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mamerto8odld · 4 years

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How Good Are BigCommerce’s Template Designs?

Best ecommerce builder for large and businesses that are fast-growing. Our independent research projects and impartial reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no cost that is extra our readers. What Are the professionals and Cons of BigCommerce? BigCommerce is a premier ecommerce platform makes it possible for you to definitely create an store that is online. It lets you set up your store, add products, and also make money through your site. But that’s not totally all. BigCommerce is a ecommerce that is specialized, meaning it’s designed to help you sell online. With tons of built-in features, data tools, and more, BigCommerce is most beneficial for large or fast-growing businesses. You won’t outgrow this platform any time in the future! BigCommerce’s clients include big brand names like Toyota, Kodak, and Ben & Jerry’s. For small businesses seeking to scale up, BigCommerce boasts an impressive average development of 28% for its clients year on year. That isn’t just hype. Here at Website Builder Expert, we carry out thorough research on all the builders we review. We put each one through hours of rigorous user scoring and testing. We compare, analyse and dig deep into every builder’s features, pricing, design flexibility, customer care, and sales tools. BigCommerce was no exception: we put the platform through its paces, and it came a solid third overall of the many ecommerce builders we tested (beaten only by Shopify and Wix). BigCommerce was also number 1 for website features, and was only behind Shopify with regards to stumbled on sales features. Could BigCommerce end up being the perfect ecommerce builder for you? Find out once we shine a spotlight in the quality of its features, ease of use, template designs, and much more. Time is money, so let’s get going! How Easy is BigCommerce to Use? As a company owner, you want to spend as time that is much possible caring for your prospects, shipping products, and watching your profits go up; you don’t want to spend precious hours trying to reformat a text box. That’s why ease of use is really so important, and just why we research it so thoroughly. So how did BigCommerce do within our ease of use testing? To be honest, it had been fairly average. BigCommerce scored 3.3/5 stars for simplicity of use, with people finding it 14% more challenging to use than Shopify. The reason that is main struggled with BigCommerce was its design interface. It’s split between two areas when you’re creating your store. One is where you add products and manage the "behind the scenes" areas of your store - for instance, discounts and shipping - while the other is where you edit your storefront. To combat this, we recommend setting up the inventory portion of your store first.

The Truth About BigCommerce

Upload all your products, add items such as for instance discounts, then go directly to the storefront editor to personalize your storefront. The news that is good, BigCommerce has recently released a brand new and exciting feature in order to make designing your store easier than ever! The latest visual merchandising tool is called Store Design, and means you can observe the consequences of the edits. This new feature makes BigCommerce significantly more customizable. Something that remains a consistent problem with BigCommerce is its terminology. It’s very complex, and this makes it unsuitable for beginners. You should be familiar with the terms that are technical or else you might waste lots of time just finding out whatever they mean - which, let’s face it, is a lot less fun than actually building your store. BigCommerce is an ecommerce builder built to carry stores into big business. Think of it like a jumbo jet: it’s got all of the powerful tools necessary to take your online store on a long-haul flight, without you being forced to change planes halfway through. However, you won’t be able to fly it straight after passing your pilot’s exam! With great power comes great complexity, and BigCommerce is not perfect for anyone who’s not savvy that is tech. However, the recent launch of the Store Design tool is a great step. It shows BigCommerce is listening to its users’ feedback, and it is making its builder simpler to use. Inside our user testing, 56% of people said they were prone to recommend BigCommerce. Regarding the whole, they liked the effectiveness of BigCommerce’s features,the ease of this onboarding process, and the professional quality for the builder. "It supports you in having the job done and is incredibly professional. What people found tricky was the language that is technical BigCommerce favors. It took people longer to get to grips with because of the true amount of enhanced functions. "Yes it’s difficult, but you can see why. It’s because it’s basically there to operate your online business for you. They are things people that are real to express when they tried out BigCommerce. It’s not the quickest or easiest platform to create an online store with as you can see. However in the long run, its powerful features can make running your company super easy. BigCommerce has been named a solid Performer by Forrester Research in two recently released reports, one on B2C commerce suites and something on B2B commerce suites. These Forrester reports evaluate and score the most commerce that is significant, to be able to guide digital businesses in selecting the right technology because of their needs. Are you considering another satisfied BigCommerce customer? Test it for yourself free of charge and tell us how you found it!

So what are these amazing features we carry on on about? BigCommerce has the best in-house features of any ecommerce builder. These provide a high quality level and minimize the reliance you've probably on 3rd party apps. You effectively have everything you need right close at hand, as well as for no extra cost. BigCommerce could be the ecommerce that is only on the market which enables you to sell physical, digital, and service-based products and never having to use an app. All of these sales types are already built into the editor. This implies less hassle and less cost, since you don’t need to worry about using alternative party apps. As soon as you’ve got your entire products set up and ready to sell like hot cakes, you will need a way to get paid! Unlike various other ecommerce builders, BigCommerce doesn’t lock you into its own payment gateway. Better still, it doesn’t impose transaction fees on any of its plans. Instead, it allows you to choose your own payment gateway without imposing any extra charges or transaction fees. You’ve got over 65 integrated payment gateways to choose from. With one-click setup, mobile payments, and multiple currencies supported, BigCommerce does its better to get you paid fast. To assist you succeed, BigCommerce has generated relationships with payment providers to cut back your costs. For instance, all BigCommerce plans do not have transaction fees, and come with pre-negotiated rates for PayPal. The longer you stay with BigCommerce and upgrade through its price plans, the reduced your rates will go - in reality, they could drop from 2.9% all of the way down seriously to 2.2%, or sometimes even lower! BigCommerce offers you a range of shipping options. You may get shipping that is real-time, offer free shipping to your customers, and print shipping labels, all with BigCommerce’s third-party integrations. BigCommerce now offers its very own service that is all-in-one next-level shipping tools. Simply install the new BigCommerce Shipping app at no cost, and enjoy special discounts (up to 80% off!) with USPS, DHL, and FedEx. Keep your customers satisfied with shipment tracking, in-store pickup, and next day delivery, and also make your personal life easier by automating your shipping operations. BigCommerce Shipping is sold with a great deal of perks, however the main one is the fact that it is possible to manage your entire shipping from a single central hub. Shipping can be a challenge, but BigCommerce aims to offer tools that are powerful minimum fuss. BigCommerce has got the amount that is largest of built-in features of any ecommerce builder. This includes the all-important SSL Security certificate, which encrypts user data in order to make online payments safe. Almost as important as an SSL certificate is the selection for abandoned cart recovery.

Keep Buying Facebook Stock in the Dip for the near future

Government to business (G2B)

Mobile-friendly design themes with full control of CSS/HTML

1000+ channels reach

9:00 a.m. Aug. 26, 2020

7-step process (below) I suggested a week ago and apply them

BusinessWire - BZX

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When a client enters their email after which abandons their products or services into the shopping cart at checkout, you are able to send an automated email to draw them back for their purchase. You can also personalize the emails and include discount codes. This is a money saver that is real! An average of, these emails win back 12-15% of customers, while personalized emails are six times more efficient than regular ones. Reaching customers has never been so easy. With BigCommerce, you can "sell everywhere" using multichannel integrations. Put simply, you are able to sell through Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, eBay, Amazon, and much more. Manage everything from one place, sit back, and watch the sales roll in from all over the web. Keep track of all those sales using BigCommerce’s data reporting tools. Identify customer trends, track your store’s performance, follow your conversion rates, and more - all from your dashboard! These are are just some of the essential features BigCommerce has. If you do wish to expand your internet site beyond these functions, it is possible to - you’ve still got over 600 apps to choose from within the BigCommerce app store. BigCommerce has a much more limited app store than its competitors. But that’s only as it has so many impressive in-house features already! You simply don’t need as many apps while you would with Shopify, for instance. This keeps costs lower, since you don’t have to pay out for third party add-ons on a monthly basis. How Good are BigCommerce's Template Designs? Your online store needs all the latest sales tools to remain in front of the competition. But when it comes to standing out from the crowd, the thing that is first visitors will notice can be your website’s design. BigCommerce has over 100 themes being offered. There are 12 free themes and over 100 paid themes, starting from $145-235. That’s a lot of themes to select from! Luckily, BigCommerce causes it to be really easy to get your perfect theme. It is possible to search by industry, or by the layout you want for the template. For instance you can choose from grid layouts or designs featuring images that are large. You could view just free or paid themes, or make use of the search bar to get tailored results. Themes really vary with regards to the industry they are categorized under. For instance, themes in the ‘Fashion & Jewelry’ category have a product zoom feature, while other categories don’t include this. Therefore it’s worth having a proper search to find a theme that best fits your store’s needs. It is possible to preview a layout just before select it, that is a truly useful option. Should you pick a style and then improve your mind, don’t worry! It is possible to switch your template any right time you love.

All BigCommerce themes are fully mobile responsive. You can’t edit the mobile view, as the theme automatically reformats to fit mobile screens. This means you don’t have to spend a second worrying all about losing out on mobile shoppers. With more than 50% of traffic originating from cellular devices, this is certainly a vital feature to possess! The question that is real, how customizable are BigCommerce’s themes? It’s a question with an answer that is exciting. BigCommerce recently released a fresh merchandising that is visual, called Store Design. Whereas before you had to customize your storefront in 2 separate areas and wait to start to see the results, this tool changes everything! The Store Design tool lets you pick out chapters of your page and there customize them and then, right in front of you. Thus giving you instant control over everything from background colors to logo positions, wide range of featured products, navigation arrow colors, and much more. This tool that is new a much higher level of customization to BigCommerce’s themes than ever before. When you’re making money through your site, any problems can be costly. Fortunately, BigCommerce has help options set up to get you sorted quickly and easily. The support and help channels available be determined by what price plan you’re on. As standard, BigCommerce provides 24/7 phone and live chat support. No need to stress out at 4am, counting down the hours until 9am; simply pick up the device or open up a live talk with get your condition dealt with by morning. There’s also email support. In reality, when you sign up for a trial that is free you get an email through offering an appointment for a 10 minute call to go over your company, its goals, and exactly how BigCommerce can help you succeed. As well as phone, live chat, and email, you are able to make use of video tutorials - and better still, the BigCommerce Help Center. If you’re on the most expensive Enterprise plan, you unlock priority support. This includes an consultant that is onboarding as well as prioritized telephone calls. With instant connections to your most senior and highly-trained support staff, this allows the level that is highest of quality support for the store. BigCommerce Pricing - could it be Good Value for Money? Everyone understands you must spend some money to help make money. But simply simply how much do you have to spend with BigCommerce? There clearly was a 15-day trial that is free and you will even request a demo to observe how BigCommerce can benefit your on line store. What exactly Do You Get for Your Money? The Standard plan sets you up with a well-rounded, fully equipped store that is online.

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goingknowherewastaken · 6 years

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Meet Allie Bennet

► Allie Bennet was created for the Polyvore group In Love With A Celebrity. As the name suggests, she was made to be the fictional love interest of a real life celebrity (Who wants to guess who I picked for the celeb? ;) ). This set was created for her personal information which is listed below the cut. At the very end I am including the requirements that I needed to follow while creating the set.

