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Top 3 Aha Moments in Real Estate with Jay Conner & Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

https://www.jayconner.com/top-3-aha-moments-in-real-estate-with-jay-conner-chaffee-thanh-nguyen/

Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner

Jay Conner was joined by his good friend Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen. They talked about some of the “Aha! Moments” in the real estate business.

In addition, they also conversed about “Private Money”. What is Private Money? How and where you can get private money to fund your deals.

All these and more in this episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen is an International Speaker, #1 Best Selling Author, and Business and Success Coach.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

After college, he worked in Corporate America for over 11 years as an Engineer and Senior IT Business Analyst.

He was a Certified Project Management Professional with the internationally recognized Project Management Institute for 6 years.

Using his corporate experience, he went on to start multiple businesses starting in 2002, including Real Estate Investing where he has invested in multiple states across the nation.

His passion, helping others achieve their highest potential in both business and in life.

As a refugee himself, Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen is committed to helping others and giving back. He is very active within his community serving within the Jaycees as a 10th Degree Jaycee, US Jaycee Senator #70583, and a JCI Certified National Trainer.

Timestamps:

0:01 – Get Ready To Be Plugged Into The Money

0:39 – Today’s guest: Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

1:34 – Jay’s New Book: “Where To Get The Money Now” –https://www.JayConner.com/Book

2:13 – Chaffee, one of the editors of Jay’s new book talks about why you need to get this book now!

3:19 – Aha! Moments in Real Estate – Private Money Academy Conference

4:43 – Who is Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen?

8:42 – 1st Aha! Moment: Substituting the collateral allows the lender to continue earning interest on a loan for a longer period of time, should the original property sell in less than 6 months.

10:19 – What is Private Money? Who is a Private Lender?

15:43 – 2nd Aha! Moment: Sellers do not know what they will accept until you make the offer.

23:10 – How can you buy a property using Subject-to existing note strategy?

26:04 – Final Aha moment for today: You can make big money in the real estate business in a very small market.

31:49 – Chaffee’s parting comments: Go out there, do not be afraid to make offers!

Private Money Academy Conference:

https://jaysliveevent.com/live/?oprid=&ref=42135

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book

Free Webinar: http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner

iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/private-money-academy-real-estate-investing-jay-conner/id1377723034

Listen to our Podcast:

https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11201/top-3-aha-moments-in-real-estate-with-jay-conner-chaffee-thanh-nguyen

Top 3 Aha Moments in Real Estate with Jay Conner & Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

Jay Conner

00:03:06

Well, Chaffee, you’re the one that came up with the idea for the show today, and that is we can talk about the live event a little bit and we had 74, what we call “A-ha moments.” So, tell everybody what “A-ha moment” is at the live event, Chaffee.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:03:34

So, first of all, let me say that this was one of the best live events that we had a long time in forever. And so to have everyone there, it was a full crowd, full room. Everyone was up in mixing and mingling and having the time and most importantly learning what to do in their business, following Jay’s processes and systems. And as you can see, it’s multiple pages before an “A-ha moment,” which is a moment where Jay talks and trains and teaches about what to do and how to do it.

And the little light bulb comes on and it’s like, “A-ha! I’ve got it! It makes sense!”  

Jay Conner

00:04:14

And the attendees are writing these down and they’re turning them in. So we give away prizes and such as well for people to share their A-ha moments. We don’t have near the time to review all 74 of them, but review just a few of the comments that the live event attendees wrote down and turned in as light bulb moments, from learning at the event. But, Chaffee, lets you take a moment and tell folks about your background and how it is we work together.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:04:47

Sure. So when I was growing up, I was told you gotta go to school, get good grades and get a good job or J-O-B as we call it, right? And so that’s what it is. I did. I went to school, I got great grades.

I’m Asian, of course. So I get straight A’s and good stuff.  

Jay Conner

00:05:06

You’re really good at math, right?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:05:07

That’s right. I was good at Math. So like a lot of Asians during my time, we were either doctors or engineers and I became an engineer, went to college, got big grades again and got a job as an engineer. So I’m working as an engineer in the corporate world at a multi-billion dollar company. And it was always nagging at me, Jay, that I needed to do more. I needed to do something else because I wasn’t made to be an engineer. I was made to do a lot more than go to a job, 8:00 in the morning and come home at 8:00 at night, 10, 12 hours a day working for somebody else, doing something that I might be good at, only I don’t really enjoy, or I don’t have really have a passion about. So during that time I decided to start something on the side and that was my real estate business. Started investing in 2002 and lost a ton of money on my first deal day.

Jay Conner

00:06:09

Uh-oh. There’s one big lesson right there.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:06:09

That’s a book that I need to write, right? Of what not to do. And one thing that I didn’t have, just to share with everybody, one thing that I did now was a coach or a mentor to call up and say, “What’s going on? What am I doing wrong? Or what am I not doing? What should I be doing that I’m not doing?” And that’s really what got me in trouble, Jay, was really some of the things that I should have done that I wasn’t doing. So it wasn’t necessarily that I was doing something wrong. It was, I was missing some steps. I’m missing some things that I should’ve been doing. And so I lost a ton of money in that first deal. Learned, I went through the school of hard knocks and, and you know, lost a ton of money.

And then I got smart and I said, I need help. And so I got a mentor, I got a coach and started doing some more deals. And then I realized how powerful a coach and a mentor can be for somebody’s business and success. And that led me to personal development, which led me to fall in love with coaching. And so I started transitioning from real estate into coaching. And then while I was coaching at a real estate event, I met this guy right here, Mr. Jay Conner. And it was like a spark right away. It was like, I like this guy. He would resonate. And I like what he’s doing. And at that time you were just starting your Where To Get The Money Now course. And you’re like, I’m going to be a speaker and a trainer.

I’m like, “Me, too. I’m doing the same thing, I’m a speaker and a trainer, too.”

And so we’ve gotten in touch over the years. And then, Jay, you started blowing up. I mean, you started teaching and training a whole ton of people. And along the way, he said, “Hey, Chafee, come join the party.” And I was just like, “I’m there.” Like, where am I at? And let’s join the party and-

Jay Conner

00:07:55

You’ve probably been coming to all of our live events. It’s probably been 7 years or more, 7, 8 years, something like that. But yeah, Chaffee helps me run my mastermind group, as well. So, wow! Mastermind group is starting to blow up big time. Because we had 22 of us in the room, thereabouts, 20, 22 of us in the room, the week before last at the mastermind. And we almost doubled that now, but yeah, Chaffee’s a very, very important part of my team when it comes to working with our students and et cetera.

So anyway, as I mentioned, we just have gone through these A-ha moments. So let’s just go back and forth, Chaffee. This first one here. So I’m gonna read the A-ha moment, but then I’m gonna ask you to expand or to really talk about what it means in a very easy, simple to understand way. So George at the live event wrote down, his A-ha moment was, “Substituting the collateral while I was a lender to continue earning interest on a loan for a longer period of time, should the original property sell in less than six months.” So,how about unpacking that. First of all, a good place to start is, make sure everybody knows what we mean when we say, “collateral.” What’s collateral?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:09:24

So collateral is what you get in place of the money that you’re lending.

And in our case, Jay, or your case, the collateral is the property. And so they get the property. If something happens and you’re unable to make that payment back to them, then they can go and get the property. And a lot of times they’ll end up with a lot more money when they get the property because you’re only buying those properties that are certain after-repair value, 75% of the ARV, as we say. And so they’re better off getting a property only, obviously you’ve always paid everybody back. And so they’ve never had to use that collateral.

Jay Conner

00:10:10

Yeah, these A-ha moments. So the name of the event that we just said is called The Private Money Academy Conference. So the emphasis of the event is on how to quickly and easily get a lot of private money. So let’s be clear, first of all, Chaffee, and make sure everybody understands what we mean by “private money.” What are we not talking about and who is a private lender or what is a private lender?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:10:37

So just to be clear, private money typically comes from somebody that doesn’t really do real estate. They don’t want to get involved in real estate. They’re busy or they have other things that they want to do in their life. And they want a greater return on their money. Sometimes people confuse private lenders with hard money lenders and these are professional money lenders. And so they charge points and they charge high interest rates. And that’s what most people are familiar with. That’s what most people use, are hard money lenders. They’re not banks, they’re not institutions. They’re just people. Most of these people are retired or they’re professionals with high incomes and they have money sitting in a bank or in a retirement account, earning them less than 1% typically. And they’re looking to earn a lot more.

Jay Conner

00:11:33

So private lenders are human beings, right? As Chaffee just said, you’re not borrowing money from any kind of bank or mortgage company or broker of money. These are individuals. In fact, Carol Joy and I right now have 47 individuals that are loaning us money, investing with us to do deals. We pay them a higher rate of return, safe and secure, but nowhere near a hard money lender’s rates. One thing that’s very different about this world of private money is we make the rules as the real estate investor. We set the program, like resetting the interest rate. We determine how long the notes are. In Kentucky, they call it a 360. It’s actually a 180. So it’s the opposite direction of how it works when you’re borrowing money from a bank. When I was borrowing money from the banks up until 2009, my first 6 years, that’s where I thought, that’s what you had to do.

You had to go to the bank and borrow the money to fund your deals. Well, 2003 to 2009, that’s what I did. But since that time, and then this world of private money, we have created our own program. And like we said, the interest rate, how much interest rate would you pay, the frequency of payments, and et cetera. So back to this coming here on this A-ha moment, George says substituting collateral allows the lender to continue earning interest. So what I taught in the section was that when you have borrowed money for your real estate deal, and it sounded like I borrow a lot of what we call “seconds” or junior lien position, smaller amounts of private money, not a lot of money that I used to buy a house, but for rehab and say, for example, so I may have like a $30,000 note that I’ve borrowed to rehab a house.

Now let’s say I sell that house and the note has not expired. So if I have another property, another collate piece of collateral that I have, then I keep that note open so that the lender can keep earning their interest. And I don’t have to pay off that $30,000 note, in this example, I can just substitute or change the collateral that’s backing that note. Does that make sense, Chaffee?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:14:07

Yeah. What you’re saying is that you don’t have to pay back that private lender and pay them on the interest because you still have time left on that note. So instead of them only getting interest on four months of payments because you sold the property within 4 months, you know, it’s a 12-month note, you got eight months left. You just take that and put it on another property and they continue to get paid on those 8 months.

Something that goes along with that is a lot of times when I have a new private lender that is doing business with us, if I cash out, I’m going to pay them off or whatever. One of the first things they say is, “Well, Jay, can’t you just keep the money? I don’t want the money back.” And the answer is, you got to either substitute- If you’re doing the business my way cause we can’t borrow any unsecured money. It’s all backed by real estate. Can I do that legally? Sure. But I want to protect and give the security to the private lenders. So they’ll ask, “Well, can’t you just keep the money, Jay?” And the answer is I can, if I’ve got another property that I can collateralize that note. And the worst, I can’t, I’m just not going to keep the money.

If you pay off and you’re also shooting the collateral, then the real estate attorney can’t keep it in their escrow account, what we call “unassigned” and I mean that they’re not a savings account, right? So either got to pay them back or settle through the collateral. We gotta do our next one, Chaffee. What we’ve got here on the sheet?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:15:42

I like this one that Felicia had which is, “Sellers do not know what they will accept until you make the offer.”

Jay Conner

00:15:55

Yes. That’s always an A-ha moment. So the A-ha moment is that sellers do not know what they will accept until you make an offer. But now I’ve heard you say this a hundred times, Chaffee, “I’ve never bought a house that I didn’t make an offer on.” Right? So the reason this is such an important point is I just know from experience, it happens all the time and Carol Joy and I, and my team, we do 2 to 3 deals a month, right?

Not a lot of deals, but 420 rehabs since we started this back in 2003. What I’ve learned over all these years is that regardless of what the seller says is the least they will accept. Now, this is particularly if they’re talking to someone else on your team, like the acquisitions. So I have a full-time acquisitionist that does the initial negotiating with the sellers. So regardless of what they tell Kim, our acquisitionist, then I’ll run the numbers. I may not be able to offer that amount of money that he said was the least they would take. So a lot of times I’ll get back to Kim and I’ll offer much, much less. For example, we’ve got a house over in Beaufort right now, that lead came in from one of our bird dogs, a.k.a. Field Agent, a.k.a. Ant Farmer. Anyway, they sent me a picture of this FSBO sign.

And we got up into the seller, Chaffee, and the seller told Kim, in fact it was an inherited property, told him they weren’t going to take one penny less than $300,000. We ran the numbers. I couldn’t offer $300,000 to make it work. The most I could offer was 250,000. So I went back to Kim. I said, “Give them the offer,” and I’m just not offering 250,000, it’s how this offer is framed and presented. I said, “All cash,” i.e. private money, private in there to buy it. And then I could close in 7 days. I knew the house was vacant. I knew it was imperative. There’s no emotional attachment to this property. And these 2 sisters just want to cash out. And so I said, “We close in 7 days, all cash. Don’t have to go get approved for a mortgage or get approved for a loan.”

And that was $50,000 less than just what they said, the least they’d take is 300, and Chaffee, they accepted it. Boom, no conversation. They accepted it, $50,000 less. So as is written down here. They really don’t know. I think they may have really thought that in their head, they may not have been playing any games, but when you’ve got an all-cash offer offered to you and you can have all that cash in 7 days. I mean, that will affect the way you think. Right, Chaffee?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:18:57

Absolutely. I mean that’s a $50,000 lesson right there, right?

Jay Conner

00:19:00

Exactly. Exactly. So the takeaway from that for me is, if you want the property, make the offer, period.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:19:12

Let me add why I think that’s also very important is that before you even get to the conversation with the seller, Jay, a lot of students that I’ve talked to that have trouble or challenges finding deals always tell me, like I asked him, “How many offers did you make?”

And they’ll say like, “2 or 3.” I go, “Why haven’t you made more offers?” And they’ll say, “Well, the numbers don’t make sense.” And so that’s a wall for them, right? That’s a mental wall that says they look at the numbers from the MLS or the lead sheet or wherever they got that lead from and say, well, you know, it just doesn’t make sense. Like, they want more, it doesn’t meet the MAO, the maximum allowable offer, or it’s above that. So it’s not a lead, let me just throw it away. And regardless of what the numbers say, if you just make the offer, according to what your numbers should be, you’ll be surprised at how many people come back and counter the offer or start that negotiation process. Or as you said, Jay, just take it because they want out.

Jay Conner

00:20:17

Exactly, and there’s an art to making the offer as well.

So we’re going to make the offer, but we’re also going to justify the offer. Many times we will share my formula that I use with the seller. Now I say, the math is what makes the decision and what we can do. And we just get the white elephant out of the conversation, like right up front. In fact, the sellers that I was visiting with this past Friday, I sat down with them for two hours, I still make offers myself. I enjoy visiting people. So I’m sitting down with these people. And so I knew what their number was and we were $30,000 off. And so I had already gone through the house and looked at the repairs that they needed and etc.

And I told them right up front and I said, “Look, I think we’re going to have to work something out,” but I’ll tell you it doesn’t work out all the time. We call that the ‘takeaway,’ right? But I just get the white elephant out of the way by saying, you know what, unless this is a win for you and a win for her husband that was sitting there as well. And this is a win for both of you and a win for me then I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be involved in any transaction where everybody is not winning. And for everybody to win, all of us have got to give a little bit, too, for that to happen for a long time. So I justified the offer by actually sharing the formula and the math.  

I don’t want to come across as though I am just like pulling some figure out of thin air and just trying to make an extra $30,000 and be some greedy real estate investor. There’s an actual formula to where this comes from and I actually gave him a choice. And one I’m gonna bring up now is not on the A-ha moments, but we talked about it at lunch and that is, I gave them multiple offers. I gave them a choice. And quite frankly, I was happy with whatever choice they took, I said, “Look, I can buy this property.” Of course they never heard of the subject to the existing note, nobody’s ever heard of it. So you gotta like, dumb that conversation down, but I said I can pay you all cash, or I can give you $10,000 more if I buy it from you with what we call,

“subject to the existing note,” or “subject to,” as most real estate investors. And they immediately took the 10,000 more. That’s what they had in their- at least these people were current. I mean, they got fantastic credit. So just to make sure everybody understands, Chaffee, tell our audience and listeners and viewers here, what do we mean by buying a property, subject to the existing note?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:23:21

So when we say “buy, subject to the existing note,” which is not something that you would actually say to the seller. You’re not going to say I’m going to buy your property subject to the existing note because that’s right over their head, right? So basically they have a mortgage on that property with the bank or with a credit union or some institution. And all you’re going to do is you’re going to make their payments for them.

So they’re not getting rid of that loan, instead, you’re just gonna pay those payments as they come on a monthly basis and they’re going to transfer the title of the property to you. So you’re going to own the property and make payments as if it was your loan, except the loan stays in their name. So that’s the only thing. You’re making their payments and you’re taking over the property and they can go on their happy way and live their life. So they don’t have to worry about those monthly payments anymore. And oftentimes Jay, with “subject to,” with the strategy that you use, if somebody is behind on payments, you’re actually helping them fix their credit because you’re making those on-time monthly payments. Now, in this case, they were on time. So you don’t have to do that. And as long as you continue to make those payments for them, that’s still helping their credit build up because that’s a loan on their property being paid on time

Jay Conner

00:24:38

Yeah. So they are actually getting in this transaction that I’m talking about, they are actually getting about $34,000 more than their payoff. So I’m buying it to the existing note, making the payments on that outstanding balance until I find a buyer and cash out. So the difference that I’m paying them, I explained to them, you’re getting the same amount of money in your pocket. Whether I pay all cash and pay off your mortgage, or if I buy it, this is what I call Option B and explained to them how “subject to” works. You’re still getting the same amount of money in your pocket. It’s just a matter of whether I’m going to be paying off your mortgage right now. And so what else am I going to do on this deal? I’m buying it, set it into the existing note, and then I’m going to borrow private money in a second position or a junior position, and use that little bit of private money to go ahead and give them their cash when we close on it.

One A-ha moment that I’ve read on here is they just made a statement that they heard me say to a lot of them all the time. And that is you can make really big money in this business in a very, very small market. So what’s the population of where you and your family live up in the Chicago area?

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:26:21

There’s about 8 million people in the city and the surrounding areas.

Jay Conner

00:26:26

Yeah. So he’s at 8 million. So me and Carol Joy are here in 40,000, so we did 2 to 3 deals a month, even when it’s become more challenging now to find deals in the market that we’re in.

But as I said, we do 2 to 3 a month, and we’re still averaging all this $70,000 profit per deal. Well, let’s fill up under contract that I’ve been telling everybody about. The after-repair value is right around 300,000 and I can put maybe $5,000 in this house. It’s already been totally rehabbed. There’s a little bit left upstairs. Well, here’s the math, I’m buying it for 160,000. It’s worth right at 300. And all I got to put in is about $5,000. So I didn’t have to take that to the committee to get the approval on that one.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:27:35

Let me just repeat that so everyone listening understands, Jay, is that these individuals are current on their payments and the house is worth about 300 after repair. And they’re willing to sell it to you for 160 and they’re allowing you to take over their payments.

And is that a real deal, Jay? Do those kinds of deals exist?

Jay Conner

00:27:59

Well, I’ll be able to show you the contract. I’d be able to show you the deed this coming Monday. But this is not an out of ordinary deal by any imagination. One question someone may be thinking right now is, well, why would somebody trust me to make their payments and give up all that equity? Couldn’t they put the house in the multiple listing service? They could, even though it still needs some repair upstairs. But I always ask people, “How did you know where to find us?” And we did marketing consistently everyday. We do Facebook ads. We do Google ads. We do direct mail to people that are behind and in foreclosure, et cetera. So I asked this lady, I said, “How did you find me?”

She says, “We’ve been living here for 28 years and we know what you do.” I mean, if you live around here, you’re going to see my face and you’re going to see my marketing on Facebook. And so she’s “All I did was I just went to Google and I Googled ‘Jay buys houses.’ ” There it was. But back to the question, why would someone be willing to do what we’re doing? Well, people do things for their own reasons. Sometimes you’re not even actually sure, but since I sat down with these people for two hours, I know why. The husband is not in good health and it’s like a hundred degrees here. He’s been working on this house for over a year. And he came in from the heat last week and his wife is worried sick that something’s going to happen to him.

And she’s going to be stuck with the burden of this house. And she tells me that she tells me that multiple times. She says, “I just don’t want to have the risk of being stuck and having the burden of this.” And in fact, on this “subject to” things they never heard of, I said, “Well, you get with me giving you $10,000 more, option B way,” I said, “The only thing you have to decide is, are you going to trust me to make your payments?” And I said, “Why wouldn’t I make your payments? I can’t sell a house and fix it up and all that if I’m not making your payments, right? I don’t want the bank to take it away from me, particularly when I’m getting ready to put this rehab money in it.”

So the short answer to the question, “Who would be willing to sell their house this way?” And the short answer is, “A motivated seller.”

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:30:46

And that’s the key. So I hear it all the time, Jay, is that, “No, I don’t. I can’t find these deals out there. No one will ever sell me these properties.” And the reason is that you’re talking to unmotivated sellers. Most of them are For Sale By Owner because they’re too cheap to hire real estate agents. So they’re not motivated. They just want more money and those, I think For Sale By Owners, you can definitely find some deals with them. If you find the right For Sale By Owner, only is you have to filter through a whole ton, a lot of them. And I think that it’s good practice for you to learn how to speak to people and just realize you want marketing channels in place to get those motivated sellers contacting you so that you don’t have to go out there and talk to a thousand people for you to find the 1 or 2 motivated sellers from those FSBOs out there.

Jay Conner

00:31:40

Exactly. Well, Chaffee, we are about out of time. So I’m going to let you wrap it up with parting comments and final thoughts.

Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen

00:31:48

Parting comments is – Go out there. Don’t be afraid to make offers. Find somebody who you can resonate with, who you like, who has a system and a process that can help hold your hand to do this business and show you how to do the things that you need to do. Unlike me, when I first started, right? Find somebody that’s going to teach you this business so that you can do this business and it can allow you to change your life and live life with the passion that you want or do the things that you’re passionate about. Because, you know, I hear a lot of people all the time, Jay. I’ve watched 30 hours of YouTube videos every single week on how to do real estate.

And I hadn’t done a deal, right? Well that’s because you don’t have somebody like Mr. Jay Conner telling you, guiding you, teaching you step-by-step, what to do and how to do it. You’re watching a thousand different videos that tell you all different things. So you’re either going to pay through the school of hard knocks and learn through mistakes, or you’re going to find somebody and go through and hire a good mentor or coach that’s going to show you how to do this business and do it successfully. And it’s going to be a lot less headaches. So you can do this business, just find the right people to work with and it will change your life.

[bananaofswifts]

PARK CITY, Utah —  

When it comes to pop stars, Taylor Swift isn’t the most forthcoming. While her fans love to read into her every song lyric, she never actually reveals who her music is about. Unlike Miley Cyrus or Lady Gaga, her social media presence is pretty demure, mostly reserved for photos of her cats and promotional material.

So when it was announced that Swift had agreed to be the subject of a new Netflix documentary, we couldn’t wait to see what — if any — candid details she’d disclose in “Miss Americana,” which begins streaming Jan. 31 on Netflix. We went to the Sundance Film Festival premiere of the movie on Thursday, and took notes on all the doc’s biggest revelations.

1. She struggled with an eating disorder

In New York City, the outside of Swift’s apartment — her “front yard,” as she calls it — is permanently surrounded by paparazzi ready to snap photos of her to sell to tabloids. But in “Miss Americana,” the singer acknowledges that she’ll no longer look at the images posted of her online daily. “I tend to get triggered by something — whether it’s a picture of me where I feel like my tummy looked too big, or someone said that I looked pregnant or something — and that will trigger me to just starve a little bit. Just stop eating.”

Swift goes on to reveal that she struggled with an eating disorder for years, often feeling as if she was going to pass out during her concerts. She made a list of everything she put in her mouth each day, exercised constantly and got down to a size double zero. (She’s now a size six, she says.)

