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twodimecastle · 4 years ago

Text

fifty bucks & six months.

spencer reid x gender neutral reader new relationship, secret keeping nonsense, 4.5k words, ao3 a/n; turns out i love writing texting fic but tumblr destroys the formatting rip

zero months.

You smile conspiratorially, extending a pinkie towards Spencer and he gives you a skeptical look.

“You know the odds of being found out immediately are-” he starts, but you cut him off.

“Astronomical, I know. I know. But don’t you think it’ll be fun to see how long we can push it?” you wheedle, not caring that your voice sounds more like begging than is strictly dignified because seeing the way Spencer’s nose crinkles in amusement at your heavy handed persuasion is too adorable to pass up. You scoot closer on the couch, tapping the end of his nose with your pinkie finger, letting him catch your hand between his as you continue “I think we’ve got a good shot at hiding it for a little while. It would be like a game.”

Spencer draws your captive hand to his lips, brushing them across your knuckles and watching fondly as you forge ahead in your campaign to persuade him, enjoying the show and the attention too much to tell you he’s already on board. Your eyes are shining with the prospect of the caper, and you’ve made no move to take your hand back from him, and Spencer’s pretty sure he’d be more than happy to sit with you in this moment forever. “I mean-” you go on, gesturing animatedly with your free hand, “you’re like-a really good liar when you want to be. And everyone else always forgets how good you are at it.”

He snorts at that and the sound makes you light up, eyes tracking the arch of his brows, the warmth in his soft brown eyes, memorising the way he looks like this; utterly unbothered, completely at ease. It might be your favourite version of him, but that race has always been a tight one with no clear winner in sight. You have lots of favourite versions of Spencer. Twisting your hand in his, you tangle your fingers together, savouring the way you feel his thumb glide delicately along your skin and the unhidden joy in his face at the simple show of affection.

Time to play your trump card.

“$50 says we can hide it from the whole group for at least six months. If everyone figures it out before then, you win. But if not everyone has worked it out by then, I win.”

The mischievous shine in your eyes is irresistible, and Spencer smiles, disentangling one of his hands from yours to extend his own pinky finger.

“You’re on.”

The words barely make it out of his mouth before you’re colliding with him, pressing your lips to his.

two months.

“So, how long has this whole thing been going on?” Derek’s question catches Spencer off guard, and, based on the way he can see you freeze in his peripheral vision, takes you by surprise as well. Sliding into the driver's seat of the SUV, Derek continues “I hope you didn’t think you were gonna be able to keep me in the dark for long, pretty boy. You should know better than that.”

Following mechanically after him, Spencer takes the passenger seat, trying to frame his next statement as carefully as possible as he hears your door close and the car start. “We were-going to tell you guys-” he begins uncomfortably, glancing back to you for support, but you look just as on edge as he feels. “We were just gonna-keep it to ourselves for a while-before telling Hotch and everything-” he tries again, the mounting tension levering his shoulders higher and higher with every passing moment, but then Derek just laughs, shaking his head.

“Hey, I’m happy for you, kid. For both of you.” He spares a look at you in the back seat through the rear view mirror, and you can feel the tension in your jaw relax, the furrows in your brow straightening out at the note of approval in Derek’s voice. “I’m glad you two finally figured it out,” he says, fondly, and you laugh.

“I bet Spence we could keep it from you guys at least six months,” you explain, reaching forwards through the centre console to link your pinky with Spencer’s, and the touch of your hand releases the last of the tension he had been harbouring as he covers your hand with the other one of his own. He knows Derek clocks the motion, filing it away in his mind somewhere, but he doesn’t care about the scrutiny so much right now. Not when your hand is so warm and comfortable in his.

Derek reaches for the dial on the radio and flicks through the channel, thinking about something, and as you watch, a slow mischievous smirk spreads across his face a moment later before he glances first at Spencer and then at you.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says to you, and Spencer can feel a familiar grin tugging at his own lips as he watches a plan take shape in his friend’s eyes. “I’m happy to sit on this information for a while for a cut of the winnings from whichever one of you comes out on top.” He snorts good naturedly as he continues “I have my own bet to win with Prentiss, so if you two help me win that one, I’ll cut you in too.”

“A quid pro quo of sorts,” Spencer says slowly, and he feels your fingers tighten around his, as you snort softly, and he knows instinctually you’re grinning the same way you always do when you’re winning a game. “I think we can do that.”

Derek grins, turning the music up as he nods, eyes on the road. “Then you two love birds have got yourselves a deal.”

two months and two weeks.

PG: youre not as slick as you think you are ;)

YN: ???

PG: ;))))))))) you should invest in some concealer for your work bag sweetness or tell the good doctor to pay more attention to whats visible in your work clothes

YN: oh my fucking god wait how do you even know thats how that happened

PG: im all knowing and all seeing im like the omnipotent goddess of the fbi

YN: derek blabbed

PG: he sang like a canary but also im an omnipotent goddess im also totally clued in on the whole bet situation with em so for the low low price of every single juicy detail about how this adorableness went down you can buy my silence :)

YN: im getting derek decaf coffee on all coffee runs from now on >:( traitors dont get caffeine

PG: darling sweet angel i need deets all of them like immediately

YN: >:( fine ok so. after that case down in georgia a few months ago? the weird one? with the creepy mother son thing?

PG: omg yuck pls dont remind me im here for the CUTENESS not the MURDER

YN: sorryyyyyyy anyway so spence was like being super weird about it all on the plane and whatever but he was doing that super annoying thing where he ignores it and says hes fine so everyone leaves him alone

PG: YEAH why does everyone here do that ALL THE TIME its SO annoyingggg

YN: ikr its insufferable and like super not subtle ANYWAY. spence was being weird and whatever and i just. refused to let him sulk on his own or whatever like i could tell there was something bothering him and so after work i insisted that we were gonna get like shitty diner food or whatever and watch a movie and he knows better than to say no to me

PG: smart boy

YN: so we got fries and milkshakes and then went back to his place to watch a movie and he was still like weird and silent and like brooding yknow? but whatever just figured hed talk about it when he was ready so i put on a movie and offered to make popcorn and then he was just staring at me and he looked so SAD and TIRED and i thought id done something wrong like the poor guy looked like he was gonna cry and i was panicking over fucking popcorn and then he says ‘why are you always so nice to me?’

PG: oh my god hes like if a sad victorian orphan was actually a triplicate phd holder

YN: i was SO thrown off i was like spencer. spencer were best friends. ive been forcing you to hang out with me for years now why do you THINK im being nice to you its bc i care about you asshole and then. like after another million years after letting me sweat it out over whether hes about to cry for like fucking years the asshole grabs my hand and says. i shit you not. ‘you know im in love with you, right?’ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PG: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YN: anyway hes my boyfriend now :’) dont tell anyone tho gotta win the bet

four months.

Lingering by the elevator, you glance around at the uncharacteristically silent office building, waiting for Spencer to leave the bullpen. The sound of his footfalls drawing nearer makes you smile and you mentally applaud yourself for suggesting the two of you remained behind after disembarking from the plane, taking advantage of the manufactured privacy to take the same car home, back to his apartment.

When he sees you waiting for him, he can’t help the soft fond smile that tugs at his face, as he reaches for your hand, sliding his fingers into yours with a gentle squeeze, the quiet of the building allowing him to indulge in the show of affection. You return the squeeze, leaning your head on his shoulder with a yawn and as he presses a fond kiss to your temple he’s rewarded by a sleepy hum of approval from you that sends a rush of quiet joy shooting through him.

“At least we won’t be sleeping in hotel beds again tonight,” you say, voice weary, and Spencer nods as he shuffles you into the elevator. The doors slide shut and the elevator starts to move and in the moment of absolute privacy, you steal a kiss, tilting your chin up to catch his lips with yours, revelling in the soft huff of surprise he lets out, even as he smiles against your mouth. Even after months, the simple act of kissing Spencer still feels new and thrilling somehow, like you can’t quite believe it’s something you’re allowed to do.

His nose brushes yours and he breathes “unless something big comes up, we get a sleep in tomorrow too,” and the way you beam at him sends his heart racing in his chest, unable to look away from the fondness shining in your eyes.

As the two of you exit the elevator and make your way through the Bureau car park, you tuck yourself against his side, wedging yourself under his arm with a happy sigh, eager to get yourself horizontal and asleep as fast as possible. Spencer brushes his lips against your temple again as the two of you close in on his car, almost free and clear of the office when a voice behind the two of you brings you up short.

“Reid?”

Spencer is reacting before his mind catches up, turning on his heel towards the sound of Hotch’s voice echoing through the parking lot, conscious of the incriminating way you’re still tucked against his side, even as his brain is rifling frantically through any possible excuses for the current circumstances.

“Hotch-” you step away from Spencer, cheeks flaming, not wanting to chance a look at him. “I-we-thought everyone else had gone home,” you trail off lamely, trying your hardest not to balk under Hotch’s ominously impassive scrutiny. A second passes, then another, and the short silence feels like months, or years even as the three of you stand locked in a stalemate.

“I take it the two of you would prefer to keep this under wraps?” He asks, finally, and it registers with Spencer, somewhat belatedly, that Hotch’s tone isn’t admonishing. It isn’t enough to dissipate the tension coiling in Spencer’s muscles just yet, but he spares a glance at you as he nods, and a moment later, Hotch gives the two of you a curt nod of his own. “I’ll tell you what,” he says, a shade of irony colouring his voice. “If you two fill out the paperwork for in-team relationships for me, I’ll keep it to myself. I understand privacy is hard to come by in our office.”

The words take a while to fully sink in, and you’re conscious that you’re standing there blinking and gaping at your boss like a bemused fish for a good few seconds before you’ve composed yourself enough to say “absolutely, sir. Of course. Thank you.”

Hotch nods again, heading towards his own car, and as he passes the two of you, a brief smile flashes across his face.

“Congratulations, you two. Get some sleep.”

four months and three weeks.

Spencer isn’t sure how late it is, but he knows you’re not asleep yet, the faint glow of your phone screen casting faint distorted shadows across his room as your free hand rests lightly on his chest. In the dark blue twilight of his room, the space feels undefined and dream like somehow, the line between his mind and his surroundings blurry or indistinct somehow, and as you huff out a near silent laugh at something on the screen in your hand, a thought rises to the surface of his thoughts like flotsam on an unwanted tide.

The more clinical part of his mind notes the autonomic response in his body, the way his heart lurches unpleasantly in his chest, heart rate rising with an influx of cortisol through his nervous system, automatically rifling through ways to control the anxiety response. Age old instinct surges forwards, starting to push his spiralling anxiety down out of sight so as not to bother you with it, but then your hand shifts infinitesimally on his chest, fingers curling in the soft fabric of his pyjama shirt, and for once his body is miles ahead of his brilliant mind, your name is leaving his lips before he’s really aware of it happening.

Your gaze flashes up from your phone at the sound of his voice, soft and hesitant, and you let the screen go dark as you set it down. You can feel Spencer’s heart hammering against his ribs under your palm, and your brows knit together in concern as you shift closer to his side, tracing gentle circles over his shirt with your fingertips, the repetitive motion intended to soothe, though you’re not sure if it’s for his benefit or yours.

“Yeah, baby?” You ask softly, working hard to keep the rising worry from your voice. After three years of friendship and almost six months of dating, you know him well enough to sense when his propensity for overthinking and catastrophizing is slipping out of his control. You can feel his chest rise as he inhales sharply, whatever he’s about to say cut off by second guessing, doing nothing to pacify your concern. “Spence? Is everything okay?” You ask again.

“This-bet-hiding our relationship-it’s-” he trails off, throat tight as he rolls onto his side, facing away from you, and smushing his face into the pillow, already wishing he hadn’t said anything. You’re the kindest person he’s ever met, but offering up this kind of raw insecurity feels like pulling teeth. Even if it’s you. Especially if it’s you. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to find out if you care about him enough to stay when his racing mind gets the better of him. The pillow muffles his voice as he says “never mind.”

You feel your own heart rate tic up in response to that, matching the wild beat of Spencer’s that you could feel under your palm only a second ago. “Baby, talk to me. What’s on your mind?”

He shakes his head, face still hidden in the pillow. “It’s stupid.”

He can feel the rush of your breath on his back as you sigh, and your voice is almost achingly patient as you say softly “it’s not stupid if it matters to you.” There’s a long pause, and you press yourself against his back, settling close and letting your hand slide over his side to rest on his chest, the heat of his skin sinking into yours even through his thin shirt. In spite of his height, he feels so small as you wrap yourself around him, drawing closer, trying to reassure him without yet knowing what he needs to be reassured of. “Spence?”

“Are you ashamed of-being with me? Is that why you want to hide it?” The words are almost whispered, the sound almost lost against his pillow and your heart sinks, plummeting faster and further than if you’d dropped it off the side of a skyscraper. You should’ve known he might worry about that, should have realised it might have felt that way. Remorse rises hot and bitter in your throat and you swallow it down, trying to steady your voice.

“Spencer. Sweetheart. No. Never. I could never be ashamed. I love you. I’m so sorry.” Your arms wrap more tightly around him and you bury your face against the crook of his neck, the tension you can feel in every inch of his body making you feel more cruel and short-sighted than you already do. “I’m sorry I didn’t realise it might feel like that. I could never be ashamed of being with you, Spence. You’re my favourite person.” He takes the kind of shaky, shallow breath that comes with trying not to cry and your heart breaks a little more as one of his hands slowly moves to cover yours where it rests against his chest, just over his heart.

As his hand rests over yours, his thumb strokes lightly along your knuckles, and he knows you know him well enough to notice the way his hand trembles, just a little, because then your hand is shifting against his, turning to clumsily tangle your fingers with his, holding tighter to him as he tries to collect himself, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath as his eyes squeeze shut. He can hear the contrition in your voice as you say softly “I’ve never really liked having people know everything about what’s going on in my life. And I love our friends but-something like this, that’s so-special? So new? I wanted to be able to keep it to just us for a while.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice comes out a little shaky, scarcely more than a whisper, and it’s more than you can take as you pull back and gently force him to roll over to face you. He’s not crying, but his eyes are glassy and you recognise the fight to keep the tears unshed in the tight set of his jaw and the hard line of his lips. Leaning on your elbow, you lift your free hand to gently smooth out the furrows of his brow, letting your fingers linger along the planes of his face.

“Why are you sorry,” you ask gently. “You don’t need to be sorry, baby. Not for talking to me about things that bother you. We can tell everyone else tomorrow, if you want? We can call off the bet. Derek will live. If he’s got a problem with it I’ll turn all his shirts into crop tops.”

He can tell the joke is a last bid attempt to make him smile, to ease his fear, and it works. In spite of the anxious weight in his chest that feels like it’s pressing him into the mattress, Spencer laughs weakly, meeting your eyes, and he watches as a relieved smile breaks across your face, releasing your lower lip from where you’d trapped it worriedly between your teeth. The unmitigated affection that floods into your eyes renders him momentarily breathless as he takes in the moment. You’re still here, still trying to take care of him. Just as kind and steadfast as ever.

“No,” he says eventually, wrapping his arms around you, pulling you down on top of him like a living weighted blanket, letting your warmth chase the bulk of the tension from his body and luxuriating in the way you curl into him, one hand sliding into his hair. “We shouldn’t call off the bet. We still have to take Emily’s money, remember?”

Your sleepy laugh is the last thing he hears before his eyes close and the feel of your body wound around his lulls him to sleep.

five months.

SR: Can I talk to you about something?

DM: you dying or something? that’s a really fuckin ominous text to recieve out of the blue

SR: I’m not dying, why would that be what you assumed? I just have a question.

DM: just a figure of speech but what’s up?

SR: It’s about your bet with Emily. What’re the terms for it?

DM: wym?

SR: What exactly did you two make the bet about? What needs to happen in order for you to win the bet?

DM: does this count as collusion?

SR: Technically yes, but calling it collusion implies a certain degree of illegality.

DM: whatever anyway the terms i made with em were that you’d make some kind of move before your birthday but she reckoned you were gonna need some kind of near death experience to do anything about your crush why?

SR: I’m just making sure I have all the information.

DM: what’s going on pretty boy? you planning something?

SR: Maybe.

DM: not a helpful answer reid is everything good?

SR: Everything’s fine. We’re just figuring some stuff out. Nothing to worry about.

DM: is there something you’re not telling me?

SR: Don’t worry about it.

five months, three weeks and six days.

In the chaos that was the scramble from the briefing room to the jet, you haven’t yet had the chance to speak to Spencer about the outcome of his most recent thesis defence panel. By the time you’ve got a moment to breathe, the jet is underway, coasting across the country towards Montana, the whole team settled in for the six hour flight. You corner him in the tiny kitchen area of the jet as he’s making a mug of mediocre coffee, fingers tapping out an absent minded rhythm on the countertop as the coffee machine whirs, clearly not paying attention to anything outside of his head.

“Hey, boy genius.” He jumps, whirling around, eyes wide with surprise, and you smile fondly. “So?” You demand, and Spencer raises an eyebrow in confusion. You snort, rolling your eyes as you elaborate. “Your defence panel. Did it go okay?”

You’re shifting your weight and fidgeting restlessly with the belt loops on your pants and as he studies you for a moment, it occurs to Spencer that you’re nervous for him over this outcome. The thought brings an almost giddy smile to his face.

“You know this isn’t my first thesis defence panel, right?” He says mildly, deliberately burying the lede, enjoying the way you scowl in irritation too much to answer your question right away, too enamoured with this display of concern on his behalf.

“Don’t be difficult, Doctor Reid. It’s still a big deal.” He just shrugs noncommittally, and you huff, swatting his arm lightly. “So did it go well?” You ask again, eyes narrowing as you try to dissect his microexpressions, trying to discern the answer he seems determined to keep from you for yourself. A few seconds later, he relents.

“I can now add degree number six to my wall.” He confirms. Getting degrees doesn’t hold the same rush of pride for him now, the accomplishment feeling somewhat less exceptional as he acquires more of them, but the way your face lights up with pride for him reminds him how special the things he’s capable of can be. You’ve always made him feel like more than the sum of his parts somehow, like something infinitely more precious than he always assumed he is.

“I fucking knew it. That’s amazing, Spence,” you say, chest warm and full with pride and love, and his almost shy smile in return is enough to make a decision for you in a split second. Your hand dips into your back pocket, drawing something out, and you carefully hide it from view in your palm as Spencer tracks the motion curiously with his eyes.

Your eyes are shining with affection and something that looks like mischief and the way you’re smiling at him is more than enough to divert his attention as you step closer, just barely noticing as you slip something into his hand. You’re dangerously, distractingly close now, and he’s conscious, if somewhat distantly, that neither of you is concealed from the rest of the team, scant meters away in the seating area of the jet. But you’re smiling and close enough for him to feel your breath on his face and suddenly your lips are on his, and even after nearly seven months of being able to touch you like this, it’s enough to make him forget everything else as he melts into the contact, savouring the warmth of your skin and the faint smell of your shampoo.

You pull back a second later, the kiss over almost as soon as it started, but it’s enough to attract attention, and you can hear a belated ‘oh SHIT’ from Emily in the main cabin of the jet. In your peripheral vision, you can see money changing hands, your friends scrambling to react, but you don’t look at them, choosing to enjoy the bemused, affectionate look on Spencer’s face as his brain catches up to the events unfolding around the two of you.

“I was tired of keeping it a secret,” you say fondly, loud enough only for him to hear. “You win.”

Blinking in confusion, he finally tears his gaze away from yours, fingers uncurling to reveal the fifty dollar bill you had pressed into his palm right before you kissed him. The penny drops and he snorts with laughter, shaking his head in half hearted indignation as his other arm loops around you, pulling you in, letting you rest your head on his shoulder, hiding your face from the rest of the team as he kisses your temple, revelling in the way you wind yourself around him in response.

“I was gonna do this in like two days. I wanted you to win,” he murmurs against your hairline, and he can feel your faint laughter.

“Too bad, baby. I’m used to getting my way,” you say, pulling back to steal another quick kiss before peeling yourself out of his arms with a wink, turning to face the onslaught of ‘care to fucking explain that’ and ‘I fucking told you so’ from the rest of your friends, tugging him with you by your joined hands.

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid/you #spencer reid/reader #reid #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds imagine #dr spencer reid #my writing #spencer reid fluff

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memoriashell · 5 years ago

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hey i really like you ( can we go out? )

Characters / Pairing: Fukawa Touko / Naegi Komaru, techincally some background Ishimaru / Oowada, Makoto gets a few lines, and Syo’s present for a bit in the begining.

crossposted on ao3

Notes: hello here's your late day five of @tokomaruweek week!! valentine's day prompt!!

the format for the texting section might look a little funky on tumblr since there’s no easy way of aligning right side / left side text but hopefully it’s obvious enough who’s texting what.

heads up i'll be skipping day 6 for now probably! i’ll come back to it when i’ve finished the rest of the week, i just might get stuck on it for a hot minute and i’d like to get the rest of the week out of the way first since i'm already behind.

anyways it's probably also noteworthy to mention that this drabble works on the basis you have a basic understanding of the cultural differences in how japan celebrates valentine's day. i was originally going to try and incorporate white day into this drabble instead of just mentioning it but i wasn’t super happy with how this one was turning out anyways and figured it was best to just get this out as it is!!

i also feel like i should clarify bc that i realize the way i characterize toko in everything this week has made it seems like she hates kiyotaka’s guts but honestly i think they’d be real close!! i really like them as two outsider kids who can relate to each other. they are two sides of the same narrative coin and in this essay i will /j anyways please understand she rags on him from a place of ( platonic ) LOVE. and also bc they r both my cc’s i could never be that mean to either of them. well. no meaner than canon is to them.

edit: forgot tws. nothing super huge bc it's mostly fluff, but it does refrence bullying ( although would you consider faked love confessions / etc as bullying? it's just cruel :( anyways. )

Summary: valentine's day has never been good for ugly girls ( and hopeless romantics ) like her.

Valentine's Day. Every girl’s least favorite day.

Or, well, at the very least, her least favorite. Uh, one of her least favorite holidays? Then again, it’s not like Touko really has a ‘favorite’ in the first place, so maybe her point is moot— but she’s getting side tracked here.

One would presume that a romantic like her, an author who writes romance for a living, would live for a holiday that's practically centered around love and romance, but they would be wrong. It’s a miserable reminder of a day for her who has practically been scorned by the idea of relationships. It is a bitter reminder of failed loves and societal norms that she’s never been able to meet.

