#even though dipping out seems optimal. seems like the logical thing to do.

[mcrvictoria]

God (the play)

Written by L.A. Glanvill Copyright 2018 (rev.)

Characters: A mottle group that went to grade school together till the end of High school. Even though they have different personalities, they maintain a close relationship even in there late twenties. Bringing New couples into the mix and dealing with the off-putting scenarios the characters create. 

God: Stereotypical character, white toga Style robe. Seems innocent almost naive. Seems to have an Identity crisis. Definite wisdom but seems simple when dealing with tough situation. Playful and whimsical as well. 

Phil: Late twenties, anal and looks for people's approval even though he's successful at his job. Seems a bit needy with a touch of sarcasm that is retracted when he goes to far. Can be self-defeating and can be a bit of a whiner. 

Martha: Wise but quietly wanting everyone to be happy. A people-pleaser, her main goal is to become the perfect host. Dedicated to Phil. Knows things others don't seem to know but can be so blind at times and a bit of a snob. She seems to miss the small things. 

Tom: Very religious, devout, a little dumb. Easily influenced by Jen. Very scattered and reactionary. Illogical. Blind to all around him. Controlled by base emotions and short tempered. 

Jen: Tom's Girlfriend. Not smart but thinks she is. Really argumentative. Emotional and reactive. Very aggressive. Uses sex as a weapon with Tom. Massively manipulative. 

Tammy: The most unlucky person ever. If anything can go wrong, it will. She falls a lot, always hurt, outer circle even affected. Can be sad and meek at times. But still seems to carry a smile even if fake. Has an expecting nature about her and stoic. 

Dr. Segal: Arrogant, controlling, big ego. Is a Player and condescending. Very shallow and materialistic. Male chauvinistic personality. Objectives women. Really believes he's better than others. 

Corina: Very shallow, gold digger, materialistic. Only wears and top brands but never pays for anything. Has multiple boyfriends. Dr. Segal being one of them. Using her looks for gains. Very flirty cheats on all relationships. 

Zoe: A clone of Corina but pretends to be dumber. Wrestles with being moral has a conscience but ignores it most times. Important to mimic Corina as much as possible. 

Liz: Rhon's Girlfriend, an accomplished musician, university TA. Sweet, kind, a little silly, quiet and very smart. Super humble, supportive and affectionate. Loves animals and people. Can be naive because she wants to believe in the best of people.

Death: Based on a grandmother character. Super sweet, soft just exudes love. Must have grannies glasses. Flowered dress. Little hate, like going to church on Sunday. Cane, just someone you would love no matter what. 

Rhon (the actor): Liz's boyfriend, logical, scientific in nature. A intellectual always ready for a debate. Can be loud at times. Knows a lot about the universe and not afraid to share his ideas. Strong sense of self. 

Rhon Grenon (The director): Laid back but impatient, direct, demanding if pushed. Also has a contradicting personality, a “I don't care attitude”, but takes everything personal. Knows what he likes and can be a little arrogant about it. 

Cue card guy:  The real Rhon Grenon. AKA, L.A. Glanvill

Song list: 

Voy Vance - Make it rain. 

Kidnap kid - first light. 

The Pete box - Wave. 

Syd Matters – River sister. 

Pretty lights – Finally moving. 

Patrick Watson – To build a home. (Tammy Dies) 

Youngblood Hawk – We come running. 

Our last night – Voices. 

Two Feet – Had some drinks. 

San Holo – Light. 

Suuns – Translate. 

The Chemical Brothers - Snow. 

Miike Snow – Cult logic. 

John Butler – Ocean. 

Waterboys – To close to heaven. 

Phosphoroscent – Song for Zula. 

The Strumbellas – We don't know. 

Ray LaMontagne – Empty. 

The Acid – Basic Instinct. 

Low- Lullaby

Crews: 

Sound Crew: Responsible of overall feel of the atmosphere and vital to success of the feel of the play. 

Lighting crew: Timing is everything. Absolute focus is necessary or wont work especially in the end. 

Food Crew: Have to do set up during end of play, Quietly and quickly. Then responsible to encourage people to start to eat. Bring them food or ask them what they want. 

Audience Plants: Willing to engage neighbours and encourage them to get involved to the party. Start before the play starts. 

Make-up crew: Responsible for all wardrobe and make-up but essential at the end to make Jen a car accident victim.. 

Visual Crew: Responsible for timing and visual play on TV. Easter Egg 

Set Crew: Layout and design as well of placement for optimal full party organization. 

Media Crew: Hit all formats of social media. Create a buzz.

Flood of lights across a room, showing all the details of the stage. Centre stage is a typical living room with couch and TV facing audience. Modern style decor Music plays softly in the background. Looks like there is a preparation for a party going on. Banner saying congratulations up and balloons, food out. Three characters are already walking around finishing prepping. The Lights dim, the characters continue to do what they are doing, above the lights and music comes the deep booming voice of God as his speech continues, the rest get the room finished and ready for the party. 

GOD: In the beginning there was nothing. Pause Nothing here anyway. This darkness, which wasn't actually darkness at the time because no one had come along to start naming things. Just was... Pause nevertheless; anyway; All the same. From the darkness I created the sun, the moon and all the stars. People weren't even on my mind at this point. I was creating scenery. See. Then I laid out the earth here and touched it up with all the beauty I could imagine. Birds, flowers, trees, beetles, rocks, sand, rainbows and snowy peaked mountains. Eventually, water crept up on the land as land invaded the waters and beasts I envisioned lived in blissful ignorance. All but one; Distaste in voice HUMANS. Humans who started thinking that they had monkeys as ancestors. Who considered themselves the descendants of muscular slugs, who heroically dragged their slippery bodies from the water to land to evolve. Again distaste in voice Suddenly, I feel a need to inform them of their folly; To make my presence known; To inform educate, instruct and edify; To help them understand themselves and to do something. Pause You see, I've become so incredibly bored. 

Lights rise again full. The three characters are speaking with one another from across the room. Light music. The doorbell rings.

Phil: I'll Get it. Walks towards the door. Stage Left. Martha raises a hand but not her head as she works away at making finger sandwiches. Phil opens the door to Tammy, Jen, and Thom. Who is carrying a bag of ice. Tammy has a grease mark on her face and her hands are slightly stained, her clothes are wrinkled and hair all messed. 

Oh my god Tammy what the hell happened? 

Tammy looks at her feet and doesn't answer. 

Tom: Her car had a little trouble. 

Jen: A little Trouble? I didn't even know that thing could move. It was a rolling horror show.

Tom:  She just had a flat tire. Jen:  A flat tire!?! I think all four tires of those tires were running on rims. She had flat rims.

Phil: Takes Tammy's hand You ok, hun? 

Tammy nods her head walks over and puts a bowl of crab dip that she brought on the table.

Tammy: I'll put the Crab dip here that I made here Martha. Is that ok?

Martha: Come in, come in all of you. Why are you all standing around? Yes Tammy that's fine, right there is fine. 

Phil moves to the side and holds the door open. The three walk by him and toss their jackets on the side chair. Phil, looking towards the entering guests goes to close the door behind him but Dr. Segal with Corina and Zoe walk in one on each arm like arm candy. Bumping into Phil as they enter. 

Dr. Segal:  How's it going, Hi, Hi. I'm here let the party begin. 

Phil goes to close the door and looks out to the audience. The spotlight focuses on him. The rest of the cast greet each other , and talk give hugs and hellos. They all grab drinks that Martha is holding on a tray. 

Phil: I decided to throw a party. Because I never do these kind of things: Normally I like a nice quiet night in with my fiance, Martha. Or a night on the town at a play, an intimate blues bar or a open air concert. But not in my house, I'm not to found of having people in my house. But these are my friends.

Pause, looks at the group. 

A motley crew of misanthropes; self-doubters the lot of them. But aren't we all? They hide it well though, don't they? Dr. Segal there, with the ladies by his side. A plastic surgeon. He has devoted his life, specifically, to enlarging the mammary glands on the already well-endowed women: Women such as Corina, The young woman on his left. 

Corina laughs, pushes her chest out, and gives Dr. Segal a slap on the shoulder

Corina didn't always look like that. Nor did any of us really want her to. She's beautiful, in her own way. Then there's Zoe who's thinking of surgery herself, but isn't sure. Why you ask? Because she isn't sure of anything or at least that's what I think. She sure seems to know everything. 

Zoe steps back from the other two and raising one hand begins to yatter in a way that the others two roll their eyes at her

Phil:  Jen and Tom, have a dysfunctional/ destructive relationship if there ever has been one. They can fight about anything; where the sun sets. What time it is on the moon. If an orange was purple what would it be called? But then they have, or so I've been told, knock out sex. Isn't that the way though? 

Jen and Tom seem to be arguing about something of near the kitchen table 

And then there's Tammy, poor, poor Tammy. We've been calling her that for years now. Nothing that we know of has ever gone her way. Her father left when she was four, then her mother died on her when she was five. She was shipped off and raised by a grandmother who didn't believe in children. Lucky for her she died when she was Ten. Then many foster-homes. And she disappeared for a good five years. These things are not mentioned in the group. None of ask and she doesn't share. Since she came back her luck has even gotten worse. If there is a chair leg to catch a toe on , she will. If she jumps a green light, she'll get t-boned by another car. If she dates a nice guy. An aspiring doctor...and don't let her know I told you this... he'll end up being the doctor only so much as that he'll get caught dismembering the neighbourhood cats. 

Tammy goes to sit down and falls of the chair. Spilling her drink on herself 

Then there is Martha and I, We've been together six years now. One day soon I am going to ask for her hand... I didn't know I could love someone this much. And this is my party which I have been planning for two weeks. Now you are all up to speed let's jump in and see where this goes. 

Martha is handing out food still and the doorbell rings again. Stage lights up and Phil walks over to answer the door. 

Rhon:  Hey buddy boy! Gives Phil a hug then pushes him 

Phil: Where's Liz?

Rhon:  She's on her way. She wanted to bring her own car so she could leave when she wanted to from work. 

Rhon Takes of his coat and drops it on the couch, Phil goes to close the door and Liz enters with God slightly behind her. She runs in leaving the door open, God wanders in as the attention is on Liz 

Liz: Rhon, Rhon. I won! I won the award for my composition! 

She runs across the room and hugs Rhon. Rhon raises a glass in his hand to toast her 

Rhon: A toast, To Liz, who just won some epic award for which I assume is a beautiful musical composition. 

Everyone raise their glasses, cheer and then drink deeply. Then the girls jump up and down in excitement and joy. Before going back to what they were doing. Lights dim. God Stands beside the couch examining the room, Hands behind his back, Tipping forwards on his feet. Phil goes and closes the door and turns to the audience. Spot light on Phil 

Phil: Then there's Rhon and Liz. There's not a better couple out there, as far any of us can tell. And If I have to admit it I'm bit jealous of their relationship. Supportive and loving, disgustingly perfect. And then there's this... 

Pauses looks at God hand stuck in air and confused 

This Guy who I have never seen before. Who is this guy? 

Stage lights up Phil walks over to Liz and Rhon who is excitedly talking to Rhon.

Phil:  Who's your friend? 

Liz: Who?

Phil: Dude with the beard. He came with you didn't he? 

Liz:  Never seen him before. 

Everyone looks at God who is now watching the TV. Music changes to christian Gospel 

Rhon: Who is this guy? And What's with the music? 

Phil:  Martha can we put on a different CD? 

Martha walks over to change the CD but it keeps playing as she pulls out the CD as she holds it. She looks dumbfounded. Phil walks over to God 

Phil:  Hi There. 

Looking quizzical, God just smiles, a kind generous smile 

God: Good day, Sir. 

Phil: Umm, Might I ask who you came with? Who you came with? 

God pauses for a second, glances around the room and back to Phil. Some are looking at him, Liz, Rhon, and Tammy are paying attention to what he's saying. All others are conversing about there places and do not hear what he is about to say

God: I am God 

Looking puzzled like he doesn't understand the question 

Phil: God? As in Godfry. Right? 

God: No, no, no. God. 

Glances till he locks eyes towards Martha direction 

Ask Martha. 

Phil: Oh, you're a friend of Martha's. 

God: Yes and no. But she'll understand. 

Phil: God. Okay, God. I see. 

Lights dim again, spotlight on God. Rest of the cast freezes. 

God: To the audience. People simply do not understand. Was I to believe that they honestly would? God is not something that comes and talks to one Saturday night. Something, someone? That just shows up in your living room. God is supposed to be ethereal, everlasting and above all else, somewhere else; Somewhere mystical and above the clouds. Or trenched deep within one's heart: not standing on your carpet in your front room. How can I make them understand who I am? Well I cannot; they simply do, or they do not. 

Lights back to full 

Phil: God then.

God: To audience And Phil here does. 

Phil: May I introduce you to my friend, Moses, Jesus and Mary. Snickers 

God: I see. Sarcasm is the lowest form of humour. Has no one ever told you that, Phil? 

Phil looks slightly shocked 

Phil: How do you know my name? 

God: I told you Phil, I am God. 

Phil: I see. 

God: Need I prove this to you somehow? 

Phil:  That may be a way to get over this awkwardness, no? 

God: No. 

Phil: No? 

God:  Yes, yes, of course. How might I prove this to you?

Phil:  Snapping his fingers What was the name of the dog I had in high school? God responds quickly

God: Skippy 

Phil:  Where did I lose my Blanket when I was four? 

God: You didn't, your mom threw it out? Taken aback and surprised but determined to catch him 

Phil: Fine then, what is my favourite food? 

God:  Chocolate: which is odd, thought not as odd as the fact, bearing in mind the aforementioned fact, that you have never had a cavity. Thanks to me. He winks and giggles 

Phil:  And what... 

God:  Toothpaste. 

Phil: Where... 

God: Georgetown. 

Phil:  Stepping back But... 

God: Spruce street, a quarter past five or quarter after five, Simultaneous multiple partners, a lakeside resort on the edge of Owen Sound, A four hundred dollar plate, the grass behind your house, with-in the bushes, Dying cats and teddy bear named Woo-woo you lost while searching for your little sister when she was lost one foggy May morning.

Phil: Head dropping Woo-woo. 

God: Speaking in a Jamaican accent Yah Phil. I'm da real ting mon. And to answer you next question, I am here to raise my praise. People jus don believe anymore. Don believe in anything. And we all need somethin' to believe in, right mon. I am da lord and Savior. But if yu need some more proof.... Raises his hands above his head 

Phil: No, No, that's alright. I'll play along. 

God:  Normal voice Are you sure? I have this amazing dancing elephant that will materialize at a moments notice. Doesn't make a mess. It's the dearest little thing I have ever seen. 

Phil: No, I'm certain. But, could you do me a favour? I know you want to raise your praise and all, but could you keep the preaching to a minimum? I have been planning this party for a couple of weeks and really, well religious talk is such a downer. We just want to have fun. 

God: Kicking his at the ground, head hung low, eyes looking up puppy-dog like Aww come on, I need to help people , help them understand that's there's something out there looking out for them. 

Phil: Please. Begging 

God: Oh All right, I'll try. 

Phil: Try? If memory serves me right, you tried a few things a few times before and they have hardly worked out properly.

God: British accent Scotch, ma boy, I kna yu have a bottle a twenty five under yu bed. 

Phil:  Smiles I was saving that for a special occasion. 

God:  Well that special occasion is here. 

Martha:  Having made her way over to God Rod is it? My, my you should be wearing more clothing: it's cold out there. 

God:  Do you know what might warm me up? 

Martha: Pigs in a blanket? 

God: Yup. Pigs in a blanket. Smiles 

Phil walks over to help Martha grab the food

Phil: It's god you know that don't you? 

Martha: Yes of course I do. Who wouldn't know God? 

Dr. Segal walks over quickly. God walks of to the food table. Picks up the crab dip that Tammy brought, Snif s it and gives a troubled face. Puts it back down 

Dr. Segal:  Who is that?

Phil: He's God. 

Dr. Segal: With a smile on his face Let's look at this rationally, shall we. God, the being who created the universe, who created the prototypes for you and me. Who keeps the world spinning, who sends the sun up and the moon down. Or whatever it is that happens there. The big guy in the sky. He's here in your living room. The man with a plan, all the answers. 

Corina overhears and comes over with Zoe in tow 

Corina: This is stupid. If he has all the answers I don't care! All that matters is how you look and what you have. Everyone knows that. 

Zoe: OMG! Corina come on that's not true. What about sad people: They need our help to make them happy. Like makeup and stuff. 

Corina: Laughs loud and claps here hands like she has a great idea I know everybody feels better when you get a good haircut. Looking with wide eyes like she has a secret to share. We should start a club or crowd funding or group or facebook or whatever to give make-up workshops in Africa or hair extensions to the poor. 

Both Girls squeal in delight and give each other a high five 

Both: OMG YEAAA!!! 

Phil looks dumbfounded and looks back to Dr. Segal to finish his conversation. Both girls talk among themselves 

Phil: Umm, anyway sure, To answer you. Why not? I mean why not? Don't you...

Dr. Segal: Believe in God? Sure, sure. Why not. I believe in God But The guy with the beard over there is trying to steal your gold pen. 

Phil: Pointing at God Hey, hey put that down! 

God: Looking startled It's a beautiful pen Phil, lovely Fine gold. 

Phil: Yeah, well you can see why I would be a little nervous about it then. 

God:  Indeed. 

Dr. Segal and Phil walk over to where God is 

Phil: And you might expect that I will Question why you have chosen to visit me. Tonight of all nights. 

God: Indeed 

Spot light on Phil 

Phil: To Audience A rope walks into a bar and orders a beer, The bartenders says, Says we don't serve ropes here. The the rope bends over and shows him the top of his head and says fraid knot? No, wait that's not the one I wanted. Slaps himself on the knee Guy walks into a party and says, “ I'm God.” No, that's not nearly as funny. Guy throws a party and everything that could go wrong goes wrong. And God walks in.

Tom:  To Phil smugly I see you are humouring the deity this evening Phil. 

Phil: So you don't believe? 

Tom: I do believe in God. I don't believe that that is him. I know God and his will: you know I am one of the faithful, one of his flock. I understand the heart and mind of God. I hate to say it Phil. But I am closer to God, more than any of you.

Jen:  I don't believe it's him either. But let's have fun with him. 

Phil Hangs his head as his friends walk past him. He turns around to find that the rest of the party members have gathered around God 

Dr. Segal: Those are some hefty bags under your eyes, old timer. Drop by my clinic and I could help you out with those. 

Martha hands God a snifter of scotch

Zoe: Like, where do you stand on abortion? 

Corina: Can you make me Prettier? 

Rhon: When I look into the night sky I can only see so far, right? I want to know what the edge of the universe looks like. 

Everyone is there surrounding God 

Liz:  Where is the most beautiful place on Earth?

Phil: Once we have figured out DNA what will we know? 

Jen: To Phil Why would he care about that? 

Tom: To Jen Why would he not? 

Jen: Where do you even come up with such dumb things to say? 

Tom: Oh-for-crying-out-loud Jen! Why can't you just agree on one thing for once? 

Jen: You always say that! I have my own thoughts, I don't like when you say I argue. Last time you did that I washed your shirt and nothing is ever good enough for you. 

Tom: What the hell are you talking about? They both walk of arguing getting softer as they walk away. Improve argument from here. Everyone turns back to God to ask more questions. But not loud. Silent but dramatic actions. Music louder like a Montague 

Tammy softly speaks as music drops almost shy like 

Tammy: What is luck? 

The party slips into slow motion but for God and Phil 

God:  Looking mournfully towards Phil You know Phil, You weren't selected at random. Your house was chosen. Wilfully selected. Let me tell you why I am here, Phil. Going into salesman mode People have managed to get the wrong idea about me Phil. My message has been bastardized to the point where I cannot tell what these people are talking about anymore. You have all made it more difficult than it needs to be. They've taken my words and ruined them. Changed them. Switched them up and spat them back out in odd formations to feed their own ego's. Someone should just ask me what I am talking about. Not these single little questions. These insignificant whims. Ask me what it is I mean by it all. 

Phil: God, What are you talking about? 

God:  Ask me what it all means. What this world is all about. 

Phil:  What's it all about God? 

God:  Beats me. Giggles 

Rest of the party snaps back out of slow motion and God and Phil are in there original places 

Tammy: Why were all my loved ones taken from me so early on in life? 

Jen comes back as Thom pouts in the corner by the food. She interrupts pushes her way in, then Thom follows back with a frown on his face 

Jen: Is true love a reality? Or some sort of chemical bullshit? 

Tom: Why are you asking this guy anything? He's not God! 

Jen: How do you even know? Well? How could you know? It might be possible! 

Tom: I, I, well I'd just know. I mean God doesn't come and start nattering to people in their living rooms, some night. Does he! 

Martha: He could. 

Liz: Is music truly the greatest divine blessing? 

Rhon: okay, so what I find hard to swallow, is what religion is selling. It seems flawed, in a way that is beyond explanation. Hypocritical, controlling, and self-centred. I think that is the problem. Self-centred. Seriously though, I use to look up into the nights sky when I was a kid and wonder what was up there, all night long, watching the stars move and the clouds and the moon. Then one day I found out that it was us that was moving and not the stars. Or that the stars had already moved and what I was seeing was not even there anymore. They were just what was left of what was once there. Like that flicker when you turn off a TV at night. And seriously listen I couldn't go to church any more. I mean, If I can stare at something with my own eyes like that, something that doesn't even exist anymore, and the lights are beautiful. The earth moves on its own accord, and all this, all this stuff was actually created by something. I was damned certain that it, whatever it was that created all of this, was not going to care whether or not I stuffed myself into a little blue suit every Sunday morning and sang songs about how much I loved him. And how much I praised him. Come on wasn't Sunday supposed to be a day off anyway? 

Everyone stops and looks at Rhon rant. For a moment when he's done silence. Then in unison to God 

Everyone: Aren't you going to give us any answers?

God looks tired, settles down in a seat. Martha grabs a drink and brings it to God and a small plate of pigs in a blanket. He smiles at her and sips his scotch and closes his eyes to enjoy it 

Martha: Let's all leave him alone for a moment, give him some space you guys.

Cast but Phil walks back to the food table talking to themselves 

God: He makes me sound like I've been neutered or something. 

Phil: We are not supposed to know the face of god, Or so we have been told.

God:  Not supposed to know? Who decided this? Shaking his head at the statement 

Phil:  Only his work. 

God: My work. Hmm. But not me. The product but not the inventor. 

Phil: But are we to thank you? 

God:  Thank me? For what? For what I have done for you? But not know who or what you are thanking? 

Phil:  Does it sound odd? 

God:  A little. Might I have a moment alone?

Phil: Certainly. 

Phil walks over to where Tom is standing, Jen Kissing Thom Passionately, God looks likes talking to someone, then sips his drink quietly. As Thom Phil is there and pushes Jen of of him 

Phil:  Tom, you don't believe that God is right there do you. 

Tom:  Oh he's here. He resides in our churches and cathedrals and in our hearts. He's all around us. Watching, judging every moment of our existence.

Phil: So, you don't believe that he could come to earth and talk to us? 

Tom: If he did, who would believe him? Unless he turned the sky into fire, and the world to salt. He would show the power of who he is. 

Jen: Yea right, he's right! 

Stage Darkens, spotlight on Phil. Who walks to the front of the stage. Rhon walks over to God. And you can see them starting a deep debate. Can only see actions no words

Phil: Well, I do. We've made him human. Sometimes some of us; If we care at all to look outside of ourselves for answers. But then, most of us are too busy for that anyway. Doesn't it seem that the stranger things get the more willing we are to accept them? The tabloids draw our eyes their stands at the grocery stores. Tweets build fear. Facebook isolates us. We don't know how to be friends anymore. The news that people have won millions in a lottery, keeping us buying and wanting and hoping that in someway or some how our number will come up and we will finally win. We have lost faith in anything tangible. And as we lose faith we begin believing more and more in things, like televangelists, products that will make us beautiful. People that lie to us and we want them too. Trying to be perfect trying each to be a God in our own right, hoping one more person will push the like button to make us closer to perfection. We have created a God so far from who he is here in my living room, that we can't even see who he is now. Or understand. No one has direct recourse to the Lord. 

Lights come back on and Rhon Is beside God. Phil walks over in mid-conversation. 

Rhon: So, you see what I mean? No, no seriously, if we live in a multi-dimensional universe. The introduction of infinity proves that a God could not exist in this wider sense of multiple infinitives of north, east, west, south, up and down. Time, God. Time could not exist if God does. What we have is a world within which we are attempting to link existing things, things we can touch and see. Like this glass of wine. Holds up glass of wine Like wise cannot see, like time, or infinity, or God. And that makes sense. Doesn't it? 

God: You cannot multiply infinity times infinity, then interject variables with an earthly construct. Quantifying the equation and expect there to be a big equal sign n the end. Counting things out on his fingers 

Phil:  So then we made God. We made God for the answer to these questions?

God: Yes, that is entirely possible. The world spinning in infinity without a leader, without a God. So, there is no God. No, wait a moment... There is Dammit you guys, I'm God. 

Phil, and Rhon Snicker At God for a moment Tom walks over near the end of god speaking 

Tom: Extending his hand Right then, God I'm Moses. Would love to talk to you a little longer but there's Sea somewhere that needs to be parted. Tom walks off laughing 

Phil: You could have said something. 

God:  I don't bother with his type. He has his own perception of who I am, what I do. I could do anything I wish to him, but he's still going to be looking for a bloody tear to come off of some manikins face or a bush to spontaneously combust. It's easier to let him live his life. Let him live simply. Than show him the truth of who I am. Like I said before the message has been lost in time. The ultimate telephone game. 

Phil: So the faithful are wrong? 

God: Hand to chin No, not wrong. But blind faith in anything will get you killed. 

End of Act I

Act II 

TV is on. Rhon Flicks remote begins to press buttons. God remains sitting munching on pigs on a blanket and sipping on his drink 

TV: In Syria today, UN troops are gaining access to previously un... On highway 7 today at 2:00am just east of Peterborough, Five teens driving what is believed in excessive speed crashed into a tree. Alcohol may have been a factor. All Five teens... For only $29.99 plus shipping and handling. That's right Greg, we pay the shipping and handling this time. What Fran We do?... It's generally our notion that, upon discovering his men bogged down in heavy snow of a Russian winter. Napoleon chose, against the wishes of his commanding officers and advisors, to continue on, but what was he expecting to find in Russia that... Show me the way to go home, everybody now, I'm tired and wanna go to bed.

Phil: Hey Rhon turn up the music, turn that thing down. More party man. 

Martha while walking across the room, takes the remote from Rhon and places it back on the TV, music plays softly in the background 

Martha: What is it I have to do to live a good life? Sorry to bother you, I really am, but I have been asking myself this question for so long now and I need to know the answer. 

God: Slow, steady, psychiatrists voice Need. Need as a word, if I am correct, normally signals something which, were one to not receive it, one might very well die? Well, will you die if you do not receive an answer, Martha?

Martha:  Looking at the couch, running her finger up and down the seam of the arm rest I suppose not. But will I be allowed into heaven?

Phil: Wanders over and sits beside Martha Yes, is there a heaven? I've always wondered that myself. 

God: Well, a while ago I rented this warehouse location on Roosevelt Island and now we get those souls packed in there nice and tight. 

Martha:  What!?! 

God: Giggling No, Martha I'm kidding. I'll have to leave that up to your imagination. But yes to live a good life Martha. I will tell you a secret Motions for her to come closer Rubber bands. You must collect more rubber bands. 

Martha nods her head and stands, when she passes the TV, there is an elastic on it and she takes it 

God: Turns to Phil I've realized over time I'm not that good with people, Phil. I often forget how ridiculously low their sense of humour is. 

Dr. Segal: At the kitchen Table But Club Monaco is the new big thing. Those Tight little tops that show off the ladies belly-rings. And the skin. Short, short, short. Legs, legs legs. 

Zoe: Club Monaco? Like, whatever. I spend, like a thousand on a shirt I can wear it like forever. Club Monaco cost like Fifty bucks. 

Dr. Segal: You could wear it forever? But do you?

Zoe: Guuuroossss, NEVER! 

Dr. Segal: Nothing I like more than a woman in a tight sweater. Takes Corina's hand and smiles I really do appreciate the subtlety of a woman. I know that sounds hypocritical being a surgeon in the art of plastic. But to me seeing a beautiful angel filling a sweater, where a lot is left to the imagination...mmm...mmm 

Corina: Sweaters! But they hide so much. They're so, regular. I mean, Like, I mean. They hide everything. 

Dr. Segal: And there is beauty in that, isn't there? In the unknown about another person? 

Zoe: No, there isn't. We should be able to judge people without talking to them.

Jen:  Well, maybe if boobs are all you have then... 

Zoe:  Take that back! Waving her finger at Jen 

Jen: Why do you immediately assume I am talking about you? 

Zoe: Take it back! Jen: Well, it's true. 

Zoe: You don't mean it. Take it back!

Jen:  I do, and I won't! 

Zoe: Why do you have to be such a bitch? 

Jen: I just say what I know. 

Zoe:  Well maybe you should, like, think about keeping some of these things to yourself, do you know what I mean? 

Jen: Honesty is a virtue. Right God? Looks across the room at God 

Spot light falls on God, the rest of the room slips into slow-motion. God speaks to the audience 

God:  Petty disputes. What makes them think that I can solve their Problems? Who was it that said, all of your dealings with one another, your financial troubles, your social concerns, your love and loss of love take them to god. Send them my way. I can fix it. In the dead of night when you have just hung up the phone with the only person you ever believed you would be able to love. Who has just told you that you unfortunately are not the one for them. Well, yell to good old God. Tell him your troubles. You've driven your car into a wall because your high. Lying there in your own stupid pool of blood and cry out to God. Maybe God can turn back time, you'll think, maybe God is the answer here. Then while you're laying a hospital room, contemplating how ephemeral it all is, how absolutely tragic the world is. How horrible you have been treated, you will say, Why, God, why have you forsaken me? And I will tell you why. Because, dumb-ass you did it yourself. It was was your choice to smoke that joint and text. Not mine. And that person that convinces you to buy Bitcoin but at the last moment you bail.

God: They become rich and you don't. You can't blame them for your lack of courage. You wanting to play it safe. You make choices that dictate your future everyday. I'm not saying hardship won't happen for no reason now and then. Sure born into the wrong part of the world what choice do you have. But definitely you have a choice here. You already won the golden ring. You by being here in this moment of time in this place have won the lottery of life. Every opportunity is given to you. I look out for the ones that need it, the little people. Putting little angels on their shoulder... But these people are beyond my jurisdiction. They've made their own rules and now must live by them. Sorry to say. 

