#My description is extremely tame in comparison

[chronomally]

The aesthetics of Bayonetta are so insane lol you fight Fortitudo by ripping both his heads off and beating him to death with them while reversing the flow of time to prevent him from flooding the coliseum no not that one with lava and then later you clit torture a Joy by tying it up and making it ride a medieval Sybian horse

[doyouremem8erme]

ok its one of the homestuck days so i will go completely all in with the troll romance descriptions. let us begin. this took me an hour to write.

Troll Quadrant Romance & Sashannarcy

The Four Quadrants

In Homestuck, trolls experience four distinct forms of alien romance. These are as follows:

Red/Flushed/Matespritship/Hearts/♡

Two trolls with flushed feelings for each other are matesprits. I begin with this quadrant because it's the most intuitive one, as it's essentially normal human romance: two people who love each other, with our typical ideas of romantic and/or sexual attraction. There isn't a lot more to say about this one.

Black/Pitch/Kismesissitude/Spades/♤

At the other end of the spectrum from flushed romance is pitch romance. One way to describe this would be to say it's a relationship with the same intimacy and devotion as a matesprit, except all those feelings defined by love are replaced with hate. This typically looks like a particularly devoted rivalry. Whenever the weird gay nerds on this site (me included) start talking about homoerotic rivalries and tension between enemies, they are essentially describing kismesissitude. It's important to note that kismeses do not secretly love each other somewhere deep down as some sort of complexity to their rivalry (although I'll get to vacillation later)--it truly is purely hatred. Despite this, kismeses still care about each other and a kismesissitude where one party actually wants the other dead is not a healthy one. The purpose of a kismesissitude is to improve both parties through their rivalry--a tame but familiar comparison might be two people who are extremely competitive in challenging each other in video games and who, through this rivalry, gradually improve their own skills. This is a reason that balance is important in a pitch romance--if one party significantly outmatches the other, a relationship of this nature can easily cross the line to abusive.

Pale/Moirallegiance/Diamonds/♢

Palerom is described as a more platonic form of romance, but that doesn't lessen its value. A human comparison would be a queerplatonic relationship, still holding the role of a romantic relationship while having a more platonic nature. However, moirallegiance isn't simply "besties 4 lyfe!!!"--the relationship is defined by a very specific dynamic and purpose. A moirail's job is to pacify or balance out their partner's personality, a dynamic that can go both ways and takes many forms. For trolls, it can simply be "my partner is dangerous and violent but I can distract them and calm them down!" as their culture is much more violent than human society, but it also can serve to uplift a partner with very low self-esteem (that's my main role for my moirail!) or to protect a partner who cannot do it for themself. The post about "sodium chloride ships" that sometimes goes around also can describe moirallegiance: two people who may be unstable on their own come together into a relationship where they balance each other out. Also in terms of online shipping phrases, it can be an "I could fix them" type of situation, in an affectionate way.

Ashen/Auspisticism/Clubs/♧

I've saved this quadrant for last since it incorporates elements of multiple previous quadrants. In an ashen relationship, the auspistice serves a similar purpose as a moirail, except instead of to an individual, their pacification addresses a pairing. This pairing can be either a kismesitude that is dangerously potent to its parties, or a non-romantic rivalry between parties already devoted to other kismeses. Essentially, the auspistice plays the role of a mediator, preventing the rivalry from growing too intense. It is the only quadrant that involves three parties.

Terminology Notes

Some of these are spelled inconsistently in canon so I've taken a single spelling and gone with it. Also, the different words listed for each quadrant have slightly different uses. The color-based words are a kind of casual or slang way to refer to romance. Pieces of media focusing on moirails or matesprits might be called "palerom" or "redrom" as short for "pale romance" and "red romance," and feelings towards might can be described as "flushed" or "pitch." I've bolded different forms of the words, like the term for a member of a quadrant ("moirail", "matesprit", "kismesis.") or the overall word for the form of romance. The symbols associated with each form are essentially analogs to how humans use the heart symbol to represent traditional romance. Finally, auspisticism is the only quadrant to have a verb associated with it: "auspisticize," or to mediate between two feuding parties. You also might say you're "in clubs" or "in spades" with someone, or any of those suit-related terms, in the place of saying "in love."

Vacillation

Sometimes, someone can experience multiple forms of romantic attraction towards another at once, or a pairing can have mixmatched views of each other. This can lead to rapid switches between quadrants--one moment, kismeses, the next, matesprits, for example.

What the hell does this have to do with Amphibia?

Congratulations. You made it through the romance essay. Now I can get to my application of these dynamics to Sashannarcy.

The most obvious relationship to jump to is Marcy as the auspistice to Sasha and Anne. This has an extremely strong basis in canon, particularly in the episode "The Dinner," where Marcy intervenes in Sasha and Anne's feud as it grows too intense ("Guys, guys, stop fighting!").

This carries naturally into pitchrom Sashanne with some amount of vacillation into redrom. Their relationship is mostly pitch, but the small amount of flushed feelings causes it to be more unstable. I also like the idea of Sasha with pale feelings for Anne, but carrying them out in very toxic ways. She sees Anne as someone who needs a moirail to help her, and tries to get her to become more like what Sasha thinks would make her best, but these are things like pushing her to do things that aren't great.

In Amphibia, once Anne stands up to Sasha, this very easily switches to pitch feelings because she realizes that Anne has no interest whatsoever in her palerom moves. For Anne, standing up to Sasha helps her improve as a person, another way that kismeses can improve each other--through mutual hate, they can distance themself from the parts of themselves they dislike by bringing out the worst in each other, if that makes sense. I like throwing the vacillation in there for a bit of extra internal conflict and fun. In their fight in "True Colors", however, this becomes full-fledged kismesitude, and a very unhealthy one at that, as Anne is so overwhelmed with anger and hate that she actively tries to kill Sasha. If only they had an auspistice in that moment...!

I'm very fond of redrom Marcanne, mostly because I really like Marcanne in general, but they are also very pale for each other. This can be seen in how protective Anne was of Marcy both before and during Amphibia. While pacification sometimes clearly goes both ways, it doesn't always have an obvious two-way flow. Marcanne is an example with a very obvious direction of pacification, that being from Anne to Marcy. Before Amphibia, Marcy is very oblivious and Anne takes on the job of keeping her out of trouble.

After the incredibly pale moment in "Marcy at the Gates" ("I don't want to lose you again."/"You won't, I promise.") which briefly reverses the direction of the moirallegiance as Marcy comforts Anne, I think the flushed feelings start to emerge more strongly from both sides. Anne, no longer forced to play the role of moirail for Marcy, suddenly realizes that her feelings may be more flushed in nature. This is seen in moments like Anne blushing at Marcy in "New Wartwood" over her architecture infodumps. After "True Colors," though, Anne is left on Earth without having ever telling Marcy how she felt.

Marcy slowly realized her feelings for Sasha and Anne were flushed in nature over the course of the series, but Sasha and Marcy (despite being the pairing with the smallest amount of canon material) as moirails is something I'm fond of--partially because flushed Marcanne, pitch Sashanne, pale Sasharcy, and ashen Sashannarcy fills every quadrant, but also because I could see a similar dynamic to pre-Amphibia Marcanne between them, just with more possibility of a mutual pacification. It's still not a healthy moirallegiance, mostly because Sasha simply doesn't put enough care into it.

Outside of auspistices and the overall goal of having one of each kind of partner ("filled quadrants"), trolls don't have typical polycules, but at the end of the show, I think all the feelings would be flushed and mutual and they would all be matesprits.

i love how much ashen sashannarcy there is. everyone understands. but. but where is pale-red marcanne. where is the sashanne vacillation.

[wanderinginksplot]

I would like to request Republic Commando Fi x reader fic with ,,how much longer 'til we're there?" prompt in which he visits his girlfriend on Coruscant after spending long time on misions off planet and then she brings him out somewhere to show him what ,,normal people" do in their free time, include some fluff please

Republic Commando Fi x fem!reader. Fi returns to Coruscant on leave and spends it with his new partner. (Rated G, despite that description.)

Okay, starting off strong with some apologies! First, I am so sorry this took as long as it did. Thank you for your patience! Second, I only just finished Republic Commando: Triple Zero, so the plot is intended to take place just after that mission and characterization is based on things that went on in that book rather than anything later. Any OOC-ness is my fault.

*If you're familiar with Republic Commando, this takes place one unspecified, routine mission after Republic Commando: Triple Zero.

*If you're unfamiliar with Republic Commando, all you need to know is that Fi is in a squad of four commandos who have been to Coruscant before and have ties there, but haven't spent much free time on the planet.

Fi + "How much longer 'til we're there?"

Word Count: 4,700

Warnings: An incredible amount of fluff, shifting POV, mentions of war, good-natured teasing among commandos.

“There you go, ramikade,” the pilot announced, his voice raised just enough to carry to Omega Squad in the back of the transport. “Triple Zero. Welcome home.”

“Home,” Atin snorted. “Troopers don’t get those, last I checked.”

“Shut it, Atin,” Niner ordered. “Be pessimistic on your own time. Fi’s excited to see his civvie.”

Fi barely heard any of their continued conversation over the excitement buzzing in his chest as he peered through the narrow viewport at the expanse of cityscape beneath them. Coruscant had been intimidating every time he had ever been there, and this time was no different.

The buildings on the uppermost level towered up toward the atmosphere, their penthouses reaching for the stars. As the ship dipped lower and lower, some of the buildings began to rise further up, silhouetting against the late afternoon sunlight - whatever sunlight could manage to filter through the smog and pollution, anyway. In this light, Fi could understand how Coruscant’s capital was sometimes known as the City of Spires.

The mass of buildings was inhabited by a teeming collection of life that was staggering in both variety and sheer scope. The city-planet - an ecumenopolis, as his HUD helpfully informed him - played host to more species than any single being could name, every neighborhood a tapestry of immigrated life and cultures. No two areas of the city were the same, and that made it unpredictable. Commandos didn’t like unpredictability. Kal’buir always said that there was danger in things that displayed no easy pattern.

You were unpredictable, though. Fi would never have guessed that you would dance with him the last time he was on Coruscant, or that you would accept him so readily. You had given your comm frequency with the understanding that he wasn't under any obligation to contact you. You had been a shock to him, running counter to everything he had been taught to expect…

So, of course, Fi had contacted you at the earliest possible opportunity.

You had spent some time together before he had to leave for his next mission. It had all been tame - extremely so, if he were to use Darman and Etain as a point of comparison, or Atin and Laseema - but you had still met him at the shipyard with a farewell kiss and a promise to show him around the next time he was on Coruscant.

“How much longer ‘til we’re there?” Fi called, leaning forward a bit to make extra sure the pilot heard him. It came out much louder than he had expected.

“Easy, vod,” Darman urged, laughing slightly.

“Shouting won’t make the process faster,” Atin told him.

Fortunately, the pilot seemed to find Fi’s eagerness amusing rather than insulting. “I’ll have you on the surface in under ten minutes, guaranteed.”

“Is that with or without a parachute?” Niner asked quietly, and the others snorted at the joke.

Fi didn’t laugh along with them. If he had the option to bail out of the transport, he’d gladly accept the use of a GAR parachute. Rumors of unreliability be karked. He had places to be.

---

The war effort never quite seemed real on Coruscant. Sure, you heard plenty about it on news broadcasts, kept up with the latest movements on the Holonet, and tried to puzzle out the esoteric decisions made by the Senate. And the troopers were certainly hard to ignore, both the ones in the Coruscant Guard and the men who came to Coruscant between missions. And yes, you had taken a bit more notice of the war since meeting Fi, but it all seemed so distant.

Coruscant had been invaded by a giant beast at one point and threatened more often than anyone could keep track of, but nothing too intense happened at the center of the galaxy. If Coruscant were to fall, it would be at the end of a war steadily increasing in violence and desperation. From all reports you had read, things weren't there yet, not even remotely.

Of course, you didn't have access to many reports. You were a civilian, working at a popular resort on the upper levels of Coruscant. Your job was to keep the rich guests happy, spending money, and excited to return. They were supposed to come to Coruscant to forget about the war entirely and they worked to do exactly that.

Honestly, the lack of meaningful discussion about the war left you feeling insane more often than not. Why was no one else concerned about a galaxy-wide conflict?

You shook your head sharply, refocusing your attention on the docking yard where you were standing. Fi was coming in on leave and he would want to talk about anything other than the war. You wouldn't let the specter of the ongoing conflict ruin what little time the two of you had together.

Realistically speaking, you shouldn't have known that Fi would be going on leave. It was considered classified information, but you had gotten a cryptic message on your comlink. It had come from a blocked frequency, one you couldn't even begin to access. You had eventually deciphered the message enough to figure out this time and date, and since you had come here to see Fi off last time… It was a bit of a leap, but worth it if you got to spend even a few more minutes with Fi.

You watched as a ship landed close to your current position. The doors started to open before it fully settled onto the ground, and you watched as a trooper covered in black plastoid plate armor appeared in the gap. He jumped the last stretch to land on the duracrete ground of the docking yard.

By the time the figure had started rushing toward you, you were already wearing a broad smile. This was Fi, you could tell. You would be willing to bet every credit you had that it was.

Halfway to you, the figure ripped the helmet from his head. You immediately saw two things: first, it was in fact Fi and, second, he looked just as happy to see you as you were to see him. The moment he reached you, he wrapped you in his arms. If the plastoid pressed against you was rigid and uncomfortable, you weren’t even remotely aware of it. You were with Fi again. He was here, he was safe. All of the other things were just details.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, beaming. "I thought I would have to wait 'til I could comm you!"

"I got a weird message on my comlink…" you explained vaguely, still feeling a little unsettled by the way things had happened.

"A message?" Fi asked, frowning. Before he could ask anything more, his own comlink chimed. "This is Fi."

"Stop chatting with your girlfriend in the shipyard," a voice ordered through the small speaker. "Take her somewhere nice. She's been waiting here for an hour."

Fi grinned again, shaking his head as he said, "Should have known it was you, Ordo. Thanks, vod."

"Have fun. And avoid the usual places unless you want to be waylaid by CSF. Obrim says he still owes you a drink."

You were reasonably sure that Fi’s groan was over-dramatized for effect based on how bright his smile was. “You’d think he would consider that debt paid after last time.”

“You really gonna complain about free alcohol, vod? Go enjoy your night and take them up on it later. You know Obrim and his boys won’t let it go.”

“Will do, Ordo,” Fi said cheerfully. “Thanks again.”

“Ordo out.”

You quirked a brow at Fi. “One of your brothers?”

“One of many,” Fi agreed with a chuckle. “But he’s one of the more useful ones. He’s been making sure I could comm you while I’m on missions. We’re really not supposed to make contact with anyone when we’re in restricted zones, but he patches me through and lays down enough encryption that no one - Republic or Separatist - can figure out what’s going on.”

"That's handy," you remarked. "Do you have to tell anyone you're leaving, or do we just go?"

"That's a matter of opinion," someone who wasn't Fi replied. You turned to find that the speaker was a trooper with an angry looking scar down his face… but the teasing smile he was wearing belied the fierceness of his face. "Fi should go to our debriefing meeting, but he might explode if he has to wait too long to see you. He's talked about you non-stop."

"Come on, Atin," another trooper lectured. "You're just as ready to see Laseema."

"Darman, stop," a third unfamiliar trooper commanded as he joined the group. "You'll deflate Atin's ego too quickly. None of us would survive the drop in pressure."

"Hilarious," Atin said sourly.

Darman took pity on you, explaining softly, "Niner doesn't look for opportunities to mess with the men, but he's not going to deny such an easy target."

"So, Sarge," Fi started, looking hopefully at the newest arrival. "Any chance this will be a short debriefing?"

"No," Niner denied flatly, and Fi deflated beside you. "So I advise you don't go. We'll cover for you."

"Sir…" Fi started uneasily.

"Consider that an order," Niner told him.

"Yes, sir!" Fi agreed, snapping a quick salute before grabbing your hand.

As he pulled you toward the nearest speeder station, you barely had time to glance back over your shoulder and call, "Nice to meet you all!"

"She's too good for him," one of them idly commented to his brothers behind you, but you were too far away to tell him that he was wrong.

