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yellowocaballero · 4 years ago

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Human Relations Snippet: Tim teaches Jon the internet and odious goats are sacrificed to the cult of Bezos

There’s no reason for this to exist. I was rereading a bit of HR and I saw a throwaway joke about Jon wanting to buy Martin a Portal Gun. I started wondering about how that would even work. The answer is, obviously, a 200 year old man squinting at a computer screen wondering why there’s so many horny singles in his area. I get possessed by demons easily, so I took three hours out of writing my daemon au and wrote this instead. Bon Appetit.

(Edit, quick clarification: I think that Jon would refuse to use the name for the Beholding that Smirke made up, and although all of this exists in my head and you guys don’t know this, there was a lot of tension between Jon and Jonah’s ‘circle’. So Jon hated Smirke and thought he was a hack. He uses Smirke’s terms to others sometimes for ease of understanding or in deference to Jonah (:/) but I think that mentally he mainly calls the Beholding his own name, The Witness. It rings of that personal and intimate connection Jon and the Beholding has. Anyway, onto the story.)

After one hour in anguished uncertainty, fifty popups that advised Jon of very many ‘hot singles in his area’, six separate sites that Jon’s God had to inform him were covers for thieves that stole money from you, and a very confusing retreat to Jon’s favorite internet page ‘Wikipedia’ as to what an Amazon was, Jon had given up.

Normally this was where he asked one of his personal assistants for help. Normally, he wouldn’t even be trying, and he would have just told one of them to do it. This was how Jon had cunningly mostly avoided using computers for the past twenty years. Some endeavors were unavoidable, and Jon was proud to say that he mastered email in 2010. Or was it 2008? He liked to think it was 2006, but it was possible...never mind. If it was important, the Witness would tell him.

Peter Lukas was right on almost nothing, Jon thought disgruntledly as he slammed his laptop shut - including in his taste of men, company, philosophies, men, patron deities, professions, and men - but he was right in his proclamation that the internet was the degradation of society. Not that he hadn’t sacrificed his morality and sold out, feeding his patron through something called “incel forums” and “Reddit”. Between him, Jonah’s “Excel spreadsheets” and “TurboTax”, and Annabelle Cane’s ridiculous “MMO guilds”, the Society was filling with computer geeks. Jon could always read the wind: he had to keep up, and quickly.

Besides, Martin had kindly educated him on how it was almost unheard of for a young man like Jon to not understand how to work that Goggle thing. Giggle? Martin was very streetwise and was one of the most insightful people Jon had ever known, he was definitely right.

Which is why he had to buy him this “Portal Gun” that he wanted. He had even shown Jon the website! And if Jon was in desperate times trying to navigate these confusing webpages entirely with URLs he memorized, then he would take desperate measures!

“I’m going down to the Archives,” Jon said, slithering off the couch and clutching his laptop to chest. Jonah had bought it for him. He appeared surprised that Jon was using it. “I may not be back for a while. I need...a book.”

Jonah didn’t look away from his own infernal machine. It seemed he was on that ‘Excel’ program again. Was it one of those ‘video games’ he kept hearing about? “Do I want to know what you were doing on that laptop.”

“Reading Wikipedia,” Jon said immediately, and somewhat defensively. Jon had discovered Wikipedia in 2001 before promptly funding it and throwing his weight behind its development. He had spent a solid five years convinced a computer was a kind of electronic screen that let you read digital Encyclopedia pages, like in Star Trek. He’d seen Star Trek. Georgie made him. “Did you know that -”

“Yes, yes, have fun. Haven’t you read that entire site already?”

“Not even,” Jon said defensively. “I can’t just sit and read through entire Encyclopedias anymore, Jonah. We know more things now.”

“What a way to describe the last two hundred years,” Jonah said, not even looking away from his computer. “We know more things. Never change, Jon.”

“You’re the one who never changes,” Jon grumbled. But it was a weak comeback, and considering his brand new delightfully short stature somewhat untrue, so Jon breezed out of Jonah’s office with full knowledge that he’d think of a better comeback halfway down the steps to the Archives.

In fact, it wasn’t until he was at the door, and by then he felt stupid for losing a point against Jonah anyway. He easily opened the door, stepping inside and quickly bee-lining for Sasha’s office. Her burgeoning powers were wonderfully flowing in the shape of access to and understanding of technology. He had never seen such gratuitous breeches of privacy as she casually committed. Every day Jon was validated in his decision to save her from the Stranger. A balance, an equal yet opposite Archivist from Jon, would be invaluable. Not that Jonah and Jon weren’t their own yin and yang, but Jonah’s powers were paltry and out-of-date. Mind reading and spying through iconography was so 1960. They needed fresh blood.

Sasha had been a wonderful choice, and Jon didn’t regret choosing her to act as saviour. Most of the time. Some of the time she -

“She’s not in.”

Jon’s fist halted in front of the door, about to sharply rap on her office door. He turned around to actually look through the bullpen, only to see that Timothy was sitting in his chair chewing a sandwich. Somehow angrily. Definitely suspiciously.

“Are you sure?” Jon asked dubiously. “Because you’ve lied about this before.”

“Because you should stop coming down here and bothering her.” Timothy balled the saran wrap in his hand and dunked it in the trash can, somehow undoubtedly giving the impression that he wished it was Jon’s head. “Just bugger off.”

Someone was in a snit. Normally Timothy wasn’t this hostile. Jon had thought that learning his name might make him less mean, but it did little to help. But when Jon looked around he didn’t see Martin, and a quick check assured him that both Sasha and Martin were having lunch at their favorite deli and engaging in that plotting hobby they both enjoyed. Timothy had elected to stay behind, stewing in his own angry and paranoid juices.

He would have to do this with Martin out of the Archives...and he really wanted to take care of this now so Martin would get it before the weekend...and it wasn’t as if Jon was scared of this boy he was one hundred and seventy years older than…

“Uh,” Jon said intelligently, “can you help me with...something…”

Timothy’s face twisted in a novel combination of surprise and disgust. “What,” he sneered, “your evil fear god or whatever can’t figure it out for you?”

“I don’t need others to think for me,” Jon said stiffly. It was something he’d had to say far too many times. “The Witness is less helpful with...troubleshooting...look, do you know how to work a computer?”

Timothy stared at him blankly. “Like, at all?”

“I’m trying to buy Martin this toy he desires,” Jon said desperately. Fuck it all, he walked over and sat down in the chair next to Tim’s desk. He pulled a little bit closer, placing his laptop on Tim’s desk, and ignored the way the other man leaned away. “But whenever I try I keep on seeing alerts about hot singles. I’m not interested in young women, I just need to buy a ‘Portal Gun’. Do you know what a Portal Gun is?”

Timothy continued staring at him, eyebrows raised. Clearly involuntarily, so quick that he may not even have noticed, one corner of his lips was ticking upwards into a smile.

“How many credit card scams have you fallen for?”

“Absolutely none,” Jon said, very quickly. He pulled out his credit card, placing it on the table. He knew a credit card was involved, although he didn’t know how. “What do I do? Do I swipe it? Is there a port?” He picked up the laptop and squinted at its sides, looking for a port. “I wanted to ask Sasha for help, since she’s the expert in hacking, but surely you know the basics?”

“I mean...I can’t, like, code, but yeah, I can work Amazon.” Timothy carefully opened the laptop, watching the display light up. He effortlessly navigated to an icon on the screen, clicking it open.

“That’s not right,” Jon said urgently. “You’re supposed to press the E.”

“I do not want to know how many toolbars you have,” Timothy said bluntly. “We’re using Chrome. That’s another way to look at the Internet.” He rubbed his hands together. “Yeah, I got a grandmother, we can do this.”

Jon perked up. “So you’ll help?”

Went unsaid: even though you hate me?

“Whatever,” Timothy grumbled. Jon decided not to press his luck.

Jon decided that he liked the Chrome better than the Internet Explorer, because it was simpler and Google was on the first page. Tim rapidly typed on ‘Amazon.com’ into the search bar and easily scrolled through the very busy and picture filled page that immediately popped up. Why was everything so fast? Maybe this was why the young people had no attention span: these pages just came up immediately. No flipping for indices for finding anything in phone books.

“Right. What was it, a Portal Gun? Like from the game?”

“A board game?”

“Video game.”

“Like on a VHS…?”

“Right.” Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know, Sasha said that you’re one of the most famous sociologists and anthropologists in British history.”

“I am extremely intelligent, Timothy, and I won’t abide any insinuation otherwise,” Jon said curtly. “I cannot be expected to keep constant track every time there’s another - iPhone or whatever. You have teenagers in your family, correct? Do you always know what they’re talking about? That’s, what, a twenty year age gap? Multiply that by ten.”

That shut him up. Timothy sighed again, much more aggressively, but he clicked the white bar and typed in ‘portal gun’ anyway. “Right. Not fucking apologizing, but right. I still don’t fucking know what ‘Twitch’ is.”

“It’s a brief spasmodic contraction of the muscle fibers,” Jon said helpfully. “Fascinatingly, this phenomenon was first observed in frog’s legs before I was even born in 1780, by Luigi Galvani. Erudite man, by the way, but he couldn’t hold his liquor. It was the birth of the study of bioelectricity, although the exact mechanism of muscle contraction eluded scientists for years.”

“Never mind.” Timothy sighed again, the perfect mix of aggravated and long-suffering. It seemed to be the man’s two favorite emotions. “My grandmother has a PhD and she still can’t figure out her cell, either. We had to get her a Jitterbug.”

Amazon, as Timothy explained, was a kind of shopping mall, except you could pick out what you wanted by its picture and have the shopping mall pack it up and send it to you. Jon didn’t quite understand why people preferred this to just going to a shop yourself, seeing as you could get it immediately instead of with a three or four day turnaround, but Tim explained that Amazon was cheaper, had a wider selection, and didn’t make you get off the couch.

“Oh,” Jon said, finally getting it, “this follows the economic model of large scale businesses underpricing their products to undercut smaller businesses in the area, driving them out of business until they hold monopoly over the market and can raise their prices without worrying about staying competitive.”

Timothy stared at him.

“I mean,” he said, “I guess?”

“This explains why my Alexa project was successful so quickly,” Jon mused. “With a lack of competition or alternatives, consumers are more likely to accept the dramatic invasions of privacy as normal. Normalizing intrusions into privacy took ages, but my early efforts paid off very well. The Ring doorbell was even better, along with the line of security and home protection systems. We’re now working on live streamed 24/7 surveillance to social media platforms.”

Timothy stared at him further.

Finally, he said, “Alexa was...you?”

“Of course,” Jon said, baffled. Who else would it be? “I gave Jeff the idea and convinced him it would be profitable. I didn’t understand the whole mechanics of it, but once I gave Jeff a vision from the Witness he was eager to implement the divinely inspired spyware.”

Timothy continued to stare.

“The evil fear god controls Jeff Bezos.”

“He thinks I’m a prophet, actually,” Jon said helpfully. “I let him become Cardinal of the imaginary cult in exchange for funding some of my more esoteric programs. Had him sacrifice a goat and everything, it was great.” At Timothy’s alarmed look, Jon was quick to elaborate, “It was the most evil goat you’ve met in your life. Morally odious.”

“...for my sanity I’m going to pretend that you said none of that.”

In retrospect, although Timothy had worked at the Institute for a few years, it did take quite a bit of time to acclimate to the fact that the Avatars permanently shaped the shape of human existence in order to better feed their gods. Jon knew better than anyone: when humanity made gods, and gods made man, and man made gods...the feedback loop could self-perpetuate for years. Eternity, if needed.

But they had no luck on ‘Amazon’. With Jon’s eidetic memory he was able to easily pick out the one that looked most similar to the one that Martin had showed him, but all of the little toy guns were for someone named ‘Rick’. Then Timothy took twenty laborious minutes explaining the entire plot of ‘Rick & Morty’ to him, which Jon patiently sat through.

“I think young people today deeply enjoy explaining media,” Jon said, once Timothy finished telling him the funny jokes. “I’m very interested in your interests, Timothy.”

“You are so fucking condescending. And please call me Tim, you’re sounding even more like my grandmother.” When Jon brightened, Tim - Tim! - quickly said, “This does not mean we are friends.”

Granted, Jon had never once in his life gave a shit about making friends, but he felt as if he should be making more of an effort with Tim. He was a sort of supernatural brother in law, wasn’t he? Although Sasha perhaps Sasha was more of a favored niece. At least, he would be, if today’s generation found some morality and stopped living in sin.

Good lord. Now he was sounding like Jonah. Georgie used to joke that he was born in the wrong generation - he should have been born a 17th century Puritan instead. Jon found it a very funny joke. Jonah did not.

“Are there any other shopping websites?” Jon asked finally, after Amazon failed them. He’d have to call up Jeff later and complain. “Or is this the only one?”

Tim sighed. “Let’s check Google.”

Quickly and efficiently, yet with many lightning fast detours, Tim found another site called ‘eBay’ - pronounced ‘e-Bay’, not ‘ehbay’ - that listed off exactly what they needed. They weren’t under the toy section, instead listed as something called ‘cosplay’, but Tim seemed highly resistant to explaining that one, so he dropped it.

They picked a likely looking white toy gun that looked the most similar to the one that Martin had liked and Tim talked Jon through punching in the numbers on his card into the website and sorting through the billing and shipping information. Tim helpfully took down the numbers on his card to file later.

“And...done!” Tim said, pressing a button and leaning back. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“It was ten times as complicated as I thought it would be,” Jon assured him, “but also much more fun. What else can you buy online?”

“Oh, god. What can’t you buy.”

Jon brightened. “Can you buy books?”

“Old Gertrude used to buy Leitners on eBay,” Tim said dully, “so yeah, sure, why not.”

Jon stared at his computer. He carefully navigated the mouse to the big red x and clicked out of the internet browser. “That’s enough of eBay, then, I think.”

Guess he would have to stick to buying Leitners in person. It was no good buying fucked up books from sketchy sources. Always stick to people you trusted, or at least trusted to be themselves. Mikaele was Jon’s favorite supplier since the kid Leitner disappeared, and they had a pleasant working relationship. Mikaele shared his grandfather’s stories about the history and culture of the Maori, and Jon told him which of his haunted artifacts would be the most helpful in the imminent apocalypse.

“Well,” Tim said finally, gently pushing Jon’s laptop away, “that was...something, great bonding session with my local supervillain, please run back to Elias and bother him instead.”

“You were very helpful, Mr. Stoker,” Jon said, as professionally yet paternally as possible. Tim was six years older than his body, so he’s not sure how it came off, but the touch of grey at his temples helped with the dignified air. “And as soon as you start acting like a man and propose to my Archivist, you’ll make an excellent brother in law -”

“Uh, excuse me?”

Jon spun around in his chair to see Sasha and Martin standing at the door, holding doggy bags and looking somewhat flummoxed. Probably confused at the sight of him and Tim having a civil conversation, which admittedly had never happened before. Possibly also confused at how completely mortified Tim looked.

“Who said anything about proposing?” Sasha asked incredulously. “Tim, are you -”

“No! No, god no!” Tim stood up quickly, holding his hands out as if he was placating a raging bull. “Nobody’s been saying anything - I would never do that to you -”

“Oh,” Sasha said frostily, crossing her arms and letting the bags swing, “would you.”

That was a domestic Jon should stay out of, even though he definitely caused it. He and Martin sidled away in tandem, huddling near the back of the Archives as Tim frantically pled for his life.

Sneakily, Jon glanced at Martin out of the corner of his eye. He looked happy. Happy, and just as stressed as he always looked - Jon had never known Martin when he wasn’t constantly stressed out, and he was more than aware that it was his fault.

He looked good, too. Really nice, broad jawline that gave his face a friendly round shape. Just friendly and round in general, it was really handsome. His hair was as nicely short and ruffles as ever. The big glasses were super stylish, and really framed his face well. Really big, broad hands. Jon, who had always been so poky and tall and thin and gaunt, like some kind of haunted scarecrow that lurked through the corners of time, was envious. He wanted some of that softness and gentleness. Really, he wanted some of Martin’s -

“So what were you and Tim doing?” Martin asked. “I didn’t know you knew he existed.”

“You told me his name,” Jon said anxiously. “I don’t forget the things you tell me, you know.”

Martin smiled shyly and him, and Jon found himself smiling back. “It’s pretty good for my ego to hear that I have something to teach the immortal genius.”

“I don’t know,” Jon said, as Sasha yelled in the background, “I’ve been learning a lot lately.”

“Really?” Martin teased. “Anything interesting?”

“Oh,” Jon said, watching the yellow fluorescent light cast Martin’s dim smile in soft relief, “I can think of a few things.”

#my writing #jonathan sims #tim stoker #archivist!sasha #martin blackwood #sasha james #mild homosexual activity and massive old man activity inbound #tma #the magnus archives #tma fanfic #the magnus archives fanfic #im posting this at an awkward time so prep for a lot of self rbs

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shinydelirium · 4 years ago

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MLQC Season 2 Chapter 8 (Kiro) Final Part [High Speed Road] & [Buffer] Translation [CN]

***SPOILERS*** THIS POST CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS FOR CONTENT NOT YET RELEASED ON EN SERVER!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!***

For the previous translations of Season 2 Chapter 8: Part 1, Part 2

Enjoy~

[High Speed Road]

At three o’clock in the afternoon, all the procedures of the new song conference were ready.

The warm sun dispersed the chill air, and the fans who were selected to participate in this conference have lined up at the ticket gate.

Many fans who didn’t get a ticket also came to experience the atmosphere, and the square was crowded with people for a while.

The security guards patrolled the square at each area with communicators and everything went on in an orderly manner.

I breathed a sigh of relief and when I was about to call Savin and ask him to bring Kiro over, I realized that I couldn’t reach him.

I called Kiro shortly after and the call was quickly connected.

Kiro: Savin isn’t at the company today. Did he go straight to the venue?

MC: Why would he? He should’ve gone directly to the company to pick you up this morning.

Kiro: Huh… I didn’t see him. I thought he was with you.

Kiro’s words left me confused.

MC: Could something have happened?

