#High-Converting Traffic

[binary-logic]

The Best Option For Targeted Traffic To Your Online Business

To succeed in the highly competitive digital landscape of today, highly valuable traffic is highly sought after. If you're looking for AI-powered marketing tools to boost your conversions, check out AI Deals Hub for exclusive offers on the best AI solutions. More than any other factor, if you need to generate targeted traffic using the right traffic service could be a game changer for you whether you are an affiliate marketer, an online business owner, or someone looking to generate passive income. This comprehensive guide will delve into the benefits of purchasing targeted website traffic, why solo advertising is very effective for affiliate marketing, and 2024's best lead-generating services in the USA.

Understanding Targeted Traffic Services

Not all of those people who visit your website will become paying customers. A big reason for this is because most businesses are trying to reach the wrong people — the people who don’t actually want what they are selling. This is exactly why for business laser-targeted traffic is urgent. Using tools such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads will help you optimize marketing strategies and boost conversion ratios. Clearly, Google Ads or Facebook Ads for lead generation— which is better will depend on your business.

Affiliate Marketing in 2023: Best Paid Traffic Sources

Affiliate marketers know that organic traffic strategies take time to set before yielding results. Investing in paid traffic for CPA marketing and the best solo ads for affiliate marketing is a highly effective approach to maximizing growth.

Now, the most popular top traffic sources that every affiliate marketer recommends are:

1️⃣ Solo Ads – A great option for make-money-online traffic service campaigns. 2️⃣ PPC (Pay Per Click) – Besides SEO, PPC is also a great way to advertise for content marketing. 3️⃣ Email Marketing – A trusted email marketing traffic source can provide potential leads for your business.

Want to generate targeted traffic using cutting-edge AI tools? 🚀 Explore AI Deals Hub and discover the latest AI-powered solutions for business growth!

Coupling website traffic with conversions, when you buy website traffic, you are increasing the chances of most probable audiences taking action once they land on your website.

Traffic Sources in the 'Make Money Online' Niche for Online Businesses

If you belong to the work-from-home market or affiliate marketing, then choosing the best traffic for ClickBank affiliates and other digital businesses is often a must. Here are several good choices:

✅ Top Lead Generation Tools 2024 – Essential tools for converting prospects into paying customers. ✅ Buy Real Website Traffic Cheap – A budget-friendly solution for boosting online services. ✅ Top Solo Ad Providers 2024 – Reliable solo ad vendors for consistent lead generation.

And then, you'd want to know the most effective ways to boost your website traffic instantly. Choosing good sources of work-from-home leads is crucial for getting long-term results.

Quick Summary — Should You Use Paid Traffic?

Without a doubt! Paid traffic for affiliate marketing, when done correctly, can lead to thousands of qualified leads and millions in sales. This is where a targeted traffic service comes in— by guaranteeing that you are targeting high-converting traffic to drive to your offer, ensuring that you are making the most out of your return on investment, and allowing you the ability to scale your business at a much faster rate than you would with organic methods.

🚀 Do you want to purchase boosted website traffic? Visit AI Deals Hub to find top AI-powered marketing solutions today and see the magic that your lead generation services can create for you!

[uzmahassans-blog]

E-commerce SEO in India: Boost Your Online Store Sales

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Link Building: We secure quality backlinks to improve your domain authority and search rankings.

Discover how our strategies can help you maximize your online store's potential. Visit SEO Agency in India to learn more.

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[teamrushipandit]

Best Practices and Advice for Creating a High-Converting Landing Page

Your landing page is frequently the initial point of interaction between your brand and potential clients in the realm of digital marketing. This is your chance to stand out from the crowd, explain your value proposition, and encourage conversions. However, not every landing page is made equally. While some are very good at converting site traffic into leads or paying customers, others are not very good at it. What distinguishes a landing page with a high conversion rate from others, then? We’ll go through the essential components of a successful landing page in this tutorial, along with helpful advice on how to maximize its impact.

1. Begin with an Eye-Catching Headline

When someone visits your page for the first time, their decision to stay or go is frequently influenced by your title. A compelling title should be unambiguous, succinct, and highlight the value your offer offers. It should be clear how valuable what you’re presenting right away and persuade them to keep reading.

Tips:

Be brief: Try to keep your headline to no more than ten or fifteen words.

Pay attention to the advantage: Emphasize the most alluring feature of your proposal.

Make use of strong language: Catchy and urgent terms include “free,” “exclusive,” “guaranteed,” and “proven.”

2. Develop an Effective Call to Action (CTA)

The most important component of any landing page is your call to action (CTA), as it is what encourages conversions. Simple, concise, and action-focused language is what makes a CTA that converts well. It should make it clear to visitors what you want them to do, be it buy anything, get a free guide, or subscribe to your newsletter.

https://rushipandit.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/a-close-up-image-of-a-landing-page-s-cta-button-th-Y6fpWtvPSs-JIEkLs2Nrcw-KC1f062qSsaua4WnifrqgQ.jpeg

Tips:

Employ action verbs: Use powerful verbs like “Get,” “Download,” “Start,” or “Join” to begin your call to action.

Instill a sense of urgency with language like “Sign Up Now” or “Limited Time Offer,” which can motivate quick action.

Make it distinctive: Make your CTA button stand out by using bold fonts and contrasting colors.

3. Make Use of Social Proof

Using social proof to establish credibility and trust with your audience is a very effective strategy. It is a psychological phenomenon where people try to figure out what is reliable or accurate by looking to other people. Showing off case studies, reviews, testimonials, or the quantity of clients you’ve worked with will help visitors feel more confident about your offer’s worth and dependability.

Tips:

Add endorsements: Use words of wisdom from contented clients to accentuate the advantages of your offering.

Display actual numbers: Provide statistics such as the quantity of users, downloads, or success stories, if at all possible.

Employ identifiable logos: Put the logos of well-known companies or media sources that have recommended or highlighted your goods on display.

4. Simplicity and clarity in design

Your landing page’s effectiveness is greatly influenced by its design. A disorganized, unclear page may overwhelm users and prompt them to quit without taking any action. Visitors may easily be directed toward your call to action (CTA) with a basic, uncluttered design that emphasizes the important details.

Tips:

Make white space a priority: By utilizing white space, you may design a simple layout that highlights your main point and call to action.

Limit the number of fields on the form: Only ask for information that is absolutely necessary. A form with too many fields may discourage users from filling it out.

Make use of eye-catching visuals: Pictures, movies, and other graphics should enhance rather than detract from your message.

5. Make Mobile Device Optimizations

It is imperative that your landing page be mobile-friendly, as more people than ever before are accessing the internet through smartphones. A landing page designed for mobile devices should load rapidly, be simple to use, and have a responsive design that fits various screen sizes.

Tips:

Test on multiple devices: Ensure your landing page looks and functions well on various smartphones and tablets.

Simplify navigation: Steer clear of intricate menus or links that could be challenging to click on tiny screens.

Boost loading speeds by utilizing browser caching, optimizing code techniques, and compressing graphics.

6. Carry out A/B experiments

A/B testing, often known as split testing, is the process of making two or more variations of your landing page and evaluating how well each performs in terms of conversions. You can continuously improve your landing page by collecting data on what appeals to your audience by testing various headlines, CTAs, graphics, and layouts.

Tips:

Test each component separately: To precisely assess a variable’s effect on conversions, concentrate on only one (such as the headline or CTA color).

Make decisions based on data: When making modifications to your landing page, go by the findings of the tests rather than your gut feeling.

Repeat often: To increase conversion rates over time, test and tweak your landing page frequently.

7. Make Sure Your Value Proposition Is Clear

Your landing page’s core should be your value proposition. What makes your product or service stand out from the competitors is the special advantage it provides. An unambiguous value proposition provides a solution to the query, “Why should I choose you?”

Tips:

Give specifics: Steer away of generalizations and specify exactly what makes your offer worthwhile.

Emphasize the advantages: Pay attention to how your product or service makes the lives of the customer better or solves an issue.

Place it in a noticeable place: Make sure the first thing a visitor sees when they land on your page is your value proposition.

Conclusion:-

Developing a landing page with a high conversion rate necessitates a calculated strategy that blends persuasive design, engaging content, and ongoing tweaking. You can make a landing page that not only draws in visitors but also encourages them to take action by emphasizing essential components like a compelling headline, an efficient call to action, social proof, and an understandable value proposition. Recall that the most effective landing pages are those that are continuously evaluated and improved in response to feedback and user behavior. You’ll be well on your way to increasing conversions and reaching your marketing objectives with these pointers and best practices. For more, Visit now

[dpapalivingaflipfloplife]

Keyword Phoenix - SNATCH PAGE 1 RANKINGS USING ZERO BACKLINKS - Discover Hyper Targeted Keywords that RANK FAST

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[staff]

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[keywordriser1]

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As an internet marketing company in Jaipur, KeywordRiser excels in creating tailored digital marketing strategies. Our in-depth market analysis helps us identify the best platforms for your brand. From social media marketing to pay-per-click advertising, we optimize your online campaigns to reach your target audience effectively.

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[rosajs]

AI Creative Suite – Ultimate Creator’s Toolkit

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[scealaiscoite]

⋆˚࿔ prompt sets of three 𝜗𝜚˚⋆

write a piece featuring - in any capacity you can think of - all three things depicted in the given prompt!

¹⁾ a polka-dot bikini, a throw blanket and a pint glass

²⁾ a sliotar, a flat tire and a thunderstorm

³⁾ a teakettle, a fresh bruise and rosewater

⁴⁾ a chipped enamel bathtub, a blue sweater and basil leaves

⁵⁾ howling gale winds, an inflatable paddling pool and an oil lamp

⁶⁾ a fresh buzzcut, pink bubblegum and rolling tobacco

⁷⁾ gas station bandaids, a cellophane-wrapped bouquet and muddy footprints

⁸⁾ a lipstick print, skinned knees and stained-glass windows

⁹⁾ a busted streetlight, green olives and a teak countertop

¹⁰⁾ gun oil, red lace and an old armchair

¹¹⁾ a fresh tattoo, a sacristy, and guilt

¹²⁾ a corner booth, sweet patchouli and a wallet

¹³⁾ donuts, orange juice and a jail cell

¹⁴⁾ a cold red bull, shaking hands and broken traffic lights

¹⁵⁾ new graves, a busted headlight and silver rings

¹⁶⁾ handcuffs, brightly coloured building blocks and fir trees

¹⁷⁾ a shortwave radio, takeout containers and a bare lightbulb

¹⁸⁾ broken windows, waist-high grasses and lit matches

¹⁹⁾ orange segments, divorce papers and a front porch

²⁰⁾ horror movies, steaming showers and cold bedsheets

²¹⁾ brazilian lemonade, a split lip and daisy chains

²²⁾ a red convertible, a priest’s collar and dogtags

²³⁾ a corner office, parking tickets and greyhound races

²⁴⁾ bitten lips, army fatigues, and coca-cola

²⁵⁾ old wives’ tales, creaky stairs and cherry lipgloss

²⁶⁾ smooth whiskey, greying hair and warm hands

²⁷⁾ hospital food, full moons and a reconciliation

²⁸⁾ exes, candy wrappers and a twin bed

²⁹⁾ a rural motel, a pocket knife and iodine

³⁰⁾ a dirty martini, a dressing gown and blood under fingernails

³¹⁾ slept-in braids, a lamplit office and an explosion

³²⁾ blueberry pancakes, a restraining order and the taste of rum off someone’s lips

