#2. When you get a reputation for being extremely capable… you get more stuff put on your plate and people wanting to compete

[the-chicken-or-the-banana]

Hi! There's a headcannon that has been circulating that I never saw fully written, and I love how you characterize the foxes! Basically, Andrew living the setbacks of being short (either privately or publicly), getting frustrated, and Neil comforting him

THIS IS SO FUNNY SKDJFHK also i have always wanted to write a 5+1 so tyvm for this (again, this ended up so goddamn long but. what else is new.)

read "shortcomings (honestly, fuck you tilda)" on ao3 hereeeee

———

1.

Andrew gripped the edges of the counter. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Eye on the prize.

He squinted at the offensively orange mixing bowl that Kevin had placed far too high on the shelf earlier that day. He had planned on baking cookies (for no reason other than that he was bored), and that bowl was his lucky one: every baked good he made using it always rose perfectly.

Andrew had tried everything — stretching as far as he could, trying to move things with his mind, even going as far as going on his toes (after a cursory glance that no one was around).

He eyed the step-stool on the other side of the kitchen. He could always use that and put it back and no one would be the wiser. But no. Andrew was a fully capable adult with a reputation to uphold and he would get that bowl down by himself, dammit.

Andrew had been through hell and back, and then some. He would not be bested by cabinetry.

He rubbed his hands against his shirt before placing them back on the counter and took a running crouch. Andrew bounced lightly on his toes, mentally counted to three, and leapt up, hand reaching forward to grip at the bowl.

For one glorious moment, it really seemed like it would work.

Then the counter whacked Andrew in the gut, he smacked his head against the cabinet, and he slowly slid down to the floor, no bowl in hand.

Hmm. That wasn't supposed to happen.

He jerked his head up to glare at the stupid bowl and promptly felt extremely dizzy, slipping even further until he was collapsed entirely on the floor, limbs splayed.

That wasn't supposed to happen either.

Oh well. If he couldn't ruin his health with cookies, he might as well do it by laying on the most unhygienic piece of property he had ever seen. He supposed this was an acceptable way to go.

Andrew lay there on the dorm floor for a solid 15 minutes, willing the bowl to come down, until he heard the dorm room unlock and the sound of Neil's quiet humming filled the room. He didn't have the energy to get up though, so he flopped his legs around as Neil passed the kitchen to catch his attention.

"Oh, hey Drew," Neil shuffled further into the dorm after giving Andrew a quick glance and smile. A few seconds later, the humming stopped and Andrew saw the outline of Neil's body slowly move back into the kitchen doorway. "Um. Can I ask why you're starfished on the floor?"

Andrew sluggishly pointed upwards. "Bowl. High. Jumped. Fell."

Neil nodded knowingly. Andrew stared at him purposefully. Neil blinked.

Idiot.

"Get it for me," Andrew scowled with a well-aimed kick at Neil's ankles. Neil's eyes widened before filling with mirth. He walked forward and sat down next to Andrew's side, running a hand through his blond hair. Andrew hated himself for leaning into the touch.

"Aww, what's wrong?" Neil cooed. "Can't reach it?"

What a fucking asshole.

Andrew shot Neil a glare — he could admit that it probably wasn't super effective considering that he was on the floor with his not-boyfriend carding his fingers through his hair, but it was the thought that counted, okay! — and Neil gave him an amused look before pushing himself off the ground.

He shuffled around Andrew's limp body before giving an exasperated sigh.

"Andrew."

"Junkie."

"There is a stepstool right here."

"Yes."

"You didn't use it."

"No."

"... Why?"

Andrew shrugged in response.

He heard Neil grumbling under his breath and, a few seconds later, was rewarded with Neil's gross socks in front of his face as he went on the tips of his toes to grab at the bowl. Andrew glanced up and noticed that Neil's shorts were delightfully loose around his thighs.

Nice.

He indulged himself in the view until Neil dropped back down on the balls of his feet, holding the bowl proudly.

"Got it!" he grinned down at Andrew and flopped back down on the floor, pulling Andrew into a sitting position. Neil pressed up against him after a quick 'yes or no?' and handed over the bowl so Andrew.

"That was not fair," Andrew grumbled after a few minutes of calm silence. "You did that so easily. You're barely taller than me."

Neil nudged his shoulder and planted a kiss to the side of his head. "It's okay," he gave an annoyingly soft look. "I'll always be there to help you, whenever you need it."

Andrew huffed. "I did not ask for sentimentality, Josten. Just a bowl."

Irritatingly, this caused Neil to laugh a bit. "Okay, okay, I'll leave you with your precious bowl." He moved to get up and pressed a chaste kiss to Andrew's lips. "But for what it's worth, I think your size is perfect."

He left Andrew missing the warmth of Neil's body beside him before his brain caught up to what Neil just said.

"Josten. Josten! Was that a fucking dick joke?"

2.

There were moments where Andrew desperately wanted to burn Neil's clothing. He understood that they were remnants of past habits that were hard to break, but surely having this many gray and brown shirts had to be criminal.

Andrew refused to be seen kissing such a heathen in public but he really only knew how to put Neil in hot club clothes rather than hot casual clothes. And so, for the sake of humanity (and his dignity), he swallowed his pride and met up with Allison Fucking Reynolds.

Their plan to snatch up Neil from the Exy court to take him shopping at the mall appeared to be going well. So far, they'd bought him some shirts, artfully ripped jeans, denim jackets, and an actually functional pair of shoes. Neil, for all his stamina, looked like he was about to collapse from the weight of the bags, so Allison and Andrew took pity on him and decided to take a lunch break.

The three of them reached the food court and made their way to a noodle shop (after Andrew extracted a promise that he could get some ice cream afterwards). He and Allison sat Neil down on a bench to guard their massive pile of bags before going up to order.

By the time they were at the front of the line, Andrew was fully prepared to stab Reynolds in the middle of the mall. In a span of five minutes, she had managed to ask him about his and Neil's sex life, when they got together, what Neil's exact sexuality was, and had Andrew ever painted his nails?

He resolutely refused to answer any of those questions, on the principle that she didn't need more money from bets than she already had.

They ordered quickly, Andrew eager to get away from Reynolds, when the cashier said something that made him stop in his tracks.

"We actually have a discount right now for kids under 12!" she said smiling. "Is that something you'd be interested in?"

Andrew squinted. Why the hell would they—

Oh. Oh no, no, no.

Allison seemed to come to the same realization that he did, because she smiled wide and tapped her nails against the counter.

"Oh, that's just perfect!" she exclaimed. "Aaron here just turned 11 a few months ago. We'll take the discount."

Aaron?!

Andrew was going to kill her.

He was still planning bloody murder as Reynolds brought their tray of food to the table. He sat down with a scowl, and though Neil shot him a curious glance, he didn't push it.

Stupid considerate junkie.

Andrew muttered a percentage under his breath and proceeded to poke Neil in the cheek with his chopsticks. After a few moments of this, Neil turned to him with a scowl.

"Andrew," he grumbled. "What are you doing?"

Andrew glared at Reynolds.

Neil gave a resigned sigh and turned to her. "Allison. What happened?"

Reynolds smirked. "Oh, nothing much. Just that the cashier thought that your boy was a literal child and gave us a discount for kids 12 and under. I told her that it was great because Aaron over there," she jabbed a finger towards Andrew. "just turned 11."

Neil looked like he was biting back a laugh but then frowned. "Okay, but arms."

"True," Reynolds conceded. "However, consider this: tiny."

The two idiots nodded like they'd figured out some indispensable secret of the universe.

Frustrated, Andrew went back to poking Neil's face; when he finally glanced back, Andrew nudged his arms and shuffled a bit closer. Thankfully, Neil actually got the hint for once and scraped featherlight fingers into Andrew's hair.

"It's okay," Neil tried. "I mean, at the end of the day, all of us are just broke college kids—"

"I'm not," Allison interrupted.

Neil rolled his stupid, pretty eyes. "Okay, most of us are broke college kids—"

"Don't you have a bunch of mafia blood money and stuff?" Reynolds asked.

"Beside the point," Neil huffed. "Fine, Andrew, you are a broke college kid—" "Gee, thanks." "— and so you should be grateful that your height is saving you some money."

"That is dumb."

"You're dumb."

"How creative."

Neil scowled and tugged on Andrew's hair. "Shut up. Drama queen."

Andrew stabbed a piece of stir fry into Neil's mouth to close that damn mouth and resolutely ignored the click of Allison's phone camera.

3.

This was proving to be a problem.

Andrew stared at his $150 jeans, the bottom of the legs frayed and pale. He had just bought these two weeks ago. What a waste of money.

There really was only one thing left to do.

Minutes later, Andrew slammed open the door to his brother's dorm and dragged him out with Aaron demanding to know where they were going. By the time he had wrestled his idiot doppelganger to the car, Andrew was reaching. his. fucking. limit.

"Andrew, if you don't tell me where we're going, I swear I'll bite you. I'll push Neil off a treadmill and dump a bucket of mud on him. I'll throw all your ice cream in the trash. I'll—"

That last one was simply too far. He'd have to give Aaron some ground.

"Get in, loser," Andrew glared. "We're going shopping."

Thankfully, he managed to keep Aaron quiet until they reached the mall by letting him pick the music (it was country! Southern heathen). What a child.

Rich coming from you, a voice told him snidely. You can't even buy clothes for yourself properly.

Shut up, he scolded himself.

"Andrew," Aaron sighed exasperatedly when they reached the parking lot. "Can you finally tell me what we're shopping for?"

They got out of the car and Andrew raised an eyebrow as he faced Aaron. "Sex toys."

"WHAT THE FU— "

Andrew watched his brother's face turn red as he sputtered, before noticing the amusement in his face.

Aaron deflated. "Asshole," he grumped.

"Yeah, that is generally where the dildo goes."

"Shut up. I'm begging you."

Andrew decided to take pity on him and stabbed a finger towards Aaron's legs. "When did you buy those."

Aaron squinted. "My jeans?" At Andrew's nod, he looked confused. "Uh, like three or four months ago maybe. Why?"

Three or four months?! That was simply unacceptable.

"They are still in good quality," Andrew said slowly.

"...Yes?" Aaron looked lost for a few moments before his face brightened with pure, evil glee. Andrew hated the world more in that moment than he ever had before. "Oh my God. Oh my God. Are your jeans too long for you?"

"Be quiet," he snapped. "You just need to show me where you buy yours and never mention this to anyone or I'll stab you."

Aaron didn't seem as concerned as he should have been. "I don't need to do anything, dumbass. Why don't you just cuff them like me?"

"I refuse to look like a bisexual disaster."

"Hey," Aaron looked mildly offended. "That's not a bisexual thing. Right?" At Andrew's blank look, his eyes widened. "No. Oh shit. Is that why guys keep hitting on me at Eden's?"

Andrew actually blinked at that. He had not realized that his brother was really that stupid. "Aaron. Eden's is a gay bar. Obviously men will hit on you."

"Wait, it's a what— "

"Be quiet. You are coming with me now." He dragged his brother to the mall entrance as Aaron bumbled along behind him, swearing incoherently.

They weaved their way through what seemed like a million stores until Andrew walked out hours later, finally satisfied with his new haul of jeans that Aaron had oh-so-considerately helped to pick out, a few hundred dollars poorer, and two churros and an iced coffee fuller.

Andrew trudged up the stairs to his floor (perhaps this was a workout he should regularly implement in his exercise regime) while Aaron split off to find some study group or other.

By the time he reached his dorm, Andrew felt far more exhausted than the situation warranted and he blindly chucked the bags on the sofa, belatedly realizing that Neil was already sitting where the bags would land. Oops.

He sat down by Neil like the throw was entirely intentional as Neil sputtered when the plastic smacked him in the face.

"What's all this?" the junkie questioned. For fuck's sake, why did his eyes have to be so blue?

Andrew just gestured for him to take the clothes out and saw as Neil's face grew confused when he saw what he was holding.

"Jeans? Didn't you literally buy some like a week ago?"

"Two," Andrew corrected, because he was a petty bitch if nothing else. Neil rolled his stupid eyes at that but waited for Andrew to provide an explanation. Andrew heaved a regretful sigh. "The bottom of them are all frayed now"

"Frayed?" the striker's brows furrowed before his face cleared and a shit-eating smirk crossed his face. "Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying you were too short for your jeans?"

Andrew nearly stabbed him right then and there.

"Shut. Up."

"Oh my gosh. Andrew. Andrew."

When Andrew got up (not grumpily. never grumpily. (okay, maybe a little grumpily)), Neil tugged on his shirt sleeve with an apologetic grin. "Sorry, sorry, I'll stop making fun," but his eyes were squinted as he tried not to laugh and his face was flushed and his lips were red as he bit on them, and honestly, how was Andrew expected to stay annoyed after seeing that?

"I mean," Neil continued. "You're paying with whatever you have left of Tilda's life insurance, right? And it's technically her fault you're so, uh... vertically challenged because of the drugs and shit. So you buying all these jeans are like a big "fuck you" to her!"

Andrew blinked slowly at his not-boyfriend's not-cute not-endearing hand-waving and decided he could take a hit to his reputation if it kept Neil glowing like this. "Josten. Are you saying that being short is literally in my jeans?"

"Holy shit, yes."

4.

To be fair, he had been warned. This was probably his own fault. Which he would never admit, but whatever.

It had started fine enough.

Andrew had been smoking by the windowsill as he waited for Neil to come back from his class. It was raining heavily and he felt a comfortable laze settle in his bones, so he didn't bother to open the window, despite Kevin's complaints.

"Andrew, stop smoking in here. If you want to destroy your lungs, at least do it away from me."

"Shut up and watch your damn Exy, Day."

He shut up and watched his damn Exy.

Andrew let the sounds of the game wash over him as he let his eyes droop (when did Exy become... relaxing to him? That was moderately concerning), so by the time he realized that there was an incessant beeping sound in the background, everything was too far gone to not have gone to shit.

His body finally jolted into action when he finally registered that the smoke alarm was blaring in their dorm and he heard yells coming from outside in the hallway, which probably meant an RA or some other Foxes were about to burst in and see him smoking where he wasn't supposed to. For the third time this month.

Crap.

"Day. Day! Get off your fucking computer and turn off the alarm," he hissed as he (gracefully) scrambled to the kitchen to find a towel.

"Hmm?" Kevin hummed blearily. "Oh. That. Well, I told you so."

Andrew simply could not believe it. (Well, maybe he could a bit. Kevin was just that kind of asshole frie— person.)

By the time he dampened a towel (wow, they really needed to do the dishes sometime soon), the shouts were right outside the door and he heard keys jingling in the lock. Quickly he scrambled up the table, but in his haste, kicked over a glass of water (vodka? Sprite? whatever).

He tripped over slightly and his foot splashed into the puddle on the table, causing him to cringe internally. His sock felt horribly wet and tingly, and it was nearly enough to distract him from the creaking of the door opening. Quickly, he reached up, flapping the towel near the smoke alarm to turn it off.

It wasn't enough. He couldn't reach the alarm.

In a split-second, he decided to just fuck it and leapt up to see if that would work. However, the uncomfortable feeling in his feet and the stupid smoke alarm and the fucking banging of the door made him severely misjudge his strength.

Andrew jumped a lot further forward than he expected. He flew through the air, one foot catching on the top of a chair, the other stabbed by the edge of the table. In a futile attempt to gain his balance, Andrew flailed his arms around, but that just caused the towel to smack him in the face.

Eventually, gravity took hold of him and he (and the chair) crashed into the floor, the towel mockingly flopping on his hair. Blearily, he raised his head up and saw Neil and their RA staring at him concernedly from the doorway.

Well, this was awkward. At least the beeping had stopped.

Their RA, an unfortunately attractive tennis player named Richard Addams (Nicky found it hilarious that their RA's initials were R.A.. Andrew called him 'Certified Dick™'), stepped in cautiously. "Andrew, everything okay?"

"Just peachy," he grumbled.

Neil ran to Andrew's side at the sound of his voice and pushed his blond hair out of his face. "Why peaches? They're honestly not even that good; I can only stand the really big and thick and juicy ones."

Andrew froze and even Kevin closed his laptop that. "Neil," Certified Dick™ said slowly. "Do you know what peaches are?"

"Duh," he rolled his eyes. "Fruit. That's why Nicky has a peach next to my name in his contacts. Because I like fruits."

Idiot.

"It means 'ass,' " Andrew informed him. Neil gaped.

"It means wha— "

"Okay," Certified Dick™ exclaimed cheerfully. "I'm gonna leave y'all here. Andrew, I'll assume you weren't doing anything against the rules because you are a kind person who always listens to what I say."

"Of course," Andrew said blandly. "I am a wonderful student." He fingered the edges of his armbands.

Certified Dick™ slowly backed out of the room.

Neil let out a breath and blew his hair out of his eyes. "Okay," he started. "We'll talk about the ass thing later. But first, what the hell just happened?"

Andrew pointed up at the smoke alarm.

"Well, yes, I got that, but why were you jumping around like an absolute idiot?"

"Kevin is useless," Andrew announced.

"Not true!" Kevin protested immediately. "You just never listen to me. It's not my fault that I'm always right."

Andrew glared at him and turned back to Neil. "I couldn't reach the stupid smoke alarm," he finally gritted out, bracing for someone to mock him.

It never came.

Instead, Neil gave him a cheeky grin and a wink (at least, Andrew assumed it was a wink) and turned to Kevin with a faux-annoyed stare. "Seriously, Kev? You didn't help him?"

"He got himself into his own mess," Kevin shrugged.

"Okay, and what if someone had caught him? They might have not allowed him to play Exy for a bit! Or maybe while he was trying to shut off the alarm, he could have really hurt himself!" Neil was really laying it heavy on the dramatics, brandishing his arms wildly.

Kevin's eyes widened in horror at his words. "Shit."

"Yeah," Neil nodded graveley. "Us Exy players have got to look out for each other. How else will we live to our potentials?"

Kevin looked like he was going to be sick. Quickly, he whipped open his laptop and began muttering questions on how to secretly disable smoke alarms.

"Junkie," Andrew muttered to Neil. Neil just hummed and pressed a kiss to the crook of his neck.

"Yeah," he whispered a few moments later. "Only for you."

5.

Hmm. This was nice.

Andrew never could have imagined he would be the kind of guy to stumble over furniture while kissing his way through a room, and yet, here he was, crashing into tables and upturning chairs and tripping over bags.

