voltron is here. The paladin who bears blue armor is on Armenia. Request backup from the Empire to reclaim voltron and eliminate the paladins once and for all.” The officer addressed the small drone who quickly sped off. "The whole Galra Empire will soon know you're here. They'll take back Voltron and eliminate you and your team like the pests you are." The officer grinned ferally.

"Sorry to break it to ya buddy, but I'm the only one here, and my lion? She’s safe with the team, far far far away from here. You'll never get Voltron, and, for sending false alarm about Voltron being here, I wonder what will happen to you." Lance taunted with a wide smirk and a biting tone as he quickly struck at the officer again. 

The officer just growled as he began attacking Lance with much more ferocity in his strikes than before, and Lance had to meet each one in equal turn in order to stay alive. He really wished Keith was here. He'd know how to beat this guy in seconds without even breaking a sweat. At that thought, Lance half-smiled, and pushed harder against the smug-looking galran. Somehow, Lance managed to disarm the officer and subsequently knocked him out with his own weapon. 

"Man," Lance sighed, "you really wanna make my job harder. Hopefully, though, your little message will end up getting to my team too. That would be great." Lance glanced around him to see the shocked faces of the civilians as they stared at Lance standing over the downed officer, his sword in one hand and his bayard disappearing from the other. With an annoyed huff, Lance tossed the officer’s sword aside and walked away. He really didn't want to deal with any of this right now. 

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

"Paladins, I need you all to come to the bridge right away. We are attempting to intercept a Galra communication, and, should we be successful, everyone should be present." Allura's tired voice called over the intercom, and Keith frowned at it. He didn't feel like standing around watching everyone else trying to break into the Galra's communications to intercept a message, knowing he couldn’t do much, if anything, to help. Keith sighed heavily, but ended up dragging himself up and out of his room anyways. 

He wasn't surprised that he was the last one to arrive at the bridge or that everyone else was already working on something. Keith was good at fighting people and piloting ships; he didn't know how to do this, so all he could do was watch. Even Shiro was looking at things and providing opinions and suggestions where he could. Granted, he was also not exactly a tech genius like Hunk and Pidge were, but he at least knew enough to not be totally lost. 

"Oh, guys!! I got it!" Pidge eventually cried in triumph, grinning as she set the audio clip that she had gotten from the Galran communications up on her computer. The speakers on her computer crackled a bit as the audio clip started.

"Attention all fleets, Voltron has been located. A paladin in blue armor was spotted on Planet Armenia of  System Sania. Requesting backup to retrieve Voltron and eliminate the paladins." When the message ended, the speakers crackled again, and then there was silence.

"Voltron is nowhere near Armenia." Allura finally commented, puzzled. "All our current paladins are right here, many billions of systems away from Sania." Her eyebrows furrowed as she stared at the computer in confusion, as if it could provide a clearer explanation.

"A paladin in blue armor?" Shiro questioned, voice strained. "Lance is… and his armor disappeared. Not even we have the blue armor. How can any of this be happening? Coran?" Shiro turned his attention to the unusually quiet Altean. 

"There is old tales in Altean history of heroes who died in battle, of children who suffered an accident and passed, of people who disappeared and turned up dead and so on, but eventually returned, safe and sound. In one such tale, a hero by the name Leona was returning home from a difficult battle, when her group was attacked by wild beasts. They were tired and unable to fend off all of the beasts before one charged at a dear friend of Leona's, and she threw herself in front of the beast, sacrificing herself to save her friend's." Coran's voice was soft as he recounted the tale. 

"However," Allura spoke up, picking the tale up where Coran left off. "Months later, Leona, alive and well, crash landed in a foreign shuttle onto Altea. When she walked out of the shuttle and got settled back at home, she would tell great tales of quests undertaken to be able to return, as she wasn't supposed to have died yet. Leona was often criticized or mocked; people thought she was some sort of demon or spirit, only there to torment those who had lost her. They didn’t believe she was actually Leona, so she ended up alone, but she continued to live until she died a natural, peaceful death well at the end of a normal Altean lifetime." Allura sighed softly.

"However, this is just an old Altean folktale. There's no way to prove Leona was real or that she really returned from the dead. I would have dismissed it completely if not for the many other stories and the slight similarities to this situation." Coran warned with a firm voice.

"You're saying though… that there may be a possibility Lance is alive? That the paladin on Armenia may be him?" Keith's voice was much louder than he intended, but he couldn't seem to get it under control, not when there was a chance he could get Lance back. "The Galra are looking for reinforcements to take whoever that person is out. If there's even the slightest chance it may be Lance, we need to go there now." Keith stared at Allura, daring her to say otherwise. 

“It’s a very old fairy tale, Keith. We will go and see, but please, let’s not get our hopes up. They could be an imposter who stole the blue paladin armor and bayard. There is no hard evidence that Lance is among the living again. I’m sorry, Keith, but I don’t want you getting hyper-fixated on it being Lance when… the most likely scenario is that is isn’t him.” Allura’s voice was soft and hesitant, and Keith could see that she desperately wanted Lance to be alive too, but she didn’t want to set herself up to be crushed if it turned out to not be him. He sighed softly and looked at the melancholy expressions of the other paladins. 

“Okay, Allura. You’re right, we’ll treat this as a simple scouting mission. If it is someone who stole Lance’s armor and bayard though… I call dibs on breaking his face.” Keith demanded, and Allura smiled at him gently, and agreed with a small nod.

“Get some rest paladins. We leave first thing in the morning for planet Armenia. It’s been a rough few weeks, but tomorrow we get back to work.” Allura smiled at the paladins around her. “Be careful out there tomorrow.” It was something Allura had never told them before, but Keith knew why he was saying it now; they all did. She couldn’t handle losing anyone else important to her again. Keith understood that feeling well.

Slowly, each paladin murmured goodbyes as they left the bridge and headed to their rooms. They all knew that tomorrow was going to be long and trying. Despite Allura’s warning, he knew that everyone aboard the castle was still hoping that the person they met the next day would indeed be Lance, even if it was highly improbable. They all just wanted Lance back, safe and sound. 

Early the next morning, you could practically see everyone’s nerves charging the air on the bridge as Allura fired up a wormhole to Armenia. Hunk started pacing as soon as the wormhole appeared and Pidge couldn’t stop bouncing and shifting in her seat restlessly. Coran was fidgeting with all sorts of things and Allura was tapping her foot incessantly as she steered the castle through. Shiro and Keith stood together against the wall; Shiro radiated nervous energy while Keith was wringing his hands nearly painfully. 

The nervous energy only got worse and worse as they traveled through the wormhole. When they finally got to the other side and the wormhole snapped shut behind them, it was like everything froze. Armenia was ahead of them, and from this distance, Keith thought it looked a lot like Earth with its various landmasses and large oceanic bodies. Except that the oceans were purple, of course. Keith looked at Allura expectantly, and as soon as she nodded, all four paladins were racing towards their lions. 

No matter what they found, Keith wanted to get down there as fast as possible. He was ready to either hug Lance or punch an imposter, whichever one ended up applying. 

He really desperately hoped he’d get to do the first option.

[eeee-lye]

Metal, Part One

To make this a bit easier on myself, and also because my right hand isn’t working that well right now, I’m going to divide this into multiple posts. So this some of the power, symphonic, sympho-folk, gothic and power-prog artists in my main playlists.

I should note that I am an autistic with auditory processing disorder, so I do not listen to music primarily for lyrics and cannot promise that any one of these songs won’t contain problematic content.

I didn’t include Nightwish or Amaranthe because I know that you know of them, @dps-winston, but if you want my recommendations on either I can provide that. It’s also worth noting that I’ve often gone for bands’ lead tracks to give some idea of what their general sound is like. Also, not all these bands are actively together or recording.

Also, as someone who’s been listening to symphonic metal for a long time, I am not always a fan of the genre’s shift away from gothic metal undertones into pop-metal undertones, so the songs I list demonstrate that. There are other songs by bands like Sirenia, Xandria and Delain that are going to have that pop-metal tone if that’s what you enjoy. It’s just that I--while I shake my cane and ramble on about the good old days--came into the genre when it was paying homage to gothic metal, and I miss that.

Amberian Dawn: Mythological/fantastic gothic power metal. Unlike most of the bands here, they don’t go for anywhere near the same degree of orchestration, but there’s still backing choral pieces. Earlier songs are more often operatic; later songs are a bit less so.

Examples: River of Tuoni (early), Fame and Gloria, Cherish My Memory (Remastered)

Amanda Somerville and Michael Kiske: Two of metal’s famous melodic voices join up in that soft/melodic corner of power metal. Their first album is slow and blah, in my opinion, but City of Heroes has some rocking songs, and the title track is pretty much the Hero’s Journey set to song.

Examples: City of Heroes, Walk on Water.

Avantasia: A long-running (usually concept album) project from power metaller Tobias Sammet and a range of guest vocalists from the power, symphonic and prog corners of metal. More symphonic-power and power-prog than true power metal. Songs like “Runaway Train” are fucking epic.

Examples: Runaway Train, Twisted Mind.

Ayreon: Pretty much the epitome of melodic prog concept album projects, by Arjen Lucassen and another range of famous metal guest vocalists. It’s still power-prog, but it leans more into the prog than Avantasia. I very much recommend listening to Ayreon as a whole album first over individual songs, as much as I adore Day Three: Pain.

Examples: I’ll always recommend first The Human Equation.

Crimfall: Folk-with-a-bit-of-symphonic metal. I’d say something like the later Nightwish sound combined with early Eluvitie and a dash of Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings with even more outrageous bombast and shifts between clean and grunt (beauty and the beast) vocals. This band goes all out between softer breaks, so it isn’t just a wall of noise. (Although the start of “Until Falls the Rain” is fucking massive.) If you don’t like grunt vocals or harder folk, this may not work for you, but if you do, Crimfall.

Examples: Until Falls the Rain, The Last of Stands, Wildfire Season, Where Waning Winds Lead

Dark Princess: Gothic metal with ... well, I can only say emo undertones, but a similar sort of pop-metal sensibility as Amaranthe. They’re a pretty accessible entry to the melodic metal genre for folks new to the idea in terms of hardness, comprehensible vocals and song lengths.

Examples: Cry, Stop My Heart, The Key.

Delain: Symphonic/goth metal in their earlier albums; gothic power-pop metal, more like Amaranthe, in their later ones. I prefer their earlier albums, and their songs that lean hardest on the pop metal rarely do it for me so I won’t list them here, but Charlotte Wessels always sounds gorgeous. Damn do I love “Sleepwalker’s Dream”.

Examples: Sleepwalker’s Dream (early), Here Come the Vultures (later), Masters of Destiny (current)

Edenbridge: Symphonic/operatic metal, more like early Nightwish. I don’t like all their songs, I admit. They’re at their best, in my book, when they’re willing to move away from a close adherence to the Nightwish or Epica sound with more diverse instrumentation; “Wild Chase” is seriously good fun.

Examples: Wild Chase, Remember Me, Higher

Elis: Gothic metal. A lot of their songs sound fairly similar to me, but if you want less orchestration and more gothic sounds with grunt vocals, chorus and guitar, they’ll provide. (RIP Sabine.)

Examples: The Burning, Salvation

Elvenking: Folk meets light power metal with some acoustic songs between, and I have to say there’s something a bit Pratchett-esque elvish or Goblin Market about the weirdness of some of their songs, lyrically. But they’re light, fantastic, folky fun; just don’t expect them to always fit the Tolkien mould. High fantasy Elvenking are not, and that’s why they work.

Examples: The Wanderer (acoustic version), The Cabal, Trows Kind

Epica: If you’re looking for a more existential/spiritual/philosophical take on Nightwish, Epica will provide in the symphonic/operatic/gothic metal sphere. They’re bit more classical-feeling than Nightwish and, at the same time, more gothic, with grunt vocals threaded through the operatic elements. They’re big, bombastic and dramatic, with a touch of Therion about their music.

Examples: Our Destiny, The Essence of Silence, Tides of Time

Kamelot: Symphonic power-slightly-prog metal with a fair bit of drama. We don’t talk about Roy Khan, but I do like his vocals slightly better than that of his replacement, Tommy Karevik. (Karevik is still good, though.) They almost always have One Really Big Romantic Power Ballad, often with a guest female vocalist; it’s practically a contractual obligation.

(Epica are named after Kamelot’s Epica album, FYI.)

Khan examples: The Human Stain, March of Mephisto, A Sailorman’s Hymn

Karevik examples: Insomnia, Under Grey Skies (with the aforementioned Charlotte Wessels), Vespertine (My Crimson Bride)

Leah: A one-woman soft/melodic Celtic metal band, often with doom and prog undertones. Not all her stuff is quite as metal as I prefer, but if you want a break from the bombast melodic metal likes to throw at you with vocals more akin to Enya than Tarja, Leah will do that.

Examples: The Northern Edge, This Present Darkness

Leaves’ Eyes: Symphonic Norse metal, most of the time, but there’s a few albums between that are more like symphonic folk or Norse/Celtic rock. I vastly prefer them when they’re leaning harder to metal, like King of Kings. (Their best album, in my book.) We also don’t talk about Liv Kristine, but I do prefer her as frontwoman.

Examples, all Liv Kristine: Halvdan the Black, Blazing Waters, Froya’s Theme, Elegy (which, because pronouns, sounds like a sapphic love song)

Pyramaze: Fantasy-style softer power metal with a slight dash of prog. It’s very traditionally DnD/fairy tale fantastic, but it’s more toned down compared to Dragonforce. You’re all but required to sing “blood will be shed” and “the UNICORN” in the same way Shakespeare demands you holler “dishonour not your mothers”.

Examples: Tears of Hate, Legend.

Serenity: They’re Kamelot’s brand of symphonic power metal with a more power-metal-leaning vocalist and fantasy or historical vocals. They’re pretty much what power metal would be if it stayed power metal in theme but tried for Kamalot’s sound and styling. For all that it’s hard not to see them as a Kamelot knock-off, I do enjoy their music.

Examples: Velatum, Rust of Coming Ages, When Canvas Starts to Burn

Sirenia: Gothic metal evolving to symphonic metal. I vastly prefer their earlier albums; their middle albums have lost uniqueness (in my opinion) as they moved towards the Nightwish-adjacent mould, just with grunt vocals. Morten Velend’s vocals, though, are good: he’s deep and gravelly while still being clear. And the recent album has that discordant note again, albeit now over Amaranthe’s pop-metal base. Sirenia is a Revolving Door of Female Vocalists, though!

(If you like Morten’s vocals and want Sirenia’s orchestral gothic stylings sans female lead vocals: Mortemia’s Misere Mortem. If you prefer the earlier Sirenia songs, see early Tristania below.)

Examples: In My Darkest Hours (early), A Shadow of Your Own Self (early),  Sirens of the Seven Seas (middle), Dim Days of Dolor (recent), Love Like Cyanide (recent)

Sonata Arctica: Power metal, sometimes with fantasy or historical themes, but a bit toned down compared to Dragonforce or Rhapsody of Fire. This is why I listen to them a lot more than I do the others, as full-out power metal isn’t really my jam. Also, you have got to listen to “Fullmoon” because werewolves.

Examples: Fullmoon (Revisited), Flag in the Ground, The Last Amazing Grays

Tarja: For the sake of completeness, I should mention that Nighwish’s former frontwoman has recorded several of her own albums, but the first two are only ever okay for me, and I don’t connect to the later gothic-pop-metal tones of the later ones. I really notice the lack of Tuomas in her songs.

Examples of songs I don’t hate: Until My Last Breath, Die Alive

Therion: Unclassifiably melodic? Well, there’s fantasy, symphonic, orchestral, choral, prog, mythological and spiritual elements bound into something that’s wild and unique. Nothing else sounds quite like Therion, and their tracks vary in terms of additional tone, instrumentation, theme and styling. It’s as dramatic and all out as all fuck.

Examples: Call of Dagon, Enter Vril-Ya, Son of the Staves of Time, Adulruna Rediviva

Threshold: Soft power-prog, somewhat like Kamelot but sans orchestration. I do find a lot of their songs to be similar, and their early stuff doesn’t speak to me at all, but the songs I like I really like.

Examples: Stars and Satellites, Small Dark Lines

Tristania: Their early (Morten) albums are discordant gothic metal with doomier-style orchestrations, mostly grunt vocals against a choral background. Their later albums ... they’re just standard goth metal. If you like harder vocals leaning into doom but with more orchestration and symphonic elements, Tristania’s early albums are great. Not a fan, at all, of their later stuff, but I’ll link a song for comparison!

Examples: Beyond the Veil (early), Opus Relinque (early), Year of the Rat (later)

Visions of Atlantis: This is another band that’s had a few different vocalists and have changed tone along with them, but they’re mostly fantasy/mythological symphonic metal. (The earlier albums have a consistent operatic power metal vibe not present on songs like “The Deep and the Dark”.) I don’t mind when autoplay offers me their songs, but they’ve never been a band whose discography I absolutely have to own.

Examples: Mermaid’s Wintertale (early), Return to Lemuria (recent), The Deep and the Dark (recent)

Within Temptation: If you’ve heard Nightwish and Amaranthe, you’ve probably heard WT, but just in case you haven’t, they’re a symphonic metal stalwart. Not all their albums work for me--sometimes they sound far too same-ish and sometimes their more experimental songs don’t hit the mark--but Hydra is fantastic.

(I do love And We Run as is. Ironically, I can’t stand What Have You Done; I wish they’d gotten Mikael Stanne or Morten Veland over Keith Caputo. Just think what that song would sound like with grunt vocals!)

Examples: Edge of the World, The Last Dance, Murder and, because I’m contractually obligated to mention it, Paradise (What About Us)

Xandria: A fairly standard gothic/symphonic/operatic metal band, but they’re another Revolving Door of Female Vocalists Band with resulting shifts in tone, so the mood of their albums shifts from gothic to full-out operatic depending on vocalist. I don’t always like all their songs for this reason! Neverworld’s End is my favourite, probably because it’s the most Nightwish-esque.

Examples of songs I like: The Nomad’s Crown, Forevermore (both from Neverworld’s End), Nightfall, Voyage of the Fallen

[jadewing-realms]

“This is gonna be so much fun!”

Fictober 2018 - Day 16

When Sasuke gets a knock on his door at 7PM on Friday night, his first thought is ‘Izuku.’ Not that it’s terribly normal for his childhood friend to visit on Friday nights; on the contrary, lately, Sasuke knows very well that he’s been… somewhat distant. For good reason, of course. Izuku’s a wholesome kid and Sasuke’s… he doesn’t really know what he is anymore. After fighting Itachi during the Bakugou Rescue Mission, Sasuke realized he’d been far too lax over the past few years. He’d allowed himself to get soft, distracted…

Izuku’s one of those distractions. But he can’t just tell him that… It’s been much easier to just throw himself into his studies and training and investigations than deal with that complicated can of worms. Which… has resulted somewhat in radio silence on his end.

That’s precisely why his brain goes to Izuku first at the sign of unexpected company at his dorm, and also why he hesitates to get up to answer. He turns away from his computer screen to stare across his immaculate room at his closed door.

He could just pretend to be sleeping. Not answer. Izuku or not, the visitor would probably give up fairly quickly and abandon their efforts.

Or… it could actually be something important. Honestly, the chances of that are rather slim, but… still. There. Which poses a problem.

He heaves a sigh, expelling with gusto his silly hesitation—only just now deemed silly—before he scoots out from his desk and drags himself to his feet. “Plus ultra,” he mumbles, rubbing an eye that itches from the sudden lack of Blinding LED. He rests a hand on the door knob, inhales, and wrenches it open.

An all-tooth smile pinching very pink cheeks is the first thing he sees, immediately followed a pair of black scalera that are leaning in way too close. “Hey Uchiha! Whatcha up to!?”

Sasuke honestly isn’t sure who he really expected. But it wasn’t Ashido.

He blinks, leaning away from her pure exuberance while trying to seem like he’s not, because that would be indicative of actual fear, now wouldn’t it? “Uh… studying?”

In the time it takes him to blink again in his surprise, her smile trades out for a look of incredulous shock, a raise of pink brows and her mouth forming an ‘o’. “On a Friday night?? Don’t you ever have fun?”

His brows tick lower in a show of offense before he can completely hide it. “Studying is fun.”

“Eesh, you sound like Iida.”

“He has the right idea.”

With a grimace that openly demonstrates her distasted for the very idea, she flaps her hands, dismissing all his talk of responsibility. “Come on, so many of you guys really need to let your hair down more.” She closes her eyes and bows her head, almost like she’s disappointed. But the expression doesn’t last long; no, she bounces back just as rapidly and points a finger between his eyes. “That’s why I’m here!”

Sasuke gingerly shoves the hand away. “Oh?”

“Mm-hm! I’m here to challenge you to a race!” Her gold eyes glitter with the passion of her statement.

An odd thing to harbor passion for, but not necessarily horrible. Still, she’s being terribly vague, which Sasuke doesn’t quite appreciate. “Uh-huh… maybe be more specific?”

Her grin stretches wider, showing her teeth again and he swears she must be trying to Dazzle her way into his good graces. But if that worked, then he’d be hanging out with Bakugou and his gang, and Sasuke would honestly rather die.

Actually, that’s not entirely true… Izuku out-dazzles them all, but that’s beside the point.

