#the bottom link summarises what happened but yeah

[yibo-wang]

why don't you like new ( I'm just curious don't mean to offend or anything)

It's alright none taken.

So back during 2020 days n*w

1. made a disgusting comment about namtan's (his costar's) body (during a live I believe)

2. made an ableist comment

it was totally uncalled for. He was radiosilent for days and let other people make excuses about him and what not and then pulled out a notes app "apology" which ngl was just making excuses and asking people to forgive him cause let's be honest he needed people to forgive him for his career

so yeah I'm really not looking forward to seeing him star in a show like cherry magic

[journey-to-the-attic]

3rd anni FINALE: brothers / paws n claws

ao3 link

note: based loosely on the pop quiz of the same name, though with the requested change of levi being a snake rather than a giraffe - and since that was different, i decided to do something new with ik as well (this is what that random animal poll was for). this one's a proper long one, so i'm deeply sorry if the keep reading bar ever breaks

∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎

You'd normally think that an event that makes Luke flee the House of Lamentation, tearfully shouting, “I’ll go get help!” must be some kind of catastrophe. Well, it still might shape up to be - but I'm hopeful that it won't. Right now, it's a situation at most.

Said situation can be summarised with one sentence: there was something wrong with the cake. This is vague enough to be misleading, though, so I’ll elaborate: there was a potion in the cake, and it made Beel grow fluffy ears and a tail, then shortly thereafter started doing the same thing to everyone else.

‘Fluffy ears and a tail’ might not sound too bad, but Luke wouldn’t have run like that if that was all. Beel has rapidly developed a mouthful of sharp teeth, a bone-shakingly powerful roar, and a sudden, even more pronounced taste for meat. Raw meat, specifically, because that is what lions eat. It'd be cool if it wasn’t for the fact that we had been the nearest sources of raw meat when the hunger first hit.

The only thing to do, really, was run and hide. And that probably wouldn’t even have worked (Beel is also now even faster and stronger than usual) if Mammon hadn’t suddenly sprouted new striped features of his own and pounced on him in return. Things just sort of went crazy after that.

I haven’t been able to keep track of them all, but knowing their track record, everyone else has probably been hit with the curse, too. Asmo definitely has, at least - I know that because it happened while he was rushing me to the safety of his room's two locks.

“It’s weird that the potion changed your clothes as well,” I say, trying to figure out whether that’s a dress or a really long blouse as he pushes me in. “Isn’t it?”

Asmo doesn’t answer for a moment - he turns the key, then peers fretfully through the peephole. After a moment, he hisses, “That doesn’t matter, does it? You know Mammon’s a tiger? There—”

There’s a knock on the door, and Asmo skitters backwards. After a moment, there’s another, mellower knock, then a plaintive, “Hello?”

Though it sounds closer to a ‘he-wo?’. Asmo frowns. “Levi? Why do you sound like that?”

There’s a shuffle. “I goh— got fangth. It’th… wha’ever, can I come in?”

Asmo doesn’t move for a moment, but relents quickly. Levi sidles in, head turning from side to side, tail dragging in behind him. It’s longer and thinner than in demon form, and iridescent green instead of deep grey - his pupils look narrower, too, and there are dark markings along his cheeks.

“Whoa!” I hadn’t gotten a good look at him when he first started transforming. “You’re a snake!”

“I notithed,” He says unhappily. He has fangs now - long, curved ones that keep catching on his bottom lip. “It’th a nigh’mare. Theeth teeth…”

“Are they retractable?”

“I’unno…” He scrunches his face in concentration. The fangs suddenly swing up into the back of his mouth. “...oh! Yes! Finally!”

“When did you switch?” I ask as he opens and closes his mouth several times with relish. “Asmo went a few minutes ago, I think he’s a panda… it looked like it hurt.”

He makes a popping sound, then releases a long sigh. “Eh - not really? It’s more like everything gets really hot and itchy for a bit. Isn’t anything happening to you?”

I look down at myself. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Guess the potion only works on demons. Lucky…” Levi rubs his arms, then abruptly dives into Asmo’s bed. “Brr! Why’s it so cold in here?”

“Snakes are cold-blooded, right? So you need to get heat from somewhere else.” I lean over and plant my hands on his cheeks. “Is that nice?”

“Ooh… yeah…” He blinks at me. “Hrm. Everything looks so weird. It’s, like… fuzzy.”

I squint at his face. Wait - those aren’t markings after all. “Oh! You’ve got heat pits! You’re, like, seeing temperature. That’s so cool.”

Asmo looks as well, then recoils, hands flying to his mouth. “Eww! There’s holes in your face!”

“As if you don’t have a nose,” Levi snaps, but reaches self-consciously to cover his cheeks anyway. “...ugh. I’m still cold.”

I’m not large enough to be an effective heater - what we really need is either a heat lamp, or the sun, neither of which Asmo has in his room. He resorts to dragging Levi to his bathtub instead, and lighting candles in a circle around him. It looks like we’re using him for a nefarious ritual, but it seems to provide Levi with a little relief.

“It’s like I can see them way clearer than everything else,” Levi says, squinting, then covers his nose. “And they smell super strong. You know I’ve got venom now, too? I got some on the carpet and it started, like, dissolving.”

So the potion definitely isn’t just a cosmetic thing. I glance at Asmo. “Do you feel any different?”

“Hmm. Maybe?” He stretches, and for the first time his sleeves fall down enough for me to see his hands. The pads of his fingers look thicker, and his nails look more like claws. “Like, I kinda wanna go to sleep, I guess.”

He leans forward on the edge of the bathtub, then fumbles and slips down into a heap. “Ooh. Gosh, this whole thing is weird. How do you think everyone’s doing?”

“It might not have even worked on Lucifer.” Those candles really do smell strong. It’s making my nose tickle. “What animal do you th— achoo!”

I can tell something’s changed as soon as I open my eyes again, but Levi’s yelp and jerk backwards (dangerously close to the candles) confirms it. I look down. Those definitely aren’t the clothes I was wearing a minute ago.

“Oh,” I say, defeated. “So the potion did work on me.”

“You’ve got a tail!” Asmo squeals, trying several times to scramble to his feet before succeeding, and immediately reaching for me. “And your ears!”

“Whoa whoa whoa—” I think I can empathise with Hyde when Aunt Lisa rushes him now. “Wait, wait, wait— put me down for a sec—”

Asmo (somewhat unwillingly) releases me, and I hurry to the mirror. White ears, a bushy red tail, distinct markings across my cheeks… am I wearing gloves? No - that’s straight-up a paw. It’s alien trying to move my fingers and watching the claws flex instead.

…my right hand is still normal, though. That one is just wearing a sort of glove. It’s like the potion got mad about not being able to do anything to the prosthetic and doubled its effects on the intact one.

I lift my paw as if to swipe at the mirror, then bare my teeth at it. “Rarrgh!”

Behind me, Levi’s reflection soundlessly pretends to get shot in the heart and collapses backwards into the tub. Asmo isn’t nearly so quiet - he squeals again, twice as loud this time.

I give him a moment to compose himself, then turn and announce, “I think I’m a red panda.”

“Ooh! So we’re matching?!” He slides over and sets his head on the crown of my head, then brandishes his own claws at the mirror as well. “Oh, we need to get pictures. Or film some videos! We can’t let this go to waste!”

“Hey, hey, slow down.” Levi emerges from the tub again. “What about everyone else? If the potion even works on humans, then Lucifer’s probably…”

“Oh, yeah! We totally need pictures of him, too.”

“That’s not the point—”

Levi pauses to yawn, but it’s nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. He just keeps going, wider than should really be possible. His fangs click out, and the entire roof of his mouth seems to turn inside out for a moment - then everything realigns, and his jaw swings shut again.

“What?” He asks after a moment. Asmo is staring at him in horror - and I with fascination.

“What happened to your bones?” Asmo asks in a hush.

“That was so cool,” I say with the same intonation. “And gross.”

“...you don’t sound like that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not.”

“That potion really is crazy,” Asmo whispers. He looks haunted. “Should that stuff really be allowed? What’s Solomon doing in that lab? Am I gonna start doing that?”

“You’re fine, Asmo,” I reassure, patting him on the arm - he latches onto me like a stress blanket. “Pandas don’t do that.”

“You promise?” He asks tearfully.

“Promise.” I think of all the videos I’ve seen over the years. “And everyone loves pandas, anyway. They’re super cute.”

Levi crosses his arms over the edge of the bathtub and rests his chin atop them, then heaves a melancholic sigh. “And everyone’s scared of snakes ‘cause they think they’re gross.”

“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport,” Asmo scolds - though, to be fair, that’s easy for him to say. “We don’t think snakes are gross.”

“Uh, yes you do. You went ew about my heat pits.”

“That’s not the same thing!”

“I love snakes,” I declare. “Anyway, every animal’s kind of gross sometimes. You should watch Planet Earth.”

All while we’re saying this, I’m beginning to worry a little about the others. Levi’s the only reptile so far - if we’re lucky, that’s the furthest up the evolutionary tree anyone else has gone, but if we’re unlucky, one of them could be a fish. If the potion’s capable of giving Levi heat pits and the bone structure to actually unhinge his jaw, there’s no reason it couldn’t give someone gills.

I wonder how the potion decides what it’s going to turn us into. Levi being a snake makes sense… but Beel being a lion and Asmo a giant panda feel more arbitrary. (Though I couldn’t imagine what it’d look like if they turned into a fly and a scorpion.) And I don’t know why I’m a red panda, either.

“I think I’m gonna go look for Beel,” I decide after a while. He’s probably sated himself at least a little by now - he knows where the fridge is. “You guys stay here.”

“You think we’re gonna send you to the lions?” Levi asks in disbelief, and starts attempting to get out of the tub. “No dice! You’re staying here, where it’s safe. I’ll go check on Beel.”

“You have to stay here, though - you’re cold-blooded now, remember?” I push him back down, which takes surprisingly little effort. “So you have to keep warm.”

“Come on, d’you really think these candles are doing anything for me? They’re tiny.”

Now that he mentions it… “Hmm. Maybe we should run you a hot bath.”

“You want me to take a bath while you go talk to a lion?”

“He’s right, hon.” Asmo interjects. “We’re not the ones who need protecting.”