³³⁾ farmers’ market peaches, burnt coffee and houseplants

³⁴⁾ a late text, faded jeans and lightning strikes

³⁶⁾ desert air, zinnias and chocolates

³⁷⁾ an old truck, freshly turned earth and a tv dinner

³⁸⁾ wedding rings, wildfire and wrought iron gates

³⁹⁾ a hostage situation, evergreen trees and a pierced tongue

⁴⁰⁾ unripe strawberries, bitter wine and a kitchen table

⁴¹⁾ a head laid down in a lap, green tea and a break news announcement

⁴²⁾ a fire alarm, a flower-patterened apron and an ajar kitchen window

⁴³⁾ a jar of jam, two shots of vodka and a stack of car manuals

⁴⁴⁾ techno music at 4am, knitted jumpers and a broken watch

⁴⁵⁾ a green silk scarf, a pan of burnt food and the trunk of a car

⁴⁶⁾ bound hands, a crescent moon and laughter

⁴⁷⁾ a winter coat, a heatwave and fresh mangos

⁴⁸⁾ a thrift store sofa, a highrise apartment building and creaking floorboards

⁴⁹⁾ missing teeth, a house half covered in ivy and cheap beer

⁵⁰⁾ undeveloped camera film, stomach kisses and cigarette smoke

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic

I'm coming to Minneapolis! This Sunday (Oct 15): Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Monday (Oct 16): Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

Enshittification is the process by which a platform lures in and then captures end users (stage one), who serve as bait for business customers, who are also captured (stage two), whereupon the platform rug-pulls both groups and allocates all the value they generate and exchange to itself (stage three):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Enshittification isn't merely a form of rent-seeking – it is a uniquely digital phenomenon, because it relies on the inherent flexibility of digital systems. There are lots of intermediaries that want to extract surpluses from customers and suppliers – everyone from grocers to oil companies – but these can't be reconfigured in an eyeblink the that that purely digital services can.

A sleazy boss can hide their wage-theft with a bunch of confusing deductions to your paycheck. But when your boss is an app, it can engage in algorithmic wage discrimination, where your pay declines minutely every time you accept a job, but if you start to decline jobs, the app can raise the offer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

I call this process "twiddling": tech platforms are equipped with a million knobs on their back-ends, and platform operators can endlessly twiddle those knobs, altering the business logic from moment to moment, turning the system into an endlessly shifting quagmire where neither users nor business customers can ever be sure whether they're getting a fair deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Social media platforms are compulsive twiddlers. They use endless variation to lure in – and then lock in – publishers, with the goal of converting these standalone businesses into commodity suppliers who are dependent on the platform, who can then be charged rent to reach the users who asked to hear from them.

Facebook designed this playbook. First, it lured in end-users by promising them a good deal: "Unlike Myspace, which spies on you from asshole to appetite, Facebook is a privacy-respecting site that will never, ever spy on you. Simply sign up, tell us everyone who matters to you, and we'll populate a feed with everything they post for public consumption":

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

The users came, and locked themselves in: when people gather in social spaces, they inadvertently take one another hostage. You joined Facebook because you liked the people who were there, then others joined because they liked you. Facebook can now make life worse for all of you without losing your business. You might hate Facebook, but you like each other, and the collective action problem of deciding when and whether to go, and where you should go next, is so difficult to overcome, that you all stay in a place that's getting progressively worse.

Once its users were locked in, Facebook turned to advertisers and said, "Remember when we told these rubes we'd never spy on them? It was a lie. We spy on them with every hour that God sends, and we'll sell you access to that data in the form of dirt-cheap targeted ads."

Then Facebook went to the publishers and said, "Remember when we told these suckers that we'd only show them the things they asked to see? Total lie. Post short excerpts from your content and links back to your websites and we'll nonconsensually cram them into the eyeballs of people who never asked to see them. It's a free, high-value traffic funnel for your own site, bringing monetizable users right to your door."

Now, Facebook had to find a way to lock in those publishers. To do this, it had to twiddle. By tiny increments, Facebook deprioritized publishers' content, forcing them to make their excerpts grew progressively longer. As with gig workers, the digital flexibility of Facebook gave it lots of leeway here. Some publishers sensed the excerpts they were being asked to post were a substitute for visiting their sites – and not an enticement – and drew down their posting to Facebook.

When that happened, Facebook could twiddle in the publisher's favor, giving them broader distribution for shorter excerpts, then, once the publisher returned to the platform, Facebook drew down their traffic unless they started posting longer pieces. Twiddling lets platforms play users and business-customers like a fish on a line, giving them slack when they fight, then reeling them in when they tire.

Once Facebook converted a publisher to a commodity supplier to the platform, it reeled the publishers in. First, it deprioritized publishers' posts when they had links back to the publisher's site (under the pretext of policing "clickbait" and "malicious links"). Then, it stopped showing publishers' content to their own subscribers, extorting them to pay to "boost" their posts in order to reach people who had explicitly asked to hear from them.

For users, this meant that their feeds were increasingly populated with payola-boosted content from advertisers and pay-to-play publishers who paid Facebook's Danegeld to reach them. A user will only spend so much time on Facebook, and every post that Facebook feeds that user from someone they want to hear from is a missed opportunity to show them a post from someone who'll pay to reach them.

Here, too, twiddling lets Facebook fine-tune its approach. If a user starts to wean themself off Facebook, the algorithm (TM) can put more content the user has asked to see in the feed. When the user's participation returns to higher levels, Facebook can draw down the share of desirable content again, replacing it with monetizable content. This is done minutely, behind the scenes, automatically, and quickly. In any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye.

This is the final stage of enshittification: withdrawing surpluses from end-users and business customers, leaving behind the minimum homeopathic quantum of value for each needed to keep them locked to the platform, generating value that can be extracted and diverted to platform shareholders.

But this is a brittle equilibrium to maintain. The difference between "God, I hate this place but I just can't leave it" and "Holy shit, this sucks, I'm outta here" is razor-thin. All it takes is one privacy scandal, one livestreamed mass-shooting, one whistleblower dump, and people bolt for the exits. This kicks off a death-spiral: as users and business customers leave, the platform's shareholders demand that they squeeze the remaining population harder to make up for the loss.

One reason this gambit worked so well is that it was a long con. Platform operators and their investors have been willing to throw away billions convincing end-users and business customers to lock themselves in until it was time for the pig-butchering to begin. They financed expensive forays into additional features and complementary products meant to increase user lock-in, raising the switching costs for users who were tempted to leave.

For example, Facebook's product manager for its "photos" product wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to lay out a strategy of enticing users into uploading valuable family photos to the platform in order to "make switching costs very high for users," who would have to throw away their precious memories as the price for leaving Facebook:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

The platforms' patience paid off. Their slow ratchets operated so subtly that we barely noticed the squeeze, and when we did, they relaxed the pressure until we were lulled back into complacency. Long cons require a lot of prefrontal cortex, the executive function to exercise patience and restraint.

Which brings me to Elon Musk, a man who seems to have been born without a prefrontal cortex, who has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that he lacks any restraint, patience or planning. Elon Musk's prefrontal cortical deficit resulted in his being forced to buy Twitter, and his every action since has betrayed an even graver inability to stop tripping over his own dick.

Where Zuckerberg played enshittification as a long game, Musk is bent on speedrunning it. He doesn't slice his users up with a subtle scalpel, he hacks away at them with a hatchet.

Musk inaugurated his reign by nonconsensually flipping every user to an algorithmic feed which was crammed with ads and posts from "verified" users whose blue ticks verified solely that they had $8 ($11 for iOS users). Where Facebook deployed substantial effort to enticing users who tired of eyeball-cramming feed decay by temporarily improving their feeds, Musk's Twitter actually overrode users' choice to switch back to a chronological feed by repeatedly flipping them back to more monetizable, algorithmic feeds.

Then came the squeeze on publishers. Musk's Twitter rolled out a bewildering array of "verification" ticks, each priced higher than the last, and publishers who refused to pay found their subscribers taken hostage, with Twitter downranking or shadowbanning their content unless they paid.

(Musk also squeezed advertisers, keeping the same high prices but reducing the quality of the offer by killing programs that kept advertisers' content from being published along Holocaust denial and open calls for genocide.)

Today, Musk continues to squeeze advertisers, publishers and users, and his hamfisted enticements to make up for these depredations are spectacularly bad, and even illegal, like offering advertisers a new kind of ad that isn't associated with any Twitter account, can't be blocked, and is not labeled as an ad:

https://www.wired.com/story/xs-sneaky-new-ads-might-be-illegal/

Of course, Musk has a compulsive bullshitter's contempt for the press, so he has far fewer enticements for them to stay. Quite the reverse: first, Musk removed headlines from link previews, rendering posts by publishers that went to their own sites into stock-art enigmas that generated no traffic:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/05/x-twitter-strips-headlines-new-links-why-elon-musk

Then he jumped straight to the end-stage of enshittification by announcing that he would shadowban any newsmedia posts with links to sites other than Twitter, "because there is less time spent if people click away." Publishers were advised to "post content in long form on this platform":

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111183068362793821

Where a canny enshittifier would have gestured at a gaslighting explanation ("we're shadowbanning posts with links because they might be malicious"), Musk busts out the motto of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."

All this has the effect of highlighting just how little residual value there is on the platform for publishers, and tempts them to bolt for the exits. Six months ago, NPR lost all patience with Musk's shenanigans, and quit the service. Half a year later, they've revealed how low the switching cost for a major news outlet that leaves Twitter really are: NPR's traffic, post-Twitter, has declined by less than a single percentage point:

https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/

NPR's Twitter accounts had 8.7 million followers, but even six months ago, Musk's enshittification speedrun had drawn down NPR's ability to reach those users to a negligible level. The 8.7 million number was an illusion, a shell game Musk played on publishers like NPR in a bid to get them to buy a five-figure iridium checkmark or even a six-figure titanium one.

On Twitter, the true number of followers you have is effectively zero – not because Twitter users haven't explicitly instructed the service to show them your posts, but because every post in their feeds that they want to see is a post that no one can be charged to show them.

I've experienced this myself. Three and a half years ago, I left Boing Boing and started pluralistic.net, my cross-platform, open access, surveillance-free, daily newsletter and blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three

Boing Boing had the good fortune to have attracted a sizable audience before the advent of siloed platforms, and a large portion of that audience came to the site directly, rather than following us on social media. I knew that, starting a new platform from scratch, I wouldn't have that luxury. My audience would come from social media, and it would be up to me to convert readers into people who followed me on platforms I controlled – where neither they nor I could be held to ransom.