“Okay, get ready for this.” She leans back, stretches her arms forward and splays her fingers wide—for effect, presumably. Sasuke glances over her rosy hands and then cocks an eyebrow at her. Surely, whatever she has to say… will not be worth the build-up.

“MarioKart.”

…Nope. Definitely not worth it.

His lack of enthusiasm must show on his face because even as he moves to step back into his room, she waves those splayed hands like the frantic motion might stop his retreat. “Wait, wait, wait, hear me out! Come on!”

He pauses. One hand grips the edge of the door, ready to shut it in her face.

She huffs and then, with a boost of confidence, plants her hands on her hips and raises her head like she’s about to make some kind of inspiring speech. “Every third Friday is Tri-Class Tournament! We challenge classes B and C and we all meet in the lounge and we beat the crap outta each other with a good ol’ battle royale! We bring snacks, we’ve got a gambling pot going, it’s super cool!”

‘Super cool’ does nothing to convince him of anything. She doesn’t seem to notice though… which is not entirely surprising, considering her intellect has always seemed on par with Kaminari’s. This does little to lessen the acute feeling that Sasuke’s time is being wasted.

He needs to find a way to beat his brother. That’s more important than any frivolous Friday game night.

“I think I’ll pass,” he says, set on his decision.

Her face falls. “But we need another heavy hitter! Come on, Uchiha, Class B has dominated us the last two months! Our morale’s at an all-time low, but you’re good at basically everything so you’d be sure to give us a critical edge! Please, pretty please??”

“No. Why should I care about your games?” He levels her with a steely glare. “I’m trying to become a Pro Hero.”

For the briefest of moments, she almost looks insulted. She sighs petulantly, folds her arms and turns slightly away—enough to exude an attitude of Done, but not enough to end the conversation. Unfortunately. While she purses her lips, he contemplates actually closing the door before she can get another word in edge-wise. It’d be terribly easy…

“Midoriya said you’d say no,” she suddenly drops.

Sasuke hates that it makes him freeze.

She keeps her eyes closed, though her face twists further into an expression of righteous disappointment. She tsks at him—actually tsks, like she’s his actual mother or something. “I didn’t want to believe it… but I guess he was right. He said you’ve been awfully distant lately.”

D***.

“He looked so lonely, sitting by himself at the end of the couch. So I just had to try and get you to join us.”

What about Uraraka? And Iida? Surely they’re there… but… then again, would Izuku be sitting alone if they were? Or possibly, Ashido might be lying through her teeth just to make him come down…

But if she’s not…

D*** d***.

“Buuuuuut I guess, I’ll just let him know...” She starts to turn on her heel, to head toward the stairs that’ll take her down, away, just like he wants. He can go back to his computer, to his research, his desperate bid for power to beat his ultimate nemesis, the brother who murdered their father…

He heaves another gust of a sigh and steps backwards into his room.

“Wait up,” he says.

Her steps halt and she glances back with the cheekiest grin he’s ever seen and he almost goes back on his decision because she knew this would work. She knew just what to say and she’d been planning to do it from the very beginning, no doubt in his mind. She does wait, with far too much satisfaction in every motion, every twinkle in her eyes.

Instead of flipping her off like he’s rather tempted to do, he just snatches his hoodie from the hook on his door and tugs it on with indignant fervor, before shuffling out to meet her with about as much vigor as anyone would have setting off for the principal’s office. Ashido bounces on her heels while he shuts his door behind him.

“YES! This is gonna be so much fun!” With a dramatic point forward, she takes off at a march, lifting her feet high and chattering about the yen and snacks in the pot and who always picks what character. Sasuke tunes her out, mostly…

And tries to think of what he’ll say to Izuku.

[tlatollotl]

Figures dressed in elaborate garments and headdresses process from right to left across the face of one of the pillars of the Temple of the Painted Pillars at the site of Pañamarca in northwest Peru. The figures hold typical Moche objects, including a plate with three purple goblets, a multicolored stirrup-spout bottle, and a feather fan.

The cover of the Autumn 1951 issue of ARCHAEOLOGY features a dramatic scene of close combat between two men, teeth bared, faces bright red with exertion, garments flying, pulling each other’s hair so violently that each grips the ripped-out forelock of his foe. Created by the artist Pedro Azabache, this cover is a replica of a wall painting at the site of Pañamarca on the northwest coast of Peru, done very shortly after the work’s rediscovery. Mural A depicts a contest between Ai-Apaec, the mythological hero worshiped by the Moche culture, which flourished in this region between about A.D. 200 and 900, and his twin or double. Although Pañamarca’s impressive ruins on a granite outcropping in the lower Nepeña River Valley were well known in the first half of the twentieth century, and had been described by travelers in the late nineteenth century, only a few articles about the site had been published and very little had been said about its wall paintings. Thus, when American archaeologist Richard Schaedel arrived there in 1950, he believed that any paintings he might find would be fragmentary at best. Once there, however, he soon found that Pañamarca’s adobe structures had been completely covered in polychrome murals. In a single week—originally planned for five days, the trip was extended when more murals and a group of burials were discovered—Schaedel and his five-person team not only recorded the combat scene, but also discovered new murals of what he identified as a large cat-demon and an anthropomorphic bird. On the walls of a large plaza, they documented a 30-foot-long composition showing a procession of warriors and priests wearing a costume with knife-shaped backflaps known to have been part of Moche sacrificial rituals.

Though in less than pristine condition after more than 1,000 years, the abundance and unexpected state of preservation of Pañamarca’s murals surprised and delighted Schaedel. But it also concerned him. In his article about the site for Archaeology, he writes, “We hope that this description [of the paintings] will serve as a timely note and warning to lovers of art and archaeology in Peru and elsewhere that this rich source of vivid mural decoration, which today only awaits the patience of the archaeologist to reveal, may tomorrow be irrevocably destroyed. If these still unrevealed documents of the human spirit are not to be forever lost to us, we must constantly keep in mind two ideals: as archaeologists, to devote our attention first and foremost to the adequate documentation of fragile paintings; and to create among the public in general an awareness of their aesthetic as well as their documentary value, so that the present apathy towards their preservation may be replaced by a sense of obligation to their protection.”

Over the more than 65 years since Schaedel’s work at Pañamarca, it was widely assumed that his admonitions had been ignored or forgotten, and that the surviving murals had fallen into ruin. Very little fieldwork was conducted after Schaedel’s excavations and work by Duccio Bonavia later in the 1950s, and only a few new paintings were discovered. When archaeologist and art historian Lisa Trever of the University of California, Berkeley, chose to work in Pañamarca in 2010 along with her Peruvian colleagues Jorge Gamboa, Ricardo Toribio, and Ricardo Morales, she wasn’t very hopeful. “I was pessimistic when we began, figuring that most of the murals that had been discovered before had been destroyed, so we set out to map where the paintings had been and to contextualize what remained,” she says. “But when we began to dig, we were shocked that so much had survived from the earlier excavations.” What was even more surprising was that so much more remained in situ, intact, and unexcavated. “We were soon looking at things that no one had seen since A.D. 780, when parts of the site were deliberately buried,” says Trever. “We went in with a sense that Pañamarca was a site of lost monuments and lost masterpieces of the ancient Peruvian past, and were amazed to find out that not everything was lost at all.”

A 1950 photograph taken at Pañamarca shows Mural C shortly after it was exposed by American archaeologist Richard Schaedel. The painting depicts eight figures—likely warriors and priests—standing as much as five feet tall.

The name “Moche” or “Mochica” comes not from any ancient source, but was given to the culture in the 1930s because the region’s ancient center was located near the modern town of Moche. Rather than being a single political entity or state, the Moche culture was a loose system of chiefdoms situated in multiple irrigated valleys, linked by shared practices and common beliefs. Their territory encompassed more than 400 miles along the coast of northern Peru. While not exactly a political capital, the cultural and artistic homeland of the Moche world was located in the Chicama and Moche Valleys, near the city of Trujillo. At some point, Pañamarca, which was about 100 miles to the south, grew in religious and cultural importance.

The Moche were skilled builders and artists. At some sites they demonstrated this by undertaking large construction projects. Other locations were peopled with accomplished metalsmiths or expert ceramicists, and still others boasted gifted mural painters. “There is an interesting view developing among scholars about a world of different accomplishments in different places that breaks down the monolithic view of Moche culture,” says Trever. Moche potters created evocative ceramics depicting daily life, the natural world, religious sacrifices, and deformed and even skeletal figures, as well as an extraordinary panoply of hybrid monsters, mythological creatures, and gods in many forms. Gold and silver earspools, necklaces, and rings, some of which are inlaid with semiprecious stones, have been found at many Moche sites. Early Moche artists sculpted clay bas reliefs and covered them with mineral-based pigments at sacred locations such as Huacas de Moche, with its highly decorated Huaca de la Luna, and at with its parade of naked captives and intricate geometric patterns. Later, they abandoned the relief style and replaced it with the flat narratives that cover the smooth adobe walls of their temples and public buildings. These paintings reveal much not only about the Moche in general, but also about how Moche rulers chose particular ways of expressing their local identity in a world where heterogeneity reigned.

A newly excavated figure (left) and a watercolor of the figure (right) at Pañamarca show one of a pair of supernatural combatants. The second figure is likely hidden behind the adobe bricks visible at the left of the image.

According to the German linguist Ernst Middendorf, who visited the ruins of Pañamarca in 1886, the Quechua name for the site, “Panamarquilla,” means “little fortress on the right bank of the river.” Trever, however, suggests a different, and more evocative, reading of the name: “little fortress of the paintings.” Pañamarca’s artists were deeply invested in painting, and the murals that cover their monumental temples, including the Temple of the Painted Pillars, reference a Moche ideology focused on either supernatural beings engaging in mythological acts or on human beings performing ritual acts, explains Trever. But adobe is ultimately not permanent—it is eroded and damaged by rain, wind, and time in a way that stone is not. “Because they are building fast, they are constantly remaking their built environment. This gives an immediate sense of their ongoing engagement with the living world,” says Trever. “And because Moche architecture, like Mesoamerican architecture, is renovated and not knocked down, what you end up with is like a set of architectural nesting dolls or onion skins.”

Furthermore, at Pañamarca, Trever sees a localized expression of identity reflected in the murals that is very different from what can be seen at other Moche sites. She believes there was an anxiety about being in the hinterland, 100 miles from the Moche epicenter, that may have led to an increased sense of orthodoxy in the imagery. “What is striking here is that we don’t see a hybrid form of Moche at all, but an even more conservative, even more explicit, Moche ideology expressed,” she says. “It’s almost like they have doubled down on the canon because they are in a more remote location intermingling with peoples of other cultures who aren’t like them.”

The Mural of the Fish adorns one of the walls of a ceremonial platform at Pañamarca. The sea creatures depicted include (clockwise from left) a ray painted using blue-gray paint over red pigment, a long red, white and blue fish, and a small red fish with blue fins.

What is also unusual at Pañamarca is that there is a density of these canonical images not only in the most public, visible spaces of the temples, but also in restricted, private spaces. While at Huaca de la Luna the inside of many of the temple’s rooms are simply white, at Pañamarca every surface that Trever and her team have excavated is covered in paintings. “It’s almost as if they needed to remind even themselves at every step what it means to be part of a culture, especially when you are far from the heartland,” explains Trever. Says Peruvian archaeologist Gabriel Prieto, “Whatever the reason was to paint all these murals here, it’s clear to me that one of the intentions was to show users of and visitors to these monuments the complexity, quality, and order of the Moche’s most important rituals, stories, and, perhaps, historic events. The paintings at Pañamarca are 100 percent Moche, but the style clearly shows some local taste, and this can tell us that the Moche were adaptable and flexible enough to forge relationships with local elites of other cultures.”

A pillar in the Temple of the Painted Pillars bears three vignettes (top to bottom): a female and a kneeling warrior, a priestess standing in front of a large, red jar, lifting a yellow goblet, and a zoomorphic figure composed of a human, feline, or fox with serpentine features.

Though much about Moche art and architecture is well understood, key questions about significant changes in painting styles over time—and how these might be related to shifts in Moche fortunes—are at the forefront of current work. Roughly four centuries after the culture first appeared, some sort of disruption rippled throughout the entire Moche world. The cause, according to archaeologist Michele Koons of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, is the million-dollar question. One possible explanation is an El Niño event, but Koons says that researchers have not yet found definitive evidence of this. She says, “I think that it was probably a mixture of different things—possibly climate change or drought, an earthquake, or some other natural disaster, as well as pressure from highland powers such as the Wari.”

It is not only the cause of the episode, but also the precise date that Koons is interested in. “I realized during the course of my research [at the previously unexcavated Moche site of Licapa II in the Chicama Valley] that the traditional dating for the Moche wasn’t really based on any data, but was built on assumptions about pottery styles that had no relationship to actual dates of any kind,” she explains. “I felt the need to unpack this.” By radiocarbon dating organic remains such as seeds and twigs found in excavated contexts alongside Moche ceramics at multiple sites, Koons was able for the first time to pinpoint the date of the catastrophic event or series of events at around A.D. 600.

A newly discovered painting shows a figure wearing a yellow dress, holding plates of food. She is trailed by a descending osprey.

With this newly refined chronology in mind, archaeologists are now able to recognize a fundamental shift in the way Moche leaders presented themselves to their communities and the outside world. “There is some sense at this time that people aren’t really buying into the current way of doing things,” says Koons, “and that their claim to leadership needs to be bolstered. This could have happened for any number of reasons.” For example, climatic events may have caused people to lose faith in their leaders’ ability to protect them. At Moche sites such as Huaca de la Luna, this change in perception is reflected in the murals, which become less repetitive and more narrative. Koons believes that this type of art reveals an awareness of not just who they are, but who they have been. For example, the iconography of sacrifice, which was depicted in Moche art for centuries, can be seen in a nearly documentary manner. “There is a sense that they are saying, ‘This is what we used to do,’” explains Koons. “It’s as if they are becoming more self-reflective and more aware of themselves at some transitional moment.”

The Moche hero Ai-Apaec is shown holding the typical Moche tumi knife in the Temple of the Painted Pillars doing fierce battle with the so-called Strombus monster.

The tremendous challenge faced by Trever and her team is that, while the history of other Moche sites prior to A.D. 600 is relatively well understood, the story of Pañamarca earlier than that date is somewhat dark—nothing has been excavated and little is known. What does seem clear is that Pañamarca’s inhabitants ultimately recovered from whatever happened at the start of the seventh century, and that they experienced a kind of renaissance that would last for some 150 years. “The story of Pañamarca is not just about crisis, but also about recovery,” says Trever. It was during this latter phase, on the site of an earlier temple, that Pañamarca’s rulers supervised the construction and expansion of the large walled plaza and monumental adobe pyramids and platforms they covered with vibrant murals. And, as a result of radiocarbon dating of organic construction materials, it is now possible to say that these structures were built between A.D. 600 and 750, the first absolute dates for the Moche in this valley. Still, questions remain unanswered. “Pañamarca’s paintings seem to me to be a large open book, and when I saw them I felt like the Moche were trying to tell me something about their civilization and their glorious past,” says Prieto. What exactly they were saying is still something of a mystery. 

[pyrewriter]

Rocky Return

Milo embraced Adrien "Remember kid, we're familia and that means we watch out for each other" he grabbed Adrien's shoulders "Now go do your thing, your shift don't start till 21:00".

"You got it boss, er...Uncle" Adrien wiped his face and turned to leave "I'll be back by 21:30, then we talk about what comes next he said over his shoulder on the way out, Milo nodded. Transforming into Chat Noir he left for the police station to begin his day as he had for the past week, it was becoming instinctual at this point. Willy was surprised at how quickly Chat had returned and admittedly curious.

"Well that was a quicky, what'd you do" Willy asked as Chat unlocked and opened the door.

"Got a job yesterday and I was getting my schedule" Chat explained "Don't gotta be in till 21:00 though so we're still stuck with each other".

"Hahaha you make that sound like it's a bad thing, Alley Cat" Willy joked.

Chat put a hand on his chest looking dramatically shocked "Sheriff, I would never" they laughed at their own absurdity. They waved to the receptionist on the way out and began their usual casual stroll around Paris, stopping at every park along the way. When they had reached the last park on their route Chat sat down pulling out the incense and wax paper "You wanna help me roll?" he asked looking at Willy.

"Sure, we're at the end of our route anyway" Willy replied shrugging and taking a seat next to Chat who handed him a handful of wax sheets and incense. He watched Chat make a few before attempting it himself, he was amazed at how efficiently his cat themed companion rolled. "You said this was an old trick of yours right?" Willy asked as he started to roll his own.

"Mhm" Chat replied sealing two "Haven't needed to do it in a few years though" he elaborated continuing his work.

"Dare I ask why?" Will asked hesitantly before sealing his first.

"Stops nightmares and the like" Chat said dryly, Willy knew that was the best he was going to get from Chat so he stopped asking questions and continued rolling in. The two of them rolled until they ran out of incense and paper, together the two of them had rolled enough to last quite a while.

"I reckon that many will get you through a month" Willy said adding the last of his incense cigarettes to the pile between them. 

Chat chuckled "You mean a few weeks". 

Willy turned to him wide eyed "What do mean 'weeks', Chat?" he asked leaning in. 

Chat put up his hands "Haha don't get your chaps in a bunch, what I mean is I gotta stash a few of these at my camp, work, and have a few on me in both Civilian and Hero forms". 

Willy backed off "Well I guess that makes sense" he crossed his arms "What's in these things anyway?" he asked.

"The incense are made with trace amounts of theanine, when crushed and burned it smokes" he picked one from the pile lighting it to demonstrate "Plus I have an oral fixation" he added handing it to Willy. It would be a bad idea for him to take off his mask in the middle of the day. 

"So what do you call them?" Willy asked taking the smoking roll from Chat, holding it in his mouth to enjoy the aroma coming from it.

"I always called it an 'I.C' which stands for 'Incense Cig' since that's pretty much what they are" Chat explained shrugging. Willy nodded taking a deep breath through his nose, "Careful there we still have half a day's light to burn".

"Seems like a shame to waste it though" 

Chat pointed to the pile "Why do you think we made so many of the things".

Willy shrugged saying "True" before standing and walking over to snuff out his I.C in a nearby ashtray.  He gestured for Chat to follow "It's about noon you ready for a recharge?".

*BEEP BEEP BEEP* Chat looked down "Guess I am" he said before gathering the I.C's and joining Willy on the walk to the station.  Most of the officers in the station seemed to notice that Chats pockets were stuffed with what looked like blunts. Only a few asked about them but he was more than willing to explain what they were, especially since they all appeared genuinely concerned. Lunch flew by and they left waving to everyone on their way out as they had but they were running out of things to do. After walking around for awhile they decided that they would just relax for the rest of the day and all of tomorrow.

Meanwhile the class was gathering to begin their search but this time they had a new member "Everyone, Juleka’s brother Luka will be helping us search from now on" Alya said addressing the others. They all greeted him welcoming the help that came with an extra set of eyes. After splitting into new teams and discussing who was going where they split up to begin searching their respective areas. Alya and Nino were together as always but this time Nino was staying close to Alya while keeping an eye out for Chat.  He didn't know how she would react given her unusual reaction from a few nights ago but he was betting it wasn't a good idea to let her see him. Hours passed and no one had seen even a trace of their missing class mate nor had they seen Chat, when they regrouped everyone was exhausted but they remained hopeful. 

"We should check in with the police" Luka suggested "They might  have some leads on where Adrien could be".  Chloe and Sabrina agreed telling everyone they would update everyone the next time they met before rushing off in the direction of the station. Over the course of the week the class had grown more understanding and closer to Chloe.

"Mind if we head back to the station a tad early today?" Chat asked then elaborated "-work's a bit far"

"Course" Willy replied standing up.

Chat stood up as well "Thanks 3-W, sorry to cut today short" 

Willy raised a hand shaking his head "Not at all" he said starting toward the station, Chat quickly joined him at his side as they walked down to the station. Chat was surprised to see Chloe and Sabrina at the receptionist desk but Chloe and company had somehow missed a Cowboy and Cat themed Hero walking past them while they talked to the receptionist and an officer. Chat took Willy to his room confirming their plan to do nothing but relax ,and probably drink, the next time they next day. When Chat returned to the front desk to ask where Belial was the receptionist took her attention away from Chloe to answer his question.

"He's with the others in the break room, I'll go get them for you" she said standing up and heading to the break room.   

It wasn't until then that Chloe had noticed his presence "Chat Noir?" she said, her tone suggesting she wasn't happy to see him "What are you doing here?".

"Drop off and pick up" he replied dryly.

Chloe mumbled under her breath "So Alya was right, you really don't care about him".

Chat let out a sigh "If you're referring to the Agreste kid then you're only half right”. 

"AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT!?" Chloe yelled holding back tears. 

Chat looked her in the eye, his voice level "I'll tell you something Bee, No one vanishes from sight, who wants to be found". Just as Chloe was about to respond the break room door opened with the usual officers and the receptionist all running out, chasing something. The commotion tore Chloe and Chat’s attention away from scowling at each other. Chat smiled knowing what it was, he whistled and Belial jumped on the desk then to his favorite spot inside Chats collar. "Been causing trouble again I see, eh bud" he said playfully scratching Belial's chin, he turned waving over his shoulder laughing on his way out. 

