#instead of separating each team in two posts they’ll likely be shown in one post instead

[stormvanari]

brain is screaming at me to make Underground and Paranormal Rescue Teams (URT and PRT) from the RCP summoning circle

help /j

[bbq-hawks-wings]

hey! I've seen a bunch of posts on how HPSC is slightly corrupted and all, could you explain if you understand this? They're (die hard villain fans) usually using this as a justification to slam the heroes for raiding the army. I'm quite confused sorry

I’d be more than happy to, friend! I have a strong feeling it’s going to be a key detail in the story moving forward so it’s good to go back in reviewing everything we know now; plus, it gives me the perfect chance to offer up my theory that ropes in Aizawa, Midnight, and Present Mic. Buckle up, though, because this gets a little long.

The HPSC tells heroes what to do.

The Hero Public Safety Commission is a pocket of the Japanese national government in this universe, sort of like how the FDA is in America.

It’s important to note that HPSC is a separate entity from the heroes. They’re the ones giving out licenses, disciplining rouge heroes, overseeing hero training, acting as liaison between heroes and law enforcement, organizing cooperative efforts with multiple heroes across different regions, and managing the general image of heroes with events like the Hero Rankings Billboard.

Heroes have to obey directives given by the HPSC and hero schools have to align with guidelines set by the HPSC, but heroes don’t usually get a say in these decisions and often only get to complain about how things are done and are stuck doing it anyway. If someone is caught heroing without a license or not in hero uniform, you can be fined and/or jailed. If a hero doesn’t keep up with paperwork or runs off and does their own thing they can also be fined and have their license suspended. If a hero goes AWOL or completely flips out they can have their license permanently taken away and be jailed.

It’s actually even more important to note that way heroes are allowed to operate and answer to the government is actually closer in line to a militia than a police force. In fact, while heroes are allowed to make arrests and use their quirks, they are more restricted in what they can and can’t do on their own than the police. If a hero wants to work with other heroes on an investigation, they have to use the private network (administrated by the HPSC) or communicate in person. In the case with the Shie Hassaikai or looking for Kurogiri and the LoV where police cooperation was necessary to carry out the investigation and bring in the gang right away there was no choice but to be transparent with the HPSC.

However, the HPSC doesn’t have to be transparent with the heroes.

They require heroes to give up all their information to keep working as heroes, but they don’t have any accountability for themselves and have notably dodged scrutiny up to this point with public backlash almost always falling on the heroes who have little to no say in how they run things.

Starting back at the beginning of the series with the USJ incident, it understandably garnered massive media attention - it should have. Dozens of unknown, random two-bit villains poured into the most secure, prestigious hero school in all of Japan undetected and resulted in the serious injury of two teachers and could have included the students as well if All Might had not been there to fight and subdue the inhuman monster - the Nomu - who had up to that point had never been seen before.

It’s not unreasonable that UA initially got the blowback from this as it could have been chalked up to complacency causing a lapse in security that the HPSC absolutely wouldn’t have been accountable for. It’s treated like a one-off event and despite investigations going nowhere on it, it’s ultimately downplayed and checked out in the background while continuing with the Sports Festival in high spirits. However, things get worse.

After passing their semester exams the Hero Course first-years head off to do practical training in the mountains with a hero team named the Wild Wild Pussycats. Remember, because this is a hero training initiative between a school and a hero team, the HPSC is likely involved at least on some administrative level in regards to granting permission and securing the patch of mountainside to use even if this detail is not acknowledged in the series. Despite efforts to only include the staff, teachers, and heroes involved word somehow still gets out - resulting in more student, hero, and teacher injuries, and most importantly the kidnapping of one of the students.

This can no longer be swept under the rug. A lot happens in the secret hideout raid revealing lots of stuff with the plot, including All-for-One’s direct involvement, but it doesn’t add anything more to our notes besides the fact UA is once again blamed and heroes are thrown under the bus instead of the organization overseeing them.

Fast forward to the Provisional License Arc. This is the first time we see the HPSC acting explicitly. It’s noted that they passed significantly more students this year than previously. Yokumiru Mera, the tired proctor, is overworked. The HPSC has a reason to urgently pump more students into the “working force” now than it had before, though at the moment it’s written off as a result of All Might’s retirement.

During the Shie Hassaikai arc the only suspect detail we get is the fact that the raid on compound is inexplicably compromised, and somehow the yakuza knew the heroes and police were coming. We’ll come back to this and to the leaks in UA again later.

Skipping the remedial courses and school festival arc, we get to the Pro Hero Arc. Big lights, pomp and circumstance, and a massive powerful Nomu attack that nearly kills the freshly crowned #1 Hero. From this point forward, what we get of the HSPC is mainly through Hawks and his experience with him. After the fight, we get a flashback of the President of the HSPC herself telling him to ignore civilian casualties in his mission to infiltrate the LoV, that he has to do it solo, and that he can’t tell anyone. Briefly in the next chapter he says that despite his objections he can’t actually tell them no.

Hold up!

Did a government agency just tell a hero to secretly get in with the villains no matter what, and when he objects and asks whether he’s just supposed to ignore collateral damage in the process is told, “You can and you will”?! (That’s a verbatim quote from chapter 192.) I thought this agency was supposed to hep people and keep them safe!

We get smatterings of interactions between Hawks and the HPSC, and though we don’t get anything from there side we’re getting that every questionable or deplorable thing Hawks does or needs to get on the LoV’s good side is acknowledged and endorsed by the HPSC. “I’m in contact with the shady guy who loosed that monster in the middle of the city with no warning. He wants me to kill the other top hero who just recovered and to join the definitely-dangerous doomsday cult, and maybe THEN he’ll let me in on what’s going on.” Ok, sure. Nothing morally questionable about any of that...

Jump to chapter 267. Up to this point, this note about Hawks’ past has been hinted at, but is here finally confirmed with a chilling detail. Kids who enter hero work may get special coaching by their families when they’re young, but the threshold for entering formal government-regulated training isn’t until 14/15 years of age in the last few years of their education. Chapter 267 shows a little Keigo Takami no older than about 8, at best, being told by the HPSC that he doesn’t get to call himself by his own name anymore. From now on, he’s going to be a hero, and only a hero, and it’s going to long and hard. Back in 192, two mysterious figures promise the same boy, shown at the same age, that his family will be taken care of.

Whatever circumstances led Keigo’s family to end up in the situation they did, they accepted an offer from a government agency, the HPSC specifically - you can see their headquarters in the flashback - to take away their very young son, take away his identity (and implicitly his family), and groom him to be government tool for the rest of his life - a commitment he had no true say in and that he could not understand at the time.

And it gets worse.

Endeavor works with the HPSC regularly as all heroes have to, but his relationship with them and what they’ll let him get away with gets put into greater question the longer we look at it. He turned to eugenics to create a hero he couldn’t be and surpass All Might for the sole purpose of satisfying his own ego. He bought a girl from her family and forced her to have his kids, then subjected those kids to cruel training - passing over each one until he got to one he felt he could work with -, beat his wife as well, and some kind of action he was involved in lead to the death of his oldest son. While the domestic abuse could be hidden, the death of his child cannot. What’s more, shortly after (very shortly if timelines add up), his youngest son received a permanent burn scar on the heat-resistant side of his face and his wife was locked away in a mental institution for a decade.

And the HPSC never bats an eye. They could take away his license. They could call the police. They could have exposed him to the public or at least ordered an investigation. But they didn’t. On some level they knew, and they did nothing.

But it might be even worse.

I skipped over this detail chronologically, but it’s the linchpin for just how corrupt the HPSC might be if all this lines up. Looking at the Endeavor Agency Arc, we get a seemingly random confrontation with a guy called Starservant (chapter 243) who prattles off a prophecy about the Dark Lord returning and his Dark Stars conspiring against humanity which will bring the world to ruin. He calls out Endeavor specifically as the shining light that beckons the darkness, but this sounds an awful lot like the deranged wailing of some crazy old man, right?

Let’s jump over an entire series now to the spin-off serial Vigilantes. This series takes place in the same universe at an earlier point in the timeline of the main story - and take an extra little note that there’s an underlying subplot about unusual drugs meant to enhance quirks (that often result in mutating the user) and that someone may be using them to clandestinely run experiments on humans from the shadows. 

In chapter 59 we get flashbacked to Eraserhead, Midnight, and Present Mic’s childhood experiences at UA, and we’re also introduced to Oboro Shirakumo - their fellow classmate and dear friend. We get a few chapters establishing their relationships and their goals and dream for the future until chapter 63 where things make a drastic turn in tone. On what should be a routine hero training exercise as third-year seniors a giant, monstrous villain shows up and attacks while the UA kids are escorting a class of preschoolers around town.

In the scuffle, though Aizawa is able to single-handedly come out victorious, in the fight and debris Shirakumo is struck in the head by falling concrete as he tries to lead the children to safety and dies on the scene. Go back to main series, chapter 254-255, the villain Kurogiri is detained but the police are having no luck questioning him. They get a sliver of a lead and call in Present Mic and Eraserhead to interrogate him, and it’s confirmed that Kurogiri was a human experiment of Doctor Ujiko - the mad scientist bio-engineer responsible for the Nomu and outspokenly faithful servant of All-for-One - created from the corpse of their dearly departed Oboro.

Here’s the kicker, though, in Japan they don’t often bury their dead. Funerals next to never include an open casket - the loved one is cremated first, their ashes placed on an funeral shrine with their picture, and the loved ones mourn there. That means Ujiko needed to get to the body before it was cremated - which requires some fast work; but that’s not even the worst of it. Jumping one last time to chapter 270, Ujiko recognizes Mic as a friend of Shirakumo and boldly admits the entire time he was after Aizawa for his quirk.

That attack more than 10 years ago was premeditated. This goes back a long ways. How did he find this information - about their quirks and their movements and where to find them? How did Ujiko get the body out of the morgue without anyone catching him? Could it be the same way his fellow servants of All-for-One were able to get into the USJ? And the Training Camp? And the Yakuza raid? All-for-One has a lot of connections for his faithful servants to move about freely in this world of heroes despite every effort being take to stop them. 

Somehow, these shining lights can never seem to outrun the dark no matter how hard they try, as if there’s a conspiracy against them. But a conspiracy of that level would have to come all the way from the top! If you wanted to get poetic about it, you could even say the stars themselves are conspiring against us. But that old man was crazy, right? If he wasn’t crazy - if he was right at all - then no matter what way you slice it:

This is bad.

[littlemisssquiggles]

RWBY Musings #81: The Queen of Thieves. What if…Weiss Schnee will have to defend her family against Robyn Hill in the next episode?

Anon-ninja asked “Do you think Oscar might train with ironwood in the next episode? Maybe ironwood will eventually question him in private? That could be used ass a way to get this boy back into the story”

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Squiggles Answers:

No; not this family, sadly to say…

I mean the other one we don’t like to talk about.

This was originally just going to be just an answer post regarding my favourite best boy: Oscar Pine, however along the way it turned into a short musing post sharing this squiggle meister’s thoughts and theories for next episode, especially where Weiss is concerned. I don’t usually muse about the Weiss-cream but it’s actually an interesting small headcanon. 

Missing Little Prince

But before I get to talking about Weiss. Let’s talk about my boy again, just to answer the anon-ninja who asked me this question. If I can be honest with you anon-chan, I actually hope that's not the case. 

While I'm eager for Oscar to at least appear once next episode (like possibly in another memory flashback courtesy of Ruby to highlight the conclusion to her brief talk with Oscar from V7CH3), I honestly would better prefer for Oscar's training with Ironwood to be its own episode since Oscar could honestly use his own focus episode at this point.  Following his treatment during V6 and his treatment in the recent episode of V7, I am seriously very tired of the Writers overlooking him. Not saying that to sound disrespectful in any kind of way or to rag on the Writers but… I really need to ask---is Oscar a character or not? More than that; is he REALLY a part of the main cast and hero team or not? 

I’d like to think of Oscar as being in the same class as JNR. He’s part of the deuteroganist group whose story and development is just as important as our protagonist team. Or at least, it’s supposed to be?

 But I’m not sure anymore. I understand that good, exciting things were promised for the precious freckled farm boy turned little prince for this volume and while I’m trying my goshdarndiggity hardest to be as patient as I can be in anticipating that, apologies but my patience was surely tested last episode and it made me think back to V6 where I had a similar experience with Oscar’s story---anticipating him having a great season only for it to fall flat in the end with his overall treatment somehow being worse than V5. At least that’s how it was for me. Not speaking for all Pineheads here. This is only my opinion.

That being said, giving how the story went down last episode and given that CH5 was written by the same CRWBY Writer---Eddy Rivas---who mentioned that CH4 was his ‘baby’ chapter too, I have a feeling that we’re more likely to have a direct continuation to plot points established in that episode.

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Men On Mission

Now that our heroes have been rewarded their huntsmen licenses and were shown viewing the mission board at the end of the last episode, I feel like the next few episodes---CH5 to CH7 or just CH5 and 6---will be its own little mini-arc; just like how Brunswick Farms was its own little mini-arc back in V6.

I’m curious if the next few episodes might showcase our heroes going on missions around Solitas according to the mission board highlighted in CH4. I want to pay especial attention to the Solitas Mission board since it might provide a clue as to where JNR_RWBY might be next episode. 

Okay, so according to the Mission board: there are two escort missions and two perimeter defence missions that are open. The remaining two missions: Search and Rescue and Bounty are stated as “In Progress” so I’m assuming that those two missions already have huntsmen assigned to them.

I’m curious to know if that’s the mission that General Ironwood discussed with Clover beforehand.

Before Ironwood met with JNR_RWBY, he was last seen discussing something with Clover where he mentioned that he needed him on the ground while warning him to be subtle since if the people saw too many huntsmen around, it might attract trouble with the Grimm.

Speaking of, can I just take this moment to address how much Ironwood has grown here? I found it really ironic hearing Ironwood discussing subtly and the attraction of the Grimm with Clover since I still remember that this was the same man who wanted to bring the full force of the Atlesian Army to Vale and went behind his own colleague and fellow headmaster of many years to do so. You know what that’s called? Growth. It’s just a nice little parallel and call back to V2 that I appreciate.

So yeah, I’m assuming that Ironwood must’ve deployed Clover down in Mantle specifically to investigate what happened to Forest. 

Ironwood told Clover not to take Marrow since he’s probably not the most subtle or discreet of the team. Poor good boy. So I’m guessing that Clover must’ve taken Harriet instead since she was absent along with him in the end. 

Pfft…I almost want to make a wise crack about Clover taking Harriet as his mission partner for good luck since…y’know…she’s based off the Hare from the Tortoise and the Hare fable and y’know…rabbits represent good luck and all that jazz.

Anyways I’m going to assume that Clover and Harriet were deployed to one of the missions on the Board. Probably the Search and Rescue one since it’s slated as in progress. Since Tyrian has been confirmed to be targeting public leaders who speak out against Atlas, I’m curious if another public leader was reported missing in Mantle and Clover and Harriet were tasked in finding them and rescuing them if necessary. That’s pretty my hunch in regards to that.

Resuming talk about CH5, since the thumbnail for CH5 highlighted Robyn Hill making her debut next episode, I'm assuming that it'll continue from where CH4 left off. As I said, CH4 ended with the heroes taking up missions in Solitas.

We know that Jaune already accepted one of the Escort Mission with the pre-schoolers. That leaves the remaining three open missions on the board to be divided between Ren, Nora, Blake, Yang, Weiss and Ruby. 

Elm also hinted that one of the Perimeter Defence missions involving a lose Sayber needing two huntsmen for the job. 

So that leaves me to believe that the second Escort and the second Perimeter Defence mission on the board will probably require 2 huntsmen each depending on their difficulty level. 

That being said, here’s my squiggly theory for the next two episode mini-arc:

CH5 will be another mission-focused episode with JNR_RWBY each deployed on separate missions across Solitas. Since Jaune will be down in Mantle with his respective escort mission, my hunch is that Ren and Nora (Flower Power) will be joining him down in Mantle since they are the two who will be designated to tackle the Perimeter Defence Mission involving the lose Sayber down in the sewers.

This leaves Team RWBY. Since the season has been going really hard with them since episode 1, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Yang and Blake (Bumblebee) are going to tag team for the second Perimeter Defence mission. This leaves Ruby and Weiss (Ice flower) with the second Escort mission which I’m going to assume is up in Atlas.

That’s my best guess.

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Queen Protects King?

Okay, now this is where things are really going to get headcanon-y. It’s also the part involving Weiss.

What if …for V7CH5, Ruby and Weiss take the Escort Mission and the person who they find out they’ll have to begrudgingly escort to wherever in Solitas is none other than Jacques Schnee and possibly Whitley too

Imagine…the look on Weiss’ face if she were to discover that her very first official mission after becoming an officially licensed huntress basically involves her working for her father and little brother---to be at their beck and call as she and Ruby play huntsmen body guards to protect them and escort them wherever in Solitas?

I think an episode like this would actually be pretty damn fascinating to watch play out, don’t you think? I think it would be great to see how Weiss would react to doing something like this especially after the awesometacular way she told off Jacques last episode. Not to mention that this could potentially be Weiss’ first time seeing Whitley again…now as an official huntress ESPECIALLY since the last time the two spoke, he basically told her that her becoming a huntress was a useless career path.

How did the young Schnee boy describe it? Barbaric? Beneath people like him and his father. I wonder just how barbaric and beneath Whitley it will be as he watches his sister use her abilities to protect his life before his very eyes? He might learn a thing or two.  

Besides I’m also curious to see how Whitley would react to seeing Weiss in action as a trained huntress; honed in her skills especially when she summons her knight. I wonder how Weiss would react having to protect her father and brother as part of her job. Seriously, I really would love for an episode like this.

And y’know what? I think it could potentially even be in the cards. My rationale for thinking an episode like this could potentially be canon is because, CH5 showed Robyn Hill in the thumbnail.

Robyn Hill is supposedly RWBY’s version of Robin Hood, right? Her and her Happy Huntresses are the RWBY-verse’s rendition of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, right?

That being said; wasn’t Robin Hood’s theme that he stole from the rich to give to the poor? Wasn’t there not a scene in the Robin Hood animated film by Disney where Robin and his Merry Men worked together to rob the greedy Prince John of his richies while he was on an excursion out of his kingdom carrying a chest of gold?

Robyn Hill will appear next episode. One of the missions in Solitas is an escort mission. 