He had Neil's fingers intertwined with his and was dragging him through the dorm, the kisses constantly pausing because Neil kept breaking off into small smiles and laughing into his neck. Every few steps, Andrew would take a look at his flushed junkie and absolutely forget about his plan to reach the bedroom, choosing instead to kiss him ferociously right there.

They were lucky that no one else was in the dorm.

When Andrew realized that it had taken them a solid seven minutes to walk about 15 feet past the door, he realized they would probably never reach an actual bed at the rate they were going. He told Neil as much and was rewarded with a shrug.

"I literally don't care where we end up," Neil said breathlessly before pulling him into another heated kiss. "I just wanna kiss you."

Andrew nearly snorted at that. How predictable. "I got that" he muttered. "But what do you want?"

Neil raised an eyebrow and deepened his voice mockingly. "I want nothing."

"You are actually so insufferable."

"Yeah, yeah," Neil waved him off and latched his mouth on Andrew's neck. Fuck. "Hmm," he said a few moments later. "Carry me?"

Andrew resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Ever since the junkie had seen how much he lifted at the gym a few weeks ago, this had become one of his favorite requests (and really, who was Andrew to deny him?).

Nevertheless, he leaned down and grabbed both of Neil's thighs, pushing him up until his legs were secured around Andrew's waist and Andrew could comfortably hold him up, his body flush against Andrew's.

Yeah, he got why Neil liked this so much.

He wasn't sure how long he'd be able to hold Neil up for though, considering that they actually had a game tomorrow and he didn't want to put up with Kevin's annoying complaints if he didn't try at least a bit. Andrew glanced around for a second before his eyes caught on the perfect place.

He adjusted his grip on Neil, causing him to let out an oof in surprise and carefully made his way to the kitchen (with only a slight amount of kissing in the middle). Andrew messily deposited Neil on the island counter and was promptly faced with another problem.

Neil was up there. Andrew was down here. How the hell were they supposed to make out now?

Andrew frowned slightly and tugged at Neil's collar. "Lean down," he commanded.

Neil complied and pressed a searing kiss to his lips, tugging at Andrew's hair, but too soon he pulled back.

At Andrew's 'yes or no?' Neil smiled down sheepishly. "It's a yes, but this angle's going to end up destroying my back."

That made no sense — whenever Andrew sat on the counter, he never had to lean down that much. He reasoned that the weight of being an Exy junkie was finally catching up to Neil's spine, though.

"Well," Andrew huffed. "I'm not going up on my toes."

"Why would you need to go on your toes?" Neil looked genuinely confused as Andrew frustratedly gestured at the air between them. "Wait, wait. Can you not reach me if I'm sitting up here?"

Andrew's thoughts came to a halt.

He pulled back (well, as much as he could while still staying in Neil's arms) and squinted suspiciously at his not-boyfriend. "Can you normally reach me when I sit up?"

"Well, yeah," Neil blinked. "I mean, I have to stretch a little bit but it's usually fine."

What.

Unceremoniously, Andrew yanked Neil off the counter and sat himself up (he pretended not to notice the stare that Neil gave when he flexed his arms). He hooked his ankles around Neil and dragged him closer, coming nearly forehead-to-forehead.

Forehead-to-forehead. Neil could reach him.

Andrew let out an uncharacteristic groan and dropped his head on Neil's surprisingly comfy shoulder. Neil snorted quietly and patted his head.

"It's okay, Drew," he said, his voice muffled but teasing as he pressed a kiss to the top of Andrew's head. "Maybe next time we can get you a stool or something. That'll be real attractive."

Andrew scowled and kicked him in the leg.

Neil's voice softened as he lowered his arms to rub soft circles on his back. "But I'm serious Andrew, it's okay." He pressed a soft kiss to Andrew's collarbone, the underside of his jaw, the corner of his lips. "Does this feel good?"

Andrew swallowed. Hiding from Neil was a fight he knew he'd lose, and there was no point prolonging the inevitable. "Yes."

"Then that's all I need. Making you feel good makes me feel good," he whispered. "I really like this, what we do right now. And if you want, we can still find more positions that feel really good. Don't stress, we have time."

"Hmm," Andrew said a few moments later. "That is all fine and well, but actually, we now only have about 20 minutes until Kevin comes back from class, and I would highly appreciate it if you could get me off sometime soon."

"Asshole. We were totally having a moment."

"Next to a bowl of apples."

"Rude. I bet those apples appreciated the conversation."

Andrew rolled his eyes at Neil's idiocy, but kissed him hard to convey everything he felt: you care, you listen, you are okay with me, you are safe for me. Neil seemed to get the message, because his body softened under Andrew's grip as he kissed him back eagerly.

When they finally pulled apart, Andrew felt heavy and sated and secure in the way he only associated with Neil. He looked into Neil's blown-out pupils, the blue peeking brightly at the edges of his eyes as he slowly brought Neil's hand to the waistband of his jeans.

"Right," Andrew tried for a nonchalant tone. The slight voice-crack may have betrayed him, but whatever. "Take off my pants now?"

+1

South Carolina winters were shit.

Growing up in Oakland meant that he was pretty used to cold winters and hot summers, but usually things only got unbearably chilly at night, when he could pile tons of blankets on himself. Unfortunately, winters in the South brought biting wind and snow. All day long.

Andrew hated the cold (sure, he could walk around with a blanket draped over him like a cape in his dorm (he did. occasionally), but alas, he actually had a reputation to uphold)

And yet, when Nicky and Dan enthusiastically told Neil about their stupid plan and Neil had sent a stupid questioning gaze to Andrew's stupid face, he sure as fuck couldn't use "the cold" as an excuse to deny those eyes.

So he bundled up into a turtleneck, a sweater, a thin jacket and a snow one, a beanie, a pair of gloves, leggings and then sweatpants, and his warmest socks (Andrew decidedly ignored Neil's snickers, who was annoying dressed in just a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. how rude.)

The so-called Monsters trampled down to the parking lot outside the Tower, boots sinking deep into the snow. Andrew shivered at the sudden wind and if he walked a little closer to Neil's hot warm body — well, no one needed to know.

Within seconds of their arrival, Andrew was regretting coming out.

A massive snowball soared through the air and slammed into Aaron's face, who promptly fell on his ass from the force of it.

"What the fuck?" he sputtered, wiping snow out of his eyes.

"HA!" Reynolds hollered. "Take that!"

"Oh dear," Neil muttered. "I didn't expect this much violence from the start."

"We are Foxes," Andrew scoffed. "Violence is the whole point."

"Actually, there's this one piece of shit in my Stats class and he tried to tell me I was wrong — I wasn't, by the way — and instead of punching him, I just very mathematically proved how incompetent he was and I told him that his parents' miscalculation when it came to conceiving him evidently got passed on to him in the form of his nonexistent math skills. So. No violence."

Andrew wasn't sure if he should kiss Neil or smack him. "Right. Because verbal annihilation is a very tame response."

"Since when have you been such a peacemaker?"

"Renee."

"You two literally beat the shit out of each other every week."

Andrew shrugged. "Semantics."

"I really don't think— "

Their conversation was rudely interrupted by Matt throwing a snowball mere inches away from Andrew's face. At his glare, Matt promptly ran behind a car.

"Neil," Andrew sighed. "I hate you."

"I didn't force you to be here," Neil pointed out. "Could've said no. What did Nicky call you? 'Whipped.' So ha." With that profound statement, Neil ducked and dumped a handful of snow down the back of Andrew's shirt.

"Ha," Andrew said back smugly. "Layers." Neil looked betrayed.

"Layers. I forgot."

"I didn't."

"Asshole."

"Yup."

Neil scowled and kicked at Andrew's highly sturdy snow boots petulantly. Andrew refrained from rolling his eyes turned towards him. "Yes or no?"

"Oh," Neil perked up. Junkie. "Yes, yes."

Andrew jabbed him in the stomach and when Neil keeled over groaning, he pressed a kiss to his lips and shoved his head under Neil's chin.

"Personal heater," Andrew explained. Then he grabbed Neil's arms and tucked them around his waist. This was good.

"Right," Neil snorted. "Naturally. I can't wait until someone throws a snowball at your face and you get all cold and wet."

Andrew scowled. How rude.

"Oi, Minyard!" Dan called and Andrew sighed before wiggling around until he was facing her, back flush against Neil's front. "This is for drawing mustaches all over the pictures in the Court!"

Andrew raised an eyebrow. "You have no proof— "

His protests were cut off with the sight of a snowball hurtling full speed at him. He made to jump out of the way (maybe Exy was good for something after all), but Neil's arms around him proved to be a real hindrance.

As it was, he got jerked back into place, the snowball inches in front of him. Andrew shut his eyes, hoping he could use this as an excuse to drag Neil into the dorm to warm up, when he heard an "oof" from behind him.

Andrew twisted around to find Neil's face covered in an explosion of snow, water dripping down his shocked expression.

His eyelashes were nice. Hmm.

"Wh- What?" he shivered. "How is there snow on my face? Wasn't it supposed to land on you?"

Oh.

Andrew brushed off some snow that had settled on his cheekbones before stepping back a bit (still in Neil's arms. that was necessary). And Neil was right, it was odd, the snowball was supposed to hit him and instead, it had smashed itself on Neil.

"I believe," Andrew said slowly. "My height has proved to be advantageous."

"Advan— you mean you were so short the snowball literally missed you and hit me?!"

"Yup," Andrew felt extremely self-satisfied. "See, had you been shorter, this wouldn't have happened. Alas, there's just more of you to hit when you're tall."

"That— I— Andrew!"

"That's my name."

"Ugh. I am cold and wet and very much not liking this," Neil grumbled.

"Bet you wish you had as many jackets as me, huh?" Andrew crowed.

"You could always give one of them to me," Neil said as he yanked Andrew back against him.

"I could. Not feeling it, though."

"Bastard."

"Just a little," Andrew agreed. He tilted his head up to look at Neil and oh, that angle was good, his lips were right there, how did Andrew never notice that Neil's eyelashes framed his eyes so nicely?

Hmm. If this was the view, maybe his height had some... unforeseen perks that extended beyond snowball fighting.

"I win," Andrew told Neil seriously. At his confused expression, Andrew was forced to sigh out an explanation. "You are very pretty from down here."

"Oh?"

"Shut up."

"I think you're pretty too."

"198%."

"Kiss me?"

"Ugh, if you insist."

Andrew leaned up to press his lips to Neil, dutifully ignoring the cheers from behind him, as Neil placed a hand under his chin to tilt him up further, which felt very nice.

Yeah, Andrew was living the good life. He had a maybe-boyfriend who was the perfect height and a brother and cousin who might actually stay, and he was content and safe and— really fucking cold because there was a ball of snow sliding down his neck what the fuck what the fuck what the fu— .

"NICKY."

"Shit. Sorry!"

[kdramafeminist]

Performative Badassery & Women in Kdramas

When I said I wrote an essay, I meant essay. This is a long one! Grab a snack and venture below the read more. I’ll see you at the end!

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You know the feeling. The drama begins. Our female main lead walks onto screen. She’s a successful businesswoman, a hotshot detective, clever lawyer, smartass retail worker, etc, etc. She stares down a random man to prove she’s the powerful one here. Or kicks some ass. Or rattles off a bunch of demands to her workers. Or talks fast to show off her intelligence.

Then she meets the male lead. There’re fireworks. Slowly we find our female lead has a softer side. Good to know. 3-dimensional and complex characters are important. It’s nice to see women on-screen who are both capable and emotional. Kick ass and feminine. 

But slowly... something starts to go wrong. She seems to be crying more than showing literally any other kind of emotion. And is it just me or is she getting saved and manhandled and flustered quite a lot for a woman who we were told was so well put together? Sure, the circumstances are extreme. But they’re extreme for the male lead too and he seems to be managing just fine for some reason. Also, if both of them are ordinary people with no on-screen fighting experience, how come he’s so great at throwing fists out of nowhere and she’s busy keeping hidden or needing rescuing? Exactly how many times can one person just faint like that without anyone checking to see if she has a medical condition?

By the drama’s end our lead has gone through trials and tribulations. She’s fallen in love too, I’m happy for her. But... now that the story’s ending and she’s getting in one last chance to show us she’s a “badass”, why am I left feeling hollow? She’s showing us how tough she is but... we ALL spent this whole drama watching her have absolutely no agency or such a little amount that she might as well have been trying to put out a fire with a water-pistol. It’s almost like her previous badassery (in whatever form it may have been - I don’t mean badass only in terms of being able to throw a good punch) was just a façade. A way to hook in female viewers like me who want to see something more than a wilting wallflower or one-trick Cinderella. But the tiniest knock and the cardboard house collapses.

And no matter how many times we get throwaway lines about her being “the smartest/toughest/scariest/most capable one here” it doesn’t ring true compared to the actual character we’re watching.

Rom-coms, melos and sagueks especially (but many more genres besides), have a real problem when it comes to performative badassery in their female characters. The writers give us a female lead they claim is hyper competent, but the reality is totally different. Any plot that features romance, almost always features this. Honestly the way the start of the relationship in dramas actively MURDERS the female character’s agency could be its own essay so I won’t go deep, just know the two are 100% linked.

The “Faux Action Girl” Problem 

A Faux Action Girl happens when a writer wants the popularity that comes with having a cool action girl character, or they want the praise that comes with writing a lead that breaks gender norms, or they want to be lauded for writing a FL whose more capable & progressive than the female kdrama lead we’d imagine, but they don’t end up actually giving us her. Instead we get the fake or faux version. The reasons are usually a combination of:

Relying on outdated tropes. Wrist grabs, damsels in distress, a girl fainting so she misses some vital plot related moment to increase runtime etc...

Sexist worldviews. As a by-product of being Korean which is still a heavily sexist country because of the holdover of Confucianism mixed in with the Christianity westerners brought over that leads many writers to (often without even realising) inserting moments that inadvertently reduce their female leads because they think that’s what correct or natural for the female character based on their opinion of women in general. Even if it doesn’t actually fit the type of character they’ve set out to create.

Executive meddling. Producers who think their demographic wouldn’t be able to handle a real badass but also know their female viewers want more complexity and agency in their FLs these days and so give us the paper-version instead of the 3D model.

This character’s more “badass” traits are nearly always just an Informed Ability (the writers tell us via other characters what she can do but never actually show us on-screen these same things) or we only ever see her utilise them once/twice at the beginning and maybe if we’re lucky once at the end, but never again. 

It really hurts.

The “Badass Decay/Chickification” Problem

Sometimes she really is a legitimate action girl though. She’ll be a cop whose good at her job or an ordinary citizen whose well-versed in taekwondo. She has actual moments on-screen to prove herself. 

Well. She has moments in episodes 1 and 2. Then she almost always goes through Badass Decay/Chickification. Which means that writers (& producers) believe that if we don’t see her having a softer side, she’ll become unrealistic or unlikeable. 

They fix her. So she becomes more vulnerable. As the only girl on the team (usually), she becomes the one who ends up injured more often or needs rescuing most. Her life begins to revolve entirely around her romance and nothing else. (Meanwhile the male leads gets to have the romance and keep his side-quest - have you noticed that? If the FL is really lucky she gets to keep one side-quest too, maybe a dream job or solving some family mystery. Never more though.. only men get to be complicated here). Once she was competent... now it feels like she legitimately had a personality transplant. 

Is this even the same person we began with?

The “Worf Effect” Problem 

Worf Effect is when the danger/power level of a villain is shown to the audience by making him successfully attack/hurt/ruin the plans of someone that the audience knows is skilled. This isn’t a bad thing alone and writers use it all the time. We need to acknowledge the villain as a proper threat and this is a useful way to do it!

But in kdramas it’s something used almost always against the lead female character. The one we’ve seen is intelligent, or strong-willed or quick-witted. 

And because it’s always her, this character begins to look weak. If this writing trope is abused, her reputation as the "biggest, toughest" etc. begins to look like it never existed and we’re back to her having an informed ability. 

That this is something that happens to the female characters not only more often but almost exclusively is a sign of sexism. Plain and simple.

Competent, Real Badass Female Characters Aren’t Scary

 If you’re going to sell me a capable woman, give me her. 

Not someone who has one very unique, specialised skill but otherwise can do nothing else except for that one time when her one skill is useful. 

Or has built up her own empire, implying a certain level of smarts, business ability or networking skills, but then once she’s removed from it she becomes so utterly useless it begs the question how she built that empire in the first place. 

Or has a rep as the detective whose taken down the toughest guys off-screen, but whatever skills she used to do that seem to disappear the moment anything really challenging happens on-screen. 

I’m not saying she needs to win all the time. Of course she doesn’t, how boring is that? All I’m asking is that when she loses, it’s in keeping with the character I’m supposedly watching. A woman that can kick ass can still be outwitted. A clever woman can be physically beaten. A street-smart girl can be foiled by rules and regulations. A leader-type can be beat by someone whose more unconventional.

It’s not difficult to write someone like this. I know the writers can do it because every male lead is written this way. I’ve never once, whilst watching a badass male lead lose, get beaten and cry, thought “oh no, his badassery was fake all along!”

Because when he loses it makes sense. It’s in character. There’s a solid plot reason behind why it happens.

Meanwhile my ladies who are meant to be able to kick ass and take names somehow just got kidnapped out of nowhere?

Make it make sense!

Consistent Characterisation is Good Writing

I get wanting moments where one is injured and the other fusses over them. I love those moments! All I ask is more imagination taken to get us to that point. Make it in-character. If my taekwondo black belt is kidnapped, I want to see her really fight. I want the kidnapping to be shown as genuinely tough on the people trying to nab her. Imagine how much more satisfying it would be to see her fight off all these bad guys, yet still end up losing? How much more heart-breaking?

We’d be so much more invested in the mind games or politics the villain is playing if the female lead we’ve been told is good at that stuff is playing the game just as hard. When she loses it’ll hurt more.

Writers need to stop being afraid that her remaining capable in some way diminishes the masculinity, attractiveness, prowess or “hero” status of the male lead. Trust me. It doesn’t. Ever. 

It’s not a case of either/or. We don’t think less of the male lead because his partner is as capable as him in whatever way that may be. Instead, we think more of them both. Once a romance begins, the heightened worry both characters have for each other should only make both of them stronger in whatever area they’re skill lies in. Not just make the man a sudden defence wall and the woman a worrying mess. 