Enjoy!! ♥

| FULL NAME;

☾Allison “Allie” Bennet

| NICKNAMES;

☾Allie – basically everyone calls her that

☾ Allison – if the full name comes out, then she did something wrong

☾ Al – Byron is really the only person who can get away with calling her this

☾ Picks – a random nickname given to Allie by her friends due to her being a Picker

| GENDER;

☾ Cis Female

| FACECLAIM;

☾ Emma Watson

| DATE OF BIRTH;

☾ 5 / March / 1989

| AGE;

☾ 29

| NATIONALITY;

☾ American, British – She was born in America, but she and her family have dual citizenship.

| ORIGIN;

☾ Before Allie was born, her parents moved from England to America for her mom's job. While both her parents grew up in England, her father's side of the family has Greek traces and her mother's side has French traces. When she was growing up, she gained their accents and never really lost it.

| HOMETOWN;

☾ Portland, Oregon

| EDUCATION;

☾ Allie double-majored when she went to college. By the time she graduated, she had a bachelors degree for both History and Business.

| OCCUPATION;

☾ Allie is a picker and she co-owns a small shop with her brother. They drive around the country, stopping at places that have 'junk' on the property and buy some of that 'junk' to restore/sell in their shop. While both will go out to find items to buy and sell, she mainly stays behind and runs the shop since someone needs to be there and she has the business background.

| SEXUAL ORIENTATION;

☾ Demisexual Heterosexual

| FAMILY;

☾ Marylin Bennet – Mother – Marisa Tomei – 52

☾ Paul Bennet – Father – Nathan Fillian – 49

☾ Byron (Moore) Bennet – adopted brother – Tyler Hoechlin - 28

| FRIENDS;

☾ Byron (Moore) Bennet – brother/best friend/roommate/business partner – Tyler Hoechlin – 28

☾ Larissa “Lacy” Hanlin – childhood friend/roommate – Rose Leslie – 27

☾ Carrie “CC” Clark – college friend/roommate – Paulina Singer – 25

☾ Robert “Robbie” Martin – friend/part-time employee – Darren Criss – 26

| HOBBIES & INTERESTS;

☾ reading, traveling, collecting Breyer horses, restoring vintage items, baking, cooking, clothes/fashion, collecting salt & pepper shakers,

| LIKES;

☾ getting a good deal, seeing others get excited about history, cats, “Say Yes to the Dress”, traveling, donuts, meeting new people, “American Pickers”, people who are just pure little cinnamon rolls, french fries/chips, books and reading, “Expedition Unknown”, Breyer horses, restoring old items, shopping, England, road trips, those ridiculous tourist traps, “Mysteries at the Museum”,

| DISLIKES;

☾ when people make Pride & Prejudice references because of her name, customers who don't know how to listen, spiders, making a bad call on a pick, the song 'What's New Pussycat?' by Tom Jones, geese, flying, mushrooms, clowns, thunderstorms, people who take advantage of others,

| BIO;

☾ Allison Bennet was born March 5th, 1989, in Portland, Oregon to Marylin and Paul Bennet. It was a difficult pregnancy for Marylin, one that resulted in a hysterectomy, but she and her husband were blessed with a beautiful and healthy little girl. With being born in America and having a majority of her family living in England, Allie's parents worked to get dual citizenship to go between the two countries. It was no surprise then when she ended up with more of an English accent (that never actually faded). When she was 6, her parents took her to her first flea market. She fell in love with the place, begging her parents to bring her (and, eventually, her friend as well) to the markets as often as possible. The items were so cool to look at and the sellers were just as awesome to listen to.

Despite not having any siblings, Allie found a brother, and best friend, in the neighbor boy. Also an only child, Byron Moore attached himself to Allie and they became like two peas in a pod. Even though Byron was one year older, the two pretty much ignored each others classmates. They played with each other, protected each other, and helped each other out over the years. When she was eight, tragedy struck. While the Moore family was heading back one night from a trip to Seattle, their car was struck by a drunk driver. Byron was the only survivor, leaving the wreckage with several scrapes and bruises, a concussion, and permanent damage to his ears. Since he had no other family that could take him in (his grandmother was in a nursing home), the Bennet family brought him into their family and eventually officially adopted him. Allie and Byron became even closer as she helped him deal with the aftermath of the accident, spending hours learning ASL for when he didn't want to wear his hearing aids.

When Allie was 12, she gained a new friend. Allie had just entered the school with Byron when they were pulled into office and placed face-to-face with a small red-haired girl. From that second on, 12 year old Larissa Hanlin, former resident of Scotland, turned the dynamic duo into a troublesome trio. Even though it wasn't the same, it was comforting to Allie to hear Lacy's accent. It was also wonderful to have another female she could talk to. Byron was great, but there were some topics that were just plain weird to discuss with him. With Lacy, Allie discovered a love of fashion and makeup, as well as some cute boys as school.

At the age of 15, the trio was snooping around at the local flea market when Allie met the person who would forever change her life. The lady was a Picker – someone who travels around the countryside looking for places with a lot of junk - “rusty-gold” is what she called it – outside. With the landowner's permission, they then dig through the items and buy old pieces to then resell, and sometimes restore, to prospective clients. Road trips? Antiques? Meeting new people? It was the best thing that Allie had ever heard of! She immediately started making plans to have this future. She could picture it then, having long days of picking before heading back to a cute little shop to display her finds.

A few years later, with Byron having gone off to study mechanics a year prior, new graduates Allie and Lacy both became roommates for their college experience. As Lacy started acting classes, Allie decided to dual major in History and Business. If she wanted to have her dream of picking and owning a business, this is what she had to focus on. Her first year passed without a hitch and in her second year she met a guy who they've come to call D.B.. Attractive and charming, they had English together and D.B. wasted no time with his flirtatious comments. Allie, having no previous dating experience, was beyond flattered. After a few dates they came out with an official label on their relationship, but, since this was all new to her, she wanted to take it slow so she could get comfortable with the concept of dating. The first month was pure bliss for their budding relationship, but after that D.B. grew a little prickly towards her. It was another month before he finally admitted that he was irritated that their relationship hadn't advanced beyond a certain point. Allie was hurt. She didn't understand why he was so upset. They had agreed on the pace at the start of their relationship, yet, here he was, seemingly on the verge of dumping her. Sure she hadn't exactly told him the 'L' word yet, but Allie did care a lot for him. Since she didn't want to lose him, she thought 'why not?'. Weeeeeell, D.B dumped her two days later. Actually, dumped isn't really the right thing to call it. After two days of silence on his end, she more of saw him flirting and hitting on another girl on the campus quad. While Lacy consoled her with comfort food and Byron threatened to beat the guy to a pulp, Allie decided to swear off relationships for the time-being.

It was in her third year, while she was working at the local library, that Allie met Carrie Clark – a first year history whiz with big plans for teaching the newest generations. The two quickly hit it off with their love of history and soon Carrie joined their little squad. It was Carrie that introduced Allie to the second biggest revelation in her life. C.C. had been going on and on for days about this awesome new website she found called Tumblr. When Allie and Lacy couldn't stand her rambling anymore, they each made their own account. A few weeks later, an intriguing post popped up on Allie's dashboard late one night. It was about different sexual orientations and gender identities. Once section in particular caught her attention and the more research she did, the more Allie realized that she was Demisexual. Suddenly, the idea of dating wasn't so daunting anymore.

When graduation loomed on the horizon, the question of 'What to do after this?' came up more and more. For Allie it was easy – buy a roomy vehicle and hit the backroads of America. The only problem was where she was going to live. That was decided over pizza. Since none of the girls wanted to be separated and with Lacy searching for acting jobs, Los Angeles was perfect. They could find a house to rent together and it would offer each of them a chance for jobs.

It seemed like seconds had passed from the time Allie and Lacy had moved to when C.C. join them down in L.A. two years later. Allie had bought and sold enough items to be able to keep up with the picking lifestyle. Although, she hadn't gotten her storefront yet. An online store, yeah, but not her physical shop. Though that changed after three years in the bustling city. Allie mainly focused on non-machine antiques; things like toys, furniture, signs, and the like, but occasionally a vehicle caught her eye. That's when Byron would be called. When she was in the middle of Kansas, she found and bought an old, decrepit Harley-Davidson, Byron was summoned down to L.A. from Portland to see about it's restoration. Three days of talk ended with him quitting his mechanic job in Portland, moving into the group's little house, and becoming Allie's business partner. Together they bought a small storefront using the money they got from selling the old motorcycle (among other items) and set about stocking it with their finds. Allie, with her business degree, took over the shop and dealt with clients and customers while Byron took on the picking aspect and the mechanical restorations. Bennet-Moore Antiques officially opened for business when Allie was 25.

When she was 26, Robert Martin joined their merry troupe. Robbie, a local L.A. mechanic, had come into the shop to look at a bike they had for sale. After chatting with the siblings about their business, Robbie ended up becoming a part-time employee and full-time friend. When he wasn't working his own job, he helped Byron with restorations and learned the art of picking, a skill that Lacy and C.C. helped him develop as well.

Now 28, with a thriving store, a dream career, and great friends, Allie honestly doesn't know how her life could be any better.

♔ REQUIREMENTS ♔

[+] Include 2+ colored pictures of your OC’s faceclaim.

[+] Include 1+ black&white picture of your OC’s faceclaim.

[+] Include lyrics of a song that captures your OC’s personality and link the youtube link here:

If Then // General Ghost // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lEMsBlH5w

[+] Include 1+ speech bubble.

[+] Include a magazine article.

[+] Tag the members in the comments.

♔ BONUS REQUIREMENTS ♔

[+] Include an outfit your OC would wear.

[+] Include a featured item.

[+] Make your set square.

[+] Include a filler of a person.

♔ DESCRIPTION ♔

↳ All of the OC information listed above

Tagging (using my All taglist and a few others): @red-shirts-always-die4444 @captainsbabysitter-blog @loststarlight @southernbellestatues @jiminthestreets-bonesinthesheets @doctorginsberg @kjs-s @feelmyroarrrr @yallneedtrek @haveyouseenmymind @reading-in-moonlight @annathewitch

*previously made with Polyvore (account : popularculture) and currently posted on shoplook. I don’t own the images used to make the set and it was made for entertainment purposes

#oc #allie bennet #polyvore #goingknowhere oc #art set #goingknowhere #goingknowherewastaken

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millaymary · 7 years

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big news: millay is moving

Real talk: this has been a tough four years for me personally, especially this past year. There is a lot I can say about why, but for now I can say that we’ve spent the past several months planning out a number of possibilities for both me and my husband, and all the “what-ifs” for a type-A, micro-managing planner like myself is some tough shit. But all that hypothesizing and work pinnacled this past week when we finally had a big decision made. So, I’m going to cut to the chase in those regards and share some super exciting news:

We are moving to Boston! And I’m bringing the shop with me!

While I’m super grateful for the time I’ve had here in Philadelphia to grow Millay—from a full-time studio to opening my first storefront (omg!)—and to meet some wonderful, talented people and amazing customers that I absolutely adore and appreciate, Boston has always had a very, very special place in my heart and I’m so so thrilled to be relocating Millay to our new home!

I actually started Millay in Boston, and getting to go back and plant roots is an incredibly meaningful move for me. I moved there in 2012 for grad school, where I started Millay (then Millay Vintage) as a side hustle to help pad my tiny student scholarship stipend. To my surprise, the side hustle took off: I dropped out of grad school, went all in, and the shop evolved in many steps from there.

