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andydona-chan · 3 years

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The missing plaques of the memorial

Read at AO3!

This one here is the last entry for Ectober as a fanfic since for ectober week I made fanart, it combines the last prompts theft/ruins, it's a bit darker than I expected, I used to the song Bad Dream from Keane when picturing the Danny that became Dan in TUE, if you can hear it either while or after reading this it would be a great way to compliment this fic. Hope you like it!

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The leftover ruins and the statue that had been placed in that street were very recent, after all, the local business that had already been closed due to an explosion, exploded again killing 5 people, this time the problem had been caused by a ghost and it was ironic and sad that the very ghost hunters of the city had been killed in the act. The memorial had been requested by Vlad Masters who had also paid for it to remain unmoved, something that the Major had accepted so long as the amount helped cover some of the damages caused by the explosion on the nearby buildings, once that was agreed on, the fence that was placed around the ruins of the Nasty Burger and the statues adorned with the metal plaques with the names and information there, were installed.

People of Amity Park had never imagined that one day they will mourn the Fenton family, almost all of its members had died on that day along with two other teenagers, the only survivor, Danny Fenton, had been affected by the loss, returning to his home that night accompanied by the police and waiting for Vlad Masters to arrive to take his custody as his godfather with an expressionless face, the boy had lost everything but somehow, he wasn't crying.

Days later they had held a funeral for all the victims, Danny's pale face and red eyes along with his automatic motions talked about how much this hurt him. His aunt Alicia had tried to comfort him, even the Manson and the Foley had tried to reach out to him and help him, but he could only look at them with sorrowful eyes unable to say or do much more than a short apology that felt like heavy regret, after a quick hug and encouragement words, the three families affected had given their relatives the final goodbye.

A week later Danny Fenton had moved out of Fenton Works to go live with Vlad Masters in Wisconsin, the students in his class the ones waving him goodbye even if Danny didn't take his eyes from the ground, he didn't even look back to the house. He climbed into the limousine sent for him with his purple school bag and closed the door, seemingly to never come back to Amity Park.

Of course, Vlad had done more than just take Danny with him, the stuff belonging to the household, were either sold or moved to a warehouse containing only what Danny had selected. The lab had been dismantled and the portal had been shut down and closed during the only week they stayed at Amity Park, however, Vlad made sure to take with him the inventions that could be useful for him and Danny in the future, not that the boy knew about everything.

Though they had found out that the portal couldn't be 'closed', it could only have the doors closed and the joints melted to keep any ghost from entering, so that's what they had done, building an additional wall in front of it as if to hide the doorway to the Ghost Zone only.

Most people wondered what would happen with Danny Fenton after that, will he just forget about his life in Amity Park? How long will the memory or the story of what happened to haunt him? It was something no one could wonder for more than a month, it had been just a couple of weeks since the incident, the memorial was built and the neighbors of the area had even had a short event to remember and reflect on what had happened. The Red Huntress had been invited to talk about ghost safety, she took it upon herself to protect them from any ghosts from now on.

Val had never told anyone how her father had been at Fenton Works helping with the lab, making sure to get copies of some papers and blueprints to develop weapons to help his daughter. They hadn't even mentioned that he had a copy of the key to Fenton Works, given by Vlad Masters in person who asked him to keep visiting and making sure the portal remained undisturbed.

Then one morning, unexpectedly, the news talked about how Vlad Master's mansion had been attacked, the place looked like if something had exploded there too, however, if you looked into it more, the pattern of focused attacks would show, and the trail of ectoplasm let the investigators know what kind of culprit they would be looking for, neither Danny Fenton nor Vlad Masters were seen again.

However, it didn't take long for the criminal to be back to the crime scene, as the saying goes, only, not many knew how much the place represented the reason why this ghost existed. Fusing with Vlad's ghost side had been difficult, Dan had managed to keep control of his new firm but from time to time one of the original personalities would take over.

Right now Danny was in control, invisible while moving through the fence and into the ruins. He sat down on one of the partially destroyed booths of the Nasty Burger, the usual red color dirty and darker with dust and damaged by the fire. Using also the fragile support of a broken table he crossed his arms over it and cried, he didn't care if someone heard him, they didn't matter, he was finally letting out all of the pain this situation had brought into his life… death… it didn't matter, nobody else mattered anymore.

The place that had held so many good memories about his friends and family, hanging out with them and eating with them was now blurry and painful reminders of something he would have loved to appreciate more, so he cried, loud and ugly as many people called it, cause he was alone, sad and with nothing and no one to turn to… he couldn't go to his aunt, she will never understand what he was now…

A loud thunder made the already damaged structure shake, followed by a heavy downpour that immediately started to drench the place, creating puddles and mud, not even the parts where the ceiling was still holding up avoided the water as it fell diagonally into the place, soaking everything up, the corrupted ghost allowed himself to turn visible and tangible, feeling the rain falling over him, he wished that it would somehow turn off the flames that used to be his hair, he had become a monster, who cared if he was a bald ugly one?

Feeling the pain as a physical wound, pulsing inside him with each sob he couldn't hold back he floated above the ruins and cried, his wail was still weak, but he could feel the energy it was taking out of him, he wasn't going to last long like this. He tensed himself, pulling at his muscles until he had bent into a fetal position, holding himself hard until it hurt, he wanted to turn into a rock and be cold and lifeless and feelingless just like the frozen figures that someone had sculpted with the face of his family and friends down below…

After a couple of minutes, tired of the position he allowed gravity to pull him down, he stood there, still feeling the rain over him, the dark gray sky roaring with thunder as if angry with him, he was angry too, thank you very much! He looked at the statues this time, feeling how his personality started to shift slowly.

Taking that as his signal to leave, he used the last couple of minutes to use his powers and remove the metallic plaques on the statues and hide them, then he became invisible again and left, he couldn't stay here, he didn't want to stay here least his newer personality would want to destroy everything completely, their original intention was to find a way back into the Ghost Zone even if he had to blow up that wall and the doors, and it was just a matter of time before he felt compelled to do so.

He knew in the long run that his fusion with Vlad's ghost half would be complete, he won't be able to be just him again and he couldn't count on his new self of now destroying anything else, so he needed that, there was a small safe place where he could keep them that will prevent their memories from being forgotten or more damaged, even if he lost himself, or the statues, or their graves, at least the plaques would be safe, he would go all the way to aunt Alicia's house to hide them, not today, not with the monster looming on his consciousness right now, but tomorrow, he would borrow a couple of hours to make sure there was still some sort of life connected to his past, it was the least he could do.

The theft was reported early in the morning, and the major made sure to have the names and dates sculpted into the stone instead of in case of any future attempt, they blamed this again on ghosts because of the attacks that had started the very next day, Val and her father never reported the issue with the portal, with the damaged doors that couldn't be fixed or the damage caused to Fenton Works building structure, the statues and the ruins of the Nasty Burger remained untouched after that, people visited the place from time to time, wondering about the original metallic plaques of the statues and remembering the reason behind the sad old ruins of the fast-food restaurant.

They would never know exactly what and how much these ruins and statues really represented, at least not to the one person that lost himself because of it.

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vampiresuns · 3 years

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Look After Your Dead, Part 2 | Prologue, Part 4

✴︎ LOOK AFTER YOUR DEAD, PART 2 ✴︎

4.9k words. In which Anatole’s past catches up to him. CWs: Discussions of memory loss and amnesia, feelings of depression and inadequacy. There’s also a lot of talks of displacement, land and family. The writer gets a little too close to existentialism.

This piece introduces some of my ocs for the first time in an official rewrite: say hello to Leonore Kaur, the dastardly counsellor with a penchant for drama, Octavia Rei, the coffee wench by day and playwright by night, roommate of Milenko, and Sabine Rei, her younger sibling, all friends of Anatole.

Featured Radošević-Cassano: Valerius, Milenko, Vlad and Louisa (mentioned).

Other Lore: The ‘Antiqullan’ range is the furthest west end of the Bulan Mountains, were the country of Altazor, featured in Secrets of An Ancient Moon, is located. Louisa is Altazoreña, making Anatole a first generation Altazoreño.

With this piece we reach the last instalment of Anatole’s prologue, however, there’s one more step before the Routes begin: All characters featured here will come back in an interlude.

What to catch up with this series? You can do that here.

Some people couldn’t help being anything but themselves. It did not mean they were rigid, immutable or incapable of change or growth. No person was that way, and those who refused the inherent mutability of life were bound to break. Instead, these people had who they are, whatever they are, as their guiding horizon — a certainty, a principle they could not betray, a truth they couldn’t deny. When their true self called, they had no choice but to answer. Who they are meant to become is bound to unravel, and once it begins manifesting, these people cannot run from it.

The self can only be repressed for so long. It’s latency is temporary, and these kinds of people understand that. They cannot wear masks, they cannot be anyone other than themselves, whether it was for better or for worse, and their past was bound to catch up to them sooner or later. Anatole was such a person.

It didn’t matter he didn’t remember who he was, because it all existed within him and no matter how much he ran from it, no matter how much circumstance prevented it, his potential would meet him sooner or later. Unknown to him yet, that time was drawing to a close.

Julian had broken into his shop again, which Anatole did not find as surprising as he could’ve. Portia treating him too comfortably, with Nevivic names, was. The way they both pronounced things lingered behind them as Portia dragged him to a nearby alley. Alone in front of his front door, Anatole realised they both pronounced his name ‘Anatoliy’.

Like his father had done the day Anatole had told him that was his name now.

A father. Had he had a father? Where was he now? In a faraway land or dead by Plague like so many in the City? He felt a ripple of his own magic bubbling inside him, he could feel the warmth of it lace with his fingers. Faint and weak, like a newborn opening their eyes, something told him he had a father. If he concentrated enough he could feel a magical tether pulling him to somewhere. With a frightened heart, he realised this wasn’t the first time in the last three years when he had felt such a tether, but this was the first time the headache wasn’t stronger than the magic.

Noon chimed over the City and Anatole, realising he had forgotten the Masquerade announcement, had to let it go.

In the Heart District, a man called Vladislav Elyseo Radošević would grab the arm of his wife, a woman called Louisa Aureliana De Silva, and with tears in his eyes he’d tell her he could swear he had just seen their son standing right in front of him. Somehow.

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

The announcement was a lot. Nothing bad happened during it, but Anatole couldn’t shake the feeling he had been there before, in a past he couldn’t remember. This time, he did flirt with a headache when he tried. Whatever magical thread that pulled to him before had seemed to grow into a tree, and the many languages and words of the people in the square hit him all at once.

As soon as he could, he retreated into an emptier corner by the cooler shadows of the marble pillars around the square. A tall person covered with a cloak, their scent myrrh-heavy was also around the corner. They seemed to want to avoid people at all costs, so Anatole gave them berth: sometimes you just wanted to be left alone to your own devices.

Away from the flock of people he began realising how much he had pushed away on the last days, because he had not had a moment to himself.

With every breath the scent of Myrrh reached his nose. Recognition hit him all at once. He turned his head to the stranger.

“You were guarding my shop the other morning.”

“I tried to warn you.”

When Anatole spoke again, the stranger turned. He followed them all the way into the market, but when he lost them, he began looking around him, not sure how he ended up in the market at all. Distracted, he collided into a cart as he turned around himself. Someone offered him a hand to stand up — a man with thick black hair that reached his shoulders, pulled away from his face in a half-bun, sparkling dark brown eyes and an easiness to his voice when he spoke, as if the entire world was his friend.

“Whoa, my guy, you took a pretty nasty fall, are you—”

The man went completely silent, his mouth hanging half open as Anatole stood before him awkwardly. He cleared his throat.