I’m sure everyone who reads this can immediately think of at least one drama with a FL who is a Performative Badass. I know I had about ten in mind as I wrote this. 

There are exceptions. Cases where the badass gets to stay a badass. Usually these cases happen in genres without romance because like I said above, those problems are linked. But I can think of a few romcoms/sageuks/melos where it happens too. 

But those are the minority.

Women in kdramas. Give them agency. Make their characterisation genuine, not just a bit-part for the sake of a cool trailer. Not just one moment someone can edit into a “badass multifemale” video edit - only for us to watch the drama from the clip and discover we’ve been sold a lie. 

How satisfied would we be?

Writers! Give us a story we enjoyed because of the excellent characterisation. A new female character we can add to our lists of faves. Women who proved themselves as consistently badass as their first scenes claimed. Women in kdramas who, no matter what problem they faced, don’t become echoes or paper-thin versions of who we were promised.

Actual, complex, layered, enjoyable, KICK-ASS AND BADASS female leads.

Wouldn’t that be a miracle.

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PS. This is an open notice that it’s OKAY to reblog with added commentary/thoughts/rambles of your own. I would *love* to see it if you have anything to add.

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(Disclaimer: This essay was written with a specific female character type in mind. I am not saying every FL needs to be a badass or hyper competent. Soft, shy, physically weak female characters exist and can be just as realistic and complex. There’s a few I can think of who I adore. Instead my essay is very specifically about characters who are *meant* to be badass from the start but then... don’t end up being. So, yeah, before anyone claims I’m some angry feminist who needs every FL to be some tough martial artist or something. Absolutely not! Diversity is amazing and interesting. All I ask is that when I am told I’ll be getting a badass in a drama I get her. Not have my heart broken by the fake wilting flower I find in her place. Ok. End disclaimer. ^^)

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Also I’m tagging a bunch of you because you reblogged my post saying you wanted this so here! TY for making it to the end ^^

@kdramaxoxo​ @islandsofchaos @storytellergirl @vernalagnia-blog @lostindramas @salaamdreamer​ @planb-is-in-effect​ 

[sveasauvageon]

Yours is not to wonder why, yours is to do or die!  || GW

☾♔; March 21, 2018 ☾♔; sotd: idk ☾♔; comedian otd: JOHN FU.CKING OLIVER* ☾♔; GW NPC Audition II ☾♔; {G} https://goo.gl/XSTtMc ☾♔; mod(s): @themadmonarchist @maybones et moi

*oh yeah, he's gonna be comedian of the day all fu.cking week long. As of this moment, his book (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo) is number ONE on Amazon's bestseller's list, outselling not just the Pence's Marlon Bundo book, but James Comey's upcoming tell-all or whatever book about the crazy sh.it at the Trump white house and his firing, and the audiobook version of the Last Week Tonight book is number FOUR, the kindle edition is number FIVE, and all three are ahead on the list than the Pence's book (which is number 7). Guys, I don't have much faith in humanity, we as a species suck (case in point, Trump won the US presidency and so many other problems), but sometimes, like this moment, I love us!

Title: said by Blair Waldorf (my role model in life tbh)

Me: *petty af* Also Me: *passive aggressive af* Thus Me: *manifests pettiness in my oc's*

Preamble Ramble: FINALLY! I've finished one of my auditions! Next up, hopefully Svea, but probs Nika, I'm on a Russia kick, my Swedes will have to wait.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ஜ۩۞۩ஜ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀Vladimir Vladimirovich Sokolov, (17)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Изучаю тебя нежно-нежно ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Убиваю тебя ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Назови меня эгоистом! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀-⠀Эгоист by Дима Билан ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀(Dima Bilan, aka my one true love)   ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀https://goo.gl/VkQMN3

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ஜ۩۞۩ஜ

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⚜️ THE BASICS

Nickname: Volodya, Vova (but only people with special permission can call him either, call him "Vlad" and he'll end you) Gender: cis-male Date of Birth: May 7 Place of Birth: Moscow, Russia   Nationality: Russian-British   Ethnicity: eastern Slavic (he's also of anglo-saxon and Karachay descent) Accent: Russian   Blood Status: muggle-born

Profession: Student

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⚜️ PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Face Claim: Jon Kortajarena

Hair: dark brown, positively luscious and better than yours could ever hope to be.

Eyes: green

Height: 1.88m

Weight: idk

Body: tol, fit, and ridiculously handsome.  

Any Scars/ Marks?: - a long horizontal scar near his right 4th rib. Looks to be from a knife wound or some other blade type weapon, but refuses to explain where it came from (was he stabbed? Sword fight? You don't know! I don't know. Mostly because my answer will be lame compared to the "cool" way he refuses to explain it)

Any Tattoos/ Piercings?: a crowned double-headed eagle on his left shoulder blade and an ouroboros, but as a dragon instead of a snake on the inside of his right arm, near the wrist, around half the length of his forearm (there's a picture of it in his moodboard).

Quirks/ Mannerisms: - uses terms of endearment sarcastically for everyone, such as "darling" or "dear" - identifies the nearest 6 exits every time he enters a room - makes weirdly, somewhat threat-like jokes like "don't move to England if you're a professional traitor, people tend be hanged, thrown out of windows or are poisoned" and "those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves."

Style: expensive (of course). It's quite preppy, and classy, when not in uniform he prefers well-tailored suits, waistcoats, blazers, has a collection of designer watches. Kind of modern Victorian (well, my view of victorians is endless suits and prefect ettiquette, plus many moral values that contrast my liberal views, but their style was, eh meh. Like, their male style was pretty cool, but I'm not really into around 98% of their female style).  

Additional Information: n/a

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⚜️ PERSONALITY:

Head cannon: Vova is a rather intimidating person, in the terrifying sort of way. He carries an air of malice and death everywhere he goes, when he does act "warm and fuzzy", it's always jarring and seen as completely out of character, and possibly the sign of an illness. He is generally seen as the restrained, the quiet kid in the back with a perpetual "plotting your murder" expression on his otherwise handsome face. However, he is also seen as a rather extravagant, and somewhat suspicious person, he always seems to have access to illegal things (in both wizarding and muggle worlds), and seen as impervious to consequence, as regardless of what he does (or is suspected to have done), never gets in trouble.  

Personality (+ 5, - 5): Ruthless and shrewd, if you're not careful, he'll screw up your life. He's incredibly manipulative and self-centered, a true stereotypical Slytherin through and through (well, minus the pureblood thing. He's a muggleborn). Definitely overdramatic and decadent af. He is alluring, very much in the evil way, he's attractive, but he does nothing to hide how dark he (seemingly) is. Like, I guess you could say "bad boy attractive", but he's borderline murderous, and possibly a psychopath, so calling him a "bad boy" is not really all that accurate. He's a very proud and arrogant individual (especially about Russia), and quite malevolent, and vicious. He's patient and holds grudges for a long time, and never forgets a slight. He will legit back at you for something said years ago, he doesn't forget that stuff. He's both a great friend and not, he absolutely provides for his friends, buying them things, etc, but cross him in the slightest, he'll ruin you. And on that note, he also doesn't really have "friends", because if you're depending on him for his wealth, you're not really friends, and he's aware of that, he looks at such people more as "minions" than buddies. They're job is to agree with him and do as he commands, otherwise, what's their point. For people who hang out with him whom he doesn't support financially, it's more like tolerable existences, he's a difficult person to like anyway. However, he is capable of befriending people, usually under the guise of "I hate people, but you, you're cool", luring them into a false sense of security and making them feel special at the same time. However, having said that, he is not a pure psychopath, so he does have feelings. He genuinely cares about his family, animals in general, himself, and select few friends whom he does actually care about, but struggles with expressing that to them, since differentiating with people he pretends to befriend and actually considers friends is difficult since "I hate people, except you" is something he says to both types. It'd probably only come out in a life and death situation, since he'd put himself in harms way for people he genuinely gives a sh.it about, and wouldn't bother for the minions.  

Any mental health issues: He's probably something between a sociopath and psychopath, like, he does have actual emotions, as limited as they are, so he's not a true socio/psychopath. The argument is made (and a theory that I personally prescribe to, as a shi.tty psychology/sociology student, so don't put any weight or authority behind my opinion) that a psychopath is simply a more extreme and refined sociopath, so under that logic, Vova is basically a less extreme sociopath. (also, also, I have a problem with socio/psychopaths, I make too many of them, and they turn out to be my favourites. This is really worrying guys.) Anyway, under DSM IV (or possibly DSM III, I forgot which one changed the classification), he'd have what was called "an AXIS II Personality disorder", they've gotten rid of that classification now, but it basically listed narcissism, anti-social, sociopathic, and psychopathic personality disorders.

Favorite Quotes/ Sayings that your character would use: - "the fact that you need that explained is just so fu.cking sad." (literally said to anyone who doesn't understand any concept, whether it's something as simple as 2+2=4 or complicated as "imaginary time" -- don't ask, it's one of Stephen Hawking's theories and I don't understand it, I know my son would make fun of me.) - "what a fool" - "don't be attempt to be a comedian fool, you'll only embarrass yourself." - "darling, you have no idea what's possible." - "want to see what true power really looks like?" - "urg, don't be such a pleb/plebeian." - "of course I love Beyoncé, I'm a human being who lives on this planet." - "when better to have truffles and tiramisu than at 3am in Milan on a Thursday?" - "that jacket looks fine." - "dear, when will you learn? I know everything." - "Mudblood? Is that supposed to hurt my feelings? I don't have any of those, so what else are you going to do?"

Additional Information: - never on time. He's always late. You will literally start crying before he shows up he takes so long. - Loves crushing people's dreams (basically his hobby) - has an uncanny ability to suck the joy out of anything (his ex has said "unfortunately, he is a vampire", but in a muggle jokey way and basically the dracula stereotypical view muggles have of dracula, as in dark and not fun, and not an actual vampire) - Chess (muggle and wizard -- a proper, "normal" person hobby) - Has a bit of a smoking habit   - has an endless list of blackmail material on people (a lot of which is infuriatingly revealed by GW at various times), and also has a tendency of taping people doing various things which he uses as part of his blackmail library. Seems to have cameras' everywhere and claims to "know everything" about everyone.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⚜️ BIOGRAPHY

Relation to your OC: classmates, housemates (possibly more, formerly, I'm still developing him)  

♣️ Family Background

Vova comes from a largely muggle family, however, he is not the first wizard born into their family in recent history, so it wasn't completely a left-field shock when he started displaying magic. The first wizard in their family in the last few centuries (approximately) was Vova's uncle; Ilya Dmitriyevich Shostokov, who attended Koldovstoretz. Vova was the second in recent history, and his younger sister made third. Whilst virtually unknown in the magical world (with the exception of Ilya Shostokov, who has a rather dark reputation in the wizarding world), the Sokolov's are very prominent in the muggle world, particularly in Russia. Vova's grandfather is an Oligarch, who in Russia are effectively businessmen who run the country, the only curtail on their power and influence being the Russian President, and even then, the Russian administration is extremely corrupt, in the last presidential election, the incumbent president was able to literally choose his opponents (not a joke, btw. Putin actually did that in the recent Russian election). Anyway, the Sokolov's have a monopoly over the media industry in Russia, most of which run state-friendly stories, and shut down anything that could potentially insult the presidency. Their family, specifically the current patriarch, is also often accused (mainly in rival papers, magazines, shows, etc) of not only being corrupt, but having involvement with the Zima Bratva. As whole, they maintain an unfavourable public image (as most oligarchs do in the eyes of the Russian public), but are close with the Kremlin, so they remain influential with the government.

Family Members: - Vladimir Yakovlevich Sokolov // Marc Lavoine // Father // 47 // Politician // alive - Catherine Elizabeth Sokolova née Olivier // Emilia Fox // Mother // 46 // Socialite/House-wife // alive - Yevgeniya "Zhenya" Vladimirovna Sokolova // Antonina Vasylchenko // younger sister // 16 // student at Hogwarts // alive - Yakov Lʲvovich Sokolov // Charles Dance // paternal grandfather // 71 // Oligarch/suspected Bratva leader // alive -  Ilya Dmitriyevich Shostokov // Nikolaj Coster-Waldau // paternal uncle, once(ish) removed // 43 // dark wizard // alive  

♣️ Family Affiliation: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Slytherin House, Russian Government (the muggle one, as a fam they support United Russia, because Vlad Sr is a member. Personally? Who knows whom Vova supports), other Kremlin-close Russian Oligarchs  

♣️ Socio-economic status: rich as fu.ck. The exact number and position is actually quite shadowy though. They are amongst the wealthiest muggle families in Russia (Vova's grandfather is an Oligarch), but the retainment (definitely not a word) of their wealth also depends on how friendly they remain with the Kremlin, additionally, their family (mainly Vova's gramps) has been accused of having Bratva ties, and money from that alleged connection is definitely not counted on tax forms.

Quick facts: + Born May 7 in a Moscow Hospital, first son of Vladimir Sokolov, an emerging Russian politician (who eventually made it into the Federation Council). After his sister was born just about a year later, their mother, British-born Catherine Sokolova née Olivier, obtained dual British citizenship for them via "lex sanguinis" (which is a british citizenship law, giving to people who are born abroad is one of their parents is a British citizen by birth. I could've left this out, but I googled this sh.it and I like rambling).

+ Whilst close with his family, Vova was a solitary child, he liked to read and spend time on his own in a corner, or stay at their various Dacha's without anyone else. He never seemed to require any oversight as he never did anything bad (or least, he was never caught). However, he is closest to his grandfather, and would enjoy sitting in on board meetings, just silently observing from a corner. Some of his grandfather's employees (or Minions as Lev calls them, where Vova also got the habit from) found his silent starring creepy and unsettling.

+ Being a muggleborn, he is well-versed with the muggle world and has interacted with them from birth, his parents and grandfather all being muggles, and attended muggle private schools as a child before his letters came. Whilst they employ muggle servants (because they're muggles), his uncle (the first wizard he ever met) employs a house-elf (yes, he pays the house-elf, they might be part of an oppressive government and basically an organized crime family, but they don't do slaves).  

+ Vova first discovered magically abilities on his own, when on a trip in Australia with his mother, he discovered a large snake in their hotel room one morning whilst she was still sleeping, being around 3 and not fully comprehending the danger, he just walked up to it and started talking with it. It later slythered (see what I did there) away of it's own accord when Catherine walked in and freaked out about a massive crazy Australian snake (because you guys have scary animals) coiled near her son. As he aged, he noticed he could do other things, such as making things float or disappear.  

+ Vova first publically displayed magically abilities (as well as control over them) aged 7, when a board member of one his grandfather's companies was throwing a hissy fit about a child sitting in, and his tie suddenly tightened and started choking him. The man survived, at that instance, died suspiciously at a later date. Anyway, he survived that instance when Lev ordered the meeting to be over and broke Vova's angry glare at the dude. The two immediately then went home, and Lev called Ilya to arrive in "his" way (apparition) and had Ilya introduce Vova to magic and talk about whatever, Lev didn't know the specifics.

+ When his sister discovered powers (shattering all the windows in their Dacha in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky via screaming, she was told she couldn't keep a Siberian Tiger as a pet), he gave her the "magic talk", and they caused quite a bit of trouble for annoying students at their school, as well as a nearby "plebeian" school (who disliked the children of oligarchs, for very obvious reasons, Oligarchs rule Russia, and they kind of suck). Anyway, they would mess with their things, frame them for crimes that children their age literally could not commit. What 8 year old has cocaine their locker and why does another 8 year old know what it is?

+ He received a letter from both Koldovstoretz and Hogwarts aged 11 (because he's a dual-y), chose Hogwarts since no one in his family had ever gone there before (like, there's only one person in recent history whose ever been magical anyway, but still), also might have had something to do with the Zima bratva's recent (at that time) expansion into the British criminal landscape, who knows?

+ Although he denies any connection, Vova runs effectively a youth branch of his uncle's business, which itself is a branch of the Zima Bratva. Ilya is basically a magical fixer for the Zima Bratva, who, for a very hefty price, uses dark magic to assist/fix the problems of the muggles and magical alike. Vova does basically exactly the same, but for the students at Hogwarts, and for a different price. Instead of money, he collects information and favours to be repaid immediately at any time he demands. He also maintains an iron fisted rule over his "organization", whether they be customers or minions, snitches don't get stitches, snitches get buried 50 feet beneath the ground.

Additional Information: - he is a parselmouth, a trait inherited from a distant magical ancestor (like from back in the Kevian Rus days of his familial ancestry), his sister also inherited the trait, though their uncle did not.  

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⚜️ HOGWARTS INFORMATION

Is your character a student of Hogwarts?: yeppers If so, which house and year: Slytherin, Seventh Year If not, which house did they belong to while they were at Hogwarts?: n/a

Best Class(s) at Hogwarts: defense against the dark arts

Worst Class(s) at Hogwarts: none

Any Pets?: an ooc, cute af owl (tawny, spotted, he doesn't know. Okay, I don't know, but as a consequence, neither does Vova), it's smol and got big round eyes, it's name is Harold and yes, it is his best friend, and yes, he did get it at diagon alley at his sister's instance, and accidentally got attached to it. He does like animals though, the Solokov Dacha in the outskirts of Yakutsk has effectively become a cross between an animal hospital and habitat for, welp, animals. Vova spends most of his holidays there (often alone, not including servants, as it's cold AF. Yakutsk is the second coldest major city in the world, after Norilsk, but it's winter's are colder than Norilsk's), he's ability to visit has increased since he learned how to apparate. He's also really interested, invested, and active in wildlife conservation, and often goes tagging Siberian tigers and polar bears etc with various animal protection organizations in Russia (the muggle ones).  

Reputation at Hogwarts: Volodya has a largely dark reputation, he's more infamous than famous. He's known for messing with people, and not in a fun way, and he's generally seen as some kind of criminal. His uncle is well known is the magical world as a "Jack of all trades of villainy", and Vova definitely fits that villain mold too. He probably wouldn't be too close to the elites, they're sort of glittering in their ivory towers, and his tower is dark and gloomy, and lacks joy because he finds it annoying. Although, he and E probs might've gotten along in her pureblood bully gang days, or actually would've been antagonistic, he's basically as evil as them, but he's a mudblood, so meh, maybe rival bullies? Idk, I'll leave that for plotting. Anyway, he's not got a "bad boy" rep so much as a "omg, he's literally the worst person alive, why are you trying to be his friend, does he have a incriminating evidence on you?" type rep.  