Since then, I’ve come back to Boston again and again visiting my best friends and picturing Millay nestled into one of the historic spaces thinking: #goals.

And guys, dreams really do come true. It’s taken several years to circle back, and there is still a ton of hard work, sweat, tears, and sheer luck that needs to happen in the coming months, but:

Millay in Boston is happening! Coming soon in 2018 to a cobblestone street near you!

So what does that mean for the Philadelphia flagship?

Don’t worry Philly friends, we’ve got a little bit of time still left together to hug it out and get you geared up with pretty things for Spring! But, I will be permanently closing this location when we move. The tentative plans are to close sometime in May 2018, and we will be sure to leave with one final soirée where hopefully all of you can come out, let me hug and thank you for your support of my little shop here (it has meant the WORLD), and you can grab some special pieces for yourself! Stay tuned for details and dates as we solidify plans.

And don’t you forget that we are online, which means you can always still shop with us, and I personally will lovingly pack up your order, write you a note, and make sure your special Millay find lands on your doorstep. Seriously Millay friends, keep in touch, we adore you.

Where in Boston is Millay going to be?

We are still finalizing plans and locations. As soon as we know, you’ll know—promise! Most importantly: General Gazpacho will be coming with, and he can’t wait to prance around Beantown in his handsome swuit and for you to visit us in our new space. Get ready Boston, we can’t wait to meet you!

Ok, that is everything I have to share for now, phew! More news coming soon, but for now, thank you to everyone in Philly who has supported Millay—make sure to come see us in the next several weeks before we move on to our next chapter!

xo.

#mvoriginals #millay #shop small #philadelphia #boston #vintage #fashion #store news

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bygosscarmine · 7 years

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Worlds Apart - Chapter Eight

find previous chapters here: [link]

a W: Two Worlds retelling/fix-it fic (Oh Yeon Joo x Kang Chul) - rated T for now: some disturbing images

Backstory Can Be Killer (1467 words)

Yeon Joo couldn't help reading the manhwa volumes with a critical eye now, invoked both by seeing Kang Chul in his own world and by her father's frightening rant. And what she saw now troubled her. Kang Chul existed in a world that both cocooned and brutalized him.

He was driven by the idea of discovering who killed his parents. He had chosen vengeance, rather than dying, at the lowest moment in his life. It was funny she hadn't really thought much about that, once he'd gotten caught up in building his broadcasting company W5, and trying to outwit the prosecutor-turned-statesman who kept trying to shut him down. Assemblyman Han was also more sinister, in rereading, considering how often he was behind attempts to blacken Chul's name. His conviction that Chul had killed his own family seemed almost demented, but Yeon Joo saw this time that there was no good explanation for the deaths. If Chul couldn't trace the killer, with all the resources and motivation he had, no wonder the prosecutor who knew the most about that case was sure he'd just lost his man.

Did Dad have a plan? Why was he just killing Chul off? Was it because he couldn't figure out how to write a proper ending for W?

She finished up with the chapters online. Yesterday's post had been taken down, and a formal apology made for it--but some enterprising netizen had taken screencaps and posted them on a blog. Yeon Joo blushed watching herself try to surprise Chul--for a second she thought her fever was coming back. Then she caught herself both wincing and grinning at the image, of her kissing the hero of the manhwa, and realized what was really happening.

She was getting out her old sketchbook, too, when her mother came into the house, talking with someone who sounded an awful lot like her father's assistant.

"Yeon Joo. Were you sick last night?" her mother said, coming to her door.

"I wasn't feeling well, but it wasn't a big deal," Yeon Joo said. "Tell Soo Bong to come in here."

"I will warm up some soup for you," her mother said, by way of reply.

"Why are you home so early?"

"I was worried about you. And your father. I contacted Soo Bong here, and will send him with some soup, as well."

Yeon Joo tamped down annoyance that her mother was still taking care of her father Well, he did contribute to their household bills. "Thank you."

Soo Bong came in looking tentative, but was reassured by her sparse room, with a wall of medical texts and reference books rather than a lot of personal decor.

Yeon Joo showed him the image in the sketchbook, since she had it out. She felt awkward about showing it to a professional artist, with the many redrawn lines and clearly mimicked style. He immediately understood what she was showing him, though.

"Wait, this is your Kang Chul? Master Oh mentioned that you used to draw, but he didn't say anything about this."

"Soo Bong. I think I am able to go into W because I am a creator of it, too. So maybe that's why Dad was gone. Where else could he have been?"

"I still don't really believe this," Soo Bong confessed. "But I guess I have to try. So you're saying that if Kang Chul exists, you and your father both had part in it. So both of you are able to go?"

"Dad said last night that Kang Chul turned on his creator. Meaning Dad. I don't know what he means, but if Chul was able to drag me in to save him...then he's right. Dad is trying to kill him, but Chul is saving himself."

Soo Bong thought about this for a moment, then shivered, and hugged himself. "That is so freaky!" A thought seemed to strike him. "Wait, so--when you appear, Master Oh isn't drawing it. How is it updating itself? It even looks like his work."

His face had a terrified fascination at the idea.

"If we take a scientific approach, it makes a certain sense. W is real, we have to take that as proven. Also, our actions affect what happens in that world. So my father's art is part of the logic of that world. The world W is formed by that hand. You sometimes draw objects in the manhwa for dad, and you make them fit his style, right?"

"Right."

"How do you do that?"

"I have to alter my strokes. I mean, by now I pretty much draw more like him than myself. It's an assistant cartoonist's quandary--you work to get experience to do your own work, but meanwhile you're suppressing your own style..."

"Right, so you can draw something in a way that fits Dad's drawing style. And most readers won't notice even if it's different. So it's possible the scenes appear that Dad wouldn't draw, but are created by the logic of how he's drawn in the past."

"So, how does it look? In the W world? What does Kang Chul look like?"

Now he was accepting the W reality as granted, Soo Bong was going into fan-mode.

"He looks like the manhwa, except more real somehow. I mean, his face is ridiculously small. But he's not as soft-looking. I know Dad doesn't have a cute style, exactly, but Kang Chul always looks a little..."

"Like this?" said Soo Bong wryly, holding up her picture of a manhwa dream-boy.

"Yes. But in real life he's got more...pores. Veins. Bones."

"And you kissed him," marveled Soo Bong.

Yeon Joo caught herself covering her mouth and flushing--and Soo Bong also looked like he was blushing. Wow, they were nerds. She covered how foolish she felt by saying, "It was just for a second. It worked. Which brings me to another point--Kang Chul is the hero. And when I did something that surprised him, the episode ended. I came back here."

"What brought you in the second time?"

"I'm not sure. That first time he pulled me in. This time I was going to talk with dad about it, and just ended up there."

"But your scene with him at the hospital wasn't long enough to fill an episode," Soo Bong said.

There was a silence, then Yeon Joo couldn't help herself any longer.

"Do you think I look okay in the manhwa? Does that look like me?"

"Look okay?" scoffed Soo Bong. "You look amazing. You look nothing like you."

He almost instantly realized what he'd said, and hurried to say, "I mean, in 2D it becomes so much more obvious you have great cheekbones. And I'm not sure I've ever seen you with your hair down. I mean. Today it's down, but..."

"I haven't brushed it," she said drily. "Yes, very observant. Thank you."

After a moment, Soo Bong frowned and said, "So what this suggests, logically, is that because you had a hand in making him, you also have the power to enter into W. Without you consciously meaning to. So maybe Master Oh did as well...but he didn't say so. And we don't see him in the manhwa."

"No," Yeon Joo admitted.

There was a moment of pondering.

"Soo Bong," called her mother, "come get this tea."

Yeon Joo wanted to leave her room, though, so she went to have tea in their kitchen. The conference about what was happening with W was at an end, anyway. Part of her was still wondering if she'd go back to Kang Chul's side--and if so, what he'd think of it.

This was like being fifteen all over again. A crush on a manhwa character, really?

"We found her," So Hee said as soon as Chul picked up her call. "When I was inspecting the shop, she was there."

"Are the police there yet?" he asked.

"No. I called you before calling them."

"Then let me handle it."

He hung up. He was still on the road, so he pulled a U-turn and headed back to the shop.

By the time he got there, though, a police car was rolled up to the storefront, lights going. Chul parked carelessly on the curb, and stepped out of his car. An officer was bundling Oh Yeon Joo out of the shop and toward the cruiser. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she was wearing sweatpants rather than the dress. So Hee emerged behind a second officer, frowning, her arms crossed. When Chul strode her way, she held up a hand to warn him.

As little as he liked it, he joined her without speaking to the officers.

"We can handle this," she said, voice low. "If we don't press charges, they'll have to release her."

#W Two Worlds #W Worlds Apart #fanfiction #kdramanetwork #W #kdrama

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welllpthisishappening · 7 years

Text

It’s the Thought That Counts (2/3)

It was, in theory, a good idea. It was, in theory, an absolutely fantastic idea. Because there was still, sometimes, a crisis or two in Storybrooke and nothing would be more chaotic than trying to find a Christmas present on Main Street, while also trying to keep said Christmas present a secret. Ordering gifts on the internet makes sense. It’s just a few clicks and online sales and the presents will be there in plenty of time for Christmas to be perfect.

Emma and Killian are positive.

Except then the presents don’t show up and it’s Christmas Eve and plan B isn’t so much a plan as it is just a bit of pre-holiday desperation and the entire town knows what they’re up to.

Rating: Mature’ish. Eventually. As it is, Killian uses some vaguely pirate-type curses in this chapter. Word Count: Like another 8K’ish. It’s gotta be even or something. AN: Hi internet, it’s me again, with a questionable amount of words and adjectives and Emma’s POV. This is still my CSSS gift for @theonceoverthinker who continues to be excellent and deserves all the words and adjectives. So, this is still the same day - Christmas Eve in Storybrooke, but Emma was lying before about paperwork and....now we’re going to find out why. There are more words coming tomorrow. Can’t stop, won’t stop. Shoutout to @distant-rose for always listening to my plotting issues and questions and but what would they even get each other for Christmas questions. Also on Ao3 if that’s how you roll.

She’s going to hit something.

Or kick something.

Possibly her desk.

And just like...the world.

Emma has no idea what to do next. There’s no time to do anything and the whole point of this was to save time and make things good and great and perfect and now it’s not going to be any of those things because she only has a few hours to figure it out and her mother will not stop promising everything is going to be fine.

Snow White is frustratingly optimistic no matter what – even in the face of postal service crises.

Emma makes some kind of noise that absolutely does not belong in any sort of fairytale and when she does, finally, give into her frustration and kick her desk, it hurts even more than she expected it to.

“Damn,” she mumbles, twisting her mouth in pain and her father does his best to turn his laughter into a convincing cough. “That didn’t work at all,” she mumbles, resting her weight on the side of her desk and she didn’t even get enough power behind her kick to leave a dent or anything.

“It wasn’t really my best effort,” David admits, crossing one foot over the other where he’s leaning against the far wall. “And I really do think you’re worrying over nothing. He’ll understand.” Emma rolls her whole head in frustration, pointedly ignoring her mother’s half-opened mouth because she’s not sure what she’ll do if she hears another round of it’s going to be fine and her toes can’t really take another round of kicking whatever it is her desk is made out of.