What if…and this is a big if…CH5 will involve Ruby and Weiss tag-teaming for a mission to escort Jacques (and maybe Whitley) on some kind of business mission where they’re supposed to make a deal and collect money or something and during the mission, the group are not only ambushed by the Grimm but also Robyn Hill and her Happy Huntresses who arrived to pilfer from Jacques and take back what he’s exploited from the people of Mantle?

I know this sounds like farfetched idea but maybe I could be onto something. I’d like to think of Jacques as RWBY’s version of the Prince John apart from his double role as the Wicked Queen in Weiss’ Snow White story.

 I also think it could be pretty cool. 

Watching Weiss be a huntress and protect her family.  I know Weiss doesn’t necessarily need to prove anything to Jacques or even Whitley. However, I still think it’d be pretty awesome to see her in action and have Jacques be there to watch his cage bird soar high and kick ass to protect his sorry ass. 

I more like this idea as being a nice little segway into developing Weiss’ side of things. I’d especially love an episode like this so that we can have like a follow-up on what Jacques told Weiss about her dear mother. 

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Weeping Willow

First of all, I know Jacques has already been depicted as the scum of the Earth but how much lower can this man sink if he resorts to using his own ‘wife’s’ disease (I’ll come back to that in a minute) as a means of guilt-tripping Weiss into coming home or worse, make her feel bad for rightfully leaving home after how he treated her last time.

What’s noteworthy about that was Weiss’ reaction to learning about how her mother might have felt upon her departure.

This is intriguing to me since…not to make it sound bad in any kind of way but, it gave the impression that Weiss actually cares for her mother’s well-being which is…kind of new to me since the last time we saw Weiss in V4, she acted rather indifferent to her mother’s existence.

We never even saw them interact. I know she talked about her in V5, giving some more perspective on how things really were in Schnee Manor. But this is the first time I’ve seen Weiss show genuine concern for her mother and I feel like if she were to see Whitley again, she might be tempted to probe him with questions about the state of their mother.

“Y’know…your mother was devastated. Didn’t leave her room for days. Y’know how she gets when she’s upset?”

Y’know how she gets when she’s upset?

Huh. That’s an interesting thing for Jacques to imply here. I know he probably mentioned that to sort of hint at the common FNDM theory that Ms Schnee is an alcoholic, like Qrow used to be. However, I feel like there is more to it than that.

The first time we heard of Mama Schnee, the impression given was that she was an alcoholic who mostly spent her days drinking her sorrows away than raising her own children. Now, according to Jacques, she sounds more like an ailing mother and that there might be more to her circumstance than I initially pegged.

Due to this, I’m now inclined to ask the question or rather, make the theory:

What if… Mama Schnee suffers with chronic depression and alcohol is basically her coping mechanism to dealing with her condition as an alternative to seeking the right medical attention and help that she needs. 

Perhaps this could potentially tie in further to Jacques’ abuse of his own wife. Like imagine if...Jacques knew of his wife’s condition and used it as a means of manipulating her further?

Like in the beginning when he was being all nice just to get her to marry him and do what he wants, he used to make his wife feel like she didn’t need help at all because to him she was perfect in his eyes. Until the bomb finally went off and now, Jacques uses his wife’s condition as ammo to guilt his children, among other things?

It’s only a small theory. Like I said, I don’t usually muse about Weiss. But since we will be exploring more of her character and backstory this season, it’d be interesting to what’s in store for us with her and her family when we get into their family affairs. 

For now, I’ll just hoping that I’m correct about her and Ruby encountering Robyn Hill and the Happy Huntresses for the first time while defending Jacques of all people. I think that could be really cool to see. But as always, for now, it’s only a theory.

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 So to conclude...

Now that I’ve mused mostly over Weiss’ side of things for CH5, as for Ruby:

...Well technically Ruby has currently become the main driver for anything to do with Oscar since the subplot involving her deceit if Ironwood is shared with Oscar. 

The most I’m hoping for with CH5 as far as Oscar is concerned is that it’ll show the conclusion to his talk with Ruby from since CH3.

That’s mostly what I’m hoping for since...honestly I 'm starting to think that Oscar might be absent from the next episode again. At least, I don’t think the plot will focus on him as much as JNR_RWBY unless it’s in flashback mode. 

Similar to Brunswick Farm in RWBY V6, I feel like CH5 and CH6 are probably going to be a mini arc involving our heroes being huntsmen in the field which will lead into them encountering and possibly clashing with the likes of Robyn Hill and her Happy Huntresses.

I genuinely feel like we might not see Oscar training with Ironwood til CH7---the midseason episode. Heck I feel like we might not even see Oscar again at all in the plot until CH7. 

Then again, as I said, this is only my best assumption here and who’s to say I’ll be correct?  I’m just a humble squiggle meister sharing her thoughts and theories as per usual. Take it as you will, fam.  

More Squiggles’ RWBY Content

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~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

[kaypeace21]

What’s ur theories or what you want to see throughout season 3 for stranger things and what can you see for will for his arc

I literally would not be able to discuss every s3 theory I have in one post XD. But I can specify what theories/hopes I have for Will’s story arc in s3.

1) I want Will’s (not supernatural) PTSD to be addressed, as well as he deep-seeded  abandoment issues(caused by Lonnie), and low self-esteem to be addressed. He probably blames himself for Lonnie leaving, and causing his family’s financial issues (which will only worsen because of the new mall). Not to mention Will probably blames himself for Bob’s death- the only cannon romantic love interest in Joyce’s life, since Lonnie. Will clearly has a low self esteem and when people ‘leave him’ he blames himself entirely. A good indicator of this, was when Jonathan says he has friends. And Will is confused and says … 

This in itself is extremely telling of how Will views himself. After s1 despite all the kids, teens, and adults doing everything they could to save him (risking their lives to do so) he still doesn’t understand why any of them actual would want to hang around him- he doesn’t see ‘his appeal- his worth’. He doesn’t like himself . He sees himself as a burden, just like his dad perceived him. And because of his abandonment issues, and somewhat iffy social skills, he probably assumes in both s1-2 they saved him out of obligation. And because of his abandonment issues,  he’s constantly feeling like a burden and always over-apologizing.  And since Will already feels like a burden, because of his dad, his PTSD,  and the upside-down incident he’s constantly apologizing .There was a reason Will didn’t tell Joyce what he saw in s1! He yells “I’m sorry “ and snuggles into his mom when he’s trying to explain the mindflayer to Hopper and Joyce. And Joyce says something indicative to his character (before anything supernatural occurs).

Joyce: “You feeling any better? Will?”

Will: “Huh? Yeah… Sorry.”

Joyce: “Hey… what’d we talk about, huh? You gotta stop it with the sorry’s.”

Will : “Yeah, sorry. I mean… yeah, I know.”

This illustrates that Joyce has already discussed the fact that Will over-apologizes . But Will still does it very often, even after these 2 separate discussions. 

I think in s3 we’ll see a cumulative reaction to how Will’s experiences have shaped him in a very sad and problematic way. Dustin starts hanging out with Steve, Lucas has a girlfriend, Jonathan will probably be too busy trying to financially support the family/dating Nancy, and to top it all off he then has a fight with Mike about not being “ kids anymore”. I think Mike will lash out, but Will will take the argument much harsher than he usually would (because all of his insecurities are piling up one after the other).So through Will’s perception, he just feels alone and like he’s being abandoned all over again, by the people who he thought would never do this to him.

2) Will’s destroys Castle Byers (Theory). I actually predicted here, that Will would destroy Castle Byers(right after his fight with Mike)- before the track list even came out. I thought this would be the case, because of Castle Byers symbolic importance. Which is why hopefully it’s Will,  not some other force that destroys it.

Will uses castle Byers as the one place he feels safe while in the upside down, or just on a daily basis. But it’s still a reminder of his deep-seeded abandonment issues. The day Will’s dad left , Jonathan and Will built Castle Byers all night in the pouring rain. Jonathan saying “we just had to finish it no matter what”. Will was the one who made-up Castle Byers in his imagination, and drew it, before Lonnie even left. He drew the sign “all friends welcome”, because with Lonnie around he never felt ‘welcome’ in his own home. So then when Will goes to Castle Byers in s3 at night in the pouring rain … he’s probably thinking that Mike (and his friends) are going to abandon him just like his dad did! 

Will wants time to stop, to regain the childhood he lost, but he can’t cry about it now -since he’s officially a teenager . And everyone else is moving on. He feels like he’s being abandoned in a “ teenage wasteland”

So I think Will may in a fit of rage destroy Castle Byers (probably using his fire powers). Similar to how El  had a psychic fit and accidentally destroyed all the windows in the cabin.

However unlike the El scene, it quickly turns into something empowering.We’d be sad. But this in itself would be Will at least trying to symbolically move on from his father’s influence, and trying to overcome his abandonment issues. Plus s3 is all about growing up- and if Will destroys the symbol of his childhood-abandonment-issues it would symbolically indicate his change in character as he accepts that he’s now a teenager . As well as how he’ll refuse to be a victim ever again (from his dad, the mindflayer, the bullies, etc)!

 Rain in itself can signify “purification of the soul”. I don’t think all of his issues will magically go away- but it’ll be the start of his journey of acceptance & self-love.

3) I want: El to find Will in the woods right after he destroys Castle Byers.

I’ve described in a previous post that based on the symbolism and iconography of the show why Will & El represent Yin and Yang , read more here. One of the many symbols of Yin and Yang is - Yin being representative of feminity/water & Yang being representative of masculinity/fire.

Will is always referenced with fire in both the comic and show . He drew his wizard character shooting fireballs in s1 and in the first ep he rolled the dice and yelled “fireball”, he had the ‘shadow monster ‘ exorcised out of him with fire, and in the comic he shoots a demogorgan and yells “fireball”. El’s element or ‘substance would be the opposite of fire, “water” - the sensory deprivation tanks are filled with water, the void floor is covered in water, she escaped the lab through a drainage pipe, looked at a reflection of herself in a puddle and cased ripples in it using her powers,  in s3 is shown sinking in water and falling out of a vanishing tub, etc.

Yin (water) and Yang (fire) have to  be “in perfect balance” (if one’s presence is stronger than the other)  “catastrophes will occur” and there will be an “imbalance between the cosmic and human realms”.  And throughout the 1st two seasons that’s exactly what happened! If El was shown prominantely then Will was gone or unconscious (or vice versa). There is a symbolic tear between the real world and upside down (because of this imbalance). And having them both be there - as a lit fire of castle byers burn, and rain pours would indicate -that their both starting to find balance. And that they’ll finally team up because of the supernatural threat.

Not to mention the last time Will was at his lowest and went to Castle Byers who found him and even read aloud his mantra/ sign of “all friends welcome”? Right, El!

 Not to mention in the very 1st episode, the boys went out in the rain to find Will, but found El instead (when she was also at her most scared and isolated). 

So it would be ! PURE POETIC CINEMA! DAMIT! They should do it! (El’s house is even in the woods, it all makes sense)! XD

4. I want : El lying for Will

Millie said about s3, that the biggest lie was that “friends don’t lie” ... “everybody lies”. El is still learning what it’s like to ‘be a person in the real world’ and understanding the complexity of familial, romantic, and platonic relationships. And although it’s admirable to never want to lie- it’s much more complicated in the real world. Will (who has very little control of his powers) will probably want to keep it a secret- afraid of how his friends perception of him will change if they knew. So El obliges and keeps Will’s secret- her first lie. 

5) I want: Will’s family dynamics evolving

I want to see the love Will has for his mother and brother (and vice versa). But I also want to see the growing pains involved with Will becoming a teenager, striving for independence, and dealing with the supernatural threat and his clear mental health issues. I want to see Joyce, Jonathan, and Will all grow as people- together. -Also Hopper & Will scenes

6) I want: Will to lash out and get angry

Will constantly fears abandonment and because of this he almost never lashes out- he mostly keeps everything bottled up inside. And regardless of whether it’s justified or not- he deserves to have an emotional outburst- where he SCREAMS about all of his frustrations.

7) I want El and Will talking about /experiencing their shared trauma & how they feel about El being the one who first opened the gate

I want to see happy moments for El and Will. But I also want to see El and Will in normal real-life scenarios/situations in s3. Making it more obvious the trauma of their abusive father figures still affects them deeply, and how their PTSD, quiet nature, powers, and the fact that they never had real-childhoods, causes them to feel more socially isolated and depressed than their peers. As they perceive themselves as nothing but burdens and “freaks” to their loved ones , since they’ll never feel “normal”. But they’ll learn to rely on each other.

-Plus how does Will feel about El opening the gate? El in s1 called herself a “monster” and when she couldn’t find Barb and Will, she felt so much guilt- she had to go to the bathroom to cry. Since then Will has had years of his life stolen, gotten Ptsd, possessed, burned alive, (technically) became a murderer, and was forever mutated (we’ll get to that last point later). So I’m just curious how they both feel about the whole ‘gate-situation’?

8) Byler scenes, and Will interacting more with all of his friends (and seeing the distinctions in all of those relationships and how Mike/Will’s dynamic differers from his other guy-friends, or even Will &Max’s friendship). And just having strong platonic relationships. And (not platonic) byler dynamics. I also want to see how he interacts with strangers/bullies in ‘normal’ situations.

9) Theory: I already explained here, that Will, will have a ‘dark phoenix’ moment at the mall releasing his very own mindflayer to protect his friends (right as the US government comes in to see everything).

10/11) Will and El are kidnapped by the government -theory here. However, El willing exposes her identity in order to go with Will and protect him - theory here.

*gifs/pics not mine

[toooldforfandom-liveblogs]

RWBY - After the Fall: Prologue

Obviously, SPOILERS AHEAD. If you haven’t read the book, probably skip this post. This is going to be more of a chapter-by-chapter liveblog than going through each sentence, mainly to preserve my sanity.

What I know: There were some spoilers going around but I think I skipped most of the serious ones. I did read a leaked page that was going around some months ago but I can hardly remember anything about it. So, here’s what I know:

Velvet is the PoV.

Coco is gay.

Fox (I think?) is blind.

They are studying in Vacuo

The cover art is really bad.

Oh, and there’s a character called “Carmine” that looks like Alolan Yang. Other than that I’m completely blind.

Apparently the book is canon (rather than “secondary canon” like the official manga) so my main hope for After the Fall is for it to give us information about things that could influence the show. I doubt it’ll be a game-changer, spinoffs never are, but at least some of it mattering in the long run would be nice.

Okay, without further ado, let’s do this!

Prologue

The main problem about secondary media is that they need to make me care about their main characters and their tribulations even if they are inconsequential for the main story that I actually like. The rational and objective argument against this would be “it should be able to stand on its own and be judged on its own merits” but I can’t claim to be objective.

So, did the prologue manage to sell me on team CFVY with Velvet as the main character? And the answer is: Eh.

It starts with Velvet thinking about how much everything about Vacuo sucks: its animals, its climate, its sand, even its people (more on that later) suck. And she never stops.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the book ends with Velvet learning to love Vacuo or something along those lines if only because of how frequently the prologue insists in telling me how much she hates the place and the circumstances that led her team to Vacuo. Which serves to set a mystery: why Vacuo?

It’s after the first of these ruminations that the prologue reveals its biggest surprise: Remnant has fauna besides dogs and birds! I’ve always complained about how live animals mostly don’t exist in the show so it’s nice that at least they get to be included here, the magic of not having to create 3d models~. They are just one more thing to hate about Vacuo , because they are giant murderous crabs that are trying to eat them, but it’s something.

The reveal of Fox’s semblance is a surprise too but in a “huh, that’s neat” way. I’m not sure I understand how it works though. It’s described as “teamspeak” but only Fox is shown “sending” thoughts. Can he hear the thoughts of his teammates or is it a one-way thing?

“Velvet thumbed through the images stored in the camera, looking for just the right one to help her friends. Professor Port, blunderbuss raised and aimed at a flock of Griffons in Amity Arena. Weiss Schnee, in a rare unguarded moment, with a giant glowing arm and sword hanging from a glyph floating behind her. Green-haired Reese Chloris leaning on her hoverboard after she and the rest of Team ABRN (Auburn) had defeated a Death Stalker.”

Velvet’s weapon is both cool and unpractical. The fight is mostly over when Coco is ambushed by a giant crab and Velvet has to stop to consider which of the weapons is the most appropriate. While Coco is fighting for her life. And then it transitions into a flashback. While Coco is fighting for her life.

But honestly, I don’t mind. The flashback is a lot more interesting that what’s going on.

“The sky was full of the wings and cries of Griffons, terrible flying Grimm monsters that had carried off several classmates and tourists, shattering the peace of the festival”

The fall of Beacon was terrible, the show made it clear, but it’s interesting to read how terrible it was for everyone.

“ In the last hour, they had seen their friend Penny Polendina torn apart by her own weapons. ”

WHY MUST YOU REMIND ME

Anyway, I’m not sure how I feel about the flashback. I love that it uses the bit between Ruby and Weiss leaving the docks and them arriving at the tower; it doesn’t feel as forced as I would have thought. But, I have the niggling thought it shouldn’t have been used so soon, let me learn more about CFVY before using the big guns that are the RWBY team.

It does gives us more characterization for Velvet though so I can’t complain too much. So far her character is: Dislikes sand (you know who else didn’t like sand? can’t wait for Darth Scarlatina) Vacuo and has an enormous desire to prove herself (it doesn’t help that she gets a bit coddled by her team). It’s not much but it should be enough to drive her character through the plot.

“Team RWBY hadn’t returned after the fall of Beacon, and no one knew exactly where Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang were now.”

This is a year after the fall of Beacon so I think CFVY are a bit into the future, maybe a couple of months. Team RWBY has done nothing too noteworthy so far in Atlas.

Moving on, Velvet finally chooses a weapon (from Fox, which makes all the sense in the world because she can take all the pictures she wants from her teammates. Actually, shouldn’t it be always the first choice and summoned ASAP and only afterwards think if the situation requires something else? Hm.) but instead of going to help her friends, she goes help an injured person.

“They’ll be fine for now, and besides, we don’t leave people behind. Not anymore.”

Which… makes sense for a huntress, even if the sentiment is somewhat heavy-handed. Also, is this is a reference to “I May Fall”?

There’s a day when all courage collapses And our friends turn and leave us behind

Because if it is, all is forgiven.

The short fight that follows is… short, but it does its job to sell me that Velvet can fight without blowing through her entire picture album. I hoped her moves would match the one time I have seen Fox fight (in “Breach”) since she’s using his fighting style but it’s mostly jumping around.

