#however they ultimately commit to remembering everything because while it's easier to drop the past they can't argue how it

[mattzerella-sticks]

Buddie roommate arc when one of them is hurt on the job and has amnesia and when they're told their family would like to see them and it's the other with Christopher they immediately accept that this is his husband and son despite not all of that being necessarily true.

[marshmallow-phd]

Midnight Hours

Part of The Untamed - EXO Wolf Universe

Genre: Wolf!AU

Pairing: Sehun x Reader

Summary: For you, being a good witch was easier said than done. Something dark was lurking inside of you and the others knew it. When you’re forced to tag along with Soomi and help a local wolfpack face a coming evil, you’re sent on a path that breaks into a crossroads. While you struggle with your inner demons, could the wolf Sehun be the key to your ultimate fate?

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 I 15 I 16 I 17 I Final

**

“Has anyone seen my wallet?”

“You left in the car last night.”

“I swear, if someone took my jacket-”

“Only you would wear something like that, Tao.”

“Why are all the eggs gone again?”

You groaned at the sudden intrusion of your peaceful sleep, burying your face in the woods-scented pillow. A chuckle rumbled beside you. A pair of lips gently brushed against your temple. Knowing that was your signal to get up, you pushed your face deeper into the sanctuary of sleep.

“(y/n)… you can’t stay here all day.”

“Watch me,” you mumbled.

Arms snaked around your waist, pulling you into a space-heater of a chest. “If we stay here much longer, someone will come looking for us,” Sehun whispered in your ear. “Probably Jongdae or Tao. Or maybe even Baek-”

You whimpered as you flipped over, cutting off the wolf before he could finish the troublemaker’s name. But that didn’t mean you were ready to wake up. It was nice, lying there with him, your cheek pressed up against his collarbone. You felt protected, loved, safe. Granted, that’s how you always felt with Sehun, but in this space and in this moment, you felt it at its maximum. From the way his arms tightened around you and how he leaned down to kiss the still-healing mark he’d indented in your shoulder only a week ago, he was feeling it, too.

“You make it hard to get up,” he sighed. From his tone, he was trying to feign annoyance. Too bad you already knew how much he loved this.

“Then let’s just stay here,” you suggested. This was technically his fault, anyway. He was the one who insisted on staying out late last night. First it was dinner, then a movie, then a long drive through the backwoods. You don’t actually remember coming home as you’d fallen asleep sometime passed one in the morning, still in the passenger’s seat of Sehun’s car.

“Okay,” Sehun mumbled. “Five more minutes.” You felt him settle again beside you, a satisfied rumble vibrating in his throat. You were just about to drift off again when-

Bang! “Alright, time to get up!”

You half-groaned, half-growled at Baekhyun and his ability to be so loud first thing in the morning. Jumping into a sitting position, you grabbed your pillow and threw it as hard as you could across the room. But you missed. The pillow smacked against the wall widely to his right.

“Well, I guess we can count a baseball career out for you,” he cackled.

Narrowing your eyes, you concentrated on the glass of water next to you on the nightstand.

“Hey!” Baekhyun spat out the water that had landed in his mouth when you sent it flying towards his face, soaking his hair and shoulders.

“Maybe next time you’ll think before you try to rouse a sleeping witch.”

Baekhyun muttered under his breath as he stormed out of the room, mostly likely to change into a dry shirt.

Sehun scooted closer to you as he sat up as well, nuzzling your shoulder with his nose. “I don’t think we should risk another messenger.”

“Probably not,” you sighed as you glanced at the now empty glass. “I’m all out of ammo.”

“Oh, I’m sure you could come up with something else.”

Rolling your eyes, you slipped out of bed and over to the dresser. After pulling out a clean shirt and pair of pants, you started to turn back to Sehun. However, before you even made it a quarter of the way, the wolf was already dressed, grabbing your wrist and lifting you up so you were now on his back. Giggles exploded from you as he raced out of the room and down the stairs, creating his own wind with the speed. You held on tight with your arms around his neck, careful not to choke him.

You were still laughing and holding onto him when he reached the kitchen. As per usual, the room was filled practically to the brim with people. Even though you’d been living full time at the farmhouse for over a month (on top of the previous month with Soomi) you still weren’t entirely used to the large amount of people. Thankfully, the second house was nearing completion and the occupancy would be cut in half. The downside, however, is that your getaway would no longer be available to you and Sehun.

“That’s still so weird,” Jongdae stage-whispered to Minseok.

The older wolf leaned back in his chair at the table to get a better look as you hopped down from Sehun’s back. “I think it’s cute.”

You thought that Sehun might send a snarky comment that way given his dislike of the “c” word, but to your surprise, he ignored them, going over to the counter and piling two plates high with food before herding you over to the table.

In front of you was more than enough food to keep you full for the next few hours. As you slowly eat the delicious breakfast that was so kindly prepared by Evie and Ming, you eyed Sehun from the side. He had something up his sleeve, you could feel it. He’d done this before; making sure you had your fill and then taking you out of the house for hours, not coming back until near dinner time.

You knew he did it for you, the alone time. In here, you could hardly turn around without stepping on somebody. So he’d take you where you could breathe again, where you could think without having to start over because someone fell or dropped something or started yelling. You were so used to the quiet and isolation. In the past, you would wish for this opposite. Apparently, the grass really is always greener.

Sehun was finished with his breakfast before you were halfway through your plate. Another indicator that he was up to something since usually he would only be just starting on his meal at this point. It was some primal instinct to make sure his mate was eating enough. At least he wasn’t a food hog.

When his plate was completely clear, Sehun stood up and dumped his dirty dishes in the sink. In a flash he was bounding back up the stairs. Harper, whose baby bump was just starting to show, raised an eyebrow at you questioningly from across the table. All you could do was shrug as you had about as much of a clue as she did.

When he came back, he had your favorite jacket in his hands along with your small backpack. With still no word to you, he filled two thermostats with fresh coffee before coming back over to the table.

“Are you done?” he asked, looking down at your mostly empty plate.

You nodded. “Yeah. Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Maybe I don’t like surprises?”

“You’ll like this one.”

“Says who?”

“Me.”

“I don’t think you’re the authority on that.”

“I’m always the authority.”

“Really? Because I don’t th-”

“Oh, would you two please just go!” Jongdae whined.

You snickered, but did as he asked, getting up from the table and dropping your plate off while giving Evie an apologetic look.

She waved the look away. “Don’t worry about it. Go have fun. I know I’d like to have a nice romantic time in the woods.”

“I heard that.” Kris entered the kitchen with Mei in his arms.

“Just dropping hints,” Evie shrugged.

Kris went over and kissed her chastely. “I’d say that’s more than a hint.”

Taking you away from the scene, Sehun grabbed your hand and pulled you towards the back door. “Come on.”

Outside the wind chilled and bit at your nose. Sehun helped you with your jacket - which helped a bit - and backpack and then motioned for you to climb on his back.

“Still not going to tell me where we’re going?”

“Nope.”

“Of course.”

Sehun took off into the trees before you could respond. Everything blurred by you. There was no telling where he was headed or what he had in mind, so you simply rolled with it. Trying to figure it out was pointless anyway.

He finally came to a stop, breaking through the trees where a large lake sat calmly. With a pat to your thigh, he signaled for you to get down. Small gravel-like pebbles, smoothed by years of being washed by the tide crunched under your feet.

“I didn’t know this was here.” Your eyes wandering over the scenery. Even with the heavy gray skies above and the rippling waters, it was breathtaking.

“Not a lot of people do.” Slipping his fingers through yours, he tugged you a little closer to shore. He sat down and tried to get you to do the same.

“It’s cold,” you complained.

But all he did was smirk at your childish whine. “I’ll keep you warm.”

Well… how could you resist that?

Sitting down in front of him, a shiver ran up your spine as soon as your backside met the rocks. Just as he promised, he wrapped his arms around you and pulled you in close.

“It’s so quiet,” you whispered after a few minutes or so.

“That’s why I brought you here,” Sehun said. “I knew you need it more often than I do. I’ll bring you here whenever you want. The others come occasionally, but not so much anymore.”

Oh, wonderful. You could already feel your insides turning into mush and your eyes filling up with salty water. Twisting your body so you could look back at him, you didn’t even try to fight the smile spreading across your face.

“I love you.”

It was a like firework show exploding on his face. Or the sun finally breaking through the clouds after constant darkness.

You hadn’t been able to make yourself say those three little words to him yet. Though Sehun had no issues saying it, you’d found yourself stopping each time you tried. Was it the timing? The atmosphere? Your fear of commitment?

You couldn’t really say that you had a fear of commitment. Being with Sehun was easy, right. You weren’t scared of being tied to him for the rest of your life. Saying it was too soon almost felt like a cop-out because you knew how you felt about him.

Maybe you wouldn’t ever really know why you hadn’t said it back before. But you finally did and it felt so right.

Ecstatic at that sentence, Sehun pounced on you. Nearly all his weight was on you as you landed hard on the rocks. A soft “ow” escaped before you could stop it, sending Sehun into a panic. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

You smiled up at him before pushing up and kissing him. “I’m fine.”

He sighed with relief. “Good.” He cupped your cheek in him palm and said the words that were obvious in his eyes. “I love you.”

Fate had decided to play around and stick the wolf and the witch together. Mortal enemies by heritage, lovers by bond. It was a story for the ages, one that would echo through time along with the other great loves of history.  

“Well, then,” you laughed, “I guess we’re stuck with each other.”

Sehun nodded once before diving in for another kiss.

[hidden-not-isolated]

Hidden, Not Isolated [C2]

On the following day, hell struck. 

On the following day, it rained.

- - -

Plop.

Snapping back to consciousness, his awakening supported alongside a startled twitch whilst his briefly bewildered eyes had rapidly flickered a few times in surprise as he took a moment to fear-filled-ly realize the heavy drop that had splattered upon contact with his forehead, was a droplet of water, evident to the feeling that he got when it had literally plummeted upon him and a swift touch of the palm which instinctively turned into a wipe.

After taking a quick glimpse at his now somewhat wet hand, his head steadily began to promptly turn upwards and towards the sky, curious to see if it was anything else than what he inwardly knew it was or was a different cause that would significantly relieve his mind, one-hundred-and-ten-percent. After all, even if it was unlikely, had it be anything of a recently fractured pipe or other, he would be able to swiftly shift two feet to the left and get him and his mind back to sleep.

