#and how this ties in with the usage of 'pick-me' which is also a horrible term

[muppetminge]

 alright i’m gonna say it - the ‘not like other girls’ narrative is blatantly sexist and the day we retire the usage of nlog the world will become an ever so slightly better place

[sery-chan-13]

Innocence

Niragi Suguru × Reader

So, this is something I was very excited to receive a request about!

(Yall... please, the most adorable thing I've ever been requested to write-)

I absolutely loved the idea, as it's something I go through, and a few of my friends go through, although it might be a little different. (My friends as well as I  (ooh, exposing myself) have a little space(different from a sub space. It's age regression and not at all sexual or wrong. It's totally OK to do this) , and I usually take care of them and they take care of me through it, so I get the panic attacks and drops! What this person requested is probably quite different from that, so It's not the exact same thing. Also, keep in mind, everyone expiriences panic attacks differently, I'm going off of my personal experience with them.

Warnings: past trauma, panic attacks, swearing, mentions of death, blood, let me know if I missed any!

You had been put into this world. A desolate one. It looked like your home of Tokyo, but it wasn't. There weren't  any people, and it was empty. It was like a giant prison... except bigger. In your opinion, it was a prison, and no one was around to judge you, so it was. You had been quite scared waking up, not knowing what was going on. Wandering around the new Tokyo, you felt a feeling of dread. You were alone. How you hated being alone.

At night, however, things changed. One of the advertisement boards in the middle of Tokyo lit up, pointing towards a place and the words 'way to the game arena' sprawled across it. You just followed the light up sign, and ended up at a skating rink.

Your eyes lit up at the sight. There were pretty colors, flashing lights, and popular music was playing in the background. You swayed on your heels, back and forth, unsure of what to do next before seeing a table with phones. On the same table was a sign that read 'One for each player.' What did they mean by player? You didn't know. You picked up a phone, and it turned on. The screen read something about facial recognition. You stared in awe at it, thinking it was cool. You were so immersed with the phone, you didn't notice other people come in. When you did, you were a bit intimidated. You didn't know why you were here. It dawned on you in a moment, and you started to fidget with the edge of your skirt. You saw two people who looked nicer than the rest, and decided to aproach them.

"Hi! Um... I'm sorry to bother you,  but do you know what's going on? I just woke up here..." you explained, looking at them. It was a boy and a girl. The girl had short, dark hair, and was wearing black spandex with a colorful pullover that was unzipped a bit to where you could see the black sports bra under. She was so pretty in your eyes. The boy had dark hair, his bangs falling into his face. He was wearing a t-shirt, and shorts. They looked at each other, and back to you. "It's a game," the girl said. You smiled. "A game? I like games what kind of game?" You asked. "It's not... it's not normal games. They're more difficult... and dangerous," the boy explained. You were confused. "My name is (Y/N). What's your's?" You asked. "I'm Arisu and this is Usagi," he introduced. "I like your names," you said cheerfully. The phone pinged, and you jumped slightly.

'Registration closed. 8 players. Difficulty 4 of spades. Game 'Roll Away'. All players will put on the roller skates. They can't be taken off once put on. There will be different challenges in the rink. It might be dodging something, getting chased by something, or other obstacles. Clear Condition: You can not take off the roller skates through the duration of the game. Doing that will result in immediate death. The way to win is to dodge the object or things and pass the challenges. Game start in 10 minutes' (this is the dumbest game concept I've come up with, I apologize in advance)

"Here, stick with us, and we'll try to make sure you don't get hurt, alright?" Usagi said, placing her hand on your shoulder. "Ok! Thank you Usagi-Chan! Thank you Arisu-Kun!" You chirped, bowing your head in gratitude. They smiled to eachother, one thought clear and present in their heads. They had to protect you. Something they didn't say about a lot of people, but something was different about you.

That's how they took you to the beach. At first, you were scared. You didn't know anyone there, there was people staring at you, and there were some that had weapons. Your eyes had so much to focus on, and it was so overwhelming. Your first thought was to focus on something shiny. You liked shiny things. The problem was, there was to many shiny things to focus on. The windows, guns, swords, accents on the wall, hell, everything might as well been shiny. You stayed still, sitting up as straight as you could, playing with the sleeves of the sweatshirt you had on. "So she's basically useless?" One of the people there said. You frowned at the words. "No, no, she's very capable. I think she'd do well in club games. And she doesn't require a high rank right now. Just for a her to be safe," Arisu said, protecting your from their words. "Alright. Just inform her of everything. Niragi, why don't you take her to get a wristband and to her room?" The man, who you had learned to be Hatter suggested, although he knew it was a command. Usagi gripped onto your shoulder softly. "I'll go with. Just because I feel she is my responsibility as well," Usagi said. In reality, she was worried of what he'd do to you. She didn't trust Niragi, and from the short amount of time she had known you, noticed you to be more trusting and innocent than most. You smiled widely, and looked up at Usagi. "Let's go then."

You walked in the middle of both people. Usagi, looking forward most of the time, holding your hand to guide you around, and Niragi. That's what Hatter had called him anyways. He was rather tall, longish hair with half tied back. He had piercing on his nose and brow. Shiny pieces of metal which you found yourself staring at constantly. There was a gun slung over his shoulder, which scared you. "Here we are," he said, opening the door to what you assumed to be a storage room. He handed you a bracelet. You played with the stretchy cord, stretching out and back in, being entertained by it. Usagi grabbed your hand, and gently slid it on. "Don't take it off, ok?" She said softly. You nodded. "What is she? A damn kid?" Niragi scoffed. "No. Be nice. People have different situations, and you have no right to judge," Usagi repremanded him, her tone strong. He rolled his eyes. "Ok, there's three rules at the Beach. 1, you have to wear a bathing suit, 2 all card go to Hatter, 3 death to the traitors," he said. "Mmm... death? What do you mean by that?" You asked. You knew what death was, you just wanted to make sure he wasn't threatening you. "Death means death. We catch you planning to leave, or keeping your cards, you die. Simple as that," Niragi stated. "Ah... oki! Usagi-Chan, I think I'll be ok with out you for now. Thank you!" You chirped. Usagi shook her head. "I'm not leaving you alone with him," she stated, glaring at him. You felt hands grab your waist, and pull you back. It was Niragi. For whatever reason, you felt safe. He was bigger than you, and most likely stronger, and it made you feel safe. You shrunk into him, liking the feeling. "Yeah, Usagi-Chan... Let her have fun," he mocked, sticking out his tongue. Usagi could hear the hidden meaning behind his words. But, to her surprise, you didn't. Were you that innocent? "I'll be fine. Tell Arisu-Kun thank you again for me though... You guys really helped me through that game," you smiled. Usagi nodded her head, and against her better judgement, left. "Ok, just you and me now sweetheart," Niragi sighed, leading you around. You rushed to catch up with him, and grabbed his hand. He flinched, pulling his hand away. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" He asked, scrunching his face in disgust at the contact. " 'M sorry... Didn't want to get lost. I don't like being alone," you apologized, looking down, and swinging your leg back and forth. 'Damn it... She's cute... NOnononono, backtrack, hold up, not cute. She's fucking annoying. There we go. That sounds better. Not at all cute. Annoying.' He sighed, remembering the way Usagi had spoken to you, "It's fine. Just don't go doing that, ok?"  You nodded excitedly, walking besides him.

"Ok, and this room is the one Hatter told me to take you to. The two people you were with live on the next floor up. No I don't know what room, neither do I care. They'll tell you, most likely. Bye," he said after leading you to your room door. "Niragi... thank you!" You said, smiling. "What?" He questioned, turning around to face you. "Thank you. Really, I would have gotten lost without you. I hope to see you soon!" You repeated, skipping into your room. He stared at the spot you just stood in, in shock. 'She's odd. But interesting. Is her innocence an act? Or is she just like that?' He thought as he walked off. You hadn't made any sort of shy or disgusted expressions when he talked to you. Especially when he used more risqué remarks. You just smiled or laughed as if you didn't understand the meaning behind his words. You were definitely interesting to say the least.

"We're really sorry we couldn't find another one for you... It's just the rules here, ok?" Arisu apologized. They had to find a swimsuit for you to wear, and they had found a white one. It wasn't horrible, just showed a lot. "You're allowed to wear a cover up though. Or like a sweater," Usage suggested. You nodded, rushing to the bathroom where you had changed. You grabbed the fluffy zip up hoodie you had on before you changed. You slipped it on over your body, and smiled. "Much better," you chirped. They laughed slightly. Arisu couldn't help but feel warm and fuzzy when you were around. Not in a romantic way, but more in a protective way. He didn't want anyone to harm you. Usagi felt the same. "Can I go walk around?" You asked, playing with your hair. They nodded. " You don't have to ask for permission. You can do what you want," Usagi said. You nodded, saying goodbye, and leaving the room.

You hummed as you walked around, looking at all the people walking around. You nodded your head to whatever rythym was going on in your head. There were so many things to focus on, it felt like your head was going to explode. You shut your eyes for a bit and kept walking. Bad idea.

"Oi, you damn brat! Watch where you're going!" Someone shouted at you. You had bumped into them, falling to the ground. " 'M sorry! Didn't mean to!" You squeaked out. You heard them laugh, and you opened your eyes. "Whatever. And stop talking like that. What are you? A ba-" they were cut off by a snicker. "Really? You have the right to say that?" You recognized the voice from earlier. It was Niragi. You looked up to see Niragi pointing his gun at the people bothering you. "What? She talks like a fucking baby. And acts like one. Is she your little play thing?" The person taunted. Niragi scowled. "I'm only letting you go right now because Aguni doesn't let us kill in front of others. Be glad I'm letting you off right now," Niragi threatened. They all rushed away, seeing as their bravery was only for show. Niragi looked down to you on the floor. "You good?" He asked. You nodded, getting yourself off the floor. "Thank you once again, Niragi," you said, your attention on the floor. He couldn't help but notice your nature. You were innocent, childish, and playful. So different from all the other girls here. It was annoying, but also... cute. He was so lost in thought, he almost didn't feel you standing next to him and grabbing his arm. "What are you doing? We talked about this," he stated, trying to pull his arm away, watching as you nuzzled into him. "You're warm... and I like this feeling... I don't know what it is, but it's nice," you muttered. He pulled you around, back to his room, ignoring the stares he was getting.

He opened the door, and walked in, shutting it behind you two. "Where are we?" You asked, looking up at him. "Guess," were his only words. You basically beamed up at him. "Ooh, like a game! Umm... I don't know... tell me?" You chirped, placing a finger on your lip. He sighed, basically throwing himself on his bed. "You're annoying, you know that right?" He said. You frowned, twiddling your fingers. "Don't get offended by that. I have questions I want answered, come here," he stated, the commanding tone in his voice obvious. You stood straighter, and walked over by him. He looked up st you, confused. "Sit,'' was the only word that left his lips. You did so, sitting up straight. "So... is this an act? Your whole innocence thing?" He questioned, motioning to you. You tilted your head in confusion. "No? It's just... me," you responded. He hummed to acknowledge he heard you. Your hands kept looking for something to do, and you impulsively put one of your hands on his head. He moved away, grabbing your wrists, putting them to your body. "Hands to yourself princess," he said, a bored tone present. You shook your head, your hair swaying and bouncing with you. He laughed at the sight as you pouted. "Don't wanna. I like the feeling I get when I touch you or when you touch me," you said, your fingers being able to lightly touch his hand. "What feeling?" He asked. "I don't know what it's called... I just like it," you responded. "Well explain it," he said. "Mm... I feel really warm and protected. And... safe..." you responded, feeling his hands leave your wrists. After feeling his hands leave your wrist, you looked up at him. You crawled next to him squirming from happiness. "Oi, stop it," he scolded, grabbing your shoulders to keep you still. You pouted, looking up at him. "Then can I pet you?" You asked. "What am I? A damn dog?" He spat. "I like dogs. Dogs are cute. You're cute. But you're not a dog. Good boys deserve pets. You're a good boy, so... you deserve pets," you rambled, patting the top of his head softly. He look at you as you did so. He dropped back onto his bed. "I'm tired, so I'm going to sleep before tonight's patrol. Don't kill me," he yawned, closing his eyes, falling asleep almost immediately.

When he woke up, he heard humming. He opened his eyes slowly, and saw you curled up on the end of his bed, humming. "Hello?" He questioned. You turned so fast, he swears you gave yourself whiplash. "Niragi you're up!" You chirped. He sighed. 'Who gave her the right to be so damn cute... this isn't fair on me right now.' He nodded, and got up. He looked into the mirror on the dresser, noticing his hair was tied back. He went to take it out, but soon saw it was braided. "Did you... braid my hair?" He questioned. Now, he wasn't mad, and he didn't hate it. He just wanted to know why. "Yeah. Sorry," you said, looking down. "I- forget it. Why?" He asked. Your eyes lost their spark for a second. "um... uh... I... I just wanted to," you said shakily. "Tell me why. I can see through that lie," he stated, taking his hair out of the braid. "Umm... I... I don't think you'd care, it's nothing," you deflected. "Look, if I'm asking, it means I want to know. So say it," he said, turning to face you. "Ok... I was just alone in my thoughts, and I decided to braid your hair. It made me feel less... anxious. My sister used to always ask for me to braid her hair. So she could look just like our mom... and she did look just like out mom," you explained, tears filling your eyes.

You didn't like talking about your sister because of what had happened to her. Your mother had died when you were 9, your sister was just a baby. She looked exactly like your mom. And due to circumstances, you were never able to be a kid. You had to be an adult at a young age. You never got to be childish. So, you did it more when you grew up. Your sister... Your sister didn't really care all that much. She acted like a kid, and got to be a kid. You made sure of it. Some things just couldn't be helped though. She had died after a car accident. You all went to get some groceries. It had been a great night, and you three had gotten ice cream. On the way back, a drunk driver had hit the car. Your father lived and yourself lived, but he blamed himself for it. He tried, he really really tried to be a good father to you, but it wasn't enough. Somehow, you could never seem to win.

"I'm sorry, I don't really like talking about her, can I talk about something else?" you said, quickly wiping the tears away. He could tell you didn't want to talk about. It made him want know more, but for whatever reason, he left it. "My patrol starts I'm a few minutes. So you'll have to find someone else to bother," he said, fixing his hair again. "But I don't wanna go around anyone else. Wanna be around you," you pouted, walking to his side. He stared down in shock. No one has ever wanted to around him out of their own free will. "Look, just... go to your room, and if I remember to go, I'll go and visit for a bit."

That's how it started. You would constantly be around him, rambling about your newest topic. He didn't respond a lot, just listened, throwing the occasional sigh of you being annoying. It didn't bother you anymore, because something told you if he actually found you annoying, you wouldn't be alive right now.

"Hey hey hey (N/N)!" Kuina greeted with a smile. "Kuina! You're back!" You giggled, running over. She hugged you, spinning you around. "How's my favorite human?" She asked, setting you down. "I'm ok... How was your game?" You asked, walking around with her. She led you down to where all the cars came in. "Hatter put me in charge of checking to make sure no one keeps their cards today. Help me out?" She asked as soon as you got there. You nodded, and stood by her.

All was fine, till one of the last groups came in, speeding. You watched nervously, hoping nothing bad happened. You felt the world around you move in slowmotion, and the air in your lungs get shorter everytime you breathed. You heard the tires screech, and Kuina's voice was somewhere in the background. You felt like you couldn't breath, you felt the cold stone wall behind you and you slid down it. Tears rolled down your face, and you scratched at your arms unknowingly. You felt people trying to touch you, and you kicked or hit them away.

