#I hit 300 followers while I was away so woo

[letterstotheflre]

i'd beg you on my knees

summary: you loved sirius's fingers, but there's something you craved more.

warnings: oral sex (male receiver), daddy kink, a bit of religious imagery (you know how it is), a bit of spitting, mentions of throat training and finger sucking, i think that's it?

word count: 2.5k

a/n: as a celebration for passing my chemistry final and 300 followers, here is the second part to the sirius corrupting you series :)

ps: i know those look like feminine hands, but pretend they are sirius’s okay i spent 2 hours looking for something to use and that’s the best i got

you couldn’t stop staring at his hands.

you had always loved them. they were big, always completely encasing your smaller ones, and full of rings, some of which you made yourself. the skin on his palm and finger pads was a bit rough, a consequence of years of holding a bat to hit the bludgers away from his teammates. but there was still a slight delicate appearance to them, courtesy of the black family genes which, despite years of slight inbreeding, somehow still managed to make some of the most attractive people in the wizarding world.

you loved the way they felt against the small of your back or your waist, always letting some warmth seep through the fabric of your clothes. you loved the way they cupped your cheeks before he leant down to kiss you, slightly squishing your cheeks and puckering your lips for him. but ever since that afternoon a few days ago, you adored the way they felt in your mouth.

you tried to be subtle, you really did, but it was impossible to stop staring at them. you couldn’t forget the weight of his fingers on your tongue nor the way they hit the back of your throat. the feeling of having them in your mouth brought a strange sense of comfort to you, it was like having a piece of him always inside you.

and sirius noticed. of course he did, you were one of the only things he deemed important enough to pay attention to, followed by the phases of the moon and any updates on the 5-year plan james had made to woo lily evans. and because he liked seeing your glazed over eyes and heating cheeks when he caught you staring, he started to show them off on purpose.

he started to talk with more hand movements, followed by always playing with any stray hairs around your face. he started to use his thumb to play with your bottom lip before kissing you, almost giving you what you wanted but then taking it away from you.

he caved in when he saw how truly needy you were for them. the teary eyes and little whines you made every time he pulled them away from your mouth were almost enough to make him hard, so he allowed you to suck on them every now and then. he watched attentively as you slightly hollowed your cheeks when he used both his pointer and middle fingers, sometimes trying to get as much of them inside you as possible.

so he started to push your limits, drawing circles against the back of your tongue before he pushed them further, not warning you before they entered your cavity, yearning to hear what other pretty sounds you could do besides moaning and whining. you had gagged violently the first time he did it, and you looked at him confused at the sudden intrusion, “remember the first time you sucked on them? remember what you wanted them to be?” you nodded slowly, embarrassed that he could recall how much you wanted other parts of him inside you. “I gotta stretch your little throat, bunny. gotta get you all ready for my cock.”

and that was that. the following days were spent with you either on his lap or on your knees in front of him, long and thick fingers prodding the back of your throat constantly until it only took you less than five minutes to get used to the feeling of something residing in it. sirius never let up, even if you had some tears in your eyes caused by the intrusion, always giving you new learning material: breath through your nose, relax your throat, open your mouth wide. his instructions ran through your brain every day, an urgent need to remember them controlling your thoughts.

and that’s how you were now, on your knees in front of him like a repentant while sirius sat on the edge of the mattress, mouth wide open as you waited eagerly for his fingers. you watched, intrigued, as his mandible moved around almost like he was collecting something. your unvoiced question was answered when his face came close to yours, his hand tangling itself in your hair to tilt it upwards, and then his spit was dribbling onto your pink tongue.

the sight of him spitting into your mouth sent a thrum of pleasure to your core. “swallow,” he said, leaving no room for disobedience. You followed his command, letting it fall down your throat as if it were your forbidden fruit, and once you opened your mouth again his fingers went in, immediately pressing on your tongue. you swirled your tongue around them, covering them in your saliva before he started to push them further. you only gagged a little, the previous lessons having already prepared you.

he let you suck on them a bit longer before removing them, watching as your hands scrambled to his wrist to keep them close. he shook his head, chuckling in amusement, “you needy thing.” he patted your head, “I think you are ready for my cock, angel, do you want it?”

you opened your eyes wide, looking like a kid in a candy shop. “yes, please!” your voice was a bit hoarse, “wanna make you feel good like you made me feel the other day, siri.” the smirk he wore on his lips when he heard your eager ‘yes’ fell into an honest smile, “oh I bet you’ll make me feel better than that, bunny.”

you watched from your position on the hardwood floor as he rose to his feet, unbuckling his belt and pulling the zipper down. he let his jeans fall to the floor, now only clad in his underwear that would soon meet the same fate and you wiggled, eager to finally see him. once he was completely naked he sat back on the bed, spreading his legs so you could kneel comfortably between them. he was already a bit hard, courtesy of the image of you suckling on his fingers so needily, but he still needed a little push before he was ready for you.

you were entranced by him, this being the first time you ever saw someone other than yourself completely naked. he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and you could see the slight ripples of muscle on his abdomen and the stray tattoos that adorned his skin here and there. he had a few scars, some of them caused by his parents' punishments and others from a few accidents during the full moon, but he was still absolutely beautiful.

and then your eyes fell lower, down the happy trail of hair that led to what you had been craving since that fateful tuesday afternoon. it was big, even though you had never seen another cock you couldn’t deny its length. there was a vein on one side that stood out a bit, and the tip was a bit red and something shiny was coating it. “can I please touch it, daddy?” you asked sweetly, wanting to remain on his good side.

the name had accidentally left your mouth a few days ago when you were suckling on his fingers. you were just so needy, so desperate for their weight on your tongue that your mind had started to feel fuzzy, and the nickname just slipped out.

your cheeks had resembled the heat of a fire, still sober enough to realize your mistake but when you saw the way his eyes had darkened and his grip on your waist tightened, you repeated it. he had cursed, voice low as his other hand cupped your cheek. “you want daddy’s fingers, hm?” he questioned, forcing you to tell him with your words what you wanted when you merely nodded. and that was a new lesson, ask for what you want and you were to only refer to him as daddy in private.

“go on, angel,” he said with a nod of his head. slowly, you moved one hand closer, still a bit hesitant with your movements. though eager to learn, you were still scared of doing something wrong and stop being his good girl as he had called you multiple times while he watched as you touched yourself for him. he would sit in a chair in front of the bed as he told you what to do and when to cum, and the rush of power he felt was extraordinary.

one finger traced the vein, the soft touch making sirius twitch. the skin was warm and actually pretty smooth, with a couple of ridges here and there. gently, you closed your hand around the base and moved it up and down, and sirius groaned. the soft touch drove him insane, your palm barely gripping him, “close your hand a bit more, puppy,” he instructed. you gripped him more tightly, “it won’t hurt you?” you asked.

sirius just smiled at your thoughtfulness, “no, baby, it’ll feel really good. just don’t add too much pressure as you did with your nipples the other day,” he slightly taunted. you blushed at his teasing, “didn’t mean to do that, daddy,” you grumbled and unknowingly thumbed at the slit of the tip, making him moan in pleasure. the sound was so heavenly in your ears that you did it again and again until one of his hands gripped your hair so you looked up at him.

“you’re teasing me now, bunny?” he said harshly, “that’s not how it works and you know it. d’ya want me to stop you from cumming again like I did yesterday?”

you shook your head quickly, or as much as you could with the grip on your hair, “no no, m’sorry, daddy, didn’t mean to.” but he just chuckled, an empty sound that wasn’t as nice as his previous moans. “oh, you didn’t mean to! like you didn’t mean to tug on your nipples. like you didn’t mean to wear that tiny skirt the other day. like you didn’t mean to cum without my permission three days ago.” he started to list all of your accidents, “is there anything you do mean, angel?” he asked harshly.

your lips slightly quivered at his tone, ashamed at making him angry when all you wanted was to please him. “I want to make you feel good, daddy! m’sorry, I promise I’ll be better. I’ll be your best girl.” you tried to convince him, and you really did mean it. all you wanted was to be good for him.

“well, then put my cock in your mouth and show me y’can be good.” with that, he moved your head closer towards him, and then slackened his grip. you looked at him while giving the tip a little kiss, then using your tongue to collect the pearly white liquid that had collected there. it tasted a bit funny, saltier than you remembered your own cum to taste, but it wasn’t necessarily bad. then, using the flat of your tongue, you moved along the length, using one hand to keep it straight.

sirius was biting his lip as he watched you, his little angel on her pretty knees about to suck him for the first time. after a few more teasing licks, you finally took him into your mouth, and the moan that escaped sirius was incredibly sinful. your mouth was so warm and so wet that the only other place sirius could ever possibly want to be in was your pussy.

you swirled your tongue around the bit that was inside your cavity, your hand still stimulating what you couldn’t fit yet. he was big, too big for your mouth, but you wanted to fit all of him inside, so you took a deep breath through your nose and tried to relax both your mandible and your throat before taking him deeper. you pushed as far as you could, staying there for a couple of seconds before pulling apart, heaving another deep breath before repeating your actions. you gagged and choked at the progressive obstruction, yet you pushed through it, but it sounded so good in sirius’s ears that he thought about just pushing your head down without warning.

sirius threw his head back with a groan when you started to hollow your cheeks, “fuck, angel, you’re so good, taking me so well.” he praised, and it made you shiver in pleasure, the meaning of his words accompanied by his gruff voice a perfect melody. you raised your eyes to look at him. he looked beautiful like this: head thrown back, lips red from biting them, completely exposed for you and one hand gripping the sheets while the other grabbed your head.

you pulled away with a pop, “y’look so pretty, daddy,” you complimented him, and it made the tension in his stomach tighten significantly. it was such an innocent compliment in a completely unholy scenario that he couldn’t help but twitch in your hand. you had just wrapped your lips around him again when he said, “not as pretty as you with m’cock down your throat,” and it made you giggle around him as you shied a bit at his words. the vibrations of your little laugh could’ve sent him over the edge, “shit—” he cursed.

you took him deeper than ever before, your throat now used to the intrusion and barely even gagging. sirius started to raise his hips, almost face fucking you but he held back some of the strength in his thrusts. you kept your eyes on him, and fuck you looked so good with your mouth full and those watery eyes and flushed skin that after a few more thrusts he pulled you away.

you whimpered, not understanding why he stopped your movements. there was still a string of saliva that connected your mouth to him, and he sped up his hand movements as he looked at your sinful image. “daddy,” you groused, tongue out so he could put it back in.

“fuck, angel, m’gonna cum,” he moaned, “n’ I’m gonna paint your little face, d’you want that?” he asked, slightly panting through his exertion. but you shook your head, “m’mouth, want to taste you,” and that did it for him. he cursed and moaned, all at the same time, as that wave of pleasure swallowed him whole. white spurts fell on your tongue, a few others coating your cheeks, and he looked so sinful while working through his orgasm that you had to clench your thighs together.

once he was fully spent, he watched as you eagerly swallowed what he gave you, showing him there was nothing left. his hands went to your cheeks, cleaning his cum from your face and forcing you to clean them, too. it was so dirty that he felt proud of what he made of you, his cock twitching once more before softening.

“was I good, daddy?” you asked him with a slightly raspy voice. you were looking up at him as if he were your god, his opinion of the highest importance to you. he smiled proudly, his fingers now playing with the chain that had a little ‘s’ that rested just between your collarbones. “the best, angel.”

TAGLIST: @gxtitobxby @emmaev @dracosafety @dracoxgeorge @sarcasmismyon1ydefence @remusjlupinisdead @mattefic @zzzfour —if you want to be tagged tap here

#sirius black x reader #sirius black imagine #sirius black smut #sirius black x y/n #sirius black x you #sirius black one shot #marauders smut #marauders fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter imagine

[hanatiny]

More Than Friends

a/n: Whether you have someone to dote on today or not, happy Valentine’s day~ Not only is this a not-so-little something for the holiday of love, it’s also a thank you for letting me reach 300 followers <3 

pairing: best friend!Yeosang x genderneutral!reader

genre: fluff

word count: 2684

warnings: high school AU, friends to lovers, Wooyoung is no.1 wingman (or at least tries to be), Yeosang is absolutely whipped, reader is unfortunately very oblivious

-----

January, and with it your winter break, had come and gone - you probably wouldn’t have even realized it was February if it wasn’t for the excessive amount of heart-shaped, overly cutesy decorations that were littered across the hallways of your school.

You groaned internally, making your way past your classmates and towards your locker with a sigh. February itself wasn’t what bothered you so much, what made you positively abhor the month was how lovey-dovey everyone around you acted during that time.

You’ve never really had any interest in relationships and you made sure to make that clear, which is why you were surprised to find a neatly sealed light pink envelope in your locker.

You looked around subtly, wondering if the person who put it there was still around before quickly deducing that they probably weren’t. Curious, you turned over the envelope in your hands, just in case it was meant for someone else entirely. All you found however was your name with a heart and a tiny butterfly doodled next to it, which meant that this letter was indeed meant for you.

You chuckled endearingly, although mildly disappointed that your secret admirer’s handwriting was too ambiguous for you to correlate with a person. Before you were able to lament it more, a quick glance at your phone in your hand revealed to you that you were going to be late if you didn’t get moving.

Stuffing the letter into your pocket, you quickly gathered your books for your classes and booked it to your classroom after pushing your locker shut again.

You couldn’t focus at all however because you were unable to think about anything else other than who the person who had slipped the letter into your locker before you arrived that morning might be, and - more importantly - what exactly the letter was going to say.

Too occupied with your daydreaming, you failed to notice your usually calm and composed childhood best friend fidgeting under the desk behind yours.

Lunch couldn’t come soon enough for either of you, especially not for your mutual close friend Wooyoung who had been practically glued to both yours and Yeosang’s hips the moment you both left the classroom.

You heaved a sigh as you slumped down into a chair at a free table in the cafeteria, Wooyoung seating himself opposite you with Yeosang right next to him.

“What’s gotten into you today, Y/n? You seem so unusually out of it!” Yeosang elbowed his friend, at which the younger whined exaggeratedly but didn’t comment.

You pulled the pink letter out of your pocket and flicked it at Wooyoung to let him inspect the item before handing it back to you, his head tilted in confusion as he cocked a brow at you.

“You’re this worked up about a letter of all things? Don’t you normally just throw love letters and stuff away every year without even looking at them? What’s so different about this one?”

You shrugged nonchalantly while Yeosang poked at his food, listening more intently to the conversation than he allowed himself to let on, “No idea, Woo. Maybe I should just open it and find out for myself what’s so special...?”

You muttered the last part more to yourself than either of the males sitting at the table but they both still heard you clearly, prompting Wooyoung to nod enthusiastically and offer some what he hoped to be encouraging words, “Yeah, you totally should! Worst case scenario, you can just politely reject whoever wrote that.”

“Good point, I might as well... Here goes nothing.” You murmured under your breath, carefully opening the envelope before pulling out not only a piece of paper but also a small tube of strawberry chapstick which would’ve likely dropped to the floor if you hadn’t caught it in time.

You discreetly slipped it into your school bag after inspecting it briefly before your hands quickly unfolded the letter and dropped the envelope onto the table carelessly before beginning to read.

~~~~~~~~~~

My dearest Y/n,

I hope you don’t mind me confessing like this. I’m simply too nervous to voice my feelings out loud...

To yourself, you may not appear as someone special. To me however, you’re like a celebrity. You’re the most important person to me, and I wish we were closer than we already are as of now.

You’re a fresh breath of air to me, you’re not like anyone else. Everytime I talk to you I learn something new, and I think that’s beautiful.

Just like everything else about you. Your eyes remind me of stars the entire galaxy with how bright they shine, and I feel like I could get lost in them if I looked for long enough.

Your smile can light up an entire room, and frequently lifts my mood so effortlessly that it leaves me wondering how you continue doing it. Your voice is like music to me, and your laugh is my favorite song. And I want to be the reason that song keeps playing.

So, if you’d be willing to give me a chance to do so... meet me at the cat café later today after class. You know the one.

I hope I’ll see you there ♡

~~~~~~~~~~

You were so engrossed in the words on the paper that you didn’t look up in time to notice your friends’ reactions as you read before they recomposed themselves; a faint hint of a blush still tinted Yeosang’s cheeks while Wooyoung’s form relaxed after briefly tensing up slightly.

You folded the letter again and slipped it back into its envelope before, once more, dropping it on the table. You smacked Wooyoung’s hand away when he tried to reach for the letter, causing him to whine at you again as his lips formed a pout when you finally looked up at him.

