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indic0lite · 5 years ago

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someone probably made this post in 2017 but oh well I wrote the most of this when I was probably supposed to be sleeping so here we go

I was going through the WKM tumblr and some image of the detectives wall caught my interest so here’s some things I wanna point out(these might not have any meaning but they’re still interesting)

IMAGE 1:

- (in red) A picture of Damien, Celine and William, most likely after Celine and Mark break up since Celine and William seem rather close

- (in pink) ‘celine is a qt’ mood

- (In blue) ‘What kind of name is Markiplier anyways?’ Abe asking the real questions

- (In orange) ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘who’ and ‘what’ all visible questions on the desk

- (In purple) ‘Police remain following celebrity death’ Last word isn’t shown here but is shown in a later image

- (In purple) ‘Fallen movie star’ This also brings up the fact that this murder wasn’t exclusive to what we saw, people outside of the manor know about this

IMAGE 2:

- (in red) Nothing to much of note here, but something worth noting about the news article is that the headline above is ‘City mayor is secretly a demon in disguise?’ which brings up a common thing in these newspaper clippings where Damien is in some kind of legal trouble with Mark or just the mayor’s actions being questioned

-Interesting photo where it’s all blacked out, I can’t make out anything in it

IMAGE 3:

- Three notes

- ‘who had eyes on the chef between 11pm-3am?’

- ‘Research locations of the colonel’s travels’

- ‘where did it all go wrong?’ The last word is blocked by the lamps shadow but brightened up it shows up

IMAGE 4:

- The same newspaper clipping from the first image

- Second newspaper clipping is another article about the mayor being in legal trouble ‘Mayor in legal trouble’ Can’t make out what’s being said in the article though

- Two pictures of the colonel and Celine being romantic, which is interesting, there’s a lot of images which we haven’t seen before

- The napkin might say laundering (which is basically concealing the origins of illegally obtained money by transferring it through foreign banks or actual businesses)

- ‘men... why?” God that’s a mood

- Three different papers documenting crimes and the person investigating

- The chef’s: Four different names under who was investigating ( Simmons, Myers, Simmons, Lady(??) ) so 4 different crimes, the actual crimes are unknown, blocked out by a sticky note

- The colonels: MANY names and repeated crimes (Dickens, O’Brien, Franklin(???), Bernard(???), Nelson, Dickens, Simmons, last is unknown) He’s committed poaching 6 times, has resisted arrest and apparently murdered someone before all of this(or was at least accused of it)

- Celine has committed two crimes (the names being Harvey(??) and Rose)I believe the second crime is theft, but I can’t make out the first one

- The napkin with the kiss mark, ‘call me’ and the phone number on it might be from Celine, but her lipstick doesn’t match up with the shade she wears during WKM, which means this happened before, so Abe somehow got a hold of it

IMAGE 5:

- Abe also has a paper but has crossed out all boxes, probably because he’s the one putting all of this together

- There’s a closer look of a newspaper we saw in the last one, the transcript of what I can make out is:

Multiple officers with the city police department are investigating a crime scene at Markiplier Manor on the northside of town.

A spokesman with the CPD said a 911 call was received around 8:30 am reposting a case of possible foul play. When officers arrived to investigate, they discovered a young man on the floor of the manor unconscious. He was ruled dead at the scene

The city police department held a press conference on Tuesday regarding the incident.

Chief of the police force says that the man, identified as Mark Fischbach, was found dead on the floor of the entryway that morning. Police believe that the child was there since 9 am, but that will not be confirmed until an autopsy is complete on the body. The Chief also said that the butler admitted to not doing a headcount of the party guests arriving at the manor the night prior

The press conference also revealed that the mayor was involved in shady business practices with mark which may affect his dealings leading into the election happening next January. Criminal charges may be placed against one of the partygoers after the autopsy is completed or if any new information arises

IMAGE 6:

-ANOTHER news article about the mayor doing something with Mark ‘Celebrity actor in cahoots with beloved mayor’ I mean at least they know we all love Damien

Image 7:

- A weird photo of the butler, Abe, the chef, and William, it’s weird and I don’t like how dark the image is

- ‘Spotted Mark in the study @ 5 pm(last seen?)’ Who spotted Mark in this study? Was it Abe? I’m guessing the house either let Abe see this room and see Mark in it or it was an eyewitness account from another one of the guests

- ‘Is he a secret’ who’s a secret? Is it William? Is it Mark? Is it Damien? Who is I t???

IMAGE 8:

- Again, another paper for the partygoers crimes and Damien has only one, investigated by Meyers, but what he did is aggressively crossed out, someone is trying to cover Damien tracks and what he did, though we do know it involved Mark, also there’s a good picture of Damien, at a party, I don’t think it was the one we were at, I think it was another party he was at.

- Under all that is a list of dates Damien was at the manor, he was there a lot, though he wasn’t there in June at all, but came back in July, the list is longer, but Abe’s picture blocks out the bottom dates

- The butler has a crime paper and the only crime he committed was public nudity, Benjamin what were you doing, what happened dude

- ‘what is a lets play?’ what is a lets play indeed dude

IMAGE 9:

- Just says it straight up ‘Mayor in legal trouble’ Damien what did you do, what did you and Mark do that got you in trouble, what happened

IMAGE 10(this ones from a video but shhhh):

- The sticky note reads ‘Dream? Hallucination? What is it?’ (that last part is obscured Im just guessing)

TLDR:

Abe was keeping track of everyone, yes, but specifically William, Damien and Celine, most likely because they’re the ones closest to William, hell even William shouts about Abe taking Damien and Celine from him in the final episode.

Damien got into some kind of legal trouble involving Mark, we don’t know what he did. He’s a dumbass so I’m not too surprised, it might’ve been laundering money, but I don’t know why Damien and Mark would be involved in something like that

Everyone in wkm besides Abe it seems, has committed at least one crime

#markiplier #who killed markiplier #wkm damien #wkm celine #wkm actor mark #wkm abe #wkm the colonel #I didnt expect to be even more confused but here I am #again this might not have any meaning but oh well #long post #Watch this kid with ADD ramble on

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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Inside a Brazen Scheme to Woo China: Gifts, Golf and $4,254 Wine https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/business/deutsche-bank-china.html

Inside a Brazen Scheme to Woo China: Gifts, Golf and a $4,254 Wine

By Michael Forsythe, David Enrich and Alexandra Stevenson | Published

Oct. 14, 2019 Updated 3:24 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 14, 2019 8:10 PM ET |

It was a brazen campaign to win business in China by charming and enriching the country’s political elite.

The bank gave a Chinese president a crystal tiger and a Bang & Olufsen sound system, together worth $18,000. A premier received a $15,000 crystal horse, his Chinese zodiac animal, and his son got $10,000 in golf outings and a trip to Las Vegas. A top state banking official, a son of one of China’s founding fathers, accepted a $4,254 bottle of French wine — Château Lafite Rothschild, vintage 1945, the year he was born.

Millions of dollars were paid out to Chinese consultants, including a business partner of the premier’s family and a firm that secured a meeting for the bank’s chief executive with the president. And more than 100 relatives of the Communist Party’s ruling elite were hired for jobs at the bank, even though it had deemed many unqualified.

This was all part of Deutsche Bank’s strategy to become a major player in China, beginning nearly two decades ago when it had virtually no presence there. And it worked. By 2011, the German company would be ranked by Bloomberg as the top bank for managing initial public offerings in China and elsewhere in Asia, outside Japan.

The bank’s rule-bending rise to the top was chronicled in confidential documents, prepared by the company and its outside lawyers, that were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The previously undisclosed documents, shared with The New York Times, cover a 15-year period and include spreadsheets, emails, internal investigative reports and transcripts of interviews with senior executives.

The documents show that Deutsche Bank’s troubling behavior in China was far more extensive than the authorities in the United States have publicly alleged. And they show that the bank’s top leadership was warned about the activity but did not stop it.

Josef Ackermann, the bank’s chief executive until 2012, said in an interview with The Times and separately in answers to written questions that he was not familiar with many of the details contained in the documents. But he defended the bank’s broader practices.

“This was part of doing business in this country,” Mr. Ackermann said. “At the time, this was the way things were done.”

For years, Deutsche Bank has been a poster child for misconduct in the finance industry. Regulators and prosecutors around the world have imposed billions of dollars in penalties against the bank for its role in a wide range of scandals. Most recently, the bank has been under investigation for the facilitation of money laundering in Russia and elsewhere.

Deutsche Bank — which for two decades was the primary lender to President Trump — also has been under scrutiny by two congressional committees and by state prosecutors in New York who are investigating Mr. Trump’s finances.

In August, the bank agreed to pay $16 million in a settlement with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission related to allegations that it had used corrupt means to win business in both China and Russia, violating anti-bribery laws, though it did not admit wrongdoing.

That penalty, the documents show, amounted to a small fraction of the revenues gained in China from business stemming in part from the activities. The bank’s outside lawyers had warned executives in 2017 that they could face a penalty of more than $250 million from the S.E.C. related to China. There is no evidence that German regulators investigated the bank’s activities in China, though they were alerted to some of it, according to the documents.

Reasons for concern appear throughout the documents, which include internal investigations conducted by two law firms, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Allen & Overy, at the time of the S.E.C.’s action.

Deutsche Bank, the documents show, dispensed hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure meetings for top executives with China’s leadership. An obscure company received $100,000 to arrange a 2002 meeting between Mr. Ackermann and Jiang Zemin, then the country’s president.

In all, the documents show, the bank paid seven consultants more than $14 million, including for help buying a stake in a Chinese bank and winning coveted assignments from state-owned companies. Some of the payments were flagged internally as problematic but allowed to go through.

On multiple occasions, according to the documents, Deutsche Bank tried to win business by collaborating with family members of Wen Jiabao, China’s premier from 2003 to 2013. The Wens’ enormous accumulation of wealth was the focus of a 2012 investigation by The Times that found family members had controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.

Winning Over the Wens

Among its many ties to China’s political elite, Deutsche Bank cultivated a deep relationship with the family of Wen Jiabao during his term as premier of China. Mr. Wen himself received gifts from the bank valued at more than $15,000. But it was a family affair, involving his son, daughter and their spouses, as well as a close business associate of the family.

The bank, at least in part through its hiring of people with political connections, won hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese deals. Such hires can be illegal if they are done in exchange for business. The bank’s outside lawyers calculated that just 19 of its so-called relationship hires helped bring in $189 million in revenue, including a plum assignment in 2006 managing a state bank’s market debut, then the biggest initial public offering in history.

Most of the Chinese government officials entangled in the bank’s activities have since retired, among them Mr. Jiang and Mr. Wen. But two parents of people the bank employed are now members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s pinnacle of power. And the country’s vice president, Wang Qishan, accepted gifts from the bank when he held previous positions, such as mayor of Beijing.

Efforts by The Times and Süddeutsche Zeitung to reach Mr. Jiang, Mr. Wang and Mr. Wen — as well as other Chinese officials, executives and relatives mentioned in the documents — either were unsuccessful or received no response. Several current and former Deutsche Bank employees declined to comment.

Tim-Oliver Ambrosius, a spokesman for the bank, did not respond to specific questions about the documents. In a written statement, he said that the company had “thoroughly investigated and reported to authorities certain past conduct,” adding that the bank had “enhanced our policies and controls, and action has been taken where issues have been identified.”

“These events date back as far as 2002 and have been dealt with,” the statement said.

Mr. Ackermann said that he had cautioned the bank’s staff that “no business is worth risking the bank’s reputation.” Though he pushed employees to increase revenue and profits, he said, “feeling pressure cannot excuse violating compliance rules and regulations or the law of the land.”

Playing Catch-Up

When Mr. Ackermann was picked in 2000 as the next chief executive, his ambition was for Deutsche Bank to be universally recognized as a global leader. And he wanted it done fast.

China was critical. It was the most populous country in the world and on its way to becoming the second-largest economy. Yet Deutsche Bank was far behind its rivals there.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had been at the forefront of helping China modernize its moribund financial system and network of state-owned businesses. In 1995, Morgan Stanley helped set up the country’s first investment bank, China International Capital Corporation. Goldman won the rights in 1997 to bring China Telecom, the country’s phone monopoly, to the international market through an initial public offering in Hong Kong.

Mr. Ackermann had to play catch-up.

A first step for the bank was poaching Lee Zhang, the head of Goldman Sachs’s Beijing office. Mr. Zhang was fluent in the ways of both China and Western business. Born and raised in China, he had studied in Canada and later moved to California, where he worked for Hewlett-Packard and studied business administration. He then went to Hong Kong, eventually landing at Goldman.

