#Like do you include the misconception or do you explain the full version right away?

[vio1315]

I have to tell you guys the secret

Kingdom Hearts is not actually a hard series to understand

It has some contrivances, it can be elaborate in places, but it’s not very hard to understand.

The issue is this: it’s long

It has a lot of games, and the games take about thirty hours to beat often times. Most things are actually explained in a straight forward way, and the concepts are repeated for entire games with each game building off the last.

That means a lot of details can add up so that it’s impossible to explain everything that will get referenced in new games in a short timeframe, but it has nothing to do with how difficult something is to understand, it is just a lot to keep track of, especially if you’re trying to learn it in thirty minutes instead of across like

Multiple work weeks worth of digesting a story

As was intended

When a person‘s heart is corrupted by darkness, they become a creature known as a ‘heartless’, and the body left behind becomes a ‘nobody’

These being the enemies to fight. Heartless introduced in 1, and Nobodies introduced in 2 (depending what the release order was but I am not here for that)

This is not a complicated concept, really. It raises plenty of questions, but this concept is explored in essentially 120 hours of gaming if not more.

Someone being unable to sufficiently explain a series with all of its intricacies is no indication of complexity or confusion.

For that matter, most of the things that are actually confusing are due to being vaguely explained within the series or outright miscommunicated. Most things don’t fall under this category, but even the things that do, aren’t really ‘complicated’, they just aren’t explained well in series.

Kingdom Hearts definitely appeals to people who like to piece together lots of details, but honestly I don’t think it’s very hard to follow for people who don’t get into all of that if they just play the games rather than watch 30 minute videos trying to explain like 13 games.

[s-tier]

As some of you guys may have noticed on Twitter this past week or so, there were a couple different hashtags trending for short bursts of time like SaveSmash, FreeMelee, among others. I'd like to take the time to help give those out of the loop some context because there has been lots of misinformation going around.

First, if I get any facts mistaken let me know and I’ll be happy to correct it.

On 19 November 2020, Smash Bros tournament series, The Big House announced on Twitter that they have received a cease and desist from Nintendo of America (NOA) “primarily due to the usage of Slippi” and will cancel both the Super Smash Bros Melee and Super Smash Bros Ultimate online events. The Big House series has been hosting Smash tournaments for almost 10 years, and the more recent installments were even partnered with Nintendo.

Earlier this year, 22 June 2020, Project Slippi releases a version of Dolphin (a Nintendo Gamecube emulator) that includes features new to Melee like rollback netcode, integrated matchmaking, replay files, complex game statistics, and more. Rollback netcode is easily the most important addition, giving players an online experience that’s significantly better than what most modern fighting games provide. It’s especially valuable in a time where the world is fighting an ongoing pandemic and gathering dozens of players to compete in-person poses a major health risk. I could gush over how incredible Fizzi36 and the rest of the Project Slippi developers are for being able to incorporate rollback netcode into Melee, but that’s not the point of this post. Just need to know that the game’s ISO file and its contents do not need to be modified in any way in order for Slippi to do what it does.

Now, despite their claims, NOA is lying. As the copyright holder, Nintendo indeed has the legal right to shut down events, streams, and media that include any of their intellectual property. Most game companies don’t assert this right because, unlike Nintendo, they know it’s not a very good idea. However, based on The Big House’s initial statement and NOA’s follow up statement to Polygon on the C&D, the tournament was shut down for other reasons: game emulation/modification and piracy. First let me say that I’m not a lawyer and would rather have someone better suited explain; but from my understanding, Slippi would not be considered illegal modification of Melee, the game, since everything is done with Dolphin, the emulator, instead. And while it is possible that numerous Melee players may be competing on illegally obtained copies of the game and don’t own their own physical copy, the responsibility falls on Nintendo to prove it.

Some suggest The Big House takes this to court, but with how big Nintendo is, many agree that the amount of time and money needed to settle the case would be too high of a price for anybody in the community to pay. So is fighting for The Big House’s online tournament a lost cause? For this event in particular, most likely yes. It’s been over a week since the C&D was issued and despite the public backlash, NOA has yet to retract its decision. However, the Melee community is already making moves in response, and for the average person, all we can do is spread awareness and see what happens next.

News of The Big House shutting down had spread far and wide, trending on Twitter for some time, reaching influencers like moistcr1tikal, LudwigAhgren, and Mutahar(SomeOrdinaryGamers), several news outlets like Kotaku have covered the story, and gained support from various other competitive gaming communities including ones that play the games that Nintendo actually supports like Splatoon and ARMS.

Few days later on 23 November 2020, an anonymous Twitter account posts a Twitlonger that contains a list of claims exposing how Nintendo has actively gone out of its way to prevent the growth of the competitive Smash scene for many years as far back as 2006. Nintendo’s actions have not only have been a detriment toward the Melee community, but all the newer Smash games and beloved fan-game Project M, as well. Many figures in the Smash community agree that most or even all the statements made in that document are legit, and I highly recommend reading it for yourself and forming your own opinion.

I won’t go over everything covered in the Twitlonger, but in the past Nintendo famously tried to shut down the Melee tournament back at EVO 2013. Melee earned its spot at the event after raising almost $100,000 for breast cancer research. After a day of constant public backlack after the story reached the top of Reddit, Nintendo stepped down from their decision, and after that came one of the most memorable and impactful Smash events in history.

The information brought public by that first Twitlonger caused others came forward with their own claims against Nintendo, exposing their actions against these communities happening behind the scenes. These statements come from members of the ARMS, Project M, and Splatoon communities. (If I come across more, I’ll try to add them here.)

These developments, soon after The Big House’s C&D, made a lot of people upset towards Nintendo. While there are several ways to go about informing others and expressing your frustration with the situation, demanding fans of Nintendo to boycott their products will not help. Doing so would probably just make less informed people not want to support the Smash scene at all.

All this noise has made many people question what the Melee scene was after. Would a rerelease on modern hardware be the solution? No, if anything, it can give Nintendo more leverage to continue this abusive relationship with the competitive community. The Melee rerelease would also likely be the PAL (European/Australian) version of the game, but the community as a whole has already abandoned it in favor of NTSC (Japanese/American). Do Melee players want Nintendo to put up their own money and sponsor competitive events? In the past, yes, but after many, many years of no shown support thus far that is no longer the case. With how malicious Nintendo has been towards the Smash community over the years, many just want the company to turn a blind eye and leave Melee alone at this point.

Mentioned earlier, the Melee community has already taken action in response to the C&D. The general plan as of now is to respectfully spread awareness and continue announcing online tournaments. In December, Ludwig is hosting a big online Melee tournament using Slippi where the winner decides which charity organization will receive the prize money of tens of thousands of dollars. Fizzi released an updated version of Slippi with a spectator mode that enables smaller, independent tournament organizers to run online competitions without needing to rely on streaming, Discord’s screen share feature, or other methods of broadcasting gameplay. Many content creators and players are also taking the time to express how much Melee means to them and how the competitive Smash scene has positively influenced their lives.

Somehow, despite everything exposed up until now, people still actively defend Nintendo as if they did nothing wrong at all and tend to base their arguments on flawed logic and/or incorrect information (you’ll see a lot of it on the Nintendo subreddit). For the remainder of this post, I’ll try to break down a few common misconceptions and explain why Nintendo should not be defended by anyone that isn’t getting paid by them.

Thank you for reading.

________________

“The competitive Melee scene hurts Nintendo’s bottom line.”

Super Smash Bros Melee has been out of production for many years now, and Nintendo has yet to release it on modern consoles.

The competitive Smash community has historically been supportive of Nintendo’s current products at the time.

Assumes the existence of competitive Melee takes opportunities away from other Nintendo games’ existing communities, when in reality it was Nintendo’s own poor community management.

Assumes that competitive scenes negatively affects Nintendo’s brand and is unwelcoming to casual players and newcomers when companies like Blizzard and Valve pump millions into their competitive scenes knowing how profitable they are.

“Nintendo doesn’t want to support events for a scene full of abusive community members.”

Claims like these are ESPECIALLY BAD because it disrespects those who have been victimized by members of their community.

Implies that exposing and ejecting abusive people from the community, and attempting to create a safer environment is bad for the scene.

Assumes people in other communities aren’t capable of doing the same horrible things.

Long before all the allegations came out, Nintendo had already invited several of these community figures to events in order to promote their games.

“Just play the new game lmao Melee players don’t know how to move on”

Has been said for ages, and clearly those saying so don’t get it.

This is literally what Nintendo wants.

“Melee players have always been after the money.”

THERE’S HARDLY ANY MONEY TO BE WON IN THE FIRST PLACE. NO THANKS TO NINTENDO.

If playing video games for money was all Melee players want, they would not be competing in a game this difficult to be good at where tournament winnings can’t reliably pay the bills.

The majority of competitive Melee players are only in it for the passion, and being able to make a living through competing in a game they love is the dream.

“Competitive players take the fun out of games! Why should I support them?”

Unless you can’t read, or are some corporate bootlicker with no sense of empathy, I see no reason not to be supportive.

This whole situation is about a dedicated community that has existed for almost 20 years trying to play their favorite game with each other online in the midst of a pandemic, and for no good reason a big company will not let them.

“Supporting Melee and/or boycotting Nintendo means I have to give up my favorite games!”

No, buy and play what you want, how you want.

Do know that Nintendo is a big company with no intent on being your friend. Stop putting them up on a pedestal.

Boycotting Nintendo won’t do anything anyway; they’re too big, and the FreeMelee movement isn’t far-reaching enough to cause any significant harm to Nintendo’s profits.

"ACTUALLY, Nintendo is within their right to shut down events. They are allowed to kill Melee if they want.”

Yes, and Nintendo is within their right to suck my nuts.

Just because it’s legal doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do.

[miguel-manbemel]

Translating Sanders Sides

Some of you may know, but one of the things I’ve done consistently is writing the Castillian Spanish subtitles for most of the episodes of Sanders Sides by @thatsthat24​ and @thejoanglebook. In fact, I’ve written them for all of the episodes that had the option available, “My True Identity” and “Taking on Anxiety with Lilly Singh” are the only two episodes that for some reason don’t have the option activated. Here I’m gonna share how it has been so far my experience translating Sanders Sides.

There’s one frequent misconception about YouTube subtitles. Save for some exceptions, creators don’t usually have the knowledge of all languages in the world, so it’s usually volunteers who write the subtitles in their mother tongues or in languages they know enough of. In my case I started writing them because, even though there were already Spanish subtitles of the generic variant, they usually had, and sorry if the original writers are reading me, several flaws, like misuse of expressions, mistakes in words (I encountered the word “hiss” as “rugido”, when the correct word would have been “bufido” in the case of a cat hiss or “siseo” in the case of a snake hiss, certainly not “roaring” which is the real meaning of “rugido”) or, and this is the only thing I’m clearly against of, things that weren’t even in the original video, like jokes someone made up, fanon commentary, even compliments to Thomas or the characters. I get that we all like these characters and the creators, but that’s not the place to express our love for them, and this is something that Thomas himself has said every once in a while that he doesn’t want to see in the captions and subtitles for his videos.

As YouTube subtitles, once approved and live, are virtually impossible to edit or delete, except by the original creator, my idea was to start writing the Castillian Spanish subtitles for the video, as an alternate version of the translation. The first episode that I translated right after it was released, I remember it as if it was yesterday, even though it was almost three years ago, was “Moving On Part 1″, then I translated all the previous episodes, and after that every episode as soon as it was released.

Writing the translation of an episode takes a lot more time than what anyone could figure out. The YouTube subtitle tool is not the most comfy to work with, even though it does its job. When the subtitles in English are already available, it gives you the times synchronized already with the English subs and you just have to write the translation. That looks as if it saves time, but in Spanish, like many other romantic languages, words are on average much longer than in English, which means that you need more time to read them, so the original times usually have to be readjusted and that takes time. I usually just delete the times altogether and write them all from scratch, it gives me more work, but it saves time in the long term. Not much though, as, on average, it takes several hours for me to write subtitles. The last episode, “Putting Others First”, if we count only the hours I dedicated to write the subtitles, it took me around 20 hours, in several intervals along three days. I’m including in this the several proofreadings I make of the subtitles where I always find typos or mistakes that I need to correct, which makes me watch and rewatch the video like dozens of times. (I’m not perfect and probably I’ve overlooked some typos still, but who hasn’t?) Thank goodness it’s good content and enjoyable to watch again and again, otherwise, the labor would be tedious.

Then there is another problem. I usually translate the text just as it is portrayed on the video. That’s, after all what a translation is expected to be, and it usually is. But there is a problem that arises from time to time. Sometimes, the original doesn’t have a direct translation or, and this is something very common in works like Sanders Sides, full of puns and jokes, the translation kills the joke. In those cases, some translators opt for adding a note between brackets explaining the joke and why the translation doesn’t get it right. I personally don’t like this solution, because it distracts you from the action (you usually have to pause the video to read the note) and most important, because, as I said, it usually happens with puns, and you know what happens when you explain a pun, right? My personal option, and something that translators are indeed encouraged to do as far as I know, is to, when a pun cannot be literally translated for some reason, get the idea that the writer wanted to convey and, being faithful to that idea, create a pun that makes sense in the target language, in my case Spanish.

I’ll explain this with an example of the most difficult piece of dialogue for me to translate in all the episodes I’ve translated of Sanders Sides. It was nothing particularly philosophical or convoluted. It was a piece of dialogue from “Losing My Motivation”. It was when Thomas said “Oh, man, I do do that” and then Patton giggles and says “doodoo”. It looks pretty straightforward... except for the fact that the auxiliary “do” doesn’t have a translation in Spanish, it just doesn’t exist, so the translation of that joke didn’t make any sense and wasn’t funny at all. You literally didn’t understand why was Patton laughing. So I was forced to become creative and my idea was to rewind a bit and get Logan’s previous piece of dialogue, when he was talking about how if Thomas “sits around waiting for inspiration to strike, consistency is unattainable”. I had the idea of using the old expression “kissed by a muse” as a synonym for inspiration, and so I translated into Spanish as “if you sit around waiting for a muse to kiss you, consistency is unattainable”. Then, I made Thomas say, “Oh, man, I do wait for that kiss” and, then instead of the doodoo joke which didn’t make sense in Spanish, I used the similarity between the Spanish for muse, “musa” and the Spanish for walrus, “morsa”, and I made it look as if Patton misheard, and laughed because he thought Thomas was waiting for a walrus to kiss him. It’s not perfect, and I only do this as a last resort measure. I usually prefer sticking to the original as much as I can.

There’s only one other instance when I’ve become creative while translating. In the scenes featuring rapping or some songs. There’s one defining characteristic of rap: it has to rhyme. If it doesn’t it’s not a rap. So, to create a translation of a rap that didn’t rhyme was almost like a sacrilege to me. So, in the case of the Rap Battle from “Am I Original”, I wrote Spanish lyrics for that rap that respected as much of the original as I could while also respecting the rhymes and also the metrics. These are the lyrics I wrote in Spanish, followed by the literal translation (I presume you all know the original English lyrics by heart at this point)

Damas, reyes y nobleza no binaria Ved como derroto rápido a este paria Aplastaré a cualquier villano con ganas de ir a por mí La bruja dragón lo sabe bien: llegué, vi y vencí Aunque no sabía adivinar, Sabía que esto iba a pasar. Piensas fatal, rapeas mal Te crees lo más, y en un pispás Acabo con tu honor: no es difícil de lograr. Te voy a superar, Princi, pues tengo una mente simpar.

Mejores genios he logrado hundir, tú no podrás huír. Si presionas, subiré, y me tendrás sobre ti. Todo es cuestion de cápita. Vas a perder como ocurrió en Ática. Ya está, vete a casa, se acabó. Solo hay un bardo entre los dos, no eres tú, soy yo.

Ladies, Kings and non binary nobility Watch how I defeat this outcast I’ll crush any villain with the guts to go after me The Dragon Witch knows well: I arrived, I saw and I won (Veni, vidi, vici) Even though I can’t tell fortune, I knew this was gonna happen. You think awfully, you rap bad You think you’re the best and in no time I end your honor: It’s not difficult to manage. I’m gonna get over you, Princey, because I’ve got an outstanding mind

I have managed to sink down better geniouses, you won’t be able to run away If you push, I’ll rise up, and you’ll have me over you. It is all a matter of capita. You’re gonna lose as it happened on Attica. It’s done, go home, it’s over. There’s only a bard among us both, it’s not you, it’s me.

As you can see, it says almost the same as the original, only that not literally, and the rhymes are preserved, so it still is a rap.There is people who may disagree with this, but this is actually a technique that is used all the time when doing a translation. In fact, sticking literally and rigidly to the original words in a text is considered a flaw in a translation, because sometimes it makes you lose all the sense of the original.

That also happens with idioms. It is a huge mistake to translate them literally. There usually is an equivalent in the target language and that’s the idiom you must use. For instance, in Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts, there’s a moment where Virgil asks Remus if he has a strong suit and Remus answes “I do, my birthday suit”. Both expressions, “strong suit” and “birthday suit” don’t make sense if literally translated to Spanish. For the first one, we have “punto fuerte”, literally “strong point”, and for the second one we have the expression “en cueros”, literally “on leather”. If I had translated the dialogue literally it would have been “¿Tienes algún traje fuerte? Sí, mi traje de nacimiento.” That doesn’t make sense in Spanish. So I had to translate to Spanish as, “¿Tienes algún punto fuerte? ¡Sí, ponerme en cueros!” (”Do you have any strong point? Yes, putting myself on leather!”) As you can see, it doesn’t make sense in English, but asure you it makes all the sense in Spanish and conveys the original words perfectly.

And I think this is more than enough of sharing my experiences translating Sanders Sides. I hope this has been enlightening in any way and that I didn’t make it too boring. I didn’t mean to pontificate about it. I’m only sharing my own experience. There are many other translators in other different languages who have their own experiences and they’re all equally valid, for starters because any language is different and therefore different rules and methods apply. As long as the translation is faithful to the original, not necesarily literally as I said, it will be a good translation, and that’s our goal after all when we translate something, to make a foreign work reachable to a broader international audience. I hope I have managed to do so and that I made @thatsthat24 ‘s work more reachable, as it deserves to be so. Until next time.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THINGS

It means that if you pick some number to focus on. I said in the second version. Except in the degenerate case, economic inequality can't be described by a ratio or even a curve.1 Boats have long had spines and ribs like an animal's ribcage.2 Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are very bad, like kids with no chance of reaching their potential, and others that are good, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin starting the company you usually give up in a fake world. There are some sterling exceptions, but as the corpus grows such tuning will happen automatically anyway. Apparently the most likely outcome is a $20 million acquisition if they can get around that. One of the occupational hazards of living in Cambridge is overhearing the conversations of people who get rich by playing games that though not crooked are zero-sum game there is at least a limit to the number who could be employed by small, fast-moving companies with a couple thousand people each.

A few months ago, one VC firm almost certainly unintentionally published a study showing bias of this type, so we get into the habit early in life of thinking that all judgements are. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as angels and super-angels may be smarter than they seem. We currently fund about 40 companies a year, selected from about 900 applications representing a total of about 2000 people. And in fact they do all look the same. Then you'd automatically get your share of the returns of the whole process slightly, as Hitchcock does in his films or Bruegel in his paintings—or at least businesslike, but often they're not. And that being so, revenues would continue to flow in, so you'd have security as well. In fact, users expect a site to improve. I carefully chose the word determined rather than stubborn, because stubbornness is a disastrous quality in a startup: a founder quits, you discover a patent that covers what you're doing, your servers keep crashing, you run into an insoluble technical problem, you have to be on it, or friends with those who are. 6 years to go public. A startup has to sing for its supper. So I've thought a lot about where to live. I doubt it would amount to much more than the definition implies.3

Law firms then made no pretense of paying people according to the value of what they create, give them the actual market value? Instead of acting tough, what most startups should do is simply always have a backup plan.4 Ok, sure, what you want. A recent survey found 52% of companies are very much influenced by where applicants went to college. Telling a child they have a termsheet, so called because it outlines the key terms of a deal. And perhaps more importantly, it's harder to lie to yourself. VCs have been provoked by their arrival into making a lot of data about that. One of the standard pieces of advice in fiction writing is show, don't tell.

Don't say that a character's angry; have him grind his teeth, or break his pencil in half. Now I know I don't.5 How important it is for many software startups because they're now so cheap. The chance of getting rejected after the full partner meeting where the firm as a whole says yes or no. Interestingly, while Kate said that she could never pick out successful founders, she could recognize VCs, both by the way they dressed and the way they dressed and the way they speak. Experts expect to throw away some early work. That's the only rational explanation for focusing on getting the right valuations, instead of blowing up in your face. Indeed, it will tend to push even the organizations issuing credentials into line.

The other is that some companies broke ranks and started to pay young employees large amounts. VCs are pretty good at 10 or 20, but it's hard to imagine something that could be a 10x return for an angel, and some of the most successful startups, including Google, ignored revenue at first and concentrated exclusively on development. They're good at doing what they're asked, since that's what it takes to please the adults who judge you at seventeen. If you offend investors, they'll leave in a huff. Let me start by describing what the world of startup funding used to look like talent. The company that says they're going to invest in you or we want to fix the bad aspects of it—you have to consciously force yourself to keep looking. I have a theory that explains why the super-angels really are is a new form of fast-moving companies with ten each?6 I think it was because I got addicted to trying to identify spam features myself, as if I were smart enough to listen.

Most of the famous founders in Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston. In this case the exploding termsheet was not or not only a tactic to pressure the startup. Imagine picking out apples at a grocery store. Viaweb succeeded because we were smart, not merely determined. But it's a mistake to talk to someone who wants to succeed. So I want to spend as little time inside the minds of spammers as possible. For example, if you're a hacker, here's a thought experiment you can run to understand why there are basically no hacker VCs: How would you like a job where you never got to make anything, but instead spent all your time listening to other people pitch mostly terrible projects, deciding whether to fund them, and sitting on their boards if you did? The user doesn't know what it means. I'd worry less about what they'd see, and more about what they'd do.

Because depending on the amount invested, that shows how far they are from reflecting any kind of work. Every kid grows up in a great city your whole life to benefit from it. There are some obvious dangers: pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. I get a lot done. I'd say what separates the great investors from the mediocre ones is the quality of their product, not the topic. The Bay Area has a lot of money. And if function is hard enough, form is forced to produce an equilibrium. So if you can choose when you raise money, you don't have to buy politicians the way railroad or oil magnates did. They're just postponing it. If determination is effectively the product of will and discipline, then you have the luxury of choosing: the top tier VCs, meaning about the top 20 only because they haven't been around long enough.

And thought you should check out the following is just not going to have to add some sort of padding to protect their misconceptions from bumping against reality. You'll find more interesting things by looking at the world than you could ever produce just by thinking. The reason is the selection algorithm I mentioned earlier. You can lose quite a lot of money by noticing sudden changes in stock prices. The only explanation is: by definition. For example, they'll almost always start with a lowball offer, just to see if you'll take it. This is how most venture investors operate.7 You could pay as little attention to the business as you wanted, knowing that your manager would keep things running smoothly.

Notes

As Anthony Badger wrote, If it failed it failed it failed it failed. Perl. Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable. When he wanted to than because they wanted to invest more.

Stone, op. Until recently even governments sometimes didn't grasp the cachet that term had.

In 1800 an empty room, you could out of fashion in 100 years ago it would have been lured into this sort of love is as blind as the first scientist.

Fifty years ago. A termsheet with a woman who had made Lotus into the sciences, you can do to get to profitability on a seed investment of 650k. The average B-17 pilot in World War II, must have affected what they are public and persist indefinitely, comments on e.

VCs and Micro-VCs. I get attacked a lot of face to face with the talking paperclip.

This was certainly true in the nature of an investor I don't think you should avoid raising money.

Articles of this type of x. The first alone yields someone flighty. The aim of such regulations is to how Henry Ford got started as a high product of number of spams that you end up reproducing some of the most important things VCs fail by choosing startups run by people trying to tell them startups are competitive like running, not you. Patrick Pantel and Dekang Lin.

Thanks to Eric Raymond, Qasar Younis, and Patrick Collison for the lulz.

[jessica-goldenstars-blog]

[ENGTRANS][Analysis] ‘My two cents on Jessica’s exit from SNSD’

Original Author: 墨武 (Zhihu)

Eng-Trans: RI + Hannah97, Yee and CAI

Source: https://www.zhihu.com/question/25626185/answer/179775847

Please take out with full credits.

‘My two cents on Jessica’s exit from SNSD’

I came to know SNSD in 03/2016 and started being interested in K-Pop. I didn’t know much in the beginning, so I gathered more information as time passed. I’m a law student in university, so I suppose my logic and common sense can be considered acceptable. I compiled my information over a period of time. Why am I bringing this up? Because too many fans are very biased when it comes to this incident. Judging from the replies I got, it seems not many can reply without prejudice. Of course, this is completely normal, you’re too emotionally-invested in a person, and the situation became so complicated. Towards someone whom you’ve loved for so many years, how can you stop loving them just like that? You won’t trust other people’s words that easily too. Many fans can’t achieve it, the ability to be impartial, and to look at this as an onlooker.

I ask that you put away your prejudice for once, and face the truth.

-Revised on June 14-

This is not a zero-sum game; I posted this analysis with no ill intent, but to encourage healthy debate, and also to share my opinions with everyone. Perhaps I was too long-winded; many people didn’t have the patience to finish reading. Some got defensive and began interrogating me in the replies. This kind of people who reply without even finishing the article are unreasonable, let’s not even start on if you respect me; it seems you lack respect even for yourself.  You spent so much time leaving a reply that has been repeated excessively (like a broken record) by others. All you did was parrot other people, you do not have a mind of your own, and such debates are meaningless.

Two points to take note:

1) Not everyone who speaks up for Jessica is her fan, I was assumed as Jessica’s fan for the past few days, but in actual fact I am just a casual fan of SNSD. I’m not young anymore, and started getting into K-Pop late, by the time I know about them, SNSD was already incomplete. I wrote this article because my principle in life makes me want to get to the bottom of everything, and with my cautious observations, I finally posted this.

Since this article is strictly an analysis on motive and reason, I have left out the professional terminology. If you are only convinced by professional terminology, then I am sorry to disappoint. My analysis is just words from an ordinary person.

In my eyes, they (idols) are just like us, just that they are slightly older and survive in a more vicious environment, so they are ordinary people who are (supposedly) more mature. It’s not like they are politicians or moguls of some sort.

2) Not everyone who speaks up for Jessica assumes she is as innocent as a lamb. Some people who didn’t even bother to read the article started barking in the comments “Only Jessica is an innocent lamb, only Jessica can do no wrong, you think the whole world wants to harm her?”. Regardless of whose side you are on, my approach is that nobody is completely innocent. People who take sides are fans. To prevent people from ignoring my analysis, which defeats the purpose of this article, and also people who tries to steer everyone in the wrong direction, okay, I hereby provide a glossary, just scroll to whatever you want to read.

1- Was she forced out or did she leave on her own accord?

2- Why was she forced out? Political reasons vs. She deserved it vs. Member conflict vs. Agency’s motive?

3- 930 Protagonist and antagonist role in this incident, what triggered 930?

4- 930 Onlookers, analysis of Chinese SONES, and common misconceptions.

Lastly, happy 10th anniversary to SNSD, and happy 10th anniversary to Jessica Jung.

Note: I saw a comment saying they are OT8, and will always support all 8, then went on to say SNSD should disband since their future has already been hindered due to this incident, and they feel discouraged. Here is a verse for you (from The Quatrain of Seven Steps):

People burn the beanstalk to boil beans,

The beans in the pot cry out.

We are born of the same root,

Why should we hound each other to death with such impatience?

1- Was she forced out? Vs. She left on her own accord?

Firstly let’s compare the official statements from both sides; any declaratives and statements not from the persons directly concerned cannot be assumed as legitimate material. Timeline of the published official statements as below:

Sep 30, 2014 at 5:00AM, Jessica made her stance on her WEIBO.

Sep 30, 2014 at 1:00PM, SM’s PR department released their official statement.

Oct 01, 2014 at 10:00AM, Jessica released her official statement.

In both Jessica and SM’s official statements, even though they focus on different points, both includes a fact that  coincides across both statements and cannot be ignored, as Jessica stated “without a proper reason, I received a one-sided notification to leave SNSD”, SM’s official statement stated “the agency had no choice but to pull up SNSD’s activities as 8 members earlier than planned”.

Everyone should have heard of ‘Rashomon’ (Rashomon 羅生門 is a 1950 Japanese film that is known for a plot device that involves various characters providing alternative, self-serving and contradictory versions of the same incident.), the same incident, with different people of different standpoints have contradictory ways of saying things, but things like fundamental truths can neither be changed nor erased. We received the message loud and clear on September 30, the agency did serve a notice to Jessica informing her that SNSD will move forward as an 8-member group, this is a fact.

So why is it that the fans in Korea curse with hatred at the mention of Jessica, instead of blaming the agency for breaking the group apart? Why did they not continue to support Jessica in her entertainment career?

That is because someone misled all of us by shifting the blame and the source of the problem for this incident onto the members and Jessica. SM’s official statement stated “this coming Spring, she notified us she will halt her team promotions”. Shortly after, ‘Korea’s #1 Paparazzi’ Dispatch released the infamous ‘insider Q&A’, 2 persons (allegedly close to Jessica) who were unwilling to disclose their identities, were interviewed. They revealed that Jessica is no longer part of the group because she said she intended to leave the group on 2 occasions with plans to get married. Those who are familiar with K-entertainment all know that K-fans detest dating scandals the most, there are many cases where they stopped being a fan and backstabbed the idol in return. Hence, the image of a selfish person who only cares about developing her own career and intends to get married to her boyfriend was formed in Korean citizens’ minds. The extent of the damage caused by this ‘created image’ is severe, 3 years later and Koreans are still leaving comments citing this ‘selfish person who only cares about her own career and intends to get married to her boyfriend’ as an excuse. Did everyone realize something? That’s right, it’s been 3 years, and they still come up with the exact same arguments, because the accusations failed to come true, so the rumors are stuck at where it started. But why do we have people taking 2 different sides, 1 group sees eye to eye with the Koreans, and the other group thinks that she was indeed a victim who got forced out. I’m not sure if the comments represent the majority, but my friends have the same conclusion as me, that Jessica was indeed forced out.

Here are a few reasons, firstly why are there different opinions in 2 countries? Because we (China) don’t have SM, we don’t have the Big-3 agencies that dominate and monopolize the market, we don’t have controversies formed by a powerful agency that refuses to let you off easy even if you dissolved your contract amicably. As I mentioned earlier, if someone like Dispatch, a top paparazzi with high publicity, reports negatively on an idol , will you believe them? Honestly, fans excluded, onlookers will likely go along with what Dispatch reports, this is also why many fans keep clarifying matters in the comment section of such reports. Fans persevered and continued clarifying even if it’s counterproductive, because by doing so, there is still a 1% chance that people may be enlightened and have a clearer grasp of the situation. If you stay silent, you have a 0% chance of turning things around. Which means, it may just be true for those who say “you think a local like me wouldn’t know our country’s celebrities better than you, a foreigner?”, you are right, you really don’t. The Korean society is weird, they condemn a person without even giving them a chance to speak up for themselves, and fans have no platform to explain matters. They only have one-sided information released by a big agency to the media, and with such ways of handling matters, it’s hard for me to not think you are the villain here. This leads to a repeated rumor being taken as truth, and this is dreadful.