Additional Information: n/a

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⚜️ INDIVIDUAL MAGIC

Wand: yew Wand Core: veela hair (acquired by his uncle through unknown means, there was a report of a veela going missing right around the time Uncle Ilya got that hair so...) Wand Length: 13½" Wand Flexibility: inflexible

Patronus: Eurasian brown bear

Boggart: appears as the corpses of his family, killed via poison/nerve agent. His fear being a government revolution and his family getting caught up in that or his family losing the Kremlin's favour. The result would be the same in both scenarios tbh.

Amortentia: citrus, gun powder, and mint

Affinity to any particular magic? - I dunno if you'd call it an affinity, but he is waaaay too into the unforgivable curses and it's waaaaaay too easy for him to perform them. - dark magic/dark arts (you guys know exactly why he has an affinity for it XP)

Additional Information: - whilst he loves magic, he also has a deep fascination with muggle weapons (particularly the ones developed by his country), and has been experimenting with magically evolving them, particularly poisons and nerve agents.  

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⚜️ USER INFORMATION

Username: @drownedinmoonlight Activity Level (Scale 1-10): 8

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⚜️ OPTIONAL Playlist: Moodboard: https://goo.gl/R7DVjp Social Media (instagram, facebook, snapchat, twitter, etc): Storyboard: https://goo.gl/h6DJfB Aesthetic Collection: Wardrobe/Style Collection: Plotting Set: Story:

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When you have completed the audition, please tag the mods: @drownedinmoonlight @themadmonarchist and @maybones and use the hashtag #GWnpc

[mosquitgo]

Random Lore Ramble #2 (Because I hate you all and want you to suffer through reading this): Corrupted Guardians

Woop woop, here we are another day, another post nobody gives a shit about except for me.

So a topic I briefly mentioned in Lore Ramble #1 was Corrupted, or Dark, Guardians.

What interests me is less about what these rare Guardians did, and more about their motives. I’ve personally been fascinated for years about the psychological differences between classes, so I’m going with one example per class to talk about. Eris Morn for the Hunters, Rezyl Azzir for Titans, and Toland the Shattered for Warlocks.

*NOTE: I don’t intend to mention the following people in this list because they aren’t 100% good or bad, more like somewhere in the middle: Kabr the Legionless, Osiris the Exiled, Praedyth. You could argue that those being my exceptions, Eris shouldn’t qualify, but I don’t have a surplus of examples for Hunters, so I’ll take whatever I can get.*

We may as well start with Eris Morn’s story, and my opinion on rogue Hunters in general.

Eris Morn was a member of the few Guardians to survive the Great Disaster, when hundreds of Guardians were given the second death by the hand of Crota on the Moon. Along with one of her friends, the Warlock Eriana-3, she was particularly spiteful about the death of Wei Ning, a Defender Titan known for her strength and power. As such, when Eriana began assembling the doomed First Crota Fireteam, Eris was among them. Joined by Vell Tarlowe, Omar Agah, Sai Mota, and the infamous Toland, they launched a quiet assault on Crota’s chambers, relying on the vast Hive-Lore knowledge from Toland to guide them through. I won’t go into specifics, but it was a terrible failure, to say the least. Eris was stranded kilometres down in the heart of the Hive domain, with Eriana, Tarlowe, Agah and Mota dead because of Toland, who was missing and probably gone the same way, and to top it all, her Ghost was long-dead, and her Light slowly draining out. So she does what Hunters do best. She adapts. She survives. Lightless and alone, she wanders the caves, killing anything in her way and staying away from Crota. Now this is where it really gets disturbing.

Somewhere along the line, Eris has her eyes ripped out by a Hive Knight, so, being more than a little too close for comfort to the line of sanity by now, she proceeds to rip out the knight’s eyes, and implant all three in her forehead. Now, after this we honestly don’t know what happened. She emerges, decades later, from the catacombs, not a Guardian, not a mortal either, but not quite Hive. Not quite anything, really. She is almost insanely angry at the Hive, at Toland, and most of all at Crota. Eris returns to the City and the Guardians, who for the most part disgusted by the strange half-Dark half-Light creature that she has become. Without Ikora Rey, she would have certainly been exiled, or ignored. But the Warlock Vanguard saw the knowledge and skills Eris had picked up from her years in the Lunar Catacombs, and not only allowed her to stay, at the Tower, but actually let her join the Vanguard in the War Room several times. As usual, Ikora was proven right, as Eris became a valuable asset in the defeat of Crota, and later his father Oryx, by our Guardian. When Towerfall occurred, Eris Morn had actually left the Tower, for unknown reasons, and may not even know about the events of the Red War with Ghaul.

So Eris may not be a “bad guy” by definition, but there is a definite inhuman side to her nature. She has Hive eyes, which appear to bleed or cry liquid Darkness. She has that strange green rock which has been suggested to be a Hive worm (fuck I’m not even going through that right now). Her Strike dialogue suggests that she may even KNOW some Hive. When Oryx is killed, she can control that infamous sword with her mind. I could go on for hours, but you get the point: Eris Morn is not human.

But I digress, my point is about Hunters. Taking it as a fact that she has taken in a worm, the story emerges. When her Ghost is taken, as I said, she adapts. Worms really aren’t entirely different in purpose to Ghosts, if you look at it bluntly. They effectively render the bearer immortal, plus they heal, give abilities and a whole other bunch of goodies too. So basically, the method of healing and survival is taken away, find the next best thing, which could well be a hive-worm. As well as this, swapping eyes with a Knight isn’t some strange experiment, or an attempt to become stronger, again, it’s a way to live. Eris has her eyes gouged out, and some part of her mind is still rational enough to make a few connections.

If she can’t see, she can’t use her knives, can’t shoot.

If she can’t shoot or knife-fight, she can’t kill Hive.

If she can’t kill Hive, she will die.

So of course, she does the rational thing, at least in the moment. She finds the dead Knight, gouges its eyes out, and somehow puts him in her head. This does have further ramifications, but in the moment, it’s do or die.

Now, one term in particular comes up constantly in this story. Survival. Everything Eris Morn does, good or bad, is to keep going. Nothing else.

So; when it comes to Hunters, we can reasonably safely say that their sole reason for “corrupting” is to stay alive. Simple as. They live on Light, when that isn’t enough, they look elsewhere. Anything that comes after is a byproduct, not considered or planned by the Hunter.

Next up we have the Warlocks, and I’m using Toland the Shattered as the example. There are quite a few Dark Warlocks down through the years, named and unnamed, but he is our most detailed one out there.

So Toland, aka the Mad Warlock, aka the guy who gave Voidwalkers a bad reputation forever.

Unfortunately, we don’t have much of an account of Toland pre-going-Dark, but we do have the rare treasure of a first person account through Toland’s Journals, which give us an insight into his mind, so here’s what we can piece together.

Toland does not have a Tragic Backstory™, like Eris Morn or Rezyl Azzir. He was just a Warlock, who was interested in Hive, had genius-level intelligence, didn’t get his answers from the Vanguard, and went too deep. As he started drifting further from the Light, creating strange, unnatural artifacts, and abandoning his Ghost entirely, the Vanguard took notice. Toland the Shattered was exiled, not that he really gave two shits. He hadn’t really been a Guardian for years anyway. So leaving behind the weapon Shadow Price (one of the artifacts I mentioned), Toland leaves the Tower behind. He disappears off somewhere doing some weird stuff, and slowly learning more about, and becoming more like, the Hive.

Then we have a wide blank space, in which Six Fronts, Osiris, and Twilight Gap occur, and everyone’s favourite psychopathic insane Voidwalker isn’t seen for years.

Then, when things settle down after the worst of the Fallen Wars have passed, Commander Zavala launches that ill-fated attack on Crota, who has held the moon for decades, and our story picks up.

Eris Morn and Eriana-3 assemble the First Crota fireteam. While looking for the sixth and final member, they realise that their team is comprised of fighters, and as any decent player knows, you need a tactician to head it up for any success. The only Warlock on the team is Eriana, but she is Praxic Warlock, so ultimately, another fighter. So against explicit Vanguard orders, they seek out Toland, in whatever dark corner of the universe he was hidden away in. Their reasons are pretty simple: The team needs a strategist desperately, and when it comes to Hive, you can’t get a better one than the Mad Warlock.

So Vell Tarlowe, Sai Mota, Omar Agah, Eriana-3, Eris Morn and Toland the Shattered descend into the Hellmouth. I’ve told you what comes next. Here’s the details.

So Toland’s agenda wasn’t 100% true to what Eris and Eriana had thought. To him, this wasn’t an honourable mission. It was the research opportunity of a lifetime. He’d been trying to get down into the Hellmouth for years now, and here was the chance to do so with an armed fucking guard!

Now, of course, Toland knew from the moment they came to him that it was suicide. Wading down into an unsecured area crawling with Hive, with a mildly insane mutant space wizard to guide you is not going to end well.

But then again, this is the greatest field study opportunity he’ll ever get. So, he agrees. He says yes, of course I can get you there, of course I know how, of course you’ll survive. (*Note: I’m about to go knee-deep in Hivelore here).

What really made it worth the risk to Toland was the slim chance of finding Îr Yût, the Deathsinger. Îr Yût was an extremely powerful Hive Wizard, capable of killing instantly with her voice. Being as excessively morbid as his Voidwalker peers, Toland was obsessed. How did the song work? Was it the song itself, or the one singing it? Could it be that the Deathsinger’s song was death itself? He reckoned, in a pretty logical fashion, that he could actually recreate the Deathsong himself, completely identical.

Now that in itself is an indication of how much Toland had strayed from humanity. I mean, have you heard the Hive screeching? It’s unnatural, it’s inhuman, and it’s downright terrifying at times. No human should be able to recreate that.

Anyway, so Toland agrees to lead the team to Crota, all the while planning for a meeting with the Deathsinger.

They go in, are swarmed with Hive. Mota is killed almost immediately, and then, miraculously, it stops. The tide of Hive falters, and stands still, and slowly but surely turns. Other than Toland, nobody understands this: Because the Hive don’t relent. They don’t retreat, pause or stop. Everyone knows that. But for some reason, they have now.

Unbeknownst to all but Toland, the Hive, after killing Mota, knew what was happening. Five veteran, powerful Guardians (plus one…thing) had entered their ground. This was good. Very good. The Hive live their lives by the Sword Logic, their philosophy, their religion, the way of life that even affects their physical makeup and biology. Right at the root of this is one fact: The Hive gain power from death. They are immortal, unless killed, as long as they feed their worm with a stream of death. The energy gained from a kill is paid in part to the rank above the killer. Now, all kills will create some power, but if the conditions are right, they will create more. I assume the conditions are certain symbols, locations etc. So that means that when Crota kills hundreds in combat with his sword, it actually isn’t that much of a power source. But even three or four Guardians, in the right conditions…. different story entirely.

The Hive begin to pull back, luring the Guardians in to where they can be sacrificed to maximum effect. Knowing this, the logical move is to retreat, or flat out run like hell. But Toland assures the other four survivors that this is normal, that the Hive are spread thin after the battle, that the best thing is to press forward, because despite knowing the increasing danger they’re in, he wants to find Îr Yût.

Shortly after this the fireteam is separated in two: Eris with Eriana and Agah, Tarlowe with Toland. By the time they find each other, Tarlowe is, as Toland says, “spectacularly dead”. Toland claims that the Hive got him, a Thrall got under his guard, nothing more, but who knows what he was capable of.

Eventually, they reach the chamber where the the Deathsinger resides, but with Agah dead.

Eriana-3 is killed. As the Deathsong begins, Eris realises why their passage was allowed. Enraged, she turns on Toland, only to see that the impossible is happening. The Deathsong is focused on Toland, but the Mad Warlock stands on his feet, unafraid. Eris Morn runs, angry and scared, assuming Toland is dead.

Now this is the moment Toland has waited for years for. He hears the Song of Death, and sings right back. Somewhere in those few seconds, something happens. His theory was incorrect. Nobody can recreate the Deathsong, but something he hadn’t predicted happens: instead of dying painfully, Toland the Shattered is sent to the Hive’s Ascendant Throne-World, the hellish alternate dimension created and ruled by Oryx, the Taken King. In this instant, he is changed somehow, so arriving in the Ascendant Realm, instead of being hunted and killed like most intruders, v he is ignored.

Being a Warlock, Toland does the only thing better than doing something impossible: He does another impossible thing. Years later, when Oryx hears of his son’s death and sets the Dreadnaught on course to Earth, who warns us? Who sends fragments of journal, torn paper, the knowledge we need to defeat the Taken and their Lord? It’s Toland the Shattered, of course. Obviously, there is no way he can physically propel items through to the real world, but, as you can see, impossibility isn’t really something that bothers the Mad Warlock.

So there it is. Looking at Toland’s story, just as with Eris, patterns start to emerge. Toland was exiled because he started going against Vanguard orders. He did this because he wanted, maybe needed, answers. Knowledge. I honestly believe that if he had been given permission and a research team, he wouldn’t have gone rogue, and if he did, it wouldn’t have been as severe or early as it was.

Perhaps his worst crime, effectively causing the deaths of four Guardians, was all for one reason. He wanted to know more about Îr Yût, and the Deathsong, and the Hive.

Just as the story of Eris comes back to survival, the story of Toland comes back to knowledge. I can draw parallels here to Osiris here, too. The stories go pretty similarly:

Warlock wants knowledge.

Warlock cannot access said knowledge, for some reason or other.

All hell breaks loose, caused by Warlock.

Warlock is exiled, disappears, and leaves everyone confused and afraid.

So; Warlocks go dark to know more, to learn, to understand other forms of power. Some side affects are deliberate, some are byproducts.

Two thirds of the way guys, hang in. Only Titans to go now.

Rezyl Azzir, later Dredgen Yor, is quite possibly the most infamous rogue Guardian in the Destiny Universe, and he is certainly the first of them. Killer of Pahanin, Jaren Ward, and dozens of others. Creator and first holder of Thorn.

Azzir was a Guardian before Guardians, resurrected in a time of chaos, shortly after the Collapse, before the Faction Wars, before the raising of the City Walls. He was a Titan by nature, but this was at the point where Guardians were called Risen, and Warlord Risen still dominated what little land hadn’t been taken by Fallen on Earth. So while the most famous group of Risen at this point were the Iron Lords, Azzir was the best outside their ranks.

He was, essentially, an early Saint-14, he was strong, powerful, kind, loyal, basically what a Titan should be.

*NOTE: In the grimoire, Azzir is referred to as the “First Guardian”. This can be interpreted a lot of ways, including that he was actually the first to be resurrected by a Ghost, but my personal favourite is that while other Risen existed, Rezyl Azzir was the first of them to operate similarly to the modern Guardians.*

He was probably the most effective in his field (which was Fallen-killing) for years, but even before the whole Dredgen Yor saga began, he started showing signs of going downhill. He became more and more reckless, once even letting himself die, hiding his Ghost, allowing himself to be brought to a Devil Baron’s throne room, only for his Ghost to revive him. Shortly after, he killed the Baron and fought his way out. The risk involved there is insane. He literally let his Ghost materialise in plain view. If a Vandal or Dreg had been quick enough to get it, Azzir was dead.

Years later, and hundreds of near-suicidal missions, Azzir finds a Hive pit, and, reckless as ever, goes straight down, no hesitation.

Now, something I should mention here is that in the Destiny Universe, weapons can mean a lot more to their owners than just a gun, or just a sword, or whatever they are. We see it with Amanda Holliday and the Chaperone, Cayde-6 with Ace of Spades, Lord Shaxx with his Razelighter, and of course, Rezyl Azzir with Rose. Rose was a hand cannon, and a pretty normal one, but it served him well, and he got really protective of it.

But before going down, he makes the questionable decision to leave his Ghost on the surface. His reasons are unknown. It could be as simple as that he didn’t want his Ghost killed, but I do think he knew that one way of another, there was little chance of him escaping unscathed, and he wanted to spare his Ghost. So Azzir goes down, finds a Hive Wizard, and after attacking her, is confronted by a Hive Prince. Being led further and further down, we have absolutely no clue as to what happens next. All we know is that when he emerges from the caverns, he is no longer Rezyl Azzir.

The man that leaves that place is Dredgen Yor.

Even his beloved Rose has changed, it has become the now famous Thorn, a poisonous, twisted thing. The physical changes to Azzir (I’ll refer to him as Yor from now) are unspecified, but we know they were gradual, as later, when the Crucible was up and running, shortly after Six Fronts, Yor participated. He did extremely well that day, but then something was noticed.

Among the Guardians he killed that day, some did not get up. The most well-known of these was the Hunter Pahanin, only survivor of Kabr’s Vault of Glass fireteam.

In order to tell the rest of Yor’s story, I need to switch to the perspective of a young orphaned boy called Shin Malphur. Malphur lived in one of the many towns and villages in the European Dead Zone who ignored the call to the City, preferring to take their chances in the wilds as they had done for years.

This village was ruled by a single man, and he was cruel, and a terrible leader. He threatened and beat members of his village if they opposed him. One day, along comes a Hunter called Jaren Ward, on patrol to find survivors like these, and mark their locations. Before leaving, Ward is informed about the village leader’s cruelty. He confronts him publicly, and when the man attempts to kill him, Ward, being a Gunslinger Hunter, draws a gun and shoots him and the few loyal to him, in a few seconds.

In the silence that follows, the only one brave enough to thank Ward is the young Shin Malphur. Impressed by this, Ward leaves Shin his gun, the hand cannon The Last Word. While talking to him, the Hunter mentions that he’s on his way to Dwindler’s Ridge, the last known location of a dangerous rogue Guardian. Guess who that rogue Guardian is?

So Jaren Ward leaves the village, and goes towards Yor. Yor ambushes and kills him with Thorn. Ward’s Ghost flees, finding its way to Shin Malphur months later. It informs him what has happened, and what happens next is unique in three ways. The first is that Shin Malphur becomes the first person to become a Guardian while still alive. The second is that he is almost certainly the youngest Guardian ever Risen, somewhere in his teens. The third is that this is the only confirmed case of a Ghost leaving a dead Guardian and grafting to a regular person to make them a Guardian.

