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milkypompon · 4 years

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𝕁𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕠𝕦𝕤𝕪 ℙ𝕥. 𝟚 | Bokuto x Reader SMUT

𝕀𝕞𝕒𝕘𝕚𝕟𝕖 | How would Bokuto react to a jealous Y/N?

𝔸𝕦𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕣'𝕤 ℕ𝕠𝕥𝕖 | Some of y’all wanted to get deep down and nasty with Bokuto, so here we are… (I HAVEN’T FINISHED TAKING NOTES FOR MY CLASS YET I’M WRITING THIS)

[Warning: female parts used for reader, eating out, captain kink]

.・゜゜・ℙ𝕥. 𝟙 ・゜゜・．

After the whole situation with the wild pack of girls throwing themselves all over Bokuto, you and him walked to your house in silence.

The afternoon sun began to drag down the night sky, painting it with swirls of indigo and purple. Walking home took much longer than usual today because you dragged your feet along the way, which didn’t go unnoticed by your boyfriend.

Bokuto tilted his head towards your way and pursed his lips.

Your eyes were glued to the sight in front of you, refusing to meet his eyes.

“... Y/N” He whispered into your ear. After no reply he decided to try something else. Bokuto suddenly stepped in front of you, causing you to bump into him. Your breath hitched, his familiar scent tickling your nose before pulling back when you remembered the events of a few moments ago.

With your hands on Bokuto’s chest, you tried to push him away, but he quickly caught your wrists with his long fingers. His bright eyes burned holes into yours, slowly darkening as moments of empty words passed by. You chewed your bottom lip at the anticipation.

“Baby, stop giving me the silent treatment or I’ll treat you the same when we fuck tonight,” Bokuto said blatantly as he leaned in a little closer.

You noticed his lips grow agape just the slightest, but enough to feel his hot breath on your face. Being out here in the open, when any fans of his could hear Bokuto whispering such lewd words, made your thighs clench.

He saw this too of course. After all, owls have better vision at night.

“You wanna clench those thighs around my head as I eat ya out?” Bokuto held his gaze, refusing to break such intimate contact.

“I- yes…” You muttered under your breath.

“You gotta use that mouth of yours to make those words a little louder,” Bokuto smirked.

You were already frustrated from earlier, now this was just infuriating.

“I want you to use that fucking tongue and lap up every single drop of my juices, Captain” you said through gritted teeth.

“HEY! HEY! HEY!” He threw up his hands and shouted into the open sky.

That statement was enough to rile up Bokuto and to sling you over his shoulder with ease, despite the weight of his gym bag. He slapped your ass as if he was spiking down a volleyball, a yelp releasing from your lips.

With a soft thump, your bum hit Bokuto’s mattress, who had his back facing you as he pulled off his white undershirt tightly hugging the deep valleys of muscles running across his back. The results of his daily routine of lifting obviously paid off from the looks of the biceps bulging through his skin. Just looking at Bokuto’s forearms ornately decorated with a few strands of veins reaching to his hands made your stomach twist.

“You look more excited than me!” You giggled as you propped yourself up on the elbows.

“Well, let’s see about that when I stick my fingers in your pretty little pussy.” He raked his spiked hair back before eyeing you through his profile. “You wanna take off that skirt or do I have to do it myself?”

You returned his snarky question, “After what you did to me earlier, you should at least pay me back with a little bit of acts of service, Koutarou.”

“Shit, baby. Who taught you to run that mouth of yours like that?” Bokuto stepped towards you and pulled your legs down until your knees bent over the mattress. Your head fell softly.

Let’s see how far I can push his buttons.

“From your best friend actually,” You smirked. “Y’know, Akaashi…”

Bokuto bit his lip at the mention of a familiar name. He bent down to bring his large hands to slide under your skirt to grip your thighs roughly, surely leaving marks. He had always been an impatient guy. With all that energy, he had to put it somewhere, so you weren’t surprised when the pad of his thumb ghosted over your clothed heat.

“It feels a little damp down here, love,” Bokuto knelt down to his knees. “Maybe I should inspect it,” He said in a low voice as he pressed into your slit lightly, a whimper slipped past your lips.

“Y-yeah, maybe you should check if there’s something wrong,” You managed to say through suppressed moans, feeling Bokuto’s thumb inching closer to your clothed little nub.

“F-fuck. Stop doing this!” You pushed his chest back with your foot, a giggle came from Bokuto. You unzipped your skirt and tossed it over his head along with your school polo, while his favorite lace bra still clinged onto you.

“Baby, are you impatient for my sincere apology?” Bokuto questioned through half lidded eyes. He pushed your stomach down. “I mean I do wanna get a taste of your sweet pussy…”

Bokuto gripped your knees and spread your legs open, his eyes dripping with lust. He hauled himself forward to hover over your frame, his strong forearms on either side of your head. His lips dipped down to your jawline, whispering into it, “I’m gonna eat you out until you moan my name a thousand times over.”

The hot breath pricked your neck, sending shivers down to your hardening nipples. Bokuto placed a soft kiss next to your luscious lips before driving his knee up to your pussy to gently push into it. You gasped from the contacts allowing him to slither his wet muscle into your warm mouth that his cock knew so well.

Your spit mixed into his creating a forbidden liquid that you both drank feverishly. Bokuto’s lips glistened with a long strand of saliva connecting both of you. He wiped his thumb over yours before licking it.

“That was really hot, captain,” You gasped out trying to catch your breath, your cheeks tinted red.

Bokuto’s eyes widened at the nickname, smirking, he stated, “If you say that again, I’ll make sure to take the reins this whole night.” He shoved his nose into the valley between your breasts.

You knew he’d like that, so you returned his excitement, “You always take control, captain.”

A muffled, “Hell yeah” reached your ears.

Bokuto snaked his fingers behind your back to skillfully unclasp your lace bra. When both of you started an intimate relationship, his first attempt of removing your bra was a complete failure that ended with giggles and a pouting Koutarou. But now, after months of experience, he could unclasp it with closed eyes.

He tossed the bra behind the other articles of clothing, now lying around forgotten. You felt your nipples harden even more as Bokuto’s breath breathed on it before using his tongue to swirl around the little pebble. Your writhed under him. Bokuto, not liking the squirming, glided his calloused hands on your sides before gripping it.

“You gotta stay still,” He whispered into your neck.

“Mmhm!” You hummed. “C-can you move a little further down?”

He knew what you wanted. How could he not when everytime he slid wandering fingers near your nether area, you’d moan in delight.

“Let me just drink up this moment, my dove,” Bokuto giggled in between the soft kisses he placed on your stomach. Inching closer and closer to where it should be.

You inhaled sharply when a pair of warm lips pushed into your tight panties. A hand subconsciously flew to grasp Bokuto’s hair.

“R-right there, baby,” You mewled out, trying to bite down your groans because you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that this was already turning the gears in your head.

Bokuto hooked his thumbs on your soaking panty, pulling down and off of you. He gripped it in his hand and inhaled deeply to take in the sweet scent of your essence. Without hesitation, he licked the cum before stuffing it in his gym shorts pocket, a questioning look arising on your face.

“Just making sure I have a trophy, so I can remember how good I ate you out,” He beamed. You grinned. “Well you better get started then-”

You bit your lip as you suddenly felt Bokuto’s wet tongue glide along your slit in one long swoop.

He brought his large hand to caress your breast, fondling it, occasionally giving your hard nipples a quick pinch. His free hand spread your pussy apart with cum webbed inside of it.

Bokuto leaned into your quivering pussy, lapping up the essence you were releasing for him. His tongue probed through every part of you, trying to get a taste. Causing his nose to nudge the sensitive nub, a moan scratched your throat.

You felt him smirk into you, knowing what was next, yet you could never prepare for it. He pulled his hand away from your breast and used it to pin your hips down. Bokuto nipped at your clit, your legs quivered at the sharp pain, but the feeling spiraled into a feeling of lewd satisfaction as he continued.

You wrapped your thighs around his head, trying to jut your hips forward for more friction. Bokuto bit the inside of your thigh harshly, pricking your supple skin.

“What the hell was that for!” You groaned.

“I told you, I get to take the reins,” Bokuto’s words vibrated into you. He threw your legs over his shoulders, the position giving him better leverage to bury his face into you.

Bokuto gave your clit a final squeeze, this time a pinch from his fingers. He gauged your wetness, knowing it was enough to take at least two fingers. Without a warning, he plunged a pair of digits into your hole, stretching it open as he scissored his way through. Each up and down motion made his fingers come in contact with your pulsating walls, as if threatening to keep it in there.

“More! I need more!” That’s all you could chant apparently.

“Say the magic word,” Bokuto teased delightfully.

“I NEED MORE, CAPTAIN,” You squealed.

He probed in a third finger, all working together to thrust in and out of your soaking hole. Each movement produced forbidden sounds of squelching cum inside of you.

Sweat trickled down your forehead as you gasped uncontrollably at Bokuto’s speed. His other hand joined in to roughly push around your swollen clit. The feeling causing the knot in your stomach to twist tighter.

“I’M ALMOST-”

Bokuto thrusted in once more into you, finally feeling your warm walls clench around his fingers. Your back arched as you squeezed your boobs at the peak of the sensation. Moans and a final gasp rang inside of Bokuto’s ears, knowing that he did a job well done.

Carefully, he moved his white ooze covered fingers out of you, giving your stomach feather-light kisses to soothe the knot that was just undone.

“So, do you forgive me now?”

𝔼𝕟𝕕 ℕ𝕠𝕥𝕖 | ngl, writing shit like this makes me feel a different way, if you know what I mean...

#bokuto x reader #bokuto #bokuto imagines #bokuto smut #haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu smut #haikyuu self inserts #haikyuu imagines #hq #hq x reader #hq smut #hq self inserts

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belphieslilcow · 4 years

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Unnamed Smopkins Fic Part 2

Jimmy’s brain tries to justify what he saw last night and now has to deal with the idea of being the Gary Guardian(tm)

(CW: one instance of ableist language at the beginning)

Jimmy immediately slamming the door after seeing Gary would almost be funny if it wasn’t him in this situation. He wasn’t sure what was happening, there was no way in hell Crabblesnitch would actually let that psycho back to school, would he? Jimmy shook his head and fast walked out the front door, not bothering to muffle the slam this time.

He was sure he had to be dreaming, he must’ve passed out during the movie and is having a bad dream, yeah that must be it. Though there was a small part of his mind telling him he was as awake as ever and he didn’t want to chance it. He went out the way he came in, climbing over the front fence and riding his bike back to Blue Skies, not bothering to call anyone to tell them he was coming, he just needed to leave.

Jimmy groaned as a ray of light hit his eyes through a window, he didn’t feel like he slept at all. He felt something that felt like an armrest on his head and shot up, he looked around and recognized it as Edgar’s place, he thought that he was right, he must’ve not left and just crashed here. He breathed a sigh of relief, it was all a dream after all…

“Hey, Jim, you’re finally awake.”

He looked over and saw Edgar, sitting at the nearby table. “Finally? How long’ve I been out?”

Edgar looked to the digital clock on his stove, “Umm, I found you at around six this morning I think, I don’t know how long you were outside, but at least since then.”

“Wait, what do you mean found me?”

“We all thought you left after the movie so we went to bed after a bit, then when I woke up I looked outside and saw you face down in the grass next to your bike, so I brought you in.”

That made Jimmy’s heart sink, Gary really was there in his dorm, huh? He put his head in his hands and swore to himself.

“You staying for lunch or are you gonna head back out?”

Jimmy got up and stretched, “No, I’ll leave, I got something waiting for me back at school.”

He heard a sharp intake of breath and saw a small smile come from Edgar, “Well you better not keep her waiting, see ya later, Jim.”

Jimmy sighed, he wished it was a girl waiting for him he waved bye and stepped out of the trailer door, after almost getting blinded by the afternoon sun, he jumped on his bike and made his way back to Bullworth.

Before getting back, he made a pit stop in town for some quick breakfast, or lunch, considering it was almost noon. He chose to eat outside, it was nice weather and more importantly, he saw some of the Nerds at a table and didn’t want to get sucked into another Grottos and Gremlins game. It was one of the slowest lunches he’s ever had, the food itself was kinda garbage, but he wanted to waste the most time he could.

He was both mad at Crabblesnitch for letting Gary back into school and rooming them up, but also at himself for not realizing it’d be Gary sooner, he could be such an idiot sometimes. Eventually he figured he better just go and get it over with, he threw away his trash in the nearby can, he debated getting his bike from the nearby garage, but figured he wasn’t in that mucha of a hurry and started his way back.

As soon as he stepped foot on campus, he heard Miss Danvers on the intercom, “JIMMY HOPKINS, PLEASE COME TO THE FRONT OFFICE, IMMEDIATELY.”

He groaned to himself, and sulked his way towards the office, giving the occasional wave to the various students walking around. He felt a pang of nostalgia as he walked up the stairs, it reminded him of when he first got here, the feeling sucked.

He eventually reached the second floor and saw Miss Danvers, she had her usual scowl painted on her face, occasionally looking to the side.

“Well, James, glad you could finally join us, Dr. Crabblesnitch is waiting in his office.” She suddenly jolted her gaze to the left again, “Not you, you’re staying here until he wants you back there again.”

Jimmy looked over to where Miss Danvers was looking and just as he thought, there was Gary. He slowly walked in and occasionally glanced over where he was sitting, Gary’s hand was covering his mouth and he had a giant bruise on his right eye, he almost seemed like he was shaking, but he didn’t have enough time to really look and made his way into Crabblesnitch’s office.

Jimmy sat down in one of the empty chairs in front of the desk, all too used to getting speeches from him.

“James, was something we discussed yesterday unclear? Did I or did I not tell you to make sure Mr. Smith behaved?”

Now it was Jimmy’s turn to scowl, “Well you didn’t tell me it’d be Gary. Why the hell is he here, anyway?”

“Mr. Smith is back in Bullworth because his parents were outraged at finding out their son was put in an asylum and demanded he be put back in.” He cleared his throat before continuing, “I for one thought that because of his… misdemeanor last year, he wouldn’t be welcomed by the other students.”

Crabblesnitch stood up and started pacing around the room, “I figured that since you’re the, ahem, ‘king of the school’, if you’re protecting him, then we won’t have to worry about any potential lawsuits with him getting killed.

“I’m not going to be his bodyguard, get someone else.” Jimmy started to get up before a hand on his shoulder pushed him back down.

“James, I’ll be straight with you, the Smith’s have paid our school a good sum of money to make sure their son stays here, I wouldn’t do it if I hadn’t already gotten the check.”

Jimmy looked up and into Crabblesnitch’s eyes as he continued, “This is not a choice, Hopkins, there is not refusing, you will protect Mr. Smith, are we understood?”

The grip on his shoulder had gotten tighter and tighter as he spoke, Jimmy shook his hand off and spoke, “If I really don’t have a choice then fine.”

“That’s the spirit, boy! Now as I’m sure you saw when you walked in, he’s in the reception area, you’ll need to walk him back to your dorm, when classes start you’ll be getting the same schedule, you may not let him leave your sight, Hopkins.”

He then pulled out a small sheet of paper, and handed it over to Jimmy. “Mr. Smith is on medication now, so he should be much calmer, these are the times he must take it,he has his own notes, but he is not allowed to miss a dose.”

Crabblesnitch took a deep breath, “Now, if there are no more questions, you may go.”

Jimmy’s head was rattling with all the information he’d been given, he felt like he was going to be taking care of a dog, not protecting some rich snobs bratty kid, but he got up and went out the door. He looked back over at Gary, he was now tapping his fingers against his knees, though his face looked strangely calmed, it gave Jimmy a weird feeling in his chest. He walked over, opening his mouth to say something to his old rival, but without a word, Gary stood up, waiting for Jimmy to walk out.

“Uh, okay, I guess we’re going back to my- our room now.” He waited for Gary to take the lead as he used to, but he just looked him in the eyes.

After a couple seconds he finally spoke, “Then, let’s go?” He tilted his head in confusion and gestured his hand out, not so subtly telling Jimmy to go first.

Jimmy nodded and started walking out the door, glancing back every so often to make sure Gary was following, and they eventually were walking side by side, on their way back to their doom, and to their new lives.

#smopkins #bully scholarship edition #canis canem edit #surprised i was able to continue writing this #but hell yeah

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aperrywilliams · 4 years

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A Normal Conversation Ch07 (Spencer Reid x Maxine Brenner)

Previous Chapter / Ch07 / Next Chapter

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Chapter 7: The second date

Summary: Second date for Spencer and Max

Word Count: 2332

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

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As he promised, Spencer was out of Max's school at 12:00 noon. Waiting in the same place as the last time. A few minutes later saw Max come out through the gate. Upon making eye contact they both smiled to each other. She walked over to where Spencer was.

"Hey… how are you?" said Max. “On time as ever Spencer" added.

"Hello. Yes, it's a habit on me... in case you hadn't noticed". Both grinned.

"It is a good habit I think. I admit it’s more hard for me..." Max said scratching her head.

"How have you been this morning? Are you ok?". She thought it was sweet of him asked her about it. She remembered their conversation from the night before over the phone.

“Yes, truly. I think I found myself just at a moment a bit distressing... but I'm fine now". Max said. “By the way... thanks. It helped me we could talk last night”.

"And it's what I intend us to do today" Spencer statement. “I have so many questions for you...". Max upped her eyebrows.

"Is it going to be some kind of FBI-style interrogation?" she joked. Spencer couldn't help but laugh.

"I hope not that kind of interrogation... shall we go?" he said quickly.

"Yeah, let’s go. We will walk there?”

"No, we’ll go in a cab. The place is a little further from here". After saying it, Spencer stopped a cab in front of them. He opened the door and invited her in first. Then he came in, closed the door, and the car moved when Spencer gave the driver instructions to get they were going.

Along the way Max told him the story of how she came art’s teacher at her school. Spencer thought it was reasonable she accepted the job in that circumstances.

"It was a good opportunity for you" he said.

“Yes, I needed to have my space and be independent and I think it was the best reason for me to make that decision. I had a good letter of recommendation too. That sure worked” said Max.

"But now you're not so comfy there..." said Spencer.

"I think I’m not" said Max, frowning. "And I think is because there is so much I could do with those children! But every time I propose something new I have someone at school who tells me that 'you can't', 'it's irrelevant', 'you have to worry about other things'… And so over and over again".

"Have you thought about what you would like to do, truly?" Spencer asked.

"So many times you would be surprised..." said Max. At that moment the cab stopped. They had reached their destination. Spencer paid and got off first, helping Max get off later.

They were in front of an Italian restaurant. Max looked at Spencer and couldn't help but joke.

"This time you’ll make sure you don't get hungry" They both laughed.

"Yeah, I wasn't going to take that risk again" said Spencer.

