#they removed the option to make your text yellow bUT NOW THE HARDER TO READ CURSIVE FONT

[shitty-proendo-blackout-posts]

fuck off.

(but in the really fancy cursive font)

[whump-town]

Nation Of Two

(Hotchniss/Hotly, language warning)

(You can also read the full text here)

It’s no secret that Emily Prentiss and Aaron Hotchner make a great team. Nearly in sync in every way possible. To outfits and biology- it’s fairly uncommon to stumble upon two people who seem to share everything in common and yet nothing at all. Mild-mannered to a short fuse, wildly protective, and a force to be reckoned with and yet what had created those similarities could not separate them more.

At the same time, Morgan had never seen two people get under each other’s skin as often as those two. In one breath, they’re moving in tandem the next arguing over a cup of coffee. Communicating through a single glance shared across a busy room and then at each other’s throats.

Dave had just broken up one of their more heated arguments. Given the profanity riddled sarcastic retort Emily had thrown as a final blow, Morgan could make a fairly educated guess that they were arguing about the headache Hotch is attempting and failing to hide.

Arguments over injuries and ailments always procure the worst scenes. They get heated, worse so when Hotch is the injured party in their das reich der zwei. Their Nation of Two- the dream team, in it together till the end of the line. The line, of course, being injuries. They want to protect everyone and when that spotlight finds itself pointing at one of them, it creates a unique kind of challenge. 

A pain in the ass. 

“Reid,” Hotch’s rough baritone breaks through the precinct. “You’re with me,” he announces, his dark eyes purposely flicking to Prentiss. “We’re going to the dock.” 

Reid realizes he’s now been roped into this. Going with Hotch means he’s siding with Hotch and like a fool, he’s only got one option. He sets the marker in his hand down on the table and sends Rossi a panicked look- knowing he’s the only person who can help him at this point. 

The older man offers him a short shake of the head- great, he’s really screwed. 

Prentiss’ jaw clenches as she glares at Hotch, her fist clenched at her side. What point is he proving right now? Look at me, Aaron Hotchner, all buff and big because I’m going to get an ear infection going outside in the snow without any protection for my busted up ears! So manly, so cool.

Fuck him. 

She hopes he gets an ear infection, it would only serve him right. Asshole.

Picking up Reid’s discarded pen, she sets back to her work. At least this way one of them would be getting something done.

__________

“Hotch?”

The snow had started coming down harder once they got in the car. Reid had learned a long time ago that as sensible as his boss was, one of the largest mistakes you could make around him was getting in a car while the man was angry. And as worrisome as the car ride had been- the tall, lanky creature standing on the dock is shaping up to be worse. 

“FBI!”

Reid blinks, just watching in confusion, and fear as Hotch keeps his solid pace up. 

“Identify yourself.” No one’s supposed to be on that dock. Hence the yellow tape wrapped, practically, all the way around it. If he could see the tape through the snow then surely so could the figure.

Hotch comes to a staggering halt, fingers itching to draw his gun. 

“Step closer,” the figure shouts over the snow, “and I’ll slit this little bastards throat.”

A father-son duo… admittedly, Hotch wasn’t expecting this. “Just let him go,” Hotch replies, evenly. His hands raise, slowly, making sure everything stays just as it is. “We can talk- tell me your name?” The kid looks no older than sixteen and terrified. Trembling. 

“I'm not going to jail!” The man shouts, “those girls had it coming! They deserved it!” The father jerks the boy closer, his son’s body covering his. “Now, fuck off!” He pulls them closer to the edge.

Hotch’s heart is thundering in his chest, he’s really not in the mood to watch a father kill his son. “Just- Just-” he falters and that’s all it takes. Hotch shouts in horror as the father throws both himself and the son over the ledge. He’s aware of Reid shouting his name but he tears off for the desk. The whole way losing articles of clothing- his phone, his gun, his jacket-

The water hits like a punch, stealing the air from his lungs. He breaks the surface and his face burns from the freezing water and the wind. He shakes his hair out of his face, searching for blood or hair or- His eyes zero in on a small splash, a hand breaking the surface. 

He dives back under, muscles burning as he forces his way through the water. There’s a mass of murky movement, two bodies in motion. Hotch struggles to tell son from father for a moment- a moment too long. A hand reaches out and grabs his leg, puling him down too and he knows. 

With all the force he can manage he kicks down at the hand, a sickening water muffled snap coming to his ears. Hotch wraps his arms around the smaller figure, his lungs burning and body growing tired. He kicks them up but there are other limbs connecting with the soft tissues of his body. The cold has numbed his body and he doesn’t feel the pain that should be coordinated with those blows.

His head breaks the surface and all he feels is pain. Up his sides, in his lungs, and his face. “Stop-” his head goes back under the water, a wave knocking them back under and over. He has to fight harder to get them to the surface and the body in his arms turns limp- like a ragdoll.

This time Hotch’s head breaks the surface and there’s no pain. Just numb, soft cold. Hotch hooks his arm under the kid’s armpits, resting his head on Hotch’s chest. He lays on his back and starts to kick, starting the exhausting and long trip back to dry land. 

“I see him!” It’s Reid, his voice edged with panic. “Hotch! Keep swimming you’re almost there!”

A wave hits and Hotch is forced back under. His body stops fighting, for a moment his brain screams but his body just sinks. It’s not even a fight. The water stops feeling like water- it’s warm and… well, somethings just can’t be explained. His body is detached, his thoughts slowing. 

Jack-

The water fills his lungs and the blur of the world turns black.

Emily-

Sharp pain in his chest- 

Burning lungs, his eyes shoot open looking and seeing nothing. Water and stomach acid burning the back of his throat and on his back he chokes- the water starting to slip back down into his lungs when he’s seized by his belt and shirt sleeve, heaved up onto his side.

He gags, chest burning as water is forcibly removed from his lungs. He attempts to struggle away but it’s to no avail. His body is not responding. 

There are hands all over him, burning warmth spreading through his veins. Like lava. “Hello Agent,” an unfamiliar face greets. Hotch just stares at the other man as he’s vaguely aware of being laid on his back. A large hand cradling his neck. “Your friend told me dove in that water,” both men’s eyes wander to the dock and the waves crashing into it. “You suicidal or something,” the medic says with a shake of his head, “ or just stupid brave?”

The Emily in his head answers “stupid brave” but Hotch can’t manage anything more than a wheezing breath. It’s taking all he has to manage that. The medic keeps talking, going on about how Hotch is either crazy lucky or an unusually good swimmer. 

“Reid?” He croaks, his head feels heavy, wrong but he can see a familiar blur in a sea of red vehicles. How? How did he get out?

The medic stops his talking and frowns down at his patient. “Is that the scrawny one?” 

Hotch swallows thickly and nods.

The medic nods back, “he’s okay. Looks a bit like a drowned rat but he saved your ass.” He motions with his head to their left, just slightly up the bank. Reid is sitting on the bumper of an ambulance, a shock blanket around his shoulders. “He’s a tough kid, though.”

Hotch keeps his eyes locked on him, assessing the situation. Reid is stronger than he gives him credit for. 

A sudden weight is placed on the center of Hotch’s chest, a foot on his sternum. To his own ears his cry of pain is muffled. Vaguely, he’s aware of the sound of a monitor making frantic noises, the medic’s voice drowning in with it. Someone shouts his name but the black encroaching on his vision is too much. He succumbs to the lava in his veins. 

__________

Morgan knocks at the open door, hoping to draw Reid from his silence. “You okay, kid?” The nurse had said he was fine. They thought he was in shock but his core temperature hadn’t dropped that much thanks to the EMTs fast work at warming him up. That hadn’t spurred him to say anything though. 

He hasn’t said a word since they pulled him from Hotch.

Reid keeps rocking himself, knees tucked to his chest and arms around his shins. He’s still freezing and it’s all his fault. He should have been faster.

“Hotch!” The adrenaline is pumping back through Ried’s body, knees and hands shaking as he watches the waves hit the side of the dock but Hotch’s head doesn't come back up. There are no bubbles coming to the surface, no signs of a fight happening below the surface. “Hotch!”

It’s been a minute but when Hotch dove in he was under for nearly two. 

Seventy-six seconds.

Even if Hotch is a good swimmer-

Reid pulls his jacket off, stripping layers of clothing from his skin. This is such a bad idea. So bad. 911 has been called, back-up is on it’s way but that’s no good if Hotch drowns. 

“I hate this job,” he mumbles, staring into the water. “I hate it. I hate it. I hate it! I hate it!” He tears into it, knowing that this is bigger than his slight aquaphobia and the freezing sting of the water on his skin. “Hotch!” He takes a deep breath and plunges into the water. 

It hurts. Burns. It’s like a thousand hypodermic needles kissing his skin. 

He pushes his hair from his face, scanning the water. Looking back to the dock he estimates he needs to go about five more feet to his right. Using long strokes he cuts through the choppy water, a wave hitting his face. He has to stop and recover, blinking the sting from his eyes. “Hotch!”

And it’s still freaking snowing. 

Reid is begging Hotch to pop up. To hear his deep voice berate Reid for getting wet too.

He hates this job.

Reid dives under the next wave, forcing his eyes to open under the water. He’s afraid to see what he’ll find. His fingertips hit something hard and covered- hair! Reid pushes himself down further, lungs burning but he’s found someone and he can’t come up yet. 

He wraps his arms around the trunk of the other person- his brain supplying Hotch was wearing a white buttoned down shirt and the hurt digging into his skin is blunt like a button. He kicks with all his might but the body- Hotch- doesn’t move. His lungs are under too much pressure and with a silent cry he kicks himself up the surface.

“Argh!” He screams into the air, lungs burning in an entirely new way. He takes two deep breaths, treading water to gather his breath. He can’t give up. He goes back down. His panic is driving his heart rate up, making his oxygen last in even shorter amounts. 

His hands connect and he has to remind himself to save the energy of being happy. ‘Come on’, he pleads. Reid tucks Hotch closer, one armed wrapped around his chest and the other extended above his head. Feeling for where the water breaks to air. 

Every muscle in his body is screaming. Lactic acid building up in his muscles and if he had the air to he’d scream in anguish. 

His fingers sting and with a new burst of energy Reid’s head emmerages from the water. He gasps for water, his cold cramped fingers losing their grip for just a fraction of a second. Hotch slips from his grasp but Reid’s scream is muffled by the waves crashing around them. 

They’re going to die and it’s his fault.

He’s crying, tears streaming down his numb cheeks. He has to stay level headed, he has to fight. 

That’s what Hotch would do.

Right, Hotch.

Reid pulls him closer, flipping him into the rescue position. Head above water, breathing or not- it has to be enough. Hotch won’t forgive him, ever, if Reid saves Hotch to leave behind that boy. A killer or not.

The water is well beyond cold enough to, hypothetically, protect from brain damage. 

Reid has to pray that's enough.

He goes back under. His lungs hurt nearly as soon as his head goes under, the cold water hitting his forehead is strangely… nice. The rest isn’t.

It’s harder. All of it. 

The current twists him, his muscles tired from swimming. If he can’t find this kid soon, they’re all going to drown. 

A wave above crashes hard, it’s force pushing him down. 

He sees nothing. 

It’s all just black and freezing. 

He kicks into something and whirls around, finding flesh and hair. Reid pulls but the kid doesn’t move. For a moment, Reid nearly leaves him. His lungs are burning, his body exhausted, and with a long fight still ahead… The bodies had hesitation marks. Shallow marks where someone young- someone incapable of murder had done as requestied but not whole heartidly.

The kid isn’t a murderer. 

Reid kicks upwards with all his might, his head feeling like it’s going to explode. 

He breaks the surface and could sob with relief at the sight of the shore lit up with emergency lights. “Help!” His voice croaks, breaking. There’s no way they can hear him. Reid pulls the kid so he’s on his back, just as he had Hotch, and begins to tug them both in the direction of Hotch’s freely floating body. “Help!”