Chloe was fuming, she was angry at what Chat had said and how he just brushed her off like dirt on his jacket. She wanted to chase after him and give Chat a slap he wouldn't forget for a long time and if she was lucky she might even knock that mask off. Were it not for Sabrina's hand on her shoulder she would have tried it too but the look on her friend's face told her it wasn't worth the trouble. She turned back to the officer they were speaking with and away from Chat with a huff "He's not worth the energy or time" she said coldly. When Chloe and Sabrina left the officer had informed them that they too were coming up empty in their search for Adrien Agreste, the news was going to be bad.

Chat was walking down the street before deciding to scale a building to reach the roof tops, once up there he de-transformed, "Isn't it a bit early for you to be Adrien again?" Plagg asked.

Adrien shrugged "Yeah but I've got work and you need a break after how hard I've been working you this past month" he moved Belial from his shoulder placing him in his shirt. Getting a running start he leaped over the gap between two buildings and started running toward the tavern holding Belial with one hand as he did. Adrien had never tried free running without the enhancements that being Chat Noir gave him, he had developed enough muscle memory to know what he was doing. He still needed to gauge his ability without any assistance but as he ran a thought occurred to him "If I show up already looking tired I can pass it off as part of my secret". 

When he finally arrived at the tavern Adrien was four stories up and had no safe way down but it was already 19:40. Not wanting to back track or transform he decided the best and shortest option was to climb down a story or two and drop down the rest of the way. Climbing down was difficult thanks to having to hold Belial, while dropping down he landed wrong and ended up on his ass landing hard enough to knock the wind from him. After a few seconds he was up and walking again ,even if it wasn't straight, he entered the tavern rubbing his tailbone.

Milo was at the bar when he saw Adrien come in rubbing his rear "Oh so it's that kind of secret is it?" he said half joking.

Adrien looked at him confused, then it clicked, "OH my god NO it's not, it is not that I just...slipped and fell on my way here" he said flustered.

Milo laughed "Hahaha sure thing kid, now get to the back and put on a uniform" he told him as he served a gentleman sitting at the bar. 

"Sure thing boss,sorry I'm late" Adrien replied walking to the back and into the kitchen. 

"Oh-uh, I don't know your size so just use whatever fits and you're early so don't sweat it" Milo called out from the bar.

"OK!" Adrien yelled back, the changing room looked more like an old locker room, he cast a look over his shoulder "Ok" he said addressing Plagg.

"Wow Adrien, you really got it good now don't you?" Plagg said mockingly as he floated out.

"Oh shut up Plagg, at least I have somewhere to work so I can fuel your cheese thirst and keep everyone fed" Adrien said with a joking tone. "Now help me find some pants" he added opening locker after locker.

Plagg rolled his eyes "Yeah, yeah" he flew into every unopened locker until he eventually found a pair that looked about the right size. "Found some" he yelled from the inside of one of the lockers before opening it. 

Adrien rushed over grabbing the pants "Thanks man, I owe you an extra slice tonight" he slipped the pants on "-a little long but I can just roll the cuffs" he did and they fit perfectly. It didn't take him long to find a shirt that fit him properly, once dressed he went to the front to meet Milo to ask what he needed to do. 

Milo looked over Adrien "It's your first day and it's been pretty slow so just clean and serve anyone not at the bar for now" he said gesturing to a pile of cleaning supplies hidden beneath the Bar. 

Adrien nodded before going around and greeting all the patrons "Let me know if you gents need anything" or some variation of it was his go-to greeting. The hours ticked by without anything interesting happening, he bussed a few tables and served drinks or food to a few patrons. Adrien was happy to finally have a civilian life that was similar to other people his age even if he did have to hide his identity as both a hero and civilian. His shift lasted until closing time at around 11:30pm or whenever Milo felt like closing early.

"Hey kid, come here for a minute will ya" Milo yelled from the changing room calling Adrien over.

Adrien looked up from the table he was bussing "Sure thing boss, just give me a sec" he yelled back grabbing the last of the bottles left on the table. After putting everything where it belonged he went to the back to see what Milo wanted him for "What's up, Milo?" he asked.

"I'm sure you've noticed the state of this place isn't the best" Milo said sitting on a bench.

Adrien looked around saying "It's not the best but it's not bad by any means" he thought back to when Nino had brought him in and about what he had seen during his shift. The floor could use some work, the ceiling was fine, some of the tables needed to be replaced or repaired, the bar and kitchen needed the most work overall. Considering Milo has been running the place alone for who knows how long though so it's no surprise that it was in a bit of a state. 

Adrien told Milo his observations and Milo agreed asking him "So then let me ask you this: How do you feel about helping me make this place better". 

"How do you mean?" Adrien asked changing back into his normal clothes "Where do I put this" he asked holding up his uniform.

Milo pointed to a locker that wasn't in too bad of shape "I'm talking about renovating this place...where we can anyway".

Adrien nodded opening the locker "I've got a few grand to spare" he said plainly.

"I hate to ask, I really do but...would you mind?" Milo said sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck.

Adrien sat next to him putting his shoes on "Don't worry about it but we can discuss this more later, I need to go do my 'secret' thing" Milo nodded giving him a pat on the back and telling him to go. Once outside he transformed and scaled the building to reach the roofs deciding to skip his nightly patrol would earn him some needed sleep. When he got the roof and de-transformed he texted Nino "Uncle's planning some renovation on the tavern, think you should be there if you can tomorrow". He didn't expect him to respond at this time of night but tomorrow was the weekend so he put his phone away lighting an I.C and closed his eyes to sleep.

The next morning he awoke drenched and cold under a dark sky that threatened a downpour. Adrien was annoyed that he had failed to wake up when the rain started but there was nothing he could do about it now other than head to his camp and change. It wasn't if he took the rooftops it wasn’t far and he didn't want to wake Plagg so putting Belial in his shirt he decided to use the trip as practice. He managed to get to the camp without waking either of his passengers and changed into some dry clothes checking his phone before starting patrol ,no response yet, he shrugged. 

Plagg woke up just as Adrien was reaching to grab him asking "What's with the wardrobe change...and why am I soaked, did you jump in the river or something?".

Adrien laughed "No, I guess we got rained on last night and neither of us woke up and by the looks of it" he looked to the sky "-it might rain again soon".  He grabbed another clean shirt using it to dry Belial then Plagg, when they were dry Adrien asked "You ready?". 

"Yeah, but don't forget you still owe me that extra slice" Plagg said smiling. 

"Hehe and you'll get it, don't you worry...now-Plagg, Claws Out" once transformed he started patrol keeping an eye out for places that would be nice to relax with Willy. 

*RING RING* the sound of her phone ringing woke Alya, she looked to see who was calling so early in the morning "OH SHIT" she yelled seeing it was Marinette. Alya answered "Hey girl, how you holdin up?" she asked.

"Good, I just got to the Orly airport, I'll be back in Paris in a few hours" Marinette replied casually.

Alya was confused at the causality of Marinette's tone before it dawned on her "You don't know do you...?" Alya asked hesitantly.

Marinette was confused now "Don't know what Alya, did something happen?" she was quiet "Alay you there".

"Mari,I think you should meet me and the class in front of the school when you get back" Alya's voice was somber and filled with regret.

Marinette was concerned now "Ok, I'll let you know when we're back in Paris" she hung up and put her phone in her purse giving Tikki a concerned look, falling silent.

Her father broke the silence that filled the car "Everything ok back there, Marinette?" he asked.

"Oui, Papa" she said, then under her breath "I hope" for the rest of the ride she stared out the window pondering what Alya meant and what the class had to do with it. 

A few hours passed, Chat had picked up Willy for their day of relaxation together and they were just sitting around by the riverfront. Marinette had texted Alya that she was in the city now and was heading home, Alya then texted the rest of the class and Luka to meet in front of the school. When Marinette arrived at her home, she could see her friends sitting on the steps in front of the school with Alya and Nino standing at the front of the group. 

Her father had noticed the group and told her "It looks like your friends want to talk to you, you go, we'll take care of the bags" Marinette hugged him before running to her friends. 

"Hey you guys what's going on and what's with all the long faces?You look like someone died or something" Marinette said jokingly but the reaction of her classmates kept her from laughing. "Alya, what's going on, did I miss something?" she asked.

Alya stepped forward letting go of Nino's hand "Mari, I'm sorry to have to tell you this but...Adrien's been missing for a week now". Marinette was taken aback and she froze, a look of shock, horror and despair on her face "Mari please".

Marinette cut her off stammering "NO, no, th-this is some kind of sick joke right? he can't just be gone" she collapsed holding her head.

"MARINETTE" the class yelled together as they all rushed to her side, together they got Marinette to her feet sitting her down on the steps. 

Alya sat next to her hugging her "I know, I know but there's more to this story please we need you to listen". 

Marinette was shaking but she managed to respond "Ok Alya, I-I'll listen".

Alya told everything that happened when they had last seen him, the mask, coughing up blood, and his sudden disappearance just before the Amber Alert. As she explained Marinette became more and more horrified and scared, fearing the worst had happened to Adrien. Alya finished explaining but decidedly left out any detail involving Chat Noir for both their sakes, Nino was silent through the entirety of the retelling of that day's events. 

Alix chimed in saying "We've been looking for him everyday after school ,all of us, but not even the Police have found him, not yet anyway".  

Marinette wiped her tears "I-I need to be alone to think for a while guys" she said before trying to run back to her house, Luka caught her arm.

He looked her in the eye concerned for her "Are you sure you don't want to be with friends right now?" Marinette tore herself from his grip running faster. He moved to chase her but Kim and Ivan grabbed him shaking their heads to tell him to just let her go.

Tikki tried to console her "I'm sure Adrien's fine Marinette, if he managed to disappear even with the injury your friends say he had then he's probably just healing". 

Marinette was crying into her pillow but looked up to respond "I don't know Tikki, he just...he just disappeared without saying a word and not even the entire Paris Police force can find him".

"They might not be able to but maybe Ladybug could?" Tikki gently suggested.

Marinette took a few deep breaths to calm down "Yeah, yeah maybe we could" she stood "Tikki, Spots On". Leaping off her balcony Ladybug decided that the best course of action was to try her normal patrol route to search for Adrien and to let Paris know she had returned. Not too long after starting her search she spotted Alya, jumping down to street level she tapped her shoulder to get her attention.

Alya turned to see who tapped her "LADYBUG, YOUR BACK!" she yelled ecstatically before pulling out her phone. "Ladybug, you've finally returned to Paris after a month of being gone, where were you and why did you leave?". 

Ladybug did her best to look heroic stating "Yes I have returned and I had some...business to attend to in my civilian life but I am back now and ready to protect Paris".

Alya's excitement faded and she asked "Do you have any comment on recent events?".

Ladybug feigned ignorance doing her best to hold back tears "No I have only returned today and it seems my partner has kept this city safe".

Alya mumbled under her breath "Well I wouldn't say that". 

"What was that?" Ladybug asked.

"N-nothing...uhm, a classmate and friend of mine has gone missing recently. His name is Adrien Agreste and no one has been able to find or contact him since" Alya said sounding scared. "There have also been Akuma sightings throughout the week an-" she choked up "and I hate to ask a busy hero...but-".

Ladybug stopped her "I will search for your friend, everyone deserves to be treated with the same importance even if there's Akuma. I will find my partner and we will search the city". She zipped herself up and onto a roof to continue her search before Alya could say another word.

Alya flinched "Ladybug, if only you knew..." she stopped recording.

Ladybug had to take a moment to breath and wipe the tears that had begun to form in her eyes after her performance for the Ladyblog. She continued on her patrol but not even an hour after her run-in with Alya Ladybug spotted Chat sitting on a bench next to the river with what looked like a cowboy. Sorrow and fear had left her in an instant, replaced by anger and resentment toward Chat Noir. Jumping to street level again she walked in front of them in the middle of a conversation but both their eyes were closed.

Chat was laughing "Wait, wait so you're telling me no one saw you running buck naked down the street?".

"I don't know Noir, all I know is that I will never play spin spin the bottle or seven minutes heaven ever again" Willy replied 

Ladybugs anger only rose, she cleared her throat to get their attention "*Ahem* Having a nice little chat are we?" she asked in an angrily sarcastic tone.

Chat recognized the voice immediately "Uh-oh, cavalries here, 3-W" he stated opening his eyes.

Willy opened his eyes starting to speak "What 'cavalry' do...you...Uh-oh" he stopped when he saw who was in front of them.

Ladybug was tapping her foot, arms crossed with a scowl plastered across her face "Care to explain?" she asked demandingly.

Chat replied seriously "No I don't think I do, LB" he stood up from the bench "3-W, it's time" he said looking over his shoulder and started to walk toward the Police station.

Willy's expression matched the seriousness and somber in his voice as he got up to follow Chat "Damn, guess I'll never get that drink" he sighed heavily "-welp times up". 

"I'll let you lead the way" Ladybug stated annoyed and angry from Chat's interactions with the Akuma, she figured they had become close and knew what needed to be done. None of them said a word on the walk to the station but Ladybug was visibly furious at how casually Chat was acting, in the back of her mind she was thinking of a few choice words to describe him. When they finally reached the station most of the officers were off duty or on break but a few familiar faces stuck out to Chat and Willy. 

Most everyone had the same reaction saying all together "Ladybug, you're back?!" she put on a smile and waved to all of them before returning to scowling at Chat. 

The three officers who were taking care of Belial and the officer who gave him the keys to the cells approached Chat "Hey guys,” he sighed holding out his fist “I think this is the last time we’ll meet here, so...bien joué?".

They all chuckled with a smile before bumping fists with him, holding it for a moment they repeated after him “bien joué” before pulling away together.

Chat looked to the officer who stored Willy's gun and asked "You remember where you put it?" the officer nodded before walking off. He quickly returned with a small gun case, opening it he presented the weapon to Chat who grabbed the gun and turned to Willy. The station fell silent "It's been fun, 3-W" Chat said extending his hand holding the gun in the other.

Willy grabbed Chat's forearm giving it a shake "It really has Noir, thank you for everything you’ve done" Chat smiled letting go of his arm.

"Cataclysm" the gun rusted and crumbled releasing the Akuma. 

Ladybug wasted no time in cleansing it "Bye-bye little Butterfly". 

Willy was cleansed at last, he fell to the ground dazed and confused "Why am I here, wait where is here". 

"Miraculous Ladybug!"  

A swarm of ladybugs engulfed Willy and the remains of the cap gun that held the Akuma and even swarmed around him. The toy cap gun was fixed and laying on the floor, the sight of it was enough for Willy to figure out what had happened on his own "Oh, I got akumatized didn't I?".

Chat knelt down grabbing the toy and handing it to him "Trust me you didn't do much and...my condolences ,I know what that feels like, but you should live your life ,for him". 

Willy hugged Chat "I don't know what I said as a villain but, thank you" he started crying, Chat patted him lightly on the back before Willy released him. Chat stood and offered his hand to Willy to help him up.

Chat handed the former cowboy his gun "Just be careful where you point that thing" he said gesturing to his mask that was still firmly affixed to his face. *BEEP BEEP* "Looks like I'm out of time, though I'd oh so love to catch up Ladybug I believe it will have to wait" Chat said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Ladybug wanted to slap that mask off his face and make him explain himself but she knew he was right and he was already out the door before she could have done anything. 

Outside Chat de-transformed in the nearby alley "DAMMIT!" he yelled punching a dumpster, despite being enveloped by the ladybugs the scar that bared his teeth was still there. 

"Maybe it's just too old to fix?" Plagg suggested.

"UGH, whatever" Adrien threw his hands in the air "It's not like I could have just gone back to the way things were even if it did work" he exclaimed "Fuck it!". He punched the dumpster until he left a large dent in its side, he would have continued until his knuckles were bloody and worn to the bone had a buzz from his pocket not stopped him. The buzz broke his rage and after a few deep stuttered breaths he pulled out his phone to see a text from a number he hadn't seen in a very long time. 

“From Fe’ Agreste: I'm at the airport come get pick me up".

Previous Chapter   Next Chapter   Chapter Guide

[2700fstreet]

OPERA / 2018-2019

THE ME I WANT TO SING

TEACHER AND PARENT GUIDE

Created and written by Tom Minter Originally commissioned by the Washington National Opera Roderick C. Demmings, Jr., piano Christine Lyons, soprano Laree "Ree" Simon, soprano

Student Guide: The Me I Want to Sing

Parents, Teachers, and Caregivers: Get the Conversation Going

Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price—their voices helped change the soundtrack of the twentieth century. Their determined efforts to perform were also instrumental in eroding prejudices that were barring African Americans from classical voice performance and opera, as well as other artistic and social realms.

The Me I Want to Sing interweaves the music, narratives, and images of Anderson and Price. It dramatizes the changes they helped bring to the American cultural landscape by means of their artistry and resolve.

This adult guide is designed to facilitate conversations about the living links between present and past for artists of color.

Conversation Starters

To set the tone for discussions with young people, consider sharing something from your personal experience that relates to the show and its themes—perhaps the story of a public figure or personal hero who successfully challenged convention. The intention is to invite reflection and conversation among your young theatergoers.

In leading discussions of The Me I Want to Sing, you can use open-ended questions to help students spot details they may have missed in the show, to dive deeper into the show’s content and themes, and to engage with potentially controversial content that may come up in discussions—issues such as racism, discrimination, and prejudice. When necessary, you can encourage students to back up their views with supporting evidence from the production itself or a trustworthy third-party source.

Here are a handful of open-ended discussion points to consider together:

What were the social and racial landscapes during the careers of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price? How do they compare to the social and racial landscapes of the United States today?

As a collaborative exercise, recount notable moments in The Me I Want to Sing: What got your attention or surprised you?

What new information or ideas came to mind by the end of the performance?

How do we define, describe, and demonstrate identity? What role do people’s identities play in their creativity, artistry, and the arts?

Work with your young people to create a list of performing artists of color—singers, actors, dancers, etc. Why do some artistic disciplines seem more diverse than others? What is the historical context of that diversity?

What are ways media, especially social media, shape today’s ideas about artists and their artistry?

Before the Show

Along with your young theatergoers, discuss and decide how they want to prepare for attending The Me I Want to Sing. First stop, review the Student Guide together. Follow their lead, but you might pose questions like:

What do they already know about race relations and segregation in the first half of the twentieth century? What more would they like to learn?

What do they know about African American performing artists of that period?

What do they know about—and what are their feelings toward—opera and classical music?

Would they be interested in listening to recordings of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price?

Would they like to take an online tour of the Kennedy Center?

Follow their lead on how they want to prepare, from theater etiquette and stagecraft to background research on Marion Anderson and Leontyne Price. You will find some ready resources below.

After the Show

Collaborate with your young theatergoers to determine how they want to process the production afterward. Let them brainstorm ways to get the most out of the experience and make the subject relevant to them. You may also revisit the questions discussed in the “Before the Show” section above.

The Student Guide

Revisit “Check This Out…” and “Think About This…” in the Student Guide. Use these sections to stir discussion about the production, its music, and the social realities the show recounts.

Consider the Themes

Consider focusing on three main themes in The Me I Want to Sing: Identity, Empowerment, and the motto, “Lifting as We Climb.”

Identity relates to how we see ourselves and others, and how we form and apply ideas about who we are. Ideas of identity profoundly affected Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price, as dramatized in The Me I Want to Sing. Their identities were front and center in the racial discrimination they encountered, as well as their presence as women of color in the world of classical music and opera.

Empowerment is the active effort of individuals or groups to tend to and meet their needs. Empowerment can be as simple as making breakfast for ourselves or taking on a job to pay our own way. It can be as complex as pursuing a long-range personal dream or organizing with others to overcome barriers to equity and fairness.

“Lifting As We Climb” is the motto of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC). The motto refers to ways communities and individuals of color can work together to help each other reach their potential. In Marian Anderson’s case, her church community supported her efforts to receive classical training as a young woman. For Leontyne Price, her family and community also helped her begin her life as a vocalist. Along their journeys, both women continued to act on a responsibility to help other young artists achieve their ambitions.

Use activities in the “Take Action” section of the Student Guide, such as creative writing and artistic projects, that students can use to explore these ideas in relation to their own lives. These activities are designed to be scalable for a diversity of learning styles and/or abilities.

Q & A with Tom Minter Creator and writer of The Me I Want to Sing

The work of playwright and author Tom Minter explores the dynamic nature of diversity. In the 2014 commission of Blues for a Royal Flush, he weaves together the lives of singers including Ethel Waters, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, and Billy Strayhorn, all in the orbit of D.C. native son, Duke Ellington.

Along with Washington National Opera, Minter has focused on creating work that reflects the individuals who make up the tapestry of our communities. The libretto for his one-act opera, Graffiti Corner, celebrates the life and neighbors of Washington’s Northeast neighborhoods. Most recently, Just Out the Window examines the gentrification of Washington, D.C. through music, and the eyes and cameras of students from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Caption: Playwright Tom Minter

Kennedy Center: Was there a specific seed of inspiration that The Me I Want to Sing grew from?

Tom Minter: This show was a commission from the Washington National Opera, and meant to specifically celebrate Marian Anderson, who is a Kennedy Center Honoree [1978]. With that I saw an opportunity to celebrate intergenerational connections, between classical singers of color, in the ways in which Marian Anderson opened doors for others.

Marian Anderson wanted the freedom to sing art songs; opera came later in her career. From the beginning, she embraced a mission to show “what is possible,” especially to people of color, and possessed an innate understanding that dreams need nurturing, especially those of children. In the span of her long career, Marian Anderson crossed thresholds into rooms that had been closed to others, and in so doing opened doors, and windows, and eyes along the way.

