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who-ever-said-i-was-nice · 3 years

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Hehehe it's me again xD

This time i wanna ask for ikevamp hc about suitors find out mc has kind of supernatural power. (Arthur, moz, theo, isaac, whoever you like xD)

You can choose what kind powers (like telekinesis or mind reading) xD

Sorry for my absurd request x"D thank you so much beforeee ❤️❤️❤️

Love you ❤️❤️

Absurd you say. I looked at this and literally went YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS! THIS IS GOING TO BE EPIC! So yea totally not absurd and also welcome back Livia. I have missed you!😁🥰🥰 Also I’m very sorry I literally disappeared for a while. I had some important end of semester exams and ye. I kind of made up a few, got inspired by a bunch of comics and anime and stuff so enjoy

Arthur

Your power: Medusa, you can turn your hair to snakes and petrify people at will. Downside: it take a lot of energy and precision, but once you learn to control it it’s pretty cool, it also relies on emotions a lot so if your emotions get out of hand so does this power and that could be really dangerous

Sooooooooo he found out when you kind of lost control

You were sitting in his room when a bird flew in and knocked over the ink bottle on Arthur’s desk and it spilled on everything

You saw Arthur’s disappointed face but you didn’t lose it yet

The final straw was when the bird took a big ol’ dump on the chair

You shook with rage as your hair morphed into terrifying green snakes that hissed in unison, you turned and looked staight at the bird and you captured it’s scared eyes with your now red ones instantly turning it to stone

It all happened it so fast

You sighed and you went back to normal

You turned around and the look on Arthur face said it all

He was surprised to say the least

Also fascinated

He will bombard you with questions

He’s a bit scared not gonna lie but he’s also curious

Isaac

Your power: Plant manipulation. You can grow plants at will, either from scratch or continue the growth of said plant. You can also manipulate them to grow in whatever shape or form you want them to grow in. Downside: you need to know the exact name, plant group, and molecular structure of the plant you are planing to control, after all you are creating plant cells and putting them together,also if you are tired, dehydrated or malnutritioned it’s not that effective

Isaac noticed how obsessed you are with botany

you would dig yourself into a pile of books and you could sit there for hour and hours on end without even moving

he understood you had a passion but little apple baby is scared for your health

so one day he just casually walks up to you and asks you what’s up

I mean at least in his mind he was casual in reality the convo went something like this

“H-h-hey y/n. Um well I uhh wanted to ask you i-i-if your ok?”

“Isaac what do you mean am I ok? I’m perfectly fine!”

“ No wait I meant what are you doing. You have bean in here for almost an entire day!”

You smiled sheepishly, then sighed

“let me show you”

you went out into the garden and you found a wilted rose

you knelt down and placed a hand on the soil at the roots

and the rose started growing back and turning green again, finally it bloomed into a magnificent red rose

Isaac is like whaaaaaaaaaat just happened???????

he’s shooketh

you explain to him about your powers and he’s like damn, nice

you end up nerding out in the library together and Sebastian literally has to drag you two away from your books

Mozart mah boi

your power: water bending. You can manipulate and fluid actually and ice and snow since they have water. Downside: it drains your energy quite fast, if you are dehydrated it’s much harder to control

you and Wolf were just chilling in the garden

you finally got him out of his room and managed to drag him outside

he grumbled about getting his clothes dirty but in the end he sat down on a bench under a rose gate very romantic i know

you were just chatting about some random things it doesn’t even matter

now a few hours prior to you guys going outside it had rained

the water from the bench was all dried up but everything else was damp

the roses actually caught a lot of water and they still had it stored in between their petals

you sensed this but you thought nothing of it

after all someone would have to rock the gate for the water to fall and there was nothing around right?

WRONG

a crow flew by and decided to perch upon this gate

and as he landed he shook the entire thing and water came pouring down

you reacted quickly lifting your hand in the air and stopping the droplets mid fall before it got you and you lover wet omg that sounded nasty. No man like your clothes get your mind out of the gutter

you stood there staring at each other as the water droplets hung in mid air all around you, shining in the sunlight like a million little crystals

he cupped your cheek in one gloved hand and tilted you head up as he met your lips in a passionate kiss

when you parted you blinked up at him, red blush burning on your cheeks and he smiles down at you, a rare smile, one only you get to see

“ We should sit here more often” he hugs you and you hug back as the water droplets continue to hang all around you

This is so much more romantic then I expected it to be. I just kind of let my hand roam on the keyboard and BAM now you have a romantic, sweet short story. You’re Welcome.

Theo where did my van gogh

your ability: Shape shift. This allows you to take the form of an animal of your choosing for a limited amount of time. The more you practice the longer you can hold the form. Downside: animals don’t wear clothes, so that means if you change back you’re going to be..well...naked.