Mr. Zhang’s mandate was to transform Deutsche Bank into a player in China. That required winning over the Communist Party.

Mr. Zhang began hiring aggressively. Many of his recruits — dozens and dozens of them, according to spreadsheets compiled by the bank’s lawyers — were young, inexperienced and well connected. They came to know him as Uncle Zhang.

Ma Weiji, whose parents were senior executives at state-owned companies, interviewed for a job in 2007. It did not go well. A senior Deutsche Bank executive emailed Mr. Zhang that Mr. Ma “was probably one of the worst candidates.”

He got the job nevertheless. Soon, Mr. Ma was using his family connections to secure meetings for the bank with his parents’ companies, according to a memo by Allen & Overy.

Another job candidate was a son of Liu Yunshan, then China’s propaganda minister. He “cannot meet our standard,” a Deutsche Bank employee wrote in an email about the company’s equity capital markets group. He was offered a job anyway.

The younger daughter of Li Zhanshu — now a top member of the Politburo Standing Committee — was judged unqualified for the bank’s corporate communications team. She got an offer, too.

Even for qualified candidates, political connections were taken into account.

Wang Xisha, whose father was the top official in Guangdong Province when she applied in 2010, was a veteran of the rival bank UBS and had also interned at Goldman Sachs. During her recruitment process, one banker noted that she would “have access” to a state-owned automaker, according to Allen & Overy. Her father, Wang Yang, is now a member of the Politburo Standing Committee.

In 2006, Deutsche Bank began to engage in what it called referral hiring. The goal was to drum up business for the bank by doling out personal favors to current and prospective clients, the S.E.C. found. Premier Wen Jiabao’s son-in-law, who was a senior official at China’s banking regulator, referred one candidate. Mr. Wen’s daughter-in-law referred another. Both were hired.

A state railway executive in China referred the son of a judge on the Supreme People’s Court. The assistant president of the oil refiner Sinopec referred a candidate, too. So did the general manager of the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

Mr. Zhang, reached by phone, declined to be interviewed for this article. He also did not respond to written questions sent through a business associate.

“It’s a relationship country,” Mr. Ackermann said in the interview. “Of course we cultivated these people.”

Cashmere Overcoats

The roster was set. The first nine foursomes to tee off at Deutsche Bank’s Beijing golf invitational in October 2003 were a predictable mix of German and Chinese executives.

The 10th group was different. It included Winston Wen, son of the newly appointed premier, as well as Huang Xuhuai, a close business associate of the Wen family. They were joined by a top official from PetroChina, a state-owned oil company.

The fourth player was Mr. Zhang. The following month, he, Mr. Huang and Mr. Wen would be off to Thailand for more golf, and later to Germany, according to documents compiled for the bank’s internal investigation.

The relationships that Mr. Zhang built with the golfers were microcosms of how the bank made a name for itself in China beyond its strategic hiring. They were showered with gifts. They were enlisted to introduce Deutsche Bank executives to Chinese decision makers. And they were hired as consultants to help win the bank work.

Among dozens of gifts to political leaders and heads of state-run companies, the oil executive received golf clubs and a bag valued at more than $2,500.

Executives at China Life Insurance, which picked Deutsche Bank to help manage its I.P.O. in 2003, were treated to Louis Vuitton luggage, cashmere overcoats, golf clubs, even a sofa, totaling more than $22,000, according to a memo by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

The bank prohibited gifts to public officials unless the legal and compliance departments signed off, and Gibson Dunn found that Mr. Zhang, who generated many of the expenses, had violated that policy.

The law firm’s research showed that from 2002 to 2008, bank officials gave more than $200,000 in gifts to Chinese officials, their relatives and executives of state-owned companies. More than a fourth went to people on the Politburo or their relatives, including Mr. Jiang, the president; and Mr. Wen, the premier.

Some of the gifts, like the crystal tiger for Mr. Jiang, who was born in 1926, the year of the tiger, were “provided” by Mr. Ackermann, according to the internal investigation.

Mr. Ackermann said that while he didn’t recall personally giving the items, he was aware that the bank’s staff thought it a good idea. He has not been accused of wrongdoing in China.

“They said that’s what Goldman and JPMorgan are doing, so we should do it,” Mr. Ackermann said in the interview. “I don’t think Wen Jiabao would be somehow influenced by a gift of a few thousand.”

In 2016, JPMorgan was fined $264.4 million by the Justice Department for its Chinese hiring. Other banks were also known to engage in similar practices. The Swiss bank Credit Suisse paid $77 million last year in criminal penalties and other fines. Goldman Sachs has not been accused of wrongdoing in its China business.

‘Red Flags’

The plan to increase Deutsche Bank’s clout in China also included buying a big stake in a midsize Beijing bank, Huaxia.

The acquisition plan, code-named Project Rooster, involved hiring Mr. Huang, one of Mr. Zhang’s golf partners. Mr. Huang had no experience in banking but had worked in a diamond company run by the wife of the premier, according to a background check that was done for the bank at the time. He was paid the equivalent of more than $2 million.

The bank’s compliance department didn’t stand in the way of the consulting role, but some senior executives were uneasy.

“Based on the information from the search firm, if this person is not known to the market and industry, why are we paying for the service and what are we paying for?” Polly Lee, the bank’s head of compliance in Hong Kong, wrote in an email to Till Staffeldt, a regional executive who was pushing for Mr. Huang’s hiring. “My concern is this individual is fronting for someone else.”

Mr. Staffeldt is now Deutsche Bank’s global chief operating officer for regulation, compliance and preventing financial crime.

Deutsche Bank’s bid for Huaxia was successful. In late 2005, the bank secured a 9.9 percent stake, which later increased to almost 20 percent. It was unclear what Mr. Huang did to help the deal go through, but Gibson Dunn later found that the circumstances around his hiring raised “red flags” that might have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, in part because of Mr. Huang’s ties to the family of the premier, Mr. Wen.

In 2006, Deutsche Bank again brought Mr. Huang on as a consultant. This time, his task was to “study in-depth the financial safety of China’s banking industry.” He received $3 million.

Inside the bank, concerns had been mounting about Mr. Zhang’s use of consultants to win business. Frank Nash, who ran the bank’s Asian corporate finance division until 2004, warned a top executive, Michael Cohrs, about the problematic use of politically connected consultants.

Mr. Cohrs shared those concerns with the bank’s lawyers, including Richard Walker, a general counsel. They concluded that Mr. Zhang was operating inside the law, three people familiar with those discussions told The Times.

Mr. Zhang kept going. In 2006 he turned to another consultant named Huang to help the bank secure a role in the I.P.O. of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The stock offering was set to be the world’s largest ever. The banks handling the transaction reaped not only huge fees but also coveted bragging rights.

That man, Huang Xianghui, was lacking in banking experience, and a background check found that the Beijing company he claimed to work for did not appear to exist at the address on his business card. But what he did have, according to the bank’s documents, was a previous affiliation with PetroChina, the state oil company. Mr. Zhang hired him.

Mr. Huang’s original contract said he would receive $3 million for services that were “solely focused on the energy industry.” In a draft, someone crossed out “the energy industry” and wrote “ICBC,” a reference to the giant state-owned bank. Deutsche Bank went on to win a high-profile role in the I.P.O.

The success ingratiated Mr. Zhang with his superiors, especially Mr. Ackermann. Mr. Zhang would escort him to meetings with top Chinese leaders, including the president and premier, as well as to gatherings with cultural and academic experts, Mr. Ackermann said. While at Deutsche Bank, Mr. Zhang was appointed to a top government advisory body, signaling his insider status.

“He introduced me to all sorts of people,” Mr. Ackermann said in the interview. “He was always an honest person and had good ethical standards.”

But Mr. Cohrs, who was the head of investment banking, warned the company’s lawyers that he was “scared of how Lee Zhang was doing business and whether there was money being passed around in envelopes,” the documents show.

There was reason to be concerned.

A Settlement, No Wrongdoing

In 2010, the head of I.C.B.C. approached Mr. Ackermann and said he wanted to hire Mr. Zhang, citing his excellent work at Deutsche Bank, according to Mr. Ackermann. He became senior executive vice president at the giant Chinese bank.

Two years later, Mr. Ackermann stepped down as chief executive. A top executive warned his successor, Anshu Jain, that the bank had grown overly reliant on winning business from state-owned companies, an area rife with corruption risks, according to a person with direct knowledge of the warning.

In 2013, when the United States began investigating JPMorgan’s hiring practices in China, Deutsche Bank initiated an internal review. It found a troubling pattern of politically connected hiring, and reported the findings to the S.E.C. and the Justice Department.

The S.E.C. subpoenaed the bank in April 2014. Months later, Deutsche Bank sued Mr. Zhang, accusing him of profiting from one of the consulting companies he had hired because it was owned by a relative. Mr. Zhang denied wrongdoing in the suit.

The Times and Süddeutsche Zeitung found two other consulting companies used by Deutsche Bank that appeared to be owned by Mr. Zhang’s wife.

Amazing Channel Holdings and Speedy Link Holdings, both registered in the British Virgin Islands, list Ji Zhengrong as the owner, according to documents found in the Panama Papers. Mr. Zhang’s wife has the same name, and her birth date, listed in Hong Kong court records, matches the birth date in the offshore company records.

Speedy Link was paid $3.65 million by Deutsche Bank to assist in its successful bid to help manage the I.P.O. of China Life Insurance Company in 2003, according to the bank’s documents. Amazing Channel Holdings was paid $100,000.

At the time, Deutsche Bank’s top lawyer was Mr. Walker, who had been warned of executives’ concerns about politically connected consultants in China.

Before joining Deutsche Bank, Mr. Walker had been the head of the S.E.C.’s enforcement division. Now, as the agency’s investigation unfolded, bank officials were feeling optimistic.

Lawyers for Deutsche Bank traveled to the S.E.C.’s office in Salt Lake City to give a presentation on the company’s internal investigation. They argued that its hiring of Chinese princelings was far less extensive and systematic than at other banks, according to a person briefed on the meeting.

The lawyers told Mr. Walker afterward that the S.E.C. seemed to share the bank’s perspective, the person said. The agency’s investigators had concluded that when the bank hired politically connected employees, they were generally well qualified — something the bank’s internal reviews had cast doubt on.

This August, the S.E.C. announced that it was closing its investigation and had settled with the bank without requiring an admission of wrongdoing. Asked about the previously undisclosed Deutsche Bank documents, Chandler Costello, an S.E.C. spokeswoman, said, “The S.E.C. does not comment on details of any investigation, but, as always, the S.E.C. is committed to pursuing violations of federal securities law, wherever or by whomever they may occur.”

Earlier this year, the bank disclosed that it remained under investigation by the Justice Department for its hiring practices and use of consultants in foreign countries.

The German public broadcaster WDR contributed reporting.

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How Deutsche Bank Hired Its Way to the Top in China

Confidential documents reveal the troubled German bank’s brazen campaign to win business in China by charming and enriching the political elite. Here are six key takeaways.

By Alexandra Stevenson | Published Oct. 14, 2019, 12:23 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 14, 2019 |

Foreign companies have long clamored for access to China, the world’s most populous country and second-biggest economy. But when Germany’s biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, set its sights on China nearly two decades ago, it was late to the game and faced fierce competition.

An investigation by The New York Times and the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung found that, for Deutsche Bank, playing catch-up meant cutting corners and bending rules. It paid millions of dollars to Chinese consultants with access to politicians, hired dozens of relatives of China’s ruling Communist Party and showered some members of the political elite with lavish gifts, according to confidential bank documents that contain spreadsheets, emails, transcripts of interviews with top executives and internal investigative reports.

A spokesman for the bank did not respond to specific questions about the documents. In a written statement, Deutsche Bank said that it had “thoroughly investigated and reported to authorities certain past conduct,” adding that the bank had “enhanced our policies and controls, and action has been taken where issues have been identified.”

“These events date back as far as 2002 and have been dealt with,” the statement said.

Here are six takeaways from the investigation.

In China, it’s all about who you know

Like other investment banks, Deutsche Bank learned early on that relationships were crucial to securing deals in China, particularly with the Communist Party elite who controlled most of the country’s assets.

Joseph Ackermann, who led Deutsche Bank from 2002 to 2012, turned to Lee Zhang, who had been running the Beijing office of a rival, Goldman Sachs, to help play catch-up. When Mr. Zhang joined Deutsche Bank, he quickly moved to get the bank a seat at the table for some of the biggest public offerings of China’s state-owned companies.

Mr. Zhang led a fast turnaround. Two years after having had virtually no presence in China, Mr. Ackermann was meeting with China’s president at the time, Jiang Zemin. The bank also footed the bill for golfing sojourns with high-profile guests, including the son of Wen Jiabao, then China’s premier.