He rolls onto his back, taking a wave to the face. He recovers quickly, a new surge of adrenaline working through him. His limbs are shaky but working. “Alright,” he says to himself, floating for a second to gain control. “Let’s do this.” He grabs the back of Hotch’s collar and the kid’s shirt and kicks with everything he’s got. Hoping that the waves hitting his face can push him towards the shore. 

“Kid-”

Reid flinches, his whole body recoiling. He blinks slowly raising his head in confusion. “M-Morgan?” He looks around him, surprised to find hospital tile and not the wet sand he’d left Hotch on. “What-” his mouth is impossibly dry, his body still cold. 

Morgan takes a step closer to him, weary. In nothing but a hospital gown and a pair of hospital socks Morgan can see his friend’s bony body. It’s no surprise he didn’t hold up well in the freezing water- he doesn’t have any fat on his body to keep him warm!

“I brought you some clothes,” Morgan lifts Reid’s bag up. He sets it down on the bed beside Reid, allowing him easy access to the clothes. What he’s not expecting is for Reid to start crying. For a moment he’s just struck, he has no idea what to do. He takes a tentative step closer, putting his hand on Reid’s shoulder. “Hey,” Morgan gathers him up in his arms, holding him close. “Kid, what the hell? What's wrong?”

Reid shakes his head, pushing his face into Morgan’s warmth. He just wants someone alive, someone warm to hold him. “I’m sorry,” he sobs. All he can think about is Hotch. “I tried, I did!” 

Morgan pats his back, “what do you mean? What are you talking about?”

Reid’s chest heaves, his sob taking him by surprise. “Hotch!”

“Oh,” Morgan pauses for a moment, not sure what all he should tell Reid. “Kid, Hotch is…” fine might be an overstatement. A little rough but- “Hotch is sitting down in the ICU with Emily, right now.” He rubs Reid’s back, shushing him gently. “Kid, he’s fine. Hotch is gonna be fine.” 

Reid pulls his head back, “what?”

That can’t be true. Reid saw. 

The EMT pulled the buttons on Hotch’s perfect white shirt open. His chest bare and unmoving, as pale as the snow under his back. CPR wasn’t working. Reid saw. His ribs were bending under each compression but nothing was working. 

He was dead. 

Reid saw. Hotch was dead.

__________

“We caught the pulmonary edema early,” the doctor promises them. His tone is light, hopeful. “He’s on a course of diuretics to clear his lungs and on oxygen until his stats come back up but he’s already doing much better.” He nods his head, clearly happy to give them a good prognosis. “There was some irritation in his right ear so I want to start him on a course of antibiotics for that, to get ahead of the ear infection.”

Emily snorts, both her hands coming up to cover her mouth but her shoulders are still shaking with the force of her laughter. It’s a horrible moment of reacting to news the wrong way but an ear infection? “I’m so sorry,” she manages to force her palm against her lips. Forcing her smile down. “I’m- I really am sorry for that I don’t-” 

The doctor holds his hand up in a clear sign of acknowledging her apology. “It’s perfectly fine,” he reassures her. “Everyone has different reactions to these sorts of things.” His smile is a strange mix of sadness and amusement as he recalls giving grimmer news than this to families and garnering a similar reaction. “I assure you, it’s not the first time someone’s laughed.”

Emily isn’t sure whether to feel reassured or sick. She lowers her hands and wipes at the bottoms of her eyes, beyond the point of caring if she looks like a raccoon or not. “Is he- Can you take me to him?”

The doctor looks at the little group behind her, all looking equally as eager to his patient. “It’s against protocol to let all of you back, yet, but I can let one of you back.” There was a name, someone Agent Hotchner had managed to call out for. “He was asking for a-a…” he can’t remember the name though. “An Emma or-”

“Emily.”

The doctor nods, “yes. He asked for Emily.”

“Well,” Emily looks back at the other’s. Swallowing the lump in her throat she says, “I’m Emily.”

The doctor claps his hands together, “well, then come with me.”

Emily looks back over her shoulder once- to JJ and Rossi being left behind in the waiting room- and offers them a small wave. Smiling sadly when they wave back.

“He was alert when I went in a few minutes ago,” the doctor tells her, coming to a sudden stop. “Try not to get him too worked up-”

She’s partially aware of what he’s saying from then on out but her attention is on the man on the bed. The man intently watching her from under the oxygen mask across the bridge of his nose. The doctor pats her shoulder, offering a smile and she nods and smiles back despite not having a clue what he’s just said.

Stepping into the room, she hesitates for only a moment before taking his hand and sitting on the edge of his bed. “Hey.” He’s cold to the touch and she sets to rubbing his fingers between her own to warm them up. “How do you feel?” With her distraction in place, it’s easier to ignore the obvious pain in her chest. Tight and wrong.

He’s too pale for even him, shivering under the layers of shock blankets and heating pads pressed around his body, but he offers her a warm smile. Reaching up with fingers that are still too cold to work properly, he fails to pull the mask from his face. She pulls it down for him, tucking it under his chin. 

“Hey,” his voice is weak, hoarse from disuse. “I got an ear infection,” he rasps at her, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. 

She keeps the mask pulled back for a moment longer, leaning in and kissing him tenderly. She runs the side of her finger along his jaw, clenching her teeth in a failed attempt to hold her tears at bay. Carefully, she places the mask back on his face. Feeling a sick twist in her stomach because she’s glad it drowns out the sound of his labored breathing. “Serves you right.” 

He smirks at her, a goofy lopsided little thing. Oxygen deprived or still cruising on his adrenaline high he says something, intangible between his slurred exhaustion and the hiss of the oxygen over his face. She makes just enough of it out to lift the mask back up and asks, “did you ask me if I’d still love you if you were deaf?”

It’s hardly the time to be having “would you still love me” hypotheticals when he’s hardly awake. Especially when his breathing is still so rough and if it gets any worse it’ll be her fault. Then she’ll have to kiss her visitor’s pass goodbye. Still, she can’t help but love him and his stupid questions.

He nods.

“I think so,” she places the mask back down. She runs her hands through his hair, smiling as he curls himself closer to her. “I mean, you don’t listen to me now, what would change?” She chuckles after she says it and he wraps his arms around her waist, pulling at her. That’s when her chest gets tight, her emotions bubbling up as he frowns up at her with those big old sad eyes. 

She almost lost him. Permanently. This time there would be no Paris for recovery, Afghanistan for penance- just permanent goodbyes where the last things they said to one another were cruel misguided words. Things that didn’t matter because that’s how the world works. 

The credits cut before the movie’s over. 

Romeo and Juliet isn’t a love story.

And he dies on a dock. 

No more Sunday’s spent in his backyard. The two of them tangled in a hammock meant for one person. A book balanced on his chest, his voice a deep rumble and the only sound in the world- “ I had taught myself to covet nothing. It was not a loathing of death that froze me. I had taught myself to think of death as a friend. It was not heartbroken rage-” 

No one could properly replace him. 

She’d never felt this comfortable with another human being. To try on clothing, twirling in place to show him that it not only has pockets but it swishes when she moves. How many men would look up from whatever teen magazine quiz he was reading and raise an eyebrow in approval? Noting she also wouldn’t have to shave above her knee in it either. 

He pushes the mask away, twisting the flimsy plastic from his face. “Come here,” he manages, breathless. “Let me hold you.”

She’s momentarily adamant to get too close. He’s hurt and tired and- pulling her closer. “Fine but only for a minute,” she caves and she always caves when it comes to him. It takes a minute to work around the machines and the wires, then moving so she’s not laying on him. “I mean it, Aaron.” She tucks her head closer to his chest, breathing in the natural scent of him. Just Hotch.

“You scared us,” she whispers against his chest. 

She’s close enough now that he can smell her conditioner. “I scared myself.” It’s not like drowning was something he was looking to do. 

Emily looks up at him, turning her head on his shoulder. “Let’s not do that again then?”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” his voice is rough again, breathing ragged. 

She reaches up and pulls the mask back over his face. Gently raking her nails through the hair at the side of his ears. “Get some sleep, huh?” He’s just a big softie and she knows that playing with his hair is going to put him out like a light. “I’ll be right here when you wake up.” 

“Promise?” he mouths, eyes dropping already.

And how is she gonna say no? “Always,” she whispers. She holds him closer, scratching at his head. 

She’s waiting for his soft snore but now she wraps him up in her arms. Enjoying his proximity. He may be a stupid man but that’s what she signed up for.

[rayne-storm]

AUgust 6 - Gaming

Title: MOON QUEEN

Fandom: Hyperdrive

As always, Hyperdrive belongs to my beautiful and talented BFF @rad-infiniitum / @starburnedfarrago

This was just super fun to write, and although the logistics as presented are just absolutely whack, I hope you enjoy!!

She smiled as she hit the buttons with routine familiarity, starting her stream. She smiled gently as she addressed her followers and her little intro video played.

There was her channel name: STELLA-PY , and the letters rearranged themselves to some bubbly synth music to: LETS-PLAY and faded out to reveal the title card for the game that she was tackling today.

"Good afternoon, guys! It's me, Stella-Py!"

"Py" in this case was pronounced "Pie," and the comments she had received about the similarity mixed with her heavier frame were old news long ago. She kept herself in a small frame at the corner of the video, just because she knew she tended to make silly faces playing spookier games, and if anyone really got a sense of her size from that, she applauded their eye for detail. Any hate got pretty quickly removed from the chat thanks to a friend who maintained it, and her lovely (if few) fans.

"Today, we're doing something new and short, while I recover from the awful, awful fetus monster. This is one you guys have been telling me to try!"

She pulled up the application on her computer, and a solid wall of blue illuminated her screen. From the wall, white letters in a vintage font appeared one by one to reveal:

"QUEST FOR THE MOON QUEEN"

Stella smiled and let the elegant chiptunes that came after the letter play for a moment before starting to speak again.

"That's right, folks! Quest For The Moon Queen was published seven years ago to itch.io by an anonymous, indie developer that only called themself 'BL00 SCR33N.' It's remained relatively obscure since then, which is a shame because it looks so cute! From what I've seen, this is an adventure game where the player is this adorable little knight, trying to rescue and woo the titular Moon Queen. I'm super excited to get into it, and please make sure to put asterisks before any spoilers to hide them!"

She paused to let the chat catch up, answering a couple of questions about her day, how the baby cow was doing, and when she would do a baby cow reveal (the poll for the baby cow name was still going, Moomin being the leader by far). The chat satisfied, she hit ENTER on her keyboard, and the screen slowly darkened.

First came a little tutorial.

There was a little blue knight in front of a white screen, and little floating text walked the player through the various movements they could do. It was relatively simple, arrow keys to move, space to jump, and a couple of keys or mouse clicks to shoot a little spark.

After the tutorial came an adorable side-scrolling adventure where the little blue knight jumped over hurdles and shot sparks at bees and little black boomerang-like shapes.

Three levels of slightly increasing difficulty later, there was a boss fight.

The boss was labeled "THE DICTATOR" and a chiptune-version of ABBA's "Voulez-Vous?" played. The knight grew a little taller, and was faced suddenly by a giant black tarantula with a hundred glowing red eyes.

The sparks were ineffective, and Stella began to panic when she noticed a small sword icon. Interacting with that froze the boss and brought up an option screen:

"CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON"

MY STRENGTH

MY SPIRIT

Well, wasn't that unique?? Stella immediately chose to fight with "SPIRIT" and the scene dissolved into a cute little cutscene.

The little knight stood before THE DICTATOR, trembling only slightly in the presence of the fierce enemy.

"I must go!" The knight proclaimed in chiming little chirps

"But why?? You have served me loyally all this time!"

"I must find my own path, and you must care for your fallen kingdom."

