#she had so much potential to be interesting and the breadcrumbs are certainly there but GOD

[clockworkflicker]

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In Sickness and In Spite

3.5k words, F cold. Familiarity with the source material is not required.

Fi/re Emb/lem Thr/ee Ho/pes — platonic Hubert & Monica. Snzfic + character study. These idiot rivals begrudgingly care about each other, your honor! Cue mlm-wlw bickering. Inspired by this post about ice magic. We love a sniffly traumatized mage.

Content warnings for wartime medieval fantasy setting, referenced past imprisonment, and mess.

“Return to the eastern encampment at once, and see to it that our reserves are told to prepare for the capture of Arianrhod.”

The faintest of smiles threatens to tug at Hubert’s lips as he hands a letter off to the courier standing at attention in his quarters. His expression, which the courier might later describe as “reeking of malicious contentedness” is one that Hubert’s fellow commanders are slowly growing used to as this war drags on, but it still sends a chill down the spines of those less familiar with the man’s more dubious qualities.

“Count Bergliez is to bring his troops to Arianrhod to hold the city in our absence, do I make myself clear?”

The man’s voice is smooth as dark chocolate, and equally rich, the courier finds himself thinking as he accepts the letter from Hubert. Of course, now is no time to indulge in chocolate, nor thoughts of admiration of a man’s voice. How foolish.

“I’ll see it done.”

Hubert folds his arms and gives a subtle nod. “Good. Well then, safe travels.”

The courier leaves, and Hubert finds himself once again alone in his quarters. He considers stepping out to check in with Lady Edelgard and discuss upcoming battle plans, but he thinks better of it once he pulls the drape from the entrance to his tent and sees that the sun has already set. They’ll be marching again early in the morning, and Her Majesty is likely to be asleep (or attempting to sleep, at least) by this hour.

He lights the lantern at his desk and sets a kettle to boil for coffee. His body feels heavy after the day’s skirmish at Magdred Way, but his mind isn’t quite ready to sleep. His troops encountered those damn Agarthan mages looming between the trees at Magdred. Evidence of their continued presence in this war, pulling the strings from behind the curtains, is enough to keep him up at night — not that he’d ever admit to such a thing. Given that he’s not sleeping just yet, there’s no sense in squandering an opportunity to get some work done, so he settles down with a stack of paperwork and quill.

Outside, a chorus of crickets come alive for the night, cautiously chirping along with the smoky early-autumn breeze and the occasional chatter from other commanders and soldiers passing by. After some time, the sound of a harsh sneeze pierces the white noise. Hubert casts a slow glance to his tent’s entrance. It sounded close by, but no one’s immediately outside the tent. He sets the distraction aside and returns to the list of provisions he was perusing.

But he can’t help but notice that the crickets’ song is punctuated by the occasional sniffle. Is that new, or has he only just noticed it now, he wonders. After a few minutes, there’s another sneeze, this one more high pitched than the last, followed by a slow, laden groan. It’s a familiar groan, he realizes. He knows exactly who it belongs to.

Unlike Monica von Ochs, Hubert does not possess a perfect memory. But given the frequency with which the woman expresses irritation around him, he would be remiss not to recognize the sound of her grumbling.

Her tent isn’t far from his. “I’m Her Majesty’s vassal just as much as you are,” Monica had insisted when they’d been setting up their base camp last week. “If she has need of me, I wish to be prepared and nearby.”

While Hubert finds her near-constant presence and general lack of composure to be somewhat grating, he certainly cannot complain about the woman’s dedication. Monica is, above all else, a valuable asset to the army and confidant to Her Majesty.

The kettle boils. He sets his quill aside and finds the coffee grounds he’d packed in his satchel. His eyes fall on the Almyran pine tea blend he keeps handy next to his stash of coffee grounds — a provision should he find a spare moment to enjoy a warm beverage with Ferdinand.

Hubert briefly regards the pine needles. Certainly not the ideal tea for a cold, and he can’t imagine his neighbor would particularly want his company. And yet...

~~~

There’s ice in her veins and haze clouding her head, and that’s really all there is to say on the matter. She sits at her desk, bundled up in her cloak with a quill and stack of paperwork. The flickering light from her lantern blurs her vision, eyes half-lidded and threatening to grow too rheumy to make out the words.

Not that it matters much. The chill gnawing at her bones from the inside out is enough of a distraction on its own that Monica finds herself wholly unable to make a dent in the status report she’s meant to have on Her Majesty’s desk by tomorrow morning.

She sniffles in irritation. She’d managed to doze off immediately after returning from Magdred this afternoon, but sleep held little respite. After a few hours of tossing and turning, she’d gasped awake, shivering with ire and cold sweat, unpleasant memories distorted by the whims of her feverish subconscious still vivid in her mind. With some effort, Monica had forced herself upright, shakily grasping the glass of water beside her bed and taking a drink.

She’s never forgotten what it’s like to be locked up in a cell — how could she? They say time heals all wounds, but such a thing can’t be true; not for her. While the sands of time are kind enough to erode others’ painful memories, weathering away sharp edges into manageable curves, Monica needs only close her eyes to find herself back on that cold stone floor, every detail in place, nothing forgotten. Exactly 296 stone blocks comprised the wall she had been chained to. That horrible woman’s raucous laugh, which always hit G#, no higher, no lower. The gleam of her athame, teasingly pressed below Monica’s jaw with just enough force to draw a thin line of fresh blood. The warm ferrous odor intermingling with the cool musk of the dungeon and that woman’s near-intoxicating scent of patchouli, sage, and mahogany.

And knowing Her Majesty was put through something so much worse; held in a cell and poked, prodded, sliced open, then reassembled as a tool of war? It makes her blood boil.

Her head had swam from sitting up so fast; a reminder that this Goddess-forsaken fever is going to literally boil her blood if she’s not careful.

Against her better judgement, she’d lit her lantern and dragged herself to her desk to take care of some paperwork. As much as she’d love to drift back off to sleep, the thought of going back there — even if only in a dream — is more than enough to keep her wide awake for a few more hours. Normally, she’d go out for a run or a swim to clear her head and simmer down, but she frankly can’t imagine her body will comply today.

Pinching her nose with a handkerchief that has long outlived its usefulness, Monica distantly wonders what would’ve become of her in that cold dark cell, had Her Majesty not come to her aid. She’d be dead, probably. It’s a useless thought, but one that plagues her nonetheless. Her nose is no less damp when she pulls the cloth away, so she sniffles again and resigns to just cleaning herself up with the inner collar of her cloak, soft fabric feeling like sandpaper against her nostrils.

“Monica?” A low voice from outside her tent startles her back to reality. “It’s Hubert. I have a matter I’d like to discuss, if you wouldn’t mind my company at this hour.”

She hesitates. Company is the last thing she wants right now. Well, perhaps she wouldn’t mind if it was Lady Edelgard or Dorothea...

“I’ll leave you be if you’d prefer it,” Hubert continues when she doesn’t reply. “But I thought it prudent to offer some tea.”

Still no response. Hubert briefly wonders if she’s managed to fall asleep. But then a small sniffle breaks the silence, followed by the sound of shuffling blankets. Monica draws aside the thick cloth draped over her tent’s entrance, eyes tilted up to meet his. Her brow is knit in confusion, but her gaze is glassy and distant. By the look of things, it was indeed the prospect of tea that coaxed her out.

She finds Hubert stood before her, holding two cups, warm steam gently rising from both. Monica doesn’t need her sense of smell to know their contents. One black coffee — a preposterous choice of beverage at this hour — and one Almyran pine tea. It’s almost a comedic image, the way the man's usual looming presence is kneecapped by something as mundane as a warm drink.

“You keep Almyran pine needles on your person specifically for Ferdinand,” she says plainly, her voice hoarse around the edges. “Why offer them to me?”

A slight frown draws Hubert’s lips. This woman is irritatingly perceptive and straightforward, especially when it comes to relationships he would prefer she kept quiet about.

But even in the low light, he can see the exhaustion plainly written across Monica’s face; dark thumbprints pressed beneath her eyes, a glimmer of moisture sits below her pinkish nose, her pallor framed by a mess of untamed burgundy locks. Judging by the paperwork strewn about on her desk, he figures she’s been just as busy as he’s been this evening. It’s not all that cold out, but her slight frame is swallowed up in a heavy winter cloak. Despite this, she looks to be shivering a little, and Hubert makes a mental note to check later if any of her reports from this excursion will need to be rewritten due to shaky handwriting.

While Monica is objectively the shortest commander in the Adrestian army, her shrewd demeanor and prowess on the battlefield are more than enough to compensate for what she lacks in height. But for the first time in years, Hubert finds himself thinking that she just looks small.

“You’re ill,” he says, matching her matter-of-fact tone.

“Yes, and?” Her eyes narrow, unfocused, and she inhales an uneven breath, then another. She ducks to the side with a horribly gruff sneeze, snatching the collar of her cloak up to meet her face as she shudders forward with the force of it. “ihh- hheh-! hHT’CHHUHshh!”

“And tea serves the dual purpose of perhaps offering some relief while also coaxing you away from your paperwork.” Hubert gives a small sigh, still looking stoic. “I should admonish you for working late in such a state.”

She scoffs, the watery phlegm crackling in her airways making her sound far more pitiful than disdainful, much to her chagrin. Wincing, she snuffles and rubs at her nose through the fabric. When she clears her throat, it does absolutely nothing for her wrecked voice. “As if you’re not guilty of the same.”

“Unlike you, I possess the sense not to work myself sick.”

“If you say so.” Knowing the man’s work-life balance (or lack thereof), Monica finds that statement highly unlikely. If she weren't so sick, she’d call him out for it, but she can’t quite muster the energy to get worked up over it at the moment. Another chill shakes through her, and it occurs to her that she’d much rather be sitting than standing, and a warm drink really does sound nice. She swallows thickly and glances away. “Anyway, I, um, I won’t say no to tea. If you’re offering.”

“That is why I’m here, yes,” Hubert says with a hint of levity, handing her a cup.

She gratefully accepts it, the deliciously warm ceramic prickling her cold fingertips. The rising steam causes her nose to run a bit more than it already was, but she revels in its gentle heat. “You said there was something you wanted to —” she pauses to sniffle, and exhales a tired, drippy guhh. “— to discuss?”

~~~

The two sit beside a small fire, tucked away at the edge of the base camp. On any other day, Monica would have simply invited Hubert to join her in her quarters, but she can’t imagine she’d be able to keep this damn cold to herself in such a small enclosed space, so this will have to do.

“Were you unwell when we marched on Magdred this morning?” He asks, settling down on a fallen log once he’s convinced he’s fed the fire enough wood to sustain itself. The flames dance, bathing them both in a warm glow amidst the dusky woods.

She shakes her head. “What, would you expect me to delay our troops because of a sore throat? I simply did what was necessary.” Monica takes a careful sip of her tea. Swallowing hurts, but it warms her from the inside out. Although her senses are too dulled to get a good handle on the flavor, she finds the tea has a distinct, earthy quality. It reminds her of simpler days spent hunting in the mountainous woodlands scattered about inland Ochs territory.

“And last night?” Hubert raises an eyebrow.

“I thought it was just exhaustion and nerves, at that point. We’d been marching all day, after all.” Smoke from the fire makes her sinuses burn, prompting her to retreat further into her cloak with a watery sniff, almost like a turtle into its shell.  

“For someone so perceptive, you certainly posses an impressive lack of self-awareness.” He tilts his head with a slight smirk. “Perhaps if you didn’t so frequently find yourself flush with rage or affection, you wouldn’t struggle to tell apart fatigue from fever.”

She glowers. “Perhaps if you grew flush with rage every now and again, you wouldn’t have the complexion of a coffin-dweller.” Smoke catches in her throat as she speaks, completely stripping the insult of any teeth it may have had otherwise. She muffles a few weary coughs against her collar, causing a bit of mess to spill from her nose and create another dark patch on the fabric.

Hubert exhales a dry laugh. In spite of everything, it’s good to see that she’s at least well enough to quip back. “Well, there’s nothing to be done for it now. But do try to be more conscientious of your limits.”  

Monica narrows her eyes with a sniff. “I know very well how hard I can push myself, thank you.” As if to deny her claim, the irritation in her airways causes her breath to hitch. Her eyes squint shut and her face contorts into an expression somewhere between a grimace and a snarl. She snaps forward with a desperate and distressingly sick-sounding sneeze, frantically aimed at the fabric resting atop her shoulders. She’d meant to stifle, but there’s only so much one can do when attempting to restrain such a forceful sneeze hands-free. She fumbles her cup of tea, spilling a bit in the process.

“And yet I can’t help but find your form as of late to be rather... rash.” Hubert turns his eyes back to the fire, not wishing for his gaze to be a source of further embarrassment for his stricken companion.

The gesture does not go unnoticed, and she’s grateful for it. The space between her nose and lips is slick, and a string of glistening mess dangles precariously from her septum to her cloak before falling against her chest. She instinctively snuffles, and immediately regrets doing so, as it produces a horribly soupy sound and reignites the burning itch. She hastily sets her tea aside and clutches at her collar with steepled hands, trembling with a flurry of quick, audibly damp breaths, until —

“ihheH- hH’KSSCH’ue! …hh? …hht’KSSCH’uhh!”

The second sneeze rends her throat, leaving her airways and collar absolutely drenched. With a small, exhausted groan, she allows herself just a brief moment of feeling sorry for herself before tending to her nose. She’s soaked through the fabric in her hands, and finds herself wondering if she needs to worry about running out of cloak. After finding a suitably dry spot, Monica draws a handful of cloak to her face and begins cleaning herself up. The stinging sensation of dry fabric against slick, inflamed skin makes her wince. “How so?”

“Lady Edelgard tells me you’ve had quite the talent for fire magic since you were young, and I must agree. The army would be remiss without a skilled mage such as yourself to set enemy strongholds ablaze.”

If she were alone, Monica would have blown her nose by now, but the thought of doing so in front of someone else makes her stomach twist in a knot. Clearly, if his unprompted arrival at her tent with tea is anything to go by, she's assaulted Hubert (and the rest of the camp, for that matter) with far too great a volume of sick noises as is. Goddess, she hopes Her Majesty hasn't overheard any of this. Monica settles for gently pinching her nose between the slick fabric, which does, blessedly, remove a decent amount of moisture. She gives a tired sigh, cautiously reaching down to retrieve her tea, almost afraid another sneeze will cause her drop it without warning. “What’re you getting at?”

Hubert gestures to the jet black tome strapped to her hip. “You’ve been teaching yourself ice spells recently. Why?”

“What kind of question is that?” She crinkles her nose. “Sometimes it’s more beneficial to freeze an enemy in place than set them on fire. Anyone can benefit from being more versatile.”

“Is versatility truly your reason, though? The elemental whiplash you must be giving yourself can’t be healthy.” Hubert gives her a knowing look as he raises his coffee to his lips.

Monica stares at him, then looks down at her tea. Assailing an enemy with flames, followed up by an ice spell, is going to inflict more pain than fire alone. That’s her reason. It’s that simple.

“We’ve recently been fighting more of the people who imprisoned Her Majesty and me. The dark mages at Magdred, for example. I...” she pauses with a sharp sniffle, frustrated with this cold, frustrated with Hubert for prompting her to confront one of her more wicked impulses at a time like this, frustrated with herself for being such a deeply bitter person. “I want it to hurt.”

Hubert remains silent and his expression unreadable, much to Monica’s annoyance. She presumes that his lack of reaction means she’s just confirmed something he was already aware of. Goddess, she hates how he seems to know her vices better than she knows them herself.

Finally, he speaks. “I understand.” His voice is low and surprisingly sincere. “Not a day goes by that I don’t lament my failure to protect Her Majesty when it mattered most.”

‘I understand’ is a bit of an unspoken compromise between two people who will never truly see eye to eye. Their ire for Edelgard’s captors is not equivalent, and they both know it. Hubert is cold and calculating, more than able to channel his emotions into neat, underhanded tactics that will serve Her Majesty well. But for Monica, it’s a spiteful, burning hatred that hungers for vengeance. It’s selfish and cruel and everything she wishes she wasn’t.

Hubert continues. “But, for Lady Edelgard’s sake, if not your own, I ask that you don’t do this to yourself. Even the most skilled mages aren’t equipped to deal with recoil from opposing elements. I suspect you’re intimately aware of this fact.”

He’s not wrong, Monica must admit. Ice magic has a way of chilling its caster to the bone, and alternating between fire and ice always leaves her a sniffly mess. It’s caused easily-ignored colds to turn debilitating more times than she’d care to let on. She doesn’t know what to say. She hadn’t expected anyone, let alone Hubert, of all people, to care.

Before she can fully sort out her thoughts, a familiar burning sensation bristles at her sinuses. Her mouth hangs slightly open in uncertainty, brow furrowed, and a small, wavering breath sifts through her teeth. Monica teeters on the precipice for just a moment. Watery mucus drips down one flared nostril, then the other, pooling above her lip. She dares not sniffle, or else —

“ihhh-? hehh- hED’SSHuuh!”

She ducks to the side and clings desperately to her teacup as a half-stifled shivery sneeze seizes her, sending another unfortunate deluge of soupy mess down her face. Goddess, she’s tired. “snndffl. ghuhh. You could say that.”

Once again, she sets aside her tea and takes to tending to her nose. “Look, Hubert, I appreciate the concernd, but I...” she trails off with a congested groan and shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“Far be it from me to lecture you,” Hubert says, standing from his seat on the log and turning to leave, “but destroying yourself won’t change the past.”

“Where are you going?” Monica looks up at him, confused.

“To fetch my kettle. You’re still shaking, and have just about spilled the last of the tea.”

Pulling her cloak a little tighter around herself, she watches him walk back to his tent. She thinks that perhaps, just this once, he might have a point.

#y'alllllll it's finally FINALLY done!!!!!! #i've been working on this since late july and it went through like three rewrites so I Am Thrilled To Be Done. happy sicktember! #monnie is one of the worst written characters ive ever seen in a video game #she had so much potential to be interesting and the breadcrumbs are certainly there but GOD #the writers hecked the fuck up #thankfully i know how to write her Correctly #the devs just straight up handed us a canon lesbian and said #'she's horribly traumatized and has a ton of ugly emotions simmering below the surface but we're not going to address any of that' #anyway i had a great time writing about these two. monica is just So Much and hubert is hubert [affectionate] #also this has almost nothing to do with this particular fic but you can't tell me that monica doesnt fuck a sneeze okay #the sky is blue. capitalism sucks. mon/ica von o/chs is a sneezefucker. these are immutable truths #the fact that she canonically has a running tally of how many times edel/gard has expressed concern for her health is proof enough #(i looked it up. the tally is at 208 at the time of the cutscene she mentions it) #this woman is unhinged we love to see it #i'd also point to her love for tea (and making tea for edel/gard) if it weren't for the fact that 90% of the cast loves tea #'oh lady edelgard! it's chilly out! would you like some tea? a coat?' girl. honey. i know what you are. #th/ree hou/ses and th/ree ho/pes are such funny games. these bitches really do just swing swords and drink tea all day long #my art #my writing #btw this isn't beta'd so if you see a typo or something that makes no sense please PLEASE tell me

[elriell]

i love your meta posts and would really like to see your thoughts on nessian and maybe the next book in detail?? thanks

Thank you, I enjoy doing them. As usual this will be rather long especially with quotes but there is so much Nessian goodness to discuss so bare with me.