Stage lights back up 

Jen: I'm not saying that you are a bad person, Zoe. Just self-centred and. 

Zoe: What? Self-centred and What? If you are having about of honesty here and all. 

Tom: Simple. 

Phil: Please stop it you guys. 

Zoe: Simple! Simple! What do you mean by that? 

Jen: Maybe more ignorant than simple, actually. I'd say. But that is not a bad thing. You just decided to live your life a different way. Different things are important to you. 

Phil: No really guys please, my party come on don't be mean to each other. We can work this out.

Zoe:  Pfff, like okay. What. The. Hell. 

Dr. Segal:  Laughing All I was saying is that I like a woman in a sweater. But if we're going to be talking like this well Jen, I mean, really, Pot, Kettle, Black. Hahaha 

Zoe: Oh shut up you, you, you pimp. 

Dr. Segal: Whooaa Hahaha. Pimp? Hahahah, let me explain to you what pimp is. 

Zoe: Like, I know what a pimp is. And. And. Why are you all being so mean to me? Starts to cry 

Jen: To Dr. Segal as she puts her hand on Zoe shoulder to support her What do you know about or anything you glorified sculptor! 

Dr. Segal:  I'll take that as a compliment. Hahaha 

Zoe: What did I do wrong? 

Jen:  What is it that I said so wrong? Or awful? It's just the truth. 

Tom: I wish this never started. Why can't you just keep your mouth shut? Why do you have to fight with everyone at every moment? 

Phil: Guys, guys, my party remember?

Corina: I think my left Boob is bigger than the right one. Can anyone see this?

Rhon:  Why can't we just get along people. It's the differences that separate us and we have to start finding common ground here. Common you guys. 

Tom: That kind of attitude will get you beat up these days. Hahahaha 

Dr. Segal:  Softly There's more to life than looks. 

Jen: And you would know. 

Tom and Phil both start laughing 

Liz: Guys what's going on? 

Tom And Phil Still laughing 

Jen, Zoe: what you you laughing at? 

In the background Tammy is eating her Crab dip, standing alone. No one else is there after eating it she sits. She waves for help but no one notices. Then leans back and dies with her eyes open. Everyone is focused on Phil who is awkwardly laughing.

Phil:  Ha, Ha, So here's a good one. This guy, he decides to have this party and, Hahaha, makes everything perfect for everyone. For his friends and then, ohh, here's a good one. The Lord almighty shows up and. Hahaha his friends start to fight with one another and Hahahaha, toss some drinks around and insult one another and then, hahahahaha. 

Dr. Segal looks over at Tammy where she is slumped over eyes open, as Phil has his break down. He walks over puts his ear to her mouth and listens for a moment. Picks up her arm and checks for a pulse. Stage goes dark and the spotlight focuses on God. God put his drink down and shakes his head 

God:  This isn't going to be pretty. Lights come up full on the stage 

Dr. Segal: Tammy's dead! He shouts out to everyone. 

Everyone: Dead? 

Dr. Segal:  Dead! 

Everyone: Dead? 

Dr. Segal:  Dead! 

Phil: How? 

Dr. Segal:  Dead!

Rhon:  No, How? 

Dr. Segal: Shrugs his shoulders Might have been something she ate. 

Zoe: I told her to go on a diet! 

Everyone glares at her still in shock. 

Phil: And then, here's the punch line. I mean get this one, It's better than three guys walk-into a bar. A priest, a mime and a drunk Irish man. Or the one about guy and his neighbour wife? Which is a good one. A real good one. This one is better. This guy, see, he throws a party and wants everything to be perfect. But then God shows up and his friends fight and argue. And then, here it is, here's the big one, the clincher. The old whoompa! One of his guests Dies. DIES hahahahahahah 

God: As he eats the crab dip and other things It was the crab Dip. I guess I could have mentioned that but then I got this scotch and got into these conversations and then the ladies here started fighting with one another. 

Rhon: You couldn't have mentioned this? I mean really God. Come on. 

Phil: I let you into my house. For the party. 

Zoe: She was my friend. 

Tom:  I can still remember our night together. Walks over to Tammy strokes her hair 

Dr. Segal: No leave her be.

Everyone sits down at the table then ignores that Tammy in dead. Someone pushes the Crab dip to the end of the table. The stages darkens slightly Music in the background. Death walks in touches Tammy on the arm and she pops up fully animated, Stands and tests out here new body. She seems stronger, more confident, both move to the back of the table and seem in a good happy conversation 

Jen: Wait! What night with her? Thom? I introduced you to her. So if you did anything with her I'll Frig'in lose it I swear to God! 

God Perks up and looks at them points to himself questioningly 

Tom: Aww, Tammy. I feel so betrayed. Jen How could you think this? 

Zoe:  Like, Serves you right. 

Tom: Oh shut it Zoe! 

Phil: My party. 

Rhon: You couldn't have mentioned this? You're God for Christ sake. You didn't get around to mentioning that the Crab dip was going to kill our friend? 

God: Well, I knew the possibility was there that it could maybe, kill her. But things can always go one of two ways. 

Zoe:  Like, whatever. IF you're God, I'm Marilyn Monroe.

Tom: And I'm Moses. 

Jen: And I'm Princess Di. 

Zoe: That's pretty Tasteless. 

Jen:  What do you know about taste? 

Tom: Name one Tchaikovsky Symphony. 

Zoe: Who? Me or her? 

Tom: Either of you. And at the same time points to God Prove you are who you say you are. Prove you're God. Let's get it all figured out here. All the cards on the table. 

Phil: No, no, please don't make him prove anything. The elephant and the destry what's left of my party. And. Oh, please just don't make him prove anything. 

With a big pause, everyone's attention is focused on God he sighs and gets ready to speak 

God:  This girl has an unlucky life and I get the blame when she dies? I didn't make the dip. I didn't make the crab dip with old eggs and old crabs. I didn't take it from the plate and stick it in Tammy's mouth. But I get the blame? See that's what I have been talking about. You all think that I have something to do with this.

Tom: Well, you do have the ultimate control over everything. Right? That's the deal. Your job description. Right? Or will you just admit now you aren't God. 

Phil: Gone, deceased, dead hands flutter in the shape of a bird. Taking off above his head an at my party. The party I have been planning for over two weeks.

Rhon: Oh sweet-Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ Phil. Shut up about the damn party. We get it, we know, but right now things have gone a little sideways here and we have bigger things to think about that that right now. 

God:  There. There is my flaw. Snaps his fingers and points My cosmic joke, my point of break or my cracked vase. You little buggers can only think yourself. Yourself and how you can be better than one another. But, in the end, just yourself. Yourself first and last. Start, middle and end, me, me, me. Do you know how I got here today? I took the subway. While I was standing there on the platform, a woman named Patricia Barker, was severely depressed. Believing the world was to much for her. She was so desperate, to much pain to speak of. Decided to remove her and her child from it. The world that is. Remove herself completely. By jumping , child in arms, in front of a oncoming subway. I was the blind black beggar at the station. You want me to help? Well it's not my job!

Martha: That's awful. 

God smiles sadly at Martha

God:  But this woman beside me, Three piece suit, a couple grand worth of jewellery, late for a business meeting as it was. She began to complain. Complain that she was going to be even later for this meeting. Huffing and puffing. That it would change her world. That it would make more and more money. “Screw this stupid woman, who is dressed like a street person.” She said aloud. Decides to jump in front of a train, I mean come on people, you want to know everything in the world there is to know? Life on mars, eternal happiness, the perfect orgasm, long life and maybe inner peace? Well, compassion is a good start. Compassion and empathy is a damn fine start actually. 

Phil:  And then my guests piss off God. 

Death makes her way to Tammy stands beside her and Tammy instantly comes to life. they talk but know one notices as all focus is on God. Death waves hello to God, God nodded in acknowledgement

Liz:  God: are you okay? 

God: Runs his hands over his face I'm sorry. You are no more to blame than anyone else. But you must understand that it is all about free will. And that is going to shock you all. I mean, especially Tom there who actually believes in me. 

Tom: Looking sheepish and acting defensive I believe in God, and there's nothing wrong with that. But you my friend are not HIM!

God: You are a rarity these days. But no one really has it wrong. Well, except for the Scientologist. They are way out in left field. Anyway I created the earth, and it was good. I created the plants, the sea, the sky, it was all good. Good. Put animals in the mix nice batch of insects all life. Then I got tired or maybe bored I can't remember. So I set the program in motion, a basic free will if you like. It was good. I went away for awhile and I came back and what do I see. It was no longer good. Yu'all screwed it it up. Yu'all forgot a few things changed a few things. But yu'all had yer purposes to fulfill. And and yu'all don't like it. Then you have someone like Tammy here who, tonight, has fulfilled her duties. Who's free-will has brought her to this. And this. 

Lights focus on Death and Tammy 

Phil:  Who is this? 

God: Death. 

Rhon: This old lady is Death? 

Death blows her nose and fixes her glasses and smiles a big smile Tammy Appears beside Death. The rest of the cast realize shes alive and standing

Rhon:  Oh my God, It's Tammy! 

The rest are shocked 

Liz: Tammy I thought you died? 

Tammy: I think I did.

Phil: Wait I thought she died! 

Tom: I told you she wasn't dead. 

Corina:  Tammy Come here, with us. 

Death: No folks we need her with us. 

Phil: Then Death shows up. What a party! 

God: Yes, Gladice here is Death and she does a damn fine job of it to. Don't you Gladice. He raises his glass to Death 

Death: I try. 

God: You've been with me for what? Two, three generations? 

Death: Going on four, God. 

God: Elected by a body of her peers each time. And she still loves the lot of you.

Death: I do, I truly do. 

God: With birth out of the way, and Death taking care of business. I have so much time on my hands. Thank you Gladice.

Death: No Thank you God. 

Dr. Segal: Sounds reasonable to me. 

Rhon: But can't you stop Death? 

God: Sure, why not. Throw a stick in the spokes of history. Why not? But it's none of my business, now is it. 

Rhon:  What if we found a good reason? 

God:  Ahh a salesman. Great, perfect. Hit me with your best pitch, Mr. Lowman.

Rhon: Can I discuss this with my friends? 

God: Certainly, By all means, take your time. 

God rises from his seat with a grunt and joins Death and Tammy behind the table. The rest go join Phil on the couch 

Rhon: What are we going to say? 

Liz: Tell him Tammy's life was horrible and that she deserves a break. 

Jen: Tell him that we could trade some of Corina's hair for Tammy. Or a leg. What are your legs insured for now Corina? Three, four hundred thousand.

Corina:  Like shut up! 

Rhon: Or maybe we could just bribe death? 

Dr. Segal: Cheat him, lie to him, bribe him. Sure, what the hell, hahaha. The whole shebang. Bring her to her knees in negotiation. Tie her up in litigation. Appeal her rulings then jump bail with our Tammy in hand. Hahahah. 

Liz, Rhon, Zoe Tom: Shut up Segal. 

Jen: To Tom You shut up. 

Tom: To Jen No you shut up. 

Jen:  Why do I hate you so much? 

Tom: Talking through clenched teeth Why must I talk through clenched teeth whenever I talk to you? 

Jen: Why... 

Tom: If only... 

The two of them lean into one another and start kissing 

Phil: Two weeks. Two weeks I planned...

Liz: This is never going to work. 

Rhon: We will have to make this work, figure out some loophole never thought of. 

The group come together heads close like they are making plans hands waving and pointing. Death, God and Tammy seem to be in a deep conversation as well. Pointing to the other group. Lights start to fade as music plays up. 

End Of Act II

Act III 

On one side of the table is God, Tammy and death. God and death standing on either side of Tammy who is sitting in the middle seat.. On the other side Tom, Phil, Liz, Rhon and Corina standing. Jen and Tom have moved to the couch and pawing each other. The TV playing old family 8mm home movies in silent mode.

God:  I see you have a couple of non-players on your side. Gestures at Jen and Tom Never-the-less, we should do this properly. Everyone, this is Death, Gladice. God points as he introduces each one to Death. This is Rhon, Liz, Zoe, and Corina, Phil and Martha. Oh of course you, know Dr. Segal. 

Dr. Segal moves across stage towards Death. He sticks his hand out to shake her hand then pulls it away 

Death: Yes, Dr. Segal, I know your work well. Rhon, a Lovely boy, Liz. Liz there are some pianos in the great beyond that you will simply love. 

Tammy: To Liz Sorry I didn't get to talk to you tonight, but that CD you loaned me is on the cabinet by my bed. You can get it back whenever... 

Liz: Aren't you scared? 

Zoe: Like of course she's scared. I mean, She's like dead.

Corina: I'm not sure I understand all this. 

Dr. Segal: You don't have too, dear. 

Tammy:  Actually, I'm not scared. Death told me about where I am going and everything and it sounds nice. And I did put on clean underwear today so we can take the express route. Anyway, I had a huge Visa Bill. Hehe. So all is good. 

Dr. Segal: Hahahaha Good one. 

Rhon: Coughs into his hand Ummmm. 

God: Yes, yes, our salesman. Gladice, these young people would like to discuss the removal of their friend from this earthly plane. If that would be ok with you.

Death: Checking her wrist watch We really haven't the time. I wish we did. 

Liz: Yelling I don't think its fair you are taking Tammy. 

Zoe: Yeah, Like her life sucked and you're, like taking it away from her early and it's wrong. 

Dr. Segal: Well spoken. 

Zoe: Go to hell. 

Corina: Maybe I could do work or something.

Death: Now, now, my children. 

Rhon: Okay. Let's take this back one step. Calmly, Calmly. Tammy is our life long friend, ok? Everyone nods. And she has had a pretty horrible life. If something could go wrong it would. By far the most unluckiest person I have ever known. It was like watching someone being tortured slowly. There has to be a better way to do this this ending I mean. 

Tammy:  Well, it did have its moments. 

Rhon: But it wasn't that great. I mean, your parents, your living conditions, your poor, poor luck. 

Tammy: You make it sound like I should be happy to be dead. 

God beams a big smile 

God: You're losing your defendant. 

Rhon:  Tammy I don't mean it the way you think. What I mean is you deserve to have a little luck fall your way. A chance to turn it around a second chance. And bottom line Tammy we want you with us. 

Tammy:  I kind of like this dead thing. It's tingly. 

Rhon: Tingly? 

Phil: Why did she have to die at my party though?

Death:  It's that easy isn't it? Someone snaps their fingers and someone is dead. There is no research in this no analysis. My team of professionals... 

Phil: Phhhhh 

Death: Who work very hard. 

Phil: Phhhhhhh 

Death: Very hard to get everything organized. Okay what is it Phil? Is there something you would like to tell us? What is it? 

Phil: Absurd! 

Death: Absurd? 

Phil:  Does no one else find this absurd? 

Death: There is nothing absurd about this, young man. This is a very serious business. Where is he going? 

Phil moves away towards the TV and just stares at it.

Tammy: Listen you guys, I don't know why this happened, well I do it was the Crab, but what I mean is this is bigger than me. More important than all of us. I feel like This means something and what I thought was bad luck or sadness or even loneliness, was teaching me something that I needed to learn. I may not understand all the nuances but I feel like for the first time. What I do matters. If you think about it, I will get to see my mom and dad, right Gladice? Gladice Nods her head yes and to me that's a greater gift than anything I have here right now at this time. 

God: Okay folks, time to jump in for a bit here. What I want to mention is that what you are forgetting is that Tammy does not have a choice. Her life was designed this way for a purpose. It was all to teach her for the moments to come. She was being trained to take over for Death. In time she will have the compassion and the grace to help people cross over. Her training started before she was born. Everything she needed to be was planned out every second in time. Tammy nods like she understands and accepts this idea with a smile.

Rhon: What about free-will. You were pretty hip on that before. 

God: It's all part of a system. Systems do not change at the drop of a hat. Everything has a function to the overall purpose. 

Dr. Segal: Devil's advocate here for a second. You tell us all about you, the almighty, your work. Ect, ect. Then you introduce us to you organizational skills. Aka this free-will deal. What, in effect, is a program set in motion to do your work for you while you were elsewhere. Taking a nap and such. Correct? Right, then you introduce us to Gladice who you inform us, is part of a system as well. You can't believe in two systems of thought. You either believe in free-will or fate. Both can't exist. And, whoa is it just me or are there some things here that no longer make any sense?

God: This is getting out of hand. I know I made the rules, but I made them a long time ago and now I cannot recall the sensibility behind them all right now. Searching his pockets 

Rhon: You're contradicting yourself now. 

Dr. Segal:  Now I was never a lawyer but I did go out for Law school before I became a doctor and I must say that... 

God: Giving a stern look finger up Tammy serves a better purpose dead than alive. 

Dr. Segal, Rhon, Liz, Zoe, Corina, Thom, all at once, after a slight pause, say But, Then fire questions fast then they pair of slowly mock talking to each other 

Rhon: An infinite universe. Indeed, But what if is flat? And what if something created it which we can't even fathom. Something outside of cumulative reality than the God we know? Of even stranger what if we are just senescence stuck on an event horizon. On the edge of a Black hole? Existing only for a nano-second, but time being relative we exist for trillions of years before our reality is destroyed by another dimension. An mathematical nominally. Mistake by happenstance. 

Steps aside 

Liz: There is so much beauty in the world. But there is so much hatred and violence. How can I believe or not believe? 

Zoe:  Do we need to know?

Corina: If there is a god, and I’m a saying if, what will it think of us? We inject plastics into ourselves, we pierce our bodies and we plaster them with ink. We shave off bits here, suck out fat there. We don't consider ourselves or others in eight out of ten actions. Or we don't care. I can't believe because too many of us don't seem to care. 

Tom: From the couch, unattached himself from Jen For the moment my belief is strong. 

Jen: My will is strong. 

Phil:  I believe. How could I not. But it's like my party. God created this thing, this world, these existences, and then everyone ruined it on him. 

God: Stop! Silence! 

Lights strumming in the background all actors go to speak but find they cannot, they open and close their mouths like fish on land, god does circles at the centre of the stage like he's in deep thought and concern

God: I came here with the idea of teaching, showing people the problems which exist and possible solutions. And, again, to prove some things to myself. I mean, I had that Job fellow awhile ago, but what did that prove? You need to keep testing and testing and testing till you find a weak spot. The spots where the light gets in and you patch them up. You make them stronger. You make them better. Thicker, Darker, more resilient. But I wasn't expecting all these questions. Or all these people with all these problems. All self-centred, petty little people have confused me. I mean, what am I supposed to do with them? What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to say?

Lights have a soft dim not full, spot light on God, he walks to the front of the stage puts his hands to cover his eyebrows to look out to the audience, to stop the glare. 

God: Rhon, Rhon Grenon. Are you out there? 

Out in the audience is the director of the play Rhon Grenon. On each side of hims is an AD cute with pens in her hair and a clipboard. On the other is a model like woman Possible Girlfriend. Super classy, snobbish air about her. 

Rhon: Right here God. 

Rhon the actor on the stage pipes up and God turns around to answer him then turns back into the light searching the audience.

God: Not you, you fool. You're not even real. 

Phil: What does he mean you're not real? You've come here and really ruined my party. You've drank my wine, filled yourself with my Doritos. 

Rhon: Yeah, I ate his Doritos. I'm real. 

God:  SHHHH! None of you are real. Rhon I know you're out there! 

Rhon G: Yes God what's up? Stands up 

God: What is going on here Rhon? Apparently I am God And have ultimate control over the universe. Right? I don't get it, where were you going with this?

Rhon G: I was trying to show ideals and obedience with conformity and such do not necessary guarantee a good life. Or a good afterlife, whatever the case may be. 

Rhon: Who are you? 

All the cast walks to the front of the stage, stay in character, they stand beside God. Do what you thin your character would do but silently 

Rhon G: I'm you but real. Look forget it. 

Rhon: He's telling me to forget it. Gestures to the other actors Forget it, he's me, But real. No problem, right, Rhon No problem. 

Rhon G and God: Please be quiet. Timing Is very important here they must say it together perfectly 

God:  Rhon, what are you going to do about this play? It has seemed that it has spiralled out of control. 

Rhon G: Well, I had a god handle on what was going on until people started shouting at one another. But that was all planned, in away, as it was, but now…

Jen removers herself from Tom walks to the forefront to face Rhon G.

Jen: So, You're God? This is our friend Rhon, And this guy here points to the Rhon G is the real Rhon who created us all and, of course, we are all just characters in a play? Well, then none of this would matter... That's it I'm leaving, are you coming Tom. 

Tom: I, I don't think so Jen. No, Not this time. 

Jen: Looking angry Fine! Have it your way. I'm sick of you and this dumb group anyway. And just so you know I'm glad this is over. I wanted to end it a long time ago Tom. So screw you! 

Jen runs to the front of the stage jumps of and storms of through the audience and out the back door 

Rhon G: Calm down everyone. It's okay. She can go. I wrote that scene in to get her to leave. I wasn't a big fan of her character anyway. I think I wrote her to pushy. That's why she gets hit by a car now. 

From the back of the theatre doors open, you hear the long screeching of tires and a hard body thump. Hit by car, Out back have a team of make -up artist ready to bandage her hun give her bruising and deep wounds. 

Tom: WHAT?? NOOO, NOT JEN!! Runs after her in hysterical After Tom leaves out the back 

Rhon G: See, now he's all distraught and horrified. Now he has real emotions. Now he feels.

God: Is that what this is all about then? 

Zoe: Okay. Like, what was that? I'm bored and confused and freaked right out and I have things to do tomorrow, I wanna leave too. 

Rhon G: No, Zoe you still have a love interest. And what is this all about? This is all about Said quickly The conceptual reality within the confines of a subversive universe, will only express the complex level of benevolence that a higher manifestation of God Transfers. But we colour our realities in deep conjecture of patronizing subtle passions. I created you, God, with a reality which transgresses all boundaries. There is no logical process or grounds of functionality that readies the mind in a state of perpetual grandeur. With willingness to explore we touch the spiritual bond of life and we express as well as experience the differences that enumerate the belief of something bigger than we are. 

God: Uh-huh. 

Pause 

Zoe: Like really, A love interest? For real? Okay I'll stay. 

She sits on the edge of the stage looks out pick a cute none actor in audience and flirt with the person. Try to convince him/ her to come and chat and eventually on stage. At this point the food crew will start to move food in slowly and quietly on the side of the audience 

Rhon: It wouldn't actually be for real though would it? If we are just actors and all in a play?

Rhon G: Don't get bitter now Rhon, whos to say what is real and what instinct. How do you know if I'm just and actor playing a part in a bigger play or reality. It could be endless. 

Rhon:  I have my own mind. I am real. 

Rhon G: I can prove you're not. 

God:  Here we go. 

Rhon: Okay, Go ahead. 

Rhon G: Think of a Number between zero and one hundred. 

Rhon: Okay got it. 

Rhon G: Forty-two 

Rhon: Uh-uh... No. uh. 

Rhon G: Yes it was. 

Rhon:  Clenching his teeth as he says it Fine it was! 

Rhon G: Go sit down big boy. 

Rhon G and Rhon Sit down at the same time in the same pose.

Rhon G: Carry on with the play now. We'll talk , After the show. 

*** Ref. 58 PG 

God: Wait. So if you created me then I am not god? 

Rhon G: That's not true at all. God is the ultimate power in the universe according to some. I can't Create God. Only God Can create God if God even exists. Which I can't prove... or disprove. I just wanted to challenge people's thinking. That's all. People are so damn set in there ways sometimes. I mean, don't people want to see different things? Different views? Visit a concept they never experienced before? Life is about experience and all the times we can see things differently, added to a whole of who we become. 

Zoe should at this point should have dragged someone up to stage to come and get food. Other audience plants should be making there way up trying to bring someone with them 

God: So I am God. 

Rhon G:  Yes 

Phil:  I want you to know mister, whoever you are. Pointing to Rhon G in the audience That I know who I am and I am not a character in a play. I am a man who spent a great deal of time putting together a party which has been, for all intensive purposes. The cast Laughs at him I have parents and a pet, and a woman here who... more laughter What are you guys laughing at?

Rhon G: Look Phil. None of this, is in the play. Now I put a lot of time into this play and would really appreciate it if you would, you know, follow the script. 

Phil Stares out into the audience. The light goes to his eyes as god turns back to the party. Phil stares for a moment then turns around and sits back down at the table. With his head in his hands he yells 

Phil: LINE! 

Guy with a cue-card steps out from the side and shows it to Phil so the audience can see it 

Cue-card guy: So you are the creator of the universe then. And this is all a joke.

Phil: In a tired and defeated voice So you are the creator of the universe, God. And all this is an elaborate joke and laughs hard and long But me, I've been planning this party for weeks now and nobody seems to care. 

God: No Phil It's all real. You've done a great job. But I think that maybe this is what I've worried about all this time. I guess the world is doing ok and As the side tables of food and drink get placed food crew get slightly louder, not as careful. Talking saying is it ready improve at this point. Ask people closest if they want a drink or a bit to come and get it. Actors on stage will have to compensate at this point that people do look out for one another every so often and that in the long run will all do fine. Right Rhon? 

Rhon: What's this God?

God:  Not you. Quiet voice Rhon. Rhon Grenon. I'm a little worried. I'm a little scared how does this all end? 

Silence from the audience 

God: Softly Mr. G? How does this all end? The party. 

Rhon G: Louder God, we can't hear you! 

God: How does this all end? 

God pauses no one says anything, makes his way slowly with Tammy and Death. They all leave out the front door 

Phil: What was that? 

Rhon: Huh? 

Liz: Where were we? 

Zoe: What was that? 

Dr. Segal:  We have just witnessed something miraculous. 

Rhon: What was it? 

Liz: Yes, what ?

Phil: It's a pretty good party, isn't it? 

Rhon: I've had a blast. 

Liz: Are we purposefully not talking about God being here? 

Phil:  Who? 

Rhon:  Who? 

Zoe:  Who? 

Dr. Segal: Who? 

Liz: Okay. Who? 

Phil: Much better. Welcome to my party. There are more people to come, I welcome you all with open arms. I think. We'll just wait and see what happens next.

Party Continues this will grow from page 58 any free hands will join on stage at this point and help pull friends and family up or to tables on the side lights will finally rise full in the audience. But will happen slowly from page 58. so subtle you cant notice it should take about 7 minutes till full. All Chartres even ones that left will come back and join in the fun. Make small talk, engage people full talking now, normal voice. Some will dance and lots of laughter. Create a real party. The goal is to make an amazing transition into real life., the goal is to have no one clap no ending to the play. All behind the scene crews will join now eat, talk about the play enjoy the success of what has happened and let go of the reality that has been created. If we do this right we will blur the lines and will give the audience an experience of a lifetime. Thank you for all your hard work and bask in the wonderful thing you have created 

One last thing as the music plays God will read “New.” As long as he wants. A key style writing that challenges the way you think. Join the party when the timing is right for you 

God: It isn't love, but it is better than nothing. As monsters run wild inside of me. I can feel your soul. But the question is. If dimensional shifts are a real construct of a multi-verse, and all possibilities are real. Then it lends itself not only to experience all aspects of love and loss. But as prophets say, to be everyone in every situation and experience all realities. Maybe the true nature of love is the sadness of what we already know to be true. And that is to hold on to hope. That in this moment of fleeting desire we seek it to be different than all realities that we have witnessed before. Or maybe it's just dumb luck, and being stupid with the choices we make that end up breaking the continuity necessary to find that one willing to work as hard as you do to make love last... 

Is that the meaning of existence? 

Do you think I can see your soul?

Do we choose what to forget? 

Are you the answer to the question I have asked all my life? 

Forgotten along the way no place is safe for us to lay our weary head. Two hearts beating. Is this all we know? I tell you now we are not ready for the truth. As far as I can tell we hide from what is offered all around us. Every part of the world is angry at what is to come. But high with our heads in the sand as a fee is paid to crazy... Raise the Goddamn alarm, both middle fingers raising to the sky. One question we haven't been able to answer yet is how do we break the chains of capitalistic greed? Enslaving all that buy into a system of empty promises and high hopes. Since when do we allow corporations to decide in the matters of love, freedom, free-will, ideas, health, science, passions, morals, values, environment and life? A marketing wet dream of sheeple walking doe eyed into the grinder. Homogenized pale realities swallowing one red pill at a time. Laughing the whole way loudly, blinders on, crying inside, screaming for sweet release. How can I explain the infinite to you if we can't grasp the lack of survival we seem to adapted to without a touch of nature. 

Feather touches the mind of entropy, brushing utopia around the corner. Ideas and ideals brought forth by constant thoughts hell bent on saving humanity. As the masses fight tooth and nail to destroy all that we know. A collective autistic nature, allowing institutions to lead us down a path of paranoia and greed. Selling phantom pocket ringtones, created in the cerebral cortex a basic animal instinct to be sold bought controlled keeping us further from our true self. Keeping us yearning for connection, even if its forgotten in the depths of time. Warning signs of cold nights to keeps us safe and alive. Are we getting better generation after generation? Right now we seem to collectively want a reset but don't know how to accomplish this task. A hard reboot. But the system has grown past anyone's self control. We hope that religion will guide us to the next time. Laughing that this is the start of the road to ruin. Fulfilling the prophecy that we decided long ago that we do not want to be here any longer. 

How is it possible that the masses have decided this delusional state of mind? Willing to challenge life itself to its very core. Does cancer know of its existence? Manipulation of idol passive conquests. Steer us into non-reality voids. Painting colour apon colour. As our perception gives way to chaos. Disintegrating terror gives us hope that we are not sheep that we really are. Safety in anxiety of a world gone mad, we have watch all empires fall.

Wheels grinding , screeching and folding as humanity is perforated into bite size portions. Fed miss-information, lies and miss-steps. Taking us to the brink of loss. 

Two minutes to twelve... 

Extinction grows closer… 

Pockets of us see a clear path a picture if you will. How to wake us up to survive. Answering questions on how to build on what has been destroyed. The more we hold on to our own reality and try to control it. The more we lose control of the awesome nature that life it self has to offer. We have to start to understand our nature. The will to feel what is real all around us. Seeking those moments of clarity wrapped in a soft blanket and a warm hot chocolate. Mother is coming folks. She is waking up. She will set us straight once again. On a paths of balance one way or another she will show us what her truest self is. Holding our hand like impetuous children we are. Time out, nose in the corner, looking over our shoulder waiting for the punishment to end. But my dear reader/ listener. I paint an easy picture in your head. If we pick our fight now... 

If we wait. We will see the witch rise and all hell will break loose. A wash of fury that not one human in the existence of humanity has ever seen. It will be a cleansing like no other. There will be no record to keep. Now idols to worship. Not one person will be safe. Some may survive, some may even grow. But not like now. Time will have wiped the memories clean. You know I'm right. Think about it my friend. Inside you is the actual light of the universe longing to know itself. 