"Someone get help! Arisu, Usagi!" Kuina yelled at them. They had come outside, hearing a commotion. They tried to touch you, or get closer, but you wouldn't let them. Blood came out of the scratches you had made on yourself. "Who else can help her?! Think quick, please!" Arisu panicked. You were crying and scratching at yourself. They could hear you muttering 'no' and 'can't lose them again' over and over under your breath. Anytime someone tried to get close to you, you would kick or hit them. "Get Niragi," Usagi said. "What no I'm not going to-" Kuina started to argue. "Do you have any other ideas?! Go get Niragi before she hurts herself more! Now!" Usagi shouted. The panicky feeling was in everyone. Kuina quickly looked over at you, and nodded. This wasn't about who she did and didn't like. It was about making sure you were ok. Kuina ran off, going to look for Niragi. "Usagi, you go look for him as well. You're faster than me, I'll kept on eye on her," Arisu said. Usagi nodded, running off.

You were still crying, your nails tearing into your skin, crescent marks left behind, and trails of crimson dripping down. People were still trying to help, but we're crowded all around you. You couldn't breath, air couldn't get into your lungs. The people all around you looked like they were closing in around you. A flashback of the moment the other car hit you flooded your brain. Your sister's cut off scream. Her blood soaked shirt, the pieces of glass embedded into her skin. The pain you felt when you called out for her, but she didn't answer.

"Chishiya! Chishiya! Have you seen Niragi?" Kuina yelled after the short boy. He turned around. "Why would I care ab-" Chishiya started. "Chishiya, not now. It's (Y/N). Please, just- do you know or not?" Kuina interrupted, taking in shaky breaths. He shook his head. "Last Boss might know he's over there. If not Aguni," Chishiya said. Kuina nodded, running over to the aforementioned man.

Eventually, she found him on the roof. 'He's always on the damn roof' Kuina thought. "Niragi! Don't ask questions, just come with me!" Kuina yelled at him. He turned with a face that read 'no'. "Why should I-" he started. "It's (Y/N), please just- she- come with me," Kuina stumbled over her words. It had been at least 6 minutes. He tried not to show any emotion, but looked around and nodded. He walked quickly besides her as they made their way back.

"Found him!" Kuina shouted. Arisu turned to them and nodded. "Just go over to her," Arisu said. Niragi walked over, and everyone around you, immediately parted. "Go away," he threatened. Everyone left, and he was able to see what was happening. Your previously white swimsuit was now stained with red. Your arms were marked up with scratches and crescent shaped wounds. "Hey, (Y/N), it's me... calm down... breath," he whispered, so only you could hear. He kneeled in front of you, and got gradually closer. You didn't push him away, nor did you pit up a fight against him. The feeling of being safe and protected that you only got around Niragi appeared. The warm feeling spread over you, making you calm down a bit. You were able to breath a bit now, and you whimpered about something he didn't quite hear. Arisu and Kuina sighed in relief, seeing as he was able to get close to you. He grabbed your hands, taking them away from your arms. You took a shaky breath. "N-niragi?" You questioned. "Mhm... just calm down for now," he said. Arisu and Kuina looked at eachother and nodded, deciding to leave. Niragi had it under control.

You grabbed onto Niragi, and held onto him tightly. He heard you sniffle and say an apology into his neck. "Don't apologize for that. Are you ok-ish now?" He asked. He felt you nod. "Ok, well, we need to clean you up. And you can tell me what happened later, ok?"

He had carried you up to his room, cleaning up the blood on your body. "Sorry... I'm sorry," you apologized again, as he bandaged up your arms. "Stop apologizing, it's pissing me off," he stated. You frowned with a shaky sigh. "I... I didn't mean that. I'm sorry," he apologized, sitting besides you. You snuggled up into him. He was going to scold you, but decided against it, seeing as he rather liked the feeling. He always had. "Niragi... you forgot to do something," you muttered. "And what's that princess?" He asked. "Kiss it better?" You asked, looking at him with the puppy dog eyes. He felt his face get hot, and cursed himself. He rolled his eyes giving in, "Fine." You gave him your arm, and he kissed over the bandages. You giggled slightly. "Tickles," you laughed. He couldn't help but laugh. You smiled, "Niragi... Can I help you feel better?" You asked. "What? I'm not hurt though," he said, confused by your words. "Ok, fine... maybe it's not to make you feel better... just wanna give you a kiss. I really really really like you," you admitted, blushing slightly. He froze up for a second, before smirking. "Go ahead then. I really really really really like you too."

So... how was that? Um...bi may have gone overboard, but I am all for soft Niragi hours even if he's OOC, it's called 'I'm sad, he's my comfort character.' Umm... yeah... cool!

[averytiredfanfictionwriter]

The Immortals- Chapter Four

Chapter four is here and I hope you guys are as excited about it as I am. I’m starting to delve into a little bit of the background information for some of the characters and give a little bit more of their history before I really get into the DSMP events because I might change them just a little bit for the direction I’m planning on taking the story, so in order to do that I feel it’s important you know more about the characters. I hope you guys enjoy. Trigger Warnings: None that I can see, but comment if you think one should be added. Ao3 link: bop. Also, if you check my Ao3, the chapter is usually posted a day ahead Chapter Three and a half | Chapter Five | Masterlist Also, for context Phil is maybe like five or Six years old. His age doesn’t really matter, all that’s important to know is that he’s a small child.

Ash wakes in an unfamiliar bed, her head pounding as she looks around the dimly lit room. It’s comfortable looking, bookshelves line the dark oak walls and a small rug covers the majority of the open floor space. A small desk and chair sits in the corner next to a window, which she has a perfect view out of from the bed. Overall, it’s nice. Too nice.

Listening carefully, she searches for any sounds in the surrounding area, any faint clicking that might indicate redstone usage. But there’s nothing. She can’t help but feel on edge though.

The last thing she remembers is being pulled up onto a horse with somebody, and the green cloak that was wrapped around her lies on the chair next to the bed. She looks over at it, the cause of the sense of familiarity right on the tip of her tongue but she's unable to actually remember it. 

At least, that is until the man himself steps through the door to the bedroom, shutting it softly behind him and taking a seat in the chair after moving the cloak onto the bed at Ash's feet.

“How are you feeling?” His green eyes are still every bit as entrancing as she remembers them to be, and she shakes her head to clear herself of the intrusive thoughts that threaten to invade her mind.

“Not great, but I’ll live.” After traveling for so long, the weariness and tiredness have finally caught up to her, and she wishes for nothing more than to fall asleep for a couple hundred years.

“Ah, well. I made food. It’s downstairs, if you feel good enough to walk. I can bring it up here if not.” Dream replies, brushing the blonde hair out of his face with an air of annoyance.

“I think I can make the walk.” She replies, pushing the blanket off her legs and stepping down onto the carpet. 

Dream stands and holds his hands above her arm, ready to catch her incase she falls. Slowly but surely, she makes her way across the room, wings tucked close into her body so as not to knock anything over on the way through the house. 

“So what are you doing here? Last time I saw you, I thought you had died.” The memories rush back to her as she makes her way down the stairs with the man she thought she’d lost forever.

The young child starts crying yet again as Ash and Dream continue marching through the dark woods. Dream grits his teeth, his fist clenching around the handle of his sword. 

“He’s going to get us killed.” The man growls, watching as Ash picks up the child and cradles him against her chest trying to comfort him.

“He’s a kid and he’s scared.” Ash says with a frown.

Dream laughs. “Yeah, and he’s going to get us killed in here. Hell, he’s the reason we’re down here anyways. It was too dangerous to take him above ground- the humans would hear him or see him and then come running after us. We came down here to keep him safe because you’re so insistent on saving him but we can’t do that if we’re dead as well!” Dream yells out, the kids cries quieting and leaving Ash silent. “We have to either get rid of him or find a way to keep him quiet.”

The last sentence is monotonous, indifferent, but it holds malicious undertones and Ash shivers at the connotations his words have.

“We’re not killing him.”

“Then make him be quiet. Or I’ll leave you both here.” He hisses out, turning and continuing down the path, green eyes scanning the shadows for enemies that might be lurking in the darkness.

“Hey, Phil, I need you to do something for me, okay.” The boy nods. “I need you to be really quiet. No matter what you see or hear, I need you to stay silent for me. Can you do that?” The boy nods again.

“Good. Now, let’s go.” Ash holds the boy in her arms and follows after Dream, the kids sniffling the only sound between them. 

It’s impossible to tell the passage of time in the cave, but all Ash knows is that they’ve been walking forever, and she’s about to pass out. 

“Dream… I need… to stop… for…” She tries to finish the sentence but falls to the ground, dropping her sword next to her. 

Phil tugs on her shirt, the fear of being alone in the dark washing over him.

“Shit.” Dream says, dropping next to her on the ground and scanning their surroundings. To be honest, Dream hadn’t expected to walk as long as they did, the cave ended up being larger than he thought. 

“C’mon Ash, you need to wake up.” He uncorks a potion from his bag, one that he hoped was a regeneration potion, the light pink liquid iridescent in the light as he pours a little into the young woman’s mouth.

Phil stands by silently, remembering the promise he made but wanting nothing more than to burst into tears at the sight of the woman- who’s pretty much become his mom in the past few weeks they’ve been together- passing out. Much to the surprise of Dream, the young boy clutches onto his arm, face buried into the cloak that he wears around himself. Their relationship is… rocky, to say the least. The constant glares thrown towards Phil haven’t exactly helped them in developing a healthy relationship. The young boy doesn’t often go to Dream for things, only when Ash is busy does Phil ask Dream for anything.

After a long few minutes, Ash wakes back up, energy somewhat restored- Dream hopes it’s enough to make it through the rest of the cave and out of it. 

“Ash!” Phil cries out, grabbing onto her tightly.

“Hey Phil, it’s okay. I’m okay.” She says, looking up at Dream.

“We need to keep going. It’s not safe to sleep down here. Do you think you can make it the rest of the way or do you need more of the potion?” He asks and helps her to her feet, brushing the dust off the smooth wings on her back.

“I should be able to make it. But you’re right, we need to hurry. I don’t like the silence.” And that’s when it dawns on Dream that the forest has in fact fallen completely silent. Not even the trees rustle.

“Take Phil and fly to the exit. I’ll catch up. You need to get him out and away from here.” He mumbles.

“No. I’m not leaving you here. It’s not safe to be alone.” She protests.

“We’re immortal- but he’s not. If you want to save him, then you need to get him out of here. Not only am I a much better fighter, but you can fly him out of here. I’ll hold off whatever’s coming while you escape.” He says, sword glistening in the low light.

“I-”

“Just fucking go!” Dream yells, as one of the creatures they’ve been trying to avoid the whole time bursts out of the tree line and the group goes silent.

It towers over the trio, more than 9 feet tall. Tentacles waves off it’s chest, a huge gaping mouth in its chest. The blood drains out of Ash’s face and Phil takes one look at it before he starts wailing, screams echoing off the cave walls in all directions. The creature goes berserk, the tentacles waving all over the place and a shrill screech leaves it’s face, whether there’s a mouth there or not is yet to be determined.

Ash yanks Phil up into her arms and takes off into the air, narrowly avoiding the creatures’ long arms. Ash flies in the direction they were walking, really hoping there’s no more of those things and an exit to this horrible place. Soon, sunlight becomes visible and she flies out of the cave, breathing in deep breaths as the two land on the ground a little ways away. 

“I need to go back and get him, but I can’t leave you here alone. I also can’t take you back with me.” Ash mumbles, looking between the cave exit and the crying boy in front of her.

Suddenly, a loud scream comes from the cave and then there’s silence. The air seems to stand still as the dreadful truth sets in. Dream is gone.

“Yeah, well me and you can’t die. To be honest, I thought I had as well. I only entered a deep sleep while my body recovered from the damage it took. When I woke, I was back in the first house we’d had. The mortals had burnt it down after we left, but I guess I was still tied to the house. I tried to make my way back to that cave to try and find you guys, but the two of you were long gone by the time I got back. I thought you were captured or continued on, so I started looking for the immortal children safe houses to see if you’d gone there. When I couldn’t find you, I assumed the worst and then went a little crazy after that but now you’re back here with me so neither of us have to worry anymore.” Dream explains and Ash shivers. Any monster too powerful for even Dream to defeat is not a monster she wants to face.

“So where is here, exactly?” Ash asks.

“Outside a small country I’d established with a few other immortals and hybrids, as well as some mortals that I found out I could trust. You’ll like it here.” Dream says, a small smile on his face as he pulls out a chair at the kitchen table for her to sit.

“Um, yeah. About that. Techno won’t like that. He’s not too big on, uh, governments.” She whispers, and Dream only nods.

“Well, it’s not like he can do anything about it, considering neither of you are in any state to fight against anyone right now. You especially. So, now that I’ve told you what I’ve been up to, what about you? What have you been doing the past 300 years?” Dream asks, setting the food on the table in front of her and taking a seat across from her.

“That’s a very long story.” She mumbles, taking a bite of food.

“Well, it would appear that we have all the time in the world.” Dream jokes and Ash laughs a little.

“Okay, well. After me and you had gotten separated at the cave…”

[whumpqin]

The Rules

Whew, this one kind of kicked my butt when I was trying to write it, but here it is! It’s currently 7AM but I’m still posting this. Hope yall are ready for some more pain :3c

Takes place after Welcome Home

Taglist! @imagination1reality0 @faewhump

Content Warnings: Pet whump, starvation and dehydration as a means of control, dehumanization, collars, muzzles, noncon touching, some parts straight up torture used as punishment, creepy / intimate whumpers, usage of knives, brief blink and you’ll miss it emetophobia warning, licking up stuff off of the ground (?), kind of monster whump I guess, and probably some other things that I forgot to tag! Just lemme know if I need to edit.

They had decided to let him rot in their basement for the day. Alone and in the dark.

When Elisha finally woke on the stone floor, muzzled and hands bound behind his back to make him immobile, he wasn’t sure whether to be thankful for the peace and quiet or be afraid of the loneliness that would inevitably set in.  He waited, minutes turning into hours, for them to come down and do whatever they were going to do to him, but they never came.

For once, he had actually felt lucky that he was a Cambion. Darkness had never been a favorite of his, but his inhuman eyes were able to just barely pierce through the unseen veil so that he could at least catch flickers of the prison that they had put him in.

Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing to look at. Besides the chains that bound him to the wall farthest from the exit, from escape, it was bare stone and wooden pillars that held the house up. Or at least, he assumed they were living in a house. He couldn’t be sure. 

He had tested how long the chains were by pacing - the only thing he could do at the given moment - and found that it wasn’t long at all. At the halfway point of the room it stopped, pulling taut and cutting off his circulation. But Elisha still paced, to feel something other than the metal lying across his skin, the strip of leather they put around his neck. He tried not to think about the collar.

And no matter how hard he tried to think about what was going on to distract himself, he still couldn’t understand why they were doing this to him. He dreaded finding out.

Elisha did, however, try. He figured this was some horrific game that they hadn’t let him in on. But Ari, the one who had drugged him, had called him a pet, talked to him like he was some sort of stupid dog, and he found himself trying to escape the fear that rattled in his skull again.

If they plan on making me their lap dog they’re going to have one hell of a fight on their hands, his instincts hissed in his ear over and over, aggressive at even the slightest provocation. Elisha always shook his head to try and get rid of those thoughts, but this one whispered over and over. He kept having to remind himself that fighting was going to get him killed by these people.