“Come on, we do this every time something—” I sigh loudly and try to compose myself. “—okay, look, you know you never win this fight. Nothing’s happened to me before. And it's just Beel, anyway.”

They exchange a look. After a moment, Levi huffs. “Fine - but you’d better not do anything stupid, alright?! I’ve seen this go wrong in way too many shows!”

“And if it looks like trouble, you’re coming straight back here,” Asmo adds. “Or I’ll cry. I mean it.”

I sigh, but smile at him anyway. “Sure, Asmo. Take a nap or something.”

It’s finally business as usual. We have an impromptu team handshake - which is nice, that’s never happened before - and then I let myself out into the hall, and into the figurative jungle.

It’s eerily quiet out here. Or it is for a moment, at least, because then something crashes in the kitchen.

I can take a guess at who it is. I hurry downstairs - I feel more agile, somehow. I don’t think my feet are paws as well, but these boots definitely look like them. I’d thought having a tail would feel stranger, but the sensation seems to have settled in seamlessly. It feels as if it’s been there the whole time.

Beel, just as I’d thought, has his head in the fridge when I get there. I can hear glass clinking and plastic crinkling. Several containers are already lying empty on the table. The only real difference between this and his usual fridge raids is that he’s gone exclusively for the raw meat.

I’ve never seen him get food poisoning, but that doesn’t mean he can’t. Well, maybe the potion gave him a lion’s stomach too... “Uh - Beel?”

He makes a sound of surprise that isn’t that different from a cat’s ‘mrrp’ - just a lot deeper - and pulls back from the fridge with startling swiftness. There’s a scrap of something pink hanging out of his mouth.

“...are you having fun?” I ask after a moment. Ignoring all new features, his demeanour looks about the same. Maybe his eyes are more dilated than usual.

He makes a rumbling sound at the base of his throat and swallows the rest of the scrap in his mouth, slamming the fridge shut with his elbow and moving to the sink. He cups his hands under the faucet and drinks deeply - every move is poised and purposeful. Then he closes his eyes and shakes himself all over, like a wet dog.

When he opens his eyes, they look normal again. I can’t say the same for the rest of him - his hair is longer and poofier, as if in imitation of a mane, and there’s fur around his neck that makes him look almost twice as large as usual.

“You switched, too?” He asks after a moment. I catch a glimpse of sharp, bloodstained canines, and recoil before I can stop myself. “...hm? Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah, peachy.” Do red pandas’ tails fall between their legs when they’re nervous, too? I feel like mine’s trying to do that. “What about you? Do you like being a lion?”

“I don’t like… liking all this,” He says after a moment, gesturing at all the empty boxes. I try not to think too hard about the image they conjure. “I mean, it’s way better when it’s cooked. You can put all sorts of different stuff on it to make it tasty. But it’s the only thing I feel like eating right now.”

“Well, that’s how a lion eats.”

Beel looks at me for a moment. Then, unprompted, he reaches up and scratches my fluffy new ears. I feel my shoulders fall. “Hey. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I hadn’t even noticed myself tensing up. It’s not like I thought he ever would, but… actually, I can’t tell if those were the red panda’s survival instincts, or my own. I’m fairly sure the latter hasn’t been working for a while.

“Yeah, I know,” I sigh after a moment, sitting down with him. Using my tail as a cushion, I can’t feel the chill of the kitchen tiles at all. “I just… I dunno. Do you know what happened to everyone else?

He thinks for a moment, then looks a little alarmed. “Uh— I think I was chasing Satan for a while. He was moving all fast and funny, and I just— I don’t know. It felt like I had to grab him. I don’t think I caught him, but…”

“We’d better see, just in case,” I conclude, getting up. “I need to check on everyone, anyway. Asmo’s with Levi already…”

“Belphie went to the observatory,” Beel says thoughtfully, following me out of the kitchen. “And I haven’t seen Lucifer since we split up. He looked like he was gonna follow you and Asmo, but then…”

“Did it look like he transformed?”

“Uhh…” He looks mildly guilty. “I don’t know. I stopped thinking straight. Mammon bit me, and then I was chasing him instead…”

“He bit you?” I saw Mammon jumping at him, but I didn’t think he’d gone that far.

“Yeah. Pretty hard, actually. It only hurt for a bit, though.” Beel points to his shoulder. “I think he thought I’d go after you first, so he was trying to chase me off. I don’t know where he went after that…”

I sigh. “Well, he’s got to be somewhere in the house. Let’s go find Belphie first.”

“Mmm? Sure.” He pauses to yawn. It isn’t quite as spectacular as Levi’s, but it’s impressive all the same. The teeth are still a little unsettling. “Be careful. I don’t know what he turned into.”

He rubs my ears again, then moves away with long, languid steps, tail trailing lazily behind him. My own tail swishes anxiously for a moment before I steel myself and follow him.

It turns out Belphie didn’t even make it into the observatory - he got into the music room, then apparently couldn’t be bothered to walk any further past the divider and just curled up under the piano. Beel very nearly stands on an extended arm before he seems to smell his presence.

“Belphie?” He crouches down and reaches for the thick brown tail he’s using as a blanket. “Wake u—”

As soon as his hand closes around the fur, Belphie’s entire body goes rigid - the underside of the piano presses his ears flat against his head as he rolls out from under it and flips upright in an instant, poised as if to pounce. It’s all so quick, all so alarmingly sudden, that my entire body tenses, jerks backwards, and I find myself with both hands raised high in the air.

I don’t know what I expected to do, only that I had to make myself look as large as possible. Belphie - eyes wide open in a way that they almost never are immediately after waking - looks at me for a moment, then laughs so loudly that Beel jumps back this time.

“Where’ve you been?” He asks, grinning. His teeth aren’t nearly as pointy as Beel’s, but his smile is a lot more devious. “Hey, I’m just messing with you.”

“Uh huh,” I say, trying not to look too scared. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to bring my hands down. I just look like I’ve long since surrendered. “I knew that.”

Belphie snickers. His tail curves up behind him, ears swivelling to the side of his head. “C’mon, relax. Let’s play a game.”

On the last word, he hops just a bit forward, and I take a great big step back. Beel glances between us, then commands, looking mildly concerned, “Be nice, Belphie.”

“I am being nice,” Belphie says with a sniff, baring his teeth at me again. The longer I look at his grin, though, the more it begins to look playful. “Hey. Hey!”

He darts forward again, but this time I’m ready for him - I pounce straight at his chest, knocking him within an inch of smacking his head on the piano, then quickly get up and scurry to the other side of the room. Belphie springs straight back to his feet and rushes so swiftly at me that there’s little I can do before he scoops me up with deceivingly gentle hands and tosses me a fair distance across the room.

A ‘fair distance’, however, is not long enough to prevent me from running straight back at him (for some reason, my hands end up in the air again) and bowling into his knees to knock him over. He lets out a sound between a yelp, a yip and a laugh, tumbling back onto his stomach and forgoing even getting back to his feet before he charges again.

“Wait—” Beel’s head swings back and forth until he’s blinking from the whiplash. “You two, come on—”

Belphie swipes at my feet at the same time that I seize his hood, sending us both back to the ground in a tangled heap. I recover first and unpin myself from beneath his unexpectedly heavy limbs, and register Beel standing over us - without stopping to wonder if it’s a good idea, I reach up, hook my claws into the fur around his shoulders, and scramble up him like a tree.

He only wobbles for a moment before balancing himself again. I adjust myself onto his back, then peer triumphantly down at Belphie through his mane.

“That’s cheating,” He complains, sitting up. “C’mon, are you really doing this?”

“You started it.” I muffle through Beel’s mane.

“What? You literally jumped at me first.”

“You’re bigger than me, so it doesn’t count.”

Beel makes a deep, rumbling sound that I’ll take as one of amusement. Hmm. I’m a lot closer to his ears from here.

Belphie yawns and flicks his tail about, then wraps his arms around it like it’s a toy. “Whatever. Bet you’re only getting away with it ‘cause you’re cute. Right, Beel?”

Beel lifts his hands innocently. Meanwhile, keeping my right hand latched to his mane, I reach up with my left to touch his ears. “I’m just standing. I can’t control what IK does.”

“Uh, yes you can. You can literally just pick her up. Any time.”

Beel’s fur is softer than I was expecting, but still coarser than any dog I’ve ever pet. I turn around to look at his tail. It’s sort of similar to Belphie’s usual demon tail - sleek along most of its length, but with a big fluffy bit at the end. He’s holding it too far down for me to reach from here, but if I twist a little more…

“Whoops—” Turns out I twisted too far. My claws detach, and I rapidly start slipping down his back.

Belphie’s eyes flash up. As smoothly as if he’d anticipated it, he ducks forward and cushions the landing with his tail - then draws in a breath through his teeth and scrunches his face up. “Oww. That hurt.”

“No one told you to do that,” I counter, but hurriedly shuffle off anyway.

“And let you break your tail? I don’t think so.” He reaches over before I can get far enough away and squishes my cheeks inward, then puts on a voice that he reserves for his most infuriating bits. “You gotta be careful, you’re just a little baby. Look at your cute little ears. What are you meant to be?”

“Not telling you!” I try to wrestle my face out of his hands, but he’s a lot better at this game than either Beel or I am. “Hey! I’m gonna bite you if you don’t stop!”

“Fine,” He sighs with unnecessarily gloom, and acquiesces. “You’re so mean to me. Well, do you know what I’m meant to be?”

I fold my arms and regard him for a moment. It’s not as obvious as the others have been so far. “I dunno. A weasel?”

He gives me a look. “Be nice.”

“I am being nice. What’s your problem with weasels?” I lean forward and pick up his tail at the tip. It’s heavier than it looks. “...well, your ears are the wrong shape, anyway. Um… you could be a hyena. Do a laugh?”

“Ha ha ha.”

“A proper one.”

“That is my proper one.”

“What do you think, Beel?”

He starts. He doesn't seem to have been paying attention - just watching us with a warm look on his face. “Uh— a cow?”

“A cow?” Belphie repeats incredulously. “Have you ever seen a cow? You just want steak, don’t you?”

Beel’s face says ‘guilty as charged’. I prop myself up on my knees and start ruffling Belphie’s ears without permission. They feel like they could be extra-big cat ears.