Sleep.

The water woke him.

The water woke him.

The water woke him from an incredibly peaceful illusion of where he wasn’t even aware that he would ultimately be unmercifully dragged back to the reality of where he was stunk in the same spot, him not even being able to complete his self-mission with the astonishingly high risk of someone spotting him and calling the police, the police to take him to a jail where all of his freedom would be restricted and stripped from him significantly. Or, you know, just to die.

Plop.

His head instinctively snapped back to the alleyway.

Slow pitter-patter. 

Keeping his head down, right eye shut, he glanced upwards slightly with his free vision, a fearful expression in tow.

Just constant pitter-patter.

His mind was so petrified of the whirlwind of the day he just had at that point, that he denied facts, “I’ll be fine...” 

I mean, facts were always the things that he had once lent towards, shakily muttering that to no one but the nighttime’s atmosphere. His eyes being closed, him shying his eyes with his uncontrollably quivering hands like a child cowarding in their closet, did nothing physically for him. However, mentally is where there’s something to be said. Maybe, just maybe, if he could stay in this one position for however long it takes, solutions would just come to him without him doing a thing himself...yes, of course!

There was hope! Surely! Everything has a happy ending! Everyone gets a second chance! Everything will be okay! Yes, and now his happy ending is even closer! And even closer! And yet again! It’s all about patience, perseverance! Nothing can last forever! In good ways too! Everything gets resolved at one point or another! Any moment now! Of course! 

Any moment now!

Any moment now!

Any moment now!

Not that he was smiling or anything.

Internally, he could hear his subconscious informing him in his mind of things he already knew, though he continuously refused to accept the facts at each and every opportunity possible. Honestly, his subconscious wasn’t at fault though. It was the voice of reason, not him. It wasn’t scolding him for running away from his problems. It wasn’t telling him unnecessarily negative things. It was just calmly and casually mentioning him of his responsibilities and he was drastically overreacting. He knew that. Shut up, shut up, shut up...

What are you doing...?

You can’t just stay here forever.

Everybody needs food and water sometime.

It hasn’t even been as much as a day yet.

If this is how every day is going to go, what would be of point of where you just give up?

Can you truly back to that kind of isolation once again?

Then again, what choice do you have?

If someone spots you, you’re gone.

What are you going to do?

Dragging the heavy weight that was his legs upwards, he painstakingly buried his expression in his knees, gathering himself up and into a trembling sphere to run away from his problems in a sense that he wanted to just evade of the subject of this horrid reality itself for a while, even if he knew that it wasn’t going to last forever and would plausibly be difficult to get a good-night’s-sleep with the hopeless rain beating. 

Forcing himself to overlook that typical ounce of common-sense, his eyelids developed heavier and heavier once again, encouraging him to disregard the frigid liquid repeatedly plunging onto his being again and again as he gradually began to weaken into an unconscious status once again.

CRASH.

The somewhat outcry that had immediately ejected from his mouth instinctively was nothing in comparison to the roaring crack of thunder overhead, accompanied amidst a blinding outburst of lightning in the atmosphere. He had uncontrollably flinched violently in backlash to the sound in the background, obviously awakening before he hesitantly twisted his head upwards, finding himself gawking at the immeasurable sky above. The pitch-black sky just seemed to be so vast and endless all-so-suddenly; he could barely remember the normally azure sky anymore; the normally azure sky that illuminated the town so he could easily locate every possible ambush spot. After all, any central would constantly be freely roaming with criminals inhabiting the enigmatic shadows of which nobody would think to look for the sinner evading deserved consequence.

I mean,

When you phrase it like that,

It sounds kind of like Soren.

But I’m not sure he’s a big fan of irony. 

CRASH.

His frightened outcry echoed in the atmosphere whilst his eyes widened in alert as another rupture of electricity rippled across the sky nothing more than moments later following the initial explosion. His heart suddenly hammering back and forth within his already frightened chest, his scared breaths steadily moulded into rapid heaves of hyperventilation. Ironically, even though he was making a conscious effort to breathe, the more he gasped for oxygen, the fleeter puffs he could inhale, the more his chest tightened, the most tortuously uncomfortable it was to breathe.

He couldn’t catch his breath.

His hypertension, stress, tiredness, and difficulty breathing eventually forced his eyesight to increasingly turn into a continually foggy blur that strongly intensified every now and then. Hell, he barely could be able to make out the thick silhouette of his own hand briefly waving in front of him as his eyes grew significantly heavier. He wasn’t only unable to locate him. He wasn’t only unable to talk to people. He wasn’t only unable to stay positive. He wasn’t only unable to persist through the storm.

He wasn’t able to take second-nature ticks to survive.

CRASH.

Again,

His existence was useless.

His heart frantically thumping faster than a cheetah, his sensitive skin being overlapped with panicking stress, the frequent roaring blots of thunder being replaced with an ear-piercing ring whilst his chest screeched, achingly powerless to inhale without exhaling the air instantaneously in the same half-second to the point of not being able to breathe at all, everything in his view extremely fuzzy, reality a haze beyond identification, 

Everything went silent.

- - - 

Heavy breathing.

Piercing ring.

Blur.

Heavy breathing.

Piercing ring.

Blur.

Heavy breathing.

Piercing ring.

Blur.

- - -

Where...am...I...?

Not only did he wonder about the glooming shadows crowding down on him, but was there an anvil on his chest and eyelids or something? His weak pants of air could only barely squeeze past his lips, whiffs fortunately smoothly gliding through his throat as his huffing sent into the breezing environment, environment anciently narrow. The invisible force on his eyelids may be a contributing factor to the continuous smears that his common-sense confirmed to be reality past the tone of broken breeze streaming throughout the proximity and physical coating of vast coldness.

Alleyway.

Right.

Wanted.

Hide.

Rain.

All that.

Awakening out of a crumpled mess, the cloudy dust trapping him forced his eyes to warningly bolt together to suddenly cough aloud amidst his mind, his mind filled with dismay of his abrupt breakdown, his chest vigorously tightening with each and every dry wheeze that had tumbled out from his throat until he was left with nothing but the damp, alley floor as he dragged himself upwards, sitting so dumbfoundedly.

When had he fallen asleep again?

Not only that, but if he had only just woken up, why was he so exhausted? Was he exhausted in his thoughts? Was that it? That would make sense. He couldn’t step a foot out of the shadows without the risk of someone beckoning the police on him, him knowing that he wouldn’t be able to fend himself if his life depended on it. Which it did. After all, if the authorities succeeded to find him, who’s to say that they would just let him off easier merely because he was apparently apologetic for deceiving the entire world and cheating the laws of physics, literally running away from consequence instead of owning up? What was he going to tell the police if he was ultimately discovered anyway?

I’m sincerely sorry. I’m aware I’ve consciously committed appalling sins but I’m also sincerely wanting not to pay the consequence, so may you be so kind as to help me find refuge?

No surprise there; that sounded ridiculous.

Same kind of ridiculous that was what sent his mind plunging down a spawl staircase, passing out along the way.

Not being sure what to do with his useless mind and useless thoughts, he hopelessly settled his hands upon the dimly lit ground, his bones being dangerously vulnerable in comparison to an average’s health; it may having something to do with the fact that he and his well-being hadn’t had anything of a day of where he could just go about its routine without a worry in the world for quite a while.

But he ignored that.

He’s seen worse, right?

Forcefully pressing his arms against the stone, he used his palms to prompt his body upwards whilst he realized just how unforgivingly cold the alleyway was yet again, even if the atmosphere presented now was an azure hue amidst the warmth that just seemed to purposely evade him as he slowly tore his numbly aching figure up and into an uncontrollably loose standing status.

Everything spinning.

His dizzy standstill propelled his head in circles, taunting to stumble face-first into the stone pavement, probably breaking his nose. Beyond the haze that was his fatigue, he was conscious enough to know that his reaction-times weren’t nearly sharp as they used to be. And when they used to be, he could defend himself. Hell, his strength to balance was tested just by using the cold wall behind himself to lean his weight against. Or lack-there-of, I mean. As his eyes forced themselves to cross, his lungs catching its breath as if it had run a marathon, Soren slipped entirely disoriented within his own thoughts. Again.

Lack of refuge.

Lack of hope.

Lack of courage.

Lack of understanding.

Lack of companions.

Lack of direction.

Lack of safety.

Lack of foresight,

Lack of survival-instinct.

Lack of strength.

Lack of health.

Well, things were just going phenomenal, weren't they?

“Where are they?”

Jumping out of his skin, the gasp that had ejected from his mouth had been somewhat muffled with the instinctive teeth-grit and hands instantaneously overlaying his mouth tightly whilst he simultaneously dropped himself from against the wall and into a sitting position on the alleyway floor, eyes showing sympathy for himself.

“They said their house was near the gate; let’s head there.”

Instinctively holding his breath, he didn’t even realize that he had checked off dizziness from his list of priorities, daze itself withering away from him.

“Okay...”

He never even truly thought about that.

He was wanted.

People were pursuing him.

People were pursuing him.

An internal screech echoes within his mind.

Sincerely, this was ironic. Mentally, his voice of reason always reminded him that half of his anxieties were irrational and with the natural: “I’m the protagonist, what bad could truly happen to me?” mindset, this knowledge was actively rattling his subconscious to the core amidst conversations overheard to and fro, loudly fusing out of tune. Now that he had a very, very valid reason to exclusively seek refuge out of silhouettes, he was assuredly at a loss. Great. It’s not like the very person he was seeking for would just happen to candidly stroll by the alleyway, would he? His luck was just far to low for that.

Once again,

He was truly at a loss.

- - -

Accidentally withdrawing from an insomniac slumber, his eyelids daringly parted ways amidst consciously heaving his own adagio, broken breaths of heavily deep puffing which evaporated as soon as they left his mouth, rising towards the darkly clouded atmosphere as he figuratively felt the anvil on his chest make its second appearance on the fourth day alone. The cold wheezes gradually chilled the alleyway insignificantly whilst his dazed body embraced strangely tranquil feeling, rendering him unusually paralyzed to movements, the beading feeling of his senses abnormally numb.

He couldn’t move.

The apathetic feeling that was determined to immobilize him on the fourth day shuddered his soul to the core while his figure persisted to welcome a moveless status; A status moveless to the point of being senseless, unable to feel any positive feeling. That is, including a piercingly intense agony within his stomach, it intensifying to and fro, a demand greater than the desire to find refuge--an apparent command for food.