Fortunately, finding a transport was a quick and simple process and you soon found yourself seated in the backseat with Fi beside you. Immediately, his closer arm was wrapped around you, pulling you tight against his side while his further hand reached across both of you to toy gently with your fingers.

He seemed content to bask in the silence, but the transport wouldn’t go anywhere until you had given the droid pilot a destination.

“Fi?” you asked gently, reluctant to break the spell of being together, but needing to draw him back to the minute details of life. “We never finalized any plans for tonight. What do you want to do?”

He considered that for a moment, his callused fingertips teasing the delicate spaces between your fingers. Eventually, voice lowered, Fi admitted, “I want to forget about the war for a while.”

You hummed softly in acknowledgment of that. You'd had a feeling that would be true for him, and you couldn’t fault him for that desire. “Do you want to be distracted? We could go to a club or find something to do…”

It was weird to feel someone shrug with their head tucked so closely against your shoulder, but you eventually realized that was what Fi had done. He mumbled something vague about how he would be fine to do anything, but an apathetic shrug and a lackluster agreement weren’t quite the excitement you were looking for.

“Or we could do something totally different,” you offered slowly. “We could have a quiet night, just the two of us.”

Fi lifted his head to peer at your face in the dim interior of the transport. As his dark eyes traced over your face, noting every line and mark of tension, you were abruptly reminded of the highly trained warrior within the laughing exterior. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that we can do something else,” you told him. “If you don’t want to be distracted from the war with loud, flashy stuff, we can do something else. We can pretend you’re a civilian for the night.”

“A civilian for the night,” Fi repeated thoughtfully, face carefully blank.

You froze, suddenly terrified that you had offended him with your thoughtless offer. “Not- I meant that… It’s just-”

“I think I’d like that,” Fi interrupted, breaking into your panicked rambling before you could get too out of control. “I’ve never been able to imagine being a civvie. Maybe with a real civvie to be my guide, I could try it for real.”

The laugh you let out was half from amusement and half from relief. “Then I know exactly where to go.”

You leaned forward and gave the name of your favorite clothing store to the waiting driver. As the droid piloted the transport into the teeming stream of Coruscant traffic, Fi pulled you back against the seat - and into his arms. It figured - the one time you wouldn’t have minded being subjected to the insane traffic jams of Republic City, the skies were clear.

“This is where you want to go tonight?” Fi asked, staring up at the store with a confused look on his handsome face.

You laughed. “No, I just thought you might like to get some civilian clothes. It’s hard to be a civilian in full armor, you know.”

Fi seemed to hesitate for a moment, but he eventually agreed and you went inside.

This was your favorite store for several reasons, but mostly because it offered a wide variety of styles at prices that wouldn’t break your bank account. You weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, but you could afford a comfortable outfit for Fi. Stars, you would find a way to buy him an entire wardrobe if it meant that he could forget about the war for a night.

He shopped like a soldier, navigating the store like it was a battlefield and finding an outfit was his sole objective. Amusingly, that meant that he forgot all about talking to or touching you, but you were surprisingly okay with that. You followed him around the store, watching as he took in information about the unfamiliar environment, processed it, and used it to get in and out of the store within half an hour. It was certainly faster than most of the trips you had made there, and the outfit he had chosen made him look remarkably… non-military.

“Do you need to go back to the GAR barracks to drop off your armor?” you asked. “Or we could stop by my apartment, though it’s a little out of the way.”

“Nah,” Fi denied with an easy shrug. “I’ll just get a courier droid to drop it off at the barracks. One of my brothers will stow it for me.”

“Oh, but-” You hesitated in your protest, staring at the pile of black plastoid. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I know courier droids are reliable, but if something happened to it…”

Fi laughed. “There’s a tracker in every piece of this armor. Commando armor, remember? If it got stolen, it would end badly for whoever took it. A courier droid will be fine. Besides, I don’t want to waste time taking you to the barracks. Can you flag down a droid while I comm one of my squadmates to look out for the drop-off?”

“Of course,” you agreed.

As it turned out, the store had its own courier droid, one whose small firm belied an ability to fly Fi's armor to the GAR barracks with ease. Best of all, the store owner lent you the droid's services at no charge since you were a regular customer.

“What now?” Fi asked after his armor had been loaded onto the courier droid, lacing his fingers through yours.

You looked him up and down, letting your admiration show clearly in your expression. Fi’s tall, muscular body was showcased perfectly in the clothing he had chosen. Dark trousers made his legs look long and strong while his shirt was emblazoned with the logo of a stunningly unpopular bolo-ball team. You had tried to talk him out of the shirt - especially since he didn’t watch bolo-ball or care about it in the slightest - but Fi had only laughed and said that it would be funny if someone tried to fight him over his taste in teams. Since the shirt fit snugly against his broad chest and showcased his thick arms, you didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to start a fight with him… but if they did, your credits were on Fi.

“Keep lookin’ at me that way, mesh’la,” Fi warned, voice low and warm, “and we’re gonna have to find somewhere more private to go.”

“No need,” you told him, reluctantly pulling your gaze from him to flag down another transport. “I thought we would go with a quiet evening. We’ll go shopping for ingredients at one of the markets on this level, then we’ll go back to my apartment and make dinner.”

“You’re sure you’re okay having me in your home?” Fi asked. Despite his earlier playfully threatening tone, his face was gentle and free of judgment.

“I’m sure,” you assured him, sending a cocky grin afterward. “I kissed you first, remember?”

He gaped, laughing at the same time. “Only ‘cause I didn’t think you’d go for an osi’yaim like me!”

“That better mean ‘kind, handsome soldier with a great sense of humor’,” you told him, stepping toward the transport that pulled up.

“Um… not quite,” Fi admitted, rushing to the transport so he could hold the door open for you. “Let’s just say I wasn’t expecting that kiss.”

“I was worried you would think poorly of me,” you told him when you were both inside the transport, smiling at the memory. “But I couldn’t help myself.”

“I can honestly say I’ve never thought better of anyone my entire life,” Fi replied, raising his hand like he was swearing an oath. “I thought I had died and was being given one last gift. It was like a dream, but better than any dream I’ve ever had.”

You softened even more at that. Fi was a good man. You laced your fingers together and slid across the seat to be closer to him. Fi relaxed into you for a moment, but tensed again. His fingers pressed beneath your chin, gently turning your head so that he could catch your gaze with his own.

“But I need you to understand,” he said, voice throbbing with intensity. “I don’t expect that. Or anything, really. If that was a one-time thing, I won’t blame you or be upset. You’ve already done more for me than anyone else I can remember, other than my vode and the Sarge. Just because we’re going back to your place doesn’t mean- What I mean is that I… I don’t want you to think-”

“Fi,” you interrupted, chuckling. “You’re sweet. I know you don’t expect anything, and I don’t have any plans one way or another. Whatever happens, happens. But for now, if it were up to me… I don’t want to pressure you, but I’d love to give you a welcome home kiss.”

“Pressure me all you want,” Fi agreed immediately, eyes dropping to your lips.

Kissing while you were both smiling was an interesting experience, but you managed anyway. By the time the transport pulled up to the market, you were significantly more mussed than you had been at the start.

“What kind of market is this?” Fi asked, following you out of the transport. He was already studying the eclectic surroundings.

“It’s a permanent, open-air marketplace,” you said slowly, trying to find the right words to explain it. You had never found anything similar, and it was hard to make comparisons for someone who had seen little of the galaxy outside of a warzone. “Anyone can rent a stall and sell their goods, whatever those goods may be. There are usually a few for fruits and vegetables, some with staple products, and a lot sell specialty goods.”

“Sounds… tricky,” Fi replied eventually.

“It’s not so bad,” you argued. “It’s never the same place twice, so it’s a good place to walk around and browse.”

“How do you know where to find what you need, then?” Fi asked, frowning.

“You don’t,” you told him with a shrug. “This is what civilians do. We browse. Or some of us do. I just like it more than going to one of those soulless grocery stations. But if you’d rather not be here, we can-”

“It’s fine,” Fi cut in. “I’m here for civvie lessons, remember? You’re the expert here. Marketplace. Teach me all about it?”

You laughed as he pressed a kiss to your temple. For the next hour, you walked him through the market, pointing out some trustworthy stands and teaching him how to haggle with the stall owners. Fi found a few odds and ends he liked, including a foldable hydrospanner. He guessed it would break the first time he used it, but you noticed the way he lingered at the stand, so you bought it for him, ignoring his protests all the while.

Fortunately, you already had everything you needed to make one of your favorite meals from your home planet. The only things you needed to find here were a side dish and a dessert. And some comfortable sleep pants for Fi to lounge around in, just in case he didn’t feel like wearing his new outfit while you relaxed in your apartment.

Since your apartment was close to the market, you and Fi opted to walk. Everything you had purchased fit in one reasonably light bag, but Fi insisted on carrying it anyway. You stopped playfully arguing with him about it when he wrapped an arm around you and swept you into a dip for a dramatic kiss that didn’t end until a group of passersby whistled and cheered their encouragement.

Fi tried to help you in the kitchen while you put together your dinner, but he was a truly terrible cook. After rescuing your meal from the second disaster it was headed toward, you asked Fi to switch to dish cleanup as you worked, and he took up scrubbing with a vengeance. He claimed he liked it even better, because it gave him time to admire you as you worked. His loud and enthusiastic praise of your cooking skills - and leadership skills and sense of timing and knife skills and appearance - was enough to make it an entirely fun experience.

You apologized as you dished up your meals, explaining that your small apartment didn’t leave you enough space to fit a table and chairs. You would have to eat on your couch. As soon as you explained that, Fi was so excited that you didn’t have the heart to apologize anymore.

“I get to sit beside you, eating the meal you cooked with your own hands, and no one’s here to give me osik if I want to touch you or kiss you while I eat?” he asked, eyes bright. “Sounds like paradise to me, mesh’la. Thank you!”

And Fi took full advantage of that privilege as you ate. His ambidextrous nature made a strong appearance as he touched whatever part of you was closest - elbows and knees were innocent enough, but after he brushed a hand over the curve of your waist, you were the one who initiated the next kiss.

When you were finished eating your meal and a light dessert, Fi insisted on doing the dishes while you set up a holofilm. He came back to the couch and you cuddled up under a blanket, holding hands and sharing an occasional kiss.

Your heart ached at the thought that Fi would have to go back to the field soon. Commandos were notorious for having short shore leave, and only on rare occasions. He was here now, but how long did you have before he was gone again? A week? A day? A few hours? There was no way of knowing, just as there was no way for you to know when you would get to see him again after he left.

With effort, you pushed the gloomy thoughts away. The important thing was that Fi was there now. You were awash in a warm tide of domesticity, and you were determined to bask in the peace of it until it was gone. You breathed out a light sigh, relaxing against Fi’s shoulder as the tension left your body.

---

You were asleep.

Fi hadn’t actually noticed until he turned to ask a question about the holofilm you had chosen, but he found that your eyes were closed and your breathing steady beside him.

He smiled, thinking of how mortified you would be that you had fallen asleep. Fi had known you for a comparatively short time, but he knew how much importance you placed on providing a welcoming environment. Hadn’t you created the perfect date night out of nothing? You were amazing, a gift he didn’t deserve in the slightest but had no intention of giving back.

When Darman had met Etain, Fi had been skeptical. When Atin had met Laseema, Fi had been uncomfortable. He had known the unpleasant truth: relationships were unreliable, unpredictable… especially in wartime. Hadn’t Sergeant Skirata told them that more than once? Females were a distraction no soldier could afford.

But then Fi had met you.

You weren’t a distraction and he liked that you were unpredictable. What you had together was different than what he had been expecting, mostly because it was so easy. Having watched Darman and Atin, Fi had thought relationships were a struggle, a battle he would have to fight even when he wasn’t fighting the Seppies. But with you? It was the easiest thing in the galaxy.

Fi still felt like an outsider in the civilian world. He always would. He would never have a normal life, not normal like the civilians he had seen that day. That had bothered him at first, but the sting was gone now that he had you. He pulled you a bit closer, relishing the way your head fit perfectly under his jaw. You were his bridge to the world of the civvies, giving him a glimpse at the life he would never experience. It could never be his life, but he could almost reach it through you, close enough to reflect some warmth and ease into his own existence. It was enough. You were enough.

“Hey,” he said softly, trying to ease you back to wakefulness rather than startle you. “ Cyare , wake up. You need to go to bed somewhere more comfortable than this.”

“‘m plenty com’f’t’ble,” you argued sleepily.

Fi grinned. “I’m glad, but you’ll hurt your neck if you stay here all night.”

You gave a halfhearted groan, but made no attempt to move.

“Want me to carry you?” he offered.

Even with your eyes closed, you frowned at that. “‘m too heavy, Fi.”

Fi shook his head, knowing full well that you couldn’t see him. You had pointed out which door was which when he came into your apartment, so he knew exactly where your bedroom was. Lifting you was easy, even when you started to struggle with the suddenness of his movements. “Hang on, little one, I’m just proving you wrong.”

You were awake enough to open the door for him, and Fi crossed the small room to deposit you gently onto your bed. When you were settled on the soft mattress, you looked up at him, eyes large and shining even in the low light that filtered through your curtains.

“Do you have to get back to the barracks, or can you stay the night?”

Stars, was this how it felt to have a heart attack? Fi’s heart stuttered in his chest, then started pounding double-time to make up for it. “Stay here?”

You smiled shyly. “You can sleep wherever you want. It’s not an invitation to… yeah. Just… if you didn’t want to go all the way back tonight. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult…”

Fi honestly stopped listening then. Technically speaking, there were repercussions if he was found anywhere other than the barracks… but one look at your rumpled clothing and cozy blankets, and he didn’t care anymore.

With a smile, Fi only asked, “Do you have a spare toothbrush?”

---

A/N - Thanks for reading!

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[robthegoodfellow]

A couple weeks after this snippet. Billy invites Robin to a New Year’s Eve party at Castle Harrington, and a little before midnight, she gets him alone to discuss the contraband. Warnings: nsfw; descriptions of past het (oral sex)

He’d been innocently stuffing his face with potato chips, en route to the fridge for another beer, when Robin emerged from the basement stairs in a blast of Deep Purple and wisps of skunk. Those poor carpets were in for some extreme deodorizing.

She sidled up to him, a lascivious leer on her face that was downright alarming on someone so inherently goofy, and pulled him into the quiet den—but not before he grabbed them both a beverage.

“So,” she began, clinking her bottle to his as they settled on the couch. “Read anything good lately?”

“Fuck,” he said, by which he meant yes, tipping his head until he was staring at the ceiling. Robin snickered, curling up in a ball along his side, and tucked her chin into her knees, her gaze begging for dirt.

He couldn’t believe he was about to talk about this with some chick he met like two weeks ago. But then again… he was kinda dying to, and he’d promised not to share it with anyone else, so…

“I skipped to ‘The Hustler,’” he began. “Because it… caught my attention?”

“Why’s that?” she asked.

Billy paused, wondering if he was prepared to admit that there’d been a small window—after he started lurking on the outskirts of gay bars, but before the specter of AIDS had really begun to haunt his psyche—where he’d obsessively thought about, uh—

“I mean, I wouldn’t want to do it for real, but…” He turned his head and found Robin riveted—no judgement, just listening intensely. “Back home I had this weird fantasy of going up to a guy and giving him my price and letting him—fuck me against an alley wall.”

“Wow,” she said, eyebrows at her hairline. “Okay.”

“Too much?” he checked.

She expelled a wheezing laugh, lifted the bottle for a long pull. “Dude, I’ve read the whole zine a hundred times. That’s… so tame by comparison.” Shaking her head, a jaded veteran who had really seen some shit, she returned to her initial line of questioning. “So—did you like that one?”

Like was an understatement. He’d had high hopes for that story and man had it delivered. Official new entry in the spank bank Rolodex. Basic summary: visiting scientist Spock buys a night with hooker Kirk who’s trying to pay his way through college or whatever—the Academy—and they flirt and bone in exquisite detail then reunite years later for more boning.

“I sorta skimmed the beginning and the chit-chat leading up to the main event—”

“But it does such a good job creating this playfulness between them!” she insisted.

“No���totally,” Billy agreed. “It was cute as fuck, and Kirk kept reminding me of—me? Or how I pictured myself in that kinda situation, all suave and confident and charming. Experienced.”