“I think you’re some kind of desert fox,” I announce. “Try barking.”

He looks offended. “No way.”

“I command you to—”

“I think it’s time for Beel to have a snack,” He says loudly, and gets to his feet. “We’re going now.”

“It’d be easier if you just do it on your own,” I say persuasively, following behind as Beel gets unceremoniously pushed out of the room. “It’s less embarrassing. It’s on your terms.”

“I’m not barking!” He insists, moving a little faster, as if that will stop me from speaking. “Make Lucifer do it. Wolves are way closer to dogs.”

“I d— oh, so the potion did work on him?” My attention is successfully shifted. “Where did he go?”

“I dunno, I wasn’t looking— where are you going?”

I’m already in the other room when I realise I was meant to answer that question, but it doesn’t matter that much. There are only so many places to be in the House of Lamentation, and Lucifer’s pretty predictable. He might well have gone back to his office to do his work for the day.

I look into the common room just in case, which is empty - but, rather suspiciously, there’s a lot of grey fur stuck to the cushions in Lucifer’s usual spot. The common room has a pretty distinct mix of scents to it, and Lucifer’s is strong enough that he can’t have left too long ago.

I’m not sure I enjoy having such strong senses. It’s easier not to pay attention to it all when I’m in the middle of something else, but it’s overwhelming as soon as I stop and try to dissect everything.

I sit down for a moment, close my eyes, and listen carefully to the silence. There’s some distant clanking and conversation from the kitchen, but other than that it’s just quiet…

…the weird thing is that we all still have our normal ears, on top of the new animal ones. I can’t tell which ones are doing the work.

Garden, a voice in the back of my head suddenly supplies, and I open my eyes again. I don’t think I even heard anything - not consciously, anyway - but it feels like the right thing to do.

And apparently it is. Lucifer is sitting out on the grass and doing absolutely nothing.

Which is quite suspicious, really. But all I can think about is how he doesn’t seem to have heard the door open, and that it would be really funny if I snuck up on him.

I take a slow, careful step onto the lawn. He doesn’t give any indication that he’s noticed anything. Maybe he can’t hear me over the rustling of his own tail swiping idly through the grass. I think this is about as close as I can get away with. Can I jump that far? Only one way to find out.

I crouch back and adjust myself. Then, using the soft grass as a springboard, I launch myself ever-so-gently at his shoulders and grab him by the head.

Lucifer doesn’t scream - I wouldn’t have expected him to, and if he had, I’d have been very alarmed. But he does let out a loud, gruff ‘heurgh!’ and nearly topple straight over, which is about as good as you get with him.

“Hey,” I announce, into his regular ear, then lean up and do the same into the wolf ones, just in case. “Hey!”

“Yes, I can hear you,” He sighs, catching himself on a hand and trying to act stern. (His tail is wagging.) “And what do you think you’re doing?”

“Dunno.” I lean forward until I’m just about hanging over his shoulder. Lucifer has to switch from hunching forward to tilting back to keep balance. “What’re you doing?”

He’s quiet for a moment. I get the feeling that he doesn’t know, either. “Keeping watch.”

“Watch on what?” The only thing in front of us is a big hedge and some flowers. “There’s nothing here.”

“Hmm,” He says, which isn’t an answer. “Shouldn’t you be inside?”

“Well, I was looking for you—” I tip further forward still, and at this point Lucifer seems to decide that it’d be more prudent to just lie back, so that I’m lying on my front instead of attempting to fall head-first into the grass. “—oof— ‘cause I didn’t think the potion would work on you. And I wanted to see what you were like.”

“You wanted to see me do something embarrassing,” He concludes, and waves off my defensive ‘nooo’. “I didn’t think it would work on you, either. What are you, exactly?”

“Red panda.” I reach across his chest and poke at one of the straps running down his shirt. “Wow. Your suspenders are kind of ugly.”

There’s a short, sharp exhale, and then he remembers to be offended. “I didn’t choose them.”

“Well, I was saying - it’s weird that the potion knows how to make clothes, isn’t it? I mean, it’s adding bones and everything…”

“Which is exactly why I’d like to question Solomon about what he put in it,” He says, and now he does sound genuinely severe. “He’s lucky it hasn’t done any damage. I don’t know how Luke managed to bake it into a cake.”

The tip of his tail - the rest of it is trapped under his back - has started lashing angrily at the grass. I wonder if scratching his ears would help calm him down, or just make him madder.

“It’s not his fault,” I say in what I hope is a persuasive voice. Maybe it’d help if I sounded more pitiful. “And I helped him bake it, too.”

He gives me a look. “You’re the one I’m most worried about. A human body shouldn’t be able to handle the same kind of magical stress as a demon, and it wasn’t exactly comfortable when I transformed. Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

“Funny story, actually. I just sneezed and then it happened.”

“You just sneezed,” He repeats.

“Didn’t feel a thing,” I confirm. “Anyway, it’s cool, isn’t it? Like - Levi has heat pits now.”

“We still don’t know how long this is going to last,” He says, but he does look less tense. “...well, you might as well have fun with it.”

“Do you feel like howling at all?” I ask, looking up at the moon. I mean, I know it’s not actually a thing, but even so… “Actually, do you feel any different? Like… is the wolf within talking?”

“You make it sound more dramatic than it is,” Lucifer says with another little exhale. “But yes.”

“What’s it saying?”

“To hunt, mostly. Feed the family, or something along those lines. But we’ve been grocery-shopping this week already - and I’m not sure what I’d hunt even if I listened. What about your… ‘panda within’, then?”

It’s nice that he’s playing along. “Mmm… I think I really wanna climb up something.”

“Something up high?” He gently pushes my head off his shoulder and gestures to the end of the garden. “Will that do?”

It’s not the tallest tree in the Devildom, but to someone of my stature it’s an intimidating enough height that I’d probably feel a little dizzy at the top - which is perfect. I hadn’t realised how much I wanted to do this until Lucifer pointed it out, but I’m moving before I can even stop to think about it.

There’s something liberating about this new agility. Scaling the trunk comes about as second nature as taking stairs - so smoothly that it feels like the air is parting around rather than rushing against me. It’s only once I’m crouched contentedly on the highest sturdy branch I can find that I notice Lucifer standing at the base of the tree, ears pricked and eagle-eyed in apparent trepidation.

The bark is rough, but for some reason it doesn’t bother me at all. I lie forward with a leisurely sweep of my tail and give him a winning smile.

He huffs. “Proud of yourself, are you?”

“Yup.” It’d be better if this was an apple tree - then I could pick one and toss it down to him, and it’d be extra cool.

Alas, the tree just has regular leaves. Which… look kind of tasty, actually. It’s not like I have access to bamboo down here, so this might be the next best thing.

“Don’t,” Lucifer warns. I can only assume that I was wearing a Beel expression. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I insist, then pause. Something’s just sped past one of the windows upstairs. “...huh? Was that Mammon?”

I can hear Lucifer’s tail swishing agitatedly as I edge closer to the end of the branch to get a closer look. A moment later, another blur goes by.

“He’s just running. Okay—” I quickly unlatch from the branch and drop down, landing neatly in Lucifer’s arms. “—I’m gonna go check on him.”

“Was a warning too much to ask for?” He asks, as if he hadn’t reached up as soon as I let go. “Alright, but be careful. He’s… energetic.”

“You aren’t coming?”

“In a moment,” He says, and an odd look comes over his face. “I might have a walk. I need to…”

I feel like ‘patrol’ might be the word he’s looking for, but Lucifer seems pretty adamant that he’s the boss of the wolf and not the other way around, so I won’t tease him. He sends me back to the house with a nod, then sets off - turning his head first, then the rest of his body, tail pointing out behind him.

I’m expecting to hear the thunder of feet as soon as I get inside, but apparently tigers are lighter-footed than I’d thought. I barely even sense Mammon approaching until he suddenly springs out from around the corner, coming within less than an inch of slamming tie-first into my face before yelping and jerking away.

At the same time, as if struck by invisible lightning, I half-twist and half-leap backwards, hands flying above my head again, and it’s only a moment after the weird, chattering sound that I realise I was the one making it. Mammon skitters several feet away, eyes wide with alarm, then catches himself on the wall and realises what’s going on.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” He holds out his hands in supplication. “Chill, it’s just me!”

I blink at him, mildly out of breath, then say, “I knew that.”

“...are ya gonna put your hands down, then?”

“Yeah.”

He waits. It takes a little effort, but I manage to regain control of my limbs and bring my arms back down to my side.

Mammon cocks his head to the side. His tail goes from pointing down to up, and begins to move idly from side-to-side as he sets his hands on his hips.

“Didn’t scare ya that bad, did I?” He steps closer, then motions for me to look up. “C’mere, lemme get a look at ya.”

“Why were you doing upstairs?” I ask as he pokes at the new markings on my cheeks, then leans back and tilts his head from side to side, squinting at me. “I saw you in the window.”

“Runnin’,” He says after a moment’s thought, squashing both my ears flat against my head. “I kinda… bit Beel. I was sorta worried I’d start bitin’ everyone else, so I was tryin’ to blow off steam. Actually, I was takin’ laps around the garden first, but Lucifer said it was makin’ his head hurt.”

“So you came back in?”

“Well, I did wanna start runnin’ faster,” He admits. “Like, I was there first. But then he growled at me. Figured it wasn’t worth pissing him off after that.”

He swipes a hand across his face, then sighs. “Man. I’m beat. Let’s just find somewhere to chill.”

“Aren’t you hungry at all?” I ask, following him back to the common room. “You were running for ages. Tigers eat a lot even when they’re just sleeping all day.”

“Eh, I’ll manage,” He yawns, slumping onto the sofa cushions and turning onto his side, like a leisurely cat. “‘Sides, I’m pretty sure Beel cleaned out the fridge. And it ain’t like there’s anything to hunt around here.”

“Ooh— actually, do you want a fun fact? Tigers kill their prey by biting onto their throats until they suffocate.”

Mammon lifts his head and gives me a look. “That’s a fun fact?”

“A lot of people think they maul them to death. Well, they can, but the throat thing’s easier. ‘Cause it saves energy.” He looks uneasy, so I try to comfort him by adding, “It’s just what they do. Tiger’s gotta eat.”