[MY FULL THOUGHTS ON NESTA]

We will get in to the good, the bad, and everything in between but let’s start with their future and them being mates. This is not an unpopular belief to my knowledge but let’s talk about it because I feel this will be a part of their arc next book, especially since ACOFAS was kind of setting up the bridge for the spin off.

So take a look at these quotes from ACOFAS,

“Cassian’s face turned uncharacteristically solemn, and he remained quiet for a moment before he said, “I get jealous sometimes. I’d never begrudge you for your happiness, but what you two have, Rhys …” He dragged a hand through his hair, his crimson Siphon glinting in the light streaming through the window. “It’s the legends, the lies, they spin us when we’re children. About the glory and wonder of the mating bond. I thought it was all bullshit. Then you two came along.”

“What about you?” I asked, pulling away after a moment. “Are you … happy?” Shadows darkened his hazel eyes. “I’m getting there.” A halfhearted answer.”

I believe this is just a little teaser for his future with her, there is so much foreshadowing about both of them being mates but also becoming something powerful, especially Nesta.

“What if I tell you what the rock and darkness and sea beyond whispered to me, Lord of Bloodshed? How they shuddered in fear, on that island across the sea. How they trembled when she emerged. She took something—something precious. She ripped it out with her teeth.”

Cassian’s golden-brown face had drained of color, his wings tucking in tight. “What did you wake that day in Hybern, Prince of Bastards?”

He is described as a leader, a prince and a god a few times but the foreshadowing for Nesta becoming a Queen/Leader is unparalleled. I know quite a few people are not fond of the idea but to be honest with all the written breadcrumbs I cannot imagine it going any other way... It is mentioned so often.

“Nesta was waiting at the head of the table, a queen ready to hold court. ”

“But she turned to Cassian, looked him over as if she were a queen on a throne, and then declared to all of us,”

“How lovely she is—new as a fawn and yet ancient as the sea. How she calls to you. A queen, as my sister once was. Terrible and proud; beautiful as a winter sunrise.”

“And proud as any queen, Nesta took Elain’s arm and led her from the guardhouse. Mor trailed behind,”

“A queen without a throne. That was what I’d call the painting that swept into my mind.”

“She kept her chin high, the portrait of queenly arrogance. “I’m not.”

“Talk to me. Nesta. Tell me—” She ripped her hand out of his grip. Stared him down. A mighty, vengeful queen.”

And I feel it will obviously be something to do with the Illyrians, as that is what is being set up. I believe they will become leaders of the Illyrians in a new way not currently present.

Mates

“And what about Cassian? He’s entangled—and enabling this nonsense.” A wry smile. “Cassian is going to have to decide some things, too. In the near future, I think.” “Are he and Nesta …?” “I don’t know. Until the bond snaps into place, it can be hard to detect.”

At this rate I do not even think it is questionable but let’s pretend we have to prove it, here are some key pieces of evidence,

Exhibit A)

Feyre painting the stars for her Mate, and her painting flames for Nesta.

“Nesta,” I said, starting on the other wing, “I painted flames for her. She was always angry, always burning. I think she and Amren would be fast friends. ”

“There was something rough-hewn about his features—like he’d been made of wind and earth and flame and all these civilized trappings were little more than an inconvenience.”

“A matching one lay atop his left hand; and twin red stones adorned Cassian’s gauntlets, their color like the slumbering heart of a flame.”

“So at odds from the male who had gone head to head with my sister, unable to resist matching himself against Nesta’s spirit of steel and flame.”

Exhibit B)

First potential scenting of it/Paralleling Rhys.

“He bowed at the waist, those wings vanishing entirely, and had begun to fade into the nearest shadow when he went rigid. His eyes locked on mine, wide and wild, and his nostrils flared. Shock—pure shock flashed across his features at whatever he saw on my face, and he stumbled back a step. Actually stumbled. “What is—” I began.” [Rhys] “But he did take a step closer, bracing a hand on the mantel, and leaned in close enough to breathe in that scent of hers. It hit him in the gut so hard her could barely focus, and it took five centuries of training to make himself meet her eyes rather than let his own roll back in his head, to keep himself poised there instead of burying his face in the crook between her neck and shoulder, to keep from moving closer, from… touching.”

“Yes, devastating was a good word for how lovely she’d become as High Fae. And in a long-sleeved, dark blue gown that clung to her curves before falling gracefully to the ground in a spill of fabric …

Cassian looked like someone had punched him in the gut.”

Exhibit C)

Feeling each others pain/worry without being there.

“He’d followed. She’d known it in her bones, her blood. He’d kept high in the skies, but he’d followed until she’d entered the building.”

“CASSIAN.” Amren reached for her, but Nesta roared, “CASSIAN!”

“Nesta had known. She gaped up at me, terror and agony on her face, then scanned the sky for Cassian, who flapped in place, as if torn between coming for us and charging back to the scattering Illyrian and Peregryn ranks. She’d known where that blast was about to hit. Cassian had been right in the center of it. Or would have been, if she hadn’t called him away.”

The door opened, and Cassian stalked in, face grave. The sight of the wings, the Illyrian armor in this opulent, pink-filled room planted itself in my mind, the painting already taking form, as he said, “What’s wrong.” [...] But I said, “She senses something is off—says we need to leave right away.” I waited for the dismissal, but Cassian angled his head. “What, precisely, feels wrong?”

“Nesta’s screaming was the only sound. Cassian blindly lurched toward it—toward her, moaning in pain.”

“I whipped my head to Nesta as she went silent. The Cauldron righted itself. Cassian again stirred, slumping on the floor—but his hand twitched. Toward Nesta.”

“You’re hurt.” Rhys snapped to attention at that. [...] Cassian seemed to hesitate, but offered it to her, tapping the Siphon atop his palm. The armor slid back a fraction over his forearm, revealing— “You know better than to walk around with an injury,” Rhys said a bit tensely. “I was busy,” Cassian said, not taking his focus off Nesta as she studied the swollen wrist. How she’d detected it through the armor … She must have read it in his eyes, his stance. I hadn’t realized she’d been observing the Illyrian general enough to notice his tells.”

Underrated Moments?

“Eat or bed?” Cassian had asked Nesta, and I honestly couldn’t tell if he’d meant it as some invitation. I debated telling him he was in no shape.

Nesta only said, “Bed.” And there was certainly no invitation in the exhausted reply.”

I feel like this is such an underrated moment between them, there is so much care and comfort in these moments I love it.

“Is she a witch.”

“She may act like one sometimes,” Cassian clarified, “but no—she is High Fae.” LOL

“Nesta listened to the low-level Illyrian soldiers whispering about how Cassian had thrown that spear, how he’d cut down soldiers like stalks of wheat, how he’d fought like Enalius—their most ancient warrior-god and the first of the Illyrians. [...]

Nesta watched, and listened to it all, while the camp was built around us.”

This part of ACOWAR when she is settling in, helping out and listening to the tales of Cassian I think will come to parallel in ACOTAR 4. I love the idea that she just sat around listening to the legend of warrior gods...

Parallels

“Why do you bother, Cassian?”

His hazel eyes shuttered as we smoothly landed. And I thought he wouldn’t answer, especially not as we heard the others already in the dining room beyond the veranda,[...] But Cassian said quietly as we headed for the dining room, “Because I can’t stay away.”

Nesta gritted her teeth, trying to haul Cassian up once more. A broken sound of pain ripped from him. “Go! ” he barked at her. “I can’t,” she breathed, voice breaking. “I can’t.”

*cries*

“But Nesta was glancing between us all, her back still stiff, mouth a thin line. “Where is he?” “Who?” Rhys crooned. “Cassian.”

I didn’t think I’d ever heard his name from her lips. Cassian had always been him or that one. And Nesta had been … pacing in the foyer. As if she was worried.

“I was almost at the door when Cassian said, “Is …” He swallowed. I spared him the discomfort of trying to mask his interest. “Both sisters will be at the house. Whether they want to or not.” Cassian’s eyes flickered. “How is she?”

Rhysand just stuck in the middle probably thinking these fucking idiots ahaha

“Are you … happy?” Shadows darkened his hazel eyes. “I’m getting there.”A halfhearted answer. I’d have to work on that, too. Perhaps there were threads to be pulled, woven together.”

“Perhaps you should get a place of your own, then.” “I have one in Illyria.” “I meant here.” Cassian lifted a brow. “I don’t need a house here. I need a room.” [...] I chuckled again, but held in my retort. My suggestion that he might want a place of his own. Soon. Not that anything was happening on that front. Not anytime soon. Nesta had made it clear enough she had no interest in Cassian—not even in being in the same room as him. I knew why. I’d seen it happen, had felt that way plenty.”

had felt that way plenty

HAD FELT THAT WAY PLENTY.

HaD FElt tHAt wAY PLenTY

Perhaps this is really why they sent her to Illyria? Is this them weaving? Not sure how I feel about that really, but we shall see.

She only said, “Go home, Cassian.” He could count on one hand the number of times she’d used his name. Called him anything other than you or that one.”

“Cassian.” I didn’t think I’d ever heard his name from her lips. Cassian had always been him or that one.”

Their reactions to each other currently.

“No matter that she could scarcely stand to be around him. No matter that she had once, long ago, in a mortal body and in a house that no longer existed, let him kiss her throat. Being near him made her want to shatter things. As her power sometimes did, unbidden. Secretly.”

“But from the moment he’d met Nesta, the cold fire in her blue-gray eyes had been a temptation of a different sort. And now that she was High Fae, that inherent dominance, the aggression—and that piss-poor attitude … There was a reason he avoided her as much as possible. Even after the war, things were still too volatile, both within the Night Court’s borders and in the world beyond. And the female before him had always made him feel like he was standing in quicksand.”

Training

Quite a few people do not want her to become a epic warrior, and while I understand that especially after her quote in the books about there being other ways to be strong... but after SJM interviews and so forth I definitely think they will go in that direction...

“You’ll what?” Cassian crooned, trailing her at a casual pace as she stopped perhaps five feet from me. He lifted a brow as she whirled on him. “You won’t join me for practice, so you sure as hell aren’t going to hold your own in a fight. You won’t talk about your powers, so you certainly aren’t going to be able to wield them. And you—”

“Something drew Cassian’s attention behind me. And even as his body remained casual, a predatory gleam flickered in his eyes. I didn’t need to turn to know who was standing there. “Care to join?” Cassian purred. Nesta said, “It doesn’t look like you’re exercising anything other than your mouths.”

“Cassian pressed one of his knives into Nesta’s hand. “Ash can kill you now,” he said with lethal quiet as she stared down at the blade. “A scratch can make you queasy enough to be vulnerable. Remember where the exits are in every room, every fence and courtyard—mark them when you go in, and mark how many men are around you. Mark where Rhys and the others are. Don’t forget that you’re stronger and faster. Aim for the soft parts,” he added, folding her fingers around the hilt. “And if someone gets you into a hold …”

Morrigan

Alright let’s move on to Mor, I am sure there are a lot of opinions on her/and her relationship with Cassian. I am going to try not to get in to detail about her personally and keep it too Nessian because I feel like that is a whole other can of worms...

“And then there would be the matter of explaining it to everyone.

To Mor. His blood chilled.”

This is a big reason for why I need both of their own POV’s because there is so much we are limited to being inside of Feyre’s head. But one thing is clear and that is that there is something wrong here, ^^^ that response is not normal for a “friend” to find out you like/whatever someone.

It is not a healthy dynamic at all, I am sorry.

I believe it also alters and changes the way Nesta perceives things, we as readers may know nothing is currently going on between them but as an outside party she would not know that and some of their scenes have got to raise alarms.

“You’re hurt?”

At the sound of Mor’s voice, Cassian snatched his hand back and pivoted toward Mor with a lazy smile. “Nothing for you to cry over, don’t worry.”

Nesta dragged her stare from his face—down to her now-empty hand, her fingers still curled as if his palm lay there. Cassian didn’t look at Nesta as she rose, snatching up the pitcher, and muttered something about getting more water from inside the tent.

Case and point, this was a rather cold and heartless thing to do especially given that she is finally trying to help him and open up. Imagine being Nesta in this situation, it is sure to raise some alarm bells...

“Rhys chuckled. Cassian, however, didn’t smile, every pore of him seemingly fixed on Nesta and Mor.”

I really hope they expand on why he is so afraid of her reaction.

“Just what I always wanted.” He held up a pair of what seemed to be red silk undershorts. The perfect match to her negligee. With Nesta pointedly preoccupied with flipping through her new books,”

“Cassian and Mor fell into their banter, laughing and taunting each other about the battle and the ones ahead. Nesta didn’t come back out again for some time.”

“The general of the High Lord’s armies stuck out his tongue. Mor returned the gesture. Amren scowled at Rhys. “You’d be wise to leave both of them at home for the meeting with the others, Rhysand. They’ll cause nothing but trouble.” His face was indeed controlled, but—a hint of surprise twinkled there. Wariness, too, but … surprise. I risked another glance at Nesta, but she was watching her plate, dutifully ignoring the others.”

I think it is very interesting that SJM put these scenes in here because as readers again we might laugh and enjoy the banter between the circle but she is making it a point to show that Nesta is bothered/has a reaction to these moments. I wouldn’t even call it jealousy per-say but rather wariness over someone she considers a player flirting around, raising red flags.

Especially getting matching underwear with someone, as an outsider how would you perceive that?

“Mor’s lips pressed into a thin line, as if she was trying her best not to say anything. Azriel was trying his best to shoot a warning stare at Mor to remind her to indeed keep her mouth shut. As if they’d already discussed this. Many times.”

I opened my mouth, but Mor beat me to it.

“He’s busy.” I’d never heard her voice so … sharp. Icy.

Mor said flatly, “When he gets back, keep your forked tongue behind your teeth.”

“I tried not to look too obvious as I glanced at Cassian.They had not seen each other since Adriata.But the warrior only gave her a cursory once-over and turned toward Azriel to say something. Mor was watching both carefully—the warning she’d given my sister ringing silently between them. And Nesta, Mother damn it all, seemed to remember. Seemed to rein in whatever words she’d been about to spit and just approached me.”

“So you’re alive.”Cassian bared his teeth in a feral grin, wings flaring slightly. “Were you hoping otherwise?”

Mor was watching—watching so closely, every muscle tense. She again reached for his arm, but Cassian angled out of reach, not tearing his eyes from Nesta’s blazing gaze.

I don’t agree with her at all, especially since she is a hypocrite because if anyone brings up her relationship with Azriel it is unacceptable and not their business. You can be a friend, you can be protective, as I am sure Az also is but you can keep it to yourself, or Cassian.

Her not wanting to loose her buffer is not only selfish but cruel to him.

“Your Solstice present.” “I don’t want one.” Cassian continued past her, tossing the present in his hands. “You’ll want this one.” He prayed she would. It had taken him months to find it. He hadn’t wanted to give it to her in front of the others. Hadn’t even known she’d be there tonight.”

This isn’t directly linked to Mor but it kind of falls under the same theme of him being shy/embarrassed(?) in regards to her, for whatever reason it doesn’t put things in the best light. We can only speculate about what was inside it, and boy do we, so we can’t say if it was personal or private but the idea that he didn’t want to display any... sentiment towards her publicly must rub her the wrong way especially since only Elain got her a present.

Touch

Not much to analyse here I just want to quote and appreciate these moments.

His voice was rough as he said, “Five hundred years ago, I fought on battlefields not far from this house. I fought beside human and faerie alike, bled beside them. I will stand on that battlefield again, Nesta Archeron, to protect this house—your people. I can think of no better way to end my existence than to defend those who need it most.”

I watched a tear slide down Nesta’s cheek. And I watched as Cassian reached up a hand to wipe it away. She did not flinch from his touch.”

“Nesta was standing there, arms around herself, eyes wide. Cassian only stretched out an arm for her. As if in a trance, she walked right to his side. His arms tightened around both of us, Siphons flaring, gilding the darkness with bloodred light.”

“She let out a small, animal sound—like some wounded stag—as she saw him. As he landed so hard his knees popped. He said nothing as Nesta launched herself toward him, her dress filthy and disheveled, her arms stretching for him. He opened his own for her, unable to stop his approach, his reaching—”

“Cassian said to her, “Nothing can harm you here.” He sucked in a breath, groaning softly, and rose to his feet. Azriel tried to stop him, but Cassian brushed him off and strode for my sister’s side. He braced a hand on the desk when he at last stopped. “Nothing can harm you,” he repeated. Nesta was still looking at him when she finally shut her eyes. I shifted, and the angle allowed me to see what I hadn’t detected before. Nesta stood before the map, a fist of bones and stones clenched over it. Cassian remained at her side—his other hand on her lower back. And I marveled at the touch she allowed—marveled at it as much as I did the mud-splattered hand she held out. The concentration that settled over her face.”

“Cassian seemed too weary to speak as well while she wrapped bandages around his wrist, only grunting to confirm if it was too tight or too loose, if it helped at all. But he watched her—didn’t take his eyes off her face, the brows bunched and lips pursed in concentration.

And when she’d tied it neatly, his wrist wrapped in white, when Nesta made to pull back, Cassian gripped her fingers in his good hand. She lifted her gaze to his. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. Nesta did not yank her hand away. Did not open her mouth for some barbed retort.”

“Cassian brushed a thumb down the back of her hand. “You’re welcome,” Cassian called after her, more than a bite to his voice. His hands clenched and slackened at his sides—as if he were trying to loosen the feel of her from his palms.”

“Her gloved fingers scraped against his calluses, but he held firm. “Talk to me. Nesta. Tell me—” She ripped her hand out of his grip. Stared him down. A mighty, vengeful queen.”

Watching

“He studied every inch of her. As if there were nothing and no one else here, anywhere.”

“When I looked ahead, I found Cassian staring back at Nesta as well. I wondered why no one had yet mentioned what now shone in Cassian’s eyes as he gazed at my sister. The sorrow. And the longing.”

“Cassian watched every bite she took, every bob of her throat as she swallowed.”

“Cassian had named about two dozen poses for Nesta at this point. Ranging from I Will Eat Your Eyes for Breakfast to I Don’t Want Cassian to Know I’m Reading Smut. The latter was his particular favorite. Suppressing his smile, Cassian gestured to the pretty piles”

“But Mor waved him off and moved to pass Cassian his gift; but the warrior didn’t take it. Or take his eyes off Nesta as she undid the brown paper wrapping on the box and revealed a set of five novels in a leather box. She read the titles, then lifted her head to Elain.”