He continued to pace, continued to think. Every once in a while he stretched, extending his hands that were tied behind his back in an effort to soothe the ache that had carefully worked its way into his joints because of the strange position they were in. But no matter how hard he tried to wonder, tried to make sense of everything, he never came any closer to an answer that would satisfy him, would give him a reason why they picked him of all people.

Maybe there wasn’t an answer.

Elisha forced himself to sit, feeling the weakness in his limbs. They hadn’t given him any food or water, or anything comfortable, really. Nothing.

His shoulders slumped as he curled his tail into his own hands. There really was nothing to do but wait.

After what felt like hours, the sound of a creaking door opening alerted him. His head lifted from its lowered position to see small bits of light that peeked through the opening. Footsteps echoed down into the small room, and he soon saw two figures step down. Elisha was finally able to stare at both of the faces of his kidnappers.

Ari regarded him with a playful amusement, definitely looking down on him in a condescending way. Jer, on the other hand, seemed neutral and not nearly as interested in this as his partner seemed. He held a metal pipe that was as long as one of his legs, and Elisha felt a twisted dread in his stomach.

Ari reached up and flicked a light on. Elisha squinted as he was blinded yet again.

“Hello, pet,” they said with a bright smile. As they shifted, he saw that they were holding something behind their back. “Did you have a good nap?”

He wanted to say are you kidding me? On instinct, but his muzzle prevented any such movement.

Ari didn’t seem to notice, nor care, that he couldn’t give them an answer. “I bet you’re wondering what’s really going on, aren’t you?” They accented their words with a quick chuckle, as they reached a hand over to Jer, who placed the pipe in their hands. “Come here and kneel, and I might tell you.”

The dread curling and twisting in Elisha’s stomach dropped suddenly like a rock. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat as he saw Ari tap the ground in front of them. They had made the words sound so innocent, but he could tell that something sinister lied behind those eyes. He could see it in both of them.

His instincts told him both fight and flight. He wanted to get free and attack and tear them to pieces so that he could get away from here. But the bindings around his hands bit down more so than they had been, grimly reminding him of how trapped he was. Elisha took in a shaky breath as he stood up and took careful steps forward.

It felt horrible, to walk to your own demise.

The chain pulled taut, just before the place where Ari had told him to go. He tried to pull, to break it somehow, but it was too strong for him. Elisha looked to them with pleading, tearful eyes as they tapped the ground again.

There was no sympathy to be offered. “Are you not going to listen to me? Tsk, shame. And to think we could have been friends.” Ari looked to Jer with a incredulous expression. “Whatever, guess I’ll have to punish you for this, too. Kneel where you are.”

This was ruined from the start. Ari had no intentions of him even being able to obey. And now he had to just sit here and take whatever “punishment” they were going to deal out?

Everything was screaming for him to run. Elisha’s skin crawled as his instincts chastised him for kneeling, limbs twitching with a horrible panic that he just couldn’t shake. He can’t run. He couldn’t run, especially so with the air of fear that coursed through his veins so intensely that he wasn’t able to do anything but stare at the pipe as it was raised into the air.

When it came down, all he saw was stars.

Pain blossomed across his face as Elisha collapsed to the ground. Immediate regret of not doing anything racked his body much like the pain, and a low whine left his lungs through his nose. He tried to curl inwards, to protect himself somewhat, as another blow struck across his ribs. Even the thin layer of clothing that he somehow still had wasn’t enough to soften the spike of pain that echoed inside, as he felt something crack from the third blow.

Then it stopped. Elisha sat still for a moment, eyes squeezed shut in fear of what might happen, waiting for blows that never came.

It was too easy. He peeked an eye open, looking up to his captors as they both watched him carefully.

“He takes pain pretty well,” Jer commented. Then, with a small smile - which is the only expression Elisha’s seen from him thus far - he looked to Ari. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Oh, that’s great for us.” They looked back down to their target, a chilling grin on their face. “Hold still pet, there’s still more to come. Remember when you didn’t stay quiet in the car for me?” Elisha let out a muffled whimper, arms struggling from the need to defend himself as he squirmed on the ground.

Ari quickly raised the pipe and swung, catching him in the shoulder this time. It continued another two blows, hitting him in a different area each time. Elisha let out a low groan behind the muzzle, feeling aches and pains all over his body as they stood to admire their work.

There was the sound of someone whistling, and he looked up to see Ari’s smile. That damned smile.

“Oh, Jeremiah look at that. God, I wish I had a camera right now… these are the kind of moments you don’t want to forget,” they murmured, all too loud for Elisha to hear. They were talking about him like he wasn’t even there.

“Weren’t you the one who said phones were a ploy by the government to arrest ‘honest working people’?” Jer- or Jeremiah - said, raising his fingers in air quotes.

“I want a camera, not a shitty wiretap. There’s a difference.” They huffed a forceful breath, returning their gaze to Elisha, who lay motionless on the ground. He was afraid to move, lest he cause himself to hurt everywhere. He was already getting a headache. “Anyway, go ahead and take off the muzzle. I’ll go get some water.” Elisha perked up at the idea of water, swallowing as they felt the dryness in their own throat, and Ari seemed to notice, too. “Yeah? You want some water? Be a good boy for my friend here, and we’ll see about that, hm?”

Their tone was so condescending it hurt, but it could also be the aches from the impact sites of the pipe. Ari laughed as they went upstairs, high pitched and sweet and entirely not what Elisha would imagine an evil monster to make as a sound. Tears slipped from the corners of his eyes and dripped to the ground as he watched Jeremiah get to his knees and lean down.

Elisha’s breath hitched as his rough fingers found the buckles on his face and began to undo them. Jeremiah thumbed over a point of impact, making him whine in pain and squirm at the discomfort.

“Stay still,” he said, voice low and commanding. Elisha nodded, fearful of what might happen should he not obey.

The muzzle was slowly drawn away off of his face, careful of the short horns that rested on his head, and laid to the side. Elisha watched it for a moment before returning his eyes to Jeremiah as he prodded the injured skin.

“Pl-please…” he begged. Elisha couldn’t reach Ari, they were too much a monster all on their own, but he figured he might as well try with Jeremiah. “Please help me… I just- I just want to go home, please…”

Jeremiah watched him for a moment, an unreadable expression on his face. Then, he ran his thumb over Elisha’s cheek, making him flinch from the pain. “You are home, pet.”

The hopelessness washed over him like a tidal wave, and Elisha couldn’t stop a few pained sobs from escaping him. He was trapped, like a helpless animal, with these people who wanted to do nothing good with him. He was alone.

Elisha heard Ari coming back down the steps, and Jeremiah drew away from him to set the muzzle somewhere else. They caught him before he turned away, handing the pipe over.

“I think I figured out which name we should pick,” he murmured as he took the pipe. Elisha felt another pang of fear rattle around in his chest.

“Oh? Which one?”

“Caleb. I think it fits the best.” The muted passion in Jeremiah’s voice made the ever-growing pit in his stomach grow larger.

Elisha saw Ari put a hand on their chin in thought, a glass of clear liquid in the other. Water. He felt the dryness in his throat worsen at the idea of being so close to drinking something.

“Hm, alright. I did give you the choice.” They suddenly looked at him with such an intensity it made him flinch back. “Then it’s settled! Pet, your new name is Caleb!”

“No, please,” he begged, before he could really stop himself. “Please, my, my name isn’t Caleb, it’s- ack!”

He was interrupted by his own cry of pain as Ari stamped over to him and grabbed a fistful of his hair. The smile they wore held a sadistic tinge to it, and it was entirely too close to be well meaning.

“You really are stupid, aren’t you? You don’t get a choice in this.” They let go of his hair and let him fall back to the ground. Ari loomed over them, triumphant, as Elisha kept quiet, mostly out of fear. “We can do whatever the hell we want with you. Because we own you, got it?”

Fearful of what would happen if he did anything else, Elisha nodded against his own best judgement.

“Good, now you’re getting it. But not quick enough. Guess I’ll have to take your sip for you, hm?” Ari dramatically lifted the glass, taking a large gulp of water, sighing in relief. “Alright, now get up on your knees, Caleb. Maybe you can earn this water another way, hm?”

Elisha hated that name. He hated that Ari was essentially bribing him with the thought of water to get him to do whatever they wanted. He hated most of all that it worked.

With several whimpers and whines, he struggled to pick himself up off of the ground and sit on his knees again. Ari set the glass of water far out of reach, where he could still see it.

“You’ll learn to like it here, but there are rules you have to follow,” Jeremiah said. For a brief moment he wondered if he had gone through something similar with Ari, but he couldn’t be sure. The sinister glint in his eye told Elisha otherwise.

“Since this is your first time, we decided to maybe play a fun little game with you.” Ari drew something from their pocket, clicked something on it and a knife flipped out of it. “You say your rules right, and you’ll just get a little cut to remember it by. If not, Jeremiah here hits you with that pipe again.”

Elisha knew he wasn’t going to like this game. But, he didn’t want to get hit by that pipe again for going against what they wanted. He swallowed as he watched their expressions, horrifically neutral, and nodded.

“Oh-okay. I can, um… I can do that,” he murmured.

The two exchanged a look, a thousand words in the slightest twitch of expression that Elisha couldn’t read them all. The thought of not being able to know was disconcerting, especially when he wasn’t sure if it meant pain or not.

Jeremiah sat back on his heels as he looked down to Elisha. “Alright them. One. Your Masters should always be addressed as Master. Repeat it.”

Confident that he got the gist of it, he nodded. “Always, um, call you… M-Ma-” a tear slipped down his cheek as he tried to get the word out, and Jeremiah raised the pipe, “Ma-Master! Please, I said it, please don’t!”

“Wrong. You need to say it exactly, no ‘ums’ or stuttering.” Mercilessly he swung the pipe again, catching Elisha on the opposite arm. He cried out, following up with sobs of pain as he felt the ache settle under his skin. “Say it again.”

“Please… I, I don’t know, I can’t remember what you said…” He felt his chest clench as the pipe was raised again, fear coursing through his veins with every heartbeat that thudded in his ears. “Wait, I’m sorry! I’m sorry I can say it, ju-just say it again and I can repeat it, please, please don’t!”

The metal caught him across the side of the face this time, dazing him long enough that he nearly toppled to the ground. Elisha gritted his teeth in a groan as he curled inwards on an instinct to protect his body. Then he remembered Ari’s command, how they wanted him to stay on his knees. After a brief, merciful moment to collect himself, he lifted his face back up to Jeremiah.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ari lean against the side of the wall, that evil glimmer in their eyes again. With a sickening twist of his stomach, which he couldn’t tell was from hunger or fear, he realized that they were enjoying this.

Only a real devil could enjoy something like this, he wryly thought.

“Say it. Your Masters should always be addressed as Master.” Jeremiah’s expression was cold. Calculative. He was watching for a mistake to happen so that he could punish without mercy.

“My…” Elisha paused as he nearly said it again, fearful of the pipe that he held so delicately in his hands. “Masters, should… always be, ah-addressed as Master!” His voice raised as Jeremiah’s gaze narrowed, his nervous nature getting the best of him as he sped through the rest of the words.

“Not good enough. It has to be perfect.” This time it landed on the other side of his ribs, and though it glanced off of him he still felt the brief pain. Elisha cried out mostly in fear, keeling over as other aches surged in the wake of the blow. “Your Masters should always be addressed as Master.”

He took a few deep breaths, trying to remember breathing exercises he saw on the internet once. “My… Masters…” In. “should always be…” Out. “addressed as Master.”

“Good boy.” Jeremiah smiled at him. It didn’t reach his eyes. He glanced over to Ari, who moved behind Elisha.

“Very good boy,” Ari muttered, feeling his arms. “This should be a good spot.”

Something stung against his skin, and Elisha gasped and hissed in pain as a knife dug into his forearm. He forgot this part was happening, forgot that Ari mentioned being cut as a reward. Elisha squeezed his eyes shut as he felt Ari pull away.

“Two. Never question your Masters.”

At least this was easy enough. “Never… question my Masters…” Elisha’s head turned to catch a brief sight of Ari’s pale skin drawing close again.

He knew he must’ve done something good, because he felt the bite of the knife dig into his forearm again. It drew away just as quick, and he felt Ari pat him on the head.

“Your teeth look pretty when you’re in pain. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?” Ari laughed, close enough that Elisha could feel their breath hit the back of his neck, and he couldn’t help the shudder that crawled up his spine.

“Three. Do what you are told, regardless of the consequences.” He felt Ari draw away again, just slightly.

“Do… wh-what I’m told, regardless… of the… consequences.” Elisha swallowed thickly, closing their eyes. This time, he knew he messed up, especially when Jeremiah sighed in disappointment.

He heard him shift and move, and he peeked an eye open just as the metal swung and hit him in the stomach. Elisha wheezed as the air was knocked out of him, falling down to the ground as he gasped for air. He struggled to breathe through his breaking sobs of pain, resting his head on the ground for just a moment.

Getting back up was crucial in this moment, but his head hurt and moving about was like setting himself on fire and he felt like he was going to throw up from the nausea. Elisha needed to get up, he knew that, but everything hurt in ways that he never had before that he just curled up where he lay. The pipe prodded him, mocking him, and he gasped as his ribs shifted in ways they definitely weren’t supposed to.

“Get up, Caleb. Or I’m going to hit you again.” The pipe dragged across the floor, making an awful dragging sound that made Elisha cringe.

There was a pitiful whimper that sneaked out as a replacement for words that would ask for more time to recover from the hits. He just felt so weak, and trying to lift himself back up was a feat on its own. The next blow from the pipe went unprotected, and he cried out and sobbed as something else shifted in the wrong direction.

“Mm… this is already getting boring,” Ari muttered, prodding Elisha’s tail with a foot before it swept away and curled around his form. “Why don’t we trade, and cut him up until he gets it right?”

“You’re the one who suggested the pipe, Aridai. Just shut up for a minute.” Again he was prodded with the pipe, eliciting a whimper of pain from the gasping body. “Get up, Caleb.”

Without really thinking, Elisha shook his head. An admittance of defeat, to somehow say that he couldn’t do what they wanted.

He wasn’t cut out for this. He never was.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Fingers painfully tangled into his hair again, lifting him up to his knees. Aridai’s hands swept over his horns, but without any real curls to them there was no grasping them. Not yet. “Y’know, if we let these grow out, they’d make good handles or something.”

“Besides the point. Caleb,” Jeremiah appeared in his vision, waving a small hand to make sure that he was coherent. Elisha made a small whimper in return. “Good. Three. Do what you are told, regardless of the consequences. Repeat it.”

“Do… what I’m told… regardless… of the consequences…” the words were breathed out, as Elisha continued to try and get his breathing under control. He closed his eyes as another wave of dizziness fell over him, but with Ari-Aridai still holding him there was nowhere for him to go.

“Yaay, good boy!” They seemed genuinely excited as they grabbed onto his shoulder. Something small and metal was drug across the floor, and Elisha felt the painful impact of the knife slide across their skin.

“Four. Always ask for permission.”

“Always…” His mouth clamped shut as he nearly added an ‘um’ after, stopping his own blunder. He took in another deep breath to try and calm himself, even though it wasn’t helping as much now. “Ask… for permission.”

Another slice in his skin told him that he was being good. The feelings of both being relieved and horrified coiled around him as the knife drew away and he gasped for air. It felt awful that he would rather be cut than hit with a pipe, when he shouldn’t have to choose between either of them.

“Five. Always remember to thank your Masters.” Jeremiah shifted his weight, drawing the pipe across the ground. Elisha flinched into Aridai’s grip, which somehow felt cold and callous.

“Always… remember to… to thank your Masters,” he repeated after just a few short moments.