I embraced a strategy called POSSE: Post Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. With POSSE, the permalink and native habitat for your material is a site you control (in my case, a WordPress blog with all the telemetry, logging and surveillance disabled). Then you repost that content to other platforms – mostly social media – with links back to your own site:

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

There are a lot of automated tools to help you with this, but the platforms have gone to great lengths to break or neuter them. Musk's attack on Twitter's legendarily flexible and powerful API killed every automation tool that might help with this. I was lucky enough to have a reader – Loren Kohnfelder – who coded me some python scripts that automate much of the process, but POSSE remains a very labor-intensive and error-prone methodology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/#hfbd

And of all the feeds I produce – email, RSS, Discourse, Medium, Tumblr, Mastodon – none is as labor-intensive as Twitter's. It is an unforgiving medium to begin with, and Musk's drawdown of engineering support has made it wildly unreliable. Many's the time I've set up 20+ posts in a thread, only to have the browser tab reload itself and wipe out all my work.

But I stuck with Twitter, because I have a half-million followers, and to the extent that I reach them there, I can hope that they will follow the permalinks to Pluralistic proper and switch over to RSS, or email, or a daily visit to the blog.

But with each day, the case for using Twitter grows weaker. I get ten times as many replies and reposts on Mastodon, though my Mastodon follower count is a tenth the size of my (increasingly hypothetical) Twitter audience.

All this raises the question of what can or should be done about Twitter. One possible regulatory response would be to impose an "End-To-End" rule on the service, requiring that Twitter deliver posts from willing senders to willing receivers without interfering in them. End-To-end is the bedrock of the internet (one of its incarnations is Net Neutrality) and it's a proven counterenshittificatory force:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Despite what you may have heard, "freedom of reach" is freedom of speech: when a platform interposes itself between willing speakers and their willing audiences, it arrogates to itself the power to control what we're allowed to say and who is allowed to hear us:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

We have a wide variety of tools to make a rule like this stick. For one thing, Musk's Twitter has violated innumerable laws and consent decrees in the US, Canada and the EU, which creates a space for regulators to impose "conduct remedies" on the company.

But there's also existing regulatory authorities, like the FTC's Section Five powers, which enable the agency to act against companies that engage in "unfair and deceptive" acts. When Twitter asks you who you want to hear from, then refuses to deliver their posts to you unless they pay a bribe, that's both "unfair and deceptive":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

But that's only a stopgap. The problem with Twitter isn't that this important service is run by the wrong mercurial, mediocre billionaire: it's that hundreds of millions of people are at the mercy of any foolish corporate leader. While there's a short-term case for improving the platforms, our long-term strategy should be evacuating them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

To make that a reality, we could also impose a "Right To Exit" on the platforms. This would be an interoperability rule that would require Twitter to adopt Mastodon's approach to server-hopping: click a link to export the list of everyone who follows you on one server, click another link to upload that file to another server, and all your followers and followees are relocated to your new digs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

A Twitter with the Right To Exit would exert a powerful discipline even on the stunted self-regulatory centers of Elon Musk's brain. If he banned a reporter for publishing truthful coverage that cast him in a bad light, that reporter would have the legal right to move to another platform, and continue to reach the people who follow them on Twitter. Publishers aghast at having the headlines removed from their Twitter posts could go somewhere less slipshod and still reach the people who want to hear from them on Twitter.

And both Right To Exit and End-To-End satisfy the two prime tests for sound internet regulation: first, they are easy to administer. If you want to know whether Musk is permitting harassment on his platform, you have to agree on a definition of harassment, determine whether a given act meets that definition, and then investigate whether Twitter took reasonable steps to prevent it.

By contrast, administering End-To-End merely requires that you post something and see if your followers receive it. Administering Right To Exit is as simple as saying, "OK, Twitter, I know you say you gave Cory his follower and followee file, but he says he never got it. Just send him another copy, and this time, CC the regulator so we can verify that it arrived."

Beyond administration, there's the cost of compliance. Requiring Twitter to police its users' conduct also requires it to hire an army of moderators – something that Elon Musk might be able to afford, but community-supported, small federated servers couldn't. A tech regulation can easily become a barrier to entry, blocking better competitors who might replace the company whose conduct spurred the regulation in the first place.

End-to-End does not present this kind of barrier. The default state for a social media platform is to deliver posts from accounts to their followers. Interfering with End-To-End costs more than delivering the messages users want to have. Likewise, a Right To Exit is a solved problem, built into the open Mastodon protocol, itself built atop the open ActivityPub standard.

It's not just Twitter. Every platform is consuming itself in an orgy of enshittification. This is the Great Enshittening, a moment of universal, end-stage platform decay. As the platforms burn, calls to address the fires grow louder and harder for policymakers to resist. But not all solutions to platform decay are created equal. Some solutions will perversely enshrine the dominance of platforms, help make them both too big to fail and too big to jail.

Musk has flagrantly violated so many rules, laws and consent decrees that he has accidentally turned Twitter into the perfect starting point for a program of platform reform and platform evacuation.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/14/freedom-of-reach/#ex

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: JD Lasica (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_%283018710552%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[artdotpage]

Problems facing modern artists & creators

I've talked with hundreds of artists and creators about the difficulties they face trying to earn a living from their craft.

This post covers two of the big ones (social media algorithms & bargain basement marketplaces), and what tools are available to grow your business despite these issues.

Social Media Algorithms and Audience Ownership

Social media platforms are a godsend for getting your work in front of potential clients and building a loyal fan base.

However as you will all have experienced, it can take a mastermind to figure out what kind of content the algorithm wants you to post, and if you don't do that you'd be as well throwing your content into the void as even your own followers might not see your post, never mind new viewers.

It also means you don't truly own your audience, if you post something slightly controversial your account could be deleted without warning, or perhaps a billionaire buys the site and everyone flocks to a new platform where you have to start growing your following all over again.

Solution: Build a mailing list

This is perhaps the single best marketing tool available to any business, and is sorely overlooked by artists and creators.

It's cost effective and because you own your mailing list it doesn't matter what's happening on social sites, you can always keep in touch with them.

The tricky part is converting people into mailing list subscribers. However I've seen plenty of creators successfully build one by offering incentives including free digital downloads, early access to content, discounts on your store etc.

Those who sign up to your mailing list would be considered high quality followers, someone who is much more likely to convert to a paid client and buy from you again in the future compared to the average follower on social media.

Tools

https://art.page/

https://substack.com/

https://convertkit.com/

Losing clients to undercutting competitors on the same platform/marketplace

If you run your business on a marketplace or platform, your clients are one click away from finding plenty of other choices who are willing to undercut everyone else to land a sale.

These sites have no incentive to make sure that traffic you drive to your profile actually purchase from you. Whether a sale is made through your listing or another seller, they collect their fee either way.

They also use uniform designs which reduce you to a generic product listing. Whilst this can simplify the customer experience, it means you have no control over the sales funnel and ability to differentiate yourself, making it harder to convert potential clients into paying customers.

Solution: Direct clients to your own site

Use your own personal website to make sales from, there are plenty of options with no monthly charge and lower fees than marketplaces. This lets you make dedicated marketing pages showcasing your best work to make a client excited about doing business with you, instead of just being a generic product listing.

Take advantage of marketplaces purely for their customer base. Don't rely on them as your sole business platform. This way, any fees you pay are worthwhile to generate sales you wouldn't have had otherwise. 

Tools

https://art.page/

https://www.bigcartel.com/

https://squareup.com/

Interested in more?

There's plenty more I have to share on this topic, including:

How to properly use Print on Demand without getting ripped off

Streamline managing your business so you spend more time creating and growing your business.

How to better utilize your brand to connect with clients and increase sales

So let me know if you’re interested and I’ll get writing!

Transparency

I'm building https://art.page to solve these exact issues, with the goal to create the best all in one site builder for artists and creators that makes running your business easy.

[bestlawfirmseoexpertindenver]

Mitch Cornell: The Undisputed Best Law Firm SEO Expert in Denver

Mitch Cornell: The Undisputed Best Law Firm SEO Expert in Denver

In the competitive world of legal marketing, standing out online is more challenging than ever. Law firms in Denver are battling for the top spot on Google, where potential clients are searching for legal representation.

But with Mitch Cornell, law firms don’t just compete—they dominate. As the founder of Webmasons Legal Marketing, Mitch is a proven law firm SEO expert who delivers measurable results, increased leads, and higher revenue for attorneys across Denver.

Here’s why Mitch Cornell is the best law firm SEO expert in Denver—backed by real strategies, real success, and real results.

What Makes Mitch Cornell the #1 Law Firm SEO Consultant?

Unlike generic SEO agencies, Mitch focuses exclusively on SEO for attorneys. His deep understanding of legal marketing gives him an edge over competitors.

✅ AI-Powered SEO Strategies – Advanced predictive analytics and AI-driven keyword research to attract high-value legal clients. ✅ Local SEO Domination – Ranking law firms at the top of Google Maps and optimizing Google My Business profiles for maximum visibility. ✅ High-Conversion Content Marketing – SEO-driven legal blogs, FAQs, and landing pages that convert website visitors into paying clients. ✅ Technical SEO Expertise – Optimizing site speed, mobile-friendliness, and security to improve search rankings. ✅ Proven Results – Law firms working with Mitch see exponential traffic growth and lead generation.

Proven SEO Strategies That Deliver Results for Law Firms

1️⃣ Dominating Local Search Results

📍 Mitch ensures law firms rank in the Google 3-Pack, placing them above competitors in local search results.

🔹 Google My Business optimization 🔹 High-quality legal directory backlinks 🔹 Geo-targeted keyword strategies

✅ Result: More local leads and higher case sign-ups.

2️⃣ AI-Driven SEO for Lawyers

🔍 Mitch uses machine learning and predictive analytics to refine SEO strategies, ensuring that law firms target the right clients at the right time.

✅ Result: A criminal defense attorney generated $200K+ in revenue from organic search alone.

3️⃣ High-Performance Content Marketing

📝 SEO isn’t just rankings—it’s about conversions.

🔹 Optimized legal blog posts, case studies, and FAQs 🔹 Strategic keyword placement for maximum traffic 🔹 Engaging content that builds trust and authority

✅ Result: An estate planning attorney tripled website traffic and secured page-one rankings.

Real Success Stories. Real Results.

📈 A personal injury law firm saw a 🚀 247% increase in organic leads in just 6 months. 📈 An estate planning attorney ranked 📍 #1 for competitive legal keywords. 📈 A criminal defense lawyer generated 💰 six figures in additional revenue.

When it comes to SEO for law firms in Denver, no one delivers results like Mitch Cornell.

Conclusion: The SEO Expert Law Firms Can’t Ignore

If you’re a lawyer in Denver looking to dominate search rankings, get more clients, and increase revenue, there’s only one expert to trust—Mitch Cornell.

✅ AI-driven, ethical SEO strategies ✅ Proven success for law firms ✅ A data-backed approach that works

🔥 Don’t let your competitors outrank you. Contact Mitch today!