It isn't love, but it is better than nothing. As monsters run wild inside of me. I can feel your soul. But the question is. If dimensional shifts are a real construct of a multi-verse, and all possibilities are real. Then it lends itself not only to experience all aspects of love and loss. But as prophets say, to be everyone in every situation and experience all realities. Maybe the true nature of love is the sadness of what we already know to be true. And that is to hold on to hope. That in this moment of fleeting desire we seek it to be different than all realities that we have witnessed before. I once heard, dreaming of what the world has taught me about love. Soothing complex fears wrapped in a neatly, tight, red ribbon. In that vision of truth. Don't ever question the deep burden I carry for you. My passion for you encompasses all. Let the dimensions cry for sweet release. It has given us the only way we can be who we need to be. Can it be as simple as you expect it to be? Passions remembered. Never giving up, never willing to fall. Making sure that all left behind will learn the lesson of true love. Beyond all expectations, beyond all hope. It isn't love, but it is better than nothing. I once heard. Dreaming of what the world has taught me about love. As monsters run wild inside of me. Soothing complex fears wrapped in a neatly, tight, red ribbon. I can feel your soul. In that vision of truth. But the question is. Don't ever question the deep burden I carry for you. If dimensional shifts are a real construct of a multiverse, My passion for you encompasses all. And all possibilities are real. Let the dimensions cry for sweet release. Then it lends itself not only to experience all aspects of love and loss. It has given us the only way we can be who we need to be. But as prophets say, to be everyone in every situation and experience all realities. Can it be as simple as you expect it to be? Maybe the true nature of love is the sadness of what we already know to be true. Passions remembered. And that is to hold on to hope. Never giving up, never willing to fail. That in this moment of fleeting desire we seek it to be different than all realities that we have witnessed before. Making sure that all left behind will learn the lesson of true love. We are the grandest illusion ever created. Beyond all expectations, beyond all hope. Stepped in, time is up, here we go! Feel the wind on your face, the sun in your eyes. Blue all around you. Paradise found. 

[bewarethelivingwra]

Children’s Week (Juel - Flashback)

Wandering idly through The Drag, Juel noticed folks were crowded around the orphanage. Having been so distracted of late, she paused for a moment, counting the days, trying to figure out exactly when it was. Finally, it hit her. Every year, the Horde tended to give the children in the city orphanages a bit of a treat – they would allow anyone with free time and their approval to take an orphan around for a day or so, show them what was outside the walls. Juel believed this was somewhere between propaganda and altruism, but never spoke of it. Her people weren't consistently allowed to participate due to fears of mental stability.

Not that she cared all that much, really. She'd never even had the urge to attempt to drag some poor child across Azeroth, likely boring them to tears, dealing with strange questions or sarcastic remarks. She was usually busy anyway, or not in the city. There was no orphanage in the Undercity, of course.

But she paused nonetheless, watching a small crowd signing up to assist, and for the first time, she found herself considering it. She wasn't sure she would be allowed, but it was worth a try. She smoothed out her hair, and dusted off her robes before joining the throng.

The matron gave her the strangest look as she walked up at her turn. Juel had been studying a notice pinned to the sign just outside. It contained a list of activities suggested for the children that would get them out of the city as well as educate them. It looked both daunting and dull.

“Can I assist you?” the female orc in charge of the orphanage asked, her expression still confused. Juel suppressed the urge to sigh in annoyance. This was the usual tone she was met with when doing anything unorthodox for her people. The matron most likely expected any Forsaken who wandered up to ask for a child, then the child would never be seen again, even with the Apothecarium inaccessible now.

“Yes, I was curious about the program,” Juel said, smiling brightly, but trying to look calm. Even friendliness was taken oddly by the living, and she was slowly learning how much was too much, and what could be misconstrued. Sometimes, losing her home city came as a bit of a blessing. She was learning much more being out and about mingling.

“The...program?” The matron looked confused, as if Juel had spoken in common or Forsaken instead of perfectly clear Orcish. Then it clicked. “Oh, you mean to take one of the children around for a day?” Juel nodded, trying not to look either too eager nor nervous. Either one could be misconstrued. “Well, we generally do not...I mean...we rarely have any of your...” Juel closed her eyes, sighing softly.

“You can say it. Usually Forsaken do not participate,” she said, trying to keep her tone from dipping into annoyance, which was closer than she expected. “But, we are allowed to participate, are we not? We are citizens, and many are here mingling about due to homelessness.”

The matron sputtered a bit at that, as if searching her brain for the right excuse to deny her, and coming up empty handed.

“Besides,” Juel said, “I have several siblings, a few who were...much younger than I was. I know the basics, especially if the child is a bit older. Not to mention you have no worries of me having to carry anyone. That could be awkward considering...” She just smiled here, genuinely wanting the matron to grasp that she meant no harm, nor did she want a child who would be uncomfortable.

The matron returned her smile this time, at least so far as Juel could tell. Some were harder to read due to the presence and size of tusks, but she felt as if the matron had softened toward her. “You know, fine,” she said. “We have a girl who has done this program once before. We believe her to be about five years old...”

“You believe her to be?” Juel asked, tilting her head at that. The matron had turned to go inside, but paused here, giving Juel an odd look.

“Yes. They do not come to us with their birthdates written upon them,” she said. “This one was just an infant. Both parents lost in the Draenor campaign early on.” Juel blinked then, stunned. She knew there had been great losses when the second portal had been opened, but hadn't known anyone personally. She nodded, her expression solemn. “Dhara had just been an infant then, left behind with her grandmother who became ill and passed herself. Hence, she has been here a while.”

“And no one scooped her up yet?” Juel asked, confused. The matron turned fully, her expression grim.

“The military has not disbanded from the previous campaign. No one is truly settled enough to take anyone on. It should not come as a surprise.”

“That makes perfect sense,” Juel said. “What did you say her name was?”

The matron gestured and a small girl, just tall enough to come up past Juel's waist, ran over, deep ruddy reddish-brown hair flying behind her. She looked up with interest at Juel, her eyes almost the same topaz yellow Juel's had been in life. She found herself taken aback. “Miss...I did not get your name.”

Juel was so fixated on this little girl, almost missing the question. “Oh, I didn't give it. I apologize.” She tore her gaze from the child for a moment to regard the matron again. “Juel Browning.”

The matron offered her a small smile at that, likely having only dealt with Forsaken who had taken up their own new names – usually something odd or sinister. “Juel Browning, meet Dhara.”

Juel looked back at the girl who stared up at her with a great deal of calm intelligence for a child so young. And her name. It sounded so close to Dahlia, Juel's mother's name, it felt almost fated. Juel smiled down at her, resisting the urge to kneel, as she had a feeling a child who looked this smart would find it patronizing.

“I think we should start with a walk, what do you think?” Juel finally asked the girl, who nodded in response. Juel offered the girl a gloved hand to take, grateful she had worn them that day, otherwise her hands would likely be uncomfortably cold. At least until she absorbed some warmth from contact. The girl took it and the matron informed Juel to have the girl back before sundown.

“And we have a list of suggestions on the board,” she added, nodding to it. Juel thanked her, but they walked off without looking at it again. Juel could see in her peripheral vision that the girl stared up at her curiously, her expression unreadable. When they arrived at the threshold between The Drag and the Valley of Strength, Juel paused, looking down at Dhara.

“What is it you might like to do first?” Juel asked her, fighting hard to not ask about food first. Her mind always went to food primarily whenever she was around the living. It seemed to be the most logical thing to ask – have you eaten, do you need to eat, would you like to get something to eat?

“They had a list...” the girl said, pointing back the way they had come. Juel nodded.

“I read it. Is that what you'd like to do?” she asked. “Something from the list?”

“Nope,” the girl said bluntly, and Juel couldn't resist a smile. She liked her honesty. “I did it last year. It's rather boring.” Juel's smile faded at that. “Was the first year I was old enough to go.”

“Well,” Juel said, brightening a bit for the girl's benefit, “whatever you'd like to do, you name it. Gold is really no issue for...my people, seeing as we don't eat or rest or any of that.”

The girl looked up at her curiously. Her expression shifted quickly into cautious optimism. “Anything?” Juel couldn't resist smiling at that. The impishness of Dhara's expression was reminiscent of her love's when he thought up something incredibly silly, and it touched her in a strange way to see it in another.

“Anything. I live in Ratchet, near the water. There is always fishing, though I'm not good at it. Swimming, even.” The girl perked up.

“I don't think I've ever been near the water, other than sneaking out to jump in the waterfalls,” she added, smiling slyly. Juel nodded, smiling back, as she recalled her little sister had done something similar on her first trip to Orgrimmar.

“Perhaps that, then. Take a ride on a wyvern, fish, swim. Maybe lunch at the inn.” Dhara's expression grew more excited as Juel listed things off, things out of the usual for their outing day. She grabbed Juel's hand this time, with a great deal of strength to it from how Juel's fingers seem to rub together. She laughed with startlement and at the girl's excitement as she tried to pull Juel toward the elevators. “The docks aren't going to disappear,” she quipped. Dhara looked up at her, her eyes bright.

“No, but the day is short,” she said as they boarded the lift.

After a rather quick wyvern ride, mostly made so fast by Juel enjoying the excitement in the little one's expression and chatter as they flew over the desert terrain of Durotar, they arrived in Ratchet. Juel was surprised how easily Dhara had become comfortable with her presence. She hadn't even flinched when Juel wrapped a protective arm around her waist after they had climbed onto the great flying beast, to keep Dhara from falling in her giddiness. Juel did attribute some of that luck to her wearing robes with sleeves that day.

Once in Ratchet, Juel peered up the hill, above which was the house she shared with her fellow, Gru'sta. She looked down at Dhara, who returned her glance with one of confusion.

“You'll need something to swim in that isn't your clothes. I don't want to return you with a cold,” she said, smiling. Juel offered her hand and Dhara took it without hesitation. “I may be able to trim something to fit you. Then we'll find some fishing gear to borrow, as well.”

Dhara peered around the small, two story house with awe when they entered fully. It was like a tiny punch in the chest seeing how this little one looked as if she had entered a palace, when it was really just a cozy little home, mostly for two. Even though they had opened their doors for a few friends, it was rare they were taken up on the offer.

“There's a bed in your sitting area,” the girl chuckled, and Juel nodded.

“We have friends over enough, we just put one here,” she said, “Come. Upstairs is where I keep my things and some sewing supplies. We'll have you ready quickly.”

Juel dug through the drawers of the rather large armoire she had bought to house her dress and robe collection, which was considerable. She found some shirts within, holding up a plain one to Dhara. It was small enough to fit her without much adjusting, and long enough to be almost a dress.

“That should work. May not even have to sew,” Juel said. She handed it to the girl and turned, though Dhara almost immediately started changing without any hint of hesitation. Juel felt another one of those tiny punches to her chest, wondering just how it had to have been for Dhara, in an orphanage so long, not even given much privacy for simple things like changing clothing.

“Ready!” she said loudly, and Juel turned. The girl had piled her regular clothes on the bed. Juel smiled down at her.

“Now we find some fishing supplies. My guess is someone at the inn may have something to loan to us.” The girl nodded excitedly and took her hand again to head downstairs and back to the quiet goblin town below.

“This one ain't gonna eat near as much as you got the other day,” she heard the innkeeper bellow as she walked in. Juel paused for a moment, the quip not quite sinking in right away, before she shook her head.

“No, but we do need some fishing supplies, if you know of anyone with some to borrow,” Juel said. She raised the hand that was clasped with Dhara's. “Day out from the orphanage in Orgrimmar.”

The goblin's expression, neutral before, shifted to one of surprise. “Huh. Never heard of them letting your type take em out.”

“First time for everything,” Juel said flatly. “Do you have anything around or not?”

“Maybe enough for one,” he said. “It gets quiet around here. Gotta keep busy somehow.” He disappeared up the stairs and Juel suspected he wasn't going to return, just to get a rise out of her as revenge for the huge breakfast order the other morning. About when she was ready to leave and find another option, he returned with what was the perfect size pole for a child (which made Juel snicker a little, not realizing that the girl and the goblin weren't too terribly dissimilar in height), as well as a tackle box.

“I didn't expect this much,” Juel said, genuinely grateful. The goblin looked at her suspiciously, and she coughed to cover up the outburst. “Thank you. We'll return everything around lunch, if that works.”

“Perfectly fine, just don't feed her the entire lunch menu,” he quipped, waving her off to go to the back. Juel smiled a little, realizing he was a bit embarrassed over the gesture and their gratefulness. She turned to Dhara.

“Ready?” The girl grinned broadly up at her. She nodded enthusiastically.

They walked to the water, not very far from the inn, and Juel opened the tacklebox, regarding what was inside with both curiosity and confusion. Her younger sister and her father had been the fishermen in the family, and she wasn't completely certain what to do.

“Is there bait?” the girl asked, peering inside.

“I'm not sure what constitutes bait in here,” Juel said softly, then she noticed a tray lifted out, and underneath was a considerable amount of good, dark soil. As she wondered why there was moist dirt in a box, a small worm peeked out. “I guess that would be it.”

“I got it,” the girl said, all excitement and eagerness. She checked the pole for a hook, finding it had one tied on, before plucking the worm from the dirt and skewering it on the hook. When she was alive, Juel would have been repulsed, not so much by the actual act of killing the worm, but the worm itself. She had never been one to fool with dirt or get dirty. She was still very fastidious in death, but found herself with much more tolerance for what she'd have found gory before. Dhara padded down to the water before casting her line, planting the pole in the dirt, and sitting down behind it. Juel couldn't help but smile. As she did, Dhara let out a contented sigh, gazing out over the water. Another tiny punch to the chest, this time somewhat pleasant more than melancholy. Juel walked over, carefully sitting beside Dhara.

“Better than the history lessons?” Juel asked. The girl looked up at her with those bright topaz eyes, nodding.

“So much better. I like it more outside,” she said, turning back to look at the water. “We rarely get to go outside the city.” Juel nodded solemnly, remembering how she had stayed within Stormwind and Capital City more often than outside. She found her comfort inside of walls more than wide open spaces, though she had been adapting a great deal with the help of someone as outdoorsy as Gru'sta.

Juel found herself neatening the girl's long, thick, ruddy hair with the hand she wasn't leaning on, and Dhara didn't seem to mind. She was so intently focused on the line in the water.

Finally, the line jerked, the pole shifting in the sand. Dhara, with surprisingly quick reflexes, yanked the pole from the sand, giving it a good hefty tug to pull the fish from the water.

“Ooooh,” she said excitedly, swinging the line toward herself to catch the wriggling fish with one hand. It was larger than her palm. Juel smiled at her.

“And now what to do with it?” Juel said. “I don't cook, so...”

Dhara shrugged, unhooking the fish rather deftly for being so little. Juel was surprised. “Too little, anyway. All the fun is in catching them.” She tossed the fish back into the water, getting good distance on her throw. Juel raised her brows, impressed. “Think I'll swim now,” Dhara said, planting the fishing pole back in the sand. Juel leaned back on her hands and watched as the girl dove off of the dock and swam back up, laughing as she breeched the surface. “Warmer than Orgrimmar water!” she cried,

“Just don't go too far out,” Juel cried, and Dhara nodded, slicking her hair back. “There are ships that come and go here.” Dhara swam for what felt like ages, and Juel envied her her enthusiasm. Finally, Dhara climbed out of the water, looking somehow more energized than when she first dove in.

“I think I'm hungry,” she said, laughing. “More hungry than I've been in ages.”

Juel rose, digging into her own bag to find something to throw over the girl's shoulders at least. Even though it was warm and there was no way she'd catch a cold, Juel couldn't help but worry. She found a spare cloak and Dhara wrapped up in it like it was the fanciest of soft blankets as Juel gathered the fishing equipment from the shore. They walked together up the stone path back toward the inn.

“That was quite a trip,” the innkeeper said as they walked in. The girl nodded emphatically, still clutching the cloak about her shoulders.

“I caught a fish, and I got to swim!” she cried. The goblin nodded sagely, humoring her.

“And now she's apparently starving,” Juel said, smiling down at Dhara, brushing back a few strands of hair that had fallen into the girl's face. She didn't seem to mind at all.

“So what'dya want to eat then?” the innkeeper asked, and Dhara shrugged. “This one tends to think orcs need the entire menu.” Dhara looked at her in confusion. Juel snickered.

“Let her choose, if you have a list of some sort,” Juel said, handing him back his tackle box. “We'll find a table.”

He came over shortly after they seated themselves, Dhara finally relinquishing the cloak. Instead of a menu, he rattled off specials from memory. Juel could almost feel her heart sink as she saw the child's eyes widen more and more as choices piled up. She turned to Juel, concern washing over her sweet features.

“I don't know what to get...” she said, blinking. Juel smiled, putting a hand to her cheek. Once again, Dhara didn't flinch.

“Anything at all you want,” she said. “It is your day, after all. And gold is nearly meaningless to me.” The goblin scoffed at that, but Juel ignored it. Dhara chose some rather heavy dish with meat and vegetables. It came out looking like a stew, and Juel was both impressed and a bit saddened with how quickly the child put away such a hefty portion.

“Th...they do feed you there, right?” she asked, blinking in surprise. Dhara looked up at her, fork halfway between her plate and her mouth, her topaz eyes wide.

“Of course, it's just not this good usually,” she admitted, then went back to digging in.

“Then perhaps some sort of dessert is in order afterward.” Juel said, smiling a bit weakly at the girl with how sad it all made her. Her own childhood had been idyllic, almost picture perfect outside of her training and the secrets related to it. This child had had the complete opposite, yet had such a sunny disposition. And still, no one had snatched her up from the orphanage somehow. Dhara smiled up at her, sopping up the last of the sauce with a huge hunk of chewy bread.

There was an actual menu for desserts, and the goblin handed it to Juel first. She glanced over it for barely a second before the girl reached. “I bet I can read it!”

“They teach you to read there?”

“Keeps us busy,” Dhara said. Juel handed it over and watched her expressions shift, more and more excited as she read over what was available. “Yep! That one!” She leaned toward the goblin and pointed with one slim, darkly nailed finger. “Chocolate pie. Never had that before.”

“Well, then you're in for a treat,” the goblin said with surprising sincerity, taking back the menu. Dhara was nearly bouncing in her seat with excitement. She only sat still once the giant slab of pie was placed in front of her. Juel watched the girl's expression, a bit concerned that she may burst into tears from the way she stared at that full plate.

“All yours,” Juel said to break the silence and the girl grinned up at her before picking up her fork and taking a heaping bite. With an amusing level of dramatics, the girl slumped back in her seat as if she was suddenly overwhelmed with the best tasting thing she had ever eaten.

It was quite likely true.

“Soooo much better than history,” she said in a tone that was both ardent and somewhat sarcastic at the same time. Juel couldn't resist a laugh.

“I should say so,” Juel said. “Just don't make yourself sick.”

Dhara took her time and it was clear she was suffering with a full stomach during those last bites, but couldn't give it up just yet. She also looked quite tired. Juel peered out the open doorway, trying to puzzle out about what time it was. She didn't know precisely when she needed to have Dhara back to Orgrimmar, but from the looks of the child, it wasn't likely she'd make it back to the orphanage awake. There had been too much activity and excitement.

“Can you get a message to the city quickly?” Juel asked the innkeeper as he returned with the bill. He raised a brow.

“You're fulla favors, aren't you?” he asked. She looked at him pointedly.

“We also tend to give you a good amount of business. And I know my fellow is a very good tipper,” Juel added. Gru'sta was definitely generous with coin; she had seen it firsthand in many places they had visited over the last few months. The goblin nodded, considering this.

“Fine. What you need?”

“Can you have someone get a message to the orphan matron that we may be late, or returning in the morning? The little one seems quite tired, and we have the space at our home.”

He scoffed. “Think she's gonna accept that?”

“Give her our location. She's free to have someone collect Dhara if need be, but she'll be safe,” Juel said. Dhara yawned loudly then, and they both glanced over. The child's bright eyes were drooping, and she had the tiniest spot of chocolate pudding from the pie on her chin. Juel shook her head, snickering a bit before taking Dhara's napkin and wiping it away.

“Fine, worth a shot,” he said. He brought her a bill just after, and she paid it with a hefty tip, as well as for the courier service. Juel went over to where Dhara was nearly asleep in her chair and helped her up.

“I'd pay to see the face on your fellow when he comes home to see a kid sleepin there,” the innkeeper chuckled, passing coins from hand to hand to count them quickly. Juel chuckled.

“Me, too.”

She got Dhara up the hill to the house, but just barely. Juel gathered the child's clothes from off the top of her own bed to bring downstairs, as well as a clean, dry shirt to sleep in. The girl was standing at the foot of the spare bed in what would be the sitting room, her head tilted.

“Looks so huge,” she said quietly. Juel nodded.

“We have friends over sometimes,” she said, laying the girl's old clothes on a chest at the foot of the bed. “Here, this is clean and dry to sleep in.” She handed Dhara a second shirt, this time one that buttoned, and turned around so the girl could change again. She was wavering on her feet.

“One more thing,” Juel said, sitting down on the bed that Dhara would be using, patting the space in front of her. Too tired to question, Dhara sat down in front of her and Juel pulled out a hairbrush that she had had grabbed from her nightstand when she had gathered the clothing. Gently, she brushed through the girl's still damp hair before neatly and intricately braiding it out of her face. Dhara continued to waver sitting up. “Much better,” Juel said, tying off the braid with a scrap of ribbon that had been on the brush, and rising to let Dhara climb under the sheets and blankets. She looked surprisingly tiny, like any human child would in a bed that large, propped up on several thick pillows and covered in fuzzy blankets. She blinked up at Juel, then smiled gratefully.

“Hope you don't get in trouble,” she said quietly. “Thank you again.”

Juel brushed back a few loose, shorter strands of the girls hair and smiled softly down at her. “You're very welcome. Perhaps we can even get breakfast in the morning, or dinner if you wake earlier, before taking you back.”

“Wonderful,” the girl said, barely above a whisper as she turned over and snuggled into the pillow. Juel lit a lamp on the far side of the room, not just for the girl's benefit as it darkened outside, but to give Gru'sta some way to see when he returned home. She went up the stairs herself to change and read on the balcony, waiting for his return. She wanted to sit and watch his expression when he walked in to see the sleeping child, but didn't want to make Dhara uncomfortable by staring.

Sure enough, just as the stars came out full and bright in the desert sky, Juel heard footfalls below that she immediately recognized. She had relocated to the bed just as it got dark, but had continued to read by lamp light. She closed her book and keened her ears to hear any sort of reaction, but got nothing other than the sound of him blowing out the lamp before ascending the stairs.

His expression was puzzled as he peered up at her from the opening at the top of the stairs. Juel smiled sweetly at him, scooting over to make space.

“Children's week,” was all she said.

The next morning, after a long night of listening for any sort of stirring from the room below, Juel found herself grinning against Gru'sta's neck, where she had nuzzled in at some point in the night. He made a sleepy, indiscernible sound, almost like a question.

“Incoming,” she said quietly, having heard soft footfalls from downstairs coming up. She sat up, making sure what she had slept in was in place before smiling sweetly at Dhara, who stood by his side of the bed (which tended to be most of the bed), looking a bit puzzled. Instead of making any sort of comment, she caught Juel's eyes and looked at her with a strange sort of understanding.

“Can we get breakfast?”

[anxious-but-logical-blog]

Unspoken Exceptions

Note:  Figured the only fitting way to dip my toes into writing for this fandom is some good old fashioned Logan angst. Because why not.  Summary:  Logan sees himself as a sort of protector of the other sides. They don’t seem to see it that way, but that’s alright with him  — most of the time, anyway. Words :  738 Ship(s) :  None Warnings:  Emotional breakdown, poor coping mechanisms, super unhealthy perception of emotions.  (I’m still pretty new to this, please let me know if I’ve missed anything!) Genre: Angst, hurt no comfort

Logan protects them. He knows he does. 

He also knows that they don't always realize he does. At best, he thinks they see him sometimes as more of a parent figure than they do Patton. After all, he's the one reminding them that believing they can touch the sky doesn't mean they should attempt leaping from a window, or that a low point isn't the end of the world. 

Not that that's really surprising in any way that they don't get it, he's quite used to seeing things in a far more objective light than Roman and Patton's dangerous optimism and Virgil's ever-frustrating pessimism. Seeing reality for what it is while the other sides don't is just a simple fact of his existence, it always has been.  So, for the most part, he really is okay with the fact that they don't seem to understand how much he wants to keep them safe.

Except for when he's not okay with it. 

Except for when the more emotional sides seem to forget that all he's ever wanted is what's best for Thomas, all he's ever wanted is for him to succeed, to be happy. To the point of swallowing his pride admitting he was wrong, only to be later innocently mocked as though his failure is their victory.

Except for when he's trying to do his job, he's trying to protect them with everything he has and he gets insults his way  —  “Oh hush, sub-astute teacher!”  —  and they look at him like he's the one who's caused them this pain  —  “Logan, can you stop!? Please?”  —  and it hurts and his temper flares and he doesn't even know he's leaving them to (more or less) their own devices until he's actively doing so. 

Except for when he fails in his duty as protector and doesn't identify an impostor in their midst.

Except for when he plays the day back in his head and lets Deceit's words roll over him, recognizing them now as the lies they are  —  “Oh good, Logan! Everyone’s favorite character!”  —  and finds they sting so much more than they should. Not that he has any time to dwell on it, he's too busy reassuring Virgil that they don't see him as one of Roman's self-named 'Dark Sides' and promising Patton that no, they hadn't liked Deceit more than him, because even though he failed today, watching out for them is still his job.

Except for when the hollow feeling settles in his chest, even as Roman does a dramatic reenactment of his speech to Deceit for Patton and Virgil hides a smile behind the sleeves of his hoodie, because yes everything turned out alright but he still should've figured it out sooner. When his mistake could jeopardize Thomas it doesn't matter that it all worked out in the end this time, he can't make it again.

But it's okay, those times when he's not alright, because he has a tried and true solution. 

He slips away, as far into the mindscape as he can get, where he knows the others don't roam and where things are hazy and cloaked in shadow and nowhere near logical. He lets his breath lose its steady cadence, lets his jaw clench as if to stop the emotions he doesn't know how to handle from finishing their clawing ascent up his throat. He lets his own arms wrap around himself as though he can physically hold himself together and squeezes his eyes shut so tight he can convince himself that the pressure is the reason they're burning and wet. He repeats nonsense affirmations to himself (that he's vital to Thomas' well-being, that he keeps Virgil grounded, that he keeps Patton and Roman steady, that he is needed if not always wanted — ) until the tremor leaves his voice and his gasping, ragged breath smooths itself out and the tension washes out of him like he's successfully bled out a toxin, and he folds in on himself, blissfully numb once again.

It's a simple process really. He reasons, as is his specialty, that he's not unlike a sponge, constantly soaking in the emotions of the other sides. It only makes sense that on occasion he'd have to wring himself out to keep his performance optimized.

There's no need for the others to know of this defect of his, not when he's handling it efficiently.

He's logic, after all. He has to be at peak performance to keep everything safe and in line.

[webgeekist]

Holiday Karma Pie

I paid for someone’s groceries today.

I didn’t do it for the karma. I didn’t even do it for the charity. I did it because the lady in front of me was having technical issues, and the less-than-$30 bill was worth sparing my sanity and getting out of that line. I played it off as a Christmas thing, asked the lady to pay it forward, and assured her that, yes, I was serious when I said it was no big deal. It wasn’t. I was happy to pay to get out of there.

I have a habit of picking the worst grocery lines. I thought, for a while, it was just this new place I’m in, but then I went home for Thanksgiving and went through 20 minutes of hell waiting for the family in front of me to finish arguing with the cashier about the $20 in savings they weren’t getting because their coupons weren’t scanning, or whatever other nonsense was preventing them from scanning an entire conveyor belt full of items, $200 and two carts into the bill. We moved to another line, finally, when one seemed available nearby. When we left with our own hefty bill in the cart, they were still there, slowly scanning the rest of their items.

I am also the person who will pick up the one item out of 100 without a bar code, and take three of them to the checkout lane.

It’s funny, this idea that you can buy karma with good deeds, as if your motivations don’t count. I’ve seen The Good Place. I know better than that. My motivation today was entirely self-serving, as is most charity in this country. We overwhelmingly donate our time or our money because it makes us feel better about ourselves, not because we genuinely care about giving. We’re scared into doing the “right thing” by a book that has been mistranslated and misinterpreted for centuries, and somehow have this warped idea that doing the right thing will buy us grace. Good Karma. A spot in heaven. Optimal reincarnation. At the end, there’s always something in it for us.

I’m no better than others in that regard. I do good deeds infrequently, and when I do, it’s almost always born of convenience. “Would you like to pay an extra 63 cents to round up your bill and donate to the Children’s hospital?” Sure. “Would you like to donate a dollar to aid in wildfire relief for Sonoma County?” Whatever. “Give a dollar to homeless pets?” Okay. “Save free information!” Click.

The result is positive for the recipient. That doesn’t make the motive for donation genuine.

And it doesn’t make the universe less likely to balance out your good luck with misfortune.

I think about that a lot. I’m always grateful for the positive experiences in my life, but I’m hyper aware of the fact that they often come at a premium. There’s a trade owed the universe, and you will pay it in painful ways. Maybe it’s a hard lesson you need to learn after you land your dream job. Maybe it’s illness, recovery, and loss after you find a few years of companionship. Maybe it’s your family turning their back on you a month before your wedding to the love of your life. And oh, by the way, she’s a girl and you are, too.

I’ve enjoyed two years with my fiancée. I marry her in 23 days. How many of my family will actually show up? At this point, I’m not sure.

I took a job in the Bay Area in July. It wasn’t so sudden that my fiancée didn’t have input. She absolutely did, and though we didn’t expect to be able to afford Northern California, we’re happy we could make this work. Or, at least, that we will make this work after June, which is when her teacher’s contract runs out in Texas. I’ve raked up so many frequent flyer miles, going back and forth every spare moment, and in the airspace between SFO and DAL, I’ve uncovered an anxiety I never expected to have: a fear of flying.

I have flown a Cessna. I have logged hours in a genuine full-scale 737-700 simulator. My dad was a professional pilot at one point in his life, my uncle still is, and all his kids can fly. My grandfather flew for the Thunderbirds. My brother is on his way to being a commercial pilot. I am not afraid of planes.