He was starving.

Stitching together enough self-preservation to try to thoroughly investigate the proximity, he strained to costively drag himself from his loose posture on the damp ground and into a limp sitting position, drastically exhausting whatever fragments that were left of his strength just by tearing his aching being from the pavement. His head was left to aimlessly hang from his scratchy neck and his newly fainted eyes to uselessly gaze at the concrete for a few moments before his lungs suddenly busted out into a coughing fit with little to no warning, the heavy rasp growing in his throat temporality erupting in escape beyond his lips, chest once again stiffening and slackening on and off with every bare wheeze, mind stuffed with plead to quit hacking his precious breath away.

. . .

His chest impermanently released of any built-up, itching discomfort, his confidence was somewhat restored by rationalizing that at least some of his tickling nausea had to be relieved, right? Dust violently expelled from his lungs, he hesitantly took that opportunity to plant his hands on the ground, not even paying any mind to the stiffly brisk floor beyond the powerful demand for food. As he tentatively used his sensitively vulnerable arms to hoist himself upward, he frantically ripped through the relatively tranquil atmosphere the second he settled his feet on the ground, seeing as he instantaneously stumbled over his own balance amongst a flinch, forcing his right shoulder to vigorously smash against the alleyway wall, him letting out an automatic, relatively loud outcry on impact, the side of his head cracking into the aforementioned building seconds after, the sudden movement abrupt to the point of being stunned even after instinctively securing his position with a hand weakly pressed upon the wall and yet another coughing frenzy simultaneously.

So standing was a no-go.

Take it that what had happened was that he hadn’t realized that his legs were frail to the point of being worthless until he had tripped over his absence of weight.

So he was useless.

His legs taunting to allow him to drop to the ground and him still being hungry, he quickly skimmed to the floor in defeatist, back to the wall.

So he was staving.

Him with an absence of an actual objective other than generally “find food,” he pointlessly studied the science of nothing what-so-ever besides catching his breath whilst gawking at the drizzly alleyway floor in front of him for a minute as his arms remained tightly grasped around his legs protectively, refusing to accept the fact that he couldn’t just shield himself from the shadows caving-in on him that effortlessly. Him himself trembling with both cold and disquietude, a shiver raced through his spine within the presence of the chilled nighttime air ensnaring him in its clouds of eclipsed enigma; Somehow, the luna’s duskiness really just felt rather worse than the other couple of nighttimes somehow. Just his luck. Would anything go his way? Perhaps only so many things go your way in life and perhaps he had previously swallowed up all of his. As for disquietude, he literally had nothing on him to guard himself against potential menaces with...

...right?

Fatigued sword...

Habits of the Endermen...

Walking Among the Endermen...

Compass...

Pickaxe...

A Man Forever Voyaging...

Torch...

Chorus Fruit...

Chorus Fruit?

They’re fruit...

They’re edible...!

He didn’t even remember he had those...!

I mean, not exactly much of a meal but at least a slice of his satisfaction and hunger would be restored from consuming a few of these berries, worst-case-scenario for him to call it a day there, right?

As he sank his teeth into the purple food, he couldn’t even swallow before he suddenly got a strange feeling briefly as if something bad was about to happen amidst a fuzzy sensation that instantaneously glazed past all of his body, momentarily unnerving his vanes to his blood along a gasp cut short by a dizzying event. Even now, him laying on freezing concrete amongst streams of brisk breeze coating over his character, he could barely understand what the smeared, dull colours of existence were, it also being accompanied by a loud, eerie, echoing soundtrack that was sickeningly familiar.

How’d he get out of the alleyway again?

Intense fatigue and hunger taking control of him, he and his attention were uncontrollably, wearily pinned onto the freezing pavement, bordering the edge of breaking out into anew coughing tantrum. The effect of the harsh nighttime atmosphere and moon gradually chilling everything that came in its path to a core made what would normally be clean breaths turn into frigid heaves. Him powerless to stand up for a moment, he took this opportunity to crestfallenly recall that any kind of Chorus Fruit were naturally counterproductive, him not being strong enough to continuously drag himself upwards and to the nearest, cryptic corridor again...and again...and again...

There goes that plan.

Slowly tearing himself upright, he was forced to instinctively groan with amidst a subconscious desire to just randomly teleport back to an alleyway in his vulnerability, his body complaining simultaneously with every significant movement. Then again, the idea of violently teleporting in any kind of similar manner again violated his soul to retaliate even with as much as the thought. His reduction of energy to balance was evidently proven once he used to his advantage a damp window of the building that was fortunately in his precise proximity to support his incompetent figure. He was restrained to roughly settle his right arm on the pane within the fact that his balance was loose to the point of nearly staggering to the ground once again in a blind stumble, evident alongside the wobbling. While his eyes quickly glanced past the reflecting glass, the distinct shading seized the windowpane to glaze a brief hue of light across its obvious shine and slightly wet drizzle inside the mysterious dusk. Though him to pay little to no mind to the environment and more to survival-instinct, the illumination haphazardly snatched his eyes’ attention to the mirror in uneasy interest, not even noticing himself loosely planting his palms on the windowsill to get a better vision at his reflection, him taking a curious gaze, lost in his own lime-green eyes that were intensely

staring

right

back

at

him.

[liskantope]

A response to Aella’s essay “The Responsibility Narrative”

I initially planned to quickly link to this piece @aellagirl put up a few days ago just to highlight it as a piece of writing containing ideas that I’ve tried to express for a while (longer-time followers know that the whole agency/responsibility topic is right up my alley) and to thank her for expressing them so much more elegantly and from a much more powerful point of view. Then I noticed a bunch of points I wanted to pick apart a bit (while I overall really like this post there are some places where I think she goes a bit further than I do or just want to respond to in other ways). Also, it seems that she turned comments off for that post or something, so I guess this post is my way of dropping a (very long and slightly erratic) comment under hers while at the same time linking my Tumblr followers to her piece and providing a response.

I’ll start by saying that I really envy the author’s writing skills, in the sense that Aella seems to have an uncanny ability to put forth highly controversial theses that many would take offense to in an eloquent, concise, and direct manner (I might even go as far as to say “blunt”), and yet manages to do this in a way that facilitates in the audience opening one’s mind and listening rather than taking offense or feeling attacked. This is something I’ve noticed for a long time in her writing. An example is her piece on monogamists rejecting polyamory out of fear, where her thesis is one that I strongly disagree with and may well have responded to with resentment if it had been displayed by any other writer. I wish I knew how to emulate this. From time to time I argue positions that are controversial and potentially threatening or angering to some, but in my writing there’s all this hemming and hawing and insertions of softening qualifications and so on which can often make those essays look like sloppy messes by comparison in which my central point is nearly lost amid all the carefulness.

As for the actual content, first of all, I’m always happy to see someone else writing things like this:

Responsibility is weird. Ultimately there’s no free will and agency is a trick of the light, but we seem to have particular rules for when and where we throw responsibility at something. Sometimes we throw responsibility at the environment, and sometimes at the person.

...and I’m especially happy to see this (as most people in my vicinity have seemed to shy away from describing the Left vs. Right divide in this way or agreeing with me when I did):

Responsibility placement seems to occur along political divides, too. Conservatives see everyone holding their own glowing ball of responsibility, while liberals see the responsibility in the environment and the cruel, unchangeable past.

Aella’s views on how we assign free will (or responsibility, which after all is treated by most as equivalent to free will) in practice is the same view as mine and seems to be pretty much the universally-agreed-upon way forward on the pragmatic side, at least judging from the (admittedly very limited) set of people whose writing on that question I’ve read. I wish there were a way to translate that pragmatic solution to a metaphysical one that we could all agree on -- I think my solution is to say that “free will” is just a word that we have no choice but to define according to the pragmatic solution because any attempts at a more “cosmic” definition are in fact meaningless. Perhaps Aella would differ by emphasizing the term “responsibility” in place of where I used “free will” in the sentence above, as after all she does call free will nonexistent and agency “a trick of the light” -- that view seems equivalent to mine for pretty much all means and purposes, though.

And as for “if someone is very lazy, shouting at them to be less lazy sometimes works”, well yes, although a key word there is “sometimes”.

Then we get to the much more controversial thesis of the essay, which is initially presented with “In my old society, men were formally and strongly given the glowing ball of responsibility... [which] sucked bad enough that I don’t think being a woman was worse than being a man.” On first reading, I’m pretty sure I misread that last bit to instead say, “I don’t think being a woman was as bad as being a man”. When just now I read the phrase correctly, my eyebrows didn’t raise quite as high as before, but they’re still raised a little bit. Because while I’m really glad that the author is presenting this alternative view and wish more people could be exposed to it and take it seriously, I still lean fairly strongly towards believing that on the whole it was still better to be a man.

(In this and what follows, I do want to point out that the author is considerably more qualified than I am to speculate on such things given her experience as a woman who actually grew up imprisoned in an ultra-conservative community; however, let me offer my own speculation based on my general impression of how humans react to power and responsibility.)

The author comes across to me as emphasizing the seductiveness of believing that fault lies not in oneself but in the environment while seeming to ignore the potentially negative effects of such a belief, or equivalently, the benefits of feeling a sense of personal responsibility. Yes, the essay highlights the (very obvious) benefits of having power, thus drawing a rough equivalence between the benefits of power and the benefits of not being assigned responsibility in a society where men hold most of the power and most of the responsibility, but I’m talking about how the holding responsibility part comes with psychological benefits along with the psychological disadvantages. Namely, in my view and in my experience, feeling a sense of responsibility is empowering, while feeling a lack of responsibility or agency is certainly easier in many ways but also comes with a sense of weakness and helplessness that can create a lot of depressed feelings. As I remember reading once in an advice article (whose title and author I don’t remember), “It’s easy to be miserable.” In the context of that article, I think its author was trying to say that a lot of misery arises from a failure to take responsibility, which is seductive because of how easy it is... but of course, due to the being miserable part, that deal definitely isn’t better than one where one feels empowered through the weight of responsibility to not have to be so miserable.