Kiro: Wait, Savin’s calling me.

Kiro shared the voice call with me. The intermittent signal connection was unstable.

Savin: I….accidentally….asleep in the carriage….

Savin: But who knows….no one in this carriage…..waking up….

Savin: Can’t stop yet….its….

The signal abruptly cut off.

MC: What’s going on?

Kiro: The call can’t be reached and the signal seems to be affected.

Kiro: MC, I’m heading out, wait for me wherever you are.

In the backstage preparation room, Kiro’s fingers tapped on the keyboard quickly.

After a while, a satellite map of Loveland City appeared on the computer screen as well as a constantly moving red dot.

Kiro: This is where Savin is now.

Kiro: Strange, how did he cover so much distance all at once….

Looking at the computer screen, the red dot seems to be moving along a certain fixed track.

I remembered what Savin said just now and I couldn’t believe it.

MC: Is he really on an unmanned train?

Kiro pursed his lips and quickly pulled up another webpage.

It’s the entire route map on the Loveland Rail Transit website.

Kiro: ….According to the route he is moving on now, it should be this one.

He tapped the screen with his finger and a more detailed train timetable and line chart enlarged on the screen.

This is a cross-river train which just opened last year that connects the east and west of Loveland City.

Because it’s famous for driving on the river surface for a certain distance, it attracts many locals and tourists.

In addition, after the opening of this route, detours on both sides of the river have been avoided, so it has become the best choice for many office workers to commute.

MC: Doesn’t Savin take this train to work…

Kiro: But MC, look.

My eyes followed his fingers on the latest operation notice and I quickly realized something wrong.

MC: “We are sorry to inform you that the cross-river air rail train in Loveland City will be suspended tomorrow for maintenance and overhaul….”

MC: ….In other words, someone started this car that was originally discontinued.

Although this idea is absurd, it seems to be the case.

Kiro thought for a moment and made a decision immediately.

Kiro: Let’s go to the scene and see.

Kiro called Ah Liu for help. After a while, Ah Liu, who was holding his head with hair sticking up everywhere, appeared in front of us with grievance.

Ah Liu: Can’t it stop for a day! I was taking a nap! I’m exhausted from having to do all this work for you! ***Changed some wording***

Having said that, Ah Liu kindly transported us to the platform where the train was about to appear.

There was no one on the deserted platform. We waited for a while and a rumbling sound came from the dark tunnel.

But the train passed the platform without stopping.

Every carriage is empty.

Kiro and I looked at each other and realized the situation.

In order to determine if there is a problem with the train, I tried to dial the service number of Loveland Rail Transit.

MC: Hello, is the Loveland City Air Rail Transit operating today?

Staff Member: Sorry, the train is not open today.

MC: May I ask the specific reason?

Staff Member: During our regular maintenance yesterday, we found that some track parts were aging and loose. In order to avoid the risk of derailment, the operation was stopped.

MC: Which station needs to be maintained?

Staff Member: Central Square Station, what’s wrong?

My heart sank.

The Central Square Station is the station where Kiro’s new song press conference was held, and the train track is also located directly above the square.

At the same time, it’s also the place with the most traffic in the afternoon.

If the train derails and falls, the consequences will be disastrous.

Is it a coincidence….?

MC: …Then, is it possible for the train to run by itself?

Staff Member: Are you kidding me? The driver did not go to work today and the door of the operating room was locked.

Staff Member: Please don’t disturb our work.

The “beep” sound of the phone hanging up echoed in my ears. Kiro and Ah Liu obviously also heard the content of the conversation, frowning.

Ah Liu: What’s next? Is this event going to be cancelled?

Ah Liu’s words suddenly reminded me.

That’s right! The anonymous call I received this morning—

I immediately found the call log and called back.

I waited with bated breath for a long time and just when I thought the other person wouldn’t pick up, the line connected.

No one spoke. Only quiet breathing.

MC: Hello, I’m the person in charge of the Inverted Smile Film and Television company that received your call this morning.

The sound of breathing continued on the other end.

Teenage Boy: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

MC: Like you said, we have indeed encountered some issues that affected the organization of the event.

MC: I want to know what the “consequence” you are talking about is exactly.

MC: Did you know what the inside story was before you made the warning call?

Teenage Boy: ….It’s too late!

MC: Are you—on an unmanned train?

The phone hung up with a “beep”.

Kiro: What happened?

Kiro cast a concerned look at me. I took a deep breath and quickly told him and Ah Liu what had happened this morning.

MC: I received a strange call this morning telling me to cancel the afternoon activities or else I will bear the consequences.

MC: I’m just guessing….if these two things are related, otherwise it would be a coincidence.

MC: However, although I was able to get through, the other person was unwilling to explain more and hung up.

Kiro thought for a moment, then turned to look at Ah Liu.

Kiro: Ah Liu, can you take us there?

Ah Liu: Where?

Kiro: To that train.

Kiro pointed to the red dot that was being tracked on the laptop.

Ah Liu: Bro, are you crazy?! Have you studied physics?***Changed some wording***

Kiro: Ah Liu, don’t forget the content of our contract.

Kiro winked, revealing an extremely brilliant but threatening smile.

Ah Liu had no choice but to grab our hands—

A dazzling white light flashed in front of us and when we regained our sight, we were already in the carriage.

The ground under my feet trembles as well as the glass on the windows.

MC: It really worked! Ah Liu, you’re so amazing!

We didn’t waste time as we looked along the carriage and finally found Savin who was unconscious on the ground.

Kiro hurriedly ran to him, shook Savin twice, and saw that he had no signs of waking up. He moved closer and opened his eyelids.

Kiro: Great, Savin is fine. He only passed out.

Kiro: But there must be someone else operating this train here. We must find this person.

Kiro and I looked at each other and realized that things are not that simple.

Ah Liu sent Savin to a safe place. After returning, the three of us continued to search along this weird train.

Finally, when we reached another carriage, we saw a teenage boy sitting in the corner.

MC: Are you trapped on this train too?

He suddenly raised his head, his face full of shock as if he didn’t expect that there would be people here.

His appearance made me feel a bit familiar.

I suddenly remembered that this was the boy who passed by me at the airport that day—

Why is he here? Did he…

MC: You’re the one who called me and asked me to cancel the event.

Teenage Boy: …You’re mistaken.

Hearing his voice, I became even more convinced.

MC: I’m not mistaken. We met at the airport too, didn’t we?

Teenage Boy: ….

The boy suddenly got up from the seat anxiously. His pale lips pressed tight and shoulders shook slightly.

Teenage Boy: This car will derail soon. If you don’t want to die, leave as soon as possible.

Teenage Boy: Don’t blame me for warning you—

A ripple was opened behind the boy and Ah Liu quickly restrain the boy’s arms.

Ah Liu: I got him. Let’s resolve this quickly.***Changed some wording***

Kiro: Thanks a lot.

Teenage Boy: Le-let go! You guys hate Evolvers!

Kiro: You’re also an Evolver, aren’t you?

Kiro: Although I don’t know what your Evol is, I’m guessing you started this train too, right?

Teenage Boy: You—!

Kiro: I command you—

Before Kiro finished speaking, the seat behind him was suddenly torn apart by an invisible power and flew toward us fast!

Kiro: Watch out!

Kiro rolled me to the corner of the carriage without hesitation and the ground where we were standing just now sank.

The glass on the window made a stronger sound and the speed of the train became faster than before.

All of a sudden, I remembered a few years ago I participated in the filming of “Miracle Finder” with the theme of a rare Evol, in which “magnetic field control” was featured.

At that time, we wanted to interview this child but his family rejected because it was too dangerous.

Perhaps…he was that same child.

MC: This child should be an Evolver of the magnetic field control class.

Kiro and Ah Liu both wrinkled their brows, realizing the tricky nature of the matter.

Every part of the train may be used by him as a weapon to attack us and we must avoid the possibility of any accident to the greatest extent.

Teenage Boy: I warned you, if you value your life, leave quickly!***Changed some wording***

MC: Don’t worry, we didn’t come because of you.

MC: Don’t you….like your Evol?

I tentatively took a step towards him, hoping this boy can lower his defense a little.

Teenage Boy: ….It’s none of your business.

A loud sound came from a distance as if something passed along the track from underneath.

The overhead is full of noise and the handrails that run through the carriage seem to be breaking inch by inch with the boy’s voice.

The sharp squeal of metal rubbing across our ears, it is about ot —

I didn’t have time to think about it, and I tried my best to grab the boy’s wrist.

In the next second, my vision suddenly plunged into darkness.

As if pressing a rewind button, the train and people in front of me kept falling backwards.

----I saw the boy’s memory.

[Buffer]

The mixed memory fragments slowly pieced together into a complete picture.

A teenage boy shivered endlessly while pulling a wet schoolbag. He cried as he picked up a book soaked with water.

Teenage Boy: If only I can become an Evolver, they won’t bully me….

Teenage Friend: Don’t be stupid, aren’t Evolvers born?

Teenage Friend: Wipe your tears away. I’ll copy today’s homework for you, okay?

The picture flickers and changes.

Teenage Boy: Ajian! (friend’s name I’m assuming) I’m also an Evolver! I won’t be bullied! The doctor said that my condition is quite normal. It may have been due to poor health which wasn’t detected before.

Teenage Friend: Wow, you’ll be super awesome in the future!

Teenage Boy: Hahaha, but I won’t be like those idiot bullies. They are too naïve!

The picture continued to change but I felt extremely angry and desperate.

??: Sorry, we cannot accept such a dangerous student in a class full of ordinary children….

??: Sorry, the residents of our community think that your child is too dangerous to live here….

??: I’m, I’m sorry…..Xiao Nan(boy’s name) your ability is terrible. We can no longer be friends.

The surrounding voices faded away, falling into a dead silence.

Teenage Boy: I don’t want to be an Evolver anymore. I don’t want to have this kind of power at all. I want to be an ordinary person….

In the large, hushed and silent gray space, the spiral staircase hovered down from the high roof, like a venomous snake lying dormant in the dark.

The light swayed from the long and narrow zenith. The boy raised his hand to block the light in front of him and took a step back subconsciously.

Teenage Boy: Excuse me….are there people here who don’t like Evol?

The teenager’s timid voice echoed in the building.

??: Come, child, don’t be afraid.

The man’s voice is very gentle but his whole body is hidden in the dark, making it difficult to see his face.

??: We understand your pain. There are many people like you here. We are victims of the same kind.

??: But you are different from us. You have the power to wipe out these sources of pain.

He stretched out his hand, like a predator in the depths of the cave waiting for its prey to be snatched-- luring the prey into the cave little by little.

The picture changed again, this time on a plane.

Not knowing what happened, the cabin shook violently.

The teenager sitting in the seat bit his lip and slowly stretched out his hand. His eyes fell on the closed operating room door.

My heart pounded and a familiar word came into my ears very clearly.

??: We rule Evol, for a better future of mankind.

--It’s GRAY RHINO!

My eyes snapped open. The blood from my whole body rushed to my head and I was abruptly flung back by a force.

The ground under my feet kept shuddering and the boy ran away towards the carriage in front of him.

MC: Wait!

The handrail above my head was suddenly torn off and came towards me. Kiro protected me.

Kiro: MC, are you okay?!

MC: GRAY RHINO….

I faintly uttered the name, and my heart filled with anger.

MC: I’m fine.

I propped myself up and quickly told Kiro and Ah Liu about what I saw.

MC: This accident….GRAY RHINO planned it all.

After hearing what I said, Kiro’s brows furrowed deeply and his expression became more serious.

Kiro: Did you…see his memory? Is this boy also a member of the anti-Evol organization?

I hesitated for a moment and shook my head.

MC: I didn’t see the same tattoo on his body so he’s only being used by the people from GRAY RHINO.

Just like the two special police officers who died in the Task Force.

MC: I’m guessing the previous plane incident was also their doing, but…

It was only after the boy used Evol that the shaking of the cabin seemed to lessen.

MC: Kiro, is this their revenge against the Evolver group?

Kiro nodded softly.

Kiro: Probably.

Kiro: Once this train derails, it will definitely cause serious casualties.

Kiro: This accident will also be concluded to be the work of an Evolver.

The train was speeding by, and the floor was bumping underfoot.

The sunlight reflected from the glass curtain wall illuminates the passing cars and I see a familiar building in the distance. My heart plummets.

There are not many stops to Central Square.

If this train isn’t stopped as soon as possible, it will crash into the crowd below.

MC: We have to find him quickly!

Kiro pulled me along the carriages but the young boy was still missing.

Just as I was about to lose hope, we opened the door of the first carriage and found the boy again.***Changed some wording***

He shrank in the corner of the carriage, like a light-sensitive animal.

Teenage Boy: Do-don’t come any closer!

The moment he saw us, the boy stood up and his body shook frantically.

Compared to the state he was before, his entire body seemed to express a sort of tight tension.

MC: Don’t get excited, we won’t hurt you. We’re—

Kiro: We’re here to be friends with you.

Kiro interrupted me altogether, walked over to the boy and sat down.

The unexpected behavior made Ah Liu and I stand still, speechless, but Kiro was very indifferent.

Teenage Boy: Do-don’t lie! I know you’re that star who was on social news before!

Kiro: Eh? Am I that troublesome?

Kiro immediately put on a melancholy expression.

Kiro: But since just now, I think your abilities are very powerful, just like the superheroes in the movies.

Kiro: So I really want to be friends with you.

A look of disbelief appeared on the boy’s face and he looked at Kiro uncertainly.***Changed some wording***

Teenage Boy: I’m not a hero. I have done a lot of wrong things and I don’t want to an Evolver at all.

His voice suddenly became low, as if thinking of something sad.

Teenage Boy: I just want to be an ordinary person with many friends so I won’t be bullied.

Teenage Boy: But after I found out that I had Evol, my life grew worse…

Ah Liu: Hey, I get you. I used to be laughed at and people said that my Evol can only be good for takeaway flash delivery.

Ah Liu: I’ve survived now and those days have gone by smoothly.

After what happened to Ah Liu, a look of surprise came across the boy’s face.

Kiro: When I was a child, I was also troubled by my Evol.

Kiro: Fortunately, I met a very good person. He taught me a lot of interesting skills and made me understand that there many wonderful things in this world.

When Kiro spoke, a ray of light flashed in his eyes. The person he’s talking about must be his master KEY.

Kiro: Those memories that make you unhappy, just lock them in the drawer.

MC: That’s right. People don’t have to be held back by the past all the time.

The boy hesitated for a moment, raised his head, looked at me uncertainly, and then at Kiro.

Teenage Boy: Can I….throw away this drawer key?

Kiro: You can put the key away and when you are brave enough, you can open it and face them. You won’t have to be afraid of anything.

Teenage Boy: But….you’re a superstar. Everyone likes you. How would you have difficulties like me?

Kiro: Before becoming a star, I was an ordinary, humble person.

Ah Liu: No way, I heard that you started shooting at the age of six—

MC: Ah Liu, no need to say so much!***Changed some wording***

As if not hearing our untimely interruption, Kiro turned his head and looked at the tear-stained teenager gently.

Kiro: In fact, whether someone is an Evolver or an ordinary person, they will find their own rightful place in this world to meet people who are in the same position.

Kiro: But before that, there may be a long wait and trials.

Kiro: Perhaps the opportunity that belongs to you has not had time to appear so you will have to be more patient.

Teenage Boy: Really?

Kiro: Really.

Ah Liu and I nodded repeatedly.

As soon as he finished speaking, the bright light poured into the window, making people unable to close their eyes.

The two sides of the window flashed past the cantilever metal structure of the bridge. The neighboring river’s surface and the buildings bathed in golden light suddenly came into view.

Kiro: You see, through the dark tunnel just now, you can see the light all at once.

The boy’s face became paler but his voice became firmer.

Teenage Boy: I will give it a try.

Great! Seeing the boy finally change his mind, I was a little relieved.

He tried to use Evol to control the train. Even though the speed was significantly lower than before, the train did not stop.

Teenage Boy: I, I can’t do it. I’m almost out of strength…

A sharp grinding sound scraped along the wall and the train sped past, even furiously shaking the handrails on the roof.

My heart seized in my chest.

Teenage Boy: It’s too late….I did something irreparably wrong…

Teenage Boy: I, I shouldn’t have listened to that man….I don’t want to hurt anyone….

Teenage Boy: I’m sorry, I’m sorry….

The young boy looked at his palm with a blank look and couldn’t help crying.

Kiro: Now, look into my eyes.

Kiro unquestionably pulled his shoulders, letting the boy look directly at him.

Kiro: I command you, stop this car!

A golden light blazed in his eyes and it seemed to have the power to stir people’s hearts.

The train slowly stopped and the sharp friction between the carriages and the rails gradually subsided.

The boy softened and sat on the ground, staring at the scenery frozen outside the window.

Teenage Boy: It really stopped….

The train had stopped in the middle of the cross-river track and the shimmering water’s surface reflected a hazy light on the window glass.

Kiro showed a relieved expression, with fine beads of sweat oozing from his forehead. Ah Liu was also obviously relieved.

Seeing my nervousness, Kiro gently squeezed the palm of my hand.

Teenage Boy: I’m sorry. I have always been a cowardly person.

The young boy suddenly apologized as if he had mustered up a lot of courage.

Teenage Boy: I was afraid to face it so I chose to escape in the way I hated most. I will definitely try to make myself stronger in the future!

Kiro patted the boy’s shoulder lightly, showing an encouraging smile.

Kiro: Mn, I believe you.

Before we had time to be happy, there was a sudden recoil.

The train that had just stopped suddenly moved forward again!