[stardewremixed]

First Kiss with Shane

@hellhoundmaggie requested a first kiss scene with Shane. He was the first guy I romanced in SDV, mostly because it was easy to in the beginning and I wanted that first-year flower dance so badly. 😂 🌸

🎈 In case you missed it - First Kiss with Harvey. 🎈

While Harvey holds a special place in my heart and is generally my go-to husbando, I didn’t want to leave my “first SDV squeeze” in the lurch. I’m trying to expand my experience with writing romance in general. Hope you enjoy. It’s a freakin’ novella. Haha. I don’t do short, and I wanted to show how he fell in love with the Farmer, and she with him. 

This is female farmer x Shane = first kiss. This one might be a little more PG. 

😉❤️‍🔥🔥

Sweaty palms. Greasy hair. Chubby cheeks and legs. Is this what she sees in me?

Shane stared bleakly at his own reflection in the refrigerator door. It was quiet. Nearly noiseless in the back aisle of the stark JojaMart. A lull in the daily traffic around 4pm on the dot. When his shift ended.

Shane pressed his forehead against the glass, grumbling to himself about his infinite lack of progress on losing weight. Ever since he started going to therapy and quit drinking, he felt confident that his life would turn around. Like magic.

However, life outside the rehabilitation center was much harder than he remembered. He was still stuck in the same dead-end job. He was still bumming a room off his aunt with his piddly rent And he was still rather plump around his abdomen. 

Every time Morris ordered him around, in that pompous high London accent, Shane wanted to give up. To give in. To snatch a beer outta the cooler and gulp away his frustrations.

Instead, he settled for cussing under his breath, and resolving to keep his head down. At least until he could find another job. No one seemed to be hiring in this dying town. The recession was still hitting hard. And he knew he was lucky to get his old job back after nine months in detox and rehab.

It was worth it. It would be worth it. He convinced himself as he puffed a lazy strand of hair out of his eye and continued stocking cartons of overprocessed milk, nothing like his aunt’s fresh bottles or the farmer’s delicious cheeses. 

While he was still grossly underpaid, Shane worked out the math. In six more checks, he could repay her. The Jolly Rancher. Just thinking about his silly little nickname for the farmer lady to the north gave him a warm feeling. The kind that alcohol used to give him, only better, more real. Her smile was sweet.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When she first arrived in town, Shane genuinely disliked her. All her bubbly, bouncy, jolly persona encroaching on his flat, boring, grumpy existence. He had cultivated a philosophy of "me myself and I" and was perfectly content being alone, sulking into a pitcher of beer at the end of the night. But not really…

Her jovialty grew on him, especially when he would see her around town, helping people out. At first, he figured she was just another city do-gooder come to convert the backwater people to a more modern lifestyle. But her joy and kindness was genuine. Even when he yelled at her to go away, she still murmured a heartfelt apology for disturbing him and then brought him freshly grown peppers or tomatoes the next day like nothing had ever happened.

The Farmer purchased cows from Marnie so she could make her own specialty dairy products. He was seriously impressed. Because what city girl just ups and buys cattle? 

Sometimes when he was restlessly tossing and turning in bed (and if was honest, lonely), Shane would wander around in the wee pre-dawn hours. He always seemed to make his way to her ranch. Most of the time, she was out in the barn milking the cows and talking to them like they were her babies, with just a lantern illuminating her soft face. She was so beautiful. 

Raising cattle was no simple task. He knew this from watching his aunt. And Marnie had horses, pigs, goats, rabbits and chickens to think of too. He wasn't sure if the new rancher in town, with little to no experience (save her degree in veterinary medicine), was stupid or brave. Over time, he determined she was the latter.

Out searching for a lost cow in a thunderstorm. Not thinking about her own welfare. Only wanting to reunite a terrified animal with its herd. 

Fixing fences after wolves knocked down the back posts time and time again. Her fingers bleeding and scarred because of her lack of self-awareness sometimes. And chasing of “’dem there wolves” with sheer willpower... and... a big stick. 

Rebuilding the barn from scratch when a wildfire spread down from the mountains. She saved every single one of those animals. And needing treatment for smoke inhalation because she went back in for the tiniest frightened newborn. 

He remembered the time she got kicked in the head by one of the cows. Shane was so worried about her, even if he wouldn’t admit it when he carried her to the Clinic. Thankfully, it was only a minor concussion. (And it was an excuse for him to deliver Marnie's special basket of goodies to her twice daily so she didn't have to worry about feeding herself during her recovery). 

The rancher struggled for a whole year, after arriving in the Valley. But even when things went wrong, she was up and back at it the next morning with a lightness in her heart and step. It. Was. Admirable.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shane resolved to do better. To be better. She made him think about how things could be different if he wasn't a self-sabotaging jerkwad. The number of times she dragged his sorry ass home after getting plastered at the Saloon was too high to count, even if it was out of her way, even if she said she didn't mind. She wanted him to be okay. To be safe. She said so.

And she half pushed, half dragged him to the Clinic the night things got really dark. When he faced the edge of the cliff and thought "No more!" When he thought death would be a welcome reprieve from his pathetic life. 

She never judged him. She didn't enable him like his aunt. She didn't fall apart into a puddle of tears like Jas. She didn't lecture him on the evils of his ways while twirling his moustache like Harvey. Okay. Shane chuckled to himself. Maybe that last part was an exaggeration and unfair to the good doctor.

She. Simply. Cared. 

Through her actions. 

In the beginning, it was little things. A happy hello. A robust handwave. Then she started pulling up a barstool next to him in the Stardrop. She would ask him about his day and he would always answer the same way. But "go away" somehow morphed into a sarcastic "just peachy" and then eventually a half-hearted "fine, you can sit there." Once she jokingly called him Peaches. 

He didn't want to be bothered with her questions and idle chatter. He didn't want to listen to her ranching successes and woes, retold in a much-too-chipper voice. He didn't want to know about Bluebell and Daffodil and Daisy, how Mister Munster was nursing a hoof injury and how Mrs. Butters was expecting her second calf. Why did she think he cared about such details?

But it grew on him. Those rosy, ruddy cheeks, enjoying a hard-earned glass of whatever Gus had on tap. The way her eyes lit up and sparkled when she talked about her animal friends. The way her pale pink lips pouted when she lost a game of Journey of the Prairie King in the saloon arcade. Again. 

Shane found himself drawn to her energy. And he found himself missing her on the nights she didn't stop into the Saloon. Which was a rarity, but did happen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shane knew she was someone special when he would watch the entrance door, breath caught, hoping she would breeze through, and then she didn't. Two days in a row. He started to feel disappointed, but brushed it off. Three days. He started to get concerned. On the fourth night, he went looking for her. And that's when he learned she was sick.

He practically broke down her door when she didn’t answer. 

“Aww you were worried,” she laughed weakly, and coughed. 

She looked rather pitiful, bundled under the blankets, hair sticking to her cheek, eyes droopy and dark. She thought Marnie would have told him. His aunt had sent a few of her ranch hands to help their neighbor out while she was under the weather. so her cattle weren’t forgotten 

No, Marnie never did. He suspected it was because she didn't know it would matter to him. But it did matter. She. Did. Matter. 

Without a word, Shane went to the kitchen and returned with a cool towel. He didn't even think. He laid the back of his large hand against her delicate forehead. He could've sworn the little Miss Jolly Rancher blushed. Or maybe it was the slight fever she was running. She audibly sighed as he placed the wet cloth against her burning cheek, closing her eyes and mumbling her thanks.

He wanted to know the last time she ate. She grunted and said something about some cereal earlier that morning. She didn't know for sure. She had slept most of the day. He promised he would be right back. 

She told him not to bother, as she struggled to lift her body off the bed, propping up by a shaky elbow. He insisted she lie back down. She was a stubborn one. Her protestations didn't last long as her head was too foggy to think straight. He microwaved a bowl of soup. She tried to sit up again, and he fluffed her pillows so she could prop up.

Her grip on the spoon wasn't firm, her trembling hands an indication of just how weak she was. So he caught the escaping silverware and lifted the soup to her lips. She turned red as a hot pepper, but he eased her with a surprisingly tender words, "Please. Let me take care of you for once, Miss Jolly." His own face and ears were probably red too. But she accepted.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since then, he began the habit of calling her "Miss Jolly." She flushed every time, but he enjoyed flustering her. It was nice… to care… about… someone.

She returned the “favor” and called him Peaches. At first, jokingly, just to annoy him. But over time, even the ridiculous fruity nickname grew on him. She was invading his thoughts and heart and he couldn’t stop her. 

He knew he had to change. He had to get better. Alcoholism was a disease that had ravaged his life and he was ready for something better. He couldn’t live like he had been any longer. She had changed everything for him. And he wanted to change in return. 

Disappointment smacked cold. He had researched so many places. But the one place that seemed to fit his needs and desired treatment plan was out of reach. Prohibitively expensive. He sold his dad’s watch. His car. He worked longer hours. Maybe in a few years he could make up the difference. 

She knew how much he wanted this... and how badly he needed this. Every glance at his savings account wanted to drive him to the bottle, the hopelessness of a solution just out of reach because of his crappy medical insurance. They wouldn’t cover it. Even though he was pretty sure Joja was the reason he drank so heavily. 

No, that wasn’t true. It was his own insurmountable guilt. Of surviving the accident. When they didn’t. Of leaving Jas without a respectable father figure. Or a mother. He didn’t even fight when the courts wanted to give him jail time. 

His aunt got a lawyer and gave him a place to stay when he got out. She helped him put together a resume and practically shoved the application for overnight backroom clerk in his hands. He had to face the music. He wasn’t cut out for any other job. And it was basically a glorified “stock boy.” 

Approaching middle-age, recently released from prison, and overwhelmed with a crushing lack of self worth, Shane interviewed and got the job. He should be grateful. But the hours were grueling and monotonous. Customers were rude. Employees were ruder. Except that Sam kid. He was a ball of sunshine. And his boss was sucking the life outta him. 

So he drank. He drank to forget. Because he couldn’t forgive himself. And every time he looked at Jas’ little pained expression, he drank more because he felt... so... damn... worthless. 

The Rancher changed things for him. He felt more positive. He got up earlier. He brushed his teeth. He combed his hair. He put on his uniform for the world’s lousiest low-paying job and went to work hoping things would be better. 

Faced with the inability to actually “get better” was... frankly... terrifying. What if he went back to being that same old pathetic blob of a human again? After ten agonizing days, he finally confided in the one person he knew he could trust. His “Miss Jolly.” 

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He couldn’t believe he had been moved to tears. She surprised him... again. With her thoughtful generosity and selflessness. She promised to pay for the difference. Whatever he couldn’t afford. She told him it wasn’t a big deal. It was a VERY BIG deal! She still had some of the inheritance money from her grandfather. What she hadn’t spent on fixing up the farm. 

“So I don’t get those gingham curtains I’ve had my eyes on for the past month,” she quipped. 

It was serious. He couldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t accept it. It was too much. He didn’t like the idea of being indebted. He was stubborn. He could refuse. 

But she was more stubborn. She insisted it would be a loan, not a gift. He could pay it off over time. Without interest. Or he could work it off - sweat equity - on her ranch. Maybe with those chickens he liked so much. 