“I know you just helped me stand up, but are you alright?”

“I’m, I’m, sorry I must be seeing things because you look just like—”

Somewhere behind him, a willowy person with fair skin and purple eyes, short hair accompanied by someone who looked a lot like them but with long, curly hair walked towards the man.

“Hey, Leonore, what happened?” The one with curly hair asked, while the willowy one looked at Anatole and dropped everything they were holding.

“Holy shit. Holy shit. Anatole?”

The man who helped him stand, Leonore, shook himself. “It’s okay, Sabine, my guy here just fell, and I’m sure this is a very whacky coincidence since Anatole is d—”

“But my name is Anatole,” he said. Everyone looked at each other in silence. Anatole didn’t know what was happening, all he knew is that these people knew him, he knew nothing of them. He felt one of Asra’s cards tug at him in his pocket.

“Excuse me, I’m afraid I don’t know who you are and I, I— I have to go.” Before anyone could stop him, Anatole sprinted back to the Main Square.

The first time he felt that pull of recognition, that thread to be followed had been with his own name after he woke up from his ‘accident’. He had tried to ask Asra about it, but he couldn’t remember a time where the magician even tried to address the question. Anatole had asked him about that too, and satisfied with the truth in Asra’s words that it wasn’t about Anatole himself why he couldn’t tell him, he stopped asking. Whatever answer would either never come to him, or he would have to get it himself.

The second time was with Asra himself: he knew nothing of why or how Asra had become someone important to him, but he knew his was a well-loved face.

Then it was his aunt, Antupillán, until it was one little thing on top of each other forming a figure which stood in the fog, slipping through Anatole’s fingers every time. His headaches always made him recede, go back to the safety of a cool room with little light coming in. Now, he felt himself in the middle of the fog as Leonore’s face materialised in the same way the magical imprint that he had felt before the announcement, unknowingly connecting him to his parents, almost did earlier that day.

Anatole was a single boat in the fog, the sound of water around him as the oars moved him towards the direction of that figure standing in it. Like the people of a forgotten town in the Antiqullan forests who themselves had forgotten the name of everything around them, until they became completely still. Anatole rowed forward as names fell back in place and life compelled him to begin again.

“So you’re Aelius? I’m Leonore Kaur! Medea is also Vesuvian so I could show you two around if you wanna. You don’t mind if I call you my guy, do you, my guy?”

“No, not at all, Leonore Kaur. Though ‘Anatole’ also works, you needn’t just call me by my first name.”

“Leo is fine.”

“No, no, I will use your full name, always, at all times.”

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

During one of Asra’s travels, Anatole had seen a doctor behind the magician’s back about his memory. The visit was mostly unsatisfactory, except by some referrals and some exercises for when he felt he could almost remember things, but then couldn’t, and the other many moods of the standard amnesiac. Not that the Doctor had called it that, but Anatole had to make a little light-hearted fun at his own condition. It was like his attention and hyperactivity issues. He was going to coexist with it either way, so he better barter with them like old friends. At least on the days they weren’t awfully frustrating.

Hearing Portia describe the Court for him was nothing like that. He shuffled Asra’s deck as he listened, pulling the same cards in rotation: The Lovers, The Hermit, The Tower upright, The Fool, the Queen of Wands, and then Death reversed, Justice reversed, The Tower but reversed this time, Temperance reversed, the Hierophant and the Six of Cups reversed. Over and over again, no matter how many times he shuffled them.

He couldn’t have explained anything that Portia was telling him now —all the different Court departments and how they were interconnected, who did what and all the gossip she could fit during their ride back to the Palace— but the moment he said it, he knew it, somehow. He shuffled again. The Lovers, The Hermit, The Tower, The Fool, the Queen of Wands, Death, Justice The Tower and Temperance all reversed. The Hierophant seemed undecided in his position, sometimes becoming horizontal without Anatole touching it.

A card without meaning. A card undecided as Portia mentioned how the Consul’s real name was Valeriy, but everyone called him Valerius like it should be pronounced in the Vesuvian common tongue.

“I had no idea until I saw it on a record! ‘Valeriy of the Cassano of Vesuvia’. With how he acts you’d barely know he is a Cassano, right?”

Portia continued to talk as Anatole shuffled again, determined to do a reading for himself. To what end? He couldn’t say. He just hoped he didn’t pull the same cards as he had been pulling for most of the ride. Portia went on, saying how Consul Valerius was the most important, which didn’t mean he could not pay attention to the others. Anatole did not need Portia to tell him the Consul was the second most important political figure in Vesuvia.

He shuffled the deck the last time, then cut it. “If the Countess is incapacitated, the Consul rules in absentia, right?”

“That is correct! Wow, I didn’t think I was such a good teacher,” Portia said with a delighted laugh. Anatole smiled softly, as he pulled three cards.

The Hermit, reversed. He had lost his way. But why? When? The Ace of Swords. Maybe he’ll find his answers, maybe he is finding them. Anatole frowned at the cards, he hasn’t found shit. Or perhaps he wasn’t seeing clearly yet. As the carriage came to a halt, he pulled Strength, upright. Only it wasn’t from Asra’s deck, but from his own deck, the one which had belonged to his aunt. In it, a figure cradled a City against their chest, like a nurturing sort of Atlas, as light came from behind them mimicking a golden halo. Strength was focused, unwavering, wise, compassionate.

How the hell had this card gotten mixed with Asra’s? That was a question for later.

Had Anatole pulled one more card, he would’ve pulled the Hierophant again.

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

The Countess looked at ease, wonderful in the afternoon light as she played the pipe organ. This would be fine, he thought, as Portia introduced him to the weirdest goddamn people he’s ever seen. If you could call them people — Volta, Vlastomill, Vulgora and Valdemar all looked and felt too off. Somehow the too open eyes, the moist skin, the despairing pulls or the sharp teeth weren’t the worst part: it was how their words made Anatole feel.

They triggered his magic, making his stomach drop. Not only were they lying, there was a threat in their words too. Magic that felt like a sharp note reverberating on every wall, on every new word they uttered.

The only one who still felt human enough was Consul Valerius.

Anatole had never seen a ghost, but he had read some accounts of necromancers and animancers about the sensory experience of encountering certain presences. It depended on the inclination of the magician, the story with the presence and why some of them may or may not feel like something meant to be encountered. Fate as something one could take or leave, as events which happened regardless of whether one wanted them to happen or not — ghosts where like the truth, Anatole remembered reading from one of them, not up to accommodate one’s expectations.

Seeing someone who made the same facial expression you did out of shock had to be like seeing a ghost. There was always something terrifyingly vulnerable about recognising oneself in others. Unlike the other moments of recognition Anatole had had through the day, this time, something screamed inside of him, making his head throb. From between the Consul’s feet, Antu scurried towards Anatole.

Antupillán, who followed Anatole like a guide and a support animal. Antupillán, who did not let people who did not know him be near him at all. Yes, he was a friendly and curious Raccoon who engaged with the world around him, not always heeling by Anatole but always close enough. But there was a difference with engagement and sitting by someone who made Anatole’s head throb when he spoke.

He better have an explanation.

It only got worse. Portia introduced them, but the room had fallen still, the tension palpable as the rest of the Courtiers watched the scene with morbid interest, except for Volta who just looked anguished as she muttered this was all very wrong. Quaestor Valdemar was staring unblinkingly at Consul Valerius, asking him ever so casually if there was anything that was the matter. The Countess looked between them in confusion, and tried to pry anything out of the Consul but he was not speaking. He just stared at Anatole in abject horror.

And was that panic in his voice when he spoke? Very faint, under the viciousness of his words as he demanded an explanation for the presence of such an offensive display? He was motioning at Anatole, rage and fear intertwined as he asked the Countess what sort of sick joke was this.

The Countess could not explain with anything else than how she had encountered Anatole, as she looked and sounded at loss.

Once again, his new found automatic pilot habit kicked into place. What he meant to do, was ask the Consul what was so offensive about him, letting him know he did not appreciate the tone or the sentiment from someone he did not know, so if he could please speak clearly.

What he did instead, though Antu tried to stop him, sounding apologetic and concerned —Why on earth? Anatole half thought in the background of his mind— was walking forward, with a lost and open expression to him, as he screamed at himself to stop. He couldn’t stop.

Like he was staring at himself from a distance, as if his own ghost was possessing his body. “Valeriy—”

But the Consul threw him the contents of his glass of wine. “Don’t you dare call me that, you witch.”

The Countess made everyone leave. She dismissed the entire Court without a second thought. The moment they were alone again, Anatole broke down into tears he couldn’t explain. Although the Countess was surprised at first, standing there awkwardly for a moment, she approached Anatole with gentleness, rubbing his back.

He wasn’t crying about the Consul, not really. He was crying about his fucking headache, and the powerlessness he felt. He knew he oughtn’t push himself into remembering, but he felt it would be all much easier if he did. Recovery was not a smoothly paved road, Anatole knew this, but right then, it was hard to accept.

“What the hell were you doing with him?” He asked Antupillán, angry and confused.

The Raccoon didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry, are you acquainted with Valerius?”

Anatole couldn’t answer that beyond an: “I don’t know.” He didn’t have any explanations, not even to himself. All he had was these unshakable certainties which were starting to materialise, without any mercy for his growing migraine. But he could not speak them yet, he could barely understand them.

He apologised again. The Countess told him it was no trouble. Her words did not have judgement, just honest, tender concern.

He felt Antu’s paws slide into his hands.

I must protect my Anatole, like my Anatole has protected me, he said.

Anatole sighed, wiping his tears away with the corner of his sleeve. A corner that wasn’t wine-drenched. “You better have a good reason not to tell me, Antupillán.”

He grabbed his familiar, plopping him onto his lap. Antu continued to hold his hand.

“I really am sorry, Countess.”

The Countess looked at him with fondness. “From what I’ve known of you, I think there is little which could make me change my regard for you, Anatole.”

She paused, looking like there was something else she wanted to say. “Why don’t we start by fixing your clothes? Such pettiness in a single Court. Whichever was your connection to the Consul, I am sorry it went sour, but I’m not surprised… he is an acquired taste. I have already taken the liberty with your wardrobe, so please, tell me what would you like and spare no expense.”

“You don’t need to. I really can spell the stains away… though I’d still need a shower.”

“Let me, as your host.”

“How about a compromise?”

“Do tell.”

“Using my own wardrobe as a canvas, we take items from it to replace them. They might not be courtly, but I have always been fussy about clothes. I think it matters what one wears.”

The Countess laughed. “I knew I was right in making you my friend.”

“On one condition.”

“Estate it.”

“You’ll let me pay you back.”

“Humble as ever. Very well, our side project will have to wait, as Portia will escort you to your chambers. Your own garments will be returned, but I think you must allow me to choose an outfit for you. I have the perfect one in mind… I do hope you change your mind about paying me back, you are my guest of honour. You could be more selfish, if you like.”

He smiled at her but did not say anything. Antu jumped out from Anatole’s arms as he stood up to spell-clean his clothes. The Palace staff who did the laundry did not deserve to work extra because of some Courtier’s tantrum. Placing his hands over his chest, he took a deep breath, moving his hands away from him slowly as he did. In front of his and the Countess’ eyes, the wine left his clothes, floating in the air like blobs Anatole gently deposited in the glass.

When he took all the stains out, he took a drink from it.

“Can I ask you something else? Do you know what wine this is, beyond well, red?”

“I could have it checked. It’s not from the Palace’s own cellar, I’m afraid the Consul brings his own from his own private cellar in the Palazzo Cassano. That is his family’s seat. From what I understand, the Cassano have been in hold of the Consulship for almost 500 years.”