-End of Chapter 8-

Continue to Chapter 9 Part 1

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readbyred · 4 years ago

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“Pathetic” Ted Spankoffski x Reader

a gender neutral, reverse hurt/comfort fic

warnings: cursing; mild sexual comments; a very tired dyslectic author

Lately, things haven’t been going so well for Ted. Charlotte broke things off for good and it was far from pretty, the atmosphere was crushing to be honest. And so with time he latched onto Paul more and more, using his best friend as a distraction from his own life and failiures. Unfortunately his companion seemed to be a bit distracted and not very eager to spend time, at least less so than usually. Ted pinned the fault on a crush of his, Emma, one of the baristas at a nearby caffee. She was hot and would be great if onyl she didn’t speak, or at least that’s what he told Paul. His friend didn’t seem to agree for some reason. But that’s how it was, in Ted’s opinion. She always got offended for so many small things and tried to make him out to be the bad guy of every confrontation. But it wasn’t Ted’s fault that their uniform shorts were so short and besides one or two comments were just a given considering how good her and her coworkers looked in them. But she always had something to say, a name to call him or even a complaint to make, if her boss was around. But even then it was all fun and games. Until one day it wasn’t.

It all started “innocently” as he considered it. He spotted Paul using the stairs on the opposide side of the building. Some time ago his friend had stopped using the ones by Ted’s office, for one reason or another. And so they made their way together, Ted trying to get some information out of him as to how things with Emma were. Finally after a conversation more painful than pulling teeth Paul announced that he was going to ask Emma out. It was a big step and it surprised Ted but after some teasing he promised not to blow this. So far so good and it wasn’t until they stood in the line, inside the cafe, that it went downhill.

It was meant to be a harmless comment, he knew Emma found them at least a bit funny too, for sure. Nothing bad, he just asked whet else could she do for a tip if she didn’t want to sing. She already looked very annoyed, he never expected her to appreciate his humour and so he nudged Paul saying that he might give her a different tip if she didn’t want his money. That, for reasons unknown to Ted, crossed the line and Emma whipped around to face them frustrated. She turned to Paul to announce that although she liked him around if his friend was going “to come around only to be a gross creep” then they might as well just go to starbucks instead, since she “didn't go to this shitty job to get harassed”

Ted didn’t even get to say that technically, he wasn’t doing anything wrong because Paul who was now done with awkwardly apologizing to his very pissed off crush, dragged him out of the Beanies, furious. They didn’t talk and to be honest Ted started to feel a bit anxious inside, like a child feels when they tip off their parent in public and know what will await them home.

But that was just how he was! A sleazeball, a jerk, a horny bastard at best. He didn’t want to accept that same persona that was now basically his whole self could have gotten him in trouble with his best friend. And he was never a fan of feeling guilty in general so as soon as he realised that Paul wasn’t going to address it he turned to the first person that asked what happened.

It was Bill who questioned the situation first and although he asked Paul what was up the younger man seemed not to be in the mood to talk and so there was Ted, ready to offer his, very objective, point of view. Leaning on the wall of Bill’s cubicle he announced, trying to sound like he didn't care that he obviously did something bad.

“His grumpy barista got pissed for no reason” chuckling nervously he exclaimed glancing over at Paul working on his computer and ignoring him “it’s not my fault she’s so stiff, alright? And there are many more girls than her, it’s her loss, ey?”

No response. Bill seemed to glance at Paul pitifully.

“Oh, come on! You can do better anyways! And as your best friend I-”

“Can you shut up?” Paul didn’t raise his voice but he as well might have, the tone he was using was way worse. He fully turned to face his older coworker, and for a very long time in a while Ted was, in fact quiet. As he spoke however he became more visibly frustrated “Can you finally stop following me around when I don’t want to be followed, trying to insert yourself into EVERY conversation i have and ruining everything with your gross comments? Why can’t you take the hint? We are not friends, you- you’re just this guy, a guy from work that’s just there when no one wants him to and is just too... pathetic for anyone to directly tell him that''

Ted’s face went blank as Paul let out his years worth of frustrations.

Ted often heard those words. “Pathetic” yes, he was familiar with the term more than anyone. It was alongside such titles as “annoying” “sad” “lonely” “disposable” “a nobody” something he heard often. Sometimes from Sylvia who worked on the top floor and had no real fun qualities besides looking hot (in his opinion). Other times from Emma who would be a decent friend if she wasn't so annoyingly ‘horny for Paul’.

Most of the time he said them himself though. It was normal, you know. A truth he accepted without any brooding except for those lonely nights in his apartment where he drank and let his emotions out. But it hurt no less to hear such remarks be thrown at him from someone like Paul. Someone who, despite his flaws seemed to be genuinely liked by people around him and wanted around. But if Paul wasn't his friend did he have anyone else at all? Not only in his job but in general. After all he didn’t have much besides his work life.

In his youth he was a nerdy little kid that quickly bloomed into a bitter, insecure adult, no magical glow up or ‘it gets better after high school” crap. When he got this job sometime after college, still a mess after that happened a few autumns earlier, he thought he found his place.

Even if he never felt very wanted he liked it here a lot. Only now had he realized he might have been the only one to see it as such. Was he just as sad as everyone apparently saw him as?

That moment made him way too conscious of his own existence and choices, it was no longer a matter of convincing himself that it's all in his head now that the truth was out and clear, the words hanging in the heavy air seemingly for the whole world to see.

And to be fair he had no arguments against the claim, because how sad that was to consider his coworkers, coworkers that apparently hated his guts, the closest people he had?

Because sure, Bill was stiff and boring but there was a certain dose of fun in their usual banter. Sylvia always knew all the gossip from the office and wasn’t all that bad at times. Melissa was always fun to hang around and even brought him lunch on a few ocassions. Even the intern that joined merely two months before, (Y/n), was someone he accepted as a friend. Not to mention Paul and Charlotte, two of the closest people he had, both of which didn’t want him around. And from what Paul said no one else did either. He had no reason not to believe it.

It took him only a few seconds to get it together when Paul finished.Ted always had a habit of getting very obviously defensive when his ego was hurt.

“Okay, whatever!” he shrugged angrily “Well, it’s not your problem then! I know when I’m not wanted”

He made his way to his office, away from Paul and Bill and all those people who he considered to be his friends.

The whole day was a bit messy, ever since (Y/n)’s foot stepped into the office they were sent on endless errands by their superior, Mr Davidson. Whatever happened up above in the chain it created one hell of a mess in the documents and so (Y/n) along with Melissa were the busiest they’ve been in a while.

Hence when they finally found time to get some well deserved coffee most of their friends were on their way back to CCRP.

That led to a lot of confusion when after stepping onto their floor they were met with an unusually tense atmosphere. They must have missed something important, they thought.

It wasn’t a long time ago when they joined the team and they never felt like the new person they were and all the efforts at staying purely professional faded with first friendships. And as much as they tried to,they became fond of their coworkers quickly. And so the current mood around them concerned (Y/n).

This wasn’t snooping around, they told themselves approaching Bill to ask what was up. He was a nice man, older than them and equally unskilled in the tech field but overall a very sweet man. If there was something to be concerned about he’d tell them for sure.

The day was almost over, one hour was left until Ted could go home and drink himself to sleep. But for now he just sat in his chair, staring blankly on the screen of his computer displaying a familiar black and orange webpage he was unusually uninterested in, mindlessly squishing his old and used up stress ball. The busiest hours were over and all files seemed to finally be back in place and safe and so he didn’t have much more to keep himself busy with.

He was angry, upset and hurt. Already keeping so many negative emotions inside, those new ones threatened to spill over the edges of the walls he built over the years but so far he managed to keep it together as much as he could.

And that’s when someone knocked on his door.

“What?” he sounded just like he felt, his own voice betraying him greatly. The person on the other side must’ve taken it as an invitation because soon they revealed themselves to be (Y/n). It wasn’t the last person he wanted to see, sure, but it was only because he didn’t want to see any of them equally. Maybe Paul a bit more than the rest “What do you want?”

“I heard what happened and-” they began, watching him carefully. Ted felt even more miserable under their gaze, truly pathetic and judged with his emotions on display. But there was no more space left for him to push them further down and ignore.

“Great, you came here to tell me how much you hate me too, or what?” he scoffed giving them a bitter look “Because I ‘acted like an asshole’?”

“You did from what I know” they responded. It wasn’t something he didn’t expected to hear but he felt even worse hearing it come from (Y/n). They were someone he had his eyes on for some time but never got to try anything. First, because he was with Charlotte and, as much of a jerk as he considered himself to be, he would never forgive himself for being just like Sam. Later when she ended things it was just too painful to jump back into ‘his game’ as he called it. As he always believed, he wasn’t able to fall in love. He did so once in college and never again. It was easier to believe than to face his fear of rejection and not being enough again. Sure, he didn’t exactly love (Y/n) and even if he could do it at all he probably wouldn't, knowing them for two or three months tops. Those sorts of feelings though, weren’t distant at all and their arrival was, at this point, almost inevitable. And so to hear them stand against him, even if rightfully so, hit him in a way he never anticipated. Hence his confused expression when they added “But I came here to check on you, you’ve been locked in here awfully long...”

“I was busy” he barked back quickly returning to his defensive tone. They sometimes asked him things like this one for no apparent reason as to why would they want to know that. He never fully gave in, only sometimes in passing throwing one or two passive-aggressive remarks referring to his situation with Charlotte and such.

“Bullshit” they raised their eyebrows looking down at him. If it wasn’t for the fact he felt anything but up for joking he’d point out how unusual it was to hear them curse. Unamused they added, awaiting his response “Your screen reflects on the glass behind you. So?”

“’So’ you can leave” with Paul’s words still vividly playing in his head he avoided their gaze. The possibility that they thought of him so lowly seeming very overbearing and terrible all of a sudden “I’m fine, alright? So what else you came here for”

“You know acting like this never worked on me, right?” they took the seat opposite to him, still acting very unbothered by his aggressive demeanour, maybe a bit impatient.

“And why do you even want to know that, huh? I mean really, (Y/n), I know you’re new around here but you really don’t have to kiss ass to-”

“Get over yourself, will you? If you’d like to know I was worried” their frown was gone almost as soon as it appeared as they went one, seemingly letting their words fall from their mouth freely “And yeah! You cross many lines, I’m not surprised Emma was mad, whatever you said to her. But you’re still someone I care about, as a person. And you’re not that bad most of the time, you know?”

“If you really want to have a place to stay over the weekend it wouldn’t hurt to ask more nicely, you know” Ted jumped between acts and masks, desperate to find one strong enough to hide whatever that was that made his expression soften.

“Look, I came here on my own but if you want things to go back to how they were you’ll really need to drop the act” they sighed, gaining a bit more of a serious tone.

“And you tell me that? It was Paul who decided to call me a lonely pathetic asshole” Ted knew well only one of those things actually came from Paul but if there was even the smallest possibility to have someone disagree with what he and others thought of him he’d gladly take it, even if it wouldn’t be honest. But what was more pathetic than fishing for a surely insincere ‘oh no, you’re not!’?

“And he regretted it right after, I spoke to him, really. I’m not going to try to make you shake each other’s hands and apologize, you can do that on your own if you want to. I’m just saying you both screwed up, there isn’t one person to blame”

“Okay, (Y/n)” he sighed “That’s cool of you to try and be moral like that but I don’t need to talk or make up with anyone so you either want to cheer me up my way or you can get back to work”

He let his eyes travel up and down their body freely, assured by their earlier statements and a bit relieved that they didn’t share Paul’s opinion. He looked back up when they stood up, torning to the door. Just before he could mentally curse himself out for ruining it they stopped.

“Tell you what, it’s Friday. I’ll make something up to get out of softball practice and we can go grab a drink” they said grabbing the doorknob “That’s the closest I’ll get to doing it ‘your way’. What do you say?”

“Wait really?” it was rare to see him truly surprised like that but it was the last thing he was expecting to come from them.

“Yeah, I can show you a cool place” they smiled walking out and turning back for the last time “come by my desk in an hour and we’ll be good to go”

The door closed leaving him alone again in a much brighter office.

Ted felt a small smile form on his face, a geniuine one too. Things were awful and he didn’t even want to think about how (Y/n) made him feel or how awkward things were going to be in the office from now on. But even if nothing was alright yet, it seemed that he was getting a bit closer to ‘okay’ and that was more than enough.

tag list:

@stopgettingonmynerves

@joeycupcakerichter

#tgwdlm #tgwdlm x reader #ted spankoffski x reader #tgwdlm ted x reader #i need sleep #tgwdlm ted #x reader

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tiramisiyu · 4 years ago

Text

【未定事件簿】 Tears of Themis: Xia Yan’s Personal Story 3-8 Translation

Translation Masterlist | Xia Yan Masterlist | Video

Translated Chapter 3: 3-1 / 3-2 / 3-3 / 3-4 / 3-6 / 3-7 / 3-8 / 3-10 / 3-11 / 3-12 / 3-14

See below cut!

Home

The next day, Xia Yan and I examined the version of the video with no deletions that Tian Xin left for us yesterday.

Xia Yan: The contents of the video with deletions involve four locations: the Stellis Major Bridge, Jinlan Street, Yunxia Mountain, and the Stellis port. And the same person has appeared at these four locations.

As he spoke, Xia Yan pointed at a person wearing leather in the video. He looked to be around 27-28 years old, his hair had highlights, and his clothes were very punk.

MC: This person is…?

Xia Yan: Meng Qishan, a detective who resigned from the profession half a year ago.

Xia Yan tapped open the document he organized before on resigned detectives, then scrolled to the column with information on Meng Qishan.

Xia Yan: Meng Qishan entered the detective profession four years ago. Ever since he entered the profession, his reputation has always been bad. Based on my investigations, he would often use grey or even illegal methods to help his commissioners achieve their objectives.

MC: Grey or even illegal methods?

Xia Yan: The main focus of Meng Qishan’s work was marital status investigations, whereabouts investigations, and background investigations. Based on principle, a detective’s investigation should seek the truth from facts. But Meng Qishan’s investigations revolved around the commissioner’s requirements.

Xia Yan: For example, if a husband and wife’s relations have broken down and they want to divorce, they would typically need to split up their wealth and properties.

Xia Yan: But some want to give less or give nothing the other person, and lessen the other person’s pestering, so they’ll hire a detective to find evidence that they have had an affair. If the other person has not had an affair, some commissioners will require the detective to “create” evidence that the other person has had an affair.

MC: So they’ll use special angles to take very ambiguous shots of typical friend meetups, meals, and accidental encounters, right?

MC: I’ve received cases like this. One side used these kinds of photos to threaten the other side, threatening to not agree to the divorce, wanting to have the other person’s reputation utterly ruined.

Xia Yan: That’s right. Meng Qishan is that kind of detective.

MC: Has no one noticed it if he does this kind of thing all the time?

Xia Yan: They have. Not only has he been noticed, he’s even been sued, but because of insufficient evidence, the prosecution was withdrawn.

Xia Yan: Meng Qishan has a good understanding of the law. He’s very skilled at wandering on the boundaries of law, and he does things that are hard to collect evidence for investigation.

I sighed. These are the so-called people that prove that “criminals who understand the law are more frightening”.

MC: Why did he resign from the profession?

Xia Yan: Because a major scandal broke out, and he offended a client. Half a year ago, he received a commission from a corporation’s senior executive to create evidence that the executive’s wife had an affair. Meng Qishan took photos of the executive’s wife entering a hotel with some male.

Xia Yan: But in court, facing the photos that the executive flung out, the wife testified that the male was her own distantly-related male cousin. No one knew of it because they rarely interacted. The wife used this to harshly recriminate the husband, saying that he defamed her wantonly for the purpose of divorce.

Xia Yan: This matter embarrassed that executive terribly, and his future at the company was also affected.

MC: So Meng Qishan offended his client because of this, right?

Xia Yan: That’s right. This case raised a big fuss, so he vanished without a trace from the detective circles.

So there was a hidden story like this behind the matter.

MC: But why would he appear in this video? Is he related to Sphinx?

Xia Yan: At first glance, there is no relation. But I feel like that wife’s male cousin, as well as the timing and location at which he appeared are somewhat too perfect. It’s like someone deliberately set this up to have Meng Qishan misunderstand and make this kind of mistake.

Xia Yan: “There is inevitability behind all coincidences.”

Xia Yan: I believe that the riddles are just pretenses. There might be another reason behind Sphinx forcing the detectives to resign.

I couldn’t help but remember the opinion Xia Yan had voiced before on Sphinx being like a “vigilante”.

MC: If it’s like what you said before, Sphinx is punishing detectives who behave badly on the regular. Why those detectives who were defeated by him treat this like a matter that has to be kept secret would make a lot of sense.

MC: But you aren’t a bad detective. Why did Sphinx issue a challenge to you? Plus, the riddles he gave you aren’t typical reasoning-based riddles.

MC: This is too weird…

Xia Yan: Mm… I’m guessing that he has other intentions with me. Such as, since I’m the best detective in Stellis City, he’s itching to figure out who’s relatively superior.

MC: … Sure, this reason makes a lot of sense.

Xia Yan: Alright alright, let’s discuss the questions between Sphinx and me later. Let’s continue analyzing this Meng Qishan.

I nodded, turning my gaze back towards Meng Qishan, who was following Tian Xin in the video.

MC: “ɸ” had Tian Xin shoot Meng Qishan in the video, then wanted Tian Xin to delete it – why?

Xia Yan: For this, we’ll have to wait until we find Meng Qishan to find out.

MC: But Stellis City is so large – how should we find him?

MC: Could you be planning to use your privileges to get the police station’s resident data?

Xia Yan: No need. Actually, the video has already given us a hint.

Xia Yan adjusted the video progress back to the place where that person appeared first.

Xia Yan: He’s carrying a shopping bag in his hand, there aren’t many things in it, and they’re all daily necessities. Thus, this place is very close to where he lives. We can use the supermarket on the shopping bag as the centre to draw a circle with a radius of five kilometres.

MC: Five kilometres?

Xia Yan: The scope of a person’s daily activities is three kilometres, but since the location this time isn’t precise enough, I’ve expanded it to five kilometres.

As he spoke, he drew a large circle on the map, using the supermarket as the centre.

Xia Yan: In livestream, the three drawings hinting at Sphinx’s riddle all had the “ɸ” symbol. I’m guessing that this is the information point that the person who set up this matter wants to convey.

MC: Are there any places in Stellis City whose names are related to this character?

Xia Yan did a search on the computer.

Xia Yan: There isn’t – the relation probably won’t be this direct.