“What are you?” Cassian didn’t seem to dare take his focus off Nesta. But my sister slowly looked at Lucien.”

“Good,” Cassian said, glancing at Nesta. “If I end my life defending those who need it most, then I will consider it a death well spent.” Lord Devlon, for once, nodded his approval. I wondered if Cassian noticed it—if he cared. His face revealed nothing, not as his focus remained wholly on my sister.”

“She looked to Beron and his family as she finished. Only the Lady and Eris seemed to be considering—impressed, even, by the strange, simmering woman before them. I didn’t have the words in me—to convey what was in my heart. Cassian seemed the same.”

“I do not want to be remembered as a coward.” “No one would say that,” I offered quietly. “I would.” Nesta surveyed us all, her gaze jumping past Cassian. Not to slight him, but … avoid answering the look he was giving her. Approval—more. ”

“Nesta’s eyes shot right to his face. She spoke quietly to me, to all of us, even as she held Cassian’s gaze as if he were the only one in the room.”

“Nesta had been beautiful as a human woman. As High Fae, she was devastating. From the utter stillness with which Cassian stood beside me, I wondered if he thought the same thing.”

Nesta blurted, “You didn’t come to—” She stopped herself. The world seemed to go utterly still at that interrupted sentence, nothing and no one more so than Cassian. He scanned her face as if furiously reading some battle report. Mor just watched as Cassian took Nesta’s slim hand in his own, interlacing their fingers. As he folded in his wings and blindly reached his other hand back toward Mor in a silent order to transport them. Cassian’s eyes did not leave Nesta’s; nor did hers leave his. There was no warmth, no tenderness on either of their faces. Only that raging intensity, that blend of contempt and understanding and fire.”

Can someone tell them both there are other people in the room? I don’t think they know...

Protect

“Tamlin snarled at her. Cassian snarled right back, “Watch it.” Tamlin looked between my sister and Cassian—his gaze lingering on Cassian’s wings, tucked in behind him. Snorted. “Seems like other preferences run in the Archeron family, too.”

“Cassian had stationed himself by the doorway, I realized, to be closer to Nesta. To grab her if Amren decided she didn’t particularly care for where this conversation was headed[...] Cassian was staring at Nesta—hard enough that my sister at last twisted toward him. Met his gaze. His head tilted—slightly. A silent order. Nesta, to my shock, obeyed. Drifted over to Cassian’s side as Amren replied to Rhys, “No.”

“Cassian casually slid Nesta behind him, his fingers snagging in the skirts of her black gown. As if to reassure himself that she wasn’t in Amren’s direct path. Nesta only rose onto her toes to peer over his shoulder.”

This is a personal favourite of mine because when it is truly dangerous she trusts and relies on Cassian completely. Also just the imagery of her peering over his shoulder is golden.

“Something …” The word was cut off by a low groan. She sagged, and Mor caught her fully, scanning Nesta’s face. Cassian was instantly there, his hand at her back, teeth bared at the invisible threat.”

“I don’t think even the Carver knows what Nesta is. But I wanted to see—just in case.”

“Why?”

“I want to help.”

“How do I fix it?” she asked. Her hair had been tied in a loose knot atop her head earlier in the day, and in the hours that we’d worked to ready and distribute supplies to the healers, through the heat and humidity, stray tendrils had come free to curl about her temple, her nape. Faint color had stained her cheeks from the sun, and her forearms, bare beneath the sleeves she’d rolled up, were flecked with mud.”

Despite any vicious words or silly mistakes they both care for each other, the second anyone becomes a threat or a problem to their counterpart a deeper more hidden feeling emerges. A protective instinct.

Brooding

“He very rarely allowed himself to think of her, anyway. It usually didn’t end well for whoever was in the sparring ring with him.”

“He was grateful the streets were empty when he hurled that box into the Sidra. Hurled it hard enough that the splash echoed off the buildings flanking the river, ice cracking from the impact. Ice instantly re-formed over the hole he’d blown open. As if it, and the present. had never been.”

“Cassian shut out the words. Shut out the image that chased him from his dreams, night after night: not Nesta holding up the King of Hybern’s head like a trophy; not the way her father’s neck had twisted in Hybern’s hands. But the image of her leaning over him, covering Cassian’s body with her own, ready to take the full brunt of the king’s power for him. To die for him—with him. That slender, beautiful body, arching over him, shaking in terror, willing to face that end. He hadn’t seen a glimpse of that person in months. Had not seen her smile or laugh.”

Understanding/Compassion

He may have his slip ups but thus far he has proven to be rather compassionate when it comes to Nesta and understanding where she comes from.

“Mother’s tits, Rhys,” Cassian cut in, wings flaring wide enough to nearly knock over the ceramic vase on the side table next to him. “You think we can just take over her family’s house, demand that of them?”

From before they even met he showed understanding to their beliefs about the fae.

“I don’t blame her,” Cassian said, shrugging despite his words. “She was—violated. Her body stopped belonging wholly to her.” His jaw clenched. Even Amren didn’t dare say anything. “And I am going to peel the King of Hybern’s skin off his bones the next time I see him.”

I think they both have their positive and negative attributes to face but overall they genuinely try their best for each other.

“Dresses aren’t good for flying, ladies.” Nesta didn’t reply.

He lifted a brow. “No barking and biting today?” But Nesta didn’t rise to meet him, her face still drained and sallow. “I’ve never worn pants,” was all she said. I could have sworn concern flashed across Cassian’s features. But he brushed it aside and drawled, “I have no doubt you’d start a riot if you did.”

No reaction. Had the Cauldron— Cassian stepped in Nesta’s path when she tried to walk past him. Put a tan, callused hand on her forehead. She shook off the touch, but he gripped her wrist, forcing her to meet his stare. “Any one of those human pricks makes a move to hurt you,” he breathed, “and you kill them.”

The beautiful thing I love about Cassian is that he loves her wholly and without concern of her abilities, her walls.

“Would you be frightened of her, if Nesta was—Death? Or if her power came from it?” Cassian was quiet for a long moment.

He said at last, “I’m a warrior. I’ve walked beside Death my entire life. I would be more afraid for her, to have that power. But not afraid of her.” He considered, and added after a heartbeat, “Nothing about Nesta could frighten me.”

I swallowed, and squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”

These idiots are both as stubborn and silly as each other, “oh you didn’t say anythign to me!” “well neither did you” honestly, these donuts will be the death of me but I love them anyways.

“And you didn’t say one gods-damned word to me the entire night.

Not that he’d said a word to her. She’d made it clear enough in those initial days after that last battle that she wanted nothing to do with him. With any of them.

He understood. He really did. It had taken him months—years—after his first battles to readjust. To cope. Hell, he was still reeling from what had happened in that final battle with Hybern, too.”

But again he acknowledges her pain, her inability to cope and return to normal after her trauma. Which I dive in to a lot more in my Nesta post, but in short my frustration lies with him saying he understands but then in moments she is suffering he seems to forget occasionally and snap.

Funny/Little moments

“I’d asked what, exactly, Nesta had said to him to get under his skin so easily. But Cassian had only snarled and told me to mind my own business, and that my family was full of bossy, know-it-all females.”

“What’s wrong?” “Nothing.” He stalked past me to the ring. “Is it Nesta?” “Not everything in my life is about your sister, you know.”

“Why should I be scared of an oversized bat who likes to throw temper tantrums?”

“Neither of us missed Cassian’s barked, filthy curse, though we didn’t deign to comment. Cassian was a general—the general of the Night Court. Surely Nesta wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.”

“Ready for some flying, Nes?” “Don’t call me that.” The wrong thing to say, from the way Cassian’s eyes lit up.”

“Nesta in a pale gray gown that brought out the steel in her eyes, Elain in dusty pink. Both males went a bit still. But Azriel sketched a bow—while Cassian stalked for the dining table, reached right over Nesta’s shoulder, and grabbed a muffin from its little basket. “Morning, Nesta,” he said around a mouth of blueberry-lemon. “Elain.”

“Cassian took a step away, but looked back at Nesta. Her face was hard as granite. He opened his mouth, but seemed to decide against whatever he was about to say.”

“He knew about the drinking, about the males. He told himself he didn’t care. He told himself he didn’t want to know who the bastard was who had taken her maidenhead. Told himself he didn’t want to know if the males meant anything—if he meant anything.”

Ownership

“His eyes widened, but the scent of his fear remained—not at her, but at who he’d heard at the front door. As he remembered who she was, both in the court, and to Cassian. She chucked his white shirt to him. “You can use the front door now.”

I think this is a big rub for Nesta, this feeling of ownership. I truly belive she knows and has felt the bond for a little while, for sure after ACOWAR. As we saw with her reaction to Lucien “claiming” Elain as his mate she is not here for this sense of entitlement fae males have.

It doesn’t further help when those around her and in Velaris all treat her as if she is his now. And she is most certainly not.

“Starting with the first male she’d taken here, who had no idea that her maidenhead was intact until he’d spied the speckled blood on the sheets. His face had gone white with terror—pure, ghastly white. Not for fear of Feyre and Rhysand’s wrath. But the wrath of that insufferable Illyrian brute.”

Is this Cassian’s fault? NO. But it probably will not help the situation for her.

“Yet as far as anyone was now concerned, the events of that last battle had bound them. Her and Cassian.”

Promises & Mistakes

“Cassian shook his dark hair out of his eyes, slightly longer than the last time I’d seen it. “I don’t think Nesta will ever forgive me for what happened in Hybern. To her—but mostly to Elain.”

“Your wings were shredded. You were barely alive.”

For that was guilt—ravaging and poisonous—in each of Cassian’s words. What the others had been fighting against in the loft. “You were in no position to save anyone.”“I made her a promise.” The wind ruffled Cassian’s hair as he squinted at the sky. “And when it mattered, I didn’t keep it.”

It is so sad that he feels that way when it clearly was far beyond his control, but I am glad that Nesta doesn’t really hold it against him and when it comes to it later on she trusts him yet again to protect her.

“It goes both ways,” Nesta murmured, as if my mate’s words moments before had triggered the idea. “He doesn’t know how much I took. And if … if I make it seem like I’m about to use his power … He’ll come running. Just to kill me.”

“He will kill you,” Cassian snarled. Her hand clenched on his arm. “That’s—that’s where you come in.”

noooow for the scene we probably all equally cringe over...

“Stop following me. Stop trying to haul me into your happy little circle. Stop doing all of it.”

He knew a wounded animal when he saw one. Knew the teeth they could bare, the viciousness they displayed. But it couldn’t keep him from saying, “Your sisters love you. I can’t for the life of me understand why, but they do. If you can’t be bothered to try for my happy little circle’s sake, then at least try for them.”

A void seemed to enter those eyes. An endless, depthless void.

Other than simply being hurt and frustrated I cannot for the life of me understand why he would say that of all things, it is such a hurtful but also random thing to say especially since he seemed to find plenty to like about her prior.

But again they are both akin to make mistakes, saying things they shouldn’t, Nesta certainly cannot complain as she can be very bad for it.

ICONIC.

“Nesta surged to her feet, staggering across the clearing, blood at her mouth from where he’d hit her, and threw herself to her knees before Cassian. “Get up,” she sobbed, hauling at his shoulder. “Get up.” He tried—and failed. “You’re too heavy,” she pleaded, but still tried to raise him, fingers scrabbling in his black, bloodied armor. “I can’t—he’s coming—” “Go,” Cassian groaned. Cassian grunted in pain, but lifted his bloodied hands—to cup her face. “I have no regrets in my life, but this.” His voice shook with every word. “That we did not have time. That I did not have time with you, Nesta.” She didn’t stop him as he leaned up and kissed her—lightly. As much as he could[…]”

“And even the Cauldron seemed to pause in surprise—surprise or some … feeling as Nesta looked at the king with death twining around his hands, then down at Cassian. And covered Cassian’s body with her own. Cassian went still—then his hand slid over her back. Together. They’d go together.”

“Cassian was sizing up Nesta, a gleam in his eyes that I could only interpret as a warrior finding himself faced with a new, interesting opponent.

Then, Mother above, Nesta shifted her attention to Cassian, noticing that gleam—what it meant. She snarled softly, “What are you looking at?”

Cassian’s brows rose—little amusement to be found now. “Someone who let her youngest sister risk her life every day in the woods while she did nothing. Someone who let a fourteen-year-old child go out into that forest, so close to the wall.” My face began heating, and I opened my mouth. To say what, I didn’t know. “Your sister died—died to save my people. She is willing to do so again to protect you from war. So don’t expect me to sit here with my mouth shut while you sneer at her for a choice she did not get to make—and insult my people in the process.”

Nesta didn’t bat an eyelash as she studied the handsome features, the muscled torso. Then turned to me. Dismissing him entirely. Cassian’s face went almost feral. A wolf who had been circling a doe … only to find a mountain cat wearing its hide instead.”

Nesta

“Nesta is different from most people,” I explained. “She comes across as rigid and vicious, but I think it’s a wall. A shield—like the ones Rhys has in his mind.”

“Against what?”

“Feeling. I think Nesta feels everything—sees too much; sees and feels it all. And she burns with it. Keeping that wall up helps from being overwhelmed, from caring too greatly.”

And I think that is what makes one of the last things we hear from her in ACOFAS where she admits she isn’t feeling anything at all, a stark contrast from before the war. She is traumatised. Unfeeling,

“Until she drew her knees to her chest and stared into the dimness. Still the silence raged and echoed around her. Still she felt nothing.”

"Nesta struggles a lot with her mental health, with facing her past, with healing herself and learning to love herself and open herself up to other people." -Sarah J Maas

As for the next book I think it will be about both of them learning to heal, to grow, and face all the unspoken things between them. I personally cannot wait for both of them to do so, I love them both equally.

They are both flawed and complicated characters but that is precisely what I love about them.

As usual I say, I am always open to discussions and opinions, I love to chat but lets keep it calm and respectful. Everyones opinion is valid ♥️

#nessian #nesta archeron #ACOTAR #ACOTAR 4 #Cassian #Nesta x Cassian #A court of thorns and roses #mine #nessian meta #cassian x nesta #Anonymous

[tuiyla]

A Definitive History of Bubbline

With “Obsidian” coming out in two days, it really is time for a definitive history of Marceline and Bubblegum’s relationship. And by that I mean the tumultuous road that led us to “Obsidian” from a production and fandom point of view. For a list of Bubbline episodes, check out my Bubbline Guide (and part two) - which I need to update, I know I know. For this post, I wanted to highlight how far this pairing has come and what Bubbline means to queer representation in children’s cartoons.

This is less of an analysis and more of an overview with links to more information on specific incidents to keep it (relatively) brief. I say it’s a definitive history but it isn’t an exhaustive one, so do check out the links included to learn more about how we got here. I realize not everyone cares about these kinds of things but I think it’s important to know how hard Adventure Time’s creators had to fight. Bubbline is a pioneer ship in many ways but it doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves.

Initial Concepts

As is the case with much of Adventure Time, the initial concept of who the characters of Bonnibel and Marceline were going to be is very different than what we ended up getting. @gunterfan1992 explores this and other production tidbits in depth in his book so I do recommend checking that out. The short version is that these two were created to be opposites and with a Betty and Veronica type dynamic in mind where they would both be love interest to the protagonist, Finn.

This didn’t quite end up being the case but remnants of this concept are seen in “Go With Me” (March, 2011), the episode with the first on-screen Bubbline interaction. As Marcy helps - and sabotages - Finn in asking Bonnie out, she also becomes a potential love interest for him but she shuts him down immediately. So while Finn’s crush on PB continues, the notion that Marceline would be part of a love triangle is dismissed. Instead, this first Bonnie and Marcy interaction established that the two already know each other and there’s some bitterness in that past.

“What Was Missing” and the Mathematical Controversy

A potential preexisting relationship between the two was further explored in “What Was Missing” (September 2011) just a season later. The episode was written and storyboarded by Rebecca Sugar and eventual showrunner Adam Muto. Sugar was responsible for much of the character depth added to Marceline and later even played, quite aptly, her mother in the Stakes miniseries. It was Sugar who wrote the now beyond iconic “I’m Just Your Problem” based on personal experiences and suggested that Marcy and Bonnie be queer characters with a complicated romantic past.

“What Was Missing” was hugely important in how it hinted at a complex relationship through character interactions, Marceline’s song, and the last scene twist with PB’s shirt. The AT crew were supportive of the idea and sneaked in plenty of queer subtext, but this is where I have to point out that 2011 was a very different time and it’s thanks, in part, to Bubbline that things have changed. Autostraddle’s article from back when covers what is now known as the Mathematical controversy. Audiences picked up on the subtext and Cartoon Network was not having it. The popularity of the ship soared but the execs were not taking to queer implications kindly.

Great Bubbline Drought

So, the ship has sailed but controversy looms over it. “What Was Missing” s subtle by today’s standards but it was enough to keep Marceline and Bubblegum apart for two years on-screen. Each character went through wonderful development in the meantime, as did the show itself, but there’s a certain sense of bitterness to what came to be known as the Great Bubbline Drought. CN got so afraid of the potential backlash that they waited two years to have a new episode featuring the pair, “Sky Witch” (July 2013), by which point Sugar had left AT to work on her own show, Steven Universe. I’m happy that Sugar got to create her own show and push for even more queer representation, but it’s also sad that she never got to write more for the ship she pioneered.

“Sky Witch” still happened, though, and featured even more subtext, from PB’s side this time around. The shirt returned and there was hope as Marcy and Bonnie were seen hanging out together more often (”Red Starved” and “Princess Day”). Another controversy threatened to emerge in August 2014 when Olivia Olson, Marceline’s voice actress said that creator Pendleton Ward had confirmed a pre-show Bubbline romance. It was a messy ordeal with deleted tweets and questions about whether the two could get together again in the series. Fortunately, though, things changed in the three years between 2011 to 2014 and another Bubbline drought didn’t follow.

The Season That Changed Everything

It took another two years after “Sky Witch” but the ball was finally, inevitably, relentlessly rolling. “Varmints” premiered in November 2015 and three episodes later, the Stakes miniseries kicked off. What season 7 meant wasn’t just breadcrumbs and (not so) subtle songs anymore: suddenly, there were too many Bubbline moments to count. “Varmints” served as a follow-up to “What Was Missing” and a final reconciliation, and though Stakes was primarily about Marcy, it also developed her relationship with Bonnie. Afterwards, it became clear that Bubbline was heading somewhere.

It’s worth noting that the cultural context also changed between when “Sky Witch” and “Varmints” aired. In December 2014, The Legend of Korra ended with Korra and Asami beginning their romantic relationship, and Rebecca Sugar was making Steven Universe more and more explicitly queer by the day. Adventure Time started the ball rolling but now it wasn’t alone as a popular Western cable cartoon with queer characters. However, Bubbline was still very much subtext at this point, just with significantly more hope of becoming more.