He sighed, remembering that gut-punch moment when Kirk told Spock he had a nice smile, this trippy mirror image of when Harrington had said the same thing to Billy, that night in November that had spun his life in a wildly different direction.

Decided not to share that particular part with Robin.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was super ready to get railed by the awkward alien with the pointy ears.”

“But then… the reverse happens, the first time,” she recalled.

“And that was hot as hell,” he concluded.

Robin abruptly groaned, unfolding herself to mimic his slouch, beer cradled to her stomach. “It’s—not fair.”

Billy grunted, inquisitive, and she raised a hand in supplication. “Why couldn’t I have found a treasure trove of stories about two women?”

“You said this stuff gets you going, though…?” he tried, placating.

“Yes,” she exclaimed. “Still surprises me, but yes. And now I have this—vivid, intimate insight into how two dudes might operate in bed. Way more knowledge of blow jobs and ass fucking than I ever thought I’d have—”

Billy snorted, loud, and Robin flashed a smirk, despite her genuine frustration.

“But like—” She tilted her head to meet his gaze, and he sobered at her wistful expression. “I have no idea what it’d be like to go down on a girl, you know?”

Their noses were inches apart, and Billy realized this was the only time he’d been this close to someone, explicitly talking about sex, and not been after a fuck.

So he hoped it didn’t come off as creepy when he offered: “I mean… I could tell you. If you wanted.”

Her face flushed, bloodshot eyes going a bit glassy. “You… could? You would?”

God, they were both so, so stoned. Whatever happened next, at least they could… blame it on that?

“I mean, I’ve only done it a few times, and I dunno whether I was any good at it—think only one of them came for real—”

“Tell me that time,” she whispered.

All of Billy’s blood was rushing to his head and his dick. But it was an inward rush, totally theoretical—his hands weren’t itching to reach for her, just himself.

“Uh—okay, but…” He shifted, resting his warming beer on his crotch, like that would hide anything, and resisted pushing down—was shocked to find the mere act of resistance kinda… dizzying. “Don’t be… weirded out by the wood.”

“Buddy, I think I’ll be right there with you on that front.”

He huffed. Fair. “Okay, so—there was this girl, last year. She was in the grade above me, and I’d see her around the neighborhood.”

Sofia. Sof. She’d been gorgeous—dark hair and eyes, crooked smile, dimple. A deep laugh that hit him funny. And smart. Way too good for him, basically.

“She wouldn’t go out with me because I had kind of a reputation as the love ‘em and leave ‘em type. Which was—accurate. But I cleaned up my act for awhile and kept asking. She never actually said no, just—not yet.”

Todavía no. Hadn’t known what that meant, at first—had to ask a surfer buddy. And it wasn’t like she didn’t speak English just as well, so it’d just been about giving him a hard time, he figured. Testing him, maybe.

“And then finally she agreed to go on a date, and we had fun. Nothing happened—but it was... yeah. It was nice. And so we went on another, and still didn’t do anything except make out, though that was… awesome. And then one day she invited me over when her parents were gone, and…”

He came back to himself to confirm. “How much… detail do you want?”

Robin was already breathing kinda shallow. She blinked, refocusing on his face, and blindly felt for the hand that wasn’t partially shielding his lap, threading their fingers tight.

Her voice was quiet and rough. “As much as you are willing to give me.”

“Fuck.” He dropped his head to rest flat on the back cushion, closed his eyes, and just… narrated the memory. “Okay. We… went into her room, and she didn’t want to have full-on sex—but she went down on me and I blew my load like, embarrassingly fast.” Another rush of blood heated his cheeks, recalling how desperate he’d been to save face, impress her. “So I tried to return the favor…”

It probably helped that that encounter was one of the few where he hadn’t been drunk or high or raging for escape or all three. Both in terms of his performance and his ability to remember it now.

“She shimmied out of her shorts and I settled between her legs, kissed her stomach, and she pressed up against my chest. Still had on her underwear, but there was this wet patch at the crotch, and before I knew it I’d bent down and kinda… pushed my nose in it and breathed her in…”

He gulped, planting his boots flat on the floor, but didn’t thrust against the bottle.

“It was… salty? Like—in general, even the taste, girls are sort of tangy and musty. Dudes have this bitterness, but girls are just… warm and wet and soft.” He exhaled a wry chuckle. “I’m not tryin’ to be corny, but she reminded me of the ocean more than anything.”

Robin’s hand twitched. “Fishy?”

“No!” he laughed. “No, just—I dunno, it was like… getting out of your car at the beach on a hot day and the smell of the sea just hits you…?” He wagged his head, lids squinched, self-deprecating. “Maybe that’s dumb. I’m super high.”

“No,” Robin said, insistent. “That sounds… nice. Keep—keep going.”

He nodded into the dark, knocked their clasped hands against the couch, and plowed ahead. “I’d only done it once before that, with this other girl, and it took her ages to get really revved up, so… I tried to take my time and kinda—teased her awhile. Rubbed her with my thumbs through her underwear, like—lightly, and sometimes dipped under the fabric to brush her—I dunno what you call ‘em—lips?”

He heard a faint whimper of affirmation.

“She had dark hair down there, already pretty wet, but I kept going with her panties on until she was just—squirming. Then I hooked my finger in the crotch of her underwear and pulled them down and—licked, with the flat of my tongue.”

“Holy… holy shit.”

“Mm-hm. She was—so wet, like—slick. I had trouble getting any friction going, so I just tried to press hard with my tongue and keep track of which places got the best… noises. The bottom half of my face was soaked, and my hands were on her like a diamond, framing her, and when she started pressing up against my thumbs, I shifted down and stuck my tongue in as far it would go—”

Robin was murmuring a stream in his ear, ohgodohgodohgod, and Billy gritted his teeth, pushed down on the bottle, barely kept from coming in his pants. He tried to catch his breath, but was still panting a bit when he continued.

“I kept rubbing her with my fingers from the outside, licking her inside, and I was pretty much suffocating, but then she went rigid and sort of… seized up, and I felt her clenching around me, kind of fluttery—like… her heartbeat on my tongue—”

The hand in his was also clenching, compulsively, tight enough to hurt.

“—so I pulled back to breathe and let her just—ride my palm until she… flopped back on the bed.”

They were both gasping, the only sound in the room aside from the dull thump of the bass below them, reverberating through the floor, his heels, the back of his thighs.

He vaguely wondered what time it was, how long they’d been careening down memory lane. How there wasn’t a dark spot on the front of his jeans, he did not know.

“Billy,” said Robin, hushed and winded still.

He opened his eyes, turned just enough to look at her, then followed the line of her arm to where her beer bottle was wedged at the apex of her legs. Great minds.

“I’m gonna need you to call me every night and tell me an X-rated bedtime story.”

He leered at her, way over the top so she’d know he was joking. “I’d offer a practical demonstration, but…”

She laughed. “But Steve?”

His eyes widened. “I was gonna say but I don’t know whether that would do it for you, since I’m a guy.” When she only maintained an assessing, intrigued gaze, he muttered, “But yeah, also Harrington.”

She snickered, swiping her thumb over the back of his.

“How quick did you figure it out?” he asked.

“Uh, the second you opened the door with kiss-swollen lips?” The bottle was still sandwiched between her thighs, but maybe at this point she was just… keeping it warm. “Not exactly a case for Sherlock Holmes.”

“Whoops,” he said, in a tone that implied the contrary.

They sat there, ignoring how they’d both been moments from blasting off, trying to cool down.

“So you…” she mused, speculative. “You like both, then? With a tale like that, you’ve gotta like both.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I tend to like guys more often, though. Like if I had to choose between going down on a chick or a guy, I’d more likely pick the guy.”

“What… makes it better, for you?”

Billy grimaced, knew he was going red again. “Partly I think I—like having something… in my mouth?”

He’d already shared this much, so why not the whole enchilada?

“But also guys just… I don’t know. Draw me in more.”

She hmmed thoughtfully, then: “What happened—between you and the girl?”

And just like that—bye-bye, boner. He freed his hand from hers, held it to his chest, part soothing, part defense.

“I, uh—” He coughed, cleared his throat. “I proved her right. Disappeared.”

He must’ve been throwing out some vibes, because she bit her lip, looked away. The basement door opened, the music cresting up and down, and he heard Jeff and Gareth blundering toward the kitchen.

“Thanks,” Robin said, finally, sincere. “For telling me all that.”

He nodded, quirked his lips to show her he was all right, and she stood on wobbly legs.

“I’m gonna… go spend some time in the bathroom,” she breezily announced. “Just for—you know, the usual reasons.”

Then she was gone, and Billy closed his eyes again, breathed.

He hadn’t lied. He had disappeared on Sof—bailed on their next date because he was too ashamed to turn up with a black eye, and then a week later… a week later, his mom had died.

And after that, every sexual encounter had been of a distinctly different flavor.

Until Harrington.

Harrington.

And then there he was, like Billy had been emitting a distress signal only he could detect.

“Found you,” he said, mouth blurry from beer and weed. He plopped next to Billy, planted a sweaty temple on his shoulder. “I let Eddie beat me at pool.”

Billy chuckled weakly. “Very noble of you, King Steve.”

“You all right?” Harrington asked, twisting to peer up at him.

“Yeah,” Billy said, but judging from the furrowed brow, he hadn’t been terribly convincing. Tried to explain. “Just—thought of her, all of sudden.”

Harrington’s eyes went shiny in an instant. His emotions were always so close to the surface when he was smashed.

“I’m fine,” Billy insisted, jostling them. “What time is it?”

“Ten till.” Harrington heaved himself over to perch in Billy’s lap, helped himself to Billy’s beer. “Gonna kiss me when the clock strikes twelve?”

Billy pursed his lips like he was giving it some serious thought. “What’ll happen if I don’t?”

Harrington shrugged with his whole body. “Pumpkin?”

“Oh, no,” Billy murmured, pulling him in by the neck of his shirt. “Can’t have that.”

About fifteen minutes later, they still had their tongues down each other’s throats—had distantly caught wind of a raucous countdown underground. An exaggerated cough was what split them apart. Robin was back, leaning against the wall.

“You miss it?” Billy asked her. “Midnight?”

“Au contraire, mon frère,” she said, waggling her eyebrows. “I most certainly made it.”

He barked a laugh. “You’re welcome.”

Harrington was blearily swerving between the two of them, like Robin seeing them intertwined should be concerning, but he couldn’t remember why.

“Don’t worry,” Robin assured him preemptively, waving her hands. “I’m super gay—your gayness is safe with me.”

“I got Robin off with my mouth,” Billy proclaimed—because he was gonna tell Harrington anyway, and this was funnier.

“NO!” she exclaimed, stricken, stumbling to clarify. “With his words, not his—I got myself off—” She whipped back to Billy, glaring daggers, but he could tell she was more exasperated than mad. “You are such a dick.”

“Happy New Year,” he sang, cheesing at her.

Harrington, if anything, looked more confused.

“I’ll explain later,” Billy promised, patting his hip.

full chapter here (fic is WIP, sorry!)

[maryasmorevna]

you’ve helped me realized that much of what i’ve been praising as ETL is in fact rivals to lovers… and that there are actually a lot of meaningful distinctions between the two relationships!! my conclusion is that both are good but for different reasons.

(sorry for the late reply, anon!)

you're welcome! ❤️ i've not written extensively about the etl Discoursé so i'm not sure which posts of mine helped you specifically but maybe it was something i've reblogged? anyway yes, both can be quite good for different reasons. at the end of the day they're just labels; i do think that the (imo legitimate) rise of the ~it's not etl if they didn't try to kill each other at least once!~ arguments is due to the pressing criticism that actual etl romances get when they do appear in media, see "it's abuse!!1!!" etc. when nope, it's just a fictional trope where two characters are ideologically opposed in every way, they belong to warring factions so of course they'd literally cross swords with each other, and often there's at least one kidnapping/torture/murder attempt. they're enemies, and that what's enemies do, they do not quarrel about rival sport teams or whatever lmao. of course if you (general you) can't handle it that's okay, to each one their own etc., but you can't cry about ~aBuSe when... i mean, that's literally the trope, dude. it often (but not necessarily) crosses with villlain/hero ships, so at least half of the pair has committed some kind of atrocity (good! 😈 lmao). it's not and will never be a 1:1 copy of our reality, and it's not meant to be read as such. of course people throwing knives at each other or whatever irl is not romantic or cute but we're talking about fiction and fictional worlds governed by very different rules than ours. it's a fantasy, a playground where you can make your imaginary dolls act out sceneries that irl are as highly improbable as dragons or magical rings of doom, and that's the point. it's very obvious tbh, i can't believe that even needs to be said, and yet some people don't seem to grasp it.

i also saw some descriptions of rivals to lovers which i don't agree with. there is a difference between rtl or etl and belligerent sexual tension; usually the latter involves two characters who are on the same side but for some reason they dislike each other, so it may turn into a hate/love thing. but rtl implies that, you know, they're rivals, so they're competing over something - i already mentioned opposing sport teams, for example. i'm currently writing a rtl chess au for my otp (which in canon is something like belligerent sexual tension + bad first impression thing a la darcy/lizzie) while in the past i've extensively written about people literally trying to gut each other (and there's at least some torture in it 😌) so i'm familiar with the difference between the two tropes. they're both fun to write but yes, the rtl story seems very tame in comparison with my usual Problematique shit lmao, tho i love writing it because it touches upon other themes, motifs, and tropes i'm in love with.

i think a lot depends on the tone and goals of the story. in a more mundane setting that deals with everyday life and not stakes higher than the empire building it's a bit more difficult to make people who attempt to slice each other's throats fall in love; fantasy&co. implicitly requires a suspension of disbelief - things are way larger than real life, and often this kind of romance shapes the land of these fictional worlds, as both represents different sides of the conflict that in a doylistic way is the basic foundation for these worlds' very existence. it's a bit daunting to imagine the same dynamic in, idk, an austenian-like setting lol, that's why for austen's standards lizzie and darcy are Peak etl when in fact they're extremely vanilla.

[ialwaysknewyouwerepunk]

Oh I'm interested to hear ab the patrick and h or l analogy you mentioned!

!! spoilers ahead for my policeman !!

well! of course i was reading it with harry in mind, especially in the beginning. at first i was looking for signs of harry in tom, while it was patrick who really struck that chord. i ended up seeing harry in both tom and patrick, while also seeing a lot of louis in patrick.

tom is instantly depicted as someone strong and charismatic by marion, and then patrick's first impression of tom is that he's friendly and trusting/naive - a side he clearly only shows patrick, an older (and smarter) man. both impressions definitely reminded me of harry.

here’s tom and patrick’s first meeting, from patrick’s pov:

patrick is an artist, works in a musem, and is a weathered gay, so to speak. he knows the ins and outs of the community (and, most importantly, how to survive in that late 50s british climate) and is comfortable about who he is: he has accepted that he is gay and prefers to remain "single" to being married to a woman. the love of his life before meeting tom was also a married man, which was very common then, but that is a step he never undertook.

here’s what he writes about his mother, whose conversation he once overheard, to illustrate how easy-going he is about his sexuality:

what especially reminded me of louis, then, was patrick's easy confidence and assurance in who he was, which he could use in his advantage to seduce/build up a relationship with tom. he knew he had to accept marion as a reality in tom's life in order for tom to thrive and their relationship to have the best chance with all the limitations they have (bc tom was a policeman put under pressure by his chief to marry, and it was also very illegal to be gay, or a "sexual invert" as they used to call it). louis knows that, for now, he needs to play the game as long as he needs to in order to get the best chance at success in life and (open) love (or at least that's definitely how i see him and how he has handled the past years).

where patrick reminded me of harry was in his artistic, sensitive and romantic streaks (which are qualities not ascribed to tom at all). patrick writes emphatically in his journal about his lover, his policeman, who he compares to greek statues and the like. how he speaks in general is artful, really. he's also an absolute romantic, taking his lover to venice, buying him gifts, treating him to everything (which is sth louis and harry both have obviously). harry is obviously incredibly romantic in his writing and how he uses words in every way. he’s cryptic and symbolic in his lyrics, but i bet a diary entry of his looks very similar to something patrick would write. and in the way that patrick is extremely kind and considerate, we all know harry is too.

patrick also has a tOn of anxiety, always describing how his heartbeat gets irregular whenever something happens that excites or upsets him (“DUM-de, goes my heart”), which is something i also align with harry.

and yk... what was definitely interesting making these comparisons were the physical descriptions (although the height difference between h and l is not as dramatic as sometimes believed): tom is broad, tall, strong, has curly hair, and patrick is smaller, sharper. again, here patrick was also like harry, in terms of being a lot more conscious of fashion and appreciative of women's clothing and makeup. 

both men in the novel have blue eyes, and there’s something about the way marion first describes tom’s eyes that just....... stuck with me

oh and just this other lil tidbit

roughly: “love is a bird that can’t be tamed”..............