“I would have defended it to anybody who said ‘I’m concerned about you,’” she says. “I don’t think you know you’re doing that when you’re doing it gradually. There’s always some standard of beauty that you’re not meeting. Because if you’re thin enough, then you don’t have that ass that everybody wants, but if you have enough weight on you to have an ass, then your stomach isn’t flat enough,” she says. “It’s all just [expletive] impossible.”

Now, whenever she has the urge to judge her body harshly, she practices positive self-talk: “Nope. We don’t do that anymore. We do not do that anymore because it’s better to think you look fat than to look sick.”

2. She wishes she’d spoken out against Donald Trump during the 2016 election

After years of keeping her political beliefs to herself for fear of isolating her fan base, Swift first voiced support for a candidate during the 2018 midterms. The film shows her weighing whether or not to speak out against Republican Senate Candidate Marsha Blackburn, and those closest to her fret that it will put her in physical danger.

During a heated family discussion, her father points out that old-school performers like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope never talked about politics. Swift, her eyes filling with tears, tells him she’s “sad” she didn’t publicly oppose Trump two years ago. “But I can’t change that,” she says. “I need to do this. I need you to, dad, to forgive me for doing it — because I’m doing it.”

Just as she’s about to press send on an Instagram post about Blackburn, her team is still concerned about the impact. Her publicist warns Swift that “the president could come after you.” “[Screw] that,” Swift replies. “I don’t care.”

3. She used to live her life to be liked

As a kid, Swift says, she kept stacks of journals. But she didn’t just write in them with sparkly gel pens. At one point, she used an actual brass quill and ink.

And what did she use the antiquated writing tool for? To write about her “moral code” — “the need to be thought of as good.”

“It was all I wrote about. It was all I wanted,” she admits in the movie. “It was the complete and total belief system I subscribed to as a kid.”

She lived for “pats on the head,” she says — any praise that she was doing a good job on her homework or her songwriting. She only found fulfillment through external approval, and subsequently became “the person who everyone wanted me to be.”

That’s why public criticism — She’s annoying! She’s gone through so many boyfriends! She’s only friends with models! — has been difficult for her to overcome.

“When people decided I was wicked and evil and conniving and not a good person, that was the one that I couldn’t really bounce back from,” she says, “because my whole life was centered around it.”

4. Her sexual assault court battle changed her irrevocably

In 2015, Colorado disc jockey David Mueller sued Swift, claiming he lost his radio station job after her security team accused him of groping the singer. Swift countersued, alleging assault and detailing the inappropriate touching. She won and was awarded the amount she sought: $1 in damages. But the emotional impact the verdict had on her was far more consequential.

“I was unspeakably and unchangeably different after the sexual assault trial,” Swift says in the film. “No man, or organization, or my family, will ever understand what that was like.”

Despite winning the case, Swift said she didn’t feel any sense of victory “because the process is so dehumanizing.” And in her situation, she had seven witnesses and a photo backing up her claim. “What happens when you get raped and it’s your word against his?” she asks.

5. She was attracted to Joe Alwyn because of his ‘wonderful, normal, balanced kind of life’

Swift has dated a handful of famous men — Jake Gyllenhaal, Harry Styles, Tom Hiddleston — who have also made their way into her music. But when she started dating actor Joe Alwyn in late 2016, she liked that he had more of a “wonderful, normal, balanced kind of life.” His vibe put her at ease during a difficult time in her life, she said, when she was facing Kanye West-fueled backlash. (Remember the “I made that bitch famous” line from his 2016 jam “Famous”? Yeah, it was about her.)

Alwyn barely appears in the documentary, though. At one point, she kisses his hand during a car ride. She also runs into his arms after a concert, and the couple sweetly drape their arms over each other’s shoulders as they wander around backstage.

6. She didn’t try a burrito until she was 26

Just as she’s about to turn 29, Swift sits in the record studio reflecting on what the age signifies. There’s a part of her, she admits, that isn’t ready to have kids — for “all this grown up stuff.” Heck, she points out, she just tried a burrito for the first time two years ago. Which means that Taylor Swift did not eat a wondrous mix of meat, cheese, beans, rice, guacamole and sour cream until she was apparently 26 years old. Process that.

7. She’s not ready for kids yet

While Swift takes excellent care of her feline children — she even feeds one at her dinner table as she eats alongside the animal — she isn’t ready for kids of her own just yet. At 29, she says, part of her feels “57 years old” — but another part is ���definitely not ready to have kids.” Case in point? She recalls visiting a friend who just had a baby and hearing how the newborn’s schedule consists of sleeping, eating, and being changed. Swift’s response? “So it’s like a Tamagotchi,” she says with a smile.

[abrakophile]

I was looking through a bunch of junk and found some letters from my dad when he was in the army. I’m afraid I'll accidently toss them, so maybe I’ll put them here?

OPs Name JUNE 02 03

I LOVE YOU

THIS IS MY NAME IN KURDISH

*my dad wrote his first and last name, and under it, in Kurdish*

ILL TRY AND FIND OUT HOW TO WRITE YOUR NAME AND MOMS TOO.

ITS STILL HOT. I WORK AND READ BOOKS TO PASS THE TIME AWAY.

HOW ARE YOU DOING? GOOD I HOPE. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? DO YOU EVER HANG OUT WITH YOUR FRIENDS? TELL THEM I SAID “WASSUP?” NAH, DONT TELL THEM. TELL ME WHAT YOUR THINKING. I’M TRYING TO SEND YOU SOME MORE OF MY DRAWINGS. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DRAW YOU? DID YOU LIKE THE DRAWING I SENT YOU OF YOU NAME? ITS ALRIGHT IF YOU DIDNY. JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU DO WANT ME TO DRAW YOU.

(Flip Page)

THIS IS WEIRD! (The page does not have lines on the left side of it) i WONDER WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS PIECE OF PAPER. HaHa

I MISS YOU ALOT. PLEASE SOND ME SOME MORE OF YOUR DRAWINGS, YOU CAN DRAW ME ANYTHING YOU WANT TO.

ARE YOU BEING GOOD FOR YOUR MOM? ITS NICE IF YOU HELP HER OUT WHILE I’M AWAY.

HAVE YOU BEEN ANYPLACE NEW? HOW IS SCHOOL GOING FOR YOU? IS MOMMY GOING TO SCHOOL? I KNOW I WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL WHEN I GET BACK. HOPEFULLY I GET THE CHANCE TO LEARN EVERYTHING THAT THERE IS TO KNOW. THAT WOULD BE GREAT.

ALSO, ID LIKE TO DO SOME FISHING? HOW ABOUT YOU? I GUESS ILL END HERE. BE GOOD AND STAY IN SCHOOL. AND JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS.

THEYRE BAD.

I LIVE YOU OP

*hearts and x’s* DADDY

---

(I don’t know if all these pages are in order or if it’s missing any, but this was the letter in the same stack as the last but this one was for my mom. In some places his indents indicate passage of time.)

I HAVENT HAD ANY TIME TO WRITE SINCE WEVE BEEN ON THE ROAD, NOT TO MENTION THAT WE CAN’T SEND MAIL WHEN WE’RE MOVING ALL THE TIME.

WEVE BEEN ON THE ROAD FOR ABOUT FIVE OR SIX DAYS, I HAVENT REALLY BEEN COUNTING. I KNOW I TOLD YOU THAT WE’D BE IN KUWAIT FOR A WHILE, BUT THAT WAS SO YOU WOULDNT BE WORRIED. I’M GOING TO KEEP THIS LETTER THOUGH, TILL I GET HOME.

ABOUT TWO NIGHTS AGO, WE DROVE THROUGH BAGDHAD, SOMEBODY SAID THAT THERE WERE PILED BODIES, I DONT KNOW IF IT WAS TRUE.

AND I GUESS YESTERDAY, A COUPLE OF PEOPLE SAID THEY SAW A MISSILE OR SOEMTHING SHOT AT US. I WAS TRYING TO FIX A TRUCK SO I DIDNT SEE IT.

ITS NOT AS DUSTY HERE IN IRAQ. IT REMINDS ME OF THE CONVOYS IN KOREA.

MOST OF THE PEOPLE WILL WAVE “HI”. SOME OTHERS DONT.

I SAW A KID OPEN HIS HAND ONCE WHILE MOVING, AND IT SAID “BUSH” THAT WAS KIND OF COOL.

OH YEAH. HERES A STORY. WHILE OUT DOING A MISSION, ONE OF OUR “BRADLEY” TANKS FIRED ON AN ENEMY AMMO TRUCK AND CLIPPED A KID. THE ROUNDS BLEW ONE OF HIS LEGS OFF AND SOME OF THE OTHER, FROM THE KNEE DOWN. SO THE MEDICS PICKED HIM UP AND BROUGHT HIM TO OUR RECONCOLIDATING POINT FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT. I GUESS HE EVENTUALLY DIED FROM LOSS OF BLOOD THE NEXT NIGHT AND YESTERDAY THEY TOOK HIM OUT AND BURIED HIM.

ALSO WE PICKED UP ABOUT 25-30 P.O.W.s AND SENT THEM SOUTH.

IT GETS PRETTY COLD AT NIGHT. AND THE DAY’S ARE VERY HOT.

SINCE WE LEFT KUWAIT ITS BEEN ME AND MENDOZA IN THE FIVE TON WRECKER AND I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT ITS BEEN EXCITING. WE KEPT GETTING SEPERATED FROM THE CONVOY AND BREAKING DOWN. BUT I THINK THAT WERE BETTER NOW. HOPEFULLY.

IM STILL WAITING TO BE AMBUSHED TO MAKE ALL THIS SEEM REAL TO ME. A PART OF ME WANTS IT AND ANOTHER DOESNT.

AND IT SEEMS LIKE ONLY OUR UNIT HAS TO STAY IN UNIFORM, EVERYONE ELSE WEARS T-SHIRTS AND BANDENA’S AND RAGS ON THEIR HEAD

WERE STILL GOING NORTH. NOBODY KNOWS HOW LONG WE’LL STAY. ITS NOT THAT BAD HERE. MEANING, IT COULD BE WORSE. 

I USED A “SHIT-CHAIR”. ITS JUST A METAL CHAIR WITH A HOLE CUT IN THE MIDDLE AND THE SEAT FROM A TOILET BOLTED TO IT, GROSS.

HELICOPTERS CAN BE HEARD ALL DAY AND NIGHT. I GOT TO SEE THEM DROP BOMBS ALL DAY ABOUT 3 DAYS AGO, FROM A DISTANCE OF COURSE.

ILL BE DRIVING AGAIN, IN A MINUTE. PROBABLY RE-FUEL AND BACK ON THE ROAD AGAIN. IM ENJOYING IT.

I HAVE 8 MAGAZINES FULL OF ROUNDS. NO GRENADES, BUT I LIKE IT LIKE THAT.

SOMETIMES IT SMELLS LIKE SHIT.

I GUESS ILL END IT HERE FOR NOW

I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU TWO TWICE IF NOT THRICE AS MUCH AS YOU MIGHT MISS ME TOO.

HELLO AGAIN. WERE SOMEWHERE NEAR TIKRI + MOSUL. YESTERDAY, ME + MENDOZA WENT LOOKING FOR MOMENTO’S. WE BROKE A LOCK TO A NEAR BY BUNKER AND FOUND 6 A.K.47s! BUT ON OUR WAY BACK TO TURN THEM IN, MAJOR TATU GOT THEM FROM US. I WAS SO PISSED. BUT I GOT A GAS MASK w/ FILTER, A FULL MAGAZINE CLIP FROM ONE OF THE A.K.s AND A BERET WITH IRAQ 1 RANK ON IT.

I MADE A STENCIL FOR THE TRUCK WERE RIDING IN. ITS CALLED THE “GAMBLER.” YESTERDAY MENDOZA DROVE, SO TODAY ILL BE DRIVING.

IM NOT POSITIVE, BUT, I THINK WERE GOING TO TURKEY. NIETO SAYS THAT HE OVERHEARD SOMEBODY FROM S1 (or SI, I’m not sure) SAYING WE MIGHT GET PAID EXTRA FOR GOING THROUGH BAGHDAD.

I THINK NIETO’S MAD AT ME. CANT EXPLAIN WHY. MAYBE ITS BECAUSE IM RIDING WITH MENDOZA AND HE DOESNT LIKE MENDOZA TOO MUCH. OH WELL, WHATEVER REASON, HOPE THINGS GET NORMAL AGAIN. HAVE TO GO,

*hearts and xs*

TODAY IS THE 25th OF APRIL, I RECEIVED FIVE OR SIX (OR SEVEN) LETTERS YESTERDAY. THE LATEST WAS DATED 07 OF APRIL. THAT TELLS ME THAT ITS GOING TO TAKE A WHILE TO COMMUNICATE.

WE HAVENT RECEIVED MAIL BECAUSE WEVE BEEN MOVING NEVER STAYING IN ONE PLACE MORE THAN A DAY, OR TWO, UNTIL NOW. WE’VE BEEN IN THIS SPOT GOING ON FOUR DAYS TOMORROW?!

GIVE ME A MINUTE...

FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF DAYS IVE BEEN HELPING MENDOZA PULL THE ENGINE OUT OF A 5 TON TRUCK AND SWITCH IT w/ ANOTHER ONE. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EASY BUT THE FLY WHEEL SEIZED UP INSIDE THE BELL HOUSING. ITS FINISHED NOW AND THE RUMOR IS WE’RE LEAVING  (OR MOVING) AGAIN TOMORROW.

ITS 10:33 THURSDAY MORNING. YOUR TIME IS 12:32 JUST TURNING THURSDAY.

I ALMOST CRYED WHEN I SAW ELIS PICTURE. I REALLY MISS BOTH OF YOU. LET ME BACK TO BEFORE I GOT DISTRACTED. I HAVENT BEEN ABLE TO SEND MAIL BECAUSE WE’VE BEEN MOVING. BUT I GUESS THAT WHATEVER THREAT THERE WAS (IF ANY), ISNT SO THREATFUL ANYMORE, WE CAN START RECEIVING AND SENDING MAIL. NO PHONE TO CALL FROM, AND NO INTERNET TO E-MAIL FROM.

THE WHOLE UNIT IS SCATTERED, SO EVEN IF I GET WHAT YOU NEED IT’LL TAKE FOREVER TO GET IT TO YOU. LET ME PULL THOSE LETTERS BACK OUT. OH WAIT. I DID LAUNDRY AND SOME UNDERWEAR THATS DRY, FELT HARD, OH WELL, WAIT A SECOND, K

I HAD TO FOLD SOME T-SHIRTS. ALL MY SOCKS ARE STILL DAMP. 

YOU CAN USE MY CONTRACT TO SHOW THAT I ENLISTED IN TEXAS AND HOWS THIS

*On a separate sheet my dad wrote a detailed note for my mom to give to someone to confirm that he did want to buy a house. He writes “I AM ALIVE AND WELL.” and “PLEASE ACCEPT THIS PAPER”, then he signed it with his scribble signature, and underneath it wrote his name in print and added “1st SQUADRON 10th CAVALRY HEADQUARTERS TROOP (I have no clue what this means)*

HOW’S THAT? HOPE I SPELLED EVERYTHING CORRECTLY. IM ALMOST READY WITH A DESIGN TO COVER THE OTHER TATTOOS ON MY LEFT FOREARM.

I JUST FINISHED LOOKING OVER ALL THOSE LETTERS YOU SENT FOR ME

IM BACK! I GOT SLEEPY SO I TRYED TO LAY DOWN FOR A LITTLE BIT. NO SLEEP. I DONT THINK. I DIDNT HAVE ENOUGH WATER TO WASH MY DCV’S AND A PAIR OF BDV’S. BESIDES FOR DRINKING WATER, BUT WE HAVE TO CONSERVE IT.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE RUMORS. TOMORROW WE’LL BE LEAVING FOR THE IRAN/IRAQ BORDER TO DO “PEACE KEEPING” FOR 3 TO 6 mths. OTHERS SAY THAT THE 4ID (i think is what this says) GENERAL WANTS TO KEEP US HERE TILL NOV., THATS WHEN 1 CAV WILL COME TO REPLACE US. WHILE OTHERS SAY WE MIGHT LEAVE BY JUNE. NOTHINGS FOR SURE.

SMALLER RUMORS FLOATING AROUND THE SITE ARE; RAMSEY AND SFC BACON ARE SLEEPING TOGETHER. SGT SIREK HAS PLANS TO TAKE NIETO AS HIS APPRENTICE AND PADIWAN LEARNER OF THE DARK SIDE. LITTLE BLACK ARNOLD IS MILITARY INTELLIGENCE FOR SPECIAL FORCES OPERATING UNDER COVER A SURVEILLENCE AS PART OF

*the rest of the page is blank*

IM BACK. TODAY IS THE 27th. I GOT BACK TO THE LITTLE CAMP AREA ABOUT AN HOUR AND A HALF AGO. I LEFT YESTERDAY MORNING TO, WELL, AS PART OF DE-CON (DE-CONTAMINATION) MISSION. HERES THE INFORMATION THAT I GATHERED.

A SITE HAD BEEN FOUND THAT WAS THOUGHT TO HAVE CHEMICAL WEAPONS AND 1-10 WAS APPOINTED TO GO TO THE SITE AND DE-CON THE CIVILIANS THAT WERE GOING TO OPEN THEM. AS IT TURNS OUT THE CIVILIANS HAVE BEEN DE-LAYED AND WOULD BE SET BACK 1 DAY.

THE NBC TEAM THAT I WAS WITH WERENT PREPARED TO STAY OVER NIGHT AND AS FORCASTED BY SSG MINOR WE MIGHT HAVE HAD TO STAY 3 TO 4 DAYS. EVERYBODY WAS PISSED.

LATELY ITS BEEN GETTING REALLY COLD AT NIGHT AND WE JUST HAPPENED TO BE NEAR A RUNNING RIVER. SO THE, ITS ABOUT 9 O’CLOCK AND IM BEAT, NO SLEEPING BAG OR ANYTHING TO COVER UP WITH AND I DECIDE TO TRY AND SLEEP. I GET AS COMFORTABLE AS POSSIBLE AND I GET ATTACKED BY MOSQUITOS. NOW IM PISSED SO I DECIDED TO JUST TO STAY UP ALL NIGHT. ABOUT 10PM ONE OF THE HEMTT (this might just say “hemi”, I don’t know) FUELERS SHOWS UP AND SGT TORRES SAYS HE HAS EVERYBODYS SLEEPING BAG! THE SITES ABOUT 45 MINS AWAY AND THEY LEFT SOMETIME MID AFTERNOON TO GET OUR SHIT, I HATE THESE PEOPLE.

RIGHT NOW ITS 9:01 PM AND ITS 11:02 AM YOUR TIME. I MISS YOU.

RIGHT NOW IM GOING TO ADDRESS AN ENVELOPE AND HAVE IT READY TO SEND TOMMOROW THE 28th. IM SORRY IF IT SEEMS THAT IM NOT WRITING VERY OFTEN. FOR A WHILE WE COULDN’T. AND NOW THAT IT SEEMS WE MIGHT BE HERE A LITTLE WHILE, THEYVE KEPT ME REALLY BUSY. LET ME ADDRESS THE ENVELOPES (he drew a star here)

ALL DONE. I THOUGHT ABOUT THE HOUSE A LOT TODAY AND YESTERDAY. IM SURE BY THE TIME THIS LETTER REACHES YOU, YOU’LL HAVE EITHER GOTTEN IT OR GAVE IT UP. IM O.K. WITH EITHER DECISION YOUVE MADE.

YOUVE KEPT THIS FAMILY TOGETHER, AND THAT MAKES ME PROUD. YOUR SMART, ATTRACTIVE AND FUNNY. AND YOU DONT TAKE ANY SHIT FROM ANYBODY. I LOVE YOU.

I HOPE THAT OUR DAUGHTER TURNS OUT TO BE LIKE YOU.

I GUESS ILL MAIL THIS TOMORROW, FIRST THING, SO

EVER YOURS

EVER MINE

*my dad signed it with his scribble, and wrote his name under it. under that are hearts and x’s with my mom’s name and then my name under hers.*

[haberdashing]

Hidden Away

Statement of Riley Parker regarding a hide-and-seek game played on their college’s campus.

on AO3

Statement of Riley Parker regarding a hide-and-seek game played on their college’s campus. Original statement given April 13th, 2019. Recording by Artemis Lee, archival assistant for the Usher Foundation.

Statement begins.

I think it’s important to start off by saying that this was a Saturday night, midterms had just ended, and most of us were drunk. I think that explains a lot of what we were thinking here. I know hide-and-seek is seen as a kid’s game, but when you’re hanging on campus with your friends, you’re bored, and you just want to let off some steam after a week of grueling exams... sometimes you get creative.

I wasn’t drunk, though. I don’t drink, never have. Alcoholism runs in my family, and I figured the best way to avoid it is to just not drink in the first place. Not that it’s really anyone’s business why I don’t drink, but when people get snotty about it, explaining that usually makes them back off a bit.

Crystal, though--Crystal Wheeler is her full name--she’s the one who suggested it, and she was drunk as a skunk at the time. Luis Vasquez was the one who suggested Old Bailey as the playing ground--he was drunk too--and it wasn’t long before we all went over there and started figuring out the rules.

There were eight of us playing--myself, Crystal, Luis, AJ, Bowie, Ben, Nessie, and Red; I could give you last names for everybody, but I really doubt they’d be of much help. The rules were simple: find a spot in Old Bailey and hide in it, wait for the seeker to find you, first one found is the seeker next if there’s time to play again, last one found gets bragging rights, leaving Old Bailey means you’re kicked from the game for good.

Old Bailey isn’t called that because there’s another Bailey to confuse it with, but because it’s really old--like, early 1800s old, oldest building on campus by far. It gets whatever classes or activities can’t fit somewhere else, pretty much, but for such a big building in the middle of campus, it’s really not used that often. And most importantly for our game, it’s got a lot of little nooks and crannies hidden away in it.

Ben volunteered to be the first seeker, and he gave us a full minute to go find our hiding spots since we needed time to be able to get there, and maybe even to figure out where it was we wanted to hide.

I knew where I was going the instant I started running, though. There’s a little room on the far end of the building from where Ben was counting that the choir uses for practice sometimes--I’m not in choir myself, but I found out about it when I helped them carry equipment in one time. The door to it’s kind of hidden away off to the side of a lecture hall, so unless you know it’s there, you’d probably pass by it and not even notice.

Once I got in the room, I noticed a wardrobe in the corner of the room, and when I opened it it turned out to be empty, so I had no doubt I’d be able to fit in it easily, if not comfortably. I climbed inside, got as comfortable as I could, and looked down at my glow-in-the-dark watch, which was already ticking away.

Tick. Tick. Tick. 12:01 AM. One minute passed. The seeker could stop counting and start looking.

I wasn’t worried about being the first one found. Even if Ben knew about this spot, it was on the wrong end of the building for that. I figured I had several minutes at least to hang in there, watch the clock, peer out through the slits in the doors to see if anyone was coming.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Thirty minutes passed.

Ben’d probably be getting close now, I figured--though I didn’t hear him, so maybe not, maybe I had a bit longer to wait. We’d never done this before, so it’s not like I had any real idea of how long it’d take. And like I said, it was a big building.

I started to wish I’d brought my phone with, but then, knowing my luck, it’d probably make some noise and give my spot away at exactly the wrong time. As it was, my watch seemed loud enough, though maybe that was just because there wasn’t anything else to make noise in there.

Tick. Tick. Tick. One hour passed.

I was getting a little achy--the wardrobe had enough room for me but not much to spare, so I was just standing inside it in kind of an awkward position, without much room to fidget around in there.

I had to be one of the last ones left, right? Maybe I’d even be the winner.

I could put up with a few aches and pains for a bit longer if it meant getting to lord it over my friends for ages to come.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Hour and a half passed.

This was getting ridiculous. My nose itched, and I had to pee, and I was bored as hell, and I hadn’t heard one single person come by this entire time.

Had they forgotten about me?