Moreover, having the intent to kill but not actually fulfilling the act does not make you guilty legally, but in the vicious entertainment industry, even having such intent equates to the death penalty. So there must be a purpose behind this intent right? Before we discuss about the purpose, I discovered another interesting point, SM stated “This spring, Jessica said she would stop group activities”. Spring could be either March, April, or May. In Dispatch’s famous ‘insider Q&A’, they mentioned that Jessica said she wanted to leave the group twice, once in January, and a 2nd time in July. Here comes my question, so which month was it exactly? Was it Spring, or was it Summer? Or SM’s idea of Spring stretches from January to July? No? So who was lying? Was it SM’s official statement, or was it the ‘insiders’ invited by Dispatch who were lying?

We should all agree on one fact, either a person actually thinking of doing something or a person actually acting out on their thoughts, are driven by a purpose and motivation. Let’s assume that since Jessica had intended to quit the group, or even mentioned about wanting to quit the group, means she must have the desire to do so. How did this desire come about in the first place? Such desires usually entail benefits to oneself, and I believe nobody would desire something that causes harm to themselves. Then was there a dire need for Jessica to quit the group that year? What caused her to have a desire to quit the group that year? I personally think she had even more reason to want to stay in the group that year.

I hereby provide 4 pieces of evidence, the first 2 will focus on Jessica’s personal reasons, the other 2 will focus on external factors. Firstly, Jessica belonged to the bottom half of the group in terms of personal schedules she had since the second half of 2011, even the leader of TaeTiSeo mentioned during their subunit interview that Jessica had  only been “practically living in the photoshoot studio”. You can find the comparison chart for personal schedules of all 9 members in freesouls bar. In comparison, the amount of personal schedules Jessica had in 2014 was more than her past 2 years’ combined. Not forgetting to mention the Jungsis subunit that SM had wanted to promote but was shelved, such important projects couldn’t have been put together within a week or two. So what reason does Jessica have to take such a huge risk now, to discard all the benefits that she was about to reap, to the extent of quitting the group no matter what? Some people say she doesn’t care, she just felt like quitting and so what, she is such a person who doesn’t care about anything. But the audio from their dance practice was leaked proving that they did record a song together, preparation for a season 2 of Jessica & Krystal’s reality show was also reported in the news. Will a person who simply don’t care be so enthusiastic in a project? Will you put in so much effort to practice again and again, only to give up on the actual day of the exam? I am sure you will not be happy at the thought of it, after all everyone loves to measure success based on results.

Secondly, in terms of career development, Jessica launched her brand in August after a series of preparation, she also mentioned in her official statement that she had informed the members beforehand, including all her future plans. Hello people, launching a brand is not a piece of cake, she must have prepared for a long time and her company only just started, and this is just an ‘insurance’ for her idol career. When you are part of a top girl group like SNSD where you can reap the fruits of your labor, she chose fashion as her future ‘insurance’, something she is familiar with and good at. Honestly, this ‘insurance’ is still at its early stages, so was there a need to sever all ties with such a strong backing when nothing has taken shape yet? Realistically speaking, even the most powerful backing does not belong to you in the end. In the real world, you can work with others but never ever rely on them completely. She is not an underaged teen who thinks the world is filled with only good people, she has lived for 25 years and survived in the entertainment industry for 14 years (2014), will she be such an idiot to sever all ties with a powerful backing and have nothing to fall back on, just to go start on a new venture?

Thirdly, in terms of SNSD’s career development, 2014 marks SNSD’s 7th year in the industry and they can be considered an unbeatable girl group, even though I think they are already on their decline, everything that goes up must come down. Anyway their decline is not that obvious and it doesn’t matter even if they are on their way down, since they have found success thanks to the contribution of all 9 members, what they need to do now is to take their share of the pie and have their taste of success. A group that has seen success internationally and reached their peak can only do so much now. Many people say SNSD still has potential but I beg to differ, because you have already reached your peak and so the public no longer anticipates what other surprises you can bring. Their only concern is that this group is at its peak. This is a dead end for many superstars, how much popularity is enough? Where is the peak? When the public no longer look forward to what you can achieve, when they are no longer curious about what you can bring to the table, the so-called popularity will start to wane, and what you are left with is only the nation’s approval. Perhaps you will say that I am contradicting myself but think carefully, are the younger generation and the previous generation supporting the same idols? The people that the previous generation supports has attained the nation’s approval, and the younger generation go for popularity, what matters is “volume”. SNSD’s potential has been gradually declining since 2014, but this works in the members’ favor instead, this means the members can begin distinguishing themselves from the group since the group has already reached its peak. They can have their own identity and not just be SNSD’s so and so. This is what I meant by tasting their share of the pie. It is obvious that SNSD is already going down that route, and we hardly see group performances by SNSD anymore, partly due to commercial and personal reasons. Since they have endured the early days where their articles were filled with malicious comments, where their every move was being monitored and scrutinized, does it sound logical to you for someone to leave the group when it’s time to enjoy the benefits and honor that the ‘brand name (SNSD)’ gives? Put yourself in this situation, you suffered 6 years of cursings, and people finally start to compliment you, then out of a sudden you tell everyone that it’s better if they continue to curse you, you can take it. This is impossible. (What in the world???)

Fourthly, Jessica’s agency SM, SM’s background and history, an agency that blocks even artistes who dissolved their contract amicably. Why is SM so harsh towards their previous artistes? Of course it’s just so they can demonstrate their power. ‘In this entertainment industry, I am God, you want to leave me? Don’t even think about it.’ You must be joking if you think Jessica didn’t anticipate SM’s tyrannical ways. She was a trainee for 7 years and had been in SNSD for 7 years, she clearly knows what happened to members who left H.O.T, Shinhwa, DBSK, and Super Junior. Even a person in any normal situation knows what risk assessment is, and when the risk is obviously greater than the benefit for whatever you want to do, any sane person would either give up the idea, or wait it out. Why is it that most Koreans renew their contract with SM? You have already been warned, ‘if we are not going to be in the same boat, then you can prepare to sink.’ Even if you are not contented, but as long as you still want to survive, you have no choice but to continue with this agency. What can you do? Of course you have to learn to forgive them. Because if you refuse to, they will not let you off. You can’t say that their staff and their management are heartless, you can only blame the agency for being ruthless. In this economically-driven world, to maintain their dominance, they will only continue to be so oppressive. You should have expected this when you chose them in the first place.

With such a powerful backing (or threat), and with her future shining so brightly, the argument of her ‘wanting to leave the group’ is no longer valid. Nobody would want to leave without tasting a bite of the pie they (spent so many years to) bake. Jessica, a member who contributed to SNSD’s success obviously wants to enjoy her share of the pie.

Therefore, saying she left the group on her own accord is completely ridiculous. Of course, such excuses started from the Koreans who were brainwashed by the media. Actually most of the SONES in China agreed that she was indeed forced out. Like they always say “I really don’t understand Golden Stars, your idol was fired and you still have the cheek to keep bringing it up”. It’s true that being forced out is somewhat like getting fired, but they are of different nature. I can’t help but feel bitter whenever people say that, because they are implying that SNSD are just colleagues rather than friends. This is as far as their group spirit goes, and will be evident in their future comebacks.

2- Why was she forced out? Political reasons vs. She deserved it vs. Member conflict vs. Agency’s motive?

Even when everyone agrees that she was forced out, why do people keep bringing this subject up? What I have listed are the more plausible reasons, I chose not to list some of the more ridiculous arguments that are obviously from brainless antis. I advise everyone to just have a good laugh and let it go when you come across those people with such great imagination.

Firstly, some people said that ‘930’ was a deflection for political scandals. I will like to call someone out.

“Politics!”

“What?!”

“There’s a (scape)goat for you, please acknowledge it.”

“Go to hell, I don’t want it.”

Politics: “I don’t want to be the scapegoat, thanks.”

Korea is undoubtedly small, let alone South Korea, it’s nothing out of the ordinary for politics and entertainment to cross paths, but not everything from drunk-driving to drug-abuse to small issues like leaving a group or dating scandals are always used to cover political scandals. Think about it, if you are a Korean, would you care more about the news of an idol (who holds a lowly status in Korean society), or a political scandal? We are talking about a country who has the guts to impeach their president and put her on trial. Everytime I see a fan say “‘Pinocchio’ was used to cover a political scandal”, “You are siding with the wrong party”, I just want to laugh. You think you are the only one who watched ‘Pinocchio’, you think you are the only one who watches the news, you think you are the only one who knows whose side they are on? Even the 5 leading organizations will not dare to take sides easily, let alone entertainment agencies. Whose side did Samsung take? I realized something when I read the ‘Twenty-Four Histories’. The typical scenario of an aristocratic family was that the elder brother would be the proposition, and the younger brother would be the opposition, they would always be at loggerheads. Why did that happen though? That is to prevent a genocide. (Author quoted a scenario of Zhuge Liang from ‘The Three Kingdoms’, research if you want to know more) Using the same logic, a company in our economically-driven society is only interested in a mutually-beneficial business relationship to ensure the company does not collapse.

Can’t you see, the South Korean president has gone through multiple setbacks, but yet the 5 leading organizations are still standing strong?

No doubt the Big-3 entertainment agencies are tools, but if we are talking about taking sides politically, then I’m sorry to tell you they are not that influential. So for those who said the series of incidents that happened to SM in 2014 were actually collateral damage to cover up political scandals, then perhaps you are overthinking this.

Why were there multiple dating scandals from SNSD that were reported that year? First and foremost, they are indeed no longer young and innocent girls, so it’s not surprising that they are in relationships too. On the other hand, media and entertainment agencies  have always had a love-hate relationship, whoever has the most lucrative offer wins. Since they are no longer the young and innocent girls like before, it’s only natural that SM loosens their leash and gives them a little more leeway. Anyway they are already the nation’s girl group, and scandals like these are not going to jeopardize their position. So they no longer see the need to bribe the media in order to stop them from publishing such photos. This is a moneymaking agency who is very realistic and calculative, so they find no need to make such ‘investments’(bribery) anymore.

Since the ‘political reason’ excuse is busted, does that mean Jessica paved the way to her own downfall, and that she deserved it? There is one reason that was stated in SM’s official statement that makes me not know whether to laugh or cry, and it is no wonder Jessica found it unreasonable as well. “No-show for events”, I have seen the information compiled by fans with regards to Jessica’s attendance for all group events, and from the start of 2014 to the month of September; this may sound embarrassing; but their accusation is completely unfounded. Perhaps SM realized they messed up too. We are talking about public events here, and everyone can see for themselves. You can’t make it go away simply by saying it doesn’t exist. Afterall, fans are not blind. So SM came up with a befuddling reason in an attempt to confuse people. “Personal schedules clashed with group activities”, this leaves an extensive room for debate because it includes practices, and how can fans possibly verify their attendance for practices (behind closed doors)? It’s not like you can follow them around as if you are their assistant or manager. Who knows they might even practice after meeting up for a meal together, so by missing the dinner gathering, they can say you were absent for practice too. Such befuddling reasons misled people into thinking Jessica deserved whatever happened to her because she was asking for it. Blindly assuming she ignored group activities and only cared about her own business, that she is so selfish, and it’s a good thing she left. Even if she did not leave the group voluntarily, thank God the agency forced her out, she deserved to be kicked out. Okay, let’s take a moment and use our brains now, what was the message that SM’s official statement was trying to convey?

“Yes, I intended to inform everyone that SNSD will proceed with their activities as 8 from now on, but I didn’t expect her to speak up first, so you can’t blame me, blame it on her for thinking about leaving in Spring, I advised her against it but realized it was futile, so I kicked her out, yes it was a decision by both the members and myself, so don’t blame this on me alone.”

SM’s official statement was actually saying; members of boy groups can go on a hiatus for 2 years (due to the need to serve in the army) and not get forced out, and members of girl groups can skip group activities due to their participation in musicals, tv-dramas, or because of health reasons, and a plethora of other excuses; their attendance is dependent on their personal schedules that could last a day or two or could even be as long as 3 to 4 months, it is alright to skip activities because I will just overlook it. BUT dear Jessica, within the span of 1 month from the day you launched your personal business, you have missed practices, take note it’s just practices since we didn’t witness Jessica missing any public events, but my apologies, please withdraw from the group, you are no longer a member.

You said Jessica was going to leave in Spring, what was your motive for advising her against it then? To make sure SNSD stays complete, am I right? But within the brief span of 1 month, you changed the course of direction for the person whom you painstakingly tried to retain, and discarded the whole idea of a complete group, oh, with such a huge loophole, tell me, are you even serious?

(It will be perfect if they were to release such an official statement 1 year later (after putting her on hiatus), because Jessica would have played straight into their hands and missed many activities, and then it would seem more rightful for them to withdraw her from the group, citing ‘no-show for multiple activities’ as a reason. There could be another frightening possibility, and that is the official statement was meant to be released in 2015 but Jessica spoke up first unfortunately, which explains the part where they said Jessica was going to leave after 1 more album in the ‘Dispatch Q&A’. Because that will make perfect sense since <Catch Me If You Can> was released in the later part of 2014 and that will seemingly be Jessica’s final single with the group as planned. SM certainly put a lot of thought into it. It seems like they failed to edit the ‘Dispatch 18 Q&A’ though, no wonder it didn’t make any sense when I came across the part where they said she will leave after releasing 1 last album with the group.)

The above bracketed paragraph is solely based on the author’s own logic and conclusion, it is up to you to believe it or not. It’s a pity we failed to notice SM’s schemes.

SM’s official statement was actually very short, because the ‘Dispatch Q&A’ had spoken everything on their behalf. What they wanted to portray was that they had tried everything they could but failed to salvage the situation, and they wanted people to believe that “Jessica’s withdrawal had absolutely nothing to do with them.”

This is a very common PR tactic; all we wanted was an explanation, but they had to drag you into the gutter, honestly, did you think all of us are as gullible as a 3 year old kid, I explicitly asked you about the weather today but you tell me the weather forecast indicates that the weather is beautiful in Spring so the weather is not bad today? Where is the correlation?

So what was SM’s role in this ‘930’ incident? In my opinion, they were the mastermind. But I feel that they are the executors and not the initiators. Firstly, all members renewed their contracts in August 2014, even though they are one of the biggest entertainment agencies, SNSD is still their top girl group and it consists of 9 women who have clawed their way to the top for the past 10’ish years. What if they decide to up and leave together if their demands are not met? It is during this time that Jessica wrote up a new contract with SM. It is impossible that SM wouldn’t evaluate her brand first. So what should they base their evaluation on? Obviously it will be evaluated based on the brand’s future value and revenue. Jessica had indeed paid the necessary fees to SM and in other words, they reached a mutual agreement. This also meant that SM expected to reap profits from Jessica’s brand. The bigger her brand gets, the better for SM, and they can reap profits without having to move a finger. This is an additional source of revenue for them, and if all things go well, they can even invest in her brand and become a shareholder at a low-entry price. Who wouldn’t want that? It would be such a waste not to. Businessmen are opportunistic and will never let such an opportunity slip away, it’s in their nature. So for those who said SM got frightened after learning how Jessica intended to scale her business, you probably thought SM is the fruit stall near your house that got their guts eaten alive. There was a legal agreement, do you take SM’s lawyers for fools who didn’t analyze the potential profit before letting SM sign the contract? Seems like you are undermining SM’s capabilities. Jessica’s ‘Blanc & Eclare’ shades also appeared in a movie produced by SM, which further proves that they did enter an agreement.

During that time, the person who held the authority to make decisions caused the ‘930 incident’ to happen, to a certain extent. The person in power at that time was Kim Young Min who was appointed the president a long time ago, but the soul of SM has always been Lee Soo Man who is also the biggest shareholder. But the docile president was finally given the chance to make a decision on his own in 2014. Lee Soo Man’s wife was critically ill then, and due to the inevitable internal power struggle, he was left with no choice but to loosen his tight reign over Kim Young Min temporarily. Kim Young Min would obviously do whatever he deemed fit against better judgement. Their artistes has no affection towards Kim Young Min, unlike for Lee Soo Man whom they address as their ‘seonsaengnim’ (teacher) because they were brought into the industry by him. If Lee Soo Man had been the one in power instead of Kim Young Min when conflicts occurred among members, he might have held the respect and ability to appease their anxiety, so that they would have waited patiently instead of making rash decisions. He would have taken a better approach and advise Jessica more appropriately when she asked for the go-ahead for her business, giving possibility to a positive outcome with regards to the earlier negotiations that have reached stalemate. Most importantly, Lee Soo Man would have had a better grasp of Jessica’s temperament and know that she is different from his other money-making machines who are obedient and whom he has wrapped around his finger. He would have known that Jessica is no pushover and cannot be easily influenced and accused for breach of contract, instead of simply devising a ‘perfect’ set-up (first citing health reasons; then absence from group activities; then dating scandal; end up leaving the group) thinking Jessica will comply obediently and they can get away with it.

Everyone should be familiar with this set-up. Yes, Sulli went through it. I am not going to judge Sulli but I just think such a set-up works indeed. At least in our hearts, f(x) should be a group of 4, the perfect 4. If Jessica hadn’t spoken up first, will the outcome be different with a similar set-up? SNSD would be a group of 8, it would make sense and everything would seem fine. Of course Jessica will still be the scapegoat, and SM will continue to profit. This outcome is absolutely perfect.

The upper management’s role here is to watch them attack each other, then turn the tide in their favor. This will be the best of both worlds for them. SM always has a fall back plan. In their official statement and subsequent arrangements, their intention was to make Jessica stay so they can share the profits equally. Honestly, SM would have been the biggest winner if Jessica had stayed in the company (after being forced out). They would have rights to Jessica’s personal fashion brand, and they could have benefitted from all the publicity from the ‘930’ saga. SNSD would return in a new form as 8 and bring a breath of fresh air to the public eye. Jessica would continue raking in revenue and they can get free publicity by mentioning Jessica - a former SNSD member, every now and then, with no consequence. Even though they are doing it now, it’s still rather inconvenient. For example, a MV conveniently leaked by an anonymous fan (e.g. Catch Me If You Can). They would have violated Jessica’s rights if they had spread that MV via their official platform instead, and Jessica would have to be compensated.

But Jessica was adamant about leaving and SM lost the opportunity to enjoy the best of both worlds. Nonetheless, Jessica was made the scapegoat successfully and she didn’t sue SM for breach of contract, so the company still won. The reason why SM was so confident was because Krystal is still under SM, and it was impossible to go hostile with SM as long as she still wanted to pursue an entertainment career, and also unless she couldn’t care less about Krystal’s future anymore. Some people said that Jessica was able to dissolve her contract with SM amicably because SM didn’t want her anymore. You must be horribly mistaken because SM still cared enough to assign a team of staff to Jessica even for her personal schedules, right until her contract was dissolved. So rather than saying SM didn’t want Jessica anymore, the more logical explanation would be that the contract was dissolved because a mutual consensus was reached after much deliberation that by doing so was the most mutually-beneficial approach. SM agreed to dissolve her contract because they were the ones who breached the contract this time. The reason why SM persecuted the people who left their company was because this group of people did violate their contract. Whereas for Jessica’s case, SM was in the wrong and since they did not have the upperhand, they were wise to not pursue this issue because the possibility of them winning this lawsuit is slim. And Jessica chose to end the contract amicably because she didn’t want to remain in such a company and also because Krystal is still under them. I am not mentioning Krystal on purpose but because it shouldn’t come as a surprise for real sisters to spare a thought for each other. If Jessica’s departure from the group didn’t affect Krystal at all, she would have appeared in SMTown’s ending stages. 3 years later today, after multiple SMTown concerts, Krystal still has not appear a single time. You can consider it a coincidence if it’s once or twice, but not if it’s everytime. It’s simply because she can’t bring herself to.

Finally, let’s talk about whether conflicts occurred among the members. As the saying goes “to stay together through thick and thin”, this is easier said than done, and hard times will always reveal true friends. It’s true they have gone through hard times together before, but it’s a different situation altogether now that they have reached their peak.

Imagine this scenario: 9 girls who reached their peak through mutual support; everyone starts to plan for their own future, and upon discussion some say they will work even harder to become the number 1 K-Pop idol; then Jessica tells the members about her grand plan, “I want to start a company, and I’m going to overtake you guys by working twice as hard”. This is definitely shocking news for the rest, “Eh, but you didn’t have any ambitions before? Why are you so motivated and driven all of a sudden?”

“Yes I’ve changed, you guys have a problem with it? I’m going to start working much harder. I’ve spent year after year without jobs allocated to me, this cannot go on anymore, can’t I start living my life without regrets from now on?”

“NO. Absolutely NOT.” I’m not sure if you have experienced it before but it happened to me. I’m generally an easy-going person and it’s not because I don’t care, but it’s simply because I don’t want others to feel threatened by thinking I’m trying to snatch anything away from them. Call me stubborn but I want to be appreciated by my superiors based on my own merits. Jessica was in SNSD for 7 years, it’s hard to believe she has no ambition at all. She trained for 7 long years, and she wouldn’t have been able to persevere if she hadn’t dreamed of success. Would she have been able to persevere if she didn’t have the passion for singing? But when she didn’t make the cut and was not selected to be part of SNSD’s subunit in 2012, her position as 2nd lead vocalist was clearly threatened. TTS comes to mind whenever people mention SNSD’s vocal line, but where was Jessica? There was no Jessica. If I put myself in her shoes, knowing that I obviously love singing, knowing that I obviously should have gotten it, and knowing that I obviously should have been acknowledged, but I was forgotten instead. You can only imagine how dejected she would have been. I can completely understand her reason for wanting to work something out for herself, but that doesn’t mean everyone else would understand or even see eye-to-eye with her.

Take me for example. I was lazy during my high school days, but suddenly realize I couldn’t go on like this during my 3rd year, so I started working very hard. But my best friend turned against me and her reason was, “why did you become so serious suddenly? I feel uncomfortable being around you, being your friend makes me feel so stressed out now.”

I was disgusted. You were always working hard whereas all I did was laze around previously, and now that I’ve started working hard, you suddenly think I got too serious? You already feel threatened even before I started working hard?

I experienced this first hand so I can understand the situation perfectly, and especially after I read Jessica’s official statement. I’m not trying to point fingers, but we tend to evaluate our friends. We are used to having friends being worse off or equal, but never better than us. Especially if said friend used to be a lazy person who suddenly decided to work hard. The anxiety and fear caused by this sudden revelation is enough to send you into a state of panic.  

That is exactly what Jessica did, she sent her 8 members into a state of panic, and they could have kept their annoyance to themselves, but someone decided to aggravate the issue. Once it was brought up and pondered over, the situation turned for the worse. They convinced themselves that her decision would affect the group instead of it being about their own fear of knowing she was going to have a brighter future than them. It’s easy to come up with a bunch of bollocks as excuses since you can’t speak about your toxic thoughts. Like my friend who said “You’ve changed, you didn’t used to care about your future”. Of course I needed to change, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have a future. Are you telling me this was what my friend wanted me to be? A useless bum?

Jessica must have been so traumatized when the members made her choose between SNSD and her business. “We reached a mutual understanding after discussing about it, you guys even congratulated me, so why is it that you guys are forcing me to choose now?” Jessica has her ‘character flaws’ and it shown at this time, she is too iron-willed, stubborn, and it feels almost impossible to get her to back down. The more you threaten and force her to yield, the tougher she becomes. Her inability to come to terms with their sudden change of mind and the members’ unwillingness to compromise led to this fight. SM chose to watch silently and not act as a mediator in this fight since they will anger the other party if they were to pick sides, so they let them work it out among themselves.

It’s such a shame that something like this happened to SNSD when it’s time to enjoy their success. The members probably held numerous meetings among their respective cliques. The more they thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed to them. The more publicity her brand got, the more absurd it felt. The more they understood the scale of her ambition, the more panicky they got. This kind of panic wasn’t jealousy, it was simply because they couldn’t get used to this supposedly ‘new and improved’ Jessica, and also partly stemmed from their own selfishness. “I can stay beside you forever, but, you cannot ever surpass me, especially not materialistically.” When the members demanded Jessica to stop all her plans, Jessica said she already invested heavily and there was no way she could drop everything just like that. Everything came to a standstill. On one hand, the members felt like Jessica has changed, “you didn’t use to be like this, you were never this driven and ambitious”, while on the other hand, Jessica felt threatened, “We have been together for 10 years, shouldn’t you guys support me unconditionally?”

So did they try to work it out? They did. Jessica continued posting material related to the members in September, but the members began to take an even tougher stance. I believe the situation wouldn’t have reached such a terrible state if someone didn’t aggravate the situation. Lee Soo Man would have attempted to appease everyone and not let any malicious person cloud the members’ judgement. The reason why any malicious person would succeed in driving a wedge between them was because the 9 of them were no longer like before, they have their own cliques now, their own circle of friends, and have their own career paths to take. There is no way to know who the malicious people who instigated them were, but they definitely existed. The success of Jessica’s brand may not have a significant impact on the members, but if Jessica succeeded in both entertainment and fashion industries, it might have a strong effect on the people behind the team. This fight looks like a 1 vs 8 from the outside, but in actual fact, it’s a conflict of personal interests that involved many others. It’s a shame they didn’t manage to keep their promise of being together forever. After considering the future revenue and benefits of 1 vs 8 without Lee Soo Man helming SM’s management team, and taking Sulli’s incident as a guide, it was easy to use a similar setup for Jessica’s dismissal. So they acceded to the 8 members’ demands, and then informed Jessica she was excluded from all future SNSD activities. They were going to use health as a reason for Jessica’s absence, and let her slowly fade away.

All 3 (Jessica, members, SM) parties were at fault.

Jessica was overconfident thinking the members would never go to the extent of kicking her out, so she used the delay-tactic and hoped the conflict would work itself out with time. She also over-estimated Kim Young Min’s trustworthiness by thinking she could disregard the members’ opposition by gaining Kim Young Min’s word of approval. As we all know, Jessica got played. If she hadn’t gotten his word of approval, she might have taken the members’ state of anxiety into consideration and not daringly leave the country to attend to personal matters. But Kim Young Min was definite and gave her his word, then he turned his back on her the moment she left the country. He broke down her defences and caught her off guard. Jessica’s overconfidence caused her to overlook the immediate danger and she was caught in an awkward predicament, like a drowned mouse.

As for the members, they cracked under pressure and gave in to their anxiety by blowing things out of proportion, thinking their conflict with Jessica was beyond repair. It escalated from simply not being used to seeing your friend become so driven suddenly, to the road of no return, because there wasn’t a mediator to alleviate the situation, and they were played by the people who used their emotions against them by clouding their judgement. I think there were neutral members who kept their opinions to themselves, and by keeping quiet they were inadvertently agreeing to whatever decision was being made. I think the neutral members were YoonA, Seohyun, Hyoyeon, and Sunny. YoonA is known for her high EQ, she is not the sort to take an active role especially in situations like such whereby she would likely offend either party. During a rehearsal around the time this fight was going on, she didn’t dare to interact with Jessica openly but they still made eye contact. In a Hong Kong interview around mid-September, she blatantly said she wasn’t the one who started or instigated this matter. As for Seohyun, she had always been cordial with Jessica, being the youngest in the group, her words didn’t weigh as much. When Jessica attended the <I Love that Crazy Little Thing> presscon, a reporter asked if she knew Seohyun was in Beijing too, and she answered “Yes”. This was a huge contrast to when she was asked if she knew Yuri was in Hong Kong, where Jessica replied “Oh she is? I didn’t know”. When asked if they were going to meet up, she replied “I don’t think so”. Her attitude was very different. Another possibility could be that her anger has slowly dissipated with time. Perhaps Jessica simply doesn’t care as much anymore, so her approach to such questions have changed too. As for Sunny, she remained passive since there wasn’t a need for her to instigate anything, because she had nothing to gain from this fight due to her special status. Nothing can change the fact that she is Lee Soo Man’s niece, and her attitude after 930 says it all. She seemed like she got sick of this supposed sisterly bond. Lastly Hyoyeon, being one of the less popular members aside, most importantly, her life motto is “it’s okay, everything’s going to be fine”. She tends to make peace with whatever situation. Jessica once said Hyoyeon gave similar advice to her before. There are similarities between these 4 members, they are neutral by nature and are not good at expressing themselves. Perhaps they have minimal conflict of interests with Jessica, or perhaps their family backgrounds are not too far off from Jessica, or perhaps their talent and field of interests are different from Jessica, so they don’t clash.

But it’s such a shame because everyone has grown up, so their way of thinking and doing things won’t be what you always see in fairytales, where they will thrive and survive against all odds. They can only obey the majority, obey the most outspoken people. Because of the fear of being singled out saying they are antisocial by not following the masses, and also the fear for their future, most importantly the fear that they will not get to enjoy their share of the pie, their share of the success that was made possible by the contribution of all 9 members.

On the morning of 930, Jessica completely gave up hope and did not follow through with SM’s plan (to say her absence was due to health reasons) when the members made such a grave and heartless decision. Let’s imagine, if any of the members had cried and threw a fit, 930 may not have gone down the way it did. Well I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and think that they didn’t waste 14 years of their lives for nothing.

Reality is cruel, even though most fans understand, they don’t want to accept reality. But we have to admit that idols hide all their problems behind their smiles, and behind their smiles is a world of pain that even they themselves don’t want to confront. It is best to not let such darkness and negativity swallow you up, because once you let it get to your heart, you will definitely crumble.

As for SM, their mistake was taking Jessica for a fool thinking they could pull the same trick twice without her figuring out how it’s done. You used the same tactic on Choi Sulli, and then you go tell Jessica, “Hey, Jessica babe, we intend to use the same tactic on you, so please don’t show up for the fanmeet today okay? Don’t show up for future SNSD activities too because you are no longer a part of the group, but please keep it a secret and don’t tell anyone, let’s take it one step at a time.” Can you guess Jessica’s reaction and next course of action? As the saying goes, even an angry bunny bites back, moreover Jessica is a cat. \(-_- )/

With Jessica’s character, she was definitely not going to be a sitting duck just waiting to get slaughtered, and this was also the reason why she was not made the leader. Her life motto is “follow my heart”. A popular artiste once said that no agency was willing to sign him and their reason was that they needed their artistes to be obedient so they could exercise control over them easily, and they should be someone who can’t survive in the industry upon leaving the agency. But he is a highly intelligent man of many talents who can survive on his own even if he leaves the entertainment industry. Jessica will never fall for SM’s tricks like Sulli did because she doesn’t do things against her own will and conscience. Perhaps Kim Young Min didn’t have a good grasp of every artiste’s personalities and thought he could use the same trick on Jessica. So the situation turned into a farce. Drama ensued and Jessica revealed the truth so everyone can have a clear view of what really went down.

3- Backstabbed her former members? Backstabbed by agency and former members?

