#this is so long it might as well read as a minific on its own 😭

[duckiemimi]

Hi Mimi hoping you’re doing good If you don’t mind me asking do you have any headcanons personal or not on gojo and geto or any characters in general?

AAA what a lovely question! thank u for asking me! though i will go out to say, i think a lot of my headcanons have interspersed into some of my analyses (and fics!) 😭 i can’t help it—they’re so dear to me, sometimes i forget where i start and where they end :’) i try my best to separate, though! some of my headcanons are serious, some are plausible, and some just make me laugh. i’ll make this into a little list then:

⟡ geto and gojo did NOT get along when they first met. it was during their first class—yaga had just asked a question about what it means to be a jujutsu sorcerer. geto, the then budding honor student, raised his hand and voiced his thoughts (something righteous, something justice-driven). gojo, who was silent and aloof the whole class, couldn’t help but comment. they fought in the classroom an hour into their first day. thank god the gojo clan has money because they obliterated half the building.

(interestingly enough, that show of power was taken into consideration when they got promoted to special grades a month later!)

⟡ shoko comes from a jujutsu clan. it’s not a prestigious one like the big three, but they’re still very respected, akin to the inumaki clan. their innate familial CT is RCT—it’s why shoko couldn’t explain it well to gojo that one time; it was just muscle memory to her, innate! the loneliness took some time to learn, though.

⟡ utahime and gakuganji are related and come from one clan. they specialize in ritualistic, supporting CTs (like in the manga!). utahime went to school in tokyo, but moved back to kyoto because her family lives there and because gakuganji was the principal in that branch. (nepo baby utahime? then again, that could be said for a lot of characters here.) mei mei is her upperclassman by three years.

⟡ when gojo was younger, his retainers (along with multiple bodyguards, hidden and in plain sight) would take him out to walk around the city. it’s why he doesn’t mind traveling far for his missions because while they pile up, he enjoys the time he spends exploring different places.

(it’s also why we saw him roaming the city alone in that one panel. maybe he was ten or twelve there? he’d sneak out during his homeschool lessons when it got boring. “tell me something i don’t know.”—a pre-pubescent gojo, probably.)

⟡ during these walks he used to go on as a child, his retainers would try to prevent him from lingering too long at one place because people talk. the people in town were all afraid and in awe of him; resentful, curious, scared. he looked different, he felt different, and every time he glanced in their direction, it would unnerve them to no end. a young gojo didn’t quite understand why at first. sometimes, they’d whisper the occasional cruel comment amongst themselves. gojo’s eyes are great, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hear.

whenever they’d reach the end of their walks, back at the gojo estate, his retainers would always crouch down and cup his face, darting their eyes around, wary that a clan member might see (even worse—his parents). they’d tell him that everything those people said were lies and weren’t true at all. they’d tell him that he’s a good child. it’s a core memory for gojo.

⟡ geto was in the judo club in middle school. it made him feel a little less lonely at home and it was an outlet for all his frustrations, for all the things he couldn’t say. he was more himself when he moved. then in jujutsu high, he took all the martial arts lessons very seriously because now he had reason to fight and train so hard; a purpose; a meaning. even ten years after defecting, his form and technique was still impeccably perfect.

⟡ geto was a social smoker, meanwhile shoko is a chronic one.

⟡ geto stopped smoking after he took in mimiko and nanako.

⟡ despite his busy, busy schedule, a freshly graduated gojo always made time to see how megumi and tsumiki were doing. he’d help them with their homework (tsumiki was always receptive; it took megumi some time to accept homework help), he’d shower them in souvenir sweets, and he’d walk megumi’s dogs with him. he tried his best! he still does!

⟡ contrary to popular opinion, gojo does sleep. or at least, he tries. it doesn’t really count as sleep if it’s all dream, though.

⟡ in the early days, geto tried to get mimiko and nanako to call him anything but master. after a year of them calling him that, it just stuck, and in geto’s head at the time, it fit his public image, so he just stopped trying.

⟡ mimiko and nanako enrolled in non-sorcerer schools. education is important, geto told them, but the sanitization they had to go through at home, after school, was tedious. geto would always ask them what they learned in class, making sure they weren’t empathizing with the non-sorcerers, reminding them that facts are facts and there is no meaning to them. sometimes, while mimiko and nanako wait for a cult-member to pick them up after school, they’d watch their classmates hug their parents at the gate. sometimes, they’d think of calling him papa.

⟡ geto had a crush on gojo in high school, halfway through their first year. gojo never thought about that (romance, relationships, and such) till his third year. they never acted on anything during the two years in between when they were constantly together.

⟡ whenever geto and gojo would meet during those ten years, it would always be out of gojo’s request, though he’d deny it if you asked. geto would always try to stay away (he’s burned the bridge, goddammit, he can’t keep risking the distance), but then he’d take one look at gojo and it would be hard to. he’d always regret it after.

⟡ the first time shoko and utahime drank together, it was a little after shoko’s graduation. drunk and delirious, shoko started talking about how lonely she was, and how frustrated she was because her two best friends are so fucking stupid. utahime helped her home and swore to never tell anybody about it. now they drink together pretty often.

these are the ones at the top of my head! maybe i’ll add on if i remember some more, but thanks again for asking!

[verfound]

MINIFIC: Oct. 23: Day 10: Full Moon (MLB, Lukanette, DLM AU)

Continuing from Ch8-9. Let's see if I can stay caught up. 😂

For @lovebugs-and-snakecharmers October Minific Challenge 2023.

Read on Ao3

To Feel Alive Again: Ch10: Full Moon

“That won’t work, you know.”

Marinette jumped at the voice, and that was probably the proof of his words right there.  She tried to scowl at Luka, but she found her face didn’t want to cooperate.  She turned away instead, tipping her head back against the chair she had brought up to the roof a few hours ago and glaring at the moon.

It had no right to be so pretty, she thought as she took another long drink from the bottle in her hand.  The world wasn’t pretty.  It didn’t deserve pretty things like that full moon above her when it had such ugliness inside.

“At least share,” Luka sighed as he dropped to the roof beside her, plucking the bottle from her fingers and taking a swig.

“No one invited you,” she bit, snatching the bottle back.  Luka coughed as some of the alcohol went down the wrong pipe, and she smirked as she tipped the bottle back.  The lip was wet from…well, his lips.  Gross.  “I only share with people I invite.  This was a solo party.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s bad form to drink alone?” he asked, taking the bottle back.  She glared at him, and he lifted an unimpressed eyebrow in turn.

…she probably looked like a grumpy kitten to him.  He was condescending like that.  The asshole.

“Stop checking up on me,” she said, turning away with a huff and slumping back in her chair.  She pulled the blanket she’d brought up tighter around her shoulders.  It was an indulgence she had gotten with her first post-death paycheck: a thick, pink, Sherpa-lined throw that was sinfully soft and kept her entirely too warm.

She loved it.

“I’m not…” he started.  She shot him a Look, and he sighed as he leaned back on his hands and looked up at the moon.  She tried to ignore the way it lit up his eyes, making them shimmer in its soft glow.  “Ok.  Fine.  I’m checking up on you.  But I’m checking up on you because I wanted to, not because Mendeleiev is making me.”

…huh.  That was new.

“…why?” she asked, glancing over at him.

“Because she’s a bitch and dealt you a shitty hand,” he said.  His fingers tapped at the roof, and when he glanced over at her he offered her a small smile.  “…and I missed you.  And when Fred told me what happened, I started to worry.”

“Softie,” she chided, and he sighed as he looked back up at the moon.

“I’m afraid you might be right,” he said.  He was still smiling.  “Tell the others and I’ll kill you.”

“Isn’t that going to be a little hard?” she asked, nudging his knee with her foot.  “We’re already dead, Luka.”

“I’m pretty determined,” he said casually.  “I’ll find a way.  Even if it’s locking you in my closet until I finally get my own lights.”

“Asshole,” she giggled.  A comfortable silence settled between them, where they just watched the moon and pretended they could see the stars beyond the city lights.  It was nice, she couldn’t help but think.  She was finding Luka was nice.  Or, at the least, he wasn’t as prickly as she had initially thought.

She was starting to drift off, the exhaustion of the past few days meeting the quiet comfort Luka’s presence offered to lull her towards the sleep she desperately needed.  She might have missed his question, if he hadn’t nudged his knee back against her foot.  Her lips twitched with a smile as she looked at the roof before her, where their limbs were barely touching.  Where they were stretched out like the old friends they might have been another lifetime ago, had she been born a few years sooner or he had been born a few years later and they had both lived past the brief spark of twenty-something.

“He would have liked you,” Juleka had said.

She was starting to think she would have liked him, too.  Back before he was dead.

“Are you ok?” he asked, his voice soft in the quiet night.

She blinked tired eyes at the moon and thought of Abby Rousseau, the little girl who had been senselessly snuffed out even sooner than they had been.  She thought of the undead man beside her and the quiet comfort his presence brought.  Of Fred, downstairs, worrying over her like the papa he was because he couldn’t worry over his own little girl anymore and she no longer had a papa to worry about her, either.  Of Théo and even fucking Mendeleiev, their merry little band of reapers slipping through life on the periphery.  They didn’t have much anymore, but at least they still had each other.

She supposed that had to count for something.

It had to be enough.

“…no,” she answered.  Her hand slipped out of the blanket and reached for his, and she smiled when he threaded his fingers through hers and squeezed.  “But I think I will be.  Thanks, Luka.”

“Any time, Marinette.”

[lajulie24]

Into the Woods

So, if you’ve already seen this, I’m reposting it in text format. Originally it was in response to an ask that @chancecraz sent me, but I made the mistake of putting a “read more” link in it and...Tumblr put the read more link at the top of the ask so nobody could see anything but the question unless you clicked. I tried to fix it but to no avail, so...here we go! Attempt #2!

chancecraz asked:

For the minific reblog, Han/Leia  B. Under cover of darkness.

Thank you for your patience! This started out a drabble and turned into something a bit longer, which is part of why it took a while. Hope you enjoy! (And for folks who have already sent me prompts, I’m getting to yours...I promise.)

Prompt: B. Under cover of darkness

Into the Woods

It felt like the night would never fall; the sunset seemed endless, the sky taking its sweet time to change from gold, to burnt orange, to red and deeper red, to violet. Waiting for the purple to deepen, for dusk to turn to night, felt even longer, especially in the cramped corner where they stood, waiting.

Leia was vaguely aware that in another life, the trappings of their current situation might seem almost romantic. Standing together by the window, Han’s body right behind hers, their eyes on the sunset and the darkening sky that followed. The sky was beautiful, the air humid but not stifling, the scent of the honeyblossoms rising up to meet them. She could feel Han’s breath on her, feel the warmth radiating from his body.

But the fact that her nerves were all straight at attention had much less to do with any feelings she might have for—or about—her current companion, and everything to do with the Imperials running a room-by-room search of their lodging house. Once it was dark, they’d have to move quickly.

“Okay.” Han’s voice in her ear was soft, deep, reassuring. They’d said next to nothing to each other for the past forty minutes, but Leia had been hyperaware of his presence, and it felt like he’d been the same.

“Yes,” she agreed.

They moved quickly, did a quick check of the window and any sight lines, took turns shimmying down the pipe just outside. No words, just eyes and nods and the two of them stealing away to the wooded area just down the road.  

The honeyblossom smell was stronger there, the forest itself a tangle of trees and vines. That was both a good thing and a bad one; if they took care to crawl through without leaving an obvious path, the snarl of vines and foliage would hide most evidence of their presence, but taking care to crawl through would also take precious time. And darkness had fully enveloped the sky now, adding a further degree of difficulty.

Han led the way, and their silence with each other continued, punctuated only by the bend and snap of branches around them, as well as the occasional huff of breath that in normal life would have been a Corellian swear word. Leia herself was boning up on her Alderaani curses in her head, particularly after the third occurrence of a vine snapping back to hit her in the face.

At last, they reached a clearing, or as close as they were ever going to get to one. Leia emerged from the thicket to find Han surveying the area around a large tree as if it were an abandoned alley on Nar Shaddaa. It was still so, so dark, but her eyes had adjusted enough that she could still see his head bob in its usual nod, indicating the way was clear.

As they made their way through this next section of forest, the trees cleared out enough that they could see pieces of sky above their heads again, glimpses of blue-black and the pinpoints of stars. It felt like a setting for a fairy story, escaping the clutch of flowering vines to travel among the ancient trees, the ominous giant not in sight but always steps away.

And then Han stopped, and looked up.

Lost in the woods was Leia’s fleeting thought; it fit with the setting, the fairy tale. They’d traveled a long time without checking their position, just moving, always moving, pushing forward, getting away.

But they weren’t lost, not really. Lost people looked around, looked back. Han was looking up. Struggling to view enough sky through the branches to read the stars.

Well accustomed to having to having her view obstructed, Leia looked around for options. It looked like the foliage opened up a little, further up into the canopy of trees. The first sturdy branch, she judged, was still a little too high to shimmy; perhaps with some help—

“Han,” she said, and his head turned from the sky back to her. “Boost me up.”

He looked concerned, kept sneaking glances back at the sky, like he might miss something important and she was distracting him. “Won’t do you any good,” he explained. “’M just tryin’ to—“

She laughed softly before cutting him off. “I’m looking for the same thing you are. You think you’re the only one’s ever been outside, flyboy?”

He still looked a little skeptical, but he hoisted her up far enough to reach the branch, and she climbed up further to get a good look.

She’d missed this, scaling trees, getting up high enough to see, really see the landscape around her. Han was right, you couldn’t see enough on the ground from here to be useful, it being so dark, but it was nice to be higher just the same. And she’d been right about getting a better view of the stars.

She tested the next branch, making sure it could hold her weight, then settled in enough to take stock of what direction they’d been heading in. Letting the stars talk to you, as one of her guides used to say.

She didn’t much want to come down.

The trunk shook slightly, and Leia knew that she had company. “Don’t trust me?” she asked.

Han’s eyes were barely visible in the dark, but she could feel them on her anyway. “Nah,” he said casually, as if he crawled through thickets and scaled ancient trees on a regular basis. “Wanted to see, too.”

She pointed out what she’d already marked in her head, suggested a direction. It was settled. Still, neither of them moved. Kept looking up.

“Had trees like this on Yavin. You ever climb one there?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “We weren’t there long enough.” She’d noticed the trees there—it had seemed somehow appropriate, her parents’ memorial nestled in the shade of the huge branches that surrounded the temple—but she’d been too busy and too heartbroken to take time to explore them then.