“This is a disaster,” Emma mumbles.

It’s not.

She know that. Rationally.

She knows Killian will understand and Henry will smile and promise it’s totally cool, Mom and they’ll still go to her parents' house tomorrow night and eat a questionable amount of food, but there had been a plan and a schedule and now it’s all blown up in her face.

Metaphorically.

She knows nothing is actually blowing up. Rationally.

But there’s this other, vaguely irrational side of Emma that just wanted everything to be some kind of Yankee Magazine type of perfect on Christmas and Regina had promised it would work.

“There’s not really a town line anymore,” she’d said, weeks ago with a nonchalant shrug as if the lingering threat of losing all your memories when you walked by the sign at the edge of town wasn’t really that big of a deal after all. “There hasn’t been forever.” Emma shook her head and waved her hands in the air, what felt like a million questions struggling to find their way out of her at once. Regina rolled her eyes. “People have been coming and going from Storybrooke for years, Emma,” she said, the struggle to keep her voice even so obvious it felt like it reached out and slapped Emma in the face. “And now that we’re not…” “Facing imminent death?” Emma interrupted and Regina didn’t even move her eyebrows.

“Something like that. Now that we’re not on the defensive, people can come and go as they please, particularly at this time of year when the potential for those seeking some kind of festive ideal is so high.”

“I’m sorry, hold on...you want to turn Storybrooke into a tourism destination?” Regina tilted her head. “It’s a consideration, but that wasn’t what I was alluding to at all. I’m agreeing with you that, with the holidays coming up, and things, relatively calm now, we might be able to expand our gift-giving tendencies.”

“And no one is just going to….you know, forget their entire being if I order gifts off Amazon and get them delivered to my house? Like an actual, normal person? Who just wants to celebrate Christmas and buy actually good gifts?”

“No,” Regina sighed, lifting one eyebrow and Emma hadn’t planned on talking for so long. She wanted this to be good. She wanted this to be festive. She wanted her house to appear in a publication she was only dimly aware of and not entirely sure was all that profitable.

“You’re sure?” “I don’t know how many times to tell you the same thing with different words.” Emma growled in the back of her throat and that wasn’t going to do her many favors in quest for holiday perfection. “Ok, ok, I get it. I just…” “Can’t find the perfect gift for the pirate who has everything with four storefront options on Main Street?”

“Something like that.” Regina’s expression softened slightly and it was, easily, one of the stranger conversations Emma had ever had. That was saying something. She was fairly positive she’d watched her mother converse with several birds a few days before. “I promise,” Regina said. “You won’t ruin anyone’s entire existence by buying gifts.”

And, well, that was that.

Emma started researching and buying and it didn’t take nearly as long as she expected and she found the perfect gift and she was considering some kind of victory celebration as soon as she got her order confirmation.

That celebration would have been premature.

Because now it’s Christmas Eve and her phone is dinging with updates from Amazon’s distribution center in Portland and there’s been some kind of issue and she didn’t really read the e-mail because she was too busy trying to kick her desk into submission.

“It’s going to be fine,” Snow says again and Emma’s not sure which noise is louder, her responding sigh or her father’s tongue click and her mother just smiles encouragingly at the open air in front of her.

“Did they at least give you a new delivery date?” David asks, pushing away from the wall to take a wary step towards Emma. She can only imagine what her face looks like.

She kind of feels like she’s on fire, which is a strange feeling to feel when the sheriff’s office is always so freezing cold, but every single one of her nerve endings seems to be pulsing under her skin with something that might actually be fury. She’s a bit surprised to find that her fingers haven’t started sparking.

It’s her goddamn magic – she knows that, rationally, but irrationally it’s kind of like being drunk on aggravation and the presents were supposed to arrive at the station two days ago and she’d planned this.

There was a schedule.

There were expectations.

There are no presents.

And she has no idea what to do next. She needs to get her magic to relax.

She needs to buy presents.

She needs some Christmas, God damnit.

“It’s….” Snow starts again and Emma’s head snaps up so quickly she’s momentarily concerned about the state of her spine.

David shifts in between them, lifting both hands like he’s regulating a boxing match instead of the eternal optimism of a fairytale princess and his slightly despondent daughter. “We just need to come up with a plan,” he says and it’s practical and rational and Emma can probably use a bit of both at this point.

She should make a list or something.

“And you never answered my question,” David adds, glancing meaningfully at Emma with the unspoken plea not to yell at her mother or kick the office furniture again.

Emma heaves a sigh and it’s probably not that serious, but the gift was so good and she was really considering that celebration and their house is covered in lights and there's garland on the railing outside and watching Henry and Killian try and make sure a tree stood straight in their living room did something very specific to her heart. Made it grow or stutter or something.

She wants a little Christmas.

No, that’s a lie. Emma wants a metric ton of Christmas and she wouldn’t be opposed to a little snow because after everything – curses and death and darkness and the goddamn Underworld – they deserve a lot of Christmas and even more festive and she’s fairly certain rum goes well with eggnog.

“December 29th,” Emma grumbles and David can’t quite mask his immediate response. Snow practically sags in front of them. “Which you know...is not great.” “Yeah, that’s a little after the fact.” “They were supposed to be here two days ago because I planned this. I paid for extra shipping! I’ve never paid for extra shipping in my entire life!” David laughs before he can stop himself and Emma’s clearly losing her slightly tenuous grip on both reality and her magic. The combination of those two words in a single sentence is, possibly, the most absurd thing she’s thought all day.

And at one point she considered sending out a locator spell for her presents.

It absolutely would not work.

“Killian really will understand, Emma,” Snow says, leaning back against David’s chest out of instinct as soon as his arm wraps around her shoulders. “And it’s not as if you’re not going to give him a gift. It’s just...delayed.” “I know, I know,” Emma mumbles. She drops onto the edge of her desk, bumping up against a stack of paperwork she didn’t remember finishing and that’s probably a sign of something. That’s she’s losing her mind. Likely. “But this is…” “A big deal,” David finishes. “Trust us, we get that.”

He says it with such conviction and a hint of emotion Emma doesn’t entirely expect that she feels her eyebrows pull low in confusion and Snow bites her lower lip.

Oh.

Emma isn’t the only one who wanted a periodical-worthy Christmas experience.

“You guys are really living up to your character stereotypes right now, you know that?” Emma asks, drawing a quiet laugh out of both her parents. Snow smiles softly at her, reaching forward to squeeze her shoulder and Emma is going to fix this.

Everyone will be gifted appropriately.

That’s not the correct verb.

“Alright,” Emma mutters, exhaling loudly and David clicks his tongue again when she nearly knocks over the paperwork. “Seriously where did that come from?” she asks distractedly. She, apparently, is only capable of following one plan at a time.

“No idea,” David answers. “It was there yesterday though. Probably more backlogs for you to go through.” “Jeez.” “It’s not as if you have to finish it today.” Emma nods, eyes flitting towards Snow and it takes, approximately, two and a half seconds for her mother to realize what’s going on. “Yes,” Snow shouts, practically leaping towards Emma and David’s arm hangs awkwardly in the air when he blinks blankly at the scene taking place in front of him.

“What am I missing?” he asks. Emma grins.

“But isn’t he supposed to be coming in here today?” Snow asks, already three steps ahead of a plan that’s only half-planned and built mostly on a little bit of hope and maybe a hint of Christmas. “You’re going to have to tell him not to come in today.”

David nods, his quiet ohhhh echoing off the walls of the office and Emma scrunches her nose. “You can’t just lie to him, Emma,” he continues, crossing his arms and it’s the most dad thing he’s done in, at least, thirty-six hours.

Emma waves a dismissive hand through the air. “I’m not going to lie,” she promises, but that’s also a bit of a lie and none of this feels very festive, but her mother looks thrilled and maybe she can find something on Main Street and she really just wants to do this right.

She wants to make sure there are gifts to open in her house on Christmas morning.

In her house.

With her family.

She’s waited long enough. And she refuses to accept Amazon’s apparent incompetence and inability to follow a schedule.

“I’m not,” she says again. “It’s...an excuse.” David lifts his eyebrows. “An excuse? On Christmas Eve? Seems like that’s against the rules.” “There is no Christmas Eve equivalent in the Enchanted Forest, you can’t possibly tell me about the rules of a holiday you’re only just getting to celebrate.” “Those are the dad rules. That’s how it works.” Emma scoffs, but the fire and the flames and the frustration that had been working through every single inch of her just a few minutes before seem to ebb just a bit. “Oh, yeah, well, that makes total sense,” she laughs. “And this is good. I’ll just...say something and then Mom and I can go march down Main Street and…” “Shop,” Mary Margaret finishes, nearly shouting the word in Emma’s face. David pulls both his lips behind his teeth to stop himself from, presumably, cackling.

Emma nods. “Yeah, exactly that. Maybe one of the dwarves owns a seafaring….store we don’t know about yet. I just need to make sure…” “Killian doesn’t show up on Main Street during patrol in the middle of the afternoon?” David asks.

She nods again. “Where’s my phone?”

It’s behind the paperwork she’s absolutely going to ignore until, possibly, after the New Year and Killian’s phone goes to voicemail. “Damn,” Emma groans, but Snow already has her phone out and he’s still not answering and maybe something happened and maybe he’s already on his way here and...he answers when she calls a second time.

Emma doesn’t wait for him to actually saying anything. She’s never been very good at patience.

“Killian?” she asks and David widens his eyes meaningfully because she sounds like she’s preparing to tell a lie or brace for some brand-new curse. Emma tries not to groan. “Where are you?” “Home, Swan and uh…” “Oh, ok, good.” “Is something wrong, love?”

She winces. David’s eyes are going to get stuck mid-roll. “Is he still home?” Snow asks, barely keeping her voice even remotely in the realm of whisper. Emma nods distractedly.

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” she says, far too quickly. “Totally fine.” And she knows he tilts his head and narrows his eyes and he’s probably doing something stupid with his eyebrows because he’s impossibly good at reading her, even when she’s on the other side of town. “You’re a rather terrible liar, you know that?” Killian asks. “Did something happen with this snowstorm?”

“He totally knows, doesn’t he?” David asks, arms crossed again. Emma glares at him.

“Swan,” Killian continues and her heel slams into the front of her desk when she nearly jumps to attention. Snow’s eyes widen at the litany of curses that fall from Emma’s mouth. “You’ve got to tell me what’s going on because I’m thinking I may just stay home if there isn’t anything else…” Emma’s eyebrows pull low, but she barely gives herself a second to consider that because this is going to work. “Yes,” she yells, grumbling when her father starts laughing again. “Yes! You should absolutely, definitely stay home.”

“Overselling,” David mumbles and Emma’s breath catches when she realizes he’s right. And Killian’s offered to stay home. “Wait,” she says suddenly. “Why do you want to stay home? Are you ok?”

“You called me, Swan. And told me I should be staying home.” “Yeah.” His eyebrows are doing something stupid, she’s positive. “Yeah?” Killian asks. “No explanation? Just...yeah?” “Uh...yes?”

Killian laughs – loud and easy, right in her ear and Emma smiles immediately, some kind of instinctual reaction she’s still trying to get used to. Her parents have started discussing the layout of Main Street and which stores might be best and she just wants to do this right.