No, of course not. We were friends. They probably just overlooked the door to the room altogether. It was easy enough to do, after all.

...when I won the game, I was making them buy me food afterwards.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Two hours passed.

I kept coming back to the thought that my friends had forgotten about me, forgotten about the game entirely, forgotten that I was still hidden away in my little nook in Old Bailey. I didn’t want to believe it, but what else was there? Could two hours of searching really not be enough to find this room? I still hadn’t heard so much as a single footstep.

Then I started to wonder what would happen if that was the case. How long would it take for people to notice I was missing? Would somebody come use the room before then?

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t checked whether I could get out of the wardrobe before stepping inside. What if I was trapped in there? What if it was locked? I could still see the room outside through those slits in the door, but I think I started hyperventilating a bit, because the air didn’t feel right in my lungs, and I wondered if the slits weren’t big enough, if I was going to suffocate to death in there and nobody would ever know-

It was exactly 2:36:13 according to my watch when I opened the wardrobe from the inside, taking a deep breath as I stepped out into the room beyond; the air wasn’t exactly fresh in there, but it was damn well better than inside the wardrobe, anyway.

I still didn’t hear a sound beyond the tick of my watch and my own breathing and heartbeat, but just getting out was enough to calm me down a little, convince me that I wasn’t going to die forgotten in an old choir wardrobe. Still, it took a few minutes before I got my bearings enough to start wandering around.

The part of me that just figured I was really good at hide-and-seek finally shut up for good when I opened the door to the choir room and entered the giant lecture hall it was connected to and still heard nothing. There was no way that seven mostly-drunk college kids searching for someone in an echo-y old building wouldn’t be making some kind of noise, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Not from people, anyway; I focused enough that I heard the hum of the electric lights, noticed a few gurgles from the plumbing system when I got a drink of water and stopped in the bathroom, but nothing that came from other people. I even looked down at the carpet to see if I could make out any footprints, but no such luck.

I walked... well, really it was more of a jog, to the other side of the building, where we’d all left our bags and phones and stuff just before the game started, but the only stuff there was mine. My phone wouldn’t turn on, even though I thought it’d still had 70% battery when we started, but at that point I wasn’t even surprised. I did, however, have a couple hard candies still buried in my bag--I tend to keep some kind of candy around just in case, especially since Nessie lives two doors down and she’s diabetic--and I ate one, thanking my past self for being so considerate.

The tiredness set in all at once, it seemed like. I’d chugged an energy drink while most of my friends were chugging alcoholic drinks, so it might’ve just been that wearing off, but suddenly I didn’t want to bother dragging myself back to my dorm and plugging in my phone and doing everything else I’d need to do before going to bed, I just wanted sleep, now. I saw some sort of a teacher’s lounge with a couch in it, and fuck, it wasn’t even an especially nice couch, just a beat-up old yellow thing that was lumpy as hell, but at that point it might as well have been sent by the gods as far as I was concerned.

I don’t remember the exact time, but I know it was a little after 3 according to my watch before I managed to get some sleep in.

When I checked my watch upon waking up, it was 9:47, the sun was shining, and I still didn’t hear a peep. Which didn’t surprise me that much, really--obviously my friends had ditched me, and I’d give them hell for it later.

But then I passed by a window. It was a beautiful day out, the sun was shining, the trees were swaying gently in the wind... and there was nobody outside.

Nobody rushing to or from the cafeteria. Nobody heading to or from their car. Nobody walking their dog, or feeding the feral cats on campus, or playing ultimate frisbee, or any of the usual things people would do on a nice Sunday morning. I didn’t even see any squirrels scampering about, and those things are usually all over campus.

My mind went to... some weird places there. Wondering if I’d missed the apocalypse or something. Maybe the Rapture. Not that I’m religious, but hell, what else was there?

I had the rest of my hard candies at that point, though that wasn’t quite enough to fill my stomach on its own. Just needed something to get my mind off things, I think, some kind of distraction.

I looked back at the lounge where I’d slept, figuring I’d make a note of it for later, maybe even thank the professor who took care of the spot for putting the couch there... I remember it was room 165, but there was no name on the door. Not a plaque, not a carving, not even a piece of paper saying the professor’s name.

There was a desk next to the couch, and I looked at the papers on it, not because it really mattered who this professor was in the greater scheme of things but because I just wanted to know, but all the papers were blank. Just ordinary white printer paper, stacked haphazardly on a desk to look like a normal professor’s workspace if you didn’t look too closely.

Not going to lie... I think I had a bit of a panic attack when I saw that. It just didn’t make sense, even with my half-formed theories about the apocalypse or the Rapture or whatnot. It wasn’t that everybody had vanished--it was more like nobody had ever been there to begin with, or that every sign of their existence had vanished with them except the building of Old Bailey itself. There was just me and my bag and that was it. Me against the world.

I really wish I’d brought my charger with me that night.

Then I figured, well, lights had worked fine the night before--and I flipped one on now, confirmed they were still working--so I might as well make my way back to my dorm room, charge my phone, get out my laptop, figure out what the hell it was I’d clearly missed. Leaving Old Bailey was still technically losing the game of hide-and-seek that I’d rightfully won, I guess, but that had long since stopped mattering to me. If I couldn’t have my friends with me, I at least wanted to know what happened to them.

According to my watch, it was 10:18 when I finally stepped outside Old Bailey.

The instant I stepped outside I heard a loud noise and I flinched, panicked a bit, covered my ears. It took me a minute to realize what the noise was.

It was my friends, all seven of them, standing outside the main door to Old Bailey, shouting my name. There was a police officer there, too; apparently they’d called him when I vanished, thought I might have gotten stuck somewhere. Guess they weren’t entirely wrong.

It was dark out, though. And according to all of their phones and watches and whatnot, it was only 2:36 in the morning, though my watch still showed that it was well after 10 AM.

The next time I went back in that building--with Red in tow, because I was not going back alone--I checked on what I remembered from my time in there. Not only could I not find the couch, I couldn’t find room 165; the numbers only go up to 149 before skipping to the 200s, apparently. The wardrobe was gone, too, and when I asked some choir kids about it, none of them remembered it being there.

There’s no big moral to this story, I don’t think, no way to tie it all up in a knot. I’ve always had a bit of an issue with anxiety, and that’s even worse now, as you might imagine. If I’ve learned anything, it’s just that the world is even weirder and scarier than I had imagined, and I could do without that knowledge, thanks. All I know is I’m never going back to Old Bailey alone, and I’m never playing another game of hide-and-seek in my life.

Statement ends.

[a-knightinsourarmor]

Broken Mind, Soul And Body

| Archive On Your Own link | Wattpad link |

Words: 1114

Chapters: 01/01

Fandom: Supernatural

Characters: Castiel, Dean Winchester

Summary: A fic based in ABO Verse with Omega!Cas having a dark past and Alpha!Dean trying to protect him.

Notes: Okay, this is a stupid fic I wrote, I am not excited about it, it's just simply what I needed to write to my current state.

Warnings: Mention of Rape, Attempt to suicide

I wanna thank @experimentzero for editing this fic. Thank you so much

Castiel took a deep breath as he walked in the dark of the night. His pace slow, his whole body was hurting, he wanted this to end. He hoped that when he hated himself so much, somebody would love him and help him, and indeed, he had Dean, his Alpha. Why was he so greedy? Why his mate's love wasn't enough for him to live?

He kept walking, not knowing where he was going. He had sent a very clear text to Dean an hour ago.

[I hope there's no afterlife, else I am screwed. I love you. I am really sorry Dean]

And then he closed his phone, so Dean wouldn't be able to somehow track his signal. He didn't know if people could do that at all. He just wanted to be left alone. It was 3:00am.

At 9:00 PM, Dean and Cas had a fight. A meaningless fight, to be honest. Dean was curious about Cas' past. A past that Cas didn't want to talk about. And then the fight went like this: ‘You don't trust me’, ‘You don't love me enough’ and all these hurtful words people use to make themselves seem more fair.

At 9:30 PM, Castiel left their place, wanting to get some air. He just wanted some time and space away from Dean. He walked to the nearest bar and ordered a drink then another, and another. He just wanted to forget his problems for a while. His past... Dean wanted to tell him his past... What was the point of it? The scars all over his body said it all. A dead mother, abused by his father, because he wanted an Alpha, and not a "filthy Omega" like him. A father that committed suicide, and a brother that purely hated him. What was the point for Dean to learn all of this? Wasn't it enough to know that he had a past he didn't want to talk about?

Around 11:00 PM, a man approached him. An Alpha. One that bought him a drink, andthat flirted with him. Well, he was flattered, and the look on the Alpha's face, made him giggle. He wished Dean was there, to see his cute jealous face. To see this man, that didn't care about his bite mark. Dean would even start a fight. Well, flirting a little, teasing the Alpha wouldn't be bad… would it?

At 01:00am, Cas waved at the Alpha, thanking him for the drink. The Alpha followed him till the door, complaining that they didn't talk much or get to know each other. Castiel made it clear that he was slightly drunk and wanted to go home. But this didn't matter. The Alpha grabbed his arm, and dragged him to the back of the store, forcing him against the wall. Castiel had been through aggressive Alphas like him. But he was drunk, and weak. He was exhausted. He cried for help, but another Alpha walked past them. Castiel was reminded once again that Omegas' rights were limited. His phone was buzzing from Dean's worried texts, as Castiel cried for help, being forced to please the Alpha.

It didn't last long. At 01:30am, the Alpha left Castiel bruised, bleeding on the ground. “You like to play with your food!” was all Castiel could scream before passing out.

He woke up an hour later. He barely managed to stand on his feet when he opened his phone to see Dean's texts. Dean apologizes. He had promised himself not to hurt himself again, or anyone around him. But what was the point?

He started walking slowly, carefully. Thinking what was the right choice to do. He had tried to cut himself. Never actually really worked. Had tried to take pills. Dean knew well where to hide them. But now he was alone, in the middle of the night. He could easily get involved in an accident.

Jump in front of a car? It wasn't right to take another life with him. Maybe jump from a building? But he wouldn't surely die.

It had started raining. He looked up at the sky. “Are you crying too? I hope you don't cry for me," he thought as he closed his eyes and kept walking. He was a living corpse anyway. He was in a relationship that Dean was more like his psychologist than his boyfriend. He didn't understand people's minds. Always so complex.

He found himself walking on a bridge. What a tragic and common way to die. Tears rolled down his eyes. He wasn't important. No one would miss him anyway. He had nobody in the world. Except Dean, the person that was suffering just by being around him.

No cars were passing. No one would see him anyway. He looked at the sky again. He was ready. “God... Since you exist... Or don't give a fuck for my existence... Like everybody else... Please... Don't make it painful at least...” he whispered.

This was not a movie. This wasn't a sad story about someone that wanted to kill himself, and suddenly the love of his life would appear behind him and rescue him. No, life wasn't that kind with him.

He climbed to the metal bars and looked down. He would surely die. “Cas!” he heard. That familiar scream. A scream that was muffled with tears, and then he saw Dean running to his place. How? How was that even possible? He froze there. As Dean walked closer he pulled even more away, wanting to jump.

“Cas, stop it, please...” Dean begged, staring at him. “I can't live without you...” he whispered. No, this wasn't real. Couldn't be real. Life wasn't like a movie. For a moment he felt relieved. Was that God? Helping him? Stopping him?

“Cas, if you jump, there's nothing else to live...” Dean stuttered. “If you jump, I won't hold you in my arms again, I won't watch the sunrise with you again. I won't make you coffee again when you are grumpy. I won't take you from work when you have your attacks. I won't have any more moments with you... If you do this, there's no way back... You tell me you won't live another happy moment with me ever again? That you won't keep studying to be a doctor? That you will abandon me?” he said breaking down.

The sweet smell of safety Dean was radiating off, but also the feeling of desperation made Cas move closer and stand on his feet again. Made him walk to his place, crying as loud as he could.

“I will kill the one who hurt you” Dean growled, holding Cas protectively.  

—

Tags under the cut. Thanks for reading it. Tell me if you want to be added (or not) to my forever tagging list or supernatural tagging list

—

If you liked this shit, please like or reblog :)

[kinglykook]

Unburden Me (01)

/ 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 /

Pairing ⇥ Min Yoongi x Reader ft. Demon!Yoongi, Demon!Jimin

Description ⇥ After a night teeming with alcohol and cardinal sins, you find yourself waking in a hospital the next day. Only, you aren’t really awake. In fact, you aren’t even alive, and you’re no longer alone. A demon named Min Yoongi offers you the choice to return to fix what you left behind and ascend to a higher place - for a price, and he will come to collect. 

Warnings ⇥ Mentions of death/hospitals, smut, language, religious themes

Genre ⇥ Smut, angst & fluff 

Length ⇥ 12.5k

__________

Your legs felt wobbly with every step as you stumbled through the streets, clutching your bag in one hand, and your phone in the other. The hem of your dress tangled around your ankles with your uneven pace, your heels offering you no reprieve in your unstable state. Mascara stained your cheeks, and your hair, previously done up in a curly updo, now fell free, falling to your shoulders in disarray. You could still feel the alcohol coursing through your veins, clouding your thoughts and making your movements hazy as you tried to focus enough to hail a cab. Your bra and panties were stuffed haphazardly in your purse, which you clutched to close to your chest in the same fashion that guilt was clutching your heart.

You’d made a huge mistake.

The combination of shock, fear, guilt, and alcohol did nothing to help you make sense of your surroundings. The city was bright and bustling around you, with people skirting by your hunched form without so much as a second glance. That was fine. You didn’t deserve any help anyway, not after what you’d done. With tears in your eyes, you looked back up at the building from which you’d just exited. The light was still on, illuminating the window, and you could see faint shadows of the figures inside. You could only imagine what they were saying about you now. What they’d tell everybody. The thought overwhelmed your mind with a new wave of raw emotion, drowning any common sense you’d had left, and leading you to step off the curb without a second glance.

__________

The gentle drones of the hospital machines woke you slowly. Blinking against the harsh fluorescent lights, you opened your eyes to find yourself surrounded by the sterile, starch white environment of a hospital. Your eyes closed again, but you pried them away as you tried to make sense of reality. The room was empty, but where was- oh. You remembered now. Last night. That was why. You hadn’t even realized you’d drank enough to warrant a hospital visit, but you were glad all the same to wake up in one piece. Raising your hands gingerly because of the IVs, you ran your fingers through your hair and rubbed away the remnants of your makeup. You felt sore all over, and more than gritty - that was no surprise. Your hand reached for the button on the bed to call the nurse, when a soft voice rang out in the room.

“There’s no need for that.” 

You jumped at the sound, eyes turning to see a man standing at the foot of your bed. You didn’t immediately recognize him, which made you irrationally worry for a split second that you had amnesia. He wore black jeans, a white t-shirt, and a black jacket on top. One lone glittering earring hung from his ear, and a thin silver chain encircled his throat. His hair was bleach blonde, but it looked soft as he regarded you, small strands falling into his feline eyes. He was beautiful, to put it plainly. His pink petal mouth parted in a small smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, the irises of which looked black as night. He stood casually, as though this were just a visit, and though his frame was small, his presence seemed to swallow the room whole. You’d remember a man like this. 

“Why?” You asked, eyes narrowing and suspicion lacing your voice. You reached for the button anyway, but stalled in pressing it. “I don’t know you.”

“You don’t, it’s true. But you will. Stand up.” His voice was quiet, but not soft. It was a direct order. You blinked at him owlishly, and he flicked his fingers at you, gesturing for you to stand. Unbeknownst to yourself, you found yourself standing, all too easily at that. The IVs fell away and when you looked down at yourself, you were shocked to find yourself no longer in a hospital gown. You had the same glittering black and gold dress on that you wore last night. 

“What- what is this?” 

The man reached for you and tugged you back towards the wall, then nodded towards the door. Seconds later, a team of nurses and doctors burst in, a defibralltor machine in hand. You looked at the heart monitor - it droned with one steady beep. But there you were, laying in the hospital bed, still clad in the hospital gown. And yet... You looked at the man next to you, suddenly afraid.

“That’s why there was no need. They were coming anyway. Shall we walk?” He left without much ceremony after that, walking straight out the door. “W-what- hey!” You sped after him, barely able to keep on his heels as you crossed the threshold of the hospital room, and found yourself... not in the hospital. 

The room was like a baroque fantasy. Each piece of furniture was sumptuous, from the plush leather chairs to the velvet ottomans to the Renaissance paintings hanging from the walls. Low rafters hung darkly from the ceiling, carved from a rich, almost red-stained wood. Stained glass lamps stood on every end table, offering what little light the lack of windows couldn’t. There was a huge wooden desk in front of you covered in parchment, papers and notebooks. There was a plush red and gold carpet underneath your feet, but you saw bits of hardwood peeking from underneath. This must’ve been the sitting room; if you looked past the open doorway across the room, you could spot the enormous bed. Whoever he was, he lived well. 

It was clearly not a hospital, so what were you doing here?

“Sit.” 

The man quickly did the same, sitting at the table and picking up a pen previously discarded. It seemed as though he had been working on something, as he noted something in a delicate scrawl. 

You sat, but you weren’t happy about it. “I’m dead?” You couldn’t even keep your voice from breaking as you said it. 

The man glanced down at his watch and nodded. “Yep. As of about four minutes ago.” He continued to write, and anger flared up inside of you. You stepped forward, slamming his hands on the table, causing his hand to jerk and the pen to skitter across the page. “Will you tell me what the fuck is going on?” 

“Sit.” He repeated, and this time, his voice rattled your soul. You found yourself sitting without any recognition as to whether there was even a chair beneath you, but the backs of your thighs hit wood as you sat. He looked up at you with annoyance, his delicate eyes flickering. Now that you were sitting so close, you saw that his eyes weren’t actually black; you saw specks of brown dotting the irises in the light, but that was no comfort. His features were beautiful, his skin glowing as if inhuman, and you couldn’t miss the deep timbre of his authoritative voice, no matter how quietly he spoke. 

“My name is Min Yoongi.” You couldn’t miss the small smile on his lips as he said his name, but if you were supposed to recognize, you didn’t. “You’re Y/N. Time of death, 4:04 am. Cause? Car accident. You’re quite the troublemaker, aren’t you.” 

“Okay Min Yoongi, if I’m dead, then what is all of this?” You gestured wildly at the room around you then paused. You had no bra or underwear on. You’d shoved it all into your purse after you’d left the apartment in a hurry, which means you certainly didn’t have it on now.. and this dress left little to the imagination through its sequins. You looked up at Yoongi again, sporting a dark smile as though he knew exactly what you were thinking about. “I’m not complaining.” You thought you heard him murmur, but you were entirely too overcome to care.

“Y/N, you’re dealing with the dark arts now.” He warned. “As a demon, I’m here to offer you a return.” A return? To life? Well.. You paused at that. Of course, you hadn’t wanted to die, but knowing what sorts of things waited for you back in reality... It wasn’t immediately tempting. “You can return to life, and fix what mistakes you left behind as an attempt to clear your soul and ascend to a higher place.”  

It was almost as though you could still feel the alcohol in your system, that was how slow your mind seemed to be working. None of this made sense, none of it, and yet there you sat, perfectly still. You’d barely accepted the fact that you were dead, and now you were given an opportunity to return, and what was all this talk of Heaven? 

“Well-”

“You’re not interested? In that case, I have a much more... fun proposition for you.” By the look in his eyes and the smarmy look on his face, you guessed you weren’t interested. Narrowing your eyes, you crossed your arms over your chest in an attempt to look intimidating. In front of Yoongi, it did not work.

“Save it, demon boy. What’s the catch for a return?”

Yoongi placed his pen down and regarded you with a degree of fascination. You weren’t sure you liked it, but it made you squirm in your seat anyway under his heady gaze. “Three conditions.”

“How poetic.” You scoffed.

“You know, for someone who just died, you have quite the mouth on you. You want to piss off a demon, pet?” 

“If it means you won’t call me ‘pet’, then yes. Just, fine, go on.” You sighed. Surely he could understand why you were pissy. The plan had been to sleep away your hangover and all memories of the night before, for days, weeks, months, whatever it took. Instead you were here, talking with an impatient demon. Sure, this was much better. 

“Three conditions. One, you can’t tell anybody about me or the deal, otherwise it will be rescinded.” You almost wanted to ask how he would know, but kept your mouth shut. He smiled then, simmering with taunting. “Yes, I will know. Two, though I’m returning your life to you, it remains at my control. I can take it just as easily as I return it. Three, if you fail to amend your sins, you return to me. Finally, the price.”

“Wait, you mean the other three aren’t a price?”

“No, they are simply rules. The price is that you come when called, whenever you are called, for any reason.”

“What?” You balked. “Come when called? When? Why?” 

“Whenever. I may need assistance with something, I may need to speak to you, whatever. Don’t forget, your life is mine once I return it to you from my hands. Do you agree?” 

“And if I refuse?” You asked, lifting a brow. “You already own my life, and I’d be at your beck and call anyway. What more do I have to lose?”

You heard a soft sound, then realized Yoongi was chuckling quietly. “If you refuse, you go to purgatory, for an undecided amount of time. It’s no fun. Take my word for it, a thousand years in purgatory is a start, and it’s long time.” 

“Can I think about it?”

“No, this isn’t a used car dealership. It should be a very instinctive decision for most people, Y/N.” Yoongi replied in a snarky tone. You didn’t know someone so pretty could be so mean. 

“Alright, alright. If I amend my sins or whatever, I can go to Heaven?” You asked, and he nodded. “If I fail... I’m yours.” 

“So we’re betting. This is a bet on my eternal soul, and you’re just a glorified bookie.” You found yourself saying, despite his earlier warning of not pissing him off. You found you couldn’t help yourself - but it was exactly what you deserved. Punishment for your sin. 

“If you like. Now, if you agree, sign this.” Yoongi handed you a heavy calligraphy pen dripping with ink, and slid forward a sheet of paper and you couldn’t help but smirk at the dramatics of it. You weighed it in your hand for a moment, pausing before signing. Could you do it, fix your mistakes and manage to ascend? And if you didn’t? You glanced at Yoongi. An eternity tied to a demon. A beautiful demon, but a demon nonetheless. 

Before you quite knew what you were doing, your hand reached forward and scrawled your signature. It looked messy compared to Yoongi’s elegant handwriting, but you had bigger things to worry about than your penmanship. You should’ve felt good about your choice, but something about the way Yoongi smiled at you once you’d finished made your heart flutter. 

Like he’d already won.  

[preserving-ferretbrain]

When Harry Met Enid

by Dan H

Wednesday, 20 December 2006

In which Dan dismisses Harry Potter as a jolly hockey-sticks boarding school romp.~

My childhood was almost embarrassingly suburban. We lived in a semi-detached house with privet hedges. I spent my evenings doing my homework, watching Children's BBC or reading. To fully round out the picture of cosy BBC normalcy, I should add that my preferred reading material, as a child, was a mixture of Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton.

I always preferred Dahl. His stories were strange, macabre, often surreal. His worlds were familiar yet peculiar, whimsical and disturbing. They were nice places to visit, but you most certainly wouldn't want to live there. It is perhaps interesting to note that, Great Glass Elevator aside, Dahl never went back to his worlds once the book had finished. His stories were self contained, they began at the beginning, and stopped at the end.

Blyton, of course, created a very different world. Teams of children with solid dependable names like Dick and Anne had very proper adventures while drinking lashings and lashings of ginger beer. Unlike Dahl, Blyton did write long-running series, the St Clare's and Malory Towers books followed the same cast of characters through their stint at boarding school, and of course the Famous Five and Secret Seven had endless adventures. Unlike Dahl, Blyton's world was ultimately a safe place, and gender aside I would have been quite happy to spend a summer term at St Clare's. I was and still am guiltily fond of Enid Blyton's 1950s utopia: it's nice sometimes to forget about the troubles of the real world, and escape to one where hardened criminals get their comeuppance at the hands of a gang of plucky twelve year olds.