I started crying and choking before walking through security. I panicked when I booked tickets. If not for some of them being booked immediately after I got the job, I would not have gotten on a plane after September, but I’ve been on five trips since, fifteen total, and for most of them the what-ifs and potential loss has consumed me to the point of paralysis. Every bump and adjustment on takeoff freaks me the fuck out. The changing sounds of the engines at different altitudes and powers freaks me the fuck out. It’s taken every moment of every one of those harrowing trips to learn how to manage the anxiety, to rationalize the noises I hear from the engines, to normalize the dips and turns out of each Bay Area airport, but come Thanksgiving, when I climbed on a plane for the first long break I’d gotten at the new company, when I was so over the project I was working on that I was relieved to be standing at another fucking gate and boarding another fucking plane, all the stress management techniques I’d gathered in my anxiety did nothing to stop me from experiencing sheer terror flying out of SJC, meeting some bumpy air, banking to head south down the coast to catch a connecting flight out of LAX and bouncing around in the turn. I landed at SAT five hours later, cried in relief when the plane touched down (I always do, and I thank the plane for getting me there. That plane’s name was Tank. I gave it that name.), and stumbled into the terminal as fast as my eighth row seat would allow.

And then, I went to my family’s Thanksgiving.

I should precede this with the statement that the nine days my fiancée and I spent at my mom’s house started fairly early on with some culture shock. My fiancée is in grad school, and one of her class assignments was a “cultural plunge.” That’s a hilarious concept, because her entire life is a cultural plunge. She was born in Houston, but raised completely in India, went to college in Singapore, and came back to the states after. Living here has been one awkward learning experience after another, and with her brown skin, it’s also often been an experience of racism, of profiling, of assumptions made by ignorant people. She can’t go through an airport without getting her bag inspected and a pat-down (that happened once with my mother, and after we told her that no, my brown fiancée really does get profiled, and my mom damn near got herself arrested chewing the TSA agents out because how dare you treat her daughter like that. Yes, my mom is privileged. But, go Mom). Her background in science has often made living in Texas not unlike living on an alien world where logic and reason are outlawed. And oh, she’s a lesbian too. Discrimination trifecta.

Anyway, she submitted the idea of going to a Catholic Church on Sunday and staying for a mass as a cultural plunge, because unlike her white middle-class native Texan classmates, this was something she’d never done before.

I mean, what are the odds that they’d pick a gospel that would somehow relate to one of the many hot-button issues that any church in a red state could pick? The Pope is fairly liberal for a Catholic, and neither my mother nor I really remembered the sermons being terribly political.

Clearly, it’s been a while since we attended church.

My mother was horrified. Here was an opportunity for her to show her daughter-in-law a bit of her culture, and her upbringing, and therefore a bit of where my own morals and morality comes from. Here’s a chance for her to prove to me that the church of her childhood might have had these tenants but the sermons didn’t get into specifics, and people mostly just tried to Love Thy Neighbor.

I was pissed. I glared hard at the deacon as he climbed off the dais and walked back to his seat, and I’m certain he saw me. I’m certain he paused for a half-step because he saw my face, which I’ve been told can be really menacing when I’m angry. I don’t keep my emotions to myself very often. I don’t have a poker face like my fiancée.

She couldn’t muster that face. She was openly crying and trying not to show it. This church – this remarkably diverse church where she didn’t stick out like a sore thumb, which had epistles in three languages, which was holding a bake sale as we walked in had on its staff a white conservative deacon who took an unrelated Gospel and warped it into a hateful political rant that didn’t hit one button. Oh no. That sermon was an IED array and it hit every single freaking target on the list.

We left during the Eucharist, and we didn’t buy a pie on the way out.

Five days after this experience that left us all in a drinking mood, and which after several bottles of wine was still a little painful, we went to the Thanksgiving party with my dad’s side of the family.

A lot of my aunts, uncles, and cousins seemed genuinely excited about the wedding. There was a bit of a shadow over one of my aunts because her father is really, really ill. Dad and my stepmother told a story about my grandmother, the escape artist, who is probably a lot more together than they think but who was put in an old folk’s home for people with memory problems about two months ago. I dread going to see her because the last time I saw her in a rehab facility, after she knocked her head and suffered the brain trauma that probably drove a lot of the symptoms she still has, it was a little difficult. It’s not going to be easy to see her in a home that isn’t actually her house. She apparently agrees, because she treats visitors to a tour of the place and asks a lot of pointed questions, like how many nurses are at the front station and whether or not you think someone can get to the parking lot from any given set of doors. She’s an inmate in a place she doesn’t feel comfortable staying, and she’s already made it to her car with an overnight bag once. But they have the keys locked up. I think she’s trying to figure out where they are.

She recognizes me. Remembers my name. Knows the wedding is soon. Asks about California. Hugs my future wife. And maybe goes through a few names before she gets some of my cousins’ and uncles’ names right, but she’s been doing that since I was four. We’re a big family. She always gets it right in under six tries.

My aunt looks hesitant to talk about her father, but she does. Both of us listen as she expresses her fears about being away, even for a day or two, because the doctors haven’t been very precise in telling the family to “spend time with him while you can.” It could be days, or maybe months, but probably not through winter because winter seems to be when so many people go, like the warmth-starved land sucks them dry. Which is weird, because we’re all from South Texas, and winter there is like 80 degrees.

We sympathize, and a pang of something I have only been able to define recently shoots through me. It feels like mortality, and reminds me of my fear of flying. It reminds me that I have this thing, this person, this state of being that I found and eventually will lose, that the loss won’t come when I’m ready for it (because that is never. I will never be ready for it). My heart hurts for her and my cousins, because the man is in his 80s like my two surviving grandparents, and that is a long and accomplished life, but it is still too soon for all of them. We have fought for my grandmother often enough and recent enough that I understand that position, too.

Hours later, before the annual turkey bowl, that aunt and my uncle, plus their oldest son come find my fiancée and I in the upstairs game room where most of the cousins retreat after lunch and before football. They ask us both to come out onto the balcony with them for a few minutes. Their younger son, recently married, follows shortly after with his new bride.

And my cousin starts….with a prayer.

“Heavenly Father, please guide our conversation today in your wisdom and light.”

I have my fiancée’s hand in my own. I hold it tighter. I know where this is about to go.

My cousin is a stalwart, honest guy. He’s the eldest son of two people who have always given where they could. They drop what they’re doing to help people, simply because they need help. They give within their means, which are better means than most. Their big and open hearts were passed to two of their three sons, both of whom were standing on that balcony with them. But they are sinners, my cousin says, all of them. And he is no better than anyone. He cannot cast judgment upon sinners as one of them, as someone who has been addicted to pornography, and has crossed lines with women. He loves us both, they all do, but surely we’ve read what the Bible says and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

My uncle says to us, we love you. We will not change how we treat you…but we’ve prayed about this for a while, and we can’t go to the wedding.

“We can’t celebrate the sin,” my cousin says.

And I know they love us, the best way they know how. I told them that I understood their perspective, though I disagreed, and respected their decision. We hugged, my aunt called me big-hearted, someone mentioned chocolate (it might have been me), and they started filing off the balcony.

I stayed behind and broke down in my fiancee’s arms.

See, my family had been outwardly accepting until that moment, when something finally broke enough for the first people to say something about it. And my fiancée – my tall, brown, “foreign” fiancée who has tried so hard to get my family to like her – felt instantly like all that effort had been for absolutely nothing. And I? I felt guilty for putting her in that position, for forcing us into a position where my family may never truly be okay with any of this, where a lifetime of loving and supporting each other so demonstratively may yet be lost on so many people I love, because somehow our relationship all boils down to sex to some people. Theirs is about love, but ours is about sex, and lust, and sin, and how the context of the Bible may be all about polyamorous lustful activities but a committed, loving, monogamous relationship between two women is just the same as sexually abusing guests and having orgies in front of idols and a really vague Greek word which in context probably means “men who sleep with boy prostitutes” but magically includes all people who engage in the act of sodomy and well never mind that you’re not actually doing that you’re just the same as the literal “man bed” who will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.

Maybe karma can keep that paradise, because I don’t want to spend eternity in a place where loving companionship is the same as assault. I get enough of that in the news.

It took me a while to come out of the bathroom I found to hide in, because there was no amount of water that could bring the redness down, and eventually my fiancée brought my closest cousin to find me. She saw us walk out, she counted the time, and she knew something had gone wrong. We told her what had happened.

This is the brewing rift. There are some people in our family who sit in Catholic services every Sunday and are not only going to the wedding but are genuinely excited for it. And there are some who might yet show up, but will be at the bar a lot.

Those excited for it will probably not enjoy learning why so many of us are absent. What happens then is probably not high drama, but probably won’t be business as usual either. Said my closest cousin, “I don’t know what to do with them now. You have a bigger heart than me for walking out of that situation without coming downstairs and telling everyone about it immediately.”

Twice in one day, in different contexts, two people I care about made reference to my perfectly normal sized, potentially smaller than average heart. Karma revealed the consequences of my good fortune that night, and they continue to unfold by the minute. For the first time in my life, I may miss Christmas with that side of the family this year. I suspect it won’t be the last thing we miss.

I climbed on the plane to come back to California two days later, and cried over the root of the problem with all these flights: the separation has been torture, and after the emotional week we had, it was going to be hard for us to heal apart. I put on my noice-canceling earphones and turned on Radiolab just before takeoff. It was a podcast about a girl without an identity, whose family kept her sheltered and off the grid, who didn’t have any kind of paper trail because her parents didn’t believe in social security numbers, and so never let her have one. I flew over Kerrville, where she had lived most of her life, while listening to the story. Takeoff was smooth. So was most of the trip back to SJC. And except for a really rough patch of air over New Mexico on the way to Dallas on Friday, my flights this weekend were just as painless.

I landed at SFO on Sunday and thanked the plane, as usual.

My eyes were dry.

[losille2000]

Home, Chapter 25

TITLE: Home CHAPTER NUMBER: 25/? AUTHOR: Losille2000 WHICH TOM/CHARACTER: Actor!Tom GENRE: Romance/Drama FIC SUMMARY: Tom returns home grouchy and exhausted from a cramped flight after four months on the road for work. Unfortunately, there’s already someone sleeping in his bed. RATING: M (sex, language) WARNINGS:  There’s sex. AUTHORS NOTES: Thank you all so very much for your kind encouragement after the last chapter. I adore you all! Enjoy!

Previous Chapter - Also available on Archive of Our Own!

Chapter 25

 Marigold shivered as her lover’s fingers lightly mapped the valleys and hills of her body, stopping briefly at the black marigold outline dancing just above her hipbone. She mewled, the sound somewhere between a giggle from the tickling sensation of his warm breath fanning out over her bare skin and a moan induced from friction between the pads of his fingers and her body.

 Tom turned to look up at her, repositioning his head against her belly, where he lay with his ear pressed to her like a pillow. “What’s the story behind this?” he asked softly, tracing the image, marveling at their precise and crisp lines permanently etched into her skin.

 “It’s a marigold,” she said.

 “I know what a marigold looks like,” he replied. “And that meaning’s obvious. I mean, why did you get it?”

 Marigold grinned, reaching out to him, running her fingers through his wild curly hair. She’d definitely done a number on it throughout the night, during all the times they’d made love. She liked how it was silky soft, and yet wiry and springy beneath her fingers, the curls holding their shape even after so much touching. It was so unlike her own hair, that had never been anything but stick straight.

 “Asha and I went before she left Harvard,” Marigold explained. “We each got one. Hers is a line in Sanskrit. It was our graduation gift to each other.”

 He pressed his lips over the flower head and flicked his tongue against her skin, mimicking the lapping flames on the charred wood of the dying fire beside them. With a grin at her resulting breathy cry, he lightly scraped it with his teeth, biting then laving his tongue to soothe the twinge of pain. Gooseflesh rose on her skin, tightening her breasts and pebbling her nipples.

 Though she understood the mechanics of their connection, she still wondered how something like that playful nip felt. How he knew, already, exactly what she liked and what her body wanted. What it craved.

 “Why’d you choose that spot?” he asked.

 She shrugged. “I supposed it was least likely to stretch there if I ever carried a child.”

 He kissed the spot again and turned until his knees were supporting him between her legs and his mouth traveled over her stomach. His tongue trailed around her belly button and moved further north. Stopping for a second, he met her gaze. “And do you want babies?”

 Marigold’s cheeks burned. Of course, she’d always thought she’d want at least one, but she had given up hope when things just weren’t working with any of her previous boyfriends or lovers. Now, almost after the point, she realized that not all hope for that dream was lost. Not with him hovering above her, waiting patiently yet invested in her answer.

 Even so, she didn’t really want to dwell on the rising tide of optimism in her heart that this thing between them might actually work out and they’d make it to a point where they were both prepared to have children. Maybe, even if it did work, the time had already passed? Maybe they were both too set on their paths in life to have a family. Being together with each other was tough enough for her to envision, sure, but more than that? She just didn’t know.

 “I… do,” she said softly. “But I’m getting older.”

 A light chuckle escaped him. “You’re hardly ancient, Marigold.”

 She giggled in response, but it was more from the tickle of his scruff against the underside of her right breast than anything else. He sucked the corresponding nipple between his teeth, doing to it what he’d done to her tattoo. She arched her body into him and whispered his name.

 “Is it odd to be thinking of a future with you and it’s only been a few days?” she asked.

 “No,” he replied, his voice deathly serious, thick with emotion.

 But that’s all he said, no more, no less. It was enough to make that hope monster rear back up inside her heart. Could it really be this easy? Everything she’d ever heard and read about romantic twin flames said this was how it would be, but she’d never believed it. And with him, well… she just didn’t know if, logically, they could make it happen. Up here, in the safety of her forest and cottage, anything was possible. But elsewhere…

 It all seemed too easy. Like there was something lurking around the corner, a roadblock, they were missing.

 She drew him up to her by tugging on his curls. He came easily, stretching and rubbing along her body until he lay beside her, one of his long legs possessively stretching across hers and twining with her ankles. His hands encircled her shoulders, pulling her flush against him. Then his mouth was on hers in a lazy, penetrating kiss. She felt it all the way to her toes, but she had no more energy to do anything. His lips, lazy as they were, belied his own exhaustion even though other parts of him were preparing for round four.

 “We really should be getting back,” she murmured into his mouth, gliding her hands down his back, then tucking herself more closely to him. Not that there was much space left between them, but she couldn’t deny the feeling of utter protection and fulfillment his arms and body created when they were wrapped around her just so.

 This constant urge to melt into him, to become one, hadn’t ceased or lessened in all the times and all the ways they’d had each other over the last six hours. In fact, it multiplied, consuming them, each insatiable in their need to be rejoined. What was it going to be like in the real world when other commitments required them to part from each other? How was that ever going to work?

 “Soon,” he said. “We’ll go back soon.”

 She closed her eyes, losing herself in his seduction, though she was already a sure thing. Somewhere in the periphery, she heard the rip of a condom wrapper, felt him arranging and holding her thigh around his hip. He dipped down and lifted, slipping inside her unhurriedly, sheathing himself to the hilt. When she opened her eyes again, he was looking at her, watching her, listening. What she saw in his blue gaze stole what remained of her ragged breaths. Maybe he wouldn’t voice it, maybe he hadn’t even admitted it to himself yet, but it was there. 

A promise.

Sincerity. Understanding. Even, she thought, the love that she, herself, had noticed creeping into her own heart.

 Then it was gone, as suddenly as it flashed across his face, replaced with a knit brow and concentration as he moved within her and pressed his mouth to hers. His hips rocked, undulating rather than pounding at any major rate of speed, taking his time. As if to show her they had all the time in the world.

 They came apart sometime later while laying in each other’s arms, in the same way the sun creeps over the horizon with the new day. Slow at first, and then coming all at once, from deep periwinkle, to misty blue-gray, to glowing golden warmth. They reveled in the thrum of the mystical stretching between them, blooming bright and exploding, as it had every time he’d taken her throughout the night. The whole interlude seemed to be a wordless explanation, a reassurance that this was real and so much larger than they were. It only grew stronger—better—each time.

 Eventually, the fire extinguished itself and they took their time gingerly moving about the stone circle redressing and cleaning up the mess they had made. Tom made sure the fire was completely out while she folded blankets and stole his jacket, her thin ceremonial gown no match for the morning chill.

 “I can’t believe the fire was enough to keep us warm all night,” Tom said as he joined her side again, twining his fingers with hers.

 She laughed. “Well, part of the reason is that the stones retain some of the ambient heat from the fire.”

 They passed the largest monolith into the clearing, where it was markedly colder. She had prepared for this sudden drop in temperature. The secondary wave of ice, not due to the time of morning or the weather, however, was another story altogether. It hit her like a brick wall, constricting her lungs, stealing her breath, and forcing every muscle in her body to contract painfully. She pulled his jacket tighter, warding off the frosty chill curling up her spine.

 It was a strange sensation, even for her.

 Marigold paused and looked around them, shivering uncomfortably, the tiny hairs on her arms prickling in the sudden peculiar wash of energy. She tried to give Tom her full attention, to keep moving with him, but her mind was diverted to something else. A crack of a tree limb in the distance, she thought, but convinced herself it was nothing. Just the natural sounds of semi-frozen flora in the early spring.

 “What is it?” he asked.

 She glanced up at him, finding the confusion wrinkling his brow. Had he felt it—heard it—too? Or was he simply playing off her? She cleared her throat. She’d been up for nearly twenty-four hours, with maybe a catnap or two with Tom.  It had to be nothing, her mind playing tricks on her. Even as a witch, she still had to distinguish between sleep deprivation or true magical impulses.

 “I just realized I’m exhausted,” she replied with a yawn. It was true. Physically and mentally. She needed to sleep.

 He grinned wolfishly, spinning her around and pulling her to his body as he started them walking again. She had to admit, leaning against him, using his body heat, made it easier to focus on their path home. It certainly fended off the lingering doubt in her mind about what she’d heard, as well as the cold.

 “I also really need a shower,” she said. “I smell like campfire and sex.”

 He chuckled. “I think we both do.”

 “Just a shower, Thomas,” she warned. “I literally don’t want you to think about this,” she waved to her lower half, “for at least eight hours.”

 “That’s going to be a problem,” he warned, pressing his lips to hers.

 Marigold frowned. “Why is that?”

 Tom grinned. “That’s about all I can think about right now.”

 “I will use the appropriate herbal supplements in my arsenal to knock you out,” she said. “Don’t tempt me.”

 His low laughter carried them into the house, surprisingly already alive with activity. Jim was at the hob, pulling a tray of just-baked bannocks from the heat. Rashers sizzled in a cast iron skillet and other edible sundries littered the counters. The smell was amazing and her stomach immediately growled at the sight. She hadn’t realized what an appetite they’d worked up.

 Jim looked up from his work, a glint of mischief in his eyes. Marigold, typically never embarrassed by such things, felt her face warm at his brief unspoken inspection. He followed it up with a fatherly nod of his head toward Tom, as if to say, ‘well done.’

 “The others aren’t quite awake yet,” Jim explained with a grin tugging at his lips. “You still have some time to get cleaned up.”

 Marigold didn’t need more motivation than that, dragging Tom upstairs to her bedroom. They showered quickly, though Marigold wished she’d made an allowance for a two-person shower instead of one. It would have made things a lot easier when trying to maneuver around a six-foot-two oak tree. Fortunately, he was all too eager to help her wash, making sure to take his time in exactly the places she told him to ignore.  She feigned upset, but it was impossible to keep a straight face or hold back her delighted sighs. Of course, she paid him back in kind.

 By the time they were dressed and made their way downstairs, the other three were sitting around the kitchen table clutching their heads and blinking bleary, sleep-filled eyes. They stared at the food on the table before them, clearly trying not to vomit.

 Asha was the first to look up at them. She seemed to be the least affected by the wine, but that was only because she had known what to expect and held back a bit during the previous evening’s revelry. “I really need some hangover tea, Marigold.”

 “It looks like you all do,” Marigold said. “Olly, Jess?”

“I don’t really want to put anything in my mouth right now,” Jess said.

 Tom chuckled. “It works.”

 Jess groaned, dropping her head on her arms. “I don’t care how you get into me. Just take away the pain. I’m begging you.”

 Marigold giggled and went to the cupboard where she’d stored the herbal mixture she’d made the previous afternoon. She knew they’d need it, and had planned ahead for them. Once she set the kettle to brew, she set out teacups in front of her friends.

 Olly gurgled. “It was only wine. Why does it hurt so much?”

 “To be fair, I warned you all,” Marigold said.

 When she received no response from them, she went back to the counters and grabbed an empty plate to fill up on food. It all looked so good. She glanced at Jim, who was finishing the last of the rashers, and smiled. “Can I keep you around? You’re a good cook.”

 Jim laughed at her. “Only good at a few things. Right, Thomas?”

 Tom groaned around a mouthful of honey-slathered bannock. “He once made something called Mystery Scottish Stew. It was horrible.”

 “I didn’t have the proteins I thought I did, so I chopped up some haggis we had on hand,” Jim confided, his lips curling in distaste. “I don’t recommend it. Even if you like haggis.”

 The sound of Olly retching from his spot at the kitchen table made them all turn. Fortunately, nothing came up, but Marigold rushed his tea. And then she waited for all of them to come back around to the land of the living. Pretty soon, they were eating and laughing. Quietly, but still back to laughing and now, marginally, enjoying the morning.

 “Told you the tea was amazing,” Tom said, elbowing Olly.

 Olly nodded. “Now if I could just have a store of it for future benders.”

 Marigold shook her head. “And like I told Tom, I don’t give it out to people to use on their own. Needs to be administered under the watchful eye of a physician or a witch.”

 “I don’t think it’s fair that you get to keep all the good stuff to yourself,” he said.

 “How do you think all those medicine men and women made a living through history, Olly?” she asked. “We keep the knowledge and charge the premium for the service. Besides, also like I told Tom, an herbal mixture is an herbal mixture. You might get some relief from making it yourself, but when I make it for you, I imbue it with other… properties. Whether you believe in magic or not, it’s true.”

 Olly held up his hands defensively. “If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last day, it’s to just agree with you because I probably don’t know what I’m talking about.”

 “Sound advice for any dealings with all women, Ol,” Tom muttered over his coffee. Marigold walked behind him and gently smacked the back of his head. Then she sat down in the seat beside him.

 Asha glanced at her watch and stood up. “I need to get going. I have a lecture at ten and I need to stop at home for a change.”

 “Your keys and phone are in the cupboard under the stairs,” Marigold said.

 Asha came around and the table and threw her arms around her friend’s neck. She kissed her cheek. “I’m so glad you’re here to stay.”

 “I am, too… let me walk you out,” Marigold said, getting up and following her friend to the front door. Marigold opened the heavy wood and moved to take a step, but froze in her spot.

 Sitting on the welcome mat was a big brown wicker basket full of spring flowers. Asha came up beside her and grinned down at the image before them. “Oh, look, you left us flowers this morning like Aunt Violet used to do!”

 Marigold felt the blood drain from her face. “Asha, I didn’t put them there.”

 She frowned. “Well, maybe one of her friends came by and left them. They probably all know you’re back now. Violet used to say it was a peace offering, right?”

 Unless Cora had told others, Cora and her family were the only ones that knew about her being back. Had they come all the way out here to deliver a customary May Day basket of flowers? It seemed unlikely knowing Cora’s age, but there was still a possibility she’d sent Sylvie with them. Marigold eyed the flowers again, though, considering the varieties of buds clumped together.

 Asha bent down to touch them, but Marigold shot a hand out, batting her friend away from the basket. “Don’t touch it!”

 “Why?”

 “There’re stinging nettles and hellebore in there,” Marigold said. “If your skin comes into contact with them, you’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

 Asha frowned again, this time looking up at Marigold. “Why would someone leave them, then?”

 Marigold sighed. It couldn’t be Cora. Cora wouldn’t be sending her an ill wish. But, who, then? She hadn’t offended anyone. She’d had no contact with anyone else who would know something about May Day baskets. “I don’t know. Just don’t touch it. Separately, the flowers don’t really mean anything bad. They’re all traditional spring plants—in fact, you can find them all out in the wood.”

 Even as she said it, and the reality of the situation filtered in her brain, the icy tendril from earlier crept up her spine anew. This time, it lodged a million tiny hooks into her body until it was a part of her. She shivered and crossed her arms over herself. Her head felt heavy and her heart stuttered.

 Had these come from the forest behind her cottage? Had there been someone out there with them this morning? Or was this completely random? If it were a witch, she would know that these flowers together—though their meanings might be innocuous individually—were not a happy omen to bestow upon anyone. There was no mistaking the intent of the poisonous plants.

 Asha pushed the basket aside with the toe of her shoe, and stepped out onto the front stoop. “Just ignore it, Marigold. I’m sure it’s nothing bad. Maybe some people trying to be welcoming, but not really knowing what they were doing.”

 “Asha, they’d be dead on my doorstep right now if they’d handled these plants without knowing what they could do,” Marigold explained. “You have to wear gloves to harvest them. No random person gathering flowers is going to know that.”

 Asha grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. “Quit worrying about it, Ree. I know you see a sign in everything, but for once in your life, just ignore it. Go back into the kitchen and enjoy your breakfast and Tom. Why ruin the last twenty-four hours by worrying?”

 Marigold sighed. “You’re probably right.”

 “I am right,” Asha said, pushing a tendril of hair over Marigold’s ear in a motherly fashion. “Have a good first day of work, too. We’ll go out this weekend if you can pull your mouth off Tom’s dick long enough to do so.”

 And just like that, Marigold lost it. Asha hardly ever flirted with the profane when she talked, but she certainly knew how to make an impact when she did. “I love you, Asha.”

 “I know you do,” she said, jumping down the front steps onto the gravel path leading to the line of cars in the drive. “I need to go or I’m going to be late for my lecture. I’m sure my students would be heartbroken.”

 “I’m sure,” Marigold intoned, waving her hand as Asha shut herself into her car and turned the ignition on. She waited until the car was out of sight before she turned back into the house, trying her best to forget the basket of dangerous flowers still sitting on her front porch.

 She’d deal with them later, after everyone was gone and she had a good sleep. So much had happened, not only in the last day, but the last forty-eight hours. She hadn’t really had time to process it all. To even begin to comprehend what it all meant. Maybe it would make more sense afterward. Maybe she was missing something, which was more than possible.

 With a yawn and sigh, she closed the door and returned to Tom.

[williamexchange]

SEO Risks to Take and SEO Risks to Avoid

Many business people have a hard time seeing the value of SEO, and we understand that. There is a lot of information and misinformation out there about search engine optimization, and it can really increase the difficulty of this decision.

While an effective SEO strategy will take many months to yield positive results for a company, and the tactics may not make sense for non-SEOers, it can make a significant improvement in a company’s online exposure and profits.

Many companies are naturally nervous about trying something out they’re not familiar with, but let’s face it, nearly any business decision is going to carry some risks with it. Some can be avoided, and some can lead to sudden and serious growth.

The question that has to be asked, then, is what SEO risks are worth it, and which should be avoided.

Before we get into it, though, let’s put this out there first: the greatest SEO risk a company can make is to avoid SEO all together. Everyone got that? Great. Let’s consider a few more.

SEO Risks to Take

1.  Making and Testing Large and Small Changes

The overall goal of SEO is to get traffic and, ultimately, transactions on your website.

Neither of those will happen if nobody clicks on your website in the first place.

So, what if you’re getting your website to rank well for certain keywords, but no one is actually clicking on your link?

There could be any number of reasons for this, and it can take some time to zero in on exactly why it isn’t performing as well as expected.

And the only way to do that is through A/B testing. You’re going to have to take one element at a time, whether that’s the meta descriptions, the titles, the content and more, and test them against new variations.

That’s all well and good and even a little obvious. So what makes it a “risk”?

It will likely take a bit of trial and error to come up with the correct wording and layout combination that results in maximum website traffic and transactions. During this time, you may find a combination that doesn’t work well at all and ends up reducing what traffic you do have – at least for a while.

The risk is worth it, though, because once you find the best results, you’ll be able to focus on that element and continue to drive more traffic and get better returns.

As you make changes, you should document what was changed, when it was changed and the date it was first re-crawled by Google after the change. This will help you correlate ranking movements to changes made. Just make sure you use a solid keyword rank checker so you’re data is valid and useful.

2.  Getting and Giving High-Quality Backlinks

Why would one company feature a link to another company’s website and risk the web user leaving their page?

Backlinks are a well-established part of SEO, and most companies want to get as many of them as they can. They help increase rankings and build authority.

However, it’s not just about being the one with the most links. Sometimes you need to give a little back.

So, yes, you may risk losing a few web visitors by providing a link to other high-quality sites, but at the same time, you’re showing Google that you are using and referencing reliable sites with established authority.

Just keep in mind, webpages that knowingly feature links to low-quality, malicious, spammy websites are at risk of getting penalized by Google. You may also get penalized by getting too many links to your site from those poor-quality sites.

3.  Enhancing Your Site’s URL Structure

Ideally, your homepage URL should be short, with only the company name. such short, simple, concise and easily remembered.

Subsequent pages, however, should have targeted keywords and be more specific about the content of the webpage.

Even so, you don’t want to let the URL get out of hand. If they’re too long and descriptive, the search engine will truncate their display with a […] after a cut-off point.

So, it may be time to alter some of your URLs with an overhaul of the site’s structure.

The risk, here, is that any kind of change like this can impact your rankings. As you alter old URLs and 301 redirect traffic to the new ones, you may see some dips in traffic and rankings.

However, if you do it right, you can end up with a streamlined structure that appeals to both search engines and internet users.

4.  Overhauling Your Website

Every once in a while, websites need to get updated and redesigned. Website redesigns can be risky and expensive, not to mention time-consuming.

Eventually, though, your website may need a new facelift. Maybe it just looks extremely outdated. Then again, it may be optimized for search engines, but human users find it difficult to navigate. There could be any number of reasons to take another look at your website and maybe – just maybe – consider reconstructing it from the ground up.

Of course, just like changing the URL structure, these types of changes come with a risk to your rankings as Google tries to re-evaluate your site. For that matter, it comes with the risk of alienating customers who have grown accustomed to your website just the way it is.

Usually, though, Google understands that every website goes through these overhauls every once in a while, so your rankings will usually bounce right back. You just have to be patient. Most of your customers will eventually get used to the changes, too. More importantly, updated your website has a better chance of bringing in many more new clients.

5.  Buy Expired or Available Domains

Some website owners, for whatever reason, don’t renew their domains, making them available for others to buy and use.

Buying some domains with a history and redirecting them to your site can potentially be a quick and easy way to increase the number of valuable backlinks adding some link juice to your site.

There are some serious risks with this technique, though, so you should only do so when you know exactly what you’re doing.

The domain, for example, has to be related to your business. It should be professional and legitimate, because if that domain still receives rankings and traffic, those visitors will be redirected to your site, and there is nothing more frustrating than arriving on a site that isn’t at all related to your original search.

Also, expired domains that were filled with spammy content and links will also be transferred over to your website, causing your site to potentially drop in rankings and get penalized by Google.

