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ashtray-girl · 5 years

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By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept and its role in Morrissey’s lyricism

PLOT This is a short prose poetry novel in which author Elizabeth Smart recounts her love affair with married poet George Barker (even though she began writing it years before they met). Said affair lasted 18 years and she bore 4 of his 15 children, whom he had from several different women.

The novel is divided in 10 parts, so I’ll proceed by summing up each one of them while also highlighting the parts which I think are relevant to the Morrissey discourse.

DISCLAIMER: even though there isn’t much of a plot to spoil (the focus is placed almost entirely on the narrator’s feelings and in the way they’re expressed), I am gonna quote extensively from every chapter so keep that in mind if you intend to read the book for yourself.

PART I The protagonist is waiting at the bust station for the man she loves to collect her (she never names him btw) but when he finally comes he’s with his wife and it’s her that the protagonist sees first.

“But then it is her eyes that come forward out of the vulgar disembarkers to reassure me that the bus has not disgorged disaster: her madonna eyes, soft as the newly-born, trusting as the untempted. And, for a moment, at that gaze, I am happy to forego my future, and postpone indefinitely the miracle hanging fire. […] Behind her he for whom I have waited for so long, who has stalked so unbearably through my nightly dreams.”

It’s interesting to note the way she talks about her. Even though she’s wildly in love with this man, she never badmouths her. On the contrary, throughout the story she seems to have a good opinion of her.

“I see she can walk across the leering world and suffer injury only from the ones she loves. But I love her and her silence is propaganda for sainthood.”

You know what all of this reminds me of? The time Angie collected Morrissey at the station to take him to Johnny’s house, a few days after Johnny had knocked on Morrissey’s door and they’d talked about forming a band. Did he expect it would be Johnny who’d come and pick him up? Did he know he had a girlfriend?

“So we drive along the Californian coast singing together, and I entirely renounce him for only her peace of mind.”

I don’t know if the narrator shares Morrissey’s fascination with cars (I don’t even think the two things are necessarily related), but it’s worth pointing out how some of the most important and dramatic scenes of the book happen in a car.

“Why do I not jump off this cliff where I lie sickened by the moon? I know these days are offering me only murder for my future. It is not just the creeping fingers of the cold that dissuade me from action, and allow me to accept the hypocritical hope that there may be some solution. Like Macbeth, I keep remembering that I am their host. So it’s tomorrow’s breakfast rather than the future’s blood that dictates fatal forbearance. Nature, perpetual whore, distracts with the immediate.”

Look at this entire paragraph and tell me it isn’t the most Morrissey thing you’ve ever read. Also, does any part of it sound familiar? Well, let’s look at the lyrics for Shakespeare’s Sister:

Young bones groan, and the rocks below say “Throw your skinny body down, son"

But I'm going to meet the one I love So please don't stand in my way Because I'm going to meet the one I love No, mama, let me go

Young bones groan and the rocks below say "Throw your white body down"

But I'm going to meet the one I love At last, at last, at last! I'm going to meet the one I love

Then the protagonist gets to the couple’s house and her sudden proximity to the man she loves brings the feelings she’s been trying to repress right back to the surface:

“The Beginning lurks uncomfortably on the outskirts of the circle, like an unpopular person whom ignoring can keep away. The very silence, the very avoiding of any intimacy between us, when he, when he was only a word, was able to cause me sleepless nights and shivers of intimation, is the more dangerous. Our seeming detachment gathers strength. I sit back impersonally and say, I see human vanity, or feel myself full of gladness because there is a gentleness between him and her, or even feel irritation because he lets her do too much of the work, sits lolling whilst she chops wood for the stove.”

There’s an unmistakable feeling of impeding doom, as if she knows that even though nothing physical has happened between them yet, she’s sealed her own deal just by being there with him and it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable strikes.

“While we drive along the road in the evening, talking as impersonally as a radio discussion, he tells me: ‘A boy with green eyes and long lashes, whom I had never seen before, took me into the back of a printshop and made love to me, and for two weeks I went around remembering the numbers on bus conductors’ hats.’ ‘One should love beings whatever their sex’, I reply, but withdraw into the dark with my obstreperous shape of shame, offended with my own flesh which cannot metamorphose into a printshop boy with armpits like chalices.”

So there you have it: Meaningful Car Scene n°1. He confesses he had a homosexual experience (and he enjoyed it, or so it seems) and she’s jealous but not outraged or disgusted, which is quite a big deal if you think this book was first published in 1945. (It’s also worth noting that, in her later years, Elizabeth Smart had affairs with both men and women). Another thing I noticed as I was writing this is that sentence, “remembering the numbers on bus conductors’ hats”, which reminded me of that line in Phoney:

Who can make Hitler Seem like a bus conductor? You do, oh Phoney you do

It’s probably just a coincidence, but I found it funny nonetheless.

“He kissed my forehead driving along the coast in the evening, and now, wherever I go, like the sword of Damocles, that greater never-to-be-given kiss hangs above my doomed head. He took my hand between the two shabby front seats of the Ford, and it was dark, and I was looking the other way, but now that hand casts everywhere an octopus shadow from which I can never escape. The tremendous gentleness of that moment smothers me under; […] I stand on the edge of the cliff, but the future is already done.”

Meaningful Car Scene n°2. There’s a first attempt at physical contact and by now he seems to have realised she has feelings for him, so he’s trying to see how far he can push himself with her.

Now, I’m just gonna go ahead and say it: I feel like something very similar to this may have happened between Johnny and Morrissey. The reason why I decided to write this analysis is because, once I read the book, I fully realised the pervasiveness of its influence in many of the lyrics Morrissey wrote while he was in The Smiths (especially during the Meat Is Murder era) and in the first years of his solo career but, as much as people talked about it, I feel like they never went deep enough. The way I see it, Morrissey had every reason to relate to the protagonist, even though she’s a woman. Someone who falls deeply in love with a married man (with bisexual tendencies, it seems) and is quite concerned with the ethics of what she’s doing but at the same time is very certain of her feelings for him. The man, on the other hand, seems to have a much more ambiguous attitude, accepting her love but also wanting to keep a respectable façade by staying with his wife. If we assume that Morrissey did harbour romantic feelings for Johnny, it’s easy to see why he would choose this book as a way to sublimate them, especially if we consider how the queer factor would’ve made them even less acceptable in the eyes of society.

But going back to the book… what about the man’s wife?

“By day she obeys the voice of love as the stricken obey their god, and she walks with the light step of hope which only the naive and the saints know. […] He also is bent towards her in an attitude of solicitude. Can he hear his own heart while he listens for the tenderness of her sensibilities? Is there a way at all to avoid offending the lamb of god?”

As I said before, she doesn’t seem to be especially jealous of his wife, but that may be because at the moment she’s high on the secret attentions her husband is giving her, so it’s easy for her to feel sorry for this other woman who’s being cheated on right under her own roof.

I can’t help but think about how Morrissey and Angie had their own relationship and seemed to be quite close. I mean, that must have been a bit of a weird dynamic (for Moz at least), and I wonder how they worked it out.

“I never was in love with death before, nor felt grateful because the rocks below could promise certain death. But now the idea of dying violently becomes an act wrapped in attractive melancholy, and displayed with every blandishment. For there is no beauty in denying love, except perhaps by death, and towards love what way is there? To deny love, and deceive it meanly by pretending that what is unconsummated remains eternal, or that love sublimated reaches highest to heavenly love, is repulsive, as the hypocrite’s face is repulsive when placed too near the truth. […] I might be better fooled, but can I see the light of a match while burning in the arms of the sun?”

There’s another reference to dying by throwing herself off a cliff, but the really interesting part is what comes after. The narrator rejects the idea that spiritual love is the highest form of love, which is achieved by embracing its physical side instead. It’s not enough for her to have a platonic bond with the man she loves because she wants him in mind, body and soul.

While reading this, I couldn’t help but draw some parallels:

- “Dying violently becomes an act wrapped in attractive melancholy.” → “To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.” - “Can I see the light of a match while burning in the arms of the sun?” → “There is a light and it never goes out.”

And then, opening the penultimate paragraph of this first chapter:

“I have learned to smoke because I need something to hold on to. I dare not be without a cigarette in my hand.”

This is one of the most obvious one. If we look at the lyrics for What She Said (which is based almost entirely on this book), it’s pretty self-explanatory:

What she said: ‘I smoke ‘cause I’m hoping for a nearly death And I need to cling to something.’

PART II This part is mainly about the remorse the protagonist is feeling towards the man’s wife, who has now realised something happened between the two of them.

“Her eyes pierced all the veils that protected my imagination against ruinous knowledge. […] Is there no other channel of my deliverance except by her martyrdom?”

It’s quite interesting to note how the chapter opens with:

“God, come down […] and tell me who will drown in so much blood.”

And then, on the next page:

“I am blind, but blood, not love, blinded my eye. Love lifted the weapon but guided my crime.”

Both of these lines reminded me of the lyrics for Yes, I Am Blind:

Yes, I am blind No, I can't see The good things Just the bad things, oh...

Yes, I am blind No, I can't see There must be something Horribly wrong with me?

God, come down If you're really there Well, you're the one who claims to care

It then goes on:

“… she whom I have injured, and whose agony it is my penalty to watch, lies gasping, but still living, on the land.”

- “Gasping, but still living.” → “Gasping, but somehow still alive.” (Well I Wonder)

PART III The narrator spends most of this chapter gushing about how in love she is with this man, who in the meantime has followed her back home to spend some time with her (though it’s not clear whether he has left his wife for her or not.)

“Even the precise geometry of his hand, when I gaze at it, dissolves me into water and I flow away in a flood of love.”

(I have nothing to say about this line except that I like it and that I can’t help but imagine Morrissey staring at Johnny’s hands as he picks the chords of his guitar, thinking these exact same thoughts.)

“When the Ford rattles up to the door, five minutes (five years) late, and he walks across the lawn under the pepper-trees, I stand behind the gauze curtains, unable to move to meet him, or to speak, as I turn to liquid to invade his every orifice when he opens the door.”

Yet another reference to his car. Also yeah, you’re wet for him, we get it.