Late Series Entanglement

But at what point does subtext become plain text? Bubbline fans sure did have fun with that question between Stakes and the finale. Bonnie and Marcy became near inseparable, with most of their major appearances involving one another from this point on. These included the meet the adoptive dad date “Broke His Crown” (March 2016), the Elements miniseries (April 2017) and the nigh on obnoxiously on the nose “Marcy & Hunson” (December 2017). In fact, all but two of Marceline’s major appearances from season 7 on included Bonnie - the exceptions being “Everything Stays” as part of Stakes, and “Ketchup”, which really wasn’t any less gay.

Bubbline moments really did become too many to count, with the vast majority of them having romantic implications. And with queer representation becoming more and more prominent in Western animation, canon Bubbline romance seemed like a question of when rather than if. I’d like to point out here how this was often frustrating, though. After the very rocky start, this relationship was thriving and was really basically confirmed, but that last little push to make it undeniably a part of queer history was still needed.

“Come on!” - The End and Beyond

The almost three years that passed between Stakes and “Come Along With Me” (September 2018) were much more tolerable than the Drought; after all, there was plenty of Bubbline content in the later seasons. The big question as the finale came was whether Adventure Time would fizzle out on its early pioneer of a wlw ship or follow through, once and for all. Almost four years after LoK ended and just before season 1 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power dropped, Marcy and Bonnie had an emotional moment, kissed on screen, and ended the series together.

The intricacies of why a kiss was needed as a signifier of romance is a discussion for another day. But wouldn’t it have been strange after almost a decade of build-up for them not to seal the deal with a kiss? And to think it almost didn’t happen, as by that point it was so obvious they were together. Again, I direct your attention towards Paul Thomas’s book, he explains how it was storyboard artist Hanna K. Nyström’s call to add this final detail. Because, come on! Sometimes, you need to be as clear as possible, and that’s the case with queer representation in animation.

Since the finale, the comics have been continuing the Bubbline train - which are not technically canon but one can have fun regardless. In any case, the existence of Marcy and Bonnie’s relationship, of their queer identities, is not something that can reasonably be denied. It was a long road, and, make no mistake, an arduous one, but this is the story of a win. A win for storytelling and a win for wlw relationships.

We’ll Build Our Own Forever

So, there you have it, a Bubbline timeline of sorts. In March of 2011 we had the first on-screen interaction and now, in November of 2020, we’re getting a 45-minute-long special with the two of them as the central characters. They’re canonically in love, with King Princess covers of Bubbline songs and more. I tried to contain myself, for once, and not write too much. I think it’s important that people have a general idea of just how monumental all of this is and how, even just 9 years ago, “Obsidian” would have been totally inconceivable.

Some of this might have come as a surprise to you. It’s certainly not been easy to get to where we are now with Bubbline and it’s yet to be seen how open “Obsidian” will be about the relationship. I’ve been talking about Bubbline for years and attempted to chronicle their relationship many times so I’m happy I’ve finally done it from this perspective as well.

Adventure Time: Distant Lands “Obsidian” is streaming on Nov 19 on HBO Max. If you can, stream it so we can show that there’s popular demand for stories like that of an angry vampire and a despotic piece of gum.

#Adventure Time #bubbline #obsidian #marceline abadeer #adventure time distant lands #at #pb #my thoughts #definitive history of bubbline #there you have it folks #princess bubblegum

[the-erudite-library]

Villainy pt 1: The Big Bads

okay i’m going to just admit right now that this post is a little biased, but i’m a salty, overanalyzing fuck so i’m going to write it anyways.

for the sake of ease of understanding, lets pretend that all the antagonists in this story are actual villains (villainy describes a malicious intent where as antagonism describes a character who is direct opposition to the protagonist) and ignore the biased narration of the series being that it’s told from a first person perspective (more on why that makes understanding the characters in this series shitty and confusing can be found here). I care a lot about the antagonists in this series and so it just feels right that i write a fucking essay based entirely around how cool they are, their wasted potential, and why some of them are just way, way cooler than others. I’m just going to go ahead and cover all the supposed villains rather than just the big bads, and i’m probably going to massively overestimate their complexity and actually try to work out a narrative for all of them because a lot of these supposed villains are actually rather sympathetic characters when they’re looked at from the right angle and honestly the narrative kind of treats them like garbage. I’m not saying that any of them were totally justified in their actions, I just think that sometimes the plot and writing of the story is so aggressively vague, biased, and nonsensical that it can be difficult to understand them.

I genuinely think that Jeanine is the best antagonist out of all of them, and I’m sure that that can be fiercely debated because really it depends on what you mean when you say ‘best’. What I mean is that I appreciate the way that there are all these little breadcrumbs for people to draw their own conclusions about her but nothing that ever really redeems her as a person, also that she’s really the closest to an actual villain that the story ever gets. I already talked about how she’s really not in the post linked above and also in this one, how she’s really a morally gray and complex person. But what I also love about her is that she’s so incredibly straightforward about everything. For the most part, she doesn’t waste much time with theatrics or melodrama, she just does the thing (aside from that one thing with the water tank in the first book that was really kind of out of character for what had just been established about her and i could not have been more glad when they changed it in the movie). Her plan makes sense, the goals are clear and her methods are obviously well thought out; I wouldn’t at all be surprised if she spent years putting it all together piece by tiny piece without anyone ever seeing it coming but by the time they did there was no stopping it. She went to great lengths to protect her own image even after the Abnegation attack and for the most part it really felt like it was just Tris and her scrawny little army up against this massively powerful woman who had the whole city at her beck and call (if you ignore the fact that the insurgency never really lost a battle of course). She suffered no fools and for the most part seemed to keep everyone at an arms length; no one knew the full scope of the plan but her and no one could ever get close enough to eventually betray her. She built up an empire of people that she held together for quite some time. Even as the war began to tip out of Erudite’s favor, no important people ever seemed to even try to leave (Jack Kang is the only example that I can think of that didn’t die before things really began to fall apart for Erudite, which leads me to think that she didn’t have all that many important associates to begin with). She was kind of one track minded and completely relentless in chasing down her goals, and it made her terrifying because you knew that she was just never going to stop until she got what she was after. She wasn’t above using any and every dirty and underhanded tactic at her disposal so long as it got her what she wanted. She wasn’t an antagonist that could be handled easily or quietly; stopping her required amassing an army and half-destroying the entire city because anything less would have been snuffed out before it could gain any traction because she was just that powerful. She always seemed to be one step (or ten) ahead and defeating her ultimately required having not much of a plan at all or a plan that not everyone was clear on because chaos was the one thing she couldn’t break down, compartmentalize, and ultimately conquer.

Jeanine and Tris’ dynamic is interesting to say the least, and not in a shippy way but in like a very genuinely compelling way. I’m going to include movie canon in this because despite how shit the movies were about some details, others were greatly improved upon (i.e. replacing the water tank bullshit with a straight up execution, it may have been a little bit less dramatic but it was far more in line with Jeanine’s character). From the very moment they meet, Tris is full of snark and sass no matter how inappropriate it may be in the moment. What they have isn’t so much witty banter as it is Tris making really disrespectful comments and Jeanine starting off as being polite about it and she just gradually loses her patience. They clash on the deepest level, not really equals but complete opposite. Let’s be honest with ourselves; Tris was not more powerful than Jeanine, she was not smarter, in the grand scheme of things she wasn’t stronger either. Which makes the fact that she was able to best her really interesting. Jeanine doesn’t handle chaos well and Tris is almost all chaos. It’s hardly a game of chess and more like one person losing and deciding to knock all the pieces off the table...which in and of itself is a kind of victory I guess.

Evelyn is...an interesting villain. For the most part, she seems to be a person driven largely by hatred and fear as a result of years and years of suffering and pain piling up on top of each other like some sort of sedimentary rock of trauma. She very well may have started out as someone who was simply just power hungry, or maybe not power hungry but just ambitious. I highly doubt she was cut out for Abnegation and there is a lot of evidence that she’s Divergent (if she’s not then it’s kind of unclear exactly where she would fit, Erudite maybe). From the way that things are set up in the Four novellas, it sounds a lot like her plans have been coming together for a long time too and that they have been the complete and total focus of her life. She brought together potentially thousands of people, made them obey her, made them fight and die for her, but most impressively she made them stick by her for years when they had absolutely no reason to. It’s kind of insinuated, if not outright said, that Evelyn is completely self made and that everything that the factionless are they what are because she built them up like that. By all accounts, she is just as impressive as Jeanine and quite the force to be reckoned with. However, her reasons for doing what she does make her all the more interesting. Like I said, perhaps she might have started out with a simple desire to be powerful and that may have been why she picked Abnegation in the first place, in hopes of getting on the council (i’ve seen that theory tossed out in fanfic before and it actually makes a lot of sense). But Marcus’ treatment of her and the way that many of the Abnegation are just so willfully ignorant, the way that they will go to great lengths to protect their image as a faction (and by extension, Marcus’ image as a leader) even if that means turning a blind eye to the fact that she was being abused must have been much more than disillusioning. It certainly couldn’t have done any good for her emotionally and by the time Four reunites with her for the first time in his novella she is a far cry from the woman that he knew as a child because she had to become someone else entirely just to survive. 

It obviously spurred a powerful desire for revenge within her, not just against the man who wronged her but against the faction system as a whole that neglected her and held her down. When she finally saw her chance to take that revenge it wasn’t her capitalizing on the war, on Dauntless’ fracturing, Abnegation’s destruction, and Erudite getting less trustworthy by the day. No, it was her perceiving a hairline fracture in the very foundation of the system that wouldn’t become anything threatening for literal years. Much like Jeanine, she stacked the deck in her favor long before anyone knew what she was doing; and in her case she had the extra advantage of nearly everyone who knew her thinking she was dead. Evelyn’s Factionless and Jeanine’s Erudite were two very powerful and very similar forces led by two very powerful and very similar women, and honestly it’s a damn shame that we got Tris constantly butting in and all but bending fate in her favor when we could have had a delightfully destructive and complex war with Jeanine and Evelyn as the central focusses.

Especially because Evelyn has a flat, kind of boring, and frankly rather irritating relationship with Tris. I think they maybe say a few sentences to each other ever, despite Tris hating her and wanting so badly to fight her. And I get it, Tris hates her for abandoning Tobias and that’s kind of understandable I guess, but given the fact that she was meant to be one of the big villains in book three one would think that there would be more of an interaction. I mean, sure, they had that one thing at the beginning of Allegiant with the interrogation scene but I’m like 90% sure that was the longest conversation they’d ever had or ever would have and it’s disappointing. 

And then there’s David, the disappointment of the three big bads imo. Generally most elements of Allegiant were disappointing and frustrating, but David was honestly one of the worst elements. He was sort of cooler in the movie, and by cooler I mean a hell of a lot creepier especially regarding Tris. Combine his relationship with Tris in the movie with the fact that in the books it’s very heavily implied that he had unrequited feelings for Natalie and it makes his relationship with her both fascinating and unsettling. Of course, that’s all wasted because those two qualities are exclusive to the book and movie respectively, therefore making his relationship with her sort of flat in both. He doesn’t really have all that much “screen” time in the books at all, at least not in comparison to characters like Nita and Matthew. He had virtually no personality and the only reason I’m including him here at all is because of the role he plays in the Allegiant movie. I’m not saying that he has the same potential or deserves the same amount of plot focus that Evelyn and Jeanine do (mainly because they just have had more time for their characters to build), but honest to god if VRoth was going to make genetic damage a metaphor for oppression (don’t get me started on how badly that was handled) at least, maybe, i don’t know, give the oppressors more than a vague and distant role in the story. I’m not in any way saying that the issues between the GD and GP people should have been highlighted, because god knows that VRoth would have just handled it poorly and I would legit have probably set something on fire. And David doesn’t need to be humanized, what he needs to be is a direct counter to Tris’ ego. If absolutely nothing else that should have been the role of all the Bureau characters save for Amar and George. Tris lowkey kind of doesn’t know how to be wrong and thinks that she knows better than absolutely everyone, and when she’s revealed to be something ~special~ again in Allegiant she became even more of an asshole. She very obviously did think that the genetically pure or the Divergent or whatever were better than the genetically damaged and it goes unacknowledged to the point where i’m just convinced that it’s completely accidental. She’s completely unsympathetic to the actual oppression that the genetically damaged face. 

But I digress.

David is honestly too distant and vague as a character to be analyzed very closely, which is unfortunate because he could have paralleled real people with real sociopolitical philosophies.

#divergent #evelyn johnson #jeanine matthews #david (divergent) #a little candor of me #first big analysis post in a while #theories headcanons and meta #i'll do caleb and nita and stuff later

[beneath-our-masks]

I’m In

Hi everyone, Mod Ten here! This was written by Mod Concerned for the most part and just edited by me so Imani (my character) was IC and for other general editing stuff. We decided not to post EVERYONE’S entry into this organization because most of them were just like “so and so received a letter and answered it with their parents.” But Riley never got a letter of their own merit, thus...a few other things were necessary. Hope you enjoy!

Taglist: @imaghostwriter @aconstantcrisis

Riley was never one to listen. They were also not one to follow the rules, or even the law. So when they hacked into a secret facility and found an interesting file, they had to act on it. Said file contained information about certain individuals and how they were selected to form a team of kid heroes. It was...interesting, to say the least. Yes, kid heroes existed. They could think of a few, but a team? Not really heard of. So when they did more digging and read up on each kid chosen, they decided to join.

It had been a week since they hacked in, found the ground plans and the file, and decided to finally go ahead with their plan and ‘break in.’ They’d show them what they can do, and become a member of the team. They stood across the street from the facility, watching Agents walk in and out, and looking past the glass panes into the actual building. It looked like a financial building, but they knew that there was a carefully sequestered area in the basement that constituted an entire secret facility. They saw a rather big desk, with a secretary. Make that two. Great, they had to distract two people. And they were probably armed. Taking in a breath, they started to cross the street. With each step, they could feel their nerves screaming at them to leave, but they continued to walk forward, getting a buzz off their adrenaline. As they made it closer to the door, a women walked out on the phone. Perfect, she was distracted. They didn’t need to enter the code to get into the building. Slipping through the door that was closing, they walked to the front desk and gave the secretaries a flashy smile.

“Good morning, I am here to see Agent Jefferson and Agent Schott,” they said smoothly. They had been practicing, and even took out their piercings and re-dye their hair back to it’s normal color. On top of that, they were wearing some of their finer clothes to look like a well put together young adult. “I got a letter,” they started, pulling it out of their satchel and laying it on the counter. They had found the template the organization used for the letters they sent out, and they used it to make their own. “I honestly wasn’t sure what to do, so I decided to come in.”

“Alright, let me call Agent Jefferson over,” a secretary said, looking a bit skeptical. Riley hesitated for a moment. They were hoping for Agent Schott, not Agent Jefferson, but they of course didn’t say anything to the secretary. Taking in a breath, they contemplated. Agent Jefferson...they had hacked in a couple more times to get files on the people they would be trying to persuade, and frankly, they didn’t like her much. She could neutralize abilities, and would probably neutralize his. They had to play this smart, rely on their smooth talking and not their power to persuade them. Sure enough, a few taps of the secretary’s phone and a small conversation later, a dark-skinned woman in a pantsuit walked up and extended a hand for Riley to shake. She was smiling.

“Hello there! You’re one of our new recruits. Here, come to my office, so we can verify that everything is in order and start the orientation.”  

“You must be Agent Jefferson!” they exclaimed happily. “Pleasure to meet you. Happy the letter was real and I wasn’t being scammed,” they said, shaking her hand. “And of course, whatever you need.”

Jefferson smiled at him and led him into her office. “After you,” she said, holding the door for Riley. Then, she sat down at her desk. “Alright, first question. When you hacked into our information databases, did you compromise them in any way, shape, or form?” Her voice was calm, but her gaze could kill.

Sitting across from Agent Jefferson, Riley’s innocent smile turned into a wicked smirk, “Maybe your technicians are not that good, if they can’t even figure that out.” They looked around the room, not even fazed by her gaze, and took everything in. “Also, I know you are a therapist, but does your office have to resemble one so much?”

“Perfect,” Jefferson said, ignoring the previous comment. “That’s exactly the confirmation I needed. Well, now we’ve found our hacker definitively. I mean, we know the IP’s you’ve hacked from, but since you’re very likely using various remote IP’s, we knew that wouldn’t get us to many places. So, I had to take a little leap. Perfect. So, now that we have that confirmation, wanna give me one reason you shouldn’t be put in federal prison?”

“Sending a kid to prison, honestly I didn’t think you would make that threat.” Riley shrugged, “Though that threat doesn’t scare me, especially since I’m about to make an offer.” They opened up their satchel and pulled out a small laptop, then opened it up to face Jefferson. It showed a countdown timer. 1:36:03, 1:36:02...and it kept counting down. “I have this much time to convince you to let me join the team of kid heroes, before all the secrets I found are revealed to the world.” They smiled innocently once again, “And don’t bother with your technicians, only I can stop this timer.”

“Alright,” Jefferson said with a nod as she fiddled with one of her plugs. “Well, convincing isn’t particularly necessary. I have a few forms here for you, but we figured if you showed up, it would be better for you to be here where we can keep an eye on you than somewhere else, where you could potentially hack in again and compromise us. It’s a directive from my supervisor that I quite frankly don’t agree with, but Agent Schott is for it. So. Mind stopping the timer?” She slid a file across her desk that was clearly intended for onboarding.

Leaning forward in his seat, they skimmed the paper she passed their way. “This is too easy.” they mused, sitting back in their seat. “I get you want to keep an eye on me, but it would be so much easier to lock me up, instead of making me a member of the team.” Riley flipped their laptop around, and started typing something. “If this is a joke, I’ll send out the information right now. Does that sound good, Agent Jefferson?

Agent Jefferson let out a sigh, massaging her temples. “Trust me, I wish that it wasn’t this easy. I do not believe in rewarding you for compromising the security of nine children that are in a very dangerous position due to their status or powers by keeping you in a position where you can compromise their security. If it was up to me, we’d be figuring out an ethical way to keep you out of our hair that didn’t involve you being around the very people whose identities you almost compromised. But, as I’m sure you know, there are plenty of people higher up than I am. Consider it them giving you this opportunity. If you’d like their confirmation, I can get them here.”

“I did not compromise anyone,” Riley snipped, rather annoyed that Agent Jefferson even thought that. “I can normally leave no trace, but I wanted you guys to know you were hacked. I left breadcrumbs for you to find.” Riley continued to type away at their laptop. “I made myself look like an amateur so you didn’t think much of me when I showed up. Also,” they began, closing their laptop and putting it away, “I never planned to reveal anything. I already destroyed the hard drive all your information was on.”

