#sure they arent jumping in joy over the idea of having us with them but they also constantly keep us with them

[the-acid-pear]

the more i think about kris the more my insanity increases tbh there's just so much nuance with not only them but also the player and their relationship and it's layes upon layers of them and i keep tryin to peel them off inside my brain and its going to turn me into a dc villain or something

[pastanest]

if you’re wondering why I’m having to repost this, or why you were perhaps previously following me but no longer are, please refer to this post. I was able to retrieve this thanks to @rosieathena - thanks so much!! ♡

Spencer Reid x gender neutral!reader

Tell Me You’re Okay

- Spencer is one traumatised boy we been knew

- and he opened up to you about pretty much all of it prior to asking you out. you’d already confessed your feelings towards him, but with all his baggage, he wanted to be sure you knew what you were getting yourself into

- he cried, you cried, and you ended up embracing each other in an emotional heap

- when you held Spencer’s face and kissed him, he knew that you had stayed, despite everything he’d told you and everything he believed to be wrong with him. you stayed

- you were aware of the horrors of the world, especially the one’s that Spencer’s job helped protect people from, but you arent on the team

- you’re a sweetheart, a kind soul, someone with a smile that lights up a room as soon as you walk in

- to Spencer, you’re like a ray of sunshine. a beaming person, quite literally. he’d never known such a bright person before, the only one to come close would be Penelope

- you are a being of pure joy, and Spencer feels like it is his job - more than that, the very reason he was put on this earth, was to protect you

- so when away on a case following a serial of victims who all resembled you ever so slightly, he couldnt help the fear and anxiety that built within him

- this only got worse when he looked at the crime scene of the victim murdered a few minutes after the team landed, the victim looked more like you than any of the previous ones

- the more Penelope informed the team of the habits and lifestyles of the victims, the more Spencer found himself making mental notes of all the similarities they had with you

- he couldnt just abandon the case and fly home to you, he had to figure out the case, but just having the slightest involvement of you, the mere idea of someone trying to harm his angel...Spencer found the case personally difficult, to say the least

- but he checked in with you regularly, texted every moment he could, made sure to call you every night but never for long because he didnt want you to miss out on sleep because of him

- Spencer didnt tell you that the case was bothering him, but you could tell, and since you didnt want to pester him, you found other ways to get through to him

- during the day, even if you knew he wouldnt see the texts for hours, you’d send him sweet messages cheering him on and making him smile

- anytime Spencer checked his phone, he’d seen an utterly adorable text from you

hey love! making jello cuz I miss you 🥰

- emojis arent Spencer’s vocabulary of choice, but he finds your use of them very endearing

- your messages reassured him more than he could possibly express, but he still couldnt properly relax at any point

- somehow this got worse after the team caught the killer. Spencer knew you were safe without a doubt, though he also knew you were safe from the beginning because he was states away, but you were now safe even from his paranoid thoughts

- let’s not forget that his last proper gf died horribly in front of him lmao so his paranoia is justified bless him

- sitting on the plane home, Spencer is restless, needing to get back to you more than he’d ever needed anything in his life

- he’d texted you to say he was on his way home, so of course you are sitting on the couch all cozy in your pj’s waiting for him

- as soon as you hear the door unlocking, you jump to your feet and bound over to him with the buggest grin on your face

- Spencer feels his entire body relax with the deepest sigh when he sees you

- you practically jump on him, wrapping your arms around his neck and legs around his waist, squealing with excitement, making Spencer laugh for the first time in a week, the kind of laugh that only happens around you

“Spence!! I’ve missed you so much!” You cheer, sounding almost as relieved as he feels.

“I’ve missed you too, so much, there arent even words-“ He feels himself getting choked up, and you’re quick to jump off him

- your hands cup his face, gently forcing him to look at you as you frown at him with concern

“Hey, what’s going on? Talk to me sweetheart.”

- Spencer sniffles, his own hands unable to leave your hips, his thumbs drawing circles on them

“Just...tell me you’re okay, please.”

- he sees the way your heart melts, he can tell just from looking in your eyes

- the most beautiful, soft smile overtakes your face

“Spence, anytime you’re around, ‘okay’ is the most inaccurate term I could possibly use.”

- Spencer chuckles at this

“Forgive me, what’s a more accurate term?”

- you beam, standing on your tiptoes and leaning close to his face, your lips mere centimetres away from his when you whisper your answer

“Perfect.”

[sicjimin]

Hello 🙂

Would you be willing to do a namgi fic (platonic or romantic) where Namjoon has a bad stomachache, but he has to push through an awards ceremony, performance and be a leader and all that jazz. Yoongi is trying to comfort him the whole time.

Take care of yourself.

A.N : my first namjoon fic !! eheh thank u for requesting :] this such a cute idea. I'm sorry this took a longgg time T.T I hope this does justice to your expectation .. :D

Ever since their debut, the end of the year—where most of the awards ceremony take time— is the scariest time in his life. It always brings more unnecessary anxiousness in his body rather than on daily basis. This year is no different .. or, if it's any different, he was more fucked up this time.

Namjoon knows he was fuck up when he feels full after few spoons of his dinner. He ate half of it before he pushed the bowl away, gaining a questioning look from his boyfriend, "You're not gonna finish it?", Yoongi asks. Namjoon huff as he gives a rub on his stomach, it genuinely feels tight, " Mhm, no. I'm full already". Yoongi frowns grown deeper, "But you barely eat anything since lunch though?"

"I know,", Namjoon brush his hair back with frustration, " I just, don't feel like it", he feels worse as time goes by, "let's finish up your food and go home hyung, I'm tired". Yoongi gives the latter one last curious look before back to his food. Being Namjoon's boyfriend for the last 2 years and his best friend for the last 8 years, making him know the younger by the back of his hand. He knows something is up with Namjoon, and his assumption proven right when Namjoon dozing off in the car back home. Namjoon can't handle silence in the car— at least there should be a radio, and now seeing him not protest or whine with the complete silence is making Yoongi more alerted.

When they arrived, Namjoon was moving so fast— it seems like he couldn't wait to curled himself to sleep, because Yoongi just finished parking the car and got into their room, he already greeted by Namjoon's figure curled under the blanket. Yoongi sighs before he retreats himself to the bathroom.

He scoots himself to his side of the bed, propped his head on his arms to support his body. He runs his fingers through the younger hair, knowing well that he's not sleeping —judging by how forced the closed eyes there. Yoongi whispers as his hand now move to graze the latter cheeks, "Joonie, hey, you're not sleeping, are you?"

Namjoon groans and turns his body so he could face the older. He wraps his hand around Yoongi's little waist, pushing the older closer so he could nuzzle his head further, "Mhm, can't". Yoongi's touch is so calming, Namjoon actually starts to dozing off as Yoongi plays with his hair, " Why? You look off after dinner". Then its silence between them, "You're sick, right?", Yoongi adds. Namjoon huff, he really can't hide anything from his boyfriend, " I can't say I'm sick .. like literally sick since it's only my stomach that hurts so bad. Maybe it's only dinner not agreeing with me hyung", Namjoon mustered a strained smile, "Lets just sleep hyung. I will feel better later. We got a long day tomorrow". Yoongi observes his boyfriend longer before giving up and groans, " Oh shit .. award shows. I hate that", Namjoon giggles, "Oh tell me about it hyung"

—

Yoongi eyeing his boyfriend that seated beside him, observing the younger through their mirror as the staff applying their makeup. They still have around 35 minutes before the red carpet starts. Yoongi could see how Namjoon getting worse as the second pass by, judging by how color has drained from his lips—making the makeup noona applying more lipbalm to conceal it— and how his hands never leaving his stomach. Yoongi turns his gaze to his mirror again, his hands slowly moving to reach Namjoon's and interlaced it. He grazes his thumbs over the latter palms. Yoongi could feel Namjoon's head turn to face him, before he turns back the squeeze.

The rest of the award show went like a blur for Namjoon. It feels like he is a robot that talks automatically once camera is on. Cheers to his 10 years of experience in interviews and red carpet, he successfully going through that one. The only thing left is enjoying the performance, accepting awards if they got some, and their performance.

Namjoon sighs in relief when he could see their seat. It still a few hours until their performance, at least he still could calm down his stomach that now feels worse after all the acts he pulled. He grabs the tissue on his suit pocket and crumpled it, absorbing cold sweats that starts making its way along with wave of cramps that shooting him on and off. He turns his head when he sees a commotion on his side with his peripheral sight, "Hyung? Arent your seat near Taehyung?", he asks when he sees Yoongi seated beside him, " I asked Jungkook to change"

"Why?"

"Dont you want to be near with me?", Yoongi asks back. Namjoon bites his inner cheeks, holding himself to sighs in joy and let out a stupid smile. Damn, he loves his boyfriend so much.

"I'm okay hyung", Namjoon says softly. He knows why Yoongi clings with him. He means, if the situation reversed where Yoongi needs to go through schedule after puking his guts out in the morning and complaining stomachache, he would cling to Yoongi too. "You're breaking cold sweats Namjoon-ah, and your hands are trembling", Yoongi says softly, worry is prominent in his voice. Namjoon widened his eyes, he forgot how observant his boyfriend is. " How bad is it?"

Namjoon bites his lower lips as he watched the performer on stage, "It feels like someone is squeezing wet towel inside me, hyung", Yoongi grazes his thumbs over the younger boy's palms, " Do you want to ask for medicine? We still have a long time here"

Namjoon shakes his head, "I think i still can handle this hyung. Don't worry"

But favor didn't work on Namjoon's side, since it's only been 30 minutes after he said with confidence "I can handle this" to his boyfriend now he's fighting with his iced americano that begging to come out. He squirms in his seat, trying to found a comfortable position that maybe could help to calm his bubbling stomach. The performer on the stage was just a mere figure that dancing and singing there, Namjoon's focus was already gone. He moves his position again as he let out a nauseated huff. He feels hot flush all over his body. He took a glance on Yoongi, hoping that his boyfriend catch how uncomfortable he's right now. and he's right.

"Joon-ah", Yoongi calls, his eyes filled with worry. Namjoon gulps down the liquid that was creeping on his throat, " Yoongi, i think i need to go to the bathroom for a minute"

"Let me go with you", Yoongi already lifts his body before Namjoon push him back softly, " No", Namjoon hushed, "Fans might be worried if there are a lot of us that gone. I will go alone"

"Are you sure you will be okay?"

Namjoon shuts his eyes closed and nods, "I will be back", he says before walking down through artist seats. When he couldn't hear more noise from the stage and entering the hallway with fewer people, he speeds up his legs and burst the stall door—he's lucky no one is there— when he sees one. The next thing he knows his body takes over as dark brown watery liquid rushing through his mouth and splashes to the water below. He gasps a quick air as his stomach cramps again, bringing another round of warm liquid out of his body. He keeps pouring wave after wave. His body bent further following the motion of his cramped stomach. He is almost sure if it's not because of his hand holding on the wall and the toilet tightly, he already falls over. Namjoon sniffles after the wave tapered down and only bitter bile spurting out. Terrible is beyond an understatement. He leaned to the wall as his body almost give up—if he didn't remember the stylist noona nagging that he will get if he stained his suit. Namjoon rubs his stomach, he already feels empty, but it still sloshing and twisting. He bites his lips as tears escaped his eyes. He needs Yoongi.

"Joon-ah?", Namjoon eyes widened. His cloudy brain tries to figure whose voice is that, but failed. "Joon? Are you here?"

Oh. Its Yoongi. Namjoon gulped down the lump in his throat before weakly answered, "Here"

The stall door opened, showing his tiny boyfriend figure, "How are you feeling?", Yoongi softly says as he makes his way to the stall. He flushed the toilet and guided the younger body to his, " 'm feeling terrible, hyung"

Yoongi rubs his back, "I know. Do you want to just rest in the dressing room? There's no way you could perform and all, Joon-ah", Yoongi leaner back a bit so he could see his boyfriend's face, but to no avail, as the younger nuzzled his head deeper on him, " I cant hyung," Namjoon mumbled, "I'm the leader. and if i suddenly disappear, fans will be worried. Everything will be a mess"

Yoongi sighs, he knows there's no way he could convince the younger if he already made up his mind, "Ok but let's ask staff for medicine first. I don't want you to go back there with an empty stomach and no medicine in your body", Namjoon weakly nods before he rinses his mouth and gets dragged by his boyfriend to do whatever he wants him to do.