“And there is so much for me, I am suddenly so rich, and I have done nothing to deserve it, to be so overloaded. All after such a desert. All after I had learnt to say, I am nothing, and I deserve nothing. […] It has happened, the miracle has arrived, everything begins today, […] all the paraphernalia of existence, all my sad companions of these last twenty years, […] all the world solicits me with joy, leaps at me electrically, claiming its birth at last.”

I can’t help but think about how similarly Morrissey must have felt after Johnny knocked on his door, after having spent his last twenty years in much the same way the narrator had, feeling lonely and isolated.

I mean, he even said so himself:

“He appeared at a time when I was deeper than the depths, if you like. And he provided me with this massive energy boost. I could feel Johnny’s energy just seething inside of me.”

“I was there, dying, and he rescued me.”

The chapter ends with this sentence:

“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death.”

Which kinda reminds me of that part in Rusholme Ruffians:

So scratch my name on your arm with a fountain pen (This means you really love me)

PART IV This is, in my opinion, the book’s most interesting chapter. What happens is, they get stopped as they’re crossing the Arizona border and once the cops realise they’re together but not married to each other, the take them to the police station, interrogate them for several hours about the nature of their relationship and then make them leave separately.

Once again, one of the most dramatic scenes takes place in a car.

I fully believe that Morrissey wrote both The Boy With The Thorn In His Side and later Late Night, Maudlin Street with this entire part in mind.

“They are taking me away in a police car […] They are prosecuting me for silence and for love […] They drove me away in a police car. […] For too much love, only for too much love. […] Are you not convinced, inspector? Do you not believe in love?”→ “They took you away in a police car / Inspector – don’t you know? Don’t you care? Don’t you know – about love?” (Late Night, Maudlin Street)

“They intercepted our love because of what was in our eyes. […] Did they see such flagrant proof and still not believe?” → “How can they see the love in our eyes and still they don’t believe us?” (The Boy With The Thorn In His Side)

I wonder who “they” were, though. I mean, we know that in the book, when she says: “They are prosecuting me for silence and for love” she clearly means the authorities, but what did Morrissey mean? Were “they” those same “people who are weaker/uglier than you and I” and those “evil people (who) prosper over the likes of you and me always”? And did he have some specific names in mind, or did he just mean society in general? As in: “They (the general public / the media / the music industry) can’t (don’t want to?) see we love each other because they’re not ready to accept that idea yet, but they’re more than happy to profit from us and our art, which is only made possible BECAUSE of that love.”

The penultimate paragraph before the end of the chapter feels especially relevant:

“All our wishes were private, we desired no more scope than ourselves. Could we corrupt the young by gazing into each other’s eyes? Would they leave their offices? Would big business suffer?”

PART V The protagonist comes back home feeling sorry for herself. Her family doesn’t approve of her relationship with a married man, but she refuses to apologise and spends most of her time contemplating nature and reminiscing about what happened.

Another quote which Morrissey probably used as inspiration for Late Night…

“Every yellow or scarlet leaf hangs like a flag waving me on.” → “Every hag waves me on / Secretly wishing me gone.”

PART VI The protagonist has an argument with her father, who’s worried about her state. Her mother doesn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore and even her brother is sceptical about the whole situation. She then reminisces about leaving Ottawa with him (she’s Canadian) and she talks at length about how they’re meant to be together no matter what. She also finds out she’s pregnant.

At the start, she mentions neighbours who warn her to stay away from him:

“The well-meaning matrons who, from their insulated living say, ‘My dear, I think you would would regret it afterwards if you broke up a marriage,’ ‘When you felt it about to happen the right thing would have been to have gone away at once.”

I wonder how many people around The Smiths were aware of Morrissey being in love with Johnny (because at this point, no one can convince me he wasn’t) and, if they were, how much did they know? Did they ever talked to him about it? Did they warn him about being cautious, about not revealing too much of his own feelings in his songs? And did they mention how bad it would look for him if he broke up a couple?

“The policeman grows fatter each day and rivals the new tanks. He blots out the doorway of the little café. A couple seeing him spills the milk at the counter, remembering what they did under the bridge last night. But the policeman is blind. He strikes only when he hears a loud noise. There are others, though, who have eyes like shifty hawks, and they prowl the streets searching for a face whereon an illegal kiss might be forming. No, there is no defence for love, and tears will only increase the crime.”

Here she’s talking about how, while in the midst of a war (the book is set in the 40s), the police (and society in general) seem to be concerned with futile things like arresting people who are doing nothing but love each other and it reminds me of a quote from Morrissey’s Autobiography:

“Men were draped with medals for killing other men yet imprisoned for loving one another.”

Later on, she makes a point of proclaiming herself ready to take their relationship as it is, without expecting much of a future.

“Though this is all there is […] I accept it without tomorrows and without any lilies of promise. It is enough, the now, and though it comes without anything, it gives me everything. […] But as long as the accessories are such now as to make me over-armed with weapons to combat the antagonistic world, even if a thousand programs go wrong, I won’t lament that past I was when I could see no future.”

She then tries to dissipate any doubts he might have about their relationship (because it looks as if he’s already starting to second-guess himself) by repeatedly reassuring him that she’s the one for him and that, as much as he tries, he can’t escape that fact.

“Remember I am not temptation to you, but everything is which inclines you away. Nor are you to me, but my entire goal. Sometimes you see this as clearly as I do now, for you say, ‘Do you think if I didn’t I could have…?’”.

I wonder… if Johnny hadn’t already been with Angie when he knocked on Morrissey’s door, would things have panned out differently for them? Would they have dared to take their relationship to the next level in spite of society’s backlash?

“Do you see me then as the too-successful one, like a colossus whose smug thighs rise obliviously out of sorrow? Or as the detestable all-female, who grabs and devours, invulnerable with greed? Alas, these are your sins, your garments of shame, and not the blond-sapling boys with blue eye-shadow leaning amorously towards you in the printshop.”

Leaving aside the fact that this man is garbage, she’s obviously anxious to reassure him that it’s not his bisexuality that saddens her, but the fact that he sees her as a threat.

Also that line, “grabs and devours”, will then be used by Morrissey in The Headmaster Ritual:

He grabs and devours He kicks me in the showers Kicks me in the showers And he grabs and devours

By the end of the chapter though, her words of comfort are starting to sound ominous:

“Only remember: I am not the ease, but the end. I am not to blind you but to find you. What you think is the sirens singing to lure you to your doom is only the voice of the inevitable, welcoming you after so long a wait. I was made only for you.”

PART VII The man has a breakdown and he’s interned in a psych facility. She tries to go and see him, but his wife is already there. He’d previously written her a letter, asking her to take him back. The protagonist leaves and when she comes back a few days later they leave together, but when she tries to confront him about the letter he refuses to listen to her. They have a fight and she ends up capitulating because he’s still ill and she wants to believe him when he tells her she’s the only one.

“My love, why did you leave me on Lexington Avenue in the Ford that had no breaks?” This line reminds me a bit of Break Up The Family, when Morrissey says:

Hailstones, driven home In a car – no breaks? I don’t mind

Which coincidentally is what’s happening in this chapter: the honeymoon phase is clearly over, he’s having troubles with his guilty conscience and he deals with them by distancing himself from her, even though she’s expecting his child.

PART VIII He and his wife move to London where the war is raging and, after a while, the protagonist follows them. She stays in a dingy hotel and he occasionally visits her to have sex with her, but by now it’s clear that he has no intention of leaving his wife for her, so they often fight and every day she’s getting more and more desperate and isolated.

The chapter opens with the line:

“His brother and his mother and his grandmother lie abandoned in death on the stones of the London Underground.”

This vaguely reminds me once again of Late Night…

You gran died And you mother died On Maudlin Street In pain and ashamed With never time to say Those special things

“Bombs are bigger, but the human brains they burst remain the same. It is the faces we once kissed that are being smashed in the English coastal towns, the hand we shook that are swept up with the debris […] and love still uproots the heart better than an imagined landmine.”

This paragraph makes me think of Ask:

Because if it’s not love Then it’s the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb The bomb, the bomb That will bring us together

In the meantime, their relationship is going sour and the protagonist feels they’re reaching a breaking point.

“When the ship cracks in the typhoon, we cover our heads and tell ourselves that all will resolve back to normal. But we are unbelieving. This time may not be like the other times that with time grew into cheerful anecdotes. […] O where does he stalk like a horse in pastures very far afield? I cannot hear him, and silence writes more terrible things than he can ever deny. Is there a suspicion the battle is lost? Certainly he killed me fourteen nights in succession.”

I can’t help but think about how Morrissey must have felt when Johnny told him he wanted to leave The Smiths. People around him (Stephen Street, Grant Showbiz) thought he was going to kill himself and the fact that Johnny then went on holiday and never made contact with him must have alarmed him even more. He’d first thought the situation could be repaired, but by then he must’ve realised the end was upon them.

“He did the one sin which Love will not allow. […] He did sin against Love, and though he says it was in Pity’s name, and that Pity was only fighting a losing battle with Love, he was useless to Pity, and in wavering, injured Love, which was, after all, what he staked all for, all he had, ungamblable.”

From what I gather, he went back to his wife because he felt sorry for her and the protagonist can’t accept that because in her eyes their love was everything that mattered and everything they had.

Now: as I said before, I think Morrissey was inspired by this book because he saw himself in it. I think he must’ve found many similarities between the protagonist’s situation and his own, both of them in love with a married man who doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Johnny and Angie split for a brief period in 1983, when The Smiths went on their first USA tour, and I’ve seen a few people speculate that if something physical happened between Morrissey and Johnny, it may very well have happened then. Morrissey may have taken advantage of the fact that Johnny was free and overcame his fears by making the first move. Or maybe, Johnny was the one who, once aware of Morrissey’s feelings for him, decided to take the bull by its horns. I don’t know. Nobody does. What I wonder is… once Johnny went back to Angie, how did Morrissey feel? Because I don’t think he was all that thrilled. Did he think he did it out of pity, like the protagonist of the book did? If something had happened between them on that tour, did he feel used? Did he feel mildly outraged? Did he resign himself to consider it a one-night stand and nothing more, even though his feelings for Johnny clearly went deeper than that? It’s also worth noticing how the references to this book start to spring up in his lyrics from Meat Is Murder onwards, that is, after that tour in 1983.