[obtusemedia]

Ranking Lady Gaga's albums, from worst to best

Being a Lady Gaga fan can be an exercise in frustration.

Gaga is far more ambitious than most popstars — I doubt we’ll ever see Ariana Grande or Ed Sheeran make an album as left-field as Born This Way or ARTPOP. But she's also far less consistent, with numerous misbegotten projects.

Gaga's undeniably successful, with five #1 hits, an Oscar and multiple iconic music videos to her name. But her messy album rollouts and tradition of underperforming lead singles make her feel like an underdog compared to the more polished, precise careers of her contemporaries like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé or Bruno Mars.

Gaga is kind of a mess. But she's our mess. This album ranking will cover some records I can't stand — albums that make me constantly hit the fast-forward button, or albums I ignore altogether. But there isn't a single record on here that wasn't a bold move. Even the "back to basics" albums made strong aesthetic choices.

So let's dive into the career of the most fascinating Millennial popstar.

#8: Cheek To Cheek (2014)

This really shouldn't count. It's a Lady Gaga album in name only. But, technically it's a Gaga album, so here we are.

I've got nothing against Gaga having fun playing Rat Pack-era dress-up with Tony Bennett. She's a theatre kid at heart, and I'm sure every theatre kid would kill to make a Great American Songbook covers record like this. It sounds like she and Tony enjoyed themselves, so I'm happy for them!

...but I'm sorry. I can't be objective about Cheek To Cheek, it's the opposite of my taste. There's only so many bland lounge ballads I can take.

BEST SONGS: I have to pick one? "Anything Goes" is cute, I guess.

WORST SONG: "Sophisticated Lady"

#7: A Star Is Born (2018)

Let me first make this clear — A Star Is Born, the movie starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga? It's a masterpiece. It's electrifying and tragic and I'm still upset it didn't sweep the Oscars that year. There's even a cute dog! You won't hear me say a bad word about it.

But A Star Is Born, the accompanying soundtrack? It's extremely hit-and-miss.

Yes, it includes arguably Gaga's best-ever song and one of the greatest movie hits ever written, "Shallow." And there's plenty of other great tunes in the tracklist too — "Always Remember Us This Way," "I'll Never Love Again," the "La Vie En Rose" cover.

Even the country-rock songs from Bradley Cooper (who, reminder, is not a professional singer) are mostly good! "Black Eyes" RIPS, and "Maybe It's Time" feels like a long-lost classic.

But sadly, there are so many mediocre filler tracks on this thing. The second half of A Star Is Born's hour-plus runtime (Gaga's longest!) is padded with generic songs like "Look What I've Found," "Heal Me" and "I Don't Know What Love Is." The only good one out of the bunch is the silly, intentionally-bad "Why Did You Do That?"

In the movie, these filler tracks serve a point – they're meant to show Gaga's character selling out. They work in the movie when you hear them for a few seconds and see Cooper make a drunkly disappointed scowl. But I don't want to listen to them, and sadly, they make up half the album.

In other words — A Star Is Born would've made an incredible six or seven-song EP. But as an 63-minute-long record? It's a slog.

BEST SONGS: "Shallow", "Always Remember Us This Way," "Maybe It's Time"

WORST SONG: "Heal Me"

#6: Joanne (2016)

After Born This Way and ARTPOP, I get why Gaga needed to make a more lowkey, back-to-basics album. I also understand that many of these songs have extremely personal lyrics for her.

But is a down-to-earth album what I really want from our most outré popstar? Not really.

Luckily, Joanne is better than that description suggests. Yes, there are some bland acoustic ballads and awkward hippie-era throwbacks (two styles that are really not in Gaga's wheelhouse), but there's also some Springsteen-style heartland rockers! And those go hard in the paint.

Joanne works best when Gaga works the record's dusty aesthetics into her brand of weirdo pop, like on the sizzling "John Wayne," the winking "A-YO" or the delightfully extra Florence Welch duet "Hey Girl."

The record also has "Perfect Illusion" — a glorious red herring of a lead single that sounds nothing like anything else on Joanne. It's a roided-up mixture of woozy Tame Impala production and hair metal histrionics, and it rules. It might be Gaga's best-ever lead single! (at the very least, it's her most underrated.)

And there is one slow tune that's unambiguously great: "Million Reasons," another solid Gaga lighters-in-the-air power ballad pastiche.

Despite what some Little Monsters may tell you, Joanne isn't a disaster. There's some great stuff in there, and even the worst songs are just forgettable. But it's still far from her best.

BEST SONGS: "Perfect Illusion," "Diamond Heart," "Million Reasons"

WORST SONG: "Come To Mama"

#5: Chromatica (2020)

When Chromatica was released near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it had been seven years since Gaga had released music in her classic gonzo-synthpop vein. I can easily picture the record serving as an "ugh fine, I'll give you what you want" response to the many Little Monsters annoyed with Gaga's half-decade of folksy ballads and Julie Andrews cosplay.

I'll say this about Chromatica — outside of The Fame Monster, it's her most consistent record. There's not a single track that's a glaring mistake. And the three singles — "Stupid Love," "911" and the triumphant Ariana Grande duet "Rain On Me" — easily stand among her best tracks.

But although "all bangers, no ballads" album sounds rad in theory, it doesn't really succeed in practice. Chromatica is solid, but it's also a very same-y record. It feels like Gaga had one really great idea for the album ('90s club music with super-depressing lyrics) and repeated it over and over and over again to diminishing results.

There are some songs that are able to separate themselves: the three singles, of course, as well as the goofy "Babylon" and "Sine From Above," the Elton John duet that's the closest Chromatica gets to a ballad. But by the end of the album, you feel more worn out than electrified.

Also — and this is probably unfair, but still — Chromatica came out just a couple months after another retro-dance blockbuster pop album: Dua Lipa's magnum opus, Future Nostalgia. That's not a flattering comparison.

BEST SONGS: "Rain On Me," "Stupid Love," "911"

WORST SONG: "1000 Doves"

#4: The Fame (2008)

Out of all of Gaga's records, The Fame is most like a time capsule. It REEKS of late '00s/early '10s pop — which isn't an entirely fair criticism, seeing as Gaga popularized that era's sleazy, synthy aesthetic. It's also not a bad thing! I don't mind a little nostalgia!

As you already know, The Fame's singles are masterworks. "Just Dance," "Poker Face," "Paparazzi" — these tracks have titanic legacies for good reason. And although it's probably the least-beloved of this album's hits, despite being a total banger, "LoveGame" should still be commended for having arguably the most Gaga lyric ever (you know, the "disco stick" line).

And even though those tracks are front-loaded on The Fame, there are some gems deeper in the tracklist. "Summerboy" is basically Gwen Stefani covering The Strokes (so obviously, it's great). "Eh, Eh" is adorable. "Starstruck" is the most 2008 song ever recorded, with aggressive Auto-Tune and Flo Rida showing up to make Starbucks jokes.

Sadly, The Fame still feels like Gaga before she became fully-formed at certain points. The back half has a number of songs that feel like generic club tracks forced by the label, and "Paper Gangsta" is one of the clunkiest songs in Gaga's catalogue.

But at the very least, the bad songs on The Fame at least serve as little nostalgia bombs for that era of pop. And the best songs are untouchable classics.

BEST SONGS: "Paparazzi," "Just Dance," "Summerboy"

WORST SONG: "Paper Gangsta"

#3: ARTPOP (2013)

For much of Gaga's career, she's been ahead of the curve. She tries something, and a year or a few years later, other popstars try something similar to diminishing results.

That doesn't just apply to the successful stuff, like Gaga's extravagant music videos inspiring many copycats from 2010-2013. It also applies to the mid-late '10s trend of legacy popstars making a controversial record with risky aesthetic or lyrical choices that backfired: reputation. Witness. Man of The Woods.

Gaga did this first, with ARTPOP — arguably the most abrasive, and bizzare major label album released by a major modern popstar. And she did it better, because unlike Swift, Perry and Timberlake, Gaga's weirdness was for real. And it was in service of some prime, hyper-aggressive bangers.

ARTPOP isn't Gaga's best work — some of her experiments on it are major misfires, from the obnoxious "Mary Jane Holland" to the bland Born This Way leftover (and Romani slur-utilizing) "Gypsy."

But when ARTPOP is on, it's ON. The opening stretch in particular, from "Aura" to "Venus" to "G.U.Y." to "Sexxx Dreams," is chaotic synthpop at its finest. Those songs took Gaga's classic sound to an apocalyptic, demented extreme, and they're fantastic.

"MANiCURE" is a great glam-rock banger, "Dope" is another classic Gaga piano ballad, the title track is some sikly-smooth dreampop; even the misguided, clunky trap anthem "Jewels N' Drugs" is bad in a hilarious, charming way!

Trust me: ARTPOP will go down in history not as a flop, but as a gutsy, underrated record from a legend. Less Witness, more In Utero.

BEST SONGS: "G.U.Y.," "Venus," "Sexxx Dreams"

WORST SONG: "Gypsy"

#2: The Fame Monster (2009)

Objectively speaking, this is probably the best Gaga album.

It's her one record with no fluff, no filler — only 34 minutes and 8 tracks, all of them stellar.

It's the record that took Gaga from "wow, this new woman is a fresh new face in pop!" to "this woman IS pop."

It's the record with her signature track, "Bad Romance," which was accompanied by arguably the greatest music video of the 21st Century. (It also has my absolute favorite Gaga track, the relentlessly catchy "Telephone.")

I don't think I need to explain what makes mega-smashes "Bad Romance" and "Telephone" and "Alejandro" great, nor the accompanying legendary deep cuts "Speechless" and "Dance In The Dark." They speak for themselves.

However — the sleek, calculated perfection of The Fame Monster, while incredible, isn't something I return to often. It's just not the side of Gaga that's my favorite. That honor would have to go to...

BEST SONGS: "Telephone," "Dance In The Dark," "Bad Romance"

WORST SONG: "So Happy I Could Die" (but it's still pretty solid)

#1: Born This Way (2011)

One of my favorite podcasts is Blank Check. The concept of the show is to analyze each movie by a famous director — in particular, those who had big success early on and then got a blank check to make whatever crazy passion project they wanted. Here's a great example: because Batman was a massive hit, Tim Burton got to make whatever Hot Topic-core movies he wanted to for decades, from Edward Scissorhands to a creepy Willy Wonka remake.

That long-winded tangent is just to say: Born This Way was Lady Gaga's blank check. By early 2011, she had conquered the pop universe, notching hit after hit after hit. Every other pop star was copying her quirky music videos. So the label let Gaga do whatever she wanted — and she didn't waste that opportunity.

Born This Way is wildly overproduced. It's both extremely trend-chasing (those synths were cutting edge at the time but charmingly dated now), but also deeply uncaring about what the teens want (I don't think Springsteen and Queen homages were big at the time). And I love every messy, overblown second of it.

From the hair-metal/synthpop hybrid opener "Marry The Night" to the majestic '80s power ballad "The Edge of Glory," Born This Way starts at an 11. And Gaga never takes her foot off the pedal for the album's entire hour-plus run time. Clanging electric guitars, thunderous synths and Clarence Clemons (!!!) sax solos collide into each other as Gaga champions every misfit and loser in the world. It's gloriously corny in the best way possible.

Born This Way is also the perfect middle ground of pop-savvy Gaga and gonzo Gaga. It doesn't go quite as hard as ARTPOP, but the hooks are stronger. And the oddball moments are tons of fun, from the sci-fi biker anthem "Highway Unicorn" to the goofy presidential-sex banger "Government Hooker" ("Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy" might be the greatest line in pop history).

Born This Way will always be my favorite Gaga album. It's armed with nuclear-grade hooks, slamming beats, and soaring anthems. Although it's not as untouchably pristine as the Mt. Rushmore of '10s pop classics (for the record, that's 1989, EMOTION, Lemonade and, of course, Melodrama), Gaga isn't best served by meticulousness. She's proudly tacky and histrionic, and so that's what makes Born This Way an utter joy.

BEST SONGS: "The Edge of Glory," "You and I," "Marry The Night"

WORST SONG: "Bloody Mary"

[profoundsheepbarbarian]

A Beginner's Guide To Acoustic Treatment

An account of an acoustic newbie's journey from bare walls to a well‑balanced, sonically pleasant space.

The physics of the propagation of sound is immensely complicated, and when the assortment of materials that make up the walls, floors and ceiling (plus any windows, doors and furniture) are added to the equation, it's very difficult to predict what will happen to sound waves once they've left their source. What's more, every room is different, and it's not just the dimensions that will dictate how the room will sound... Imagine two rooms of the same shape and size. One has two‑metre-thick concrete walls, and the other a single‑layer plasterboard stud-wall. Even with those brief, albeit extreme descriptions, you probably know already that the two rooms will sound very different. Add in the multitude of room shapes, sizes, wall‑construction methods and surfaces found in home studios, and it becomes impossible to provide a one-size-fits-all guide to acoustic panel treatment.

The subject of acoustics is regularly discussed in SOS, but plenty of readers still ask for the subject to be covered from a much more basic starting point. What follows is a look at installing acoustic treatment from a complete beginner's perspective: some basic, essential information, along with a bit of advice from acoustics professionals that should give you the confidence to get started. I'll follow this up by taking you step by step through my own recent experience of treating a room.

Why Bother With Acoustic Treatment?

Untreated rooms have an uneven frequency response, which means that any mixing decisions you make are being based on a sound that is 'coloured', because you can't accurately hear what's being played. In short, you can't possibly tell how your mix will sound when played back anywhere else. It isn't just an issue for mixing, though, because any recordings you make of acoustic instruments will bear all the hallmarks of the space in which you record them. That may be a good thing if the space in question is Ocean Way or SARM West, but probably preposterously bad if it's your living room or bedroom. So, if you want your mixes to transfer well, and your recordings to be free of room 'honk', you need to pay attention to the acoustic properties of your environment — no matter how good the gear you're using.

First Things First

The first thing to grasp is the outcome you want to achieve. It's a common misconception that acoustic treatment with acoustic ceilings or acoustic baffles should kill all reverberation, and that you want a room covered floor‑to‑ceiling with foam tiles: this isn't what you're aiming for. You also need to bear in mind the limitations imposed by space and budget: most home studios are small in comparison with the Abbey Roads and AIR Lyndhursts of this world, and many home‑studio owners simply don't have the funds for bespoke treatment solutions.

So what is the aim? Andy Munro, acoustic design specialist, remarks, "acoustic design is the science that restores a neutral sound balance”. Applying that science means interfering with the path of sound to control the sound energy. Jorge Castro, chief acoustician at Vicoustic, says that "in the case of affordable treatment, we need to control the energy of the sound first. Then we can take care of the sound quality. With small spaces, bass frequencies are always a problem, and we should control the low frequencies as much as we can.” In fact, he continues, "In small rooms, I've never heard people saying they have too much absorption of low frequencies.”

Absorption & Diffusion: What, Where, Why?

To achieve the right balance, there are two main approaches: absorption and diffusion. Products that have absorptive properties include foam and rigid mineral-wool (see the 'DIY & Rockwool' box), and they 'soak up' the sound energy, turning it into heat, through friction. Most effective on high‑frequencies, absorption is essential for reducing flutter echoes and for taming bright‑sounding or 'ringy' rooms. Bass trapping is also a type of absorption, but is specifically designed to absorb low‑frequency energy. A clever combination of soft, hard, thick and thin materials, including air, is used to make the most efficient bass trap, and an empty gap between the wall and the back of the trap helps to make it even more effective.