I think Jessica got backstabbed, so she retaliated and gave them a taste of their own medicine. Let’s be logical, what would you do if you got backstabbed? Smile and let it pass? This is what a monk would do, not how commoners like us would react. The reason why I said Jessica got backstabbed: firstly Jessica posted on weibo at 5am when it wasn’t too long after she got informed of her dismissal. She was absolutely infuriated at this time, perhaps she witnessed the members carrying on with their preparation for the Shenzhen fanmeet as if nothing happened after notifying her of her dismissal. Or perhaps she didn’t even get to see the members after receiving a message for her dismissal, and all the members were not contactable. No matter what happened, it definitely had significant impact on a person who thought there was still room for negotiations. Moreover the people who informed you (be it in person or by written notice) had been your friends for more than a decade. Both scenarios are unthinkable and unbearable but unfortunately, either of this scenario must have happened. I have this conclusion because in both of SM’s and Jessica’s official statements, "company and members" were mentioned. If the rumors are real, it could be less hurtful if Jessica was notified face-to-face, rather than simply receiving a written notice to leave the group, and then go on to find out that all members were uncontactable. Jessica deserved to be treated with at least minimum respect, and granting her a face-to-face settlement is the proper way.

Regardless of what went down, the person who received such news would feel absolutely helpless and angry, and it is no surprise that it led to Jessica’s post on Weibo. Perhaps you think you can handle such news without getting into a frenzy, then good for you, but that doesn’t apply to everyone. What about Jessica? She was once asked about Sooyoung and YoonA’s relationships and she said, “if the members were not informed beforehand and only got to know when the news break out, then that’s rude.” This was exactly what happened to her, and the sheer anger she felt was a tell-tale sign of who the real backstabbers were. Long-time Sones will tell you Jessica is cold and not to be trifled with, something they derived from media reports and the image that SM tailormade for her. I feel that she doesn’t have an overly vibrant personality and is also not easily fooled. She doesn’t accept being shortchanged. How can we be all smiles after being backstabbed repeatedly unless you are Mother Mary? Some would say she did that because she anticipated SM’s actions and wanted to gain the upperhand. Guys, this is not the way to do it. It doesn’t always mean you have the upperhand just because you did something first.

The《Old Book of Tang》has two examples on “take the initiative is to gain the upper hand”, but two different results, positive case - Tang Long coup and negative case - Li Chongjun rebellion case, in the concept of time they are both the first, why they had different fates? Because Li Chongjun at most was a person with a temporary meaning of indignation, and ignored the definition of the first start is " to surprise the enemy". However, Li Longji's “take the initiative is to gain the upper hand” was way better because his "sudden attack when enemy aren’t prepared" such steady ruthless behavior style.

So let’s take a look, did Jessica’s behavior really was “strikes first and gains the advantage”? In fact, from this point in time, you can see, Jessica has no wisdom as Li Longji when she was in the middle of such situation, my analogy may make people feel funny, how is an idol comparable to an emperor of Tang dynasty? Of course not. Return to the matter, what I mean is that 25-year-old Jessica Jung failed with her “strike first”, and it even created dangers for her future situation.

Jessica’s statement was posted at 5:00 AM, but SM released the official statement until 1:00 PM, I would like to ask, is it really “strike first and get advantages” that you gave your opponent such a long time difference? Do you all think that after informing Jessica to leave the group in the early morning, SM’s PR all went back to sleep? Obviously no. Not to mention at 5:00 AM the rest of the members must have got up and got ready to go to Shenzhen in the morning for the fan meeting. We can also see what SM was doing for up to seven hours from the trend of news later. Yes, they began their fancy performance of manipulating the media and news, if you are interested, you can search up, they really calculated every step well.

Since SM informed that Jessica to leave the group, SM must have prepared to solve the aftermath. SM is the No.1 of Korea showbiz and deals with this kind of things for many times, its PR is the strongest and fastest among the three big entertainment companies, you have to admit that inside of SM there’s a complete PR crisis management mechanism model, and this is why the artists who are blocked by SM will never enjoy the status that other artists have. Isn’t there JYJ Law? Yes, but do you see it works? No. We can understand these common senses, as a member of SNSD, a senior artist under SM, wouldn’t Jessica understand all these? She does, it’s just she has to release her emotions.

It is a normal thing, but Jessica react without any time difference, it gives SM a chance to twist the truth and catch breath which gets her into a bad fix, we’re all familiar with the story of “three men talking makes a tiger” (repeated rumor becomes a fact), when most of the media of the country talk about something in a certain way, as someone who does not know the facts, will you believe the media or a litigant who was smeared? To a great extent, the media is the eyes and ears of civilians, people will trust everything the media report, I have watched a Korean movie “Defender”, the lawyer in it was actually defending for the children who got framed, but the media twisted the facts and call the lawyer a bad guy who is bribed, from this, we can see that media can really so someone wrong or even put them to death.

That is why I say that Jessica is actually not the people who catch all the ball before the bound because she posted this statement under her impulsive anger, she did not think too much nor did she prepared anything to protect herself, and that gives the opponent a perfect chance to flip the card.

If I was Jessica, and I really wanted to ruin SNSD like some people said, I would announce publicly that it was the company and members forced me out and wanted me to take the blame when everything is ready, on the evening of the SNSD fan meeting, when the members who attend the fan meeting followed the script and say that I cannot make it to the fan meeting because of sickness. What do you think? I would call that perfect.

Come, everybody, let’s take a minute and think, is the situation that I suggested “pre-emptive”, or post the news at 5 AM and give the company and PR plenty of time to get ready “pre-emptive”?

“Isn’t mentioning members means that members knew about it and even pushed it behind?” Many people who saw Jessica’s Weibo posts thought like that. Of course what we think is not important, what matters is what Korean people think and how they choose. Alright, even people believe this statement and know it is not Jessica’s fault, so what? Because it is impossible for them to condemn their bias, it is also impossible to condemn a party of eight because of a party of one, and it is impossible to allow SNSD - the name card of Korea - get dirt on it, so, sorry we have to blame you. So we see a very funny thing that under the news about Jessica, in the Korean comment section, as long as there’s a news about Jessica, they always leave negative comments and hates, but the only exception is when she releases her album, people comment with good word to affirm her singing skill, is it her singing skill that good, good enough to overcome all those hates before? All the people who always comment her with bad word suddenly stopped on the day? I don’t think so.

Compared with the announcement came later from SM, the content of Jessica’s Weibo posts are really simple and clear, it’s just like, “I can’t meet you at 10:00 PM tomorrow because my friends don’t allow me, I can’t go now”, such a casual and normal message, I feel so funny when I see those “betray��� arguments.

“In the end, it is just whose fan you are, you stand by whom, isn’t it?” Yes, I agree with that, but it’s obvious there’s right and wrong between standpoints, and I feel right to stand on the standpoint of Jessica to make sense of this issue. We may as well imagine it, if Jessica only mentioned the company and did not mention members, will her ending change? No, SM had already prepared many public notices for her, say that she is just selfish and wanted to leave, sooner or later, fans of SNSD will believe this allegation and turn to condemning Jessica. But if Jessica didn’t mention members, will rest of the members and fans end differently? Yes, because like that, the reputations of other eight members would not suffer a bit, and their fans can continue to follow their bias without any guilt, meanwhile, criticize Jessica who got kicked out from time to time.

Can people be so selfish to such great degree? Just for your self-interests, you can step on other people’s genuineness and yell at other people said that he or she is setting you up?

Apparently in today’s society, speaking the truths is betrayal, and telling lies and empty words is honesty.

4- Prepared to leave the group? Whom to blame for losing group spirit? (SNSD fans)

Before I get to the main point, I still want to emphasize, the truth is the more you debate about it, truer you will find it is, put it anywhere works the same. Started with this post, fans from every side started to put on a show, both sides hold strongly to their arguments, looking back, the truth is actually crystal clear. 

Here I want to introduce the background of both sides, first, Jessica’s side, obviously her bias fans. And another side, are they really group fans, I don’t really think so, at least official SNSD fansites didn’t state they are OT8, and I believe, those who separate Jessica and SNSD from the beginning are definitely not group fans, I asked those who were group fans back then, they struggled inside for a long time, didn’t know whether to believe Jessica’s post or not, but they never publicly showed which side they chose. But at that time, bias fans with their hearts belong to someone have already started to choose side, what did Jessica’s leaving exposed, it exposed the inside structure of SNSD’s Chinese group fans has already turned from mostly group fans to mostly bias fans, I see that some people who become SNSD’s fans later or just became a group fan a while ago complain that Jessica made SNSD’s fans lost their group spirit, I want to say that you misunderstood, SNSD’s group fans were already losing to the bias fans of the three popular aces (Tae, Yoon, Sic), the only difference is to see it falling apart on the surface or storming under the waves.

So, at the beginning both arguing sides’ backgrounds, put it plainly, is just three popular aces’ bias fans divided into two sides and fight, only this time one side picked up “group fan” such noble weapon. Group fans’ noses got pulled by others, this is why someone became nobody’s fan, because group fans have no enough strengths to fight three aces’ bias fans, the purpose of one side is to explain the issue of Jessica leaving the group, another side wanted to shame about Jessica’s leaving, group fans were forced to choose a side, some people chose SNSD for a more certain future, some people chose Jessica for their reconciled minds. Some people didn’t choose because SNSD died after 930, eight people are still SNSD is just nonsense, what you like is it just the brand of SNSD, SM’s strategy? Let them say whatever they want to say, let them manipulate whichever way they want to manipulate? So after that, OT7, OT6? Till there’s no one left? Looking at those people who chose the side right after and desperate Jessica out of the group but also claim themselves as group fans, I feel chilly at my back, since when the meaning of group fans became following the brand and the name? What is more disappointing, that those people became OT8, and for proving their choice are correct, they started to seek for excuses.

First, “unexpectedly, got informed suddenly” this point got griped by every bias fans group led by SNSD’s two big aces bias fans and zoomed in, they found that before and after the middle of September, some words said by some of the leaders of Jessica’s fans, they think that Jessica leaving the group is well-known among people, but herself didn’t know about it, it is such a show. About this, I want to use a metaphor don’t know if it is appropriate. I remember in 《西窗法雨》(a Chinese book about law) there is a famous case in England, 19th century, the “crew murder” case, it’s about a ship crossing ocean and the ship got into shipwreck, there were only four people left, a kid drank sea water and was about to die, and there’s no more food left on the ship, so the captain had an idea, egged other people to kill the kid and save himself. This case is a very famous case in Case Law, I alter it a little bit, for example, there are three people on the ship, the ship is leaking and they have to through one people out, at that time, the other two have already decided to through A away, but the A who got chosen to be through away do not comply, he grabbed onto the ship, he is negotiating with the people on the ship, maybe there’s some other way to solve the problem instead of having to through him into the ocean. This is a survival instinct, everyone is like this, someone asks how can he be so stupid, that’s because you are not on the ship, you don’t know for A now, leaving the ship means death.

People around who cares about the ship are watching, too, they got to know about the situation a little earlier than those who were watching from the shore far away and waiting for the ship to return, but due to their love for the ship and their respect to A, they didn’t send out the information that they know about beforehand, they just turn around to those people on the shore who cares and complain, “maybe this time when they come back there will be no more A”, because they knew that A may not pass this difficulty, but meanwhile, people all have some hope, A had hope, he thought that people on the ship may consider his suggestion, they will take him back home together, people who care about A, thought that A has the ability to make things turn around. All of sudden, someone on the ship found a tool and threw A into the ocean, what a clean cut. This is way beyond the expectation of A and people around who cares.

May I ask, for A, is it the suddenness and panic that he felt at that moment he got through away conflicts with the idea that he knew he may get through away? This moment that A got through away caused people around who knew about the situation anger and indignation, is it conflicts with the action of telling people on the shore “don’t wait, A may not make it” when they saw A struggling?  

So, got informed all of a sudden conflicts with there were disagreements among members and leaving the group was about to happen? No. Is it the anger and shocking they have when actually see a confirmed statement of having to leave the group conflicts with that some head of fans knew some inside news in the middle of the month and complain about it on Weibo? No.

So, where did the argument of premeditation come from? Form the mouths of OT8 who purposely making a clearly “got forced out of the group” issue into “leaving the group on her free will”, why do they do that, because they couldn't face the fact that “my idol was involved in this act of forcing someone to leave”, what’s funny is that a lot of smaller/younger fans got pulled away, followed such idea and believed in it, yelling about that Jessica wanted to leave, making me a new fan feel embarrassing. An argument can be so easily laid bare, surprisingly got make into the truth for so long. This really fulfills those OT8’s purpose of saying such thing.

Second, I remember that I have read some Jessica’s Weibo posts about parting the group, at first on Weibo there weren't so many complaints about “8 others”, and then I verified about it, this argument was brought up on that afternoon, why needed verify, because when I came into the fandom this actually became a main point of such debate, what can I say, this just makes me laughing me tears out. At first, when I encounter such argument I even thought about it carefully, this can only blame the word “others” which wouldn’t be controversial in any other language besides Mandarin. This is not that I am boasting Mandarin and despising English, this complaint about “others” really need to blame that Mandarin is so broad and profound, one speaking tone has one explanation, whatever you want to think, whatever you want to say, you can always find a version. In addition, Jessica also posted Korean version, this time about how to translate group members nobody seemed to care. OT8 tirelessly bring up “8 others”, make me feel confused. The word “others” upsets who? Does it really have so many deep meanings that they need to bring that up every time talking about parting the group? It is necessary to make up explanations and twist her words just to make it fit into the meanings you wanted it to mean when she didn’t even know about the Mandarin translation of that word?

But soon after, when I see more and more such arguments, I realized even though such argument seems very unreasonable but how smart it is, this is just an ulterior motive, how many others doesn’t matter, what matters is that Jessica mentioned members in her statement, why keep following a group if it is not what you sign up for any more? It is that Jessica mentioned members in her statement made OT8 angry, no other reasons just because she broke the “my idol is innocent” image in their minds, because it would make their idols get involved. The best solution is to draw in those group fans who were swinging, create a “Jessica is the villain” image, don’t allow you to rethink why Jessica would mention members, what was the background story, just a simple word “others”, drawing those swinging group fans whose bias was not Jessica, and also got Jessica fans attention, it was a righteous and clear statement, after that they keep grabbing onto that word and make up explanations.

Seriously, fandom wars are most splendid when comes to crisis PR.

Today, I return this strange argument about “others” back to OT8, also advise Jessica’s fans no need to explain so many grammars or translations, this is just a tool they use for brainwashing, how possibly they don’t know about those. Also, among all those whitewash reasons, only this one works the best, because it will not be refuted as time passes, it is just a word, no need for proof, all they need to use is their hypocritical whiny to blame her.

Third, why Jessica posted on Weibo, my idea since I got into the fandom has not changed till now, although there was some intention to come develop in China, but that intention didn’t develop just then, but in 2013, this intention was developed not only because Jessica herself wanted to come to China, but the whole SM had a strategic incline to China after 2013, our country’s market is huge and strong, and K-POP market was not saturated, it was in its heyday, it was a wonderful choice for SNSD which needed to develop a new market, so we could see that after 2013, SNSD had more and more activities leaning towards China, also in 2014 tested the water on TV shows and national tour, so someone needs to open up the popularity for SNSD as pioneer, SM needed Jessica’s intention to be the pioneer, so there could be a signal that she’s developing in China. Why choose Jessica, is to balance the 3 top aces, especially Jessica and Taeyeon, they have similar positions, both are main vocals, but there are only so many resources, if you got it, I won’t have it, if I got it, you won’t get any, competing for so many years, put Jessica to China in an appropriate way, is a strategy to ease the conflicts a little bit. SM did some good calculations, it is the same reason later putting Yoona to replace Jessica’s position on opening up Chinese market, it’s always choosing paths for SNSD’s future consumption, if it wasn’t for the Korea’s ban, with Yoona’s fluent Chinese, leading SNSD to gaining more fans in China is no problem. Meanwhile, to keep aces conflicts from happening, Taeyeon have never entered the Chinese market.

Also, she did not have any other social media back then, it is unrealistic to make a new account just for posting this thing, getting verified would take a while, she would not have the mood to set up a new account, and the first post is, "excuse me everyone, I am no longer a part of the group", no one would do that, unless their brains not working, serious face.

On top of that, why not posted within Korea, I am wondering about this, too, within Korea itself, why don’t they design their own social media app? You just making celebrities have no choice when they want to announce something, got no sense of privacy that it is exclusive to my country, everyone uses INS, once it’s posted the whole world know about it, so not low-key. All right enough sidetrack, you guys all know that Korea doesn’t have its own social media, then someone says, isn’t there some official website comment section? Oh so you got kicked of SNSD, and then you went to SNSD official website and leave a comment saying that I got kicked out, how awkward and embarrassing is that. Jessica was angry, but not ruthless. Or tell the media, let them publish news overnight, but is media any good? Your statement is just about that I got forced out, but media which always likes to add oil onto fires, their news may be like “Shocking! Jessica got pushed out of the group by members, members shouting ‘if you’re going then I’m not going’!”

Last but not least, also the most understandable reason, why posting on Weibo, because she needs to inform Chinese fans, originally she was going to Shenzhen fan meeting that day, but she could not go now, who else should she tell besides Chinese fans? Tell Japanese fans? Sorry I couldn’t come to the Shenzhen fan meeting tomorrow. Japanese fans would be like: where is Shenzhen? Of course you tell the fans in that country what is going on about me within that country, such simple reason, still got many criticisms, I even feel sorry for her.

5- Fans turn into haters VS. Tool career?

A few days ago, Korea had a vote about fans turn into haters on DC, I saw that Jessica gloriously got listed again, the reason is still the one I talked about in the beginning - marriage blalalala, selfishly leaving the group blalalala, really, if this is not called love, what else is? In fact, if a fan being fan for a long enough time, he or she will become the head of fans, get to know a lot of things that people would not know, but also have to keep a lot of secrets that people do not know about, because to some extent, your relationship with this idol is difficult to unbound, your love towards them may not be as strong as before, the reason why you stick to it is because you can make profits out of each other. According to group fans and individual strong-biased fans, before the whole thing of parting the group, all the fansites higher-level managements received some signals. What does it mean by received signals? I found the answer later in a Korean Sone’s statement. Received signals means that after the Dispatch’s eighteen questions once was released, they immediately published a "why we do not support Jessica" statement, yes, immediately, the speed of writing is so fast that makes me feel that they didn’t even struggle inside, makes people really sad, when fans in China or other countries are still swinging between OT9 or OT8, Korean Sones have already given out a statement, told Jessica, they no longer choose to support her, I don’t want to post all those logic errors of that statement out here to have you joke about them, I just recommend everyone do not take it serious about the group spirit and statement of Korean people, in their eyes, what idol really is, do not matter, they can support them today and against them tomorrow, It seems very easy for them to issue a “stop supporting” statement, because the status of Korea idols is just too low, and they are not actually loving the idol, is that brand, is the kind of marketing only.

When Jessica Jung leaves you can do that, you can do it again when Jessica Zhang leaves, all that you will ever publish is only "Why don't we support xxx".

Forget about justice, what we want is to a definite career of following idols, just the brand a company created, as for who is a member in there, how she’s vividly alive, it doesn’t matter.  

This is K-POP, the individual appears insignificant under the flow, they are just tools, they are just some dispensable parts which made up the whole valuable industry.

6- When is the end of “you” and SNSD? Is the argument of exploiting childish or not?

Before the talking about the argument of exploiting, I want to talk about some facts that I got “brainwashed” heavily after I got into SNSD, and later I find out those sayings are not true.

1. Jessica invested 40 million dollars into her company, but there is no official statement proving that.

2. Jessica was back to Korea in the early morning, it was in the early morning, but it was the early morning of 29th, not the 30th as SONEs said.

3. Yoona and Taeyeon scapegoat for “Lan Kwai Fong”, in Korea there was no any public comments on that, the news of Yoona and Taeyeon came from Hong Kong Apple Daily, there was one version stated Jessica went to Lan Kwai Fong, but the most news was pointing at Yoona and Taeyeon. The “scapegoat” argument was just nonsense. Because that back-view never matched a front face, you can not say that the main character was Tyler Kwon and now he is close to Jessica, and you just inferring it was Jessica, such way of interpretation is, emm, unintelligible. Or here’s another example, one day the police came and arrested you, the reason is that your friend killed someone, the murder crime that your friend did three years ago just got solved, now you and your friend are so close, then you guys must be complicity and did that together. If such interpretation got put onto your head, do you think is reasonable?

So in the whole K-POP fandom, come to convincing, I was convinced most by SONEs, like for me I didn’t know, a lot of things got carried away by their comments, if I didn’t have a brain which likes to think, maybe my standpoint could have got lead astray.

And in SNSD, there are three people that I admire the most, one is Yoona Im, very high EQ, if she did something, she would tell everyone in the world obscurely that she did it, if she tried, she would tell you she tried without revealing she’s showing off. Also, she never be the one in the whirlpool center, no matter who fell down, she is always still and steady, in SNSD, she actually never wanted to be the thorn in everyone’s eyes, always trying to desalinate that she is in the ACE position, as you all know from interviews, Yoona has always emphasized the saying that “popularity is like seasons.” So many people say that her EQ is high, she is an idol who packaged herself very exquisitely, if you want to follow someone without getting any negative energy, personality setting never falls, always positive and upwards, this person is definitely the best choice, she will never show you the negative side, because she never reveals her true self.

Another one is Jessica Jung, what characteristic that people most afraid of a person, it’s tenacity, is resurrection after death. Maybe someone would say what’s the big deal of it, here here here, the keyboard is yours, you type. Not everyone would be able to face the same “out of group” thing and then come back up again, somebody may go down the wrong pathway. You may not want to admit, but it is true, that she is too notionate, making her road very rough and meandering, she lives very real, she exposes her real “follow my heart” to the public, some people can accept it, some people gnash their teeth in hatred, in the end, it’s just because she can live according to her heart, but most of us, can’t. If you want to follow someone who can help you cultivate yourself and become godly, toughen your personality, and polish your nature, this one would be a good choice. After all, so many blame since debut, but Jessica’s attitude is: no explanation. Never explain, got wronged and got blamed, but she never uses explanation to solve problems. Living in such attitude for long, no wonder becoming godly.

Here I want to say something, actually I do not so agree with Jessica’s way, but seems like she doesn’t have other option. Korean media making her their stunt, after she knew about it, she didn’t say like “hey, my agent company, let’s do a classification or something”, but like “you guys like change my words, right? OK, I will never accept your interviews.” During the first album, because she let Korean medias interviewed her, Jessica suffered on the first day of coming back, later during the second album, she chooses to not taking any Korean media’s interview, no explanation+no intercommunication, even though she’s living by following her heart, but it is a heartbreaking response.

The third one is Taeyeon Kim, this one no doubt should get praise, from background perspective, her family situation is relatively bad among SNSD or most trainees, it’s not like if your family owns a glasses store then you are rich or in middle class, if your civil teacher sees it he or she will criticize you. We (Chinese people) yet care about social status and family class, not to mention Korea is a Capitalism country with our ancient Confucianism influences, over there the class differences are absolutely obvious. But she could use such natural family advantage to make her stand on a winning ground. Some people say she is sensitive, that’s true if it was you, can you not be sensitive? You are not the most good-looking one, not the richest one, there’s plenty of people in the company with excellent singing skill, if one thing that makes you stand out, it is the pureness and obedience, follow company’s decision unconditionally, as I just talked about, SM likes some “nobody” who would listen, she totally qualify for that, no wonder she gets to promote a lot. Also, compared to Yoona Im, Taeyeon Kim would rather show her vulnerability, you would think she’s real, she needs your attention and love, such realness makes her go further. If you want to follow someone who inspires you, who has big dreams, recommend you follow Taeyeon Kim, absolutely an encouragement machine.

OK, now let’s talk about the argument of exploiting, actually “exploit” is pretty much fans’ wishful thinking, whether is the fans of SNSD right now or Jessica’s fans, are using this argument tirelessly, but in fact, technically no one is being exploited. If there is someone (something) is being exploited, is the big pie.

No matter it’s nine or one people, they all have the right and they are enjoying the big pie. Subjectively or objectively, the big pie is the subject of exploit.

Why there’s “former SNSD” title before Jessica’s name from time to time, why in the interview she always got asked how it is after leaving SNSD? Because the band of SNSD is so grand, the brand that those nine people built is so controversial, it’s so necessary for gossips, you think Jessica would really want to hear about these questions? I don’t think so, but you think the media would really never mention it? That’s definitely impossible because it is a stunt that could be dug out from Jessica, it is the point of entertaining of an entertainment industry star, don’t mention this, do you want to ask Jessica what did you eat today? Even if they ask that, will the volume of sales and attention be greater than mentioning the stunts or gossips that people interested in? No.

Same reason, why every time the 8 people SNSD has something happen, Jessica would be mention, accompany them without physically being there? Because in everybody’s heard, they still did not forget that this group is nine people. Everyone is treating this issue with a mindset like “it’s OK, we can still dig out something from it.” So CMIYC nine people MV got leaked out before SNSD’s comeback, Sooyoung Choi used lyrics from “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God” to answer the question about Jessica apart the group in the interview of SNSD 10th anniversary, if no surprise, before the 10th anniversary there will be a series of practice room video being released, all from unofficial channels, but the officials are behind it. As I said, “exploit” is naive children’s idea, their interests are related is the reason why they can not leave the other side alone.

Do you guys remember what it was like during Jessica first solo come back, this side Jessica just announced that she will be coming back in the middle of May, the next day SM daddy is telling everyone, “hey guys, Tiffany is coming back on May 11th. Surprise or not? Unexpected or not?” Well done my SM daddy, you can bump someone so confidently and give others an illusion like they are the host instead of the guest, if I was Jessica’s company, I would be so offended that I will be vomiting blood for three gallons, obviously it was us announced first, now you making us so passive. But SM daddy didn’t just stop there, they saw your teaser, and hired the same American backup dancers as you, backup dancers is just doing business, no big deal, but have you consider Tiffany’s feeling? Win or lose, what’s the point? That’s two old friends who fought together for 10 years, pulling them out and making them opponents, is it really delightful?

No, but the company is just company, they don’t care about your personal feeling. So we saw that before and after the time of Jessica releasing her album, the dance instructor of SNSD posted such words on her social media, “I am drunk so I don’t know what I am talking about, in my heart, you nine girls have the same importance to me, make my heart hurt.” Oh, so this is a side proof that SM hires those dancers on purpose.

So that’s why when Jessica releasing her winter album, only announced it one week before it came out (I probably remember it correctly), and her MV and everything (He probably mean the teasers) kept confidential until three days before the comeback, just because she didn’t want to bump into Seohyun, this behavior really slapped some people’s faces, those who said that she is definitely going to bump Seohyun, if like the first album, build the publicity first to get people excited and then come back, then maybe Seohyun’s album would be released before or after her comeback time, according to SM daddy’s habit, should be before her, this way creates an illusion that I released it first, you followed me, you are taking advantage of me, but this time Jessica made a sudden come back, very little pre-publicity, SM couldn’t finish producing Seohyun’s album within one week, so there was no second bumping, some people got slapped on the face, and then said that it is intentional, she is just afraid to bump into Seohyun, err, so for people who hate you, no matter what you do, you don’t even have a way to make them not hate you.

Some people ask, Jessica, when will be the end of you and SNSD?

Probably when SNSD has no one left, or Jessica leave the industry.

Or as long as Jessica is active, and SNSD is still there, the entanglement will never end, and keep going on and on.

7- My feelings

I just want to tell those restless people: she is no longer a member of SNSD, the fame and profit of SNSD belong to the eight people, but she is the one who was forced out, and the one who bears the pain, please stop accusing someone who literately burst into tears when reading “she’s crying every day” in her sister’s letter that she wanted to leave the group, if someone’s crying just because of one sentence, this can only prove that the scar is way too deep.

I really understand this feeling that you will cry when people mention something touched your heart, I am from a divorced family and always behave strong, everyone thought that I am mature, that’s true too, I have worked really hard to go to college with my efforts, however, whenever someone mentions my parents’ divorce I will cry out loud, just that word “divorce”. Later, I found out a truth:

Everyone has their own scar, people don’t touch, doesn’t mean that it is no longer exist.

I believe that there is some true affection when members of SNSD cried, their relationships last for 14 years at the most, the shortest would be 9 years too, no matter what they would be touched by the scene. But please think about Jessica who has no chance to catharsis the same feeling, since they are on different paths now, if you can’t forget about her, then please don’t act like you care about her but at the same time discrediting her in order to proof that 8 girls are innocent, don’t even say it out loud like you are right, “even though I know that she did nothing wrong, but I would rather follow someone who pretends that everything is peaceful and fine than to forgive someone who exposes her true self.” Such moral is horrible and difficult to understand.

In the end, I want to use the words from Krystal’s letter as my conclusion:

“When I see my sister crying so hard in pain every day,

I wanted to cry, too, I felt so, so sad and heartbreaking.

My sister is such a vulnerable person, will people ever know?”

END.

[axekerose54]

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Two New York Times–bestselling authors unveil new research showing what meditation can really do for the brain. In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it. Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open readers’ eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change—even if we continue for years—without specific additions. More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training. The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson’s own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice. Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.

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Let's be real: 2020 has been a nightmare. Between the political unrest and novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it's difficult to look back on the year and find something, anything, that was a potential bright spot in an otherwise turbulent trip around the sun. Luckily, there were a few bright spots: namely, some of the excellent works of military history and analysis, fiction and non-fiction, novels and graphic novels that we've absorbed over the last year. 

Here's a brief list of some of the best books we read here at Task & Purpose in the last year. Have a recommendation of your own? Send an email to jared@taskandpurpose.Com and we'll include it in a future story.

