#not specified whether reader is love interest so can be readers decision to relationship with him

[sheriffgrimes-archerdixon]

The devil and I

Tw’s: blood, gore, near SA

Request: hey, I was wondering whether you could do something along the lines of where joes group hold rick at gunpoint but instead of it being michonne and Carl it’s the reader, Carl and rick? And they try to hurt y/n. If you’re comfortable with that? Thank you!

I’m so sorry this took me forever- i binged twd all over again so I’ve got inspiration to write this scene… legit my love for Rick is only growing🥲❤️ note: I am not following the scene so words will not be the same and actions will not be the same. Edit: this has been sat in my drafts for ages I forgot to post it so apologies. (Daryl not included in this version sorry!)

A/N: literally if Rick protected me like this I would legit fold. 😭

Safety was always something no one took for granted yet whenever you took safety for granted even for a split second everything went terribly wrong… exactly like this moment. You were now stood with your hands up in surrender Rick stood beside you and Carl in the car asleep. You listened to the cruel man as he began talking, blaming Rick— going on a tangent about how Rick was going to pay with his life. It made you feel sick to your stomach your fearful eyes locking onto Rick who was clearly watching you out of his peripheral one of his hands inches away from grabbing his pistol his other hand raised. “You think you’re all that?” His voice was sarcastic “well let me tell you somethin’ you killed our friend! That means we’ve gotta kill you! Start with the girl…” his cold eyes moved to look at you, eyes scanning up and down your body tongue lightly licking against his lower lip as he smirked “then we’ll kill you.” His eyes snapped back to Rick who looked infuriated to say the least. “It was my fault okay? Don’t- don’t get my people involved” he spat out. “Don’t? Oh you should’ve thought about that before killing my men!” He yelled making you flinch, immediately making his attention return to you as he suddenly turned his gun on you ricks eyes narrowing as he clenched his jaw,

“Hey! Keep the gun on me. On me.” Rick demanded, Joe looking at him with annoyance “you think you have fuckin’ control in this situation? Well buddy you’re wrong. You don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!” Jesus Christ this guy needed to take a chill pill. Your body trembled as the gun remained pointed at you, Rick too being held at gun point by another man as the other men in the group began searching around— the chubby one finding Carl, beginning to sniff him out in a crude horrible way your eyes wide as you watched the man do the unthinkable… this was sick! “Leave him be!” Rick yelled referring to Carl, Joe only laughing. He could’ve stopped his men from touching Carl.. pinning him down but he didn’t. He seemed to find it amusing. You watched with wide eyes until eventually you couldn’t cope anymore, making a drastic decision as you attempted to sprint over to Carl only for one of the skinner men to kick out his foot making you trip as you landed face first in the mud. “Well that was a dumb decision wasn’t it sweetheart!” You breathed heavily hearing Rick struggle slightly “don’t do anything to them— fuck! Don’t touch them! They didn’t do anything. It was all me! Leave them be!” Rick raised his voice desperately but despite that Joe didn’t listen, only mocking Rick further.

That’s when you felt a hand grab you, swiftly turning you over as you watched the tall man come down to straddle your waist— grubby hand grabbing your jaw as he got a good look at you. “Joe she’s a pretty one. Might keep her!” The man laughed out evilly Rick’s cold pale blue eyes glaring straight into the back of the man’s head his hands clenched by his side as he tried to breathe normally the fury on his face clearer than anything. He was about to snap… about to do something wrong… but these men couldn’t just do this. His eyes slid to the fat man who was now loosening his belt, ricks heart dropping into his stomach. “Don’t touch me!” You yelled averting ricks gaze back to you, watching you fight the man off attempting to push him away only for him to grab your wrists and pin them above your head “don’t touch her! Get your filthy hands off of her” he demanded, Joe taking that as a advantage more than anything knowing Rick seeing his people being hurt would cause him more pain… but unbeknownst to Joe it would also spur him on to doing something else in retaliation. “Hey— turn her around so he can see her face.” Joe laughed out, the man holding you down quickly obeying a sick grin on his lips as he forced you onto the floor— Rick now stood where you could see him but because you were laying on the ground he was upside down. Tears clung to your eyelashes as you stared at him in fear the terror clear. “You can take what you want! Just stop it. Stop this!” Rick demanded but it fell upon deaf ears. The men didn’t care. Rick watched as the man holding you began cutting your T-shirt off until you were exposed- leaving you in your bra and jeans.

“Well would you look at that… ya convinced yet?” He spoke to Joe as if asking whether they could keep you now. Joe only smirked and you watched in horror as the man began cutting your bra off, ricks eyes fleeing to look at Carl again the man pressing a knife to the young boys skin ricks head aching, his vision spinning, before he acted in complete panic and need to save you both as he abruptly head butted Joe making a bullet fly into the air— hitting one of joe’s men straight in the head knocking him unconscious immediately. The smell of gunpowder swirled in the air and you quickly kicked the man in the balls, watching him attempt to ease the pain only for him to pin you down again as you struggled barely registering what Rick had done, the familiar metallic scent of blood making you look over at him momentarily as your body continued to desperately fight…. Rick had bitten a huge chunk of flesh out of joe’s neck… clearly tearing an artery… your breath hitched as Rick stormed towards the two of you his beard coated in blood before he roughly stood the man up, shoving his gun onto his chin “give me one good fucking reason why I shouldn’t pull the trigger.” Rick growled out, but didn’t even wait as he pulled the trigger— it was violent… vicious… merciless.. you watched with wide eyes as Rick didn’t even tend to you, yet, instead moving toward the fat man who was now up hands raised attempting to desperately save his own life. You weakly scurried towards Carl, grabbing him and holding him close as the boy gripped onto you, a shadow of terror in his eyes… he was traumatised… you knew what Rick was going to do. He was going to end this man’s life in the most horrific way for touching his son and so you quickly but gently helped Carl get into the car, your head turning just in time to watch a sharp hunting knife be shoved into the man’s stomach— the jagged teeth immediately sinking into his flesh as Rick began dragging the knife upwards… literally gutting the man like a fish.

You watched with wide eyes your breath hitching, Rick keeping the man held up as he stared into his eyes watching how the life drained from him little by little and as the man slumped Rick began violently stabbing the man over and over and over again. Your eyes filled with terror. You hadn’t seen Rick like this before… never… he was so composed but obviously and rightfully so he acted like this correctly. You would too if it was your child. But you were also traumatised from also nearly being sexually assaulted. Your brain wasn’t entirely working and so you shakily got into the car and began comforting Carl your face twisted with pain and other emotions that couldn’t quite be deciphered… you were unsure with what you felt… you were confused… desperate for comfort but you knew Carl needed it more than you at the moment. You silently pulled a blanket over him in an attempt to sooth him, your fingers beginning to run through his hair gently.

—

You weren’t sure how long had passed but it was now daylight, the sun breaking through the clouds. You were sat near the car a numb expression on your face, your head bowed your body covered in blood and dirt hands trembling slightly. You were still shirtless, bra hanging on by only one strap but that was the least of your worries. You barely noticed as the familiar boots came into view, the man soon sitting beside you your eyes catching onto his hands covered in dried blood his wedding ring coated in the crimson liquid your eyes remaining locked on it momentarily before you looked away again. “Are you okay?” Those words left his lips so compassionately yet you could hear the tiredness in his voice. He didn’t need someone else to worry about.