Xia Yan: “ɸ” is the 21st letter in the Greek alphabet. It has different meanings in math, physics, and engineering. Magnetic flux, focal strength, Euler’s formula… which meaning is it hinting at…

MC: The “ɸ” was on the drawings. Could it have something to do with the drawings?

Xia Yan: The drawings? Places where “ɸ” can be linked to the drawings…

Xia Yan and I sunk into deep thought for a moment. I looked again at those three drawings hinting at Sphinx’s riddle, each drawing’s composition very well-balanced.

MC: Ah! Xia Yan, could it be the golden ratio!

MC: Look, the compositions of these drawings all use the golden ratio method.

Xia Yan: So that’s how it was - “ɸ” also means the golden ratio in math. The approximate value, using the first three digits, of the golden ratio is 0.618.

I looked for a place relating to 0.618 in the circle indicated by Xia Yan.

MC: A rest station, Yuelai Hotel, Nautilus Bar – these three places’ addresses all include 618. Should we check out each one?

Xia Yan: No, it probably is this place – Nautilus Bar. The cross-section of the spiral of a nautilus’ shell indicates the Fibonacci Sequence, while the ratios of the sequential numbers in the Fibonacci Sequence approach the golden ratio without limit.

MC: So that’s how it was.

Xia Yan looked at Nautilus Bar on the map and frowned slightly.

Xia Yan: Do you still remember how I said last night that I can track Tian Xin’s whereabouts using his phone signal position?

MC: I remember. What’s the matter?

Xia Yan: I just checked Tian Xin’s movement route for today. Ever since a few hours ago, he’s been hovering near Nautilus Bar.

Xia Yan tapped at the keyboard as he spoke. The map immediately displayed a red route line – Tian Xin’s movement route. Just as Xia Yan said, he’d been moving around near Nautilus Bar the whole time.

MC: Could he also be investigating the clues left by “ɸ”?

[Flashback]

Tian Xin: Jeez, this guy. If you’re going to help someone, help them out until the end.

Tian Xin: He clearly had some reasoning methods, but he refused to help me design the riddles. My reasoning is really crappy. Otherwise… Sphinx’s riddles wouldn’t need to be designed that crappily… After that set of videos, people kept spewing hate at me…

[Flashback end]

MC: He clearly kept complaining yesterday about how his reasoning ability was very bad. He shouldn’t have been able to figure out the riddle this fast… Right, is there any overlap between the interpersonal relationships of Tian Xin and Meng Qishan?

Xia Yan: Wait a bit – checking now.

Xia Yan tapped quickly on the keyboard, different webpages popping up and shifting back and forth on the screen. A few minutes later, he stopped.

Xia Yan: Found it – there is indeed one point of overlap. I told you earlier that Meng Qishan received a commission from a senior executive client, to create fake evidence and slander his wife for having an affair.

MC: Mhmm, in this case, Meng Qishan just might have lost all face due to something relating to Sphinx.

Xia Yan: The overlap of Meng Qishan’s and Tian Xin’s interpersonal relations is in this case. The wife of that executive has a blood-related little sister named Han Feifei. She and Tian Xin are childhood friends.

MC: Eh?

Xia Yan showed the information he just found to me. On the social platform, there were a lot of duo pictures of the executive’s wife with her little sister, Han Feifei, as well as duo pictures of Han Feifei and Tian Xin.

MC: Thus, the reason why Tian Xin would investigate Meng Qishan and Sphinx might be this.

Xia Yan: Tian Xin must still be hiding a lot from us.

MC: These hidden things might also be related to Sphinx’s clues.

Xia Yan: …

Xia Yan: Regardless of if it’s for Tian Xin, Meng Qishan or Sphinx, we have to make a trip down to Nautilus Bar.

#tears of themis #tears of themis translations #weiding shijian bu #xia yan #未定事件簿 #夏彦 #tot translation

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sams-sass · 5 years ago

Text

Hear Me

Hi! Here is something I thought of and wanted to write down for you guys. Thanks for all the love!

GIF not mine.

Summary: The case leads for Sam and Dean to find something out about you as Dean realizes something of his own.

Characters: You, Sam, Dean

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Warnings: None really, show level violence

You, Sam, and Dean busted back into the motel room. You had spent the whole day looking into the lives of the victims and couldn’t come up with a single connection. Without a connection, there really wasn’t much to go on. All of the victims were female and had their throats slit and vocal cords removed. Other than that, they really had nothing in common. Different jobs, friends, ages, races, everything basically. You, Sam, and Dean had split up and gone to all the houses, it was a long day of listening to sad stories. You sat down on the bed as Dean handed you and Sam a beer before cracking one of his own.

“Maybe this isn’t a monster. Maybe its just a bad person doing a bad thing.” Sam said after taking a long drag from his beer.

“I don’t know, man. The lack of evidence, the stealing of the larynx specifically, the way the bodies were just tossed and not cared about. Seems pretty monstery to me.” Dean said back, his tone unsure.

“Sorry, Sammy, but I gotta go with Dean on this one. After leaving 7 bodies behind and not leaving a trace of evidence, especially since it could care less about the victims. It seems too lucky to be a human.” You weighed in coming to stand next to Sam.

“Alright so, lets go over it again. Dean, what did you find out about Beth?” Sam asked.

“Nothing man, she was a good girl. She wanted to be a scientist, she was studying physics, she had a boyfriend, craziest thing she did was sing karaoke at the local bar on Thursdays with friends.” Dean answered.

“Wait, she sang karaoke?” You asked looking up at him.

“Yeah, friend said she was good and that she loved to sing. What does that have to do with anything?” Dean asked giving you a confused look.

“The two girls I asked about, Jen and Grace. They were both singers too. Jen was a lot more professional taking gigs at bars, but she was also older. Grace was in her church choir. I didn’t think anything of it because a lot of people sing.” You answered

“Wait, my two were also singers. Hannah and Wendy both sang whenever they could. I didn’t think anything of it because what monster cares about singing.” Sam said nodding.

“Yeah….yeah the other two I asked about, uh Kelly and Dana they sang too. I ruled it out as a coincidence for same reason as Sam, what monster cares?” Dean agreed with the two of you.

“Holy….jackpot.” Sam said staring at his computer.

“What?” You and Dean said at the same time.

“There is a charity benefit concert thing coming up on Saturday, locally, and 4 out of our 7 victims were registered to be in it.” Sam said looking at the two of you, turning his computer so you could see.

“Well, that’s not a coincidence.” You said looking over the webpage.

“No, its not.” Dean shook his head next to you.

“This is a problem.” You sighed standing up straight.

“What is?” Dean asked.

“Every girl who is still registered is in danger. I think we need to be backstage.” You said letting your hip rest against the counter and crossing your arms.

“So what your saying is…we need a girl who can sing to go undercover for us.” Sam said raising one eyebrow and tilting his head in your direction.

“Concerts two days away.” You answered looking away, deep in thought. “I’ll sneak in the back and pretend to be a contestant. That way I can keep an eye on all of the girls and also feed you guys information as you’re in the audience.”

“You can’t sing….what if you have to sing?” Dead was confused, eyebrows furrowed.

“I can sing, I just don’t randomly sing in front of people.” You explained. “Now, if you will excuse me. I have some shopping to do and you guys have some tux’s to look into.”

“Tux?!” Dean said, eyes wide.

“Did you not read the part where it said it was a black tie affair?” You said grabbing your purse and heading for the door. You had seen a little boutique on your way in and knew they would have a dress for you. “Peace.” You said giving them a smile as the door closed behind you. You walked to the boutique to find a woman with a friendly face and a large smile. She helped you choose several dresses that you tried on. You found the one. It was a gown that hugged your curves and let loose where you wanted it too. It was a classic dress. You bought it and walked out of the store happy.

The next day the three of you devised a plan. Dean got a hold of the blueprints for the building and you two created a plan on the best way for you to sneak in. You then helped Sam to research on what this monster could be.

“Oh my god…” You said looking at the webpage in front of you. “Well, goddess to be correct.”

“Goddess? What goddess?” Dean asked coming to stand behind you. He put his arms on the chair and leaned down. You could feel his breath on your skin, it was a slight distraction.

“Aoede, the goddess of voice and song. She was one of the original muses in Greek mythology. Said to collect voices of true song from those she deemed worthy.” You said reading from the page.

“Great. Another goddess.” Dean said pinching the bridge of his nose.

“How do we kill her?” Sam asked.

“According to this her only weakness is a gold blade dipped in the blood of a virgin.” You sighed, looking up at the ceiling.

“Why do these things like virgins so much?” Dean spread his arms out, annoyance on his handsome face.

“Don’t know.” Sam said shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders.

“I have a crazy idea.” You said biting your lower lip. “Well, out of the three of us, I have definitely had the least amount of sex. So, what about if we purify my blood and give it a shot?”

“It could work.” Dean said tilting his head to the side and raising his hands in a “whatever” gesture.

“I mean if it doesn’t we’re screwed….but we’re always screwed and I don’t have a better idea so, alright.” Sam said placing his hands on his shoulder and looking into your eyes as you smiled up at him.

The next day you spent getting ready, the concert started at 7 and you were nervous. You hadn’t sung in years and you picked a big song. You dressed in black slacks and a white button down with a black vest over it. You went to the concert hall two hours early and snuck in the back door. You waited for other staff members begin to arrive, then you quietly walked into the room and stood with the rest of the cocktail waiters and waitresses. People began to arrive and fill the room, you slipped away and grabbed your backpack out of the bathroom stall you locked it in and walked in the back towards the dressing rooms. You found an empty one and locked the door. You curled your hair and pinned one side back letting the others fall. You went for a bold makeup look, a dark smokey eye and bold red lips. Taking the gold jewelry that you kept from your previous life before you became a hunter, you added a necklace, earrings, and a bracelet. Then you slipped on your new dress and heels and opened the door as other contestants began to fill the halls. You needed to be quick to get to the band before people started taking their seats. You walked to the back and found the head of music, identifying him from the website you and Sam looked over. You quietly slipped him a 50 and whispered the song into his ear, placing your hand on his chest and looking up at him from your eyelashes. He nodded and licked his lips, letting his eyes linger on you for too long. You walked to the back of the stage with the other girls and waited.

People were now taking their seats as Sam and Dean looked around the room trying to find the seat with the best view to see the crowd. They walked to the back and took seats directly in the middle, looking around the room.

“Man, I hate wearing this thing.” Dean said tugging on his collar slightly. “I look like a penguin.” Sam smirked and looked at the crowd. The first few people came out and sang, they were all good, but neither Sam or Dean saw a reaction in the audience. Then you came on stage. Dean sat a little straighter in his chair as his stomach flipped. You were radiant, your dress was tight and showed off your figure. Your red lips were turned into a small smile as your heels clicked against the floor. The music started and Dean couldn’t look at anything but you. Your mouth opened and Dean heard the sound that suddenly made everything make sense.

Share my life, take me for what I am 'Cause I'll never change all my colors for you

Take my love, I'll never ask for too much Just all that you are and everything that you do

“Did you know she could sing like that?” Sam asked leaning in closer. Dean couldn’t form words at the moment so he just shook his head. I don't really need to look very much further I don't wanna have to go where you don't follow I won't hold it back again, this passion inside Can't run from myself There's nowhere to hide Don't make me close one more door I don't wanna hurt anymore Stay in my arms if you dare Or must I imagine you there Don't walk away from me... I have nothing, nothing, nothing If I don't have you

Your body was swaying along with the song and Dean couldn’t pull his eyes away, he was pretty sure he didn’t even blink. Dean was sitting there, mind swirling with images of you, quickly realizing he has been in love with you for years. Of course there was the playful flirting and smiles but this was something new. This feeling in his chest was growing in him and he couldn’t breathe. His arms were planted firmly on his thighs, holding him up. His green eyes gazing at you in a new light. You see through right to the heart of me You break down my walls with the strength of your love I never knew love like I've known it with you Will a memory survive, one I can hold on to I don't really need to look very much further I don't wanna have to go where you don't follow I won't hold it back again, this passion inside I can't run from myself There's nowhere to hide Your love I'll remember forever Don't make me close one more door I don't wanna hurt anymore Stay in my arms if you dare Or must I imagine you there Don't walk away from me... I have nothing, nothing, nothing...

You spread your arms out wide and looked through the whole audience. Dean knew you couldn’t see him, but God all he wanted was for you to look directly at him. His whole body was on fire and you were the only medicine. Don't make me close one more door I don't wanna hurt anymore Stay in my arms if you dare Or must I imagine you there Don't walk away from me, no Don't walk away from me Don't you dare walk away from me I have nothing, nothing, nothing If I don't have you

The entire audience was silent after you sang your final note before an eruption of applause surged through the crowd. People stood as they continued to clap, you took a small bow and waved as you walked off the stage. The trance Dean was in broke as Sam hit him in the chest lightly, getting his attention.

“Dude, black dress three o’clock.” Dean looked to where his brother was pointing, a woman with long auburn hair was exiting her row and heading for the backstage hallway. The two hurried from their seats and followed after her. When they walked into the hallway you were standing there, waiting.

“I saw her come this way.” You said as the brothers approached you. As soon as the words left your mouth Sam went flying towards the wall. Dean turned and grabbed his gold knife with your blood on it from the back of his pants. The woman walked out of the darkness and into the light. She was stunning. She had long auburn hair that cascaded in a waterfall of waves down her back, her eyes were a shining royal blue and her skin was a rich almond color with not a trace of impurities. As the two of you looked at her she waved her hand and Dean also went flying. Sam got up and charged at her with his knife, she quickly walked towards all of you and rammed Sam back to the ground.

“I just want your voice.” She said to you.

“Sorry, sis.” You said before you too were slammed into the wall. Dean charged at her and was able to land one blow in before she flung him across the room again. You tried to get up but couldn’t, there was something holding you to the ground. She continued to toss the boys around as you struggled against her hold. She pinned Dean to the ground and was holding her hand up, ready to strike when her head flung back as the gold blade entered her chest. She screamed loud and high, a light came from her chest and she burst into a ball of light that slowly dissipated. You stood there with the gold knife in your hand, panting slightly.

“Thanks, Y/N/N.” Dean said as Sam helped him to his feet. You nodded and the three of you quickly ran out the back door, someone must have heard something and was going to come and look. You all walked into the motel and Sam was the first to talk.

“So, Y/N.” Here we go. “Why didn’t you tell us you could sing like that?” He asked undoing his bowtie.

“What was I supposed to do? Be like oh, by the way guys: I’m a really good singer? Good morning, I can sing my little heart out, side note.” Sam laughed with you as you giggled.

“You’re amazing, Y/N.” Dean said, there was no joking in his face as he looked into your eyes.

“Thank you.” You tucked a stray piece of hair behind your ear as you looked down and smiled, feeling shy. You licked you lips. “Hey, mind if I take the first shower?” You asked. Both boys said you could take it and you quickly stepped out of your heels. Undressing and getting under the warm water felt really good, it is always fun to dress up now and again, but you enjoyed sweat pants a little more. As the makeup washed off your face and the curls were rinsed from your hair you thought about Dean. He looked so good tonight in his tux and for a few moments you could have sworn he was staring. Your crush on him had been brewing for a long time and you didn’t know how much longer you could hold it in. How many more times could you see him pick up some girl who smelt like 5 dollar perfume? How many more times could you have him wink at you or kiss you on the head and not reciprocate? How many more times could you ignore the dance your insides did when he looked at you like he was tonight? You shook all thoughts from your head and got out of the shower, putting on sweat pants and a big shirt for sleeping. You walked into the room as Sam walked into the bathroom. You gave Dean a small smile and walked over to one of the beds. You both sat down and it was then that you noticed Dean seemed nervous. He looked at you and then quickly looked away.

“What is it?” You asked facing him and leaning your head, trying to catch his eyes.

“Y/N….I don’t know how to say this.” Your breath caught in your throat as your stomach twisted into a tight knot.

“What is it?” You asked, trying to sound calm as your palms got sweaty.

“I, well, I think I’m in love with you.” He said finally looking at you. “I mean it, Y/N, when you were on that stage tonight…I could hardly breathe. You are the first thing that pops into my head in the morning and the last thing that floats through my mind at night. I always thought we were best friends, but baby, you mean so much more to me than just friendship.” He moved so he was now kneeling in front of you. His hands resting on your thighs as he spoke. “Every time I hear your voice my day is instantly better, every time I see you after a case I automatically know its going to be ok. You’re the one Y/N, you’re the one for me.” His hands were now running up and down your thighs as his eyes held yours.

“I love you too, Dean. I always have.” Was the only thing you could think of to say. He laughed slightly and you did too he then leaned forward and pressed his plump lips to yours. Your mouths moved together in perfect sync, his tongue entering your mouth, you sucking lightly on his bottom lip. Everything about the kiss was more than you ever dreamed of. Sam clearing his throat is what broke the two of you apart. He gave an awkward nod as he pressed his lips into a hard line. He quietly grabbed his bag and mumbled something about getting his own room. As soon as the door shut Dean was on you again, his hand coming up to rest on your cheek as his lips found yours again. His fingers lightly brushed the back of your neck as you twisted your arms around him. You both fell into the passionate and warm bliss that surrounded you and succumbed to your feelings.

As Sam walked out of the office holding the key to his own room he whispered a ‘finally’ to himself as his mouth rounded into a smile.

Three years later

“Dean!” You screamed running through the halls of the bunker. You guys had found this place a few months ago and nothing felt as good as having something to call ‘home’, or so you thought. You ran into his chest as he grabbed your shoulders and pulled you away from him, checking you over for an injury.

“What is it, baby?” He said, worry etched into his face.

“I’m….I’m….I.” You tried but you couldn’t get it out so you just handed him the test. He took it from you and stared at the plus sign. Your fingers nervously twisted as he continued to stare.

“You’re pregnant.” He said matter of factly. “Oh my God! You’re pregnant!” He said lifting you in his arms and kissing you desperately on the mouth. “I love you so much, I love you, I love you, I love you.” He said as tears filled his eyes.

“I love you too, Dean Winchester.” Was all you could get out before his mouth stopped you from speaking.