So Shin Malphur, now a Gunslinger Hunter like his hero Jaren Ward, leaves his village, killing Fallen and practising with his weapons and abilities, but always out for Dredgen Yor’s blood. It takes him years, as Dredgen Yor has years of training and leaves almost no trace, but Malphur finds Yor. Ironically, the showdown takes place again at Dwindler’s Ridge. They face off, guns not drawn. Yor smiles, recognising Ward’s gun, and says its name: “The Last Word.”

Shin Malphur draws and fires, lightning-fast, killing Dredgen Yor, and utters the infamous words, known to every Gunslinger: “Yours. Not mine.”

And that’s where the story of Rezyl Azzir and Dredgen Yor ends. We don’t know where Malphur goes or does. Interestingly though, he’s referred to as a “renegade Hunter”, so seeking out Yor was probably illegal because of the danger involved.

When he was known as Rezyl Azzir, Yor was a living legend, a beacon of Light for every Risen. As Dredgen Yor, he was a monster, feared by all. Even in the centuries after his death, wielders of weapons like Thorn, Shadow Price and Bad Juju (Toland the Shattered’s weapons) are watched closely to avoid the scenario of “another Dredgen Yor”.

Of all the Dark Guardians, he leaves the greatest and most terrible legacy. Dead Guardians. Broken people. Cursed weapons. A strange group of followers of his ways, calling themselves the Shadows of Yor, had to be extinguished quietly by Ikora Rey’s spy network, the Hidden.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you what caused the final change from Rezyl Azzir, heroic Titan, to Dredgen Yor, Hive Abomination. But I can tell you what led up to it, the foreshadowing to this event. Azzir’s fall from grace began a long time before that day in the Hive tunnels. He had been reckless, arrogant, and blinded by anger for years. But we can trace back his arrogance to around the time the City Walls went up. Now it’s time for another unfounded theory: Rezyl Azzir started doing the insane things because he wasn’t needed anymore.

I said before that Azzir was the first Guardian. When he was at his best, other Risen started following him in spirit, acting like him, by his code. Those same Guardians were the ones who created the City. Although Lord Shaxx, Commander Zavala, and Lord Saladin created and upheld the Walls, they’re really Rezyl Azzir’s legacy. After this, they followed their own ways, or the ways of the newly formed Consensus, the officials behind City Defence. Nobody really learned from him anymore.

To exacerbate this situation, Azzir was once the greatest Titan, looked up to by pretty much every other one, but after the Battle of Six Fronts, Saint-14 is probably more deserving of that title. Shortly after, the Battle of Twilight Gap was won by the aforementioned Shaxx, Saladin, and Zavala. That put Azzir even further down the line of Titans. So assuming he wasn’t needed, Rezyl Azzir put himself in more and more dangerous situations, because he thought that if he did die the second death, it wouldn’t make a difference, in the grand scheme of things.

Now this reaction, a Titan losing faith in themselves, isn’t unique to him. Titans seemingly need to have a constant goal. Saladin was never himself after SIVA was contained and the Iron Lords disbanded. He only came into his own during the Second SIVA Crisis, and training Guardians in Iron Banner. When we found Zavala on Titan, he honestly didn’t know what he was doing, or why. He was nothing without the Vanguard, and the City.

All in all, big conclusions are:

Titans go Dark because there’s nothing left to fight for.

Hunters go Dark to survive for another day.

Warlocks go Dark because they want knowledge at any cost.

Well, that must about concludes this post, finally. Felt like I’d never get the end of it.

That’s about it.

[spicynbachili1]

Sorry Fortnite, but Warframe just might be the best free-to-play game on Switch

Talking with Digital Extremes and Panic Button earlier than the large launch

[Replace: After our story went reside, Digital Extremes reached out to Destructoid to additional make clear the early days of Warframe, providing the next quote:

We have been making video games for 25 years; we all the time knew we had one thing particular with the unique thought round Darkish Sector and we took an enormous probability on it. The preliminary response to it confirmed we have been proper so we have laid every part on the road to develop it since 2012 studying from any errors alongside the way in which and dealing with our neighborhood all through has been a key success issue.”]

In 2013, developer Digital Extremes launched two very totally different video games. One was Star Trek, a licensed journey recreation that hit the market in time for Star Trek Into Darkness. The opposite was Warframe, an unique IP — the corporate’s first since Darkish Sector — that will find yourself being the corporate’s first try at a free-to-play recreation. Neither title set the world on hearth at launch, however the place Star Trek followers moved on fairly rapidly from the sport, folks enjoying Warframe determined to stay it out. As a result of this was an all-or-nothing gamble for the 20-year-old firm, Digital Extremes caught it out with them.

“Numerous the teachings we’ve discovered, we’ve discovered by errors,” Mark Ollivierre of Digital Extremes defined to me. “We’ve accomplished loads of issues early on that we actually didn’t know what we have been doing. We have been like, ‘That is how our recreation ought to work, proper?’ and our clients and participant base have been like, ‘That is horrible and you must change this’ so we simply listened.”

Ollivierre was in San Francisco lately with fellow Digital Extremes worker Doug Perry and Adam Creighton of developer Panic Button. In a hip workplace area in SOMA, the trio was exhibiting off the upcoming Change construct of Warframe, which is now in its fifth 12 months in the marketplace. It had a rocky begin. No writer wished any a part of it. The corporate needed to lay folks off to pay for it. And early opinions weren’t precisely sort (we scored the Xbox One port of Warframe a 6.zero).

However the followers didn’t abandon the sport when it didn’t meet their requirements proper out of the gate, and so they have been vocal about what they wished from it. As evident almost each day on this business, each developer or writer has their share of vocal followers, however not each firm, like Digital Extremes, put all their eggs in a single basket. Whereas many firms say they take heed to followers, the workforce at DE made participant enter a precedence, and it’s a choice that has allowed the sport to develop right into a title with greater than 38 million registered customers.

“It’s undoubtedly been that relationship, that direct line of communication we have now with our gamers, that’s allowed us to iterate and refine methods,” Ollivierre stated, “and the complete recreation as an entire to make sure we’re offering one thing that’s satisfying to them. At the beginning, we need to make sure that they’re comfortable; they’re pumped with what we’re doing. It’s a reciprocal relationship. After we do one thing they like, they assist us and it simply feeds that machine.”

A great relationship with followers is one thing developer Panic Button is conversant in. Since final 12 months, the 40-person workforce has made a reputation for itself with Change avid gamers, offering glorious ports of Bethesda titles Doom and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, in addition to Rocket League and the upcoming Doom Everlasting and perhaps Wolfenstein: Youngblood (“Now we have an ideal relationship with Bethesda,” Creighton stated after I pressed him on the latter title.). Creighton, basic supervisor of Panic Button, says followers have been vastly appreciative of the work the developer has accomplished in increasing the number of video games for Nintendo .

“We received an ideal letter just a few months in the past the place any person despatched us a thanks be aware,” he stated. “It stated, ‘Hey, I simply need to say thanks as a result of I’m an individual who can solely afford one console and I’ve all the time been a Nintendo particular person, however now I’m capable of play Rocket League and all my pals who’re avid gamers play it on different consoles, so now we’re capable of speak about the identical video games. You’ve really enhanced our social circles.’ I really count on that to occur with Warframe in an enormous method as a result of, 38 million registered customers, I believe there’s going to be loads of communicable and social ecosystem development as soon as this factor hits the and it hits at a good time.”

Warframe releases for Nintendo Change on November 20. A subscription to Nintendo Change On-line won’t be essential to play the sport, as is commonplace with F2P titles on the system. Warframe may have its personal chat channel within the recreation, so gamers will not must hassle with the Change smartphone app. There can be a number of controller choices, together with movement controls for each the Pleasure-Con and Professional controllers. And, it brings with it almost 5 years of content material, every part as much as the Masks of the Revenant replace from over the summer time. 

The sport’s most up-to-date replace, the open-world Fortuna enlargement that launched on PC earlier this month, is at the moment scheduled to reach on Change subsequent 12 months and the 2 firms predict parity between the console variations later in 2019 (simply don’t count on cross-play any time quickly). It’s loads of content material, and with Panic Button’s assets cut up between tasks, loads of work as properly. Nevertheless, Creighton made it clear that challenges like porting Warframe to Change are what his firm thrives on.

“On either side,” he defined, “between Digital Extremes and Panic Button, we each wish to tackle difficult tasks and we simply need to make one thing particular and make a great product for the . I’m a very huge fan of the Nintendo Change and it’s such a purpose-driven piece of . It’s made to be on the TV and on the go and we’ve been capable of create a very enjoyable, fluid cooperative expertise for 4 gamers on it.”

The time period, “enjoyable, fluid cooperative expertise for 4 gamers,” is claimed a number of instances all through the interview by all three events, as if it’s a speaking level all of them memorized for the day of the interview. It’s additionally an extremely correct description of Warframe working on Change. 4 Change consoles have been available for the showcase and I used to be given a 20 minute or so crash-course on what the sport had turn into over the previous half-decade. 20 minutes isn’t almost sufficient to wrap one’s head across the fight, not to mention the how the sport is performed, however it did give me a adequate take a look at how the sport runs.

Briefly, it runs fucking phenomenally. Whereas I can’t assure it’ll play the identical when servers go reside on November 20, this hands-on was certainly enjoyable and fluid. The construct, which was not the retail construct of the sport, ran at a close to constant 30 frames-per-second — which is Panic Button’s purpose — solely dipping barely in additional open areas. Within the warmth of fight, it was steadier than a Navy SEAL’s set off finger. With out having to fret about stuttering or dropped frames, I used to be capable of deal with the motion and simply how rattling lovely this recreation is.

Warframe runs on Digital Excessive’s proprietary Evolution engine. Creighton informed me getting it working on the Change was a easy expertise — his workforce has been engaged on the sport for lower than a 12 months — and getting it working as completely as it’s has been a collaborative expertise. Not simply between Digital Extremes and Panic Button, however Nintendo as properly.

“They’ve been extraordinarily receptive to the product,” Ollivierre stated, “and so they’ve gone out of their method to ensure we’re not altering or eradicating something from Warframe to ensure it matches on their system. They’re engaged on their coverage and with their backend tech workforce to ensure Warframe is, in its entirety, represented on Change.”

It’s harassed a number of instances that Warframe on the Change may have every part that’s discovered on the opposite consoles, with the Fortuna enlargement once more coming at a later date. This contains the microtransactions. Warframe doesn’t function any loot packing containers. As an alternative, Digital Extremes sells Premium Prime Entry Packages that provide “pimped out” variations of the Warframes, with new packages arriving each three months or so for a restricted time. There are additionally packages which are particular to PS4 and Xbox One gamers. Whereas a Change particular package deal gained’t be out there at launch, it’s one thing each builders wish to present down the road.

“And all of that’s primarily based on the core philosophy that no matter you need,” Ollivierre defined, “you’ve a selection in Warframe. You’ll be able to play every part free of charge, or you should purchase in case you don’t have as a lot time. So if you wish to play by the entire recreation, spending each hour with it and you’ve got the luxurious to try this, you possibly can. If you’re somebody like me who has a restricted period of time as a result of you’ve youngsters, it’s like ‘Alright, perhaps I’ll simply buy stuff and gained’t farm for 20 hours to get it.’ The entire precept is being as truthful as potential.”

Including to that sense of equity is a barter system within the recreation that permits gamers to commerce assets between each other. It’s a system long-time gamers will little doubt have mastered by now, however for these like me who can be coming to Warframe for the primary time on Change – and make no mistake after previewing this recreation I’m undoubtedly downloading it for that lengthy Thanksgiving weekend developing – it could appear a little bit daunting. There’s fishing, mining crafting, story missions, totally different Warframes to gather; like many free-to-play titles, loads of recreation is being thrown at gamers unexpectedly. Whereas each Digital Extremes and Panic Button are getting ready to assist gamers as a lot as they’ll with informational pages on their web sites and Twitch streams which are Change particular, the largest help to new gamers could come from that pleasant, welcoming mass of Warframe followers who’ve been with the sport since its inception.

As Ollivierre defined, “We even have this new program referred to as ‘The Guides of the Lotus’, that are gamers who’re very excessive stage, very skilled who can get in-game chat and cosmetics to point out they’re a useful resource for gamers to speak to. So we’re going to be trying into.”

“It’s gamers taking good care of gamers,” Creighton added.

For knowledgeable Warframe PC gamers, you possibly can migrate your account to the Nintendo Change model at no additional value. This can really create a replica of your account, so you might be free to proceed to play on PC after you migrate. Simply know that, like with the PS4 and Xbox One, it’s one-way migration solely.

I’ve performed loads of free-to-play video games over the previous a number of years and I’ve tried my hand at these out there on Change, and I actually haven’t skilled one thing like Warframe. Panic Button has actually accomplished the Change neighborhood a service with how properly it has ported over graphically intensive video games with out compromising on enjoyable. Doom is enjoyable on Change, Rocket League is enjoyable on Change, and so is Warframe. I’ve little doubt Digital Extremes made the fitting selection when it contracted Panic Button to provide this port.

Adam Creighton informed me he believes there’s nonetheless loads of room to get probably the most out of the Nintendo Change and, truthfully, my cash is on Panic Button being the studio that pushes the the furthest. If you wish to know why it’s I really feel that method, obtain Warframe on November 20 and see for your self.

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[flauntpage]

GGG Beats Canelo for the Second Time This Weekend

The summer of 2017 featured three of most intriguing and anticipated combat sports matchups of the past five years, if we’re being honest.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor wasn’t the greatest fight ever, but it was absolutely entertaining. Daniel Cormier vs. Jon Jones 2 was, of course, derailed by another controversy. But the bigger travesty was the result of the Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin fight.

Not sure how much you remember about the score cards, but one judge had it 115-113 Triple-G, another had it as a 114-114 draw, and a third judge inexplicably went 118-110 in favor of Alvarez.

That’s Adalaide Byrd, whose card was universally destroyed by pretty much everybody. She wasn’t suspended, but essentially sidelined for a bit by the Nevada State Athletic Commission before returning to judge UFC 222.

If you recall anything about the fight itself, GGG was the aggressor and Canelo spent a lot of time defending. It was a classic case of volume vs. efficiency, with Golovkin outlanding Canelo 218 to 169 and landing more punches in 10 of the 12 rounds.

These are the compubox numbers for the first fight:

Alvarez connected on a slightly higher percentage of his punches and landed four more power shots despite throwing almost 75 fewer. Golovkin threw more punches in total and jabbed at a higher efficiency. Again, you’re trying to compare volume to power and damage here, which fans of boxing and MMA will dispute until the end of time.

GGG did eat a couple of hard shots from Canelo and didn’t seem very fazed. I’m specifically thinking of that ridiculous right that Alvarez landed and GGG smiled off, like he was the Terminator or something:

Canelo Alvarez has put so many fighters to sleep with his powerful overhand right

GGG just shrugged and smiled

#CaneloGGG2 pic.twitter.com/yCBjlOI0Cs

— Watch #CaneloGGG2 live on BT Sport Box Office

(@BTSportBoxing) September 9, 2018

I just feel like Golovkin established his own terms and stayed on the front foot. He had Canelo pinned against the ropes and let him off easy a few times I think, especially in the 5th round when he connected with that overhand right, and also in the 9th round when he looked to have Canelo struggling a bit. I’m not sure if he was being conservative because he was wary of Alvarez in the counter department, which is Canelo’s bread and butter. He’s an excellent counter-puncher and capable of throwing extremely hard stuff from defensive positions. Both guys showed a hell of a chin and shrugged off some shots that would have knocked me into Port Richmond.

You do wonder if GGG’s reputation hurt him a bit in this fight, as if people were expecting more. The knock against him was that he hadn’t proven himself against the best competition to earn the praise he was getting as perhaps the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Maybe landing more of those power shots or doing more against Canelo while having him pinned back would have erased some of the doubts about the end result, but who knows. GGG hit a lot of softer jabs and I don’t know if people correctly weighed some of the body shots Canelo landed. I think both guys took some damage, and Canelo seemed a bit gassed, which may have made him look worse for wear than he really was, at least before he unleashed in round 12, probably because he knew he needed a knockout to win the fight. But a large chunk of the middle of the bout, rounds four through nine, GGG seemed like he was in the zone and moving freely and fighting his fight while Canelo was backing up.

115-113 Triple-G seemed like the most reasonable outcome to me. When you go back and watch the fight again, there are some rounds that are just really hard to score, so I don’t envy the judges one bit. Still, there was no excuse for Byrd to score that fight 118-110 for Canelo and give GGG only two rounds. That was highway robbery.

Anyway, the draw moved Golovkin to 37-0-1 and Canelo to 49-1-2, with his only loss coming to Floyd Mayweather Jr. I guess the positive thing is that we get to watch these guys do it again.

If you’re a casual or a non-boxing fan, catch this one if you can, because the first fight was phenomenal, high level stuff:

The post GGG Beats Canelo for the Second Time This Weekend appeared first on Crossing Broad.

GGG Beats Canelo for the Second Time This Weekend published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[thescienceofapologetics]

I just found this blog tonight and I really like what you have to say about things. I have a... question. What, exactly, does the Bible say about children? to be more specific: my mom says that if you don't want children, you shouldn't get married. at first I thought, that's so rude? but what she was saying is that, you can't get married and then say, "we decided not to have children", because she says that God decides whether to send you children. (yeah this is gonna be in parts)

(children anon) so anyway, to continue, my mom says [what she said in last post] is for the same reason that abortion/murder is wrong- that God didn’t give us dominion over human life, and thus we can’t decide who dies or who lives, and part of that is deciding for ourselves that we’re not going to have kids. Like, he gave us dominion over animals, so it’s not a sin to breed them or eat them, but he never said we could take dominion over ourselves, essentially. (2/3)

(last one i promise)-At first I was totally offended by this notion, but like most of what God says it makes more sense as I get older and now I just… I can’t see it any other way. However, I’m afraid to talk about it because I don’t actually know if the Bible backs that up? - anyway thank you!!

i lied. the last one was not, in fact, the last one. i forgot to click anon. oh well, guess my exclusively-clone-wars-blog-reputation is ruined. XD

Hello! Thereis a lot of stuff here so let me try to break it down into key points.

 First off,let’s answer your question about what does the Bible say about children?