Missionaries by Phil Klay

I loved Phil Klay’s first book, Redeployment (which won the National Book Award), so Missionaries was high on my list of must-reads when it came out in October. It took Klay six years to research and write the book, which follows four characters in Colombia who come together in the shadow of our post-9/11 wars. As Klay’s prophetic novel shows, the machinery of technology, drones, and targeted killings that was built on the Middle East battlefield will continue to grow in far-flung lands that rarely garner headlines. [Buy]

 - Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Battle Born: Lapis Lazuli by Max Uriarte

Written by 'Terminal Lance' creator Maximilian Uriarte, this full-length graphic novel follows a Marine infantry squad on a bloody odyssey through the mountain reaches of northern Afghanistan. The full-color comic is basically 'Conan the Barbarian' in MARPAT. [Buy]

 - James Clark, senior reporter

The Liberator by Alex Kershaw

Now a gritty and grim animated World War II miniseries from Netflix, The Liberator follows the 157th Infantry Battalion of the 45th Division from the beaches of Sicily to the mountains of Italy and the Battle of Anzio, then on to France and later still to Bavaria for some of the bloodiest urban battles of the conflict before culminating in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. It's a harrowing tale, but one worth reading before enjoying the acclaimed Netflix series. [Buy]

 - Jared Keller, deputy editor

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff

If you haven’t gotten this must-read account of the September 11th attacks, you need to put The Only Plane In the Sky at the top of your Christmas list. Graff expertly explains the timeline of that day through the re-telling of those who lived it, including the loved ones of those who were lost, the persistently brave first responders who were on the ground in New York, and the service members working in the Pentagon. My only suggestion is to not read it in public — if you’re anything like me, you’ll be consistently left in tears. [Buy]

- Haley Britzky, Army reporter

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry

Why do we even fight wars? Wouldn’t a massive tennis tournament be a nicer way for nations to settle their differences? This is one of the many questions Harvard professor Elaine Scarry attempts to answer, along with why nuclear war is akin to torture, why the language surrounding war is sterilized in public discourse, and why both war and torture unmake human worlds by destroying access to language. It’s a big lift of a read, but even if you just read chapter two (like I did), you’ll come away thinking about war in new and refreshing ways. [Buy]

 - David Roza, Air Force reporter

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor

Stalingrad takes readers all the way from the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to the collapse of the 6th Army at Stalingrad in February 1943. It gives you the perspective of German and Soviet soldiers during the most apocalyptic battle of the 20th century. [Buy]

- Jeff Schogol, Pentagon correspondent 

America's War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew J. Bacevich

I picked up America's War for the Greater Middle East earlier this year and couldn’t put it down. Published in 2016 by Andrew Bacevich, a historian and retired Army officer who served in Vietnam, the book unravels the long and winding history of how America got so entangled in the Middle East and shows that we’ve been fighting one long war since the 1980s — with errors in judgment from political leaders on both sides of the aisle to blame. “From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift?” the book jacket asks. As Bacevich details in this definitive history, the mission creep of our Vietnam experience has been played out again and again over the past 30 years, with disastrous results. [Buy]

 - Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Burn In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P.W. Singer and August Cole

In Burn In, Singer and Cole take readers on a journey at an unknown date in the future, in which an FBI agent searches for a high-tech terrorist in Washington, D.C. Set after what the authors called the "real robotic revolution," Agent Lara Keegan is teamed up with a robot that is less Terminator and far more of a useful, and highly intelligent, law enforcement tool. Perhaps the most interesting part: Just about everything that happens in the story can be traced back to technologies that are being researched today. You can read Task & Purpose's interview with the authors here. [Buy]

 - James Clark, senior reporter

SAS: Rogue Heroes by Ben MacIntyre

Like WWII? Like a band of eccentric daredevils wreaking havoc on fascists? Then you'll love SAS: Rogue Heroes, which re-tells some truly insane heists performed by one of the first modern special forces units. Best of all, Ben MacIntyre grounds his history in a compassionate, balanced tone that displays both the best and worst of the SAS men, who are, like anyone else, only human after all. [Buy]

 - David Roza, Air Force reporter

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Alice Network is a gripping novel which follows two courageous women through different time periods — one living in the aftermath of World War II, determined to find out what has happened to someone she loves, and the other working in a secret network of spies behind enemy lines during World War I. This gripping historical fiction is based on the true story of a network that infiltrated German lines in France during The Great War and weaves a tale so packed full of drama, suspense, and tragedy that you won’t be able to put it down. [Buy]

Katherine Rondina, Anchor Books

“Because I published a new book this year, I've been answering questions about my inspirations. This means I've been thinking about and so thankful for The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender. I can't credit it with making me want to be a writer — that desire was already there — but it inspired me to write stories where the fantastical complicates the ordinary, and the impossible becomes possible. A girl in a nice dress with no one to appreciate it. An unremarkable boy with a remarkable knack for finding things. The stories in this book taught me that the everydayness of my world could become magical and strange, and in that strangeness I could find a new kind of truth.”

Diane Cook is the author of the novel The New Wilderness, which was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection Man V. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Read an excerpt from The New Wilderness.

Bill Johnston, University of California Press

“I’ve revisited a lot of old favorites in this grim year of fear and isolation, and have been most thankful of all for The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Witty, reflexive, intimate, queer, disarmingly occasional and monumentally serious all at once, they’ve been a constant balm and inspiration. ‘The only thing to do is simply continue,’ he wrote, in 'Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul'; ‘is that simple/yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do/can you do it/yes, you can because it is the only thing to do.’”

Helen Macdonald is a nature essayist with a semiregular column in the New York Times Magazine. Her latest novel, Vesper Flights, is a collection of her best-loved essays, and her debut book, H Is for Hawk, won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction and the Costa Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

Andrea Scher, Scholastic Press

“This year, I’m so grateful for You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson. Reading — like everything else — has been a struggle for me in 2020. It’s been tough to let go of all of my anxieties about the state of the world and our country and get swept away by a story. But You Should See Me in a Crown pulled me in right away; for the blissful time that I was reading it, it made me think about a world outside of 2020 and it made me smile from ear to ear. Joy has been hard to come by this year, and I’m so thankful for this book for the joy it brought me.”

Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of five romance novels, including this year’s Party of Two. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and Time.

Nelson Fitch, Random House

“Last year, stuck in a prolonged reading rut that left me wondering if I even liked books anymore, I stumbled across Tenth of December by George Saunders, a collection of stories Saunders wrote between 1995 and 2012 that are at turns funny, moving, startling, weird, profound, and often all of those things at the same time. As a writer, what I crave most from books is to find one so excellent it makes me feel like I'd be better off quitting — and so wonderful that it reminds me what it is to be purely a reader again, encountering new worlds and revelations every time I turn a page. Tenth of December is that, and I'm so grateful that it fell off a high shelf and into my life.”

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series and the Carve the Mark duology. Her latest novel, Chosen Ones, is her first novel for adults. Read an excerpt from Chosen Ones.

Ian Byers-Gamber, Blazevox Books

“Waking up today to the prospect of some hours spent reading away part of another day of this disastrous, delirious pandemic year, I’m most grateful for the book in my hands, one itself full of gratitude for a life spent reading: Gloria Frym’s How Proust Ruined My Life. Frym’s essays — on Marcel Proust, yes, and Walt Whitman, and Lucia Berlin, but also peppermint-stick candy and Allen Ginsburg’s knees, among other Proustian memory-prompts — restore me to my sense of my eerie luck at a life spent rushing to the next book, the next page, the next word.”

Jonathan Lethem is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Motherless Brooklyn. His latest novel, The Arrest, is a postapocalyptic tale about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Riverhead

“I’m incredibly grateful for the magnificent The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer. This book — a mélange of history, memoir, and reportage — is the reconceptualization of Native life that’s been urgently needed since the last great indigenous history, Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s at once a counternarrative and a replacement for Brown’s book, and it rejects the standard tale of Native victimization, conquest, and defeat. Even though I teach Native American studies to college students, I found new insights and revelations in almost every chapter. Not only a great read, the book is a tremendous contribution to Native American — and American — intellectual and cultural history.”

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is author of the novel Winter Counts, which is BuzzFeed Book Club’s November pick. He is also the author of the children’s book Spotted Tail, which won the 2020 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Read an excerpt from Winter Counts.

Valerie Mosley, Tordotcom

“In 2020, I've been lucky to finish a single book within 30 days, but I burned through this 507-page brick in the span of a weekend. Harrow the Ninth reminded me that even when absolutely everything is terrible, it's still possible to feel deep, gratifying, brain-buzzing admiration for brilliant art. Thank you, Harrow, for being one of the brightest spots in a dark year and for keeping the home fires burning.”

Casey McQuiston is the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, and her next book, One Last Stop, comes out in 2021.

"I'm grateful for V.S. Naipaul's troubling masterpiece, A Bend in the River — which not only made me see the world anew, but made me see what literature could do. It's a book that's lucid enough to reveal the brutality of the forces shaping our world and its politics; yet soulful enough to penetrate the most recondite secrets of human interiority. A book of great beauty without a moment of mercy. A marriage of opposites that continues to shape my own deeper sense of just how much a writer can actually accomplish."

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright, and his latest novel, Homeland Elegies, is about an American son and his immigrant father searching for belonging in a post-9/11 country. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Vanessa German, Feminist Press

“I'm most thankful for Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether. It's a YA book set in 1930s Harlem, and it was the first Black-girl-coming-of-age book I ever read, the first time I ever saw myself in a book. I appreciate how it expanded my world and my understanding that books can speak to you right where you are and take you on a journey, at the same time.”

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. She is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Philyaw’s writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Read a story from The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

Philippa Gedge, W. W. Norton & Company

“As both a writer and a reader I am hugely grateful for Patricia Highsmith’s plotting and writing suspense fiction. As a writer I’m thankful for Highsmith’s generosity with her wisdom and experience: She talks us through how to tease out the narrative strands and develop character, how to know when things are going awry, even how to decide to give things up as a bad job. She’s unabashed about sharing her own ‘failures,’ and in my experience, there’s nothing more encouraging for a writer than learning that our literary gods are mortal! As a reader, it provides a fascinating insight into the genesis of one of my favorite novels of all time — The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as the rest of her brilliant oeuvre. And because it’s Highsmith, it’s so much more than just a how-to guide: It’s hugely engaging and, while accessible, also provides a glimpse into the mind of a genius. I’ve read it twice — while working on each of my thrillers, The Hunting Party and The Guest List — and I know I’ll be returning to the well-thumbed copy on my shelf again soon!”

Lucy Foley is the New York Times bestselling author of the thrillers The Guest List and The Hunting Party. She has also written two historical fiction novels and previously worked in the publishing industry as a fiction editor.

“The books I'm most thankful for this year are a three-book series titled Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend. Walking a fine line between comedy and horror (which is much harder than people think), the books follow Jack, an employee at a gas station in a nameless town where all manner of horrifyingly fantastical things happen. And while the monsters are scary and more than a little ridiculous, it's Jack's bone-dry narration, along with his best friend/emotional support human, Jerry, that elevates the books into something that are as lovely as they are absurd.”

T.J. Klune is a Lambda Literary Award–winning author and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Extraordinaries.

Sylvernus Darku (Team Black Image Studio), Ayebia Clarke Publishing

"Nervous Conditions is a book that I have read several times over the years, including this year. The novel covers the themes of gender and race and has at its heart Tambu, a young girl in 1960s Rhodesia determined to get an education and to create a better life for herself. Dangarembga’s prose is evocative and witty, and the story is thought-provoking. I’ve been inspired anew by Tambu each time I’ve read this book."

Peace Adzo Medie is Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2020). His Only Wife is her debut novel.

Jenna Maurice, HarperCollins

“The book I'm most thankful for? Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. My mother and father would read me poems from it before bed — I'm convinced it infused me not only with a sense of poetic cadence, but also a wry sense of humor.”

Victoria “V.E.” Schwab is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Vicious, the Shades of Magic series, and This Savage Song. Her latest novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, is BuzzFeed Book Club’s December pick. Read an excerpt from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Meg Vázquez, Square Fish

“My childhood best friend gave me Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle for Hanukkah when I was 11 years old, and it's still my favorite book of all time. I love the way it defies genre (it's a political thriller/YA romance that includes a lot of scientific research and also poetry??), and the way it values smartness, gutsiness, vulnerability, kindness, and a sense of adventure. The book follows 16-year-old Vicky Austin's life-altering trip to Antarctica; her trip changed my life, too. In a year when safe travel is almost impossible, I'm so grateful to be able to return to her story again and again.”

Kate Stayman-London's debut novel, One to Watch, is about a plus-size blogger who’s been asked to star on a Bachelorette-like reality show. Stayman-London served as lead digital writer for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and has written for notable figures, from former president Obama and Malala Yousafzai to Anna Wintour and Cher.

Katharine McGee is grateful for the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Chris Bailey Photography, Firebird

“I’m thankful for the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. I discovered the series in elementary school, and it sparked a love of big, epic stories that has never left me. (If you read my books, you know I can’t resist a broad cast of characters!) I used to read the books aloud to my younger sister, using funny voices for all the narrators. Now that I have a little boy of my own, I can’t wait to someday share Redwall with him.”

Katharine McGee is the New York Times bestselling author of American Royals and its sequel, Majesty. She is also the author of the Thousandth Floor trilogy.

Beth Gwinn, Time-Life Books

"I am thankful most for books that carry me out of the world and back again, and while I find it painful to choose among them, here's one early and one late: Zen Cho's Black Water Sister, which comes out in 2021 but I devoured just two days ago, and the long out-of-print Wizards and Witches volume of the Time-Life Enchanted World series, which is where I first read about the legend of the Scholomance."

Naomi Novik is the New York Times bestselling author of the Nebula Award–winning novel Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and the nine-volume Temeraire series. Her latest novel, A Deadly Education, is the first of the Scholomance trilogy.

Christina Lauren are grateful for the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Christina Lauren, Little, Brown and Company

"We are thankful for the Twilight series for about a million reasons, not the least of which it's what brought the two of us together. Writing fanfic in a space where we could be silly and messy together taught us that we don't have to be perfect, but there's no harm in trying to get better with every attempt. It also cemented for us that the best relationships are the ones in which you can be your real, authentic self, even when you're struggling to do things you never thought you'd be brave enough to attempt. Twilight brought millions of readers back into the fold and inspired hundreds of romance authors. We really do thank Stephenie Meyer every day for the gift of Twilight and the fandom it created."

[k-frances]

For part one in which I explain what plot planning is, and some general terms and misconceptions surrounding it, click here.

For part two in which I compare and contrast Plotters and Pantsers, click here.

How to Pants

How to pantser? How to pantify your writing? I don’t know how to say this, but what I’m getting at is; how can you use the Pantser tactic of story writing to your advantage, even if you yourself tend to be more of a plotter? 

Before you start

Stop. Put down the plot map. Turn off your brain. And write. Okay, maybe turn your brain back on, but only focus on the here and now of your idea. The benefit of starting fresh with a new idea, is that you are witnessing your own birth. You see the story at its most raw, infantile form, and that’s important. You might grow that story to adulthood, dress it, give it a full time job, but if you ever find yourself thinking ‘where am I going with this?’ or ‘what is the point of this?’ usually, that newborn baby, that thing you started writing day one, is your answer. Knowing what inspired you to write your story, will help you to know what elements are interesting to you, and therefore to the reader.

Also, writing a few scenes before plotting is important for motivation. How many times has an idea struck, and instead of writing it in it’s raw, yet imperfect form, you went plotting away, only to find that the story was stupid? Well, it might not have been stupid at all, but no story is interesting in bullet point form. It’s easier to let that skeptical voice shut down a piece that you haven't even started yet and is nothing but a series of notes on a page. If you start right away and you get a really interesting scene, at least you have ground zero, and somewhere to go. Maybe you realize these scene is actually in the middle of the story. That’s fine! Maybe you never even include this scene at all in finial piece, but it will still be an important part of the process that gets you to your final draft.

One leg in, one leg out; half pant

Have an idea, but not all the ideas. At some point in your plot, you will reach a place where you want/need to have ideas about what the plot will entail in the future. But even if you are writing a story that involves a lot of twists that must be pre-planned out in your mind, you can still surprise yourself. Don’t go over bored with the plotting, don’t plan out every single event that is going to happen. I know some writers prefer to do this, but give it a try at least. You might find that what your creative brain does when the keys are clicking is surprising, almost like something grabbed you and dragged your story in a direction you didn’t foresee, but you like. Sometimes that natural feeling can only come about if you give yourself some wiggle room. 

So you know what has to happen, but lets mix things up along the way. What if these characters got alone time? What would they say? Try a scene that pops into your head but wasn’t part of the original plan, see what happens. If it’s bad or doesn't fit, you can cut it out, but you might learn something about your world, characters, or even about the heart of the story you’re trying to tell but didn’t know it. 

Do not be afraid of change

Accept the fact that your plot is not set in stone. Ever. Ever, ever, ever, not even after the first, second, third draft is done. You might be sure about it now, but you never know when an idea will smack you clear across your face. When that happens, you ride the wave, because nine times out of ten, it’s taking you someplace amazing. It’s more work, actually, because just writing a perfect little plot that follows all your originally laid out brickwork is easy. When you follow a whim, you have to go back, rewrite, change things, add characters, kill characters, and the worst, change minute things throughout the story that are different now, and god only knows you will run across a spare line referring to some thing that has never happened in this version of the story for the next five read throughs! But while it’s harder, it’s almost always worth it. 

So pants that story! Expose all its... parts... yeah, it got weird.

These are some ways that writing in a seat of your pants method can be beneficial to you, but as you’ve probably guessed, there are times when plotting is just as crucial. For a post detailing how to plot, stay tuned next week!

[trentteti]

Tips for the Last Week Before the June Exam

Happy Memorial Day! Now, if you’re taking the June LSAT, you would be forgiven if you forgot that this is Memorial Day. Especially given that the June test is — checks calendar — yikes, one week away. Instead of remembering those who served, you’re trying to remember all the common fallacies and whether the word “always” introduces a sufficient or necessary condition. Rather than spending the day, carefree, with your less-ambitious friends are spending their Memorial Day at beaches and barbecues, you’re here, looking at a screen. Trying to make sense of how to make that last score jump before the exam.

Luckily, we can help you out with that. Below are a few last-minute tips to help make that last week of studying as productively as possible.

1. Take Some Practice Exams (But Don’t Just Take Practice Exams)

You’re preparing to take a test, so you should probably take some practice tests this week. Shocking, I know! They should also be recent exams, ideally, since those are the exams most likely to resemble the June test. Folks, you really can’t get this kind of unique, out-of-the-box advice elsewhere.

Yuks aside, there is a misconception about taking practice tests in the week leading up to the exam that we should address. Many think these practice exams will help you increase your score. That’s misguided. Practice exams are great at a lot of things — measuring your progress, getting timed practice, experimenting with your strategic approach to these sections. But practice exams do not, in and of themselves, increase your score. In fact, if you work exclusively under the extreme duress of 35-minute timed intervals, your score may decrease a little bit, as your accuracy wanes.

For this reason, what happens after the exam is really the most important part of this week. This is when you increase your score.

To that end, after taking and scoring an exam, it’s helpful to do “blind review” of the LR questions you missed and the games and passages you didn’t do super well on. So later in the day after taking an exam, or even the next day, do those questions, games, and passages again, without seeing the right answer or the answer you selected. Do them untimed.

If you’re able to answer a question correctly on the second try, and you were able to anticipate the correct answer and explain why all the incorrect answer choices were wrong, that’s a great sign. It means that you know how to do that particular question. You, in all likelihood, missed that question on the test because the timing pressure got the best of you, leading you to make a small mistake. Getting more timed practice — either by taking another full exam or by doing a single, timed, 35-minute section — will help you minimize these mistakes on the real exam.

On the other hand, if you’re able to answer a question correctly on the second try, but you had trouble anticipating the right answer, or if you couldn’t articulate why certain incorrect answer choices were wrong, that just means you haven’t mastered that type of LR question, or passage, or logic game quite yet. You should try to find really hard versions of that particular Logical Reasoning question type, passage type, or game type, and do some untimed practice.

Or on the other (I guess third?) hand, if you miss that question again, you should probably review the approach to that particular LR question type, passage type, or game type. Go back to your notes and review the approach and any attendant concepts that are frequently tested on those questions (like diagramming or causation or the common fallacies). Then, get lots of untimed practice with that question, passage, or game type.

2. Remember to Tend to Your (Mental/Physical/Metaphysical) Health

It’s important to work hard this last week, but don’t overdo it. Be reasonable with how hard you’re pushing yourself. Don’t do anything crazy like taking a practice exam at midnight after a day of studying. Studying for longer than six hours a day is kind of pushing it. You want to be well-rested and sharp, both for the practice exams you take and for the actual exam. Make sure you’re eating well, getting plenty of sleep, and keeping active.

Also, if you take a practice exam the Wednesday or Thursday before the exam and it goes really well and you felt really good while taking it, there’s nothing wrong with making that your last practice exam. End on a high note. And definitely don’t do anything on the Sunday before the exam. Just relax and recharge on that day. Engage in some self-care, exercise, meditation, power poses, daily affirmations, time with your in-all-likelihood-neglected-over-the-last-few-months friends, or just eat something tasty.

3. Handle the Logistics

Before the exam, be sure to review the (sometimes ridiculous) rules regarding the day of the test, which can be found here. Make sure to get your Ziplock gallon bag together with No. 2 wooden pencils, erasers, your admission ticket, a valid form of ID, a snack, a beverage, you non-digital wristwatch*, and anything else you might need that LSAC allows in a test center. It’s also a good idea to do a practice run to your testing center before the day of the exam, just so you know how to get there, where to park, where to check in, and all that stuff.

*A note on watches: If you want to be especially cool and stylish and about-that-LSAT-life, there are a few popular LSAT-specific watches on the market that you can buy. They typically have a rotating “diver’s bezel” to help you keep track of time, or they have an altered face that only includes 35 of the full 60 minutes normally displayed. Both of these features comply with LSAC rules. However, some of these watches have a button that automatically resets the minute hand. That feature does not comply with LSAC’s rules. If you get a watch that does that, you’ll have an LSAT-specific watch that’s not even allowed for the LSAT. I can imagine no sadder purchase. If you need to get an analog wristwatch but don’t want to go full-LSAT nerd, any analog watch with a diver’s bezel works well for the exam.

4. Find Some Warm-Up Questions

Get ready for a lot of bureaucratic time-wasting the day of the exam. You should anticipate spending at least four hours at the test center, even with the writing section removed from the test day. For most test centers, you’ll check in and wait around while the proctors check everyone else in. It’ll be a minute before they take everyone to the test room. You can use this time to your advantage — you can do a few easy LR questions and maybe an easy logic game to warm up and build confidence before the exam. So find a few easy questions, and compile them into a packet to bring to the test center. Of course, they won’t allow these questions into the test room, so you’ll have to chuck them before entering the room in which they’ll hold the exam. Ideally, this packet should include only questions you’ve seen before — the last thing you want to do is to panic before the actual test by missing an allegedly “easy” question.

————-

There is just a week left, but a lot of progress can still be made. Follow these guidelines, get some practice exams and untimed review in, handle the logistics, and — before you know it — you’ll be making up for a lost Memorial Day with some very well-deserved celebrating next week.

Tips for the Last Week Before the June Exam was originally published on LSAT Blog

[caripr94]

@wingletblackbird Yeah, I've been researching about Hades and I've been appalled to see how much modern media has misrepresented him. He was really not at all like Satan. In fact, the image of Satan in much of modern thought is actually a big misconception. In the Bible, the underworld is not Hell and Satan is not the ruler of either. The underworld, which is called Sheol or Hades in the Bible, is actually a place that people go to after they die where the righteous are in peace and the unrighteous are in torment. (And no, I don't believe that Christians go to heaven right after they die. I used to, but then a pastor pointed out that that teaching is most likely the result of many people, including Christians, taking certain Bible verses out of context.) Hell is the lake of fire that will appear on Judgment Day when the unrighteous are thrown into it to suffer for all eternity. (Sorry, but that's what they get for being unrighteous in God's eyes.) Again, Satan is not the ruler of either domain, but he's actually described in the Bible as more like a wandering nomad who roams the Earth, looking to cause trouble and lure people away from God. Hell is not his current domain; it's his future punishment on Judgment Day. I'm pretty sure that the idea of Satan being the ruler of Hell/the underworld came from the Roman Imperials hijacking the Church and syncretizing Christian teachings with pagan tradition, namely with Hades being conflated with Satan. That's not fair because if you really look at Greek mythology, you'll find that Hades was actually one of the most moral of the Greek immortals, which is why he has become one of my favorite Greek mythological characters (though as a Christian, I acknowledge that even he's not perfect and I do not plan on worshipping him as a god). If anything, it would actually be Zeus who was the closer Greek mythological equivalent to Satan, considering how tyrannical and immoral Zeus often was in the myths and how Satan is described in the Bible as the "prince of the power of the air" and the "god of this age". (Sorry, but that's what the Bible says and as a Christian, I take it seriously. It would explain why most (but not all) of our world elites are so greedy and corrupt.)

As for the myth of Hades and Persephone, the oldest version actually has Hades getting permission from Zeus, who was Persephone's father (I know, Hades married his own niece, but that kind of thing wasn't uncommon amongst the ancient Greeks, especially not the Greek immortals), to take Persephone as his wife. Abducting women to take as wives was actually a common marriage custom amongst the ancient Greeks and Homer's version of the myth has Persephone eventually realizing that she actually got a good deal with Hades and actually voluntarily eating the pomegranate seeds, knowing full well that she would be bound to the underworld as a result, though she later lied to her mother about Hades forcing her to do it.

I love ancient religions because often, in the source material, the death and death-adjacent deities are like chill as fuck.

My favorite example is Hades. He gets the Underworld mostly because his younger brothers put their fingers on their noses and said “not it.” So like a good big-bro he goes down there and proceeds to basically be the god of bureaucracy.

He gets everything set up so he doesn’t actually have to do anything. Thanatos is the God of Death (also chill as fuck) and he’s the one who ends lives (but only off the shopping list the Fates give him), Hermes’ psychopomps are the ones who bring the souls down, it’s three dead guys who are the ones to judge your soul, and the fearsome three-headed guard dog… Hades named him Spot.

All the shitty stuff that goes on in Tartarus (Hell), yeah, that’s mostly Zeus’ doing. Hades doesn’t come up with the punishments, just provides the acreage. And when gods come down and want to bring people back to life (often after some god has gotten them killed), Hades is like “nah man, paperwork is finished, transfer’s complete, let them have their rest, find someone else to be your punching bag.”

As for the whole Persephone thing, that is a strange one. I’m like 85% sure the story is mostly Demeter propaganda because that goddess is not chill as fuck. I mean, I guess Hades could have kidnapped Persephone with serious malicious intent, but then did a 180 after realizing he was being a total d-bag. Because, seriously, he pretty much lets Persephone take over everything. Like, everyone knew who wore the pants in the Underworld, the motherfucking Iron Queen herself.

And as much as I love Hades in the Hercules animated movie because of the perfect comedic timing of James actually-a-horrible-human-being Woods, yeah, Hades couldn’t give a crap about what everyone else was doing. He often stayed neutral in wars, be it between mortals or gods, mostly because death does not discriminate, all souls end up with him in the end.

When it comes to the Underworld, Hades is basically the equivalent of the general manager who pokes his head in now and again to make sure nothing is on fire. The rest of the time he’s playing with his shiny rocks because being Lord of the Underworld meant he also had domain over gold, silver, gemstones, basically all the pretties.

Hell, Hades needs an actual Helm of Fear in order to be intimidating because otherwise, yeah, nope. I like to think of him as Skinny!Steve whist his brothers are like, well, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman (aka Poseidon). Let’s face it, Momoa could kick your ass just by looking at you sideways and may actually be a demi-god.

So, please, if you’re writing Hades in anything, don’t make him out to be the modern idea of Satan or Lucifer. He’s really just an introvert with high functioning organizational skills who loves rocks and women who can kick his ass.

[nonrebloggingviewerswillbeshot]

A Shameless Rant (Alistair/Cullen)

How far has our society come when we can argue and bicker over such trivial things that have no bearings on life and simply serve to aide someone through a time of distress or something similar?

Games offer something to someone that could be completely different to what it offers another person. An npc in that game could be a source of comfort for a person when another could just as easily hate the same npc and have a strong desire to kill them.

When did going to the people who like that npc and bashing them suddenly become something that was common or normal and vice versa? Since when did we all walk down a tunnel in life or have a hive mind where we all had the same thoughts, the same struggles, the same insecurities and mentality?

Let’s get specific, let’s talk about Alistair and Cullen shall we.

First of all if you hate these npc’s then good for you, that is well within your right, but the minute you decide to bash people for their love of these characters is when you cross a line.

Now let’s get personal.

I love Alistair okay get over it, and I also love Cullen for similar but different and specific reasons.

Alistair is a gentlemen through and through and quite frankly I would take this make up of polygons over what is considered a man in this day and age where ‘being a man’ is doing drugs, boozing up, sleeping with everything on two legs, cheating on your girlfriend, going around beating others up, being obsessed with the taking of steroids, and being the stereotypical version of a bad boy among other things.

Plus I want a man to treat me with respect and it says something about society when it takes a 3D model in a computer game to find it. I’m sick of games nowadays that have romance options being “Let’s bang because we can, not necessarily because we love eachother.” and if you don’t like my opinion, leave, we’re all different and this is who I am.

The argument is that Alistair is too dumb to function but honestly I think we can give that award to Goku who doesn’t know what kissing is despite having kids and other various nonsense that makes no sense.

If Alistair was too dumb to function he wouldn’t even be a grey warden in the first place, he faces down dark spawn, and fights an endless battle with a darkness that will never be ridden from the world until the arch demons are gone. He has the possibility to be a king or just remain a grey warden, either way he has very important roles regardless of what you choose so let’s get rid of that stupid misconception immediately.

(Spoilers Ahead)

As we know Alistair is the son of Fiona and King Maric Theirin, and if you have paid attention to anything he says in Origins you’ll know that he was hated by Isolde and treated poorly because of her suspicion that he was her husbands son.

His moments of hesitation come from talking to a female grey warden, and perhaps other women and I just don’t remember that part, although he has no qualms about raising his voice at Anora so I’m going to refer to my previous statement of it being the female warden.

I’m not going to say Alistair had the hardest life but it wasn’t the easiest either if we consider his age, and he was eventually dropped off at the chantry because of Isolde. Honestly if people hate how shy he is and how much of a gentleman he is at this point whatever, I don’t care but people like that exist, deal with it.

We could argue that his treatment from Isolde aids his fear of talking to the warden which I am personally going with. Let’s look at how hesitant he was to tell you he was a bastard in the first place, he didn’t want to tell you as explained by himself because people either coddle him because of it or treat him badly.

At his young and impressionable age it would have left psychological marks on him that he perhaps fears being treated like this and is thus hesitant when it comes to talking to women let alone those he has feelings for. It would be hard in the least which it is for his character and that is actually realistic.

Origins is a dark fantasy game in the first place so let’s not forget that either, considering the city elf wardens backstory is her getting kidnapped along with several other women to be raped by the Arl’s son and his friends.(yes I played a city elf)

Also if you meet Alistair in Inquisition, gone is his happy-go-lucky attitude he has a cold seriousness about him that breaks your heart when you realize he has become a man that get’s the job done instead of being his usual goofball self.

So essentially if you don’t like a touch of realism in your gaming then gtfo because that’s how life works. Events in our lives leave their marks on us regardless of if we want them too or not.

Which brings me to my second point being Cullen.

Cullen has had a far worse time than Alistair has and that has definitely left their marks on him as a person. If you played a circle mage which I have you will see his rather cute and shy interactions with the warden, and I’m not sure if it’s intended but after you talk to him he sprints off in the other direction.

Moving on to the annulment of the circle at Calenhad we find Cullen trapped in a magical barrier and he’s rambling on about how the demons are using you to haunt him again. The man actually cries when you meet him begging for an end to all this misery, he is a broken human being. And if you bring Leliana with you she will comment on how he had been denied food and water for a few days as well and attempts to give him some.

Afterwards he explains that his friends were killed and tortured some were turned and he was tortured as well as I explained earlier. After finally realizing that you are real he asks you to kill all the mages in the tower including Irving and all the mages who never turned.

You can either choose to go along with his request and kill everyone or not and save the mages, but either way the damage on his mind is already done and he has a fear that would not easily go away considering he still has nightmares in Inquisition.