Now that he heard the name again, Cassano, he felt like someone had hammered a silver plate which set a mechanism in motion. The words had the same feeling around them as the word ‘Balkovia’ did — home, holding hands with ‘unattainable’. Could it be that he was wrong? That home wasn’t unattainable because the gaping void of missing memories inside him meant he couldn’t reach it, but rather, than he hadn’t remembered yet?

There was only one way to know. He’d face the Consul again. He would as soon as he could.

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

There had been a jewel with his change of clothes. An emerald necklace that had traces of Asra’s magic. Traces so strong Anatole could almost pull his friend back to him. He wanted to follow its guiding pull, but it wasn’t a good idea to do it when everyone was roaming around in the Palace still. He waited, and when the halls went quiet he stole out of his room, following Asra’s magic imbued in the necklace until a fountain in the gardens.

He let it drop into the water, watching it fall as the light caught on the faces of the gem, amplified as if the water itself was glimmering. He ran his palm over the water. The magic felt like his own until it stopped: the liquid now a mirror, showing Asra at the other end.

When Asra noticed him he looked surprised, full of pride and relieved to see him. His laughter was like music, like the sitars of street musicians from other corners of the world. His praise felt warm to Anatole, Asra’s eagerness always did, even when the magician felt like he had said too much —like right now, by calling Anatole a man of light, and a man of words.

His eagerness to see his friend won over his apprehension. Or perhaps, seeing his friend like he once remembered him, with his Prussian blue shirt with cream white bishop sleeves and ochre yellow pants. “Was it Rumi who said silence is the language of God and everything else is poor translation? Well, you might be the one exception to the rule.”

“If I did this, I did it in silence.”

“Light speaks through you, Nana Banana—”

“Do not call me that.”

“—It always has.”

Anatole wouldn’t have been able to anticipate the turns their conversation would have. It was heavy, filled with the request of honesty, and talk of the things Anatole had gone through. They talked about Nadia, once she had been Asra’s friends, even if he know claimed they were strangers. Anatole asked about justice, and if he could trust her that way.

“I want to but—”

“But you have a duty to Vesuvians?” Asra said, less heavy than when he was talking about Nadia. Instead, he sounded resigned, like he was starting to let go of a fight he fought out of habit, not because he should or because he’d win it.

“Asra the City needs justice, but not that justice.”

“I somehow knew you’d say that. You can take the boy out of politics, but not politics out of the boy.”

Anatole blinked. “Was I like this before? You promised to be honest.”

“I did,” the magician sighed. “You were. You were a beacon of hope in a hopeless situation.”

“Well, I most certainly have not been feeling like a beacon lately— I feel, misplaced. Like I know and I don’t know at the same time, like—” Anatole told him everything he had omitted before. Him speaking like he was on automatic pilot, like he could see himself from afar only both the speaker and the spectator were him. He was honest about pulls of magic he had felt through the years but never followed, afraid he’d get lost. He told Asra about the Consul, about so many things he had spoken to the Countess like he knew things he had no way of knowing. Not to that level of depth.

He told him he felt like he had been dead before and now he was being born again, only he didn’t know what kind of living he was supposed to be, while somehow walking with more hope and purpose than he’d suspect himself having.

He only noticed his eyes welling up with tears when Asra got blurry. “I want to find out myself, but I need to ask: I was not born here was I?”

Asra’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “No. No, you were not… is there something else on your mind? I didn’t think this was the turn the conversation would have.”

“Neither did I…” Anatole dried his tears again. “I’m so fucking tired of crying in front of people.”

“Yeah, you’ve always hated that.”

“Did I know the Consul.”

“Oh, Nana I really can’t answer that. I know I promised—”

Antole took in a sharp breath. “Then answer me this: I was never your apprentice before, was I?”

“Nana, I can’t—”

“Answer the damn question. You promised.”

“No, no you were not. You approached magic differently than I did, but you sometimes made mine look like a joke.”

“Don’t depreciate yourself to compliment me, that’s not how it works. If I can’t do it, then neither can you.”

Asra raised is hands in surrender. “It was, and is still very impressive.”

“Alright, I have one more question. You told me I had an aunt right? Paris, Paris De Silva… Asra did I have parents? Asra I need to know this.”

Asra was quiet for so long, Anatole thought he wasn’t going to reply at all, but before he could get angry Asra steeled himself and spoke again, looking directly into Anatole’s eyes. “You’ll tell me to stop the moment you get a headache, alright?” Anatole agreed. “You did, Nana. You do—”

Anatole heard footsteps and ruffling leaves behind him and turned away from Asra. “There’s someone. I’ll find you again. I love you.”

Without thinking, Anatole drew his hand over the water, making a closing motion and Asra dissipated before he could say anything else. He stood from his spot at the same time a voice he didn’t recognise asked him if he had, perchance, found a self-refilling quill around the fountain.

“I’m so sorry to disturb you, it is that I finally broke from a very long writer’s block and funnily enough I lost my quill— Anatole?”

As the stranger said his name, Anatole felt one of the heaviest waves of sadness and grief he had ever felt from someone. The man standing before him was dressed head to toe in black, his chesnut curls moving very lightly with the breeze. He snapped out of his shock with a panicked look in his eyes, walking past Anatole fast enough that he could break into a jog as he muttered to himself, frenzied and confused, that this couldn’t be happening again. Anatole tried to help him, but the stranger jumped back as his eyes swelled with tears.

The man broke into a run, leaving Anatole alone and confused with no other option than going back to his room.

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

Once he was alone in his room once again, he cried. He cried until he couldn’t breathe. There was a gaping hollowness inside of him. Something locked away for reasons beyond his comprehension. He stared at his shaking hands, flexing his fingers, trying to anchor himself with the moment. What had happened to him? What had happened to him that he saw people he couldn’t know in his dreams, and friends in the faces of stranges? What had happened to him that one day he had nothing but a mismatched language, latching on his tongue as he asked Asra —who was unable to understand him— a thousand and one questions the magician could not answer. So many questions he could choke on them.

To speak, to exist in language is to exist, and what was he if he could not be spoken? If the faces his hearts conjured for him turned him in horror? If strangers like the man in the fountain walked away from him like he was some unspeakable thing walking on this earth?

If he laid on the floor and closed his eyes, he could feel the earth calling him, but not how it called the dead. If he focused enough on desintegrating into the earth, he could feel his veins open up and flourish until it carried him back to a city he has never been in before and even further than. It carried it to forests where lakes within lakes lied, and it carried him through the desert into flowers which bloomed despite its dryness. Like a stream turning into a river running to the sea, he was born in the high of the mountains, and the city of the wells surrounded by forests and marshes.

One thing he knew: Something had happened in Vesuvia. Something had happened to him, in Vesuvia. Something that made part of the flourishing blood of his open veins pull in the middle of the City, layers and layers down into the Earth like a beating heart underneath the floorboards, foreshadowing an encounter which was meant to happen. Anatole could only rise up to meet it.

Even if right now he felt lost and broken he would. His name was the name of the sun, and the sun always rises. He would be spoken, and he would find what happened to him and this City which had cradled him into existing. His blood flowed here for a reason, and he would find out that reason.

Some people can’t help to be anything but themselves. They will do anything in their power to speak that self into existence, even if they spent the rest of their lives on it. When he stood up from the floor to wash his face and go to sleep, he knew he’d find the truth about what happened that night in the Masquerade. He knew because he knew the secret of his own self was intertwined with it, in the same way he did not need Asra’s confirmation to know he had to have known the Consul.

Perhaps he was the figure in the fog, and it was time to reach it to light long forgotten lanterns.

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blackevermore · 3 years

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x Secrets of The Lake: The Company of Misery and Pain

{ Chapter 9 }

Summary: Vladimir Masters’ family tree has always been tainted by secrets swept under the rug. From generation to generation there have been countless reasons the Masters’ family had seemed to keep private from the public. Even to this day, Vladimir was no exception. But what was one to do when a restless spirit from the settlement years finally breaks free from restraints and demands you answer for your ancestor’s crimes? Vladimir doesn’t know. However, Clockworks does.

Notes: We just having fun, rewriting some of the canon, new adventure new characters. I will apologize now for any grammar, spelling, weird sentence structuring in advance. My brain writes faster than my fingers and even when I go back through to reread it I still miss things. Sorry about that!

Word Count: 3725

P.s: I think it's best if I tell you now the flashbacks are out of order I should have said that earlier but never late than never for a long story owob

Vlad laid across the faint couch trying to recall all that had happened, the more he put everything in order the more he felt his brain about to melt. Danny took it upon himself to watch over Tayonna who was now being held captive in the guest room that had now been converted to a giant ghost trap. Vlad would have thrown her in the basement had it not been a complete mess. Honestly, he would have done a lot more had it not been for Danny playing hero, or Dani needing to be comforted.

This day had gone to complete shit and Vlad knew as soon as he stepped back into his workspace there would be questions. And for every question would be a white lie that covered up the whole water pipe story. Grumbling a butter biscuit or a fudge muffin, Vlad rolled his head to the side and stared mindlessly into the fireplace in front of him. He could still taste the plasma in the back of his throat even though the endless teeth brushing and mouthwash. He even tried to drown it down with a drink but all that did was make it worse. That also upset his stomach even more and he made way towards the nearest bathroom to another unpleasant round.

The mist had scared him. Vlad had never seen anything like it on Earth nor in the Ghost Zone. The way it slid off his body like heavy smoke felt unbelievably weird and made Vlad shiver. It felt almost like an essence of himself was pulling from his body and forming into a very upset vision. Vlad tried his best not to walk past mirrors when he wasn’t in a good mood. Anger was a face he had grown used to but sadness and misery were faint expressions he buried deep inside. The few times he couldn’t help but look he could only focus on how dark his blue eyes got and the way his face grew longer than it was. It was haunting to see or feel complete utter sadness, and that’s exactly what the mist looked like. ‘Like the day you got their wedding invitation’.

“She’s awake!” Dani shot through the door flying above Vlad, she still looked as if she would rather be somewhere else but the hero inside her pushed her to keep helping. Vlad secretly praised her as he slowly sat up and clenched his chest again. The shocks were long gone but he could still feel a sudden zap here and there, along with the sudden tighten and release around his human heart. He strongly hoped he would never have to do that again. It was already an awkward feeling shoving his own hand through his chest. Dani flew down to take his arm to help him up but Vlad held up a hand to stop her as he made it to his feet. He took a deep breath and took a small step, the shock made his energy a bit slow to regenerate, when he found a steady pace he followed Dani out the room and towards the bedroom hallways.

Vlad could call himself paranoid the way he boobytrapped his homes. He himself was a ghost but yet every door was equipped with anti-ghost bars that were turned on by command that could cut off any exit. The statues that decorated the walkways all had blasters installed in either the eyes or the base. Once he and Danny found their common ground he made sure to update the system so Danny wouldn’t be a target anymore.

But Vlad did enjoy that first week of Danny showing up and having to dance like a monkey when the signals were tripped. When he made it to the bedroom/cell he gave the system command to dismiss the bars and walked inside. Danny sat on the floor closer to the door watching Tayonna who now sat up in the corner of the bed against the wall. Her head hung low and she tried to curl into herself. However, when Vlad walked into the room her head shot up and she stared at him with pure hatred. Dani stayed outside and a few feet away from the door. She didn’t want to be anywhere near Tayonna.

Vlad only rolled his eyes and huffed before crossing his arms behind his back and clearing his throat to Danny.

“Any progress?” Vlad asked, never breaking eye contact with Tayonna. If she wished to insert her dominance in his home, he would have to show her who was really in charge.