—

The rest of the award shows goes well. Namjoon managed to give 2 speeches for the awards they received, and the rest of it, the members gratefully backing him up for speaking. Yoongi never left his side during the whole event, gently squeezing his hand every time Namjoon tightens his grip whenever cramps hit him, and rubbing his palm softly whenever he sees Namjoon start being jittery and can't stop gulping down sick. Short to say, he's couldn't ask for a better Yoongi. Namjoon also needs to give applause to his body that still manages to jump, run, and practically— function normally during their performance. It feels like his body understands his duty as he was fine the whole performance, even until closing, and just give up when the time they entered the dorm—as he bolts from the car and runs to throw himself to the toilet for another harsh round of puking his guts out.

"I was wondering how you suddenly manage to act fine the whole time .. it seems like your body is already set up as an idol, hm?", Yoongi murmured as his hand rubbing Namjoon's arched back that still contracts, sending whatever remains from the younger stomach to go out. Namjoon leaned back when he managed to stop dry heaving, his hand shakily wipes his mouth and his nose before he chuckles weakly, " I guess that's the perks of 10 years idol?"

[lucky-bucky-boy]

Hi there! 👋🙋‍♀️I just found your blog and saw your valentine's day post and that you have Thor tagged. And now I'd like to ask you for a HC 😊 I've been wondering how Thor would have reacted to the whole valentine's day hype the first time he witnessed it? Like all the stuff that's being sold and the fuss so many people make. Would he have jumped right into mood if he had a significant other at the time? Do you have any ideas? Thank you already and Happy Valentine's Day 💕!!

Does anyone else remember how ungodly happy and obsessed with pop tarts thor was?

Because I fully imagine, that for his first few years on Earth, Thor is like that with everything

Even holiday's

And especially a certain holiday that pertains to love and joy and happiness

Because Thor is essentially a golden retriever in human form

And his home and family arent exactly the most affectionate so hes overwhelmed in the best way possible

He studies how the rest of the team reacts to it, seeing an equal mix of disgust, dismissal, and absolute excitement

You've just been kind of like whatever about the day

No valentines no fuss, and 75% off valentine's day chocolate the day after

Win / win really

But thor decides to delve in, indulging his curiosities

Hes at a store, having asked most likely Natasha or Pepper to take him because sometimes Midgardian women can confuse him

But hes still getting use to Earth / US customs

And at first Thors just looking at everything but then he grabs a basket and starts grabbing everything possible

He looks at other shoppers who have Valentines day stuff and mimics their baskets

A card, flowers (which he got the biggest he could), multiple boxes of chocolate, he even grabs a few other things he remembered you off handedly saying you really liked like candies and chips

The whole team is confused when he brings everything back cause like 'dude wtd who is you valentine?' Cause he hadn't even asked anyone on the team so they're not sure where this mystery person came from

Thor doesn't answer and fixed everything up into a gift bag

Just as you're coming to the common area where the team was gathering for dinner or a game night or something

Thor intercepts your path, giving you that big goofy smile of his

He hands over the gifts, "Tony said that on today, when you like a person you're supposed to give them gifts. I hope I did good."

Which thoroughly catches everyone off guard

Thor wouldnt even wait for your reaction, not even knowing that there was really supposed to be one

But he wasnt upset that you were much more friendly and flirty with him for the rest of the night

Now he just had to come up with excuses to buy you more stuff

[borhapstyles]

Headcanon: First Date with Ben

HEY so it’s my spring break and i’m back temporarily :) i hate saying temporarily but i know that once school starts again i’m never gonna have time to breathe lol but i’d like to think school is temporary, writing for you guys once summer hits will be the real thing <3 

this wasn’t requested but as a starter, i’ve written this headcanon :) sorry if it’s shit, haven’t written in a while so i’m a little rusty. i hope you like the ending though, i certainly do. 

**this is going off the “Meeting Ben” headcanon I wrote a while back xx

“so uhm…”

“yes?” you giggled, brows raised as Ben swallowed harshly

“i-i was wonderin’ if you’d like to go on a date with me.. sometime..?”

“is this not a date?” 

then Ben’s cheeks went red, even more so than they were before

because like

he had been waiting for the right time to ask you on a date since he followed you into that cafe

how was he supposed to know he was gonna spend the next two hours talking to you in that back table

but you looked so lovely underneath the fairy lights of the cafe

and he adored the rose tint on your cheeks whenever you subtly dropped in your love for Queen

that’s another thing, he loved your taste in music

i mean, it’s a given that you liked Queen because of Bo Rhap

but when he learned of all the other bands / artists you loved, he kinda sorta just wanted to kiss you right there

he should’ve

anyways

“n-no, i mean, like a proper date, not that this can’t be considered one, but-”

“i’m joking, i’d love to” you cut him off, more laughs spilling from your mouth

and then you and Ben set a date, a time, and after he insisted on picking you up, you finally let him

the day of, he showed up with your favorite flowers which uh

u didn’t tell him what ur favorite flowers were

he uh.. kinda found out through instagram stalking

he didn’t specifically stalk you

but Joe did

Ben mentioned you to Joe and Joe was quick to find your account

(let’s pretend it’s on public if it’s not)

“oh she’s on public, this is gonna be fun” Joe said to Ben while they were hanging out the next night

“she is?!” Ben jumped over and

for a moment he wanted Joe to like.. stop because he kinda felt weird doing it

but i mean

he also was super super curious to see your posts and kinda also wanted to see more of ur face

so he went along with it

“she might even be funnier than I am” Joe said when he went over one of your captions

“I couldn’t stop laughing when I was with her, she’s hilarious” Ben gushed

“oh wait, what’s that one?” Ben made Joe stop scrolling to click on one of ur pics

it was of u and your friend’s dog

with the caption “don’t tell (your friend’s name) but i’m stealing her dog forever sorry”

“she likes dogs” Ben whispered to himself, a smile on his face as he imagined you with Frankie 

that’s when Joe stopped and looked at his friend

“you’ve known her for a total of 30 hours and yet i’ve never seen anyone do this to you.. you really like her, don’t you?”

Ben sighed, he didn’t want to let himself get so deep so quickly but

there was something about all this that just felt so easy, like it’s come into place

and something about you that made him feel as if he’s known you his whole life even if you had never been to england before meeting him

so Ben just smiled and nodded, hoping he wouldn’t get his heart broken with all the risk he’s taking

and they continued scrolling till Ben got a text from … 

surprise surprise, you 

and completely forgot Joe was there for a moment 

“oh by the way, just so you know, her favorite flowers are…” Joe told him before leaving

“how do you know?”

“her instagram, which, if your elderly ass would bother to learn a little more about, is a great app”

so anyways when Ben showed up with your favorite flowers u were happy and he was happy that u were happy

but also lol because you were staying in an airbnb and didnt rlly know where to put the flowers down

aaaannnywaaaays 

then you two drove out into beautiful London 

the night life was buzzing with Londoners and tourists alike and you couldn’t be happier to be in such a city

much less next to Ben, who if a week ago someone told you you’d be with him 

u might punch them for playing with your feelings

but here you are

“you see that building? that’s Abbey Road studios”

“so much history here, I think I’m in love”

when Ben finally stopped driving

you two were in front of a rather tall building somewhere in the financial district

Ben rushed to your side to open the car door

“can i ask where we are now?” you laughed and Ben chuckled as he finally told you

and he made sure to open the door for you on your way in

im convinced chivalry is still alive and comes in the form of ben hardy 

and u two rode the elevator aaallll the way up 

then you two went through a couple other doors

and then eventually you were met by a host who checked you guys in

then you were led outside

let’s say it summer by the way so you guys arent freezing when u go out

it’s a rooftop area, with outdoor furniture and plants decorating the area

fairy lights strung around the pergola, soft gentle music in the background

there’s a few other couples having dinner but it’s peaceful and everyone’s rather into each other so you know no one’s eyes will be wandering

but your favorite part of the whole thing

was that you could see the entire london skyline from your position, with a table in the perfect spot so no one was blocking the view

“what d’ya think? i-is it too much?” Ben asked shyly as you hadn’t said anything 

but you were in love with the place, your heart filled with joy

“it might be too early to say that this is the best date i’ve ever been on but i will, if that gives you any idea for how i’m feeling” 

as the dinner progressed, any nerves you felt coming in vanished

as did Ben’s

it felt natural, comfortable, meant to be

and when Ben reached over to hold your hand across the table

part of you never wanted him to let go, even if it made it a little harder to eat

in any case, he himself never quite wanted to let go either

with you, he wasn’t Ben Hardy, actor. he was just Ben

and he felt like he could be anyone he wanted to be around you

he loved that even if you were a fan, you never made him feel like he needed to take on the actor-persona he had 

in fact part of you forgot he was even an actor when you asked him if he had met anyone famous 

which made Ben laugh and your cheeks go red 

but Ben slipped up too lmao

“so I heard you like dogs?”

“...yes but...from.. who..”

then his cheeks got red as he had to carefully explain how him and Joe didnt stalk you on instagram but stalked you on instagram basically 

celebrities, they’re just like us

that’s when you laughed

which made Ben realise he could hear you laugh all day and never get tired of it

and never get tired of your smile

something about your twinkling eyes when you spoke about your friends and family back home

and about all your passions, ridiculous and not so ridiculous

u may or may not have let him in on your love for Queen, even more so than in the cafe

and u kinda forgot he was in Bo Rhap for a hot minute

but he was amused, he loved seeing you speak about something so close to your heart

and felt proud to be part of it

all in all Ben felt a feeling he hadn’t experienced in quite a long time, if ever in his life

a feeling of completion, of relief

as if he had been waiting his whole life to meet you

and so he continued listening to your rant about how much you love Freddie and JIm together

watching as you blushed and apologised profusely for going on about them

“don’t be sorry, i wished we could’ve had more of them in the film as well. and i love hearing your opinions on them, i love hearing you talk about it all. it makes me more and more fortunate to have been part of it”

“well i have much more to say about anything Queen related if you’re interested”

“then i’m always here to listen for when you do wanna speak about them” 

when dinner finished, you and Ben decided to postpone driving you back 

you two walked around the city more and eventually made it to a little park just up the road

your hand in his, humming ‘39 by your favorite band

Ben smiled to himself as he realised you felt the same comfort around him as he did with you

and so the months went on, date after date with Ben

till you found yourselves on your one year anniversary, walking around the same park you two had gone through on your first date

“do you remember when we first came here?” he asked

“of course, it’s when I realised I love loved you and was basically fucked”

“why’d you say you’re fucked?” he laughed

“i mean, i was like, oh god i’ve scared him by talking about my obsession with Queen and he actually knows them and he’ll tell them and Brian and Roger will think i’m crazy and he won’t ever date me again after this and all i can do now is hum ‘39 and hope he won’t block me on instagram after this” 

Ben cackled

“that’s not at all what i was thinking, i hope you know that”

“well obviously” you rolled your eyes

“d’ya wanna know what i was thinking?” 