A lot of people (JK Rowling first amongst them) like to talk about how much more there is to Harry Potter than to other children's books. They talk about the real danger that Harry faces, about how terribly, terribly dark Rowling's world is, and about how it's all very serious and mature. One Times reviewer, comparing Potter to the Worst Witch series writes:

But though Mildred, the Worst Witch, like Harry Potter, gets into scrapes with bullies and teachers, there is never a twinge of real terror in Murphy's imaginary world. Harry Potter experiences not only the ordinary trials and triumphs of the boarding-school genre, but repeated attempts to murder him.

This critic, I think, misses two important points. Firstly, while I admit that my memory of The Worst Witch is a little hazy, I am fairly certain that there actually is a villain in TWW who actually does have a plan to kill everybody in the school. Secondly, the repeated attempts to "murder" Harry are carried out by the most ineffectual, bungling, non-threatening group of incompetents ever to grace the pages of a children's book. Harry Potter's encounters with the Death Eaters are no more frightening than the Secret Seven's frequent run-ins with thieves and smugglers, and they represent no greater physical danger.

Now, I don't think this is a weakness in itself. When Harry and Ron confront the troll in Philosopher's Stone it's a genuinely exciting scene. We understand that Harry and Ron are willing to risk their lives for their friend thereby displaying the cardinal virtues of Courage and Friendship and Pluckyness. This scene is in no way marred by the fact that I do not on a rational level actually expect Harry, Ron, or Hermione to be killed. However, I do not think that the troll-fighting scene involves any more danger or sacrifice, or has any greater merit than (for example) the bit in The Naughtiest Girl in the School where Elizabeth risks detention in order to buy a birthday present for her less wealthy best friend. Both sequences involve the protagonist choosing to place themselves in danger (either physical danger in the case of Harry, or social danger in the case of the Naughtiest Girl) in order to help a friend. It doesn't matter whether the risk is of death or of detention, the point is the decision that the character makes, and the consequences that follow from it.

Thinking about it, it's this fixation on the physical events of the series (Harry Gets Attacked, Harry Goes Into The Dark Forest, Harry Fights Death Eaters), rather than the narrative points behind those events, which is responsible for most of the utter tosh that gets written about Harry Potter. The fans say "Harry Potter is placed in real, physical danger, this means that the Harry Potter series is Dark and therefore Good" the detractors say "Harry Potter is not placed in real, physical danger, this means that the Harry Potter series is Not Really Dark and therefore Not Really Good." Both of these groups of people completely miss the point. Harry Potter is a children's series about the importance of friendship and courage. Whether it chooses to illustrate those points with midnight feasts and ginger beer or with trolls and dragons and the occasional deaths of significant characters is completely beside the point. It is what it is, a children's adventure story set in a boarding school, with some wizards in it.

And that should be the end of it, and it would have been had something peculiar not happened to the series around about book four.

Harry Potter books 1-3 are excellent children's books. They combine exciting adventure with boarding school cosiness to produce thoroughly engaging stories about wizards and magic and the importance of friendship and courage. Books four to six (and I strongly suspect book seven will follow suit) are sub-par fantasy about Wizards and Magic.

Normally, this wouldn't annoy me as much as it does. It'd be a shame, but I'd cope. However I actually think that the course taken by the Potter books has actually had a detrimental effect on Children's Fiction as a whole.

It is absolutely right and correct to say that books for children are in no way inferior to books for adults. It is absolutely true that children are capable of dealing with issues far more complicated than adults give them credit for. Unfortunately this leads some people to the conclusion that there should be literally no difference between children's books and books for adults or, worse, that the merits of a children's book should be weighed according to how similar it is to a book for adults.

So many of the things which the later Harry Potter books are praised for the richness of the world, the complexity of the overarching plot are attributes which belong to adult, not children's fiction. That is not to say that children's fiction cannot be complex, but that its complexities should lie in areas other than the intricacies of the backplot and the precise functioning of Horcruxes.

To put it another way: Snape in the first book is complex in precisely the right way for a children's book. We start out thinking that he is Bad, but it turns out that he is Good. This is a nice twist, and children are smart enough to appreciate the moral complexity of it. Snape is horrible, but he is a good person. Snape in the later books is "complex" in precisely the wrong way for a children's book. He is a tangle of conflicting motivations, which may or may not actually make very much sense. He's probably going to wind up having been in love with Lily Potter, and blame himself for her death and blah blah blah.

Now I'm not saying that children are incapable of understanding characters with complex motivations. I'm saying that children won't gain anything by being asked to understand characters with complex motivations (particularly when said motivations are spurious and rather cliched). When you hear children talk about the Potter books, they always talk about how much they love the wizards and the broomsticks, you hear remarkably few people saying "well I'm really interested in the formative childhood experiences of Severus Snape."

Just look at the great classics of children's literature (particularly fantastic children's literature). We aren't asked to analyse the motivations of the Mock Turtle, or wonder whether the Queen of Hearts is really as bad as she seems. Nobody expects us to be interested in the political climate of Oz (well ... Gregory Maguire does). Children's books shouldn't be preoccupied with the same petty minutiae which fill up so much adult literature (particularly fantasy literature). In pandering to the fans' desire to speculate about the inner workings of her magical world (guess what folks, it doesn't have any, it's completely nonsensical) Rowling is breeding a generation of "book lovers" accustomed to the worst excesses of the fantasy genre.

Dahl, Carroll, Baum and the others may not have had the "moral" heart of the Harry Potter books (at least, that's Miss Rowling's analysis), but they had an imagination which far exceeds the few simple ideas which JK spins out over the Potter series. They may not have had long running plots, or complex character arcs (like the "Lupin shacks up with Tonks" arc or the "Harry goes out with Ginny for all of five minutes" arc), but for pity's sake children get enough of that sort of thing watching Eastenders.

JK Rowling is raising a generation of children to value world above plot, plot above meaning, and volume of written material above everything.Themes:

J.K. Rowling

,

Books

,

Young Adult / Children

~

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Rami

at 14:07 on 2006-12-20I don't read Harry Potter, but I agree with your points about Children's Fiction As A Whole - it *shouldn't* just be adult fiction with shorter words and more colorful packaging!

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Wardog

at 13:04 on 2007-01-01And Harry Potter, of course, has its range of "adult" covers, as if to further distance itself from the rest of children's fiction. As I shall surely write in an article of my very own, JK seems to be no longer writing books for children, she's writing books for Harry Potter fans which is actually a completely different thing.

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TheMerryMustelid

at 17:59 on 2012-04-21"Snape He's probably going to wind up having been in love with Lily Potter, and blame himself for her death and blah blah blah..."

Wow! You're a prophetic genius! How _do_ you do that? ;)

You hate JK Rowling as much as I hate Dan Brown. Let's get together and do coffee! :) Though I actually enjoyed the Potter series *ducks* I recognize it for the big magic soap opera it is. I have no illusions that it's great literature, but I think fellow fantasy writers like Terry Pratchett are just a _mite_ jealous that she captured the youth market before they did.

Whatever you may think of Rowling, you gotta give her credit for getting young kids around the world excited about

reading

. That's no small feat. Sorry if the visual image of a 5 year old hugging the latest Harry Potter tome to their elated breast gives you the vapors, but I find it inspiring. :P

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Dan H

at 22:32 on 2012-04-21

Whatever you may think of Rowling, you gotta give her credit for getting young kids around the world excited about reading.

Obviously getting kids to read is good, but I'm genuinely not convinced JKR actually increased the amount of books read by children - I strongly suspect that the sorts of kids who read Harry Potter are the sorts of kids who would have been reading anyway. I think the anecdotal evidence gets skewed here in the sense that for kids-who-read, there is likely to be a particular author who you remember as being the author who got you into reading (for me it was Dahl with a side order of Pratchett) and while I think there's a generation of kids for whom that author was Rowling, I don't think that's quite the same as Rowling getting kids to read. It's like the Yoko Factor in reverse, the kids got themselves to read, Rowling was just there at the time.

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Arthur B

at 00:31 on 2012-04-22Plus: getting lots of kids to read is benign enough. Getting lots of kids to

all read the same stuff

brings me out in chills.

As a young person the most valuable books I read were the ones which were strictly speaking not actually intended for people my age.

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Sister Magpie

at 06:03 on 2012-04-22I could swear I remember reading some actual research about this idea with HP. The basic result was, unsurprisingly, that while HP did certainly get kids interested in reading those books (just as Star Wars got kids interested in seeing Star Wars), the number of readers (meaning kids who read for pleasure) was basically the same.

So essentially the same idea--there are now a lot of adult readers whose first amazing books were HP, but the generation that were kids when HP came out don't have a higher percentage of readers as a result.

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James D

at 06:56 on 2012-04-22Man, that's kind of depressing. There must also be kids out there whose 'first amazing books' were the Twilight series.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 15:17 on 2012-04-22Yeah, some kids are just readers. They'll read whatever's in front of them, whether it's Harry Potter or the cereal box. Kids who don't like to read because reading is hard or boring will just wait to see the movies, as always.

I'm honestly impressed with Rowling for tapping exactly the right cultural vein at the right time. I mean, the woman literally wrote books that managed to appeal to *every kind of person everywhere*. Even people who hated the books enjoyed hating them, and often for very different reasons. She tried to give everyone everything and failed spectacularly, but she did manage to give everyone something. And she did it just by being herself and writing the kind of books she would want to read.

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TheMerryMustelid

at 16:22 on 2012-04-22I'd like to see those statistics about how the number of kids reading Potter were "reading kids" anyway. I'm writing from the states and let me tell you, seeing American kids

under

7 years old _pack_ bookstores (and I'm talking the

big

chains here) just to read a story was a new phenomena to me. Kids that young usually are not into reading as a rule.

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Arthur B

at 16:25 on 2012-04-22

I'd like to see those statistics about how the number of kids reading Potter were "reading kids" anyway. I'm writing from the states and let me tell you, seeing American kids under 7 years old _pack_ bookstores (and I'm talking the bigchains here) just to read a story was a new phenomena to me. Kids that young usually are not into reading as a rule.

Were they packing the bookstores year-round or just around the Potter release dates? Because if it's the latter, that might just be a side effect of them all being keen to read the same books by the same author rather than being particularly more keen to read than their forebears.

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TheMerryMustelid

at 16:28 on 2012-04-22

James D: Man, that's kind of depressing. There must also be kids out there whose 'first amazing books' were the Twilight series.

I see what you did there. :P

God, that would be even

more

depressing, wouldn't it?

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Sister Magpie

at 17:17 on 2012-04-22

Were they packing the bookstores year-round or just around the Potter release dates? Because if it's the latter, that might just be a side effect of them all being keen to read the same books by the same author rather than being particularly more keen to read than their forebears.

I don't have the actual statistics, but the upshot of what I read was the opposite. It wasn't that the books were read by kids who were readers anyway. They were also read by non-readers because they were a huge thing everyone wanted to read. But they didn't get kids interested in reading so much as interested in Harry Potter. So it didn't create readers, it created HP fans who read that.

Though in my experience having worked at a kids' bookstore there are plenty of kids who would pack a bookstore to hear a story. There just aren't huge events where a specific book coming out brings in the crowd all at once--which of course was true for adult readers with HP too.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 17:21 on 2012-04-22I think if the goal was to get kids to start reading Harry Potter and then graduate them to actual good books, it didn't work. There are kids who read Harry Potter and nothing else, which doesn't quite make them "readers."

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 20:09 on 2012-04-22

I have no illusions that it's great literature, but I think fellow fantasy writers like Terry Pratchett are just a _mite_ jealous that she captured the youth market before they did.

That was never the problem- Pratchett, at least, was annoyed at the way she was presented in the news as if she was the first person ever to put MAGIC in books for CHILDREN, etc, in pieces obviously written by people who do not read fantasy (and yet think they know what's what in the genre).

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http://lonewolf-eburg.livejournal.com/

at 21:07 on 2012-04-22The main problem with Harry Potter isn't that the books stop being "children's books" halfway though. "These books are no longer for children" is a statement that implies something that is nor positive, nor negative.

The problem is that in the later books, "childlike" elements inherited from earlier ones uncomfortably mesh with the new "adult stuff". I'd argue that in HBP and DH this is particularly noticeable, though two previous books suffer from that as well. As a result, both the series and every particular post-PoA book taken in itself have a hard time realizing who the hell is their primary audience. That results in a lot of dissonant Mood Whiplashes, aborted storylines and themes as the narrative merrily goes from "childlike" to "adult" and back again, and inconsistent characterization.

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TheMerryMustelid

at 21:19 on 2012-04-22TheMerryMustelid:

I have no illusions that it's great literature, but I think fellow fantasy writers like Terry Pratchett are just a _mite_ jealous that she captured the youth market before they did.

http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

That was never the problem- Pratchett, at least, was annoyed at the way she was presented in the news as if she was the first person ever to put MAGIC in books for CHILDREN, etc, in pieces obviously written by people who do not read fantasy (and yet think they know what's what in the genre).

Didn't Pratchett also take Rowling to task for effectively saying her books

weren't

fantasy? Like she was trying to distance her series from the "taint" of the genre or something. If she did say something as bone-headed as that, I don't blame him for jumping down her throat.

I love Pratchett and am happy to see him finally getting a wider audience in the States. For many years it seemed he was almost the American fantasy geek's best kept secret. I used to sneer at Terry Brooks readers while I clutched the latest then-hard-to-find Pratchett tome. But that was way back and Pratchett has had good american distribution for at least a decade now.

Ogg is my Co-pilot. :D

To get back on topic, if it's statistically true that Rowling didn't inspire more kids to read beyond her series, that is too bad, but is it necessarily her fault? One of my little pet theories is that fantasy in general has benefitted from the Harry Potter frenzy, because during the waits between Potter books & after the series ended, readers needed something to fill the void. So in effect, Rowling did help other fantasy writers by making fantasy more popular than ever before, even mainstream.

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Sister Magpie

at 00:04 on 2012-04-23I don't think anybody would say it was her fault. It came up, I think, because there were a lot of people crediting her with single-handedly boosting literacy rates etc. That idea has gotten repeated a lot, so it just gets corrected. Blaming her for not performing that feat is like blaming her for not actually being able to fly a broomstick--I don't think anybody could do it!

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Dan H

at 09:37 on 2012-04-23

The main problem with Harry Potter isn't that the books stop being "children's books" halfway though. "These books are no longer for children" is a statement that implies something that is nor positive, nor negative.

I think I disagree, but only margainally. I think "these books are no longer for children" does in fact imply something negative, simply because it implies - well - all of the stuff you mention later.

The reason I would suggest that it was bad for a series of children's books to become a series of books for adults is simply that it is inevitable that the "for kids" stuff doesn't fit with the "for adults" stuff. Part of the problem here is that people seem to forget that you can have a dark, serious story in which bad things happen to people which is still fundamentally a children's story, or a lighthearted wacky romp which is still for grownups.

Rowling's error - essentially - was that she mistakenly believed that the only way to engage with the "serious" themes she wanted to engage with in her children's stories was for her to stop writing children's books.

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http://lonewolf-eburg.livejournal.com/

at 15:16 on 2012-04-23I agree that JKR's OMGADULT!change was always going to have some problems, but I also think that she could've done more to alleviate the problem of thematic discordance. She didn't seem to be aware that she has a problem that needs fixing at all.

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Frank

at 17:04 on 2012-04-23I, too, recall reading that HP did not increase readers. My understanding is that the series may have increased literacy within age groups. Increasing one's ability to read books does not necessarily make one a reader of books.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 17:24 on 2012-04-23I agree that after about book three Rowling was no longer clear which market she was targeting, and it didn't matter because she was solidly hitting all of them. I can imagine her and her publishers having their minds blown by their success and wanting more of it, without really being sure what was working and shouldn't be changed and where they had room to let her go crazy and do what she liked. There may not have been a conscious choice to turn the books "adult," but an organic growth in that direction, which no editor ever bothered to sit down and take a good look at and realize just how fucked up it was.

Basically, I think Rowling was a decently talented newbie who was deeply injured by her early success, and it'll be interesting to see whether she ever recovers from it as a writer.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 17:34 on 2012-04-23

She didn't seem to be aware that she has a problem that needs fixing at all.

I think closer to the end, her only thought was "finish these fucking books so I can get the fuck on with my life." It's probably more that she simply didn't care what she wrote anymore as long as she got words on paper, and her editors cared even less.

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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/

at 20:06 on 2012-04-23

She didn't seem to be aware that she has a problem that needs fixing at all.

Given that her next book seems to be a satire on the State of the Nation, I'd say she does at least realise that a work primarily for adults will allow her more room to engage with the ideas she wants to in the manner which she would like. As Dan and others have noted, the social commentary in HP was hampered by the fact that it was ultimately a story about the Chosen One defeating the Dark Lord.

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http://lonewolf-eburg.livejournal.com/

at 20:29 on 2012-04-23I think that Scipio is correct here. To make her later books truly "grow" and be consistent at least in themselves (even if we disregard the earlier ones), JKR needed her books to change from "ultimately a story about the Chosen One defeating the Dark Lord". But while some fanfiction writers could do that (with varying degrees of success), Rowling, understandably, couldn't afford it.

That's why GoF and OotP weren't as bad as DH. In then, JKR could allow herself to deviate a little. HBP, IMO, is just plain badly written.

"I'd say she does at least realise that a work primarily for adults will allow her more room to engage with the ideas she wants to in the manner which she would like"

To be fair, sometimes fantasy can be a good vessel for real-world commentary. But then, see the previous points made on the thread.

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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/

at 19:05 on 2012-04-24

To be fair, sometimes fantasy can be a good vessel for real-world commentary. But then, see the previous points made on the thread.

Oh, definitely. One of my favourite fantasies of the moment is Shadows of the Apt, which tries very hard to engage with race, privilege and the nature of prejudice and discrimination in general. I just think that a series for children is perhaps not the best medium for that sort of thing.

[youngeditor1999]

I posted 5,822 times in 2021

11 posts created (0%)

5811 posts reblogged (100%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 528.3 posts.

I added 250 tags in 2021

#love - 44 posts

#babes - 39 posts

#hailey upton - 24 posts

#nature - 21 posts

#jay halstead - 21 posts

#chicago p.d. - 21 posts

#yes - 20 posts

#fauna hodel - 20 posts

#<3 - 20 posts

#upstead - 20 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#the line from this song that madae me think the most is when she sings forgetting him is like trying to know somebody that you never met

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Elliot freaking Stabler ✨

So excited and extremly ready for there to be new content in the Elliot Stabler tag on this site 😍🤩 Good or bad, I don’t care, I’ll take it all 💖

April 1st, everybody! 

5 notes • Posted 2021-02-21 06:15:26 GMT

#4

Not me writing detailed notes about a Tom Brady/Rob Gronkowski Alternate Universe fic idea instead of actually doing my homework. 

Nope, not at all... 😅

7 notes • Posted 2021-02-18 01:24:46 GMT

#3

Thank you for the tag @boasamishipper ! 🥰 This was a lot of fun!

Rules: Tag nine people you want to get to know better/catch up with!

Favourite Colour: Purple but I wear a lot of blues and pinks.

Currently Reading: I’m always reading at least five books at one once because books are everything 💖 Right now, I’m in the middle of Safe by S.K. Barnett, Mergers and Acquistions by Cate Doty, Before She Dissappeared by Lisa Gardner and The Summer of Everything by Julian Winters. And of course, I’ve been reading reading lots of fanfictions for all types of fandoms and ships!!!

Last Song: “Brutal” by Olivia Rodrigo...but I’ve had her entire album (”SOUR”) on repeate since it first came out! 

Last Movie: Noctural Animals (2016, directed by Tom Ford). It has Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhall as the main characters and is just a really phenominal film. 

Last Series: I re-watched Ugly Betty again becuase it’s one of my all-tiime favorites, so why not?!

Sweet, Spicy or Savory: All! I like savory the most, but do like those jalepno flavored Cheetos (spicy without being overly spicy) and of course have to have sweets in my life too. 😋😅

Craving: Soft prerzels dipped in queso cheese, orange sherbert, Soutr Patch Kids and some fresh lemonade! 

Tea or Coffee: I drink a lot of both, but I am more of a tea girl for the most part. I can never resist a classic vanilla latte though!

Currently Working On: My Rob Gronkowski/Tom Brady fic, based on past moments that are leading up to present day; that NFL RPF cop A/U I was talking about a few months ago featuring (you guessed it!) Tom, Rob, Jules (as in Julian Edelman) and Danny (as in Danny Amendola); a few small I Am the Night fics that I am intending to make a series out of; other random story ideas that come into my head and won’t go away until I sit down and write a little about them. Also, I have a co-worker whose in her 40′s and has a daughter who is the same age as me. She’s going away to Maryland for college (we live in Indiana, so it’s a bit of distance!), so I’ve been buying her fun things to take with her to remind her of home while she’s out there studying and living her best life 💜😎

Tagging: @superweirdass @lucifersmorningstar @reasonandfaithinharmony @turbo4herbo @pragmaticoptimist34 @hellacuteangelofthelord @contrastismyotp @mcdannowave @mazlum-xtreme Also even though this would be 10 people, I also want to tag @pizza-is-my-buziness 💗

8 notes • Posted 2021-06-12 23:05:37 GMT

#2

Whoever made the Larry Stylinson Playlist over on Spotify:

First of all, thank you for making it (: It’s an excellent collection of songs!

But it is missing a song: Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One”. Harry and Kacey Musgraves sang a cover of it live at his Madison Square Garden 2018 concert. It really fits the vibes of being a Larry song through and through. Not to mention that Harry is a big fan of Shania herself (: 

I know that I could just make my own playlist and put “You’re Still the One” on mine, but I don’t know, I really feeel that it belongs on the list that already exists. 

Just something for you to think about (: 

11 notes • Posted 2021-01-20 02:31:07 GMT

#1

HOW WE DOIN’ CHICAGO PD FANDOM?!

Holy fuxking shit I cannnot believe that we just got to witness all of the greatness that epidoe had to offer!!! 

I truly can’t even find the words right now ro full describe all of the feelings that are running through me. 

(Will update at a later time though!)

30 notes • Posted 2021-01-14 04:16:57 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[witchin-bitchin-twopointoh]

ANALYZING WHO KILLED MARKIPLIER CH. 1 SCENE BY SCENE: PART ONE

I’ve gone through every second of this video at .5 speed maximum and recorded everything I saw, as well as questions, notes, uncertainties, and relevance to current theories. Next I’ll try to draw as accurate a map of the manor as I can make at that point, but this comes first. Feel free to reblog with anything I missed! Some people have unique knowledge I don’t (guns, poker, crime scene investigation, military badges, etc.) so I may overlook something. Additionally, if I mention something you’ve already pointed out, let me know and I’ll credit you specifically. This is LONG.

Scene One: Introduction (0:00 - 1:00)

This is a large, very expensive looking Manor. Mark is obviously quite rich in this. For what? YouTube? Or something else?

This is obviously an old-timey TV show introduction, and the font has that Markiplier TV feel to it, as has already been pointed out. Is this fictional (in the Markiplier ego-verse)? Is this actually airing on Markiplier TV?

The Colonel is the first character we see. He’s walking toward the manor as the shot pans overhead. Innocent enough.

That’s Ethan’s hand, isn’t it? Probably ultimately irrelevant, but Ethan also posted a video on his twitter where he fell off a balcony with a camera strapped to his chest, so it’s rather safe to assume something like that will happen to the PC (player character).

The time is shown to be 7: 55 when we arrive. Presumably PM, by the light in the sky and the nature of the video, but it’s ambiguous.

We focus on what appears to be two garages, with a tower-like room and 3 windows. One is open. Remember that for later: Those windows can open.

As we approach the Colonel, he shakes his head and has his hand on his hips,. Almost as if he hasn’t been here in a long time? This may hint that he recognizes the Manor.

Everybody and their mother has pointed this out, but the Colonel has an unmistakably Wilford-like voice, as well as a hat and large mustache to potentially cover Wilf’s defining traits. Not only that, but Wilford was once said in a livestream to have been a war general.

Perhaps those badges mean something.