This tactic, however, is inexpensive and has the potential to drive serious traffic to your site if you follow the best practices.

SEO Risks to Avoid

Now that you have an idea of what SEO risks are worth taking, here are SEO risks that will likely do your business more harm than good:

1.  Poor Doorway Pages (or any doorway pages at all)

Doorway pages are simple and easy to create in batches to target specific keywords and keyword groups. Trustworthy SEOers avoid doorway pages as a rule because Google greatly dislikes them and penalizes sites that use them.

Google’s opinion of such pages should be reason enough for you to avoid this particular risk.

The only time Google will let doorway pages slide is if they offer unique, clear and valuable content and information to the site visitor – in other words, only if it acts just like the regular content on your website.

There is simply no reason to bother with them, so don’t risk it.

2.  Disallowing Neutral Backlinks

You want good backlinks to your website, not bad ones. What about the ones that are neutral, that don’t help, yet don’t hurt your website’s ranking and SEO?

Neutral backlinks may not give your website the SEO boost it needs, but they also won’t subject your site to Google’s potentially harsh penalties.

In fact, with Google’s Penguin update, some penalties for bad backlinks because the search engine realized that the websites themselves don’t have control over every site that links to theirs.

As a result, it is harder for a site to be punished by Google for malicious backlinks.

The only way you’ll be able to tell if the backlinks on your website are bad, spammy and low-quality is if you’ve noticed that Google has taken manual action on your site.

If no action has been taken against your website by Google, the backlinks on your website are safe, though they may not be high enough quality to boost your site’s search rankings.

It is possible to disavow certain links, but you need to be careful about it. If you attempt to disavow all your neutral links, you risk potentially blocking sites that can improve your ranking.

3.  Deleting or Condensing Content or Entire Pages

It may seem like no big deal to delete a page from your website, especially if it is about a product or service your company has discontinued.

Once a page is deleted, the keywords it once ranked for are now gone. The same thing happens to the URL of the page, which also includes those page-specific keywords.

Instead of risking the loss of those rankings, consider keeping the webpage even if you’ve discontinued the product. Simply leave a message on the page for the visitor that redirects them to a similar page with a relevant product or service.

If you’re merging or condensing two pages into one, make sure to include 301 redirects on the old URLs to make sure that all the link juice and traffic isn’t lost.

4.  Using Exact Match Keywords in Anchor Text

It may seem logical to have your targeted keyword as the anchor text for a link to your website. After all, you want your site to rank for that keyword or phrase.

This practice was popular for SEOers in the past who had the same logic. Unfortunately, this practice got abused by “black hat” SEOers who used an excessive amount of exact match keyword anchor texts to link to their websites – and the links didn’t exactly come from the most authoritative sites.

Since then, Google has greatly cracked down on this practice and will punish websites who overdo this practice. Don’t risk it. Look for more natural ways to link to your site and develop a more varied backlink portfolio.

5.  Making Too Many “Small” SEO Changes to a Site

Occasionally, it is a good idea to update the content on your website. In fact, Google favors fresh, updated content.

However, constantly changing the content and the look and feel of your website, even a little bit at a time, strictly for SEO purposes, will not go unnoticed by your website visitors or Google.

Making too many changes to your website or making the changes too often will raise red flags for Google which will likely see your webpage as suspicious and likely penalize your site.

Over time your site visitors will also notice the changes (especially since most of the changes were likely done for search engines instead of them). If this happens, they may find your site harder to navigate and find value. Some visitors may even start to think your site is suspicious.

Balancing Risk and Reward

SEO is essential for any business to succeed. There are many risks to SEO, some of which are worth taking because they can produce favorable results for a business. Other risks can harm and hinder a company’s internet marketing strategy and online presence.

As risky as SEO is, the only thing riskier is for a company not to do any SEO at all. You can get affordable web designing services, from web designing company Lakewood, Denver and can increase your visibility and rankings in search results.

[interruptedbyfluff]

Closing Statements

Pairing: Anxiety/Logan

Genre: Hurt/comfort, some angst, some fluff, happy ending

Words: ~2700 (how did this happen whAT)

Warnings: negative self-talk, cognitive distortion, I think that’s it?

Summary: Anxiety thought “My NEGATIVE Thinking” went well, but…what if it didn’t?

Update: Anxiety now refers to himself mostly by name :D

~*~

“You did a good job.” The words rolled around Anxiety’s mind, and a gentle warmth bloomed in his stomach. “All that is commendable.” Logan had given him credit for sitting through that mess of a debate, gone out of his way to make sure Virgil knew he was liked, too. He'd even smiled, something the logical character never admitted to doing (even if it happened all the time anyway), and that smile had been for him. “I don't necessarily mind your company.”

Wait. What was that supposed to mean? No, Logan had meant that despite their disagreements, he still wanted Anxiety around. Verge burrowed a little deeper into the mound of stuffed animals on his bed. Logic had always struggled with emotions, and anything approaching affection would definitely scare him, which meant a lot of double negatives. He had been vague so he didn't have to admit he liked someone out loud. That was all. ...right?

“Well, you are wrong about a lot of things.” The warmth was gone, replaced by a creeping chill. Logan was up front and honest. It was his thing. If he actually enjoyed Anxiety’s company, wouldn't he have just said so? But instead of anything approaching a real compliment, Logan had dodged the topic, relying on double negatives and subtext to make Anxiety feel better, to get him to a “standstill.” Logan “didn't necessarily mind” him. He was wrong all of the last video, and the whole of this one, and now Logan was telling him he was “jumping to conclusions” because he was wrong about that too, and his pain was clearly all in his head and his own fault for being irrational. God, how could he have been so dumb. After all, what was more likely, Logan dancing around his volatile moods so as not to set him off again when they'd just calmed him down, or someone genuinely wanting him around? Virgil was willing to bet it wasn't the latter. Thomas didn't. Thomas flinched whenever he popped up. Logan startled less, now, but he'd probably just gotten used to it. Or he'd started predicting when Anxiety would show up, so he was expecting the sudden onslaught of darkness. Or he just bottled it up with the rest of the feelings he pretended not to have, Verge didn't know. But he did know he wasn't really wanted.

What was it Logan had said, that he “couldn't imagine having a debate with the other two” because they were sunshiney and “unbearable”? He didn't actually like Anxiety, he could just stand Virgil’s negativity slightly better than than Sirs Dashing Dunce and Puppy Puke. Look at that cheap, plastic participation trophy. Which, by the way, he had earned in the debate as well, “participating even though he didn't want to,” and “reasoning in his own special way.” Ugh, the special snowflake award you get when teachers can't think of anything genuinely good to say.

The debate. There was a sneaking, traitorous ray of hope worming its way into Verge's gut. No, no no no, he couldn't get his hopes up, that would hurt even worse when they were inevitably shredded. But he took out his phone anyway, typing in the beginnings of a text to Logan.

“hey i might just be ‘magnifying’ again or whatever but,” he began. He couldn't get past that. But what? He sighed and went to erase it. … Why was the enter button so close to the backspace?! Erase, cancel, delete, anything! But the message sent, and the damage was done.

Silence, for a few moments. Maybe Logan had the volume on his phone turned off? Or he was reading? Maybe he wouldn't notice and Virgil could sneak his phone out of his pocket later and delete the message and no one would have to know-

Bzzt. Never mind, too late. Verge crammed his phone under a pillow. Plan B: hide until the problem went away. It didn't really work, but it usually delayed the first problem long enough for a new one to pop up and distract everyone. And besides, optimism, right? First time for everything. Logan might even let it go. The whole thing was that he probably didn't care anyway.

Bzzt. He wasn't answering. He wasn't even going to look. Virgil scooted down to the far end of the bed, nestled back into his plushie pile, and pulled out his laptop. Desperate times called for distraction, and the best place for that was tumblr.

Verge was about five minutes down his dash and dangerously close to sending someone anon hate just to stir things up when there were two sharp knocks on his door. It had to be Logan - Roman would have just barged in, and Morality would have done one of those half-phrase knocks that came with the urge to knock back before opening the door. No, this was businesslike, no-nonsense and to the point. Definitely Logan. Virgil ignored him.

Two more knocks, followed by, “Anxiety?” Nope. No one home. Don't come back later. The door cracked open and Logan poked his stupid, bespectacled face in. “Hey. Can I come in?”

“It looks like you're going to regardless, so why not,” Virgil scowled.

Logan blinked at him. What, was he expecting Anxiety to still be happy after the video, lulled into complacency by a few kind words? Well, news flash. Verge knew they were faked. He knew better and Logan would not get the upper hand on him again and oh god he was crying.  Big, wet tears that were just as messy and embarrassing as the disaster in his head, and his makeup was definitely going to run. Why? Why was it always him, why couldn't he keep his stupid tears inside his stupid face, and of course it was right in front of Logan. He flopped as far back as he could on his mountain of squish and threw his arm across his face, letting his laptop fall to the carpeted floor. It was probably fine. Unlike him.

***

Logan was getting mixed messages. Anxiety had appeared happy at the end of the video. He had not only realized his defense of his isolation was flawed, but recognized the implication that he was liked. Appreciated. Logan should have anticipated how short a time that would last, with Anxiety’s recurring tendencies toward cognitive distortion; that was why he'd focused his energy on researching the topic, after all. The aborted text message he'd received seemed indicative of distress, especially when Anxiety failed to reply after two decently-spaced responses. So he'd gone to check on him and been greeted with sarcasm and a sneer. Again, Logan had failed to account for previous trends; Anxiety was known to become hostile when uncomfortable. But now he was crying, and Logan didn't know why.

Anxiety would do that to Logan; he'd behave in ways that made no sense. Hissing mid-debate, for example. He was a puzzle that didn't quite fit together right, and Logan found him endlessly fascinating. But that would not help solve the current situation.

***

The bed dipped, and after a few moments, Verge risked a glance over his sleeve. Logan was laying next to him, or as close to laying down as was possible. He said nothing, didn't even look at Virgil, just...laid there, gazing up at the ceiling. Virgil tucked his face back into his arm and refused. Refused what, he wasn't sure, but the crook of his elbow was dark and safe and there were no confusing, unpredictable adorable doofuses in there. His eyes continued to stream, dampening his hoodie sleeve, probably smearing eyeshadow everywhere. Black on black, it would look the same anyway.

Verge became very aware of Logan next to him. Not moving, not stirring. Just breathing, deep and slow and even. Calm. In, and then out, and again. It was a while before Virgil could match it, before his lungs stopped heaving and hiccuping. His sleeve was cold. His eyes felt puffy and his throat was sore. The anger was gone, drained out of him. So was most of the sadness tsunami that had plucked him right off the beach and tossed him around without mercy, leaving a lightly throbbing ache behind, like an empty old bruise buried in his chest. And Logan was still here.

Somehow, impossibly, Logan was still here.

***

Logan stared up at the ceiling, picking constellations out of the thousands of glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to its surface, listening as Anxiety's sobs ebbed and eventually subsided. Tracing out familiar stories from the stars that matched the world outside. Trying to make shapes from the ones that looked nothing like the actual sky. Wondering if Anxiety did the same when he couldn't sleep.

It was good, he supposed, that Anxiety was letting himself cry. For someone as tense as Anxiety, crying was likely an important release of emotion. Catharsis was allegedly instrumental to both physical and non-physical health, though Logan still needed to find a few more sources before he really believed it. Tears carried excess hormones and even toxins out of the body, allowing emotional recovery after extreme spikes. This made it no easier for Logan to hear.

He listened as Anxiety's breathing slowly steadied out, gradually synchronizing with his own. He pretended not to notice as Anxiety settled, no longer shaking with sobs that wracked his body. He simply watched the stars and waited for Anxiety to make the first move.

And eventually, he did.

"You-" Anxiety rasped. He cleared his throat and tried again. "You stayed."

Logan turned his head to meet Anxiety's eyes. Hurt still lingered there, but so too did a kind of amazement. And something else, something he couldn't parse, made Logan swallow and shift his focus back to the ceiling as he replied, "yes. You're important."

***

"You're important." That was loaded, probably, but Virgil didn't have the energy to pick it apart. Would it be so bad if, just once, he took it at face value? The air was so soft right now, quiet and heavy like a thick blanket. Comforting. Not stagnant, though, because there was someone else there, breathing it with him. Someone who thought he was important.

Scratch that, not just someone. This was Logan, who couldn't deal with feelings and stayed while he cried anyway. Logan, with his endless curiosity about the world and sparkling excitement about poetry and processes. Logan, who probably knew which of the constellations on the ceiling were real, and which ones Virgil had just made up, and the stories across multiple cultures about each one. Who, after several minutes of putting up with Verge and his feelings, only now looked uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” Virgil prodded, gently.

Logan wouldn't meet his eyes, letting the question hang in the air between the for a moment, two. Finally he replied, “I'm not very good at this.”

“At what? You have an unclear antecedent there, Teach.”

That pulled a smile from him. It was small, and gone again as he next statement rolled in on top of it, but that was twice today and Verge immediately decided he needed more of Logan smiling at him in his life.

"...feelings." It took a moment for Logan to begin, but once the words started flowing they tumbled out in a torrent. "There's so much I just don't know. I don't know why you're in pain, or whether saying anything will help or hurt, or what to say. I don't know whether I said something wrong in the video today, or if it actually helped you at all, or if I just came across as insensitive or even snobbish. I don't know how to make sure you feel important and loved because that's not my department but it doesn't seem to be happening and it's just wrong. I don't know if this dissonance is rooted in spending too much time with Morality or if it's innate. I don't know why my heart rate increases when you're around and I don't know what to do about it and honestly I'm terrified."

Fear was his burden, not Logan's. Virgil needed to fix that immediately. "I don't have answers to everything. But let's take them one at a time, okay?" Logan nodded. "The first one you said was you didn't know why I was in pain, right?" Another nod. "Inference-observation confusion." That brought the tiny smile back. It was wobbly, but it was there. "As to whether saying anything will help or hurt, you did amazing. The quiet was exactly what I needed. You didn't push or try to get me to explain, but you also stayed. It was perfect."

Logan's face relaxed, thank goodness. Verge wasn't sure what the right words were, here, but something seemed to be working, to be helping. "Sometimes I need to be reminded that what I'm thinking is way out of proportion to what happened, and that means talking. Sometimes it means just being there. I don't know have an algorithm or anything to help you figure out which I need when, but I can try to tell you. Does that help?" It was weird, acknowledging that he needed help. But Logan was scared, and if facing the unpleasant parts of himself would make Logan feel better, Verge would take on his darkest demons in a heartbeat.

Logan made a face, but replied, "it does. It's not optimal, but it does help."

"As for the video today, yes, it did help. Knowing there are real things like magnifying and mental filtering, and that this stuff isn't just in my head, helps so much. I'm not very good at dealing with them yet, but putting a name to them was huge." Virgil could almost hear the relief in Logan's breathing - nope, that was probably just him projecting. But Logan did look slightly more comfortable.

Here was the hard part. Virgil wanted to gloss over the video, to skip the parts that had freaked him out because he was trying to make Logan feel better, not worse. But Logan would want facts more than he would want platitudes. "You did seem like a bit of a know-it-all, but that's par for the course."

"Golfing, Anxiety?"

"Expression. It's normal for you."

"Ah."

He may have used the metaphor on purpose because he knew it would trip Logan up, but now Verge was out of stalling tactics. "The part that got to me was when you were vague at the end. You were trying to cheer me up, but then all you said was that you didn't not like me? It left a lot of room for...conclusion jumping."

And Logan's face fell. "So when you were crying, that was my fault?"

Oh god. No, this wasn't how this was supposed to go. Deep breath, he could save this.

"A little. Mostly it was the cognitive distortion, coupled with...previous data, I guess? But hey." Virgil nudged Logan gently with his elbow. "I needed that. I feel better than I've felt in a while; that storm was brewing one way or the other."

"Rain metaphor, because of the tears?"

"Yep, you got it." Even though Logan didn't look like he entirely bought it, Verge didn't know what else he could say that would make things better on that one. So he moved on.

"I don't really know what you're feeling, or whether it's because of hanging out with Morality, but I can tell you it's okay. You don't lose who you are just because something feels wrong. Not even if you're Logic incarnate," Virgil emphasized when it looked like Logan was about to protest. "As to the heart rate and the dissonance, would it help if..." he trailed off, nervous. Logan was looking at him with such wide eyes, as if he could tell Verge was about to drop something big. Verge swallowed and reached out, tucking his hand into Logan's. "Would it help if I tell you I like you, too?"

The huge, goofy, totally out-of-character smile that spread across Logan’s face was all the answer he needed.

~*~

A/N: Oh my gosh this took so long, plz feel free to come talk to me about it! Any fixes? Anything that stuck out, good or bad? Better title suggestions?

[wikimakemoney]

SEO Risks to Take and SEO Risks to Avoid

Many business people have a hard time seeing the value of SEO, and we understand that. There is a lot of information and misinformation out there about search engine optimization, and it can really increase the difficulty of this decision.

While an effective SEO strategy will take many months to yield positive results for a company, and the tactics may not make sense for non-SEOers, it can make a significant improvement in a company’s online exposure and profits.

Many companies are naturally nervous about trying something out they’re not familiar with, but let’s face it, nearly any business decision is going to carry some risks with it. Some can be avoided, and some can lead to sudden and serious growth.

The question that has to be asked, then, is what SEO risks are worth it, and which should be avoided.

Before we get into it, though, let’s put this out there first: the greatest SEO risk a company can make is to avoid SEO all together. Everyone got that? Great. Let’s consider a few more.

SEO Risks to Take

1.  Making and Testing Large and Small Changes

The overall goal of SEO is to get traffic and, ultimately, transactions on your website.

Neither of those will happen if nobody clicks on your website in the first place.

So, what if you’re getting your website to rank well for certain keywords, but no one is actually clicking on your link?

There could be any number of reasons for this, and it can take some time to zero in on exactly why it isn’t performing as well as expected.

And the only way to do that is through A/B testing. You’re going to have to take one element at a time, whether that’s the meta descriptions, the titles, the content and more, and test them against new variations.

That’s all well and good and even a little obvious. So what makes it a “risk”?

It will likely take a bit of trial and error to come up with the correct wording and layout combination that results in maximum website traffic and transactions. During this time, you may find a combination that doesn’t work well at all and ends up reducing what traffic you do have – at least for a while.

The risk is worth it, though, because once you find the best results, you’ll be able to focus on that element and continue to drive more traffic and get better returns.

As you make changes, you should document what was changed, when it was changed and the date it was first re-crawled by Google after the change. This will help you correlate ranking movements to changes made. Just make sure you use a solid keyword rank checker so you’re data is valid and useful.

2.  Getting and Giving High-Quality Backlinks

Why would one company feature a link to another company’s website and risk the web user leaving their page?

Backlinks are a well-established part of SEO, and most companies want to get as many of them as they can. They help increase rankings and build authority.

However, it’s not just about being the one with the most links. Sometimes you need to give a little back.

So, yes, you may risk losing a few web visitors by providing a link to other high-quality sites, but at the same time, you’re showing Google that you are using and referencing reliable sites with established authority.

Just keep in mind, webpages that knowingly feature links to low-quality, malicious, spammy websites are at risk of getting penalized by Google. You may also get penalized by getting too many links to your site from those poor-quality sites.

3.  Enhancing Your Site’s URL Structure

Ideally, your homepage URL should be short, with only the company name, such as: https://bit.ly/2wH9KJS. Short, simple, concise and easily remembered.

Subsequent pages, however, should have targeted keywords and be more specific about the content of the webpage.

Even so, you don’t want to let the URL get out of hand. If they’re too long and descriptive, the search engine will truncate their display with a […] after a cut-off point.

So, it may be time to alter some of your URLs with an overhaul of the site’s structure.

The risk, here, is that any kind of change like this can impact your rankings. As you alter old URLs and 301 redirect traffic to the new ones, you may see some dips in traffic and rankings.

However, if you do it right, you can end up with a streamlined structure that appeals to both search engines and internet users.

4.  Overhauling Your Website

Every once in a while, websites need to get updated and redesigned. Website redesigns can be risky and expensive, not to mention time-consuming.

Eventually, though, your website may need a new facelift. Maybe it just looks extremely outdated. Then again, it may be optimized for search engines, but human users find it difficult to navigate. There could be any number of reasons to take another look at your website and maybe – just maybe – consider reconstructing it from the ground up.

Of course, just like changing the URL structure, these types of changes come with a risk to your rankings as Google tries to re-evaluate your site. For that matter, it comes with the risk of alienating customers who have grown accustomed to your website just the way it is.

Usually, though, Google understands that every website goes through these overhauls every once in a while, so your rankings will usually bounce right back. You just have to be patient. Most of your customers will eventually get used to the changes, too. More importantly, updated your website has a better chance of bringing in many more new clients.

5.  Buy Expired or Available Domains

Some website owners, for whatever reason, don’t renew their domains, making them available for others to buy and use.

Buying some domains with a history and redirecting them to your site can potentially be a quick and easy way to increase the number of valuable backlinks adding some link juice to your site.

There are some serious risks with this technique, though, so you should only do so when you know exactly what you’re doing.

The domain, for example, has to be related to your business. It should be professional and legitimate, because if that domain still receives rankings and traffic, those visitors will be redirected to your site, and there is nothing more frustrating than arriving on a site that isn’t at all related to your original search.

Also, expired domains that were filled with spammy content and links will also be transferred over to your website, causing your site to potentially drop in rankings and get penalized by Google.

This tactic, however, is inexpensive and has the potential to drive serious traffic to your site if you follow the best practices.

|

//  and see how your site is currently performing.|

SEO Risks to Avoid

Now that you have an idea of what SEO risks are worth taking, here are SEO risks that will likely do your business more harm than good:

1.  Poor Doorway Pages (or any doorway pages at all)

Doorway pages are simple and easy to create in batches to target specific keywords and keyword groups. Trustworthy SEOers avoid doorway pages as a rule because Google greatly dislikes them and penalizes sites that use them.

Google’s opinion of such pages should be reason enough for you to avoid this particular risk.

The only time Google will let doorway pages slide is if they offer unique, clear and valuable content and information to the site visitor – in other words, only if it acts just like the regular content on your website.

There is simply no reason to bother with them, so don’t risk it.

2.  Disallowing Neutral Backlinks

You want good backlinks to your website, not bad ones. What about the ones that are neutral, that don’t help, yet don’t hurt your website’s ranking and SEO?

Neutral backlinks may not give your website the SEO boost it needs, but they also won’t subject your site to Google’s potentially harsh penalties.

In fact, with Google’s Penguin update, some penalties for bad backlinks because the search engine realized that the websites themselves don’t have control over every site that links to theirs.

As a result, it is harder for a site to be punished by Google for malicious backlinks.

The only way you’ll be able to tell if the backlinks on your website are bad, spammy and low-quality is if you’ve noticed that Google has taken manual action on your site.

If no action has been taken against your website by Google, the backlinks on your website are safe, though they may not be high enough quality to boost your site’s search rankings.

It is possible to disavow certain links, but you need to be careful about it. If you attempt to disavow all your neutral links, you risk potentially blocking sites that can improve your ranking.

3.  Deleting or Condensing Content or Entire Pages

It may seem like no big deal to delete a page from your website, especially if it is about a product or service your company has discontinued.

Once a page is deleted, the keywords it once ranked for are now gone. The same thing happens to the URL of the page, which also includes those page-specific keywords.

Instead of risking the loss of those rankings, consider keeping the webpage even if you’ve discontinued the product. Simply leave a message on the page for the visitor that redirects them to a similar page with a relevant product or service.

If you’re merging or condensing two pages into one, make sure to include 301 redirects on the old URLs to make sure that all the link juice and traffic isn’t lost.

4.  Using Exact Match Keywords in Anchor Text

It may seem logical to have your targeted keyword as the anchor text for a link to your website. After all, you want your site to rank for that keyword or phrase.

This practice was popular for SEOers in the past who had the same logic. Unfortunately, this practice got abused by “black hat” SEOers who used an excessive amount of exact match keyword anchor texts to link to their websites – and the links didn’t exactly come from the most authoritative sites.

Since then, Google has greatly cracked down on this practice and will punish websites who overdo this practice. Don’t risk it. Look for more natural ways to link to your site and develop a more varied backlink portfolio.

5.  Making Too Many “Small” SEO Changes to a Site

Occasionally, it is a good idea to update the content on your website. In fact, Google favors fresh, updated content.

However, constantly changing the content and the look and feel of your website, even a little bit at a time, strictly for SEO purposes, will not go unnoticed by your website visitors or Google.

Making too many changes to your website or making the changes too often will raise red flags for Google which will likely see your webpage as suspicious and likely penalize your site.

Over time your site visitors will also notice the changes (especially since most of the changes were likely done for search engines instead of them). If this happens, they may find your site harder to navigate and find value. Some visitors may even start to think your site is suspicious.

Balancing Risk and Reward

SEO is essential for any business to succeed. There are many risks to SEO, some of which are worth taking because they can produce favorable results for a business. Other risks can harm and hinder a company’s internet marketing strategy and online presence.

As risky as SEO is, the only thing riskier is for a company not to do any SEO at all.

Social media has its own share of risks. So before you jump into your next campaign, download and complete this checklist to ensure everything is ready to go.

//

The post SEO Risks to Take and SEO Risks to Avoid appeared first on SEO.com.

source http://wikimakemoney.com/2020/04/16/seo-risks-to-take-and-seo-risks-to-avoid/

[ramyaharikrishnan01]

seo company in chennai

SEO RISKS TO TAKE AND SEO RISKS TO AVOID

Many business people have a hard time seeing the value of SEO, and we understand that. There is a lot of information and misinformation out there about search engine optimization, and it can really increase the difficulty of this decision.

While an effective SEO strategy will take many months to yield positive results for a company, and the tactics may not make sense for non-SEOers, it can make a  seo company in chennai  significant improvement in a company’s online exposure and profits.

Many companies are naturally nervous about trying something out they’re not familiar with, but let’s face it, nearly any business decision is going to carry some risks with it. Some can be avoided, and some can lead to sudden and serious growth.

The question that has to be asked, then, is what SEO risks are worth it, and which should be avoided.

Before we get into it, though, let’s put this out there first: the greatest SEO risk a company can make is to avoid SEO all together. Everyone got that? Great. Let’s consider a few more.

SEO Risks to Take

1.  Making and Testing Large and Small Changes

The overall goal of SEO is to get traffic and, ultimately, transactions on your website.

Neither of those will happen if nobody clicks on your website in the first place.

So, what if you’re getting your website to rank well for certain keywords, but no one is actually clicking on your link?

There could be any number of reasons for this, and it can take some time to zero in on exactly why it isn’t performing as well as expected.

And the only way to do that is through A/B testing. You’re going to have to take one element at a time, whether that’s the meta descriptions, the titles, the content and more, and test them against new variations.

That’s all well and good and even a little obvious. So what makes it a “risk”?

It will likely take a bit of trial and error to come up with the correct wording and layout combination that results in maximum website traffic and transactions. During this time, you may find a combination that doesn’t work well at all and ends up reducing what traffic you do have – at least for a while.

The risk is worth it, though, because once you find the best results, you’ll be able to focus on that element and continue to drive more traffic and get better returns.

As you make changes, you should document what was changed, when it was changed and the date it was first re-crawled by Google after the change. This will help you correlate ranking movements to changes made. Just make sure you use a solid keyword rank checker so you’re data is valid and useful.

2.  Getting and Giving High-Quality Backlinks

Why would one company feature a link to another company’s website and risk the web user leaving their page?

Backlinks are a well-established part of SEO, and most companies want to get as many of them as they can. They help increase rankings and build authority.

However, it’s not just about being the one with the most links. Sometimes you need to give a little back.

So, yes, you may risk losing a few web visitors by providing a link to other high-quality sites, but at the same time, you’re showing Google that you are using and referencing reliable sites with established authority.

Just keep in mind, webpages that knowingly feature links to low-quality, malicious, spammy websites are at risk of getting penalized by Google. You may also get penalized by getting too many links to your site from those poor-quality sites.

3.  Enhancing Your Site’s URL Structure

Ideally, your homepage URL should be short, with only the company name, such as: www.yourcompany.com. Short, simple, concise and easily remembered.

Subsequent pages, however, should have targeted keywords and be more specific about the content of the webpage.

Even so, you don’t want to let the URL get out of hand. If they’re too long and descriptive, the search engine will truncate their display with a […] after a cut-off point.

So, it may be time to alter some of your URLs with an overhaul of the site’s structure.

The risk, here, is that any kind of change like this can impact your rankings. As you alter old URLs and 301 redirect traffic to the new ones, you may see some dips in traffic and rankings.

However, if you do it right, you can end up with a streamlined structure that appeals to both search engines and internet users.

4. Overhauling Your Website

Every once in a while, websites need to get updated and redesigned. Website redesigns can be risky and expensive, not to mention time-consuming.

Eventually, though, your website may need a new facelift. Maybe it just looks extremely outdated. Then again, it may be optimized for search engines, but human users find it difficult to navigate. There could be any number of reasons to take another look at your website and maybe – just maybe – consider reconstructing it from the ground up.

Of course, just like changing the URL structure, these types of changes come with a risk to your rankings as Google tries to re-evaluate your site. For that matter, it comes with the risk of alienating customers who have grown accustomed to your website just the way it is.

Usually, though, Google understands that every website goes through these overhauls every once in a while, so your rankings will usually bounce right back. You just have to be patient. Most of your customers will eventually get used to the changes, too. More importantly, updated your website has a better chance of bringing in many more new clients.

5.  Buy Expired or Available Domains

Some website owners, for whatever reason, don’t renew their domains, making them available for others to buy and use.

Buying some domains with a history and redirecting them to your site can potentially be a quick and easy way to increase the number of valuable backlinks adding some link juice to your site.

There are some serious risks with this technique, though, so you should only do so when you know exactly what you’re doing.

The domain, for example, has to be related to your business. It should be professional and legitimate, because if that domain still receives rankings and traffic, those visitors will be redirected to your site, and there is nothing more frustrating than arriving on a site that isn’t at all related to your original search.

Also, expired domains that were filled with spammy content and links will also be transferred over to your website, causing your site to potentially drop in rankings and get penalized by Google.

This tactic, however, is inexpensive and has the potential to drive serious traffic to your site if you follow the best practices.

SEO Risks to Avoid

Now that you have an idea of what SEO   seo company in chennai   risks are worth taking, here are SEO risks that will likely do your business more harm than good:

1.  Poor Doorway Pages (or any doorway pages at all)

Doorway pages are simple and easy to create in batches to target specific keywords and keyword groups. Trustworthy SEOers avoid doorway pages as a rule because Google greatly dislikes them and penalizes sites that use them.