Theo was walking back to his room in his usual grumpy style

he slammed open the door expecting King to jump on him and crush him, but instead he was greeted by a very interesting sight

there was another dog with King there

it was an Alaskan Malamute that had y/e/c eyes that where freakishly similar to yours

he walked in and knelt down to pet the dog and it seemed happy

for about 15 milliseconds

all of a sudden the pup became restless and backed into the corner

Theo approached it slowly, but it suddenly turned into a very naked y/n

you bought your knees to your chest and made sure he couldn’t see anything and then smiled at him

“Theo do you mind giving me some clothes. It seems my time ran out”

Theo has a nosebleed

no I’m kidding, he’s super surprised tho

he gets you something to wear and then you get an ear full

but he’s also curious so he asks you about it

you explain how it works and at the end of it he sighs and ruffles your hear, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips and his eyes gentle

“ You really are just a silly Hondjie”

Thant’s it! I really really hope you enjoyed. I promise to finish the rest of these as soon as possible. In the meantime stay safe out there!

Tags: @nad-zeta @liviavivi04 @jeanstan

#Ikemen Vampire #cybird ikemen #ikemen vampire mozart #ikemen vampire theo #ikemen vampire arthur #ikemen vampire isaac #ikemen vampire headcanons

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firefeufuego · 4 years

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allegrezza: chapter two

Inspired by the prompt ‘Media Adaption’ for RebelCaptain Appreciation Week, I thought I’d bang out another chapter of the coda to my Mozart in the Jungle crossover. Enjoy!

‘Tepoztlán’, the voice of the driver carries down the bus as it comes to a stop and Jyn stands and reaches for her bag before stepping off into Cassian’s hometown. It’s a bit odd to be here without him, but the orchestra’s delayed flight out of Rio left her with an extra day in her little surprise trip to Mexico and there’s something here she wants to do alone.

Tapping in her destination on her phone, she sets off through the streets of the picturesque town, nestled in a valley between the soaring cliff sides of lushly forested mountains. Jyn’s less interested in the landscapes and architecture than the people though, because everywhere she looks, she sees a younger Cassian — in the two boys kicking a football back and forth that could be him and Rodrigo, or the babbling toddler sitting on his father’s shoulders.

There’s a bittersweet heaviness to those fond invented memories that mirrors the ache she feels when she thinks of her own childhood, those early years of happiness making the subsequent loss cut all the deeper.

Still, better than to have never been happy at all, as Cassian would say if he were here. She misses him, even more than she has done for the past month that they’ve both been touring.

She’s supposed to be in Belgium now before setting off for the last leg of the tour in Germany, but the thought of not being there when Cassian played his first professional concert in Mexico (a concert that he and Rodrigo had been stressing each other out over for months) was unacceptable. Or so she’d thought after a bottle of wine in her empty hotel room before shelling out more money than she’d rather think about for last minute flights.

Her phone buzzes in her hand, telling her she’s reached her destination. There’s a stand selling flowers near the entrance and she buys the two most expensive bouquets, feeling strangely nervous about first impressions even though the people she’s buying them for could literally not care less.

After a few minutes scanning the rows of stones, she finds them.

Jeron Andor Lopez and Charlotte McMillan share a simple headstone, engraved with a short message about Cassian and — Jyn notes with a smile — a few of the best bars of the Brahms sonata.

Laying down the flowers, she gets the water bottle and a packet of tissues out of her bag and sets about cleaning the dirt and dust off of the stone, which looks as if it had gone unvisited in some time. She knows Cassian is never able to visit as often as he wants to and he has no other living family in Mexico, which is why he had to move to the US to live with his mother’s dour brother after the accident.

Once she’s done scrubbing, she drinks the rest of the water and sits beside the newly gleaming granite, looking around to check that she’s alone before clearing her throat awkwardly. ‘Hello. My name is Jyn Erso and I’m in love with your son.’ She pauses for a minute, tracing Cassian’s name. ‘You would be so proud of him, he’s just— he’s the best person. I feel like I should thank you both, for, you know, making him. I’m, um, I’m going to ask him to marry me soon, actually, which is kind of why I’m here. I think that if you knew me, and how I hurt him, you probably wouldn’t trust me with him. There are days when I don’t really trust myself with him. But I promise, on every grave in this place, that I will spend every day of the rest of my life trying to make him happy. And if I don’t, you can feel free to strike me down with whatever powers you have at your disposal.’

There’s no sudden burst of sun or gust of wind that she might imagine into a response, but the sense of duty that brought her here still feels satisfied. She feels the weight of responsibility of making that promise to the only other people who loved Cassian as much as her, but it feels grounding — more like an anchor than a burden.

After another few minutes of thoughtful silence, Jyn murmurs a goodbye and starts toward the second place she’d come here to see.

