#somewhat formatted from its chat beginnings and edited

[purrpickle]

Random Pezberry Thought of the Day #332

A/N: So parts of this were featured in previous RPTOTDs, but this quickly (and lengthily!) veers off from them. Enjoy some more amazing @thedeadflag​ (and me) awesomeness! :D Just, uh, be warned - FEELS ahead.

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purrpickle sent a post Every Time

jupiterjames:

ao3: they were trapped in a blizzard, a single vacancy at the motel with only one bed. What will happen between them?

me: *clicking on the fic* omg what will happen between them?!

*sparkly eyes*

thedeadflag 

XD that's me 10000%

purrpickle

...I just had the thought of Santana, forced in close to Rachel, one of her first thoughts being that Rachel's nightly routine smelled fucking GOOD on Rachel's skin.

There was no way Rachel was allowed to smell so good. Was RUDE.

thedeadflag

It was rude and obscene and maybe she'd put on a totally appropriate display of aggression like physical intimidation via standing close to Rachel and being in her space. To non-verbally express how rude she felt it all was, and definitely not to, you know, be able to smell her better

purrpickle

...Which is shattered later, of course, when Santana's half asleep, Rachel sprawled all over her with Santana's nose in her neck and Santana mumbles a weak protest that Rachel's not allowed to smell so good.

thedeadflag

But of course. And of course Rachel eventually figures this out. And as much as Rachel absolutely would mentally plan out a speech to Santana about how she doesn't appreciate being harassed for the crime of smelling apparently unexpectedly nice (which of course earns its own subsection in her rebuke), she sees it as a prime opportunity for bonding

purrpickle

And then the lights go out. The power lines are down. And Rachel's terrified, almost shaking, because this is one of those old hotels where the bathroom is actually out in the hall, and she REALLY needs to pee but she doesn't want to go alone.

Santana's like, "Nuh-uh, bitch. I's not going out there with the serial killers, etc. etc."

thedeadflag

But Rachel's being all pushy and getting in her space, and Santana's having a hard time thinking with Rachel smelling illegally fine. And before she knows it, she's getting dragged out of the room and into the hallway, Rachel yelling about her father's connections with the ACLU startling her out of her stupor, but it's too late by then, they're already out of their room and down the hall

purrpickle

Santana's in her underwear, nipples practically falling out as it's SOOOO COLD, while at least Rachel has her camisole and, like, actual pajama shorts because somehow, freakishly, Rachel was prepared for anything - and, like, so what if Rachel had tried to tell her to be prepared too and she'd just tuned it out because she was watching Skin Wars while Rachel rattled annoyingly in her ear through her phone? - but at least they had light courtesy of Rachel's flashlight app, but then Santana realizes Rachel's taking it with her inside the ancient bathroom and going to leave her outside in the hallway, sexy and alone and premo cannibal or ghost bait.

*falling OFF

*not out. *giggle snorts*

thedeadflag

XD

purrpickle

Rachel would only be so lucky.

thedeadflag

Rachel would probably faint tbh

And then lay out an overly wordy half-apology about her reaction, because Santana is a human being, but Santana really ought to have listened to her when she told San to prepare for the trip

Because she, otherwise, would not have had a nip slip :P But yeah, Santana's not staying out in the hall with the serial killers and children of the corn

purrpickle

Oh, she gets a good look when she opens the door and illuminates Santana in front of her, Santana actually in the process of lunging forward and pushing Rachel back into the bathroom and slamming it shut and cursing as she scrabbles for the lock - because she heard a creepy ass noise, okay? But honestly, Rachel had expected a push up bra or something otherwise padded, not the thin thing she got, gloriously putting Santana's cleavage on display and being very, very clear that Santana's cold - "ONLY cold, Berry," Santana growls, "It's not like seeing you in your skivvies is doin' anything for me."

And yes. Thin enough to slip when Rachel hangs onto her in fright, burying her face in her chest. Ooh. Poor Santana. Hot breath right on her sensitive parts.

thedeadflag

And Santana's having an internal conflict over whether to hold her close or push her away until Rachel kind of nuzzles her cleavage, asking if Santana uses cocoa butter, and it's absolutely 100% not the time for any of that when there's probably a crazed lumberjack hunting them down

purrpickle

I want to say it ends up being the hotel owner's dog (let's be real, this is more like a bed and breakfast now, old European style so Santana's also grouchy because they both had to pitch in money to pay for the night and it was very much more expensive than she would have liked), having pushed his way out of the kitchen and roaming the halls. All Santana heard was panting and claws clicking on the floor coming up the stairs, and that's it, she was gonna barge her way into the bathroom - with Rachel fortunately opening the door before she slammed her body into it. "Now is NOT the time, Berry!" Santana hisses, swallowing as Rachel exhales again, making her legs shiver, "We gots to arm ourselves. And turn off that damn light - we'll be seen!"

Rachel NOT AT ALL ON PURPOSE drops her hands to Santana's ass as they wait for the "serial killer" to move on, ears pricked to make sure it doesn't try to break into their room because, for the grace of god, Rachel remembered to bring the key with them and locked it behind her. Santana's body's just warm, okay? And she's sweating a little with cold dread and Rachel's hands slip down her naked, tight back...

thedeadflag

And Santana's about to tell Rachel to get her hands off the goodies, because she swears she hears breathing in the hallway and she needs to focus on that and not how rudely nice it feels to have Rachel pressed up against her and palming her butt, but then there's a bump against the door from the other side (the dog's wagging tail lightly impacting against it, unbeknownst to them) that startles Rachel and suddenly those hands on her ass are squeezing hard

purrpickle

Squeezing hard and pulling Santana into her so their hips knock together and Santana swears Rachel's mouth slides down completely on top of her nipple as she buries her face harder into her chest - also accidental, of course - and Santana's mortified, absolutely MORTIFIED that a low, husky groan leaves her mouth completely involuntarily, and she's freezing and grimacing, it not helped at all by Rachel squeaking and shushing her because she doesn't want to die and they need to be quiet!

But she's also sorry for squeezing Santana's... derriere.

thedeadflag

The seconds that pass after that are agonizingly long, Rachel's hot breath washing over her breast, Berry's hands no longer clutching at her ass but still firmly cupping it, that tiny body pressed her against her and holding them close as they listen for any noise, the muted clacking of feet slowly fading into the distance and down the stairs. 

And as the fear and near-death anxiety slowly leaves Rachel's body with every breath, maybe she finds a particularly ample amount of curiosity filling that vacancy. And maybe Santana's body is gloriously warm, but by the frustrated and mortified expression etched across Santana's face, maybe there's even more heat hiding in those cheeks of hers. Cheeks she might openly consider cute if it wouldn't likely get her defenestrated

purrpickle

Rachel only realizes when Santana's strong hands wrap around her shoulders and pushes her away, that she's still nestled into her. Santana's glaring at her, then telling her it's HER time to use the bathroom, and Rachel's gonna wait outside like a good dwarf, okay. Rachel protests quietly, telling her the serial killer JUST left and what if he turns around? Santana scoffs that that's not HER problem, but unless Rachel has a fetish for watching people pee and a thousand dollars to pay Santana to let her watch, she's out of luck. Finally, her own face burning, Rachel just leaves and tells Santana she can knock on the door when she's done - but ONLY two knocks followed by a pause and then four more so she knows she's not the serial killer - and MAYBE Rachel will let her in. Inside, she's planning on using the time to think about what had just happened and unpack it and figure up a way to apologize for groping Santana like that.

Rachel hears Santana stumble down the hall before the heel of Santana's hand bangs on the door, followed by a sharp curse, then, as Santana's doing the knock Rachel told her to do, Rachel's already answering the door, pulling her inside and closing and locking the door behind her. "Come on, come on, into the bed, Santana Lopez! You're freezing!" Rachel rubs her hands up and down Santana's arms, pointedly keeping her eyes from where the light from her glowing phone shows off her still hard nipples. They dive into the bed, and somehow, grumbling and huffing the whole way, Santana finds herself wrapped around Rachel again, nose buried in her hair, sharing body heat with her ears still pricked for someone trying to break down their door. Rachel STILL smells so good. It's so unfair.

thedeadflag

There are two things that Rachel notices immediately. The first is that for how chilly Santana's extremities were when she pulled San into the bedroom, they quickly turned into a warm cocoon of limbs practically the moment they tumbled into bed. Sure, Santana's torso ran as hot as ever, but Rachel knew her rubbing alone couldn't spur on that sort of warmth that quickly. The second part was that after settling in against each other, Santana huffing and puffing the whole way and still more tense than normal, Rachel couldn't help but feel Santana's heart-rate increase. And sure, there was a statistical probability that there was a serial killer roaming around, but the noise had faded, and as seconds of silence turned into minutes, Santana only seemed more tense, more worked up. Which was bizarre, because as cognizant of the threat outside her room as she was, she couldn't help but feel safe, a swell of relaxation pushing her fear toward the edges of her mind as she breathed Santana in, the strangled moan from earlier echoing in her mind. She hardly even noticed her hands drifting back down to Santana's hind-quarters again before a low half-aborted moan escapes Santana.

purrpickle

((I'm not sure how to work it in here, but I almost want Rachel to put her hand on Santana's forehead and ask her if she's coming down with a fever. XD))

thedeadflag

Haha, okay, but she would. because Santana moaning and feeling overly warm is (in Rachel's mind at least) much more explainable as a fever than, you know, attraction. And Rachel's squirming a bit, trying to gauge Santana's temperature and test her for a fever, and she's making so much noise, and Santana just wants to (A) avoid being murdered, and (B) get some quality Zzzzs, but Rachel's making that impossible, and she's just everywhere, and smelling SO GOOD, and Rachel insists she's sick (Santana insists she's not and she's just sick of Rachel poking and prodding her), and that Santana's coming down with something (which only gets Santana thinking new, dangerously alluring thoughts about going down on Rachel to see if she tastes as good as she smells, which only gets her more flustered because WHY IS THIS HAPPENING)

And maybe Santana's so frustrated that she lets slip, in trying to control the situation, that Rachel needs to calm her skeeterbites and put her hands 'back where they belong', while re-securing Rachel's hold around her (back a half inch or so above her butt) Which of course sends Rachel's mind spinning at a certain B-word in there that suddenly casts a different light on recent happenings

purrpickle

(Is the b word belong?)

(Also yes. Yes to everything.)

thedeadflag

Haha, yes. Because Rachel's insecure, she would wonder if she belonged as a part of Santana's inner circle, someone she counted as a close friend. Someone Santana would willingly involve in her world. And she knows Santana's abrasive and defensive and doesn't always mean what she says, so she's gotten better at not taking it all to heart, but now.... ...Now she's been physically close with Santana for a short time and Santana's already admitted she smells nice, and that she wants Rachel to hold her, and there were moans on two separate occasions (and then light consideration of past interactions over the years of Santana complimenting her, the consistent themes of their duets together, or those intense dark eyes lingering on her in what she thought was anger but might have been something else instead), and maybe a new conclusion is forming as to a far fetched but now not entirely impossible way that Santana considers her. And suddenly the bonding she wanted to accomplish this weekend is cast in a new light. Because Santana's so warm and her heart is racing

purrpickle

Rachel's breathless. She has near perfect breath control, but she's breathless. She's scared, too, but feeling so warm and safe, and she buries her face into Santana's neck, pulling her closer into her. 

"Santana?" she asks softly, feeling like her voice is catching in her throat even if it doesn't sound like that. And Santana grumbles, her heart triple beating as Rachel's soft nose and warm breath brush along her neck. She inhales, almost gritting her teeth as Rachel's scent grows stronger in her nose. "What?" 

"I... I really would like to kiss you, if you were interested."

thedeadflag

And all sorts of curse words are filling her head for being so damned transparent, but Rachel’s so soft, and warm, and smells so damn good, and if this is to be her last night on earth before being murdered by some michael myers slash norman bates wannabe, then maybe kissing the lips she'd spent years admiring wouldn't be the worst way to go out. Maybe kissing Rachel wouldn't be the end of the world, even if it'd probably lead to drama and endless rambling on Rachel's part, meaning a total lack of sleep ahead of her. But with the room as chilled as it was, Santana was in no rush to leave the bed, or the arms of the girl pressed up against her. Santana reluctantly removed an arm around Rachel and gently prods berry's chin up, angling them on path for a collision course. Even in the pitch darkness, Rachel's eyes are just gleaming, making Santana halt a breath away as one last stray defensive, inadvertently illuminating thought fell from her lips. "Fair warning: If you pull cat calendar craziness on me I'll ends you"

purrpickle

Heat and shock ripple through Rachel's chest, and her mouth is pursing open as the thought of SHE'S REALLY SUGGESTING A *RELATIONSHIP*? runs through her, and she's inhaling deeply, eyes wide open and seeing Santana's shining in the light and the squeak of, "Oh-okay," is on the tip of her tongue - and that's how Santana finds her lips, plush and warm and trembling, pursed and pillowing her upper lip, and Santana groans, increasing the pressure, her fingers under Rachel's chin moving forward and down to map out her neck, Rachel's throat muscles swallowing under them.

((I'm just laughing because one part of Santana's mind is sputtering because, "Aren't we hiding from a serial killer? How did it end up like this???"))

thedeadflag

XD yep. Like, she's not one to turn down a hot macking session, especially when Rachel's only getting more and more intense in her kissing as time ticks by, and damn. But still, there was a serial killer, like, right outside their door! She wasn't just hearing things! So it makes her feel like one of those girls she hates in horror movies who are too busy making out or having sex to notice the serial killer creeping up, but damn it, how can she stop?

purrpickle

Not to mention the adrenaline of almost certain death is making both girls more brazen, and it's not long until they're practically rolling all over the bed, gasping and moaning into each other's mouth as each girl takes a turn being on top. They're definitely not cold anymore.

However, when Santana elicits a loud, sharp moan by sucking on Rachel's neck, they both freeze, shocked back into reality.

thedeadflag

You know I'm not sure what idea I like more... Hearing a muted bark from the other side of the hall, letting them know they'd been freaking out over a damned dog this whole time, Santana wanting to go out and scare the thing away but Rachel's arms are snug around her waist, fearful that Santana would kill the poor pup... 

...Or the both of them freezing for a full minute and a half before letting out relieved sighs. Santana telling Rachel to be quiet and putting a hand over Rachel's mouth, only for Rachel to kiss her hand, eyes full of mischief. And Santana's super pumped that Rachel's into it, but now that reality's setting in, she's got all these previously unearthed feels rising to the surface and she's already blabbed on enough tonight, but the idea of this being a one-off and messing things up is already getting kinda scary for her, and she's not sure how to handle that, not when Rachel's usually the one rambling a mile a minute but seems content to just keep kissing, which Santana's not sure how to interpret, and everything just starts feeling so tight in her chest

purrpickle

The second second second second one. Insert even more meaning and emotions into this thing!

thedeadflag

And Rachel, she's too spooked about Santana's disparaging remarks about her wordiness in the past to even approach talking about this, at least not until maybe the morning, but she really, desperately wants to. She just doesn't want to scare Santana away, because ever since their lips brushed against each other's, all these moments in the past have started to click, so many confusing moments in their history and confusing feelings coming under new clarity, and it's all so heavy in her and building and building and all she can do is hold on. As cared as she is of the potential serial killer roaming the property, she's terrified to the bone of losing whatever this is before she had a chance to foster it and get neck deep in it. It's the most frustrated she'd felt because she'd so burdened with all this clarity and with the knowledge that if she put it to words, it'd likely slip right between her fingers. She'd always been a dreamer and she's never let one die on her before, so she wasn't about to start now.