“He introduced me to all sorts of people,” Mr. Ackermann said in an interview.

By 2006, Deutsche Bank played a leading role in the initial public offering of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world’s biggest offering at the time. This not only brought the bank a windfall, but also gave it fresh bragging rights in China. By 2011, it topped Bloomberg’s rankings for banks managing initial public offerings in China and Asia, outside of Japan.

Playbook Lesson 1: Lavish the political elite with gifts

Deutsche Bank handed out gifts totaling more than $200,000 to Chinese officials, their relatives and the executives of top state-owned companies, the documents show.

Mr. Jiang, the president at the time, received a Bang & Olufsen sound system. The premier, Mr. Wen, was given a crystal horse, his Chinese zodiac animal. Other gifts included a bottle of 1945 Château Lafite Rothschild wine, cashmere coats, golf clubs and stays at luxury hotels. There was even a car seat, valued on internal documents as $3,977, that went to a top executive at the state-owned oil giant PetroChina.

Playbook Lesson 2: Pay consultants for access

When Deutsche Bank wanted to buy a big stake in a Chinese bank in 2005, it hired a consultant named Huang Xuhuai. Mr. Huang helped provide information about competing bids, enabling Deutsche Bank to come in with the winning bid. Mr. Huang was paid more than $2 million. Though the bank knew Mr. Huang had close ties to the family of the premier, Mr. Wen, which might raise red flags, Mr. Huang was hired again and paid $3 million.

The bank made payments worth more than $14 million to seven consultants who helped it win deals with state-owned companies.

Playbook Lesson 3: Hire the children of political elite

Deutsche Bank hired aggressively. Dozens of these new hires were young, inexperienced and very well connected, according to spreadsheets produced by lawyers for the bank. One was deemed “probably one of the worst candidates” by a senior bank executive. Nevertheless, he got the job. His parents were top executives at big state-owned companies.

Another applicant “cannot meet our standard,” an employee wrote in an email to colleagues. The candidate, the son of Liu Yunshan, China’s propaganda minister at the time, got an offer.

Even the candidates who were qualified were often assessed based on their connections. One banker noted that another candidate, Wang Xisha, whose father is now a member of the top Politburo Standing Committee, would “have access” to a state-owned automaker in Guangdong, where her father was a top official.

An internal bank investigation of 19 of these so-called relationship hires found that they helped bring the bank $189 million in revenue.

“It’s a relationship country,” Mr. Ackermann said in the interview. “Of course we cultivated these people.”

Red flags were raised

The internal bank documents show that while Deutsche Bank’s compliance officials didn’t put a stop to certain practices, some senior executives were uneasy.

When discussing whether to hire Mr. Huang as a consultant, for example, the bank’s head of compliance raised questions in an email. “My concern is this individual is fronting for someone else,” Polly Lee, head of compliance in Hong Kong, wrote to a senior executive, Till Staffeldt.

Mr. Staffeldt went on to become Deutsche Bank’s global chief operating officer in charge of compliance, regulation and preventing financial crime, a job he still holds.

Others were worried about the ties that Mr. Zhang cultivated, too. The head of Deutsche Bank’s investment banking at the time wrote to lawyers that he was “scared of how Lee Zhang was doing business and whether there was money being passed around in envelopes,” according to the documents.

A law firm hired by the bank later found that the circumstances around Mr. Huang’s hiring raised “red flags” that could have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Deutsche Bank paid a relatively modest penalty

In August, Deutsche Bank paid $16 million to settle allegations by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that it used corrupt means to secure business in China and Russia. The bank was not required to admit wrongdoing. The bank’s internal documents show its legal counsel had warned executives that it could face penalties of more than $250 million from the S.E.C. related to China alone.

Asked about the previously undisclosed Deutsche Bank documents, Chandler Costello, an S.E.C. spokeswoman, said, “The S.E.C. does not comment on details of any investigation, but, as always, the S.E.C. is committed to pursuing violations of federal securities law, wherever or by whomever they may occur.”

In written responses to questions from The Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung and the German public broadcaster WDR, Mr. Ackermann, the former chief executive, said he had cautioned the bank’s staff that “no business is worth risking the bank’s reputation.” Though he pushed employees to increase revenue and profits in China, he said, “feeling pressure cannot excuse violating compliance rules and regulations or the law of the land.”

Alexandra Stevenson is a business correspondent based in Hong Kong, covering Chinese corporate giants, the changing landscape for multinational companies and China’s growing economic and financial influence in Asia.

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authenticparanoidghosts · 6 years ago

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here’s a very long d&d story about the time my party used volleyball skills to become a god. for @komodoclassic, because she asked

this is a story in three parts

part i - a brief introduction of major characters and setting

okay so this was our big sophomore year campaign that lasted from first semester on over into part of second semester

really good campaign, our DM put a lot of work into it and we love him, but we had so many players that we had to split into two groups who both played the same world on the same timeline which was a huge fantastic mess

it ended bc the group I was in got a total party kill fighting a lizard with a magic eyeball (a totally different story - I was playing a hot tree and I might have killed him on my own after the rest of the party died if he hadn’t had that fucking entourage) and the other group killed the interdimensional asshole/refugee guy my party was actually trying to help

anyways, important characters in this story:

our DM, who I will not refer to by name even though I do tag him by name sometimes. I love to be inconsistent

me, playing my first character for this campaign (who did survive! she had to be retired before the lizard TPK for other nonsense reasons), a dwarf paladin named Taxes

Taxes (real name: Ataxite Tellus) was from a family of swindlers and petty criminals and was forced to leave her life of burglary and scamming when her parents got paid off to have someone take the fall for murdering The Very Important Mayor Of The Big Island Of This Archipelago Country and decided to frame her for it

instead of going to jail like she was supposed to, she was like “fuck this” and fled to a different island where she dyed her hair and put on a bandana like an old west outlaw and spitefully decided to dedicate her life to Not Being A Huge Asshole

obviously the way to do this is by taking some (k)night classes and becoming a paladin

Taxes is not a very good paladin

her god is Deimos, who does fire and war and justice and out of all the gods we met during the campaign (which was honestly a shocking amount) he was the nicest to us

our DM said he (Deimos) got briefly famous on the d&d reddit - partially because of this story and partially because of the stunts we were pulling immediately before it

anyways it’s important that you know that Taxes is from a family of criminals and just genuinely not very good at her job

one of my roommates, playing an elven wizard/lich whose name was Faenor but went exclusively by Gregg

good things to know about Gregg: she and Taxes had a classic straight man/banana man dynamic where she would try to do terrible ridiculous criminal things and Taxes would loudly protest but do very little to stop her

a friend, playing a dwarf paladin/cleric named Yule Marbles

Yule also followed Deimos and she and Taxes had an elaborate prayer handshake that they’d made up that gave them DM-sanctioned bonuses to religion checks

our party prayed basically exclusively to Deimos and eventually gained new player characters who ALSO followed him so after a point we just kind of paraded around the world as Deimos’ Favorite Idiots

part ii - volleyball

alright those are the people you need to know, let’s set the scene

our party needs to flee Dinosaur Hell Island where we have just solved the mystery we were summoned to help investigate and also accidentally started a war

quick trivia: Taxes (me) got mocked CONSTANTLY through the campaign bc she kept ACCIDENTALLY STARTING WARS

BAD PALADIN BEHAVIOR

but I did get a joke proficiency in starting wars which I later convinced the DM to let me use to benefit the party, so who’s laughing now, motherfucker

(the final count was that at LEAST three (3) legitimate, real-ass wars could be traced directly back to my actions as Taxes, as well as a couple other events that I would prefer to call “skirmishes” or “battles” that happened more indirectly. I refuse to count Malcolm’s not-so-legal battle for the deed to hell because 1) I did NOT help that guy, I just said I would, and 2) that was his problem and he started it)

we are leaving without telling anyone what we’ve found out

because they’re going to kill us, probably

you know. because of the war. that we started. on their already incredibly politically fraught island

the point is that we solved the goddamn mystery despite being absolutely terrible detectives and we FINALLY get to leave

we’ve been playing this part of the campaign for weeks and we’re all very tired of it

also the player who was intended to take point on the investigation (her hot mentor/maybe boyfriend? was the one who had called us there) had died pretty early on doing a pretty risky stunt involving a shark and an underwater cave, so we were just muddling through it

and we kept “”accidentally”” insulting people by stealing things (dinosaurs) and getting caught trying to break into things (sacred temples) and just generally being rude (Yule REALLY didn’t like the fey and I was briefly cursed by a swamp hag)

and, again, we started that war

we really need to skip town

a very unfortunate ship had crashed on the island a couple days previously and some of the people on it are very powerful sorcerers who we (really just Xenon, the half-orc fighter and everyone’s very best friend) have convinced to teleport us off the island

we just need to hide out on their beach and kill some time until the teleportation circle is ready

“do you want to take a rest?” the DM asks

“we should play beach volleyball,” someone else says, at the exact same time

resting is for suckers who are afraid of the very angry lizard people who want to kill us

we vote unanimously to play beach volleyball

the DM graciously decides that, in the interest of comedy, we have all the materials we need and won’t have to, like, sit down and weave a net

we break into two teams of four. team names are quickly decided to be The Hotdogs vs. The Hamburglars

after the party split our group retained “hamburglars” as our group chat name because our threshold for what entertains us is embarrassingly low

there are eight of us, so we’re playing four-on-four

the makeup of the teams isn’t important (and I can’t remember them), but know that we’re a half-orc, a tiefling, a middle-school-age human girl, an adult human man, two dwarves, an undead elf, and a fishperson

we spend a decent amount of time coming up with rules necessary to let us play volleyball

it’s mostly dexterity checks and rolling a d4 to see what quadrant of the court the ball lands in

some of our group doesn’t know the rules to actual volleyball and they have to be explained

listen. this is possibly the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done. I’m willing to acknowledge that, you don’t need to tell me.

anyways, ultimately the outcome of the game doesn’t matter (the Hamburglars won) and neither does how good or bad anyone was at rolling for imaginary volleyball (we fucking crushed the Hotdogs)

the point is that we played it and were so charmed by it that we would not forget about our new skills. we would remember them in our hour of need.

part iii - now I am (accidentally) become (NOT ACTUALLY A) god, destroyer of pirates

imagine there’s a timeskip

like, uh, two weeks later in game time at MOST

the group has split in real life, so my group is now Taxes, Yule, Gregg, Roswell (delightful fishperson), and another guy who stopped coming regularly and then was later replaced by another guy who doesn’t really become important until later, when we try to help a dimension-hopping dicklick by killing a lizard and stealing his eyeball

his character’s name was Yashirou and he’s not in this at all but it’s important that you know that by the time he died he had been partially transformed into so many different things that he was achingly close to being classified as an abomination and also was probably going to be fired from his job as a space cop

anyways, it’s a new day and a new session

actually, it’s probably like 11 pm. this will be relevant later

Taxes, Gregg, and Yule are the only player characters present because Roswell was busy or something

we’re on a new continent, hanging out with Taxes’ younger sister, Olivine

Olivine has also split from their parents and now runs an all-female gang of pirates who steal from the two much BIGGER gangs of pirates and also the trading federation and then sells whatever they’ve captured to the anti-government faction of the civil war that’s currently happening on the continent

this civil war is the only war currently going on/about to start where the root causes are NOT my fault in any way because when the thing that caused the circumstances that are creating unrest happened, Taxes had her hands over her ears and was humming loudly bc she knew she’d be morally obligated to do something if someone told her what was going on

right now, both major gangs of pirates and the trading federation are also all currently at war with each other

this is my fault

nobody but Gregg and Yule know it’s my fault, though, so I’m only in danger of being mocked for it

anyways we’re hanging out with my sister

doing crime

well, Gregg is doing crime. Taxes and Yule are paladins so they’re just protecting their good friend Gregg from people who might try to do her harm. it’s an airtight excuse, thank you

we’re actually on the continent because we’re traveling to visit Yule’s wife and son

so my sister and her gang (and us) have recently stolen a bunch of supplies from a guy named Scipio who is, we’ve been told, a Huge Asshole

Olivine’s gang is going to pay some local sailors to run the supplies up to the northern part of the continent which is both where the rebels are based and where Yule’s family lives

so ofc we’re on one boat (chock full of magical items we have recently lit a perfectly nice wizard on fire to steal) and two of the girl gang members are on the other (full of, like, food I think) providing security and acting as Olivine’s representatives for the deal they’re trying to make with the rebel camp

things are going well

we’re just sailing, no big deal

except, you know, like the first rule of d&d is Never Get On A Boat

and we are definitely on a boat

undeniably on a boat

on a boat full of MANY stolen goods

so ofc a couple hours into our trip, a bigger, faster ship sails up behind us. a bigger, faster ship with very official looking flags

it’s a gang of pirate enforcers (from one of the big two gangs) and they are presumably here to rob the shit out of us