The Colonel says that he thought he’d be the last guest to arrive. He introduces himself to you, so he doesn’t know you. This also implies that both of you are late, or perhaps the other guests have a penchant for being early.

He says “my friends call me the Colonel. You’re welcome to do the same.” Avoidance; he doesn’t tell you his real name. Why? To avoid being caught? Because he’s really Warfstache?

It’s hard to see his eyes behind those fancy glasses.

In we go. He comes in behind us, presumably.

Scene Two: In the Manor (1:01 - 2:34)

Tyler greets you as The Butler, reprising his role from A Date With Markiplier. This begs the question; is it the same character? More importantly, is this the same universe? He greets us with his customary “bonjour.”

The Mayor and The Detective are chatting rather casually in the background as you interact with The Butler.

He asks you for an invitation, so this party/celebration is invitation only.

On your invitation it says “Y/N District Attorney.” This is a bit of a weird way to word it. Why put someone’s profession on their invitation, and why like that? “Sally District Attorney?” This is probably irrelevant, but for the sake of being thorough, I’ve included it.

This does, however, have implications about the main character; that you’re a minimum of 26 years old, that you are very intelligent and have a good memory, and that you know the law very intimately. This could be very important later on. It also means I can refer to the Main Character as “The Attorney” from now on.

There’s a seal on the envelope, a gold one. From whom? Mark? the Mayor?

Probably for brevity’s sake and not an important detail, but The Butler does not actually check your invitation before letting you in. This could mean that nobody here has actually been vetted.

The Butler tells you he’ll fetch you a drink “forthwith” (without delay or immediately) and exits to the right. But wait, where is the Colonel?

As we approach the Mayor and Butler, The Mayor makes a motion with his hand seeming to indicate “crazy” and the detective shakes his head in a sort of begrudged agreement or acceptance, mouthing “yeah.”

The Mayor has an odd walking stick thing. If anyone could tell me what that is called, that’d be great. The top appears to be solid metal, and heavy enough to bludgeon with.

The Mayor greets you as an “old friend” and asks you how you’re settling into your “new office.” The implication here is that you do not directly work together, which would make sense as you’re clearly a newly hired district attorney.

However, next he says “there’s no one I would rather have alongside me to protect this great city of ours.” Do you work directly with The Mayor?

Not to mention that he says it will “take some getting used to.” What did you do before becoming a district attorney?

Not a fact, but I immediately fell in love with the Mayor during his first 2 lines of dialogue.

Many people are very confused and/or concerned about the line “but try not to rob me blind again.” It’s connected with a statement about the Poker Table, so grammatically he likely is talking about the game. Is the Mayor bad at poker? Are you really good at poker? Do you have a history of cheating? Perhaps you actually did physically rob him during an event like this?

Also, you’ve played poker with the Mayor before.

The Mayor exits behind you, either to sit down, go where the Butler is, or perhaps greet the Colonel, a conversation we would not be privy to.

You move to a short hallway to the left that opens to a formal dining area, and we meet our good old friend the Chef. Like the Butler, he reprises his role from ADWM, and does a damn good job of it.

He has a ladle in his hand (why?) and is picking up an ornate serving platter as you approach. Perhaps he’s cleaning up from an earlier snack? Are you actually late?

He seems to be irate already, making a comment about hors d’ouvres, a small, bite sized snack with layers, and that he’ll get them when he’s “good an’ ready.” Has someone already asked him about them? From ADWM, we can presume the Chef is a perfectly lovely person when not in a rotten mood. Who pissed him off? Mark?

He also points his ladle threateningly at your face and tells you harshly to “stay out of [his] kitchen.”

The tiny chef is pointed toward you, on this end of the kitchen. Remember that for later.

The Butler saves you from this terrifying ordeal (you just wanted to say hello!) and tells him “not to be rude to our guest” with an even more terrifying glare. Is the Butler above the Chef in terms of hierarchy?

“So sorry about that. Here’s your champagne.” That is not a lot of champagne. There’s 5 glasses on the platter, not including yours.

“Enjoy your evening.” His tone here, and at the champagne comment, are SO unsettling, and so is the music. Almost conspiratorial.

You hesitantly toast to him, and he slinks out of frame hilariously. This is probably just Tyler being a doof as he tries to get out for Mark to arrive, though if you read far enough into it it could be that the Butler is afraid of Mark.

Mark comes down a spiral staircase with the same openable windows as we saw in the intro, and an ornate rug. He’s wearing what appears to be a red silk robe. A very blood covering color.

He seems almost to announce his presence to everyone, though you’re the only one there, or are you? Is the Colonel still behind you? What about the Mayor? The Detective? However, this is probably just a silly pretentious version of his “Hello Everybody, My Name Is Markiplier” and not to be taken too seriously.

He calls the evening (so yes, we did arrive at 7: 55 PM) auspicious, which means “favorable to success.”

He makes a comment about being surrounded by “close and trusted friends.” So among The Attorney, The Colonel, The Mayor, and The Detective, everyone is friends with Mark, or at least he believes so.

Also, this means you have some kind of history with Mark.

He gestures elsewhere when he says “close” (at the Butler?), and at you when he says “trusted.” Mark trusts you. Why you, specifically? Especially if you robbed the Mayor “blind?”

Apparently, according to Mark, this evening is “for you.” Which means you showed up late to your own party. Nice.

He makes an obvious foreshadowing comment about being “dead tomorrow.” Probably just a joke, but it could also be read to mean Mark is aware to some degree that his life is supposedly in danger, perhaps someone tried to warn him but he brushed it off. It’s an odd thing to say right after you’ve turned the focus to someone else; a more typical thing to say would’ve been that “you” or “we” could be dead tomorrow, not specifically him.

Of course, this could just be Mark being self-centered.

You drink the “champagne” and go into an odd haze as the sound of Mark’s “crazed laughter” (per english captions) distorts, and the party sequence begins.

Scene Three: The Party Sequence (2:35 - 3:00)

I have never been drunk, so I can’t verify, but that probably is not what one tiny glass of champagne looks like. I’d be willing to bet that’s not what any amount of champagne looks like. Were you drugged?

EDM Music starts playing! How fun. Also, not very old-timey.

The Detective is wearing a weird hat. I don’t even know what to call that. He looks just as inebriated as you feel.

You’re playing Poker, at least it sort of looks like it. The first few shots are typical guy partying. The Mayor does a keg stand, which is amazing, although not very relevant.

Much of this scene is played for laughs, but there are a few gems.

You go into the kitchen a few times. The cook is cooking. Is this to set up an alibi for him?

The Colonel and The Detective “roughhouse” for a bit. The fighting does not look serious, but the Colonel demonstrates the skillful use of a headlock.

The Colonel is seen with a flask. His own alcohol? Why?

The Colonel swings at the Butler, then you flip off the Butler. Poor butler.

The Colonel is seen loading a very powerful gun, the same one Wilford had in Markiplier TV. Not only is this solid evidence of him being Wilford, it shows that he is not inebriated enough to impact his fine motor functions.

He points the gun at the Detective, then at his own head, grinning the whole time. His hat and glasses come off to reveal nothing special.

The Detective uppercuts you, and you fall to the ground. The Mayor runs to your side, extremely concerned, and this marks the end of the merrymaking.

You fall into bed. It is 1:30 AM. Assuming the beginning up to this point was all real time starting when you arrived, 25 seconds of potentially drug-addled partying just covered 5 hours and 33 minutes of potential murder setup.

Scene Four: There’s Been a Murder! (3:01 - 7:02)

An alarm rings to wake us at 8:30 AM sharp. That’s 7 hours of sleep. Not bad. However, who set the alarm? Was it the Mayor, who probably got us to bed safely?

Or was it the Butler, who is awake and has been long enough to serve you, er... setzer water with cocaine. Sounds... pleasant.

That said, if you were drugged, it probably wasn’t with cocaine. The effects don’t match very well.

That aside (for now), the Butler is waiting outside your room when you wake up. This means he probably set the alarm.

The Butler walks away, leaving you alone with The Mayor as he walks to the right.

The Mayor greets you as “our little monster.” His hand is obscuring the metal top of his stick thingy.

He reminisces briefly about “our days at University.” You knew each other in college, and are very good friends.

Apparently, you went quite wild. Like a college student. On drugs.

A concerning, Dark-like line: “Good to let the beast out every once in a while, eh, old friend?”

He expresses confusion about what it is you’re all celebrating. Mark earlier said it was about you. Did the Mayor not get the memo?

“It’s good to have the gang back together, but out of the blue like this seems...” So you all, hired help excluded, know each other. Presumably from university.

Also, it’s safe to assume at this point that Mark invited us all under vague or unknown motives.

“Life is ours to choose, as I always say.” Hello, very obviously Dark-like line. And also very out of the blue. This comment has no context.

He says he has some work to finish. What? At a party? “Finish?” Mayoral duties are typically not something you can just do at a friend’s house before breakfast.

“We’ll all catch up soon.” Ominous.

He walks to the right, following the Butler and staying on the second floor.

You walk down the stairs. These stairs are carpeted, and there are curtains in the windows. This may be important later: there’s at least 2 distinct spiral staircases in the Manor.

We focus on a suit of armor here... gotta remember that.

Just as we’re thinking about that, something falls from above right in front of us! It’s Mark, and he looks to be dead!

Lightning strikes just as we look upon the body. Nice timing, but not very relevant. It’s just for atmosphere.

The Detective shows up, and immediately announces there’s been a murder. That’s a bit hasty. We as the audience knew that this is a murder mystery, and we saw the body drop, but he didn’t. Was he expecting this?

The Butler and The Chef have the same reaction. What about them?

Not a fact, but Tyler’s “oh my god murder” just has me in stitches every time I see it.

Also the chef. Comedy gold right there.

The Detective seems to be trying really hard to make sure we know Mark is dead. He points it out when it really isn’t appropriate.

I’m pretty sure the owner of the Manor being dead doesn’t make you in charge, Detective.

...Bucko.

Not only does the Detective want you to know he’s dead, he wants you to know it was murder. Someone committed this act.

(At this point in writing this, Chapter 2 dropped, so from here forward the theories will include that knowledge.)

Why did the body drop in front of you, specifically?

Of course the Detective suspects you first, but backs off quickly. The Butler is rather quick to come to your aid.

The video is, at this point, starting to get you to suspect the Detective. Not typical of a whodunit, but what part of this is?

The Detective makes sure to talk in great detail about his dead partners and all their deaths without prompting.

The Detective clearly doesn’t know you, despite the Mayor’s earlier comment about “the gang.”

You turn around to grab the fingerprinting kit, and when you turn around, the crime scene is set up completely. This means time has elapsed.

The Mayor appears, and he’s the only one who doesn’t immediately expect murder, despite the fact that there’s now CLEARLY been a murder. He instead asks what the hell happened.

When he’s told it’s a murder, he doesn’t even expect it to be Mark. Besides the Colonel, everyone else is here. This could either speak to innocence (via shock) or guilt (via fake confusion).

The Detective is downright hostile to the Butler when he asks to call the authorities.

The excuse for nobody coming or leaving is a bit suspect. I’ve left places during thunderstorms. However, there’s no other evidence to suggest it’s false, so I’ll let it slide.

The Detective seems to suspect that the murderer is out to kill more people, without any evidence. Hmm...

The Butler leaves to take care of guests.

The Chef leaves to cook.

The Mayor leaves to “talk to the Colonel.” Besides being the only person to appear even remotely distraught, others have pointed out that his skin turns gray as he leaves. This could just be the lighting; The Butler’s does the same as he enters the same way.

That’s all for now. The rest of Chapter One will be up by tomorrow (10/12/17) at the latest. This took 4 hours to do 7 minutes of video. Please love this, I’m working REALLY hard on it.

[mitchbeck]

CANTLON: UCONN BEATS WILDCATS, 7-4

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The suddenly revived UCONN offense aided by a pair of seniors, Alexander Payusov two goals and Wyatt Newpower three assists and a plus-five, swept a critical Hockey East weekend series from UNH by the score of 7-4 before a season-high crowd of 8,211 at the XL Center. UCONN’s record goes to 11-12-4 overall, but the all-important Hockey East number went above .500 at 8-7-2  and UNH falls to (13-11-2 overall, 7-8-1 HEA). The Huskies are in sixth place in the conference, but in a four-way tie in points at 18 with UMASS-Lowell in fourth place, Providence is in fifth followed by UCONN and then Maine. Northeastern is in eighth with 17 points. “I was very pleased with the weekend it was the second is where we won the game from start to finish. It was one of our five best periods of the year and we kept the pressure on them,” said a smiling head coach Mike Cavanaugh. For UNH’s head coach Mike Souza it was a big disappointment. “Not much to say. Credit UCONN they wanted it more than we did this weekend. It was an unacceptable defensive performance on our part. Hats off to Mike (Cavanaugh) they competed hard and made more plays than we did, that’s for sure. We beat ourselves in a lot of ways tonight.” In the third period, the Huskies added some extra icing on the cake as sophomore Jachym Kondelik scored two goals himself as UCONN erupted for 14 goals in two games and 12 different Huskies were on the scoresheet at game’s end. The play was all started by a blind backhand pass by Wyatt Newpower to Kondelik standing at the right side of the UNH net and his first shot was stopped by Trey Taylor, but he got the puck right back and buried his seventh goal of the year at 7:06 for a 6-2 lead. Newpower’s backhand pass was a no-no as the head coach wanted the blind backhand passes to stop as it was leading to turnovers that have been hurting the team. In this case, it ended well. “The coach told our defenseman not to do those types of passes just get to the net. It doesn’t have to be the hardest shot it has to be on the net and a speed we can tip it at or get a (rebound) like on Sasha’s first goal, that’s what we need,” said Knodelik. The head coach was pleased not only his big players came through, but the team got scoring throughout the lineup. “We got everybody scoring Sasha had two goals, Jachym had two goals, Ruslan’s line two goals. We got scoring from all four lines, that’s a recipe for success. When all four lines are chipping in its hard for the other team to focus on one line and shut it down. I told the kids if you keep getting multiple shot shifts, not just one and done. Several multiple shot shifts you will wear teams down and will score.” UNH got a puck bounce of their own on their third goal as Will Mackinnon right point drive went wide short side, but the eight ball bounced off the backboards and off Vomacka’s skate and into the net at 10:04. It was Mackinnon’s third goal of the year and West Haven’s Eric Esposito picked up the first of his two assists for the game and made the score 6-3. Kondelik scored his second goal at 16:37 on a great feed from Kale Howarth from behind the net and UNH closed out the scoring as Joe Sacco Jr. son of Boston Bruins assistant coach Joe Sr. scored his first of the season at 18:06 to make it 7-4. The Huskies regained the lead early in the second period as Brian Rigali, who had a net-front presence, and pest with four shots on goal started this scoring sequence. Rigali put the puck up the left-wing boards and defenseman Yan Kuznetsov shooting off his back foot got it on the net. UNH goalie Ty Taylor left a 28 oz. porterhouse rebound that Alexander Payusov easily slapped past him far side for his sixth goal at 4:32. For Cavanaugh, he shows more from his senior winger from Montreal. “He showed more emotion, he was vocal and was into the game. He was moving his feet, he’s a fun kid to watch when he is playing like that. You can get paralyzed by statistics sometimes were your not scoring goals, but you're helping your team in a lot of other different ways. I was really glad to see him get a few goals because were gonna need Sasha going down the stretch.” The Huskies got the all-important two-goal cushion on some fine work from UCONN’s fourth line. Defenseman Blake Wheeler (plus four) kept the puck in the UNH end of the ice after a Zac Robbins attempt was stopped. Justin Howell deep in the right-wing corner corralled the puck that UNH goalie Taylor missed behind the net. Robbins circling back like an eagle looking for a squirrel went to the net and made a perfect open blade redirect for just his second goal of the year at 15:06. “That was a big goal and gave our bench a big lift. They did very well in the second and in the third with good puck management.” Tomas Vomacka kept the lead for the Huskies with several breathtaking saves on Patrick Grasso hat trick bid, Filip Engaras, and Eric MacAdams. The best though came on Will Mackinnon as the original shot by Mackinnon came off the backboards past Vomacka and went right back to MacKinnon. Vomacka incredibly got back to the net, past a prone teammate top of the crease to deny him what seemed was a sure goal. The Huskies went back on the rush from that save as Vladislav Firstov stopped on a left-wing bid on across ice pass on a late-developing break play with 2:50 to go in the period. The Huskies got some serious puck luck on its fifth goal and third of the period. Alexander Payusov from behind the goal line as he got the puck from hard work by Harrison Rees dump in. Payusov just wheeled and fired the puck that went off the skate of UNH defenseman Ryan Verrier and into the net with 12.7 seconds left, ending a 20 shot barrage from UCONN. The Huskies went to the intermission with a commanding 5-2 lead plus roaring ovation from the crowd. “We shot a lot more pucks than we did last week. We didn’t get the bounces last week but we're happy with the outcome. The crows were great today.” The Huskies grabbed the 1-0 in the first period as they did Friday in New Hampshire. Once again their top line Ruslan Iskhakov-Vladislav Firstov and Jonny Evans factored in the goal. Evans on the right-wing got a good lead pass from t Firstov and Ruslan Iskhakov had inside position on the defenseman and redirected the perfect soft lead pass by Wildcats netminder Ty Taylor at 4:12 for his ninth goal. They finished a combined plus five with six points and on Friday had 11 points and combined plus 15 with each forward plus five. “The commitment to playing defense is helping them, they’re playing a 200-foot game. It was an emphasis we made to shoot one-time pucks, off the pass we saw that a couple of times tonight. My college coach Terry Meagher at Bowdoin always said shoot five-hole when your struggling when looking to pick corners that’s when you miss the net. That is something we have been doing really, really well this week,”. UNH’s lethal powerplay quickly tied it at one just 36 seconds later and 16 seconds into the penalty. The penalty call by Jamie Koharski on Adam Karaschik was a very weak interference call. UNH’s Patrick Grasso received a pass from the left-wing boards from fellow assistant captain Charlie Kelleher at the left side of the net, Grasso completely unchecked turned and swept his 10th goal of the season by Tomas Vomacka. UNH took the lead at 2-1 as Max Gildon from the right point with the puck on edge came off the right point with a slapshot that Vomacka stopped. The rebound was right there and Patrick Grasso found a still bouncing puck swiped at it and put in his second of the period and 11th of the season at 14:01. The Huskies top line was involved in their second goal that came in the last minute of play in the first. Wyatt Newpower at the right point let one fly and with a partial screen from Firstov who cleanly tipped the puck with 52.6 seconds left the Huskies had a lead and momentum going into their locker room. The period saw Vomacka keep the lid on what could have become a wild scoring free-for-all with several stops that he has made look routine as he has all season. NOTES: -UCONN has a bye week off and returns to action against the Maine Black Bears with the second game in Orono will be another NESN broadcast at 7:30 pm on the 15th. -RW Carter Turnbull (lower body) was injured on Friday was out and likely won’t be back till the Maine series in Orono in two weeks. -UNH lost Charlie Kelleher for the game with a lower-body injury late in the first period. -Ben Freeman continues his solid faceoff work with 12 of 23 many in the UCONN end of the ice in PK situations. -UNH had some local ties in Eric Esposito (West Haven/Loomis Chaffe Prep), head coach Mike Souza an ex-Bridgeport Sound Tiger and associate head coach Glenn Stewart, is a former UHL New Haven Knights in his sixth season. Goaltending Development coach ex-Pack, Ty Conklin in his first season. -The Wildcats Patrick Grasso’s uncles are former NHL superstars Joe and Brian Mullen and ex-New Haven Nighthawk, Tom Mullen. Patrick Mullen his cousin is still playing with the Belfast Giants (Northern Ireland-EIHL). -A recent article in USHCO .com by Jim Connelly intimating that Hockey East as a conference might change its format and become part of all-conference setup with all sports. A longtime trusted hockey source and confidant, very familiar with Hockey East and hockey in general, collegiate and minor pro, shot the article down like an incoming drone. “Utterly and completely baseless. I have no idea where that information came from, but there is no truth to it whatsoever.” It seems farfetched because nearly half of the conference would be disqualified from BU, Maine, UNH, Merrimack, Vermont, and UCONN either are have no conference affiliation or only in certain sports. College hockey is on the verge of expansion not contraction in the next two years. The long plan anticipated inclusion of Holy Cross into Hockey East is still not on the horizon our source commented, “I think that issue might be something the next commissioner will handle.” Joe Bertagna after 23 years is stepping down at the conclusion of the season and a conference committee has been interviewing candidates and has been narrowed down to five candidates. -The UCONN rink bond package has been written according to our source, however, when it will be formally presented to the bond commission remains unknown at this time as legislative jockeying is still ongoing with the Governor and other legislators. -Good news for UCONN hockey fans for next season a Nashville organizational source said both Tomas Vomacka and Jachym Kondelik will be back for their junior years as neither will be offered contracts this spring when the college season ends. -Matej Blumel, from the Czech Republic who was a former UCONN player, but never skated a minute for the Huskies bolting for the Czech Elite League three weeks before the season was to begin. The NHL draft choice of Edmonton Blumel has just three goals and four points in 26 games has re-signed with HC Litvinov (Czech Republic-CEL) for next season. Read the full article

[xterri]

Mystic Messenger Christmas DLC - 707’s missing VNs and CG Walkthrough

** Started around 08:30 for Christmas Eve. ** version 1.6.8a **

The idea I was working with this time, was to get onto any character’s route other than 707′s, while still maintaining a fair number of his hearts. Then after the 16:15 chat + VN, I would focus mostly on getting only 707′s hearts. 

As a result, I ended up with only the 2 common VNs on Christmas Eve, but also got the 00:01 & 19:23 VNs + CG on Christmas Day.

NOTE  I’m not 100% positive of what I did that lead me to get the VN and CG, so I’m going to list everything I did / answered with here. 

Also want to note that I recently finished all the character’s good routes and secret endings before I attempted to get the CG and VN again. Not sure if that had any effect, but just going to mention it for now.

While I did get the VN and CG, only the CG seems to have been saved in my album, and the VNs aren’t appearing in my chat history. I’m hoping it’s just a glitch, but letting all those who read this know. 

*****************************************************************************************

Missed first 2 chats and 2 phone calls (707 and Yoosung), but called them back.

08:37 – returned missed incoming call from / outgoing call to 707 

He comes to us on his sleigh and comes down through the chimney!

Reason why he only gives presents to nice children.

A ghost!!!!

Wait… Seven… You’re… Santa?

08:38 – returned missed incoming call from / outgoing call to Yoosung 

What did you do last Christmas Eve?

What did you do on Christmas?

Oh… I can already imagine what happened…

Your neck must have hurt…

I would have wanted to go straight home

PC Room.

It won’t be like that this year!

08:40 – outgoing call to Jaehee

(No choices)

Replied to Yoosung’s text (probably came after one of the missed chats)

08:38 – text Yoosung back

I love things like this! Brings back so many memories!

*****************************************************************************************

CHRISTMAS EVE

*****************************************************************************************

06:48 - 707 on Eve

——————

1)      Please help me, Justice Warrior 7☆0☆7!!

alt.      I want to play without worry on Christmas

 2)      Hero, Jaehee and Yoosung look busy so will they be okay?

 3)      Welcome, V.

 4)      So, you are coming too?

 5)      Why?!

 6)      Are you coming, Seven?

 7)      Is there a solution like 707? Lol

 8)      Whoosh (*Disappears*)

——————

08:48 (text)    707

This reply has been manufactured in the same facility as electromagnetic waves, battery, and hourglasses.

*****************************************************************************************

09:17 – V’s participation

——————

1)      Is the event planning going well?

2)      Obviously he has to come because he is the President, isn’t he?

3)      Maybe it’ll complicate things if use the RFA name.

4)      I think it’s better to wait and see. We don’t know how people think.

5)      I want to think that it was an unavoidable…

6)      Okay. I trust Jumin so I will trust also trust V too.

7)      Let’s carry one Rika’s will!! The heart behind is more important than the name.

8)      What happened to Rika was a shame, but you need to focus on the present so the event will be a success.