The scene dissolved again, and the spider rolled over, defeated.

Stella felt there was more to the story, but could only really comment on how sweet that was.

"This is such a cute little game! You guys are the best, and if anyone has any idea how to get in contact with the person who developed this, please let them know that I love it so much!!"

The next levels were water-themed (of course), leading up to a new boss fight:

THE EXILE.

This boss was a massive squid, with pink tendrils that acted as hair. The blue Knight's sparks again were ineffective, and again Stella was presented a choice:

THE EXILE HAS REPLACED YOU. CHOOSE YOUR REACTION:

COMPASSION

CRUELTY

Stella again went for the softer route, and again, the screen dissolved.

Surprisingly, the squid-like creature shrunk to being smaller even than the Blue Knight.

"I am afraid, Knight."

"Why are you afraid? You have everything you could ever want, now."

"Because I am so small, and this world is so big."

The knight knelt and gently hugged the little creature.

"Take heart, EXILE, for there are many large things, but there is only one of you. Develop your skills, grow your talents, and the world will bend for you."

The EXILE bobbed happily, nodding.

"Thank you Knight! Good luck on your journey!!"

The EXILE swam away, and the Knight progressed.

So it went, with such bosses as:

THE CORINTHIAN, an eagle dressed like a glam-rocker, who the Knight could either PLUCK or APPLAUD. Applause led to the Knight clapping and giving the creature a CD to sing along to.

a giant troll THE BEAST that offered a stealth option to SNEAK around or SLAY.

THE PRETENDER, a shadowy silhouette of a woman, and the Knight could choose KILL or KINDNESS. Kindness led to the Knight patting the shadow on the back, and with each little pat more of the sprite filled in until the shadow became a dark-skinned woman in a space suit.

Finally, about two hours of play later, the knight was jumping on clouds and was faced with the final boss:

THE DEMON.

This boss was a massive metal insectoid, and Stella waited for the choice to appear, but a minute of waiting led to her health being knocked down halfway, and a message popping up:

NOT EVERY BATTLE HAS A SOLUTION. DRAW YOUR SWORD AND FIGHT.

That felt… wrong.

The chat was exploding to fight back as the monster hit the Knight, but she just couldn't.

Tears in her eyes, she removed her hands from the keyboard.

The health bar was knocked down to zero.

NOT EVERY BATTLE CAN BE WON the screen proclaimed, as it began to fade.

Suddenly, a shower of pink and green lights fluttered down.

The chat began to go crazy. This, it seemed, had never been discovered before. Everyone always fought the monster, and gained a trite little victory screen, the little Blue Knight doing a little dance.

This was something completely new.

NOT EVERY BATTLE CAN BE WON.

BUT SOMETIMES LOSING YOURSELF ALLOWS ANOTHER TO LIVE.

The metal shell of the boss began to melt, and out floated a beautiful woman, pale-skinned with pink and green hair, and nearly translucent green wings that shimmered and glowed.

She floated down to the body of the little fallen Knight and kissed his head. The knight slowly stood.

"Thank you, Blue Knight, for your compassion. Thank you for setting me free. You do not have to hide yourself any longer."

The armor melted away from the knight, and an adorable little creature with blue skin, long ears, and yellow eyes remained.

The descriptions of the characters changed. The Blue Knight became THE REGRETFUL SOUL, and what once was THE DEMON became…

THE MOON QUEEN.

"Thank you, my lady," the REGRETFUL SOUL chirped, and they took each other's hands.

The MOON QUEEN scooped up the little creature, and began to fly up the screen with him. As they reached the top, they turned and faced the screen.

THANK YOU, PLAYER, FOR ABSOLVING OUR GUILT AND SETTING US FREE.

The screen faded to black, and Stella initially thought it had completely ended. She was about to exit out of the program (still sobbing), when a little message slowly flowed up from the bottom:

TO LUNA.

I LOVE YOU.

I LOVE YOU.

I LOVE YOU.

-NEIL

Stella couldn't help crying harder, and blubbered out her closing spiel. The chat still kept going absolutely crazy, some claiming that this was a hacked copy of the game, or that they totally knew about the secret ending. Suddenly a new kind of message began exploding:

The game was gone.

It wasn't on itch.io, or any other site that the chat could find.

What in the world…?

Stella figured that she would deal with the implications of that later, saying goodbye and logging out of her stream.

She gave herself a few more minutes to cry before she heard the soft ping of a new email.

She sighed and opened it, ready to be assaulted by some kind of anger (per usual when she streamed), and was surprised to see the sender was going by "BL00 SCR33N."

She opened the message, and it simply read:

"You saved the knight and the Moon Queen. Congratulations. Want to meet up?"

After that was a phone number.

This was a terrible idea.

She called.

[ot3]

My approach to flat colors + limited palette drawings

This is a follow up to this post  i made about how i go about figuring out a color palette for my limited palette drawings. an anon asked me about my actual technique of finishing them so this is gonna be an explanation of how I work in a limited palette with flat colors. I ended up with these thumbnails for a sketch last time so we’re gonna work from here and I’m gonna sort of walk through how i got to the finished version

first things first: every part of this process is just developed as a result of me messing around. take my advice with a grain of salt and if you think you know a way to do something better/that makes you more comfortable. go with that over what I say.

I’m honestly a little surprised when people express confusion about how i draw like this because it’s SUPER simple - literally all you’re doing is just stacking solid color blocks of shape. its very imprecise despite how sharp everything ends up looking. 

First things first is that you want to decide how you will be handling your edges throughout the duration. Do you want your shapes to be ultra-sharp and precise, or do you want a little bit of a wobblier, grainier edge? Both can look good but it’s VERY much a matter of situational basis. i’ve been favoring looser and grainier shapes so that’s how i’m going to be working on this. 

on the left here, you can see the shapes made with precise rectangular selections and an untextured pen, on the right, freehand drawn shapes and a grittier pen. There’s something immediately pretty different feeling about them. So play around with that first - its not something that’s fun to change halfway through! But lets step back a minute. It helps to work large to small. The two biggest shapes here are these orange chunks and everything gets stacked on top of them so i’m gonna do that first. 

Now, a key feature of what i do: clipping masks. almost all digital art programs have them. What a clipping mask does is it constrains the pixels of a layer to the transparency of the layer below it. Here I have the light orange layer, and then on top of it the buildings and billboard are clipped to the orange. Most of you probably already know this and I’m overexplaining a bit, but there was a time when i didnt know how clipping layers worked and someone had to explain it to me.

now you’ll notice the shapes of the buildings are rough, and sloppy. here’s the fun part: since this is all about stacking shapes, only your exterior edges matter. this all gets filled in. be as sloppy as you want when you’re making your shapes. in fact, the outside edges get trimmed out a bunch to when i do this - i go in and erase them clean. Don’t be too finnicky about drawing perfect and precise! its a waste of time. As long as the silhouette is what you want, the interior can be a nightmare.

Working this way, it’s important to keep your layers stacked in a way you can make sense of. Right now there are four layers here: the background dark orange, the two main orange rectangle shapes, and then the buildings on one layer and a billboard on the other. I rack up a LOT of layers doing this and it makes it annoying in some aspects, but being able to freely recolor any one chunk without losing my detail is a key aspect of this.

So, I block those out

Next, I do the same for the smaller chunks that are still main shapes. There are once again, a lot of layers here. The top layer is the hair - you can see the head showing through it. The head and arm underneath the hair, same layer. Then the cup. Then the light green pieces of paper. Then the dark green ones.

The cup is technically farther forward than the head and arm so you would think it’d go on top, but the point isnt to recreate the foreground and background hierarchy with layers so much as it is to group things in a way i can work with. The cup goes underneath so it can be grouped with all the other objects on the table. 

now, i just go and fill in all the shapes. i forgot to do the blinds but i get them later. you might notice a lot of these shapes are pretty rough, which was harder to notice before they were filled in. Now that I can see better, I go in with an eraser and clean up the edges until they’re the shape I want 

sometimes erasing leaves little bits of ‘noise’ around objects like on this napkin here. i like to keep a little bit of this noise for texture, but if you dont like it make sure to get rid of it! if you’re working very crisp this will stand out a LOT

Next up is to add some detail onto the objects

I flipped the canvas here because the head shape was wrong - the ears were uneven and i wanted to fix it. I want to go about adding detail onto the billboard and buildings. i do all detail with clipping masks - but the objects are clipped to another layer and so nothing can be clipped to them. instead, i unclip them and just erase by selection for the same effect

all of the text on the papers is clipped to the papers below it. the buttons are clipped to the phone. the yellow photos and card are actually another independent layer on top, in case i want to recolor them separately. im indecisive and end up recoloring things a lot. For the most part these objects are starting to become recognizable as more than just shapes

i go in an add the details on the background and character now. theres some more stuff on the table. the lines of the face and ears are on one layer, and the flats of the eyes below that. Here’s what each group of layers is, and what they look like on their own

The background/bottom chunk. Just the table, window, and shirt.

The middle bit. All the stuff on the table and the blinds.

Finally, the top, which is just his head and arm. 

now this stage is the bare bones of the drawing. you can more or less tell everything that’s happening. it reads. but its very much lacking in something - it doesnt have a ton of depth or interest. and adding that additional detailing, the dept and interest, is where stuff starts getting REALLY tricky and subjective. 

im gonna take you to a much simpler scenario to show the sort of options i go through at this stage

ahh its our dear friend, sphere casting shadow. this is, more or less, the kind of image we have. you can tell whats happening but it’s lackluster. there are TONSSS of ways frm here that you can go add interior detail to a shape once it has been established. here are some quick and SUPER rough examples

from top left to bottom right: flat cel shading, softer airbrushed/gradient shading, halftone, and a textured brush. Each of these has their strengths and weaknesses. They can also be combined.

for example, here’s the solid cel shading being used to contain a gradient/airbrushed detail. This image - probably the single oldest piece of my art i still willingly show people - is entirely colored with gradients being contained in cel-shaded chunks. It has a sort of soft, luminous quality but without losing its crispness.

here’s a super quick bust with some variations of stuff going on. obviously this is no masterpiece but you see how different types of detailing can interact with each other and be used to distinguish materials too. 

With the mob psycho comic I did, the detailing that wasnt line was done using a variety of halftones of different shapes layered on top of each other

by contrast parts of my ace attorney comic use a textured brush and have a sort of blended, papery feel

any of them can work for pretty much anything as long as you are using it with intent. practice around. mix styles of finishing together. find a comfort zone. the more you do it the more intuitive it becomes and at the heart of it this process is a very intuitive way of drawing because of how far removed it is from realism.

Now here is the trick - light and shadow.

Everything up to this point has been very flat and adding detail helps but there’s only so much that can accomplish. To get HEAVY light and shadow you need to think about things differently. I think if there’s any part of this process that’s complicated, its this one. 

To truly get the most out of your palette, you need to pick chunks of an image to be in higher/lower light and then either ‘step up’ or ‘step down’ the colors in that chunk. here’s what I mean.

Here’s our ball with a beam of light on it. Everything Within the beam of light is one step in our limited palette lighter than anything outside of it. Here’s how I go about doing this: the shape of the beam of light is below everything else. Then, once I have the shape blocked out, i select it. With that selection in place, i go to EVERY SINGLE LAYER that’s effected, lock the opacity, and recolor that chunk. So what’s going on here is that there is only one more layer - the beam of light, below everything but the background, and the rest of this effect is just caused by every layer above it now being two-toned following the exact same silhouette. THIS is why it’s so important to keep your layers separate - if the shadow and highlight had been painted onto the base directly, i would not be able to do this without significant effort. 