“Anyone who can get into our system is not an amateur. Besides, I’m sure you know that we’re doing this largely for the safety of many of these kids. Someone like you could have condemned them to a fate worse than death, hence my disagreement with this situation.” Agent Jefferson let out a long-suffering sigh. “Now, if you don’t mind filling out the forms, we can get you slotted in and continue to redo our security so that we don’t have any more sensitive information getting into the hands of those who could at least pretend to use it as blackmail.”

“Well, one of your technicians could…” Riley began, rambling about all the technical measures the organization could implement.

“You’ll need parental consent as well, especially since you’re under eighteen,” Agent Jefferson interrupted, partway through the rant.

Riley stopped rambling and looked up at Jefferson, another wicked grin appearing on their face. “Already done,” they said smugly, going back to their satchel and searching through it for a piece of paper. He tossed it on the desk in front of her. “I showed my parents the letter I fabricated, and they loved the idea. Better than me doing shit alone, they said.”

“Fabulous,” Jefferson replied, not trying particularly hard to not sound sarcastic. “Alright. I’m going to take you to a common area and have you wait there until everyone else gets there. Is there anything else I should know?”

“I want to be partnered with Dakota,” was all they said as they went back to filling out the paperwork. Riley had totally forgot to ask for that. Hopefully she’d agree. From what he’d seen from Agent Jefferson, probably not, but they could hope.

“So my answer is going to be no since I don’t negotiate with people who could have put the information of vulnerable children at risk, but luckily for you it isn’t my call. It’s me, Schott, and some others. I’m at least going to have to know why you want to partner with him.”

“He seems...interesting.” Riley wasn’t lying; they were curious about the boy. Someone ripped from his family and tested on his whole childhood...certainly interesting. “Out of the nine, he’s the most...appealing to me. Granted uh...Ace? Or Bayleigh seem pretty interesting as well. Though I’m not going to lie when I say Dakota is hot.” Now that was a lie, for the most part. But hopefully it’d work.

Agent Jefferson sighed again. “Don’t bother lying. I’ve spent plenty of my life working with hormonal teenagers and right now, I can at least tell that isn’t your primary reason. Well, at least you also know the risk that someone like you partnering with him causes. You seem to enjoy pushing people’s buttons. It could get you killed if you do it with Dakota.”

Riley shrugged. “Let’s just hope I can calm him down before he punches me,” they said, leaning forward in their chair. “Though, if he did manage to kill me, only three people would care. And I’ve left them with quite a bit of memories about me, so it's not like…” Riley trailed off, not liking to think about how their little sister would take their death. They shook their head and looked back at Agent Jefferson. “I don’t care about the risks, I want to be paired with Dakota.”

Agent Jefferson nodded. “I’ll talk to the higher-ups. We’ll see.”

“Thank you, Agent Jefferson!” Their cocky demeanor was back, and they jumped up from their seat, satchel slung over their shoulder. “Now then, take me to the others.”

#imani #agent jefferson #riley #mod concerned writes #writing #oc's #writblr #writeblr #ocs #short story

[sirlennon]

The 9 Benefts of SEO

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In order to get executive buy-in, SEOs require to talk an alternative language : a CMO is just not interested within a list of rankings, they will want to understand the effect of SEO on performance. Should you be going for regional SEO, try to obtain the server close to the location you attempt to rank with regard to. He or she is the proud Founder and Chief Architect of cognitiveSEO, a good SEO Toolset focused on in-depth analysis of ranking signals. A write-up in states that will 85% of individuals prefer indigenous mobile apps to websites Function your brand prominently in the particular app name and be certain you have proper links in order to apps for better search search positions Also, you should ensure that application optimization tops your list associated with SEO optimization. Plus because Google shows YouTube movies in their search results, your own video must be SEO pleasant. Enter your competitor's URL directly into the SEMRush search bar and you will be provided with a listing of SEO keywords, with their particular rankings and traffic. The voice lookup is growing everyday, which might the key factor for your own SEO success in 2018 since online users are more curious in accessing the web through spoken command. We have simply no choice left other than switching the website into mobile-friendly sites along with mobile-friendly SEO strategy to appeal to more users as well since grab and retain search motors attention. These key phrases and key phrases will after that be integrated into articles that will are relevant for that site simply by the SEO consultant. In 2018 there will become an even bigger concentrate upon machine learning and SEO through data. ” Of course, the particular amplification side of things will certainly continue to integrate increasingly along with genuine public relations exercises rather of shallow-relationship link building, which usually will become increasingly easy in order to detect by search engines. The particular Yoast SEO plugin enables a person to write better content along with page and keyword analysis, immediately generate XML sitemaps, enable breadcrumbs, add social and schema markup, as well as a huge number of other optimizations. In the particular future, SEOers will have in order to write more for the internet user, which the search motors will begin to mimic. Research Engine Optimization popularly referred in order to by the acronym SEO is usually really a technique of immediate marketing employed to rank the webpage on top leads in order to increase the number of the particular visitors on website. My predictions intended for SEO in 2018 is that will we are going to keep on to see Google devalue web pages with keyword stuffing and slim content. Technical optimization: all associated with the behind-the-scenes engineering that SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION pros do to make this easier for search engines such as google to find a site. SEO developments continue to emerge, but 2018 is a great revolution in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION just because a lot associated with new game-changing technologies will experienced in this time and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION optimization will get a much better yet new shape. Although personally We are usually not a fan of tone of voice search, but a high percent of people are incredibly for up-to-date on-page SEO optimization, add functions such as voice search, e-mail plug-ins such as ability associated with users to just click upon the email and send this, call plug-ins as well as other modes associated with communication such as Skype. As lookup engine algorithms have become even more refined, the nature of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION profession has additionally changed. 2017 delivered an entire new set associated with changes in the way companies market their products and providers, marketers try to improve their own ranking with seo (SEO), the particular way people surf the internet and much more. If RankBrain may become more and more important in rankings, which is extremely likely, that means that SEO's will start optimizing more plus more for user experience rather of other factors. As marketers plan their content marketing technique for 2018, SEO is definitely SEO 2019 Slide top-of-mind — or at least this should be! 2018, certainly is going to be a good interesting year for SEO within support of time will inform who manages to maintain the particular right blend to come on the top. Digital advertising experts dealing with both SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and AdWords rely on the particular keyword page of the lookup console to show which key phrases trigger user queries for each organic and paid content. These niches or categories are usually labeled with keywords, so SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION enables you to be positioned for a particular category simply by using appropriate keywords or key phrases and key phrases. As predicted, local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and local search made a good impact in the past yr, though the online world have not fully embraced the new great introduced by hyper-localization. Consequently, let's have a look in the emerging SEO trends associated with 2018. Nearby SEO is always a great place to start for little businesses. Analyzing the quality of your own website's inbound backlinks and exactly how they're feeding into your website architecture can provide your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION team insight into many methods from your own website's strongest and weakest webpages to search visibility on specific keywords against competing brands. Because my company offers had lots of success in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, I believed that search purpose wouldn't apply at me. I might just create a better page” and push that page upward with backlinks. Associated with all the SEO tools away there, thousands of online online marketers, small businesses proprietors, and SEO's prefer to use Ahrefs in order to help them improve their research rankings. Key phrases are like a compass regarding the SEO campaigns: they inform you the best and regardless of whether or not you're making improvement. Knoxweb understands search motor technology, and can set a person up with an SEO marketing campaign which will see results. This particular technique involves collecting a checklist of brand mentions of your own website using any SEO device and reaching out to sites to convert your brand describes into backlinks. As search engines always develop more advanced technologies plus responsiveness to online searches, fresh SEO techniques will emerge in order to keep companies ranking high upon search engines. If you increase your own site loading speed, develop the beautiful mobile-friendly design, and framework your website for users, a person will notice a positive effect on your SEO performance. I spent regarding 1 or 2 hours upon the Internet for Best On-Page SEO strategy but did not really get any posts so that will I can be satisfied that will this is the best technique for seo. It is usually important to keep your web site and the users updated in order to get an SEO ranking aspect. Remember that a research engine listing remains an advertising, so we must get the marketing dialled in together along with our SEO. Incorrect Usage of anchors and Poor on-page SEO No matter just how many backlinks you send the particular Rankings will get stuck plus go down. Therefore for you to keep upward within the SEO game, it can crucial to develop mobile-friendly sites. Simply no, content marketing does not sama dengan SEO, so Content Marketing Institute's content is not an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION blog, per se. But, this particular site offers a lot important information that we decided in order to include it in our listing; and, yes. An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert could probably utilize a mixture of AdWords for the preliminary data, Google Search Console intended for website monitoring, and Google Analytics for internal website data. Updates searching algorithms and within people's searching patterns and the particular mobile over desktop preferences are usually changing the nature of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. The remedy to this question is in order to create a YouTube channel plus make video content using video clip SEO strategies. It's also a great idea to start your strategy to SEO with On-Page considering that you have much more handle of your own website's problems, so you'll be able in order to eventually begin a successful linkbuilding campaign on a website that will is well-structured and provides beneficial information to its users. I feel that specialized SEO mistakes that affect get budget - and also dirty Google with non-SEO-friendly content like as social landing pages, Wp media archives, offer pages plus cloned e-commerce product pages -- will have a more harmful impact on sites moving forwards. For us SEOs it hasn't been within getting traffic to our websites with regard to several years and, for Search engines, it's not profitable. Topics like as content quality, website rate, security, design, the Knowledge Chart, artificial intelligence, algorithm updates plus Google mandated changes should become considered by anyone looking in order to stay up to date along with SEO. The tactic of enhancing your pages to earn even more traffic through being more extremely relevant to search queries, on-page SEO is something everyone may do. Our goal is in order to craft a page that assists the searcher achieve their objective, answering the intent of their own search. Videos on your blog may also increase your Dwell-Time, producing them a must-have for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION this year. Because Google continues to refine the enigmatic search algorithm to provide users probably the most relevant results, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION professionals and pundits across the particular globe have taken note associated with the growing number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends and strategies that are usually poised to be the potential of SEO. Extended efficiency allows an extensive SEO evaluation, including backlinks, more projects plus a lot more keywords. Because a result, people can't get full advantage of SEO in order to improve the ranking of their own websites and content. Targeting trends such as the particular growth of ready-made responses, contextual advertising, voice search and regional SEO, can often provide higher results than an emphasis upon organic search. By carrying out thorough research, I came throughout with these 10 SEO developments that you might watch within 2018. When you stop plus take a look back in where search engine optimization (SEO) started, it's pretty incredible exactly how far it's come in earlier times couple of years — also the past few months. Rather, it is usually better for people who observe their main profession as the writer but who require in order to have relevant SEO skills in order to provide their online content the particular best shot of being noticed by their target audiences. I heard of all these for the initial time, and I ‘ll certainly apply these off page search engine optimization techniques for my blog. I am Still Understanding SEO with advanced techniques, i actually liked the echovme Posts. In today's digital marketing scenery, Google My Business (formerly recognized as Google Places) is currently the particular starting point of Local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Because we all know Backlinko provides changed into a brand title now in SEO and SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING tips, I found your several pages ranking on top regarding many SEO related keywords. Organised content is the key in order to the new SEO strategies plus itโ€s a critical asset in order to be featured in voice research engine results, as well since featured snippets and Google Activities. To avoid getting penalized and ensure that will a website is fully enhanced, these top SEO trends intended for 2018 should be thought on the subject of. Those included in the SEO world understand how complex and ever-changing the particular industry can be. With more than 200 ranking factors as properly as the constant updates associated with the algorithm, checking up upon SEO trends is mandatory. A professional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION company will verify the nearby listing on Bing and Search engines. Like many things in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you will need to begin with an extensive keyword study In order to rank for the Jesse Bowie question, you also need to explore what else individuals ask. And remember, additional search engines like google this kind of as Bing and Yahoo depend sometimes even more on exactly what some may call outdated SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION practices. Google Webmaster Equipment is a part of Google's best SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION websites package. If a person have a website that a person want to become easily discovered by a search engine, you need to increase your site rank via SEO as well. Which what most of these SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tactics want to accomplish - increased rankings. This free ebook will teach you, step by step, how to transform your Local SEO so you can start generating more traffic and sales for the business. Not only internet research engine algorithm changes but furthermore the way people search retains changing, therefore, thinking about the above ten SEO trends- digital marketers plus business owners can make the particular website ready for ranking higher in 2018. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is known as the steps you get to make sure you are usually ranked highly in the lookup engines like google when somebody searches for a related expression, such as "how to cease my dog from barking". Hopefully this article has assisted inform you of all the particular things you need to understand about the upcoming SEO styles for 2018! These are a few associated with the SEO trends which may yield greater results in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018. In reaction, she lists multiple SEO misconceptions related to content and attempts to clear them up in order to ensure that people can advantage from the best of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION without needing to deal along with the dregs. Clearly, there are a amount of new SEO trends relocating to the forefront in 2018. SEO at the end associated with the day will always depend on content and links. Thus, SEO strategy will certainly try to create a back-link profile to avoid spamming within 2018 and yes, backlink will certainly remain an important key in order to making your company rank upon top in search ranking. Amongst the traditional strategy and the particular backbone of SEO, Content, plus Links continue to be mainly because worthy as they were. Digital marketing trends possess become more affected by cultural media, so keep it within mind when planning your 2018 SEO. Because a internet search engine trainer, I always suggest people in order to see SEO as a advertising process in addition to the particular technical aspects. SORTS OF SEO There are two main varieties of search engine optimization, whitened hat search engine optimization (the ‘good' kind), and black head wear (the 'not so good' kind). With a shift to mobile-first indexing, the biggest SEO tendency we'll see in 2018 could be the adoption of accelerated mobile webpages. Information analysis of keyword triggers plus user queries can be utilized to allow experts to distinguish client intent and plan their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and PPC campaigns accordingly. By focusing upon these best SEO trends within 2018 and actualizing particular strategies, it will guarantee that the site is completely streamlined plus prepared to get targeted customers. I agree with almost all points but still uncertain how voice search can move to SEO. SEO content in 2018 requirements to be fact-based, user-targeted plus compliant with Google's truthfulness expert signals. The trouble is that SEO ranking factors have changed a lot over the years (find out how in our keyword research guide ). That means the search engine optimization methods that worked 5 years back will not fly today. While I still discover this trend in play along with many enterprises still in the particular middle of their digital change, the convergence in the MarTech space is creating many synergies and opportunities which should become seen as a welcome advancement for brands and agencies who else are searching for an advantage in regards to their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION motivated content marketing or outreach methods. For marketers who had been raised in the ‘traditional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION market, ' 2018 is the time to adapt or perish. If your web pages were designed to get the particular most out of Google, along with commonly known and now out-of-date SEO techniques chances are Search engines has identified this and will be throttling your rankings in several way. SEO changes along with the time and has arrive a long way from dark hat days of link gardening and keyword stuffing to the particular rise of machine learning AI's. SEO will not only mean placing related keywords at the proper location. Maybe you bought several, or maybe your SEO did not care too much regarding the high quality of the links he constructed for you. It does not matter if you are a local business delete word, search engines greatly value backlinks as well as the SEO value” they bring with these. Most of the particular classic SEO elements still keep a lot of weight, points like incoming links and inner structures so we're having in order to optimize for those but concurrently most see the writing upon the wall - AI is usually pushing its way into the particular algorithm and with it a good increased ability for Google in order to comprehend a user's intent plus whether a page meets that will intent and deliver that because a result that regardless associated with many of those classic indicators.

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How to Get Started with SEO

The rules plus best practices for the lookup engine optimization (SEO) industry are usually constantly changing. SEO stands for search engine optimization. Sometimes SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is simply a matter associated with creating sure your site is definitely structured in a manner that will search engines understand. SEO can also stand for internet search engine optimizer. Before this change, the particular best practice was to prevent hidden content at all expenses as it wasn't as efficient for SEO (it was possibly too hard to crawl for that bot in some cases or even given less important by Search engines in others). In 2018, SEO strategies are usually oriented towards creating a extensive relationship, helping brands to produce solid networks and links which may remain active for a lengthy term. Social networking platform is one of the particular most important ranking signal aspects for boosting your SEO rating and also increasing your SERP visibility factor. The professional SEO agency will appear at the site and create recommendations to improve your search motor ranking and site traffic. The thing that was troubling regarding 2017, so that as we all head into 2018, is the particular new wave of organizations simply bolting on SEO as the service with no real gratitude of structuring site architectures plus content for both humans plus search engine understanding.

These ‘quality updates' are very reminiscent of Search engines Panda updates and often effect many websites at the exact same time - and often these types of focus on demoting similar ‘low-quality' SEO techniques we have already been told Panda concentrates on. Every single SEO person was always speaking about long tail keywords They will are multi-word phrases that obtain a lot more fine-tuned or even even perhaps just various methods of saying the same issue. Now that SEO is getting popular among device users, it is usually safe to say that SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION on mobile platforms will improve and improve business to customer relationships in 2018. A brand new wrinkle within the SEO game is sociable networking or social media marketing and advertising, which not just helps your own company to be found, yet also allows your business in order to interact directly together with your potential clients. When it arrives to SEO Trends in 2018, Relevancy is still exactly the particular same. Good keyword research is the cornerstone of your SEO. As a matter associated with fact, the power of any kind of website lies in the DE UMA. Domain Authority is SEOmozs determined metric for how well the given domain will probably position in search results. SEO training courses will create you well-versed with various SEO strategies like link building, keyword analysis, optimizing content by using the particular right keywords, optimizing the web site structure, off-site SEO, PPC marketing and many more. Therefore in addition to adapting the particular SEO technique of writing content material based on keywords, it will be important for businesses to create a responsive website, both with regard to mobiles and computers. SEO” stands with regard to Search Engine Optimization - SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is the process of obtaining your website to rank increased in search engines. The best thing a person can do to assist your own local SEO ranking is in order to make certain that all existing listings possess the correct Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) and web site URL. In order to get executive buy-in, SEOs require to talk an alternative language -- a CMO is just not interested within a list of rankings, they will want to understand the influence of SEO on performance. If you are going for regional SEO, try to obtain the server close to the location you attempt to rank regarding. He or she is the proud Founder and Chief Architect of cognitiveSEO, a good SEO Toolset focused on in-depth analysis of ranking signals. A write-up in states that will 85% of individuals prefer indigenous mobile apps to websites Function your brand prominently in the particular app name and be certain you have proper links in order to apps for better search ranks Also, you should ensure that application optimization tops your list associated with SEO optimization. Plus because Google shows YouTube video clips in their search results, your own video must be SEO helpful. Enter your competitor's URL straight into the SEMRush search bar and you will be provided with a listing of SEO keywords, with their own rankings and traffic. The voice research is growing everyday, which might the key factor for your own SEO success in 2018 since online users are more serious in accessing the web through spoken command. We have simply no choice left other than transforming the website into mobile-friendly internet sites along with mobile-friendly SEO strategy to appeal to more users as well because grab and retain search motors attention. These key phrases and key phrases will after that be integrated into articles that will are relevant for that site simply by the SEO consultant. In 2018 there will end up being an even bigger concentrate upon machine learning and SEO through data. ” Of course, the particular amplification side of things will certainly continue to integrate increasingly along with genuine public relations exercises rather of shallow-relationship link building, which usually will become increasingly easy in order to detect by search engines. The particular Yoast SEO plugin enables a person to write better content along with page and keyword analysis, immediately generate XML sitemaps, enable breadcrumbs, add social and schema markup, as well as a big number of other optimizations.