But at the same time, in Santana's head, her composure's chipping away with every second Rachel's not using her big over dramatic words to clarify what she meant to her. Because Rachel was moon-eyed for Finnept and Jessie St. Jackoff right away, incapable of shutting up about their 'burgeoning romantic potential'. Was she not good enough? Did she not measure up? Was she just a warm body and a nice bit of adrenaline-induced entertainment for Berry? And damn it if all of that doesn't have her eyes stinging, forcing her forward to pull Rachel into a kiss to keep Rachel from noticing, to try and derail the path her emotions were on. Maybe if they kissed hard enough, maybe if they touched each other in the right places enough, maybe she could sidestep the persistent presence in her head telling her that, yet again, she wasn't good enough.

purrpickle

(I both love and rue you. This is perfect. Do you think they're in high school here? That's what I was picturing.)

(I ask as I formulate what to add next.)

thedeadflag

I wasn't committed to any particular time frame tbh, but high school was a definite possibility.

purrpickle

I like the idea of high school Pezberry because the sheer drama of it, the intensity of being unsure but WANTING so much.

Rachel's confused, inside. Santana's kisses are almost more... Desperate now. Hot. The girl having taken her hand away and replaced it with her mouth again, body pressing into Rachel's from above, from her chest to her hips, and she's... Like Santana's way of expressing panic at near certain death is getting translated by her hands running up and down Rachel's sides, tangling in her hair, the girl ONE second away from starting to rock into her. And yes, it made Rachel's heart pound, and her body squeeze, as her own hands swept up and down Santana's burning, smooth back, palms catching against her bra, but there was just something... OFF that filtered through the haze inside her own mind.

"W-wait," she gasped - mindful, barely a whisper, unable to stop a whimper when Santana's lips brushed along hers as she dropped her head back to put space between them; undeterred, Santana just moved her attention down Rachel's chin, administering to her neck again, almost as if she'd forgotten it had made Rachel moan before. "Sa-Santana. WAIT." Sure, she was screaming inside her own head that she was going to ruin EVERYTHING now, that can't she just, this ONCE, stop the babbling inside her head - - but this hurts.

thedeadflag

aAaauughhh I am slain! Seriously, this is so good and it hurts so good

purrpickle

I knooooow.

It's the rewarding, GOOD type of painful angst.

thedeadflag

Santana doesn't hear Rachel's first 'Wait'; not really. She's too worked up, too frantic, too in need not to hear it for what she's used it as before...rejection. A soft form of it, perhaps, maybe even a polite one allowing for prospects of improvement. Which is why she moved to Rachel's neck, scraping her lips along its column in frenzied fiery kisses, hands scrabbling against Rachel's expanse, knowing that against all reason and logic, this felt right. This felt right and she didn't want to lose it so quickly. But Rachel's second protest hits her like a railway spike to the heart, pinning her down in breathless agony, waiting for the inevitable late Christmas gift of coal she'd be getting in the form of a roaring ten-tonne full-steam train of rejection. And maybe one of those god damned squeaky whimpers escapes her at the prospect of being trapped in that room to fester in it, what with the storm, and the serial killer outside. And maybe a tear or two fall, and maybe Santana wonders what she's going to do about that because she can't live with Rachel's pity, but she's half a breath from falling apart, and even if this is all just a shameful one-time romp, she wants it too much not to latch onto it. To latch onto Rachel, burying her face in the diva's neck to hide from the scrutiny Berry was sure to unleash on her, even if there'd be no hiding from being told again how she wasn't enough, that this wasn't right. And maybe she just really needed Rachel to either shut up and just hold her tonight without pitying commentary, or to just keep kissing her without pitying commentary because she really fucking didn't need to hear Rachel babble on about how there'd be someone great out there for her in the world, not when she lived in Lima fucking Ohio, not when she always felt so damned lonely, especially since Britt shacked up with the transformer. She'd heard enough about how it 'gets better', she wanted to be okay right now. Why was that so wrong?

purrpickle

When Rachel realized the wetness on her neck isn't just from Santana's lips and tongue, she froze, knowing something truly WAS wrong. "Santana?" she whispered again, hands curling on the cheerleader's shoulders, as if she was about to attempt to push her up, but paused, listening to the both of their heavy, stilted breathing loud in the suddenly cold air of the room. Santana was warm, burning hot on top of her, shoulders trembling, and Rachel wanted to sit up, to curl the shaking girl into her arms, stroke her cheeks and ask her what was wrong... But she knew what was wrong, didn't she? Reality had hit Santana.

Who she was with. Why they were huddled together. Fear came roaring back into Rachel's chest, now emotional and not just for her own mortality. This was wrong. This was all wrong. And in sheer mortification, Rachel could feel tears pricking her own eyes. She was only a teenager, and this was too much. First getting stranded, then the serial killer, then the rather fast-tracked discovery of her feelings. She didn't want to die, to lose herself, or ANYTHING to change that would ruin EVERYTHING.

thedeadflag

*a gif of Ron Swanson saying "Boom, sadness"*

Because that just tore out my heart

purrpickle

I know.

I just keep on thinking, "Those poor little miscommunicating assuming babies!"

thedeadflag

They need to be loved and happy :(

purrpickle

And they can be! It's a good thing they're stranded there, honestly. Makes them actually talk to each other (eventually). As well as circling back to sweet lady kisses. But... More reverential, after confessing kisses.

As well as figuring out it was a puppy all along.

thedeadflag

(Just one way I see this going down, but there's a lot of ways to pull the trigger on this) Santana feels Rachel freeze underneath her, and no matter everything she's known in the past, that chill quickly rises up into her, knowing that even her best efforts weren't enough to win Rachel over, to convince her she was worth it. And combined with that massive hit to her pride that she was trying to prove to anyone that she was worth it... "Whatever, Berry, I get it, alright? But if you speak a damn word about this, I'll show you how we do it in Lima heights adjacent" Santana knows her voice is squeaky and strangled with tears but it doesn't stop her from grabbing the covers as she rolls off Rachel, cocooning herself in them the best she can, knowing the levee of her composure is on the verge of breaking from the emotions storming inside her, and she's not sure she'd be able to reel herself back from this one so easily.

And Rachel's just laying there perplexed, because she'd been waiting for the words in that second sentence so intensely that she almost missed them, having been caught off guard by the first words out of Santana's mouth. She expected being told to shut up. To never speak a word about Santana's spiral into the depravity of kissing and touching HER of all people in desperation. After all, she was Rachel Berry, social outcast, heavily-maligned diva extraordinaire, blabbermouth 'treasure trail', but... She'd spent most of her life growing up alongside Santana. She didn't survive this long without knowing when Santana was defensive, or when Santana was hurting. Both scenarios were liable to break out into pandemonium and collateral damage, so while her brain was tossing up all the red flags it could muster, the not-quite-concealed despair in Santana's opening words had her taking a rare moment to think before she reacted, before she inadvertently made this worse and ruined everything in a way she hadn't foreseen. Because, despite all logic and history between them, it halfway sounded like Santana was trying to spare herself the shame of being rejected, rather than sparing herself the shame of admitting she'd kissed and touched Rachel Barbra Berry with passion and fervor. And that thought, as impossible as she would have thought it an hour ago, left her colder than the crisp chill of the draft permeating the window and walls. She'd striven all her life for power and control, but hearing Santana's squeaky, half-muted cries from the bundle of covers beside her, Rachel was positive she'd never wanted this. If this was what it meant to be desired and wanted badly enough to reduce someone to tears, it'd make for a good half-censored entry into her memoirs, and a solid experience to draw upon for her future acting career, but their hearts had beat alongside each other just a few seconds ago. She could feel the aching vacancy grow with every passing second, but she didn't know how to bridge that gap, if she was even right about what it was between them. She couldn't just do nothing, though. Not with her heart yearning to be close to Santana, to feel Santana, to develop the spark they'd had together tonight into something bigger and brighter. She had to take a leap... It just needed to be a calculated one, one that Santana would understand, and one that would keep her from being murdered.

But at the same time, she was frozen in place by consequence, nothing about their situation allowing her even the slightest relief in order to catch her breath.They'd just narrowly escaped death and, more importantly, the loss of her dreams, and she deserved time to process that, and to heal from it, and yell and scream about it and all the fear bubbling up in her lungs and tearing at the sinews between her ribs. She had every right to be terrified and exhausted and bewildered, and to take a breather, but the cries from the girl next to her stole that from her. She deserved to have time to process ad think things through and make a game plan for how to approach this, complete with a series of power points and diary entries and emotionally cathartic musical performances, but they were stranded, alone together in a serial-killer's hideout that masqueraded as a bed and breakfast, and Santana was so utterly unpredictable right now that there was no right answer and she needed one just as much as she needed Santana back in her arms again.

purrpickle

((Honestly? I think the phones are down as well, the snow's piled up to the rafters, almost, and they're forced to spend another night at the bed and breakfast. So in between staring at everyone suspiciously and staring yearningly at Rachel [until the girl looks at her] - because let's be real. The girls are both exhausted. Maybe Rachel gets a quiet, reluctant, "We'll talk tomorrow," from Santana before her overworking mind makes her fall asleep still thinking about pulling Santana back into her arms. But they DO wake up tangled together - Santana's face down on the bed and groaning into it when Rachel comes back from the bathroom, the door to the room quietly clicking shut behind her.))

((Frankly put, they both make mistakes that first night.))

thedeadflag

Haha, yep, they're both too romantically clumsy not to fumble their way

purrpickle

It won't be easy! But it'll be worth it.

Definitely worth it.

I can ALSO see an almost self righteous Rachel being steamed and snapping at Santana to sit up, face her, and they are going to TALK.

To which Santana apathetically says something about "serial killer proofing their room."

'Cuz maybe Santana had been ignoring Rachel, trying to shelter her own heart and lick her wounds.

thedeadflag

Absolutely, I could def see Santana using some distance along with misdirection/deflection to keep herself safe and not aggravate her heartache any more than it already was

purrpickle

Santana also "convinced" the proprietor of the bed and breakfast (also! Let's say there's terrible to no cell service there, either, to cover those bases) to "give" her an extra large shirt that has, like, the logo of the bed and breakfast on it, so she can sleep in it, make her feel a little less "exposed" when in front of Rachel. Rachel both appreciates and hates it, because a) it covers up her distracting cleavage and abs and skimpy, skimpy underwear, but also b) it makes her legs look even more attractive somehow, and she can barely look at Santana without drooling because it's just so... It's almost like Santana's more attractive half clothed than half clothed in underwear.

thedeadflag

And as time passes, Rachel just grows more and more frustrated. Loves the way that the tops of Santana's thighs peek out with every swish of the shirt, loves the fact that despite the boxy shape of the top she can see hints of those familiar curves behind it, knows those curves intimately and it only reminds her of what Santana felt like by concealing them. However, she hates the fact that it essentially symbolizes Santana closing herself off, especially with how confused Rachel's been since the previous night. It only reminds her of the opportunity slipping through her fingers. She wants... No, she NEEDS answers. And despite knowing it could blow up in her face, that it could unleash a lot of heartbreak against her, she eventually loses her ability to put up with it later the next night, entering the bathroom while Santana's brushing her teeth, and locking the door behind her.

(At this point, I'm not sure what Rachel would do. One part of me thinks she'd be courageous and go for broke in dramatic fashion, singing something like Norah Jones' "Turn Me On" as a gambit, knowing that if Santana had a really bad reaction, there was no way Santana would ever speak of it when they found a way back home, not with everything that happened. And if Santana felt like murdering her, it would have happened last night, not when Santana was sullen and distant)

(And the other hand, I also think that Rachel would be so worked up and so buzzing with plans and ideas that she'd probably mix up her words and accidentally demand that Santana disrobe ('Stop hiding behind that silly shirt, Santana! You know I deserve to get a feel for what you're keeping from me and I'd like to think my relentlessness and dedication is too well known to you by now for you to deny me") when in her mind she'd cobbled together a sentence demanding Santana stop hiding from her in a more general sense, but that danged t-shirt just kept teasing her and before she knew it, she'd insinuated that she was going to physically ravage Santana whether the girl consented or not. And she'd be 100% aghast at herself for that, but then the most peculiar thing happens... Santana starts fiddling with the hem of her top, taking hold of it as if she's thinking of pulling it away.)

(Or maybe something else, I'm not sure, there's so much that could happen)

purrpickle

God, Rachel SO WOULD garble something like that out, thinking she's saying something more, well, non-sexual and not so directly telling Santana to strip.

Santana, for her part, is plussed, almost staring at Rachel with her jaw dropped, but damn if it doesn't also make her heart pound.

The fire, the passion in Rachel's eyes, and her voice, it momentarily shocked her still, surprising her out of her normal usual instant anger.

thedeadflag

Absolutely, because Santana does not really like being told what to do (at least outside of certain specific contexts), but her frustration over Rachel ordering her to strip is not nearly as intense as the bevy of thoughts storming in her mind over what Rachel's relentlessness and dedication would look and feel like, and she wants that passion burning in Rachel's eyes to be real. She takes a step forward as she grabs the bottom of the shirt and pulls it over her head and away, a flash of anxiety coursing through her in the half second where the t-shirt obscured her view, dreading that Rachel's expression would change like a mirage of an oasis to someone dying of thirst, but the diva's molten gaze only grew darker, pupils almost completely blown as Santana stepped up to her. Her heart was like a school band's snare drum, each beat quick and sharp, unsure if this yearning of Rachel's was just for her body or more. As scared as she was of 'more', standing a breath away from Rachel, she came to the stark realization that she needed it. This couldn't just be physical. She couldn't handle another night like last night.

"Well, Rachel? Here I am."

purrpickle

Rachel's shock is what saves her, saves them. It stills her tongue, doesn't let out a scandalized sound or gasp of outrage. Rachel won't realize it now, her eyes glued to Santana's body, all the air sucked out of her lungs as if Santana had stolen all of it, but she will, later, wrapped up in Santana's arms, so warm and excited and HAPPY, and thank Lord and Barbra she didn't stop them when they'd barely started. It's already chilly in the bathroom, the power still out, and no fireplace inside like some of the fancier b&bs Rachel had seen on HGTV before, and Santana's body... Reacts to the removal of her shield. Goosebumps are evident on her arms, when Rachel drags her gaze away, but that's not where her eyes are snared. Currently the only light in the bathroom is supplied by a flickering candle, Rachel's phone long dead, and what it does... How it frames Santana's lean frame, and definitely NOT lean chest or strong line of her hipbones leading down to her skimpy, skimpy panties... The girl's brazen, but almost as if she could reach into Santana's mind and deconstruct and take her apart, she can see she's vulnerable, too, and even if that wasn't what Rachel expected, telling Santana not to hide behind her shirt, she can't help letting out, her hands coming up to cover her mouth, in a near-gasp, lungs working overtime to draw in enough air even just to keep her STANDING, is, "You're beautiful."

Also, she's painted in shadows and moving light, and it makes Rachel's heart pound even more than the unexpected nakedness.

thedeadflag

*fluff-driven eternal screaming*

purrpickle

You know, I also think it's a turning point for Rachel. She's so used to thinking of Santana as "hot" (the hottest girl in McKinley, after all), but right at that moment... And it means SO MUCH to Santana, too, that that's where Rachel's mouth went.

thedeadflag

Absolutely. I often headcanon Santana always hearing she's hot/scorching/etc., and that Brittany's called her pretty a small handful of times, but that's about it. So Rachel saying she's beautiful just... Means everything to Santana in that moment, because everyone who only wanted her for her body always said she was hot... This connection with Rachel was new, and there Rachel was throwing a new word her way she'd never been called, at least not by anyone who wanted her. Which is a huge relief, with how it offers the notion that Rachel doesn't just want her for sex, but there's something more

And yeah, Santana's always had this more or less very put together facade/presentation in public, and it sort of plays on and lends to her reputation, but here Santana is, nearly naked physically as well as emotionally, and it's absolutely a case of Rachel realizing she's seeing Santana in a new light. All the same familiar features, but just like a song that's been transposed to a different key, there's no mistaking the difference. And so many of the old familiar words she often applied to Santana fell away, no longer viable as she sought out a more fitting vocabulary, and it's then that the simplest, easiest word that forms in her mouth comes out. Beautiful

purrpickle

The expression on Santana's face after those words left her lips is heartbreaking.