Maestro Rivera’s music conservatory is a gorgeous old building, bustling with young students lugging around instrument cases that are still just a bit big for them. There’s a particular kind of cacophony that only comes from music schools and makes her miss Yavin fiercely.

More than a few of the students recognise her and excitedly ask for selfies and after a few minutes of increasingly awkward smiling and being maneuvered within various configurations of friendship groups, she asks them where she can find the maestro. Two of them immediately appoint themselves as her guides, eagerly pointing out various ensemble rooms and places of interest, including a bin where the great Rodrigo de Sousa apparently set all the school’s Tchaikovsky scores on fire in a fit of adolescent pique. With the benefit of years of living with Cassian, Jyn just manages to keep up with their slowed-down Spanish, though she keeps her responses to a minimum to avoid having to use her apparently comical accent.

About a month after that first recital at Yavin, Jyn — feeling outgunned in the romance stakes after Cassian had so tenderly nursed her back to health then treated her to a series of increasingly lovely dates — tried to tell him how she felt in Spanish, practising in the mirror more times than she was willing to admit until the words felt comfortable in her mouth.

Once she’d said them, Cassian’s expression was almost entirely charmed, but she still caught the laugh he’d quickly suppressed.

Flustered and a little dismayed, she asked, ‘How did I not get it right? I looked it up in a proper dictionary and everything.’

Quickly wrapping her in his arms, he explained between kisses that he’d just never heard such strongly Danish-accented Spanish before. ‘I think your brain just defaulted to the foreign accent it already knew.’

Somewhat mollified, Jyn nevertheless looked up the hardest words she knew in Danish and made Cassian pronounce them, which he did with exaggerated incompetence.

Then of course, because he really was impossible to compete with as a romantic, he took her face in his hands and said, his voice hushed and reverent, ‘I’m falling in love with you too.’

She shivers now as she did then, but her reverie is soon interrupted by their arrival at Maestro Rivera’s room.

The man who opens the door looks like some kind of vengeful Old Testament deity, all stern brow and long, white beard. No wonder Cassian and Rodrigo are as good as they are, if this is who was telling them to practise. His face soon brightens as he takes her in though. ‘Ms Erso, what a pleasure.’ He takes her hand and presses it to his lips. ‘How you have grown since the last time I saw you.’

Jyn opens her mouth in surprise, brow furrowing. ‘When—’

He links his arm with hers and starts to walk down the hallway, raising an eyebrow at the two students who have surreptitiously moved to follow them and sending them scurrying off. ‘Your father and I crossed paths a few times before I retired here. I remember you as a very well-behaved young child at one of his concerts.’

‘That doesn’t really sound like me.’ Hellion had been bandied about quite a lot during her childhood.

‘Ah!’ He chuckles. ‘Perhaps not normally, but you were so enchanted by the music, even then. You followed your father’s fingers so closely, I’m surprised you didn’t turn out to be a violinist.’

‘I nearly did.’ She’s about to go on to explain why she chose piano instead, but decides she’s had enough of thinking about children losing their parents for one day.

‘Now, I think that you did not come here to talk about your past.’ Guiding them to one of the many photos lining the corridor, he points to one with a hint of mischief. ‘Maestro de Sousa tells me one of my other students has caught your eye.’

The photo shows a string ensemble mid-performance and in the first row sits Cassian at around eight years old, face serious as he holds his little 13 inch viola aloft. She gasps out a delighted laugh at his terrible haircut and chubby cheeks, marvelling at how they could have transformed into the razor-sharp beauty of the man she knows.

Maestro Rivera laughs along with her. ‘Puberty really was a blessing for that boy. But so talented.’ He frowns. ‘I’ve always thought he’s wasted on the viola. You know, I tried so hard to get him to switch to the violin, but he would not listen.’

Jyn thinks of how Cassian’s face lights up when he’s playing with the orchestra in a way that it never quite does when he plays alone. ‘He’s too selfless for violin, he just likes making other people sound good.’

The maestro hums in acknowledgement. ‘And of course there was his mother. A truly impressive musician. She played like you, not quite as beautifully as Cassian, but with such fire.’

‘With the blood?’

‘With the blood, exactly. I see someone has been stealing my lines.’ He leads her down the corridor to other photos of Cassian, including one of him and Rodrigo in a string quartet, arms around each other and smiling. Jyn gets out her phone and is about to take a picture of it when Maestro Rivera plucks the frame off the wall and hands it to her. ‘Consider this my payment.’

Raising an eyebrow as she puts the photo away, she asks, ‘Payment for what?’

‘For the piano recital that you’re about to give for my students, of course.’ His tone is benevolent but brooks no argument and she pities the poor soul who would ever try to say no to this man.