“hm”

“I was actually thinking of Freddie while we were walking around”

“same”

“no, i’m serious” Ben chuckled 

“why were you thinking of Freddie then?” you giggled, squeezing his hand a little tighter

“well, if I was just going in my head about how if it wasn’t for him there would’ve have been Queen, wouldn’t have been a Bo Rhap, I never would’ve been in anything like it, and I might not have met you then because of it”

“i don’t like thinking about that” you muttered, leaning your head into his side

“really though, it’s mad how much he’s influenced all our lives in a good way” he stopped walking, you standing below him with curious eyes batting at him 

“i guess we have Freddie to thank then for bringing us together” you said before pecking his lips

and then you two stood there for a moment, your head pressed against his chest as you listened to his heartbeat

that’s when Ben looked down at you in his arms, then up into the starlit sky and whispered; 

“thank you, Freddie” 

[smallblanketfort]

as someone who was raised without religion idk much about god. i have ideas on what i believe in but i’m not sure how strongly i back them. what is god to you? how do you even define the word ‘god’? can god be anything as long as he/she/they/it is something you believe in?

long post alert! first know that my belief in god is why i am here. this belief made this blog. this is such a lovely, big question i have been pondering. i am so so honored that you are asking. i think it’s important to remember that faith in god is really what you make of it. in the words of tyler joseph, “Faith is to be awake, and to be awake is for us to think.. you need to try to think.” remember this. your faith is your own to create.

just a note, this post will seem all over the place, but it’s only bc my belief in god is so intertwined with life philosophy and experience. i cannot separate these things.

first, things important to note in your faith journey //  god as a being who loves questions and god as a being not defined by church or politics

as a bit of background, i grew up in christian churches, and i still call myself a christian. as i have gained life experience and developed my own identity, this has allowed me to ask more questions about the Bible and the traditional god.

don’t let questions scare you. questions are a healthy way to explore and get to know such enormous concepts such as the divine. questions get you answers.

don’t let your aggressive stop you. “Is it ever acceptable to be angry at God? I would suggest that it is not only acceptable, it may be one of the hallmarks of a truly religious person. It puts honesty ahead of flattery.”- Harold S. Kushner

often, churches may shoot down questions, but this is a hierarchal system speaking, not god. churches are made of people. they don’t speak for god, and i really need you to remember this. you don’t have to subscribe to everything a church says. question everything. the bible is absolutely full of people questioning and doubting and being angry with god- which is part of why i believe in it. it’s raw humanness, and it is okay. listen to cataracts by levi the poet, or at least the track big business. alternatively: “Every day I am afraid that he [Jesus] died for nothing because he is buried in our churches, because we have betrayed his revolution in our obedience to and fear of the authorities.”— excerpt from “A Radical Christian Creed” by Dorothee Soelle

god and genderso to begin, i recently tweeted about god being… gender queer, or simply without gender. the bible generally uses masc pronouns and titles like father, but i believe that an unlimited god cannot be constrained into human constructs. if we are all made in god’s image, god is not strictly male. to say god can only be male is to place societal, human constraint on the devine. the characteristics to describe the divine biblical “father” arent reserved for male in our society. god isnt human. i am getting into the practice of saying “the divine” or “they” pronouns to describe god. anyway- i do believe in the trinity (god, son, holy spirit, more on this towards the bottom) so they is absolutely a christian term.

god and love and evili believe god is a loving, creating force. i often hear people asking “why does god allow this” and frankly, i can’t relate. if i believe in a good force, i have to believe in an evil force as well. if i believe in good and evil, i have to also believe they are at odds, fighting a spiritual warfare. i also hate the phrase “it happens for a reason.” sure, maybe. but your tragedy is tragedy. your chaos/trauma/pain is chaos/trauma/pain, not a lesson by default. however, since i do believe god is a loving, creating force, i believe that god can find something good to give you out of everything. perhaps we might not discover this good for years, or maybe the good will be something that you don’t experience, but, for example, perhaps telling your story saves someone else.

everything good as an echo to the divinealong with that, i believe everything good in the world is created by god, and thus an extension / connection to the divine. this helps me overcome depression and anxiety. i can wake up every day and say, wow, look at all this faith entertained: the sky and its clouds. leaves. the way milky chai tastes. music somehow exists and transcends space and time?? people love hugs? animals like pats? science!! sweaters are dope, they change our body temperature. the fuel that keeps us going tastes good??? what even is taste? can you believe color is just light unabsorbed? incredible. thank you.this type of gratitude is indeed a practice, something to work on daily. it’s not always easy. i don’t want to act like it’s an easy cure to mental illness. it’s a practice that def helps me tho.

including all peoplewhich extends towards people. i love the phrase namaste: the divine light in me recognizes and honors the divine light in you. suddenly, everyone is valuable. everyone is created. everyone is experiencing the world. it makes kindness much easier. this is why i don’t understand most phobias… how can one say a divine creator didn’t mean to create different flavors of love?! it’s beautiful.

let me say that again: all peoplei want to get this straight, esp w our… political climate. this post say it better than i can: the immigrant apostle creed and the litany for the dreamers. i also think it’s interesting to remember that many native americans believe that trans people are closer to the divine, bc of points i made earlier- god can’t really be boxed into a gender. also, i believe in a feminist jesus that was a child refugee and a homeless man who experienced suicidal thoughts and anxiety. (i’ll try to link references when i get home)

other religions and my godi study a lot of buddhism and other religions. i like to understand things. i love buddhism, and i believe it, but i think that having faith in this god offers depth and purpose. where buddhism empties, yeshua, the christian jesus, fills. it’s service to ease the pain of the earth, out of love. that’s it.

faith as movementwhich is also to say, yes, shitty people exist, and i can easily become so. it’s an uphill battle, but i like to view living as becoming closer to the person i was created to be. as we live, we have all these sides giving us input, shaping us. what we believe shifts who we are. we need to be selective as to which voices we are buying into. are these voices bringing us closer to the loving, whole person we are created to be?

god as a forgiving figurei believe god is forgiving. again, i believe in an evil force too, but i believe that god’s doors stay open. this isn’t an end. 

everything is a gift / god in everythingwhich brings it full circle. i believe god’s hand is in all the beautiful things. the giggly groupchats and sleep overs. the gasps of surprised joy and the dark chocolate. love love love love so many types of love. comfy beds. so much can be a religious experience.

further reading, from twenty one pilots to tags to the message-

i encourage you to also take a peek at my thread on coping mechanisms in twenty one pilots’ discography. it’s extremely difficult for me to separate top from my faith.

as for the trinity… just as i have different facets (daughter, friend, lover, coworker, etc) i believe that god can have different facets as well- the divine figure who is all knowing, the figure who has experiences humanness, and the spirit that comes closer, inhibiting the rest. tbr, i don’t find this concept extremely important. it’s all god to me, whatever.

again, thank you so so much for giving me space to talk about this. it’s so generous and kind and open of you. i am genuinely honored. it’s something that is very engrained into the way i see the world, tho i know i do not speak of it often. it’s difficult for me to find the vocabulary for something that is so based on feeling and experience for me.

if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! i’d really love the dialogue.

if you want a jumping off place for what i believe, the message bible is really cool. you can read it in book form from your library, or online for free. start at luke, or matthew/mark/john- just any of the four books about jesus. read the words, not what you’ve heard in politics or church. i can’t stress this enough. the more i read, the less i see a connection between these institutions.

i also have a faith tag on my personal blog. you can get a feel for what i believe here.

i hope that was vaguely interesting to someone :)) again feel free to ask any questions 

xxx you are loved for who you are and the true you you are becoming

[kz-i-co]

No Harm

Request: "Hi I just recently found out Tumblr page and I love your writing. I was hoping to make a one shot request on monsta x wonho. Where y/N is being bullied by him but he bullies her because he likes her. Thank you in advance✨💕."

Pairing: Shin Hoseok/ Lee Hoseok (Wonho)/ Reader

Genre: fluff

Words: 5.9k

A/N: I hope this is okay anon- I was in the mood for a summer camping vibe king of story so I used your request for it :)

m.list  ╫ mx masterlist

You smiled seeing the clock strike 4:30. It was the last class of the last day of your freshman year of college and you couldn't wait to start your summer vacation.

You entered your dorm and immediately started packing your bags. "You excited to go home?" Your roommate asked.

"Yes, I can't wait to dive into my pool when I get home." You jumped in your sneaks.

"Sounds like fun, at least you only have to drive a half hour." She pouted.

"I know, I'm sorry." You felt guilty. Joy had to travel 3 hours just to get home. That was rough. You liked your roommate and couldn't wait to see her in a few months but you werent close enough to hang out all the time, especially on break.

You were in the greatest mood that nothing could ruin it. You blasted out your favorite tropical tunes, with the windows open, letting the wind wipe your hair annoyingly in your face, but you didn't care.

You even stopped for fast good on the way home because it's been forever since you had a decent meal. College food was good but it was the same choices.

Once you got home, you noticed a truck out front with the garage door open. You began to question what was going on and then you figured your mother was probably having another one of her episodes and need to clean out the house once again. She hated cluster and had to change future every now and then. It used to drive you crazy but it's been a while since you've been home so still nothing was killing your mood.

As soon as you got inside, you heard your brother's voice. Your first thought was, 'why was he here?', but then you remembered your mother needed a strong male to help her with her spring cleaning or whatever she liked to call it.

You entered the kitchen and saw your sweet ol' big brother and then your eyes made contact with him. You said nothing could kill your mood but now you stand corrected. You were in a bad mood precisely.

He made eye contact with you and smirked. "Hey (Y/N)'s home." He hit your brother to point you out.

"Hey." Shownu came over and gave you a big bear hug. "I missed you." You smiled. You missed your brother but you didn't miss the lingering leech behind him.

"Did you miss me?" He came up to you.

"Let me think? No Wonho, I didn't." You sassed.

"You guys are the same." Shownu rolled his eyes amused.

"I'm sure you did." He smirked again as he leaned down and whispered to you.

"I didn't....maybe if you leave for a long time then I'll change my mind."

"(Y/N)! That is so rude, apologize." Your mother joined the conversation.

Wonho stared at you amused and you pouted like a little child. "I'm so sorry....dick." You mumbled the last part.

Wonho was the only one that heard you and looked at you amused. He was a jerk and you couldn't stand even being around him.

"Okay man, I'll talk to you later." He high fived Wonho.

"Bye shorty." He ruffled with your hair as he passed and you just gave him a sarcastic smile.

"You getting rid of stuff again?" You asked.

"I'm redecorating." She said and went upstairs.

"Anyway, how was school?" Shownu asked.

"Fine." You shrugged. "Glad it's over...for now." You huffed.

"Hey remember those camping trips dad used to take us on?" He asked.

"Yeah." You opened the fridge.

"I was thinking maybe we could bring back the tradition?"

Your father used to take you camping the week after school ended for the summer. It was always the best time you ever had but unfortunately he passed away 6 years ago so life has been dull. Your father was always the adventurous one and the fun one. Your mother is more of the stay at home introvert.

"Come on, it will be fun."

"Just the two of us?" You asked.

"Well maybe you could bring some of your friends......and I'll bring some of mine, and Eunji maybe." He said.

"Okay....which friends are you thinking?" You asked intrigued.

"Not sure....Minhyuk is pretty handy with a tent."

You tried not to make your blush obvious. You had a crush on Minhyuk for a while now and you intended to keep it a secret, especially from your brother.

"Let me text them." He got out his phone and made it out of the kitchen.

-

It's a been a few days since you enjoyed your summer vacation and you spent most of the hours in the pool or sun bathing.

"Is your brother bringing the boo's?" Arin asked laying next to you.

"I don't know but he better." You laughed. You were beyond excited and you got one more friend to join you.

"Who is your brother taking?"

"He said Minhyuk and Jooheon are coming and also his girlfriend and her sister and that's all."

"Are his friends hot?" She asked.

"Yes." It was clear that all his friends were attractive, even the one you hated.

"Especially Minhyuk."

"You still crushing on him?" She asked amused.

"Hell yes." You had no shame when it came towards your friends.

"What about his muscular friend? Is that one Jooheon?" She asked.

"Jooheon is the one with the dimples." You haven't seen Joonheon in a while so you weren't sure with the one she was talking about.

"Oh no, not him, the one who had blond hair, has adorable ears." Oh god no. She's talking about Wonho.

"No." You said in disgust. "He isn't coming thank god." Your brother already told you he had to work. You felt instant relief.

"What's wrong?"

"I hate him."

"Why?" She laughed.

"He's an ass."

"But he's hot."

"I don't care." You took off your sunglasses and dived back into the pool.

"Ever think that maybe he likes you?" She smirked.

"Nope." You leaned back floating on the water.

"He might?" She just shrugged with a smile.

Wonho was very attractive, you didn't deny that but too bad his horrible personality got in the way.

-

It was the day you were leaving and you were upstairs with your two friends packing for the week.

"So where are we going?" Arin asked.

"Leahigh waterfalls....it's So beautiful." You smiled. "Out of all the places my dad took me, that one was his favorite."

"I heard of it, but never been."

"Trust me, you'll love it." You were just about done.

"So what's the plan?" Jane asked.

"My brother and his friends are getting the alcohol and other drinks and I said we would bring snacks and other types of junk....he has a cooler full of different foods for dinne and stuff."

"Do we have to pee outside?" Jane asked. She was very girly.

"Last time I went they had an outhouse?"

"Okay." She still looked disgusted.

"Lets go." You went down to the car.

"Please don't drink to much." Your mother said as you packed the car.

"No worries."