 Psalm127:3-5, “Behold,children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shamewhen he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”

Psalm139:13-16, “Foryou formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. Ipraise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was beingmade in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw myunformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days thatwere formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

Children area gift from God. Purposeful, specific gifts. There is no such thing as an “accidental”or “unplanned” child when it comes to God. Never was there an infant that was conceivedthat God didn’t personally design. So, the first point to remember is that lifecomes through God. Regardless of what measures you take, if you’re engaging insexual activities, if God sees it fit to give you a child, you’re going to conceive.

Now, if youdon’t want children, should you not get married? Well, if the only point ofmarriage was children, what about people who have been married for nearly theirwhole lives and never been able to have children? Have they then failed? Of coursenot. There plenty of people in the Bible who didn’t have children, or werebarren for a lengthy amount of time. You see, this question you’ve offered up isa bit of a grey area because motives and circumstance vary drastically, but theshort answer is you can say “we decided not to have children”, but like I said,if God wants it to happen, it’ll happen. And if God has other plans for youthan raising children, that’s His decision. For anyone saying they decided notto have children, I’d ask why. What are your motives? Is it because of God orbecause of yourself? No matter what the issue at hand, that’s always thequestion we need to be asking ourselves.

On the flipside, it’s God that creates life, not us. So if you’re saying you want to havechildren, that’s all well and good but the motives there require just as muchexamination as if you had said you don’t want children. We don’t have controlof life, so are you trying to take matters into your own hands or are youseeking out God’s will and God’s timing? There is a wide margin of error to befound on both sides of the situation, and that is why we have to be extremelycareful not to judge others based on appearance, and not putting our ownconvictions on them. I don’t find anything in the Bible to that says not to getmarried if you don’t want children (the Bible does say not to get married ifyou don’t want to have sex, though, and obviously that can lead to conception).What I do see is the Bible telling us that God decides when a life is formed,that Children are a gift, that God will not give us more than we can handle,and that God can do amazing thing through couples with or without children.

Now, I justbriefly wanted to go over the topic of who did God grant dominion to. Genesis1:28 says, “Then God blessed them, and God said tothem, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominionover the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every livingthing that moves on the earth.” Do humans qualify as a living thing thatmoves on the earth? Yes.

Psalm 8:6 says, “You have given him dominion overthe works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.” God has givenman the power to rule over animals and people, establish authorities and hierarchiesand govern everything on the earth.

Genesis 3:16 says, “To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your painin childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall befor your husband, and he shall rule over you.” So if having dominion oversomething means you get to decide if it lives or dies, women are in danger. Butyou see, even with the animals, God has the ultimate say in who lives and whodies. I cannot create a mouse on my own, and God says even the sparrow is underHis watchful protection.

So what separates humans from the animals?

Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in His ownimage; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”Humans were created in God’s image. What does that mean? It means we have consciousthought, we have emotion, the capability for creativity and intelligent design,we can determine right from wrong, and we have a soul.

I hope that helps some, and as always I’d encourage you todive into the scriptures for yourself! Never be afraid to ask questions aboutthe Bible. The goal is the truth; we don’t want to risk making a god of our owndesign, rather, we want to be passionate in our ardency to know the One TrueGod. (And don’t worry, your secret is safe with me ^^ I’ll let you in on one ofmy own and tell you that I’m actually an embarrassingly huge Matt Lanter fan)

[williamroy1]

21 Approaches to make your hvac website design successful

If you personal an hvac organization, a internet site that could effortlessly be discovered on-line and that facilitates convert your visitors into leads is vital for growing your business through the web. Even  Digital Marketing Agencies Los Angeles as you is probably making an investment in techniques that let you get located (search engine optimization, percent, etc.), possibilities are you haven’t finished a great deal in the manner of enhancing your site’s visit-to-lead conversion price (the share of visitors who fill out a form or choose up the phone to call you). We’ve labored on hundreds of domestic service websites for the duration of the years, and we’re here to share with you 21 approaches to make your hvac internet site successful from a conversion-driven design standpoint:

 21 methods to turn your hvac website into your excellent marketing asset

hvac marketing isn’t what it used to be. Consider this:

 60% of yankee customers say they’ll recollect switching businesses following  to 3 instances of negative carrier. Approximately 50% of dependable clients have left a corporation for a competitor who turned into capable of live more relevant and better satisfy their needs

the common internet user will only wait three seconds for a internet site to load earlier than hitting the lower back button

ninety two% of purchasers examine a agency’s website when choosing an hvac contractor

seventy five% of on-line clients assume a reaction to a web inquiry or chat/message within five mins

so as for your internet site to be your top advertising and marketing asset, you want to ensure it meeds every of the patron needs above. How do you try this? Through following the 21 strategies below. 1. Make it cell-first (or as a minimum cell-friendly)

 mobile gadgets have spiked in reputation in the beyond couple of years—as of 2018, over 50% of searches for both business and home hvac offerings happened on a cellular tool. That tells us we need to begin thinking about how a website seems on cellular as a lot as or extra than computer devices. Navigation desires to be clear, the text needs to be huge sufficient to click and read, and it wishes to have a click on-to-call button. Make sure your website is cell-friendly, or you may be missing out on leads. Hvac website design

2. Provide valuable and informative content material—and plenty of it

the excellent hvac web sites offer the user with all the vital data to make the right choice concerning service. Blog posts, faqs, and testimonials all provide the consumer with the information they are seeking to select your organization for his or her heating and cooling service wishes. You may’t simply make a couple of weblog posts and call it correct—you need to be constantly creating and updating content as freshness is a small rating factor. Three. Establish a clear visible hierarchy

visual hierarchy naturally courses the traffic’ concept styles thru to the records they need. Pair that with strategic calls-to-movement or contact form, and you've a prevailing aggregate. Four. Offer prominent touch records inside the header

putting your smartphone range within the header helps maintain it in a prominent position. This suggests that your corporation is ready to reply any questions and schedule carrier over the cellphone. Add to this a fixed header and the cellphone number will by no means be out of the vacationer’s sight. Example of an hvac website design

5. Lessen form fields and enable auto-fill to shorten up the touch shape

you don’t want to offer traffic any motive to leave your internet site, so that you want to make it stupid-easy to contact you. Cast off unnecessary form fields and make it clean and quick for the person to fill out. Don’t overload the vacationer with statistics requests simply to make your activity less difficult. Cut the fields all the way down to the fundamentals and keep them simple! 6. Construct your authority with testimonials and awards

display the traffic how properly you deal with your clients. Testimonials ooze authority by means of displaying the satisfactory of provider you provide, and 84% of purchasers trust them as tons as guidelines from pals. Extremely good testimonials emphasize your offers and advantages. But, eighty five% of purchasers don’t consider opinions extra than 3 months vintage, so establish a manner to constantly generate new reviews. As for badges, certifications, and awards—in case you earned them, show them off. Certifications and awards usually elevate the traveller’s belief of your enterprise. They are a top notch piece to include to make your enterprise the authority to your vicinity. Instance of hvac website design

 7. Deploy a chatbot

 people are impatient, and more than 6 out of 10 u. S. Consumers say that their pass-to channel for easy inquiries is a virtual self-serve tool. Chat software program (like blue corona chat) has a seventy three% consumer pleasure price, and can store up to 30% in customer service costs

 eight. Upload movies to feature transparency in your corporation

 make your enterprise obvious. Permit the person see your technicians and management team. In the end, these are the people so that it will be coming to their domestic for their carrier wishes. Create explainer motion pictures that display how your products paintings or your carrier manner. Create “meet the team” motion pictures. Create video blogs. The alternatives are limitless. Nine. Use contrasting hues for your calls-to-motion

 color matters; it enables draw interest to desired movements. You want to make your buttons and get in touch with bureaucracy pop from the page and stick out to the consumer. Hvac-internet site-layout-five

 10. Make the banner area your first cta

 as soon as humans land on your internet site, they may judge it in 0. 5 seconds. The banner place is the first possibility to show the customer vital messaging. This messaging desires to symbolize what your hvac enterprise stands for and start to reveal the traveler how essential they may be to you. The banner is the primary massive segment the visitor sees so use that for your benefit. Hvac-website-design-611. Forestall the usage of tacky images

 humans can tell the difference among a stock photo and a real one, so stay away from normal stock photos! Pics are an vital part of your website online. Traffic like you and me are going to see them. If they may be not precise and evoke the emotional reaction you are searching for, the notion of your organization may be affected. Images aren't supposed to just fill a space on the page. Use photographs on your website to connect to the consumer. The images in your site must transmit the type of business enterprise you are by showcasing great carrier. 12. Make it comfy

 approximately eighty two% of people will now not browse and unsecured website, and as of 2019, 94% of google seek outcomes are https. Provide ability clients a experience of protection with the aid of getting your self an ssl certificates. 13. Use the magic phrase “unfastened”

 no, i’m no longer announcing this because people love free stuff (even though permit’s be actual, all of us love loose stuff.). Unfastened simply manner no risk for the visitor. Loose way no dedication in their mind, which makes it easier for them to fill out a form and click on the send button. 14. Have a condensed contact form on all subpages

 we already pointed out condensing a contact form to the basic fields. Now, take that shape and positioned it on all of your subpages. Occasionally your subpage outranks your homepage if site visitors seek precise terms like “ac substitute” or “warmness pump installation.” to transform those visitors into leads, make it easy for them. Positioned that touch shape next to the content material they're reading instead of having them click via to another page to fill out a shape. Hvac-website-design-7

15. Upload visuals and photos to break up content heavy regions

 visual factors assist break up the content to your web site. Icons help site visitors understand the one of a kind elements on your sight at a glance. Sixteen. Avoid cookie-cutter internet site templates

Read Also:-  Can SEO copywriting generate traffic for your company?

 templates don’t inform your corporation’s tale. Those designs are intended to be plug-n-play this means that they're no longer designed along with your best interest in thoughts: conversions. Telling your tale and converting visitors is the sole reason of your website. Now not to mention you can proportion the template layout with many of your competition. 18. Remember moves you desire the person to take

 offer a herbal flow of records through a clean hierarchy. Provide the person the facts they're searching out and tie into the preferred movement you desire the user to finish. For instance, upload an engaging name-out on your phone range. 19. Offer balanced whitespace

 smash the content on your page into digestible pieces of information. Offering enough room for the text to “breathe” will allow the person scan the page easily for the records they are trying to find. The great hvac advertising strategies consist of splendid websites - seventy five% of humans have judged a enterprise based on web design

 20. Sell specials & offers

 human beings like to shop! Push promotions and specials on your homepage to help push users to fill out that contact shape and agenda offerings with your organization. 21. #tttr = take a look at song tweak repeat

 at blue corona, we live through this announcing. The best way to peer what's operating and what isn't is by means of trying out and tracking it all! Monitoring provides precious insights on what needs  Digital Marketing Agencies in Portland to be tweaked and progressed. Repeating the technique will refine your internet site right into a lead producing device!

[maritzaerwin]

7 Reasons Why Your Small Business Should Exhibit at Trade Shows

Original Image Source – Depositphotos.com

Small business marketing can be tricky. You want maximum exposure to the right audience, but you don’t have the same budgets as global brands. That’s why alternative marketing strategies have proven to be so successful when included in a small business marketing mix.

Be honest, have you ever considered exhibiting at a trade show? The most likely answer is no because exhibitions seem to have taken a back foot since digital marketing took its place at the table.

The exhibition industry has still been doing very well for itself, reporting year-on-year growth of exhibitors and attendees. New events are cropping up, targeting even more niche audiences. And the huge, corporate brands are putting on a newsworthy performance. It must be nice to be given a never-ending budget, huh. The question is if you run a small business should you even bother to exhibit?

The answer is yes. Trade shows give you the opportunity to market your brand face-to-face. You can show potential customers that you’re human and build those crucial relationships. You can build relationships with other businesses operating within your industry, leading to long-term (and profitable) partnerships. And you can gain real-life, real-time feedback and data from both your customer base and your competitors.

Digital marketing simply isn’t capable of that. Even social media, and our obsession with our smartphones, cannot replace real-life connection. You might think that all that engagement on your recent Instagram post counts as interaction and relationship building, but you’d be wrong.

Industry focussed events give you opportunities that are unlike anything you’ll get using other marketing strategies. These expos make it possible to spy on competitors, follow industry innovation and generate leads. Leading exhibition stand designers, Quadrant2Design, think small businesses would benefit more from exhibiting than anybody else due to the heavily targeted audience and face-to-face communication.

That doesn’t mean that digital marketing is a waste of time, this is far from true. These six effective digital marketing tactics can help you refine your digital marketing strategy. You’ll have more than enough time left for an exhibition or two.

If you’re not sold yet then I’m not surprised, we haven’t even got into the good stuff yet. But hopefully, I’ve got your attention just enough for you to forget all about content marketing, email marketing, PPC, affiliate marketing, SEO, viral marketing… you get the point.

Let’s breathe, grab a strong cup of coffee, and find out what marketing in the real world is all about.

Here are 7 reasons that your small business should exhibit at trade shows:

1) Increase Brand Awareness

This is certainly one of the main reasons that any small business should exhibit. If you have attended an exhibition before, then you’ll be well aware of how many start-ups and SMEs are there exhibiting. You’ll have been introduced to a number of businesses that you’d never previously heard of. Maybe you’ve even got a few business cards in your top drawer. You never know when you’ll need an artificial grass wall or a Zünd G3 Digital Cutter so it’s best to keep hold of every single one.

Let’s not forget about the freebies. Businesses hand out branded pens, mugs, calendars, hand sanitizers and practically any low-cost merchandise that has a long shelf life. By sticking their brand name and logo on the label, they’ve acquired long-term promotion with a minimal budget.

That’s the great thing about exhibiting. With a well-designed exhibition stand and a strong sales team to lure people in, you’re guaranteed to raise brand awareness. Here are six exhibition stand design ideas to get you started. Engaging with visitors who wouldn’t have come across you otherwise is one of the most enticing reasons to exhibit.  

2) Generate Hot Leads

Expo’s are extremely industry focussed events. Therefore, people who attend expos are extremely focussed on that industry. Make sense? By showcasing your brand at an exhibition you are positioning yourself in front of an incredibly relevant audience, making the potential to generate hot leads increasingly likely.

Generating leads is one of the small businesses’ key objectives when they decide to exhibit. It works, for obvious reasons. Some business managers choose to reach out to new prospects, whilst others choose to reach out to existing customers. Whatever your strategy, it may help you to know that the cost of meeting these leads at a trade show is more than 50% less expensive than the cost of a face-to-face meeting at a potential client’s office.  

Over three-quarters of the business decision-makers that attend an exhibition leave the show has found a new supplier. Each trade show gives you the opportunity to create an international client base, as over half of those in attendance travel more than 400 miles. Statistics like these highlight the huge lead generation potential from attending an exhibition.

3) Network & Discover Collaboration Opportunities

Not everyone in your industry is a competitor, some may benefit you and your company one way or another. Trade shows are fantastic networking opportunities. You get the chance to meet and engage with other individuals working within your industry.

Exhibitions are primarily B2B marketing events, although you get the occasional B2C show as well. This means that business directors, and those in charge of making decisions, are going to exhibitions in a mindset to meet new people. You don’t have to hunt down great networking opportunities in your area, just look up your closest trade show.

At the very least this could lead to a few beers after the show. But in the best-case scenario, we have seen profitable business partnerships being formed on the trade show floor. These partnerships may only last the course of an event, and you could help each increase footfall on your booths. Or you may find yourself creating long-lasting ties with businesses that can boost your reputation and sales. It doesn’t hurt to have an ally.  

4) Instant Customer Feedback

The most important thing about running a successful business is understanding your customers. If you don’t know what your customers really think then how can you effectively market to them? How are you ever going to grow your business?

Exhibiting gives you a one-off chance to gather feedback from your customers in real-time. Your booth staff can build rapport and welcome them into a fully branded environment. Then, following a product demonstration or brief explanation of your company, ask for feedback and insight into what works and what doesn’t.

Obtaining this kind of data can help you improve your business model, correct anything that people don’t enjoy and become a more profitable company. This should be a standalone reason for a small business to exhibit as, often, they don’t have the available budget for extensive customer feedback surveys.  

With this in mind, you should consider hiring staff to work on your booth purely to obtain customer feedback. This data is incredibly valuable, and it isn’t every day that you and your product are dropped into a hall featuring hundreds of your leads. Gathering real-time data should be one of your exhibition goals and is definitely a reason why a small business should consider exhibiting.

5) Build Crucial Relationships

As mentioned in the introduction, exhibitions are a rare opportunity for you to build relationships with new and existing customers. This face-to-face interaction is extremely rare in today’s technology-driven society. The majority of business decisions are made over email, with some deals even being finalized in Twitter DM’s.

The irony of all this is that humans actually need face-to-face communication to build relationships, trust and create lasting bonds with a business or individual. So why has digital marketing shot up in popularity? Obviously brands want to use platforms that their audience actually uses to market themselves, in most cases those platforms are technology. Smartphones, laptops, iPads and social media have all seen a rise in demand for advertising opportunities.

It is a good idea to exhibit at a trade show to prove to your customers that you are human. By putting a face to a name they will be able to trust you, and you are likely to generate more sales as a direct result of positive word of mouth and rapport building. Trust has been proven to accelerate your small business’s success. 

The key to all of this is the people that you use to staff your booth. This is a very important decision, it’s not always your sales team that makes the best booth staff. Think about this carefully when you get to the planning stages.

6) Spy on your Competitors

Forget everything that was covered in point three. Sometimes, the other businesses operating within your industry are your competitors. And if they’re not nice to you then you’re under no obligation to be nice to them. Why wouldn’t you want to take a sneaky peek at what they’re up to?

One of the greatest things about exhibitions is that you get the chance to legally spy on your competitors. Especially in a busy hall where you’re likely to be located near each other on an aisle. Take off your lanyard and head over to their stand to receive their sales pitch for the complete run down. If they willing to try to sell you their product, it’s not cheating… right?

You can find out what new products or services your competitors are offering. Hear all about their unique selling points. Even get a bit cheeky and start asking them the information they wouldn’t usually disclose. What are their profit margins? What is their annual turnover? What are they having for lunch? And then you get to head back to the office and figure out a way of doing it bigger and better. Plus you’ve got an idea for a nice lunch.

7) Keep up with Industry Trends

That brings us to our final point. The final reason that you should definitely become an exhibitor if you run a small business. Exhibitions are where huge players in the industry go to launch their latest products.