There was a low hum in the forest, with nightbugs making their song. Han was quiet for longer than usual, like he was taking a deliberate pause. Then his voice was soft: “Alderaan?”

He was being careful, but it felt better than the kind of careful she usually got from people, people who acted like the name of her homeworld was the secret word that could never be uttered again, lest its curse infect you with sorrow. This kind of careful was good. More like…gentle curiosity.

“We had forests like these in Aldera,” she said. “I lived in one, once. For like a week.”

The branch Han was resting on shook, just enough to rustle the leaves a bit. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I lived in the woods.”

“With your folks?”

“No, by myself. I ran away.”

She could hear Han chuckling a little. “You bring a chef with you? Guide?”

Leia kept her eyes on the sky, remembering. “No, just me.”

“And they let you stay out there for a week.”

Leia smiled a little, recalling the burst of stubborn pride she’d felt even as she was being reprimanded. “It took them a week to find me.”

“And how old were you?”

“I was nine.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Han sounded impressed.

It was quiet for a few minutes, the nightbugs sounding again. They probably should be going soon, getting another few steps ahead of their pursuers. But neither of them moved.

“You’d like Kashyyk,” Han said, like he’d never left off from their earlier conversation. “Trees like this, but older, bigger. They live in the trees there, y’know.”

It did sound like a place Leia would like, honestly. It also sounded like a place Han missed, was almost homesick for. Which was interesting, given that it was Chewie’s homeworld, not his own.

“Have you been there a lot?” she asked.

“Yeah. Used to. Least I could do, y’know, since Chewie’s always with me. Haven’t been back in a while, though.”

Because of the Rebellion. Because you’re here, instead.

Leia lifted her head again to look at the sky. The stars were the same across the galaxy, but the view changed, the stars spoke differently, depending on where you were when you looked up.

She turned back to Han, found his eyes in the dark. Thought of the mythical firmament, the dome containing the moons and the stars within them.

It was time to come back down.

Leia smiled. “Come on, hotshot. Let’s make some time and I’ll tell you the rest of the story.”

Send me a character I write and a drabble prompt for a minific!

[voidlitmoon]

Finding Our Stars - Bonus Mini Chapter

Ok @sugarglider9603, here is chapter one!

Alright I want to make something clear.. I chose Pecha because of Picani, please accept my reference :)

Also READERS PLEASE NOTE the Bonus Chapter links will be available ONLY ON THE MASTER POST, this includes the minific of MJ and and Iris that I've posted before, I have adjusted the links so it is no longer the Part 2 link on part one and (now) part three, Part 2 link is now Shine Freely My Friends. If want to read these extras later on, check out the Master post link, you can also find Pokeside art from me as well :D

Ao3 link

Ao3 series link

Chapter 2

Master Post

Words: 1,447

Summery: 'They seemed to be in a room with many other brown Eevee eggs, some still as rocks while others shook a bit, one on the other not to far away having a few cracks of its own. They lay in nest of blankets, the warm sun shining through a window straight onto his egg shell pieces. The Eevee squinted, he could see perfectly fine, but the light bothered his eyes, most likely since he basically stared straight at it as he entered the world.

The human opened a door to what seemed to be a large shed or small barn, for they exited onto a sprawling green field, trees sprouting here and there. Berry bushed lay at their bases, Oran, Sitrus, Logan, Pecha, Cheri, and many others spread between.

But what was fascinating were the brown pokemon currently turning to watch the human.

The Eevee's eyes widened as Eevees like himself stared back, brown eyes curiously inspecting him.'

A world were they were wanted to be one thing, but then ignored as extras when not. Where when every other of there kind around them kept separate, two connected like puzzle pieces. All was normal for several months

Until a new Eevee hatch.

And without realizing, Sleep and Pecha connected to a much bigger puzzle on a journey to find their little dark Star

Chapter One

Crack

what.. was that? 'Light' his mind supplied. The creature pushed a paw to the egg's shell, lightning bolts shooting along.

crack

"C'mon c'mon c'mon" a voice? Someone was talking outside wherever he was, instinct kicking in. The creature kicked the shell's inside, pushing.

crack

The light grew brighter and brighter as more fell through the splits, causing the pokemon to blink, the light bothering his eyes.

crack

Almost out.

crack

Just a bit more.

crack

Almost-

CRACK

The egg split open, the Eevee inside tumbled out.

"Ugggh, another normal" the voice muttered, making the Eevee look up.

The figure above him reached out a hand, patting him head "sorry bud, you not the one. Let's go put you with the others" the Eevee blinked, shaking his fur as he stood and chirped a confused ok.

The human picked him up, letting the Eevee look around.

They seemed to be in a room with many other brown Eevee eggs, some still as rocks while others shook a bit, one on the other not to far away having a few cracks of its own. They lay in nest of blankets, the warm sun shining through a window straight onto his egg shell pieces. The Eevee squinted, he could see perfectly fine, but the light bothered his eyes, most likely since he basically stared straight at it as he entered the world.

The human opened a door to what seemed to be a large shed or small barn, for they exited onto a sprawling green field, trees sprouting here and there. Berry bushed lay at their bases, Oran, Sitrus, Logan, Pecha, Cheri, and many others spread between.

But what was fascinating were the brown pokemon currently turning to watch the human.

The Eevee's eyes widened as Eevees like himself stared back, brown eyes curiously inspecting him.

"There's another one hatching right now" the human announced to the crowd, setting the newly hatched Eevee down. No Eevee made a move toward the human, just continuing their business when they walked back inside.

Eevee blinked, confusion filling him "excuse me" he squeaked to a nearby Eevee. She stop confused "what's going on?" He asked, curiosity filling his mind.

"That's Manti" she explained, shaking out her fur "they/them pronouns. Apparently they're breeding for shiny grey colored Eevees, when ever they come out with one it's brought over to their house instead of staying with us" Eevee stared at the large house she pointed at before walking away.

He jumped a few minutes later as the door opened again, 'Manti' sighing as another brown Eevee lay in his arms. He set the squinting Eevee down next to the other before walking away.

"What going on?" The squinting Eevee asked, confused. The older Eevee explained as the walked over to a shaded spot, apologising with his small knowledge.

"That's so weird" the younger mumbled softly, starting a tad scared out at the other pokemon. They ended up curling together near a Peacha Berry bush under a red apple tree, the younger enjoying the sweet tasting berries. The taste was ok with the older, but maybe a bit too sweet.

"Hey" the younger looked up "it's ok to be scared, we're new to all this" the older snuggled closer "we'll stick together."

The younger hummed "it might be possible Manti could name us, or give us to someone else to name, but do you wanna give each other nicknames? Might be easier since we're both Eevees" he giggled.

"Hmm ok, how about Sleep for me, since that's all I want to do right now" the older joked, causing the younger to laughed. "All right then Sleep, what's mine?" Sleep felt his cheeks heat up slightly, but couldn't help but let out a small laugh "how about Peacha, since your so sweet?" He suggested, giving a grin as the younger gave a very noticeable blush and froze. Sleep felt sudden fear, what if he took offense, what if he didn't like it, what if-

The younger smiled, tucking his head under the older's chin "I love it" Peacha whispered.

______________________________

 

Sleep watched sleepily as Manti entered the Hatchery. It had been several months since Sleep and Peacha hatched, only one shiny grey Eevee had appeared. Manti seemed very happy, the two being close enough to hear them mutter "finally a Jolteon" before walking off. Apparently the human had been attempting for a long time to gain every shiny Eevee and Eeveelution, already having the normal furs.

 

It had been quite a while since the last shiny though, Manti gaining more and more annoyed.

 

"FOR ARCEUS SAKE" a scream raged from the Hatchery, startling Peacha from sleep. Manti exited, clearly upset but just let out an sign, setting the Eevee down before walking away. Sleep looked curiously at the new Eevee.

 

Even for a newly hatched, the Eevee was very small. It crouched in the setting sun's lights, darker than normal furred slightly spiked in fear. Poor Eevee must have been terrified having a scream be the first noise he heard. Anger at Manti bubbled in Sleep for a moment before Pecha stood up, bounding over to the curled up Eevee.

 

"Hey" Pecha whispered and Sleep wandered up behind "are you ok?" The Eevee glanced up, brilliantly rich violet eyes stared. Sleep blinked. Manti really must have not gotten a good look at this Eevee, otherwise it probably would have never left his sight.

 

"I- I" the dark Eevee mumbled, shrinking down. Pecha blinked "oh no it's ok, Manti's not mad specifically at you" he comforted.

 

Sleep gently nudged the Eevee up, the small one following them. After that day the two hatched, the Pecha bush under the rich red apple tree had become their sleeping spot. There was a large radius of open grass between that tree and other objects, giving the two, now three privacy.

 

The two calmed the Eevee down, explaining the situation as they curled him between the two.

 

"So, Manti is a shiny breeder?" The Eevee mumbled tiredly as the others nodded. The violet eyes were locked on the sky as stars started shining brightly, calming the Eevee even more.

 

"Do you.. do you want me to leave you guys alone?" He whispered asked.

 

"No!" Pecha cried, snuggling up closer. The Eevee blinked "but your so close, I don't want to interfere."

 

Sleep shook his head "we choose who we want to be around" he looked up at the stars alongside the Eevee "and to prove that I, the amazing Sleep, with give you a nickname" Pecha swatted him with his tail "of course, only if you want one."

 

The Eevee looked over and hesitated "are.. are you sure?" Sleep nodded.

 

"Alright.." Sleep and Pecha snuggled the small one closer "how about Star, dark one?" Sleep mumbled sleepily, glancing one last time at the sky the violet eyes were still latched onto.

 

The dark one thought for a moment, before nodding.

 

"I.. I like it" Star mumbled, smiling.

 

______________________________

 

Manti walked out, fresh air shifting around them. Footfall behind them made the breeder turn, smiling as an old friend walked out.

 

"So I heard you were looking for an Eevee. I just had a special looking Eevee born about two weeks ago, bright purple eyes. It's not a shiny so it's useless to me, but a dragon evolution would look cool with those eyes.

 

 

 

When Sleep and Pecha woke up, their little Star was gone.

 

______________________________

 

Sleep comforted Pecha as the younger cried. "Don't worry, we'll find him" Pecha just shook his head.

 

"Manti took him while we slept, he probably gave him off to a trainer" he mumbled between tears. It was probably true, occasionally humans would come by and take one of the 'extra' Eevees along with them.

 

Sleep growled "we will find him" the tone causing Pecha to look up as Sleep stood up, making his way to the fence.

"But we can't leave!" Pecha exclaimed, eyes wide. "Yes we can" Sleep argued calmly, hopping through the boards "just no one has. Listen, Manti doesn't care about us, we might have been split anyways because they gave us to two separate trainer" Pecha hesitated, remembering the sad truth.

 

"I'm leaving to find our Star, whether your coming or not" Pecha finally looked up, determined. He hopped through the fence, tucking his head under Sleep's chin and nuzzling the Eevee's chest "like you can get rid of me that easily" Pecha purred.

 

the two split, glancing one last time at the Eevee farm, seeing other Eevees watch them with shocked faces as the turned away.

 

"Now" Pecha growled, walking into the forest, the unknown "let's get our Star back."

[roselightfairy]

Don’t even ASK me about work yesterday and today, but, uh, another minific ensued.

This is one I actually kind of wanted to write as a longer story once upon a time, but as seen in the fic to come, I definitely don’t have the juice for it.  I’m honestly not even happy with this bit, but I’m attention-starved and pretending that my creative well isn’t totally dry, so I’m posting it anyway.

Set, if it isn’t clear, right after Finding a Voice, in the in-between time when Gimli and Legolas are each at their respective homes.

My dear Gimli,

I am not unaccustomed to the feeling of missing a loved one, but never have I known an absence like this before.

It is not the dull ache I have long known, faded into a pain at the back of my heart that only sharpens at certain moments few and far between.  It is the ache of a fresh-lost limb, whose absence I feel more for the illusion of its presence - I only remember it is gone when I go to move it, and then I realize that a part of me is elsewhere, and I yearn for nothing more than to have it back.

I can marvel at it now, for how is it that I could not have known the shape of my heart before?  But then, perhaps it is only fitting, for the first time I knew the extent of my affection was when we were first parted, when I first realized that half of it beat in your breast instead.

I have no better words to tell you this, so I hope you will understand that I love you and miss you most dearly...

***

Ravens of Erebor, Legolas thought, were much akin to their dwarven counterparts: disinclined to idle chatter and often unprepared for the full spectrum of elven emotion.

This one watched him with beady, impatient eyes, urging him to cease his delaying and pass over the letter, that the bird might finally return to his mountain home.  "I know," Legolas said, moving to do so and then abruptly losing his nerve and twitching back.  "It is only..."  His belly fluttered with nerves, and he abruptly regretted all he had written; he wished to tear the letter into pieces and begin anew.

"Goodness, Legolas," said Eleniel, and it was a sign of his distraction that he jumped at her sudden appearance. "Be careful - I can feel the heat of your blush from arm's length away.  Do you wish to rival the sun herself?"

"Hush," Legolas mumbled, swatting in her direction and flushing harder.

Eleniel grinned at the letter.  "Is that written for anyone in particular?" she teased.  "And do you plan to seal it with a kiss, as do the children of men with letters to their sweethearts?"

Legolas clutched the letter to his chest as though to protect it, and again he fought the urge to rewrite the whole thing.  But Eleniel seemed to sense it, and her teasing smile softened.  "Relax, Legolas," she said.  "I saw him as well as you did, and I assure you the infatuation goes both ways."

She patted his arm before slipping away and leaving him to gaze down at the letter, and then up into the exasperated eyes of the raven.

"Do not tell," he whispered, and glancing around to see that no one was watching, he pressed his lips to the seal before passing the letter to the bird and watching both soar away in the direction of the mountain.

***

Gimli could not wait until he had returned to his own room to read the letter.  He stood exactly where he had received it, in the hall outside his preferred drafting room, and broke the seal as his fellows flooded out of the room around him.  And there he stood, reading... and reading...

"Goodness, my lord Gimli."  It was Alma, the young apprentice who had impressed him enough that he was thinking of taking her on.  "Are you quite well?"  

He looked up, ready to reassure her, but then he saw that she was giggling, surely more aware than she had pretended of the contents of his letter.  "I do not think I have ever seen you blush so before..."

[elspethsunschampion]

Infernal Contract

A/N: My husband is studying to be an accountant, and he, uh, expounded on some things today that turned into a minific. As per usual for my stories, I recommend not reading if you ship Jaciana or dislike Liliana being portrayed in a not-terribly-sympathetic light.