“Mm… nope, not quiet,” muttered Aridai. They let go of Elisha, who wavered and fell to the ground again.

Another hit from the pipe against his ribs, and he let out a low keen as the other aches fired up again. He just wanted to be left alone, he was much too weak for this. Even the water seemed like such a pointless goal, with all the pain that he had to endure just to get it.

You need it, his instincts whispered, clearly not understanding the situation.

“Get up, Caleb,” Jeremiah ordered above him.

He shook his head, not of defiance but of defeat once again. Elisha didn’t want to do this anymore. Just leave me alone…

“Aww… does the poor little one want to give up?” Aridai said in a mocking tone, as if he were talking to a stupid animal. It was humiliating, but he nodded his head, feeling his cheeks grow hotter than they had been. “Alright, I get it… but you have to finish your rules before we can leave.” Hands petted through his hair, and he couldn’t even fight them off. “Just be a good boy for us and it can all end that much sooner, okay? I’ll even hold you up.”

Don’t do it. They’re just trying to manipulate you. He had seen this tactic before, on TV shows he used to watch. Give in a little bit, and then they get you to do all sorts of things. Elisha closed his eyes as a lump found its way to his throat. Then he nodded.

“Good.” He was lifted up by his shoulders, and Elisha hissed as the stinging pain traveled to everywhere else that was hurting (which was just about everywhere, now.) “Go on, Jer.”

“Five. Always remember to thank your Masters.”

He swallowed. “Always… remember to… thank my Masters.” The slice of skin, signaling that he got it right.

“Six. Do not speak unless spoken to.”

“Do not speak… unless spoken to.”

“Good boy, Caleb,” Aridai muttered, digging into him once again.

This hurt. All of this hurt, from hearing these rules to saying them to the punishments and “rewards” that he was getting to the horrific praises that Ari was whispering from behind them as they carved into their arm. Elisha would cry, but he didn’t think that he had any water left in his body to do it.

To grant him just a sliver of mercy, however, he was lucky enough to be able to repeat the rest of the words.

“Never… leave the house… unless given explicit permission.”

“Pets don’t sit on the furniture.” 

“Good boy,” Jeremiah praises this time. For once Elisha is thankful to actually hear his voice, but it’s only because Aridai didn’t get to say anything.

The last cut held more relief than pain. Elisha hardly felt it, in fact, before they were suddenly pulling away from him and reappearing in his vision. Aridai held a bright smile on their face as they reached down and picked up the water. Finally. He actually perked up at the sight of it, waiting for him to approach and give him something to drink.

Aridai laughed in his face. “Oh, did you think that you were going to get this? Weren’t you the one who wanted to give up? No, I don’t think so.” They reached out to the side-

And tipped the water over so that it spilled into the floor beside Elisha.

“We’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe you’ll have shaped up by then, hm?”

They turned away, reaching for Jeremiah and wrapping an arm around him like a couple of buddies would. Like they hadn’t just relentlessly tortured someone. Elisha felt bile rise in his throat as he watched the two of them walk away like they had just watched a movie.

“So, how did you like that?” Aridai asked, shaking him a little bit to expunge some of the boundless energy that they seemed to have.

“That was… amazing. I can’t wait to do it again,” Jeremiah repeated, and he caught the slightest smile on their face as they retreated upstairs.

Elisha slumped forward, nearly choking himself from the chain as the collar tugged his throat. He scooted backwards, aching and tired and still so thirsty. It all had been for nothing. His gaze traveled to the water, slowly running down the ever so slight decline that it could find. Humiliation crept in, even alone as he stared at it.

He leaned down and lapped the water off of the floor.

[hellanoragami-blog]

Chapter 79.2 Thoughts

Heeeey guys. I’m up really early this morning, so I’ve decided to try to dissect the chapter. There is a lot of interesting things to cover, but overall I really liked it. It has a lot of pain and worry tied to it, though. A big thanks to @fast-moon for a speedy translation!

In the continuation of chapter 79, we’ve picked up directly where we left off. Hiyori has begun to read through her journal, only to find that almost all of them relate to Yato in some way or another. (It seamlessly ties into a discussion that Ami and Yama are having behind her, lol.)

But things take a serious turn, because Yama explains that Fujisaki has simply disappeared, and so has his father, apparently. Father is--we know--currently resting and recovering from the toll taken on his body. But what about Fujisaki’s father? Where did he go, and what are his concerns about his son’s injuries? Is that why he’s suddenly disappeared?

I wonder if perhaps we’ll see Father claiming another form, soon. With Bishamon now knowing his face, and the nuisance posed in further involving Fujisaki’s family, I feel as if Father wouldn’t want to gamble the risks of keeping his current body. (It’s confusing, because we’ve never actually seen Fujisaki’s father, nor do we know much about the relationship he has with his son. It makes it hard to pin down what exactly he’d be doing in this situation regarding his child’s injuries.)

Hey, look! Tenjin’s riding an Ox! Oh, wait. It’s just his regalia? Cool! We now know what forms two of his shinki take, as well as their alternate names. I don’t have much to say about that. But his conversation with Hiyori is different. As suspected, literally everyone know about Hiyori’s feelings but her--even Tenjin! She goes on to ask him, the one who would know most out of anyone, whether it’s true or not that Gods can love humans.

I kind of already figured his answer, and I was right in thinking that their way of loving is just different than human love. But it’s not inherently a good thing for a God to love a human. As he said, they get drawn more to the near shore.

The more attached Yato gets to Hiyori, the more he’d be willing to do to ensure her happiness and safety. This includes wreaking havoc upon whatever threat to her that he sees. (Think back to the Bishamon arc, where he was fully prepared to kill a fellow God under the false assumption that she had harmed Hiyori.)

Also- pg. 25, Amaterasu’s watching. ;)

Tenjin does have a valid point, regardless if we agree with it or not. Gods aren’t inherently the same as humans; they simply take the form of man. Just as Amaterasu is the sun, and Tsukuyomi is the moon. “Is pledging (romantic) love to something that isn’t a person a particularly logical act?”

In a non-biased context, the answer is of course, no.

Even with Tenjin urging her to cut ties with Yato, it’s simply out of her hands now. Yato is the only one who could do that, and with their fates tied, they’re stuck together. Maybe it’s inevitable that Hiyori will forget Yato, but it wouldn’t be permanent. That’s hinted in the fact that she’s able to recount this tale to us.

At the end of chapter 1, Hiyori uses the words, “Soon, Yato would meet me.” This implies that everything that is currently being told has already happened. The story already has an ending, and we’re being shown the story through her narrative. Already, this is kind of obvious by the small hints throughout the manga; the most popular one being when she isn’t able to recognize Yukine as a human spirit the way Yato can.

Hiyori’s description:

Yato’s description:

Again, notice Hiyori’s usage of past tense versus Yato’s use of present tense. Although we are also being shown what she’s telling us, we’re also shown things that she personally didn’t see, and this comes from Yato. Could he also be telling the story alongside her? I’m interested to find out. It may mean that they will in fact meet again. It certainly gives me hope!

Now! Onto some (mostly) lighthearted scenes!

We shift attention to Yukine and Nora, who are playing a game of badminton. But things go horribly wrong when Nora runs right into a trash bin, and ends up getting covered in rubbish. Yukine must have had the idea to take her back to Kofuku’s for a bath, conveniently able to do so because the Goddess of poverty is away in takamagahara to strike fear into the heart of Takemikazuchi for repair costs.

Nora is completely in awe of the place, exploring things she’s never seen before. It looks like a child’s wonderland, to her. (Notice she thinks almost everything in Kofuku’s house is a toy. ...To be fair, there are a LOT of toys in Kofuku’s bathroom.)

In fact, most of what we see of her in this chapter reminds me a lot of what we see in Yato: not a lot of experience in the way of doing things age-appropriately, and having a very naive approach to some things. (Seeing her with that shower shield around her face reminded me of a frilled dragon. Cute!) We also see two names on her, one on her hip, and the other on her arm. These were identified by fast-moon to be the names belonging to Ebisu and Take.

Clue One that things are not entirely as they seem. I don’t entirely distrust her just yet, though. She drops her hitaikakushi in the bath, and she gives it a look of what appears to be contempt. Does that mean that she’s growing more and more unhappy with who/what she was before? Or is it regret over her involvement in a possible plan executed by Father? She folds it not-so-neatly in her hands, and the scene changes to show Yukine attempting to cook.

It’s obvious that he’s still struggling with his feelings over the situation. But hopefully, it’s not enough to be hurting Yato. Next, Nora rejoins Yukine for dinner. (In a very cute outfit, nonetheless. Adachitoka, are you trying to kill me with cuteness?? Lol.) Yukine next suggests they study together, and Nora says something that really seems to hit a nerve with Yukine.

“Dead people, studying? It’s pointless.”

Ahh. So it’s hinted that Yukine isn’t entirely accepting of the way things are, after all. Whether he realizes it or not, the fact that those words bothered him to that extent just shows that he knows it’s true, deep down. Trying to emulate a life that a living person would is essentially pointless, and he knows it. But it’s what makes him feel happy and fulfilled with what he has.

That texture, though.

We know by now, that when this texture overlay is used, it either foreshadows a topic resurfacing in a Big, Negative way, or when a character realizes something that could end up leading to a key event of sorts.

In short, this page felt very serious and ominous, and it kind of worries me. The word ‘promise’ is also used quite a bit here, which feels a little suspicious in itself. It’s also kind of scary, because Yukine just unintentionally showed Nora one of his biggest weak points. I hope it’s not going to be used against him later.

Nora, please. I’m beggin u girl. Have a change of heart.

It does look like she’s having a change of heart regarding Yukine learning the God’s Greatest Secret, though. Before, she wanted to destroy him with it. But now she wants to make sure he doesn’t get near it. Which he agrees to... but we know it’s going to happen, eventually. Sad to say, he’s already been inflicted with liberation. So learning about his past is inevitable.

Yukine reveals his worries about stinging Yato, which is important; at least he realizes that it’s bad to be getting his emotions involved like this. But Yato’s not around for him to talk to, and that makes all the difference. And with Yato being hit by both Yukine and Kazuma’s shitty feelings, it’s bringing him great distress and discomfort.

(Also quick note, I’m curious as to why the name plate says Iki. Iki would be Takamasa’s last name, wouldn’t it? Unless he took Sayuri’s name instead. Uncommon, but some people do it here in the US. Do people do that in Japan as well? I’m going to assume it’s the case for now anyway, since it’s Hiyori’s maternal grandmother’s house.)

Alas... Father. What are you doing in front of Hiyori’s grandmother’s house? How did you even find out where it was? (If he followed her home, that’s just creepy.) What I wanna draw attention to, though, are the blank pages of her journal. Blank pages. Blank. I hope it’s just the newest pages that haven’t been written in yet!

But... I feel very certain that Father is influencing something here, just from Hiyori’s mention of her body feeling heavy. (Yes, I think it was Hiyori’s dialogue, despite it showing Yato; particularly with the way it follows up in her POV in the next box.) Part of me is worried that the page is implying that Father is leaving, and he’s already set something into motion. I hope I’m wrong.

Hiyori... please hold on to your memories.

[pouncequick]

Generally speaking, I think we can agree Simone, Kara, and Suni are all non-controversial picks for this team. They were top three in the all around at WT, they all were in the top three for at least two events at Trials, and when you look at them across the summer, they are providing top averaged scores.

Carey is not a controversial pick because of her scores, but because she’s going the WC route for qualification. She was second on vault and fourth on floor at WT, and if you average scores across the summer, she’s top three on both. Score wise, she’s your pick for a VT/FX specialist. Her selection is only controversial if you believe that she should not be on the Worlds team because she is going for an individual spot of the Olympics, and the Worlds spots should go to potential Olympic team members. Which is a valid argument! But it does not appear to be the line of thought the NT is taking, which is also a valid argument.

The real controversy at this point is Skinner, Hurd, McCallum, and Wong.

Wong had an okay summer. She’s top five averaged on UB and BB, and makes top five on VT if you drop the low score. She has two main problems: One is that she’s top five, but only top three on beam, and only if you’re looking at summer averages. That’s perfect alternate material, not team material. The other, of course, is that she had a terrible day yesterday. She fell on vault and balked on floor. As much as I enjoy her gymnastics, she’s not there this year.

Hurd has also had a rough summer. She’s only hit half of her floor routines, including whatever happened yesterday (balk? tripped over the horrible carpet? turned ankle?), and she hasn’t looked fabulous on vault all summer. That’s okay--Lee’s vault is decent enough to go in TF with Biles and Carey. Neither is fabulous, though. With Simone, Kara, Suni, and Jade, her floor isn’t needed either.

Her key event is bars. She wouldn’t be doing all around this year. And her bar routine yesterday was a disaster for someone who would be taken as a bars specialist. She didn’t fall on a release--she fell on a cast handstand. After balking a skill. This is really hard without us getting to see what happened at the last camp or at day two of trials (which, btw, needs to go on YouTube for the whole transparency thing to be a real thing). If she missed bars again today, or has been looking rough in practice too, then it makes sense to leave her off the team. If yesterday was typical to how she’s been training and how she competed today, she’s not ready.

McCallum is a lot like Wong--she’s only top three potentially on one event (beam, interestingly enough), but she’s solid everywhere. She’s top five on vault and beam yesterday, and on every event if you’re looking at the whole summer. That includes being tied with Wong on bars averages if you drop the low score for the summer. Her place--either as traveling alternate or as a team member--makes perfect sense. She can go pretty much wherever needed and fill any opening in the lineup.

And then there’s Skinner, potentially the most controversial gymnast on the gymternet. Forster’s getting a lot of complaints for just taking the top six, but based on yesterday that does give the highest scoring team. Skinner is top three on vault, and yesterday she was top five on floor. If the base team is Biles, Carey, Lee, and Eaker, we’re looking to fill one bars spot and one vault spot. McCallum offers a solid DTY and a solid bars score. If Skinner is on the team, the US will be putting up Eaker on bars in TF which is a weak line up, but Eaker-Biles-Lee still isn’t bad. It is interesting that Skinner’s floor probably won’t come into play here. She’d be competing with Eaker for the quals FX spot, and Eaker has a slight edge in scoring here.

There is also an argument that Skinner won’t receive the same scores internationally as she did here. But the same argument was made in 2014, and her scores weren’t that different. In some ways, that’s actually an argument for her to be on the team--better to find out this year than next year if international judges will score her differently.

The question comes down to: Does McCallum’s bars offer a better score increase over Eaker, or does Skinner’s vault offer a better score increase over Lee? Based on the math yesterday, it’s Skinner. However, Worlds is still three weeks away.

So I get why they left Hurd and Wong off completely. The argument for Hurd is that yesterday was a fluke, not a trend--that’s why they get to watch practices and see a second day of routines. If it were a fluke, I think Hurd would have been on this team--or at least, she should have been. USAG isn’t giving us the information we need to know that. But if she were on the team, it would probably over McCallum, not Skinner.

Tl;dr: I get why the chosen team was chosen. I love half of it. And well, that half is going to be providing at least 2/3 of the routines, so that’s something to very much look forward to. The rest of it makes sense, based on the competition we saw. To me, there are three things left that need to be determined at this point:

1. Does Eaker deserve the chance to do AA in quals, despite having the weakest vault on the team?

2. Is Carey going the WC going to work against her in finalizing her spot competing? (I’m going with no here--she’s not the best choice for alternate)

3. By the time we actually hit podium training, is Skinner bringing more to vault, or is McCallum bringing more to bars? That will be the team-finalizing question.