Diffusion is the scattering of sound energy using multi‑faceted surfaces. Diffusers are commonly made of wood, plastic, or even polystyrene. Jorge Castro explains: "diffusion helps in energy control and improves the sound quality in frequencies throughout the middle and high range of the spectrum, and also improves sweet‑spot image.” The 'sweet spot' is the place between the speakers where you should be sitting to get the best stereo image (imagine that your head and the two speakers form an equilateral triangle). That pretty much concludes the theory: now for the practice!

Getting Started

Before undertaking this project, I'd read plenty about acoustics, but had never attempted to properly treat a room myself: the nearest I'd come was propping foam panels against the walls to tame flutter in the spare‑room‑cum‑studio of my rented house. I hadn't been able to glue or screw anything to the walls, for fear of incurring my landlord's wrath, and the thought of retouching the paintwork after tearing strips of self‑adhesive velcro pained me too! So this was very much a learning experience.

The space in question included an area that would provide a reasonable‑sized live room, and another that would serve as a small control room, and although both were important, I really wanted to get the performance space right. I decided that I'd buy commercially available panels, because I simply didn't have the time, space or inclination for the DIY option. Most manufacturers of acoustic products also offer a consultation service, and they often have free on‑line calculators to help you decide on a suitable treatment option, too, so even if you choose the DIY route this can be a sensible place to start, and fabric acoustic panels are also available.

I chose to get my treatment from Vicoustic, a company relatively new to the UK acoustic‑treatment market who make a range of products for studios and home theatres. I told them that, as this was the only live room for a small project studio, it needed to be quite versatile, with both a 'dead' corner for dry recordings and a more ambient space to liven up acoustic recordings where needed. I'd expected a solution with almost complete wall coverage, foam panels and diffusers covering every square inch, but Vicoustic came back with a plan that surprised me, which suggested that total coverage wasn't necessary.

In fact, Jorge says that the typical home studio needs only between 30 and 40 percent coverage to adequately treat it. So don't go over the top: remember that we're trying to control the energy, or "restore the natural sound balance,” and not to kill the sound completely.

As for the proportion of diffusion to absorption, Jorge says, "some believe it should be 50 percent absorption and 50 percent diffusion. In the home studio, because of budget and space constraints, the actual proportion can vary considerably.”

Planning

So, you've decided on your acoustic foam treatment, you've had it delivered, and it's piled in the middle of the room. The next step is sticking it up on the walls, right? Well yes... but you also want to make sure that it goes in the right place, partly to optimise its acoustic performance, and partly because you don't want it to look like it's been put up by a two‑year old! As a first‑timer, I found it useful to have the 3D drawings Vicoustic had supplied, as they enabled me to plan precisely where each panel would go. You can create a computer‑generated version of your room yourself using a freeware 3D drawing programme such as Google Sketchup (http://sketchup.google.com). This may seem a bit over the top (sketches on the back of an envelope would do the job), but it can provide a useful guide to print out and use like a map during installation. What's more, you can plan the look of a room, moving tiles and panels around on the computer instead of having to rip them off the wall if they look silly.

Measure Twice, Stick Once

With my 'map' in hand, it was time to mark up the walls. The Vicoustic plans showed the panels equally spaced along the walls, but without any dimensions or measurements to indicate how to space the tiles, so I measured the whole room and planned the position of all the panels supplied. A quick and easy formula for plotting the position of a row of equally spaced panels soon emerged. To calculate the distance between each panel, and between the end panels and the walls, you just measure the length of the wall, subtract the total width of all the panels to be fixed to it, then divide that figure by the number of gaps between panels (or by the number of panels plus one). Marking up is then a cinch, but to get things looking good, you'll need to mark the corner points and will require a spirit level and a spare pair of hands. Once plotted and marked, it's also a good idea to double‑check that you have the same number of actual panels as you have on your plan!

Stick 'Em Up!

With the planning done, it's time to stick the panels to the walls and ceiling. The way you do this depends on the type of treatment you're applying. Large, framed panels will come with brackets and (hopefully) sturdy fixings, whereas foam‑based tiles will need to be glued, using an aerosol‑based product or a tube of paste‑like glue that needs a skeleton gun. Spray‑mounting can often give less than satisfactory results, so I was glad to discover that the Vicoustic delivery included the tube variety. With just two tubes supplied, though, I soon had to resort to alternatives, and found that the sticky gunk used to fix mirrors to walls worked exceptionally well.

To prevent the glue squidging out from the sides of the panels, I piped the glue on no less than an inch from the guide line on the wall and on the back of the panel itself, in different patterns, to increase the adhesion. With this kind of glue, I found that it would begin to set in about a minute, allowing just enough time to pull the panel off and turn it if it was the wrong way up. When sticking panels to the ceiling, I took the same approach. It was a textured ceiling, which called for lots of glue and a firm hand to seat the panels: again, it's useful if you can get a friend to lend a hand.

Hearing The Result

Once in place, the Vicoustic treatment worked very well. The main part of the room is now nicely controlled, if a bit on the 'live' side, and the diffusers ensure excellent intelligibility of speech: a sure‑fire sign of good acoustic control. I had a few spare corner traps, which were put into the dry corner, to make it even more 'dead', and it will be easy to add a few smaller foam tiles to dampen the sound further if it's found to be too 'roomy' further down the line.

Having tried some recordings in the room, I'm happy to say that excellent sound barrier can be achieved between acoustic instruments and vocals by using the different areas of the room. Because the sound inside the room is controlled, the ambience can be used to good effect if a roomy sound is desired on the recording.

Ultimate Control

So far, I've only addressed the dedicated live/recording space, and most home studios are single rooms, with both the monitoring and performance areas in the same space, so I asked Andy Munro to explain how to approach treating such a space. "The best approach,” he said, "is to sketch the room out, then divide each dimension into thirds. If the mixing position is on a third ratio, and so are the speakers, they will not stand on any of the half or quarter 'standing' wavelengths that cause a peak or trough in the bass [see the 'Standing Waves' box for more information]. The result will be a smoother sound, with fewer problems when the acoustic absorption and sound barrier is added. Ironically, most professional rooms are set up about the centre line, which tends to result in a 'hole' at certain frequencies.”

Also important in monitoring rooms is the control of early reflections. When a speaker cone is driven, it disperses acoustic energy to the listener's ears directly, and also to the walls and ceiling of the room, and the best example may be acoustic diffuser. Uncontrolled, these early reflections bounce back into the room and reach the listener a few milliseconds later than the direct sounds, because of the additional distance they've had to travel. Unless in a large room, this delay is not perceivable as a different sound; instead it disturbs the phase, and therefore the clarity, of the sound. To keep early reflections on a tight leash, the 'mirror points' of the room should be identified and treated. To do this, sit in the listening position and 'guesstimate' where a mirror would have to be placed to enable you to see each monitor cone from the sweet spot. Then apply absorption to these points. A 'ceiling cloud' can be positioned in a similar way, to control vertical reflections.

Conclusion

No matter how much you spend on instruments, amps, speakers and recording gear, you still need to pay attention to the space in which you use them. The treatment of home studios is tricky, because of their size and the construction materials used, not to mention the budget of the average home‑studio owner. It's impossible to get a 'pro-studio sound' from a space that's built as a spare bedroom, mainly due to the laws of physics, but also because 'proper' studios might have big bucks spent on acoustic design with soundproof materials. But if you can get your head around what you're trying to achieve, you can still make such a space perfectly usable, with only a small amount of money, some forward planning and a little bit of knowledge.

[pinpuku]

pokemon partner/team/region request for @brisenau

original request & description under “keep reading”

zodiac: virgo (aug. 28) mbti: istj

fav colors: red, black, and blue favorite animal(s): sea creatures and dogs

hobbies: video games, reading, listening to music, watching movies aspirations: lmao i can’t even decide what to wear half of the time. i just want to do something that pays well and is enjoyable favorite area type: cities/mountainsides + cool or cloudy weather

good traits: i’m smart and sometimes even funny. i love my friends and show affection by buying them stuff or just goofing off with them. helpful, obedient, hardworking, and patient on good days. laid back most of the time (or at least i try to be)

bad traits: HOO BOY. self-loathing, lazy, selfish, materalistic, easily stressed, snarky, bitter, cold (but secretly emotional), stubborn, awkward, runs away from conflict, dependent on others (as much as i hate it), irritable. i could hate on myself for hours lol

i’m garbage at describing myself, but thank you anyway! 💚💚💚

Let’s meet your new team! 

♡ I think a good partner for you would be Ralts. Ralts is sensitive, shy, empathetic & emotional. It is also very intelligent, especially for being otherwise similar to a quiet human child. Ralts will constantly test you in a positive way without actually trying to. Raising Ralts will require you to learn how to better control & understand your feelings & internal reactions more, as Ralts will feel everything you do to some scale. When you are happy & calm, Ralts will be happy & calm and so on. This might sound like a horrible match for anyone who isn’t particularly emotionally healthy, but it can be a great chance to learn & grow for new trainers. You will benefit from having a partner that can soften & brighten your life. Raising a happy Ralts will have a trainer both consciously & subconsciously rewire their brain to think in better, healthier ways, simply for the sake of Ralts initially. Of course a plain out bad or extremely volatile person are obvious exceptions. Ralts will love affection, goofing off & being as helpful as possible to a trainer they trust & love. Ralts will bring out your best qualities. The bond between a Ralts and a good trainer will grow to be one of the strongest bonds there is. Ralts won’t tolerate you hating on yourself, freely allowing your bad traits to take full reign. However, being emotionally aware & connected to others, Ralts will be understanding & loyal even when you are just not having a great day of course, as everyone has those days including ralts!

♡ Krabby is pretty easy to care for. Just be aware you have to train it to not pinch! Trainers are often charmed by the bubble shows they can create, although not quite as grand & controlled of a scale as the Popplio line. Can grow into surprisingly strong battlers despite their diminutive size. Tentacruel is a pokemon that has a scary image & hunting style, but it is otherwise not particularly difficult to train once tamed. This is especially true if it was captive bred. Just be sure to not grab their tentacles! A dedicated & focused trainer won’t have many issues with Tentacruel. The orbs on their head glow beautifully from time to time, especially when battling. 

♡ Samurott will appreciate a trainer that has a hardworking nature. It is very skilled it battle, and it will intentionally be as proud & intimidating as possible in a fight. Samurott will help a trainer become more sturdy, unshakable & confident. They trust a capable trainer fully & have an honorable attitude in all situations. 

♡ Poochyena & Furfrou are the poke-dogs of the team! Poochyena has a wild streak to their personalities, but they are extremely loyal & obedient to their trainer. Training them to not nip at a young age is key, let them know to reserve that for rough play time & battles only! They are still puppies, and they learn quickly. They work well in teams. Furfrou is regal & serious in comparison. You have to earn their trust fully before you can touch & handle their fur too much. Once trust is earned from patience & hardwork, they are loyal & can be surprisingly fierce in battle or when protecting their loved ones. Don’t underestimate Furfrou just because they look pretty! 

As for region, I feel Sinnoh would be a perfect fit. It is a mountainous, cool region with many interesting cities. It’s rich in mythology & history, and lifestyle tends to be slower paced compared to some other regions. They have advanced technology when it comes to natural energy. 

Hope you like your team! ^~^

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Iceland to Eurovision with a plan to end capitalism... with cakes!

Meanwhile, in Iceland...

Iceland’s a peaceful nation, innit? So calm, so serene, they wouldn’t even want to squish a fly and would rather wish it a nice day if they were personified as a whole. Except that they’re actually not quite and firstly reacted rather massively negatively on the news of Israel going up for to host Eurovision 2019, even with 23,000 Icelanders signing a petition calling on the Icelandic national broadcaster to boycott the contest, and even the big Söngvakeppnin 2017 darling Daði Freyr signed it. I admire their courage but broadcasters are broadcasters and if they take proverbial decisions and later are fine with everything, I don’t see why wouldn’t try participating anyways, and THEN withdraw if there are issues with something, like last minute call from EBU to get their shit together with funding or a faulty national final contract...

Well, fuck your protests, RÚV said, and went ahead with another Söngvakeppnin edition in the works.

And boy I assume the protest was large af if only 10 entries ended up being chosen for the final cut... what was Iceland gonna do? Have 4 finalists in total? Well no, someone was gonna get a wildcard to round up the finalists in the end.

But enough about that. Out of all of those 10 acts, full of mostly okay songs, we saw a clear win for the ones and only - it's the anti-capitalist award winning techno BDSM bondage unicorn soft boy couple goals kids loving sprinkles and rainbows performance art project group Hatari that went and enjoyed their time in Tel Aviv already, with their kick-ass song, "Hatrið mun sigra".

And oh boy was it an exciting pick for Iceland. Do you remember their last year's entry? Well, this year Iceland decided to shit all over their love and peace mindset by presenting us with series of bold statements like "Life is meaningless!", "Happiness comes to an end!", "Europe will crumble!"... right after the year they were all about the choice we could make to help and to heal in different ways. Feels though as if we should have swapped the entries because with "Hatrið mun sigra"'s events coming to life, "Our Choice" sounds like an aftermath because with happiness ending, so are people's stabilities, and too many would indeed be dying in vain. And how the world is starting to learn all over again about the acceptance of one another, and all that. It truly is Ari in the streets and Hatari in the sheets. ;)

Let's take a minute to appreciate the entry itself though. It opens up with eerie buzzes, off-measure beat and a warning "huh!" shout, that leads us all into this beautiful musical kingdom. Its instrumental is badass. It's one hypnotic techno tune that could easily be used in a car commercial. Or a catwalk. Or a glorious boss fight in an 8 bit game. What makes it more unique is the vocal balance - Hatari's core force are the two cousins Matthías and Klemens, who created the band and recruited their friends to help them on tours I suppose, and now the friends are here with them in Tel Aviv. The thing that makes it somewhat eyebrow raising, despite being a damn fine techno piece, is the instant screaming of the lyrics in the verses (courtesy of Matthías) and the light angel-esque vocal sound that's kinda reminiscent of Sigur Rós's Jónsi (courtesy of Klemens). Yin-yang if you will. A subtle balance of the two, and even the Icelandic meme mother Morges pointed it out that if it were only Matthías's growls on the song or Klemens's falsetto, it would sound too much and people would be bored by it.

Other than this song being perfectly composed (even with including a god damn keychange) and making me wanna dance, there's an image tying it all together. I did say it earlier that one part of Hatari's many descriptions is BDSM and bondage. And this definitely is there on their imagery, especially on the Icelandic NF. The boxes, the choreography, the color red, the backgrounds... everything on here is life. The way Matthías gets one of the Hatari dancers by the neck at the very end of their NF performance is just... unexplainably flawless. Go watch it here.

Some might say that this whole thing is more reminiscent of AWS from last year, but this isn't quite true. AWS were simple boys with nothing much in mind for Eurovision other than to make a "typical metal show". Hatari are here with a proper message to dismantle capitalism. AWS were just fun, Hatari are both fun and condescending. AWS didn't really have all that buzz going on for themselves in the odds, Hatari are still sitting in bookies top 10 as of now. AWS didn't prepare anything shocking for the audiences other than playing really loud and the scream breakdown only coming in on the bridge of the song. Hatari is full on onto you with everything - the costumes, the words, and so on, and the screaming is already on with them verses. And Hatari have way more chances to be memorable than AWS by being completely outstanding in everything. We love bondage kings singing in Icelandic (the language's 2nd appearance in Eurovision from an Icelandic song in this decade, first time it happened in 2013). We truly do. (And so do I still love the AWS boys, don't mind me.)

So as a whole I'd like to say that I really, REALLY adore this. It's expressive, it's divisive, it's brave, it doesn't care if you hate it, it's there and it's divine. I didn't really piece my thoughts well together on this, but I will forever find a lot of nice things to say on it, after all this time, always. ♡ The whole team and the whole marketing from Iceland Music News is perfect. The song is perfect. The composition is perfect. The chorus and the chorus lyrics are love. The performance... could use some good camerawork, but still. I'm crying at how much this is beautiful. Iceland's alternative scene is banging and them finally submitting something from one of its many outskirts among all of those pop songs is a victory on its own. Love, love, love Hatari. I bow down to these great people for existing and ending up on Eurovision.