If his eyes didn’t betray his curiosity, you would’ve said he was simply sulking because you hit him, but you knew better than to be that naive.

“No Wooyoungie, you won’t get to read it. At least not now.” You narrowed your eyes at your longtime friend as he huffed in disappointment, “But why~?”

“Because I can’t trust you to keep your mouth shut. The entire school would know about this by the end of the day.” You bit back, smiling triumphantly at the stunned silence Wooyoung offered in return.

“Touché.” Yeosang murmured, pushing his tray away to rest his arms on the table instead while he eyed you, wondering if you had any suspicions about the letter’s author.

As if reading his mind, your mouth opened to speak and Yeosang couldn’t help but focus on your lips, although he kept it as discreet as he possibly could.

“I want to meet up with the person behind these words. Something feels different about them... I initially suspected it to be Hongjoong, but his handwriting is nowhere near this neat."

Wooyoung snickered at that, but allowed you to continue and voice your conclusion.

"So for now, my secret admirer is a complete mystery to me."

"To you, and to everyone else." Yeosang added under his breath. He had a tendency to be quiet, so you weren't put off by this whatsoever.

"Indeed, Sangie...~" Yeosang felt his heart skip a beat at both the nickname and the somewhat affectionate lilt in your tone.

He was promptly yanked back out of his reverie however when you collected your belongings and stood to leave after checking the time on your phone, his eyes not straying from your form in the slightest, “In any case, we should probably get back to class.”

You turned on your heel and walked out of the cafeteria with Wooyoung in tow, the latter noticing his friend staying behind for a little longer than necessary but not commenting on it as Yeosang beamed, visibly lovestruck. It was a miracle to him and Wooyoung both how you didn’t take any of the countless hints he had given over the past few months, whether they were intentional or not being up for debate.

Completely zoned out, Yeosang jumped in his seat when the bell rang, prompting him to hastily grab his backpack and make a beeline for the classroom he shared with you, with quick steps.

He saved himself from tripping over his own two feet more than just once before he finally slid into the seat behind yours, breathless. You turned to face him, quirking an eyebrow inquisitively.

“Are you alright, Yeosang?”

It was a simple question, and yet the clear concern laced in had the blonde’s heart lurching in his chest once more as he nodded with a reassuring smile. He hated how cliché his crush presented itself, as if he was just hopelessly infatuated with you.

This was absolutely the case, as the way his heart rapidly pounding in his chest proved, but that was beside the point.

You thought it was suspicious that he didn’t seem to trust his voice because it was in no way like him to be this flustered - or perhaps you should rather say insecure. You shrugged it off though and turned back around to focus on your lecture, thinking he may just be feeling a bit under the weather.

Both of you found yourselves unable to keep your minds from going off-track, however. Yeosang was still excited about the prospect of possibly having a very real chance to be with you the way he wished to, while you kept wondering about who your secret admirer may or may not be.

The end of your torturous classes didn’t come soon enough for either of you, Wooyoung mysteriously nowhere to be found when you and Yeosang finally left the school building. You were relieved to find the crisp morning air had warmed up considerably over the course of the day, somewhat surprising considering the time of the year, and exhaled deeply, pulling a soft endearing chuckle from Yeosang’s lips.

You grinned at your friend, having always quite enjoyed the melodious sound of his voice before your expression shifted to a miniscule frown when you were eventually forced to part ways with him. Because no matter how close the two of you were, you still lived in different neighborhoods.

You turned to face him with a small smile, adjusting the shoulder strap of your bag before wrapping your arms around Yeosang in a tight but warm hug before meeting his eyes again, “I’ll call you tonight and tell you how my date went, yeah? See you tomorrow, Yeosangie~”

You waited for him to nod and boldly leaned up to peck his cheek before walking off in the direction of your house, not aware of the way you had flustered the poor boy. If it had been possible he would’ve melted into a puddle right then and there on the sidewalk, his face flushed a bright red from calling your meetup a date as he walked on in the direction of the cat café he wanted to meet you at.

He could only hope that you’d stick to your word, and actually show up.

Meanwhile you squealed in excitement when you rounded the corner, making a run for it down the street to your home. You slammed the door shut behind yourself, thankful that noone else was home presently so you could get ready and calm down your nerves in peace.

When you had finally made yourself look somewhat more presentable than you did while wearing your school uniforn, satisfied with your appearance before halting your steps when your open school bag caught your eye. After a moment of hesitant consideration, you spread the strawberry chapstick you were gifted across your lips.

Fully content now as you took one last look in the mirror, you grabbed your phone and keys to stuff into your pockets as you left your house to make your way to the café a few blocks away.

When you arrived there, greeted casually due to being a regular at the establishment along with your friends, you were led into the outside area where the cats were allowed to roam freely.

You would often jokingly call it the ‘fluffy garden’ when you were younger due to the amount of felines you’d be able to interact with. Now however, you paused mid-step upon realizing what you were seeing.

Yeosang, your childhood best friend and secret crush, lying on a blanket on the grass. He had ditched the school uniform’s jacket for his own, personal favorite jacket, you mused as you took in his posture. He had one arm hooked underneath his head while the other rested on his side, his hand petting the small cat that had positioned itself on his chest and purred from his attention.

As if sensing your presence, the animal licked Yeosang’s fingers gently before scrambling to hop off of him and run to play with its furry friends instead. You regarded the scene with a fond look in your eyes before heat rushed to your cheeks when Yeosang finally turned to face you, flashing you the breathtaking shy smile you adored so much before beckoning you over and gesturing to the space on the blanket next to him.

You watched him turn to meet your eyes when you positioned yourself next to him, a smile tugging at your lips.

“So... I take it you were the one who ‘sent’ the letter, Sangie~?” The male in question nodded sheepishly, secretly finding it cute how you never stayed consistent with the nicknames you gave to people. “Yeah, it was me. Wooyoung helped though... the chapstick was his idea, among other things.”

You hummed at the nervous laugh that slipped past his lips as he waited for your reaction, “I expected as much. A mystery how he managed to not snitch, truly...” You trailed off, reaching to brush a strand of hair out of Yeosang’s handsome face. “What’s also a mystery is how neither of us seem to have picked up on the signals we tried to send each other.”

Yeosang tilted his head slightly, subconsciously leaning into your touch as he eyed you with somewhat furrowed brows, “But I thought you weren’t interested in relationships, Y/n?”

“I did say that, but I’m making an exception for you. I guess what I’m saying is... I like you back, Yeosangie. As in... like like you.”

You bit your lip in anticipation of his next move, practically seeing the cogs turning in his head before his face lit up with relief.

“I’m so glad to hear that, I was actually even worried you had changed your mind and wouldn’t come in the first place.” Yeosang took a deep breath as he took in your shy but genuine expression, “Can I... would you let me kiss you?”

You nodded, gently tugging him close by means of his jacket before he even had time to react. Your kiss was clumsy, as expected from two people your age, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. It was perfect, just like you were to each other.

He grinned at you when he pulled back, “Did you put on the strawberry chapstick~?” You giggled in response, “Mhm, I sure did. What’s interesting though is that you taste like vanilla... and I happen to like vanilla~”

You spent the rest of the afternoon and evening talking and playing with the cats until it was time for the café to close, and you left to make your way back home. Together this time, hands interlocked.

Yeosang kissed you again lovingly when you reached your doorstep and promised to pick you up before school the following day before walking off into the night, a bright smile on his face.

You had barely set foot into your house and heard the door click closed behind you, when your phone vibrated in your hand. You didn’t need to check to know who was calling you at this hour, amusement filling you as you heard your now-boyfriend’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Well Y/n, how was your date~?”

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@8makes1teamnet

#8makes1teamnet #ateez fanfic #ateez fluff #ateez yeosang fluff #yeosang fluff #kang yeosang fluff #t*mblr pls do ur thing and tag everyone pls thank you <3 #also please don't let this flop lmao I put so much work into it- #hanatiny writes

[vtforpedro]

long, long health update - tw in tags please read them

I am going to speak very frankly about suicidal ideation; please don't read further if this is triggering for you ;3; but please know that I love you I had my follow-up appt with my neuropsych on monday to go over my results and whatnot. it was virtual, and I was in the middle of a head episode and I told her I wasn't doing well, but within about 5-10 minutes, she was saying I should probably go to the ER lkajflaj I guess it looked pretty bad lmao anyway I told her all the reasons I couldn't. medical trauma, being dismissed b/c I have doctors who manage my headaches, and I know it's not life-threatening even if it is 10/10 agonizing, so why are you here. they're so dismissive. she said that they have medication to possibly help break the cycle of constant migraines but I've been treated with those before and they didn't do shit migraines are secondary to iih. it's the iih that needs to be fixed ._. she said I still deserved to not suffer and that the ER is very strict about keeping covid patients away from other patients and I didn't have the heart to tell her they intubated a covid patient 10-15 feet away from me last time I was in an ER 😭 anyway so the results. she said she wasn't worried about anything going on that was concerning or indicating something wrong in my brain. I DID score quite a bit lower for someone my age on information processing (which is exactly what I said I was struggling with to my two neuros who were both like ehhh) and some issues with memory but they weren't super specific and so it could be something neurological, could be my migraines and constant agony lmao, could be my Emotional State. could be all of them at once, I suppose ;) she went into more detail about some of these things but it was the two questionnaires I filled out that were HNNN. so once all the data is entered from like 300 questions it shows a good look into my personality and perceptions and all that and it makes a cool little graph (OR SO I THOUGHT). the kind that looks like mountain peaks. so she points at the one that is waaay higher than the rest and nearly touching the top of the box and she's like 'do you see this one' me: yeah 😬 her: this is your feelings and ideations about suicide me: 😬 😩 😬 her: when I see a score this high, I stop what I'm doing and I call the police to have them escort you to a hospital me: 😬😬😬😬😬 her: but I didn't do that. because when we spoke in office you told me you felt this way and why you don't do it. you told me it's something you've lived with for a long time and the pain you are suffering is what makes it so bad. and I trust you me: 😭😭😭 okay her: do you see this line down here? this is people who have suicidal ideation recorded on this test. you scored 98% higher on suicidal ideation compared to people reporting suicidal ideation HNNNNNN. she said it probably wasn't surprising to me and asked me if I was safe again and all that. I assured her I was and said in my previous appointment; I've had suicidal thoughts since I was like 12? maybe earlier. there have been very few times in my life not surrounded by abuse and trauma so I'm never really free of it. I've had four traumatic incidents causing increasingly horrible episodes of ptsd in nine years. all through my 20s. still here woo, lol and she said she knew that and had a patient not long after my first appointment who had similar circumstances in their life. and they told her it's almost a comfort having it. cause I was saying it's in the back of my mind at all times and I won't do it, but yeah, it's always there. anyway she said they said the same thing; it's always there, always in the background as 'hey I'm an option!' even though we aren't going to harm ourselves. it's a comfort knowing there is an option even if we plan on never using it? idk it just spoke to me and I felt it in my soul we talked about some emotional stuff after and I cried and it was a thing. it felt really good to speak to a psychologist who, just as she was in the first appointment, seemed genuinely concerned and wanted to help

me. I told her I was ready for therapy and she said she'd already looked for therapists for me lkasjdlkja and gave me a group that I emailed yesterday. I don't think they'll take my insurance but she said to message her through the portal if they don't and she'll try to find someone who does I don't remember if I mentioned it, but since she knew about the head shit before I met her, she dimmed her office lights without asking if I needed it and like as soon as we started the virtual visit, she leaped up and dimmed them and said she should've thought about it before the appt 😭 (I keep my brightness really low on my computer and use the warming feature 24/7 on comp and phone and my apt is really dimmed but it still helped a lot when she did it) she kept saying 'you did nothing wrong. it was the choice of others to do what they did. you don't deserve to carry their choices. you deserve to be able to hand it back to them. you don't deserve to be in pain. you did nothing wrong. you deserve to be free of what they did and you deserve to not suffer in such physical pain' I'm so wary of doctors but I really like her and I feel fortunate to have been referred to her ;3; speaking for a long time and especially emotionally is hard for me, so I might try to do two sessions a month once I find a therapist and see if I'm ok with that. trying to keep everything virtual while delta is out there I read her report and her official diagnosis is uhh really strong for major depressive disorder, severe. and severe ptsd with disassociative symptoms so!!! I claimed both of those on my disability application and the person handling my claim told me when I had this appt to call and let her know because she wanted the info. I signed a release the day I was there when I told my neuropsych that cause MH stuff is different than other medical records. she said she faxed it to the woman handling my disability application but I was gonna call her and ask if she received it and also tell her I have a new neuro so she will probably request his stuff too I called today and her voicemail box is full so lol try again later today's been awful. last night was horrible. got a bill for over $800 from my colonoscopy/endoscopy even though I asked numerous times if insurance was covering it and was told yep, every penny. so I was on the phone with insurance and the surgery center for 45 minutes. insurance seemed confused af but the agent I spoke with got some help from people who handle this stuff I guess finally she told me not to pay it, they're going to send them a letter to get it sorted (idk if this means I won't have to pay it at all or if they're going to try to make it that way. but I think govt insurance, which is what I have, works differently. like doctors kinda have to follow what they say vs. the other way around) and not worry about it for the next 30 days. I'm still gonna worry about it lmao they used a nice scare tactic on the bill that this was the 'LAST AND FINAL NOTICE' despite the fact they've never sent me anything else. my mom and the insurance agent said nah that's just what they do to scare people into paying fuckin love america <3 land of the free. the american dream! greatest country on earth 💜🖕💜 I just don't want it to go to collections and have to fight credit bureaus to get it off my credit so it's not destroyed |: anyway my head hit like 10/10 bad while I was on the phone cause of the talking a lot and trying to PROCESS INFORMATION and stress and also the fucking hold music, which I have to hear in some way b/c I gotta know when they're back on the line hnnnnn bad day. it's 1pm and bad, bad, bad day. bad month all around. I want this shit to stop anyway. I'm sorry about the suicidal ideation talk, but it's important to talk about that stuff. it can get severe but it can also get better. it does, eventually, even if it comes and goes. it always does get better I'm sorry, I also really needed to get this down somewhere. feel like I'm going to explode emotionally AND physically and I need to talk about it. hopefully

soon I'll have a therapist to talk to so I can get a lot of this stuff worked on. got my whole life to chat about so it'll probably take a long time but I'm willing to let it lmao therapy doesn't usually work for me anymore but idk I've had a lot of shit happen in less than two years so maybe it will this time I'm trying! I really am trying if you read this rambling monster, thank you. love you all and please stay safe

#vtforpedro personal #tw suicidal thoughts #tw suicidal ideation #tw suicide #tw mental health #tw depression #tw anxiety #tw mental illness #personal #medical #also she is obligated by law to report suicide risks and right now that's to the police so I can't blame her for that #we desperately need crisis intervention rather than fucking asshole cops but that's just what it is right now

[yootaesowlwrites]

The One Thing Chapter 9:

Chapter 9-  The One Thing series.

This series has a taglist, if you want to be added, send me an ask.

More fanfiction.

AJ stands next to Jasper on the baseball field they had made hearing a jeep approach, Edward and Bella climb out of the jeep and Esme smiles meeting up with them halfway.

"Hey, glad you're here, we need an umpire," Esme says, she leads Bella away from Edward.

"She thinks we cheat," Emmett says as he walks past them.

"I know you cheat," Esme says, they stop at the catcher's corner. "Call 'em as you see them, Bella."

"All right," Bella says. Emmett hands the ball to Alice and she walks to the middle of the field while Edward and Emmett move to the outside, Rosalie got ready as the thunder moved closer.

"It's time," Alice says, everyone stood behind Rosalie and Alice throws the ball towards Rosalie, she hits it just as the thunder rumbled loudly.

"I see why you need the thunder now," Bella says, Rosalie drops the bat and speeds around the field while Edward speeds after the ball. "That's gotta be a home run, right?"

"Edward's very fast," Esme says, Jasper twirls his bat in his hand while watching Rosalie run around the field, AJ walks up behind Carlisle as Edward throws the ball back to Esme, she catches it seconds before Rosalie slides to a stop.

"You're out," Bella says.

"Out! Woo!" Emmett yells, Rosalie glares at Emmett. "Babe, come on, it's just a game!" Rosalie stands from the ground glaring at Bella, she walks past Bella.

"Nice kitty," Carlisle says as Rosalie walks past him, Carlisle steps up to bat next.