“How can I put love up to my hopes so suicidal and wild-eyed when the matter is too simple and too plain: it is her tears he feels trickling over his breast each night; it is for her he feels the concern; and the pity, after all, not the love, fills his twenty-four hours. Perhaps I am his hope. But then she is his present. And if then she is his present, I am not his present. Therefore, I am not, and I wonder why no one has noticed I am dead and taken the trouble to bury me. […] For even if he loves me, he is in her arms. O the fact, the unalterable fact: it is she he is with: he is with her: he is not with me because he is sleeping with her.”

For me, this might be the most heartbreaking part of the book. The protagonist knows that no matter what she tells herself, when he’s done with her he comes home to his wife while she’s stuck in a hotel room in a country which is not her own.

That line, “I wonder why no one has noticed I am dead and taken the trouble to bury me”, also crops up right at the beginning of What She Said:

What she said: “How come someone hasn’t noticed that I’m dead And decided to bury me? God knows, I’m ready!”

Which makes me think Morrissey must have somehow related to this part. “He loves me, but he’s still with her.” “He has martyred me, but for no cause, nor has he any idea of the size and consequence of my wounds. Perhaps he will never know, for to say, You killed me daily and O most especially nightly, would imply blame. I do not blame, nor even say, You might have done this or this rather than that. I even say, You must do that, you have to do it, there is no alternative, urging my own murder. […] If ever again he lets those nights happen, or dallies with remorse for past sins to others while sinning most dangerously against me, I shall be unrevivable. I shall, whether I want to or not, be struck dead with the fact. And he may clothe it in all humanity’s most melting colours, and pity, and sympathy, and call on love to be kind, and I too shall pray, Let me be kind, but it will be no good.”

This entire thing reinforces my first thought, which is: Morrissey and Johnny at one point had a one-night stand (“It was a good lay, good lay...”), except for Morrissey there were much stronger feelings attached to it.

As hurt as she is, the protagonist doesn’t blame the man for going back to his wife and she even encourages him, because she recognises that, at the end of the day, it’s the best course of action for everyone involved. What she wishes wouldn’t happen again are those nights, coupled with him badmouthing her to others out of remorse for his own actions.

If we once again consider the queer factor in the relationship between Morrissey and Johnny, it wouldn’t surprise me if Morrissey followed the same reasoning when Johnny went back to Angie because, as much as Morrissey loved him, he wouldn’t be able to give him the stability of a straight relationship. (That isn’t to say Johnny didn’t love Angie, btw. I’m sure he loved her deeply and he still does, but I also think at the time some internal conflict was present because, on some level, he reciprocated Morrissey’s feelings.)

That last line, “… and call on love to be kind, and I too shall pray, Let me be kind” reminds me of I Know It’s Over:

It takes strength to be gentle and kind

This can be applied to many situations, but I feel like it becomes especially relevant in the context of the love of your life leaving you for someone else, who you also care about.

PART IX The protagonist goes back home to Canada and has to face the invasive questioning of neighbours who see her with a big belly but no wedding ring. After a while though, she realises she must see the man she loves and so she leaves to meet him once again.

“I am lonely. I cannot be a female saint. I want the one I want. He is the one I picked out from the world. I picked him out in cold deliberation. But the passion was not cold. It kindled me. It kindled the world. Love, love, give my heart ease, put your arms round me, give my heart ease. Feel the little bastard.”

- “I want the one I want.” → “I want the one I can’t have.” - “Put your arms round me.” → “All I ask of you is one thing that you never do / Would you put your arms around me? (I won’t tell anyone).” (Tomorrow)

PART X The final chapter opens with the line that gave the book its title: “By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept.” He didn’t come to collect her, so she has a breakdown right in the middle of the station. The ending is kind of confusing. It looks as if she resigns herself to go back to him just to have sex with him, and she tries to convince herself everything is fine, but it clearly isn’t.

Elizabeth Smart went back to George Barker time and time again, even though their relationship was dysfunctional to say the least and they were both very damaged, egotistical individuals. He cheated on her repeatedly but she loved him nonetheless, so I guess it would make sense for the book to end like this as well.

“They obey the glint in the middle of my glazed eye, for it is the fierce last stand of all I have.” → “Gasping - but somehow still alive / This is the fierce last stand of all I am.” (Well I Wonder)

“I wanted only one thing. I gave you the full instructions. The name, I spelt it out in letters as long as a continent, even the address, the address that makes waterfalls of my blood because it is also her address. I said quite plainly and loudly: This is what I want. I want this, and I don’t want any bonus. Just give me this and I’ll pay any price you ask. I made no reservations. You took advantage of this. I never grudged. But, Sir, so what I plead is just – what are you stalling for? There is no more to give.”

This entire paragraph reminds me of Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.

“He hangs, damp with his impotent tears, nailed by one hand to Love and by the other one to Pity.”

This man is split between love and duty and can’t seem to be able to make a decision, with everyone suffering as a consequence, including him. That’s what the protagonist sees. What I see is a man who likes to have his ego stroked and doesn’t mind a bit of drama. It’s not that he’s unable to make a decision, he just doesn’t want to.

“Is it possible he cannot hear me when he lies so close, so lightly asleep? […] My dear, my darling, do you hear me when you sleep?”

These parts were clearly used by Morrissey as inspiration for the lyrics of Well I Wonder (which, like What She Said, was based almost entirely on this book – I even think they were written back to back.)

Well I wonder Do you hear me when you sleep?

“This is the very room he chose instead of Love. Let it be quiet and full of healing. […] It is the cursed comfort he preferred to my breast. The one who shares it weeps silently in corners, is tender unnoticed, and makes his necessary tea. ‘Have you seen my notebook, dear?’ ‘It is under the desk, my sweet.’ Give it to him, O my gentle usurper, whom I also have usurped, my enemy whom I have both killed and been killed by. […] He also is drowning in the blood of too much sacrifice. Lay aside the weapons, love, for all battles are lost.”

At last he’s made his choice and if we’ve learned something from history it’s that a man’s comfort will always be more important than a woman’s safety and peace of mind.

FINAL COMMENTS As I said before, one of the reasons I think Morrissey was inspired by this book is that he found its story to be relatable, but it’s not just that. The language, as you may have noticed by reading some of its quotes, is quite poetic, abstract and melodramatic, with a major focus on introspection and an underlying sense of pervasive melancholy. This is an artistic quality that both Morrissey and Johnny had in common, even though they expressed it differently: one through his lyrics, the other through his sound. Ultimately, I think Morrissey found By Grand Central Station… very useful creatively and personally. Creatively because it gave him the inspiration to write some of his best songs (also, here’s a reminder that both Moz and Johnny declared Well I Wonder as one of their favourite Smiths’ songs at some point), and personally because it provided him with an outlet to confront his feelings for Johnny, which I think must have been quite tumultuous. With a shortage of LGBT media which was even more prevalent in the 80s, queer people often had to read between the lines of straight stories to find something to relate to, and I feel like that’s what Morrissey did. Personally, after reading it I found myself surprised by the superficiality with which most people (biographers, reviewers etc.) talked about its role in Morrissey’s lyrics, because clearly there’s so much more to it than stealing a line here and there. It’s also about him feeling invested in a story because it spoke to him and it represented him, at least partially, in an era when anyone who didn’t fit in with society’s standards of what it meant to be a man or a woman might as well not have existed at all.

#the smiths #morrissey #johnny marr #marrissey #by grand central station i sat down and wept #elizabeth smart

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hollywritesinstardust · 6 years

Text

Sister Sinner, Chapter Five

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

Fandom: Criminal Minds/White Collar

Characters/Pairings: Derek Morgan/Reader; Hotch, Neal, Peter, OMC (Gio), OMC (Frank)

Words: 2,452

Y/N - Your Name

Although Mozzie seemed to think that you’d let yourself be handed over to the wolves, your case continued steadily. Over the next five days, you had been contacted by Gio and had another meeting with him, this time in an almost-empty library while you wore a wire underneath your bra strap. You talked shop. You knew how to shoot a gun, but you didn’t know how to smuggle them or what grade of weaponry he and his bosses would be after, so you repeated the information given to you in your earpiece by Agents Prentiss and Rossi during the meeting. You also lifted a cigarette butt that Gio had been smoking and got it to the CSI lab, where they sent Garcia their file on the DNA match and you positively confirmed who Gio was.

While you were waiting for the next part of the operation, you kept talking with the BAU agents and irritating Ruiz with your mere presence. Morgan was the one you spoke with most, and the most candidly. There was something about him that made you feel like you could speak in confidence. Reid was also kind of a sweetheart, and he reminded you of Moz in some ways which made you more comfortable. JJ was also one of your favorites. She had a calm, caring demeanor like El but carried herself with the authority and confidence of an agent you could feel safe trusting your health to.

“Boyfriend?” Morgan – well, Derek, as you called him now – asked, playing 20 Questions and bouncing a stress ball back and forth across the desk with you.

You smirked. “Why, are you interested?” You caught the particularly hard throw and tossed it back. “No, for the record. Last one turned out to be a buzzkill.”

“You mean a cop,” he accused lightly, his eyes a little mischievous and daring.

Shaking your head, you repeated, “No, I mean just in general a buzzkill.” You grabbed the ball again and gave it a squeeze, battering it between your hands. “No wine, no dancing, ‘don’t run in the snow, there might be ice.’ And that counted as two questions.” While Derek protested that the second wasn’t a real question, just a follow-up, you threw the ball back at him and asked, “Dogs or cats?”

“Dogs,” he replied with no hesitation. “Don’t tell Prentiss.”

“And, let’s see, DC or Marvel?”

“DC,” he replied easily, giving you a scolding look. “Superpowers versus a powered suit? Sorry, Iron Man, there’s no competition.”

“Superpowers versus hyper intelligence,” you countered, because that was Iron Man’s real strength. “… But I see your point, a little bit.”

Hotch clearing his throat made you both stop. You took your feet off of another of the chairs and let yours tip back down onto the floor evenly, sitting up straight. Derek tossed the stress ball over his shoulder towards the side of the room without blinking, pretending he hadn’t been playing with it. The boss looked at the two of you both a little sternly, like he knew you hadn’t been working.

“We’ve been so productive,” you promised, reading the expression. “Already did a cognitive interview.” Derek walked you through one of your meeting with Frank Gambino, and Garcia did a comparison against the DMV and the sketch from the artist you sat down with and confirmed you had met with the Don.