Within half an hour, she finds herself seated at an old but well-maintained grand piano and surrounded by students. Most of the hastily-gathered crowd is seated but the maestro has allowed the pianists to come up close and they watch her technique with eagle eyes, making her think harder about it than she has in a while.

She plays the Prokofiev from her current tour repertoire along with some Beethoven and Mozart for good measure. Once she’s finished, the piano students are asked to list all of her mistakes, with any that they missed helpfully supplied by Maestro Rivera.

It’s just like she’s back with Saw, and she makes a note to find his most recent contact details. Rumour has it he’s somewhere in Mongolia doing something interesting with throat singers.

After many more selfies and a fond ‘Hasta pronto’ from the maestro, who’s coming to the concert in a few days, she’s put in someone’s parent’s car and driven back to the bus stop.

While she waits, she gets a message from Cassian. You still awake?

She goes to call him before realising the country code will ruin her surprise and she doesn’t have enough data for an internet call. With a disappointed sigh, she replies, Barely. Talk tomorrow?

Okay. Miss you.

She feels a little awful, knows he’s even more stressed about coming to Mexico and the concert than he’s letting on. But she’ll more than make up for it tomorrow. God, she’s never felt better about dropping two grand on a whim. Miss you too, it’s not long now. Have a safe flight.

Yeah, just two more weeks. I love you.

Who knows, maybe it’ll feel shorter. Love you too. So much. Even without those cheekbones.

?????

;)

#my fic #mitj au #rebelcaptainweek #i promise there'll be a chapter where they actually interact soon!

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hollywritesinstardust · 7 years

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Sister Sinner: Chapter One

Request: Do you do cross-overs? I was thinking Neal Caffery's younger sister works with the BAU, her brother, Mozzie, and Peter on a case, and ends up crushing on Derek Morgan.

A/N: As you can see... I might've gotten carried away with this. This is chapter 1/?; italics are flashbacks. Anon, please let me know what you think!

(Background information: La Cosa Nostra is the Italian mob. Richard Kuklinski, AKA "The Iceman," was a contract killer for the Gambino family of the La Cosa Nostra. The Russian mob, or the mafiya, are considered by the American government to be the most prominent threat of organized crime, which is partly why Keller wouldn't leave the country without the money from the auction in White Collar 1x12 "Bottlenecked." The "former employer" Y/N refers to is Vincent Adler.)

Fandom: White Collar/Criminal Minds crossover

Characters/Pairings: Derek Morgan x Reader; Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, Diana Berrigan, Clinton Jones, Eric Ruiz, Aaron Hotchner, Spencer Reid, David Rossi, Jennifer Jareau

Words: 2,400

Y/N - Your Name

As a freelance CI, you got to spend much more time with Neal without having to sneak around. Although you weren’t exactly pleased with spending so much time with Peter at first, you’d warmed up to him over time and considered him a good friend. (You still preferred his wife.) Where the WCCD team was concerned – well, you were just glad that Diana and Cruz hadn’t been on Neal’s case way back when. They were kinda scary.

The debriefing was pretty normal for a case of insurance fraud. You and Neal had found ways to communicate and distract each other from the boring overviews of things that were of really no interest whatsoever while the rest of the agents sat up straight and raised their hands to ask questions like good little students. Peter had made it against the rules to text during meetings, so you and Neal had started to write letters onto each other’s hands under the table. After that, he started making you sit on opposite sides.

He had yet to pick up on that you were tapping out messages to each other in Morse code.

Don’t look. Ruiz is in white-collar.

Of course, your first impulse was to look, but con artistry taught you to rein those in. You carefully tapped your fingers on the table, just hard enough to be deliberate but light enough not to make a noticeable sound to the agents on either side of you.

Does he look mad?

It was a well-known fact that Ruiz was not part of the cheering section for the WCCD. In fact, he jeered even in team-building sports that you were forced to attend. He tried prying incriminating information out of you when you ran into each other in the cafeteria. He tried to bully Neal away from crime scenes. He was a decent agent, and knew how to get the job done, but he was not a nice person, and if it was fair to say that he was anti-Peter, then it was an understatement to say he was anti-Caffrey, no matter which Caffrey was in question.

Neal caught your eye and raised an eyebrow. You tilted your head very slightly. With those two tiny gestures alone, he had asked you if you were asking a serious question and you had admitted that Ruiz practically always seemed mad.

“Y/N,” Jones said your name suddenly, wry and a little amused. Oh. They hadn’t figured out the Morse code yet, but at least one person had seen you and your brother making eye contact.

“I’m paying attention,” you said, giving Jones a winning smile and batting your eyelashes flirtatiously. “Neal said the painting’s a forgery, the provenances were proven to be forgeries, and now we just need to know who fenced the real one.”