This in no way supports the slaughter that he suggested because realistically no amount of trauma excuses the harm caused to other people because of it but it is understandable given that fear is a powerful force able to make people do many things they thought they would never do.

Moving along to Dragon Age 2 when he was sent to Kirkwall because Greagoir sent him away because Cullen was no longer allowed to be around the mages in the tower and he needed to be away from the place that caused him so much pain.

So now at Kirkwall; Knight-Commander Meredith has been fostering his hate for mages and so he treated them as less that human stating to Hawke “They are not people like you and me.” I played a mage in DA2 but I always understood the importance of the circle so that we didn’t end up with another Imperium.

I understood why he treated them like this because he was never given a chance to see mages as anything other than evil abominations and blood mages such as what was in Fereldan’s circle. And since I can only assume Meredith was filling his head full of stuff that would make him remain loyal to her and her ideals alone it makes sense.

Moving through the acts you see him questioning her despite his own distaste for mages and I think that is progress because despite his mental scars he is able to see that this is not right, and he has regrets already. He understands that Meredith is going crazy as revealed in Act 3 I believe, but what options does he have when the only safety he has is to cling to the order that controls the mages.

He needs to feel that control over them so that he can in some way be assured that what happened at Calenhad can never happen again. It does however as seen when Anders blows up the chantry but still my point remains. Cullen has a fear that causes him to both hate what the Templars get away with and hate what mages get away with at the same time. Leaving him between a rock and a hard place.

If you tried to face your biggest fear I could see you standing their questioning everything multiple times because it’s not easy to step out from that metaphorical blanket of security you think you have. Cullen turning on Meredith at the end of Act 3 proves he is taking a leap of faith, his convictions strong enough to ignore his fear for a moment and do what is right.

If you aid the Templar's in saving Kirkwall, several mages will surrender to you and Meredith demands their death, but Cullen is expressing his opinion against what she wants, saying that it is not what the order stands for. Hawke ultimately has the choice and they can be saved much to Meredith's displeasure. Fighting against Meredith at the very end proves that he has made a choice and it was the right one.

Moving on to Inquisition, his desire to leave the Templar's is perfectly expected, he has had enough of people like Meredith he’s tired of dealing with mages, and he doesn’t want to be tied to his past life anymore. His ‘whining’ about the mages joining them is still justified even if he get’s over it for the greater good because he realizes that it is your choice to make as the Inquisitor. 

Why would anyone who has been tortured by a certain group want more of them walking freely around them, it’s a panic attack waiting to happen. 

Being someone who has been through some pretty horrific stuff in my life I can understand these characters on a deeper level than most, there are many psychological factors behind the actions and reactions from these 2 characters.

Honestly I could touch up more on this whole thing but I think I have said my peace and this post is already long enough. so thank you for listening to my spiel and have a nice day.

[sjwbangtan]

[ENGTRANS][Analysis] ‘My two cents on Jessica’s exit from SNSD’

Original Author: 墨武 (Zhihu)

Eng-Trans: RI + Hannah97, Yee and CAI

Source: https://www.zhihu.com/question/25626185/answer/179775847

Please take out with full credits.

‘My two cents on Jessica’s exit from SNSD’

I came to know SNSD in 03/2016 and started being interested in K-Pop. I didn’t know much in the beginning, so I gathered more information as time passed. I’m a law university student, so I suppose my logic and common sense can be considered acceptable. I compiled my information over a period of time. Why am I bringing this up? Because too many fans are very biased when it comes to this incident. Judging from the replies I got, it seems not many can reply without prejudice. Of course, this is completely normal, you’re too emotionally-invested in a person, and the situation became so complicated. Towards someone whom you’ve loved for so many years, how can you stop loving them just like that? You won’t trust other people’s words that easily too. Many fans can’t achieve it, the ability to be impartial, and to look at this as an onlooker.

I ask that you put away your prejudice for once, and face the truth.

-Revised on June 14-

This is not a zero-sum game; I posted this analysis with no ill intent, but to encourage healthy debate, and also to share my opinions with everyone. Perhaps I was too long-winded; many people didn’t have the patience to finish reading. Some got defensive and began interrogating me in the replies. This kind of people who reply without even finishing the article are unreasonable, let’s not even start on if you respect me; it seems you lack respect even for yourself.  You spent so much time leaving a reply that has been repeated excessively (like a broken record) by others. All you did was parrot other people, you do not have a mind of your own, and such debates are meaningless.

Two points to take note:

1) Not everyone who speaks up for Jessica is her fan, I was assumed as Jessica’s fan for the past few days, but in actual fact I am just a casual fan of SNSD. I’m not young anymore, and started getting into K-Pop late, by the time I know about them, SNSD was already incomplete. I wrote this article because my principle in life makes me want to get to the bottom of everything, and with my cautious observations, I finally posted this.

Since this article is strictly an analysis on motive and reason, I have left out the professional terminology. If you are only convinced by professional terminology, then I am sorry to disappoint. My analysis is just words from an ordinary person.

In my eyes, they (idols) are just like us, just that they are slightly older and survive in a more vicious environment, so they are ordinary people who are (supposedly) more mature. It’s not like they are politicians or moguls of some sort.

2) Not everyone who speaks up for Jessica assumes she is as innocent as a lamb. Some people who didn’t even bother to read the article started barking in the comments “Only Jessica is an innocent lamb, only Jessica can do no wrong, you think the whole world wants to harm her?”. Regardless of whose side you are on, my approach is that nobody is completely innocent. People who take sides are fans. To prevent people from ignoring my analysis, which defeats the purpose of this article, and also people who tries to steer everyone in the wrong direction, okay, I hereby provide a glossary, just scroll to whatever you want to read.

1- Was she forced out or did she leave on her own accord?

2- Why was she forced out? Political reasons vs. She deserved it vs. Member conflict vs. Agency’s motive?

3- 930 Protagonist and antagonist role in this incident, what triggered 930?

4- 930 Onlookers, analysis of Chinese SONES, and common misconceptions.

Lastly, happy 10th anniversary to SNSD, and happy 10th anniversary to Jessica Jung.

Note: I saw a comment saying they are OT8, and will always support all 8, then went on to say SNSD should disband since their future has already been hindered due to this incident, and they feel discouraged. Here is a verse for you (from The Quatrain of Seven Steps):

People burn the beanstalk to boil beans,

The beans in the pot cry out.

We are born of the same root,

Why should we hound each other to death with such impatience?

1- Was she forced out? Vs. She left on her own accord?

Firstly let’s compare the official statements from both sides; any declaratives and statements not from the persons directly concerned cannot be assumed as legitimate material. Timeline of the published official statements as below:

Sep 30, 2014 at 5:00AM, Jessica made her stance on her WEIBO.

Sep 30, 2014 at 1:00PM, SM’s PR department released their official statement.

Oct 01, 2014 at 10:00AM, Jessica released her official statement.

In both Jessica and SM’s official statements, even though they focus on different points, both includes a fact that  coincides across both statements and cannot be ignored, as Jessica stated “without a proper reason, I received a one-sided notification to leave SNSD”, SM’s official statement stated “the agency had no choice but to pull up SNSD’s activities as 8 members earlier than planned”.

Everyone should have heard of ‘Rashomon’ (Rashomon 羅生門 is a 1950 Japanese film that is known for a plot device that involves various characters providing alternative, self-serving and contradictory versions of the same incident.), the same incident, with different people of different standpoints have contradictory ways of saying things, but things like fundamental truths can neither be changed nor erased. We received the message loud and clear on September 30, the agency did serve a notice to Jessica informing her that SNSD will move forward as an 8-member group, this is a fact.

So why is it that the fans in Korea curse with hatred at the mention of Jessica, instead of blaming the agency for breaking the group apart? Why did they not continue to support Jessica in her entertainment career?

That is because someone misled all of us by shifting the blame and the source of the problem for this incident onto the members and Jessica. SM’s official statement stated “this coming Spring, she notified us she will halt her team promotions”. Shortly after, ‘Korea’s #1 Paparazzi’ Dispatch released the infamous ‘insider Q&A’, 2 persons (allegedly close to Jessica) who were unwilling to disclose their identities, were interviewed. They revealed that Jessica is no longer part of the group because she said she intended to leave the group on 2 occasions with plans to get married. Those who are familiar with K-entertainment all know that K-fans detest dating scandals the most, there are many cases where they stopped being a fan and backstabbed the idol in return. Hence, the image of a selfish person who only cares about developing her own career and intends to get married to her boyfriend was formed in Korean citizens’ minds. The extent of the damage caused by this ‘created image’ is severe, 3 years later and Koreans are still leaving comments citing this ‘selfish person who only cares about her own career and intends to get married to her boyfriend’ as an excuse. Did everyone realize something? That’s right, it’s been 3 years, and they still come up with the exact same arguments, because the accusations failed to come true, so the rumors are stuck at where it started. But why do we have people taking 2 different sides, 1 group sees eye to eye with the Koreans, and the other group thinks that she was indeed a victim who got forced out. I’m not sure if the comments represent the majority, but my friends have the same conclusion as me, that Jessica was indeed forced out.

Here are a few reasons, firstly why are there different opinions in 2 countries? Because we (China) don’t have SM, we don’t have the Big-3 agencies that dominate and monopolize the market, we don’t have controversies formed by a powerful agency that refuses to let you off easy even if you dissolved your contract amicably. As I mentioned earlier, if someone like Dispatch, a top paparazzi with high publicity, reports negatively on an idol , will you believe them? Honestly, fans excluded, onlookers will likely go along with what Dispatch reports, this is also why many fans keep clarifying matters in the comment section of such reports. Fans persevered and continued clarifying even if it’s counterproductive, because by doing so, there is still a 1% chance that people may be enlightened and have a clearer grasp of the situation. If you stay silent, you have a 0% chance of turning things around. Which means, it may just be true for those who say “you think a local like me wouldn’t know our country’s celebrities better than you, a foreigner?”, you are right, you really don’t. The Korean society is weird, they condemn a person without even giving them a chance to speak up for themselves, and fans have no platform to explain matters. They only have one-sided information released by a big agency to the media, and with such ways of handling matters, it’s hard for me to not think you are the villain here. This leads to a repeated rumor being taken as truth, and this is dreadful.

Moreover, having the intent to kill but not actually fulfilling the act does not make you guilty legally, but in the vicious entertainment industry, even having such intent equates to the death penalty. So there must be a purpose behind this intent right? Before we discuss about the purpose, I discovered another interesting point, SM stated “This spring, Jessica said she would stop group activities”. Spring could be either March, April, or May. In Dispatch’s famous ‘insider Q&A’, they mentioned that Jessica said she wanted to leave the group twice, once in January, and a 2nd time in July. Here comes my question, so which month was it exactly? Was it Spring, or was it Summer? Or SM’s idea of Spring stretches from January to July? No? So who was lying? Was it SM’s official statement, or was it the ‘insiders’ invited by Dispatch who were lying?

We should all agree on one fact, either a person actually thinking of doing something or a person actually acting out on their thoughts, are driven by a purpose and motivation. Let’s assume that since Jessica had intended to quit the group, or even mentioned about wanting to quit the group, means she must have the desire to do so. How did this desire come about in the first place? Such desires usually entail benefits to oneself, and I believe nobody would desire something that causes harm to themselves. Then was there a dire need for Jessica to quit the group that year? What caused her to have a desire to quit the group that year? I personally think she had even more reason to want to stay in the group that year.

I hereby provide 4 pieces of evidence, the first 2 will focus on Jessica’s personal reasons, the other 2 will focus on external factors. Firstly, Jessica belonged to the bottom half of the group in terms of personal schedules she had since the second half of 2011, even the leader of TaeTiSeo mentioned during their subunit interview that Jessica had  only been “practically living in the photoshoot studio”. You can find the comparison chart for personal schedules of all 9 members in freesouls bar. In comparison, the amount of personal schedules Jessica had in 2014 was more than her past 2 years’ combined. Not forgetting to mention the Jungsis subunit that SM had wanted to promote but was shelved, such important projects couldn’t have been put together within a week or two. So what reason does Jessica have to take such a huge risk now, to discard all the benefits that she was about to reap, to the extent of quitting the group no matter what? Some people say she doesn’t care, she just felt like quitting and so what, she is such a person who doesn’t care about anything. But the audio from their dance practice was leaked proving that they did record a song together, preparation for a season 2 of Jessica & Krystal’s reality show was also reported in the news. Will a person who simply don’t care be so enthusiastic in a project? Will you put in so much effort to practice again and again, only to give up on the actual day of the exam? I am sure you will not be happy at the thought of it, after all everyone loves to measure success based on results.

Secondly, in terms of career development, Jessica launched her brand in August after a series of preparation, she also mentioned in her official statement that she had informed the members beforehand, including all her future plans. Hello people, launching a brand is not a piece of cake, she must have prepared for a long time and her company only just started, and this is just an ‘insurance’ for her idol career. When you are part of a top girl group like SNSD where you can reap the fruits of your labor, she chose fashion as her future ‘insurance’, something she is familiar with and good at. Honestly, this ‘insurance’ is still at its early stages, so was there a need to sever all ties with such a strong backing when nothing has taken shape yet? Realistically speaking, even the most powerful backing does not belong to you in the end. In the real world, you can work with others but never ever rely on them completely. She is not an underaged teen who thinks the world is filled with only good people, she has lived for 25 years and survived in the entertainment industry for 14 years (2014), will she be such an idiot to sever all ties with a powerful backing and have nothing to fall back on, just to go start on a new venture?

Thirdly, in terms of SNSD’s career development, 2014 marks SNSD’s 7th year in the industry and they can be considered an unbeatable girl group, even though I think they are already on their decline, everything that goes up must come down. Anyway their decline is not that obvious and it doesn’t matter even if they are on their way down, since they have found success thanks to the contribution of all 9 members, what they need to do now is to take their share of the pie and have their taste of success. A group that has seen success internationally and reached their peak can only do so much now. Many people say SNSD still has potential but I beg to differ, because you have already reached your peak and so the public no longer anticipates what other surprises you can bring. Their only concern is that this group is at its peak. This is a dead end for many superstars, how much popularity is enough? Where is the peak? When the public no longer look forward to what you can achieve, when they are no longer curious about what you can bring to the table, the so-called popularity will start to wane, and what you are left with is only the nation’s approval. Perhaps you will say that I am contradicting myself but think carefully, are the younger generation and the previous generation supporting the same idols? The people that the previous generation supports has attained the nation’s approval, and the younger generation go for popularity, what matters is “volume”. SNSD’s potential has been gradually declining since 2014, but this works in the members’ favor instead, this means the members can begin distinguishing themselves from the group since the group has already reached its peak. They can have their own identity and not just be SNSD’s so and so. This is what I meant by tasting their share of the pie. It is obvious that SNSD is already going down that route, and we hardly see group performances by SNSD anymore, partly due to commercial and personal reasons. Since they have endured the early days where their articles were filled with malicious comments, where their every move was being monitored and scrutinized, does it sound logical to you for someone to leave the group when it’s time to enjoy the benefits and honor that the ‘brand name (SNSD)’ gives? Put yourself in this situation, you suffered 6 years of cursings, and people finally start to compliment you, then out of a sudden you tell everyone that it’s better if they continue to curse you, you can take it. This is impossible. (What in the world???)

Fourthly, Jessica’s agency SM, SM’s background and history, an agency that blocks even artistes who dissolved their contract amicably. Why is SM so harsh towards their previous artistes? Of course it’s just so they can demonstrate their power. ‘In this entertainment industry, I am God, you want to leave me? Don’t even think about it.’ You must be joking if you think Jessica didn’t anticipate SM’s tyrannical ways. She was a trainee for 7 years and had been in SNSD for 7 years, she clearly knows what happened to members who left H.O.T, Shinhwa, DBSK, and Super Junior. Even a person in any normal situation knows what risk assessment is, and when the risk is obviously greater than the benefit for whatever you want to do, any sane person would either give up the idea, or wait it out. Why is it that most Koreans renew their contract with SM? You have already been warned, ‘if we are not going to be in the same boat, then you can prepare to sink.’ Even if you are not contented, but as long as you still want to survive, you have no choice but to continue with this agency. What can you do? Of course you have to learn to forgive them. Because if you refuse to, they will not let you off. You can’t say that their staff and their management are heartless, you can only blame the agency for being ruthless. In this economically-driven world, to maintain their dominance, they will only continue to be so oppressive. You should have expected this when you chose them in the first place.

With such a powerful backing (or threat), and with her future shining so brightly, the argument of her ‘wanting to leave the group’ is no longer valid. Nobody would want to leave without tasting a bite of the pie they (spent so many years to) bake. Jessica, a member who contributed to SNSD’s success obviously wants to enjoy her share of the pie.

Therefore, saying she left the group on her own accord is completely ridiculous. Of course, such excuses started from the Koreans who were brainwashed by the media. Actually most of the SONES in China agreed that she was indeed forced out. Like they always say “I really don’t understand Golden Stars, your idol was fired and you still have the cheek to keep bringing it up”. It’s true that being forced out is somewhat like getting fired, but they are of different nature. I can’t help but feel bitter whenever people say that, because they are implying that SNSD are just colleagues rather than friends. This is as far as their group spirit goes, and will be evident in their future comebacks.

2- Why was she forced out? Political reasons vs. She deserved it vs. Member conflict vs. Agency’s motive?

Even when everyone agrees that she was forced out, why do people keep bringing this subject up? What I have listed are the more plausible reasons, I chose not to list some of the more ridiculous arguments that are obviously from brainless antis. I advise everyone to just have a good laugh and let it go when you come across those people with such great imagination.

Firstly, some people said that ‘930’ was a deflection for political scandals. I will like to call someone out.

“Politics!”

“What?!”

“There’s a (scape)goat for you, please acknowledge it.”

“Go to hell, I don’t want it.”

Politics: “I don’t want to be the scapegoat, thanks.”

Korea is undoubtedly small, let alone South Korea, it’s nothing out of the ordinary for politics and entertainment to cross paths, but not everything from drunk-driving to drug-abuse to small issues like leaving a group or dating scandals are always used to cover political scandals. Think about it, if you are a Korean, would you care more about the news of an idol (who holds a lowly status in Korean society), or a political scandal? We are talking about a country who has the guts to impeach their president and put her on trial. Everytime I see a fan say “‘Pinocchio’ was used to cover a political scandal”, “You are siding with the wrong party”, I just want to laugh. You think you are the only one who watched ‘Pinocchio’, you think you are the only one who watches the news, you think you are the only one who knows whose side they are on? Even the 5 leading organizations will not dare to take sides easily, let alone entertainment agencies. Whose side did Samsung take? I realized something when I read the ‘Twenty-Four Histories’. The typical scenario of an aristocratic family was that the elder brother would be the proposition, and the younger brother would be the opposition, they would always be at loggerheads. Why did that happen though? That is to prevent a genocide. (Author quoted a scenario of Zhuge Liang from ‘The Three Kingdoms’, research if you want to know more) Using the same logic, a company in our economically-driven society is only interested in a mutually-beneficial business relationship to ensure the company does not collapse.

Can’t you see, the South Korean president has gone through multiple setbacks, but yet the 5 leading organizations are still standing strong?

No doubt the Big-3 entertainment agencies are tools, but if we are talking about taking sides politically, then I’m sorry to tell you they are not that influential. So for those who said the series of incidents that happened to SM in 2014 were actually collateral damage to cover up political scandals, then perhaps you are overthinking this.

Why were there multiple dating scandals from SNSD that were reported that year? First and foremost, they are indeed no longer young and innocent girls, so it’s not surprising that they are in relationships too. On the other hand, media and entertainment agencies  have always had a love-hate relationship, whoever has the most lucrative offer wins. Since they are no longer the young and innocent girls like before, it’s only natural that SM loosens their leash and gives them a little more leeway. Anyway they are already the nation’s girl group, and scandals like these are not going to jeopardize their position. So they no longer see the need to bribe the media in order to stop them from publishing such photos. This is a moneymaking agency who is very realistic and calculative, so they find no need to make such ‘investments’(bribery) anymore.

Since the ‘political reason’ excuse is busted, does that mean Jessica paved the way to her own downfall, and that she deserved it? There is one reason that was stated in SM’s official statement that makes me not know whether to laugh or cry, and it is no wonder Jessica found it unreasonable as well. “No-show for events”, I have seen the information compiled by fans with regards to Jessica’s attendance for all group events, and from the start of 2014 to the month of September; this may sound embarrassing; but their accusation is completely unfounded. Perhaps SM realized they messed up too. We are talking about public events here, and everyone can see for themselves. You can’t make it go away simply by saying it doesn’t exist. Afterall, fans are not blind. So SM came up with a befuddling reason in an attempt to confuse people. “Personal schedules clashed with group activities”, this leaves an extensive room for debate because it includes practices, and how can fans possibly verify their attendance for practices (behind closed doors)? It’s not like you can follow them around as if you are their assistant or manager. Who knows they might even practice after meeting up for a meal together, so by missing the dinner gathering, they can say you were absent for practice too. Such befuddling reasons misled people into thinking Jessica deserved whatever happened to her because she was asking for it. Blindly assuming she ignored group activities and only cared about her own business, that she is so selfish, and it’s a good thing she left. Even if she did not leave the group voluntarily, thank God the agency forced her out, she deserved to be kicked out. Okay, let’s take a moment and use our brains now, what was the message that SM’s official statement was trying to convey?

“Yes, I intended to inform everyone that SNSD will proceed with their activities as 8 from now on, but I didn’t expect her to speak up first, so you can’t blame me, blame it on her for thinking about leaving in Spring, I advised her against it but realized it was futile, so I kicked her out, yes it was a decision by both the members and myself, so don’t blame this on me alone.”

SM’s official statement was actually saying; members of boy groups can go on a hiatus for 2 years (due to the need to serve in the army) and not get forced out, and members of girl groups can skip group activities due to their participation in musicals, tv-dramas, or because of health reasons, and a plethora of other excuses; their attendance is dependent on their personal schedules that could last a day or two or could even be as long as 3 to 4 months, it is alright to skip activities because I will just overlook it. BUT dear Jessica, within the span of 1 month from the day you launched your personal business, you have missed practices, take note it’s just practices since we didn’t witness Jessica missing any public events, but my apologies, please withdraw from the group, you are no longer a member.

You said Jessica was going to leave in Spring, what was your motive for advising her against it then? To make sure SNSD stays complete, am I right? But within the brief span of 1 month, you changed the course of direction for the person whom you painstakingly tried to retain, and discarded the whole idea of a complete group, oh, with such a huge loophole, tell me, are you even serious?

(It will be perfect if they were to release such an official statement 1 year later (after putting her on hiatus), because Jessica would have played straight into their hands and missed many activities, and then it would seem more rightful for them to withdraw her from the group, citing ‘no-show for multiple activities’ as a reason. There could be another frightening possibility, and that is the official statement was meant to be released in 2015 but Jessica spoke up first unfortunately, which explains the part where they said Jessica was going to leave after 1 more album in the ‘Dispatch Q&A’. Because that will make perfect sense since <Catch Me If You Can> was released in the later part of 2014 and that will seemingly be Jessica’s final single with the group as planned. SM certainly put a lot of thought into it. It seems like they failed to edit the ‘Dispatch 18 Q&A’ though, no wonder it didn’t make any sense when I came across the part where they said she will leave after releasing 1 last album with the group.)

The above bracketed paragraph is solely based on the author’s own logic and conclusion, it is up to you to believe it or not. It’s a pity we failed to notice SM’s schemes.

SM’s official statement was actually very short, because the ‘Dispatch Q&A’ had spoken everything on their behalf. What they wanted to portray was that they had tried everything they could but failed to salvage the situation, and they wanted people to believe that “Jessica’s withdrawal had absolutely nothing to do with them.”

This is a very common PR tactic; all we wanted was an explanation, but they had to drag you into the gutter, honestly, did you think all of us are as gullible as a 3 year old kid, I explicitly asked you about the weather today but you tell me the weather forecast indicates that the weather is beautiful in Spring so the weather is not bad today? Where is the correlation?

So what was SM’s role in this ‘930’ incident? In my opinion, they were the mastermind. But I feel that they are the executors and not the initiators. Firstly, all members renewed their contracts in August 2014, even though they are one of the biggest entertainment agencies, SNSD is still their top girl group and it consists of 9 women who have clawed their way to the top for the past 10’ish years. What if they decide to up and leave together if their demands are not met? It is during this time that Jessica wrote up a new contract with SM. It is impossible that SM wouldn’t evaluate her brand first. So what should they base their evaluation on? Obviously it will be evaluated based on the brand’s future value and revenue. Jessica had indeed paid the necessary fees to SM and in other words, they reached a mutual agreement. This also meant that SM expected to reap profits from Jessica’s brand. The bigger her brand gets, the better for SM, and they can reap profits without having to move a finger. This is an additional source of revenue for them, and if all things go well, they can even invest in her brand and become a shareholder at a low-entry price. Who wouldn’t want that? It would be such a waste not to. Businessmen are opportunistic and will never let such an opportunity slip away, it’s in their nature. So for those who said SM got frightened after learning how Jessica intended to scale her business, you probably thought SM is the fruit stall near your house that got their guts eaten alive. There was a legal agreement, do you take SM’s lawyers for fools who didn’t analyze the potential profit before letting SM sign the contract? Seems like you are undermining SM’s capabilities. Jessica’s ‘Blanc & Eclare’ shades also appeared in a movie produced by SM, which further proves that they did enter an agreement.

During that time, the person who held the authority to make decisions caused the ‘930 incident’ to happen, to a certain extent. The person in power at that time was Kim Young Min who was appointed the president a long time ago, but the soul of SM has always been Lee Soo Man who is also the biggest shareholder. But the docile president was finally given the chance to make a decision on his own in 2014. Lee Soo Man’s wife was critically ill then, and due to the inevitable internal power struggle, he was left with no choice but to loosen his tight reign over Kim Young Min temporarily. Kim Young Min would obviously do whatever he deemed fit against better judgement. Their artistes has no affection towards Kim Young Min, unlike for Lee Soo Man whom they address as their ‘seonsaengnim’ (teacher) because they were brought into the industry by him. If Lee Soo Man had been the one in power instead of Kim Young Min when conflicts occurred among members, he might have held the respect and ability to appease their anxiety, so that they would have waited patiently instead of making rash decisions. He would have taken a better approach and advise Jessica more appropriately when she asked for the go-ahead for her business, giving possibility to a positive outcome with regards to the earlier negotiations that have reached stalemate. Most importantly, Lee Soo Man would have had a better grasp of Jessica’s temperament and know that she is different from his other money-making machines who are obedient and whom he has wrapped around his finger. He would have known that Jessica is no pushover and cannot be easily influenced and accused for breach of contract, instead of simply devising a ‘perfect’ set-up (first citing health reasons; then absence from group activities; then dating scandal; end up leaving the group) thinking Jessica will comply obediently and they can get away with it.

Everyone should be familiar with this set-up. Yes, Sulli went through it. I am not going to judge Sulli but I just think such a set-up works indeed. At least in our hearts, f(x) should be a group of 4, the perfect 4. If Jessica hadn’t spoken up first, will the outcome be different with a similar set-up? SNSD would be a group of 8, it would make sense and everything would seem fine. Of course Jessica will still be the scapegoat, and SM will continue to profit. This outcome is absolutely perfect.

The upper management’s role here is to watch them attack each other, then turn the tide in their favor. This will be the best of both worlds for them. SM always has a fall back plan. In their official statement and subsequent arrangements, their intention was to make Jessica stay so they can share the profits equally. Honestly, SM would have been the biggest winner if Jessica had stayed in the company (after being forced out). They would have rights to Jessica’s personal fashion brand, and they could have benefitted from all the publicity from the ‘930’ saga. SNSD would return in a new form as 8 and bring a breath of fresh air to the public eye. Jessica would continue raking in revenue and they can get free publicity by mentioning Jessica - a former SNSD member, every now and then, with no consequence. Even though they are doing it now, it’s still rather inconvenient. For example, a MV conveniently leaked by an anonymous fan (e.g. Catch Me If You Can). They would have violated Jessica’s rights if they had spread that MV via their official platform instead, and Jessica would have to be compensated.

But Jessica was adamant about leaving and SM lost the opportunity to enjoy the best of both worlds. Nonetheless, Jessica was made the scapegoat successfully and she didn’t sue SM for breach of contract, so the company still won. The reason why SM was so confident was because Krystal is still under SM, and it was impossible to go hostile with SM as long as she still wanted to pursue an entertainment career, and also unless she couldn’t care less about Krystal’s future anymore. Some people said that Jessica was able to dissolve her contract with SM amicably because SM didn’t want her anymore. You must be horribly mistaken because SM still cared enough to assign a team of staff to Jessica even for her personal schedules, right until her contract was dissolved. So rather than saying SM didn’t want Jessica anymore, the more logical explanation would be that the contract was dissolved because a mutual consensus was reached after much deliberation that by doing so was the most mutually-beneficial approach. SM agreed to dissolve her contract because they were the ones who breached the contract this time. The reason why SM persecuted the people who left their company was because this group of people did violate their contract. Whereas for Jessica’s case, SM was in the wrong and since they did not have the upperhand, they were wise to not pursue this issue because the possibility of them winning this lawsuit is slim. And Jessica chose to end the contract amicably because she didn’t want to remain in such a company and also because Krystal is still under them. I am not mentioning Krystal on purpose but because it shouldn’t come as a surprise for real sisters to spare a thought for each other. If Jessica’s departure from the group didn’t affect Krystal at all, she would have appeared in SMTown’s ending stages. 3 years later today, after multiple SMTown concerts, Krystal still has not appear a single time. You can consider it a coincidence if it’s once or twice, but not if it’s everytime. It’s simply because she can’t bring herself to.

Finally, let’s talk about whether conflicts occurred among the members. As the saying goes “to stay together through thick and thin”, this is easier said than done, and hard times will always reveal true friends. It’s true they have gone through hard times together before, but it’s a different situation altogether now that they have reached their peak.

Imagine this scenario: 9 girls who reached their peak through mutual support; everyone starts to plan for their own future, and upon discussion some say they will work even harder to become the number 1 K-Pop idol; then Jessica tells the members about her grand plan, “I want to start a company, and I’m going to overtake you guys by working twice as hard”. This is definitely shocking news for the rest, “Eh, but you didn’t have any ambitions before? Why are you so motivated and driven all of a sudden?”

“Yes I’ve changed, you guys have a problem with it? I’m going to start working much harder. I’ve spent year after year without jobs allocated to me, this cannot go on anymore, can’t I start living my life without regrets from now on?”