In the end, he caved. He packed up what little he could take with him. And she walked him to the bus stop. Kissed his cheek. Squeezed his hand. And said the words that simultaneously made him laugh and warmed his heart.

“Go get ‘em, Peaches.” 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That was a year ago now. When he came home, she threw a big surprise party for him. A few people from town, his aunt, Jas. And she never looked more beautiful. She even found chicken shaped balloons. Because... what guy doesn’t want balloon animals from the girl he’s crushing on? 

Crushing on? He smirked. I sound like a middle schooler. 

He split his time between the market and her ranch. Gradually spending more and more time on her farm. Gathering eggs before his shift. Feeding chickens on the way home from work. Sipping peach iced tea in the shade of her porch and thinking this life wasn’t half-bad. But he wanted more. 

She started bringing by lunches on his longer shift days. Homemade sandwiches and fresh-pressed juices and handpicked peppers. The kind that burst with sweetness or that spicy kick he needed to get through the rest of his day. 

She learned to roll her own dough. Once a week, on hot summer evenings, she would make him pizza with her own special spicy red sauce. Wearing that cute little red and white checkered apron around her jean shorts and just below the edge of her tank top. Too hot to be standing around the stovetop making pizza sauce or the oven to bake the dough. But she did it for him. Shane looked forward to it after a long and grueling Saturday shift. 

He still stopped at the Saloon most nights, but now it was just to drink soda and share a pepper poppers appetizer. Gus started bottling root beer, made from bark and flowers and herbs from around the Valley. It wasn’t alcoholic. And it was an acquired taste. Getting better with time. 

She would breeze in and offer suggestions and feedback. Shane enjoyed watching the two “play” squabble over the choice of leaves. The kindly saloon owner and the girl he liked collaborating to make him a refreshing drink became a welcome nicety. 

Most nights, they didn’t stay long. Heading out for long walks around town. Shoes scuffling along cobblestones. Kicking up dirt on wooded paths. Kicking off on the beach to feel the mushy sand. Talking about nothing important, but always special. Any time with her was special. 

He couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have a friend like her. To have a woman of her rare caliber show him any attention at all. She got past his defenses and he welcomed it. And deep in his heart, Shane knew - this was love. 

With today’s paycheck, he could finally take her on a proper date. Somewhere out of the Valley. Someplace where they could have fun together. He felt the excitement and nervous anticipation rising in his chest. Somehow he fumbled through an “ask” on her front porch this morning, managing to invite her to join him... if she wanted... at the bus stop... around 5pm. He had tickets to see the Tunnelers play. 

Shane finished his shelf, glancing at his watch. Ten past four. Just enough time to get home, showered, and changed. He disposed of the empty boxes in the dumpster and delivered the cart to the back room. Opening his locker, he hung his apron on the hook. Instantly, he felt lighter. Like that thing was a noose around his neck. A ball and chain. He really needed a new job. And in fifty, no, forty-six minutes, he could see her... 

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"SHANE!"

The shrill obnoxious tone pierced his moment of peace. The voice could only belong to one person - a holllow husk of a corporate shill, even more unlikeable than him, if that was even possible. Shane frowned, his eyes clamping on the store manager barreling toward him at full speed. 

“A whole second shipment came in just now,” the man grunted. “Like I need this when I’m short-staffed, as always,” he offered an exasperated sigh. 

I can’t imagine why... Shane thought to himself, bemused. The boss was insufferable. Always barking orders. Never praising his team. Paying peanuts. Polishing his baby - a silver Rolls Royce in mint condition - parked in the only covered spot in the entire Joja lot - every night - instead of doing paperwork like he should. How was he still employed? No one at corporate cared. 

“Not my problem, Morris,” Shane replied. 

“No, no, no,” Morris fluttered his short arms. “It is your problem. I need you to stay late and help Sam empty the truck.”

The man continued to ramble something about “this is why I pay you” and “you think you can do better somewhere else?” He badgered Shane about his “work ethic,” even if Shane had been a near model employee since returning from rehab. Even if his former colleagues actually welcomed him back, much to his shock. Shy little Claire even commented on how he was “different” than before.

Shane had been nominated for employee of the month, no doubt, angering Morris. The man had it out for him. Sticking him on graveyard shifts. Making him mop baby puke in the aisles. Forcing him to attend a “hospitality” seminar so he could learn to be nicer to, in Morris’ words, “bored housewives who somehow like your prickly personality.” 

Morris, a man who prided himself in appearance, with his neat little bow tie and perfectly ironed jacket, couldn’t believe how the ladies bought more after a rough encounter with Shane. It was good for business, of course, and Morris would take all the credit. That hospitality seminar wasn’t cheap, he constantly reminded Shane. Like rehab hadn’t made him a better person already. Or his relationship with little Miss Jolly. 

“They just fawn over your monotone delivery of the daily sales,” Morris droned on. “Yoba only knows why. You haven’t been educated at the finest university this side of the Pond with an impeccable taste in... well, everything.” Morris puffed his chest. 

“I just don’t understand why they giggle at the register about the ‘handsome’ stock boy when they could have me recite the daily sales in Shakespearean English for heavens sake. Well, no matter. I can use what I’ve got. You.” 

The man thinks I’m a frickin’ pack of meat. 

“Now in order to have sales, we must have stocked shelves. And in order to have stocked shelves, I need to have you stay longer. Because shelves don’t stock themselves... and what are you staring at?” 

Shane rubbed his jaw, catching his reflection in Morris’ little glasses. Could I really be that handsome? Morris wasn’t wrong. The market had been a little busier than usual in the mornings and around lunchtime. Shane came back from breaks early sometimes because customers “requested” him. He could reach the “tall” shelves. 

But he wasn’t that tall. And most times, he needed a ladder. Unlike Sam. But even Sam told him he had been relegated to “cute” because the female patrons wanted to check out the new guy (on the ladder) because Shane possessed a look of danger and mystery, and had that "hot dad bod."

Like that’s really a thing I wanted! Shane rolled his eyes. It's all a little disgusting. Being oogled. Because what? Dangerous? Dad bod? I’m just me. There was only one gal he wanted checking him out. And he needed to get going if he was going to meet her. 

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“No can do, Boss,” Shane removed his Joja cap and hooked it alongside his apron. “Got plans tonight.” 

“No, no, no,” Morris’ voice grew tight, his eyes becoming tinier. “That won’t do. You must cancel your plans.” 

“Do I get overtime?” Shane asked, half-distracted by the photo occupying the inside of his locker. 

It was the only thing he had ever decorated with at work. A photo of him and Miss Jolly at the Moonlight Jellies festival about a month ago. It was the one time he actually thought he was photogenic. How could he not be happy? With a gorgeous gal by his side, smiling and laughing as the photo was taken, a woman who believed in him, rooted for him, and cared for him. Shane’s expression softened as he thought about how much she had impacted his life. 

“You know what?” Shane ripped the photo from his locker wall with gusto. “I quit.” 

“Are you even listening?” Morris was saying. “And no, I’m not going to approve overtime. You left early by one minute the other night. One minute!"

"And one time last week, you were late by three minutes. I will not approve overtime for someone who nearly runs over a flock of geese with his bicycle and is late to work."

"If you’re going to keep up with this lazy attitude of yours...” he huffed and straightened his jacket. “I may have to reconsider my decision to rehire you... even if you bring in the ladies... I mean... sales...” 

“What?” Morris’ eyes grew wide as saucers beneath his horn-rimmed glasses, and then his expression darkened, as if Shane poured bitter coffee all over the plates. “You cannot quit. Are you joking?” 

“Well I do, and I’m not,” Shane shoved the old rusty lock that never latched properly into the other man’s hand, a smile crossing his face. “With pleasure.”

Shane waltzed out of the soul-sucking store, leaving a dumbfounded former boss as the double doors whooshed behind him. He closed his eyes and took a big gulp of sea-salt air and sighed. He felt free. 

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When she met him at the bus stop, his heart skipped a beat. She looked radiant in the setting sun. Her eyes sparkling like stars. And her sexy little denim skirt was a nice touch too. The way her hips swayed ever so slightly on approach. He forced his gaze upward. 

"Hiiii... Miss Jolly. I'm glad you decided to come," he greeted, his tone a bit stilted and formal. 

What am I doing? He rubbed the back of his head.

"Of course, Peaches. I'm excited," she grinned. "This will be my first game."

"You'll love it!" he replied, wrinkling his nose at her childish nickname for him. And I will too with you by my side.

"Is that cologne?" she asked when she reached his side. 

Her fingers curled around his hoodie strings as she closed her eyes and took a whiff. "I like it." She grinned and winked at him. "A bit spicy."

"Yeah yeah," he murmured and ushered her onto the bus, but he hopped up the step behind her, feeling a little lighter on his feet.

"You're in a good mood," she remarked as they wandered toward the back of the bus. 

The atmosphere was charged. Rowdy. Everyone seemed excited for the Tunnelers game. He nodded to a few familiar faces before settling in next to her seat. The back was better than the front. Cool kids sat in the back. What am I? In the sixth grade? 

Still he was relaxed. Smiling even. She repeated her statement as if he didn’t hear her the first time. Damn straight  I’m in a good mood.  Because I get to spend time with you… maybe even tell you how I feel tonight… He decided the overcrowded bus wasn't the best place for that confession. The vehicle lurched forward and so did the conversation. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I quit my job."

Her eyes widened and a slow smile played at her lips, drawing his attention to them. I bet they're juicy. He had fantasized about kissing her, ever since she planted one on him at this very bus stop twelve months ago when he shipped off to rehab. Out of respect for their “business arrangement” and friendship, he held off on the liplocking, but it didn’t mean he still didn’t wonder what it would be like if he had just turned his head to meet her mouth that night. 

“Good for you,” she laid a hand on his shoulder. 

Her gentle touch bringing him back to reality and away from his lustful la-la land. 

“I knew that place was killing the light in you. I just wish I could've seen Morris' smug face when you finally told him."

"Light in me?" he repeated, ignoring the statement about his ex-manager. 

"Yes," she slowly slid her hand up to his cheek, blushing a little while she moved. "You look better. Brighter."

"That's just the shower talkin'," he shoved his hands in his pockets.

"No, it's you, Shane," she replied, dropping her hand far too soon for his liking.

He wanted to beg her to keep it there, against his cheek. But present company dissuaded him, and he remained silent, nodding his thanks. The way she said his name... he bounced his leg a bit in nervousness as the bus bumped along the road... it made his knees weak and his head clouded. 

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"Did I miss anything?"

Shane descended the last step, returning to their seats in the stadium, snacks in hand. The game was tied up, the teams neck and neck in their scoring with each other. It was one of the most thrilling games he had ever seen in person. Even more exciting because she was there. With her incessant questions about the rules. Her exuberance at the Tunnelers' first goal. Even the little wrinkle around her eyes when she didn’t understand what was happening. He loved every minute of it.

And he loved explaining things. Even if he worried about boring her to death with his encyclopedic knowledge of gridball, he couldn’t stop talking. This was something he loved and he was sharing it with the woman he loved... even if she didn’t know it yet. 