Rating: T

Summary:   Liliana really should have read the fine print. Jace makes it a point to explain why.

If you enjoy my stories, please consider buying me a coffee :)

         The galley of the Weatherlight was crowded and noisy. Gideon watched Jace, who was practically inhaling a portion of soup, drooping slightly, and looking generally exhausted. He had appeared several feet above the deck a few hours ago, told them, “Sorry, amnesia issues again,” and promptly gone to sleep. Now he had tottered down and asked for food, promising Gideon he would give a more complete description when he was feeling a little better. Curious and concerned though he was, Gideon knew there was no point in trying to hurry him. Whatever had happened, Jace looked simultaneously better than Gideon had ever seen him—a new intensity, a new spring in his step—and also more exhausted and wrecked.

           “I cannot wait to kill that demon,” the two of them heard, rising over the crowd. Liliana’s voice. Jace winced slightly—one thing he had made extremely clear was that he did not want to deal with Liliana at all, and Gideon was not inclined to force him. Whether or not the enchantress might be trying to make up for past misdeeds had nothing to do with whether anyone who had been previously hurt by her needed to have anything to do with her whatsoever, and the hints about her involvement with Jace had been particularly—discomforting. So Gideon was sitting with Jace, and Liliana and Chandra were on the other side of the room. “I just cannot wait,” Liliana’s voice said clearly, “to call my soul my own again. Once I get rid of this lease—”

           Gideon nearly wound his neck backwards with the suddenness of his turn; next to him, Jace’s head had snapped to the side as well. “Lease?” both of them said. Gideon got up. Jace made an explosive noise and then followed.

           “You leased your soul?” Jace demanded without preamble as they fetched up at the other table.

           Liliana blinked up at him. “Um,” she said, clearly taken aback. “You knew that.”

           “No, no, no.” Jace shook his head. “No, you told me you sold your soul.”

           She stared, clearly uncomprehending. “Leased, sold, what’s the difference?”

           “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me!” Jace threw his hands into the air and stalked out of the room.

           Gideon, also perturbed, but at least a little calmer, leaned over her. “Liliana,” he said. “This is very important. Did you sell your soul, or did you lease it?”

           “I don’t understand,” she murmured, but she could apparently tell from his tone of voice that he was deadly serious. “I…believe the contract said ‘lease’, although I could check.”

           Putting one hand over his face, Gideon took a long, deep breath, but before he could figure out where to begin, Jace breezed back into the room, holding an extremely thick volume he must have gotten out of the ship’s library, which he slammed down onto the table so hard that Chandra, Liliana, and Gideon all jumped. He flipped it open and shoved it under Liliana’s nose. “This is the definition of a capital lease,” he said. “A capital lease is a lease in which the lessor only finances the leased asset, and all other rights of ownership transfer to the lessee. This results in the recordation of the asset as the lessee's property in its general ledger, as a fixed asset.”

           “Are you trying to tell me something, because whatever it is, I don’t understand it,” Liliana said crossly.

           “Jace—” Gideon tried, but Jace held up a finger and shook his head.

           “I shouldn’t even be surprised,” he sighed. “Liliana. Let’s say I’m a demon. I want a soul. The soul is an asset that I acquire from you.”  

           “Yes! I know! I want it back!”

           “No,” Jace said. “You really don’t. Because you still own your soul. That’s what a lease means. I acquire the asset from you—it goes into my books—but you are still the owner. You are the lessor, and I am the lessee.”

           “So you get ownership, it says so right there!”

           “If I keep paying you. Good god, Liliana, have you never heard someone say ‘I can’t believe he’s dead, he owed me money’?”

           She opened her mouth and then closed it again. “Ah—well—that is—”

           “There is a reason people generally do not want to kill their debtors. You leased your soul. The demons keep it as long as they keep paying you for it with your youth. If they are dead—I’d like you to pay very close attention to this, because it is apparently difficult for you—if they’re dead, they can’t pay you anymore.”

           Gideon winced slightly at the dawning horror on Liliana’s face. “You—you mean—”

           “Yes, to everyone’s utter astonishment, the demons weren’t expecting you to kill them because it doesn’t help you at all. It just means they’ll be forced to default on the contract because you can’t fulfill a payment on a contract when you’re dead.”

           “Gideon—” Liliana turned to him, wringing her hands, face pale, and he was forced to nod.

           “Standard contract magic,” he said. “The hieromancy is, um. Relatively straightforward.”

           “Oh,” Liliana said.

           “Yeah,” Jace agreed.

           She rallied slightly. “But—but I thought that I gave them my soul, and they gave me…youth.”

           Jace shrugged. “Not if it’s a lease,” he said. “And maybe this is just what I should have expected. You never did have a very good grasp on taking care of assets, did you?”

           Liliana’s hands were white-knuckled as she stared at the table. “What am I going to do?” she asked quietly.

           “That,” Jace said, with uncharacteristic viciousness, “is really not my problem anymore.” Trembling slightly, he turned and stalked away from the table, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.

           Gideon took another deep breath. “All right,” he said steadily. “Change of plans.”

           “Can you help?” Liliana burst out, hands twisting and twisting around one another. “Can you—you’re a hieromancer—I-I don’t—I don’t want to die, Gideon.”

           “You’re going to need someone with a lot more skill than I have,” Gideon told her. “It’s not going to be easy—not without Jace’s help—” and he wasn’t going to ask Jace for help, there was definitely too much pain there, “—but there is someone I know who might have—an angle.”

           Liliana looked up, hoping dawning in her eyes. “Who?”

           “An expert contract negotiator. Teysa Karlov.”

[muggle-writes]

Colors - chapter 1

(title subject to change when it’s not 11 pm on a work night)

Find it here on AO3

for @the-nintendo-nerd​ who won my minific giveaway, which turned… not so mini (almost 4000 words. Welp.)

probably won’t stay as a one-shot.

Soulmate AU: you can only see colors after the first time you’ve seen your soulmate, primarily Harry/Ginny with other canon ships implied… kind of

CW for brief memories of verbal homophobia

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

Harry was getting tired of wandering King’s Cross station alone, looking for a platform that couldn’t exist. He was just wondering if he should pull out his wand and tap on the barrier between platforms 9 and 10 when a new voice cut through the crowd, catching his attention.

“–Packed with muggles of course –”

Harry spun around, and caught sight of a small group of people, all clearly talking together. A plump woman had been the one talking, but there were four boys pushing trolleys with their own trunks, and a girl holding the woman’s hand. The tallest boy’s trunk had a cage with an owl on it – mottled and medium-bright, not the beautiful white that Hedwig was, but still definitely an owl.

While he was mentally categorizing the group, his vision swam and suddenly he was seeing differently. Harry blinked a few times, rubbed his eyes under his glasses, and the new sensation didn’t change. This must be color, Harry realized, which meant his soulmate was in the group. The Dursleys had denied the existence of soulmates as adamantly as they had denied the existence of magic, so perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised that the “elitist lie about ‘colors’ – is bright and dark not good enough for them, they have to make up imaginary sensations to boast about?” was true as well.

He was so disoriented by the sudden appearance of color that he almost forgot to follow them. Soulmate or no, he still needed to know how to get to platform 9¾ and they were likely to know since they were complaining about muggles.

Their hair was all the same color as each other and rather a different color than most people around him in the station. Fortunately, whatever the color was, it was particularly eye-catching so even when a rush of people cut him off from the strangers, he found them again quickly when the cross traffic passed.

Taking advantage of the lull, Harry swallowed his nerves and pushed his trolley up to the group, who was now gathered around one of the pillars denoting the border between platforms 9 and 10 and glancing periodically across at something. He wondered which of them might be his soulmate. A couple of girls in primary school had found each other as soulmates early on, and while the Dursleys had made a huge fuss about “homos pushing their ideas on children” and of course about soulmates and colors as a concept at all, the teacher had later that week compassionately reminded the children that soulmates were sacred bonds, and that they should be cherished regardless of gender or social expectations. Harry wasn’t sure he understood the appeal of soulmates or romance yet, but he was kind of hoping his soulmate would be one of the boys just to spite the Dursleys and their lies.

“Now, who remembers what platform we’re looking for?” the woman prompted.

“Nine and three-quarters,” the girl piped up. “Mum, can’t I go…”

“You’re not old enough, Ginny,” the woman interrupted. “Alright then Percy, you first.”

The boy with the owl nodded and stepped away from the group, marching toward… something. Harry tried to watch, but another rush of people and backpacks obscured his vision before Percy’s destination was obvious. By the time they cleared, Percy was nowhere to be seen.

After two more boys, seemingly twins, not just by appearance but also by how they’d teased their mother about mixing them up, had also vanished, Harry was still no closer to understanding how they were getting to the platform.

Harry stepped forward timidly to draw their attention. “Excuse me,” he asked softly

Ginny’s gasp interrupted Harry, who was about to repeat his interjection louder.

The woman glanced down at Ginny, who had hidden herself behind her mother’s legs, peering out occasionally at Harry and then ducking back again when he glanced her way. The woman then followed Ginny’s gaze to Harry. “Hello dear, can I help you?” the woman asked kindly.

“Er, yeah, I was wondering. Do you know how to get…” Harry trailed off, as something in a different bright color flashed in his peripheral vision – clearly he was still slightly distracted by the presence of color.

“Onto the platform?” the woman asked helpfully, before sending another concerned glance at her daughter. Harry nodded. “First time at Hogwarts, dear? It’s Ron’s first time too,” she said, indicating the remaining boy. Ron was gangly and had a smattering of freckles across his face, and offered Harry a friendly smile of his own. ”Well, it’s perfectly easy. You’ve just got to walk straight at that barrier ahead,” she indicated the next pillar up, the nearest in the direction that the older boys had disappeared. “You can close your eyes if it helps, and it’s best to do it at a bit of a run if you’re nervous. Why don’t you go next?”

Harry nodded, feeling too choked with nerves to answer aloud, and turned his own trolley toward the barrier. He took a deep breath and started walking directly at it. He found himself moving more and more briskly. When he was about four paces away from the barrier, he closed his eyes, bracing for the impact instinct said was inevitable, and kept moving. Six steps later, he cracked his eyes open and realized he was on a platform he hadn’t found by merely walking around, with no barrier to be seen. He opened his eyes fully and slowed to a stop. He glanced over his shoulder to see a brick wall behind him instead, the same texture and color as the pillar he had run towards. Another trolley burst through behind him, with Ron pushing it.

Harry grinned. Magic sure could do some amazing things. He turned to face the train again. Most of it was the same black he’d always seen, but there were glossy parts in another bright color that Harry couldn’t yet put a name to. Part of the Dursleys’ resistance to the idea of soulmates was by shredding the color-identification books he and Dudley had come home with their first year of public school. Harry hoped wizards had some equivalent that he could borrow from someone. Colors were so vibrant and interesting that he wanted to be able to identify them for himself.

The train’s whistle blew a warning, and Harry glanced up to see that the clock on the wall said it was only five minutes until eleven, so he needed to get onto the train. The twins from before helped Harry get his trunk on the train and into an empty compartment. When they spotted his scar, they tried to ask about it, but Harry only got as far as confirming that yes, he was Harry Potter, before their mother called them outside again.

As Harry was getting settled in his seat, he realized he hadn’t asked their names or if either of them could see color. Well, with bright hair like theirs, he was sure to find them again, and he would have more chances.

Asking about someone’s color status wasn’t exactly taboo, but it was deeply personal, so he hadn’t exactly been prepared to ask them in public on first meeting, especially since his soulmate wouldn’t be more than one person, and he wasn’t quite sure who it was out of the five kids he’d initially seen.

Out the open window, he heard Fred and George telling their family that they’d met him, interrupted briefly by their mother asking “Ginny, dear, what is the matter?” but getting no verbal reply, before she asked the twins how they knew it was him, and scolded them not to be overbearing.

The train whistled its one-minute warning, and the conversation outside faded as the boys hurried onto the train. Moments later, the compartment door slid open and Ron poked his head into Harry’s compartment. “Mind if I sit here? Everything else is full,” he explained, with a sheepish smile.

“Go ahead,” Harry agreed, with a nod and a small smile of his own, before he returned to staring out the window, watching the rush of colors in the witches and wizards’ outfits on the platform, and watching them all recede as the train started to move. He caught Ginny’s eyes briefly, as she chased the train and she looked away abruptly, cheeks flaming into brightness, before she stumbled and fell behind the train. That color was red, right? Or pink? He knew blushing was supposed to be one of those colors from stories his teachers had read to the class over the years. Because blood was red, right? Except when it was blue, that was a science fact. But he was sure blushing wasn’t blue. He really needed to get a color-identification book to study.

Fred and George stopped in just long enough to introduce themselves properly, and to point out Ron as their brother, before leaving again.

Ron, like the twins, was impressed to be meeting Harry Potter, and asked to see Harry’s scar, but eventually they settled down into normal, getting-to-know-you conversation. At least, Harry assumed it was normal. Dudley had been chasing off any of Harry’s potential friends for years, so he wasn’t exactly familiar with the process. After the cart came through, they shared snacks, and Harry gratefully let Ron explain all the unfamiliar candies and treats.

A few other people stopped in, looking for a toad. First was a boy named Neville, who owned the toad, and a few minutes later, a girl named Hermione, who claimed she’d already read several of the textbooks, and watched with interest, then disdain as Ron tried a rhyming spell Fred had given him, which apparently should have made his pet rat have chinchilla-soft fur instead of its normal shaggy coat. She loftily proclaimed that maybe he should try a good spell, or a simpler one, and demonstrated by genuinely fixing Harry’s taped-up glasses.

Ron scowled at the compartment door after she left for much longer than Harry thought was warranted, eventually complaining “she’s a bit bossy, don’t you think?”

Harry mentally compared Hermione to Aunt Petunia, whom he’d always thought of as bossy, and shrugged instead of answering. They really didn’t compare. Aunt Petunia was much more insufferable. Ron kept scowling at the door.

A while later, a vaguely familiar sneering face slid open the compartment door. “They’re saying Harry Potter’s in this compartment. It’s you, isn’t it?” he asked, looking directly at Harry. Harry took a moment longer than necessary before he realized that this was the same boy he’d met in Madam Malkin’s who had proclaimed Slytherin the best house, and Hufflepuff the worst. Seeing in color was a little weird, because he noticed the color of the boy’s pale hair before the angular shadow his nose cast on his cheek this time. Harry nodded warily, eyeing the large, hulking boys who had flanked the familiar one. The sneering boy introduced Crabbe and Goyle before introducing himself as Draco Malfoy.