“NO. Absolutely NOT.” I’m not sure if you have experienced it before but it happened to me. I’m generally an easy-going person and it’s not because I don’t care, but it’s simply because I don’t want others to feel threatened by thinking I’m trying to snatch anything away from them. Call me stubborn but I want to be appreciated by my superiors based on my own merits. Jessica was in SNSD for 7 years, it’s hard to believe she has no ambition at all. She trained for 7 long years, and she wouldn’t have been able to persevere if she hadn’t dreamed of success. Would she have been able to persevere if she didn’t have the passion for singing? But when she didn’t make the cut and was not selected to be part of SNSD’s subunit in 2012, her position as 2nd lead vocalist was clearly threatened. TTS comes to mind whenever people mention SNSD’s vocal line, but where was Jessica? There was no Jessica. If I put myself in her shoes, knowing that I obviously love singing, knowing that I obviously should have gotten it, and knowing that I obviously should have been acknowledged, but I was forgotten instead. You can only imagine how dejected she would have been. I can completely understand her reason for wanting to work something out for herself, but that doesn’t mean everyone else would understand or even see eye-to-eye with her.

Take me for example. I was lazy during my high school days, but suddenly realize I couldn’t go on like this during my 3rd year, so I started working very hard. But my best friend turned against me and her reason was, “why did you become so serious suddenly? I feel uncomfortable being around you, being your friend makes me feel so stressed out now.”

I was disgusted. You were always working hard whereas all I did was laze around previously, and now that I’ve started working hard, you suddenly think I got too serious? You already feel threatened even before I started working hard?

I experienced this first hand so I can understand the situation perfectly, and especially after I read Jessica’s official statement. I’m not trying to point fingers, but we tend to evaluate our friends. We are used to having friends being worse off or equal, but never better than us. Especially if said friend used to be a lazy person who suddenly decided to work hard. The anxiety and fear caused by this sudden revelation is enough to send you into a state of panic.  

That is exactly what Jessica did, she sent her 8 members into a state of panic, and they could have kept their annoyance to themselves, but someone decided to aggravate the issue. Once it was brought up and pondered over, the situation turned for the worse. They convinced themselves that her decision would affect the group instead of it being about their own fear of knowing she was going to have a brighter future than them. It’s easy to come up with a bunch of bollocks as excuses since you can’t speak about your toxic thoughts. Like my friend who said “You’ve changed, you didn’t used to care about your future”. Of course I needed to change, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have a future. Are you telling me this was what my friend wanted me to be? A useless bum?

Jessica must have been so traumatized when the members made her choose between SNSD and her business. “We reached a mutual understanding after discussing about it, you guys even congratulated me, so why is it that you guys are forcing me to choose now?” Jessica has her ‘character flaws’ and it shown at this time, she is too iron-willed, stubborn, and it feels almost impossible to get her to back down. The more you threaten and force her to yield, the tougher she becomes. Her inability to come to terms with their sudden change of mind and the members’ unwillingness to compromise led to this fight. SM chose to watch silently and not act as a mediator in this fight since they will anger the other party if they were to pick sides, so they let them work it out among themselves.

It’s such a shame that something like this happened to SNSD when it’s time to enjoy their success. The members probably held numerous meetings among their respective cliques. The more they thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed to them. The more publicity her brand got, the more absurd it felt. The more they understood the scale of her ambition, the more panicky they got. This kind of panic wasn’t jealousy, it was simply because they couldn’t get used to this supposedly ‘new and improved’ Jessica, and also partly stemmed from their own selfishness. “I can stay beside you forever, but, you cannot ever surpass me, especially not materialistically.” When the members demanded Jessica to stop all her plans, Jessica said she already invested heavily and there was no way she could drop everything just like that. Everything came to a standstill. On one hand, the members felt like Jessica has changed, “you didn’t use to be like this, you were never this driven and ambitious”, while on the other hand, Jessica felt threatened, “We have been together for 10 years, shouldn’t you guys support me unconditionally?”

So did they try to work it out? They did. Jessica continued posting material related to the members in September, but the members began to take an even tougher stance. I believe the situation wouldn’t have reached such a terrible state if someone didn’t aggravate the situation. Lee Soo Man would have attempted to appease everyone and not let any malicious person cloud the members’ judgement. The reason why any malicious person would succeed in driving a wedge between them was because the 9 of them were no longer like before, they have their own cliques now, their own circle of friends, and have their own career paths to take. There is no way to know who the malicious people who instigated them were, but they definitely existed. The success of Jessica’s brand may not have a significant impact on the members, but if Jessica succeeded in both entertainment and fashion industries, it might have a strong effect on the people behind the team. This fight looks like a 1 vs 8 from the outside, but in actual fact, it’s a conflict of personal interests that involved many others. It’s a shame they didn’t manage to keep their promise of being together forever. After considering the future revenue and benefits of 1 vs 8 without Lee Soo Man helming SM’s management team, and taking Sulli’s incident as a guide, it was easy to use a similar setup for Jessica’s dismissal. So they acceded to the 8 members’ demands, and then informed Jessica she was excluded from all future SNSD activities. They were going to use health as a reason for Jessica’s absence, and let her slowly fade away.

All 3 (Jessica, members, SM) parties were at fault.

Jessica was overconfident thinking the members would never go to the extent of kicking her out, so she used the delay-tactic and hoped the conflict would work itself out with time. She also over-estimated Kim Young Min’s trustworthiness by thinking she could disregard the members’ opposition by gaining Kim Young Min’s word of approval. As we all know, Jessica got played. If she hadn’t gotten his word of approval, she might have taken the members’ state of anxiety into consideration and not daringly leave the country to attend to personal matters. But Kim Young Min was definite and gave her his word, then he turned his back on her the moment she left the country. He broke down her defences and caught her off guard. Jessica’s overconfidence caused her to overlook the immediate danger and she was caught in an awkward predicament, like a drowned mouse.

As for the members, they cracked under pressure and gave in to their anxiety by blowing things out of proportion, thinking their conflict with Jessica was beyond repair. It escalated from simply not being used to seeing your friend become so driven suddenly, to the road of no return, because there wasn’t a mediator to alleviate the situation, and they were played by the people who used their emotions against them by clouding their judgement. I think there were neutral members who kept their opinions to themselves, and by keeping quiet they were inadvertently agreeing to whatever decision was being made. I think the neutral members were YoonA, Seohyun, Hyoyeon, and Sunny. YoonA is known for her high EQ, she is not the sort to take an active role especially in situations like such whereby she would likely offend either party. During a rehearsal around the time this fight was going on, she didn’t dare to interact with Jessica openly but they still made eye contact. In a Hong Kong interview around mid-September, she blatantly said she wasn’t the one who started or instigated this matter. As for Seohyun, she had always been cordial with Jessica, being the youngest in the group, her words didn’t weigh as much. When Jessica attended the <I Love that Crazy Little Thing> presscon, a reporter asked if she knew Seohyun was in Beijing too, and she answered “Yes”. This was a huge contrast to when she was asked if she knew Yuri was in Hong Kong, where Jessica replied “Oh she is? I didn’t know”. When asked if they were going to meet up, she replied “I don’t think so”. Her attitude was very different. Another possibility could be that her anger has slowly dissipated with time. Perhaps Jessica simply doesn’t care as much anymore, so her approach to such questions have changed too. As for Sunny, she remained passive since there wasn’t a need for her to instigate anything, because she had nothing to gain from this fight due to her special status. Nothing can change the fact that she is Lee Soo Man’s niece, and her attitude after 930 says it all. She seemed like she got sick of this supposed sisterly bond. Lastly Hyoyeon, being one of the less popular members aside, most importantly, her life motto is “it’s okay, everything’s going to be fine”. She tends to make peace with whatever situation. Jessica once said Hyoyeon gave similar advice to her before. There are similarities between these 4 members, they are neutral by nature and are not good at expressing themselves. Perhaps they have minimal conflict of interests with Jessica, or perhaps their family backgrounds are not too far off from Jessica, or perhaps their talent and field of interests are different from Jessica, so they don’t clash.

But it’s such a shame because everyone has grown up, so their way of thinking and doing things won’t be what you always see in fairytales, where they will thrive and survive against all odds. They can only obey the majority, obey the most outspoken people. Because of the fear of being singled out saying they are antisocial by not following the masses, and also the fear for their future, most importantly the fear that they will not get to enjoy their share of the pie, their share of the success that was made possible by the contribution of all 9 members.

On the morning of 930, Jessica completely gave up hope and did not follow through with SM’s plan (to say her absence was due to health reasons) when the members made such a grave and heartless decision. Let’s imagine, if any of the members had cried and threw a fit, 930 may not have gone down the way it did. Well I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and think that they didn’t waste 14 years of their lives for nothing.

Reality is cruel, even though most fans understand, they don’t want to accept reality. But we have to admit that idols hide all their problems behind their smiles, and behind their smiles is a world of pain that even they themselves don’t want to confront. It is best to not let such darkness and negativity swallow you up, because once you let it get to your heart, you will definitely crumble.

As for SM, their mistake was taking Jessica for a fool thinking they could pull the same trick twice without her figuring out how it’s done.You used the same tactic on Choi Sulli, and then you go tell Jessica, “Hey, Jessica babe, we intend to use the same tactic on you, so please don’t show up for the fanmeet today okay? Don’t show up for future SNSD activities too because you are no longer a part of the group, but please keep it a secret and don’t tell anyone, let’s take it one step at a time.” Can you guess Jessica’s reaction and next course of action? As the saying goes, even an angry bunny bites back, moreover Jessica is a cat. \(-_- )/

With Jessica’s character, she was definitely not going to be a sitting duck just waiting to get slaughtered, and this was also the reason why she was not made the leader. Her life motto is “follow my heart”. A popular artiste once said that no agency was willing to sign him and their reason was that they needed their artistes to be obedient so they could exercise control over them easily, and they should be someone who can’t survive in the industry upon leaving the agency. But he is a highly intelligent man of many talents who can survive on his own even if he leaves the entertainment industry. Jessica will never fall for SM’s tricks like Sulli did because she doesn’t do things against her own will and conscience. Perhaps Kim Young Min didn’t have a good grasp of every artiste’s personalities and thought he could use the same trick on Jessica. So the situation turned into a farce. Drama ensued and Jessica revealed the truth so everyone can have a clear view of what really went down.

3- Backstabbed her former members? Backstabbed by agency and former members?

I think Jessica got backstabbed, so she retaliated and gave them a taste of their own medicine. Let’s be logical, what would you do if you got backstabbed? Smile and let it pass? This is what a monk would do, not how commoners like us would react. The reason why I said Jessica got backstabbed: firstly Jessica posted on weibo at 5am when it wasn’t too long after she got informed of her dismissal. She was absolutely infuriated at this time, perhaps she witnessed the members carrying on with their preparation for the Shenzhen fanmeet as if nothing happened after notifying her of her dismissal. Or perhaps she didn’t even get to see the members after receiving a message for her dismissal, and all the members were not contactable. No matter what happened, it definitely had significant impact on a person who thought there was still room for negotiations. Moreover the people who informed you (be it in person or by written notice) had been your friends for more than a decade. Both scenarios are unthinkable and unbearable but unfortunately, either of this scenario must have happened. I have this conclusion because in both of SM’s and Jessica’s official statements, “company and members” were mentioned. If the rumors are real, it could be less hurtful if Jessica was notified face-to-face, rather than simply receiving a written notice to leave the group, and then go on to find out that all members were uncontactable. Jessica deserved to be treated with at least minimum respect, and granting her a face-to-face settlement is the proper way.

Regardless of what went down, the person who received such news would feel absolutely helpless and angry, and it is no surprise that it led to Jessica’s post on Weibo. Perhaps you think you can handle such news without getting into a frenzy, then good for you, but that doesn’t apply to everyone. What about Jessica? She was once asked about Sooyoung and YoonA’s relationships and she said, “if the members were not informed beforehand and only got to know when the news break out, then that’s rude.” This was exactly what happened to her, and the sheer anger she felt was a tell-tale sign of who the real backstabbers were. Long-time Sones will tell you Jessica is cold and not to be trifled with, something they derived from media reports and the image that SM tailormade for her. I feel that she doesn’t have an overly vibrant personality and is also not easily fooled. She doesn’t accept being shortchanged. How can we be all smiles after being backstabbed repeatedly unless you are Mother Mary? Some would say she did that because she anticipated SM’s actions and wanted to gain the upperhand. Guys, this is not the way to do it. It doesn’t always mean you have the upperhand just because you did something first.

The《Old Book of Tang》has two examples on “take the initiative is to gain the upper hand”, but two different results, positive case - Tang Long coup and negative case - Li Chongjun rebellion case, in the concept of time they are both the first, why they had different fates? Because Li Chongjun at most was a person with a temporary meaning of indignation, and ignored the definition of the first start is “ to surprise the enemy”. However, Li Longji’s “take the initiative is to gain the upper hand” was way better because his “sudden attack when enemy aren’t prepared” such steady ruthless behavior style.

So let’s take a look, did Jessica’s behavior really was “strikes first and gains the advantage”? In fact, from this point in time, you can see, Jessica has no wisdom as Li Longji when she was in the middle of such situation, my analogy may make people feel funny, how is an idol comparable to an emperor of Tang dynasty? Of course not. Return to the matter, what I mean is that 25-year-old Jessica Jung failed with her “strike first”, and it even created dangers for her future situation.

Jessica’s statement was posted at 5:00 AM, but SM released the official statement until 1:00 PM, I would like to ask, is it really “strike first and get advantages” that you gave your opponent such a long time difference? Do you all think that after informing Jessica to leave the group in the early morning, SM’s PR all went back to sleep? Obviously no. Not to mention at 5:00 AM the rest of the members must have got up and got ready to go to Shenzhen in the morning for the fan meeting. We can also see what SM was doing for up to seven hours from the trend of news later. Yes, they began their fancy performance of manipulating the media and news, if you are interested, you can search up, they really calculated every step well.

Since SM informed that Jessica to leave the group, SM must have prepared to solve the aftermath. SM is the No.1 of Korea showbiz and deals with this kind of things for many times, its PR is the strongest and fastest among the three big entertainment companies, you have to admit that inside of SM there’s a complete PR crisis management mechanism model, and this is why the artists who are blocked by SM will never enjoy the status that other artists have. Isn’t there JYJ Law? Yes, but do you see it works? No. We can understand these common senses, as a member of SNSD, a senior artist under SM, wouldn’t Jessica understand all these? She does, it’s just she has to release her emotions.

It is a normal thing, but Jessica react without any time difference, it gives SM a chance to twist the truth and catch breath which gets her into a bad fix, we’re all familiar with the story of “three men talking makes a tiger” (repeated rumor becomes a fact), when most of the media of the country talk about something in a certain way, as someone who does not know the facts, will you believe the media or a litigant who was smeared? To a great extent, the media is the eyes and ears of civilians, people will trust everything the media report, I have watched a Korean movie “Defender”, the lawyer in it was actually defending for the children who got framed, but the media twisted the facts and call the lawyer a bad guy who is bribed, from this, we can see that media can really so someone wrong or even put them to death.

That is why I say that Jessica is actually not the people who catch all the ball before the bound because she posted this statement under her impulsive anger, she did not think too much nor did she prepared anything to protect herself, and that gives the opponent a perfect chance to flip the card.

If I was Jessica, and I really wanted to ruin SNSD like some people said, I would announce publicly that it was the company and members forced me out and wanted me to take the blame when everything is ready, on the evening of the SNSD fan meeting, when the members who attend the fan meeting followed the script and say that I cannot make it to the fan meeting because of sickness. What do you think? I would call that perfect.

Come, everybody, let’s take a minute and think, is the situation that I suggested “pre-emptive”, or post the news at 5 AM and give the company and PR plenty of time to get ready “pre-emptive”?

“Isn’t mentioning members means that members knew about it and even pushed it behind?” Many people who saw Jessica’s Weibo posts thought like that. Of course what we think is not important, what matters is what Korean people think and how they choose. Alright, even people believe this statement and know it is not Jessica’s fault, so what? Because it is impossible for them to condemn their bias, it is also impossible to condemn a party of eight because of a party of one, and it is impossible to allow SNSD - the name card of Korea - get dirt on it, so, sorry we have to blame you. So we see a very funny thing that under the news about Jessica, in the Korean comment section, as long as there’s a news about Jessica, they always leave negative comments and hates, but the only exception is when she releases her album, people comment with good word to affirm her singing skill, is it her singing skill that good, good enough to overcome all those hates before? All the people who always comment her with bad word suddenly stopped on the day? I don’t think so.

Compared with the announcement came later from SM, the content of Jessica’s Weibo posts are really simple and clear, it’s just like, “I can’t meet you at 10:00 PM tomorrow because my friends don’t allow me, I can’t go now”, such a casual and normal message, I feel so funny when I see those “betray” arguments.

“In the end, it is just whose fan you are, you stand by whom, isn’t it?” Yes, I agree with that, but it’s obvious there’s right and wrong between standpoints, and I feel right to stand on the standpoint of Jessica to make sense of this issue. We may as well imagine it, if Jessica only mentioned the company and did not mention members, will her ending change? No, SM had already prepared many public notices for her, say that she is just selfish and wanted to leave, sooner or later, fans of SNSD will believe this allegation and turn to condemning Jessica. But if Jessica didn’t mention members, will rest of the members and fans end differently? Yes, because like that, the reputations of other eight members would not suffer a bit, and their fans can continue to follow their bias without any guilt, meanwhile, criticize Jessica who got kicked out from time to time.

Can people be so selfish to such great degree? Just for your self-interests, you can step on other people’s genuineness and yell at other people said that he or she is setting you up?

Apparently in today’s society, speaking the truths is betrayal, and telling lies and empty words is honesty.

4- Prepared to leave the group? Whom to blame for losing group spirit? (SNSD fans)

Before I get to the main point, I still want to emphasize, the truth is the more you debate about it, truer you will find it is, put it anywhere works the same. Started with this post, fans from every side started to put on a show, both sides hold strongly to their arguments, looking back, the truth is actually crystal clear.

Here I want to introduce the background of both sides, first, Jessica’s side, obviously her bias fans. And another side, are they really group fans, I don’t really think so, at least official SNSD fansites didn’t state they are OT8, and I believe, those who separate Jessica and SNSD from the beginning are definitely not group fans, I asked those who were group fans back then, they struggled inside for a long time, didn’t know whether to believe Jessica’s post or not, but they never publicly showed which side they chose. But at that time, bias fans with their hearts belong to someone have already started to choose side, what did Jessica’s leaving exposed, it exposed the inside structure of SNSD’s Chinese group fans has already turned from mostly group fans to mostly bias fans, I see that some people who become SNSD’s fans later or just became a group fan a while ago complain that Jessica made SNSD’s fans lost their group spirit, I want to say that you misunderstood, SNSD’s group fans were already losing to the bias fans of the three popular aces (Tae, Yoon, Sic), the only difference is to see it falling apart on the surface or storming under the waves.

So, at the beginning both arguing sides’ backgrounds, put it plainly, is just three popular aces’ bias fans divided into two sides and fight,only this time one side picked up “group fan” such noble weapon. Group fans’ noses got pulled by others, this is why someone became nobody’s fan, because group fans have no enough strengths to fight three aces’ bias fans, the purpose of one side is to explain the issue of Jessica leaving the group, another side wanted to shame about Jessica’s leaving, group fans were forced to choose a side, some people chose SNSD for a more certain future, some people chose Jessica for their reconciled minds. Some people didn’t choose because SNSD died after 930, eight people are still SNSD is just nonsense, what you like is it just the brand of SNSD, SM’s strategy? Let them say whatever they want to say, let them manipulate whichever way they want to manipulate? So after that, OT7, OT6? Till there’s no one left? Looking at those people who chose the side right after and desperate Jessica out of the group but also claim themselves as group fans, I feel chilly at my back, since when the meaning of group fans became following the brand and the name? What is more disappointing, that those people became OT8, and for proving their choice are correct, they started to seek for excuses.

First, “unexpectedly, got informed suddenly” this point got griped by every bias fans group led by SNSD’s two big aces bias fans and zoomed in, they found that before and after the middle of September, some words said by some of the leaders of Jessica’s fans, they think that Jessica leaving the group is well-known among people, but herself didn’t know about it, it is such a show. About this, I want to use a metaphor don’t know if it is appropriate. I remember in 《西窗法雨》(a Chinese book about law) there is a famous case in England, 19th century, the “crew murder” case, it’s about a ship crossing ocean and the ship got into shipwreck, there were only four people left, a kid drank sea water and was about to die, and there’s no more food left on the ship, so the captain had an idea, egged other people to kill the kid and save himself. This case is a very famous case in Case Law, I alter it a little bit, for example, there are three people on the ship, the ship is leaking and they have to through one people out, at that time, the other two have already decided to through A away, but the A who got chosen to be through away do not comply, he grabbed onto the ship, he is negotiating with the people on the ship, maybe there’s some other way to solve the problem instead of having to through him into the ocean. This is a survival instinct, everyone is like this, someone asks how can he be so stupid, that’s because you are not on the ship, you don’t know for A now, leaving the ship means death.

People around who cares about the ship are watching, too, they got to know about the situation a little earlier than those who were watching from the shore far away and waiting for the ship to return, but due to their love for the ship and their respect to A, they didn’t send out the information that they know about beforehand, they just turn around to those people on the shore who cares and complain, “maybe this time when they come back there will be no more A”, because they knew that A may not pass this difficulty, but meanwhile, people all have some hope, A had hope, he thought that people on the ship may consider his suggestion, they will take him back home together, people who care about A, thought that A has the ability to make things turn around. All of sudden, someone on the ship found a tool and threw A into the ocean, what a clean cut. This is way beyond the expectation of A and people around who cares.

May I ask, for A, is it the suddenness and panic that he felt at that moment he got through away conflicts with the idea that he knew he may get through away? This moment that A got through away caused people around who knew about the situation anger and indignation, is it conflicts with the action of telling people on the shore “don’t wait, A may not make it” when they saw A struggling?  

So, got informed all of a sudden conflicts with there were disagreements among members and leaving the group was about to happen? No. Is it the anger and shocking they have when actually see a confirmed statement of having to leave the group conflicts with that some head of fans knew some inside news in the middle of the month and complain about it on Weibo? No.

So, where did the argument of premeditation come from? Form the mouths of OT8 who purposely making a clearly “got forced out of the group” issue into “leaving the group on her free will”, why do they do that, because they couldn’t face the fact that “my idol was involved in this act of forcing someone to leave”, what’s funny is that a lot of smaller/younger fans got pulled away, followed such idea and believed in it, yelling about that Jessica wanted to leave, making me a new fan feel embarrassing. An argument can be so easily laid bare, surprisingly got make into the truth for so long. This really fulfills those OT8’s purpose of saying such thing.

Second, I remember that I have read some Jessica’s Weibo posts about parting the group, at first on Weibo there weren’t so many complaints about “8 others”, and then I verified about it, this argument was brought up on that afternoon, why needed verify, because when I came into the fandom this actually became a main point of such debate, what can I say, this just makes me laughing me tears out. At first, when I encounter such argument I even thought about it carefully, this can only blame the word “others” which wouldn’t be controversial in any other language besides Mandarin. This is not that I am boasting Mandarin and despising English, this complaint about “others” really need to blame that Mandarin is so broad and profound, one speaking tone has one explanation, whatever you want to think, whatever you want to say, you can always find a version. In addition, Jessica also posted Korean version, this time about how to translate group members nobody seemed to care. OT8 tirelessly bring up “8 others”, make me feel confused. The word “others” upsets who? Does it really have so many deep meanings that they need to bring that up every time talking about parting the group? It is necessary to make up explanations and twist her words just to make it fit into the meanings you wanted it to mean when she didn’t even know about the Mandarin translation of that word?

But soon after, when I see more and more such arguments, I realized even though such argument seems very unreasonable but how smart it is, this is just an ulterior motive, how many others doesn’t matter, what matters is that Jessica mentioned members in her statement, why keep following a group if it is not what you sign up for any more? It is that Jessica mentioned members in her statement made OT8 angry, no other reasons just because she broke the “my idol is innocent” image in their minds, because it would make their idols get involved. The best solution is to draw in those group fans who were swinging, create a “Jessica is the villain” image, don’t allow you to rethink why Jessica would mention members, what was the background story, just a simple word “others”, drawing those swinging group fans whose bias was not Jessica, and also got Jessica fans attention, it was a righteous and clear statement, after that they keep grabbing onto that word and make up explanations.

Seriously, fandom wars are most splendid when comes to crisis PR.

Today, I return this strange argument about “others” back to OT8, also advise Jessica’s fans no need to explain so many grammars or translations, this is just a tool they use for brainwashing, how possibly they don’t know about those. Also, among all those whitewash reasons, only this one works the best, because it will not be refuted as time passes, it is just a word, no need for proof, all they need to use is their hypocritical whiny to blame her.

Third, why Jessica posted on Weibo, my idea since I got into the fandom has not changed till now, although there was some intention to come develop in China, but that intention didn’t develop just then, but in 2013, this intention was developed not only because Jessica herself wanted to come to China, but the whole SM had a strategic incline to China after 2013, our country’s market is huge and strong, and K-POP market was not saturated, it was in its heyday, it was a wonderful choice for SNSD which needed to develop a new market, so we could see that after 2013, SNSD had more and more activities leaning towards China, also in 2014 tested the water on TV shows and national tour, so someone needs to open up the popularity for SNSD as pioneer, SM needed Jessica’s intention to be the pioneer, so there could be a signal that she’s developing in China. Why choose Jessica, is to balance the 3 top aces, especially Jessica and Taeyeon, they have similar positions, both are main vocals, but there are only so many resources, if you got it, I won’t have it, if I got it, you won’t get any, competing for so many years, put Jessica to China in an appropriate way, is a strategy to ease the conflicts a little bit. SM did some good calculations, it is the same reason later putting Yoona to replace Jessica’s position on opening up Chinese market, it’s always choosing paths for SNSD’s future consumption, if it wasn’t for the Korea’s ban, with Yoona’s fluent Chinese, leading SNSD to gaining more fans in China is no problem. Meanwhile, to keep aces conflicts from happening, Taeyeon have never entered the Chinese market.

Also, she did not have any other social media back then, it is unrealistic to make a new account just for posting this thing, getting verified would take a while, she would not have the mood to set up a new account, and the first post is, “excuse me everyone, I am no longer a part of the group”, no one would do that, unless their brains not working, serious face.

On top of that, why not posted within Korea, I am wondering about this, too, within Korea itself, why don’t they design their own social media app? You just making celebrities have no choice when they want to announce something, got no sense of privacy that it is exclusive to my country, everyone uses INS, once it’s posted the whole world know about it, so not low-key. All right enough sidetrack, you guys all know that Korea doesn’t have its own social media, then someone says, isn’t there some official website comment section? Oh so you got kicked of SNSD, and then you went to SNSD official website and leave a comment saying that I got kicked out, how awkward and embarrassing is that. Jessica was angry, but not ruthless. Or tell the media, let them publish news overnight, but is media any good? Your statement is just about that I got forced out, but media which always likes to add oil onto fires, their news may be like “Shocking! Jessica got pushed out of the group by members, members shouting ‘if you’re going then I’m not going’!”

Last but not least, also the most understandable reason, why posting on Weibo, because she needs to inform Chinese fans, originally she was going to Shenzhen fan meeting that day, but she could not go now, who else should she tell besides Chinese fans? Tell Japanese fans? Sorry I couldn’t come to the Shenzhen fan meeting tomorrow. Japanese fans would be like: where is Shenzhen? Of course you tell the fans in that country what is going on about me within that country, such simple reason, still got many criticisms, I even feel sorry for her.

5- Fans turn into haters VS. Tool career?

A few days ago, Korea had a vote about fans turn into haters on DC, I saw that Jessica gloriously got listed again, the reason is still the one I talked about in the beginning - marriage blalalala, selfishly leaving the group blalalala, really, if this is not called love, what else is? In fact, if a fan being fan for a long enough time, he or she will become the head of fans, get to know a lot of things that people would not know, but also have to keep a lot of secrets that people do not know about, because to some extent, your relationship with this idol is difficult to unbound, your love towards them may not be as strong as before, the reason why you stick to it is because you can make profits out of each other. According to group fans and individual strong-biased fans, before the whole thing of parting the group, all the fansites higher-level managements received some signals. What does it mean by received signals? I found the answer later in a Korean Sone’s statement. Received signals means that after the Dispatch’s eighteen questions once was released, they immediately published a “why we do not support Jessica” statement, yes, immediately, the speed of writing is so fast that makes me feel that they didn’t even struggle inside, makes people really sad, when fans in China or other countries are still swinging between OT9 or OT8, Korean Sones have already given out a statement, told Jessica, they no longer choose to support her, I don’t want to post all those logic errors of that statement out here to have you joke about them, I just recommend everyone do not take it serious about the group spirit and statement of Korean people, in their eyes, what idol really is, do not matter, they can support them today and against them tomorrow, It seems very easy for them to issue a “stop supporting” statement, because the status of Korea idols is just too low, and they are not actually loving the idol, is that brand, is the kind of marketing only.

When Jessica Jung leaves you can do that, you can do it again when Jessica Zhang leaves, all that you will ever publish is only “Why don’t we support xxx”.

Forget about justice, what we want is to a definite career of following idols, just the brand a company created, as for who is a member in there, how she’s vividly alive, it doesn’t matter.  

This is K-POP, the individual appears insignificant under the flow, they are just tools, they are just some dispensable parts which made up the whole valuable industry.

6- When is the end of “you” and SNSD? Is the argument of exploiting childish or not?

Before the talking about the argument of exploiting, I want to talk about some facts that I got “brainwashed” heavily after I got into SNSD, and later I find out those sayings are not true.

1. Jessica invested 40 million dollars into her company, but there is no official statement proving that.

2. Jessica was back to Korea in the early morning, it was in the early morning, but it was the early morning of 29th, not the 30th as SONEs said.

3. Yoona and Taeyeon scapegoat for “Lan Kwai Fong”, in Korea there was no any public comments on that, the news of Yoona and Taeyeon came from Hong Kong Apple Daily, there was one version stated Jessica went to Lan Kwai Fong, but the most news was pointing at Yoona and Taeyeon. The “scapegoat” argument was just nonsense. Because that back-view never matched a front face, you can not say that the main character was Tyler Kwon and now he is close to Jessica, and you just inferring it was Jessica, such way of interpretation is, emm, unintelligible. Or here’s another example, one day the police came and arrested you, the reason is that your friend killed someone, the murder crime that your friend did three years ago just got solved, now you and your friend are so close, then you guys must be complicity and did that together. If such interpretation got put onto your head, do you think is reasonable?

So in the whole K-POP fandom, come to convincing, I was convinced most by SONEs, like for me I didn’t know, a lot of things got carried away by their comments, if I didn’t have a brain which likes to think, maybe my standpoint could have got lead astray.

And in SNSD, there are three people that I admire the most, one is Yoona Im, very high EQ, if she did something, she would tell everyone in the world obscurely that she did it, if she tried, she would tell you she tried without revealing she’s showing off. Also, she never be the one in the whirlpool center, no matter who fell down, she is always still and steady, in SNSD, she actually never wanted to be the thorn in everyone’s eyes, always trying to desalinate that she is in the ACE position, as you all know from interviews, Yoona has always emphasized the saying that “popularity is like seasons.” So many people say that her EQ is high, she is an idol who packaged herself very exquisitely, if you want to follow someone without getting any negative energy, personality setting never falls, always positive and upwards, this person is definitely the best choice, she will never show you the negative side, because she never reveals her true self.