In the particular future, SEOers will have in order to write more for the internet user, which the search motors will begin to mimic. Lookup Engine Optimization popularly referred in order to by the acronym SEO is definitely really a technique of immediate marketing employed to rank the webpage on top leads in order to increase the number of the particular visitors on website. My predictions intended for SEO in 2018 is that will we are going to keep on to see Google devalue webpages with keyword stuffing and slim content. Technical optimization: all associated with the behind-the-scenes engineering that SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION pros do to make this easier for search engines such as google to find a site. SEO tendencies continue to emerge, but 2018 is a great revolution in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION just because a lot associated with new game-changing technologies will experienced in this time and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION optimization will get a much better yet new shape. Although personally We are usually not a fan of tone of voice search, but a high proportion of people are incredibly for up-to-date on-page SEO optimization, add functions such as voice search, e-mail plug-ins such as ability associated with users to just click upon the email and send this, call plug-ins as well as other modes associated with communication such as Skype. As lookup engine algorithms have become even more refined, the nature of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION profession has additionally changed. 2017 delivered an entire new set associated with changes in the way companies market their products and providers, marketers try to improve their own ranking with seo (SEO), the particular way people surf the internet and much more. If RankBrain can become more and more important in rankings, which is really likely, that means that SEO's will start optimizing more plus more for user experience rather of other factors. As marketers plan their content marketing technique for 2018, SEO is definitely SEO 2019 Slide top-of-mind — or at least this should be! 2018, certainly is going to be a good interesting year for SEO within support of time will inform who manages to maintain the particular right blend to come at the top. Digital advertising experts dealing with both SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and AdWords rely on the particular keyword page of the research console to show which key phrases trigger user queries for each organic and paid content. These niches or categories are usually labeled with keywords, so SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION enables you to be positioned for a particular category simply by using appropriate keywords or key phrases and key phrases. As predicted, local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and local search made a good impact in the past season, though the online world has not fully embraced the new great introduced by hyper-localization. As a result, let's have a look with the emerging SEO trends associated with 2018. Nearby SEO is always a great place to start for little businesses. Analyzing the quality of your own website's inbound backlinks and just how they're feeding into your website architecture can provide your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION team insight into from your own website's strongest and weakest web pages to search visibility on specific keywords against competing brands. Because my company provides had lots of success in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, I believed that search purpose wouldn't apply at me. I would certainly just create a better page” and push that page upward with backlinks. Videos on your own blog can also increase your own Dwell-Time, which makes them the must-have for SEO this time of year. By making use of optimization strategies like the website name, keywords, The meta label, indexed pages, internal and exterior links, SEO can significantly assist your website search engine ratings for all pages. This new trend is definitely driving companies like Google, Ask, and Pinterest to invest within new ways to better realize the way we visually eat content which means your 2018 SEO strategy should act similarly and optimize your visual articles. You will get an possibility to discover out about latest trends plus new methods SEO professionals are usually adopting to rank a site high in the search motors. There are usually LOTS of voice searches within the wonderful world of nearby SEO. As Search engines tweaks its algorithms, tools, plus search engine policies, so will go the SEO industry. Whenever it comes to writing SEO-friendly text for Google, we should optimize for user intent, not only exactly what a user typed into Search engines. I spent regarding 1 or 2 hours upon the Internet for Best On-Page SEO strategy but did not really get any posts so that will I can be satisfied that will this is the best technique for seo. It is usually important to keep your site and the users updated in order to get an SEO ranking aspect. Remember that a research engine listing continues to be an advertising campaign, so we must get the marketing dialled in together along with our SEO. Incorrect Usage of anchors and Poor on-page SEO No matter just how many backlinks you send the particular Rankings will get stuck plus go down. Therefore for you to keep upward within the SEO game, is actually crucial to develop mobile-friendly sites. Simply no, content marketing does not sama dengan SEO, so Content Marketing Institute's content is not an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION blog, per se. But, this particular site offers a lot beneficial information that we decided in order to include it in our listing; and, yes. An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert could probably make use of a mixture of AdWords for the preliminary data, Google Search Console with regard to website monitoring, and Google Analytics for internal website data.

Updates searching algorithms and within people's searching patterns and the particular mobile over desktop preferences are usually changing the nature of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. The remedy to this question is in order to create a YouTube channel plus make video content using movie SEO strategies. It's also a great idea to start your technique to SEO with On-Page considering that you have much more handle of your own website's problems, so you'll be able in order to eventually begin a successful linkbuilding campaign on a website that will is well-structured and provides useful information to its users. I feel that specialized SEO mistakes that affect get budget - and also dirty Google with non-SEO-friendly content like as social landing pages, Wp media archives, offer pages plus cloned e-commerce product pages : will have a more harmful impact on sites moving ahead. For us SEOs it hasn't been within getting traffic to our websites regarding several years and, for Search engines, it's not profitable. Topics like as content quality, website acceleration, security, design, the Knowledge Chart, artificial intelligence, algorithm updates plus Google mandated changes should end up being considered by anyone looking in order to stay up to date along with SEO. The tactic of enhancing your pages to earn even more traffic through being more extremely relevant to search queries, on-page SEO is something everyone may do. Our goal is in order to craft a page that assists the searcher achieve their objective, answering the intent of their particular search. Videos on your blog may also increase your Dwell-Time, producing them a must-have for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION this year. Since Google continues to refine the enigmatic search algorithm to provide users probably the most relevant results, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION professionals and pundits across the particular globe have taken note associated with the growing number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends and strategies that are usually poised to be the potential of SEO. Extended efficiency allows an extensive SEO evaluation, including backlinks, more projects plus a lot more keywords. Since a result, people can't consider full advantage of SEO in order to improve the ranking of their particular websites and content. Targeting trends such as the particular growth of ready-made responses, contextual advertising, voice search and nearby SEO, can often provide better results than an emphasis upon organic search. By carrying out thorough research, I came throughout with these 10 SEO developments that you might watch within 2018. When you stop plus take a look back with where search engine optimization (SEO) started, it's pretty incredible just how far it's come in earlier times couple of years — also the past few months. Rather, it is usually better for people who notice their main profession as the writer but who require in order to have relevant SEO skills in order to provide their online content the particular best shot of being observed by their target audiences. I learned about all these for the very first time, and I ‘ll certainly apply these off page search engine optimization techniques for my blog. I am Still Studying SEO with advanced techniques, we liked the echovme Posts. In today's digital marketing panorama, Google My Business (formerly identified as Google Places) has become the particular starting point of Local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Since we all know Backlinko offers changed into a brand title now in SEO and SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING tips, I found your several pages ranking on top regarding many SEO related keywords. Organised content is the key in order to the new SEO strategies plus itโ€s a critical asset in order to be featured in voice lookup engine results, as well because featured snippets and Google Activities. To avoid getting penalized and ensure that will a website is fully enhanced, these top SEO trends regarding 2018 should be thought in relation to. Those included in the SEO world understand how complex and ever-changing the particular industry can be. With more than 200 ranking factors as properly as the constant updates associated with the algorithm, checking up upon SEO trends is mandatory.

A professional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION company will verify the regional listing on Bing and Search engines. Like many things in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you will need to begin with an extensive keyword analysis In order to rank for the Brian Bowie question, you also need to explore what else individuals ask. And remember, some other search engines like google this kind of as Bing and Yahoo depend sometimes even more on exactly what some may call outdated SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION practices. Google Webmaster Equipment is portion of Google's best SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION websites package. If a person have a website that a person want to become easily discovered by a search engine, you need to increase your site rank by means of SEO as well. Gowns what most of these SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tactics making the effort to accomplish - increased rankings. This free ebook will teach you, step by step, how to increase your Local SEO so you can start generating more traffic and sales for the business. Not only internet lookup engine algorithm changes but furthermore the way people search will keep changing, therefore, thinking about the above ten SEO trends- digital marketers plus business owners can make the particular website ready for ranking higher in 2018. All of these types of strategies wrapped up are identified as SEO, or seo. At the most basic degree, SEOs need to think regarding the fact Google can considerably closely imitate what a individual user can do. Search engine optimization has in order to evolve with the times, yet not in the way nearly all people describe it. Every period I see someone write SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION has changed a lot within 20 years” I laugh away loud. Keyword research is one associated with the most important aspects associated with SEO. It's that will period of year again, whenever we see an influx associated with SEO articles forecasting trends in order to look for in the fresh year. I proceed into much more detail within SEO Page Titles: 15-Point Register for B2B and B2C Brand names, which explains the best methods to work in relevant key phrases that accurately reflect the web page content. The main thing, however, is usually that Local SEO is almost always cheaper and more efficient than traditional marketing. Research Engine Optimization; short for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, is a process coping along with the optimization of websites within a way that they can get high ranking within the particular search engines. Enter: SEO -- a method to filter plus organise websites depending on key phrases. SEO today is producing sure a user's experience is usually optimal in terms of the particular content they're consuming, how they may consuming on various devices, plus what action they're lead in order to take next. And as over 55% of most search results on Search engines contain one or more video clips — almost all of which usually are YouTube videos — submitting SEO-optimised YouTube videos will obtain you more Google search direct exposure and increase your online presence exponentially. In situation your website is on the particular newer side, you can prioritize your PPC campaign first because it can take a whilst for SEO rankings to turn out to be established, but don't ignore your own SEO in this process. In truth, you're going to see even more and more people investing within SEO as paid traffic stations will get expensive. Google failed to result web pages so much right after updates, quickly but they gather data at all times so they are usually testing their algorithms then this effects all directories in search engine optimization. I agree with most points but still uncertain how voice search can exchange to SEO. SEO content in 2018 requirements to be fact-based, user-targeted plus compliant with Google's truthfulness expert signals. The trouble is that SEO ranking factors have changed a lot over the years (find out how in our keyword research guide ). That means the search engine optimization methods that worked 5 in years past will not fly today. While I still observe this trend in play along with many enterprises still in the particular middle of their digital change, the convergence in the MarTech space is creating many synergies and opportunities which should end up being seen as a welcome growth for brands and agencies which are searching for an advantage in regards to their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION motivated content marketing or outreach methods. For marketers who had been raised in the ‘traditional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION market, ' 2018 is the time to adapt or expire. If your web pages were designed to get the particular most out of Google, along with commonly known and now obsolete SEO techniques chances are Search engines has identified this and is usually throttling your rankings in several way. To become competitive in SEO in 2018, it is very important to understand how Rankbrain is assessing user experience upon your site. With visual content getting emphasized as an important portion of SEO strategy, we will quickly see an improvement in the particular search results too, which is usually further in line with the particular user's queries. You can furthermore use Google Analytics to discover SEO keywords for content marketing. And am do see that blogs are pushing incorrect advice both to new business owners and to people that have run their own companies regarding years but are extremely brand-new to SEO. Research engine optimization (SEO) may be the procedure by which webmasters or web business owners utilize strategic duplicate to reinforce their website's position. Good SEO books explain in depth how best to use key phrases and the way to structure your entire site to attract the attention associated with search engine spiders along along with human visitors, and an post like this cannot do the particular topic justice.

[nest-raider]