And then they meet Slate, who is who I was talking about when I mentioned that Vacuo’s people suck. Every time Vacuo is mentioned in the show it’s accompanied with something about how there are only thieves and scoundrels, that surviving is above everything else. And every time I think “it’s an entire kingdom, how can you know” but I let it go because it could be an in-universe stereotype.

But nope.

“Surviving is what we do here, or don’t,” Slate went on. “We look out for one another, but if it’s down to your life or someone else’s, you choose your own. No hard feelings.”

She’s the first person from Vacuo the book introduces and she’s just like everyone said Vacuans were. Welp. It reminds me of Star Wars and how secondary characters get their characterization through their species and/or planet. A hard place with hard people *yawn*

On the bright side, the encounter allows Coco to show her over the top personality and it’s amazing.

“We’re Shade Academy’s newest star pupils. Team CFVY. I’m Coco, and that’s Fox, Velvet, and Yatsuhashi.” Coco pointed out her teammates.”

“Fortunately, I had this broken wagon,” Slate went on. “I stayed with it and hoped for the best.” “That’s us,” Coco said. “The best have arrived.”

Coco has a strong enough personality that it makes me wish the book was from her PoV. Not that Velvet is not interesting, but she seems to be largely passive, mostly complaining in her own head. It is her start point so I’m hoping she gets better by the end of the novel.

I think the prologue does a good job introducing the characters and the main threads the book will follow: Velvet really dislikes Vacuo, and the second flashback solidifies the idea that something happened that made everyone go to Shade. The way the prologue ends, with Velvet once again asking herself why they had to leave Beacon, makes it clear that it’ll be important through the book.

So, what happened? I don’t have the slightest. They probably desired to continue their education and Fox is from there so that’s a vote for the continent, but did Velvet never complain?

“I don’t know how safe we’ll be,” Slate said. “Something odd’s been going on.” “What do you mean?” Coco asked. “Let’s just say we aren’t one big happy family lately. Not anymore. But there’s time for that later. I’m taking the big one. Looks like she might be carrying egg sacs.” Slate scampered off toward the dead mother crab and then carved out a hefty chunk of meat.”

A hint of a main plot has appeared! There was some already, with CFVY having been sent by Shade to defend a settlement being attacked (by Grimm?), but this looks more personal. Are they going to get involved in Slate’s problems, with Velvet learning to appreciate Vacuo and its people thanks to Slate and maybe also learning how to stand up for herself earning the respect of her teammates (that she always had but she didn’t know)? Eh, probably. But at least it should be fun to read.

Random thoughts

“Fox spoke aloud only when they were in mixed company, or when he really wanted people to listen.” but in the prologue he always uses his power. Even with Slate when talking about the crab meat. It’s like the editor did a Search and Replace of “Fox said” and replaced “said” with “sent”.

Since Velvet’s semblance is “photographic memory”, I thought the flashbacks were part of that, especially considering there are two in a very short amount of time. But, the flashbacks go from third-person limited to a more omniscient point of view so I’m not sure if that theory tracks.

Glynda finally reappears! Poor character, relegated to flashbacks and non-speaking media.

One way to separate fanfiction from official works is that official spinoffs always explains concepts (Aura, Semblances, etc) that should be clear if you have ever watched the show. But who would pick up this book without having watched RWBY?

CFVY has been in Vacuo for more than a year but Velvet’s character reads like she’s suffering from culture shock. It’s like Myers wrote the character and only afterwards decided how long they had been there.

[psyga315]

Rewriting Pooh’s Adventures

With everyone getting obsessed with rewriting, I decided to rewrite myself. However, I’m going with an old topic I used to touch up upon: Pooh’s Adventures.

Basic gist: Take a movie, insert clips of Winnie the Pooh, done. However, Pooh’s Adventures ends up having such a huge meta-plot involving villains having apprentices or the reasons behind the team ups that I can’t help but see some sort of nugget worth salvaging. So that’s what I’m gonna do. Rewrite Pooh’s Adventures to be a more streamlined story.

First off, some guidelines:

1.       It won’t be in video format. While Pooh’s Adventures is mainly shown through video, I feel like it would most benefit from something like written prose or comic format. Unless Sony Vegas suddenly becomes cheaper to access, the most people will have is a defunct application and a scramble to find an application that isn’t a free trial or overtly complex.

2.       No crapton of characters. I made a parody of Pooh’s Adventures where Pooh had 100 people that followed him, only for the number to get quickly decimated to about twenty or so. I’m not exaggerating the number at all. I remember at least one Adventure where a character outright states the absurd number of 78. As in “It’ll be just the 78 of us”. And that number grows with each character added. So, obviously we’re gonna stick to a low number, especially starting out.

3.       The Adventures in question are multi-chaptered “Episodes” of a long season. Not sure the approximate length, but 12 episodes seems like a good guideline.

With that out of the way, let’s begin:

This is a long post so...

PROLOGUE

It’ll be simple: Pooh and his friends at the 100 Acre Woods sans Christopher Robin. The set up might be a re-telling of Pooh’s Grand Adventure, but during their trip to Skull, they find Bowser there and he captures them, establishing his connection to Pooh.

EPISODE 1

Bowser then sells them to Queen Grimhilde who has them work alongside Snow White. Grimhilde has Ratigan and Fidget who keep tabs on her for Bowser. Prince Charming ends up getting replaced by Ash Ketchum, who had been separated from his friends as they faced a “legendary Pokemon”. And this inevitably gets to crossover shipping between Ash Ketchum and Snow White as she slowly realizes that Ash is the person she’s been wishing for, though Ash has cold feet about committing to a relationship, especially when he still wants to go on journeys.

Pooh is, for the most part, that kind of spectator protagonist, as are his friends. They witness the journey rather than partake in it. Of course, sometimes the characters take a course of action, like Tigger who Grimhilde easily manipulates into hunting down Snow White in trade for freeing him and his friends. This drives an already huge wedge in between Tigger and Rabbit and makes a conflict for Pooh on whether to trust one of his closest friends. Pooh, while not taking an active role, is going to be the most affected by these adventures.

The episode ends as usual, with Grimhilde dying, albeit the lighting bolt that broke the cliff is from Pikachu’s Thunder attack. Ash has a guilt trip over murdering someone in the heat of the moment (he realized he does love Snow White, but was too late to save her, at first) that he shut himself away. It’s here that he encounters newly appointed Conscience, Jiminy Cricket, who serves as Ash’s companion for his B-plots. Yeah, Ash is the deuteragonist for the story, at least for this first season. And yes, I do mean season.

Bowser, for now at least, is this overarching villain who always enters Pooh’s life in one way or another. Mostly through his associates or allies. As foreshadowing to his eventual final fight, Ratigan gets slightly angry, only for Fidget to calm him down and the two retreat. Upon hearing that Grimhilde is dead, Bowser mourns a bit for her before he mutters: “He won’t be happy to hear this”…

EPISODE 2

With Pooh and friends now freed from Grimhilde’s grasp, they go on a journey to find home. This lands them in France where they grab the interest of an inventor named Maurice, who instantly adores and wants to help them. They soon meet his daughter Belle who gripes about this man named Gaston and you know where this is going.

Ash, meanwhile, upon the advice from Jiminy, seeks to try and find someone to regain his strength. He finds Gaston and, upon hearing how he’s a hero to the town, effectively becomes a second LeFou and hangs on his every word. Though it isn’t until Ash eavesdrop on a conversation between Gaston and an old judge named Frollo that not only is Gaston a dick, but that Frollo, like Ratigan, is working under Bowser.

Gaston quips about how Frollo supposedly died at Notre Dame, only for him to chuckle and go “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”, all while he seemingly holds onto a wooden talisman. Ash tries to confront Gaston, only for him to beat him up and leave him for dead in the snow. There he’s taken in by the Enchantress and healed up. Jiminy recognizes her as a fey, akin to the Blue Fairy. She warns Ash that what he did against Grimhilde stained his heart with darkness and that it would take an act of equal value to cleanse it. In other words, Ash must revive or otherwise save someone’s life, even indirectly. She also warns him that dark hearts will attract other dark hearts, even if they are slightly tainted. In other words, Ash is gonna find himself bumping into villains more than Pooh will.

Speaking of, the experience at Beast’s Castle helps Pooh to better trust Tigger. There may also be a nod to the Christmas Special where they joke about that time a piano tried to kill them (may be in feature length though) and after Gaston is killed, Ash and Pooh reunite and go off on their next journey. Maurice helps Pooh out by inventing a means for easier transport. “I call it the Wah-gon.”

EPISODE 3

There, they go to Agrabah where we get a little more insight as to the villains as Jafar has a brief chat with a dark fey named Maleficent about Bowser’s plan to get revenge over Grimhilde’s death, with a brief aside that Bowser plans in involving him into the matters.

Meanwhile, Ash and Pooh are easily separated. Ash ends up with Aladdin and is concerned about his thieving considering the Enchantress’s warnings about dark hearts attracting dark hearts. However, he eases up as Aladdin hands a spare piece of bread to a child. Pooh ends up in Jasmine’s palace, where, like before, her father ends up being enamoured with the stuffed animals. Jafar easily spells trouble for Pooh and friends, especially after he mentions someone named Bowser Jr. as a potential suitor for Jasmine.

Details are rough here, but I do want to see a scene where Jasmine initially gets interested in Ash over Prince!Aladdin, if only to hammer in the point that Jasmine loved Aladdin for himself and not for his riches. There’s also a bit where Jafar, after getting the lamp and becoming a sorcerer, gloats to Maleficent about obtaining more power than her. They have a brief clash to which Bowser interferes and tells the two to knock it off. Maleficent merely glares at Jafar and leaves, telling him that pride comes before the fall. Jafar is soon defeated and with a free Genie, he decides to tag along with Pooh, just for a bit while he stretches his legs.

EPISODE 4

There’s a rather light-hearted episode about them encountering Alice and going to Wonderland. For the most part, it’s just a silly episode to break away from the more serious stories. Even a funny bit where Ratigan tries to recruit the Queen of Hearts, only to find she’s off her rocker and goes “okay, screw this, I’m outta here”. Because Wonderland is meant to be wacky. That said, there’s two important bits of information: one, Alice recognizes Pooh as Christopher Robin’s toy and explains about how he’s been busy with school but that he’ll always have Pooh in his heart. And two, Ratigan mutters that he’ll try “the other Queen of Hearts.”

EPISODE 5

Another light-hearted, but more serious story involves Cinderella. Having been through this before, Ash and Pooh resolve to beat up Tremaine, only for the Fairy Godmother to interfere and tell them that by doing so, they’ll increase the dark stain in Ash’s heart. For Tremaine to truly be defeated, they must instead help Cinderella. The group take her advice and leave to help her. The Godmother is happy at this change and waits to help Cinderella in her time of need…

Only for Maleficent to find the Fairy Godmother and kill her, taking her wand. Genie is the one that replaces her in the “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo” sequence (citing he can’t stand to see a pretty woman cry) and stays out of helping her because he knows Pooh and Ash have it handled.

Ratigan is seen “helping” the mice, only to instead tip off Tremaine and her sisters about Cinderella. Pooh and Ash see Ratigan during the “break Cinderella out” scene and confront him, only for him to obtain control of Lucifer through a magical bell given to him by Maleficent. He uses Lucifer to nom at least some of the lesser important mice before being forced to retreat after Ash sics Pikachu at them. Ash still feels a little shook given how the last time he used Pikachu, he murdered someone, but Pooh reassures him that he’s helping Cinderella.

A dark idea I have that might not be featured because this is involving way too much than what is necessary is that Maleficent comes in Cinderella’s time of need and offers her power in trade for her allegiance to Bowser. In a moment of weakness, she accepts and burns the Tremaines, her hair turning blackish brown from the ashes. She goes full coocoo for coco puffs and embraces the teasing nickname she is given, renaming herself Cinder Fall. You can see why I’m not so keen on the idea, though if it sounds like a fun idea to you guys, I might include it.

Instead, Ash confronts Prince Charming (who ends up being the same Prince Charming that would have saved Snow White) about Cinderella and the two trade opinions. Ash tells Prince Charming that if he truly loves Cinderella, he has to be the hero and save her, while Prince Charming tells Ash about how he feels like marriage is an obligation, especially after his father passed away and it was made imperative that he married. Tempted to go further with this, go all Once Upon A Time, and reveal that he’s really the Pauper to the real Prince.

Tremaine also confronts Ash and tells her the backstory she had from the 2015 remake, where she had married Cinderella’s father and tried to make it better for them, only to realize that she had lived in the shadows of both the deceased mother and of Ella herself. She merely wanted to bring joy to their lives only to get slapped in the face and be indirectly told that she’ll never be significant in their lives. Ash shoots her down by pointing to the depressed Cinderella and telling her that rather than bring joy, she brought misery and despair and says how she will merely become a shadow that haunts Cinderella’s dreams.

So, after the glass slipper breaks, rather than bring out the spare, Prince Charming decides to go with his gut and accept Cinderella as the woman he fell in love with. Tremaine has one last talk with Cinderella where she breaks down and apologizes, only for Cinderella to forgive her. However, Tremaine is so wrecked with guilt that she feels like she can’t be forgiven, and goes into exile. Ash realizes how, like him, she too has a dark sliver in her heart that must be overtaken with an act of equal value. He goes off to follow her as Genie parts ways with Pooh to travel the globe.

EPISODE 6

This is a turning point as it’s a two-parter.

Pooh, following on a letter given to him by Alice, goes to the Darling estate, close to where Christopher Robin lives. However, they get a detour when Tinkerbell accidently puts pixie dust on Pooh and the happy thoughts of reuniting with him end up making him fly. Meanwhile, Ash finds Ratigan about to manipulate Tremaine to the dark side and confronts him. Ratigan ambushes them though and takes them to Captain Hook’s ship where they’ll be taken to Bowser to complete their corruption.

Thankfully, Hook has a one-mind track named Peter Pan and is busy fighting him instead of transporting them to Bowser. Once he gets more serious about killing Peter Pan, Ash believes it’s because he lost his hand to him and confronts him on it, only to be told that he lost more than that: Peter Pan killed his wife. Ash, having met him at some point during the battles between him and Hook, doesn’t believe him and that there has to be more to the story than that. Tremaine proves to be an effective lady on the ship and puts the pirates in line, helping Ash escape in the huge climax.

During said climax, rather than getting chased by Tick Tock like in the original, Hook tries to get Peter Pan to admit his murder. Maleficent appears and tells Hook to hurry up. The way she enters via green fiery entrance causes Hook to notice something off and remembers how his wife died: green fire. He asks Maleficent if she killed her. Maleficent gloats about it, telling him that she did kill his wife and blamed Peter Pan for it, if only to ensure that he’d side with Bowser. She reminds him that he’s only Bowser’s lapdog and that he should do as told if it’s good for him. Hook takes out a sword and swears revenge…

And then Maleficent explodes him with magic a la Watchmen. She groans and as Ash tries to fight her, she goes “ENOUGH OF THIS!” and uses the Fairy Godmother’s wand.  

EPISODE 7

Ash wakes up in another timeline where Hook survives, never knowing of Maleficent’s actions, but Peter Pan has grown old and has kids. He tries to tell Hook the truth, only for him to refute Ash. He has gone on too long without revenge and the fact that Peter Pan gets to have a happy life and not him drives him to the deep end. Tremaine, meanwhile, tries to get through to Peter’s son, who has grown upset with his negligence, something she feels like she has done to Cinderella.

Pooh, meanwhile, is on another timeline where it’s Wendy who grew old and had kids. Basically the plots for both Hook and Return to Neverland happen side by side. However, Pooh is able to get through to Hook a lot easier than Ash by simply being dumb enough to let Hook come to the conclusion that Maleficent killed his wife himself. He swears vengeance on them, gives up fighting Peter Pan, and takes them back to London just as Ash returns from his version of Neverland. When the wand is used, it split the realm into two timelines, hence why London is the same. Ratigan is there to try and capture them all right here and now.

Ash retaliates by having Pikachu fight him. The fight is where Ratigan loses his temper and goes all out. The two are evenly matched until Pikachu steals the bell from Ratigan and causes him to fall off of Big Ben (with a little help from Peter Pan, who ends up getting synchronized between Hook!Peter and RTN!Peter thanks to returning to London.) Ash, not wanting to have any more blood on his hands, uses Pooh and his friends as makeshift cushions to save Ratigan and tells him to run. He does… then finds Maleficent who monologued about using the wand for her own purposes. Thinking she wants to overthrow Bowser thanks in part to his anger, he tries to fight Maleficent… only for her to step on him and call him vermin.

Oh, and at one point during this two parter, there’s a nod to Ash never aging from Peter Pan and possibly an implication that Ho-Oh gave him that immortality. And also the words “all of this has happened before and all of it will happen again” becomes a pretty relevant phrase throughout the two-parter and throughout the next couple of episodes.

EPISODE 8

Wendy informs Pooh that Christopher Robin has gone on a field trip to the amazons, so that’s where Pooh and his friends go with the help of Hook’s ship. This is where Hook departs, telling them that if they ever need a lift to simply call him with a repurposed communicator device that Bowser originally gave him. There, Pooh meets Jane, Christopher Robin’s aunt, who is out wanting to research for gorillas. There, he also meets Clayton and Injun Joe. Having met the Neverland Injuns, Pooh assumes both Clayton and Joe are friendly. Spoilers: they’re not.

This time, Ash is with the heroes and Pooh is with the villains. The reason is that Ash sympathizes with Tarzan as he had encountered someone like him before (The Kangaskhan Kid) and also how Tarzan’s savagery had him confused that he’s the one he should be worried about, not Clayton. Meanwhile, Pooh gets friendly with Clayton, while Rabbit and Tigger’s schism gets to its boiling point, causing the two to split. Tigger encounters Ash and finds the gorillas. He then goes to Clayton and tells them the location of the gorillas. This causes Clayton’s true nature to be revealed, to which Rabbit and Tigger just grow further apart.

There’s a brief war between man and gorilla, though in the moment of this, Maleficent appears before Clayton and Injun Joe and tells them to accomplish their gorilla hunting mission for Bowser. To help, Maleficent uses the Fairy Godmother’s wand to turn the in Injun Joe’s heart to turn him into a vicious Beast named Injurin’ Joe. Yes, I’m going with that. However, Joe’s new powers get to him and rather than Clayton hanging himself, as soon as he’s defeated, Joe kills and eats Clayton. Ash fights him, only for Pikachu to come in and save him with a Thunderbolt to the chest, killing Joe. Ash’s flashbacks are triggered and he shakes. Keep in mind that he’s a ten-year-old and had not only witnessed death, but also murdered two people at this point. Needless to say, Ash isn’t all right in the head, but Tremaine comforts Ash. By this point, she’s become the mother of the group, much to Rabbit’s dismay.