9)      Did something show up?

10)   You worked hard today… even though it’s Christmas Eve…

11)   Even though it’s sad that we couldn’t call it RFA, if it’s you, I’m sure you can overcome it.

12)   I’ll look forward to it. Bye bye.

——————

09:25 (outgoing call)     Jumin

Did you sleep well?

I don’t.

Weren’t you sad when you realized Santa isn’t real?

09:27 (outgoing call)     Zen

Can’t… breathe… Zen, why are you so out of breath? *pant*..*pant*..

Is it okay for you to take calls during practice?

I want to go out with you on Christmas day.

*****************************************************************************************

11:24 – Spend X-mas with someone + Visual Novel (common)

——————

1)      I’m here, Mr. Han.

2)      Welcome, Seven~

3)      I’ll respect Jumin’s privacy., k.

4)      Seven… you really do miss Elly!

5)      If you deny it, then that means you are a robot,

6)      Rather than just being with someone, I want to do something meaningful.

7)      To think Jumin would say something like that…

8)      I don’t really care about today… it just feels exactly the same.

9)      I’ll get going too ^^

——————

12:29 (text)    Jumin

Elizabeth 3rd!

12:22 (incoming call)     Jaehee

So much must have changed after you started working for C&R.

I’ll help you next time.

No way… I don’t think that’s the case.

Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret!

12:24 (outgoing call)     707

Seven, are you okay? Do you want me to call again?

Talking on the phone with me?

I’d like to see it too.

Why don’t we decorate the tree together?

*****************************************************************************************

13:42 – Jealous Zen

——————

1)      Gasp, the Christmas couple movie that’s coming out!

2)      It really is a tragedy… I want to embrace you

3)      Yes yes…

4)      Jumin, Welcome!

5)      Zen… were you?

6)      White Day and Pepero Day are also made for commercialization.

7)      That’s kind of random…

8)      I think Zen understand loyalty really well.

9)      No, I wouldn’t do that.

10)   That’s so sad… is that person doing well now?

11)   That’s so harsh, especially on Christmas….

12)   Hahaha! Jumin was right~! You rsense of humor, seriously…

13)   Jumin, calm down and it would be better if we talk about this later.

14)   Maybe something bad happened at the meeting earlier.

15)   To think you’re busy on Christmas Eve… Hang in there! Think of me

——————

14:07 (text)     Zen

I wish I have…

14:10 (outgoing call)     Yoosung

What if you upset your stomach? Take your time.

Am I keeping you from finishing your meal? Should I hang up?

14:12 (outgoing call)     Zen

You’re not trying to ignore my call on purpose, were you?

They might not all be couples.

Judgement day for all couples?!

Did you just say you want all the couples to break up…?

14:17 (outgoing call)     Jaehee

Yes, go ahead.

Uhm… Jaehee, if you need to go back to work, should I hang up?

Hi, Jaehee!

It’s fine. I shouldn’t have called you when you’re so busy.

Is it okay for me to choose?

*****************************************************************************************

16:15 – Dreams for Christmas

——————

1)      Yoosung, is everything going well?

2)      Yes, but I don’t really like things like that lolol

3)      Seven lolol ~ It looks like you are in a good mood.

4)      I’m also curious! Please tell me if you have a Christmas dream hehe

5)      …

6)      Because cats want to jump and touch the decorations!

7)      So that means you won’t be going… It would’ve been nice if you helped Yoosung T_T

8)      I’m not in danger, right?

9)      Every person has a different way of having fun haha

10)   Please reconsider going…

11)   That’s true, it is kind of interesting.

12)   He should be more sociable like you.

13)   Jaehee… hang in there.

14)   You should hurry. It was nice talking to you. ^^

——————

16:36 (text)     Yoosung

I’d like to spend it with someone like you too, Yoosung.

16:36 (text)     707

Everyone should have their own tree on Christmas.

16:31 (incoming call)     Zen

If you use this app, you don’t really have to join a couple’s plan.

You can get all kinds of benefits if you’re a couple.

Are you eager too?

I’m sure patience will lead to a beautiful relationship.

** No VN after this chat **

*****************************************************************************************

18:06 – Cold Jumin

——————

1)      Hello.

2)      I’ll just spend it like any normal day.

3)      Like other people?

4)      Jumin, I understand it was V who requested the name change. You did this for the sake of the RFA, right?

5)      Jaehee!

6)      Hahaha, your face is blurry.

7)      That’s a smart way to encourage people to attend freely.

8)      Jaehee, hang in there…

9)      Jumin, you will be attending tomorrow right?

alt.      Did you two… get into a fight?

10)   Jumin… I think it would be best if you rest for a bit.

11)   Jumin… something must be bothering you. I wish there was something I can do.

12)   Hurry up and go. It was nice talking to you.

13)   There, there…

14)   Don’t drink that and cheer up! Don’t you know it’s not good to drink too many of those?

15)   Good luck on your work.

——————

18:26 (text)     Jaehee

I think 707 likes to mess around a lot.

18:27 (outgoing call)     707

About what you’re having for dinner?

Some people wouldn’t feel that way. Like Jumin?

You are such a nice person to be so considerate.

18:34 (outgoing call)     Yoosung

Why do you sound so down?

Did you mess up your finals?

It’s best to do just what you can at the moment.

*****************************************************************************************

19:18 – Can’t rest on Christmas

——————

1)      707 is here!! Open up the gates!!

2)      What should you do if your blood pressure gets higher? Dr. 707!

3)      If it were me, I wouldn’t be able to handle it T_T I don’t like one-sided love or one-sided authority.

4)      It’s bad to fight. I want peace!! I respect everybody’s preferences!!

5)      If I sent hearts, would you still hate it?

6)      What do you have to say?

7)      I want to be with Seven but… because of work… [MC] is sad.

8)      I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing…

9)      Because he’s God Seven!

10)   It’s so cute! I feel so much brighter ^^

11)   Sending and receiving messages with 707 makes me quite happy.

12)   Running away;;; is that okay?

13)   Merry Christmas Eve!

14)   But he seemed less energetic… I don’t know why

15)   Zen, every time you get tired at practice, just think of me for support! You can do it! You know I’m cheering for you right?

——————

19:43 (text)    Zen

Zen, are you talking behind his back right now?

19:44 (outgoing call)    Jumin

I was just wondering if you were having a happy Christmas Eve.

No, not really happy.

I wasn’t… that nice. I was a bad kid.

*****************************************************************************************

20:53 – Preparation

——————

1)      Hello.

2)      Be honest, you want to play games lol.

3)      Wehlciome, Juniun

4)      Just think about it as a good experience ^^

5)      Yoosung, it’s already been decided, you should let it go…

6)      Yoosung, I think the content of what we do is more important than the name. If Rika was here, what would she do now?

7)      I see that you’ve been drinking alone, Jumin. I hope you have a good evening.

8)      It would be better for me to go early and help you.

9)      I will go to sleep soon too. Good night, Yoosung.

——————

21:05 (text)     Jumin

Yes, I have.

21:05 (incoming call)    Jumin

I’m too old to believe in that.

The world isn’t always logical!

What if I want the same present as you…?

21:07 (outgoing call)     Zen

Did something happen, Zen?

You can just connect it to your charger and call me.

*****************************************************************************************

23:01 – Christmas soon!

——————

1)      Did you just discover a rabbit?!

2)      Quick, go home before you’re transformed by the crystal power!

3)      That’s hair discrimination but it would be cute to put ornaments in your hair!!!

4)      I want to see Seven… But I can understand why he would want to be alone lol

5)      Go and become a star, Fairy 707!

6)      Rest well and good luck tomorrow!

7)      Seven, you should go home now! Before it gets too late.

——————

23:05 (text)     Jaehee

The event is gonna go so well because of you~

23:06 (outgoing call)     707

Should I hang up?

Who are you calling so late?

23:08 (outgoing call)     Jaehee

Jaehee, do you have a cold?

What are your plans for Christmas?

23:10 (outgoing call)         Yoosung

Did you just come home?

We could talk while you’re taking a shower…

I had a fun day.

You don’t want to skip out on the charity event, do you?

I’m very excited.

*****************************************************************************************

CHRISTMAS DAY

**unlocked next day’s chat after 23:01 – “Christmas soon!” chat**

At this point, I can see that I already have the 00:01 & 19:23 VN, so I don’t think your answers really matters on this day unless you’re aiming for the bad ending. 

*****************************************************************************************

00:01 – Ungrateful Christmas + Visual Novel (707?)

——————

1)      I’m having a hard time falling asleep because of you

2)      Does that mean you have to practice all over again? That’s too much.

3)      Hi Seven

4)      Merry Christmas to you both!

5)      I’m here for you :)

6)      That’s right.  Hope they treat their actors with more care.

7)      It’s Christmas…. I feel bad you have to work.

alt.      I think it’s gonna be an ordinary Christmas.

8)      Don’t feel lonely. I will stay with you together in spirit! Good night.

——————

23:34 (text)     Unknown

Yes. I want to know who you are.

*****************************************************************************************

02:24 – Christmas’s duty

——————

1)      Jaehee, you’re here!

2)      I feel bad that things aren’t working out for Zen, even when you’re cheering for him so much.

3)      If it’s Zen, he’ll do a great job! He’s always done well.

4)      Ah, you mean you feel like you have to do something special?

5)      I don’t know. Sometimes I think luck can be more important than diligence…? It all about luck

6)      Good night! I think I’ll be up for a little more.

——————

23:46 (text)     Jaehee

I prefer warm food.

23:46 (incoming call)     Jaehee

I don’t have anything planned in particular.

Of course. I’ll do it.

Is there a shirtless scene?

*****************************************************************************************

05:50 – Yoosung’s X-mas memory

——————

1)      Merry Christmas Yoosung :)

2)      Uh oh… No! Don’t use that T_T I’ll getchu new ones

3)      What kind of memories do you have of Christmas, Yoosung?

4)      Sounds like a happy family.

5)      Haha that’s cute…

6)      What’s more important than your name is your will.

7)      Donating is a good thing to do.

8)      Bye~

——————

23:53 (text)     Yoosung

I love white Christmas. Maybe it’s because it’s rare~

23:53 (incoming call)     Jumin

Am I important to you?

What did you choose?

*****************************************************************************************

08:43 – Yoosung and C&R

——————

1)      Poor Yoosung… Shall I text him to run away…

2)      Just as usual.

3)      Jumin, are you feeling okay after dinking yesterday?

alt.      I don’t have much plans.

4)      Are you talking about V…? Something really did happen between you two.

5)      Yes! Is the event going well?

6)      Jumin is going to take care of it. No worries, Jaehee

7)      Wouldn’t releasing stress be first for Jumin. Work can come after, one by one :)

alt.      Reading is best.

8)      You can call the President and work with the phone J

9)      Jaehee… Be strong for the event!

10)   Since V is coming… I think it’s better if you go too.

alt.      I trust things will work out well… Talk to you later.

——————

00:02 (text)     Unknown

I’ll send you the address to the apartment. [Send address]

** if you want the bad ending then just answer Unknown’s texts truthfully **

00:02 (text)     Jumin

I use it until it no longer works.

00:02 (incoming call)     Zen

You’re whispering…!

I was going to get angry if you didn’t call. Hmph.

*****************************************************************************************

10:32 – Not everyone is happy + Visual Novel (707)

——————

1)      Hello. 707

2)      Is your Christmas going well?

3)      You should spend it happily today! So you don’t feel jealous of others!

4)      I hope Seven is not included there… it’d make my heart ache…

5)      So Seven, are you unable to work because you’re sad?

6)      Just be a great donating Santa for me today.

7)      Yoosung, I’ll go too.

8)      Seven can do what he wants

9)      Yes, see you again!

10)   Yes… It would be nice if he came even if he’s late…

11)   Even if Seven doesn’t come, Rika is going to be there in spirit… Cheering for you, Yoosung.

12)   Yes, I hope the event is good :)

——————

00:10 (text)    707

When on Earth do as Earthlings do.

00:10 (incoming call)    Yoosung

You sound as if you’re going to leave for somewhere…

I’m treating everyone equally~.

*****************************************************************************************

13:06 – Depressing day

——————

1)      Yes, just stay calm today

2)      Come to my place too!!

3)      But that’s only possible in your dream

4)      I hope… that dream comes true. I wish that it’d happen today.

5)      Welcome, Jumin!

6)      Jumin, have you organized your thoughts?

7)      Jumin is doing his best too.

8)      Kk

9)      You two seem to have completely different personalities lol

10)   Which means you’re playing around

11)   Thank you for welcoming me, Jumin :)

12)   Zen, I will be cheering for you!

——————

00:19 (text)     Zen

Thanks for saying that, Zen~

*****************************************************************************************

16:07 – All because of [MC]

——————

1)      Zen and Jumin… Don’t they look like an excellent pair?

2)      Would the event go well?

3)      Yes, I’m worried that Yoosung’s going to get hurt

4)      Yes… it’s all about circumstances! Some people could be on another planet!

5)      Honey Buddha limited edition 2 is being released for the New Year!

6)      I think he will fix and hack at the same time

7)      It seems the donation drive is gathering power from the universe.

8)      Cheers up~! Don’t work too hard!

9)      Yes, and if you can come to the event.

10)   Didn’t you feel a bit liberated while talking with me? Goodbye! Seven.

*****************************************************************************************

18:10 – Resting now!

——————

1)      Heya Yoosung!

2)      Yoosung Kim has melted. +1 point.

3)      I guess you’re still busy. You know that you have my full support, right? >.o

4)      I’m sorry sorry sorry too… x100

5)      Yoosung (Lv. 13) still doesn’t know what suffering is.

6)      Seven, activate your nice guy mode!!

7)      I don’t remember saying I’ll go lol

8)      And the one who kicks off to the tangent is 707070707

9)      Did you see penguins at the South Pole?

10)   That’s like a blockbuster movie…

11)   Should I go instead of seven? I can’t be sure, but…

12)   ^^

13)   Merry Christmas!

——————

00:33 (incoming call)     Unknown

Who is it?

As soon as possible

*****************************************************************************************

19:23 – 707 and Xmas + Visual Novel (707)

——————

1)      Hello~ How is the event going? 

2)      I hope you finish work soon and spend the rest of the day with Zen’s DVD! Have hope!

3)      I want to see all of Zen’s performances on DVD with you, Jaehee  haha

4)      I think Seven’s heart… has traveled far out into space for Christmas.

5)      Maybe he’ll be a bit different this Christmas?

6)      I wonder what kind of person would suit you, Zen. Lol

7)      Cheer up Zen T_T

8)      Bye~

9)      He’s smart.

10)   Not yet. Good luck with practice.

——————

00:44 (incoming call after VN)     707

Yes~

Yes…

*****************************************************************************************

21:00 – From the outer space! + Visual Novel (707)

——————

** Skipped the chat **

——————

[goldira01]

Friday Four Play: The “Getting Lazy” Edition

Lazy. The entire country is lazy.

We have amazing freedoms in this country … freedoms that are the envy of the world: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, et cetera. But the most important of all? The freedom (and the responsibility) to vote and choose our representatives to maintain and uphold these very freedoms.

Do we? Nah…

In the 2016 presidential election, voter turnout was a mere 55.7%. For the 2018 midterm elections, turnout was just 53.4%. In other words, roughly 160 million U.S. citizens didn’t vote in either election.

The excuses vary, but they go something like this:

“I can’t be bothered, let someone else take care of that.”

“It’s too much of a hassle. I can’t take off work.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. The government doesn’t work.”

When half of the voters in a country “of the people, by the people and for the people” don’t vote, do you really have to wonder why the government doesn’t work?

Anyway, you may soon be able to scratch “too much hassle” off the list of pathetic reasons not to vote. The greater Seattle area will become the first region to allow voting via smartphone.

Is that lazy enough for you? You can now vote while doing your business on the toilet, while you browse your email or look at cat videos and baby pictures on Face-stagram.

The smartphone voting plan encompasses more than 30 cities in the Seattle area, representing 1.2 million eligible voters. It’s also only being tested for a King Conservation District board of supervisors’ election — so nothing too major (yet).

On one hand, I applaud any efforts to get lazy constituents off their butts to vote. On the other hand, smartphone voting brings to mind a rather abhorrent mental image for me. I really don’t want a prime-time election TV show hosted by Ryan Seacrest telling me: “The voting lines are open!”

One final note: Privacy and security experts believe that smartphone voting puts our democracy at risk of being hacked. My response to this is that we already had that problem, and no one seems to care.

Besides, if we spent as much on securing our elections as the candidates do running for office, this wouldn’t be a problem anyway.

Hargett out.

And now for something completely different, here’s your Friday Four Play:

No. 1: “Adjustments” Incoming

Yesterday, we discussed Comcast Corp.’s (Nasdaq: CMCSA) latest quarterly report. Great Stuff noted how the top-line numbers looked good, but the real devil was in the details. One of those details, in particular, was widely overlooked. Heck, the wording was so benign, I even missed it.

I’m correcting that today. The detail in question is this (emphasis mine): “With the rate adjustments that we are implementing in 2020 as well as the ongoing changes in consumer behavior, we expect higher video subscriber losses this year.”

That’s right! Rate adjustments, aka higher cable prices. Comcast is going to squeeze those few remaining pay-TV customers for all they’re worth, until they leave for streaming services too.

Now, Comcast hopes to make up the difference with a $10-per-month premium tier on its new Peacock streaming service. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Comcast’s broadband customers also see a price hike eventually … if they haven’t already.

After all, the math just doesn’t work out for Comcast. Streaming and broadband customers just don’t bring in the same kind of revenue as high-margin pay-TV customers. Prices are going up, I guarantee it. Keep a close eye on Peacock (when it launches) and broadband subscriber numbers. These are your new metrics for measuring Comcast’s success.

No. 2: Don’t Forget About Intel

Nowadays, everybody wanna talk like they got something to sell. But nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish. And investors act like they forgot about Intel.

Seriously, did Wall Street think that Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) was going to just fade away because Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Nasdaq: AMD) made some snazzy new chips? Nope. Not happening.

The original semiconductor OG not only reported blowout fourth-quarter earnings and revenue, but it also lifted guidance for the full year. Earnings topped expectations by $0.27 per share, and revenue was $1 billion higher than expected. Cloud computing was the main driver for the beat, rising 48% year over year. That’s some serious green.

As for guidance, Intel expects earnings of $5 per share on revenue of $73.5 billion, versus analysts’ expectations for $4.66 per share and $72.4 billion in sales.

But the real kicker for INTC investors was news that the company’s board approved a 5% dividend hike. That puts Intel’s dividend yield at a healthy 2%.

Competition may be heating up with AMD, but Intel’s been here before. Don’t count it out.

No. 3: Broadcom Gets Apple Juiced

Broadcom Inc. (Nasdaq: AVGO) has an answer to the question: “How do you like them Apples?”

That answer? “Very much, thank you!” This morning, the company announced that it signed a 3-year, $15 billion supply deal with Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL). The deal covers a wide range of high-performance radio frequency (RF) chips — i.e., the semiconductors that handle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 4G and 5G data connections.

The deal’s price tag alone is noteworthy, but Broadcom has some ulterior motives behind this Apple agreement. Currently, both Qorvo Inc. (Nasdaq: QRVO) and Skyworks Solutions Inc. (Nasdaq: SWKS) are interested in bidding for Broadcom’s RF business unit.

With a $15 billion Apple supply deal in its back pocket, Broadcom should now be able to command a premium price for its RF unit. Sorry Qorvo and Skyworks, the price just went up.

No. 4: What’s the Big Deal?

Seriously, I’d like to know. Shares of American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) surged more than 4% on the open this morning, following the company’s quarterly earnings report. Yet, I don’t see anything anywhere near that spectacular in the numbers.

For instance, AmEx reported earnings of $2.03 per share on revenue of $11.37 billion. Earnings beat expectations by just $0.02 per share and were down 12.5% from year-ago results. Revenue was merely in line with Wall Street’s target.

Maybe it’s guidance that’s driving AXP? Nope. The company’s forecast was roughly in line with consensus targets … even a bit on the low side of analysts’ range.

My best guess is that today’s move was technical in nature — ’cause the earnings just don’t support it. AXP had been banging up against price resistance at $130 since the middle of January. Once the shares breached this psychological level (people like round numbers … they’re pretty and look good in spreadsheets) AXP jumped sharply.

I expect American Express to maintain some of today’s gains, but the shares are already coming back to earth. Look for a more controlled upside from here, now that the initial knee jerk is out of the way.

Great Stuff: When Life Gives You Coronaviruses…

OK, I’ve got to level with you. I can’t get the idea of infectious plague snakes out of my head. They’re seriously harshing my take on the market. The fact that the coronavirus death toll rose from 17 to 26 in just a day also kinda freaks me out. (Wait, coronavirus … corona … maybe I just need a beer?)

As a rational investor, I know that I need to cool my jets on this one and actually prepare for uncertain times. I also know my risk tolerance levels and my investment goals, but what about you, dear reader?

Only you know how risky or conservative you can allow your investments to remain — and how prepared (or unprepared) your portfolio is for volatile markets.

All right Mr. Great Stuff, that’s fine and all, but I don’t want to spend all day looking at charts and market data…

I would call you lazy here, but I think I’ve already covered that. While it’s not “voting with your smartphone” easy, the experts here at Banyan Hill make this process exceedingly simple.

Experts such as Ted Bauman spend all day (and a sizable chunk of evenings too) digging through the markets so you don’t have to. This week, Ted also has profit-taking on the brain (great minds think alike!), giving you three ways to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.

In fact, you can get your “Gambler” fix right here: “The No. 1 Question: When to Sell Shares and Claim Profits.”

But if you have better things to do than wait for consolidation patterns … or watching for bullish breakouts … you may find it easier to have Ted handle the analysis for you!

Click here to see how Ted’s market expertise can help you find profits — even if the markets go haywire.

That’s all for this week. But don’t fret, you can get more meme-y market goodness by following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

[auburnfamilynews]

There is some apprehension about the year ahead. (Photo by Acid Reign.)

     War Eagle, everybody! As the bleak midwinter settles in with frost and northern winds, it is time to assess recent events in football and beyond. A year of excitement and disappointment in football has passed. Despite a loss last Wednesday at Tuscaloosa, Auburn has a Top Ten basketball program. And how about that Auburn gymnastics team? Prior to last week, Auburn had not won a match against Alabama since Jimmy Carter was president of the USA.

     I watched most of the basketball game against Alabama last Wednesday night. Auburn did a good job guarding a hot-shooting team. Alabama just got too many points off turnovers. Auburn had been doing a very good job of not giving the ball away up to that game, but turnovers really were the difference in this one. That, and Alabama was able to render both Auburn guards a non-factor with the ball. That has not happened all year, but you can bet Florida was taking notes. Auburn will have a tough matchup in Gainesville this Saturday trying to get back on the winning track.

     I have avoided posting about the Outback Bowl mainly because I just did not have anything positive to say about that game. I have not seen Auburn pushed around like that in years on both lines of scrimmage. Just looking at the numbers, it is hard to believe Auburn lost that game by just 7 points.

     To find a worse defensive performance by Auburn, one would have to go back to the 2015 game at LSU. That would be the game where Auburn defenders were trying to avoid Leonard Fournette, and running away. On offense, it was clear that the coaching staff was worried about Minnesota’s defensive front seven. Auburn ran a very screen-heavy set of plays in the first half, to get away from the blitzing up front. That was not bad strategy, except that Auburn could not block cornerbacks and safeties at all. Auburn would screen the ball out wide, and the cornerback would run through the blocker and blow up the play. I don’t think I saw a successful wide receiver block all day long. Auburn’s star running back JaTarvious Whitlow was hardly on the field in the first half.

     As far as Auburn’s future in football, the main thing I can think of is those lines of scrimmage. Auburn loses 3 out of 4 starters on the defensive line, and 4 out of 5 starters on the offensive line. I’ve heard it opined that we have better players on the bench on the offensive line. If that is true, why weren’t they playing this season?