One significant pair of eyes she reached were those of a nine-year-old Leontyne Price whose mother had brought her to the balcony in a segregated theater in Mississippi to watch a woman of color sing. That little girl didn’t necessarily know what Marian Anderson was singing, but she saw a woman of color onstage, in dignity, looking magnificent, singing beautifully, and seemingly speaking to her.

KC: You’re a playwright and writer with a strong relationship with classical music. What does that relationship stem from?

TM: My father started out as a teacher of choral music in junior and senior high schools in East Harlem. My mom was [a] singing artist and sang opera. So the legacy of music in my family runs very deep.

As a child I experienced first-hand what opera allows to be amplified, in terms of storytelling. There’s a family story about when I was growing up. I was with my father in the car, driving somewhere, with the classical music station on. The “Triumphal March” from [Verdi’s] Aïda came on and I apparently got very excited. Dad, being an educator, immediately followed up on this teaching moment. He went out and bought a recent recording that featured Leontyne Price and Jon Vickers under the direction of Georg Solti.

My father introduced me to the libretto, showing me how the Italian appeared on one page and the English translation on the other. He didn’t know what to say when he found that I was captivated, and sat between the stereo speakers for three straight hours!

I have had a several great passions in my life. They include the career of Leontyne Price, as well as studying the journey of Giuseppe Verdi and his revolutionary impact in melding words, emotion and music into drama.

KC: What would you say to young people who might roll their eyes at classical music or opera?

TM: Music is a natural form of expression for children. Too often, I think we over-mystify music. We need to knock down every single wall that stands between young people and musical experiences. I am deeply grateful to my family for creating an environment where music was not mysterious. I have had the freedom to roam in any kind of music that engages me.

Opera is a way of amplifying stories in a unique way. For parents and caregivers, they can facilitate how a child interacts and responds with the world-enhancing experiences of word, music, and story as part of their inherent playfulness.

In Italy, France, and other countries, there is a rich history of connecting music to word and storytelling. (Perhaps not as much in the United States in such fashion.) The reason Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price are so incredible is the way they glow as they perform their art, imbuing an audience with desire to experience their own gifts of song in such a way. How can we not have children understand that empowerment and the gift in this art form?

KC: In The Me I Want to Sing, you make a point of emphasizing how Ms. Price’s career in a sense stood upon the opportunities of Ms. Anderson’s. How important has that solidarity been in developing the talents of artists, especially artists of color?

TM: I think it’s critical. Audiences need to be able to see themselves reflected in the art—any art. And that solidarity is important for people of color, youth of color, who are interested in any of the arts, or anything in life.

In Marian Anderson’s case, it was her church community that gave her the support she needed as a young person and vocalist. Historically, the church has been such a mainstay for black families, especially at that time. They saw that this young woman should be allowed to sing anything that came out of her mouth!

It is unfortunate, but in the case of opera, artists of color continue to be underrepresented, or find themselves involved in new iterations of Porgy & Bess, Showboat, or even Scott Joplin’s Treemonish. Perhaps having focus on newly composed operas, such as Champion, by Terrance Blanchard, there can be room for Troubled Island, by William Grant Still with a libretto by Langston Hughes, which speaks for itself as legacy of black talent in this art form.

But in saying that, we should not forget such talent should also be represented across every facet of performance, from stagehand to Executive Director.

KC: What would you say to educators and school administrators about the importance of this artistic process in our schools?

TM: We need to educate on a spectrum that includes the arts in the mix of other aspects of critical thinking that our youth are already aware of. They are doing things with technology, for example, that are astonishing to me! They are already being creative artists every day, creating intuitively on social media and in their own paths as young artists, and not always within the scope of a classroom’s stream of education.

What do we educators have to offer? In my mind what’s slipping most is context. We must remember that “context is everything” in being able to apply critical thinking, and that our collaborative help in framing events and experiences is valuable for young people.

That’s a realization Marian Anderson came to early on. She wanted her music, her art, to reach beyond the limits of what American culture allowed at that time. It was important to her that African Americans be able to see and hear her without being segregated and treated as second-class citizens. In doing so, and in igniting the dream of a Leontyne Price, she was instrumental in showing the way to breaking down some of the barriers that were blocking African Americans from the arts—and the arts from the contributions of African American artists.

Resources

“The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow.” California Newsreel. Online guide to the award-winning PBS series. newsreel.org/video/the-rise-and-fall-of-jim-crow

“Marian Anderson.” PBS Biography. An hour-long program that explores Anderson’s life.

“NEA Opera Honors: Interview with Leontyne Price.” National Endowment for the Arts. June 3, 2010. Reflections on her life and career.

“How to Start Appreciating Classical Music.” Deep Cuts. March 21, 2017. A video survey course defining and exploring classical music.

“Opera 101, Opera Basics.” The San Diego Opera Podcast. June 10, 2013. When we want to know more about the art form. Start at about the two-minute mark (2:00).

STANDARDS CONNECTIONS

English Language Arts—Literacy in History/Social Studies (RH.2, RH.7)

-

Writer: Sean McCollum

Content Editor: Lisa Resnick

Logistics Coordination: Katherine Huseman

Producer and Program Manager: Tiffany A. Bryant

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David M. Rubenstein Chairman

Deborah F. Rutter President

Mario R. Rossero Senior Vice President Education

Presenting Sponsor of Performances for Young Audiences.

Additional support for The Me I Want to Sing is provided by A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation; the Kimsey Endowment; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; Anne and Chris Reyes; and the U.S. Department of Education.

Funding for Access and Accommodation Programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Major support for educational programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by David M. Rubenstein through the Rubenstein Arts Access Program.

Kennedy Center education and related artistic programming is made possible through the generosity of the National Committee for the Performing Arts.

© 2019 The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

[kennethmontiveros]

Mobile Landing Page Examples That Seriously Set the Bar

We’ve all had frustrating experiences browsing the web on our phones: load times that seem to carry on forever; pages that are cluttered and difficult to navigate; long, rambling blocks of text that make it tough to understand what you’re even looking at.

Well, at Unbounce, we’re putting our foot down. We’re tired of junky mobile landing pages. We want to celebrate the pages that do mobile right, with easy-to-follow copy, super-sleek designs, and crazy-fast load times. And since it’s our blog, that’s what we’re going to do.

But before diving into the incredible, Unbounce-built examples, we’ll cover some tips for how to knock your next mobile landing page outta the park.

Mobile Landing Page Best Practices

(“Duh, I know how to make killer mobile pages. Show me the examples!”)

Mobile landing pages aren’t so different from their desktop counterparts, and standard best practices still apply. However, there are some additional considerations for on-the-go visitors, and it’s why you should really be building separate landing pages for mobile (or, at the bare minimum, ensuring that your page is mobile-responsive).

Here are some sure-fire ways to build great mobile landing pages:

Be concise in your written copy Brevity might be the soul of wit, but it’s also the soul of mobile landing pages. (My high school literature teacher weeps.) Consider how visitors are going to be engaging with your content. Distill the information on your page to just the essentials, and make it easy for visitors to skim: bullet points, short sentences, obscure acronyms, ASOASF. (No, not ASOIAF, ya nerd.)

Nail the content above the fold Above the fold content is crucial on any landing page, but it’s especially important for converting mobile users. We have a terrible attention span when we’re on our phones: we spend less time on sites than when we’re on desktop, and bounce rates are way higher. That means your content needs to hook visitors the moment they hit your page.

Keep your design super simple This isn’t to say you can’t include awesome graphics or a catchy explainer video (although you need to be careful—more on that below). Rather, you want visitors to move naturally through your page without getting lost or overwhelmed. Use a single column layout, and strive to maintain a 1:1 attention ratio. If you’re using a lead gen form, keep the number of fields to a minimum and make sure visitors can autofill.

What does “attention ratio” mean? Attention ratio is the ratio of links on a landing page to the number of conversion goals. Since every campaign has one goal, the corresponding landing page should only have one call to action.

Make use of sticky bars Landing pages are all about getting visitors to convert—but on smaller screens, it can be harder to draw their attention to the action you want them to take. Sticky bars can help keep your call to action (CTA) top-of-mind (or top-of-screen) by having it subtly follow your visitors as they scroll through your page.

Be sure everything loads lightning-fast Quick load times are essential to converting with mobile landing pages. The bounce rate for mobile visitors gets crazy high after loading for just a few seconds—and considering most of the world is still browsing on 3G connections, any poorly-optimized images or videos on your page could be slashing your conversion rates. Keep things light.

Ready to boost your page speed?

Get Unbounce's landing page speed checklist and follow our step-by-step guide to improve your load times in a single afternoon.

var eventMethod=window.addEventListener?"addEventListener":"attachEvent",eventer=window[eventMethod],messageEvent="attachEvent"==eventMethod?"onmessage":"message",estop=!1;eventer(messageEvent,function(e){if("inline"==e.data[2])e.data[1]=e.data[1]+11,document.getElementById(e.data[0]).style.height=e.data[1]+"px";else{if(isNaN(e.data)&&"stop"!==e.data)return;if("stop"==e.data)return estop=!0,!1;estop||(e.data=e.data+11,document.getElementById("sizetracker").style.height=e.data+"px")}},!1);

Best Mobile Landing Page Examples

1. Western Rise

Image courtesy of Western Rise. (Click image to see the full page.)

Social media is a massive driver for ecommerce. Something like 54% of people active on social use the platforms to research products, and roughly a quarter click a promoted post in any given month. But driving conversions from social platforms requires a coherent, uniform experience—from the moment someone clicks an ad on their timeline to when they’re trying to remember their PayPal password at checkout. (Was it ‘12345’, or just ‘password’?)

Will Waters, Co-Founder and Creative Director at functional clothier Western Rise, described how the company turns mobile visitors into handsomely-dressed customers.

With a lot of our current traffic coming from Instagram, it’s imperative for us to have a seamless experience for our customers to learn more about the product.

We specifically chose to build this with Unbounce because we see that a potential customer can click or swipe to arrive at the landing page and learn about the product in detail without having to click through multiple pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Maintain a unified experience from beginning to end. When you’re building a seamless social-to-storefront experience, you don’t want prospects jumping out of that pipeline. All of the information a visitor needs to make a purchase decision is right here on the page, so there’s no need to bounce and look for more details. Reinforcing that, every CTA on this landing page leads visitors to the same spot on Western Rise online store.

If you’ve got an attractive product, show it off. People don’t buy clothing unless they believe it looks good. (The obvious exception being foam clogs—what’s the psychology behind that?) Western Rise includes bold photography to highlight their clothing in the context of use, demonstrating fit and function that would be great to show off on your social timeline.

Optimize those images (seriously). This is an image-heavy page, which can be problematic for load times on mobile. Not here: Western Rise gets an impressive page speed grade from Google, which is like getting a thumbs up from Beyoncé or a backslap from Jeff Goldblum.

Bonus: Western Rise uses a popup on the linked store page to promote a giveaway contest and capture leads. (Hey, if they’re not gonna buy, you can at least try to snag their email address.)

2. Glints

Image courtesy of Glints. (Click image to see the full page.)

Marketers sometimes have a way of over-complicating things. (Who, us?) They’ll use a paragraph where a sentence will do. They’ll build an explainer video when all prospects want to see is a screenshot. On mobile, simplicity wins.

This landing page from talent recruitment platform Glints is an excellent example of how to do mobile right. The brand uses strong content above the fold that immediately communicates what the service is and why we should care: the copy is concise but descriptive, and there’s lots of white space that lets things breathe. It’s not longwinded or excessive—it’s compact and effective.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Keep things straightforward. You don’t need to drown your visitors in content, as Glints demonstrates here. The company pares its copy down to just the essentials, then arranges the page in a way that doesn’t give visitors a claustrophobic panic attack.

Use a hero image that reinforces your headline. Glints does a lot of messaging work above the fold. The top headline instantly identifies the target audience, which is backed up by the hero image. The supporting copy speaks to the promise of finding a dream career. Then, the second heading quickly shows off some of the significant brands hiring through the platform.

Multiple CTAs all go to the same place. An attention ratio of 1:1 is ideal, but you can include additional calls to action if they all point in the same direction. Glints does that here, each with variant copy that prompts the visitor to convert. If the content above the fold doesn’t do it, maybe the logo spread of brands on the platform or the expanded benefits will.

3. Promo

Image courtesy of Promo. (Click image to see the full page.)

Promo are experts at using videos to drive conversions on their landing pages (as we highlighted in this post on high-converting pages). And they ought to be: the easy-to-use platform lets customers quickly build videos for sponsored social media posts. Promo not using videos in their marketing would be like Superman not using the power of flight in his marketing. (It’s a bird, it’s a plane? Ah, you’re too young.)

But video content can be a big problem for mobile visitors. Deployed carelessly, it can dramatically increase a landing page’s weight and create grueling on-the-go load times. Poor page speed can cancel out any conversions you hoped to gain by including a video in the first place.

Yael Miriam Klass, Promo’s Content Lead, described how the company uses video on mobile landing pages without sacrificing the overall experience:

The best way to grab attention and keep visitors on your mobile landing for more than half a second is with a simple video. Simplicity is key because it needs to load quickly or you’ve lost them.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Create a lightweight experience. It’s not clear from just looking at the mobile version of this landing page, but Promo has done a lot to slim the content down from desktop. The full-sized page features an auto-play video in place of the hero shot and dynamic buttons overlaid on the sample videos. Instead, the mobile version uses static images that only play video once a visitor has interacted with them.

Get the most from the space above the fold. The headline conveys Promo’s unique selling proposition for this targetted segment—that is, easily creating videos for social media. Coupled with a clickable explainer video and prominent call to action, Promo makes the most of the available real estate to deliver a wicked first impression above the fold.

Build credibility with trusted brand logos. Promo includes Facebook and Instagram partner badges above the fold to immediately affirm that they’re trusted by major social media platforms—an important point when you’re trying to win with a social media use case. The page also features a spread of client brand logos and individual customer testimonials, further establishing credibility.

4. Country Chic Paint

Image courtesy of Country Chic Paint. (Click image to see the full page.)

Emotional marketing is a great tool regardless of medium, but it’s especially useful on mobile. People tend to participate most in social media on their phones, and they’re already being emotionally primed by videos of dogs cuddling with ducks, or whatever you people are into these days.

This landing page from Country Chic Paint—built by Webistry—includes an emotional element that makes it more likely to resonate with mobile visitors.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Use sticky bars to keep your CTA in view. Country Chic keeps their call to action prominently displayed throughout the landing page by using a sticky bar, making it easy for visitors to convert the minute they’ve made the purchase decision.

Reinforce your offer with a compelling cause. In addition to the sticky bar, this page features a number of inline CTAs that continue to prompt visitors as they read through Country Chic’s bulleted product differentiators: the low environmental impact, the company’s paint recycling program, and their charitable initiatives. Plus, we know this is supporting a great cause, and it’s a compelling reason to buy.

Show visitors what your product or service looks like in action. Country Chic does a terrific job of picturing their product in the context of use. Rather than just showing off the paints included with the kit, the company demonstrates how they actually look on a piece of reclaimed furniture and other craft projects.

5. ClaimCompass

Image courtesy of ClaimCompass. (Click image to see the full page.)

Making your offer clear is key to winning conversions on mobile. That can be tough when you’ve got a complicated product or service that needs some ‘splainin’—especially when it seems too good to be true.

ClaimCompass was also featured in our high-converting landing page examples post, where Alex Sumin, the company’s Co-Founder and CMO, described the difficulty of getting people to buy into the promise of free cash. That hasn’t slowed Alex down, though: in addition to turning one of every three visitors into conversions, this Unbounce-built landing page does a great job of distilling a complex regulatory measure into the tangible benefits for consumers.

When you look at the mobile experience from a contextual point of view, then not only are we limited by the real estate on the device, but also by the environment in which that content is consumed.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the micro-moments in which these mobile interactions occur and consider how they’ll impact our objectives, whether it’s content consumption, conversions, or other.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Break complex ideas into understandable benefits. Free money sounds like a simple enough offer, but ClaimCompass is dealing with a ton of jargonistic legal and regulatory considerations. The company does an excellent job of grabbing visitor attention with brief copy above the fold, then quickly banging out the key benefits of the service with bullet points just below.

Provide avenues to learn more (when appropriate). High-level explanations and benefit statements aren’t going to be enough to convince everyone. This page provides lots of secondary information that expands on the offer and outlines the ClaimCompass process, plus links to an in-depth blog post that gets into all of the nitty-gritty.

Turn positive press and reviews into trust. Yeah, ‘no-strings cash’ sounds like fiction, but ClaimCompass builds credibility and trust by associating itself with the major news outlets its been featured in, highlighting the average customer review score, and pulling real testimonials straight from Facebook.

Bonus: The hero image speaks to anyone who has ever been on a delayed flight. Her face is my face. Her pain is my pain.

6. Helix

Image courtesy of Helix. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sleep is pretty popular these days, but archaeological evidence suggests that humans have actually been sleeping for thousands of years. Wild stuff.

Mattress company Helix capitalizes on sleep-mania with this landing page that really showcases what’s possible on mobile. Despite including a ton of information, this page never feels overwhelming thanks to some awesome design decisions that make each section feel fresh with a new visual style. What elevates the page to the next level, though, is Helix’s use of relevant testimonials and its smart lead generation tool.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make your landing page beautiful. This is a great-looking landing page, and it shows that you can build a visually-engaging experience for small screens. Each section seems to have its own texture—whether it’s unique iconography, eye-catching graphs, or the stylish video—and encourages visitors to keep scrolling.

Provide social proof that speaks to your use case. Helix highlights customer testimonials from couples with different sleeping preferences, which is the audience this page is targeting. For example: “This mattress literally saved our marriage.” As a firm-mattress-lover currently stranded on 4 inches of memory foam, please send help.

Generate leads by providing value. The landing page call to action drives visitors to Helix’s Sleep Quiz, which—after collecting their email address—asks prospects a series of questions to help them find their perfect mattress type. There’s value there, and it makes for a rich lead generation tool.

7. Boostability

Image courtesy of Boostability. (Click image to see the full page.)

Lead generation still typically comes down to filling out a form, which can make it a little tricky on mobile. Visitors aren’t eager to tap out all of their personal details on a small screen. And speaking from experience, people struggle to thumb-spell even simple words correctly. Good luck adding jimbo@gnail.cob to your email list.

If you’re going to use a lead gen form on your mobile landing page, you’d better make sure it’s autofill-enabled. That’s what the team at Boostability did, and—lo and behold—they’re currently rocking a conversion rate well above industry average.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Be sure your form isn’t blocking conversions. Lead generation forms can be a barrier to conversion on phones, but that isn’t the case on this page. Boostability includes its short, autofill-enabled form above the fold, allowing visitors to easily register for their free website analysis.

Show visitors what conversion gets them. Below the form, Boostability gives more details on what the website analysis actually includes, complete with screenshots from inside the product. This helps visitors understand what they’ll be getting when they give Boostability their personal details.

Lots of content isn’t an excuse for a cluttered page. There’s a ton of information on this landing page, and Boostability manages to condense it all in a small space without making anything feel crowded. That’s because they’ve stuck to a single column that features loads of white space.

Not sure how your landing page performs on mobile? Run a test with the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which ranks your page against nine specific performance categories including mobile responsiveness.

8. Good Eggs

Image courtesy of Good Eggs. (Click image to see the full page.)

Pitching your product or service to mobile visitors is tricky. People probably aren’t sitting down to read everything you’ve got to say. They’re usually on the move, half-glimpsing at their phone as wait in line for coffee or meander blindly into traffic. Even after you’ve got them on your page, you need to work hard to keep their attention.

That’s not the only challenge Good Eggs faced with this landing page. Grocery delivery is an increasingly crowded space, and the company needs to differentiate itself from its competitors. That means having an opportunity to explain why this service is different.

Heidi Hirvonen, Marketing Manager at Good Eggs, explained how the company builds landing pages that keep mobile visitors engaged:

We know that Good Eggs customers are incredibly busy—trying to optimize every moment in their lives—and looking for creative solutions to save time without compromising on their standards or values.

Unsurprisingly, about 50% of our traffic is mobile, which makes it vital for us to design mobile-friendly experiences for every step in the customer journey, from our marketplace, to our emails, to our Unbounce landing pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Demand attention with compelling imagery. Good Eggs does a great job of breaking up their landing page copy with stylish photography, prompting visitors to pause just long enough to read about some of the company’s competitive differentiators. That’s especially important when you need to stand out in a crowded space.

Make your offer immediately clear. This landing page is built around an offer promoting one of the brands of ice cream that Good Eggs carries, and everything above the fold reinforces that: the delicious hero-shot of the ice cream; the copy outlining the discount for the ice cream; the prompt to claim the ice cream. Give me the ice cream.

9. Ace

Image courtesy of Ace. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sometimes, a landing page is about more than just getting visitors to understand the tangible features and benefits of your offer. You might want to convey a feeling—make them understand what it’s like to have taken the plunge and experienced transformative results. When it works, it’s powerful.

Ace is a test preparation company that helps aspiring students with their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, which can make or break their academic and professional goals. Harnessing that emotional element to drive conversions, Ace’s landing page—built by DMR—evokes a sense of aspiration that encourages prospects to dream big.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Connect with visitors on an emotional level. Rather than hitting visitors with a screenshot from the test platform or some grinning stock model, Ace uses the hero image and headline on this landing page to speak to the aspirational nature of their service. Education unlocks all kinds of new opportunities, and Ace concisely captures that above the fold.