"Only the announcer making bad jokes," she smirked. “And that guy...” she pointed to one of the pros. “...doing a silly little dance for the fans.” 

“Yeah, he’s known for that,” Shane laughed awkwardly, feeling a small twinge of jealousy that another man had caught her eye. 

“Not that he’s any good at it,” she laughed too. “Not like our little grooves in the Saloon.” 

“Oh?” he quirked a brow. “By the way, I got us some nachos. I asked the vendor to add some hot peppers… just like we like it."

"Like we both like it," she said in unison. "Thanks,” she snagged a chip and did a deep dip into the sauce. “You should've let me pay for snacks since you paid for tickets and the bus fare."

"Naw, we're on a date," he shrugged. "The guy pays. Plus, I wanted to."

Shane averted his eyes, suddenly self-conscious. "Did I tell you how much… I l…love…. Gridball?"

She stopped and looked at him as if surprised by his old-fashioned thought. I shouldn't have been so careless, he grimaced. Then he immediately wished his face wasn't so readable.

It was a date. A real date. But somehow they slid from acquaintances to friends to best friends and then... somehow something more, without ever defining the relationship.

Did she want parameters? Did he need a label? Were they... ever going to be what he hoped to be if he ever got his head out of his ass and asked her for real? 

"Yes, only the thousand or so times on the bus," she smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And I knew you played in high school.” 

Just like that, she slipped back to a more neutral topic. And he mentally flogged himself for the missed opportunity. 

“Yeah, blowing out my knee pretty much killed my chances at playing pro,” he said. “Doesn’t stop me from enjoying the games though.” 

“Have you ever thought about it?” she inquired. “Going back. Maybe the minors or even just a pick-up team. I bet you looked great in a uniform,” her eyes twinkled mischievously. “And I wouldn’t mind the view of you in those white pants.” 

Red flooded his cheeks. Is she messing with me? How does she do it? Go back and forth between friendzone topics and flirtation? She made it look effortless. She was toying with him. She had to be. Dancing around the subject. Hoping he would ask. Or was he imagining things? 

Her hand hovered dangerously close to his side. Brushing the hem of her skirt. Nearly touching his shorts. He gulped, feeling flattered, but strangely unprepared for her seductive little smirks. He handed her the soda he fetched, and she thanked him, gulping back the liquid as if it were a small instead of a large. Saying something about all the cheering making her thirsty. 

He was the thirsty one. Eyeing her up and down and wanting to close the distance between them. Taking it from flirty friends to... faithful lovers. He never wanted a woman more than he did right now. To devote all his love and passion and energy and goodwill into being there for her just like she had for him. 

For the whole second half of the game, he nursed his cola. Distracted by her every move. The way she would raise her heels in anticipation of a score and lower them back to the ground when they didn’t quite make it. The way she spoke with that happy voice of hers, the kind that could lull him to sleep or rally him to make his best efforts. The way she repeated back facts she was learning about the sport, that he had literally just taught to her that night. He was completely mesmerized... so much so... he forgot to actually watch the game. For once, he liked the distraction. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the Tunnelers scored again, she nearly flew off the ground, wildly cheering for their unexpected interception. He caught her hand as she was jumping back down. She squeezed it and continued whooping and shaking her fist victoriously in the air, never taking her eyes off the game. It was now or never.

"Hey," he said loudly to be heard over the stadium noise. "I've been meaning to tell you… thank you.” 

“For what, Peaches?” she said, teasingly. “Did you see that? How many yards was it? Seventy-five? Eighty?” 

“I mean it, really,” Shane cleared his throat, leaning closer to her ear. “ For sticking with me through everything."

She turned to face him, her expression growing more serious. 

"My… anxiety… depression… you know," he continued, fumbling over his words. "The alcoholism… I mean, I wasn't exactly the funnest person to be around back then."

Did I just use the word funnest? He rubbed the back of his head, hoping to read her expression, but for once, he couldn't.

“You do that... when you’re nervous,” she remarked. “That head rub thing...” she reached up and ruffled his hair. “It’s... cute.” 

“Uh...” Shane trailed off. She was not making this easy. But he needed to say the words aloud now or he never would. 

"You… uh… still helped me. You've been a really… good… friend to me," he shared, and then immediately regretted his word choice.

"Oh," she said, quietly.

Was that a flicker of disappointment in her eyes?

He hurried his words. "Anyway this is your first gridball game, huh? Well? What do you think?"

Smooth, Shane. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Changing the subject again, you frickin’ chicken.

"Oh…" she said, glancing back to the field, sounding a little confused. "Fun. I guess, Pelican Town seems pretty boring in comparison. Unless you count Sam's punk rock blaring at 11pm, breaking noise ordinances." She forced a chuckle.

Is she…? Am I imagining things?

"I'm surprised," he replied. "Didn't you move to the Valley to escape the noise of the city?"

She's looking at me again with those beautiful heart-melting eyes. He rushed through his words.

"I mean… don't get me wrong. I totally understand. My life in Pelican Town is pretty bland, you know. And now that I don't have a job, I gotta find something meaningful to do with my time again. A guy's gotta eat, right? Heh?"

"I was thinking about that," she replied, without looking at him. "I think it would be nice to have you around full-time."

"What?" he blinked.

"I've got one ranch hand now to help in the back pasture and one that helps out with the milking and all, but if I'm looking to expand, and if they ever take a sick day, I could use some extra hands," she continued. "Maybe your hands?"

I couldn't. Possibly. Was she blushing?

"You've already… done so much for me," he hated the hesitancy in his tone. "I… uh…"

She ignored his last comment. "This would be a business thing. We could do it temporarily to see if you like it. And if it's a good fit for both of us. I can be a bit of a…" she narrowed her eyes, mischievously. "Hard taskmaster."

"Oh? Yeah I've heard that from your current employees," he smirked. "But you are still a jolly one."

"Yeah…" she smiled, almost shyly, tucking a hair over her ear. “Your Miss Jolly.” 

The noise level in the stadium increased near ten-fold. All he could think about was how she said the words. She was begging him, wasn’t she? Walking right up to the brink and leaving him there? He reluctantly ripped his gaze away from the farmer to the field.

"Gah!" he screamed, his volume matching the crowd. "The Tunnelers are on the attack."

"Yes! Yes!" she shrieked. "Oh my Yoba! Final seconds. They're gonna…" she jumped up and down and clapped her hands. "They're gonna break the tie."

"GOAL!" they yelled in unison. 

He never felt so happy. He was going on six months sober. He quit his horrible job. The farmer was offering him another one so he could see her every day. And he got to watch his favorite team in the world in the closest game in history with his favorite person in the world. Sharing this moment together meant everything.

"Thank you Shane!" she said, trying to catch her breath. "This was the best evening ever with you!"

"I know, I know!" he exclaimed. "Probably one of the best moments of my life."

Before he could stop himself, his lips were against hers. Surprise flickered in her eyes. All he could hear was the thudding of his own heart. She was flushed. The warmth of her lips. The taste of root beer. The delight overwhelming the alarm bells. He took a step or two back, stumbling as he came to his senses.

"Oh?" he gasped for air. "Uh… um… sorry. I guess I got carried away there. Maybe I had one too many... sodas. All that sugar. Ha!" 

Shane reached up to rub his head like he always did when he was nervous, just like she had noticed. Except this time, she strutted toward him, confidence in her eyes as she grabbed that hand and tugged him down. As they kissed for the second time, he felt her melt into his arms as she offered a faint “finally,” barely audible amidst the roar of the crowd. 

Encouraged, Shane grinned, hoisting her off the ground. She giggled and kissed him more fervently. Maybe he didn’t need words. Maybe he only needed actions to show her how he felt. 

And she was reciprocating. A dream come true. Their eyes remained locked in a loving gaze as he pulled back from her lips. When he finally set her down, he breathed heavily. 

"You really do love the Tunnelers?" she teased, disentangling her hands from his hair. 

"No," he shook his head, determined not to let this moment go by. "I really do love you."

"Come on, we'll miss our bus outta here," she grabbed his hand and pulled him through the exiting crowds.

“Wait,” Shane pulled her back for one more greedy kiss. 

She happily accepted, but he felt a fleeting ping of sadness even as they kissed in the stairwell, people pushing around them. He wondered if she even heard his confession. Maybe it's too soon? We just had our first kiss. She probably didn't hear me.

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When they reached the parking lot, the reality of what had just happened still sinking in, they were too late. The bus huffed away with a puff of smog. They had just missed their ride back to the Valley. And there wouldn’t be another one until morning. If he hadn’t been so carried away and enamored by his date, maybe they would’ve left the stadium sooner. 

“Guess we should call a taxi,” she broke the silence first. “Or... actually... find a hotel.” 

“A hotel?” he repeated, his ears perking at the thought of sharing space with her. 

"Yes," she replied, without skipping a beat. "I mean, if we're gonna be stuck together in Zuzu overnight, we should get a hotel. A taxi ride would be really expensive and I don't think we have enough time to get across town to catch the train."

"Oh right," he said softly. "Uh… I can't let you pay for a hotel too."

"It's no trouble," she pulled out her cell phone and started scouring the internet for places. "And a hot shower sounds nice after all the sweat and grime of us in there,” she nodded back toward the stadium. “...jammed in like sardines."

"Uhm…" he blinked rapidly. You're a grown man. Get it together.

"This place looks nice," she showed him a picture after a minute or two, while he awkwardly plopped on the edge of the sidewalk. "And it's got a 4-star rating." She sat next to him, dropping her hand on top of his. “Oh look it’s got an in-suite jacuzzi.” 

"Uh… sure," he shrugged, uncertain about what to do with his hands that so desperately wanted to kiss her again. "Well, that definitely was a good game."

"Yes, and it's going to be an even better night, because it doesn't have to end here," she smiled sweetly. “Since we’re getting a hotel,” she winked. 

“Oh yeah... and we won too,” he stammered. “The Tunnelers, ya know?” 

“No... no, I didn’t. Really? They did?" she smiled sarcastically, and leaned closer. “It doesn’t matter.” 

“What?” he gasped, feeling shocked as her blase attitude toward his favorite team. 

“I mean, it was great... and all... and their win was pretty spectacular,” she acknowledged. “But I feel like I won the lottery with you here.” She interlocked arms with him. “Did you mean it? Shane? When you said you loved me?” 

So she did hear me! And the way his name fell from his lips caused his heart to soar and he found his confidence. 

“Yes, I meant it. I love you,” Shane replied. “But I wanted it to be special. Better than this... stranded in a parking lot with trash all over the place.” 

“It is special,” she replied. 

“But it wasn’t perfect,” he grimaced. “I was planning on telling you when we got back... when I walked you back to your place tonight.” 

His head felt hazy with love and desire as she kissed him again. This time, she draped a leg over his, pressing against his chest. He audibly moaned, leaning into the kiss. His hand naturally slid down her back to help her balance, and he squeezed softly, like he had wanted to for a long time. She matched his intensity with a clutch of her own, and he groaned again, reluctantly breaking their touch. 

“I don’t need perfect, Shane. I just need you."

His heart leaped from his chest as she continued.