Jane informs Pooh that Christopher Robin sadly was lost at sea during a storm. The group is devastated. Too devastated to even move on…

EPISODE 9

A group of sailors hired by Professor Porter escort the group home on the ship, only for the storm to kick up again. Jiminy, in the midst of this, recognizes a whale that attacks them as Monstro, the very same whale that ate Geppetto and Pinocchio. With no time to react, the group is nommed by Monstro and this becomes our Belly of the Whale episode. With the very real fate of being digested by Monstro, Pooh and the others must make do with the fact that Christopher Robin may have died.

Pooh is depressed knowing his journey is for naught, Piglet is upset that Tigger and Rabbit are fighting amongst themselves, Eeyore is depressed because he’s Eeyore, Ash is convinced he’s doomed to be a villain, Tremaine is confronting her cruelty over Cinderella, and overall everyone’s bummed out. That’s when they hear a familiar voice. It’s Christopher Robin! Turns out he isn’t dead, but rather saved by Monstro. Jiminy wonders how that makes sense since the last time he met him, he wasn’t so nice…

Turns out he wasn’t. He expels them out before the newly crowned Queen of the Sea: Ursula.

EPISODE 10

Ursula, after granting the group the ability to breathe out of pity, tells them about how Bowser wanted them alive. Pooh & friends to once again be Bowser’s slave and Ash & Tremaine to become fully corrupted. Ash is tempted to use Pikachu to thundershock her, but that’s when Ursula stops him, pointing out that with each kill he racks up, it’s another stain on his heart. When it becomes fully tainted, he’ll be one with the darkness.

She locks them up and gets ready to meet Bowser. However, Ariel, in the process of trying to nab the trident from Ursula, finds Pooh and his friends, then breaks them out. Ariel ends up being fascinated with Ash and Tremaine given they’re humans while Pooh goes over and takes the Trident from Ursula. The group fight Ursula and manage to defeat her, only for Maleficent to appear and attempt to capture Pooh and his friends… Then Pooh uses Triton’s trident and causes a disruption with the Fairy Godmother’s wand, splitting the group including Maleficent. They split across time once more…

EPISODE 11

Ash awakens in the Fairy Realm where the Enchantress finds Ash. Her not knowing who Ash is confirms he’s in the distant past of Sleeping Beauty. Pooh and the others end up in a cottage where three kindly old ladies and a growing girl take them in, the present time of Sleeping Beauty (the past). And lastly, Maleficent and Tremaine end up at her broken castle in the future (the present).

Let’s break this down:

Ash and the Enchantress come across a beautiful fairy with hawk-like wings. To his surprise, she is Maleficent. Yes. I’m. Going. There. Anyways, this is the eve where Stefan goes to kill Maleficent to be crowned king. However, he can’t go through with it and so cuts off her wings. Ash confronts Stefan about this to which Stefan comments how he is willing to do anything to be king, but killing the one he loves is a line he couldn’t cross. He says that Ash should be grateful that Maleficent was spared and goes off into the night.

Pooh learn about the situation from the fairies and realize how much of a dick Maleficent is. The fairies conveniently leave out the bit where she used to be good until Stefan screwed her over. Prince Phillip is revealed to be a cousin of Prince Charming. The plot goes pretty much like Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent, except without Stefan going crazy-go-nuts in-between scenes.

Tremaine and Maleficent discuss about what Maleficent wants, as she recognizes the wand from the tales she used to read Cinderella. A wand with infinite powers, even reviving the dead if need be. She asks why she holds such a power to which she tells her about Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. Or rather, she tells her about how she held so much power and yet did nothing when Cinderella suffered under her heel or even before Tremaine entered her life.

Tremaine is both upset and angry at this, but this time not to herself, but at the Godmother. Maleficent rubs this in by telling her about the Enchantress and how she turned a prince into a beast, with the servants being turned into items just to spite them. She gives her the revelation that fairies used to be nice and good, hearts of pure light. Then man intruded on their lands and turned them rotten. Now they wish to exact revenge on humanity, with Bowser giving them the means to do so. What she left out was that the fairies only do so to rotten humans. Those with black hearts. Prince Adam was selfish and so turned into the Beast. Injun Joe was cruel and so turned into Injurin’ Joe. Only to those who are pure of hearts or have a chance at redemption do the fairies intervene and help them.

And that’s what the Blue Fairy does: intervene. And boy is she pissed. Maleficent murdered her own kin for power. Maleficent calls her out by showing the wand. What kind of all-powerful being just sits there and does nothing while people suffer? With the wand’s power, she will save everyone, starting with herself. Before the Blue Fairy can do anything, she casts the spell and goes back in time.

Ash, due to the time travel on Maleficent’s part, ends up getting warped back to the point where Stefan is about to cut off Maleficent’s wings, only for Maleficent, the Blue Fairy, and Tremaine to appear. Maleficent tries to kill Stefan before he can do the deed, but Ash stops her and shows her how he couldn’t go through with killing her in the past. That, deep inside, he truly loved her enough to spare her. Maleficent, however, is far too gone to reconsider and before she can attack Stefan, the Blue Fairy rams into Maleficent and forces her to the present.

By this point, Pooh & friends are at the scene where Phillip is captured and the fairies go to break him out. It’s revealed that this is before Maleficent has teamed up with Bowser, let alone team up with him. Pooh and Christopher Robin break Phillip out while Rabbit and Tigger, finally finding a common ground, beat up the goblins while Piglet and Eeyore get the wagon ready for the group to ride out on. Soon, Ash’s group emerge and the two Maleficents, as they share the same time now, merge and the result is a more powerful dragon, the likes of which not even the fairies can stop. The Blue Fairy, however, summons Charizard and Ash hops on him to fight Maleficent in a sky battle while Pooh and the others figure out how to defeat Maleficent. The fairies enchant Phillip’s sword, but it can’t pierce the scales. Pooh, however, figures out a weakness and as soon as Maleficent roosts, he climbs on her. She can’t feel Pooh because he’s stuffed with fluff and during the battle, Pooh slowly and surely starts to rip apart her scales, eventually leaving a piece of flesh where Phillip can impale her. For added cool points, this is right after Ash’s Charizard does that “fly around the world” Seismic Toss he’s known for.

With Maleficent dead, Ash looks at the remains of her: the Fairy Godmother’s wand. He frowns and mutters that she’s the one whose darkness overtook her heart. He picked up the wand and with that resolve in mind, he goes to Stefan and tells her about Maleficent, only for him to break down into tears and realize the consequences of his actions. Tremaine notices this and reconciles with Stefan, telling him that what’s done is done and that they can only work towards a brighter future. She announces her intent to stay with Stefan and Aurora. Blue Fairy takes everyone back to present time where Ash finds that Tremaine had lived a good life with Stefan and Aurora, having found her one true place and redemption.

It seems like the happy ending is achieved since Pooh is reunited with Christopher Robin and Ash seems to have resolved his inner conflict, buuuut there’s one more obstacle that comes in and attacks Pooh and Ash: the same legendary Pokemon that split Ash from his friends. It descends and transforms into a warlock, who declares that Ash killed his sister, Queen Grimhilde.

EPISODE 12

The man introduces himself as Maliss and wants revenge on Ash. Ash steps forwards and tells him to kill him if it satisfies him. To which he does… Only for Pikachu to take the bullet. Cue that scene where Pikachu talks and everyone freaks out. Thankfully, Pikachu is spared thanks to the Blue Fairy’s intervention, but she ends up weakened from it. She reveals the reason fairies only intervene for good humans and punish bad ones. The pureness of someone’s heart fuels the magic. If the magic is to benefit a cruel person, then the fairy is punished for it by giving their life force. Same goes if they punish a kind person. It was put in place by Mother Nature herself to keep the Fairies in balance. There’s also one other problem, one that explains why the Fairy Godmother didn’t just bring Cinderella’s mother back: life must be paid with life. Essentially, Pikachu’s wounds transferred over to the Blue Fairy.

As the Blue Fairy dies, she tells them to seek out a wizard named Merlin. Before Maliss can continue his onslaught, Mewtwo intervenes and teleports them to his hideout: Skull, the same place Bowser was at. It turns out that the reason Bowser was there to begin with was to try and strike an alliance with Mewtwo, only for him to rebuff. Ash tries to talk to Mewtwo, given how he met him, but he tells Ash that he doesn’t remember Ash. The only human he does remember his is creator, someone named Dr. Spengler.

He explains that, like the previous Mewtwo, he escaped, but was without purpose. That’s when the Blue Fairy came and told him to prepare for a battle against the forces of Darkness. He basically gets Pooh up to speed about how Bowser is this evil dude who has legions of villains and he won’t stop until the world’s in his grasps. Ash feels guilty over what happened and goes to sulk. The Blue Fairy’s wand activates with the Fairy Godmother’s wand and sends him to an alternate universe entirely for a brief moment. There, he meets an adult Snow White who is happily married, not to him, but rather the Prince Charming that was meant to marry Cinderella. Snow White finds Ash familiar, but can’t seem to put her finger on it. Ash wants to tell Snow White how sorry he is for not reciprocating her love, but realizes that she might not even know what he’s talking about, so he words it as a “I have a friend” situation. She tells Ash not to lose hope and that true love can break any curse.

Ash flashes back and, with that resolve in mind, he goes off to revive Snow White with love’s first kiss. Snow White wakes up and they have a touching reunion. Maliss comes by to crash the party, but Pooh, with the help of Mewtwo, stop him. Bowser then arrives, fed up with Pooh’s constant interference and how each of his allies fell to him. He attacks Pooh while Ash fights Maliss. It’s a pretty climatic showdown, but Pooh is shown to be on the ropes despite putting up a good “fight” (read: running from Bowser). That is until Aladdin shows up on Carpet and slashes Bowser with a scimitar. Then Tarzan throws a spear at Bowser. Peter Pan flies in with his knife. I’d add more returning characters, but Adam’s no longer the Beast, Wonderland is explicitly a dreamish realm with no desire to interfere with this war, Ash is pulling double duty for Prince Charming, Ariel can’t walk on land yet, and Phillip died of old age.

But the point still stands, Pooh may not have strength, but he has something Bowser can never have: friends. This is made poignant when Christopher Robin, the friend that kickstarted his adventure in the process, being the one to defeat Bowser by tipping him and having him on his back. Bowser retorts by saying how his circle of mages are his friends and that he will come back with many more. Before the group can finish him off, a large owl flies in and carries Bowser off, telling him that his father wishes to speak to him.

Ash, meanwhile, utilizes a weakness of Maliss: he uses a cape that turns people into stone. Ash grabs the cape and uses it on Maliss, turning him to stone. He falls down and gravity finishes him off. Ash feels guilty at first, but doesn’t have the same twinge of malice he had when he killed Grimhilde nor the fear when he killed Injurin’ Joe. He feels Snow White hugging his back and realizes why. He wasn’t fighting for revenge or in the heat of the moment. He was fighting to protect the people he loves.

With everything neatly wrapped up, Ash leaves with Snow White to find his friends, Mewtwo stays in Skull while petting a wolf he calls Aisling, and Pooh and Christopher Robin have a heart-to-heart about school and how Christopher Robin tells Pooh that while he won’t always be around, he’ll still have a place in Pooh’s heart. Roll credits, everyone lives happily ever after, right?

WRONG!

EPILOGUE

Bowser is brought to a world of darkness by the Grand Duke of Owls. There, he is brought face to face with a robed man he calls “father”. The man demands to know why some of Bowser’s strongest wizards have been put out of commission, to which Bowser tells him of Pooh. He is intrigued by the notion that Bowser was defeated by a fluffy teddy bear, but also embarrassed. He declares that Bowser’s son, Bowser Jr., will depart to far-east Asia to prepare for the oncoming storm. Bowser tries to protest, grabbing the man by the collar. The hood falls off, revealing a skeleton.

The skeletal man reassures Bowser. He’s training with a powerful empire and that when he returns with his betrothed, he will be the most powerful Koopa in the land. Bowser is pissed, but acknowledges what needs to be done. “I know… I must avenge Mother….” The skeleton then tells the Grand Duke of Owls to fetch him a potato sack. Confused, the DGoO obliges and goes over to fetch a sack. The skeleton then summon forth bugs to go over and infest the bag, eating the potatoes and eventually making the sack its home. It then rises and stands straight up before contorting the bag to make arms and legs, and finally, a head.

“What brings me to your service, oh Wiseman?” Oogie Boogie asks.

----

And yeah, that’s basically how I’d rewrite Pooh’s Adventures. Took about a good 6 hours to write up the first season. What do you guys think?

[gdelgiproducer]

DOTV AU: An Exercise in Alternate History (Part V)

Parts I, II, III, and IV offer more detailed context. (To briefly sum up why these posts are happening: alt history – as in sci fi, not “alternative facts” – buff, one day got the idea that DOTV could have turned out hella different if Jim Steinman looked for a star lead in other places, decided to reason out how that might work.) This is still getting a good response, so I’m gonna keep the train rolling.

Parts of the AU timeline established so far: instead of stopping at recording two songs from Whistle Down the Wind on a greatest hits compilation, Meat Loaf wound up taking more of an interest in Steinman’s new theater work than he did in our timeline, and through a series of circumstances found himself volunteering to play Krolock in the impending DOTV when Jim poured out his woes to him about needing to find some sort of star to attract investors. At a loss for any better ideas, Jim accepted Meat’s impulsive proposal, but not without resistance from his manager, David Sonenberg, who proposed Michael Crawford as an alternate candidate. Through quick thinking on Meat’s part, and inspiration on Jim’s, Crawford left the room accepting an entirely different role than he walked in hoping to get, leaving Krolock still open for Meat. There was a brief speed bump, when Meat disliked Jim’s English script for the show, but after meeting with the original German author Michael Kunze and convincing Jim to compromise, things were on the road to being back on track... at least until 9/11 occurred. Following a brief hiatus, everyone involved is meeting to re-assess their options.

Continuing the alternate DOTV timeline:

February 2002: After completing the Night of the Proms tour and taking a holiday break, Meat Loaf requests a meeting with co-star Michael Crawford, composer Jim Steinman, co-author Michael Kunze, and the other creatives on DOTV to assess where things are at. Obviously, people have other commitments, so the creative team may not shape up exactly the same as initially planned, but at least they’ll see who’s still coming along for the ride and get a bead on where the show is at. A dinner is planned at Café Carlyle, a cabaret space housed within the hotel of the same name, on the Upper East Side of NYC.

The dinner begins as any dinner involving Jim begins: with Steinman’s ordering disorder on display, and his manager, David Sonenberg, smiting his own forehead so hard it turns purple. Imagine the headwaiter’s surprise when he takes everyone’s order and hears Jim say, “For starters, we’ll have the entire left half, plus two each of the chicken hash, Dover sole, and seafood salad.” “Excuse me, sir... the entire left half of the menu?” “That’s correct. And for the second course, I’ll have another order of the roasted halibut and the filet mignon. What looks good to you guys?” Meat is not at all surprised; with Jim, you get everything and then everything else. “And for dessert, sir?” says the headwaiter, anticipating the massive tip. “Well, why don’t you bring us some New York cheesecake. And, heck, how about an order of the chocolate opera cake? And profiteroles. For everyone to share.” Meat can only laugh at the incredulous expressions of everyone who doesn’t already know Jim. He  orders the table a round of fifty dollar Côtes du Rhône. This’ll be a long one. 

First order of business: is the new script ready? “Not quite,” says Jim without even missing a bite. Meat rolls his eyes; typical Jim. His method is seduction. Jim has ideas for new stuff; he doesn’t always have the results to back them up. If he can talk you into it, he can do it -- eventually. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, it’s a cut and paste job anyway. I do have a synopsis so everyone can see what the show will be like. Rest assured, everything’s back the way you want it.” Steinman gestures to Sonenberg, who passes pages around the table.

We now pause to read said synopsis:

ACT ONE

Some time in the late 19th century, Professor Abronsius, a rather intensely wacky vampire killer, stands trial before the Governors of the University of Heidelberg. He has made a mockery of the school’s good name with his “ridiculous writings and insane theories,” insisting that he can prove vampires (and other supernatural creatures) actually do exist. For this “crime against science,” he is sent packing by his colleagues. His assistant Alfred, handsome if sweetly dim, with an ardent and Byronic underbelly, resolutely stands by his mentor and guide. Now gifted with -- however unwelcome -- free time, they set off on an excursion, hoping to prove the professor’s theory correct, and become lost in a blinding snowstorm (Overture).

We are now in a dark forest, three nights before Halloween, near a remote Transylvanian village somewhere in the Carpathians. Sarah, the beautiful teenage daughter of the local innkeeper, is out picking mushrooms with her easily frightened friends when they come upon an abandoned graveyard in a clearing. To reassure them all is well, she says a prayer (Angels Arise). Suddenly, a pack of very cool young vampires appears out of the mist, dancing with rapturous abandon (God Has Left the Building). Sarah is entranced as a coffin rises from the ground containing the mesmerizing and extremely cool Count Von Krolock, an immortal suitor whose call she finds strangely irresistible. The Count introduces himself to Sarah in a most charming way, sings to her seductively telling her of another world (Original Sin), and promises to return for her at the total eclipse of the moon. The lure of the night is strong, as is the promised deliverance from the mundane world she knows.

Back in the village, at the inn, we meet Sarah’s father, Chagal, his long suffering wife, Rebecca, and his beautiful voluptuous chambermaid, Magda, whom he spends most of his free time lusting after, much to Rebecca's disdain. Together with the local villagers, they demonstrate that nothing perks up men like wine, women and song -- and Garlic. Into the midst of the hustle and bustle burst two strangers, the first in twenty years: Abronsius and Alfred, who have nearly frozen to death in the nearby woods. Although the villagers deny any knowledge of vampires in the proximity, the professor cannot be fooled and becomes increasingly suspicious.