( Ugly. Rude. Awkward. Unsociable. So what if they’re right? Who is she to tell them they’re wrong? )

If it is not for the fact that she is pretty sure Ishimaru will be at her door if she doesn’t show up, she would probably skip class today. Oh, to be a confident gay man on Valentine's Day and not a closeted lesbian who feels the need to meet heteronormative societal norms. It’s unfair because not only is he ( mostly ) unaffected by this kind of holiday, he’s probably one of the people who care the least about the delicate social intricacies ( and romanticism ) of a holiday like this one. If nothing else, so she can’t say she envies the position this puts Oowada in, because Ishimaru would probably just see this as a learning moment. Anyways before she sounds too envious of her peers for getting their shit together, she just wants it to be unknown that she thinks it’s really unfair that he would get to judge her reasons for wanting to skip school.

( Actually, if she fessed up the deep-seated issues related to why she’d rather not have to be present on a day like today, the last thing he’d do it judge but that’s not really something she wants to acknowledge right now )

Moving on.

Despite the fact that, internally, she is making a fuss about a holiday, she suspects that most of her class probably doesn’t really care about these things. That doesn't mean she feels any less pressured to conform. It’s not like any of them would want chocolates from someone like her anyways, so it’s not like she really needs to be worried...

It’s not the end of the world, stop being such a debbie downer! Syo butts in, ever so helpful. By which she means is very, very unwanted and unhelpful. All the same, they ( unfortunately ) have a point and if she has to put up with this shitty day then at the very least she’d like to have breakfast before someone sees fit to break down her door.

You technically don’t have to do anything. Syo sounds almost too enthusiastic to help with the ‘issue’ at hand.

Using you to escape my problems isn’t always a viable strategy. Touko rebukes. Nor is it a choice, usually.

Only because you try and make yourself as miserable as possible by making things worse for you.

She has nothing to say to that, and instead focuses on braiding her hair to be passably presentable.

“Fukawa-san?” Oh, what she wouldn’t give to not have to hear her name today. Granted, Touko doesn’t think hearing her name being called on any given day is usually a good sign, but it still feels too early in the day to willingly put up with anything and shoots a glare at Naegi, standing in front of her desk. It probably doesn’t help that he sounds nervous for some godforsaken reason, but that’s technically not out of the ordinary, and she’s pretty sure Syo has something to do with that. “Sorry, uh...I was going to try and catch you at your locker this morning, but I guess I must’ve missed you, huh?”

She gives him the most deadpan, withering stare she can muster at the moment as if to say obviously. She’d even turned up to class early because she figured that dealing with whoever else would be in class would be more manageable than having to deal with anything going on in the halls ( because Hope’s Peak is not a normal school and god knows if something can go wrong, it will, and she is not having any of it today ). She assumed that if she looked busy, anyone with any common sense would leave her alone, but Makoto is not the brightest, clearly.

It still kind of throws her for a loop, however, that he chooses to approach her today, of all days. If she were anyone else, or if this exchange happened in any other context, she is sure that him acting like this on Valentine's Day would seem like it was setting up for a love confession. If it weren’t for the fact that Naegi already had a partner so, that’s probably not an issue— not that that would be a theoretical issue, because hey it’s not like Naegi was likely to be the kind of person cruel enough to fake a love confession. That’s definitely not something that’s happened to Touko before and gotten her hopes up only to be horribly crushed and definitely not the reason she’s been particularly defensive today. Nope.

( Yeah, okay, she’s not fooling anyone, but thankfully the only one aware of this is herself. And Syo, but both of these things are clear givens )

It occurs to her that Naegi hasn’t said anything, waiting for her to say something to him, and she grits her teeth irritably. “Wh-What? Spit it out already.”

“Err...are you...” He starts to say something and then seems to think better of it, sheepishly ducking his head for a moment before holding a bag out to her. “Sorry. Komaru asked me to bring these to you. Kirigiri-san had to convince her to not try and sneak into the main building just to bring these to you herself.”

It takes a long minute for her to process what he says before snatching the bag from his grip and holding it close to herself. Friendship chocolates...? That’s probably what’s in the bag. Which is a pretty nice thought in itself— Touko doesn’t usually get gifts like this. It almost makes her not want to touch the bag and ruin the illusion, refrain from eat whatever’s in the bag: but honestly if she doesn’t, Syo will probably make sure to savor it, so she won’t even pretend like that’s an option.

( There’s a part of her that feels a little guilty too, that she hadn’t even considered that Komaru might do something like this and have something prepared for her in return, but if she’d made something and not gotten anything then she’d look like a fool, and it’s not like she would’ve been able to get it to her easily anyways, so she really shouldn’t feel guilty about accepting it, but— )

“I’m glad you like it. She was kind of worried about how you’d take it.” Naegi speaking breaks through her current train of thought and is he still standing here? Had she been stupidly smiling to herself? How embarrassing!

“It’s n-n-not like that...and what kind of person do, do you take me for, anyways...!” Well, if she had been showing any sort of positive emotion on her face, she isn’t anymore. Touko takes this as an opportunity to shove the bag into her book bag, before anyone can notice. For some reason, he looks vaguely disappointed. “I was...ugh, I was just th-thinking that it was surprising she’d trust you with it given the, the track record with how your l-luck turns out!”

Makoto opens his mouth to refute this but thank god someone calls his name from the doorway, and she takes that opportunity goes back to her books before he can try and say anything further to her.

touko-chan!!!!

makoto said he gave you my gift successfully so i know u got it

i think

i didn’t expect u to thank me or anything but it’d be nice

pls tell me u got it right

did u at least read the note i left in there for u

Does Komaru not have homework, or what? She could at least give her a few minutes to try and get a word in. It’s not her fault math is a bitch and Touko is too stubborn to maybe talk to one of her peers into explaining the subject to her.

Yes, by some miracle I did manage to get it.

Thanks.

You’re a good friend.

Sorry.

Is that all? I’m busy.

That is not all, apparently, because Komaru forgoes texting to call her directly. If it were anyone else, she’d ignore it; but since it’s her she figures she can probably talk and do math at the same time.

“So you didn’t check the bag at all?” Komaru speaks before she can even consider greeting her, and Touko rolls her eyes despite the fact that she cannot see it.

“Hello to y-you too. Uh…honestly, I shoved it in my bag earlier and...and haven’t checked on it since. I assumed it was j-j-just candy, and it’s probably safer hid from Syo there.”

“Ugh! I told Makoto to mention to you that I put something else in there. And there’s a box for Syo in there too!” She can practically hear her pouting through the phone line. “Well, uh— I guess that’s fine since you’re busy...? Just check it when you get the chance, okay? Please? I promise it’ll make sense.”

“I got it, I got it. I’ll take a break once I finish this up and check it out. Good enough for you?”

“Mhm! Thank you Touko-chan! I’ll let you go now, so you can focus. Bye!” If Touko wasn’t mistaken ( but probably is ), she sounded almost nervous, the way her words come out in one rushed breath.

Admittedly, now she’s too intrigued by whatever had Komaru pressed enough to make sure she was aware of it, and she doesn’t think she’ll be able to focus now, so...opening the bag it is. She grumbles and groans to herself for a moment, stretching as she gets up from her desk to grab her bag.

She hadn’t really noticed at the time, but now that she thinks about it, there’s some definite weight to this thing, more than she’d expect from some candies ( even now knowing that apparently Komaru had accounted for Syo as well ). Not much though, and she probably would’ve just passed it off for the box the sweet is stored in if she were to really think about it, but now she figures that’s probably not the case. Touko peeks inside the bag a little hesitantly— curiosity wins out over anxiety in the end, and spots what appears to be a small booklet along with a box of chocolates.

Oh god.

She braces herself because, this is probably some kind of manga if she knows Komaru and ( unfortunately ) not a mini-novella but otherwise has no idea what to expect. And once she opens it, she has to thank whatever higher being made sure Makoto didn’t say a thing to her about it because there’s absolutely no way she would have been able to keep a straight face if she’d looked at this in class.

One, she forgot how generally talented Komaru was at this type of stuff. Obviously, still room for improvement, but not nearly as bad as Touko would have thought. Two, this is not really a manga, but a fucking thinly veiled love confession, complete with the most casual ‘Hey I really like you, can we go out?’ Third, she’s extremely glad Komaru did not insist on being on the phone while she checked this out because she does not think she can coherently answer that right now.

In fact, it takes Touko a good half hour to calm herself down enough before she can even consider texting her a response. There’s no way she’s embarrassing herself any further by calling her about it, even if that might have been a more meaningful exchange, but like Komaru just confessed to her through manga so clearly they’re already past that point.

You’re a dork.

I hate that you’re using your talents for this though.

thats not a no?

Not a yes.

Very tempted to make it a no for making me suffer through this.

touko-chan;;;;;

be gentle to my poor heart if ur gonna reject me :(

Ugh. I was kidding.

Yes you idiot.

Just don’t use manga for this stuff next time?

ok!!!!! :)

actually i promise nothing

lol sorry ♡

You’re the worst.

hehehehehe >:)

i love you too!!

are you busy this week??

let’s meet up!!!

Some of us care about our grades. As should you.

But Thursday and Friday are lighter days.

Yeah yeah. I like you or something.

thank uuuuu ♡♡♡

She chews on her lip as she rereads the message and mulls over it as she tries to ignore the flip-flop of her stomach. It’ll be fine. She’ll just aim to have something planned out for White Day in return.

#tokomaru week 2021 #toukomaru #tokomaru #komaru naegi #toko fukawa #touko fukawa #danganronpa #* zhi writes

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savysavannah · 5 years ago

Text

Challenge 1

Special thanks to @damian-schreave and @hadleyjaneharper for the rps.

Also the last section is not in fic format because its 2am, im lazy, and you get the gyst from the RP. Apperantly this is too long so part 2 soon.

The Prince was off in Paloma for a bit so we were of little use in the Palace, no idea why they had us move in so early. Therefore, I’d spent most of the day with some books I’d grabbed from the library. Primarily they were legal books since it never hurts to brush up. But every once in a while, such as now I’d need to go and grab some food.

I brought my notepad and a book on contract law with me and walked into the kitchen. There was another girl also in the kitchen. We haven't spoken to each other, she didn’t seem unfriendly or particularly awful company, just hadn’t really had the moment to. I grabbed a plate of fruit and wondered if she would say anything. After a moment I sat down and resumed reading.

Then a small sad sigh came from the young woman who was looking down at her phone with a sad face. It wouldn’t be too bad if I took a break for some conversation. However, the young woman looked troubled, she may not be in the mood. I yawned and stretched then mumbled, but loud enough for her to hear, “God, I could use a drink.” and wondered if the other would take the bait.

There was a beat before the other spoke, “Long day?”

“More or less. Lots of reading, missing work. How about yourself?”

She shrugged “Its...different than what I’m used to. Lots of sitting still when I’m used to spending my days moving around.” SHe grimaces then sighed, “The adjustment period is always the toughest, though.”

I thought for a moment trying to remember the occupations of the selected, “The dancer?” I asked.

She grinned “Yeah. Hadley.” She raised an eyebrow, “And you?”

“Lawyer.” I said and stood from the table, walked over to Hadley and held her hand out, “Savannah Mars, Labrador, three.”

She shook my hand, “Nice to meet you.” then thought for a moment, “You said you were missing work? Do you work at a law firm?”

“Kinda. I work for the Illean Civil Liberties Union in their legal division. It's a non-profit which focuses on civil rights and for me civil legal cases. Lgbt+ rights defense, domestic defense, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, that’s really cool.” She said, seeming actually interested in my work. “Are you missing the casework, or something else?”

“It's pretty hard for me to step back from my work. Since I'm kind of left worrying about my clients. A new guy took over my cases but I'm trying to still work in my own way by studying up on some legal sections I work in less frequently but still may come up. Such as contract law.” I explained not fully hearing her other question.

She nodded, “I understand, sort of. I’m left worrying about how my ballet company is going to perform, with somebody else taking over the role in the Nutcracker that I’ve had the past few years.”

“Yeah the transition really is nerve wracking. Have you seen them perform though?” I asked hoping that could at least provide some solace.

“I’ve seen pictures on Instagram, but no videos yet. We were just finishing up our performance of Cinderella when I left. Nutcracker rehearsal started a few days after, but it’s a show we do each year, so... “ She sighed “ It /should/ be fine.”

I nodded, “well if they assigned them the role try and have faith in their qualifications. That's what I'm keeping in mind for mine. They did go to law school so it's fine. They got the role so it’s fine.” I said partially for her and partially for me.

She sighed a little hesitant, “Yeah, you’re probably right. Competition is just gonna be a bitch and a half when I’m sent back.” She chuckled wryly.

“Well maybe you'll win and then you won't have too. Who’s gonna take a role away from the future queen of Illea.”

“That’s extremely unlikely to happen.” She then almost smirked “What about you? If you win, nobody’s going to tell you no in a courtroom.”

I laughed, “If I win I'll kill myself.” Then I realized how dark that sounded, though it didn’t seem to phase her.

“I hate to say that I feel the same way, but…” She shrugged and nodded, “I feel the same way” For a moment I was confused, why would she join if she felt the same way? Then it clicked, a dancer would be a five, lower class, need the money.

“You're a five right? Did you apply for the money? If you don't mind my asking that is. It would just make sense why you'd dislike to win.”

“It…” She bit her lip, “Kind of? It’s a long story involving a deadbeat mom, a shitty health care system, two starving artists, and a kid with leukemia.” She said with an apologetic smile. Whatever she’d be apologizing for I can’t say.

“Well shit man, I'm glad you got in then. Both for the money and for a break from that. I know this society fucking sucks and we've got a likely shit for brains hier, but if you ever need a lawyer I'm here to help. Hopefully, being a three now will provide some help for you too.” I said then caught myself making a mental note to not be so vulgar with my language.

She gave me a small smile, “Thanks. Now I just have to figure out what I’m doing with the rest of my life, after throwing my career into dance, only to become a Three.” She laughed, “What about you? Why did you enter? It sounds like you had a pretty cushy gig going on.”

It wouldn’t be smart to tell the truth, but lying when Hadley had been so open felt wrong, I sighed and said, “My brother. Basically he forged my entry and I didn't want him to get into legal troubles for that. He's a fucking idiot.” I sighed and let that last cuss word slide as he is a fucking idiot.

She snorted, “Men really do only have two brain cells.” She gave a small smile, “I’m sorry that you ended up in that situation, though. That’s rough.”

“Yeah. I tried to beat him up but my other brothers stopped me. It was really a mess. Had to find out from a waitress asking for a photo with me.”

She shook her head, “My best friend told me that he was so upset to see me, “throwing my life away,” as if I hadn’t entered to help him and his brother.” Sounds like an ungrateful ass. She sighed and looked down at her fruit, “When did life get this messed up?”

A question with too big of an answer. A bit panicked and not knowing what to say I took a strawberry off my plate and held it out to her, “Fruit?”

She chuckled and took the strawberry, “Thanks.” She takes a bit, chews, and then pauses, looking at Savannah, “You know what I could really go for right now, though? A good gin and tonic.”

“God that'd be great. You know what, let's make some. One glass can't hurt.”

She shrugged, “Sure, sounds fun. I’m down.” She looks around, “I know they keep the wine in that cabinet, but I haven’t found the liquor yet.”

After gathering our ingredients we get to work making the glasses, “so, what's your plan in all this?”

“In the selection?” She raises an eyebrow and then shrugs, she starts pouring things into the mixer bottle, “Stay here for as long as I can so I keep making stimulus checks, and then get sent home before I’m stuck spending the rest of my life here.” She finishes pouring and looks at Savannah, “You?”

I sighed, “about the same. Give the money to the non-profit I work for. I was hoping I could root for you to win, you seem like you have a good head on your shoulders to influence him, but the more I think about it the more I realize that's like damning to hell.

She snorts, “Well, I still appreciate the compliment, and I would’ve said the same about you.” Then she sighs, “I’ve always known that it’s been like this, though. He gets to squander every penny he has on luxury shit, whereas my paychecks…” another sigh, “But life isn’t fair.”

“Yeah. And then waste the money on useless shit and trying to pass dumb laws like making 'cats' illegal instead of actually fixing the problems in this country.” I said and poured myself a glass of the drink.

She poured some for herself and then shook her head with an eye roll, “Don’t even get me started on that debacle. Why even joke about things like that?”

“Because he doesn't comprehend how the people of his own country are suffering. He's just so blind with privilege. Not that I have much to speak on but at least I freaking try to think about others in the country and their situations.”

She gave me a small smile, “You didn’t seem like the type to blow your money on worthless things to me, at all. I don’t even know what I’m going to say to him when we have that interview in a few days.”

“Yeah I think im just gonna be polite for the sake of not causing a scene that'll haunt me my whole life” I said and took a sip, then clarified, “polite though, not kind.”

She nodded then drank too, “I really went from putting on one type of show for Twos to another.”

“Any idea what you're gonna do as a three?” I asked.

She pursed her lips and shook her head, “I haven’t taken a science or maths class since I was eleven, and I don’t have the money for university. I guess I could work as a translator, or if that doesn’t work out, marry a five and go back to dancing.” She took another sip of her drink, “Hopefully I’ll be here long enough to figure it out.”

“Do they not have like threes who are dance teachers? I haven't really looked much into the area myself but it may make sense.”

She shook her head, “For me, at least, it was mostly Russian immigrants who were former dancers themselves, so Fives.”

I thought for a moment, “Well if you ever need history lessons, english, or legal aid I'm around. I dug into my pocket and pulled out a business card, since it’s not like either of us plan to be here long, “Just all the way up in Labrador. Where are you from again?”

“Allens. So, not too far. Thanks.” She replied and looked at the card.

“Welcome.” I replied, finished off my drink then wrote down another idea.

Hadley narrowed her eyes curiously, “What are you writing?”

“Just an idea for a proposition with the ICLU. There are probably other girls in a similar situation as you being lower caste now upper be it through marriage or selection, it may be helpful to talk about implementing a caste readjustment program.”

She lifted her head, smiling just a little, “That sounds like a great idea.” Then a little quieter she added, “I'd appreciate it.”

“Hopefully my boss will agree and pass it onto the innovation department. I'll write a quick memo about it to her later.” I smiled happy to have something to do.

“You really love your job, don't you?” She asked.

I nodded, “It makes me feel like I have some kinda purpose. As cheesy as that is to say.” Making actual change in Illea instead of just prancing around doing whatever else I could have grown up to do.

“No, I get that.” She looked down, “As a kid, I never really felt like I belonged, but on the stage, dancing?” She looked a little distant, “Standing out was a good thing.”

I nodded, “Mhm. Have you thought of ways you could continue working while at the palace?”

She smiled, “Actually, I had a conversation with Prince Eaton about that, and I’ve been able to work out a schedule that allows me to still practice, even though I have to do a little more work to catch up on lessons.”

“That'll be good. If you wanted too you could put on a performance and donate the profits. That way you could be working towards a goal too instead of general practice.”

She tilted her head, “That's an interesting idea. I’ll keep that in mind.”

I nodded, “Well it was nice meeting you, Lady Hadley. But it is probably time for me to get back to work.” Then held out my hand to shake goodbye.

She took it, giving it a shake. “Nice to meet you too.”

It was pretty late in the afternoon by the time I was escorted to the interview room. Damian was in a navy blue suit jacket, dress pants, and a white button up shirt. He smiled at me as I got closer. His eyes flicker to my nametag for a second before he speaks, “Hello, Lady Savannah. It’s a pleasure to meet you in person.”

I smiled trying to stay polite, then gave a small curtsy, “The same to you, your highness.”

He smiled back, taking a few steps back and gestured for me to go into the interview room. In the room is a sofa, surrounded by stage lights and a few cameras, what a romantic first meeting. There is one camera on a swivel stand, that is currently focused on Damian and I. He starts walking into the room, looking at me as he talks, "How have you found your first few days here, so far?"

I debated giving him a short one word answer of 'fine' but Danny's words of 'don't ruin your own happiness" slipped into my head. "They've been fine. I've enjoyed your library. It's helped me feel like I can in some ways continue working by catching up on legal matters normally outside of my areas of expertise."

He nodded while smiling then took a seat on the sofa, "So you're a lawyer, then? What kind of law do you practice?"

Reluctantly I sat next to him, hopefully I wouldn't catch an STD from proximity alone, "Yes, I practice primarily civil and criminal law with the Illean Civil Librities Union. So primarily defending people who are in bad situations due to outdated laws which need amending." My tone came out more passive aggressive than intended, but it was slightly justified as he should have been working to amend said laws and help people instead of partying.

"That's a great thing, to be doing. What got you into law?"

"Well I was at the University of Labrador. My best friend I'm the sorority I was in decided to go to a protest over women's rights in illea. We went, someone man came and antagonized some women, she defended herself verbally, got arrested, felt up by the officer, then was unable to do anything legally about it. I felt that was unfair so I decided to look into being a lawyer, liked the process, graduated in 2 years, went to Yale and here I am."

He lets out a low whistle, looking down for a second. I couldn't help but be a but prideful at my accomplishment, then looks back up at me, more serious than before, his jaw tense, "I'm really sorry that happened to your friend." He said and fell silent. What a conversation killer.

"It's fine." I said trying not to dwell on it, "How was your time in undergrad? Partied a lot, I saw." I said the passive agressiveness coming out again.

He smiled, a little more relaxed than before, but not as relaxed as he was when he first entered the room, "I enjoyed my last few years of freedom before entering the real world, yes." He then raised his eyebrows, grinning a little wider, kind of teasing, "And what about you? Being in a sorority and all, I doubt you were much of a homebody yourself."

I couldn't help but completely flush and bit down my urge to absolutely smack him upside the head. "It was a brief phase. It was fun. But also a waste of time." I chuckled a bit remembering my airheaded behavior in that year, "had I already been working harder I may have been able to finish faster and help more people."

He grinned a little at how flustered I was, which just made me want to punch him more, then smiled a little more genuinely towards the end, "We're still young. We have our whole lives to keep fixing things."

i frowned, "That isn't true. We never know when we're going to die. Something could always happen so we should be trying to help as much as we can. Not to mention while we" I paused after my slip of the tongue, but didn't correct it "partied in undergrad people were suffering who could have been helped."

There's a flicker of a frown on his face when I mentioned how short life is, but he lets it go, tilting his head when he looks at me, "We can't save everyone. That's impossible. We can try to do as much as we can, but there will always be more people in need of help.

"Partying isn't trying."

He raised his eyebrows, "You didn't even know you wanted to be a lawyer, back when you were partying in college."

I got kinda flustered again, he's right, there's no logically sound way to win. Yeah but I should have, I wish I had. Would have made the time a lot less regrettable." I said then cleared my throat, "Though, this is a bit of a heavy topic for our first meeting, don't you agree? Your- Damian." I barely corrected myself from saying Your Highness.