“Fine.” You murmured back tiredly ricks eyes boring into you as he studied you carefully, he was an ex sheriff for gods sake he wasn’t dumb… he could sniff a lie out immediately. But really was anyone okay nowadays? “Hey” he reached his hand out grabbing onto your hand gently his grip tender and you slowly looked at him feeling gross. You could still feel the man’s hands on your body… groping you. “He touched me rick.” You whimpered feeling pathetic but you trusted him. Deeply. You knew you could talk to him without being judged. “I can feel his hands everywhere.” Tears stung your eyes as finally a few trailed down your cheeks leaving pale marks down your mud covered cheeks, Rick didn’t know what to say. What could he say? He however didn’t think much on it, instead giving your hand a squeeze. “I won’t let that happen ever again. Im sorry y/n.” He spoke tenderly and you glanced at him tired eyes locking with his and you only shook your head. “Not your fault.” You assured calmly yet emotionally, Rick didn’t speak for a moment or two before he eventually stood up. You believed he was going to leave but much to your surprise you watched as he removed his jacket, extending a hand out towards you as you slowly and timidly grabbed his hand. He pulled you up carefully before helping you put the jacket on, and once it was over you he leaned down slightly grabbing the ends of the jacket as he zipped it up for you until the zip dangled just below your neck before he stood back up. “We’ll get moving as soon as Carl is awake. Don’t want to risk running into anymore folk like that…” he spoke and you nodded silently, expecting him to walk off which he did at first before pausing turning to look at you “again I’m sorry.” He paused momentarily before walking back to you and much to your gratefulness and surprise he pulled you in for an abrupt hug, holding you for a solid 50 seconds before he pulled away hands resting on your shoulders “we’ll be alright.” He reassured searching your eyes that held doubt and worry and you gulped heavily before nodding. He then pulled away, “Rick” you murmured shakily making him pause as he looked back at you “pinky promise?” You held your pinky out for him watching as he glanced down at your pinky outstretched for his and he smiled slightly before nodding, stepping back towards you his pinky locking with yours “I pinky promise that we’ll be alright y/n.” He spoke whilst looking into your eyes. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you or carl ever again.” The look in his eyes saying that much… he was going to protect you and his family until his last dying breath.

[imagineyourworld]

Hey there! Could I request g. with Luke Skywalker with an inquisitor reader? Congrats on reaching 100, can't wait to read more of your work!

Hi,

Thank you so much <3

That's a really interesting request, I hope I can do it justice.

Love, Charlie

-------

Luke Skywalker x Genderneutral!Inquisitor!Reader

g. "Sorry doesn't fix everything."

Warnings: Slight age difference (just a couple of years, not specified), kinda self-harm, but not really

-------

You didn't consider yourself anyone special. You were one of many, one of many children orphaned during the end of the Clone Wars or the beginning of the Empire, one of many cadets in the Imperial Academy, one of many singled out on your fifteenth birthday for 'special training'. It wasn't until you turned eighteen and were sent on your first mission, the only one of your squad to ever receive a mission at all, that you realized that maybe there was something special about you, though you only managed to put it in words once none other than Grand Moff Tarkin, the Grand Moff Tarkin, pinned a medal on your chest and congratulated you to your promotion. That's when you realized that you were special, you were one of only a handful of Inquisitors, chosen and trained to rid the galaxy of the few remaining Jedi or those who still had faith in the doomed order, those whose abilities were too dangerous to let them live. You were good at what you did, if not one of the best, and had countless medals to prove it. Maybe that's why your next mission came from very high up, from Darth Vader himself. The day you met the second most powerful man in the galaxy would change your life forever, though whether for better or for worse you would never be able to tell.

-------

Vader had sent you to what had to be the worst planet you have visited so far. Tatooine was nothing but a pile of sand, two burning suns and more criminals and low lives than you cared to count. Though for someone high up in the empire, who received a generous salary, it wasn't too bad. Rent and food were cheaper than other places, so you allowed yourself the rare luxury of renting a small suite in one of the better hotels the planet had to offer. The mission itself was simple, all you had to do was listen to locals and maybe ask a few inconspicuous questions to find out whether there were any Jedi sympathizers left in this corner of the galaxy. That's how you met him, and how your life changed once more. Luke Skywalker quite literally ran into you the first time you visited a place called Tosche station. He was just leaving as you were entering, and since he wasn't paying attention to where he was going and you had no space to move to the side the two of you collided. Luke managed to stay on his feet, but you began to stumble and fall, only to suddenly find yourself in his arms. Wow, that kid has fast reflexes, was the first thing you thought, but once you got a closer look at him you realized that he was no kid, at the most he was a couple of years younger than you, though his out of style clothes and long hair made him appear younger than is actual age. "I am so sorry, I wasn't paying attention. Are you alright?", he asked, his arms still around you and concern in his eyes. You didn't know what it was, but there was something about him that made you stare just a moment longer, and heat rise up to your cheeks. "I'm fine. But I might feel better if you bought me a drink", you replied. Your keen eyes noticed the blush that crept up his face at your words. His reaction, and the overall lack of young people, let alone attractive young people, on this planet made it obvious that he wasn’t used to flirting, which brought out a strange sense of accomplishment and possessiveness in you.  “Just wait here, I’ll get us something to drink and I know a shady place to sit down”, he told you before disappearing in the crowd. 

-------

True to his word Luke reappeared a moment later and lead you to what seemed to be an abandoned farm a short distance away. That’s where the two of you settled and only when the suns began to set did you get back up. You didn’t remember the last time you have had a conversation like this, talking about everything and nothing. In just one short afternoon you learned more about Luke than you knew about most of your fellow cadets back at the academy. He was an orphan, living with his aunt and uncle on their moisture farm and though the two of them were happy with that life, Luke wanted more, he wanted to see the galaxy, a sentiment you could understand more than he knew. Luke was all of the things the people in your life weren’t; open and honest, sweet and funny, warm as the two suns above and quite good looking on top of it. In retrospect you should have known that it wouldn’t take Luke long to find a place in your heart, and your frequent meetings that followed after your first day together certainly didn’t help.  Luke was your first kiss, only a week after you first met him in the Tatooine desert with gleaming stars and a bright moon above.  He was the first one you told about your past, at least a few basics. You told him that you were an orphan, that your parents had been killed during the last few days of the Clone Wars and that you have been on your own since you were a baby. You told him about the loneliness and fears you usually kept bottled up and your unrealistic dreams for the future.  Luke was the first you slept with, back in your hotel suite, after you had treated him to a dinner nicer than any he has had back on the farm. It wasn’t like what your peers had told you sex was like, it was sweet and passionate and lovely.  And even though you tried your best not to, Luke was the first person you ever fell in love with, the first you cared about, other than the memory of parents you didn’t even remember if you were being honest.  Your relationship with Luke was both the only real thing and the biggest lie in your life. He had told you everything about himself, but you had no choice but to keep lying to him again and again, no matter how much it hurt. Maybe that’s why part of you was glad when, after once again reporting that there was nothing unusual on Tatooine, you were told your mission was over and you should report to the Death Star.  When you told Luke that you’d have to leave the next day he kissed you in his unique sweet way and whispered the three words you have come to cherish against your lips.  “In that case I think I should give this to you now. I had been planning to wait til our one year anniversary next month, but I guess that doesn’t matter now”, he mumbled, speaking more to himself than to you. Before you could ask what he was talking about he pulled a small box out of the messenger back he usually carried with him. Gently he opened the box to reveal the most stunning bracelet you have ever seen.  “It was my mother’s, one of the few things I have of hers. I want you to have it.”  You lifted the bracelet out of  its box, admiring how the stones shone in the soft light of the candles around your suite.  “Luke...”, you said, trying your best not to let your voice break. “I cannot accept this.”  You lowered the bracelet to put it back in the box, but before you could Luke took your hand in his and used his other hand to close your finger on top of it.  “I want you to have it, I really do. To remember me by. Besides, the colour really doesn’t suit me.”  You couldn’t fight the smile that found its way to your lips at his bad joke, neither the tears that appeared in your eyes. It really was time for you to leave this planet, to leave Luke, if you didn’t do it soon you feared you never would.  “Thank you. I won’t take this off, I promise”, you vowed as he gently fastened the bracelet around your wrist and then pressed a soft kiss on your pulse point.  “I love you”, he said with a sad smile.  Only then did it occur to you that he had said it multiple times now, almost every day ever since the first time he had said it almost seven months ago, but never once did you say the words back. Maybe it was fitting that the only time you told him how you felt about him was when saying goodbye.  “I love you too, Luke.” 