(I'm kind of conflicted what happens next. I can't see Santana being, you know, unsure about showing her body, being a cheerleader and all, but I think it's different because this is an emotional vulnerability. Not to mention it really IS cold in the bathroom, and if she's not sharing Rachel's body heat...)

thedeadflag

100%. I don't think she'd be shy about her body, but I do think she might be a little... Cautious about the way she opens herself to Rachel's touch. She'd absolutely be emotionally vulnerable, and Santana's panic threshold in those moments can be like a hair trigger at times, and so i could see her not wanting things to progress, on a physical level, in a way that's too familiar. I could see that if Rachel's touching her in ways that make her a little scared that she was wrong, that this really was just physical... I could see her moving Rachel's hands, her head, her lips, I could see Santana slowing things down to test Rachel's patience, I could see her definitely feeling on edge, and a bit uncomfortable with the newness, not to mention the chill in the air.

Not that she'd necessarily need to exercise all of that caution. Rachel, seeing Santana all new now, I think she'd take a new approach. She's always been a perfectionist, incredibly thorough and meticulous and detail oriented, and I think she'd want to learn Santana like her favourite song, inside and out, and that would mean a lot of exploration. A lot of reverence and awe. Rachel loves to learn, and as much as she'd be all for Santana guiding and teaching her, she'd absolutely take initiative and have her own priorities. And she, too, would not favor the chill, and would probably do well to keep their bodies close until either of them decided to drag each other back to the bedroom to the comfort of their warm bed

purrpickle

Agreed with all of that (though I was thinking it would be more likely someone would knock on the door, wanting to use the bathroom before too long). Just, how would they even START Rachel touching her?

I think it would be Santana who took the initiative to pull Rachel into a kiss in the bathroom, so gratified when Rachel moans and trembles against her, her skin so soft and cool against Santana's heated, bare skin, only thin fabric keeping Santana's goodies from meeting Rachel's, only her camisole between them.

Rachel's hands settle, jumpily, on Santana's sides, Rachel exhaling into Santana's mouth as Santana keeps her cheeks cupped in her hands, having taken a step forward and drawn her in. Rachel's heart is pounding, and she's acutely aware of Santana's burning skin both under her hands and against her front. She both wants to slide her palms up and down and in and back... But as much as her heart is telling her to dive in, to wrap herself up in Santana and never let go, Rachel knows, somehow, that pushing too much, too soon, will break the spell, make Santana skittish. It's her psychic ability kicking in, perhaps, but she also remembers the night before when Santana had frozen when things had gotten... Handsy. And Rachel doesn't think she could stand a repeat of last night. So as Santana expertly, slowly, explores her mouth with her own, Rachel doesn't try to speed them up, or let Santana's near nakedness get to her. It's chilly in the bathroom, but Santana's minty toothpaste is addicting, and maybe, if she presses in close enough to Santana, it'll keep her warm, too.

thedeadflag

Santana is so deeply immersed in Rachel's kisses that she nearly jumps out of her skin when a loud knock sounds at the door. One of the other guests at the B&B asking to use the bathroom, and while it could be a serial killer, she doubted the portly dude and his wife were capable of much violence given the dude calling out from the other side of the door was hobbling around the whole time she'd seen him. Rachel, courteous as always, announced loudly that they'll be finished in a second, making the decision for both of them, stepping away from her. Which sends a fresh panic spiking through her heart until Rachel's returning with her top and slipping it back over her head, those smouldering eyes not breaking focus from her own. So maybe she's not as spooked when Rachel opens the door and steps out. And maybe when the man rushes in and Santana squeezes out past him, and Rachel takes hold of her hand and gives her this entirely Rachel Berry sort of look, the same one Berry gave her before marching off to perform "Don't Rain On My Parade" in their first Sectionals, maybe her heart skips a beat and she clutches that soft, lithe hand of Rachel's.

And Rachel leads her back to their room, to their bed, tugging her to follow Rachel under the covers. The sheer relief Rachel exhales as she wraps Santana up, foreheads pressed together, Berry pulling her into a languid kiss, has her melting. Rachel didn't need her naked. Rachel didn't need her curves or her orgasms. Rachel just wanted her, no real pressure to escalate, nothing telling her Berry wanted to use her. And maybe Rachel still hadn't talked endlessly at her, but she'd looked at her like she was something special, and she was being so patient and careful, and maybe, just maybe, this could be something real.

And Rachel can feel the tension and fear slipping away inside Santana, heart bursting with pride at the happy little sounds escaping Santana with each of her kisses or ministrations,

In a moment of pure emotion and impulse, Rachel whispers "We're going to hold hands in the halls," between kisses, startling herself at letting those words slip after working so hard to contain them only for a bit of hand-holding between the bathroom and their bedroom to undo all her hard work.

And, after a moment, Santana startles as well as the words register, but when all she sees is confusion and yearning in Santana's eyes, Rachel continues. "When we get home. I'll refrain from 'cat calendar madness', but we'll hold hands. We'll hold hands in the halls and walk each other to class. You'll sing occasional duets with me in glee. And I'll take you to Breadstix on Thursdays because that's the night they expand their vegan menu, and I've always wanted to have a regular date night. I think it'd be important for our burgeoning romance." She worries she's not been concise enough, and then that she'd been too concise and ended up sounding authoritarian, not wanting to order Santana around so much as lay out her expectations. She needs to be clear. Before she gets too deep and has her heart broken again, before they get too intimate, she needs to be clear. The words had been building up over their time stranded together, and she couldn't hold them in any longer. She'd already put up such a gargantuan fight on that front, knowing Santana hated her rambling.

purrpickle

Santana's eyes almost melt, looking wet in the muted flickering of the candlelight from the bedside table that filtered through the bed sheet above them. "And I'll," Santana husks, her hand coming up to curl in Rachel's hair, fingers almost trembling as her palm brushed along her cheek, "I'll give you my Cheerio's jacket. If we make it out of here..." She searches Rachel's eyes, "I... I'd... Maybe you won't wear it at school, but," Santana inhales, her eyes darting away, as if she was starting to realize how silly or stupid she sounded, sounding a little uncomfortable even as a soft yearning threaded through her words, "I'd like you to have it. If you wanted it." She shrugs, hand sliding down Rachel's cheek to rest, a little heavily, on her shoulder. "I dunno."

It was like Santana had lost nerve somehow, for some reason, obviously in the midst of remembering something that made her uncomfortable, and Rachel frowns, hating how the sight made her heart ache. She wanted to reassure her, but there was still one thing that she wanted to make sure, for her heart. "Would you... Not want me to wear it at school?" she whispers reluctantly, convinced Santana could feel the faltering of her heart in her chest, "Because I'd... I'd really like to."

(Santana's faltering because of many reasons - she never was able to give Brittany her Cheerio's jacket as she had her own, and besides, it would be a reminder to Rachel that Santana had been part of - and still was - the institution that had made Rachel's life terrible, as well as... That was so big. So huge. To give her the jacket. And what if Rachel turned her down? What if Rachel wasn't as eager for this as it seemed? And... Even though she'd offered it, was SANTANA really ready to give it to her, either? And what would people say at school? It had seemed a good idea at the time, when she'd first brought it up, but now, it seemed like more and more doubts started to grow with each new word she'd uttered.)

thedeadflag

Rachel can see her words haven't registered, that Santana's too lost in her own head, eyes growing glassy. Whatever was going on in there, she needed to stop it before Santana worked herself up enough for them to lose this new connection before it ever really began. She brings a hand up to Santana's face, risking the less secure hold on the girl for a more intimate cradling of her cheek. "Santana..." She speaks clearly, each syllable deliberate and with purpose, drawing Santana's focus, even if the girl seems a little shaken now. Truth was, she was a fan of PDAs, and wearing Santana's jacket would count as a huge one. It was far and above what she'd spoke of, which were largely things that random passersby could chalk up as friendly occurrences, much as they had between Santana and Brittany, or at least most had. As much as she appreciated the offer, as much as she yearned to wear it despite the troupe's history with her (after all, it would be a clear sign of her conquering her past with them and claiming acceptance by their leader, evidence that she hadn't succumbed to their past efforts against her, and instead rose above and thrived in spite of them), it was a major step. As much as she wanted to sing an intimate a-capella version of Sara Bareilles' 'Brave" to the trembling girl in her arms, there was time for that at a later date. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day they get back to Lima. "Santana...I want to hold hands in the halls, and sing duets in glee, and have date nights at Breadstix..."

She brushed her thumb across the swell of Santana's cheekbones, drinking in the increasingly intense cautious focus Santana was sending back at her. "...And when you're ready, I want to wear your Cheerios jacket if that's something you want to give me. I'd like the whole world to know I'm your girlfriend, but not before you're ready for that. As you well know, I have two gay fathers who have experience in coming out, and I myself have been preparing slideshows and memoir chapters on my experiences and struggles as a semi-closeted bisexual woman in high school, and we've all seen what happened with Kurt and Karofsky so I understand the trepidation and how jumping in deep very quickly could be overwhelming and fraught with concerns, and certainly with your history of singing your romantic feelings in the past I could see Glee being a better environment to have a test run of being open before expanding it to the whole school, so I can be patient for you. I just...I would need a lot of *this*. I'm rather high maintenance, and if I can't get all the attention I need in school, then I'd need more outside of it, which was already my plan of action to begin with with step two being..."

purrpickle

Santana could hear what Rachel was saying, but the words weren't really registering. Instead, she was drinking in Rachel's expression and the feel of her hand on her face, her earnestness and soft, determined look. She had shifted some, resting on Santana's side as she looked down at her, and Santana inhaled deeply, turning her face just enough to press her cheek into her palm, Rachel trailing off. When Santana opened her eyes again, Rachel was gazing at her with semi-furrowed brows, studying her, teeth biting into her plump lip. "Santana?" she whispered.

Santana licked her lips, her hand, almost forgotten on Rachel's shoulder, stroking down, curling softly around Rachel's thin bicep. She took a chance, cobbling together the general idea of what Rachel had been talking about - what had filtered into her mind, at least. "I'm not good with the emotions, Berry, and I'll probably mess this up. Like I did now. Fuck... Look... In... In a perfect world, I'd be able to give you my... Jacket... Like I said, but you're right. Not... Not yet." She took a deep breath, then reached up with her other hand, urging Rachel down, into her chest, arms wrapping around the girl's slim shoulders, hoping Rachel could hear how fast her heart was beating with her ear on her breast, speaking more for her than her clumsy words could. After a second, Rachel having frozen before slowly, gently, making herself comfortable, curling into Santana's side, Santana reached for her hand, wrapping her fingers around the other girl's, her heart jolting as Rachel laced their fingers together. That gave her the courage, along with the silence of the bed and breakfast, almost as if they were the only people around without the hum of electricity giving her nothing but her own thoughts and Rachel's breathing to listen to, "But I DO want this. And wants those 'Stix nights, and..." When she trailed off again, fingers tracing through Rachel's hair, she was almost startled when Rachel's soft voice wafted up to her, her words vibrating against Santana's midriff: "To get to know us?"

Rachel pushed up, staring down into her eyes again. "I... I don't know if you heard me, Santana, but I'm high maintenance."

Santana abruptly snorted, squeezing Rachel's hand as a laugh left her shortly after. She dropped her head back against the pillow, continuing to laugh even when Rachel huffed, tapping her shoulder strongly. "Tell me something I DON'T know, Rache. I know." She smirked up at Rachel, the last tightness in her chest easing as she lifted her chin, pulling Rachel's pouting lips into another kiss, "And you 'totes should know I am too."

(I think it's amusing they're talking about the logistics of being in a relationship before saying they want to be in a relationship, or like each other.)

thedeadflag

At the same time, I think it's perfectly them to get ahead of themselves when they're in the moment

It's one of many reasons why I love them

purrpickle

Oh yes, definitely. It is perfectly them. Which is why they finally figure out that at some point, every so often, they need to sit down and talk and check in with each other, so they're not assuming or forging ahead or the like. All throughout their relationship.

thedeadflag

For sure!

purrpickle

Back to the "serial killer" shenanigans - how 'bout, that second night, after Rachel and Santana have fallen asleep wrapped up in each other, lips swollen and their hearts beating with hopeful plans about how their relationship is going to go, they get jerked away by the sound of barking and paws running through the halls because maybe a raccoon or other critter scratched its way into the shelter of the b&b, like, through an attic window.

((UGGGGGHHHH now I want a semi-angsty New Years Pezberry fic, or maybe have this happen over New Years. XD))

((Or, ooh! They arrive back on New Year's Eve!))

thedeadflag

it'd definitely fit the winter setting

purrpickle

That's what I was thinking!

thedeadflag

And yeah, the idea of getting back NYE, only to tackle the issue of nosy gleeks and various folks vying for each of them to be their midnight kiss... Intriguing

purrpickle

You know both of them would worry that getting back to "civilization" would break them out of their bubble, starting with whoever's driving dropping the other one off to get cleaned up for the gleek party.

Kurt and Mercedes whisk Rachel away, asking how she managed to survive Satan for three days, while Quinn and Brittany do the same for Santana, though more like The Hobbit and did she talk your ears off?

Ooh, Santana's walking through Tina's house when a small hand flashes out from a side room, Rachel all nerves and wringing hands as she's gazing worriedly/hopefully up at Santana. Her chest's warm, heart beating quickly, but she doesn't want to lose this, lose Santana, and as the hours had passed with only glances across the room and shy smiles every now and then, nothing had happened. It's not that she's expecting Santana to announce them yet, not at all, after their conversation last night, but she's feeling needy and worried. "I..." she starts, drawing herself up to apologize for pulling Santana bodily, but then Santana's eyes dilate and she moves in, hands cupping Rachel's cheeks to tilt her head up, soft lips coming down to kiss her, softly, lingeringly, but also direct and hard, as if she's been waiting, wanting this too, eager to reassure herself that this is real, too.

thedeadflag

*swoon*

purrpickle

"It's nice to know it still feels so good even without the threat of a serial killer," Rachel breathes as their lips part, eyes still closed, her cheeks pinkening as she realizes she's said that out loud. 

Santana laughs, shaking her head and kissing Rachel again. "Dork," she says affectionately.

[comicteaparty]

May 11th-May 17th, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from May 11th, 2020 to May 17th, 2020.  The chat focused on Gender Slices by Jey Pawlik.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Gender Slices by Jey Pawlik~! (https://topazcomics.com/genderslices/vol1/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until May 17th, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic! Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I have read the comic before. The whole thing and the author's comment at the end. It is such a shame to hear that Jey has gotten hate for their work. It takes a lot of bravery to be so openly queer on the internet, and I admire it a lot.

I like the art!

It is simple and clean and expressive.

This might be a bit of a weird comment, but from how Jey draws themselves, I feel like I have an understanding of how they actually look?

Like, their face and body are just a few lines here, but they're a distinctive few lines.

About the writing: it's hard to make a short form comic like this! Brevity is the soul of wit and all that, and it's hard to be concise!

But I think they manage it well

I feel like every panel has a purpose

I think it's fascinating, and sometimes saddening, how how you are and how you look affects how others treat you

This comic gave me greater insight into what it's like to be seen as non binary. Or, to not be seen as non binary when you are

I don't know if Jey will be reading this, but thank you for making the comic <3

I hope that many other people learned something from reading it as well

eliushi [a winged tale]

I really enjoy comics that give me more insight into other people’s lives. Bookmarked and will go through the comic this week!