He chuckled, "A bit, but it's different from the surface level talk about work and provinces." He inclined his head, "Though, if you think about it, you never would have discovered your passion for law if you hadn't joined your sorority." He shrugged and gave a stupid grin which made me blush even more.

Finally I snapped and turned to point a finger at him, "You won okay. I can't regret something if I didn't know to do something better, but that doesn't make topless jello shots any less of an embarrassing memory." I exclaimed then heard what I said and wished to curl into a ball and die.

He chuckled a little, "We all have our moments. It's okay."

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door then, and a guard pokes his head in. Damian nods at him, then turns and looks at me, "Unfortunately, we'll have to exchange stories another time. It appears our time today is up."

I sighed in relief at my rescue, then mumbled under my breath, "Thank God." I stood to curtsy, "Your-" I cringed a bit at the error, "Damian."

He chuckled again, "It was a pleasure to meet you Savannah. Until next time." He smiled at me when we got to the door, and stopped in the doorway.

I smiled back politely, "Thank you for the conversation. Till next time."

*savy was taking a break from her work and decided to out for a walk in the gardens. She had always been a fan of taking runs when stressed snd the gardens were providing a peaceful alternative. She was walking around when she thought she saw a bunny in the bushes. Being the gal she is she wanted to see it closer so she stepped off the path and walked into the gravel. Immediately her heel sank in the gravel. She lost her balance for a moment but didnt fall. Instead she panicked. She debated stepping out of her shoes to get it out but she didnt wanna hurt her skin on the gravel. Instead she tried to wiggle it loose and hopped no one was near*

*rip savannah, but Damian is out distressing by playing basketball at that point in time, and from where he's standing as he shoots this basket, he can see someone clearly struggling with something in the gardens. he can't see who it is, or what the problem is, but he figures he should go check it out. he tucks the basketball under one arm, jogging towards the person he can see, calling out* Hey, everything okay?

*savannah hears him call out an knows immediately it's the last person in the world she'd want to find her like this* Absolutely peachy! *calls back and debates ditching the shoes*

*he slows to a stop when he gets closer, his eyes going from savannah's face to her foot* Mmm, looks like you've got yourself in a bit of a sticky situation, there.

*is extremely flustered* no situation at all. I said I'm fine. *aggressively wiggles the heel and almost trips so she squeaks but manages to catch herself*

*when he sees her almost trip, he lunges forwards to catch her before she hits the ground, but then she catches herself, so he's like "oh was that for nothing?" he looks down at the shoe, furrowing his brows, thinking* Here, let me help with that, before you actually fall.

I'm not going to fall and I don't need your help. I'm perfectly capable of defeating some gravel on my own

*he takes a step back* Alright... if you insist... *hes not going anywhere, just watching her, waiting to see what she'll do*

*huffs when she doesnt hear him walk away and continues to wiggle then huffs when shes not getting anywhere* Fine. If you're just going to stand there anyways you may as well help.

*he chuckles, setting the basketball down on the ground, kneeling down to look at the gravel and the heel, before beginning to dig the heel out with his fingers* Not the best shoes to walk off the path in.

*rolls her eyes* I didn't think about that. I thought I saw a bunny and got distracted

*he can't help but raise his eyebrows at that, grinning, twisting the heel a little to unscrew it from the gravel* Was it at least a cute bunny?

*his tone is a little teasing*

It was cute, be careful with your tone though when your face is near my foot. *once its free she steps back on the path so she doesn't sink again*

*he chuckles, joking* What, are you planning on giving me a royal nose job with your shoe?

You could probably use one. *offers a hand to help him stand back up*

*he picks up his basketball, taking her hand, still grinning at her, teasing* Maybe it's just the angle you've been looking at it from.

*stands on her tiptoes looking at his nose* Nope. It's a little off. Nose job it is.

*she pinches his nose* its a big flaw. Doubt you'll be able to get a wife like that

*he chuckles* I don’t know, my nose has never gotten in my way before

*considers* You're right, I'm sure that was just your sense of responsibility that got in the way.

*he raises his eyebrows* You know, I’ve never turned in an assignment late, or anything for work late. Never asked for an extension.

I somehow find that doubtful. Your reputation of being a loose partier precedds that of a responsible duitiful person.

Well, it’s the truth. *he shrugs* If you’re really curious, you could email my professors. It’s all about finding a balance. *he smiles*

*grumbles because he seems to be honest about it* What did you even study?

I dual majored in political science and marketing. You?

*sighs in relief* at least you werent a buisness major. Political Science and History for me on a prelaw track.

*he nods, smiling, genuinely curious* Did you prefer one over the other?

Probably political science. I mean I love history it's why I added it. For fun since it's just like learning stories and seeing the modern day impact of said stories. But political science felt more efficient. Like it helped me have a better understanding of the philosophy of political thinking which has helped me a lot in law. Plus I just liked the professors more.

*he smiles* Understandable. Good professors make it so much easier to learn the content

*smiles* yeah and lots and lots of highlighters. Did you have a favorite topic in political science?

*grinning* I took a really cool course on comparative political economies - I really like the economic side of things. That, and the classes I had to take on international politics. *he looks over at savannah* What about you?

Probably civil politics. I've always been a fan of civil work. I honestly thought about working for the AFEI instead of the ICLU but decided I wanted to do more personal legal work than policy legal work. But it's always been the work that has interested me more since it's important to bring up civil conflicts within the country and try to help as much as possible. But learning about where we came from in terms of The United States vs the civil policies of Illea was an interesting course for me, especially because of the overlap of History and Political Science.

*he nods as she talks, thinking that all over* I think work guided what classes I liked as well. Because beyond national politics, I also have to think about international politics, trade agreements, and maintaining Illéa’s position in the world.

*seems slightly surprised* so you actually liked your major? I assumed you just were kinda forced to pick it

I was kind of forced to, but I could still pick the classes that interested me more. *He shrugs* Plus I really enjoyed my marketing major.

*thinks for a moment* Can I ask you something and have an honest answer? No bullshit PR answer. I'm just trying to figure out if we can trust you to be our future king through this, at the very least.

Sure *he nods, pursing his lips a little* Ask away.

Do you actually want to be the king of this country? Like aside from the perks you have from it, do you care about the work?

I do care. *he pauses, swallowing* I really do. It’s just...it’s a lot of pressure to accept from a young age.

*she thinks for a moment* Noted. Thank you for your honesty. *Looks at the basketball* Do you play much?

*he smiles kind of sadly* Not as much as I used to. I’ve gotten a little busy helping to run the country, and such.

*gets an idea* Do you wanna make a bet with me?

*he grins* Depends on what it is

Basketball. I'm working on a program right now with the ICLU, a coworker wants to come visit me and discuss about it but appreantly work visits aren't allowed during this. If I can get more hoops in you'll arrange that?

*he furrows his brows* Better yet, I could just organize for your coworker to visit under the guise of another event going on. Just give me a few weeks to work out the details.

*kinda chuckles because shes competitive* oh? Youre scared you'll lose? But if that's what you prefer

*he laughs* No, I just know I’d win, and I’d hate to deny you the ability to see your coworker

Fine. You'll set up the meeting, then I'll just prove to you that I would win had their beem stakes.

*he narrows his eyes at her, extending a hand to shake, still grinning* Deal

*shakes it firmly then kicks off her heels planning to walk to the court barefoot.* Would be an unfair advantage for me to still be in them

*he raises his eyebrows* Why, they helped square up the height difference between us, at the very least *he chuckles*

*almost elbows him over that but barely stops herself* I don't need that help. I'm perfectly capable of crushing you independent of my shoes

*he laughs* I played basketball in uni, you know?

As did I. Well- not in a club. A guy who I was *ponders for a moment* acquainted with, played it therefore I played with him and his friends fairly often

*he raises his eyebrows* And how tall was your acquaintance? Because I’m used to playing with people my height, but also my mom and sister, who are - *he puts his hand somewhere around his shoulder because they’re 5’4” and 5’5”* - about this tall

He was around 6'3. His friends the same or more. Don't worry I'm well aware of the disadvantage of my height and very prepared to utilize it

*he chuckles* Oh, I’ve got to see this. *when they get to the court he starts dribbling the ball casually, walking towards the middle of the court* Do you want to start with the ball, or should I?

*thinks for a moment and puts her shoes down on the edge of the court and rolls up the bottoms of her dress pants a bit* You can start with it.

*he raises his eyebrows at her rolling up her dress pants, but he nods* Okay, if you insist. *he waits until he’s ready before starting the play*

*she walks up prepared to steal since she cant block*

*he starts dribbling more seriously, quickly maneuvering around her, taking three large steps with the ball, and then shoots a basket, and it goes in*

*she kinda huffs about that dislikes. But once he has the ball again she tries again, this time getting it and doing her UNDER THE LEGS MOVE AND SHOOTS*

*he turns around, a little in shock* That is not a legal move!

Hmmm *puts her finger to her chin very smug* I dont think it explicitly says in the rules that you're not allowed too. You use your height I'll use mine *VERY SMUG*

*he narrows his eyes* Fine, best 2 out of 3? Whoever gets this next shot wins, then

*SHES BEING COCKY NOW* Aw is the wittle princey calling it quits so soon? His fragile ego damaged? *bats her eyes teasingly*

*he narrows his eyes* Fine, best three out of five, then. *he starts dribbling the ball right from here he is, and it’s a long shot to his basket from there, but he’s pretty confident, so he goes for it, and somehow it actually goes in. he raises his eyebrows at her* Still think you’re gonna win?

*crosses her arms* That was luck. *goes to get the ball since shes closer*

Or just sheer skill. *he smirks a little*

*turns to face him just to roll her eyes and gets the ball. She then dribbles it back to the middle or something idk how basketball works*

*he follows her to the middle, standing in front of her, knees bent in that “ready” position idk wtf it’s called lmao*

*that position makes knees wide so she dribbles and goes to do her fast under the leg move again*

*he sees it coming this time, and takes a few steps back, keeps his arm in front of him to reach for the ball, which he gets, and then dribbles across to the the hoop he has to score in, taking the shot, and watching it go in again. he grabs the ball as it bounces back up, raising his brows at savannah* One more, or are you good? *he grins a little*

*huffs again and crosses her arm* Fine we'll call it at 3 to 1. But in my defense it's been awhile.

*he grins* Well, you’re always welcome to practice out here with me, if you want.

I can't tell if you're being taunting or not *rolls her eyes and walks up to him then holds out her hand to shake for the end of the game*

*he takes her hand and shakes, then gives her a genuine smile* No taunting. I mean it. I’d love to have someone new to play with.

I'll consider it then. I am getting slightly bored of your homes running path for exercise.

*smiles back even tho she doesnt wanna because it was a nice offer*

*he tilts his head from side to side* Yeah, the running trail through the gardens is kind of short. There are better ones /in/ Angeles, if you ever want to check them out

Not sure I'm allowed to just waltz on out of here, but I'd love the names of any you know. My grandmother lives near her so I'm sure I'll be visiting soon enough after this if not immediately so.

*he shrugs* I could also drive you sometime, if you want. I /do/ have a car.

*seems a bit surprised* You know how to drive?

*he furrows his brows* Of course! I got my license as soon as I was legally allowed to.

But its not like you need too? Don't you have like drivers?

*he looks a little confused and taken aback* I’m sure some exist, but why would I want someone else to drive me when I could be free and drive myself?

I'm not sure. I just know rich people, like for example my cousin *mumbles for a moment to find the phrasing* So my grandmother is in charge of the Mars Candy Corporation. My mom's older brother Nathaniel will be taking over it, his kids also my cousins all have drivers. They're like twenty something now but Jackson is always bragging about how he doesn't have to take the effort to drive himself places. I just assumed other people who could afford them would have them, especially busy people who could work instead of drive.

*he blinks* Wow, I never even would have considered that. *he shakes his head* No, I like driving. Being able to roll the windows down and blast the music...it’s like a few moments of freedom. *he shrugs, smiling a little sadly*

*she noticed the smile then something clicks* so freedom is your vice. You act out to feel free, thus the partying. You mentioned earlier the responsibility of being a prince being am influence on the partying. A lack of freedom makes sense. *she knows shes getting too personal but her curiosity and worry for the future gets the best of her* But what does that mean you're going to do when you're king? You'll have even less. How do you plan to maintain that restriction without bursting and needing freedom?

*he stiffens a little at her analysis because damn it’s spot on, but sighs towards the end* Getting as much out of life as I can now. I always knew what my future held for me. So I can plan accordingly. *he forces a small grin, trying to joke* Besides, with any luck, I’ll be old and almost out of energy by the time I’m king.

*furrows her eyebrows concerned* That doesn't work. *sighs* Believe me I'd know. But we aren't wired to run off memories. Instead we develop habits and coping mechanisms. Everyone snaps from time to time, you'll go back to what made you happy last. For you I assume that'll be partying. Which is something you can't do as king, and assuming it wont be till your old isn't right either, regardless of if that was a joke it's not something that you can lean on since millions of people could be relying on you and you'd be unprepared. You are going to be king, You are not going to have freedom, you are going to be under immense pressure and responsibility, honest answer, what are you going to do when you need to snap?

*he narrows his eyes at her, this time more out of irritation than anything else, and he’s a little sarcastic* Gee, thanks for the reminder. Though, for the record, I /haven’t/ partied since uni, and I have no plans to in the near future. So perhaps I’ll rely on my other coping mechanism, such as basketball, or taking a drive.

Yeah well it's the truth and uni wasn't that long ago. It's hard to break habits. I mean I partied like 4 times a month in undergrad and I still use it. That was forever ago but that's not how humans work. You're gonna lean on what you've leaned on. You're going to get shitfaced, you're going to want what you used to have, you're gonna idolize those times in uni and want them back. But you're not going to have it and it's going to be hard and shitty but you have to tough it out because of the country that relies on you and this is proving to me that you're not going to be a reliable King for the people who need you.

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disposedserenity · 5 years ago

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*rough* review of MOTS:7

The title might say review, but it’s really just my own thoughts that I want to share in the form of verbal vomit. STREAM while u read.

1) Interlude: SHADOW I loved the song right away on first listen. The extended version is soooo good, because it traces back to yoongi’s iconic ‘I want big house, big cars, big rings’ line from NMD. Thematically, this is my favourite concept out of the 3 rap line solos (Persona, Shadow & Ego). Yoongi songs all immediately reasonate with me because the stuff he writes about are what I’ve experienced at one point in my life.... and I feel so deeply when yoongi is rapping about it. At this point, I could go on forever about why I love yoongi songs so much but I will stop here.

2) Black Swan

It took me about three listens to fully appreciate the song, but I KNEW I was going to love it when I heard that trap beat and the bump bump bump lyric... Then I watched the performance, and I just loved it even more. For years, I’ve been fervently wishing that bts (especially jimin) would do a contemporary dance and I AM SO GLAD THEY DID!! Speaking of the dance, that’s another analysis on it’s own.... The way they match the dance steps to the lyrics.... Also this song lined up right after shadow makes perfect sense because Shadow talks about losing yourself into the deepest and darkest recesses of your soul while in Black Swan, the boys step into that shadow and confront it because they realise you have to make peace with your shadow to emerge triumphant.

3) Filter

I swear, this could be an Alec Benjamin song because this song has Alec Benjamin VIBES all over. Well, I guess jimin took inspiration from him because he put a ton of alec’s songs on his spotify playlist and even went to his concert so yey! Both their voice tones are similar ish because it’s very distinct and their singing voices are quite different from their speaking voices so it’d be really cool if they made a song together. Funnily enough, I don’t really like this song as much as I thought I’d would. It’s not a bad song, but I think I don’t gravitate to this song as much because this song was written about jimin for jimin and it’s really himself that he’s singing it to.

This song also radiates BIG libra energy. Libras love changing and moulding their personalities to please other people and they put on various personas to showcase the multi-faceted sides of themselves (sorry, just a huge astrology enthusiast here lolol). Filter has a narcissist undertone to it done in a purposeful manner. The protagonist of this song KNOWS he’s desired and is flaunting it in any way possible. They are aware of the power they hold and are wielding it to control the listener (the pursuers) Ahahaha sounds like someone we know? Recently, I told a friend that Jimin is really good at fan service. He’s the idol of idols, his face and name gets recognised first, everyone wants to be him AND be with him.... To sum it up, filter is jimin showing the world that he has many sides and it doesn’t matter which we are going to choose because he can adapt to whichever one you please (this push and pull reminds me a lot of house of cards hmm...)

4) My Time

Jungkook definitely has some magic where his song always gets to me and I immediately like the song. I think he excels in laying out his emotions bare and this creates a perfect canvas for telling his story. I definitely cannot relate to what he talks about in My TIme because I am not a jetsetting global superstar who vary between time zones (not that I know of), yet I still feel like I’ve been in his exact footsteps and know that feeling. This, my friends, is what true skill looks like. The rarest of musicians are able to write a song about themselves and make it relevant to almost everyone. It’s an impossible task. Yet, this golden maknae has succeeded once again.

In Begin, he talks about leaving Seoul to pursue his dreams and dedicates that song to his 6 members, his 6 newfound brothers, the hardships they go through and again, this hits you hard. You might not have left your hometown at a young age, but everyone has left something or someone behind in their lives. Euphoria ALWAYS makes me melancholic even though I clearly 1) am not young, 2) do not have a first love 3) minus bts, would NOT call anyone the cause of my euphoria but shit, jungkook out here got me feeling things and tearing up.

Thank you jungkook for constantly expressing your thoughts in such a clear way in any song you write, and My Time is no exception (and it sounds like such a r&b banger too)

5) Louder than Bombs

TROYE! SIVAN! You absolutely can hear troye’s fingerprints all over this song because this song sounds like a troye song (in the best way possible, because I looooove troye and his music) This is another classic “happy sounding but sad af lyrics” bangtan moment. Louder than Bombs is a good midway point in the album because they are crossing into the sad, aggressive, heart tearing, no bullshit songs territory.

(I don’t have a lot to say about this because I really love this song and sometimes with songs that I like, I just sit back and enjoy for what it is.)

6) ON

OKAY NOW LET’S GET INTO FORMATION! (yes, this was the first thing that it reminded me of hahaha and her superbowl half time performance had a marching band too) THIS.IS.SUCH.AN.ABSOLUTE.EARWORM. I LOVE IT. The 30 second preview made me so intrigued because it only featured the “hey na na na” part so I wondered what ON would sound like. I was NOT expecting it to sound like that, but what can I say? BTS always blows me away with their title tracks.

Speaking of formation, hooooo boy do I love the formation of this choreography. Mad props to The Lab for pulling this out of their hat because IT IS SO IMPRESSIVE. The set up reminds me of dionysus too, in the way that the choreography is being arranged in the live performances. Big ups to the Blue Devils marching band too, because even though you can’t really see much of them in the mv (or maybe I’m too focused on the boys lol) but you can hear the marching band so much clearer in the audio and I am LIVING for it. Overall, I am utterly thrilled by this masterpiece.

7) UGH!

*gunshots* alright back to 2013 bangtan let’s go. UGH, when will rap line stop making a banger? never I guess, UGH. lord, just let me get dissed by rap line once and then life would be better.

I. fucking. love. the. rap. line. I am definitely not smart enough to try to analyse or decipher the lyrics even with translations because their wordplay is on a whole other level. With cyphers and ddaeng, I really shouldn’t be surprised anymore but I still am. They manage to outdo themselves with every new song they release together. RM, Suga and J-Hope are great on their own but you put them TOGETHER? in one STUDIO? god help us all when this is performed live because someone’s gonna get headbanged out of the venue. I’ll end this with a silent prayer for a rap line concert.....

8) 00:00

This song is so, so, so painful. This song is what Tonight is to me. Ok I’m going to get a whole lot more personal here.

I was in a fucking terrible internship last year during the period Persona was released (I’m actually quite thankful this song wasn’t released then or I’d really have full on goblin ugly cry listening to this). That was the worst job experience I’ve ever had in my life (lao tian ye please don’t deal me any more shitty hands). I spent every day wishing that my misery would end soon and I physically did not want to go to work the next day. Every morning, I was almost crying to have to get up to go to work (and because it was an almost 2 hour journey to the office). By the time I reached home, all I could do was eat (if I had an appetite) and retire to my room and lie on the floor and just stare into my ceiling while mindlessly scrolling through social media looking for some sort of solace. Some days, even bts wasn’t doing it for me. Even though I managed to get out of that hellhole before the end date, the trauma (lol can I call it that?) and emotions stayed with me throughout the rest of the year. Only one friend knew I had depression and constantly asked me about it (thank you friend, even though you won’t read this...) and I even looked up therapists in singapore.

The lyrics ‘An unsettling night, suddenly, I look at the clock. Soon, it’s 12 O’Clock. Will something change. It probably won’t be the case’ hits so hard because this describes my situation to a T. By the time I got home, it was about 8.30 and by the time I snapped out of my mindlessness, it was almost midnight and this cycle just carried on for months.

Zero O’Clock

And you gonna be happy

Midnight is both a happy and sad hour, because for some it could signal the end of their misery or their happiness. Back then, it was my hell because it meant a new hellish day was approaching. Looking back now, I realise it could have been a tiny form of happiness because it meant that the days are passing and the end to my pain was getting closer.

So thank you Jin, Jungkook, V and Jimin for creating such a beautiful song that I didn’t know would end up being so personal. Putting aside the meaning, it is such a great song that I’d put on repeat. But I’m scared to call this a favourite because of how intimate this is for me so I hope y’all understand. But, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

9) Inner Child

This sounds like it should be a in a drama or anime haha. The “whoa ohhhh” vocals in the backgrounds reminds me a lot of Jet Lag too. Inner Child is a very fitting title because as V described, it is a letter to his past self. As an ARMY, I’ve witnessed how much V has matured over the past few years. I mean even though all of the members have also grown, V’s transformation is the one that stands out the most (at least to me). Tae went from a bright eyed outgoing kid to a still outgoing but deeply contemplative adult in front of millions of adoring fans and strangers alike, and I cannot imagine how that must be like for him. V is a notoriously private person, and we know the least about if you reeeally think about it. I will never (nor do I want to) know what goes through his mind but I appreciate the fact he reveals a tiny glimpse of it in his songs (scenery, winter bear and now inner child).

10) Friends

CAN YOU SPELL SOULMATES? NO YOU CAN’T, BECAUSE THERE IS NO VMIN IN IT. Ships are cute and all, but vmin has trascended beyond what ships are and I’m convinced they are all part of a bigger plan arranged by the Almighty that no matter what happens, they will always find each other in their four lives (can you tell I’ve been watching Goblin lolol). Recently, I was listening to a podcast by Jae and the episode was about the probability of soulmates. One of the questions he posed was what is a soulmate? To me, I believe that soulmates exist in many forms. There are the romantic soulmates (hi glenn & benn), friendship soulmates, family soulmates, strangers soulmates and even a bond between a pet and a human. I now think there should be another category of soulmates and that is vmin. *cries I want what vmin have* Not everyone manages to find their soulmates. The lucky ones do, and the rest of us will have to settle for second best.