Jones chuckled. “You’re a dangerous woman sometimes, Miss Caffrey.”

“You flatter me,” you responded with a smile.

Neal chuckled, leaning back in his chair. He’d taught you most everything you knew, but the body language and the lines you used for flirting had been taught to you by Kate.

The open conference room door was pushed open wider. You, along with everyone else in the room, turned your heads to see Ruiz.

“Eric,” Peter greeted, holding a folder closed with the spine against his palm. “Looking particularly morally indignant today, I see. How can we help you?”

Ruiz, grinding his teeth and glowering at Peter, crossed his arms and held his chin high, not taking the bait. “We have guests in my department. They’re experts from Quantico.” You and Neal both shared another look, and you beat out a rapid note to him with your fingers.

So he’s saying he’s not an expert?

Neal started to grin but caught himself, looking back up at Ruiz with a very serious and understanding face.

“They want to borrow a Caffrey,” Ruiz finished, very intentionally not looking at you or your brother. Peter smiled secretly behind his hand. He did like that his CIs were known to consistently be the best.

Neal pushed his chair out from the table in a move to stand up. “I’m getting more popular!” He declared pleasantly.

“Not you,” Ruiz snapped shortly.

Both of you turned to stare at the homicide investigator with wide eyes. You pointed at your own chest. Neal pointed at you, seconding the silent question. Neal was well-known for how well he performed undercover. When you went into the field, it was, more often than not, as an observational consultant or a distraction for Neal to get past a suspect. Because Neal was essentially an indentured servant while you had never been convicted, the bureau preferred to place him in the more dangerous situations. Using you made them more vulnerable to liability lawsuits. As such, Neal was the go-to for anything dangerous, and you were more commonly the criminal version of Diana.

Still, you smiled delightedly, showing your best charismatic glee. “People are noticing I exist!”

Peter came over to your chair, put a hand on your shoulder, and stated to Ruiz, “You don’t want her.”

You looked up at him, wounded and a little insulted. The stinging feeling faded when you saw how concerned and guarded Peter was and you realized he was just worried about you. Nevertheless, he was interfering in your opportunity to do something interesting for once.

“Why don’t you love me?” You demanded of him solemnly.

Peter didn’t miss a beat. “My wife is superior to all other beings.”

“Good answer,” Diana snickered.

The camaraderie and easygoing comedy just annoyed Ruiz even further. “What do you want for me to borrow her, Burke?” Ruiz asked impatiently. “I could bring the Quantico guys up here, but they’ve already set up shop with a bulletin downstairs. I will if I have to. We need an informant and yours fits the bill. She’d be perfect if she wasn’t a criminal, but we can’t do better.”

Your first thought wasn’t very polite, so you went with a second one. “It’s innocent until proven guilty, Eric,” you chided, using his first name because you knew it would press his buttons. “I’m an angel. If you look at me in the sunlight you can see a faint impression of my ethereal halo.”

“Actually,” Peter said with a very innocent and amicable face. “Y/N isn’t obligated by any contract to work for me. Unlike Neal, she has the right to make that decision herself. If you want her to make a temporary position in violent crimes, all you can do is present the details to her and let her choose.”

Ruiz looked incredibly upset that he couldn’t just get a leash to yank you around on from your supervising agent, but while Peter was the agent who supervised your consulting work, the FBI didn’t have leverage on you the way they did with a lot of their informants. Mozzie and Neal were always very, very meticulous about keeping your record clean, especially once Neal was officially on a wanted list.

To rub it in, you stood up gracefully and folded your hands in front of you. “Let’s go,” you beamed at Ruiz. “I wanna meet the team from Quantico. Maybe I can ask them about the programs at the FBI Academy.”

Ruiz snarled as he stepped aside to let you lead the way out. “You can’t join the FBI.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” you sang, winking at a grinning Diana on your way out.

“You just wait,” Ruiz threatened. “You’ll slip up one day, Caffrey, and I’ll be waiting.”

“Oh, my,” you said in hushed surprise. “Are you going to stalk me like Peter stalked Neal? This is exciting. I can lure you out to Paris when I’m actually in Brussels, and I can send you some champagne and a reminder to go home to your wife before your anniversary.”

“Shut up and walk!”

“I missed you,” you sniffed, your eyes tearing up. You blinked and let them roll partway down your face, falling onto Neal’s turtleneck and wetting his shoulder.

“You have no idea,” he whispered back, taking you by the shoulders and holding you at arm’s length. He smiled with pride and affection. “You look so much older.” You blushed. You’d last seen him at seventeen, and now you were twenty-two.

“You’re one to talk,” you said, prodding his cheek. “You look ten years older.”

“Yeah, but I’m still pretty,” he charmingly said.

“And modest,” you agreed dryly.