The 9 Benefts of SEO

Lookup Engine Optimization (SEO) trends plus techniques seem to change along with the tides. Posts in this blog are readable plus informative, sharing news about Search engines, SEO trends and more. With brand new technologies and techniques, algorithm up-dates and trends, SEO is permanently evolving and offering new possibilities for marketers to rank highly looking results. I feel that specialized SEO mistakes that affect get budget - and also dirty Google with non-SEO-friendly content like as social landing pages, Wp media archives, offer pages plus cloned e-commerce product pages : will have a more harmful effect on sites moving forwards. Having the effort to comprehend actually the basics of SEO may help your site gain increased click-through rates, engagement, and associated with course, rankings. Getting experience that spans multiple stations with an integrated mindset -- especially on SEO and PAY-PER-CLICK synergy, combined with a efficiency mentality—sets up people who are usually new to the marketplace intended for success. Voice lookup is also an emerging tendency in SEO strategies. These ‘quality updates' are very reminiscent of Search engines Panda updates and often effect many websites at the exact same time - and often these types of focus on demoting similar ‘low-quality' SEO techniques we have already been told Panda concentrates on. Each SEO person was always speaking about long tail keywords These people are multi-word phrases that obtain a lot more fine-tuned or even even perhaps just various methods of saying the same issue. Now that SEO is getting popular among device users, it is usually safe to say that SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION on mobile platforms will improve and improve business to customer relationships in 2018. A brand new wrinkle within the SEO game is sociable networking or social media marketing and advertising, which not just helps your own company to be found, yet also allows your business in order to interact directly along with your potential clients. When it arrives to SEO Trends in 2018, Relevancy is still exactly the particular same. Good keyword research is the cornerstone of your SEO. As a matter associated with fact, the power of any kind of website lies in the DE UMA. Domain Authority is SEOmozs computed metric for how well the given domain will probably position in search results. SEO training courses will create you well-versed based on a SEO strategies like link building, keyword analysis, optimizing content by using the particular right keywords, optimizing the web site structure, off-site SEO, PPC marketing and many more. Therefore in addition to adapting the particular SEO technique of writing articles based on keywords, it will be important for businesses to develop a responsive website, both with regard to mobiles and computers. SEO” stands intended for Search Engine Optimization - SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is the process of obtaining your website to rank increased in search engines. The best thing a person can do to assist your own local SEO ranking is in order to be sure that all existing listings possess the correct Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) and web site URL. In order to get executive buy-in, SEOs require to talk an alternative language -- a CMO is not really interested within a list of rankings, they will want to understand the effect of SEO on performance. If you are going for nearby SEO, try to obtain the server close to the location you attempt to rank intended for. He or she is the proud Founder and Chief Architect of cognitiveSEO, a good SEO Toolset focused on in-depth analysis of ranking signals. A write-up in states that will 85% of individuals prefer indigenous mobile apps to websites Function your brand prominently in the particular app name and be certain you have proper links in order to apps for better search ranks Also, you need to ensure that application optimization tops your list associated with SEO optimization. Plus because Google shows YouTube movies in their search results, your own video must be SEO pleasant. Enter your competitor's URL in to the SEMRush search bar and you should be provided with a listing of SEO keywords, with their own rankings and traffic. The voice research is growing everyday, which might the key factor for your own SEO success in 2018 because online users are more fascinated in accessing the web through spoken command. We have simply no choice left other than switching the website into mobile-friendly sites along with mobile-friendly SEO strategy to bring in more users as well because grab and retain search motors attention. These key phrases and key phrases will after that be integrated into articles that will are relevant for your site simply by the SEO consultant. In 2018 there will end up being an even bigger concentrate upon machine learning and SEO through data. ” Of course, the particular amplification side of things may continue to integrate increasingly along with genuine public relations exercises rather of shallow-relationship link building, which usually will become increasingly easy in order to detect by search engines. The particular Yoast SEO plugin enables a person to write better content along with page and keyword analysis, instantly generate XML sitemaps, enable breadcrumbs, add social and schema markup, as well as a huge number of other optimizations. As internet entrepreneurs, bloggers, and small business proprietors, SEO is essential. Therefore, today I'll list out 10 low-cost SEO tips that will certainly improve your ranking on the particular search engines. The keyword SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tips and tricks was obtaining decent searches per month. Join Mark Mitchell of BrightEdge in a detailed facts preparing your SEO activity for 2018, which will include reflecting on your own SEO performance from 2017, evaluating your existing resources, planning brand-new search technologies coming down the particular line in 2018, and even more. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION includes strategies like keyword concentrating on, article marketing, backlink building, plus more, which helps your web site rank better in search motors like Google. Within order to have an efficient website along with having solid content, responsiveness along with a strong web site structure it is important in order to constantly stay updated with most recent SEO-techniques and your target marketplace. As research engine algorithms have become even more refined, the nature of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION profession has additionally changed. 2017 delivered an entire new set associated with changes in the way companies market their products and providers, marketers try to improve their own ranking with seo (SEO), the particular way people surf the internet and much more. If RankBrain can become more and more important in rankings, which is quite likely, that means that SEO's will start optimizing more plus more for user experience rather of other factors. As marketers plan their content marketing technique for 2018, SEO is definitely SEO 2019 PDF top-of-mind — or at least this should be! 2018, certainly is going to be a good interesting year for SEO within support of time will inform who manages to maintain the particular right blend to come at the top. Digital marketing and advertising experts dealing with both SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and AdWords rely on the particular keyword page of the lookup console to show which key phrases trigger user queries for each organic and paid content. These niches or categories are usually labeled with keywords, so SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION enables you to be rated for a particular category simply by using appropriate keywords or key phrases and key phrases. As predicted, local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and local search made a good impact in the past yr, though the online world has not fully embraced the new great introduced by hyper-localization. Consequently, let's have a look from the emerging SEO trends associated with 2018. Nearby SEO is always a great place to start for little businesses. Analyzing the quality of your own website's inbound backlinks and just how they're feeding into your site architecture can provide your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION team insight into many methods from your own website's strongest and weakest web pages to search visibility on specific keywords against competing brands. Because my company provides had plenty of success in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, I believed that search intention wouldn't affect me. I would certainly just create a better page” and push that page upward with backlinks. Associated with all the SEO tools away there, thousands of online online marketers, small businesses proprietors, and SEO's prefer to use Ahrefs in order to help them improve their lookup rankings. Key phrases are like a compass intended for the SEO campaigns: they inform you the best and whether or not or not you're making improvement. Knoxweb understands search motor technology, and can set a person up with an SEO marketing campaign which will see results. This particular technique involves collecting a listing of brand mentions of your own website using any SEO device and reaching out to web sites to convert your brand brings up into backlinks. As search engines always develop more advanced technologies plus responsiveness to online searches, brand-new SEO techniques will emerge in order to keep companies ranking high upon search engines. If you increase your own site loading speed, develop the beautiful mobile-friendly design, and framework your website for users, a person will notice a positive influence on your SEO performance. I spent regarding 1 or 2 hours upon the Internet for Best On-Page SEO strategy but did not really get any posts so that will I can be satisfied that will this is the best technique for seo. It is usually important to keep your internet site and the users updated in order to get an SEO ranking element. Remember that a research engine listing remains an advertising campaign, so we must get the marketing dialled in together along with our SEO. Incorrect Usage of anchors and Poor on-page SEO No matter just how many backlinks you send the particular Rankings will get stuck plus go down. Therefore for you to keep upward within the SEO game, it can crucial to develop mobile-friendly internet sites. Simply no, content marketing does not sama dengan SEO, so Content Marketing Institute's content is not an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION blog, per se. But, this particular site offers a lot beneficial information that we decided in order to include it in our checklist; and, yes. An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert could probably make use of a mixture of AdWords for the preliminary data, Google Search Console regarding website monitoring, and Google Analytics for internal website data. This new paradigm associated with users relying on voice lookup for many of their research needs will be a sport changer for SEO. The internet users are almost all excited to know how brand-new SEO trends could affect their particular business this year. It's the job to stay ahead associated with digital marketing trends so check out out these 9 SEO forecasts. The process associated with manipulating your content so Search engines and other search engines normally return your page near the particular top of the organic research is what SEO is almost all about. As Rand Fishkin pointed out in a Whiteboard Friday, content that is improved for keywords still holds beneficial SEO power. 9 forecasted SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends that will shape your own digital marketing strategies. Some SEO experts and bloggers say that brief URLs ranks better in Search engines. Amazing article i don't know regarding youtube SEO but after reading through this article i fully realize how to rank video on-line and google also. In the sixth chapter of our SEO intended for beginners guide, we will talk about backlink - one of the particular most important aspects of search engine optimization. Exactly what you are going to discover is that you simply require to do a bit associated with SEO search engine optimization. 50 Best On-Page SEO Techniques to rank within the 1st page with absolutely no Back links. We were trying in order to rank once with one associated with our article for the key phrase SEO tips”. Google and additional major search engines take the particular SEO title and display this within the search engine outcome pages. Remember, it requires time to generate good SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION rankings. Listed below are the top six SEO tendencies that, I believe, will rule in 2018. Therefore I realize that many of a person sometimes wonder, "Gosh, it seems overwhelming to try and describe to someone outside the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION profession how to get an internet page ranked. " Well, perform you know what? The particular importance of user experience regarding SEO is here to remain this 2018 and it really is one of those SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION changes you must take directly into account. SEO is used as the description for a person, somebody that does search engine optimisation as a job, and since a verb I'm going in order to internet search engine optimize this particular website”. Google takes very serious doubt to such Black Hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques. And when you have the handle on that, it's period to optimize your site with regard to the new SEO trends that will I outlined within this guide. Research from Intellectual SEO and others shows the relationship between search rankings plus social signals. SEO content is a mixture of keywords and keyword terms. A big component of the internet marketers believe that online marketing is restricted to SEO, SMO & SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING, where the truth is, a lot associated with other online marketing strategies possess previously arrived at the finish of 2016 and several of all of them are still coming since the particular beginning of 2017. Today, a person are going to know the best SEO techniques that will assist improve your website's optimization (and traffic) remarkably. I am Still Studying SEO with advanced techniques, we liked the echovme Posts. In today's digital marketing surroundings, Google My Business (formerly recognized as Google Places) is currently the particular starting point of Local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Because we all know Backlinko offers changed into a brand title now in SEO and SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING tips, I found your several pages ranking on top regarding many SEO related keywords. Organized content is the key in order to the new SEO strategies plus itโ€s a critical asset in order to be featured in voice lookup engine results, as well since featured snippets and Google Activities. To avoid getting penalized and ensure that will a website is fully enhanced, these top SEO trends with regard to 2018 should be thought around. Those included in the SEO world understand how complex and ever-changing the particular industry can be. With more than 200 ranking factors as properly as the constant updates associated with the algorithm, checking up upon SEO trends is mandatory. It is usually quite true that this search position depends on the WEB two. 0, content, Blog, keywords, higher quality links, and technical search engine optimization and UX user-friendly design. With the rise of tone of voice search more than half associated with Google's searches can come from cellular devices, so you clearly are unable to afford to ignore mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION anymore. Anyone can the basics of SEO and integrate it into their digital product sales, advertising content strategy. This can help drive spreading, links and mentions of content material that can affect SEO ranks and traffic. Since a savvy company owner, you understand how important keyword research is usually and always has been regarding SEO. This ‘what is SEO‘ guide (and this entire website) is definitely not about churn and burn off type of Google SEO (called webspam to Google) as which usually is too risky to set up on the real business web site in 2018. Organic SEO Competitors: Like commercial intent, evaluating the keyword's competition in Google's natural search results takes some even more digging. All of these types of strategies wrapped up are recognized as SEO, or seo. At the most basic degree, SEOs need to think regarding the fact Google can significantly closely imitate what a human being user can do. Search engine optimization has in order to evolve with the times, yet not in the way nearly all people describe it. Every period I see someone write SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION has changed a lot within 20 years” I laugh away loud. Keyword research is one associated with the most important aspects associated with SEO. It's that will period of year again, whenever we see an influx associated with SEO articles forecasting trends in order to look for in the brand-new year. I move into much more detail within SEO Page Titles: 15-Point Register for B2B and B2C Brand names, which explains the best methods to work in relevant key phrases that accurately reflect the web page content. The main thing, however, is definitely that Local SEO is almost always cheaper and more efficient than traditional marketing. Research Engine Optimization; short for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, is a process coping along with the optimization of websites within a way that they can get high ranking within the particular search engines. Amongst the traditional strategy and the particular backbone of SEO, Content, plus Links continue to be mainly because worthy as they were. Digital marketing trends have got become more affected by sociable media, so keep it within mind when planning your 2018 SEO. Because a internet search engine trainer, I always suggest people in order to see SEO as a marketing and advertising process in addition to the particular technical aspects. VARIETIES OF SEO There are two main sorts of search engine optimization, whitened hat search engine optimization (the ‘good' kind), and black head wear (the 'not so good' kind). With a shift to mobile-first indexing, the biggest SEO craze we'll see in 2018 will be the adoption of accelerated mobile webpages. Information analysis of keyword triggers plus user queries can be utilized to allow experts to spot client intent and plan their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and PPC campaigns accordingly. By focusing upon these best SEO trends within 2018 and actualizing particular strategies, it will guarantee that the site is completely streamlined plus prepared to get targeted customers. I agree with most points but still uncertain how voice search can move to SEO. SEO content in 2018 requirements to be fact-based, user-targeted plus compliant with Google's truthfulness expert signals. The trouble is that SEO ranking factors have changed a lot over the years (find out how in our keyword research guide ). That means the search engine optimization methods that worked 5 years back will not fly today. While I still observe this trend in play along with many enterprises still in the particular middle of their digital modification, the convergence in the MarTech space is creating many synergies and opportunities which should become seen as a welcome growth for brands and agencies that are searching for an advantage in regards to their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION motivated content marketing or outreach methods. For marketers who had been raised in the ‘traditional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION market, ' 2018 is the time to adapt or expire. If your webpages were designed to get the particular most out of Google, along with commonly known and now obsolete SEO techniques chances are Search engines has identified this and is definitely throttling your rankings in a few way. SEO changes along with the time and has arrive a long way from dark hat days of link gardening and keyword stuffing to the particular rise of machine learning AI's. SEO will not only mean placing related keywords at the proper location. Maybe you bought a few, or maybe your SEO did not care too much in regards to the high quality of the links he constructed for you. It does not matter if you are a local business delete word, search engines greatly value backlinks as well as the SEO value” they bring using them. Most of the particular classic SEO elements still keep a lot of weight, points like incoming links and inner structures so we're having in order to optimize for those but at the same time most see the writing upon the wall - AI is definitely pushing its way into the particular algorithm and with it a good increased ability for Google in order to comprehend a user's intent plus whether a page meets that will intent and deliver that since a result that regardless associated with many of those classic indicators.

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How to Get Started with SEO

Lookup Engine Optimization (SEO) trends plus techniques seem to change along with the tides. Posts from this blog are readable plus informative, sharing news about Search engines, SEO trends and more. With brand new technologies and techniques, algorithm improvements and trends, SEO is permanently evolving and offering new possibilities for marketers to rank highly looking results. I feel that specialized SEO mistakes that affect examine budget - and also dirty Google with non-SEO-friendly content like as social landing pages, Wp media archives, offer pages plus cloned e-commerce product pages -- will have a more harmful effect on sites moving ahead. Getting the effort to comprehend actually the basics of SEO may help your site gain increased click-through rates, engagement, and associated with course, rankings. Getting experience that spans multiple stations with an integrated mindset -- especially on SEO and PAY-PER-CLICK synergy, combined with a efficiency mentality—sets up people who are usually new to the marketplace regarding success. Voice lookup is also an emerging pattern in SEO strategies.

These ‘quality updates' are very reminiscent of Search engines Panda updates and often influence many websites at the exact same time - and often these types of focus on demoting similar ‘low-quality' SEO techniques we have already been told Panda targets. Every single SEO person was always speaking about long tail keywords These people are multi-word phrases that obtain a lot more fine-tuned or even even perhaps just various methods of saying the same point. Now that SEO is getting popular among device users, it is usually safe to say that SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION on mobile platforms will improve and improve business to customer relationships in 2018. A brand new wrinkle within the SEO game is cultural networking or social media marketing and advertising, which not just helps your own company to be found, yet also allows your business in order to interact directly together with your potential clients. When it arrives to SEO Trends in 2018, Relevancy is still exactly the particular same. Good keyword research is the cornerstone of your SEO. A very essential SEO trend to know within 2018 is the mobile-first list. To avoid getting penalized and ensure that will a website is fully enhanced, these top SEO trends with regard to 2018 needs to be regarded. Being a good experienced SEO content writer, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION copywriter, copy writer, technical writer, reactive content writer, blog writer, Exceptional special interest in digital marketing and advertising. That means this increases user experience which boosts SEO and rankings. Carrying out technical SEO with regard to local search engines is actually a similar process. In Local SEO, citations are referred to as mentions” of your local business on other websites and web pages. That getting said, if you want in order to increase your search ranking, and stay relevant and competitive in your own industry, then you have in order to stay abreast of the present SEO trends and techniques. SEOs will need in order to collaborate closely with designers plus developers to prioritize technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and usability search engine standing factors to gain a aggressive edge. In order to get executive buy-in, SEOs require to talk another language -- a CMO is not really interested within a list of rankings, these people want to understand the influence of SEO on performance. In case you are going for regional SEO, try to obtain the server close to the location you attempt to rank with regard to. He or she is the proud Founder and Chief Architect of cognitiveSEO, a good SEO Toolset focused on in-depth analysis of ranking signals. A write-up in states that will 85% of individuals prefer indigenous mobile apps to websites Function your brand prominently in the particular app name and be certain you have proper links in order to apps for better search ratings Also, you should ensure that application optimization tops your list associated with SEO optimization. Plus because Google shows YouTube video clips in their search results, your own video must be SEO helpful. Enter your competitor's URL straight into the SEMRush search bar and you should be provided with a listing of SEO keywords, with their particular rankings and traffic. The voice research is growing everyday, which might the key factor for your own SEO success in 2018 because online users are more fascinated in accessing the web through spoken command. We have simply no choice left other than switching the website into mobile-friendly web sites along with mobile-friendly SEO strategy to appeal to more users as well because grab and retain search motors attention. These key phrases and key phrases will after that be integrated into articles that will are relevant for that site simply by the SEO consultant. In 2018 there will become an even bigger concentrate upon machine learning and SEO through data. ” Of course, the particular amplification side of things can continue to integrate increasingly along with genuine public relations exercises rather of shallow-relationship link building, which usually will become increasingly easy in order to detect by search engines. The particular Yoast SEO plugin enables a person to write better content along with page and keyword analysis, instantly generate XML sitemaps, enable breadcrumbs, add social and schema markup, as well as a huge number of other optimizations.

As internet internet marketers, bloggers, and small business proprietors, SEO is essential. Therefore, today I'll list out 10 low-cost SEO tips that may improve your ranking on the particular search engines. The keyword SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tips and tricks was obtaining decent searches per month. Join Mark Mitchell of BrightEdge in a detailed explained preparing your SEO activity for 2018, which will include reflecting on the SEO performance from 2017, evaluating your existing resources, planning brand-new search technologies coming down the particular line in 2018, and even more. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION includes strategies like keyword focusing on, article marketing, backlink building, plus more, which helps your web site rank better in search motors like Google. Within order to have an efficient website along with having solid content, responsiveness plus a strong internet site structure it is important in order to constantly stay updated with most recent SEO-techniques and your target marketplace. As research engine algorithms have become even more refined, the nature of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION profession has additionally changed. 2017 delivered an entire new set associated with changes in the way companies market their products and solutions, marketers try to improve their own ranking with seo (SEO), the particular way people surf the internet and much more. If RankBrain will certainly become more and more important in rankings, which is quite likely, that means that SEO's will start optimizing more plus more for user experience rather of other factors. As marketers plan their content marketing technique for 2018, SEO will SEO 2019 Slide be top-of-mind — or at least this should be! 2018, certainly is going to be a good interesting year for SEO within support of time will inform who manages to maintain the particular right blend to come on the top. Digital advertising experts dealing with both SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and AdWords rely on the particular keyword page of the research console to show which key phrases trigger user queries for each organic and paid content. These niches or categories are usually labeled with keywords, so SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION enables you to be rated for a particular category simply by using appropriate keywords or key phrases and key phrases. As predicted, local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and local search made a good impact in the past season, though the online world have not fully embraced the new awesome introduced by hyper-localization. For that reason, let's have a look in the emerging SEO trends associated with 2018. Nearby SEO is always a great place to start for little businesses. Analyzing the quality of your own website's inbound backlinks and exactly how they're feeding into your website architecture can provide your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION team insight into from your own website's strongest and weakest webpages to search visibility on specific keywords against competing brands. Because my company provides had lots of success in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, I believed that search purpose wouldn't apply at me. I might just create a better page” and push that page upward with backlinks. Videos on your own blog can also increase your own Dwell-Time, which makes them the must-have for SEO this time of year. By making use of optimization strategies like the website name, keywords, The meta label, indexed pages, internal and exterior links, SEO can significantly assist your website search engine ratings for all pages. This new trend is usually driving companies like Google, Ask, and Pinterest to invest within new ways to better realize the way we visually eat content which means your 2018 SEO strategy should act similarly and optimize your visual content material. You will get an chance to discover out about latest trends plus new methods SEO professionals are usually adopting to rank a site high in the search motors. There are usually LOTS of voice searches within the wonderful world of regional SEO. As Search engines tweaks its algorithms, tools, plus search engine policies, so will go the SEO industry. Whenever it comes to writing SEO-friendly text for Google, we have to optimize for user intent, not merely exactly what a user typed into Search engines. I spent regarding 1 or 2 hours upon the Internet for Best On-Page SEO strategy but did not really get any posts so that will I can be satisfied that will this is the best technique for seo. It is usually important to keep your internet site and the users updated in order to get an SEO ranking aspect. Remember that a research engine listing remains an advertising, so we must get our own marketing dialled in together along with our SEO. Incorrect Usage of anchors and Poor on-page SEO No matter exactly how many backlinks you send the particular Rankings will get stuck plus go down. Therefore for you to keep upward within the SEO game, is actually crucial to develop mobile-friendly internet sites. Simply no, content marketing does not sama dengan SEO, so Content Marketing Institute's content is not an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION blog, per se. But, this particular site offers a lot useful information that we decided in order to include it in our checklist; and, yes. An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert could probably work with a mixture of AdWords for the preliminary data, Google Search Console regarding website monitoring, and Google Analytics for internal website data.

Updates searching algorithms and within people's searching patterns and the particular mobile over desktop preferences are usually changing the nature of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. The option to this question is in order to create a YouTube channel plus make video content using video clip SEO strategies. It's also a great idea to start your strategy to SEO with On-Page considering that you have much more handle of your own website's problems, so you'll be able in order to eventually begin a successful linkbuilding campaign on a website that will is well-structured and provides useful information to its users. I feel that specialized SEO mistakes that affect get budget - and also dirty Google with non-SEO-friendly content like as social landing pages, Wp media archives, offer pages plus cloned e-commerce product pages : will have a more harmful impact on sites moving forwards. For us SEOs it hasn't been within getting traffic to our websites regarding several years and, for Search engines, it's not profitable. Topics like as content quality, website acceleration, security, design, the Knowledge Chart, artificial intelligence, algorithm updates plus Google mandated changes should become considered by anyone looking in order to stay up to date along with SEO. The tactic of enhancing your pages to earn even more traffic through being more extremely relevant to search queries, on-page SEO is something everyone may do. Our goal is in order to craft a page that assists the searcher achieve their objective, answering the intent of their particular search. Videos on your blog may also increase your Dwell-Time, producing them a must-have for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION this year. Because Google continues to refine the enigmatic search algorithm to provide users one of the most relevant results, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION professionals and pundits across the particular globe have taken note associated with the growing number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends and strategies that are usually poised to be the potential of SEO. SEO is used as the description for a person, somebody that does search engine search engine optimization as a job, and because a verb I'm going in order to internet search engine optimize this particular website”. Google takes very serious doubt to such Black Hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques. And when you have the handle on that, it's period to optimize your site regarding the new SEO trends that will I outlined with this guide. Research from Intellectual SEO and others shows the relationship between search rankings plus social signals. SEO content is a mixture of keywords and keyword terms. A big component of the internet marketers believe that online marketing is restricted to SEO, SMO & SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING, where in fact, a lot associated with other online marketing strategies possess previously arrived at the finish of 2016 and several of all of them are still coming since the particular beginning of 2017. Today, a person are going to know among the best SEO techniques that will assist improve your website's optimization (and traffic) remarkably. I am Still Studying SEO with advanced techniques, i actually liked the echovme Posts. In today's digital marketing scenery, Google My Business (formerly identified as Google Places) has become the particular starting point of Local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Because we all know Backlinko offers changed into a brand title now in SEO and SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING tips, I found your several pages ranking on top with regard to many SEO related keywords. Organised content is the key in order to the new SEO strategies plus itโ€s a critical asset in order to be featured in voice research engine results, as well since featured snippets and Google Activities. To avoid getting penalized and ensure that will a website is fully enhanced, these top SEO trends with regard to 2018 should be thought around. Those included in the SEO world understand how complex and ever-changing the particular industry can be. With more than 200 ranking factors as nicely as the constant updates associated with the algorithm, checking up upon SEO trends is mandatory.