They walked towards the entrance and come into the place. It was not a big place, but it was very well decorated, very Italian style. Black and white photos of different people hung on the walls, possibly the owner's family of origin. There were checkered tablecloths on all the wooden tables. Chairs was wooden made too. A young woman approached Spencer and Max asking if they needed a table. Spencer nodded saying "for two, please". The young woman led them to one of the tables by a window, the one that faced the crowdy street. She handed them two menus and told them that the waiter would be taking their order soon.

They sat down and took the menus to see what they were going to eat. Max looked at the menu with an infinity of dishes on it and was not quite sure what to order.

"Any suggestions? So many options overwhelm me" Max asked. Spencer thought for a minute.

“If you ask me, I think the risotto at this place is fantastic. Although I traditionally choose pasta, I like it more”. At that point the waiter came to take their order. Max heeded Spencer's suggestion and chose a risotto with four cheeses sauce, while Spencer ordered his traditional pasta with putanesca sauce. To drink they asked for water and juice.

“I think I had already asked you in the cab, but now we could return to the subject. What would you like to work on?" Spencer asked.

"I've thought so many things" said Max, sighing. "From the most unlikely to very simple ideas". Spencer looked interested, waiting for her to continue talking. "For example, did you know in museums and theaters there are programs that encourage children's bond with arts as a way to integrate soft skills they cannot acquire at school?".

"I suppose it's reasonable to think of something like that given museums and theaters aren't going to survive long in this digital era otherwise" Spencer said.

"Sure, it may be a business plan for them, but despite it I think this kind of measures can help expand children's minds and connect them with things more sensitive than math’s... I would love to do something like that...". Saying it Max paused for a second. "Of course... no offense" finished saying. Spencer smiled at the last sentence.

"Are you saying it because I like math?... Ok, I think I can forgive you that" he said jokingly. Max smiled.

"I've also had crazy ideas like going to Los Angeles for artistic painting on the shore of the beach, smoking weed, like I did when I was younger...". Spencer stared at her trying to know if what she was saying the truth or teasing him. She noticed it and decided to challenge him. "Okay, Dr. Reid, Mr. Profiler... those I just said, is it true or a lie?". Spencer accepting the challenge scrutinized her eyes and body language. He watched her carefully and silently for a few minutes. Max couldn't help but blush feeling his eyes so meticulously look on her.

"It is… true!" Spencer sentenced, surprised himself by his finding. Max smiled sheepishly.

"Clearly there are things I did in my youth I'm not very proud of today ..."

"I am not going to judge you. I have no moral for it. I've also done things I'm not proud of…”said Spencer. At which he quickly regretted saying it. Max was about to question him when the waiter arrived with their order. "Our dishes!" Spencer said quickly "…Now you’ll tell me if my recommendation was good for you or not"

Max didn’t want to do her own questionnaire on him. She was hungry and preferred to focus on food. Apparently Max's plate had been a good recommendation, since he was enjoying it with great need. Spencer was also concentrated on his own plate. From moments to time he looked up to see how Max was enjoying her food.

"I owe you one. It was an excellent suggestion” said Max taking a sip of the juice that had been brought while they was eating.

"I’m happy you liked it" said Spencer pleased. After she wiped her lips with the napkin. Max started to speak again.

"Well then... FBI. And you travel a lot you told me. Do you like it?"

"My job? Too much. I love it. Travel is something you get used to… or at least you should get used to” said Spencer.

"And if you do profiles to catch murderers... isn't that like 'playing' at being them and thinking like them?"

"In fact, that's what we do". Spencer noticed Max frowning. "I know... it could be heard as very morbid thing... but the truth is... being difficult and unpleasant as it could be... sometimes... I think someone has to do it".

"I am not going to question it. I think it as a very dedicated job and it is good there are people like you who do it…”. Spencer looked at her knowing there was a ‘but’.

"But…?" Spencer asked.

"The thing is... how can you deal with it?... I mean, in your daily life". Spencer thought about it a few seconds before answering.

"I don't know... I guess trying not to think about it too much. At least I try… ” Spencer said.

"But you have those dreams..." said Max. ‘Touché…’ thought Spencer.

"Eh… yes. I think sometimes it just beats you... a little...". Spencer lowered his head and thoughtfully for a few moments. Max knew had struck a tough matter so she wanted to change the subject.

"Okay. I think we shouldn’t have to talk about work" She looked at him and gave him a smile. He smiled too. "What do you like to do when you are not traveling?"

"Wow... ok. I love to read, a lot. I have a small and interesting collection in my apartment”

"I can imagine it... and I bet it's bigger than you say, since I think it couldn't be any other way" said Max.

"One of these days I’ll invite you to my apartment and you’ll realize I’m not underestimating my collection...". Spencer paused for a few seconds, hoping it didn't sound like an overly explicit invitation. Apparently Max took it very naturally.

"It would be nice to see that, although I could bet you do have a giant collection..." Max laughed. "Well, what else…?"

“Uhm… I like to watch old movies sitting on my couch eating popcorn. I also like listening classical music on an old record player I have… sometimes I write little case reports for my classes…” said Spencer.

"No offense, I think I'm beginning to understand why your therapist told you to go out more..." Max said with some caution to try not to make Spencer feel bad. He just laughed out loud.

"The truth is… I like my place. I think it has everything I need for when I'm not at work. Even though…"

"Even though …?"

"Even though I think walking in the park and talking with you could also be one of my new favorite activities...". Max couldn't help but blush, knowing perfectly well what he was referring to.

Spencer couldn't help saying it either and though it might seem like he was flirting but he really was convinced of how good a practice like that had done to him. Gratitude perhaps? He thought was clear it could be more than that. Her eyes captivated him. When she speak… the passion was clear in her words. She looked secure, defined in life... he, in other hand, being the genius he was, felt he lacked. "Had she suffered much in her life?" he wondered. He hoped not. He inadvertently felt a need to protect her but he was not sure why, because it was clear that she didn’t need any man to protect her.

Time had gone by too quickly for both of them. When Max saw the clock on her phone realized if she did not leave at that moment would be late for class.

"I have to go now, the next class is in 20 minutes" said Max. Spencer gestured for the waiter to bring over the check. "Thank you so much for lunch" she said while was getting up from the chair. Spencer rushed to stop her.

"Wait, I'll go with you…"

"Spencer, it is not necessary, I can take a cab outside…".

“Let me go with you. I brought you here. At least let me take you back” said Spencer.

"I'm not going to get lost, if that's what worries you…" Max said jokingly. The waiter had brought the check and Spencer was paying with his credit card.

"I know you're not going to get lost... it's just that...". The waiter finished processing the payment and left. "Let me go with you".

Max didn’t understand why so much insistence by him. Under normal conditions she would believe this excess courtesy was a typical tactic of male conquest, but in Spencer it’s looks like very natural. There was no way he was faking politeness.

She finally agreed to have Spencer's company in a cab. The funny thing is throughout the trip none of them spoke. They only gave each other furtive glances hoping the other didn't notice. Despite that the trip wasn't awkward. Apparently they liked having that kind of company even if they was silent. Max felt in comfort with his company even though they knew each other so little. She wondered if he would feel something similar.

When they got back to school it was almost 3:00 p.m. They both got out of the taxi. Max was in a bit of a rush, but she didn't want to be rude, so she let Spencer walked with her to the entrance. They stood looking at each other for a few seconds.

"Thanks for the lunch. I had a great time with you today… and the risotto was totally worth it” said Max smiling.

"No problem. Thanks to you for stand me all these hours…” Spencer said jokingly. Max couldn't help but patting his arm.

"Hey! Don't say that. You don't seem to be torture after all”. Max laughed.

"Good to know it... Ok, I'm leaving so you can go to your class”. Spencer moved closer so he could kiss her on the cheek. He hesitated a few seconds, but when he saw that she was approaching him, he decide to do it. It was a short but very warm and pleasant kiss.

Goodbye Spencer. Take care” Max said before turning and come into the school. It was just time to start her class.

"You too..." Spencer managed to say, although in a voice so soft and low that hardly she heard it. Then, with his hands in his pockets, he began his walk in search of a cab to return to work.

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#spencer reid #maxcer #criminal minds #spencer reid fanfiction #dr. spencer reid #maxine brenner

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purplesurveys · 4 years

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907

Are you one of those lucky people to own a walk-in closet? lol lucky people. No I don’t have one of those. Is there a random object you own that has a huge personal significance? Well it’s more significant today because we had our virtual graduation this morning... so I’ll go with my graduation sash. Ever since I started university I’ve always wanted to wear my own sash in a physical ceremony so again, it sucks that our batch got affected by the pandemic. Do you use Google? For just about everything, yeah. Would you like to go swimming right now? That would be soooooo so nice. I’ve been going through old vacation photos and I really miss the beach. Can you play electric guitar? Nope.

Do you have an HDTV? My parents do. When was the last time you drank something through a straw? Around a month ago when my dad bought milk teas for me and my sister. Have you ever tried to teach yourself a different language? I didn’t teach myself per se, but I have tried my hand learning Spanish on Duolingo several times. It always comes in phases – I get passionate about learning and use the app for weeks, then it kinda burns out after a while. Right now I haven’t used it since I got sick in May. How long was your last phone call? A little longer than an hour, I think. It was pure silence though; we just wanted to hear each other’s surroundings. Do you need to repaint your nails? No, I never get it painted. Has there ever been a horoscope that came true for you? Psh. Are you a fan of industrial metal? Holy shit I feel so stupid right now. I thought this was referring to a literal kind of metal and I thought, that is such an odd thing to be a fan of...Google quickly taught me that it is in fact NOT a material for building infrastructure jdsskfjskf. Anyway, no I am not a fan. Are you one of those people who chew two pieces of gum, not one? Yeah, occasionally. I don’t like how one piece loses flavor all too quickly so I go ahead and pop two in. Do you have a wall calendar? Not since 2008. We only had a wall calendar in our old house; when we moved here we started to rely on digital clocks and our phones to tell the time. Have you ever taken the pictures from a calendar and used them as posters? I haven’t had a calendar like that, so no. I’ve done this with magazines though. Can you handle the cold? Hahaha no, I can’t. I was already in so much pain in 20ºC weather in Sagada, and I fared much worse in 12ºC Japan weather. I would still pick living in a colder climate in a heartbeat over a tropical one, though. Have you ever been to Canada? Nope. Do you believe in superstitions? Just one superstition involving my university that doubles as an inside joke, so it’s not like I take it 100% seriously. It’s a generations-old joke that’s impossible to ignore if you’re a student, so I just jumped in. When was the last time you took a taxi somewhere? It was from the airport to back home, but I forgot where we landed from. Bohol I think? Palawan? I don’t even know anymore. It was so inconvenient I begged my dad that we stop using taxis as transportation for our future trips. Would you ever join the army, airforce or navy? No. How old is the person you last kissed? 22. Is there a friend that you can always rely on to get you out of a jam? I don’t think so. When it comes down to it they all have their own different things going on and I can’t just call them whenever and expect them to come to me, and that’s okay. Generally though, I think my most reliable friends are probably Andrew and Angela. What was the most embarassing thing you've had to buy? I’ve never felt embarrassed by anything I had to buy, but it can get a little uncomfortable trying to buy napkins when my dress or pants are already soaked. I get over it quickly though, since menstruations are normal lol. Have you ever tried to balance the light switch between off and on? When I was a kid. I haven’t tried it in a while. Do you believe in ghosts / supernatural occurences? They’re fun to think about, sure, and I do enjoy watching the supernatural episodes of Buzzfeed Unsolved where they go ghost-hunting. I like to think that they somehow exist, but I still also very much maintain my skepticism at all times. Have you ever mistaken a person's gender? I’ve used the wrong pronouns accidentally but I always correct myself and apologize once I’ve noticed my blunder. What was the most expensive thing you've broken? My old iPhones. I’ve also sported a few dents on my car, but I wouldn’t say I broke the car. Has anyone texted you yet today? Not text, but online chat. We had our virtual graduation this morning so my inbox was swamped with congratulatory messages and such. Did you stay calm during the whole swine flu scare? I did, but I mean I was 11 and had no clue how serious it was supposed to be. I remember cheering when they suspended classes for a week because of a local swine flu case, so yep – still ignorant back then. Is there a light on in the room you're currently in? There is, but it isn’t turned on. Are your feet touching the floor? Nope, they’re on the bed. Have you ever been in a car accident? Mild ones, nothing too life-threatening. Do you usually make back-up plans? Yeah man I’m so anxious I always have at least plans A-C lined up in my head and ready to go whenever necessary. Can you focus well in high-stress situations? Usually. Without the aid of mascara, do you have long eyelashes? I do. I get compliments on it all the time too. I didn’t realize it was apparently a nice feature to have until more and more people pointed it out haha. Is there a kind of music you listen to that helps you release your anger? Yeah I have a playlist that’s lined up with all of my favorite loud, angry punk rock music specifically for when I’m pissed off. Are you one of those people who keep their feelings bottled up? I can, particularly whenever I feel like it’s not worth it to blow up. Is one of your friends extremely odd but you love them regardless? Not really. Aya’s pretty weird but I wouldn’t call her extremely odd. Is there anyone you dread going into public with? My mom when she’s mad. Are you a victim of writing run-on sentences? For the most part, I wouldn’t say so. If I write a run-on sentence it’s almost always in an informal setting where I’m more loose with punctuation, like if I’m chatting on IM or writing an answer on here. Still, I try to avoid them and I never do it in a formal situation. Graffiti: an art or an act of vandalism? They can be both. Some people who genuinely just want to fuck around vandalize, like how I’ve seen “Mark <3 Erica” in spray paint on public walls or some similar shit lol. But a lot of graffiti are art as well; many have important messages or symbolisms to say. Do you buy things online? I’ve done it a few times. Not regularly. I like being able to see and touch something before buying it. Are you easily frightened? I definitely am but at the same time I’m really into horror movies and serial killers and a ghost-hunting series? Hahaha it’s weird. I guess I enjoy the thrill that comes with having those interests. Do you have a favorite model? Over the years I’ve loved Elizabeth Jane Bishop, Kiko Mizuhara, Taylor Marie Hill, Gigi Hadid, Bella Hadid, and (controversial pick!) Kendall Jenner. Have you ever watched Titanic? So many times. Honestly, one of my favorites. What's your current facebook display picture of? It’s my official graduation photo wearing my graduation sash! :) I finally changed it last Friday after I got the email saying I’m on the list of graduates. How about your IM display picture? My main IM is my Messenger, which also uses my Facebook photo. Is there anyone whose hair you envy? Gabie’s for one. Hers is really smooth and silky and wavy. Would you act in a movie if it offered a role? If I was going to be a mostly unseen extra in a blockbuster film and still be paid like $600 for it, then I don’t see why I wouldn’t take it. Does speaking in front of people make you nervous? Only if there’s going to be an unscripted aspect to it that’ll make me have to come up with answers on the spot, like miting de avances or thesis defense. If I have a script or even just a general gist of what I want to say, I have no problem improvising and speaking in front of a crowd. Can you read in a moving vehicle or does it make you sick? It makes me sick but it hasn’t stopped me before. Have you ever dated someone who was extremely shy? I’m the extremely shy person... Or have you dated someone who took things too fast? I felt that way with Gab at first when she wanted to have sex like two months after we started dating, though I was scared mainly because it was going to be my first time and I wanted to make sure I was comfortable. Now that I’m a little older, two months seems like a healthy amount of time. Does the idea of driving 220 mph sound exciting to you? Sounds terrifying. It could be fun, but only if we’re in the middle of nowhere where there’s loads of space to go that fast and no chance of crashing. Everyone has a weakness, what's yours? Food. Do you or anyone you know have an account on Deviantart? I had classmates in high school who had accounts but I’m not sure if they still have it, or if Deviantart is even still as active as I knew it to be. Thoughts on the Dunkin Donut commercial that says "America runs on Dunkin'"? It’s a creative slogan but if I was American I wouldn’t want a doughnut place claiming to represent my country. It cute though. Do you bother buying movies on DVD anymore or do you just download them? I watch them on Netflix, which is still technically like buying them since we pay for the subscription anyway. Do you listen to Daughtry? No. Do you get your eyebrows waxed? I don’t. Waxing looks so painful to me. How do you take your coffee? Lots of creamer or milk, a little sugar. I like trying out different coffees, but when I’m simply relaxing I do want my coffee as least bitter as possible. If you have a dog, what breed is it? I have an aspin mix, though we never figured out what Kimi’s other half is. And I also have a beagle. Have you found someone who makes you unconditionally happy? I don’t know if 'unconditionally’ is possible but yes, I do have people who make me very happy. Do you have a friend who always seems to be dying their hair? Not anymore. Jo used to dye her hair like every month though and she must have been able to go through the entire rainbow. She looked sooo good in each of the colors. Would you swap names with a friend? I love all their names but I don’t see why that would be necessary. Do you plan on going to university? I did. I graduated today. Guys who wear muscle shirts, yes or no? Idk man, they can wear whatever they want. Are you a fan of Carrie Underwood? No. I liked some of her singles when I was younger, but I’m not a fan in that I have her albums and know her lesser-known songs. Do you make playlists on iTunes? I used to, when I still used iTunes. I make playlists on Spotify now. Have you ever forgotten someone's birthday? I don’t think so. Are you scared of being left behind? Yessir. I’m super competitive, so I hate the feeling. Do you remember your last dream? No. I’m really bad at remembering them unless they’re nightmares or insanely strange. I do know that I dreamt while we were watching mass earlier on the television though, hahaha. Do you know someone who is an obsessed Star Wars fan? So many people in my circle are. Is politics something you don't care about? No. If there’s anything I give tons of fucks about, it’s that. What's a movie/tvshow/book/series that is way overrated? I’ll go with the first things I thought of...in that order: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before; Stranger Things (it’s good, but not as good as people hyped it to be); I don’t really read anymore; and what do you mean by series? Just realized I only gave 2 out of 4 answers lol oh well. Do you think Barbie presents an unhealthy image to young girls? I don’t like how its physical features are still unrealistic; but I appreciate their attempts at diversity. I can’t say it was upsetting seeing a Filipino-themed Barbie :) Is there a pet that you desperately want? All I ever wanted were dogs, and now I’ve got two of them. Would you ever get your bellybutton pierced? Nope. Are you musically talented? Hahahahaha Have you ever shot a gun? Not a real one, so no. Athenna’s dad had this practice gun he used for target practice (duh) and I messed with that a few times. Do you have a friend that always changes their mind last second? That’s Gabie. She’s lucky she’s my girlfriend and that I love her, because it’s actually a big pet peeve of mine. Are you not afraid to voice your opinion? Yup. The only time I don’t say it out loud is if it’s unnecessary and if it’s going to be simply disrespectful. An example would be when my uncle offered to make me a carrot cake for my grad gift, and I just said yes because it was already generous enough for him to offer me a free cake when he runs a food business. In reality it’s not my favorite cake at all; it wouldn’t even be in my top 20. Are you one of those people who are always pushing their limits? Yes, I definitely overwork myself to the point of exhaustion and burnout. But I honestly prefer doing things and being busy than sitting around. Is there a word that you will always find humorous? Bubbling. Because Drake and Josh.