“I wish, she just woke up and backed into the corner. But she is messing with my head a bit. I almost had a breakdown about a cookie I didn’t eat and threw away.” Danny got to his feet and stretched, hearing all of his bones crack at once. With a sudden heavy sigh, he turned to Vlad and tapped his foot. The older halfa eyed him confused and mouthed a ‘what is it?’. Danny’s face twisted to an annoyed eye roll before he caught himself and backed away a bit.

“Whoa, yeah, see she’s doing it again, I almost punched the hell out of you for breathing the wrong way.” Danny held his head and turned back towards Tayonna. The ghost was still shooting daggers at Vlad and even breathing heavily as if she was about to attack him. “Well if she can’t get to you she sure was gonna use me. Dude, you gotta fix whatever this is.”

“I’m well aware of that, Daniel, It’s not as if I asked to be in this situation in the first place.” Vlad hissed. The constant reminder that he had to fix this was starting to run him up a wall. Vlad took a moment to straighten himself out and breathe before he walked closer to Tayonna. The girl didn’t flinch or move from her spot as Vlad now stood at the edge of the large bed. He kept his hands behind his back to keep it cool and unbothered. Vlad knew he had authoritative energy that could make anyone cowardly at his feet. Tayonna would surely give in eventually and tuck her tail between her legs.

“Now, Miss Tayonna, won't you tell us all why you felt it was utterly necessary to invite yourself into my home and cause so much trouble?” Vlad tried to not sound pissed off, but every word that left his lips he threw like acid. Tayonna’s eyes grew wide then narrowed like a snake as she stayed quiet and continued their staring contest. “Or more importantly, how did you change from your ghost form to a human form.” Vlad pointed out, which seemed to catch Tayonna’s attention before she looked back towards him then away. Vlad huffed angrily and brought his arms forward to cross them.

“You think she’s one of us?” Danny called out. “I mean it would be very rare if she was. What were your ancestors getting up to?” Danny pushed off the wall he was leaning against and came up beside Vlad, he stayed somewhat behind the man hesitantly.

“I don’t believe halfas would exist during her time, she is very much a ghost that has the ability to mimic powers it seems. I figured she must have attached herself to my core and in turn, she mimics my energy. The reason why she could control my electric power so easily.” Vlad hummed, a mimicking ghost was a rather dangerous type especially if they had to latch on to you. For a moment Vlad felt his annoyance and frustration slip away as the science side of him became interested in what more Tayonna could do. With the cuffs still on her along with the anti-ghost rope she was pretty much defenseless to any poking and probing Vlad wanted to do. Those little activities would have to wait, a certain Phantom wouldn’t be too happy to know Vlad was back on his bullshit. Nor would the older halfa wish to explain to the youngest who would definitely tell the other.

“So if she’s not going to talk to either of us, what do we do?” Danny finally asked the big question Vlad had been avoiding. He had thought of just throwing her back into the Ghost Zone and making sure that secret space she came from she couldn’t get out of. Maybe even have Skulker keep an eye on her every so often to make sure she wouldn’t start screaming again or getting out. Or maybe Vlad could keep her here but somehow figure out a way to get rid of her himself. Clockwork did tell him to handle the situation. Vlad was knocked from his thoughts by the sound of paper hitting the ground. Both Danny and Vlad heard it and looked down towards their feet. A small sheet of paper laid at Vlad’s and he reached down to pick it up. He should have known who it was from before he flipped it over.

“Pieces in a puzzle with only two corners will always be bound together” - CW

“What does that mean?” Danny hovered over Vlad's shoulder causing the man to jump away from the sudden scare. Danny cracked a smile at how easy it was to make the man jump then pointed back towards the note.

Vlad rolled the card in his fingers a bit and sighed, “Clockwork sure likes his sayings. You know that more than I, I’m just as confused.” Vlad lazily handed Danny the card and told him to keep it. Vlad was once again looking towards Tayonna to make sure she hadn’t tried anything. She still huddled up in the corner but now she looked so sad, blinking slowly and staring down as if it was a void. Vlad felt his heart slow and grow heavy as he watched her.

There it was again, that feeling of wanting to reach out and hold her, and there it went as Vlad mentally screamed at himself to get it together. She was just using her emotional powers somehow despite having the handcuffs still on. Yet Vlad couldn’t pull himself away from her and whatever she was doing. Then Vlad saw it from the corner of his eye, the mist started to rise off his skin and droop to the floor before inching closer to the bed. Danny saw it too but didn’t say anything, all he could do was watch alongside Vlad as the mist formed an outstretched hand and reached out to Tayonna. When the hand touched her she pulled away and tried to fight it off.

“Leave me alone, you’ve already done enough, stop touching me.” Tayonna had finally spoken and she sounded so broken. Vlad felt a sting in his heart and unknowingly he wished for the hand to go away. The hand tried to touch her again but before it could it faded away with the rest of the mist.

“Um…?” Danny started and Vlad finally pulled himself away from looking at the ghost and turned away towards the door.

“I don’t know,” Vlad couldn’t even fake a sense of understanding as he felt his heartache and his mind become foggy with a sudden sadness. He quickly covered his face when he felt tears peak in the corners of his ears. He quickly wiped them away before Danny could ask what was going on and he straightened himself up. “I think it’s best if I keep her here for the night. It’s late and the both of you have school tomorrow.” Vlad looked at Danny then at the door as he saw Dani slowly poking her head in. He hoped she didn’t see the way he wiped his face, that would be embarrassing. “Daniel, why won't you stay the night and in the morning I’ll have Jackson come and drive both of you to school.” Danny looked back towards Tayonna and felt a sudden rush of sadness. He shivered and threw up his hands to protest.

“Thanks but I would rather not be around someone who's gonna make me have a mental breakdown at 2 am. I can do that in my own time with my special playlist. I’ll just fly home.” Danny turned ghost and started to hover off the ground. Vlad nodded and was ready to dismiss the boy till he remembered Dani at the door.

“You wouldn’t mind hosting Danielle until this is all over would you? I rather she is safe as well.” Vlad asked, feeling the father in him swell with the need to protect.

Danny turned around and cocked ahead to the side to see Dani but she ducked behind the frame, “You wanna go back home with me, short stack?”

“Don’t call me that!” Dani stuck her head through the wall and stuck her tongue out. She then took a moment to look around and take a glance at Tayonna before pulling her head back out. “Yeah, that would be nice.” Dani’s voice was low with anxiousness. Vlad let out a heavy sigh and nodded for Danny to go help Dani and hurry home. It would be best if he was alone with this problem. That was enough people in one night to be in danger.

When the kids were gone Vlad gently waved them away before closing the door and floating back up to the room Tayonna was in. He stood outside the anti-ghost bars peering in as Tayonna now laid on the bed. ‘What exactly is it that you want, Miss Tayonna?’ he thought to himself as he backed away from the door and haunted away towards his own bedroom.

Vladan knew better than to snoop around the house like some paranoid townsmen. There was enough of that when his family travelled into the town square since they were German. It seemed like the English still had a stick up their ass when it came to others joining them. Everyone was an outsider in one way or another but yet found a way to put each other in a ranking system for security. Vladan grunted at his wandering thoughts as he walked around the cottage. Settling in a few days ago was easy but it was still beyond him why they had to be so far away. Could his father not settle closer to the others for a quicker journey? Vladan knew better than to question his father’s mind, Vladan had learned early every man has a secret that only gets revealed with due time. Luckily for him, Luther had no secrets Vladan hadn’t already heard, and vice versa.

Vladan wasn’t really a nature person as he was a man who sat by the fire and read. But something pulled him from his bed that morning and told him to go out and look around. His parents were gone and took the house servants and Luther was still sick in bed so Vladan took his chance. As he rounded the back of the house he heard someone praying. Praying? On a Tuesday? Vladan would have laughed, he wasn’t much of a religious man like everyone else, but the sheer thought of someone praying by his house nerved him. He slowed his pace and peeked around the edge of the wood and saw Tayonna. She kneeled to the ground in a patch of grass surrounded by cups and bowls. Vladan narrowed his eyes confused as to why she would be outside and what she was doing. He couldn’t help but watch her as she bowed a few times and mumbled incoherent words. This must have been a thing her people did before being brought over, that was the only thing he could think of. But as he watched her it seemed like things only got weirder.

Tayonna stopped praying and frantically looked around herself for something. She then snapped her fingers and a basket that was placed behind her snapped open and a jar hovered out and to her hands. She then swirled her finger in the air and drops from the freshly rained grass rose to the air and formed balls. She waved for the biggest ball to fall into the bowl and she began to pour other things from the cups into the bowl. When she was finished mixing everything she placed the bowl in front of her and bowed face down into the grass. He could hear her mumbling again and then the bowl began to glow. Vladan felt his body shake in fear but also pure curiosity. He knew what he was seeing, the men at his university spoke of them like fairy tales, he even spoke of them like fairy tales. Tayonna was a witch. He hadn’t noticed he had walked out from his hiding place and walked closer to the girl until he heard her scream. Tayonna fell to her butt and tried to put space between them. She begged him not to hurt her and that’s when Vladan snapped fully out of his trance.

“I’m not going to hurt you, woman!” Vladan growled, holding out his hands to calm her so she didn’t wake Luther. Tayonna finally made it to her feet and gathered her dress, she looked between Vladan and the forest that stretched on behind them. Vladan looked then shook his head. “Don’t you dare!” He lunged and quickly grabbed her wrist and pulled her against his body to hold her down. Tayonna was about to let out a scream which wouldn’t do any of them any good so he quickly covered her mouth. They stood there struggling with each other until Vladan brought them both to their knees.

“I’m not going to hurt you unless you give me a reason to. I will remove my hand and you will answer every question I have. Do you understand?” Vladan couldn’t explain why he was giving this servant a chance to explain herself. But he felt he needed to. Tayonna was still shaking but she calmed down just enough to shake her head slowly. Vladan removed his hand from her mouth and spun her around to face him, he never removed his hands from her arms just in case. “You are a witch and there is no denying it. Are you cursing my family, if you are I will have you dealt with.”

“I am not cursing your family, master Vladan, I was blessing the house.” Tayonna kept her head low and chose not to fight to get her arms away from him. She didn’t want to be hit or attacked.

“Blessing?” Vladan was taken back and it showed on his face.

“Everyone has been so kind to me and I do not wish to be sold again. I wish to stay until I die and can fly back home. Please do not sell me...I won't do it again...please do not sell me.” Tayonna began to cry and Vladan pulled away from her allowing her to fall to the ground. Witches are all bad, right? All the fairy tales he was told as a child and all the legends of witches only pointed to them being evil beings that caused only trouble.

“Witches are only bad things. Witches do not pray.” Vladan said abruptly and pointed at the girl. “You are trying to deceive me with lies. Are you the reason my brother has been sick the whole time? Do not lie to me!” Vladan hadn’t meant to raise his voice but it came out so fast.

“No! I have only done things to make him better. He was sicker before I arrived and he slowly gets better the more I help.” Tayonna was telling the truth, their mother had only good things to say when it came to Luther’s health recently. Luther had even offered to go to town for their father because he ‘felt up to it’. Vladan was still skeptical but he didn’t truly sense evil coming from the girl. And since he had seen how comfortable she made his brother feel he didn’t believe she would want to kill them so quickly.

“You’ve been helping him? How?” Vladan asked, kneeling slowly to face her. Tayonna raised her head and backed away before answering him.

“His baths, I put the herbs in his bath to calm his senses and ease the pain. It’s not much but it’s enough to help him through the day.”