Ron coughed, possibly hiding a laugh, and drew Malfoy’s attention. “Think my name’s funny do you? No need to ask yours. My father told me all Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford.” He turned back to Harry as Ron’s ears and face and neck lit up in the color that was probably red. Except if his hair was red, maybe his face wasn’t red. Hmm.

“You’ll quickly find that some wizarding families are better than others, Potter,” Malfoy continued. “You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.”

“I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks,” Harry answered coldly. Even though he’d only known Ron for a few hours, he could tell Ron was itching to say something scathing in response, and Harry was hoping whatever it was wouldn’t escalate the situation.

It did nearly end in a fight, but Ron’s pet rat scared Goyle off, and the visiting trio fled.

Hermione came in again as Malfoy and his cronies fled, scolded them for fighting, and reminded them to get changed into their robes.

When she had left again, Ron turned to Harry. “Do you think Malfoy can actually see color? Who would match with a prick like him?” he asked, baffled.

Harry snorted in agreement. “Beats me,” he responded. “Hey, this might be a weird question, but do wizards give all their kids a color-identification book like the muggles do?”

Ron gave Harry a considering look. “Not a book, really. It’s a lens that you can hold over something and it’ll tell you what color the thing is. Not much use before you’ve met your soulmate, but it’s interesting for sure.” He rummaged in his trunk and came up with his robes and something that seemed like a large magnifying glass with a brass handle, except the lens was flatter.

“Can I see that?” Harry asked, and Ron shrugged and handed it over. Harry looked around at the whole compartment, reading the words that appeared over each object. The upholstery on the seats was maroon. The pattern on the floor was green with yellow. His trunk was shades of brown. As expected, his robes were black. His socks and trainers were different shades of gray, though perhaps he should have expected that, as they didn’t look much different to him than they had when he’d put them on that morning. Scabbers was brown with gray patches and yellow eyes. Ron’s hair was orange. The grass outside was mostly identified as yellow even though Harry thought grass was supposed to be green. One of his textbooks had a cover that was the same bright color as he’d noticed on the train, which turned out to be red.

Harry handed the lens back, and quickly turned to the corner of the compartment to change into his own robes. When he turned around again, Ron was also peering around at everything through the lens.

“Sorry if this is too personal, but can you see colors?” Harry asked, not sure if he was hoping Ron was his soulmate or not.

Ron blinked at him, ears flushing again – and Harry was starting to understand why that color had the same name as the brighter “red” of his textbook cover – and then scowled. “Yeah,” Ron sighed, sounding irritated. “Someone I met on the train. You?”

Harry blinked at that incongruous response. Weren’t most people excited to meet their soulmates? And he and Ron had seen each other in the station, even though they’d first met on the train. Could they be soulmates? Why would Ron be disappointed about that? He almost forgot to answer, until Ron opened his mouth to say something else. “Erm. Yeah, I guess?” Harry answered. “But I’m not quite sure who it was.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” Ron said seriously. “I know everyone says soulmates are supposed to be your romantic life partner, but sometimes they’re just destined to be your best friend.” He said this with absolute certainty, but his ears kept getting redder and redder in a way that told Harry he ought not ask why Ron was so sure. “I mean, it’s probably scary to think you may never recognize them for who they are, but…

“I mean, it was you or one of your siblings,” Harry admitted impulsively, not quite sure if he was interrupting or if Ron had meant to trail off there. “I just kind of saw you all at once, and I’m not really sure who it was.”

“Hell, I wish you were my soulmate,” Ron grumbled. “You’d be better I think. Huh, who was there this morning?” he mused aloud. “Well, Percy met his match his first year. I don’t know if they’re dating yet, but Mum likes Penny okay. You’re probably lucky it’s not him, he’s rather stuck up. And Fred and George, er, both know theirs. And you’re not my soulmate unfortunately. So if it’s one of us it’s probably Ginny. My little sister. She’s alright, I guess, though she rarely shuts up about anything. She was weirdly quiet today, I suppose that was once we met you?”

Harry shrugged. “Dunno. We didn’t really interact.”

Ron chuckled. “Well, either we’ll make plans for you to meet everyone over Christmas, or you’ll meet her next year when she comes to Hogwarts. Then you can see for yourself what she’s like on a normal day,” he said as the train started to come to a halt.

Harry only hesitated a second, but then the brakes were screeching too loudly for him to reply. On the other hand, he wasn’t quite sure what he would have said. It was weird to think that someone he’d never met was his soulmate. Was she supposed to be special to him? He felt nothing yet: a slight optimism about the idea of having a soulmate and proving the Dursleys wrong, but nothing for or against Ginny Weasley. He wondered how he ought to feel about her.

Harry easily found Hagrid, who was shouting for the first years, and clambered with his fellows into the small boats that took them across the lake. When they got there, they found themselves waiting in a small chamber with large, double doors behind them, and a small but ornate door ahead. Indistinct chatter could be heard beyond that door.

Soon enough, a woman appeared, introducing herself as Professor McGonagall, and gave them instructions. She would call them, one at a time, through the door to be sorted into their houses. She would place the Sorting Hat upon their heads and it would tell them where to go. Remaining students would be able to hear the results well enough through the door, but they were not to come through any more than one-at-a-time. It wasn’t an unusual policy, but there was some unhappy muttering about not being able to see friends get sorted. Ron switched from fretting about the troll Fred had warned him about, to worrying what his parents would think if he wasn’t in Gryffindor. Harry didn’t respond. He had never known how not to disappoint his guardians, and he didn’t really have parents to disappoint.

Sure enough, they could hear the Sorting Hat’s song clearly in the entry chamber. Harry wondered what it looked like, and whether it was really a hat, or some other magical object that was just placed upon heads and called a hat. He waited, getting increasingly nervous, as more of his fellow first-years were called through the door and his own turn approached. He wondered if there was a house for students who just felt a bit queasy.

When “Granger, Hermione” was called through the door, Ron tangibly relaxed, though he scowled heavily when she got sorted into Gryffindor, his preferred house. Harry felt like he might be missing something. Hermione had been a little brusque, but not that bad, he thought. Maybe she just reminded Ron of someone worse? Like the way Crabbe and Goyle had both kind of reminded him of Dudley except they were lacking the cunning gleam that was usually in Dudley’s eyes. They were similar enough to him that he wanted to avoid them.

When Harry’s name was called, he grinned nervously at Ron’s whispered, “good luck!” and stepped through the door. He tried not to look at the crowd of students who had briefly stopped their chattering when his name was called, and were just starting to resume in whispers. “Is it really him?” “Harry Potter!” “The Boy Who Lived”. As soon as his eyes found Professor McGonagall again, he kept his gaze fixed on her as he walked up, taking careful strides so his knees didn’t wobble. It was indeed a hat in her hands, but it looked to be in awful shape – battered and torn worse than any of his hand-me-downs from Dudley.

Finally, he got to the stool she had set up, and sat himself carefully upon it, which granted him one brief glance ahead at the crowd before the Sorting Hat slipped down over his eyes and blocked them out again.

One argument with the Sorting Hat later, and Harry found himself a Gryffindor as well, though haunted by the Hat’s words that “you would be great in Slytherin.” He made his way carefully to the Gryffindor table, which was cheering loudly, and found a vacant seat by the older Weasley boys, who all welcomed him heartily.

By the time the evening was done, Harry had borrowed Ron’s Spectralens again and identified the house colors, visible in the banners above each house table, as red, green, yellow, and blue, each with a different pattern repeated in light and dark shades. Gryffindor was red with interlocking diamonds outlined in a paler shade. Slytherin was green triangles alternating in light and dark. Hufflepuff was bright yellow – not at all the same as the grass – with five-pointed stars outlined in a darker yellow that the Spectralens occasionally called gold. Ravenclaw was blue with interlocking circles outlined in a lighter shade, forming a pattern that seemed to shift in Harry’s peripheral vision. More importantly, over the course of the evening Dumbledore had made enough announcements, large and small, that there wasn’t too much attention on Harry anymore, and in addition Harry had met a ghost and a poltergeist and talking portraits on his way through the undeniably magical castle. He had friends and magic and colors. The Dursleys would hate every bit of that, and knowing that only made Harry love it more.

The next morning, while Harry was reading his letter from Hagrid, Ron was reading his own letter, which had been delivered by an ancient-looking brown tawny owl who nearly collapsed into Ron’s bacon after dropping the letter in his lap.

“Hagrid’s invited me over for tea,” Harry informed Ron, turning to deliver the news. “Would you like to come with me?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ron agreed. “I’ll come. Hey, Mum’s asking if you, the boy we helped to find Platform 9¾, really are Harry Potter. She wants to know because ‘it matters to Ginny’. How much you wanna bet they’ve figured it out too?” That you’re Ginny’s soulmate went unsaid. Ron and Harry were both hesitant to talk about it too publicly. Harry in case they’d guessed wrong, and Ron presumably because his sister was involved but Harry hadn’t had a chance to ask why.

Harry paused from scribbling a reply to Hagrid, and glanced sideways at Ron. “Huh. Probably. Think I should write her a letter?” He would do so if only so he didn’t have to filter his responses through Ron. Although Ron was great, Harry was still wary of talking about soulmates aloud, especially when too many people were around.

“Who? Mum or Ginny?” Ron asked curiously.

“Er, your mum I guess?” Harry decided. “I could say I’m not sure which of you I saw and even though you think it was Ginny, I didn’t want to get her hopes up if I was wrong? And then if I’m not wrong, maybe start writing Ginny and get to know her.”

Ron nodded. “Yeah, mum would probably like that.” He grinned, “And then I wouldn’t have to write letters on your behalf.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry teased, also grinning. “You’re trying to get out of extra work and we haven’t even gotten our schedules yet.” He re-read his note to Hagrid (I’d be happy to come, and I’m bringing my friend Ron ~ Harry) and sent Hedwig off again.

Ron snorted, but before he could reply, Professor McGonagall arrived to pass out their schedules and give the first years instructions on how to find their first class of the day. They got rather busy after that, with subjects that were entirely new to Harry and plenty of homework to go with it all, but nothing could quench the warm feeling growing in Harry’s chest that he was finally somewhere he belonged.

[cryptswahili]

BEST TECH STORIES of 2019 (so far)

Hello Curious Hacker,

The internet has so many best of 2018 articles right now… At Hacker Noon, we’re forward thinking. Below are the best 27 stories of the year 2019 (so far).

But first, three short updates from around the Hacker Noon HQ:

Our equity crowdfund campaign is up to $986k from 893 people. The Reg CF maximum raise is $1.07M. Invest before it’s too over.

We’ll be media partner at Blockchain Connect Conference: Academic 2019 @ San Francisco Marriott tomorrow (Jan 11th), with Trent Lapinski recording podcasts and Derek Bernard recording video. A few tickets are still available, come meet the team.

Longtime Hacker Noon contributor Febin John James published a new book: “Ripple Quick Start Guide: Get started with XRP and development applications on Ripple’s blockchain” via another long timer Hacker Noon contributor Packt_Pub, and it included this really kind acknowledgement. Thanks Febin! We bought your book too :-)

And now onto the good stuff: THE 27 BEST TECH STORIES OF 2019 (so far):

CRYPTO WINTER

Surviving Crypto Winter — Part One: Mattereum and the Internet of Agreements by Daniel Jeffries and Carly E. Howard, JD, LLM. Time to build. From the ashes of competition, rises the phoenix. As winter hits, good projects buckle down and get to work building real technology that works in the real world. And that’s what this new series of articles is all about: Who will survive the crypto winter? I’m going to dig deep and profile companies with the best shot at surviving the bust and building something we can’t imagine living without in the coming years.

Surviving Crypto Winter — Part Two: Blockstack and the Great Pendulum of History by Daniel Jeffries. AI went through two wintersand it took 50 years for anyone to reap rewards like self-driving cars. The Internet looked like a joke for the first twenty years. 3D printing is still in a winter, after early hopes of a printer in every house failed to materialize without the reason to have one yet. And of course, the crypto market suffered a spectacular crash in 2018, as the markets lost 80% or more of their value over a long slow slide to despair. The winds of crypto winter are blowing furiously and the storm is taking many victims already. In this series, I cover who stands the best chance of rising from the freezing cold and thriving when spring comes again.

2019 Developments

Best Coding Languages to Learn in 2019 by Rafi Zikavashvili. In an ideal world, your choice of programming language shouldn’t matter. Most of the popular languages share the same basic concepts, to the untrained eye most of them look the same, and let you achieve more or less the same outcome. From a developer’s perspective, a programming language is a tool and choosing the right one will influence one’s career, economic prospects, and future happiness. This article looks at five of the most popular programming languages, examines their individual and relative merits, and recommends which ones you should learn in 2019.

Major Programming Trends to Prepare for in 2019 by Constantin. Trend #1: Could Python Catch up to Java? If you look at the chart above, you’ll see that Python is already the third most popular programming language in the world. According to Stack Overflow, it surpassed C# in popularity in 2018 and PHP in 2017. But Python only recently achieved this status.

Useful Vim tricks for 2019 by Cláudio Ribeiro. Vim has a steep learning curve, let’s not try to cover it. But once you start getting the nuances of it you start discovering that Vim is full of time-saving tricks. That’s what we’re going to cover in this article. I’ve scoured the internet for Vim tricks. Some of them come from different websites, twitter posts and some of them are my own. Either way, some of these might be useful to improve your workflow in 2019.

What if

… we could verify npm packages? by Steve Konves. An npm package is just tarball of files. The fact is that all package managers (Npm, Nuget, Maven, etc) just distribute tarballs or zip files or some other bundle of content. Any responsible developer is going to keep their code in source control; however, this code may or may not be the only thing in the package. For compiled languages like Java or .Net, packages contain build artifacts, not source code. Especially if the build output is obfuscated, it is difficult if not impossible to casually discover security flaws in the package contents. Javascript is a bit different in that many simple packages are simply tarballs of unmodified source code. However, Typescript requires a transpilation step any many other non-Typescrpt codebases include some form of bundling or minification process before an npm package is created. Security concerns are exacerbated but the fact that minified code is hard to read.

Making Career Moves

How I Got Multiple Software Engineer Job Offers When Switching from Another Industry by Weihe Wang. Failure is the mother of success. I failed onsite interviews 4 times before getting my first offer. Sometimes you solved all problems brilliantly but failed the interview; while sometimes you struggled in one or two rounds but succeed in the end. There is an uncontrollable factor called luck that might be pivotal. It is frustrated to be rejected after an onsite interview, but don’t lose confidence and keep applying to other companies.