Do you frown upon immature people? Typically. Have you ever slipped on ice and hurt yourself? This may have happened to me once or twice when I was still regularly visiting the ice skating rink at the mall. People were always super nice and helped me get up, though. Do you try to have an intimidating impression? I don’t try. Apparently it’s naturally the vibe I give off. Living in the big city or chilling in the country? BIG CITY. Always the big city. I’ve gone to the country/province so many times; I already know what it’s like there. I’ll always prefer a noisy city. No one seems to obey the legal drinking age, do they? Hahahaha a lot seem not to. I know so many high school kids who’ve had a drink before turning 18. Do you like your country's flag? Sure. I like that we can switch up the colors depending on if we’re at war or not. Have you ever made a totally amazing snow fort? I’ve never even seen snow before. Do you use Bounty Paper Towels? No. Are you the one usually behind the camera or the one in the picture? BEHIND If you get married, will you have a traditional wedding? Traditional, yes. Religious, no. Do you feel you’re slowly losing one of your friends? No. But now that I’m no longer in school, I really hope I’ll continue to be friends with my orgmates. I’ll certainly keep in touch as much as I can. If you draw, what's one thing you always have trouble with? Everything about it. Is there someone you know moving away any time soon? No. I do know my friend’s sister had already moved and started her new job in California, but when the pandemic started she had to go back here. This virus is just ruining so many great things for everyone, man... Allergic to anything? Nope. How many cars have you owned? Zero. I drive one; can’t say I own it because my parents bought it. What are you going to do after this? Maybe take another survey.

#survey #surveys

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suicidalcatz · 5 years

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Dog Days Are Over : Chap 3

AN : hi guys! A longer chapter in which we get to meet Jake for real. I had fun writing it, especially the dialogues, I hope you’ll like it. Next chapter will be next week, I’ll be abroad again but I’ll have more free time. I think we can categorize this as a slow burn / friends to lovers fic. The more I write ideas the more I know where this is going. Feel free to leave me feedback!

Pairing : Jake Kiszka x reader

Genre : College AU

Previous parts : Prologue ; Chap1 ; Chap 2

Masterlist : here

Chapter three : Mind if I join you ?

By the time I finished my assignment, birds were chirping and sunrays were piercing through the scraggy branches of the December trees. A pleasant fog had settled around school, covering the park and the fields in a white blanket. Sitting by the windowshill, legs against the radiator, I was sipping my first tea/coffee of the day, but not of the night. My eyes were pricking with the familiar sensation of tiredness. Boy I knew this school was elitist but the amount of homework was impressive, I already missed sleeping. That was the main reason Mandy and I kept skipping parties, to be honest. I went half of the time to keep in touch with people, and be a little social. Mandy went more often and I didn't know how she could cope with that already infernal routine.

We were so busy painting and sewing that we napped whenever we had the time, every minute counted, we literally had no time to waste cooking or cleaning up the room we lived in. And the worst is that it wasn't even an excuse to our laziness, it was real.

Fabric of different colors and patterns were scattered accross the floor, a huge pile of canvas was pushed to a corner, our walls had my digits on them in the form of black dots because I didn't wash my hands after doing some charcoal drawing, and Mandy's sewing mannequin fully clothed in the middle of the kitchen always threatened to give me a heart attack whenever I went to the toilet and saw it in the corner of my eye. The good thing was that living together on campus and sharing a room was way cheaper than renting a place, and the legend was true ; art students really are broke. Sure it was smaller than we had expected, especially after filling it with all of our stuff, and we had to share showers and toilets with the other residents of the dorm but hey at least we had a little kitchen.

My phone alarm started ringing softly, and I immediately set if off, still gazing outside the windows at crows eating yesterday’s french fries and students already chatting, displaying posters for the Christmas school festival, and smoking in the designated area. Mornings really were for coffee and contemplation.

It turned out that my work paid off. Receiving compliments by the teachers was harder than expected but when they did congratulate me for my work, it felt twice as good. But that gigantic illustration got me running out of paper for the next assignment. Going to the school supplies store with a portfolio half my size was a pain in the ass, and feeling this enormous thing tug on my shoulder all day long was worst, but I had no choice. It was so unpractical that I accidentally kicked someone with it.

- Sorry I wasn't paying attention.

- No prob- Oh hey it's you.

- Josh ! Hi.

It was weird hearing his voice for the first time or at least talking for the first time, after having exchanged so many notes. I got cold just by looking at him, it's like he didn't even know it was Winter. Aside from a red and white flowered jumper, who definitely didn't seem warm at all, his tight jeans were cropped and he looked as extravagant as always. He had a very unique sense of fashion and I loved it, he really didn't look out of place in this school. A glance at his hands and I saw he came to buy some guitar strings. Before I could make small chat about it in order to break the ice, he saw me and addressed it, lifting the package in front of his face.

- That's for Jake, my brother. Playing the guitar isn't a part of my numerous talents.

So his name was Jake. Nice. I've been honestly so busy with work I had forgotten about him for a moment, but noneless mentally thanked Josh and his seemingly sixth sense for making things easier for me. The clerk was grumpy per usual, so we got out of the store before he could yell at us, and continued chatting in the hallway. It wasn't anything interesting, just getting to know each other a little. Much to my surprise, it wasn't awkward like I may have imagined it to be. Josh was a nice guy with great conversation and seeing him being at ease made me feel less shy too. He suddenly got in front of me and put a hand on my shoulder.

- So sorry about that ball of paper the other day, my pitcher skills are rusty.

- Not one of your talents either ?, I teased.

His expression softened before a small grin appeared on his face, nodding and shaking his finger like I just made a point. He gave me a light tap on the shoulder as the bell rang, cue for us that we should be in front of our respective classrooms.

- Let's meet here and have lunch together with Mandy, I'll show you real talent. We get out at 1 !, he added, running in the corridor past students to go to his next class.

Fuck, I really have to tell Mandy.

Having luch together wasn't exactly what I expected. But somehow, it made sense ?

After texting Mandy something along the lines of « Saw Josh while buying paper, he wants to eat lunch with us today ??? », I wondered how he knew our names and then remembered the teacher calling us last time because we were ''disturbing class''. Yeah no wonder Jake doesn't want to hang out with us. My eyes were on the clock the whole time I was in the workshop. Even without having to meet Josh, they were always. The atmosphere was heavy, nobody was allowed to say a word, not even « bless you » when another student sneezed. And it lasted four full hours. Thank God we could eat, drink and listen to music while painting (never understood this teacher's sense of priorities) otherwise I would've fell asleep on my canvas.

By the time I got out of my misery, Mandy was already waiting for me outside, assaulting me with questions. After little deliberation we thought it was best for us to run to our room to change, one of the pros of being in a boarding school. It was noon, and Josh said he'd go out at one, that let us some time to talk and wash away the paint from my arms.

- He said we had to meet them in front of the shop, I called from under the shower.

- What do you mean « them » ?

Turning off the water, I scrubbed my eyes. Yeah, what did he mean « we » ?

- I have no clue, he was in a rush. We should ask his number next time, if he wanna meet again.

- It'll save us three a lot of paper.

Letting out a snort, I got out of the shower, catching a clean shirt Mandy threw at my face for me to wear before going to meet Josh and whoever was with him. Boy oh boy was I not disappointed when I saw Jake's silhouette from the other end of the corridor. Panicking a little and trying to be discrete, I quickly glanced at the door behind me but Mandy caught it and put her hands on my shoulders to keep me from escaping this situation. It was so uncomfortable. The hallway was painfully long, just next to the cafeteria so sometimes someone would go out and slow us down, making things even more embarrassing. They made no move to meet us halfway but Josh interrupted his conversation with his brother to wave at us with a wide movement, shaking his arm in the air, which we replied by the tiniest gesture ever, the one you make at the supermarket when you see someone you really don't want to at the moment. That tiny wave of the hand, exactly.

- Hi ladies, I took the liberty of inviting my brother to the party, as he was feeling lonely without me.

- Not really, Jake interjected.

He greeted us with a smile and a charming nod, wearing actual winter clothes, in comparision to his twin. The dark oversized sweater and grey denim jacket looked good on him, like literally everything else, and I tried not to stare.

- Hi, I'm Jake, he said to cover Josh's pouting and complaints about him lying.

- I know, I half-whispered.

I got so busy staring at his brown eyes that I replied without thinking and now he was standing in front of me with a puzzled expression on his perfect face. Mandy poked me in the ribs, trying to save what was left of the chances of him wanting to have anything to do with us.

- Josh told us about you, she said with a convincing smile. Shall we eat ?

Not very subtle, but nice attempt to change topics.

- Oh yeah, let's go ! I have found the perfect place.

The ever enthusiastic Josh took the lead and we all followed after him as he showed and introduced every corner of the school like a real tour guide, only saying bullshit instead of real historical info, but judging by his interest in Art History class we weren't really shocked. What had us three surprised however was the place we were in when he exclaimed « Voilà ! ».

- It's a staircase, pointed out Jake.

- It's a place full of possibilities, corrected Josh.

Mandy gave me a look like they were both crazy and I could tell by her face she wondered how we got into that mess. Josh sat first and his brother, defeated, did the same, sitting by his side and motionning for us to join them. The patterned floor tile was cold as hell beneath me and I had so many questions I wanted to ask but didn't dare to do so-

- So why are we eating on the stairs ?

For a second I thought I had thought out loud but it was Mandy who broke the silence.

- See ?, Josh said to his brother, Told you eating in the park was best.

Jake shook his head like he couldn't believe it before looking at us.

- This crackhead wanted to have a picnic. It's literally freezing outside.

- So eating inside was your idea ?, I asked to made sure I understood.

With a nod, he took his backpack while speaking, unwraping his lunch from its aluminium foil.

- Yup. Looks like I'm the reasonable one. Didn't know we were gonna eat here though, he added with a little apologetic gaze.

- Well excuse me sir I did my best, Josh chimed in.

We couldn't help laughing a little, as Josh angrily tore the aluminium of his sandwich. What I also couldn't help was stealing glances at Jake who was sitting in front of me, by the window. It turned out the boy was less intimidating that I first had thought. Talking to him was nice, I had the feeling that he really care about what I said, looking me in the eye and nodding, listening intently before replying. He sounded like a quiet, composed, and cultured person, and I found his presence soothing. His low, raspy voice had a serene je ne sais quoi that I couldn't really explain. To top it off, his smile, just like his brother's, was mesmerizing.

- Still, said Mandy with his mouth full after someone made them move to use the stairs, you know we could've eat at the cafeteria, right ?

She teased and Josh started shouting again that he wanted a picnic, which made us all laugh because it was the hundredth time he had to justify his poor life choices.

- Oh yeah, I just remembered !

In a second, he calmed himself and his face lit up with the look of someone who just got a great (or terrible) idea. One thing I learned is that with Josh, it could've been both, we never knew. He fumbled in his bag in search of something, squirming, making a mess, giving his half eaten sandwich to Jake for him to hold and almost knocking him out with his elbow.

- I told you I'll show you real talent, he said with his head in his bag.

Four curious eyes turned to meet my gaze and I shrugged.

- He did ?, Jake wondered.

- Yeah, it made me freak out a little.

A little laugh escaped from his lips, and it was the cutest thing I had ever heard. Not that I'll admit it out loud. Thankfully, Josh interupted my staring contest with his twin and threw a bag of cheese balls our way. The sound it made almost covered the « Oh, not again » complaint from Jake and I quirked an eyebrow. Mandy opened the bag like she was asked to.

- Shoot, I'll catch.

Jake face palmed while Josh was already in position.

- That's the talent you were talking about ?, Mandy asked unsure. I don't know why, I should be surprised, but I'm not.

He was actually pretty good at it, if that was even something to be proud of. I could see her having a good time throwing chips his way and booing the rare times he missed.

- I swear they have after school contests with our brother.

Hearing Jake talking to me made my head jerk off of Josh. Brother ? Mandy caught the same info and paused the ball throwing to look at him.

- Do you guys have another brother ?

I took a sip of water while they were explaining, taking this opportunity to look at the hour just to make sure we won't be late to our next class as we were all in different buildings.

- Oh yeah, Sam, he's studying music too, but we're not in the same grade, said Josh. People often mistake him and Jake for twins even though he's the youngest.

This info almost had me choking on water imagining another Jake but fortunately, they mistook it for outrage that people would think that. By the time the bell rang, we learned that they all were staying in the dorms too, in another building. The twins shared a room together, whereas Sam and Danny, their best friend, shared theirs. We didn't exchange numbers, since Mandy forgot to ask and I was too shy to, but when we parted ways, they both left saying « See you later ».

#gvf fic #gvf x reader #gvf imagine #gvf fanfic #jake kiszka x reader #jake kiszka fic #jake kiszka imagine #josh kiszka fic #greta van fleet fic #greta van fleet imagine #greta van fleet #jake kiszka

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wendydarling823 · 5 years

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How to fix public education?

The reason for the question mark is 2-fold

1) I want to know other people’s ideas and theories. I can’t get enough of articles of teachers who have left the profession pre-retirement because they have snapped under the weight of the problems in our schools. These are the people that know what’s wrong because we are in those trenches every day. Don’t ask a superintendent or a SBoE rep how to fix schools - they’re the ones doing the breaking. Ask the teachers.

2) My ideas are only based off of what I’ve seen and read. I’ve taught in public school for 4 years. I’ve worked in public schools for 10 years. I’ve worked with children for 16 years. I know a lot, but obviously I don’t know everything.

So, how do we fix education? Longest freaking post I’ve ever written.

1) Spend money, obviously. But what the money goes for has to be taken into consideration. You don’t need to fund a program for high schools to have a 1:1 Chromebook to student ratio - these kids are carrying computers in their pockets. You don’t need to spend thousands on a boxed curriculum unless your teachers have tried it and specifically ask for it because they believe it will help the students they have in front of them. You don’t need to hire a superintendent for each high school feeder zone AND a district superintendent, plus 20 other administrators in between and off to the sides. So what should the money go for?

A) Teachers.

i) Reduce class sizes hire more teachers so teachers have fewer kids in a class at a time. When your child is struggling to learn, do you put them in a class with 20 other kids? No, you pay for one-on-one or at least small group support. At the very least, there should be more teacher’s aides. Hell, student teaching should be a paid internship when that teacher is in my room every day.

ii) Pay teachers more. We have a college degree, often advanced degrees, we are constantly earning more hours of professional development and honing our craft (because it is a craft) but we are being paid like (paid) interns or apprentices. Compared to other jobs with commensurate degrees and experience, we are paid nearly 20% less. And we pour our money right back into our jobs to buy things we want/need to make our classrooms comfortable, effective, and fun for ourselves and our kids.

B) Books. I started to type “and supplies” and then I realized that books are a category of their own. What determines a child’s success later in life more than any other factor? Number of books in the home, and whether parents read to them. We can’t barge into houses armed with books and force parents to sit at their kids’ besides and do the voices for the characters. But we can do that for them at school - we can make libraries into palaces, we can work with the city library to get a bookmobile that visits every neighborhood zoned for our schools and we can gift books to children that they can keep forever. Hell, Dolly Parton will send your child 60 books (1X a month every month until they are 5), we can do that.

C) Supplies. Paper. Pencils. Manipulatives. Markers, paint, glue, scissors. The basic supplies of an art room for the purpose of giving every student the opportunity to CREATE. A dedicated closet or cart of everyday items that students can view with new eyes. Is that a Q-tip for cleaning out your ears? Or is it a bunch of bones you can use to recreate the skeleton of that stegosaurus you read about in your book? The supplies for the creation of writing, the creation of art, the free space to work out a math problem and show every step of your thinking. Some schools have so much they waste it, other schools don’t have enough.

D) Technology* The star is because the current model is ‘technology for technology’s sake,’ and that’s wasteful and also reductive. These kids have phones and tablets, they are digital natives. They know how to use computers for writing, computation, research, slideshows, video production. Show them what else they can do! Teach them to design. To compose music, to edit and add effects. Yes, let them learn to code if they want to, but don’t force it. A friend of mine wrote a grant to get a 3D printer in her school, and she got it, but not a single other teacher was interested in learning how to use it so they could teach their kids. Spend the tech money on things that will prepare students for the real jobs of the future.

2) When you spend the money, spend it fairly. Not equally, fairly, justly. My school district is decently sized. Theoretically, every person who owns property zoned for our district is paying their tax dollars into a single fund that is being spent per student, right? But even inside our district limits there are schools so poor the teachers don’t even have a supply closet of basics (I’m talking printer paper, staples, paperclips) and schools so rich the teachers get $400 to spend on their classrooms. Why? Because the poor school is in the part of town that is mostly low income, and the rich school is in a master-planned community that gets money from the HOA foundation and has a PTA that can do the old “Spend money to make money” method of fundraising. It’s funny, because the poor school is poor enough to get extra money because they are poor (Title I), but it’s still not as much as the rich school is getting.

3) RESPECT. YOUR. TEACHERS. Sure, paying them, making their classes smaller, and giving them the tools they need is a big part of respecting them, but there are other components.

A) Respect a teacher who says that a student is creating a bad environment, even if that student has a behavior plan. We’ve pushed the LRE (least restrictive environment) for a couple of decades now, and for the most part it is a very important thing to honor. Kids who point and gawk a at a student in a wheelchair or with leg braces or who has Downs or CP are kids who’ve been taught to view that population as “other”. They should have kids of all abilities in their classrooms to foster community and empathy, and because all should be welcome to the table of education. However, when a student is able to terrorize a classroom, physically injure or attack a teacher or another student, and get off with little more than some isolation in the office, and then appear back in class the next day, you’ve created a restricting environment for the other 19 kids, and the teacher. The teacher is walking on eggshells so the student doesn’t throw a chair or shove another student, and boundaries are not set or enforced. The students hold their breath each time this child speaks, wondering if this is the point where they have to have class in the hallway while their peer turns all the desks over and makes it rain crayons.

B) Respect a teacher who says that not every part of this curriculum is appropriate, and fills in the gaps with things that are. Tina Fey says, “In most cases, being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.” You ostensibly hired that teacher because they demonstrated an ability to understand and teach the standards, manage a classroom, make learning accessible, whatever it is that they bring to the table. Lessons in a box are a product sold to make money for someone. They can be an ingredient in a recipe, they are not the only thing you serve or the only store you shop at. Respect a teacher who knows from experience and backs it up with research. You will not teach every 5-6 year old how to read right away. Some are just not ready yet. Not every student develops the same way at the same time, so why would they learn the same way at the same time? And why, when the studies show that early childhood is birth through age 8, would you expect Kindergarten kids to sit at a desk all day reading and writing? They should be learning through play. Respect a teacher who wants to introduce more banned/challenged books to her literature circles. Respect a teacher who challenges the set curriculum when they know it is what’s best for their kids, and FOR PETE’S SAKE ask the teachers who are STILL. IN. THE. CLASSROOMS. for their input in adopting curriculum standards. If I had my way, any person who makes decisions regarding schools, whether it’s a principal, a superintendent, or a member of the SBoE would have to re-enter the classroom every 10 years. Sort of like recertifying. They want to issue rulings and set standards? They better know what that’s going to look like on the most micro level. Once a year, every decade, they must teach a class or a section of a subject in order to keep being in charge of making decisions.