-------

Soon after your return to the Empire, and your first visit to the infamous Death Star, did you realize why you had been called back so suddenly. The war against the rebels was picking up pace and the Empire could use all the help it could get.  The next year was busy, you were no longer sent on solo missions but rather trained with the elite forces, taught to fly and shoot instead of fighting with your lightsaber, and then it suddenly stopped.  After the Battle of Yavin the Empire had to regroup, rethink its strategies, and fight a new opponent.  “We have information about an old Jedi temple, you will leave tomorrow and destroy it”, Grand Moff Tarkin informed you in his usual clipped way.  This caught your attention, and for the first time in a while your interest. Hunting Jedi, making sure no children strong with the force would ever find out about their existence and take care of them if they did was what you were trained for, what you often thought you were born to do. Suddenly it dawned on you that the last time you had actually been assigned a mission like this was before Tatooine, before Luke.  “Why me? I don’t mean to question your decision, but there are many older, more skilled Inquisitors.”  Tarkin simply nodded. “I agree. But Lord Vader asked for you specifically. You’re to leave for Dagobah tomorrow at 0700.” 

-------

Your short research told you that Dagobah was basically a slimy mudhole, but upon arrival it seemed even worse than in the pictures on the holonet.   “If that temple is inside one of those swamps I’m not even gonna bother, I’ll just set fire to the whole planet”, you mumbled as you climbed out of your TIE fighter, careful not to get your bracelet caught on the ladder. That had happened once during one of your first flying lessons and it had cost you almost a month’s salary to get it repaired, apparently the medal alone was worth more than you made in a year, from the stones you might even be able to buy a small planet.  The second your feet touched the ground you felt something dripping down from the trees onto your arms, which you could only hope was water.  Luckily, after just a few meters, you stumbled upon a path covered with mostly dry branches and pebbles.  “I thought this planet was supposed to be abandoned, but this looks almost like someone made this path on purpose.”  You kept walking along the path, checking your datapad every now and then to make sure you were headed the right way.  After what felt like half an eternity of walking you finally reached a small hut, which your datapad assured you was right next to the temple, though since you couldn’t see anything other than the hut and a million trees you decided to investigate there first, who knew what you may find.  A familiar buzz ran through your entire body, adrenaline and excitement preparing you for what was to come. With a slight smile on your lips you ignited your lightsaber, partially so you’d be ready for what- or whoever would be waiting for you inside, partially because from where you stood in the doorway you could tell that it was incredibly dark and the added benefit of a lightsaber was the soft glow that helped in situations like this.  Inside the hut was larger than it had seemed on the outside, mostly meaning that there was more than just one room. In fact, there was a long hallway with open doors on both sides leading to different rooms. The first couple of rooms you checked, if they could even be called that, were pretty much overtaken by nature and rotting away. There was nothing that spoke of Jedi, or any other intelligent being, having been there in recent years. It wasn’t until you were closing in on the last rooms that you heard a low noise, followed by a gut feeling that told you that what you were looking for would be in that room. Though since you didn’t know what, or who, exactly would be in there you entered the room with your lightsaber stretched out in front of you, hoping the red sword would make any possible threat stand down before they could try anything while you would remain in the shadowy hallway to glance inside.  The plan seemed to work, since you heard a small gasp from inside the room just a moment before you realized who it had come from.  “Luke?”  “(Y/N)?”  Both your voices were astounded, shocked, and mournful. Of all the people in the galaxy, why did it have to be Luke Skywalker you found here of all places?  “What are you doing here?”, you asked as you slowly entered the room.  It was then that you noticed just how different Luke looked, how much he had changed since you last saw him. His hair was a bit shorter, his skin paler and his eyes darker. And he was wearing an orange flight suit, the outfit was completed by the helmet in his hand, with the familiar rebel symbol on the side.  You turned your lightsaber off before fastening it to your belt, just in time because only moments later you felt your legs begin to wobble before they gave out underneath you.  Luke, his reflexes fast as ever, quickly pushed a chair in your direction, so you would fall on that instead of the hard floor.  “Luke... Please don’t tell me this is what I think it is.”  You didn’t know what made you plead, hated the hurt and fear in your voice, but how could Luke, your Luke, not only be a rebel but be hiding right were an ancient Jedi temple was supposed to be.  “If you’re asking whether I’m a rebel, the answer is yes”, he said after a moment of silence. “But judging by that red saber that’s not the only thing you’re asking.”  Luke astonished you by sitting down on the small bed you only just noticed, one of the few pieces of furniture in the small room. How could he be so calm?  “Why didn’t you tell me that you’re a... what do you call yourselves again? Inquisitors?”  You couldn’t help the inappropriate laugh that escaped your lips.  “Yes, Inquisitors. Also known as the only people stopping the Jedi from destroying the galaxy as we know it.”  Luke simply looked at you, an expression on his face you’ve never seen. He seemed to be beyond angry, though there was no denying the sadness in his eyes.  “Is that what you believe? That the Jedi, the few Jedi you and those like you haven’t slaughtered, are trying to destroy the galaxy?”  Not knowing what made you do it you sat down next to Luke, though you did your best to put some distance between you on the small bed.  “Luke, I know this might be hard to hear, I know some people, rebels and Jedi alike, probably told you more lies than either of us can count, but the Jedi are bad. They once controlled the galaxy, did you know that? And they used that control to gain riches and live comfortably while others suffered. They were selfish and deceiving and cruel and Emperor Palpatine was the only one who could stop them. You know that, don’t you?”, you asked. Of course Luke had to know that, know the truth. You spoke to him in a soft voice, careful not to burst his bubble too sudden, to give him time to adjust and acknowledge what deep down you were sure he had to know.  “Is that what they told you? What they made you believe so you would go around killing innocent children, scared old fugitives and all those trying to live normal lives after a genocide? Wake up, (Y/N)! It’s not the Jedi that are bad, it’s the Empire.”  Luke reached out to take your hand and for reasons unknown to you, you let him.  “The Empire raised you, didn't it?”, he asked.  To say you were shocked would be an understatement. You’ve never really told Luke anything about your past, you weren’t even sure whether you told him that you were an orphan, but certainly not what your childhood had been like.  “How did you know?”  He moved closer to you before he answered, reached for your face to lay a hand on your cheek. The sadness in his eyes was even more obvious now, so much so that it took over his entire face.  “There’s no other explanation. If you had known life outside the Empire, if even just for a moment, you would know just how false everything you just said is.”  You shook your head. Though doubt began to creep in on you, the bigger part of your brain knew that Luke must be trying one of his Jedi tricks on you. But as soon as that thought appeared you neglected it. This was Luke, your Luke. Sweet and kind and caring, he couldn’t hurt a fly, much less you, no matter how much time has passed. So was what he was saying true? At least partially?  “They told you what they want you to believe, never let you make up your own mind. I know you, (Y/N), I know that deep down, somewhere underneath all those lies you’ve been told, you’re a good person, and that person doesn’t have to heart to be an Inquisitor.”  There was an expression on Luke’s face you knew all too well. Hope.  He squeezed your hand before lifting it up to his lips to press a soft kiss on the back of it.  “Luke, I... I’m...”, you started, but with how much your lip was quivering you couldn’t finish your sentence.  “It’s alright”, Luke said before pressing another kiss to your hand. “You don’t need to say it, you don’t need to apologize. You know, sorry doesn’t fix everything, but it’s a good start. And if you let me, I can help you. You could start a new life as part of the rebellion, I’m sure they’d be glad to have someone of your expertise.”  As Luke kept talking your head began to spiral. Finally you came to a conclusion, and though you knew it was the right thing, you almost didn’t go through with it, knowing you wouldn’t be able to look Luke in the eyes afterwards.  Slowly you began to loosen your hand from Luke’s grasp and removed his other hand from your cheek.  “I’m not sorry. I’m not gonna say that I am when I’m not. Maybe what I’ve done was wrong, and if that’s the case your rebellion would never accept me, I don’t think I would accept me if what I have done wasn’t for the good of the galaxy, or maybe everything I’ve ever been taught was right and you’re lying to me. Whatever it is, I cannot say that I’m sorry, much less go with you, until I know the truth.”  You took a deep breath and averted your eyes from Luke’s face. You couldn’t bear to look at him right now.  “I know you won’t hurt me, even though you probably should. And I won’t hurt you, even though that’s what I’m here for. I’ll go looking for answers, to see whether I’m the villain you think I am, or the hero I was raised to be.”  As you spoke the last words you got up from the small bed. You could feel Luke’s eyes on you, but knew that if you looked at him, at the face you’ve seen in your dreams ever since you first met, you wouldn’t be able to go through with your plan, instead you’d crumble and fall into his arms, knowing he’d always be there to catch you.  Lucky for you, Luke didn’t say anything, didn’t try to stop you until you were almost out the door.  “I still love you”, he finally said. “Maybe I shouldn’t, knowing what I now know, but I can’t help it.”  Even though every bone in your body was screaming at you to turn around, even though your heart was aching to catch one last glimpse at him, you continued to walk out the door, out the hut and didn’t stop until you reached your TIE.  And just as you were taking off, after you have ripped parts of your clothes and carefully cut yourself with your lightsaber to make it seem as if Luke had bested you in battle, you finally did turn around and looked for Luke among the trees. And though you didn’t see him, something told you that he was there, watching you. It was that feeling that made you whisper the words you should have said to him whenever you had the chance.  “I love you too. And I’m sorry, for everything.” 