Also kudos to Jimin for his first ever produced song! woohoo

11) Moon

When I first read that this was a song about Jin’s love for ARMY, I braced myself for a full waterfall of tears. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how happy this song sounds??? (thanks jin for not making me cry again like tonight did). Now that I think about it, of course Jin would make a happy love song (pffft saggis). As we all know, Jin’s way of comforting himself is to comfort others through laughter, smiles and lotsa dad jokes. No one else but Jin would and I love him even more for this. He takes the idea of what you’d think a love song would sound like and turn it around. SAD? NOT IN JINHIT ENTERTAINMENT.

Jin, know that you are more than a handsome face and the oldest member. You are loved more than you think you are. You think you’re the moon to us? No hun, you are the entire galaxy contained in those worldwide shoulders.

12) Respect

My favourite track. I mean starting with that iconic “should I stay or should I go” line? Genuis. Collab of the year. Namgi of the year. Ok, maybe I am slightly (alot) bias since this song is essentially Suga, RM & El Capitixn (yes, THE El Capitixn that helped to produce DDAENG).

Namgi dynamics are so rarely talked about because most people see them as the underground rapper duo who’ve known each other over 10 years and are old friends and that’s about it. Their dynamics just gets to me even more because the trust and respect they have for each other is incredible. Joon looks up to yoongi as an older member and also for his incredible work ethic, while yoongi trusts joon wholeheartedly as their leader even though joon is younger and the way they banter off each other? ugh, where can I get bros like namgi? Their rap and producing styles are so vastly different yet the result that is respect makes ME respect them. Use me as your slave, masters.

bonus: that ending clip of them just having a convo? please share your stories from back in the day, please. I said please. with a cherry on top.

13) We are Bulletroof: the Eternal

Is this MOTS : 7′s answer to Mikrokosmos? I can already imagine this as the ending song of a concert..... A perfect tune to end the album as well. Who knew my attraction to the number seven had a deeper meaning than just simply liking it huh? Is my life preplanned too.... @ universe give me answers. I really like how this song did not go the WABB Part 1 & 2 route and took a softer approacher indeed. It’s almost like they are saying we were seven hardened boys made more tender with the existence of armys.... ok bitch don’t make me cry anymore than I have been suppressing.

“we are not seven, with you” :’))))

14) Outro: Ego

This is the kind of song that gets better the more you listen to it. Not that it was bad on the first listen, but usually such bright and positive songs takes a while longer for the emo in me to process. I say this all the time that I almost sound like a broken recorder, but I LOVE LOVE how hobi has crafted a sound for him that is uniquely his and you will be able to immediately recognise it’s him (which is such a hard feat to pull off, might I add). I’m also immensely proud because he started out as a street dancer to becoming one of the best rappers in the industry while holding his rightful candle alongside two already established rappers that is namgi. I cannot wait to see this being performed live because you just know he’ll get everyone and their grandmas to start vibin right there.

In conclusion, I love bts. what else is there more to say.

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doyouevenshipbr0 · 7 years ago

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gruvia drabble

author’s note: imma keep it real w/ yall... im a lil drunk rn!!! hope this fic is still good tho lmao! this is pertaining to the plot of the anime rn like how gray and juvia reunited after six months... well we never did get to hear gray’s explanation or apology..... so here it is! enjoy! side note: after actually writing this 1. im not rly drunk anymore, a shame. and 2. all my fics as of recently literally have the same exact format lol!!! cool! great!! we love a boring queen! ok hopefully i can stray from this format in the future but for now! here is ~this~.<3

“Oi, Juvia,” Natsu turned and called out to Juvia. They were finally beginning their long awaited journey back to Magnolia, to reform their guild, after just defeating Avatar. “Did you and Gray wanna’ go back to your cabin and get some of your stuff before you go back?”

“G-g-go back?! Just the two of us?! After all this time?!” Juvia’s face turned a blistering red as she cupped her fiery cheeks in her hands. It had been so long since they were both alone in that house together. What would it be like? How would they act? Would things be different?

“Oh yeah.” Gray calmly chimed in. “There are some things I wanna’ get.” He then turned to Juvia. “We should probably go.”

“O-of course! If Gray-sama insists!” She perked up, suddenly eager to go.

They caught a train back to the village they stayed in and made it there in a fairly short amount of time. Gray looked around their old home with suspicion.There wasn’t a soul to be seen. The town was once so full of life, and bright with spirit. Now the grey clouds above seemed to reflect the dreary village.

“Did something happen?” Gray asked Juvia as they casually walked through the town. “There’s nobody here.” He continued looking, looking for any sign of life.

“Oh.” Juvia remembered, and slouched slightly, partially ashamed. “Everyone kind of, well, left.” She said simply.

“What?” Gray was surprised. “Why?”

“Well...” She paused and took a moment to breathe. “Juvia’s rain sort of... came back, and it was, well, constant.” Her voice was sheepish. “It sort of drove everyone out of the village Juvia supposes.” She forced a smile and a fake lighthearted laugh.

That got Gray’s attention. He stopped looking through the village and snapped his focus onto Juvia. “What do you mean it came back?” He seemed annoyed.

“After Gray-sama left, Juvia’s rain came back.” She shrugged. Once she saw Gray’s look of what seemed like agitation, she began to panic. “It’s not a big deal or anything! Juvia was just being over-dramatic!” She gave another plastic smile, attempting to ease Gray.

“Tch.” Gray looked away from Juvia and turned back to the path to the way to their house, dropping the conversation.

Eventually, they approached their cabin. The wood that the house was built out of was seemingly becoming moldy, or at least dingy. All of the drapes to the windows were now closed, although Gray remembered Juvia always insisted they leave them open. The plants that Juvia adored that were littered around the porch were dead from drowning in her storm.

“Juvia is sorry the house is so out of shape, Gray-sama!” Juvia was embarrassed. She only ever had Gray on her mind, so she never took the time to worry about the appearance of their home once he was gone. Even though that place meant everything to her, she seemed to completely disregard it.

“Stop it.” Gray said, harshly. He didn’t need Juvia to explain herself. It was ridiculous of her. “It doesn’t matter anyway. We’re just here to get our stuff.”

“Right.” Juvia nodded.

Inside, the rooms were dark, and dusty. It was hard for Gray to believe they even lived their at one point, that this was the same home they shared. He remembered Juvia always making a fuss about keeping the place clean, and decorative, and so full of life: some things that this foreign lot was lacking.

Gray was finished packing up first. He had all of his belongings in a duffel bag with a couple other things held in his hand. The door to Juvia’s room was open, so he walked in and leaned on the frame of the doorway.

“Yo.” Juvia flinched to Gray’s low voice, it had been so long since she heard it. She paused her packing and turned around. “I’m all packed up. If you need any help just let me-” Gray paused. As he looked around, Juvia’s room seemed to follow the same format as the rest of the rooms. Dull, gloomy, muted, but something caught his eye.

“What’s this?” He set his belongings down. He walked over to her bedside table towards a vile of red liquid, which was now almost empty.

“Oh, well, nothing really.” Juvia sporadically said with a forced chuckle and quickly was at Gray’s side, hoping to take the bottle before he could get a good look at it.

“Medicine?” He read the label of the bottle. “And it looks like Wendy’s handwriting.” He turned to Juvia.

“Y-yes.” Juvia took a step back and nervously held her hands together. “Wendy-san made that potion for Juvia.” She looked away.

“Why?”

“Juvia was, uh, well, sort of sick.” She remained avoiding eye contact.

“Sick?” Gray’s voice and tone raised. “You were sick? And Wendy couldn’t cure it with just her magic? She had to make a potion?” All of these little things were building up to one big slap in Gray’s face.

“Juvia had a very bad fever. I was sitting outside most of the time, so it was caused by my rain...” She said to the volume of that of a mouse, fidgeting her hands.

“Oh my god.” Gray sunk. He put the bottle back on the table and collapsed onto the bed, holding his head in his hands as his elbows rested on his knees. Just what had he done?

“B-but none of this is Gray-sama’s fault!” She was quick to perk up and defend Gray.

“All of this is my fucking fault!” Gray lifted his head and snapped his gaze to Juvia with sharp, blunt eyes, glistening with a sheen of tears. Juvia dropped her defense, and looked back beneath her.

“If it weren’t for me, this place wouldn’t look like shit, your rain wouldn’t have come back, and you wouldn’t have gotten sick!” He was angry. Juvia said nothing. “Am I wrong?!”

Juvia’s shoulders began to bog, jaggedly, up and down. She had finally broken. She was out of false excuses.

“Why did you leave me, Gray-sama?” She looked back up to him, tears overflowing in her piercing, yet helpless gaze.

Gray’s eyes widened, the sight before him caused his breath to catch itself in his throat.

“I-it was a secret mission.” He looked away, bringing the blank look back to his face. “It was to get more info on Zeref. I had to go, and Erza told me I couldn’t tell or bring anyone.”

Juvia’s tears fell onto her face, and then onto the floor.

“Juvia knows.” Her head was down, once again. She gathered her composure, slightly, for a mere moment. “Juvia understands. Putting and end to Zeref and E.N.D is very important to Gray-sama. This was all for the best.” She sniffled. “So, why..?” She brought her hands up to her eyes, and lost the weak grip she had on herself for that second, and began sobbing into her palms.

“So why is Juvia so hurt?”

Gray said nothing for a brief instant. He looked at her, although she did not return the contact, with shock and sorrow in his eyes. He didn’t know what to think, and he couldn’t place Juvia’s emotions, but he knew what he was feeling.

Remorse, guilt, responsibility, sadness, Gray’s heart was a melting pot of these horrible things. He couldn’t bare to see her in so much pain before, and all because of him. He would not be the reason she shed tears. He refused, especially after all she’d done for him. She was by his side, supporting him through everything. Even after he abandoned her for six months, she still did nothing but be there for him.

He quickly arose from the bed and wrapped his arms around her, with her hands still covering her eyes, causing her breath to stop in surprise for a second.

“It’s alright. I’m sorry.” His words were soft though his face was flinty. He stared at the wall as he brought his hand up to the back of Juvia’s head, firmly bringing her face to his chest, as he rested his chin atop her.

“G-Gray-sama should not have to apologize.” She shook her head as she sobbed into his chest, her voice muffled.

“Like hell I shouldn’t” His voice was even lower. “So cut the crap. You’re allowed to be sad. From some aspects, what I did,” He paused. “What I did to you was a shity thing. Really shitty.” Her cries were much softer as he spoke. He remembered all the scolding Natsu gave him, and manifested it into his words.“So let me say I’m sorry.” He grumbled through his pouted lips as his cheeks were colored pink.

Juvia finally removed her hands from her face and wrapped her arms around Gray, being encased by his warmth. The warmth that she had missed, so very much.

“It’s ok.” She hummed; her mood was already much better just by appreciating being in Gray’s hold. “Juvia is glad Gray-sama is ok.”

She held on even tighter, and in about a minute, her instincts kicked in. Her mind began to soar with thoughts of Gray, and his big, toned arms that were engulfing her. She subconsciously began to sniff him, and exhale with delight.

“Ahh.” She swooned. “Gray-sama still smells just as delicious as he always has.” She snuggled up against him.

“O-kay” Gray announced. “That’s enough of that.” He said, avoiding Juvia’s odd comment. He pulled her away from him and turned back to his things. “We should probably head out. The guild isn’t gonna’ rebuild itself.”

“Aw!” Juvia said, defeated, and dramatically slouched over.

“Don’t sound so disappointed cause’ I stopped you from smelling me! Don’t you realize that ain’t normal!?” He exclaimed.

“Juvia doesn’t care about what’s normal! Juvia hasn’t smelled your sweet scent in six whole months! You can’t blame me!” She defended, reaching her arms out for Gray.

“Quit bein’ creepy and meet me in the living room when you’re done packing.” Gray asserted with an annoyed, but familiar look on his face as he quickly made his way out of her room and shut the door, as Juvia sulked on her bed.

They soon packed all of their belongings and walked through their front door, back into the village where a ray of sun peaked through the dispersing clouds.

“Juvia is so sad to say goodbye to she and Gray-sama’s home.” She frowned with exaggerated sniffles.

“I wouldn’t call this a goodbye.” He said frankly. “It’s more like a ‘see-ya-later.’“ He turned to Juvia with a smirk on his face. Her eyes began to glow, and she settled onto a content smile.

“Yes, Gray-sama.” She looked to the ground with her fulfilled smile.

On their walk to the train, Gray grabbed his arms and gave a small shiver.

“It’s gettin’ kinda’ cold out.” He simply said.

Juvia pondered and looked around a little to see any signs of anyone or anything being cold, which she did not, and felt her own body temperature at a fairly normal level, and for Gray especially, this weather was hardly anything.

“Really? Juvia doesn’t think it’s too co-” She turned back to Gray with confusion and quietly gasped as she saw him wrapping himself with a grey, poorly knitted, homey/cozy looking, seemingly worn in scarf. He did not make eye contact with her, and kept his sharp expression on the road ahead.

She knew that scarf all too well.

“Actually, Juvia is a little chilly.” Attempting to keep her overjoyed reaction in line, she simply wrapped her one arm around Gray’s and with the other she reached out and held his hand, causing him to initially flinch, but he kept his hand intertwined with hers.

They made their way to their true home, Fairy Tail, walking in bliss, putting the bad parts of the past behind them and looking to a hopeful future.

One where Juvia’s rain would never return.

#gruvia #Gray X Juvia #Juvia x Gray #gruvia fanfic #gruvia fanfcition #gruvia drabble #doyouevenshipbr0 #juvia lockser #juvia #fairy tail fanfiction #fairy tail fanfic #fairy tail #ft

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goffilolo · 8 years ago

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Demise of Midoriya Izuku (part 9)

Hi! Happy new year. i hope you enjoy this chapter. It’s much shorter than the last few, but i guess i missed the shgorter format. it also allows me to post more frequently. the whole fic is also on ao3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11557743/chapters/30250017

Another day, another opportunity to piss off your psychiatrist. Because when life gives you lemons you squeeze them to get the juice in Shin’s eyes.

“-now this time I want you to open up a new page in your notebook and fill it with all of your good qualities” said Shin as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

“My what now?” asked Izuku, feeling very unimpressed and maybe slightly sarcastic, but not too much since he already had lunch.

“Izuku!” exclaimed the doctor in his usual halharted threatening tone “we’ve talked about this.”

“No, we didn’t! You talked about this, and I pretended to listen while plotting Endeavour’s murder” said the boy as a matter of fact while flipping through his notebook and pointing to a particular page titled ‘KILL ENDEAVOUR’ to prove his point.

“See? That’s another thing” shouted Shin as he stood up and pointed at his patient “What’s up with your fixation on Endeavour?”

“He’s an ass”

“No that’s not it...I mean it kinda is, but that’s not your main problem. There’s plenty of assholes you could be fixated on, Fuckugou would’ve been a better choice, given that he actually fucked you up, yet somehow…” the doctor trailed off, hoping to achieve a dramatic effect, which was not dramatic, just straight up annoying - according to Izuku at least.

“...somehow, you’re hyper fixated on this one asshole who you’ve never even met in your life, who hasn’t done anything to you, who you haven’t had any contact with whatsoever. You know what I think?” he asked cheekily.

“No, but I’m probably about to find out” said Izuku, rather unimpressed with his doctor’s childish behaviour.

“I think…” there he goes again with the annoying pause.

“JUST GET FUCKIN ON WITH IT!”

“Alright, alright. I think that deep down it all goes back to your father-”

“For fucks sake, Shin not again. Literally every session you bring up my dad at some point. I don’t even know why you want me to talk about him, because THERE ISN’T ANYTHING TO TALK ABOUT! I haven’t seen this man since i was a little kid, I don’t remember shit about him, and yet you fixate on him. Now which one of us has daddy issues, huh?!” shouted Izuku as he overflowed with irritation. The topic of his dad was a bit of a sore spot for him and he knew it. And Shin knew it just as much. So why would he try to poke and pry on purpose, knowing how much it would agitate his patient?

“With you it’s always daddy issues, or mommy issues, it’s such a Freudian thing, you’re practically fixated on it” exclaimed Izuku, trying to divert the attention from the topic, as well as blow off some steam by messing with the psychiatrist “Is there anything you’d like to tell me? Do you perhaps want to fuck Freud?”

“Izuku, what the actual fuck!” shouted the doctor, feeling slightly disturbed by the boy’s mental gymnastics that lead to this conclusion.

“Two can play that game, Shin”

“No, no, no! We’re not doing it, I see what you’re doing and we’re not going off the topic. Back to the problem” said the doctor as he glared at the boy, wanting to get back to the main problem rather entertain Izuku by indulging him in his shenanigans.

“Because your father left so early you now have this internal unresolved conflict that you refer to as ‘daddy issues’ that you simply refuse to acknowledge and deal with, which is why you’re going to be bitter and sensitive about the subject and never be able to move on, unless you actually face it like an adult” said Shin in a gentle voice, one that Izuku has never heard before, and barely recognized as belonging to this man. It was one of those rare moments when shin showed him a different side of himself that Izuku knew meant something important.

“Alright then you Freudfucker, enlighten me about my daddy issues and how do they relate to my Endeavour hatred” said Izuku as he mentally patted himself on the back for coming up with ‘Freudfucker’.

The doctor glared at him, but otherwise did not acknowledge the new insult, insead he opened up his notes about the unruly patient and began to elaborate on the origins of the ‘daddy issues’.

“Due to the distance between your father and yourself there is a gap of some sort where a ‘father’ figure is ought to be. Basically any male figure who you look up to, admire, learn from. When it comes to you Izuku, that gap has been filled by All Might for a very long time, which makes sense if you look at it; it’s a very distant admiration of a person who you have no interaction with, the same way you have no interaction with your father.”

“Ok, that sounds like some Freudian shit, but ok” said Izuku, feeling a bit skeptical, but still curious about where all of this is going.

“After your suicide attempt and letting go of your dreams to be a hero All Might is no longer a centre of your universe, he is no longer an aspiration, therefore the gap remains empty once again. Right now you’re angry, you’re bitter and for good reasons. However there is also this anger towards your father, which you refuse to touch upon or even acknowledge, which caused you to look for another target so to say. I’m not saying you see Endeavour as a father figure, but he’s an excellent scapegoat for your anger as it allows you to both be angry on someone else’s behalf over his shitty behaviour, as well as project your own feelings. Again a distant, one-sided interaction, the same way as with your father, because you simply don’t know how to do it any other way.”

The long winded explanation of the doctor was followed by a pregnant silence as the teen was still trying to process everything the psychiatrist said to him. He felt the usual irritation’ a byproduct of his defences when it came to being analysed to a point where you’re unsure of your own motivations and identity. It felt like being scratched on the inside, knowing that it’s there, but unable to touch it yourself. The vulnerability that came with those sessions was something Izuku will never become fully comfortable with, but he’s smart enough to know that it’s not meant to be pleasant, it’s meant to be helpful.

“What the fuck” said Izuku, softly, but full of emotions that he cannot yet comprehend.

“Sorry, was it a bit too much?” asked Shin sheepishly, feeling that he overwhelmed the teenager.

“A bit is a strong word.”

“Yeah”

The silence dragged on, neither knowing how to continue the session. To be fair the session was almost over anyway. Shin looked at his watch awkwardly, then back at Izuku hoping that the boy will get the hint and end his misery. The man really hated being put in such tense, awkward situations.

“So…” he said, standing up from the chair and heading towards the door.

“Time’s up?” asked Izuku as he slowly started to wheel himself out of the room.

“Don’t worry, we will continue next session. I’m glad that we finally broke through your defences when it comes to the topic of your father. I hope we can make more progress from now on”

“Oh yeah? Well I hope to win a lottery, but life is not a wish-a-bitch” said Izuku sarcastically.

Just as the boy was about to leave the room he was smacked on the head with a clipboard.

“Oi, what did I say before? Don’t get cocky with me. And don’t forget to do what I asked you to. I know it seems silly, but it’s an opportunity for you to look at yourself beyond the image of a ‘quirkless, pitiful boy’ that the whole world around you insists on. You’re more than an extra joint in your foot.” said Shin in that inspirational tone that always irked Izuku.

“We’ll see about that”

………………………………………………………………………………

The next day Shin found a very familiar notebook stuck on the door to his office with a note attached saying ‘did my homework like a good student ;)’.

‘Suspicious’ thought Shin ‘very suspicious’.

He grabbed the notebook and went into the office, already dreading whatever it was he was about to see.

While flicking through many pages of personal thoughts, Endeavour related conspiracies and very graphic drawings depicting the hero’s death, the doctor has finally reached the last page titled ‘The Awesomeness of Midoriya Izuku’.

What followed was a list of ‘good qualities’, most of which in Shin’s opinions would be more suitable in the context have they been titled ‘How to be a perfect criminal’.

‘Superb murder planning’

‘Can sing All Might’s theme song while asleep’

‘Would be a good stalker’

‘No self preservation (survival is for the weak)’

The doctor sighed and closed the notebook, feeling already tired despite the fact that his shift hasn’t even began. This was going to be another long day.

“IZUKU!”

#demise!au #bnha #boku no hero academia #midoriya izuku #iyashi shin #fanfic #demise of midoriya izuku

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kpopgerapitico · 8 years ago

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EOYR 2017: K-Dramas Part 2

These dramas are good. With a capital G. I love them all very much. They may have problems, but I either don’t remember them, or I don’t care about them. Or the show was so good that I forgot about the downfalls.

These aren’t in an order (they are in my heart) because I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Quick Honorable Mentions: I decided to not include any drama specials/web dramas in the rest of this post, so I have to mention a few here instead.

My Runway:

In A Sentence: Body changing with models. That’s it, that’s the show

Steer Clear If: You require depth, because you will not find it.

Comments:

This drama is not deep or long, but it is sweet. It is a lollipop in drama form. It is a drama that is neither hard to follow or offensive. It also didn’t come out this year, but was released to Netflix this year, so this is the year I watched it in. It holds a spot close to my heart for being adorable and requiring no brain power, which sometimes is all I want from a drama.

Last Minute Romance:

In A Sentence: Baek Se’s bucket list includes dating an idol star . . . oh and she has 3 months to live.

Steer Clear If: This show depicts both cancer and depression. Both are treated respectfully (and often in a new way).