Now tell me, how are you not going to love a band that was noticed by Icethony Landtano himself? ★

And how are you not going to love a band that loves children? And cakes? If you don’t, then shame on you, really. ;p

Approval factor: no. ....... way I’m not going to approve this ;) I want more epic Iceland after that, too.

Follow-up factor: Actually, that's the best possible way of approval I've ever seen. It's a complete 180 of an entry jump that it's impossible to believe the angel Ari came before Hatari. Good job, Iceland! Keep going that good way!

Qualification factor: Well, this is a case of all or nothing, where an entry is so loudly and proudly different that you don't know exactly where is it gonna place. If AWS had some sort of struggles to qualify (they were 4 fucking points over Romania last year), so would have Hatari, but only if the televote doesn't give them enough love against the jury's hatred. But for now I'd remain extremely and utterly positive over the boys. =) The final will hear of that song about the dystopia, the power and powerlessness, the hope and hopelessness, and that if we don't remember to love, the hatred will prevail and the capitalism will overwhelm the world. (so I secretly hope for them to win too haha)

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

Honestly, thank you RÚV for making Söngvakeppnin 2019 happen despite the petition. I love it how a band with the most shocking atmosphere won - kinda embodies the feeling of most of this nation's about what's going in Israel and Palstine. But no more on that. I'll not discuss that anymore. It's highlights time:

• At this point, who needs NF highlights if Hatari are highlights themselves. ♥ I love a token unphased contestant - the one that minds one's own business by not being overly happy - in fact, most of the things that occured to Hatari are, in their own words, "according to plan"! So they're all like, "yeah we entered and thanks to us being here, we're definitely winning this, and will definitely win Eurovision after winning that". Them drinking SodaDream in their tracksuits and not giving a single fuck about the surroundings, especially after being announced as qualifiers to the NF final, was an absolute #mood. They even were amazing on a show named 12stig (where Icelandic NF participants are talking about what will they do in the NF, what will they do if they make it to Tel Aviv after winning, etc.), with Matthías basically serving as the spokesperson for Klemens's piece of mind, and then them both doing a hand gesture,.. Communicating through one's whispers being voiced by a mastermind. Sounds like a horror movie concept.

• And no, I didn't love Hatari only - there was this one joyful great love pop song bearer finalist Tara Mobee whose song I liked. Other favourite acts include this indie blues number by a Faroese madame Kristina Skoubo, a silly pop/dance perfection by Daníel Óliver and a country-ish flavoured folk-ish pop song by Ívar Daníels. Granted they're too tame in comparison to Hatari, but they could have been other great alternatives for Eurovision! Unlike the two returning artists that competed... Hera Björk being one of them... she signed the petition against Iceland in 2019 Eurovision FFS! and yet she's here with her mind changed??

• Ari Ólafsson returning for a both winner reprise AND an epic and unexpected take on "Grande amore", one of the beloved Italian entries. Can't believe that actually became a thing but... here you go I suppose? Flawless vocals. If anyone deserves to repeat their ESC stint from Iceland, it's Ari.

• Other highlights of the final night were Yohanna reprising her 2nd placer smash hit "Is It True?" 10 years later and even doing an Icelandic "Shallow" cover with the hosts ❤ and even Selma from Jerusalem 1999 fame came on the show too, but only in the green room!

• That one time I saw Friðrik Ómar (one of the two returning artist potential contestants) wearing a Freddie Mercury shirt ❤

• This honest to God mess of a performance and honest to God mess of a song. The song was a football anthem from 00s ripoff, the guy looked like Lil Pump and sounded annoying ("BLÆ BLÆ BLÆ"), the girls were salvageable, the chorus is cute and the performance? "So how many colors and dancers do you want?" "Yes." I hated it but 'twas fun I s'pose.

• I loved laughing at certain things of Söngvakeppnin, like the random insert of all the other contestants into ads and a lot of times I had to see the recap of all the (super)finalists. That's the only non-musical highlight I have aside from postcards, sorry Eleni. ❤ Your repeat performance of "Fuego"/"Tómame" from the Spanish NF and your trashbag dresses were still sleek tho.

Think that's all I'm gonna talk about. For now I would just love to end this by saying that Hatari might be scary, but children indeed love them (a lot of Hatari support posters in the NF were held by children, some of them teens even had bondage masks lol. Besides, 2 of the main members (if you count the band’s drummer Einar alongside the main members list) have kids on their own so it's understandable). Hatari might be impudent, but it attracts some people who love crazy in Eurovision. Hatari might be too political, but they're here in Tel Aviv to raise awareness, not to outright fucking protest - they know their goddamn limits, okay?? So for now, I'd just like to wish everyone involved in Iceland's entry the best in their life and to know that they contributed to one of the best things that happened to Eurovision. Only the eternal glory to the Icelandic lords and saviours. HATRED CAN AND WILL PREVAIL, END OF.

Oh and cakes!

[phinnsyreads]

Interview Log 026-01

Interview with ████ █████, former principal at SCP-026.

Agent ██████: Thank you for your time, Mr. █████.

█████: Not at all. If there's one thing I have plenty of these days, it's time.

Agent ██████: So, let's get down to business. You were principal of [REDACTED] back in [REDACTED], is that correct?

█████: Yes, that's right.

Agent ██████: What can you tell us about that?

█████: Well, you've heard the stories, I'm sure. Folks say it was haunted. I don't know about that, but things did seem strange towards the end.

Agent ██████: Tell me about them.

█████: Let's see, there were the stairs, of course. You've heard about that, right? People would count fifteen coming up and sixteen coming back down. I'm sure there was a trick to it, like an optical illusion, but I never could figure it out. And we had a history book that turned up completely blank. [Pauses] I suppose these seem rather tame. But you know how it is. Little things add up. People tell stories.

Agent ██████: Tell me about the dreams.

█████: The dreams? Oh, yes. People were complaining about nightmares. Mostly students, but a few of the staff as well. It was always about school never ending. We joked about it at first, but more people talked about it. I didn't put much credence into it, but, well, when we found the blueprints didn't match up with the school, it seemed easier just to move to a new building. The schoolhouse was old, anyway, and we wanted a fresh start. And, just like that, things seemed to settle back to normal.

Agent ██████: I see. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

█████: Hmm. [Pauses] It's not really much, but maybe it will make a nice footnote in that book you're writing. I still sometimes have dreams about being in my office, back at the old schoolhouse. Sometimes I'm doing paperwork, sometimes I'm talking to someone, but it's always back behind the desk, just like old times. But gradually, I notice something's a bit off. The bell's ringing, but I don't hear anyone in the hallway. No students hurrying in or out of the classroom, no chatter, no footsteps, nothing but the bell. And it doesn't stop. The crazy thing is that I never notice it's a dream until then. I've been retired for ten years, but until I notice the bell, I think everything's normal. Crazy, isn't it?

Agent ██████: I think it's very interesting. Thank you very much. If you think of anything else, don't hesitate to give me a call.

█████: Any time.

Item #: SCP-026

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-026 is to remain securely locked and boarded up at all times when there is no research ongoing. Alarms are set to alert the Foundation in case of entry by civilians or other agencies.

Description: SCP-026 is a three (3) story public school building built in ████. It has two (2) wings connected to a central foyer. It was declared condemned in ████ after it was found the floor plan didn't match up to the building's blueprints (see Interview Log 026-01). It came to the Foundation's attention after several disappearances in the area were linked to visits to the abandoned building.

The building demonstrates spatial anomalies. Its internal space is much greater than the external surface of the building would allow. Hallways display variable length, while stairways have differing numbers of steps going up or down. The number of rooms off the hallways changes each time they are counted. Attempts to reach the far ends of the hallways have met with failure thus far. Entrance through the fire escapes located at the ends of the hallways leads to doors approximately midway down the length of the halls.

EDIT: See Note 026-A

There is considerable graffiti on the interior walls of the school. Most appears typical, including gang signs, names, and street art. However, the graffiti fades and reappears, changing location. Writing on chalkboards and bulletin boards changes in a similar fashion. Subjects typically found range from standard school subjects (mathematics, literature, biology), to more esoteric subjects, such as quantum entanglement, ████████, and eugenics. One researcher reported one board detailing information about SCP-████, but photographic evidence showed only a blank slate. The contents of notepads, books, and pieces of paper have been observed to disappear, only to reappear on surfaces within SCP-026. New writings have appeared, mostly drawn from graffiti or text-books. Note: caution should be exercised in bringing documents onto the grounds of SCP-026. The phrase "The children used to sing" has appeared multiple times in various places throughout the building, but there is currently no explanation for its significance.

A number of unconscious subjects have been found in the building, mostly of high school age, ranging from twelve to eighteen. They are dressed in accordance to the school's dress code, circa ████. Several have been identified as former students or faculty of the school who disappeared after the school shut down (in at least one case, more than ten years after the closure). It is currently unknown how they were transported back into SCP-026. (See Note 026-B)

All attempts to wake the subjects while inside the building have failed. On being removed from the grounds of SCP-026, the subjects wake abruptly. They experience a period of confusion, before dying from extremely rapid dehydration, followed by advanced decomposition. No useful intelligence has been recovered from the subjects to date.

The inability to wake subjects extends to those who fall asleep on the grounds of SCP-026, though the rapid dehydration only seems to affect those who have been found on the grounds of the school. See Incident Report 026-12.

Incident Report 026-12 During a routine security check of SCP-026, Agent Malek was found unconscious by his partner, Agent Jones, in the main foyer. Initial attempts at rousing Agent Malek were ineffective, so he was moved for transportation to Site ██. Upon leaving the grounds of SCP-026, he woke abruptly in a state of agitation. When questioned, he revealed that he had been dreaming of a classroom setting. This dream has been consistent throughout all subjects who have fallen asleep within the grounds of SCP-026.

Note 026-A: Robotic exploration and video feeds have shown that the apparent spatial anomalies are caused by changes in the perceptions of observers, rather than actual spatial phenomena. For this reason, SCP-026 does not require the expertise of Mobile Task Force Rho-8 "Roadside Picnickers" at this time.

UPDATE: Further exploration has shown that some spatial phenomena do occur. See the Exploration Logs for more details.

Exploration Log 026-4 Exploration conducted by Agent ███████

"All right, I'm walking into the lobby. Walls are mostly bare concrete, a little paint here and there. Graffiti everywhere. A few beer bottles, some other trash. Looks like just another abandoned building.

"Okay, I'm making my way up the stairs. More graffiti on the walls. Okay, I'm going into the hallway. The peeling paint is kind of creepy. Looks like some sort of sheet fungus. Reminds me of [REDACTED]. The doors are kind of weird. Some are really close, others are far. Really irregular spacing. Doesn't match up with the blueprint you showed me. Okay, here's a classroom. Pretty empty. Some old desks. Real old, like they had in the thirties. The chalkboard's got a few math problems on it. Looks like trig. Okay, I'm going to check out another room.

"Back in the hallway. Heading to the next room. Desks look more modern in this room. Made from particle board. More posters here. Look to be from the eighties, I'd say. I recognize some of them from when I was a kid. Looks like Latin on the chalkboard. Yes, I'm taking pictures.

"Okay, back in the hallway. Heading to the next room.

[Several minutes of silence]

"There's something really screwy with this place. I could swear the room was just a few feet away, but it feels like I've been walking for hours. Anyway, I'm here.

"We've got sleepers. Three of them, two girls and a boy. They look to be around fourteen, fifteen. They're all wearing the same uniform. Yeah, just like you showed me. Hang on a minute while I take some pictures. At least we can figure out who they are.

"The furniture's pretty old looking, what's left of it. Lot of broken chairs and desks. Nothing on the walls. Chalkboard's… The hell?

"You're not going to believe this, ████. It's got Agent █████████'s notes up there. In her handwriting, even. We're going to have to be really careful what we bring in here.

"Yeah, I've got pictures, don't worry. Okay, I'm going to check one more room, and then I'm out.

"Back in the hallway now. Heading for the next room.

"Another anomaly. I've been going the same direction this entire time, but I'm back at the stairs. Yeah, I'm just going to head down. I've had enough of this place for one day. I'll meet you at the door."

The developed photos revealed [REDACTED]

----

Exploration Log 026-12 Carried out remotely using a robotic drone via video feed. Exploring the first floor hallway.

The hallway appeared in poor condition, with graffiti on the walls. Comparison with previous videos shows the graffiti has changed. Many of the same signs were present, but in different positions. Some seemed new.

Doors were uniformly spaced on the wall. Some were intact, while others were cracked or missing entirely.

First room in the hallway was the girl's bathroom. More graffiti on the walls. Several broken mirrors. A toilet had been removed from the wall entirely and placed in the center of the room. There was a great deal of porcelain and glass on the floor.

The next room over was the boy's bathroom. This was skipped in favor of exploring the classrooms.

The first classroom had no furniture. The chalkboard was broken in two. On one side of the board, there was a set of lines reading "I will not pass notes during cla (sic)." The other side had fragments of a lesson on [REDACTED]. There was one poster on the wall, depicting Helen Keller.

The second classroom was well furnished, with the largest number of intact desks to date, mostly made from wood and steel in a style used in the 1950's. There were two sleepers found that had not been reported in previous sweeps of the building. The first was a male teenager in a student's desk. Comparison with File 026-04 revealed him to be ██████ ███, a former student of the school. He was reported missing ten years after the school closed down, at age twenty-eight. The other was a woman in her mid-thirties sitting behind the teacher's desk. Her identity is still unknown. The chalkboard had a timeline of World War 2, overlaid with an intricate piece of graffiti.

The third classroom had fifteen particle-board desks in various states of disrepair. A map on the back wall was consistent with the sociopolitical conditions of 1974. A bookshelf had collapsed, and spilled a set of encyclopedias onto the floor.

The robot was then guided to the end of the hallway and back to the entrance. There was no sign of spatial anomalies at this time.

----

Exploration Log 026-15 Exploration conducted by Agent █████, accompanied by a robotic drone.

"Okay, I'm in. Lobby looks like it always does. Probably some graffiti drift. Here comes the robot."

The lobby was compared to previous videos. Some differences in the graffiti were noted. Otherwise, no significant changes.

"I'm heading upstairs now. Goddamn, the robot's heavy. How much crap did you load on it? You could've warned me. Gonna rest a second on the second landing. Video coming in all right? Cool, cool."

First set of stairs was navigated without trouble. The second floor hallway appeared similar to the first floor hallway, though with less debris.

"I've caught my breath. Heading up to the third floor. Wish there was a guard rail… Next time, it might be easier to carry the robot and the gear separately, and load it in once it's up. The gear's pretty idiot proof. I think I could probably figure it out. Damn thing must weigh over a hundred pounds. There, on the third floor now. I count… twelve doors. Weird spacing. That last door's got to be at least a hundred yards down. This place is pretty messed up."

Rangefinder showed the hallway was approximately forty-five meters long. Five doors on each side, evenly spaced, with one more door at the end of the hall. Eleven total.

"I'm heading in. There's not as much graffiti up here. A bit of debris. I'm opening one of the doors. Janitor's closet, and, hey, we've got a janitor. He's sleeping standing up. That's new. Male, seems to be in his mid-fifties. Nametag says ‘███████.’ A couple old broomsticks, what's left of a mop… Looks like rats have been nesting in here. They've shredded one of his pantlegs, but looks like they didn't touch the sleeper himself. What? You want samples? Eh, sure. Wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've picked up for this job. Okay, I think that's it."

Comparison with File 026-4 revealed the sleeper to be ████ ████████, former janitor in SCP-026. Later analysis of the rat feces revealed [REDACTED]. Recommended future exploration teams wear biohazard gear.

"Here's a classroom. No, no sleepers. Couple of desks intact, the rest looks pretty bad. Looks like someone took a sledgehammer to the place. No, wait, I stand corrected. Baseball bat. It's leaning against the corner. There's about half a case of beer here, full cans. Looks like they left in a hurry. Hey, get the robot to face the board. There's something I want you to see. Looks like Latin to me. Could be significant. Get someone to translate it, it might be a clue to what's gone down here."

The Latin was found to be a series of sentences showing different conjugations of the verb vendo, to sell. All were found in ███████'s Latin Primer, a textbook formerly used by the school. The baseball bat was aluminum, and analysis of the fingerprints was inconclusive.