After exploring the rooms upstairs in which they are staying, Alfred meets Sarah. He is instantly smitten by her and vice versa, but having noticed the attraction between them, Chagal, very protective of his child, literally boards-up the door separating them (Don’t Leave Daddy). Since the budding passion of the young is highly flammable his solution proves to be as effective as spit on a forest fire. Unable to sleep, Alfred and Sarah sing of their newly awakened desire for each other (There’s Never Been a Night Like This), but they are not alone in their yearning: Chagal sneaks away from Rebecca -- who swiftly knocks Abronsius on the noggin in a case of mistaken identity -- to pay an unwelcome visit to Magda, and the Count returns to invite Sarah to a grand ball at his castle, offering her a chance to make her wildest dreams a reality, an opportunity to quench her thirst for more (The Invitation). How can any small-time girl resist?

The next day, the idyll of a winter mid-afternoon (Everything’s Fair) is broken when Abronsius witnesses a small business exchange between Chagal and Koukol, a hideous hunchback who lives somewhere in the woods. He inquires about the odd fellow, but Chagal refuses to discuss the matter. This does not deter the professor (Logic). For every question there is an answer and no truth that defies understanding -- or so he believes.

But no law rules the human heart and desire is quite an immeasurable emotion. Alfred also offers Sarah a way out: he begs her to run off and make a new start with him (Braver Than We Are). Too little, too late. Unbeknownst to Alfred, Krolock has sent a gift for Sarah -- a pair of red boots and a vision. Alfred leaves Sarah alone outside for a moment and she puts on the boots; she has a fantastic reverie about dancing with vampires (Red Boots Ballet) and can no longer control herself, try though she might (Say a Prayer). Torn between Alfred and the Count, Sarah runs off to Krolock’s castle, pursued by Chagal, who is in turn pursued by Rebecca and Magda who are concerned for his safety, who are in turn followed by Alfred and Abronsius, reasoning that they will be shown the way to the Count’s lair.

At the giant castle in the woods, they are greeted by watchful eyes in the darkness (Something to Kill (Our Time)), and by the mysterious Krolock and his flamboyant son, Herbert, who is instantly attracted to Alfred (Bless the Night). In the same breath, Krolock taunts Alfred and invites the two men into his domain (Come With Me) and the two reluctantly accept his invitation.

ACT TWO

In the great hall of the castle, Sarah reconciles what was once just a fantasy with her new reality, seduced by and embracing her inevitable indoctrination to this family (Vampires in Love (Total Eclipse of the Heart)). Sarah is entranced as Krolock makes his way down the staircase toward her. What has long been just a notion inside her is now a man before her. She willingly offers him her throat, although he resists the urge to bite her there and then.

Meanwhile, given a room, Abronsius sleeps soundly while Alfred is tormented by a nightmare (Carpe Noctem) that is a peculiar reflection of reality. In the dream he is a creature of the night. The following morning Alfred bravely swears that above fear and beyond doubt he will stay there in the hope of saving her (For Sarah).

But Abronsius is more concerned with capturing the Count and his son as specimens to prove his theory. Alfred and the professor make their way to the crypt, hoping to locate the two vampires, but instead they encounter the freshly dead Chagal. Before Abronsius can think of something else, Alfred hears what he believes to be Sarah singing and the hapless duo flee the crypt just as Rebecca and Magda arrive. Encountering Chagal's bitten body, Rebecca grieves while Magda gloats (Death Is Such an Odd Thing). In death she finds him to be far more bearable than in life. Chagal wakes-up and bites them both.

Truly, love is in the air. As Chagal cements his eternity with the women he loves in tow, Alfred has a close encounter with Herbert, who has set his sights on him. The smitten Herbert waltzes with an unwilling Alfred singing a song of love and longing (When Love Is Inside You). Herbert’s attempt to draw blood from the young man is thwarted by quick thinking, but to add insult to injury, Alfred then finds Sarah bathing in preparation of that evening’s ball. He begs her to flee with him, but his plea falls on deaf ears -- she is dying to go.

Meanwhile, Abronsius’ search through the castle has taken him to the library, which he enthusiastically discovers is stocked with every book ever written (Books, Books). The Count, who initially pretends admiration for the professor and offers him eternal life, confronts him, taking the opportunity to boast that the the battle for Alfred’s soul is already complete and that he is the victor.

To his horror, Abronsius, joined by Alfred, watches as, in throngs, the vampires crawl from their coffins, cursing the redundancy of their existence and eager to devour (Eternity). At the same moment, stung by Abronsius’ rejection, Count Von Krolock laments the truth of his being (Confession of a Vampire) and makes a bleak prediction: before the turn of the next millennium mankind, overcome by greed, will know only one god -- the god of appetite.

Speaking of appetite, the moment has arrived! The Count and his brethren are eager to proceed (The Ball: Never Be Enough). Sarah is presented while a disguised professor and Alfred wait for an opportunity to rescue her -- a chance that unfortunately comes only after she is willfully and gloriously bitten. In the midst of the climactic vampire dance (The Minuet), they take hold of Sarah and run.

Stopping in the woods to rest, Alfred once more professes his love to Sarah and the two lovers embrace, singing of their born-again freedom (Braver Than We Are (Reprise)). He believes all is well until the second she sinks her teeth into his neck. Once bitten the couple takes off to begin a life that will know no end. Meanwhile, oblivious to what is happening around him, Professor Abronsius revels over the information he has unearthed about the existence of vampires, unaware that their numbers have grown. As the Reign of the Undead begins, everybody somehow manages to find happiness... Transylvania-style (The Dance of the Vampires).

Back to our regularly scheduled program:

Meat is forced to admit Jim’s right. Based solely on this synopsis, it would be a cut-and-paste job, and it does answer all of the objections he had. Moving the Heidelberg scene to the top of the show reorients things just enough so that at least the focus is shared between Alfred and Sarah. On top of that, every song is where it should be, “Is Nothing Sacred” has been cut from Act II (it appeared in both earlier versions as a duet between Alfred and Sarah lamenting the loss of their love, but for once everyone was in agreement that it slowed the show down and there was no way to make it work), and no climactic shape-shifting transformation to be found (Jim has never been one to hide spoilers). As soon as the actual script is put together, this could be a working product.

Crawford is momentarily rattled by the Alfred-and-Abronsius prologue. “Bit like Phantom to start with foreshadowing and then plunge in?” he mutters under his breath. But Meat counters, with a grin: “I think it’s more like the opening of Psycho, wouldn’t ya say, Jim?” Meat, of course, knows what’s coming. Jim has seen Psycho 23 times; he thinks that if you’re learning about film, you don’t have to go beyond Psycho, because you can watch it a thousand times and find something new each time. All he has to do is settle in and let Jim talk Crawford’s ear off: “Psycho begins, if you watch it, with a long shot of Arizona, a satellite view of the whole state of Arizona, or at least the city of Phoenix. Long shot of the whole city. And then, the camera goes into one area. Then one block, and then one building, and then through the window of that building, to Janet Leigh and John Gavin in bed, nude, having sex. You start at an extreme distance, and it keeps getting closer and closer until it ends up where the story begins.”

Crawford is flummoxed. “...but... how is that...” Before he can get another word in edgewise, Jim is off on a stream-of-conscious flight of fancy: “Lost inside a blinding snowstorm, an innocent boy and a man of science... an unspoken certainty -- where something is shattered, something is breaking through... then their suspicions are proven correct... the wilds of Transylvania... the shadow of a dark knight looms large... you set up the hero first, and then right at the beginning, you need the big horror scene, like when the shark attacks the girl in Jaws, and then in the next scene everything is fine and you go on to tell the story.” Twenty minutes of free association from film to film later, his head spinning, Crawford stops Jim: “Jim, I, uh... I think I get it. Sounds grand. Let’s move on, shall we?” Meat, with a grin: “Waiter? More Côtes du Rhône for my English friend here.”

It’s Sonenberg’s turn to speak about the financial picture, and unfortunately, he is pretty much the bearer of bad news: “We’ve got nothing.” “What about your share of the investment?” Jim shoots back. “I raised my share, but that’s all I raised! Andrew Braunsberg threw in his share, too, but ours combined won’t bring you this show! This is gonna cost at least 12 million, it’s not like either of us has a small fortune tucked away! Do you know how much it will cost for that fucking coffin to rocket out the floor? And let’s say we keep the designs from Europe, which -- by the way -- we can’t afford to do even if we get investors, who’s paying for the six-ton graveyard to come down from fifty feet in the air? Shows cost four times as much on Broadway as they do in Europe! And this is before we get into the fact that we had readings and workshops that didn’t come cheap, even though we had other people shouldering the burden with us. When they walked...” “When they walked, I did what you said! You said we needed stars to boost the box office -- we have two of them! You said we needed the show to have more of a balance between horror and comedy -- we’re nearly there! We’ve done readings, we’ve done workshops, there should be a list of interested investors by now! You’re telling me I followed every instruction you gave me and we couldn’t attract producers?!” “Jim, that happens. The odds of failure in any show biz endeavor are astronomical. You know this. I have this conversation with you time and time again.” “So basically you called this meeting to raise our hopes and then tell us it’s a wash, is that it?!���

Meat can’t bear to see Jim like this. He never could. Jim is always within steps of achieving his dream and never quite getting there, and it’s usually due to Sonenberg’s interference. “Guys, guys, before things get too heated and we say stuff we might regret... look at who is at this table. We’ve got a major arena rocker, two Grammy-winning songwriters, we’ve got the biggest box office star in musical theater, we have a music manager with a list of clients as big as my ass. We know promoters, theater owners, rich people with cash to burn, we make more contacts shaking hands at industry parties than we know what to do with. Between all of us, we’ve got to be able to rustle up some investment coin!”

Meat turns to Crawford. “Michael, I know you were up for my part for, like, twenty seconds. Were you bringing any investors to the table for that?” “Now that you mention it, yes, there were a handful.” “Call them. Explain the situation. Tell them we’re looking to cut costs and bring this show in tight, so they can look at our numbers, offer suggestions for a way forward.”

He swivels in his seat to the other Michael at the table. “Mr. Kunze, was there any interest from other American producers before the show started on this path?” “We had this husband-and-wife couple who were major producers book tickets to opening night in Vienna, but they canceled last minute.” “Any chance you remember who they are?” Sonenberg cuts in: “Barry and Fran Weissler, but...” “The Weisslers? As in the Weisslers who did Chicago? The license-to-print-money Weisslers? We need a meeting with them ASAP.”

Meat now focuses on Sonenberg. “Look, Jim is pissed at you right now, and understandably so, but we need all hands on deck. David, is there anybody you can think of that might come to the table?” “Well... I am about to have lunch with Jerry Weintraub about a film project. You win an Oscar, they all come knocking.” “I remember Jerry, he started in talent management and concert promotion. Theater is a good way for him to combine those interests. He may not bite, but bring up the project anyway.”

Jim weakly tosses in, his engines beginning to rev again: “I could talk to Leonard Soloway. He’s never been major on Broadway, mainly a house or company manager, but he’s produced before, and he’s been looking to move back into that sector. He was very interested in this at the reading last April. He called it a gem.” “The worst that he can say is no, and we’re already starting a list to go down, so give him a buzz,” Meat says. 

“As for me, I’m gonna talk to Michael Cohl.” Sonenberg is skeptical: “The concert promoter?” “He’s handled packages as big as this, you know who he’s worked with, it’s practically an encyclopedia of the business. Maybe he wants to move into producing.” “He also wants to put his hand in the till. He’s a chiseler. A bunch of managers complained about him a few years back; he was working this scheme where he told their clients playing this festival in Toronto that there was a sales tax that was coming out of their pay, and a gate charge reflected in the ticket price. Festival’s exempt from that tax and the organization that runs it has no gate charge. He was putting hundreds of thousands in his pocket.” “So,” interrupts Jim, “you’re saying he has money to spend, and he knows how to cut corners and get more.” “Oh sure, Jim, because we want to line up with a whiff of anything illegal on a high risk investment. I’m just saying, if we bring him on, there have to be stringent safeguards. We’ll need to double- and triple-check every transaction that comes through him.” “Well,” says Meat, momentarily unable to check his inner self-control, “he can’t do any worse than the advice I was getting in 1981.” “Oh sure, dig up that dead horse and start beating it again!” Sonenberg fires back.

Before the conversation can get out of control, Meat somehow manages to rein himself in: “Alright, look, let’s not get off the subject at hand here. We thought things were hopeless only moments ago, but now we have a list of... Michael, how many investors were interested again?” “Three.” “Okay, and that plus Cohl, Jerry, Leonard, and the Weisslers -- not to mention Braunsberg and David -- puts us at 10, if everyone signs on. Even if some of them say no, we should still be farther ahead than we were on the producing front. This project is not dead.”

“It might as well be,” Sonenberg grouses. “John Caird’s off attending to other commitments, Ezralow’s doing a Josh Groban TV special, and we need a new set of designs. You tell me where we’re gonna find a whole new creative team.” “David, I don’t have the highest opinion of you, but I know you’re not stupid. You’re not seriously implying that this production only looked into one person for each position, right? Surely we can look around at a few people and get some opinions.” “Besides,” Jim chimes in, “the director problem is already solved. I was co-directing, now all I have to do is call Barry [Keating, Jim’s right-hand man and a Tony-nominated composer in his own right] in to be my assistant and we’ll whip this into shape.”

A deathly silence descends upon the table. Meat is brave enough to be the first to speak: “Actually, I think we need to interview some directors, too.” “Why go to the trouble? I have it under control.” For once, Sonenberg agrees with Meat and says so: “You think you have it under control. Things have been pretty serious in this conversation so far, let’s be real right now: you’ve never directed a musical this big in your life. You and Barry are fine for a workshop, but this is a spectacular with a lot of moving elements.” “I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Half the show in Vienna I had to talk Polanski into doing. Or did it behind his back. A lot! He had a totally different vision.” “Jim, giving notes and making contributions that people agree with is not the same thing as directing.” “I’ve directed music videos!” “You’ve story-boarded music videos.” “What about that one I directed for Bonnie that was nominated for seven Billboard Video Awards?” “Did it win any?!” Meat once again has to halt the argument brewing: “Look, Jim, we need to be serious about this if you want it to work. It can’t hurt to just talk to a few other people. We’re not committing to them.” Steinman is momentarily silenced, but his sour expression betrays he’s still displeased with the present turn of events.

“Now, as for the choreographer...” Meat says. Jim perks up again: “Barry could...” Sonenberg slams his fist on the table: “You shut up or you lose a toe! Go on, Meat.” “Alright, we’re not opening till October, and that means we’re not starting in earnest until August. That’s after the Tony Awards. Let’s see if any real talent emerges this season, and if worse comes to worst, we’ll just hire whoever won.” “That doesn’t solve our problem with the design team, though. Even if we get them signed by June or July, that’s not nearly enough time to design, approve, and execute a whole show.” “Well, we can start talking to people now, and maybe they’ll even give us some clues about a choreographer or director, if there’s someone they’ve worked with who they really liked.” At a loss for any other way to proceed, Sonenberg nods gravely.

At meeting’s end, everyone is in concurrence on the next course of action: actually finish the script, schmooze with potential investors or producers, and put together a new creative team. Preferably not all at the same time, but with the crunch on, they’ll do whatever needs to be done.

Didn’t expect this to be so short or focus on one event, but our heroes have lots of ground to cover. Catch you next time!

[toothextract]

Make sense of your data with these essential keyword segments

Posted by TheMozTeam

This blog post was originally published on the STAT blog.

The first step to getting the most out of your SERP data is smart keyword segmentation — it surfaces targeted insights that will help you make data-driven decisions.

But knowing what to segment can feel daunting, especially when you’re working with thousands of keywords. That’s why we’re arming you with a handful of must-have tags.

Follow along as we walk through the different kinds of segments in STAT, how to create them, and which tags you’ll want to get started with. You’ll be a fanciful segment connoisseur by the time we’re through!

Segmentation in STAT

In STAT, keyword segments are called “tags” and come as two different types: standard or dynamic.

Standard tags are best used when you want to keep specific keywords grouped together because of shared characteristics — like term (brand, product type, etc), location, or device. Standard tags are static, so the keywords that populate those segments won’t change unless you manually add or remove them.

Dynamic tags, on the other hand, are a fancier kind of tag based on filter criteria. Just like a smart playlist, dynamic tags automatically populate with all of the keywords that meet said criteria, such as keywords with a search volume over 500 that rank on page one. This means that the keywords in a dynamic tag aren’t forever — they’ll filter in and out depending on the criteria you’ve set.

How to create a keyword segment

Tags are created in a few easy steps. At the Site level, pop over to the Keywords tab, click the down arrow on any table column header, and then select Filter keywords. From there, you can select the pre-populated options or enter your own metrics for a choose-your-own-filter adventure.

Once your filters are in place, simply click Tag All Filtered Keywords, enter a new tag name, and then pick the tag type best suited to your needs — standard or dynamic — and voila! You’ve created your very own segment.

Segments to get you started

Now that you know how to set up a tag, it’s time to explore some of the different segments you can implement and the filter criteria you’ll need to apply.

Rank and rank movement

Tracking your rank and ranking movements with dynamic tags will give you eyeballs on your keyword performance, making it easy to monitor and report on current and historical trends.

There’s a boatload of rank segments you can set up, but here’s just a sampling to get you started:

Keywords ranking in position 1–3; this will identify your top performing keywords.

Keywords ranking in position 11–15; this will suss out the low-hanging, top of page two fruit in need of a little nudge.

Keywords with a rank change of 10 or more (in either direction); this will show you keywords that are slipping off or shooting up the SERP.

Appearance and ownership of SERP features

Whether they’re images, carousels, or news results, SERP features have significantly altered the search landscape. Sometimes they push you down the page and other times, like when you manage to snag one, they can give you a serious leg up on the competition and drive loads more traffic to your site.

Whatever industry-related SERP features that you want to keep apprised of, you can create dynamic tags that show you the prevalence and movement of them within your keyword set. Segment even further for tags that show which keywords own those features and which have fallen short.

Below are a few segments you can set up for featured snippets and local packs.

Featured snippets

Everyone’s favourite SERP feature isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to outfit yourself with a snippet tracking strategy. You can create as many tags as there are snippet options to choose from:

Keywords with a featured snippet.

Keywords with a paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an owned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an unowned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

The first two will allow you to see over-arching snippet trends, while the last two will chart your ownership progress.

If you want to know the URL that’s won you a snippet, just take a peek at the URL column.

Local packs

If you’re a brick and mortar business, we highly advise creating tags for local packs since they provide a huge opportunity for exposure. These two tags will show you which local packs you have a presence in and which you need to work on

Keywords with an owned local pack.

Keywords with an unowned local pack.