-

"Oh wow....how beautiful." You parked right outside of the waterfall.

You forgotten how beautiful it was.

"Look the boys are here and they are getting the tents up." Jane pointed.

You saw Shownu setting up the third tent. There was 4 in total.

"Hey ladies." Minhyuk greeted as soon as you stepped out of the car.

"Hi." You blushed.

"(Y/N) long time no see." He leaned in to give you a friendly hug.

"Yeah."

"How's school?"

"Schools school." You smiled with a shrug.

"I bet." He gave you a warm smile. "Here let me get that for you."

He took your bag for you and you grabbed the bag with snacks and started walking side by side with him.

You brushed your hair behind your ear nervously. Minhyuk always made you feel that way, he was just so sweet and gentle.

"Hey shorty." You heard a familiar voice and you looked up seeing who it was.

You felt like someone just stabbed you with a knife. You saw the boy step out of the tent and was waving in your direction.

You couldn't even speak. What the fuck was he doing here?

"Shownu." You ran over to your brother in a quick pace.

"Hey I missed you-" You grabbed him. "What is he doing here?" You mumbled.

"He got off of work so he wanted to come."

"Why?"

"What's wrong, you guys are always acquainted with each other." Your brother clearly didn't see your true feelings. He thought is was all friendly teasing, but it wasn't.

"No, we arent."

Minhyuk was by your side now. "We haven't decided on sleeping arrangements yet." He said as he put your bag near the others.

"Thank you." You sweetly smiled.

Wonho noticed you being all sweet with Minhyuk and he rolled his eyes. He walked over to you guys and put his arm around you.

"You want to help me get firewood?" He said and you immediately pushed his arm off.

"Not really." He groaned.

"Come on, it will be fun, I'm up for a little hike." Minhyuk smiled.

"Okay." You answered sweetly and followed Minhyuk.

Wonho watched you and glare as you fell for his charm. "Why does she hate me so much?"

"She doesn't hate you, my sister is brutally honest, trust me." Shownu said.

"I guess she is." Wonho could read you perfectly.

"Hey Jane, Arin want to help me build this last tent?" Shownu asked your friends.

"Okay."

....

"Wonho, you ready?" Minhyuk asked as he lingered behind.

"Yeah."

"Can I come, I love to look around."

"Jihyun, hey." Minhyuk greeted. "This is Eunji's sister."

You smiled genuinely. You never met her but you heard she was really nice.

"This place is so beautiful, there is this beautiful bridge above the-" She walked off with Minhyuk and you just stood there in agony.

"Come on pal." Wonho put his arm around you again.

"Can you not, please." You pushed him away and started walking back.

"Where are you going it's this way." He grabbed your hand.

You were in a bad mood now. "I dont want to go now."

"Why because your boyfriend walked away from you." He said in an annoying mocking voice.

"Will you get a life." You snapped.

"I'm sorry, please help me." He begged.

"Fine." You walked back the other way.

It was an awkward silence and you had no idea where Minhyuk and Jihyun even went. You walked up to the hill that was on the top of the water fall. It was the same as you remember. It brought you back memories of your dad.

"Where does that lead?" Wonho asked as you saw a path in the woods.

"I don't know, I never been in there."

"Come on." He grabbed your hand.

"I don't know-"

"It will be cool."

"And what if we get lost dipwad." You insulted.

He suddenly turned towards you and leaned forward. "Stop being a downer."

He looked at you too close that it made you feel uncomfortable.

You pushed him away. "I wouldn't be a downer if I was somewhere else you werent."

"Why are you so hostile?" He walked backwards in front of you.

"You know Why?"

"I don't."

"Are you kidding me?" You glared.

"What?"

"You're a dick, that's why?"

He laughed. "How?"

"You're an idiot."

"Okay, I'm sorry, it's just fun."

"Because you're a heartless pig." You ended the conversation.

He stoped in his tracts as you kept going. You looked around and it seemed that you were in some abandoned garden and there was a small stone ruin that looked to be a house centuries ago.

"Wow." You smiled at how beautiful it was. You have never seen a ruin up close before. The middle of the garden had an old water fountain with green moss grown all around it.

"That house gives me the creeps." Wonho said.

"What do you mean?" You were still looking around in amazement.

"Looks like something from blair witch."

"Shut up, does not." You sat down on the stone bench. There were a few carvings of names written into it.

"Aww, these names are in a heart."

"Cute." Wonho said sarcastically.

"Look." You saw something inside the torn house and walked inside.

"Come on, why go in there?" He whined.

The house didn't have anything to it but there was a staircase that led to the back and there was a table and chairs set. As you tried to step through the door way, your foot got stuck between twigs and thrones.

You groaned trying to get your foot out. You held onto the door and tried pulling harder and you fell backwards but your foot was still caught. As you were about to dreadfully call Wonho's name he already made eye contact with and came over as quickly as possible.

He looked at you concerned. A look you never seen on him before. "Are you hurt?" He asked sweetly.

"My foots stuck." You whined.

"Okay hold on." He kneeled down and moved the thrones around. It was too tight that he had to pull his pocket knife out and cut you free. Even though you were release you still had your shoelaces all knoted with more twigs.

"Here, let's go back and get you cleaned up." He smiled.

He grabbed your hand and he had to help you jump over the entrance of the door, so you wouldn't get stuck again. You were surprised when he carried you in his arms and helped you sit on the bench.

He kneeled in front of you and fixed your shoe to get all the spikes out. You couldn't help but stare as he gently worked on your foot. You have never seen this side of him before. You liked it. For once he didn't tease you like he normally does. Especially at a time like this. No jokes about being stuck or anything.

"You have a few scratches, so we'll get you patched up." He got up. "Lets get out of here before you disturb the peace." There it was.

"Thank you." You shyly said.

He looked at you serious. "Anytime."

....

Once you got back closer to camp, you helped gather firewood.

"Where have you two been?" Shownu asked.

"Exploring." Wonho said. You noticed Minhyuk look towards you and Jihyun was right by his side.

"Hey, we lost you." Minhyuk smiled.

"That's okay, I found some cool garden." You smiled.

"Cool, maybe you can show me, some time." He caused you to blush once more and Wonho to roll his eyes. He threw down the firewood in the pit and walked the farthest away from you. You were so focused with Minhyuk you didn't notice.

"You hungry, we were about to make lunch."

"Starving." You smiled and followed him to the pit to sit down.

Kihyun came over and hooked his phone to a portable speaker and began to play music. Your brother handed you the plate of food.

"That tree has a rope hooked up so we can swing into the stream." Arin sat next to you.

"Forget that, we can jump off the ledge at the top of the waterfall." Jihyun sat on the other side of Minhyuk and you felt your fingers grip your plate tightly.

"That's a great idea." Minhyuk agreed.

How were you suppose to compete with her? She was beautiful, adventurous, friendly, taller. This started to becoming the worst vacation ever.

As you watched Minhyuk and Jihyun engaged into another conversation, your mind actually started thinking about Wonho. Not that you wanted to but everyone was sitting and eating while he wasnt.

After you finished your food, you got up wandered to one of the tents. You saw Wonho laying down, playing with his phone.

"Hey." You kicked his foot. "Foods ready." He didn't look at you.

"Did you hear me?" You ducked inside the tent and stood above him. "Food is ready." He finally looked at you.

"I'll eat later."

"You can't because between my brother and Jooheon, there will be nothing left."

"Then whatever." He shrugged.

"Why are you being a snape all of a sudden?"

"I'm not....wait did you say snape?"

"I did, now get up." You gently tapped his side with your foot.

"Make me." He challenged.

You groaned and stepped over him and took both of his hands and pulled to try to get him up. You honestly didn't even know why you were even trying. Was he worth it?

He barely made an progress as you tried to pull him. He was just watching you amused. Once you weren't focused he pulled you down, so you fell right on top of him.

Your heart fluttered from being so close and you quickly moved to get up. "Okay, I won't make you."

You nervously left his tent and went back to the group. The little progress you had worked since you saw him come over to the group.

"We are not wasting all the beer on tonight, just to let you know." Shownu said.

"Come on." Jihyun got up with her sister.

"Where are they going?" You asked.

"We're going swimming." Shownu started walking with everyone to get their bathing suits on.

"Come on (Y/N)." Jane pulled you away.

....

"So any progress with Minhyuk?" Jane asked you.

"Minhyuk? I've only seen her with Wonho." Arin teased.

You scrunched up your face in annoyance. "That girl Jihyun keeps pulling him away from me and Wonho won't leave me alone."

"Because Wonho likes you, you idiot."

"He does not, he makes fun of me."

"Because he likes you." Jane joined in.

"Whatever, I only care in trying to get Minhyuk to notice me more then Shownu's sister but I can't with Jihyun."

"We'll distract her."

"Really?"

"Yes now hurry and get dressed."

....

"You look so hot in that suit, if that doesn't get Minhyuk then I don't know what will." Arin spoke.

"Why are they hiding all the fun?" Jane asked as she noticed the boys all chit chatting and they were in their bathing suits but they still had shirts on.

"There he is, with no Jihyun around." Arin pushed you.

The first person to notice you three walking towards them was Wonho and his mouth was hanging open as he saw you.

"Fucking likes her." Arin whispered to Jane not letting you hear.

"Hey." You greeted nervously.

"Hey, you're ready." Minhyuk said and you started walking with him. Wonho watched as he stared at you walking away and he turned to join you until Arin stopped him.

"Hey Wonho, you look great, how many bench presses do you Do?" She said to get his attention. He just looked at her confused and Jane noticed the other girls walk out of the tent. Jane immediately went over to them and start chatting up.

"You want to go first?" Minhyuk asked you as he held the rope.

You held onto it but too scared to jump. Minhyuk pulled off his shirt to get ready himself.

"I'm not sure if I can."

"Here, it's easy." He stood behind you and you felt his body rub up against yours as he held the rope around you. "You have to have a good grip and then you jump and then jump off as soon as you hit the water."

You nodded. "You go first, so I can watch you."

He laughed and took the rope off your hands. "Ready?"

Then he jumped and swung across, landing perfectly in the water. You smiled seeing him rise up again from the water. "You can do it." He yelled to you.

You grabbed the rope and jumped just like he did and let go right into the water. "That was scary." You pouted.

"You did great." He smiled. He laughed cutely at you as he leaned in closer. Your heart was beating like crazy and you began to shut your eyes ready.

"You have a leaf in your hair." You opened your eyes once again and saw him with the leaf in his hand. That was why he leaned forward. You felt like you were having a mental break down. He didn't want to kiss you, he only saw you as a friend, worse a friends little sister and nothing more.

He broke your thought by splashing you. "Up for another round?"

"Sure." You said sadly. You both got out of the water and this time he had you take the rope first and you did with no troubles. Once you rose again in the water you saw Jihyun talking to him. She pointed to the top of the water fall and began following her up there.

"(Y/N) Come on." He said as he continued with her.

You felt like dying. You got out of the water and put on a pull over shirt and you walked up the water fall. You stopped as you notice a small cave before it and went inside. It was beautiful. You saw the inside of the water fall and you immediately felt peace. You finally felt tears begin to fall. Useless tears that shouldn't even be happening.

Maybe your crush on Minhyuk should just expire. He didn't like you anyway and you gave up trying to impress him.

"You okay?" You heard a familiar voice.

"I'm fantastic." You lied.

"Are you?" His voice was soft.

"What do you want Wonho....I think I rather be alone." You snapped.

"I saw you upset and crawl into this cave by yourself so sorry if I care."

"Maybe you shouldn't." You shrugged.

"You can't let him get to you like this, it's either you tell him how you feel or move on."

"What are talking about?" You played dumb.

"Really?" He looked at you unamused. "Oh Minhyuk, let's go for a hike together and run off into the sunset." He did in a mocking tone.

"I don't sound like that." You folded your arms with anger.

"That was a perfect impression of you."

"Was not."

"You're right." He stood by you mysteriously. "Good job." He patted your shoulder a little harder then usual and you lost your balance falling off the small cliff behind the waterfall straight into the water.

You rose from the water and looked up from where you were standing and saw a laughing Wonho.

"You fucking asshole." You whined.

"My bad."

"You better get down here." You argued.

"You going to make me?" He smirked.

"I will kill you in your sleep." You glared.