Google’s opinion of such pages should be reason enough for you to avoid this particular risk.

The only time Google will let doorway pages slide is if they offer unique, clear and valuable content and information to the site visitor – in other words, only if it acts just like the regular content on your website.

There is simply no reason to bother with them, so don’t risk it.

2. Disallowing Neutral Backlinks

 You want good backlinks to your website, not bad ones. What about the ones that are neutral, that don’t help, yet don’t hurt your website’s ranking and SEO?

Neutral backlinks may not give your website the SEO boost it needs, but they also won’t subject your site to Google’s potentially harsh penalties.

In fact, with Google’s Penguin update, some penalties for bad backlinks because the search engine realized that the websites themselves don’t have control over every site that links to theirs.

As a result, it is harder for a site to be punished by Google for malicious backlinks.

The only way you’ll be able to tell if the backlinks on your website are bad, spammy and low-quality is if you’ve noticed that Google has taken manual action on your site.

 If no action has been taken against your website by Google, the backlinks on your website are safe, though they may not be high enough quality to boost your site’s search rankings.

 It is possible to disavow certain links, but you need to be careful about it. If you attempt to disavow all your neutral links, you risk potentially blocking sites that can improve your ranking.

3.  Deleting or Condensing Content or Entire Pages

It may seem like no big deal to delete a page from your website, especially if it is about a product or service your company has discontinued.

Once a page is deleted, the keywords it once ranked for are now gone. The same thing happens to the URL of the page, which also includes those page-specific keywords.

Instead of risking the loss of those rankings, consider keeping the webpage even if you’ve discontinued the product. Simply leave a message on the page for the visitor that redirects them to a similar page with a relevant product or service.

If you’re merging or condensing two pages into one, make sure to include 301 redirects on the old URLs to make sure that all the link juice and traffic isn’t lost.

4.  Using Exact Match Keywords in Anchor Text

It may seem logical to have your targeted keyword as the anchor text for a link to your website. After all, you want your site to rank for that keyword or phrase.

This practice was popular for SEOers in the past who had the same logic. Unfortunately, this practice got abused by “black hat” SEOers who used an excessive amount of exact match keyword anchor texts to link to their websites – and the links didn’t exactly come from the most authoritative sites.

Since then, Google has greatly cracked down on this practice and will punish websites who overdo this practice. Don’t risk it. Look for more natural ways to link to your site and develop a more varied backlink portfolio.

5.  Making Too Many “Small” SEO Changes to a Site

Occasionally, it is a good idea to update the content on your website. In fact, Google favors fresh, updated content.

However, constantly changing the content and the look and feel of your website, even a little bit at a time, strictly for SEO purposes, will not go unnoticed by your website visitors or Google.

Making too many changes to your website or making the changes too often will raise red flags for Google which will likely see your webpage as suspicious and likely penalize your site.

Over time your site visitors will also notice the changes (especially since most of the changes were likely done for search engines instead of them). If this happens, they may find your site harder to navigate and find value. Some visitors may even start to think your site is suspicious.

Balancing Risk and Reward

SEO is essential for any business to succeed. There are many risks to SEO, some of which are worth taking because they can produce favorable results for a business. Other risks can harm and hinder a company’s internet marketing strategy and online presence.

As risky as SEO is, the only thing riskier is for a company not to do any SEO at all.

seo company in chennai

[jonathanbelloblog]

First Drive: 2019 Porsche 911 GT3 RS

NÜRBURG, Germany — A flimsy air fence is the only thing separating my borrowed Porsche 911 GT3 RS from the baddest-ass racetrack on earth. The proximity is so tempting, you could hardly blame me for my smoldering fantasy to ditch the Nürburgring’s sterile Grand Prix circuit and hit the hallowed Nordschleife, unfettering all 512 horses on the forest-lined über track.

I’m officially here to test Porsche’s newest RS model, but given the new Porsche’s large-scale aspirations, the Grand Theft Auto-style “What if?” becomes an irresistible reverie. The 690-hp 911 GT2 RS that plays big brother to the GT3 RS is the reigning king of the ’Ring, with a blazing lap time of 6 minutes, 47.25 seconds, but the non-turbo GT3 RS, the most powerful normally aspirated 911 ever, is only nine seconds behind the twin-turbo range-topper. With a lap time of 6:56.4, it’s a shocking 22 seconds quicker than its predecessor and holds the third-quickest production car ’Ring lap in history, ranking on top of the late, great, 887-hp 918 Spyder. Only the GT2 RS and Lamborghini Huracan Performante (6:52.01) have gone quicker here. Strange days, indeed.

Comprehending the essence of the new GT3 RS requires a bit of mechanical context. Though this squat, big-winged, NACA-ducted and vented track rat bears more than a passing resemblance to the GT2 RS, its philosophical intent diverges significantly. Both cars fall under the lightweight RS (rennsport) category, claiming Porsche’s most aggressive, motorsports-derived engineering which gives it more in common with a purpose-built Cup car than a roadgoing passenger car. In fact, the GT3 RS produces 20 more horsepower than its race counterpart. Unlike the track car, the street model also packs niceties like air conditioning and a front axle lift system. But while both are configured with a purist-satisfying rear-drive layout, the GT2 RS saunters with a bit more exclamatory swagger.

“We have [customers] that are into GT cars because they like the intimacy, the immediacy of the cars,” explains GT line director Andreas Preuninger. “But there is a certain clientele for turbo and non-turbo engines. Some GT customers love the turbo punch—this animal, this King Kong car—and that’s the definitely the GT2 RS. The GT3 RS is used more as a track tool, a sport instrument. It’s more purposeful.”

The mechanical differences beyond forced induction are incremental. The GT2 RS carries some 66 more pounds at the tail not just because of its massive variable-geometry turbines, but because the exhaust headers must act as a load-bearing element for the turbos and thus are constructed of cast iron for strength and improved heat dissipation. Damping rates are modified, and the four-wheel steering calibration is custom tuned for weight distribution. An overall philosophy of weight reduction is shared across both platforms, and track-focused hardware includes a rear-seat delete, carbon-fiber body panels, fully adjustable suspension with ball joints, and an adjustable rear wing and removable front diffuser that can create up to 1,100 pounds of downforce at 186 mph. A Weissach package adds further featherweight carbon bodywork, carbon anti-roll bars and coupling rods, and magnesium wheels.

To Preuninger’s point, the GT3 RS does indeed feel purposeful as it rumbles out of pit lane and onto the GP circuit. Grip the Alcantara wheel and bury the pedal, and the engine winds its way upward on a long-winded, 9,000-rpm trajectory. Unlike the GT2 RS, which emits unapologetically turbocharged wheezes, whirs, and burbles, the naturally aspirated engine explores its powerband with a linear, predictable escalation. Squeeze the six-piston carbon ceramic brakes, and there’s a deep well of stopping power available; do so gently though, because here on the slightly damp track, progressive inputs are key to going fast, as evidenced by hot laps with none other than rally and race legend Walter Röhrl and Formula 1/LMP1 veteran Mark Webber. But while the smoothness of the pros inspires awe and confidence from the passenger seat, the effect is eerily mirrored from behind the wheel as well. Unlike my GT2 RS experience at Portimão, which also involved a dash of inclement weather (and admittedly a heavier downpour), the organic relationship between the non-boosted engine and wet tarmac is relatable enough to encourage relatively aggressive driving.

Cornering is an equally facile trick: turn-in with a progressive tug of the wheel, and the 3,153-pound car obeys submissively. There’s no four-wheel steer-induced exaggeration, no fat anywhere in the connection between the steering wheel and the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires—which has something to do with the rubber, but a lot more to do with the rear axle. Equipped with Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus (PTV), the electronic rear differential stabilizes the tail under hard braking and enhances front-end grip. The sensation of intense front-end bite is absent in manual transmission-equipped non-RS GT3s, which lack the PTV function; here, the turn-in is prescient, enabling enough entry speed to egg on the driver and hit corners harder. Though this test car is setup for less aero (producing only 317 pounds of downforce at 186 mph), there’s still a palpable sense of preternatural grip in higher-speed corners, aided by the sticky Michelins. The effect is noticeable enough that, finally after several confidence-inspiring laps, I can finally experience some tire scrub and slip in lower-speed corners. But it isn’t terrifying.

In fact, the GT3 RS approaches its limits with a level of obedience that makes the whole package just make sense. The PDK responds with near-instantaneity, and its own internal shift logic in automatic mode is eerily proper. And yet you’re still probably wondering, why not offer a manual gearbox on this otherwise analog-oriented sports car? “We could have done it,” Preuninger says, “but we want to be hygienic about what we make as an option, and it has to fit this car character-wise. This is a rennsport; it’s a track tool. People want to be fast, and with a manual against a PDK, the PDK would gain on it even on a short straight.” Okay, we get it. But to drive the point home, he adds, “Tell me one race car besides a NASCAR that shifts manually these days.”

Despite the supernaturally quick shifting, I see that while I’m clearly not on pace with Röhrl and Webber, the GT3 RS somehow manages to feel connected to my intentions in a deep and manageable way that the GT2 RS didn’t. Then again, full disclosure regarding my experience with the GT2 RS at Portimão: When asked, some four months later, about its tendency to rotate quickly mid-corner, Preuninger reveals that “Portimão was sub-optimal; the mechanics weren’t good about getting the tire pressures right. The cars went out with too much pressure at the rear, which made the cars harder to drive.” He goes on to say the rears should have been set at 2.4 bar, not 2.6 (the fronts were at 2.0). Fair enough; maybe the turbocharged car is, at its core, more drivable than I experienced. But the GT3 RS, despite its (nearly) equally stratospheric performance levels, feels far more approachable than you might expect.

Session two on the track reveals more … well, everything. With a better understanding of the short course’s 10 right and seven left turns, the GT3 RS exudes an easy athletic ability that enables it to be pushed harder, and respond with even more physical prowess. Up the pace, and everything just seems to amplify: the braking capacity, the turning ability, the acceleration. It’s almost video game-like, except for the fact that the engine, whose intuitive responsiveness encourages a finer line to be drawn at that crucial limit when you lay on the throttle coming out of a corner. Unlike the torrent of torque on-hand with the GT2 RS, the GT3 RS feels like a dragon that’s more tame-able, one that won’t spit fire in your face if you dip the pedal a few millimeters too far.

After a rocking, rollicking, and an all-too-brief double stint on the GP circuit, I wheel the GT3 RS back into pit lane, exhilarated and intrigued by the depths of its talents, of which I’ve barely scraped the surface. Does the Nordschleife hold the same allure as it did when I first strapped into this 512 horsepower two-seater? With a juicy 3.2-mile filet within arm’s reach, maybe I don’t covet the 12.9-mile side of beef quite so compulsively. But then again, it sure would be nice to try.

2019 Porsche 911 GT3 RS Specifications

ON SALE Now PRICE $188,550 (base) ENGINE 4.0L DOHC 24-valve flat-6/512 hp @ 8,250 rpm, 346 lb-ft @ 6,000 rpm TRANSMISSION 7-speed dual-clutch automatic LAYOUT 2-door, 2-passenger, rear-engine, RWD coupe EPA MILEAGE N/A L x W x H 179.4 x 77.87 x 51.06 in WHEELBASE 96.57 in WEIGHT 3,153 lb 0-60 MPH 3.0 sec TOP SPEED 193 mph

IFTTT

[webanalytics]

Is Facebook Organic Reach Really Dead? Here’s How to Break Through It for More Social Engagement

Every now and then, the overlords of the Internet decide to change things up in the digital marketing world.

And with how fast things change, it can sometimes be easy to miss a noteworthy tidbit of news.

One such tidbit recently came to light, and it’s definitely worth your attention.

Namely, Facebook has started taking steps to change the Organic Reach of pages on their platform.

And that has some implications for everyone.

It doesn’t matter if your Facebook Page shares memes, connects a community, or is a landing page for your brand.

You’re going to see some changes, and chances are they will come sooner rather than later.

To help cut through the clutter and keep a clear picture of the path ahead, I’m going to lay out what’s actually changing.

And at the end, we’ll give you some insightful ways to come out ahead.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to take action accordingly and still have a healthy Facebook presence.

But first, let’s talk a bit more about what Organic Reach actually is, and why it’s changing.

What is Facebook Organic Reach?

Organic Reach on Facebook is simply a measurement of how many people can find you on Facebook for free.

It’s much like organic rankings on a search engine, although in the case of Facebook it’s based on aspects like popularity, post frequency, and other contributing factors.

And when you think about the current state of Facebook, it seems logical that Facebook would be making some big changes.

With more and more content being generated and shared, plus with how the News Feeds curates the content you see, it’s natural that Facebook would need to fine-tune their system from time to time.

And so Facebook is making changes.

Specifically, they’re changing Organic Reach to look and feel a little more like the Paid Reach measurements.

The newer look really only changes a few minor elements, but the numbers will look bad nonetheless.

Previously, Facebook counted Organic Reach as any time an unpaid post appeared in someone’s News Feed.

Now, Organic Reach will only give you a hit if your unpaid post actually enters a person’s screen.

The changes don’t affect how your post is shown to anyone, nor does it really change anything about how posts are displayed at all.

It just affects how Organic Reach is tallied, but that makes a difference.

The seeming paradox then is that you can expect your Organic Search traffic to take a big hit, but that particular metric should be a lot more accurate.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, there’s a good reason for the death of Facebook’s Organic Reach:

“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands, and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”

He goes on to discuss how Facebook will be changing to mitigate this issue.

Specifically, Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be better geared to curate content that builds meaningful relationships.

And it’s worth mentioning that Zuckerberg himself lost about $3.3 billion because of this decision.

But what exactly is this “death” in terms anyone can understand?

More importantly for you, how might this affect your business?

To give you an idea, you have to look back a little bit.

Because as of June 2016, the Organic Reach of a Facebook Page had fallen to a mere 2%.

That’s a crazy drop from just four years prior, and Facebook and Zuckerberg still think that there’s too much Organic Reach for a Page.

So it’s pretty clear that if 2% reach is too much, we’re nearing the end of an era in terms of Organic Reach being the best viable option for spreading your brand on social media.

And the implication is pretty clear for business owners.

Your page is going to have less Organic Reach.

And with Reach dropping, you can fully expect that engagement is going to go with it.

So at this point, you’re probably wondering if there is any hope beyond the doomsday hype?

The answer is yes.

Because Organic Reach is not totally gone, and it probably won’t ever be.

The key here is to simply understand the changes taking place in the Organic Reach algorithms.

The consensus is that Facebook waging war against low-quality content, which means there are still avenues you can take that will help your Organic Reach.

You simply need a different strategy than saturation.

So now that you know what’s going on, let’s look at some ways you can use these changes to your advantage.

Tip #1: Focus on quality, not quantity

First and foremost, you need to understand that Facebook is changing to emphasize quality over quantity.

I’m going to repeat that for emphasis: Quality over quantity is the first place to start.

There’s been a long-running misconception that posting more or less on Facebook equates to more reach, but that’s as ludicrous as treating a “Like” as a useful metric.

You’re just making things worse for yourself if your goal is to post as frequently as possible, especially with the new changes.

And posting infrequently doesn’t do you any favors either.

Because the data points to a truth that couldn’t be further from a quantity-driven approach.

First of all, studies have shown that a moderate amount of posting seems to edge out posting too much or too little.

So when there are fewer posts, it becomes less likely that a post gets lost in your audience’s feed.

Which means your Organic Reach is going to do better with just a few, high-quality posts.

But don’t get carried away thinking high-quality posts can still be posted as often as possible.

Because the data still points in the opposite direction.

Buffer conducted some tests that help prove this point beyond any doubt.

They started by evaluating how many posts were being created per day on their Page.

As you can note, over the course of 2016 and into 2017 they say a fairly significant drop in how many times they posted.

To be precise, they were posting at half the peak rate by the middle of 2017.

And oddly enough, this trend helped them increase their Organic Reach:

They went from capping out with an Organic Reach of ~70,000 to a top reach of ~170,000.

That’s a 100,000 Reach spike that can be directly related to the frequency with which they posted on their Page.

And what’s more, they also saw a boost in direct engagement from this study as well:

This is a powerful illustration of how simply posting less and focusing on quality can improve your overall Organic performance on Facebook.

And this isn’t just a fluke.

It starts and ends with original and share-worthy content that will actually engage your audience.

Which means you need to focus less on pumping out content and focus more on crafting something that’s truly shareworthy.

You’ll see better Organic Reach, and you won’t regret it.

Tip #2: Know what your audience is looking for

A high-quality post isn’t just going to come from nowhere.

It starts with a more concerted effort to offer higher-quality content around your brand as a whole.

That means finding topics that are meaningful and then generating something that’s both shareworthy and relevant.

The more specifically targeted your approach, the better off you’ll be.

Small changes go a long way in improving quality, and the ultimate application is up to your unique brand.

The only way to truly know what “quality” means for your Page is to create some, test it, and then start making changes.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t have any other direction before you just start creating content.

One place you can start is simply by knowing which posts are right on Facebook, such as video.

Sharpie does a great job of creating interesting video that generates views and shares throughout their audience.

Here’s a recent example of one of their videos that partners Sharpie with NBA star Chris Paul:

Even if you can’t partner with a celebrity, you can use video to help boost your Organic Reach and increase engagement.

And success on Facebook through video isn’t just speculation either.

There are plenty of success stories, like this one from Audi:

Even in the highly competitive automotive industry, they were able to boost their lead generation by almost 12%.

And if that doesn’t convince you, I highly recommend you go check out more success stories.

It doesn’t even have to be long video either, as Facebook recently launched their own Boomerang application.

And whether you use video or not, just remember that high-performing and popular Facebook posts are a mixture of entertaining and educational.

Don’t mistake that as an either/or situation.

You need a mix of both if you want to succeed.

Most importantly, I recommend looking into what online audiences are actually consuming these days.

You might love creating and sharing your podcast for a blog post, but you’ll get more facetime with a sharp video or even just a simple photo.

And then there’s also the problem of engagement baiting, which Facebook has started to crack down on.

You might think it’s okay to ask for Likes, Shares, or “votes,” but the dark days of those posts are behind us.

Facebook now filters posts like these and gives them a lower priority than posts with more engaging content and imagery.

So all things considered, you have a lot to consider when you’re trying to pin down what your audience wants to see.

But if you put in the effort, you can develop a system that keeps your brand in the spotlight without dipping into your ad budget.

Tip #3: Consider your timing

You may have heard the news already, but there is such a thing as an “optimal time” when you’re posting to Facebook.

It just depends on a few essential elements.

The basics are pretty simple though.

Knowing when Facebook tends to be most active overall can help you time your posts accordingly.

Studies show that sharing at different times will affect Likes, Shares, and overall engagement statistics.

You can also try to take advantage of multiple spikes like this, but remember you want quality over quantity.

One or two posts per day will do just fine.

If you post at the right time, it’s more likely that your audience will actually be on to see your post.

That by itself could increase your Organic Reach and help you engage with your followers.

But keep in mind that performance can be industry specific as well, so do your homework before you simply start changing all of your posting times.

And once you check your own industry’s trends, make sure that the information you uncovered accurately matches your own audience by examining your own Facebook Page’s Insights tab.

Your goal here is to simply avoid posting at times when your audience is unlikely to see posts.

If there’s a verifiable time when engagement and Reach dips, you might not want to share your best content at those times.

And there are a lot more studies on this topic than just the ones above.

Kissmetrics has put together research that verifies the science of timing posts.

All of this research points to one thing in regard to Organic Reach.

Namely, that it’s best for you to let the Facebook algorithm focus on delivering one piece of content to your audience.

This approach mitigates the need for Facebook to filter and select your strongest content.

If you only ever share your best content at the best times, Facebook will still work well for you.

The trick is just to know when to post on Facebook.

Do your own research, and then use the results you find to your advantage.

Tip #4: Variety helps, so start curating

Curation can be a tricky topic.

Why would you want to put another brand’s content on your page?

Isn’t that counterintuitive?

You may be surprised, but it could actually help.

Recent studies suggest that the curating on Facebook can solve many common issues faced by marketers:

As long as you’re mindful of brands and companies that have a strong following or high brand loyalty, you can leverage a strategic tag to increase your own engagement.

So it’s a good idea to start sharing more curated content in addition to the content you create.

Curating content is the relatively simple process of finding great content from other sources on the Internet and then sharing it with your own audience.

As long as you know your audience, and find posts that match your target, you can provide supplemental content that still helps your brand’s Organic Reach on Facebook.

It’s also a good idea to add tags to posts like this when and where it’s appropriate.

In essence, this practice “signals” to Facebook that you have interesting content that needs to be shown more often.

As long as you’re following your analytics closely with this type of targeting, you’ll see good results over time.

Tip #5: Stop selling

One of the biggest toe-stubbing moves that can hurt your Organic Reach is trying to sell too much.

And with Facebook essentially turning the tables on solely commercial content, this is a bigger deal than ever.

But think of it in terms of volume alone.

Even in your own industry, you’ve likely found that there’s an increasingly saturated social media network that you have to wade through.

With Facebook focusing more on engagement, simply trying to route traffic to your website can be a mistake.

That means that Facebook is also evaluating intent when it filters content.

This particular trend isn’t exactly in your favor.

And when you tack on that Facebook users are savvy enough to filter out the content that they don’t want to see even if it makes it past the News Feed algorithms, you have a recipe for disaster.

That’s why understanding where social media fits into the sales funnel and focusing on brand awareness will serve you better for Organic Reach.

Social media is a top-of-the-funnel endeavor, and you have to treat it that way.

Going for a hard sell just isn’t going to work, and that type of content is just going to get filtered out by either Facebook or your audience.

There’s a greater need now more than ever to engage directly with your community.

That means instead of just posting random articles, you need to find ways to have discussions on your Page.

You need to spend more time being active and replying to comments on posts, even unhelpful ones.

Because your audience craves acknowledgement more than anything.

They just want to be heard.

Real-time engagement can help the Organic Reach of your brand more than a sales-oriented post ever could.

That’s why you need to ditch the old sales funnel approach to social media and adopt a more accurate idea of what social funnels look like.

Notice how the elements in the top part of this funnel are more relationship oriented.

That’s because your Organic Reach relies on audience building with Facebook, not sales.

And I can’t over-emphasize how important this shift is.

Because business are almost always affected by changes to social networks, which is why the idea is to share content users are interested in and will actually engage with.

You need to worry about sales a little later, preferably once your audience is established and loyal to your brand.

Which oddly enough means you need to be smarter about your Facebook Ads budget.

Because that’s one of the best ways to invest in building your audience with a longer funnel.

You need to embrace Facebook as a pay-to-play game, because it is for better or worse.

More and more marketers are coming to Facebook, and it’s already the top source of paid social media in the world by a long shot.

Which means the only way you can play, or win, is to start investing your money in it wisely.

Try boosting posts that have already proven to be strong performers, not just the posts you think will perform well.

That means you need to post content first, then check your engagement.

Then if your audience engagement is strong, boost that post so that it reaches even more people.

In sum, create and boost great content, not just any content.

Because if recent trends have shown us anything, it’s that we’re only going to see an increase in spending on paid digital advertising in the coming years.

So learning to couple the pay-to-play element with the other tactics in this post is the best way to move forward.

Since you can’t just rest on your laurels and coast off of Organic Reach anymore, you have to take action.

Tip #6: Consider an alternative route

The final piece of advice that I want to leave you with revolves around a rather unsung element of Facebook: Groups.

From a marketing point of view, Facebook Groups have been relatively incognito due to how a sort of risk-reward equation that always tipped more toward risk.

It was just easier to post on your Page, pay for your ads, and ignore Groups.

But now, they’re looking more attractive.

And this makes sense. A Group around your brand is one that consumers will have to opt into.

Which means they get notifications and engage with your brand at a deeper level.

Plus, they’re free, which can’t be beat.

And Facebook has been giving quite a bit of attention to Groups lately:

With more than one billion Facebook users involved in Groups, we may well be looking at a new frontier for social media marketers.

It may take time to lay the groundwork and build your community, but there’s no denying the potential power of your own Group.

They could be the ultimate answer to the Organic Search issue.

Conclusion

The truth of the matter is that Facebook Organic Reach is not dead.

It’s just different than what you’re used to.

Facebook has changed the game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still play it well.

You just have to realize that your metrics only look different. In reality, your Organic Reach is more accurate than ever, which is a good thing.

But these changes require that you take a new approach to maintaining and improving your social engagement.

A simple change like focusing on quality over quantity is by far the best places to start.

But more than that, try to find the format that fits your audience. Use blog posts, images, and especially video to engage to the fullest.

Then take strides to post your best content at the right time on the right day of the week.

You can also start to curate content that your audience will be interested in, which tells Facebook that your content is shareworthy.

Overall, just focus on brand building, not sales.

And remember that Facebook is now a pay-to-play system for marketers. If you want to win, bring your checkbook.

Finally, start considering Groups as an alternative for opt-in engagement. You could be suprised by what you find.

At the end of the day, your Organic Reach rises and falls on how well you execute the strategies in this post.

All you have to do now is find a way to stick with these changes.

What methods have worked best for keeping Organic Reach up for your brand?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

from Search Results for “analytics” – The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog https://ift.tt/2K1l7hG #Digital #Analytics #Website

[alissaselezneva]

Is Facebook Organic Reach Really Dead? Here’s How to Break Through It for More Social Engagement

Every now and then, the overlords of the Internet decide to change things up in the digital marketing world.

And with how fast things change, it can sometimes be easy to miss a noteworthy tidbit of news.

One such tidbit recently came to light, and it’s definitely worth your attention.

Namely, Facebook has started taking steps to change the Organic Reach of pages on their platform.

And that has some implications for everyone.

It doesn’t matter if your Facebook Page shares memes, connects a community, or is a landing page for your brand.

You’re going to see some changes, and chances are they will come sooner rather than later.

To help cut through the clutter and keep a clear picture of the path ahead, I’m going to lay out what’s actually changing.

And at the end, we’ll give you some insightful ways to come out ahead.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to take action accordingly and still have a healthy Facebook presence.

But first, let’s talk a bit more about what Organic Reach actually is, and why it’s changing.

What is Facebook Organic Reach?

Organic Reach on Facebook is simply a measurement of how many people can find you on Facebook for free.

It’s much like organic rankings on a search engine, although in the case of Facebook it’s based on aspects like popularity, post frequency, and other contributing factors.

And when you think about the current state of Facebook, it seems logical that Facebook would be making some big changes.

With more and more content being generated and shared, plus with how the News Feeds curates the content you see, it’s natural that Facebook would need to fine-tune their system from time to time.

And so Facebook is making changes.

Specifically, they’re changing Organic Reach to look and feel a little more like the Paid Reach measurements.

The newer look really only changes a few minor elements, but the numbers will look bad nonetheless.

Previously, Facebook counted Organic Reach as any time an unpaid post appeared in someone’s News Feed.

Now, Organic Reach will only give you a hit if your unpaid post actually enters a person’s screen.

The changes don’t affect how your post is shown to anyone, nor does it really change anything about how posts are displayed at all.

It just affects how Organic Reach is tallied, but that makes a difference.

The seeming paradox then is that you can expect your Organic Search traffic to take a big hit, but that particular metric should be a lot more accurate.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, there’s a good reason for the death of Facebook’s Organic Reach:

“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands, and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”

He goes on to discuss how Facebook will be changing to mitigate this issue.

Specifically, Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be better geared to curate content that builds meaningful relationships.

And it’s worth mentioning that Zuckerberg himself lost about $3.3 billion because of this decision.

But what exactly is this “death” in terms anyone can understand?

More importantly for you, how might this affect your business?

To give you an idea, you have to look back a little bit.

Because as of June 2016, the Organic Reach of a Facebook Page had fallen to a mere 2%.

That’s a crazy drop from just four years prior, and Facebook and Zuckerberg still think that there’s too much Organic Reach for a Page.

So it’s pretty clear that if 2% reach is too much, we’re nearing the end of an era in terms of Organic Reach being the best viable option for spreading your brand on social media.

And the implication is pretty clear for business owners.

Your page is going to have less Organic Reach.

And with Reach dropping, you can fully expect that engagement is going to go with it.

So at this point, you’re probably wondering if there is any hope beyond the doomsday hype?

The answer is yes.

Because Organic Reach is not totally gone, and it probably won’t ever be.

The key here is to simply understand the changes taking place in the Organic Reach algorithms.

The consensus is that Facebook waging war against low-quality content, which means there are still avenues you can take that will help your Organic Reach.

You simply need a different strategy than saturation.

So now that you know what’s going on, let’s look at some ways you can use these changes to your advantage.

Tip #1: Focus on quality, not quantity

First and foremost, you need to understand that Facebook is changing to emphasize quality over quantity.

I’m going to repeat that for emphasis: Quality over quantity is the first place to start.

There’s been a long-running misconception that posting more or less on Facebook equates to more reach, but that’s as ludicrous as treating a “Like” as a useful metric.

You’re just making things worse for yourself if your goal is to post as frequently as possible, especially with the new changes.

And posting infrequently doesn’t do you any favors either.

Because the data points to a truth that couldn’t be further from a quantity-driven approach.

First of all, studies have shown that a moderate amount of posting seems to edge out posting too much or too little.

So when there are fewer posts, it becomes less likely that a post gets lost in your audience’s feed.

Which means your Organic Reach is going to do better with just a few, high-quality posts.

But don’t get carried away thinking high-quality posts can still be posted as often as possible.

Because the data still points in the opposite direction.

Buffer conducted some tests that help prove this point beyond any doubt.

They started by evaluating how many posts were being created per day on their Page.

As you can note, over the course of 2016 and into 2017 they say a fairly significant drop in how many times they posted.

To be precise, they were posting at half the peak rate by the middle of 2017.

And oddly enough, this trend helped them increase their Organic Reach:

They went from capping out with an Organic Reach of ~70,000 to a top reach of ~170,000.

That’s a 100,000 Reach spike that can be directly related to the frequency with which they posted on their Page.

And what’s more, they also saw a boost in direct engagement from this study as well:

This is a powerful illustration of how simply posting less and focusing on quality can improve your overall Organic performance on Facebook.

And this isn’t just a fluke.

It starts and ends with original and share-worthy content that will actually engage your audience.

Which means you need to focus less on pumping out content and focus more on crafting something that’s truly shareworthy.

You’ll see better Organic Reach, and you won’t regret it.

Tip #2: Know what your audience is looking for

A high-quality post isn’t just going to come from nowhere.

It starts with a more concerted effort to offer higher-quality content around your brand as a whole.

That means finding topics that are meaningful and then generating something that’s both shareworthy and relevant.

The more specifically targeted your approach, the better off you’ll be.

Small changes go a long way in improving quality, and the ultimate application is up to your unique brand.