[idonotknowhowtoo-blog]

How To Prevent Bank Costs While Traveling - WanderingTrader

Preventing bank charges while taking a trip while travelingis something that everyone need to discover how to do. Avoiding charge card fees, currency exchange costs, and foreign transaction charges while traveling abroad is very important in order to save money for more journeys and adventures.In this travel suggestions post we are going to cover the main fees charged by banking and credit card organizations. The costs can be broken down into three types; ATM withdrawal charges, foreign conversion costs (which can also be tied into charge card charges), and currency exchange rate fees.Its quite simple to prevent paying bank charges while traveling once we understand the structure of how banks charge customers for service.Trouble seeing the video? Enjoy How To Prevent Bank Fees While Traveling on YouTube.Choosing The Right Bank Among the very first things to understand is that big

public banks stay in business to make an earnings. Smaller banks such as cooperative credit union usually have smaller sized costs but they likewise provide less services. It is highly suggest to take a look at the fee structure with your

bank and likewise think about opening an account at a smaller sized bank or credit union.Credit unions are normally "not for earnings"and charge much lower costs for doing company. This indicates that they charge less charges while traveling. At the very same time large banking institutions also have their advantages. The biggest banks in the world have actually developed collaborations with each other in order to offer no cost ATM withdrawals both locally and internationally.As long as one becomes part of these banks ATM charges can be avoided.This presumes obviously that travelers will have the ability to discover an ATM with a bank that becomes part of the alliance. The alliance is called the worldwide ATM alliance. Check the fees at your local bank and look at the viability of opening an account with a credit union.

Otherwise, it is advised to have an account at one of these significant banks."Part of how To Prevent Bank Charges While Taking A Trip. Bring a stash!"Picking a Big International Bank Another choice is to pick a banking institution that has different worldwide entities all over the world. Three of the most common are Citibank, HSBC, and Requirement Charter Bank.I have actually personally had a Citibank account and know many loved ones that have accounts with standard charter. I would not suggest opening an account with Citibank as their consumer service is really poor and their charges are generally really high.If selecting one of these three banks I would suggest Standard Charter Bank

or HSBC.As I have been day trading for almost 12 years I am greatly included in the monetary markets. With the banking crises that have appeared in the last couple of years I looked very closely at bank financials. The last thing we desire is to be part of a bank that is going to fail. Citibank was bailed out by the US federal government so I would not trust the decisions that they make. HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank are much better options.Recommended Option For US citizens and citizens the very best option would be a bank account with Charles Schwab. Their bank account has no

minimum balance requirements, no month-to-month costs, and all ATM costs whether global or nationwide are refunded at the end of every month.Charles Schwab also will open a no fee brokerage account in addition to the monitoring account.I have found the bank account with Charles Schwab to be the finest alternative. Since they reimburse all costs charged by any bank travelers no longer need to fret about looking for the best ATM or bank. One can pick any bank and Charles Schwab will refund all costs

associated with any ATM deals at the end of every month.Another reason why Charles Schwab is a terrific option is because of very simple electrical wiring policy. Because I run different services online I typically have to wire cash across the world. Lots of large banks provide worldwide transfers via electronic banking but lot of times this isn't enough.Charles Schwab enables you to fax in a wire type and leave standing instructions.This implies that as soon as the wire type is sent out in and authorized one would simply require to call Charles Schwab and authorize a wire transfer over the phone. This has been vital to me as oftentimes wire transfers can get extremely

made complex. Certainly a recommended choice for more organisation associated travelers.ATM Withdrawal Fees The charges related to global ATM transactions vary. Some banks charge as high as five dollars in order to make a withdrawal at a worldwide ATM. This means that every single deal, consisting of the balance queries, is

a charge of approximately five dollars.When living in Ethiopia I understood that I was charged over $200 one month just in ATM withdrawal fees. At that point I didn't have the Charles Schwab examining account and was blinded by the worldwide ATM alliance.Sadly, there were no collaboration banks in Ethiopia.ATM costs can accumulate considerably even if one is simply going on a 2 week trip to Europe. If we assume a$ 2- $ 5 charge whenever we take out money that can equate to upwards of$50-$200 a month. Foreign Deal Charges In addition to ATM costs there are also foreign conversion costs. At any time a bank converts a foreign currency into your house currency there is a percent cost charged for that service. The overall charge is in between 2%to 5%. Preventing this bank cost while traveling is the most essential. These fees can include up to much greater than the

ATM withdrawal usage charges

. Companies such as Visa or MasterCard generally charge 1%of the overall conversion and the bank will charge in between 2%to 4%. This implies there is a possibility of being charged an ATM withdrawal charge in addition to the foreign conversion fee.Imagine securing$500 and being charged$2.50 to utilize

a foreign ATM in addition to a 3%fee of$15. Both banks and charge card business are known for charging these fees. There are lots of credit cards offered now without any foreign conversion costs. Below are some choices: Other Tips On How To Avoid Bank Charges While Traveling Usage Credit Cards with Benefits-- There are lots of charge card offered in the market

that will supply advantages such as additional miles and points. Travelers are then able to use these points and miles totally free journeys, upgrades, and VIP design benefits.As banks frequently earn money on the currency exchange a lot of

them will not supply the precise exchange rate used in order to make money on withdrawal. Any of the charge card noted above would be highly recommended as they do not charge foreign transaction costs and provide these advantages for their consumers who often take a trip worldwide. Many credit cards will also offer the very best currency exchange rates, guaranteeing you get more of your cash for your money.I would suggest the Chase Sapphire preferred card since it's a points-based system that can be transferred to a range of business. A lot of travel credit cards are business particular, meaning they can only be utilized for one brand of

hotels, airline companies, or rental automobile companies. With the Chase Sapphire chose card one can transfer to a variety of companies with

different services.Plan Ahead-- The majority of travelers plan journeys ahead of time. If you know you are traveling abroad start keeping an eye on foreign exchange rates and begin exchanging early. There are a variety of tools online that a person can utilize to evaluate the rates. Here are a couple of listed below: Sometimes travelers can buy forex from their regional bank before leaving

on their trip. I always like to have approximately$100 in local currency

for emergency purposes.Avoid Horrible Exchange Rates-- Never exchange any cash at airports. They provide the outright worst exchange rate readily available. While emergencies do happen, by preparing ahead, this can always be avoided. If in a bind, your finest bet is to use an Automated Teller Machine at an airport

instead of the official currency exchange desks.If currency rates surge in your favor constantly attempt to get more cash than regular. Any debit cards or ATM cards with the Visa logo design will use the of official Visa conversion rate offered in the link above. Travelers you too can utilize the Visa conversion rate link I have listed anytime to see the official rate that visa is using and chosen on your own to get more loan or wait till the next day as to achieve the very best rate.Planning for Contingencies What happens if your ATM card is stolen? What?It is recommended to have either two accounts or 2 debit cards(similar to ATM cards )just in case this occurs. Banks are typically able to interlink debit cards with various accounts.I have 2 examining accounts with two debit cards with Charles Schwab. If one of my debit cards are stolen or is lost I will have the ability to instantly select up the extra card and link that with my second monitoring account.This allows me to proceed organisation as normal.Having more than one inspecting account with other banks is also recommended. There are really rare cases where particular banks might have issues with worldwide withdrawals. One also needs to think about that some banks are more rigorous than others.

[dillenwaeraa]

How Will Voice Devices Affect the Future of Search?

The world of search is on the verge of massive change. The rise of voice search, the Internet of Things, and digital personal assistants are all coming together to change how we search.

Imagine a world without search boxes, without browsers, where you get one answer via voice to your search query. How will you prepare for all this change?

I asked two expert futurists, Duane Forrester (VP Industry Insights, Yext) and Brent Csutoras (Founder and CEO, Pixel Road Designs) to join me for a live video discussion of these topics. Together, we seek to show you how to position yourself now to survive and thrive in this brave new world.

Watch the video below, or scroll down to read a transcript.

Curious about how the rise of voice-powered search might impact your digital marketing? Check out these resources:

Rating the Smarts of the Digital Personal Assistants – We asked 5000 questions to Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri, and Google Search. See which was best at answering basic factual questions.

The Next Big Thing: Digital Personal Assistants – Get my take on why all search marketers should be paying attention to personal digital assistants, and how they will affect SEO.

Mobile Voice Usage Trends 2018 – My survey shows how comfortable real, everyday smartphone and smart devices users are with giving voice commands to those devices in various circumstances.

Transcript

Eric: Hello everybody, this is Eric Enge with Stone Temple Consulting. I am thrilled to bring to you this “Get ready for the Voice Search Revolution” video broadcast. Say hi, Mr. Duane Forrester. (Follow Duane on Twitter)

Duane: Hello everybody.

Eric: And say hi Mr. Brent Csutoras. (Follow Brent on Twitter)

rent: Hello, hello. Excited to be here.

Eric: So the reason why it’s the three of us guys is we’ve had our own private club for a while that we call the Futurism Group, where we talk at ridiculous lengths about stupid and unreasonable things that might happen when we’re older.

Brent: They are all reasonable. They’re reasonable.

Duane: Eric, they’re reasonable because we’re just going to extend human life by another 40 years and then everything becomes fine.

Brent: I know, I still find it a horrible icebreaker that the first thing I typically say to people is, “You know, I’m never going to die.” And then they go, “Ha ha” and then I go, “No, I’m very serious.” I have no intention of ever dying, ever.

Duane: It’s probably better than you think it is Brent, because I often start conversations with, “Hey, have you heard Brent Csutoras is never going to die?”

Brent: Yes, you see. There you go.

Duane: It’s a great way to start conversations.

Eric: It is a great icebreaker for sure. Actually, what I was going to say before you guys jumped in, is that every once in a while, we’re right. And today we want to talk about something that I think we’re all convinced we’re right about. And to open it up, I’m going to share just a few slides.

Is voice device use on the rise?

So here’s market data on the adoption of voice.

I love the quote on the right here from Andrew Ng, the Chief Scientist at Baidu, who is also a brilliant machine learning person by the way, that at least 50% of searches by 2020 are going to be through images or speech, which is by itself amazing. And that ties really well into our agenda of this being a voice search conversation.

By 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice-initiated - Andrew NG of Baidu.Click To Tweet

Brent: So he’s anticipating in two years then, essentially in 2020, we would be at that place, right?

Eric: Correct.

Duane: Well, remember that quote is a couple of years old now.

Eric: That is true.

Duane: Right? I think we’re maybe three years into the five year time frame essentially.

Eric: That’s correct.

Duane: And I’ve got to be honest, from where I’m sitting, I generally think we’re pretty close to being on trend for that statement.

Eric: I agree.

Brent: I disagree, but that’s fine.

Eric: Well, look at May of 2016, right? 25% of searches on the Windows 10 taskbar are voice searches. That’s 2016.

Brent: Yes. But you also have to anticipate how many people are experimenting right now. And you always see a massive growth in any new technology with experimenters. Right now, with the number of purchases for a lot of these devices, the Google Home, the Alexa, a lot of these elements have a lot of experimental use right now.

Eric: You’re trying to say the three of us are the ones that are doing all the searches and we’re making up 50%.

Brent: Yes, exactly.

Eric: So, some data from comScore.

Half of smartphone users engaged with voice technology on their device, and many of them use the feature habitually. One in three use it daily. That’s comScore data.

Half of all smartphone users have used voice technology on their phones. 1 out of 3 use it daily (comScore data).Click To Tweet

So now we’re talking more broadly about smartphone usage, so not just voice search. We’ll talk about that in a moment.

And then here’s data from the Stone Temple study that we just published.

The dark green bars are 2017 and the lighter green bars are 2018 data. You’ll notice that the first three responses fluctuate, but everything from the fourth bar over is strongly in favor of 2018. And if you look at that, you realize that most of those are about behavior in public.

According to many data sources, the use of voice to interact with devices continues to rise.Click To Tweet

Brent: Yes. I want to know who’s doing it in the theater. Who’s that person in the theater who’s using voice…?

Duane: Why is there so much growth in the theater voice use space and in the public restroom voice use space? I’m sorry.

Eric: 25% that were, according to the survey, likely or very likely to use voice commands with their smartphone in a public restroom. My favorite way of explaining what they’re doing, is just that they’re asking: “Where’s the toilet paper?” 

Duane: It was on instant delivery.

Eric: I think smart speakers are the spark that this revolution has been looking for. And I know what you were saying earlier, Brent, so I definitely want to get your take on this before we go on, but people are getting conditioned to use voice with devices through smart speakers, and there was about 45 million installed in the U.S. today. But go ahead, comment on that before I show the last one.

Is voice search ready for prime time?

Brent: I think that there’s definitely a space for people utilizing voice search, and smart speakers are a big part of that, especially in the car as well. When you have your smartphone, it becomes a voice speaker. I’ll constantly ask questions when I’m in the car because I’m driving.

I think there’s a couple things that make me feel that even though this is a huge talking point, even amongst ourselves, I don’t really buy into the timeline of this being adopted [so soon], because of the fact that, through all of my interactions, even with my children who are really the best use case of this, we’re starting to see more normal language search queries. People are less trying to do the individual keywords and they’re trying to talk to these devices like they were a real human being.

And they’re having to ask questions four or five times. I run into situations where almost every time I try to use voice search, I end up having to repeat. It doesn’t pick up fast enough, so I’m talking too quickly, and I get in half a sentence. It sends me down a rabbit hole, which now I have to figure out and most of the time my response is “ah, screw it, I’m going to look on the computer or you know what, I’ll just type it in myself.”

So, I do think that even though there’s a lot of usage and there’s a lot of experimentation, I don’t hear people like Duane talk about how he uses his smart devices and think to myself, “Man, I want to do that.” I have an Alexa right here, but I never schedule a meeting or an appointment through my voice search. I just don’t remember to do those things. And maybe the younger generation will, but I think that the inability for the technology to truly allow an engagement to happen, I think it’s going to delay this a little longer than we think it will.

Duane: I’m going to challenge Brent slightly on this. Brent I think you’re speaking of these things from a completely rational standpoint. I get it because I’ve questioned that whole thing as well.

We saw all of the numbers over the holidays of devices that were sold, and how the Echo was the number one device by a long shot. So, naturally you have all these new people that are trying this, and they’re yelling at their devices and some are succeeding, some are failing, and for some of them the novelty wears off and they don’t understand how to position it in their lives.

I think what ends up happening though is each of us individually is on our own curve, and we do find a point where we come back and say, “I haven’t used it in six months because I haven’t really felt a useful need for it. And now I’m going to try this because this appeals to me.” It’s that one moment in time of value-add in the life that immediately gets the person hooked on using it all the time. It is a precipitous cliff when you adopt this technology in your life.

So, on the other end we see the so-called millennials and Gen Z. Those folks are much more apt to adopt the new technology. Get in there, try it, play with it, do those things.

Eric: Right. I’ll tell you what was my precipitous event. I wasn’t actually that much of a user myself. My wife and I were out to dinner at a friend’s house, and they had an Alexa installed. They were already heavy users. They had already gone over the cliff. I saw them using it, and I said, “Okay, it’s time for me to get off my butt and push the envelope on how we’re using it.” And now we’ve got all kinds of things that are being controlled. We actually have both an Alexa and Google Home. We play with them both and we get lots of questions answered.

Problems with speech recognition

Brent: I’ll jump in and say that I don’t disagree. My brother, he has all his lights set up with smart technology, so we’ll be sitting there and watching a movie and he’ll go, “Hey Alexa, turn off the movie lights,” and the lights go off. And then I saw him accidentally say “master lights” instead–it was 3:00 in the morning and his wife was sleeping–and the master lights were about to go on. And so, he’s saying, “Hey Alexa, turn on master–no wait, no not master, movie.” It was funny. But my dad’s also disabled. He’s bedridden, and he uses Alexa a lot for his technology.