-------

I’m so sorry that this took ages, but I hope it was worth the wait. I really loved this idea and though I don’t think I really did it justice I have tried my best. 

[lockefanfic]

What another banger Locke, going straight for the readers' hearts now huh. Also, two smuts with two different characters? Wow! Cries when seeing their last smut chapter :(

From how I'm seeing it, it seems like Sana isn't going to be endgame. It has been pretty clear how oc feels about Sana, especially with the lines "I’m tired of your bullshit" and "You knew why she did the things she did. But you didn’t like the way she did them." Even in Ch46, Sana was left crying on the bed while oc and Momo talk things out. Perhaps if Sana wasn't too extreme, maybe she would have a better chance. Cool smut though, it's rare to see someone be taken from behind but still being the one doing the fucking (like in Ch28 Nayeon and Jay)

Now Nayeon is the tricky one to analyse. The one thing that is unaddressed (intentionally or not) is their jobs if they were to be together. It might be implied, but not explicitly stated, that oc works in Seoul (although I don't think so as Seolhyun runs the Seoul office (from Ch29)) If he doesn't, it's gonna be tricky to maintain the relationship between Nayeon and oc. Nayeon has came a long way from when she first arrived in the main storyline, from being jealous that oc is fucking the other girls to now being more accepting of that (like Momo) although she still is disappointed in this chapter because she is unsure of oc's decision. The sex scene was great as well, building on the public sex and leash kinks of Nayeon (free show for the waiter, where can I sign up to work there)

While she is not featured in this chapter, I'm going to bring in Momo for a brief discussion. While I mentioned that it might be hard for Nayeon and oc to maintain a relationship, you know who can? Momo. They already travel together for multiple Business Trips (just had to say it) and being the first love interest, it can lead to one of the more complete ending of this amazing series. Given that she isn't featured here, it is highly likely that she is going to be next and I can't wait to see how oc is going to interact with Momo next. The bigger question at hand is "Is Jeongyeon still going to be in the next few BT parts?" Because I sure as hell don't mind a non-smut portion for her (out of respect for her hiatus)

Yeah, two smuts with two different characters in the same chapter is new lol, and unfortunately I kind of feel looking back at it like it's a lot of smut crammed into one chapter... but I wanted each of the love interests to get a scene before the end, so that meant some cramming was required.

Sana :(, but anything can happen for endgame! OC didn't outright deny her...

As for where OC works he doesn't work in Asia - remember this whole thing started when he and Momo went on that first Business Trip to Tokyo. I haven't specified where he works, just that it's not in Seoul/Tokyo (I did this on purpose to allow for the reader to fill in their "home city/country" for iMMeRzIOnZ). It's the same reason why I never really specified what industry JYP is involved in - just that they're engaging in corporate espionage.

As for Momo: shrug lol I wouldn't take the order that the final smuts are happening as a hint as to who endgame girl is. I kind of just wanted some poetic symmetry with Momo being the first smut chapter and (spoiler) probably being the last smut chapter, but that has no bearing on whether she'll be endgame girl or not.

And yes Jeongyeon will be in the last two chapters, but obviously not in a smut capacity.

Thanks for reading friend, always love your long asks lol <3

[thinknicht]

what's your biggest challenge and what comes easiest to you when writing?

Interesting question. It’s really made me think about my writing style and how it’s evolved over the years (honestly, it had been one hell of a journey and I have no regrets), tbh, my only regret is not knowing your username so I could give you a shoutout, but in any case… thanks for the ask! I mean it. It made me think, and do so a lot, which I appreciate.

But you probably don’t care all that much. You’re here for answers. And fear not, my fair anonymous, for they shall be given.

I suppose I should be a procrastinator and go with the easier answer first. (Get it? Okay never mind ignore me. ) What comes easiest to in writing, hands down, is… (drumroll)

dialogue. Yep. You read that right. It’s harder for OCs but generally, once I start I can’t stop. Literally a recurring problem for me is that I often start to add stuff in second reads (once a severe is already completed) making it sometimes twice as long as it was originally. The downside of this ease at writing it is that my dialogues get way too long and then I have to make hard decisions on which pieces of dialogue need to be cut out and which get to live. (Or whether I think my readers would be fine with the surplus.) I know you were probably expecting me to say something else is easiest but yeah. Dialogues, definitely. They’re my best friend. They really help me flesh out new characters, relationships developing between them and add dynamism to the story.

As for my biggest challenge…? It really isn’t a fixed thing. For example, believe it or not my biggest challenge used to be humor of all things. Humor, which is now one of my strengths. Well, it wasn’t always. In fact, learning the art of humor (make no mistakes, writing humor and doing it well is a literal ART) was my main aim when I wrote Twisted (it’s on ffnet) with literally that one goal in mind. To learn how to write humor. It was something I’d been stewing on for quite some time prior to that, reading articles, starting to watch a lot of youtubers that appealed my own brand of humor, giving myself a push to start making more jokes in social situations. Basically it was a day to day effort to cultivate my own sense of humor and laugh more easily at things. This, I have to say, really changed me as a person and I was much happier for it. Going back to twisted now (my first ‘successful’ humor piece) I feel like a lot of it was kind of immature and a bit unrealistic, but it was a definite start and I learned so much from writing it. I am now a much funnier and happier person than I was before, have more friends and confidence in social situations and all… because I once decided to learn how to write humor scenes. Yeah. No lie.

Then came my next challenge, which was adding more layers of depth to antagonists. This is why I made danzo morally grey in MTE and why Hiruzen is also neither good nor bad, but rather someone with good intentions and bad executions. In short, I wanted to start writing contradictions. Real humans are full of them and I think realizing this is an important part of being a writer. Also, I have always wanted to try my hand at a Snape-ish type of character and my danzo in some ways resembles him (in some very limited ways) so that was a bonus! That actually I didn’t struggle with so much, but I think the important part was coming to the realization of wanting to make my characters like this. It is something I’m incorporating more and more as o write.