Both of you stared at each other for another minute, hardly able to believe that after so long, you were finally back together. You were going to thank Moz next time you saw him, possibly with a bottle of wine worth hundreds of dollars, because nothing he had ever done for you had ever meant as much as this – as letting you be the first person to welcome Neal back into the real world beyond grey prison walls.

“If you ever get arrested again,” you vowed emotionally, “I’m going to make you bleed.”

You, like your brother, had all the skills to charm at least ninety percent of the people you met – you simply didn’t like people the way Neal did, and you generally kept to yourself. There were very few faces in the violent crimes division that you recognized, even including Ruiz.

He took you to a conference room. It was the same layout as the WCCD, and had several floors’ worth of ceilings and floors caved in, you would then be in the same space as your team, yet again. This room was fuller than the one you’d just left, filled with a tall and lanky man in a sweater vest, a tall and dark-haired man who might as well have boss written on his forehead, a big and strong-looking black man, a slim and pretty blonde woman, and an older European man sitting down around the table. They all had guns in holsters at their waists, even the one that looked like he belonged in a university. Peter carried a gun, and you could shoot just as well as any agent, but Neal’s attitude towards weapons had made you wary around them.

“Hotchner, I got just the kind of girl you asked for,” Ruiz announced, leaving the door wide open. You made yourself look far more comfortable than you felt – when you looked uneasy, people tended to treat you like you weren’t qualified for whatever it was you wanted. “Y/N Caffrey.”

The teacher’s aid turned to you and looked over your face with intent curiosity. “Any relation to the art forger?”

You waved with a smirk. “My brother was never convicted of any art forgeries.”

The oldest man turned a smug look on the blond, who smiled at you apologetically and nervously, and he started chewing on his lip. The guy sitting next to him slugged his shoulder, laughing.

“Reid’s mouth runs almost as fast as his brain,” he said to you, giving you the same sort of handsome smile your brother often flashed. Unlike with Neal, you could tell his was sincere. “SSA Derek Morgan. That’s Spencer Reid.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Caffrey,” the boss of the unit said, reaching over the table to shake your hand. “We’re sorry to pull you from your team.”

“Don’t be. No insurance fraud is interesting unless Sterling Bosch is involved,” you answered jokingly, waving it off. It was no secret that insurance fraud was your least favorite crime to look into, despite having – allegedly! – had a hand in it before. “So, I’m dying to know what kind of criteria you listed to make this grunt think oh, I think she fits the role perfectly.”

The old one raised his hand, then pointed to himself. “SSA David Rossi.” Rossi lowered his arm and looked at you seriously. “What do you know about La Cosa Nostra?”

You frowned slightly and didn’t care if they saw. The last time anything had come up with organized crime, your brother had almost been killed, and you’d fought for your life against a hired muscleman. “The Italian mafia hasn’t had as threatening a presence in America since around the time the Patriot Act was put in place,” you summarized, just to prove you knew what you were talking about. “The Russians have been a more current threat – and trust me, I might know a guy who the Russians dislike, and they’re definitely scarier than the Italians.”

“We’re not so sure about that,” the blonde woman put in with a grimace. “There have been several murders in the Harlem area that have key signs of enforcers carrying out the crimes.”

“For various reasons, we believe that this is the work of a La Cosa Nostra family.” The boss nodded slightly to Reid, who perked up.

“We have our suspicions about the Gambinos,” he said, tapping a pencil against his forefinger with a slight smile. “Although they’ve been generally more in the shadows since Richard Kuklinski’s arrest and subsequent conviction, they’ve left a distinct signature.”

Derek nodded in corroboration. “What we need is someone to get in with the Gambino’s Don. He’s a traditionalist – he won’t trust men without years of rapport we don’t have time to build. Without completely burning a real agent’s identity, we can’t offer out one of our own.”

The boss met your eyes gravely. “I won’t lie to you, Miss Caffrey; this is dangerous. You’re under no obligation. Agent Ruiz brought you to us because he believes you can do the job. As the sister of a con artist, you must realize how hard it can be to pretend to be someone else, even under threat of death.”

You smiled wryly. “Just the sister of a conman? Hypothetically, my brother and I were on our own for years. Try asking yourself how no one knew who I was until I told them.”

“Ha!” Ruiz interrupted loudly, pointing at you. “You just confessed! I told you, Caffrey, you and your brother’s arrogance-“

“Actually,” Derek intervened, raising an eyebrow at Ruiz skeptically, “She said hypothetically.”

Smiling briefly at Derek, you continued to speak. “I understand danger, Agents. One of my brother’s former employers tried to have me killed to send a message. So.” You clapped your hands excitedly and broke into a smile, hoping that the butterflies in your stomach would dissipate sooner rather than later. “When do I start?”