“That’s not much of a change, darling,” Killian says and Emma sighs, falling down into her desk chair and pleasantly surprised when it doesn't break under her. “And you need a new chair.” “We need a new everything in this office, we’ve been over that eight-hundred times.” “True,” he agrees. “That’s still not an explanation though. Why do you want me to stay home?” “Why do you want to be staying home?” He doesn't answer immediately. “Killian.”

“It’s nothing,” he says, like that’s an explanation and genetics are absolutely a thing because Emma actually tuts the same way Snow does when Killian doesn’t continue. “Just feeling a little under the weather and I don’t want to miss any of your parents' plans tomorrow.”

If she weren’t also telling a lie, she would probably be offended by the one she’s just heard.

It’s almost comically bad.

And obvious.

She scoffs, narrowing her eyes and ignoring whatever David is doing with his face. “That was almost painfully bad,” Emma mutters, but she’s trying not to laugh because he didn’t even try.

“If you don’t need me in the station or questioning dwarves about weather patterns than I’m happy to stay home for the day, love,” Killian continues. “Although I think we both need to work on our excuses.”

Emma licks her lips, butterflies in her stomach and heart hammering against her chest and her father looks almost too smug because, of course, Killian figured it out. “It’s not an excuse,” she says. “It’s...whatever. There are no weather issues because that snowstorm thing was a total lie and Dad went to go check it out already anyway. So there’s...you know...not a ton going on here.” “Of course.” “You are infuriating when you’re all-knowing.” “I’m not anything, Swan. Except possibly learning what something called wrapping paper is.”

The muscles in her face are starting to ache from overuse, but that seems almost appropriate on Christmas Eve and a town full of actual characters and maybe it’ll snow later. Emma hopes it snows later. The lights on their house will probably look fantastic in the snow.

“Wrapping paper, huh?” she asks, laughing softly. “Interesting. Any particularly good patterns on this wrapping paper?” “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Ah, we haven’t gotten that far in the instructional period, huh?”

She can see the smile inch across his face, as clearly as if he’s standing in front of her and Emma’s not sure her heart is ever going to recover. Merry Christmas, or something. “Not as such, no,” Killian answers. “But I’m sure we’ll get to that part of the rules eventually.” And, rationally, she knows he doesn’t mean it like that. She knows her dad didn’t mean it like that. But, irrationally, that little voice in the back of Emma’s mind, the one who only knew about lights because of TV shows and ancient VHS tapes that, more often than not, broke in even more ancient VCR’s in houses across the country, isn’t sure she can have all of this without paying some sort of festive price.

“What?” Killian asks, the concern in all four letters obvious even on the other side of town.

“I just...I mean there aren’t rules to this, you know. It’s not like I’m…” She needs to finish a sentence. And she’s fairly certain she could hear Henry before.

“Swan?”

“I mean presents are good, but you know we didn’t really talk about gifts and you don’t have to…” He doesn’t wait for her to finish. “I want to,” Killian says, voice softer and more determined than she’s heard it in weeks and she sighs out a breath of air that’s decidedly close to swooning. Her office chair squeaks when she sinks further into it, ignoring whatever silent conversation her parents are having with their eyes and she’s going to buy him the greatest goddamn gift in the history of last-second Christmas gifts.

Or something with fewer curse words in it.

“See, saying things like that out loud is just absolutely unfair,” Emma says. Her chair is some kind of torture device. The thing is out to destroy her back, she’s positive. “What am I supposed to think about for the rest of the day?” David sticks his tongue out. Snow looks like she’s trying not to cry. “Hopefully that,” Killian says and Emma bites her tongue. Her heart is trying to expand.

“Ah, that was even worse.” “You’re telling me these things like they’re an insult, Swan. I’m failing to see that point of view at all. It all seems almost romantic.” “Almost,” she repeats, tugging her hair over her shoulder and sitting up straighter and Snow is bobbing on the balls of her feet, excitement rolling off her in waves. For half a dozen stores on Main Street. There better be something nautical out there.

Although that might be too similar to what’s, maybe, coming on December 29th.

“You really don’t have to come in today,” Emma continues. “We’ve got everything taken care of and I’m just going to get caught up on some paperwork while things are still quiet.” “You’ve told me several times I don’t have to come in today, love, I understand.”

Emma tilts her head, eyebrows pulled low and something’s going on. She knew it as soon as she picked up the phone, but now she’s positive and she can’t hear her kid anymore.

Her super power hasn’t exactly been necessary since they avoided the end of the world, but it’s still there and it’s practically ringing in her ears now, some kind of warning bell or signal that’s impossibly loud and even more difficult to ignore.

And Killian Jones, pirate and reformed scoundrel and the love of her life in a true-type sort of way, is, quite clearly, up to something.

“Right, right,” Emma says, wondering if she left her hat in her jacket pocket or on the hook just inside the front door of the office. “And you know, paperwork. Lots of it.”

“Right,” he agrees. “Paperwork.”

Emma nods, not sure if she’s trying to convince herself or him or either one of her parents and Snow is pointing towards the door like they’re on a holiday timetable. They kind of are. “Exactly,” she says, doing her best to infuse some certainty into the word. “So, uh….I’m going to go do that and you’re going to stay home and probably read, like, twenty books.” “Seems rather ambitious, don’t you think, love?” “The paperwork or the books?” “Either or.” She laughs under her breath and the chair makes noise when she stands up, walking towards Snow and her coat and her hat is hanging out of the side pocket. “I’ll see you later,” Emma says. “For movies and hot chocolate.”

“I look forward to it, Swan.” She smiles. “Yeah, me too. I love you.” It’s strange – a string of letters and words and feeling that she was so terrified of coming so easily now, but the sentence seems to just roll out of her with practiced ease and Emma means it in some kind of monumental way.

She hopes he knows.

“I love you too,” Killian says and she bites her lower lip, closing her eyes lightly and trying to let his voice silence whatever warning bells her superpower is still ringing in the back corners of her brain. She’s going to find the perfect gift.

It, however, Emma is quick to learn, impossible to do that in Storybrooke.

Particularly when her mother keeps buying all the goddamn gift options.

She tries not to be frustrated. Really she does. But her magic keeps fluttering in her fingertips and maybe she can just poof herself to Portland and back without anyone noticing and she’ll just...steal her presents from the distribution center.

That is, absolutely, against the rules.

“We’ll find something,” Snow promises for the umpteenth time, but the sentiment looses some of its shine when she’s already laden down with bags of her own. Emma’s wallet might be burning a hole in her bag. “Those little anchors weren’t bad,” she adds, an attempt at Christmas comfort that also falls a bit short in the middle of the sidewalk. “Even if they were a little…” “Touristy?” Emma suggests and Snow shrugs. “They were for the tourists, Mom.” “But they’d look cute in your bathroom!” Emma groans, the sound falling out of her before she can remember all the reasons Snow is just trying to help. “You want me to buy Killian something we can use to decorate our bathroom?” On Christmas?”

“They were willing to customize it.” “For the tourists,” Emma repeats, dragging out the words like she’s arguing the most important thing in the world. “So they can put their names on anchors that say Storybrooke, Maine on them. They’re for kids. And incredibly overpriced.” “Happy said he’d give you a discount.” “Because he’s thinks he’s supporting the monarchy or something. He bowed!” “It was polite,” Snow argues. “Just be glad Killian wasn’t actually here. He probably would have saluted him.” Emma rolls her whole head back, staring at the sky and asking several different deities to just let her find something because she can’t go home empty handed. Or deal with any more dwarves calling her Princess like that’s a normal thing. “Oh my God,” she sighs. “That is insane. You know that’s insane, right?”

Snow shrugs again, mouth twitching like she’s trying not to beam at Emma right there in the middle of the sidewalk. “They respect you. The entire town does, both you and Killian and it’s well...it’s tradition. Even if it is a bit antiquated, monarchy-type things.” “Monarchy-type things,” Emma repeats and her mother gives up on that whole not smiling thing. ��Are you sure there isn’t a Christmas equivalent in the Enchanted Forest? Everyone seems to know how this is supposed to work.”

Snow considers the answer for a moment, rocking her weight between her feet and scrunching her nose slightly “I mean there isn’t a Santa Claus leaving presents or breaking into homes around the world, if that’s what you're suggesting.” “I promise, it wasn’t.”

Snow stops smiling long enough to shoot Emma something that might almost actually be a glare, but it barely lasts a moment before she dives back into the story and it’s all just a bit maternal, like she’s learning some kind of family tradition or recipe that’s been handed down from generation to generation.

It’s nice.

“So,” Snow continues. “No Santa, no elves, no presents under the tree or nice and naughty lists, which again, just...don’t get me started, your father has been listening to me question this since the start of the month.” “Mom are you anti-Christmas?”

“No, no, no! I am just...well, it’s all a little confusing isn’t it? The rules and the quasi-lies and it seems a bit like a deceptive way to get children to behave. That’s not how Solstice is at all.”

“Solstice?” Emma asks and they’re moving again, making their way towards that one clothing store and maybe she can buy Killian something made of leather. A belt? Boots? She might be the worst gift-giver in the history of the world.

Snow hums, changing her grip on the half a dozen bags in her hands. “It was never an actual day, just sort a general time during the month, right when winter started. And there were lights and candles and carols of a sort and you’d exchange gifts, but they were always little things. Knick knacks that were personal and meaningful and it was…” “That sounds nice,” Emma says when she trails and Snow smiles at her. There’s snow on the ground and it’s all decidedly picturesque, but Emma’s stubborn and she wants to give her husband a good gift. She wants the best of both worlds. “You really can’t buy anything in this store though or I’m not going to be able to find anything for Killian.”

Snow blinks, pursing her lips slightly and she’s probably going to do permanent damage to her fingers because she bought David some kind of actual scabbard-type thing in Happy’s store and it must weigh, at least, twenty-five pounds.

“The anchors were good though, I’m just saying,” Snow starts, but Emma’s already shaking her head and she doesn’t even check for traffic before crossing the street.

“Yeah, well, I’m just saying,” she argues. “Mom, this needs to be good. It can’t just be…”

Emma freezes, tilting her head and she barely noticed the shadow when she was so busy learning about Enchanted Forest traditions, but she can’t ignore the set of footprints moving away from the sidewalk towards the alley.

Her superpower makes more noise.

“Those are recent,” Snow says, coming up next to her and, somehow, bending down to examine the marks without letting her bags touch the ground. “And moving back into the alley. Why would anyone be going back there?”

Emma shakes her head, mind racing and defenses rising automatically and if someone is going to do something stupid on Christmas Eve when she doesn’t have a present for Killian, she’s going to use her recently-acquired powers of monarchy to throw them in a cell for several days.

God bless us, everyone.

She clicks her tongue, taking a step towards the slightly darker space next to the store and her fingers tap an uneven rhythm on the side of her jeans. “Yeah,” she mutters, trying to peer through the darkness for someone or something and she wonders if Solstice traditions also include fighting monsters. Or potential thieves looking to empty cash registers. “Why would anyone want to be in this alley? You think there’s a door to the store back there?” There’s scuffling a few feet away from her and Emma’s right hand lifts automatically, fingers twisting in the air and she’s dimly aware of her mother mumbling something about wishing she had her bow. Emma’s gun is in the station.