The only way to truly know what “quality” means for your Page is to create some, test it, and then start making changes.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t have any other direction before you just start creating content.

One place you can start is simply by knowing which posts are right on Facebook, such as video.

Sharpie does a great job of creating interesting video that generates views and shares throughout their audience.

Here’s a recent example of one of their videos that partners Sharpie with NBA star Chris Paul:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FSharpie%2Fvideos%2F10160286088165344%2F&show_text=0&width=560

Even if you can’t partner with a celebrity, you can use video to help boost your Organic Reach and increase engagement.

And success on Facebook through video isn’t just speculation either.

There are plenty of success stories, like this one from Audi:

Even in the highly competitive automotive industry, they were able to boost their lead generation by almost 12%.

And if that doesn’t convince you, I highly recommend you go check out more success stories.

It doesn’t even have to be long video either, as Facebook recently launched their own Boomerang application.

And whether you use video or not, just remember that high-performing and popular Facebook posts are a mixture of entertaining and educational.

Don’t mistake that as an either/or situation.

You need a mix of both if you want to succeed.

Most importantly, I recommend looking into what online audiences are actually consuming these days.

You might love creating and sharing your podcast for a blog post, but you’ll get more facetime with a sharp video or even just a simple photo.

And then there’s also the problem of engagement baiting, which Facebook has started to crack down on.

You might think it’s okay to ask for Likes, Shares, or “votes,” but the dark days of those posts are behind us.

Facebook now filters posts like these and gives them a lower priority than posts with more engaging content and imagery.

So all things considered, you have a lot to consider when you’re trying to pin down what your audience wants to see.

But if you put in the effort, you can develop a system that keeps your brand in the spotlight without dipping into your ad budget.

Tip #3: Consider your timing

You may have heard the news already, but there is such a thing as an “optimal time” when you’re posting to Facebook.

It just depends on a few essential elements.

The basics are pretty simple though.

Knowing when Facebook tends to be most active overall can help you time your posts accordingly.

Studies show that sharing at different times will affect Likes, Shares, and overall engagement statistics.

You can also try to take advantage of multiple spikes like this, but remember you want quality over quantity.

One or two posts per day will do just fine.

If you post at the right time, it’s more likely that your audience will actually be on to see your post.

That by itself could increase your Organic Reach and help you engage with your followers.

But keep in mind that performance can be industry specific as well, so do your homework before you simply start changing all of your posting times.

And once you check your own industry’s trends, make sure that the information you uncovered accurately matches your own audience by examining your own Facebook Page’s Insights tab.

Your goal here is to simply avoid posting at times when your audience is unlikely to see posts.

If there’s a verifiable time when engagement and Reach dips, you might not want to share your best content at those times.

And there are a lot more studies on this topic than just the ones above.

Kissmetrics has put together research that verifies the science of timing posts.

All of this research points to one thing in regard to Organic Reach.

Namely, that it’s best for you to let the Facebook algorithm focus on delivering one piece of content to your audience.

This approach mitigates the need for Facebook to filter and select your strongest content.

If you only ever share your best content at the best times, Facebook will still work well for you.

The trick is just to know when to post on Facebook.

Do your own research, and then use the results you find to your advantage.

Tip #4: Variety helps, so start curating

Curation can be a tricky topic.

Why would you want to put another brand’s content on your page?

Isn’t that counterintuitive?

You may be surprised, but it could actually help.

Recent studies suggest that the curating on Facebook can solve many common issues faced by marketers:

As long as you’re mindful of brands and companies that have a strong following or high brand loyalty, you can leverage a strategic tag to increase your own engagement.

So it’s a good idea to start sharing more curated content in addition to the content you create.

Curating content is the relatively simple process of finding great content from other sources on the Internet and then sharing it with your own audience.

As long as you know your audience, and find posts that match your target, you can provide supplemental content that still helps your brand’s Organic Reach on Facebook.

It’s also a good idea to add tags to posts like this when and where it’s appropriate.

In essence, this practice “signals” to Facebook that you have interesting content that needs to be shown more often.

As long as you’re following your analytics closely with this type of targeting, you’ll see good results over time.

Tip #5: Stop selling

One of the biggest toe-stubbing moves that can hurt your Organic Reach is trying to sell too much.

And with Facebook essentially turning the tables on solely commercial content, this is a bigger deal than ever.

But think of it in terms of volume alone.

Even in your own industry, you’ve likely found that there’s an increasingly saturated social media network that you have to wade through.

With Facebook focusing more on engagement, simply trying to route traffic to your website can be a mistake.

That means that Facebook is also evaluating intent when it filters content.

This particular trend isn’t exactly in your favor.

And when you tack on that Facebook users are savvy enough to filter out the content that they don’t want to see even if it makes it past the News Feed algorithms, you have a recipe for disaster.

That’s why understanding where social media fits into the sales funnel and focusing on brand awareness will serve you better for Organic Reach.

Social media is a top-of-the-funnel endeavor, and you have to treat it that way.

Going for a hard sell just isn’t going to work, and that type of content is just going to get filtered out by either Facebook or your audience.

There’s a greater need now more than ever to engage directly with your community.

That means instead of just posting random articles, you need to find ways to have discussions on your Page.

You need to spend more time being active and replying to comments on posts, even unhelpful ones.

Because your audience craves acknowledgement more than anything.

They just want to be heard.

Real-time engagement can help the Organic Reach of your brand more than a sales-oriented post ever could.

That’s why you need to ditch the old sales funnel approach to social media and adopt a more accurate idea of what social funnels look like.

Notice how the elements in the top part of this funnel are more relationship oriented.

That’s because your Organic Reach relies on audience building with Facebook, not sales.

And I can’t over-emphasize how important this shift is.

Because business are almost always affected by changes to social networks, which is why the idea is to share content users are interested in and will actually engage with.

You need to worry about sales a little later, preferably once your audience is established and loyal to your brand.

Which oddly enough means you need to be smarter about your Facebook Ads budget.

Because that’s one of the best ways to invest in building your audience with a longer funnel.

You need to embrace Facebook as a pay-to-play game, because it is for better or worse.

More and more marketers are coming to Facebook, and it’s already the top source of paid social media in the world by a long shot.

Which means the only way you can play, or win, is to start investing your money in it wisely.

Try boosting posts that have already proven to be strong performers, not just the posts you think will perform well.

That means you need to post content first, then check your engagement.

Then if your audience engagement is strong, boost that post so that it reaches even more people.

In sum, create and boost great content, not just any content.

Because if recent trends have shown us anything, it’s that we’re only going to see an increase in spending on paid digital advertising in the coming years.

So learning to couple the pay-to-play element with the other tactics in this post is the best way to move forward.

Since you can’t just rest on your laurels and coast off of Organic Reach anymore, you have to take action.

Tip #6: Consider an alternative route

The final piece of advice that I want to leave you with revolves around a rather unsung element of Facebook: Groups.

From a marketing point of view, Facebook Groups have been relatively incognito due to how a sort of risk-reward equation that always tipped more toward risk.

It was just easier to post on your Page, pay for your ads, and ignore Groups.

But now, they’re looking more attractive.

And this makes sense. A Group around your brand is one that consumers will have to opt into.

Which means they get notifications and engage with your brand at a deeper level.

Plus, they’re free, which can’t be beat.

And Facebook has been giving quite a bit of attention to Groups lately:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ffacebook%2Fvideos%2F10155948336496729%2F&show_text=0&width=560

With more than one billion Facebook users involved in Groups, we may well be looking at a new frontier for social media marketers.

It may take time to lay the groundwork and build your community, but there’s no denying the potential power of your own Group.

They could be the ultimate answer to the Organic Search issue.

Conclusion

The truth of the matter is that Facebook Organic Reach is not dead.

It’s just different than what you’re used to.

Facebook has changed the game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still play it well.

You just have to realize that your metrics only look different. In reality, your Organic Reach is more accurate than ever, which is a good thing.

But these changes require that you take a new approach to maintaining and improving your social engagement.

A simple change like focusing on quality over quantity is by far the best places to start.

But more than that, try to find the format that fits your audience. Use blog posts, images, and especially video to engage to the fullest.

Then take strides to post your best content at the right time on the right day of the week.

You can also start to curate content that your audience will be interested in, which tells Facebook that your content is shareworthy.

Overall, just focus on brand building, not sales.

And remember that Facebook is now a pay-to-play system for marketers. If you want to win, bring your checkbook.

Finally, start considering Groups as an alternative for opt-in engagement. You could be suprised by what you find.

At the end of the day, your Organic Reach rises and falls on how well you execute the strategies in this post.

All you have to do now is find a way to stick with these changes.

What methods have worked best for keeping Organic Reach up for your brand?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

from WordPress https://reviewandbonuss.wordpress.com/2018/04/19/is-facebook-organic-reach-really-dead-heres-how-to-break-through-it-for-more-social-engagement/

[filipeteimuraz]

Is Facebook Organic Reach Really Dead? Here’s How to Break Through It for More Social Engagement

Every now and then, the overlords of the Internet decide to change things up in the digital marketing world.

And with how fast things change, it can sometimes be easy to miss a noteworthy tidbit of news.

One such tidbit recently came to light, and it’s definitely worth your attention.

Namely, Facebook has started taking steps to change the Organic Reach of pages on their platform.

And that has some implications for everyone.

It doesn’t matter if your Facebook Page shares memes, connects a community, or is a landing page for your brand.

You’re going to see some changes, and chances are they will come sooner rather than later.

To help cut through the clutter and keep a clear picture of the path ahead, I’m going to lay out what’s actually changing.

And at the end, we’ll give you some insightful ways to come out ahead.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to take action accordingly and still have a healthy Facebook presence.

But first, let’s talk a bit more about what Organic Reach actually is, and why it’s changing.

What is Facebook Organic Reach?

Organic Reach on Facebook is simply a measurement of how many people can find you on Facebook for free.

It’s much like organic rankings on a search engine, although in the case of Facebook it’s based on aspects like popularity, post frequency, and other contributing factors.

And when you think about the current state of Facebook, it seems logical that Facebook would be making some big changes.

With more and more content being generated and shared, plus with how the News Feeds curates the content you see, it’s natural that Facebook would need to fine-tune their system from time to time.

And so Facebook is making changes.

Specifically, they’re changing Organic Reach to look and feel a little more like the Paid Reach measurements.

The newer look really only changes a few minor elements, but the numbers will look bad nonetheless.

Previously, Facebook counted Organic Reach as any time an unpaid post appeared in someone’s News Feed.

Now, Organic Reach will only give you a hit if your unpaid post actually enters a person’s screen.

The changes don’t affect how your post is shown to anyone, nor does it really change anything about how posts are displayed at all.

It just affects how Organic Reach is tallied, but that makes a difference.

The seeming paradox then is that you can expect your Organic Search traffic to take a big hit, but that particular metric should be a lot more accurate.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, there’s a good reason for the death of Facebook’s Organic Reach:

“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands, and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”

He goes on to discuss how Facebook will be changing to mitigate this issue.

Specifically, Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be better geared to curate content that builds meaningful relationships.

And it’s worth mentioning that Zuckerberg himself lost about $3.3 billion because of this decision.

But what exactly is this “death” in terms anyone can understand?

More importantly for you, how might this affect your business?

To give you an idea, you have to look back a little bit.

Because as of June 2016, the Organic Reach of a Facebook Page had fallen to a mere 2%.

That’s a crazy drop from just four years prior, and Facebook and Zuckerberg still think that there’s too much Organic Reach for a Page.

So it’s pretty clear that if 2% reach is too much, we’re nearing the end of an era in terms of Organic Reach being the best viable option for spreading your brand on social media.

And the implication is pretty clear for business owners.

Your page is going to have less Organic Reach.

And with Reach dropping, you can fully expect that engagement is going to go with it.

So at this point, you’re probably wondering if there is any hope beyond the doomsday hype?

The answer is yes.

Because Organic Reach is not totally gone, and it probably won’t ever be.

The key here is to simply understand the changes taking place in the Organic Reach algorithms.

The consensus is that Facebook waging war against low-quality content, which means there are still avenues you can take that will help your Organic Reach.

You simply need a different strategy than saturation.

So now that you know what’s going on, let’s look at some ways you can use these changes to your advantage.

Tip #1: Focus on quality, not quantity

First and foremost, you need to understand that Facebook is changing to emphasize quality over quantity.

I’m going to repeat that for emphasis: Quality over quantity is the first place to start.

There’s been a long-running misconception that posting more or less on Facebook equates to more reach, but that’s as ludicrous as treating a “Like” as a useful metric.

You’re just making things worse for yourself if your goal is to post as frequently as possible, especially with the new changes.

And posting infrequently doesn’t do you any favors either.

Because the data points to a truth that couldn’t be further from a quantity-driven approach.

First of all, studies have shown that a moderate amount of posting seems to edge out posting too much or too little.

So when there are fewer posts, it becomes less likely that a post gets lost in your audience’s feed.

Which means your Organic Reach is going to do better with just a few, high-quality posts.

But don’t get carried away thinking high-quality posts can still be posted as often as possible.

Because the data still points in the opposite direction.

Buffer conducted some tests that help prove this point beyond any doubt.

They started by evaluating how many posts were being created per day on their Page.

As you can note, over the course of 2016 and into 2017 they say a fairly significant drop in how many times they posted.

To be precise, they were posting at half the peak rate by the middle of 2017.

And oddly enough, this trend helped them increase their Organic Reach:

They went from capping out with an Organic Reach of ~70,000 to a top reach of ~170,000.

That’s a 100,000 Reach spike that can be directly related to the frequency with which they posted on their Page.

And what’s more, they also saw a boost in direct engagement from this study as well:

This is a powerful illustration of how simply posting less and focusing on quality can improve your overall Organic performance on Facebook.

And this isn’t just a fluke.

It starts and ends with original and share-worthy content that will actually engage your audience.

Which means you need to focus less on pumping out content and focus more on crafting something that’s truly shareworthy.

You’ll see better Organic Reach, and you won’t regret it.

Tip #2: Know what your audience is looking for

A high-quality post isn’t just going to come from nowhere.

It starts with a more concerted effort to offer higher-quality content around your brand as a whole.

That means finding topics that are meaningful and then generating something that’s both shareworthy and relevant.

The more specifically targeted your approach, the better off you’ll be.

Small changes go a long way in improving quality, and the ultimate application is up to your unique brand.

The only way to truly know what “quality” means for your Page is to create some, test it, and then start making changes.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t have any other direction before you just start creating content.

One place you can start is simply by knowing which posts are right on Facebook, such as video.

Sharpie does a great job of creating interesting video that generates views and shares throughout their audience.

Here’s a recent example of one of their videos that partners Sharpie with NBA star Chris Paul:

Even if you can’t partner with a celebrity, you can use video to help boost your Organic Reach and increase engagement.

And success on Facebook through video isn’t just speculation either.

There are plenty of success stories, like this one from Audi:

Even in the highly competitive automotive industry, they were able to boost their lead generation by almost 12%.

And if that doesn’t convince you, I highly recommend you go check out more success stories.

It doesn’t even have to be long video either, as Facebook recently launched their own Boomerang application.

And whether you use video or not, just remember that high-performing and popular Facebook posts are a mixture of entertaining and educational.

Don’t mistake that as an either/or situation.

You need a mix of both if you want to succeed.

Most importantly, I recommend looking into what online audiences are actually consuming these days.

You might love creating and sharing your podcast for a blog post, but you’ll get more facetime with a sharp video or even just a simple photo.

And then there’s also the problem of engagement baiting, which Facebook has started to crack down on.

You might think it’s okay to ask for Likes, Shares, or “votes,” but the dark days of those posts are behind us.

Facebook now filters posts like these and gives them a lower priority than posts with more engaging content and imagery.

So all things considered, you have a lot to consider when you’re trying to pin down what your audience wants to see.

But if you put in the effort, you can develop a system that keeps your brand in the spotlight without dipping into your ad budget.

Tip #3: Consider your timing

You may have heard the news already, but there is such a thing as an “optimal time” when you’re posting to Facebook.

It just depends on a few essential elements.

The basics are pretty simple though.

Knowing when Facebook tends to be most active overall can help you time your posts accordingly.

Studies show that sharing at different times will affect Likes, Shares, and overall engagement statistics.

You can also try to take advantage of multiple spikes like this, but remember you want quality over quantity.

One or two posts per day will do just fine.

If you post at the right time, it’s more likely that your audience will actually be on to see your post.

That by itself could increase your Organic Reach and help you engage with your followers.

But keep in mind that performance can be industry specific as well, so do your homework before you simply start changing all of your posting times.

And once you check your own industry’s trends, make sure that the information you uncovered accurately matches your own audience by examining your own Facebook Page’s Insights tab.

Your goal here is to simply avoid posting at times when your audience is unlikely to see posts.

If there’s a verifiable time when engagement and Reach dips, you might not want to share your best content at those times.

And there are a lot more studies on this topic than just the ones above.

Kissmetrics has put together research that verifies the science of timing posts.

All of this research points to one thing in regard to Organic Reach.

Namely, that it’s best for you to let the Facebook algorithm focus on delivering one piece of content to your audience.

This approach mitigates the need for Facebook to filter and select your strongest content.

If you only ever share your best content at the best times, Facebook will still work well for you.

The trick is just to know when to post on Facebook.

Do your own research, and then use the results you find to your advantage.

Tip #4: Variety helps, so start curating

Curation can be a tricky topic.

Why would you want to put another brand’s content on your page?

Isn’t that counterintuitive?

You may be surprised, but it could actually help.

Recent studies suggest that the curating on Facebook can solve many common issues faced by marketers:

As long as you’re mindful of brands and companies that have a strong following or high brand loyalty, you can leverage a strategic tag to increase your own engagement.

So it’s a good idea to start sharing more curated content in addition to the content you create.

Curating content is the relatively simple process of finding great content from other sources on the Internet and then sharing it with your own audience.

As long as you know your audience, and find posts that match your target, you can provide supplemental content that still helps your brand’s Organic Reach on Facebook.

It’s also a good idea to add tags to posts like this when and where it’s appropriate.

In essence, this practice “signals” to Facebook that you have interesting content that needs to be shown more often.

As long as you’re following your analytics closely with this type of targeting, you’ll see good results over time.

Tip #5: Stop selling

One of the biggest toe-stubbing moves that can hurt your Organic Reach is trying to sell too much.

And with Facebook essentially turning the tables on solely commercial content, this is a bigger deal than ever.

But think of it in terms of volume alone.

Even in your own industry, you’ve likely found that there’s an increasingly saturated social media network that you have to wade through.

With Facebook focusing more on engagement, simply trying to route traffic to your website can be a mistake.

That means that Facebook is also evaluating intent when it filters content.

This particular trend isn’t exactly in your favor.

And when you tack on that Facebook users are savvy enough to filter out the content that they don’t want to see even if it makes it past the News Feed algorithms, you have a recipe for disaster.

That’s why understanding where social media fits into the sales funnel and focusing on brand awareness will serve you better for Organic Reach.

Social media is a top-of-the-funnel endeavor, and you have to treat it that way.

Going for a hard sell just isn’t going to work, and that type of content is just going to get filtered out by either Facebook or your audience.

There’s a greater need now more than ever to engage directly with your community.

That means instead of just posting random articles, you need to find ways to have discussions on your Page.

You need to spend more time being active and replying to comments on posts, even unhelpful ones.

Because your audience craves acknowledgement more than anything.

They just want to be heard.

Real-time engagement can help the Organic Reach of your brand more than a sales-oriented post ever could.

That’s why you need to ditch the old sales funnel approach to social media and adopt a more accurate idea of what social funnels look like.

Notice how the elements in the top part of this funnel are more relationship oriented.

That’s because your Organic Reach relies on audience building with Facebook, not sales.

And I can’t over-emphasize how important this shift is.

Because business are almost always affected by changes to social networks, which is why the idea is to share content users are interested in and will actually engage with.

You need to worry about sales a little later, preferably once your audience is established and loyal to your brand.

Which oddly enough means you need to be smarter about your Facebook Ads budget.

Because that’s one of the best ways to invest in building your audience with a longer funnel.

You need to embrace Facebook as a pay-to-play game, because it is for better or worse.

More and more marketers are coming to Facebook, and it’s already the top source of paid social media in the world by a long shot.

Which means the only way you can play, or win, is to start investing your money in it wisely.

Try boosting posts that have already proven to be strong performers, not just the posts you think will perform well.

That means you need to post content first, then check your engagement.

Then if your audience engagement is strong, boost that post so that it reaches even more people.

In sum, create and boost great content, not just any content.

Because if recent trends have shown us anything, it’s that we’re only going to see an increase in spending on paid digital advertising in the coming years.

So learning to couple the pay-to-play element with the other tactics in this post is the best way to move forward.

Since you can’t just rest on your laurels and coast off of Organic Reach anymore, you have to take action.

Tip #6: Consider an alternative route

The final piece of advice that I want to leave you with revolves around a rather unsung element of Facebook: Groups.

From a marketing point of view, Facebook Groups have been relatively incognito due to how a sort of risk-reward equation that always tipped more toward risk.

It was just easier to post on your Page, pay for your ads, and ignore Groups.

But now, they’re looking more attractive.

And this makes sense. A Group around your brand is one that consumers will have to opt into.

Which means they get notifications and engage with your brand at a deeper level.

Plus, they’re free, which can’t be beat.

And Facebook has been giving quite a bit of attention to Groups lately:

With more than one billion Facebook users involved in Groups, we may well be looking at a new frontier for social media marketers.

It may take time to lay the groundwork and build your community, but there’s no denying the potential power of your own Group.

They could be the ultimate answer to the Organic Search issue.

Conclusion

The truth of the matter is that Facebook Organic Reach is not dead.

It’s just different than what you’re used to.

Facebook has changed the game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still play it well.

You just have to realize that your metrics only look different. In reality, your Organic Reach is more accurate than ever, which is a good thing.

But these changes require that you take a new approach to maintaining and improving your social engagement.

A simple change like focusing on quality over quantity is by far the best places to start.

But more than that, try to find the format that fits your audience. Use blog posts, images, and especially video to engage to the fullest.

Then take strides to post your best content at the right time on the right day of the week.

You can also start to curate content that your audience will be interested in, which tells Facebook that your content is shareworthy.

Overall, just focus on brand building, not sales.

And remember that Facebook is now a pay-to-play system for marketers. If you want to win, bring your checkbook.

Finally, start considering Groups as an alternative for opt-in engagement. You could be suprised by what you find.

At the end of the day, your Organic Reach rises and falls on how well you execute the strategies in this post.

All you have to do now is find a way to stick with these changes.

What methods have worked best for keeping Organic Reach up for your brand?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2018/04/is-facebook-organic-reach-really-dead.html

[ericsburden-blog]

Is Facebook Organic Reach Really Dead? Here’s How to Break Through It for More Social Engagement

Every now and then, the overlords of the Internet decide to change things up in the digital marketing world.

And with how fast things change, it can sometimes be easy to miss a noteworthy tidbit of news.

One such tidbit recently came to light, and it’s definitely worth your attention.

Namely, Facebook has started taking steps to change the Organic Reach of pages on their platform.

And that has some implications for everyone.

It doesn’t matter if your Facebook Page shares memes, connects a community, or is a landing page for your brand.

You’re going to see some changes, and chances are they will come sooner rather than later.

To help cut through the clutter and keep a clear picture of the path ahead, I’m going to lay out what’s actually changing.

And at the end, we’ll give you some insightful ways to come out ahead.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to take action accordingly and still have a healthy Facebook presence.

But first, let’s talk a bit more about what Organic Reach actually is, and why it’s changing.

What is Facebook Organic Reach?

Organic Reach on Facebook is simply a measurement of how many people can find you on Facebook for free.

It’s much like organic rankings on a search engine, although in the case of Facebook it’s based on aspects like popularity, post frequency, and other contributing factors.

And when you think about the current state of Facebook, it seems logical that Facebook would be making some big changes.

With more and more content being generated and shared, plus with how the News Feeds curates the content you see, it’s natural that Facebook would need to fine-tune their system from time to time.

And so Facebook is making changes.

Specifically, they’re changing Organic Reach to look and feel a little more like the Paid Reach measurements.

The newer look really only changes a few minor elements, but the numbers will look bad nonetheless.

Previously, Facebook counted Organic Reach as any time an unpaid post appeared in someone’s News Feed.

Now, Organic Reach will only give you a hit if your unpaid post actually enters a person’s screen.

The changes don’t affect how your post is shown to anyone, nor does it really change anything about how posts are displayed at all.

It just affects how Organic Reach is tallied, but that makes a difference.

The seeming paradox then is that you can expect your Organic Search traffic to take a big hit, but that particular metric should be a lot more accurate.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, there’s a good reason for the death of Facebook’s Organic Reach:

“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands, and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”

He goes on to discuss how Facebook will be changing to mitigate this issue.

Specifically, Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be better geared to curate content that builds meaningful relationships.

And it’s worth mentioning that Zuckerberg himself lost about $3.3 billion because of this decision.

But what exactly is this “death” in terms anyone can understand?

More importantly for you, how might this affect your business?

To give you an idea, you have to look back a little bit.

Because as of June 2016, the Organic Reach of a Facebook Page had fallen to a mere 2%.

That’s a crazy drop from just four years prior, and Facebook and Zuckerberg still think that there’s too much Organic Reach for a Page.

So it’s pretty clear that if 2% reach is too much, we’re nearing the end of an era in terms of Organic Reach being the best viable option for spreading your brand on social media.

And the implication is pretty clear for business owners.

Your page is going to have less Organic Reach.

And with Reach dropping, you can fully expect that engagement is going to go with it.

So at this point, you’re probably wondering if there is any hope beyond the doomsday hype?

The answer is yes.

Because Organic Reach is not totally gone, and it probably won’t ever be.

The key here is to simply understand the changes taking place in the Organic Reach algorithms.

The consensus is that Facebook waging war against low-quality content, which means there are still avenues you can take that will help your Organic Reach.

You simply need a different strategy than saturation.

So now that you know what’s going on, let’s look at some ways you can use these changes to your advantage.

Tip #1: Focus on quality, not quantity

First and foremost, you need to understand that Facebook is changing to emphasize quality over quantity.

I’m going to repeat that for emphasis: Quality over quantity is the first place to start.

There’s been a long-running misconception that posting more or less on Facebook equates to more reach, but that’s as ludicrous as treating a “Like” as a useful metric.

You’re just making things worse for yourself if your goal is to post as frequently as possible, especially with the new changes.

And posting infrequently doesn’t do you any favors either.

Because the data points to a truth that couldn’t be further from a quantity-driven approach.

First of all, studies have shown that a moderate amount of posting seems to edge out posting too much or too little.

So when there are fewer posts, it becomes less likely that a post gets lost in your audience’s feed.

Which means your Organic Reach is going to do better with just a few, high-quality posts.

But don’t get carried away thinking high-quality posts can still be posted as often as possible.

Because the data still points in the opposite direction.

Buffer conducted some tests that help prove this point beyond any doubt.

They started by evaluating how many posts were being created per day on their Page.

As you can note, over the course of 2016 and into 2017 they say a fairly significant drop in how many times they posted.

To be precise, they were posting at half the peak rate by the middle of 2017.

And oddly enough, this trend helped them increase their Organic Reach:

They went from capping out with an Organic Reach of ~70,000 to a top reach of ~170,000.

That’s a 100,000 Reach spike that can be directly related to the frequency with which they posted on their Page.

And what’s more, they also saw a boost in direct engagement from this study as well:

This is a powerful illustration of how simply posting less and focusing on quality can improve your overall Organic performance on Facebook.

And this isn’t just a fluke.

It starts and ends with original and share-worthy content that will actually engage your audience.

Which means you need to focus less on pumping out content and focus more on crafting something that’s truly shareworthy.

You’ll see better Organic Reach, and you won’t regret it.

Tip #2: Know what your audience is looking for

A high-quality post isn’t just going to come from nowhere.

It starts with a more concerted effort to offer higher-quality content around your brand as a whole.

That means finding topics that are meaningful and then generating something that’s both shareworthy and relevant.

The more specifically targeted your approach, the better off you’ll be.

Small changes go a long way in improving quality, and the ultimate application is up to your unique brand.

The only way to truly know what “quality” means for your Page is to create some, test it, and then start making changes.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t have any other direction before you just start creating content.

One place you can start is simply by knowing which posts are right on Facebook, such as video.

Sharpie does a great job of creating interesting video that generates views and shares throughout their audience.

Here’s a recent example of one of their videos that partners Sharpie with NBA star Chris Paul:

Even if you can’t partner with a celebrity, you can use video to help boost your Organic Reach and increase engagement.

And success on Facebook through video isn’t just speculation either.

There are plenty of success stories, like this one from Audi:

Even in the highly competitive automotive industry, they were able to boost their lead generation by almost 12%.

And if that doesn’t convince you, I highly recommend you go check out more success stories.

It doesn’t even have to be long video either, as Facebook recently launched their own Boomerang application.

And whether you use video or not, just remember that high-performing and popular Facebook posts are a mixture of entertaining and educational.

Don’t mistake that as an either/or situation.

You need a mix of both if you want to succeed.

Most importantly, I recommend looking into what online audiences are actually consuming these days.

You might love creating and sharing your podcast for a blog post, but you’ll get more facetime with a sharp video or even just a simple photo.

And then there’s also the problem of engagement baiting, which Facebook has started to crack down on.

You might think it’s okay to ask for Likes, Shares, or “votes,” but the dark days of those posts are behind us.

Facebook now filters posts like these and gives them a lower priority than posts with more engaging content and imagery.

So all things considered, you have a lot to consider when you’re trying to pin down what your audience wants to see.

But if you put in the effort, you can develop a system that keeps your brand in the spotlight without dipping into your ad budget.

Tip #3: Consider your timing

You may have heard the news already, but there is such a thing as an “optimal time” when you’re posting to Facebook.

It just depends on a few essential elements.

The basics are pretty simple though.

Knowing when Facebook tends to be most active overall can help you time your posts accordingly.

Studies show that sharing at different times will affect Likes, Shares, and overall engagement statistics.

You can also try to take advantage of multiple spikes like this, but remember you want quality over quantity.

One or two posts per day will do just fine.

If you post at the right time, it’s more likely that your audience will actually be on to see your post.

That by itself could increase your Organic Reach and help you engage with your followers.

But keep in mind that performance can be industry specific as well, so do your homework before you simply start changing all of your posting times.

And once you check your own industry’s trends, make sure that the information you uncovered accurately matches your own audience by examining your own Facebook Page’s Insights tab.

Your goal here is to simply avoid posting at times when your audience is unlikely to see posts.

If there’s a verifiable time when engagement and Reach dips, you might not want to share your best content at those times.