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isearchgoood · 4 years

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The Dirty Little Featured Snippet Secret: Where Humans Rely on Algorithmic Intervention [Case Study]

Posted by brodieclarkconsulting

I recently finished a project where I was tasked to investigate why a site (that receives over one million organic visits per month) does not rank for any featured snippets.

This is obviously an alarming situation, since ~15% of all result pages, according to the MozCast, have a featured snippet as a SERP feature. The project was passed on to me by an industry friend. I’ve done a lot of research on featured snippets in the past. I rarely do once-off projects, but this one really caught my attention. I was determined to figure out what issue was impacting the site.

In this post, I detail my methodology for the project that I delivered, along with key takeaways for my client and others who might be faced with a similar situation. But before I dive deep into my analysis: this post does NOT have a fairy-tale ending. I wasn’t able to unclog a drain that resulted in thousands of new visitors.

I did, however, deliver massive amounts of closure for my client, allowing them to move on and invest resources into areas which will have a long-lasting impact.

Confirming suspicions with Big Data

Now, when my client first came to me, they had their own suspicions about what was happening. They had been advised by other consultants on what to do.

They had been told that the featured snippet issue was stemming from either:

1. An issue relating to conflicting structured data on the site

2. An issue relating to messy HTML which was preventing the site from appearing within featured snippet results

I immediately shut down the first issue as a cause for featured snippets not appearing. I’ve written about this topic extensively in the past. Structured data (in the context of schema.org) does NOT influence featured snippets. You can read more about this in my post on Search Engine Land.

As for the second point, this is more close to reality, yet also��so far from it. Yes, HTML structure does help considerably when trying to rank for featured snippets. But to the point where a site that ranks for almost a million keywords but doesn’t rank for any featured snippets at all? Very unlikely. There’s more to this story, but let’s confirm our suspicions first.

Let’s start from the top. Here’s what the estimated organic traffic looks like:

Note: I’m unable to show the actual traffic for this site due to confidentiality. But the monthly estimation that Ahrefs gives of 1.6M isn’t far off.

Out of the 1.6M monthly organic visits, Ahrefs picks up on 873K organic keywords. When filtering these keywords by SERP features with a featured snippet and ordering by position, you get the following:

I then did similar research with both Moz Pro using their featured snippet filtering capabilities as well as SEMrush, allowing me to see historical ranking.

All 3 tools displaying the same result: the site did not rank for any featured snippets at all, despite ~20% of my client's organic keywords including a featured snippet as a SERP feature (higher than the average from MozCast).

It was clear that the site did not rank for any featured snippets on Google. But who was taking this position away from my client?

The next step was to investigate whether other sites are ranking within the same niche. If they were, then this would be a clear sign of a problem.

An “us” vs “them” comparison

Again, we need to reflect back to our tools. We need our tools to figure out the top sites based on similarity of keywords. Here’s an example of this in action within Moz Pro:

Once we have our final list of similar sites, we need to complete the same analysis that was completed in the previous section of this post to see if they rank for any featured snippets.

With this analysis, we can figure out whether they have featured snippets displaying or not, along with the % of their organic keywords with a featured snippet as a SERP feature.

The next step is to add all of this data to a Google Sheet and see how everything matches up to my client's site. Here’s what this data looks like for my client:

I now need to dig deeper into the sites in my table. Are they really all that relevant, or are my tools just picking up on a subset of queries that are similar?

I found that from row 8 downwards in my table, those sites weren’t all that similar. I excluded them from my final dataset to keep things as relevant as possible.

Based on this data, I could see 5 other sites that were similar to my clients. Out of those five sites, only one had results where they were ranking within a featured snippet.

80% of similar sites to my client's site had the exact same issue. This is extremely important information to keep in mind going forward.

Although the sample size is considerably lower, one of those sites has ~34% of search results that they rank for where they are unable to be featured. Comparatively, this is quite problematic for this site (considering the 20% calculation from my client's situation).

This analysis has been useful in figuring out whether the issue was specific to my client or the entire niche. But do we have guidelines from Google to back this up?

Google featured snippet support documentation

Within Google’s Featured Snippet Documentation, they provide details on policies surrounding the SERP feature. This is public information. But I think a very high percentage of SEOs aren’t aware (based on multiple discussions I’ve had) of how impactful some of these details can be.

For instance, the guidelines state that:

"Because of this prominent treatment, featured snippet text, images, and the pages they come from should not violate these policies."

They then mention 5 categories:

Sexually explicit

Hateful

Violent

Dangerous and harmful

Lack consensus on public interest topics

Number five in particular is an interesting one. This section is not as clear as the other four and requires some interpretation. Google explains this category in the following way:

"Featured snippets about public interest content — including civic, medical, scientific, and historical issues — should not lack well-established or expert consensus support."