Comments:

This show gives me even more reason to love Han Seung Yeon. Also, this is a depiction of cancer I have NEVER seen in dramaland. It is both unerringly optimistic as well as realistic and grounded. The romance is sweet and understated. The main character dies (it’s not a spoiler, you know she has cancer in the first 5 minutes) and (this IS a spoiler) her boyfriend chooses to live his life and not be totally sad, and is successful. It is a refreshing take on a lot of common drama tropes that keeps you watching. The Romeo and Juliet speech is really good, and any scene with Han Seung Yeon (most of the scenes admittedly) are great as well. It is a worthy watch.

Individualist Ji-young:

In A Sentence: What happens when lonely people who don’t acknowledge that they’re lonely meet each other.

Steer Clear If: This deals with depression, and an almost sort of suicide attempt.

Comments:

This drama is the reason I refuse to give up on Gong Myung. Because he may keep choosing shitty drama after shitty drama, but this one shows that if you give him a character with a lot of charm, a little bit of depth, and the job to make puppy eyes at the lead, he will succeed. In spades. This drama also shows that you don’t have to be optimistic in your portrayal of depression in order to get a happy ending. I also love the fact that Ji Young gets to a better place with her depression (I hesitate to say she is better) post breakup. She is not saved by a man, she is forced onto a new path maybe, but the healing comes off screen and away from him.

Basically, watch more drama specials.

Now back to the long format.

Argon:

In A Sentence: They used to be the best news team, and maybe, they will be again.

Steer Clear If: You don’t like news shows. That’s it.

Comments:

Coming into this show, I had no expectations, except that it was one of the last things Kim Joo Hyuk did, and that I loved him in Like For Likes (and also Two Days One Night). This show was what I wanted Newsroom to be.

By having 8 episodes, Argon manages to avoid the downfall of so many news shows that get lost in the procedural nature of the show. Instead, every case feels important to the main plot, and every case feels important to the growth of the characters. The show is tightly paced without feeling rushed.

This show made me care about news that was either fake, or about people in a country far far away. It made me teary eyed both at the plots and emotions of the show as well as the fact that this role was so damn good for Kim Joo Hyuk, and I will never be able to see him in another like it in the future.

And that may have been the main reason that I cried during the last episode. That and everyone having some great successes. Or maybe just Kim Joo Hyuk walking out of a building, leaving Argon as well as the world.

Father Is Strange:

In A Sentence: A family lives their lives as a whole lot of normal people problems happen to them.

Steer Clear If: You cannot handle a long show. There are a LOT of episodes in this show.

Comments:

This was the first (and only) weekend drama I have ever watched, at the recommendation of Dramabeans’ javabeans. And I’m very glad that I listened. This show takes the tropes of a weekend drama, keeps the ones it likes and uses the ones that are annoying judiciously. The main characters are all deeply written, and often have equal amounts good and bad in their personalities. No one does something out of character, which was a rarity in the shows this year.

It was also a show that made me happy just while watching. It wasn’t groundbreaking. It wasn’t overly complicated. It didn’t try to be anything it wasn’t. Instead, it used stellar acting in nearly every role to convey a family faced with crisis after crisis who choose to stay together.

It is the supportive family that we all want. And yeah, everyone makes mistakes, including most of the members of this family, but that never makes them stop loving each other. For that alone it is worth watching.

Because This Is My First Life:

In A Sentence: The contract marriage show that is about so much more than just the relationships between 2 people.

Steer Clear If: I honestly don’t have any warnings about this show . . . Actually, that’s a lie. There is some noble idiocy sort of stuff that I am super tired of, but fits the story so it doesn’t bother me. It might bother you.

Comments:

There is a reason everyone loved this show. And the central relationship was only part of it. It had Lee Minki as a man who is un-apologetically different, un-apologetically weird, and makes very few changes to that personality over the course of the show. And for once, that isn’t bad, because his original personality is good, and it is more exposed than changed over the course of the show. And it has Jung So Min (in her second show of the list) as a woman who lives her life sort of floating along, accepting what happens to her, while also being smart enough to change what she thinks she can. The combination doesn’t seem like it will work, but it somehow works beautifully.

There is also the side relationship of the CEO and the friend, which does a wonderful job of showing what it means for a man to respect his partner, and just as importantly, for a woman to demand that respect.

There is also the side relationship of the friend and her long term boyfriend (another appearance for Kim Min Seok) that is heartbreakingly real. I especially liked how the show treated the final breakup, and how it forced the characters to confront their emotions instead of ignoring them.

It is a romance whose plot is nearly almost all the romance, which is where its strength lies. It doesn’t try to be anything it isn’t, and it manages to be stellar at what it is.

The Package: (my a little bit favorite)

In A Sentence: Everyone goes on vacation for different reason; some for love, some to run from love. (I know that’s vague. It’s intentional)

Steer Clear If: This show is sometimes slow in a contemplative sort of way. There is occasionally some tropes that the show doesn’t avoid so much as dives into head first.

Comments:

These is a pre-produced show. And because of that I had high expectations on the visual quality of the show. I had high expectations. They were shattered.

A significant portion of this show is a love letter to France. It is beautiful. The whole show is shot in tones, from the green of night to yellow tinted days in France, to blues in Korea (you could probably write a whole color theory essay on this show). It tells the visual part of the story so so damn well. From the location choices, to wardrobe, the whole show quietly excels at using the budget it got to full visual effect.

And that is a perfect adjective to describe the show: quiet. Instead of sticking to one point and hitting it over and over, it meanders between characters and side plots. It is rarely uproariously funny, or depressingly sad. It spends most of its time in the mundanity of stories and characters that feel so very real.

The whole cast is amazing, and does wonderful work in the wonderful roles. Instead of listing the actors, I’ll give some tropes without too many spoilers.

There is the elderly couple, the wife dying of cancer, the husband continuing to annoy her and everyone else on the trip.

There is the young couple, who are in and out of love (mostly out), and trying to figure out what to do.

There is the older man with the younger woman. And that is all I will tell you about them.

And there is the guy who was stood up at the terminal boarding the plane to Paris.

Oh, and the girl who never stopped running.

And that ensemble is the real reason the show excels. You may tune in every week to see how the romance is progressing, but for many episodes, it isn’t the most important thing happening. There is illness, and heartbreak, and anger. There is laughter, and joy, and love. I have cared more about other casts before, but I never cared for this many people all at once.

It is maybe the most satisfying show I watched this year. And one of the most underrated.

#eoyr 2017 #kdramas part 2

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eglantinex · 8 years ago

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♥ ✮ ☯ ☼ ☀ ☁ ☢ ✦ ✧ ❥ ✖ ♒⚜☣❀

cannonofatlas said: ☀ What's your rp pet peeve?

This has gotten much longer than I thought it would be.

✧ Do you agree with reblog karma or is it forced interaction?

(As I mentioned in my rules, RP memes are essentially invitations to interact. When someone reblogs one of them and is practically begging you to send one, but you don’t do it, then reblog it and beg everyone else to send you one--how does that make sense? There’s a reason people call it karma--remember, do unto others?

People shouldn’t be so militant about it, sure, but there’s a reason people get sensitive about it. Even saying “b-b-but I don’t feel worthy!” doesn’t make sense after a point--we all say that. Being self-deprecating doesn’t magically make us special.

If they don’t answer, or don’t give the answer you wanted, don’t let that discourage you. You guys are following each other for a reason. Don’t be afraid to do some trial and error. If one person isn’t receptive then someone else will be, guaranteed.

☢ What fads/trends are you so over?

Using so much HTML that you can barely read the actual reply. I know why people use it and I don’t want to come off as universally disliking people who do it, and more often than not people do use it in a way that actually complements their writing and gives their replies a distinct flavor. Rather than trying to make it look all fancy and aesthetically pleasing, but when you actually read the reply, it’s...mediocre, at best. Focus on the quality of your writing first, then pretty your replies and your blog up all you like. Just for god’s sake, never the other way around.

(If I follow you and you format replies, this isn’t about you. If I disliked someone’s RP style so much then I would not be following them at all.)

♒ Thoughts on the fandom you're currently rping in?

Always. Complaining. Translate that to Latin and make it the FNDM’s official motto.

Besides the people I interact with on this blog, I don’t consider myself involved in the RWBY fandom at all. I used to be the person who followed all the popular blogs and nodded along to everything they said, but eventually everything they said was a complaint, complaint, complaint. Even genuine constructive criticism is worded in ways that are exhausting to read. Now it’s popular to hate this character, hate this episode because of one flaw, act like you know exactly how to make the show perfect and the creators are stupid for not seeing your vision. Then there are the people who are like “ugh yeah stupid SJWs,” the people who throw a hissy fit when artists draw Blake with a darker skin tone. Then there are the people who think certain ships are good as gospel, somehow think they’re required to have canon proof or else, and passive-aggressively push the less “popular” ships into a corner.

And yes, I will say this--I also really want more diversity in RWBY, but the rabid way people absolutely demand it from the show is really. shitty. (Lest people think they can have a word with me for daring to have this opinion--no, I am not straight. No, I am not white.)

I’m not saying I’m not aware of the glaring flaws in RWBY’s writing and diversity, and I always like ideas on how to fix those problems, but the fandom’s attitude--the really loud, vocal ones, because most fandoms’ problems revolve back to them--is ultimately counterproductive.

☀ What's your rp pet peeve?

Several. Personal posts significantly outnumbering actual RP-related posts; people being snobby just because their blogs are fancied up; personal blogs mindlessly liking and reblogging stuff (I used to be one of those people, which intensifies that dislike); pity parties that always, always carry over to their characters; characters that try really hard not to look overpowered and fail every time.

♥ What's the WORST thing that has happened to you rp wise?

Absolutely losing my muse for about a year. I’m glad I finally managed to start over, but it was rough. Eventually I was trying to force myself to do replies because I was terrified of becoming irrelevant to my RP partners and I would get angry at them if that seemed to be the case, even if they didn’t really do anything and weren’t aware that I felt the way I did. Given that most of the people I’m doing threads with now are people who used to follow me from the old blog, my worries were completely unfounded.

✮ Have you managed to stay away from drama?

Thank god yes. I don’t get people who say they thrive on that sort of thing; it’s tiring and unproductive. I sort of get the entertainment value but even then it’s not worth it. Just avoid the loud people.

☯ Have you ever tried to bring peace to a situation?

On Tumblr? No. In my earlier days on the Internet in general, I had this idea of being that firm but fair mediator; I remember trying to stop people from responding to a YouTube comment troll when I was maybe 14. But on Tumblr fights get petty and personal real fast--people make it that way--and like I mentioned above, it’s not worth expending my energy anymore. I might message someone to try and calm them down, but otherwise I just ask them to tag their crap or unfollow.

☼ How long do you stay mad?

Depends. If it’s not a big deal to me I brush it off; maybe I’ll be bothered for a while but I try to let it pass. I’m used to bottling things in rather than expressing what upset me because I was used to people not bothering to know, so that makes me stay mad for longer. Even if I do forgive, I don’t forget. Not in the dramatic way people like saying it to make themselves sound so tough, but I know that they’ll probably do it again whether they mean to or not.

☁ Have you ever forgiven a partner when you shouldn't have?

I am too forgiving, so yes. I used to tolerate RP blogs who really played up the pity party out of, well, pity.

✦ Thoughts on duplicates following you?

I haven’t actually had duplicates follow me until today, funnily enough. I don’t mind them; each person portrays the character differently and that’s always interesting to see. But it’s natural to prefer one portrayal over another; I know I do. Just don’t be a jerk about it.

❥ Has someone ever ruined an FC or character for you?

Yes.

✖ How has Tumblr RP changed since you started?

Not a lot that I can tell. People who I RPed with almost three years ago are still operating the same way. Though that’s not to say their writing hasn’t evolved; it definitely has.

Since this is a salty meme I guess this is where I rant about the negative changes I see among RPers, but I don’t really see any right now. Maybe in a few months I’ll see through the cracks.

⚜ How many people do you not like?

RP-wise, only a couple I’ve had uncomfortable experiences with in the past. I think if I ever get a message saying “care to RP?” I may block the sender immediately, no question.

☣ Have you ever rp'd with someone you knew for a fact was abusive but tried to give them a chance/to make up your own opinion on the roleplayer? Did they change or did you understand what people were talking about?

No abusers as far as I know, thankfully--but there is someone who was very much bad news. I’ve mentioned pity parties a couple times above, and this is one of the people I refer to when I say that. They basically acted as if they were a great victim, and sought attention--I was similar to that before, so I know people like that when I see them. I gave them chance after chance because I did believe that their angst came from somewhere genuine, and I wanted to at least help them out of their tragically self-deprecating cycle, but in the end it was too much.

There are other people who became really uncomfortable with them too and made posts calling them out and such, and rather than address those concerns they would call it yet more evidence that the world was so against them and no one loved them. And the thing about people like that is you never know how to tell them that their attitude is not going to reward them at all. You don’t even know if it’s all an act or if they actually think that way.

❀ What has made you completely lose your chill?

The aforementioned gripes with the fandom. That’s why I rarely have RWBY on my personal now, and I struggle with finding blogs that have all the good stuff (fanart, headcanons, speculation, gifs and edits) without all the really annoying ones (militant shipping--god I wish that was referring to actual boats--passive-aggressive comments towards the crew, assuming White Rose and Bumbleby are/should be the canon ships, claiming that the crew are warping the original vision while acting like they magically know better).

#outofthebriar #inbox #rant /#negative /#< i'll be using these in the future so feel free to blacklist #smokingsilas #i may as well tag you beeb i mean #also i did rearrange my replies so that the most relevant ones are near the top #they're the ones i most want people to read #anonymous #the red mailbox

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kowlsy2 · 5 years ago

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y'all know that trope about two friends getting married at 35 bcs theyre still single? Heres my take on it w/ the dream team. Lets be real these three would get married for a meme. (posted on mobile if formatting is weird)

Okay, if Dream was being honest he barely remembered the conversation. Him and Sapnap were still using skype for god's sake, it happened a long time ago. Sapnap had gotten on, quiet, and just seemed out of it.

(or had it all been a joke? a stupid joke between middle schoolers??).

How it started didn't matter. The ending was the same. They were so young, but already Dream worried too much about looking cool- about looking 'right'. About not being the nerdy boy who didn't talk to girls and spent all day hutched over a computer in some dark room while his cooler classmates did all the stuff they talk about in books and movies, coming of age, whatever.

If they were both single, hopelessly single, when sapnap turned 25, they would get married.

"Ew dude dont be gay"

"I'm not gay!! I'm just saying if we got married then we could meet! and then like, I don't know help each other get girls. We wouldn't like, actually be married, it'd just be paperwork."

"Sure dude, whatever. Lets get married if we're still single in a decade and a half. theres no chance."

What a stupid meme.

It was a bit more of a big deal with George.

Dream never asked George about his love life-- it seemed insensitive honestly. He knew, or basically knew, that George had never really gotten close with girls. It wouldn't surprise him at all if George hadn't even had his first kiss yet. No girlfriend, no date to formals; nothing.

They were older now, Dream had been doing online school for a year at this point, George was going to uni, they were growing up. They spent more time talking then they didn't; but Dream never brought up his fumbling attempts at kissing, dating, even that ill fated attempt at 'more' at that one party.

But george brought it up, late at night, quiet as death.

"I think I'm going to die alone."

The words were funny. His tone was not.

"What are you talking about?"

"I think I'm never going to have a girlfriend."

"Did something happen? Dude that's ridiculous."

"Is it? I'm 20 and I've never had a girl even like me. I just don't think I'll ever find someone that likes me." A pause. "Nothing happened, in particular. I just was thinking about it. I'm just like- I don't know- I thought for a little that I was just going slowly, but now everyone I know, even people younger than me, everyone has had girlfriends, and sex and I'm just. Not. Doing that. No one wants to do that with me."

"I'm sure thats not true!"

"Yes it is! All the girls here, they want to date cool dudes, dudes with experience, who don't have fucking minecraft server staff meetings on friday nights instead of going out to clubs and whatever."

"Like you'd even want to date a girl who goes out and gets trashed on a friday night."

"I'd date anyone at this point. but no one would date me, much less like, marry me."

"Marry you? Dude what are you talking about, marriage is like, so far away from us"

"Not really Dream. My mum got married a year after she graduated uni, thats only a few years away. Most people get married in their 20s, and I can't even get a single date with a girl."

"Dude, worst comes to worst, if you're like, 29 and still single I'll marry you."

"Please don't joke about this"

"I'm not! If we are both single, and you're almost 30, and you still haven't found a girlfriend, I'll marry you, and they you can come live in the US, easy, and all the girls will love you for your accent if nothing else"

"ha ha ha"

"Oh, don't you be sarcasitc. I'd marry you and we could just like, be friends, and live together, and it'd be so much fun. I'd totally do it."

"oh yea, and our youtube channels will have 3 million subscribes each, and minecraft will be more popular than fortnite again."

"Georgeeee just say youllll marryyy mee"

"Fine. If I'm still single in 8 years lets get married Dream."

It was barely a meme this time. But it worked.

He never should have included the bit with the berries in the final video. Sapnap and George had just been so funny, it felt wrong to cut it out. Dream sometimes worried that viewers didn't understand George and Sapnaps relationship, thought that they were just both his friends, so they hung out together, but this clip finally showed that they had their own relationship, their own friendship outside of him.

Even as he was touching it up he knew he was letting them outshine him in his own video. Now it felt like the meme followed him everywhere, cutting him out of the punchline, even in his own streams.

"George! Thank you so much for grabing this bonemeal for me!"

"oH you're so welcome Sapnap! Anytime!"

"Wow george you're so kind and generous!"

"Sapnap you're so polite! and it's such a good job you're doing with the farm!"

"Thank you so much George! I'm so glad you've taken the time to let me know that I'm appreciated!"

Dream had to do something before the entire stream got derailed; he had a goal and he wasn't going to let his idiot best friends upset if.

"yes yes you're both wonderful people, so generous, ladies they are single."

Oh my god how didn't I notice! George, you're like, perfect husband material!"

"Sapnap youre also going to be amazing husband, so kind, and hardworking and-"

Chat was in shambles, Dream would need to act fast if he ever had a chance at getting them to stop.

"well if you're both such good husband material why don't you marry each other?"

That would stop them in their tracks.

"Oh Dream that's such a good idea! Sapnap, love of my life, will you marry me?"

Or not.

(Dream always forgot how much more confident George was when he wasn't the one streaming)

"Oh George! Yes! a million times yes! As soon as you come to the states!"

The meme was much funnnier this time.

It may have been a stupid idea. A face reveal, and a meet-and-greet and meeting George and Sapnap in person for the first time, all at the same time.

But hey, Dream wasn't famous for forthought. He was famous for cluches.

By this point (5 million subscribers oh my god) George and Sapnap getting married had been a well established meme.

Him and George hadn't ever talked about That Conversation again, but sometimes, he'd send george funny articles about people marrying to get green cards, or videos of american women swooning over British accents. (it still wasn't that much of a meme, but it seemed less likely now. They had all grown so much, become so much more sure in themselves), and sometimes George sent them to Dream as well.

He had forgotten about his conversation with Sapnap, years ago, before it all started.

But before leaving for vidcon he needed something soothing, something mindless, so he had been sorting through old accounts, deleting anything he hadn't used in years.

And he found his oldest skype account.

Of course all three of them had planned to get married to each other, like something out of a shitty fanfic.

But that didn't mean it wasn't funny.

So he bought them matching rings.

Sue him. He had the money.

Dream had planned to do it at his face reveal, but, it got much, much too chaotic fast, and he didn't think fake proposing to his two best friends would calm people down.

So he did it afterwards.

I mean he already had the rings.

"What is this?"

"Relax, dude, its a joke--mostly."

"What??"

Okay maybe it felt a little stupid when they were both looking at him.

"okay so basically-- I was looking at super old skype logs, and Sapnap, Nick, whatever, do you remember like, back in like 2014, we were both like, freaking out about not having girlfriends"

"oh wait-- yeah--"

"--so we said that if we were both single when we were 25 we would get married?"

"yeah, to like better be wingmen or whatever--"

"--so basically, here you go."

Dream slides the first box across the table. It has a ring in it, 2 rings of plain gold with a pressed ring of volcanic glass-- obsidian-- in the middle. He has a matching one on a chain around his neck, hidden, and a third in the box sitting in front of him.

He slides it over to George.

"and George I figured that all of our schemes about marrying so you could come live over here--"

"You guys were planning what?"

"-- and I think that you probably don't need to do that anymore, but I thought you might need this too. If you ever need a reason to stay in the states, well, there you go."

God he was awkward in real life.

"I don't know what to say--"

"God don't say anything-- Especially not on twitter-- But. Just. Thank you, so much. For being my friend. I can't marry both of you, and honestly, I'm pretty sure I should just wait and marry a girl for real, but. I'm so glad you both are in my life, and I hope you both stay in it for a long time. Like marriage or, something like that."

It's not a meme at all this time.

#georgenotfound #sapnap #dreamwastaken #dream team #do people post fic on tumblr in this fandom? cause i do now #also they are like. 13 in the first bit so they're a lil homophobi #and george is sad in the second bit not an incel. i dont know how to write it to not be like that #also please validate me i havnt written fic in yearssss #mcyt #alright ill stop rambling now #mine

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ryanonwrasslin-blog · 8 years ago

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The Wrestling Optimist - March 9, 2017

For those newbies, this is my first in what I anticipate becoming roughly a weekly edition of my thoughts, from a mostly optimistic viewpoint, on the wonderful world of professional wrestling. I'm working my hardest to stop being such a miserable smark, and this column is my best effort at both keeping myself honest and funneling out the various thoughts I have on wrestling. For the most part, this will be a WWE-themed piece every week, and it's still evolving, but for now I think I've found a solid format. Also, I typically intend for this to be a weekly column, but I was excited to try it out after Fast Lane (and really put my efforts at optimism to their most extreme test), so this particular column will only cover Raw, Smackdown Live, Talking Smack, 205 Live, and NXT.

Theme of the Week: We really are in the fast lane to Mania. The PPV may have left a lot of people a little displeased, but I think Raw and SDL did a nice job this week of building to the Jaws-like creature lurking in our midst, the reportedly 6.5 hour Wrestlemania now less than a month away. On Raw we got Y2J vs. KO, and the Women's Triple Threat officially booked, set up a possible Cruiserweight title match, while also getting Lesnar vs. Goldberg hyped, and Reigns vs. Taker hinted at with the subtlety of one of the Big Dog's Superman Punches. And the inevitable pre-show Tag title match will get clarity next week. That's an awful lot of productivity even for 3 hours.

Smackdown Live, not to be outdone, settled on Wyatt vs. Orton officially, made an intriguing Women's Championship free-for-all, kept the build on for the Mixed Tag, set conspiracy theory AJ Styles loose on Shane O'Mac, and hinted that we're going to get a hardcore type of Intercontinental Title match between Corbin and Ambrose.