“oh shit” we say, and look over at the other boat where the only NPCs who can help us also appear to be mouthing oh shit

“well,” someone says (me), “I think we can talk our way out of this”

I like to think I’m optimistic (and sometimes I find combat boring)

I prefer to try to lie my ass off to get us out of bad situations

we let the pirates board

things to know:

previous to this adventure on this continent, Taxes had gained the ability to see the names of everyone she meets, Death Note style

also she has a new helmet

more on the helmet later

Yule, who had been wearing Custom Order Rose Gold Plate Armor with the symbol of Deimos (god of LAW and JUSTICE) inscribed in the front and a cake recipe on the back, had been persuaded to take it off and hide it below decks so she looks less like the paladin/cleric she is

Gregg and Taxes look sketchy as hell all the time so they’re not worried

“hey, uh, what’s the plan?” someone asks, moments before the pirates climb onto our ship

“we are also pirates now,” Taxes says

“what”

“we are specifically the same sort of pirates they are because they’re not going to rob one of their own boats,” Taxes says, because she has the actor feat and is willing to use it

“alright, sounds good,” Gregg says, because she loves deception and can just blast the shit out of anyone with her wizard powers if things go south

so we let the pirates board

guy #1 (the only important pirate in this story) is obviously in charge and probably wearing an outfit that makes him look like a douche

he’s a huge douche which we find out immediately and also again later

you’ll see

he starts in on us, threatening everyone, asking our business and clearly winding up to start demanding that we put our hands on our heads and show him where our gold is

“Harrison,” Taxes says

she can see that his name is Harrison with her magic eyes

“Harrison, please, you’ve got the wrong boat”

Harrison - and everyone with him - about swallows his tongue in surprise that she’s addressing him by name

later we find out from the DM that at work he goes by something incredibly silly like Inflammis or Incindior or Combustus or something

none of the other pirates know his name is really Harrison

“who the fuck are you” the pirates, rather reasonably, want to know

“representatives of Lady Blackwing herself,” Gregg says, because we have a hold full of treasure we’ve literally just stolen from this exact group of pirates the day before and nothing to lose

Gregg is basically impossible to kill and should not be allowed to make decisions for the party, but we never learned

we attempt to convince Harrison that we are, in fact, pirates and that we do, actually, work for his boss (Lady Blackwing)

our story is that we’re secret profiteers who are selling things on the black market to both armies in order to fill Lady Blackwing’s pockets with gold

I’m sure you remember there’s a civil war about to get started

“what the fuck is a secret profiteer?” Harrison wants to know

“well,” we say, “we’d tell you, but how do we know you’re high enough up in the organization to have clearance for that information?” heavily implying that he’s a chump for not recognizing us

oooo, burn

Harrison is, of course, not fooled by this

so we send Yule down to the hold to get something to prove that we have our own cargo (that we definitely didn’t steal from them)

Yule comes back, arms full of Custom Order Rose Gold Plate Armor with the symbol of Deimos (god of LAW and JUSTICE) inscribed in the front and a cake recipe on the back, and we roll JUST barely high enough to convince him that we have our own goods and we might, in fact, be pirates who are on his team and he probably should try not to rob us

so Harrison, a little dazed and definitely pissed off (we were not very polite to him), goes back to his ship

the pirates who have boarded the other vessel also go back to their ship

we start trying to sail the hell out of there as fast as possible

the other boat we’re traveling with sails up next to us and our NPC friends wave us over

“what the FUCK did you tell them?” hot girl gang member who can, like, literally smite things (she was clearly the muscle of the group) asks us

“we convinced them we were also pirates,” we say

“oh shit” she says

their boat has convinced the pirates that they’re just merchants

turns out the pirates really are looking for the people who robbed them yesterday

for revenge

that’s us. they want revenge on us.

we decide to sail faster

it’s too late, though, because the pirate ship is sailing after us again and we already know they’re capable of catching us

“should we fire the canons?” someone asks, unsure if our boats even HAVE canons

“you should roll initiative,” the DM says, not at all like it’s a suggestion

we’re in combat

on Harrison’s first turn, he hits us with a level 7 fireball

turns out he’s a wizard and he’s very mad at us

Infernus, his work name was probably Infernus

we’re understandably furious about being on fire

there is some shouting that he probably cannot hear

now we get turns

two of us are paladins who don’t really have ranged attacks, and the other one of us is Gregg

the NPCs can do some cool shit but this has dragged on long enough so I will not mention them

“hm,” Gregg says, and tries to light them on fire back (it doesn’t work)

“oh dear,” Yule says, and attempts to fire a canon at them (turns out we do have them)

“I’d like to use my magic hat,” Taxes says, because she REALLY doesn’t want anymore 7th level spells being thrown around and now seems like a good a time as any to figure out what the hat does

“oh my god,” says the DM

“oh my god, really?” he looks delighted

this is the first inkling we get that Taxes’ magic hat is maybe more powerful than any item we ever should have been given

ABOUT THE HAT

previous to this adventure (after Dinosaur Hell Island), Gregg went house shopping and we ended up stealing a fortress carved into a meteor (located in a plane I think our DM might have made up that was basically space) from a Beholder

after clearing the Beholder and most of its minions out from our future home, we went through it and found a whole bunch of loot. most notably a rock with a weird marking on it, a shield, and a helmet

the rock went to Gregg who owned the house and when she picked it up the markings moved to her arm and gave her sort of a sick sleeve tattoo that I think boosted all her necrotic spells or something

goth as FUCK

Xenon, the fighter and our very good friend, got the shield and I honestly don’t think we ever figured out what it did

Taxes got the Helmet of War

she’s a paladin of the god of war (and justice and fire), so why not

it’s just a normal-looking helmet and it gave +1 to armor class and our DM had me roll a d4 to see how many charges it had

the helmet had 4 charges, and we did an arcana check but all we learned was that it would summon “an avatar of war”

cool, I thought, like a spirit or something that can fight with me in battle

well

we didn’t bother to investigate any further

“I’d like to use my magic hat,” Taxes says, thinking that an avatar of war might be able to fly and go attack Harrison from a distance

“oh my god,” says the DM, and from the light in his eyes you’d think one of us had just gotten down on one knee for him

“are you sure,” he asks in the DM Voice, and Taxes just shrugs because even if it doesn’t work, at least they’ll know what the hat does, right?

“yeah,” Taxes says, “I activate my magic hat”

“oh my god,” the DM says, and starts furiously writing something down

we wait with interest because we’re starting to get the feeling that the hat does something cool

who’d have thought

“okay,” he says, after a minute

“Taxes starts to glow and she steps off the ship,” he says

“what,” I say, because I’m wearing plate armor and don’t trust myself to roll high enough not to drown because of it

“a giant, 50 foot tall, glowing Taxes forms around her”

“what,” I say

“you’re standing on top of the water, piloting this giant spectral form from the inside”

“what,” I say

“your strength and dex are both 30 and you have 100 additional health,” he says. “it’ll last for 10 minutes or until the 100 health are depleted”

“what,” we all say

“what would you like to do, avatar of war?” he asks

oh, I’M the avatar of war

THAT’S what the hat does

Taxes raises her arm and points at the pirate ship

HARRISON, she yells, in a voice that’s 50 feet tall and also glowing

the intimidation roll is a nat 20

Gregg does a perception check and the DM assures us that Harrison has peed himself

we all feel very smug

“I want that ship,” I say to the DM

“you- what?” he asks

“I want to have that ship. I’m going to pick up it up,” I say

“oh my god,” he says

“roll strength for it,” he says

Taxes rolls a nat 20 to pick up the ship

the second nat 20 in a row

all four of us are literally shaking with excitement

she scoops up the ship with one huge, glowing hand, and heaves it up to eye level

down on our boat, Gregg and Yule are going absolutely ape

Gregg is screaming encouragement, Yule is on the verge of ecstatic tears

this is also exactly how we feel in real life

“what do you want to do with the boat?” the DM says

“uhh,” I say, because I hadn’t thought that far ahead

we all contemplate the situation

“you could dropkick it,” someone says

“oh my god,” I say

we look at the DM

“roll something,” he says, because no one wants to see what’s about to happen more than he does

natural 20

the third one

in a row

this will probably never happen to me again, ever, in my life

all four of us are shouting at once, we’re on the verge of hysteria

I’m in tears

it’s nearly 1 am and we’re acting like we’ve won the superbowl

this is the best possible outcome the magic hat could have had

“how do you want to do this?” the DM asks, which is his special ‘I’m going to give you gays everything you want’ phrase that usually means we get to decide the finishing blow for an enemy

“actually,” I say, “can I jump serve it?”

“oh my god,” someone says

that’s right. beach volleyball, motherfuckers

“yes,” he says

50 foot Taxes tosses the boat into the air

takes a beautiful run-up

and spikes a boat full of pirates so hard that it soars over the coastline and crashes well inland

“wow,” the DM says. “I’m gonna need some time to figure out how much experience this get you”

later, once he’s got it figured out, it will be enough to give Taxes two levels instantaneously as well as giving Gregg and Yule one each

Taxes goes back to the boats she’s been traveling with

EVERYONE on board is losing their goddamn minds

Yule and Taxes decide to ride the high and take a moment to make an extra big prayer to their god to thank him for the magic hat because it’s so incredibly baller

the roll is not a nat 20, but a holy fire descends upon Mega Taxes and the symbol of Deimos appears over her huge, spectral breastplate

Attack of the Fifty Foot Taxes decides to just pick up the ships she’s traveling with and carry them as far as her remaining 9 minutes of avatar time will get her

“what day is it,” I ask the DM as we’re doing this, because we’re tracking exactly what day it is in-game and it’s fun to know

“june 21st,” he says, after flipping through his notes

“huh,” someone says, “that’s the summer solstice”

“oh my god,” he says

you’ll never guess which patron deity’s major holiday is celebrated on the summer solstice

that’s a lie, you get one guess

it’s Deimos, god of fire and justice and war and being AWESOME as HELL

a giant, glowing figure of a dwarf in battered armor with the symbol of Deimos blazing on their chest was seen walking across the ocean just offshore of a major continent that is currently on the cusp of all-out civil war on the morning of Demios’ holy day

it’s just Taxes, who really only does these things on accident or on impulse in the heat of the moment

but the people of the continent don’t know that

soon, after reaching our destination and starting off on foot towards the village where Yule’s wife lives, we start hearing rumors about the return of Deimos, the Real Ass God

this is what makes the third war my fault

the rumors are never disproven and people continue to believe that Deimos Really Did That until the day we called it quits

“oh my god,” Taxes, a very grudging paladin, says in horror, adjusting her bandana more firmly over her face

“oh my god,” says Gregg, who knows exactly how she’s going to be introducing her friend to the next person they meet

#this is the world's longest post #I'm so sorry #posts #also kinda #my writing #and I'd better tag this for #Taxes