Back up big promises with proof. Ace includes a ton of detailed testimonials from students that have found success on the platform, which is vital for a service that pledges life-changing results.

Maintain visitor attention with eye-catching visuals. The copy on this landing page is broken out into digestible bullets, each paired with colorful, eye-catching icons. That helps Ace keep visitors’ attention without being overwhelming.

10. GoBoat

Image courtesy of GoBoat. (Click image to see the full page.)

Like Ace in the previous example, GoBoat goes light on the description of its boat rental service and instead focuses on the experience of seeing Copenhagen from the water—how it feels. Sure, there’s less pirate imagery than we’d like for a company that says we can “be [our] own captain,” but GoBoat includes a ton of beautiful photographs that have already got me planning a summer trip to Denmark.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make sure visitors immediately understand the benefit. GoBoat succeeds in conveying the most essential information above the fold while also making clear the primary benefit: piloting the boat yourself. And while the company chose to exclude the auto-play video from the desktop version of this page, the static hero shot does a great job of capturing the experience that GoBoat is offering.

Speak to the experience you’re offering. Most people aren’t renting with GoBoat to live out some childhood freebooter fantasy (shame)—they’re doing it to experience the beautiful sights of Copenhagen. The company plays to that with this landing page, giving lots of real estate to shots of the city’s most famous landmarks. Meanwhile, the page is concise in its copy and uses bullets to quickly address standard questions.

Looking for more landing page inspiration? Check out these other Unbounce resources and start building beautiful pages that crush your conversion goals:

Create high-converting landing pages in 30 minutes: Free Video Crash Course from Unbounce and Skillshare

Effective landing pages that look great, too: The Best Landing Page Examples You Gotta Save for Your Swipe File

Calculate your landing page performance: The Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer

Mobile Landing Page Examples That Seriously Set the Bar published first on http://nickpontemktg.blogspot.com/

[josephkchoi]

Mobile Landing Page Examples That Seriously Set the Bar

We’ve all had frustrating experiences browsing the web on our phones: load times that seem to carry on forever; pages that are cluttered and difficult to navigate; long, rambling blocks of text that make it tough to understand what you’re even looking at.

Well, at Unbounce, we’re putting our foot down. We’re tired of junky mobile landing pages. We want to celebrate the pages that do mobile right, with easy-to-follow copy, super-sleek designs, and crazy-fast load times. And since it’s our blog, that’s what we’re going to do.

But before diving into the incredible, Unbounce-built examples, we’ll cover some tips for how to knock your next mobile landing page outta the park.

Mobile Landing Page Best Practices

(“Duh, I know how to make killer mobile pages. Show me the examples!”)

Mobile landing pages aren’t so different from their desktop counterparts, and standard best practices still apply. However, there are some additional considerations for on-the-go visitors, and it’s why you should really be building separate landing pages for mobile (or, at the bare minimum, ensuring that your page is mobile-responsive).

Here are some sure-fire ways to build great mobile landing pages:

Be concise in your written copy Brevity might be the soul of wit, but it’s also the soul of mobile landing pages. (My high school literature teacher weeps.) Consider how visitors are going to be engaging with your content. Distill the information on your page to just the essentials, and make it easy for visitors to skim: bullet points, short sentences, obscure acronyms, ASOASF. (No, not ASOIAF, ya nerd.)

Nail the content above the fold Above the fold content is crucial on any landing page, but it’s especially important for converting mobile users. We have a terrible attention span when we’re on our phones: we spend less time on sites than when we’re on desktop, and bounce rates are way higher. That means your content needs to hook visitors the moment they hit your page.

Keep your design super simple This isn’t to say you can’t include awesome graphics or a catchy explainer video (although you need to be careful—more on that below). Rather, you want visitors to move naturally through your page without getting lost or overwhelmed. Use a single column layout, and strive to maintain a 1:1 attention ratio. If you’re using a lead gen form, keep the number of fields to a minimum and make sure visitors can autofill.

What does “attention ratio” mean? Attention ratio is the ratio of links on a landing page to the number of conversion goals. Since every campaign has one goal, the corresponding landing page should only have one call to action.

Make use of sticky bars Landing pages are all about getting visitors to convert—but on smaller screens, it can be harder to draw their attention to the action you want them to take. Sticky bars can help keep your call to action (CTA) top-of-mind (or top-of-screen) by having it subtly follow your visitors as they scroll through your page.

Be sure everything loads lightning-fast Quick load times are essential to converting with mobile landing pages. The bounce rate for mobile visitors gets crazy high after loading for just a few seconds—and considering most of the world is still browsing on 3G connections, any poorly-optimized images or videos on your page could be slashing your conversion rates. Keep things light.

Ready to boost your page speed?

Get Unbounce's landing page speed checklist and follow our step-by-step guide to improve your load times in a single afternoon.

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Best Mobile Landing Page Examples

1. Western Rise

Image courtesy of Western Rise. (Click image to see the full page.)

Social media is a massive driver for ecommerce. Something like 54% of people active on social use the platforms to research products, and roughly a quarter click a promoted post in any given month. But driving conversions from social platforms requires a coherent, uniform experience—from the moment someone clicks an ad on their timeline to when they’re trying to remember their PayPal password at checkout. (Was it ‘12345’, or just ‘password’?)

Will Waters, Co-Founder and Creative Director at functional clothier Western Rise, described how the company turns mobile visitors into handsomely-dressed customers.

With a lot of our current traffic coming from Instagram, it’s imperative for us to have a seamless experience for our customers to learn more about the product.

We specifically chose to build this with Unbounce because we see that a potential customer can click or swipe to arrive at the landing page and learn about the product in detail without having to click through multiple pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Maintain a unified experience from beginning to end. When you’re building a seamless social-to-storefront experience, you don’t want prospects jumping out of that pipeline. All of the information a visitor needs to make a purchase decision is right here on the page, so there’s no need to bounce and look for more details. Reinforcing that, every CTA on this landing page leads visitors to the same spot on Western Rise online store.

If you’ve got an attractive product, show it off. People don’t buy clothing unless they believe it looks good. (The obvious exception being foam clogs—what’s the psychology behind that?) Western Rise includes bold photography to highlight their clothing in the context of use, demonstrating fit and function that would be great to show off on your social timeline.

Optimize those images (seriously). This is an image-heavy page, which can be problematic for load times on mobile. Not here: Western Rise gets an impressive page speed grade from Google, which is like getting a thumbs up from Beyoncé or a backslap from Jeff Goldblum.

Bonus: Western Rise uses a popup on the linked store page to promote a giveaway contest and capture leads. (Hey, if they’re not gonna buy, you can at least try to snag their email address.)

2. Glints

Image courtesy of Glints. (Click image to see the full page.)

Marketers sometimes have a way of over-complicating things. (Who, us?) They’ll use a paragraph where a sentence will do. They’ll build an explainer video when all prospects want to see is a screenshot. On mobile, simplicity wins.

This landing page from talent recruitment platform Glints is an excellent example of how to do mobile right. The brand uses strong content above the fold that immediately communicates what the service is and why we should care: the copy is concise but descriptive, and there’s lots of white space that lets things breathe. It’s not longwinded or excessive—it’s compact and effective.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Keep things straightforward. You don’t need to drown your visitors in content, as Glints demonstrates here. The company pares its copy down to just the essentials, then arranges the page in a way that doesn’t give visitors a claustrophobic panic attack.

Use a hero image that reinforces your headline. Glints does a lot of messaging work above the fold. The top headline instantly identifies the target audience, which is backed up by the hero image. The supporting copy speaks to the promise of finding a dream career. Then, the second heading quickly shows off some of the significant brands hiring through the platform.

Multiple CTAs all go to the same place. An attention ratio of 1:1 is ideal, but you can include additional calls to action if they all point in the same direction. Glints does that here, each with variant copy that prompts the visitor to convert. If the content above the fold doesn’t do it, maybe the logo spread of brands on the platform or the expanded benefits will.

3. Promo

Image courtesy of Promo. (Click image to see the full page.)

Promo are experts at using videos to drive conversions on their landing pages (as we highlighted in this post on high-converting pages). And they ought to be: the easy-to-use platform lets customers quickly build videos for sponsored social media posts. Promo not using videos in their marketing would be like Superman not using the power of flight in his marketing. (It’s a bird, it’s a plane? Ah, you’re too young.)

But video content can be a big problem for mobile visitors. Deployed carelessly, it can dramatically increase a landing page’s weight and create grueling on-the-go load times. Poor page speed can cancel out any conversions you hoped to gain by including a video in the first place.

Yael Miriam Klass, Promo’s Content Lead, described how the company uses video on mobile landing pages without sacrificing the overall experience:

The best way to grab attention and keep visitors on your mobile landing for more than half a second is with a simple video. Simplicity is key because it needs to load quickly or you’ve lost them.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Create a lightweight experience. It’s not clear from just looking at the mobile version of this landing page, but Promo has done a lot to slim the content down from desktop. The full-sized page features an auto-play video in place of the hero shot and dynamic buttons overlaid on the sample videos. Instead, the mobile version uses static images that only play video once a visitor has interacted with them.

Get the most from the space above the fold. The headline conveys Promo’s unique selling proposition for this targetted segment—that is, easily creating videos for social media. Coupled with a clickable explainer video and prominent call to action, Promo makes the most of the available real estate to deliver a wicked first impression above the fold.

Build credibility with trusted brand logos. Promo includes Facebook and Instagram partner badges above the fold to immediately affirm that they’re trusted by major social media platforms—an important point when you’re trying to win with a social media use case. The page also features a spread of client brand logos and individual customer testimonials, further establishing credibility.

4. Country Chic Paint

Image courtesy of Country Chic Paint. (Click image to see the full page.)

Emotional marketing is a great tool regardless of medium, but it’s especially useful on mobile. People tend to participate most in social media on their phones, and they’re already being emotionally primed by videos of dogs cuddling with ducks, or whatever you people are into these days.

This landing page from Country Chic Paint—built by Webistry—includes an emotional element that makes it more likely to resonate with mobile visitors.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Use sticky bars to keep your CTA in view. Country Chic keeps their call to action prominently displayed throughout the landing page by using a sticky bar, making it easy for visitors to convert the minute they’ve made the purchase decision.

Reinforce your offer with a compelling cause. In addition to the sticky bar, this page features a number of inline CTAs that continue to prompt visitors as they read through Country Chic’s bulleted product differentiators: the low environmental impact, the company’s paint recycling program, and their charitable initiatives. Plus, we know this is supporting a great cause, and it’s a compelling reason to buy.

Show visitors what your product or service looks like in action. Country Chic does a terrific job of picturing their product in the context of use. Rather than just showing off the paints included with the kit, the company demonstrates how they actually look on a piece of reclaimed furniture and other craft projects.

5. ClaimCompass

Image courtesy of ClaimCompass. (Click image to see the full page.)

Making your offer clear is key to winning conversions on mobile. That can be tough when you’ve got a complicated product or service that needs some ‘splainin’—especially when it seems too good to be true.

ClaimCompass was also featured in our high-converting landing page examples post, where Alex Sumin, the company’s Co-Founder and CMO, described the difficulty of getting people to buy into the promise of free cash. That hasn’t slowed Alex down, though: in addition to turning one of every three visitors into conversions, this Unbounce-built landing page does a great job of distilling a complex regulatory measure into the tangible benefits for consumers.

When you look at the mobile experience from a contextual point of view, then not only are we limited by the real estate on the device, but also by the environment in which that content is consumed.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the micro-moments in which these mobile interactions occur and consider how they’ll impact our objectives, whether it’s content consumption, conversions, or other.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Break complex ideas into understandable benefits. Free money sounds like a simple enough offer, but ClaimCompass is dealing with a ton of jargonistic legal and regulatory considerations. The company does an excellent job of grabbing visitor attention with brief copy above the fold, then quickly banging out the key benefits of the service with bullet points just below.

Provide avenues to learn more (when appropriate). High-level explanations and benefit statements aren’t going to be enough to convince everyone. This page provides lots of secondary information that expands on the offer and outlines the ClaimCompass process, plus links to an in-depth blog post that gets into all of the nitty-gritty.

Turn positive press and reviews into trust. Yeah, ‘no-strings cash’ sounds like fiction, but ClaimCompass builds credibility and trust by associating itself with the major news outlets its been featured in, highlighting the average customer review score, and pulling real testimonials straight from Facebook.

Bonus: The hero image speaks to anyone who has ever been on a delayed flight. Her face is my face. Her pain is my pain.

6. Helix

Image courtesy of Helix. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sleep is pretty popular these days, but archaeological evidence suggests that humans have actually been sleeping for thousands of years. Wild stuff.

Mattress company Helix capitalizes on sleep-mania with this landing page that really showcases what’s possible on mobile. Despite including a ton of information, this page never feels overwhelming thanks to some awesome design decisions that make each section feel fresh with a new visual style. What elevates the page to the next level, though, is Helix’s use of relevant testimonials and its smart lead generation tool.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make your landing page beautiful. This is a great-looking landing page, and it shows that you can build a visually-engaging experience for small screens. Each section seems to have its own texture—whether it’s unique iconography, eye-catching graphs, or the stylish video—and encourages visitors to keep scrolling.

Provide social proof that speaks to your use case. Helix highlights customer testimonials from couples with different sleeping preferences, which is the audience this page is targeting. For example: “This mattress literally saved our marriage.” As a firm-mattress-lover currently stranded on 4 inches of memory foam, please send help.

Generate leads by providing value. The landing page call to action drives visitors to Helix’s Sleep Quiz, which—after collecting their email address—asks prospects a series of questions to help them find their perfect mattress type. There’s value there, and it makes for a rich lead generation tool.

7. Boostability

Image courtesy of Boostability. (Click image to see the full page.)

Lead generation still typically comes down to filling out a form, which can make it a little tricky on mobile. Visitors aren’t eager to tap out all of their personal details on a small screen. And speaking from experience, people struggle to thumb-spell even simple words correctly. Good luck adding jimbo@gnail.cob to your email list.

If you’re going to use a lead gen form on your mobile landing page, you’d better make sure it’s autofill-enabled. That’s what the team at Boostability did, and—lo and behold—they’re currently rocking a conversion rate well above industry average.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Be sure your form isn’t blocking conversions. Lead generation forms can be a barrier to conversion on phones, but that isn’t the case on this page. Boostability includes its short, autofill-enabled form above the fold, allowing visitors to easily register for their free website analysis.

Show visitors what conversion gets them. Below the form, Boostability gives more details on what the website analysis actually includes, complete with screenshots from inside the product. This helps visitors understand what they’ll be getting when they give Boostability their personal details.

Lots of content isn’t an excuse for a cluttered page. There’s a ton of information on this landing page, and Boostability manages to condense it all in a small space without making anything feel crowded. That’s because they’ve stuck to a single column that features loads of white space.

Not sure how your landing page performs on mobile? Run a test with the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which ranks your page against nine specific performance categories including mobile responsiveness.

8. Good Eggs

Image courtesy of Good Eggs. (Click image to see the full page.)

Pitching your product or service to mobile visitors is tricky. People probably aren’t sitting down to read everything you’ve got to say. They’re usually on the move, half-glimpsing at their phone as wait in line for coffee or meander blindly into traffic. Even after you’ve got them on your page, you need to work hard to keep their attention.

That’s not the only challenge Good Eggs faced with this landing page. Grocery delivery is an increasingly crowded space, and the company needs to differentiate itself from its competitors. That means having an opportunity to explain why this service is different.

Heidi Hirvonen, Marketing Manager at Good Eggs, explained how the company builds landing pages that keep mobile visitors engaged:

We know that Good Eggs customers are incredibly busy—trying to optimize every moment in their lives—and looking for creative solutions to save time without compromising on their standards or values.

Unsurprisingly, about 50% of our traffic is mobile, which makes it vital for us to design mobile-friendly experiences for every step in the customer journey, from our marketplace, to our emails, to our Unbounce landing pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Demand attention with compelling imagery. Good Eggs does a great job of breaking up their landing page copy with stylish photography, prompting visitors to pause just long enough to read about some of the company’s competitive differentiators. That’s especially important when you need to stand out in a crowded space.

Make your offer immediately clear. This landing page is built around an offer promoting one of the brands of ice cream that Good Eggs carries, and everything above the fold reinforces that: the delicious hero-shot of the ice cream; the copy outlining the discount for the ice cream; the prompt to claim the ice cream. Give me the ice cream.

9. Ace

Image courtesy of Ace. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sometimes, a landing page is about more than just getting visitors to understand the tangible features and benefits of your offer. You might want to convey a feeling—make them understand what it’s like to have taken the plunge and experienced transformative results. When it works, it’s powerful.

Ace is a test preparation company that helps aspiring students with their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, which can make or break their academic and professional goals. Harnessing that emotional element to drive conversions, Ace’s landing page—built by DMR—evokes a sense of aspiration that encourages prospects to dream big.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Connect with visitors on an emotional level. Rather than hitting visitors with a screenshot from the test platform or some grinning stock model, Ace uses the hero image and headline on this landing page to speak to the aspirational nature of their service. Education unlocks all kinds of new opportunities, and Ace concisely captures that above the fold.

Back up big promises with proof. Ace includes a ton of detailed testimonials from students that have found success on the platform, which is vital for a service that pledges life-changing results.

Maintain visitor attention with eye-catching visuals. The copy on this landing page is broken out into digestible bullets, each paired with colorful, eye-catching icons. That helps Ace keep visitors’ attention without being overwhelming.

10. GoBoat

Image courtesy of GoBoat. (Click image to see the full page.)

Like Ace in the previous example, GoBoat goes light on the description of its boat rental service and instead focuses on the experience of seeing Copenhagen from the water—how it feels. Sure, there’s less pirate imagery than we’d like for a company that says we can “be [our] own captain,” but GoBoat includes a ton of beautiful photographs that have already got me planning a summer trip to Denmark.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make sure visitors immediately understand the benefit. GoBoat succeeds in conveying the most essential information above the fold while also making clear the primary benefit: piloting the boat yourself. And while the company chose to exclude the auto-play video from the desktop version of this page, the static hero shot does a great job of capturing the experience that GoBoat is offering.

Speak to the experience you’re offering. Most people aren’t renting with GoBoat to live out some childhood freebooter fantasy (shame)—they’re doing it to experience the beautiful sights of Copenhagen. The company plays to that with this landing page, giving lots of real estate to shots of the city’s most famous landmarks. Meanwhile, the page is concise in its copy and uses bullets to quickly address standard questions.

Mobile Landing Page Examples That Seriously Set the Bar published first on https://nickpontemrktg.wordpress.com/

[samanthasmeyers]

Mobile Landing Page Examples That Seriously Set the Bar

We’ve all had frustrating experiences browsing the web on our phones: load times that seem to carry on forever; pages that are cluttered and difficult to navigate; long, rambling blocks of text that make it tough to understand what you’re even looking at.

Well, at Unbounce, we’re putting our foot down. We’re tired of junky mobile landing pages. We want to celebrate the pages that do mobile right, with easy-to-follow copy, super-sleek designs, and crazy-fast load times. And since it’s our blog, that’s what we’re going to do.

But before diving into the incredible, Unbounce-built examples, we’ll cover some tips for how to knock your next mobile landing page outta the park.

Mobile Landing Page Best Practices

(“Duh, I know how to make killer mobile pages. Show me the examples!”)

Mobile landing pages aren’t so different from their desktop counterparts, and standard best practices still apply. However, there are some additional considerations for on-the-go visitors, and it’s why you should really be building separate landing pages for mobile (or, at the bare minimum, ensuring that your page is mobile-responsive).

Here are some sure-fire ways to build great mobile landing pages:

Be concise in your written copy Brevity might be the soul of wit, but it’s also the soul of mobile landing pages. (My high school literature teacher weeps.) Consider how visitors are going to be engaging with your content. Distill the information on your page to just the essentials, and make it easy for visitors to skim: bullet points, short sentences, obscure acronyms, ASOASF. (No, not ASOIAF, ya nerd.)

Nail the content above the fold Above the fold content is crucial on any landing page, but it’s especially important for converting mobile users. We have a terrible attention span when we’re on our phones: we spend less time on sites than when we’re on desktop, and bounce rates are way higher. That means your content needs to hook visitors the moment they hit your page.

Keep your design super simple This isn’t to say you can’t include awesome graphics or a catchy explainer video (although you need to be careful—more on that below). Rather, you want visitors to move naturally through your page without getting lost or overwhelmed. Use a single column layout, and strive to maintain a 1:1 attention ratio. If you’re using a lead gen form, keep the number of fields to a minimum and make sure visitors can autofill.

What does “attention ratio” mean? Attention ratio is the ratio of links on a landing page to the number of conversion goals. Since every campaign has one goal, the corresponding landing page should only have one call to action.

Make use of sticky bars Landing pages are all about getting visitors to convert—but on smaller screens, it can be harder to draw their attention to the action you want them to take. Sticky bars can help keep your call to action (CTA) top-of-mind (or top-of-screen) by having it subtly follow your visitors as they scroll through your page.