The Mania card is now starkly visible, with the unknowns being whatever is happening with the Triple H/ Seth Rollins/ Samoa Joe/ Sami Zayn/ maybe Finn Balor storyline, whether Big Show vs. Shaq happens, how the poor SDL Tag division will be handled, which undercard guys will fill out the AMBAR, and then designating a few of these as pre-show.

For my own druthers, I mostly don't care how the card order stacks up, but I'm going to lose it if the Smackdown women end up on the Pre-Show as I fear they might. My girls Becky and Alexa deserve better than that.

10 Best Moments of the Week

Teasing the Phenomenal Forearm into the RKO Some day they are going to have Orton hit him with the RKO when going for either the forearm or the 450 and it's going to be the coolest thing since the Curb Stomp RKO, and I'm glad they clearly know how cool that is.

Heyman rushing out to address the CM Punk chants and halt whatever ill-fated improv Goldberg was about to attempt I'm not positive that Heyman was rushed out there early to cut off the Punk chants and prevent Goldberg from saying something that would only make the chants worse, but it certainly looked that way and it was another hilarious reminder of how little WWE can trust Goldberg to do pretty much anything.

The Miz motherfuckin' ETHERS John Cena I have nothing to add to his masterpiece. Go watch the SDL and Talking Smack segments.

FORK YOU! - I loved Baron Corbin pinning Dean Ambrose under a forklift. I'm always in for goofy prop fights, and there's always a place on the card for something like this at Mania. I hope this is how the match goes at Mania, a sometimes goofy, sometimes brutal street fight sort of affair. We know that Ambrose wanted the Mania match with Lesnar to go way too far last year but was rebuffed. Let him try this year with someone young and hungry like the Lone Wolf.

Austin Aries, the hero the Cruiserweight division needs Running Aries as the apparent face against Neville could be a weird fit in the long run, but I was all in for this segment on Raw. Aries is the outsized character the division needs right now to complement all the work Neville is doing and the better ring-work we've started seeing from guys like Tozawa and Swann.

The SAnitY and Dillinger story really comes together I don’t know about everyone else, but seeing Roddy get dragged out beaten half to death by the rest of the group, and seeing Tye and Jose get fired up about it, worked like hell for me. That awkward trio coming together against the heels was lacking something and this helped fill in the storyline, as did EY yelling “YOU DID THIS” at Tye. Good stuff.

As the Smackdown Women's Division Turns Becky gets turned on by a tag partner again (at this point I’m surprised Luke Sanders hasn’t turned on her), and Mickie at last turns on Alexa. Sometimes the easy story is the right one. If Naomi makes it back, she's pretty clearly going to win the title, but if not I really hope they have Becky overcome a whole Rogues gallery of heels to win (throw in Eva Marie and Carmella to really put it over the top). She's been turned on so many times that she needs the perseverance story.

For a night, the Part-Timers were booked well I'm as deeply skeptical as anyone that Raw can get me fully invested in a Lesnar/ Goldberg feud or an Undie/ Strong Roman feud, but credit where it's due, they did an excellent job on Raw this week. Goldberg eating an F5 was long overdue and I honestly wanted to see the whooping get worse.

TJP and Shinsuke dab on each other WWE spent a few headscratching months booking TJP after the Cruiserweight classic, but this was a fun match and felt like the right way to handle him, as a cocky, shitty, sorta heel who also does some seriously cool shit in the ring.

The way AJ Styles says, "Randy Orton burns down a man's house and gets rewarded for it!" I knew AJ was among the best in the ring prior to his WWE run, but his promos have been a wonderful surprise to me. He is a natural on the mic and has a goofy charisma, and for whatever reason I chuckled for a long time after he said this particular line.

Let the Smark Out

For as much as I’m trying to be an optimist, wrestling is not a perfect product. Far from it, really, and when you have problems with something, it’s healthy to let that sort of thing out. So, in the hopes of keeping a 5:1 ratio tilted toward the good side, here are my two complaints of the week:

Are we seriously doing this with Emma again? She was in such a good place as Evil Emma with the half-gloves and the shoulder pads. Given how shallow the Raw Women’s division is, why did they feel the need to screw around with something that was working????

I’ve known for weeks that the Styles/ Shane O’Mac feud was coming, but now that it’s here, it hurts even more. There is obvious proof on the roster in multiple forms that you only get so many Wrestlemania’s out of your top workers (like Balor and Rollins both being potentially on the shelf for this year after not being on last year’s card either). To use up one of those years for Styles, unquestionably the best in-ring performer in the company, and probably the world, is asinine. I know there is no bigger honor in WWE eyes than to fight against a McMahon (and I strongly suspect we’re heading toward either a Bayley or Sasha vs. Stephanie program in the next year), but I have no interest in seeing AJ selling for ol’ Baby Jabs McMahon.

Let’s Rank Stuff!

One of the best things to do as a wrestling fan is to compare things. Who's on the Mount Rushmore of wrestling? Who was the most over with the crowd? Who's the best in-ring worker? What's the most uncomfortable Attitude Era storyline in retrospect? That's what I'm going to do here every week, pick a topic and rank it as I see it. Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts! I'd love to hear them.

This week's ranking: The Status of the Championship Belts

It's been almost 8 months since the Brand Split, which saw WWE add a whopping 4 title belts to their company (and a fifth in the UK Title even more recently) and with Wrestlemania approaching, I thought now would be a fun time to rank those titles in terms of their current level of prestige. Keep in mind the old adage about the wrestler making the belt, not the other way around. So without further ado, in reverse order:

13. UK Championship - Too young to be any higher. If Pete Dunne gets it, though, this thing could rocket up the list. That dude has incredible potential.

12 US Championship - Man what a precipitous fall. A short 18 months ago, Cena had made this thing into probably the second best belt in the company. But more recently it's been seen being dragged around by a disinterested Roman Reigns like he was worried that touching too much of it might infect him with some terrible disease. The good news is that I can see KO winning this at 'Mania and proudly defending it, not because it represents America or anything, but because KO is convinced anything he has is just the best.

11 Smackdown Tag Team Championships - Another letdown since the brand split. Slater/ Rhyno was fun, but American Alpha is surprisingly struggling right now.

10 Raw Tag Team Championships - The shenanigans required to get New Day to the tag title record didn't help anyone, and now I can't help but view The Club as utterly inconsequential. Tag team wrestling on the main roster is in a bad way right now. Thankfully, there's hope on the horizon if WWE is smart enough to realize it.

9 Cruiserweight Championship - Talk about the wrestler making the belt. Putting this thing on Neville was the step that was badly needed to salvage this belt and the entire division.

8 Smackdown Women's Championship - This division has done wonders in terms of drawing out depth and giving its characters chances, but it's in need of some excellent, or rather Bex-cellent, wrestling and something memorable. I think maybe they missed an opportunity not having Becky and Nikki fight for this at some point. Face vs. Face can be tricky, but these two could have done it, it would have given more prestige to the belt and now rumors are Nikki may be on her way out. That’s a seriously missed opportunity if so.

7 WWE Universal Championship - Yikes. I was closer to putting this thing 8th than moving it higher. It's impressively ugly, KO's title run was consistently neutered, and now Dadberg is drenching it in sweat for the next few weeks before Lesnar takes it from him at Mania and promptly disappears for a few months. If we do this ranking again in June, this belt might be 13th.

6 NXT Women's Championship - Asuka is obviously great and the coming feud with Ember should be a lot of fun, as should Nikki Cross' pursuit, but the belt hasn't kept up with some of the others under the WWE umbrella. From where it was during Sasha/ Bayley, things have slipped a bit in part because no one legitimate has come for Asuka. Yet.

5 NXT Tag Team Championships - Several of the best matches of 2016 were contested for this belt, and honestly I feel like it should be higher. I just couldn't quite bring myself to pull the trigger. That said, there's no shame in being 5th and the sole beacon of light for tag team wrestling in WWE.

4 Raw Women's Championship - I didn't love the hot potato of the belt, same as most people, and I loathe it when WWE starts talking about "making history," but this title is a very important one right now.

3 Intercontinental Championship - This likely would have been number 2 if I'd done this ranking in the fall thanks almost entirely to the Miz. Ambrose has been fine as champ since then thanks to his pedigree as a former WWE Champ, and if they are setting up Baron Corbin to win the title at Mania, that could be a great step toward both making a star and helping keep the belt relevant.

2 NXT Championship - One of the most impressive lineages of any championship belt in wrestling history right now. At times, it probably has surpassed even the WWE Championship itself. I'm curious to see how they handle Bobby Roode's reign after having one indy giant after another hold it for years on end. Obviously Roode is no slouch, but this does feel like an interesting point for the title.

1 WWE Championship - I'm glad they're back to just calling it the WWE Championship. That just sounds so much better than adding any sort of "world" modifier to it. It's the franchise, the belt with all the history behind it, and that WWE itself even clearly tries to pay respect to, and this past year or so has only added to the legacy. Getting AJ Styles' name on the belt was great for everyone, Cena tied the record with it, and now Bray Wyatt, a character that WWE has always viewed as a long-term face of the company, is battling another all-time legend in Randy Orton at Wrestlemania for it. That's great stuff.

Match of the Week

This was supposed to be a column that covered everything after Fast Lane, but I have to give it up one more time for Neville vs. Jack Gallagher. That’s unquestionably the match of the week.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I sketched out a rough idea of the Mania card earlier in the column, but for the next few weeks I’m excited for the build. That’s where these matches are set up for memorable moments and big crowd pops or destined for failure. I covered the Triple H saga in this segment in the Fast Lane column, but I was surprised to see it not get a ton of attention on Raw this week. It’s starting to feel like WWE doesn’t even quite know what to do with it at this point.

If we get through this week’s Raw without some kind of stakes for Mania set for those two and the various other players in their drama, I’m going to start doubting whether the match is actually happening, and if maybe we’ll only get some kind of confrontation only at the show.

The Finisher

Big Show vs. Shaq would be kinda cool if it happens, but if it doesn’t, I hope they do Strowman vs. Show II. Strowman is ready for something more than winning the AMBAR, and Show deserves a reward for getting into such ridiculous shape. Plus, those two had low-key the most surprisingly fun match of 2017 so far, and you could do a lot worse than a ten minute hoss fight at Mania. Make it happen, WWE.

#WWE #wrestling

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lawrenceseitz22 · 9 years ago

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 115 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Bradley: There’s a weird delay between when it says we’re starting and when it actually goes green. Hey, everybody. This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts for January 18, 2017. It’s 4 p.m., Eastern. We only have a couple on with me today. I’ve got Chris and Marco. Hey, Chris. How are you?

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here.

Bradley: We got Marco. How are you doing, buddy?

Marco: Hey, man. What’s happening?

Bradley: Guys, you know after last week we did the format with … Trying to use the WebinarJam comments and that didn’t work out very well so we switched back. We’re using the new WebinarJam sessions like Overlay. We’re not using Hangouts for the actual video. That’s why the interface or, excuse me … the video that you’re watching now looks a little bit different with the layout, but for all intents and purposes on your end as a viewer, as an attendee, nothing will be different. We’re going to continue using the Google-Plus pages like we have been. We’re going to use that as the Event Page as the place to post your questions. You can access that event page through the notification emails that get sent out once you’ve signed up and registered for the Hump Day Hangout Series. If you have not registered for the Hump Day Hangout Series, please do so.

http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2 and once you register it redirects you to a thank you page. There’s a video with me explaining that if you click on a link above, that you can subscribe to be notified to the entire series for an entire year. You can unsubscribe at any time, but I recommend that you do so, that way notifications get sent out as well as the link to the event page every single week will be sent out in that notification emails so you can post your questions early. We just got to train you guys to get in on the new system with us. I think it’s going to make it beneficial for everybody in the long run, and hopefully you guys will agree. That said, I think the only announcement that I know of because Adam’s having difficulties attending today, is we’ve got a citation service up now, guys. Actually, I haven’t even got a chance to click through and look at it yet but yeah, we’ve got a citation service now available for people that want to purchase citations.

There are high-end citations. They’re not the cheap, shitty ones so I recommend is if you’re doing lead-gen properties or things like that, you can go with the cheaper services if you feel like it, but if you want the Cadillac of citations, we have that available now. That’s http://ift.tt/2iVLhIT. Hernan or … Hernan. Marco or somebody can post that on the event page for you guys. Check it out. If you’re doing any sort of client work and that kind of stuff, these are the same citations that I use in my business. The same citation service for all of my clients. Very, very, very high-quality citations. You can’t get any better than what we have available so check that out. Do we have anything else we need to announce before getting into questions? Guys, do you know?

Marco: Yeah. I’d like to add that Video Power House is almost ready to go, man. I thought we’re hard at work. The sites are being built. We have the categories. We actually have someone that checks the videos to make sure that they go into the correct category. We’re going to keep the theme. Keep them powered up and I’m adding some extra sauce into the mix some [inaudible 00:03:19] and some other stuff that I know will power up the network, give it authority, give it relevancy, give it trust and so I think it’s totally going to rock and at the same time what we’re going to do is we’re going to limit the number.

Sorry, but it has to be done, and we have to let people go. We’re going to limit at first, the number of people that we let in just to make sure that we can serve that amount of people, that the system can handle. As we go, we will open again, for more people. Hopefully, I don’t know. We’ll see how it works. We’ll see how it all works out, but I just want people. I’m really excited about this because we’ve been working really hard to make this happen. We’re right there. We’re right there, man. I’m really excited about that.

Bradley: Hey, look. We had the late comers. The fashionably late members.

Adam: Hey, guys. I just woke up.

Hernan: Hey, everyone. What’s up?

Adam: I haven’t had consider restart but I know Marco was talking about Video Power House, which is awesome. I’m getting super pumped about that.

Bradley: Yeah, and it’s …

Hernan: Hi, what’s up?

Bradley: Well, and Hernan. Yeah, what’s up man?

Hernan: Hey.

Adam: Hey, Hernan. FYI, I’m not sure if it’s WebinarJam, but your mic sounds really high. You might want to adjust the levels.

Hernan: I don’t know why. I’ll try to figure that out.

Bradley: You got to take the microphone out of your mouth.

Hernan: Oh, okay. That makes sense.

Bradley: Yeah, Video Power House is going to be crazy and we got people staff in place that are monitoring the submissions and making sure they go to the right categories. Like Marco said, it’s crazy. We’re going to have the support team behind it and all that. Guys, it’s taken us … Shit, I think we announced it originally, over a year ago, didn’t we? … Video Power House, or close to a year ago? It’s been a long time, I know that. We’ve been working on it forever but it’s getting guys, and it’s going to be incredibly powerful so check that out. That said, Adam, since you are usually the one that gives announcements, we mentioned citations and Video Power House. Is there anything else needs to be mentioned?

Adam: I think that’s it. If you’re in the IFTTT/SEO Academy, you’re going to be getting an email with a webinar just for you so by all means, come check it out. That’s going to be tomorrow. Then our, what? Our Local Kingpin people have got a cool webinar going on tonight. I think you’re going to be talking about a case study, right? … for the people who …

Bradley: Yeah.

Adam: … are in the Local Kingpin?

Bradley: Yeah, I forgot to mention that. The Local Kingpin Update Webinar Number-2 is immediately following Hump Day Hangouts today. It’s going to be mainly member Q&A other than a new case study announcement where Hernan and I are tag teaming a new case study in a different industry. A local case study, and we’re going to be basically adding all that training to the Local Kingpin training site. Once that’s done, once the second case study has been added, which will be in a couple months. It will be complete in a couple months, the price is definitely going up on that because it’s a really, really good course. There’s a ton of information in there, and this second case study, we’re going to take a brand new business from the ground-up and build it, like for real … using Adwords … Adwords for video, remarketing, Bing advertising and Facebook ads for local. We’re going to do that together and get this business off the ground.

It’s for a local gym and that’s going to be awesome because we’re going to literally take a guy’s business that’s just got started and get him profitable and get leads coming in the door. That’s going to be added to the training and that’s again, we’re going to announce that Local Kingpin Update Webinar-2 … the details of that. Then we’re going to add the training to the membership site and then we’ll do the results at the end of 60 days, roughly and the Update Webinar Number-3. Definitely check that out, guys. Also, we cover a lot of that kind of stuff inside the MasterClass on a bi-weekly basis. That’s the ongoing case study group so if you guys are interested in getting that kind of detail like case studies where we go through step-by-step on how things are done and show results basically, in real-time, the Master Class is where you want to be for that.

Hernan: Yep. Can you guys hear me better now?

Bradley: Yeah.

Hernan: It’s better? I just wanted to add to what Bradley was saying about putting a completely-from-scratch case study, a success story completely from scratch. One of the challenges is to do it with a slow budget as possible. That was one of the conditions from the client. It’s going to be a ton of fun because that way we can be working with that and progressing that, and investing the profits back into the campaign so that we can get a really good case study for you guys, so stay tuned. I think that’s going to segue into whatever we are doing with Facebook, in terms of training in 2017, which is also going to be really, really good.

Bradley: I’m pretty excited about it because this is going to be really cool to take somebody’s brand new business and help them to grow and get profitable quickly. That’s awesome so I’m really looking forward to this, as well. This will be the first time Hernan and I have worked together on a project this closely in quite a while. We used to back in the day, couple years ago. We used to work on various projects a lot closer, more often but now we don’t do it nearly as much so this will be kind of fun to get a chance to work with him, as well.

Hernan: Yep.

Bradley: All right, guys. I’m going to take the screen and we’re going to get into questions. We’re pretty much done on announcements. Correct?

Adam: I think so.

Bradley: All right, let me close out of all these various windows that I have opened that you guys don’t need to see. Really, shut all the porn down. No, I’m kidding.

Adam: Bradley, can you or maybe you went over this before I got here, but did you go over how this works now, with the new setup for people? How they’re supposed to post questions and all that?

Bradley: Yep. Basically, guys, just for one more time to re-cap, if you’re not signed up for the Hump Day Hangout Series, which is now done through http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2. It will take you to a registration page. Go register then on the thank you page that it redirects you to after registration, there’s a video. I explain what to do, but there’s a button, a link above the video that says, “You can subscribe or register for the entire series.” All you got to do is click that one time and then go confirm your subscription. Then you’ll get notifications for the next 52 weeks. Again, if at any time you don’t want to be notified of the upcoming Hump Day Hangout, that’s fine. You can unsubscribe at any time but in those notification emails will be the link every week to the event page so that you can post your questions early. Again, register, subscribe to the series. It’s a two-step process. There’s a video that explains how to do it. Then you will be notified every week of the upcoming webinar with the link to the event page for you to post your questions, okay?

Google AMP & Ranking

All right. That’s said, let’s do it. Lee’s up first. He says, “Is Google Amp increase rank. Do you suggest Google Amp?” I’m going to hand that one to Marco.

Marco: Does it increase rank? It targets a different section of the algorithm. It’s just totally geared towards that type of page. Really, what it works more on is something that’s news-worthy, news-related, and things like that. We have a plug-in that does Amp, that does Amp Pages, and it does posts as Amp Pages. We’re going to make it available. We have to make just a couple of tweaks to it. We had it ready, but then we discovered that there was a little bug in it that we needed to fix. We have it ready. The thing that I would tell you is test. It’s what we always say. Take it. Use it. Use it the way it’s supposed to. Go and look at the documentation. Google tells you everything about Amp and how to use it, what it’s for. Lee, that’s what I would say. Just go and look at the documentation and see what Google wants you to do with it. I mean, there are times where you do need to follow what Google says, and this is one of those instances.

Hernan: I just wanted to add real quick that the other day I was browsing on the mobile, on the phone, and I started noticing on the search engine result’s pages on the search within Google. Yeah, within Google on the mobile phone, some of them will start showing little icon that’s showing accelerated mobile pages. You know what I mean? It will start showing those results with a little icon to the left of it on the listing that says, “AMP,” or Accelerated Mobile Pages. I think it’s a little lightening or something like that. That gives you the idea that Google is actually starting to index these pages and is starting to give them priority on mobile results. This is super important because most of your clients will be on mobile anyways, and you want your mobile versions to load as fast as possible. You know what I mean? That’s why we are doing the AMP, the AMP thing. I started noticing that and I wanted to tell you guys to be aware of that.

Indexing Citations

Bradley: Very cool. Mark Kong was up next. He says, “Hey, guys. Hope you are all starting the year with a bang. I’m excited about this year and believe I will be able to finally join the Masterminds so looking forward to that.” I believe you will finally be able to join as well, Mark. That’s all it takes, guys … is the belief that you can do it and you can make it happen. We look forward to having you, Mark. My question is, how are you indexing your citations? I still have quite a few not indexed and they were built a while ago, now. If I just copy and paste the URL of the citation page into Google and it doesn’t show, does it mean that it’s not indexed or may my link still be indexed? Cheers.

A couple things, Mark. Yeah, there’s a lot of citations that are slow to index, or they don’t index, or you won’t see them in the backlink analysis tool such as Majestic, and Ahrefs and things like that. A lot of the times you won’t see them. It’s similarly to web to dot o links. It’s very similar to that, in that a lot of the times, you will not see those backlinks in link analysis tools. A better way to find citations, to see if citations are recognized or indexed, as you call it because they don’t have to be in Google’s index for Google to know that they’re there, just so you understand that … but a better way to determine whether your citations are being counted or found is to use a tool such as BrightLocal. That’s the one that I use. I know there’s another one that other people often use called, “Whitespark.ca,” I believe it is. I’ve been using BrightLocal for about six years. Well, at least five years. I don’t plan on changing because I’m really familiar with BrightLocal. It’s a great, great service. BrightLocal will show you. You know what it will do? Basically, a count of all of your citations that it can find on the web. It’s not 100% accurate, either but it’s a lot more accurate than link analysis tools are for finding citations.

The other thing is and remember, we talked about this many, many times because people always ask a similar questions when it comes to web two dot o links from the IFTTT network’s not showing, but if you go into search console and you take a look. I don’t remember which. It’s one of the drop downs in the left-hand side bar, but if you look at “Links to Site.” Links to your site or something like that. You click on that and Google will show you what it’s recognizing now. Within the last few months, and Terry Kyle did a blog post about this, but within the last few months Google has started to show less and less links than it used to. That doesn’t mean that they’re not still seeing them, though because my guess is a lot of those, you will still see in the search console area, but again just to double check to see if your citations are being counted, I would recommend using a citation service or, excuse me … a local marketing service such as BrightLocal or Whitespark, okay?