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tak4hir0 · 5 years ago

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It’s hard for me to believe, but I’ve been working in the software tech industry for 10 years now. For the vast majority of that time, I’ve either been a product manager, or a founder with a heavy focus on product. With the trend on Twitter of 1 like = 1 insight or spicy take, I decided to jump on board the trend and do one on product management. It appears to have resonated: Should I get in on the 1 like = 1 take (max 100) train and tweet about product management? 10 Likes and I'll start a thread of product tips and 🌶️takes. — Jason Evanish (@Evanish) January 2, 2020 So 100,000+ impressions later, it seems that it really resonated with people. With the ephemeral nature of Twitter, I wanted to preserve those takes for easy future reference, so this post represents them. 100 Insights + Spicy Takes on Software Product Management There’s some great discussion around many of the tweets, so I encourage you to check out all the discussions here. The trick to tell if there’s a reply to a tweet is to look at the speech bubble in the bottom left corner of each tweet: If the tweet says 1 in that area (like Tweet 2/), then the only reply is my subsequent tweet in the thread. If it’s more (like Tweet1/) then there are replies to click on and see. Anyways, let’s get onto the takes: 1/ Being a PM is a job of influence. The best PMs are the mayor of their area of work. You need to be able to build coalitions, and get buy in from a wide group of people. That doesn’t happen by accident. It takes work. 2/ The best PMs are autodidacts. They’re constantly curious and always learning.If you don’t like learning lots of new skills from sales, to marketing, to negotiation, to EQ, to design, don’t be a PM. 3/ PMs are also like a point guard playing basketball. Done right, they set up many others to look great.A strong collaboration makes your designers create better designs, and the engineers ship a better product faster. Those assists don’t show in the score sheet but matter. 4/ PMs also are limited by their team. If you are missing key players or have weak players at other positions, it will often look like the PM is weak, because they have to cover or fill in gaps.Two of the toughest are PMs w/o good design help or lacking a good tech lead partner 5/ There are many ways to become a PM. You cannot major in product management, so everyone gets their start different ways.If you think you want to be a PM, look into how people you follow did it. You may be surprised how varied it is. 6/ The best ways to become a PM: A) Excel at a growing company & ask to transition (seen it work great for marketers, customer success, design, & engineers) B) Do a side project or startup to show you can PM (this eliminates the chicken or egg problem of having never been a PM) 7/ Getting an MBA won’t help you become a good PM.It won’t make you a better PM if you already are one, either.If you want to become a GM at a company, an MBA makes sense, but it doesn’t help product managers. 8/ I’m sure the previous tweet is going to get some replies from a Sloanie, HBS grad, or Stanford MBA.As is always the case on Twitter, exceptions always get mentioned, but do not disprove the general statement. Save $200k if you love PM and don’t get an MBA. 9/ Most of the worst PMs I know or have heard about are either former engineers or MBAs. – MBAs often bring ego + don’t want to do the real work (talking to customers, iterating, etc) – Engineers can struggle with the interpersonal & relationship building side of PM’ing. 10/ If the sales team is at war with your product team, or people try to go straight to your engineers for pet requests, those are your fault.The #1 mistake that good PMs make is not building relationships across departments. Fix it with peer 1 on 1s: https://jasonevanish.com/2015/09/24/product-managers-peer-one-on-ones/ 11/ The #1 mistake mediocre & bad PMs make is not talking to customers.It’s scary getting outside the building, and they instead choose to be master BS artists.If this is you, change your ways in 2020. I wrote how-to’s I wish I had when I started: https://jasonevanish.com/product/ 12/ There are 31 flavors of product managers. An A+ PM at one company would be terrible for another company.If you’re hiring, recognize this could explain a short stint on a resume, and if you’re job hunting, don’t apply to PM jobs that don’t match your skills & strengths. 13/ PMs fit differently based on a variety of factors such as: – The business model (Ecommerce vs. SaaS vs. Ad tech are dramatically different jobs) – Company stage (Think public company vs. Series B vs. Seed) – Company culture (How are decisions made? What do they value?) 14/ The interview process for product management is completely broken. 15/ There would be no need for a whole market for products to “Master the PM Interview” if the interview process was actually good at most companies. 16/ The best interviews see if you can do the work *you’ll be hired to actually do.*Unfortunately, most PM interviews are veiled in hypotheticals that have nothing to do with the job, and are basically trick questions.Mastering trick ?s has nothing to do w/ being a good PM. 17/ Most product teams don’t check their applicant tracking system nor respond to applicants who apply cold.This is ironic given the trend of calling PMs “Mini-CEOs”, and recruiting is one of a CEO’s most important jobs… 🙄 18/ If you want to get a response on an application, get an intro into someone on the team.Don’t have a network? Search LinkedIn for lower level PMs. No one asks them for help, so they’re more likely to respond & have a call/coffee to discuss the culture, then refer you in. 19/ The first PM hire at startups is almost always a sacrificial lamb at the altar of learning for the founder.Read more why and what to do about it here: https://jasonevanish.com/2019/04/28/second-1st-pm/ 20/ The best job if you love startups is to be the *2nd* first PM hire, as you get all the opportunity, equity, and influence…all thanks to the PM that came before you.They died on hills, and helped the company learn what they actually wanted. 21/ Most customers don’t report bugs or give feedback.They just quietly suffer, or churn and then maybe tell you. 22/ I follow the “Rule of 10:” If 1 customer has an issue, there are probably 10 more that didn’t say anything. 23/ If you have an issue, get in the habit of sending a note to those affected. It’s good service AND it helps you quantify issues.I’ve had many engineers be surprised when they see that 2-3 tickets is actually affected TONS of users. Getting a list to email helps quantify it. 24/ Customers don’t care how hard (or easy) a feature was.All they care about is if you solve their problem or make it possible for them to do what they want to do. 25/ Quick Wins (aka – simple things you can do to make the product better for your customers) is a great way to let your team recharge and build some momentum after shipping a big feature.Sometimes customers are more excited by this than your big feature. 26/ Product/Market Fit exists for both buyers and end users.You can have one and not the other, and it will cause your business to sputter. 27/ Never become a PM at a company where the founders don’t understand what a PM does. You’ll get no credit for wins + all the blame for any problems.Fateful last words include “that feature went really well, but I have no idea how you contributed” & “Why can’t you just…” 🤦‍♂️ 28/ Jeff Bezos was right when he said this: “The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There’s something wrong with the way you are measuring it.” The problem is most PMs don’t talk to enough customers to tell this is the case. 29/ There’s nothing like doing product management in Silicon Valley. There, PMs are mostly considered vital and valuable parts of the company. This changes who does the job, and how they work. 30/ If you want to be world class at product management, you need to work a few years in Silicon Valley for this reason, and many more.Being around that many product obsessed, super smart people, will level you up rapidly. 31/ A long time product consultant in NYC told me, “NYC product is 20 years behind the Valley.” That feels directionally accurate.I think there are *many* smart, great PMs in town, but it’s structural/cultural issues that undervalue product here: https://medium.com/@Bosefina/how-to-be-a-product-driven-company-in-nyc-342fd689877e 32/ The mascot of NYC PMs would be Eeyore.The amount of self deprecation I’ve seen/heard that really feels like “haha, it’s funny, but I’m actually sad about it” has been one of my biggest surprises.Product is undervalued in many cases here! 33/ One of the hardest remote jobs is being a PM.Collaboration and innovation are where the magic happens, and that’s the greatest weakness of remote work.There are ways around some of it, but it takes a lot of conscious effort. 34/ If you’re a remote PM, use any flights or face time you get to try to solve your biggest challenges.Nothing remote can compare to the energy of being in the room at a white board with your designer and engineer(s) working on a problem. 35/ Also document, document, document, and share, share, share.You can’t walk by your pod and tell them about a great customer interview, so you need to find other ways to share what everyone needs to know…in a light weight way they’ll actually read/see. 36/ On the flip side, remote can help bring out some of the best work of your designers and engineers as they can more easily get into deep work and focus.Try doing that in an open office… 37/ The #1 skill to develop to be a better PM is to become a better writer. 38/ Writing touches everything you do as a PM: – Product specs – Updates to customers – Updates to stakeholders – Note taking in meetings – Notes and takeaways from customer interviews – Writing good survey questions – Communicating to your team 39/ To become a better writer as a PM, write more: – Blog posts – Internal documents – Tweets + Tweetstorms ;) – Personal notes to collect and organize your thoughts. – Emails and experiment with templates you use. 40/ The other way to become a better writer is to read more. Read regularly, and you’ll find your vocabulary gets stronger and you always learn. 41/ My favorite books to help you write #1: Tested Advertising Methods amzn.to/2sHa6OH – Copywriting goes everywhere from the marketing site, to help docs, to inside your product – You probably have to write some of that – The lessons apply beyond that H/t @LarsLofgren 42/ My fav books to help you write #2: Never Split the Difference amzn.to/2Ff5HoL – You do a lot of negotiating as a PM. This teaches you a better approach whether working with an angry customer, negotiating with another team for resources, or deftly handling your boss. 43/ My favorite books to help you write #3: How to Win Friends & Influence People amzn.to/2ZJOLQG – PMs are in the people business and this is the gold standard to working well with other people. This applies as much to what you write as what you say. 44/ The best way to earn respect from an engineer is to have data to back up what you tell them. Show them the customer interviews & quotes, or the analytics/data and you’ll engage them much more in what they’re building.This wins many more people over than a batle of opinions. 45/ The easiest trap to fall into as a PM is to ship things and never check the results of your work.Set a reminder for yourself 2 weeks or 2 months (depending on your company stage) later to go back and see what worked or didn’t. 46/ Setting up analytics and measurement of a new feature is as important as making sure all the buttons are where they should before launching your feature.It should be part of your product spec. (I like @joshelman‘s approach for that https://jasonevanish.com/2014/06/03/how-to-write-a-product-thesis-to-communicate-customer-needs-to-design-and-engineering-teams/ 47/ Ship early, ship often. 48/ I follow the “Estimation Rule of 2X:” Any project’s estimate is always off by 2X. – When it’s 2 vs 1 day, or 2 instead of 1 hour, it’s not a big deal. However, the bigger the project, the more brutal this becomes (4 weeks vs 2 weeks, 4 months vs 2 months is a problem). 49/ PMs should be tool agnostic. Whatever your engineers will actually use and keep up to date is the project management tool you want to use.The tool you love for the burn down and gannt charts is not the hill to die on if all your engineers hate it. 50/ “Your startup either dies, or lives long enough to end up using Jira.” This saying I used to hear 5 years ago still seems true. 51/ PMs should be infinitely curious. If you see something you don’t understand you should want to investigate. – Look into the analytics, ask the engineer to explain why, ask what motivated your designer to go that direction. You’ll learn, and it often sharpens their thinking. 52/ If you’re a Senior PM or higher, you should be mentoring people inside and out of your company.It’s great to give back AND it will make you a better PM. 53/ Every time I help someone as a mentor, I walk away with a few new ideas and usually a reminder of a few things I know I should do that are slipping. 54/ It’s never been easier to get a mentor. A few ways people have reached me, and I’ve gained help: – DMs on Twitter – Well crafted Linkedin messages – Cold emails after they read my blog and found my email address on there. – Replies to blog post emails from subscribers. 55/ Creating a bonus structure for PMs is a very risky move*. If your company’s needs to change, you want PMs to be flexible, but that’s hard to convince them if their bonus says otherwise.* Exception = E-commerce it can work since it’s easier to have a consistent target. 56/ Being pedantic is a terrible trait for a PM.Care about the details, but in a tactful way. Know what hills to die on, and how to have both strong opinions, *and* loosely hold them. 57/ The art of knowing where and how to draw the line between high quality and shipping on time is one of the hardest skills to develop as a PM.Those that master it are worth their weight in gold.I like @Wayne‘s essay on this: https://blog.usejournal.com/want-to-build-an-incredible-product-strive-for-the-delta-of-wow-f184b716af18 58/ Being a founder, even if your startup fails, makes you a much better PM. – You appreciate other roles more as you likely wore their hats – You learn to ruthlessly focus on the metric that matters most – You learn to deal with extreme constraints & the creativity that breeds 59/ A good PM is like glue & grease: – Glue to hold things together and fill in gaps – Grease to make things run more smoothly and adapt to changes 60/ Feature voting tools are for mediocre PMs. 61/ Show me a feature voting site for a product and I’ll show you a graveyard of unanswered customer requests and a lot of noise. 62/ Show me a product team that relies on data from feature voting, and I’ll show you a team that thinks they know their users a lot better than they actually do.Some day I’ll finally turn this into a blog post it deserves: Cool to be able to better track and organize what comes in via Intercom for PMs, but feature voting is terrible product management. Thread: https://t.co/ycodNk7XxX — Jason Evanish (@Evanish) July 29, 2018 63/ Companies that struggle with endless debates about their products and roadmap typically are arguing opinions, which ends up creating lots of politics and the most important person in the room making calls. 64/ Companies focused on their customers settle their debates one of two ways: 1) They ask “What’s best for the customer?” 2) They plan an experiment or table the discussion until they get some data/evidence 65/ Disagree & commit is an essential skill for any PM.You need to do it sometimes, and so does everyone else on your team.The key to avoiding resentment is to measure the results of the decision. Everyone is wrong sometimes, and that’s okay as long as you fix it later. 66/ Great product leaders are unsung heroes: Their teams get all the credit if it works, and if it doesn’t, they are the ones to have to answer. 67/ Getting customers to talk to is hard and interviewing them is time consuming, which is why so many PMs rarely do it. 68/ Getting customers to talk to you is a team effort: – Get customer success to forward you customers with issues in areas you’re fixing – Reach out yourself (email, @intercom, etc) – Partner with marketing on surveys & reach out to interesting answers. – Talk to sales leads 69/ Joining a company to change their product culture is like signing up to climb Everest in shorts.It may be possible, but there’s a good chance you’ll die trying. 70/ Product managers pre-product/market fit have a 10X harder job than those post-product/market fit. 71/ The stronger the product/market fit, the easier it is for any product manager to look smart and deliver wins.A lot will be obvious, and in many cases, anything you build will work. 72/ Being hired as a PM to help a startup with a solution looking for a problem always leads to failure.The power dynamics and negative inertia are too great. Also, the founders should have been figuring it out, not a hired gun with 0.5-2% of the company. 73/ Some PM jobs are really project management jobs with a power struggle left off of the job description. 74/ Sharing wins and happy customer quotes are great ways to give your team a jolt of energy.We have a Slack channel dedicated to it at Lighthouse called #HappyManagers specifically because of this. Anyone can scroll through to read stories, quotes, and testimonials. 75/ When something is broken, the best way I’ve found to motivate a designer or engineer is to share the customer’s words directly.It’s one thing when you say it, but when they hear a customer say it, it hits their ego differently in a good way so they want to fix. Side note: My favorite story of exactly this happening was also one of my proudest moments as the PM at KISSmetrics: web.archive.org/web/2012112303… 76/ Beautiful designs aren’t always usable or accessible designs. 77/ The #1 thing I’ve always had to remind designers I’ve work with is “Do you think a 50 year old with bifocals can read that”? 78/ McDonald’s theory is a great way to get your team unstuck:Suggest something you know will be rejected to get you back on the track of what you all do want. medium.com/@jonbell/mcdon… 79/ Harsh truth: The best products don’t always win.Sales & Marketing machines can be just as dominant, if not more so. 80/ In some markets, adding more features to demo & put on your pricing checklist is more valuable and important than any of the features being particularly good or useful. 81/ Tech debt doesn’t matter right until it might kill you. 82/ Adding another feature won’t help your company win if the ones you already have are broken. 83/ Tech debt is rarely talked about publicly, but many well known startups (both successes and failures) have faced major reckonings because of it. For example: 84/ As a rule of thumb, once you’re onto something charging to or past P/M fit, spend 20% of your time on tech debt.This keeps it from crippling you and halting all progress (or killing you) later.A nice overview is here: https://blog.crisp.se/2013/10/11/henrikkniberg/good-and-bad-technical-debt And the legendary Marty Cagan wrote about it here: https://svpg.com/engineering-wants-to-rewrite/ 85/ My favorite way to pay down tech debt is to revisit/iterate on old features. This way you squeeze in a few quick wins (remember tweet #25?) along with fixing a troubled, decaying part of the product.It also helps keep the engineer(s) working on it thinking about customers. 86/ I knew @SlackHQ Channels could help with customer bugs and issues, but I was pleasantly surprised how well it also works to source customer development & product feedback fast.This is an amazing post on the topic from founder/CEO @stewart: https://slackhq.com/shared-channels-growth-innovation 87/ Always be iterating on your processes. What worked for a small team or company will break as you grow.Fortunately, said breaks are predictable: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/company-growth-everything-breaks-25-employees/ 88/ The best way to iterate on your process is to make it a habit: – Post Mortems (even when things go well) – Peer 1 on 1s to get individual/private perspectives – Ask for feedback after a ticket is closed (What can I do differently to make that easier/better next time?) 89/ The best way to scale being a customer driven company is to get everyone involved.You can’t be everywhere, but you can teach bits and pieces to others. Teach them how to ask a good followup question over email, or to do some of their own interviews. 90/ You need thick skin as a PM. You will fail and need to find another way. You will take more blame than you probably deserve.I’ve interviewed and been rejected by more companies than you’d ever guess. Lost many deals. Been flaked on by customers over and over. It happens 🤷‍♂️ 91/ Focus groups are a disaster. Customer development is *one* customer at a time.You need to hear their individual stories and situations, not group think. 92/ Remember what Steve Jobs said on simplicity:“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end”The best solution is usually not the first idea. Keep pushing to get it right to unlock magic. 93/ Sometimes the best move is to kill a feature, not add another. 94/ My favorite way to learn is to read based on the biggest challenge I’m currently facing.This insures you immediately apply it to your work…and I find also motivates you to finish reading faster.I’ll share some good places to start after #100 95/ The product tours industry feels universally overpriced.None of them show you how to calculate ROI for what they charge, and typically it’s a small part of successful onboarding + educating users. 96/ Onboarding is really hard.- Customers don’t read. – They skip overviews and tours. – They quickly get bored of videos…then complain they “don’t get it.”And it’s still your job to help them get to the AHA! moment. 97/ The best way I’ve learned to make onboarding work is to use a lot of “lead bullets” mixed with experimentation.A little bit of everything makes it so there’s something for everyone.Ideally, you’ll simplify & help them focus on 1 thing, but that can be resource intensive. 98/ @intercom is the best product category for startup PMs since the development of modern analytics changed how we measure and made data accessible to everyone. 99/ Some mistakes you can learn from others and avoid. Others end up being learned the hard way.Be nice. What’s obvious to you may be a difficult lesson for others, and vice versa.This is especially true in product given how varied all our backgrounds are. 100/ Time management is a crucial skill as a PM; know where all your hours go every day & make sure you get the important stuff done.This video is a great way to conceptualize that: VIDEO Further Reading: Want to learn more PM skills, my reply here gives a few people to start with: – Read lots of books. My favorites by category here: https://jasonevanish.com/bookshelf – Rafael Balbi: Who are some great PMs you regard from the west coast? I’ve been interested to learn more about these differences. A few off the top of my head (some aren’t PMs anymore or were pm minded founders but their blog posts and presentations are still gold) @cagan @joshelman @BrianNorgard @rrhoover @jmj @hnshah @Pv @seanrose @Bosefina @cindyalvarez @DesignersGeeks @wfjackson3 @ShaanVP @danolsen Also would add @kennethn and his great blog: https://kennorton.com/newsletter/ and the classic post by @bhorowitz Search for their blogs and you’ll find gold mines. I’d also add that part of it is company structure / culture, not a difference in skills. It sets you free to do things that in a different structure and valuing of product that wouldn’t allow or would be serious upstream swimming. I’ve dedicated the last 5 years of my life to helping people be better managers. If you have a big team to manage, sign up for a trial to make your 1 on 1s organized, motivating, and accountable, or tell your eng. manager to check us out: getlighthouse.com Learn something? Give this tweetstorm a Retweet or a Share: Should I get in on the 1 like = 1 take (max 100) train and tweet about product management? 10 Likes and I'll start a thread of product tips and 🌶️takes. — Jason Evanish (@Evanish) January 2, 2020

#Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Evanish

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thinktosee · 5 years ago

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INVITATION TO FORMER US PRESIDENT OBAMA - A SATIRE

Barack and Michelle Obama. Image courtesy Amazon.com

OPENER

Today’s post continues in the tradition of David C. Singh. A funny and precocious youth who believed in honouring his right to free speech, till the very end.

AN INVITATION TO FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA – a satire

Dear President Obama,

Greetings from the merlion city of singapore. Yes, I know, our beast is special. It’s a cross between a mermaid and a lion. The first a fairy tale creature, just like this city, while the second, we only see in mandai, in a lock-up, like so many creatures here. They must have been too intelligent and critical.

Anyway Sir, let’s get to the point of why I am writing to you, as I don’t want to waste your time. Not that you are busy now or anything like it since you left the White House nearly three years ago. Being unemployed has its compensations however – we can always tell folks that we are writing a book! That will get their attention. By the way, how much did you get for your memoir? Sorry, I tend to go off tangent. Now back to why I am writing to you :

WE HAVE A JOB FOR YOU!

I am sure you will enjoy it, although I do apologize that you are eminently over-qualified and that it’s way down the level of your skills set. But you know what? It pays sooooo much higher than what you got as U.S. President, including all the perks which went with that! Ok, ok….the job title. Please don’t get disappointed, ok? Hold your breath now. It’s……..

PRIME MINISTER OF SINGAPORE!

I know. It’s a midsized-city mayor’s job. Not up to the standards of talent which you, a successful foreigner possess. Think about it, my dear Obama – instead of getting US$400,000 annually as you did as U.S. President, you will receive USD 1.31M as mayor, oops, sorry, prime minister of the empire of singapore, which also includes our large islands of Ubin, Sentosa and many smaller ones. A much smaller job it may be but pays much more. Gee, that’s everybody’s dream. And just to make sure we get your undivided attention to this serious proposal, we are quite prepared to throw in the job of the president of singapore too. Imagine that – 2 for 1. Should you accept this mission, Mr. Obama, you will be president and prime minister. And for the first time in our short political history, we will have a real president, with real powers! And a really qualified person for it to boot! It will be a real job too! And the annual pay of USD 1.15M for the president of singapore will go on top of what you will get as prime minister. How do you like this double whammy, my president cum prime minister?

And Michelle? Oh yeah, the charming and soooo intelligent Mrs. Obama. Well, we are not unkind as the Americans were to her during your two terms as U.S. president. It must have been so hard on Mrs. Obama. All that immense talent unused, just being First Lady-like. She was not only a successful lawyer before, but also a terrific administrator and human being, especially in her support for the poor! Just like you with human rights and all, and that Nobel Peace Prize. Way to go, Brother.

As I said, we are not unkind. There’s a job too here for Mrs. Obama. But I don’t want to insult her. It’s way below her skills set. And I really don’t know what it pays. No one except the incumbent seems to know. But I am guessing it pays much, much better than your 2-in-1. Impressed? Yes, sir. It’s a public job. I know, but that’s a fact – no one knows what this job pays. Again, I am not sure how Michelle will feel about this, but at least it’s a Management job! And you know what, she will really have a chance to do what she likes – helping us poor folks here. The job? Why, the head of Temasek, our sovereign wealth fund. I am confident Michelle will do a fine job of stretching the returns on our life-long savings. And if she does that, why, she will get a huge bonus too! Except, I don’t know what the amount is. No one knows. But I know it’s huge!

Hold on. I’m not done, sir. Now since you will be the prez-pm, do we really need to pretend anymore who really is the de facto defense minister? Yes, sir. The US. Commander, Indo-Pacific Command is our man or woman! He or she’s been watching over the region like a hawk since the end of World War Two. He or she decides who can and cannot play in the malacca straits and south-china sea and who needs more beautiful and costly toys, like missiles, fighter jets and tanks to keep up with the Joneses. So why not just officially declare him or her as our defence minister? And besides, he or she’s for real - been in a real combat, and not once mind you. So he or she really understands military doctrine first hand, unlike the paper-bearing generals in our midst. So really, what we are proposing here is to scrap the whole defence forces of singapore, starting from the top. Let’s de-layer that, as they like to say in a corporate “right-sizing” exercise. Our real defence forces since WW2 had always been the U.S. 7th Fleet. No one messes with them. By removing the redundancies or duplications in our defence posture, we save over $15 billion annually. Wow! And the beauty of this is our idealistic youth can now forego the two years of enforced brainwashing known as national service. They can be free to pursue their dreams and keep their heads unsanitized, like any normal human being.

And something else, with the U.S. Commander, Indo-Pacific heading up defense, do we really have to go on pretending too that we have a foreign policy? You know of course, we don’t have one. It’s always been the U.S. foreign policy. So really, we can also scrap the foreign ministry and save a few more billions there. The U.S. Commander, Indo-Pacific Command will also be our foreign minister. He or she speaks with unmatched authority. Try messing with him or her!

One other thing, with Michelle and you in charge, we need not now spend zillions to attract investments and tourists with all the high-powered promotional visits abroad by the folks in the Economic Development and Tourism Boards. Your world-class stature is more than enough to get the dollars into the city. Everyone loves and wants to rub shoulders with both of you. And your humility and confidence in your rule. Man, those media folks here will cotton to you the way a bee does to honey. No more libel suits and other fear-mongering stunts. Instead, we finally will get to say publicly what we have always said privately. Ain’t that sweet, Bro? A real honest and passionate society instead of a hypocritical or fake one. The world will beat a path to our doorstep. You are my man!

One final thing, Bro. You will need a political party to support you. Have I got a name for you. Ready? It’s Real Action Party (RAP). For a real caring and sensitive guy like you. Huh? Oh them. I can’t remember what is the name of the current party as I don’t subscribe to the local msm. But I hear in the coffeeshops among the Ah Pehs, that party’s unofficial name is NAP. I think it stands for No Action Party, although I cannot be sure. Best you check with your CIA folks in Langley, ok? They know more than we do about this city. In fact, they know more about anything, including nothing, than anyone else in this world. Why, just ask Prez Trump! He’s been twittering non-stop about it since he came on board.