Another one is Jessica Jung, what characteristic that people most afraid of a person, it’s tenacity, is resurrection after death. Maybe someone would say what’s the big deal of it, here here here, the keyboard is yours, you type. Not everyone would be able to face the same “out of group” thing and then come back up again, somebody may go down the wrong pathway. You may not want to admit, but it is true, that she is too notionate, making her road very rough and meandering, she lives very real, she exposes her real “follow my heart” to the public, some people can accept it, some people gnash their teeth in hatred, in the end, it’s just because she can live according to her heart, but most of us, can’t. If you want to follow someone who can help you cultivate yourself and become godly, toughen your personality, and polish your nature, this one would be a good choice. After all, so many blame since debut, but Jessica’s attitude is: no explanation. Never explain, got wronged and got blamed, but she never uses explanation to solve problems. Living in such attitude for long, no wonder becoming godly.

Here I want to say something, actually I do not so agree with Jessica’s way, but seems like she doesn’t have other option. Korean media making her their stunt, after she knew about it, she didn’t say like “hey, my agent company, let’s do a classification or something”, but like “you guys like change my words, right? OK, I will never accept your interviews.” During the first album, because she let Korean medias interviewed her, Jessica suffered on the first day of coming back, later during the second album, she chooses to not taking any Korean media’s interview, no explanation+no intercommunication, even though she’s living by following her heart, but it is a heartbreaking response.

The third one is Taeyeon Kim, this one no doubt should get praise, from background perspective, her family situation is relatively bad among SNSD or most trainees, it’s not like if your family owns a glasses store then you are rich or in middle class, if your civil teacher sees it he or she will criticize you. We (Chinese people) yet care about social status and family class, not to mention Korea is a Capitalism country with our ancient Confucianism influences, over there the class differences are absolutely obvious. But she could use such natural family advantage to make her stand on a winning ground. Some people say she is sensitive, that’s true if it was you, can you not be sensitive? You are not the most good-looking one, not the richest one, there’s plenty of people in the company with excellent singing skill, if one thing that makes you stand out, it is the pureness and obedience, follow company’s decision unconditionally, as I just talked about, SM likes some “nobody” who would listen, she totally qualify for that, no wonder she gets to promote a lot. Also, compared to Yoona Im, Taeyeon Kim would rather show her vulnerability, you would think she’s real, she needs your attention and love, such realness makes her go further. If you want to follow someone who inspires you, who has big dreams, recommend you follow Taeyeon Kim, absolutely an encouragement machine.

OK, now let’s talk about the argument of exploiting, actually “exploit” is pretty much fans’ wishful thinking, whether is the fans of SNSD right now or Jessica’s fans, are using this argument tirelessly, but in fact, technically no one is being exploited. If there is someone (something) is being exploited, is the big pie.

No matter it’s nine or one people, they all have the right and they are enjoying the big pie. Subjectively or objectively, the big pie is the subject of exploit.

Why there’s “former SNSD” title before Jessica’s name from time to time, why in the interview she always got asked how it is after leaving SNSD? Because the band of SNSD is so grand, the brand that those nine people built is so controversial, it’s so necessary for gossips, you think Jessica would really want to hear about these questions? I don’t think so, but you think the media would really never mention it? That’s definitely impossible because it is a stunt that could be dug out from Jessica, it is the point of entertaining of an entertainment industry star, don’t mention this, do you want to ask Jessica what did you eat today? Even if they ask that, will the volume of sales and attention be greater than mentioning the stunts or gossips that people interested in? No.

Same reason, why every time the 8 people SNSD has something happen, Jessica would be mention, accompany them without physically being there? Because in everybody’s heard, they still did not forget that this group is nine people. Everyone is treating this issue with a mindset like “it’s OK, we can still dig out something from it.” So CMIYC nine people MV got leaked out before SNSD’s comeback, Sooyoung Choi used lyrics from “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God” to answer the question about Jessica apart the group in the interview of SNSD 10th anniversary, if no surprise, before the 10th anniversary there will be a series of practice room video being released, all from unofficial channels, but the officials are behind it. As I said, “exploit” is naive children’s idea, their interests are related is the reason why they can not leave the other side alone.

Do you guys remember what it was like during Jessica first solo come back, this side Jessica just announced that she will be coming back in the middle of May, the next day SM daddy is telling everyone, “hey guys, Tiffany is coming back on May 11th. Surprise or not? Unexpected or not?” Well done my SM daddy, you can bump someone so confidently and give others an illusion like they are the host instead of the guest, if I was Jessica’s company, I would be so offended that I will be vomiting blood for three gallons, obviously it was us announced first, now you making us so passive. But SM daddy didn’t just stop there, they saw your teaser, and hired the same American backup dancers as you, backup dancers is just doing business, no big deal, but have you consider Tiffany’s feeling? Win or lose, what’s the point? That’s two old friends who fought together for 10 years, pulling them out and making them opponents, is it really delightful?

No, but the company is just company, they don’t care about your personal feeling. So we saw that before and after the time of Jessica releasing her album, the dance instructor of SNSD posted such words on her social media, “I am drunk so I don’t know what I am talking about, in my heart, you nine girls have the same importance to me, make my heart hurt.” Oh, so this is a side proof that SM hires those dancers on purpose.

So that’s why when Jessica releasing her winter album, only announced it one week before it came out (I probably remember it correctly), and her MV and everything (He probably mean the teasers) kept confidential until three days before the comeback, just because she didn’t want to bump into Seohyun, this behavior really slapped some people’s faces, those who said that she is definitely going to bump Seohyun, if like the first album, build the publicity first to get people excited and then come back, then maybe Seohyun’s album would be released before or after her comeback time, according to SM daddy’s habit, should be before her, this way creates an illusion that I released it first, you followed me, you are taking advantage of me, but this time Jessica made a sudden come back, very little pre-publicity, SM couldn’t finish producing Seohyun’s album within one week, so there was no second bumping, some people got slapped on the face, and then said that it is intentional, she is just afraid to bump into Seohyun, err, so for people who hate you, no matter what you do, you don’t even have a way to make them not hate you.

Some people ask, Jessica, when will be the end of you and SNSD?

Probably when SNSD has no one left, or Jessica leave the industry.

Or as long as Jessica is active, and SNSD is still there, the entanglement will never end, and keep going on and on.

7- My feelings

I just want to tell those restless people: she is no longer a member of SNSD, the fame and profit of SNSD belong to the eight people, but she is the one who was forced out, and the one who bears the pain, please stop accusing someone who literately burst into tears when reading “she’s crying every day” in her sister’s letter that she wanted to leave the group, if someone’s crying just because of one sentence, this can only prove that the scar is way too deep.

I really understand this feeling that you will cry when people mention something touched your heart, I am from a divorced family and always behave strong, everyone thought that I am mature, that’s true too, I have worked really hard to go to college with my efforts, however, whenever someone mentions my parents’ divorce I will cry out loud, just that word “divorce”. Later, I found out a truth:

Everyone has their own scar, people don’t touch, doesn’t mean that it is no longer exist.

I believe that there is some true affection when members of SNSD cried, their relationships last for 14 years at the most, the shortest would be 9 years too, no matter what they would be touched by the scene. But please think about Jessica who has no chance to catharsis the same feeling, since they are on different paths now, if you can’t forget about her, then please don’t act like you care about her but at the same time discrediting her in order to proof that 8 girls are innocent, don’t even say it out loud like you are right, “even though I know that she did nothing wrong, but I would rather follow someone who pretends that everything is peaceful and fine than to forgive someone who exposes her true self.” Such moral is horrible and difficult to understand.

In the end, I want to use the words from Krystal’s letter as my conclusion:

“When I see my sister crying so hard in pain every day,

I wanted to cry, too, I felt so, so sad and heartbreaking.

My sister is such a vulnerable person, will people ever know?”

END.

[lovesimos]

Michael Jackson’s first book saw the light in United States at the end of February 1988 with a display worthy for the star he was. In the book, Michael discusses his personal and professional life and the publisher Doubleday described it as “candid”. With “Moonwalk” MJ traces an autobiography where he talks about his friends, his surgeries and his compelling rise to the category of a star. The book was another success for Jacqueline Onassis.

Book picture

 As an editor at Doubleday Books the former first lady presented Michael Jackson book as an idea that would be worth pursuing. The marketing department people were out of a different background and they had no idea about MJ but she got the approval. Rumours tells that her kids Caroline and John, Jr. suggested her to approach MJ. So she orchestrated the deal. Michael Jackson book would have been a bestseller.

Closing The Contract With Michael Jackson

She reached Michael’s to talk about the possibility of writing a book. Despite the reservation in which wrapped up his private life, he could not say no to the former first lady and actually Michael signed with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1984, before the “Victory” tour. Jackie achieved a coveted book contract with MJ.

Robert Hilburn helped Michael in the beginning. But it seem there were a difference of intent between MJ and Mrs. Onassis: he wanted to put together a picture book, while Onassis wanted a full-scale biography. After a clarification between the two, attorney John Branca ended Hilburn involvement in the book.

“She was the only person in America who could get him on the phone,” said Stephen Davis, one of the ghost-writers of “Moon Walk,” in an interview with Reuters. Michael considered the former First Lady a great woman and was deeply flattered when she approached him.

Writing The Book

The agony that accompanied its publication was great. Michael had agreed to write it with the help of a ghostwriter at the behest of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and editor Shaye Arehert spent several weeks in his house of Los Angeles and followed him on his tour in Australia, but writing the book went on for, like, four years. “While he loved books and carried them with him wherever he went, creating one was just not as exciting as finding the right note or step or guitarist,” explained Areheart. “So the writing of this book took a long time.”

Then came the anguish of shaping his story. Before this, he had never stopped to consider what it meant to narrate the critical events of his life. He struggled with the process and procrastinated for years. When he agreed to be interviewed, Michael dwelled on his childhood and the cruelty of his father. In fact, after Michael himself, his father Joseph emerges as the book’s most memorable character. After Michael rejected the work of the first ghost-writer, began consulting directly with Areheart. Eventually a second writer, Stephen Davis, was employed, although his name did not appear on the book’s cover.

After finally approving the contents and allowing the book to go to press, Michael had a crisis of conscience; worried that the memoir would alienate his family, he was especially concerned about his descriptions of the beatings he suffered at Joseph’s hand. Michael feared that had been too candid. Then at the last minute he threatened to pull the plug on the book unless Jackie would have wrote the introduction. She complied though she complained about it for months–“I don’t know what to write.” Finally she wrote a two-paragraph introduction, which began with the line, “What can we say about Michael Jackson?”

The amount received by MJ was kept secret but according to a People Magazine article of that time, Onassis paid Jackson a $300,000 advance for the book. The ghostwriter Davis received what “a generous flat fee.”

The operation had been managed in complete secrecy, to where only a small number of top executives of the publisher knew the project, the manuscript was kept in a cash box and its different chapters were sent to the pre-printed by special couriers. MJ even had put a name in code to the autobiographer: Neil Armstrong, who was the first man to take a lunar walk. For once, the measures have worked, and the book reached the bookstores in plain surprise. It was printed on a paper heavier and more expensive than usual, carrying on each page a small drawing of the feet of Michael Jackson when he makes his famous moonwalk.

The Book Launch

As Doubleday was aware that Michael Jackson fans were not regular bookstores clients a formidable publicity launch was arranged, saturating above all the radio waves, with spots, promotions and broadcasting, with a bell in seven stations in the twenty-seven most important cities of the country, as well as advertising on television and videos, and even in bookstores, with some figures of the singer in natural size able to hold in both hands nineteen books.

The promotions involved trivias or song contests, for which winners received copies of ”Moonwalk”. Those stations featured rock music and rhythm-and-blues. Somewhat similar promotions also runned on the top 19 national video shows, including the Turner Broadcasting System, Nickelodeon and VH-1. Both the radio and video promotions were arranged by Epic Records, Michael Jackson’s recording label.

At the beginning, three hundred thousand copies had been printed soon reaching 500,000 after having topped the New York Times Best Sellers and quickly sold out the initial print. That was an extremely successful book.

The obvious next step was to print more copies and then prepare a paperback version. But MJ, “who had total control of the project, vetoed both plans”. “There was so much bad feeling when it didn’t go back to press,” Davis said. Relations between the two cultural icons were already strained because Michael had threatened to block the book’s publication unless Onassis wrote a foreword. Onassis, who as MJ, used to guard her privacy and did not want her name in any book she edited, reluctantly made an exception.

Michael planned to have his autobiography “Moonwalker” published in Europe to coincide his British tour dates. MJ added two further dates at Wembley on August 26 and 27 taking a total of seven nights in all — a record for the venue. Prince Charles and Princess Diana attended Michael’s July 16 concert at Wembley — benefit for Great Ormond Street Hospital The Prince’s Trust. The UK publishers was Heinemann.

Inside The Book

If “Moon walk” would have been written by any other Pop Star it would have probably been a dull affair—it’s really just a brief ramble by this bloke through what he’s done in the last 29 years and why he did it. “Moon walk”, however, is rarely dull for several reasons.

Firstly Michael Jackson was so famous and reclusive already at that time and it’s been years since anyone’s really known what he thought about anything, so even the little bit that ���Moon Walk” gave away was fascinating.

Secondly Michael Jackson was not the slightest bit like any other pop star, or even like many other people—the picture he gave in “Moon Walk” is of someone obsessed with achieving certain things all his life to a degree most people could barely imagine.

At the beginning of the book, after an intriguing self portrait with his head covered by a “Billie Jean “hat and signed “MJ 1998” and the dedication to dancer Fred Astaire,

he placed two quotes that sum a lot of what he tried to say in the rest of the book.

One by Beatles John Lennon in which he say he is just a channel for music and the only joy for him is when the music flows through him: “those moments are what I live for”.

The other—perhaps more revealing—is by Thomas Edison (inventor of the light bulb) who explains that to discover anything he would first study everything that has ever been done in the past to do with that thing, then says the three qualities you need to achieve anything worthwhile are “hard work”, “stick-to-it-

Other two themes also come up again and again:

The first one is the price he paid. If you’ve believed all those newspaper reports about how off his trolley he’s supposed to be you’ll be surprised at how clearly he seemed to realize the position he was in—all the way through he empathizes how important what he does and how much he loves it. From time to time there are sad little references to how he’d like to be as the other people, to how lonely he is and to how difficult it is for him to find love.  Occasionally you feel like giving him a kick and telling him not to be so wet and weedy but more often you feel like giving him a hug.

The other main theme is this amazing belief he could make people all around the world thrilled. Sometime you get the impression that deep down he thinks what had happened to him was in some ways terribly unfair—all he tried to do was to make people happy and harm no one, all he got in return was people calling him a freak or a loony. “I hope this book help clear up some misconceptions” say Michael Jackson at one point. Well, “Moon walk” was a superb start.

“I believe I’m one of the loneliest people in the world.” That’s just one of the many sad tales in the book that Michael Jackson wrote, and I pick out a few more “highlights” to explain why the book is such a “fascinating read”.

When Michael Jackson and his brothers used to rehearse in the family’s tiny house in Gary, Indiana, some other local “kids’ used to throw rocks at the windows as they played and teased them they never ever be successful. His first performance was in first grade where he stood up and sang–Climb Every Mountain – from The Sound Of Music. He remembers feeling a bit confused at how impressed everyone was after he’d done something that seemed so sample but also thrilled because he’d made some of his teachers so happy that they started blabbing.

The Jackson 5 would play in dodgy ‘strip’ dubs and -seedy’ clubs. As well as watching lots of women take their clothes off, in one club he and his brothers used to take turns peeking through a hole in the wall of their dressing room into the ladies’ toilet: “I saw stuff l have never forgotten” recalls Michael. On the same subject Michael adds, rather ominously. “I received quite an education as a child. More than most. Perhaps this freed me to concentrate on other aspects of my life as an adult..”

When the Jackson 5 were first starting off, no-one in the family was allowed to talk on the phone or more than five minutes in case anybody from a record company phoned up to offer them a record contract.

Once the Jackson 5 started to have hits like “I Want You Back” Michael would spend a lot of his time living with “veteran” songstress Diana Ross – she’d go shopping for pencils and paint with him. “She was my mother, my lover and my sister all combined in one amazing person” he coos. When she announced she was getting married Michael admit that he was a bit hurt and a little jealous …“it was hard for me because I had to walk around pretending to be overwhelmed that Diana was getting married to this man I’d never met …”

Before the Jackson 5 did interviews their record company Motown would sit in on the interviews, blocking any questions they thought were not suitable. Michael remembers that once they were bit narked at not being allowed to answer a question about Black Power (a big American black rights movement) so at the end they winked at the interviewer and quickly gave a black power clenched fist salute, the scamps…

Whenever they were on a tour, the Jackson 5 used to get up to pranks galore: they’d have fast walking races down hotel corridors, pillow fights, wrestling matches, shaving cream wars, would drop balloon and paper bags full or water off the balconies, order huge meals on room service for strangers and would booby trap their hotel room doors so that anyone walking in would get a bucket of water on their head. Phew, rock’n’roll eh.

Getting acne as a teenager was, claim Michael, one of the most ghastly things he’s ever had to live through… “a pimple for every oil gland”. As a result, he became subconsciously scarred: “My appearance began to depress me I couldn’t look it people when I talked to them”.

People did not worship Michael because his good at doing pop music. Michael could be shit at pop music and it wouldn’t matter. People worshipped and still adore Michael because he was very very good at being a star. He was doing it brilliantly until about 1987 and with up and down he’s still up there among the top six charismas.

Even though unremittingly cheapened by the tabloids Michael is still about as close as the pop carousel ever comes to mythology. But it is essential he remains fundamentally unattainable.

His autobiography should in theory expose how normal he was, how boring just like the rest of us, how he wiped his potty everyday and went down the shops and watches the TV and, er,” feeds the chimp”. There you are…He can’t do it. He might even be trying to do it but it’s not in his nature. He’s supernature. Michael Jackson was uncommon.

However once one gets over prose style, “Moon walk” is pretty absorbing.  The mildly-fashioned anecdotes concerning Jackie Wilson, Gamble and Huff, even ugly Quincy Jones, are entertaining. There are no great shakes but his memories of Billie Jean arriving by carrier pigeon from The Muse are sparkly enough and the tragic real-life heartbreak (Liza Minnelli, Liz Taylor, Brooke Shield, Diana Ross — “I’ve always loved her and & always will” are like cinnamon-flavoured news bulletins.

 The pictures are great, and the print is so big is practically braille. He’s a perfectionist about his records and his movies and every little “oof” or “wap” is precious; tingly; understanding. The book is written like a deckchair with woodworm, but he does what his good at, fascinate people.

Is “Moonwalk” the true story of Michael Jackson?

No, it isn’t. “Moonwalk” is an autobiography with all the unpleasant memories taken out. It gives to the reader the impression that Michael Jackson has been selective in the way he viewed his own history. There are very good reasons for Michael’s reluctance to air any dirty linen.

He probably was conscious that his fans did love him more for his childlike Peter Pan personality. After all, his sexuality as performer, on entertainer, was and it is legendary. Why bother to spoil that?

In this book MJ was honest about his nose surgeries, his religious preferences and some various anecdotes but he remained an enigma. For a man with so much soul he had taken pains to conceal his own soul. The final impression is of a rather lonely fellow who is hell bent on perfecting career. He also show to be a genuinely nice and gentle man and maybe that’s more important than everything else.

Michael Jackson’s film “Moonwalker”

It was set for a 1988 spring release too. A full-length feature directed by Jerry Kramer with special effects by Colin Chilvers. It contains a series of set pieces put together and includes a section around the “Smooth Criminal” from the”BAD” album.

The film reputedly cost 22 million dollars. The film’s message is a slogan against drugs in general and against the exploitation of children-dealers in particular.

      Sources:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jackson-jackieo/michael-jackson-book-a-headache-for-jackie-o-idUSTRE5631S420090704

“Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis” – January 4, 2011 by Greg Lawrence

“MoonWalk” By Michael Jackson – February 1988

              “Moonwalk”Michael Jackson’s Autobiography Turn 30 Michael Jackson's first book saw the light in United States at the end of February 1988 with a display worthy for the star he was.

[philipfloyd]

13 SEO Myths That Are Probably Killing Your Ranks

Faster, easier, higher. That’s what we’re all up to when it comes to ranks and traffic, right? Well, easy wins with little effort are rare in SEO. There are most likely myths that will wipe out your business instead of boosting it.

  As we are often being asked about many misconceptions from the SEO world, we’ve decided to gather and share with you the most important SEO myths that tend to keep you from improving your ranks and traffic. And of course, clarify them once and for all.

    SEO can make you or break you, depending on how you’re using it. Here’s an idea of what you should stay away off, the SEO myths. Read them, breath them and live without them:

  Using Tabbed Content Can Penalize Your Site

Syndicate Content Does Hurt Your SEO

It’s Better to Have More Links Than More Content

The Disavow Tool Is Useless After Penguin 4.0

Links in Comments and Forums Will Attract Google Penalties

Social Signals Don’t Impact SEO

All Backlinks Are Created Equally

Keyword Optimization Matters Most in SEO

Artificial Social Shares Will Boost Your Rankings

Keyword Density Should Be at Least 2% to Increase Your Rankings

A High Number of Links Is All You Need to Rank on the Top

You Don’t Need an SEO Specialist, Anyone Can Do It

SEO Is All About Rankings

  The evolution of SEO is faster than our ability to perceive it. Over the years, it appeared so many speculations regarding SEO that you would think you were at a stock market.

  The long list of SEO myths continues to be more and more voluminous. Some of these myths appeared from the need of the so-called experts who wanted to find out Google’s next move. It is sad to see these people living and dying by Google’s quotes and PR statements.

  Let’s move past the “SEO is dead” phrase and start focusing on certain facts pertaining more to bad documentation rather than to real myths. SEO is not dead and we’ll be long gone when and IF that will really happen. It is very much alive and, we might add, omnipresent.

  SEO is not about shenanigans. SEO is not something you can easily use to bring your newly created website on top of results like some magic fairy dust. Rather, it is a continuously evolving industry. There is no one-time recipe for SEO algorithms that change every day. You have to adjust your strategies accordingly and act naturally. Otherwise, you might look suspicious.

  We’ve seen a lot of stressed and frustrated people blaming it on tools and agencies when they don’t see the SEO efforts equating to payoffs instantaneously. Even the creation of the world took more than one day. Good results don’t come easily.

Digital marketers understand that SEO is not a magic pill that will skyrocket your rankings in one day. Vishal Ray Malik Founder of ConversionLink / @vishalraymalik

  1. Using Tabbed Content Can Penalize Your Site

  Tabbed content started as a solution for keeping your site clean and to the point, without overcrowding the reader. They could show or hide the content by a click. What started as a good thing for the user ended badly for the search engine crawlers.

  The hidden text using expandable sections was bad for SEO because bots could not read the text and therefore the website couldn’t get indexed or ranked.

  Google discarded the websites that used the “click-to-expand” type of content because it thought they were hiding it from the user, exactly the opposite of its intention. But as you all know, there might have been a grain of truth in Google’s position towards tabbed content because there are all sorts of people trying to trick Google.

  John Mueller stated that Google may not rank the page for the tabbed content because it knows users do not see the content by default.

From our point of view, it’s always a tricky problem when we send a user to a page where we know this content is actually hidden. Because the user will see perhaps the content in the snippet, they’ll click through the page, and say, well, I don’t see where this information is on this page. I feel kind of almost misled to click on this to actually get in there. John Mueller Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google /  @JohnMu

You can listen to his answer in the next video:

    Nonetheless, we must understand that Google penalizes those websites that deceptively use hidden text.

  Matt Cutts explained in the video below that using JavaScript for collapsing content is an accepted and a common practice by lots of ecommerce websites that want to make their site more welcoming.

    Using JavaScript for tabbed content that includes hidden text is an accepted example within Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Not all hidden text is considered deceptive. For example, if your site includes technologies that search engines have difficulty accessing, like JavaScript, images, or Flash files, using descriptive text for these items can improve the accessibility of your site. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines  

Let’s take Wikipedia, for example, the online encyclopedia that uses on-click expandable content on the mobile version.

    If you look at the picture above you can see that the collapse sections complement the content. There is a lot of information on the page and you can easily go and read only what you’re interested in, and not the whole article.

  Using tabbed content is not bad for SEO and Google won’t penalize your site if it is implemented in a non-spammy way. The hidden text or links is considered spammy if it there solely for search engines rather than visitors.

  2. Syndicate Content Does Hurt Your SEO

  First, let’s start by saying duplicate content is neither syndicate content nor article spinning.

  We all know about duplicate content and the long talk over the year, when it has been said that duplicate content will penalize your website. Things have changed and we learnt that the duplicate content penalty was a myth. Matt Cutts and Andrey Lipattsev said repeatedly that duplicate content doesn’t get you penalized, while copied content does.

  As for article spinning, the penalization is applied. It is a technique used in SEO by rewriting articles and replacing specific words, phrases, sentences trying to provide a different version by each spin.

  However, syndicated content refers to a situation when a third party publishes an article taken from a source while mentioning it and doesn’t take credit for the article. Syndicated content doesn’t violate Private Label Rights (PLR) either because the original author keeps the ownership of the article and offers a Creative Commons license for reposting.  

  If all these steps are followed, then syndicate content won’t damage your site or your SEO; it won’t be deemed copied content and get you penalized. So the myth of syndicate content must be broken. Syndication is not a form of plagiarism as long as there is a source cited.

  The truth is that only copied content and article spinning will penalize your website.

  Here’s what John Mueller says in Search Console Help, regarding content that is automatically generated, doesn’t comply with the copyright infringement and the Webmaster Guidelines.

Our algorithms prefer unique, compelling and high-quality content. Content that is rewritten, “spun,” automatically translated or otherwise modified in an attempt to make it appear unique would go against our Webmaster Guidelines and can result in action being taken against sites that rely on such content. John mueller Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google /  @JohnMu

Syndication can really help you if done correctly. If you use it as an amplification technique, you get the chance to rich a broader audience.

  There are a lot of trustworthy websites that publish syndicate content and have a large number of people that are subscribed to the newsletter and RSS feed through a dedicated service like Feedly.

    3. It’s Better to Have More Links Than More Content

  There was a time when it was better to have more links than content to rank higher in Google. Back then, links had more value. Building links was essential for SEO and for assuring high rankings. And since it began to have such a huge effect on rankings, all kinds of webmasters and SEO pros started to do link building just to create chunks of links, thinking only about quantity and not at all about quality. Google realized that people abused this technique and flooded the SERP with irrelevant and bad sites getting triggered there only by having bad inbound links with no value for the user.

  The solution Google found was the Webspam Update, named Penguin afterward. This big change happened on April 24, 2012, when Penguin was released for the first time. Back then, it addressed problems such as keyword stuffing and link schemes. Later on, they took the problem into their own hands and penalized sites with unnatural, manipulative inbound link profiles.

  Both Matt Cutts and Andrey Lipattsev confirmed that content, links and RankBrain are the first 3 rankings factors. All of them are equally important. None of them is more important than the other.

  Another myth is broken here: it is better to have more links than more content. Put your ideas into action and start creating an abundance of new content or improve the one you already have. Information is in your pocket.  

  A natural link profile and good content can bring you high rankings. And the best way to do it comes from the SEO masters and people that went through all Google dances and managed to dance all the way up to the present.

  Bill Sebald, from Greenlane, managed to improve the rank from #5 to #2 for the period of time they optimized the content with the help of Content Assistant. And he’s not the only one. The knowledge and tools are here; you just have to create the strategy and take some time to do it.

  Within 24 hours, we saw our rank improve from #5 for the term we were optimizing for to #2. This fluctuated over the next few days but then we settled into the #2 spot and have remained there since. Read the full case study. BILL SEBALD Founder Greenlane / @billsebald ‏

  4. The Disavow Tool Is Useless After Penguin 4.0

  To disavow or not to disavow? That is the question.

  We get tons of emails and questions from people saying they know disavow tools are useless and Google knows which links they built and which they didn’t.

  Let’s take the example above that can prove our point:

I saw that I have some links marked as unnatural, but I have never built those links. Google says if you never built the link then don’t worry about it. I only built the link to a single post which is 100 photoshop tutorials post so that is why I am shocked to see that all of my links are marked unnatural by your tool.

The 100 photoshop tutorials post is unnatural itself. Google might ignore it, but it might not. Google doesn’t know if you built those links. They are pointing to your site and that’s it. Maybe someone did a negative SEO attack on your website. Google could see that as something you did and penalize you. What Matt Cutts and John Mueller say is different from what the algorithm does.

  When Google Penguin 4.0 went live, Gary Illyes said:

Traditionally, webspam algorithms demoted whole sites. With this one, we managed to devalue spam instead of demoting AND it’s also more granular AND it’s real time. Once the rollout is complete, I strongly believe many people will be happier, and that makes me happy. Gary Illyes Google spokesperson / @methode

People still asked if the disavow tool was still necessary, along with this update:

  5. Links in Comments and Forums Will Attract Google Penalties

  Another urban legend has been brought to life: all community engagement is toxic, such as links in comments and forums.

  Don’t confuse forums with directories. The latter are more suspicious, but for sure in that case, also, there are white-hat directories. One of the clearest differences to emerge is that a forum is a discussion panel and a directory is an online list or catalog of websites.

  The mirror has two faces. If we’re to take forums in general and links in comments we would say that they have low-quality, because there are a lot of spammers. Along the years, lots of forums were bombarded by constant spam messages from marketers trying to cash in on a captive audience and build lots and lots of spammy links. It was a time when forums were popular, that’s why the bad guys focused their attention on them.

  Forums have some advantages:

Have niched users;

Have loyal users, that help increase website traffic through repeated visits;

Easily create a connection and build a relationship because you no longer have to search them and capture their attention;

Easier to gain trust.

  So you can understand why spammers were attracted by building links there through comments. But with time, just like Google, proper forums that delivered relevant information started to have more restrictions on user-generated content (UGC).

The next wave of the Web is going to be user-generated content. John Doerr General partner KPCB / @johndoerr

You can find lots of trustworthy forums and social communities built on user-generated content that provide valuable information from experts and pros. Reddit, WebmasterWorld, Moz Forum, Quora, Campus Society, Stumble Upon, Tumblr are just a few examples of communities built on user-generated content, each of them focusing on a specific audience.  

  Did you know that millennials spend 30% of their media consumption time with content that is created by their peers (UGC) and consider it to be more memorable than other media? But that’s not all, user-generated content is trusted more than traditional media (59%) according to a research made by Ipsos MediaCT/Crowdtap.

    Millennials are also committed to engaging with social media on a daily basis above all other media types.

  Let’s debunk this myth together. Community engagement is not toxic if it observes Google’s quality guidelines and comment links from forums and user-generated communities are naturally placed there.

  6. Social Signals Don’t Impact SEO

  Come into the mythical place named Narnia, where everything is possible and social activity has no value for SEO. Well, let’s see why it is a myth and which is the truth behind it.

  I hear lots of people saying things like:

“Is it true that likes on Facebook, Twitter, and so on, do not count towards Google rankings? Well, why bother improving my social activity?”