(Rereading what I’ve written here the following day, my words in the above paragraph look like contradictory nonsense in the context of the essay I’m responding to: it may sound like I’m saying “Aella is wrong to equate the benefits of lesser responsibility with the benefits or greater power, because carrying lesser responsibility also comes with the disadvantage of having lesser power.” But this is because I’m struggling to make a clear distinction in words between power in the sense of institutional power or authority to make decisions -- the power that Aella refers to -- and the feeling of personal empowerment in the sense of being able to tolerate or withstand adversity. I’m saying that a direct negative consequence of not carrying the ball of responsibility is a feeling of personal weakness that comes with it, which is fairly separate from the fact that lesser responsibility tends to be correlated with less society-bestowed power. Perhaps I’m slightly confounded here by viewing everything primarily through the lens of modern times, where differences in concrete society-bestowed power have mostly disintegrated and a lot of the oppression that activists complain about boils down to some adversity being intolerable mental-health-wise. Not sure if this edited-in aside clarifies my position or makes it even more muddled.)

This is not to say that in practice people don’t choose the less-responsibility route far more often than taking the glowing ball of responsibility. They do, I believe increasingly as our society becomes more socially progressive, and the younger generations recently seem to be embracing a norm of doing it more than ever. And that’s in large part because in a certain sense, it is the easier path. But that doesn’t mean they’re better off psychologically for it. Here let me try my hand at saying something potentially offensive very concisely and directly *deep breath*: the people I know who are most committed to shooing away that ball of responsibility -- the “environment-changers” as Aella might call them or the low-agency-goggle-wearers as I might call them -- the ones who go to the most extreme deep end in that direction tend on the whole to be the most bitter and frustrated, the most terrified of life in general, and the least emotionally or psychologically healthy people I’ve known, to an extent that I don’t think can fully be directly explained by the disadvantages that were handed to them.

As for Aella’s observation that on average men tend to have a more high-agency mentality while women tend to have a more low-agency one... yes, this has certainly occurred to me although I don’t think I’ve ever noted it in writing -- for some reason, I hesitate to feel fully convinced. I still lean towards claiming that the tribe one belongs to is a bigger factor here than gender, but it certainly makes sense that gender is a factor, and her observation does jive with my experience.

Now we get to the part about the Gillette ad, and again I can’t bring myself to go as far as the essay does. I should probably write another post describing a fuller reaction to the ad. As a response to the essay, I would argue that the author is making a point I strongly agree with about modern feminism in general (perhaps it can be applied to some other wings of SJ but far less so since for most other axes of oppression the reality really is something much closer to members of one group directly oppressing the members of another), but that the Gillette ad is not really a great example of this.

I understand “toxic masculinity” in this context to refer to certain behaviors traditionally associated with masculinity that are harmful but still encouraged or normalized for men in our culture. I agree that the ad places responsibility for fixing toxic masculinity solely on men and that this is an overly-simplistic judgment (although to some extent a statement that brief has to be simplistic). I also have some of my own issues with the ad. But sometimes the solution to overturning a cultural norm for a particular group really does almost exclusively rest on the shoulders of that group.

Aella states near the end of the essay, “Women reinforced gender roles just as much, if not more, than the men did.” My personal impression is a variant of this: I think it always has been and continues to be the case that women are the primary enforcers of female gender roles (including some of the most oppressive ones to live under) while men are the primary enforcers of male gender roles. In other words, gender roles are policed most heavily among one’s own gender group. That would imply in this case that many of the traditionally-male behaviors brought up in the ad -- physical aggression, sexual harassment, objectification of women and so on -- are reinforced in men primarily by other men. This strongly jives with my personal experience: it’s never been girls and women in my life who shamed me for not being fiercely competitive about something or for not picking fights or for not being aggressive enough at approaching women for dating/sex. In my life, it’s almost exclusively other guys that have. Of course I’m not saying that these masculine norms are entirely not enforced by women -- in particular, objectification of women arguably is perpetuated on a certain level by some subset of the female population. But I think by and large women tend to promote values for everyone of all genders which are the opposite of the uglier traditionally-masculine norms: diplomacy, sensitivity, gentleness, and so on.

And one corollary of men being the main perpetrators of “toxic masculinity” behavior among fellow men is that the most effective way to push things in the opposite direction is for men to start pushing other men away from these behaviors (”Not cool, dude!”). Which is exactly what the Gillette ad is preaching.

[ctrl-shift-esc]

“So, it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.” ― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

All Aboard RelationSHIPS

The Art of Combining my Life with Yours

Hello, 

It’s Friday the 13th, I’m writing to you from a quaint coffee shop here in Gastown , Vancouver, BC.

It’s taken me a while to finally get to write this thing. (what’s new) 

But here we are…

So as per the results of my Instagram poll, this will be a conversation about what I believe it takes to be in a committed relationship. 

So often nowadays I hear of couples who once adored each other, who once talked about spending the rest of their lives together, break up for no apparent reason. Myself included.

No one’s cheated, no one’s physically hurt the other, no ones ultimately betrayed the other. So why are these relationships ending? Why is it that two people who once adored one another, suddenly decide that they’re no longer right for each other? Why are people, who say they eventually dream of getting married, end up giving up on their partner? I’m hearing reasons like; I just fell out of love. They just weren’t right for me. My heart just wasn’t in it anymore. They weren’t enough of this or too much of that… 

Here’s what I think:

We are quick to blame. We are quick to quit. We are quick to judge. We are quick to start looking for something better when we suddenly aren’t getting everything we want. We always want better. Though, perfect does not exist. I’m (now) a true believer in; “The grass is not greener on the other side, It’s greener where you WATER it.”

DISCLAIMER:

-These are only theories - based on my own experiences.

-These are not by any mean factual. They are merely perceptual. (as is anything in this world)

-I understand your experience might be very different than mine, which does not make your way of loving or living any less right.

-I will be talking about what it means to take responsibility for your choices and how you show up - this does not mean; to go ahead and blame yourself for circumstances that are clearly out of your control. Please remember that.

so without further a-do 

lets get crackin’!

First, take a moment to ask yourself what it means to you to be in a committed relationship? What does it mean to be in love? What does it mean to love someone? What does it mean to break up? What are your reasons to get out of a relationship? What are your reasons for not getting into a relationship in the first place? What do you ultimately want for yourself and your love life?

And now, are your choices reflecting the values you’ve set for yourself?

My definition of love and definition of a committed relationship has evolved in the past couple of years, in ways I truly never thought it would. I’ve dated my fair share of different individuals - choosing them solely based on how they made me feel. Based on how much giddiness they created for me. Blindly hoping, that this time, it would work out. Choosing them based on all the wrong reasons, based on all the wrong values. That being said, it didn’t mean I fell any less in love with them. Even if I was somehow picking the wrong people. I was madly in love every time. Or should I say; I was madly in lust. Either way, needless to say, these clearly never lasted. Except for my very first love, which was a bumpy ride of a relationship, & lasted for more than 3 years. 

Why do I think they never lasted? Truthfully, partly because I didn’t know how to take responsibility for my own actions. Also, I didn’t have the emotional language I have today to have been able to express myself properly. I was a bundle of emotions with no direction, no guidance. I don’t blame my ex-lovers for not being able to stick around, how were they supposed to know how to deal with me, when I didn’t even know how to deal with myself?

You can’t hold someone else accountable for the outcome of your relationship if you can’t hold yourself accountable for your own actions. 

This is a touchy subject, because all of what I’m saying is purely based on my experiences. Where you’re at in your journey and what you’ve determined you need right now, may not resemble me at all. And that’s ok. For now, for the sake of reading a blog, hear me out & let’s go for a ride.

First; I’d say in a “relationship”, but I’ll say “Friendship” ( because any couple should ultimately be great friends to begin with) there needs to be a mutual decision to be committed to one another. I’m not talking puppy love commitment . I’m not talking, “let’s be bf/gf until we’re not anymore” - - commitment. Not the - “I won’t cheat on you because I’m not technically allowed to, since I’ve called you my bf/gf already” commitment. I’m talking about the ; I consciously & consistently choose you. I choose you to be my teammate. I choose you to be my partner. I choose you to be my best friend. I’ve decided I won’t give up on you - that kind of  “committed to one another”. The commitment that goes beyond the initial attraction. The commitment that meets the other persons soul. The commitment that meets the other person half way, because they also choose you wholeheartedly.

Also you need to know, you have your own work to do in a relationship and your partner has theirs. You are, ultimately, 2 different entities. You can take responsibility for your half of the equation (and I’ll get into, how , in just a moment) but you absolutely cannot take all of it. 

You need to be vulnerable, not for your partner, but for yourself. Which means you identify when and why you feel what you’re feeling. 

Second; you have to have the will to make ends meet. Both of you. The will to work on your faults. The will to work together as a team to find solutions when you’re no longer calibrated, because kid you not, it will happen. If there’s no will there’s no way. 

You need to be honest, with your partner and yourself. Once you’ve identified what is going on, you voice it to your partner.

Then comes the compromise, the solution finding, and trial and error. 

This type of communication is not easy. 

NOT EASY. 

I think people nowadays underestimate what “Not Easy” means. It means it’s HARD. It’s uncomfortable. It means it’s not fun; it’s long, tedious, exhausting. Sometimes it feels hopeless. However, “Not Easy” does not mean, “Not Worth It”. 

I used to choose my men based on all the wrong reasons, to the point one day, I decided to have a checklist. I figured this was the perfect way of not dealing with bullshit. I believed this was exactly how I was going to pick the right person. The person that would be exactly what I wanted. Surely if they’re exactly what I want then it would last forever. 

Well that guy came along and it didn’t even last to the 4th month. So clearly lists and strict relationship diets are not 100% effective. I wanted someone that seemed like a “Fuck Yes” a no brainer - but easy turned out to be the hardest relationship I’ve had to this date, in the sense that it destroyed me. 

I then decided, I no longer had rules. I said yes to what ever the universe sent my way (get your head out of the gutter, not talking sex things)….. I said yes to meeting new people, people I would’ve otherwise never spoken to. I said yes to trips I would’ve otherwise not agreed to. 

During that time I said yes to someone who I’d been friends with for longer than I could remember. I said yes despite knowing it would not be an easy relationship if it were to ever turn into one. But I said yes. Because fundamentally we communicated properly, we knew who we were as individuals. There was definitely a sexual attraction there, we laughed, we enjoyed each other. I said yes to someone I otherwise wouldn’t have, and it was the best choice I ever made. It’s been wonderful and life changing. Anything but easy. I would be lying if I said there hasn’t been times where I wondered if it wouldn’t be easier to give up. 