It seemed wrong to bring firearms on a Christmas shopping trip.

She takes another step forward, boots crunching on the snow and it’s icy back here, where the, rather limited, expertise and execution of the Storybrooke Public Works department didn’t reach.

She almost falls over when someone shouts her name, twisting back to gape at a slightly terrified looking Archie, just barely visible outside of the shadows in the alley.

Emma curses, again, and her mother doesn’t look quite as stunned as she expects, making a noise somewhere between a guffaw and a snicker. She tries to keep her footing as she moves back towards the sidewalk and she just wants to get in this store because she’s actually kind of freezing.

“Just saying Happy Holidays,” Archie says before Emma can even ask and she takes a deep breath through her nose. “Out doing a bit of late shopping I see?”

Emma’s breathing gets louder, but Snow is already muttering about plans and stores and she feels herself being tugged into Modern Fashions before she can even begin to formulate a response for Archie.

“You’re some kind of Christmas diplomat, you know that,” Emma mutters, smiling at Snow when the bell above the shop door dings loudly. They’re the only ones in there.

Snow scoffs. “You grow up in a castle and a quasi-revolution, you learn some of these things. And you don’t need to be diplomatic, you just need to remember that Killian will appreciate any gift and no one is going to tattle on your present issue. They probably all think Killian’s on patrol anyway. And, well…” “They’re still slightly intimidated by him?” Emma suggests.” “Yeah, you know, maybe some of that too.”

Emma rolls her eyes, but it’s definitely true and she’s running out of time to find some kind of mythically perfect gift.

And there’s a store clerk talking to her. It’s Bashful. He can’t meet her gaze.

“Afternoon your highnesses,” he says, mostly into the slightly worse-for-wear carpet that runs from wall to wall. Emma groans. “You uh...you just missed…” “We’re looking for a gift,” Snow interrupts in a decidedly un Snow-like way and Emma’s not sure what to do with that, but she’s more than willing to let her mother take over the reigns of this conversation if it means she can try to find one single item of clothing that doesn’t appear to be made out of polyester.

They need new stores.

She’s fairly positive the dwarves made some kind of deal with Regina to own every store.

Bashful blushes and the thought leaves Emma close to hysterics because this is all absurd and she's probably going to have to suck up her pride and go back to that first store and buy those stupid anchors because there is nothing in this store that screams Killian and at least there was some kind of theme with the tourist stuff.

He can put them in the brand-new sea chest that will maybe, hopefully arrive somewhere in town four days after Christmas.

And that might have been overpriced too, but it was perfect and Killian was starting to collect things – a mix of modern and not and just a bit of pirate and the thought that he could do that in a space that was, unequivocally, theirs left Emma’s pulse thudding in her ears.

So she’d bought the chest and Amazon claimed it was an antique and maybe she’d make a joke about that. Or she would have if the stupid thing came on time.

She resists the urge to start mumbling nautical curses under her breath again.

She's not sure Bashful’s face can get any redder.

Emma spins on the spot, nearly knocking her shoulder into a rack of clothing and she doesn’t even say anything before Snow nods, a knowing smile on her face. “Yeah,” she says. “Not much, huh? I don’t even want to buy anything.” “Rough review.” “Nothing here is even vaguely nautical themed.” “You’re really big on the nautical theme, aren’t you?” Snow makes a noise in the back of her throat that might be a disagreement or an agreement and Emma laughs, shoulders sagging slightly because this was supposed to be easier. She should just be able to find something.

“I have a tendency to harp,” Snow admits and Emma’s going to dislocate something if she laughs any harder, the absurdity of it all hitting her suddenly and forcefully and there are tears in her eyes. Snow makes a face. “What do you say some grilled cheese and onion rings?” Emma perks up – like she’s actually her thirteen-year-old kid and Snow looks like she’s just seen a particularly beautiful sunrise. Bashful continues to stare at the ground. “Grilled cheese and onion rings?” she echoes, something settling in the pit of her stomach. “Yeah?” “Yeah,” Snow says, somehow shifting the bags in her hand to squeeze Emma’s shoulder.

“Hot chocolate?” “That goes without saying.”

Emma nods, any trace of lingering frustration or superpower or whatever Bashful had been trying to tell them when they walked into the store forgotten in a moment of something vaguely maternal and she doesn’t even argue when Snow directs her back across the street towards Granny’s. It’s nice and simple and, for the first time all day, she’s almost breathing normally.

Until they nearly run over Killian and Henry.

“Swan?” “Killian?” “Mom?” “Henry?” “Hey,” Snow says, leaning to her side and nearly hitting Emma with bags when she tries to wave one hand. “Happy Christmas Eve!”

Henry laughs under his breath, grinning from ear to ear, but Killian looks like he’s just encountered the ghost of Christmas past, present and future all at the same time. Emma can’t move. Her eyes are so wide they’re starting to water.

“What are you guys doing here?” Henry asks brightly, trying to peer into the bags. Snow clicks her tongue.

“We thought we’d get some food.” “In between stacks of paperwork?” Killian asks, gaze darting from the bags to Emma’s still wide-eyed face and she tries not to scowl. “Is that right, Swan?”

She looks anywhere except him and it’s as bad as if she were to start shouting I lied about paperwork in the doorway of Granny’s. “We’re taking a break,” she says instead. “And I’m starving. And Mom was...you know, boosting the town’s entire economy in one day. It’s...we did not plan this.”

“Naturally.” “Did you guys eat?” “Pie and fries,” Henry answers excitedly and, at least, forty-seven alarm bells go off in Emma’s head. She’s surprised when her eyes don’t actually fall out onto the step they’re all occupying.

“Pies and fries?” she asks. “Did you unearth some kind of world-ending evil or something?”

She shivers because her coat is actually a piece of garbage and she should really buy a new one, but she’s been lied to enough about the productivity of the United States postal service and she hardly has half a moment to consider if there’s a magical equivalent of that before she feels herself being tugged a few inches to her left and Killian is incredibly warm.

She rests her head on his shoulder.

“I promise it’s not that serious, love,” he says, but she twists her eyebrows when she glances back up at him “It’s not.”

“We were just hungry,” Henry adds. “And there was new pie. Or fresh pie. What would you call still-warm pie?” “I think fresh is the correct term,” Mary Margaret says.

“Yeah, that makes sense, right?” Emma pulls back to stare at Killian. She wants some answers. “What are you guys doing here though? What happened to wanting to stay home?”

He shrugs, but doesn’t actually say anything and they’re clearly both out of lying practice because it’s like some kind of massive billboard right in front of her face announcing that there is a story here and she’s missing a few key facts.

“There’s only so much reading you can do in one afternoon,” Killian says. “And not much food at home.” Henry makes some kind of impossible noise – a warning or a caution and his jaw almost audibly snaps shut when all three of them turn to stare at him. “Nothing, nothing, nothing, I mean...nothing. We should probably go though.”

They’re a family of horrible liars.

“Go?” Emma repeats. They haven’t actually closed the door. Granny doesn’t sound pleased. “Where do you have to go?” “Home,” Killian and Henry say at the same time and the obvious reaches out and smacks her. She’s clearly lost all concept of rational thought at this point.

Snow nods, humming softly as if that makes sense, but Emma’s somewhere in the realm of complete disbelief at this point. Fries and pie is some kind of chaos code. “Did you two practice that or…” She trails off, widening her eyes and Henry shuffles on his feet.

“Back to the books, Swan,” Killian says. “This was just a break, right?”

She’s, quite clearly, not going to get any answers out of this conversation and she’s not sure how much longer than can influence Granny’s heating bill before she comes at them with her crossbow.

“So, uh…” Henry wavers. “We going to go or….” “Aye,” Killian says, pressing a kiss to the top of Emma’s head and she just barely feels it through her hat. She twists back to look at him, determined to get something out of this, but she also doesn’t want to give up any information and it’s a fine line to walk on a holiday when she’s fairly close to freezing and decidedly present-less. “I’d suggest the pie, Swan,” Killian adds, squeezing her hip and she nips at his lip out of instinct.

“Our refrigerator is filled with food,” Emma whispers.

She silently congratulates herself when he freezes in front of her, but that lasts all of two seconds before he’s smirking at her and that’s not the way this was supposed to go. “I finished all the paperwork two days ago,” Killian says, resting his forehead on hers and her heart drops into her stomach. Damn. That’s why it was sitting on her desk. “And we haven’t arrested anyone recently.”

He flashes her a grin when her eyes feel as wide as saucers and Snow hisses in a breath of air. Henry’s already halfway down the sidewalk, looking as if he’s ready to start jogging in place.

“I’ll see you at home, Swan,” Killian smiles, turning to take a step, but Emma’s a hint quicker nad her fingers tighten around the collar of his jacket.

She kisses him that time.

And he tastes a bit sweet, like pie and something that’s probably the milkshake no one was going to mention because that’s kind of against the rules at Granny’s, but it makes her smile and want and a slew of other verbs she’d never even allowed herself to consider before this town and this family and everything that’s landed at her feet in the last few years.

“I’ll see you later,” Emma mumbles and Killian’s eyes seem to get bluer when he glances at her once more before practically bounding down the steps towards Henry.

The door to Granny’s slams shut behind them and the entire restaurant turns towards the sound, staring at Emma and Snow expectantly.

“Oh,” Granny sighs, head propped up on her hand and leaning against the counter. “You’ve been successful, I see.” “Kind of,” Emma corrects. She weaves her way around tables and chairs and drops onto the first stool in front of her. Granny’s lips quirk. “What?” “Nothing, nothing, just rumors.” “Rumors?”

Granny nods knowingly and Snow winces when she finally lets go of the bags. “I think I’m going to have marks on my fingers until New Year’s,” she sighs. “But we did get some good stuff.” “That so?” Granny asks and Emma gets the sudden suspicion that they’ve been ratted out by several Storybrooke pedestrians and, possibly, more than one dwarf. “You seem to have shown up rather empty handed though, Princess. Grilled cheese or onion rings?”

“Both,” Emma sighs. “And whatever milkshake my kid just had he wasn’t supposed to.” Granny’s whole expression shifts, sarcasm turning into enthusiasm and Emma wonders if it’s healthy for her emotions to flip as often as they have in the last four hours. It’s exhausting. “Strawberry, chocolate and vanilla,” she says. “That pirate of yours is a pushover.”

Emma laughs, mostly because she’s not sure Granny will appreciate if she just melts into a puddle of something on her floor. And there’s already two steaming mugs of hot chocolate sitting on the counter in front of them. “Cool trick,” Emma mumbles and Granny hums in agreement. “What were the rumors?” “I am just the messenger. I don’t want to be arrested for crimes I didn’t commit.” “We’re not that kind of monarchy,” Emma promises and Granny’s smile, somehow, gets wider.

“That was diplomatic,” Snow says, something that feels like pride in her voice when she smiles at Emma over her own mug. “And I bet it was Archie, wasn’t it?”

Granny nods, eyebrows lifted in not-so-silent judgement. “Said he saw you coming out of that that knick-knack store. One of you looking victorious and the other looking...testy.” “Testy,” Emma echoes. Granny shrugs. “And that store is for whatever tourism schtick Regina has been on for the last couple of months. It’s not a good spot for gift-giving inspiration.” “I’m not disagreeing with you, merely reporting the facts. And you really shouldn’t rehash old gift ideas either. No repeats of previous romantic moments.” Emma narrows her eyes and she’s finally starting to regain feeling in her hands, the longer she holds onto this mug. “What do you know?” she asks. “And have you heard anything about some break-in attempts around here?”