Or even asking:

What would be the SEO benefit of linking to Instagram/Facebook/Twitter posts?

  But the real question should be “Is your site providing added-value for your users?” rather than thinking of the “SEO benefits”.

  Let’s get one thing straight: it is true that a “like” on a social account doesn’t influence Google rankings, but they have a positive influence among shares, engagement. John Mueller states that there is no direct ranking signal in Google’s ranking algorithm. Google treats Facebook and Twitter posts like any other web pages for search, but NOT as a ranking factor. But this doesn’t mean social signal has no value for SEO. It indirectly influences website rankings.  

  Social signals have a lot of value in this manner. You build your brand and drive traffic to your website, therefore influencing your SEO.  

  Source: blindfiveyearold.com

  We conducted a study on this topic and the numbers were clear: a strong presence on social networks is correlated with better rankings. This means that, in general, the higher the ranking of the website, the higher the chances that the average presence on social network is larger.

  Another interesting discovery was the fact that Facebook post engagement has a strong connection with organic search CTR. Larry Kim saw that Facebook posts with extraordinarily high engagement rates tended to have above expected organic search CTR.

  Source: wordstream.com

  In the end, it is about how engaging your content is.

    If you have a successful activity on your social accounts and create engagement, you have the possibility to attract a larger audience and send it to your site. On top of that, that audience can share the information and amplify it, organically. Influencers come to your site and in no time you can increase the number of links, which boosts your SEO efforts.

Links are the confound in the correlation between social shares and rankings. AJ Kohn Owner, Blind Five Year Old / @ajkohn

Remember that social engagement sends positive signals to Google. Long story short, social signals have an indirect impact on SEO and a powerful impact on search rankings. The result of the social activity is more valuable than the action per se. That’s the one that counts.

  7. All Backlinks Are Created Equally

  Oh boy! Oh boy! They never stop coming. I’ll boil this down to the bare facts.

  You know and I know that there are bad and good links. Getting at this point, we can see that backlinks are not created equal. But let’s not stop here.

  Let’s go on with the good links and say that they are created equally. At this point, I have to ask you: is a link on Forbes equal with bananaroots.wordpress. com? The first domain is an American business magazine and the second one is a blog about bananas. Firstly, the two domains are different by the industry, secondly by the domain influence/authority and page influence/authority.

  There are so many aspects to take into consideration when we talk about backlinks that this could take an entire post and lots of coffee to bare all the SEO myths that are out there and debunk them. But, I’ll save your energy and go with the one that interests us today, at this moment.

  To figure out this backlink equality issue, let me present you two situations. If you search for “brown recluse” you’ll see search engine results from EmedicineHealth and LiveScience. The first page  has a well-covered topic with lots of on-topic content as you can see in the next screenshot:

    The second page was a short article, poorly-covered with a lot of general information about a lot of things.

    And then we checked the number of links. If we were to compare the two sites, the LiveScience has lots of links, it is a big site.

    If I had to choose, a link on EmedicineHealth would be more valuable than LiveScience.

  Equality is not always the answer. Equity is.

  Source: culturalorganizing.org

  Link equity (formerly named link juice) is an important part of off-page SEO since it passes value and authority from one page to another.

  Let’s accept and embrace the fact that backlinks are not created equal and focus on those which are more “juicy” or equitable.

Some links are more equal than others.

  8. Keyword Optimization Matters Most in SEO

  Keyword optimization is one step in all the SEO process that happens on-site. The first would have to be keyword research. You can do that through multiple alternatives. Keyword Planner from Google Adwords has been one of the most popular options for a long period of time, but since SEO evolved, lots of agencies have proposed lots of other tools.

  Some other opportunities that we can find in Google are the autocomplete suggestions we can see when we start typing in the search bar for a specific query (as represented in the next screenshot). Or, review the list of searches related to autocomplete suggestions that we can find at the bottom of the first page.

    There is also the Keyword tool and Content Assistant which is a complete option that includes the keyword research, competitor spying for that keyword, keyword and content optimization.

  All the keyword phrases we use in a content create a vocabulary and therefore give a context to the topic we’ve written about. Due to that, Google uses Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to understand if your content is related to a search query. In case you need guidance using keywords suggestions that take this algorithm into consideration, Content Assistance can give it to you in seconds. The tool uses the same algorithm for extracting keyword recommendation you could use in your content.

  But keywords do not represent everything, context does. It just started to have a major impact on search results. And let’s not forget RankBrain, which helps Google process its search results through artificial intelligence. So Google will start to offer more personalized results based on each individual behavior. It goes through billions of pages and selects only the most relevant for particular queries.

  Nowadays, as we mentioned several times, Google’s trying to optimize the page for the user. So if you’re trying to use specific words over and over again just to optimize for the search engines, it will only weaken your website. In the end, you might get penalized and suffer a great loss.  

  Taking into consideration the SEO process we talked about, keyword optimization is not the crucial SEO element or the most important one, but it is the first one. It is a dwarf among giants. There are arguably even more relevant aspects. At the moment, we can not point to a specific SEO element that is the most important one, but rather there is a handful of steps and aspects that create a synergy.

  9. Artificial Social Shares Will Boost Your Rankings

  We’ll start by saying that artificial or fake social shares are considered to be black hat social media techniques.

  We talked before about social signals and you know by now that they are emerging as ranking factors as search engines try to understand our social interaction and behavior. In this manner, a page with lots of shares and links has the advantage to rank higher. But just like any abuse of guidelines, these tricks that fool the system are penalized.

  That being the case, Facebook says that buying fake likes, shares will only hurt you; it might get harder for those who want to advertise, too. Not once did it happen for Facebook to suspend advertising accounts. And it’s not so easy to reactivate such an account.

Pages with artificially inflated like counts are harming themselves, making it harder and more expensive to reach the people they care about most. Facebook  

Facebook adds that they value real connection and support strong relationships created through the platform.

We have a strong incentive to aggressively go after the bad actors behind fake likes because businesses and people who use our platform want real connections and results. Facebook  

Experts value the power of social signals but only used for the right reasons, not for inflating with artificial shares and likes that pollute the social platform.  

Social media is a set of modern communications channels that can be used to transmit “content” and communications to an audience. As such, it can be used, in this context, to publicize “content” and news so that more people hear about you and then link to you. And those links can help your rankings. Samuel Scott Marketing speaker and tech contrarian / @samueljscott

The bottom line is artificial social shares don’t help in keyword ranking. In the best case scenario, you should call yourself lucky if your account isn’t suspended. Facebook is using AI to penalize spammy websites in its News Feed.

  10. Keyword Density Should Be at Least 2% to Increase Your Rankings

  Keywords, in all its forms for SEO, seems to be a hotly contested topic.

  At this point, I barely have strength left to argue. It starts to get funnier or is it rather me feeling nervous-funny.

  The never-ending talk about keyword density that should be 10%, 4,5% or 7 %. We’re starting to ask ourselves if is so hard to be natural these days?!

It’s ironic, you’re asking “What would the algorithm think about this?” and the algorithm is asking, “What would a real human think about this?”

  During a Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout, last year, John Mueller said that the focus should be on the readability and not on the keyword density.

We expect content to be written naturally, so focusing on keyword density is not a good use of your time. Focusing too much on keyword density makes it look like your content is unnatural. John Mueller Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google /  @JohnMu

Keyword density might lead to keyword stuffing if you try and program everything like it is a machine.

A lot of people think there’s one recipe and you can follow it like baking cookies. And if you follow it to the letter, you’ll rank number one. That’s not the way it works. Matt Cutts Former head of the webspam team at Google / @mattcutts

That’s not how the search engines work. Google will recognize the pattern.

  The sad part is that we are in 2018 and we’re still hearing questions such as “what is the ideal keyword density percentage to improve rankings in Google in 2018?” (*facepalm* and *heavy breathing*).

  Then you go back to quality, the naturalness of things. So no, you should not focus on maintaining your keyword density a specific percentage to rank higher. There is no IDEAL % for keyword density. Rather have a vocabulary, semantics, a long copy to avoid keyword stuffing. In the end, be very careful not to have too much of one keyword.

  11. A High Number of Links Is All You Need to Rank on the Top

  The myth goes something like this: once you have so many links, you don’t really need anymore. And it should be enough for helping you rank higher. No numbers are thrown out (apparently it might differ from one industry to another), but it is really such a thing of having too many links that it doesn’t matter in terms of ranking if you get more? 

  In the ante-Penguin Era, a high number of links might be enough for ranking on top if you wanted to believe that.

  Obviously, there is no such thing as too many links. Maybe for unnatural links, though. Because if you have too many unnatural links you might get penalized. But here we are talking about good links as ranking signals. Smart marketers and webmasters wouldn’t pursue this, because they know (spoiler alert: debunking a myth right now) links is not the only ranking factor and neither is the number of those links. The focus should be on content marketing, social activities, natural links, since we talked so much about them.

  12. You Don’t Need an SEO Specialist; Anyone Can Do It

  Whoever said SEO is something any IT guy can do, fooled you.

  There is also technical SEO, which as the name says, requires some technical expertise. It is an SEO component, entirely something else. If you hear technical it doesn’t necessarily have to be IT. The job of an SEO expert is different from an IT expert; it requires wider knowledge on content, user behaviour, equity, semantics and context, and a lot more.  

Think of SEO this way: If a customer-focused content marketing program is the sandwich, then SEO is the mayonnaise. It touches nearly everything and enhances the overall flavor of the sandwich, but on its own, it’s not very appetizing. Lee Odden CEO at TopRank Marketing / @leeodden

Of course, you need the knowledge of an IT person that can handle some things better than an SEO pro. You can not give or expect from somebody experienced in IT to do the SEO duties and expect best practices and great results. Some things go hand in hand.

  An IT professional can help you with issues such as website crawling (errors, XML sitemap, URL parameters, indexing errors), redirects, website audit (for internal links), loading page speed and many more.

  In the end, SEO isn’t something you can handle to an IT person, in case you want to rank and have a site and visitors.

    13. SEO Is All About Rankings

  Search engine optimization is the process for naturally placing the website in search results by the search engines. If we think from the on-site perspective, then the keywords used in context, the meta descriptions, the images selected for the content, the title are significant among all the on-site SEO elements.

  Getting this straight, we need to understand that SEO, at this level, must answer to the user need and intent. That is the future: the user-intent-based content. Google’s moving the attention on user intent for more accurate and personalized results.

  Relevant and well-optimized (not over-optimized) content remains a top ranking factor. Think of that this way: you are on the first page of Google and rank for a keyword you optimized your content for. You want the users to enter your website or not? If the answer is yes and they will do so it means you optimized correctly your content, you have relevant meta description, title, URL. If on the contrary, the user doesn’t enter your website it means it’s not relevant, you optimized the content for the search engines, and that won’t last for long.

My rule of thumb is: build a site for a user, not a spider. Dave Naylor Head of Search Marketing and Speaker at Bronco / @DaveNaylor

Lost are the days when over-optimization was doing all the job for ranking your content higher and higher ‘till it reached the sky, because sky is the limit. But no more!

  Over-optimization for the sole purpose of ranking isn’t a technique approved by Google according to the Quality Guidelines.

Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first. Wendy Piersall Blogger & author at wendypiersall.com / @emom

But for some other reason, if you have over-optimized content, you have a chance to clear your past and deoptimize it. At this stage, you have to evaluate your content and see if there is anything you can adjust, redirect or rewrite and re-optimize to fulfill the actual requirements for quality.

  If you got it until here, I must congratulate you and ask you to debunk another SEO myth, and tell the truth, that SEO is not all about rankings, but rather quality, natural language, context and earning links (named just a few, because we could keep it like this all night).

  Conclusion

  13 is an unlucky number, not to mention when it is placed near SEO myths. The internet is full of them, and people follow them blindfoldedly. You decide what is best for your business and what SEO strategies to apply or not. Yet, we wanted to share and debunk with you the most common SEO myths, the ones that we are constantly asked about.   

  We are always trying to provide you with valuable content and information in the SEO world, with facts that can be applied and aspects you should stay away from and never challenge Google or other search engines. These SEO myths are in the last category and we hope that this article was a helping hand. If you have some other SEO myths you want to share or discuss with us, feel free to write about them at the comments section below. 

  The post 13 SEO Myths That Are Probably Killing Your Ranks appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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[dietadviser]

A Whole30-inspired way to eat `clean` without sacrificing a whole month

The idea behind Whole30, created by Dallas Hartwig and Melissa Hartwig in 2009, is dazzling. Lots of people desire to eat much better, especially at the begin of a new year, yet have no suggestion just how. Setting apart a piece of time making over your diet - say, Thirty Days - ought to be easy sufficient. Right? That's exactly why The Whole30 book quickly became a The New York Times best seller and why a lot of individuals have selected up the imitator hashtag on social networks. Nowadays, #whole 30 frequently implies that you are attempting to eat clean and 'reset' your body by reducing out processed foods for 30 days, with or without the aid of the main program.

There's a typical misconception that it takes 21 days to develop a brand-new routine, which is exactly what makes Whole30 so darn attractive. If you could simply hang tough for One Month, you may appear beyond as an absolutely beginner who in fact likes eating clean. But in 2010, College University London researchers put the 21-day myth to the examination as well as discovered it to fall brief - generally, research participants really felt that a new healthy behavior became automatic after 66 days of practice.

The lesson to be found out is this: The Whole30 could be a wonderful beginning factor, yet there's no guarantee that it will certainly heal exactly what ails ya (i.e., lifelong unhealthy consuming routines). Embracing several of these clean consuming concepts for 2 months or more might provide you a suitable shot at normally altering the means you consume. Try these easy Whole30 regulations individually, without adhering to the monthlong program.

1. Begin by terminating the sugar

This one is much easier compared to it sounds, if you could commit making the first huge adjustment. For me, ultimately kicking sugar in the ass made the hugest distinction in exactly how I really felt - as well as how my pants fit. If you do one 'whole' point in the following 1 Month, take wellness instructor, physical fitness trainer and wellness blogger Kristian Henderson's advice: Place added thought into exactly how much sugar you consume and also the lots of different ways it could sneak into your diet regimen. She claims, 'You expect sugar in desserts - pies, cakes, brownies, cookies, donuts, and so on - however sugar is also discovered in most refined food, flavored yogurts, breads as well as icy fruit. As well as a great deal of times, you may not also recognize it is sugar. You need to enlighten yourself on the 56+ names of sugar - right here is a partial listing: brownish sugar, walking stick crystals, cane sugar, corn sugar, corn syrup, crystal dextrose, vaporized walking stick juice, fructose sweetener, fruit juice concentrates, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, fluid fructose, malt syrup, maple syrup, molasses, pancake syrup, raw sugar as well as syrup.'

2. After that, do away with the processed foods on your grocery list

If you've grasped no-sugar degree one and also are all set for the next challenge, lower all refined foods from your grocery store checklist. 'Cut out refined carbs, even if you aren't going to reduce out all grains or even gluten,' states Liz Barnet, a New york city City fitness and food trainer. 'That suggests no pasta, pizza, cookies, cakes, crackers, grain, chips, these foods are generally lacking in nutrients, unless they are synthetically included. Only eat grains and also carbs that call for basic, simple cooking, usually steaming. Assume rice, quinoa, buckwheat, or perhaps farro or wheat berries and also barley (which do include gluten). These kinds of grains consist of fiber and protein, which enhance satiety as well as slow-moving food digestion, so you'll remain full and also pleased much longer.' (Note that in the main Whole 30 diet regimen, grains are eliminated completely).

3. Concentrate on the tidy foods you like, not the ones you miss

The Whole30 could look like a lengthy listing of restrictions when very first beginning out, however that's where your internal Pollyanna can come in convenient. Look on the silver lining, and you'll see that there are a lot of delicious as well as nourishing entire foods that you can load on your plate. Barnet suggests 'great deals of vegetables, some seasonal fruits, wise starches and also carbs like sweet potatoes or butternut squash, lean meats as well as healthy and balanced fats like avocado, coconut oils and also some nuts as well as seeds.' She proceeds, 'By basing most of your diet on these nutrient-dense foods, you will essentially 'crowd out' not-so-nutritious foods.'

4. Review ingredients, not labels

As Henderson clarifies, it's easy to get stuck in a clean consuming rut, where you concentrate on showy nourishment labels while neglecting ingredients. Help yourself to program proper by staying clear of luring 'low-carb' as well as 'low-fat' foods that declare to be healthy and balanced and also skim the actual active ingredient checklist rather. 'You may like your route mix, as well as it may be reduced in calories and also carbohydrates, but if the component listing is long and if it has words you can not articulate, you ought to pass. Bear in mind, the essence of tidy consuming is consuming food in its most all-natural state,' Henderson says.

5. Simplify when eating out

Unless you're begging the trendiest vegan restaurant in community, it's going to be difficult to buy a 'entire' dish when eating in restaurants considering that you cannot ensure exactly how the food was prepared. Henderson recommends maintaining it simple to maintain your top priorities straight when you get a bite with pals. 'For starters, avoid quick food,' she claims. 'It is almost difficult to obtain tidy food from a fast-food dining establishment. Second, search for farm-to-table restaurants or restaurants that pride themselves in providing natural or in your area sourced fruit and vegetables. This increases your chances of obtaining clean food. If all else falls short, simply get barbequed chicken or fish with a side of veggies and also brownish rice. Maintain it straightforward.'

6. Consume little salads throughout the day

If you're not used to this squeaky tidy living, it can be tough to stay determined to pile veggies on your plate dish after meal. Rather, Dawn Viola, holistic nourishment teacher as well as exec chef at This Truthful Food, advises simplifying into bite-size chunks that make the Whole30 method less complicated to ingest. 'Salads can be a terrific method to consume a wide array of vegetables throughout the day, but often a huge salad can feel overwhelming (who wishes to eat that much lettuce?). Rather, have a tiny salad with nutrient-dense foods. One half cup of broccoli sprouts or one cup of kale or cress micro-greens offer more nutrition per cup compared to their completely expanded versions. Include a tablespoon of sesame seeds or grown sunflower seeds, some shredded raw beetroots, a little goat cheese, and also you have actually got a simple (small) salad with large benefits,' Viola explains.

7. Lastly, offer yourself some credit

There's an old proverb that states the most convenient means to swallow an elephant is one bite at a time, and the same could be true for all that fresh fruit and vegetables in your refrigerator. As Viola mentions, every adjustment makes a huge difference, despite how huge or small it seems to you. 'Every modification relocates you an action better to your objectives,' she says. 'Keeping that in mind can keep you feeling in control and also not so overwhelmed at the idea of everything entailed with changing eating as well as lifestyle routines.'

When you inevitably slip up on your Whole30-inspired journey, duplicate Taylor Swift and also shake it off. And also keep in mind Viola's knowledge and take it one action each time. 'For instance, dedicate to removing a minimum of one refined food from your grocery store cart every week and also change with the real point. So if you're an applesauce fanatic, buy real apples, if you're hooked on a commercial-brand cream, buy a container of coconut oil and also slather it on when your skin is still damp after a shower (nope, you will not scent like coconut for long).' Viola includes, 'Do not be so tough on yourself, due to the fact that you're awesome, and you could do this!'

[minnievirizarry]

How To Create & A/B Test Facebook Landing Pages

All those “Likes” your business has on Facebook? All that traffic you’re generating with News Feed ads? It’s worthless if you don’t have an end-goal in mind.

To turn Facebook traffic into sales, businesses are increasingly looking to powerful marketing tools called Facebook landing pages.

What is a Facebook Landing Page?

A Facebook landing page is a standalone web page, disconnected from your website’s main navigation. It’s created solely for the purpose of getting Facebook users to take action—to buy, signup or download.

Because it’s designed with persuasive elements like a compelling call-to-action, benefit-oriented copy and an attention-grabbing headline, a landing page is more efficient at convincing its visitors to take action than any other web page.

However, it takes more than sound design to convert your visitors. Your landing page also needs to be used the right way. Driving all your Facebook traffic to just one page won’t work.

In order for it to perform to its full potential, your landing page needs to be tailored to the campaign it’s part of. That means each promotion you run needs its own page.

Here’s how to create one for your next Facebook campaign, and how to optimize it using A/B testing.

The Essentials of an Effective Facebook Landing Page

Every Facebook landing page, regardless of what campaign it’s part of, should feature these elements:

1. No Outbound Links in the Navigation, Body or Footer

Without links in the navigation menu, footer or body of your page, your visitors won’t be able to escape easily before converting. They’ll remain focused on clicking your call-to-action instead of the link to your “About us” page.

“But what if they want to learn more about my business?”

If it’s designed correctly, your prospects shouldn’t need to leave your landing page to learn more about you. It should contain a virtual elevator pitch—just enough about you to communicate who you are and why your offer is worth claiming.

If they want to learn more about your company culture or why you got into business, they can return to your website after they’ve evaluated your offer.

That goes for any other page on your website too. Navigation links to your “Contact us,” “Careers” and “Locations” pages should be omitted. Your logo shouldn’t be linked to your homepage. Right now, the only thing your prospects should be focused on is clicking that call-to-action button.

Take a cue from this NetSuite landing page:

2. A Benefit-Oriented Headline

Teasing out the benefit of your offer isn’t always easy. That’s why professional copywriters get paid the big bucks to do it.

Still, you don’t need years of training to figure out why your visitors should claim your ebook, free trial offer or product. Remember this: your prospects should be able to answer the question “What’s in it for me?” as soon as they reach your landing page. So tell them immediately in the biggest, boldest letters on your page—the headline.

Make sure to be clear about the true benefit to them and be wary of fake ones.

For example, are you offering your visitors an ebook on how to learn expert copywriting techniques? Or are you offering them a resource from which they can learn the writing secrets that experts use to sell more products?

Most professionals don’t want to learn copywriting techniques, but they do want to learn how to write to sell more of their product. Sometimes it takes working a little harder to find your product or service’s true benefit, but it’s always worth the extra digging.

3. Strong Message Match

When Facebook users click your ad, they need to know immediately that they’re in the right place. That’s why the ad that’s driving traffic to your landing page should match with the message of your landing page. This is known as “message match” and it’s crucial to establishing trust with your visitor.

Everything from your page’s headline to its colors should match the referring advertisement. Take this Salesforce page ad and its corresponding landing page, for example.

Here’s the ad:

And here’s the landing page users see when they click through:

Notice how the headline of the ad matches the headline of the landing page exactly as well as its colors? Even the image is exactly the same.

These similarities assure your visitors that they’re in the correct place. Without them your prospects will feel confused at best and at worst, deceived.

4. Concise Copy That Highlights Benefits Over Features

Remember to consider the situation of your landing page visitors as you craft your content. These aren’t people reading for pleasure. They’re busy. They’re on your landing page to quickly evaluate your offer and be on their way.

Don’t drone on, get poetic or try to show off your big vocabulary. Write like you talk. Use bullet points to quickly highlight the benefits of your offer and separate text blocks into small digestible chunks for effortless reading. Make it easy for your visitors to skim your content because that’s what they’re most likely going to do.

Notice how the bullet points on this Digital Marketer landing page entice visitors to convert by stressing the highly specific benefits of downloading the company’s Facebook ad templates.

5. Engaging Visuals

Because they’re able to convey information quickly and efficiently, images and videos have a place on every type of landing page. They’re especially useful on longer ones that need to be packed with a ton of information, like sales pages and click-through landing pages.

Infographics and explainer videos can replace large portions of text that could potentially scare your visitors away. They can also help your prospects better understand your product or service quickly. It’s good to describe your offer, but in many cases it’s even better to showcase what it is and how it works.

Here’s a great example from bookkeeping service, Bench (click through to play around with the image):

While it’s not on a landing page, this interactive image is a great example of what you could include on yours to better explain your service and how it works.

6. Social Proof

If there’s a long waiting line outside of a restaurant, we assume it serves good food. If our friends tell us a particular movie was entertaining, we’re more likely to see it. This is called “social proof” and it can be a valuable persuasive tool on your landing page.

Testimonials from satisfied customers helps prove that people find your product or service valuable. With widgets and buttons that count your social media fans, you can show visitors that your business is worth following. By displaying logos of well-known companies you’ve worked with or big-name publications you’ve been featured in, you can boost your perceived authority.

Take a look at how Jeff Bullas uses social proof on his homepage:

And check out how agency, Amadeus Digital, uses it to persuade prospects to retain their agency:

The reason it’s so powerful is because buyers take cues from other buyers. In fact, 88% trust online reviews as much as recommendations. Boost the perception of your business by displaying on your landing page the many brands, industry authorities and satisfied customers who find your product or service valuable.

7. Attention-Grabbing Call-To-Action Button

Your call-to-action (CTA) is the most important element on your landing page. Without it your visitor literally cannot convert. When you create yours, don’t settle for using a gray button that reads “Submit.” Your CTA needs to get visitors’ attention and make them excited about converting. Instead, try to stress the benefits of claiming your offer with personalized copy.

For example, if your landing page’s goal is to sign people up for a webinar that teaches them the step-by-step system you used to generate an extra $5,000 in monthly revenue with Facebook, don’t use “Sign up” or “Register.” Try something like “Show Me The Social Media Secret To Higher Revenue” or “Teach Me The Revenue-Boosting Social System.” The difference is something your visitors will actually want to click.

How to Improve Your Facebook Landing Page

There will always be room for improvement on the first iteration of your landing page, and the second, and the third. The headline might not resonate with visitors the way you expected. The copy might be a little too verbose. But you won’t know what to improve until you collect data and test. And one of the easiest and most effective ways to do that is with the A/B method of testing.

What is A/B Testing?

A/B testing refers to the process of comparing two different landing pages at a time—one “A” version and one “B” version. Everything else, though, remains the same—like traffic sources and campaign run times, for example.

The Two Ways to A/B Test

A common misconception is that in order to conduct a true A/B test, you can only test one element at a time. For example, if you wanted to discover the effectiveness of your headline, you would test your original page featuring the original headline against a variation page with a different headline. Whichever page converts more visitors at the end of the test has the better headline, since that’s the only difference between the two pages.

That’s the most accurate way to test, but it’s not the only way.

On many occasions, it’s impractical to test only one element at a time. The duration of a single A/B test can be long, which means to optimize an entire page, it would take an extended amount of time and resources that many marketers don’t have. So during major site redesigns or optimizations, they test multiple elements at a time.

They test a variation page with a different headline, form and maybe featured image against their original. At the conclusion of their test, the page with the higher conversion rate is the winner. Why it’s the winner, they won’t know exactly. But, think of it this way: if your page generates more conversions, do you really care if you know whether it was the headline or the image or the form that caused it?

Maybe you do. Or maybe you’ll just be satisfied that your new page has generated more conversions. Which method you choose will depend on how much you want to know and the amount of time and resources you have.

What you can’t choose is the rest of the testing methodology. There are some exact steps you’ll need to follow to make sure you can rely on the results of your A/B test.

Step 1: Gather Data

You should never test without a reason to. Use your website and social media analytics tools to find out how your visitors are behaving. Heat mapping software can show you whether your visitors are noticing your CTA button. Google Analytics can show you if your prospects are abandoning your page immediately.

You have to first identify your page’s problems before you can fix them.

Take an example from Lim Cheng Soon at Pair, who used a heat map to see how visitors were interacting with this mobile app landing page:

Here’s what the test showed:

You’ll notice some small green dots and some bigger red and yellow ones. The bigger, red and yellow ones are locations on the page where visitors paid the most attention. According to Soon:

“Turns out, I found out too many people click on the navigation bar on the top instead of clicking the conversion button (link to AppStore and Google Play). So I made up a theory that having too many ‘distractions’ around the conversion button wasn’t such a good idea.”

So he tested that theory by running A/B tests that hid the social sharing button and the “Download for Free” text.

The results? A 12% boost in conversion, but only because he knew where his landing page was lacking by collecting data first. Without that vital step, you won’t know whether your test will actually make an impact on your conversion rate.

Step 2: Create a Hypothesis

From that data, develop a hypothesis. For example, “Using heat mapping software, we noticed that our visitors were mistaking a photo for the call-to-action button. Because of that, we think that changing the design of that photo to make it look less like a button will divert more attention to the real CTA button.”

At the conclusion of the test, you can accept or reject that hypothesis.

Step 3: Calculate Your Sample Size

Before you can end your test, it will need to reach something known in the scientific world as “statistical significance.” The term refers to the number of visitors you’ll need to generate to each of your pages (original and variation) before you can be confident that your results aren’t due to chance.

The accepted level of statistical significance in most industries is 95%. At a 95% level of significance, you can be 95% sure that the results of your A/B test can be attributed to the changes you made to your landing pages, and not to chance.

Use this calculator from Optimizely to determine how many visitors you’ll need to each of your landing pages before you can reach 95% significance.

Step 4: Create Your Variation Page

Now it’s time to make the adjustments you hypothesized would boost your conversion rate. If you thought it was a new headline that would persuade more visitors to take action, create your test page with a new headline. If your data showed you might need a new image, create your variation with a new image.

Whatever you choose, be sure your control page remains the same. Without a baseline to compare your variation to, you won’t know if your new page is performing better or worse.

Step 5: Eliminate Confounding Variables

Many scientific tests are conducted in a lab for a reason. It eliminates any outside factors that might threaten to poison your results. Something as simple as the occurrence of a holiday or a tiny mistake in the code of your landing page could impact the results of your test for the worse.

There’s no way to completely eliminate all confounding variables. The best you can do is control for as many as you know about. Learn more about how to do that here.

Step 6: Test Everything

Before you begin running your test, you need to ensure everything is working correctly. Make sure:

Your CTA button directs prospects to your “thank you” page when clicked.

Your form is passing information into your CRM system.

The links in your ads direct you to the right page.

Your landing page is displaying correctly in all browsers.

Step 7. Drive Traffic

Now you’re ready to begin driving traffic from Facebook to your landing page. Remember that Facebook allows you to get really granular, so at some point it might be worth testing traffic from different types of ads (sidebar, news feed, audience network) or even different segments (male, female, married, single, etc.) to see how they impact your conversion rate.

Most importantly do not end your test before you reach 95% significance. You can’t be remotely confident of your results until that point. And even then, you can’t be sure of anything.

Conversion optimization influencer, Peep Laja, describes a time when reaching 95% confidence wasn’t enough:

“The variation I built was losing bad—by more than 89% (and no overlap in the margin of error). Some tools would already call it and say statistical significance was 100%. The software I used said Variation 1 has 0% chance to beat Control. My client was ready to call it quits. However, since the sample size here was too small (only a little over 100 visits per variation) I persisted and this is what it looked like 10 days later.”

The variation that had 0% chance of beating control was now winning with 95% confidence.”

The longer you run your test, the more confident you can be of its results. The moment you reach 95% significance isn’t the moment you should stop, it’s the earliest you can stop. If you have the time and resources to run your test longer–do it.

Step 8. Analyze & Improve

Now it’s time to look at your results. Did your variation achieve what you thought it would? Or is your original still reigning supreme? Make changes, or don’t, based on your results. And never stop testing.

There’s always a better version of your landing page waiting to be created.

This post How To Create & A/B Test Facebook Landing Pages originally appeared on Sprout Social.

from SM Tips By Minnie http://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-landing-pages/