The other thing you can do, what I always do whenever I get citations from one of the services I would use, I would always just take the spreadsheet, copy all the profile URLs or the citations page URLs, whatever, and then put them into indexing services. I used multiple indexing services. However, during our mastermind webinar last week with our awesome link building manager, [Dadya 00:16:25], he expressed that Express Indexer, Express.indexer, I think it is or something like that. Let me see if I can find the link. I don’t have an affiliate link for it, but it doesn’t matter because these guys … I was using this … Hold on a minute. I can’t talk and type at the same time, guys so excuse me. Expressindexer.solutions. Expressindexer.solutions.

He says that they are by far, the best indexing service that he’s ever used and they recently, within about the last two months or so, they redid how their whole entire system and how they index links. He’s getting an 80% indexing rate from Spam Links. We’re talking GSA Links. GSA Spam Links, he’s getting 80% indexing rate, which is phenomenal. I mean, that’s unheard of. That’s using this service, right here. I’m going to be using it. We already have a subscription to this. We have because we used to use this for ATM or Mass Page Generator sites, that type of stuff for indexing those sites, but I stopped using it because we haven’t been building many of those sites recently, but apparently now, this is the best service available so I’m going to be using this a lot more. Check it out. All right?

Thoughts On Serplify

Next. Phoenix Car Accident Chiropractor. That’s a mouth full. Have you guys seen the new Serpify by Mo Miah et al? It’s a Serp Shaker-type software. There’s a YouTube video. Yeah, I’ve heard about it. We’ve had a bunch of people already message us asking us what we think. I don’t have an opinion on it. I probably won’t ever have an opinion on it because I’m not going to test it only because if I’m going to be building mass page generator sites, I’m going to be using the ATM … Lead Gadgets and the ATM just because I have a history with those guys and that software, and I know it well. I don’t need another one. Personally, I’ve had some bad experience with some other software in the past. I don’t know. I can’t speak about this one in particular. Serpify, I have no idea but there’s a bunch of different types of mass page generators out there now. As far as I know from the ones that I have tested, there’s no competition. The ATM is by far the best. It is rather expensive, though. It’s more for agency-level people. You got to take that into consideration, as well.

You guys want to comment on this, at all? Has anybody looked at this?

Marco: No, I don’t have time. I have too much stuff going on, man. I wish I had some time to check it out and be able to tell people, “Yes,” or “No.” Sorry, if anyone has tried it though and they have an opinion, you’re welcome …

Bradley: Post it.

Marco: … to let us know.

Adam: Yeah, we’d be happy Definitely, we could have somebody on and if you’ve got some experience, we’ll talk to you ahead of time but yeah, sure. For me, I’d just look. I’d be like, “Well, I don’t know if it’s going to be better, but if you’re not looking for something automated like the ATM,” which I would say, “Maybe you should be.” How about, I don’t know? I’d like to see the differences from that and maybe Serp Shaker because I’m sure this is a plug-in, probably.

Bradley: I’m not sure how it works but like I said, I’m just not. If I’m going to do mass page generator, like mass page sites I’m going to use ATM because I’m comfortable with it and I’ve been using it for, shit … over two years, now. That’s what I’m going to stick with. I’m not really going to test one of the new tools just because there’s a learning curve involved and I just don’t need another one. You know what I mean? That’s like Keyword Tools. I probably have, no shit … at least a dozen Keyword Tools. I don’t know why I have so many of them because I only ever use Google Trends, Power Suggest Pro, and the Keyword Planner anyways. I don’t know why I have so many damn keyword tools, but every time one comes out, they make a million promises and I always pick it up because I want to check it out. There you go. Money wasted … Now, they collect digital dust.

Marco: Nothing. Just to get in there about that keyword research. Nothing beats, as far as I’m concerned, Power Suggest Pro.

Bradley: I totally agree.

Adam: I was going to say, Bradley, you put that link for your training stuff you did. I think that’s still a good one. I’ve sent people there before.

Bradley: Yeah, it’s dated now. Just go to Keywordsuggest.io, Keywordsuggest.io. You can opt in. It’s free, guys and then I’d good to go through keyword research training and exactly how I use the tools that are freely available. I do talk about obviously, Power Suggest Pro because it’s super, super awesome. It’s cheap and inexpensive with a one-time cost. You’d be stupid not to pick it up. If you ever need keywords, Power Suggest Pro is awesome, but Keywordsuggest.co, you can opt in and then it will redirect you to the training site where you can go through the keyword research training that I did. It’s a bit dated but the principles are still the same, guys. They’re tried and true timeless principles, so to speak. All right?

Any Issues With Burner App On Phone

Katie’s up next. “Hi, guys. Couple quick things. First, I’m testing out Mega-Ray. Was impressed. I put in a ticked and they called me on the phone.” That’s fantastic. I know Jude and the developers. They have quite a support team behind them. That’s another reason why we promoted that product because I know how much development and support is behind that product guys. We’ll report back after some tests. I’ll be glad to hear it, anxious to hear what your results are.

Next, “Anyone have issues with the Burner App on phone sometimes not working with Google. Coming back and saying that number’s not valid?” Yes, that is a known problem or issue. That is a problem. In fact, we have even started having issues with our VA’s in the Philippines using SIM cards for phone verifying brand-new accounts. What’s interesting is if you have a Google account that you need to add a recovery phone number to. You’ve already got the Google account. Let’s say you already have a Google account, and you need to add a recovery phone number to it, or you want to enable YouTube Livestream, live streaming from YouTube like YouTube Live events. You need to enable that, or become YouTube Partner Verified. Whatever. You can use a Burner App for any of those instances, a Burner App phone number for any of those instances and it will work fine. It just won’t work on registering the Gmail address for the first time, when you’re creating the Gmail account. It doesn’t work there, but if you can get it created and then add your own phone number for recovery options or enabling live streaming, that sort of thing, those numbers will still work fine.

What’s the solution? What we’ve been doing is I’ve been going through. My bookmarks are still screwed up. Let me see if I can find it real quick. Here we go. This should be it here. Son-of-a-bitch, my bookmarks are all screwed up. MetroBiz, Kendrick Nair posted it the last time. Let me see if I can find it real quick. If I can’t, I’ll try to post it on later. There it is, Bulkpva.com and I know I’ve got it bookmarked. I just got to put it in the right place. This guy right here, this is the guy that I buy all of our Gmail accounts from now, guys … Phone verified Gmail accounts. It’s from this one, Bulkpva.com. I’ve sent this dude a lot of business because we buy a ton of them for our network builders, for the IFTTT Done For You, IFTTT networks and stuff like that as well as any time I need him for my own projects, now. I just buy them from him. He sends you a spreadsheet with the phone verified accounts with the recovery options and all that kind of stuff.

The trick is once you get them back, you need to log in and bind them to your IP or to your Proxies, if you’re using Proxies like for example, if you’re using BrowSEO. As soon as you get those back, within 72 hours, you want to try to log into every one of those accounts that you get, but that’s all we do now is purchase the accounts. It’s too much. It takes too much time and effort to try to phone verify your own accounts now, guys. It’s so much cheaper to have somebody else just do it for you. Buy 25 or 50 at a time, try to long into them all, but so what. For how cheap they are, and the amount of headache and time it will save you to have some available for whenever you need them, it’s totally worth it. Spend a few bucks. Pick them up. That guy’s a good guy. He’ll replace them if they’re not working once, right after he delivers them. After a few days he won’t replace them, but he’s just a good dude and again, I don’t mind sending him business. He’ll take care of you.

Setting Up Silo Structure For Local Cities In YouTube

Finally, “Just watched the YouTube SEO Course. Great stuff. How would you recommend YouTube structure for local cities? Do you agree with others that say, “Channel name equals keyword plus USA, then playlist equals keyword plus State, and then video title equals keyword plus counties, and in description to put in the cities?” If not, what channel or silo structure do you recommend? Finally, how many silos per site? Thanks. Happy New Year.” All right, that’s a long question. There’s a few things in there. First of all, I wouldn’t create a playlist on a State-level and then do video titles via county-level because typically, that’s not. First of all, a State playlist could be a rather large playlist, and other than having just the State in common with all the videos in that playlist, there could be a lot of difference like topical differences, niche differences, industry difference. Because of that, the only common denominator or theme among all of those in a playlist would be the State, which I think it too broad.

Now, typically what I will do, and I don’t usually do this with YouTube Channels but basically, when I’m siloing out a website for a contractor that covers a large service area or something like that, is I will create the silos based on counties. The playlist would be a county-based playlist. Then the video titles would be the keyword plus city. The reason I say that is because most people don’t search for service plus county. Most people when they search Google, they search service plus city, or keyword plus city. With local intent, most of the time it’s going to be a city-based search, not a county-based search. Because of that, you should be targeting the city name and the video title, which is the SEO title. That’s because that’s the most important place for the keyword. If you want to rank for a city, typically you’re going to want to target the city in the title.

I would generally do playlist in one of two ways. I would either create a playlist based on a specific city, or a country if I’m going to be covering multiple locations within the county. For example: Fairfax County, Virginia it has I believe, 23 cities within that county. I might have a playlist for Fairfax County, Virginia. Then I would have individual videos in there, but Fairfax, Virginia, which is Fairfax is also a city in Fairfax County. It’s the City of Fairfax. That might have 50 different businesses in it, so why not have a City of Fairfax playlist. Does that make sense? It’s just about containers, building containers. All a playlist is, is a container. You got to think about whatever you put in that container, it should be relevant to the other items in that container. The hierarchy in how you build that is really going to depend on the specific project.

I can’t tell you specifically without knowing more details about what you’re trying to do, but you got to think about it logically. Again, I would do a playlist based upon a city and have multiple videos in that because I’m targeting different niches in that city. Again, the common denominator being the city, or I’ll target by county if it’s for the same business or the same industry. I’ll targe by county, the playlist by county. I’ll build a playlist or the silo as a county-based silo. Then all the individual videos will be keyword plus city name within that county and/or I will build a playlist based around a niche, an industry. Then place various videos in that niche-based or industry-based playlist, which is just another silo. By the way, you can add the same video in more than one playlist.

If it makes sense for example, let’s say that you’ve got 15 plumbing clients across the State of Virginia. You also have various clients in all different industries, as well. You could have in Fairfax, Virginia you could have a Fairfax playlist that you have all the various businesses that you service or that you serve in Fairfax, in that playlist, but then you could also have a plumbing playlist, a playlist for plumbers, plumbing services, whatever. In that one, you also have the Fairfax plumber as well as plumbers from all over the State of Virginia. You would end up having that Plumber from Fairfax video on two different playlists. The Fairfax playlist, as well as the Plumber Playlist because it makes sense to do so.

Just remember that. I can’t give you the exact structure without knowing more details. I can tell you typically, a playlist on a State-level is going to be a bit too broad unless you’re narrowing in on one specific industry and that’s all the videos in your entire channel are going to be about that one industry, in which case then you might want to do playlist by state because you probably have less overall videos in each playlist. I don’t know if that makes sense, but hopefully I explained that in a way that you all could understand.

Anybody want to comment on that at all? That was a bit complicated.

Marco: I would just add that if she does proper SEO, she’s going to geolocate her video anyway. She’s going to add that so all of the other things that you could add to it would just be Google is going to know what the geolocation of the video anyway, if you’re doing your proper SEO with the video.

Bradley: Just remember that guys. The easiest way to think about a silo is it’s just nothing other than a container. Everything that you put in that container should be similarly themed. They should be relevant to the other items within that container in some way, shape or form. It’s up to you to decide as to what the relevancy is and how to create those containers, and what to place in those containers.

Using A Buffer Site Before Using Crowdsearch.Me For A Google Partner Site Like Diigo

Greg’s up next. “When using Crowd Search Me for wanting traffic,” we’re having issues with them right now, just so you know. “When using Crowd Search Me for wanting traffic to come into our site from Google partner like Diigo, do we need to start at a buffer site to start with the search and bring the traffic into the Google partner then to our site? Use Tumblr to go to Diigo and enter the website, or can we start with Diigo directly? Thanks.”

You can do both, Greg. Honestly, you’d be better off to set up both so that you have some variety or diversity in the traffic. Remember I call this, “CT Spam,” Click-Through Spam. That’s what it is. We’re spamming the click-through rate. There’s nothing wrong with that. Technically, it’s probably against the Terms of Service but, whatever. What do you call that, Marco? An unapologetic spammer. He’s an unapologetic spammer.

Marco: You got that right.

Bradley: That’s what we do. As far as that, Greg, I would do both.

Marco: Unapologetic and unrepentant.

Bradley: Unrepentant. You can do both, Greg. Most of the time for speed’s sake, I’ve set them up. Just go direct from a social site to wherever I want to send ultimately, the traffic end up for social referral traffic, it usually goes to a money site. Well, same thing for YouTube videos, as well. It’s up to you, Greg. It really doesn’t matter. You can do both and in fact, again I recommend that you do both so that you can add some diversity to your traffic streams.

Alexa To Ramp Up Voice Search Results

Bryan’s up. “Have you any suggestions how to use Alexa to ramp up voice search results?” There has to be a way to speak to Alexa. Is that the Amazon thing? What is Alexa? Let’s see. I’m thinking of … what is “ramp up voice search results”? I’m not sure I understand what he’s trying to manipulate here? “Ask questions. I would think that people also ask her something. Big, underlying voice search?” I’m not sure what the question is, Bryan. I’m not 100%. Anybody else go in and try to interpret this for me?

Hernan: No. Yeah, I don’t understand it either. Bryan, if you could reframe it or re-ask it? The only Alexa I know is the directory where you can get how many …

Bradley: I don’t know if that has anything to do with voice search. That’s this. I was thinking. What’s that stupid thing? Amazon Echo. Is that what it is? The thing people buy and they sit and they talk, and they say, “Amazon, buy whatever,” or what the hell is it called? I don’t know. I don’t have it so that’s what I thought he was talking about. Yeah, I’m not sure what you’re saying, Bryan. To be honest, I don’t know what you’re as far as “ramp up voice search results”. “There’s something big underlying voice search, If you can tell it what questions you want to be found on, I think it can be huge. Care to comment or suggest.” Again, I’m not sure, Bryan. As far as trying to get ranked for questions, that is the Hummingbird Algorithm, the Hummingbird Layer to the algorithm. It was added, damn … it’s been three years, now. Hasn’t it? It’s been three years since Hummingbird was introduced, which is crazy. That’s specifically what that was for was more complex search queries mainly driven because of voice search, because of mobile devices.

That’s really what the birth of Hummingbird was for, was because of people asking or speaking their search queries in and that they’re naturally more complex because they’re speaking instead of typing, and because of that, the Hummingbird Algorithm was added or the layer was added to the algorithm to try to help understand those more complex queries and match them with the content that would best solve that user’s search. Again, if you want to try to target that specifically, voice search, I don’t know how that works in the background, but when you talk your voice search in, all it does is transcribe it to text anyways, and then it searches that text. You can manipulate the questions, basically the Hummingbird Algorithm. You can manipulate that by posting questions in your content and then answering those questions. That, you can see over and over and over again through Knowledge Graph answers.

When you guys ask a question into Google, whether via by voice search or by typing it in. Usually, when you start to type a question in, what do you do? You see Google suggest auto complete, and you end up selecting one of the questions anyways. You click on that, most of the time you’re going to see a Knowledge Graph answer or an answer in Knowledge Graph on the top of the search results, which is just coming from one of the pages listed on page one. It’s because somebody wrote the question out in the content and then answered the question. Knowledge Graph I believe, at least it used to be, you didn’t even really have to have the structured data in place for that to be pulled in, although now, you probably have to have it marked up. Marco, you’re testing a lot of shit with that right now. Do you have any comments on that.

Marco: Yeah. I’m planning on making the Knowledge Graph by bit.

Bradley: Well, there you go Bryan. The Knowledge Graph is going to be Marco’s bitch. I hope that answered your question.

Hernan: This reminds me. Sorry Bradly, but if you guys, I don’t know if you guys have ever watched “If Google Was a Guy” series. I don’t know if you ever watched those video, Bradley. “If Google was a Guy”, just search for it on YouTube. It’s on YouTube. It’s super fun and it’s a parody of what would happen if Google was a guy behind a desk answering questions. It’s a lot of fun. At some point, it gets super weird with the voice search. It’s a lot of fun so if you guys want to go ahead and after the webinar, go ahead and check it out. “If Google was a Guy”. There’s five or six episodes, something like that. It’s super fun.

Bradley: Bryan, sorry. I’m not sure where the Alexa thing came into all that, but if you can clarify. I’m kind of curious now.

Public Library in Diigo

Jordan’s up next. He says, “Yo. Can anyone remind me how to make Diigo Library public facing? Is that possible?”

Marco: Jordan, before you answer, I’d like to give a Jordan a shout out because he’s so active in our IFTTT Academy, the 2.0 Facebook Group, just answering questions, sharing so Jordan, thank you for everything you do, man. Just keep it up. Just keep ranking and taking over niches.

Bradley: I’m not sure, Jordan why you’re having any issues with that because when you set up the Applet. Let’s go to Applets real quick, and we set up new applet. Say if this. We’ll just use a feed. New feed item. We’re just going to walk through this real quick guys. Give me a second. http://ift.tt/2kjHS2z. We’ll just go with the default feed for now. Create trigger. Then we’re going to select “Diigo” here. Now, right here … Add a Public Bookmark. When you set up the account, the applet if you add a public bookmark, it should be default because of what you select here, add it to your public bookmark library. I’m not sure what you mean by that, Jordan. If you were using the recipes or the “Applets” as they’re called now, which I know you’ve got plenty of experience. This is really just for everybody else’s benefit. If you select the Add a Public Bookmark, it should automatically be public. I’m not sure what the problem is unless something has changed recently that I’m unaware of, if you can clarify that.

How To Run IFTTT 2-Tier Network Properties In Serp Space?

Will’s up. “Hi, Bradley. Two newbie questions about IFTTT. I just purchased my full two-tiered network from Serp Space Marketplace. The first posts from my site has been syndicated and the management dash, I see that over half the properties are showing Not Yet Checked. What do I need to do to get them up and running?” What does that mean, Adam … in Serp Space?

Adam: Sorry. One more time. I’m dealing with support tickets about some stuff.

Bradley: He says, “I purchased my first full two-tier network from Serp Space. The first two posts from my site has been syndicated. In the management dashboard, I see that over half the properties are showing as Not Yet Checked. What do I need to get them up and running?”

Adam: I’m guessing then that he’s using IFTTT Network Management in which case, if you just got that then it may not have literally checked them yet. It takes time. They don’t immediately check all properties right away. That way we don’t have issues. I would give it 24 hours if you still have that. Put a ticket in at support or email [email protected].

Bradley: Yeah, the other thing is try posting another post to your blog and let it syndicate because again, just similar to when you first setup an IFTTT Network, sometimes the first post or even two or three of the first posts don’t end up syndicating to all the networks properly. It’s called, “Priming the Network.” Priming the pump, basically. It’s something that just happens. I’m not sure why, but sometimes you have to post two or three posts before all of the triggers fire correctly anyways. It may be something to do with that, Will. Just go ahead and post another post if you can and check it then. If for whatever reason you’re not seeing reporting like it’s supposed to be, just contact support@serpspace. I don’t have my hands in that project very much. Adam’s been managing that with our partners in that business quite a bit. I really don’t have a lot of answers for that. Sorry, but support will take care of you. We’ve got a lot of support staff there now.

How To Make Use Of 3 Persona Rings In IFTTT?

Next one. “I recently heard you on a webinar saying not to syndicate posts from the money site beyond the first tier branded ring because of footprint issues.” That is correct. “I immediately went and disconnected the three persona rings. Please, could you advise what I should be doing with them now, and how can they be put to good use?” Well, this has been covered so many damn times, I’m not picking on you. I’m just saying this has been covered so many times on Hump Day Hangouts, it’s absolutely one of the most frequently asked questions we get. That said, if you go to Support.semanticmastery.com, Support.semanticmastery.com that’s where our Knowledge Graph base is. There’s an IFTTT SEO Academy section. In there are a bunch of frequently asked questions. I know this question’s got to be in there at least two or three different times where I’ve answered it two or three different ways because this is a question that has been coming up for two years over, and over, and over again.

Very, very quickly I can say that the reason why we hadn’t been recommending two-tier networks was because there are footprint issues on the persona-based networks the second tier networks if you don’t have related content from other sources being published on a regular basis to the second-tier networks, which is why if you have a two-tier network you should be injecting for a blog syndication I mean, a two-tier network for blog syndication, you should be adding additional content or additional related content RSS feeds to the tier 2 triggers. You log into the IFTTT account on tier 2 so that there’d be tier 2A, tier 2B, tier 2C. There would be three IFTTT accounts that you would log into and setup another set of recipes for each related content source so that you’re publishing additional content to tier 2 from other sources, related content.

Topically relevant content, but that’s a nightmare. It’s a pain in the ass. It’s hard to maintain. It’s hard to manage so I’ve been recommending against that forever until RSS Masher came out, which is Daemon Nelson’s product that’s awesome. It’s one of the only things that I’ve seen that can simply that process and make it a viable option to be posting blog syndication on your two-tier networks. Again, I don’t know if that offer’s still open, but I know we had a sweet deal from Daemon that people from our list could continue to purchase. I don’t know if we have that link, but if you want to drop it will …

Adam: Yeah. It’s up. It looks like it is. I’ll put it in.

Bradley: That’s awesome. That’s the only thing I have. Until RSS Masher, I’d been recommending against it. Now, if you’re using RSS Masher, I see it as giving us the ability to simplify blog syndication on tier 2 networks to where it’s more manageable. It’s still more work, there’s no doubt. There’s still more work to do that, but it will minimize your footprint. It will simplify that process and make it more manageable. Easier to maintain. As far as that, if you don’t have that and you don’t plan on using that, you can still use those three persona rings. Again, you just got to add additional content sources in as tier 2 triggers or just use them for video syndication or something like that. If you don’t want to tie them back to your blog at all, which is fine, you could use them for video syndication or you could use them for any other projects that you got coming up.

Jame’s up. “Hi, guys. It’s been a little while since I have submitted a question, but been on the sideline absorbing your greatness.” I will plus-one that. “I see Marco is still looking tanned, cute and bear-like.”

Marco: I will plus-one that.

Thoughts On Bing Having More B2B Conversion But Lesser Traffic Than Google

Bradley: That’s awesome. “Anyway, here’s my question. Question 1: I noticed through testing that Bing seems to be more lucrative for acquiring b2b projects, as it appears that most corporates tend to be stocked up with the pre-loaded Internet Explorer and Bing as the default search engine. Do you think that the future for a more sizeable project will not be coming from Google but from Bing, as it has a higher conversion rate with less traffic but higher quality? Should we therefor, not be looking at targeting our efforts to Google for b2c, for Business 2 Consumer, and Bing, for b2b?