PODCASTS

Cowen, Andreessen, and Horowitz: Annotated by Arnold Kling. The view from 1995: Marc Andreessen and bhorowitz first collaborated in 1995, when Horowitz left an established, successful company, Lotus Notes, to work with Andreessen at a high-flying startup, Netscape. Andreessen points out that the big issue dividing the tech world was whether or not the Internet was going to actually solve the problem of connecting the world’s computers. As late as 1995, there were still many major companies that were working on technology that would be valuable if and only if the Internet did not work. That was a bad bet.

Hacking The Self with Nick Seneca Jankel & Trent Lapinski. “What is purpose? Well, purpose is like love in action. It is that love and kindness that comes out into I’m going to take on this community issue, I’m going to take on a bigger social problem then I was before. Until we can access purpose within, and keep it stable within us, that control and protect mode of a monkey will keep going ‘forget the purpose, lets make another million, that would be really cool, then we’ll be loved’.” Listen on iTunes or Google Play

Traction

24 Experts Weigh In: How Do You Get Traffic Without Budget? by Kirill Shilov. In my own personal experience, the best way to come up with new solutions is to find experts who have already achieved success in the same field as you and simply improve or repeat what they did. So I went ahead and asked experts from different fields about what they would do if they could start from scratch in 2019. And they answered!

Venture Capital

The Warning Label That Should Come With Venture Capital by Founder Collective.

The 200 Black Women in Tech to Follow On Twitter List by Jay Jay Ghatt. Why Black Women? Since the first list was published three years ago, I’ve been asked why I only featured women on this list when the tech ecosystem is not inclusive of black men as well. My answer: the list of 200 Black Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter was created out of a need to fill a specific and articulated void after I learned that Black Women were less than 1% of StartUp Founders receiving VC Capital (less than .02%), and in essence were located at the bottom of the totem pole and represented the least, much less than black men, white women, Asian American women and other marginalized groups. Not only did this group not receive funding, it was the least represented on the staffs of tech companies and virtually absent on other “who to follow” lists in tech. Out of exclusion comes a solution. I wanted all to know that we’re here too and to make it easier to “find us”, offer a list of the group least represented to draw from so that could not longer be an excuse as to why we were not included.

Hmm… the internet actually works for…

Who’s Really Behind the World’s Most Popular Free VPNs? by William Chalk. Over half (59%) of the apps studied ultimately have Chinese ownership or are based in China, despite its strict ban on VPNs and its notorious internet surveillance regime. This raises questions about why these companies — which have such large international user bases — have been allowed to continue operating. The Chinese-owned VPNs have been downloaded by users in the US, UK, Latin America, Middle East, and Canada. Three of the apps — TurboVPN, ProxyMaster and SnapVPN — were found to have linked ownership. In their privacy policy, they note: “Our business may require us to transfer your personal data to countries outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”), including to countries such as the People’s Republic of China or Singapore.”

More Government Imagery

See people’s faces from miles away in the 195 gigapixel photo of Shanghai. by Ben Longstaff. As an engineer this is amazing, as a citizen the privacy implications are terrifying. Your average smartphone camera is around 12 megapixels. This image of Shanghai is 195 gigapixels. One megapixel equals one million pixels, a gigapixel equals one billion pixels. Put another way, this image is 16,250 times larger than the image you can take with your smart phone. Let’s see what that feels like through the BigPixel viewer looking at the roof top of a building a few miles away.

How to Download Live Images From Government Weather Satellites by Alex Wulff. Using nothing but your computer, some software, and a $20 radio dongle you can receive transmissions from NOAA weather satellites in the sky overhead. This is an incredibly exciting project that’s easy to do but produces great images. Think about it — you can receive images from a satellite almost 1000KM straight above you!

Listing Infinity

Infinite Data Structures In JavaScript by Francis Stokes. In the real world we deal with “infinite” ideas all the time. All the positive numbers is an example of an infinite concept we wouldn’t bat an eye at. But typically when we are programming we have to think of these infiniteconcepts in a finite way. You can’t have an Array of all the positive numbers (at least not in JavaScript!). What I want to introduce in this article is the idea of an Infinite List data structure, which can represent some never ending sequence, and let’s us use common operations like map and filter to modify and create new sequences.

You Know the Value of Patterns

Complicated patterns aren’t always that complicated. Usually it’s the “simple” ones that bite you. by Patrick Lee Scott. Staring at the maze of interconnected passageways of the microservice system, I immediately recognized the problems. I was sitting with a new client doing a review of their system. This was the first time they were showing me the code which was described as “very interesting” and “definitely one of the most complex I’ve worked on!” with excitement. I shuttered a bit. I thought about my ironically misquoted t-shirt with a picture of Albert Einstein.“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex… It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” — E. F. Schumacher.

Necessary Comparison of Bitcoin to the Weather

Bitcoin: The Gathering Storm. How Thunderstorm Dynamics Are Similar To Bitcoin Market Cycles by Charlie Shrem. On a typical summer day in Florida, the sun rises and begins to heat the ground. This solar heating is transferred into the lowest part of the atmosphere near the surface, essentially the air near the ground begins to gain energy and buoyancy. This can be compared to how Bitcoin adoption increases, such as when thousands of Bitcoin ATMs are deployed and stores begin to accept Bitcoin, which pumps energy into the Bitcoin system.

Necessary Comparison of Bitcoin to Light Itself

The Bitcoin Light Bulb Moment by Beautyon. This is the central problem with the state interfering with technology; no one can predict the future. Now that the law is in force, we are in a situation where capital has been wasted and misdirected, resources wasted and misdirected and depending on the state of the decommissioning of the incandescent bulb lines, no cost less way back to the manufacturing of incandescent light bulbs. The state, by its nature, is incompetent. They cannot predict the future and they are not omniscient. In order to be able to legislate effectively, especially where technology is concerned, they would need to be omniscient, with perfect knowledge of every piece and field of ongoing research and technology, and the potential of each piece and field of research and technology.

About Your Health

Eat Fat, Get Thin? A Physician’s Approach to Reinventing Your Health in 21 Days by Jordan “J” Gross. I tested the strategies presented in Dr. Mark Hyman’s New York Times best-selling book, and here is how it went… My friends have called me the human guinea pig. I am a test mouse in a lab full of endless possibilities. I have gone seven days with only eating Chipotle, I have done a full year with no McDonald’s, I have talked to a new person every day for the last few years, and I have even gone a full month without going to the gym (that one was the hardest for me)… the self-experimental journey I embarked upon recently was actually not so much out of curiosity and adventure, but rather, it was out of necessity.

About Those Other Coins

“When Altseason?” — How to Time the Most Profitable Period in the Cryptocurrency Market. by Rekt Capital. Altseason, a shorthand for Altcoin Season, is the time of the year when the majority of the people in the cryptocurrency market develop a very positive sentiment about Altcoins. This translates into exponential gains across Altcoins (i.e. Alternative coins to Bitcoin). In the past, Altcoins have enjoyed immense gains during Altseasons. Most notably in December 2017 which saw most (if not all) Altcoins gained their initial market valuation many times over during a period of a few weeks of constant, almost uninterrupted uptrends.

About Those Other Tokens…

STO Market Outlook 2019 by Tatiana Koffman. 2018 will be remembered as having paved the way for a new generation of security tokens. Issuers and investors continue to remain curious about the benefits of tokenization such as increased liquidity, fractional ownership, decreased issuance costs, innovative structures and greater pricing efficiency. After conducting an independent study of 130+ STOs currently on the market, the following are some trends forming for 2019.

ETHEREUM

2.0 — The Road To Constantinople And Beyond by Vince Tabora. The next system wide upgrade for the Ethereum network called Constantinople will be implemented in 2019 (originally set for 2018). It is also called as “Ethereum 2.0” or the “New Ethereum”, software version 3.5, part of the release called Metropolis. There is a lot on the line with the success of the Ethereum project, and these are the upgrades to scale the network. The Constantinople upgrade is scheduled for block #7080000. There will actually be three forks in the beginning of 2019 and this includes Constantinople. The two other forks are “hard forks”, meaning they will create a new cryptocurrency. These are Classic Vision and Ethereum Nowa. ETH holders should get an equivalent of those coins in their digital wallet after the fork, if supported by the wallet or digital exchange.

DATA, DATA, DATA

Interview with Data Scientist at kaggle: Dr. Rachael Tatman by Sanyam Bhutani (check out his whole series on machine learning heroes). Dr. Rachael Tatman: As for technical speaking, the best two pieces of advice I can give you are, first, to practice as much as possible. Ask if you can give talks at local events or to relevant clubs. The more talks you give the less nerve-wracking they are and the more you learn what is effective for you. Practice is doubly important when you’re prepping a talk. I usually try to run through the talk at least twice a day in the week leading up to it, making little adjustments when I come across awkward places. Of course, I don’t do that with live streams. I pretty much treat livestreams like technical interviews; it doesn’t matter if I make mistakes so long as I’m telling you what I’m thinking so you can follow my thought processes. My second piece of advice is to be as specific as possible. One of my personal pet peeves are talks that are about how “data science is revolutionizing something” but that is super vague. I want information I can actually apply! If you built a model that does X, talk about why X is important, how you built the model, what makes your model different from other models and how it performed in various situations. Tell me about what specifically you did that didn’t work so I know not to try it. Think about what you wanted to know about whatever you’re talking about a year ago and then tell me those things.

A Last Thought About Diversification

Why Should Everyone Invest In 2019 (Attention, Engineers) by Rafael Belchior, who also wrote the definitive productivity post of the modern era: Top 1,337 Productivity Tips For 2019, Or Any Other Year. As we have just started 2019, 🎉 we have another perfect opportunity to review our lives, opportunities, values, and expectations.

Source: https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-12-31

Despite being a tech addict (DevOps, Blockchain), my path presented me several ways of approaching life and the knowledge I have gained. At some point, I noticed that there is something that professors at my university are not teaching that would turn us into more independent persons. Money. In particular, I became very interested in the investments world, as it allows you to generate money using the money. If you don’t invest your money, it will never increase. You will likely spend, give it away or save it (and possibly spend it in a short-term wish). Now, you could be asking yourself: Why should we care about investments and money? What are the opportunities? Shouldn’t we just save money? How to start well? How to avoid being scammed by false gurus? What is the big picture that we should be aware? Shouldn’t we limit ourselves to the observation of the secret mysteries of this beautiful universe? 🌌

Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted.

Kind Regards,

David Smooke

P.S. We built 13 new collections this week to make easier to find great stories about: BioHacking, Bitcoin ETF, Blockchain Development, Coding, Cryptoeconomics, EOS, Learning to Code, Hacks, Ripple (XRP), Security Tokens, Tech Economics, & Women in Tech.

P.P.S. Our equity crowdfund campaign is up to $986k from 893 people. The Reg CF maximum raise is $1.07M. Invest before it’s too late.

BEST TECH STORIES of 2019 (so far) was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

[socmedsean]

[Tech Tip] 10 Steps To Improve The Speed, Security, and Functionality Of Your WordPress Blog

SocMedSean - Social.Media.Sean [Tech Tip] 10 Steps To Improve The Speed, Security, and Functionality Of Your WordPress Blog

Before getting started, I know this is a really looooong post, and I apologize in advance. I considered breaking this up into ten separate posts because there truly is enough content to justify each topic having its own post. In the end, I decided to create this post as the overview of each topic and an introduction.

Eventually, I will be writing full, in-depth posts on each topic, but wanted to get things going with these tips. In the meantime, go grab a cup of coffee or tea and settle in. I hope this is an especially valuable post for anyone running a WordPress blog. 

–Sean

As more and more new sites hit the Web on a daily basis, the adoption of WordPress as a content management system seems to keep on growing. WordPress has come a long way since it was launched in 2003 and the volume of complimentary plugins and themes is growing at a staggering pace.

via GIPHY

Whether you are just getting started with WordPress or are a seasoned vet looking to speed up your site and reduce administration headaches, there are often decisions that have to be made to ensure the smooth operation of your site. Balancing speed with functionality, ease-of-use with security, and automation with stability are all decisions that constantly need to be evaluated.

Whether from my clients, friends, or other WordPress fans, I often hear questions like:

How do I speed up WordPress while still using plugins for functionality?

Are there best practices for securing my WordPress instance?

Do good plugins really slow down my site?

If my WordPress site is slow, is it my host, my plugins, or my theme?

What tips do you have to make WordPress administration easier?

If these are questions you have about your WordPress site, read on. After more than 12 years working with WordPress, I have been through some trials and tribulations, including having my site hacked, so I hope these will help you in your decision-making process.

To get you started on the right track, I have put together 10 ways to make the management of your WordPress website/blog back-end a bit easier. If you would like to skip forward to a specific tip, just click any of the links in the table-of-contents.

WordPress Optimization Tips – Table Of Contents

Tip #1 – Minimize Plugins

Tip #2 – Choose A Lightweight Mobile-Friendly Theme

Tip #3 – Minify Your JavaScript And Cascading Style Sheets

Tip #4 – Install The Duplicate Page Plugin

Tip #5 – Control Spam With A Light-Weight Plugin

Tip #6 – Set Your Permalinks Up Properly

Tip #7 – Set Up The Ability To Redirect Inbound Links

Tip #8 – Configure A Custom 404 Error Page

Tip #9 – Implement Strong Passwords And Hide The Admin URL

Tip #10 – Add A Firewall To Protect Against Brute Force Attacks

Tip #1 – Minimize Plugins

[Level of Difficulty: 2 out of 5]

When it comes to speed and optimization of WordPress, less is definitely more. This mantra definitely applies to WordPress plugins.

69 active plugins might be a few too many and all these plugins could be causing conflicts and slowdowns.

While plugins are little bits of code magic that help us do everything from create contact forms to speed up our sites through caching, each one also adds a little bit of overhead to our sites, slowing them down. Even the most efficiently-coded plugins still can cause a drag on the server.

Poorly-coded plugins can causes errors, slowdowns, conflicts with other plugins, and even shut down your site completely.

So, to make your life easier and reduce the time you spend troubleshooting issues with plugins, resolve to keep them to a minimum. Do a deep-dive analysis of each of your plugins and ask yourself the following questions:

Do I really need this plugin?

If I really need the functionality, could I replace it with a widget or some HTML?

if I really need the functionality, is there a better plugin that is more lightweight and is better supported by the developer?

If I don’t need the plugin, how soon can I turn it off and remove it?

As an example of how I implemented this process, I was using a “popular posts” plugin to track which posts were receiving the most traffic and then displaying those popular posts in the footer of my site. The plugin tracked the data for the last 90 days and then always showed the top nine posts from the last 90 days. 