A professional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION company will verify the regional listing on Bing and Search engines. Like many things in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you will need to begin with an extensive keyword analysis In order to rank for the Donald Bowie question, you also desire to explore what else individuals ask. And remember, some other search engines like google this kind of as Bing and Yahoo depend sometimes even more on exactly what some may call outdated SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION practices. Google Webmaster Equipment is section of Google's best SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION websites package. If a person have a website that a person want to become easily discovered by a search engine, you need to increase your site rank by means of SEO as well. Which what most of these SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tactics making the effort to accomplish - increased rankings. This free ebook will teach you, step by step, how to increase your Local SEO so you can start generating more traffic and sales for the business. Not only internet research engine algorithm changes but furthermore the way people search will keep changing, therefore, thinking about the above ten SEO trends- digital marketers plus business owners can make the particular website ready for ranking higher in 2018. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is called the steps you consider to make sure you are usually ranked highly in the research engines like google when somebody searches for a related term, such as "how to prevent my dog from barking". Hopefully this article has assisted inform you of all the particular things you need to understand about the upcoming SEO developments for 2018! These are a few associated with the SEO trends which may yield greater results in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018. In reaction, she lists multiple SEO common myths related to content and attempts to clear them up in order to ensure that people can advantage from the best of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION without needing to deal along with the dregs. Clearly, there are a quantity of new SEO trends shifting to the forefront in 2018. SEO at the end associated with the day will always depend on content and links. Thus, SEO strategy will certainly try to create a back-link profile to avoid spamming within 2018 and yes, backlink will certainly remain an important key in order to making your company rank upon top in search ranking. Enter: SEO : a method to filter plus organise websites depending on key phrases. SEO today is producing sure a user's experience is usually optimal in terms of the particular content they're consuming, how they may consuming on various devices, plus what action they're lead in order to take next. And as over 55% of search results on Search engines contain one or more movies — almost all of which usually are YouTube videos — submitting SEO-optimised YouTube videos will obtain you more Google search publicity and increase your online presence exponentially. In situation your website is on the particular newer side, you can prioritize your PPC campaign first because it can take a whilst for SEO rankings to turn out to be established, but don't ignore your own SEO in this process. In truth, you're going to see even more and more people investing within SEO as paid traffic stations will get expensive. Google failed to result web pages so much right after updates, quickly but they gather data on a regular basis so they are usually testing their algorithms then this effects all directories in search engine optimization. I agree with just about all points but still uncertain how voice search can exchange to SEO. SEO content in 2018 requirements to be fact-based, user-targeted plus compliant with Google's truthfulness specialist signals. The trouble is that SEO ranking factors have changed a lot over the years (find out how in our keyword research guide ). That means the search engine optimization methods that worked 5 in years past will not fly today. While I still discover this trend in play along with many enterprises still in the particular middle of their digital change, the convergence in the MarTech space is creating many synergies and opportunities which should become seen as a welcome advancement for brands and agencies who else are searching for an advantage in regards to their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION motivated content marketing or outreach methods. For marketers who had been raised in the ‘traditional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION market, ' 2018 is the time to adapt or expire. If your web pages were designed to get the particular most out of Google, along with commonly known and now out-of-date SEO techniques chances are Search engines has identified this and will be throttling your rankings in a few way. To end up being competitive in SEO in 2018, it is vital to understand how Rankbrain is assessing user experience upon your site. With visual content getting emphasized as an important portion of SEO strategy, we will quickly see an improvement in the particular search results too, which is usually further in line with the particular user's queries. You can furthermore use Google Analytics to discover SEO keywords for content marketing. And am do see that blogs are pushing incorrect advice both to new firm owners and to people with run their own companies with regard to years but are extremely brand-new to SEO. Lookup engine optimization (SEO) will be the procedure by which webmasters or web business owners utilize strategic duplicate to reinforce their website's standing. Good SEO books explain in more detail how best to use key phrases as well as how to structure your entire web site to attract the attention associated with search engine spiders along along with human visitors, and an post like this cannot do the particular topic justice.

[thesylvalining]

Once upon a time, there was a girl who needed a haircut. That girl, as fate would have it, was me. I’d just finished a bike ride (of course) and was wandering the side streets off Corso Giacomo Matteotti, daydreaming about handsome Italian men, my next bike ride and the pasta con pesto di pistacchio con gamberi Lisa crafted a couple days prior.

As I shoved the bangs out of my eyes for the umpteenth time, one of a plethora of parucchieres (hairdressers) materialized. Its name: Beauty Lab, in English. I thought, I’ll pop in and see if they can’t save me from a certain very near fate as a Shetland Pony…

Inside above the cool tiles, to the hum of hair dryers, the nice proprietor Ivana filled me out a little card and said come back at 1400. I burst back out into the heat, went back to the castle, made lunch, knocked off a few things on the to-do list and returned.

Twenty minutes, a coffee and a free, blunt bang trim (frangia taglia dritta) later (plus tip), I’d maybe found a(nother) job. Speaking Italian to Ivana with surprising success, a woman in the back waiting for a shampoo overheard me.

I joined her there and we exchanged contacts; her name was Laura and at that time all I knew of her was she had a two and a half-year-old daughter, was very nice, spoke English and was in need of a shampoo.

Fast forward a week or so in which Lisa and I had been literally inseparable (more on the shenanigans later). And during which I’d been able to watch the flag throwing ceremony of Faenza’s traditional Palio with all the other screaming, hormonal adolescents in the province of Ravenna.

  Now, on Tuesday Lisa and I were sitting in front of the fountain in Faenza at Fmarket, enjoying a victory drink or two during aperetivo.

I’d figured out — with ample and loving assistance from the Universe — how to remain in Italy until September and see about going broke in another country besides my own (I promised the whole tale; you shall have it soon). Another victory sip; the phone rings.

Now, over the same week I’d been playing a game of employment cat-and-mouse with the downstairs neighbors (Matteo and Alice) regarding babysitting. Every time either of us smacked into each other in the castle’s courtyard — one or both parties in a hurry — they said we’ll call you, we promise. So I figured the caller was Matteo. “Pronto,” I said, which literally means “ready” but also kind of means “hello.”

A man’s voice in English — but not Matteo. Curiosity mingled with the Prosecco in my cocktail as I absorbed the words “tomorrow” and “photo shoot.” Eventually I put due and due together and realized I was speaking with Laura’s husband — Laura from the hairdresser. Her company was desperate for someone to help wash dishes between photo shoots in Ravenna tomorrow, starting around 8:30 a.m. It was an all day gig and did I want to work?

Visions of Italian underwear models swam in my brain like espresso bean moscas (flies) in the top of a glass of Sambuca. Then he said the photo shoot was of a famous vegan Italian chef… well, that was cool, too. I told him I needed to change some plans and mull it over, hung up, put my phone on the table, looked at Lisa and said, “Holy sh*t!” The Universe, once again, came through like last night’s full, brilliant moon over Piazza del Popolo. Even though Lisa and I had plans the next day for a stupendous bike ride, it seemed too good an opportunity to decline.

So the next morning, Laura picked me up and off we went to the photo shoot/filming session. On the drive, the details unfurled like a sheet about to be dried on the line in dryer-less Italia: Laura, with her business partner Carlo, owns a communication and marketing company called Cambiamente in Faenza. One of their projects is a thick, elegant magazine in both Italian and English (referred to as their book-azine) called Ossigeno, (or Oxygen) which focuses on healthy recipes, fitness and general health. They pair their content with classy photos and art, hence our journey to Ravenna.

Passing vineyards and canals, we touched upon my journalism background and my general passion for words. Honestly, I hoped for a chance to write something for Cambiamente — and the way the Universe and my lucky stars were pulling me along by my thrift store bike jersey, was anything too much to hope for?

We pulled up to a sleek kitchen in what seemed like an industrial zone somewhere in Ravenna. I met a tired Carlo outside (he and Laura were up entirely too late hobnobbing).

“This is Sylva,” Laura said, as I shook Carlo’s hand. “She’s a journalist, too.”

Laura and I went on a coffee mission and when we returned, met the rest of the crew: film maker Lucca, Cambiamente’s editor Fabiola, vegan chef Daniela Cicioni, Matteo, assisting a famous photographer who — like Voldemort — shall not be named. But — very unlike Voldemort — this photographer was kind, interesting, funny and made snapping incredible photographs look easier than it would be if he had actually borrowed Harry Potter’s wand.

I found myself generally assisting Daniela; strangely, we started as two souls on the same boat holding different paddles — hers Italian and mine English, both of us learning to use the other. But I quickly re-learned pass me a knife please (passami un coltello, per favore) or a spoon (un cucchiaio) or a small bowl (una piccola ciotola) and things went smoother than one of the purees Daniela crafted. At some point, we switched paddles and she started asking me in English; I answered in Italian.

Somehow, thirteen hours disappeared among dirty dishes and photo and video shoots to the whir of Daniela’s 750 euro blender. It transported me back to one of my past lives as a college journalist/editor, interviewing bands and random politicians. Sure, these folks — the musicians, this photographer and chef — are famous and ridiculously successful, but also just plain human. I enjoyed the ample down time with everyone spent drinking way too much coffee, fiddling on phones, eating piadina con rucola, squacquerone e proscuitto for lunch and watching music videos in order to answer the world’s most important question: who was hotter, Beyonce or her sister Solange?

Assisting Daniela was a pleasure — she was like a kind, quiet tornado, a petite person with an incredibly measured, precisely beautiful approach to vegan cooking. I quickly ascertained this was the perfect job: when we weren’t filming or shooting and I wasn’t washing dishes, we were sampling vegan delights. First, leftover hazelnut tortes sprinkled with thyme and vegan chocolate muffins from a previous day…

Then everything that left the table after the famous photographer was done with it… among other things sauteed leeks, pureed purple sweet potatoes with ginger, tempeh with almond milk merengue, velvety pureed butternut squash alive with spices, edible flowers, and the nuts, fruit and vegetables strewn about everywhere as props…

That evening, after extensive cleaning and rearranging, we packed Laura’s car with our stuff — and our spoils. I walked away with fruit, enough nuts to sink a ferry, vegetables, Daniela’s homemade tofu and tempeh, edible flowers and a mint plant.

Then, with tired feet and an even more tired Laura, we all piled into her small car to drop Daniela and Matteo off at their hotel (in the morning, they’d return to their respective homes — Daniela to Lake Como and Matteo to Verona). I thanked Daniela (in Italian) for the chance to help and said it was a pleasure to meet her. During the rare moments when she wasn’t chopping, blending or preparing, she asked me about myself and where I was from; I told her I’ve lived in Colorado the last eleven years. She said, “Don’t you miss your home?” To which I responded I don’t have one at the moment — only a storage unit. Although I do miss friends and family sometimes. Outside the car in Ravenna, she told me (also in Italian) that I was interesting, nice and efficient which was a perfect mirror of my experience with her.

Against the backdrop of a blazing orange and pink sunset, Laura and I chatted all the way home — in English, despite her constant protests (in English) that her English isn’t that great 🙂 I went to bed exhausted but once again pleased after following the Universe’s breadcrumbs yet again, like a modern day Gretel sans Hansel…

Two days ago, as Lisa and I fell out the door on our way to a couple hours of work at the Farm, my phone rang again. I was wrestling with my bike jersey,  one shoe on, unable to find said phone, of course. It was Laura — and not, as I assumed, asking when I’d like to come get paid (although she did that too) but explaining something far more interesting. She’d made a proposition to Carlo regarding an article about an exercise called Feldenkrais for the next edition of Ossigeno. Could I send some writing samples over?

Yesterday I popped into Cambiamente to retrieve my euros for the photo shoot — and to meet with Laura and Carlo about the potential article. When I came into Carlo’s office, the PDF of my article for Backcountry Magazine was up on the computer. And then we were talking about word counts, due dates, payment and shaking hands — we had a deal!

Now it’s Saturday, June 10 (four days after I originally would have flown home) and I officially have a freelance writing gig in Italy. I think it’s certainly a small hop and not a leap to say the message right now is stay. Stay and see what happens, who it happens with and how. Each day is its own little mystery and I happily take on the roll of detective.

However, this detective needs to go on a bike ride, in order to come back refreshed, with weirder tan lines, ready to embark on a more cerebral journey involving the gentler art of Feldenkrais…

On the next edition, we’ll return to the enchanting waters of Venice (and/or the Story of Staying) — unless the Universe sends me another case to crack!

  Something’s Cooking… Once upon a time, there was a girl who needed a haircut. That girl, as fate would have it, was me.

#aperetivo #art #Cambiamente #cooking #Daniela Cicioni #Exercise #Faenza #Feldenkrais #film shoot #freelance writer #freelancing #fruit and vegetables #Hansel and Gretal #healthy living #Italian #Italy #journalism #journalist #language #learning #life #mint #nuts #Oxigeno #Palio #photo shoot #photography #pronto #Ravenna #Shetland Pony

[viralhottopics]

In defense of ghosting: It’s a valuable dating tool, not a problem to be fixed

Image: Christopher Mineses/Mashable

Ghosting is everywhere, and dating apps are desperate to put an end to this disappearing act. But ghosting doesn’t need a solution it is the solution.

If you didnt already know before plunging into the deep, dark depths that is online dating, you certainly learned quickly thereafter: dating is a numbers game. And when youre messaging with what turns out to be your third lamest match of the day, ghosting becomes a necessary tool to manage the exhaustion that is mining through the hundreds of (probably boring) people at your fingertips.

For the record: This isnt the nicest way of looking at people.

For the record: This isnt the nicest way of looking at people. But neither is the meat-market display of the swiping mechanism employed by the most popular apps. It is, as they say, what it is. If youre going to partake, this objectification is an inherent and unavoidable aspect of dating app culture.

SEE ALSO: We’re so tired of dating apps but we just can’t quit them

There are a literal million reasons why a match can flop. You can chalk most failed conversations up to lack of spark you either have a connection or you dont. Not everyone wants to partake in games of witty one-upmanship (*raises hand*) or blatant innuendo (*puts hand down*). You might just be on completely different pages right off the bat.

Some people are lazy swipers. Theyll casually swipe right before really analyzing your profile only to later discover oh, wait they actually really hate people with cats and ew thats a cat in your last picture and they missed it the first time. It happens.

Other people are coming off their last breakup sore and just looking for the validation, comfort and ego boost that newcomers tend to feel from the matching experience they were never there to meet up anyway.

See: a literal million reasons.

So when someone doesnt chat you back, the rejection isnt necessarily personal. Its cheesy but its true: Its not you, its them. Youre not a fit, and thats okay.

Its cheesy but its true: Its not you, its them.

Ghosting isnt unique to the online world. Weve done it countless times in person, it just doesnt seem as pointed. If you were at a party full of single people and chatted briefly to someone before pausing to chat to another, and then turned back to discover the first person had disappeared, you probably wouldn’t think too much of it after all, it’s a big party and you’re all there to mingle, a 45-year-old single writer who uses a combination of Tinder, Happn and Bumble told me.

Speaking briefly with someone in person does not imply an investment, and neither does an online greeting. You havent met, you can barely remember this persons name without going back to check their profile, and youve made no promises or commitments.

As a 32-year-old single software developer said, I think that’s why people feel okay ghosting. I hardly know this person. Do I really have to go through the exercise of telling them why I’m not interested? And thats the main issue: formally cutting off every conversation you might have with a stranger online would be exhausting.

Even as someone who only casually flips through dating apps, I have 200+ matches that I do not speak with, either ever or any longer. Some I stopped replying to, some stopped replying to me. Thats online dating.

SEE ALSO: The internet baes who ‘breadcrumb’ you and never meet you in person

I have so many conversations going on at the same time that don’t result in actual dates that I can’t actually reject all of them. So I ghost, a 29-year-old investment professional told me. I don’t think the person really devoted any resources to chat me along with other multiple people at the same time online.

Ghosting is easy. Sitting down to explain why you arent interested in continuing a conversation with someone you barely know is not.

And what good would come of it anyway? As much as some people might feel like understanding why the other person disappeared would be helpful, there are too many variables.

Even with the best intentions, some criticism might read as offensive. Or they might just not know what the hell theyre talking about. (They dont actually know anything about you, after all.) Or it might be one of those incredibly personal literal million reasons that would have no impact on your future involvements.

As the 29-year-old investment professional put it, How would the other person possibly benefit by an internet stranger saying he or she doesn’t wanna meet up because I find you boring. The 45-year-old writer said something similar: If I hardly know a person, I think I have little right to judge their behavior. It’d be massively egotistical of me to judge them after so little interaction.

Its just not feasible for every match to answer your requests for feedback.

Online dating moves quickly. One day youre all about one or two threads of interaction, and the next its an entirely different set of people. Its just not feasible for every match to answer your requests for feedback.

I think it’s slightly unrealistic to expect people to pour their hearts out to you when you hardly know them, the 45-year-old writer said. The problem is that one person might just not be into it (call it chemistry, call it feeling, call it vibe, whatever) while the other person is projecting all sorts of stuff on the other person and building up the proto-relationship in their mind.

The only effort we can reasonably expect from a match is to take a stab at an honest-to-goodness conversation. If it doesnt pass the initial chemistry test, anything else is unnecessary.

There are, of course, scenarios where ghosting is bad. If youve been dating someone even casually for a chunk of time, for instance. But when youre just chatting, gauging who the hell this person even is? When you havent even committed to a first date? Its not rude its just part of the process. Its expected, as the 29-year-old said.

Dating apps like The League and others are rushing to try to “solve” the problem of ghosting. Theyre offering features like read receipts or expiring messages that feel more like shaming. Those features, along with other attempts to engineer social interactions between matches (like limiting how many people you see, especially with The Leagues penalization of people who dip into any kind of inactivity) are manipulating your behaviors by controlling your experience.

SEE ALSO: The best dating apps to get you laid

So why are these apps even bothering? Ghosting is always going to be a part of online dating, as long as its a numbers game. But neither of those things are inherently bad. Dating apps, as abhorrent as they can be, are at least convenient and manageable. You can gauge a potential match from a safe and fairly anonymous distance, and you can decide when to pull the plug without the risk of them continuing to have unfettered access to you.

The fact that online dating is on your terms is one of the few things it has going for it.

The fact that online dating is on your terms is one of the few things it has going for it. The best feature these apps introduced was making communication gated rather than leaving it open to a wild west world of negging and sexually-charged commentary. Thats done. But theres certainly still room for features that would minimize the need for ghosting.

The most cumbersome part of all this is swiping through the piles of profiles some of which are joke accounts or spam to get to someone you could see yourself liking. Anything that would help that experience vague and magical algorithms, for instance would be more effective than these features that feel like yet another opportunity for a cash grab (with paid-for member accounts nabbing extra flexibility) rather than a service to the user.

If, one day, apps were able to accurately detect and record your most personal-interest swiping habits to better predict who you would like as in, be an actual matchmaker wed probably spend less time swiping and ghosting in favor of more time actually dating.

SEE ALSO: Hater, the app that lets you find love based on what you hate

Most of the current algorithmic qualifiers dont have much of a bearing on what kinds of people personality, look, style, character youre looking at. Tinders voting-as-ranking system, based on what we know about it, seems far too much like a Black Mirror Season 3, episode 1 popularity contest than a personalized matching system.

For now, were left with an imperfect system. Theres plenty about the culture of online dating that would deter any number of people. Ghosting, I would argue, is one of the less offensive ones a tool of efficiency rather than rejection. But its up to you to decide if its worth the hassle.

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#In defense of ghosting: It’s a valuable dating tool #not a problem to be fixed