#dean x reader #dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #dean x female!reader #spn #spnfandom #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fandom #dean x you

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sweetsyncraft · 5 years ago

Text

SweetSyn’s Guide To Etsy

(I will add more as I learn more)

When I officially started my Etsy in 2018, I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve constantly had people asking me what tips I had for getting started. Unfortunately, I told them you needed a following to make sales. Boy was I wrong. SEO is the key. Buckle up, I’m going to learn you a few things. (I’m Texan don’t judge me for that sentence.)

“Search Engine Optimization”, which is the reason when you search for something on Etsy, you see a bunch of bland titles. Being Creative with titles will only hurt you. You need to have targeted, keyword-based titles and tags, to make sure you end up at the top of the food chain.

Listing Titles

This part is long due to the fact that I never knew how important this was.

The best way to do this is to start typing in what you’re selling into the Etsy search bar. Any related autocomplete phrases that are related to the pop-up list, is what should be in your title. (Keyword 1 - Keyword 2 - Keyword 3 - Keyword 4) and so forth. For example, I simply clicked on the search bar and it gave me a list of the current most popular searches. One of them was marble earrings, and the first listing had the best selling badge. Their title was “Handmade Polymer Clay Marble Triangle Earrings | Minimalist Geometric Earrings | Hypoallergenic Surgical Steel Stud | Multiple Size”. The second listing, from another shop, was “Marble Stud Earrings, Marble Jewelry, Round Stud Earrings, Wedding Stud Earrings, Marble Studs, Statement Studs, Minimalist Studs”.

I know how tempting it is to come up with a clever name for your listing, but Etsy doesn’t like that. Putting a long title full of keywords makes it more likely for someone to see your listing without searching through 240 pages. Yes, there were exactly 240 pages of marble earrings. The last one, way at the end was simply titled “Rosé Marble Earrings”. I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how to put that little mark over the ‘e’ when typing on a computer.

The second part of this is being more specific than just ‘marble earrings’. If someone is looking for something more specific than marble earrings they’re going to search more of what they want. This is how you separate yourself from everyone else on those 240 pages. The two listings I found were round studs and the other was geometric triangles. Maybe I hate circles, and I specifically want triangles, so I search “marble triangle earrings”. That’s in the title of the first listing, I’m going to find that listing.

DO NOT PUT YOUR SKU’S IN YOUR TITLES! You will lose sales because of this. Your title is very important, no one is going to be searching “866798Q”

Additionally, Etsy will not show more than one or two items per seller on any given page of search results. That way smaller shops have a bit more of a chance. Make sure you’re targeting different keywords per listing, or you’ll be competing with yourself.

After a few months, go into your listing analytics to see which keywords are getting that listing more views. You may find that your main keyword, or the first few words in your title, isn’t working as well as another one. If something is working better, make it the first part of the title, and you should even more views.

Adding titles in other languages will not help your listing. Etsy automatically translates for other languages.

I’ve seen a few people say that Etsy has changed and that they don’t like ‘title stuffing’. However, that’s not the case in what I’ve seen. The entire first two pages of marble earrings were nothing but long ‘stuffed’ titles.

This is a comment from an admin of one of the Etsy Facebook groups I’m in, he is a social media marketer:

“YES title stuffing is bad and you should not do it, because Etsy & Google do not count that as quality SEO.

However, we must first understand exactly what "Title Stuffing or Keyword Stuffing" really is.

Keyword stuffing is when someone fills a webpage (in this case an Etsy title) with the same keywords they want to rank for, over and over again in hopes that the more times they use the keywords the more relevant Etsy and Google will see their page or listing.”

...

“Now as far as your Etsy title goes you should absolutely use your keywords, but not repeated over and over again, while also keeping a non-robotic tone.

2 examples of title stuffing:

Basically stuffing the same word over and over again.

2. Title stuffing for the maximum keywords: Comfy Baby Shirt, comfortable, for boys, for girls, gifts, cheap, organic, cotton, romper, jumpsuits, newborn, baby clothes

Both of these examples are using spammy tricks to rank high. But this will not work and both Etsy and Google will ignore you.

You want your title to sound fluent and not like a robot while using your keywords.

Also, you want to avoid changing up your titles too much, because your listings SEO needs to season a bit for maximum effectiveness.”

Tags

A major thing that I have learned over this process is that your tags must be written in sentences and not individual words. For example instead of marble, earring, earrings, geometric, geometrical, your tags should be Marble Earrings, Studded Earrings, Geometric Jewelry. MOST IMPORTANTLY! Use ALL 13 tags! Think about what makes your product unique, you don’t need to repeat categories and attributes. You also don’t need to use the same keywords as your title, unless you want to highlight a certain keyword. Tags and titles that do not relate to your listing, can have a negative impact on your visibility.

Fill out everything you can on the listing, such as categories and attributes, which also act like tags. The more you fill out the more likely someone will find your listings.

Adding tags in other languages will not help your listing. Etsy automatically translates for other languages.

Pricing

Be mindful of everyone else’s prices, customers are not only going to look for quality, but also the best deal. Though, you don’t want to end up making a negative profit.

Cost of goods (per product) + Profit (I like to do the cost of supplies x2) + Shipping (if you’re doing free shipping) = Price

The reason I double the dost of supplies for my profit is for in case something goes wrong, I still made a little money for my time. You made need to adjust this to compete with other sellers.

Shipping

Etsy gives priority to listings with free shipping in the search results, it also sounds a bit better to the customer. Don’t worry you won’t lose out on money by offering it, all you have to do is include the shipping cost in the price.

However, if you do plan on offering international shipping, I recommend charging for it. I live in Texas, and it costs $8 dollars to ship a sticker to Canada. Whereas shipping to Maine only costs 70 cents.

Play around with shipping options, it took me a long time to learn that sending stickers as a letter, instead of a package or flat envelope, is MUCH cheaper. The downside, there is no tracking number. So I only recommend this for items that are very cheap to remake.

Photos

Your product photo is the first thing that is going to be seen when someone is searching for an item. I made the major mistake of not caring what my photos looked like for the longest time. From lazily taking a screenshot of my Cricut design space for a decal listing, to setting my mugs on my tacky paint-covered table. Don’t do this, make your photos look professional. Now I’m not saying go hire a photographer to take your photos. Simply lining a bix with paper, or draping a sheet over a chair can create a perfect backdrop.

Put your best photo first.

A 2017 survey showed that 90% of Etsy shoppers said the photo quality was very important in their decision making. Think about it as, if you don’t take the time for quality photos, that most likely means you’re not taking the time to make quality products.

When posting your photos on the web browser version of Etsy, your image needs to be at least 2000 pixels wide. A simple way to fix this, the way I do, is resizing the photo in Paint 3D or a photo editor. Another way is simply making the listing on the mobile app because it won’t have that requirement.

Description

I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard it from a few people, repeat your title in the description.

This is yet another thing I struggled with. I felt that the title said enough, what more was there to explain about a car decal, other than the size? Well, a lot. Now I’m not saying be one of those annoying recipe pages, that gives their life story before getting to the ingredients and the actual recipe. Just make sure it tells exactly what the customer expects to receive.

Don’t copy someone else’s description, develop your own voice. Give all the details you can about your product, because just like policies, this can save you from something going wrong. The customer isn’t able to touch your product and get a full feel of what it is. A well-written description can be the make or break of a sale.

Play 20 questions with yourself.

Reviews

You’re bound to get a bad review at some point. Don’t let it be the thing that shuts you down, and ruins your shop. Message the customer and see what you can do to change their review. If you can’t change it, don’t worry. Learn and improve from it. When looking at reviews, I hardly ever take the negative ones seriously, unless there’s a lot of them. If you have 50 good reviews and 5 negatives, you’re going to be okay.

Sometimes you have to take the hit and lose some profit. Say their package gets lost in the mail, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. You may have to refund them or send them another. Something I’ve always done to keep customers happy, if something goes wrong I send a small freebie with the replacement. Usually, it’s something extra that I have laying around.

Marketing

Social Media is your best friend! Use everything you can, and HASHTAGS! HASHTAGS! HASHTAGS! Before I even started TikTok or Etsy, I wanted to have a huge Instagram following. I ended up with 1,000 followers, just by using a ton of hashtags. No matter what site you’re using, if it allows you, use every hashtag under the sun. This is where you can get extra with it, especially Instagram and Tumblr where you don’t have a limit. Just make sure you separate it from your caption.

Using social media to grow a following can help so much! I would never have made it through 2020 without my following. Seeing a more personal side of you can help a lot, and you’ll even make some amazing friends along the way! The most rewarding thing is when you’re told you inspired someone to start making arts and crafts or living their dream.

Other Information

Make sure your policies are clear. If you do not offer refunds or returns, and a customer reports you for not refunding them, this will save you!

Experiment with things, see what works best for you! Having a following and ignoring all of this worked for me for two years. Eventually, my TikTok views dwindled, meaning sales went with it.

The more items you have listed, the more likely you are to be seen. Try to post something new once a month. Additionally, the more you have the more likely someone that found exactly what they wanted, will buy more from you. If they see something else they like while looking at one item, you’re making more money.

Categories are much easier to do on a web browser. All you have to do is type in what your listing and it will give you suggestions. Mobile Etsy is nearly impossible to figure out where to list decals and stickers. You’d never guess to look in electronics, would you?

Helpful Sites

https://keywordseverywhere.com/

https://www.thesaurus.com/

https://erank.com/

https://www.keysearch.co/

https://www.keywordtooldominator.com/

https://seller.tools/

Resources

https://printify.com/blog/2020-etsy-seo-secrets-all-you-need-to-know/

#etsy #etsy seo #seo #search engine optimization #search engine organization #etys seller #small business #sweetsyn #sweetsyncraft

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rigelmejo · 5 years ago

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Review of Lingq and Reader Language Apps

My tentative review of lingq: Literally seems to serve the same function for me as the Pleco Reader. The positive benefit of using lingq - it highlights words you don’t know in blue, words you’ve started learning in yellow, and words you already know are left unhighlighted. This is motivating because the progress you make is clear, and the words you already know you don’t try to over-study or re-memorize (because my perfectionist tendencies LOVE to get hung up studying things I already know before progressing). Lingq also counts the words you’ve marked as known. That is the primary reason I’m trying the app - I wanted to gauge how many chinese words I actually can read and am familiar with.

However, the core negatives to lingq: their dictionary/lookup function for words is clunky and inconvienient. It only shows the most common translation at a quick click pop up and that isn’t necessarily nuanced or correct. The pop up is hard to get rid of because you have to expand it then exit out of it, which is inconvenient and slows down reading (I wish I could just click the pop-up again or click the word again to remove the translation pop up). It has options to search more in-depth definitions on sites like baidu, but all the steps that takes makes doing so just as time consuming as opening the internet browser or baidu app and searching it that way. So the dictionary option I find is lacking and inconvienient, and that affects ease of reading/ease of use. The dictionary feature IS better than the Idiom reader app, but Idiom reader app also has the ability to look up more in-depth definitions which takes just as much time as lingq/a web browser.

Basically - Pleco Reader is eons better than both of them. Pleco Reader’s only draw back in definitions, is it provides so many that the less familiar you are with chinese, the more its a puzzle of which definition applies (but usually the top ones are the most common, so it’s rarely an issue) - but a reader can’t be expected to know which meaning of 15 possible a writer may have intended, if that meaning’s one of the least common. So it’s just nice that pleco provides the less common ones so it’s easy to look up when those situations arise. In addition, Pleco Reader is very convenient to flip from dictionary explanations back to reader, not slowing the reading experience. Lingq ALSO has very few chinese materials in varying levels. It seems to rely on users uploading their own materials. So a lot of it seems to be ripped from a textbook, or web article, or native book. Pleco Reader in comparison has several graded readers available to purchase, which are great for picking materials at your actual reading level, with relatively high frequency words to learn, and with grammar that should be comprehensible. Also, pleco lets me import any of my own pdf, ebook, and txt documents, along with any website. So I can read webnovels on there, my own graded readers I’ve got from other places, etc. Pleco Reader is MUCH more convenient for reading virtually whatever you want, and it’s definitions are both easier to access (including most idioms you’re likely to encounter) and more likely to have most helpful definition.

Probably the biggest difference - Lingq is 12.99 a MONTH. Pleco Reader has a one time cost of 10-20 dollars (depending on the package you buy). Then Pleco sends you a code so if you ever lose your app/get a new phone/something goes wrong, you can enter the code and get back all your purchases. A one time cost is eons more affordable, and really kind of them. I especially like that they put in the effort to give you the ability to recover your purchase if you have any issues. I bought the 20 dollar package I think - so I could get the expanded dictionary, with pretty much any word or idiom I’d ever see, natural speech audio, and the Reader. It has been well worth it. I’ve been using pleco for like 4 months, so the longer I use it the more that cost seems minimal (it’d be like the equivalent of 5$ a month before, free now. Or the equivalent of the cost of Lingq for less than 2 months).

Lingq’s cost PER month I’m not sure I could feel justified in spending. The ONLY added benefit I see of using Lingq over Pleco, is lingq has color coded the words you know/don’t know/are learning, and lingq counts how many words you know. Those two features are motivating. But they’re just motivational benefits.

Other then that, Lingq has the following features: audio (Pleco Reader has this too), flashcards (using anki or memrise for free appear to be equally good or better than lingq’s feature, especially because you can simply export from lingq), cloze-like questions (again, memrise, anki, Quizlet, and even in some ways clozemaster are free alternatives). I personally hate flashcard type study, so I use memrise when necessary but generally would never use such features - so lingq’s flashcard features aren’t worthwhile for me. If they’re something you’re interested in - again, there seem to be free options available that are as good as or better than lingq.

So, at least for my own personal learning preferences, lingq does not seem to be worth it. Everything it provides is available somewhere else for cheaper, for a one time cost, or free. Pleco Reader I think offers the most benefits and convenience out of every Language-Reader app I’ve tried. Compared to: Lingq, idiom, using Baidu itself on a webpage, etc - closest comparison is the free ZhongWen chrome extension on chinese sites, I think that’s nearly as convienient as Pleco Reader and obviously the alternative for when you’re on a computer. Idiom is actually a really nice app considering it’s free, and it does serve the basic purpose (Pleco Reader is a one time purchase cost) - idiom has sometimes incorrect translations/audio, but over all if you read enough content then that’s just a few words a paragraph or page that you won’t be able to study. Those words can be looked up separately in a free dictionary app (like free Pleco’s dictionary, or google translate, or baidu) if they keep confusing you or keep seeming to be wrong.

Lingq just... does not seem worth 12.99 a month, for only the added benefit of making it obvious which words you know/don’t know/are studying. Other than that single ability, there are comparable tools out there that already does what Lingq does or better, for cheaper or free.

Overall, readers I would recommend:

Pleco Reader (10 dollars, or a bit more if you buy it in a package, single time purchase) - benefits include the only dictionary you’ll need, audio (per word or for entire text), flashcard making ability, option to import any ebook/txt/website, option to one-time purchase graded readers. Although paid, I appreciate that all purchases are one time only. On a phone, this is the app I overwhelmingly rely on - it has everything I need in one area. I personally like to open up mtlnovels.com and read the novels with dual chinese/english, so I can look at the english sentences afterward - and use Pleco Reader as I get through the chinese chunks to make sure I can look up words I don’t know. If I were going to start translating, I’d probably use this method so I could get a gist of the meaning in english, then go through each line and fix errors and improve the translation for idioms and less straightforward meanings. For reading for Ease, that method’s the best for me to get through the novels I want to read. For reading intensively, I just open up a novel I want to read in all chinese and chug through it using pleco to look up words I stumble on.

Free alternative: Zhongwen chrome extension. Equally extensive dictionary, links to grammar points, audio (per word), can read anything online or opened in a chrome browser (so you could open your txt documents in it) - sometimes works on subtitles on videos too. Subtitles on viki, on netflix, seem to be readable by zhongwen. It may work on some pdfs opened in chrome. Only available on computers. It’s really fantastic. If you’re on a computer I’d just recommend using this one overall.

Free Alternative: Idiom - app. dictionary is decent, but some errors or limitations mean occasionally looking up words in another free dictionary app (Google Translate, Baidu Translate, Pleco Dictionary). Machine audio (per word), also sometimes has errors. Can read anything on a website. There are some other readers that serve the same function as idiom, I’ve seen one for webnovels... but I think at idiom overall is as good as or better than the other options out there. Idiom does not auto-link you to novel websites, but if you can find them then you can put any url in. Idiom also works for MANY languages - so you can also use it for french/spanish/japanese/etc. Idiom is the app I use for french, since obviously Pleco Reader is just for chinese. For free readers, and readers in other languages, I think idiom’s the best bet. Lingq might have more appeal for language learners of other languages - since it IS a little better than idiom with providing the correct translations, but lingq’s translations are still off sometimes TOO. So, if you’re learning a language that isn’t chinese, I’d recommend trying Idiom for free and seeing if it’s useful to you before shelving out money for anything paid.

Not a reader, but there are two netflix dual subtitle chrome extensions that work really well for reading with a dictionary too, I’ll list them later when I look them up. These are ALSO available to use in many languages, so that’s nice. for both of the free dual subtitle extensions, Zhongwen also seems to work for them (if you ever want to look up a secondary definition).

Dictionary Apps:

Google Translate - good for drawing the characters, at least for me it has the easiest time recognizing what I’m trying to look up (I’m left handed and draw characters with my right on my phone so). When I’m watching tv its easy to open google and draw an unknown character in the app when I don’t know the pinyin. It usually only offers the most frequent/common definition, so it has limitations - but for a quick lookup of one word its usually convenient. For a quick gist of bigger chunks of text, google translate is also a quick way to do it although at least some words and phrases WILL probably be incorrect.

Pleco Dictionary - this part of the pleco app is free. The definitions are the most thorough I’ve seen, and the easiest to get a meaningful definition if google translate is inadequate. Pleco’s definitions hands down seem to be the best. You have to pay for one of the packages to access the ability to draw characters to look them up, to access idiom translations, natural voice pronunciations, and a much more massive dictionary. I just bought it - and now I rarely have to use google translate. Only negative - have to look up things word by word, or by idiom/phrase. Other then that, it’s the best one probably.