This works with all of the finishing techniques I talked about above

A combination of cel shading and half toning, all stepped up to give the appearance of heavier light on one area.This is also how I go about rendering transparency in this style. All of my layers are fully opaque and I allow the colors to do the work of conveying transparent material

Here’s our ball with the patterned/textured brush  shading, being viewed partially through a window

it’s obviously not a very representational way of working, but as long as your audience UNDERSTANDS what you’re trying to convey, then you’re executing it successfully.

So with that, now we’re gonna go and finish this drawing.

For this one, I decide a big central shadow is necessary. In the original thumbnail, he was backlit, which I still plan on doing, and that wouldn’t make sense without casting a shadow.

I’ve had to change the colors of some objects entirely in order to get this to work right. This is what I mean when I call this an intuitive process - some stuff felt weird, so I changed it. This also involves a bit of problem solving. The newspaper is now unable to be separated from his hand. Sometimes changing the color of an object makes that object look better, but ruins its relationship with the objects around it. It’s up to you to learn how to adjust and finagle things until you get it where you want.The paper he has and the napkin underneath it also all blend together now.

The next few parts of this process are REALLY just trial and error, where I toss a bunch of spaghetti at it until it works. It’s hard to decide what to screenshot, because I don’t know what will or will not be part of the finished drawing. To that end, you can watch the recording of this drawing here. This video isn’t edited at all so it contains a couple of minutes of really shitty sketching, and then all of the color thumbnailing work i did in the last post. Actually getting started on these final colors begins around the two minute mark. It is also sideways, I am sorry I don’t know why. 

Now, here you can see where I’ve more or less worked things out. His hand’s not on the cup anymore because my friend pointed out it didnt have an arm attached to it. I added some halftoning to make a gradiating effect in the sky and on the table to give the impression of a sunrise. His eyes are different but as of posting this, I don’t like them and am probably about to go back and change them again. The Cup now has a shadow and some rim lighting. His hand is in shadow. The stain on the napkin is big enough to define the edge of the paper on top of it.

Little things like that. 

The more you draw like this the more the way you need to think about your space becomes natural. I hope this helps and I wish you all the best of luck!

[morningfears]

I Gotta Ask

Part One | Part Two

Rating: PG-13 (Mentions of abortion)

Request: Celebrity!Reader | Part three of Lost In Japan.

Word Count: 2.8k

Author’s Note: I usually save this until the end so I’m sorry and I’ll keep it short. I wasn’t going to even write this, let alone post, but I got inspired and wrote it and wanted to give this a proper conclusion. It was never my intention to upset anyone.

White noise filters through your headphones, fills your ears and blocks out the hustle and bustle of the backstage area, as you lie on the couch in the corner of your dressing room. Your arm is slung across your eyes in an effort to block out the harsh overhead lights but the pressure does little to relieve the intense ache pounding at the front of your skull. You feel nauseous, exhausted and overwhelmed and a little lightheaded, but that’s quickly becoming a feeling you’re all too familiar with. And as much as you’d have liked to cancel your appearance at a music festival you’d only agreed to perform at months ago because Ashton would also be there, you knew that you couldn’t.

The decision to cancel a show is never one that you take lightly. In fact, you’ve often remarked that it’s a ‘damned if I do, damned if I don’t’ situation. The decision is always either show up and perform, shoving your discomfort to the back of your mind for a few hours, or cancel and be forced to face the questions and rumors that tend to abound. And while neither option appealed to you (you would’ve much preferred to just lie in bed and forget that the world around you exists), showing up to perform came with an added bonus that left you unable to cancel.

Showing up at the festival guaranteed that you’d at least be in the same building as Ashton.

It’s been three weeks since you’ve seen him. Three weeks since he walked out of your home, heartbroken and angry in equal measure. Three weeks since he stopped taking your calls and started sending you to voicemail immediately. Three weeks since he stopped responding to your texts. Three weeks since he stopped bothering to read them at all.

You knew that you wouldn’t be able to see him any other way so you pushed the discomfort you’ve been feeling to the back of your mind and steeled yourself to perform, no matter what.

When you first decided to attend the festival, to accept the invitation to perform at this event for the first time, Ashton had been over the moon. He was thrilled that you’d get to see their new material live, that you’d get to see an actual show as opposed to just a rehearsal. He was also thrilled that he’d get to see you perform your new material live as he hadn’t even been able to watch your rehearsal due to his busy promotional schedule.

The both of you had been thrilled beyond measure, beyond ready to support one another and for the festival itself, but now there isn’t even an ounce of excitement to be found in your body.

Now, as you lie on the couch, anxiety weighs heavily on your chest and nausea churns your stomach as your head pounds. You’re certain that Ashton won’t seek you out but you’re curious if he’ll even look your way should you cross paths. You think that you should get up, that you should go find him, but your body feels as if it’s made of lead. Your limbs feel heavy, your head the heaviest of all, and the idea of actually moving makes you want to cry.

So, you resign yourself to lying on the couch in peace, stage-ready, until the moment you’re forced to move.

Unfortunately, the only person that truly knows what’s happened between you and Ashton has a very different idea of what you should be doing.

You feel a hand nudge the headphones away from your ears before it moves to grip your forearm. “Get up,” you hear as the hand pushes your arm away and allows the light to shine brightly on you. “The guys have the dressing room right down the hall and they’re on their way in. You need to talk to Ashton and you need to do it now.”

Reluctantly, you peek up at your assistant with one eye squinted open. “There’s no point,” you mumble, defeated, as you move your hands to grip the pillow that had been lying limply across your stomach. “He doesn’t want to talk to me. I’m sure he hates me by now and, I mean, rightfully so. Just, leave it alone, Max,” you breathe as you clutch the pillow tight against your stomach and roll onto your side with a quiet groan.

Max huffs a breathe as he watches you readjust your headphones and shift into the most comfortable position you can find. He knew that you weren’t going to confront Ashton. He understands, he knows that you’re tired and ready to give up but he knows (just as you do, rationally) that you have to talk to him immediately. So, without a second thought, Max marches out of the dressing room and steps into the hall just as Ashton passes.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Max breathes as he catches Ashton’s arm, “I thought this was going to be harder. Look, I know you don’t want to talk to her. And I get it. Well, I don’t because I’ve never been in this situation but I can imagine. Actually, no I can’t. I’m going to stop now. Anyway, the two of you need to talk. I’m not telling you this as her assistant. I’m telling you this as someone who is her friend and genuinely cares about her. I’m also telling you this as someone who knows what’s happening right now. So, just. Talk to her, please. I don’t think you’ll regret it.”

Max can see the underlying anger in Ashton’s eyes, can see the sadness and the exhaustion, but he can also see the curiosity. He can see traces of the fondness Ashton always had in his eyes whenever you were mentioned and that is enough to make him cautiously optimistic that Ashton will agree as he repeats a quiet, “Please talk to her.”

Ashton is silent for a moment, weighing his options, before he nods. Max throws his hands up, relieved, and steps away from the door. The moment Ashton steps inside, Max pulls the door shut behind him and decides that now is the perfect time for a coffee break.

Ashton stares at the back of the door for a long moment before he turns and allows his eyes to rake over the room in search of you. Much to his surprise, you’re unaware of his presence. He finds you on the couch, pillow held tight to your stomach and eyes clenched shut. He notices the odd position of your head and sighs as he recognizes the symptoms of one of your headaches. He debates for a moment, unsure of whether or not he should even be in the same room as you, let alone touching you, before he crosses the space that separates you and settles onto the floor in front of the couch.

He studies you for a brief second, takes in the sight of you and savors it, before he brings his hand to your temple and begins gently rubbing. He feels you jolt, shocked by the sudden touch, and gently removes your headphones before he hums, “It’s just me.”

Instead of relaxing into his touch as he’d expected of you, you nudge his hand away and roll over to face him. “What are you doing in here?” you ask quietly, your voice hoarse with disuse. He says nothing and you frown. “It was Max, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he sighs as he truly looks at your face and notices the dark circles that are still noticeable despite the copious amounts of concealer. “He told me that we should talk. But I honestly don’t think there’s anything for either of us to say.”

You’re quiet for a moment, unsure of how to tell him, before you sigh, “Yeah, there is.” When he raises an eyebrow at you, you push yourself up with a groan. Your head is still pounding, it’s making you lightheaded, but you power through it as you focus on Ashton’s hands tapping against his thighs. You almost smile at the nervous tick before you think better of it and bite the inside of your cheek as you contemplate your words.

“I have a lot to say,” you whisper, your own hands moving to play with the beading on your jacket as you drop your gaze to the yellowing tile floor. “I want to apologize, first of all. This is the most overwhelming experience I’ve ever dealt with. I was afraid and alone. I was thousands of miles from home when I found out that I was pregnant. I was hundreds of miles away from you. That’s not how I imagined it happening. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted children with you. I’ve thought about it, you know?

I imagined that we’d be a little older, a little more settled in our careers. I imagined we’d be living in a nice place outside of the city with a big backyard, close to a nice school district. I imagined we were married, more in love than ever and ready for this. I imagined that I expected it and that the time was right. I imagined that I’d be able to think about it and talk about it and be the happiest person alive. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t expecting it and the timing was the worst. I wasn’t able to think about it without shutting down. We aren’t married, we aren’t living together, and we’re not older.”

You pause for a brief second, long enough to take a deep breath, and Ashton notices your hands shaking as you run them along the tops of your thighs. He wants to reach out for your hand, wants to hold it and reassure you, but he refrains. Instead, he simply listens as you continue. “I realized I couldn’t do that, though,” you whisper, tears lining your lashes, “I realized I couldn’t just shut down and not think about it. I realized I couldn’t just get rid of this child and move on like nothing had ever happened.”

You’re quiet for another beat, the tears finally tracking slowly down your cheeks, and Ashton does reach for your hand. You recoil, surprised at the gentle touch, before you relax and allow him to hold your hand in his. He squeezes reassuringly but you can’t lift your head to look at him. Instead, you keep your gaze on the tile and continue speaking.

“I haven’t had any shows the past three weeks,” you inform him, your voice barely audible, “I’ve just been at home. And I’ve been thinking. I’ve spent a lot of time crying, a lot of time questioning. But I thought about every negative that I gave you, every reason to not have this child, and I fully stand by all of them. I still believe that we’re too young, that we haven’t been together long enough, that the timing couldn’t be worse, and that I’m not entirely sure I’m ready.”

Ashton can feel his heart sinking to his stomach and he attempts to remove his hand from your grasp but you squeeze a little tighter and shake your head. “Please, don’t,” you whisper as you finally lift your head, “please, just keep listening.”

He looks you in the eye for a long moment, sees the sincerity and the depth of emotion swimming behind the tears, and nods as he gently squeezes your hand. He doesn’t respond, instead, he allows you to continue speaking.

“Even though I thought about the negatives, I also thought about every positive that I hadn’t let myself consider. I thought about how amazing it would be to wake up, you by my side and a little mini-us in the nursery down the hall. I thought about how heartwarming it would be to see you sing them back to sleep when they get fussy. I thought about the little things, the birthday parties and trips to visit grandparents. I thought about going on family vacations.

I thought about showering this child with love and affection that I didn’t always get as a kid. I thought about being the parent I always wanted to have. I thought about how before you, I wasn’t sure I’d ever meet someone I wanted to have children with. But now, I know there’s no one else I’d rather do this with.”

Ashton is silent as he stares at you. He fully glances over you once more, takes in the slight bloating of your face and the way you’re hugging the pillow tightly to your stomach. He takes in the look in your eyes, a look that is bordering on desperation, and he feels his heart skip a beat.

“So, you didn’t…?” he trails off, not daring to hope as he absentmindedly grips your hand a little tighter.

You shake your head and he releases the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “I was going to,” you admit quietly, hanging your head and letting your gaze fall back to the tile floor, “but I couldn’t. I got so sick the morning I made my appointment and when I was lying on the floor in my bathroom, I just. I couldn’t do it. The thought of going to the appointment made me feel even more nauseous so I didn’t go. I cancelled the appointment and made one with a doctor to make sure everything was okay.”