“Tiger’s gotta eat,” He repeats, but his face stays creased. “Okay, now tell me something nice.”

“Alright.” I sit down on the carpet in front of him. “Every tiger has a unique pattern. So these are your special Mammon stripes! They’re the same under the fur, too, so you’d still have them even if you were completely bald.”

“Ha! Reckon I could pull it off?”

“Uh... I dunno, your head’s pretty big.”

He smacks me on the arm. “I told ya to tell me somethin’ nice.”

“I’m not going to lie - that’s the nice part. If you did go bald, Levi wouldn’t stop calling you an egghead for a week.”

“Ain’t that mean someone’s smart, too? Hey, I could live with that.”

“But your head would be so shiny. And an eagle might think it was a rock and drop a tortoise on it.”

He snorts incredulously. “Yeah, ‘cause that happens all the time to bald people.”

“It’s happened at least once,” I assert. “Historically. According to one guy two thousand years ago. The bald guy died, by the way.”

“Be a hell of a way to go.” He twists up, so that his chest faces the ceiling, and folds his arms with a deep sigh. “Fine. Guess I’ll hold back, just for you.”

His tail lolls over the edge of the sofa as he closes his eyes. I watch it for a while, glancing periodically up at his ostensibly absent expression, then reach out to catch it.

Like a spider on a string, it flicks backwards, and goes to lying barely an inch away. I try again, then again, then again, and yet it keeps bouncing away, as if it can sense the movement. No matter how fast I move, it’s always just a little faster.

I refuse to give up. I keep batting at it with mounting frustration, switching from quick jabs to slow, careful ambushes before finally turning a glare to Mammon’s face - and belatedly notice that his eyes are fully open again.

We look at each other for a moment. Then I realise that he’s not paying attention, and instinct takes over. Before he can react, I seize his tail and - for some reason I can’t fathom - bite it.

But I suppose I can’t have bitten it very hard, because Mammon usually makes it very loudly known if someone so much as pinches him. This time, he just stares at me. Then he starts laughing.

“Hahaha, oh man—” He reaches forward and gives both my ears an aggressive, adoring rumple, declaring, “Aren’t ya sweet? You havin’ fun with that? Hahahaha!”

“Quit it,” I mumble, pushing his tail away from me with perhaps an unnecessary amount of force, then decide on a whim to climb up onto the sofa with him. “Move up.”

“Oof!” He ends up squished against the back, but I’m too embarrassed to care. “Sheesh, give a guy some breathing room.”

“No,” I muffle into a cushion. “Die.”

“Fine, then. Have it your way.” He burrows one arm under me, then uses that as leverage to make himself some more room. I bury my face in my hands and pretend not to hear his pleased chuffing. “Wanna tell us a bedtime story?”

I peek up at him through a gap in my fingers. “...all the stories Dad told me about tigers end in the tiger dying.”

“Oh, don’t tell me, lemme guess—” He snickers. “—some little red thing tries to eat its tail and—”

Before he can finish, my hands shoot up and tug both of his tiger ears down. This time he does yelp. “Oi! Okay, okay, you win—”

“I don’t even know why I did that,” I grumble, letting go and shielding my face once more.

He chuffs again, pinching my nose with just enough force to be annoying. “Yeah, well, it was funny. Don’t even worry about it. Y’know Levi used to bite my arm whenever he got excited? Man, that was ages ago…”

“You shouldn’t let him bite you now - he’s got snake venom. You’ll get necrosis and your arm’ll fall off.”

“That bad? Yikes.” He yawns, then abruptly tucks me under his chin like a glorified teddy bear. “Good thing you’re gonna guard me, right?”

“I can’t do anything when I’m stuck here,” I complain - knocking my head affectionately into his at the same time, like a hypocrite. “I can’t die valiantly in battle if you don’t let me go.”

“Against a snake? Nah, leave it. That’s not even a cool thing to fight.”

“How dare you say that about Saint Patrick…”

The conversation continues in that vein for a little longer - until Mammon finally runs out of energy to keep coming up with responses, and instead starts responding with a series of low, growling hums. He dozes off soon after that. Considering how long he was sprinting around for, I’m impressed he managed to stay awake for that long.

I’d like to stay with him for a while, but I don’t feel sleepy at all, and it’s also getting kind of warm. I carefully wriggle my way out, then stand up and survey the scene. I reckon I’ll build a few cushions around him, like a fort, and that way he’ll be extra safe…

Once I’m done with that, I decide to go wandering again. Satan’s the only one I haven’t seen so far, and I can’t tell if the ongoing silence from him forebodes well or poorly.

The first place to check is, as usual, the library, which is empty at first glance. Then I catch a pair of vivid green eyes staring at me - a large demon-shaped cat tucked neatly into a high-up gap in the bookshelf.

“...why are you in there?” I ask, even though I know the answer from Hyde, and it’s just that he can, and wants to be.

Satan stays there for a moment, then slips out, landing softly on all fours, and sits gracefully back on his haunches. I’d be worried about the lack of response if it wasn’t for his tail pointed straight up behind him, waving slowly like a happy flag.

“Hello,” He says, perfectly serene.

“Hey.” I give him a knowing look, which he ignores. He’s not fooling anyone who knows him even a little - let alone me. “Are you having fun being a cat?”

“You would not believe,” He replies, and at this point the giddiness starts to seep into his voice. He leans forward a little. “Come here. Scratch my ears.”

There’s a weirdly intense look on his face. I wrinkle my nose at him. “What?”

“Scratch my ears,” He says again, as if it was the instruction that was the problem.

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“Not if you’re gonna be weird about it—”

“I can purr now,” He says impatiently. “Come on, come on, I’ll show you.”

“Okay, okay—” I bend down a little and give the base of his ears a rub. They’re sleeker than Hyde’s - more intact, too. “Is that good?”

He shuts his eyes, ducking his head so that I get the angle correctly. A familiar sound starts up, even louder and deeper than I’m used to, like a little motor in his chest.

It’s hypnotic. I kneel down beside him, and in turn he starts dipping his head even lower, until it looks like he’s contorted in a funny yoga pose. Eventually he just gives up on supporting himself and flops over onto his side with a content little smile.

A voice in the back of my head comments that this must all look incredibly strange. The voice in the front of my head replies that it’s really cute, so it doesn’t matter.

I mess around with one of his ears and turn it inside out. He doesn’t seem to notice, but the ear itself starts twitching restlessly, as if trying to reverse itself. “What’ve you been up to? What else can you do?”

(It’s kind of hard not to start baby-talking him, but I’m not sure he’d forgive me if I did.)

“Well, Lucifer left his office unlocked, so I went in and got some fur on his chair,” He says triumphantly, opening his eyes for long enough to offer a slow, happy blink. “Then I just took a nap. Sleeping as a cat is much nicer than sleeping as a demon. No wonder they always look so happy.”

There’s no way Satan didn’t spend at least a little time just basking in the bliss of his feline transformation, but I won't force him to admit that. I pick up one of his hands and turn it over. Like Asmo, they look mostly the same, but with little pads on the ends of his long fingers.

Satan yawns, then slowly sits up again. “What are you looking at?”

“Trying to see if your hands do the…” I press down between his knuckles, and his nails do indeed seem to protract. “Whoa! I wonder how that works?”

He looks down, then lets out a shallow gasp and wrenches his hand out of mine, reversing the positions so that he’s holding my left hand instead. His ears are pointed straight up - I imagine a pair of whiskers fanning out from his cheeks.

“You’ve got paws,” He whispers in awe.

“Paw,” I correct, showing him the right one. “This is just a glove. I don’t think the potion works on prosthetic stuff.”

“Interesting..." He frowns. “I wonder if we have any textbooks about this kind of thing.”

I know he prefers spellwork over brewing, which I’ve heard Professor Baal vocally complaining about in the staff room before, so this is a good sign for them. After a moment, though, the scholarly look on Satan’s face vanishes again, and now he’s wearing the same expression he watches kitten videos with.

He tweaks my nose, then starts combing his fingers methodically through the hair I messed up on the sofa earlier, beginning to purr again. I’m suddenly put in mind of those videos of cats grooming each other.

He shifts to better reach the back of my head, and I hear a quiet chime. I look down. There’s a bell tied around his tail.

Weird choice of accessory. It’s not attached very securely - just loosely looped around with a strong string. Satan pauses as I detach the bell, then lift it up and give it a jingle.

I open my mouth to say something, then realise that, based on his expression, he won’t hear a word of it. Satan’s completely frozen in place, eyes fixed on the bell. His now-unadorned tail swishes restlessly behind him.

Holding my breath, I jingle the bell again. The pupils of his eyes expand until there’s barely any green left in them, and he crouches back unconsciously. I think he’s actually trembling a little in anticipation.

I give it one last shake, then toss it away. Satan follows it with a sharp turn of his head - then, wiggling as if to calibrate, pounces at it like— well, like a cat at a mouse.

As soon as he lands beside it, his hand strikes the edge at just the right angle to send it spinning away, and this time he doesn’t even try to adjust before leaping at it again, then again - head held close to the ground, digging his claws into the carpet to keep himself from skidding and then getting them stuck when he tries to keep going. Each time, the bell seems to evade his grasp, right up until he lunges for it a little too rapidly and runs head-first into the wall.

“Oh no—” I’d been covering my mouth to stop myself from laughing, but now it’s more out of shock - I hurry to prop him back up as Satan stares at the ceiling, dazed. “—are you okay?”

He blinks deliriously for a moment, then gives himself a shake and flushes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine—”

He hurriedly gets back to his feet and, for want of something to do, starts flattening the fur on his ears. The bell lies, discarded, a few feet away. His eyes keep darting back to it again.

After a moment, deciding that he doesn’t seem like he has a concussion, I get up to retrieve it. Satan watches me in close anticipation as I toss it in my hand for a moment, then roll it over to him.

His hand shoots out and slams it to the ground. Then he smacks it my way again, and without thinking I dive to the side to catch it.

With each pass, he gets a little more boisterous, and the bell starts moving in wilder, faster directions, criss-crossing all over the library, passed back and forth with barely enough respite to actually jingle. I bounce this way, Satan bounds that way - knocking into furniture so frequently and loudly that it’s not really a surprise when someone comes to see what’s going on.