“Will my brother become healthy again and be able to travel back home?” Vladan had to know, he had to know if his brother will grow old as he and live a fulfilled life. That was his best friend. “Please tell me.” Vladan reached out and took hold of Tayonna’s shoulders and shook her a bit and the girl stiffened before quickly shaking her head ‘no’.

“Your brother was not meant to live this life with you. He was only supposed to be here for a while until he left. I’ve tried to convince the earth to let him stay but it seems that even he is ready.” Tayonna lowered her head again and Vladan finally let go of her and rose to his feet. A heavy silence fell over them as Vladan tried to debunk her words. Surely his brother would live long, they had promised so long ago, but the feeling Vladan got from Tayonna that she only told him the truth. “He was so happy to have you here with him, Master Vladan. He speaks so highly of you, the best brother he could ever have, a best friend.” Tayonna slowly got up wiping her face with her hand and kept space between them, there was no telling how Vladan felt towards her after this. Vladan looked up towards the small window that led to Luther’s room then back down to the ground. He clenched his fist a couple of times trying to fight back tears and sighed.

“Do my parents know you are a witch?” Vladan asked, and Tayonna quickly shook her head ‘no’.

“Does he know you are a witch?” Vladan finally asked.

Tayonna looked up at him with her bright green eyes now tinted red from crying then towards the window, “He was the one that insisted on buying me.”

#📖Ghost Stories👻#vlad masters #Danny Phantom #dp fanfic #my writing #self ship community

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nanasalt · 5 years

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@sfiddy replied to your post “4, 12, 16, and 17 for Glenya”

Good. Damn. It. Kat. I did NOT need plot fodder. Do you even know how many WIPs I have? DO YOU 🔪 God almighty, I hadn't really thought about the moment of 'not my fathers son' that way. It sucks the aggression right from the room and leaves something so bruise-tender that I can't help but prod it. That is a very different vibe from the frustration and righteous fury of identity confusion that comes to a head at the ballet etc. Damn it damn it

You did need it so you will create things I can read and love and cherish forever.

Though honestly, one of the mainstays of this vibe that I should’ve made clearer is that the confrontation - and the aftermath of it - is not romantic. Even that “not my father’s son” line isn’t when Anya realizes she loves-loves him, it’s when she realizes that she’s wildly misinterpreted him and it opens her eyes to the bigger picture.

It ties back to what I’ve said before, that Anya’s selfish and prone to tunnel vision. She never considered Gleb’s motives, not really, because she doesn’t want to. He wants her to stop looking for her family, therefore he is wrong, and she doesn’t look too much deeper. Maybe she wrote him off as being his father’s son and therefore a danger to her since she’s trying so hard to believe she’s Anastasia, but either way, she refused to see him as a person; Gleb’s just obstacle.

The lead in and the confrontation is really when Anya matures out of that. She’s let go of her obsession with finding her family because she’s found her family, but she’s also found that she doesn’t want to be a princess. Even her grandmother suggests that Anya should leave, that she doesn’t belong to this world. The first crack in her facade, then, is realizing that Gleb might’ve had a point when he said Anastasia should be dead with the old Russia, because she is Anastasia and she’s never felt more confused.

Of course, he shows up with a gun and his own breakdown, so she doesn’t have time to consider his point of view too much further because she’s busy being so absolutely, incandescently angry - at him, at her situation, at the world at large - that she can’t find words to do more than say things she knows will piss him off. She wants him to feel just as broken and lost as she does - and she almost manages it.

Remember, Anya’s spent weeks if not months pretty much dependent on keeping in Dmitry and Vlad’s good graces; they were her only way out and Dmitry refused to let her pay for her own papers, even threatened to steal her diamond when she pulled through for them all. She had her little outbursts and was soothed and patronized through them, but - except that night at the ballet - she’s never laid into either of them or sought to push their buttons the way she does with Gleb in the confrontation.

So she finally gets to take out all her anger, and Gleb still won’t shoot her. She dares him to, tries to goad him into it, might honestly want him to, and he can’t. That’s heavy for both of them. But perhaps it was a moment of weakness, and he’ll go back and sell her out, have someone else clean up his mess and do away with her so he can go back to being Deputy Commissioner Vaganov.

Except he won’t and he tells her as much; he’ll cover for her somehow and take his punishment. He never even asks her to give up the title, which means he certainly won’t be able to spin this to his boss; he fully expects to go home with Anastasia comfortably installed in Paris, and tell them he couldn’t kill her, and accept whatever happens.

To Anya, who’s selfish enough to manipulate criminals to get out of Russia, selfish enough to drag an old woman’s feelings through the muck in hopes of getting her own answers, selfish enough to leave it all behind just because she wants to ... what Gleb’s saying he’ll do is almost unthinkable.

So her question becomes, is she selfish enough to let Gleb go back to Russia? Now that they’ve both seen the worst parts of each other, does she want to let him die? Despite everything, she trusts him. If he leaves, she’s won’t have to worry about her safety, or her grandmother’s, or anyone she’s come to care for, but Gleb can’t say the same. If she takes the crown and title, he’s going to be punished, probably shot, and he’s not asking for anything from her except a handshake and to part as equals.

That’s the moment she realizes how much they’ve both been changed by her choice to go find her family. Falling in love comes later; in the moment, she knows he’s human, he’s damaged, and she doesn’t want to see him die for her.

It’s empathy, and it’s enough to change things completely.

#sfiddy #kat replies #glenya #x: analysis #i was gonna add some more but lol #basically in the end gleb needs to learn to be more selfish #anya has learned to be selfless though she's not going to give up what she wants #the opposing move is gleb forgoing his duty to russia and his orders and his family and all of it to follow his duty to himself #they have lots to learn from each other still #especially now that they're willing to listen #(anya realizes she loves him in some stupid mundane moment)#(like gleb brings her tea and she's like 'oh!' and it all clicks together)#(gleb almost loses it when she tells him because he's been in love since they met)#(what do you mean you only just realized?!)#(anya's like 'i had other things going on!')#(gleb has to explain to her that yes love at first sight is real or else what is he doing here?)#(anya's not sure she believes him)#(it works out but they're dumb and bad at talking about their feelings sometimes)#x: meta

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five-rivers · 5 years

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I scribbled a little ficlet because your phight post was hilarious

Maddie dropped the piece of paper onto the workbench. Jack frowned at the distraction, turning away from his microscope and picking it up. “What is it?” he asked, smoothing out the buckled edge where it had been torn from a notebook. She stayed quiet as he read, clasping her hands to hide their trembling as her husband’s face bloomed in horrific realisation.

“It was in Danny’s sock drawer,” she said once he had had time to read it. Jack continued to stare at the paper, eyes moving up and down as though reading it several times. She waited until he finally looked up. “What do you think it means?”

Jack shifted on his stool, pushing it away from the bench. The legs screeched along the tiles, and he gingerly handed the paper back to her. The smile was gone from his eyes. “Mads-”

She clenched her fingers around the list, its crinkling oddly satisfying. “I know,” she snapped, the pity in his tone too much for her to keep listening to. “But why does he still need human things? Why can he even look human?”

Jack was sagging, shoulders low and hands loose and empty. It mirrored the hopelessness in his expression. “I don’t know,” he said, voice hollow, “but he’s a ghost.”

The words slammed into her, and Maddie felt herself begin to shake her head. “It doesn’t make sense,” she choked, a sob forcing its way through her lips. She clenched the paper tighter. “It’s impossible.”

Jack reached for her, and Maddie folded into him. “I’m a terrible mother!” she wailed, pressing her face into his chest while he stroked her hair.

Jack made small shushing noises, his arms safe and firm around her. He was shaking as well, sniffing as he tucked his chin over her head.

Neither of them spoke as their world rocked. Maddie felt like everything had been torn away from her, her only link to the truth clutched in her hand. She pulled away from Jack and wiped her nose on her sleeve, uncurling the paper and looking at it again. “He… He’s hidden stuff in the walls,” she said, the words thick and nasal. “Things that would be incriminating?”

Jack pulled an ectoblaster from its holster at his hip. His mouth was a grim slash, eyes darker than Maddie had ever seen them. “I’ll start in his room,” he said, brushing past her and heading towards the stairs.

“Mind the house support beams,” Maddie called after him, re-reading the list yet again with a frown. It was definitely her son’s handwriting, far sloppier than usual. The paper was smudged and words had been crossed out and re-written, and down near the bottom of the sheet there were the telltale signs of teardrops.

The house shook with the sound of an explosion, fine streams of dust trickling from seams in the ceiling. If they were wrong about all of this, Danny was going to be furious when he came home to find one of his bedroom walls in splinters.

Jack’s feet were heavy above her, and he strode down the lab’s stairs a moment later. In his hands were two things that sent panic shooting through her veins. She stuffed the paper into her pocket and took the items from him, trying not the overreact. She ran her fingers over an old cassette tape from when they had actually had a security system, before it had broken to the point of being irreparable. It had happened shortly after the portal started working, and they had always blamed invading ghosts.

The other item was a plain notebook, with a note scribbled on the front in black marker. The handwriting matched the list in her pocket – Diary. Don’t read!

She looked up at Jack. “This was it?”

He shook his head. The pain in his expression had dulled, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “There was a pile of blasters,” he said, “and some ectoplasm containers, along with a first aid kit and the broken Ghost Gabber.”

She hefted the tape in her hand, feeling the weight. It was as though everything rested on this one little thing. “Does the old VCR still work?”

Jack nodded. “I used it the other day to watch those old research tapes again,” he said, heading over so a small television in the corner of the lab.

Maddie followed him, passing the tape back and chewing on her lip as Jack slipped it into the empty slot.

It was time to find out what was really wrong with their son.

——

And then after they figure it out they decide that instead of confronting Danny about it they try to make true all of the things on the list that they can but pretend to remain clueless. They even put the list back in his sock drawer, fresh laundry carefully placed on top.

So finding the things in the wall? “Oh Danny, did you know that we caught a ghost hiding stuff inside the structure of our house? You’d better watch for that haha, you wouldn’t want them to put YOU there!”

Jack waits in the bathroom, deliberately standing in the empty shower with the curtain drawn closed when he knows that Phantom has just finished a fight. Soon enough Danny flies in and transforms, and Jack simply pushes back the curtain as his son jumps clear into the air for a moment in fright. “Hiya son, could you help me hunt these ectospiders? I saw some in here this morning.” Danny nopes out of there so fast…

They install security cameras EVERYWHERE and make sure Danny sees them doing it. He keeps sabotaging them. They keep fixing them. He doesn’t know how they haven’t seen him transform yet. (Hint: they have…)

They still haven’t figured out the ‘Technus’ thing, whatever that is, so Jack just named their new security cemeras The Fenton Technus System TM. Danny is super confused.

Maddie catches Phantom in a net at least once a week. She rigs them where she knows Danny will be, but is always SO clumsy that she 'accidentally’ lets him loose whenever she tries to move him to better containment. (Danny might just be starting to get suspicious)

Maddie photoshops pictures of Phantom doing normal things, like eating cereal or lying on their couch where Danny likes to rest. She says it’s to help them be more aware of the possibility of ghosts around them. Danny starts losing sleep because he can’t figure out what the hell is going on.

Jack finds Wes’ Fenton/Phantom conspiracy page and deliberately leaves it up on the family computer’s screen. Danny isn’t seen for almost three days after that. For some reason, Phantom suddenly becomes very camera-shy.

The ghost list in Danny’s diary mentioned that Cujo was a ghost dog, so the Fentons decide to adopt a shelter puppy (for ghost hunting purposes, of course). Maddie names it Cujo, a wicked glint in her eye as Danny’s face goes so pale that she thinks he might faint.