It comes out like an accusation.

It might be an accusation.

She grabs a menu, if only to do something with her left hand that isn’t waving it through the air in getting late in the day, no present panic and Granny’s eyebrows shift again.

“You should have bribed Archie not to talk when he saw you,” Granny says. “And I know everything. I thought that was a well established fact by now.” Snow coughs when she nearly chokes on her hot chocolate, trying not to laugh too loudly and, at some point, Emma burnt her tongue. That seems like a sign.

“Repeating is cheating,” Granny intones and Snow is barely staying upright on her stool.

Emma puts her mug down. “What do you know?” she repeats, pausing between each word for dramatic emphasis and she knows it’s not going to work as soon as the words are out of her mouth. “And I’m not repeating anything...I didn’t…” “Plan that one date you and the captain actually went on?” “Wow, that’s just rife with judgement isn’t it? How long have you been holding that one in? Is it because we didn’t come here?”

Granny shrugs. It’s definitely because they didn’t come there. And not technically true because they went on more than one date during those six weeks of peace, but it usually ended with stolen makeouts in the backseat of her bug or Killian’s room upstairs and Emma isn’t sure she can bring that up in front of her mother without wanting to actually to die of embarrassment.

“That’s neither here nor there,” Granny says, tugging the menu of her end. “How deep would you say you are into your current state of lack of present panic?” “Inching closer and closer to drowning.”

Snow makes a supportive noise and even Granny looks almost empathetic for a moment, eyes flitting back towards the door like she’s looking for someone or something or perhaps the inspiration for the perfect present for the pirate who has everything.

“You’re thinking too big,” she says, as if that makes sense. “Did you try something in leather?” Emma rolls her eyes, shoulders shifting with the force of her sigh and Snow squeezes her shoulder again. “If it even looked remotely like leather or was vaguely nautical we considered it, but there aren’t really that many options.”

“And for that ship of his?” Emma blinks.

“What?” she asks, flinching slightly when a waitress puts a plate in front of her. There’s another one on her other side and the smell of onion rings seems to attack every single one of her senses at once.

“A captain has a ship, yes?” Granny asks and Emma nods slowly. “Then it only makes sense that he’d appreciate something for his ship, yes?”

Emma’s not sure she entirely appreciates whatever tone this conversation has taken, but Snow is already listening off parts of a ship and ideas for thecaptain’s quarters and Emma, maybe, blushes at that because Granny laughs loudly, head thrown back and smile wide and that could work. It’s a good idea. And The Jolly could probably use more...blankets or something.

God.

She’s awful at this.

They eat the rest of their meal with Snow talking and planning and Emma drinks her milkshake so quickly, Granny makes not-so-quiet comment about the similarities between parents and children. She dips one of her onion rings into the glass.

It scandalizes everyone within a ten-foot radius.

And they’re halfway back down the block when she hears it – Henry laughing and Killian’s footfalls and Emma barely considers the state of her mother’s hands before she’s tugging on Snow’s wrist and pulling her into the closest doorway she can find.

They nearly fall into the library.

“God, fuc…” Emma sighs, knees buckling under her and Belle looks a little stunned and Mary Margaret’s bags aren’t looking quite as festive. They’re looking decidedly crumpled.

The door is still open.

And Henry is still laughing. “Killian, you’ve got to slow down,” he shouts, but there’s a note of excitement in his voice that has Emma gaping at Snow and waving a hand towards Belle when she opens her mouth to ask questions.

“He’s going to be asleep by the time we get there, if we don’t hurry up, lad,” Killian counters. Emma’s not sure who’s smiling more – her or Snow and it’s probably her because she might also be trying to will the memory into every single corner of her mind and even Belle looks somewhere in the realm of sentimental.

“We should probably close the door, don’t you think?” Belle asks, nodding towards the still-open piece of wood or whatever it is. Emma nods dumbly, taking a step further into the library and grabbing some of the bags that had been rather, unceremoniously, dumped on the ground.

“Sorry about that,” Emma mutters as the door slams shut behind her.

Belle shakes her head before the entire apology is finished. “Are we hiding from something?” “Christmas in general?” “And Killian,” Snow adds. Belle’s lips twitch, tilting down slightly in surprise and, well, it is kind of surprising. They’re never going to get to the homegoods store Doc owns at the other end of Main Street.

“Killian,” Belle echoes.

Emma shrugs, not sure what other excuse she can possibly come up with at this point. “He was supposed to be at home,” she says, realizing midway through the sentence she hasn’t actually explained anything. “We’re uh...we’re having a present issue.”

“That so? Did you try something in leather?” Snow laughs, sinking onto one of the chairs at a table a few feet away. “You know, I’m starting to suspect we’re not the only one’s with present problems.” It takes, exactly, five seconds, two deep breaths and one slightly dramatic gasp for Emma to understand.

“You know the internet is really the worst,” she grumbles and Snow laughs, a bit freer that time when Emma doesn’t immediately burst into frustration-fueled flames and magic. “We should just go back to this Solstice thing and ignore all these other Christmas expectations. I can’t...buying blankets for the Jolly is so lame.” “That is kind of lame,” Snow admits and Emma waves both her hands through the air in unspoken question. Her mother shrugs, stretching her legs out in front of her and Belle can’t seem to decide if it’s appropriate to laugh or not. “I...well, it is kind of lame. And not, you know, sentimental, which is kind of what Solstice is all about and...blankets are so lame.” “Have you been thinking that all day? You wanted to buy those anchor things! You were talking about decorating the bathroom!” “Which one?” Belle interjects and Emma’s eyebrows leap up her forehead. “I mean...your house is very large.” “That’s true,” Snow agrees. “I really did think the anchors were cute. Plus that discount.” Emma growls, sliding down the door she’s only dimly aware she’s still leaning on. Her legs splay out awkwardly in front of her and she’s momentarily worried she’s actually concussed herself when her head bumps back against the wood.

“This is a disaster,” she sighs. “An absolute….” Snow tilts her head when Emma trails off, but she barely pays attention to that, gaze directed at Belle and ideas firing and a plan forming and maybe this will work. It is, after all, about sentiment.

And he probably could have read twenty books that afternoon on pure determination and desire and Captain Hook was a bookworm.

“Belle,” Emma snaps and the woman’s head snaps up quickly. “Do you...could you…”

She jumps up, the muscles in her leg protesting at the movement, but Emma’s already moving towards the back corner of the library, her mother and Belle trailing after her and she’s mumbling under her breath about constellations and history and her husband is such a nerd – it makes her heart pick up a little bit.

“Wait, wait, wait, Emma,” Snow starts, tugging on the back of her jacket and that can’t be good for the slightly loose stitching. “What’s going on? You’re not making any sense.” Emma spins on the spot, smile wide and Belle and Snow exchange confused glances. “Are you alright?” Belle asks cautiously, like she’s going to combust with Christmas Eve and Solstice excitement. “You look….thrilled.” “Will you take cash?” Emma asks. “Or, you know, Savior-type IOU’s? I have no idea how much cash I actually have.” “I really don’t understand what you’re asking me.” “I know what to get Killian.” “And you need to...pay me for that?” Emma’s practically jumping up and down. “Yeah, maybe,” she admits. “Come on. I think I remember seeing it back here.” She’s going to save Christmas.

#cs ff #captain swan ff #captain swan #cs #cs fic #itttc #csss17 #snow white hates santa claus #pass it on #laura writes canon

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drummcarpentry · 4 years

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Supporting Small Business Saturday with 2020-Conscious Marketing

Posted by MiriamEllis

Image credit: Elvert Barnes

“Conscious spending with the community can contribute to neighborhood sustainability.” — Christine Araquel, The Park’s Finest

I encountered this quote from a restauranteur on the American Express Small Business Saturday website, and just these few words called a vivid image to my mind: local business owners and customers gazing together toward the horizon, hoping to pierce the clouds of COVID-19 and see them clearing away, revealing communities that are still standing, and still capable of sustaining our hometowns, our cities, and our dreams.

72% of consumers believe they will frequent neighboring businesses more after the crisis is over, but that will take all of us doing our part now to ensure as many SMBs are still there to greet us when better days return.

In Q4 of 2019, I used my column to encourage local business owners to start having meaningful conversations with customers about how “conscious spending” at independently-owned enterprises impacts local quality of life. Buying local affects everything from mental and physical health, to emergency services access, diversity, democracy, and climate change.

In 2020, it’s time to turn up the local SEO industry’s dial on conscious spending. Today, I’m urging every business owner and marketer to consider dedicating space to a concerted educational campaign on the topic on their websites, social profiles, local business listings, reviews, and real-world interfaces. Your work, and mine, depends on sustaining independently-owned local businesses through and far beyond Small Business Saturday. With the right strategy, we can make an impactful effort together.

What is Small Business Saturday?

American Express created Small Business Saturday in 2010 in response to the Great Recession. This annual event invites communities to shop at small, local businesses on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Small Business Saturday’s date this year is November 28th.

Americans spent $19.6 billion at independent businesses on Small Business Saturday in 2019. In 2020, AmEx is placing special emphasis on shopping locally to help SMBs remain viable amid the challenges of the public health emergency. AmEx is also strongly encouraging shoppers to support Black-owned independent businesses this year.

Practical tactics for Small Business Saturday preparation

To ensure your local business is ready to welcome the maximum number of shoppers on the big day, check these off your list:

Do a quick audit of your website to be sure all contact information and hours of operation are current and accurate for each location of your business.

Do the same for your local business listings on the major location data platforms.

Write at least one Small Business Saturday Google Post to explain your special offers for the day.

Post a Google Q&A about your participation in Small Business Saturday.

Publicize your Small Business Saturday offers on your social channels.

Respond to any recent reviews that mention Small Business Saturday.

Make use of any appealing partnership deals you qualify for by participating in AmEx’s official Small Business Saturday program.

Make use of AmEx’s tutorials on topics like contactless payments, answering COVID FAQs, and implementing digital shopping.

These are all standard good practices to ready your company for this major shopping day, but amid the severe challenges of 2020, it’s time to go beyond common techniques.

Share-worthy Buy Local statistics

If conscious local shopping is the goal, education is the key to helping customers make informed choices.

There’s never been a better year for local vendors to re-envision themselves as heroic community educators. Beyond the typical preparations you make to get ready for Small Business Saturday, now is the time to start sharing with customers why conscious shopping with you matters. Consider:

In 2012, small businesses made up 99.7% of US employer firms. SMBs with 500 or fewer employees are the backbone of the US economy.

As of August 2020, 163,735 total U.S. businesses on Yelp were reported as closed, with 97,966 reported as permanently closed due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, the last Civic Economics Prime Numbers report found that Amazon had displaced 62,000 shops and 900,000 retail jobs in just one year. Small businesses are struggling to survive the tandem challenges of COVID and monopoly.

As much as $7 billion in uncollected state and local taxes were lost in one year by local communities due to Amazon, depleting resources needed to cope with emergency and ongoing needs. Meanwhile, if every US family spent just $10 extra locally each month instead of at a big box or national chain, over $9.3 billion would be directly returned to local economies. Our hospitals, fire departments, schools, and other essentials of community life depend on having a strong tax base.