He took off his shirt and you stared at his toned body. "Oh my god." You mumbled to yourself. He jumped off the cliff right into the water. You waited patiently for him to rise up and once he did you jumped on him trying to drown him.

"Hey." He splashed you.

"Asshole."

"It made you smile." He said.

You felt it. You didnt even realize at first that you were smiling. "Only because I have plans to get rid of you."

"Okay." He brushed off. "This can be our spot." He said.

"Why would I want a spot with you?"

"Because." He just said and moved in closer to you.

You felt his hand grab your hip and pulled you forward. You were too stunned to even move and you didn't understand why. You seen him starting to lean forward and you found yourself closing your eyes once again. But this time you felt the lips touch yours.

The kiss was slow and gentle, the total opposite of the boy in front of you. The kiss got deeper in seconds and you found yourself working against his. You felt his hips aligned with yours and his roaming hands all over you. The butterflies were unbelievable and you didn't know what was happening.

You snapped back into reality and pulled away immensely. "I'm sorry." You swam away and quickly got out of the water. You grabbed your things and went over to the showers that were a little down the road.

"What was I thinking?" You leaned against the shower wall.

How were you going to face him now?

You finished up and as you were heading back you passed Jihyun and Eunji. "How are the showers?" They asked.

"Oh um...they're okay." You shrugged.

It was almost dark out by this point and once you got back the fire was going. "Hey you....I feel like I always lose you?" Minhyuk greeted as he saw you.

"I don't know what you mean." You laughed with no meaning.

Maybe if Jihyun wouldn't block our view it would be a beautiful sunset.

"Want to help me bring over the cases." Beer? You could really use one, and you hated beer funny enough.

"I never got you alone enough to talk to you." He laughed. "It's been a while since I've seen you (Y/N) and I was just telling your brother how beautiful you've become."

You looked at him stunned.

"Not that you weren't before, you just changed a lot, in a good way." He smiled sweetly.

"Thank you."

"Also, you and Wonho are cute together."

"Wait What? Me and Wonho." Your mouth hug open.

"Yeah."

"We aren't together." You said quickly.

"Really? You guys act like a couple." He shrugged.

"No just friends, not even more like acquaintances."

"Really, you act close."

"We aren't close." You made it more clear.

Those words just spit out from your dear old self not even thinking back what happened an hour ago. To be honest your lips still trembled from feeling his lips on yours. Nope, snap out of it, your enemies remember.

"Okay then." He just laughed.

Shownu got a lot of drinks, not just beer but different types of alcohol, girly drinks some people say like Smirnoff.

"Since you are free all summer I hope, we can hang out more if you like, I'm a pretty fun person."

"Im very aware Minhyuk." You giggled. "Sounds fun."

When you got back to the camp you noticed Wonho notice you. He didn't look at you with an special emotion, not a smirk, smile, nothing. You instantly felt guilt. You ran away from him when he was vulnerable and that left a bad impression.

You decided to shrug it off. And lucky enough Jihyun was talking up a storm with your friends so you got to talk to Minhyuk a little. Your circle of friends came more interesting as everyone was telling their round of ghost stories.

Kihyun was in the middle of the scariest story of the night and poor Jooheon was so focused that he didn't even notice Wonho sneak up behind him. The timing was right as Kihyun hesitated from an instance climax and Wonho made the move and jumped right next to Jooheon scaring the pants off of him. He was crawled up on the ground and looked up as everyone was laughing.

"You guys suck, this is why I didn't want to go." He whined.

"You're too easy man." Wonho sat back down next to him. He wasn't letting you ruin his night which was clear.

You didn't even realize how many bottles you were drinking that you were already buzzed. Shownu gave a limit of 3 drinks so you could save some for the other two nights but you were already on bottle 6.

Now everyone was past ghost stories and moved on to embarrassing stories. "Shownu remember that time, when you got locked out of the house and you had to break in and the neighbors saw you and called the cops." You laughed drunk. "Weren't you in your underwear?"

"Are you drunk?" He asked.

"I am not." You said bold.

"How many drinks did you have?"

"This is my third." You lied.

"There's no way....no more for you."

"You guys are so boring, let's have a real party." You got up and started moving to the music.

"Minhyuk do you want to dance? Wait you need to ask Jihyun for permission first Right?" You laughed.

Minhyuk looked at you confused while Jihyun looked at you guilty. "I hate that you are too nice Minhyuk and I hate you Jihyun for being so damn nice as well that I can't hate you even though I want to....did That make sense."

"(Y/N) maybe we should walk it off." Wonho stood up and held onto you.

"Wonho, you are so cute." You pinched his cheeks. "He's a good kisser to....You want him Jihyun? You want Minhyuk mine as well take Wonho to....take both guys away from me, you know you want to."

"(Y/N)." Shownu said.

"I'm sorry, I'm just so angry that all I do is get you to notice me and she just takes you away like a tornado....tornado." You laughed to yourself. "Do you notice me Wonho? Will you be taken away to?"

"I'm going to sober her up." Wonho looked at your brother.

"Why can't you be gay so I can just admire you in my dreams."

"Okay, enough of that."

He pulled you down to the shallow part of the stream. "Sit."

He had a bottle of water and handed it to you. "You have a big mouth when your drunk."

"You have a big....I don't know where I was going with this." You laughed.

"(Y/N) What did you mean about me being taken?"

"I thought that maybe you never want to see me again." You took a sip of your water.

"Why would you think That?"

"Because I blew you off."

"You didn't do anything......I was a little disappointed but." He shrugged.

"I know, I'm sorry you like a pathetic-"

"Shut up idiot." He interrupted. "Dont make this a sob story." He smiled.

"You are confusing me." You groaned. "I hate you and you make me want to rip my hair out but then I don't know I like how you are always there, as annoying as it can be."

He just blushed at your drunken words of truth. Drinking the whole bottle of water was already making you feel better.

"Why did you kiss me?"

He looked at you. "Because I like you idiot."

"Are you sure or are you just some horn dog."

He laughed. "I've liked you for a while (Y/N)."

"Then why are you such as asshole to me?"

"Because I rather have you being your true self then being all shy around me, like you are with Minhyuk."

"Maybe I've gotten a little far but I couldn't help it, I think your cute when your mad." He continued.

"Boys are stupid and confusing." You rubbed your sore head.

"I'm sorry, you don't feel the same way, but I'll get over it." He shrugged.

"How do you know I dont-" You slipped out.

"What?" He leaned closer to you.

"Nothing."

"You feel the same way?"

"I'm drunk I won't remember this." You brushed off.

"We've been sitting her for 20 minutes, you sobered up a lot since then.

"I don't remember how I feel, you surprised me."

"Do you want me to refresh your memory?" He was close enough you could feel his breath gently on your face.

"I um-" You couldn't speak. Your heart was beating like crazy. "Isn't this taking an advantage?"

"I'm giving you permission?" He smirked.

"But-"

"All you have to say is yes or no."

You wanted to say yes, drunk or not. You felt something in his kiss but you were too chicken to face it.

"I-" Before you could answer he brought his lips towards yours and it felt right. It felt comfortable. You didn't hesitate to respond to his and you felt him grab your neck, deepening the kiss. You felt butterflies as he brushed your bottom lip with his tongue for permission.

You granted assess to only let the kiss get deeper. His hand lingered down caressing your hip gently. Your hand wandered up his shirt feeling his toned chest. You had to pull away for some air and he gently rested his forehead against yours.

"You had that disgusting cranberry drink?" He laughed.

"That's my favorite." You pouted.

"Ew."

"Too bad." You leaned in to kiss him once again and you heard more screaming from Jooheon at the camp.

"We should get back." He pulled away.

"Yeah." He grabbed your hand and you both walked up to the camp together.

Everyone stared as you re-entered the camp. "Everything I said was a lie."

You smiled. "I don't hate you Jihyun, if anything I envy you."

"It's okay, I envy you, I've jealous that Wonho likes you." She likes Wonho? "Minhyuk and I been best friends for a long time, that's all."

"I'm so sorry." She hugged you from your apology.

"It's fine." She laughed.

"Are we ready for bed?" Jooheon asked sweetly. You could tell how shaken up he was. Now one will ever live it down that he's scared easily.

"So sleeping arrangements is me and Eunji." Shownu started.

"I hope you don't mind (Y/N) but Jihyun wants to sleep in our tent." Arin said. That was fine but it would just be a little crowded.

"You can sleep in my tent." Wonho could read your expression. "Just me and you." He whispered.

You gasped and hit him. "I'm not doing anything."

"I didn't say that, we can just talk about things, about us."

You blushed. "And make out." You hit him again while laughing.

"Okay, everyone good? Goodnight everyone." Shownu went into the tent with his girlfriend and you grabbed your bag and made your way into the tent with Wonho.

You looked at him in a whole different light. He was always attractive before but now everything was electrified. You couldn't help but smile as he set up the sleeping bags. He was too cute and you never thought you would look at him in that way.

"What?" He caught you staring.

You just shook it off.

"Where is your sleeping bag?" You looked out side of the tent and saw nothing.

"I must of forgotten it, in the car." You said.

"How inconvenient." He arched an eyebrow.

"Hold on let me go get-" You started to get up but he stopped you.

"It's a pretty heavy walk and it's pitch black."

"I'm not scared."

"Mine is big enough for the both of us." He smiled.

"Bold move Hoseok." You used his real name.

"I'm not hitting on you, it's just a waste of time when we could is it share mine." He shrugged.

"Okay." You pursed your lips.

You suddenly pulled off your shirt and your shorts leaving yourself in your underwear and a stunned Wonho.

You threw on one of your brother's old shirts as your pajamas. It was too hot to be sleeping in heavy clothes.

"Do you wear your clothes to bed?" You asked.

"I sleep nude." He smirked.

"Shut up, you do not."

He tugged off his shirt and shorts as well but stayed in his underwear. "For you I will make an exception."

He got into the sleeping bag and you stared at him before getting in yourself.

"Do you really sleep in the nude?"

"Ask me again in a few weeks, when you can sleep in my bed." He closed his eyes.

You felt butterflies. You faced away from him as you felt his bare chest behind you. You actually felt comfortable and didn't take you long to doze off into a deep slumber.

You began to grow excited for the future.

[tiaraofsapphires]

Humans and Angarans arent genetically compatible, but thats not gonna stop them from ending up with a lot of kids- of various species. Not that Jaal or Sera mind. Family is family, and family is precious.

Omlllllll I love kidfics so this was a joy to write. Thanks for the prompt! (And if you want biological babies, this fic exists 

“Mama-a-a!”

That was all the warning Sara got before a little turianscrambled on top of her, practically sitting on her stomach.

“Oof! Veleus, what is it?” Sara groaned.

“Papa won’t let me feed Fluffy!” came the reply.

She sighed. She had told Jaal to let the kids handlepet-related chores. Generally, he was good about remembering, but this time,apparently, he forgot.

“Did he already feed the hamster?”

His mandibles clicked and shifted in a frown.

“Yes, but I want to feed him! Sinia fed him yesterday and Barsanthe day before that. I want a turn.”

Sara sat up, moving Veleus to her lap. He was almost bigenough that she couldn’t carry him without strain. When did that happen?

“How about tomorrow? I’ll make sure that you’re the one tofeed Fluffy, okay?”

Veleus paused for a moment and then nodded.

“Okay. I wanna be like the big kids for once.”

Don’t grow up too fast. That was what Sara wanted to say,but she only smiled and kissed her son on the forehead.

“Love you, Mama,” Veleus said, pecking her cheek beforehopping off the bed and running out of the room.

Sara smiled and eased herself out of bed.

Children of tragedy, orphans from fights against the kett.The Initiative had been desperate to adopt out as many of them as possible, assoon as possible.

Jaal and Sara couldn’t have their own children together: an unfortunate consequence of biology.

But they were more than happy to adopt a legion: human,angara, turian, krogan.

There were only the younger kids in the house, the rest ofthem off at school.

Veleus was one. And then there was the youngest: Asha.

Speaking of, where was she?

It didn’t take much looking.

“What are you doing?” Sara asked as soon as Asha came intosight.

The angara stopped her bouncing on the living room couch toturn towards her mother, looking vaguely embarrassed. Sara glanced behind herto see that Asha’s dolls were scattered on the ground, likely knocked off bythe movement.

“Flying. Like Auntie Suvi.”