“Is it?” Ashton asks, his voice hopeful as he stares at you, desperate for you to lift your head once more.

“It’s fine,” you nod, fingers of your free hand moving to rub over the material of your pants. “We’re both healthy,” you inform him. “I have an audio file of the heartbeat, if you want to hear it,” you offer quietly.

“Please,” he breathes and is unable to help himself as he moves his free hand to your chin and nudges your head up so that he can meet your eyes. “But, first, please tell me what else is on your mind,” he whispers as he searches your face for any clue.

“I know that you want to be in the baby’s life,” you nod, “and I’m glad. But if you don’t want to be with me, that’s fine. Don’t feel like you have to, just because we’re having a child. We can work something out, parenting-wise. I just don’t want you to feel obligated to stay with me.”

“What?” he questions, feeling as if the air has been knocked out of his lungs. He stares at you for a long moment, questioning whether you truly believe that he no longer wants to be with you or if you’re simply looking for an out yourself. When he sees that you’re genuinely afraid, he moves from the floor to sit beside you on the couch and wraps his arms around your shoulders to pull you flush against his chest.

“I shouldn’t have left,” he whispers against your hair as he places a kiss to the top of your head. “I shouldn’t have gone anywhere. I should’ve stayed and we should’ve talked. I should’ve been there to hold your hair back when you got sick or go get you something to settle your stomach. I was just so angry that you weren’t giving this a shot but that wasn’t fair. I didn’t listen to any of the points that you made. I just brushed them off and kept pushing because I want this so badly.”

“I want to have a child, yes,” he nods, “but more than that, I want to have this child with you. I want to do it together, as a couple. I want the three of us to be a family. I love you, doll. And I love this baby. I can’t wait for us to be a family.”

Before you can comment, Ashton is shifting so that he can bring you in for a soft, slow kiss. You melt into his embrace, your hands releasing the pillow still in front of your stomach and reaching for his chest as the kiss continues. You remain wrapped up in one another for a long while, his hands never moving from your cheeks and yours never moving from his chest, until he pulls away to catch his breath and rests his forehead against yours.

“Can I?” he questions as he releases your cheek to hover his hand above your stomach. When you nod, a small smile on your lips, Ashton grins the brightest grin you’ve ever seen and carefully nudges the fabric of your jacket and top out of the way to brush his fingers over your barely-there bump.

“Holy shit,” he laughs, tears of his own stinging his eyes. “We’re going to have a baby.”

“Yeah,” you nod, the small smile growing larger as you feel the weight lift off your chest. “We’re going to have a baby.”

Extra Note: I had a little more planned for this part and for another little short chapter but basically. No one knows (outside of family and friends) until the baby’s not a baby. Like, the baby’s almost a year old and everyone is completely shocked and confused as to how no one noticed or even suspected anything. But they didn’t. And Ash and reader live happily ever after in a really sweet bubble of cuteness. They never post pictures of their child’s face but sometimes Ash will post a picture of Reader holding baby while she looks out at their backyard or she’ll post a picture of baby asleep on Ash’s chest while they take a nap. And everyone goes insane when they figure out who the father of Reader’s baby is and it’s a lot but everyone’s happy for them because they look so happy and in love. Okay. Bye.

Also. I’m sorry for any emotions this series caused. Okay. I’m gonna schedule this and then go watch Daria. Alright. Bye.

[heinrichklaasen37-blog]

The White Pages Game

It is possible to search by name and location during the white pages.  In the instance of free white pages websites, you can use no more than the very first few letters of the name you're hunting for as a way to bring up some results from which to select.  You would think and believe that to be able to discover absolutely free white pages, you must utilize Google.

When you visit our website you will see a box where relative information must be inserted.  All you will need is the suspicious telephone number, type it in the search form on their site and press enter.  Of course you won't always have all the information that you need, however you will still require some way to limit your search.

All you need to do is go the online white pages and click the choice for the reverse phone search. A recognized example is Uber. All you need to do is visit the site and click on such an option. If you're looking for an accurate and speedy answer, go to paidreverse search websites. Therefore, should you want to conduct search with the telephone number that keeps on bothering you day and night, you may use white pages online from free websites that you can test out. Paid search sites are some of the the favourite mode of searches in the net. White Pages - the Conspiracy With quite a few sites specifically devoted to helping people find different people and a small info, you'll find nearly anyone. They, for various reasons, need to know the background of other people with whom they interact, for example, employers need to check out future employees, etc.. Read about a few of the ideas that you could attempt to use to find people in foreign nations. 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[berserker-official]

For Honor 1.14.1 Patch Notes

Here’s a link if you want to read them on the official site

Live Update Part

-Fight-

Unlock Tech Fixes: Unlocked attacks can no longer become unparryable.

Players were able to elect to launch attacks without having a target locked, and if they performed this in a particular way, the attacks would still be aimed at you, but you could not parry it. We fixed this by forcing the system to aim directly at the nearby target. (Because of this we’ve updated rotation speeds for some character’s Zone Attacks - Conq, Highlander, Shinobi, and Shugoki. There might still be situations that make attacks unparryable, but this should be extremely rare.)

Guardbreak: Bug Fix resolved an issue causing guardbreak to not connect when both players are fighting on certain stairs in Forge and Sentinel maps.

Warlord: Headbutt timing reverted to pre patch 1.13, meaning Dodge Forward into Headbutt is now 100ms again. Dodge recovery duration shortened to 600ms from 700ms. Light Side Attacks damage increased to 13 from 12. Counter Stab damage increased to 12 from 10.

Centurion: Charged Heavy Attack range decreased to 4.25m, Charged Heavy Finisher range decreased to 4.75m. Uncharged Heavy Finisher link into Jab delayed by 100ms. Jabs do not stagger on wall anymore. Normal Jab Stamina drain decreased to 30. Normal Jab Miss recovery shortened to 700ms. Legion Kick does not stun anymore. Eagle Talon stamina cost increased to 20. Bug Fix Jab stamina cost of 12 works correctly now.

Shinobi: Double Dodge stamina cost decreased to 24. Double Dodge Kick stamina cost decreased to 10. Back Flip and Front Roll stamina costs decreased to 12. Reflex Guard Duration increased to 800ms.

Patch Notes Part

Zone Attack Flicker: Flicker has been removed.

Host Advantage: If 2 opponents use the same attacks each other at the same time one player would be rewarded with a hit and the other would be hit. This is fixed. This goes for attacks like Raider’s stampede Charge, LB’s Long Arm and Sprint attack, Cent’s Charged Heavies, Finishers, and Jabs, and Gladiator’s Skewer. (Fixing the issue on the Impaling Charge has unfortunately created another issue that caused the LB’s sprint attack to bump after stumbling his opponent near a wall. To correct that, we have added a specific recovery when that target bumps a wall. The effect is now the LB has a 100ms delay when unlocked and a 200ms delay when locked.

Chip Damage: Can no longer kill because of Revenge/ Attack Boosts/ etc.

General: Optimized the attack UI feedback so it appears as soon as possible.

Assassins now have the same conditions for parry as non-assassins (this means they can no longer parry Warden’s Crushing Counterstrike or Highlander’s confirmed hits.

Fixed an issue that allowed the player to apply bleed to an opponent while in Revive or Respawn invulerability period.

Re-enabled iconic Emote Spam for Conq, Cent, LB, Raider, and Orochi. Female Conq will be in a future update.

Warden: Right Basic Heavy Attack now causes the opponent to play the regular block anticipation animation

Conq: Added text entry to Moveset page to explain the Conq can cancel attacks into Full Block. Female Conq’s Kick Flip emote animation polished to remove clipping. Fixed an issue that triggered a strange run animation when dodging back followed by unlocking and not moving.

Lawbringer: Fixes Long Arm so it can now successfully connect against a Staggered opponent. It also no longer hits moving targets too early. When performed Out of Lock, the Heavy Finisher of Judge, Jury and Executioner chain is unblockable.

Kensei: Out of Stamina run speed slightly reduced. Fixed I Quit emote so arms no longer clip through torso.

Shugoki: Shugoki no longer plays an incorrect animation after losing the Passive Uninterruptible Stance. Opponent ragdoll no longer flops over Shugoki when he kills with a Demon Ball followed by a light attack against a wall.

Orochi: Wind Gust Attack Range increased to 3m.

Nobushi: Can now Counte Guardbreak when in Hidden Stance.

Raider: Raider no longer gets stuck on certain props in the environment during Stampede Charge while the opponent continues to get carried through the air. Also no longer plays improper animation when performing the Stampede Charge on an opponent near geyser or wall.

Warlord: Warlord now has his block defense return starting at 100ms after a Feint. Out of Stamina run speed slightly reduced. All unlock hit animations fixed.

Valkyrie: Valk’s opponents now play the right reaction to her guardbreak making them immune to other opponent’s guardbreaks. Fixed an issue with the Valk’s chains playing the wrong sound.

Centurion: Cent how has his block defense return starting at 100ms after a Feint. Out of Stamina run speed slightly reduced.

Shinobi: Health increased to 110. Reduced Shinobi’s window to bump opponent with the Tackle by 400ms. Shinobi now properly enters the unbalance state when they perform a grab followed by a heavy attack and the opponent activates Revenge. Ledge drop animation fixed. Shinobi input for cancelling a charge edge case now fixed. Adds bleed icon to Teleport light attack and Teleport Kick in moveset page. Knees no longer clip through ground during Epic Tantrum Emote.

Highlander: Emotes can no longer be cancelled in the first 100ms of the animation anymore while in Offensive Form, and can now be cancelled after 300ms to stop “wavedashing.” Fixed an issue that cause guardbreaking after a dodge forward to be harder than intended. Out of Stamina run speed slightly reduced. Highlander can now change stance during parry. Fast-flow to Offensive form now takes input priority over stance change as well. Bone Crusher execution can now launch people off ledges. Polished the animation transition from guardbreak to heavy attacks.

Gladiator: Dodge Side’s movement slightly adjusted to address the unreliable dodge. Side dodge attacks like Bee’s Sting and Sucker Punch now launched at 300ms into the dodge. When the opponent performs a light attack and the Gladiator performs a Skewer Deflect by deflecting the attack, the opponent was able to dodge. This is fixed. Fixed an issue that caused the the bot to be unable to throw opponents to the side or backwards while impaled. Fixed an issue that allowed Shinobi to backflip out of the deflect and grab without him being able to react. Gladiator no longer falls off ledges after missing a Skewer. Fuscina Ictus now applies bleed when it hits a Shugoki’s super armor. Female version of Dig Your Own Grave emote no longer has the weapon wandering away. Weapon is now oriented properly during the No Mercy execution. Gladiator bot can now detect wall-throw opportunities during Skewer. Fixed an issue relating to missing sounds.

Feats: Fixed an issue where feats will not unlock when you level up with the renown gained from a multi-kill assist. Fixed a bug where if you die while an active feat buff is applied, when you respawn you still have to wait out the remainder of the active portion.

Bots: Bots have been updated to take into consideration the stamina cost when using ladders. We’ve found an issue that affected the ability for bots to successfully do Sprint Attacks on fleeing enemies. Fixed an issue that caused the Valkyrie bot to play the miss animation instead of the hit animation after successfully landing a Shield Bash. Warlord bots will use Zone Attack less often in 1v1 situations. Assassin bots no longer get stuck attempting to activate Fear Itself after killing their enemy. Bots no longer remain inactive at their bases in Custom Dominion Matches. Bots can now dodge Shugoki’s Demon’s Embrace.

General Improvements

Added Anti-Run Away system to Brawl. This will only trigger if one player is left in each team.

We separated Duel and Brawl match making MMR.

When a player quits a 1v1 PVP Duel, the other player automatically wins the match. Loss will now be added into the quitting player’s stats when a quit penalty is triggered. Relaxation perameters are now updating correctly in the match making page.