C) Respect a teacher against a parent. You don’t work in customer service, you don’t owe it to the parent to bend over backwards to make them happy. When mama bear comes roaring using the “B” word (bullying), ask them to sit down with the teacher and make it clear that you trust the teacher and her handling of the situation. When you do have to intervene, make sure that teacher knows you have their back.

4) Shift the entire cultural narrative to valuing education and educated people, build schools that are places of value to a community (and hey, the school can be a community center after hours, so long as classroom hallways are locked up). Public school is not just a babysitter for your kids until they turn 18, it should be treated as their job and their responsibility. It should be able to teach them things they will really need - social skills, survival skills, basic home economics, finance, SEX ED and actual health. It should offer creative outlets for everyone - art, music, theater, dance, woodworking, metal shop. Learning should be given as a right but revered as a privilege. That starts with all of us right now.

#education #teaching #super long post #I needed to vent #rant #educhums

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giantpredatorymollusk · 5 years

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This is a story about farming. It is quite long. I think it may be worth reading anyway, but unfortunately I have no way to prove it. I’ve also tried my best but I still don’t know if it actually makes perfect sense in every way? But it did all actually happen; so it all kind of has to make at least a little bit of sense, even if doesn’t really seem like it.

The trouble all started in 1901, when my great great grandfather emigrated to the United States from the modern-day Czech Republic and later, in 1911, bought a 90-acre farm there. Many years later, most of that farm came to belong to my grandfather, and roughly 10 years back he retired from his job selling tires at the tire store and started making the 40 mile drive north to the farm to spend his summer days there and plant a garden (in the area that wasn’t already rented out to be planted with soybeans.) Not long after that, he had enough produce to start selling stuff at a nearby farmers’ market in an upscale town, physically not far from the farm, although psychogeographically immensely distant from that chunk of desolate, isolated, fairly representative rural Ohio.

I was dragged in in the summer of 2015, from the end of June to the beginning of July, mostly pounding stakes into the ground so that the roughly 1000-1500 tomato plants that my grandfather had planted that year (with occasional help from my grandmother and uncle) could be tied up between them and the fruit wouldn’t lay on the ground and rot easily. I hated it there (in fairness, I probably would’ve hated anything that involved leaving the house during that time in my life) and when my dad got me out of it (by hiring me to help him paint a house) I quickly divested myself of the money I’d received there to wash my hands of the place and resolved never to go back. My dad was never in favor of me going to the farm, knowing as he did that the work could be dangerous (operating old, large, and unreliable tractors and backhoe with minimal training or safety precautions; running large, dangerous power saws in creative ways without the proper guards, gear, or safety precautions, mostly to put points on stakes; operating saws in an unsafe manner while standing in the raised bucket of the old and unreliable backhoe in order to trim trees; etc) and probably also suspected that I personally (especially then) was fairly vulnerable to being psychologically manipulated into performing difficult tasks that I was unhappy doing over a long period of time while being underpaid under some circumstances. Hmm.

I returned to the farm for the entirety of the summer of 2016. After barely surviving/graduating my senior year of high school that year I had given up on life and settled pretty quickly back into the routine of the daily back-and-forth farm trips. It is true that I was getting paid; it was also true that I was being challenged and learning things, mostly the basics of planting vegetables, like which plants were cold-season crops and which were warm-season and how far apart to space the transplants, and how a PTO works on a tractor; and it’s certainly a fact that on a personal level, I was still completely taken in by my grandfather’s wit and farm wisdom and overpowering managerial confidence. I made myself completely subordinate to him, and blamed myself when his ideas for what we should be doing next were completely obvious to him but rather opaque to me; I remember it frequently happening that he would tell me what to do and I would reflexively go off to do it, and then realize I was unclear on what he meant and have to timidly re-approach him for further instructions. This kind of slowed down the learning process. Much later I would also realize how superficial his constant confidence could be, and how it was often less the natural attitude of someone who knew what they were doing and more a tool he used to impress people into doing things without thinking too much about any of the potential alternatives. Also, according to my admittedly fallible memories, I was getting paid $35 per day for what were generally between 7 and 8 hour days. I was, in fact, 18 years old that year and probably could have gotten a different job that for one thing paid a better hourly wage and for another left me less reliant on the caprices of my family; but this was neither a thing that happened nor a thing that was expected from me, least of all by me. My internal world hadn’t expanded as I’d grown older; my universe of possibilities was limited to the things that were already present in my somewhat simple life. This was probably symptomatic of some larger problem or problems with the functionality of my brain at that point in my life.

One can become trapped in many different ways. You can be trapped in a specific city, or a zip code, or in a geographic region sorely lacking in cities, or one which they are considered entirely strange and outlandish things; in a job, in a career, in a lifestyle, or in a set of lifestyles considered realistic given your high school grades, ability to connect with others, and standing in society and life; in a friend group, or in an identity, or in a lack thereof, or in any number of the various rules and regulations that govern how one is allowed to interact with the rest of the human race; in a comedy, a tragedy, a pastoral narrative, or in any combination of the above kinds of story that one no longer wishes to be part of. For all I know, thanks to the stereotypical farm benefits of character building, meaningful work experiencing, and nature connecting-with, working at the farm for that year may have actually been good for me; nevertheless, I wish that it had been my last full summer there. I had showed up, learned some stuff, earned a small amount of money, and, in retrospect experienced at least the majority of what this particular 90 acre area of the planet had had to offer. Alas.

2017! This year, we had a pretty consistent schedule that I can remember clearly to this day: we left at 9:30 AM, when my grandfather would pull into my driveway and blow his horn, and got back between 7 and 8 o’clock at night. Built into that schedule is a one hour commute each way (we both lived about 40 miles away from the farm, which was actually inhabited by my uncle, who was often around and occasionally helped with the work but frequently made fairly abrasive and critical comments (if often correct) comments about it (for example, about the fact that our work day started so late in the morning)) and a daily grocery store stop for drinks for the cooler. I was the driver (once my grandfather’s problems with what I suspect is undiagnosed narcolepsy had almost killed us a couple of times) which you would think give me control over the stereo, but I quickly learned that my grandfather had pretty specific taste in music (country from the 50s and 60s) and a temperament unsuited to most podcasts. Obviously, most of that time in the daily schedule was taken up by the work day (so generally either planting tomatoes (which gets a little less rewarding after about the 500th one, which that year only put us at about a quarter of the way through the tomato plants, not counting the hundreds of eggplant, cabbage, and zucchini plants or the miscellaneous corn, squash, and beans), pounding stakes and tying string for the tomatoes, or harvesting tomatoes) which lay at the end of the lonely highway on a lonely work site at which the same 2-4 people showed up every day. (It became four people once you counted my younger brother, who came up to the farm that year until the start of marching band season got him out of it, and who fortunately made it his main job to get everyone to pack up and leave promptly at the end of the day. Once he stopped showing up, and even though I persuaded my grandfather to move the schedule up an hour so that we could get home earlier, we never left as consistently as we did when he was there; I didn’t have the stamina to find my grandfather (who didn’t carry a phone or a watch) and tell him what time it was at the end of the day every single day so that he could start to think about leaving.) I was being paid $40 a day, with a $20 bonus for market days once they started, which with our theoretically 35-hour work week ends up being about $6.29 an hour? Huh. In addition to the extra $20, the market season was nice because picking stuff is less tiring and more rewarding than planting stuff, and because I got to see way more people every day in the form of our market customers, even if I was interacting with them mainly through the intermediary of my grandfather.

Another nice thing is that this is the first year I have a decent photo album for! I started experimenting with old 35mm film cameras in late June and by early July I had my first interchangeable-lens digital camera, which I relied upon to keep my brain alive for large parts of the summer. I have… a lot of pictures from this season.

Finally, at the end of the year, I ended up in college. Any criticisms of my grandfather that I might offer up here have to be tempered by the fact that he did in fact drive me to the local (relatively) cheap higher-education dispenser and basically registered me for me (technically, I applied but there’s a 100% acceptance rate.) This was something I desperately wanted to do but was unable to make happen by myself. I won’t say that my grandfather every really understood the problems I went through while experiencing formal education, but as perhaps the member of my family least comfortable himself with the concept and culture of higher education, he was the most willing to notice and accept that I needed help getting started with it.

However, I did do quite badly that semester (I started out enrolled in 4.5 classes and ended enrolled in 2, with a C average) and going to the farm to work 4 days a week still (after morning classes and also on Saturday) did not help that except in that it provided a convenient distraction from it; an opportunity for me to distract myself from my frustrations by wearing myself out.

Why did I come back to the farm for 2018? I wasn’t happy there in 2017, I have the journal entries to prove it. Reasons: it was the path of least resistance, it was something I was more already familiar with than any other job, and my grandfather remained a very difficult person for me to say no to. (Also, he asked me (and my brother) to commit in midwinter, when it still seemed non-threatening and pretty far away.) The schedule was pretty much the same as I described for last year except that for some reason we went up 6 days a week as often as 5 (weather permitting.) My brother went up with us for the same period of time as he had previously, but was even more ornery this year than he was the last, which was an accomplishment; this didn’t stop me from being grateful for his presence. Mostly, I recruited him to work on whatever I was working on during the day, whenever I had a specific project: like building a fence around the second patch, or digging drainage ditches on the lawn, or moving the rainwater collection tank trailer to water stuff before Grandpa could realize that something that he didn’t plan for us was happening. My uncle became extremely fond of complaining that we were getting less done working on the same thing together than we might have working on different things far apart; this may have been true, but I was unwilling to test the theory.

As I implied above, I had a lot more freedom this year to pick projects that I thought needed to be done instead of following instructions all day, as long as I could seem confident about it under scrutiny later. I responded in two ways: I started wearing earbuds and listened to music and occasionally podcasts for most of the day, which was great except that it ruined earbuds and made me feel slightly spacey like I wasn’t even physically there sometimes, given that it was the main input that was actually making it to my brain, and I gave myself three new jobs. The first was to pick, display, and sell produce at a roadside stand that I set up back home (ideally without attracting too much attention from my uncle, who was doing the same thing); the second was to start picking for and selling at a new weekday farmers’ market; and the third was to fix an old dump truck that had been sitting in the back barn for the better part of the decade with a broken brake line, with the help of my dad, who came up to the farm a few days to show me what to actually do. The stand was very successful but 20% went to my mom for stocking it during the day and another 20% went to my grandfather for owning the farm; the new farmers’ market only required me to pay off my grandfather but had too many vendors for the customer base and was generally very slow; and the truck project was a huge disaster that consumed countless hours and brain cells: one brake line burst after another, we ended up having to remove and replace the two brake cylinders in each of the back wheels (which necessitated jacking the 12.5 ton vehicle up and removing both rear wheels and axles), the wiring for the lights was fucked from a previous botched repair job by a person or persons unknown, the bed needed to be attacked with the farm’s one working boom truck to get it to even move, and even after it was going up and down smoothly the hydraulic pump was occasionally leaking fluid, which I was neither qualified for or willing to try to fix; then, during the first test drive with a potential buyer, the radiator apparently exploded, and he convinced my grandfather to sell it to him for $1000, which was split between him, me, and my dad and uncle for helping (more or less.) I eventually calculated that with those three extra projects in addition to my regular salary (up $5 a day but without the weekly bonus, resulting in a net raise of $5 a week) I nearly made minimum wage working there that summer. (Hey, if Quinn is going to read this, I should probably note that minimum wage in Ohio was $8.15 an hour, at least when I wrote this, it’s up to $8.55 an hour now.)

Also, after going on three years of the whole “pull into Mitch’s driveway and blow the horn for a while” routine, the horn on my grandfather’s F-150 finally gave out and he locked the keys in my car while climbing inside of it to use its. (He did admit to this but also told me that I should never have left the keys inside of a car with “automatic locks.”) I had a much better spring semester this year, but it still wasn’t made easier by my 28 hours a week at the farm (plus the commute) right up until October 25th, when I finally quit.

Performance review:

Another part of my feelings about the farm that I have to mention is that the whole time I was there, I was pretty well aware that it was not nearly as productive as it should have been. One large part of this was just flawed soil management practices; by the time I got there, my grandfather had been planting mostly the same plants in mostly exactly the same spots for nearly 10 years, which is absolutely not how any of that is ever supposed to work. He sent soil samples away for analysis, got back reports prescribing long lists of fertilizers to be applied in massive quantities to help production, and then went back to using what he was planning on putting down anyway (mostly starting fertilizer (which we dragged around in 5 gallon buckets for the entire planting season), calcium spray to try to prevent previous years’ blossom end rot epidemics, and some poorly labeled sacks of miscellaneous stuff that he had gotten at a farm auction and that had been taking up space in a barn for years.) My grandfather’s managerial attitude was that all ideas were suspect unless they occurred to him first, which meant it sometimes required some stamina to get certain things done; he would ride up on the lawn mower and stare at you suspiciously if he wasn’t sure of exactly what you were doing.

Like this.

(Of course, the farm was not really run with the purpose of maximizing production, anyway. My grandfather kept it going year after year initially because he was retired, and wanted something to take up his time, and because he wanted to turn himself into a farmer; later, he got the idea that he was going to turn me into one.)

The other main obstacle to growth was the fact that we were surrounded by 80 acres of soybean fields that were at a slightly higher elevation than our plants, which meant that 2 inches of rainfall was more than enough to flood the place. This is not actually a good thing for any plant’s growth (except for cucumbers, and I guess sometimes zucchini.) I ended up (with my brother) digging hundreds of feet of drainage ditches in 2018 to try to combat this. Like, with a shovel. We had a trencher, but its hydraulic pump leaked fluid like a sieve, which had prevented it from being used for years, kind of like that dump truck I mentioned fixing earlier. Other broken down equipment included two boom trucks (one of which was specifically designed just to lay railroad ties), two full-size tractors (an Oliver and a Farm-All), a handful of mechanical tractor attachments that lay scattered throughout the barn-adjacent grass, a smallish red Troy-Bilt riding lawn mower, and a 1963 Buick Riviera.

On a personal level, going to the farm every day felt like dying? It was long hours of difficult, tedious, low-paid work in a desolate and isolated location. It was sort of like a sensory deprivation chamber, but for thoughts and feelings instead of for senses. On one hand, I regret every single miserable second of it, and hope to never see the place again for as long as I somehow manage to live (sadly unlikely); on the other hand, I do think it made me more appreciative of the moments when I do feel like I’m alive in the world, even when they’re not exactly easy ones. I have more enthusiasm for certain types of fear now, like driving to a strange and distant city to see a band play by myself, actually talking to the host in the AirBNB there, and descending into a strange subway system without really knowing how I’m going to get anywhere I’m trying to go from there; or signing up for classes for next semester without knowing exactly what they’ll be like, and talking to the strange person sitting next to me, or even just emailing the professor to ask for an explanation of an assignment that I don’t understand. It reminds me that I’m not as trapped anymore.

This contradicts what I want to be true, which is that the farm was just a background event in my life, instead of something that defined it for all of those years. The things that I was doing in the background of this, the story about farming, were the things I now realize were actually important to me at the time: taking those pictures, going back to school, the music I was listening to while I was out in the field, pounding in tomato stakes… I was also re-learning the piano in the evenings when I still had the energy. Unfortunately, the farm did define that part of my life to a large extent because of the way it served as an obstacle to me pursuing those things. The thing is, I wasn’t really trapped there, in any real physical or consequential sense; the farm took over my life because I was unable to recognize and act on the fact that I did have access to real sources of happiness.

Also, I guess the whole time I was technically committing tax evasion?

Anyway, whenever I see one of those posts about how nice it would be just to leave society and go live on a farm or something, this is what I’m thinking of.

#yes. long. maybe save this for when you already know that you're going to be bored #if anyone actually makes it to the end please interact

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chalabrun · 6 years

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between the dirt & desperation, ch. 3

Word count: 2,191 Pairings: Symbrock Rating: T Warnings: Mentions of character death Summary: Sequel to “Angry & Half in Love with You”, it’s been well over a month since Eddie moved away from San Francisco to start over in his hometown of Manhattan. Yet, it’s difficult to return to a normal life when what you were once addicted to becomes addicted to you. A/N: This is a crossover between Venom (2018) and Sam Raimi’s Spiderman trilogy (2002-07). This is also the last chapter!

( READ ON AO3 )

When he was kid, there was a morbid game Eddie would play with the other school kids. When it was too cold to go out and play, they’d be remanded indoors since the gym wasn’t large enough to play host to them and whatever PE class was going on at the time. There was a large, old globe in one of the corners. It was a game he started, and he didn’t entirely remember why; maybe something to do with the silent blame his father hung over his head for his mother’s death.

He and what few friends he had would take turns spinning the globe with their eyes closed, a digit suspended over the revolving world until a few seconds passed and they’d bring their finger down like the arm and head-shell of a record player down on the actual record. Then, wherever it’d landed, they’d invent some outrageous story on the spot. Of how they’d died.

Eddie remembered one in particular out of the innumerable times they’d played it, where his had landed smack dab on NYC itself. He didn’t remember entirely what story he’d invented, but it had to do with aliens and an explosion—some War of the Worlds crap.

Funny how those things turn out.

Eddie coughed roughly upon awaking, feeling as though he’d been dragged through cement and then an ocean, all tactile sensation rough and dirty, starched and coarse. Too much heat. Too much smoke when his lungs craved air. As though he’d been incubated in a volcano, Eddie craned up at his vision that was still black and interrupted by jettisons of water. Too familiar. Too fucking familiar. His breath misted and tasted like plastic, robotic.

Eddie…

“He’s awake! Man, you really got caught up in the wrong place. Can you hear me? That was quite an explosion.” He blinked blearily at the white-masked EMT who had propped him up enough to sit from the temporarily gurney inside an ambulance. How…? “We thought we’d have to take you to the hospital, but aside from some superficial scrapes, and the dirtiness, you seem fine. Unless you’d rather be taken in…?”

“Nah…’s okay. Thanks, though,” Eddie mumbled after unhooking himself from the respirator and picking his way through the cramped ambulance and to the edge of the site where the warehouse had been, looking like Galactus had punched a crater in the earth where it’d stood. Its gaping maw somehow barely strafed any nearby residences, just far enough, though debris and cinders scattered everywhere.