Be sure everything loads lightning-fast Quick load times are essential to converting with mobile landing pages. The bounce rate for mobile visitors gets crazy high after loading for just a few seconds—and considering most of the world is still browsing on 3G connections, any poorly-optimized images or videos on your page could be slashing your conversion rates. Keep things light.

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Best Mobile Landing Page Examples

1. Western Rise

Image courtesy of Western Rise. (Click image to see the full page.)

Social media is a massive driver for ecommerce. Something like 54% of people active on social use the platforms to research products, and roughly a quarter click a promoted post in any given month. But driving conversions from social platforms requires a coherent, uniform experience—from the moment someone clicks an ad on their timeline to when they’re trying to remember their PayPal password at checkout. (Was it ‘12345’, or just ‘password’?)

Will Waters, Co-Founder and Creative Director at functional clothier Western Rise, described how the company turns mobile visitors into handsomely-dressed customers.

With a lot of our current traffic coming from Instagram, it’s imperative for us to have a seamless experience for our customers to learn more about the product.

We specifically chose to build this with Unbounce because we see that a potential customer can click or swipe to arrive at the landing page and learn about the product in detail without having to click through multiple pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Maintain a unified experience from beginning to end. When you’re building a seamless social-to-storefront experience, you don’t want prospects jumping out of that pipeline. All of the information a visitor needs to make a purchase decision is right here on the page, so there’s no need to bounce and look for more details. Reinforcing that, every CTA on this landing page leads visitors to the same spot on Western Rise online store.

If you’ve got an attractive product, show it off. People don’t buy clothing unless they believe it looks good. (The obvious exception being foam clogs—what’s the psychology behind that?) Western Rise includes bold photography to highlight their clothing in the context of use, demonstrating fit and function that would be great to show off on your social timeline.

Optimize those images (seriously). This is an image-heavy page, which can be problematic for load times on mobile. Not here: Western Rise gets an impressive page speed grade from Google, which is like getting a thumbs up from Beyoncé or a backslap from Jeff Goldblum.

Bonus: Western Rise uses a popup on the linked store page to promote a giveaway contest and capture leads. (Hey, if they’re not gonna buy, you can at least try to snag their email address.)

2. Glints

Image courtesy of Glints. (Click image to see the full page.)

Marketers sometimes have a way of over-complicating things. (Who, us?) They’ll use a paragraph where a sentence will do. They’ll build an explainer video when all prospects want to see is a screenshot. On mobile, simplicity wins.

This landing page from talent recruitment platform Glints is an excellent example of how to do mobile right. The brand uses strong content above the fold that immediately communicates what the service is and why we should care: the copy is concise but descriptive, and there’s lots of white space that lets things breathe. It’s not longwinded or excessive—it’s compact and effective.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Keep things straightforward. You don’t need to drown your visitors in content, as Glints demonstrates here. The company pares its copy down to just the essentials, then arranges the page in a way that doesn’t give visitors a claustrophobic panic attack.

Use a hero image that reinforces your headline. Glints does a lot of messaging work above the fold. The top headline instantly identifies the target audience, which is backed up by the hero image. The supporting copy speaks to the promise of finding a dream career. Then, the second heading quickly shows off some of the significant brands hiring through the platform.

Multiple CTAs all go to the same place. An attention ratio of 1:1 is ideal, but you can include additional calls to action if they all point in the same direction. Glints does that here, each with variant copy that prompts the visitor to convert. If the content above the fold doesn’t do it, maybe the logo spread of brands on the platform or the expanded benefits will.

3. Promo

Image courtesy of Promo. (Click image to see the full page.)

Promo are experts at using videos to drive conversions on their landing pages (as we highlighted in this post on high-converting pages). And they ought to be: the easy-to-use platform lets customers quickly build videos for sponsored social media posts. Promo not using videos in their marketing would be like Superman not using the power of flight in his marketing. (It’s a bird, it’s a plane? Ah, you’re too young.)

But video content can be a big problem for mobile visitors. Deployed carelessly, it can dramatically increase a landing page’s weight and create grueling on-the-go load times. Poor page speed can cancel out any conversions you hoped to gain by including a video in the first place.

Yael Miriam Klass, Promo’s Content Lead, described how the company uses video on mobile landing pages without sacrificing the overall experience:

The best way to grab attention and keep visitors on your mobile landing for more than half a second is with a simple video. Simplicity is key because it needs to load quickly or you’ve lost them.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Create a lightweight experience. It’s not clear from just looking at the mobile version of this landing page, but Promo has done a lot to slim the content down from desktop. The full-sized page features an auto-play video in place of the hero shot and dynamic buttons overlaid on the sample videos. Instead, the mobile version uses static images that only play video once a visitor has interacted with them.

Get the most from the space above the fold. The headline conveys Promo’s unique selling proposition for this targetted segment—that is, easily creating videos for social media. Coupled with a clickable explainer video and prominent call to action, Promo makes the most of the available real estate to deliver a wicked first impression above the fold.

Build credibility with trusted brand logos. Promo includes Facebook and Instagram partner badges above the fold to immediately affirm that they’re trusted by major social media platforms—an important point when you’re trying to win with a social media use case. The page also features a spread of client brand logos and individual customer testimonials, further establishing credibility.

4. Country Chic Paint

Image courtesy of Country Chic Paint. (Click image to see the full page.)

Emotional marketing is a great tool regardless of medium, but it’s especially useful on mobile. People tend to participate most in social media on their phones, and they’re already being emotionally primed by videos of dogs cuddling with ducks, or whatever you people are into these days.

This landing page from Country Chic Paint—built by Webistry—includes an emotional element that makes it more likely to resonate with mobile visitors.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Use sticky bars to keep your CTA in view. Country Chic keeps their call to action prominently displayed throughout the landing page by using a sticky bar, making it easy for visitors to convert the minute they’ve made the purchase decision.

Reinforce your offer with a compelling cause. In addition to the sticky bar, this page features a number of inline CTAs that continue to prompt visitors as they read through Country Chic’s bulleted product differentiators: the low environmental impact, the company’s paint recycling program, and their charitable initiatives. Plus, we know this is supporting a great cause, and it’s a compelling reason to buy.

Show visitors what your product or service looks like in action. Country Chic does a terrific job of picturing their product in the context of use. Rather than just showing off the paints included with the kit, the company demonstrates how they actually look on a piece of reclaimed furniture and other craft projects.

5. ClaimCompass

Image courtesy of ClaimCompass. (Click image to see the full page.)

Making your offer clear is key to winning conversions on mobile. That can be tough when you’ve got a complicated product or service that needs some ‘splainin’—especially when it seems too good to be true.

ClaimCompass was also featured in our high-converting landing page examples post, where Alex Sumin, the company’s Co-Founder and CMO, described the difficulty of getting people to buy into the promise of free cash. That hasn’t slowed Alex down, though: in addition to turning one of every three visitors into conversions, this Unbounce-built landing page does a great job of distilling a complex regulatory measure into the tangible benefits for consumers.

When you look at the mobile experience from a contextual point of view, then not only are we limited by the real estate on the device, but also by the environment in which that content is consumed.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the micro-moments in which these mobile interactions occur and consider how they’ll impact our objectives, whether it’s content consumption, conversions, or other.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Break complex ideas into understandable benefits. Free money sounds like a simple enough offer, but ClaimCompass is dealing with a ton of jargonistic legal and regulatory considerations. The company does an excellent job of grabbing visitor attention with brief copy above the fold, then quickly banging out the key benefits of the service with bullet points just below.

Provide avenues to learn more (when appropriate). High-level explanations and benefit statements aren’t going to be enough to convince everyone. This page provides lots of secondary information that expands on the offer and outlines the ClaimCompass process, plus links to an in-depth blog post that gets into all of the nitty-gritty.

Turn positive press and reviews into trust. Yeah, ‘no-strings cash’ sounds like fiction, but ClaimCompass builds credibility and trust by associating itself with the major news outlets its been featured in, highlighting the average customer review score, and pulling real testimonials straight from Facebook.

Bonus: The hero image speaks to anyone who has ever been on a delayed flight. Her face is my face. Her pain is my pain.

6. Helix

Image courtesy of Helix. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sleep is pretty popular these days, but archaeological evidence suggests that humans have actually been sleeping for thousands of years. Wild stuff.

Mattress company Helix capitalizes on sleep-mania with this landing page that really showcases what’s possible on mobile. Despite including a ton of information, this page never feels overwhelming thanks to some awesome design decisions that make each section feel fresh with a new visual style. What elevates the page to the next level, though, is Helix’s use of relevant testimonials and its smart lead generation tool.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make your landing page beautiful. This is a great-looking landing page, and it shows that you can build a visually-engaging experience for small screens. Each section seems to have its own texture—whether it’s unique iconography, eye-catching graphs, or the stylish video—and encourages visitors to keep scrolling.

Provide social proof that speaks to your use case. Helix highlights customer testimonials from couples with different sleeping preferences, which is the audience this page is targeting. For example: “This mattress literally saved our marriage.” As a firm-mattress-lover currently stranded on 4 inches of memory foam, please send help.

Generate leads by providing value. The landing page call to action drives visitors to Helix’s Sleep Quiz, which—after collecting their email address—asks prospects a series of questions to help them find their perfect mattress type. There’s value there, and it makes for a rich lead generation tool.

7. Boostability

Image courtesy of Boostability. (Click image to see the full page.)

Lead generation still typically comes down to filling out a form, which can make it a little tricky on mobile. Visitors aren’t eager to tap out all of their personal details on a small screen. And speaking from experience, people struggle to thumb-spell even simple words correctly. Good luck adding jimbo@gnail.cob to your email list.

If you’re going to use a lead gen form on your mobile landing page, you’d better make sure it’s autofill-enabled. That’s what the team at Boostability did, and—lo and behold—they’re currently rocking a conversion rate well above industry average.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Be sure your form isn’t blocking conversions. Lead generation forms can be a barrier to conversion on phones, but that isn’t the case on this page. Boostability includes its short, autofill-enabled form above the fold, allowing visitors to easily register for their free website analysis.

Show visitors what conversion gets them. Below the form, Boostability gives more details on what the website analysis actually includes, complete with screenshots from inside the product. This helps visitors understand what they’ll be getting when they give Boostability their personal details.

Lots of content isn’t an excuse for a cluttered page. There’s a ton of information on this landing page, and Boostability manages to condense it all in a small space without making anything feel crowded. That’s because they’ve stuck to a single column that features loads of white space.

Not sure how your landing page performs on mobile? Run a test with the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which ranks your page against nine specific performance categories including mobile responsiveness.

8. Good Eggs

Image courtesy of Good Eggs. (Click image to see the full page.)

Pitching your product or service to mobile visitors is tricky. People probably aren’t sitting down to read everything you’ve got to say. They’re usually on the move, half-glimpsing at their phone as wait in line for coffee or meander blindly into traffic. Even after you’ve got them on your page, you need to work hard to keep their attention.

That’s not the only challenge Good Eggs faced with this landing page. Grocery delivery is an increasingly crowded space, and the company needs to differentiate itself from its competitors. That means having an opportunity to explain why this service is different.

Heidi Hirvonen, Marketing Manager at Good Eggs, explained how the company builds landing pages that keep mobile visitors engaged:

We know that Good Eggs customers are incredibly busy—trying to optimize every moment in their lives—and looking for creative solutions to save time without compromising on their standards or values.

Unsurprisingly, about 50% of our traffic is mobile, which makes it vital for us to design mobile-friendly experiences for every step in the customer journey, from our marketplace, to our emails, to our Unbounce landing pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Demand attention with compelling imagery. Good Eggs does a great job of breaking up their landing page copy with stylish photography, prompting visitors to pause just long enough to read about some of the company’s competitive differentiators. That’s especially important when you need to stand out in a crowded space.

Make your offer immediately clear. This landing page is built around an offer promoting one of the brands of ice cream that Good Eggs carries, and everything above the fold reinforces that: the delicious hero-shot of the ice cream; the copy outlining the discount for the ice cream; the prompt to claim the ice cream. Give me the ice cream.

9. Ace

Image courtesy of Ace. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sometimes, a landing page is about more than just getting visitors to understand the tangible features and benefits of your offer. You might want to convey a feeling—make them understand what it’s like to have taken the plunge and experienced transformative results. When it works, it’s powerful.

Ace is a test preparation company that helps aspiring students with their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, which can make or break their academic and professional goals. Harnessing that emotional element to drive conversions, Ace’s landing page—built by DMR—evokes a sense of aspiration that encourages prospects to dream big.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Connect with visitors on an emotional level. Rather than hitting visitors with a screenshot from the test platform or some grinning stock model, Ace uses the hero image and headline on this landing page to speak to the aspirational nature of their service. Education unlocks all kinds of new opportunities, and Ace concisely captures that above the fold.

Back up big promises with proof. Ace includes a ton of detailed testimonials from students that have found success on the platform, which is vital for a service that pledges life-changing results.

Maintain visitor attention with eye-catching visuals. The copy on this landing page is broken out into digestible bullets, each paired with colorful, eye-catching icons. That helps Ace keep visitors’ attention without being overwhelming.

10. GoBoat

Image courtesy of GoBoat. (Click image to see the full page.)

Like Ace in the previous example, GoBoat goes light on the description of its boat rental service and instead focuses on the experience of seeing Copenhagen from the water—how it feels. Sure, there’s less pirate imagery than we’d like for a company that says we can “be [our] own captain,” but GoBoat includes a ton of beautiful photographs that have already got me planning a summer trip to Denmark.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make sure visitors immediately understand the benefit. GoBoat succeeds in conveying the most essential information above the fold while also making clear the primary benefit: piloting the boat yourself. And while the company chose to exclude the auto-play video from the desktop version of this page, the static hero shot does a great job of capturing the experience that GoBoat is offering.

Speak to the experience you’re offering. Most people aren’t renting with GoBoat to live out some childhood freebooter fantasy (shame)—they’re doing it to experience the beautiful sights of Copenhagen. The company plays to that with this landing page, giving lots of real estate to shots of the city’s most famous landmarks. Meanwhile, the page is concise in its copy and uses bullets to quickly address standard questions.

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/best-mobile-landing-page-examples/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[roypstickney]

Mobile Landing Page Examples That Seriously Set the Bar

We’ve all had frustrating experiences browsing the web on our phones: load times that seem to carry on forever; pages that are cluttered and difficult to navigate; long, rambling blocks of text that make it tough to understand what you’re even looking at.

Well, at Unbounce, we’re putting our foot down. We’re tired of junky mobile landing pages. We want to celebrate the pages that do mobile right, with easy-to-follow copy, super-sleek designs, and crazy-fast load times. And since it’s our blog, that’s what we’re going to do.

But before diving into the incredible, Unbounce-built examples, we’ll cover some tips for how to knock your next mobile landing page outta the park.

Mobile Landing Page Best Practices

(“Duh, I know how to make killer mobile pages. Show me the examples!”)

Mobile landing pages aren’t so different from their desktop counterparts, and standard best practices still apply. However, there are some additional considerations for on-the-go visitors, and it’s why you should really be building separate landing pages for mobile (or, at the bare minimum, ensuring that your page is mobile-responsive).

Here are some sure-fire ways to build great mobile landing pages:

Be concise in your written copy Brevity might be the soul of wit, but it’s also the soul of mobile landing pages. (My high school literature teacher weeps.) Consider how visitors are going to be engaging with your content. Distill the information on your page to just the essentials, and make it easy for visitors to skim: bullet points, short sentences, obscure acronyms, ASOASF. (No, not ASOIAF, ya nerd.)

Nail the content above the fold Above the fold content is crucial on any landing page, but it’s especially important for converting mobile users. We have a terrible attention span when we’re on our phones: we spend less time on sites than when we’re on desktop, and bounce rates are way higher. That means your content needs to hook visitors the moment they hit your page.

Keep your design super simple This isn’t to say you can’t include awesome graphics or a catchy explainer video (although you need to be careful—more on that below). Rather, you want visitors to move naturally through your page without getting lost or overwhelmed. Use a single column layout, and strive to maintain a 1:1 attention ratio. If you’re using a lead gen form, keep the number of fields to a minimum and make sure visitors can autofill.

What does “attention ratio” mean? Attention ratio is the ratio of links on a landing page to the number of conversion goals. Since every campaign has one goal, the corresponding landing page should only have one call to action.

Make use of sticky bars Landing pages are all about getting visitors to convert—but on smaller screens, it can be harder to draw their attention to the action you want them to take. Sticky bars can help keep your call to action (CTA) top-of-mind (or top-of-screen) by having it subtly follow your visitors as they scroll through your page.

Be sure everything loads lightning-fast Quick load times are essential to converting with mobile landing pages. The bounce rate for mobile visitors gets crazy high after loading for just a few seconds—and considering most of the world is still browsing on 3G connections, any poorly-optimized images or videos on your page could be slashing your conversion rates. Keep things light.

Ready to boost your page speed?

Get Unbounce's landing page speed checklist and follow our step-by-step guide to improve your load times in a single afternoon.

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Best Mobile Landing Page Examples

1. Western Rise

Image courtesy of Western Rise. (Click image to see the full page.)

Social media is a massive driver for ecommerce. Something like 54% of people active on social use the platforms to research products, and roughly a quarter click a promoted post in any given month. But driving conversions from social platforms requires a coherent, uniform experience—from the moment someone clicks an ad on their timeline to when they’re trying to remember their PayPal password at checkout. (Was it ‘12345’, or just ‘password’?)

Will Waters, Co-Founder and Creative Director at functional clothier Western Rise, described how the company turns mobile visitors into handsomely-dressed customers.

With a lot of our current traffic coming from Instagram, it’s imperative for us to have a seamless experience for our customers to learn more about the product.

We specifically chose to build this with Unbounce because we see that a potential customer can click or swipe to arrive at the landing page and learn about the product in detail without having to click through multiple pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Maintain a unified experience from beginning to end. When you’re building a seamless social-to-storefront experience, you don’t want prospects jumping out of that pipeline. All of the information a visitor needs to make a purchase decision is right here on the page, so there’s no need to bounce and look for more details. Reinforcing that, every CTA on this landing page leads visitors to the same spot on Western Rise online store.

If you’ve got an attractive product, show it off. People don’t buy clothing unless they believe it looks good. (The obvious exception being foam clogs—what’s the psychology behind that?) Western Rise includes bold photography to highlight their clothing in the context of use, demonstrating fit and function that would be great to show off on your social timeline.

Optimize those images (seriously). This is an image-heavy page, which can be problematic for load times on mobile. Not here: Western Rise gets an impressive page speed grade from Google, which is like getting a thumbs up from Beyoncé or a backslap from Jeff Goldblum.

Bonus: Western Rise uses a popup on the linked store page to promote a giveaway contest and capture leads. (Hey, if they’re not gonna buy, you can at least try to snag their email address.)

2. Glints

Image courtesy of Glints. (Click image to see the full page.)

Marketers sometimes have a way of over-complicating things. (Who, us?) They’ll use a paragraph where a sentence will do. They’ll build an explainer video when all prospects want to see is a screenshot. On mobile, simplicity wins.

This landing page from talent recruitment platform Glints is an excellent example of how to do mobile right. The brand uses strong content above the fold that immediately communicates what the service is and why we should care: the copy is concise but descriptive, and there’s lots of white space that lets things breathe. It’s not longwinded or excessive—it’s compact and effective.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Keep things straightforward. You don’t need to drown your visitors in content, as Glints demonstrates here. The company pares its copy down to just the essentials, then arranges the page in a way that doesn’t give visitors a claustrophobic panic attack.

Use a hero image that reinforces your headline. Glints does a lot of messaging work above the fold. The top headline instantly identifies the target audience, which is backed up by the hero image. The supporting copy speaks to the promise of finding a dream career. Then, the second heading quickly shows off some of the significant brands hiring through the platform.

Multiple CTAs all go to the same place. An attention ratio of 1:1 is ideal, but you can include additional calls to action if they all point in the same direction. Glints does that here, each with variant copy that prompts the visitor to convert. If the content above the fold doesn’t do it, maybe the logo spread of brands on the platform or the expanded benefits will.

3. Promo

Image courtesy of Promo. (Click image to see the full page.)

Promo are experts at using videos to drive conversions on their landing pages (as we highlighted in this post on high-converting pages). And they ought to be: the easy-to-use platform lets customers quickly build videos for sponsored social media posts. Promo not using videos in their marketing would be like Superman not using the power of flight in his marketing. (It’s a bird, it’s a plane? Ah, you’re too young.)

But video content can be a big problem for mobile visitors. Deployed carelessly, it can dramatically increase a landing page’s weight and create grueling on-the-go load times. Poor page speed can cancel out any conversions you hoped to gain by including a video in the first place.

Yael Miriam Klass, Promo’s Content Lead, described how the company uses video on mobile landing pages without sacrificing the overall experience:

The best way to grab attention and keep visitors on your mobile landing for more than half a second is with a simple video. Simplicity is key because it needs to load quickly or you’ve lost them.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Create a lightweight experience. It’s not clear from just looking at the mobile version of this landing page, but Promo has done a lot to slim the content down from desktop. The full-sized page features an auto-play video in place of the hero shot and dynamic buttons overlaid on the sample videos. Instead, the mobile version uses static images that only play video once a visitor has interacted with them.

Get the most from the space above the fold. The headline conveys Promo’s unique selling proposition for this targetted segment—that is, easily creating videos for social media. Coupled with a clickable explainer video and prominent call to action, Promo makes the most of the available real estate to deliver a wicked first impression above the fold.