My next challenge was writing OCs that wouldn’t make people run in the opposite direction. I have to admit… I am still struggling with that. But! I have also made a LOT of discoveries in the process (I don’t want this post to go on forever but if you want me to specify, just say the word!) and I think I’ve gotten most of the ‘formula’ of dos and songs down by this point. Anyways I also realized that morally ambiguous FEMALE characters are way less well received than male ones, especially if they’re potential love interests, which made me wonder in turn about societal perception of ‘anti heroes’ as cool when it’s a man vs when it’s a woman. Make of this info what you will.

But anyways, there are many other challenges to writing I’ve been struggling with, such as pacing, the classic showing va telling, which can be observed in the larger scale of things as well as adverb and adjective usage, then there’s the order and length of scenes when you have many POV switches going on… another hard task for sure… and coming up with original metaphors… knowing when some comic relief is needed… honestly there’s so much stuff. But if I had to pick ONE thing? Again, I think you’ll be surprised but…

I pick writing romance and or mushy stuff, which I weirdly have a lot of trouble with, even though I love reading it. I cannot explain it. I guess I just find it embarrassing to share, in a way, something so deeply personal with the internet. Here’s to hoping I’ll do Sakura and Itachi justice!

Anyways, I think that covers it :) Peace!

[forlawfirmsonlymarketing]

What to Tweet: 21 Easy Ideas for Your Business or Brand via @KristiKellogg

At this point, you probably need no convincing that Twitter is an effective marketing tool for business. You can use Twitter to gain exposure, drive site traffic, assist in conversions and improve overall brand reputation. If you’re ready to up your investment in Twitter, but don’t know where to start or what to tweet, we’re here to help. Read on for 21 things to tweet from a business or brand account.

1. Promote Your Blog Posts and Content

Whenever you publish a new blog post, case study, white paper or any other piece of content, push it out to Twitter! And not just on the first day – make sure you schedule out follow-up tweets, especially if it’s a piece of evergreen content that’s performing well. For example, let’s say REI publishes a blog post on supplies you need to bring when backpacking – that’s the kind of article that will be perpetually relevant. REI could schedule out weekly tweets promoting that single blog post (with slightly different messaging each time) throughout an entire year.

2. Promote Your Sales and Specials

Whether you’re having a sale in a store or a special online, let your Twitter followers know! For an in-store sale, include the details of where and when, and highlight some of the best deals. For an online sale, include your promo code and let customers know how long it’s good for. In either case, include a lively picture or GIF to attract more attention. (Looking for a source for license-free photos? Check out 41 Places to Find Free Images Online That You Will Actually Want to Use.)

3. Share Helpful Tips or On-Brand Messages

Tweets don’t only have to link back to a specific blog post. Use Twitter to share one-off tips and tricks that your audience will find useful. If, for example, you sell skincare products, you could tweet general skincare tips. A yoga studio, on the other hand, could tweet out positive mantras. What can your business share that would benefit your audience?

4. Respond to Complaints, Comments and Questions

Customers expect responses from brands and businesses on Twitter. According to research, 72% of Twitter users expect a brand to respond within an hour when they tweet a complaint. To maintain your brand’s reputation, it’s essential to respond politely and promptly to complaints. Never argue with the user, but thank them for sharing their experience and do everything to address their concerns (and move the conversation off Twitter to email or a phone call when it’s above and beyond the scope of 280 characters!) Make sure to actively monitor your Twitter for complaints (and questions) so that concerns are addressed quickly and don’t escalate.

6. Give Answers to FAQ

Your FAQ is a great place to find content for Twitter. What questions come up again and again? Repurpose those questions and answers into bite-size Twitter content. This is an easy way to anticipate and address needs before your audience even brings it up!

7. Conduct Polls

Polls are a quick and easy way to garner engagement on Twitter. You can:

Ask for general feedback.

Discover product preferences.

Learn more about your customers.

And it certainly doesn’t have to be all serious – you can ask lighthearted questions solely to boost engagement.

8. Highlight Reviews & Recommendations

It comes as no surprise that 97% of shoppers say reviews influence buying decisions. In addition to review sites and your actual website, post positive reviews to Twitter. If you get a glowing review on Yelp, Google, or anywhere else, don’t hesitate to hit copy and paste. Share the quote directly to Twitter with a link to the actual review page.

9. Ask for Reviews & Recommendations

You can use Twitter not only to highlight reviews but also ask for them. Sometimes your customers need that extra push to make a review. A restaurant could tweet something as simple: Reviews are so important for our business! If you love our restaurant, would you mind leaving us a review on Yelp? It’d mean so much to us! Take 60 seconds and leave us a review! 🍔 Include a link leading them directly to where they can lead a review. This kind of request is something you could work into your Twitter calendar once a week.

10. Share Articles & Content that Are Relevant to Your Readers

Your Twitter account shouldn’t be a bullhorn announcing only your own accomplishments. There should be a healthy mix of content that is relevant to your audience – and sometimes that means tweeting things that have nothing to do with your company itself. For example, let’s say you’re a digital marketing agency specializing in SEO and a major algorithm update takes place. Sharing a news story on the subject would be relevant to your clients, and it would also show that your agency is on top of the latest news. Or maybe you’re a local business, and you have a neighboring store who is holding a charity event – chances are that the people who frequent your business would also be familiar with your neighbors so it would make total sense to help promote it.

11. Announce Job Openings

Looking for new talent? Take to Twitter to announce your need. Anyone following you is already interested in your brand, and who knows who’s out there that would jump on the opportunity to work with you! Always tweet out job openings with a link to where people can apply.

12. Highlight Standout Employees

Speaking of employees, use Twitter to highlight your standout staff. Share noteworthy accomplishments, whether it’s earning employee of the month, completing a major project, celebrating a major work anniversary or generally going above and beyond. Not only will this boost staff morale, but it will also attract potential customers, employees, and customers. Who wouldn’t want to work with a company not only has exemplary workers but takes the time to acknowledge and thank them?

13. Link to Any Press Coverage, Mentions or Recognition of Your Business

Whenever your business earns press coverage, an award or recognition of any kind, make sure to tweet it out. Press mentions are one of my favorite things to tweet. They’re Twitter gold, and belongs on all your social media channels, as well as a page dedicated to press mentions on your website. Set up Google Alerts for your business’ name so you’re always on top of any news that comes out.

14. Recognize Holidays and Events

Holidays are excellent fodder for Twitter content. Show the human side of your brand with thoughtful well wishes for the holidays, expressions of gratitude on Thanksgiving, national pride on the Fourth of July, etc. Not sure what to post, exactly? It can be as simple as a kind tweet with a relevant picture, or as elaborate as a three-minute video of your office singing a Christmas carol. Get creative!

15. Retweet Any Positive or Useful Tweets Mentioning Your Brand

Make use of other people’s tweets! Whenever someone mentions your business or employees, respond to the tweet and take the extra step to retweet it. Note: when people mention you, they might not necessarily use your Twitter handle. For that reason, it’s key to set up a column in your TweetDeck that monitors any mention of your brand’s name, the CEO and executives’ names, or any other important terminology associated with your business.

16. Find Ways to Be Transparent & Go Behind the Scenes of Your Business

Studies have shown that consumers are more likely to buy from transparent companies and more willing to give transparent companies second chances after a bad experience. One way to be transparent is to go behind the scenes of your business. You can:

Share goals and objectives.

Share videos or pictures of day-to-day operations.

Admit to mistakes you’ve made and how they’ve shaped (or will shape) your future actions.

17. Get in On Trending Conversations

Take advantage of trending hashtags when appropriate. For example, if #FridayFeeling is trending, a store could offer a 10% TGIF discount with and use #FridayFeeling in its hashtags. Or, if you’re a B2B, maybe it’s just a funny TGIF picture, video, or meme celebrating the end of the week.