Baidu Translate - also free. Biggest benefit is the ability to put a url in and have it machine translate the entire page. Like google, it’s very useful to get a quick gist of bigger chunks of text, and a handful of those words or phrases may be translated wrong. It’s fun to use it to translate english pages to chinese (again, some errors will crop up). It’s sometimes better than Google translate for looking up individual words, and phrases - but also has its limitations.

Overall I use Baidu and Google for chunks of translations, and then Pleco or Zhongwen for specific words or phrases. It’s why I like using dual chinese/english mtlnovels.com in Pleco Reader - because then the big-chunk machine translated english is already provided (and the only thing Pleco Reader can’t do), and so I can just use pleco to go by word and phrase to get specific pieces of translation that are more accurate.

I use Google translate or Pleco Dictionary for looking up words by drawing characters - but this is only a free feature in Google translate (and honestly I think Google translate recognizes my handwriting better - so I usually use Google, then if the definition isn’t helpful I copy paste the text version of the word into pleco dictionary).

#language learning #lingq #pleco #chinese #review #i was so hopeful about lingq and it IS a good app its just #...i cannot justify it when idiom is literally fre #and pleco is a one time purchase thats less than a movie ticket and super well made

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shoddy-sonneteer · 6 years ago

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Ebullience

Pairing: Jung Hoseok/J-Hope*Reader

Genre: Fluff

Summary: Booking tickets are always nerve wrecking. But thank god, you have your boyfriend

Work Count: 966 words

They said 8PM. It was 7:57. 3 more minutes. You can’t afford to get distracted. You have to do this. You can do this.

The clock struck 8 and you refreshed the page again for the, you didn’t know. You lost count. But it doesn’t matter. You were waiting for the page to open with bated breath.

The page opened. But there was no change in its contents. What the holy shit! They said bookings open at 8 and it was 8. Maybe your internet screwed you over? You tried to open the same webpage in your mobile phone.

It is showing the same. Damn it!

You let out a groan refreshing the page yet again.

“Still hasn’t opened?” You heard a voice from behind you. It was Hoseok, your boyfriend of 2 years waiting for you to come back to the bed to give him the cuddles he deserved after working for around 12 hours with minimal break. But you had an important task at hand. You were booking the tickets for the movie ‘Love yourself in Seoul’ for you and your friends who were also trying from their accounts.

“No.” You replied not turning to look at him refreshing the page yet again.

“Babe, I seriously don’t understand why youre doing this.”

“What do you mean, Hobi?” You said looking at him with a frown.

“What I mean is that, your boyfriend, that is me, Jung Hoseok can make sure you watch the movie with Bangtan Sonyeondan themselves. I’ll talk to Namjoon.”

What he said only made your frown intensify. The thought of watching the movie with BTS themselves was of course alluring and also a once in a lifetime opportunity. But you always hated the idea of using influence or pulling strings. That’s one of the main reasons why you didn’t tell your friends that you were dating THE Jung Hoseok. Also, one of the reasons why you were adamant on booking the tickets was because you promised your friends that you would all watch the movie together.

“Hobi, I promised them we would all go together.”

“But baaabe… I came here for some attention from my girlfriend. Not to sit here hugging a pillow while she is giving a computer her undivided attention.” He whined cutely.

“I’m so sorry baby. But I want you to understand that this is important for me right now. I couldn’t go to the concert because the tickets were sold out before I could even open the page. I wanna see you guys perform so bad.”

“Fiine.” He said pouting and hugging the pillow tightly.

Sighing, you went and sat beside him pulling him into a hug.

“I’m so sorry baby. I know I should have been with you from the moment you came from work today. I missed you a lot today.”

“What about the tickets?” He asked wrapping his limbs around you making you chuckle.

“They opened the bookings only at 9 PM for Burn the Stage. I think they are going to do the same this time too. Besides, even if they open the bookings now, I hope my friends would have gotten it. If not, they would call me. I just want to cuddle with my hardworking boyfriend.” You said kissing his forehead.

“I love you so much, jagi.” He said hugging you tighter.

“I know. I love you a lot lot too. Youre the best thing that ever happened to me.” You countered pressing your lips on his head.

The both of you stayed like that for a really long time, neither of you wanting to move from the comfortable position you were in, which was unfortunately interrupted by the ringing of your phone that you had forgotten on your study table beside your laptop.

You shot him an apologetic look before unentangling yourself from him to answer the call.

It was your friend. It means only one thing. THE BOOKINGS HAVE BEEN OPENED.

Panicking you began refreshing the open web page on your laptop, pressing the accept button on your phone tucking it between your ear and shoulder. But before the page could refresh completely, you could hear a lot of yelling and squealing making you remove the phone and stare at it.

“Dude. What happened? You got the tickets?” You asked hopefully.

“YASSSS!! OMG I CANT BELIEVE WE GOT THE TICKETS!!! WE ARE GOING TO THE MOVIE!!” She yelled in your ear making you jump around in happiness.

After the both of you finished yelling for the next five minutes about how excited you were to watch that movie, you went and hugged him tightly.

“WE ARE GOING TO THE MOVIE!!! IM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW!!” You yelled in joy squeezing him tight.

“I know babe.” He said hugging you back tight. “But I’d really like it if my ears were in a working condition because you know, I need them to work.”

“Sorry.” You apologized, rolling onto the bed but not letting him go.

“I’m glad you’re going to the movie like you wanted.” He said placing a kiss on your lips.

“I know. I’m so happy right now.” You said giggling slightly and hugging his neck.

“You know what this calls for? Celebration.” He announced inching closer looking into your eyes and occasionally at your lips.

“What do you suggest?” You asked trying to hide the blush that was colouring your cheeks.

“I think you know exactly what I mean, sweetheart.” He said as he leaned forward and kissed you.

You kissed him back with passion and knowledge that he is always going to be there for you and support you for everything you want to do and achieve in life. He will alwys be the sunshine in your life like he is to all the ARMYs.

#bts #bts scenarios #bts namjoon #bts jin #bts yoongi #bts hobi #bts jimin #bts taehyung #bts jungkook

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jazzbits · 7 years ago

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I’m not going to tag anyone on this but if you’re up to the task feel free to copy, paste, and tag me so I can read your answers!

1. Is there a special person in your life? My mom, dad, bro and hmm ekis

2. Think of the last person who hurt you; do you forgive them?

I guess uhm yes

3. What’s something you really want right now?

uhm fruits ahh sushi!! I haven’t had my dinner yet and I’m starving.

4. Are you afraid of falling in love?

It’s not an option right now. But if it was the right person I would be fine with it hehe pag naka move on na ako.

5. Do you like the beach?

super yes

6. Have you ever slept on a couch with someone else?

nah

7. What’s the background on your cell?

My cat

8. Name the last four beds you were sat on?

hotel room's bed, mom and dad's, mine and hmm ate sachi

9. Do you like your phone?

I guess! It’s just an iPhone 6.

10. Honestly, are things going the way you planned?

No, not at all.

11. Who was the last person added to your contacts?

kuya dexter's.

12. Which hurts most, physical or emotional pain?

Emotional… It lasts longer.

13. Would you rather visit a zoo or an art museum?

BOTH OMG

14. Are you tired?

Yes! I slept in so late this morning but still exhausted from last night.

15. How long have you known your 1st phone contact?

Probably about 3 years.

16. Are they a relative?

some of them

17. Would you ever consider getting back together with any of your exes?

Well… There’s a reason why they are an “ex” so hopefully yes hahaha jk

18. When did you talk to the last person you shared a kiss with?

hmm

19. If you knew you had the right person, would you marry them today?

No, that’s not an option right now.

20. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

I don’t know.

21. How many bracelets do you have on your wrists right now?

two

22. Is there a certain quote you live by?

I don’t really live by any specific quote.

23. What’s on your mind?

hmm her, tbh, we used to do this thing like randomly.. she'll be like "sige na magtanong ka pa, ang tagal naman ehh" haha enough kwento naman tayo nito

24. Do you have any tattoos?

25. What is your favourite colour?

the color of her eyes

26. Next time you will kiss someone on the lips?

No clue!

27. Who are you texting?

Kei.

28. Think to the last person you kissed, have you ever kissed them on a couch?

nah

29. Have you ever had the feeling something bad was going to happen and you were right?

Yes! Lots of times.

30. Do you have a friend of the opposite sex you can talk to?

Yes

31. Do you think anyone has feelings for you right now?

uhm yeah

32. Has anyone ever told you, you have pretty eyes?

Yes

33. Say the last person you kissed was kissing someone right in front of you?

I don’t think that would happen but I would probably be upset.

34. Were you single on Valentine’s Day?

No.

35. Are you friends with the last person you kissed?

never been kissed never been touch but totally damaged AMP

36. What do you friends call you?

jazz, bhe, babe, tayan, etc hahah

37. Has anyone upset you in the last week?

Yes.

38. Have you ever cried over a text?

Y E S

39. Where is your last bruise located?

wrist

40. Where is it from?

myself

41. Last time you wanted to be away from somewhere really bad?

Right now

42. Who was the last person you were on the phone with?

natalie

43. Do you have a favourite pair of shoes?

CLN, WB, NIKE,

44. Do you wear hats if you’re having a bad hair day?

No. I wear hijab

45. Would you ever go bald if it was the style?

No.

46. Do you make supper for your family?

Yes.

47. Does your bedroom have a door?

Yes.

48. Top 3 webpages?

Email, Youtube and Tumblr.

49. Do you know anyone who hates shopping?

My brother

50. Does anything on your body hurt right now?

My heart..jaw

51. Are goodbyes hard for you?

They can be depending on the person.

52. What was the last beverage you spilled on yourself?

Water probably.

53. How is your hair?

it's all good rn

54. What do you usually do first thing in the morning?

Get out of bed then wash my face

55. Do you think two people can last forever?

It’s definitely possible but you have to put the work in.

56. Think back to January 2007, were you single?

yessss

57. Green or purple grapes?

I like both.

58. When’s the next time you will give someone a big hug?

Probably when get home. aye mom and dad I miss you a lot

59. Do you wish you were somewhere else right now?

Yes, in her room..I want to hug her and thank her for everything she did for me :)

60. When will be the next time you text someone?

Right now.

61. Where will you be 5 hours from now?

Mandaue again and again, Mall uhm bank

62. What were you doing at 8 this morning?

eating

63. This time last year, can you remember who you liked?

Yes <3

64. Is there one person in your life that can always make you smile?

Four actually! mom, dad, my cat, and her

65. Did you kiss or hug anyone today?

Nope.

66. What was your last thought before you went to bed last night?

I was crying..dying hmm

67. Have you ever tried your hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end?

Countless times…

68. How many windows are open on your computer?

Two! Facebook and Tumblr.

69. How many fingers do you have?

10…

70. What is your ringtone?

The default iPhone one

71. How old will you be in 5 months?

72. Where is your mom right now?

hometown, cotabato city

73. Why aren’t you with the person you were first in love with or almost in love?

hindi siya masaya sa piling ko oh divaa tagalog naman

74. Have you held hands with somebody in the past three days?

75. Are you friends with the people you were friends with two years ago?

Yes I think most of them.

76. Do you remember who you had a crush on in grade 7?

Um yiz

77. Is there anyone you know with the name Mike?

enriquez

78. Have you ever fallen asleep in someone’s arms?

79. How many people have you liked in the past three months?

Only one.

80. Has anyone seen you in your underwear in the last 3 days?

Yes my cousin

81. Will you talk to the person you like tonight?

i want to but hahaha no?

82. You’re drunk and yelling at hot guys/girls out of your car window, you’re with?

I don’t do that and I wouldn’t be in my car drunk.

83. If your bf/gf was into drugs would you care?

OFC

84. What was the most eventful thing that happened last time you went to see a movie?

not impressed

85. Who was your last received call from?

mom

86. If someone gave you $1,000 to burn a butterfly over a candle, would you?

No?? What’s with some of these questions?

87. What is something you wish you had more of?

TIME, COURAGE, AND CHANCE

88. Have you ever trusted someone too much?

Yes, I have a habit of that.

89. Do you sleep with your window open?

OFC NOT UGH SO SCARY HUH

90. Do you get along with girls?

uhm yeah

91. Are you keeping a secret from someone who needs to know the truth?

No.

92. Does sex mean love?

I mean I would like to think it does but it doesn’t all of the time.

93. You’re locked in a room with the last person you kissed, is that a problem?

Potentially could be.

94. Have you ever kissed anyone with a lip ring?

95. Did you sleep alone this week?

Yes, downstairs @sofa hahaha

96. Everyone has somebody to make them happy, do you?

Yes.

97. Do you believe in love at first sight?

Possibly?

98. Who was the last person that you pinky promised?

none

99. How many kids do you want?

shiz we used to like having 10 or more? lol and honestly agreed but now..uhm maybe 2 baby girl and a baby boy

100. Do you like doing tags? sometimes lol

#Asks #100 questions

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masteryjournalist-blog · 7 years ago

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Gamification and Media Convergence

When I first read through this assignment about “Gamification and Media Convergence” the first thing that came to mind was the board game “Clue” that was later turned into a movie in the mid-80s. My web research also tells me that the original movie is being remade starring Ryan Reynolds.

I grew up in a time long before computer games – yes, I am old! – and Clue was popular at one time. According to Boardgamegeek.com, “Clue” is a “classic detective game.” It involves its players moving from room to room in a mansion to solve a murder. Each player must uncover the cards of other players by making continuous accusations. It’s considered “a great game for those who enjoy reasoning and thinking things out.”

Clue Wiki reports the game was created in 1949 by Anthony B. Pratt and was originally called “Murder!” Clue Wiki also reports the game was created to provide entertainment during “lengthy air raid drills in underground bunkers.”

Fast forward to 1985, and the movie “Clue” comes out with three different endings. According to Cinemablend.com, the movie’s ending is a “Clever scheme that was meant to wink at the source material and produce a cheap inspiration for repeated viewings. Some reviewers hated the gimmick. Some fans were confused by it, but three decades later, all three of the endings live on . . .” This movie was perhaps the first attempt of making a film “interactive.”

The old board game has also transitioned into a computer game. From what I can find on Amazon, there is also a game called “Clue: A Murder, A Mansion, A Mystery is available” as a computer game.

Another board game that I grew up with was called “Battle Ship” where a player attempts to sink the ships of his opponent.

According to the Boardgamegeek.com, the original Battleship game was a “pencil-and-paper” domain game. In 1967, Milton Bradley upgraded it to a board game where “plastic grids with holes that could hold plastic pegs used to record guesses.” Each player moves his ships on the grid while his opponent yells out a location. The other player yells “Hit!” or “miss!”

Hollywood also turned this game into a movie in 2012. Wikia.com reported that “Battleship is a 2012 American military science fiction war film loosely inspired by the classic board game.” According to Wikia.com, the movie was about an “international fleet of ships who come across an alien armada while on naval war games exercise. An intense battle is fought on sea, land and air.”

Just like with “Clue,” the game is also available on line and in a 3-D format. Nintendo also offers a number of online games called “Battleship.”

This transformation of board games into movies and computer games prove quite a phenomenon. In my research, I came across the webpage denofgeek.com that reports “Ten Board Games Being Turned into Movies.” It is apparently what a lot of people want, so Hollywood is following suit. I noted a popular board game from my childhood – yes, I repeat, I am old, “Monopoly” is being turned into a movie.

Denofgeek reports that Ridley Scott at one point wanted to turn the game into movie and said, "I wanted to just make a movie about the idea of greed."

This has been done before, says Denofgeek but it also said that “when in the heat of Monopoly, even the frailest board gamer can turn into a green-eyed demon . . .,” it said.

Denofgeek also quoted Scott as saying that his adaptation of the Monopoly movie would be “akin to an Alice in Wonderland and Wall Street mash-up where an actual Monopoly fan gets transported into his coveted board game . . .”

Hasbro apparently didn’t like Scott’s version and has offered Lionsgate the chance to create a more “PG-minded” movie.

“With rumblings still going on as recently as last year, it’s likely that some iteration of Monopoly will be passing ‘Go,’” said the webpage.

Just like with the other two games mentioned, the old board game has been turned into a computer game that Atari sells.

For some reason, I initially didn’t like the idea of my childhood board games being computerized. It seemed like computers took a lot of the personal touch and the socialization out of the games by putting them online. As someone who works on a computer all the live long day, I still prefer that board games, but my children enjoy playing various games on the computer. That is the way things are going. I realize that just because it’s a computer game doesn’t mean it’s all solitaire and that the socialization remains in many cases.

With the transition of board games to movies to computer games shows that any kind of entertainment can be transformed into any kind of entertainment. And it seems to be selling quite well so more power to them!

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wickedbananas · 7 years ago

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An 8-Point Checklist for Debugging Strange Technical SEO Problems

Posted by Dom-Woodman

Occasionally, a problem will land on your desk that's a little out of the ordinary. Something where you don't have an easy answer. You go to your brain and your brain returns nothing.

These problems can’t be solved with a little bit of keyword research and basic technical configuration. These are the types of technical SEO problems where the rabbit hole goes deep.

The very nature of these situations defies a checklist, but it's useful to have one for the same reason we have them on planes: even the best of us can and will forget things, and a checklist will provvide you with places to dig.

Fancy some examples of strange SEO problems? Here are four examples to mull over while you read. We’ll answer them at the end.

1. Why wasn’t Google showing 5-star markup on product pages?

The pages had server-rendered product markup and they also had Feefo product markup, including ratings being attached client-side.

The Feefo ratings snippet was successfully rendered in Fetch & Render, plus the mobile-friendly tool.

When you put the rendered DOM into the structured data testing tool, both pieces of structured data appeared without errors.

2. Why wouldn’t Bing display 5-star markup on review pages, when Google would?

The review pages of client & competitors all had rating rich snippets on Google.

All the competitors had rating rich snippets on Bing; however, the client did not.

The review pages had correctly validating ratings schema on Google’s structured data testing tool, but did not on Bing.