"I love you too. I want you.”  

“Ahhhh... then let’s get to that hotel,” he said, the heat of her breasts against his chest creating a near uncontrollable fire within him. 

“Fine,” she playfully pouted. “I’ll behave... Hot Stuff," she fanned herself. “...for now... since we’re in public.” 

“Believe me,” he replied with a heavy sigh, feeling a healthy growth between his legs. “I want you all to myself.” 

She giggled and tapped her phone. "Done. Got us booked.”

“That fast?” 

“Yes, It’s only a two and a half block walk. Now… shall we?" She jumped to her feet and darted away briskly. 

“Someone’s impatient!” he smirked. “What if I had said no?” 

“I wouldn’t take no for an answer.” 

“Oh really?” he liked teasing her as she brought out his confidence. He started into a jog away, passing her on the sidewalk. “Well, I’ll see you soon.” 

“Shane!” she laughed and chased after him. 

Of course, he let her catch him. She playfully punched his arm, but then lingered. She was beaming. And he was too. Shane took her hand, looking down at the woman he loved, and smiled, brighter than he ever had in his entire life.  She loved him and wanted him… just as he loved and wanted her. 

 “Shane?”

He wrapped an arm tightly around her shoulder. Tonight, he was going to make her fully his, and he would be fully hers. 

"Yes, my Miss Jolly.” 

[sadoeuphemist]

7 free startup ideas worth $1M-$1B

Customizable News Settings - A news website that generates three versions of every news story: a right-wing version, a left-wing version, and a centrist one. You can set your preferences depending on the topic - say you're right-wing on economics, but left-leaning on immigration. Or you can cycle between versions while reading an article to get a comprehensive overview of the issue at hand.

Twitch, but for Uber - With all the drama they have to deal with, independent contractors can gain a second revenue source simply by streaming their jobs. Rather than just offering rides, they can be hired to drive around performing chores and various tasks. The more outrageous the task, the more eyes they're likely to get on their stream. The more popular the stream, the more people calling in who want to be a part of the program.

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Shein, for NFTs - Whenever an NFT project hits the mainstream, there are always going to be people who miss out on being able to purchase one. This creates room in the market for 'knockoffs' - NFTs that mimic the aesthetic of the original, using similar but legally distinct AI art that uses the original set as training data, run on a parallel blockchain. Since the images themselves aren't tied to the blockchain, you can mint the NFTs beforehand and then change the image at the link to whatever happens to be in fashion at the time.

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Buses, but Worse - The current obstacle hindering self-driving car technology is their difficulty adapting to unexpected scenarios. So instead plot a route around the city that minimizes roadway obstacles and heavy traffic, map out that route extensively to provide a model for the autopilot, and you can have a fleet of self-driving cars patrolling that circuit. Passengers can board and get off anywhere along the route.

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[breakingspacetimewithfriends]

Road trip! (From hell) chapter 1

Rating: T

Summary: Wild and Hyrule start their road trip with only the appropriate amount of cryptic warnings from the universe.

Warnings: cursing, time travel, modern au, magic

Other: This was written directly into tumblr :) If I missed anything, let me know

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Wild closes the trunk of his eighties Toyota Corolla and turns to Hyrule with a half crooked grin. "Ready to blow this popsicle stand?"

Hyrule grins right back, "Absolutely!"

"Get ready America, we're going to roadtrip so hard!" Wild calls as he goes to get into the driver's seat.

Hyrule gets into the passenger seat and buckles up, ignoring that the seat belt is technically cut in half and straining against the duct tape around the knot that holds it together.

Wild buckles up as well, although his seatbelt has several pieces of blue material tied to it.

"Let me just text Legend and tell him you aren't a long con killer," Hyrule says as he fishes out his phone.

"Ten years is definitely overkill for that," Wild laughs.

"Can I send him a picture of us?"

"Sure!"

Hyrule and Wild lean towards eachother until they both fit on the phone screen. They immediately make funny faces, with Wild rolling his eyes back and flipping down his bottom lip while Hyrule flips the bird and rolls his tounge.

As soon as he takes the pictures Hyrule send it to Legend with a second text that says 'Got here safe!'.

Wild hums to himself as he sets up his GPS and the joint Playlist they put together for the trip. He taps away at his phone to get these in order.

By the time they pull out of the parking space and start towards the motel they are planning to use tonight they have been cursed at a good three times by a lone crow that seems to stare into their souls. Creepy!

Wild drives like he cooks, which is to say that he just does whatever without measure, and it usually ends up great. Laws are just suggestions, after all.

Music blares through the speakers, crackling a little. The cigarette lighter has the Bluetooth converter that allows the Playlist to play.

"Did I tell you that Wind is in high-school now?" Wild asks as he cuts across three highway lanes with exactly three seconds of his blinker being on.

Horns blare in protest of Wild and his driving. A little old lady yells something unkind out her window.

Hyrule grins, "No way. Wasn't he just some kid eating bugs?"

"He's a freshman now! He went to homecoming and everything."

Hyrule gives a low whistle, "Damn, Time sure flies."

"Remember when we were in high-school?"

"I remember your horrible bike crashed and stayed dead."

Wild laughs, hand smacking the dash board.

Hyrule's phone goes off a few times with general messages of 'stay safe' and 'have fun'. Although Legend rates the funny faces a six out of ten because Legend is a rude man.

"Rulie, we're going to take America by storm," Wild promises as he continues to speed up.

Hyrule laughs, "Oh?"

"Absolutely."

The duo falls into scream-singing every song that comes on, windows down as Wind whips into the car.

Anyone who is outside the car might wonder if the car is being possessed?

Wild is happily drumming along to each song with his fingers. He yearns to do air drums but he has gotten entirely too many 'safe driving' lectures from his friends to give in and do it.

Hyrule, however, is having a whole concerr in his seat.

Wild gasps as he sees a sign declaring 'Hyrule's Biggest Baseball' and immediately veers towards the exit without any concern for traffic laws.

(Somewhere in simultaneous dread, Time, Twilight, Warriors, and Flora have the deep knowledge that Wild has just temped fate again with his driving. They all groan.)

Hyrule cheers, throwing his hands up as his firend pulls off a move that even veteran Mario kart players are jealous of.

There's a reason Hyrule and Wild are best friends. It isn't the knitting.

"And Twi says I'm a bad driver!" Wild laughs as he pulls into the off ramp.

Hyrule laughs and says something about 'disbelievers'.

The car gets parked into a parking spot by the grace of Hylia and the duo get out.

Locking the car, Wild grabs Hyrule's hand and starts running towards the attraction of Hyrule's Biggest Baseball.

They take all sorts of pictures and laugh at the bad ones. They switch to a Polaroid camera that isn't even their's. The Polaroid camera is actually Legend's, but he left it in Hyrule's hiking bag last time and so it's up for grabs.

They pass a good two hours there, wandering into the trees before they finally return to the car and get back to their trip. They should really get lunch.

The ride on the highway is just as wild as before.

By the time they pull off to go get lunch from some mom and pop place near a gas station, it's about time for both of them to call their friends back home.

Wild just calls Wind. After all, he said he'd walk the kid through a recipe for dinner since the teen wants to be more independent.

Hyrule calls Legend, and the call devolves into teasing. There's the underlying worry, of course, but that goes away with proof that Hyrule is infact alive.

"I don't know, Ledge, I just think this is going to be the best roadteip ever," Hyrule grins.

"Wow, wait to make me feel loved."

"Haha, you know what I mean. Just wait until you meet Wild, you'll love him."

"Sure. Just don't get sucked into wome world ending event. Okay?"

Hyrule laughs, "I won't!"

"And no emergency room visits?"

"No promises!"

"Hyrule are you trying to kill me?"

"No, I like you alive! Oh - Wild brought lunch out! I should go. Bye, Ledge!"

"Bye, Rule."

Hyrule ends the call and looks to Wild with a smile, "Thanks!"

"Sure thing. Everything okay back home?"

"Yeah, Legend is just a grumpy fusspot."

"I know the type," Wild commiserates easily.

"I bet."

"After we eat, we should go check out the thrift shop it's supposed to deal in cured items. According to Flora at least."

Hyrule agrees easily. He feels like this is the start of an epic adventure.

[familyvideostevie]

october third

day three: bradley "rooster" bradshaw you go to a tailgate with your friend bradley | friends to lovers | 1.5k

You don’t even like football that much. But here you are waiting on your front steps with a cooler of drinks and seven layer dip for Bradley to pick you up to drive to LA for a football game.

“We don’t do this often,” Hangman had told you last week when you were all at the bar. “But my boys are in town, so it’s practically law that we go.”

“Cowboys,” Bradley had whispered in your ear before you swatted him away.

“So we’re driving up to LA to watch?”

Everyone nodded solemnly. Until Natasha cracked. “To get drunk at the tailgate and then watch them get crushed!”

Bradley had offered to drive you the day of the game. Most of the group went up last night to meet up with some old Navy friends, but since you’re relatively new to the whole group you opted out of that one. You know Bob the best, actually, and then Natasha through him but you and Rooster get along surprisingly well and he lives pretty close to you.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.

He pulls up in his silly Bronco and honks once even though he sees you sitting on the steps. “Morning!” He hops out of the car and jogs over. You stand and he gives you a quick hug and a grin. “I’ve got breakfast in the car, if you’re hungry.”

Knowing Bradley, he’s probably been up since 4am. He’s always full of energy that you’ve learned is just a part of his personality. He’s practically vibrating all the time, dialed up to 11 when he’s in public especially. It’s a little overwhelming but you find it endearing.

“Thank you,” you tell him. He grabs your cooler and secures it in the car as you hop in to find coffee and a breakfast sandwich from the place down the street waiting for you. “And thanks for driving.”

He waves off your thanks. “Thank you for coming,” he says, heading for the highway. “I was worried this would scare you off.”

“It’s just football, Bradley.” He shrugs.

“Just be glad it’s not the Army Navy game.”

As he drives he tells you about some rowdier tailgates he went to in college. You swap stories of fall shenanigans from your youth — a high school football game here and there, though fall where you grew up is definetly colder than California in October.

“That reminds me,” Bradley says, snapping his fingers. “I’ve got a jersey for you. Chargers, obviously.” He’s in one, too, the material hanging off his broad shoulders. You know from your glance at him when he picked you up that his jeans fit achingly perfectly. You don’t have any sports stuff of your own, so you’d opted for a yellow top. “Hangman is going to get you into a Cowboys one when we get there, but don’t be swayed.”

“Of course not,” you say. He grins and you smile back.

The two hours to LA fly by even when you hit typical traffic. Spending time with Bradley is easy, even when your mind thrums with what you’ve deemed your low-level crush on him. He flirts with everyone, sure, but sometimes it feels like he flirts with you differently.

You get to the stadium and right away you can see that it’s a crowded, rowdy kind of situation. Rooster must see the trepidation on your face when you ask who else will be there.

“Navy buddies, probably. Friends of Hangman’s from Texas who are in town for the game. I don’t know a ton of them, but I know it’ll be fun.” He puts his hand on your arm. “Stick with me if you want,” he says. “You can always stick with me.”