She bounced, once, twice, just as an example. Her blue skinwas flushed ever so slightly from the exertion.

Sara sighed. “Please, Asha, you already hit your head oncethis week. Don’t do it again.”

Gods knew how scared she had been when she heard the thumpand subsequent crying. Of course, omnigel patched up the little cut and bruisevery quickly, but still, Sara worried.

Asha patted her forehead, looking utterly unconcerned forher wellbeing.

“Don’t worry, Mom. Uncle Drack said I have a thick head.”

Sara bit back a smile, knowing that Drack didn’t mean thatin a good way.

“Come on. Get down from there,” Sara said, holding out herarms.

Asha reached forward and wrapped her arms around Sara’sneck, clinging to her. She was at least young and small enough that Sara couldcarry her. Sure, she could use herbiotics to help, but she never liked using them around the kids.

Mostly because then they would insist that she do trickswith them.

Sara jumped to the sound of a crash from the kitchen area,followed by Veleus’s raucous laughter.

“Everything okay in there?” Sara called out, carrying Ashato the source of the noise.

She turned the corner to see Jaal hunched over a face-downcasserole dish on the floor, Veleus sat at the counter with his hands coveringhis mouth in a poor attempt to squash his giggles.

Jaal gave Sara a long-suffering glance as he stood up withthe dish and half of what probably used to be macaroni.

“I’ll eat it off the floor,” Veleus suggested, looking atthe half that spread over the metallic floor.

“Me too!” Asha chimed in.

“No, you won’t,” Sara said firmly, sitting Asha down next toher brother. “Your Papa and I will make sandwiches after we clean this up.”

Jaal nodded, smiling jovially.

“Ah, yes, good idea, my darling wife.”

Jaal leaned over and kissed her, short and sweet, ignoringthe two-child chorus of ‘ew’s’.

I hope that was good! (And sorry it took me 2 months to fill but…life and other things)

[themoneybuff-blog]

Some Hard Questions

What do I really need in life? What do I need to have a life thats enjoyable? What do I need to get out of bed in the morning, to feel something positive inside of me? What things am I spending money on that are just giving me bursts of pleasure but not bringing me lasting sources of positive feelings in my life? What things am I spending money on that I actually dont care about much at all? What could I be building if I wasnt spending that money on things that dont really matter to me? I find myself asking these questions about my own life quite often, and theyre hard questions to answer. My actual needs in life are few. Basic food. Water. Basic clothing. Shelter. Id probably include some form of human connection in there, because over time most of us (myself included) break down without that. Something to occupy my mind, because, again, without that, Id probably break down over time. Everything else is really just a want, not a need. So, why do I want those extra things? Almost universally, I want those extra things because I believe they will bring me pleasure or happiness or to avoid discomfort. I eat tasty food because it brings me pleasure. I eat healthy food to avoid discomfort (now and in the future). I have a nice house because it brings me pleasure its more shelter than I need. I can go on and on and on like this. Now, there are some things in life that really do provide lasting pleasure for us. Theyre worth it in terms of the resources we exchange for them. For example, I think a modest home for a family falls into that category; below a certain size, its uncomfortable, but above a certain size, theres a lot of wasted space. However, when Im honest with myself, the things that get me to jump out of bed in the morning are rarely related to things Ive bought. Almost always, I get out of bed because Im excited about the things Im going to do and (often) the people Im going to do them with, and those things often do not involve spending money. Specific things that get me out of bed feeling excited for the day include: * Doing something with my family, or taking care of them in some meaningful way. * Doing something that gets me into a flow state, which means that its an activity I get so absorbed into in an active mental and physical way that I lose track of time, such as writing or martial arts practice or playing a challenging board game with friends or getting absorbed in a challenging book. * An adventure of some kind, like a hike or a visit from an old friend or a dinner party or a planned day of geocaching or a day with my wife or a day with my kids. * Having a bunch of good writing ideas * Having some personal projects that Im about to reach a milestone with or about to complete Heres the big thing to notice: None of those things costs any significant amount of money. None. The things that really make me feel excited and full of zest for life almost always have very little cost involved. The truth is that most of the money I spend is spent on things that bring me rather fleeting bursts of pleasure, pleasure that fades and rarely turns into anything lasting. Often, Ill spend money on things that dole out those fleeting bursts of pleasure, like my cell phone or my Netflix subscription, but theyre never going to be things that cause me to jump out of bed in the morning. The key idea Ive been trying to live by for the last few years is this: Does this expense add in a meaningful way to anything thats really important in my life and brings me consistent, lasting joy, the kind that gets me out of bed in the morning? If I cant give a strong yes as an answer, Im not going to spend money on it. Dont we need those little bursts of pleasure, though? Sure, but you can get those for free, or extremely cheap. I get them when I go outside on a warm day or when I drink some ice water with just a little lemon in it. I get them when I hold my wife close to me or when I laugh with my children. I get them when I play a great board game with a friend or when I have a couple of hours to get lost in a good book. The temptation to chase those pleasure bursts is strong, though. I wont deny that the temptation to just throw money at something thats going to bring me a burst of pleasure right away and then fades quickly is a big one. Things that give regular little hits of pleasure are particularly tempting. Social media. Television. Little treats. Sweets. The list goes on and on. My challenge is to remember that the things that genuinely support and protect the sources of lasting, meaningful happiness the things that get me out of bed in the morning are where my money and resources should be spent. That means securing a strong retirement. That means working hard all through the week so I can have some big blocks of free time on the weekend. That means minimizing the things that arent really important to me so I have time and money for the things that are. This isnt something that you just decide one day and thats that. This is a constant series of decisions, choosing to turn away from spending money and resources on things that arent meaningful in your life and choosing instead to spend money and resources on things that are meaningful, that are the very things that get you to spring out of bed in the morning. It all starts with one simple question. What are the things you live for, the things that get you out of bed in the morning, the things that drive you forward and youre driven to do? Those are the things your money should be centered around, not the little bursts of pleasure that fade away, not the things that just provide a steady dose of little pleasures that never add up to anything. My goal is simple: I want to build a life where every day is filled with things that get me out of bed in the morning. That means thinking about how I spend my money and how I spend my time and cutting out those uses that dont lead to that kind of life. Some things to think about: Does the brand of laundry soap I use ever change how I feel about getting out of bed in the morning? If no, then why buy anything other than the most inexpensive one that gets my clothes clean. Does social media ever change how I feel about getting out of bed in the morning in a positive way? If no, then why should I use it? Does a really good cup of coffee change how I feel about getting out of bed in the morning? Actually, this ones a maybe, so it makes sense to seek out the best cup of coffee for the price and for the effort for me, and thats cold brew coffee made in the fridge. I just keep asking those kinds of questions, and you should, too. Use the money you make and the time you have to build a life that gets you excited to get out of bed each morning. Dont spend money or time on anything that doesnt. Thats what its all about. In the end, thats what almost all of the advice on The Simple Dollar is all about tactics for getting you there. Good luck. https://www.thesimpledollar.com/some-hard-questions/

[annaxkeating]

Increase Your Landing Page Speed (By Stealing Our Homework)

If you’ve read Unbounce’s 2019 Page Speed Report (and you really should), then you already know why speed is so important this year. Slow-loading landing pages have always been an obstacle to higher conversions, and now Google is punishing poor mobile load times in its search rankings. To be successful in 2019, we—marketers—need to be thinking fast. But are we?

To find out, we polled almost 400 marketers on their attitudes around page speed and asked what (if anything) they were doing to get faster.

Just 56% of marketers are happy with their mobile load times, according to the 2019 Page Speed Report.

Almost three of every four respondents said they had taken steps to improve their page speeds over the last year, and that’s pretty good. Alarmingly, though, only half of marketers we surveyed are satisfied with their load times on mobile.

So most marketers are trying to get faster, but many aren’t where they want to be. Which begs the question: what are people doing to speed up their landing page load times?

Computer, enhance!

Only 39% of marketers have bothered to find out how fast their pages are actually loading. Not great.

Here, we start to see why marketers are somewhat pessimistic about their page speed progress. Just over half have optimized their landing page images—ostensibly one of the simplest ways to speed up your load times—and even fewer have done any of the real technical-sounding things they need to get faster. (I mean, fair, they sound pretty boring to us, too.)

Here’s a doozy, though: just one in three marketers have run a website speed test to find out whether their load times are impacting their conversions. That’s the easiest one!

And hey, we get it. Marketers are being asked to do more than ever before, often with fewer resources. If you’re a small team (or a single person, the smallest of the teams), you might feel you don’t have the time or expertise to meaningfully improve your page speed.

But I’ve gone and done the hard work for you—me, a film school graduate who, until recently, believed that his Apple computer was impervious to viruses. (Hoo boy, it is not.) I’ve spent hours talking to Unbounce developers, reading how-to guides, and generally just bombarding my brain with the most dull, technical page speed information I could get ahold of. (Apologies to said developers.) And if I can get my head around it, there’s no excuse for the rest of you.

Below, I’ve simplified some of the most effective ways to increase your landing page loading times in a guide. For each fix, I’ve indicated the technical difficulty and the estimated time it’ll take, so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself in to. Use the table of contents below to jump to what’s relevant to you, or go ahead and do it all in order.

Jump to a Landing Page Speed Fix

How to Check Your Landing Page Speed

Run a Google Speed Test (5 Minutes)

Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer (5 Minutes)

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes

Reduce Your Page Content (15 Minutes)

Optimize Your Images (30 Minutes)

Host Your Videos Elsewhere (30 Minutes)

Audit Your Hosting Solution (30 Minutes)

Implement a CDN (30 Minutes)

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes

Minify HTML, JS, and CSS (15 Minutes)

Enable Browser Caching (15 Minutes)

Set Up GZIP Compression (15 Minutes)

Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins (30 Minutes)

Convert Images to Sprites (30 Minutes)

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes

Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS (45 Minutes)

Start Hand-Coding with AMP

Final note: If you’ve built your page with Unbounce, you can skip a lot of this stuff—we make many speed fixes on the back-end automatically. In this post, look for the ‘Building Pages in Unbounce?‘ callout boxes to see if a given fix is something you need to implement.

Look for these callout boxes throughout this post to get Unbounce-specific tips and learn how we automatically optimize your landing pages to make them load super fast.

How to Check Your Landing Page Speed

First things first.

Before you throw on your hard hat and start hitting things with a hammer (both figuratively and literally), it’s important to have some idea of what’s working—and what’s not—on your landing page. That means running a speed audit.

It’s important to point out that, regardless of which speed test you use, you don’t want to get too hung up on your score. Achieving a perfect score is not always technically possible (and it might not even be desirable). Instead, use your results as a general guideline to improve page speed and implement the fixes that make sense for you.

Okay—let’s test them pages.

Run a Google Speed Test

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes

There are a bunch of great tools for testing your page speed, but why not start with the big dog itself? Google’s PageSpeed Insights is an awesome way to do a quick performance check-up with at-a-glance recommendations. (Ryan Engley, Unbounce’s VP of Product Marketing, explains how to interpret and act on your PageSpeed Insights results in this must-read blog post.) Then there’s Lighthouse, a newer tool from Google that provides a comprehensive analysis of your how your page presents to end users.

You’ll also want to run your page through Google’s Test My Site tool, which will check your speed from a mobile perspective.

Clicking on individual results in PageSpeed Insights will reveal your problematic page elements.

Running a Google speed test should only take a couple of minutes, and the results will help you identify some of the top opportunities to boost your landing page load times.

Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes

Running a speed test with Google should be your top priority, but PageSpeed Insights doesn’t give results tailored to landing pages. For that, you’ll want to run your page through the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which not only provides feedback on page performance but includes a bunch of advice on creating more effective campaigns and kicking your conversions into overdrive.

Unbounce’s Landing Page Analyzer provides feedback on page speed, but also actionable advice on things like SEO, message match, and mobile-friendliness.

Building Pages in Unbounce? Then you’ll definitely want to give our Landing Page Analyzer a shot. Get best-practice recommendations for conversion optimization and see how your landing pages stack up against others in your industry.

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes

With your results from both Google and Unbounce, you’ll be well-equipped to move onto the actual work of making your page perform better. It’s time to pick up that hammer.

These fixes should be simple enough for anyone to tackle, regardless of their technical expertise.