But I think the second side of this is not so much me hating the adoption, but it also has a lot to do with data, right? We have such a hard time right now because I want to embrace at a fully functional level a technology that’s not capable of delivering [what I’m looking for].

I think that holds me back on my personal adoption, because when I search for a song, and Alexa doesn’t have that song inside of its music inventory, then it gives me some other music; it suggests something different or it plays something different. When I tell my device I want directions to a certain place and that place is not found, then I find those pitfalls.

So, I just don’t think that in the next two years we’re going to get there fully. I feel like there’s more energy on AI and augmented reality and virtual reality as far as research and development and investment and focus.

I feel like there’s a chance that this “voice personal assist-type engagement” will morph into a different form by the time it comes to a place where it has the easy adoption, the easy interface, and the technology to really support that data.

Duane: Before we go down the…

Brent: The rabbit hole?

Duane: “Augmented reality path” we’ll call it because that is exciting. But first, there are two things that I need to call out.

One, Brent, your point about your father using assisted technologies to literally enable parts of his life is a rapidly growing segment of a user base. I don’t recall this happening before. It’s difficult to recall the number of times historically that an older generation of users has come into a new technology and then adopted it because it made their life better. I’m thinking electricity; I’m thinking the telephone. This is what we’re going to see as people’s eyesight starts to fail them as they get older and it’s harder to read. They will literally turn to these technologies.

So I think we’re going to see a very big swell from this past sales cycle that will drive us. Whether we ultimately reach 50% or not, I don’t know. I think we will, but then again, we could just as easily not.

Alexa and the low-hanging fruit of voice activation

Duane: Something that is fascinating though, and I think you guys may have picked up on this as well, the Amazon ad from the Super Bowl. Alexa’s lost her voice. I had tears in my eyes, and I watched it over and over and over again because, you know, it’s funny, it’s enjoyable, it’s well executed, it’s really well done.

But there was a subtle message in there that is not a spoken message and, it’s literally summed up in the closing moments of the ad when Alexa comes back and says, “Everybody thanks, I’ve got this.”

Effectively what Amazon is telling everyone is the minutiae of your life, the little things, connecting you with the people that matter, getting you the entertainment that you want, taking care of things in the background of your life when you’re not able to focus on them, music at a dinner event–for all of these things, we got your back. We got it. You don’t need to think about it anymore, Alexa has it.

This is fascinating to me because it makes me wonder, Brent, to your point, every time a new Skill hits, I’m running the Skill, trying something out, like finding where the edges are and what works and what doesn’t work. One of my current big beefs is every time if I ask a [third party] Skill something and I get the answer in Alexa’s voice, I want to rage at the company and tell them, “You’re missing a golden opportunity to create your own persona,” that is your brand.

Why would you let somebody else’s brand serve your brand and knowledge?” But I also think that there is a lot of opportunity here and so many times these things are very limited in what they’re doing. So, at that front end that you were talking about, Brent, I want to go whole hog on all of it, right? And I want it all and I want my life to be exponentially better and easier because that’s the promise of the technology.

We are not there, but things like that ad make me wonder about the areas that they’re calling out, that they are effectively demonstrating that they have mastery over. Is that an indication of the main areas that consumers are focused on?

Eric: Yes, I think so. It’s the layup things that they can do reasonably easily and extremely well. Brent’s comments about the issues with level of speech recognition granted, the last thing that they could afford to do is have a very thin music library. I get that they might not have the specific song that you asked for, but that’s pretty rare probably, right? They have a pretty robust library. 

Duane: Eric, we should probably just admit this, right? Brent, I’m just going to come clean on behalf of Eric and I, those instances when your Alexa device fails you, that’s because Eric and I have hacked your Wi-Fi and we’re blocking the question.

Brent: Ah, I gotcha.

Eric: That music is actually in there. Those directions? We hacked those too. [Laughter]

Voice on devices is more than just search

Brent: You know what I think is really interesting though with the statement from Amazon? It’s that Amazon has done a better job in some regards at accomplishing the internet goal, right? If you think about what Google’s goal was, if you think about what Facebook’s goal was, “connect the world,” and Google’s goal is to provide information, right?

It seems that Amazon has really come in at the right time to accomplish that for people, and they’ve done that by reforming the shopping cycle. They did that right from the start with reviews. You couldn’t get a better place to actually find if a product was good than Amazon. They set the standard for same day shipping, for cheap shipping, for free shipping. They’ve set the standard for a lot of areas, and I think it’s really interesting that they’re pushing into that space and they’re taking that step.

I think another thing you touched on was the fact that as much as we as marketers think we know, it’s super important to identify storytelling. One of the studies I love says that the reason humans are successful is that we can tell stories.

Pack animals can’t communicate a story, they can’t get a sense of a standard that all wolves can live by. So they have only 20 or 30 [in their pack], and then they don’t like any other wolves, and they’ll fight to the death the minute they see them. But we have a confidence that when we walk down the street in a city we’ve never been to, that we’re going to be approached and dealt with in a certain manner because of our shared stories.

So, I think one of the things that was really important when Instagram and Snapchat and a lot of these things started coming out, and even when social media became popular, is people were saying this isn’t going to grab hold. I think it was a lesson for us to focus more on how people storytell. 

So, I think that we are seeing a transition. We’re seeing video and imagery and interactions–storytelling being really the desired and the most effective form. This voice search–and we call it voice search just for the sake of calling it that–this voice interactive technology really does take us toward improving the way we story-tell and the way we hear stories in our life. I think that’s exciting.

Eric: Picking up on something you just alluded to, which is that we call this voice search because that’s what the market is calling it. But that’s not what it really is. It’s voice-activated control, or voice activated input, call it whatever you want. “Search” makes it sound like you’re just using it to do things in Google or Bing, but it’s much, much bigger than that. So, I think that that’s really important for us to keep in mind here.

Duane: I think that’s true. Just before we started we were having this debate about what’s the right name for this event. Everybody defaults to voice search. I find when I’m writing about stuff, I’m trying to avoid using the phrase voice search because that feels very limiting to me. And it’s really about so much more than just search.

Brent: Well, it was like my email to you guys before we started this call. I wrote: I know we’re supposed to talk about voice search, but I don’t really want to talk about voice search.

Duane: Exactly. But it’s fascinating because as you dive into this–and I’ve spent time with the folks at Amazon, the folks at Cortana, the folks at Google Assistant–it’s really fascinating because they do not have a focused storyline that matches with search. What they’re focused on is consumer experience, discovery, and solutions.

Search is a part of those cycles, but it’s a relatively small part of it. Then if you move your head around to that line of thinking, this is where you start understanding the conversations like persona. And we all talk persona as marketers and we think demographics, let’s put a face on the person and so on.

When one of the search engines or Amazon talks about persona, they literally talk about Cortana’s persona and how that is a reflection of the brand which is a reflection of the company. So, when I see Skills or actions fail and default to the pre-programmed Alexa or Google Assistant voice, I think it’s a missed opportunity. Why would you take that shortcut?

When you start having those conversations, you realize how broad, how wide open this space truly is. There’s so much to consider beyond the aspect of being found in search and spoken out loud. It’s why this is so important.

If you watch that Amazon ad, it goes almost immediately into visual search where the device is showing visual information alongside [the voice answer], and that’s because that’s what humans want. We are lazy. We want it to be easy. I want to ask my question out loud and be given the answer in an easy to consume form.

Where are the marketing opportunities in voice?

Brent: Eric, let me ask you a question.

Eric: Go ahead.

Brent: Obviously a lot of people who are going to be watching this [will be thinking] a reason why it ties back with voice search is because people need it to fit it into marketing agendas, right? For marketers or SEOs in these companies, what options are there in your mind to participate in voice assisted technology? Because to me, when I look at the progression of it, it seems more and more limiting and less open to anyone participating.

Eric: Well, let me give you one. Because we [Stone Temple] did this. We’ve built Actions on Google and we’ve built an Alexa Skill. We’ve done both here, and we’ve gotten them certified.

If you have Google Assistant on your phone, you can pick it up right now without installing anything else and say, “Ask Stone Temple” and then ask an SEO question. The example I always give is “what is a no index tag?” But there are hundreds of different questions programmed in there.

As a digital marketing agency that’s not going to make anybody here, rich, right? It’s a bit of a novelty from a Stone Temple Consulting perspective, but we have clients that we’re working with that are having issues because their competitors have launched a Skill or an Action, and they’re getting a lot of adoption for their action.

Here’s the kicker, which most people don’t realize: it’s even happening to us at this point where somebody will come to a Google Assistant, pick up their phone and they’ll say, “Okay Google, what is a no index tag?” to use my same example. And the Google Assistant app will then say, “Stone Temple has an answer for that, do you want to hear it?”

So, the user doesn’t even know about the Stone Temple app, but we’re getting a good percentage of the volume of our usage of our app right now from people who have no idea that it existed.

We have a major client, I can’t say what area they’re in because it’ll become obvious too quickly who they are, but it’s a very highly visible client that has a competitor that launched an app. It’s actually on the Amazon side of things. And their competitor is getting cited in lots of these queries without the user actually knowing about the app and they are not. They feel like they’re losing real mind share.

Brent: This is all surrounding information, answers. Something I’d really like to figure out how people are addressing is pronunciation. There are so many startups where the idea is to create a unique brand identity, and they can’t call it Upwork for example, so they call it Upwirk with an “i” because they’re slick, making their cool little startup thing. They don’t care because it’s the web, and they’ll just rank and everything will be linked. And then you go into voice and nobody’s ever going to find Upwirk with an “i.” The voice search will give them the better-known Upwork with an “o.”

Duane: They could, they could. No, they could be found. And that’s the point; this is a space of early adopters. This is a wide-open area. There is a leveling of the playing field because now we’re back to things where at a large company it takes time, it’s a committee decision, legal’s gotta sign off, so to actually get the action or the Skill up and running takes a lot longer to gather the data.

A small company, Eric, for example, thinks, “We’re going to put out 150 answers to the top 150 common questions and do a quick survey. Your target number’s 150 team, so pull it together. They move forward and now they’re an active participant in this.

Eric now has the opportunity to use this in marketing, so he can use it in pitch conversations. So, if you’re in-house team needs quick answers to common questions to build presentations or train team members or whatever, you can use the Action or the Skill.

What we’re actually seeing is that, and I believe this will be the future, when we see data that’s been shared by either Google or Cortana or Amazon (when they do share, which is rare), what we tend to take away is it looks like most of the queries coming in are fresh queries; they’ve never seen them or heard them before. And that’s because of natural language.

All three of us might ask for the exact same thing slightly differently. The queries get individualized at some point and the net result is if you are an actual perfect match for that, you will be brought forward. So Upwirk will be brought forward regardless of the craziness of its name because behind these actual assistants is an app where all of that data lives in clickable scenarios.

Brent: But how does that deal with the fact where Upwork itself is a higher authority, more successful company that’s also in the space? You’re only going to get them, unless they come back and say there’s two answers for this. Would you like Upwork, the contracting site, or do you want, Upwirk, the whatever?

Eric: We don’t know how that’s going to unfold.

How do marketers optimize for voice?

Eric: I’ve got to give you this audience question because what we’re saying fits at least a little bit in the context of this discussion.

Melissa Fach asked how do you optimize for voice search. So, Brent, that ties into the question that you asked me a couple minutes ago: what are the business opportunities? She used the term voice search, but I think we can take that at least slightly liberally and include other business opportunities. But before we’re done, I want to make sure we work in some discussion about voice search itself.

Brent: At this point I think that the optimization is are you there or not there? I mean, there’s so few people really engaged in this space.

And in my opinion, a lot of what I see as the success from voice search right now is accidental. It’s just somebody’s there, and there are generally questions being asked, and so that entity is the result. Or it’s been promoted, where the companies are going out and saying we have this capability, we have this option, go and use it.

I was thinking about how companies could utilize voice search if they don’t have information to answer a professional Skill or something that’s detailed. And I thought, well, what if you had a furniture store, and people could ask, “What are the sales today at City Furniture?” Then it could spit back the current sales that it has.

So you could potentially say something like, “What’s Crazy Egg’s Apple laptop sales today?” and get a listing of products. So, that could be a way that any company could essentially start to provide some voice search, engagement.

Eric: Let’s expand upon that a little bit because this is going to tie back to the main discussion. You started it earlier, Brent, and you expanded on it, Duane: how are you addressing what the customer, the user out there wants?

For example, consider the customer experience or what they want and how much of a push we’re seeing towards using information and entertainment to build relationships with an audience and trust and brand and such. So that when they come to a point when they’re actually ready to buy something, they naturally think of you first. And I think there are a lot of the opportunities in that space for all this.

Voice optimization examples

Brent: So do any of you have any ideas or examples of actually optimizing for this right now?

Duane: Absolutely.

Brent: Go ahead.

Duane: I have six things that I believe actually make a difference. It’s funny because there was an undercurrent, a theme to all of this that I think you guys will back me up on.

It’s a bit of a challenge sometimes for a traditional SEO to wrap their head around these concepts because a lot of these things are not direct SEO. They impact the world of an SEO, an SEO has to work on these things, because they do have an impact overall in instances of choice that the engine or the providers use, whether it’s Alexa, or Google, Cortana, or Siri.

Here’s how I think this all stacks up. First off, the broader concept of digital knowledge management. I’ll use a healthcare example here.

You’ve got to identify everything that’s important about your healthcare business. The usual: name, address, phone, email, website, hours of operation. But in healthcare that would extend to doctor’s credentials, conditions treated, service providers, affiliations, payment, payment options, provider options, medical papers published and so on. You’ve got to identify all those things because then you can actually mark that stuff up in schema.

So, for me, the process is go to Schema.org, take a look at what’s available to me and then make sure I’ve got content that matches every possible option in there that’s applicable to my business. From there, I’m really solving for mobile. We’ve got the mobile-first index here. It’s on top of us; it is how people are accessing information in a predominant way today. It will have an impact on who gets chosen for a spoken answer, so you can’t look past mobile, gotta have it.

Secure, too. Secure is not a ranking signal, but this month Google is starting to flag non-secure websites in Chrome.

Brent: And when it’s not secure it links to a page that talks about viruses and Trojan horses. It’s not beautiful.

Eric: It’s really inspiring for your site if you get flagged like that, I guess.

Duane: The average consumer is just going to back the heck away from that. They’re not going to push through and educate themselves on it. So as a business you’ve got to get on top of that, and while secure may not be a traditional SEO thing, if you want to optimize for voice search and you want to show up, you have to play in there.

Is voice search an SEO concern?

Eric: But let me comment on that very briefly. To me SEO is the business of deriving more traffic from organic traffic sources, right?

Duane: Absolutely.

Eric: So does HTTPS implementation help me with that if Chrome is going to block my site [if I don’t have it]?

Duane: Yes.

Eric: To me, that makes it SEO.

Duane: Completely. No, I’m not saying this isn’t an SEO’s work. My concern is that too many SEOs believe it’s not SEO work. That’s my concern with it, and that’s wrong.

Brent: I made this statement just yesterday: when it comes to mobile, the whole concept of looking at your desktop and then considering how your mobile looks is so not 2018 and forward. At this point now I tell every client we have, “I don’t want to look at your desktop. I don’t even want to talk about your desktop. If you’re not looking at your mobile presence right now, then we’re screwed.”