My Related Posts widget now is just a custom HTML widget with the links to my most popular posts that I gather from Google Analytics. One less plugin causing overhead issues and waiting to break.

After doing an audit, I just decided that I could get that data from Google Analytics and then create a custom HTML widget and populate the content using HTML. Takes me 15 minutes to update every 90 days and reduces the overhead caused by a popular posts plugin.

Tip #2 – Choose A Light-Weight, Mobile Friendly Theme

[Level of Difficulty: 3 out of 5]

Much like plugins, WordPress themes can run the gamut when it comes to usability and performance. Super lightweight themes like Twenty Sixteen are mobile responsive and load in the browser really quickly, but they aren’t really sexy in their appearance.

Other, beautifully-styled themes can be bloated and even abandoned by their creators. Take the Groesy WordPress theme, as an example. Nice looking theme, built using the Visual Composer editor, and is completely abandoned by its creator.

While this theme might appear sexy and feature-rich, the fact that is not supported by the developer should be a GIANT red flag.

Sure, the creator of the theme will still take your $59, but there is no support from the developer and they haven’t updated the theme in years. In fact, it’s only certified by the developer to work up to WordPress version 4.6.

Probably one of the most popular questions I get when I present at conferences is “What theme or themes do you recommend”. It’s kind of like a trick question that WordPress developers like to ask each other. It signals what is important to us in our site design.

Answer with something like “Avada” (one of the most popular WordPress themes in use) and you get dinged for liking a theme that some consider overly-used, bloated, and slow.

Answer with something like “Twenty Sixteen” and you get dinged for liking a theme that is over-simplistic and not very sleek and stylish.

My answer is two-fold:

For fast, minimalist designs I like the Genesis framework. SocMedSean.com is built on Genesis and it works really well for me. It’s easy to customize, has plenty of code hooks that can be used instead of plugins, and is well supported by the developers.

For corporate Websites, I prefer the Bridge theme by Qode. The theme is well-supported and allows my team to design sites that all look different, but are built on a stable, easy-to-maintain platform.

Choose something with good support that won’t be abandoned.

NOTE: The reason I give this a 3 out of 5 when it comes to difficulty is because you really have to know what you want your site to look like before you choose a theme. Then, after you have implemented your theme and design, we often changes themes over time as our sites evolve and our audience needs change. Theme selection is an on-going decision…and is often one of the hardest parts of building WordPress sites.

Tip # 3 – Minify Your JavaScript And Cascading Style Sheets

[Level of Difficulty: 3 out of 5]

No, code minification does not have anything to do with Minions. While they are cute and adorable helpers in the movie “Despicable Me”, they can’t help us administer our WordPress sites (yet <G>).

via GIPHY

Code minification refers to the aggregation of various JavaScript scripts and style sheets into fewer files and then shrinking them in size by performing operations like removing whitespace, shortening variable names, removing duplicate variables, and even replacing long, poorly-coded functions with shorter, more efficient ones.

The process of minifying your JavaScript and CSS can speed up your site significantly, because the browser will need to process fewer lines of code. Sounds great, right? Right!

The problem is that minification can also really screw up the look and feel of your site if the code minifications don’t play well with your theme or plugins. Again, another reason to reduce the number of plugins to those that are necessary and well-supported.

But don’t let the potential of some issues scare you away from minifying the code on your site. The benefits far outweight the time it will take you to set it up and there is a great plugin that can do most of the heavy lifting for you.

If you’re ready to start minifying your site, here are the steps I recommend:

Backup your site – I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but either use the backup tool that your host provides or use a plugin like Updraft to backup the site.

Install and activate Autoptimize – It’s the best, fully-supported theme out there and I have used it across dozens of different themes and have always been able to get it working at some level.

Configure Autoptimize to work with your site – I highly recommend this guide, put together by the MediaVine team on how to use Autoptimize.

NOTE: If you follow the guide above and Autoptimize messes up your site, don’t panic an uninstall it. Just go back to the admin console and uncheck one box and then save and empty the cache. Do this until you find the checkbox that is messing up your site.

Once you have identified the culprit, go back and enable all the boxes per the guide except the one you identified as a problem. Once you have as many of the check boxes set as possible, run some site speed tests. I’ll bet your site is performing better.

Tip #4 – Install The Duplicate Page Plugin

[Level of Difficulty: 1 out of 5]

Not every one of these tips is one focused on the technical aspects of running a WordPress site. This one is about making WordPress easier to use and getting your content published faster. Of all the plugins I use, the Duplicate Page plugin makes it easier to build the site and add content because I can just replicate a well-performing page and then adjust the content.

Once you have the plugin installed, you’ll see a “duplicate this” link under every page or post within your site. Just click that link and WordPress will create a duplicate version of the page/post in draft format. You can then easily modify the content to fit your needs.

The “Duplicate This” link now allows you to easily and quickly replicate any page or post in your WordPress site.

NOTE: When the plugin creates a new duplicate version of the post or page, it’s going to use the original page slug and add a -2 to the end of it. BE SURE to create a new slug that is unique to the new page or post. If you simply edit the slug and empty it out, WordPress will create a new slug based on the page title when you first save or publish the new draft.

Tip #5 – Control Spam With A Light-Weight Plugin

[Level of Difficulty: 2 out of 5]

This one is pretty quick and easy. While Akismet is by far the most popular anti-spam plugin out there, it doesn’t mean it is the most lightweight and/or best one. If you have Akismet set up and running and your site does great on speed performance scores, then leave it alone and let it continue to do it’s thing.

If, however, Akismet isn’t catching all your spam or if you are looking to tune your site for extra speed, try using one of the two following alternatives:

Anti-Spam Bee – My go-to Anti-spam plugin. Plenty of configuration options, but really works as “set it and forget it”.

Anti-Spam – The lightweight version of the anti-spam plugins. Again, really good at what it does.

 Whichever anti-spam plugin you use, be sure you’re running one of them. Take the hassles out of managing comment spam and let the automated plugins do the work for you.

Tip #6 – Set Your Permalinks Up Properly

[Level of Difficulty: 1 out of 5]

Setting up your permalink structure is something you’re going to want to do early and do right.

If you are setting up a new instance of WordPress, take a moment to think through what you want your URL structure to look like. Do you want to include the month and year in your URL? Do you just want to include the post slug?

One thing I can tell you is you DO NOT want to use the default WordPress setting that displays the page ID. Bad for user experience, bad for SEO. This should be one of the first things you change when setting up your blog.

By default, WordPress has a terrible URL structure. Changing it should be one of the first settings you fix.

Whichever permalink structure you select, stick with it. Changing your permalink structure can have negative consequences on both your social-sharing counts and your search engine optimization.

NOTE: If you are in the troublesome position of having to change your permalink structure, continue on to tip #7, as you will have to set up redirects for your existing content to let Google and other search engines know where your content went.

Tip #7 – Set Up The Ability To Redirect Inbound Links

[Level of Difficulty: 3 out of 5]

I set this as a difficulty level of 3 because, depending on what you are using redirections for, this can be simple or this can be difficult.

If your have been combing through your Google Analytics or Search Console and you notice some inbound 404 links you can use a redirection plugin to re-point that traffic to the proper location of the post or page. This can happen when someone generously links to your site, but mis-types the URL in their hyperlink.  The end result is their reader clicks the link to come to your site and, instead of great content, they see a 404 page.

Grrrr….

The simple way to resolve this is to install the Redirection plugin and create a redirect that points the improper URL to the new URL.

Another, more complex situation that might require the use of a redirection plugin is the changing of your permalinks. As I mentioned in the last tip, changing permalink structure is not something you do on a whim. I know from experience because when I started SocMedSean.com (waaay back in 2009), I used a permalink structure that included the month and the year.

As the years progressed and SEO conventions changed, I decided to adjust my permalink structure to eliminate the month and the year and just show the post or page slug. To accomplish this, though, I had to tell Google and other search engines where to go to access the content. Also, I couldn’t just leave the old URLs hanging out there, because they would result in 404s.

So, to proactively fix the issue, I installed the Redirection plugin and manually created redirections for each of the posts.

Using the Redirection plugin, I was able to redirect all the links from my old permalink structure to my new permalink structure.

Those are just a couple of examples of where a good redirection plugin can help you better administer your WordPress site. A few more situations might include:

You want to republish an old post and change the URL slug to something new. You can use the plugin to redirect the traffic from the old URL to the new one.

You want to unpublish an old post that is no longer relevant, but want to redirect the traffic to a more current post.

You want to shorten the slug of a published post and want to redirect the traffic to the old, longer slug to the new one. 

The options are pretty limitless.

NOTE: Going back to the earlier tip of minimizing plugins, if you don’t need a redirection plugin, don’t install one. There are a lot of redirections that can be performed in your .htaccess file. If you’re tech-savvy and don’t mind editing your .htaccess file, then by all means, save the overhead of the plugin an perform your redirects there.

Tip #8 – Configure A Custom 404 Error Page

Every person who has used the internet has encountered the very annoying 404 error.

The standard 404 offered by a browser is non-descript and just tells the user that the page cannot be found. Generally, the 404 page strands the user with nothing more than a link back to the home page and a Refresh button.

The default Internet Explorer 404 page is useless and strands the visitor

WordPress, as a content management system, however usually delivers a theme-based 404 that maintains the header and the footer of the site and displays a generic “page not found” message to the user.

If you really want to help your users and retain some of the traffic that may have occurred because of a broken link, then consider customizing your 404 and giving your users some options other than just clicking the back button or closing the tab.

An effective 404 Error page should have a couple of things that will make it useful – it would not be any good to you to just put up a message that just says “we do apologize for wasting your time and screwing up badly.” Instead, consider adding some or all of the features below that would help your visitor find what they are looking for:

 The 404 page should look very much like the rest of your site; this way your visitors will know that they are still on a part of your website.

Explain the error that happened, and possibly describe the common causes of the error (outdated content, mis-typed URL etc). The language you use should be clear.

If your website has a search function that isn’t included in the navigation, simply add a search box and let them search for the content.

Provide links to alternative posts/pages that might be related to the search they are finding

Add an email link; this way, visitors will be able to report a problem – do not think that most of them will utilize this feature, but some will.

Remember, the last thing you want them to do is just close the browser and give up on your site. Basically, just ensure that you motivate your readers not to lose their faith in your site, and provide them with alternatives as to where they can go next.

My custom 404 page allows users to search, provides a link to contact me, and gives readers access to alternative articles that the might have been looking for.

Tip #9 – Implement Strong Passwords And Hide The Admin URL

Generally, the front-end of your WordPress site is open to the public and there isn’t any authentication required to access the content. Other areas, like your admin console should be secured to keep people from prying into the administrative areas of your site.

By setting a username and password you can restrict access to just a few people who have the “secret combination”. I can’t emphasize how important it is to ensure that those who access your admin console use strong passwords that are difficult to crack. I can go on and on about how crappy passwords can cause real issues for your site security.

Regardless of whether your WordPress site is a personal blog or a corporate website, you need to ensure that your admin console is secure an the first step toward doing that is strong passwords. Change them quarterly, use combinations that are not able to be guessed. Take this seriously.

The other aspect of securing your site has to do with securing your admin console itself. The great thing about WordPress is the hard work has been done for you through the development of the CMS admin console. The WordPress core contains an administrative area where you, as the admin, can add/remove plugins, themes, posts, pages, etc…

One downside of WordPress, though, is it uses the default /wp-admin/ URL to provide access to the admin console.

Unless changed, the admin console for every WordPress blog can be accessed by going to http://bit.ly/2s1F9Ry. Hackers don’t even need to guess where your sensitive files are located. Once the know the address, they can start their hacking activities.

If you think about it, there are really three things a hacker needs to know in order to access your WordPress admin console:

The URL of your admin console

A username with administrator privileges

The password that goes with that username

That’s just three things keeping hackers out of your site.

So….why would you give away one of those protection features to them for free?

To get that protection back, you need to hide the admin console URL by changing the URL from /wp-admin/ to something like /astrid93294/. That’s a URL that no hacker would possibly be able to guess. You’ll want to make it something only you will know, but make it something you can remember.

You can hide your admin URL by using a plugin like WPS Hide Login. This easy-to-use plugin allows you to change the location of your admin console simply by installing the plugin, typing a new destination, and saving the settings. Once you make the change, visiting /wp-admin/ will result in a “not found” message.

If you are adhering to my earlier advice and minimizing the number of plugins that you have installed, you can also accomplish this by editing your .htaccess file. There is a great overview of doing this here.

One more thing to consider, though. Just securing your admin console is only the first step. It’s up to you to make sure you’re rotating your passwords frequently and using complex passwords that can’t be easily hacked. Take all three elements seriously, and that’s a great start toward securing your site.

Tip #10 – Add A Firewall To Protect Against Brute Force Attacks

[Level of Difficulty: 4 out of 5]

The last tip I have for better administering your WordPress site is to ensure you are running a firewall plugin. Yes, I know I started the post by instructing you to minimize the number of plugins you run, but cutting corners by not having a firewall plugin isn’t something you should do.

Personally, I have three security plugins that I use for different reasons. The plugin I choose depends on the site, the budget, and the compatibility with various hosts. The ones I prefer are:

WordFence – A solid security plugin that allows you to configure brute force attack settings, receive alerts about plugins/themes that need attention, and ban/block users and IP addresses. The plugin is updated frequently with new definition files. There is also a paid version that adds additional features.

All In One WP Security & Firewall – Some hosts, like WP-Engine don’t like WordFence, so All In One is the solution I use on those hosts. Again, it’s a solid firewall with plenty of configurations. The bonus of this plugin is that it also has a built-in feature to hide your admin URL, so you won’t need an additional plugin for that feature if you go with this one.

Sucuri Scanner – Another solid entry into the firewall plugin arena. Easy to use, lots of configuration options.

Whichever solution you choose, take some time to really understand the options that area available, how they work, and what the ideal configuration settings are for your usage.

There you go! Ten tips that can help make sure your WordPress site is ready to maintain and ensures that your visitors are getting the information they need.

Have additional tips that need to be added? Feel free to leave your thoughts in a comment or send them my way via my contact form.  Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions.

Cheers!

–Sean

Share This Post With A Pin!

[Tech Tip] 10 Steps To Improve The Speed, Security, and Functionality Of Your WordPress Blog Sean R. Nicholson.

This post originally posted at SocMedSean.com - SocMedSean – Social.Media.Sean http://bit.ly/2LGEPjT

[hotspreadpage]

How to select the best caching solution for WordPress

There is no denying that the existence of an appropriate website is justified primarily by its loading speed: the faster, the better. Forty-seven percent of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, which is quite a task to accomplish as a new website owner.