“You’re about to get even more productive,” Hotch decreed, pulling out a seat and sitting at the table with his crossed arms on top. “Sofia’s burner phone just got a text with GPS coordinates, a time, and a date.”

You perked up, intrigued and a little excited to see it through. “Think this is the drop?” You asked, eager to finish playing your part and see the rats get put in cages. Neal was your loved one and he went out of his way to make sure no one was hurt; those that took financial hits were always people who could afford to lose. The Gambinos were just monsters, plain and simple.

Hotch was nodding while Derek took a photograph of your burner phone’s screen, then gave it to you with the text pulled up. You noted that the time was in military time and Gio was planning on you being there that night. “Wow. He moves quick,” you remarked.

“There’s a cargo ship sailing into a northern shipping dock this evening,” Hotch explained. “Garcia got ahold of someone with SECNAV and found it’s sailing in from a region known for its loose handle on guns and similar dangerous equipment. With the information you floated undercover, they’re likely betting that her armament is on that ship. They want to trade hands at the docks.”

“Get done with me before moving the goods, so I don’t get to see where they take it.” You realized, and yeah, that was pretty smart. You had to applaud them for doing their research.

“That’s our thought, too,” Hotch agreed with you. “If all goes well, we can nab them as soon as Frank Gambino shows up. With the probable cause, not to mention the incriminating audio you’ve recorded, we can get a warrant and search his premises. Anything we find there can be added to the prosecutors’ case.”

“So I just need to show up, get them comfortable, and wait for Derek and his raid party,” you summarized, giving the younger agent a sidelong, confident look. We’ve got this, you told him with your eyes, and he hid a smile by looking down to the table, shaking his head slightly at your assurance and enthusiasm. “It’s practically in the bag already.”

Gio met you – well, Sofia – outside of the shipyard. You were pretty sure that you were supposed to need an ID card to get in, but there was no one on duty at the gate and Gio had a code that seemed to open it up. You sent a glance towards the guard’s booth and made a mental note to send someone there ASAP to make sure it really was empty, and the guard wasn’t lying incapacitated.

“So polite of you to come at last notice,” Gio told you, seeming like he was trying to be conversational. He was definitely wearing an earpiece and made no attempts at hiding it, and you wondered if you’d hear Frank’s voice if it were just a little louder.

“Business is business,” you replied coolly, not giving anything away. “I like closing deals, just like any businessperson.”

Gio socialized poorly, like he was usually taciturn, but he had never been quiet for very long before. You didn’t think much of it when he didn’t continue making small talk with you. If Frank just wanted to get this over with, fine. You at least had that much in common. The muscleman led you through the shipyard. You checked your watch after walking four minutes, glanced around for the sunset, and realized you were going east. When Gio stopped finally in the midst of a collection of unloaded trans-Atlantic shipping containers – huge metal boxes, coated in solid copper, silver, and red coats – you felt a little overwhelmed. The containers were too big to see around and created the impression that you were in a maze.

Is it intentional? You wondered as Gio looked down at his phone, continuing to hold his silence. You had him in a shipyard he wasn’t supposed to be in, waiting for a nonexistent armament of smuggled firearms. As soon as Frank showed up, your job was done, and you could leave, and you knew that the tracking aspect of your watch meant there were FBI agents tailing you.

You didn’t wait long, just standing there like a sitting duck and looking around yourself. The rendezvous point reminded you of a scene from NCIS. (You were pretty sure the scene you were remembering didn’t end well for Tony or Ziva.) Then there were more footsteps, faint at first but growing in volume, and metal-toed boots carried in an Italian-looking man you’d never seen before on your left. Just then you realized that you were in a narrow cross-section of the containers and looked to your right. A second man, this one looking less Italian and more Latin American, came from that direction; from around a container at your front approached a man you remembered seeing at the library in your last clandestine meeting, but you hadn’t flagged him as another henchman. Now you knew better.

Surrounded on all sides… which means…

You turned around slowly while putting your hands up to show you were harmless. Frank Gambino slunk up behind you, wearing leather loafers and a grey tweed suit. He was immaculately groomed, looked richly dressed, and though he was short, he had an air of power and intimidation around him that you could see the others felt, too. It was the kind of atmosphere Keller wanted to carry but just never could manage.

“Sofia,” Frank said genially to you, with a handsome smile above his dark beard. He had a wide face, thin eyebrows, and pink, sun-damaged cheeks. And a handgun clenched in his dominant fist. “Cara ragazza. Thank you for coming, really, it makes my job so much easier.”

He raised the handgun. You lifted your hands higher above your head and locked your eyes on his. You knew it made you seem more controlled, but its main purpose was to keep you from staring at the weapon pointed right at your face.

“What’s this about, Frank?” You asked, forcing your tone light. You were a few notches higher than usual. “I thought we were friends. Ish.”

“I did, too. Then, me and my boys, we thought, save the pretty girl the trouble, unload the shipment for her.” Frank gestured around you at the containers and you saw with a start that they’d been opened, left just slightly ajar. They went through everything. “And wire your money through those lovely islands. Except… there’s one problem. There’s no shipment.

“Your references checked out at first,” the Don continued, giving you credit and waving the gun slightly as if in praise. “Convincing cover. Dig a little deeper, though, and Rydell’s burnt. He was one of us because he went away. Know how to look, work the system, he never went away.”

You cursed under your breath. In most cases, convictions were public record. Neal’s alias of Gary Rydell had been arrested to preserve his cover, but Frank or one of the people who work for him must have searched for more info to prove that Rydell was legit and found that the man never really existed… at least, not the way you’d led them to believe.

“It will be a shame to ruin such a beautiful face,” Frank mourned, considering your scowling expression. “But then, no cop can be as beautiful as liberty.” One side of his mouth lifted up and he cocked the gun, preparing to fire. “I do love your American values.”

It would have been such a cliché to say that your life flashed. You’d come close to dying on many occasions, and you’d never actually had your life flash before your eyes. You had regrets and you had thoughts, and you missed people, and you wanted your mom before she became so distant or you wanted Ellen because you thought of her as a mother, too. This was the first time you’d really had memories come to mind while looking down the barrel of a gun, and it was probably because your family been right, this was too dangerous, and you hoped they wouldn’t feel too guilty because everything that had happened had been your choice.

Neal raised a glass towards you with a serene smile, both of you around his dining table in the penthouse. “To first drinks,” he offered as a toast.

You snorted. “Neal, you gave me my first drink when I was sixteen.”

“Yeah,” he recalled, nodding with a smirk, “But this is the first time we’ve drank together while it’s legal.”

You rubbed your eyes again and let him celebrate. You’d let him celebrate any stupid thing he wanted as long as he wasn’t wearing an orange jumpsuit.

A knock on the door came before it was opened, but only just. Before Neal could say so much as an invitation, it was being pushed on. It was left unlocked, so a tall man in a suit came right on inside, looking around curiously.

“Nice place,” he commented. You held your tongue from everything you wanted to say. You’d never forget what Peter Burke looked like for as long as you lived. He was the man who’d taken Neal away for years.

As if he knew what you were thinking – and hell, he probably did – Neal reached for your hand and squeezed softly under the table, where Peter couldn’t see, trying to remind you that he would still be in jail if the FBI agent hadn’t chosen to take a chance on him. It didn’t matter. Peter was still your least favorite person.

“Oh, you had company,” Peter said in surprise, just noticing you. You smiled thinly. He smiled back, uncomfortably, not recognizing you. “Well, um – you didn’t mention you had a date.” He said to Neal.

You both looked at each other in horror. “Oh, God, no,” you both objected simultaneously, devolving into hurried assurances that you were not, in fact, dating. You departed soon after, bitter and angry at Peter for interrupting your first evening with your brother in more than four years.

Give me a different memory, you thought at your brain angrily. Give me a happier one. Where I’m not so pissed off at Peter anymore, because now he’s like family. That gun was still there, waving in front of your face, and you didn’t want to die period but especially not with resentment towards someone who you wanted to think about with respect and love. It was hard to think, though – whatever came to mind just happened to be what you remembered, and the panic and fear and adrenaline clouded everything else.

Everything except for your current senses, which were still ready to fight or to take flight. You darted your eyes around fearfully like a bird looking for a safe escape, and encroaching on all sides from around shipping crates and the large metal containers you saw FBI agents in Kevlar vests. It could’ve been Peter or Hotch or even Ruiz, and you still would have felt like the sky had opened up and shone a ray of angelic, saving light on you. Derek’s voice magnified in a bullhorn made your knees weak.

“Put the gun down! You are surrounded!”

A/N: There will only be one more chapter after this! I expect the total of Sister Sinner to be about 14-14.5K, counting all six chapters. Thank you all for reading!

On the tags list are: @bestillmystuckyheart, @skeletoresinthebasement, @werewitchling, @1enchantedfantasy1, and @ragweed98!

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wayward-hums · 3 years

Text

Backscratcher Solved

The things you believed in will stay like the needle in the eye of your son, forever, while violet lights on Christmas windows tell their young to count the stars above for the tow trucks to come.

One snap of both fingers on both hands is that quick to forget the loss of the eye for the storm. Bjork and her son on some island are editing magazines, as the newspapers cut their font accordingly.

Believe in Weimar - all the dogs that make you happy today are the cats with burnt tails at night, and that weeps you out.

Tell Eno about the sign, as present continuous couldn't be if not for being alive. Forget the Judge, he knows.

My fire is despairing in Chernobyl while the elephant's leg is laughing inside one snake turned into a wrong god.

My orange later is the new blue and black depending on the dalton in the snow.

Cilla approves of my literature beyond the thistles of the pale lilac rainbow.

Roma follow lithium when Kurt knows how right Reznor could have been if he still believed in self destruction from Lucas.

There's too much actor geometry in my systems. I think this is stolen from Ballard. Ballard who did you steal it from? Jews probably... Then I feel shameless to steal it from you once more.

If you want to find my twisted sister, my anchor has made a pact in Panjeea not to look in the eye when the Celtic ring is breaking on the middle finger.

The man hammering the anvil still sits on the fence before the oval, surrounded by coal and covered by the trees.

Pigeons not only develop a coop, they wait before the docks positioning themselves in the manner of your being and everything turns against Gira machine because his Polaroids don't match the patterns on Andy's chest.

My murder of crows never Rows M for H anymore, as the P is at composed consolidation with the Mac and cheese.