Yes, it would be easier……. Somewhat.

Would it be worth it? To give up?

No.

Never. 

What has kept me holding on? Other than the fact, that I’m not only IN LOVE with him, but I simply love who he is as a human being.

Well! I want to get married one day. Which means I have already made the decision that I ultimately want to share my life with 1 person. I also know, no one is perfect. So then how am I supposed to justify wanting to be committed to one person if I run away when things get a little rocky?

If I give up, it means I was never fully committed in the first place. Which means I can’t expect anyone to be committed to me either.

Also, I find practicing at becoming a better human; growing intellectually, emotionally, and together, far more gratifying than having to start all over again every time. Any relationship will take work, will take calibration, due to the simple fact that 2 different human beings can’t always be on the same wave length. Shit just gets rocky sometimes. That’s fact. With anyone. So why would I want to drop all the hard work, for a temporary way out, just to start all over again with someone else down the road?! 

This will never be worth it to me. 

But yes, I have a limit. IF I’m finding the strength to communicate, to put the work in, I’m willing to try , try again……and try again. But if I’m asking for what I need and my needs can’t… not can’t but simply won’t be met, and the work isn’t reciprocated… Then there comes a time where I can’t do all the work myself. This could cause me to let go. IF I am betrayed, I’m talking, cheated on or hurt to the point of no return… I’ll let go. 

They’re called relationSHIPS for a reason, it isn’t always smooth sailing. There’s going to be waves and some rockier than others. Love takes work. It’s not just about a feeling. It’s either you’re on board or you can take your life raft back to shore. 

No do not stay in something that is toxic. Do not take responsibility for something that is out of your control either. If your partner lacks commitment, that is not a You problem. If you showed up 100% for yourself and your partner and tried your best at all times then that’s all you can do. However, If the relationship didn’t cause any real harm to you, & you haven’t fully given it a chance, you bail, know that this was your choice. Take full responsibility. It wasn’t because that person wasn’t right for you, It’s simply because you chose to decide she wasn’t. If you haven’t taken the time to ask for what you needed, If you didn’t give the person the chance to give that to you - If you blamed falling out of love as though this was out of your control, know that you did not commit to the relationship. This isn’t right or wrong, it is what it is, but take responsibility for it. I believe; If you’ve fallen for them before, you can fall for them again, question is, do you want to?

I’ll let you ponder…

on that note 

Ctrl+ Shift+ Live Love Laugh wholeheartedly (Btw, a little quality time goes a long way.) <3 . 

[biggaybunny]

My Hitman Level Reviews

I should probably wait until I finish Hokkaido, but I’m impatient so here are my thoughts on the levels in Hitman (2016) so far (note that I have mastery level 20 in all levels mentioned): Update: Now With Hokkaido!

Level: Paris

Rating: 7/10

Thoughts: Though there is a tutorial level preceding Paris, this level is really the introduction to the game’s full scope, and it does a pretty good job of it. The size of the level and the game’s ability to handle scores of NPCs are shown off in full. Past that, the level is pretty fun and creative, and the difficulty level felt just right.

Pros/Cons:

+ Does a good job delineating areas different disguises are allowed in

+ Harder to reach disguises are worth getting

+ Most opportunities are easy to pick up on

+ Emphasis on multiple routes and events to take advantage of

+ Verticality of level allowed it to create different “stages” of challenge

- Lots of the level unused, underused

- The wacky/fun opportunities were very lopsided to one of the targets

- Too many red herring devices / interactables

Level: Sapienza

Rating: 8/10

Thoughts: A fan favorite, and for good reason. Tons and tons of opportunities, many of which border on the absurd. There’s also much more story / lore to the level, and NPC interactions can become another tool in your arsenal

Pros/Cons:

+ Well used, varied level with tons of different environments

+ Still does a good job of presenting most opportunities

+ Unprecedented number of challenges, many of which are over the top in a good way

+ The amount of wacky stuff really deserves a second mention for how much fun it is. Kill your target with a circumcision knife dressed as a plague doctor. Knock them out and put them in the wood chipper. Drop a stalagtite on them. Shoot them with a naval cannon

+ Exploration is fun and well rewarded

+ Inflatable alligators

- Goes overboard with the disguises. There are so many that give almost identical access and restrictions.

- Moving around the house always a little bit of a pain, not easy to remove or distract observant individuals

- One of the targets has a painfully long loop that makes getting certain challenges just not worth the time it takes

- Certain areas just... utterly annoying to get to

- Ether virus objective was too much; makes runs longer, does not offer a lot of variety, is rather tedious

Level: Marrakesh

Rating: 9/10

Thoughts: My favorite level. The difficulty jump from the first two levels turns a lot of people away from Marrakesh, but it’s really a treasure to master. Really tasks the player to use stealth and strategy to maneuver the level effectively.

Pros/Cons:

+ Crazy/fun kills plentiful, and for once split evenly between targets

+ Clearly conveys which disguises allow what access

+ Tons of hidden tools to find and put to use

+ Both targets easy to observe / learn the routines of, but still harder to kill

+ Ups the difficulty level without becoming unfun

+ Exploration & creativity largely rewarded

- Some challenges require a lot of contrivance to set up

- Prerequisites to certain challenges unclear, poorly explained

- Lots of level is just filler, though at least some of it is used as a place to put opportunities / items

Level: Bangkok

Rating: 7/10

Thoughts: Though a much tighter level design than the other levels, Bangkok felt like a weird de-escalation of the whole series, both in setting and in difficulty. The level is solid, but doesn’t do anything particularly well -- except for maybe the storyline with one of your targets, Jordan Cross.

Pros/Cons:

+ Much heavier focus on reconnaissance than other levels -- not just random exploring, but actually learning about your targets

+ Has some of the most memorable kills in the series, admittedly

+ Level is very compact, making it easier to remember where things are or how to manuever

- Level is highly linear, with no side passages whatsoever to large (important) chunks of the level

- Level is incredibly easy, perhaps easier than Paris. Getting any disguise you want takes almost no effort at all, and access isn’t well gated

- Area access poorly conveyed, with guards not reliably stating when passing them would be tresspassing

- Once again, all the fun kills are stacked on one target, and there is very little interesting to do with the other target

- Several opportunities can break easily (as in, bug out) and even more are extremely difficult to pick up

- A lot of dialogues refer to opportunities that can be picked up, but do not count as learning about the opportunity

Level: Colorado

Rating: 5/10

Thoughts: Overall, disappointing. Colorado’s setting should be the perfect way to increase the difficulty without limiting the options available to the player. In reality, however, the level lacks teeth. And somehow, despite having twice the number of targets of any other level, Colorado has the lowest number of challenges available to it.

Pros/Cons:

+ Setting excuses a lot of odd equipment / items / environmental objects

+ Targets have a variety of guardedness, availability, and different routes that still can intersect for some combo kills

+ Despite the number of targets, the level generally doesn’t take too long to complete

- Level is utterly disappointing from a difficulty standpoint, with most disguises being near-perfect

- Level’s difficulty is further lacking by the fact that surveillance is almost nonexistent (cameras or guards), trivializing a lot of kills

- Several disguises are essentially redundant in terms of their benefits

- Disguises are very hard to tell apart at a glance, from a combination of a lack of variety in attire, and the fact that not all disguises are proper “uniforms” and take different appearances

- Access VERY poorly defined, with accidental trespassing easy to commit

- So many missed opportunities for kills involving farm equipment and/or makeshift military equipment

- Much of level is pointless, not even used to place items/opportunities/disguises/etc

- Incredibly small number of challenges, despite there being four targets with different backstories and routines / weaknesses /.etc.

- Some challenges are impossible to complete during the main quest, further limiting options

- What challenges do exist are usually boring, unoriginal / recycled, and/or not personalized to the targets at all

- having to complete the tornado shelter objective every time is pointless as it’s completely linear and offers no additional challenge or strategy

- several opportunities placed randomly or are difficult to find

I’ll update this with Hokkaido when I finish that.

Level: Hokkaido

Rating: 7.5/10

Thoughts: A fairly strong end to the first season, Hokkaido still suffers from many of the design flaws that began to emerge post-Marrakesh. Given the setting, and what’s at stake plot-wise, I went in expecting to need all my patience, focus, and game knowledge to work out the level. In actuality, while certain parts of the level can be tricky, Hokkaido ultimately is no more difficult than Bangkok, perhaps slightly harder than Sapienza. That being said, the level was creative and featured some very fun challenges.

Pros/Cons:

+ Level was challenging in interesting ways, primarily by nullifying or rendering less effective many common strategies from earlier levels

+ Easy to pick up on all the opportunities

+ Just the right amount of disguises to make things interesting, and certain disguises were appropriately tricky to obtain

+ Features some of the wildest kills the series has offered yet.

+ Largely immune to “brute force” methods of assassination

+ Lets the player do the sensible thing for an alternate “kill” of one target (trying not to spoil it)

+ Fun easter eggs

+ Level has a surprising amount to offer for its size, lots to do

+ Kai is amazing and slightly creepy. It was an interesting antagonist for 47, basically interfering with your plans without being aware / hostile about it.

- Not that many special kills for one of the targets (again)

- Level is too small. Just, frankly, too small. There were a couple of routes that gave you pretty much everything you’d need to pull of any kill, because there just wasn’t room to separate out items/disguises/etc. Not everything has to be the size of Marrakesh, but they crammed Hokkaido full of as much as they could, and it still kind of comes up short

- Level lacks difficulty. More guards, more enforcers, more cameras, or something novel, just, anything.

- Kai was underused. For a self-aware AI fully integrated into the entire facility the comprised the map, it was incredibly easy to dupe and largely absent from many routes and opportunities.

[frazzledsoul]

A late night insomnia induced post in which I try to justify the second most upsetting event in Gilmore Girls history

. . . . I am of course, speaking of the Gilmore/Hayden marriage experiment.

(Disclaimer: if you’ve written any of the stories I refer to below, understand I’m not judging you. I mostly wrote this because of a very upsetting story I read which directly suggested that Lorelai would have been wasting her life with Luke if she didn’t give him that ultimatum. It made me think of a lot of the fanfiction trends I’m not comfortable with, but as always, it is just my opinion).

Fan fiction is always a unique experience.