Small businesses not only create the local and state tax base essential to civic life, they also contribute 250% more than big brands to community causes. Shopping locally directly impacts services and programs you care about like first responders, food and housing security, children’s resources, and animal welfare.

Make a copy of Moz’s free Why Buy Local stats sheet to help you tell a compelling small business story to the communities in which you serve and market.

For local business owners: Where to educate in the run-up to Small Business Saturday 2020

Share the stories (with supporting statistics) of your choice to boost awareness of the benefits of shopping at independently-owned, local businesses in the following places:

Websites

Determine which resources matter most to the communities you serve, and explain how shopping local funds those essentials. Create a section on the homepage of your website summarizing these benefits, and link it to a landing page that expands on how conscious local shopping is sustaining the community.

For example, in my community, taxes are absolutely critical to keeping official fire departments operational, and volunteer fire departments depend on local giving. In the American West, where we’ve been in a constant state of disaster due to fire for months, SMBs can use their websites to draw the throughline between shopping local and funding essential emergency services. In other parts of the country, it could be flood relief, or food banks, or the survival of local newspapers.

Build a strong internal link structure pointing to your shop local landing page, and sprinkle your product and service pages with stats proving the point that choosing your business instead of a big box or online monopoly makes life better where shoppers live.

Social profiles

Bring creativity to bear in publicizing your most compelling reasons to shop local on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms. You don’t have to guilt-trip customers into spending at independents, but you can engage them with statistics that show how shopping with you benefits the community, as well as inviting customers to tell their own stories.

Use social media to ask which services, resources, places, and causes matter most to your customers, and help locals connect the dots between where they spend and how their purchases fund whatever is valued most at a local level.

Local business listings

Concise statistics can be incorporated into the description fields of your local business listings, Google Posts, videos, photos, GMB messaging, and Google Q&A. Use these spaces to give local shoppers extra reasons to do business with you.

And, of course, be sure the basic contact information and hours of operation on your major local business listings are up-to-date before Small Business Saturday, so that first-time shoppers who like your messaging can find you without any misdirection or disappointment.

Reviews

Incorporate brief statistics into review request campaigns, encouraging respondents to voice their educated opinions on why they choose to shop locally with you.

For example, a review request might state that sales at your business contribute X amount of funding to first responders, and that you’d appreciate the reviewer writing about how supporting these services matters to them and to the community. A review corpus spangled with persuasive statements from fully-aware customers can help other shoppers choose you over corporate competitors.

Additionally, local business owners are sometimes at a loss for how to vary their “thank you” owner responses to positive reviews. Diminish repetition by including data in your replies. For example, a hypothetical owner response could read:

“So glad you enjoyed your soft tacos, Mary! Your great review is extra appreciated right now, as dining with us is also ensuring a 3% donation to our local food bank from every order. You’re making a difference by helping us make sure everyone in the community has food on the table this winter. Thank you so much for caring about our town. We hope to see you again soon!”

The new Moz Local plans will alert you to every new review that comes in on our partner networks. Use these alerts to craft timely, informative thank-you notes in your owner responses.

Real-world interfaces

Storefronts, window displays, in-store signage, menus, brochures, mailers, packaging, receipts, business cards, and many other real-world assets can convey educational statistics that will help locals choose you to support the local economy.

Google has interesting theories about the messy middle of the customer’s journey during COVID-19. Your online assets may be of most influence during the evaluation and exploration phases of the buyer’s path, but don’t overlook the messages you’re sending to customers whose attention you’ve already captured. Using tangible assets — like window displays seen by passersby — to showcase how local patronage directly sustains the community could bring you repeat business from convinced customers.

For agencies: Be more than a local SEO — be a local business advocate

Image credit Indie Bound/Raven Bookstore

Local SEO agencies know, first-hand, the difficulties they and their clients have been through in 2020. Consider Danny Caine: teacher, poet, author, and owner of The Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas. Like so many independent business owners, he gives back to his community. Whether he’s serving locally-famous pie to visiting authors, or donating to restore the neighborhood church where Langston Hughes worshipped, Mr. Caine walks the hometown walk with a good heart. He’s like so many of our SMB clients.

But Danny Caine has taken community advocacy one step further than most local business owners. His letter to Jeff Bezos on the distinction between healthy competition and harmful disruption made some news. His self-published zine, How to Resist Amazon and Why, sold 10,000 copies and is now headed for formal publication as a full-length book.

While so many local search marketing agencies have been offering discounts to clients to keep them going during the pandemic, or simply seeing their SMB contracts disappear, Mr. Caine is proactively offering education to inspire conscious local shopping.

If a busy independent bookseller like Danny Caine can make the time to utilize local, social, and print media as advocacy channels, how much could skilled marketers at good agencies do to boost messaging in support of their SMB clients? Is there anything standing in our way?

Just do it

Multiple inspiring speakers at MozCon 2020 advised brands to have strong opinions and take public stands on important issues, building affinity with customers based on shared values. Mention was made of the famous Nike ad featuring abolitionist, Colin Kaepernick. In dollars and cents, the year following Nike’s commercial brought them $163 million in earned media, a $6 billion brand value increase, a 31% increase in sales,

and all-time-high stock values. But it brought the country so much more than this — it role-modeled courageously doing the right thing in the face of adversity.

The local SEO industry doesn’t have the same visibility as a footwear giant or a beloved superbowl quarterback. Collectively, ten of my favorite local SEOs have about 130,000

Twitter followers. What can we do, with only this much reach, to support local business owners like Danny Caine in what has become a critical, nationwide struggle of independents vs. monopoly?

Marketers: you’ve spent your careers developing incredible publicity skills! I want to know what your best ideas are, and I have three suggestions of my own to share to get the conversation started:

Idea 1: Take a stand on education

Because local SEOs work in tech, we find ourselves in a work environment that sometimes reveres market disruption just for the sake of the “wow” factor. We look at our social media feeds and see our peers cheering for Amazon Prime Day because it’s cool, for every Google AI development because it’s cool, for big box brands because they’re cool.

But for our own client base and our own communities, we know in our bones that it’s the opposite of cool to see local businesses closing down and workers displaced, or to see independent business owners struggling to scrape together the budget for a competitive local search marketing campaign.

There are hundreds of good reasons not to cheerlead for the biggest competitors of independent businesses, but for local SEOs, we don’t have to look further than our client rosters to choose which side to champion. Unless you’re holding out in the hopes of a Fortune 500 company becoming your star client, you’re already working with one or two feet in the SMB camp. So why not speak up about it?

That audience of 130,000 Twitter followers would quickly get used to seeing local SEO agencies taking bold, principled stands on the basis of ethics, civics, and local economics. What you say could begin influencing the larger worlds of SEO and digital marketing, so that the norm becomes covering market disruption with greater thoughtfulness about its impacts on local community life.

In the run-up to Small Business Saturday, why not start by sharing some Buy Local stats on your social feeds? Then, looking ahead to 2021, see how far you can take your agency in the direction of client support. I’ll follow any marketer who takes the leap from local SEO to local business advocate.

Idea 2: Make your agency website a source of educational citations

Most digital marketing agencies already have some sort of portfolio, and they’re often one of the most underutilized areas of the company website. Reimagined, portfolios are only a couple of steps away from becoming useful directories of structured citations for clients that could help boost their organic visibility and associated local pack rankings.

Putting the power of your agency’s own PA/DA behind the local brands you want to see beating out spam and corporate competitors is a great act of SMB allyship. Your agency could:

Create an in-depth page for each client containing structured NAP, a link, and the best data you can amass about how choosing this SMB benefits its city of location vs. shopping with big boxes of online giants.

Build good internal links to these pages.

Seek out a few good inbound links to these pages

Promote these pages on your social feeds

Use these pages as your examples at conferences, on webinars, and podcasts in 2021

Try to build at least one of these citation pages for a favorite SMB client before Small Business Saturday so that you’re templating the process. Create more in the new year and track how they’re ranking in the overall scheme of your clients’ unstructured citation/reputation assets.

Idea 3: Educate pro bono and educate for a fee

“I felt like I had to do more,” says Local SEO Search founder, John Vuong, and I hope you will take two minutes to watch his highly motivational video:

Many local SEOs are giving knowledge and help away right now out of an honorable desire to help SMBs get through tough times. Mike Blumenthal and Mary Bowling recently discussed this on a LocalU Last Week in Local podcast:

Mary: One of the tactics that’s been used here in our little valley is having free “get your business online” things where an agency will go in and help small businesses in their area actually get online and get verified and start harvesting some of the rewards of having Google My Business set up properly. It’s a really worthwhile thing to do.

Mike: I think with just an hour a month, an agency can then both build out the listing and provide additional services including metrics that demonstrate significant key performance indicators as they build this business toward a full digital relationship.

I recommend listening to the full conversation starting at about 10:10 in the video, and to the interview by Garrett Sussman that sparked it. In completely practical terms, our industry knows that a thriving local business scene means more clients with better funding for really good marketing.

I’d suggest adding one extra ingredient into any pro bono or discounted work you’re doing for local businesses: freely share my stats sheet with independent business owners to help them better tell their own story of how shopping with them sustains community life.

Meanwhile, if you’re a local SEO who has earned enough of a reputation to be a guest on podcasts, a speaker at webinars, or a paid presenter at conferences, build education about the vital role of independent businesses into your pitches. The more the digital marketing industry hears from us, and the more awareness we raise about the importance of conscious shopping, the better position we are putting our clients in to win.

Simmering success this year for a better Small Business Saturday in 2021

Image credit: Mark

If 2020 got in the way of you doing everything you wanted to do leading up to Small Business Saturday, consider that we’ve all got 12 months ahead of us before next year’s event. That’s 12 months to double down on educational messaging to support year-round, conscious, local shopping.

I don’t want to say it will be easy — there will definitely be hurdles.

In particular, marketing on the promise of dubious convenience is as old as commerce. I’ve laughed at canned soup ad copy telling consumers to buy their product to avoid standing over a hot stove for hours. Education is what makes us able to spot the fiction here: when you make soup from scratch, you turn on the burner and then go about the rest of your day until it’s ready to eat. Nobody, not even Jacques Pépin, actually stands glued to the stove while homemade soup simmers.

The Amazons, the big boxes, the monopolies and near-monopolies, are counting on the public going along with the fiction of convenience indefinitely and never stopping to count the cost to our communities.

Actively point out to your customer base that it’s not actually more convenient to shop giant “everything stores” anymore (if it ever was?), because with the curbside pickup and home delivery revolution 2020 brought small businesses, “near me” shopping has never been easier. Highlight that we can all take a 10-minute drive to pick up an item and get ourselves out of the house, or place a quick order via the web from a local purveyor and go about the rest of our day.

At least, we can do this so long as we still have local independents to buy from, to support with our dollars, and with our serious marketing skills. The choice is ours, and the real convenience will be on the side of the people if we choose to build thriving tax bases, community health and safety, human well-being, and local character via locally-supported commerce.

With 12 months between Small Business Saturday 2020 and 2021, you have the time and talents to contribute to positive social change. What are your best ideas? Please share in the comments!

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lakelandseo · 4 years