They can’t do much about the Guys in White, and they really don’t want to risk anything terrible happening to their son (whose 'ghost’ is seeming more and more skittish and less and less threatening every day), so Maddie and Jack dress up in white suits one day and talk at the dinner table about how they’re hopefully going to be joining the greatest ghost hunting organisation ever! (Danny has no clue that they’re talking about his team)

One morning, when Danny doesn’t look as exhausted as he usually does, Maddie tells him that she saw Phantom walk through their front door and up the stairs the previous evening. She apparently didn’t have a gun with her, and she’d been so shocked that by the time she reacted, the ghost was already gone. (Danny remembers how quiet she was when he got home the night before. He swallows his spoon as the realisation hits him. He has no idea that it didn’t actually happen.)

The next one is a bit more difficult, but Maddie and Jack doggedly follow Phantom every night for a week while he patrols the town. One night he literally turns back into their son in front of them, but they were standing off to the side, so when they blow it off like nothing happened he just assumed that they didn’t see him.

Jack calls Vlad one day, wailing about why he didn’t TELL him?!?! (He’s talking about Vlad not joining them for Christmas. Danny thinks it’s something else entirely.)

Every time Danny gets the hiccups, Jack presses a button that sets off the house��s ghost alarms. When Danny looks away at the commotion he uses a new little spray gun to blast a bit of dry ice over the surface of whatever Danny had been facing, covering it in a thin layer of frost. The wild terror in Danny’s eyes is almost funny, but Maddie thinks that maybe they’ve taken this whole joke a bit too far.

Jack keeps saying that all ghosts are edible and that Maddie should grind them up and use them to make fudge because of ectoplasm’s viscosity. She pretends to actually try it. Cue Danny trying to save them from what he perceives as sheer stupidity. (He steals the entire platter of fudge when Jack tries to have a slice and yells at his parents for almost giving themselves a lethal dose of ectoplasm poisoning. Later that night Phantom is seen sitting on top of the Ops Center eating the fudge, and looking very confused when it’s obviously not glowing in the middle.)

They say that they’ve made a helmet that can read ghosts’ thoughts. Jack jams a normal motorcycle helmet from the shed onto Danny’s head before the poor guy can escape, and asks with a frown why Danny is thinking about Phantom.

It’s been a month, and Danny’s starting to show cracks. It wasn’t what they’d intended to happen, but he’s visibly stressed all the time and jumps at every noise. They decide it’s finally enough, so one day when he gets home from school, they pretend he’s invisible for ten minutes. Jack almost blows it by acting like he can’t hear his son either, but Maddie has a fake panic episode and clutches her 'invisible’ son close to her with big 'sobs’ until Jack can stop quietly laughing into his gloves. It’s sort of like a prank video that Danny had once showed them, but he really begins to freak out, and Maddie finally can’t stop herself from laughing. Danny’s so confused and stressed, and his eyes and freckles have started to glow really brightly with emotion, and it’s that strangeness of glowing freckles that finally tips everything over the edge. They tell him between bursts of laughter what’s been going on for the past month, and Danny isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry as everything finally makes sense.

@lexiepiper Thank you for writing this! It made me laugh, too. I’m blogging this because I think that everyone and the ghosts that don’t live in their houses should be able to see it too.

#danny phantom #submission #from @lexiepiper #phanfiction

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list17robbins · 2 years

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laurasinele · 6 years

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Thanks, Taika of my dreams

Couple of nights ago I had a weird dream. I am on four different psycoactive meds and my dreams have always been colourful to begin with, so weird dreams are not something extraordinary in this household of ours and our mornings usually begin like: “hey, husband, I had this crazy dream today in which Vlad Putin was an aquatic monster and we were seventies cops with horrible staches and fur coats and he tried to kill us by a river and we shot him but he didn’t died so I panicked and just switched to another tv channel and there was a riot in a fancy old theatre on our kitchen table because Jennifer Lawrence and David Tennant had stopped performing a live episode of Doctor Who to elope and live to the fullest their secret romance” (I actually dreamt that and I don’t even watch Dr. Who). But this dream I am talking about now was awfully dull. Yeah weird, but dull. Until...

Before I get to the details of my dream let me introduce you to the man on this picture. This is Taika “I do whatever the fuck I want because I don’t need your validation to know I am cool as fudge” Waititi, better known lately for directing the last instalment to Thor’s plot arch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the colourful joy and delight full of flag waving and redemption that is Thor: Ragnarok. We, my husband and I, love Taika Waititi since we first met him a couple of years ago in What We Do In The Shadows, co directed with Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords (and they both star in the movie with hilarious results). What?! You haven’t seen it?! One of the greatest fantasy comedies of our times?! Go now, I’ll wait.

(Now that you’ve seen the movie you now that’s Taika in it as Viago, waiting for you to fulfil your task) No, but seriously, we love him. If we were tu bump into him on the street we would invite him home and feed him and make sure he is all warm and cozy and tell him what a talented, lovable huge dork he is and that we love almost anything he does. Proof is, I only got interest in Ragnarok because of him because i hated so much the other two that I couldn’t finish them and that is not something that happens to me easily, not being able to finish a movie. AND I LAUGHED MY ASS OF AND I HAD THE GREATEST TIME WATCHING THOR: RAGNAROK EVEN ON HEAVY MEDS AND WITH A DEPRESSION. Because this man knows his shit when it comes to comedy and that ain’t easy.

Well, you are now acquainted with one of the most charismatic directors, writers and actors, with one of the most original and unapologetic public personas of this days. You’re welcome.

Look at that, a happy family with the mischievous son conveniently locked away LOL

Back to my dream!

I was at the cinema and my husband and I had set up one of my friends for a date without her knowing. It was weird because the three of us were sitting apart in little clusters of movie theatre seats, four seats for each, and from where we were sitting none of use could see the screen at all but somehow (dream logic) we still were catching every detail of the movie. All the lights were on and people was talking, it was kind of a special event in which you were welcome to bring your own food and sit wherever you pleased. We were bored and my friend wanted to finish the food and leave because the movie was stressing us out. Apparently, it was about kidnapping children but I didn’t know that until that moment (the me on my dream seemed to know, though). Then, Haley Joel Osment does his entrance in a nerdy outfit and produces a blanket and a picnic basket from a backpack. Yeah, I know, dream logic, ok? Haley Joel Osment was the guy me and my husband had set my friend up with.

So by then, the me inside the dream is ok with everything, it’s her plan after all, but the dreaming me is done with this shit and is bored af. So I decide I’m leaving and I accidentally end up inside the movie I DON’T KNOW HOW.

And there’s my husband and my friend and Haley Joel Osment and they’re all like “this movie is bad karma we out” and suddenly I’m alone and poor Naomi Watts tells me she’s done making the freaked out mom and she begs for me to take her role so she can be the evil mom that wants my kid because her daughter died. I don’t even have kids irl life and I don’t belong in the movie and now I want to know whats happens with my friend and HJO because against all odds it looked like they liked each other?? But Naomi is so beautiful and talented and she looks so done that I say ok and I do the freaked out mom followed around the big ass suburb house full of broken toys by the evil mom aka Naomi Watts. And I was really terrified and exhausted but every now and thens we would stop and OOC chat for a while and she would compliment me on my performance, thank me for the chance or complain about sandwiches in the catering today and I would say “But Nay, I’m only here because some psycomagical shit I didn’t event get to see the set” and she would apologise so much as if she had been unwillingly racist or something. And the we’d resume the chasing. So, apparently, the plot of the movie was that Naomi and her husband had lost a daughter and now wanted mine (that wasn’t there at all), but during the chasing around the house two things were discovered: a skeletal child that ran away from us, thankfully, and a live one, a seven-year-old boy, naked, locked in a closet. I took the boy in my arms an resumed my race around the house but this time I was pissed because why did they wanted to steal a child if they already had one that they were neglecting? I was so pissed that I forgot to run and started walking. I heard I siren downstairs and thought it was the cops but it was an ambulance toy. it was broken and I was afraid it would catch fire, so I picked it up and switched it off, all the while carrying a sobbing, naked kid. But then the sirens resumed and there were blue and red colour in the entrance hall so I ran there and the door stormed opened and there were the Andes fro Hot Fuzz in SWAT gear and... MOTHER FLIPPIN TAIKA WAITITI IN A SIXTIES SPY POSE POINTING WITH HIS HANDS TOGETHER AND NO GUN AT ALL

He is sporting a black suit with satin lapels that looks very expensive, but he wears white tennis slippers, a black cotton t-shirt and an ugly felt pin of a flower over his chest pocket, with ridiculously small deep blue petals. I am staring at the pin when he breaks his ridiculous pose and says IN HIS VIAGO VOICE:

“I’m the Goldblum’s daughter godfather, what happened?” (yeah, the dreaming me was also like whaaaaaaat lolololol)

“They tried to steal my daughter. I found him in a closet. The other is dead”

He took the boy while saying “I always suspected them” and he hugged him while whispering “It’s ok now” to his ear. Still in his Viago voice. Then he looked at me and he realised I’d been through hell and (dream logic) he hugged me simultaneously and told me everything was going to be alright. And I woke up.

Now hear me out, babies, hear me out. I’ve been through a lot for this past few years and when I had that dream, I was on all day in bed 5 day streak after a faint hint of recovery that lasted barely a week and was preceded of months and months of oversleeping and only showering once in two months, medication with undesirable side effects, and well... your average depressive state.

When I woke up from that dream after running up and down the stairs of a house full of broken but never discarded toys, protecting a daughter that wasn’t there, in a role that wasn’t mine, in a place I had no idea how I had ended up in, after saving a naked, terrified kid, after seeing another one go, Taika hugged me and told me it was alright. The very personification of Comedy and Humor came to save me and held me and told me that it was all over now. And I felt such relief when I woke up...

Thanks, Taika of my dreams. Thank you for telling me that things are starting to work like they are supposed to inside my head because I couldn’t tell.

Also, this is very important, if someone could please draw Taika in The Pose from the end? That would be the greatest service ever done for the human race. It’s not personal. Thanks.

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kevinalevine · 6 years

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How Your Website’s Theme Affects SEO & Rankings

The advent of CMS (Content Management Systems), such as WordPress, has revolutionized the internet, with around 5-10 websites being built every single second. If websites were built before only by professionals, today anyone can create a website in a matter of minutes, with little to no coding knowledge.

That creates lots of opportunities, but also comes clogged up with many problems.

After an easy 5 minutes install process, one of the first things most people want to do is customize the aspect of their new website. This isn’t hard to do. The market for themes and templates it’s HUGE. But how does the website’s theme influence your rankings and your overall SEO?

I want to thoroughly thank Vlad Olaru from Pixelgrade and Thomas Usborne from Generatepress. They both helped me out in putting up this article and provided heavy insights about theme development and its relation with SEO. Their ideas are spread out around the whole article.

Why and How Do Themes Affect SEO?

Ugly Design Can Scare Users Away

Slow Speed Will Bore the Users to Death

Bad Structure Will Puzzle Search Engines

What Makes a Theme SEO Friendly?

HTML Markup

Speed & Page Size

Responsive Design & Images

Structured Data

Content Prioritization

API Hooks

How to Find an SEO Friendly Template

Check the Images

Check the Headings

Use the Rich Snippets Testing Tool

Send Them an E-mail

Fix the Theme Yourself

Why Are There So Many Bad SEO Themes Out There? (+ A Call to Developers)

Use Less Sliders (or ‘Useless’, You Can Read It Both Ways)

Optimize the Theme’s Core Images

Make Use of the ‘srcset’ As Much As Possible

Don’t Ignore PageSpeed Insights Completely

Minify the Codes If Possible

The problem is that most users only think about the visual aspects of a theme, completely ignoring the technical ones. Even more, almost every template out there comes up with the phrase “SEO optimized” in the description, many times misleading the user into thinking it will solve SEO issues for them (more on that later in the article).