3. Why were pages getting indexed with a no-index tag?

Pages with a server-side-rendered no-index tag in the head were being indexed by Google across a large template for a client.

4. Why did any page on a website return a 302 about 20–50% of the time, but only for crawlers?

A website was randomly throwing 302 errors.

This never happened in the browser and only in crawlers.

User agent made no difference; location or cookies also made no difference.

Finally, a quick note. It’s entirely possible that some of this checklist won’t apply to every scenario. That’s totally fine. It’s meant to be a process for everything you could check, not everything you should check.

The pre-checklist check

Does it actually matter?

Does this problem only affect a tiny amount of traffic? Is it only on a handful of pages and you already have a big list of other actions that will help the website? You probably need to just drop it.

I know, I hate it too. I also want to be right and dig these things out. But in six months' time, when you've solved twenty complex SEO rabbit holes and your website has stayed flat because you didn't re-write the title tags, you're still going to get fired.

But hopefully that's not the case, in which case, onwards!

Where are you seeing the problem?

We don’t want to waste a lot of time. Have you heard this wonderful saying?: “If you hear hooves, it’s probably not a zebra.”

The process we’re about to go through is fairly involved and it’s entirely up to your discretion if you want to go ahead. Just make sure you’re not overlooking something obvious that would solve your problem. Here are some common problems I’ve come across that were mostly horses.

You’re underperforming from where you should be.

When a site is under-performing, people love looking for excuses. Weird Google nonsense can be quite a handy thing to blame. In reality, it’s typically some combination of a poor site, higher competition, and a failing brand. Horse.

You’ve suffered a sudden traffic drop.

Something has certainly happened, but this is probably not the checklist for you. There are plenty of common-sense checklists for this. I’ve written about diagnosing traffic drops recently — check that out first.

The wrong page is ranking for the wrong query.

In my experience (which should probably preface this entire post), this is usually a basic problem where a site has poor targeting or a lot of cannibalization. Probably a horse.

Factors which make it more likely that you’ve got a more complex problem which require you to don your debugging shoes:

A website that has a lot of client-side JavaScript.

Bigger, older websites with more legacy.

Your problem is related to a new Google property or feature where there is less community knowledge.

1. Start by picking some example pages.

Pick a couple of example pages to work with — ones that exhibit whatever problem you're seeing. No, this won't be representative, but we'll come back to that in a bit.

Of course, if it only affects a tiny number of pages then it might actually be representative, in which case we're good. It definitely matters, right? You didn't just skip the step above? OK, cool, let's move on.

2. Can Google crawl the page once?

First we’re checking whether Googlebot has access to the page, which we’ll define as a 200 status code.

We’ll check in four different ways to expose any common issues:

Robots.txt: Open up Search Console and check in the robots.txt validator.

User agent: Open Dev Tools and verify that you can open the URL with both Googlebot and Googlebot Mobile.

To get the user agent switcher, open Dev Tools.

Check the console drawer is open (the toggle is the Escape key)

Hit the … and open "Network conditions"

Here, select your user agent!

IP Address: Verify that you can access the page with the mobile testing tool. (This will come from one of the IPs used by Google; any checks you do from your computer won't.)

Country: The mobile testing tool will visit from US IPs, from what I've seen, so we get two birds with one stone. But Googlebot will occasionally crawl from non-American IPs, so it’s also worth using a VPN to double-check whether you can access the site from any other relevant countries.

I’ve used HideMyAss for this before, but whatever VPN you have will work fine.

We should now have an idea whether or not Googlebot is struggling to fetch the page once.

Have we found any problems yet?

If we can re-create a failed crawl with a simple check above, then it’s likely Googlebot is probably failing consistently to fetch our page and it’s typically one of those basic reasons.

But it might not be. Many problems are inconsistent because of the nature of technology. ;)

3. Are we telling Google two different things?

Next up: Google can find the page, but are we confusing it by telling it two different things?

This is most commonly seen, in my experience, because someone has messed up the indexing directives.

By "indexing directives," I’m referring to any tag that defines the correct index status or page in the index which should rank. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:

No-index

Canonical

Mobile alternate tags

AMP alternate tags

An example of providing mixed messages would be:

No-indexing page A

Page B canonicals to page A

Or:

Page A has a canonical in a header to A with a parameter

Page A has a canonical in the body to A without a parameter

If we’re providing mixed messages, then it’s not clear how Google will respond. It’s a great way to start seeing strange results.

Good places to check for the indexing directives listed above are:

Sitemap

Example: Mobile alternate tags can sit in a sitemap

HTTP headers

Example: Canonical and meta robots can be set in headers.

HTML head

This is where you’re probably looking, you’ll need this one for a comparison.

JavaScript-rendered vs hard-coded directives

You might be setting one thing in the page source and then rendering another with JavaScript, i.e. you would see something different in the HTML source from the rendered DOM.

Google Search Console settings

There are Search Console settings for ignoring parameters and country localization that can clash with indexing tags on the page.

A quick aside on rendered DOM

This page has a lot of mentions of the rendered DOM on it (18, if you’re curious). Since we’ve just had our first, here’s a quick recap about what that is.

When you load a webpage, the first request is the HTML. This is what you see in the HTML source (right-click on a webpage and click View Source).

This is before JavaScript has done anything to the page. This didn’t use to be such a big deal, but now so many websites rely heavily on JavaScript that the most people quite reasonably won’t trust the the initial HTML.

Rendered DOM is the technical term for a page, when all the JavaScript has been rendered and all the page alterations made. You can see this in Dev Tools.

In Chrome you can get that by right clicking and hitting inspect element (or Ctrl + Shift + I). The Elements tab will show the DOM as it’s being rendered. When it stops flickering and changing, then you’ve got the rendered DOM!

4. Can Google crawl the page consistently?

To see what Google is seeing, we're going to need to get log files. At this point, we can check to see how it is accessing the page.

Aside: Working with logs is an entire post in and of itself. I’ve written a guide to log analysis with BigQuery, I’d also really recommend trying out Screaming Frog Log Analyzer, which has done a great job of handling a lot of the complexity around logs.

When we’re looking at crawling there are three useful checks we can do:

Status codes: Plot the status codes over time. Is Google seeing different status codes than you when you check URLs?

Resources: Is Google downloading all the resources of the page?

Is it downloading all your site-specific JavaScript and CSS files that it would need to generate the page?

Page size follow-up: Take the max and min of all your pages and resources and diff them. If you see a difference, then Google might be failing to fully download all the resources or pages. (Hat tip to @ohgm, where I first heard this neat tip).

Have we found any problems yet?

If Google isn't getting 200s consistently in our log files, but we can access the page fine when we try, then there is clearly still some differences between Googlebot and ourselves. What might those differences be?

It will crawl more than us

It is obviously a bot, rather than a human pretending to be a bot

It will crawl at different times of day

This means that:

If our website is doing clever bot blocking, it might be able to differentiate between us and Googlebot.

Because Googlebot will put more stress on our web servers, it might behave differently. When websites have a lot of bots or visitors visiting at once, they might take certain actions to help keep the website online. They might turn on more computers to power the website (this is called scaling), they might also attempt to rate-limit users who are requesting lots of pages, or serve reduced versions of pages.

Servers run tasks periodically; for example, a listings website might run a daily task at 01:00 to clean up all it’s old listings, which might affect server performance.

Working out what’s happening with these periodic effects is going to be fiddly; you’re probably going to need to talk to a back-end developer.

Depending on your skill level, you might not know exactly where to lead the discussion. A useful structure for a discussion is often to talk about how a request passes through your technology stack and then look at the edge cases we discussed above.

What happens to the servers under heavy load?

When do important scheduled tasks happen?

Two useful pieces of information to enter this conversation with:

Depending on the regularity of the problem in the logs, it is often worth trying to re-create the problem by attempting to crawl the website with a crawler at the same speed/intensity that Google is using to see if you can find/cause the same issues. This won’t always be possible depending on the size of the site, but for some sites it will be. Being able to consistently re-create a problem is the best way to get it solved.

If you can’t, however, then try to provide the exact periods of time where Googlebot was seeing the problems. This will give the developer the best chance of tying the issue to other logs to let them debug what was happening.

If Google can crawl the page consistently, then we move onto our next step.

5. Does Google see what I can see on a one-off basis?

We know Google is crawling the page correctly. The next step is to try and work out what Google is seeing on the page. If you’ve got a JavaScript-heavy website you’ve probably banged your head against this problem before, but even if you don’t this can still sometimes be an issue.

We follow the same pattern as before. First, we try to re-create it once. The following tools will let us do that:

Fetch & Render

Shows: Rendered DOM in an image, but only returns the page source HTML for you to read.

Mobile-friendly test

Shows: Rendered DOM and returns rendered DOM for you to read.

Not only does this show you rendered DOM, but it will also track any console errors.

Is there a difference between Fetch & Render, the mobile-friendly testing tool, and Googlebot? Not really, with the exception of timeouts (which is why we have our later steps!). Here’s the full analysis of the difference between them, if you’re interested.

Once we have the output from these, we compare them to what we ordinarily see in our browser. I’d recommend using a tool like Diff Checker to compare the two.

Have we found any problems yet?

If we encounter meaningful differences at this point, then in my experience it’s typically either from JavaScript or cookies

Why?

Googlebot crawls with cookies cleared between page requests

Googlebot renders with Chrome 41, which doesn’t support all modern JavaScript.

We can isolate each of these by:

Loading the page with no cookies. This can be done simply by loading the page with a fresh incognito session and comparing the rendered DOM here against the rendered DOM in our ordinary browser.

Use the mobile testing tool to see the page with Chrome 41 and compare against the rendered DOM we normally see with Inspect Element.

Yet again we can compare them using something like Diff Checker, which will allow us to spot any differences. You might want to use an HTML formatter to help line them up better.

We can also see the JavaScript errors thrown using the Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool, which may prove particularly useful if you’re confident in your JavaScript.

If, using this knowledge and these tools, we can recreate the bug, then we have something that can be replicated and it’s easier for us to hand off to a developer as a bug that will get fixed.

If we’re seeing everything is correct here, we move on to the next step.

6. What is Google actually seeing?

It’s possible that what Google is seeing is different from what we recreate using the tools in the previous step. Why? A couple main reasons:

Overloaded servers can have all sorts of strange behaviors. For example, they might be returning 200 codes, but perhaps with a default page.

JavaScript is rendered separately from pages being crawled and Googlebot may spend less time rendering JavaScript than a testing tool.

There is often a lot of caching in the creation of web pages and this can cause issues.

We’ve gotten this far without talking about time! Pages don’t get crawled instantly, and crawled pages don’t get indexed instantly.

Quick sidebar: What is caching?

Caching is often a problem if you get to this stage. Unlike JS, it’s not talked about as much in our community, so it’s worth some more explanation in case you’re not familiar. Caching is storing something so it’s available more quickly next time.

When you request a webpage, a lot of calculations happen to generate that page. If you then refreshed the page when it was done, it would be incredibly wasteful to just re-run all those same calculations. Instead, servers will often save the output and serve you the output without re-running them. Saving the output is called caching.

Why do we need to know this? Well, we’re already well out into the weeds at this point and so it’s possible that a cache is misconfigured and the wrong information is being returned to users.

There aren’t many good beginner resources on caching which go into more depth. However, I found this article on caching basics to be one of the more friendly ones. It covers some of the basic types of caching quite well.

How can we see what Google is actually working with?

Google’s cache

Shows: Source code

While this won’t show you the rendered DOM, it is showing you the raw HTML Googlebot actually saw when visiting the page. You’ll need to check this with JS disabled; otherwise, on opening it, your browser will run all the JS on the cached version.

Site searches for specific content

Shows: A tiny snippet of rendered content.

By searching for a specific phrase on a page, e.g. inurl:example.com/url “only JS rendered text”, you can see if Google has manage to index a specific snippet of content. Of course, it only works for visible text and misses a lot of the content, but it's better than nothing!

Better yet, do the same thing with a rank tracker, to see if it changes over time.

Storing the actual rendered DOM

Shows: Rendered DOM

Alex from DeepCrawl has written about saving the rendered DOM from Googlebot. The TL;DR version: Google will render JS and post to endpoints, so we can get it to submit the JS-rendered version of a page that it sees. We can then save that, examine it, and see what went wrong.

Have we found any problems yet?

Again, once we’ve found the problem, it’s time to go and talk to a developer. The advice for this conversation is identical to the last one — everything I said there still applies.

The other knowledge you should go into this conversation armed with: how Google works and where it can struggle. While your developer will know the technical ins and outs of your website and how it’s built, they might not know much about how Google works. Together, this can help you reach the answer more quickly.

The obvious source for this are resources or presentations given by Google themselves. Of the various resources that have come out, I’ve found these two to be some of the more useful ones for giving insight into first principles:

This excellent talk, How does Google work - Paul Haahr, is a must-listen.

At their recent IO conference, John Mueller & Tom Greenway gave a useful presentation on how Google renders JavaScript.

But there is often a difference between statements Google will make and what the SEO community sees in practice. All the SEO experiments people tirelessly perform in our industry can also help shed some insight. There are far too many list here, but here are two good examples:

Google does respect JS canonicals - For example, Eoghan Henn does some nice digging here, which shows Google respecting JS canonicals.

How does Google index different JS frameworks? - Another great example of a widely read experiment by Bartosz Góralewicz last year to investigate how Google treated different frameworks.

7. Could Google be aggregating your website across others?

If we’ve reached this point, we’re pretty happy that our website is running smoothly. But not all problems can be solved just on your website; sometimes you’ve got to look to the wider landscape and the SERPs around it.

Most commonly, what I’m looking for here is:

Similar/duplicate content to the pages that have the problem.

This could be intentional duplicate content (e.g. syndicating content) or unintentional (competitors' scraping or accidentally indexed sites).

Either way, they’re nearly always found by doing exact searches in Google. I.e. taking a relatively specific piece of content from your page and searching for it in quotes.

Have you found any problems yet?

If you find a number of other exact copies, then it’s possible they might be causing issues.

The best description I’ve come up with for “have you found a problem here?” is: do you think Google is aggregating together similar pages and only showing one? And if it is, is it picking the wrong page?

This doesn’t just have to be on traditional Google search. You might find a version of it on Google Jobs, Google News, etc.

To give an example, if you are a reseller, you might find content isn’t ranking because there's another, more authoritative reseller who consistently posts the same listings first.

Sometimes you’ll see this consistently and straightaway, while other times the aggregation might be changing over time. In that case, you’ll need a rank tracker for whatever Google property you’re working on to see it.

Jon Earnshaw from Pi Datametrics gave an excellent talk on the latter (around suspicious SERP flux) which is well worth watching.

Once you’ve found the problem, you’ll probably need to experiment to find out how to get around it, but the easiest factors to play with are usually:

De-duplication of content

Speed of discovery (you can often improve by putting up a 24-hour RSS feed of all the new content that appears)

Lowering syndication

8. A roundup of some other likely suspects

If you’ve gotten this far, then we’re sure that:

Google can consistently crawl our pages as intended.

We’re sending Google consistent signals about the status of our page.

Google is consistently rendering our pages as we expect.

Google is picking the correct page out of any duplicates that might exist on the web.

And your problem still isn’t solved?

And it is important?

Well, shoot.

Feel free to hire us…?

As much as I’d love for this article to list every SEO problem ever, that’s not really practical, so to finish off this article let’s go through two more common gotchas and principles that didn’t really fit in elsewhere before the answers to those four problems we listed at the beginning.

Invalid/poorly constructed HTML

You and Googlebot might be seeing the same HTML, but it might be invalid or wrong. Googlebot (and any crawler, for that matter) has to provide workarounds when the HTML specification isn't followed, and those can sometimes cause strange behavior.

The easiest way to spot it is either by eye-balling the rendered DOM tools or using an HTML validator.

The W3C validator is very useful, but will throw up a lot of errors/warnings you won’t care about. The closest I can give to a one-line of summary of which ones are useful is to:

Look for errors

Ignore anything to do with attributes (won’t always apply, but is often true).

The classic example of this is breaking the head.

An iframe isn't allowed in the head code, so Chrome will end the head and start the body. Unfortunately, it takes the title and canonical with it, because they fall after it — so Google can't read them. The head code should have ended in a different place.

Oliver Mason wrote a good post that explains an even more subtle version of this in breaking the head quietly.

When in doubt, diff

Never underestimate the power of trying to compare two things line by line with a diff from something like Diff Checker. It won’t apply to everything, but when it does it’s powerful.

For example, if Google has suddenly stopped showing your featured markup, try to diff your page against a historical version either in your QA environment or from the Wayback Machine.

Answers to our original 4 questions

Time to answer those questions. These are all problems we’ve had clients bring to us at Distilled.

1. Why wasn’t Google showing 5-star markup on product pages?

Google was seeing both the server-rendered markup and the client-side-rendered markup; however, the server-rendered side was taking precedence.

Removing the server-rendered markup meant the 5-star markup began appearing.

2. Why wouldn’t Bing display 5-star markup on review pages, when Google would?

The problem came from the references to schema.org.

<div itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Movie"> </div> <p> <h1 itemprop="name">Avatar</h1> </p> <p> <span>Director: <span itemprop="director">James Cameron</span> (born August 16, 1954)</span> </p> <p> <span itemprop="genre">Science fiction</span> </p> <p> <a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html" itemprop="trailer">Trailer</a> </p> <p></div> </p>

We diffed our markup against our competitors and the only difference was we’d referenced the HTTPS version of schema.org in our itemtype, which caused Bing to not support it.

C’mon, Bing.

3. Why were pages getting indexed with a no-index tag?

The answer for this was in this post. This was a case of breaking the head.

The developers had installed some ad-tech in the head and inserted an non-standard tag, i.e. not:

<title>

<style>

<base>

<link>

<meta>

This caused the head to end prematurely and the no-index tag was left in the body where it wasn’t read.

4. Why did any page on a website return a 302 about 20–50% of the time, but only for crawlers?

This took some time to figure out. The client had an old legacy website that has two servers, one for the blog and one for the rest of the site. This issue started occurring shortly after a migration of the blog from a subdomain (blog.client.com) to a subdirectory (client.com/blog/…).