He needed air. Needed something blue or gray and without the acrid stench of smoke rotting dark and his lungs, to get away from this hellish ruin.

The blond’s clothes were intact, Eddie slipping behind a gathering bevy of news vans hastily setting up shop that he didn’t intend on sticking around for. Better for Spiderman to think he was dead than have his face plastered over the news. Thankfully, with the gathering throng of people, his restitution had been in a place off from the center of chaos where no one really paid him any mind. No one knew that there had been a single man, or that he’d survived

Eddie didn’t know how long they walked down bleak streets and slanting buildings that leaned into each other, this clearly a dilapidated part of town. Trees hung heavily, already beginning to turn their leaves, a phenomena that didn’t really occur in the sunny latitudes of San Fran. His walk was shaded, hood pulled over his head and feeling miserably cold. But quiet. Still. Something pulsed in him that wasn’t his.

Venom emerged and he could practically sense that it was weak, burrowing like a kitten into his neck, craving warmth. “Hey,” Eddie greeted throatily as they paused briefly, pressing his cheek against its squishy morass that began purring weakly. It was exhausted. It had been the only thing that had kept him alive. Just like last time. Kittenish licks could be felt against his jaw, meaning that the symbiote at least heard him.

This neighborhood became more familiar the more he walked. It was like a high pressure, nostalgia. Creeping like a tide to lap at his feet. Overgrown sidewalks gave way to a clearing that revealed a modest church, red brick and chipping white paint. Its belfry pierced the sky alone amid a ring of trees that encompassed it. If he looked close enough, he could see the playground he used to play at while his dad conversed with the priests. They’d be drinking buddies if vices didn’t go against their vocation.

Without really thinking of it, he walked towards the stoop and opened the double doors, the interior inside dusky and quaint. You’d think it was a church from some backwater, landlocked Midwest town and not Long Island, but here it was. Rays of pale sunlight filtered weakly through narrow windows, motes of dust swimming in it. Pews crowded close together, the interior firm and Spartan. Exactly as he remembered it. His father and he had always sat in the middle.

This was all before they’d moved to San Francisco when he was still a little kid, maybe in elementary school or so. Never mind that it had made things strained between him and his older sister, Mary. Aside from the bullying and trying to excel in school so he’d have some scrap of validation his father never gave him.

“This…is where your parents wed.” Its voice was still weak, but it was better than silence.

“Yeah,” Eddie confirmed, pocketing his hands in his hoodie pocket. “Looks’a lot smaller than when I last remembered it, Ven. Though, I was kinda a tiny tot way back when.”

Venom emerged cautiously as a beginning thaw, marveling at it as though it were the most amazing thing it’d ever seen. He could feel its swell of affection, something that made him freeze, but not with rejection. It felt heavy and he wasn’t ready to be crushed. While his expression seemed to darken, a note of hope was in Venom’s voice. “Here is where humans bond. Like we did. And we’re here now.” It sounded excited, and nervous.

Eddie leaned against the prayer rest of the front pew, one of his hands curled around its shape, against the lacquered grain. “So, what—you sayin’ we ought’a get hitched, is that what you mean, Ven?” The dry dubiousness in his voice cause Venom to shrink away. “We get ourselves all dolled up, then what? Get a fuckin’ priest to marry us? Invite my family that doesn’t acknowledge I exist and the rest a’ those buddies a’yours on Klyntar sure as hell wouldn’t come, since the betrayal an’ all? Anne’d… Nah. God!” He laughed bitterly.

Raking his fingers through his hair in frustration, his hood came off in the process. He was still filthy. But, maybe it was just karma. This was like a reflection of the outside, right? Everything ruined and decayed in him. The effigy of Jesus affixed to the crucifix gazed down at him with an old Bloodhound’s gaze. Eyes turned down like they were too heavy to smile with again. They were accusing, reminding him of what he was jabbing almost too intentionally.

“’m sorry, Ven. It’s just…a lot at once,” he sighed tiredly, feeling the symbiote emerge again. He felt like Lucifer from Cinderella, only a lot less humorous. Getting dust and grime everywhere he touched. Let alone on Venom, of all things.

“It’s gonna take awhile. Hell, I dunno how long. To get used’t—this. Whatever we think we are. Whatever we’re trying t’be.” Jesus’ eyes bore down at him, as if demanding he continue. So did thirteen more from the painted Stations of the Cross that encompassed the church. He had to drop his gaze back to the plain tile ground. “People don’t work that way. They don’t live inside’a each other’s heads, knowing what they’re seein’, smellin’, hearin’, thinkin’—it just ain’t like that. Hell, I’d say it makes us pretty damn stir crazy, Ven. We’re so used to livin’ like fuckin’ goldfish in a bowl and sometimes, the bowl is clear enough for people t’look in. But, the fish don’t get inside’a each other’s heads. Hell, if they’re together for too long, sometimes they downright start maulin’ each other. Two people in the same small space. Nevermind in each other’s bodies—”

“Know you’re not like us, Eddie. Never thought you would be, but—we’re trying to understand. Understand you, and the world. Can’t stop how we feel about you,” the symbiote reasoned adamantly, pearl-bright gaze holding his when he couldn’t meet that of the divine. “And…it’s strong. Very strong.”

Eddie’s brow wrinkled together in disbelief. “D’you really mean that, or ya just standin’ too close to the speakers and it’s all you can hear?” he asked defensively, feeling himself clam up again even while Venom was trying to get in.

It manifested as a large humanoid blot that swallowed the lights of the many candles, those for the prayers people lit as alms. A good head taller than him, all symbiote sinews and impenetrable density, Venom pushed him back against the pew he’d been leaning on—enough that his back curved from how it loomed over him. The burn of frustration and indignation welling passionately in its throat.

“Said it yourself. You know everything we think, feel—and you think we aren’t sincere? That we’re faking it?” Venom scoffed disdainfully, lips curling in a snarl, bringing its gaze level and powerfully over Eddie’s, strands of matters clinging to the hem of his jeans from their proximity. Even if he wouldn’t yield. “We know you’re bullshitting yourself if you really think that, Eddie.”

That didn’t mean he’d falter. Eddie pushed back, craning up to sink his teeth into Venom’s neck like that first night. That night he still couldn’t tell was a mistake or not. Venom’s chest rumbled audibly and it was enough to loosen its hold, insinuating more but instead taking Venom by its chin and forcing it to look in his eyes. “Not here,” he commanded firmly, but not cruelly, gaze boring with insolvent stone into Venom’s. By its chin did he guide it away, stepping from their intimate closure.

“That’s not what we’re here for,” he murmured after a long moment, Eddie’s gaze growing distant with grief as he fished for a wad of cash he tossed indiscriminately in the donation basket nearest the candles. He procured a relatively long but intact match and suspended it over an already lit candle, jerking his head for Venom to join him at his side while he knelt. “Help me with this. We met because’a Maria, y’know. We owe her one.”

Reverently did Venom’s tenebrous hand envelop Eddie’s and it was warm. He smiled low but approvingly, lowering together to light an untouched candle. “I dunno if you had any gods back where you were from, on Klyntar—I mean. But just…focus on Maria. I wanna feel everything.”

Though Venom seemed reluctant to open those floodgates, it sank on the kneeler, emulating Eddie’s pose. “…Knull. He created us,” the symbiote said, not expounding further. And Eddie didn’t push for it.

Pain. So much pain. Maria hadn’t been healthy before she’d died, and his palms twitched spasmodically and he grimaced, feeling her death throes. Everything before she perished. The panic, the voices, the fear and remembering him— Eddie exhaled stiffly and deep, head tucked down and back bowed before he could straighten. Venom’s hand steadied on his back, expression discernibly concerned.

“She had happy moments, Eddie. She showed us you. Untouched mornings. Brilliant sunlight. Kind people who made sure she was safe. Like you.” He didn’t know whether it was supposed to make him or Venom feel better, but he felt…a little less guilty. She hadn’t been alone, and her death hadn’t been their fault. Venom hadn’t known any better. Maybe for a moment. He still felt at fault, even if— …No. Venom felt guilt. He knew what Maria had been to him. “…She didn’t die hating you. You saved her…and us.”

“…Maybe,” Eddie said, unclasping his hands and staring deep at that flickering flame. He folded his arms on the prayer rest, conflict broiling in his eyes. His lips quirked a little when he felt Venom rest its head on his shoulder, arm circling his shoulders. Funny how an alien acted more human than most.

“It won’t be an easy road, Ven. We make nice now, maybe we’ll know more than before. We’ve gotta lotta shit in shore for us. You sure you wanna put up with all’a that?” He felt Venom’s smile span wolfishly.

“Always did like a good challenge. You’ll trust us, we’ll prove ourselves.”

Eddie nodded, still feeling muddy and heavy. Sometimes, he tried pretending like Maria wasn’t really gone. That he’d wake up on a sunny morning with Anne’s petite form next to him, warm and gold swimming in her hair. That everything would be back to normal, even the cracked and broken parts of it.

“I jus’ hope you’re right, Ven. I really do.”

#eddie brock #venom #symbrock #veddie #spiderman #my writing #here have a bittersweet ending--#never thought i'd finish a fic this fast but--here we are 8'D

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throughthedirt · 6 years

Text

Season 1: Chapter Nine

Previous Chapter — First Chapter

Miles

It didn't matter that I was just shy of turning 44 years old. The University of Oregon campus was nearly 300 acres of property housing nearly 23,000 students from around the world. Sure, the majority were teens and young adults, but there was no shortage of older individuals seeking education. More so, I didn't have to be a student. I could be a teacher, a maintenance worker, the IT guy, even a fuckin' janitor. For all anyone knew, I belonged here. And the way I walked through those grand, window-framed doors - people knew. I had a purpose. Showing no signs of hesitation, fear, or confusion, I waltzed my way throughout the campus. For nearly an hour, I roamed the campus freely and without even batting an eyelash to any other person. I was mostly ignored by those who did notice me. But for most, it was like I didn't even exist - just like the rest of them. I was just another body in a mass of humans. But I was here for a reason, and that was to fulfill a job and keep a promise; an agreement that got me freedom in 6. Kyle Turner. Kyle fucking Turner. "Fuckin' football prick raped my niece and got off scot-free," as Correctional Lieutenant Dave Ward would say. The very first words of his that changed the course of my history at Oregon State Pen. And I had read the reports, the articles, the media frenzy - all in prison. I knew what he had done, and he was guilty. But a fully-paid scholarship and a hell of a lot of "hush-money" got him nothing. Not even a smack on the wrist. He walked. Went free. And Ward's niece? Well, things didn't go so great for her. Fearing him, she refused her admittance into UofO, afraid she would see him again. So the fucker had to die. And now it was finally time.

Approaching the glass doors of the Performance Center, I made a fatal mistake. Reaching my hand out to pull on the handle, the door stayed shut. It creaked as I tried to open it - but it was locked. "Uh, hello?" A large football player called to me in his confusion, his mouth agape and his eyes squinted as he made his approach. He was as heavy as he was tall; his long, afro-style hair alone adding inches to his height. "This building is for authorized personnel only..." He said to me, pulling a plastic card from behind him and slipping it through the swipe-pad beside the door. The pad flashed green and the door clicked. Unlocked. This place was advanced, way more security than I could have ever imagined. University of Oregon had changed in the last 6 years. Turning to him, I gave a toothy grin and begin to chuckle. "Boy do I feel old, huh." He looked at me, cautiously as he stood before the door. But I didn't let him disappear into the building before I extracted needed information. "I'm actually lookin' for someone - maybe you can help me..." I iterated, "One of your football mates, Kyle Turner." The player gave me a saucy eye glare. "What about him?" Pausing, I conjured the biggest load of shit I could muster up in 0.2 seconds. "My niece, you know-" I started to chuckle, so much so that it interrupted my speech. "Ah man, this is embarrasing on her part, but she's... she's a HUGE fan of his. And I mean HUGE. She has posters of him all over her room, you know?" "Uh-huh..." Little interest from him. Only suspicion. But I didn't let him get another word in. "I mean she's just nuts for college football. Strange for a girl, no? I guess the world is changin' and I'm far behind. Heh, heh, heh." I chuckled again, trying to fluster the boy with too much information for him to process. "But ANYWAYS -" I continued, "Her birthday's comin' up and I was hopin' to get maybe a... you know... surprise appearance from him?" There was a look of confusion on the poor boy's face. "WITH COMPENSATION, of course." Another smile. "Uhhhhhhhmm, righttttt." He replied. "Let me..." He struggled to respond. Possibly the weirdest request he'd ever received, surely. "Let me go see if he's here. I'll be right back." "Sure thing, but ah-!" I held my hand up, a signal for him to stop as he reached for the handle. "Allow me," Taking the door by the giant O shape in its handle, I pulled the steel frame open to allow for the jock to head in. In respect to him, I closed it behind him, locking me out of the building once more. I stood there waiting. Waiting patiently. With my hands stuffed in my pockets, I casually swayed my body and whistled a chirpy hymn. To my surprise, it took only minutes for the door to open again. And out came Kyle fuckin' Turner in the flesh. And he wasn't a teenager anymore. No... He was a man, now. "Uh, hi-?" Kyle would greet me, without so much as a formal introduction. Fuckin' millennials. It took me a moment to sink in his appearance. Tall, 6'1, still shorter than me. A big guy, no doubt. But size didn't matter when it came to murder. Only intent, motive, and calculation. "Yes! Kyle Turner." Pulling my hand from my coat pocket, I extended it to him. "My name is Angelo Rossi. It's great to meet you!" Turner took my hand, shaking it as firmly as I was squeezing. But as he had taken my hand in his, I had also raised my other free hand to firmly grip his bicep. A sort of gesture of greeting, but it secretly to scope his muscular size. "Yeah, thanks." The fucker would respond. Yeah, thanks? Really? Really. Releasing his hand, I returned my superior 6 foot 3 stance to it's upright position and gave a fake, cheery smile. "My niece, she's a crazy fan." Pulling for my wallet, I slipped out a photograph of a teenage girl. "Her name is Nakoma. She's... half native half Italian, like me. Heh." Kyle took the photo in his hand, his eyebrows raising at the beautiful young lady he saw in the picture. Perfect, interest. "A looker, I know. Causes me more problems, ya know?" I chuckled, taking the photo back. "So listen, I came here hopin' I could hire you. For a job, of sorts." Kyle crossed his arms before him and looked at me curiously. "Oh yeah?" "Yeah, man. I'm organizing Nakoma's 16th birthday and I really want to make it special. She has posters of ya' all around her room and I thought, pffftttt, what better to surprise her with her favorite football player? Every teenage girl's dream, right?" I laughed again, thinking the idea is silly, but might actually work. "Nothin' major. There's be about 30 of her girlfriends there hangin' around the pool-" Realizing it was January, I instantly corrected myself. "Indoor pool, at her father's place. Big place, you know?" Kyle's head was nodding - Still interested. "Figured you can drop by for an hour or so, or even less if you're in a crunch. Sign some autographs, take some pictures. Grab a bite to eat, whatever you want. There'll be plenty of food, cuz, well, Italians, am I right?" Laughing again, Kyle's interest seemed to only be piquing the more bizarre and outlandish the story got. "Sounds fun." He smiled, bringing his fingers to his lips as he pondered the thought of 30 hot teenage girls in their bikinis. "But uh-" He started to sway. "I don't know-" "I'll pay you $5,0000. Cash." I confessed. His eyes widened. "$2,500 for showing up. $1,500 for autographs and another $1,000 if you take some selfies. You know' - the girls thing. Selfies, heh." I paused, my eyes growing darker as they remained hidden behind Aviator shades. "What do ya' say? We got a deal?" Swiftly changing tunes, "You know what, don't sweat the decision now. There's a lot of politics in sports, I'm old. I know it." I waved my hand in typical Italian fashion. "You gotta' business card or somethin'?" "Uh, nah but I can give you my number-" Perfect. A rich white kid, hot-shot jock, AND a moron. This was too easy. Handing him the photo, he retrieved a pen from his pocket and jotted down his digits. "Wow, thanks man. I appreciate you considering this." I waved the photograph of "Nakoma" and slipped it back into my wallet. "I'll give you a call something this week. Talk it over with your coach or manager or whoever you kids report to, heh." I put my hand out for him to shake again, "And nice meeting you again."

— — —

I found myself roaming the halls of University of Oregon on my attempt to exit the campus. My curious mind sent me further and further into the campus maze - a prestigious multitude of buildings and intricate floor plans; each with its own purpose, meaning, and unique design. Deep in UofO, I stumbled upon the Department of Fine Arts. The halls were brimming from floor-to-ceiling with murals and artwork. Slowing my pace, I stopped to appreciate the work. I had always had an affinity to for paintings. My eye had always found itself drawn to the color red. Red. My dark irises wandered the walls, finally pulling towards a large, 5 foot canvas. It soared above me - dazzling in its ocean of red. The painting was of a woman, presumably dripping in blood. A sort of, Queen of the Damned. Intrigued, my eyes shifted to the small plaque stuck to the wall by the corner of the artwork. Nicola Strom. My stomach sunk as my heart skipped a beat. "Crucifixion." The words rolled off of my lips. My head retracted slowly as my eyes closed. "Mmmm."