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Wow, I love the way the webcomic showed how being nonbinary was like. It's very simple and gets the point across very well. I'm also going to keep reading it.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

On Gender Slices; - I enjoy how personal and insightful about Jey's journey as non binary. - I like how clean and straight forward the story is. It's more like an auto bio comic strip - Even though the designs are simplistic, I see the author's personal struggle within. - As a reader, I really like self discovery stories. Gender Slices is helping me think about gender spectrum, respecting pronouns. - Overall, it expresses how different stages of your life, your identity can change as a non binary person. Wow this comic accurately shows the common issues my enby friends complain about. But it's much clearer in this comic format(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I loved Gender Slices! It's hard for me to comment on character and stuff when it's, like, autobiographical? Like, that's a real human person lol. But I really think the comic does a great job of conveying Jey's journey through their identity with all these short scenarios. It feels like a diary of sorts, and that's really cool to me.

eliushi [a winged tale]

I really enjoyed this and will be recommending it to folks I think will benefit from understanding this community better. I found the most powerful messages and portrayal of experiences come from the small everyday things that we often take for granted. I felt the clean art style and clear panels helped the autobiographical narrative be very approachable. Most importantly, the tips offering better phrasing and approaches to talking about gender in the comic were very enlightening and useful. I hope more people read this, young to old to in-between! There will always be things to learn on how to respect and love each other more.

RebelVampire

What I like about the beginning of the comic and the art style all in one is just how clean the art is. I'm a huge fan of good, easy to read linework, since it's much easier for me as a reader to understand what's going on. This is something that occurred through out the comic, so each strip's message was conveyed really clearly. <3 I am overall glad this comic exists, as it's good to hear people's unique stories as they deal with life, whether it's something unique related to being nb or something that's somewhat universal regardless of those sorts of issues; I know at the beginning, disappointing parents was a pretty big theme and I think that's something we all experience. This was also clearly an extremely personal story at work, and it takes a truly brave soul to make something like this. Which honestly, I think those are the parts that make the comic the strongest. It's a personal story, and you know these events really happened and get to connect with the creator on a personal level without even knowing them. As such, the material really sticks with you because of that personal, emotional connection that's developed as you read it. As for a "favorite" moment, there is one strip that stood out to me (which I sadly didn't bookmark). But in it, Jey talks about how they appreciate having words and "labels" to describe themself, but also acknowledges that some people don't like to label themselves. And as a person who doesn't like to label themself, I really appreciated that. This is something I feel rarely gets mentioned in webcomics, so I liked that there was a mutual respect established in the strip that it's ok to have a preference in that regard and that whether you want to find labels for yourself or don't want to, you're a cool person.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. Of the moments in the comic, which did you find the most personally relatable and why? In what ways do you think that moment might help others who read it?

10. What do you think the personal stories in this comic teach us about finding personal happiness, self-acceptance, and acceptance from others?

11. Why do you think telling stories about the sorts of gender issues presented here are important, and what moments in the comic show why that’s the case?

12. How does the comic being autobiographical versus fiction affect your views on the comic’s messages? In what ways does it being autobiographical make it stand out from other comics?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

I've already talked about the most relatable moment in regards to favorite for me. I think it's a helpful moment because it just helps show everyone is different, and that it's good to have mutual respect all around. I think that the personal stories teach us about the themes of happiness, acceptance, etc. is that it's hard work. You aren't gonna nail it in one day, and you also can't be expected to. Society certainly may want you to have a grasp on these things, but ultimately these things are achieved at your own pace and you shouldn't beat yourself up over it. These stories are important for a lot of reasons, but for me personally I always think the most important thing is that it just makes people feel not alone. And I think the part of the comic that shows this is the strips about Jey finding people in their community. Humans do not like to feel lonely, and these stories help show people that no, even if you're in a community where this isn't a thing, there's billions of people in the world and theres always a community out there to share your experiences with and bond with. Autobiographical comics, in my opinion, tend to have a much stronger emotional connections. Sometimes with fiction stories, it can be hard to really get into the emotions, since at the end of the day, characters are representations of people and not exactly people. They can be damn good and feel super real, but there will always be that gap of "but it's fiction." Autobiographical stories don't have this. They are basically raw emotions put onto a page, and there's just this inherent sense of reality to them that fiction struggles to capture sometimes. As such, the messages they deliver are more powerful in most cases.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Going back to the previous question; 9. Most personally was expressing how Jey tried to self talk to adjust to a new name. But end up falling back to their birth name. 10. It helps to see how one might struggle internally, what gender disphoria feels from the character's pov. 12. It gives a deeper insight since this is a real person's experience and not a fantasy character going through the stages. I will continue reading Jey's journey and learn from their experiences. I think it's a good guide to what a non binary person goes through.(edited)

RebelVampire

Well since the comic is done, I am looking forward to seeing more people discover it. I know lots of people really need stories like this, so its nice to see when people are positively affected by them. Once again, it is a great thing this comic exists. Maybe it's not a comic for you, but it's one of those comics where you can tell it means a lot to someone out there, and I think everyone needs those special collection of stories to help them navigate through life

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Gender Slices this week! Please also give a special thank you to Jey Pawlik for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Gender Slices, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: https://topazcomics.com/genderslices/vol1/

Jey’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jpawlik

Topaz Comic’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/topazcomics

Topaz Comic’s Shop: https://topazcomics.com/shop/

Topaz Comic’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/topazcomics

[commodorecliche]

Gimme all the book recs Please :D

yaaaaaaaaaaaas okay great. i love sharing books i love.  

1. The Thief of Always - Clive BarkerGenre: Dark FantasyBig personal favorite of mine. My father read this to me when I was a kid, and it literally has stuck with me since then. Every now and then I go back and reread it just for fun. It’s a wonderfully spooky little story, accompanied by some really lovely and somewhat off-kilter illustrations. Much like Coraline, it’s a novel that is a fable for children, and a tale of terror for adults.

After a mysterious stranger promises to end his boredom with a trip to the magical Holiday House, ten-year-old Harvey learns that his fun has a high price.

2. House of Leaves - Mark Z. DanielewskiGenre: Postmodernism, horrorHands down an absolute favorite. This is a book I literally recommend to everyone. This is a book that made me viscerally uncomfortable, at times I didn’t even sleep in the same room as it. I made it sleep in the living room. There is nothing overtly terrifying about the book, but its format and its unsettlingly immersive nature will lead you down a road unlike any other. 

In 1997, Johnny Truant has stumbled upon a chest full of scrap papers that had once belonged to a man named Zampono. The papers aren’t just scraps though, they’re a chaotic but detailed transcription of a series called the Navidson Record. The Navidson Record is a series of videos made by a family who has discovered that their new house appears to change dimensions almost daily, it has hallways that shouldn’t exist, doors that should lead outside but instead lead into nothingness. Johnny attempts to re-order and reconstruct Zampono’s papers, and along the way begins to lose himself as well. 

3. The Postmortal - Drew MagaryGenre: Science Fiction, Postmodern DystopiaReally funny, really dark, and full of a surprising amount of morality and humanity in a pre-apocalyptic world. 

Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and-after much political and moral debate-made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult, and other horrors.    

4. Horrorstor - Grady HendrixGenre: Comedy, HorrorHonestly this book is just balls to the wall fun. It’s a horror novel that’s laid out like the world’s most messed up IKEA catalog. Spooky at times, ridiculous and funny, at times moving, while also offering great social commentary on consumerism and the the current status of retail workers. 

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking. To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination. 

5. Rant - Chuck PalahniukGenre: Science Fiction, Horror, SatireThis is a book I read several years ago and that I still think about from time to time. I haven’t had time to sit down and reread it, but parts of it still resonate with me today. This is a very peculiar story and it is told in a rather peculiar fashion (it is an oral history, and as such is told in a very conversational way by a number of different characters with a wide variety of thoughts and opinions on the titular Rant. It’s hard to properly describe this book, but let’s just say it’s been in my reread list for a while now. 

Buster “Rant” Casey just may be the most efficient serial killer of our time. A high school rebel, Rant Casey escapes from his small town home for the big city where he becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death, after which his friends gather the testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life. 

6. John Dies at the End - David WongGenre: Comedy, Horror, Dark FantasyHoly god what do I even say about this book? It is just hilariously and marvelously insane. A perfect mix of cosmic fantasy, horror, comedy, and lunacy, and I loved every minute of reading it. I still have the rest of the series lined up to read, too!

The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault. 

7. Sphere - Michael CrichtonGenre: Science Fiction, Deep Sea HorrorThis is one I actually JUST finished, and I absolutely adored it. I had a couple small complaints about it, but overall, it was a wonderful read and very engrossing. Plus, I’m always a sucker for deep sea horror. 

A group of American scientists are rushed to a huge vessel that has been discovered resting on the ocean floor in the middle of the South Pacific. What they find defies their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently, undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old…. 

8. I, Lucifer - Glen DuncanGenre: Religious Fantasy, Occult FictionThis book is incredibly well researched, thought out, and characterized, as well as funny and extremely thought-provoking. I’d never expected to see a story that would give me a realistic and modern look into the Devil’s side of the story. I especially never expected to see a story that would make the Devil learn what it is to be human, either. All in all just an A+, fantastical read. 

The Prince of Darkness has been given one last shot at redemption, provided he can live out a reasonably blameless life on earth. Highly sceptical, naturally, the Old Dealmaker negotiates a trial period - a summer holiday in a human body, with all the delights of the flesh. The body, however, turns out to be that of Declan Gunn, a depressed writer living in Clerkenwell, interrupted in his bath mid-suicide. Ever the opportunist, and with his main scheme bubbling in the background, Luce takes the chance to tap out a few thoughts - to straighten the biblical record, to celebrate his favourite achievements, to let us know just what it’s like being him. Neither living nor explaining turns out to be as easy as it looks. Beset by distractions, miscalculations and all the natural shocks that flesh is heir to, the Father of Lies slowly begins to learn what it’s like being us. 

9. The Wasp Factory - Iain BanksGenre: Psychological HorrorLook, I want to say this right off the bat. This book is… not for everyone. Trust me when I say this is an extremely dark book with a lot of dark content. I would say that if you have any potential triggers, you may want to message me first and I will give you a better rundown of what all this book entails. This is a true piece of horror fiction. But it’s also incredible. I ate this book up in about two days and it is one of my favorite pieces of dark fiction to date. So yeah, chat with me if you have any concerns, but if you enjoy truly dark fiction, then this is up your alley. 

Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I’d disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That’s my score to date. Three. I haven’t killed anybody for years, and don’t intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through. 

10. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (the whole series, trust me)Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction, Cosmic FantasyJust trust me when I say this is a series that literally everyone should read at least once in their life. They are unflabbably hilarious in a way that only Douglas Adams could be, and they are just truly unique. This series is (rightfully) a classic and shouldn’t be missed. 

Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide (“A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have”).

11. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War - Max Brooks Genre: Zombie horror, Faux HistoryI beg you - do not judge this book by the very terrible movie that was made about it. It is an entirely different animal than that mess of a movie, I promise. World War Z is a masterfully crafted book that details the zombie apocalypse in ways never before done in fiction. The Battle of Yonkers scenes and the testimony of Tomonaga Ijiro still stick in my head to this day. This book is a triumph of horror, ‘history’, and humanity, all balled into a distinctly unique experience. 

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years. 

12. The Raw Shark Texts - Steven HallGenre: Fantasy/Realism, Meta-fiction, MysteryThis is a tough one to put into words. I read this many years ago, and I remember it more as a series of emotional experiences rather than just as a singular plot. Which I think really speaks to its character as a book. This is a book that deals with dissociation, memory loss, our sense of self, how easily we can lose that sense, and our struggle to hold onto or to rediscover the world we know and the people we believe ourselves to be. This book is just… an experience, much like House of Leaves. It’s immersive, and at times quite unsettling. 

Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house he doesn’t recognize, unable to remember anything of his life. All he has left are his diary entries recalling Clio, a perfect love who died under mysterious circumstances, and a house that may contain the secrets to Eric’s prior life. But there may be more to this story, or it may be a different story altogether. With the help of allies found on the fringes of society, Eric embarks on an edge-of-your-seat journey to uncover the truth about himself and to escape the predatory forces that threaten to consume him. 

I think 12 should be good for now! I certainly have more though, if you want them!! 

Bonus, Currently Reading: The Library at Mount Char - Scott HawkinsGenre: Contemporary Fantasy, Horror, Dark FantasyI don’t have a whole lot to say about this yet since I’m not very far into it, but so far it’s been extremely intriguing, and Hawkins’ writing is truly beautiful. 

A missing God. A library with the secrets to the universe. A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away. Carolyn’s not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas sweater over the gold bicycle shorts. After all, she was a normal American herself once. That was a long time ago, of course. Before her parents died. Before she and the others were taken in by the man they called Father. 

Bonus 2, Up Next to Read: Dark Matter: A Ghost Story - Michelle PaverGenre: Horror

January 1937. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely, and desperate to change his life, so when he’s offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year, Gruhuken, but the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice: stay or go. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return–when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible. Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone. Something walks there in the dark… 

(also if any of y’all have read these, i’d love to hear YOUR thoughts on them too)

[truthbeetoldmedia]

The Critical Role of 'Critical Role'

It’s any given Thursday night, roughly 9:50 pm Eastern Standard Time, and my house is filled with the scent of oven-fried chicken and the driving thrum of Celtic percussion and string instruments. The PS4 Twitch app is open, streaming an impressive flow of themed fan art over-scored by the aforementioned tune. My loved ones are gathered; we hunker down with our meals, eagerly anticipating the clock’s turn to 10 pm. It’s time for Critical Role.

Critical Role is a weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign livestream, currently available on both its own Twitch channel Critical Role, as well as the Geek & Sundry Twitch. The series features live gameplay of a home-brewed world, created and made manifest by the talents of popular voice over artist Matthew Mercer, acting Dungeon Master, and featuring live unscripted performances by his equally-gifted friends. The core players are Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham; special guests also occasionally join in, such as Khary Payton, Mark Hulmes, Sumalee Montano, and Ashly Burch, who've all appeared briefly in this campaign.

If some of these names are familiar to you, that’s because the talent involved in Critical Role are renowned, tested, and aggressively committed actors/members of the production, animation, television, film, and gaming industries. Their varied skills, gravitas, and dedication combine with Matt’s ceaselessly creative mind and quick thinking into an amalgam so dense and compelling that it’s hard, as a viewer, to escape the show’s pull. Not that I’d want to; I’ve long since passed the event horizon and I’m in it until the end.

Currently, Critical Role is on its second iteration. Campaign 1 ran for several years as a private home-game amongst friends, then was translated into a format fit for livestreaming. It followed the heroic band of adventurers known as Vox Machina,  made up of characters birthed from noble archetypes; imperfect yet admirable individuals with the heart and skill to face world-rending, inconceivably fearsome enemies; a story intricately laced with nuance and lore, but grander and more sublime for it.

Campaign 2 is quite different in flavor, though still seated in the same world as its ancestral adventure, some 10 years after the fact. The team is now The Mighty Nein, a name blithely transplanted from an in-joke made by the Twitch chat and the cast themselves. The new characters are deeply flawed, broken, and self-centered individuals brought together by aligned goals and a specific brand of apathy only possible in jaded, wounded souls who just want to do at least a few decent things in their blighted lives. Despite this somewhat bleak tapestry, Matt and the Players have managed to weave in glittering threads of love, charity, hope, and devotion. It's tragic and beautiful; both rough and soft to the touch, depending on which swatch you feel.

Given that Campaign 1 is so voluminous in its scope, breadth, and tenure, it is understandably overwhelming as a starting point for the uninitiated. For this reason, I recommend diving in at the beginning of Campaign 2, launched on January 10, 2018 and available for free on Geek & Sundry’s YouTube.