     I’m cautiously optimistic that Auburn will be ok up front on defense. Line coach Rodney Garner seems to produce capable lines every year, no matter who leaves. Auburn has recruited well on the defensive line, and development will be key. What worries me is replacing 4 starters out of 5 in the secondary. Next season, we will have offenses like Alabama, LSU, Lane Kiffin and Mike Leach slinging the ball at the Auburn secondary, and that is just in the Western Division. Offensive coordinators will quickly take advantage of any coverage issues, and take advantage of the weakest coverage guy, just like in the past season.

     Offensively, there is less reason for optimism. Auburn has a pretty good quarterback returning, but will have to adjust to a new offensive coordinator and line coach. We’ve heard optimism from the Auburn camp when new coordinators and line coaches are brought in. The new guys can bring in some new wrinkles, but in the end Auburn still likes to line up 3 and 4 wide receivers and waste a down running up the middle against an 8 man box. We’ve again been told that things will be different this time, but I have my doubts after the last 5 seasons.

     This off-season will be critical in developing a cohesive front. I’m hoping Auburn’s receivers are healthier going into the off-season, and can work on timing and routes. Chemistry on the offensive staff will be critical, as well. If there is friction in the staff meetings, the results on the field could be disastrous.

     I do have a glass half-full side of my views, as well. With coach Gus Malzahn as a coordinator or head coach, Auburn has beaten Alabama and Nick Saban 4 times in the past 10 seasons. Nationally, only 4 teams outside the SEC have beaten Alabama. Those are Oklahoma (2013), Ohio State (2014) and Clemson twice (2016 and 2018). The SEC East has just 1 (ONE!) victory against the Tide in the past 10 years. That was Steve Spurrier and the South Carolina Gamecocks in 2010.

     The SEC West hasn’t done much better. LSU has 3 wins (2010, 2011 and 2019.) Ole Miss has 2 (2014 and 2015). Texas A&M has 1 win, in 2012. Arkansas and Mississippi State have not beaten Alabama at all, since 2007. Measured by that standard, Gus Malzahn has done better than any other coach Alabama has played against.

     Going forward, both teams have some rebuilding to do. Guys leaving early for the NFL or the transfer portal continues to be a challenge for both teams. I think Alabama had more issues on this that Auburn did. Auburn had Noah Igbinoghene and Arryn Siposs decide to go out early. I would not be surprised to see a running back or two decide to leave, as well. It’s going to be hard to give out enough carries to make all those guys happy. I’m not sure at all about the decision by Siposs to leave for the NFL draft. By and large, the NFL does not draft punters, and even if they did, there are several punters who would be ahead of him on the board. It may be possible to pick up a job in free agency. I think Igbinoghene probably did make the right decision. He has everything the NFL looks for in a cornerback, and he’ll land somewhere with a bright future.

     I apologize for the gloom and doom in this post, but at least we aren’t LSU! They lost big-time coaches on the offense and defense, their Heisman quarterback has graduated, and their roster has a lot of holes thanks to the NFL draft and the transfer portal. On top of that, I don’t think we’ve heard the last of the $100 bill handouts, either. LSU also has some issues apparently, with the NOPD. There were arrest threats over victory cigar smoking, and $100 bill-man Odell Beckham Jr. now has an arrest warrant out on him for assault on an officer. Wow. Some messes for the Bengal Tigers to clean up, to be sure!

The post A Look Back, and Ahead. appeared first on Track 'Em Tigers, Auburn's oldest and most read independent blog.

from Track 'Em Tigers, Auburn's oldest and most read independent blog http://trackemtigers.com/a-look-back-and-ahead/

[kansascityhappenings]

‘Here we go’: Chiefs prepped for Texans in pseudo-rematch of Week 6

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City Chiefs will welcome the Texans to Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday for the divisional round of the playoffs, a rematch in name only of their Week 6 nail-biter won by Houston on a fourth-quarter touchdown.

The Chiefs are so markedly different that their early October game is nearly meaningless.

The Chiefs were in the midst of a shaky 6-4 start to the season, their defense was still adjusting to Steve Spagnuolo’s new 4-3 scheme, and their injury list was about as long as the receipt at a CVS.

Running back Darrel Williams #31 of the Kansas City Chiefs makes a leaping attempt for a pass in the end zone against inside linebacker Zach Cunningham #41 of the Houston Texans during the first half at Arrowhead Stadium on October 13, 2019 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Peter Aiken/Getty Images)

Five starters were missing because of injuries, including offensive linemen Eric Fisher and Andrew Wylie, and a handful of other key contributors were hobbled by ailments.

Among them was quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who was still dealing with a sore ankle.

Well, the league’s reigning MVP is back to putting up mind-blowing stats, the Chiefs’ postseason bye has the team as healthy as it has been all season, and a defense that was once the Achilles’ heel has become one of the biggest reasons that Kansas City is among the favorites to reach the Super Bowl in Miami.

“Every team I think changes throughout the season. They develop their personalities,” said Chiefs coach Andy Reid, whose team was back at work Monday. “We all have highs and lows. You kind of work through that and here you sit. We’re not the same as we were at the beginning. They’re not the same as they were at the beginning. So here we go.”

The easiest change to parse out between the Chiefs of three months ago and the current bunch is in personnel.

Fisher is back from his groin injury and Wylie from his ankle sprain. Chris Jones is back from his groin injury, fellow defensive tackle Xavier Williams has returned from injured reserve and linebacker Anthony Hitchens — voted one of Kansas City’s playoff captains — has returned from yet another groin injury.

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes #15 of the Kansas City Chiefs walks off the field before a game against the Denver Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High on October 17, 2019 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images)

Those big numbers that Mahomes has been putting up have come thanks in part to the emergence of rookie wide receiver Mecole Hardman, who was still getting his legs under him in October, and the return of veteran Sammy Watkins, who was absent during the first meeting with Houston because of a hamstring injury.

The Chiefs also lost cornerback Kendall Fuller in that game. He is back to 100 percent, too.

There have been other personnel changes, of course, and not all of them have been good. The Chiefs lost defensive end Alex Okafor to a torn pectoral muscle late in the season, and rookie safety Juan Thornhill had his dynamic debut season cut short when he tore his ACL in a Week 17 win over the Chargers that helped the Chiefs earn the No. 2 seed in the AFC playoffs.

But even those losses have been offset by some noteworthy additions. First came defensive tackle Mike Pennel, who has helped to shore up the run game.

Then came seven-time Pro Bowl pass rusher Terrell Suggs, who was waived by the Arizona Cardinals and claimed by the Chiefs just in time to play in their final two regular-season games and get fully acquainted with the defense for what he hopes is another championship push.

“This team plays with tremendous swag,” said Suggs, who climbed another notch on the career sack list with one against the Chargers. “That’s the No. 1 edge that a football player has: confidence. When you have a team that’s playing with swagger, and the head ball coach is encouraging that, that can help you in January in playoff football.”

Strong safety Tyrann Mathieu #32 of the Kansas City Chiefs reacts to a defensive stop against the Chicago Bears in the third quarter of the game at Soldier Field on December 22, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

That swagger comes in part from a defense that has leaned on newcomers Frank Clark and All-Pro safety Tyrann Mathieu, the latter of whom played for the Texans last season.

They put together a streak of 10 consecutive quarters without allowing a touchdown late in the season, shutting down Tom Brady and the Patriots along the way, and had become so dominant that one of the league’s best offenses was left playing little more than a supporting role.

It certainly isn’t the same hodgepodge bunch that was still picking up the scheme in Week 6, when Deshaun Watson ran for two scores and threw for another in leading the Texans to a 31-24 victory.

“We have some great momentum heading into the postseason,” Mathieu said. “I know my teammates feel the same.”

NOTES: Reid said everybody participated in Monday’s workout, a good sign for a team that dealt with plenty of illnesses late in the regular season.

Mathieu and Hitchens were joined by Mahomes, TE Travis Kelce, P Dustin Colquitt and K Harrison Butker as playoff captains. They were chosen in voting by their teammates.

Former Chiefs S Ron Parker announced on social media Monday that he was retiring. “He came in as a small-college guy and he just did a great job,” Reid said. “I told him he’d be a great coach. He just has a great way about him.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2020/01/06/chiefs-prepped-for-texans-in-pseudo-rematch-of-week-6/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2020/01/07/here-we-go-chiefs-prepped-for-texans-in-pseudo-rematch-of-week-6/

[itswomanswork]

TAS 523: (Special Episode) 3 Growth Options For Your Business and Brand (Phase 2)

Do you think it’s time to take your ecommerce business to the next level? Are you ready to explore growth options outside of Amazon so you can increase your profit margins? What is the roadmap to get there? Where do you even start? You’ve come to the right place! On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll join Scott and Chris on the road as they travel to Georgia en route to an upcoming event and bring you along for the ride. In their conversation, the guys explain what Phase two entails, options you should start considering to diversify the channels your brand is featured on, and much more! You don’t want to miss a minute of this engaging episode!

What is Phase 2?

If you are ready to “Graduate” from Phase 1 of building an ecommerce brand and you are ready to move forward with what Scott and Chris are calling Phase 2, buckle up! On this episode of The Amazing Seller, the guys explain what you should expect from Phase 2 and how you can get started with it today. What is Phase 2? It’s going deeper with much of the content that Scott has already introduced to the TAS community but with an eye of moving away from Amazon. This also includes what Scott has been covering lately under the phrase, digital marketing. To hear more about Phase 2 and how you can get started, make sure to listen to this episode!

Don’t become channel dependent!

Did you know that any business that is dependent on any one thing for too long is destined to fail? It’s true! If for whatever reason, Amazon decided to blacklist your account right now, would your ecommerce business survive? Chances are, your answer is no. What’s the solution? According to Chris and Scott, you’ve got to work hard at diversifying your channels so you are prepared when the curveball comes your way. Don’t leave it all up to chance! Learn from Scott and Chris’ years of experience in building ecommerce businesses on and off of Amazon so you can have a thriving business!

The difference between an ecommerce site and a sales funnel.

What is the difference between driving traffic to your ecommerce site and driving traffic to your sales funnel? Which place is the best landing spot for your target audience? On this episode of The Amazing Seller, you’ll hear from Scott and Chris as they explain the difference between each landing location and why it matters which one you choose. The main difference between the two options is that a sales funnel is a more narrow and focused experience for your customer. When you drive your customer to your sales funnel, they won’t hear all about your brand and all the other distractions that a full site might feature. Which one should you send your customers to? It depends on where you are at in your brand development. Listen to Scott and Chris explain which option might be best for you by listening to this helpful episode!

Three ways to grow your business separate from Amazon.

As Scott and Chris expand on what Phase 2 is all about, you might be wondering where you should jump in to get the ball rolling. According to the guys, there are three great starting points for you to move from Phase 1 and start working toward Phase 2 of your ecommerce business.

Start looking at other marketplaces to take your brand.

Learn how to use sales funnels to drive traffic.

Begin building your ecommerce site.

Which option is the best one for you? Hear more from the guys as they expand on each of these ways to grow your business off of Amazon by listening to this informative episode, you don’t want to miss it!

OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER

[0:03] Scott’s introduction to this episode of the podcast!

[3:30] What is Phase 2?

[5:30] Why you shouldn’t be channel dependent.

[10:30] Going internationally on Amazon is great but you still need to diversity!

[16:00] The difference between an ecommerce store and a sales funnel.

[22:30] The value of driving traffic to your educational content.

[27:00] Scott explains how his new brand utilized a blog to drive traffic.

[30:30] Chris recaps the three ways to grow your brand off of Amazon.

[34:00] Why it’s helpful to break things down into steps.

[39:00] Closing thoughts from Scott.

TRANSCRIPT TAS 523

TAS 523: (Special Episode) 3 Growth Options For Your Business and Brand (Phase 2)

  [INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] Scott: Hey, guys. I want to jump in here and I want to give you a heads up. Today, we’re not going to do an Ask Scott session and the reason why is because I have another episode that I want to play for you. It’s one that Chris Schaffer and I recorded in…

Read full transcript…

Click Here to Download Transcript

…the car heading to Georgia for an event and you’re going to start hearing a few of these episodes. We did a bunch of recordings in the car. We had about a four-hour ride each way and today we’re going to be talking about growing outside of just Amazon and really what other channels we can use to grow our business. All right. So, I just want to jump in here and give you that heads up so you’re not like, “Scott, where is the Ask Scott session for this week?” This is going to be in place of that. I will be back to do another one next week so stay tuned for that but in the meantime sit back, relax, enjoy this car ride with myself and Chris Schaffer.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:53] Scott: Well, hey, hey, what’s up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of The Amazing Seller Podcast. This is episode number 523 and the reason why I’m laughing is because we’re on a highway right now and we are going to do this intro and there’s an Escalade that’s acting as if they’re in I think Indianapolis.

[00:01:12] Chris: Fast and the Furious 9. If you’re driving an Escalade and you’re from Georgia and you’re listening to this podcast, it might be you. Obey the speed limit.

[00:01:19] Scott: Obey the speed limit. All right. Yes. We are in a car today in my car and we are heading to an event and we decided to fire up the mics. I’m holding a mic as I’m holding the wheel as well but I’m safe, guys. We’re cruising right here around 75 miles an hour. We’re in the slow lane by the way just to make sure that we’re safe

[00:01:41] Chris: We’re responsible adults.

[00:01:42] Scott: Yes, we are and we’re paying attention and, yeah, we figured while we had about 250 miles to kill, we might as well record a few episodes. So, Chris Schaffer, what’s happening over there in the passenger seat?

[00:01:55] Chris: Not a whole lot. I’m just looking out the window here, Scott, and laughing at all of the things that are laying along the side of the highway here as we drive through South Carolina and there’s like carpets and bales of hay and all kinds of stuff to look at out the window, but I’m actually really pumped. I’m excited that we’re headed to this event. It’s kind of interesting because we normally both fly and you said, “You know, it’s going to take me longer to get through TSA,” and hope you’re going the speed limit because there’s a police officer.

[00:02:21] Scott: Yeah. Put the lights down.

[00:02:24] Chris: You said, “It’s going to take me longer to get through TSA and get on a plane than it is to drive there basically. I’m going to have to get up and go to the airport and that’s going to take three hours and it’s going to be a two-hour flight. We might as well just drive.” So, I flew to South Carolina and we’re driving to the event now.

[00:02:36] Scott: You actually flew to North Carolina.

[00:02:38] Chris: Whatever.

[00:02:38] Scott: And then I picked you up.

[00:02:39] Chris: That’s right. I flew in to Charlotte, so I am a liar and I just offended everybody in North Carolina. It’s like 10 minutes from South Carolina. What do I know? I’m from Texas. We actually have a few hours in the car which is rare for us and it’s just you and I.

[00:02:55] Scott: Yeah.

[00:02:35] Chris: It’s not our team. It’s not all the people that distract us with all of the other things, the things that we should be focused on.

[00:03:01] Scott: Exactly.

[00:03:01] Chris: And so, we have some time to kind of just chat about the future of everything that’s going on with the podcast and where we think everything is headed and what people should really be focused on beyond just that initial picture of we talked about for a few hundred episodes now of getting up and getting started and starting to sell on Amazon. So, I’m excited to dive into some of that stuff right now.

[00:03:23] Scott: Yeah. I know you and I were talking about what we should cover and there’s a lot we want to cover but we want to keep this focused.

[00:03:30] Chris: Digestible.

[00:03:31] Scott: Yes, and digestible. So, we are going to start with what we’re calling phase 2 of building your e-commerce business. And the reason why I’m calling it phase 2 is because phase 1 was something that I talked about at Sellers Summit and it was really about how we’ve built a six-figure brand in the past 12 months and we did it pretty much on Amazon and then we’ve done some list building and stuff like that which I talked about so that still in phase 1, but phase 2 is going I guess a lot deeper in building stuff off of Amazon, traffic, offers, free plus shipping offers, funnels, all that fun stuff that I’m calling digital marketing for anyone that’s brand-new. You’ve been hearing me talk about that. That’s what we were talking about. So, what I want to do today, Chris, is really talk about the three ways that you can really start phase 2 because there isn’t just one way. There’s one way that I see us doing it but there are a few different ways that you could do it. So, why don’t we dive into those three ways? Before I do though, Chris, let me remind people of the show notes because there should be some show notes for you if my editor did their job which I’m sure they did. If you head over to TheAmazingSeller.com/523 and the show notes and transcripts and everything should be there so definitely check that out. And I also should probably mention if you’re brand-new and you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Scott, I want to do phase 1 then I would say probably head over to TheAmazingSeller.com/Bootcamp and that will give you the foundation and really some training that we’ve done there to kind of walk you through and build that foundation for building that thing out before you could even get to phase 2. So, with that all being said, Chris, let’s rock ‘n roll. What do you say? Let’s jump in.

[00:05:19] Chris: Let’s do it.

[00:05:19] Scott: Where do you want to start?

[00:05:20] Chris: Well, I mean, obviously when we’re talking about phase 2, we’re talking about selling places that aren’t Amazon and the whole reason that we want to do this is because we don’t ever want to be channel dependent. If you guys haven’t heard us talking about this in the past, you’re going to hear us beat you over the head with this but any business that is dependent on any one thing consistently going right is destined to fail over the long-term. Whether that is one product existing in perpetuity whether that is one place that is driving all of your traffic or whether that is one place where you’re getting all of your sales. Now obviously in the 1800s, the 1900s, and even the early 20th century and the 21st-century, you could launch a retail store and that would be the only place that you would get that. But we don’t really have that luxury online because there’s a lot of places that people can go to buy things. So, the question that comes up a lot is, well, what is that first place? There’s a couple of different ways that we can go about this. The easiest one for a lot of people is to list on other marketplaces. There’s a bunch of other ones. There’s Walmart, there’s Rakuten, there’s Sears and you can make good money on all of those marketplaces. We had somebody recently in the little mastermind that we did that – what was the requirements to be in there? They were all six figures.

[00:06:40] Scott: Yeah. Oh yeah, it was 250,000.

[00:06:42] Chris: It’s 250,000 or more.

[00:06:44] Scott: And we had a few people that were just touching a million.

[00:06:46] Chris: And he was substantially more if I recall and he wasn’t selling on Amazon. He was only selling in these other marketplaces.

[00:06:51] Scott: He started the opposite way that I would start but, yeah, he did and now he’s going to be launching his stuff on Amazon. So, fine, it’s another channel.

[00:06:58] Chris: Right. And that for a lot of sellers I think is going to be the easiest because you don’t have to learn any additional skills really. I mean to sell on Walmart, you basically just have to apply and then you have to figure out how to fulfill the orders. Rakuten is the same kind of way. You just basically set up an account and you can do that. Sears is the same way. It’s the same model that we’re used to and you’re able to pick up a couple of extra small chunks of the pie if you will. If Amazon is 50% of all sales online, Sears might be 2% or 3%. You’re going to pick up some sales from each of those just like kind of how I feel about moving into like Amazon.ca or.mx or whatever. Those are great strategies because you can pick up on additional one or two sales in each of these places. Assuming we’re selling 10 products a day, 10 sales a day, we might get one from Sears or two from Sears. That’s great and that’s one place that we can diversify but that wouldn’t be where I spend a ton of my time and my energy and effort because again once you kind of get that up, it’s not any different from what you’re doing on Amazon and you’re still 100% dependent on someone else doing the traffic driving for you which I think is a problem long-term. The number one skill that I think people need to master to be very successful in this long-term, one is product selection but, two…

[00:08:13] Scott: Market selection.

[00:08:14] Chris: Right. Two is being able to communicate with that market. So, if you’re able to pick the right market and you’re able to find a passion or niche…

[00:08:21] Scott: Just passed a Jeep by the way. If any of you have been following along the workshop, I reference the Jeep stuff quite often. So, if you haven’t, you might want to go check out…

[00:08:28] Chris: And we’re not in the Jeep so we didn’t get waved at.

[00:08:30] Scott: No, we didn’t. I wouldn’t want to drive the Jeep here honestly this long.

[00:08:34] Chris: We’re going to get blown around.

[00:08:35] Scott: Well, yeah, I mean, things like you got to hold on with two hands, I won’t be able to do this.

[00:08:38] Chris: It’s a tank.

[00:08:39] Scott: It is. It’s a beast.

[00:08:41] Chris: But I think the number one skill beyond picking the right product, picking the right market is really understanding how to communicate with that market and driving traffic. When you can master that, the other two ways that we can really start to sell outside of Amazon become very, very “easy” to do and I say easy kind of with air quotes because mastering traffic and understanding how to communicate with our audience is not easy. It takes work but the other two ways which is having our own full-fledged e-commerce site through something like WooCommerce or Shopify or any of those platforms or building out sales funnels where we control that experience a little bit more, it’s usually a little easier to get those up too. Both of those are kind of dependent on that but if you mastered that skill then you can apply that to either of those two and it makes either of those two in my opinion substantially more valuable than going to that first method which is just going to other people’s channels. Any time that we can own our own real estate, we are much better off in terms of long-term strategy. Renting is fine. Renting is great as long as your landlord is willing to rent you. If your landlord stops being willing to rent you, you need to find another place to live. And if it’s through house, nobody is going to kick us off.

[00:09:55] Scott: You have to pay your taxes.

[00:09:57] Chris: But again, right, technically you’re renting.

[00:10:00] Scott: Exactly.

[00:10:01] Chris: And so, anytime that we can own our own piece of real estate, own our own traffic, that’s going to be substantially better for us. So, I would really prefer that people kind of lean towards those other two in terms of a long-term solution. Do you feel the same way?

[00:10:14] Scott: I do. The other thing I know that people are asking themselves probably not all, but some, why don’t I just launch on the international marketplaces for Amazon versus going off completely of Amazon because they are kind of independent in a sense where if my one account got shut down, the other one necessarily wouldn’t get taken down. What’re your thoughts on that?

[00:10:37] Chris: And I can do some stuff in the UK that I can’t do in the US but at the same time you’re still playing on somebody else’s playground at that point. One, if Amazon does shut your account down for some reason then they understand that those are linked. They’re not stupid. They know everything I’ve ever bought, and they know everything I’ve ever sent to anybody else. They have the data. If they wanted to shut you down, they would. I think that’s fine, but I think that’s still phase 1 and if you want to go international and you want to deal with that, that’s fine but for me, I’ve helped brands launch in the UK. We’ve helped brands launch on .jp and it’s nice. It’s a nice additional stream of income. You don’t really have to learn any new skills but when you do that, you’re still 100% dependent on Amazon and the whims of Amazon. And not that that’s not a good thing, not that Amazon is not a gift from the traffic gods in terms of how easy it is to get up and get launched. And not that it’s not where we want to start. We absolutely want to start with Amazon but for the long-term if we’re talking about building a real brand that we can sell, and we can get a good multiple on if that’s what we want to do or if we want to just be stable over the long-term, I don’t want to be dependent on one single place. And even though it’s technically a different place, it’s still the same place.

[00:11:58] Scott: Here’s the other thing though too like when you are launching or putting your products up on the other marketplaces within Amazon, you need a separate batch of inventory. So, now your cost have just maybe doubled in a sense and you have inventory that’s over there that now you have to deal with and then all of the other logistical stuff of doing that and setting up your different tax and all that stuff and I’m not saying that we’re not going to do that like we probably will sooner than later but that’s not like next move for us and I think that there’s a better way of figuring out your next move as far as like outside of Amazon traffic.

[00:12:46] Chris: Here’s my like 5,000-foot view of diversification within other marketplaces or even just within other Amazon marketplaces. So, your whole Sears, Rakuten, any of like the daily deal sites, any of those kinds of things are great but you don’t own the customer and if you want to build a brand over the long-term, you need to own the customer relationship. We cannot do that on Amazon. We cannot do that on Sears. We cannot do that on Rakuten. We can’t do that on any of these marketplaces because it’s setup that they are buying from Sears. They are buying from Amazon. That is who they are purchasing from and so you lose out on a couple of key things. One is the brand loyalty piece which you can kind of make up with an email list and some of those kinds of things.