Well Sir Obama, I do hope Michelle and you find this all very fascinating. I have one final surprise. Should you accept this mission, you will not be living in hardship as many expats do when they work abroad in 3rd and 4th world countries. No sirree. We have more class than that. Michelle, you and your lovely children will be housed in the Istana or Palace. That’s not equivalent to your White House, which is just a house after all. No sir. The Istana is much fancier! This is a huge palace centered over 100 acres right dab in the middle of land-scarce singapore city. Why, your White House is tiny at just 18 acres, compared to the Istana. Pathetic really. And y’all Americans always think you have the bestest of everything! Now we here, we know how to take care of our own. Everything beyond world class – the pay, lodgings, bonus, very long or permanent job tenures for public officials, etc. And you know what? We just love foreign talents like Michelle and you. We know you will like it here, although the jobs for both of you are far below your skills set. But hey! It’s the thought that matters right?

I really look forward to hearing from you on this invitation to be our mayor…er sorry, president-cum-prime minister. And please do inform the Commander of the Indo Pacific Command that we look forward to having him and also his marines here in the open, rather than cooped up there unseen and unheard in the north of the island. What a waste of social talent. Let us mingle and integrate, ok?

Sincerely yours, Sir.

PS : By the way, with the billions of dollars we will save from scrapping the defence and foreign ministries, I like to propose the money be disbursed toward a free education for every citizen from grade school to university. No better investment than this – an investment in our future. And the money which is left from that be disbursed to all the senior citizens as a Universal Basic Income. And yet still what’s left, we compensate all the singles, including LGBTQ folks who had been denied public housing till they reached middle age.

What’dya say Bro? Don’t y’all love this idea?

In the Spirit of David Cornelius Singh

David’s father

Email : [email protected]

https://thinktosee.tumblr.com/

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abundantchewtoys · 6 years ago

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HS Epi, Meat p6 reaction

I gotta say, snatching people from the Game Over timeline was a good way to invest us back into these characters. Plus, unlike the post-canon selves, they don't have 'certain victory' all written over them - by which I mean that I think it's unlikely they would be killed outside Universe C, since its existence and their ability to live in it was their Ultimate Reward. Admittedly, the planet they've inherited is less than ideal, but that was never stipulated in the rules.

Meanwhile, John himself with his retcon powers remains more earthed in the plot, also because this was the timeline he originated from in the first place. Still unsure how the fact there's 1 John but 2 versions of his selves will get resolved though.

I kind of doubt the New Game Plus versions (Cosmic Reset? still unsure on what to call them) are going to be joining their adult selves in Universe C, though the idea of the post-canon selves serving as guardians amuses me. I also doubt the NGP's are going to create their own timeline in Universe C to inhabit, with John joining them after 7 years. They would be deprived of 7 years of John, and even though he mostly kept to himself in the post-canon timeline, that would kind of suck, and not even Dirk creating an Autoresponder for John could bridge the time difference adequately. So, I figure they might just pick up one of the spare teen Johns (or rather, export one from the timeline, just like how John is now duplicating the Game Over selves). Maybe the one (John) that John sent to LOWAS when he went back to consult Terezi.

... Hmm, after seeing Blaperile checking out the Load Game & Save Game links on Homestuck, I think I've decided to call this new timeline the Reload timeline!! :D

Anyway, I suppose we're in for a perspective switch back to John now, and indeed like I said previously, I think LOLAR is the most likely candidate. It wouldn't feel entirely right for John to leave Rose hanging for now in favour of, say, fetching Dirk first.

---

"The sky is really blue. But it’s a different kind of blue than Earth C’s sky; it’s less, somehow, like someone took a photo of the sky and turned the contrast down a little, just enough to make the clouds blend into the horizon." ... This is Andrew Hussie criticizing his own art, isn't it? Hahah! This must be LOLAR, so I guess it's back to John now, since we're in Command Prompt Land again.

"That is to say, it isn’t the kind of sky promised by a paradise planet. Just an ordinary one." Oh sure, that's the in-story explanation: it lacks promise.

"You realize suddenly how much you’ve missed the ordinary, as opposed to the supposedly perfect." Oooh, heheh, guess John got bored by the idyllic parts of Earth C.

"You’ve been away from home almost as many years as you lived there. It’s not just the sky. Everything else is exactly and nothing like you remembered it: the scent of damp grass, the quality of the air, the solitude." Wait what? John went back to Earth?? What plot point could he mess up there without messing up the events leading up to the Reload timeline? ... Has he travelled back to his own atmospheric page? Since he says he's "home", it isn't the exile's future or Dirk and Roxy's. Guess it'll be either John's actual home or Jane's, but... What could he do here that wouldn't mess up the timeline?? ... Steal Jane's Dad just before she Enters? No, wait, she tried to follow him around on LOCAH...

Yeah, Blaperile's correct in that if he sees his Dad, he'll be very sad.

"A woodpecker raps away incessantly at the tree with the tire swing outside your old bedroom window." XDSFSFSF, so it's really his home, in the past! ... I would rather like him to visit his Dad's past, but I doubt we'll ever see his childhood. Still, what could Rose have sent him here to retrieve?

"You couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, so you and your little army are sitting in a circle in your old backyard exactly one week before the meteors hit." Hopy shit, he didn't zap them to blankspace???? Hah, I guess John's at school and Dad's at work. And the neighbours... Well, the suburb might be deserted during office hours, actually. Would be funny if in the background, an elder crazy cat lady is seen ogling them from behind her curtains, or something.

Wow, okay, so, in case he's already went and fetched... everyone of the B1 and B2 kids, and his "little army" is complete, this must be a time skip! That must've been an awkward meeting altogether! Welp, so much for the conversation with Terezi, and seeing Karkat & Kanaya's response (in case he fetched Jane right about the time she was on LOFAF).

"It’s you, Rose, Dave, Jade, and all four of your teenage progenitors, each dressed in god tier garb. No trolls. No one who can die" Yep... Guess, like some of the platform conversations, as well as the LOMAX ones, we'll just have to imagine all the fluff. It's the Meat path for a reason, after all. We're jumping straight to the Meat of the rest of the "meat-up". :mspa:

"No one who can die from anything less than a heroic sacrifice. At least, this is what you assume to be the reasoning for Rose’s instructions to assemble your party this way." Well, Rose might have had a Light vision showing only they went to confront Caliborn, so then this is just self-fullfilling prophecy. Guess we're left with the idea that, in the abandoned session, everything might still have gone to shit, if no-one of these kids came back. We know how the confrontation between Aranea and )(IC went, and how the trolls fared against them all. Eeesh, I hope that's not the fate in store for these versions of Terezi, Kanaya and Karkat. One Game Over death for them was enough.

"Wind slices down the street, between the neat rows of bungalows. It’s chilly, carrying air from the mountaintops with it. Even that feels different. The wind moves through you now, under your skin and right into your bones, skimming their hollows the same way it does the homes of your salamander neighbors, or the open mailbox in front of your childhood house." The wind still skims the void, but the boy is part of the wind now. Hey, I didn't know of the mountains near John's home. Are they in the direction of Pipe lake?

"The smell of a cake baking wafts from the open window and the sick stench of browning sugar fills the yard. You used to hate that too, but now it makes you want to—" ... PFffff, so Dad IS home. Unless he put a cake in the oven and put a timer on, we know he owns a timer. Now I picture Dad seeing a bunch of people in coloured pyjamas in his yard and immediately putting a cake on. Those poor, homeless clowns deserve some real food after all. :mspa:

"> Dude, don’t cry in front of all the cool teen versions of your friends.

You hold back your tears with a big, ugly snort." Aww... I actually thought he wanted to just run in and hug his Dad, actually. But this...

"Jake is sort of ruining the mood anyway by bouncing away on your old Green Slime pogo. Doesn’t he realize how dangerous that thing is? Of course not. The fool." Jake, stop, what are you doing. Behave yourself, man! It's like he's a goddamned empty-headed consort.

"Dave fractures the silence by broaching a subject that’s on everyone’s mind but yours, apparently." Why he's an adult now?

"DAVE: so whats gonna happen to everyone we left in the wrecked time line" ... How thoughtful, actually. I mean, John can't just dismiss them as irrelevant. No matter the actual state of the timeline and their relevance to the ending, Kanaya's Rose's girlfriend, Terezi is Dave's ex, Karkat is still John's buddy and the mayor is the mayor! The other dudes, PM and the villains, as well as the sprites though, are less relevant to this party. Hope John doesn't say the timeline has vanished into the void by now, like Alt Future Dave's.

"JOHN: uh, well. JOHN: i don’t know actually. i’ve been to that time line four times now and it always pretty much goes to shit." It also happens to be your timeline. So, what does he count as his separate appearances in the timeline, then? He appeared in Dave's room, out in LOHAC, on LOFAF, on Derse, went back to LOHAC, appeared after Game Over, zapped back to meet with Terezi, and now he's zapped back to retrieve everyone! Maybe he's taking some of those appearances as a single one. Like the original Game Over is one, Reload is two, and then some other times?

"DAVE: oh ROSE: This has been bothering me as well. Is Kanaya going to be ok? ROSE: And by Kanaya, I guess I mean... everyone?" I knew it. ... Can Kanaya be a euphemism for everyone from now on? :mspa:

"DAVE: yeah what about karkat DAVE: and terezi DAVE: and the MAYOR?? JADE: oh my god!!!!! DAVE: what JADE: actually dave, i hate to say it but... JADE: i think john might have actually saved the mayor by bringing us all here?" Okay, Jade is indeed fine again. Hey, yeah, she was about to threaten the mayor to get Dave to cooperate, wasn't she? Ooooh, this marks it, this is the first time every B1 kid was featured in the same conversation. What a unique accomplishment!

"DAVE: jade that is seriously uncool JADE: i KNOW! JADE: i was gonna kick him right into the lava! DAVE: that is fucked up on so many levels i dont even know where to begin DAVE: its like an escher staircase of cartoon villainy" Yes, Grimbark Jade wasn't all bark! But her idea of villainy was childish on some levels still, because that's just what she's like!

"DAVE: i got nothing DAVE: its so DAVE: so... JADE: grimbark? :B woof woof DAVE: jesus no jade its stone cold evil DAVE: i cant believe you just said that shit and then woofed at me DAVE: i cant DAVE: i cant even look at you right now" Yes, Dave was really attached to the mayor in this timeline, even more so than in the final timeline leading to Universe C. But uh, welp, I hope this doesn't cause any fractures! We got to remember, they aren't in the best place here, emotionally. All of them still have all these unresolved psychological issues, more so than the post-canon selves.

"JOHN: uh, everyone, can we...

Everyone turns to look at you immediately, like you’re an authority. Which you kind of are." Yes, John, you can't bring a group of teenagers together as an adult without knowing something about handling emotional outbursts. Face it... You're a dad now. :P Or at least a big brother.

"You are struck with the sudden and uncomfortable realization that you are the only adult in the yard. You’ve never felt like an adult until this moment. Eighteen came and went and nothing really changed except that you’re pretty certain you could grow a bitchin’ mustache now if you wanted." That's just how it is, you feel like the same vaguely irresponsible person until you are trust back into a group of people where the age difference is felt the hardest. And heheh, now I'm reminded of Davesprite's note impersonating Dad, chiding John about growing facial hair in his absence. :P

"And you might even have one by now, if you didn’t feel a sense of duty to uphold the sacred Egbert family tradition of shaving at least once per day, even if it isn’t really necessary. You owe at least that much to the memory of your departed father." Aww.

"JOHN: let’s chill out for a minute. i’m sure this is all very confusing to all of you. JOHN: about the time line you’re leaving behind... yeah, i get it. it’s weird. JOHN: i’ve already left one major time line behind. well, two if you count the one i just came from, where we’re all adults. JOHN: the truth is, i have no idea what happens to these time lines and all the people living in them, when i just... zap out of them, to use my retcon powers to change stuff?" For doomed timelines it's simple: you either die and become a ghost, you go back to change the timeline, or you get erased when someone does the second thing. But for John's retconned timelines, yeah, it's not as clear. If it doesn't work like with doomed timelines, there's already a bunch of duplicate timelines out there with associated ghosts in the dreambubbles. Meaning a lot of new confused human ghosts, which we haven't seen anything of until now. I wonder, dead or alive, if any of these duplicates will be brought up again. Well, besides a John like I've already theorized.

"JOHN: they might stop existing completely. i don’t know. JOHN: the thing is, we can’t really think about it. JOHN: it’s tough, but if we’re all acting like heroes here, and trying to do the right thing, then we have to put it all behind us. JOHN: it’s a sacrifice we’re making. JOHN: i mean, we’re risking our lives by fighting a powerful monster, sure." This would be a rousing speech if you weren't the one to have kidnapped them. And, seeing as you're an adult and they're teens, kidnap is still the right word here. Can't wait to hear input from the B2 kids about this, actually. Dirk could blow all John's arguments of the table in a heartbeat, actually. Heheh. HEARTbeat.