I’m aware that modern media is crawling with genre stories: you can’t walk three feet without banging your toe on some phylactery or superpowered humanoid. And while Critical Role takes place in an indisputably fantastical setting, where the characters level up and come into powers which they often don’t initially comprehend, this is not a “coming of age” tale. There are no “Hero’s Journey” tropes. The growing pains explored are generally relegated to the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. The Mighty Nein learn and develop in tandem, outside the constraints and moors in which storytelling often entrenches itself. That’s the beauty of Dungeons & Dragons. Regardless of what the Dungeon Master has planned for each session, if they’ve given the Player Characters enough freedom, the emergent narrative is wholly original.

Being a Dungeon Master is famously likened to wrangling cats, though I find it more like wrangling cats who’ve learned to use laser pointers and Roombas on their own. One of the areas where Critical Role shines is that Matt is always over-prepared for whatever path the characters may choose, not to mention remarkably quick on his feet in adapting this sandbox he's established in response to how the Players decide to play, and the Players do him the courtesy of self-regulating their out of character moments and the silliness which often accompanies the excitement of roleplaying with your friends. Each session accumulates calculable progress.

But now that I’ve described the scaffolding on which Critical Role is built, I’d like to talk about the more abstract reasons I feel the series is so important, and why it’s absolutely worth your time.

One obvious benefit is that the series is live. Live broadcast media, in recent memory relegated mostly to sketch shows, soap operas, and the exhausting 24-hour news cycle, has been reinvigorated by the podcast, vlogging, and gaming communities. It’s a special joy to be present when something momentous occurs — a precious time-locked thing you share with a community made up of those who love what you love. An intangible communion of experience: in this instance, one where you cannot rely on your knowledge of narrative structure, because not only are we learning new things about these characters with the passage of time, but the actors who portray them are learning as well; all of which is packaged in breathtaking improvised acting.

The Players who make up The Mighty Nein are unafraid to make bold choices, to do things which until that precise second they didn’t know their characters would do. They don’t pander to the audience in order to provide the story beats which will make us comfy and complacent; these actors are so dedicated to maintaining organic character growth that, on occasion, some of their actions will frustrate, annoy, or anger the audience. However, the beauty in this is that none of the Players’ calls are pre-fabricated to elicit a specific reaction from the audience. You’ll love some stuff and hate some stuff, but there’s no onus, no learned helplessness, no pretense or smugness or hubris: those very things which can drive us up the wall when dealing with a lot of media these days.

Like most fandoms, there are some bad apples here and there, but Matt and the Critical Role team are dedicated to creating and maintaining an inclusive, intersectional environment where we can all thrive. The Critical Role cast and staff do everything possible to step in on behalf of their core players, special guests, and fans alike, in order to defend against, mediate, and mitigate the sporadic flares of anger, cruelty, and general suckiness which pervade so many other fandoms. They are humble and grateful and express it often, with deep sincerity.

Fan artists and other creators are welcomed, embraced, appreciated, and encouraged. Cosplayers are readily provided reference images and showcased on the official series Twitter. The Critical Role production group is even working on programs meant to provide new players and novice DMs with guidance for the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons game system, as well as help navigating the more complicated aspects of RPG group dynamics. Every Critter is celebrated and bolstered in an open-source, accessible, super-fun community.

This show has brought pure, distilled hope and joy to so many, while also maintaining its initial purpose: a group of close friends who nerd out roleplaying and having a blast. The only thing that’s ever changed is that now we get to be part of it, too.

Critical Role airs Thursdays at 7 pm Pacific Standard Time on either the Critical Role or Geek & Sundry Twitch channels.

[oceansofparadise]

Amy had an interview with dontboreus.com.au

Evanescence will be hitting the east coast of Australia in February with their Synthesis – Live With Orchestra tour. We were lucky enough to chat with frontwoman Amy Lee ahead of the tour.

Performing with an orchestra that you can’t have multiple rehearsals with is no simple feat- what’s behind the decision to tour the upcoming album with local orchestras in each city?

It’s an incredible and intimidating thing. With 28 musicians being added to the band, I can’t really imagine how we would take them all on the road with us! Before we began the tour I was more than a little curious as to how well it would work, but it’s been working beautifully. We owe a lot of that to Susie Seiter, our touring conductor. She spends 2 hours with the orchestra every day going over the whole show and working through the hard parts, teaching them the music. We actually only get 30 minutes with band and orchestra together every day before the show that night, so most of our performance is being done for the very first time as a group in front of the audience. It creates this very raw energy during the show that I love.

David Campbell contributed to what is arguably your biggest commercial single (Bring Me To Life) – what was it like working with him in a more involved capacity on Synthesis?

Yes, David arranged all the strings for all 3 of our albums, so it was really essential to the whole idea of this project that we do it together. It was a homecoming, a reinvention, and a moment of full realization for the two of us to be able to do fully what we’d been tapping at for years. We always wanted to collaborate on a more intricate level and this album was us finally seizing that.

What’s the new music industry landscape like for an established career artist like yourself?

Everyone’s experience is different. There is more music out there available to everyone than ever before, and we all have much more independently and uniquely customized feeds into or consciousness- that is awesome but also potentially limiting and isolating. If you only listen to one type of music, you will keep being fed similar music based on the machines reading what you’ve liked previously. So we’re all sort of in these little customized bubbles. There are artists out there you may never hear of with millions of followers just because it doesn’t fit into the format of what you’ve liked so far. But my taste has changed constantly throughout my life- depending on what I’m going through, what I’m moved by. And we are also complex. We have aspects to ourselves that take many formats, genres, media, forms of expression, to touch. I don’t miss radio stations only playing 40 songs on repeat being all most people knew about, but there is something awesome about great curation. I wish there was a PURE, un-buyable platform for music that we were all plugged into.

Synthesis will be taking a look at and reimagining a whole lot of fan-favourite songs. What is behind that decision?

I just followed a craving in my heart until it snowballed into one of my biggest challenges yet. Truth is, if I’m not being challenged, I’m not inspired. And sometimes less really is more. At some point you have to take something away to hear more of the raw power of a song, to expose its fragile but courageous heart. The decision on what songs we would redo wasn’t too much about the fans, it was more about what I wanted. I wanted to re-record The End of the Dream in a way that exposed the completely post traumatic healing of a survivor- taking the time to focus on the pain, and then look up and past it, gathering the strength to live on, better. Stronger. With a new understanding of the beauty of pain and the heartbreak of real life, not fly away from it, but carry it. Carry it all and feel grateful for it. Even proud.

Synthesis is said to merge orchestral elements and electronic elements- what is the weirdest instrument/ object that you used in the reimagining of the tracks?

Will was using a vintage Roland vocoder (SVC- 350) for some beat processing and it accidentally began picking up some distorted and very otherworldly sounding Mexican radio station’s frequency at the end of “Your Star”. It added a subtle level of authentic creepiness to the song that we couldn’t have if we had been trying to. Some mistakes are my favourite parts.

Which artists were you listening to around the time of writing Imperfection?

Needed Me – Rihanna, I Am Dust – Gary Numan, Blood In The Cut – K. Flay, Apply-Glasser, An Echo, A Stain – Bjork, Head Like A Hole – Nine Inch Nails

There’s a huge, beautiful piano intro in the video- why was that cut from the single version?

I see it as an intro into the song, but also as a segway between two songs. It never really mattered too much to me where people identified the beginnings and endings to be, since i hear the whole album as one piece flowing together. Naturally when you service a song to radio, if you want to to have any chance of getting played, it makes sense to leave out the 2 minutes of piano solo before the vocal comes in. I think this song belongs on the radio. Whether it’s universally perceived that way or not, who knows. But i can totally visualize it. So if that means making an edit that only gets most of the vision across, to help that possibility, ill do it. It would still be a major victory for music that’s so far outside the mainstream box.

You’ve had a lot of intense experiences with fans- what is the most intense experience you’ve had with a fan?

I met someone recently, who told us her story of being a victim of a home invasion when she was young. The intruders killed her husband and brother, but she and her baby survived. Her life’s path after that was marked with different points all along the way that were represented by our songs. The pain, the healing, the life beyond… and we were able to celebrate their lives together as mother and daughter (who’s now a teenager), lifelong Evanescence fans, who were there to attend their first show that night.

You became a role model very early on in life- was that a lot of pressure?

Yes. But I felt somewhat prepared for the job because I was the eldest of 4 siblings and was always trying to help guide my little sisters and bro down the right path. I loved them so much, I didn’t see it as pressure with them- so I guess I carried over the same feelings to my audience of youth. The pressure comes when you feel like you can’t be yourself, or that there’s a side of you that no one can ever know. I don’t want to act. I want to be the real me. And I’m not perfect, and I have to be brutally honest in my writing. So that true self can be uncontrollable. She can say things I don’t really want to admit. She could also open us all to a deeper honesty. That I would be proud of.

[x]

[guncontrolessay385]

college paper

About me

How To Write A College Paper Example

How To Write A College Paper Example Focus on getting the narrative structure working and ensure your characters are doing their job first, earlier than worrying about length. Only when you’ve written the MS, and then rewritten it, will you should think about the size of the MS. Came across this article attempting to determine the rules for this lazy bum of a author. In writing your synopsis, you need to have the ability to write one for each manuscript + an summary synopsis for the ‘series’ . I assume you'd be submitting your MS as a series, so then you definitely would submit the overview synopsis (and perhaps the extended single-book synopses additionally, on request). My second story is just 8000 words and I’ve simply barely begun the story. I’m very descriptive and see this being a really convoluted but comprehensible story. I’d like to see them in print however don’t wish to waste others time and/or cash. So my question to you is that this, with somewhat adjustment my story can simply be presented as two books with a word depend of roughly 80,000-word each. Do I write it describing the primary e-book solely, or do I write it incorporating each. I actually don’t anticipate to get it revealed as it violates most publishers code of ethics. It makes 50 shadows look like the little merman and has dangerous violence however I’m not towards it, just doubtful. At this point in your manuscript’s growth I would simply be writing and not using a thought for the size – what it ‘ought to’ be. Enjoy the writing course of and then you can begin crafting your manuscript upon getting the preliminary narrative on paper. At this point of writing I can be concentrating on the writing itself and not worrying one bit about the word depend. The word count will change as you write and edit your work. If your manuscript is totally different to the norm, that’s fine, but I would advise that you just enlist exterior assist to ensure your manuscript is actually doing all that you just set out to do. With memoir-sort writing it may be hard to know what you've associated on paper, and what is nonetheless floating about in your head. And external reader might help you with this, and also help you with the overall structure, as well as the sentence-level errors and so on. I’m within the process of writing my first novel and when the time comes I don’t even know where to begin. Please do feel free to name or email me and we are able to chat further about this. My novel, which initially began out to be a boy beats girl romantic thriller based on true occasions, finished up by being an erotic thriller with a one hundred sixty five,000-word count. After reading your article, I now understand why I haven’t heard back from publishers. The word count is just too excessive, particularly for a first-time author. Although initially I was very excited after I was accepted by a writer, and even signed a contract, sadly, they went into liquidation just before printing. It will be wherever from one reader to four readers. I cannot make that claim, however I do imagine that the majority of them are read. In smaller to mid dimension schools they're certainly learn, at least by two readers, and all Honors College essays are read. Many colleges have a strong dedication to a holistic evaluate of every application and typically have two or three readers for each file. A really good essay could be a sturdy addition to the appliance file. For a small faculty, there is a chance that you essay will only be learn by a couple of people, but for a bigger school it could possibly make its method via several palms before being put down. While essays don’t weigh as a lot as grades or course choice, if you're applying test-elective or to a smaller college, extra consideration might be given to this section of the application. Yes, every faculty essay is learn if the faculty has requested for it . The variety of readers is determined by the college’s evaluate process. The lovely thing about being a author is that life, age and expertise all work collectively to assist us turn into better on the craft. It is a job that many get higher at as we grow old and wiser. I would always recommend writing your manuscript in the first occasion and then contemplating the word rely after you've redrafted your work several occasions, via self-editing. It is a uncommon occurrence for me to seek out an author who needs little to no enhancing, either self-editing or enhancing from an exterior editor. I think any writing may be improved upon from its first drafting – significantly with manuscripts. It’s an enormous ask to get the plot ‘simply so’ in the first occasion, in addition to have all the other elements working properly at this stage. In reality, I assume the magic actually happens whenever you edit and begin adding the layers. If you're feeling that your MS is different to all else on the shelf, that can be wonderful…however it can be scary for publishers these days as a result of there isn't any proof that one thing like it'll promote. The publishing sphere is a unique place than it was 20+ years in the past; much less dangers are being taken. Don’t format as you go, give attention to assembly your word depend first, after which when you are done writing, return and evaluate. If you attempt to review as you go along, it will take you longer to satisfy your word rely, and also you might become too fatigued to complete your work. So, simply go on writing with out trying again, and evaluation only when you've met the word depend. Some campuses have a pool of reviewers, whereas others are extra particular.

[environmentalscienceessays544]

write essay for me

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Write My Essay And Make It Look Good

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Albion Online: The Technology of Albion

To work on a successful game is the dream of many Indies and beginners in the games industry. On the next four pages David Salz from Sandbox Interactive shares his dream with us.

The opportunity to make Albion Online was a dream coming true. At the same time, it was frightening. Even though I had many years of game development experience, some of it as a partner in my own company, I had never done an MMO before. In fact, I did not personally know anyone who had. What followed was a great learning experience (and I learned many things the hard way).

Getting started We started Albion Online with just two coders. Knowing that we knew nothing, we went through every book and article about online and multiplayer game development we could find. There is shockingly little, especially if you compare it to other fields like graphics programming. We also reached out to the few people in Germany who had MMO experience. Their very helpful input took the worst of our fears away, and we simply got started.

Middleware We use the Unity3D game engine to make Albion Online. Unity was up-and-coming when we started; it is powerful, flexible and inexpensive. Unity’s biggest strength, however, is the ability to publish on a huge number of platforms with very little additional effort. Even though we originally planned a PC-only game, we quickly realized that tablets and other mobile devices would be a crucial market in the future. Hence, Albion Online became a true cross-platform project. We started with Unity 3.5 almost 7 years ago, but we have made it a habit to always upgrade to the latest version of Unity as quickly as possible. These days upgrading the engine is a huge testing effort, and often new Unity bugs prevent us from using a particular new release. Finding a version that is stable enough for us has been getting more and more tricky the larger our game has become. On the other hand, there is no alternative since new OS versions (mostly OSX and mobile) often require new Unity versions.

As a network middleware, we use Photon. Photon comes with a server framework; the core is written in C++ for performance reasons, but the application code is C# – which is good because it means we can write the entire project in a single language and share code between server and client. C# is, in fact, an excellent choice for server development – very easy to use, fast, efficient and very stable thanks to garbage collection and exception handling.

Most of the game uses Photon’s reliable UDP protocol, and movement messages are sent as unreliable UDP messages. For the chat server and for inter-server-communication we use TCP. We use Photon on the lowest possible level, i.e.,, only the server framework and the network protocols. There is also a cloud-based hosting solution, a chat system, and even an MMO framework, but we decided to use none of that. Instead, we wrote as much as possible ourselves, and we decided to host the game on dedicated bare-metal servers.

Finally, we needed databases. For the game, the biggest concern was the ability to scale the game database for the potentially “infinite” game world size. We decided to give Apache Cassandra a try. Cassandra is a NoSQL database, i.e.,, it sacrifices the ability to do complex queries in favor of speed, high throughput, and the possibility to scale horizontally, i.e.,, by simply adding more servers.