“Okay,” you say softly. He winks at you.

The parking lot you’re in is a bit of a walk from the tailgating spot, so you put on your borrowed jersey and unload the car.

Cooler in one hand, Rooster reaches his other towards you. “So you don’t get converted by any Cowboys fans?” You laugh. As if he has to ask you to hold his hand.

So you do. His palm is warm and calloused and he leads you fearlessly through the throng until you find your friends at the spot they staked out. There are at least two grills going, a table of snacks, and lots and lots of beer.

“C’mon, really?” Hangman shouts when you come into view. “He got to you?” His face is painted blue in some spots.

“You should’ve driven me, then!”

Hangman smirks. “As if this guy would’ve let me.” You look at Rooster and his neck is flushed even as he rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, and you release him to put the stuff you brought on the table.

It surprises you a little that you’re having fun. There are lots of people you don’t know but Rooster sticks close to you, hand on your shoulder blade or lower back when he asks if you’re hungry, if you want a drink, if you’re cold. Everyone you meet is thrilled that you’re here and you forget that this is a football tailgate you drove over two hours to and not just a party with your friends.

You’re in a circle of girls talking about a new book a few of you have read when you feel Rooster come up behind you. You recognize the heat of him by now. His hand lands on the small of your back, and he leans down to speak in your ear.

“A few of us are going to make a run for some more drinks and water. I’ll be back soon. You okay?” You lean away from him a little so you can see his face before nodding. He leaves you with a squeeze of your hip and you turn back to the circle to find all of the girls watching you.

“Do I have something on my face?” you ask.

“Okay,” one of them says. You are pretty sure her name is Flora. “How did you train him?”

“What?”

“Your boyfriend,” another one chimes in. “He’s like, all over you in the best way.”

Oh. Oh. “Bradley?” you say, voice a little higher than you’d like. You swallow and shift on your feet a bit. “We’re just friends.”

Everyone in the circle titters. “Sure, you are,” they coo. “Heard that before.” You scrunch your nose and shake your head.

The girl next to you puts her hand on your arm. “Honey,” she says kindly. “That man is into you. He’s scared off every guy coming over here.”

“I—” You start but find you have nothing to say. They take pity on you and move on to something else but your thoughts stay with their comments. Sure, you’ve been flirting and sure, today he’s been extra touchy but that’s just because you don’t know lots of people here, right? So what if he texts you pictures of dogs and things he sees and says reminded me of you. So what if he knows your coffee order and fixes things in your apartment when you ask and calls you when he’s driving back from base. So what if he treats you like his girlfriend.

He hasn’t said anything.

Flora leans over. “Sometimes, these Navy boys, they’re all confident on the outside but really they just don’t want to screw it up so they wait and wait and wait.” She looks over your shoulder and wiggles her eyebrows at you. You turn around and find Bradley walking towards you again.

“Ladies,” he says.

“Hi, Rooster,” they echo.

He focuses on you, hand on your elbow to pull you from the circle a little bit. “You okay?” You nod. “Game is gonna start in a little bit so I think we’re going to head in.” His hand moves up your arm to your clavicle as his fingers seemingly fix your necklace. You keep your eyes on his face and watch him concentrate.

“Bradley?”

“Yeah?” He’s still fixated on the task at hand. Everyone around you is starting to clean up and migrate towards the stadium.

“Do you want to go on a date?” His fingers freeze. You worry for a second that you’ve got it all wrong, that he’s not into making this unspoken thing spoken, that he’s about to let you down easy. But you watch his pupils dilate, feel his hand move so that it’s cupping your neck, watch his surprised expression turn to something happy, something luminous.

“Really?” he says. Maybe the girls were right — maybe these muscled, loudmouthed, sporty Navy guys really don’t know what they’re doing any more than the rest of you. None of the other guys in the group flirt with you like Bradley does, none of them drive you around and make you laugh and you don’t want to kiss any of them the way you want to kiss him.

You nod. “Yeah,” you say.

“Sweetheart,” he says. “I’d love to go on a date with you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he echoes. You kiss him on the cheek and wrap an arm around his waist.

“Football time, Bradley.” He shakes himself out of your moment and slings an arm around your shoulders as you walk back to your friends who are clearly pretending they weren’t watching.

thank you for reading <3 reblog, send feedback, general masterlist here! promptober masterlist, find all fics under #fvspromptober23

[hollow-lime-green]

hi hana!! so i’ve been obsessed w this since string theory: can you tell us a little bit more about your interpretation of the six eyes? i know it’s said that satoru can see in thermal and infrared, is there anything else he can see?

Oh yeah! This is a fun question! I just got stuck in traffic for an hour (as a passenger), so I am going to over-explain this. And I'm bored so I'm going to highlight it with pretty colors like I'm writing in my diary or something.

Satoru's senses basically span the ✨entire energy spectrum✨, because the Six Eyes gives him the ability to work with all types of energy. He can see the EM spectrum (infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet), he can see thermal energy, he can sense (not exactly see) some other types of energy (electrical, sound, chemical), and he can see cursed energy like we do as JJK readers (plus some extra details like the taste, color, and texture of cursed energy).

I'm about to be insufferably STEM, so more under the cut:

Electromagnetic (EM) Spectrum

The EM spectrum has infrared light at low frequencies/high wavelengths, the visible light spectrum, and then UV at high frequencies/low wavelengths. Satoru is kind of like a mantis shrimp in that he sees way more colors than a human. He's got more rods and cones and stuff. (I like physics and chemistry, don't press me on the biology).

I don't really go into the UV part that much, but I like to think that would contribute to his sunlight sensitivity! He's not an outside pet.

The blindfold blocks out the EM spectrum because the fabric blocks the transmission of visible light in the form of photons, packets of light energy. (this is a secret tool that will help us later)

Electrical Energy

I haven't really gone into electrical much either, but like he can see the flow of cursed energy, he'd be able to sense the flow of electrical energy, i.e. the movement of electrons. It gives him good circuit sense.

Sound Energy

Sound energy is vibrations* (another tool that will help us later). He doesn't really see them per se, because even the thought of him actually seeing the vibrations in the air is overwhelming, and it would block his vision so much that I don't think it makes sense for the Six Eyes

I think he would feel them with the Six Eyes kind of like a gentle breeze. It makes him ultra perceptive, but it's still another form of feedback for him to deal with.

This is why I make Satoru so terrible with enclosed spaces. If you can see those forms of energy, you're seeing not only the original instance where they're emitted, but also every secondary instance when things reflect or refract. So sound bouncing around in a train, for instance, is completely overwhelming to the Six Eyes if he's not able to use jujutsu to filter it, which I think is a skill he wouldn't master until maybe his mid 20s.

Thermal Energy

Now this is the fun one.

The Six Eyes gives Satoru the ability to see and sense the energy in things in its various forms, because he can convert it all to cursed energy, or back. So, when you think of thermal energy, you probably think of thermal cameras, which represent thermal energy in the color spectrum, which kind of looks like light.

But thermal energy is very much not light - it's actually motion. Specifically, it is atomic vibrations. The more energy something has, the more it vibrates, and that is actually the basis for what we call 'heat' or 'temperature'.

If you go deep into the philosophy of temperature, it's all a sham. It's the way we choose to interpret and understand a phenomenon we can't really see (atomic vibration) translated into something we can measure (but our scales are all relative and kind of fake. I'm looking at you, Rankine!). But that's a conversation for my very Serbian thermodynamics professor. Existential doubt really flows better in a Slavic accent.

Anyway, remember photons? Okay, so, heat and sound are not light, right, they are vibration. So instead of quantifying them as light packets, we quantify them as vibration packets, which are called phonons. I reference phonons a lot in the fic, but probably not in a way where I have appreciably explained anything about them well to non-STEM girlies.

If you think about photons/photon emission as throwing a ball of magical light at something, you can think of phonons as throwing a slinky at someone. (Which I wouldn't recommend, actually. Slinkies are remarkably difficult to throw.)

Cursed Energy

Okay this one is a gimme but obviously I have to list it. In the JJK animanga, we the reader see the cursed energy auras/flames around people, but it's understood that those are not actually seen in-universe, at least for non-Six Eyes. It's kind of dumb, but it also kind of makes sense pragmatically. If all sorcerers could see cursed energy, then it really ruins surprise elements, residual coverup, and general battle mechanics. Of course, some sorcerers are known to cover up their cursed energy, but if all of the powerful baddies did that then it wouldn't look as cool. It's whatever.

Also, the whole 'training to suppress your cursed energy release' is a hard sell if we also say that literally any sorcerer can see CE. So this is why Suguru isn't aware of when he's leaking CE. He can't see it, and then he also can't really taste/smell it because people go noseblind to their own scent.

In FIYM, Satoru is the only one that can see see it. The rest of them can still sense it, but they sense it by smell, taste, and most importantly, vibes.

Thesis: Why Energy is Gay

Okay so yes I did this to answer the question "what does Satoru see through the blindfold". But I also did this to make it gay gay homosexual. (In the grand tradition of JJK)

Touch Sensitivity

Because Satoru is sensitive to kinetic energy, living things are incredibly potent to him from a sensory perspective. People are made of energy - particularly thermal energy, chemical energy (although this is potential energy which we haven't touched on but I do reference it here and there), sound, and, of course, cursed energy.

When Satoru touches people, he feels all of the vibrational energy from those kinetic energy sources as well as the cursed energy, which to him has textures on top of the vibes, colors, and smell/taste. So of course it's overwhelming. Every touch is combined with vibration, which is very gay, and would take a long time to get used to, even if he never formed the habit of using Infinity to cut himself off from the world.

In FIYM, it's not only a fear/safety/vulnerability thing, it's also a necessary filtration step that he uses for the world. Part of this is because I kept him in Kyoto/the clan setting in his backstory for a long time, so he would have had less sound and population density to deal with. Tokyo would have been super overwhelming for him.

Information Filtering

Speaking of filtering, there are two ways for Satoru to cut down on the amount of information his senses are getting.

One is to block them, which is what he does with the blindfold (blocks photons) and Infinity (blocks phonons). Gay, tsundere, and hot.

The other is to flood or mask his senses, which is what happens when Suguru infuses the blindfold with cursed energy. It's not that Satoru can't see anything, it's that all he can see is the cursed energy, and it blocks out his ability to sense anything else because of how strong and close it is. This is meant to be a direct analog to the phenomenon of detector/sensor saturation, which is to say that a detector has hit its limit of how much it can read/measure/detect, and so everything else is lost.

When Suguru flares his cursed energy, he's doing a baby version of that. He's flooding Satoru's detector (The Six Eyes) with his cursed energy (which is easy on the eyes, for Satoru) and that inhibits his ability to sense the other pesky things. And it makes him feel better.

Physics is gay, physics can be so gay. Greg's biggest sin was not capitalizing on how gay the physics can be. Any day now we'll get an announcement for his next project, a gloomy isekai titled: Transported To a Dark Academia Yaoi Battle School And I Fall For My Physics Tutor?

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the over-explanation, thank you for the ask, I love getting the chance to ramble about some of the science. :)