— — —

January 20th, 2018 - Five days after release. Eugene, Oregon had been unusually warm for January. For the most part, it was sunny and rainy on-and-off, with an average high temperature of 45 degrees F. Too warm for snow. At least, not enough sub-zero temperatures to keep it for more than a couple days, anyways. Luckily for this lovely Saturday evening, the rain had stopped early morning and the skies were greeted by a brightening sun. Kyle parked his Trail-Rated Jeep cruiser in front of the colonial-century home, red-bricked mansion. He ducked his head, looking over the place with his pale eyes as he took in the sheer size of the place. Although Eugene was home to old money - big money - it was also commonly inhabited by the middle class. Whoever owned this place... wasn't a white-collar, middle class citizen. Exiting his truck, he approached the front door, which was lavishly decorated with a Sweet-Sixteen balloon bundle. A clear indication he was at the right house. As he rang the doorbell, it only took a few seconds before he was greeted by a familiar face. "Mr. Turner." I said, standing tall with my hand cemented firmly on the back of the door. It was the first time he was seeing my hazel-speckled brown eyes. It was also the last. "Cute." I blurted, subliminally mocking his uniformed self as my eyes gazed over his full-football get-up. Shredded sleeves to show his pectoral muscles. How sleazy. Helmet and all. How sweet. "Come join the fun." I smirked, guiding him through the front door. "But maybe take off the helmet." Chuckling, Turner cracked a smile as he took a step into the house - which was, unsuspectingly, filled with the sound of laughing girls. "Too much, huh?" Kyle joked, unclasping the helmet and slipping his head free. His back was to me as I closed the door. "I thought mayb-" The moment he turned to face me, my hand - hidden behind the door the entire time - swung straight for his head. A thin medical syringe pierced into the side of his neck - administered by my right hand - Gloved. Protected. Injecting the cocktail of muscle relaxants, Kyle quickly deteriorated in a matter of seconds. His initial reaction to grab for my hand, but by the time he could react - it was already too late. He was losing almost all of his muscle ability. One. Two. Three. He hit the ground, unable to move, unable to moan, unable to call for help. With his body curled in the middle of the hallway, his eyes remained open - panicked. Looking down at his 6'1, 200 pound physique - which had been reduced to nothing in just seconds - I shook my head. Pathetic. His eyes followed my every move. He was conscious. Awake. Aware. I stepped over him and walked past him like he didn't even exist. Stepping into my living room, I smiled at the sound of giggling teenage girls filled the open-concept space. Walking over to the stereo system, I grabbed the remote and clicked - Off. Silence. Girls? What girls. There were no girls. Returning to his paralyzed figure, I crouched down to brood over him. I tilted my head to the side and grabbed his face between my gloved thumb and fingers. Squeezing his limp cheeks between them as I leaned his head to look at me. "Oh, Kyle." I made clicking noises with the back of my tongue. "Remember her?" Pulling a photograph from my back pocket - Sarah Ward. "Yeahhhhh." I flicked the photo in his face, nearly submitting to my urge to spit on him. "You're gonna die tonight." There was a dark, unforgiving grimace that crept my cheeks. "And it's gonna fuckin' hurt." Two, single-drop tears fell from the corners of his eyes. Hours had passed. Daylight turned to dark as night loomed over the city. Darkness was here. And it didn't come from the sky, nor the sun. Using Kyle's keys, I exited the mansion on the quiet, quaint street. E 22nd Avenue - a large strip of homes graciously spread apart; separated by the comfort of many, decades-old trees. I pulled the vehicle into the long driveway, reversing it rear-forward all the way to the side of the house. Two garage doors welcomed the Jeep, closing behind the front of it. It remained utterly hidden, safe within the confines of the home's garage. It would remain there until 3:45 in the morning, and a storm was brewing. The sound of the garage door sliding gurgled as it swayed open. Keeping the lights of the Jeep off, I placed it into drive and pulled it out of my driveway. The garage door closed behind me automatically, dismissing any evidence it had ever harbored a crime scene. My heart remained regular - beating as it would driving any other vehicle, on any other day, under any other circumstances. Humming, I drove the few blocks between the mansion and the University Campus. The Jeep came to the vehicle entrance of the Oregon Autzen Football Stadium. Like everything within the Performance Center, it required a swipe card to be unlocked and accessed. Holding out Kyle Tuner's card, I flicked it between the pad and waited. Flashing green, the gates to the field slid open. Although forbidden to bring any vehicles directly on to the terrain, it was 3:50 in the morning, on a Saturday. Too late for any players to be hangin' around during off-season, and too early for any maintenance workers or cleaners to begin their services. It was pitch-black, and between the sticky snow and the blowing winds - visibility was poor. Reversing the trail-rated wrangler, I slowly backed it up on to the field, parking the trunk of the vehicle directly in front of the brightly-yellow painted goal-post. Exiting the vehicle, I was dressed from head-to-toe in Kyle's football uniform, with the addition of a black long-sleeved T-shirt underneath. No tattoos were visible. Virtually nothing about me was recognizable. For all intensive purposes, I could very well be Kyle Turner. Unlatching the trunk, it swooshed open. There lay the true Kyle Turner. The flesh and blood. And there was a lot of blood. Taking the thick, twisted rope in my hand, I ran it from the back of the truck to the goalpost. Tossing it over the post's T-center, I caught it back in my hand and ran it back to the truck. The end of the rope was supported by a curled grappling hook. Kneeling behind the trunk, I fastened the hook to the hitch on the Jeep and found my way back to the driver's seat. Pushing the gears into drive, I slowly began to inch the vehicle forward until the rope strained - pulling viciously with the weight. Metal to the floor, I forced the truck into overdrive, suddenly gunning it forward and sending the object in the trunk to veer out of the vehicle. Decelerating the tracks, I watched in my review mirror as the item - two strong planks of crossed wood - reeled up against the T in the yellow goalpost. As it mounted to perfect height, I slammed the Jeep in park, and swiftly - excitedly- hopped out of the truck. It started slow at first, my heavy, rumbling laughter. But it evolved, soon developing into a magnified, thrill-infused maniacal cackle. Victory.

— — — January 21st, 2018 - The Discovery. The lights to the stadium flickered on - lighting the dark early-morning. The sun would not rise for another hour. And for a group of football jocks mucking their way to football practice, it would be a morning they would never forget. Wailing. Loud, incessant, uncontrollable wailing. The sound of screaming echoed throughout the stadium; hair-raising in its velocity, and intensity. The scene brought a grown, 21-year old man to his knees. Vomit projected from his chapped lips as he puked vehemently on the immaculate, freshly-snowed grass - staining it flaxen. It brought a wave of nausea to the entire team. Some cried, some collapsed, some gagged, heaved, hurled. But most... most stood in shock. Hailed before them was the body of Christ - a crucifixion of their most valued team member. There lay the body of Kyle Turner, naked and colorless, with only the stain of bleeding red that covered his postmortem flesh. His genitals were mutilated. His penis split in three different directions. He had been completely castrated; his balls were absent entirely from his groin. An indescribable amount of blood has been loss at its expense, leaving a blood-pour of red human serous to cascade down his legs. Cause of death? Blood loss. Slow, agonizing, harrowing blood loss. The cross hung from the center of the goalpost, the snow beneath his purple-faded feet red with blood. His hands were staked on either side; his ankles crossed and tied. His neck - the same color as his bruised toes - was mounted by barbed wire. His head bore the same fate - crowned like that of Christ with blood trickling from his scalp. RAPIST - Carved with a knife in to his forehead. SINNER - The words dripped from his abdomen in crusting blood, beginning to harden... but still moist. Fresh. — — — "Shocking news this morning on KVAL-13." Smitha George - Live News Reporter, would announce on national television. "A tragedy has occurred at University of Oregon. Senior Football Quarterback Kyle Turner, Star of the Oregon Ducks, was found brutally murdered at the campus stadium." She would go on, standing unshaken in the parking lot of the Performance Center. "Police have ruled the case a homicide after teammates found Tuner's mutilated body crucified on the goal-post of the end field." Spilling too much information for her own good - reporters classically interfered with investigations; often jeopardizing their efforts. "His hands and feet were reportedly pinned to a wooden cross, and his head wrapped in barb wire. Teammates report that the words "Rapist" and "Sinner" were carved on his body..." "... And that his eyes and lips were painted red, with blood." "Turner's vehicle, a Black 2017 Jeep Wrangler - was found abandoned at the scene. Police are looking for any information that may aid their efforts in solving this terrible case." She paused, staring into the camera as her words fed into the lives of millions of Oregon residents. "I'm Smitha George, reporting LIVE for KVAL-13 News." The clip ended.

#miles jones chapter #miles jones perspective #miles jones #dawn crow #through the dirt #jeffrey dean morgan faceclaim #jdm #murder #tw: violence #tw: rape mention

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eldritchdrakon · 6 years

Text

Short story 03: Mannequin

This is one of my oldest stories, written almost 3 years ago. Unlike my others, this isn’t fantasy. Just give it a read and lemme know what you think!

I ran for my life. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, my whole body screaming in urgency. I glanced over my shoulder and yes, he was still in focused pursuit, his serrated blade glinting in the twilight, his intense red eyes glaring at me vindictively.

Didn’t make any sense, did I? Let me start from the beginning. My name is Sheena. I’m doing my arts degree at Higgin’s University. I live alone, which led to me working part-time at a retail store. Between college and all the night shifts, I have almost no time for anything else. A pretty boring life. Not many friends either, just Amanda, who used to be my neighbour.

This morning, on my way to painting class, I caught sight of Ethan, a member of the football team. Highschool heartthrob with a goofy grin that could make anyone weak in the knees. Bright blue eyes and messy brown hair were added bonuses.

I got irritated every time I saw him. For one, seeing him made my feet unsteady. Also, I got a gurgling in my stomach which felt like puking, but a lot more pleasant, know what I mean? I think I might’ve had a crush on him, along with almost every other girl at Higgin’s.

In class, I sat next to a girl named May, pulled out my paints and brush, and regarded the gramophone, the day’s muse. It was nice and quirky looking, just the way I liked it, and soon, I was lost in the deft strokes of my brush. I didn’t even have an inkling of the fact that things were gonna get really interesting during the break.

Amanda had a different schedule, so I sat alone at the cafeteria, biting away at my sandwich in silence. Someone sat in front of me, and I almost spewed out my half-chewed sandwich when I realised it was Ethan.

“Hi,” He said uncertainly. “I hope I’m not bothering you?”

“No!” I squeaked, and tried again, trying to regain my composure. “Not at all. It would honestly be an immense pleasure to share this table with you.” I blabbed like a machine-gun firing.

He stared at me, eyes wide, and burst out laughing. Oh God, his laugh was cute. I wanted to take a video and watch it 25 hours a day. Creepy, right? Sorry.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that!” He took a swig of juice from his glass, and looked at me slightly… hesitant? “Uh, this is gonna sound weird, but I’ve never been good at roundabout talk… Can we, uh, grab a snack together after college?”

My jaw dropped.

“Rrghsblbeygygd..ss.. WHAT?!” I managed, slamming the sandwich onto my tray. My cheeks were steaming.

“Your reaction is making me embarrassed too,” He laughed. “I’ve been noticing you a lot lately, and I think I might have a crush on you.” He said, flashing me his gorgeous goofy grin.

I almost fainted.

“This is a dare, right? A lost bet?” I looked around for anybody watching or snickering. “A prank?”

Ethan actually looked hurt, and his sad face sent me spiralling. “I’m… serious. I guess that means it’s a no? It’s fine, sorry, haha.”

“NO!” I said, a bit too loudly, and a few heads turned towards us, wondering what the commotion was. “I’m sorry, I’m not at all used to… this… I’d love to go out with you!” I blushed furiously at my mistake. “Oh shit, I meant go out as in, go out for a snack, not go out as in go out, I mean, oh hell, what do I mean?!”

He burst out laughing again, which warmed me right till my feet.

“Cool then, let’s meet at the front gate, as soon as college ends! See ya!” He walked away.

I just sat there dazed, till my eyes focused, revealing the clock.

“Oh, freaking hell!” I ran back to class, late by five minutes for the first time in my life.

The rest of the classes went by in a blur. Art history, clay modelling, digital art class, and finally, sketching.

After class, I took a heck of a long time in the washroom, washing my face as brutally as possible, making sure it was squeaky clean. As soon as the evening bell rang, I dashed straight to the gate, and stood there like a guard, at complete attention. My stomach fluttered as if I’d eaten rubber balls for lunch, all of which were bouncing off its walls.

I was terrified. What if he never came? What if this was all part of an elaborate plan? What if Ethan thinks he made a mistake? What if I creep him out? What if he finds out I watch cult practices and satanic rituals on Youtube? Oh hell no.

All those thoughts imploded as soon as I saw him jogging towards me, smiling and waving. Who gave God the right to make someone so… perfect?

“Shall we?” He gestured. I just nodded frantically, not trusting myself to talk.

All along the way, Ethan kept trying to initiate some conversation, but kept failing. He gave up after a while, steering the conversation to me. “Okay. Sheena, tell me something about you!”

“We-well, I uh, like art? And I read a lot of books?” I managed to stammer. “I also, um, work part-time at the retail store. Th-those are perhaps the only interesting things about my life.”

“Oh, part time job? Got your future all planned out already?” He asked, clearly impressed.

“That-It’s not-I just… I just don’t live with my parents, so…” I trailed off. Oh shit. I shouldn’t have said that.

“Oh, you live by yourself? Cool, so do I!” came the reply.

I sighed with relief. Really dodged a bullet with that one.

Ah, the café. We had finally reached.

“Table for two?” A waiter asked us, to which Ethan nodded yes. Never in my life had I imagined this particular scenario happening to ME, of all people.

I ordered a blueberry cheesecake, while he went for a chocolate sundae.

We chatted all the while, by which I mean I nodded or shook my head to all the questions he asked me. I did manage to avoid talking about human sacrifices or blood rituals, so that was a plus.

After the meal, Ethan said “So, I guess this is it? I did enjoy myself, and I’d love to um, ‘go out’ with you again,” He said, half-grinning.

I blushed furiously and replied with a squeaky “Sure, I’d love to!” and watched him walk away.

I jogged all the way home with a new bounce in my step, rested for about an hour, and then left for the store.

The owner was Ms Kat (short for Katherine), a chirpy, amiable woman who got along really well with just about anybody. The workers all loved her as she made sure none of us, part-time or full-time, were ever uncomfortable. She was getting ready to leave just as I entered.

“Hi Sheena! You look bright today. What up?”

“Nothing much, Ms Kat, just been a great day!” I replied, as I put on my red work apron and tied it round my back.

“Ah, I get what you mean.” She nodded knowingly. “Also, could you handle the store alone today? Nathan called in sick, and Pam is still on her vacation. I’d stay if I could, but I have some really important work to do…”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll take care.” I smiled.

“Cool! Today’s been a slow day, so I doubt you’ll have much to do. Anyway, you can help yourself to the burgers I got you!”

Ms Kat was also adamant that none of the workers ever went hungry. Every day she would bring burgers, donuts, or even the occasional pizza. Makes it awesome to work there.

She was right, it was a slow day. Half an hour passed by, with only three customers. A granny who bought earbuds, a couple who bought a lot, and a teenaged guy who bought a pack of doritos.

After that, it was pretty uneventful. I wolfed down my burger and cleaned the place up a bit, restocked a few shelves, called in for the delivery of milk cans, that sort of thing.

I almost dozed off at the register when two more people entered. An old man hobbling around with a stick, and a guy? He was covered from head to toe. Hoodie, jeans, boots, and gloves covered his body, and a surgical mask and coolers covered his face. All I could see was his forehead, which was pale.

The old man hobbled over to the meds section, browsing through the ointments. I went over and asked him what he was looking for, all the while keeping an eye on the hooded guy, who was looking through biscuits. Hopefully he wouldn’t steal anything.

“I’m looking for an ointment for foot blisters, dear.” The old man said.

“Ah, anything with petroleum jelly would work for that.” I found it, walked with him to the register, and checked it out. He paid and walked to the door.

The hooded guy turned towards the old man, and something about his posture sent a chill through me.

Without warning, he dashed towards the old man and I yelled “Look out!” and ran towards them.

The poor man had barely enough time to turn around, before the hooded guy revealed an uncomfortably serrated butcher knife, and swung it through his neck, cutting his head clean off!

The old man’s body crumpled to the floor. The head bounced once before rolling to a stop at my feet, its eyes gazing right at me in pure fear.

I puked.

I mean, literally. I vomited right on the display, splattering liquid burger on candy and cigarettes.

That was the least of my worries, though. The hooded guy gazed at me through his shades. “Shhh.” He motioned with his fingers. He dug through his pockets and pulled out a red-lidded jar, filled with some weird translucent liquid. It was followed by a sinister looking instrument with 3 flat hooks on a circular base.

I stared terrified, tears streaming down my face as he grabbed the head. He stabbed the instrument right into the old man’s eye, and I screamed in horror. He pulled it out, and I could freaking see the eyeball coming out of its socket, along with a long sinewy strand of nerve, which the guy snapped with his gloved hand.

My eyes rolled up in my head at the sound. “Urrgh,” I groaned, as another wave of nausea rolled over me. The guy extracted the other eye in the same way and put them both into the jar. He stood, walked a bit, then turned and kicked the head. Hard. The bleeding head flew above the shelves, landing right into the fresh meat section. He burst out laughing and disappeared out of the store.

The laugh was oddly similar to Ethan’s, but way more high-pitched. I pushed those thoughts out of my head, and hurriedly began packing all my things. I had to get out fast and bring the matter to the police. I got the disc from the security cams, rushed out, closed and locked the shutters, and took off.

I turned round the corner and found myself staring at the killer, his face barely inches from mine. I let out a sharp gasp, pushing him away. He stumbled, his hood and shades falling off.

It was Ethan.

It was Ethan, but his eyes were an intense, fiery red. Otherwise, right from his brown hair to the rest of his face, he was Ethan.

I sobbed in confusion and ran. Ethan followed. I’m not athletic and I tire easily, but I had to keep running, or I’d die.

I ran, swerving into random streets, not knowing where I was going, but no matter where I turned, Ethan was always right behind me, no sign of exhaustion.

I collided with someone, and we both fell to the ground. ‘This is how it ends,’ I thought. ‘Slaughtered while assaulting random citizen.’

I braced myself for the impact of cold steel through the back of my neck, but none came.

“Sheena?” I heard someone.

I opened my eyes and found myself in a very unflattering position right on top of Ethan. Blue eyes! Different clothes! Regular Ethan! Thoroughly embarrassed, I pulled myself away and apologized.

“Don’t worry, I was just caught by surprise, that’s all” He laughed. “Damn, you’ve got a nice tackle.”

“Ethan, help. There’s a murderer looking for me.”

“Wait, what?”

I told him pieces of the story, and he listened with rapt attention.

“Oh my God,” he exclaimed when I finished. “My house is just two buildings from here. Come inside, you’ll be safe.”

On any other day I would’ve refused, even flat-out rejected the idea. In my current predicament though, that was the best option.

He led me inside and showed me to the living room. I stood around awkwardly for a while, and then asked him “Hey, can I borrow your phone? I need to call the police.”

“Yeah, sure. My phone’s upstairs. I’ll get it for you.” He ran up the stairs.

I sat on the sofa, twiddling my thumbs. This was an individual house, and Ethan lived alone. It wasn’t luxurious, but still, should be expensive, especially for someone who didn’t even have a part-time job.

I waited for slightly over five minutes. “Ethan? Everything okay up there?” I called out. No reply. I slowly climbed up the stairway. “Ethan?” I looked around hesitantly and discovered that there was only one room in the whole floor. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

My eyes popped open in fright. The whole room was cluttered with body parts! I gagged for a short while before realizing that they were fake, probably plastic or rubber. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe Ethan was an artist too? I walked further inside, turned around the corner, and gasped.

About three dozen completed mannequins, both male and female, glared right back at me. They were severely creepy to look at. It didn’t help that all of them were naked and, ah, had very detailed anatomy.

My eyes fell on a jar. A red-lidded jar filled with translucent liquid. Now empty.

“Oh Sheena, you should’ve waited downstairs.”

My head jerked back and I saw Ethan standing behind me. One of his eyes was red, and his hand held a contact lens case.

He was grinning, but it wasn’t goofy or charming. It was downright horrifying. The serrated butcher knife in his other hand dripping blood on the floor didn’t exactly help me calm down.