Cassandra is essentially a distributed hash table. You can retrieve data only based on its hash key. There is no ‘SELECT … WHERE’ mechanism like in SQL. You can, however, build compound keys out of multiple columns and retrieve data based on partial keys. That way Cassandra forces you to design your tables around the queries you are going to make. This takes some time to learn, but the upside is that inefficient queries are almost impossible in Cassandra.

You can build a Cassandra cluster out of as many server instances (‘nodes’) as necessary. They will automatically split the hash space with some redundancy, so a couple of nodes may fail and the cluster will still stay operational. A caveat is that Cassandra is only ‘eventually consistent.’ Due to the distributed nature of the database cluster, it is possible to read ‘outdated’ data from the cluster, even though the ‘latest’ data will eventually be synchronized to all nodes. This can be fixed by either writing to or reading from a quorum of the database nodes, i.e.,, if you need consistent information, you can choose between slower reads or slower writes. Albion Online keeps most data in the game server’s memory while a player is logged in, so we choose slow reads but very fast writes. Player data is only read when the player logs in or changes the game server, but it is written every time something changes – just in case the game server crashes.

The biggest downside of NoSQL databases is the inability to do complex queries, i.e., JOIN and WHERE commands. For some purposes, e.g., the in-game marketplaces, queries are important, so we use a couple of Postgres SQL databases as well.

A collection of ‚tiles‘. The collision grids (black; collision is red) are hand-painted and used by server and client. The 3D collider (green wireframe) is used only by the client for mouse-picking and keeping the characters feet on the ground.

Doing a Unity game… without Unity It was clear to us from the beginning that we did not want to run Unity on the game servers. Unity is a closed-source environment we did not believe it was flexible, scalable and stable enough to support a game server for thousands of concurrent players. Also, we were simply not comfortable with having an uncontrollable ‘black box’ in such a key spot.

As a consequence of that, the core game systems would have to work without Unity, and we ended up coding our own technology even in areas where Unity offers good solutions. We have, for example, our own level file format, our own collision system, our own pathfinding, and our own game object management.

While that sounds like re-inventing the wheel, I would rather see it as cherry-picking. While it is somewhat crazy to write your own engine just because you can, it is equally crazy to use an engine feature just because it exists. You should rather ask yourself ‘Is this exactly the solution I need?’ and ‘How long would it take to write something myself that more precisely matches my needs?’ Owning and controlling key parts of the code has many advantages. Not only does our game server work without Unity, but we, in fact, also have a fully functional command-line version of the game client that runs without Unity! It has no graphics and no UI but is otherwise fully capable of logging in and playing the game. You can easily launch 50 to 100 of those on a single machine, and we often use it as a scriptable bot for stress tests.

Model – View – Controller A key design principle of Albion Online is a strict Model-View-Controller pattern. In an online game, the server must have absolute authority, meaning that all game world manipulations happen on the server and only the server can decide whether a player action is valid or not. We keep game data in memory and use databases as permanent storage; hence the server acts as the Model and the Controller here.

The Albion Online client is just a library (i.e., a DLL) that is able to communicate with the server. It will mirror the part of the data model that the player can “see” at a given point in time and offer a controller interface similar to that of the server. The client does validity checks and sometimes even prediction, but will ultimately send all valid requests to the server. The client library knows nothing about Unity. This allows us to have the command-line client mentioned earlier. The client code is maintained as a separate Visual Studio project that has no Unity dependencies, so it is easy to keep the separation in everyday work.

Unity comes into play as a pure View component. It will subscribe to various events the client library offers, create a view for every game object and update the view whenever the game object changes. All of the UI and input code is in Unity as well, but the real business logic is in the client library and not in Unity.

The collision information of all tiles is combined into a large collision grid for the entire map. It is also used for pathfinding.

Maps and Collision Unity is very good for map and level editing and extensible, too, so we had every intention of using it that way. On the other hand, the game server would need to be able to load the map files as well. Certainly, the server would not need the graphical assets, but it would need to know to location and properties of all interactive objects, the shape of the terrain, object collisions, etc. Collision was the next issue. Unity comes with a sophisticated physics system, so you could leave player-vs-environment collision completely to the physics module, or at least use ray casts against the physics geometry to determine where a player can go and where not. Today Unity even has built-in navigation meshes for pathfinding, that did not exist in 3.5 when we started. While that approach works great for an action-adventure, it seemed too complicated for the kind of MMORPG that we had in mind. We would need walkable and non-walkable terrain, line-of-sight checks for projectiles and pathfinding for monsters.

All of that should be super fast because it would have to executed or at least double-checked on the server for thousands of players and monsters. Physics-based collision does not give you that kind of performance. Another problem with physics engines is that they sometimes ‘tick out.’ We have all occasionally fallen through the ground or have been catapulted in the air in our favorite games just because we walked into an odd corner at an odd angle. For a level designer, such problems are very annoying to fix because it is often not obvious why the physics engine has an issue with a particular piece of geometry.

Considering all that it made sense to write our own collision and pathfinding system. In a drastic first step, we decided to regard the whole game as essentially 2D. The top-down perspective already forces the level design into a 2D mindset, and while the maps would not be totally flat, they would be flat enough to get away with this simplification. The world of Albion consists of ‘tiles.’ A tile can be a piece of ground or an object. Ground tiles are typically 10 by 10 meters (in respect to the size of the characters). Objects are everything that sits on top of the ground, from decoration to interactive objects like trees or buildings. All tiles have a hand-painted 2D collision in a 1×1 meter grid. The collision system allows a small number of geometrical primitives like triangles, circles and infinitely thin lines. Maps are built in Unity but exported into a proprietary file format. Every tile is a Unity prefab plus some meta information like size, collision, etc. A map is essentially just a huge list of tiles, often up to 30,000. Server and client load the same file. While the server only cares about the meta information, the client actually instantiates all the Unity prefabs. To our surprise, this form of loading is actually faster and gives us more control than using Unity scenes! We still use Unity scenes to store the maps for the level editor, but not in the game.

The Server Farm The server farm consists of several different server types and databases. We host everything on bare metal machines since we need strong CPU time and memory guarantees. Albion is a single, unique game world for all players. We use instancing only for player islands and certain types of dungeons, so we would not benefit much from the ability to scale to dynamically allocated virtual machines. Instead, we simply distribute the game world across a fixed number of physical machines.

Most of the heavy lifting is done by the Game Servers. Depending on your character’s location in the game world your client will connect to a different Game Server. As you move through the world, you may have to connect to a different game server. Your client will also maintain a connection to the Chat and Login Server. The Login Server handles all account operations like login, logout, character creation, etc. and will tell the client which Game Server to connect to.

The World server is the single authority for all game features that work across Game Servers, for instance, parties, guilds, guild vs. guild battles, etc. The Backoffice server controls farm startup, shutdown and provides an API to “talk” to the entire farm.

The Game Server Our game world consists of zones (“clusters”) that are roughly 1 x 1 km in size. There are currently around 600 of these. When you change zones, your client may have to connect to a different game server, and you will see a short loading screen on the client. The game logic of a cluster is handled by a single thread. Making this multi-threaded would be very error-prone and not necessarily more efficient since there are numerous complicated interactions between game objects which would require locking. Instead, all incoming player commands are put into a synchronized event queue and processed in order of arrival. Any work that can be offloaded – like database operations, pathfinding or logging – are handed to separate thread pools that complete their respective tasks asynchronously and put the result back into the event queue.

A second mechanism we use extensively is scheduled events (or simply put: timers). There is no real game loop in Albion Online, meaning that game objects have no Update() functions that are called every so often. Instead, objects will create timers whenever they need to. Monsters will create a recurring AI update timer as soon as a player gets near but delete the timer again when the player is gone.

Interest Management Interest Management is the ability to efficiently determine which game object can “see” which other objects at a given point in time. This is important for multiple reasons.

First of all, we want to minimize the network traffic for each client by sending the client only updates of objects it can actually see right now. Second, players do cheat. Any information that is sent to the client can and will be extracted by cheaters. That means we absolutely need to restrict client knowledge to objects that are on the screen or at least very close to it. The whole mechanism is also useful for many other purposes; for instance, monsters are activated when a player comes near and deactivated when the player leaves.

All this needs to be as efficient as possible. Let’s illustrate this with some numbers: A single (1 x 1 km) cluster may contain more than 300 players, 500 monsters and more than 10.000 other interactive objects (most of which are trees, because you can cut down every single tree in Albion Online).

We achieve the efficiency by putting all objects into a grid-based hash. Each grid cell is roughly 10 x 10 meters and contains a list of objects inside. Very large objects may be in multiple cells at once, but that is rare. The object itself is responsible for updating the hash if it moves. The grid cells fire events when objects are added or removed, so subscribing to these events already gives you a very efficient way of monitoring an area.

Each player is surrounded by something we call an Interest Area. It consists of two grid-aligned rectangles. When an object enters the inner, smaller rectangle, the player will start “seeing” the object, i.e., the server will send the client an initial “new object” message (“look, a monster!”) and subscribe to the various event the object itself offers. Whenever the object does something interesting (e.g. the monster attacks someone) it will fire an event, that event will be forwarded to the Interest Area of the nearby player, and the Interest Area will forward the event to the client.

An object will be watched until it leaves the slightly larger blue area. When that happens, the client will receive an “object gone” message and stop receiving updates. The blue area is larger in order to keep the visible object set more stable over time.

Conclusion I hope I was able to shed light on some of the more interesting technical aspects of Albion Online. It has been quite a journey, and we keep learning new things all the time. If you have questions, feel free to contact me!

Example of an object life cycle Here is a short example of an object life cycle. The server knows all objects (players,mobs,trees etc.) and their properties. The Interest Management system checks which client can see which objects. Whenever an object becomes visible (or invisible) to a client, an enter (or leave) message is sent to the client which will create a local copy of the object (or destroy it again). The server will also send update messages for all visible objects should their properties change.

Unity sits on top of the client as a pure view component. For every object created by the client, it will create an object view in the form of a Unity GameObject. The view will subscribe to any changes to the original object and will update graphics, sound and animation accordingly. The view takes input, i.e., interprets Mouse Clicks etc. into game commands. Commands are forwarded to the client game object, which checks the command for plausibility, and ultimately forwarded to the server which executes the command. Should game objects change as a result of the action, the server will send update messages as described above.

David Salz CTO, Sandbox Interactive

David Salz has been working as a software engineer in the games industry for 18 years. He is CTO and one of the founders of Sandbox Interactive. Before he entered the world of MMORPG gaming, David co-founded another company; his previous studio Bitfield produced several games for PC and Nintendo DS.

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Airtame 2: Digital Signage and Wireless Presentation, with Enterprise Class Security

Our verdict of the Airtame 2: Great for wireless presentations and web content like KPI dashboards. With strong security and ease of management for multiple devices, it's ideal for schools, offices and other environments that demand high security.810

The Airtame 2 is a digital signage and wireless presentation device designed for schools, offices, hotel lobbies, and other enterprise environments that value security and ease of deployment. As the name suggests, it’s an upgrade on the original Airtame device, offering beefed up specs for more reliable streaming, and the ability to display more complex websites.

Read on to find out what we thought of the device, and enter the competition at the end of this review to win one for yourself.

What’s In The Box?

Airtame 2 device

Magnetic mounting disc

USB-C to USB-A and HDMI cable (“AirCord”)

5v @ 2.3A USB power adaptor (with 3 plug types)

Quickstart guide

Available from Airtame.com for around $400.

Note the inclusion of a 2.3A USB power adaptor: this is significantly higher than the USB port on your TV will provide, which is usually 0.5-1A. You should not plug the USB cable into your TV as it may result in damage to the port. Use only the adaptor provided.

On the Airtame 2 you’ll find a USB-C and micro-USB OTG port (allowing an Ethernet connection with suitable adaptor); as well as a hole for a Kensington Lock. The latter is a new and welcome addition—the first Airtame model had no such physical security.

One aspect I’m slightly disappointed by is the lack of PoE connectivity out of the box. Instead, the PoE to USB-C adaptor will come at a later date, as an optional purchase. For a product designed to be used in a corporate environment and costs as much as it does, I feel that should be included out of the box. Cabling for projectors and TVs is often kept discreetly inside the wall and ceiling panels, so having to find a socket for the power adaptor isn’t always going to be easy.

Technical Specifications

NXP i.MX6DP 1GHz+ ARM Dual-core Cortex A9 CPU

Vivante GC2000 GPU (Four shader cores @594Mhz)

2GB RAM

HDMI 1.4b

Wi-Fi: 802.11bgn/ac

1920×1080 Full HD output @ 60FPS.

eMMC storage (unspecified size)

The Wi-Fi functionality can either be used to connect the Airtame to a Wi-Fi network, or to broadcast its own ad-hoc network. Another trick up its sleeve is that when used as an ad-hoc network, the Airtame can proxy the internet connection to the client, so guests can maintain their internet connection while connecting directly to the Airtame. Note that there’s a single 5Ghz, and a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi chip. You can only only rebroadcast an ad-hoc network on the other channel that’s not currently in use. So if your device is connected to the 5GHz corporate network, it can only create an ad-hoc Wi-Fi for direct connections on the 2.4GHz channel. If using an Ethernet adaptor, both channels can be used for ad-hoc connections.

Mounting the Airtime 2

Unlike the first Airtame which was light enough to be plugged directly into an HDMI port, the Airtime 2 is quite a bit larger, at half an inch thick and three inches wide. However, you have a couple of great mounting options out of the box: either magnetic, or permanent adhesive. Included is a powerful magnetic disc, which snaps directly to the back of the Airtame 2. It can then attach to any ferrous metal, such as you’ll find on the back of most TVs. This is the easiest way to mount the Airtame 2, but you’ll also find a layer of permanent adhesive on the magnetic disc itself.

Should you wish, peel off the protective tape, then the magnetic disc can be affixed to any surface, such the top of a projector, or on the wall. The Airtame 2 device itself will still attach magnetically to this disc, but the disc will be permanently fixed. Attempting to remove it may result in damage to a painted surface or wall.

Cabling the Airtame 2 is easy, as well. A single proprietary cable breaks out the USB-C port on the device to an HDMI and USB-A plug. Again: even if your TV has a USB port, do not plug the Airtame into it, you will damage the port. Use the included power adaptor, which outputs 2.3A @ 5V. Should messy cabling be a problem, you’ll also find some of the same adhesive midway along the cable, too.

Setting Up the Airtame 2

To set up the device, you’ll need a desktop or laptop. Head to airtame.com/setup to download the right software for your OS. I tested using a Mac, though the Windows procedure is virtually identical. Chromebook and Linux is also supported.

Just plug in the Airtame and turn it on: the screen will tell you everything you need to know to get started presenting. This makes it great for guests to your facilities.

  Streaming from iOS

Out of the box, AirPlay support is disabled. Which is a little odd, consider it’s listed on the website as the recommended way to share from an iOS device. You’ll need to go into the Device Settings -> Advanced -> AirPlay to enable it, then restart. AirPlay support is officially in beta status. I found it pretty solid in areas that had decent Wi-Fi connection, but I did experience some hiccups in the poor reception areas between access points. A few times, the AirPlay output option was detected by iOS, but refused to play. Other times, it just crashed midway through a video, which required a full restart of the Airtame device to fix.

Streaming from Android

Unusually, streaming from Android is more limited that iOS. There is no Miracast support, and the only content you can present is pictures or documents loaded via the local device or a few cloud services. The Airtame Android app itself was last updated in 2015, and there is still no option for full device mirroring, or even video content, though it is on the roadmap.

Streaming from Mac

AirPlay is the easiest option here too, but the Airtame desktop app will give the best performance. You can opt to either stream your whole stream, or a single window. Unfortunately, the desktop app was unable to automatically detect the Airtame device. It’s possible my network was blocking certain broadcast packets, but it’s an enterprise-grade Ubiquiti UniFi setup, which is exactly the sort of network you’d find in offices and schools. Apparently it’s a common issue.