Want all the juicy data squeezed into a local pack, like who’s showing up and with what URL? We created the Local pack report just for that.

Landing pages, subdomains, and other important URLs

Whether you’re adding new content or implementing link-building strategies around subdomains and landing pages, dynamic tags allow you to track and measure page performance, see whether your searchers are ending up on the pages you want, and match increases in page traffic with specific keywords.

For example, are your informational intent keywords driving traffic to your product pages instead of your blog? To check, a tag that includes your blog URL will pull in each post that ranks for one of your keywords.

Try these three dynamic tags for starters:

Keywords ranking for a landing page URL.

Keywords ranking for a subdomain URL.

Keywords ranking for a blog URL.

Is a page not indexed yet? That’s okay. You can still create a dynamic tag for its URL and keywords will start appearing in that segment when Google finally gets to it.

Location, location, location

Google cares a lot about location and so should you, which is why keyword segments centred around location are essential. You can tag in two ways: by geo-modifier and by geo-location.

For these, it’s better to go with the standard tag as the search term and location are fixed to the keyword.

Geo-modifier

A geo-modifier is the geographical qualifier that searchers manually include in their query — like in [sushi near me]. We advocate for adding various geo-modifiers to your keywords and then incorporating them into your tagging strategy. For instance, you can segment by:

Keywords with “in [city]” in them.

Keywords with “near me” in them.

The former will show you how you fare for city-wide searches, while the latter will let you see if you’re meeting the needs of searchers looking for nearby options.

Geo-location

Geo-location is where the keyword is being tracked. More tracked locations mean more searchers’ SERPs to sample. And the closer you can get to searchers standing on a street corner, the more accurate those SERPs will be. This is why we strongly recommend you track in multiple pin-point locations in every market you serve.

Once you’ve got your tracking strategy in place, get your segmentation on. You can filter and tag by:

Keywords tracked in specific locations; this will let you keep tabs on geographical trends.

Keywords tracked in each market; this will allow for market-level research.

Search volume & cost-per-click

Search volume might be a contentious metric thanks to Google’s close variants, but having a decent idea of what it’s up to is better than a complete shot in the dark. We suggest at least two dynamic segments around search volume:

Keywords with high search volume; this will show which queries are popular in your industry and have the potential to drive the most traffic.

Keywords with low search volume; this can actually help reveal conversion opportunities — remember, long-tail keywords typically have lower search volumes but higher conversion rates.

Tracking the cost-per-click of your keywords will also bring you and your PPC team tonnes of valuable insights — you’ll know if you’re holding the top organic spot for an outrageously high CPC keyword.

As with search volume, tags for high and low CPC should do you just fine. High CPC keywords will show you where the competition is the fiercest, while low CPC keywords will surface your easiest point of entry into the paid game — queries you can optimize for with less of a fight.

Device type

From screen size to indexing, desktop and smartphones produce substantially different SERPs from one another, making it essential to track them separately. So, filter and tag for:

Keywords tracked on a desktop.

Keywords tracked on a smartphone.

Similar to your location segments, it’s best to use the standard tag here.

Go crazy with multiple filters

We’ve shown you some really high-level segments, but you can actually filter down your keywords even further. In other words, you can get extra fancy and add multiple filters to a single tag. Go as far as high search volume, branded keywords triggering paragraph featured snippets that you own for smartphone searchers in the downtown core. Phew!

Want to make talk shop about segmentation or see dynamic tags in action? Say hello (don’t be shy) and request a demo.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

from https://dentistry01.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/make-sense-of-your-data-with-these-essential-keyword-segments/

[celebritylive]

Warning: This post contains spoilers

Will & Grace has come to an end. Again.

The beloved NBC sitcom wrapped up for the second time on Thursday, closing the door on its three-year long revival (technically counted as seasons 9, 10, and 11 of the Emmy-winning series).

While a number of guest stars swung by for the show’s farewell bow — including Matt Bomer and Minnie Driver, each reprising their recurring characters — the last episode was all about tying up the storylines of the main foursome, played by Eric McCormack (Will), Debra Messing (Grace), Sean Hayes (Jack), and Megan Mullally (Karen).

In the episode, Karen started a new chapter with an old flame, Jack saw his career dreams come true, and Will and Grace packed up their New York City apartment to move to their new house in the suburbs, where they plan on raising their two babies together.

“Everything’s going to be so different,” Grace told Will at the end, shortly before she went into labor. “A whole new life. A new house, kids. We’ve always been just been Will and Grace.”

“It’s okay. Maybe we’ve been Will and Grace long enough,” Will responded, later assuring her, “We are going to be great.”

RELATED: Farewell Will & Grace! See the Cast in Bittersweet First Look at Series Finale

Fans never got to see a glimpse of what that family life would be like, though, with the show ending before either became parents (meaning they’ll be left wondering what Will’s daughter and Grace’s son’s names would be).

That was far different from the way the show originally ended back in 2006. That ending, as viewers might remember, saw Jack inheriting a ton of wealth, Karen loosing all her money, and Will and Grace estranged, each living separate lives with their spouses and kids.

Eventually, those kids — Will’s son Ben (Ben Newmark) and Grace’s daughter Lila (Maria Thayer) — met for the first time in college, after coincidentally moving across the hall from one another. And Will and Grace, now 20 years later, finally bumped into each other again and rekindled their friendship.

All that was wiped out when Will & Grace came back on the air in 2017, after fanfare over a 10-minute 2016 skit to help encourage voters in the election drummed up interest by NBC to bring the series back again.

This time, creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan erased Will and Grace’s kids and instead made Grace move back into Will’s apartment after their respective divorces. Karen’s marriage to Stanley, meanwhile, was on the rocks. And Jack got a job teaching theater at a community theater.

Over the course of the next three seasons, a lot changed. Will got serious with newscaster McCoy Whitman (Bomer), while Grace and her once-rival Noah Broader (David Schwimmer) found themselves in a hot and heavy love affair. Karen and Stanley officially divorced, and Jack married flight attendant Estefan (Brian Jordan Alvarez). 

While Jack’s relationship lasted, Will and Grace’s respective love interests fell to the wayside. In season 11, which premiered in October, both set out on a journey to become parents — Grace miraculously getting pregnant (though she never learned the identify of the father) and Will hiring surrogate Jenny (Demi Lovato) to carry his baby.

As for Karen, she wound up inheriting a minor league baseball team, which she hilariously guided to success. In celebration, she had the team’s suburban town’s name changed to “Karen Walkerland.”

It was in that town, first shown in last week’s penultimate episode, that Will and Grace found the house they would decide to move to in order to change their lives. That’s also where Karen began to realize she was still in love with Stan, and learned that he felt the same way.

In the finale, she finally reunited with Stan on the top of the Statue of Liberty, where they had their first date.

“I guess it ain’t over until the fat man choppers in over restricted airspace,” she said of her ex, who has famously never been shown. She then agreed to marry Stan again. “You’ve done terrible things, I’ve done terrible things,” she said. “There are bad people on both sides.”

As that was happening, Jack finally got the chance to see his dream of performing on a Broadway stage come true, playing the role of Sailor No. 5 in the fictional revival of On the Town after the actor usually playing the part — as well as the actor’s first, second, and third, understudies — fell ill.

He had learned of his happy news while standing at the peak of the Statue of Liberty with Karen. “This is the first good thing to happen to me on top of a woman,” he quipped.

Of course, in typical Jack fashion, the performance didn’t go without its blunders, with Jack’s legs giving out after a day of traipsing around the city, climbing that aforementioned monument, and tapping throughout the musical (Hayes’ physical comedy is still unparalleled).

But while at the show, Grace ran into McCoy, prompting the newscaster to try to win Will’s heart back.

“It was all just so much so fast, getting married and the baby. I got scared. I’m only thinking about the future,” McCoy told Will, apologizing and stressing, “the gay guy gets to have his Prince Charming, too.”

Debra Messing, Sean Hayes, Megan Mullally, and Eric McCormack Chris Haston/NBC

RELATED: Sean Hayes Says Shooting the Final Episode of Will & Grace ‘Was Really Sad … Everybody Lost It’ 

In the end, Will remained undecided about McCoy, summarizing their future with a simple “we’ll see.”

And as all united back at Will and Grace’s now-empty apartment to say goodbye one last time, he finally felt something he had been avoiding all day: nostalgia for the life he was leaving behind.

“I’m happy for you,” Grace told Will. “Just like you’ll be happy when it happens for me.”

from PEOPLE.com https://ift.tt/2VxhEyZ

[wondrous-reads]

Stranger Things

(Written post season 3)

I truly am at a loss for words to describe the way the last episode has moved me, but since I am too full of feelings to be productive until I let them out, I will search them.

I’d like to start with Billy. Billy did most of his character development within the last 30 seconds of his short life. I feel like this is a common trope: the minor character no one likes until they die. But in the end I must say I did not come around. I don’t think Billy sparing Eleven in those final moments makes up for the terror he created in the second season, for the way he obviously abused Max, himself, and really anyone that crossed his grimy path. We got the chance to see inside his mind for just a moment. When Eleven wandered through his memories to find The Source, we saw that Billy was just redirecting the abuse that fell upon him from his father. I cannot possibly step inside his shoes. He was young and didn’t have a chance to see the error in his ways. But you know what? He did NOT have to shovel more anguish onto Max’s shoulders. She could have been his partner in an immensely difficult situation, someone to share the load. Instead, they each had to deal with their struggles separately.  An “I’m sorry” as you’re dying doesn’t quite cut it in my opinion, Billy. But if it helps Max sleep at night to think her brother died a better man, then so be it.

Next, we need to talk about Jim Hopper’s death; or, more accurately, what we all believed for 20 minutes to be his death. My naive little heart had lightened for a second when I though Billy was the big character death we all knew was coming. I was thinking:

“I know this is sad for Max but if I had to pick someone to die, it would be him anyway.”

“I thought he was dead the whole time like the other people that melted.” 

“Thank God it wasn’t Eleven”.

And just when the producers were sure my guard was lowering, Joyce Byers, one of the most traumatized characters of the entire series, must save the world by killing her best and only true friend (and, in my eyes, her soulmate). Hear me out: in every season of Stranger Things, Joyce Byers looks absolutely insane. Meaning, once a year for the last three years she has had to fight for her son’s life completely alone, at least initially. Now, who is the first and sometime’s only person to believe her every time? Jim Hopper. Don’t misunderstand, I was 100% Team Bob in Stranger Things 2, despite the chemistry between Hopper and Joyce. Bob was exactly the kind of man Joyce needed and deserved. But I believe there are so many different kinds of love that we all hold for each other in this world, and more than one of them are the strong, good, mushy, romantic kind. Joyce and Bob were like a soft tealight candle placed securely in a smooth glass candle holder on top of a granite counter top set for a family dinner. A quiet, safe flame with no danger of burning the house down but that still illuminates the room. Joyce and Jim are like embers, a subdued glow in the background, but they burn hotter than any flickering flame on its own. Embers that someone cold, starving, and lost in the wilderness could fan into a roaring fire just to survive. Embers that if left recklessly unattended on a windy night, could become a blazing wildfire consuming and destroying anything in its path. Embers that sit in a hearth of a house, forgotten but not burnt out, smoldering silently and keeping a family warm. Hopper and Joyce have that shared trauma that binds them together, they understand each other even when they are screaming the opposite. Plus, they’ve been together before--only to separate, and then find their way back to one another. Whether Jim is alive or dead, I know that those coals are still glimmering in the night, that they will never grow cold. So, even though I know Joyce will be just fine if Jim is actually dead, the hopeless romantic in me is just hoping that Jim is the American in the Russian’s possession.

Which brings me to my next point: is Jim dead? There are so many arguments for either side, that I feel like the best thing for my jumbled emotions would be to simply list them and pick a side next year when the new season comes out.

Reasons for Jim to be alive:

1) The Russians have an American that I’m willing to say is 98% likely someone we’ve met. Now, even though this person could be anyone--say, the science teacher whose name escapes me or for some unforeseen reason the conspiracy theorist--I think there is a good chance that it’s Hopper. The reason is that false grief is a pretty common thing to plague viewers with, while lasting false hope is not. When a character you though was dead is alive, it is awesome and shocking, whether they are a good or bad guy. But if you thought a beloved character was alive and they turned out to be dead? Bummer.  For example, everyone thought Glenn was dead for several months following his faked death on The Walking Dead. He was never portrayed as possibly being alive and then being dead. When he died, it was obvious, there was a body, we watched it happen. Which brings me to my next point:

2) We didn’t see Hopper die OR see a body. In fact, we are very deliberately shown that there is nothing where he was standing. Now, this could very well be because he was vaporized by the blast, just like the Russians that were in the chamber a the time of the explosion. However, most of us drama-lovers know that if you did not SEE THE CHARACTER DIE EXPLICITLY and you are not SHOWN A BODY, there is a fat chance they are not actually dead.

Reasons for Jim to be dead:

1) It almost seems like the producers were trying too hard to make us think he’s alive (see: my last two points). I do not trust writers and producers as far as I can throw them and they make me doubt my own instincts until I am a rambling mess.

2) The way the series “ended” before that little blurp after the credits was very neat and tidy. Bittersweet, yes, but indisputably fair and fitting. Joyce, Will, and Eleven deserve to leave Hawkins the most. With Hopper dead, there’s nothing holding them there.

3) Hopper got to go out as a hero, as a good guy, as a pretty much developed character. I couldn’t ask for a better way to for him to leave the show.

I see that I have two points for Jim being alive and three for him being dead, but honestly strength/evidence wise I’d say they add up to be about equal arguments. One thing is for sure: the makers of the show have done an excellent job of making me think about his way too hard. 

Lastly, some closing thoughts that are less in-depth:

Jonathon didn’t really need to leave with Joyce, Will, and Eleven. He’s graduated, and there is a certain unoccupied cabin in the woods that no one knows about and therefore probably costs very little to live in until he can get another Job. Sure, his family would be farther away but we all grow up and leave our families don’t we? And c’mon, Jancy.

Eleven is my absolute favorite character.

I would have really liked it if the token LGBTQ+ representative character could have been bi so that she could like girls but also Steve because when two people laugh like that it is beautiful and maybe this is a hetero-normative agenda but they would be SO CUTE.

Some predictions:

1) With Jonathon gone, Nancy will date Steve again because he saved her life and is less bullshit. But if Stoncy is reinstated, Steve is no match for Jonathon (hopefully)

2) The show will absolutely suck if they decide not to bring back the Byers family and Eleven, so they’ll be back.

3) Eleven will regain her powers because Mike said she would and we all want her to, However, it is unclear if she will get them back before or after the start of the next season.

10/10, would recommend

[christinesumpmg]

Make sense of your data with these essential keyword segments

Posted by TheMozTeam

This blog post was originally published on the STAT blog.

The first step to getting the most out of your SERP data is smart keyword segmentation — it surfaces targeted insights that will help you make data-driven decisions.

But knowing what to segment can feel daunting, especially when you’re working with thousands of keywords. That’s why we’re arming you with a handful of must-have tags.

Follow along as we walk through the different kinds of segments in STAT, how to create them, and which tags you’ll want to get started with. You’ll be a fanciful segment connoisseur by the time we’re through!

Segmentation in STAT

In STAT, keyword segments are called “tags” and come as two different types: standard or dynamic.

Standard tags are best used when you want to keep specific keywords grouped together because of shared characteristics — like term (brand, product type, etc), location, or device. Standard tags are static, so the keywords that populate those segments won’t change unless you manually add or remove them.

Dynamic tags, on the other hand, are a fancier kind of tag based on filter criteria. Just like a smart playlist, dynamic tags automatically populate with all of the keywords that meet said criteria, such as keywords with a search volume over 500 that rank on page one. This means that the keywords in a dynamic tag aren’t forever — they’ll filter in and out depending on the criteria you’ve set.

How to create a keyword segment

Tags are created in a few easy steps. At the Site level, pop over to the Keywords tab, click the down arrow on any table column header, and then select Filter keywords. From there, you can select the pre-populated options or enter your own metrics for a choose-your-own-filter adventure.

Once your filters are in place, simply click Tag All Filtered Keywords, enter a new tag name, and then pick the tag type best suited to your needs — standard or dynamic — and voila! You’ve created your very own segment.

Segments to get you started

Now that you know how to set up a tag, it’s time to explore some of the different segments you can implement and the filter criteria you’ll need to apply.

Rank and rank movement

Tracking your rank and ranking movements with dynamic tags will give you eyeballs on your keyword performance, making it easy to monitor and report on current and historical trends.

There’s a boatload of rank segments you can set up, but here’s just a sampling to get you started:

Keywords ranking in position 1–3; this will identify your top performing keywords.

Keywords ranking in position 11–15; this will suss out the low-hanging, top of page two fruit in need of a little nudge.

Keywords with a rank change of 10 or more (in either direction); this will show you keywords that are slipping off or shooting up the SERP.

Appearance and ownership of SERP features

Whether they’re images, carousels, or news results, SERP features have significantly altered the search landscape. Sometimes they push you down the page and other times, like when you manage to snag one, they can give you a serious leg up on the competition and drive loads more traffic to your site.

Whatever industry-related SERP features that you want to keep apprised of, you can create dynamic tags that show you the prevalence and movement of them within your keyword set. Segment even further for tags that show which keywords own those features and which have fallen short.

Below are a few segments you can set up for featured snippets and local packs.

Featured snippets

Everyone’s favourite SERP feature isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to outfit yourself with a snippet tracking strategy. You can create as many tags as there are snippet options to choose from:

Keywords with a featured snippet.

Keywords with a paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an owned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an unowned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

The first two will allow you to see over-arching snippet trends, while the last two will chart your ownership progress.

If you want to know the URL that’s won you a snippet, just take a peek at the URL column.

Local packs

If you’re a brick and mortar business, we highly advise creating tags for local packs since they provide a huge opportunity for exposure. These two tags will show you which local packs you have a presence in and which you need to work on

Keywords with an owned local pack.

Keywords with an unowned local pack.

Want all the juicy data squeezed into a local pack, like who’s showing up and with what URL? We created the Local pack report just for that.

Landing pages, subdomains, and other important URLs

Whether you’re adding new content or implementing link-building strategies around subdomains and landing pages, dynamic tags allow you to track and measure page performance, see whether your searchers are ending up on the pages you want, and match increases in page traffic with specific keywords.

For example, are your informational intent keywords driving traffic to your product pages instead of your blog? To check, a tag that includes your blog URL will pull in each post that ranks for one of your keywords.