First of all, you have to reach a particular level of insane obsession to even know what it is or to attempt reading it, and as far as I’m concerned, I have to go significantly past the route of no return before I even attempt it. You have to put up with a lot of sentimentality and bad porn to get to the good stuff, and if you’re reading fanfiction for a genre show, forget it. There are some weird ships out there, and stuff that bears no significant relationship to the show it’s supposedly about. The fact that Fifty Shades Of Gray emerged out of such a phenomenon is not shocking at all once you’ve waded into it, and that’s actually on the milder end of things.

I’m not even going to talk about the Walking Dead Negan/Glenn slash I accidentally read on here. Or some of the stuff I accidentally stumbled on about David Archuleta back in 2009 or so. Trust me, you don’t want to know.

I’ve noticed a few trends in reading fanfiction for Gilmore Girls’s’ core couple. First of all, there’s a lot more of it than I expected. People were passionately writing these stories three, four, five, six years after the show ended, and this is long before anyone even thought of a Netflix revival to continue the story. Second of all, a lot of it is actually really good. Third, this is a fandom that loves to go AU and “correct” certain plot events, and while that’s really not my thing, I’ve read quite a few of those stories and I’ve liked them more than I thought I would. However, there is one particular genre I’m not crazy about.

It appears that when revival spoilers came out that Luke and Lorelai were not married for at least part of the revival, it inspired . . . some angst. Quite a bit of angst. Even among writers I really liked. Nothing positive had changed in the Luke/Lorelai relationship. Luke still won’t commit or let Lorelai into his life. She’s still mournfully gazing at the engagement ring or the wedding dress and hoping things will change and he won’t budge. Sturm und drang. It’s season 6 all over again.

This appears a little funny in retrospect after reviewing what actually happened in the revival. Lorelai was clearly in the driver’s seat when it came to the marriage discussion this time around. She’s the one who decides to hold off for nine years: she’s the one that decides when it’s time to finally make that final step. The parental duties are kept mostly separate, but this was at Lorelai’s insistence (this doesn’t stop people from blaming Luke when he lives up to his end of the bargain, but I guess old habits die hard), and as Luke points out, he just went along with what she wanted. When Lorelai re-proposes, it’s Luke who comes running with the old engagement ring he’s held onto for a decade just in case she was ever ready for it again.

If anyone’s longingly looking at that ring, it wasn’t her.

Of course, there was a time in the show’s history when Lorelai was that person, and it’s not a time period any of us remember fondly. The sixth season finale is one of the most upsetting events I’ve witnessed in many years of obsessive TV watching. I think the only thing that really comes close for me is watching Jon Snow get murdered and seeing Glenn and Abraham get turned into human oatmeal earlier this year. We knew about Glenn and Abraham way ahead of time, and we got Jon Snow back two episodes into the next season. But I don’t think any of us anticipated the level to which Amy Sherman Palladino would sink her show.

The thing that upsets me most about the break-up in that episode is that Luke has been running around looking for Lorelai for days, clearly concerned about her welfare. He keeps trying to get her to sit down and discuss the situation rationally, and she won’t have it. She’s going to have a loud, noisy, public meltdown in the middle of the street, and he’s going to have to deal with it. Yes, there were real issues in their relationship that they needed to hash out. Maybe he wouldn’t budge in the end and she would still decide she wanted marriage and kids on her timetable more than she wanted him. But screaming in the middle of the street and stomping off and sleeping with his worst enemy when he wouldn’t immediately agree to her crazy plan wasn’t the way to have that discussion. There were very real issues affecting the custody of his child that partially caused Luke to act the way he did, and those issues would not be solved by the quickie wedding that Lorelai insisted that they have at that very moment. Not everything revolves around her and her biological clock, and if she insists on behaving in this manner, she’s not really of a sound mind to embrace marriage or motherhood, anyway.

(Oh, and a more apt metaphor for ASP and her approach to contract negotiations is pretty much impossible to find compared to this one, but I suspect this is the point).

That said, despite all of this, I kind of get it. Luke’s behavior gets really bad in the latter half of season 6. I feel I can’t judge him too harshly for prioritizing his kid, but it’s not pleasant to watch. I understand why Lorelai felt at that point that she had to break up with him, and why she married someone else after a few months.

I’m a 36 year old woman from Alabama. I have seen this situation play out in my own life more times than you know. The concept of a woman in her late thirties breaking up with a long-term partner because he isn’t ready for marriage and kids and quickly marrying someone who is is something that is very familiar to me. And in real life, these marriages actually last. When you get to a certain point, it’s easier to settle and compromise because you want the same things. Sometimes life isn’t fair, and you have to choose your best options.

When Luke justifies to himself that he and Lorelai were never meant to be together and tells he’s going to stop being angry and just move on, he basically gives her his blessing to pursue other options. She’s still devastated, but when Christopher shows up and makes his big romantic plea, it’s immensely appealing to her. Sure, it’s not the epic, passionate love affair she wanted, and she’d rather be hearing this stuff from Luke, but Christopher is doing all the stuff she wanted Luke to do. He lets her be involved with his child. He wants marriage and kids. They’ve been involved for 20 years anyway. So when he pushes for it in this ultra-romantic setting, she goes for it. Wanting the same things will be good enough to justify this decision, right?

Of course, it’s an epic disaster for the six weeks or so that it lasts. Christopher is weak, pathetic, and utterly useless to anyone who might have the misfortune of needing to rely on him. He let Lorelai participate in his child-rearing decisions largely because he was incapable of making them himself. Lorelai isn’t in love with him and she’s never fully committed to this life together, but she convinces herself that because they supposedly want the same things, it’s good enough. 

However, Christopher isn’t good enough, and never will be. The character reference that Lorelai wrote laid out all that Luke was capable of, all of the love and devotion that he lavished on Lorelai and Rory over the years, and of how special he was to the both of them. Lorelai didn’t sign the letter OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE, but she might as well have. When Christopher read the letter, he knows that Lorelai still loves Luke because she will never be able to say those things about him. No one will ever be able to say those things about Christopher. He knows that he’ll always be nothing more than a very inferior replacement, and that Lorelai is never really going to be able to love him that way. 

Eventually, Lorelai realizes this too, and ends this torturous marriage experiment once and for all.

As far as Luke is concerned, I think he allows his family to talk him into the idea that he and Lorelai were destined or failure as a way to live with the situation. If he allowed himself to think of everything that went wrong, he would go insane. And he can’t break down and do that, because he’s got a daughter to take care of now. It’s his way of stepping up and being the bigger person. The show starts building him up again, and they really, really needed to do that. He becomes a great guy again, and we needed him to be that guy.

I don’t think the reality of the situation really hits Luke until Lorelai shows up in the hospital with the wedding ring. Then he has to admit what he’s lost, but even then he can’t give up. He’s got a kid he’s got to fight for, a new infant niece, a very pregnant employee/surrogate daughter to look out for. When the letter’s read out to him, he allows himself to have a tiny bit of hope. And when Lorelai needs him, he drops everything and runs to her side, because he still loves her and would do anything for her. He’s worthy of everything in that letter at that moment.

I think what this brings us all to is that Lorelai ultimately learned that this set plan she had for marriage and kids was not what was going to make her happy. I think what both she and Luke came to realize that what they really wanted was each other, not some arbitrary expectation of what life was supposed to be like for them. Giving up on Luke was not the right decision because he couldn’t be replaced, and what she needed most of all was simply to have him in her life, and for him to be in hers. Both of them figured out that marriage and parenthood were going to be a lot harder than they thought they would be, and neither of those things mattered more than being together. Their life together was a good life, and it made both of them happy. Ultimately, Lorelai did decide that she did want to be married, and Luke wanted that, too, because all he ever wanted was her. However, that doesn’t mean the previous decade didn’t count because it didn’t live up the previous ideal. It did.

As far as the kids issue goes, I think for Lorelai it was mostly a vague afterthought. I think it was different for Luke, at least at first. It’s not an accident that he has so many surrogate kids. He did want to be a dad in some way, but having April gave him that opportunity, and it wasn’t a very pressing need after that. Besides, it’s not like he’s going to run out of additional offspring any time soon, either.

Life can be good, and deep, and meaningful, and worthy, even if it doesn’t live up to a Norman Rockwell ideal. I think Lorelai learned that when she tried to substitute someone else for the person she really wanted.

[filipeteimuraz]

11 Ways to Make a Living on Social Media Without Selling a Single Product

Do you have lots of social media followers? Want to learn how to turn those followers into dollars?

Right now, there are people making a living on social media without selling anything.

We’ve all seen those profiles of seemingly regular people with tons of followers.

It always seems as if they’re traveling or doing something fun. But what exactly do they do to fund this fairytale lifestyle?

They are social influencers.

Experts predict that in the next two years, global influencer marketing will be a $5-10 billion dollar industry.

In 2017, 86% of marketers relied on influencer marketing campaigns at some point during the year.

And 39% of marketers say they have increased their influencer marketing budgets for 2018.

All of this is promising news if you’re interested in making a living on social media as an influencer. Even if you don’t have lots of followers right now, this guide will show you what you need to do to make yourself more appealing to marketers and brands.

In the past, I’ve explained how to use micro influencers to increase your product credibility.

But now I wanted to write an informative guide aimed to help influencers make more money.

With influencer marketing making my list of the top marketing trends to look for in 2018, there is plenty of money to be made in this space if you position yourself accordingly.

These are the top 11 ways to make a living on social media without selling any products.

1. Pick a platform

The first thing you need to do is decide which platform you’re going to prioritize the most.

Ultimately, you’ll want to have profiles set up on as many social networks as possible, but one needs to be your bread and butter.

Research shows that nearly all social influencers work on Instagram.

In 2018, more than 82% of social influencers said that Instagram is their number one platform. Just over 12% responded with YouTube, and less than 2% said Facebook.

That’s probably because 76% of influencers say that Instagram has the best tools compared to other social platforms.

Based on these numbers, I highly recommend picking Instagram as your top priority.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. If other influencers are having so much success on Instagram, you should be able to follow in their footsteps.

Your other social profiles should be used to enhance the image of your personal brand and ultimately expand your reach.

But you can use Facebook and Twitter to try to get more followers on Instagram.

2. Join a network for influencers

Another way to make money on social media is by joining networks made for influencers.

These platforms are used to connect brands with people based on their followers and specialties.

Brandwatch is a great place to start.

Let’s say you share lots of content related to yoga and holistic health on your social media profiles.

Your followers are obviously interested in this content as well, which is why they are following you in the first place.