Streaming from PC

Your only option on Windows is to use the desktop app, offering full desktop or selective window casting. Thoughtfully, Airtame also offers a “guest app”, which can be used if you don’t have admin rights. Our Airtame was detected immediately, and establishing a connection was fast and easy.

It’s clear that wirelessly presenting from a desktop or laptop is the main use case, and where the most development effort has been pushed.

Also of note from a security perspective is the ability to require a PIN code before a connection is accepted, meaning only those physically located in the meeting room will be able to present. The PIN is output onto the display device, and must be typed into the client software–AirPlay or the native AirTame app–before the streaming can begin.

For Digital Signage and KPI Dashboards

When not actively used as a presentation device, the Airtame can be set up to display other content. You can fully customize the welcome message, or hide it completely. Then you can display a slideshow, or web content (such as Key Performance Indicator displays). You can either use a public URL (i.e. one that doesn’t require a login); or you can use one of the new “HomeScreen apps”. These require an Airtame Cloud account, which we’ll get on to shortly.

When using the first option, you’ll also need to ensure that the URL isn’t going to automatically trigger an annoying GDPR popup, which requires the user to click to accept cookies before revealing the underlying website. Sadly, MakeUseOf is forced to use one of these, so I was unable to get it to display correctly. You can’t connect a keyboard or mouse to the Airtame, so you can’t click the message away or login. This is one of the biggest limitations of the Airtame device. It shouldn’t be a problem if you own the website in question–you can likely code your own exception for a specific page, as well as craft the CSS to display in a larger format suitable for TV screens.

Yes, we know this popup is annoying.

Airtame Cloud

To make full use of your Airtame, you’ll want to setup a free Cloud account. The Homescreen functionality is also currently free while in beta testing. At some point, it will become a paid subscription service, though no specific timeline has been given.

  To add your device to Airtame Cloud, click Add a new Airtame, then copy paste the provided cloud token into your device’s settings and apply the changes. It should shortly appear in the Cloud list of devices, and need only be done once for each device.

Click on the Homescreen icon to the left of the Cloud screen to view the selection of apps available. If you have multiple devices, you can highlight all those you wish to change the settings, then click Edit. From here, you can switch apps, edit the default welcome text, and more. It’s really easy to deploy the same changes to all your devices, which is fantastic for large venues.

At the moment, the list of Homescreen apps is somewhat limited:

URL display or image (the same as local configuration)

Worldclock

Unsplash (an image service)

Google Slides

Trello

Room Overview (which integrates with Google Calendar to show room availability)

Dropbox Gallery

This covers a broad number of real world use cases, but hopefully we’ll see more integrations as the Homescreen is developed further. I tried to test the Room Availability feature, but it was unable to authenticate with either my Google Suite account or personal Gmail. This was a great opportunity to test out their support chat. Within 5 minutes, the support team had confirmed that the feature isn’t available for personal accounts, but that the Google Suite appeared to be bugged, and promised to get back to me once fixed. Full marks for support. (It turns out that the Overview feature requires “room resources” to be enabled on the G-Suite account, which apparently we at MakeUseOf don’t have, since we don’t actually have an office space.)

Not for Netflix

To be clear: the Airtame isn’t designed for home use. If you’re looking for a streaming media client to plug into your TV or projector and show Netflix on, this isn’t it. In fact, the Airtame doesn’t even support Netflix. This is not the dongle you’re looking for. You’d be better served by an Amazon Fire Stick, Roku, Chromecast, or Apple TV. Which the best media streaming solution for you?

If you have a specific device you’d like to compare to the Airtame, check out Airtame’s own comprehensive comparison page. Airtame is primarily for presenting slideshows, spreadsheets, and monthly reports, as well as the occasional video.

Do You Need the Airtame 2?

While upgraded hardware is always welcome, the real value of the Airtame ecosystem hasn’t changed since the first model:

Corporate grade security. Both in software with WPA2 Enterprise Wi-Fi support, and physical hardware with the Kensington Lock slot. This isn’t a theoretical problem: thousands of Chromecasts were hacked to display a message encouraging viewers to subscribe to Pewdiepie’s YouTube channel.

Remote management. Via the Airtame Cloud, your devices can be remotely configured from thousands of miles away, and changes deployed instantly.

Scalability. One Airtame or thousands, it doesn’t matter: you can deploy updates instantly, to every device.

Reliability. We’ve all seen a frozen Raspberry Pi loading screen in public places before, and it’s embarrassing. For those who value their time, the Airtame system is reliable. Airplay support can be buggy, but that’s typically true of any third-party device.

Dual purpose. When not being used to present, Airtame defaults to your choice of welcome message and background content.

If your business or school needs a simple way to present wirelessly, with rock solid security protocols and physical locks, look no further than Airtame.

Enter the Competition!

Airtame 2 Giveaway

Read the full article: Airtame 2: Digital Signage and Wireless Presentation, with Enterprise Class Security

Airtame 2: Digital Signage and Wireless Presentation, with Enterprise Class Security published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/

[mediacalling]

A New Facebook Guide to Creating Video, The Shift to Instagram Stories Ads and Messenger, and 5 YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss

Looking to catch up on the latest social media news, but short on time? We have you covered! This week (episode #110) we’re chatting about all of this and more:

According to an interesting article from Digiday, Facebook is shifting gears with brand advertisers. After years of trying to sell brands on the Facebook news feed, they’re changing their pitch to Instagram, Stories, and Messenger engagement.

Facebook interviewed some of the top video producers on social media media and compiled their latest tips, tricks, and helpful suggestions to move your business forward with video.

YouTube requires a unique focus. The best practices for YouTube video won’t necessarily be the same as they are on Facebook or Twitter. We have some really interesting YouTube stats for you on how to improve your brand’s performance on YouTube.

Join 17,500+ weekly listeners for the Buffer podcast, The Science of Social Media, where we bring you the latest and greatest in social media marketing news, updates, stories, insights, and actionable takeaways.

Let’s dive in!

A new Facebook guide to creating video, the shift to Instagram Stories ads and Messenger, and 5 YouTube facts you can’t miss [complete podcast transcript]

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation between Hailley Griffis and Brian Peters.

Part I: The Shift to Instagram Stories Ads and Messenger

Part II: A Brand New Facebook Guide to Creating Video

Part III: 5 Interesting YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss

Brian: Hi everyone! I’m Brian Peters and this is The Science of Social Media, a podcast by Buffer. Your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and learning.

Hailley: Welcome to episode #110! I’m Hailley Griffis and this week we’ve got an exciting episode on the docket for you this week. Tons of interesting things to talk about in the world of social media, including a brand new guide from Facebook on creating videos, the shift to instagram stories and messenger, youtube, and more!

Brian: Usually these news-style episodes are filled with things that have already happened on social media, but this week we’re looking towards the future and how your brand can stay relevant on social media in the coming weeks and months.

Hailley: Let’s kick off the show!

Part I: The Shift to Instagram Stories Advertising and Messenger Engagement

Brian: Facebook is shifting gears with brand advertisers. Well, they are according to a really interesting article from Digiday.

Essentially, after years of trying to sell brands on the Facebook news feed, they’re changing the pitch to Instagram.

Hailley: Brand marketers have somewhat cooled off on the news feed as an advertising vehicle because they are beginning to see it as little more than a place for less-premium direct response ads, said four ad buyers interviewed for the Digiday article.

Many big advertisers have noticed that Facebook hasn’t been able to make brand budgets work in the news feed because of content competition and saturation, and so it’s doubling down on its strengths — which is performance.

Brian: The Facebook news feed’s original selling point was about being reach-driven, but as Digiday mentioned, over time brand advertisers have had growing concerns about the news feed being a “brand-safe” environment and whether ads there are actually seen in the feed.

Users are also pulling back from Facebook in favor of Instagram.

According to Merkle, ad-spend growth on Instagram has quadrupled (roughly 177 percent), while Facebook ad spend has only grown around 40 percent in Q2, compared to a year ago.

Hailley: To add to that, Facebook’s market value last month dropped by $120 billion — the largest ever corporate loss in history — when it announced that growth would slow.

And so with places to show ads in the news feed running out, Facebook is looking to their pride and joy, Instagram, to help accelerate growth quickly.

Brian: Facebook executives, with all that is going on, said they are looking to fine-tune their pitch.

In short, and I thought this was a really great way to look at the current ad ecosystem, Facebook’s news feed is being sold as a product for performance advertisers.

Instagram, with its short-form video Stories and visual content, is more of the brand-building play.

And Messenger is for brands interested in customer relationship management. Which, as we’ve talked about in the past, is extremely important in today’s day and age.

Hailley: Agreed. It’s a lot of the reason we’re putting so much time and investment in building out and enhancing our product Buffer Reply. We think that customer service, monitoring, and brand management will be a critical piece of marketing strategies moving forward.

But of all of the advertising options within the Facebook ecosystem, Stories is the one that Facebook sees as its next big revenue driver.

Stories is now used by 400 million daily active users, according to Instagram.

Brian: I think one of the most interesting part of Stories, besides it’s incredible growth is the idea of vertical video, which is still relatively new to so many brands.

So demand for the Stories ads product is still low, but I really believe that we will soon be at a point where a good chunk of brands and budgets are using Stories as an ad platform.

Hailley: One of the things that Instagram’s really has going for them is even though their total audience is smaller than Facebook’s (about half), engagement is super strong.

And I think that’s in part because it’s a highly visual platform where brands are almost forced to create beautiful content. Because if they don’t they won’t be able to compete with those that do.

On the Facebook side, as we discussed in episode 109, brands have seen engagement in the news feed drop since shifting to prioritizing user interactions over brand content earlier this year.

Brian: According to interviews in this Digiday article, Instagram’s engagement can be three times higher than on Facebook and cheaper to reach. Which we’ve definitely experienced first-hand here at Buffer.

For example. Greg Allum, global head of social at Jellyfish, found that the CPM (or cost per 1,000 reach) on Stories is four to five times cheaper than Facebook’s news-feed ads.

And for marketing software company Kenshoo’s clients, the average price for Instagram Stories ads seen 1,000 times was $4.70 versus $5.34 for standard Facebook ads. Not a huge difference, but noticeable, especially at scale.

Hailley: It’s pretty clear that Facebook is heavily focused on improving the creative for Instagram Stories. It does seem like they’re launching a new feature every week over there.

And so for lots of brands and small businesses that means working more through influencers and improving their creatives. Creatives being video quality, audience targeting, product ads, and other things.

Eventually, of course, Instagram hopes to double down on revenue by pointing big ads budgets towards Instagram TV. The next evolution of Instagram Stories. We’ll keep you posted on that here on the show.

Part II: A brand new Facebook guide to creating video on social media

Brian: Video is an opportunity that keeps growing, and it’s evolving faster than ever. Vertical, square, landscape, whatever the format, the data shows that people LOVE consuming video content on social media.

Hailley: Recently, Facebook spoke with some of the top video producers on social media media and compiled their latest tips, tricks, and helpful suggestions to move your business forward with video.

We thought we’d share a few of our favorites here with you today.

Brian: At the very top of the Facebook list of best-practices is this idea of delivering personalized experiences at every touch point for your audience with video.

Which sounds great, but what does that actually mean?

On the organic side of things, that means investing in brand awareness campaigns. More often than not, people aren’t looking to be sold to, at least they don’t think they are.

Hailley: By creating content that’s focused on brand awareness, not sales your business can accomplish a few things. One is that you’ll grow engagement and trust. Top-of-the-funnel content is much more likely to be shared by users.

By simply getting in front of potential customers on social media, you’ll help to increase the chances of actual sales down the road.

Brian: Exactly, and that might mean educational types of content, fun, entertaining content, contests, rewards, and more. In this stage you’re focusing on providing informative and valuable interactions with customers.

Once you’ve got your brand awareness campaigns running, that’s when you can begin to focus your efforts on moving people down the funnel.

Retargeting users who have previously viewed and demonstrated interest in your product by visiting certain pages or even added an item to their cart, is a great way to help them along.

Hailley: Right, and the video content at this stage shouldn’t necessarily be sales-focused either, though it could be. Aim to give these folks reason to take the next step by inspiring them to purchase or learn more.

But be sure to be consistent with your brand and your overall narrative. At every part of the customer journey, you should be considering the relationships you are building with your audience.

Are they seeing random, conflicting ads from your brand? Or are they seeing one, cohesive story?

Brian: And I know we’re not all used to creating humorous content, BUT, a breakdown of 250 video ads from 22 brands on Facebook found that humorous videos can drive a 70% higher video completion rate for informational videos and cost 60% less than emotional video ads.

Which really goes to show the psychology of people on social. I feel like when I see a funny ad I relate to it a lot more, and in turn, relate to the business a lot more. I might even share it with a friend.

Hailley: Another great tip from Facebook in this study was that you should aim to present your brand within the first 1–2 seconds of the video.

So typically you might save your logo or branding until the end of the video, but adjusting the video creative to the first 1-2 seconds can help to improve brand lift.

And make sure to tell your story with visual descriptions, including text overlays at the beginning which can provide important information and context to viewers. Studies show it helps to increase view time by up to 30%.

Brian: One part from this study that I found interesting is when they talked about video length. And I don’t know why I didn’t expect Facebook to say this, but they cited that to capture attention, remember that 6 and 15 seconds are the new digital standards for video.

So super short, actionable videos are where it’s at in 2018. Shorter videos tend to perform better for capturing newer audiences’ attention and can develop brand awareness.

Hailley: Yup, concise messaging and videos are absolutely the focus these days.

We should pretty much assume that the viewer is unaware of the video content starting out. Which means you have to give them a reason to stick around.

And when measuring the success of your videos, focus on relevancy score. Relevancy determines if your audience is stopping to watch your videos. Whether you’re running direct response or branding campaigns, you need the content interesting right off the bat.

Brian: Yes, relevancy score is the main thing we look at for all of our advertising content, particularly when it comes to brand awareness. A score of 8,9 or 10 is great for top of the funnel campaigns.

And typically, we get scores of 9 or 10 when we boost organic posts or user-generated content.

I think it’s because this type of content is less intrusive compared to produced ads. Users are more likely to engage longer with ads that mimic the other content in their News Feed

Hailley: Exactly and this goes back to to truly understanding your audience. We’re living in a mobile-first generation and our campaigns should cater to that behavior.

For example, people are making on-the-spot decisions via their phones, does your video reflect that?

Consumers are reading reviews and doing research, does your video incorporate social proof?

Brian: Such a great way to think about it, Hailley.

Today, consumers have incredibly high expectations for right-here, right-now experiences and they are increasingly making last-minute plans. Make sure you’re brand reflects those behaviors.

And speaking of mobile, Facebook recommends to not be afraid of the 3-second rule. Basically that the first 3 seconds is as long as it takes for people to decide if they’ll continue watching or not.

Try and capture the viewer’s attention at the beginning with a strong hook.

Hailley: And of course, if the theme or atmosphere of your content calls for a longer-form video and its performance is delivering high returns, don’t be afraid to push the limits of each advertising channel.

You should absolutely be experimenting with different types of videos, lengths, styles, and format. Each brand is unique and will experience different results based on their audiences.

So just as a recap here for everyone:

When you plan, shoot and produce branded content, start with social media and mobile viewing in mind.

Brian: Exactly and make sure your creative idea can be conveyed in as little as 6 to15 seconds

Challenge yourself or your creative team to show how the video can get the same message across in a shorter timespan.

And lastly, always include captions if your video has dialogue or voiceovers. That keep your audience around and watching for longer.