The door opens, and Satan stops himself short. He sits up straight, replacing his playful expression with a completely serious one, and Levi eyes us both suspiciously.

“What were you doing?” He asks after a moment.

“Nothing,” lies Satan, getting up. His eyes dart down to the bell again, and he discreetly kicks it away. “What’re you doing here?”

He scratches his head. “Well, Asmo got hungry. And I didn’t wanna just sit around in his room.”

“Are you still cold?” I ask. He shrugs.

“I think I’m getting used to it,” He says, coming further into the room. “I mean, it’s still chilly, but it’s like… outside chilly.”

“That’s good. Oh, have you tried eating anything yet? Do you reckon you could swallow stuff whole like Gerald does?”

He grimaces. “Do I have to? That sounds gross. Do we even have anything big enough?”

“Uhh… a big loaf of bread, maybe…?”

Satan, listening to this with interest, glances to the side and spots Levi’s long snake tail, and abruptly shoots into the air - so high that it looks as if a helicopter took off with a rope tied around him. Levi yelps and dives to hide; a moment later, Satan lands on his feet, a good ten feet away from where he started.

Levi peeks warily out from behind the armchair. “What was that?”

Satan clears his throat and refuses to make contact. “Ahem - do you hear people in the common room? Let’s go to the common room.”

The common room is a lot busier than it was since I left it. The twins have arrived, and the scene looks like Mammon’s swapped personalities with Belphie - while the latter is playing a chase game with Beel around the sofa, he has his head propped up on a cushion, blinking reproachfully at them for disturbing him.

Asmo shows up soon after we do, throwing himself into the seat next to me with a metric armful of some leafy vegetable that I can only assume is the Devildom equivalent of celery. He offers me a stick and keeps crunching loudly throughout Levi and Satan’s bickering, cheeks perpetually full like a hamster.

With everyone else gathered here, it’s not long before Lucifer slips in as well, and immediately gets dragged into Belphie’s game with Beel. Lucifer waits until he’s tuckered himself out (which doesn’t take long, because it’s Belphie), to finally call a family meeting of some kind so that everyone can get their bearings.

Though there isn’t much to say - we're all more or less settled into ourselves now, so it’s just a matter of getting used to everyone else. That doesn’t take long, either, and soon enough, certain demons start getting bored. Within the hour, they’re all running around the house again like excited puppies.

…I say ‘they’, but that includes me. Levi’s the one who opts to stay sitting calmly by the fireplace. Belphie keeps collapsing in the middle of the hallway for a five minute nap before he gets up to join in again, and Lucifer has to try to keep up with us to make sure we don’t start breaking everything.

Such is the commotion that no one hears the knock on the door, which Luke left unlocked when he fled. That also means that no one thinks to stop Mammon when he makes to use it as a launchpad - Solomon steps inside and immediately gets bowled over, sending the carefully corked bottle in his hand flying. Behind him, Luke lets out a short squeak and covers his eyes, but it lands safely on the carpet, its momentum carrying it down the hall.

And then it comes to a stop by Satan’s feet.

He stares at the bottle, eyes dilated. His tail flicks restlessly.

“Satan,” Lucifer starts, ears pricked in caution - none of us are close enough to grab the bottle to safety. “Don’t—”

Satan reaches down and bats the bottle cleanly into the wall. It smashes it into about a million smithereens. The rest of us watch the violet potion inside drain into the carpet.

“You know,” Solomon says, cross, “Sometimes you bring this on yourselves.”

[uhohbestie]

TAMN Outline

Since we're so close to the end of TAMN, I just wanted to share what Lock and my outline looks like, especially because neither of us ever used outlines for writing fic before this LOL

The only reason we have one for TAMN is because we were determined to finish this thing within a year of starting it and really wanted to post a chapter a week. Realistically, between work and irl and different timezones, there was no WAY we'd be able to keep up with a weekly posting schedule OR our self-imposed deadline if we were writing on the fly, so an outline was a good way to keep us on track.

(Details under the cut 'cause this got long af lmao)

SO FIRST OF ALL. We have quick chapter markers to refer to just to keep track of where we're at. The obvious ones are as follows:

🐈 Scar POV Chapters 🦜 Grian POV Chapters 🧟‍♂️ Some sort of significant zombie encounter that chapter 💦 Smut

I took this screenshot a WHILE back so Chapter 12 was actually split into 2 chapters, as was Chapter 14. So while the two emojis in Chapter 14 were meant to signify both Scar and Grian's POVs in that chapter, we ultimately just split it into a separate Scar chapter and a separate Grian chapter.

As for the other markers, this is what they mean at a glance:

✔️ Chapter is written ✔️✔️ Chapter has been edited by one person ✅ Chapter edited by both of us; Ready to Post 💯 Chapter has been posted to AO3

The last one isn't in the screenshot above, but is another one we use. And, ofc, if it doesn't have any of those markers beside it, it means the chapter hasn't been written yet.

Other than that, every chapter heading has not only the chapter number, but a reminder of where Scarian are, the time of day that chapter starts at, and how long of a walk/drive to their next destination remains. Plus, the very first point is always the current date and the weather (in Celsius 🍁) for the day. It looks something like this:

For a short chapter like Ch. 6 where not too much happens, the outline is just a handful of points. Also, we put a strike through things we skipped as we wrote when we felt they no longer fit the mood we were going for. (Basically, the outline is here as a guide and we adjust as needed for full creative freedom.)

Now the LINKS at the bottom lead to ANOTHER document where Lock and I's original conversations are sorted, in case we need to reference back to something we don't remember. That looks like something like this:

So when you click the link, there's a pop up that will take you directly to the original conversation about it located in another doc.

Basically, Lock and I had talked about TAMN for months before every writing it, so when I suggested making an outline, Lock was like "yeah, we basically have a skeleton already with how much we've talked about it". So what we did was, I copy-pasted EVERY conversation we had about TAMN into a Google Doc, and then Lock went through and SUMMARISED EVERYTHING in each conversation into The Main Points. After that, I went and put them into chronological order in a new doc which then became the outline we use today! 💫

Thus, when you click on a link from the outline, you get taken to the conversation summary, and if you scroll down past the summary you get to the actual conversation itself, minus our usernames/formatting/timestamps to make it easier to read at a glance:

And then, ofc, the further along we got in the fic, the more complicated the plot and the chapters got. So instead of short and sweet outlines with a link or two to old conversations, we had to come up with a lot of in between events that still somehow added to the plot and moved the story along to the main points we wanted to hit.

This was actually what took me the longest during outlining, and poor Lock kept going "JUST LEAVE IT BLANK, WE'LL FIGURE IT OUT AS WE GO" but I really wanted to have SOMETHING down just to give us a springboard to launch off of, because we had no idea if we'd have time WHILE writing to come up with anything.

(This continues on for more pages since we combined two chapters into one here, but this is the gist of what the outlines turned into per chapter as we got later and later in the fic LOL)

Turned out to be the right call, because it's saved our asses more than once when on a time-crunch! That said, there were a couple chapters where we DID in fact go "idk about what's in the outline, what if we do this instead?" and then do that because it Felt Right. So again, the outline was super helpful but not a hard and fast rule. (Though Lock and I had our fair share of "WHY DIDN'T YOU WRITE WHAT WAS IN THE OUTLINE"/"I FORGOR" moments that have been fun every step of the way 😂)

AAAND, I THINK THAT'S IT! THAT'S OUR OUTLINE! 🎉

Just wanted to make a post for it to document because it was such a novel experience, hahaha! Like I said earlier, neither Lock nor I ever used outlines before, even when writing fics together for other fandoms :')

I've got two completed longfics under my belt from before TAMN in my last fandom and I wrote those completely on the fly as well. Worked out just fine, but like. It took me 2-4 YEARS to finish the fics, and they were both MUCH shorter than TAMN is. 😅 Nothing wrong with that obviously, but it was a lot of fun to try something new and it felt incredible to be able to have a new chapter ready to go each week! ;w; 💜

We're almost done writing the fic and honestly idk what we're gonna do with all this free time once we've wrapped it up... time to come up with a new longfic ig LMAO

IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR, HOORAY! 🎊

Here's a little bonus for you--

From the time I went to a gun range and shot both a rifle (near the head) and a shotgun (the spray by the stomach) and took notes so that we could use it in our fic JHGFDSKJHDF THE CRAZY RESEARCH WE'VE BOTH DONE FOR TAMN I STG 😂😂😂😂😂

[adventures-in-asexuality]

‘Home’ Alone

You may have heard that Boris Johnson has recently become the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, and, as such, the Prime Minister. This wasn’t an election open to the general public; party leaders are elected by the members of that party, and it’s no real surprise that the Conservative Party members like conservative candidates.

This isn’t a post about that, per se; there are plenty of other people detailing all of his failings and horrifying attitudes and behaviours. It’s just an illustration of how the political situation in this country is devolving faster and faster. I started talking about this in 2014, just a couple of years after I first got on tumblr at all, and I’ve been talking about it ever since, whenever I have the mental fortitude to do so - which, right now, isn’t often. 

But, hey, what’s another list of my deepest fears? 

I wrote a post a year or two ago with some of the things that we’re facing here, in the UK. I’ll link the entire post, but here is the most important paragraph:

‘But. I have been saying this. I said it when reports came out of the huge number of people dying within a few weeks of their disability claims being denied or revoked. I said it when a coroner went so far as to name the DWP as the cause of death on a death certificate for a disabled person. I said it when we started seeing stats of the huge proportion of cases of denied benefits that were winning at appeal or tribunal (and the huge barriers to even getting to appeal or tribunal in the first place). I said it when we heard about the suicide baiting in disability assessments. I said it when we heard that, even if you could get them, disability benefits were leaving people cold and hungry.’

These aren’t stopping.

Back in 2015, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities announced that they were going to investigate how the UK was treating disabled people. The report came out in 2016, and, as summarised here, found ‘‘grave and systematic’ violations of the rights of disabled people’. There’s no enforcement method for this, though, and the government were free to disagree and to carry on exactly as they were. Which they did. 