Is your purple super handed man still escaping through your husband's elbow while you stick your eye in it to see how close you are from reaching your own screw? He says quietly that they always come and so they do. They really do. I see them wandering around me in Jung and its shadows. I see stars. Little openings, usually of green glow.

My hook aura can do a cucumber before 9pm.

***

Keep all lose ends, you never know whether the mercurial son won't end up trashing background music.

Your belt in hypercube can do prime numbers showing the tree that cut its own head and turned into a stone from which Pegasus took young self into nowhere.

Gabo Othala Gabo Othala Gabo Othala.

The silver lining is on your apricot.

Remember that babies are on the mint trolley so the smoke is showing you Odin from the blood to the excrement in the river.

Mondays are manic and ratty, Tuesday is for the eternal love of Thom. On Wednesdays the leprechaun is flexing the muscles, while Thursday belongs to David... and it is so low, Lou needs to cut himself in the reeds for Iggy to pop alive on television. Running around the beach with a yoggi.

Jessica's Fridays are doing shrimps in the green mile jar for a doormouse.

Weekends don't come around. Or they do when Moz is unable to look me in the eye, cursing the father.

No-one really sells the world exactly, not even my self, my voided body.

Saturday could be the moment for Nick Cave's split with Blixa if not for the fact I'm on Jupiter and she is on Pluto.

No matter how much your raisin shows, the towel will sweep the others for you on a snow creamed Marilyn kiss from three Irelands visiting to and fro and then back to young Erin again.

This is not the time for the b&w, but for the 'S' that goes onto 'M' for the demon that doesn't breathe (it lives in the idea in the hallway-room that wasn't reversed to the time before the great break)

So count to nine (hee-haw) because 13 is the number reserved for jumping Heather / feather of the church of Brigid.

Silvans blow their Peruvian pipes for Oliver to replace Stuart, like a fiver killed through my barking girl hidden within an exhibitionist gym for when we were young animal girls.

Sometimes things feel like faceless beauty looking cardinal purple for Art to go turquoise and celeste on a mean lean green sunflower pact with a-cordian Jon.

There's too much carnelian on the Fubar for the floss of Leviathan and red weather drums hiding Indian eggs on mount I donated a paper plane to cover the moon of wolves in my polar bear lying on the floor.

A misogynist chef that cooks awesome hospital food without much attitude for love sings "wo' y'all yall".

"Keep it snappy for suffragette equalizers on central Deadpool Rock Resistance", said Edith in Glasgow while singing bread melody of the morning frost in pure mist.

David lynch knows not to pull 7 for a very long time in this factory.

Sunglasses at night might help, but children of the plague have begun their surreal journey with abacus to give a three - fingered hand shakes.

Bolt the doctor in the eye of your chin.

Apples don't talk of piety when they're unafraid of the mirror iris. Ewe and Grace won't ever do the thin daughter's water scale channel in the open.

There is a teal in Argos for the Chinese salmon and eels.

We won't scratch Hungarians to bring turkey to the bridge for the anti-heroes hidden in literature's fantastic eyelashes.

Please remember the terrifying future of the freeze. Why your brother is so full of angst about spiders and machines from war of the worlds. You love him and you understand how step-ladders work now.

Although you're still around the difficulty to forgive, regardless of the amount of Tzur's Ho and purple Sign O' the Times, she must have your name.

Gather self around the time you crunched and went back to say Carlin was not just right, he was essential.

You don't want to die holding an Artaud shoe but pancreatic cancer doesn't feel appealing either. Why is it always cancer or suicide by society?

Don't slice the ear, keep the slave in the black tulip for scientists to wonder.

Japan is saving the moment of air / water release for the grainy deserted field of barley, Roxy Boney.

Yoko Ono never meant to tell me until this December that I am Pepe Pewing lasers for Hong Kong.

I am forgiven.

There is sorrow for Libby in my dust bunnies, I crumble my rib and lung.

The right side of the body hailing to the man is the realm of the dead. Live your hands separately, I told them enough.

Raspberry slipper hill on Francis the magpie turn leopard once for the Tinkerbell to off herself for Disney-Pasta with a sample of Finland for the birds on your assessment notes.

At first you may think that the weirded masked nympho is having a pact with a hoover man and denotes the conversations to the red lion man blackmailed by the pen handling yellow, 9"11 causing peckers, over and over.

I said I won't Sanchez you that white frame for Chris and John, but I allowed my blue trousers to go full circle and come back as I don't feel much like creating portals in 2005, so don't dare stealing my love.

Time and morality are so relative it feels it was me who has always been giving to the eternity; I have given flowers for the red crown that brought cracks on the crocodile pavement for ankh girl go sandman.

I have awakened you and nursed Joe in his dream on the 01/12 by spitting on my totem.

If they are looking through my right eye, my left fountain keeps flowing gum that will come back in style, since the owls have left the ward with marlboro and lassoes, Dennis Jordan won't buffalo buffalo even for the ear.

***

Birds see my floaters and I don't catch black snow. One tiny spoon of Italian ice-cream wounded by an old relative (that is not with me anymore) is enough to convince Vienna of waiters.

FedEx kid told Tom who lately broke a lot of wall not to look me in the Wilson this time, one neighbour on covid19 is enough, we reckon. His son did some Buckley a while back. Who else looks like dope?

I learned that my cairn was a farmer. The one legged Alan tossed the coin to me. The deor collects no dandylion.

The tin with the stag in four A reflected the same pattern as the Rudolf before the || hallway, just like my radiator - dried bobble today.

They tried to recount me by removing my magnetic field of mice away, while adding heavier than life gravity onto my atlas that still reminds me of clear bag in Hungarian.

***

When I spoke to you the first time your blonde hair and pale skin were set on fire. I love every time you move your head towards a cat caress.

Phil Spector is still reincarnating outside the window. Swayze's wife must be furious about the theft of patsy Cline into the crazy vein of my middle finger.

The teared rose on Mexican palms have led me to a higher wisdom of Armenia.

Now that I listened to you I understand the highs of organic artists better and I'm disappointed it is leaving me while the gravity of rock and roll becomes too heavy to relate to my foetus on the leash the way I could relate before.

You have to be that tall to pass my headge-row with a lion tattoo on the armpit, when you drive over the body of that girl and get away with it, buddy.

Tear for Eddie.

Who is off the nut today? I'm only playing poker cards on my brown paladium. The ancient black cat knows no Asian bullshit

Hyenas are laughing about their shimmering initiation. Bird laughs with droplets falling on my right elbow. It serves me not (back when I got scared in the restaurant chain) until I'm served Jasmine knot.

I'm that girl everyone keeps selling and that man you can't look in the eye on your right. Stop using my raspberry rabbit, it is mine!

Why do You insist on using language as if it couldn't harm you? I'm least likely to, anyway.

***

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infolearn · 4 years

Text

The 60 Best Free SEO Tools [100% Free]

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Yes, it's called Keyword Sh****r. It pains me to write this. That said, it says what it does and does what it says. Type in a keyword and it, um, poops out a poop-ton of keywords. Get it: Keyword Sh****r 19. Keywords Everywhere

An SEO favorite! Install this browser extension for Firefox or Chrome, and see keyword suggestions with volume as you cruise the internet. Works in Google Search Console as well. This one is a must-have for keyword inspiration. Get it: Keywords Everywhere 20. Ubersuggest

Sometimes I make fun of Neil Patel because he does SEO in his pajamas. I'm probably jealous because I don't even own pajamas. Regardless, Neil took over Ubersuggest not long ago and gave it a major overall. If you haven't tried it in a while, it now goes way beyond keyword suggestions and offers a lot of extended SEO capabilities such as basic link metrics and top competitor pages. Get it: Ubersuggest Link Tools Tools to find, evaluate, and process backlink opportunities. 21. Disavow Tool

Google makes the Disavow Tool hard to find because most site owners usually don't need to use it. But when you do, it can be useful for getting penalties removed and some SEOs swear by it for fighting off negative SEO. If you choose to use this tool, be careful and check with this guide on disavowing the right links. Get it: Disavow Tool 22. Link Explorer

Link Explorer is arguably the largest, highest-accuracy link index and the most authoritative Domain Authority checker in the SEO world today, boasting 35 trillion links. The free account access gives you 10 queries and 50 rows of data per query every month, plus adds basic link metrics to the MozBar as you browse the web. Get it: Link Explorer 23. Link Miner

Link Miner is a free Chrome extension developed by Jon Cooper, one of the masters of link building. Use it to quickly find broken links on each page, as well as see basic link metrics as you search Google. Simple, easy, and useful. Get it: Link Miner 24. Detailed

Detailed is a unique type of free link research engine, developed by the marketing genius Glen Allsopp (you can find him in the comments below). Detailed focuses on what's driving links to some of the most popular niches on the web, without the extra fluff that can make reverse engineering success a sometimes time-consuming process. Oh, he's got a killer newsletter too. Get it: Detailed 25. Backlink Checker

Many people don't realize that Ahrefs offers a free backlink checker, but they do, and it's pretty good. It does have a number limitations compared to their full-fledged paid tool. For example, you're limited to 100 links, and you can't search by prefix or folder, but it's handy for those quick link checks, or if you're doing SEO on a tight budget. Get it: Backlink Checker Local SEO Free tools to optimize your on Google Maps and beyond. 26. Google My Business

Basically, this is the #1, must-have tool for Local SEO — especially if you live in a market served by Google. It allows you to claim your business, manage listing information, and respond to reviews — among other things. Claiming your business profile forms the foundation of most other local SEO activities, so it's an essential step. Get it: Google My Business 27. Google Review Link Generator

The Google Review Link Generator by Whitespark solves a simple problem - how do you give your customers a URL to leave a Google review for your business? Reviews drive rankings, but Google doesn't easily provide this. This generator makes it easy. Get it: Google Review Link Generator 28. Local Search Results Checker

One of the hardest parts of Local SEO is figuring out rankings from any location — especially when Google stubbornly wants to serve results from the location you're in. BrightLocal solves this with a quick local ranking tool that can virtually drop you into any location on earth to check actual local rankings. Get it: Local Search Results Checker 29. Moz Local Check Business Listing