So after some time, when amateur webmasters start to learn about SEO, the question finally pops up:

“Should I change my template? Can the website theme affect my SEO?”

The short answer is yes, a theme can affect your SEO. I spotted what the source of the issues might be, and, to find out more, I took the effort to ask a couple of theme developers about it. Together, we came up with this article, intended to answer questions for both users and developers.

Knowing these technical aspects can help you make a more educated decision when purchasing a theme. You’ll still have to optimize your site for the best results, but the theme can help you solve a lot of problems from the start.

While I will be talking a lot about WordPress, these things apply to other CMSs, such as Joomla, Drupal and Magento.

Why and How Do Themes/Templates Affect SEO?

A long long time ago, SEO used to be very easy. Put up a bunch of keywords somewhere, and you were all set. If that wasn’t enough, just build some links and you’ll definitely rank.

Today, however, a lot more search ranking factors have been developed, from necessity. A lot of people have been abusing the old ways of doing SEO, so optimization had to adapt in order to return useful results for the users.

Design aside, themes and templates are a very big part of a website’s structure, and they also can affect speed. If you don’t get all of these three things lined up and working well together, you’re prone to see lower rankings, even if your content is good.

Ugly Design Will Scare the Users Away

If your design is too clogged up with things, it might turn off readers. You have to find a balance between ad and content placement, user experience and looks. Don’t think just about what you like, but think about what your target audience might like.

For example, many people tend to create their websites using a flat design, but sometimes, flat design actually causes confusion for the users because they have no idea where they can actually click. This can eventually affect your revenue and overall rankings.

You can clearly see at the bottom of the left picture that people focused more on the target link, because the target link was uppercase, bold, blue and underlined, instead of just having the same font. On the other side, people focused more on the heading, as the click signal was not strong enough.

Since the heading wasn’t actually clickable, this could have led to a bad user experience, as people would try to click the heading in vain. Google uses user experience as a ranking factor, so getting people to navigate your site easily is a good idea.

Sometimes, you have to give up on your favorite version of the design, simply because it doesn’t work as well. With a little bit of extra work you can find the right balance.

Slow Speed Will Bore the Users to Death

People hate it when they have to wait a long time for websites to load, and truth is most websites load really slow. On 3G mobile connections, the average load time for a website is 19 seconds. It’s estimated that about 50% of users leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This will increase your bounce rate and reduce your revenue.

One of the solutions Google brought us are Accelerated Mobile Pages. However, these pages are still limited in a number of ways, and many webmasters don’t want to use them.

If a user leaves your website or blog before it even loads, clearly their experience with it was 0. Google notices this and tries to return the fastest loading results to its users.

You theme has to help the site load pages as fast as possible in order to keep visitors happy.

Bad Structure Will Puzzle Search Engines

Search engines don’t really see the website. Instead, they see the code behind it. If that code is not well structured, and HTML tags aren’t correctly placed, search engines won’t understand what the website is about very well.

For example, many templates could be using multiple H1 tags to style text on the homepage. Good for design, but bad for SEO. Hell, many templates could be ignoring the headings altogether, leaving your pages with just the title tag and some divs. Google can still understand the text in the divs, but the important content won’t be highlighted anymore.

Structure is also closely related to speed. The code has prioritized the loading of the visible content. This content is often referred to as ‘above the fold’. Even if your website loads fast, if certain elements that are towards the bottom of the page are loaded before the ones at the top of the page, search engines will notice it and consider it a bad practice.

What Makes a Theme SEO Friendly?

Let’s get things straight: a theme or template has the main purpose of making your website look good. Being SEO Friendly is a side benefit. But this side benefit is so demanded these days, that almost every theme out there is now “SEO Optimized” or “SEO friendly”.

Really. Go on and visit ThemeForest and check out the WooCommerce section. Open up the first 3 premium themes that pop-up and do a CTRL + F search for SEO.

Vlad Olaru from Pixelgrade and Tom Usborne from Generatepress both disclose the SEO capabilities of themes and templates:

A WordPress theme does not represent a WordPress based website. It is a very important part of it but it has its limitations. A template can’t account for a bad server, not using a cache plugin or not writing relevant titles and content. VLAD OLARU Co-Founder and Developer at PixelGrade / @vladpotter

Content is the most important factor when it comes to ranking high, so the best thing a theme can do is keep things fast and let the content do the rest of the work. Thomas Usborne Founder and Developer at GeneratePress / @tomusborne

Sure, content is one of the most important parts of a website, and templates do not have full responsibility on making your website SEO friendly. They don’t affect things such as URLs or the entire site architecture.

However, what templates do affect is every single page on your website, be it in a negative way or in a positive way.

You see… a website template can be just like an uncomfortable suit. It looks good, but walking in it all day long doesn’t work too well.

So what exactly makes a theme SEO friendly?

I’ll give you a hint: having a titles and meta descriptions section built in a theme won’t make it SEO friendly. For that, we have WordPress SEO by Yoast. Adding options like these will only make it heavier.

That being said, here are some things to consider when determining the SEO friendliness of a template, from both Tom and Vlad, as well as cognitiveSEO:

HTML Markup:

The HTML is the most important part of a theme’s SEO friendliness. It stands at the core of what search engines see. Templates have to make it easy for search engines to digest the content of the website. The HTML5 tags must be wisely used in order to correctly highlight the most important parts of the content and their subordinates.

If the HTML doesn’t make sense, and title tags, for example, stand at the bottom of a page instead of the top, Google won’t like that. Now that is a very unlikely case, but as I said earlier, some premium themes completely miss out on all the headings.

Most web developers comply with quality guidelines when it comes to coding HTML, but if they don’t know the fact that H1 tags carry more weight in search engines, they won’t use them wisely.

Speed & Page Size:

People don’t like it when websites load slowly. A poorly developed theme can cause websites to load slowly. Of course, other factors are involved, such as the server or the user’s internet connection and device performance.

Still, a theme should first try to render the upper part of the website, called above the fold. If other elements from the bottom load before, the site will appear to be loading slowly.

When parts of the website start rendering chaotically, users might think the website is bugged out or broken. If you ever saw a website that first loads plain text and then renders the graphics and positions, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

The code files should take up as little space as possible. For example, calling a class twice will take up more space than just calling it once.

.class { text-align:center; } .class { color:red }

.class { text-align:center; color:red; }

Some files can also be minified, which will reduce download time even more.

Responsive Design & Images

Today, responsive design is the standard. If your website doesn’t load well on mobile devices, you can lose more than 50% of the traffic. Having a single design and code that fits all screen widths well is hard to achieve. Most responsive designs use the same CSS file for all widths, although there is an option to load them separately:

Although it’s good to save as many as possible, CSS codes don’t take up too much space.

Images, on the other side, are by far the most problematic thing when it comes to websites. It makes them slow, and displaying the perfectly sized image for each and every screen width is almost impossible. Developers should use the ‘srcset’ attribute on images to load the image size closest to the width of the screen. There’s no point in downloading a 1000×1000 pixels image if you’re going to display it as 500×500.

Structured Data

Schema.org markup is really useful for engines. This is especially the case when it comes to eCommerce sites. Search engines can display certain parts of your website directly in the search engine, making your result stand out. These results are called rich snippets.

One of the most common types of rich snippets is the review stars snippet:

Other snippets can include things such as the price:

Content Prioritization

A theme should effectively point out to the search engines which part of the content is most important and should also avoid creating duplicate content. Content tabs in highly customizable templates should use the proper HTML tags.

If you’re adding a ‘content section’ through a builder, that section should contain <p> tags. A ‘heading section’ should be wrapped up in H1, H2, H3 tags. If you can add an image somewhere, outside of the WordPress library, it should also have an ‘alt’ attribute.

Modifying codes for these kinds of features/builders can be a headache, so themes should take care of it from the beginning.

API Hooks

This is a rather technical aspect about the theme, which you can’t really find out without asking, but it’s a really important one. Without these Hooks, none of the helpful SEO plugins will be able to improve the performance of your website properly.

This means that any modification to your website will require custom theme intervention, which is usually very expensive.

How to Choose a Good Theme for SEO

Choosing a good theme from the start is the best thing you can do, but chances of you reading this article before creating your first website are small. Well, at least you can use this in the future.

If you think the current website template might be affecting your SEO and are planning to change it, make sure you also check out this redesign checklist, created especially to help you avoid any SEO disasters.

Furthermore, don’t get tricked by PageSpeed Insights! Although it’s a good way to determine the quality of a site’s HTML structure, PageSpeed Insights can sometimes be misleading, especially when looking on a demo theme.

Usually, PageSpeed Insights generates the scores accordingly. For example, if you have 100 images on your website, and 100 of them need optimization but you save only 10kb from all the optimizations, the score will be higher than if you had 100 images on your website and only 2 needed to be optimized, but the optimization would save 100kb.

But, in the following case, the SnapStore theme demo has an astonishing 0/100 PageSpeed Insights score. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen, but here’s the deal: although they should, developers won’t spend time on optimizing these pages. The servers could be bad, and these installs have no optimization plugins.

In this case, the biggest reason are the images, as they are all about 2MB in size. You can easily compress them from 2MB to 100KB and save 95% without losing any noticeable quality. I would post the difference, but I don’t want to load a 2MB file on this article. You can do the test anytime by downloading the first slider image from the theme with the Inspect Element tool. Use TinyPNG to compress the file, and compare the two versions.

While the images could be optimized, the truth is that’s your job, because you’ll change the presets anyway. The server response time also has a very big impact on the score, but that’s not your server, it’s theirs. Put this theme on a good server and you won’t have issues. Caching, again, is nothing theme related, so you can ignore it. That will be fixed by a plugin.

What about the render-blocking JavaScript? Surprise! It’s actually Google. You have no control on some of the JS files such as Analytics, Tag Manager or the fonts. Tom from GeneratePress also pointed this out to me: Google errors their own JS files in PageSpeed Insights.

The only thing that’s left is Minification, which can be in fact fixed with a plugin as well.

Check the Images

As I mentioned, most of the images on the template will be replaced. It’s your duty to make sure you filter them through a website like TinyPNG or a plugin like WP Smush. The only images you should check for compression are the core images of the theme. I’m talking about any icons, backgrounds and images you won’t be replacing.

A more important thing is whether the images are using the ‘srcset’ attribute. This will make them load proper versions for each screen size. To do this, right click an image in Chrome and click Inspect.

As you can see above, both GeneratePress and Silk (a PixelGrade theme) take advantage of the ‘srcset’ attribute to properly display images on different screen sizes.

Most of the time, WooCommerce templates will use this function only for products images, because it’s a basic WooCommerce feature. However, they might miss other areas, such as page builders. Make sure you check more than one image, from more than one page.

Check the Headings

If you’re looking for a customizable theme, make sure the customization options use the code and tags wisely.

Hit up CTRL + U on your demo theme and do a search for ‘<h1’ and ‘<h2’, without the quote marks. If no headings pop up, then something is strange. Each page should have an H1 tag. No more, no less. There can me multiple H2 tags, but if each of them has a different font style and size, then something is fishy.

Sometimes, the designers trick you with the looks. Take a look at this beauty, for example:

If you look at the headline as a human, you will read “We are experts if it comes to watches.” Read the headline as a search engine, however, and it’s a completely different story:

It now reads “We are if it comes” and “Experts to watches”. Not good for SEO if you’re trying to match some keywords in your headline.