In 2016, the Brexit referendum happened. One of the topics that I remember very clearly from that time was the Conservative promises that they could write a new Human Rights Bill, since we would no longer be bound by the EU’s rulings on human rights. This was, of course, presented as a good thing, though I’m not even sure entirely how. All I remember was thinking about all the rights that we already knew were being violated, about how it was so obvious that a UN Committee was investigating it, and thinking: Why would a government ever write their brand new human rights bill to enshrine rights that they are already violating?

The answer, of course, is that they won’t. 

We haven’t heard anything more about the supposed brand new human rights bill since then - hell, we haven’t even left the EU yet - but this is always at the back of my mind, casting a shadow over my day-to-day life.

Because what this means for me is that my country does not want me. I can never be at home here because I am not wanted here; because my country would rather people like me die quietly, preferably in a way that doesn’t impact on their statistics, and leave the abled people alone. 

What does this have to do with asexuality, then? Well, I am ace and arospec and a lesbian, and there are two very obvious consequences of this.

Firstly, I don’t have a family. Anyone who’s been following me for a while will know this already, but here’s the bottom line: I am estranged from my family for many reasons, including that I am queer. This is a story everyone knows, I’m sure - it’s easier to list queer people of my acquaintance who do have a family - but it does remove one of the common support networks that people have. 

Secondly, I don’t expect to be in any kind of significant relationship any time soon. Don’t feel sorry for me or tell me to meet more people; it’s just a natural consequence of liking very few people and also being a bundle of trauma and disability. I’m used to it. The real problem is that this removes the other common support network, and most people in life assume that you have either one or the other. 

Coyote wrote a piece recently, On “single”, that’s relevant here. The whole post is well worth reading, but in it, ey comments on one of the conversations we’ve repeatedly had with each other: the issues with emergency contacts. You’re supposed to have someone who would drop everything to come help you. And, realistically, people expect this person to be either your partner or your immediate family. After all, those are the people that you can count on, right?

(Wrong. But we all know that.)

Coyote commented on how untenable this is in ir post, and I’m just going to quote the relevant part here. 

‘Ever since I left my family, I’ve been intensely aware of how, if I were to go for too long between jobs, or if I were to get severely sick, there’s practically no one close at hand to intervene or take care of me. And that weighs on me. That makes my life feel tenuous and unstable in a way that’s more far-reaching for me than simply not having a romantic partner. It would be different if I had solid career prospects and enough savings to coast on indefinitely, but I don’t.’

I want to underline that this is how the state of being singled affects us all. Not just the traumatised ones, not just the disabled ones, not just the ones who face other difficulties and marginalisations. All of us. This is always only survivable by the lucky ones. 

So where does this leave me? I have a bunch of progressive disabilities. I’m barely managing to hold down a job at the moment; I’ve given up having hobbies, seeing friends more than a couple of times a year, leaving the house at all except for essential errands, and I’m still constantly exhausted and in severe pain. All I do is work and rest for the next day’s work, and I’m still ill too often for my employer. I drag myself to work in so much pain that I’m propping myself upright, typing one-handed and slowly collapsing over my desk, and people still assume that I’m malingering, that I should just stop complaining and do my job better. 

And these are progressive disabilities. They are only ever going to get worse.

You can see, now, why the gutting of social safety nets is a very personal issue for me. 

Let’s recap. The government is aggressively uninterested in supporting disabled people, so when (and it will be when) I can’t manage to hold down a job no matter how much I injure myself in the process, I won’t be able to rely on them for such extravagant things as a roof over my head and semi-regular meals. People who support such cuts often say that people on disability benefits are just malingering, that real disabled people would have their family or partner care for them, but even setting aside what an awful situation that puts carers in even if it works as planned (and it is an awful situation), I don’t have either of those support networks. I’m on my own now, and, barring some extremely unlikely events, I’ll stay that way even when I can no longer support myself. 

This means that I don’t have a home. 

That’s a little overdramatic: I have somewhere to live at the moment. I’m even lucky enough, now, that I can live by myself; I have lived with strangers before, and it didn’t work well. I don’t want to repeat the habit. I can shape my space around me to some extent, and I do have a roof over my head, and both of these are important; I don’t want to trivialise that. 

What I don’t have, though, is any sense of security or welcome. I live here, and I have possessions here, and, bit by bit, I’ve even acquired nonessential items (even if every time I acquire something that wouldn’t fit in a suitcase packed in the dead of night, I panic a little bit). I’m always aware, though, that this place is only mine for as long as I manage to keep up full-time employment; as soon as I’m forced out of that sphere, I’ll need to be elsewhere, and I won’t have elsewhere to be. 

My welcome in this country, in this city, in this house is measured only by my participation in the capitalist workforce, and as soon as I involuntarily exit it, I will be unwelcome everywhere. 

Home is supposed to be the place that you’re always welcome, right?

Yeah, I don’t see that happening any time soon. 

This is the point where people start talking about wider communities, like the ace community. It’s an understandable impulse; if the normal support networks fail people, we want to think that there are backups. That smaller communities are still there to help us. 

I’ve talked before about not feeling welcome in the ace community for a variety of reasons, but that’s not entirely relevant; sure, I’m not at home here, but even if I was, there’s a bigger barrier here: we don’t have resources for this. (I feel like I should be talking more explicitly about the aro community here - because, at least to some extent, this would seem to be a more common aro-specific issue than an ace-specific issue - but I find it hard to think that it would be appropriate, since I'm not meaningfully involved in the aro community, largely because it's pretty clear I am unwelcome.) Most ace community resources are focused on dealing with people’s journey to recognise themselves as ace and how they can navigate their relationships afterwards - and even though that can be a large part of people’s lives, it’s not the be-all and end-all, and isn’t even on the radar for some of us.

This isn’t to say that this entire issue is just due to a failing of the ace community; this is a large and systemic problem, and it feels pretty self-defeating to throw any amount of effort at it at all. We also don’t talk about it, much, though, and that, I think, is the greatest disservice. It can feel like so much of ace community resources are devoted to reassuring aces that they are okay as they are and, from that basis, helping aces find partners, or at most reassuring unpartnered aces that just because they’re single now won’t mean that they’re single forever, that we ignore almost completely the logistical challenges of going through life without the societally expected support networks. 

We can’t solve this entire problem by ourselves - that would require completely rewriting society. But maybe we can include it in our directory of problems, understanding that this is an ace issue and finding or creating resources for it accordingly.

[jhindraven]

okay im gonna go on a long rant about paladins, and how the new skins are a bit of a travesty

first of all, i just wanna say that i’m no expert on character and/or game design, and i dont claim to be one either. i may be studying it at the moment, but i only know what ive learnt from my teachers and from youtube. keep that in mind. 

also, this is a collection of all my complaints about paladins regarding skins. this isnt just one specific issue- this is everything i hate. this is all my opinion, you dont gotta agree, whatever.

okay now onto the actual rant. 

alright. so. seris has a new skin out atm- cottontail seris. and its...

well to put it simply, it fucking sucks. thunderbrush, buddy, pal, what the fuck is up with this skin.

look, i get that its a skin. it doesnt have to be in character. whatever, cool, it isnt canon to what little story this game has (thats an entirely different rant for later), thats fine. but it... doesnt look like seris. you took her most defining features and threw them out the window. and thats bad. not only from a design perspective, but from a gameplay one as well.

now, lets have a look at seris’ default skin. what are the key features? and what’s her silhouette like?

her key features are a long flowing skirt, hood up, and a blindfold, right? yeah. her silhouette is clearly a dress, with the big triangle-like shape down the bottom. her head becomes almost like a triangle/diamond too, because of how it points on the top of her head.

now when we compare that to the new skin, we have an issue:

where did her skirt go? where’s her hood?  without those things, her silhouette is wack. she looks like an entirely new character! she looks more like a long haired skye, or lian, or even kinda like ying. not seris.

when you’ve got abilities like cassie’s and talus’ ults, that allows you to see the other team’s silhouettes through the walls, this shit is important to think about. i probably wouldn’t have time to sit and go “hold up is that seris? or is that [insert literally any other female champion minus like two]”

this issue happened with inara too, but to a lesser extent. her battlebyte skin removed her big skirt/dress in favour of a pencil skirt-type thing, causing her silhouette to change a bit. but because she’s got her staff, her floating ribbon, and the floating crystals she looks (close to) the same.

and unlike seris, she’s tall. seris is about average height for all the female champions, and that makes her harder to pick out with this skin.

and you know its bc thunderbrush is like,, super horny and just has to sexualise every female character in this godforsaken game or he cant sleep at night or something. @.kinessie puts it best in this post here

on a different note

 it has officially been one whole year since furia was released and since the rise of furia event.

why is thunderbrush still posting demonette/abyss skins????

on his twitter he says, and i quote, “I want more ‘demonettes’ in the realm as well as a chance to flesh out the Pyre some more. Pyre warrior drogoz is a good start but we need more.”

i mean that’s neat and all, but like... surely you can make a more interesting concept than just “tall demonette maeve”

dont even get me started on how sexualised this skin is, considering that she’s one of the youngest champions

i dont have much more to say about the demonette stuff other than just “surely you can do better than that”

my final thing

why do the same like 8 champions keep getting new skins?

im gonna make a whole new post with how many skins each champion has, and when their latest one was added. so yeah. ill edit this post and add a link to it once i do it. EDIT: its here

my whole point can be summarised with this image:

(credit: u/clertex on r/paladins)

SO, TLDR:

the new skins are boring or completely change the character, and thunderbrush keeps ignoring almost every character for the waifu-bait ones.

thunderbrush has no rights

[littlesnowarrow]

Security fail, pt1

So... I did a thing. Yesterday (for me, as I’m writing this) was @saibrarutherford‘s birthday, and because she’s the sweetest lady around, I wanted to give her something for her special day. 

It was supposed to be a one-shot, but it has turned out too long (and I still haven’t finished it after working on it for a full month), so I’ll be dividing it in three parts. Because yeah.

Security fail part 1 

Next Part

Summary: Saibra Trevelyan returns home from an exhausting mission in Orlais, as usual, when she finds out that some things have been happening in her dear stronghold. But, who is responsible for them?

Words: 2.6k

Warnings: None.

AO3 Link

Grammar and vocabulary corrections are always welcome.

Saibra was worn out. Like every time she returned from Orlais; those people truly only knew how to complain about each other and plot in that Game everyone seemed to enjoy playing save her. And she had just been a couple of days out. But she couldn’t go to her quarters yet. The required meeting at the War Room with her advisors was about to begin, and she really wished it would end soon so she could slip under her blankets and sleep at least for a whole day.