"You got this, Mi Amor," AJ says, Alice throws the ball and he hits it dropping the bat immediately before running, Emmett and Edward both set their sights on the ball and got after it, they jump into the air and collide with each other as the thunder rumbles.

"What are you doing?" Edward asks laughing, Emmett pushes Edward before standing from the ground, Carlisle makes the run and stood from the ground.

"Told you that you got this," AJ says, she pecks his cheek as Jasper steps up to bat next, Alice throws the ball and he hits dropping the bat before running, Emmett dashes after the ball climbing up a tree, he launches himself off grabbing the ball mid-air and throws it to Esme.

"My monkey man," Rosalie says, AJ picks up the bat.

"Give me your best," AJ says, Alice throws the ball and AJ hits it and drops the bat before taking off, Edward speeds after the ball and AJ slides across the home run as well.

"You cheated!" Edward yells.

"You're just sour that I was faster!" AJ says, she stood from the ground moving out of the way as John moves to bat next, Alice throws the ball and John hits the ball and drops the bat.

"STOP!" Alice yells, John stops and everyone speeds towards Bella and Esme. "They were leaving then they heard us." Edward put's his hand on Bella's back ready to take her and leave.

"Let's go," Edward says.

"It's too late," Carlisle says.

"Get your hair down," Edward instructs Bella.

"Like that'll help, I can smell her from across the field," Rosalie says, everyone stands in a line next to each other as three vampires walk out from the mist, they walk onto the field and stop in front of the Cullen's.

"I believe this is yours." The dark-skinned vampire says, he held up a ball and tosses it towards Carlisle, Carlisle catches it.

"Thank you," Carlisle says.

"I am Laurent, and this is Victoria and James." Laurent introduces them.

"I'm Carlisle and this is my family," Carlisle says.

"Hello," Laurent says.

"I'm afraid your hunting activities have caused something of a mess for us," Carlisle says.

"Our apologies, we didn't realize the territory had been claimed," Laurent says.

"Yes, well, we maintain a permanent residence nearby," Carlisle says.

"Really?" Laurent says, he glances at James. "Well, we won't be a problem anymore, we were just passing through."

"The human's were tracking us, but we lead them east, you should be safe," Victoria says.

"Excellent" Carlisle says, although it was not excellent, it was better to pretend.

"So, could you use three more players?" Laurent asks, everyone looks at Carlisle. "Come on, Just one game?"

"Sure, why not? A few of us were just leaving, you could take their place." Carlisle says. "We'll bat first." Carlisle tosses the ball towards Laurent but instead, Victoria caught it.

"I'm the one with the wicked curveball," Victoria says with a side smirk.

"Well, I think we can handle that," Jasper says, he and Emmett stood beside each other smirking.

"We shall see," Victoria says, everyone begins walking away from Edward and Bella just as a light breeze blows by, James sniffs the air.

"You brought a snack," James says, he turns back to face Edward and Bella, everyone surrounds Bella and AJ tries to place James in a trance, but he knew to avoid her gaze.

"A human," Laurent states, everyone snarls while Bella trembled with fear.

"The girl is with us, I think it's best if you leave," Carlisle says.

"I can see the game is over, we'll go now," Laurent says backing up, he knew that they were outnumbered, Victoria slowly follows him but James stood his ground. "James." James backs up before turning around and wrapping his arm around Victoria, the three vampires leave the field.

"Get Bella out of here, Go." Carlisle orders, Edward leads Bella back to the jeep while everyone else gathered all the things.

"I tried to place him a trance, but he knew to avoid my eyes," AJ says, Carlisle turns to place a hand on her shoulder.

"It's fine, we'll get him," Carlisle says. "Follow Edward and Bella, make sure James doesn't get to them before we get him." AJ nods her head.

"All right," AJ says, she was about to take off when she was suddenly pulled into a kiss.

"Be careful," Carlisle says when they broke away from the kiss.

"Always am," AJ says, she speeds towards the direction the jeep went quickly catching up to them, she stays hidden in the wooded area as they arrive at Bella's home, Bella storms into the home screaming at Edward before slamming the door shut, Edward went to her room to help her pack as Bella ranted to her father.

AJ looks around before seeing James in a tree near the house listening to everything that was being said, she knew she could take him and was about to attack when Bella exits the house leaving Charlie standing by the door looking heartbroken, Bella climbs into the truck and drives away, AJ looks back to the tree and saw James had disappeared.

"Dammit," AJ mumbles, she speeds down the road following Bella's truck, minutes later Edward climbed into the truck and started driving, Emmett jumps onto the back of the truck probably scaring Bella.

"AJ!" Emmett yells.

"See you at home," AJ yells, she speeds into the woods returning home, she speeds into the house and sees Laurent speaking with Carlisle, a snarl leaves her mouth but Carlisle quickly stops her.

"He came to warn us, it's all right," Carlisle says, AJ nods her head before turning her gaze away from Laurent.

"I saw him, he was at the Swan residence," AJ says. "I was about to attack when Bella left the house, when I looked back he was gone."

"It's all right," Carlisle says, Bella and Edward walk into the house and spots Laurent, Edward hisses at him. "Wait, he came to warn us about James."

"This isn't my fight, and I've grown tired of his games," Laurent says. "But he's got unparalleled senses, absolutely lethal, I've never seen anything like him in my 300 years." He warns. "And the woman, Victoria, don't underestimate her." He walks past Edward and Bella, leaving the house.

"Come," Carlisle says, they walk into the garage with everyone.

"I've fought our kind before, they're not easy to kill." Jasper states.

"But not impossible," Emmett says, he opens a cabinet while Jasper opens another one.

"We'll tear them apart and burn the pieces," Jasper says.

"I don't relish the thought of killing another creature, even a sadistic one like James," Carlisle says.

"AJ, you have to compel him to stop, or at least stay in place long enough for us to kill him," Edward says.

"That is not going to be easy, he avoided my gaze on the field," AJ says.

"You have got to try!" Edward says, AJ takes a step closer to him.

"Darling," Carlisle says placing his hands on her shoulders.

"John has got to conjure up an illusion to confuse him, and then I can try to do the rest, but as I said, It won't be easy," AJ says.

"We can all help," Edward says.

"We'll see how things play out," AJ says, Rosalie climbs onto the countertop in the garage.

"What if he kills one of us first?" Rosalie asks.

"I'm going to run Bella south, can you lead the tracker away?" Edward asks.

"No, Edward, James knows you would never leave Bella, he'll follow you," Carlisle says.

"I'll go with Bella," Alice says. "Jasper and I will drive her south, I'll keep her safe, Edward."

"Can you keep your thoughts to yourself?" Edward asks.

"Yes," Alice says, she takes Bella's hand and leads her towards one of the cars.

"Rosalie, Esme could you put these on so the tracker will pick up Bella's scent?" Edward asks, he throws a jacket towards Esme and Rosalie.

"Why? What is she to me?" Rosalie asks, almost challenging him, Carlisle looks at Rosalie.

"Rosalie, Bella's with Edward now, she's part of the family now, and we protect our family," Carlisle says, he picks up the jacket and holds it out for her to take, she slowly takes it and walks towards the Jeep with Emmett behind her.

"AJ, John can you go to Charlie's house and keep an eye out for Victoria?" Edward asks, AJ nods her head as the garage door opens, Carlisle walks up to AJ.

"Be careful, and call if you need help," Carlisle says, AJ nods her head.

"You be careful as well, and call if you need us," AJ says, they share a kiss before Carlisle climbed into one of the cars with Esme, AJ and John speed out of the garage with all the cars following behind them until they reached the main road.

The One Thing Taglist:

@mikariell95​ //

#twilight imagines #twilight imagine #twilight fan fiction #twilight fanfic #imagine #imagines #carlisle cullen imagine #carlisle cullen imagines #fanfiction #fan fiction #fan fic #fanfic

[swapdancepapyrus]

WOO UPDATE! and story thus far....

If you have a hard time reading about problematic workplaces, arrogance and ignorance all the above and more similar-- Dont read, but it might help you get an understanding as to why i need massive amounts of help and support financially.

Ko-fi: Here~

So i work at a place similar to a small-time grocery store. but popular. catch my Not-gonna-say-where vibe. And lemme say, the prospects weren't too bad. this was while i was living in a semi-expensive apartment area with someone that seemingly prefered to make me use all my money for rent instead of saving said money. So things were looking pretty glum as far as me getting things for myself, like transportation, food, etc. 

My workplace was able to hire me, but on the basis that they begged me to be in Deli. and as some people would know, the Deli is the worst to second-worst area in a grocery to work at. It had the same premise as a Mcdonalds. High turnovers, safety issues through the roof, people who dont really care about themselves-- you get the idea. 

So i go into deli, instead of Floral as intended, cause “more money and hours to get said money” and at the time i lived fairly close, i would walk back and forth from work and things seemed to be ok. I didnt feel too bad for my job at the time, and i was making ends meet on the outside. Or at least thats what I thought. However, that basically changed when I found out what my roommate was doing to me, and thus moving to a new area with several new friends of mine. 

I moved MUCH further away from my workplace and thus started to learn the bus routes. That was fine and all, ive learned the busses before in my old city. So that wasn't a problem. But as people know, busses can only do so much. Which can leave someone potentially late for work just cause thats how busses work sometimes--and theres nothing you can do about it. Especially Sunday. Which i will elaborate on later. 

 How bout literally now-- Remember December 23, 2018? The night i got sexually abused? That was a SUNDAY. Guess what late night transportation was later and somehow missed on that day? YEP. I’ve never rode a bus after 8 ever again after that btw. I hate sundays. I hate needing to ride a bus on sunday period. Aight? Im paranoid and I scream when a male (or similar) sits next to me on the bus. No. just. No. 

(The event consisted of me getting a call card from police who escorted me home. My virginity is not lost, but my functionality of my right arm was and still is, severely damaged. this is the key problem to all my problems from then on.)

So its after that event right? My attendance was fine until then. the weeks following to now, ive taken days off. Ive taken time to just rest my arm. My shoulder cannot handle the pressure of cutting meat with the slicers for more than a few times. With me being extremely slow doing so. 

Lets just tryyyy to keep this short and say they were not pleased with my lack of performance.... 

Thus i had to keep explaining to my superiors that my arm hurts, i cannot be running the slicers, etc. But of course since the deli is shorthanded-- i was basically forcing myself to slice meat cause lord knows no one wants to slice meat. (previously my fave part of the job before accident) And due to the ‘shorthandedness’, me trying to ask for days off was a cardinal sin. Im a person whose stamina isnt even long enough to last a whole day at work. So me having to exhaust myself at my job, could only mean that when i got back home it was a hit-or-miss if my arm was going to even move the next day. 

This is where the problems arise. Im a good worker, i do my job--and do it well. But when im constantly injured---and the job im in does NOT help me fix that injury. The only attempts i make towards them at least caring about my injury instead of the hours i worked were meetings that they made me sound like a petty and selfish autistic gremlin. Even though the managers in charge know LITERALLY EVERYTHING about my end of the story, they see me more,

BUT BUSINESS! BUT MONEY! BUT NUMBERS!  Nothing about giving a care about injured workers. About people who have special needs. Nothing. No resources given.  

Which makes me mad. Sure i cant go to work often cause of my distance from home and work. But, thats where I requested to transfer to avoid that problem. Didn't go through cause my attendance was nasty due to my injury.

So what do I do? I cant fix the attendance problem in the slightest if my workplace isnt closer to home. I cant fix my injury if I do not have time to even relax and do to a doctor and spend a day in the offices to get SOMETHING done about it. 

Neither happened. So im stuck trying to at least get into Floral as intended so i can at least do my job. Nothing over the shoulders. Im stuck working the slicers, hurting my arm even more. Even with a shoulder brace I can only do so much.

Present day, Im basically going to go to a meeting that may or may not, leave me jobless. Who knows, but with the above statement-- this is the only job i actually didn't mind ditching for the sake of my personal health. 

I have several jobs in the running right now that are potential takers. Thankfully there are more prospects here than elsewhere at the moment. 

But until i get that job landing, i need help being stable enough to last a month which is at best 300$ so i can at least pay for my rent without issue. 

If you can, just send me some good ol’ Honeybears.  

Please and thank you for your time!

#swapdancesupport #mun speaks #Please try to at least understand me. #I am in a lot of pain-but i dont want to lose you guys or my dreams #mun update

[changarroo]

Incheon University // part 1

*note the pictures are not ours, the edit is*

Moving to University is scary, let alone being five hours away from the ones you love. But it was time for venture off into the. real world and continue your study. But tutoring the Deans playboy son how will that turn out? Is everything going to be all sunshine and rainbows? Or will your world come tumbling down?

What a Warm Welcome... // masterlist

word count: 4.7k

Genre: Fluff, Angst // College AU Series

Pairing: Jisung x Reader

Welcome to Incheon Private University, where boys and girls fight to have the top spot in the most well known private elite school. Though for you it was a bit different. You did not come from a wealthy family which put you in a position to fight for your way into Incheon High School. You took extreme classes and test, along with studying hard just so you can get it. You waited at the dinner table with your mother and sister waiting for the mail to be delivered. Exactly two minutes from the last time you checked your phone the door rang. Your head shot up and you stumbled your way to the door. You quickly opened it, which of course scared the mailman as he looked at you with such fear and horror in his eyes. He hands you the envelope and you thank him. You make your way (DOWNTOWN WALKING FAST jkjk) back to the table with shaking hands. Your mom rubs your back as you unclasped the silver clips and pull the pristine white paper out. 

You looked at your mom and give a half smile. Your mom has encouraged you throughout all of your grade school years, leading up to this point. Your father has walked out on the three of you after your sister y/s/n was born, and of course, that was a huge finical change for you. Your mom worked three two for jobs just to be able to pay for all the fees and the tests that needed to be taken for Incheon Private University. You pull the letter out more “You know if I don’t get in I just want to thank you for everything you have done for me mom” You tear up, you would have never believed what the letter said if your mom did not scream that you got a full ride scholarship to Incheon. You drop the letter and scream with your mom and sister holding them tightly. “Thank you Thank you Thank you”

You currently lived in Busan which means Incheon is three hours and nine minutes away. You were very worried about leaving your mom and sister

“As soon as I get a job mom I will help you out,” You say as you back your last boxes and bags

Your mom smiles “Babygirl I am so proud of you. The only thing you can do is get good passing grades and meet a man who will treat you like his world” She kisses your forehead

“I love you mom” Your voice cracked as the tears begin to spill. Your little sister comes in and hands you her pink stuffed elephant “Here take this! He will protect you!” She says happily and gives you a hug as you whisper in her ear “No matter what happens you take care of mom okay. I’m counting on you”

She does her little soldier pose “Yes ma’am”

“You ready to go Y/N” You take one last look at your room since you won’t see it in four years and you nod “Yeah I’m ready” Once everything is loaded into the car, you start your journey to Incheon, for a new life and a brand new perspective

A few short hours you pull up to the large glass building filled campus that is surrounded by large fountains, and blossoming trees. You step out and are greeted by the headmaster. You bow to show your respect, not expecting him to come

“H-Hello sir, thank you so much for this opportunity. I promise I will keep my academics my top priority while I am here.

“Please the honor is mine to have such an extraordinary student attend my university” He turns to your mother “And as expected you are the mother, I assume?” Your mother gleams proudly and shakes his hand

“That I am sir”

He speaks once again “Well follow me please, there is much paperwork to be signed. Y/N my men will take your backs to your room and you will follow”

You nod and follow the men to the large dorm rooms. Each dorm had a nicely sized kitchen, in which an island was placed in the middle, two separate bedrooms, the living and dining room, and of course the bathroom. When your bags were finally placed in your new living space for the next four years, a head pops out from behind the wall. You turned around not noticing the female until a scream appears and your soul nearly leaves your body as you scream back at the female.

Once the screaming is over you both laugh and she introduces herself “Hey I’m Jeongyeon. I am a second-year student so I can help you at all times” She starts to giggle more and you look at her like she is crazy “You are all everyone at this campus is talking about. You beat Kim Woojin, which is like the smartest kid ever” You looked shocked

You knew your scores were high but not the high. Woojin and yourself were in competition since you could remember. Although he got more shine due to his status. Woojin’s family owned one of the most well-known car companies in the world today. He has practically had a golden spoon in his mouth since birth. Although you admit you used to have the biggest crush on him towards the end of middle school and little into high school. The two of you talk for the rest of the time before your mom comes up and knocks on the door. You let her and your sister in and show them around before you knew it they had to leave and your heart sank. It did not hit you until you realized that you wouldn’t be woken up by your little sister, or singing in the kitchen with your mom, but you also knew that she wanted this for you. You walk them back to the car and hug them one last time “I love you” You say to the both of them as they say it back and enter the car, before driving away.