And the even more interesting part in all of this: these policies do not apply to web search listings nor cause those to be removed.

It can be lights out for featured snippets if you fall into one of these categories, yet you can still be able to rank highly within the 10-blue-link results. A bit of an odd situation.

Based on my knowledge of the client, I couldn’t say for sure whether any of the five categories were to blame for their problem. It was sure looking like it was algorithmic intervention (and I had my suspicions about which category was the potential cause).

But there was no way of confirming this. The site didn’t have a manual action within Google Search Console. That is literally the only way Google could communicate something like this to site owners.

I needed someone on the inside at Google to help.

The missing piece: Official site-specific feedback from Google

One of the most underused resources in an SEOs toolkit (based on my opinion), are the Google Webmaster Hangouts held by John Mueller.

You can see the schedule for these Hangouts on YouTube here and join live, asking John a question in person if you want. You could always try John on Twitter too, but there’s nothing like video.

You’re given the opportunity to explain your question in detail. John can easily ask for clarification, and you can have a quick back-and-forth that gets to the bottom of your problem.

This is what I did in order to figure out this situation. I spoke with John live on the Hangout for ~5 minutes; you can watch my segment here if you’re interested. The result was that John gave me his email address and I was able to send through the site for him to check with the ranking team at Google.

I followed up with John on Twitter to see if he was able to get any information from the team on my clients situation. You can follow the link above to see the full piece of communication, but John’s feedback was that there wasn't a manual penalty being put in place for my client's site. He said that it was purely algorithmic. This meant that the algorithm was deciding that the site was not allowed to rank within featured snippets.

And an important component of John’s response:

If a site doesn’t rank for any featured snippets when they're already ranking highly within organic results on Google (say, within positions 1–5), there is no way to force it to rank.

For me, this is a dirty little secret in a way (hence the title of this article). Google’s algorithms may decide that a site can’t show in a featured snippet (but could rank #2 consistently), and there's nothing a site owner can do.

...and the end result?

The result of this, in the specific niche that my client is in, is that lots of smaller, seemingly less relevant sites (as a whole) are the ones that are ranking in featured snippets. Do these sites provide the best answer? Well, the organic 10-blue-links ranking algorithm doesn’t think so, but the featured snippet algorithm does.

This means that the site has a lot of queries which have a low CTR, resulting in considerably less traffic coming through to the site. Sure, featured snippets sometimes don’t drive much traffic. But they certainly get a lot more attention than the organic listings below:

Based on the Nielsen Norman Group study, when SERP features (like featured snippets) were present on a SERP, they found that they received looks in 74% of cases (with a 95% confidence interval of 66–81%). This data clearly points to the fact that featured snippets are important for sites to rank within where possible, resulting in far greater visibility.

Because Google’s algorithm is making this decision, it's likely a liability thing; Google (the people involved with the search engine) don’t want to be the ones to have to make that call. It’s a tricky one. I understand why Google needs to put these systems in place for their search engine (scale is important), but communication could be drastically improved for these types of algorithmic interventions. Even if it isn’t a manual intervention, there ought to be some sort of notification within Google Search Console. Otherwise, site owners will just invest in R&D trying to get their site to rank within featured snippets (which is only natural).

And again, just because there are categories available in the featured snippet policy documentation, that doesn’t mean that the curiosity of site owners is always going to go away. There will always be the “what if?”

Deep down, I’m not so sure Google will ever make this addition to Google Search Console. It would mean too much communication on the matter, and could lead to unnecessary disputes with site owners who feel they’ve been wronged. Something needs to change, though. There needs to be less ambiguity for the average site owner who doesn’t know they can access awesome people from the Google Search team directly. But for the moment, it will remain Google’s dirty little featured snippet secret.

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whitelabelseoreseller · 4 years

Text

The Dirty Little Featured Snippet Secret: Where Humans Rely on Algorithmic Intervention [Case Study]

Posted by brodieclarkconsulting

I recently finished a project where I was tasked to investigate why a site (that receives over one million organic visits per month) does not rank for any featured snippets.

I did, however, deliver massive amounts of closure for my client, allowing them to move on and invest resources into areas which will have a long-lasting impact.

Confirming suspicions with Big Data

Now, when my client first came to me, they had their own suspicions about what was happening. They had been advised by other consultants on what to do.

They had been told that the featured snippet issue was stemming from either:

1. An issue relating to conflicting structured data on the site

2. An issue relating to messy HTML which was preventing the site from appearing within featured snippet results

As for the second point, this is more close to reality, yet also so far from it. Yes, HTML structure does help considerably when trying to rank for featured snippets. But to the point where a site that ranks for almost a million keywords but doesn’t rank for any featured snippets at all? Very unlikely. There’s more to this story, but let’s confirm our suspicions first.