"JOHN: but the sacrifice i’m talking about... is saying goodbye to the life we thought we belonged to, and all the people in it. JOHN: probably forever. JOHN: it sucks, and i’m sorry i had to ask this of you all. JOHN: but there’s no other way. JOHN: everyone who has ever existed, and will ever exist, is counting on us... i think? JOHN: so... JOHN: yeah.

> Shrug." So on the one hand, John acknowledges he might have left Earth C forgood, but on the other hand he saw it as a goodbye, not a farewell. Still, he's right to address the threat Lord English poses to Paradox Space as well as the continued existence of the universes inside Genesis Frogs. I mean, the continued existence without threat of annihilation by a time travelling mobster.

"It’s all you can think to do to punctuate your speech of lukewarm inspirational value. Judging from the confused looks from the others, all of them may share your assessment of your own oratorical skills, except for one person. She’s perked up at your spiel, regarding you with alert and admiring eyes." Boyfriend material, isn't he, Roxy? :P Yeah, how's John going to take this rehash of their first meeting. It's one thing to long back to a moment, but to revisit it, him an adult and she a teen? Awwwwkwwwwaaaard.

"ROXY: that was a fine ass speech and idk if i speak for the rest of my peeps here but im fuckin psyched ROXY: lets do this shit" Well yeah, Roxy did have her shit together the best out of everyone. She overcame her character flaw (the drinking) on her own.

"She *wonks* at you." Her typos transcend media.

" JOHN: uh.

You weren’t prepared to get passively hit on by the Definitely Not Legal version of a girl you used to have a crush on at the age she was when you first met her, only a few hours after you watched the Actually Legal version of her engage in passionate hand-holding with her possibly aromantic skeleton alien monster girlfriend. You start to sweat, and again the unwelcome odor of undercooked meat emanating from your body makes itself known to your nose." Of course Roxy is more okay to hit on him, see her Dad crush. Meanwhile, John has all this *history* he's thinking about. Also, he might actually don't want to interfere with the "whatever" that is Roxy/Calliope! That would be sportive of him, if it were true. Lastly, how many times is the meat-odored sweat going to remind John which path he's in, hahah. ... Is it the same in the Candy path, some sickening sweet smell sticking to him? Crumbs of sugar in his hair?

"You quickly distance your mind from any additional discomfiting thoughts about your old and semi-ex flame, and propel yourself into a wildly unrehearsed tactical planning session. You review each of your abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and then cobble together a reasonably sound approach to besieging a young and bratty version of Lord English by way of surprise attack. The planning is mostly disorganized and structureless, although some common themes that often recur involve you and your original three friends leading the charge, since you are the oldest and wisest, and therefore the strongest, with the exception of Jade, whose gaudy array of powers make her the most formidable of the group, bar none. Aside from that, it appears the consensus is that the melee will likely devolve into an absolute free-for-all—at least going by the general patterns of incoherent banter, shit-talking, and points of pedantic tactical disagreement plaguing the jam session. You overhear someone making mention of... a huge, gay hope bubble? That can’t be right, but you didn’t catch who said it. A flamboyant pink spell? Yeah, this conversation is off the rails now." Yeah, these guys were never good at the finesses of planning things out. Partially due to their teen problems, but in the final timeline before Collide, they weren't really planning anything either beyond deciding how to split up. ... How and where did the Hope and Heart powers of Jake and Dirk become known to the B2 kids, though? Did John whisk them away at a later point in their timeline, after Brain Ghost Dirk had already manifested and Jake was killed once by Aranea? Oh, and only by rereading do I understand John designated himself as the oldest and wisest and strongest barring Jade, I thought he meant all four B1 kids, that couldn't be right.

"At the precise moment you believe the meeting has outlasted its usefulness, Jake does you the favor of effectively pounding the gavel for adjournment by rocking back a bit too far on your lawn pogo and launching himself over the top of the ride on the next bounce. He face-plants right into the dirt." Still the cosmic butt monkey then. Gotta love the juxtaposition with his more 'mature' version on the previous page. Also, maybe Blaperile is right and the Hope & Heart powers were speculated on, not actually witnessed. Unless Rose had a Light epiphany.

"Dirk goes to help your yard clean the Jake off its dirt." ... Yes. That is definitely a thing that can be really happening.

"Jade follows, to help out. It seems she wants to chat with Jake, considering it’s the first time they’ve met, from her perspective. Some eruptions of chatter can be heard from other members of the group." Aww, okay, it's time for a platform conversation parallel. Who'll approach John then, Roxy? But Rose would want to talk to her at some point, too.

"It’s easy to forget, since the reunion between your friends and all your young relatives happened so long ago from your point of view, but this is all quite novel to everyone here. They’ve hardly had a moment to process it, since your plan to drag them all off to fight Lord English has understandably stolen the thunder of an otherwise poignant homecoming. Poor kids, you think." Wow, this alienation is really something. It must be jarring to experience some shit for the semi-second time, seeing people with baggage that, from your perspective, they've already cast aside.

"You decide to give the teens some space to work through their shit before you take off to save the universe." Off screen reunion time! But where will John head to?

"You end up wandering all the way around to the other side of your house," Is he going to meet Dad by accident? Or at least watch him from a distance? I figured he couldn't do much in the yard without being noticed if Dad was home, but maybe I was wrong. I like Blaperile's idea that John will leave him a note. He could forge one, making it look like Nanna wrote it, actually. ... Or maybe he will write something his teen self wouldn't know how to put into words, yet...

"Your dad’s sitting right there, smoking his pipe and operating his professional-looking, boring, gray PDA. He’s got the kitchen timer set up on his desk, and you can hear the notes of his favorite fatherly jazz album filtering out through the window, which is open only an inch." Oh, so Dad is home!! Guess he was to engrossed in his interests to notice anything amiss, and John was ignorant of his Dad's actions that day, apparently. ... No mention of the Crosbytop, but then that might have been too silly for this emotional moment. Poor John. He won't be able to contact him without messing up the timeline, and anything less than direct contact (a note, PDA message) might ring hollow in his ears too. It's sad to think, but there's no saving his Dad, not without creating another timeline, and that might have unforeseen consequences. But John might still have thought about it, or start thinking about it. Unless he feels that doing so would rob the event of importance, plus that he would start feeling obligated to save everyone's loved ones once he started. His Dad raised him better than to be so self-centered!

"The sun is hitting the glass in such a way that you can’t see his face." Oh, he's facing the window? I thought he was sitting behind the desk, but apparently he was somewhere else, near the grammophone, perhaps. Also, featureless guardian, that never stopped being a thing!

"> This is probably the last time you’ll ever have the chance to talk to him...

The urge is overwhelming. But you can’t, and not just because your feet won’t move and your throat is closing up. It’s just that... it would be a really bad idea to bother him. It would totally freak him out, to have an adult version of his son show up out of the blue and knock on his window like a creep. He probably wouldn’t even recognize you."

:/ True enough.

But John didn't think about rewriting the timeline to save him so much as how his immediate action would be responded to in the moment.

"> Fair enough. It’s time to go, John." The narrative prompts are a lot more lenient and respectful than in Homestuck proper.

"You return to the backyard. Your teen friends have split off into genetically segmented groups: Roxy and Rose sitting in the grass, Jade and your shared ecto-parents laughing together by the Green Slime pogo, and the Striders leaning against the farthest fence, with a tense foot and a half of space between them. It’s heartwarming." I think the Strider conversation is going about as good as on LOPAK. Hopefully even smoother, because the original took a while to get going.

Though it must be a tad painful for John to watch all this unfold, seeing as he can't have the reunion he so desires.

"But something doesn’t feel right about it to you, possibly for selfish reasons. It’s the selfishness of your own perspective, of wanting the memories you had of the reunion between all these people to be the most notable and legitimate manifestation of this event. To see the moment echo, or play out all over again, to overhear the heartfelt confessions repeat themselves... It feels cheap. To you, that is. To the man who lived through it all before and selfishly doesn’t want to have the memory tarnished with a tawdry reprisal" Yeah, John was hoping that lending them legitimacy through the retcon would improve on the conversations being had. And his memory of the event he experienced was already so gilded, his expectations were sky-high in this regard. ... I feel like the narration might be acknowledging the grown-up fans in this.

"You wonder. Do you see these teen versions of your friends as “real”? Are you treating them, at Rose’s behest, as simple puppets? Doing your part to insist they fill friend-shaped recesses in an essential plan to stabilize all else that can be considered important, a distinction no longer applying to them? Do you care at all about whatever fate it may be that you are sentencing these children to? Are you becoming as complicit in the fatalistic evils of Paradox Space as Lord English himself? Are you becoming a monster, John Egbert?" These are good questions for John to have. Because for him to not have qualms, he would be the monster he fears to become. John has to open his heart to them. Blaperile has a good point though, John might have felt this alienated from the post-canon versions of his friends too, whether he realizes it or not. That could explain him losing touch with them. But yeah. He's here now, adult or not. He's got to make due, and see if he can't reconnect with either version of his friends. He'll become a better friend for it.

John never had a problem with meeting another version of himself like the other kids had, but maybe it was all along because that kind of existential crisis is only caused in him through meeting people he should love but feels alienated from: Dad, these versions of his friends, all the ghosts in the dreambubbles...

"JOHN: uh, hey kids... ROSE: Please, Adult John, don’t do that." Oh hell yes. Better nip that denominator in the bud, Rose. (Heh, Rosebud.)

"It’s obvious that she’s trying very hard to hide her apprehension. ROSE: Is it time to go? JOHN: yeah. JOHN: i mean... JOHN: no, if you want to be technical. i can zap us in wherever, whenever. we have all the time in the universe if we want it. ROSE: But if we don’t leave now, you’re afraid we never will? JOHN: heh."

I love how in-tune Rose and John are, no matter how much time and space has separated them.

"JOHN: i guess it’s true that people don’t really change. they just grow up?

Rose gives Roxy a strange look, appearing to silently acknowledge an entire conversation that has been taking place, using a great volume of words that aren’t being spoken." Heh, Rose and Roxy's conversation on the platform was about their moms and how different or not the other was to that person. I take it their conversation went in the same direction this time around. I think John's response is just more proof to the veracity of the claim. Also, more proof on the pile of the ultimate self, on the side, actually. The idea being kind of like, they're the same person but different due to the circumstance.

" ROSE: I guess.

She smiles." Also, for Rose it must be nice to see the boy she knew still lives inside the man she doesn't know yet.

"> Get the show on the road. JOHN: okay everyone... i’ve never zapped this many people before so let’s all just... JOHN: uh, hold hands, maybe? in a circle, i mean. that should work. DAVE: god this is so lame JADE: its not lame its perfect!!! DAVE: nah JOHN: shh! JOHN: alright. is everyone ready, then?" Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya. :P Dirk, Jake and Jane didn't get any lines yet, that'll be something for a later page. ... Hah, Blaperile has a good point. John zapped a planet away, twice! Why would this bother him now? :P

... Is the Masterpiece really up next, wow. (After a scene change to Universe C.)

"Only Jade says yes enthusiastically." God, I really missed simply happy Jade. We might still see her on Universe C, but it's with the knowledge she spent three years without any real sapient friends but Jaspersprite & Nannasprite.

"The last thing you hear before zapping away is your dad’s kitchen timer going off in his study." Time's up! Appropriate, if they're really going to confront Jake now.

I got to say, it would be very nice seeing the Masterpiece how it really happened, and not what Caliborn told us. I wonder what he lied about, if anything. It would seem noteworthy to mention John was an adult, but then again, humans might all look alike to cherubs. It's true that Arquiusprite wasn't mentioned on the character list, but I blaim it on Equius being Voided out, it's been a theme before. It's his aspect, the Expatriate's sign hid the cue ball from Doc Scratch' sight, Gamzee used Equius blood to erase himself from the tomb, and so on.

I also think there are odds that characters without dialogue are not mentioned on the character list, like WV. Though it would be weird for Equius/Arquiusprite to be the only troll without dialogue. Davepeta represents the Collide timeline's Nepeta, so that explains her absence from the list.

Still, it would need to be explained how Arquiusprite got there and from what timeline. My money is on him uploading himself through Lil' Seb.

... I thought of something. If we start from the assumption Caliborn's Earth is Earth C in the far future, and not put their by say Condy after Game Over, then logically Lil' Seb, Arquiusprite and Gamzee are all from the Collide timeline.

#homestuck #homestuck epilogues #upd8 #reaction #spoiler alert #john egbert #B1 #B2

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