As you head back to the dorm you tie your up in a high ponytail you hear a familiar voice call your name

“Y/N” You slowly turn around to reveal a much more handsome, much taller, Kim Woojin. Your cheeks instantly heat up, thank goodness it was dark

“Hey Woojin” You play it off like you totally did not kill his testing scores and that your heart was beating fast

He scoffs “Just because we were friends does not make us friends”

You smirk “Same old cranky Woojin I see” He cracks a smile and hugs you

“Want to grab coffee with me?” He asks

You nod and shiver a little forgetting your jacket

Woojin instantly takes his off and hands it to you “Still a gentleman I see”

He rolls his eyes “You know that gentleman act works well with the ladies”

You groan and push his hand in which was holding the jacket away

“I’m only kidding Y/N” He places the jacket around your shoulder as you begin to walk.

You look up at Woojin “How’s life been treating you, Woo?” He looks down

“Life is good. I couldn’t ask for more? What about you, you know since the whole incident” You smile “Everything is better, don’t worry I promise”

Woojin raises an eyebrow but nods “This conversation isn’t over”

You roll you're as at him as he opens the door for you.

You follow Woojin to the line and look at the menu

“I think I want peppermint hot chocolate” You excitedly but Woojin begins to laugh at you

“You are such a child” You scoff “There is nothing wrong with liking hot chocolate”

Woojin turns his focus to the cashier who was blushing at the sight of Wojin and you smile, looking at him to see if he notices but he seemed to not care. He ordered and paid for the items before you had a chance to. He thanked the girl and took the cup and walked away. You saw the disappointment in the girl's eyes and you smiled “Don’t be discouraged just keep trying”

She looked and smiled “Thank you. I’m Na Naeun by the way” She shakes your hand

“Nice to meet you, I’m Y/N. I should get going bye” You walked away towards Woojin

“You know you could have paid her attention a bit more, she was practically dying to speak to you but she was scared” You took a seat looking at him

“I don’t have time to interest myself with females,” He said sternly

“Stop sounding like your father” You drink your hot chocolate and look out the window

He kicks your leg softly under the table “On the fourteenth, my friend is having a big party at his house for this birthday you should come”

You look at him “Woojin how long have you known me?”

He thinks “Maybe fifteen to sixteen years, why?”

“Has there ever been a time where you’ve seen me go to a party?” He hesitates to answer

“U-Uh no”

You begin to speak again “So what in the entire world would make you think I would go to a damn party now!?”

“You need to step out of your shell Y/N”

You shake your head “I strongly disagree. I am perfectly fine in my shell. Leave me be”

He rolls his eyes”Whatever”

After getting coffee you guys bid your goodbyes and you head back to your dorm room. The following morning you are called into the head dean office to discuss your schedule

“I see you are taking IB Calculus. My son is also taking that class but he is not doing too well, so I was wondering if you could tutor him and I will pay you weekly” He officers

You instantly shut down the payment “Sir I can easily do it without charge”

“Nonsense I will pay you 300 dollars a week to tutor my son” He practically begs and of course you could not say no. After the meeting, you head to the enormous classroom that was filled with chatter and many unfamiliar faces. You quickly find an open seat towards the middle. You set everything down and now to those who spoke to you. A few minutes later after getting ready girls began to giggle and get rowdy as some Cheeto looking boy enters the classroom. Your eyes couldn’t help but follow the vibrant hair as he took a seat behind you, showing interest in you. You quickly turned around with your cheeks tonite with blush

“I’ve never seen you before” He tugs at your hair as you pull your head forward taking your hair back “And you will continue to not see me” You scoot your chair in more and scoff

What a little prick

The professor entered the classroom and everyone greets him

“Today class we are very honored to have the highest scoring of both male and females in our class today”

You instantly look down as people began to whisper

“Will you please stand up?” He asks looking at you. You were very hesitant but finally stood up and many people clapped, while others just scoffed. After that embarrassment, the day went on pretty smooth and school ended. You hurried and rushed back to the door to get the major assignments you had to get done. Jeongyeon came home with ramen and your guys at and talked today

“Hey, there was this weird guy with orange. Who is he?” You ask and Jeongyeon spits her food out

“You don’t know who he is?” She asked

“Why should I. He’s just a person with a strange personality. He almost looks like a squirrel”

She laughs “That squirrel is the Dean's son”

You instantly dropped your chopstick “That orange bucket is his son. I have to tutor that idiot. Literally, pray for me”

That following weekend you were asked to attend the Dean’s residence to tutor the Cheeto. You packed all of your books into your bag and took an Uber to his house. You were confused as you saw girls with tight dresses leave the premises. You frowned to yourself and entered the house. You were not dressed up, only in a simple blue skirt with your white tee shirt and a black jean jacket. Your hair was up in a high ponytail, nothing compared to the females running around. “Hello miss,” a butler said to you “how can we be a service to you today?”. “Um hi, I’m supposed to be tutoring the Dean’s son today. Where would the session be located?” you asked shifting your backpack a bit. “Ah yes the tutor, Mr. Han would be located in his room at the moment. Upstairs and it’s the third door on the left” he pointed to the proper directions and soon you were on your way. Once you were at the proper location you lifted your hand to knock on the door. To your surprise, the door opened before you revealing a girl in front of you leaving the room. “What did I get myself into,” you asked yourself looking at the girl and then looking forward into the room.

Once you entered the room you see the orange head placing his shirt back on and you walked back out knocking hard on the door

“Come in” was the response on the other side

You pushed open the door, happy to see him dressed as you set the books down

“I’m aware your father told you about tutoring session today” you crossed your arms eyeing him

“I heard I just don’t care” He turned and looked at you

You begin to mumble “What a stupid little-”

“A little what I dare you to finish the sentence kitten” He walked closer to you and lifted your chin with his finger, as his other traced the thigh, looking you up and down

“You are such a pig” You push and slap him as you grab your belongings walking out. As you headed out you ran into the Woojin

“I didn’t expect to see you here” He smiles happily

“You weren’t supposed too” You continued walking out of the house and walking back to the dorm. After about twenty minutes of walking, you finally arrived at the dorm.

You threw your books down and kicked your shoes off, flopping on the bed

“Why are boys so stupid” You laugh at his reaction that played in your head when you slapped him

The weekend passed slowly and you attended the Deans office

“Sir I want to-”

He stops you “I’m aware of the events my son pulled this weekend” There was a knock on the door and your attention looked towards it. An orange head popped through

“Have a seat Jisung” He sighs as he watched his son

You cross your legs in your white shirt, shaking your black doc martens

“You owe Ms.Y/N an apology for you disrespectful actions. He smirked and turned to you

“I’m sorry that an innocent little girl-”

His father slams his fist “Get your act together Jisung. You won’t graduate if you keep it up. I don’t care if you are my son or not”

Jisung instantly shut up “I apologize for Y/N for my actions”

You just looked at him and noticed that he needs discipline. He doesn’t do well with being yelled at or losing something important to him

“It’s fine” You stand up and grab your bag

“If you will excuse me I need to meet with someone”

You bowed and gave Jisung one last look before walking out

Walking out you notice that you were getting a phone call from your house phone.

“Hello?” you answer not knowing who was calling you.

“Y/N! How college? I missed you so much!” the voice of your sister on the other line may be a smile grew on your face.

Being away from home suck but both her and your mother were proud of what you were doing.

“College is hard but I’m pushing, missing you and mom every day. How is she?”.

“She doing good, you know working hard for the two of us, she still brags about you getting into Incheon, oh I got an A on my lecture paper and I’m in the top five percent of my school.”.

“See I know you could do you” you walked up to a tree I the school field and slowly fell and sat on the ground.

Jisung walked out of the building and show you laughing at your phone call.

He notices the way you how you fall a little bit when you laugh and how your hair falls into your eyes.

He wanted to walk over to you and give a true apology, but seeing you laugh made him feel uncomfortable like you were talking to a boyfriend of some sorts. He didn’t understand why he was so drawn to you now.

Waking up to a new day you weren’t excited for your morning class knowing that the “wonderful” Jisung would be sitting in front of you. But there was no reason to let one person bother you so much.

So you put on your favorite oversized hoodie, that feel over your knees and your Adidas superstars and you were on your way.

You arrived at your class about ten minutes early and took a seat in your usual spot and grabbed your phone. You started to text your younger sister, telling her to enjoy her day, as send began to send memes. You smile and laugh quietly to yourself when you see a black shadow block part of the light. You slowly look up and see Jisung.

“What exactly are you doing here” You look up unamused

“I want to apologize for my behavior the following day” He took a seat and looked at you, examining your face. You felt uncomfortable “Yeah I already said it was fine”.

He pouts softly “Are you sure” He teased sighting as he wanted your attention.

“Yes now go away”.

He grabbed all of his stuff and hopped over the row of chairs in front of you and took a seat in the next to you.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m sitting down. Jeez Y/N and I thought you were smart.”

“I am smart? Wait you think I’m smart? Like really smart or are you just saying that to get to me?”.

“One never exposes there secrets Y/N”.

You roll your eyes at him as the teacher walks in, throughout the lecture you keep trying to slide your paper that had little notes

“Are you still going to tutor me still?”

You look at him and write

“Can you focus so you don’t fail as your father stated”

He frowns at the coldness

Once class ends you quickly pack your items and fly down the small number of stairs

Jisung trailed behind you

“W-Wait slow down” He whines and started to slow down as he sees Woojin appear. You hug him tightly and he wrapped his arms around your shoulder

“Oh hey, Jisung!” He called the younger over

“Y/N this is-”

You cut him off “Han Jisung. I’m aware”

You look at Woojin “I’m hungry” You poke your lower lip out

“Don’t even try that with me” He rolls his eyes

“Jisung want to join us for lunch?” Woojin offers and you punched his side

“No, I’m sure he needs to study CONSIDERING HE IS FAIL-”

“I’d love to join” He smirks and looks at the two

“I’ll pay it will be my treat”

The car ride there was silent and filled with an angry you, smiling on the outside but planning a route of exit in case something happens.

Woojin pulls into a small café and you quickly hop out of the car “that was the most painful ride of my life” Jisung got out after you and waited with you while Woojin parked the car.

“Umm do you want to go inside and get a table or something?” Jisung asked pointing to the door behind you guys.

“Sure it’s kinda cold out here” you bundled yourself in your jacket to keep warm and walked up towards the door.

Once inside the two of you found your way to a table near the huge window that overlooks the city.

“So how do you know Woojin” Jisung randomly said looking at the menu.

“Oh, he and I are childhood friends, our mothers are friends so I would spend time at his house whenever my mom was at work”.

“What about your dad? Couldn’t he also watch you?”.

“He wasn’t really around much” you lowered your head.

“Oh, I…”

“Its okay, you didn’t know really I’m fine, I’m quite grateful for my mother and all the help from Woojin’s family. They shaped me into who I am today”.

“Hey, guys what did I miss?” Woojin asked pullin’ up a chair and taken a sit between the two of you.

“Nothing really,” you answer “are you gives ready to order?” you looked behind at the counter trying to get the attention of a worker.

“Yeah, I’m I need food in my stomach ASAP” Woojin chuckled putting his hands on his stomach.

For the rest of the night, Jisung couldn’t take his eyes off of you. He didn’t understand why he found himself somewhat drawn to you. Knowing you and how you acted there was no way that you would fall for his classic player moves, but that was okay. You were different from every other girl he been around. He felt like he can be himself around you.

“Okay guys I think it's getting late we should get going” you looked at your phone and notice the time.

“Yeah, Jisung looks like he going pass out any minute,” Woojin said pushing Jisung out of his daydream.

“Nah if anything he would sleep in class tomorrow”.

“I would so not be sleeping in class tomorrow Y/N, have a little faith in me.” he held the car door open the car door for you.

“Eh, I’ll see about that tomorrow,” as you smile patted his hand and then slipped into the car.

The ride back the dorms were quiet as everyone was sorta sleeping.

You could feel your eyes slowly getting heavy as you looked outside of the car window. You then started to wonder how you got so lucky to be here in the city, experiencing life as it was. Soon you were officially out as you leaned your head on the window.

Waking up the next morning wasn’t fun as you remember your class in the morning, but you also had no memory of getting back in your room.

As soon as you were about to walk out for your first class you notice a note on your desk.

“Hey Y/N, Jisung and I notice that you fell asleep on the ride home, so we helped you up to your dorm which is oddly clean for a college student. Anyways text me when you wake up”

Woojin

Quickly you pulled out your phone really quick and texted Woojin thanking him for bring you up to your dorm and then you were out to class.

“Hmm coffee sound really good right now,” you said to yourself as you passed the coffee cart near your building.

“Hey can I get you anything?” the coffee art boy asked.

“Yes, morning can I just get a small coffee with a bit of milk in it,”.

“Sure anything else?”

“Make that two small coffees and make a blueberry muffin,” a familiar voice said from behind you.

“Wow looks like you’re not going to be falling asleep in class today,” you said to Jisung who was now standing next to you.

“How did you sleep last night Y/N?” he asked paying the coffee cart guy.

“Really well surprisingly, and you no you don’t have to pay for my coffee, I could have gotten it myself,” you grabbed your cup of coffee and then proceeded to take a sip.

“I know I just wanted to do something nice I guess”.

“Come on we're going to be late for class”.

Throughout the class, you had a hard time focusing on the topic which was a first for you. You started to notice the little things that Jisung did that you never noticed before. This can’t be the same guy you ran into when you walked into him half dressed. What is heaven's name is going on?

“So I'm guessing you’re coming over later to tutor me right,” Jisung asked setting his laptop back into his bag.

“Oh yeah right, I should be, what time is good? I don’t want to walk in on whatever I walked into like last time”.

“Yeah,” Jisung lowered his hand and rubbed the back of his neck “I’m sorry about that by the way, I was mad at my father and took it out by doing that”.

“By doing girls?”.

“Just are you coming today? Yes or no?”.

“Yeah I should be there after my 14:00 class”.

“Okay cool, I’ll see you there then”.

“Bye Jisung”.

Walking up to Jisung house you didn't know what to expect since last time wasn’t the best meeting.

You lifted your hand towards the door and gave a simple knock or two.

“Ah, Miss. Y/N, Mr. Jisung has been expecting you” the butler said as he opened the door “he is in his room, I expect you to know where it is located”.

“I do, I’ll find my way up”.

Walking up the staircase you were wondering if Jisung was going to pull the same stunt like last time. He is mature he should learn by now,,, right?

“Y/N your here,” Jisung opened the door with a smile on his face.

“Yeah, is it only you or is there someone hiding in your closet,” you asked holding onto your books tightly.

“It’s just me I promise, where do you want to study?”

“In here is fine,” you walked towards his bed and set your bag down following by sitting down on the bed.

“I never really got a good view of your room last time I came, it’s not what I expected”.

“I don’t know whether I should take that as a compliment or not,” Jisung said with a confused looked in his face.

“It’s good, I show who you are, I like it. Now let's start with math”.

A few hours later the two of you were surrounded by multiple textbooks, an empty bottle of waters, and paperwork everywhere.

You were nearly about to pass out when you heard a book drop in front of you.

“I’m up, I’m awake” you lifted your head from the table.

“Come on,” Jisung said standing up with his hand out “I’ll walk you home”.

Walking out of his house you notice that it was already dark. Why was Jisung being so nice you thought to yourself. I mean he was a real ass to you the first day of classes and also when you came by the first day. What change? “Hey Jisung, why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?”.

“Honestly there something about you I just can’t shake off, like your different from all the over girls that I been with”.

“Like dated or…”.

“I never really dated anyone before, I never thought that dating was for me”.

“Oh”

“Why?”

“No reason I’m just wondering”

“Hey  Y/N,” Jisung stopped at the steps of your dorm. You turned around to face him. He was stretching the back of his neck as if he was scared. “There this special event coming up and only people who are invited can come. I was wondering if you wanted to go you know to go with me”.

“When, where and what time?”

“Now Ace I can’t tell you, then everyone around us will here. I’ll pick you up here on Friday at 17:00.”

“Okay okay, fine surprise me. I’ll see you on Friday”.

“Friday”.