Try these three dynamic tags for starters:

Keywords ranking for a landing page URL.

Keywords ranking for a subdomain URL.

Keywords ranking for a blog URL.

Is a page not indexed yet? That’s okay. You can still create a dynamic tag for its URL and keywords will start appearing in that segment when Google finally gets to it.

Location, location, location

Google cares a lot about location and so should you, which is why keyword segments centred around location are essential. You can tag in two ways: by geo-modifier and by geo-location.

For these, it’s better to go with the standard tag as the search term and location are fixed to the keyword.

Geo-modifier

A geo-modifier is the geographical qualifier that searchers manually include in their query — like in [sushi near me]. We advocate for adding various geo-modifiers to your keywords and then incorporating them into your tagging strategy. For instance, you can segment by:

Keywords with “in [city]” in them.

Keywords with “near me” in them.

The former will show you how you fare for city-wide searches, while the latter will let you see if you’re meeting the needs of searchers looking for nearby options.

Geo-location

Geo-location is where the keyword is being tracked. More tracked locations mean more searchers’ SERPs to sample. And the closer you can get to searchers standing on a street corner, the more accurate those SERPs will be. This is why we strongly recommend you track in multiple pin-point locations in every market you serve.

Once you’ve got your tracking strategy in place, get your segmentation on. You can filter and tag by:

Keywords tracked in specific locations; this will let you keep tabs on geographical trends.

Keywords tracked in each market; this will allow for market-level research.

Search volume & cost-per-click

Search volume might be a contentious metric thanks to Google’s close variants, but having a decent idea of what it’s up to is better than a complete shot in the dark. We suggest at least two dynamic segments around search volume:

Keywords with high search volume; this will show which queries are popular in your industry and have the potential to drive the most traffic.

Keywords with low search volume; this can actually help reveal conversion opportunities — remember, long-tail keywords typically have lower search volumes but higher conversion rates.

Tracking the cost-per-click of your keywords will also bring you and your PPC team tonnes of valuable insights — you’ll know if you’re holding the top organic spot for an outrageously high CPC keyword.

As with search volume, tags for high and low CPC should do you just fine. High CPC keywords will show you where the competition is the fiercest, while low CPC keywords will surface your easiest point of entry into the paid game — queries you can optimize for with less of a fight.

Device type

From screen size to indexing, desktop and smartphones produce substantially different SERPs from one another, making it essential to track them separately. So, filter and tag for:

Keywords tracked on a desktop.

Keywords tracked on a smartphone.

Similar to your location segments, it’s best to use the standard tag here.

Go crazy with multiple filters

We’ve shown you some really high-level segments, but you can actually filter down your keywords even further. In other words, you can get extra fancy and add multiple filters to a single tag. Go as far as high search volume, branded keywords triggering paragraph featured snippets that you own for smartphone searchers in the downtown core. Phew!

Want to make talk shop about segmentation or see dynamic tags in action? Say hello (don’t be shy) and request a demo.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://ift.tt/2NhLLop

[byronheeutgm]

Make sense of your data with these essential keyword segments

Posted by TheMozTeam

This blog post was originally published on the STAT blog.

The first step to getting the most out of your SERP data is smart keyword segmentation — it surfaces targeted insights that will help you make data-driven decisions.

But knowing what to segment can feel daunting, especially when you’re working with thousands of keywords. That’s why we’re arming you with a handful of must-have tags.

Follow along as we walk through the different kinds of segments in STAT, how to create them, and which tags you’ll want to get started with. You’ll be a fanciful segment connoisseur by the time we’re through!

Segmentation in STAT

In STAT, keyword segments are called “tags” and come as two different types: standard or dynamic.

Standard tags are best used when you want to keep specific keywords grouped together because of shared characteristics — like term (brand, product type, etc), location, or device. Standard tags are static, so the keywords that populate those segments won’t change unless you manually add or remove them.

Dynamic tags, on the other hand, are a fancier kind of tag based on filter criteria. Just like a smart playlist, dynamic tags automatically populate with all of the keywords that meet said criteria, such as keywords with a search volume over 500 that rank on page one. This means that the keywords in a dynamic tag aren’t forever — they’ll filter in and out depending on the criteria you’ve set.

How to create a keyword segment

Tags are created in a few easy steps. At the Site level, pop over to the Keywords tab, click the down arrow on any table column header, and then select Filter keywords. From there, you can select the pre-populated options or enter your own metrics for a choose-your-own-filter adventure.

Once your filters are in place, simply click Tag All Filtered Keywords, enter a new tag name, and then pick the tag type best suited to your needs — standard or dynamic — and voila! You’ve created your very own segment.

Segments to get you started

Now that you know how to set up a tag, it’s time to explore some of the different segments you can implement and the filter criteria you’ll need to apply.

Rank and rank movement

Tracking your rank and ranking movements with dynamic tags will give you eyeballs on your keyword performance, making it easy to monitor and report on current and historical trends.

There’s a boatload of rank segments you can set up, but here’s just a sampling to get you started:

Keywords ranking in position 1–3; this will identify your top performing keywords.

Keywords ranking in position 11–15; this will suss out the low-hanging, top of page two fruit in need of a little nudge.

Keywords with a rank change of 10 or more (in either direction); this will show you keywords that are slipping off or shooting up the SERP.

Appearance and ownership of SERP features

Whether they’re images, carousels, or news results, SERP features have significantly altered the search landscape. Sometimes they push you down the page and other times, like when you manage to snag one, they can give you a serious leg up on the competition and drive loads more traffic to your site.

Whatever industry-related SERP features that you want to keep apprised of, you can create dynamic tags that show you the prevalence and movement of them within your keyword set. Segment even further for tags that show which keywords own those features and which have fallen short.

Below are a few segments you can set up for featured snippets and local packs.

Featured snippets

Everyone’s favourite SERP feature isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to outfit yourself with a snippet tracking strategy. You can create as many tags as there are snippet options to choose from:

Keywords with a featured snippet.

Keywords with a paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an owned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an unowned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

The first two will allow you to see over-arching snippet trends, while the last two will chart your ownership progress.

If you want to know the URL that’s won you a snippet, just take a peek at the URL column.

Local packs

If you’re a brick and mortar business, we highly advise creating tags for local packs since they provide a huge opportunity for exposure. These two tags will show you which local packs you have a presence in and which you need to work on

Keywords with an owned local pack.

Keywords with an unowned local pack.

Want all the juicy data squeezed into a local pack, like who’s showing up and with what URL? We created the Local pack report just for that.

Landing pages, subdomains, and other important URLs

Whether you’re adding new content or implementing link-building strategies around subdomains and landing pages, dynamic tags allow you to track and measure page performance, see whether your searchers are ending up on the pages you want, and match increases in page traffic with specific keywords.

For example, are your informational intent keywords driving traffic to your product pages instead of your blog? To check, a tag that includes your blog URL will pull in each post that ranks for one of your keywords.

Try these three dynamic tags for starters:

Keywords ranking for a landing page URL.

Keywords ranking for a subdomain URL.

Keywords ranking for a blog URL.

Is a page not indexed yet? That’s okay. You can still create a dynamic tag for its URL and keywords will start appearing in that segment when Google finally gets to it.

Location, location, location

Google cares a lot about location and so should you, which is why keyword segments centred around location are essential. You can tag in two ways: by geo-modifier and by geo-location.

For these, it’s better to go with the standard tag as the search term and location are fixed to the keyword.

Geo-modifier

A geo-modifier is the geographical qualifier that searchers manually include in their query — like in [sushi near me]. We advocate for adding various geo-modifiers to your keywords and then incorporating them into your tagging strategy. For instance, you can segment by:

Keywords with “in [city]” in them.

Keywords with “near me” in them.

The former will show you how you fare for city-wide searches, while the latter will let you see if you’re meeting the needs of searchers looking for nearby options.

Geo-location

Geo-location is where the keyword is being tracked. More tracked locations mean more searchers’ SERPs to sample. And the closer you can get to searchers standing on a street corner, the more accurate those SERPs will be. This is why we strongly recommend you track in multiple pin-point locations in every market you serve.

Once you’ve got your tracking strategy in place, get your segmentation on. You can filter and tag by:

Keywords tracked in specific locations; this will let you keep tabs on geographical trends.

Keywords tracked in each market; this will allow for market-level research.

Search volume & cost-per-click

Search volume might be a contentious metric thanks to Google’s close variants, but having a decent idea of what it’s up to is better than a complete shot in the dark. We suggest at least two dynamic segments around search volume:

Keywords with high search volume; this will show which queries are popular in your industry and have the potential to drive the most traffic.

Keywords with low search volume; this can actually help reveal conversion opportunities — remember, long-tail keywords typically have lower search volumes but higher conversion rates.

Tracking the cost-per-click of your keywords will also bring you and your PPC team tonnes of valuable insights — you’ll know if you’re holding the top organic spot for an outrageously high CPC keyword.

As with search volume, tags for high and low CPC should do you just fine. High CPC keywords will show you where the competition is the fiercest, while low CPC keywords will surface your easiest point of entry into the paid game — queries you can optimize for with less of a fight.

Device type

From screen size to indexing, desktop and smartphones produce substantially different SERPs from one another, making it essential to track them separately. So, filter and tag for:

Keywords tracked on a desktop.

Keywords tracked on a smartphone.

Similar to your location segments, it’s best to use the standard tag here.

Go crazy with multiple filters

We’ve shown you some really high-level segments, but you can actually filter down your keywords even further. In other words, you can get extra fancy and add multiple filters to a single tag. Go as far as high search volume, branded keywords triggering paragraph featured snippets that you own for smartphone searchers in the downtown core. Phew!

Want to make talk shop about segmentation or see dynamic tags in action? Say hello (don’t be shy) and request a demo.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://ift.tt/2NhLLop

[mercedessharonwo1]

Make sense of your data with these essential keyword segments

Posted by TheMozTeam

This blog post was originally published on the STAT blog.

The first step to getting the most out of your SERP data is smart keyword segmentation — it surfaces targeted insights that will help you make data-driven decisions.

But knowing what to segment can feel daunting, especially when you’re working with thousands of keywords. That’s why we’re arming you with a handful of must-have tags.

Follow along as we walk through the different kinds of segments in STAT, how to create them, and which tags you’ll want to get started with. You’ll be a fanciful segment connoisseur by the time we’re through!

Segmentation in STAT

In STAT, keyword segments are called “tags” and come as two different types: standard or dynamic.

Standard tags are best used when you want to keep specific keywords grouped together because of shared characteristics — like term (brand, product type, etc), location, or device. Standard tags are static, so the keywords that populate those segments won’t change unless you manually add or remove them.

Dynamic tags, on the other hand, are a fancier kind of tag based on filter criteria. Just like a smart playlist, dynamic tags automatically populate with all of the keywords that meet said criteria, such as keywords with a search volume over 500 that rank on page one. This means that the keywords in a dynamic tag aren’t forever — they’ll filter in and out depending on the criteria you’ve set.

How to create a keyword segment

Tags are created in a few easy steps. At the Site level, pop over to the Keywords tab, click the down arrow on any table column header, and then select Filter keywords. From there, you can select the pre-populated options or enter your own metrics for a choose-your-own-filter adventure.

Once your filters are in place, simply click Tag All Filtered Keywords, enter a new tag name, and then pick the tag type best suited to your needs — standard or dynamic — and voila! You’ve created your very own segment.

Segments to get you started

Now that you know how to set up a tag, it’s time to explore some of the different segments you can implement and the filter criteria you’ll need to apply.

Rank and rank movement

Tracking your rank and ranking movements with dynamic tags will give you eyeballs on your keyword performance, making it easy to monitor and report on current and historical trends.

There’s a boatload of rank segments you can set up, but here’s just a sampling to get you started:

Keywords ranking in position 1–3; this will identify your top performing keywords.

Keywords ranking in position 11–15; this will suss out the low-hanging, top of page two fruit in need of a little nudge.

Keywords with a rank change of 10 or more (in either direction); this will show you keywords that are slipping off or shooting up the SERP.

Appearance and ownership of SERP features

Whether they’re images, carousels, or news results, SERP features have significantly altered the search landscape. Sometimes they push you down the page and other times, like when you manage to snag one, they can give you a serious leg up on the competition and drive loads more traffic to your site.

Whatever industry-related SERP features that you want to keep apprised of, you can create dynamic tags that show you the prevalence and movement of them within your keyword set. Segment even further for tags that show which keywords own those features and which have fallen short.

Below are a few segments you can set up for featured snippets and local packs.

Featured snippets

Everyone’s favourite SERP feature isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to outfit yourself with a snippet tracking strategy. You can create as many tags as there are snippet options to choose from:

Keywords with a featured snippet.

Keywords with a paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an owned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an unowned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

The first two will allow you to see over-arching snippet trends, while the last two will chart your ownership progress.

If you want to know the URL that’s won you a snippet, just take a peek at the URL column.

Local packs

If you’re a brick and mortar business, we highly advise creating tags for local packs since they provide a huge opportunity for exposure. These two tags will show you which local packs you have a presence in and which you need to work on

Keywords with an owned local pack.

Keywords with an unowned local pack.

Want all the juicy data squeezed into a local pack, like who’s showing up and with what URL? We created the Local pack report just for that.

Landing pages, subdomains, and other important URLs

Whether you’re adding new content or implementing link-building strategies around subdomains and landing pages, dynamic tags allow you to track and measure page performance, see whether your searchers are ending up on the pages you want, and match increases in page traffic with specific keywords.

For example, are your informational intent keywords driving traffic to your product pages instead of your blog? To check, a tag that includes your blog URL will pull in each post that ranks for one of your keywords.

Try these three dynamic tags for starters:

Keywords ranking for a landing page URL.

Keywords ranking for a subdomain URL.

Keywords ranking for a blog URL.

Is a page not indexed yet? That’s okay. You can still create a dynamic tag for its URL and keywords will start appearing in that segment when Google finally gets to it.

Location, location, location

Google cares a lot about location and so should you, which is why keyword segments centred around location are essential. You can tag in two ways: by geo-modifier and by geo-location.

For these, it’s better to go with the standard tag as the search term and location are fixed to the keyword.

Geo-modifier

A geo-modifier is the geographical qualifier that searchers manually include in their query — like in [sushi near me]. We advocate for adding various geo-modifiers to your keywords and then incorporating them into your tagging strategy. For instance, you can segment by:

Keywords with “in [city]” in them.

Keywords with “near me” in them.

The former will show you how you fare for city-wide searches, while the latter will let you see if you’re meeting the needs of searchers looking for nearby options.

Geo-location

Geo-location is where the keyword is being tracked. More tracked locations mean more searchers’ SERPs to sample. And the closer you can get to searchers standing on a street corner, the more accurate those SERPs will be. This is why we strongly recommend you track in multiple pin-point locations in every market you serve.

Once you’ve got your tracking strategy in place, get your segmentation on. You can filter and tag by:

Keywords tracked in specific locations; this will let you keep tabs on geographical trends.

Keywords tracked in each market; this will allow for market-level research.

Search volume & cost-per-click

Search volume might be a contentious metric thanks to Google’s close variants, but having a decent idea of what it’s up to is better than a complete shot in the dark. We suggest at least two dynamic segments around search volume:

Keywords with high search volume; this will show which queries are popular in your industry and have the potential to drive the most traffic.

Keywords with low search volume; this can actually help reveal conversion opportunities — remember, long-tail keywords typically have lower search volumes but higher conversion rates.

Tracking the cost-per-click of your keywords will also bring you and your PPC team tonnes of valuable insights — you’ll know if you’re holding the top organic spot for an outrageously high CPC keyword.

As with search volume, tags for high and low CPC should do you just fine. High CPC keywords will show you where the competition is the fiercest, while low CPC keywords will surface your easiest point of entry into the paid game — queries you can optimize for with less of a fight.

Device type

From screen size to indexing, desktop and smartphones produce substantially different SERPs from one another, making it essential to track them separately. So, filter and tag for:

Keywords tracked on a desktop.

Keywords tracked on a smartphone.

Similar to your location segments, it’s best to use the standard tag here.

Go crazy with multiple filters

We’ve shown you some really high-level segments, but you can actually filter down your keywords even further. In other words, you can get extra fancy and add multiple filters to a single tag. Go as far as high search volume, branded keywords triggering paragraph featured snippets that you own for smartphone searchers in the downtown core. Phew!

Want to make talk shop about segmentation or see dynamic tags in action? Say hello (don’t be shy) and request a demo.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://ift.tt/2NhLLop

[dainiaolivahm]

Make sense of your data with these essential keyword segments

Posted by TheMozTeam

This blog post was originally published on the STAT blog.

The first step to getting the most out of your SERP data is smart keyword segmentation — it surfaces targeted insights that will help you make data-driven decisions.

But knowing what to segment can feel daunting, especially when you’re working with thousands of keywords. That’s why we’re arming you with a handful of must-have tags.

Follow along as we walk through the different kinds of segments in STAT, how to create them, and which tags you’ll want to get started with. You’ll be a fanciful segment connoisseur by the time we’re through!

Segmentation in STAT

In STAT, keyword segments are called “tags” and come as two different types: standard or dynamic.

Standard tags are best used when you want to keep specific keywords grouped together because of shared characteristics — like term (brand, product type, etc), location, or device. Standard tags are static, so the keywords that populate those segments won’t change unless you manually add or remove them.

Dynamic tags, on the other hand, are a fancier kind of tag based on filter criteria. Just like a smart playlist, dynamic tags automatically populate with all of the keywords that meet said criteria, such as keywords with a search volume over 500 that rank on page one. This means that the keywords in a dynamic tag aren’t forever — they’ll filter in and out depending on the criteria you’ve set.

How to create a keyword segment

Tags are created in a few easy steps. At the Site level, pop over to the Keywords tab, click the down arrow on any table column header, and then select Filter keywords. From there, you can select the pre-populated options or enter your own metrics for a choose-your-own-filter adventure.

Once your filters are in place, simply click Tag All Filtered Keywords, enter a new tag name, and then pick the tag type best suited to your needs — standard or dynamic — and voila! You’ve created your very own segment.

Segments to get you started

Now that you know how to set up a tag, it’s time to explore some of the different segments you can implement and the filter criteria you’ll need to apply.

Rank and rank movement

Tracking your rank and ranking movements with dynamic tags will give you eyeballs on your keyword performance, making it easy to monitor and report on current and historical trends.