Part III: 5 Important YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss

Hailley: If you’re ready to hear more about video, perfect, because we stumbled upon some pretty amazing YouTube facts you just can’t miss as a business or brand.

But like all platforms, YouTube requires unique focus. The best practices for YouTube video won’t necessarily be the same as they are on Facebook or Twitter.

Brian: With that, we’ve got some really awesome YouTube stats for you on how to improve your brand’s performance on YouTube. And if you find these interesting, you’ll love episode 95 where we talk about strategies that helped us grow our channel by more than 59% in 30 days.

Anyways, back to the stats. First is that comments are directly related to the ranking of your YouTube videos. The more comments a video has the higher it typically ranks.

Hailley: Second, longer videos heavily outperform shorter videos on YouTube. Get this, the average length of videos that rank on the first page is 14 minutes and 50 seconds.

And that goes back to YouTube being as much of a search engine as it is a social media channel. User intent is super high and so they’re willing to spend more time watching content to learn.

Brian: This next stat is obvious, but worth mentioning, and that’s that video views have a significant correlation with video rankings. In order to get more views to improve rankings, you have to make sure that you include keywords in your title, meta tag, and description as well as optimize the video for YouTube with things like length, keyword, research and more.

Again, all covered in episode 95 of this show.

Hailley: Next up is that subscription driven videos have a reasonably strong correlation with video rankings. In other words, videos that lead to subscriptions rank higher. That’s why you always see people asking for a subscribe at the beginning and end of their videos.

It’s a great tactic.

Brian: Last but not least, approximately 20% of the people who start to watch your video will leave after the first 10 seconds.

And this one does relate to most social media channels. You gotta’ create a killer intro with a solid hook in the first few seconds to keep people around.

Hailley: Thank you so much for tuning in to the Science of Social Media today. The show notes for this episode are now available on the Buffer Blog at blog.buffer.com with a complete transcript.

If you ever want to get in touch with me or Hailley, we’re always here for your on social media using the hashtag #bufferpodcast. You can also say hi to us anytime and hello@bufferapp.com

Brian: Yes we would absolutely love to hear from you all. Fun fact, we just surpassed 17,000 weekly listeners here on the show. Big shoutout to you all for, well, being awesome.

And a huge thank to everyone leaving iTunes reviews! Wherever you may be tuning in from and reviewing around the world, you hold a special place in our hearts.

Next two weeks we’re chatting LinkedIn strategy and content discovery – a few you won’t want to miss. Until then everyone!

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website

Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 17,500+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

A New Facebook Guide to Creating Video, The Shift to Instagram Stories Ads and Messenger, and 5 YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss posted first on http://getfblikeblog.blogspot.com

[mariemary1]

A New Facebook Guide to Creating Video, The Shift to Instagram Stories Ads and Messenger, and 5 YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss

Looking to catch up on the latest social media news, but short on time? We have you covered! This week (episode #110) we’re chatting about all of this and more:

According to an interesting article from Digiday, Facebook is shifting gears with brand advertisers. After years of trying to sell brands on the Facebook news feed, they’re changing their pitch to Instagram, Stories, and Messenger engagement.

Facebook interviewed some of the top video producers on social media media and compiled their latest tips, tricks, and helpful suggestions to move your business forward with video.

YouTube requires a unique focus. The best practices for YouTube video won’t necessarily be the same as they are on Facebook or Twitter. We have some really interesting YouTube stats for you on how to improve your brand’s performance on YouTube.

Join 17,500+ weekly listeners for the Buffer podcast, The Science of Social Media, where we bring you the latest and greatest in social media marketing news, updates, stories, insights, and actionable takeaways.

Let’s dive in!

A new Facebook guide to creating video, the shift to Instagram Stories ads and Messenger, and 5 YouTube facts you can’t miss [complete podcast transcript]

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation between Hailley Griffis and Brian Peters.

Part I: The Shift to Instagram Stories Ads and Messenger

Part II: A Brand New Facebook Guide to Creating Video

Part III: 5 Interesting YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss

Brian: Hi everyone! I’m Brian Peters and this is The Science of Social Media, a podcast by Buffer. Your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and learning.

Hailley: Welcome to episode #110! I’m Hailley Griffis and this week we’ve got an exciting episode on the docket for you this week. Tons of interesting things to talk about in the world of social media, including a brand new guide from Facebook on creating videos, the shift to instagram stories and messenger, youtube, and more!

Brian: Usually these news-style episodes are filled with things that have already happened on social media, but this week we’re looking towards the future and how your brand can stay relevant on social media in the coming weeks and months.

Hailley: Let’s kick off the show!

Part I: The Shift to Instagram Stories Advertising and Messenger Engagement

Brian: Facebook is shifting gears with brand advertisers. Well, they are according to a really interesting article from Digiday.

Essentially, after years of trying to sell brands on the Facebook news feed, they’re changing the pitch to Instagram.

Hailley: Brand marketers have somewhat cooled off on the news feed as an advertising vehicle because they are beginning to see it as little more than a place for less-premium direct response ads, said four ad buyers interviewed for the Digiday article.

Many big advertisers have noticed that Facebook hasn’t been able to make brand budgets work in the news feed because of content competition and saturation, and so it’s doubling down on its strengths — which is performance.

Brian: The Facebook news feed’s original selling point was about being reach-driven, but as Digiday mentioned, over time brand advertisers have had growing concerns about the news feed being a “brand-safe” environment and whether ads there are actually seen in the feed.

Users are also pulling back from Facebook in favor of Instagram.

According to Merkle, ad-spend growth on Instagram has quadrupled (roughly 177 percent), while Facebook ad spend has only grown around 40 percent in Q2, compared to a year ago.

Hailley: To add to that, Facebook’s market value last month dropped by $120 billion — the largest ever corporate loss in history — when it announced that growth would slow.

And so with places to show ads in the news feed running out, Facebook is looking to their pride and joy, Instagram, to help accelerate growth quickly.

Brian: Facebook executives, with all that is going on, said they are looking to fine-tune their pitch.

In short, and I thought this was a really great way to look at the current ad ecosystem, Facebook’s news feed is being sold as a product for performance advertisers.

Instagram, with its short-form video Stories and visual content, is more of the brand-building play.

And Messenger is for brands interested in customer relationship management. Which, as we’ve talked about in the past, is extremely important in today’s day and age.

Hailley: Agreed. It’s a lot of the reason we’re putting so much time and investment in building out and enhancing our product Buffer Reply. We think that customer service, monitoring, and brand management will be a critical piece of marketing strategies moving forward.

But of all of the advertising options within the Facebook ecosystem, Stories is the one that Facebook sees as its next big revenue driver.

Stories is now used by 400 million daily active users, according to Instagram.

Brian: I think one of the most interesting part of Stories, besides it’s incredible growth is the idea of vertical video, which is still relatively new to so many brands.

So demand for the Stories ads product is still low, but I really believe that we will soon be at a point where a good chunk of brands and budgets are using Stories as an ad platform.

Hailley: One of the things that Instagram’s really has going for them is even though their total audience is smaller than Facebook’s (about half), engagement is super strong.

And I think that’s in part because it’s a highly visual platform where brands are almost forced to create beautiful content. Because if they don’t they won’t be able to compete with those that do.

On the Facebook side, as we discussed in episode 109, brands have seen engagement in the news feed drop since shifting to prioritizing user interactions over brand content earlier this year.

Brian: According to interviews in this Digiday article, Instagram’s engagement can be three times higher than on Facebook and cheaper to reach. Which we’ve definitely experienced first-hand here at Buffer.

For example. Greg Allum, global head of social at Jellyfish, found that the CPM (or cost per 1,000 reach) on Stories is four to five times cheaper than Facebook’s news-feed ads.

And for marketing software company Kenshoo’s clients, the average price for Instagram Stories ads seen 1,000 times was $4.70 versus $5.34 for standard Facebook ads. Not a huge difference, but noticeable, especially at scale.

Hailley: It’s pretty clear that Facebook is heavily focused on improving the creative for Instagram Stories. It does seem like they’re launching a new feature every week over there.

And so for lots of brands and small businesses that means working more through influencers and improving their creatives. Creatives being video quality, audience targeting, product ads, and other things.

Eventually, of course, Instagram hopes to double down on revenue by pointing big ads budgets towards Instagram TV. The next evolution of Instagram Stories. We’ll keep you posted on that here on the show.

Part II: A brand new Facebook guide to creating video on social media

Brian: Video is an opportunity that keeps growing, and it’s evolving faster than ever. Vertical, square, landscape, whatever the format, the data shows that people LOVE consuming video content on social media.

Hailley: Recently, Facebook spoke with some of the top video producers on social media media and compiled their latest tips, tricks, and helpful suggestions to move your business forward with video.

We thought we’d share a few of our favorites here with you today.

Brian: At the very top of the Facebook list of best-practices is this idea of delivering personalized experiences at every touch point for your audience with video.

Which sounds great, but what does that actually mean?

On the organic side of things, that means investing in brand awareness campaigns. More often than not, people aren’t looking to be sold to, at least they don’t think they are.

Hailley: By creating content that’s focused on brand awareness, not sales your business can accomplish a few things. One is that you’ll grow engagement and trust. Top-of-the-funnel content is much more likely to be shared by users.

By simply getting in front of potential customers on social media, you’ll help to increase the chances of actual sales down the road.

Brian: Exactly, and that might mean educational types of content, fun, entertaining content, contests, rewards, and more. In this stage you’re focusing on providing informative and valuable interactions with customers.

Once you’ve got your brand awareness campaigns running, that’s when you can begin to focus your efforts on moving people down the funnel.

Retargeting users who have previously viewed and demonstrated interest in your product by visiting certain pages or even added an item to their cart, is a great way to help them along.

Hailley: Right, and the video content at this stage shouldn’t necessarily be sales-focused either, though it could be. Aim to give these folks reason to take the next step by inspiring them to purchase or learn more.

But be sure to be consistent with your brand and your overall narrative. At every part of the customer journey, you should be considering the relationships you are building with your audience.

Are they seeing random, conflicting ads from your brand? Or are they seeing one, cohesive story?

Brian: And I know we’re not all used to creating humorous content, BUT, a breakdown of 250 video ads from 22 brands on Facebook found that humorous videos can drive a 70% higher video completion rate for informational videos and cost 60% less than emotional video ads.

Which really goes to show the psychology of people on social. I feel like when I see a funny ad I relate to it a lot more, and in turn, relate to the business a lot more. I might even share it with a friend.

Hailley: Another great tip from Facebook in this study was that you should aim to present your brand within the first 1–2 seconds of the video.

So typically you might save your logo or branding until the end of the video, but adjusting the video creative to the first 1-2 seconds can help to improve brand lift.

And make sure to tell your story with visual descriptions, including text overlays at the beginning which can provide important information and context to viewers. Studies show it helps to increase view time by up to 30%.

Brian: One part from this study that I found interesting is when they talked about video length. And I don’t know why I didn’t expect Facebook to say this, but they cited that to capture attention, remember that 6 and 15 seconds are the new digital standards for video.

So super short, actionable videos are where it’s at in 2018. Shorter videos tend to perform better for capturing newer audiences’ attention and can develop brand awareness.

Hailley: Yup, concise messaging and videos are absolutely the focus these days.

We should pretty much assume that the viewer is unaware of the video content starting out. Which means you have to give them a reason to stick around.

And when measuring the success of your videos, focus on relevancy score. Relevancy determines if your audience is stopping to watch your videos. Whether you’re running direct response or branding campaigns, you need the content interesting right off the bat.

Brian: Yes, relevancy score is the main thing we look at for all of our advertising content, particularly when it comes to brand awareness. A score of 8,9 or 10 is great for top of the funnel campaigns.

And typically, we get scores of 9 or 10 when we boost organic posts or user-generated content.

I think it’s because this type of content is less intrusive compared to produced ads. Users are more likely to engage longer with ads that mimic the other content in their News Feed

Hailley: Exactly and this goes back to to truly understanding your audience. We’re living in a mobile-first generation and our campaigns should cater to that behavior.

For example, people are making on-the-spot decisions via their phones, does your video reflect that?

Consumers are reading reviews and doing research, does your video incorporate social proof?

Brian: Such a great way to think about it, Hailley.

Today, consumers have incredibly high expectations for right-here, right-now experiences and they are increasingly making last-minute plans. Make sure you’re brand reflects those behaviors.

And speaking of mobile, Facebook recommends to not be afraid of the 3-second rule. Basically that the first 3 seconds is as long as it takes for people to decide if they’ll continue watching or not.

Try and capture the viewer’s attention at the beginning with a strong hook.

Hailley: And of course, if the theme or atmosphere of your content calls for a longer-form video and its performance is delivering high returns, don’t be afraid to push the limits of each advertising channel.

You should absolutely be experimenting with different types of videos, lengths, styles, and format. Each brand is unique and will experience different results based on their audiences.

So just as a recap here for everyone:

When you plan, shoot and produce branded content, start with social media and mobile viewing in mind.

Brian: Exactly and make sure your creative idea can be conveyed in as little as 6 to15 seconds

Challenge yourself or your creative team to show how the video can get the same message across in a shorter timespan.

And lastly, always include captions if your video has dialogue or voiceovers. That keep your audience around and watching for longer.

Part III: 5 Important YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss

Hailley: If you’re ready to hear more about video, perfect, because we stumbled upon some pretty amazing YouTube facts you just can’t miss as a business or brand.

But like all platforms, YouTube requires unique focus. The best practices for YouTube video won’t necessarily be the same as they are on Facebook or Twitter.

Brian: With that, we’ve got some really awesome YouTube stats for you on how to improve your brand’s performance on YouTube. And if you find these interesting, you’ll love episode 95 where we talk about strategies that helped us grow our channel by more than 59% in 30 days.

Anyways, back to the stats. First is that comments are directly related to the ranking of your YouTube videos. The more comments a video has the higher it typically ranks.

Hailley: Second, longer videos heavily outperform shorter videos on YouTube. Get this, the average length of videos that rank on the first page is 14 minutes and 50 seconds.

And that goes back to YouTube being as much of a search engine as it is a social media channel. User intent is super high and so they’re willing to spend more time watching content to learn.

Brian: This next stat is obvious, but worth mentioning, and that’s that video views have a significant correlation with video rankings. In order to get more views to improve rankings, you have to make sure that you include keywords in your title, meta tag, and description as well as optimize the video for YouTube with things like length, keyword, research and more.

Again, all covered in episode 95 of this show.

Hailley: Next up is that subscription driven videos have a reasonably strong correlation with video rankings. In other words, videos that lead to subscriptions rank higher. That’s why you always see people asking for a subscribe at the beginning and end of their videos.

It’s a great tactic.

Brian: Last but not least, approximately 20% of the people who start to watch your video will leave after the first 10 seconds.

And this one does relate to most social media channels. You gotta’ create a killer intro with a solid hook in the first few seconds to keep people around.

Hailley: Thank you so much for tuning in to the Science of Social Media today. The show notes for this episode are now available on the Buffer Blog at blog.buffer.com with a complete transcript.

If you ever want to get in touch with me or Hailley, we’re always here for your on social media using the hashtag #bufferpodcast. You can also say hi to us anytime and hello@bufferapp.com

Brian: Yes we would absolutely love to hear from you all. Fun fact, we just surpassed 17,000 weekly listeners here on the show. Big shoutout to you all for, well, being awesome.

And a huge thank to everyone leaving iTunes reviews! Wherever you may be tuning in from and reviewing around the world, you hold a special place in our hearts.

Next two weeks we’re chatting LinkedIn strategy and content discovery – a few you won’t want to miss. Until then everyone!

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website

Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 17,500+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Thank A New Facebook Guide to Creating Video, The Shift to Instagram Stories Ads and Messenger, and 5 YouTube Facts You Can’t Miss for first publishing this post.

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