At surface level everything was fine; if a user requested any individual page, it all looked good. A crawl of all the blog URLs to check they’d redirected was fine.

But we noticed a sharp increase of errors being flagged in Search Console, and during a routine site-wide crawl, many pages that were fine when checked manually were causing redirect loops.

We checked using Fetch and Render, but once again, the pages were fine. Eventually, it turned out that when a non-blog page was requested very quickly after a blog page (which, realistically, only a crawler is fast enough to achieve), the request for the non-blog page would be sent to the blog server.

These would then be caught by a long-forgotten redirect rule, which 302-redirected deleted blog posts (or other duff URLs) to the root. This, in turn, was caught by a blanket HTTP to HTTPS 301 redirect rule, which would be requested from the blog server again, perpetuating the loop.

For example, requesting https://www.client.com/blog/ followed quickly enough by https://www.client.com/category/ would result in:

302 to http://www.client.com - This was the rule that redirected deleted blog posts to the root

301 to https://www.client.com - This was the blanket HTTPS redirect

302 to http://www.client.com - The blog server doesn’t know about the HTTPS non-blog homepage and it redirects back to the HTTP version. Rinse and repeat.

This caused the periodic 302 errors and it meant we could work with their devs to fix the problem.

What are the best brainteasers you've had?

Let’s hear them, people. What problems have you run into? Let us know in the comments.

Also credit to @RobinLord8, @TomAnthonySEO, @THCapper, @samnemzer, and @sergeystefoglo_ for help with this piece.

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trewhitttesean1992 · 5 years ago

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What Is A Reiki Master Attunement

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#Reiki Healing License Astounding Useful Tips #Reiki Crystal Palace

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jvacdigital-blog · 7 years ago

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1. An 8-Point Checklist for Debugging Strange Technical SEO Problems

Occasionally, a problem will land on your desk that's a little out of the ordinary. Something where you don't have an easy answer. You go to your brain and your brain returns nothing.

These problems can’t be solved with a little bit of keyword research and basic technical configuration. These are the types of technical SEO problems where the rabbit hole goes deep.

Fancy some examples of strange SEO problems? Here are four examples to mull over while you read. We’ll answer them at the end.

1. Why wasn’t Google showing 5-star markup on product pages?

· The pages had server-rendered product markup and they also had Feefo product markup, including ratings being attached client-side.

· The Feefo ratings snippet was successfully rendered in Fetch & Render, plus the mobile-friendly tool.

· When you put the rendered DOM into the structured data testing tool, both pieces of structured data appeared without errors.

2. Why wouldn’t Bing display 5-star markup on review pages, when Google would?

· The review pages of client & competitors all had rating rich snippets on Google.

· All the competitors had rating rich snippets on Bing; however, the client did not.

· The review pages had correctly validating ratings schema on Google’s structured data testing tool, but did not on Bing.

3. Why were pages getting indexed with a no-index tag?

· Pages with a server-side-rendered no-index tag in the head were being indexed by Google across a large template for a client.

4. Why did any page on a website return a 302 about 20–50% of the time, but only for crawlers?

· A website was randomly throwing 302 errors.

· This never happened in the browser and only in crawlers.

· User agent made no difference; location or cookies also made no difference.

The full checklist

You can download the checklist template here (just make a copy of the Google Sheet):

The pre-checklist check

Does it actually matter?

But hopefully that's not the case, in which case, onwards!

Where are you seeing the problem?

We don’t want to waste a lot of time. Have you heard this wonderful saying?: “If you hear hooves, it’s probably not a zebra.”

1. You’re underperforming from where you should be.

1. When a site is under-performing, people love looking for excuses. Weird Google nonsense can be quite a handy thing to blame. In reality, it’s typically some combination of a poor site, higher competition, and a failing brand. Horse.

2. You’ve suffered a sudden traffic drop.

1. Something has certainly happened, but this is probably not the checklist for you. There are plenty of common-sense checklists for this. I’ve written about diagnosing traffic drops recently — check that out first.

3. The wrong page is ranking for the wrong query.

1. In my experience (which should probably preface this entire post), this is usually a basic problem where a site has poor targeting or a lot of cannibalization. Probably a horse.

Factors which make it more likely that you’ve got a more complex problem which require you to don your debugging shoes:

· A website that has a lot of client-side JavaScript.

· Bigger, older websites with more legacy.

· Your problem is related to a new Google property or features where there is less community knowledge.

1. Start by picking some example pages.

Pick a couple of example pages to work with — ones that exhibit whatever problem you're seeing. No, this won't be representative, but we'll come back to that in a bit.

2. Can Google crawl the page once?

First we’re checking whether Googlebot has access to the page, which we’ll define as a 200 status code.

We’ll check in four different ways to expose any common issues:

1. Robots.txt: Open up Search Console and check in the robots.txt validator.

2. User agent: Open Dev Tools and verify that you can open the URL with both Googlebot and Googlebot Mobile.

1. To get the user agent switcher, open Dev Tools.

2. Check the console drawer is open (the toggle is the Escape key)

3. Hit the … and open "Network conditions"

4. Here, select your user agent!

1. IP Address: Verify that you can access the page with the mobile testing tool. (This will come from one of the IPs used by Google; any checks you do from your computer won't.)

2. Country: The mobile testing tool will visit from US IPs, from what I've seen, so we get two birds with one stone. But Googlebot will occasionally crawl from non-American IPs, so it’s also worth using a VPN to double-check whether you can access the site from any other relevant countries.

1. I’ve used HideMyAss for this before, but whatever VPN you have will work fine.

We should now have an idea whether or not Googlebot is struggling to fetch the page once.

Have we found any problems yet?

If we can re-create a failed crawl with a simple check above, then it’s likely Googlebot is probably failing consistently to fetch our page and it’s typically one of those basic reasons.

But it might not be. Many problems are inconsistent because of the nature of technology. ;)

3. Are we telling Google two different things?

Next up: Google can find the page, but are we confusing it by telling it two different things?

This is most commonly seen, in my experience, because someone has messed up the indexing directives.

By "indexing directives," I’m referring to any tag that defines the correct index status or page in the index which should rank. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:

· No-index

· Canonical

· Mobile alternate tags

· AMP alternate tags

An example of providing mixed messages would be:

· No-indexing page A

· Page B canonicals to page A

Or:

· Page A has a canonical in a header to A with a parameter

· Page A has a canonical in the body to A without a parameter

If we’re providing mixed messages, then it’s not clear how Google will respond. It’s a great way to start seeing strange results.

Good places to check for the indexing directives listed above are:

· Sitemap

o Example: Mobile alternate tags can sit in a sitemap

· HTTP headers

o Example: Canonical and meta robots can be set in headers.

· HTML head

o This is where you’re probably looking, you’ll need this one for a comparison.

· JavaScript-rendered vs hard-coded directives

o You might be setting one thing in the page source and then rendering another with JavaScript, i.e. you would see something different in the HTML source from the rendered DOM.

· Google Search Console settings

o There are Search Console settings for ignoring parameters and country localization that can clash with indexing tags on the page.

A quick aside on rendered DOM

This page has a lot of mentions of the rendered DOM on it (18, if you’re curious). Since we’ve just had our first, here’s a quick recap about what that is.

When you load a webpage, the first request is the HTML. This is what you see in the HTML source (right-click on a webpage and click View Source).

Rendered DOM is the technical term for a page, when all the JavaScript has been rendered and all the page alterations made. You can see this in Dev Tools.

4. Can Google crawl the page consistently?

To see what Google is seeing, we're going to need to get log files. At this point, we can check to see how it is accessing the page.

When we’re looking at crawling there are three useful checks we can do:

1. Status codes: Plot the status codes over time. Is Google seeing different status codes than you when you check URLs?

2. Resources: Is Google downloading all the resources of the page?

1. Is it downloading all your site-specific JavaScript and CSS files that it would need to generate the page?

3. Page size follow-up: Take the max and min of all your pages and resources and diff them. If you see a difference, then Google might be failing to fully download all the resources or pages. (Hat tip to @ohgm, where I first heard this neat tip).

Have we found any problems yet?

1. It will crawl more than us

2. It is obviously a bot, rather than a human pretending to be a bot

3. It will crawl at different times of day

This means that:

· If our website is doing clever bot blocking, it might be able to differentiate between us and Googlebot.

· Because Googlebot will put more stress on our web servers, it might behave differently. When websites have a lot of bots or visitors visiting at once, they might take certain actions to help keep the website online. They might turn on more computers to power the website (this is called scaling), they might also attempt to rate-limit users who are requesting lots of pages, or serve reduced versions of pages.

· Servers run tasks periodically; for example, a listings website might run a daily task at 01:00 to clean up all it’s old listings, which might affect server performance.

Working out what’s happening with these periodic effects is going to be fiddly; you’re probably going to need to talk to a back-end developer.

· What happens to the servers under heavy load?

· When do important scheduled tasks happen?

Two useful pieces of information to enter this conversation with:

1. Depending on the regularity of the problem in the logs, it is often worth trying to re-create the problem by attempting to crawl the website with a crawler at the same speed/intensity that Google is using to see if you can find/cause the same issues. This won’t always be possible depending on the size of the site, but for some sites it will be. Being able to consistently re-create a problem is the best way to get it solved.

2. If you can’t, however, then try to provide the exact periods of time where Googlebot was seeing the problems. This will give the developer the best chance of tying the issue to other logs to let them debug what was happening.

If Google can crawl the page consistently, then we move onto our next step.

5. Does Google see what I can see on a one-off basis?

We follow the same pattern as before. First, we try to re-create it once. The following tools will let us do that:

· Fetch & Render

o Shows: Rendered DOM in an image, but only returns the page source HTML for you to read.

· Mobile-friendly test

o Shows: Rendered DOM and returns rendered DOM for you to read.

o Not only does this show you rendered DOM, but it will also track any console errors.

Once we have the output from these, we compare them to what we ordinarily see in our browser. I’d recommend using a tool like Diff Checker to compare the two.

Have we found any problems yet?

If we encounter meaningful differences at this point, then in my experience it’s typically either from JavaScript or cookies

Why?

· Googlebot crawls with cookies cleared between page requests

· Googlebot renders with Chrome 41, which doesn’t support all modern JavaScript.

We can isolate each of these by:

· Loading the page with no cookies. This can be done simply by loading the page with a fresh incognito session and comparing the rendered DOM here against the rendered DOM in our ordinary browser.

· Use the mobile testing tool to see the page with Chrome 41 and compare against the rendered DOM we normally see with Inspect Element.

Yet again we can compare them using something like Diff Checker, which will allow us to spot any differences. You might want to use an HTML formatter to help line them up better.

We can also see the JavaScript errors thrown using the Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool, which may prove particularly useful if you’re confident in your JavaScript.

If, using this knowledge and these tools, we can recreate the bug, then we have something that can be replicated and it’s easier for us to hand off to a developer as a bug that will get fixed.

If we’re seeing everything is correct here, we move on to the next step.

6. What is Google actually seeing?

It’s possible that what Google is seeing is different from what we recreate using the tools in the previous step. Why? A couple main reasons:

· Overloaded servers can have all sorts of strange behaviors. For example, they might be returning 200 codes, but perhaps with a default page.

· JavaScript is rendered separately from pages being crawled and Googlebot may spend less time rendering JavaScript than a testing tool.

· There is often a lot of caching in the creation of web pages and this can cause issues.

We’ve gotten this far without talking about time! Pages don’t get crawled instantly, and crawled pages don’t get indexed instantly.

Quick sidebar: What is caching?

Why do we need to know this? Well, we’re already well out into the weeds at this point and so it’s possible that a cache is misconfigured and the wrong information is being returned to users.

How can we see what Google is actually working with?

· Google’s cache

o Shows: Source code

o While this won’t show you the rendered DOM, it is showing you the raw HTML Googlebot actually saw when visiting the page. You’ll need to check this with JS disabled; otherwise, on opening it, your browser will run all the JS on the cached version.

· Site searches for specific content

o Shows: A tiny snippet of rendered content.

o By searching for a specific phrase on a page, e.g. inurl:example.com/url “only JS rendered text”, you can see if Google has manage to index a specific snippet of content. Of course, it only works for visible text and misses a lot of the content, but it's better than nothing!

o Better yet, do the same thing with a rank tracker, to see if it changes over time.

· Storing the actual rendered DOM

o Shows: Rendered DOM

o Alex from DeepCrawl has written about saving the rendered DOM from Googlebot. The TL;DR version: Google will render JS and post to endpoints, so we can get it to submit the JS-rendered version of a page that it sees. We can then save that, examine it, and see what went wrong.

Have we found any problems yet?

Again, once we’ve found the problem, it’s time to go and talk to a developer. The advice for this conversation is identical to the last one — everything I said there still applies.

· This excellent talk, How does Google work - Paul Haahr, is a must-listen.

· At their recent IO conference, John Mueller & Tom Greenway gave a useful presentation on how Google renders JavaScript.

· Google does respect JS canonicals - For example, Eoghan Henn does some nice digging here, which shows Google respecting JS canonicals.

· How does Google index different JS frameworks? - Another great example of a widely read experiment by BartoszGóralewicz last year to investigate how Google treated different frameworks.

7. Could Google be aggregating your website across others?

Most commonly, what I’m looking for here is:

· Similar/duplicate content to the pages that have the problem.

o This could be intentional duplicate content (e.g. syndicating content) or unintentional (competitors' scraping or accidentally indexed sites).

Either way, they’re nearly always found by doing exact searches in Google. I.e. taking a relatively specific piece of content from your page and searching for it in quotes.

Have you found any problems yet?

If you find a number of other exact copies, then it’s possible they might be causing issues.

This doesn’t just have to be on traditional Google search. You might find a version of it on Google Jobs, Google News, etc.

To give an example, if you are a reseller, you might find content isn’t ranking because there's another, more authoritative reseller who consistently posts the same listings first.

Jon Earnshaw from Pi Datametrics gave an excellent talk on the latter (around suspicious SERP flux)which is well worth watching.

Once you’ve found the problem, you’ll probably need to experiment to find out how to get around it, but the easiest factors to play with are usually:

· De-duplication of content

· Speed of discovery (you can often improve by putting up a 24-hour RSS feed of all the new content that appears)

· Lowering syndication

8. A roundup of some other likely suspects

If you’ve gotten this far, then we’re sure that:

· Google can consistently crawl our pages as intended.

· We’re sending Google consistent signals about the status of our page.

· Google is consistently rendering our pages as we expect.

· Google is picking the correct page out of any duplicates that might exist on the web.

And your problem still isn’t solved?

And it is important?

Well, shoot.

Feel free to hire us…?

Invalid/poorly constructed HTML

The easiest way to spot it is either by eye-balling the rendered DOM tools or using an HTML validator.

The W3C validator is very useful, but will throw up a lot of errors/warnings you won’t care about. The closest I can give to a one-line of summary of which ones are useful is to:

· Look for errors

· Ignore anything to do with attributes (won’t always apply, but is often true).

The classic example of this is breaking the head.

Oliver Mason wrote a good post that explains an even more subtle version of this in breaking the head quietly.

When in doubt, diff

Never underestimate the power of trying to compare two things line by line with a diff from something like Diff Checker. It won’t apply to everything, but when it does it’s powerful.

For example, if Google has suddenly stopped showing your featured markup, try to diff your page against a historical version either in your QA environment or from the Wayback Machine.

Answers to our original 4 questions

Time to answer those questions. These are all problems we’ve had clients bring to us at Distilled.

1. Why wasn’t Google showing 5-star markup on product pages?

Google was seeing both the server-rendered markup and the client-side-rendered markup; however, the server-rendered side was taking precedence.

Removing the server-rendered markup meant the 5-star markup began appearing.

2. Why wouldn’t Bing display 5-star markup on review pages, when Google would?

The problem came from the references to schema.org.

</div>

<p><h1 itemprop="name">Avatar</h1>

</p>

<p><span>Director: <span itemprop="director">James Cameron</span> (born August 16, 1954)</span>

</p>

<p><span itemprop="genre">Science fiction</span>

</p>

<p><a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html" itemprop="trailer">Trailer</a>

</p>

</p>

We diffed our markup against our competitors and the only difference was we’d referenced the HTTPS version of schema.org in our itemtype, which caused Bing to not support it.

C’mon, Bing.

3. Why were pages getting indexed with a no-index tag?

The answer for this was in this post. This was a case of breaking the head.

The developers had installed some ad-tech in the head and inserted an non-standard tag, i.e. not:

· <title>

· <style>

· <base>

· <link>

· <meta>

· <script>

· <noscript>

This caused the head to end prematurely and the no-index tag was left in the body where it wasn’t read.

4. Why did any page on a website return a 302 about 20–50% of the time, but only for crawlers?

At surface level everything was fine; if a user requested any individual page, it all looked good. A crawl of all the blog URLs to check they’d redirected was fine.

But we noticed a sharp increase of errors being flagged in Search Console, and during a routine site-wide crawl, many pages that were fine when checked manually were causing redirect loops.

For example, requesting https://www.client.com/blog/ followed quickly enough by https://www.client.com/category/ would result in:

· 302 to http://www.client.com - This was the rule that redirected deleted blog posts to the root

· 301 to https://www.client.com - This was the blanket HTTPS redirect

· 302 to http://www.client.com - The blog server doesn’t know about the HTTPS non-blog homepage and it redirects back to the HTTP version. Rinse and repeat.

This caused the periodic 302 errors and it meant we could work with their devs to fix the problem.

“SEO helps the search engines figure out what each page is about, and how it may be useful for users. Here at JVAC photo, we can help you solve all your SEO problems. Let’s get you in front of your prospect clients. Call us now at 561-346-7243” - JVAC Digital

Credits: moz.com

Written by: Dominic Woodman

#jvacphoto jvacdigital westpalmbeach palmbeach florida seo digitalmarketing smm contentmarketing emailmarketing marketingonline sem socialmed

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tainghekhongdaycomvn · 7 years ago