And… there was something she wanted to check by herself. Cullen, Josephine and her were waiting for the rest to arrive, using the time to check how many rifts were left in the map. Or at least she tried, because the Antivan was was so distressed it was impossible not to wonder what had gotten into her. She had been shifting from one foot to the other, fidgeting even, and she would have paced if she had been accompanied by people less observant. Suddenly, something seemed to change her mind, as she approached Saibra and leaned very close to her ear, very careful her words wouldn’t reach the Commander.

“Inquisitor…” She gaped a couple of times, but she couldn’t find the words with which she so naturally got on. Saibra would have worried hadn’t been for the intense red colour that darkened even more her skin. “You should know that your Spymaster is an incorrigible prankster.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leliana said behind them. Both women turned to her startled since they hadn’t heard her enter. Josie’s blush became more intense when she saw the Nightingale’s angelic smile.

“No?” the Ambassador was starting to lose her temper. “My… my things! In the courtyard!”

Saibra stifled a snort. So it was true. Everyone in Skyhold had seen the new flag in the courtyard had been replaced by someone’s frilly undergarments, who no doubt belonged to Lady Montilyet. They had only hung there, graciously waving with the cool mountain breeze, until lunchtime, when the Ambassador had taken a break from her usual pile of paperwork in her office. The deed itself and her loud shriek had been the object of the rumors that were heard through the valley in the last few days, something her Commander had told her as soon as Saibra had gotten down from Solace.

“The ruffles were very festive.” Her grin widened, and her lips showed the tip of her fangs, like a predator that was having fun with her prey.

“Leliana!” she protested.

“What’s the matter?” asked Cassandra in her thick Nevarran accent.

“Our Lady Ambassador was victim of a serious attack against her intimacy at the beginning of the week, soon after your departure to Orlais,” Cullen answered. “And Leliana seems to be the one at fault.”

“Certainly I’m not.” Leliana huffed and crossed her arms before her chest. “If you must blame someone, it should be Sera. I’ve told her many times not to involve my agents in her businesses.”

And then, the Nightingale frowned. Everyone in the room exchanged a concerned look between them; it wasn’t usual for the redhead to reveal her train of thought that openly. Her unyielding mask began to crack bit by bit as she seemed to realise something the others didn’t.

“Sera could have arranged the banner incident, but she left with you, so it’s impossible she’s been able to organise the rest.” Her voice had become a low and dangerous growl that made their hair stand on end.

“Which ‘rest’?” Cassandra was the only one with enough courage to try to interact with her. Josie gasped at Saibra’s side, and her face turned pale when only five minutes ago had been of the same colour of the brightest pepper in the kitchen. Leliana answered with a nod.

“I’m afraid we have a joker in the hold, Inquisitor,” she announced.

“Meaning?”

“There have been some incidents since your leaving, now that Leliana mentions it.” This time it was Cullen speaking. “We all thought it had been Sera’s doing but-”

Little by little, the three advisors tried to summarise what had been going on during these days, taking Josie’s undergarments as the starting point. A lot had happened: from changing the tea sugar for salt lumps or emptying wine bottles -the cheap ones though- for coloured water to having placed food leftovers inside of each mattress that existed in the entire fortress. Or dusting stinging powder inside socks, disassembling chairs and benches so they would break by just sitting on them… Even putting bells on Baron Plucky.

That had personally infuriated the Spymaster, who had sworn she would take care of the rogue elf’s punishment. Not even Bull, whom they had hidden the patch and painted an eye on his scar, had any idea of who the culprit could be, nor the reasons that were driving them to commit those… pranks.

And it was true. Sera liked to play, but she had never dared with such scale. As they kept telling the facts, a feeling of restlessness began to fill Saibra from head to toe. Whoever was doing all that clearly didn’t have to intention to harm them, but it could be an strategy to distract them while some tragedy happened somewhere? Corypheus couldn’t be that smart, could he?

“They seem to have been merciless with everyone, without a clear target,” finished Josephine.

“But whoever they are, they must have spent a lot of time among us to get to know our weaknesses,” Cullen pointed out.

Not everyone. Although the whole of Skyhold had been flown off the handle, Saibra and her family had gotten out of it. It could be said that Vastra had had her share; a couple of nights ago, her sister found her children eating a box full of chocolates right before bedtime. The dawn had come and the little girls still hadn’t gone to bed, no matter how many tricks Vastra used with them. When she accepted it was impossible to calm them down, she ordered Jim to take care of them while she went to take a long and well-deserved nap. And nothing had happened to Cullen as well, at least not yet.

“I will personally see this matter dealt with if you allow me, Inquisitor.” Leliana offered.

Saibra was too tired, especially after that long series of unfortunate events, so she simply nodded in agreement and concluded the council.

***

Saibra dragged her feet through the hallways of her fortress, nodding or slightly bowing her head to answer the greetings of the people she run into. She needed a warm mug of tea and a calming bath with some special salts Josie had received. The pouch gave off a pleasant smell of camomile, lavender and orange, and with only a small sniff she was feeling a bit more revitalised.

The walk from the War Room to her bedroom had never felt so long, and on her way she couldn’t help but think about the recent events. The prankster had been clever to put Sera on the spot from the beginning, and lucky that everyone thought she was guilty when she probably didn’t even hang Josie’s famous underthings in the courtyard. And yet the prankster had raised the spirits of her people; she heard them tell stories of what had happened to one’s partner or the kitchen help. Her favourite so far was the explosion in Dagna’s lab that had covered the cave with a permanent glitter impossible to wash away.

But Saibra didn’t felt observed nor threatened; maybe those days in Orlais had immunised her against dirty tricks and back-stabbing for some time. Surely the joker was already gone and far from there, though never outside Leliana’s reach. She decided to pray for their souls and hope Leliana’s punishment were to be somewhat merciful.

She left the room half closed for when Cullen returned from his office, and climbed each step as she couldn’t climbed the next one. When she finally reached the top, she was disappointed to see the bathtub wasn’t ready. The hearth wasn’t even lit to heat the water. Odd. Despite her arrivals always caused a big fuss, the staff made sure her relaxing ritual was prepared for when she dropped the Inquisitor’s armour on her bed. Maybe there had been a mishap. Maybe the prankster had striked in the servants quarters today…! But if that would have occurred, they would have been informed during the council. So, she shrugged and began undressing to a more comfortable outfit.

After a brief moment, someone knocked downstairs. Neither Cullen, Vastra or her nieces ever asked for permission to come in, so it was probably Dorian. She allowed him to come up the stairs while she casted a tiny fireball to lit the hearth. Saibra giggled under her breath; she knew how much her Commander hated it when she used her magic unnecessarily, but Maker she needed that bath.

A head poked out from the stair’s railing, at first cautiously and then more freely. It was an elf, Dalish judging by the tattoo that covered her face, and her dark brown hair tied in a high ponytail that showed a pair of moving ears. Her eyes were of a deep bright green, wrinkled at the corners because of the mirthful smile she was offering to her.

“I’m terribly sorry, your Worship. I was required somewhere else, so I couldn’t prepare the bathtub on time.”

“It’s okay. If you’re still busy I can do it myself.”

“Please no! I’d never let the Inquisitor carry these heavy buckets by herself.” The elf hurried and gently pushed her away from the heated water. Saibra examined her from top to bottom, curious if she was talking seriously; she was so short and thin she would break if she lifted the buckets. But contrary to her expectations, the elf did her job without a single sign of pain or trouble.

When the bath was ready, Saibra shrugged off her silken robe and tested the temperature with the tip of her toes before finally dropping in. The water was exquisite, warm with a subtle colder current that gave her goosebumps all over her legs. She could still hear the elf moving around and doing this and that, never fully pausing for longer than a couple of seconds. She unpacked her travel bag, shook her cloak to dust the dirt of the road and filled a brazier to warm her bed. Somehow everything reminded her of when she was a child, and her mama would prepare them to go to bed after a long day playing in the Trevelyan manor courtyard.

She was almost dozing off when the elf stopped behind her and poured Josie’s bath salts. The crystals tickled her skin before adapting to the water’s temperature, causing them to dissolve into that marvelous smell of citrus. A pair of hands unexpectedly run along her shoulders in a slow massage. Her fingers were cold, and knew exactly how much pressure she had to put to undo the contractures in her shoulders. Saibra began humming out of pleasure, without minding if that stranger could see her in an almost vulnerable state.

“Is it comforting, your Worship? I might not have healing magic, but they say my hands can do wonders.” she whispered. Saibra sighed in response. “Is it alright if I move to the head?”

“Please…” she finished with a soft groan as soon as the elf began rubbing along her scalp with a chuckle. There was a moment in which she touched certain point, and the mage unintentionally poured some of her own magic into the water.

“Wow! So it’s true you’re a mage, huh?” She didn’t know? Saibra would have sworn that her class was the order of the day. “Must’ve felt strange living outside the Circle for this long.”

“It certainly has sometimes. But even though the Ostwick circle was a pacific one, the freedom is still enjoyable.” She felt the elf nod in agreement. “And you? When did you leave your clan?”

Somehow, the cheerfulness she so easily gave off darkened just an instant before she recovered. Her fingers resumed massaging her head as if that question hadn’t reopened an old wound in her heart. Be as it may, her voice didn’t show any of that uneasiness.

“A very long time ago. I ignore where they might be now, with the hallas taking them around Thedas. I wonder if they’ve planted a tree in my memory or something of the sorts.”

She knew, after the time she had spent in the Graves, that the Dalish honoured their dead planting a tree as a natural gravestone. It saddened her when she realised that the elf had accepted that her people had given her up for dead, either because she left back then or because she had joined the humans at present day. Although if Saibra asked her, she would probably be intruding too much, and she didn’t want to seem a nosy boss that only seeked to satisfy her curiosity.

It ended too soon, unfortunately. The elf indicated her with a couple of light taps that she should come out of the water before she would catch a cold, so Saibra got up and let herself be embraced by the soft towel she wrapped her with. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I should be thanking you for taking me in! Life hasn’t been easy since the Blight-” she stopped abruptly, as she had made a terrible mistake by mentioning that.