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Mobile versions of websites often differ significantly from their desktop versions. Because Google has switched to mobile-first indexing, it's important that major elements (links, structured data, etc.) match on both versions. A number of tools will check this for you, but Zeo's is probably the most complete. Get it: Mobile First Index Checker 31. Mobile SERP Test

It's amazing how mobile search results can vary by both location AND device. MobileMoxie's mobile SERP test lets you compare devices side-by-side for any location, down to specific addresses. Get it: Mobile SERP Test 32. Mobile-Friendly Test

The gold standard for determining if your page meets Google's mobile-friendly requirements. If your page passes the test, then Google counts it as mobile-friendly, which is a bonafide (albeit small) ranking factor. If your page isn't mobile-friendly, it will give you specific areas to address. Get it: Mobile-Friendly Test Multi-tool Free SEO tools that have so many functions, they have their own special category. 33. Chrome DevTools

The sheer number of SEO tasks you can perform—for free—with Chrome DevTools is simply staggering. From JavaScript auditing to speed to On-Page SEO, some of the best features are hidden away but totally awesome. Need some specific ways to use it for SEO? Check out these resources here, here, and here. Get it: Chrome DevTools 34. Marketing Miner

Marketing Miner has a low profile in the United States, but it's one of the best-kept secrets of Eastern Europe. If you need to pull a lot of SERP data, rankings, tool reports, or competitive analysis, Marketing Miner does the heavy lifting for you and loads it all into convenient reports. Check out this list of miners for possible ideas. It's a paid tool, but the free version allows to perform a number of tasks. Get it: Marketing Miner 35. MozBar

One of the original SEO toolbars, the MozBar has seen significant upgrades over the years. Log in with a free Moz account and get link metrics as you browse the web, perform on-page analysis, and SERP analysis. The free version is super-useful by itself, while Pro users get additional functionality like advanced keyword suggestions. Get it: MozBar 36. SEMrush

Like Moz, SEMrush offers a full suite of all-in-one SEO tools, and they have a free account option that works well if you only work with a single website, or only need a quick peek at top-level data. The free account level gives you access to one "project" which includes basic site auditing, as well as limited keyword and domain reporting. Get it: SEMrush 37. SEO Minion

SEO Minion is a very popular Chrome extension that goes beyond most SEO toolbars. Some of the quick functions it performs include analyzing on-page SEO, check broken links, Hreflang checks, a SERP preview tool, and a nifty Google search location simulator. Definitely worth trying out. Get it: SEO Minion 38. SEOquake

Out of all the SEO toolbars available on the market, SEOquake is probably the most powerful, and comes with a plethora of configuration options — so you can configure it to adjust to your SEO needs. Aside from offering a boatload of data for every URL you visit, you can also perform basic on-page audits, compare domains, and export your data. Get it: SEOquake 39. Sheets for Marketers

Sheets for Marketers isn't a tool per se, but a website that contains over 100+ free templates to perform a huge number of tasks using Google Sheets. Find powerful free sheets for everything including competitive analysis, site audits, scraping, keyword research, and more. This is a website for your bookmarks. Get it: Sheets for Marketers 40. Small SEO Tools

Small SEO Tools is a favorite among old-time SEO. It comprises a collection of over 100 original SEO tools. Each tool performs a very specific task, hence the name "small". What's great about this collection is that in addition to more traditional toolsets like backlink and keyword research, you'll find an abundance of hard-to-find and very specific tools such as proxy tools, pdf tools, and even JSON tools. Get it: Small SEO Tools 41. Varvy

Varvy offers a suite of free website audit tools from the folks at Internet Marketing Ninjas. Most of the checks are of the on-page type concerning crawling and best practices. Varvy also offers separate stand-alone tools for page speed and mobile SEO. Overall, this is a good quick tool to start an SEO audit and to perform basic checklist tasks in a hurry. Get it: Varvy Alternatives: SEO PowerSuite, CanIRank On-page SEO Tools to help you maximize your content potential at the page level. 42. Natural Language API Demo

While there is some debate over how actionable Google's Natural Language API is for SEO, there is no denying it's a cool tool with lots of advanced analysis. The free demo allows you to analyze the text of a single page at a time and lets you see how a search engine would view entities, sentiment analysis, syntax, and categorization. Get it: Natural Language API See also: Advanced SEO Strategies using Natural Language Processing 43. Rich Results Test

Did you implement review rating stars in your JSON-LD, and want to see if your markup is valid for Google's Rich Results? Getting a passing grade doesn't mean your page will automatically display rich results in the SERPs, but think of it as the cost of admission (the cost being free, of course.) Get it: Rich Results Test 44. Structured Data Testing Tool

Bookmark, bookmark, bookmark this page. Google's Structured Data Testing tool is essential for not only troubleshooting your own structured data but performing competitive analysis on your competitor's structured data as well. Pro Tip: You can edit the code within the tool to troubleshoot and arrive at valid code. Get it: Structured Data Testing Tool 45. Tag Manager

On the surface, Google Tag Manager serves a simple purpose of allowing you to inject "tags" (such as Google Analytics) into your HTML. Beyond that, advanced users can leverage Tag Manager for a host of SEO functions. While Google recommends against using Tag Manager to insert important elements like structured data, it remains useful for a ton of SEO-related activities. Get it: Tag Manager 46. View Rendered Source

This simple JavaScript auditing tool does one thing, and it does it very well. View Rendered Source is a free Chrome plugin that allows you to easily see the fully rendered DOM of any URL, and compare it to the original HTML. Great for JavaScript auditing and troubleshooting. Get it: View Rendered Source Research Cools free tools for competitive, historical, and technological analysis. 47. BuzzSumo

As an SEO research tool, BuzzSumo is awesome. Its Chrome extension is one of the few tools available that deliver reliable social share count estimates for any piece of content. You don't get as much data with a free account, but you still get access to top content and trending data. One of our favorite tools. Get it: BuzzSumo 48. Hunter

Hunter is a popular email search tool, and definitely the most popular free email finder. Use it to find the email address associated with any company or individual, and verify any email address you already have. 50 free queries/month before paid plans kick in. Get it: Hunter Also popular: Viola Nobert 49. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is like competitor analysis on steroids. You can research your competitor's traffic, top pages, engagement, marketing channels, and more. The free offering is limited to five results per metric, but it's often enough to grab a quick data point. Get it: SimilarWeb 50. Wappalyzer

There are lots of tools that help you analyze what technology stacks a website runs on, but Wappalyzer is an SEO favorite. It's 100 percent free (unless you want advanced reporting) and will instantly tell you what technology a site is using. For example, are they using Yoast or All In One SEO Pack? Get it: Wappalyzer 51. Wayback Machine

Gotta be honest, I personally use the Wayback Machine 2–3 times a week. It's perfect for uncovering historical data. You can even find a trove of historical robots.txt files archived. There are a ton of other SEO uses for Wayback Machine you may find useful. 100 percent free. Get it: Wayback Machine 52. Bulk Domain Availability Checker

To be honest, I hadn't heard of this tool before, but several SEOs who regularly purchase domains praised it highly. It seems particularly popular with the black hat/PBN group, but the tool itself has white hat SEO legitimacy as well. Simply input up to 20,000 domains at a time, and it will quickly tell you if they are available. Beats the heck out of typing them in one at a time using Godaddy. Get it: Bulk Domain Availability Checker Site Speed Tools to speed up your site in order to improve engagement, increase conversions, and rank higher. 53. Cloudflare

There are so many good things to say about Cloudflare, it's difficult to know what to include here. Aside from a free CDN to speed up your site, it also allows for easy DNS management, and 100 percent free DDoS protection. You can run on a paid plan forever, but if you're ready to upgrade, the pro features are super cool and amazingly affordable. Get it: Cloudflare 54. GTmetrix

GTmetrix is one of many webpage speed performance tests that SEOs love to use. It provides familiar reports such as PageSpeed, YSlow, and Waterfalls, as well as automatically visualizing historic data for each page it analyses. Get it: GTmetrix 55. Lighthouse

Lighthouse is Google's open-source speed performance tool. It's also the most up-to-date, especially in terms of analyzing the performance of mobile pages and PWAs. Google not only recommends using Lighthouse to evaluate your page performance, but there is also speculation they use very similar evaluations in their ranking algorithms. Get it: Lighthouse 56. Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Insights is another Google tool built on top of Lighthouse, with one key added metric: Field Data. Field Data uses metrics collected by the Chrome User Experience Report so you can see how your page performs with real users across the globe. Not every page has data, but it's super useful when it does. Get it: Page Speed Insights 57. SpeedMonitor.io

If manually logging into a speed tool to check your performance each day isn't your thing, consider SpeedMonitor.io. It uses Lighthouse data to gauge performance, then tracks it over time and stores the results — all for free. You can even add competitor tracking and on-demand audits. Get it: SpeedMonitor.io 58. WebpageTest

Webpage test is another performance tool similar to GTMetrix. It breaks down performance into easy-to-understand grades, along with some of the most detailed performance reports found anywhere. Get it: WebpageTest Wordpress To be honest, there are literally hundreds of Wordpress plugins that can be helpful for SEO. You almost always want a "general" SEO plugin, and we've listed two below. For others, you have a lot of options, but this list from Kinsta is a good place to start. 59. Rank Math

The "new" kid on the Wordpress SEO plugin block, RankMath is quickly earning a cult following among certain SEO pros. It's fully functional and comes with some cool features like built-in redirection, which means needing to install fewer plugins or pay for upgrades. Worth checking out. Get it: Rank Math 60. Yoast SEO

Yoast is the "name" in Wordpress SEO. The most trusted name, the most installed (30 million sites) and often, the most innovative. With the help of our friend Jono Alderson, they've created some amazing advances in the delivery of structured data. I personally use Yoast on most of my Wordpress sites, and they are obviously highly recommended. Get it: Yoast SEO Alternatives: All in One SEO Pack, SEOPress

Bonus: Free Google Sheet of All 60 Tools

We've included a Google Sheet containing all 55 tools listed above. You can make a copy of the sheet and file away for your personal use, or share with your team. Get the Free SEO Tool Sheet Special Thanks A lot of smart SEOs deserve credit for helping out with the recommendations in this post. A number of folks contributed suggestions from Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. A comprehensive list of SEO tools and resources is maintained by Saijo George. It's continually updated and well maintained. You can find it here. p.s. While these are 60 of the best free SEO tools, it's by no means a complete list! What are some of your favorite free SEO tools? Let us know in the comments. Read the full article

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 7 years

Text

Someone Ask Someone Already!