If you join one of these networks, it will be easier for brands to find you if they have a product or service related to your content.

If a brand wants to work with an influencer to sell their newest yoga mat and yoga clothing, it’ll get matched with you through these networks.

You can handle all communication with the brands through these platforms as well.

This can help you stay organized as opposed to using direct messaging through social media. Once you get lots of followers, it’s tough to keep up with all of the messages in your inbox.

I recently wrote about my favorite platforms for effectively managing social influencers.

The post was intended for brands, but it’s helpful for influencers to read through it as well. Go through the list to see which platforms fit your wants and needs the most.

3. Boost your engagement rates

The reason why brands want to work with social influencers is they historically have extremely high engagement rates.

In fact, brands named engagement as the top metric for measuring the success of influencer marketing campaigns.

If you want to make yourself more appealing, you can show brands how high your engagement rates are with your followers.

Start by learning how to write captions that drive engagement.

You want your followers to like, comment, tag, view, and share your content.

Respond to your followers.

I know, this can be tricky, especially for those of you who have tens of thousands of followers. But the key is getting into a habit of making time to respond.

At the very least, like their comment if you can’t respond to it.

Remember, we’re treating this as your job. If you want to make a living on social media, you need to dedicate a certain amount of time each day toward making yourself a more valuable influencer.

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

Engaging with your followers will help them feel a personal connection with you. When you recommend a brand to them, they will be more likely to act on your recommendation, making your marketing campaigns more successful.

4. Give away free stuff

Everyone wants to get something free.

To increase engagement with your followers, hosting a giveaway is one of your top options.

Once you start negotiating with brands and deciding what kind of content you should be posting, you can suggest a giveaway.

Ultimately, the decision is theirs. They will be the ones paying you for sponsored content.

But you don’t have to commit to anything you’re uncomfortable with. If you think the content they want you to post doesn’t add value to your followers, you can respectfully turn down the offer.

After all, you don’t want to lose credibility by posting everything and anything someone presents to you.

Otherwise, you could see a drop in engagement from your followers.

Take a look at this post from Instagram personality Jen Selter:

Jen has more than 12 million followers on Instagram.

How do you keep 12 million people entertained? Don’t spam them.

Yes, it’s clear that this post is promoting a brand. But she’s doing it in a way that adds value to her followers by giving them a chance to win something free.

This post has all the elements required to run a profitable giveaway.

If you are still trying to grow your following, giving something away could be the best way to do that, even if you aren’t getting paid by any brands yet.

It may be worth spending $100 out of your own pocket on a gift card, for example, to give away to your followers.

Then you can show brands how good your engagement rates were for that campaign as you move forward with your career as an influencer.

5. Use multiple hashtags

If you’re trying to make money on social media, you can’t be afraid to use hashtags.

But don’t use only one per post.

Research shows that using multiple hashtags leads to higher engagement rates.

The magic number here is seven.

Posts with seven hashtags have the highest engagement rates.

But that doesn’t mean you should go overboard. Using more than eight hashtags on one single post can seem spammy.

Use a variety of hashtags.

Some should be broad and intended to reach the highest number of people. For example, #tbt or “throwback Thursday” is a popular hashtag used on social media.

So your post would be exposed to the masses.

However, you don’t want to get lost in the shuffle.

Create some unique and more specific hashtags appropriate for each campaign. If you look at the giveaway example again, you’ll see that Jen used #JenSelterGIVEAWAY in per post to stand out.

6. Partner with a mobile app

All too often I see social influencers partner with the same types of brands. They’re promoting clothing, fitness apparel, accessories, and food.

While there is nothing wrong with this strategy, it may not be sustainable for long-term growth.

Those brands will end up using other influencers in the future once they feel they’ve gotten the most out of you and if your cost per post rate gets too high.

Think outside the box and try to partner with unique brands, such as mobile applications.

Here’s a great example of this strategy used by social influencer Eric Rubens:

Eric has more than 380k followers on Instagram.

If you look at his bio, he promotes a few different things related to his personal brand image. You can see his YouTube name and link to his website.

But look at what I highlighted. It’s his partnership with Explorest, a new mobile application.

The idea behind this app is very unique.

It shows users exact directions to places where they can take cool photographs.

This idea also fits within Eric’s personal image. If you look through his profile, he takes amazing photographs of places all over the world. So his followers are obviously interested in this type of content.

That’s why he was able to successfully partner with a mobile app such as Explorest.

7. Find your niche

It’s tempting for new influencers to take jobs from any brand that offers them money. But you need to understand how these posts can impact your future.

You don’t want to partner with any brand that goes against your core values and beliefs.

Furthermore, you need to analyze how this content will affect your followers and how you’re perceived by other brands moving forward.

Let’s look at an example to show you what I’m talking about. Here is James Tollefson’s Instagram biography:

James has just over 23k followers, which is a great number for micro influencers.

While his biography doesn’t promote anything specifically, like in the previous example, it tells you more about his life and who he is.

He’s a software engineer, living in San Diego, who is a fitness enthusiast.

Now, just saying you’re a fitness enthusiast and being a fitness enthusiast are two different things. Let’s take a look at his pictures to see if they fit the description:

As you can see, the content definitely fits the biography.

James shares content related to his fitness journey, and he promotes products that fit that niche.

If you join a community that connects brands and influencers, you want to make sure your content fits your speciality.

Don’t say you’re a foodie in your biography and then never share content related to food or work with brands in that industry. It doesn’t make sense, and it won’t make you any money.

8. Know your worth

According to research, 80% of influencers say sponsored content is their primary source of income.

This ranked higher than advertisements and affiliate links. Only 33% of influencers actually sign a contract with sponsors.

You’ve got to make sure you protect yourself and get paid for your work.

Don’t just post content for brands who offer to send you free products. That’s not enough if you’re trying to make a living.

As you can see from the graph below, marketers are planning to increase their marketing budgets for influencers:

Only 5% of marketers say they’re going to decrease their influencer marketing budgets.

The money is out there. It’s just a matter of finding it. Don’t settle.

How much is a post worth? The numbers will vary based on the number of followers you have and your engagement rates.

On average, 66% of businesses pay less than $250 per post.

And 27% pay between $250 and $1,000.

Just 4% pay up to $3,000 per post.

Unless you’re a celebrity, you probably won’t see $3,000 for one post. But with that said, it’s not unreasonable to aim for that $250-1,000 window.

Let’s say in a week you share two sponsored posts from two different brands. One pays you $750, and the other pays $250.

If you can continue getting rates like that steadily throughout the year, you’ll make more than $50k annually.

9. Post high-quality photos

Look back at all the examples I showed you so far. What do all of them have in common?

High-quality content.

If you want to become a social influencer, you need to make sure you’re sharing only quality photos.

Buy a professional camera if you have to. Or at least get yourself a new smartphone that takes better pictures.

Invest in yourself.

As you saw in the example of partnering with a mobile app, taking high-quality photos can lead to big opportunities for you.

Just look at Albert Hongbo Yang’s Instagram profile:

These images are breathtaking.

Albert has over 24k followers who are interested in his photos, which is a huge leveraging point when it comes to working with brands.

Even if you don’t want to sell products on Instagram, if your photos are good enough, you can make money as a photographer.

Post pictures that draw attention and make you seem more legitimate.

Refer to my guide how to take and edit photos without hiring a professional to help you with this.

10. Fully disclose your relationships with brands

Part of being a social influencer means you need to fully disclose your relationships with brands.

First of all, you don’t want to mislead any of your followers or cause them to distrust you. That’s not right.

But more importantly, it’s a requirement by the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC says that these disclosures must be clear and obvious. It doesn’t want you to use anything ambiguous, like #thanks or #collab, which could be misinterpreted.

You also can’t rely on a disclosure that will only be seen if people “click more” or view the content on a separate landing page.

To show you how to properly disclosure your relationships, look at this post from Anastasia Ashley:

Anastasia is promoting La Roche-Posay skincare products.

As you can see, she clearly tagged them in her caption and used the hashtag #sponsored to disclose her relationship with the brand.

There is definitely nothing ambiguous about that. She’s complying with FTC regulations.

11. Promote your services

OK, so you want to make a living on social media without selling any products. But you can still sell your services.

Earlier I explained how you could make a living by taking high-quality photos and then leverage your photography skills to make money.

That’s just one way to do it, but there are plenty of others.

For example, let’s take a look at Rob Atkin’s Instagram profile.

Rob is promoting his personal website in the biography.

Clearly, he’s a personal trainer. But the way he positions his services is much more creative than just saying “personal trainer.”

Instead, he uses creative phrases such as “I help busy people get abs” and “fitness specialist” to promote his services.

As you can see from his posts, his content fits into that niche, which is extremely important, as I mentioned earlier.

So if you want to make money on social media without selling any products, consider using your distribution channels to promote your services instead.

Conclusion

There is tons of money to be made on social media right now.

People are making a living without selling a single product.

Those of you who have a large social following can use your profiles to get paid by brands.

Even if you don’t have lots of followers right now, you can increase your following and engagement metrics to make yourself more appealing to prospective clients.

If you follow the tips and advice I’ve outlined in this guide, you can turn your social media profile into a money-making machine.

How are you leveraging your social media followers to make money as a social influencer?

https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/29/11-ways-to-make-a-living-on-social-media-without-even-selling-a-single-product/ Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2018/08/11-ways-to-make-living-on-social-media.html

[dianesaddler]

Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report – January 2017

https://www.google.com/jsapiThis is the 52nd income report as part of the zero backlink experiment.

Every month I will publish a post like this one that shows you how this blog is progressing and everything I have done across the month to get it there.

These reports will help me track my own progress while teaching you what to do and more importantly what not to do.

ATTENTION: Learn My Secrets With Instant Access To The Income Report Archive//my.leadpages.net/leadbox-796.js

What I Have Done In January

January has been a great month for a number of reasons.

I managed to complete 2 larger projects that had taken significant time which has cleared the decks for me to catch up on smaller but essential tasks.

However everythings about to hit the fan as I’m going to return to the UK for 5 weeks next week to catch up with friends and family along with a visit to Thailand in the middle.

So with that said, lets take a closer look at what I did in January-

Why I’m Ditching Aweber

First and foremost, I spent most of the month planning my migration from Aweber to Drip.

Why?

Well because Drip is quite simply the new generation of email marketing, built from the ground up for the modern world of digital marketing.