Alternative Gamepad Presets The available layouts are:

Default.

Layout 1: Swapped (X/Square) with (LB/L1) and quickchat commands are selectable by the D-Pad.

Layout 2: Swapped (X/Square) with (RS Click/R3) and quickchat commands are selectable by the D-Pad.

Fight Controls Tuning

Added the ability to customize guard mode angles and dead zones for Gamepad & Mouse separately.

Sprint to Exit Guard Mode with gamepad

Added the option to exit guard mode by sprinting.

Ballista

Improved reliability of the Near Miss feedback for ballista projectiles. Fixed a conflict between reviving an ally or entering a ballista. Revive is prioritized. Communication tools are now available while in ballista. Fixed issue where hero’s hands become offset while turning the ballista.

Maps

Overwatch: Players spawn in Close-Quarters in Lane Area

Sanctuary Bridge: Players now fight in the middle of the bridge. Spike traps have been removed. Trap door has been added.

Canyon: Players now fight in Close-Quarters in the Graveyard area

High Fort: Initial spawn locations and gameplay space on the smaller island portion of the Brawl location have been adjusted.

Faction War: War assets can now be deployed from Event playlist.

Customization: Added a bar to the gear stats to show how powerful the gear is compared to the highest bonuses and biggest penalties. Scavenger menu background has been darkened to help readability.

User Interface: Notifications for all group members have been added when players with strict NAT types join groups. Improved support for Color Blind Mode for Deuteranopia and Protanopia. “invert aiming Y-axis” renamed to “invert ground targeting Y-axis.” Modified Brawl icon on the world map to make it more distinctive. Added an option to remove all new notifications in the option menu, this option also disables all the yellow exclamation marks. Icons were added to the interface to inform users of different network issues, the legend of these icons is found in the Social Menu by selecting NAT type and Connection Quality Section. Game mode modifiers are now shown in the map overview for every game mode just like in Custom Matches.

PC: When using Keyboard and Mouse to select a hero on the grid, the loadout selection squares will appear on the top of the hero tile to make loadout selection faster and more obvious. Benchmark Results are now exported to “Documents/My Games/For Honor/Benchmark.”

Various Fixes

Duel Tournament: Fixed an issue that was caused by Quickmation option to be inaccessible after abandoning a Tourney. Fixed an issue that was caused by accepting a group invite while in queue for Duel Tournament.

Map: Fixed an issue that caused the wrong animation to play while climbing a specific ladder in Overwatch. Fixed an issue that caused the Attacker minions and bots to take a longer route to the lane in Citadel Gate. Fixed an issue that caused the player to remain stuck in an invisible collision in Sanctuary Bridge.

UI: Fixed an issue whereby users were redirected to main menu instead of campaign world view after completing a mission. Fixed an issue where players were unable to exit the War Asset deployment menu. Fixed an issue that caused the match vote text to appear in the wong place. Fixed an issue that caused the match type and parameters to reset when canceling match making in custom matches. Fixed an issue that caused the player to be unable to start a custom match after adding bots. Fixed an issue that caused the icons and levels of the player to disappear in the faceoff screen. Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the revive icon to be invisible. Fixed an issue that sometimes caused gear stats to disappear from screen while scavenging items. Fixed an issue that caused “Find New Opponent” to appear in between VS AI matches. Fixed an issue that caused Social Menu to not appear properly. Fixed an issue that caused the war banner of the previous season winner to not be displayed or displayed at the wrong location.

Customization: Fixed an issue allowing engravings to be applied to cloth for Gladiator. Fixed sound effect for Blizzard mood effect. Fixed an issue with Kensei’s standards and armor customization. Fixed an issue with Shattered Ice mood effect to play no sound while performing executions or emotes on the Highlander. Fixed an issue with Silent Watcher Peacekeeper chest piece. Fixed an issue with the Female Comq arms where material did not apply correctly.  Fixed an issue with the Shinobi chest piece customization. Fixed an issue with the Nobushi head customization. Removed blood textures from underpants that caused accidental illusion of a smiley face. Fixed an issue with the Warden’s “Horse Lord Helm” customization. Fixed an issue with the Gladiator “The Flying Lys” mythic outfit. Fixed an issue with “Oak Leaves” mood effect that had no sound effect while performing Executions and Emotes on the Gladiator. Fixed an issue with “Obsidian Shards” mood effect that had no sound effect while performing Executions and Emotes in the Barrack. Fixed an issue with “Fire Flies” mood effect that had no sound effect while performing Executions and Emotes in the Barrack. Fixed an issue with “Death Mist” mood effect that that was not consistent across all Heroes. Fixed an issue that caused the Female Orochi chest symbols to appear smaller than the Male symbols. Fixed an issue with “Plasma Shock” mood effect that had no sound effect while performing Executions with the Shugoki. Fixed an issue with “Blizzard” mood effect that had delayed sound effect while performing Executions. Fixed an issue with that caused the thumbnail of the “Arcadia Champion” Mythic outfit of the Lawbringer to be different from the actual outfit. Fixed an issue with that caused the thumbnail of the “Loki’s Dream” Mythic outfit of the Valkyrie to be different from the actual outfit.

PC Specific Bug Fixes: Fixed an issue that caused the Text Chat to be inaccessible in Hero selection screen. Fixed an issue that caused Text Chat to be unavailable after leaving a game and starting a new one. Fixed an issue that caused the Text Mute Icon to not update when match is loading. Player gets stuck in-game when presses Text Chat key + Toggle HUD key buttons simultaneously in a match with more than one players. In Game Menu does not get invoked when any controller or Keyboard and Mouse or Tobii is disconnected while in-game. Key binding warning pop up is not displayed for the Ballista shoot and Ballista zoom key in Key Mappings. Camera keeps on rotating in one direction when user moves head beyond tracking angle with the Tobii eye tracking device while in-game. Tobii: The character runs in opposite direction while moving forward when eye gazed on the extreme left/right side of the screen. Steam Controller: Touch pad is displayed for analog during practice on tutorial panel of dodge. Steam Controller: Misleading button prompts are displayed for multiple options in transform of emblem editor. Steam Controller: Button prompt for News tile navigation is missing on the Main menu. Steam Controller: Button prompts are missing for scroll up and scroll down button on credits page. Mouse click sound effect is not audible for the Hero Overview and Stats Overview on the Heroes page. Story Mode: Player is unable to select the character through the loadout at the start of the mission with a keyboard. Fixed an issue that caused “Find New Opponent” button to not appear.

[shatteredskies042]

Witch Hunt V

The two set off into the streets of Rome, and again, out of the city and onto the E35 north and out of the city.

“What did you see, Allyson?” He asked her, watching her as she drove.

“Visions, of people close to me dying all from the past,” she said quietly, “people who were just like you.” This cut her deep, but she knew what he would say, “Portia has... she killed a few of them to get to me. She can’t kill me herself, but what she can do is hurt me.”

“And that fed your anger, and what you did to Julius,” he stated carefully.

“Yes,” she admitted a bit shamefully.

“You need to get a handle on it, Ally,” Michael told her quietly. “Because it can eat you up, and I don’t want that to happen to you,” he looked out the window at the quickly passing countryside out the Porsche’s window. “It happened to me, and it’s gotten people killed,” he said sadly.

“I remember the story,” Ally replied. “I’m just worried that this... vendetta, will get you killed, too.”

“I should be dead right now, Ally,” he smirked, glancing over at her. “Should have died in the jungle, should’ve died in that Siberian gulag, should have stayed dead after Novaya Zhelmya. I’m hard to kill.”  

“I know that,” she smiled thinly as she made minute adjustments to the wheel as they drove. “I’m just worried that your confidence, and my confidence in you, will get you killed.”

Michael was touched, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. “It hasn’t yet,” he told her with a smirk. “We’ll take these guys,” he promised the blonde. “And that’ll be the end of it, nobody else dies.”

“I sure hope so,” Ally lamented, before her phone buzzed. She fished it out of her pocket and tossed it to Michael, “what’s coming in?”

Michael picked the phone up, and read the messages coming in. “Rani came through on the translation, old dialect, and what she can make out, it’s tales of a lich,” he explained.

“Wait, what do they want with liches?” Ally asked suddenly.

“Part of the texts is how the subject of the book became a lich, and the creation of their phylactery,” he added, reading through the translation. “What is a lich, exactly?” he asked Ally.

“A magic user that goes through a complex spell to basically become immortal, they bind their soul to an object they call a phylactery,” she explained. “If they die, they’ll basically reincarnate at their phylactery, and they are more powerful magic users. What else does the translation say?”

“Describes a ritual, sounds bloody and dark,” he commented, not bothering to read out the details. “What would they want with this book?”

“It’s kind of obvious,” Ally stated, “Madame von Portia wants to become a lich. She’s nearing the end of her natural lifespan, and this is one of the ways she can become one of the most powerful magic users on the planet and effectively live forever.”

“But we’re not going to let that happen,” he finished.

The rest of the ride past in silence, the two of them traveling through Italy and past the Swiss border. The practical removal of borders throughout the western European continent made travel trivial, where a checkpoint would have stood, a “Welcome to Switzerland” sign welcomed them to the neutral nation. It was too easy, and a border would have destroyed their operation. After all, a couple pounds of high explosive and several weapons would be frowned upon on the continent.

The road was scenic, into the white capped mountains and pristine forests. Until the ancient city of Zurich appeared on the horizon, and the yellow Porsche glided into it at high speed. “Where’s the bank?” Michael asked, looking around at the sights.

“Defender’s dream, attacker’s nightmare,” Ally mused. “It’s on a spit of land between the Limmat River and an ancient irrigation canal,” she told him, pointing out the windshield at the sparkling lake, “and backed up to the lake.” She took an exit off the highway and into the city itself, narrating. “Only one street in, and it’s heavily guarded.”

“Speaking from experience,” he noted.

“During the last World War, I thought about breaking in to get at the vault and acquire some things for myself. I’m good, but I’m not that good,” she stated. “The Schnee Bank has been in business for almost three centuries, they know how to protect things. And not just from humans, because a fair number of special individuals have accounts and deposit boxes there. It’s been tried, but nobody has beat the vault, and it only got harder to crack with time.

“They built the vault to expand, in their basement, with plenty of space to grow. The inner layer is all the old style, stone on stone, then it expands outward into rebarred concrete, steel plates, lead,” she shook her head. “The lock is again, old and new. No doubt updated from when I cased the place,” she stated. “Our options for getting in are slim to none, there’s a reason they call it a fortress,” Allyson told him. She guided them to a hotel nearby, “pop the glove box,” she told him, “pull the roll of gold coins, please,” she asked kindly.

Michael opened the box up, and searched through it until he withdrew a roll of shoddily wrapped gold coins, printed with strange engravings. “Secret society stuff?” he asked.

“Welcome to the most exclusive hotel in Switzerland,” she smirked. Allyson drove into a covered parking garage, then once they parked alighted the car. Michael joined her as they strode to a set of double doors, pulled open by a doorman with a smile. Ally confidently led the way up to the front desk, the pair drawing the eye of nearly everyone in the room. The interior was impeccably maintained, despite looking hundreds of years old. The blonde walked to the counter, and set one of the gold coins on the counter top. “I’d like to get a room,” she told the concierge as the woman behind the counter inspected the coin.

“Of course, ma’am,” the concierge finally responded, “will you require any services during your stay?” she asked.

“A change of clothes would be nice, we forgot to pack,” the blonde smiled sheepishly.

“That can be arranged. You know where everything is, Miss Allyson,” she smiled pleasantly, passing over a hefty and ancient looking key with 501 engraved on the sides.