#stray kids #staydata #kpopinc #jyp stray kids #stray kids au #jyp entertainment #straykids #sk writersnet #district4419 #skzwriters #stray kids han #stray kids han jisung #skz #skz han jisung #skz han #stray kids writing #kpop au #kpop writing #stray kids series

[twatd]

6,000 Years of Murder – Part Six: Things Fall Apart

Tim: The Wicked + The Divine #36 finally gave us a definitive list of every damn Recurrence that has occurred since Ananke first started exploding heads, so we thought we’d take a walk through the annals of history and provide some context for what was happening at the time. Welcome to 6,000 Years of Murder.

Our sixth octet of Recurrences bridges the gap between BC and AD, and sees two great powers rise, in the form of the Han Dynasty and the Roman Republic, only for them to crumble into bloodshed and chaos. Feels like an appropriate arc for WicDiv, no?

188BC – Eastern China When we last left China, the Zhou dynasty was starting to crumble back into a series of smaller territories, but since then, the Qin imperial dynasty has reunited the country. Now, we’ve begun the Han dynasty, considered a golden age in Chinese history, with China’s majority ethnic group still calling themselves the ‘Han Chinese’ and modern Chinese script often referred to as ‘Han characters’. 188BC sees Emperor Hui of Han die aged just 22 (maybe he was in the Pantheon?) and his domineering mother Empress Dowager Lü take the throne, having already been the power behind it.

Also occurring since we last checked in on China? The birth, life and death of Confucius, one of China’s most influential philosophers. His teaching, which emphasised personal and state morality, justice, sincerity and social harmony, will form one of the central schools of thought for the rest of China’s history. It emerged during a period called the Hundred Schools of Thought, a time of great cultural and intellectual expansion that occurred during the Warring States era. Alongside Confucianism, important Chinese philosophies like Taoism and Legalism were also developed, and their interplay will shape China for centuries to come.

96BC – Etruria The Roman Republic has been chugging along for around 300 years at this point, so we should probably pay some attention to it. As the name suggests, Rome is still a republic at this point, controlled by a Senate and giving at least the tip of a hat towards the notion of democracy popularised by the Greeks. However, little Julius Caesar, currently four years old, will soon put an end to that and transform the already successful republic into an Empire that will conquer much of Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

It’s worth noting that this Recurrence doesn’t take us to Rome itself but Etruria, the cradle of an earlier culture in Northern Italy that was assimilated into the Roman Republic around 300 years earlier. I couldn’t nail down a concrete reason for this choice, but my current working theory is that, as one of the first cultures absorbed into Rome, Etruria represents the way that the Empire will go on to suck in and process so many of the surrounding civilisations.

4BC – Judea When a series is focused on humans ascending to godhood throughout history, cultivating great followings and bringing about change before dying young, it makes sense that we ended up in Judea in time for Jesus’ birth (yes, contrary to what you’d think, Jesus was born between 6-4BC, to allow Herod to be King upon his birth). As you can imagine during this period, despite travelling almost 1,500 miles from our last Recurrence, we haven’t outpaced the Romans, who annexed Judea in 63BC, shortly before transforming from a republic into an empire.

Herod was designated “King of the Jews” shortly after the Roman conquest, gaining military control in 37BC. He dies just as we visit, in 4BC, and will split Judea up amongst his sons, who are largely inept and rejected by the people in favour of more direct Roman rule. Even then, Jews living in the province still maintained some form of independence, able to judge offenders by their own laws. This independence was also the root of several rebellions that brewed in the area over the next 150 years, eventually resulting in the Romans renaming large areas to try to erase the historical ties Jewish people had to the region. That didn’t really go over very well.

88AD – Teotihuacan We’ve crossed over into Anno Domini - the numbers start going up from here! To celebrate, let’s take a trip to the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas and the sixth largest city in the world: Teotihuacan. Located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, and just 25 miles from modern-day Mexico City, this metropolis boasted advanced building techniques including multi-storey residential blocks. Like other Mesoamerican sites, the urban planning was incredibly precise, oriented to the progression of the sun and stars, making the entire city a living calendar.

Quite who constructed Teotihuacan is unknown. Archaeological evidence suggests it was a multi-ethnic city, with distinct quarters occupied by the Otomi, Zapotec, Mixtec, Maya and Nahua peoples. Originally, it was presumed that the Toltecs were behind initial construction, based on colonial-era texts that quote Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs. However, the Nahuatl word “toltec” means “craftsman of the highest level”, and so might not refer specifically to the Toltec civilisation. It’s now generally assumed that settlement began around 300BC by the Totanac people, with the city reaching its zenith around 450AD.

181AD – South East Asia So far, our dalliances in Asia have mostly been centred on modern-day India and China, but that leaves large areas unaccounted for. Merchants throughout the region are busy establishing the Silk Road to China, but trade is also occurring via sea, taking you close to the Mekong Delta in present-day Vietnam. Right now, that area is part of the Funan network of states. Like Teotihuacan, modern understanding of Funan and the people that founded it is heavily debated. A lot of evidence, including the name we give it, comes from a single report by two Chinese diplomats, and given that China was often trying to conquer this part of the world, should be taken with a pinch of salt.

There’s a boss-ass folktale surrounding the region’s founding which involves a genie, a magic bow and a snake princess, but we can probably (unfortunately) also file that under “dubious”. What we do know is that Roman, Chinese and Indian goods have all been excavated in the area, suggesting a truly powerful trading centre. The Mekong Delta was perfect for both rice cultivation and fishing, further helping the area’s economy, and tactical conquests and colonies meant that at points, the kingdom controlled the entire trade route from Malaysia to central Vietnam.

271AD – Eastern China The Han period in China may have had a massive impact that continues to today, but it had to end at some point, that point being around 220, not long after the awesome Battle of Red Cliffs (see the great John Woo film starring Tony Leung for more details). Prior to this, there was already considerable infighting between various kingdoms and warlords as the Han dynasty weakened, and with it dissolved, we reach the Three Kingdoms period - a slight misnomer given that each of the states (Wei, Shu and Wu) had an emperor claiming the right to rule over all of China. By 271, the Shu have already conquered by the Wei, who shortly afterwards are usurped by the Jin dynasty, and in 280, the Jin will conquer the Wu, reuniting China.

While the Three Kingdoms period may only less than 100 years, from the Han Dynasty weakening to the Jin emerging triumphant, this period is the most bloodthirsty in the country’s history. As much as 60 per cent of the population may have been killed due to high conscription levels, brutal massacres and widespread famine. Despite this, the period also saw considerable advances in technology, include improvements on the repeating crossbow, mechanical puppet theatres and non-magnetic compasses that used differential gears. Still, Ananke’s visit seems remarkably tranquil for such a period of upheaval.

364AD – Eastern Europe The Roman Empire is still doing its thing, but change is on the horizon. Constantine has ended the persecution of Christians after converting, and has shifted the Roman capital to New Rome AKA Constantinople to be closer to his rivals the Sassanid Empire. Meanwhile, out in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, a number of nomadic warrior tribes have formed a loose confederation called the Huns. While their best known leader Attila won’t be born for another 40 years, they are doing their best to disrupt things for both the Sassanids and the Romans, attacking settlements across Eastern Europe.

The Huns attacks didn’t come out of nowhere - it’s likely that the El Niño Southern Oscillation caused a megadrought in Inner Asia, causing them to migrate to the edges of their own lands. Whatever caused their sudden attacks, they terrified the Romans, who associated them with the Antichrist and Gog and Magog (whom Alexander the Great had captured behind mountains, according to legend). Those superstitions probably weren’t helped by a massive earthquake that hit the Eastern Mediterranean the year after our visit, destroying parts of Crete, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Sicily and Cyprus.

454AD – Germania Our first Recurrence that we’ve seen before, in the 455 Special. Persephone’s death takes place the year before the Roman Lucifer went all “meat-harpy”, and her placement in Germania suggests she may have been part of the Vandals, who we see invading Rome in the Special, rather than a Roman citizen like Lucifer and Bacchus. By this point, the Roman Empire has split in two following the death of Theodosius I, with the Eastern part to remain going as the Byzantine Empire, and the Western part (where we are) soon to fall.

Rome, as we find it, is beset on all sides. In the East, our old friends the Huns are attacking, Attila having just died and divided the Empire among his sons. The Visigoths are sometimes allies and sometimes enemies, depending on what they can get away with. Anglo-Saxons are settling Britain, and in Germania, tribes including the Suebi, the Alans and the Vandals have been ransacking towns and establishing their own kingdoms. The Vandals, led by Genseric (who also appears in the Special) establish a kingdom that includes Corsica, Malta and parts of Africa, and while originally thought to be part of the destruction of Rome, are now thought to have acted as inheritors of many Roman traditions. They’ve certainly inherited Ananke’s efficiency at disposing of heads.

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#WicDiv #The Wicked + The Divine #The Wicked and The Divine #TWATD #6000 Years of Murder

[modmyst]

Alrighty ya’ll.

**Trigger Warning** : Suicide Discussed, Religion and Witchcraft Discussed, Reincarnation Discussed, Murder & The Salem Witch Trials are discussed.

I died, and when this happened, I was sent a message from a past life. I have now returned from the gates of the afterlife, sent back by Anubis after the weighing of my heart; having been shown I had unfinished business to return to here among the living.

The message I was given is that I am also the reincarnation of Margret Scott. Do you know who she was? The name is likely familiar if you’ve followed the Salem Witch Trails or read about them in any detail...

How did I get this message from Margret; a past incarnation of my own inner divine being/spirit/soul? Well, in December of 2020, for reasons I won’t get into, I made an attempt to intentionally take my own life. I told no one and the attempted resulted in me being in bed alone and sick for days. I told anyone who asked that I had the flu, and asked to be left to rest... It’s uncertain what happened to me or my brain, chemically, in those days following... but I truly believe that during that time I died and was given the opportunity to return with a message for others in hopes of raising awareness and creating a safe haven for other ‘witches’ and outcasts such as myself. (See link at the bottom of this post).

But then, when I returned to the living world, I only maintained memories from Margret Scott and not from myself... I began speaking irrationally, in circles,l and about nonsense; no one could understand me. I kept telling my everyone “they” were trying to burn me at the stake.... This of course made no sense at the time. I was speaking nonsense. Right? Welp that crazy talk was the conclusion that landed me in the hospital (thankfully!) where I forgot entirely what of who in my life was real and begun questioning reality altogether - scary shit at the time, believe me. You don’t realize how thankful you are for everything and everyone in your life until you begin to believe they were never there, never with you to begin with...

Well, as I found out later after my return home (sanity not even close to returning until mid-I want to realistically say January?), having done some digging into the messages I was receiving, I learned Margret Scott was an immigrant born in 1616 who immigrated with her family to the United States. Later in life she married Benjamin Scott and they were “awarded”/given farm land in Rowley County, Massachusetts to care for and tend to in order to benefit and repay the community they were now a part of.

Margret and Ben had six children, three died early on in infancy (increasing her risk of witchcraft accusations- high mortality rates among infants were always blamed on the women who bore them...😒), while three grew old and moved on to have lives and families of their own. Margret appeared to be closest with her son, Benjamin Scott, named after his father...

Later in life, after their children had grown, Benjamin (Margret’s husband) passed away due to illness and Margret was left alone to care for herself, her land, and her home... and for years she did so; managing to live off what her husband left behind for her... But, as a woman, she was inevitably led to the need to beg her neighbors for asstance. She grew old and at the age of 72, she began getting nasty when neighbors eventually began turning her away when begging became a regular necessity... her own adult children seemingly never coming to her rescue or aid... she was alone in the world with no one. And it was bad timing for Margret, regardless of who she was or how she reacted to being turned away as a beggar.

As her own frustration likely grew, so did the contempt her neighbors felt for her... this woman, assuredly an outcast in society, had no where to turn in her darkest days and was now likely being viewed by neighbors as a nuisance. She was now poor, hungry, and very probably cold if she could no longer chop her own wood for her hearth... let’s remember, she was 72 when hung for Witchcraft... it was October when she was hung... Yet there was little charity or kindness left in the hearts of her neighbors due to her regular requests for assistance (how else was she supposed to provide for herself as a woman in her 70s?! Alone, without her husband any longer nor the support of her adult children...)

Now, at this time, I have something to point out as a very odd coincidence: Margret Scott was the ONLY WOMAN from Rowley County, Massachusetts to be hanged in the Salem Witch Trails... My married last name... is Rowley. My husband’s aunt (his father’s sister, a Rowley by blood), told me weeks after my attempt that she knew when she met me she was meant to be my spirit guide in this life for reasons she couldn’t disclose... but she believes in many of the same things I always have, coincidentally... (And believe me, my husbands side of the family is not woo-woo at all!) And prior to her saying those words to me, I’d never had much of a conversation with the woman... but this is all coincidental, right?

Anywho, as I was saying, poor elderly Margret was later hung for Witch Craft in Salem due to accusations made by a child... yes. The official documentation can be found online- the written testimony recorded during the trails states that “Wiccan Scott” (not Margret specifically) came to her in the night in torment. And another accused witch made claims that Margret was involved with them in acts of witchcraft (magically hitting the leg of a man with a stick- the man claimed he felt this so it was therefore ‘verified’ as true🙄), and despite Marget’s denial, they used this “evidence” against her.

Because her original accusers from Rowley County were from two prominent and wealthy families, Margret never stood a chance... and what is worse? No one seemed capable of speaking up for her.... Her family never came to her aid when she was begging others for firewood, food, and likely other supplies needed to survive the harsh Massachusetts winter ahead...

On October 2, 1962 (O.S. September 22nd) Margret was hung along with several other victims of the trails... but her story doesn’t end there.... oh no. It gets worse! How?!

How does it get worse after death?! Well, many victims families later received restitution for the murder of their loved ones due to these accusations. However, no one ever came in search for Margret’s restitution. Not even her children or other kin. And while every other victim was slowly obsolved of their “witchcraft” crimes, Margret was never proclaimed innocent by Massachusetts until 2012! 2012?! Roughy 300 years after being murdered by her neighbors?!?! Why?

Now.... to finally close this incomplete story... I have one last little tidbit that should strike you through your heart; cold as it had mine.... because this is significant...

Margret Scott’s body was discarded in a what was likely some kind of pit or ditch along with the other Salem Witch Trial victims that day. BUT, when the bodies were retrieved either claimed by kin or to be burned, her body was never found...

Literally no one (willing to share, anyway) knows what happened to the remains of Margret Scott. She has been memorialized, of course, as a victim of the trails and she now has an official headstone... but her body? No one knows where she physically went... but I know... she’s somewhere. Someone cared enough to retrieve her remains AFTER her murder, never to speak of it or seek restitution. Why? Who did this? Was it family? Was it someone else?

... we’ll never know.... 🤷🏻‍♀️

So here I am... Here to tell her story...

Follow me to learn more and check out my tarot business @ RaesReadings.com

🔮Interested in joining the ModMyst Coven?🔮

TheModMystics.com is a newly created safe haven for witches. It’s similar to Facebook but it’s on our OWN network! If you’d like to join the Coven and be part of something truly magical and unique, you know where to find us how 👆🏼

[flappingbrickwings]

All the feelings

We are comin’ in hot to the new school year fresh off a week of serious summer cramming. When you only get to see your favorite people (my sister and her kids) six days out of the whole goddam year (365 days! Six = less than 1/52. So not cool.), you gots to make it count. 

We did. 

Sunday afternoon the girls and I hopped in an Uber and headed to LAX Enterprise to pick up a mini-van (*extreme eye roll transforms into extreme excitement when I get behind the wheel of this seven-seater beast*), nearly being run off the road by a CHP SUV in the process. We melted into the masses at LAX while my sister battled an irate customs officer who almost didn’t let her into the country because she’d signed her kids’ passports for them. At the instruction of the US embassy in Japan. Just as she’s done for their last five collective passports. Apparently, “My daughter doesn’t write English,” was a point of contention, so yes - despite our feeling of liberal security here in Los Angeles, he-who-must-not-be-named is still making his presence felt. (*Extreme eyeroll/deep sigh/inescapable feeling of impending doom.*)

Monday we hit the Hansen Dam Aquatic Center, aka the fake beach and rolled from there straight to Chuck E. Cheese, aka the fake restaurant. Fortunately they fixed the beer taps making it once again bearable for parents, although I’m still pissed that they’ve replaced the tokens with those cards - just like the school cafeteria. Why are we giving our children credit cards? Guys, it’s so fucked up. 