Build credibility with trusted brand logos. Promo includes Facebook and Instagram partner badges above the fold to immediately affirm that they’re trusted by major social media platforms—an important point when you’re trying to win with a social media use case. The page also features a spread of client brand logos and individual customer testimonials, further establishing credibility.

4. Country Chic Paint

Image courtesy of Country Chic Paint. (Click image to see the full page.)

Emotional marketing is a great tool regardless of medium, but it’s especially useful on mobile. People tend to participate most in social media on their phones, and they’re already being emotionally primed by videos of dogs cuddling with ducks, or whatever you people are into these days.

This landing page from Country Chic Paint—built by Webistry—includes an emotional element that makes it more likely to resonate with mobile visitors.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Use sticky bars to keep your CTA in view. Country Chic keeps their call to action prominently displayed throughout the landing page by using a sticky bar, making it easy for visitors to convert the minute they’ve made the purchase decision.

Reinforce your offer with a compelling cause. In addition to the sticky bar, this page features a number of inline CTAs that continue to prompt visitors as they read through Country Chic’s bulleted product differentiators: the low environmental impact, the company’s paint recycling program, and their charitable initiatives. Plus, we know this is supporting a great cause, and it’s a compelling reason to buy.

Show visitors what your product or service looks like in action. Country Chic does a terrific job of picturing their product in the context of use. Rather than just showing off the paints included with the kit, the company demonstrates how they actually look on a piece of reclaimed furniture and other craft projects.

5. ClaimCompass

Image courtesy of ClaimCompass. (Click image to see the full page.)

Making your offer clear is key to winning conversions on mobile. That can be tough when you’ve got a complicated product or service that needs some ‘splainin’—especially when it seems too good to be true.

ClaimCompass was also featured in our high-converting landing page examples post, where Alex Sumin, the company’s Co-Founder and CMO, described the difficulty of getting people to buy into the promise of free cash. That hasn’t slowed Alex down, though: in addition to turning one of every three visitors into conversions, this Unbounce-built landing page does a great job of distilling a complex regulatory measure into the tangible benefits for consumers.

When you look at the mobile experience from a contextual point of view, then not only are we limited by the real estate on the device, but also by the environment in which that content is consumed.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the micro-moments in which these mobile interactions occur and consider how they’ll impact our objectives, whether it’s content consumption, conversions, or other.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Break complex ideas into understandable benefits. Free money sounds like a simple enough offer, but ClaimCompass is dealing with a ton of jargonistic legal and regulatory considerations. The company does an excellent job of grabbing visitor attention with brief copy above the fold, then quickly banging out the key benefits of the service with bullet points just below.

Provide avenues to learn more (when appropriate). High-level explanations and benefit statements aren’t going to be enough to convince everyone. This page provides lots of secondary information that expands on the offer and outlines the ClaimCompass process, plus links to an in-depth blog post that gets into all of the nitty-gritty.

Turn positive press and reviews into trust. Yeah, ‘no-strings cash’ sounds like fiction, but ClaimCompass builds credibility and trust by associating itself with the major news outlets its been featured in, highlighting the average customer review score, and pulling real testimonials straight from Facebook.

Bonus: The hero image speaks to anyone who has ever been on a delayed flight. Her face is my face. Her pain is my pain.

6. Helix

Image courtesy of Helix. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sleep is pretty popular these days, but archaeological evidence suggests that humans have actually been sleeping for thousands of years. Wild stuff.

Mattress company Helix capitalizes on sleep-mania with this landing page that really showcases what’s possible on mobile. Despite including a ton of information, this page never feels overwhelming thanks to some awesome design decisions that make each section feel fresh with a new visual style. What elevates the page to the next level, though, is Helix’s use of relevant testimonials and its smart lead generation tool.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make your landing page beautiful. This is a great-looking landing page, and it shows that you can build a visually-engaging experience for small screens. Each section seems to have its own texture—whether it’s unique iconography, eye-catching graphs, or the stylish video—and encourages visitors to keep scrolling.

Provide social proof that speaks to your use case. Helix highlights customer testimonials from couples with different sleeping preferences, which is the audience this page is targeting. For example: “This mattress literally saved our marriage.” As a firm-mattress-lover currently stranded on 4 inches of memory foam, please send help.

Generate leads by providing value. The landing page call to action drives visitors to Helix’s Sleep Quiz, which—after collecting their email address—asks prospects a series of questions to help them find their perfect mattress type. There’s value there, and it makes for a rich lead generation tool.

7. Boostability

Image courtesy of Boostability. (Click image to see the full page.)

Lead generation still typically comes down to filling out a form, which can make it a little tricky on mobile. Visitors aren’t eager to tap out all of their personal details on a small screen. And speaking from experience, people struggle to thumb-spell even simple words correctly. Good luck adding jimbo@gnail.cob to your email list.

If you’re going to use a lead gen form on your mobile landing page, you’d better make sure it’s autofill-enabled. That’s what the team at Boostability did, and—lo and behold—they’re currently rocking a conversion rate well above industry average.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Be sure your form isn’t blocking conversions. Lead generation forms can be a barrier to conversion on phones, but that isn’t the case on this page. Boostability includes its short, autofill-enabled form above the fold, allowing visitors to easily register for their free website analysis.

Show visitors what conversion gets them. Below the form, Boostability gives more details on what the website analysis actually includes, complete with screenshots from inside the product. This helps visitors understand what they’ll be getting when they give Boostability their personal details.

Lots of content isn’t an excuse for a cluttered page. There’s a ton of information on this landing page, and Boostability manages to condense it all in a small space without making anything feel crowded. That’s because they’ve stuck to a single column that features loads of white space.

Not sure how your landing page performs on mobile? Run a test with the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which ranks your page against nine specific performance categories including mobile responsiveness.

8. Good Eggs

Image courtesy of Good Eggs. (Click image to see the full page.)

Pitching your product or service to mobile visitors is tricky. People probably aren’t sitting down to read everything you’ve got to say. They’re usually on the move, half-glimpsing at their phone as wait in line for coffee or meander blindly into traffic. Even after you’ve got them on your page, you need to work hard to keep their attention.

That’s not the only challenge Good Eggs faced with this landing page. Grocery delivery is an increasingly crowded space, and the company needs to differentiate itself from its competitors. That means having an opportunity to explain why this service is different.

Heidi Hirvonen, Marketing Manager at Good Eggs, explained how the company builds landing pages that keep mobile visitors engaged:

We know that Good Eggs customers are incredibly busy—trying to optimize every moment in their lives—and looking for creative solutions to save time without compromising on their standards or values.

Unsurprisingly, about 50% of our traffic is mobile, which makes it vital for us to design mobile-friendly experiences for every step in the customer journey, from our marketplace, to our emails, to our Unbounce landing pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Demand attention with compelling imagery. Good Eggs does a great job of breaking up their landing page copy with stylish photography, prompting visitors to pause just long enough to read about some of the company’s competitive differentiators. That’s especially important when you need to stand out in a crowded space.

Make your offer immediately clear. This landing page is built around an offer promoting one of the brands of ice cream that Good Eggs carries, and everything above the fold reinforces that: the delicious hero-shot of the ice cream; the copy outlining the discount for the ice cream; the prompt to claim the ice cream. Give me the ice cream.

9. Ace

Image courtesy of Ace. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sometimes, a landing page is about more than just getting visitors to understand the tangible features and benefits of your offer. You might want to convey a feeling—make them understand what it’s like to have taken the plunge and experienced transformative results. When it works, it’s powerful.

Ace is a test preparation company that helps aspiring students with their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, which can make or break their academic and professional goals. Harnessing that emotional element to drive conversions, Ace’s landing page—built by DMR—evokes a sense of aspiration that encourages prospects to dream big.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Connect with visitors on an emotional level. Rather than hitting visitors with a screenshot from the test platform or some grinning stock model, Ace uses the hero image and headline on this landing page to speak to the aspirational nature of their service. Education unlocks all kinds of new opportunities, and Ace concisely captures that above the fold.

Back up big promises with proof. Ace includes a ton of detailed testimonials from students that have found success on the platform, which is vital for a service that pledges life-changing results.

Maintain visitor attention with eye-catching visuals. The copy on this landing page is broken out into digestible bullets, each paired with colorful, eye-catching icons. That helps Ace keep visitors’ attention without being overwhelming.

10. GoBoat

Image courtesy of GoBoat. (Click image to see the full page.)

Like Ace in the previous example, GoBoat goes light on the description of its boat rental service and instead focuses on the experience of seeing Copenhagen from the water—how it feels. Sure, there’s less pirate imagery than we’d like for a company that says we can “be [our] own captain,” but GoBoat includes a ton of beautiful photographs that have already got me planning a summer trip to Denmark.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make sure visitors immediately understand the benefit. GoBoat succeeds in conveying the most essential information above the fold while also making clear the primary benefit: piloting the boat yourself. And while the company chose to exclude the auto-play video from the desktop version of this page, the static hero shot does a great job of capturing the experience that GoBoat is offering.

Speak to the experience you’re offering. Most people aren’t renting with GoBoat to live out some childhood freebooter fantasy (shame)—they’re doing it to experience the beautiful sights of Copenhagen. The company plays to that with this landing page, giving lots of real estate to shots of the city’s most famous landmarks. Meanwhile, the page is concise in its copy and uses bullets to quickly address standard questions.

[annaxkeating]

Mobile Landing Page Examples That Seriously Set the Bar

We’ve all had frustrating experiences browsing the web on our phones: load times that seem to carry on forever; pages that are cluttered and difficult to navigate; long, rambling blocks of text that make it tough to understand what you’re even looking at.

Well, at Unbounce, we’re putting our foot down. We’re tired of junky mobile landing pages. We want to celebrate the pages that do mobile right, with easy-to-follow copy, super-sleek designs, and crazy-fast load times. And since it’s our blog, that’s what we’re going to do.

But before diving into the incredible, Unbounce-built examples, we’ll cover some tips for how to knock your next mobile landing page outta the park.

Mobile Landing Page Best Practices

(“Duh, I know how to make killer mobile pages. Show me the examples!”)

Mobile landing pages aren’t so different from their desktop counterparts, and standard best practices still apply. However, there are some additional considerations for on-the-go visitors, and it’s why you should really be building separate landing pages for mobile (or, at the bare minimum, ensuring that your page is mobile-responsive).

Here are some sure-fire ways to build great mobile landing pages:

Be concise in your written copy Brevity might be the soul of wit, but it’s also the soul of mobile landing pages. (My high school literature teacher weeps.) Consider how visitors are going to be engaging with your content. Distill the information on your page to just the essentials, and make it easy for visitors to skim: bullet points, short sentences, obscure acronyms, ASOASF. (No, not ASOIAF, ya nerd.)

Nail the content above the fold Above the fold content is crucial on any landing page, but it’s especially important for converting mobile users. We have a terrible attention span when we’re on our phones: we spend less time on sites than when we’re on desktop, and bounce rates are way higher. That means your content needs to hook visitors the moment they hit your page.

Keep your design super simple This isn’t to say you can’t include awesome graphics or a catchy explainer video (although you need to be careful—more on that below). Rather, you want visitors to move naturally through your page without getting lost or overwhelmed. Use a single column layout, and strive to maintain a 1:1 attention ratio. If you’re using a lead gen form, keep the number of fields to a minimum and make sure visitors can autofill.

What does “attention ratio” mean? Attention ratio is the ratio of links on a landing page to the number of conversion goals. Since every campaign has one goal, the corresponding landing page should only have one call to action.

Make use of sticky bars Landing pages are all about getting visitors to convert—but on smaller screens, it can be harder to draw their attention to the action you want them to take. Sticky bars can help keep your call to action (CTA) top-of-mind (or top-of-screen) by having it subtly follow your visitors as they scroll through your page.

Be sure everything loads lightning-fast Quick load times are essential to converting with mobile landing pages. The bounce rate for mobile visitors gets crazy high after loading for just a few seconds—and considering most of the world is still browsing on 3G connections, any poorly-optimized images or videos on your page could be slashing your conversion rates. Keep things light.

Ready to boost your page speed?

Get Unbounce's landing page speed checklist and follow our step-by-step guide to improve your load times in a single afternoon.

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Best Mobile Landing Page Examples

1. Western Rise

Image courtesy of Western Rise. (Click image to see the full page.)

Social media is a massive driver for ecommerce. Something like 54% of people active on social use the platforms to research products, and roughly a quarter click a promoted post in any given month. But driving conversions from social platforms requires a coherent, uniform experience—from the moment someone clicks an ad on their timeline to when they’re trying to remember their PayPal password at checkout. (Was it ‘12345’, or just ‘password’?)

Will Waters, Co-Founder and Creative Director at functional clothier Western Rise, described how the company turns mobile visitors into handsomely-dressed customers.

With a lot of our current traffic coming from Instagram, it’s imperative for us to have a seamless experience for our customers to learn more about the product.

We specifically chose to build this with Unbounce because we see that a potential customer can click or swipe to arrive at the landing page and learn about the product in detail without having to click through multiple pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Maintain a unified experience from beginning to end. When you’re building a seamless social-to-storefront experience, you don’t want prospects jumping out of that pipeline. All of the information a visitor needs to make a purchase decision is right here on the page, so there’s no need to bounce and look for more details. Reinforcing that, every CTA on this landing page leads visitors to the same spot on Western Rise online store.

If you’ve got an attractive product, show it off. People don’t buy clothing unless they believe it looks good. (The obvious exception being foam clogs—what’s the psychology behind that?) Western Rise includes bold photography to highlight their clothing in the context of use, demonstrating fit and function that would be great to show off on your social timeline.

Optimize those images (seriously). This is an image-heavy page, which can be problematic for load times on mobile. Not here: Western Rise gets an impressive page speed grade from Google, which is like getting a thumbs up from Beyoncé or a backslap from Jeff Goldblum.

Bonus: Western Rise uses a popup on the linked store page to promote a giveaway contest and capture leads. (Hey, if they’re not gonna buy, you can at least try to snag their email address.)

2. Glints

Image courtesy of Glints. (Click image to see the full page.)

Marketers sometimes have a way of over-complicating things. (Who, us?) They’ll use a paragraph where a sentence will do. They’ll build an explainer video when all prospects want to see is a screenshot. On mobile, simplicity wins.

This landing page from talent recruitment platform Glints is an excellent example of how to do mobile right. The brand uses strong content above the fold that immediately communicates what the service is and why we should care: the copy is concise but descriptive, and there’s lots of white space that lets things breathe. It’s not longwinded or excessive—it’s compact and effective.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Keep things straightforward. You don’t need to drown your visitors in content, as Glints demonstrates here. The company pares its copy down to just the essentials, then arranges the page in a way that doesn’t give visitors a claustrophobic panic attack.

Use a hero image that reinforces your headline. Glints does a lot of messaging work above the fold. The top headline instantly identifies the target audience, which is backed up by the hero image. The supporting copy speaks to the promise of finding a dream career. Then, the second heading quickly shows off some of the significant brands hiring through the platform.

Multiple CTAs all go to the same place. An attention ratio of 1:1 is ideal, but you can include additional calls to action if they all point in the same direction. Glints does that here, each with variant copy that prompts the visitor to convert. If the content above the fold doesn’t do it, maybe the logo spread of brands on the platform or the expanded benefits will.

3. Promo

Image courtesy of Promo. (Click image to see the full page.)

Promo are experts at using videos to drive conversions on their landing pages (as we highlighted in this post on high-converting pages). And they ought to be: the easy-to-use platform lets customers quickly build videos for sponsored social media posts. Promo not using videos in their marketing would be like Superman not using the power of flight in his marketing. (It’s a bird, it’s a plane? Ah, you’re too young.)

But video content can be a big problem for mobile visitors. Deployed carelessly, it can dramatically increase a landing page’s weight and create grueling on-the-go load times. Poor page speed can cancel out any conversions you hoped to gain by including a video in the first place.

Yael Miriam Klass, Promo’s Content Lead, described how the company uses video on mobile landing pages without sacrificing the overall experience:

The best way to grab attention and keep visitors on your mobile landing for more than half a second is with a simple video. Simplicity is key because it needs to load quickly or you’ve lost them.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Create a lightweight experience. It’s not clear from just looking at the mobile version of this landing page, but Promo has done a lot to slim the content down from desktop. The full-sized page features an auto-play video in place of the hero shot and dynamic buttons overlaid on the sample videos. Instead, the mobile version uses static images that only play video once a visitor has interacted with them.

Get the most from the space above the fold. The headline conveys Promo’s unique selling proposition for this targetted segment—that is, easily creating videos for social media. Coupled with a clickable explainer video and prominent call to action, Promo makes the most of the available real estate to deliver a wicked first impression above the fold.

Build credibility with trusted brand logos. Promo includes Facebook and Instagram partner badges above the fold to immediately affirm that they’re trusted by major social media platforms—an important point when you’re trying to win with a social media use case. The page also features a spread of client brand logos and individual customer testimonials, further establishing credibility.

4. Country Chic Paint

Image courtesy of Country Chic Paint. (Click image to see the full page.)

Emotional marketing is a great tool regardless of medium, but it’s especially useful on mobile. People tend to participate most in social media on their phones, and they’re already being emotionally primed by videos of dogs cuddling with ducks, or whatever you people are into these days.

This landing page from Country Chic Paint—built by Webistry—includes an emotional element that makes it more likely to resonate with mobile visitors.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Use sticky bars to keep your CTA in view. Country Chic keeps their call to action prominently displayed throughout the landing page by using a sticky bar, making it easy for visitors to convert the minute they’ve made the purchase decision.

Reinforce your offer with a compelling cause. In addition to the sticky bar, this page features a number of inline CTAs that continue to prompt visitors as they read through Country Chic’s bulleted product differentiators: the low environmental impact, the company’s paint recycling program, and their charitable initiatives. Plus, we know this is supporting a great cause, and it’s a compelling reason to buy.

Show visitors what your product or service looks like in action. Country Chic does a terrific job of picturing their product in the context of use. Rather than just showing off the paints included with the kit, the company demonstrates how they actually look on a piece of reclaimed furniture and other craft projects.

5. ClaimCompass

Image courtesy of ClaimCompass. (Click image to see the full page.)

Making your offer clear is key to winning conversions on mobile. That can be tough when you’ve got a complicated product or service that needs some ‘splainin’—especially when it seems too good to be true.

ClaimCompass was also featured in our high-converting landing page examples post, where Alex Sumin, the company’s Co-Founder and CMO, described the difficulty of getting people to buy into the promise of free cash. That hasn’t slowed Alex down, though: in addition to turning one of every three visitors into conversions, this Unbounce-built landing page does a great job of distilling a complex regulatory measure into the tangible benefits for consumers.

When you look at the mobile experience from a contextual point of view, then not only are we limited by the real estate on the device, but also by the environment in which that content is consumed.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the micro-moments in which these mobile interactions occur and consider how they’ll impact our objectives, whether it’s content consumption, conversions, or other.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Break complex ideas into understandable benefits. Free money sounds like a simple enough offer, but ClaimCompass is dealing with a ton of jargonistic legal and regulatory considerations. The company does an excellent job of grabbing visitor attention with brief copy above the fold, then quickly banging out the key benefits of the service with bullet points just below.

Provide avenues to learn more (when appropriate). High-level explanations and benefit statements aren’t going to be enough to convince everyone. This page provides lots of secondary information that expands on the offer and outlines the ClaimCompass process, plus links to an in-depth blog post that gets into all of the nitty-gritty.

Turn positive press and reviews into trust. Yeah, ‘no-strings cash’ sounds like fiction, but ClaimCompass builds credibility and trust by associating itself with the major news outlets its been featured in, highlighting the average customer review score, and pulling real testimonials straight from Facebook.

Bonus: The hero image speaks to anyone who has ever been on a delayed flight. Her face is my face. Her pain is my pain.

6. Helix

Image courtesy of Helix. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sleep is pretty popular these days, but archaeological evidence suggests that humans have actually been sleeping for thousands of years. Wild stuff.

Mattress company Helix capitalizes on sleep-mania with this landing page that really showcases what’s possible on mobile. Despite including a ton of information, this page never feels overwhelming thanks to some awesome design decisions that make each section feel fresh with a new visual style. What elevates the page to the next level, though, is Helix’s use of relevant testimonials and its smart lead generation tool.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make your landing page beautiful. This is a great-looking landing page, and it shows that you can build a visually-engaging experience for small screens. Each section seems to have its own texture—whether it’s unique iconography, eye-catching graphs, or the stylish video—and encourages visitors to keep scrolling.

Provide social proof that speaks to your use case. Helix highlights customer testimonials from couples with different sleeping preferences, which is the audience this page is targeting. For example: “This mattress literally saved our marriage.” As a firm-mattress-lover currently stranded on 4 inches of memory foam, please send help.

Generate leads by providing value. The landing page call to action drives visitors to Helix’s Sleep Quiz, which—after collecting their email address—asks prospects a series of questions to help them find their perfect mattress type. There’s value there, and it makes for a rich lead generation tool.

7. Boostability

Image courtesy of Boostability. (Click image to see the full page.)

Lead generation still typically comes down to filling out a form, which can make it a little tricky on mobile. Visitors aren’t eager to tap out all of their personal details on a small screen. And speaking from experience, people struggle to thumb-spell even simple words correctly. Good luck adding jimbo@gnail.cob to your email list.