18. Have a Sense of Humor and a Heart

Just because you’re a business, your tweets don’t need to all be business-driven. People love to see the human side of brands, so don’t hesitate to occasionally share a funny meme or joke, or a heartwarming video. When you post things like this, try to keep it relevant to your brand. For example, a shoe company could post a video of a charity giving out shoes to poor in third world countries – while it has nothing to do with their actual business, it’s still on brand.

19. Hold Contests

Use Twitter as a platform for a social media contest. This will increase your engagement, boost your following, and lead to conversions. You can also use your contest to capture emails and leads. Software like Studies and Rafflecopter make it simple to run a contest.

20. Strategically Interact with Influencers

Is building relationships with social media influencers one of your goals? It doesn’t happen by magic. Influencers are far more likely to partner with a brand they’ve formed a relationship with. Make a list of influencers that your brand would benefit from working with, and begin regularly interacting with them: thoughtfully comment on their comment and retweet it when appropriate. Then, when you’re ready to ask for something from them (whether you’re offering to pay or not), your request is much more likely to get attention – your business won’t be a stranger, but someone the influencer has begun to form a relationship with.

21. Participate in Twitter Chats

Twitter chats are a great way to earn more engagement and followers. A Twitter chat is much like any other online chat, in which online users gather at a specified time to discuss certain topics or issues. The great thing about Twitter chat is it brings users together from all over the world to a platform where they can interact in real time rather than communicate in a delayed manner through traditional social media postings. To join a Twitter chat, you just need to know the hashtag being used (every Twitter chat has its own hashtag). The best way to follow Twitter chats is with a site like TweetChat or TweetDeck. There are Twitter chats on virtually every topic you can think of. SEMrush, for example, hosts a Twitter chat (#SEMrushChat) every Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET that focuses on digital marketing topics. Find Twitter chats that are relevant to your business or industry, and make a point to join in when you can.

Image Credits Featured Image: Paulo Bobita

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/what-to-tweet-21-easy-ideas-for-your-business-or-brand-via-kristikellogg/

[seo1code-blog]

10 Smart Search Engine Marketing Tactics To Get Free Google Traffic

10 Smart Search Engine Marketing Tactics To Get Free Google Traffic

Search engines on average will drive 300% more traffic than social media. So how do you let Google know you exist?

One tactic is to put more focus on quality content. But content on its own can’t make you rank in “Top 10” search results. You should also take into account the importance of link building.

Link building is the most significant but also the most challenging aspect of optimizing your blog or website for search engines.

It has significant effects on how your website ranks in search engines. But what is “link building“?

“It is the process of attracting and establishing inbound links to your website which help your website achieve higher ranking with search engines and drive targeted traffic to your site“.

But there is a lot of buzz about how Google reacts to unnatural and spammy backlinks. Google is always updating its algorithms and changing the game by releasing Penguin updates that give you penalties for using unnatural ways of getting backlinks on your websites.

I’ve learned through hard work many search engine marketing tactics that can benefit your business. I’ve chosen the top 10 best strategies that I’ve implemented. Each one has resulted in great success.

Here they are!

1. Scoop.it

It is one of my favourite SEO ways to get good links within 15 minutes. It is an awesome content curation basement where people gather interesting content over the web and publish them in a magazine format.

Lots of these Scoop.it pages have high PR like 3 and more. This type of publications draws much attention via social engagement.

How do you do it?

Chose the category of your post or infographic you want to share, find the closely related Scoop it page and suggest your post. Based on my experience, 50 % accept them within a day what means a good amount of quality backlinks for 15 minutes of your work.

2. Finding broken links

This method is time-consuming and scalable. You should get much patience to find links that have 404 errors.

It is a real problem that it takes a lot of time and effort.

There are many companies that moved and changed their brand names, therefore, the links were deleted. I guess this tactic is totally worthy to spend time and efforts to gain these killer links.

How to find these broken links? In Google search you can use the following search strings that allow you to find some of them:

“SEO” + “resource page”

“Seo” + “recommended sites”

“Seo” + “useful links”

“Seo” + “toolbox”

“Seo” + “resources”

“Seo” + “useful tools”

So, as soon as you find pages, check whether all the links are working well. When you find such kind of broken links, you can instantly contact the owner of the website and inform him about this crap-shoot.

I can recommend you to use the Chrome Extension Check My Links. It will help you to find out all broken links that are highlighted in red.

Replacing dead links in Wikipedia

I guess you’ve noticed some dead links on Wikipedia pages. They don’t instantly remove these links and just add a footnote with the link “dead link”. That will give you a chance to replace it with your link.

You can find these links with the next search string:

site:wikipedia.org SEO + “dead link”

Or you can check out with the tool WikiGrabber to find all dead links on Wikipedia. After you find a dead link, you need to recreate it on your site and replace it with your link in Wikipedia.

3. Monitor competitor’s backlinks

It can seem kind of creepy to keep track of competitors’ backlinks, but I can make sure you will get a lot of great ideas how to get quality links based on them.

Before monitoring them you should figure out your top competitors in SERP, I actually use SE Rankingtool to monitor my top competitors. As soon as you get their target keywords, enter them into your backlink tool like Webmeup or Ahrefs, you will get a diverse list of backlinks linking to their sites.

Weekly or monthly checkups will help you to stay awake with what SEO tactics your competitors use to acquire links and draw up a plan how to replicate as many links as possible.

4. Getting the most out of Infographics

Creating and submitting infographics is the most effective and powerful link building strategy in SEO. It taps into the visual content marketing trend and Visual.ly is one of the leaders in this segment.

Most people try to stay away from this method, creating a professional infographic costs a pretty penny. But you can easily create by yourself with the following resources:

Visual.ly

DailyInfoGraphic.com

AmazingInfoGraphics.com

Piktochart.com

Coolinfographics.com

Submitinfohraphics.com

Infographicjournal.com

Personally, I use the last one. It has a good functional and various themes, even for free users.

You can also find some freelancers on Odesk or Freelancer that will do it at low cost.

Just few points you should keep in mind:

Include only real data sources

Embed your website link in the infographic source code (probably, someone will use this info-graphic on his website and you will get a good backlink)

Use attractive design

Be brief. Don’t blur your facts in text

Limit the size of your infographic to 1500 pixels

Use statistics that will make the info-graphic more actionable

Share it via social networks

To get the most out of your infographic, you can offer bloggers to post it as a guest post. You can also share you work on above-listed websites, or you can find the submission sites with the search strings:

“submit infographic”

inurl: submit infographic

intitle: submit infographic

“infographic directory”

When you submit an info-graphic, make sure to write a unique description with 200-300 words to take real advantage from it. With this form of creativity, you will make your campaign successful in your niche.

5. Answer online

Businesses need not only to build up quality links, but also build good relationships with customers. Monitor the activity of your potential customers and check out how they are doing online.

They will gather in groups to discuss some items on forums and blogs. Try to monitor all the activities online. You can check on Yahoo answers, topical forums, Quora and etc. You can use Google Alerts and add your keywords to track any mentions about your service. Try be helpful and user-friendly, don’t be spammy.

It can take some time, but it will pay off. You can gain a good authority on the websites. People will know you and follow you. They will start linking to your website to get additional awesome content.

6. Reverse guest posting

Reverse guest posting is the opposite of guest posting. The idea is that you find guest bloggers to write a good content for your website.

The idea of reverse guest posting works completely in a different way. You don’t need to find just any bloggers that have time to write a content. The main idea is to build up a good relationship with authority and famous bloggers. Ask them for content for your blog.

What are the benefits of reverse guest posting?

Effective mechanism to build relationships

The post can be shared via social media by that blogger

Fantastic way to place that link

Show your readers a new perspective

You have control of the process of reverse guest posting

How Does Reverse Guest Posting Work for you?

You should figure out what you want to get out of a guest writer and define the subject of guest articles. How often you want him to contribute on the blog.

It is easy to make a list of famous bloggers you want to work with. Make some research and find other bloggers you can’t know them.

Contact these bloggers and talk to them about this opportunity.