Reduce Your Page Content

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

We’ve marked this as an easy opportunity to increase your page speed, but it probably won’t feel like that when you start thinking about which elements on your page you can junk. Marketers love big hero shots, beautiful supporting imagery, and fun, animated explainer videos. But how much of that content is actually helping you drive conversions?

Visual content accounts for a huge portion of the size of an average web page—images account for over 20% of web page weight, as pointed out by Kinsta—and each element creates an HTTP request. That’s when your visitor’s browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the elements of your page. Too many calls can be a serious drag on your load time, so one of the simplest ways to improve your page speed is cutting down the number of elements you include.

Look at each piece of content on your page critically, then ask yourself: “Does this spark joy?” “Does this increase conversions?” If you don’t think there are pieces you can toss, try running an A/B test with a slimmed-down version of the page. The results might surprise you.

Bottom line: stick to the fundamentals of good landing page design and try to keep the number of elements (and thus HTTP requests) to a minimum.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We recommend that you keep things pretty lean, but we’d never remove content from your landing page. (Must resist… desire… to do best practices…) This is one optimization that you’ll have to tackle on your own.

Optimize Your Images

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

Once you’ve trimmed some elements from your page, you’ll want to optimize the content that made the cut. Poor image optimization is the most common reason for slow page loads, especially for mobile visitors. Fortunately, it’s also one of the easiest issues to fix.

These are some quick tips for shrinking your images and improving your page speed. The goal here should be getting images at least under 800kb, but the smaller we can make them, the better.

Resize your images

It’s easy to chuck a larger image onto your page and rely on your content management system (CMS) to compress it to the appropriate size, but it’ll still be loading at least some of those extra pixels on the back end, and your visitors are going to feel it in the load. When you add an image, make sure it’s the same dimensions that your page will be rendering it.*

*This doesn’t necessarily apply to Unbounce’s retina image support—read up on that here.

Choose the right file type

Most people don’t think too much about the format of the image they’re uploading, but it can have a dramatic effect on page performance. The file types you’re probably most familiar with are JPEG and PNG—and, yes, there are differences.

JPEG is a ‘lossy’ format, which means it’ll lose some data during compression. That typically gives you a smaller file, but it can come at the expense of visual fidelity. Generally, images with significant color variation (say, photographs) perform better as JPEGs, and any dip in quality can usually go undetected.

PNG is ‘lossless,’ so the image’s appearance won’t change when resized, but it tends to make for larger files if there’s significant color variation. PNG is ideal for simple images with defined shapes, like those with text. Saving PNGs in 8-bit (rather than 24-bit, which has a broader color palette) can help shave off some extra bites.

Here are some optimization tips for JPEG and PNG (and GIF, that villain) from Google itself.

Use compression tools

Before your weigh-in, it’s good to run images through a final round of compression. There are plenty of image compression tools on WordPress, as well as some free, standalone ones like TinyPNG. These shrinky gizmos offer a simple way to cut down your image sizes without braving the cursed labyrinth that is Adobe’s export settings. (Hey, I’m a words guy.)

Your takeaways here are:

Ensure your image dimensions match how they’ll actually be displayed

Use JPEG when a slight dip in visual fidelity isn’t the end of the world (like photography), but PNG when it is (images with text and sharp lines)

Compress images to keep the file size as tiny as possible

If you want to take a deeper dive into image optimization, we recommend that you check out this post from Search Engine Land, which goes into detail on making images smaller while keeping them beautiful.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got you covered. Unbounce’s Auto Image Optimizer shrinks your images as soon as they’re uploaded so you can focus on making the best landing page possible.

Host Your Videos Elsewhere

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

Why carry something yourself when you can make someone else carry it for you? That’s my motto for landing pages and life, and it’s why I’m no longer welcome on Unbounce’s company hiking trips.

Hosting videos on your own domain can be great for SEO purposes, but that’s not usually our goal with landing pages. We want everything to load in a flash and give our visitors the best chance to convert. Depending on your hosting solution, though, your videos might be slowing down your page speed, suffering from playback issues, and taking up an uncomfortable amount of server space.

Done properly, transferring videos to a third-party platform can shed some extra load time and help your pages render faster. Consider moving video content to Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo, then using a light embed technique so that your videos only load heavier playback elements when your visitors actually click on them.

Building Pages in Unbounce? As a disclaimer: Using light embed codes with Unbounce (or any custom code, for that matter) will require some technical knowledge to implement and could, in rare cases, cause issues. Check out this Unbounce community post for more information.

Audit Your Hosting Solution

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

Loading speed isn’t just determined by what’s on your landing page. Your web host also has a major influence in how quickly your page rolls out to potential customers.

There are three common models for web hosting:

Shared hosting Generally the most affordable solution, shared hosting is when your website is hosted alongside other sites on a single web server. Everyone draws from common resources (like storage space and processing power), which means—you guessed it—you need to share.

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting This is essentially a mix of both shared and dedicated hosting. With VPS, your website still shares server space with others, but you’ll have dedicated resources that no one else can dip into. The result is more power and flexibility, but it tends to come with a higher price tag.

Dedicated hosting For those who’ve had a traumatic roommate experience (who hasn’t?), dedicated hosting means your website has the server all to itself. More resources, no sharing. That’s great if you’re heavy on digital content and get a ton of traffic, but dedicated hosting is also the most expensive option and requires the technical know-how to set up and maintain your server.

Low-volume websites can generally get by with the cost-effective shared solution, but once your traffic starts to rise, you might not be getting enough juice from your web host to deliver content quickly—and that’s when load times start to suffer. (Give this post from Search Engine Journal a read for a more comprehensive explanation.)

It’s also important to note that the whereabouts of your web server can have a significant impact on your page speed. If you’re not using a content delivery network (CDN; more on this below), you’ll want to make sure that traffic from foreign countries isn’t encountering too much latency.

Think your hosting solution might be impacting your page speed? Run your site through a server speed test like this one from Bitcatcha, and use WebPageTest or Pingdom to see how your quickly your landing page loads in other countries. Depending on the results, you might decide it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan (or change web hosts altogether).

Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to worry about this one—Unbounce’s global hosting solution boasts 99.95% uptime and ensures that your landing pages always have the necessary resources to load super fast.

Implement a CDN

Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

When your landing page gets a visitor, their web browser pings your server to get the content necessary to build out the page. Simple, right? Everyone downloads your website information from the same place, regardless of their location around the world. Well, that’s usually fine if the visitor is in or close to the country that your web server is located, but when they’re halfway around the globe, chances are they’re going to encounter some latency.

To avoid that, you should look into deploying a CDN, which caches your website across a network of data centers and proxy servers all over the planet. Say your own server is in the United States and someone from Lithuania is trying to visit your landing page. Instead of downloading your content from across the Atlantic, that visitor can pull a cached version from a server nearby.

Setting your website up with a CDN is pretty straightforward and—depending on your traffic—generally affordable. Here’s a list of some popular CDN providers from Mashable.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got five global data centers supporting the Unbounce CDN, which means your landing pages will load in a flash regardless of where they’re being accessed from.

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes

These next speed fixes are a little trickier, but they should be manageable for marketers with a little technical know-how. Still, a mistake here could mean actual damage to your landing page.

Our recommendation? Do some research, make a backup, and—if you can—consult briefly with a developer on your team. It never hurts to have an experienced colleague to turn to if you get in over your head.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We talk a lot about WordPress through this next section. If you’re using our plugin to publish Unbounce landing pages to a WordPress domain, some of these recommended speed fixes can actually cause technical issues. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for clarification if you’re ever unsure.

Minify HTML, CSS, and JS

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

All those lines of HTML, CSS, and JS code that make up your landing page? They’re packed with spaces, line breaks, and other bits of formatting that make it more legible and easier for us to interpret, but each makes your load time just an eensy bit slower—and the web browsers your visitors are using to render your page don’t particularly need them.

With minification, the goal is to cut out all of that extra junk and condense your code so that browsers can read it faster. Here’s an example snippet of Javascript code from Wikipedia:

var array = []; for (var i = 0; i < 20; i++) { array[i] = i; }

After minifying, that code would look something like this:

for(var a=[i=0];++i<20;a[i]=i);

There are plenty of free online tools that will do this for your landing page, like Minify Code, as well as a bunch of WordPress plugins. Be sure to check out this post from Elegant Themes, which is an awesome resource that dives into the many options at your disposal.

Building Pages in Unbounce? Do we minify? We practically invented minifying. (Editor’s note: We did not.) Unbounce compresses all of your code automatically, making your landing page as slim as can be. No coding your pages from scratch and no minifying that code in the background? We’re making this too easy for you.

Enable Browser Caching

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

The goal with any landing page should be getting prospects to convert the first time they visit, but the reality is that not everyone will. Sometimes, visitors will need some time to think about it: they’ll bounce, do more research, check out some competitors, then come back to your original offer. Browser caching ensures that when they return, your page will load even faster—and that’ll make them more likely to convert.

Not sure if you’ve already got caching enabled? Before you start, run a quick caching check using a tool like this one from GiftOfSpeed.

If your site is built on WordPress, enabling caching is as easy as adding a plugin.* (WordPress is almost too easy, huh?) Check out this list of caching plugins, most of which include quick instructions for getting set up.

*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these caching recommendations could create big problems. Check with us first.

For those not on WordPress, enabling browser caching on your own is pretty simple if you’re willing to get your hands dirty. For example, on Apache web servers, it comes down to inserting a little bit of code into the .htaccess file on your web host or server: <IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year” ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month” ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year” ExpiresDefault “access 1 month” </IfModule>

This article from Varvy provides a great how-to, as does this one from WinningWP (which discusses enabling browser caching from a WordPress perspective but is applicable more broadly).

If all of this makes you nervous, there’s likely a simpler method for you to set up browser caching. Most web hosts will enable caching for you if you ask. Depending on your hosting solution, it might be as easy as making a phone call. (Although, now that I think about it, that might be more daunting for some of us.)

Building Pages in Unbounce? Seven-day browser caching is enabled on all Unbounce-built landing pages, so this is a speed fix you can comfortably skip. Maybe use this free time to treat yourself to some self-care? You’ve earned it.

Set Up GZIP Compression

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes

When a visitor reaches your landing page, their browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the page and the server transmits them back. Naturally, that process moves faster if the information being sent is compressed to be as small as possible. Here’s where GZIP compression comes in.

(You’ll want to check to see if GZIP compression is already enabled before you get started.)

As with browser caching, the difficulty of setting up GZIP compression is going to be determined by how your website was built. If you use WordPress, you’re in luck: many WordPress plugins will enable GZIP compression for you almost automatically. If you don’t use WordPress, well, we’re headed back into your server.

This article from GTmetrix provides a quick overview of the importance of GZIP compression and how to enable it. With Apache web servers, you’ll need to add this chunk of code to your .htaccess file. <IfModule mod_deflate.c> # Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml

# Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers) BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html Header append Vary User-Agent </IfModule>

And again, if this is beyond your comfort zone, your web host will probably help you set up GZIP compression if you ask nicely.

Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to ask us nicely, because we’ve already done it. All Unbounce landing pages are automatically compressed during data transfer. (But be nice to us anyway, alright?)

Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

WordPress is wonderful in its simplicity. As we’ve seen throughout this article, page speed fixes that might require a front-end developer on a static website can often be achieved by simply installing a WordPress plugin. Want to enable browser caching? Boom, W3 Total Cache.* Need to minify your scripts? Pow, Autoptomize.* Developer, shmeveloper.

But because it’s so easy to add functionality through plugins, WordPress websites have a habit of collecting a lot of them—along with all the of the bits and bites of code that make them work. Those add up.

Take a look at the scripts and plugins you’ve added to your website and decide whether they’re essential to your visitor experience. If they’re not, junking them could help cut some extra seconds off of your load time. (And guess what? There’s a plugin for that.) You can also disable plugins one at a time, then retest your page speed to determine which ones are problematic.

*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these plugins in particular might start a fire.

Building Pages in Unbounce? This is more of WordPress fix, but it also applies to Unbounce customers that have inserted a bunch of custom scripts onto their landing pages. Learn how the Unbounce Script Manager helps you keep things tidy.

Convert Images to Sprites

Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes

If your landing page includes a series of similar-sized images (say, for a client logo bar), you can shorten your load time by combining them into an image sprite, then use CSS to display specific chunks of that sprite at a time. This post from WebFX provides a great step-by-step guide for creating CSS sprites.