Ally picked up the key with nimble fingers, and looked up at her human companion, “come on, let’s relax a little,” she told him, before walking to a bank of elevators. “If we didn’t have our weapons, we could get them here, too,” she explained as she called the elevator, and leaned on the wall next to the door. “They even offer tailoring, if you wanted a new suit,” she told him.

“Telling me I need a new suit?” he teased her.

“You could use one or two new ones,” she agreed, pushing off the wall when the elevator dinged and arrived. The two entered the brass interior, and Ally looked to the operator and told him to bring them to the fifth floor. The ride was smooth, and the doors opened into an ornate hallway. Ally led the way out, and to their rented room. Sliding the key into the lock, she pushed the heavy door open into their room, a sizable space fit for a millionare. Two doors branched off along the left wall leading to bedrooms, and a kitchen and bathroom hid behind doors on the right. The outer wall was a row of windows, looking out over the city.

“You know how to pick a room,” Michael commented, before lowering his voice, “are we secure in here?” he asked.

Allyson knew he checked for hidden microphones, and wanted to know just how safe they were. “We are. I’ve had much more firepower than we have in here before without a problem, you can relax.”  

Michael sighed, then sat down on an ornate couch and relaxed. “So, what’s our plan to deal with the bank?”

“We’ll need to case the place, and do as much research as possible,” she told him, sitting on the arm of the couch and looking down at him. “I can outsource some of the research, but we need to get on the ground and eye the place up. Fortunately,” she walked across the room to a small desk, and tosses a brochure from it to Michael.

“Tours of Zurich?” he asked, opening it and reading glancing at the advertisement.

“Third panel,” she directed.

Michael did as she suggested, finding a list of sites on the page, reading through it until he reached about halfway. “The bank. You aren’t going to tell me we’re going on a tour,” he looked up at her.

“The tour doesn’t go into the vault, but it gives us a look into the lobby and the front line we’ll have to get past,” she said. “We’ll have to think this one through pretty hard,” Ally stated needlessly.

“Well, the first thing we’ll have to do is scout the place out,” Michael said, looking at the brochure, before looking to the blonde. “Anything else we can do to prepare?” he asked her.

“You need a suit,” she smiled, looking over at him.

“A new one?”

“You could use a few new suits,” Ally teased, writing on a notepad. “They’ve got tailoring here, and it doesn’t disappoint,” she promised.

“And what are you going to do?” he asked.

“Take a peek around the neighborhood,” she said, stretching and setting a few coins on the counter by the notepad. “Use this to pay for the tailoring,” the blonde said, before turning and going for the door.

“Ally,” Michael called out, standing and looking to her.

The blond turned, eyeing him, “yes?”

“Be careful,” he told her, knowing she wouldn’t, but he had to hope.

“Always,” she smiled thinly at him, before she opened the door and slid out.

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How to Convert With Psychology: 4 Design Levers To Pull

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How to Convert With Psychology: 4 Design Levers To Pull

Users, visitors, prospects, leads, and customers.

What do all these words have in common?

They’re how we, as marketers, classify the people who engage with our brand — humans with needs and desires. Yet, as we lump them together in analytics dashboards, based on view time, country of origin, bounce rate, and countless other attributes, it’s easy to forget that they’re just like you and me.

Human needs and desires create demand for your business. They’re what your product or service aims to fulfill. But, in order to fulfill these needs and desires, your business needs more than just a good product. You also need a solid grasp of design.

Design, more than anything else, is understanding what drives people’s behavior. What do they want? How do they want to receive it? And how can you deliver it to them? In other words, you need a firm grasp of psychology.

Fortunately, when you optimize your website design for conversion, you can leverage psychology everywhere: in colors and numbers, shapes and taglines, and even the serifs of letters. And knowing how psychology and design intersect is key to guiding prospects toward conversion.

Below, we’ll take a look at four foundational principles that will help you marry psychology with design, as well as some little-known phenomena that can give you an edge in your design and conversion rate optimization efforts.

How to Convert With Psychology: 4 Design Levers To Pull

1. Beat the curse of knowledge.

From the moment you set out to design any form of marketing collateral — an ad, email, or landing page — you’re cursed. Cursed with knowledge, that is.

To explain further, you obviously know your product well. Your audience, however, does not. So, even if you’ve created a new and innovative product, its benefits won’t register with your audience if you can’t explain it in simple terms. This phenomena isn’t limited to new and complicated products, either. A lot of times, simpler products require the simplest descriptions.

Take bed sheets, for example. Bed sheets are an ubiquitous product that everyone knows how to use. We don’t need to read a manual to understand how to stretch them over our mattresses.

All bed sheets aren’t created equal, though. For instance, you could sell bed sheets with microfibers, high thread counts, or distinct material types. And when you’re writing descriptions of your bed sheets’ features and benefits, it’s natural to think everyone else has the same knowledge about microfibers and thread counts as you do.

What you may not realize, however, is that most of your target audience won’t have your level of product expertise. Consequently, in your attempt to convey a unique selling proposition, you could’ve filled your product description with jargon, which actually makes its selling point harder to understand.

This is the reason the curse of knowledge is so hard to beat — even if you know it’s impacting your ability to write clear, concise, and compelling copy, you can’t really pinpoint the curse’s degree of affect on you. Try all you want, but it’s almost impossible to truly imagine what it’s like to be in your prospects’ shoes. You can’t “unknow” what you know.

So, how do you beat the curse of knowledge?

Consider testing your ad, product listing, email, or landing page on members of your target audience who haven’t been exposed to your product yet.

During your test, try to figure out if they can immediately understand why your product is better than your competition. If they can’t, ask them to explain why, and use their feedback to optimize your marketing collateral in the future.

2. Channel your inner city planner.

Nowadays, attracting attention is a huge challenge and retaining it is even harder. But, in order to convince a visitor to convert on your website, you must be able to do both.

To help you attract and retain your target audience’s attention, let’s go over some findings from a branch of social science founded in the early 1900s — Gestalt Psychology.

Most people are familiar with Gestalt psychology through the phrase, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,”, which, today, can be translated to “Rather than perceiving all things equally, we perceive them in the context of their whole.”

For example, image you’re driving through a bustling city. When you’re behind the wheel, what are you paying attention to? Most likely your surroundings, like the cars around you, lights, signs, pedestrians, and bikers, right?

Well, that’s not because there’s nothing else to pay attention to. There’s much more to pay attention to in a busy city. Your brain is just focusing your attention on the most relevant stimuli in your specific situation, like other drivers, pedestrians, and signals, instead of irrelevant stimuli, like restaurants and barber shops (unless you’re looking to grab a bite to eat or get a haircut). 

Now, this isn’t happening just because of your amazing prioritization skills. It’s also happening because most cities are designed relatively well. For instance, one way signs show you which streets you can’t turn on, yellow lights warn you to slow down, and red octagons tell you to stop. These indicators have been reinforced as important signals in your mind ever since you started driving.

In regard to digital marketing, a similar process takes place when visitors consume a web page. Our visitors are like drivers in a city, and as marketers and designers, we need to effectively guide them toward the most important parts of our web pages. To learn how to do this, check out the following principles from Gestalt psychology:

The Law of Similarity

Humans tend to group similar things together. Due to this tendency, we also notice things that stand out from the crowd. For example, in the image below, clustering the yellow flowers around the red one makes it stand out.

When it comes to guiding visitors toward certain elements of your web page, the law of similarity is the most important principle to leverage. Any contrast in size, motion, color, and weight will attract people’s attention.

Eye tracking studies also show that we “enter” web pages through its largest elements, like its image or headline. Then, we consume the smaller elements, like its subheadings, bullets, bolded and italicized words, and then finally its copy.

In a nutshell, if an element is larger than its surroundings, like a headline or featured image, it will draw more attention than its surroundings. If an element is a different color than its surroundings, like a call-to-action button or a form, it will also draw more attention than its surroundings. And if elements look different, like bolded or italicized words, they will draw more attention than the text around them. These are some principles to keep in mind when you’re designing content for consumers who have a fleeting amount of attention.

The Law of Past Experience

The Law of Past Experience states that visual stimuli, under certain circumstances, will be categorized according to past experiences. For instance, consider the standard website design. The internet has been around long enough that certain designs have become so common that they’re an industry standard now.

Navigation bars will always be at the top of websites. Site links will be at the bottom. And since humans have been reading for such a long time, a headline will lead to a subheading, which will then lead to body copy. Breaking this fundamental structure by aligning your text to the right or moving your navigation bar to the left sidebar will only create confusion.

The Law of Pragnanz

Our brains prefer simplicity. Whenever possible, we will simplify complex visuals to comprehend them in an easier, quicker fashion. So don’t over-complicate your web pages. Unless you’re writing for industry insiders, eliminate jargon from all your content. You should also stray away from huge blocks of text. If you need to write longer body copy, separate it into digestible chunks of information, like small paragraphs or bullet points.

The Law of Proximity

When perceiving a group of visual stimuli, we group things that are close together. For example, below, you see two groups of dots, one set of 18 and another set of 12, as opposed to one set of 30 dots.

So whether you’re labeling form fields or creating icons with descriptive text, your visitors should instantly understand what belongs where.

3. Leverage the decoy effect.

If your landing page features two pricing options, and your goal is to subtly guide visitors to choose one option over the other, consider including a third, decoy option, which is an asymmetrically valued option that taps into our natural desire to get the best deal possible.

One of the most well-known examples of the decoy effect comes from a famous pricing experiment conducted by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics professor at MIT.

In his study, he asked 100 MIT students which of the following subscriptions they’d rather purchase.

The print-only subscription was the decoy option, since it was the same price as the print & web subscription but offered significantly less value. After he took his poll, he discovered that 84% of the participants selected the print & web subscription, 16% of them selected the web-only subscription, and none selected the print-only subscription.

According to these results, The Economist would have generated $11,444 in revenue from these students.

In another poll given to 100 different students at MIT, Ariely removed the “print only” option and asked them which subscription they would rather purchase. This time, the results were the complete opposite of the first experiment — a measly 32% of the participants chose the print & web subscription and a whopping 68% of them chose the web-only subscription.

Without the decoy option, which made the most expensive option seem like a better deal, significantly less people bought the priciest subscription and significantly more people bought the cheapest subscription.

According to these results, The Economist would’ve only generated $8,012 in revenue from these students, which was nearly $3,500 less than the experiment with the decoy option.

In sum, to successfully use the decoy effect, you have to make sure that your third option is asymmetrical in value to the other two options. Put simply, the decoy should make the option you want to nudge your visitors toward look like the best deal.

In the experiment above, most participants choose the print & web subscription because they thought they were getting something that was worth $185 for only $125. But, if you think about it, is the print-only subscription really worth $125? Most likely not.

When the print & web subscription was priced this way, though, the participants thought they were buying a print subscription and getting a free web subscription. As a result, they perceived this subscription to be the best deal and couldn’t help but choose it.

4. Minimize user stress as much as possible.

Imagine you’re trying to register for an account on a popular discussion forum so you can post a pressing question. However, there’s an issue with your form.

You’ve hit “Register” twice already, but the page has reloaded with an error message at the top of the form that says “Sorry, there was a problem with your registration. Please make sure all fields are accurate.” This form is also fifteen fields long, and there’s no indication of what you’ve exactly done wrong.

Needless to say, you’re frustrated. And this stress greatly impacts your biology, triggering the release of the stress-inducing hormone, cortisol. In a blog post for ConversionXL, Alex Birkett elaborates on cortisol’s effect on your target audience:

When users feel frustrated, they get stressed and cortisol starts to build up. If it hits a certain threshold, users will give up and go to your competitor’s site. Life is too short to go crazy trying to deal with crappy form design as well as unhelpful error handling.

Most of us can relate to this kind of experience — attempting to solve a problem once or twice and then giving up and going somewhere else.

This is an unforgivable way to lose conversions. Think about it — these visitors want to convert. In fact, they’re so eager to convert that they’re trying to do so a second time. But, unfortunately, you weren’t clear about the error they made. So they left to find another website that didn’t make converting so hard.