If you’re going to use a lead gen form on your mobile landing page, you’d better make sure it’s autofill-enabled. That’s what the team at Boostability did, and—lo and behold—they’re currently rocking a conversion rate well above industry average.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Be sure your form isn’t blocking conversions. Lead generation forms can be a barrier to conversion on phones, but that isn’t the case on this page. Boostability includes its short, autofill-enabled form above the fold, allowing visitors to easily register for their free website analysis.

Show visitors what conversion gets them. Below the form, Boostability gives more details on what the website analysis actually includes, complete with screenshots from inside the product. This helps visitors understand what they’ll be getting when they give Boostability their personal details.

Lots of content isn’t an excuse for a cluttered page. There’s a ton of information on this landing page, and Boostability manages to condense it all in a small space without making anything feel crowded. That’s because they’ve stuck to a single column that features loads of white space.

Not sure how your landing page performs on mobile? Run a test with the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which ranks your page against nine specific performance categories including mobile responsiveness.

8. Good Eggs

Image courtesy of Good Eggs. (Click image to see the full page.)

Pitching your product or service to mobile visitors is tricky. People probably aren’t sitting down to read everything you’ve got to say. They’re usually on the move, half-glimpsing at their phone as wait in line for coffee or meander blindly into traffic. Even after you’ve got them on your page, you need to work hard to keep their attention.

That’s not the only challenge Good Eggs faced with this landing page. Grocery delivery is an increasingly crowded space, and the company needs to differentiate itself from its competitors. That means having an opportunity to explain why this service is different.

Heidi Hirvonen, Marketing Manager at Good Eggs, explained how the company builds landing pages that keep mobile visitors engaged:

We know that Good Eggs customers are incredibly busy—trying to optimize every moment in their lives—and looking for creative solutions to save time without compromising on their standards or values.

Unsurprisingly, about 50% of our traffic is mobile, which makes it vital for us to design mobile-friendly experiences for every step in the customer journey, from our marketplace, to our emails, to our Unbounce landing pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Demand attention with compelling imagery. Good Eggs does a great job of breaking up their landing page copy with stylish photography, prompting visitors to pause just long enough to read about some of the company’s competitive differentiators. That’s especially important when you need to stand out in a crowded space.

Make your offer immediately clear. This landing page is built around an offer promoting one of the brands of ice cream that Good Eggs carries, and everything above the fold reinforces that: the delicious hero-shot of the ice cream; the copy outlining the discount for the ice cream; the prompt to claim the ice cream. Give me the ice cream.

9. Ace

Image courtesy of Ace. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sometimes, a landing page is about more than just getting visitors to understand the tangible features and benefits of your offer. You might want to convey a feeling—make them understand what it’s like to have taken the plunge and experienced transformative results. When it works, it’s powerful.

Ace is a test preparation company that helps aspiring students with their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, which can make or break their academic and professional goals. Harnessing that emotional element to drive conversions, Ace’s landing page—built by DMR—evokes a sense of aspiration that encourages prospects to dream big.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Connect with visitors on an emotional level. Rather than hitting visitors with a screenshot from the test platform or some grinning stock model, Ace uses the hero image and headline on this landing page to speak to the aspirational nature of their service. Education unlocks all kinds of new opportunities, and Ace concisely captures that above the fold.

Back up big promises with proof. Ace includes a ton of detailed testimonials from students that have found success on the platform, which is vital for a service that pledges life-changing results.

Maintain visitor attention with eye-catching visuals. The copy on this landing page is broken out into digestible bullets, each paired with colorful, eye-catching icons. That helps Ace keep visitors’ attention without being overwhelming.

10. GoBoat

Image courtesy of GoBoat. (Click image to see the full page.)

Like Ace in the previous example, GoBoat goes light on the description of its boat rental service and instead focuses on the experience of seeing Copenhagen from the water—how it feels. Sure, there’s less pirate imagery than we’d like for a company that says we can “be [our] own captain,” but GoBoat includes a ton of beautiful photographs that have already got me planning a summer trip to Denmark.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make sure visitors immediately understand the benefit. GoBoat succeeds in conveying the most essential information above the fold while also making clear the primary benefit: piloting the boat yourself. And while the company chose to exclude the auto-play video from the desktop version of this page, the static hero shot does a great job of capturing the experience that GoBoat is offering.

Speak to the experience you’re offering. Most people aren’t renting with GoBoat to live out some childhood freebooter fantasy (shame)—they’re doing it to experience the beautiful sights of Copenhagen. The company plays to that with this landing page, giving lots of real estate to shots of the city’s most famous landmarks. Meanwhile, the page is concise in its copy and uses bullets to quickly address standard questions.

from Digital https://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/best-mobile-landing-page-examples/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[itsjessicaisreal]

Mobile Landing Page Examples That Seriously Set the Bar

We’ve all had frustrating experiences browsing the web on our phones: load times that seem to carry on forever; pages that are cluttered and difficult to navigate; long, rambling blocks of text that make it tough to understand what you’re even looking at.

Well, at Unbounce, we’re putting our foot down. We’re tired of junky mobile landing pages. We want to celebrate the pages that do mobile right, with easy-to-follow copy, super-sleek designs, and crazy-fast load times. And since it’s our blog, that’s what we’re going to do.

But before diving into the incredible, Unbounce-built examples, we’ll cover some tips for how to knock your next mobile landing page outta the park.

Mobile Landing Page Best Practices

(“Duh, I know how to make killer mobile pages. Show me the examples!”)

Mobile landing pages aren’t so different from their desktop counterparts, and standard best practices still apply. However, there are some additional considerations for on-the-go visitors, and it’s why you should really be building separate landing pages for mobile (or, at the bare minimum, ensuring that your page is mobile-responsive).

Here are some sure-fire ways to build great mobile landing pages:

Be concise in your written copy Brevity might be the soul of wit, but it’s also the soul of mobile landing pages. (My high school literature teacher weeps.) Consider how visitors are going to be engaging with your content. Distill the information on your page to just the essentials, and make it easy for visitors to skim: bullet points, short sentences, obscure acronyms, ASOASF. (No, not ASOIAF, ya nerd.)

Nail the content above the fold Above the fold content is crucial on any landing page, but it’s especially important for converting mobile users. We have a terrible attention span when we’re on our phones: we spend less time on sites than when we’re on desktop, and bounce rates are way higher. That means your content needs to hook visitors the moment they hit your page.

Keep your design super simple This isn’t to say you can’t include awesome graphics or a catchy explainer video (although you need to be careful—more on that below). Rather, you want visitors to move naturally through your page without getting lost or overwhelmed. Use a single column layout, and strive to maintain a 1:1 attention ratio. If you’re using a lead gen form, keep the number of fields to a minimum and make sure visitors can autofill.

What does “attention ratio” mean? Attention ratio is the ratio of links on a landing page to the number of conversion goals. Since every campaign has one goal, the corresponding landing page should only have one call to action.

Make use of sticky bars Landing pages are all about getting visitors to convert—but on smaller screens, it can be harder to draw their attention to the action you want them to take. Sticky bars can help keep your call to action (CTA) top-of-mind (or top-of-screen) by having it subtly follow your visitors as they scroll through your page.

Be sure everything loads lightning-fast Quick load times are essential to converting with mobile landing pages. The bounce rate for mobile visitors gets crazy high after loading for just a few seconds—and considering most of the world is still browsing on 3G connections, any poorly-optimized images or videos on your page could be slashing your conversion rates. Keep things light.

Ready to boost your page speed?

Get Unbounce's landing page speed checklist and follow our step-by-step guide to improve your load times in a single afternoon.

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Best Mobile Landing Page Examples

1. Western Rise

Image courtesy of Western Rise. (Click image to see the full page.)

Social media is a massive driver for ecommerce. Something like 54% of people active on social use the platforms to research products, and roughly a quarter click a promoted post in any given month. But driving conversions from social platforms requires a coherent, uniform experience—from the moment someone clicks an ad on their timeline to when they’re trying to remember their PayPal password at checkout. (Was it ‘12345’, or just ‘password’?)

Will Waters, Co-Founder and Creative Director at functional clothier Western Rise, described how the company turns mobile visitors into handsomely-dressed customers.

With a lot of our current traffic coming from Instagram, it’s imperative for us to have a seamless experience for our customers to learn more about the product.

We specifically chose to build this with Unbounce because we see that a potential customer can click or swipe to arrive at the landing page and learn about the product in detail without having to click through multiple pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Maintain a unified experience from beginning to end. When you’re building a seamless social-to-storefront experience, you don’t want prospects jumping out of that pipeline. All of the information a visitor needs to make a purchase decision is right here on the page, so there’s no need to bounce and look for more details. Reinforcing that, every CTA on this landing page leads visitors to the same spot on Western Rise online store.

If you’ve got an attractive product, show it off. People don’t buy clothing unless they believe it looks good. (The obvious exception being foam clogs—what’s the psychology behind that?) Western Rise includes bold photography to highlight their clothing in the context of use, demonstrating fit and function that would be great to show off on your social timeline.

Optimize those images (seriously). This is an image-heavy page, which can be problematic for load times on mobile. Not here: Western Rise gets an impressive page speed grade from Google, which is like getting a thumbs up from Beyoncé or a backslap from Jeff Goldblum.

Bonus: Western Rise uses a popup on the linked store page to promote a giveaway contest and capture leads. (Hey, if they’re not gonna buy, you can at least try to snag their email address.)

2. Glints

Image courtesy of Glints. (Click image to see the full page.)

Marketers sometimes have a way of over-complicating things. (Who, us?) They’ll use a paragraph where a sentence will do. They’ll build an explainer video when all prospects want to see is a screenshot. On mobile, simplicity wins.

This landing page from talent recruitment platform Glints is an excellent example of how to do mobile right. The brand uses strong content above the fold that immediately communicates what the service is and why we should care: the copy is concise but descriptive, and there’s lots of white space that lets things breathe. It’s not longwinded or excessive—it’s compact and effective.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Keep things straightforward. You don’t need to drown your visitors in content, as Glints demonstrates here. The company pares its copy down to just the essentials, then arranges the page in a way that doesn’t give visitors a claustrophobic panic attack.

Use a hero image that reinforces your headline. Glints does a lot of messaging work above the fold. The top headline instantly identifies the target audience, which is backed up by the hero image. The supporting copy speaks to the promise of finding a dream career. Then, the second heading quickly shows off some of the significant brands hiring through the platform.

Multiple CTAs all go to the same place. An attention ratio of 1:1 is ideal, but you can include additional calls to action if they all point in the same direction. Glints does that here, each with variant copy that prompts the visitor to convert. If the content above the fold doesn’t do it, maybe the logo spread of brands on the platform or the expanded benefits will.

3. Promo

Image courtesy of Promo. (Click image to see the full page.)

Promo are experts at using videos to drive conversions on their landing pages (as we highlighted in this post on high-converting pages). And they ought to be: the easy-to-use platform lets customers quickly build videos for sponsored social media posts. Promo not using videos in their marketing would be like Superman not using the power of flight in his marketing. (It’s a bird, it’s a plane? Ah, you’re too young.)

But video content can be a big problem for mobile visitors. Deployed carelessly, it can dramatically increase a landing page’s weight and create grueling on-the-go load times. Poor page speed can cancel out any conversions you hoped to gain by including a video in the first place.

Yael Miriam Klass, Promo’s Content Lead, described how the company uses video on mobile landing pages without sacrificing the overall experience:

The best way to grab attention and keep visitors on your mobile landing for more than half a second is with a simple video. Simplicity is key because it needs to load quickly or you’ve lost them.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Create a lightweight experience. It’s not clear from just looking at the mobile version of this landing page, but Promo has done a lot to slim the content down from desktop. The full-sized page features an auto-play video in place of the hero shot and dynamic buttons overlaid on the sample videos. Instead, the mobile version uses static images that only play video once a visitor has interacted with them.

Get the most from the space above the fold. The headline conveys Promo’s unique selling proposition for this targetted segment—that is, easily creating videos for social media. Coupled with a clickable explainer video and prominent call to action, Promo makes the most of the available real estate to deliver a wicked first impression above the fold.

Build credibility with trusted brand logos. Promo includes Facebook and Instagram partner badges above the fold to immediately affirm that they’re trusted by major social media platforms—an important point when you’re trying to win with a social media use case. The page also features a spread of client brand logos and individual customer testimonials, further establishing credibility.

4. Country Chic Paint

Image courtesy of Country Chic Paint. (Click image to see the full page.)

Emotional marketing is a great tool regardless of medium, but it’s especially useful on mobile. People tend to participate most in social media on their phones, and they’re already being emotionally primed by videos of dogs cuddling with ducks, or whatever you people are into these days.

This landing page from Country Chic Paint—built by Webistry—includes an emotional element that makes it more likely to resonate with mobile visitors.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Use sticky bars to keep your CTA in view. Country Chic keeps their call to action prominently displayed throughout the landing page by using a sticky bar, making it easy for visitors to convert the minute they’ve made the purchase decision.

Reinforce your offer with a compelling cause. In addition to the sticky bar, this page features a number of inline CTAs that continue to prompt visitors as they read through Country Chic’s bulleted product differentiators: the low environmental impact, the company’s paint recycling program, and their charitable initiatives. Plus, we know this is supporting a great cause, and it’s a compelling reason to buy.

Show visitors what your product or service looks like in action. Country Chic does a terrific job of picturing their product in the context of use. Rather than just showing off the paints included with the kit, the company demonstrates how they actually look on a piece of reclaimed furniture and other craft projects.

5. ClaimCompass

Image courtesy of ClaimCompass. (Click image to see the full page.)

Making your offer clear is key to winning conversions on mobile. That can be tough when you’ve got a complicated product or service that needs some ‘splainin’—especially when it seems too good to be true.

ClaimCompass was also featured in our high-converting landing page examples post, where Alex Sumin, the company’s Co-Founder and CMO, described the difficulty of getting people to buy into the promise of free cash. That hasn’t slowed Alex down, though: in addition to turning one of every three visitors into conversions, this Unbounce-built landing page does a great job of distilling a complex regulatory measure into the tangible benefits for consumers.

When you look at the mobile experience from a contextual point of view, then not only are we limited by the real estate on the device, but also by the environment in which that content is consumed.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the micro-moments in which these mobile interactions occur and consider how they’ll impact our objectives, whether it’s content consumption, conversions, or other.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Break complex ideas into understandable benefits. Free money sounds like a simple enough offer, but ClaimCompass is dealing with a ton of jargonistic legal and regulatory considerations. The company does an excellent job of grabbing visitor attention with brief copy above the fold, then quickly banging out the key benefits of the service with bullet points just below.

Provide avenues to learn more (when appropriate). High-level explanations and benefit statements aren’t going to be enough to convince everyone. This page provides lots of secondary information that expands on the offer and outlines the ClaimCompass process, plus links to an in-depth blog post that gets into all of the nitty-gritty.

Turn positive press and reviews into trust. Yeah, ‘no-strings cash’ sounds like fiction, but ClaimCompass builds credibility and trust by associating itself with the major news outlets its been featured in, highlighting the average customer review score, and pulling real testimonials straight from Facebook.

Bonus: The hero image speaks to anyone who has ever been on a delayed flight. Her face is my face. Her pain is my pain.

6. Helix

Image courtesy of Helix. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sleep is pretty popular these days, but archaeological evidence suggests that humans have actually been sleeping for thousands of years. Wild stuff.

Mattress company Helix capitalizes on sleep-mania with this landing page that really showcases what’s possible on mobile. Despite including a ton of information, this page never feels overwhelming thanks to some awesome design decisions that make each section feel fresh with a new visual style. What elevates the page to the next level, though, is Helix’s use of relevant testimonials and its smart lead generation tool.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make your landing page beautiful. This is a great-looking landing page, and it shows that you can build a visually-engaging experience for small screens. Each section seems to have its own texture—whether it’s unique iconography, eye-catching graphs, or the stylish video—and encourages visitors to keep scrolling.

Provide social proof that speaks to your use case. Helix highlights customer testimonials from couples with different sleeping preferences, which is the audience this page is targeting. For example: “This mattress literally saved our marriage.” As a firm-mattress-lover currently stranded on 4 inches of memory foam, please send help.

Generate leads by providing value. The landing page call to action drives visitors to Helix’s Sleep Quiz, which—after collecting their email address—asks prospects a series of questions to help them find their perfect mattress type. There’s value there, and it makes for a rich lead generation tool.

7. Boostability

Image courtesy of Boostability. (Click image to see the full page.)

Lead generation still typically comes down to filling out a form, which can make it a little tricky on mobile. Visitors aren’t eager to tap out all of their personal details on a small screen. And speaking from experience, people struggle to thumb-spell even simple words correctly. Good luck adding jimbo@gnail.cob to your email list.

If you’re going to use a lead gen form on your mobile landing page, you’d better make sure it’s autofill-enabled. That’s what the team at Boostability did, and—lo and behold—they’re currently rocking a conversion rate well above industry average.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Be sure your form isn’t blocking conversions. Lead generation forms can be a barrier to conversion on phones, but that isn’t the case on this page. Boostability includes its short, autofill-enabled form above the fold, allowing visitors to easily register for their free website analysis.

Show visitors what conversion gets them. Below the form, Boostability gives more details on what the website analysis actually includes, complete with screenshots from inside the product. This helps visitors understand what they’ll be getting when they give Boostability their personal details.

Lots of content isn’t an excuse for a cluttered page. There’s a ton of information on this landing page, and Boostability manages to condense it all in a small space without making anything feel crowded. That’s because they’ve stuck to a single column that features loads of white space.

Not sure how your landing page performs on mobile? Run a test with the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which ranks your page against nine specific performance categories including mobile responsiveness.

8. Good Eggs

Image courtesy of Good Eggs. (Click image to see the full page.)

Pitching your product or service to mobile visitors is tricky. People probably aren’t sitting down to read everything you’ve got to say. They’re usually on the move, half-glimpsing at their phone as wait in line for coffee or meander blindly into traffic. Even after you’ve got them on your page, you need to work hard to keep their attention.

That’s not the only challenge Good Eggs faced with this landing page. Grocery delivery is an increasingly crowded space, and the company needs to differentiate itself from its competitors. That means having an opportunity to explain why this service is different.

Heidi Hirvonen, Marketing Manager at Good Eggs, explained how the company builds landing pages that keep mobile visitors engaged:

We know that Good Eggs customers are incredibly busy—trying to optimize every moment in their lives—and looking for creative solutions to save time without compromising on their standards or values.

Unsurprisingly, about 50% of our traffic is mobile, which makes it vital for us to design mobile-friendly experiences for every step in the customer journey, from our marketplace, to our emails, to our Unbounce landing pages.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Demand attention with compelling imagery. Good Eggs does a great job of breaking up their landing page copy with stylish photography, prompting visitors to pause just long enough to read about some of the company’s competitive differentiators. That’s especially important when you need to stand out in a crowded space.

Make your offer immediately clear. This landing page is built around an offer promoting one of the brands of ice cream that Good Eggs carries, and everything above the fold reinforces that: the delicious hero-shot of the ice cream; the copy outlining the discount for the ice cream; the prompt to claim the ice cream. Give me the ice cream.

9. Ace

Image courtesy of Ace. (Click image to see the full page.)

Sometimes, a landing page is about more than just getting visitors to understand the tangible features and benefits of your offer. You might want to convey a feeling—make them understand what it’s like to have taken the plunge and experienced transformative results. When it works, it’s powerful.

Ace is a test preparation company that helps aspiring students with their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, which can make or break their academic and professional goals. Harnessing that emotional element to drive conversions, Ace’s landing page—built by DMR—evokes a sense of aspiration that encourages prospects to dream big.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Connect with visitors on an emotional level. Rather than hitting visitors with a screenshot from the test platform or some grinning stock model, Ace uses the hero image and headline on this landing page to speak to the aspirational nature of their service. Education unlocks all kinds of new opportunities, and Ace concisely captures that above the fold.

Back up big promises with proof. Ace includes a ton of detailed testimonials from students that have found success on the platform, which is vital for a service that pledges life-changing results.

Maintain visitor attention with eye-catching visuals. The copy on this landing page is broken out into digestible bullets, each paired with colorful, eye-catching icons. That helps Ace keep visitors’ attention without being overwhelming.

10. GoBoat

Image courtesy of GoBoat. (Click image to see the full page.)

Like Ace in the previous example, GoBoat goes light on the description of its boat rental service and instead focuses on the experience of seeing Copenhagen from the water—how it feels. Sure, there’s less pirate imagery than we’d like for a company that says we can “be [our] own captain,” but GoBoat includes a ton of beautiful photographs that have already got me planning a summer trip to Denmark.

Best Mobile Landing Page Takeaways:

Make sure visitors immediately understand the benefit. GoBoat succeeds in conveying the most essential information above the fold while also making clear the primary benefit: piloting the boat yourself. And while the company chose to exclude the auto-play video from the desktop version of this page, the static hero shot does a great job of capturing the experience that GoBoat is offering.

Speak to the experience you’re offering. Most people aren’t renting with GoBoat to live out some childhood freebooter fantasy (shame)—they’re doing it to experience the beautiful sights of Copenhagen. The company plays to that with this landing page, giving lots of real estate to shots of the city’s most famous landmarks. Meanwhile, the page is concise in its copy and uses bullets to quickly address standard questions.

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/best-mobile-landing-page-examples/ via http://www.rssmix.com/