Summary: For a world-renowned career criminal, this should be easy. It’s also very important to him, so of course, every time he tries, things go down in flames.

Word Count: 4,367

The First Time, Things Went Awry

You were outgoing and friendly, but you liked your personal life to stay private, so Neal decided that a quiet, familiar setting would be the best place to ask you to marry him.

Neal had met you completely by chance, but he had kept you by his side entirely on purpose. With everything you went through for – and sometimes because of – him, he knew he was lucky you hadn’t just changed your priorities and left him. He’d have been heartbroken if you did, but he would’ve understood – especially after you were approached on the street by the murderer Neal had been undercover to catch.

To say that it had bothered you would be an understatement, but not once did you ever hold it against Neal, for which he was incredibly grateful. By your reasoning, there were always going to be killers, but you were proud of your boyfriend for helping to stop them. Hearing someone say they were proud of him… well, it didn’t happen often, but he liked the feeling. He liked that someone thought he was doing the right thing. He liked that someone thought so highly of him when society as a whole looked down on him because of the anklet on his leg.

Commitment had always been hard for him. He’d gone through two legitimate identities before he’d settled on Neal Caffrey, and that wasn’t counting his dozen or so various aliases. The only reason he’d promised Peter a whole four years of indentured servitude was because the alternative was to look back in some twenty years and realize he’d spent almost a decade of his life incarcerated. His relationship with Mozzie had bloomed on the basis that neither of them liked to commit to life choices and wanted the riches that would give them the freedom not to settle. Marriage was a huge commitment, but it was nonetheless the only commitment Neal had ever particularly wanted to make. Almost everyone had accused him of being a romantic at heart. They weren’t wrong. He knew he’d found the one, and was ready to make sure that everyone knew.

First, before he could do that, he had to make that clear to you, and hope that you’d be willing to have him.

Standing dates were hard to arrange. They were easily undermined by work or the unexpected. You kept a standing date on Sundays anyway so that you would have the time together if things went as planned. Neal glanced at the clock, forcing himself to stay relaxed and confident as he set out a bouquet of red roses on the table. He wasn’t going for a spectacle, but he wanted you to feel welcomed, appreciated, and loved.

The knocking on his door came at about a minute past the hour. He smoothed down the front of his shirt as he went to let you inside, daring to smile excitedly. The box from the jeweler’s left a small but constant weight in his pocket, never giving him the chance to forget how important this evening was.

When he opened the door to see you, he found you standing there with wet eyes, red cheeks, and a defeated slump to your shoulders. Instantly, his calm composure was gone, and he held out both arms. You pressed yourself against him, locked your hands behind his back, and cried quietly into his chest. Neal ran his hand down your hair in concern, but realized that his proposal was going to have to wait.

“Bad day?” He whispered sympathetically.

You nodded weakly. “The worst,” you agreed through your tears, voice cracking miserably.

Neal solemnly pressed a kiss to your temple and was glad he’d set the stage for a quiet night in. You needed it.

The Second Time, There Was a Mistake

“What music do you want?” You called from by the shelves, looking through Neal’s old-school CD collection while he took a cardboard box out of the refrigerator. He didn’t want you to see what he was doing – he wanted it to be a surprise.

After the first attempt failed before it even began, Neal decided to take it as a sign. He wasn’t a particularly spiritual man, but this was just too special to risk doing it wrong. He still thought that keeping it personal and relaxed was the best move, but instead of getting on one knee per tradition, he’d had the brilliant idea of asking via cake. You loved cake and he owned a bakery; it was already a match made in heaven. Besides, this way he wouldn’t have to worry about having trouble speaking. He’d never had trouble talking before, but he’d also never asked anyone something so meaningful.

“You choose,” he answered, smiling at you while you got on your knees to scan the lowest shelves. “Surprise me.” It was only fair, since he was planning on surprising you, too.

He opened up the box, carefully looking up to make sure you were still distracted. He expected to have an intricate black-and-white design in icing, decorated with writing in your favorite color asking you to be his wife. Instead, it was frosted in pink trim and boasted about your high school graduation.

He sighed and made a mental note to change how special orders were stored and organized. If even the owner’s requests were being mixed up with other demands, then there was probably something systematically wrong.

Two failed tries in a row. Neal tried not to take that to heart. It wasn’t a very encouraging trend. He closed up the box, moved it back into the fridge, and took out a block of cheese, planning to slice it and serve with a bottle of wine. Proposal was off the table – just for the night – but there was no reason why he shouldn’t romance you all night.

The Third Time, There Was an Interruption

The cake hadn’t worked and a sudden, spontaneous proposal ran too much risk of catching you at a bad time. He wasn’t writing things down as he learned them, but he definitely made a point of improving from his mistakes. Neal was determined to do this right. You meant the world to him, and he wanted his proposal to reflect that.

You loved music, so he took you to a classical concert in one of his best suits. He’d recovered a stolen violin for the theater, so the manager gave him access to the best balcony seats they had. Afterward, he’d bought you ice cream that you ate while walking home through Central Park. It was understated, compared to the concert, but you were with him because you loved him, not because of what he could give you, and every time he remembered that, Neal smiled a little brighter.

It was a perfect date. It was going to end beautifully. There were bath salts and aromatherapy candles prepared to be used in a long, luxurious bath; your very favorite snacks were being kept fresh in his refrigerator; the show you binged together when one of you was sick or hurt was queued up in the first slot on the Netflix account.

He turned his back to the door as he looked down at you, giving you his softest, handsomest smile. “What’s that for?” You asked him teasingly. You reached for his neck and he tilted his cheek into your hand, allowing your thumb to rub along his jawline.

Neal’s smile grew wider. “To entice you into my bed. What else?”

You laughed and playfully smacked his arm. Neal opened the door and let you in, rubbing his arm overdramatically and pretending your blow had actually hurt.

“Moz!” You chimed cheerfully, surprised but happy. Neal looked up quickly before he’d even finished closing the door.

“So much for a perfect date,” he muttered under his breath, careful not to let you hear.

Mozzie stood up from the couch and smiled at you politely. “Y/N.” You frowned slightly. No one could miss that he seemed a little icy. A little hurt, you took a step backwards. Mozzie didn’t seem to be upset with you, though; he fixed his eyes on Neal, whose eyes darted impulsively to the drawer beside his bed, which had been opened. “Neal, may I have courteous and entirely boring words with you in the expansive, well-tiled hallway?”

Your expression went from wounded to confused as you looked to Neal for an explanation. He had one, but he really didn’t want it to come this way.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised you, turning his eyes on Moz in a mild glower. Neal rubbed your back between your shoulder blades and leaned down to whisper in your ear, “If I’m not, assume I’ve been kidnapped to Thailand.” You scoffed in amusement and Neal smiled, kissed your temple, and followed Mozzie into the hall.

To his friend’s credit, nothing was said until the door was firmly shut and they were several yards away from it. If their voices remained level, you wouldn’t be able to hear anything. Neal tucked his hands in his pockets, rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, and waited semi-patiently.

“What the hell?!” Mozzie demanded, taking the velvet ring box out of the inside of his canvas jacket. “You’re going to propose?!”

“I was,” Neal hissed back, looking over his shoulder and gesturing hastily for the so-called lawyer to lower his voice. “Until you showed up! Why did you even find that?”

Mozzie waved his hand dismissively. “Doesn’t matter why! I found it, and you hadn’t told me! Neal, you’re going to shackle yourself to another person in the eyes of the government. The government, Neal!”

Neal sighed. “Yes, Moz, I know what marriage means.” He hoped this wouldn’t be one of those lectures that ended in Moz being red-faced and off-topic. Those always took the longest. He sent a last, longing look towards the thick door to his penthouse before resigning himself to putting off the question for yet another time.

The Fourth Time, Things Went Terribly Wrong

As predicted, his best friend didn’t talk to him for a few days. Neal even went as far as to check both Friday and Sunday (and on an actual Friday and Sunday, too) but couldn’t find Moz anywhere, so he gave him space. If the man didn’t want to be found, he knew where to hide.

It was… not the kind of reaction he’d been hoping for. He knew Moz was still clinging to the idea that they’d get that final score and disappear someday, living with no one to answer to. Neal had been hoping he’d have the chance to take Mozzie aside after you’d said yes and gently break the news to him. The fact was that even if they had the opportunity to go, Neal would never leave the ones he loved – as he’d already proven – and marrying you just made it harder for Mozzie to continue denying what he already knew: Neal didn’t want to leave New York, even if that meant continuing to come to the FBI when he was called.

There had been a couple of times since when things looked optimistic, and maybe they could’ve been days or nights when Neal could’ve asked you to be his – but without Mozzie on his side, it just felt like his skin was crawling. They’d been through a lot together; he didn’t want to be so at odds when he made one of the most important moves of his life.

Luckily, it wasn’t all that long before he pulled through and came back from wherever he’d been pigeonholing away. The bespectacled man was waiting for Neal to come home after work, lying on his couch with a half-drunk bottle of sake, and while Neal expected a short but dreary resolution, he instead had postcards of honeymoon destinations chucked at him with terrible, drunken aim. For when you’re off your leash, he’d said.

Since then, Neal used him as a sounding board. Together, they had nixed a few ideas that Neal had had in the moment, and although Moz’s favorite plot was long-winded, complicated, and more than a little odd, they eventually managed to come to several agreements on how and where to make it scenic but secluded, memorable but personal, and, most importantly, catered to both of your tastes.

You stood on top of the Empire State Building to the side of one of the tourists’ viewing binoculars, Neal behind you and with his hands out on either side of you, holding onto the rail. A gentle evening breeze rustled through his hair and was dusting your cheeks a pretty rose color with the chill. It was almost time for the public sections of the building to close, but Neal was waiting for as many people to filter out as possible so that he could have your attention entirely on him.

“This is amazing,” you stated admiringly, leaning back and resting your head against Neal’s chest. He murmured agreement, feeling his heart speed up. It was about to get even better.

“FBI! Don’t move!”

Neal felt a lot of feelings for Peter and had had a lot of reactions to the man’s voice, but never before had he wanted so badly to tie him to a chair, stick him in a closet, and wait until janitorial staff rediscovered him. He wondered if he could get away with it – probably not, because El would have a hard time forgiving him. These were special circumstances. Maybe she could make an exception.