Few steps how to reach out google bloggers:

Use Twitter search to get bloggers with search query “guest post SEO”

Use Google with search strings “guest post by”, “guest blog by” and specify your topic

Use the websites you already know or ask others for any recommendations

You can use Followerwonk tool for outreach

You will be surprised with how many bloggers will want to talk to you.

7. Blogger reviews

Reviews about products, software or services are one of the best ways to get good backlinks at scale. It is especially good for e-commerce websites.

How do you catch the attention of bloggers? You can offer some free stuff and they may start reviewing it on their sites. It is quite an intensive and time-sapping process. You need to find bloggers, contact them, send them products, wait for product reviews and send email reminders.

It is a hard work!

Try to find bloggers in your niche. If you sell some products or information that can help people to learn something, for example, “ways how to make coffee”, you should use search strings like “how to make coffee”, “make coffee home” and etc.

You will get a list of bloggers and filter out authority websites. So, right now you have to reach out them with the following email template:

Make sure what you are writing. Check your language and grammar mistakes. Don’t be too spammy. I want to note that you don’t ask them to post your links and reviews. You just let them take a decision about your product.

8. Get feedbacks about your website

This is an easy mechanism of getting backlinks. I’ve met a bunch of feedback websites where you can get a dofollow backlink. You should register, submit your website, write a small description about it. I love ConceptFeedback.com website, but before submitting your website you should leave five reviews on other websites.

Here are some sites you can check out:

ConceptFeedback.com

BounceApp.com

SuggestionBox.com

Criticue.com

Or you can find them in Google using search queries “website feedbacks”, “site review”, “website customer review”.

9. Quality links from brand mentions

Monitoring any mentions about your brand or product is a good way to get quality backlinks. It is vital to know what customers think about you online. You can use Mention tool to track all mentions about your business.

It works fine for me. You should create an alert like for Google Alerts and you will get mentions about your brand or service. If you notice someone mentions about you without a link, you can contact that person, tell him thank you and ask him kindly to place a link to your product.

You can use the following email template to outreach:

Following this tactic, you can gain a bunch of quality backlinks.

10. Reverse image search

Reverse image search is something new and totally different from the other link building tactics. It is one of the greatest way to get links.

If you manage a website and use only quality images, you should keep track of your image theft. You can take some advantages from theft to gain quality links.

So, how to do that?

In Google image search you can enter the search string like site:yoursite.com and you will get all images on your website that Google has indexed. Click on images and see how they are displayed.

If you find out someone is using them without your link, you can reach out the admin and let him know about it. Site owners, usually, try to avoid any conflicts, and you will have a high rate of response to your email. Don’t forget to mention that the image is originally from your website and ask them to place an attribution backlink.

To simplify your SEO process, you can use TinEye to check all images that are used by other people from your website.

It is a call time on posting…

I’ve mentioned just my favourite ways of intact link building tactics out there. Take enough time to digest them and check out how they will work for you.

If you know any other effective link building tactics, I will be more than happy to hear them.

[sallysklar]

Shanker Blog: Weaning Educational Research Off of Steroids

Shanker Blog: Weaning Educational Research Off of Steroids

Our guest authors today are Hunter Gehlbach and Carly D. Robinson. Gehlbach is an associate professor of education and associate dean at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, as well as Director of Research at Panorama Education. Robinson is a doctoral candidate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Few people confuse academics with elite athletes. As a species, academics are rarely noted for their blinding speed, raw power, or outrageously low resting heart rates. Nobody wants to see a calendar of scantily clad professors. Unfortunately, recent years have surfaced one commonality between these two groups—a commonality no academic will embrace. And one with huge implications for educational policymakers’ and practitioners’ professional lives.

In the same way that a 37 year-old Barry Bonds did not really break the single-season home run record—he relied on performance-enhancing drugs—a substantial amount of educational research has undergone similar “performance enhancements” that make the results too good to be true.

To understand, the crux of the issue, we invite readers to wade into the weeds (only a little!), to see what research “on steroids” looks like and why it matters. By doing so, we hope to reveal possibilities for how educational practitioners and policymakers can collaborate with researchers to correct the problem and avoid making practice and policy decisions based on flawed research.

To understand the problem of research on steroids, let us review the “study” that caused a colossal earthquake in psychology, and is beginning to cause tremors in education. The authors of this study conducted a real experiment with the goal of generating a clearly fake result. Specifically, they showed how listening to the Beatles’ When I’m Sixty-Four made study participants younger—note the causal language. The goal of the authors was not to try to convince anybody that John, Paul, George, and Ringo could lead them to the fountain of youth, but rather to illustrate how well-meaning researchers (and journal editors) can inadvertently produce (and publish) false findings.

How did they pull this off? In designing their study, they used techniques commonly employed by diligent educational researchers. For example, they tried out a couple different treatment conditions (while some participants listened to the Beatles, others heard “Kalimba” or “Hot Potato”), collected several dependent variables (including, how old participants felt and how much they would enjoy eating at a diner), and examined a host of different covariates (e.g., father’s age).

After completing their data collection, the study authors then thoroughly analyzed their data. In other words, they looked at their data in numerous ways in an effort to find any statistically significant results that may have emerged. As it turned out, one becomes significantly younger by listening to the Beatles only after controlling for paternal age—listening to other music, testing other dependent measures, and using other covariates presumably did not show effects. A major point to emphasize here is that these techniques—collecting a great deal of data and thoroughly analyzing one’s data—are exactly what good researchers are trained to do. 

Two major problems result from these sensible practices. First, just by chance alone researchers are bound to find at least one significant result. Second, because humans are incorrigible storytellers, researchers will likely find a way in which their results “make sense” or “align with prior theory.” Exacerbating the problem, many of these performance-enhanced findings trickle down to educational practitioners and policymakers who then use the study results to inform their instructional and policy decisions. 

First scholars in medicine, then psychologists, and now even journalists writing for mainstream news outlets, have realized this problem and called attention to the fact that many research findings are on steroids. In doing so, they have pressured these disciplines to change the norms around conducting research. Yet, the field of education has barely starting discussing the problem (and not because research on steroids doesn’t exist!). So what should be done to address this challenging situation?

Giving up on educational research cannot be an option. If we throw in the towel on data, we are left with gut intuitions to guide decision-making. Historically, people’s gut intuitions have done little to close achievement gaps, boost teacher retention, stem violence in our schools, or otherwise improve education’s challenging issues. Research can provide answers if it is done right.

Fortunately, some important progress is being made. A small but growing group of researchers has begun to pre-register their studies. In this approach, researchers publicly post exactly what their hypotheses are and exactly how they will evaluate each one—e.g., they specify the equation they will use to test each hypothesis. Most important, they post this information before they have examined their data for the first time. By doing so, researchers help their audience distinguish those analyses which are confirmatory—and we should really have faith in—from those that are exploratory, which we should view as interesting hypotheses to test in a future study.

In an effort to promote this particular practice within the educational research community, we recently wrote an article discussing the promise of pre-registration in education. Through this piece, we tried to identify some of the ways in which very reasonable characteristics of studies (such as using small sample sizes, eliminating outliers in idiosyncratic ways, or findings that interventions work only for particular subgroups of students, etc.), in the aggregate, might signal research on steroids. Academics can sometimes sniff out questionable studies. Our hope was that identifying these characteristics would help everyone else more readily identify problematic research.

Next, we offered some specific suggestions for how educational researchers might pre-register their studies, including how they might address some of the problems that consistently arise when conducting field research in schools.

However, one can imagine how effective it is for a small group of academics to gently suggest to their colleagues that their tried-and-true approach to research, that has served them well for so many years, should be replaced by a new method. This message is typically as well-received as when school administrators hear about the extra round of budget cuts. Given that most practicing academics work very hard on their comprehensive data collections and thorough analyses, the news that research norms need to change to include an additional step is especially hard to hear.