"Okay, next classroom. Desks look fairly modern. Eighties, I'd guess. Chalkboard's got a quote from Nicholas Nickleby on it. Yes, I'm sure. It says right there on the board. 'The sun does not shine upon this fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon it.' Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens. There's an apple on the desk. Looks fresh. I'm tossing it into the drone. Okay, I'm looking out the window. Hey, are you guys still out there? Because I see kids in the schoolyard. I don't see the van, or any of you. Yeah, second classroom on the right. You see me? Weird."

The apple appeared fresh on the video feed. However, when removed from the samples bin, it was in an advanced state of decomposition. The drone's feed through the window showed the Foundation van on the ground, and the research team looking up at the window. No children were seen in the schoolyard.

"Okay, you want me to head down the hallway? All right. Let's see if I actually make it this time. Not holding out any hopes. Walking forward. It looks ten feet to the next door, which would actually put it in the last room, but who's counting?

"I'm still here. It's just farther than it looks. Feels like I've been walking at least a couple of hours. I'm almost there. I'm just going to take a breather. I—Okay, this is wrong. I've stopped moving, but now I'm going backwards. The hallway's moving past me. Shit, I just saw the door move past me. I'm moving forward again. That's better.

"Okay, I'm almost there. One last dash and I should make it. And I'm back with the robot. I knew it wasn't going to work. There's no way to get there, I'm telling you."

The video feed showed the next door was thirty feet away. The total elapsed time from one door to the next was five minutes, in which time Agent █████ meandered toward the end of the hallway. No anomalous activity was observed while he was standing still. When he neared the end of the hallway, Agent █████ turned around and quickly returned to the beginning of the hallway.

"Okay, I hear you. I've got my eyes closed. I'm walking forward. Left, got it. Going straight. Correcting left again. Correcting right now. Okay, this is going a lot faster. Okay, correcting right. Yes, right, I heard you. Goddamnit, I am going right! Okay, left. No it is not the same direction! Look, if you think it's that easy, just send the robot in."

The robot was able to reach the end of the hallway with no problems. Agent █████ attempted to follow, but was unable to keep a straight line to the end of the hallway.

"Just go ahead and send the bot in. I'm not going to try again until we have a better idea what's in there. Something's keeping me out of there. We should figure out what it is before anything else. Look, if you want to know that badly, go yourself or request some Class Ds. I'm not going in. Deal with it."

At this point the robot opened the door and crossed the threshold into another hallway, running perpendicular to the first, thirty meters in length. No doors were visible. A single window was observed but was situated too high for the view outside to be visible. The walls were free of graffiti. The left was a dead-end, while the right terminated in a left-hand turn. The robot turned right into the new hallway. After ten meters, the unit's GPS showed it to be outside the building, though the video feed still showed the hallway. It continued to the end of the hallway, and turned left. Agent █████ was just ahead, at the beginning of the original hallway. Turning the camera behind the robot showed only the stairwell, with no sign of the second hallway. The unit's GPS showed it by Agent █████'s position at this time.

"I see another classroom. I don't see the robot, though. I lost track after it went through the door. What do you mean it's outside? Did it go out through the window? Look, maybe the GPS is screwy. Calm down. What do you mean turn around? What the hell am I—Oh, fuck! Okay, that's enough. I'm calling it off for the day. We can come back after we get some Class Ds in here."

Note 026-B: Several class D personnel exposed to SCP-026 have disappeared from Foundation control, only to reappear inside the anomalous building. The subjects in question had previously complained of dreams identical to those experienced by Agent Malek.

UPDATE: See Interview Log 026-08.

Interview Log 026-08

Dr. █████: "Please have a seat."

Agent Walker: "Thank you."

Dr. █████: "Let's get down to business. I understand you're requesting a transfer out of fieldwork. Would you like to talk about that?"

Agent Walker: "I'd rather not."

Dr. █████: "It's your choice. However, I can't approve a transfer without reason."

Agent Walker: "Look, I…" The agent paused here. "You've seen my record. You know I worked on twenty-six, right?"

Dr. █████: "I've read the report."

Agent Walker: "I was there the first time we took one of the sleepers out. A lot of them were adults when they disappeared, but they're kids again when we find them. So, I see this sixteen-year-old boy just kind of shrivel away. I had nightmares that night."

Dr. █████: "You're supposed to report any unusual dreams after contacting a potentially mind-altering phenomenon."

Agent Walker: "It hadn't been declared a mindscrew yet. We just thought it was a weird space thing. We were just watching it until the Picnickers got there. And it was a shock, you know? We weren't expecting anything like that. Anyway, I got over it quick enough. I'd seen worse. I once had a guy melt while I was holding onto him."

Dr. █████: "I see. What happened next?"

Agent Walker: "Nothing, for a while. I went in a couple of times, but didn't see anything too weird. But… Look, I know I should have reported it. But one of my buddies had just been disappeared after getting touched by some weird scip, and I didn't want it to happen to me."

Dr. █████: "You've been affected by an SCP?"

Agent Walker: "I… Yeah. It was a week later. I was dozing in the back of the van, and I started dreaming."

Dr. █████: "Can you describe this dream?"

Agent Walker: "Just like the others. You've read the reports, right?"

Dr. █████: "Pretend that I haven't. For the record, Agent Walker."

Agent Walker: "All right. I'm in a classroom. It's just like one of the ones in 026, but new. Not falling apart. I knew the teacher's name. I knew who was sitting by me, even though I'd never seen most of them before. The bell started ringing, but no one moved. I raised my hand, but the teacher didn't notice. Finally, I tried to leave, but the door wouldn't open. Then I noticed something strange with my hand. It had color. Everything else was black and white. But I felt like I was the one who was… wrong? Out of place? That's when I woke up. The van was leaving. No one else noticed I'd been asleep."

Dr. █████: "And you didn't think to report this?"

Agent Walker: "Like I said, I was scared. And this was before they found Malek. I figured it was just another nightmare. Nothing weird. And after Malek had his dream, well, they didn't do anything with him, so I figured it wasn't a big deal."

Dr. █████: "He was put on observation. You should have been as well, for your own safety and for the safety of others."

Agent Walker: "You paper-pushers think it's all so easy, don't you? Sitting behind a desk all day, you don't know what it's like. Well, things aren't so clear out there. Not when you're the one hunting talking cats in a sewer, or waiting to see if you're the one who's not going to come back this time."

Agent Walker was visibly distressed. It was several minutes before she calmed down enough to continue the interview.

Agent Walker: "Anyway, it wasn't until later that we connected the dreams with the sleepers. Not until they found those Class Ds on the second floor. Still, I thought I might be okay. I wasn't actually inside of twenty-six when I dreamed. I wasn't sure until the dreams started."

Dr. █████: "You're having reoccurances?"

Agent Walker: "Yeah. They started six months ago. It's the same dream. But each time, it takes me a little longer to notice it isn't real. And when I look at my hands, they're a little more gray."

End interview 026-08

Note: Agent Walker has since been given a Class A Amnestic and returned to field work.

====

[The voice of Agent ███████ (Interview Log 026-01) was provided by @phantomancer.] [The voice of Mr. ██████ (Interview Log 026-01) was provided by Breck Wilhite.] [The voice of Agent ███████ (Exploration Log 026-4) was provided by Spera Crinis.] [The voice of Agent █████ (Exploration Log 026-15) was provided by @navox-the-weary.] [The voice of Dr. █████ (Interview Log 026-08) was provided by Brittany Carlton.] [The voice of Agent Walker was provided by @mezzoprime.]

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 378: ENDON Bodies 

This is a 12″ featuring remixes of the Japanese band ENDON by Justin Broadrick and Vatican Shadow. I received it from the band’s manager after Russian Circles played with ENDON in Tokyo back in 2014. The band impressed me so much that I interviewed them for Noisey. The article is reposted below:

The first time I went to Japan on tour, I was treated to a performance by an opening act consisting of two tiny Japanese girls at a small club in Shibuya. One girl played acoustic guitar and sang in a cute, sweet, elfin voice not unlike Satomi Matsuzaki from Deerhoof. The other girl was playing some sort of motion-activated sampler device. She would make karate chop movements over the small glowing piece of equipment that would trigger samples of gong hits. It was the most Japanese thing I’d ever seen. I just wished there was a hologram Anime character doing lead vocals.

I toured Japan again earlier this year and our host informed me that we would be playing with “the most extreme band in Tokyo”. More extreme than the girl duo with the gong sounds and the martial arts moves? Doubt it. But then I bore witness to ENDON. I can’t say how the band weighs up against other acts in the region—this is a culture that birthed Melt Banana and Masonna, after all—but I’d be hard pressed to envision any other Tokyoites coming close to their level of aggressive dissonance. The drummer plowed through the set with an unrelenting barrage of blast beats. On stage left, a guy was beating a black box strapped to his chest. At first I thought it was old piece of stereo equipment—an old CD player, perhaps—but on closer inspection I realized it was some homemade device with a series of springs stretched across the front. He was beating the springs the way a heavy-handed guitarist strummed guitar strings. Harsh noise thundered out of his amp. Stage right, a guitarist churned out a caustic wash of distortion that sounded Burzum’s Filosofem and the Mohinder discography getting sucked into a turbine engine. Next to him, another band member hunched over a bank of blinking lights, cranking out electronic squalls. At the front of the stage, vocalist Taichi Nagura loomed over the crowd. Built like a tank with a shaved head and a well-groomed moustache, Taichi would be perfectly cast as the intimidating bodyguard Tamaru in a movie adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. While the band doled out their sonic punishment, Tamaru shrieked, howled, whinnied, growled, and bellowed his way through the set, occasionally chucking a beer cans at the audience along the way.

I was shell-shocked by their set. A few weeks later, I was able to get a hold of Taichi to talk about what I’d witnessed.

Brian (B): I remember talking to you over dinner before seeing you play and you described ENDON as “noise metal”. That’s probably the most straightforward description of what you do. But in the States, noise metal usually refers to bands like Today Is The Day, Dazzling Killmen, or Deadguy. Those bands seem tame in comparison. For the sake of not confusing or misleading American readers, we need to come up with a different genre name for you guys. How about power-electronics-violence? Or white-noise metal?

Taichi (T): I love both of the suggestions, really appreciate it. They hit the mark. I know I should be modest, but how about “catastrophic noise metal”?

B: “Catastrophic noise metal” it is, then. So how does a catastrophic noise metal band like ENDON even start? Did you have an idea of what you wanted to sound like when you first got together?

T: Originally, we started ENDON in order to make noise music more functional on an entertainment level. In the extreme music scene in Japan, combining general rock sounds and noise has been a very popular subject for many years but it has mainly been made through collaborations between established bands and noise musicians. We were not satisfied or comfortable with it, because there were very few bands that focused on it as one unit. I think there should be more artists with these terms. Typically, these collaborations tend to add harsh noise as an addition to the higher frequencies of the guitar, like a shoegaze sound. We would like to stay away from that. We wanted to offer listeners a different style. And there is another reason we wanted to make our own sound: general noise and avant-garde styles in Japan have been too close to free-jazz or free music. We still like that stuff, but it’s gotten to be too much, too limiting in its criteria.

B: I would guess that the songwriting originates around guitar riffs, since the guitar seems to have the most concrete and recognizable structure. Am I right? Does the creative process ever start around the noise elements? Lou Reed has that famous quote about cymbals eating guitars—do you ever run into the problem of the noise eating the guitar?

T: Exactly. In most cases we wrote music with guitar riffs first just because metal and hardcore music was a major reference for most of the songs on this album. However, the guitar in “Pray For Me” was written last. For our previous EP, we did lots of jamming and improvisation over and over again to arrange and shape songs. But now we write more with the guitar first. When there is no context or specific ideas, a tiny little motif from an instrument is a great lead. With the invention of black metal, combining noise and metal is not so difficult to imagine anymore. Harsh noise and black metal have an affinity. At the same time, an affinity means a competitive frequency level, especially between guitar and noise. It is very important how we control and arrange them. That’s fun though; we never feel that the structure between guitar and noise is annoying. It is the best part of our songwriting. We usually adjust the equalization between noise and distortion, which leads to a definitive result for listeners. For example, we adjusted our amplifiers a little bit before a recent show and played our usual set. We saw a review later that said ENDON played a bunch of new songs that night.

B: I know Atsuo from Boris helped record your new album MAMA, and I could imagine there being some crossover between ENDON’s audience and Boris’s audience, just because you both have one foot in the metal world and one foot in the experimental music world. And Boris obviously has the occasional collaboration with Merzbow to add the noise element. But aside from that, ENDON and Boris are very different beasts. Do you feel like you have any musical peers in Tokyo? Do you feel a kinship with the Japanese hardcore scene?

T: Atsuo knows exactly what we would like to do, even more so than us! I am so proud of our first full-length being so well made despite our noisy and complicated style. I know we are absolutely in Atsuo’s debt. Yeah, Boris and ENDON have similar tastes in some ways, though they are the pioneers of this genre and no one can be like them. We respect them a lot. ENDON has also been very good friends with a sludge-core band called Zenocide and an industrial unit called Carre. They are the same age as us and often do collaborations together. We also have lots of friends in Tokyo’s grind and noise scenes. Personally, I don’t think ENDON belong to the hardcore music scene in Tokyo, though our favorite venue Earthdom is a mecca of the local hardcore scene. You can still see legendary Japanese hardcore bands there, bands we grew up seeing over and over again. My impression is that the cool and interesting bands at our age used to be hardcore bands that then try to do another thing. Zenocide, who I mentioned earlier, used to be crust punk guys, for example.

B: I think the hardcore vibe I was picking up on comes from the strong antagonistic vibe to your live show, as if the music and performance is meant to punish the audience. Do you feel hostility towards the crowd? Or do you ever feel like the crowd is hostile towards you?

T: No, it’s not intended to be against the audience at all, but against myself. It’s me against the world. In order to act like that, I prepare songs without words. I have no idea what makes me so irate. I see no major difference among each and every individual besides an unspecified mental condition. I try to put myself in that headspace for the purpose of the show. It is not only a punishment but also a sweet pleasure to me. When I act like a master and try to pretend to punish the audience during our show, I feel like I am released from my sin and am buried in happiness. My shows with ENDON are kind of a tragedy in that way. In fact, during the early days of ENDON, there was a lot of fighting between the audience and me…

B: A lot of singers in the world of extreme music tend to fade into the background on record because they have a limited vocal range. With ENDON, it sounds like you have 5 or 6 different singers because the timbre of your voice changes so much. It literally sounds like an entire family—father, mother, son, daughter, family dog—attacking each other. Is this a response to the monotonic quality of metal vocals? Or is it just what naturally came out of your mouth at the first practice?

T: To me, screaming and shouting within the limited range of extreme music sounds so boring. It’s just laborious, a kind of duty they have to fulfill. Of course, what I do is partially a response to monotonous metal vocals, but more than that I would like to keep myself happy as opposed to responding to or attacking others. In that sense, my vocals need to be done unconsciously. Most importantly, ENDON as a whole should prepare our sounds and arrangements to make our music operate unconsciously. As you’ve pointed out, I have tried to do several vocal styles, like one voice that has multiple characters. And I show a relationship among those characters in a psychoanalytical way, like family therapy role-playing. Certainly, there have been good examples of other people doing this. A few singers from great depressive black metal bands have an impressive scream that has both the characters of victim and assailant in one. Multiple characters in one voice… I wanted to move ahead in that direction.

B: Speaking of family therapy, have any of your parents ever come to see you play? And are you still welcome in their homes afterwards?

T: It’s annoying to say that my parents don’t recognize I am crazy at all even though I am doing crazy stuff in ENDON. They are baby boomers that enjoyed Western art, culture, and music during their youth, and they view themselves as the first generation that brought that Western culture over to Japan. They still try to tell me what is best when it comes to music. That is one of the major reasons why everyone in ENDON and I try to focus on musical and cultural “parricide” with songs like “Parricide Agent Service” and “Etude For Lynching By Family”.

B: So I take it that’s a “no” then.

[a-skirmish-of-wit-and-lit]

Book Review: 1984 by George Orwell

"A nightmarish vision of the future" is a beyond apt description of this novel where concepts like freedom of speech and thought, democratic ideology, and individualism have not only come to die but have been scourged from people's lives and minds completely.