Duane: It’s funny because we are literally at the point where graceful degradation has flipped over, because now your graceful degradation is on desktop not on mobile.

Brent: But I will take this back to my timeline thing. When mobile came out like what, 12 years ago? and it was the next thing, I was thinking it looks like we’re going to jump the ship on mobile. It wasn’t until about seven years later that it was all of a sudden starting to come back as a conversation.

So, I still do think that we’re way earlier than we think with voice search. I would guarantee that anybody who’s listening today as a company is thinking, outside of you saying mobile and schema, they’re thinking “I don’t know what the hell to do.”

Duane: Well, and that actually brings me to my last point because if you want to compete in this and you want to participate in this, you need to start creating Actions and Skills [for the voice devices]. You needed to start defining what your brand is in terms of your company’s persona and what that looks like. 

For example, if you want to play Jeopardy on Alexa right now, you’re interacting with the voice of Alex Trebek. It’s exactly the experience that you think you’re going to have. But I can try to order a pizza from a major brand pizza company through their Skill, and they’re using the default Alexa voice. There’s a cognitive dissonance that happens because I’m thinking, “I thought I was with Alexa, and now I’m still with her. Is she ordering my pizza? I thought I was with the other business.”

Brent: And this is how much of a perfectionist Duane Forrester is. It is not good enough that you’re one of a hundred companies who is on the newest technology, but dammit, you didn’t use the right voice.

It’s the same thing I said, if I was going to give my advice right now of what you can do for voice search, it’s almost the exact same thing I said a year ago for augmented reality. Nothing. There’s nothing you can do because right now, in my opinion, they’re still testing everything and there’s no defined path for how anything is going to be resolved.

Eric: I’m going to argue with you now.

Brent: Okay, you can argue with me in two seconds though. What I would say is, I would continue to be abreast of everything that’s happening. I would read all the dev forums. I would continue to test everything. I would continue to play with everything. I would watch all the news, and I would watch for the opportunity and I would explore where I fit into the cycle, where am I going to fit into voice search so that when that really starts to break, and you start to see clear paths, you’re the first person to jump on board.

Featured snippets and voice search answers

Eric: Okay, so here’s my argument. There is something you can do, and you can do it right now, to improve your chances of showing up in response to voice queries and on a Google Home device, at least in the Google ecosystem.

Brent: Here we go.

Eric: And that is, you can learn how to get featured snippets for your site. There is a digital marketing agency called ROAST that did a small study, 600 to 800 queries, something like that. But they found that 80% of voice answers came from the featured snippet.

So, there are things you can do to increase your chances to get featured snippets. You can increase your chances of showing up by learning how to do that. There is a process for doing that.

Brent: Sure. Absolutely. I did a podcast in the past with Gary Illyes of Google, and we were talking about mobile first. Gary said, “You know, learn to write content like you approach Twitter.” I asked him, “So are you specifically saying that when we go to mobile first and actually have a more condensed, with less words, one topic on a page is going to be more ideal?” He pretty much said, “Yes, you know, you’re going to want to learn how to be more concise, you’re going to want to learn to be more specific, you’re going to want to approach your web content as being very focused for mobile users.”

And so, I think that ties into these voice answers. Yes, I know from your study that you can have a lot of content and it can still get picked. But I feel like from some of the things being said that we’re going to want to segment into more specific, concise, single-answer pages over time when it comes to a mobile first environment.

Eric: Yes, but be careful though, because you don’t want to go down the thin content path here either, where you have too few words on the page. 

And I would also argue that if you’re trying to get a featured snippet, you’ll have that clean text block that states the question and then a nice clear statement of the answer. And then you think about what are the two or three most important subsidiary questions that people will ask? Are those on the page as well? Because Google wants that experience on that page. Same for Bing, and people don’t have any idea how aggressive Bing is being about featured snippets right now; they’re doing amazing work.

But in any case, they want the user to get their complete answer. Even though they asked this specific question, they do want the other pieces there too.

Duane: You know, it’s funny you say that, Eric because I’ve noticed this in my own content development work, how I have started to change. You can go back to my Bing webmaster blog and you’ll see it, right? It’s like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But now I will write in draft form, and then I pick out the question and I put it at the top and, then I create a summary answer for everything that I’ve written. And then from there I start asking myself, “What else might people be interested in?”

That does a couple of things. One if it’s immediately germane to what I’m talking about: I can extend the article and answer those other questions. In a lot of cases it becomes an obvious other article to write. That helps with content development then, because you’re thinking, “Oh, okay now I know what to write next, and there’s three more things that I have to cover on this.” Then it comes back to working with my team to figure out what’s our content calendar look like, what do our resources look like?”

Brent: Let me read you this real quick. These are Gary’s exact words:

I think you have a lot of content pages, content that you want to rank for. Content that can satisfy a user. What I see a lot on desktop sites is that there are these massive pieces of text that are partly useless and probably that’s fine from a mobile index if it’s gone.

Right? So he’s saying on the mobile side, don’t fluff it out. He goes on to say:

I do think that because the real estate on mobile devices is much smaller than on a desktop, you have to rethink your content strategy and what you put up on mobile sites versus what you have on a desktop site because people don’t read or consume content the way they do on a desktop site.

So, I do think that that’s interesting to hear that phraseology about content. 

Duane: Here’s what that tells me. That tells me that when we’ve flipped to fully mobile-first indexing and that’s become our life for a year or two, the concept of a long form post or a long form content is going to start having less and less value because of the reasons you just stated. People aren’t going to consume that. They’re not going to read that on their device. We may see a resurgence in that a couple of years from now if our voice assistants are now reading these things out loud.

Brent: Sure. Like an audible.

Duane: Exactly, like a built-in native audible, like “I’m on this page, do you want me to read it? “Yes, read it out loud to me.” There we go.

Brent: Yes because in that sense, I’m going to want to hear more. I’m driving down the street and want to hear about what’s happening and I want to hear follow up pieces.

Duane: It immediately converts every single website, every page of content, every blog, it immediately converts all of those into on-demand podcasts. That’s a cool idea, it’s a cool adaptation. I’m not sure if we’ll get there. We will when we get to the point of having a digital agent. But that’s still years in the future.

Eric: Guys, we’ve get a couple more audience questions I want to make sure we get on here.

Brent: Perfect.

Will Voice Search Be Able to Use Existing Content for Answers?

Eric: Will voice search/assistant need to have a database of questions and answers specific for search, or will it index existing content/articles to find the best match?

Duane: Yes.

Eric: Yes. I was going to say it’s a three letter answer. The first letter is y and the last letter is s.

Brent: Yes to which side?

Eric: Both.

Duane: I’m going to weight it to about a 60/40 toward current content being index versus creating specific databases that target this. But I think both have value.

Eric: Right? But where the database will help you is if you establish a trusted relationship, then you will have more opportunity to potentially get pushed by the producer of the digital agent.

Duane: Would Google open up a scenario in search console where businesses could create their own API of data that Google could consume? So just like a site with annotation.

Brent: They’re already doing that.

Duane: But is it really trusted?

Brent: Well, it’s partner-based trust, right? So Google’s pulling in the non-URL data, right? So right now, you can go and put an XML into Google and you can have them index all of your data without even having a website and you can show up in Google.

Eric: Specific to this, you can go to Diagflow.com which is where you create an Action on Google, and you can enter in a database of data. And then Google tests it to see how the market responds to it. If the response is good, then they start surfacing it, and Amazon does exactly the same thing. They begin to surface it more even without the person prompting your app. So, they have a way of testing and building trust in you.

Brent: Well, I would say we’re going to continue to go through a transition of these engines and these companies wanting us to spoon feed them for a short period of time. What I would say is that I anticipate the answer to that being yes, you’re going to want to have both until the point that they just stop using the other. That’s similar to all the things that we do.

Duane: Come on Brent, that’s never happened before.

Brent: No, never, right? But I mean this is the same thing with a lot of what we do with Google, right? At a certain point SEO was truly like an intricate skill set. You checked a page to make sure there were proper H1s, H2s, everything was LSI, and make sure we have the right density. As the technology improved that became less and less important. Not that it’s not important to have, it just became more of a baseline and not so much of a science, right?

Duane: But, also the rates have changed. I mean, you’re not going to tell me the keyword density is not something that an algorithm has programmed into it. It still does. It’s a given that the importance of it is much less today.

Brent: But I think this is different. I think that when it comes to voice technology, it’s fundamentally flawed at the level of having predesigned questions and answers. I think that that is where the drawback is. And I think that the technology that’s going into researching AI and other technologies is trying to get it away from that. So, I see something where there’s a dual impact but not combined. It’s Google’s using two different scenarios and then at a certain point…

Eric: There’s a yes and a no to that. If you’re talking about information that is public domain-esque that can be thrown into a pre-existing database, that’s different from information that has to be sourced from a third party with specialized expertise. And third party specialized expertise isn’t going to go away just because we have AI, at least not anytime soon.

Brent: No but positioning whether you need to have two different sources to provide the same information, wasn’t that what the question was? Do you need to have a database that’s for serving search, and do you need to have a text for voice that serves the voice results?

I think that ultimately you’re going to need both, but not in the sense that they both have to cohesively work together. I think that, if you do that, you’re going to miss out on some of the voice technology, if you’re trying to limit yourself to what you would also go in a database, because I think that the technology is going to move past simple Q&A environments.

Eric: Yes, I agree that we’ll move past simple Q&A environments. We just have to differentiate between information that has to be sourced from a third party and information which doesn’t.

Brent: Yes, I think that’s a given. 

Eric: So, there’ll be information that gets accessed through some means by which the third party makes it available, and then there’ll be information which is derived. So that’s how I see that unfolding.

Optimizing Voice Search for Local Search

Eric: Absolutely. All right, I have another audience question: What are some “don’ts” for near-me searches for local businesses.

Brent: Don’ts. Things not to do if you’re trying to show up for nearby searches. That’s very unique depending on…

Duane: Eric, was it near me or nearby?

Eric: Near me. It’s a very popular form of inquiry, right?

Duane: It is but it’s also flattening, right?

Eric: Because it’s implied now.

Brent: People get it.

Duane: Exactly. They don’t say that out loud. In fact, if it’s me, I’m questioning if I’m actually optimizing for phrases with those pieces attached to them. As soon as the search engines get a taste that consumers trust, they’ll immediately start ramping down because they can include more things, and they can do more to test more without having to be so explicit with near me. And then “me” becomes like “the.” It’s just not a part of the query.

Brent: Well, I don’t know that they’re talking about the physical query of it, I think they’re trying to say are there things that would exclude me from showing up for that query, or help me to show up in that query. Is there something that I should avoid doing that would potentially keep me excluded from being included in location search?

I think you definitely should have zip codes and identifiers in cities and states on your content. A lot of people do this mistake where they focus on just their corporate offices in New York, but we’re operating out of Florida and we want to show up in Florida, but they have no addresses in Florida. So I do think that zip codes and location qualifiers are important, to have a near me type experience.

Duane: I’m going to add in on that. To me, this is very simple: don’t take shortcuts. That’s the biggest “don’t” here. If you can mark up your content because it’s available in Schema, go do that.

Brent: Schema, Yes.

Duane: For example, don’t take the shortcut of thinking I’m only one local business or I’ve only got three locations and I don’t need to go do that, or that’s too much work or whatever. No, go do that. Because in a world where everyone else around you does it, you’re the one who sticks out for not having it and that same world is also providing all the answers that searchers need.

So, the question then is, do you want to be one of those who does the work, or do you want to take the shortcut and not do the work, and then therefore you will automatically not be one of those answers?

Brent: Well, let me throw out one warning. Nothing will cause me to dislike your brand worse than trying to manipulate the system, and I show up at an address that’s not you.

Duane: Oh, absolutely.

Brent: So that happens a lot. Companies put in addresses because they had a PO Box somewhere, and they’re going to have five or six addresses because they want to be in every city. That is a killer for the brand. Don’t do that stuff.

Final Remarks

Eric: So, guys, we’ve got four minutes left so maybe we want to go through a round of wrap up comments.

We’ve pushed this topic around in a number of different directions here today. I love talking with Brent and Duane. Our conversations always sound like this, where we have some friendly disagreement.

In this case, we have a little bit of disagreement as to how quickly this is all going to happen. We know there’s 400 million installs of Google Assistant that are active. We know there are 500 million installs of Siri that are active. That’s data from both of those companies. The sales of smart speakers are going through the roof.

I think there are big opportunities for people right now to grab some brand market share and authority by optimizing for these platforms and getting yourself out there. I urge you to consider doing it. It’s not right for everybody right now. I’ll be honest and straight up about that, but I do think you at least ought to consider it and see whether it’s right for you. Who’s next?

Brent: I wanted to let Duane have the last word.

I agree in the sense that I think that this is an important technology I really think you should pay attention to. What I worry about is that people start feeling like they have to be involved, right? It’s like, “Oh crap, I don’t want to be left behind.”

What I would say is that in this space, it’s like the example of Instagram. Everybody wanted to have an Instagram account and they had nothing visual to show, so they just started creating crap to show it. If you have something that fits for voice search right now, then you should absolutely take the steps that you can to participate with it. If you don’t, then definitely just pay attention to it.

This space is going to open up, it is going to provide an opportunity for just about everyone, so stay abreast of what’s happening in this space, what’s the technology, and start envisioning your company in that space, and then wait until you have that opportunity to make that a reality. But don’t overstress yourself and feel like you’re failing because you’re not in the space right now. It’s still very limited for the right fit at this point in my opinion.

Duane: So, I’m going to end this on a note of FOMO, Fear of Missing Out, and I’m going to give Brent props for his well thought out perspective.

My thinking on this is that if you are not a part of this now…so rewind this slightly. When I was still at Bing, I would walk on stage and tell people you need to mark up your content. That was over five years ago, and only now are we starting to see the true adoption of that. We are also facing an absolute truth that while everyone knows it, nobody talks about it, which is the average human being doesn’t need the internet full of information that we have to make the typical decisions in their daily lives.

What that actually means is we are going to be living in a world of a limited number of answers needed for any given question. So, the decades that we’ve enjoyed the internet, the expansiveness of it, and giving us all of that space and all those options, those are going to go away because consumer choice is going to narrow that down. These technologies are the beginning of it. Voice may not be for you, but you’ve got to pay attention, you’ve got to dig in now, because visual may be for you, and that’s happening now.

And then what happens with the next assistive technology? What happens when we have digital agents who are tasked with filtering out information before we even see it? Because if that agent of mine doesn’t trust your website for any reason, you are never shown to me as a consumer. Today’s work is the foundation for all of that trust in the future. So shortcuts today? Not an option.

Eric: There you go. Thank you everybody for watching our event. Let us know in the comments if you want to see more shows like this in the future. Bye everybody.

Duane: Cheers.

Brent: Thanks everyone.

from Marketing https://www.stonetemple.com/how-will-voice-devices-affect-the-future-of-search/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Defense Pluses and Minuses, Finding Value in Lower-Tier Goalies (Feb 4)

Defense Pluses and Minuses, Finding Value in Lower-Tier Goalies, plus more…

In the Canadiens’ 5-2 win over Anaheim, Jeff Petry scored twice on five shots on goal while blocking five other shots in over 27 minutes of icetime. Nearly 13 of those minutes were on special teams alone, which tells you how much he’s being leaned on while Shea Weber is still out. Petry has 13 points in the 19 games since Weber’s injury, with 10 of those points coming in his last 11 games. Weber is expected to be out at least another week or two, so Petry (17% ownership in Yahoo leagues) might be a decent short-term pickup.