Tuesday we headed south to Great Wolf Lodge where we arrived just before the 1pm check-in rush and snagged the last early-available room. Woo-hoo! We left the kids in the lobby while we got the bags out of the car and when we stepped onto the elevator to go back down the power went out. (*Instant anxiety-attack.*) Fortunately, the door was about half way closed and the other guy with us managed to push it back open. A crowd of (clearly stupid) waiting people crowded in after us while we beelined for the stairs. By this point the kids were starving - we didn’t time it well - so we just wanted to drop our bags in the room then get lunch before everything went to shit, as it can so quickly with hungry children. 

But when we got to the elevators we found a small crowd of GWL employees waving their hands apologetically saying, “Sorry folks, we just need five minute to re-set the elevators.” Having no intention of walking up eight flights of stairs with all our bags and children, we waited. And then we realized that they were all crowded in front of elevator number one because it was stuck. Somewhere up there in the darkness. Full of people. (*Shudder.*) My sister and I exchanged glances as the kids sunk deeper into low blood sugar insanity and had a silent conversation about whether or not we could in fact do those eight flights. Before we reached a conclusion, the elevator doors slid open and traumatized people began to file out, quietly and calmly, considering. You know when you’re on a full elevator and it stops at another floor and some asshole and his eight kids/buddies/co-workers say, “We can squeeze in, right?” Wow. Was this elevator packed with people. As they exited it was like one of those clown cars or the scene from The Meaning of Life when the products of unwasted Catholic sperm just keep on coming. And there was at least one occupant who weighed at least 300 pounds. Guys, so not cool. Makes me sweat just thinking about it. 

We took the elevator (*shudder*) up and dropped our bags off and then took the elevator (*shudder*) down to the basement. The doors closed behind us and literally seconds later the power went off again. This time we were plunged into total darkness because, as I said, we were in the basement. FULL BLOWN PANIC ATTACK. The emergency lights came on and we grabbed hands and headed upstairs, where we managed to convince a super sweet teenage waiter to seat us and serve us the only thing he could - milk and beer. Word spread around that the city was working on a transponder and it could be another hour before the power came on. We resolved to sit it out and erupted in cheers when the kitchen staff sent out guacamole and chips followed by sliced veggies. Really restored my faith in humanity after the whole, “I can’t let you into the country because you signed your kid’s passport”/CHP trying to run us off the road experience.  

Once the power came on and we downed a couple of margaritas we were ready for the fun. There’s nothing like walking around next to naked with 3,000 strangers to put a smile on your face. And then the cheerleading camp arrived. Not even making that up. I’ll let your imagination fill in the blanks - suffice to say when I went on the terrifying light green slide that launches you out of a cylinder as if aiming to drive you directly into the seventh layer of hell, even though my niece & nephew went before me I still had plenty of support. (I refrained myself from asking the attendant if anyone had ever shit their pants on this before, terrified that I might be the first. Spicy margaritas + anxiety = poquito touch and go.) We shut the park down and dragged the same hangry kids to dinner at 10pm. Ok I admit I had a temper tantrum at about 9:15 when my girls “missed” the lazy river exit again and I stamped my feet and slapped the water and gnashed my teeth and yelled, “I”m starving and tired and I just want to get out of here!” before I realized there was another “grown up” standing right next to me. Chortling, I suspect. 

Thursday we hit Universal Studios where we all drank butterbeer (bit disappointing - definitely the American version of butterbeer at about 90% corn syrup - Hogwarts would never serve it) and pumpkin juice (delicious! spiced cider) and real beer (of course) and ate at the Three Broomsticks and bought wands and chocolate frogs and got to pretend along with 20,000 other muggles that we were in Hogsmeade for a little while. I am endlessly in awe of how one woman tapped into something so deeply personal and yet clearly universal. I guess it’s the collective unconscious? And a tribute to the power of storytelling. In these dark times, stories give us life and keep us going. 

Friday we hit the beach for pancakes, mimosas, and waves. The ocean whispers her own tales, telling us the secrets of where we come from and where we are headed and the relentless possibilities of time and space, light and dark, the weight of water and the lightness of life. And of course the beach is also a great place for a post-mimosa nap. (*Snore.*)

Saturday Sash took the kids and my sister and I hung out, talking and laughing under a veil of impending sadness. It’s so hard living far away from your family. Never gets easier. Add separation anxiety to a looming mid-life crisis and I fear sleepless nights and teary mornings ahead. 

I’m grateful for my sister’s incredible budgeting abilities and airplanes that close the gap and fun parks and minivans and pushed back first days of school and pizza and every flavor beans and G&T’s and everything else that made this week magical.

Now back to reality. Kindergarten orientation tomorrow - holy guacamole. Here we go.

#writing #flappingbrickwings #family #summer #kids #fun

[chantalkrcmar]

Staying the Hell Away

A while ago, I wrote about the massive humanitarian crisis that hit India’s migrant laborers during lockdown. Thousands upon thousands literally started walking hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers from urban centers where they worked back to their native places. Given that their sources of livelihood disappeared overnight, and they had no savings to fall back on, many felt they had no other choice.

So now the big question amongst India’s business elite is…yup, you guessed it…How do we get “our” workers back?!

It turns out that it is way harder than you might imagine. I don’t think India’s business leaders are all that surprised. Exhibit A: For the longest time, there was no way for migrant laborers to go back home except for on foot. And then some state governments started running special trains for them to go. It was big news when word leaked that some business leaders in Karnataka had told politicians to not allow migrant laborers to go home because they would be needed at some point in the future again. (You may recall that I also mentioned that gem in a previous blog.) So, no, business leaders are not surprised. You kick a dog often enough and you’re probably not surprised when it bites back. You may be angry, but not surprised.

Corporate heads were not the only ones who had a strong hunch that the migrant laborer exodus was less than fleeting. Many activists, NGO workers, and researchers also claimed from the beginning of this crisis that once the migrants left, they would not come back to the cities anytime soon. I was pretty surprised by how certain they all sounded. For example, when I watched this interview with the President of one of India’s highly-regarded think tanks, the Centre for Policy Research, on 28th April (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=70&v=sSUD0EJz7WU&feature=emb_logo), the interviewer asked her if she thought the migrant laborers would return. Without hesitation, she said “no.” She went on to explain that they had been so mistreated in the early parts of the  lockdown and that whatever trust they might have had in the government (which was already tenuous) had completely evaporated. I have so many quotes from construction workers themselves whom I interviewed who told me they have to be completely self-sufficient because they get nothing from the government — even if they are entitled, and even if they are desperate.

Here’s an interesting little look-see into this situation, from yours truly who refuses to completely give up on fieldwork — despite my continued confinement. At least there’s WhatsApp…

Construction projects in Mumbai were allowed to resume a few weeks ago, so I wanted to see if all the predictions about migrant workers who fled were correct. I called one of my research contacts, an executive of one of India’s most prestigious and profitable construction contracting firms — we’ll call him Mr. S — and he told me that they are having a massively tough time finding construction workers now. In fact, all of their construction sites are operating again, but with a maximum of 30-40% of the workforce they need on each.

And his company is trying hard to woo workers back. Mr. S told me that his company is offering a bonus of 12,000-14,000 INR for anyone who starts working for them now. Most of these construction workers make between 300 and 800 INR per day (depending on gender and skill level), so this bonus is no small change. The company is also offering to fly migrant laborers back to Mumbai from their villages, and pay them higher wages than before. Mr. S’s company has scouts scouring all the rural areas to which the workers have returned. And so far they are barely finding anyone who is willing.

These workers may be poor and uneducated, but they are not dopes. My book smarts in most ways do not hold a candle to their street smarts. From all the interviews I did before lockdown, I already knew that. And now I know it even more. There is absolutely no indication that daily wage earners who went to their native places are now living the high life. Indeed, rural unemployment rates are better than urban now, partially due to a government work scheme in rural areas. Wow! A government scheme that is working here! Miracles do occur…But it’s still tough in rural India. And no matter how desperate the daily wage earners are, they are not falling for any gimmicks that industry officials are throwing their way to tempt them back.

Even this company, which I know from my fieldwork treats its labor force more humanely than most, and therefore has earned my respect more than most others, is not exactly treating the workers, in my opinion, with enough respect and care during this COVID crisis. I asked Mr. S about health and safety measures they’re using on construction sites now. Keep in mind that the COVID numbers in Mumbai are still horrible, so risks are still high. He told me they are enforcing masks and doing regular temperature checks. But of course construction workers cannot socially distance from one another. There are too many tasks that require two or more people working side by side; that is simply the nature of the work — and not a particular cruelty of this company.

When I asked Mr. S if they are quarantining workers who have temperatures or other COVID symptoms, he said, “I don’t know. If we find someone with a fever we just call the authorities and they take them and deal with it.” That is what really  shocked me — and nothing about the treatment of workers in the construction industry here should shock me anymore. Shouldn’t a decent human being at least know what happens to his workers if they contract COVID-19 on the job? Or even if you’re not all that decent, shouldn’t you care — if for no other reason than you desperately need them to recover so they can go back to work in your already-depleted workforce?!

So that’s a look at the industry side of things at this current time. And now for one more word about our wonderful (ahem, sarcasm) government here. Not only did their slapdash, aggressive and mostly-pointless lockdown result in grievous harm to poor daily wage earners all over India, it also now has caused huge problems for most of our biggest companies. The construction industry, one of India’s largest and only second to agriculture in terms of numbers of people it employs, has been brought to its knees. If only the politicians who worsened this already-bad crisis were the ones paying the price…

For anyone following India’s woes during COVID-19, here’s an interesting article about unemployment. The up-shot is: don’t believe the hype. Numbers are misleading about the jobs and incomes people can access now…

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/unemployment-rate-declines-sharply-as-india-exits-lockdown-11592249924927.html

[ronijashworth]

SearchLove San Diego 2018 Round Up

2018 was our fifth year in San Diego for SearchLove and what a blast it was. This year we hit a couple of personal milestones: selling our 5,000th SearchLove ticket and San Diego was completely sold out for the third year in a row. SearchLove San Diego 2018 saw 200 people in one room from all over the world including USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Australia and more, all united to watch some of the leading speakers in digital marketing take to the stage. Let’s see what they had to show us!

Dana DiTomaso - From Organization-Centric to Customer-Centric

Goals that are often set by management encourage marketers to be reporting the wrong metrics such as email signups, bounce rate and time on site.

Always think about the users’ needs and use those to shape your marketing goals.

Define customer conversions by building personas with the goals the customer is trying to achieve rather than goals your business is trying to achieve. “I am a....... Who wants to...... So I can.......”

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Dana DiTomaso | From Organization-Centric to Customer-Centric from Distilled

Rob Bucci - Featured Snippets: From Then to Now, Volatility, and Voice Search

Featured snippets are appearing for longer, natural language queries with the words “how”, “where”, “is”, “does”. These type of queries are still growing in volume.

Featured snippets are the cornerstone of voice search - they're stable, not going away any time soon, and they are the way to maximize your reach for voice searches.

Optimize for voice search by creating snippet content for long tail search queries.

Voice search commands are translated into search queries: “What are the best headphones for $100” turns into: [best headphones for $100]”

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Rob Bucci | Featured Snippets: From Then to Now, Volatility, and Voice Search from Distilled

Alexa Hubley - Real Lessons in Growth Marketing... From Watching Romantic Comedies

Create intimacy with your customers by using segmentation to speak to your customers at scale, while still talking to them as individuals. To do this, you need to create personalized assets including landing pages, pricing plan tables, emails, videos, and at times personalised items such as thumbnail images at scale (Alexa created 3,500 thumbnails for one campaign!).

“Woo” customers by generating humour. “If you can make someone laugh, there is an emotional connection with them, and anything you say beyond that is going to be more meaningful.”

Build trust with your customers by offering items such as swag packs, conference tickets & exclusive deal extensions. This helps make your customers feel special,  building the trust between them and your brand.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Alexa Hubley | Real Lessons in Growth Marketing... From Watching Romantic Comedies from Distilled

Justin Briggs

You can get YouTube search volume using YTCockpit. It’s like SEMRush but for Youtube!

When creating titles for your YouTube videos you should look to keep them under 50 characters to avoid truncation in most places, e.g. organic search & suggested videos. Video descriptions should be between 300-350 words to hit the sweet spot.

The optimal number of word phrases in tags is 2-3. You can source suggestions and common keyword tags using TubeBuddy.

Older videos tend to perform better. Videos originally receive a freshness boost when they are launched for the first 0-6 weeks. To leverage this, you should use high publication rates to help your other videos perform better.

Make your thumbnail images even more clickable by bumping up image contrast and saturation.

When measuring the success of your video content, ensure you are focusing on the right metrics. Views is a pretty poor metric, instead, use watch time which is a stronger ranking factor.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Justin Briggs | Video: Search and Discovery from Distilled

Tom Anthony - An Introduction to HTTP/2 & Service Workers for SEOs

Browsers typically open around six connections maximum, causing a backlog of file requests as a result slowing down page load time.

HTTP2 solves this issue by allowing many requests to happen on a single connection.

HTTP2 is quite simple to implement and doesn’t require a site migration in the same way we had to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS. It doesn’t even need developers to do anything as the servers do all the work!

Service workers can modify view source (and thus you can get different source code with and without JavaScript).

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Tom Anthony | An Introduction to HTTP/2 & Service Workers for SEOs from Distilled

Mat Clayton - Site Speed for Digital Marketers

Images often account for ~50% of file size for any given page. Compressing images, is one of the easiest wins you can make to improve site speed.

Use progressive images rather than baseline images. Progressive images produce a low res image to the users creating an illusion the page has fully rendered.

Make sure you are removing redundant code from your site, in particular, remove any unused CSS. Less code > less data to transfer > faster site.

Remove all code bloat such as tracking pixels and 3rd party scripts.

Caching is super important. Use a CDN to reduce latency and server load.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Mat Clayton | Site Speed for Digital Marketers from Distilled

Rand Fishkin - How Marketers Can Incite Hunger Rather Than Just Serving Food

Don’t cater to existing demand in the market; use your marketing efforts to create the demand.

Don’t undervalue your branded search volume.

To create demand we have two options. The historical approach that SEO has taken; serve existing search demand by ranking. Alternatively, create more demand for your brand and rank automatically!

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Rand Fishkin | Demand Creation - How Marketers Can Incite Hunger Rather Than Just Serving Food from Distilled

Wil Reynolds - Power BI For Marketers - Make Big Data Easy Again

“Don’t bring an opinion to a data fight.”

There are no more broad-based rank factors. There's only what matters for your rankings."

Stop talking about keywords and let's start talking about MONEY!

Don’t just use search volume to make decisions. Instead, use Power BI to back up your recommendations with dollar amounts and actual click-through data from paid accounts to prioritize the most valuable terms for a specific client.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Wil Reynolds | Power BI For Marketers - Make Big Data Easy Again from Distilled

Sarah Esterman - Marketing Emergencies: A Survival Guide

Sometimes marketing mistakes can open opportunities, but only if you aren't too wrapped up in feeling like a failure that the error happened in the first place.

It is vital to set up an emergency response plan and to establish a point person for marketing emergencies.

Sarah’s five steps to dealing with a marketing emergency:

Keep your cool - remember to breathe!

Be kind - when stress is high be kind to others and yourself. Choose your words carefully.

Know the facts - use positive facts about yourself and your abilities to reassure yourself.

Don't freak out - ask questions about the scenario

What actually happened?

How many people were affected?

Is there any $$ to be lost?

How would your customers be feeling?

What are the consequences?

5. Take action - Do you need to respond to this incident? 

Potential ways you could respond to any given situation:

Fix the thing

Email a follow-up

Social call-out

1:1 customer relations

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Sarah Esterman | Marketing Emergencies: A Survival Guide from Distilled

Darren Shaw - Local Search Hacks You Probably Haven’t Seen Before

Hack for driving more interactions on your Google My Business listing: Seed the Q&A section with your own questions you want customers to know the answers to.

Incentivizing customers to leave reviews directly breaches guidelines set by Google. Instead, incentivize your employees to have customers leave reviews.

Ensure consistency with your phone numbers. Add additional phone numbers to the second and third listing spots on Google My Business and Google will tie all of this data together.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Darren Shaw | Local Search Hacks You Probably Haven’t Seen Before from Distilled

Ashley Ward - Reuse, Recycle: How to Repurpose Your Content and Make the Big Bucks

Mobile devices projected to reach 79% of global internet usage this year, mobile-first content strategy essential.