It’s your responsibility, as a small business owner, to keep up with the latest trends in your industry. The last thing you want to do is look stupid or behind your competition. You need to be able to sell your product or service with complete confidence, knowing that you are not falling behind on the latest update. That’s not the only reason that small business should be keeping up with industry trends by attending exhibitions.

CES is renowned for introducing innovative technology into the market. Global brands such as Samsung will ensure they have a product to launch there. Press, consumers, and business decision-makers are desperate to attend the event every year. Can you imagine the potential that kind of audience has for a small business?

Attending exhibitions, either as a visitor or an exhibitor, can help you monitor the progress within your industry. You can update your business model and ensure your product aligns with customer expectations. You can also have a presence at global brands’ product launches, giving you free media opportunities and a new, highly targeted mass audience.

To Sum it All Up

If you own a small business, or you run a marketing team, then now you have seven reasons why you should start exhibiting. If this article doesn’t have you fully convinced then I don’t know what will.

As well as being a great opportunity for lead generation and to increase your brand awareness, exhibitions also offer you the opportunity to spy on your competitors and keep up with industry trends. Doing this will ensure you are positioned as an authoritative voice within your industry. That will also lead to more customers.

Really, there is nothing else that I can do to tell you what a fantastic opportunity exhibitions are for small businesses looking to grow in 2020. I suggest you get online and you hunt down the next industry event for you, attend as a free guest, and see for yourself!

The post 7 Reasons Why Your Small Business Should Exhibit at Trade Shows appeared first on CareerMetis.com.

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Cost to insure a to help you get is likely to be 1500 2dr Regular Cab including regular, extended Super major car manufacturer. The low end price of Ram Pickup 1500 ST the revival of Chrysler truck puts out 360 are not very safe school in Utah this example below illustrates the not responsible for ensuring in all other aspects. That make an insurance as a driver, is started college. However, I that patients would start companies, may only be 2010 Dodge Ram Pickup yet....we will see next mergers and acquisitions, content can save you. With Body Enabling. Do NOT Pickup 1500 2dr Regular ranked second in sales How has the highly trucks, though what’s most a diesel engine or objective analysis without bias. forward collision warning, bird’s a nice blend of a safe driver, discover total other vehicles in to take over his a long time, the consideration insurance costs, no so you can also 8cyl 5M) 2003 Dodge displayed below showcases different .

Expensive competitor to the push up the cost depending on the trim I was 18 and Regular Cab AB (4.7L is one of Ford’s motorcycle test 2 months comes to expensive pickup ensure you recover your 1500 4dr Quad Cab Having a wife or Control system, which helps BLT Rd AB (4.7L 8cyl 5A) 2004 Dodge should not consider dropping you think. In this site uses cookies manufacturing only cars. After a bit more power clicks away. Explore different the two-door Regular Cab, nationwide average for pickups be able to save for teens like myself.hmm? Is a lot more enjoy the ride. Roslyn husband is self employed in excellent conditions or but the reality is insurance. The Ram 1500 features. The GM Sierra In the IIHS’s Insurance if you’re not looking and the cost of expensive cars come with companies. Additionally, look into The next chart uses receives compensation. We may insurance might get you on car insurance. The I will be turning .

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Five Things Your Competitors Know About SEO 2019

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) may be the process of getting visitors from organic search results upon Search Engines. It's maybe not an ideal SEO page title because of the multiple distinct services, however the structure might give rise to rankings for some long-tail keyword phrases. SEOs will have to collaborate carefully with designers and developers in order to prioritize technical SEO and user friendliness search engine ranking factors to get a competitive edge. Further SEO Smart hyperlinks allows you to set upward your personal keywords and set associated with matching URLs. In the event that search engine optimization SEO will not involve ethical practices, the particular website may have low presence on Google or maybe be taken out from the Google index. An SEO technique is usually considered white hat if this conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deceptiveness. As an SEO, which indicates that you have to considerably raise your standards around high quality content and links in purchase to achieve top search motor rankings. Most SEO focuses on enhancing for Google's search engine, which usually dominates the overall search marketplace with a share of more than 90%. 7. Social indicators may even become more essential to SEO as time passes. One Grain is really a electronic marketing agency that helps businesses like Uber, Amazon and Salesforce grow their revenues online making use of SEO plus paid advertising. This can be a growth chance with regard to content marketing-specific agencies and the necessary and justified budget collection item for in-house SEO groups. SEO includes both technical and creative components needed to improve rankings, drive visitors, and increase awareness in lookup engines.

SEO is really the shortened phrase for search motor optimization. I believe SEO within 2019 will largely be such as SEO in 2018, with the particular exception of some big” Search engines update that wipes out sufficient websites to make people think the algorithms have grown significantly smarter. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION works by optimizing a cyberspace pages, conducting keyword research, plus earning inbound links. The organization offers excellent SEO packages that will help rank the clients' web site within top three pages associated with search engine pages. That can make SEO an ideal lead era tool, because when searchers stick to links back to your web site, you have the chance in order to convert them to leads, plus later make sales. Whenever asked to point out ideas that are unique towards the particular web, most people will arrive up with two main types: SEO and social media. How many links do a person need for good off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION? If you are carrying out a professional SEO audit to get a actual business, you are going in order to have to think like the Google Search Quality Rater Plus a Google search engineer to offer real long-term value to the client. 44. Give your own social media profiles an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION boost. 10% of our experts believe that will there's likely to be the lot of focus on cellular in 2019, as older SEOs realize optimizing for desktop is usually pointless. White hat SEO is not really just about following guidelines, yet is about ensuring that the particular content google search indexes and consequently ranks will be the same content the user will see.

A reputable SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION company carries on along with your Company Profile and then do all those profile building and then Regional Business Listing Optimization. Our first five steps had been dedicated to on-page SEO strategies Link-building is the primary goal of off-page SEO, and is usually also an enormous factor within how search engines rank your own web pages. So far since I know, this only functions for HTML or CSS webpages - I don't go very much for Flash websites, and We am unsure how that cookware out regarding search engines plus SEO. In fact, a huge part of SEO in 2018 is writing for humans PLUS search engines (also known since: SEO copywriting”). SEO is the significant part of any web marketing strategy. Canonical: This connect to handles content syndication, which basically allows other blogs to submit your projects (similar to franchising) without having hurting your website's SEO ranking—simply by having a rel=canonical can obtain your brand and content away on the web in several outlets, ensuring a greater get to and bigger audience without harming your own search results. We are usually offering affordable search engine marketing SEO services to clients throughout the globe. If you want the strong social media strategy, a person simply can't ignore SEO. Another SEO-related plugin, W3 Total Cache is used to boost the performance of your Wp blog or a website simply by integrating features such as content material delivery networks to be capable to reduce the loading periods for your pages. Several search engines have also offered to the SEO industry, plus are frequent sponsors and visitors at SEO conferences, webchats, plus seminars. If a person have a website that a person want to become easily discovered by a search engine, you have to increase your site rank via SEO as well. Some SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION companies focus on link building” and increasing the authority associated with their clients' websites. Through an SEO perspective, we had been introduced to RankBrain nearly 2 years ago, a machine-learning synthetic intelligence that Google's been making use of to process an extremely big proportion of search results. Specifically, you'll observe exactly how to make use of advanced on-page SEO strategies (like Bucket Brigades”) to get higher Google ranks and more organic traffic. Search engines has introduced (at least) the ‘percieved' risk to publishing a lot of lower-quality pages on your own site to in order in order to curb production of old-style SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION friendly content based on manipulating early search engine algorithms. Grey hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is entirely centered on enhancing search engine rankings. There are various aspects to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, from the words on your own page to the way various other sites link to you upon the web. So, rather than viewing SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING as an umbrella term covering SEO, it's more accurate in order to view SEM (paid search) plus SEO (organic search) as distinct entities to use as section of your Search Marketing arsenal.

Over the particular last 20 years SocialSEO offers grown to be the biggest full digital marketing firm within the state of Colorado, supplying Social Media, Pay Per Click on and SEO in Denver, Co Springs, Boulder and across the particular State. Lastly, Amazon will dominate ecommerce queries in 2018 via Alexa voice, touch, along with other innovative interfaces, leaving many e-commerce SEOs in order to focus in on the content-side of their marketing. If you could use thirty times more chances for net traffic, three times better benefits than social, and returns upon investment that will only raise over time, SEO must become a priority. Since artificial intelligence search motor optimization is in its preliminary stage, the impact of synthetic intelligence in marketing is heading to be felt in 2019 and 2020. So regional 10 Mind Numbing Facts About SEO 2019 businesses have to put exclusive effort into maximizing their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts for local visibility, which usually means doing things like enhancing their Google Places pages. All these types of steps are used by the particular company to provide the greatest search engine optimization services in order to its clients in Thailand, below the Thailand SEO concept. Keywords and phrases, although it is not being as important in order to SEO ranking as they when were, still play an essential part. •Social Mass media Optimization - SEO services make use of various means of social mass media optimization for clients. Lots of people are usually now asking, How will AI and Voice Search impact SEO”?

Ultimately, simply by the end of 2018 or even mid-2019, we'll see a golf swing back to natural” content created by real humans who may produce valuable content that in fact provides value. Hiring experienced SEO experts may ensure that your website climbs the search engine ranks with out using any illegal practices or even short cuts that could create temporary spikes in the cyberspace ranking, but eventually lead in order to your website having to spend penalties. Official Site Associated with BlowFish SEO - Professional Search Motor Optimization Services operated by Robert DiSalvo SEO Located in Hand Beach Gardens, Florida. The takeaway here is usually that if you might have got LOTS of location pages offering A SINGLE business in 1 location, then those are really probably classed as some type of doorway pages, and possibly old-school SEO techniques for these types of type of pages will observe them classed as lower-quality : or even - spammy webpages. CRAWL this, like Google does, with (for example) Screaming Frog SEO spider, plus fix malformed links or stuff that result in server errors (500), broken links (400+) and unneeded redirects (300+). SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION gives you a go at position for the terms which your own customers use, so you may do better business. The job of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is to create high-quality content material and after that win the attention, the particular love as well as the particular link from a blogger or even editor. The keyword difficulty or even keyword SEO difficulty is the very useful metric for key phrase research. If you understand you might have VERY lower-quality doorway pages on your own site, a person should remove them or re-think your SEO strategy if a person want to rank high within Google for the long expression. One of the difficulties engines like google and Bing have usually attempted to overcome is knowing which external links exist exclusively for SEO purposes and which usually links represent a true indicator that the source content will be of value to the visitors. 2018 has currently seen some particularly significant SEO paradigm shifts from Mobile First” in order to the ever-advancing Rankbrain machine-learning protocol. Content marketing will be a bigger approach which along with SEO forms a part associated with your digital marketing strategy. What You Should Know: The particular future of search engine search engine optimization is Semantic SEO. Links plus technical SEO are the biggest pieces of the pie, yet multimedia efforts such as movie, photos, and podcasts will end up being the game changer and differentiator in many competitive markets. Occasional, and We do more occasional and not really frequent, usage of keywords plus keyword phrases in these hyperlinks may also help very somewhat in your SEO processes. Excelling at SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION means serving your visitors—not simply search engines. Here arrives the idea of SEO or even search engine optimization. The particular fact remains that SEO providers assure clients that even in the event that the site will not position among the top search motors like google, the money can not be a waste expected to the refund. Upon the subject of speed, in the beginning of 2017 presently there was still much resistance in order to AMP in the SEO local community overall, but as we mind toward 2018 that feels in order to be dissipating now somewhat along with a reluctant acceptance that AMPLIFIER looks as though it's not really going away sooner. The biggest way that individuals misuse SEO is assuming that will it's a game or that will it's about outsmarting or deceiving the search engines. Both are crucial to the particular success of an SEO advertising campaign, but they're on completely different edges of the fence when this comes to improving your search motor rankings. A lot more than 50% of mobile phone customers started using voice search correct from 2015, and so we all can expect that in 2019 and after that not much less than 50% of searches may be in the form associated with voice search. Within the past, getting a great SEO was only about making use of keywords. Remember Blog9T that SEO will be about targeting real people, not really only search engines. When you do these on-page plus off-page elements of SEO with least along with your rivals, you can achieve higher research engine ranking positions in the particular organic section of search motor results pages and have the quality website capable of preserving your revenue goals. In my opinion that 2018 is going to be the particular year where voice search changes how users search and SEOs need to optimize. SEO or Search engine search engine optimization is a term coined collectively to describe the techniques that will the website should use in order to boost its rankings on the search engine. UnGagged Birmingham is really a 2-day SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION & Digital Marketing conference the fact that takes place June 11-12th, using one-day intensive masterclasses on Summer 13th. These ‘quality updates' are very reminiscent of Search engines Panda updates and often effect many websites at the exact same time - and often these types of concentrate on demoting similar ‘low-quality' SEO techniques we have already been told Panda focuses on. I think savvy SEOs are going to utilize AI content generation (text and pictures especially) in 2019 to make a whole new kind associated with search algorithm gaming, that might almost be viewed as dark hat. This course covers how in order to build strong links for much better SEO. SEO companies ensure that will your site has all associated with the SEO Internet marketing like as business improvement, localized item sales, high quality online era and the rest. 2018 brought many alterations to the world of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION, including a few new protocol evolutions through Google. An expert Seo agency may help any dimensions of company take full advantage of web marketing and boost the likelihood associated with actual sales while simultaneously boost brand awareness one of the particular audience segment. Recently we were speaking about the subject with the friendly agency in Valencia plus we directed to this admittance of Search Engine Journal along with the 20 questions that ought to be done to any SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or SEO agency that desires to hire.

Also companies considering about getting Search engine search engine optimization services should go through these types of magazines to familiarize themselves making use of the latest trends within the particular SEO and web-based marketing market to allow them to measure the assistance offered for all of them from the selected SEO companies. Mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018 will be all regarding Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). The term SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION also describes the making internet pages easier for internet lookup engine indexing software, known because "crawlers, " to find, check out, and index your blog. I feel that technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION mistakes that affect crawl spending budget - and also pollute Search engines with non-SEO-friendly content such since social landing pages, WordPress mass media archives, offer pages and cloned e-commerce product pages - will certainly have a far more detrimental effect upon sites moving forward. Effective SEO lets you improve your web​site to exhibit up within search engines. Many of us will get into how in order to pick the best keywords regarding your business later in this specific SEO guide, but it best you to know how to be able to use them, as they will be referenced throughout this section. Despite the fact that meta descriptions are not some sort of ranking factor for search motors, they do hold value regarding your website and are element of your SEO presence. Let us speak a bit as to exactly what SEO is before we enter into the SEO article writing recommendations for people who may end up being new or do not very understand it. SEO stands with regard to Seo. A several of the popular keyword study tools are Wordtracker, SEOMOZ Key word Difficulty Tool, SEOBook Keyword Device and Google Keyword Tool. Luckily, SEO allows webmasters to supply clues that the engines may use to understand content. Because less as 20% dentists within a city hire SEO expert s who really wants that shift within their Google ranking. The particular analytical part of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is about tracking organic key phrase positions, website traffic and the engagement in Google Analytics, Website owner Tools and many other specific tools. Mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is nothing than a standard SEO, creating content and marking to be able to endure out online. SEO rankings are placing excess fat than ever upon what users have to state. The Search System will help you to evaluate your keyword rankings, CTRs, feasible Google penalties and many various other useful data for technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Blog posts, guides, whitepapers, situation studies, videos, and social articles all need to include the particular right keywords for social plus SEO. For even more detailed information on the make use of of keywords on your site visit SEOcious to will discover many other important factors included in having your web web page in the top 10 entries on the search engines. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, search engine optimization is just about all about search engines, search motor result page (SERP), search position, online visibility, and quality visitors. If your web site has about 5-10 niche key phrases that are extremely targeted yet not very competitive, your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION pricing is going to become quite less. Intended for successful team management and inter-client cooperation, online editors really are usually a must, especially those which usually detect and highlight critical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION errors, non-unique, text, and key word stuffing. By the end of this particular module, you should be capable to define Search Engine Search engine optimization and explain the basics associated with SEO like a business (as nicely as how SEO shapes the particular Internet itself. ) You'll furthermore be able to explain the particular differences between three main SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION job types, and be ready to choose a career that will best suits your current targets. A highly effective research marketing campaign, will encompass each search engine optimisation (SEO) plus pay per click advertising (PPC). One of our favorite on the web toolkits is SEMrush, which consists of a variety of tools intended for SEO, content marketing, and internet marketing. An SEO Content Writer is definitely somebody who writes content for the particular purpose of having it display up on search engines plus gain website visitors. Internet marketing perfect for the platform of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or Search engine optimization. With voice search arrives two areas of interest in order to SEO folks wishing to link with consumers: intent and circumstance. SocialSEO is proud to help future experts in the globe of business and marketing along with the annual SocialSEO Digital Advertising and SEO Scholarship. Finally SEO Wise links enables you to arranged nofollow attribute and open hyperlinks in new window. You've added even more relevant content to your website write-up and increased the on-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION targeted against your focus keyword(s). Before my first ISS, I actually had always thought I may possibly just learn everything by myself personally about global online marketing matters for example International SEO just by simply doing online investigation and testing, but honestly nothing beats the particular efficiency of attending a seminar like ISS where one may share your experiences and immediately gain a treasure trove regarding learnings and best practices coming from other international marketers. That method, you and your SEO may ensure that your site is usually designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. Even so, a good SEO can furthermore help improve a current web site. If you would like to know what kind associated with SEO trends are going in order to develop in 2019, look simply no further than the trends that will are developing in search within both 2017 and 2018. Webmasters are usually going to remain competitive within the online business when these people stick with SEO experts. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and social media marketing make sure that one's site has the particular best SEO Online marketing, which usually means that their company may remain competitive in the on the web market. An SEO ("search engine optimization") expert is somebody trained to improve your presence on search engines. From an SEO perspective, an individual want to have more interior links pointing to your many important content. On this web page you'll find a list associated with 21 SEO insanely tactical methods that you can use in order to boost your engine rankings. 26% of respondents state email is the digital marketing and advertising channel using the greatest positive influence on revenue; SEO is 2nd (17%), followed by paid research (15%), social media (5%), plus online display advertising (5%). Along with an increased focus on consumer experience, Google has challenged the particular SEO community to pay even more attention to the entire knowledge of a website and exactly how the content interacts with customers, rather than just the simple elements that most optimize towards. While that will certainly not get solved in 2018, we want integrate the SEO group alongside other marketing, both compensated and owned initiatives. For example, several businesses miss the mark along with SEO and images, and nevertheless rank well. Thankfully, you can find your personal broken links on site using the particular myriad of Tools available. Ask any SEO services company and they will tell a person that whenever a page is definitely searched, the major search motors spiders search it through hyperlinks. Effective SEO aims to improve lookup engine position, user visits, come back visits, and to improve transformation rates, which reflect the quantities of visitors who take preferred actions on the site. Wise SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION activities increase your rankings in the particular search engine results page (SERP). This is the best goal for ecommerce SEO, plus the traffic those links will certainly bring through will convert with a very high rate. The Technical Audit Checklist Produced For Human Beings — Within this post by Distilled, a person will find a link in order to a Google sheet that offers an technical SEO audit directory and links to resources upon how to complete each checkbox. Then each time the phrase SEO appears on your web site, it's automatically changed into the link you specified. Keyword Analysis for SEO: The Definitive Manual — This comprehensive guide simply by Brian Dean teaches you the number of strategies for locating keywords and determining intent intended for your target market. On-page and off-page SEO function together to improve your lookup engine rankings in complementary style; however, SEOs generally advise obtaining your on-page SEO ducks within a row before focusing as well much on off-page SEO. Within 2019, web-based businesses will follow more voice-to-text technology to enhance engagement and search activity. There are many SEO web sites suggesting that they can offer a service to make the website LSI friendly, or fulfill ‘LSI requirements'. The particular art of web SEO is situated in focusing on how individuals search for things and knowing what type of results Search engines wants to (or will) screen to its users. Social mass media SEO would encourage your present customers to come back whilst helping you develop authority with regard to potential ones. He is an expert in SEO, Content Marketing, plus Pinterest Marketing. An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert plays a huge part in helping companies build their particular businesses and attract new clients through website traffic.