A team of FBI agents came out onto the viewing deck. Neal wrapped his arms around you protectively, growing more and more irritated. Peter holstered his gun after he, Diana, and another agent cleared the area. Jones escorted the only remaining visitors back to the exit, while Peter approached Neal.

“Is this what we’ve come to now?” Neal asked Peter, annoyed, his arms tightening around your waist.

“Hi, Peter,” you commented, bewildered but not really scared.

Peter stared back into Neal’s eyes skeptically. “I sit down to dinner with my wife,” he started to explain, looking just as testy as Neal felt. The two men stared back at each other, equally confrontational. “And just as I start to enjoy my nice, homecooked meal – which was actually on my plate instead of Satchmo’s, for once – I get a phone call from Mozzie, saying you’re having a soul crisis of the utmost importance, so I can’t expect you to heel when I dangle your chain for the rest of the day and possibly tomorrow.”

Neal let go of you. “This was just a misunderstanding, darling.” He smiled down at you.

“It sounds like I’m missing something,” you replied suspiciously.

“Moz is having a stroke,” Neal answered without hesitation, pressing a guiding hand to the small of your back. “Diana, will you please take Y/N to get coffee downstairs?”

You were unwilling to leave without an explanation, and Neal was struggling to think of a way to get out of being forced to show his hand (which he really wanted to do in a lovely, intimate moment, not as a result of an FBI raid). As fate would have it, someone took pity on Neal and Peter’s aggravation struck once again. He cut in before Neal had to say anything, whether he wanted to or didn’t.

“So just to be sure I understand this,” Peter reestablished, holding a hand out to stop everyone from going anywhere. “There’s not a crisis?”

The Fifth Time, It Didn’t Go According to Plan

As the afternoon progressed, Neal was beginning to wonder why he had been so anxious. Things were going perfectly. You were in high spirits, and Neal had decided not to rely on a third party to ask you to marry him. (In hindsight, he could admit that that wasn’t his best idea.) You’d been sitting with him on the couch for over an hour, both of you just talking, trading the occasional, affectionate kiss and smile.

Neal had always loved how easily the conversation came between the two of you. He didn’t have to concentrate on carefully choosing his words or painstakingly coloring what he said. You took him at face value more often than not, and when you didn’t, it was typically because he’d said something that sounded like a blatant lie (most of the time it was when he claimed complete innocence with an obviously-guilty expression).

He could feel your hand against the back of his head, fingers playing with his short hair idly. He loved when you did that. It was soothing. It was a reminder that you were there and you wanted to touch him. (He liked that he could look in the mirror and see where his hair was messed up because of you.) He rubbed your shoulder, massaging his fingers into your bare skin where your shirt had slipped and the sleeve had fallen further on your upper arm. You were warm and comfortable, and he was struggling to think of somewhere better to be.

You held his hand a little tighter and leaned your head on his arm. “Love you.”

He pressed his lips to your forehead. “I love you, too,” he answered contently.

“I know.” You replied with honest certainty, and he smiled. He was glad you didn’t have to question how he felt. “You’re always so kind. You go out of your way to be sweet to me, even when you’re upset and I’m the one that should be taking care of you. There’s no way I couldn’t know.”

Neal felt his face warming with the beginnings of a soft blush. “I’m sure I could make it more obvious.”

His heart started to beat faster and he wondered if you could feel his pulse. He didn’t think so – you weren’t touching his wrist, throat, or chest. This wasn’t exactly what he’d planned, but it was the perfect opportunity. It was even better than all of the others, because this one had come up naturally. There had been no staging or planning.

You unknowingly set it up. “How?” You challenged him, teasing.

He didn’t hesitate to answer. Neal turned his hand over to take your fingers in his palm and leaned back to look down at your bright eyes and beautiful face. “Marry me,” he said simply.

Your smile didn’t fade. Instead, you giggled, which made Neal’s heart skip a beat as he wondered why his question made you laugh. “Point made,” you agreed, covering your mouth with your hand. “I suppose your gestures could’ve been a bit more obvious.”

Neal wanted to be upset, but you looked so pleased that he had a hard time being disappointed. You leaned against him again and he set his chin on top of your head, musing over what he would have to do to make his intentions explicitly clear. Of course, the one time he had managed to get as far as to actually ask you to marry him, you had misunderstood. He rolled his eyes where you couldn’t see.

Once, It Went Incredibly Right

Neal never stopped wanting to marry you, but he gave it a rest for a little while. He was beginning to think maybe it would be best to give it time. Why else would he be consistently stopped from asking? It was frustrating and made him want to shout at anyone who would listen. He knew he wasn’t a good man, by many peoples’ definitions. He knew he probably didn’t deserve you. But he had also never claimed to be a selfless man, and for as long as you were happy to be with him, he wanted to hold onto the happiness that you gave him. So why was it so hard to ask for it?

About a month after he had gone as far as to get the words out, only to have them misconstrued, you went on a date to an art exhibit. Neal wasn’t sure how you’d managed to convince Peter, but the agent had had his radius expanded to include the MOMA for the evening. He was, nevertheless, incredibly grateful. Getting out of his enclosure without an agent breathing down his back felt freeing. Being out in what felt like the open world again, with the love of his life at his side… it felt better than anything.

He would never stop being fascinated with art and the intricate meanings that could go into just a few brushstrokes. You had never shared his passion – not as intently – but you always fostered and nurtured his interest. According to you, it was nice to see someone be able to enjoy something as much as he did.

Art exhibits were supposed to be quiet. They were supposed to be hushed and classy and a place where Neal fit in – he liked fitting in. It made him more approachable, and more likable, and less memorable when the police asked for witnesses to describe the thief. (Okay, so maybe the last one was slightly less important these days.) Very rarely were they actually silent, though, so when a hush fell, Neal was quick to notice. He turned to look to you, just ascertaining that you were okay, when his voice died in his throat, and he, the master of words, was left wordless.

You were on one knee beside him, holding up a small black velvet box with a simple but elegant silver wedding band.

“This is a little unorthodox,” you laughed nervously. The audience was politely quiet. Someone had started crying, even though you’d barely started speaking. Neal could barely believe what was happening and fought the urge to prick the pad of his finger on his tie pin. “But we’re not really a normal couple, are we?

“Neal.” You stopped and took a deep breath. Neal wanted to just slip down onto his knees and wrap his arms around you and kiss you until neither of you had any oxygen left in your lungs, but the aura or the romance or just the shock kept him where he was, looking down at you with wide, shocked eyes, a disbelieving expression, and a mind that had ground to a halt. “I’m never going to be another Kate, or Alex. And I know I’m not exactly the kind of girl Moz wants for you, either.” You shrugged slightly, holding your smile together anxiously. “But you’ve seemed happy with me, and I know I’ve never been happier with anyone else, and it doesn’t matter where we are or what’s going on. I know that if I have problems, you’ll help me… and I hope you know that I’ll never not drop everything to help you.

“In the last couple of months, you’ve done a lot of really romantic gestures – really nice things for me, without reason, without expectation. They’re not exactly this,” you lowered a hand to gesture to your kneeling position, “But they’ve shown me that you’re in this for the long haul. I love you, Neal Caffrey. And if you’ll let me, I want to show you the same promise in the most definite way that I know how.” You smiled up at him hopefully, your eyes bright and cheeks flushed with hopefulness, nervousness, and eagerness. “Will you be my husband?”

Neal gave in to what he’d been wanting to do since he saw you on the floor and let his knees give out, falling with minimal grace. He brought his hands up to cup your cheeks and pressed his mouth to yours in a loving, passionate kiss, fierce and desperate and so, so in love. He felt your hands against his chest, fisting in his jacket and holding him close – felt your heart threatening to jump out of your chest.

“Yes,” the conman answered, beaming brightly at you, breathless and ecstatic, barely able to believe it that someone – that you – wanted him as badly as he wanted you. “Yes, yes, I’ll marry you.” He kissed you again, laughing joyously against your lips. “I want you to be my wife!”

The room burst into applause and the kid who’d been crying before just started sobbing even harder. Neal’s eyes were glued on you, taking in your blush, your relieved and love-struck grin. In all of the time he’d spent imagining how he would become your fiancé, it had never occurred to him that you might be the one to ask. A dumb, silly smile threatened to just crush all logical thoughts and make him into a grinning idiot for the foreseeable future. He had you.

You gave him the ring and he slid it onto his left hand. It fit perfectly, sized specifically for him, and the silver band looked gorgeous against his skin – but maybe that was because he was so enamored with you, and this was the symbol you’d chosen to represent that he was going to be forever yours.

Footsteps crossed the linoleum. You both looked up to see Mozzie, huffing and offering a bouquet of white roses and holly sprigs. “For the blessing of your union,” he said, holding them to Neal with a wry smile, his glasses a little fogged and crooked. Neal tactfully chose not to ask aloud if the proposal had made him start to cry. “May your true love pave the way for natural growth and permit you honest domestic bliss.”

You laughed sympathetically at his slightly choked tone and reached for Mozzie’s hand, touching his wrist while Neal took the flowers with a laugh. “Are you okay, Moz?” You inquired earnestly.

He sniffed and pointed at you, daring you to try to comment on his emotions. “I’m just glad that someone asked someone already!” He lied, rushing away before he started to cry again.

Neal and you looked back at each other and shared an entertained smile before leaning into each other’s space again and gingerly kissing. The first kiss of your engagement was on the floor of an art exhibit while Neal held flowers and you held one of his hands in both of yours, and it could never have been more perfect in his wildest dreams.

A/N: I chose to write from Neal's POV this time. How do you think it went?

Requested by @fearwill.

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isearchgoood · 4 years

Text

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

Posted by brodieclarkconsulting

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

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

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

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

Confirming suspicions with Big Data

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An “us” vs “them” comparison

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google featured snippet support documentation

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

For instance, the guidelines state that:

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

They then mention 5 categories:

Sexually explicit

Hateful

Violent

Dangerous and harmful

Lack consensus on public interest topics

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

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

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

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

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

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

I needed someone on the inside at Google to help.

The missing piece: Official site-specific feedback from Google

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

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

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

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

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

And an important component of John’s response:

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

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

...and the end result?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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whitelabelseoreseller · 4 years