There’s a boatload of rank segments you can set up, but here’s just a sampling to get you started:

Keywords ranking in position 1–3; this will identify your top performing keywords.

Keywords ranking in position 11–15; this will suss out the low-hanging, top of page two fruit in need of a little nudge.

Keywords with a rank change of 10 or more (in either direction); this will show you keywords that are slipping off or shooting up the SERP.

Appearance and ownership of SERP features

Whether they’re images, carousels, or news results, SERP features have significantly altered the search landscape. Sometimes they push you down the page and other times, like when you manage to snag one, they can give you a serious leg up on the competition and drive loads more traffic to your site.

Whatever industry-related SERP features that you want to keep apprised of, you can create dynamic tags that show you the prevalence and movement of them within your keyword set. Segment even further for tags that show which keywords own those features and which have fallen short.

Below are a few segments you can set up for featured snippets and local packs.

Featured snippets

Everyone’s favourite SERP feature isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to outfit yourself with a snippet tracking strategy. You can create as many tags as there are snippet options to choose from:

Keywords with a featured snippet.

Keywords with a paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an owned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an unowned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

The first two will allow you to see over-arching snippet trends, while the last two will chart your ownership progress.

If you want to know the URL that’s won you a snippet, just take a peek at the URL column.

Local packs

If you’re a brick and mortar business, we highly advise creating tags for local packs since they provide a huge opportunity for exposure. These two tags will show you which local packs you have a presence in and which you need to work on

Keywords with an owned local pack.

Keywords with an unowned local pack.

Want all the juicy data squeezed into a local pack, like who’s showing up and with what URL? We created the Local pack report just for that.

Landing pages, subdomains, and other important URLs

Whether you’re adding new content or implementing link-building strategies around subdomains and landing pages, dynamic tags allow you to track and measure page performance, see whether your searchers are ending up on the pages you want, and match increases in page traffic with specific keywords.

For example, are your informational intent keywords driving traffic to your product pages instead of your blog? To check, a tag that includes your blog URL will pull in each post that ranks for one of your keywords.

Try these three dynamic tags for starters:

Keywords ranking for a landing page URL.

Keywords ranking for a subdomain URL.

Keywords ranking for a blog URL.

Is a page not indexed yet? That’s okay. You can still create a dynamic tag for its URL and keywords will start appearing in that segment when Google finally gets to it.

Location, location, location

Google cares a lot about location and so should you, which is why keyword segments centred around location are essential. You can tag in two ways: by geo-modifier and by geo-location.

For these, it’s better to go with the standard tag as the search term and location are fixed to the keyword.

Geo-modifier

A geo-modifier is the geographical qualifier that searchers manually include in their query — like in [sushi near me]. We advocate for adding various geo-modifiers to your keywords and then incorporating them into your tagging strategy. For instance, you can segment by:

Keywords with “in [city]” in them.

Keywords with “near me” in them.

The former will show you how you fare for city-wide searches, while the latter will let you see if you’re meeting the needs of searchers looking for nearby options.

Geo-location

Geo-location is where the keyword is being tracked. More tracked locations mean more searchers’ SERPs to sample. And the closer you can get to searchers standing on a street corner, the more accurate those SERPs will be. This is why we strongly recommend you track in multiple pin-point locations in every market you serve.

Once you’ve got your tracking strategy in place, get your segmentation on. You can filter and tag by:

Keywords tracked in specific locations; this will let you keep tabs on geographical trends.

Keywords tracked in each market; this will allow for market-level research.

Search volume & cost-per-click

Search volume might be a contentious metric thanks to Google’s close variants, but having a decent idea of what it’s up to is better than a complete shot in the dark. We suggest at least two dynamic segments around search volume:

Keywords with high search volume; this will show which queries are popular in your industry and have the potential to drive the most traffic.

Keywords with low search volume; this can actually help reveal conversion opportunities — remember, long-tail keywords typically have lower search volumes but higher conversion rates.

Tracking the cost-per-click of your keywords will also bring you and your PPC team tonnes of valuable insights — you’ll know if you’re holding the top organic spot for an outrageously high CPC keyword.

As with search volume, tags for high and low CPC should do you just fine. High CPC keywords will show you where the competition is the fiercest, while low CPC keywords will surface your easiest point of entry into the paid game — queries you can optimize for with less of a fight.

Device type

From screen size to indexing, desktop and smartphones produce substantially different SERPs from one another, making it essential to track them separately. So, filter and tag for:

Keywords tracked on a desktop.

Keywords tracked on a smartphone.

Similar to your location segments, it’s best to use the standard tag here.

Go crazy with multiple filters

We’ve shown you some really high-level segments, but you can actually filter down your keywords even further. In other words, you can get extra fancy and add multiple filters to a single tag. Go as far as high search volume, branded keywords triggering paragraph featured snippets that you own for smartphone searchers in the downtown core. Phew!

Want to make talk shop about segmentation or see dynamic tags in action? Say hello (don’t be shy) and request a demo.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://ift.tt/2NhLLop

[rodneyevesuarywk]

Make sense of your data with these essential keyword segments

Posted by TheMozTeam

This blog post was originally published on the STAT blog.

The first step to getting the most out of your SERP data is smart keyword segmentation — it surfaces targeted insights that will help you make data-driven decisions.

But knowing what to segment can feel daunting, especially when you’re working with thousands of keywords. That’s why we’re arming you with a handful of must-have tags.

Follow along as we walk through the different kinds of segments in STAT, how to create them, and which tags you’ll want to get started with. You’ll be a fanciful segment connoisseur by the time we’re through!

Segmentation in STAT

In STAT, keyword segments are called “tags” and come as two different types: standard or dynamic.

Standard tags are best used when you want to keep specific keywords grouped together because of shared characteristics — like term (brand, product type, etc), location, or device. Standard tags are static, so the keywords that populate those segments won’t change unless you manually add or remove them.

Dynamic tags, on the other hand, are a fancier kind of tag based on filter criteria. Just like a smart playlist, dynamic tags automatically populate with all of the keywords that meet said criteria, such as keywords with a search volume over 500 that rank on page one. This means that the keywords in a dynamic tag aren’t forever — they’ll filter in and out depending on the criteria you’ve set.

How to create a keyword segment

Tags are created in a few easy steps. At the Site level, pop over to the Keywords tab, click the down arrow on any table column header, and then select Filter keywords. From there, you can select the pre-populated options or enter your own metrics for a choose-your-own-filter adventure.

Once your filters are in place, simply click Tag All Filtered Keywords, enter a new tag name, and then pick the tag type best suited to your needs — standard or dynamic — and voila! You’ve created your very own segment.

Segments to get you started

Now that you know how to set up a tag, it’s time to explore some of the different segments you can implement and the filter criteria you’ll need to apply.

Rank and rank movement

Tracking your rank and ranking movements with dynamic tags will give you eyeballs on your keyword performance, making it easy to monitor and report on current and historical trends.

There’s a boatload of rank segments you can set up, but here’s just a sampling to get you started:

Keywords ranking in position 1–3; this will identify your top performing keywords.

Keywords ranking in position 11–15; this will suss out the low-hanging, top of page two fruit in need of a little nudge.

Keywords with a rank change of 10 or more (in either direction); this will show you keywords that are slipping off or shooting up the SERP.

Appearance and ownership of SERP features

Whether they’re images, carousels, or news results, SERP features have significantly altered the search landscape. Sometimes they push you down the page and other times, like when you manage to snag one, they can give you a serious leg up on the competition and drive loads more traffic to your site.

Whatever industry-related SERP features that you want to keep apprised of, you can create dynamic tags that show you the prevalence and movement of them within your keyword set. Segment even further for tags that show which keywords own those features and which have fallen short.

Below are a few segments you can set up for featured snippets and local packs.

Featured snippets

Everyone’s favourite SERP feature isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to outfit yourself with a snippet tracking strategy. You can create as many tags as there are snippet options to choose from:

Keywords with a featured snippet.

Keywords with a paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an owned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an unowned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

The first two will allow you to see over-arching snippet trends, while the last two will chart your ownership progress.

If you want to know the URL that’s won you a snippet, just take a peek at the URL column.

Local packs

If you’re a brick and mortar business, we highly advise creating tags for local packs since they provide a huge opportunity for exposure. These two tags will show you which local packs you have a presence in and which you need to work on

Keywords with an owned local pack.

Keywords with an unowned local pack.

Want all the juicy data squeezed into a local pack, like who’s showing up and with what URL? We created the Local pack report just for that.

Landing pages, subdomains, and other important URLs

Whether you’re adding new content or implementing link-building strategies around subdomains and landing pages, dynamic tags allow you to track and measure page performance, see whether your searchers are ending up on the pages you want, and match increases in page traffic with specific keywords.

For example, are your informational intent keywords driving traffic to your product pages instead of your blog? To check, a tag that includes your blog URL will pull in each post that ranks for one of your keywords.

Try these three dynamic tags for starters:

Keywords ranking for a landing page URL.

Keywords ranking for a subdomain URL.

Keywords ranking for a blog URL.

Is a page not indexed yet? That’s okay. You can still create a dynamic tag for its URL and keywords will start appearing in that segment when Google finally gets to it.

Location, location, location

Google cares a lot about location and so should you, which is why keyword segments centred around location are essential. You can tag in two ways: by geo-modifier and by geo-location.

For these, it’s better to go with the standard tag as the search term and location are fixed to the keyword.

Geo-modifier

A geo-modifier is the geographical qualifier that searchers manually include in their query — like in [sushi near me]. We advocate for adding various geo-modifiers to your keywords and then incorporating them into your tagging strategy. For instance, you can segment by:

Keywords with “in [city]” in them.

Keywords with “near me” in them.

The former will show you how you fare for city-wide searches, while the latter will let you see if you’re meeting the needs of searchers looking for nearby options.

Geo-location

Geo-location is where the keyword is being tracked. More tracked locations mean more searchers’ SERPs to sample. And the closer you can get to searchers standing on a street corner, the more accurate those SERPs will be. This is why we strongly recommend you track in multiple pin-point locations in every market you serve.

Once you’ve got your tracking strategy in place, get your segmentation on. You can filter and tag by:

Keywords tracked in specific locations; this will let you keep tabs on geographical trends.

Keywords tracked in each market; this will allow for market-level research.

Search volume & cost-per-click

Search volume might be a contentious metric thanks to Google’s close variants, but having a decent idea of what it’s up to is better than a complete shot in the dark. We suggest at least two dynamic segments around search volume:

Keywords with high search volume; this will show which queries are popular in your industry and have the potential to drive the most traffic.

Keywords with low search volume; this can actually help reveal conversion opportunities — remember, long-tail keywords typically have lower search volumes but higher conversion rates.

Tracking the cost-per-click of your keywords will also bring you and your PPC team tonnes of valuable insights — you’ll know if you’re holding the top organic spot for an outrageously high CPC keyword.

As with search volume, tags for high and low CPC should do you just fine. High CPC keywords will show you where the competition is the fiercest, while low CPC keywords will surface your easiest point of entry into the paid game — queries you can optimize for with less of a fight.

Device type

From screen size to indexing, desktop and smartphones produce substantially different SERPs from one another, making it essential to track them separately. So, filter and tag for:

Keywords tracked on a desktop.

Keywords tracked on a smartphone.

Similar to your location segments, it’s best to use the standard tag here.

Go crazy with multiple filters

We’ve shown you some really high-level segments, but you can actually filter down your keywords even further. In other words, you can get extra fancy and add multiple filters to a single tag. Go as far as high search volume, branded keywords triggering paragraph featured snippets that you own for smartphone searchers in the downtown core. Phew!

Want to make talk shop about segmentation or see dynamic tags in action? Say hello (don’t be shy) and request a demo.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://ift.tt/2NhLLop

[fairchildlingpo1]

Make sense of your data with these essential keyword segments

Posted by TheMozTeam

This blog post was originally published on the STAT blog.

The first step to getting the most out of your SERP data is smart keyword segmentation — it surfaces targeted insights that will help you make data-driven decisions.

But knowing what to segment can feel daunting, especially when you’re working with thousands of keywords. That’s why we’re arming you with a handful of must-have tags.

Follow along as we walk through the different kinds of segments in STAT, how to create them, and which tags you’ll want to get started with. You’ll be a fanciful segment connoisseur by the time we’re through!

Segmentation in STAT

In STAT, keyword segments are called “tags” and come as two different types: standard or dynamic.

Standard tags are best used when you want to keep specific keywords grouped together because of shared characteristics — like term (brand, product type, etc), location, or device. Standard tags are static, so the keywords that populate those segments won’t change unless you manually add or remove them.

Dynamic tags, on the other hand, are a fancier kind of tag based on filter criteria. Just like a smart playlist, dynamic tags automatically populate with all of the keywords that meet said criteria, such as keywords with a search volume over 500 that rank on page one. This means that the keywords in a dynamic tag aren’t forever — they’ll filter in and out depending on the criteria you’ve set.

How to create a keyword segment

Tags are created in a few easy steps. At the Site level, pop over to the Keywords tab, click the down arrow on any table column header, and then select Filter keywords. From there, you can select the pre-populated options or enter your own metrics for a choose-your-own-filter adventure.

Once your filters are in place, simply click Tag All Filtered Keywords, enter a new tag name, and then pick the tag type best suited to your needs — standard or dynamic — and voila! You’ve created your very own segment.

Segments to get you started

Now that you know how to set up a tag, it’s time to explore some of the different segments you can implement and the filter criteria you’ll need to apply.

Rank and rank movement

Tracking your rank and ranking movements with dynamic tags will give you eyeballs on your keyword performance, making it easy to monitor and report on current and historical trends.

There’s a boatload of rank segments you can set up, but here’s just a sampling to get you started:

Keywords ranking in position 1–3; this will identify your top performing keywords.

Keywords ranking in position 11–15; this will suss out the low-hanging, top of page two fruit in need of a little nudge.

Keywords with a rank change of 10 or more (in either direction); this will show you keywords that are slipping off or shooting up the SERP.

Appearance and ownership of SERP features

Whether they’re images, carousels, or news results, SERP features have significantly altered the search landscape. Sometimes they push you down the page and other times, like when you manage to snag one, they can give you a serious leg up on the competition and drive loads more traffic to your site.

Whatever industry-related SERP features that you want to keep apprised of, you can create dynamic tags that show you the prevalence and movement of them within your keyword set. Segment even further for tags that show which keywords own those features and which have fallen short.

Below are a few segments you can set up for featured snippets and local packs.

Featured snippets

Everyone’s favourite SERP feature isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to outfit yourself with a snippet tracking strategy. You can create as many tags as there are snippet options to choose from:

Keywords with a featured snippet.

Keywords with a paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an owned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

Keywords with an unowned paragraph, list, table, and/or carousel snippet.

The first two will allow you to see over-arching snippet trends, while the last two will chart your ownership progress.

If you want to know the URL that’s won you a snippet, just take a peek at the URL column.

Local packs

If you’re a brick and mortar business, we highly advise creating tags for local packs since they provide a huge opportunity for exposure. These two tags will show you which local packs you have a presence in and which you need to work on

Keywords with an owned local pack.

Keywords with an unowned local pack.

Want all the juicy data squeezed into a local pack, like who’s showing up and with what URL? We created the Local pack report just for that.

Landing pages, subdomains, and other important URLs

Whether you’re adding new content or implementing link-building strategies around subdomains and landing pages, dynamic tags allow you to track and measure page performance, see whether your searchers are ending up on the pages you want, and match increases in page traffic with specific keywords.

For example, are your informational intent keywords driving traffic to your product pages instead of your blog? To check, a tag that includes your blog URL will pull in each post that ranks for one of your keywords.

Try these three dynamic tags for starters:

Keywords ranking for a landing page URL.

Keywords ranking for a subdomain URL.

Keywords ranking for a blog URL.

Is a page not indexed yet? That’s okay. You can still create a dynamic tag for its URL and keywords will start appearing in that segment when Google finally gets to it.

Location, location, location

Google cares a lot about location and so should you, which is why keyword segments centred around location are essential. You can tag in two ways: by geo-modifier and by geo-location.

For these, it’s better to go with the standard tag as the search term and location are fixed to the keyword.

Geo-modifier

A geo-modifier is the geographical qualifier that searchers manually include in their query — like in [sushi near me]. We advocate for adding various geo-modifiers to your keywords and then incorporating them into your tagging strategy. For instance, you can segment by:

Keywords with “in [city]” in them.

Keywords with “near me” in them.

The former will show you how you fare for city-wide searches, while the latter will let you see if you’re meeting the needs of searchers looking for nearby options.

Geo-location

Geo-location is where the keyword is being tracked. More tracked locations mean more searchers’ SERPs to sample. And the closer you can get to searchers standing on a street corner, the more accurate those SERPs will be. This is why we strongly recommend you track in multiple pin-point locations in every market you serve.

Once you’ve got your tracking strategy in place, get your segmentation on. You can filter and tag by:

Keywords tracked in specific locations; this will let you keep tabs on geographical trends.

Keywords tracked in each market; this will allow for market-level research.

Search volume & cost-per-click

Search volume might be a contentious metric thanks to Google’s close variants, but having a decent idea of what it’s up to is better than a complete shot in the dark. We suggest at least two dynamic segments around search volume:

Keywords with high search volume; this will show which queries are popular in your industry and have the potential to drive the most traffic.

Keywords with low search volume; this can actually help reveal conversion opportunities — remember, long-tail keywords typically have lower search volumes but higher conversion rates.

Tracking the cost-per-click of your keywords will also bring you and your PPC team tonnes of valuable insights — you’ll know if you’re holding the top organic spot for an outrageously high CPC keyword.

As with search volume, tags for high and low CPC should do you just fine. High CPC keywords will show you where the competition is the fiercest, while low CPC keywords will surface your easiest point of entry into the paid game — queries you can optimize for with less of a fight.

Device type

From screen size to indexing, desktop and smartphones produce substantially different SERPs from one another, making it essential to track them separately. So, filter and tag for:

Keywords tracked on a desktop.

Keywords tracked on a smartphone.

Similar to your location segments, it’s best to use the standard tag here.

Go crazy with multiple filters

We’ve shown you some really high-level segments, but you can actually filter down your keywords even further. In other words, you can get extra fancy and add multiple filters to a single tag. Go as far as high search volume, branded keywords triggering paragraph featured snippets that you own for smartphone searchers in the downtown core. Phew!

Want to make talk shop about segmentation or see dynamic tags in action? Say hello (don’t be shy) and request a demo.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://ift.tt/2NhLLop