Use the Rich Snippets Testing Tool

If you’re looking at an eCommerce template, you should check out the structured data markup with Google’s structured data testing tool. Check out the homepage, as well as single product pages, category pages and articles.

Take a look at the product page, and check out the product attribute. Make sure it has no errors.

Sometimes articles also have the schema.org markup for recipes. You can view more structured data markup types here. If anything fits your niche, you should try to find a template that provides this.

Send Them an E-mail:

Send an e-mail to the developers, asking them about the features of the theme. If they respond fast, that’s a good sign. It means that they are active and ready to support you if you have any issues with the tempalte.

As almost nobody posts this, you can also ask for a screenshot of the backend section, so you can view the theme from the inside. Ask the developers any questions regarding the points mentioned above.

It’s also a good time to ask if the template uses the default WordPress Hooks that make the template compatible with other plugins.

Fix the Theme Yourself

You don’t always have to choose the best theme. You can always fix most of the things. There’s only one little issue. The whole site might crash.

Start by adding a caching plugin. This will speed up the site for recurring users. Then, add an image optimization plugin to make your images take up less space. Last but not least, try a minification plugin. However, be careful, as minifying theme files can cause render issues or crashes.

Minifying a theme’s CSS, JS and HTML using a plugin can affect how a theme displays and potentially crash the whole site.

Why Are There So Many Bad SEO Themes Out There? A Call to Developers

Now both Tom and Vlad built incredibly good themes, both SEO friendly and customizable. But out there, there are a lot of themes that don’t focus on SEO at all. There could be many reasons why this is happening.

Theme developers try to figure out the users’ intent and needs. The truth is, users look for the most features they can get in a single place, at a low price. But, one theme can’t fit them all. Having everything (which you never use) in a single template is just gonna make your site heavy and slow. For example, if you don’t use a slider on a specific page, the JS slider script might still be downloaded, making your site slower. This isn’t always the theme’s fault, as plugins usually generate codes like that as well.

So from this rush of making hundreds and hundreds of themes to fit everyone’s needs, bad ones turn out as well.

Another thing could be that developers simply don’t think about SEO. But since Google is desperately trying to speed up the internet with things like Google AMP or clean it with things like the interstitials penalty, it is obvious that they should.

Use Less Sliders (or ‘Useless’, You Can Read It Both Ways)

Almost every site there has a slider. But sliders aren’t that cool. Even Yoast agrees on this one. Sliders are slow and they require a lot of coding to get them to work. Animated ones even load dozens of images, creating multiple requests to the server and adding to the overall page size.

The truth is people only see the first slide most of the time. They rarely click sliders. Multiple offers on the same page can also be very confusing. You’d be better off just displaying a single image with your best overall offer.

Optimize the Theme’s Core Images

Of course, you can’t make sure the users add their titles, content and images correctly, but themes do have images by default, such as backgrounds and social media sharing buttons. They might not seem relevant, but saving even 10 KB in size could make your site load faster. If your total page size is 100KB, that would be a 10% improvement.

There are also many images from your theme that people might like and just leave them there. If they aren’t generated from the media gallery so they can be optimized by a plugin, then they should come optimized by default. Most users aren’t very tech savvy and won’t know how to deal with it themselves.

Make Use of the ‘srcset’ Attribute As Much As Possible

Responsive is hard and frustrating. But it’s awesome and it looks fantastic. Try to also make it load fast by not wasting time to load big images and display them small. Always use the ‘srcset’ image attribute. Even if it’s a photographer’s website, you still don’t need the full images. You can load them separately when a click occurs.

There is an option for backgrounds too. It’s still in development and only supported by the major browsers, but it’s there. Use it wisely if you every need to add background images on responsive designs.

Don’t Ignore PageSpeed Insights Completely

Yeah, it’s funny. Google fails by returning errors to their own files. But that’s not the point. The point is for you to spot issues that you can fix, and fix them.

But think about it like this:

Since Google recommends using it, they are probably using those things to rank websites as well. It must have at least a slight impact on the algorithm’s decisions.

Speed isn’t always the answer for crawlers and bots as speed is relative to the connections. The structure of the page is absolute. If you have a really fast web hosting and your users also have strong connections and computers, that doesn’t mean you should ignore the structure.

Minify the Codes If Possible

I know you like your code pretty. I do as well. But on the web, speed is of the essence. The code lies behind what the user can see, and search engines can very well understand minified code, even though it might be hard to decipher by humans. This also applies to plugin developers, as many theme developers actively implement plugins into their themes.

Rarely will someone take a look at the underlying code, and if they do, you probably don’t want them to understand anything. It makes it harder for them to copy something you did. If they want to know something, they might as well ask you directly.

I know that there are plugins out there that can minify code, but they can and most of the time WILL create problems. Minify as much code as possible on your live versions so that your users don’t risk breaking their sites.

Conclusion

As you can see, themes don’t only impact the design of a website, but SEO as well. If your theme doesn’t help with making your website quick for users and easy to read for search engines, it will affect you in a negative way, and can sabotage tyour entire campaign on the long run.

Make sure you check some of the things mentioned in this article the next time you’re searching for a new website template.

I want to thank Tom and Vlad very much for helping us create this resource. If any of you have questions or opinions, feel free to leave them in the comments section.

The post How Your Website’s Theme Affects SEO & Rankings appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

How Your Website’s Theme Affects SEO & Rankings published first on http://nickpontemarketing.tumblr.com/

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megabrocklesner1world-blog · 5 years

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Who Can Gain FIFA Player of the Year For 2008?

Samba dancing may sound only as enjoyment, particularly for foreigners. In Brazil, this task is taken really severely by amateur and skilled dancers, as we will see below. Samba dancing in the Carnival of Brazil is area of the lifestyle and somehow connected to our national identity. The same as Punk in New Orleans, Tango in Argentina, and Salsa at the Caribbean, samba dancing is shown and realized by Brazilians because college days. In an all-natural sort, every woman, (and some men too), learn how to samba dance to some extent, during childhood. On samba and Carnival areas, this is specially true. In this short article, we will describe how samba-schools like Mangueira and Unidos da Tijuca, and other institutions connected to Carnival in Brazil conduct contests to find out and choose the very best samba dancers in Brazil.

As you have in all probability heard or observed, the portugues para concurso Brazilian Carnaval became a professional institution. Everybody else involved in functions, shows, and parades want to be sure only the very best methods are used, equally product and human. A carnival parade encompasses many wings, and in one of them, only the very best may join: the famous "elite samba dancers'side", or, as they are called in Portuguese, the "Passistas Wing ".Today comes the problem: How these standard samba-schools choose the very best samba dancers among hundreds in the country, to symbolize them within a carnival season? Most of them conduct demanding and really competitive samba dance contests in Rio and Sao Paulo.

These samba dancing contests can be popular here and may sometimes get a lot more than 2 or 3 rounds. Normally they are prepared at the samba-schools premises or famous samba auditoriums or specific clubs. A series of conditions are used to aid jurors choose the very best dancers. Being a beauty pageant match in the US, not merely the sweetness, or in this instance, the dance per state is examined, but some attributes. A number of the conditions examined by the specific court contain acceptance, posture, control and over all empathy. Above all, the evaluating screen tightly looks at the "samba at the legs" qualification, or even to use the unique expression in Portuguese, "Samba number Pe ".Samba number Pe in Portuguese is the precise power to dance the samba.

The court is generally composed of skilled samba dancers, choreographers, former Carnival Queens and crucial celebrities in the Samba community. How many prospects can vary and range between 20 up to 50, in famous contests. These samba dancers come from really varied skills and and see these contests as a good opportunity to task themselves within the carnival community and press in general. Many, after winning these contests became Brazil wide famous Carnival Queens, muses, actresses and models. Tatiana Pagung, one of the all time samba dancers in the Carnival of Brazil, started her skilled life winning several contests. Shayene Cesario, Brazilian model and actress, gained 2010 Rio's Formal Carnival Queen Match mainly because of her good samba abilities and impressive beauty.

Rio hosts several contests, and certainly one of the main samba dancing contests is the Rio p Janeiro Carnival Queen and Princess competition offered by the city´s official tourism human body, called RIOTUR. This match is always presented on July and is very concurred. This year, more than 30 prospects needed area of the competition and all significant prospects shown exceptional samba routines. Therefore next amount of time in the Carnival of Brazil, take to to go to one of these simple exciting contest-shows in the pre-Carnival period. Probably you will learn how to dance the samba too!

Eurovision Song Match, 2008: a written report from beyond the pale.

The Eurovision finals, the annual kermesse of pop schlock, beloved by teenyboppers, ice skating costume manufacturers, cheesy queens and all fans of bad style through the duration of Europe is just a responsible delight that I look forward to every year. Envision if the Europeans were allowed to produce their own pop music minus the overwhelming artistic intimidation of Afro-American designs, Caribbean beats, Indigenous tunes from Mexico and Afro-Lusitanian creativity from Brazil? A terrifying thought, and one that is taken to horrifying life every Spring!

On Saturday, May 24, the 2008 final night needed place. An extended parade of mainly amateurish tracks went by in a gleeful blur. But that's ok, because while a genuine supporter finds the whole show thoroughly engaging, it is always significantly language in cheek, and half the enjoyment is hating it. I seen it on French TV and had the chatter of Julien Lepers and Jean-Paul Gaultier to keep me company. Here was my take on the proceedings:

The very first song was from Romania. Nico and Vlad performing "Pe-o Margine p Lume." I think Romania has done the French touch to death. This enjoy duet was performed half in Romanian and half in French, and it was an artful song, but that wasn't be enough to produce it at all interesting.

UK: Andy Abraham, performing "Actually If ".Due to the fact the U.K. could never sink less than the 2007 entry, that may probably go down ever sold whilst the worst Eurovision song EVER, this was good in comparison. Odd heart disco from the 1970s, and a pretty good performance from Andy, as well. Jean Paul Gaultier called him sophisticated in his sort installing funksuit.

Albania: 16 year previous Olta Boka performed "Zemrëdeborah Elizabeth Lamë Peng." Done well, in the French heart queen mode. But since Albanian does not noise at all like whatever else, it was hard to share with what she was getting all upset about.

Indonesia: Number Angels performed "Vanish ".Sure, that's right. Disappear. Please! Envision the Pussy Pet Dolls should they couldn't carry a song or break also the lamest move. Certainly, Indonesia was getting right back at Eurovision for the snub 2007's entry got.

Armenia: Sirusho performed "Qele, Qele." The Balkan overcome that is familiar from therefore many ex Yugoslavian entries over time mixed with a little bit of Pink. Perhaps not awful, whilst the French might state, mainly because of her strong and musical voice.

Bosnia Herzegovina: Laka performing "Pokusaj ".Precisely what we required: Theater of the Absurd within the Theater of the Absurd. The artist appeared as if Chief Kangaroo served by the bride of Frankenstein in a miniskirt. The song sounded like a classic uniqueness song from San Remo, classic 1985.

Israel: Boaz performed "The Fire in your eyes." A fantastic artist with a genuine pop song with a Balkan tint. The very first really good song in the show.

Finland: Terasbetoni performing "Missa" something or other. Yikes! More alarming heavy metal from Finland. Mercifully, this time around they remaining the Celebrity Trek Klingon markers at home. Horrible shouting and head breaking guitar licks offered me really unwelcome bad journey flashbacks from the 1980s.

Croatia: Kraljevi Ulice and 75 dollars with a song called "Romanca." Croatian ballads generally tend precariously to the schmaltzy, however the melodic impulse frequently preserves them. Now it really didn't function, and screamin'Grandmother and the clumsy dancers didn't help.

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