But to the ability to actually target those people and turn them into a longer-term higher value customer, I can’t really do that on Amazon unless I have them on the email list and I’m doing all kinds of crazy marketing things to try to match up Amazon purchases to people on my email list. I’m trying to do an email append and all of these crazy things. If I sell it to them through my own website or I sell it to them through my own sales funnel, I already own that customer data and I know exactly what they’ve bought, and I can serve them exactly like Amazon does except I’m thinking higher margins with other complementary products that they may want.  And here’s another great one, if I’m selling something that people would subscribe to let’s say a supplement. I guess we’re entering Georgia.

[00:14:13] Scott: It’s a giant peach right here. Did you see the giant peach? There it is.

[00:14:16] Chris: I did.

[00:14:18] Scott: There’s a giant water tower and it’s shaped like a peach.

[00:14:22] Chris: Next to Fatz café.

[00:14:23] Scott: So, yeah, the peach basket. All right. Anyway, Georgia is the peach state. I don’t know if you knew that.

[00:14:31] Chris: I have no idea. So, I can serve them other products or if I have something that people would buy more than once, I can then I have a couple of chances to try to make them a subscriber versus them just happening to click to subscribe and save button on Amazon and ordering from me multiple times. I can run a Facebook ad and target them and bring them back into being a customer and then I increase the lifetime value of that customer. And we’re looking at e-commerce long-term. There’s a couple of metrics that we really want to look at. One is the average cart value or average order value which is something we look at on Amazon, just how much they’re spending per transaction, and then how frequently are they buying from us. Those are the two things. There’s only like three ways that you can get more money. You can either sell more to new people, acquire more customers but that can be expensive. You can sell more to the same people, get them to buy different products, or you can get them to buy more frequently. That’s really it. There’s not a whole – it’s not rocket surgery, right? We can’t control that portion of the experience through a marketplace. We can control that portion of experience through a sales funnel or through our own ecommerce site. Now, when we’re talking about those two things, Scott, I think everybody understands what a full-fledged e-commerce site looks like. You go to Shopify, you load up all your products. What is the difference in your mind between building out what I’m going to call, and all of our funnely friends are going to yell at me but I’m going to put in air quotes, just a “sales funnel” versus building out a full e-commerce site? What are the differences in your mind there and why might somebody listening choose one over the other?

[00:16:04] Scott: Well, your e-commerce site is really it’s a store of all of your products so if you landed there, you have a whole bunch of different like options. You have a whole bunch of different ways that you can interact. There’s really no sales as we call it funnel. There’s no process. There’s no sales process or there’s no direction. There’s no guidance once you land there. Yes, you might have landed there because you did a search for a garlic press and you end up on that and then you might see something else that might get your attention and then you might see something else and then you just wander around until maybe you leave so you’re not really controlling the experience in a sense. With a sales funnel with even just two or three products, you can guide them and really get them to raise their hand in the beginning, so you know that it’s the right customer and what they’re looking for and then you can offer them things that are related to that kind of like frequently bought together inside of Amazon except the difference is you’re controlling that experience. So, that’s my thought on that.

[00:17:06] Chris: Yeah. And I think the answer isn’t one or the other necessarily and the reason that you and I like the concept of funnels in general is because for those you guys who haven’t                   run a ton of digital ads like Scott and I have done a bunch of the digital marketing stuff, anytime you’re paying to put somebody somewhere whether it’s through a Facebook Ad, AdWords, YouTube, Instagram, any of these kinds of things, we want to give them one thing to do. Why? Because every single one of us has the attention span shorter than a goldfish and this is new studies that they’ve done are showing that the attention span of the human being is now shorter than the attention span of a goldfish.  

[00:17:44] Scott: That’s ridiculous.

[00:17:45] Chris: Just think about that. When you take somebody that you are paying for and you drive them to a place where they have 10 different options, chances are they’re going to hang out for a little while and they’re going to check out some of those things. But if you give them one option or two options, the thing that really is interesting is if they aren’t interested, they kind of leave right away. But if they are interested, they’re actually more likely to buy from us. An e-commerce store is nice if you can have traffic that you don’t need as much control over like somebody coming in from a Google search, I don’t necessarily have any control over which page on the website they land on. Now I can do some SEO to try to rank a specific page over another but at the end of the day, Google is going to show what Google is going to show and they’re going to land on one page.

And so, I have to have a little bit of a broader experience. I have to allow those people to show me what they want versus when I’m running an ad, I want to drive that to a page that I have as much control over as possible because I want to eliminate any of the things that might distract them from the thing that I want them to do. I either want them to leave or do the thing that I want them to do which in this case, buy. Now, I think if you have maybe 8 to 10 products, five or more is really where I would start with this then I would probably start with the e-commerce site to get that built and then start to focus on building some of those funnels. If you have fewer than that, I wouldn’t even build out a Shopify store or do any of those kinds of things. I would just start with the sales funnel. And you can actually do that in either case because you’re probably going to have one or two products that sell the best anyway and you can start by building a sales funnel in that way. Does that make sense?

[00:19:24] Scott: Yeah. The other thing I just want to add is like if you are creating an e-commerce store that’s great and all. That’s kind of like that’s your store. That’s your piece of property. That’s your real estate. But you still have to get people there. Yes, you can do SEO, search engine optimization, and you can work on that. That’s usually going to take some time but what you’re really going to probably start finding is that you’re going to want to drive paid traffic to this real estate, to these places. And when you’re doing that, you have to in your head think, “How am I going to get an ROI in this? Like, I’m spending money to acquire a customer. How much can I spend?” That’s number one. But really how can I get them to, number one, come there but not just buy but also like consume information that’s helpful but then potentially buy?

But when you’re paying for traffic, you probably want to get that done as quickly as possible because you’re like, “Wait a minute. I just spent money and I didn’t get anything.” So, you got to think about that stuff. So, having a store is like you said nice and it’s probably a must especially because if you’re a brand you want to have a place that you can call home and there are different ways you can do it. I mean I think everyone should have their own website but also a blog component and then your store that’s attached to that as well because then it’s kind of like all of your home base is kind of connected. But…

[00:20:52] Chris:  Well, and the people that are coming through that are going to be, again, the less controlled traffic.

[00:20:56] Scott: Exactly.

[00:20:56] Chris: Not necessarily what people were paying for. There are people that read a blog and then saw a product that they were kind of interested in and so we link them over to the Add to Cart page which is fine because again we’re kind of eliminating some distractions there. We’re not going to link it over to the homepage of the store. We’re going to link them specifically to that product and kind eliminate some of those distractions but they’re still going to have other places that they could go.

[00:21:18] Scott: Okay. So, let’s just dig into that real quick because there’s different ways that people can do this even ourselves like we’re thinking of different ways to have people come over to our property and then now with Facebook Pixels and all of that stuff we can do all of that fun stuff which we’ll probably talk in another episode about that advanced strategy as far as how you retarget and follow-up and build custom audience and all that stuff. But if you have a piece of content that’s on your blog or your website and you’re directing even page traffic there, you’re hoping to educate them enough to where they’re going to want to click on the links inside that post that get them to order your product eventually like that’s what we’re hoping that they do. Now, with Facebook Pixels and retargeting and build a custom audience and stuff, we have more chances at that even if they don’t buy that day. But let’s just talk about that real quick because if you are driving people to your store, I would recommend driving them to a piece of content that educates and explains or maybe compares and then has your product kind of woven through that post. You want to just speak to that real quick?

[00:22:36] Chris: So, I guess in that case though you wouldn’t be driving them directly to the store necessarily.

[00:22:40] Scott: No. We’d be driving them to a piece of content that is helpful and useful but then has the opportunity for them to click over to the product that’s listed in our store.

[00:22:50] Chris: Right.

[00:22:53] Scott: So, I guess what I’m asking you there is between doing that and building a sales funnel, what one do you prefer or would you prefer someone to do first?

[00:23:03] Chris: The answer is it depends. The answer is do whichever one you feel most comfortable with first. If you are a person who feels comfortable creating content, content is going to create a lot of long-term value for you. A sales funnel at least the way that we build them is generally going to be dependent on paid traffic and that’s fine because that’s a way that we scale rapidly. Content is not generally going to be dependent on paid traffic. We’re going to get traffic from social media, from Facebook, from Twitter, from Instagram, from Pinterest, from all of these kinds of fancy places and then from search engines, from Google, and from Bing. And if you look at what we’ve done in the new brand, Scott, we’re doing somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 monthly uniques I think if I remember those numbers correctly depending on the month. We had half a million people hit the site within the first 12 months and half of that came from social, half of that came from organic, almost none of that was paid.

Now, some of those visits were people that we had because the giveaway was listed there but we’re not really counting that because that’s different traffic. Let’s just say even if it’s 400,000, 400,000 people, that’s pretty substantial. We’re not necessarily selling anything directly from there though, so we have to link that back to a product at some point to actually see some ROI on that. If you’re comfortable creating content, then that is the thing I would focus on at first because you’re going to be able to get a base of stable traffic that way that you don’t have to pay for. If you’re not comfortable creating blog posts because here’s the thing, you and I have a little bit of background there. We know some of the things that we need to do to titles, to descriptions, the types of content that we should create. You and I really sat down in that brand, looked at the analytics after we published a few blog posts and said, “Here’s the stuff that’s working, here’s the stuff that’s not. Let’s focus on this.”

[00:24:51] Scott:  Right.

[00:24:52] Chris: And we did more of the stuff that’s working. Again, 80% of business is doing more of what works and less what doesn’t.

[00:24:56] Scott: Exactly.

[00:24:57] Chris: But not everybody has that skillset. Not everybody wants to do that. It’s something that everybody should learn but it’s not necessarily the easiest thing to do for a lot of people. And so, if you’re not somebody that feels comfortable creating video, writing blog posts, creating content of any kind for your audience, a sales funnel can be nice because all you’re doing is putting an ad to the landing page and you’re saying, “Hey, you have to create one piece of content,” that’s the ad creative whether it’s a video or a photo and the text that you put on Facebook and you’re writing a couple of words on the landing page and sharing some pictures. And you’re putting in front of people who are potentially your customers and you’re saying, “Go buy this.”

Once you’ve mastered that skill, you can scale really, really quickly but you’re still missing the other half of that equation which is the organic people, the people who aren’t ready to buy right now. You heard me throughout this in the past and I don’t know if it’s accurate, but I heard it somewhere years ago and it’s always kind of stuck in my head and it’s a good kind of rule of thumb, 3% of people at any given market are willing to buy at any given time. So, 3% of cooks are kind of actively looking for a garlic press. If they saw a garlic press that was interesting to them, they would buy it. But that leaves 97% of people out. No matter how good our ad is, no matter what happens, they’re just not ready for that.

[00:26:11] Scott: They’re not ready.

[00:26:12] Chris: Because they just bought one, because whatever. And so, that’s where the content side of that comes in. So, I would say focus where you feel most comfortable up front. Now, that we have Amazon up and stable and maybe we launched on Amazon.com, .uk, wherever, whatever other marketplaces we want to launch and we’re ready to move into phase 2, sit down, have an honest conversation with yourself and figure out where you feel most comfortable. I think you need to do both, but I would start, and I would focus on whichever one I think I could do the best first. There’s no wrong answer.

[00:26:46] Scott: No. Let me just kind of go back at what we kind of did from the very beginning and again it was kind of our long-term play knowing that over time because SEO and kind of getting your pages ranked in Google and all that stuff takes time, we knew that eventually, we would have some organic traffic if all we did was published our content on a blog and eventually we would add the store component to that. And then when you add that store component, yes, you’ll probably get some searched but we’re not really caring about that as search. We’re just looking at that as being another piece of real estate kind of like a little addition that we put on a house. We’re putting that little extension on there so this way here we have a place to now send those people but, in the beginning, and if you are just starting right now, or maybe you’re six months in or maybe you’re a year in, maybe you’re two years in and you haven’t done that yet, start doing that just as a regular thing for your brand.

And over time you’re going to start getting some organic traffic and then you can do some cool things like we’re talking about now that you’re going to get free traffic as well and you’re going to have places that then you can drive paid traffic to a blog post that did really well or that got a bunch of shares or that got a bunch of comments or any of that stuff. So, as you’re building your brand, it’s never too soon, in my opinion, to just start writing content on your platform and in this case it’s your websites/blog and from there then you can start to rework it or look at your analytics and see what’s doing good, what’s not doing so good, and all of that stuff and then you can do more of what works and less of what isn’t working or hasn’t worked in the past. So, I just want to throw that out there for people like no matter where you are right now you should be doing that because it will pay off eventually.

[00:28:37] Scott: And maybe we should probably do a whole another episode even talking about like how to optimize and really like do the basic SEO stuff for content whether that’s on YouTube, whether that’s on your blog or whether that’s on Facebook or whatever like there’s different components for different platforms. In this case, we’re talking more of Google but maybe we should even drill into that in a future episode to get people to kind of where they need to be there. So, let’s just kind of wrap up though, Chris, here as far as if you’re already selling on Amazon you’re doing okay meaning you’re selling where you believe is at your potential or your rate about the max and you’re ready to start going off of Amazon. Let’s kind of do that recap real quick. You want to run them through that?

[00:29:30] Chris: Run them through which?

[00:29:32] Scott: Well, the three different ways.

[00:29:32] Chris: When they know or the three different…?

[00:29:33] Scott: Yeah. Well, no. I think really, I just want to give people those three different things that they can do when that time comes.

[00:29:39] Chris: So, before they do any of these three though and you just touched on this, we need to be at a place where we are stable. We’re not seeing big spikes and dips in sales unless it’s seasonal. We know that it’s seasonal because we’re selling snow shovels in July and it’s the same kind of thing. Everybody wants to know when they pivot. When do I go to product 2? When do I go off of Amazon? The answer is when you’re consistent. There is no like green lights that mysteriously appears in your dreams. There is no like, “Oh, absolutely I would go.” It’s okay, no matter what I kind of do on Amazon when I raise my budget for PPC, when I drive extra traffic, I might eke out an extra sale a day but really, I’m at 15. I’m at 14 today. I have 16 tomorrow. I average 15, doesn’t matter what I do. That to me is stable. Once you are there then you can start to look at one of those in three ways and those three ways that I would take a look at are, one, other marketplaces. So, not even including your .co.uk, your .jp, your .mx, but other actual brand marketplaces like your Walmart.com, your Rakuten, your Sears, those kinds of places.

Or then going to kind of pivot and look at like a paid traffic strategy through a sales funnel or more of an organic traffic strategy where we’re really building brand equity and all those kinds of things and then launching our own ecommerce, our full-fledged ecommerce story if you will using something like Shopify or WooCommerce. Now, with those last two, Scott, there is something that just popped into my head and it’s a question you and I get all the time and it’s something that I think holds a lot of people back from this and I say, “Don’t I need to fulfill those orders myself?” And the answer is no. Dirty little secret, Amazon will ship your stuff to your customers even if they don’t buy from Amazon and it sounds too ridiculous to be true, but it absolutely is. Whether you’re using Shopify or a ClickFunnels or a WooCommerce or any of those kinds of places, you can have Amazon fulfill those orders for you as long as you have that inventory at Amazon. Now, over the long-term that may not be the best strategy for you because you’re still dependent on the fulfillment service but it’s the easiest way to get started and it holds a lot of people back because they say, “I don’t want to ship my inventory.”

[00:31:38] Chris: And I don’t know who the best third-party logistics or 3PL provider are. I don’t know all of these things. Well, you don’t have to learn anything new there. Let’s move with a minimum viable product and say we’re going to use Amazon for now knowing that it’s going to be more expensive upfront to have them do it than it might be to have somebody else do it but at least I know that if I can make it work at the most expensive just like we do with air shipping upfront if I can make a product work with air shipping, if I can make it work with Amazon’s third-party fulfillment and I can make a profit then I can definitely scale it.

[00:32:07] Scott: 100% yeah.

[00:32:08] Chris: Because I’ll be able to save a dollar or two or maybe even more on my fulfillment cost when I move to somebody else when I’m ready to do that, but we can take it one step at a time and I think that last thing is something that holds a lot of people back and is one of the reasons that they’re not doing this stuff once they’re at that stage.

[00:32:23] Scott: Yeah. No, that’s a good point. A lot of people think that they have to ship the stuff themselves and you don’t. You can actually connect that through. What are we doing right now? I don’t want to get too in the weeds here but what are we doing right now to connect that to make that work for us?

[00:32:40] Chris: We’re using ShipStation.

[00:32:41] Scott: Okay. So, and what is it like to set that up without again getting too technical?

[00:32:45] Chris: It took 10 minutes. It was one of those things I went in assuming that it was going to take a lot of time and effort and it really didn’t. You sign in, you give your Amazon API access basically, and then you just have to copy and paste your SKUs into ShipStation and when an order comes into ShipStation whether that’s through Shopify or ClickFunnels and there’s actually a better way to do this than when you and I set it up now but when we set it up we use ShipStation. It costs us like $10 a month. And anytime we get an order into any of our sales funnels into the e-commerce site, it goes into ShipStation. As soon as ShipStation has it, they tell Amazon to ship it. And if there’s an issue with the address or anything like that we get emailed. So, we can kind of jump on that too because as we all know, people that buy stuff are not always the smartest and they fat finger things. I type in my address wrong all the time so if that’s a concern for people, they kind of hope you resolve that as well, but it costs us like $9 a month.

[00:33:40] Scott: Yeah. And so, what I really want to really wrap up here with is that building a business is complicated sometimes if you allow it to be. If you chunk it down, if you break it down into phases and that’s kind of what I’m doing now, and this is something that I’m doing different than I did two-and-a-half years ago too. It’s like phase 1 is this, phase 2 is this, and phase 3 will probably be something additional.

[00:34:10] Chris: It’s just world domination and things.

[00:34:11] Scott: Yeah. Well, exactly or maybe that’s the exit. I don’t know. But right now, we talked to a lot of people at Sellers Summit, people that were listeners of the show and they’re like, “We want to hear more of this,” and that’s what we’re going to be doing moving forward. Now, if you’re new, I’m not going to be leaving you guys behind. We’re always going to have our resources and we’ll even have episodes that touch on those beginner level stuff, but we are going to be talking a lot more about digital marketing, about scaling, about growing, about building outside channels, all of that stuff that we’re doing and that we’re also helping other people do and we’ll definitely be bringing that to the podcast. So, I just want you guys to know, you don’t have to do it all, but you have to simplify things and also only do what you can do right now where you are right now. And the one thing that I will leave with is you talked about like when do you decide to do that? And that’s when you’re stable.

The only thing I would add to that is I would like to see you have three to five products because, with the three to five products, it makes sense to build out a Shopify store or just a store in general. It also makes sense to then roll out a sales funnel because having a sales funnel with only one product is probably not going to work that well. Not unless you can have multiple units being purchased then you can say, “Oh, you bought this? Well, how would you like three more for this?” Like that could work but you have more options when you have more things that you can plug in to offer on the backend. And I think a good example of this, a lot of people have bought through Vistaprint. A lot of people have bought through GoDaddy. Those are two great examples of how you offer people more of what they just bought or additional things on top of what they just bought that will help them. So, if you buy from GoDaddy, they’re going to offer you hosting. They’re going to offer you an extra email address. They’re going to offer you protection of the domain like all of that stuff.

[00:36:11] Scott: If you go to Vistaprint, you just bought business cards. They’re going to offer you more business cards. They’re going to offer you postcards. They’re going to offer you stickers. They’re going to offer you magnets. They’re going to offer you all of that stuff that could also assist you in what you just bought.

[00:36:25] Chris: I think the other good example there that people may have gone through if you haven’t gone through either of those two is something like a 1-800 Flowers or ProFlowers.com. And I went through this experience recently. We had a holiday. Sent my mom some nice flowers. I’m a good boy. I called her too.

[00:36:40] Scott: You called her too? Wow.

[00:36:41] Chris: I keep getting pictures. She keeps texting me pictures because they keep, I guess, they send them as buds and they keep blooming and it’s getting fatter and fatter and she’s getting kind of excited about it. But when you go and you buy something, you go and they say, “Okay. It’s $49.99 for the flowers.” You going to buy the flowers and then the very next thing that they show you is, “Oh, do you want teddy bears? Do you want chocolate?” And it depends, they actually have it broken out pretty well like if you click on like the romance section there’ll be like teddy bears and chocolates and I love you cards. It might be an additional $5 or $6 for the card, another couple of dollars to send them a teddy bear or whatever else. For the Mother’s Day stuff, it was like mylar balloons which is, “You’re my favorite mother,” which I thought was kind of weird because if you have more than one or whatever. “You’re my favorite mom or whatever. Happy Mother’s Day.”

[00:37:29] Scott: Best mom ever.

[00:37:31] Chris: Any of those kinds of things and then they had, “Do you want to double your flower order?” So, they have the regular and then they have the deluxe. If you’re really a good son, you would get them the deluxe.

[00:37:40] Scott: Can you send them to someone else? The reason I asked that because maybe if you are buying some for your mother but then your spouse wanted, could you ship another order?

[00:37:49] Chris: I don’t think they have it set up that. I may have just missed that what they do on the backend. So, they walk you through this process and it really is a sales funnel and we’ll dive into this in a different episode but if you’ve ever gone through that process, you understand the concept at the very least.

[00:38:03] Scott: Yep, and you’ve probably been upsold.

[00:38:07] Chris: Whether you thought you’re going to be or not.

[00:38:09] Scott: You’re going to a dentist office, you’re being upsold. You’re being sold additional things like, “We can do this, we can do that, here are your options. We suggest this.” You go get an oil change, “We should flush your fluids. We should do this,” like all of that stuff. It’s marketing 101 but we can control that process really easy when we have our own properties and that’s why phase 2 for us is really building out those external properties that we get to control and by the way, you are building assets in your business that then your business will be worth more if you ever decide to sell it. So, it’s another huge advantage there.

[CLOSING]

[00:38:43] Scott: So, Chris, I think that’s going to wrap up. We’ve killed about 40 miles, maybe 45 miles and probably about 45 to 50 minutes or so. You can look right now on the recorder.

[00:38:55] Chris: Thirty-eight.

[00:38:56] Scott: Thirty-eight minutes so just about 40 minutes. Wow. So, that’s pretty impressive. It’s still recording, right?

[00:39:01] Chris: Yeah.

[00:39:02] Scott: Good.

[00:39:02] Chris: It’s counting up so I’m assuming it’s recording.

[00:39:05] Scott: All right, guys. So, like I said, this is phase 2 of what we’re talking about here as far as depending on where you are in the process but phase 2 is really taking the business now and the brand and bringing it outside of just Amazon so you’re not dependent there. I will also remind you if you are brand-new and you’re saying like, “I just don’t even know what market I’m going to go into,” or, “I’m not even sure where to start,” or maybe you’re in your market and you’re not sure how to add additional products to that market, I would suggest our training, Product Discovery Bootcamp and that really is how to find your market, really drill down into that market and then find three to five products out of the gate so you can build the brand inside of that market. So, if you’re interested definitely had over to TheAmazingSeller.com/Bootcamp. The show notes to this episode can be found at TheAmazingSeller.com/523 and all the show notes and transcripts can be found there. And guess what, Chris, want to know something?

[00:40:12] Chris: Yes.

[00:40:13] Scott: We didn’t get an accident driving recording this episode so that’s good. So, we might be able to record one more before we get to the event.

[00:40:20] Chris: I think we got time.

[00:40:22] Scott: All right. That is going to officially wrap this car cast up with myself and Chris Schaffer. Remember, guys, as always, I’m here for you, I believe in you, and I’m rooting for you, but you have to, you have to, come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, Chris is going to say it with me and I don’t even have to count today. You ready, Chris? He says yes. He’s looking at me. On the count of three let’s do on three. One, two, three. Take action!

[00:40:45] Chris: Take action!

[00:40:47] Scott: Have any awesome amazing day and I’ll see you guys right back here on the next episode as long as I don’t hit this U-Haul truck in front of me right now.

[END]

Click Here to Download Transcript

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

www.theamazingseller.com/bootcamp

Shopify

ClickFunnels

ShipStation

VistaPrint

GoDaddy

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