Think about your own user behaviour patterns when you are creating content for your customers, especially on mobile!

Steps to reuse content: Define specific business goals, audit your existing content, create your “gem” list (this is the content you will repurpose), distribution (get that information out there).

Use the content you already have! Repurpose existing content into an ebook, update content with more relevant & useful info, recycle it to make the original into something new. TIP: don't change the URL.

There are two types of repurposing content:

Republishing - find content that had previously been successful and update it with new imagery and stats.

Recycling - turn existing content into new content, e.g. podcasts, videos, infographics etc.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Ashley Ward | Reuse, Recycle: How to Repurpose Your Content and Make the Big Bucks from Distilled

Aleyda Solis - Moving URLs

Simplify hreflang implementation by avoiding adding it to every single page of different international versions of your site.

Migrations require involvement from marketing, development, and design & UX. Collective buy-in and understanding across these teams makes all the difference.

Three reasons to consider using AMP

You can’t fix your mobile site speed.

You need to appear in Google’s Top Stories Carousel ASAP.

You're building a new site and using AMP is your easiest solution.

However, be aware of “shiny object syndrome SEO". Determine what is relevant for your website visibility before investing time, effort and resources into something like AMP.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Aleyda Solis | Moving URLs from Distilled

Brandy Lawson - Smarter Reporting with Data Studio

Creating reports can be time-consuming and feel like a waste of energy, particularly if we feel that no one even looks at them. Google Data Studio gives us the platform to start demonstrating value to our clients/bosses.

Google Data Studio can help cut the amount of time you spend compiling reports for your clients by roughly 50%!

Reasons why you should start using Google Data Studio for reporting: it automatically updated, the reports are interactive, you can add other data sources, it’s versatile, it comes with pre-existing templates removing a whole lot of work!

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Brandy Lawson | Smarter Reporting with Data Studio from Distilled

Ryan Charles - Newsjacking: How To Add to the Story and Earn Big Links in Real Time

Newsjacking requires agility. Can you build something and ship it within 24 hours for that story.

For newsjacking its best to have a connection to the story, there are varying degrees of connections required to newsjack. Do you have a unique and original angle? You need this for it to land with the audience.

Reporters have to generate news 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, they are on the look-out for a story. HARO... Help a reporter out by adding to their story.

If you’re looking to newsjack a story start local. If you see success this will create a ripple effect into larger news organizations.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Ryan Charles | Newsjacking: How To Add to the Story and Earn Big Links in Real Time from Distilled

Will Critchlow - From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words

Early web spam was okay as long as it didn’t make Google look stupid by flooding the SERPs with low-quality sites. In fact, early Googlers saw this as a game of cat and mouse. As this spiralled out of control, this forced Google to produce more complex algorithms to protect their reputation.

Adsense is one of the most underrated things Google has ever done. It incentivised the creation of a huge amount of long-tail content, but it also created the monster that eventually required Panda to fix it.

Where is Google going next? Given their recent purchases, Google is (most likely) coming for the cloud computing space.

Facebook is going through many of the learning curves that Google has already experienced, e.g. content spam/fake news.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Will Critchlow | From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words from Distilled

from Digital Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/searchlove-san-diego-2018-round-up/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#digital marketing

[davidrsmithlove]

SearchLove San Diego 2018 Round Up

2018 was our fifth year in San Diego for SearchLove and what a blast it was. This year we hit a couple of personal milestones: selling our 5,000th SearchLove ticket and San Diego was completely sold out for the third year in a row. SearchLove San Diego 2018 saw 200 people in one room from all over the world including USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Australia and more, all united to watch some of the leading speakers in digital marketing take to the stage. Let’s see what they had to show us!

Dana DiTomaso - From Organization-Centric to Customer-Centric

Goals that are often set by management encourage marketers to be reporting the wrong metrics such as email signups, bounce rate and time on site.

Always think about the users’ needs and use those to shape your marketing goals.

Define customer conversions by building personas with the goals the customer is trying to achieve rather than goals your business is trying to achieve. “I am a....... Who wants to...... So I can.......”

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Dana DiTomaso | From Organization-Centric to Customer-Centric from Distilled

Rob Bucci - Featured Snippets: From Then to Now, Volatility, and Voice Search

Featured snippets are appearing for longer, natural language queries with the words “how”, “where”, “is”, “does”. These type of queries are still growing in volume.

Featured snippets are the cornerstone of voice search - they're stable, not going away any time soon, and they are the way to maximize your reach for voice searches.

Optimize for voice search by creating snippet content for long tail search queries.

Voice search commands are translated into search queries: “What are the best headphones for $100” turns into: [best headphones for $100]”

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Rob Bucci | Featured Snippets: From Then to Now, Volatility, and Voice Search from Distilled

Alexa Hubley - Real Lessons in Growth Marketing... From Watching Romantic Comedies

Create intimacy with your customers by using segmentation to speak to your customers at scale, while still talking to them as individuals. To do this, you need to create personalized assets including landing pages, pricing plan tables, emails, videos, and at times personalised items such as thumbnail images at scale (Alexa created 3,500 thumbnails for one campaign!).

“Woo” customers by generating humour. “If you can make someone laugh, there is an emotional connection with them, and anything you say beyond that is going to be more meaningful.”

Build trust with your customers by offering items such as swag packs, conference tickets & exclusive deal extensions. This helps make your customers feel special,  building the trust between them and your brand.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Alexa Hubley | Real Lessons in Growth Marketing... From Watching Romantic Comedies from Distilled

Justin Briggs

You can get YouTube search volume using YTCockpit. It’s like SEMRush but for Youtube!

When creating titles for your YouTube videos you should look to keep them under 50 characters to avoid truncation in most places, e.g. organic search & suggested videos. Video descriptions should be between 300-350 words to hit the sweet spot.

The optimal number of word phrases in tags is 2-3. You can source suggestions and common keyword tags using TubeBuddy.

Older videos tend to perform better. Videos originally receive a freshness boost when they are launched for the first 0-6 weeks. To leverage this, you should use high publication rates to help your other videos perform better.

Make your thumbnail images even more clickable by bumping up image contrast and saturation.

When measuring the success of your video content, ensure you are focusing on the right metrics. Views is a pretty poor metric, instead, use watch time which is a stronger ranking factor.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Justin Briggs | Video: Search and Discovery from Distilled

Tom Anthony - An Introduction to HTTP/2 & Service Workers for SEOs

Browsers typically open around six connections maximum, causing a backlog of file requests as a result slowing down page load time.

HTTP2 solves this issue by allowing many requests to happen on a single connection.

HTTP2 is quite simple to implement and doesn’t require a site migration in the same way we had to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS. It doesn’t even need developers to do anything as the servers do all the work!

Service workers can modify view source (and thus you can get different source code with and without JavaScript).

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Tom Anthony | An Introduction to HTTP/2 & Service Workers for SEOs from Distilled

Mat Clayton - Site Speed for Digital Marketers

Images often account for ~50% of file size for any given page. Compressing images, is one of the easiest wins you can make to improve site speed.

Use progressive images rather than baseline images. Progressive images produce a low res image to the users creating an illusion the page has fully rendered.

Make sure you are removing redundant code from your site, in particular, remove any unused CSS. Less code > less data to transfer > faster site.

Remove all code bloat such as tracking pixels and 3rd party scripts.

Caching is super important. Use a CDN to reduce latency and server load.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Mat Clayton | Site Speed for Digital Marketers from Distilled

Rand Fishkin - How Marketers Can Incite Hunger Rather Than Just Serving Food

Don’t cater to existing demand in the market; use your marketing efforts to create the demand.

Don’t undervalue your branded search volume.

To create demand we have two options. The historical approach that SEO has taken; serve existing search demand by ranking. Alternatively, create more demand for your brand and rank automatically!

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Rand Fishkin | Demand Creation - How Marketers Can Incite Hunger Rather Than Just Serving Food from Distilled

Wil Reynolds - Power BI For Marketers - Make Big Data Easy Again

“Don’t bring an opinion to a data fight.”

There are no more broad-based rank factors. There's only what matters for your rankings."

Stop talking about keywords and let's start talking about MONEY!

Don’t just use search volume to make decisions. Instead, use Power BI to back up your recommendations with dollar amounts and actual click-through data from paid accounts to prioritize the most valuable terms for a specific client.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Wil Reynolds | Power BI For Marketers - Make Big Data Easy Again from Distilled

Sarah Esterman - Marketing Emergencies: A Survival Guide

Sometimes marketing mistakes can open opportunities, but only if you aren't too wrapped up in feeling like a failure that the error happened in the first place.

It is vital to set up an emergency response plan and to establish a point person for marketing emergencies.

Sarah’s five steps to dealing with a marketing emergency:

Keep your cool - remember to breathe!

Be kind - when stress is high be kind to others and yourself. Choose your words carefully.

Know the facts - use positive facts about yourself and your abilities to reassure yourself.

Don't freak out - ask questions about the scenario

What actually happened?

How many people were affected?

Is there any $$ to be lost?

How would your customers be feeling?

What are the consequences?

5. Take action - Do you need to respond to this incident? 

Potential ways you could respond to any given situation:

Fix the thing

Email a follow-up

Social call-out

1:1 customer relations

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Sarah Esterman | Marketing Emergencies: A Survival Guide from Distilled

Darren Shaw - Local Search Hacks You Probably Haven’t Seen Before

Hack for driving more interactions on your Google My Business listing: Seed the Q&A section with your own questions you want customers to know the answers to.

Incentivizing customers to leave reviews directly breaches guidelines set by Google. Instead, incentivize your employees to have customers leave reviews.

Ensure consistency with your phone numbers. Add additional phone numbers to the second and third listing spots on Google My Business and Google will tie all of this data together.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Darren Shaw | Local Search Hacks You Probably Haven’t Seen Before from Distilled

Ashley Ward - Reuse, Recycle: How to Repurpose Your Content and Make the Big Bucks

Mobile devices projected to reach 79% of global internet usage this year, mobile-first content strategy essential.

Think about your own user behaviour patterns when you are creating content for your customers, especially on mobile!

Steps to reuse content: Define specific business goals, audit your existing content, create your “gem” list (this is the content you will repurpose), distribution (get that information out there).

Use the content you already have! Repurpose existing content into an ebook, update content with more relevant & useful info, recycle it to make the original into something new. TIP: don't change the URL.

There are two types of repurposing content:

Republishing - find content that had previously been successful and update it with new imagery and stats.

Recycling - turn existing content into new content, e.g. podcasts, videos, infographics etc.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Ashley Ward | Reuse, Recycle: How to Repurpose Your Content and Make the Big Bucks from Distilled

Aleyda Solis - Moving URLs

Simplify hreflang implementation by avoiding adding it to every single page of different international versions of your site.

Migrations require involvement from marketing, development, and design & UX. Collective buy-in and understanding across these teams makes all the difference.

Three reasons to consider using AMP

You can’t fix your mobile site speed.

You need to appear in Google’s Top Stories Carousel ASAP.

You're building a new site and using AMP is your easiest solution.

However, be aware of “shiny object syndrome SEO". Determine what is relevant for your website visibility before investing time, effort and resources into something like AMP.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Aleyda Solis | Moving URLs from Distilled

Brandy Lawson - Smarter Reporting with Data Studio

Creating reports can be time-consuming and feel like a waste of energy, particularly if we feel that no one even looks at them. Google Data Studio gives us the platform to start demonstrating value to our clients/bosses.

Google Data Studio can help cut the amount of time you spend compiling reports for your clients by roughly 50%!

Reasons why you should start using Google Data Studio for reporting: it automatically updated, the reports are interactive, you can add other data sources, it’s versatile, it comes with pre-existing templates removing a whole lot of work!

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Brandy Lawson | Smarter Reporting with Data Studio from Distilled

Ryan Charles - Newsjacking: How To Add to the Story and Earn Big Links in Real Time

Newsjacking requires agility. Can you build something and ship it within 24 hours for that story.

For newsjacking its best to have a connection to the story, there are varying degrees of connections required to newsjack. Do you have a unique and original angle? You need this for it to land with the audience.

Reporters have to generate news 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, they are on the look-out for a story. HARO... Help a reporter out by adding to their story.

If you’re looking to newsjack a story start local. If you see success this will create a ripple effect into larger news organizations.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Ryan Charles | Newsjacking: How To Add to the Story and Earn Big Links in Real Time from Distilled

Will Critchlow - From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words

Early web spam was okay as long as it didn’t make Google look stupid by flooding the SERPs with low-quality sites. In fact, early Googlers saw this as a game of cat and mouse. As this spiralled out of control, this forced Google to produce more complex algorithms to protect their reputation.

Adsense is one of the most underrated things Google has ever done. It incentivised the creation of a huge amount of long-tail content, but it also created the monster that eventually required Panda to fix it.

Where is Google going next? Given their recent purchases, Google is (most likely) coming for the cloud computing space.

Facebook is going through many of the learning curves that Google has already experienced, e.g. content spam/fake news.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Will Critchlow | From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words from Distilled

[heavenwheel]

SearchLove San Diego 2018 Round Up

2018 was our fifth year in San Diego for SearchLove and what a blast it was. This year we hit a couple of personal milestones: selling our 5,000th SearchLove ticket and San Diego was completely sold out for the third year in a row. SearchLove San Diego 2018 saw 200 people in one room from all over the world including USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Australia and more, all united to watch some of the leading speakers in digital marketing take to the stage. Let’s see what they had to show us!

Dana DiTomaso - From Organization-Centric to Customer-Centric

Goals that are often set by management encourage marketers to be reporting the wrong metrics such as email signups, bounce rate and time on site.

Always think about the users’ needs and use those to shape your marketing goals.

Define customer conversions by building personas with the goals the customer is trying to achieve rather than goals your business is trying to achieve. “I am a....... Who wants to...... So I can.......”

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Dana DiTomaso | From Organization-Centric to Customer-Centric from Distilled

Rob Bucci - Featured Snippets: From Then to Now, Volatility, and Voice Search

Featured snippets are appearing for longer, natural language queries with the words “how”, “where”, “is”, “does”. These type of queries are still growing in volume.

Featured snippets are the cornerstone of voice search - they're stable, not going away any time soon, and they are the way to maximize your reach for voice searches.

Optimize for voice search by creating snippet content for long tail search queries.

Voice search commands are translated into search queries: “What are the best headphones for $100” turns into: [best headphones for $100]”

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Rob Bucci | Featured Snippets: From Then to Now, Volatility, and Voice Search from Distilled

Alexa Hubley - Real Lessons in Growth Marketing... From Watching Romantic Comedies

Create intimacy with your customers by using segmentation to speak to your customers at scale, while still talking to them as individuals. To do this, you need to create personalized assets including landing pages, pricing plan tables, emails, videos, and at times personalised items such as thumbnail images at scale (Alexa created 3,500 thumbnails for one campaign!).

“Woo” customers by generating humour. “If you can make someone laugh, there is an emotional connection with them, and anything you say beyond that is going to be more meaningful.”

Build trust with your customers by offering items such as swag packs, conference tickets & exclusive deal extensions. This helps make your customers feel special,  building the trust between them and your brand.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Alexa Hubley | Real Lessons in Growth Marketing... From Watching Romantic Comedies from Distilled

Justin Briggs

You can get YouTube search volume using YTCockpit. It’s like SEMRush but for Youtube!

When creating titles for your YouTube videos you should look to keep them under 50 characters to avoid truncation in most places, e.g. organic search & suggested videos. Video descriptions should be between 300-350 words to hit the sweet spot.

The optimal number of word phrases in tags is 2-3. You can source suggestions and common keyword tags using TubeBuddy.

Older videos tend to perform better. Videos originally receive a freshness boost when they are launched for the first 0-6 weeks. To leverage this, you should use high publication rates to help your other videos perform better.

Make your thumbnail images even more clickable by bumping up image contrast and saturation.

When measuring the success of your video content, ensure you are focusing on the right metrics. Views is a pretty poor metric, instead, use watch time which is a stronger ranking factor.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Justin Briggs | Video: Search and Discovery from Distilled

Tom Anthony - An Introduction to HTTP/2 & Service Workers for SEOs

Browsers typically open around six connections maximum, causing a backlog of file requests as a result slowing down page load time.

HTTP2 solves this issue by allowing many requests to happen on a single connection.

HTTP2 is quite simple to implement and doesn’t require a site migration in the same way we had to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS. It doesn’t even need developers to do anything as the servers do all the work!