Interestingly, even a single second of delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions, and Google’s algorithms favour fast-loading websites in the form of search engine rankings. With so much at stake with regard to your website’s loading time, the pain is real. So, how does one make sure that WordPress websites are fast to load?

Caching is an efficient solution

Caching serves the purpose of creating and keeping a static version of your website and serving it to a requesting visitor when they access your website for the second time or more. It enhances your site’s user experience by swiftly presenting the static version without any delay.

This delay, otherwise, is simply caused when a visitor is trying to access a website from their browser and all the website elements such as the posts, slider, headers, CSS files, JavaScript, images, videos, etc., take their own time to get downloaded on the browser. When caching is in place, your website is ever-ready to deliver a cached/static version – quickly.

If you are new to website creation, how do you implement Caching on your website? What are the ways and means? Are their tools that can help you do it?

To start, you must test your website for its speed monitoring using tools such as:

Pingdom

StatusCake

Monitis

Uptime Robot.

These tools are a great way to figure out anything that might not be going well on your website’s backend when it comes to its loading time and similar issues. Since WordPress websites have their own share of down time owing to a number of factors, you cannot always act laid back when it comes to the performance and WordPress security of your digital property. If you would like to learn about striking a balance with your WordPress site’s security apart from its performance, you can read more here.

Broadly divided into two, WordPress Caching can be determined as:

Browser Caching: Reducing the load on the server is a great way of optimizing your website’s speed and that is what Browser Caching does. It reduces the number of requests per page, resulting in the superpower where your website loads faster.

Server Caching: Used by websites that have spiked traffic rates, Server Caching is largely about when data is cached on the server itself, helping with the loading revisions.

The best plugins to incorporate caching onto your WordPress site

You can choose from the following list of plugins to manage caching on your WordPress website.

WP Super Cache

Total number of downloads: 2+ million

One of the best caching plugins in the WordPress repository, WP Super Cache is a great cache management plugin. Generating static HTML files for your WordPress website, the plugin serves cached files in three ways, which are based on speed. It employs methods like Apache mod_rewrite and a modification of your .htaccess file to serve supercached static HTML files.

  W3 Total Cache

Total number of downloads: 1+ million

Highly recommended by web hosts and developers, this plugin has continued to reign the WordPress caching market for a number of years. By employing browser caching, it renders pages quickly, which results in reduced page load time, and further garners more page views and increased time on site.

A great plugin in itself, W3 Total Cache contributes to improvement in your site’s SEO, offers content delivery network (CDN) integration, and overall user-experience on the WordPress site.

WP Fastest Cache

Total number of downloads: 600,000+

The plugin serves the usual caching functions, offers SSL and CDN support, allows Cache Timeout for specific pages, enable/disable cache option for mobile devices and for logged-in users. Available in over 18 languages, the plugin does not require the user to modify the .htacces file and is pretty simple to set up. However, it does not currently support WordPress Multisite, but it is hoped that the plugin developers are working towards introducing this. Also, their premium version has much more to offer.

Cache Enabler

Total number of downloads: 40,000+

Working its way to improving the performance of your website, the Cache enabler plugin offers WordPress multisite support. Its disk cache engine is efficient and fast and the plugin can be easily setup. One of the unique features of this plugin is its ability to create two cached files: plain HTML one and gzipped (pre-compressed files). It also offers the features of clearing the cache in either a manual or an automated manner.

Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization

Total number of downloads: 10,000+

A great speed optimization caching plugin by WPMU Dev, the Hummingbird plugin features file compression, minification and full-page, browser and Gravatar caching. It also provides performance reports for your WordPress site so that you can maintain its speed. Its scanning feature keeps a check on files that might be slowing your site and provides probable fixes.

NOTE: While caching is great, you will also need to implement other efforts if you really want to increase your website’s speed. Some of the things that you can easily do are:

Invest in a reliable web hosting service and go with a hosting plan that suits the size of your business website

Getting a CDN service is a great way to cater to your site visitors from various geographical locations without having them to wait up a bit too long for the server to fetch your site data

Declutter your website’s database, uninstall plugins and themes that you no longer need

Always use a WordPress theme that has been optimized for speed.

Conclusions

Website speed matters, and caching is one of the easiest ways out there to accomplish a fast loading site. Since your site’s speed has a direct relationship with user experience and the traffic it drives in, it follows that search engine optimization also slides in. Therefore, you must direct all your efforts into making sure that your website is capable of impressing its visitors with an unmatched speed.

Lucy Barret is an experienced Web Developer and passionate blogger, currently working at WPCodingDev. 

How to select the best caching solution for WordPress syndicated from https://hotspread.wordpress.com

[kellykperez]

How to select the best caching solution for WordPress

There is no denying that the existence of an appropriate website is justified primarily by its loading speed: the faster, the better. Forty-seven percent of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, which is quite a task to accomplish as a new website owner.

Interestingly, even a single second of delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions, and Google’s algorithms favour fast-loading websites in the form of search engine rankings. With so much at stake with regard to your website’s loading time, the pain is real. So, how does one make sure that WordPress websites are fast to load?

Caching is an efficient solution

Caching serves the purpose of creating and keeping a static version of your website and serving it to a requesting visitor when they access your website for the second time or more. It enhances your site’s user experience by swiftly presenting the static version without any delay.

This delay, otherwise, is simply caused when a visitor is trying to access a website from their browser and all the website elements such as the posts, slider, headers, CSS files, JavaScript, images, videos, etc., take their own time to get downloaded on the browser. When caching is in place, your website is ever-ready to deliver a cached/static version – quickly.

If you are new to website creation, how do you implement Caching on your website? What are the ways and means? Are their tools that can help you do it?

To start, you must test your website for its speed monitoring using tools such as:

Pingdom

StatusCake

Monitis

Uptime Robot.

These tools are a great way to figure out anything that might not be going well on your website’s backend when it comes to its loading time and similar issues. Since WordPress websites have their own share of down time owing to a number of factors, you cannot always act laid back when it comes to the performance and WordPress security of your digital property. If you would like to learn about striking a balance with your WordPress site’s security apart from its performance, you can read more here.

Broadly divided into two, WordPress Caching can be determined as:

Browser Caching: Reducing the load on the server is a great way of optimizing your website’s speed and that is what Browser Caching does. It reduces the number of requests per page, resulting in the superpower where your website loads faster.

Server Caching: Used by websites that have spiked traffic rates, Server Caching is largely about when data is cached on the server itself, helping with the loading revisions.

The best plugins to incorporate caching onto your WordPress site

You can choose from the following list of plugins to manage caching on your WordPress website.

WP Super Cache

Total number of downloads: 2+ million

One of the best caching plugins in the WordPress repository, WP Super Cache is a great cache management plugin. Generating static HTML files for your WordPress website, the plugin serves cached files in three ways, which are based on speed. It employs methods like Apache mod_rewrite and a modification of your .htaccess file to serve supercached static HTML files.

 W3 Total Cache

Total number of downloads: 1+ million

Highly recommended by web hosts and developers, this plugin has continued to reign the WordPress caching market for a number of years. By employing browser caching, it renders pages quickly, which results in reduced page load time, and further garners more page views and increased time on site.

A great plugin in itself, W3 Total Cache contributes to improvement in your site’s SEO, offers content delivery network (CDN) integration, and overall user-experience on the WordPress site.

WP Fastest Cache

Total number of downloads: 600,000+

The plugin serves the usual caching functions, offers SSL and CDN support, allows Cache Timeout for specific pages, enable/disable cache option for mobile devices and for logged-in users. Available in over 18 languages, the plugin does not require the user to modify the .htacces file and is pretty simple to set up. However, it does not currently support WordPress Multisite, but it is hoped that the plugin developers are working towards introducing this. Also, their premium version has much more to offer.

Cache Enabler

Total number of downloads: 40,000+

Working its way to improving the performance of your website, the Cache enabler plugin offers WordPress multisite support. Its disk cache engine is efficient and fast and the plugin can be easily setup. One of the unique features of this plugin is its ability to create two cached files: plain HTML one and gzipped (pre-compressed files). It also offers the features of clearing the cache in either a manual or an automated manner.

Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization

Total number of downloads: 10,000+

A great speed optimization caching plugin by WPMU Dev, the Hummingbird plugin features file compression, minification and full-page, browser and Gravatar caching. It also provides performance reports for your WordPress site so that you can maintain its speed. Its scanning feature keeps a check on files that might be slowing your site and provides probable fixes.

NOTE: While caching is great, you will also need to implement other efforts if you really want to increase your website’s speed. Some of the things that you can easily do are:

Invest in a reliable web hosting service and go with a hosting plan that suits the size of your business website

Getting a CDN service is a great way to cater to your site visitors from various geographical locations without having them to wait up a bit too long for the server to fetch your site data

Declutter your website’s database, uninstall plugins and themes that you no longer need

Always use a WordPress theme that has been optimized for speed.

Conclusions

Website speed matters, and caching is one of the easiest ways out there to accomplish a fast loading site. Since your site’s speed has a direct relationship with user experience and the traffic it drives in, it follows that search engine optimization also slides in. Therefore, you must direct all your efforts into making sure that your website is capable of impressing its visitors with an unmatched speed.

Lucy Barret is an experienced Web Developer and passionate blogger, currently working at WPCodingDev. 

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/24/how-to-select-the-best-caching-solution-for-wordpress/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2018/04/how-to-select-best-caching-solution-for.html

[verfound]

MINIFIC: Oct. 23: Day 1: Autumn (MLB, Lukanette, DLM AU)

...I was gonna do these, and then I wasn't gonna do em, and then work life flipped off creative life and here I am, joining the fun at @lovebugs-and-snakecharmers's late. Using the Ghostober 2021 prompts here. Just having fun. 👀

Read on A03

To Feel Alive Again: Day 1: Autumn

A chill breeze whispered through the street, nipping at the edges of exposed skin peeking out from coats and scarves.  Marinette pulled her own coat – a lumpy, gray thing she had lifted off a reap a few weeks back – and tried not to scowl.

She used to love this time of year.  Before.

The changing of the seasons meant a new wardrobe.  Layers of material, vibrant splashes of color, boots and hats and scarves – so many accessories.  She used to have the cutest peacoat, made from a deep burgundy wool that always kept her warm on the coldest fall days.  She had embroidered a swirl of leaves around the hem in a rich gold thread, and she had even found golden buttons shaped like maple leaves to line the front.  She had been so proud of that coat.  She’d lived in it every fall for years.

…she hadn’t died in it, though.

She’d died in the spring.

When it was too warm for such a heavy coat.

She supposed it was funny, in a way.  Before, the fall – a season marked by death – had always brought a new life to her, but the spring – the season for life and renewal – had brought with it her death.

Now she saw it everywhere.

It was hard to love things anymore.  In the After.

“You’re still allowed to love things,” Théo had said, not unkindly, one morning over breakfast.  It was a rare moment of seriousness for him, and if she hadn’t been in such a foul mood she might have appreciated it.  Instead, she hunkered down deeper in the gray coat she hated and stared – glared – out the window.  She hummed, not really agreeing or disagreeing.  She didn’t see the way Luka glanced up at her from his coffee, a small frown playing at the edges of his mouth.

She did see the large, chunky sweater folded on the foot of her bed when she came home a week later, though.

“…Fred, what…did you leave this here?” she called, her hands trembling as she held the sweater up.  It was obviously handmade – not as good as she could make, but absolutely perfect in its little imperfections.  The stitches pulled just a little too tight or a little too loose, the slightly uneven ribbing along the neck, the braiding that hadn’t been blocked properly zigzagging down the front…it spoke of time, and care, and things Marinette hadn’t let herself think about in far too long.  And it was soft, the yarn used to make it obviously high quality.  She knew just how much a sweater like this would cost – more than she could dream of affording these days, when she was still struggling to hold down an after-death job.

“Hmm?” Fred called, popping his head in the room.  When he saw the sweater, his eyebrows lifted.  “Ah, that?  No, it wasn’t me.  Luka dropped it off while you were out.  Said something about pink suiting you?”

Marinette’s head jerked up, surprised, but Fred was just smiling at you.

“You’re still allowed to love things, Marinette,” he said, inclining his head towards her.  “You’re still allowed to feel.”

She looked back at the sweater, her lips pursed and her eyes burning with tears she refused to shed, and didn’t answer.  Fred sighed and flipped his hat onto his head, nodding at her.

“I’m off,” he said, tipping his hat at her.  “Make sure you eat tonight, kid, all right?

…he probably hadn’t meant a mug of hot chocolate and a plate of macarons, but as she hunkered down in the nicest sweater she had ever worn and watched her old favorite sappy movie on the cracked tv…well.

At least when you’re dead you don’t have to worry about calories.

[lajulie24]

For the minific reblog, Han/Leia B. Under cover of darkness.

Thank you for your patience! This started out a drabble and turned into something a bit longer, which is part of why it took a while. Hope you enjoy! (And for folks who have already sent me prompts, I’m getting to yours...I promise.)

Prompt: B. Under cover of darkness

Into the Woods

It felt like the night would never fall; the sunset seemed endless, the sky taking its sweet time to change from gold, to burnt orange, to red and deeper red, to violet. Waiting for the purple to deepen, for dusk to turn to night, felt even longer, especially in the cramped corner where they stood, waiting.

Leia was vaguely aware that in another life, the trappings of their current situation might seem almost romantic. Standing together by the window, Han’s body right behind hers, their eyes on the sunset and the darkening sky that followed. The sky was beautiful, the air humid but not stifling, the scent of the honeyblossoms rising up to meet them. She could feel Han’s breath on her, feel the warmth radiating from his body.

But the fact that her nerves were all straight at attention had much less to do with any feelings she might have for—or about—her current companion, and everything to do with the Imperials running a room-by-room search of their lodging house. Once it was dark, they’d have to move quickly.

“Okay.” Han’s voice in her ear was soft, deep, reassuring. They’d said next to nothing to each other for the past forty minutes, but Leia had been hyperaware of his presence, and it felt like he’d been the same.

“Yes,” she agreed.

They moved quickly, did a quick check of the window and any sight lines, took turns shimmying down the pipe just outside. No words, just eyes and nods and the two of them stealing away to the wooded area just down the road. 

The honeyblossom smell was stronger there, the forest itself a tangle of trees and vines. That was both a good thing and a bad one; if they took care to crawl through without leaving an obvious path, the snarl of vines and foliage would hide most evidence of their presence, but taking care to crawl through would also take precious time. And darkness had fully enveloped the sky now, adding a further degree of difficulty.