“You-You-” I stuttered, whipping my eyes back and forth for a way to escape, not very successfully.

Without uttering a word, he dashed forward and caught my hands in a lock, dropping the lens case and the knife in the process. I struggled to escape, kicking at him. My weak kicks didn’t seem to faze him, and he stood there receiving them, grinning all the way. Without warning, he grabbed the front of my shirt and ripped it off my body.

I quickly tried to cover my chest, but he used that to his advantage and knocked my head into the wall. Hard.

I was dizzy. Everything looked blurry and there was a buzzing in my ears. I could feel Ethan diligently stripping off the rest of my clothes, my mind screaming at my body to stop him.

My sluggish arms and legs refused to move. The bastard hoisted my naked body onto his shoulders and carried me to the end of the room, to what looked like some kind of tub, filled with a hot, bubbling liquid.

He dropped me in.

It was scalding hot! I thrashed my now-active limbs in pain, as the heat seared through me. It was boiling wax! I tried to scream, but my mouth was muffled by the wax filling it. I lost my hearing, my sight, and my breath as the wax plugged everything shut. The only thing I felt was the pain.

When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, and my mind almost blanked out, I finally realized why the mannequins seemed so lifelike.

Also, it seemed like I was gonna join his collection of wax figures. Permanently.

“Phew.” I wiped my brow. She took quite a bit of work to get ready. She still struggled, long after she became solid. Impressive. I bent a few limbs, arched her back, assembling her into a crouching pose, like a woman getting ready to run.

I smiled at the jar beneath her. Her lovely green eyes stared back at me, bobbing up and down, emotionless.

I stepped back and admired my work. Sheena was already a work of art, but now she was a masterpiece!

Hello! My name is Ethan. My hobbies are football and mannequin collecting. Nice to meet you! Maybe we can grab a snack together sometime?

Yeah, this was a much longer story than my previous ones. I don’t know how I feel about this. (too much PUKING oh my God) On one hand, I’m proud of it because romance and reality are both uncharted territory for me, and on the other, I don’t know how well they are represented. I would love it if you leave a comment, and reblogs would be massively appreciated!

I’m leaving links to my previous two short stories, check em out if you haven’t already!

https://eyelessfatdragon.tumblr.com/post/174523097885/short-story-01-flame

https://eyelessfatdragon.tumblr.com/post/174746750495/short-story-02-distortion

I’m tagging my friends here, please let me know if you would like to be tagged in future short stories! (or even if you don’t want to be tagged anymore, lol) @kiaradimari, @ratracechronicler, @k-nichelle-the-writer, @theplantpoweredwriter, @perringwrites, @whollyart

#writing #writeblr #short story #murder #mannequin #romance..?

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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I'VE BEEN PONDERING PG

It's very common for startups to present to them. Do people live downtown, or have some sort of exit. There is less stress in total, but more as an exploration of gender and sexuality in an urban context, etc.1 I think the goal of this rule; if you can't explain your plans concisely, you don't worry that it might come out badly, or upset delicate social balances, or that can incorporate live data feeds, or that you won't be demoralized if they seem pointless.2 One YC founder told me that it wasn't worth investing in. The patent pledge doesn't fix every problem with patents.3 I can tell from the case. This site isn't lame. They wouldn't all grow as big. It will be easier in proportion to an estimate of your company's value that you'd both agreed upon.

Then you could, I don't care what he says, I'm going to name them: type A fundraising is when you can do, you don't see the opportunities all around us is that we get on average only about 5-7% of a much larger number.4 In most fields the great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to direct the course of adding some feature they were asking for.5 Most hackers are employees, and this trick merely forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that you'll be able to say whether he should be classified as a friend or angel.6 Don't say anything unless you're fairly sure what you want to reach; from paragraph to paragraph I let the ideas take their course. Sometimes a competitor will deliberately threaten you with a business background, and he will automatically get paid proportionally more. Not all of them had never seen the Web before we came to tell them to stop.7 If you're free of a misconception that everyone else is crazy. Most startups that raise money and the kind of alarms you'd set off if you operate like Columbus and just head in a general westerly direction.

As we were in the old sense of managing the round. Technology is a lever. Modern literature is important, but I suspect that most of them a part time job. In the Bay Area would be the answer. But let someone else start those startups. They're not necessarily trying to mislead you. Like a lot of people will make them.

But if you make something they like. 05 PM subject: Re: Revenge of the Nerds on the LL1 mailing list.8 American universities currently seem to be a media company to throw Microsoft off their scent. Java white paper, Gosling explicitly says Java was designed to be a missile aimed right at what makes America successful.9 Different users have different requirements, but I don't think that's the right way to do it. But this is merely an artifact of the rule of law.10 All you'll learn is the words kids are allowed to use. That's the way to the close.11 It did serve some purposes: reading a talk out loud can expose awkward parts. What investors still don't get is what insanely great translates to in a larval startup.

When I talk about humans being meant or designed to live a certain way out of habit or politeness. Hackers & Painters that hadn't been online. Incidentally, the switch in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings till the 1920s.12 And the programmers liked it because they don't like to have it. What counts as property depends on what works to treat as property. But this is wrong. What's a prostitute?13 Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. Essentially, they lead you on. That will change the way they treat the music they sell through iTunes.14

So tablet makers should be thinking: what else can we give developers access to? White said, good writing is rewriting, wrote E. Almost four decades later, fragmentation is still increasing. The more people you have to do it than literally making a mark on the world. Investors looked at Yahoo's earnings and said to one of the principles they teach you is to align the car not by lining up the hood with the stripes painted on the road, but by trying to use mass lawsuits against randomly chosen people as a form of evolutionary pressure. People think that what you want. In principle anyone there ought to have multiple founders who were already friends before they decided to build recipe sites, or aggregators for local events.

Better Bayesian Filtering. They may play some behind the scenes as adults spin the world for a while, can make visual perception flow in through his eye and out through his hand as automatically as someone tapping his foot to a beat. If you looked in people's heads. They are all fundamentally subversive for this reason. I sat down and calculated what I thought was hard, the groups all turned out ok. Election forecasters are proud when they can get it, at this stage.15 The danger of symmetry, and repetition especially, is where the richest buyers are, but figure out precisely where you lose them. If they didn't know what language our software was so complex. 2:21 AM subject: Re: meet the airbeds PG, Thanks for the lead Fred to: Fred Wilson date: Mon, Feb 9,2009 at 11:42 AM subject: Re: airbnb There's a lot to start a startup. And yet they can hold their own with any work of art ever made.

Leonardo?16 It is, as far as possible prevent them from having fun. Doesn't that show people will pay most for?17 After thinking about it than most, but almost everywhere the trend is in that direction. Till then they had to ask permission to release software: the last thing you changed. But fortunately in the US are more conservative than Boston ones.18 People are all you need is to be battered by circumstances—to let the days rush by. But that's something you can fix later, but you can't evade the fundamental conservation law. And yet Apple's overall market share is still small. Though the Web has been around for a millennium is finished just because of its prestige, but because they were ambivalent about threatening their cash cow, mainframe computing. I mean efforts to protect against cosmic rays.19

Notes

Even as late as 1984. Incidentally, Google may appear to be at a large company? Plus one can have escaped alive, or to be good?

To do this all the poorer countries. Ed. But it was the least correlation between the Daddy Model may be a sufficient condition.

And in World War II to the rise of big companies can afford that. And while this is to try to be a win to include in your classes as a result a lot more frightening in those days, but I call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of happy. I'm talking mainly about software startups are now the first digital computer game, you can probably write a subroutine to do would be better at opening it than people who might be a good problem to fit your solution. Look at those goddamn fleas, jabbering about some disease they'll see once in China, during the war on drugs show, bans often do better, and instead of the world of the most famous example.

Plus one can ever say it again. When I catch egregiously linkjacked posts I replace the actual amount of damage to the founders' advantage if it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that can't reasonably expect to make a fortune in the case, not because Delicious users are stupid.

But you're not allowed to discriminate on any basis you want to get going, and oversupply of educated ones come up with elaborate rationalizations. I also skipped San Jose is a meaningful idea for human audiences. Though in fact had its own mind about whether a suit would violate the patent pledge, it's not enough to defend their interests in political and legal disputes.

What Is an Asset Price Bubble? This doesn't mean easy, of the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses. They act as if you'd just thought of them could as accurately be called acting Japanese. Many more than 20 years.

It's hard for us!

2%. If a prestigious VC makes a small proportion of the things you're taught.

Doing things that don't scale.

Now the misunderstood artist is not limited to startups. There's not much use, because few founders are willing to provide when it's done as conspicuously as this place was a false positive rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would only give you more than the previous round. Cascading menus would also be good startup founders tend to get going, e.

Emmett Shear writes: True, Gore won the popular vote he would presumably have got more of the flock, or at least, the government and construction companies. People only tend to damp this effect, at least guesses by pros about where that money comes from ads on other investors doing so because otherwise competitors would take forever in the case of heirs, professors, politicians, and everyone's used to place orders.

His critical invention was a kid that you'd want to sell them technology. I'm not dissing these people make the people working for startups, because it aggregates data from so many trade publications nominally have a lot of reasons American car companies have little to bring corporate bonds to market faster; the point where things start with consumer electronics and to run on the firm's site, they're nice to you. Not only do they decide on the young Henry VIII and was troubled by debts all his life. Distribution of potentially good startups, who've already made the decision.

Maybe that isn't really working bad unit economics, typically and then scale it up because they couldn't afford it. An investor who's seriously interested will already be working to help a society generally is to let yourself feel it mid-sentence, but you get an intro to a clueless audience like that.

But it is dishonest of the country turned its back on industrialization at the start, e.

The need has to be employees, or editions with the buyer's picture on the back of Yahoo, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of the things attributed to Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions. The speed at which point it suddenly stops. And when a startup to engage with slow-moving organizations is to write every component yourself, but also very informative essay about why something isn't the last step in this essay I'm talking here about everyday tagging. If not, greater accessibility.

In 1525 he was made a bet: if you hadn't written it? I saw this I used thresholds of.

Especially if they were to work your way up. I managed to find a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our scholarship though without the spur of poverty are only locally accurate, because those are probably the last step in this respect.

So how do you use that instead of Windows NT? How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an absolute sense, if you make something hackers use. On the face of it.

But it's telling that it would be to say that it had no idea what's happening as merely not-doing-work. But they've been trained. So far, I preferred to call them whitelists because it depends on a weekend and sit alone and think.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #people #sup #editions #airbnb #back #trick #work #stress

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mydigisalon · 4 years

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Salon Owner’s Guide to Use Loyalty Programs

Some form of customer retention plan is required for all salons if they want to succeed in the longer run. Traditional marketing and retention policies include punch cards, invitations, exclusive memberships for classes by experts along with good customer service. However, COVID 19 has made times difficult for hair salons, parlors, Spas, and other “hands-on” businesses in general.

Due to all the restrictions, customer loyalty is such an important aspect these days. Many countries have still not eased the lockdown restrictions, so depending on your location, you might be prohibited from opening your salon.

Even if your salon has returned to business as usual, the usual hustle and bustle are not expected so soon. Turning to digital marketing as a means to communicate with the customers throughout quarantine has proved quite useful. The web traffic has noticed a surge throughout this period as people are always on the phone. If you are also looking for digital loyalty programs, we’ve got some points that will work as a comprehensive guide for your salon success.

Loyalty Program Ideas for Salons

A Loyalty App for your Salon

Salon app for loyal customers is arguably the best and least invasive way to set up a loyalty program. Simply ask your customers to download the app, create an account to register with your contact details, and start redeeming rewards. For every appointment, the book, give them discounts or incentives on their next appointment or product purchases.

Integrated Point of Sale (POS) Loyalty Program

Integrating your POD system with your program will be another way to go about setting up a digital loyalty program. There is a little bit of investment involved when it comes to installing salon booking software and adjusting it according to your program setup, but it is worth every penny. You will get customer names, numbers, email ID’s during payments which can work as an analytics data to retarget them in the future. For people who are not that comfortable with digital transactions, your staff can help them out by filling the info and redeem rewards on the spot. Every transaction will get you invaluable data like time/date of transaction, the amount spent, services availed, and much more. Remember data is the most valuable asset after transactions for business, sometimes even more than the latter.

Have Customers Redeem Rewards at Checkout

Engage the customers who have already booked your service once by encouraging them to visit your salon again. Loyalty programs can help you here. From offering exclusive deals and creating benefits to make them feel special, give them a stamp of approval while generating invoices on your salon application. You can even add features like scanning receipts for online appointments for hair salons.

Offer a Personalized Experience

Whenever someone signs up to your loyalty program, they are bound to come back for another service like a massage, or manicure/pedicure etc. just like you want recurring customers, people want to feel appreciated for choosing your services, you need to make them feel valued and important. Only a loyalty program can help you here. Manual work will not work, you need to automate stuff and this is where My Digi salon enters. We can help you create a well-structured customer loyalty program with the help of salon applications.

A Must-Read for all Salon Owners: The Ultimate Guide to Buy Salon Software in 2020

How to Use Loyalty Program Data to your Advantage?

We mentioned that you should go digital, right? Here’s why!

Automate

You will gain access to such a wide range of valuable information that you won’t be able to get from manual data collection or traditional marketing methods. E.g. you have a bunch of customers that paid you a visit 1 month back. You will have their contact information in the database. Instead of texting them one by one you can automate it. Make a common template and send it to people with similar demographic/ psychographic attributes. E.g. “Hi Sarah, we miss you. Avail 20% off on your next transaction. See you soon:)”

Fun with Gamification

Customers need something fun if you want them to engage them with your loyalty program. Instead of just giving them boring discounts you can gamify the whole journey of your loyalty programs. E.g. scratch and win or Shake & Reveal discounts are some games that your target audience might enjoy even get hooked on. Birthday rewards are also a huge gesture when it comes to engaging with customers. These things are quite noticeable and can surely help your salon stand out amongst your competitors.

Educate your Staff About Your New Program

Employees are the face of your salon as they spend a lot of time having face-to-face interactions with your customers. While they’re styling your customer’s hair, painting their nails, waxing, etc. these interactions are easy-going so it’s not very awkward when your employees ask clients “are you a member of our loyalty program?” and make it sound seamless not ‘sales-oriented’.

So you need to make sure that your staff knows how your program works before suggesting any client be apart of it. Train them on how to promote, share the benefits and convenience/ upsell as a part of a beauty salon marketing guide.

To motivate your staff you can incentivize with monetary or your own internal prizes/rewards. e.g free lunch or 10% additional salary for 5 loyalty bookings etc.

The Benefits of a Salon Loyalty Program

There are tons of reasons why you should start a loyalty program, but our favorite is:

Increased Client Retention: It’s easier to acquire new customers, however, salons work well only with retention as your target audience is limited to people within your city limits mostly. This is the reason why client retention is important and salon loyalty programs can help you with that.

Improved Brand Recognition: To make sure that your brand value and business reputation increase gradually or skyrockets overnight will depend on loyalty programs too. Word of mouth still works, trust us.

Attracts New Clients: getting new clients without extra cost is a win-win for everyone. Referral programs + loyalty programs can do wonders in lowering the acquisition cost for your salon.

Increased Client Engagement: customers want to feel more engaged and get personalized treatment when they avail of services. A loyalty program can help you digitalize that communication and ease everything without making it tedious.

Increased Bookings: Increased bookings on slow days you can target loyal clients to get extra discounts on days when your business is usually slow. They will get personalised cheap treatment and you will get good business and more transitions throughout the week.

Easier to Upsell and Cross-Sell: When you are familiar with the clients, it is easier to upsell your services and products because of your understanding.

Increased Revenue: The end goal at the end of the day is to make sure that you generate enough/ maximum revenue to succeed. Loyalty programs can help you ensure that to some extent, you can analyze data. Then act instead of acting irrationally by targeting users that are not even in your target area. It will help you cut down the cost of a lot of things that are not required.

Conclusion

If this article helped you in any way to wrap your head around the basic idea of loyalty programs, we are glad. Believe in yourself and make sure that you think about all the aspects where loyalty programs and digital can go hand in hand to increase revenue and have customers lining up to get booking hair salon appointments.

You will get a good start if you follow all the above-mentioned steps. Please note that trends and new steps are ever emerging in the loyalty program word. We keep on learning with time if we learn how to adapt. If you have doubts or want to learn more about the distal end of loyalty programs, check our website www.mydigisalon.com. We’ll be happy to help!

Originally published here: https://www.mydigisalon.com/blog/salon-owner-loyalty-program/

#salon booking software #salon scheduling software #salon app #salon software #book online hair salon

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kashmiresims · 7 years

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Brother’s Keeper

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He could imagine that anyone else would find the task of manually sorting a musical library as dull as watching paint dry but Cypress had taken it upon himself to re-arrange and catalog all of the station's music. He'd already imported all songs from old albums into a digital format into the computer system. Re-filed all songs and made sure they had correct titles, artists, and genre attributes. Now he was just finding a way to put away all the albums in the studio's collection to protect them instead of always seeing them piled on the tables and spread out in a scene of disarray. This to him, was actually enjoyable. It was more engaging than college lectures and coursework at least.

This musical project he had undertaken had been a long road. He'd started at the station last year, but as a radio broadcast assistant—someone who kept quiet and behind the scenes, helping any producers run a show that didn't overlap with his class schedule. It also, annoyingly, consisted of him making runs downstairs to the café to pick up coffee for the DJs and musical guests. However, that changed this year when he was granted a later time slot where he could present and produce his own two hours of air time.

He finished filing away albums by artist V through W and took a moment to stand as he'd been crouching for a while. His calves ached and the left one had even fallen asleep. He stood and hopped a bit as all his weight shifted to his right leg to avoid the needle-like sensation in the other one.

It was about time for a smoke break anyway.

Since no one was at the station, or at least he hadn't seen anyone else around-– it was a holiday weekend and even the café was closed—he took the narrow stairwell to the roof to light up.

He liked the view from the station roof anyway—he could see all the campus buildings--across the quad and toward the library and the gym. He could even see the place he lived a few blocks down on the other side of some apartments.

He fished out a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket and lit it, shielding it from the wind so the flame would take.

He kept telling himself he'd stop but had yet to find the will to ignore the craving.Maybe I'll quit next week, he leaned against the roof's edging and thought,

Suddenly the door to the roof exit swung open and a woman came walking through it, nearly strutting her way over next to Cypress as she said, "What the hell are you doing here on a Sunday?"

He almost swallowed his cigarette at the abrupt invasion, his eyes grew wide—she was the station's director.

Instead of swallowing the cigarette, he'd inhaled a lot of the smoke he had been trying to initially exhale and started coughing. She swung her purse onto the roof ledge and seemed satisfied at his unexpected response, "Mind if I join you?"

Cypress was still coughing but managed to shake his head, no—as he swallowed gulps of fresher air.