Service workers can modify view source (and thus you can get different source code with and without JavaScript).

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Tom Anthony | An Introduction to HTTP/2 & Service Workers for SEOs from Distilled

Mat Clayton - Site Speed for Digital Marketers

Images often account for ~50% of file size for any given page. Compressing images, is one of the easiest wins you can make to improve site speed.

Use progressive images rather than baseline images. Progressive images produce a low res image to the users creating an illusion the page has fully rendered.

Make sure you are removing redundant code from your site, in particular, remove any unused CSS. Less code > less data to transfer > faster site.

Remove all code bloat such as tracking pixels and 3rd party scripts.

Caching is super important. Use a CDN to reduce latency and server load.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Mat Clayton | Site Speed for Digital Marketers from Distilled

Rand Fishkin - How Marketers Can Incite Hunger Rather Than Just Serving Food

Don’t cater to existing demand in the market; use your marketing efforts to create the demand.

Don’t undervalue your branded search volume.

To create demand we have two options. The historical approach that SEO has taken; serve existing search demand by ranking. Alternatively, create more demand for your brand and rank automatically!

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Rand Fishkin | Demand Creation - How Marketers Can Incite Hunger Rather Than Just Serving Food from Distilled

Wil Reynolds - Power BI For Marketers - Make Big Data Easy Again

“Don’t bring an opinion to a data fight.”

There are no more broad-based rank factors. There's only what matters for your rankings."

Stop talking about keywords and let's start talking about MONEY!

Don’t just use search volume to make decisions. Instead, use Power BI to back up your recommendations with dollar amounts and actual click-through data from paid accounts to prioritize the most valuable terms for a specific client.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Wil Reynolds | Power BI For Marketers - Make Big Data Easy Again from Distilled

Sarah Esterman - Marketing Emergencies: A Survival Guide

Sometimes marketing mistakes can open opportunities, but only if you aren't too wrapped up in feeling like a failure that the error happened in the first place.

It is vital to set up an emergency response plan and to establish a point person for marketing emergencies.

Sarah’s five steps to dealing with a marketing emergency:

Keep your cool - remember to breathe!

Be kind - when stress is high be kind to others and yourself. Choose your words carefully.

Know the facts - use positive facts about yourself and your abilities to reassure yourself.

Don't freak out - ask questions about the scenario

What actually happened?

How many people were affected?

Is there any $$ to be lost?

How would your customers be feeling?

What are the consequences?

5. Take action - Do you need to respond to this incident? 

Potential ways you could respond to any given situation:

Fix the thing

Email a follow-up

Social call-out

1:1 customer relations

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Sarah Esterman | Marketing Emergencies: A Survival Guide from Distilled

Darren Shaw - Local Search Hacks You Probably Haven’t Seen Before

Hack for driving more interactions on your Google My Business listing: Seed the Q&A section with your own questions you want customers to know the answers to.

Incentivizing customers to leave reviews directly breaches guidelines set by Google. Instead, incentivize your employees to have customers leave reviews.

Ensure consistency with your phone numbers. Add additional phone numbers to the second and third listing spots on Google My Business and Google will tie all of this data together.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Darren Shaw | Local Search Hacks You Probably Haven’t Seen Before from Distilled

Ashley Ward - Reuse, Recycle: How to Repurpose Your Content and Make the Big Bucks

Mobile devices projected to reach 79% of global internet usage this year, mobile-first content strategy essential.

Think about your own user behaviour patterns when you are creating content for your customers, especially on mobile!

Steps to reuse content: Define specific business goals, audit your existing content, create your “gem” list (this is the content you will repurpose), distribution (get that information out there).

Use the content you already have! Repurpose existing content into an ebook, update content with more relevant & useful info, recycle it to make the original into something new. TIP: don't change the URL.

There are two types of repurposing content:

Republishing - find content that had previously been successful and update it with new imagery and stats.

Recycling - turn existing content into new content, e.g. podcasts, videos, infographics etc.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Ashley Ward | Reuse, Recycle: How to Repurpose Your Content and Make the Big Bucks from Distilled

Aleyda Solis - Moving URLs

Simplify hreflang implementation by avoiding adding it to every single page of different international versions of your site.

Migrations require involvement from marketing, development, and design & UX. Collective buy-in and understanding across these teams makes all the difference.

Three reasons to consider using AMP

You can’t fix your mobile site speed.

You need to appear in Google’s Top Stories Carousel ASAP.

You're building a new site and using AMP is your easiest solution.

However, be aware of “shiny object syndrome SEO". Determine what is relevant for your website visibility before investing time, effort and resources into something like AMP.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Aleyda Solis | Moving URLs from Distilled

Brandy Lawson - Smarter Reporting with Data Studio

Creating reports can be time-consuming and feel like a waste of energy, particularly if we feel that no one even looks at them. Google Data Studio gives us the platform to start demonstrating value to our clients/bosses.

Google Data Studio can help cut the amount of time you spend compiling reports for your clients by roughly 50%!

Reasons why you should start using Google Data Studio for reporting: it automatically updated, the reports are interactive, you can add other data sources, it’s versatile, it comes with pre-existing templates removing a whole lot of work!

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Brandy Lawson | Smarter Reporting with Data Studio from Distilled

Ryan Charles - Newsjacking: How To Add to the Story and Earn Big Links in Real Time

Newsjacking requires agility. Can you build something and ship it within 24 hours for that story.

For newsjacking its best to have a connection to the story, there are varying degrees of connections required to newsjack. Do you have a unique and original angle? You need this for it to land with the audience.

Reporters have to generate news 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, they are on the look-out for a story. HARO... Help a reporter out by adding to their story.

If you’re looking to newsjack a story start local. If you see success this will create a ripple effect into larger news organizations.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Ryan Charles | Newsjacking: How To Add to the Story and Earn Big Links in Real Time from Distilled

Will Critchlow - From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words

Early web spam was okay as long as it didn’t make Google look stupid by flooding the SERPs with low-quality sites. In fact, early Googlers saw this as a game of cat and mouse. As this spiralled out of control, this forced Google to produce more complex algorithms to protect their reputation.

Adsense is one of the most underrated things Google has ever done. It incentivised the creation of a huge amount of long-tail content, but it also created the monster that eventually required Panda to fix it.

Where is Google going next? Given their recent purchases, Google is (most likely) coming for the cloud computing space.

Facebook is going through many of the learning curves that Google has already experienced, e.g. content spam/fake news.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Will Critchlow | From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words from Distilled

from Digital https://www.distilled.net/resources/searchlove-san-diego-2018-round-up/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[donnafmae]

SearchLove San Diego 2018 Round Up

2018 was our fifth year in San Diego for SearchLove and what a blast it was. This year we hit a couple of personal milestones: selling our 5,000th SearchLove ticket and San Diego was completely sold out for the third year in a row. SearchLove San Diego 2018 saw 200 people in one room from all over the world including USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Australia and more, all united to watch some of the leading speakers in digital marketing take to the stage. Let’s see what they had to show us!

Dana DiTomaso - From Organization-Centric to Customer-Centric

Goals that are often set by management encourage marketers to be reporting the wrong metrics such as email signups, bounce rate and time on site.

Always think about the users’ needs and use those to shape your marketing goals.

Define customer conversions by building personas with the goals the customer is trying to achieve rather than goals your business is trying to achieve. “I am a....... Who wants to...... So I can.......”

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Dana DiTomaso | From Organization-Centric to Customer-Centric from Distilled

Rob Bucci - Featured Snippets: From Then to Now, Volatility, and Voice Search

Featured snippets are appearing for longer, natural language queries with the words “how”, “where”, “is”, “does”. These type of queries are still growing in volume.

Featured snippets are the cornerstone of voice search - they're stable, not going away any time soon, and they are the way to maximize your reach for voice searches.

Optimize for voice search by creating snippet content for long tail search queries.

Voice search commands are translated into search queries: “What are the best headphones for $100” turns into: [best headphones for $100]”

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Rob Bucci | Featured Snippets: From Then to Now, Volatility, and Voice Search from Distilled

Alexa Hubley - Real Lessons in Growth Marketing... From Watching Romantic Comedies

Create intimacy with your customers by using segmentation to speak to your customers at scale, while still talking to them as individuals. To do this, you need to create personalized assets including landing pages, pricing plan tables, emails, videos, and at times personalised items such as thumbnail images at scale (Alexa created 3,500 thumbnails for one campaign!).

“Woo” customers by generating humour. “If you can make someone laugh, there is an emotional connection with them, and anything you say beyond that is going to be more meaningful.”

Build trust with your customers by offering items such as swag packs, conference tickets & exclusive deal extensions. This helps make your customers feel special,  building the trust between them and your brand.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Alexa Hubley | Real Lessons in Growth Marketing... From Watching Romantic Comedies from Distilled

Justin Briggs

You can get YouTube search volume using YTCockpit. It’s like SEMRush but for Youtube!

When creating titles for your YouTube videos you should look to keep them under 50 characters to avoid truncation in most places, e.g. organic search & suggested videos. Video descriptions should be between 300-350 words to hit the sweet spot.

The optimal number of word phrases in tags is 2-3. You can source suggestions and common keyword tags using TubeBuddy.

Older videos tend to perform better. Videos originally receive a freshness boost when they are launched for the first 0-6 weeks. To leverage this, you should use high publication rates to help your other videos perform better.

Make your thumbnail images even more clickable by bumping up image contrast and saturation.

When measuring the success of your video content, ensure you are focusing on the right metrics. Views is a pretty poor metric, instead, use watch time which is a stronger ranking factor.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Justin Briggs | Video: Search and Discovery from Distilled

Tom Anthony - An Introduction to HTTP/2 & Service Workers for SEOs

Browsers typically open around six connections maximum, causing a backlog of file requests as a result slowing down page load time.

HTTP2 solves this issue by allowing many requests to happen on a single connection.

HTTP2 is quite simple to implement and doesn’t require a site migration in the same way we had to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS. It doesn’t even need developers to do anything as the servers do all the work!

Service workers can modify view source (and thus you can get different source code with and without JavaScript).

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Tom Anthony | An Introduction to HTTP/2 & Service Workers for SEOs from Distilled

Mat Clayton - Site Speed for Digital Marketers

Images often account for ~50% of file size for any given page. Compressing images, is one of the easiest wins you can make to improve site speed.

Use progressive images rather than baseline images. Progressive images produce a low res image to the users creating an illusion the page has fully rendered.

Make sure you are removing redundant code from your site, in particular, remove any unused CSS. Less code > less data to transfer > faster site.

Remove all code bloat such as tracking pixels and 3rd party scripts.

Caching is super important. Use a CDN to reduce latency and server load.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Mat Clayton | Site Speed for Digital Marketers from Distilled

Rand Fishkin - How Marketers Can Incite Hunger Rather Than Just Serving Food

Don’t cater to existing demand in the market; use your marketing efforts to create the demand.

Don’t undervalue your branded search volume.

To create demand we have two options. The historical approach that SEO has taken; serve existing search demand by ranking. Alternatively, create more demand for your brand and rank automatically!

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Rand Fishkin | Demand Creation - How Marketers Can Incite Hunger Rather Than Just Serving Food from Distilled

Wil Reynolds - Power BI For Marketers - Make Big Data Easy Again

“Don’t bring an opinion to a data fight.”

There are no more broad-based rank factors. There's only what matters for your rankings."

Stop talking about keywords and let's start talking about MONEY!

Don’t just use search volume to make decisions. Instead, use Power BI to back up your recommendations with dollar amounts and actual click-through data from paid accounts to prioritize the most valuable terms for a specific client.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Wil Reynolds | Power BI For Marketers - Make Big Data Easy Again from Distilled

Sarah Esterman - Marketing Emergencies: A Survival Guide

Sometimes marketing mistakes can open opportunities, but only if you aren't too wrapped up in feeling like a failure that the error happened in the first place.

It is vital to set up an emergency response plan and to establish a point person for marketing emergencies.

Sarah’s five steps to dealing with a marketing emergency:

Keep your cool - remember to breathe!

Be kind - when stress is high be kind to others and yourself. Choose your words carefully.

Know the facts - use positive facts about yourself and your abilities to reassure yourself.

Don't freak out - ask questions about the scenario

What actually happened?

How many people were affected?

Is there any $$ to be lost?

How would your customers be feeling?

What are the consequences?

5. Take action - Do you need to respond to this incident? 

Potential ways you could respond to any given situation:

Fix the thing

Email a follow-up

Social call-out

1:1 customer relations

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Sarah Esterman | Marketing Emergencies: A Survival Guide from Distilled

Darren Shaw - Local Search Hacks You Probably Haven’t Seen Before

Hack for driving more interactions on your Google My Business listing: Seed the Q&A section with your own questions you want customers to know the answers to.

Incentivizing customers to leave reviews directly breaches guidelines set by Google. Instead, incentivize your employees to have customers leave reviews.

Ensure consistency with your phone numbers. Add additional phone numbers to the second and third listing spots on Google My Business and Google will tie all of this data together.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Darren Shaw | Local Search Hacks You Probably Haven’t Seen Before from Distilled

Ashley Ward - Reuse, Recycle: How to Repurpose Your Content and Make the Big Bucks

Mobile devices projected to reach 79% of global internet usage this year, mobile-first content strategy essential.

Think about your own user behaviour patterns when you are creating content for your customers, especially on mobile!

Steps to reuse content: Define specific business goals, audit your existing content, create your “gem” list (this is the content you will repurpose), distribution (get that information out there).

Use the content you already have! Repurpose existing content into an ebook, update content with more relevant & useful info, recycle it to make the original into something new. TIP: don't change the URL.

There are two types of repurposing content:

Republishing - find content that had previously been successful and update it with new imagery and stats.

Recycling - turn existing content into new content, e.g. podcasts, videos, infographics etc.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Ashley Ward | Reuse, Recycle: How to Repurpose Your Content and Make the Big Bucks from Distilled

Aleyda Solis - Moving URLs

Simplify hreflang implementation by avoiding adding it to every single page of different international versions of your site.

Migrations require involvement from marketing, development, and design & UX. Collective buy-in and understanding across these teams makes all the difference.

Three reasons to consider using AMP

You can’t fix your mobile site speed.

You need to appear in Google’s Top Stories Carousel ASAP.

You're building a new site and using AMP is your easiest solution.

However, be aware of “shiny object syndrome SEO". Determine what is relevant for your website visibility before investing time, effort and resources into something like AMP.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Aleyda Solis | Moving URLs from Distilled

Brandy Lawson - Smarter Reporting with Data Studio

Creating reports can be time-consuming and feel like a waste of energy, particularly if we feel that no one even looks at them. Google Data Studio gives us the platform to start demonstrating value to our clients/bosses.

Google Data Studio can help cut the amount of time you spend compiling reports for your clients by roughly 50%!

Reasons why you should start using Google Data Studio for reporting: it automatically updated, the reports are interactive, you can add other data sources, it’s versatile, it comes with pre-existing templates removing a whole lot of work!

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Brandy Lawson | Smarter Reporting with Data Studio from Distilled

Ryan Charles - Newsjacking: How To Add to the Story and Earn Big Links in Real Time

Newsjacking requires agility. Can you build something and ship it within 24 hours for that story.

For newsjacking its best to have a connection to the story, there are varying degrees of connections required to newsjack. Do you have a unique and original angle? You need this for it to land with the audience.

Reporters have to generate news 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, they are on the look-out for a story. HARO... Help a reporter out by adding to their story.

If you’re looking to newsjack a story start local. If you see success this will create a ripple effect into larger news organizations.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Ryan Charles | Newsjacking: How To Add to the Story and Earn Big Links in Real Time from Distilled

Will Critchlow - From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words

Early web spam was okay as long as it didn’t make Google look stupid by flooding the SERPs with low-quality sites. In fact, early Googlers saw this as a game of cat and mouse. As this spiralled out of control, this forced Google to produce more complex algorithms to protect their reputation.

Adsense is one of the most underrated things Google has ever done. It incentivised the creation of a huge amount of long-tail content, but it also created the monster that eventually required Panda to fix it.

Where is Google going next? Given their recent purchases, Google is (most likely) coming for the cloud computing space.

Facebook is going through many of the learning curves that Google has already experienced, e.g. content spam/fake news.

SearchLove San Diego 2018 | Will Critchlow | From the Horse’s Mouth: What We Can Learn from Google’s Own Words from Distilled

from Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/searchlove-san-diego-2018-round-up/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#Digital Marketing