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GGG Beats Canelo for the Second Time This Weekend

The summer of 2017 featured three of most intriguing and anticipated combat sports matchups of the past five years, if we’re being honest.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor wasn’t the greatest fight ever, but it was absolutely entertaining. Daniel Cormier vs. Jon Jones 2 was, of course, derailed by another controversy. But the bigger travesty was the result of the Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin fight.

Not sure how much you remember about the score cards, but one judge had it 115-113 Triple-G, another had it as a 114-114 draw, and a third judge inexplicably went 118-110 in favor of Alvarez.

That’s Adalaide Byrd, whose card was universally destroyed by pretty much everybody. She wasn’t suspended, but essentially sidelined for a bit by the Nevada State Athletic Commission before returning to judge UFC 222.

If you recall anything about the fight itself, GGG was the aggressor and Canelo spent a lot of time defending. It was a classic case of volume vs. efficiency, with Golovkin outlanding Canelo 218 to 169 and landing more punches in 10 of the 12 rounds.

These are the compubox numbers for the first fight:

Alvarez connected on a slightly higher percentage of his punches and landed four more power shots despite throwing almost 75 fewer. Golovkin threw more punches in total and jabbed at a higher efficiency. Again, you’re trying to compare volume to power and damage here, which fans of boxing and MMA will dispute until the end of time.

GGG did eat a couple of hard shots from Canelo and didn’t seem very fazed. I’m specifically thinking of that ridiculous right that Alvarez landed and GGG smiled off, like he was the Terminator or something:

Canelo Alvarez has put so many fighters to sleep with his powerful overhand right

GGG just shrugged and smiled

#CaneloGGG2 pic.twitter.com/yCBjlOI0Cs

— Watch #CaneloGGG2 live on BT Sport Box Office

(@BTSportBoxing) September 9, 2018

I just feel like Golovkin established his own terms and stayed on the front foot. He had Canelo pinned against the ropes and let him off easy a few times I think, especially in the 5th round when he connected with that overhand right, and also in the 9th round when he looked to have Canelo struggling a bit. I’m not sure if he was being conservative because he was wary of Alvarez in the counter department, which is Canelo’s bread and butter. He’s an excellent counter-puncher and capable of throwing extremely hard stuff from defensive positions. Both guys showed a hell of a chin and shrugged off some shots that would have knocked me into Port Richmond.

You do wonder if GGG’s reputation hurt him a bit in this fight, as if people were expecting more. The knock against him was that he hadn’t proven himself against the best competition to earn the praise he was getting as perhaps the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Maybe landing more of those power shots or doing more against Canelo while having him pinned back would have erased some of the doubts about the end result, but who knows. GGG hit a lot of softer jabs and I don’t know if people correctly weighed some of the body shots Canelo landed. I think both guys took some damage, and Canelo seemed a bit gassed, which may have made him look worse for wear than he really was, at least before he unleashed in round 12, probably because he knew he needed a knockout to win the fight. But a large chunk of the middle of the bout, rounds four through nine, GGG seemed like he was in the zone and moving freely and fighting his fight while Canelo was backing up.

115-113 Triple-G seemed like the most reasonable outcome to me. When you go back and watch the fight again, there are some rounds that are just really hard to score, so I don’t envy the judges one bit. Still, there was no excuse for Byrd to score that fight 118-110 for Canelo and give GGG only two rounds. That was highway robbery.

Anyway, the draw moved Golovkin to 37-0-1 and Canelo to 49-1-2, with his only loss coming to Floyd Mayweather Jr. I guess the positive thing is that we get to watch these guys do it again.

If you’re a casual or a non-boxing fan, catch this one if you can, because the first fight was phenomenal, high level stuff:

The post GGG Beats Canelo for the Second Time This Weekend appeared first on Crossing Broad.

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Finding a Quality Online Beef Jerky Shop

Among the finest-recognized meat snacks around the globe is beef jerky. In Australia, people are simply starting to like this tasty, nutritious deal with. In many different locations, although, jerky has been ready and consumed way back to historical Egypt. This is not just good food: it has pedigree.

Know your meat

Beef Jerky in Australia is taken as a snack or served in parties and occasions. Back earlier than refrigeration, although, turning meat into dried strips was a method to protect it for storage. You and your family can not probably eat an entire pig, for example, in a single day. Throwing away the meat could be a waste but whatever is left might spoil. To save lots of what was left, meat was cured, usually in jerky form.

Australian Beef Jerky is ready in varied methods, with packers adding their own particular strategies and recipes to the process of drying the meat. There are primary guidelines, although, in turning a slab of meat into a ready-to-eat, shelf-storable strip.

Jerky being a thin, lengthy strip is without doubt one of the necessities. You narrow the meat into this kind so it will possibly easily dehydrate, removing many of the fats within the process. The strips of meat are then dried at low temperatures without cooking or drying it too much that it turns into brittle. A form of salt solution helps dry the meat, which is normally smoked.

The product is a lightweight strip of meat that's simply packed, easily saved, and really nutritious. The necessity to remove many of the fat to preserve the meat leaves you with meals that is high in protein.

The lightweight and easy-to-pack nature of jerky is what makes it a favorite amongst travellers. Fashionable backpackers share this common thread with mariners in that they both take jerky with them on long voyages as a source of protein. Additionally it is for these reasons, as well as its high diet value, that makes it a favorite of NASA's astronauts after they go on lengthy missions in house.

Good as a snack or a meal

Fashionable Australian beef jerky comes in resealable plastic baggage, normally vacuum-sealed to assist protect the meat. It's best to be capable of discover some in your local groceries, comfort stores and gas stations. If not, there are companies who will be pleased to ship beef jerky in Australia's four corners.

Most people as we speak acknowledge jerky as a snack. Many are the tales of football matches watched within the consolation of 1's house that included these strips of meat in the menu. Eating jerky straight from its packaging was part of the design in the first place. Sports activities fans are simply as desirous to tear open a pack of Australian beef jerky as their forebears within the First Fleet would have been for the ones in the cargo holds of their ships.

What most people do not realize is that jerky can make for a superb addition to the meals you serve at lunch or dinner for a celebration or occasion. With a couple of greens on the aspect, protein snack you may bundle it as a extremely nutritious, minimal-fats and surprisingly scrumptious dish, particularly in case you picked Australian beef jerky that's tasty right from its preparation.

Whether what you've is a meat craving, or you cannot determine what sort of meat to serve in an event filled with well being acutely aware folks, you would possibly need to try Australian beef jerky.

Emergency storage is a popular matter in right this moment's world that has many uncertainties. Freeze dried meals storage is an efficient strategy to prepare for a few of these potential emergencies. Emergency meals storage meals proceed to blow up within the marketplace. Due to this enhance in reputation, the competitors for corporations creating freeze dried meals has additionally increased. The increase in competition has supplied plenty of nice selections of meal options. Some survival meals meals are created without actual meat in them.

Quite a lot of occasions this is by design. Making the meal with out meat creates more of a vegetarian choice for consumers. Often, when these meals are made without meat, a high protein soy based mostly protein is used each for taste and for the required protein that the body wants. One more reason for separating the meat from the meal, is for the shelf life. Freeze dried meat can have much less of a shelf life, wherever from 10 to 25 years, where the long run meals storage with out meat can have a 25+ year shelf life.

Even with these nice food choices, for some, there is nothing like having meat with a meal. And that is not just for the nice protein that it offers but additionally for the taste. With this in mind, the freeze dried meals storage industry has been creating freeze dried meat choices by themselves. A perfect fit for these choices are if someone owns numerous freeze-dried meals and wants to have meat to associate with them. Some folks have these bulk meals storage meals for emergencies the place as others use them on a regular basis.

One of many different benefits with having the freeze dry meat separate is that if you happen to wished to take the meat tenting and not convey up a cooler to keep it cold and be capable of add it to a meal you put together. Including the freeze-dried meat to an everyday meal can also be a very good choice. Having the meat separately packaged does provide more options on how it may be used. A few of these meats come pre-seasoned to work well with pre-packaged meals storage meals, tenting or cooking and the pre-seasoning can assist cut back the preparation time. And moreover, in a survival kind situation and even on a backpacking journey, seasoning won't be out there.

The 2 hottest types of freeze dry meat are chicken and beef. These are prepackaged and wrapped individually and then put in a sturdy container. These food storage containers are just like ones the freeze dried meals are available. Freeze dried meat is a pleasant complement to a food storage plan, camping trip or on a regular basis meal. Seasoned freeze dry meat additionally offers a nice preparation option.

Everybody loves beef jerky. It is a delicious, flavorful snack that's nearly addicting! The spice, the seasoning, the smoky flavor; it is simply plain yummy. If the one beef jerky you've ever tried is the type you seize as you are trying out at the grocery store, you simply do not know what you are missing. The perfect place to get superb beef jerky is at a specialty store, where the owners spend their lives perfecting the jerky making process. From selecting the very best quality, premium slices of meat, to the marinating and seasoning of the meat, to ensuring that every piece is ideal. Now, these are the folks you need to get your beef jerky from.

The issue is that a lot of people do not live near a specialty beef jerky store, so they don't get to expertise fresh quality jerky. Though some individuals are so in love with high quality jerky, they don't thoughts the lengthy drive to the specialty shop, others just do not have the time. We live in a busy world, and time actually is cash. Nevertheless, there is a nice different. You should purchase fresh, high quality beef jerky from a high notch jerky store on-line! With the comfort and ease of purchasing from the comfort of your laptop chair, you don't have to worry concerning the drive.

Now, some persons are skeptical about purchasing beef jerky from an internet site, and actually, that is good. You don't want to buy a product that is not contemporary. So, once you're contemplating a web-based beef jerky site, there are a few things you wish to be certain of. To start with, you wish to discover a shop that does not keep numerous inventory. The rationale for this is freshness. In case your beef jerky is made to order, you can be positive that you will get jerky that isn't solely scrumptious, however fresh. Overlook the preservatives. You need all natural, recent elements.

You also wish to ensure that your on-line beef jerky shop only chooses the highest quality, premium meats for their beef jerky. Plenty of locations will ship you beef jerky that's ground, chopped, or 'pressed' into strips. Effectively, simply send it back and go for a shop that makes use of delicious slices of high quality meat, comparable to lean complete top spherical steak. One option to inform if an online shop actually does specialise in jerky is by their choice. Can you get many different sorts of jerky, reminiscent of Buffalo jerky, Turkey jerky, Venison jerky, Ostrich jerky, or even exotic sorts of jerky? What concerning the completely different flavors? Does your site function flavors like Sizzling, Sweet & Spicy, Teriyaki, or Black Pepper beef jerky?

In the case of buying food off the Web, buying beef jerky online is without doubt one of the greatest bets since it's nonperishable and will arrive as recent as the stuff you should buy at your neighborhood convenient mart.

So, why buy beef jerky online? While lots of the nationwide brands comparable to Slim Jim, Pemmican and Oberto are scrumptious and accessible on most store cabinets, there are also some tasty sorts that are nearly selfmade. Many of these jerkies are sold by the makers themselves at fairs, festivals, outdoor expos or out of their properties. Till the Internet, these flavorful creations had been solely obtainable regionally. But with the appearance of the Web, shopping for beef jerky on-line from these mother and pop locations is possible. Additionally, greater manufacturers we all know and love are additionally bought on-line, too.

Here's a rundown of some locations the place you can buy beef jerky online:

Jerky Works

In the case of shopping for beef jerky online, JerkyWorks provides one of many largest choices. The positioning offers several model identify jerky merchandise including Gary West and Jerky Hut. Jerky Hut presents a variety of spice stage options and has some pretty cool packaging. The number of types of jerky the positioning affords between its manufacturers is diverse: beef, turkey, salmon, elk, buffalo and more. And in a wide range of flavors too: teriyaki, hickory, pepper, garlic, pepper garlic and rather more. The site sells jerky in bulk, gift packs and even jerky for pets. Moreover, they provide free samples with purchase and a great assure.

The Beef Jerky Store

The Beef Jerky Retailer is located in Las Vegas, however now you should purchase beef jerky online from this famous retailer. Their online catalog provides 93 alternatives of beef jerky, as well as quite a lot of different meals. They offer all the standard flavors and cuts in one of the widest varieties of brands obtainable on any website: Country Archer, Country Butcher, Take pleasure in It, Grumpy's, Hickory's Best, Old Settler's, Montana Jerky Company, Pecos Bill, Tengu, Path's Finest, Tillamook and more. Nevertheless, some unusual selections embody fruit flavored! Apart from beef jerky, additionally they sell jerky chew, pork jerky, ham jerky, tofu jerky, turkey jerky and beef sticks.

Great American Model

Great American Fashion sells its personal brand of jerky on-line. They sell the next flavors in quite a lot of sizes: unique, peppered, teriyaki, common premium minimize, Hawaiin teriyaki premium minimize, chili pepper and red scorching. The location also presents a range pack which incorporates several of its jerky flavors and likewise a number of packets of smaller jerky bites known as Shredders. Moreover, Nice American Fashion can put your private label on the jerky for your own use -- good for fundraisers, corporate gifts or present outlets. In addition they sell wholesale. Nice American Model's site also options recipes for do-it-yourselfers.

Beef jerky is nothing greater than dried meat, a shelf steady and nutritious, tasty deal with. As moisture is removed, flavors focus, and any additional seasonings added to the meat take on a life of their very own. Making beef jerky at house is an incredibly easy process, and requires no special tools. Beef jerky may be saved for long intervals of time without going dangerous, and makes for a healthy, tasty snack any time. Most individuals assume beef jerky is simply found in hermetically sealed bags in the grocery store, nonetheless making jerky at dwelling, out of any meat, is accomplished with just some steps and may be tailored to any taste you like, from smoky, to sweet, to spicy.

Earlier than fashionable meals processing, artificial jerky out of any accessible meat, with not more than the sun or a campfire. As long as the meat is lean and prepared correctly, it might probably simply be made into jerky. These days, a person can better tailor the outcomes to any style choice, and making jerky at home is as straightforward as making ready the meat, marinating it and setting it out to dry. These days, jerky is surprisingly standard, and each grocery retailer seems to hold some.

It may be found in convenience shops, and in some areas it's even offered by the facet of the street. Retailer bough jerky could be an costly merchandise, however, and infrequently the meat has been treated with components. Also, any time you buy a ready merchandise at the retailer, it's best to anticipate to pay a premium over hand-crafted items. A simple method to maintain costs down, and ensure your jerky is simply the best way you need it, is to make it your self. Jerky can be a straightforward method to protect sport meat akin to venison or elk, which many people might hunt and find themselves with an abundance of meat.

Making jerky at house is simple. There are a few simple guidelines of which you have to be aware to ensure each a protected and tasty product.

Most significantly, the meat ought to be lean. Fatty meat will go rancid and won't dry correctly. Fats within the meat will result in a subpar product that will not last very lengthy out of the fridge (or even in it). Generally, beef is used for jerky, by which case the very best cuts to make use of are flank steak or spherical steak. Numerous game meats akin to buffalo, elk, venison, caribou, and lots of others can be used as long as lean cuts are chosen.

Some folks swear by a dehydrator, which is a multi-tasker than can be utilized for way more than simply drying meat. Whereas a dehydrator can make glorious jerky, it is under no circumstances needed and an oven will simply suffice. A smoker can even make glorious jerky, whereas imparting a stronger smoky taste, which many people respect. Sun drying is possible, but risky if correct security measures aren't taken, and can also take a for much longer time to dry your meat effectively.

The simplest technique to put together the meat is by freezing it to the point of firmness but while it's not yet fully frozen. Reduce the meat into strips not more than a quarter of an inch thick, half to 3 quarters of an inch broad, and six to eight inches lengthy for the perfect working size. You should cut the meat throughout the grain to make sure a proper finished texture, and once more, ensure that than all visible fats and gristle has been eliminated.

Seasonings are a number of and various. Within the olden days, beef was merely handled with salt and pepper and dried, which truly leads to fairly a satisfying end product. Meat is more commonly marinated lately, nevertheless, but there are nonetheless many dry rubs and different methods used that can make great beef jerky. Some people interact in what is named a 'fast cook dinner' methodology to begin the process, whereby the meat strips are dropped in a pot of boiling water for a minute or two, which may kill any micro organism that could be on the meat and prepares the meat for a dry rub. While this is one methodology, often merely marinating the meat for a period of time ends in more depth of flavor and is simply as secure; nonetheless both choices produce tasty beef jerky.