To change this deeply entrenched habit of how research is conducted and introduce pre-registration as a norm will require help from practitioners and policymakers. Specifically, three forms of tough love could put critical pressure on educational researchers. First, district administrators can embrace their roles as gatekeepers. As they are reading research, they can flag studies that appear dubious and tell their colleagues why they may want to be skeptical of the findings. In doing so, administrators will help shrink the audience for research on steroids.

Second, when interacting with researchers who are promoting their latest findings, ask them whether their study is pre-registered. If it has not been, find out why not. There may be a good reason. But then there is probably a corresponding good reason to view the findings as exploratory and in need of future testing. Exploratory studies introduce important new ideas, but they probably are not a foundation for sound educational policy.

Finally, when setting up new research partnerships, ask for pre-registration as a requirement of the partnership. This is the moment when practitioners and policymakers typically have the most leverage in the relationship. So it makes sense to take advantage of that moment to make the research as useful to all parties involved as possible.

With enough upward pressure on educational researchers from practitioners and policymakers, we can move away from educational research that is on performance enhancing drugs. Then hopefully, we can get back on the right track of enhancing the performance of students and teachers.

elaine October 2, 2018

Source

Shanker Blog

Shanker Blog: Weaning Educational Research Off of Steroids published first on https://buyessayscheapservice.tumblr.com/

[robbinforney1-blog]

Ways to Text Ladies 3 Typical Errors You Must NEVER Help make When Texting Women.

Using a bank can really conserve you funds, however there are actually additionally methods which you shed a considerable amount of money. All traits looked at, these are actually several of the most prominent oversights that house owners typically create the second they decide to change their aged home windows along with PVC windows. Work toward conquering these mistakes and just about anything, and everything you really want is actually within your grasp. Therefore, attempt to view oversights and also breakdowns as a perfect option to expand and also discover as an individual. The option is your manager discovering the error in any case and locating that you are actually at shortcoming - which is certainly not a great condition to be in. One of the greatest blunders developed by those wanting to enhance for excellence is actually presuming that the trendiest products within the manner planet may make them effective. Sadly several appear to make oversights when utilizing body movement and non-verbal indicators to the level that their try in reading through actually lowers the high quality of the interaction. If you seem to be to certainly not care that you created a blunder, your employer as well as your affiliates are actually particular to be beat off. But I have actually learnt how to view adjustment as a possibility, as well as learnt how to enjoy my blunders due to the very wealthy trainings I profited from them. Maybe you would like some brand new perspectives regarding blunders: Mistakes are actually legitimate and reasonable: You might claim there's no such thing as mistakes, however our experts are all fairly used to that word. For this oversight I merely chose to have the inaccuracies taken care of, and a brand-new file made, to make sure that future duplicates from guide would be proper. After that various other mistakes comply with because this truly isn't really the right circumstance for us. So have a look at the scenario and identify whether the instance was one that ought to have been prevented. If you enjoyed this write-up and you would such as to obtain more info pertaining to yellow pages uk (http://una-sana-alimentazione.it/calorie-come-sapere-se-e-troppo-bassa) kindly visit our own site. Some of one of the most common membership internet site errors that most people usually make is actually to not specify their target market effectively. Inquire previous or current co-workers or even folks outside the institution for their viewpoint on the oversight and just what they believe you may do to recoup. Name around to a couple of insurance companies for quotes before you decide on an insurance company. Most people photo identification fraud as something that occurs when somebody rifles through your trash bin searching for credit card statements or even just what possess you. Making use of phrases including click on this link" or even find out more" in internal links is a large oversight considering that the search engines cannot know exactly what the web page being actually connected is about. I have expanded to feel that our team are actually all excellent simply the way our company are actually and that includes our errors. When that involves mistakes having an effect on both the sides from several accounts, correction from these forms of errors can easily frequently be actually enabled with the help of an entry made in the publication. You spend every day from your entire life developing an identity on your own, yet you believe that your organisation doesn't be entitled to one. You could hear or even read it current regular about someone's tragic story of jeopardized identity. Errors from fact arise when a criminal accused misconstrued some simple fact that undoes an aspect from the crime. A lot of from my clients, as well as the people that I come in exchange, struggle with admitting oversights. When determining if they may, a major mistake 1st opportunity shoppers help make is focusing on the monthly house repayment volume afford a particular home. Look for the poor regions in your life such as confining opinions that trigger you making errors then attempt to transform these confining practices, beliefs, and also activities. Remember that oversights are certainly not signs from weak point or awkwardness; bouncing back from them confirms durability and determination. It is actually fascinating that any inclination to court or condemn people originates from our personal desire to be mistake-free, our very own fear of errors. These mistakes could well prevent your potential to make a brand-new and strengthened you." to stop your own self from producing these common gown for gratification oversights, you'll would like to carry on keeping reading. Just like sounds that lead a driver to strongly believe that repair works remain in need, there will certainly be actually suspicious noises made along with the put in of the incorrect design year components. Since you inform all of them that the examination motor illumination is actually on, auto mechanics are certainly not mind readers neither do they automatically know just what's incorrect with your cars and truck just. Another common car repair shop blunder auto owners make is actually neglecting the insight from the auto mechanic. P.S. Error # 6: If you possess no wall posts on your web page this suggests there is no socializing on this earth (account). If all you must understand was actually certainly not on call to you at that time you makinged a decision that made a result you were not looking for, you have at the very least learned one means not to do something in the future. James Joyce named all of them, portals from breakthrough." Despite how big or tiny you recognize your blunder to become, as soon as you understand that you have actually erred; this simply calls for adjustment, nothing at all else. As a specialist in the POP Culture, the most interesting thing about individuals may be summed up in one term: oversights. The only error that can definitely hurt you is preferring to not do anything just due to the fact that you are actually also afraid making a mistake. If you may handle to avoid making some of these 5 mistakes summarized over, you'll be actually properly placed to recover your ex sweetheart's heart ... and rebuild a happy, loving relationship that is going to stand up the test of time. However, one of the biggest main reasons we limit our own selves off new experiences is because-- although our team've all made and survived a lot of from them-- our experts dread mistakes. Some of the absolute most common credit oversight is actually co-signing on a finance for family and friends members that don't pay there bills. They informed the updates internet site that the precise procedure for managing such an error was unknown considering that such errors had certainly never been made in the Oscars' 88-year past history. Do not trump your own self up. Return to the very first step where you examine the mistake. Both Gergen and also Schoemaker focus on that numerous companies seek individuals that came and created errors out in advance. Expertise being to become had just of obvious and also particular fact, error is actually certainly not a fault from our understanding, yet a mistake of our judgment, giving acceptance to that which is certainly not real. Every fantastic error possesses a halfway second, an instant when that may be recalled as well as probably solved. If you have not brought in any type of errors for a while, you may certainly not be actually providing your own self possibilities to risk, to learn, or to grow. Writers, Bloggers, Podcasters & Artists: Aiding you certainly not simply construct & nurture a committed target market, yet how to utilize your mistakes so you transform them into your largest endorsers but. Self-Care: Common massage therapy blunders counselors make are actually that they carry out certainly not handle on their own as high as they should. Oversight # 7 - Settling your claim too soon, or appearing as well anxious to resolve your case soon. You may consistently ask for quotes as well as review that with four to five asks for and choose the most ideal. Merryll Manning: Trapped On Puzzle Island by John Howard Reid was posted more than twenty years ago in Australia. That is necessary for you to prevent this blunder as well as be actually prepared for other expenditures like examination expenses, assessment expenses, finance processing fees, etc There really are actually indisputable, just selections you made accordinged to the impressions you had at the moment. These little ones live in 2 various places-one location where they have the love as well as help of their dad (moms and dads), and one more where they experience that if their mistakes were found, they will be unworthy from that love. When I view one, I'm merely a quite outdated entrepreneur and an incredibly professional businessman who created every oversight in the manual as well as can easily identify one.