To combat this issue, you should write descriptive error messages next to the field where the error was made. And make sure these messages don’t just say “Error”. They should describe the exact steps the user must take to correct the problem.

An even better thing you can do is to clearly label each form field. This will decrease the likelihood of user error because, sometimes, designers overestimate their user’s ability to remember things.

For instance, imagine you’ve arrived at a form that has placeholder text inside each field, like, “Enter age here” and “Enter email address here”. You begin to fill it out, and once you’re four out of six fields through, one of your co-workers walks up to your desk.

A few minutes of small talk later, you return to the form. But you’re having trouble recalling the information you’re supposed to enter in the current field. Even though you just have to delete the text in the field, it still frustrates you, triggering the release of cortisol in your brain.

Brands need to consider this small yet potent problem when building their forms. And according to Katie Sherwin of Nielsen Norman Group, it’s especially important they do so because of how distracted people are today.

If the user forgets the hint, which people often do while filling out long forms, he has to delete what he wrote and, in some cases, click away from the field to reveal the placeholder text again. In an ideal world, users would be entirely focused when filling out a form. But in reality, users multitask. They have different tabs open, or they might be pulled away by an email or phone call. For complex tasks, they might have to stop and go retrieve a document or order number. From our research on mobile usability, we know that mobile users are also frequently distracted and interrupted while using their devices. So, it’s important to help users pick up where they left off.

The best way to help users pick up where they left off is by placing clear, permanent labels above or next to each field, like this: 

And for those wanting to remove nearly all friction from form completion, consider a one-click sign-up through Google or Facebook. 

Converting With Psychology

The list above is just a few examples of the countless psychological phenomena that impact user behavior. When you better understand how the human brain operates, you can apply some proven principles in all aspects of web design to win conversions.

Now the only question is, will you?

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My second , 5-minute “Get Healthy” Simple Step:

 Add Some Beans

Pop question:

How many beans do you need to eat to live longer?

1/4 cup?

1 cup?

1 pound?

Answer:

For every 20g of beans you eat (that’s only about a tablespoon), you might live 6% longer.

That’s because beans are a healthy source of plant-based protein, loaded with heart-healthy fiber, and provide other key nutrients like iron and calcium.   Beans have been around for centuries, feeding centuries of people all over the globe – from the soybeans of Japan to the chickpeas of India and the pinto beans of the American West.  Nowadays, canned beans are still one of the cheapest proteins on the market (you can get cooked organic beans around $1/ pound), making healthy eating both affordable and convenient.

My second, 5-minute “Get Healthy” Simple Step: Add Some Beans

When you do your weekly grocery shopping, pick up 4 cans of beans.  Could you eat these 4 cans of beans in a week?  Of course you can!  Toss them on salad, add them to pasta, cook them into soup, or purée into a creamy dip.  Bottom line: keep it simple.

Here’s my Ultimate Chef’s guide to Beans —

How they taste, what to do with them, and why you need more

Baby Rapini

Sweet Napa cabbge

Broccoli at Austin Farmer’s Market

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The Taste:

What used to be considered strictly “poor man’s food” is now popping up in trendy restaurants as chefs and farmers discover heirloom, varieties like Anasazi, European Soldier, and Yellow Eye Stueben.  While beans offer a rainbow of colors and sizes to choose from, their flavor and textures are quite consistent. A bean aficionado might be able to distinguish between pinto and black turtle, but, for most of us, beans all seem to pretty much fall into the same taste profile.  However, you can play with beans in the kitchen 2 main ways:

How you cook them

How you flavor them

Chef’s Tip: You can add healthy, delicious flavor to beans by infusing the cooking liquid with ingredients like chipotle peppers, garlic, onion, and bay

How to Cook the Ultimate Beans:

From braising to stewing to roasting, there are quite a few options for cooking beans.  My experience as a plant-based chef has taught me a few key lessons on basic cooking techniques for beans:

Roasting

Skill Level: Intermediate – Advanced                       Taste Level: Nervous Seedling

Use on: Already cooked beans.  Chickpeas and edamame makes delicious bite-sized snacks after roasting with a spiced coating.  If you’re ever Peru or another part of South America, try some Roasted Habas. These crunchy snacks are a regional favorite for crunchy street food snacking,

How to do it: Preheat oven to 350. Make a coating by combining 1 tbsp. chickpea flour with 3 tbsp. warm water.  You can season this coating with spices like chili powder, cumin, smoked paprika, or garlic powder. Drain the cooked beans and get them as dry as possible.  Then, toss around in the coating. Spread the beans onto a baking sheet and roast for bout 65-70 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let completely before storing. Just store in an open container (like a bowl), on the counter.

Chef’s Tips for Ultimate Flavor: Rather than just regular seasonings, add some interesting flavors to your coating. Use wasabi powder for some wicked heat, nutritional yeast for cheesy flavor, or toasted sesame seeds for a nutty crunch.

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Chef’s Plant-Based Tip: Chickpea Flour mixes with warm water to create a crunchy coating for roasted beans. This replaces the egg white chefs traditionally use

Crunchy Wasabi Edamame – Healthy, Plant-Based, Oil-Free, Gluten-Free, Vegan Protein, Baked Snack Recipe

Braising

Skill Level: Intermediate                          Taste Level: Curious Seedling – Confident Brussel Sprout

Use on: Any beans. This is the main way to cook beans from raw.

How to do it: First, you’ll want to soak the beans. To do this, simply cover the beans with a few inches of water and let sit for 6-10 hours.  Then, drain and rinse off the soaking liquid. Place the soaked beans in a pot and cover with fresh water, enough to come about 2 inches over the beans. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer.  Simmer until the beans are tender, about 45-90 minutes, depending on the size and age of the beans.

To make the Ultimate:  You can infuse the cooking liquid with all sorts of flavor.  I love adding smoked chipotle peppers (instead of the traditional smoked ham) to black beans for an irresistible Black Bean Soup.  Or fresh bay leaves add bright flavor to simple Shiitake Mushroom Miso Soup with Black Beans and Spinach.  Braised sweet onions create a satisfying backdrop to hearty Giant Peruvian Lima Beans that even meat lovers gobble up.

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The first step of “braising” is “browning”. Sweat the onion and smoked paprika until aromatic and golden brown around the edges.

Smoky Sweet Braised Giant Lima Beans – Healthy, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Plant-Based, Oil-Free, Vegan Recipe

Canned or Frozen

Skill Level: Beginner                             Taste Level: Curious Seedling – Confident Brussel Sprout

Use on: Any canned or frozen bean. The most commonly available in US markets are: garbanzo, black beans, red kidney, cannellini, and pinto.

How to do it: Okay, so technically you aren’t really cooking the beans, but that’s okay! For canned beans, you want to drain and rinse off the liquid from the can. This liquid isn’t appetizing and can cause gas. Frozen beans just need to be cooked 1-2 minutes, either in the microwave, boiled, or just cooked into whatever stew, soup, or warm dish you’re already making

To make the Ultimate: Add some flavor! Even if you’re just looking for a quick, satisfying snack, add some flavor with dried spices, soy sauce, or even chili sauce. Sprinkle smoked salt onto chickpeas, add a dash of chili powder to a bowl of pintos, or stir miso paste in with frozen edamame. Microwave for a minute to activate the spices, grab a spoon, and dig in.

Chef’s Tip: When using canned beans, you should always drain and rinse the beans thoroughly. The liquid in the can is not delicious and can upset your stomach

  Healthy Bean Nutrition:

Heart-Healthy Fiber,

Plant-Base Protein,

Antioxidant Color,

Essential Iron and Calcium

  Some truths about beans:

Fiber Truth:

Beans are loaded with fiber.  You probably already know this.  Did you know that just 1 cup of beans has about ½ of your daily fiber?  It’s so simple.  There is NO fiber in animal-based protein.  No fiber in chicken breast, salmon, shrimp, eggs, grass-fed steak, or hormone-free cheese.  Fiber helps keep you full without any calories.  It gives you long-lasting energy and has extra heart-healthy benefits.  It lowers your cholesterol, lowers blood pressure, and protects against stroke and diabetes.

Big ‘Ole Italian Salad – Healthy, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Oil-Free, Plant-Based, Vegan Recipe

Protein Truth:

In the plant-based food world, beans “bring it” when it comes to protein.  1 cup of black beans has about 16g of protein, over 1/3 of the daily protein goal for women.  One of the most common mistakes of a someone starting a plant-based diet is to overdo it on veggies and salads, forgetting to add complex carbohydrates like beans.  While there is protein in fruits and vegetables, eating your daily 1 cup of beans can help ensure that you’re getting enough protein.  It can help ensure your energy level stays up and you stay satisfied.

Iron Truth:

Iron deficiency is a common concern for someone adopting a plant-based diet.  However, “vegetarians do not have a higher incidence of iron deficiency than do meat eaters”.  In fact, beans and Dark Greens are healthy sources of vegan iron.  Plant-based iron is composed of non-heme iron, which is harder for your body to absorb than animal-based iron.  Vegetarians need to be mindful, then, of getting a little extra iron in their diet – more reason to get your daily 1-cup serving of beans, and plenty of healthy, dark greens.  On the flip side, Vitamin C greatly helps with iron absorption.  Vitamin C is in foods like spinach, sweet potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes, and cauliflower.  So, eating a big salad with a bunch of beans on top makes for a Vitamin C – Iron powerhouse combination.  There isn’t any Vitamin C in that big piece of steak.  Without that Vitamin C, most of that iron might not get absorbed in your body.

Heirloom Red European Soldier Beans – Healthy, Plant-Based Protein

Antioxidant Truths:

Beans are full of antioxidants. Just like with fruits and vegetables, the many colors of beans point to the many antioxidants under their skin. In fact, darker beans have been shown to have more antioxidants than their lighter counterparts. Don’t get too wrapped up in the details, though. Eat a variety of beans that fit your tastes.

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Get Your Beans Recipes:

Hungry Yet?

Here are some healthy, plant-based recipes to inspire you to Get Your Beans:

http://Get Your Beans

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References and More Reading:

Aging, Food, Culture, and Healthy (big study that found the advantages of Greek aka “Mediterranean” diet):

“A high intake and variety of plant foods (in particular vegetables, legumes and fruit); a high intake and variety of seafood and a low intake of meat emerged with statistical and biological significance… the importance of the overall traditional Greek food culture, with its emphasis on plant derived food of various kinds, as opposed to individual food categories, in protecting against premature death. “

Southeast Asian J Trop Med Public Health. 1997;28 Suppl 2:100-12: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9561644

Antioxidant Activity of Extracts, Condensed Tannin Fractions, and Pure Flavonoids from Phaseolus vulgaris L. Seed Coat Color Genotypes, Sugarbeet and Bean Research Unit, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Plant and Soil Science Building, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, Clifford W. Beninger * and George L. Hosfield, J. Agric. Food Chem., 2003, 51 (27), pp 7879–7883, Publication Date (Web): December 3, 2003: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0304324?prevSearch=%5BContrib%3A%2BClifford%2BW.%2BBeninger%2C%5D&searchHistoryKey=&

World Health Organization Calcium Recommendations for Preventing Osteoporosis: http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/trs916/en/gsfao_osteo.pdf

Vitamin C in Fruits and Vegetables: http://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/vitamin-c-in-fruits-and-vegetables

How Fiber Protects Your Heart, by John Donovan: http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/fiber-heart

Nutritional Value of Dry Beans, pdf: http://beaninstitute.com/nutritional-value-of-dry-beans/

Step Two: Add Some Beans, An Easy Change towards a Healthy, Plant-Based Life My second , 5-minute “Get Healthy” Simple Step: Add Some Beans Pop question: How many beans do you need to eat to live longer?