This was not an easy decision as I’ve been using Aweber for nearly 10 years and they are still a great start point.

But my needs have outgrown them as I want to develop more sophisticated and personalized email marketing campaigns.

The migration process is going to be a huge head ache over the next week, but it is a necessary change that will have an immediate impact on the bottom line.

Here are just a few of the features that stand out for me-

Tags Not Lists

Aweber relies on having separate email lists of people, where as Drip just has one central list of people with tags.

So you can tag people that have signed up for the SEO lead magnet or tag them if they clicked a certain link in an email for example.

That means you can get hyper relevant with the emails you send out while making the whole thing easier to manage.

Now I know that Aweber have recently introduced tags with the new campaign builder, but it’s very much an after thought that they have fudged in.

Visual Workflow Builder

One of the most powerful features of Drip is the visual workflow builder.

That makes it easy to create powerful email marketing campaigns complete with if/then statements, goals, delays and much more-

Plus it looks beautiful right?

Automatic Resending Of Emails

When you send out an email, a large portion of your list won’t open it.

So to get around that, you can always re-send the email with a different subject line to people that didn’t open it the first time.

In Aweber this is an entirely manual process that takes 5-10 minutes to do and you have to remember to do it on the right day at the right time.

Where as in Drip, it’s just a check box-

That feature alone is worth it’s weight in gold!

Website Visitor Tracking

One of the coolest features I am looking forward to implement is the ability to track exactly which pages on the blog people have visited.

For example someone might read a product review on the blog which I could use as a trigger to send them an email with an exclusive discount code for the product.

Or I could track if people are reading tutorials about how to fix a Google penalty and automatically pitch them my penalty removal service.

There’s a million ways I can use this feature and I am going to be taking full advantage of it in due course.

Disabled Mobile Popups

Way back in August, Google announced they would start penalising sites that show intrusive interstitials on mobile devices.

Essentially what this means is if you show a welcome popup or exit popup that covers the content, you’re in trouble-

Luckily disabling popups is just a click of the button with Thrive Leads so it wasn’t a huge problem.

However I then spent time designing some new 2 step ribbon based calls to action to replace them-

That way I can have the best of both worlds, dodging the Google penalty while still collecting mobile email subscribers easily.

Luckily Thrive Leads have a bunch of templates ready to use so it was a very quick and easy process.

Content Audit Results

Last month I was working hard on a complete content audit to see which content needs updating, deleting or repurposing.

I also took a look at the performance of my regular income report roundups and what I have read this month posts.

Looking at the stats, both of these types of posts perform poorly when compared with other content.

So as of this month I will no longer be publishing income report rounds or what I have read this month posts.

I know that some of you will be unhappy about that, but that does mean I will have more time and resources to produce much better content all around.

In summary-

39 posts were deleted

23 posts need minor updates

40 posts need bigger updates

37 posts would benefit from post specific content upgrades

There will no more income report roundups or what I have read posts

Income reports are also on the chopping block for further review in the future

I am going to be working on all of that over the next few months to make sure you guys are getting the best experience possible end to end.

Running With The Bulls

This month also marked the annual Tope event where I live.

It is essentially a huge cowboy party where horses and cowboys take over the streets.

But the most exciting part is the bull ring, where spectators can get in with bulls and do their best not to get trampled on-

It’s pretty crazy to say the least and there are always a number of casualties! Luckily I wasn’t one of them!

Content Creation

First and foremost I spent a lot of time updating the deals section with new deals and discounts that you cannot find anywhere else.

There is now a total of 60 deals listed!

I also shared 23 SEO copywriting tips that got an awesome response from you guys!

After that I showed you how to choose the best VPN and how to use it for digital marketing/SEO activity’s.

Last but not least, I published an update to this post which shows you how to build a profitable business on Fiverr step by step.

Crunching The Numbers

So let’s get our hands dirty and see how the blog has actually performed this month.

Visitor Statistics

Last month traffic sat a steady 61,209 (1,974/day) which increased to 66,213 (2,135/day) this month.

That is means January was the 5th straight month that traffic stayed above my goal of 60,000 per month.

Most Popular Content

It was a close tie this month with with SEO copywriting guide, free SEO tools & Fiverr guides taking center stage.

Top Traffic Sources

The top traffic sources have remained pretty much the same as last month with nothing new to report really.

Search Engine Traffic

Search traffic has grown significantly this month after making a number of changes on site.

Last month saw 47,949 (1,547/day) visitors from Google which has exploded to 56,285 (1,815/day) this month!

I am going to be publishing a case study on exactly what I did to nearly double organic search traffic in the past 6 months shortly.

YouTube Views

I lost all of my historical YouTube views because of changes I made to the branding – so I keep track of them separately.

YouTube views increase gently from 18,388 to 18,638 this month.

That also had an impact on total minutes watched which also increased gently from 83,999 to 88,502 respectively.

Social Shares

This month the total social shares across Facebook and Google+ decreased from 73,606 to 73,263.

That is because I deleted 39 posts which also saw the social shares deleted alongside them.

Google+ – 25,122 (25,497 last month)

Facebook – 48,141 (48,109 last month)

Subscribers

The most important metric on the entire blog – earning a subscription from someone is the ultimate form of commitment and conversion.

This month brought 1,792 new subscribers which is steady drop from last months 2,146 new subscribers.

There are now a total of 156,455 subscribers across all of the various channels!

E-mail – 1,257 (1,230 last month) / Total: 86,994

Twitter – 233 (287 last month) / Total: 14,901

YouTube – 179 (166 last month) / Total: 13,268

Facebook – 93 (479 last month) / Total: 22,760

Google+ – -24 (13 last month) / Total: 17,907

RSS – 54 (-29 last month) / Total: 625

Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap

Income Report

Here are the numbers you really want to see-

Affiliate Earnings

48HoursLogo – $20.00

A2Hosting – $85.00

ActiveCampaign – $2.80

Ahrefs – $298.39 (case study)

Aweber – $101.70 (tutorial)

Blog Advertising – $817.88 (Advertise)

Blue Chip Backlinks – $150.00

Bluehost – $65.00 (discount coupon)

BrightSpark – $22.30

BuyProxies – $65.40

CashCrate – $11.17 (tutorial)

CMS Commander – $19.21

Domain Hunter Gatherer – $334.02 (tutorial)

Drip – $00.60

Drip Revolution – $288.05 (discount coupon)

FCS Networker – $184.98 (discount coupon)

FreshDrop – $18.12

GetResponse – $40.77 (review)

GSA Captcha Breaker – $622.44 (review / discount coupon)

GSA Search Engine Ranker – $800.81 (review / discount coupon)

GSA SEO Indexer – $47.51 (case study)

HQ Biz In A Box – $16.20

IPVanish – $489.21

JustHost – $560.00 (start a blog / discount coupon)

Kontent Machine – $177.45 (review)

LeadPages – $489.90

LearnDash – $45.15

LinkAssistant – $41.17

LongTailPro – $481.06 (review / discount coupon)

MintVine – $6.70

MyThemeShop – $125.30

OneHourIndexing – $410.21 (case study)

OptinLinks – $27.34

PandaBot – $108.24 (case study)

PowerupHosting – $43.97 (discount coupon)

PrivateInternetAccess – $18.00

PrizeRebel – $7.56 (tutorial)

ProxyHub – $3.39 (discount coupon)

Raven Tools – $49.97 (case study)

RescueTime – $3.02

SamCart – $99.00

SEMRush – $903.72 (review)

SENuke – $88.20 (tutorial)

SEO Content Machine – $87.63 (discount coupon)

SEO Monitor – $140.74

SEO Powersuite – $98.67 (review)

SEO Spyglass – $41.17

SERocket – $322.50 (tutorial / discount coupon)

SERP Book – $9.57

SERPed – $1,201.50 (review)

SiteGround – $50.00

SociSynd – $16.85

SwagBucks – $7.26 (tutorial)

TBSolutions – $5.00

TheBestSpinner – $131.00 (tutorial / discount coupon)

ThirstyAffiliates – $25.08 (discount coupon)

Thrive Themes – $33.50

TrafficPlanetHosting – $430.00

TrafficTravis – $30.49

TweetAttacksPro – $14.85 (case study / discount coupon)

Ultimate Demon – $220.42 (review / discount coupon)

URLProfiler – $118.64 (discount coupon)

VideoMakerFX – $173.00 (case study)

WordAI – $129.34

ATTENTION: Learn My Secrets With Instant Access To The Income Report Archive//my.leadpages.net/leadbox-796.js

Expenses

Kinsta Hosting – $100.00

Aweber – $119.45 (tutorial)

Facebook Advertising – $148.36 (Case Study)

Consultation Earnings

I separate out the consultation earnings from the affiliate earnings. The blog drives affiliate sales directly and whilst it does generate consultation leads these are separate projects in their own right.

This month I didn’t taken on any consultation work so made a grand total of nothing!

Other Income

I’m working on another project right now that is part of the blog but not something I’m ready to talk about publicly yet or maybe ever.

I will declare the income here though as it wouldn’t be possible without the blog and ‘technically’ it is affiliate income.

Last month this was $10,840.73 which increased to $13,477.63 this month.

Earnings Total

Affiliate Income – $11,478.12

Consultation Income – $00.00

Other Income – $13,477.63

Expenses – $367.81

Grand Total: $24,587.94 / £19,485.94 ($22,759.89 / £18,518.28 last month)

Unable to post graphs at the moment – will update asap

Signing Off

It has been a great start to the new year, not just in terms of earnings but everything I have achieved this month.

With the content audit complete and the move to Drip, I have a clear road map ahead of me for the next few months on what I want to achieve.

The only spanner in the works is the fact that I am returning to the UK next week for 5 weeks, so I expect things to take a small nose dive.

On the flip side though I should have migrated everything from Aweber to Drip before I go along with some new email campaigns that will do the heavy lifting in my absence.

Thank you to everyone that has helped me reach my goals – I couldn’t do it without you, the reader!

Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report – January 2017 was originally published on Matthew Woodward

Monthly Income, Growth & Traffic Report – January 2017 posted first on Matthew Woodward Blog

from Blogger http://scottmcateerblog.blogspot.com/2017/02/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report.html

from Scott McAteer https://scottmcateer.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report-january-2017/

from WordPress https://dianesaddler.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/monthly-income-growth-traffic-report-january-2017/