Han led the way, and their silence with each other continued, punctuated only by the bend and snap of branches around them, as well as the occasional huff of breath that in normal life would have been a Corellian swear word. Leia herself was boning up on her Alderaani curses in her head, particularly after the third occurrence of a vine snapping back to hit her in the face.

At last, they reached a clearing, or as close as they were ever going to get to one. Leia emerged from the thicket to find Han surveying the area around a large tree as if it were an abandoned alley on Nar Shaddaa. It was still so, so dark, but her eyes had adjusted enough that she could still see his head bob in its usual nod, indicating the way was clear.

As they made their way through this next section of forest, the trees cleared out enough that they could see pieces of sky above their heads again, glimpses of blue-black and the pinpoints of stars. It felt like a setting for a fairy story, escaping the clutch of flowering vines to travel among the ancient trees, the ominous giant not in sight but always steps away.

And then Han stopped, and looked up.

Lost in the woods was Leia’s fleeting thought; it fit with the setting, the fairy tale. They’d traveled a long time without checking their position, just moving, always moving, pushing forward, getting away.

But they weren’t lost, not really. Lost people looked around, looked back. Han was looking up. Struggling to view enough sky through the branches to read the stars.

Well accustomed to having to having her view obstructed, Leia looked around for options. It looked like the foliage opened up a little, further up into the canopy of trees. The first sturdy branch, she judged, was still a little too high to shimmy; perhaps with some help—

“Han,” she said, and his head turned from the sky back to her. “Boost me up.”

He looked concerned, kept sneaking glances back at the sky, like he might miss something important and she was distracting him. “Won’t do you any good,” he explained. “’M just tryin’ to—“

She laughed softly before cutting him off. “I’m looking for the same thing you are. You think you’re the only one’s ever been outside, flyboy?”

He still looked a little skeptical, but he hoisted her up far enough to reach the branch, and she climbed up further to get a good look.

She’d missed this, scaling trees, getting up high enough to see, really see the landscape around her. Han was right, you couldn’t see enough on the ground from here to be useful, it being so dark, but it was nice to be higher just the same. And she’d been right about getting a better view of the stars.

She tested the next branch, making sure it could hold her weight, then settled in enough to take stock of what direction they’d been heading in. Letting the stars talk to you, as one of her guides used to say.

She didn’t much want to come down.

The trunk shook slightly, and Leia knew that she had company. “Don’t trust me?” she asked.

Han’s eyes were barely visible in the dark, but she could feel them on her anyway. “Nah,” he said casually, as if he crawled through thickets and scaled ancient trees on a regular basis. “Wanted to see, too.”

She pointed out what she’d already marked in her head, suggested a direction. It was settled. Still, neither of them moved. Kept looking up.

“Had trees like this on Yavin. You ever climb one there?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “We weren’t there long enough.” She’d noticed the trees there—it had seemed somehow appropriate, her parents’ memorial nestled in the shade of the huge branches that surrounded the temple—but she’d been too busy and too heartbroken to take time to explore them at the time.

There was a low hum in the forest, with nightbugs making their song. Han was quiet for longer than usual, like he was taking a deliberate pause. Then his voice was soft: “Alderaan?”

He was being careful, but it felt better than the kind of careful she usually got from people, people who acted like the name of her homeworld was the secret word that could never be uttered again, lest its curse infect you with sorrow. This kind of careful was good. More like…gentle curiosity.

“We had forests like these in Aldera,” she said. “I lived in one, once. For like a week.”

The branch Han was resting on shook, just enough to rustle the leaves a bit. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I lived in the woods.”

“With your folks?”

“No, by myself. I ran away.”

She could hear Han chuckling a little. “You bring a chef with you? Guide?”

Leia kept her eyes on the sky, remembering. “No, just me.”

“And they let you stay out there for a week.”

Leia smiled a little, recalling the burst of stubborn pride she’d felt even as she was being reprimanded. “It took them a week to find me.”

“And how old were you?”

“I was nine.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Han sounded impressed.

It was quiet for a few minutes, the nightbugs sounding again. They probably should be going soon, getting another few steps ahead of their pursuers. But neither of them moved.

“You’d like Kashyyk,” Han said, like he’d never left off from their earlier conversation. “Trees like this, but older, bigger. They live in the trees there, y’know.”

It did sound like a place Leia would like, honestly. It also sounded like a place Han missed, was almost homesick for. Which was interesting, given that it was Chewie’s homeworld, not his own.

“Have you been there a lot?” she asked.

“Yeah. Used to. Least I could do, y’know, since Chewie’s always with me. Haven’t been back in a while, though.”

Because of the Rebellion. Because you’re here, instead.

Leia lifted her head again to look at the sky. The stars were the same across the galaxy, but the view changed, the stars spoke differently, depending on where you were when you looked up.

She turned back to Han, found his eyes in the dark. Thought of the mythical firmament, the dome containing the moons and the stars within them.

It was time to come back down.

Leia smiled. “Come on, hotshot. Let’s make some time and I’ll tell you the rest of the story.”

Send me a character I write and a drabble prompt for a minific!

[oscarkruegerus]

How to select the best caching solution for WordPress

There is no denying that the existence of an appropriate website is justified primarily by its loading speed: the faster, the better. Forty-seven percent of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, which is quite a task to accomplish as a new website owner.

Interestingly, even a single second of delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions, and Google’s algorithms favour fast-loading websites in the form of search engine rankings. With so much at stake with regard to your website’s loading time, the pain is real. So, how does one make sure that WordPress websites are fast to load?

Caching is an efficient solution

Caching serves the purpose of creating and keeping a static version of your website and serving it to a requesting visitor when they access your website for the second time or more. It enhances your site’s user experience by swiftly presenting the static version without any delay.

This delay, otherwise, is simply caused when a visitor is trying to access a website from their browser and all the website elements such as the posts, slider, headers, CSS files, JavaScript, images, videos, etc., take their own time to get downloaded on the browser. When caching is in place, your website is ever-ready to deliver a cached/static version – quickly.

If you are new to website creation, how do you implement Caching on your website? What are the ways and means? Are their tools that can help you do it?

To start, you must test your website for its speed monitoring using tools such as:

Pingdom

StatusCake

Monitis

Uptime Robot.

These tools are a great way to figure out anything that might not be going well on your website’s backend when it comes to its loading time and similar issues. Since WordPress websites have their own share of down time owing to a number of factors, you cannot always act laid back when it comes to the performance and WordPress security of your digital property. If you would like to learn about striking a balance with your WordPress site’s security apart from its performance, you can read more here.

Broadly divided into two, WordPress Caching can be determined as:

Browser Caching: Reducing the load on the server is a great way of optimizing your website’s speed and that is what Browser Caching does. It reduces the number of requests per page, resulting in the superpower where your website loads faster.

Server Caching: Used by websites that have spiked traffic rates, Server Caching is largely about when data is cached on the server itself, helping with the loading revisions.

The best plugins to incorporate caching onto your WordPress site

You can choose from the following list of plugins to manage caching on your WordPress website.

WP Super Cache

Total number of downloads: 2+ million

One of the best caching plugins in the WordPress repository, WP Super Cache is a great cache management plugin. Generating static HTML files for your WordPress website, the plugin serves cached files in three ways, which are based on speed. It employs methods like Apache mod_rewrite and a modification of your .htaccess file to serve supercached static HTML files.

  W3 Total Cache

Total number of downloads: 1+ million

Highly recommended by web hosts and developers, this plugin has continued to reign the WordPress caching market for a number of years. By employing browser caching, it renders pages quickly, which results in reduced page load time, and further garners more page views and increased time on site.

A great plugin in itself, W3 Total Cache contributes to improvement in your site’s SEO, offers content delivery network (CDN) integration, and overall user-experience on the WordPress site.

WP Fastest Cache

Total number of downloads: 600,000+

The plugin serves the usual caching functions, offers SSL and CDN support, allows Cache Timeout for specific pages, enable/disable cache option for mobile devices and for logged-in users. Available in over 18 languages, the plugin does not require the user to modify the .htacces file and is pretty simple to set up. However, it does not currently support WordPress Multisite, but it is hoped that the plugin developers are working towards introducing this. Also, their premium version has much more to offer.

Cache Enabler

Total number of downloads: 40,000+

Working its way to improving the performance of your website, the Cache enabler plugin offers WordPress multisite support. Its disk cache engine is efficient and fast and the plugin can be easily setup. One of the unique features of this plugin is its ability to create two cached files: plain HTML one and gzipped (pre-compressed files). It also offers the features of clearing the cache in either a manual or an automated manner.

Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization

Total number of downloads: 10,000+

A great speed optimization caching plugin by WPMU Dev, the Hummingbird plugin features file compression, minification and full-page, browser and Gravatar caching. It also provides performance reports for your WordPress site so that you can maintain its speed. Its scanning feature keeps a check on files that might be slowing your site and provides probable fixes.

NOTE: While caching is great, you will also need to implement other efforts if you really want to increase your website’s speed. Some of the things that you can easily do are:

Invest in a reliable web hosting service and go with a hosting plan that suits the size of your business website

Getting a CDN service is a great way to cater to your site visitors from various geographical locations without having them to wait up a bit too long for the server to fetch your site data

Declutter your website’s database, uninstall plugins and themes that you no longer need

Always use a WordPress theme that has been optimized for speed.

Conclusions

Website speed matters, and caching is one of the easiest ways out there to accomplish a fast loading site. Since your site’s speed has a direct relationship with user experience and the traffic it drives in, it follows that search engine optimization also slides in. Therefore, you must direct all your efforts into making sure that your website is capable of impressing its visitors with an unmatched speed.

Lucy Barret is an experienced Web Developer and passionate blogger, currently working at WPCodingDev. 

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/24/how-to-select-the-best-caching-solution-for-wordpress/

[sheilalmartinia]

How to select the best caching solution for WordPress

There is no denying that the existence of an appropriate website is justified primarily by its loading speed: the faster, the better. Forty-seven percent of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, which is quite a task to accomplish as a new website owner.

Interestingly, even a single second of delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions, and Google’s algorithms favour fast-loading websites in the form of search engine rankings. With so much at stake with regard to your website’s loading time, the pain is real. So, how does one make sure that WordPress websites are fast to load?

Caching is an efficient solution

Caching serves the purpose of creating and keeping a static version of your website and serving it to a requesting visitor when they access your website for the second time or more. It enhances your site’s user experience by swiftly presenting the static version without any delay.

This delay, otherwise, is simply caused when a visitor is trying to access a website from their browser and all the website elements such as the posts, slider, headers, CSS files, JavaScript, images, videos, etc., take their own time to get downloaded on the browser. When caching is in place, your website is ever-ready to deliver a cached/static version – quickly.

If you are new to website creation, how do you implement Caching on your website? What are the ways and means? Are their tools that can help you do it?

To start, you must test your website for its speed monitoring using tools such as:

Pingdom

StatusCake

Monitis

Uptime Robot.

These tools are a great way to figure out anything that might not be going well on your website’s backend when it comes to its loading time and similar issues. Since WordPress websites have their own share of down time owing to a number of factors, you cannot always act laid back when it comes to the performance and WordPress security of your digital property. If you would like to learn about striking a balance with your WordPress site’s security apart from its performance, you can read more here.

Broadly divided into two, WordPress Caching can be determined as:

Browser Caching: Reducing the load on the server is a great way of optimizing your website’s speed and that is what Browser Caching does. It reduces the number of requests per page, resulting in the superpower where your website loads faster.

Server Caching: Used by websites that have spiked traffic rates, Server Caching is largely about when data is cached on the server itself, helping with the loading revisions.

The best plugins to incorporate caching onto your WordPress site

You can choose from the following list of plugins to manage caching on your WordPress website.

WP Super Cache

Total number of downloads: 2+ million

One of the best caching plugins in the WordPress repository, WP Super Cache is a great cache management plugin. Generating static HTML files for your WordPress website, the plugin serves cached files in three ways, which are based on speed. It employs methods like Apache mod_rewrite and a modification of your .htaccess file to serve supercached static HTML files.

  W3 Total Cache

Total number of downloads: 1+ million

Highly recommended by web hosts and developers, this plugin has continued to reign the WordPress caching market for a number of years. By employing browser caching, it renders pages quickly, which results in reduced page load time, and further garners more page views and increased time on site.

A great plugin in itself, W3 Total Cache contributes to improvement in your site’s SEO, offers content delivery network (CDN) integration, and overall user-experience on the WordPress site.

WP Fastest Cache

Total number of downloads: 600,000+

The plugin serves the usual caching functions, offers SSL and CDN support, allows Cache Timeout for specific pages, enable/disable cache option for mobile devices and for logged-in users. Available in over 18 languages, the plugin does not require the user to modify the .htacces file and is pretty simple to set up. However, it does not currently support WordPress Multisite, but it is hoped that the plugin developers are working towards introducing this. Also, their premium version has much more to offer.

Cache Enabler

Total number of downloads: 40,000+

Working its way to improving the performance of your website, the Cache enabler plugin offers WordPress multisite support. Its disk cache engine is efficient and fast and the plugin can be easily setup. One of the unique features of this plugin is its ability to create two cached files: plain HTML one and gzipped (pre-compressed files). It also offers the features of clearing the cache in either a manual or an automated manner.

Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization

Total number of downloads: 10,000+

A great speed optimization caching plugin by WPMU Dev, the Hummingbird plugin features file compression, minification and full-page, browser and Gravatar caching. It also provides performance reports for your WordPress site so that you can maintain its speed. Its scanning feature keeps a check on files that might be slowing your site and provides probable fixes.

NOTE: While caching is great, you will also need to implement other efforts if you really want to increase your website’s speed. Some of the things that you can easily do are:

Invest in a reliable web hosting service and go with a hosting plan that suits the size of your business website

Getting a CDN service is a great way to cater to your site visitors from various geographical locations without having them to wait up a bit too long for the server to fetch your site data

Declutter your website’s database, uninstall plugins and themes that you no longer need

Always use a WordPress theme that has been optimized for speed.

Conclusions

Website speed matters, and caching is one of the easiest ways out there to accomplish a fast loading site. Since your site’s speed has a direct relationship with user experience and the traffic it drives in, it follows that search engine optimization also slides in. Therefore, you must direct all your efforts into making sure that your website is capable of impressing its visitors with an unmatched speed.

Lucy Barret is an experienced Web Developer and passionate blogger, currently working at WPCodingDev. 

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/24/how-to-select-the-best-caching-solution-for-wordpress/