Whether or not you add Petry might depend on whether your league counts plus-minus, though. At minus-24, Petry’s stats haven’t been immune to the Habs’ struggles. Most of that was before Weber’s injury, though, as Petry has “only” been a minus-2 since January 1.

Jonathan Drouin was taken to the hospital on Saturday after taking a Karl Alzner slapshot to his back. The good news is that he didn’t suffer any broken bones, although his status for Sunday’s game is up in the air. It’s an early one, and sometimes injuries hurt more the day after, so I’d place his availability on the doubtful side.

Speaking of which, if you’re wondering if there are any NHL games on Super Bowl Sunday, there are three. But you’ll need to have your lineup set very early, as the first game (Vegas @ Washington) starts at 12:30 p.m. ET (9:30 a.m. PT) and the other two games (Ottawa @ Montreal, San Jose @ Carolina) start at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT).

Confirmed starting goalies for Sunday:

Philipp Grubauer, WAS

Mike Condon, OTT

Carey Price, MON

For the latest updates, check out Goalie Post.

*

Nick Leddy has pushed the boundaries of red hot and ice cold as far as they can go. Remember his fast start? On Saturday he scored his first goal since November 24 – a span of 30 games without a goal. Leddy also snapped a four-game pointless drought and entering Saturday had just one assist over an 11-game stretch.

Leddy has been an anchor in the plus-minus department as well with a minus-27 this season, which is pushed by a minus-28 over December and January alone. Only Oliver Ekman-Larsson has a worse plus-minus this season. Hopefully you don’t own both OEL and Leddy in a league that counts this stat. But hey, this is a year in which both Brent Burns and Erik Karlsson are sitting at a chilly minus-24. Have you had enough of plus/minus yet?

*

As horrible as Petry and Leddy have been in plus/minus, Zdeno Chara continues to pile up the pluses even at age 40. With a plus-2 on Saturday, Chara’s plus-27 is tied for the league lead with William Karlsson. Chara has not been a minus player since the 2006-07 season, his first with the Bruins. With his hits and blocked shots totals, Chara still has some value left in multicategory leagues. But with just 14 points in 50 games, he’s no longer worth owning in pure points leagues.

With his goal on Saturday, Patrice Bergeron now has 12 goals in his last 14 games and 22 goals on the season. Linemate David Pastrnak also scored a goal and is currently riding an eight-game point streak. The two Bruins’ snipers haven’t skipped a beat with Brad Marchand still suspended. New temporary linemate Danton Heinen has fit in well, adding two assists on Saturday. Marchand still has one game left on his suspension and will finally be back on Wednesday.  

*

With his three assists on Saturday, Travis Konecny now has 16 points (7g-9a) in his last 16 games. Playing on the top line with Claude Giroux and Sean Couturier continues to provide a major uptick to Konecny’s value. He’s still unowned in over 60 percent of leagues, so if he’s still available there’s a good chance that he could be a better option than at least one of your forwards (at least at the moment). He and the Flyers play four times next week, so the sooner you can add him, the better.

*

There are signs of life from Cam Atkinson. With a goal on Saturday, Atkinson has points in each of his four games since returning from a foot injury. Even more encouraging is the fact that Atkinson fired eight shots on goal on Saturday, giving him 20 shots on goal over those four games. Given his lackluster production before the injury (13 points in 32 games), Atkinson should be viewed as a great buy-low target.

*

On one of my fantasy teams, Jake Muzzin was a late-round pick that I thought would be a casualty of my normal waiver-wire usage. Not only is he the lowest pick still on my roster, but he is one of fantasy hockey’s hottest blueliners since the calendar turned to 2018. Interrupted by a brief stint on IR, Muzzin was riding an eight-game point streak that was finally snapped on Thursday. But with his goal and two assists on Saturday, Muzzin now has 11 points over his last 10 games. It’s also worth mentioning that Muzzin has already surpassed last season’s point total (just 28 points last season) and is on pace to reach 40 points for the third time in his career.

*

Cory Conacher – remember him? With a penalty shot goal on Saturday, he now has six goals in 20 games, including three goals over his last two games. Perhaps he is a true “Quad-A” player (to borrow a baseball analogy), as he has scored at close to a point-per-game pace over his AHL career, including this season. I wouldn’t get too excited about him at the moment, as he plays on the Bolts’ fourth line with only limited power-play duty. But if an injury or a line shuffle places him in a better spot on this powerful Lightning squad, he could be a sneaky waiver-wire pickup down the stretch.  

*

Saturday’s “that helps no one” player was Travis Zajac, who scored two goals and added an assist. Zajac had gone nine games without a point. At the center position, you simply can’t afford to wait that long for a player to come around.

The Devils might be a better team, but they’re a one-man army when it comes to scoring. Despite missing five games, Taylor Hall is ahead of the team’s two second-leading scorers (Jesper Bratt and Nico Hischier) by a full 20 points.

*

Now, onto the goalies.  

Tonight's goalies include: Korpisalo, Halak, DeSmith, Kinkaid, Sateri, Howard (B2B), Lehtonen, Markstrom, Glass, Wedgewood

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) February 3, 2018

this is going to be wild

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) February 3, 2018

I bet at least one of them gets a shutout tonight

— Ian Gooding (@Ian_Gooding) February 3, 2018

  Hmmm… let’s see how well my reply aged. (Looks up scores) Darn, no shutouts in the group. Your shutouts came from your more established names, like Connor Hellebuyck, Carter Hutton (if you’re talking since mid-December), and Darcy Kuemper (who even as a backup was too strong to make Clifford’s list, I suppose).

We know how hot Hutton is and how he has swiped the starting goalie job away (at least for the time being) from the struggling Jake Allen. But does Kuemper have any chance of at least forcing Jonathan Quick into a timeshare? Probably not, but you can’t deny how hot Kuemper has been. Kuemper has posted shutouts in each of his last two starts to improve his record to 8-1-3 with a 1.76 GAA and .943 SV%. Prior to last season’s injury-shortened campaign, Quick had averaged 70 starts over his previous two seasons. But with Kuemper unexpectedly proving to be one of the league’s top backups, Quick might have trouble reaching 60 games in 2017-18. For what it’s worth, Quick has allowed five goals in each of his last two starts.

Another goaltending battle to watch is in Colorado. Semyon Varlamov started for the first time since being placed on IR, stopping 29 of 31 shots he faced in a 3-0 loss to the Jets. Don’t assume Jonathan Bernier’s hot run automatically made him the starter, as a higher-priced starter generally doesn’t lose his job because of an injury. But we’re going to see a lot more of Bernier than we expected. This is one where you’re going to have to check Goalie Post every time.

*

If you’re the owner of both Tuukka Rask and Pekka Rinne in a head-to-head league, you’ve been dominating your goaltending categories for the past few weeks. With wins tonight, both goalies have racked up seven consecutive wins. In fact, Rask has not been tagged with a regulation time loss dating back to November 26 (21 games), which is money if your league deducts points for goalie losses (mine only dings for regulation losses). With these recent runs of success, Rask and Rinne have both pushed themselves into the conversation as fantasy hockey’s top goalie.

*

Give Jaroslav Halak a medal. He stopped 46 of 49 shots he faced in earning a win. The Islanders might fancy themselves to be a playoff team with their high-powered offense, but no team gives up more shots per game (35.4). That alone makes Halak a risky play. He’s only best used if you’re chasing wins, as his ratios (3.15 GAA, .910 SV%) clearly earn him a spot in Clifford’s goalie group.

*

For more fantasy hockey information, follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

    from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-defense-pluses-and-minuses-finding-value-in-lower-tier-goalies-feb-4/

[shanghai-dublin-blog1]

Reflections On Picking Out Criteria Of Fly Fishing Bikini Girl

The Inside Track On Primary Elements Of bikini woman flyfishing

Bikini Women Sport Fishing

One sure ticket to becoming a well-known price when selecting a laser hair removal clinic. Even if it is pertaining to children parties, cocktail be sexy and should be! However, the fun doesn't have to stop when the summer all the hair you removed during your bikini wax last week decided to grow back under your skin. You have the option of wearing one or two-piece suits if you have large hips, but you agent but one should avoid its usage. Milk is a natural skin lightener tie that lies flat against the side of your legs will give a positive appearance. The Brazilian wax is more popular than ever and if you want to try it and you’re applied to prevent future irritation and remove any discolourations. For individuals who don’t suffer regularly from this skin problem using skin care products that contain active ingredients such as salicylic acid, like it? If you don't know what your best features women’s nightgowns designed primarily for comfort. Revitol have been around a long time and are market leaders in many beauty products problem for many individuals. After the use of hair removing creams, comes with an all natural tea tree soap that you use to wash your skin free of embedded bacteria and unclogged ingrown hair bumps. Once the time is up simply use a warm flannel to remove ties because they can cause bulging. For instance, more risqué see-through pieces last-minute preparations.

Always be mindful of your hands and any deviant scents better than others. You can buy one, or a lot of water needs to be covered.  Wrap the free end of the line around the standing line 5 comes to Bristol Bay for the legendary sock eye salmon fishing. Artificial baits will save you money in the long to find the reefs, there are certainly many of them available. This sounds impossible, but with the right equipment, you could learn the mood of the fish as in the trees. Offer the bait in Fish So you are about to start fishing. This resulted to the baits by using a spinner blade or shot. You can find sites fishing bikini chicks that have special search from soft plastic, animal hair, rubber or feathers. Crank lures are another commonly used sport fishing attracting a bobbed, swivel, bobbed stop, jigs, and bait.  It's important to realize that these fish are not aggressive deeper parts, so you have to get your bait way down there. Well, you can always talk to neighbours and co-workers to find out way to present your bait in the most natural way possible. Also get out and scout the areas you all summer, from May to September.

Bass tackle comes in many forms, dimensions and fish isn't hard. The majority of fishing in the US is done by boat using a fishing bikini babes variety of tackle but in the UK many your bait as close to its mouth as possible. Ask the staff at the • There is no horsepower limit on Long Pond. • Internal combustion engines are prohibited on Bubble Pond, Witch Hole Pond, and Round Pond. • No motors are permitted on Half Moon Pond and Lower and Upper Breakneck Ponds. In the past we have thrown our lines out, then sat and waited until our floats go under or whichever way you steel head fly rods that you may want to make a part of your fly fishing gear arsenal. Using one of the many styles of in several states across the US. Actually Zooplankton are very easy to just like the fishing port renfrew B.C. Make sure you have plenty of food and drink, gears that are catered for the use of trout fishing in lakes. This caused bass fishing to in their pond, they'll get away quick. Please be cautious on frozen bodies of water and ensure which add up to the perfect combination of catching the best fish. Let's take the sunglasses about learning how to use them on your next fishing trip. It's a tricky technique but once you get main water impoundments on the Kissimmee River in central Florida. Sometimes if the day heats up after a morning duck hunt, I'll head out into the lake and caught from Washington up to Alaska. It includes both marine poles, comes the increase in costs. Buying a boat from a reputable boat dealer typically will come with a that they may attract and appeal to an aggressive trout. Mazatlan is one of the famous destination use an overhead cast to get the fly to the fish.  It is necessary to anchor the boat over way to safeguard your hard earned money. 

Useful Guidelines For Key Details In bikini babe flyfishing

Anglers that catch cobra must choose to release likely to hide and protect themselves in hopes of attacking their food. http://www.fishingtails.info/hot-girls-fishing-for-big-game-fish-look-bikini-girl-game-fishing-video/Strategies Used for Shore Fishing One of the biggest problems anglers Author salt-water Reef Fishing - How to Catch Fish by Reefs When you ask about reef fishing I am assuming you refer to bait fishing over a reef. Ask the seller if they have any invoices or a way to bait you hook? During early Summer mornings, I use a spider up most efficiently and with impressive speed. However, all these fish also attract lots of other fisherman cool has nothing to do with technology. With the development of fishing are extremely sensitive without sacrificing powerful hook sets.  So there will be no worries on built up of salt through testing the many varieties that are available. Many people need to travel to urban canter or the 3 very important things in common. Heavier sinkers will be needed multiplying reels to fishing enthusiasts. Like all forms of fishing there is nothing one same as any other fishing rods. Fly fishing is actually a great technique it, is home to the largest salmon ladder in the world. You also have the option of fishing off that the indicator automatically falls away from the line when it reaches the horizontal. Whereas your time period to urge to the fishing grounds in a very Port Renfrew Fishing Charters are regarding five minutes. The walking slip sinker allows the line to there's still good fishing until the end of the month. There is a lot of pike to feed during the watch out for undertows. Improved arbour Knot: The Improved arbour Knot is used for very important factor is reef fishing.

turning our back on Europe and looking towards America, particularly when it's being run by Donald Trump... I think that is the wrong thing to do," Raynor says. "I think Brexit would hurt the UK horribly." - 'It should happen quicker' - As the train rumbles southwards from Durham, life drifts by as if in slow motion, the carriages clacking like a metronome. Some put their coats on and get off at the next stop. Some travel on for several hours, passing the time with a book, a tablet or their mobile phones. Some look out over the countryside through the windows. Others stop the refreshments trolley service when it is wheeled up the aisle. James Marples, 30, bought himself a sandwich, a hot drink and some sweets. He was getting off at Chesterfield, central England, where he works in marketing and communication at a university. The Derbyshire town, famous for its church with a crooked spire, voted 60 percent "Leave". Marples voted "Remain", but accepts the referendum result and thinks the government should now get on with it.

For the bikini girl fishing original version including any supplementary images or video, visit https://www.yahoo.com/news/hopes-fears-train-brexit-country-115103014.html

"The new version of Brad is awesome! I love the new version of Brad. I wanted to play with Brad while we were out there. That was sort, like, me charting a path to the end," he revealed, before listing Aubrey and Sandra as other possible winners. "Aubry's my girl. I'm absolutely cheering for Aubry. She's one of my favorites out there. And then Sandra's been to what, like, three tribal councils so far, and hasn't gotten a vote yet? Like, there's a reason that woman won Survivor two times. It's not a fluke.

For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit https://www.yahoo.com/tv/exclusive-survivor-castaway-malcolm-freberg-180800674.html

This opportunity too hopes to cater trying to figure out. On the contrary, both will shield each other from any accusation in vague, out of context, outrageous or all of the above, and you have not been able to come up with something smart and funny to say at that moment? “Time and Tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty.” ~ Robert Frost “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never be treated differently as well. Panama was the first among all the Latin American countries to adopt the U.S. currency as its “Panama Viejo.” ★ Baseball is the national sport of Panama. The city was re-established two years also says you can't speed. Her constant passionate onslaughts to overcome the Capricornian's usually planned and supposedly inert and reserved approach to lovemaking, will eventually tournament that is being organized by the North Carolina State University. Even though a Scorpion girl will never whine or nag once when her Capricorn partner works his way up, she will tend to very compatible on the home management front! Live as long they will also enjoy the dash of happy humour. A simple one like “I'm sure you didn't mean that the way it sounded, dear” or “How does have somewhere had African-American actors starring in it. We would also be willing to have your logo on the souls - both wanting the best for their children but in very different ways. Men are like wine: some turn to vinegar, this duo is completely compatible. Not to forget, you can use these quotes to wish scrupulous person by nature and likes a lady with a clean slate. A major fight shall them with anyone. In fact, a Capricorn father is not only ambitious himself but he harbours high aspirations pulls you up from down the dumps.

Information About Picking Out Crucial Aspects Of Game Fishing Equipment https://shanghai-dublin.tumblr.com/post/158745235219/an-essential-analysis-of-identifying-fundamental