Orwell turns up the dial on totalitarianism to an alarming and appalling degree in this book. He makes WW2 ideology under leaders like Hitler or Stalin seem tame in comparison, extremist though it was. He makes it so those in control can rewrite the past as well as the present so that the Party is always right and never wrong, effectively obliterating historical accuracy altogether. That means people aren't even certain what year it is because the "truth" is constantly changing and is wholly dependent on manipulation and brainwashing. The "truth" becomes the propaganda the Party feeds and forces them all to believe. Worse, they have no choice BUT to believe it because no one person is permitted to question the Party in anything. To imagine a government like this - any government - with this amount of unchecked dominance was absolutely bone-chilling for me. To think, too, that it'd be impossible to separate fabrication from reality whenever the media's main goal is to spin lies with unmistakable veracity is the kind of thing that could keep a gal like me up at night--head thumping, fingernails bitten, and petrified.

Talk about dismaying! I'm not ashamed to admit that a part of my soul recoiled when I learned the philosophy behind Newspeak, either. As a writer, as a lover of books and poetry and words in all their forms, I hated that its purpose and its reason for existence was to limit language so there's little to no variety. Imagine a language that's created with the intent to decrease its existing vocabulary instead of increasing it. *trembles with outrage and horror* To destroy or eliminate words is the worst kind of blasphemy, in my opinion, archaic though many of them become over time. So the premise behind Newspeak was extremely difficult (impossible, really) for me to accept passively. Doing so felt like choking on all the creative liberties I spend my days living and loving. (Not to mention take for granted like everybody else.) Reading this was sharp and cynical in the worst way. Like a cold water slap across the face. I say that because not only was it poignant and powerful, but everything about it felt possible. That was the worst part. It was so awfully, artfully possible to close my eyes and see myself living with Thought Police and telescreens, with Big Brother who was always watching, and no longer having control over what I wanted to write or read or do. I think that's largely Orwell's point here, though-- To unsettle. To disturb. To drown all readers in an Extreme��� of extremes. Herein lies a sociopolitical commentary as well as a warning. All of the content he presents here is a stark, severe, and scary examination of what could be in this world if we let it. And while many years have lapsed since its original publication, the fact that 1984's themes still resonate now more than ever shows why it's revered as a literary classic and always will be. I'll forever be grateful for books like this that shock me into deep, evaluative thinking. P.S. May we strive to never live in a society where WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

4/5 stars

*You also can follow me on Goodreads (HERE)

[nazih-fares]

It’s been eight long years since the Halo series ventured into the ruthless world of “PC-only” RTS with Halo Wars back on the Xbox 360. Halo Wars is probably a title that is on this list of surprising games, and ended up becoming one of my most memorable gaming experiences as well as others, but sadly the developers – Ensemble Studios – close house roughly a year after launching the game. Probably most known for their work on Age Empires, Ensemble Studios was acquired in 2001 by Microsoft, and all of its assets remained with the Redmond publisher and developer, and now comes its sequel, simply named Halo Wars 2 under the care of 343 Industries as caretaker of the Halo franchise and The Creative Assembly, a studio renown for its Total War RTS series. Will this be the same experience as it was on Xbox 360, or just a simple upgrade of a former gaming sensation?

The story starts with the cryogenic awakening of James Cutter, Captain of the brave UNSC Spirit of Fire, 28 years of a long sleep. For those of you which played Halo Wars, this is the same crew that you played as in the first game, waking up and embarked in a new conflict against the insurgents of the alien coalition: The Banished led by the Brute warlord Atriox. In any case, the storyline has deep root with the Halo lore – as you would expect – and will be perfect for fans of the franchise, even if it’s a rather short campaign with only 12 missions, which will take 5 to 8 hours to finished depending on difficulty or if you’re a Halo Wars veteran. In the end, even if you peak beyond the cutscenes which are on par with the quality of a certain iconic competing RTS developer (Blizzard Entertainment) – Halo Wars 2’s narrative is all in all particularly faithful to the franchise’s universe, which is great considering it was given to new hands.

Newcomers to Bungie’s original Sci-Fi might find this game a good entry point for the franchise, especially since a “definitive edition” of the first title is paired with Halo Wars 2 as a preorder incentive. Yet there’s nothing groundbreaking, and the campaign basically sees you play as the UNSC, leading Cutter and the Red Team in missions that are not really inspired where you’ll have to destroy Atriox bases, kills X many enemies, defend checkpoints under the pressure of a stopwatch. Nothing that reinvents the wheel for fans of the genre, especially since these are usually winning conditions and goals that will be re-purposed in multiplayer which is the major upgrade in this episode, but we’ll get to that later on.

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On the point of view of gameplay, the original Halo Wars smooth playability with the controller is yet again as a success, especially in a game genre that is usually on PC and played with mouse/keyboard combination. For those that never played the first game, the first missions will obviously teach you all the subtleties of the controls, which have been a bit reworked on the interface front as well as adding some new possibilities. Would you like quickly navigate from one base to another? Quickly jump on alert points? Assign tactical groups to the D-pad arrows? It’s all in here. I will though spare you from falling into a very complex description of each unit, its use or hero special skills, as they are mainly based on successful mechanics of the original Halo Wars and are worth discovering on your own. The only inconvenience I wished they fixed from the first game is the unit and building production system, which is as always tedious.

Why tedious? Well you mainly start with a base of command, a limited number of spots on which you can build add-ons to either harvest resources (mainly supplies and power) or assign to other kind of productions like building military units. The whole is ruled by a set of timers based on what build you are going for, and there comes the eternal RTS dilemma between either farming resources to better plan or just playing aggressive and destroy the opponent before he gets a chance to prepare for an attack. While the latter is the wrong approach in this game, the game system induces to build more resource modules (at the beginning of the game) than production, and thus giving you an unbalanced harvest/production ratio. The result is that it makes the matches extremely slow in the beginning, filled with farming and light map scouting,  and while there’s always strategic points with fresh resource around the map that will initiate probably early confrontations, they are not enough to build a stable economy and favor a truly aggressive expansion strategy.

These rules of direction are obviously applied both in multiplayer and singleplayer, which gives a slow playing pace that really struggles to take off. Thankfully, when it comes to singleplayer, the most interesting – and challenging – missions of the campaign are those that require almost no economy management, centered around the combat. But with an AI that is not that smart, and the lack of mission diversity, you’ll quickly forget the campaign and jump in the core of the game: the multiplayer mode.

When it comes to multiplayer, don’t expect major clashes and the depth of a StarCraft II, as Halo Wars 2 is an easier RTS game to tame… as well as simpler to master. Multiplayer games start the same as the previous Halo Wars, where you are asked to choose a Leader, with their specific attributes and powers, before each match. You soon get used to the very balanced Stone/Paper/Scissor strategy of the game, even if sadly fades quickly when you are faster at building your economy, and can literally dump insane amount of units, overwhelming any weakness or strength of the opposing force… After all, like all RTS, strength in numbers can mean an easier victory. Bigger matches with allies can be more more interesting and fun, but there are more complete alternatives of this game genre on PC, but it remains one of the rare options on Xbox One for now.

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While the original Halo Wars only had one PVP competitive mode which was Skirmish, Halo Wars 2 adds Blitz mode, offering a new take on RTS with a blend of Hearthstone-ish deck building strategies. The concept is simple: open card packs that you obtain by finishing the campaign, performing daily and weekly goals or buy them with real-life money and build decks to use in battle. Blitz mechanics remove the whole need of building specific base modules to build units, instead the cards themselves once played will call upon that same card unit, having only one resource to take in consideration which is energy. It’s a more fun and simpler take on the Stone/Paper/Scissor strategy of each faction, and matches can be finished quickly, in comparison to a more traditional skirmish mode.

On the point of view of graphic engine and the more technical front, Halo Wars 2 is a clean and smooth experience, even if the framerate drops on some rare occasions when there’s too many units on the battlefield, but remains an overall visual success. The special effects such as explosions add some fun flair to the visual output, with overdoing it and removing the attention of the player on the field of action.

Halo Wars 2 was reviewed using an Xbox One and Windows 10 downloadable copy of the game provided by Microsoft. The game was tested on an Xbox One and a PC running Windows 10 Pro, with a 4GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960 fitted on a 5th Generation Intel i7 4720HQ 3.2Ghz CPU and topped with 16GB of RAM. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published

The first Halo Wars was intended for Halo fans, and Halo Wars 2 is no different even with a new multiplayer modes and story. It's been eight long years since the Halo series ventured into the ruthless world of "PC-only" RTS with Halo Wars back on the Xbox 360.

[kellykperez]

Taming the local search beast in a post-Possum and Fred world

It’s estimated that 46 percent of all searches performed on Google have a local intent, and the Map Pack appears for 93 percent of these.

In September 2016 Google unveiled a new local search algorithm, dubbed Possum, and it pretty much went unnoticed in comparison to the real-time Penguin update released in the same month.

In short, Possum made it harder for businesses to fake being in locations that they’re not (through the likes of virtual offices), as well as tackling Google My Business spam.

Possum, however, isn’t a “single” algorithm update, as it affected both localized search results as well as the Map Pack, which of course are two separate algorithms both triggered by search queries that are interpreted as having a local search intent.

The Google “Fred” update, which hit SERPs back in March, has also had an impact on local search, much like the Phantom updates before it.

A lot of local SERPs are extremely spammy, where websites have been built cheap and location names have been liberally applied to every menu link and keyword on the page, such as this home page sidebar menu:

This of course, is only a snapshot of the page – the menu and tile icons go on a lot more. Spam such as this still ranks on page one, because Google still has to provide results to its users.

Take advantage of the market conditions

A lot of locally-focused websites aren’t built by agencies; the vast majority tend to be self-built or built by bedroom level developers who can churn out a full website for £300 (or less).

Some verticals have seen some significant online investment in recent years, while others lag behind considerably. By investing in a good website and avoiding the same spammy tactics of your competitors, you can create a powerful resource offering user value that Google will appreciate.

Directory submissions and citations

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about just backlinks. Recent studies have shown that citations with a consistent NAP (Name, Address & Phone number) are important to both local algorithms.

There is no magic number to how many directory submissions you should have, but they need to be relevant.

I’ve worked on local campaigns in the UK where they have been previously submitted to directories in Vietnam, Thailand and Australia. Yes, it’s a backlink, but it’s not relevant in the slightest.

Think local with your directories, and exhaust those before moving onto national ones. The number of local directories should also outweigh the nationals were possible. To do this properly, it’s a manual process and to ensure quality it can’t be automated.

Reviews

Review volume, velocity and diversity factors are important, and in my opinion, they’re going to become more important in the coming months – particularly following the recent release of verified customer reviews for online businesses.

In Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, the evaluators are instructed to research a website/brand’s online reputation from external sources in order to assess the quality of the website.

This is why getting reviews on your Google My Business listing, Facebook pages, positive tweets, Yell, Trip Advisor reviews etc are all great. Having testimonials and reviews on your website is great for users, but you wouldn’t publish bad reviews on your own website, would you?

Google accepts that negative reviews appear, but as long the good outweighs the bad, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. If you do get a negative review, demonstrate your customer service and respond to it. You can set up Google Alerts to monitor for your brand and flag up any external reviews.

Google My Business & Bing Places

Believe it or not, Google My Business is considered a directory, as is Bing Places. It’s important that you have one if you’re a local business, and that you’ve optimised it correctly. This means the correct business name, address and phone number (keep your NAP as consistent as possible), choose an appropriate category and include a thorough description.

localBusiness structured data mark-up

Structured data mark-up (or schema) is an addition to a website’s code that enables Google’s RankBrain (and other AI algorithms from other search engines) to better understand a website’s context by providing it with additional information.

Not all websites are currently utilizing this schema (or any schema), and Google wants you to use it.

If you don’t have developer resource to hand, and you’re not a coder you can use Google’s Data Highlighter to mark-up content – you will need a verified Google Search Console however to make this work.

Other considerations

As well as focusing locally, you need to also consider other ranking factors such as SERP click-through rates.

Optimizing your meta title and description to appeal to local users can have a huge impact on click-through rates, and the change could be as simple as including the phone number in the title tag.

You also need to be on https and have a secure website. Getting hacked, suffering a SQL injection or having malware put on your site can seriously damage your reputation within Google and take a long, long time to recover.

from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/05/25/taming-the-local-search-beast-in-a-post-possum-and-fred-world/

[sheilalmartinia]

Taming the local search beast in a post-Possum and Fred world

It’s estimated that 46 percent of all searches performed on Google have a local intent, and the Map Pack appears for 93 percent of these.

In September 2016 Google unveiled a new local search algorithm, dubbed Possum, and it pretty much went unnoticed in comparison to the real-time Penguin update released in the same month.

In short, Possum made it harder for businesses to fake being in locations that they’re not (through the likes of virtual offices), as well as tackling Google My Business spam.

Possum, however, isn’t a “single” algorithm update, as it affected both localized search results as well as the Map Pack, which of course are two separate algorithms both triggered by search queries that are interpreted as having a local search intent.

The Google “Fred” update, which hit SERPs back in March, has also had an impact on local search, much like the Phantom updates before it.

A lot of local SERPs are extremely spammy, where websites have been built cheap and location names have been liberally applied to every menu link and keyword on the page, such as this home page sidebar menu:

This of course, is only a snapshot of the page – the menu and tile icons go on a lot more. Spam such as this still ranks on page one, because Google still has to provide results to its users.

Take advantage of the market conditions

A lot of locally-focused websites aren’t built by agencies; the vast majority tend to be self-built or built by bedroom level developers who can churn out a full website for £300 (or less).

Some verticals have seen some significant online investment in recent years, while others lag behind considerably. By investing in a good website and avoiding the same spammy tactics of your competitors, you can create a powerful resource offering user value that Google will appreciate.

Directory submissions and citations

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about just backlinks. Recent studies have shown that citations with a consistent NAP (Name, Address & Phone number) are important to both local algorithms.

There is no magic number to how many directory submissions you should have, but they need to be relevant.

I’ve worked on local campaigns in the UK where they have been previously submitted to directories in Vietnam, Thailand and Australia. Yes, it’s a backlink, but it’s not relevant in the slightest.

Think local with your directories, and exhaust those before moving onto national ones. The number of local directories should also outweigh the nationals were possible. To do this properly, it’s a manual process and to ensure quality it can’t be automated.

Reviews

Review volume, velocity and diversity factors are important, and in my opinion, they’re going to become more important in the coming months – particularly following the recent release of verified customer reviews for online businesses.

In Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, the evaluators are instructed to research a website/brand’s online reputation from external sources in order to assess the quality of the website.

This is why getting reviews on your Google My Business listing, Facebook pages, positive tweets, Yell, Trip Advisor reviews etc are all great. Having testimonials and reviews on your website is great for users, but you wouldn’t publish bad reviews on your own website, would you?

Google accepts that negative reviews appear, but as long the good outweighs the bad, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. If you do get a negative review, demonstrate your customer service and respond to it. You can set up Google Alerts to monitor for your brand and flag up any external reviews.

Google My Business & Bing Places

Believe it or not, Google My Business is considered a directory, as is Bing Places. It’s important that you have one if you’re a local business, and that you’ve optimised it correctly. This means the correct business name, address and phone number (keep your NAP as consistent as possible), choose an appropriate category and include a thorough description.

localBusiness structured data mark-up

Structured data mark-up (or schema) is an addition to a website’s code that enables Google’s RankBrain (and other AI algorithms from other search engines) to better understand a website’s context by providing it with additional information.

Not all websites are currently utilizing this schema (or any schema), and Google wants you to use it.

If you don’t have developer resource to hand, and you’re not a coder you can use Google’s Data Highlighter to mark-up content – you will need a verified Google Search Console however to make this work.

Other considerations

As well as focusing locally, you need to also consider other ranking factors such as SERP click-through rates.

Optimizing your meta title and description to appeal to local users can have a huge impact on click-through rates, and the change could be as simple as including the phone number in the title tag.

You also need to be on https and have a secure website. Getting hacked, suffering a SQL injection or having malware put on your site can seriously damage your reputation within Google and take a long, long time to recover.

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/05/25/taming-the-local-search-beast-in-a-post-possum-and-fred-world/