Joining smaller images into a larger file might seem counterintuitive, but again, the idea here is to reduce the number of HTTP requests on your page and ultimately make it faster. Each individual image requires its own call—combining images into a single CSS sprite means your page only needs to make one.

Building Pages in Unbounce? We don’t build CSS sprites for you, but you can certainly use them on your Unbounce-built landing pages. Check out our documentation on custom JS and CSS with Unbounce.

Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes

We’re into the scary stuff now.

These are fixes you should absolutely not attempt unless you know what you’re doing or you’ve consulted extensively with a front-end developer. (We even had one of the Unbounce devs fact-check this article, and we’ve never felt smaller.) Proceed with caution.

Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS

Difficulty: Hard / Estimated Time: 45 Minutes

Those CSS and JS scripts that make your landing page beautiful and enable cool, dynamic functionality? They could be one of the major reasons that your page is loading so slowly. (Bad news for my flashing, neon visitor counter.)

When a web browser runs into CSS or JS in the head of your document, it’ll wait to download and process that content before continuing to render your page’s HTML. That might sound like a good thing from a user experience perspective—after all, we want people to see our landing page as it was intended—but it actually means that visitors can be left waiting on a blank screen while everything loads in the background.

To avoid this, we need to implement techniques for preventing render-blocking CSS and JS on our landing page. (Refer back to your Google PageSpeed Insights results to check if any scripts are slowing down your page load.)

Reduce render-blocking CSS

There are a couple of ways that we can neutralize render-blocking CSS. One option is to defer all CSS until after the HTML has loaded. That’ll certainly improve page speed, but it will also present non-styled content when the visitor first reaches our page. Not ideal.

The other, more preferable option is to defer most style rules until the HTML has been rendered, but inline the CSS necessary to correctly display content above the fold within the HTML. That way, visitors will see the properly-styled content as soon as they hit the page while the rest will load out of view. Pretty sneaky. This is a great tutorial using a real-life example from codeburst.io.

Another page speed opportunity for you here is combining your CSS files. By moving your style rules from several files to just one (or maybe two, tops), you can reduce the number of times that visitors need to ping your web server and improve your landing page load time. Here’s a good resource from GiftOfSpeed on combining and compressing you CSS scripts.

Eliminate render-blocking JS

Like CSS, JS scripts can prevent your landing page from rendering as quickly as you might like. We can avoid that by deploying the defer and async attributes. The former tells the browser to wait until your HTML is rendered before it begins pulling in JS scripts, while the latter asks that JS be downloaded simultaneously without interrupting the HTML download.

An important note is that not all JS scripts are equal: some are critical to the rendering of your page and need to be addressed right out of the gate, so they’ll have to stay at the top. Dareboost does a good job of explaining how to distinguish between critical and non-critical JS, as well as how to implement deferred and asynchronous loading.

Building Pages in Unbounce? Unbounce optimizes for most Google PageSpeed Insights recommendations, including the removal of render-blocking elements. That means you can skip this one.

Start Hand-Coding with AMP

Difficulty: Very Hard / Estimated Time: ∞ Hours

Alright, “∞ hours” is an overstatement, but implementing AMP is no small task. Developed by Google, the AMP project is an entirely new framework with which to build your web pages. The goal? Dramatically improve page speed, especially for mobile users.

AMP is made up of three core components: AMP HTML, AMP JS, and AMP Cache. That means you’ll need to learn new markup, as well as understand the framework well enough to get your landing pages validated and make sure they actually work.

We won’t get into the nitty-gritty of building with AMP here, but the AMP website has a bunch of resources (including tutorials) to help you get started.

Building Pages in Unbounce? No hand-coding AMP pages for you—Unbounce makes it easy to drag and drop together AMP experiences. Choose one of our AMP-optimized templates, load your content, get validated, and start publishing lightning-fast landing pages right away.

Improving your landing page speed can sound intimidating, but even small tweaks will make a big difference for your load times. Tackle the easy stuff first, then move onto more challenging fixes as you get comfortable. And above all, keep testing: seeing your improved speed results after each undertaking will give you the confidence and motivation to move forward.

Or, you know, just build with Unbounce. We automatically handle most of the speed fixes listed (or at least makes them super easy), which saves a ton of time. That means you can focus on what matters: getting more conversions and improving ROI.

from Digital https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/increase-landing-page-speed/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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Hi all, I recently wrote this post about how Drip screwed over its most loyal customers and I thought perhaps /r/Entrepreneur would get value out of my lessons learned.----If you’re not familiar, Drip is email marketing software that’s pretty heavy on the marketing automation front. I won’t do them the courtesy of a link, so you’ll have to Google them if you want to check it out.They’ve been around since 2012 or so, founded by someone I trusted, but he sold the business to Leadpages a few years ago, and it’s been going downhill ever since.I’ve been using them for years as the backbone of two “side” businesses: IndieHive, which covers this website for freelancers and the related products and services that I sell, and Everleads, a curated lead generation site for freelance designers and developers.In 2016 and 2017, I really dug deep into Drip. I built out dozens of interconnected workflows to carefully shepherd my subscribers through various funnels and sequences with duplicate emails or annoying content that’s not relevant to them. I integrated my web front-end with their APIs so that I could customize the site for subscribers. I wrote bridging scripts to connect it to Mixpanel for analytics, and I used Zapier to hook Drip up to even more services. It was the heart of my entire business, and it was awesome.But throughout 2018, things started to go awry.I kept experiencing glitches in the workflows where people would get stuck on workflow steps that should be instant, like “remove tag”. Or people would end one workflow and start another, but not have any of the data that the first workflow had set. There were honestly dozens of these little glitches, but individually they were minor.Also troubling: deliverability started to slip. Not precipitously, and I can’t prove that it wasn’t just my emails, but I have heard from others that they were having issues with getting their emails into people’s inboxes in 2018.But the most egregious thing for all of this was that support was basically no help at all. I probably opened two dozen support requests in 2018 and I’m not sure they actually resolved a single one. We’d spend hours going back and forth so they could even understand the problem. Then they’d almost always say one of two things:“For a workaround, just insert a number of delays between steps in your workflows so that the system doesn’t get confused!” So all my workflows had little 5 minute delay steps to try and make sure things worked correctly. Which they still didn’t. Wtf.Or they’d just say they need to escalate to the developers and then I’d get an email weeks or months later from some random support engineer letting me know they were still looking into why the most basic functions of their software don’t work right. Awesome.Alarmed by this, I repeatedly researched alternatives throughout 2018, but nothing seemed worth going through the pain of migration and the risk of just having similar issues somewhere else. So I kept resolving to be patient with Drip and hope (pray) that they were hard at work at undoing whatever architectural disaster had led us here.And then…In early January 2019, while I was on a relaxing cruise with my wife for our 15th anniversary, I got an email from Drip:https://ryanwaggoner.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/drip-bullshit-pricing-email-2.pngSo basically: “Hey, we’re raising our prices in 12 days! You can keep your current price if you switch to an annual plan!”And if you read it carefully, there’s something pretty important missing from this email.It doesn’t say what the new pricing is**. Seriously wtf.**So I emailed to ask. They responded the next day (so now I have 11 days) to reveal they were doubling my monthly price.Drip raised my price from $184 / month to $368 / month with 12 days notice.That’s just about the worst way imaginable to treat your oldest and most loyal customers.And it was the last straw for me.Now, to be clear, I completely understand wanting to grow a company in a new direction, or thinking that you need to raise prices to reflect more value.But you don’t do it when your platform is half-broken, you don’t do it with 12 days notice, and you grandfather in existing customers, at least for long enough for them to migrate. Also, you tell them the price when you tell them that prices are rising.It’s hard to imagine how Drip could have been more disrespectful to their customer base than what they did here.So as of last month, I switched all my subscribers to ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign for Everleads and IndieHive, respectively. That’s thousands of dollars that Drip won’t be getting from me. I managed to get both setups completely migrated off just before their billing renewal dates, in one case with literal minutes to spare.It was a pain and required some late nights but it was worth it to deny them another penny.I’m not alone in feeling upset about this. Twitter was ablaze for weeks with people who were angry and bailing for greener, more respectful pastures. I’ve taken a sick joy in watching a lot of people migrate off Drip with much larger lists than mine.I also cancelled Leadpages in favor of Instapage. I was already unhappy with Leadpages, mainly because it feels pretty clunky and dated, they aren’t very responsive to user feedback, and they’re still missing some pretty basic things (like being able to pass form data to the thank you page. Seriously?).Side note: I was going to link to the Leadpages idea portal, but they apparently shut it down. Makes sense, since it was filled with hundreds of good ideas with many, many customer votes that had been ignored for years.Regardless, even if Leadpages was awesome, they own Drip and I won’t give another penny to such an unethical company that treats its customers so poorly.And this migration was a huge pain (which is what they were counting on), partly because of how complex my Drip setups were, but also because ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are both pretty different from each other and from Drip. On the surface, they all do some of the same things, but once you dig in, things diverge, which made the migration especially painful.Drip is complicated. Stupidly so. In fact, it’s so complicated that there are a number of problems using it:It doesn’t really work. I mean, it does like 99% of the time, but that last 1% means that some of your subscribers are going to have a bad time. And it’s not just that their emails won’t show up. They might just get stuck in a workflow, or skip some emails in a sequence, or get things at the wrong times, or lose data, etc. And since this happens randomly, the number of subscribers who experience it accumulates over time.The customer support reps don’t really know how it works, because it’s too complicated. So you end up spending hours writing up descriptions of the problem and putting together screencasts to show how things don’t seem to be working, and the only response you get is that they’ll have to ask the developers.It encourages you to setup really fancy complex automations which, even if they did work, are way beyond what you actually need. Just imagine: you can do anything! You can track everything! You can have an unlimited number of tags and fields! Track and automate all the things!Your setup can end up being really brittle and deeply tied to the Drip architecture, which is a problem if you want to migrate off. And it’s hard to expand and modify over time without breaking all kinds of things for your subscribers who are in those automations.The setup is hard to document. It’s easy to end up with a large collection of documents and spreadsheets and screencasts to try and explain not only what you did, but why you did it.It’s hard to audit and debug when things go wrong. And things will go wrong. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening with your subscribers, where things went off the rails, and how to get it back on track without screwing things up further.In the end, Drip for me felt like a really shitty programming language. Technically possible to do almost anything, but so painful that in the end you wish you hadn’t bothered.By contrast, ConvertKit is simple. And yes, I think it’s too simple in places. I think there are some genuine gaps in the functionality that makes it a little too hard to get done the things you want.But I’m also aware of the fact that I’m coming from Drip and a really convoluted setup, so being forced to simplify is probably a good thing.And ActiveCampaign is not simple, but it’s powerful in a bunch of ways that Drip should have been. Additionally, it has the distinction of actually being, you know, functional. Crazy, I know.Also, ActiveCampaign apparently is more open to feedback than Drip. I posted a Twitter thread listing some things that I like about it and Jason VandeBoom, the founder of ActiveCampaign, setup a call with me to go over some of my feedback. And ActiveCampaign isn’t a tiny company; they have hundreds of employees and are much larger than Drip. It meant a lot to me that Jason would just jump on the phone with a random customer to see how they could improve.Meanwhile Drip’s emails aren’t even signed by an actual person. During this whole debacle, I don’t think anyone from Drip actually responded to anyone’s tweets or complaints. A couple days after the initial announcement when things were blowing up on Twitter, they sent this out another email that was basically "sorry, not sorry"Just like their price increase, all of their corporate communication just screams “We don’t care about you. Go away.”So I did.I’m actually really glad that I dropped Drip, after all that. Partly because of how much better ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are as tools, but mostly because it taught me a lesson about how you need to be careful when you’re a small company about who you integrate with, because while your interests may align now, that could change at any point.But this rant has gone on long enough, so I’ll save that point for a future post.Disclaimer: just in case Drip decides to sue me (which would be so on-brand for them at this point), ALL the descriptions of Drip’s functionality, failings, and communications is to the best of my recollection and should not be taken as a literal word-for-word account.----Happy to answer any questions about my experience with Drip, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign. Would also love to hear anyone else's experiences with any of those (or others you'd recommend in the space of email-based marketing automation).Original post: https://ryanwaggoner.com/drip-pricing-review/