Question 2: Is there a way to address [Amp 00:45:16] Pages production? Is there a technique for pushing them to Google News? Keep up the great work. Jane.” Okay, Jane, I’ll let Marco answer the second questions but for the first question, I’m not sure what you’re asking for about with that specifically other than should we be focusing somewhat on Bing? My answer to that is absolutely, yes. I only know that because I just recently for the case study, it’s an affiliate project, that I’m doing for the Master Class. For Master Class, we have a live case study going on right now. It’s an affiliate project and I’m just crushing it. I’m doing really, really well with generating traffic right now. I’m doing all paid traffic. Nothing organic, at least at the moment. It’s just strictly paid traffic, and I’ve been Google AdWords. A few weeks ago I decided to start playing around in Bing Ads and I’m getting really good results from Bing Ads … like really good results.

My cost per conversion is lower than my Google cost per conversions. It’s working really, really well. I know Bing is absolutely something that should be added. It shouldn’t be overlooked. All too often, we overlook Bing and Bing and Yahoo together now, make up for it’s about a-third of the search traffic. That’s a significant amount of traffic. I know Hernan said that it’s like a different demographic often, and it sounds like Jane, you’re kind of confirming that, that it may be the older demographic, 45-plus crowd that is heavy on the Bing Network, but it also could be a lot more corporate stuff, as well. That makes sense to me because you’re right. A lot of the computers and network services and stuff like that are all Microsoft-based, so that very well could be true and I had never even thought about that.

I know to ignore Bing is really stupid, in my opinion. Now, for SEO it’s been difficult because if you’re optimizing for Google, that usually didn’t translate well into Bing. Bing, you could get away with a hell of a lot more for on-page stuff, you could keyword stuff a lot more, your keyword density could be a lot higher. You could for back links, for off-page stuff you could do a hell of a lot more exact match anchors and that would rank. Using Exact Match Domain in Bing will help you to rank in Bing really easily. There’s a lot of things that you could get away with in Bing that you can’t in Google.

Typically, if we optimize for Google, you end up not optimized very well for Bing because you’re not over-optimized like Bing likes, I guess. Strictly from a paid standpoint, a paid traffic standpoint, it’s absolutely silly to ignore Bing in my opinion because it’s basically a close of the Adwords dashboard, if not a little bit funkier. It’s no doubt the Bing dashboard is a little bit funkier than Adwords, but it’s damn near identical. If you know how to run PPC Campaigns in Adwords, you can do it in Bing and you’ll probably get results similar to what I’m seeing, which is going to be really good traffic and a good amount of leads. Lower cost per conversion, that sort of thing.

Marco, do you want to take Question 2?

Marco: Yeah. Question 2 is simple because what our plug-in does is it turns the page into Amp automatically. It delivers the page as an Amp page. There’s no page production. All you have to do is upload the page into the website if you’re doing whatever it is that you’re doing. Our plug-in will turn it into an AMP page. What we’re doing also, and I have to make that available, is that if you’re posting it will make a post into an AMP page. That takes care of any production. Is there a technique for pushing them to Google News? Unless you have a recognized news site, it’s really difficult to get into Google News. I don’t see a way of tricking. I haven’t looked into it.

I haven’t looked into the algorithm and how to trick Google into accepting just any website into Google News, but it might be something worth looking into. If you haven’t joined the AMP creators mastermind on Facebook, I suggest that you do so because I will make that plug-in available shortly. We have two versions. I’m going to make at least one of them available in the next few days. I hope that answers the question. I would agree with her on the first part. Just absolutely that Bing has less traffic, but it’s a higher conversion rate. The client is usually worth more because of the demographic, so yes to that question, also.

Bradley: Awesome. Thank you. We only got about three minutes left because we’ve got to get ready for the local Kingpin Update Webinar but we’re going to try to run through a couple more very, very quickly.

Would It Cause Some YouTube Account Issues If There Are Activities From 2 Sources?

Robert says, “Bradley, if I have,” and Happy New Year to you, as well … “a YouTube account that’s built with BrowSEO that are set up on different IPs and a good standing in age with supporting two-tier accounts, etc I intend to continue using these accounts within BrowSEO. If I think put them in the Mega-Ray, same YouTube accounts, wouldn’t that create a problem for my accounts?” Robert, I assume it would but I don’t know for sure. What I would suggest is don’t test it with one of your aged accounts that you’ve been building a digital footprint with inside of BrowSEO. I would not do that.

Guys, a digital footprint is a good thing, now. It really is as long as you’re not spamming. That’s what BrowSEO allows us to do is build digital footprints for our personas, which is incredibly powerful. That said, Robert, what I would do is take a new channel and try it in both. What I’m saying is put it in BrowSEO, assign it to a proxy, and IP, whatever. Log in, do a little bit of activity, watch a couple of videos, like a couple videos, that kind of stuff and then add it to Mega-Ray, and then start trying to post on it and see if it causes a problem. If it locks the account, ask for reverification then you know it’s a problem, but it’s a new account then and you’re not losing an aged account.

I would test that. I can’t give you an answer because I don’t know. I assume it would cause a problem, yes. Like you said, you answered your own question. My assumption is that is a correct guess or a correct assumption but I don’t know without testing so I would suggest you test that with a new account so that if you lost it, it’s not a big deal. “If that is the case, the problem from two sources then my best option if I decide to use Mega-Ray is to populate it with all the YouTube accounts, tiers, etc.” Yes, and that’s what I would do, Robert because I would be using those accounts more for spam purposes then I would be for aged accounts like I would be building in BrowSEO anyways so because of that, I would basically buy a whole bunch of YouTube accounts from MetroBiz, the one I just showed earlier on this webinar. For real, I’d buy them all from him and then I would go and I would add all those accounts into Mega-Ray.

“Also, what is your real take on Mega-Ray?” It’s awesome. I’ve mentioned this before. We did a promotion for Video Marketing Blitz, which is Abs’ product. Ab is a great developer. I’ve been buying his products literally, for five or six years now, no kidding. Abs’ got great products, except Video Marketing Blitz is complex because there’s a ton of tools and so there’s a learning curve. Very, very powerful no doubt, but there’s a learning curve. Mega-Ray is incredibly simple. Very, very powerful. Think of it this way. It’s like Syndwire on steroids. It really is. It’s like an enterprise-level Syndwire. It also except that as far as the posting goes, posting within Mega-Ray is a lot easier than it is within Syndwire. Syndwire, there’s a lot of manual work. That’s kind of the reason why I just stopped using it. Mega-Ray is a lot more automated. It’s a great product. There’s no doubt or we wouldn’t have promoted it. I know there’s a lot of development behind them and a good support staff.

We got to go, guys. I do want to just very, very quickly cover Darrel’s question about SocioLinks. That’s Abs’ product. We were just talking about Video Marketing Blitz. Abs’ product, the new one is out. It’s called, “SocioLinks.” I’m really surprised he didn’t reach out to us and ask us to be a JV or an affiliate for him because we usually do well promoting his products because we all believe in his products and think that he’s got good products. For whatever reason, we’re not an affiliate for it. I haven’t tested it. I can tell you though, pretty much everything that he puts out is good product. I don’t say that about a lot of developers. If Abs put it out, my guess says it’s probably a really good product, Darrel. I don’t have an opinion on it because I didn’t get a chance to test it, and I’m mad at Abs for that, but that’s it.

All right? We got to wrap it up guys.

Hernan: Bye, everyone. Thank you.

Adam: Have a good one.

Bradley: Yeah, thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see you all … Just a few minutes.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: Bye.

Adam: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115 posted first on your-t1-blog-url from Blogger http://ift.tt/2ji6mvI via IFTTT

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anchorsawaytat1 · 9 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 115 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here.

Bradley: We got Marco. How are you doing, buddy?

Marco: Hey, man. What’s happening?

Bradley: Hey, look. We had the late comers. The fashionably late members.

Adam: Hey, guys. I just woke up.

Hernan: Hey, everyone. What’s up?

Adam: I haven’t had consider restart but I know Marco was talking about Video Power House, which is awesome. I’m getting super pumped about that.

Bradley: Yeah, and it’s …

Hernan: Hi, what’s up?

Bradley: Well, and Hernan. Yeah, what’s up man?

Hernan: Hey.

Adam: Hey, Hernan. FYI, I’m not sure if it’s WebinarJam, but your mic sounds really high. You might want to adjust the levels.

Hernan: I don’t know why. I’ll try to figure that out.

Bradley: You got to take the microphone out of your mouth.

Hernan: Oh, okay. That makes sense.

Bradley: Yeah.

Adam: … are in the Local Kingpin?

Hernan: Yep. Can you guys hear me better now?

Bradley: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep.

Bradley: All right, guys. I’m going to take the screen and we’re going to get into questions. We’re pretty much done on announcements. Correct?

Adam: I think so.

Bradley: All right, let me close out of all these various windows that I have opened that you guys don’t need to see. Really, shut all the porn down. No, I’m kidding.

Adam: Bradley, can you or maybe you went over this before I got here, but did you go over how this works now, with the new setup for people? How they’re supposed to post questions and all that?

Google AMP & Ranking

All right. That’s said, let’s do it. Lee’s up first. He says, “Is Google Amp increase rank. Do you suggest Google Amp?” I’m going to hand that one to Marco.

Indexing Citations

Thoughts On Serplify

You guys want to comment on this, at all? Has anybody looked at this?

Bradley: Post it.

Marco: … to let us know.

Marco: Nothing. Just to get in there about that keyword research. Nothing beats, as far as I’m concerned, Power Suggest Pro.

Bradley: I totally agree.

Adam: I was going to say, Bradley, you put that link for your training stuff you did. I think that’s still a good one. I’ve sent people there before.

Any Issues With Burner App On Phone

Setting Up Silo Structure For Local Cities In YouTube

Anybody want to comment on that at all? That was a bit complicated.

Using A Buffer Site Before Using Crowdsearch.Me For A Google Partner Site Like Diigo

Marco: You got that right.

Bradley: That’s what we do. As far as that, Greg, I would do both.

Marco: Unapologetic and unrepentant.

Alexa To Ramp Up Voice Search Results

Hernan: No. Yeah, I don’t understand it either. Bryan, if you could reframe it or re-ask it? The only Alexa I know is the directory where you can get how many …

Marco: Yeah. I’m planning on making the Knowledge Graph by bit.

Bradley: Well, there you go Bryan. The Knowledge Graph is going to be Marco’s bitch. I hope that answered your question.

Bradley: Bryan, sorry. I’m not sure where the Alexa thing came into all that, but if you can clarify. I’m kind of curious now.

Public Library in Diigo

Jordan’s up next. He says, “Yo. Can anyone remind me how to make Diigo Library public facing? Is that possible?”

How To Run IFTTT 2-Tier Network Properties In Serp Space?

Adam: Sorry. One more time. I’m dealing with support tickets about some stuff.

How To Make Use Of 3 Persona Rings In IFTTT?

Adam: Yeah. It’s up. It looks like it is. I’ll put it in.

Marco: I will plus-one that.

Thoughts On Bing Having More B2B Conversion But Lesser Traffic Than Google

Marco, do you want to take Question 2?

Would It Cause Some YouTube Account Issues If There Are Activities From 2 Sources?

All right? We got to wrap it up guys.

Hernan: Bye, everyone. Thank you.

Adam: Have a good one.

Bradley: Yeah, thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see you all … Just a few minutes.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: Bye.

Adam: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

qxcel1 · 9 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 115 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here.

Bradley: We got Marco. How are you doing, buddy?

Marco: Hey, man. What’s happening?

Bradley: Hey, look. We had the late comers. The fashionably late members.

Adam: Hey, guys. I just woke up.

Hernan: Hey, everyone. What’s up?

Adam: I haven’t had consider restart but I know Marco was talking about Video Power House, which is awesome. I’m getting super pumped about that.

Bradley: Yeah, and it’s …

Hernan: Hi, what’s up?

Bradley: Well, and Hernan. Yeah, what’s up man?

Hernan: Hey.

Adam: Hey, Hernan. FYI, I’m not sure if it’s WebinarJam, but your mic sounds really high. You might want to adjust the levels.

Hernan: I don’t know why. I’ll try to figure that out.

Bradley: You got to take the microphone out of your mouth.

Hernan: Oh, okay. That makes sense.

Bradley: Yeah.

Adam: … are in the Local Kingpin?

Hernan: Yep. Can you guys hear me better now?

Bradley: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep.

Bradley: All right, guys. I’m going to take the screen and we’re going to get into questions. We’re pretty much done on announcements. Correct?

Adam: I think so.

Bradley: All right, let me close out of all these various windows that I have opened that you guys don’t need to see. Really, shut all the porn down. No, I’m kidding.

Adam: Bradley, can you or maybe you went over this before I got here, but did you go over how this works now, with the new setup for people? How they’re supposed to post questions and all that?

Google AMP & Ranking

All right. That’s said, let’s do it. Lee’s up first. He says, “Is Google Amp increase rank. Do you suggest Google Amp?” I’m going to hand that one to Marco.

Indexing Citations

Thoughts On Serplify

You guys want to comment on this, at all? Has anybody looked at this?

Bradley: Post it.

Marco: … to let us know.

Marco: Nothing. Just to get in there about that keyword research. Nothing beats, as far as I’m concerned, Power Suggest Pro.

Bradley: I totally agree.

Adam: I was going to say, Bradley, you put that link for your training stuff you did. I think that’s still a good one. I’ve sent people there before.

Any Issues With Burner App On Phone

Setting Up Silo Structure For Local Cities In YouTube

Anybody want to comment on that at all? That was a bit complicated.

Using A Buffer Site Before Using Crowdsearch.Me For A Google Partner Site Like Diigo

Marco: You got that right.

Bradley: That’s what we do. As far as that, Greg, I would do both.

Marco: Unapologetic and unrepentant.

Alexa To Ramp Up Voice Search Results

Hernan: No. Yeah, I don’t understand it either. Bryan, if you could reframe it or re-ask it? The only Alexa I know is the directory where you can get how many …

Marco: Yeah. I’m planning on making the Knowledge Graph by bit.

Bradley: Well, there you go Bryan. The Knowledge Graph is going to be Marco’s bitch. I hope that answered your question.

Bradley: Bryan, sorry. I’m not sure where the Alexa thing came into all that, but if you can clarify. I’m kind of curious now.

Public Library in Diigo

Jordan’s up next. He says, “Yo. Can anyone remind me how to make Diigo Library public facing? Is that possible?”

How To Run IFTTT 2-Tier Network Properties In Serp Space?

Adam: Sorry. One more time. I’m dealing with support tickets about some stuff.

How To Make Use Of 3 Persona Rings In IFTTT?

Adam: Yeah. It’s up. It looks like it is. I’ll put it in.

Marco: I will plus-one that.

Thoughts On Bing Having More B2B Conversion But Lesser Traffic Than Google

Marco, do you want to take Question 2?

Would It Cause Some YouTube Account Issues If There Are Activities From 2 Sources?

All right? We got to wrap it up guys.

Hernan: Bye, everyone. Thank you.

Adam: Have a good one.

Bradley: Yeah, thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see you all … Just a few minutes.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: Bye.

Adam: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

daynamartinez22 · 9 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 115 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here.

Bradley: We got Marco. How are you doing, buddy?

Marco: Hey, man. What’s happening?

Bradley: Hey, look. We had the late comers. The fashionably late members.

Adam: Hey, guys. I just woke up.

Hernan: Hey, everyone. What’s up?

Adam: I haven’t had consider restart but I know Marco was talking about Video Power House, which is awesome. I’m getting super pumped about that.

Bradley: Yeah, and it’s …

Hernan: Hi, what’s up?

Bradley: Well, and Hernan. Yeah, what’s up man?

Hernan: Hey.

Adam: Hey, Hernan. FYI, I’m not sure if it’s WebinarJam, but your mic sounds really high. You might want to adjust the levels.

Hernan: I don’t know why. I’ll try to figure that out.

Bradley: You got to take the microphone out of your mouth.

Hernan: Oh, okay. That makes sense.

Bradley: Yeah.

Adam: … are in the Local Kingpin?

Hernan: Yep. Can you guys hear me better now?

Bradley: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep.

Bradley: All right, guys. I’m going to take the screen and we’re going to get into questions. We’re pretty much done on announcements. Correct?

Adam: I think so.

Bradley: All right, let me close out of all these various windows that I have opened that you guys don’t need to see. Really, shut all the porn down. No, I’m kidding.

Adam: Bradley, can you or maybe you went over this before I got here, but did you go over how this works now, with the new setup for people? How they’re supposed to post questions and all that?

Google AMP & Ranking

All right. That’s said, let’s do it. Lee’s up first. He says, “Is Google Amp increase rank. Do you suggest Google Amp?” I’m going to hand that one to Marco.

Indexing Citations

Thoughts On Serplify

You guys want to comment on this, at all? Has anybody looked at this?

Bradley: Post it.

Marco: … to let us know.

Marco: Nothing. Just to get in there about that keyword research. Nothing beats, as far as I’m concerned, Power Suggest Pro.

Bradley: I totally agree.

Adam: I was going to say, Bradley, you put that link for your training stuff you did. I think that’s still a good one. I’ve sent people there before.

Any Issues With Burner App On Phone

Setting Up Silo Structure For Local Cities In YouTube

Anybody want to comment on that at all? That was a bit complicated.

Using A Buffer Site Before Using Crowdsearch.Me For A Google Partner Site Like Diigo

Marco: You got that right.

Bradley: That’s what we do. As far as that, Greg, I would do both.

Marco: Unapologetic and unrepentant.

Alexa To Ramp Up Voice Search Results

Hernan: No. Yeah, I don’t understand it either. Bryan, if you could reframe it or re-ask it? The only Alexa I know is the directory where you can get how many …

Marco: Yeah. I’m planning on making the Knowledge Graph by bit.

Bradley: Well, there you go Bryan. The Knowledge Graph is going to be Marco’s bitch. I hope that answered your question.

Bradley: Bryan, sorry. I’m not sure where the Alexa thing came into all that, but if you can clarify. I’m kind of curious now.

Public Library in Diigo

Jordan’s up next. He says, “Yo. Can anyone remind me how to make Diigo Library public facing? Is that possible?”

How To Run IFTTT 2-Tier Network Properties In Serp Space?

Adam: Sorry. One more time. I’m dealing with support tickets about some stuff.

How To Make Use Of 3 Persona Rings In IFTTT?

Adam: Yeah. It’s up. It looks like it is. I’ll put it in.

Marco: I will plus-one that.

Thoughts On Bing Having More B2B Conversion But Lesser Traffic Than Google

Marco, do you want to take Question 2?

Would It Cause Some YouTube Account Issues If There Are Activities From 2 Sources?

All right? We got to wrap it up guys.

Hernan: Bye, everyone. Thank you.

Adam: Have a good one.

Bradley: Yeah, thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see you all … Just a few minutes.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: Bye.

Adam: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

howardkuester22 · 9 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 115 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here.

Bradley: We got Marco. How are you doing, buddy?

Marco: Hey, man. What’s happening?

Bradley: Hey, look. We had the late comers. The fashionably late members.

Adam: Hey, guys. I just woke up.

Hernan: Hey, everyone. What’s up?

Adam: I haven’t had consider restart but I know Marco was talking about Video Power House, which is awesome. I’m getting super pumped about that.

Bradley: Yeah, and it’s …

Hernan: Hi, what’s up?

Bradley: Well, and Hernan. Yeah, what’s up man?

Hernan: Hey.

Adam: Hey, Hernan. FYI, I’m not sure if it’s WebinarJam, but your mic sounds really high. You might want to adjust the levels.

Hernan: I don’t know why. I’ll try to figure that out.

Bradley: You got to take the microphone out of your mouth.

Hernan: Oh, okay. That makes sense.

Bradley: Yeah.

Adam: … are in the Local Kingpin?

Hernan: Yep. Can you guys hear me better now?

Bradley: Yeah.

Hernan: Yep.

Bradley: All right, guys. I’m going to take the screen and we’re going to get into questions. We’re pretty much done on announcements. Correct?

Adam: I think so.

Bradley: All right, let me close out of all these various windows that I have opened that you guys don’t need to see. Really, shut all the porn down. No, I’m kidding.

Adam: Bradley, can you or maybe you went over this before I got here, but did you go over how this works now, with the new setup for people? How they’re supposed to post questions and all that?

Google AMP & Ranking

All right. That’s said, let’s do it. Lee’s up first. He says, “Is Google Amp increase rank. Do you suggest Google Amp?” I’m going to hand that one to Marco.

Indexing Citations

Thoughts On Serplify

You guys want to comment on this, at all? Has anybody looked at this?

Bradley: Post it.

Marco: … to let us know.

Marco: Nothing. Just to get in there about that keyword research. Nothing beats, as far as I’m concerned, Power Suggest Pro.

Bradley: I totally agree.

Adam: I was going to say, Bradley, you put that link for your training stuff you did. I think that’s still a good one. I’ve sent people there before.

Any Issues With Burner App On Phone

Setting Up Silo Structure For Local Cities In YouTube

Anybody want to comment on that at all? That was a bit complicated.

Using A Buffer Site Before Using Crowdsearch.Me For A Google Partner Site Like Diigo

Marco: You got that right.

Bradley: That’s what we do. As far as that, Greg, I would do both.

Marco: Unapologetic and unrepentant.

Alexa To Ramp Up Voice Search Results

Hernan: No. Yeah, I don’t understand it either. Bryan, if you could reframe it or re-ask it? The only Alexa I know is the directory where you can get how many …

Marco: Yeah. I’m planning on making the Knowledge Graph by bit.

Bradley: Well, there you go Bryan. The Knowledge Graph is going to be Marco’s bitch. I hope that answered your question.

Bradley: Bryan, sorry. I’m not sure where the Alexa thing came into all that, but if you can clarify. I’m kind of curious now.

Public Library in Diigo

Jordan’s up next. He says, “Yo. Can anyone remind me how to make Diigo Library public facing? Is that possible?”

How To Run IFTTT 2-Tier Network Properties In Serp Space?

Adam: Sorry. One more time. I’m dealing with support tickets about some stuff.

How To Make Use Of 3 Persona Rings In IFTTT?

Adam: Yeah. It’s up. It looks like it is. I’ll put it in.

Marco: I will plus-one that.

Thoughts On Bing Having More B2B Conversion But Lesser Traffic Than Google

Marco, do you want to take Question 2?

Would It Cause Some YouTube Account Issues If There Are Activities From 2 Sources?

All right? We got to wrap it up guys.

Hernan: Bye, everyone. Thank you.

Adam: Have a good one.

Bradley: Yeah, thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see you all … Just a few minutes.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: Bye.

Adam: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 115 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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