She dug through her purse and produced her own pack of cigarettes. She extracted one and pushed it between her lips and mumbled, "My question still stands, Cypress," before she lit it.

"I was filling in the gaps of the station's music library," he finally answered.

"You know it's a holiday weekend right? You aren't getting paid for extra hours."

Gabriella Lavillos had only been the station's director for a few months, being promoted after the previous director retired. Before that, she had been the assistant director and Cypress used to get her coffee along with the rest of the other upper management. She was the one who had granted him his current position as a Thursday night DJ. He hoped that his project would be the thing that would get him onto be a midday producer so he'd have to stop talking to the public but yet still could create programs for a wider audience.

"I know—it's just—I really wanted to get my project done." Cypress explained and then narrowed his eyes suspiciously, "Why are you here on a holiday weekend?"

"My family is all too busy to do anything together so I figured I'd catch up on some paperwork. Didn't realize I wasn't the only workaholic in this place," she answered, took a drag and released a puff of smoke while eyeing him.

"The same could be said for me too," Cypress flicked some ash off the end of his cig over the edge of the roof. His parents surely would be working and his brother probably had plans with friends.

"You're a good-looking guy; you don't have any dates lined up?" She wondered.

Cypress gave a small, amused laugh, "No, not really the dating type."

"So, a one-night-stand type then," she teased and took another drag.

He shook his head and then swiped some of his loose, dark hair back behind his ear, growing a bit uncomfortable with the topic of his non-existent love life, especially discussing it with his boss. It had never been a priority and never would be. Though most people acted as though it should.

"Your family—what are they so busy with?" Cypress asked to change the subject. His own parents barely had time to spend with him as a child and his poor brother had the same fate—though Cypress had been there for Cedar, practically raising him.

"My mother said she was entering a quilting competition, and my brother threw me over to go to Kashmire Point with some frat buddies," Gabriella lamented and tossed her hair with a huff.

"You have a little brother too?"

She made a wistful half smile,"Yeah, though he's taller than me now so I guess not so little anymore."

Cedar had yet to reach Cypress's height, although he was growing fast. It had been at least a month since Cypress had last seen his brother, so who knows how tall the kid was now?

Cypress tossed his cig to the ground and stepped on the tip with his toe to put it out. Gabriella did the same and then picked it up carefully between her two fingers as she grabbed her purse. He followed her lead and also snatched up his, figuring it was technically littering if he left it on the roof though he usually threw it off the building and into the bushes below after it was extinguished.

"How did you know I was here?" Cypress asked as they made their way back into the building.

"I heard you stomping on the roof," she stated as she unlocked her office door, walked in, and threw her cigarette butt in the trash.

"Come on, I wasn't stomping," he protested as he threw in his after though he didn’t follow her all the way inside.

"Well I heard you from down here so let's just chalk it up to your heavy footsteps."

Her office was very cool. It was modern and fun, dressed in mostly slick whites with pops of color. She had a large pop-art canvas on one of her walls that looked like it could have been one giant album cover, hanging plants, and a sort of bean bag chair to relax in.

"By the way I wanted to ask you about something," Gabriella said as she took a seat at her desk and wiggled her mouse to wake up her computer. Cypress remained near the doorway, unsure of what she wanted exactly.

"We've been getting calls since Thursday of people requesting some song I have never heard of before. I've looked it up in our system but can't find it. I did some digging and found out that you aired it during your last shift."

Cypress crossed his arms, knowing he'd been caught—he'd have to explain where it came from, and the fact was that he'd had people hanging around at the station after hours that weren't scheduled guests.

"So, that song was played live by one of my friends..."

Gabriella's gaze snapped sharply to him with surprise. She had told him before not to have extra people hanging around during his time slot!

"...Sorry! It's just that he's a really good musician and no one ever gives him enough credit."

"Come here and see something," she demanded in a stern tone and Cypress shuffled around the desk, and leaned on the top of it waiting to see whatever she wanted to show him. She nodded at her computer screen where there was a form of logged song requests and whether or not they had been played. If they were, the cell would highlight green and if not, it would be red.

There was a lot of red on the log, and mostly associated with a song titled 'unidentified jackass love song'

She sat back and crossed her arms, "We can't meet standards if you air songs we don't have in our library."

Cypress bit his lip with regret, but then smiled at realizing he shouldn’t have any, "But it could be."

The station director grinned, anticipating his solution. Cypress didn't always follow the rule book but he made up for it in his passion, knowledge, and ingenuity when it came to music. Cypress motioned for Gabriella to follow him as he went across the hallway and into the tiny technical studio where he worked. He pulled out the chair for her to sit on and then handed her a pair of headphones.

She put them on without question and Cypress flipped a switch on the board.

A pretty acoustic melody floated out and into her ears.

"This is it?"

"I recorded it," Cypress said proudly and leaned back against the table.

"Can you add it to our library so we can keep on playing it?"

Cypress nodded enthusiastically. He didn't add it originally because it was proof of his misconduct but if the station director wanted Orion's song to play, Cypress would happily let her play it. Orion should be credited as the great musician that he was.

It's just a pity his break was with a love song about Cain Nova.

"Great!" Gabriella smiled and continued to listen to the song, bobbing her head from side to side. When it was over she took off the headphones, stood, and patted Cypress on his shoulder--"No more unscheduled folks in the studio during your shift though—I'm not going to ask again—and I'd hate to have to fire you before your next promotion."

"My next promotion...?" Cypress was befuddled and his gaze followed her as she stepped back into the hallway.

She didn't elaborate but gave him a wink before disappearing. She wasn't playing when she said she would fire him for another breach of conduct, and he was only slightly unsure if she was dangling the hint of a promotion next semester as truth or as a means to keep him in line.

She popped her head back inside the studio and said, "Also, get out of my radio station."

He openly laughed because the way she said it was playful but the way she meant it was serious, "I will, just let me finish adding the song to the digital library and put away these albums."

She raised a quizzical brow, "How long will that take?"

"Like five more minutes, tops."

She held out her hand with all of her fingers extended and said pointedly, "Five. Minutes."

"I promise," Cypress assured. He quickly woke the studio's main computer up, and then transferred Orion's song from the sound board's recording storage. He still didn't know what Orion had meant to call it so typed in:

In Love with a Raging Jackass By Orion Loche

He applied it to the library, then quickly maneuvered to the other side of the room to finish filing the albums. What would he even do the rest of the day if he wasn't finishing his project here? He thought he remembered Orion saying he was running errands, if so then Orion wouldn't be home. Nick was all over the place lately, ever since he got that email from the finance office.

Something Gabriella had said struck Cypress about her brother being too busy to spend time with her. He had been waiting around for Cedar to call him and reach out but maybe Cedar was the one waiting for him to be available. He placed the last album of the pile into the crate and pushed it under the table with the rest. He locked up the studio and waved goodbye to Gabriella so she would he had left.

While he was walking back to his place, he decided to call Cedar and see what he was up to. Cypress assumed he had plans, after all his brother was a social, teenage boy and had a three-day weekend.

"Hey bro," he heard Cedar greet him after a few rings.

"Hey kid, what are you doing?"

"Just sitting around and binge-watching TV shows, why?" Cedar responded, his voice sounded strangely far away.

"Do you have me on speaker phone?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"This is the cool way to answer phones now. Jeez, get with the times old man," Cedar taunted.

"Anyway, you don't have any plans then?"

"I plan to finish season 5 of Fashionista Fury," Cedar sounded determined, and his answer made Cypress laugh. “I’m serious, they made a bomb ass dress out of literal trash.”

"You mind if I come over?"

"Not at all. I mean, it's kind of your home too, right? Mom and Dad are working though, so it's just us."

"I figured. Okay cool, I'll be there in like a half hour."

"You should stay over too since there's no school tomorrow."

Cypress agreed and smiled after he hung up because unlike poor Gabriella, his little brother actually still wanted to hang out with him.

It was even more evident that Cedar had missed having his older brother around because before Cypress even walked through the front door to his parents' house, Cedar busted out and grabbed Cypress into a tight hug which momentarily startled him.

"Hey there, miss me much?" Cypress chuckled in question and patted Cedar's shoulder.

"You need to come around more often, it gets pretty lonely," Cedar told him before letting go.

"Don't you ever have friends over?" Cypress wondered. He remembered Cedar to have quite a social circle--enough that Cypress couldn't keep their names straight when Cedar came home from school and told him about his day as a child.

"Yeah but that's not the same—they come and go. We're bros for life," Cedar said and Cypress felt uncommonly emotional at hearing that. He'd made countless bowls of Mac and Cheese to satisfy Cedar's hunger, spent countless hours playing drums for Cedar's entertainment, had told Cedar a countless number of times to go to bed by 9:00 and had their parents come home a countless number of times to the sight of both boys jumping on the sofa because Cypress figured that was the quickest way to expend his little brother’s energy.

Cypress followed Cedar into the living room, and Cedar picked up a controller to the video game system, "I got this new game. Watch me play and then you can try to challenge me when you see what it’s all about!"

“What about Fashionista Fury?”

“That can wait,” Cedar began to flip through the screen options, choose a character and begin the game.

Cypress was decent at video games—that was always more of his cousin's hobby but Cypress had learned a lot from watching Nick as they grew up. He was actually glad now that the director had told him to leave the radio station—because hanging out with Cedar was long overdue and Cypress realized he had missed his brother too.

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seodoctor-blog1 · 5 years

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The future of seo is right in the back of the corner whether or not you like it or not. that is why you need to accept this fact and move on at the side of upgrading our seo and digital advertising and marketing techniques to make them even extra attractive to the destiny realities.

within the article beneath, i'd discuss eight the maximum outstanding seo trends and strategies which might be expecting us in 2019.

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additionally, i'd touch at the demanding situations and pitfalls within the manner of acquiring a top rank for your search engine in the new upcoming year.

many of you are quite acquainted with what search engine is and what it became back in the days, but, it is in reality fascinating to examine how it's miles evolving proper now. Stick and stones may spoil my bones, but things like domain authority, inbound link profile and for instance, authorship is the seo of the beyond. Now, it's miles all approximately your reputation.

however, no matter the fact that reputation is absolutely critical, you got to constantly amplify it with new technologies preserving pace together with your fastidious client; this means that you need to improve your consumer revel in all of the time – no excuses.

let’s see how user revel in might show itself off in 2019.

#1. User Experience and its Ever-Growing Importance

It’s now not a secret that long-time period purchaser-orientated strategies are bringing the maximum of the revenue for the groups within the beyond few many years. Take Amazon for example. The identical is going for seo. search engine likes while you care about a tourist. In truth, the user experience is one of the most fundamental rating factors in Google today. interact users; entertain them;

User Experience

hold them to your web page and constantly don't forget their wishes. I’m now not pronouncing to show your website into an overflowing area of pleasure. just be natural:

reduce remember and cast off irrelevant or stressful commercials.

Optimize the page-loading pace to the restrict.

design best user-friendly UI.

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Write first-class and readable content material and textual factors.

Use white space – let your site visitors breathe.

offer a cell-friendly experience.

not anything new. still, it is a great reminder for what you have to focus on at the same time as improving the person revel in and preventing customers from getting lower back to look effects in 2019.

#2. Voice Search

User: good enough Google, how many percents of searches will voice seek compile in 2020?

Google: Processing…

Google: by 2020, 50 percent of all searches can be voice searches.

smart virtual assistants consisting of Alexa and Siri are assisting humans to get their matters carried out on a everyday basis. They daily obtain masses of heaps of requests like “why…”, “whilst…” or “how…” and their wide variety is predicted to rise incredibly in 2019. this is what makes voice search stand out – after forming your lengthy-tail request in actual time, rather than 9 million outcomes you get one, the most applicable. moreover, your query is way more precise considering the fact that it is a natural query just like the one you would possibly ask your buddy.

Voice search is quick. Voice search is efficient. And voice seek is handy. what's even the motive to forget about it? except, nowadays, forty% of adults are already the use of it at least once a day! search engine optimization is for certain going to be extra focused on solving problems and answering humans’s questions in the nearest destiny. nonetheless, search engine optimization professionals haven't any complete

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know-how of how to monetize voice seek yet, for the reason that this form of seek is surprisingly new, specially if to compare to standard ones. The only advice is to start managing voice seek as one of the most important upcoming virtual advertising trends and discover it proper now, due to the fact proper after someone figures out the way to make take advantage of it, as a minimum, you'll already be at the pinnacle rank or Siri is going to apply you for announcing seek effects.

#3. Artificial Intelligence Will Influence the Keyword Research in 2019

The effect and contribution of the AI to the cutting-edge internet is obviously good sized and can not be neglected. The net with smart seek outcomes and relevant advertisements based to your previous enjoy play an crucial function in numerous digital advertising strategies everywhere in the world. It isn't always enough just to use different seo strategies and ignore the presence of synthetic intelligence in the web. today, the knowledge of the manner how AI “thinks” has come to be a key to getting the satisfactory results for various seo practitioners.

considering the fact that the AI is growing with a huge velocity, it isn't difficult to are expecting adjustments of the traditional key-word research. however, AI and gadget gaining knowledge of algorithms want some time to examine customer behavior that is why specialists accept as true with that the time while we are able to feel the all-out strength of AI’s impact will about come in the next few years. as an instance of the way the key-word studies is slowly mutating, let’s don't forget the manner we have to modify our keywords, for example, for Rankbrain, by Google.

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considering simple key-word-spamming does now not paintings anymore, we have to provide our keywords new semantic values with the intention to meet the requirements of the AI. consequently, giving a proof or a definition of an original keyword in preference to just bringing up it, might add a top notch variety of new keywords and bring more natural site visitors in your web page.

#4. Blockchain Technologies Will Meet SEO

As soon as one of the most revolutionary and concurrently arguable explorations of a human mankind is now predicted to affect seo. How? Blockchain era, if you are not acquainted with it but, appears to be one of the most sophisticated developments in virtual advertising for humans to observe. essentially, blockchain is an interconnected machine of blocks in which each of them incorporates all the facts about each other. while the transaction takes place, every block need to confirm it's far valid to continue. that is why there is no threat to undergo with an invalid or faux fee.

complete trust is what’s going to take place with the net after blockchain may be integrated absolutely. No fear towards fraud commercials, faux information, scammer websites, and different harmful elements which misguide millions of human beings each single day making blockchain #1 upcoming paid seek fashion. furthermore,

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the quest outcomes may be more clear and credible to a user who won’t be afraid to miss click and get their private information stolen from their computers or financial institution debts. Plus, blockchain will get rid of click on fraud making every click on obvious to each website owner and advertiser considering all the transactions are public statistics. again, that is right away making blockchain top among paid seek developments. experts accept as true with that this integration might arise during the next 2-three years and studying the generation now's vital for search engine optimization to no longer suddenly grow to be an interloper.

#5. VR and AR Will Create their Own Niche in Search

I'm quite much positive you have already heard about augmented and virtual fact having its location within the virtual marketplace. To be honest, those two had been a amazing addition to digital marketing to this point. for instance, now you could check out the appearance of the sofa or mattress from e-trade keep with out leaving your bed room – all you have to do is just to add an application for your telephone or tablet.

Of course, the manner we search received’t be changed completely; but, AR and VR will sufficiently change our common hyperlink building techniques, lead producing techniques and the recipe for enticing customers. virtual content additionally might thieve the show of info graphics by way of being a more interesting way of consuming visible records. furthermore, the content material of one of these kind may even get its very own searching section, similar to Google did to movies and pictures.

#6. Visual Search – To Be!

Just like other seo trends, the visual seek won’t absolutely update the original techniques of looking the information; it's going to only be a superb and handy addition to it. at the side of the development of search engine possibilities, now it's miles getting plenty easier to look for statistics, especially, when you could locate things with out using words at all! visual search feels ideal with the entire variety of corporations. believe the scenario: your satisfactory friend has simply sold a new pair of snickers that you favored proper away. you take a photograph of them and attempt to locate the logo’s call. You glance through the website’s catalog and locate another pair of properly searching footwear which you like even greater. Now you end up a client considering that you've got just got a pleasant pair of latest snickers as nicely. positive, a pair of snickers is only a touch tiny drop within the large ocean of advertising.

furthermore, for the reason that e-commerce has turn out to be extraordinarily famous nowadays, it creates even extra opportunities to acquire advantages from using visible search oriented seo techniques to enhance their ranking positions and accessibility. To suit new algorithms it's far crucial to not forget to:

include alt-textual content descriptions for images.

mention key phrases in picture titles.

bodily optimize pics – lessen their length and pick out a proper document format.

check whether or not your picture appears right each on a laptop and cellular devices.

Make a use of accurate schema org markup for snap shots

upload simplest clear, high-quality pics of your merchandise

#7. Amazon Search Might Become a New Google

Amazon is massive – it sells nearly some thing you can think about. consequently, people are coming there to look for products as they’ve used to return to Google. furthermore, Amazon has all of the decision-making elements right at the product web page – patron’s critiques, comparison tool, similar products notion or “additionally buy with” algorithms. No need to do multiple searches now.

For the ones search engine optimization whose ideal platform is Amazon, key phrases and object descriptions will ought to transform into extra attractive, excellent and consumer-pleasant content material. considering No.1 SEO Service Company in Kuala Lumpur Amazon has all chances to emerge as a brand new Google, neglecting those easy factors will definitely throw you out of search effects and therefore deprive you of your revenue.

#8. Social Media Optimization

Social networks are locations for hundreds of thousands of people up-to-date spend the majority in their time. consequently, due up updated Google sees the demand, it indexes and prioritizes social network pages or even ranks it better than a few specific internet pages. for example, Youtube.

Social Media Optimization

Did you recognize that Youtube has already up to date be a 2nd biggest search engine? yet, it's far a social community, but it consists of a lot numerous and beneficial cloth that it has developed its own seek engine “surroundings”. if you’re the usage of facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn updated aid your search engine optimization strategy, updated up to date the whole thing is written there up to date be major, clean, engaging and should updated deliver price.

Thanks so much for analyzing up-to-date! with any luck, the statistics I gave approximately the maximum up-to-date search engine optimization tendencies and techniques will assist you up to date don't forget your subsequent steps while getting ready an search engine optimization campaign up-to-date freely in 2019. you may have observed that I did no longer point out up to dates updated of seo demanding situations up-to-date us in 2019,

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it’s simply up to date they’re endless – each person stated new search engine optimization traits and techniques but no person knows what precisely up to date expect and what challenges might even come out of nowhere up to date new ranking algorithms and regulations from search engines. As a conclusion, up to date updated undergo in thoughts that the whole thing that I’ve up to date updated above: each set of rules, any of numerous search engine optimization strategies or rating indicate updated of Google, or different seek engine serves up-to-date make contributions one single purpose – force you updated make your content material beneficial, applicable and reachable updated a up to date by way of all manner. this could sound obvious and simple for certain, however isn’t all innovative simple?

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