“The Blight? Are you from Ferelden?” she leaned forward when the servant used a second towel for her head.

“I lived there, yes. But anyway,” she changed the subject, “A lone, wandering Dalish is always suspicious, it doesn’t matter what difficulty we’re going through.”

She seemed so lonely and tired of that prejudice that her words sounded older than what she really was. Saibra couldn’t help but pity her, as much as it wasn’t very polite to do. There was a small silence between them, staring at each other and drinking from their eyes stories they weren’t told. Saibra felt the unstoppable urge to hug her, to help her sooth away those unspoken problems.

One of her ears lifted at the sudden sound of a closing door. The spell that had bonded them broke as the elf helped her step down from the bathtub, her endless energy bursting again, and bowed as a farewell after handing her her nightgown. Saibra still wanted to embrace her, but before she could consider if that went beyond her limits as leader of the Inquisition, the elf was already gone.

But Saibra didn’t hear the snort the cheerful elf barely managed to suppress while she headed to the stairs, or the casual “Hey Cullen” she spoke to the Commander.

When Saibra emerged from behind the screen, Cullen was still looking at the stairwell with a very confused look twirled in his scarred lip. “Is something wrong, beloved?” she said while hugging him from behind. Cullen shook his head as if he wanted to get a horrible idea out of his mind and twisted in her arms ready to land a soft kiss on her forehead. But instead, he observed her bewildered, eyes open with concern and distant laugh. Now it was her turn to be confused. “What?”

“Sweetling, you should check yourself in the mirror.”

She stepped back almost frightened, and without ever letting go of his hand, Saibra approached the full-length mirror hanging next to her dresser. She checked out her body expecting to find anything unusual, but there was nothing that could justify the warning of her lover…

A strand of hair swung before her eyes. She would have sworn that lock couldn’t belong to her, that it was the tip of the towel that was still drying her scalp. And at the same time it had the same texture as one of her curls, only that the colour… The colour…

“AAAAAAH!”

[sempiternalsandpitturtle]

Content marketing can reduce your cost per lead – here’s how!

How’s this for getting your attention: Content marketing could reduce your cost per lead (CPL) by as much as 63 per cent!

That stat comes from Brafton, a content marketing agency in the US. We’ll explore this figure in a bit more detail shortly, but for now we mention it to titillate and entice you. If your CPL is the International Space Station and you’d rather it was a submarine, this 63 per cent proves that content could be the marketing strategy you’ve always needed.

Today we’re going to examine this issue on a few fronts. First, we’ll cover how to accurately calculate your CPL. Then we’re going to explain, in brief, how content marketing could save the day. Finally, we’ll move into the how – we’ve got a heap of go-to tips for reducing cost per lead with content, so bookmark this article and let’s get started!

Part 1: How to determine your cost per lead

To determine your cost per lead, first figure out your total advertising dollars spent, then divide that number by the number of leads received. The result is your CPL. So for example, if we spend $3,000 per month on marketing and receive 50 leads, our CPL is $60.

What is a good CPL?

Sorry, but we can’t answer that! It’s different for every business.

Having a triple-figure CPL might seem gratuitous, but if those same leads are worth an extraordinary amount of money, it makes sense to spend more to capture them. Conversely, if your leads are worth less and you require more to keep your business afloat, that triple-figure CPL is going to stretch your budget to the seams, and then some.

Ultimately, if instinct is telling you that you’re spending too much, it’s worth looking at reducing the cost. You know your business better than anyone, after all.

Part 2: How can content marketing reduce my cost per lead?

Content marketing is heralded as one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies around. Take a look here:

Must-read stat! Content marketing costs 31 per cent less than paid search, and over the long-term can produce three times more leads, according to a Kapost study.

What puts some people off content is the fact that it takes time to build up. Pay-per-click (PPC) results happen near-instantly, manufacturing instant gratification and creating a good graph to show the higher-ups. But when you focus solely on PPC advertising, you’re always going to be paying the same amount for the same (if not less, depending on competition fluctuations) leads. Over the long-term, it’s inefficient – not least because the moment you switch it off, it stops generating leads.

Content, on the other hand, is like a snowball at the top of a mountain. Sure, it starts off small, but by the time it reaches the village at the bottom, it’s a monster that needs little further incentive to keep rolling. Or in other words, content marketing becomes exponentially easier over time, as you build up your SEO strength and establish an audience.

So what about that 63 per cent you mentioned?

The proof is in the pudding, and we love pudding.

Brafton, after taking on an account that had a high CPL (US$125), put together an inbound leads strategy that balanced long-term content with targeted short-run PPC campaigns.

The team decreased their client’s CPL by 63 per cent and increased non-paid leads by a third.

Now you can work on doing the same for your business here in Australasia.

Proof that good #contentmarketing is all about balance! Take a look at how we reduced a client's cost-per-lead by 63%: https://t.co/ZhZaHn3Luc pic.twitter.com/VggbCGiCpW

— Brafton (@Brafton) November 15, 2017

Part 3: How to use content marketing to reduce cost per lead

1. Establish your content strategy

All good marketing strategy should start with goals, objectives and metrics. Without these, you’re a boat with no chart or compass.

Goals: These are tangible actions you want users to take on your website. Think ‘buy now’ or ‘download this’. For generating leads, you need goals that capture user information.

Objectives: An objective is the broader aim your strategy should accomplish. Today, we want ‘reduce CPL’ overall, but you may also want to ‘increase leads’, ‘reduce reliance on PPC’ or similar.

Metrics: These are how you determine success. So, how will our goals and objectives be measured? Well, the CPL figure is itself a good metric. We also want to monitor total incoming leads, and could also look at site traffic, email open rates and so forth. Anything related to leads and success.

What comes after goals? Target audience

A clearly defined audience is a vital component of a content strategy, so at this stage you must also put together a range of detailed audience descriptions, known as user personas. These are guides that define your ideal audience members in terms like demographic, job title, pain points, social media habits, or anything else deemed relevant.

Learn how to create your own by checking out our User Personas guide. Additionally, to find out more about expanding your audience size once you know who to target, check out the link in the tweet below.

Content syndication is a great way for a business to expand its audience and generate leads. However, it's vital to follow content syndication best practices. https://t.co/ZZ51wr8JuJ pic.twitter.com/OCVqPVi4H4

— Castleford (@castlefordmedia) September 24, 2018

2. Optimise for mobile

If your website is poorly optimised for mobile, it’s going to sting you later.

Forty-six per cent of people use both desktop and mobile devices to access websites, and 30 per cent use exclusively mobile (says a comScore study). Google knows this, and is increasingly prioritising mobile-friendly websites in its search rankings, to the point of even indexing mobile pages before it indexes desktop sites.

How does this relate to leads?

SEO is essential for content marketing, as the two are part of the same sandwich. A lack of mobile optimisation is a barrier to success you can’t ignore.

3. Optimise your landing pages

Conversion landing pages should sell a user on your content within the first few seconds.

Where do people leave their details when they want something from your business? Conversion landing pages.

So what do you need to pay close attention to and fully optimise in order to achieve success? Oh yeah. Conversion landing pages.

What makes a great conversion landing page?

Enticing copy: Good landing page copy does two things. First, it tells the user what the page is about in the first few lines – that’s best practice UX. Second, it entices a user with compelling information. For example, if your CLP is for a whitepaper, you’d reveal enough info for a user to feel like the document is a must-download, but not enough that they get the answer without downloading it.

Bold call to action: Further to copy, there should be a bold call to action. This should fit with your goals strategised above, and clearly state what action you wish the user to perform. Think “Download our whitepaper on XYZ” rather than “Click here”.

Smart design: Smart landing page design frees the page of clutter and shows, clearly, the copy that entices the eye and the call to action where users must click. Think arrows, contrasting colours, clear fonts – that sort of thing.

Not too many questions: In the lead form itself, don’t ask too many questions. You can enquire for further details as you nurture the lead. For now, just capture the basics and begin the relationship.

4. Create valuable content that is worth a lead

Content, SEO and leads are all intertwined, and good-quality content underpins this strategy.

Excellent content builds authority and your website’s SEO strength. It also gives you something to promote and discuss on social media channels like Facebook or LinkedIn. This in turns builds brand awareness and helps your website rank in search.

Over time, people start finding it easier to discover your content (remember the snowball), and because it’s valuable, they lap it up. When you capture someone’s attention, you have an opportunity to capture a lead. So not only are you building leads over time, you’re also building authority, trust, SEO strength and more – something PPC campaigns don’t do.

Key takeaway: To summarise – produce regular content that is professionally made and valuable to your target audience. Promote this content and use it to capture leads. Over time, it’ll only get easier (and cheaper).

“You need a blog to do well at SEO!” “You won’t get traffic without content!” “When was your website built, the stone age?!” We walk you through the basics of how to do #contentmarketing for #SEO https://t.co/4KiuPrT8qv pic.twitter.com/zn18euj3q2

— Castleford (@castlefordmedia) November 28, 2017

5. Build an email database

Even if you don’t need sales leads right now, an email database full of blog subscribers is a great way to capture leads for the long term. After all, if someone has handed you their email in return for a blog subscription, they’ve shown that they love your content and are willing to hear further from you.

In fact, BtoB Magazine found 59 per cent of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel for revenue generation.

How to build an email database with content

Put your most valuable content behind email sign-up gateways.

Create content that people will actually want to see in their inbox.

Encourage existing subscribers to share your content.

Create email-only resources that only subscribers can see (and, obviously, promote that it exists!).

In summary

Creating valuable content that is strategically driven and targeted to specific audience demographics will build your brand awareness, trust, and SEO visibility.

Use value-driven content to boost your search visibility and brand trust, which will in turn help you attract low-cost leads.

It also gives you something worthwhile to promote on social media.

These four things in turn attract readers to subscribe buttons, asset gateways, ‘request a demo’ pages, or any other type of lead-gathering forms on your website, creating an effective long-term, low-cost loop of finding audience members and gathering their details.

You can then combine this approach with targeted, short-term PPC campaigns to promote specific pieces of content. For example, your most valuable whitepaper (hosted on an optimised conversion landing page).

With this best of both worlds approach, you will see your cost per lead reduce over time.

from http://bit.ly/2OlSykb