And there are a lot more studies on this topic than just the ones above.

Kissmetrics has put together research that verifies the science of timing posts.

All of this research points to one thing in regard to Organic Reach.

Namely, that it’s best for you to let the Facebook algorithm focus on delivering one piece of content to your audience.

This approach mitigates the need for Facebook to filter and select your strongest content.

If you only ever share your best content at the best times, Facebook will still work well for you.

The trick is just to know when to post on Facebook.

Do your own research, and then use the results you find to your advantage.

Tip #4: Variety helps, so start curating

Curation can be a tricky topic.

Why would you want to put another brand’s content on your page?

Isn’t that counterintuitive?

You may be surprised, but it could actually help.

Recent studies suggest that the curating on Facebook can solve many common issues faced by marketers:

As long as you’re mindful of brands and companies that have a strong following or high brand loyalty, you can leverage a strategic tag to increase your own engagement.

So it’s a good idea to start sharing more curated content in addition to the content you create.

Curating content is the relatively simple process of finding great content from other sources on the Internet and then sharing it with your own audience.

As long as you know your audience, and find posts that match your target, you can provide supplemental content that still helps your brand’s Organic Reach on Facebook.

It’s also a good idea to add tags to posts like this when and where it’s appropriate.

In essence, this practice “signals” to Facebook that you have interesting content that needs to be shown more often.

As long as you’re following your analytics closely with this type of targeting, you’ll see good results over time.

Tip #5: Stop selling

One of the biggest toe-stubbing moves that can hurt your Organic Reach is trying to sell too much.

And with Facebook essentially turning the tables on solely commercial content, this is a bigger deal than ever.

But think of it in terms of volume alone.

Even in your own industry, you’ve likely found that there’s an increasingly saturated social media network that you have to wade through.

With Facebook focusing more on engagement, simply trying to route traffic to your website can be a mistake.

That means that Facebook is also evaluating intent when it filters content.

This particular trend isn’t exactly in your favor.

And when you tack on that Facebook users are savvy enough to filter out the content that they don’t want to see even if it makes it past the News Feed algorithms, you have a recipe for disaster.

That’s why understanding where social media fits into the sales funnel and focusing on brand awareness will serve you better for Organic Reach.

Social media is a top-of-the-funnel endeavor, and you have to treat it that way.

Going for a hard sell just isn’t going to work, and that type of content is just going to get filtered out by either Facebook or your audience.

There’s a greater need now more than ever to engage directly with your community.

That means instead of just posting random articles, you need to find ways to have discussions on your Page.

You need to spend more time being active and replying to comments on posts, even unhelpful ones.

Because your audience craves acknowledgement more than anything.

They just want to be heard.

Real-time engagement can help the Organic Reach of your brand more than a sales-oriented post ever could.

That’s why you need to ditch the old sales funnel approach to social media and adopt a more accurate idea of what social funnels look like.

Notice how the elements in the top part of this funnel are more relationship oriented.

That’s because your Organic Reach relies on audience building with Facebook, not sales.

And I can’t over-emphasize how important this shift is.

Because business are almost always affected by changes to social networks, which is why the idea is to share content users are interested in and will actually engage with.

You need to worry about sales a little later, preferably once your audience is established and loyal to your brand.

Which oddly enough means you need to be smarter about your Facebook Ads budget.

Because that’s one of the best ways to invest in building your audience with a longer funnel.

You need to embrace Facebook as a pay-to-play game, because it is for better or worse.

More and more marketers are coming to Facebook, and it’s already the top source of paid social media in the world by a long shot.

Which means the only way you can play, or win, is to start investing your money in it wisely.

Try boosting posts that have already proven to be strong performers, not just the posts you think will perform well.

That means you need to post content first, then check your engagement.

Then if your audience engagement is strong, boost that post so that it reaches even more people.

In sum, create and boost great content, not just any content.

Because if recent trends have shown us anything, it’s that we’re only going to see an increase in spending on paid digital advertising in the coming years.

So learning to couple the pay-to-play element with the other tactics in this post is the best way to move forward.

Since you can’t just rest on your laurels and coast off of Organic Reach anymore, you have to take action.

Tip #6: Consider an alternative route

The final piece of advice that I want to leave you with revolves around a rather unsung element of Facebook: Groups.

From a marketing point of view, Facebook Groups have been relatively incognito due to how a sort of risk-reward equation that always tipped more toward risk.

It was just easier to post on your Page, pay for your ads, and ignore Groups.

But now, they’re looking more attractive.

And this makes sense. A Group around your brand is one that consumers will have to opt into.

Which means they get notifications and engage with your brand at a deeper level.

Plus, they’re free, which can’t be beat.

And Facebook has been giving quite a bit of attention to Groups lately:

With more than one billion Facebook users involved in Groups, we may well be looking at a new frontier for social media marketers.

It may take time to lay the groundwork and build your community, but there’s no denying the potential power of your own Group.

They could be the ultimate answer to the Organic Search issue.

Conclusion

The truth of the matter is that Facebook Organic Reach is not dead.

It’s just different than what you’re used to.

Facebook has changed the game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still play it well.

You just have to realize that your metrics only look different. In reality, your Organic Reach is more accurate than ever, which is a good thing.

But these changes require that you take a new approach to maintaining and improving your social engagement.

A simple change like focusing on quality over quantity is by far the best places to start.

But more than that, try to find the format that fits your audience. Use blog posts, images, and especially video to engage to the fullest.

Then take strides to post your best content at the right time on the right day of the week.

You can also start to curate content that your audience will be interested in, which tells Facebook that your content is shareworthy.

Overall, just focus on brand building, not sales.

And remember that Facebook is now a pay-to-play system for marketers. If you want to win, bring your checkbook.

Finally, start considering Groups as an alternative for opt-in engagement. You could be suprised by what you find.

At the end of the day, your Organic Reach rises and falls on how well you execute the strategies in this post.

All you have to do now is find a way to stick with these changes.

What methods have worked best for keeping Organic Reach up for your brand?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

Is Facebook Organic Reach Really Dead? Here’s How to Break Through It for More Social Engagement

[reviewandbonuss]

Is Facebook Organic Reach Really Dead? Here’s How to Break Through It for More Social Engagement

Every now and then, the overlords of the Internet decide to change things up in the digital marketing world.

And with how fast things change, it can sometimes be easy to miss a noteworthy tidbit of news.

One such tidbit recently came to light, and it’s definitely worth your attention.

Namely, Facebook has started taking steps to change the Organic Reach of pages on their platform.

And that has some implications for everyone.

It doesn’t matter if your Facebook Page shares memes, connects a community, or is a landing page for your brand.

You’re going to see some changes, and chances are they will come sooner rather than later.

To help cut through the clutter and keep a clear picture of the path ahead, I’m going to lay out what’s actually changing.

And at the end, we’ll give you some insightful ways to come out ahead.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to take action accordingly and still have a healthy Facebook presence.

But first, let’s talk a bit more about what Organic Reach actually is, and why it’s changing.

What is Facebook Organic Reach?

Organic Reach on Facebook is simply a measurement of how many people can find you on Facebook for free.

It’s much like organic rankings on a search engine, although in the case of Facebook it’s based on aspects like popularity, post frequency, and other contributing factors.

And when you think about the current state of Facebook, it seems logical that Facebook would be making some big changes.

With more and more content being generated and shared, plus with how the News Feeds curates the content you see, it’s natural that Facebook would need to fine-tune their system from time to time.

And so Facebook is making changes.

Specifically, they’re changing Organic Reach to look and feel a little more like the Paid Reach measurements.

The newer look really only changes a few minor elements, but the numbers will look bad nonetheless.

Previously, Facebook counted Organic Reach as any time an unpaid post appeared in someone’s News Feed.

Now, Organic Reach will only give you a hit if your unpaid post actually enters a person’s screen.

The changes don’t affect how your post is shown to anyone, nor does it really change anything about how posts are displayed at all.

It just affects how Organic Reach is tallied, but that makes a difference.

The seeming paradox then is that you can expect your Organic Search traffic to take a big hit, but that particular metric should be a lot more accurate.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, there’s a good reason for the death of Facebook’s Organic Reach:

“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands, and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”

He goes on to discuss how Facebook will be changing to mitigate this issue.

Specifically, Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be better geared to curate content that builds meaningful relationships.

And it’s worth mentioning that Zuckerberg himself lost about $3.3 billion because of this decision.

But what exactly is this “death” in terms anyone can understand?

More importantly for you, how might this affect your business?

To give you an idea, you have to look back a little bit.

Because as of June 2016, the Organic Reach of a Facebook Page had fallen to a mere 2%.

That’s a crazy drop from just four years prior, and Facebook and Zuckerberg still think that there’s too much Organic Reach for a Page.

So it’s pretty clear that if 2% reach is too much, we’re nearing the end of an era in terms of Organic Reach being the best viable option for spreading your brand on social media.

And the implication is pretty clear for business owners.

Your page is going to have less Organic Reach.

And with Reach dropping, you can fully expect that engagement is going to go with it.

So at this point, you’re probably wondering if there is any hope beyond the doomsday hype?

The answer is yes.

Because Organic Reach is not totally gone, and it probably won’t ever be.

The key here is to simply understand the changes taking place in the Organic Reach algorithms.

The consensus is that Facebook waging war against low-quality content, which means there are still avenues you can take that will help your Organic Reach.

You simply need a different strategy than saturation.

So now that you know what’s going on, let’s look at some ways you can use these changes to your advantage.

Tip #1: Focus on quality, not quantity

First and foremost, you need to understand that Facebook is changing to emphasize quality over quantity.

I’m going to repeat that for emphasis: Quality over quantity is the first place to start.

There’s been a long-running misconception that posting more or less on Facebook equates to more reach, but that’s as ludicrous as treating a “Like” as a useful metric.

You’re just making things worse for yourself if your goal is to post as frequently as possible, especially with the new changes.

And posting infrequently doesn’t do you any favors either.

Because the data points to a truth that couldn’t be further from a quantity-driven approach.

First of all, studies have shown that a moderate amount of posting seems to edge out posting too much or too little.

So when there are fewer posts, it becomes less likely that a post gets lost in your audience’s feed.

Which means your Organic Reach is going to do better with just a few, high-quality posts.

But don’t get carried away thinking high-quality posts can still be posted as often as possible.

Because the data still points in the opposite direction.

Buffer conducted some tests that help prove this point beyond any doubt.

They started by evaluating how many posts were being created per day on their Page.

As you can note, over the course of 2016 and into 2017 they say a fairly significant drop in how many times they posted.

To be precise, they were posting at half the peak rate by the middle of 2017.

And oddly enough, this trend helped them increase their Organic Reach:

They went from capping out with an Organic Reach of ~70,000 to a top reach of ~170,000.

That’s a 100,000 Reach spike that can be directly related to the frequency with which they posted on their Page.

And what’s more, they also saw a boost in direct engagement from this study as well:

This is a powerful illustration of how simply posting less and focusing on quality can improve your overall Organic performance on Facebook.

And this isn’t just a fluke.

It starts and ends with original and share-worthy content that will actually engage your audience.

Which means you need to focus less on pumping out content and focus more on crafting something that’s truly shareworthy.

You’ll see better Organic Reach, and you won’t regret it.

Tip #2: Know what your audience is looking for

A high-quality post isn’t just going to come from nowhere.

It starts with a more concerted effort to offer higher-quality content around your brand as a whole.

That means finding topics that are meaningful and then generating something that’s both shareworthy and relevant.

The more specifically targeted your approach, the better off you’ll be.

Small changes go a long way in improving quality, and the ultimate application is up to your unique brand.

The only way to truly know what “quality” means for your Page is to create some, test it, and then start making changes.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t have any other direction before you just start creating content.

One place you can start is simply by knowing which posts are right on Facebook, such as video.

Sharpie does a great job of creating interesting video that generates views and shares throughout their audience.

Here’s a recent example of one of their videos that partners Sharpie with NBA star Chris Paul:

Even if you can’t partner with a celebrity, you can use video to help boost your Organic Reach and increase engagement.

And success on Facebook through video isn’t just speculation either.

There are plenty of success stories, like this one from Audi:

Even in the highly competitive automotive industry, they were able to boost their lead generation by almost 12%.

And if that doesn’t convince you, I highly recommend you go check out more success stories.

It doesn’t even have to be long video either, as Facebook recently launched their own Boomerang application.

And whether you use video or not, just remember that high-performing and popular Facebook posts are a mixture of entertaining and educational.

Don’t mistake that as an either/or situation.

You need a mix of both if you want to succeed.

Most importantly, I recommend looking into what online audiences are actually consuming these days.

You might love creating and sharing your podcast for a blog post, but you’ll get more facetime with a sharp video or even just a simple photo.

And then there’s also the problem of engagement baiting, which Facebook has started to crack down on.

You might think it’s okay to ask for Likes, Shares, or “votes,” but the dark days of those posts are behind us.

Facebook now filters posts like these and gives them a lower priority than posts with more engaging content and imagery.

So all things considered, you have a lot to consider when you’re trying to pin down what your audience wants to see.

But if you put in the effort, you can develop a system that keeps your brand in the spotlight without dipping into your ad budget.

Tip #3: Consider your timing

You may have heard the news already, but there is such a thing as an “optimal time” when you’re posting to Facebook.

It just depends on a few essential elements.

The basics are pretty simple though.

Knowing when Facebook tends to be most active overall can help you time your posts accordingly.

Studies show that sharing at different times will affect Likes, Shares, and overall engagement statistics.

You can also try to take advantage of multiple spikes like this, but remember you want quality over quantity.

One or two posts per day will do just fine.

If you post at the right time, it’s more likely that your audience will actually be on to see your post.

That by itself could increase your Organic Reach and help you engage with your followers.

But keep in mind that performance can be industry specific as well, so do your homework before you simply start changing all of your posting times.

And once you check your own industry’s trends, make sure that the information you uncovered accurately matches your own audience by examining your own Facebook Page’s Insights tab.

Your goal here is to simply avoid posting at times when your audience is unlikely to see posts.

If there’s a verifiable time when engagement and Reach dips, you might not want to share your best content at those times.

And there are a lot more studies on this topic than just the ones above.

Kissmetrics has put together research that verifies the science of timing posts.

All of this research points to one thing in regard to Organic Reach.

Namely, that it’s best for you to let the Facebook algorithm focus on delivering one piece of content to your audience.

This approach mitigates the need for Facebook to filter and select your strongest content.

If you only ever share your best content at the best times, Facebook will still work well for you.

The trick is just to know when to post on Facebook.

Do your own research, and then use the results you find to your advantage.

Tip #4: Variety helps, so start curating

Curation can be a tricky topic.

Why would you want to put another brand’s content on your page?

Isn’t that counterintuitive?

You may be surprised, but it could actually help.

Recent studies suggest that the curating on Facebook can solve many common issues faced by marketers:

As long as you’re mindful of brands and companies that have a strong following or high brand loyalty, you can leverage a strategic tag to increase your own engagement.

So it’s a good idea to start sharing more curated content in addition to the content you create.

Curating content is the relatively simple process of finding great content from other sources on the Internet and then sharing it with your own audience.

As long as you know your audience, and find posts that match your target, you can provide supplemental content that still helps your brand’s Organic Reach on Facebook.

It’s also a good idea to add tags to posts like this when and where it’s appropriate.

In essence, this practice “signals” to Facebook that you have interesting content that needs to be shown more often.

As long as you’re following your analytics closely with this type of targeting, you’ll see good results over time.

Tip #5: Stop selling

One of the biggest toe-stubbing moves that can hurt your Organic Reach is trying to sell too much.

And with Facebook essentially turning the tables on solely commercial content, this is a bigger deal than ever.

But think of it in terms of volume alone.

Even in your own industry, you’ve likely found that there’s an increasingly saturated social media network that you have to wade through.

With Facebook focusing more on engagement, simply trying to route traffic to your website can be a mistake.

That means that Facebook is also evaluating intent when it filters content.

This particular trend isn’t exactly in your favor.

And when you tack on that Facebook users are savvy enough to filter out the content that they don’t want to see even if it makes it past the News Feed algorithms, you have a recipe for disaster.

That’s why understanding where social media fits into the sales funnel and focusing on brand awareness will serve you better for Organic Reach.

Social media is a top-of-the-funnel endeavor, and you have to treat it that way.

Going for a hard sell just isn’t going to work, and that type of content is just going to get filtered out by either Facebook or your audience.

There’s a greater need now more than ever to engage directly with your community.

That means instead of just posting random articles, you need to find ways to have discussions on your Page.

You need to spend more time being active and replying to comments on posts, even unhelpful ones.

Because your audience craves acknowledgement more than anything.

They just want to be heard.

Real-time engagement can help the Organic Reach of your brand more than a sales-oriented post ever could.

That’s why you need to ditch the old sales funnel approach to social media and adopt a more accurate idea of what social funnels look like.

Notice how the elements in the top part of this funnel are more relationship oriented.

That’s because your Organic Reach relies on audience building with Facebook, not sales.

And I can’t over-emphasize how important this shift is.

Because business are almost always affected by changes to social networks, which is why the idea is to share content users are interested in and will actually engage with.

You need to worry about sales a little later, preferably once your audience is established and loyal to your brand.

Which oddly enough means you need to be smarter about your Facebook Ads budget.

Because that’s one of the best ways to invest in building your audience with a longer funnel.

You need to embrace Facebook as a pay-to-play game, because it is for better or worse.

More and more marketers are coming to Facebook, and it’s already the top source of paid social media in the world by a long shot.

Which means the only way you can play, or win, is to start investing your money in it wisely.

Try boosting posts that have already proven to be strong performers, not just the posts you think will perform well.

That means you need to post content first, then check your engagement.

Then if your audience engagement is strong, boost that post so that it reaches even more people.

In sum, create and boost great content, not just any content.

Because if recent trends have shown us anything, it’s that we’re only going to see an increase in spending on paid digital advertising in the coming years.

So learning to couple the pay-to-play element with the other tactics in this post is the best way to move forward.

Since you can’t just rest on your laurels and coast off of Organic Reach anymore, you have to take action.

Tip #6: Consider an alternative route

The final piece of advice that I want to leave you with revolves around a rather unsung element of Facebook: Groups.

From a marketing point of view, Facebook Groups have been relatively incognito due to how a sort of risk-reward equation that always tipped more toward risk.

It was just easier to post on your Page, pay for your ads, and ignore Groups.

But now, they’re looking more attractive.

And this makes sense. A Group around your brand is one that consumers will have to opt into.

Which means they get notifications and engage with your brand at a deeper level.

Plus, they’re free, which can’t be beat.

And Facebook has been giving quite a bit of attention to Groups lately:

With more than one billion Facebook users involved in Groups, we may well be looking at a new frontier for social media marketers.

It may take time to lay the groundwork and build your community, but there’s no denying the potential power of your own Group.

They could be the ultimate answer to the Organic Search issue.

Conclusion

The truth of the matter is that Facebook Organic Reach is not dead.

It’s just different than what you’re used to.

Facebook has changed the game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still play it well.

You just have to realize that your metrics only look different. In reality, your Organic Reach is more accurate than ever, which is a good thing.

But these changes require that you take a new approach to maintaining and improving your social engagement.

A simple change like focusing on quality over quantity is by far the best places to start.

But more than that, try to find the format that fits your audience. Use blog posts, images, and especially video to engage to the fullest.

Then take strides to post your best content at the right time on the right day of the week.

You can also start to curate content that your audience will be interested in, which tells Facebook that your content is shareworthy.

Overall, just focus on brand building, not sales.

And remember that Facebook is now a pay-to-play system for marketers. If you want to win, bring your checkbook.

Finally, start considering Groups as an alternative for opt-in engagement. You could be suprised by what you find.

At the end of the day, your Organic Reach rises and falls on how well you execute the strategies in this post.

All you have to do now is find a way to stick with these changes.

What methods have worked best for keeping Organic Reach up for your brand?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

[kiyo-alvara-blog]

The Journal of Dr. Kiyo Alvara: Entry 1

Good evening, Journal.

My apologies for neglecting to write recently, there’s been little of note these past weeks. However I’ve had a very eventful couple of days. To get straight to the point, Gaedren Lamm is finally dead, and I’ve met an intriguing group of adventurers who helped make such a feat possible. It would seem that, willing or no, my fate has become intertwined with theirs.

Now, I will start from the beginning. When I woke the other day, I found a note placed on my bedside table. Nothing in my home or workplace had been moved or removed, so the culprit wasn’t a mere thief. The contents of the note informed me that if I wanted to track down Gaedren and avenge Kyth then the writer of the note, one Zellara Esmeralda, wished to help. The note gave me an address and specified that I should go to the location that night to meet with her and a group of adventurers who would be vital to stopping Gaedren from ruining more lives.

I took precautionary measures, of course. I brought along many of my best healing potions, as well as some formulaes, acid vials, and explosives. If things went south and this was some convoluted trap, I was well prepared to fight or flee.

When the sun was dipping down in the horizon, I took my leave and made for the address indicated. I found the door already open, and lights on within. I peeked my head inside, and heard voices down the hallway. Cautiously, I made my way inside.

I found the aforementioned group of adventurers, seated around a table. They asked me if I was the one who summoned them, which I denied. I showed them the letter which I received. One of their group showed me that she received a similar letter, signed with the same name.

Introductions were made. The first to offer his name was Garran, a tiefling and the son of Unae and Elkin Thandas. He’s quite the wide-eyed one, contrary to his appearance. He seems quite friendly, but I fear that the kind of optimism he carries rarely survives contact with the outside world, much as it pains me.

Next was Orda, a large half-orc with an impressive tower shield. He seems a friendly sort, and I shall likely enjoy his company going forward. I’ve made an offer of celebratory drinks later and look forward to getting to know him better.

After Orda was a young woman with dark eyes and a mousy look about her, who introduced herself as Sai Gwenn. The poor dear seems nice, but scared of her own shadow and the coat she wears is in absolute tatters. I have made offer to take her shopping for something more presentable, but she turned me down, claiming she liked the clothes she has.

The final member was a man named Hayden, a student of the sciences himself. He’s an interesting one, I can’t quite put my finger on him. He seems to guard his emotions well, I can’t get a good read on him. He’s clearly well learned and I respect that he’s chosen the same profession as I, albeit he has a focus on surgeries. However his proficiency with knives in a fight is more than I’d expect of someone only trained in surgery, and there’s a guardedness about him that makes me feel there’s more under the surface than I’ve seen. Still, the rest of the group are people with good hearts, so I am certain Hayden is no different. Sai especially seems connected to him at the hip, looking to him for guidance and following him like a lost pup.

When introductions were complete, our hostess made her appearance. She apologized for keeping us waiting, then explained why she brought us together. This group of adventurers had come to Korvosa in search of a woman named Rubella, a shiver dealer who had committed multiple murders and pinned them on a local carnival in the last town their group passed through. She was guilty of having made a powerful form of shiver, so potent that it caused multiple deaths before she was forced to flee Korvosa. What a waste of talent, this sickening misuse of alchemy.

Rubella, as it turned out, had returned to Korvosa after her murderous scheme had been uncovered. She fled to Gaedren with the promise that she would make a stronger variant of shiver to spread in the streets of Korvosa, making the drug lord that much more money.

Zellara informed us that Gaedren had stolen her harrow deck, which was a family heirloom, and in an attempt to get it back her son was murdered by him. One of many lives cut tragically short by his actions. I, for one, was more than happy to assist Zellara in reaping vengeance and bringing Gaedren to justice. Most of the adventuring group seemed to be in agreement on this, since they’d come to town seeking Rubella regardless.

Orda seemed to have his suspicions, however. Apparently in the last place they had been, someone had told a lie and kept a secret that caused more people to be killed, and he didn’t want a repeat of that. He told her he would be glad to help, but he wanted to know anything she might be hiding, anything that might come up later that we should know now.

In the interest of honesty and keeping Orda’s trust, Zellara did tell us one other thing. She was already dead, killed by Gaedren when she tried to avenge her son. She was now trapped, her spirit connected to her stolen harrow deck and her body’s remains, which Gaedren had kept out of some sick fascination. The room which we’d been standing in was not that lavish well lit home we’d believed, with a snap of her fingers she revealed the truth: we were in a place that had long been abandoned and forgotten with the death of its owners.

Orda seemed satisfied with the answer, if perhaps a bit shaken by her surprisingly straightforward admission to being a ghost. I admit to being caught off guard myself. It’s not every day you meet a friendly haunt, after all. Most are quite a bit more sinister.

Zellara informed us that we should prepare and seek out Gaedren’s hideout the next night, as he wouldn’t be there at the moment. Sai and Hayden decided that they would take the extra time to scout the old fishery Gaedren was based out of, while I’d decided to prepare more potions. I told the group of adventurers my idea: I would use a disguise potion and a vocal alteration potion to make myself appear as one of Gaedrens customers, someone drug addled and homeless. I would go inside and scout it out, see if I could locate the children he held hostage, and any other potential dangers. Then I would give them a signal to attack.

The plan was flawed, Hayden pointed out, as we didn’t know the interior to know how to best set off a signal, and we didn’t know just what Gaedren might do to his ‘customers’. Hayden suggested a counter idea, that he would disguise himself as Rubella’s deceased husband, using my disguise potions and a ring they had gotten off the man’s body. He would then take Sai as a ‘hostage’ to offer to Gaedren and Rubella, get close enough to them, and put a knife in their ribs. I was concerned about how realistically Hayden could pretend to be this dangerous woman’s husband as opposed to someone they’re less familiar with, like an addicted customer, but the rest of the group seemed fairly convinced it was a good plan, so I conceded the point.

We each went our separate ways, I spent the night making the potions Hayden would require for his plan, then I retired to bed for the night. I had a restful sleep. I feel as though I had a pleasant dream, although I don’t really remember it well now. I must have brewed my polypurpose panacea incorrectly, as I didn’t have the promised lucid dreams they give me.

Regardless, the next morning I met with the adventuring group in a local tavern called the Red Dragon Inn. We discussed our plans for the evening. Hayden and Sai would enter through the dockside entrance, while the rest of us would circle around back. If we heard any commotion, we were to burst in uninvited and help Hayden and Sai to dispatch any unsavory folks who might have set upon them. The plan concerned me for many reasons, but it was the best plan we had. I handed off the potions I’d brewed to Hayden and informed him of the time limit on each, telling him to be absolutely sure to drink the vocal alteration potion last, so that he wouldn’t waste any time with it on.

Afterwards, I returned home to open my office. Hayden came along, interested in what he might be able to learn from my medical practice. I will be happy to share my knowledge with him, and he agreed to share his notes as well, although he was very specific in telling me that his knowledge was purely surgical and not medical. That was fine, I’m practiced in surgery and while it’s not my forte there’s nothing to lose from reading what knowledge a college has to share. I get to meet with others in the field so rarely, I’m eager to pick Hayden’s brains. He’s only a student at the moment, but the very fact he’s in a medical college rather than apprenticing means that he’ll have experiences in the field that I do not.

Though he said a few things I found a tad off putting, if I am to be honest. For one, I heard him mention “The Lady of Graves” when he spoke to Zellara. I would like to find out what a pragmatic and intelligent man in the medical field could gain from worshipping the goddess of death. Yes, I am aware it’s a common line of worship, especially amongst those who must see death so often. Yes I am also aware that she also presides over childbirth. I still do not see the logic behind someone sworn to help heal others and prevent death in following the doctrine of a goddess who celebrates the nature of death. I can see how it’s a good coping mechanism, I suppose, but I would feel like a failure as a doctor if I needed to take comfort in the idea that my patients dying was simply fate or it’s their time or what-have-you.

I apologize. I got a little heated there. It’s a subject that utterly confounds me, and I cannot believe that an otherwise intelligent seeming man like Hayden would have to take comfort in the shallow platitudes offered by such a faith.

We also got into a conversation about the state of Korvosa after I went about setting a child’s broken leg. Her mother had no money to pay with, and the poor girl was asking if she would be able to walk again soon so that she could keep working so her family could eat. I wish I could say it’s the first time I’d heard this same heartbreaking tale, but this is all too common nowadays. I helped the child and gave them instructions on what they could do to help it heal faster and properly. Afterwards, I told Hayden what I just wrote: that this is all too common, and that there is a huge discrepancy between the rich and poor in this city. Hayden showed distain for how the city was being run, but not for quite the same reasons as I did. He said that this was no way to run a business, and that the short term gains wouldn’t outweigh the long-term consequences. Certainly, he’s not wrong. But it’s such a cold and pragmatic way of putting it when peoples’ lives and livelihoods are at state. Comparing Korvosa to a failing business doesn’t do justice to the cruelty the common folks in the city endure.

I don’t know if Hayden sensed that what he said bothered me, or he simply felt it was time to get ready for our plans. Either way, he excused himself to walk the streets and make sure he didn’t hear any whispers that might clue Gaedren in on our plans.

I closed up shop and made my way to meet the others at the inn, then we made our way to the docks. As we grew close to the abandoned fishery, the putrid smell of stale ocean water and rotting fish filled the air. Orda, Garran, and I slipped around to the back after Hayden drank down the disguise potion and readied the vocal altercation potion.

I didn’t see what happened next, but pieced it together from Sai and Hayden’s accounts later. Hayden and Sai played their parts excellently. Hayden dragged Sai inside and talked down to a violent little gnome who worked for Gaedren. When Rubella entered the picture, Hayden played his part to a tee, and had the shiver maker virtually wrapped around his finger with his quick thinking and perfectly timed use of the wedding ring.

There was one particularly dangerous part, in which I am relieved I didn’t go in by myself as I initially planned. Rubella accepted Hayden’s lie that he’d captured Sai and was using her as a hostage to keep the rest of the adventuring group at bay, and agreed to a plan to make her their drug addled servant much as they’d apparently once done to a group of skulks. However, Rubella pulled out a vial of shiver, and told Hayden they should get started.

With a level or finesse I wish I’d been there to see myself, Hayden managed to make it look like he’d forced the drug down her throat while really switching it out. If he can do that with someone scrutinizing him so closely, I bet he could give magicians and illusionists a run of their money.

Rubella and one of Gaedren’s lackeys took Hayden and Sai deeper into the fishery to work out a business proposition. It’s here that Hayden make a misstep. He tried to rush into the final part of the plan, and in an attempt to get Rubella close to him, he said that on dying he wished he would have been close to her, and that all he wanted now was a kiss. This was apparently too out of character for her husband, even if he’d died and been resurrected. Rubella called his bluff. She and Hayden ended up having a scuffle, and in the process Sai undid the knot Hayden had tied and screamed an ear shattering shriek.

Garran, Orda, and I heard the scream from outside the door, which happened to lead right into the room that the others were fighting in. Orda broke open the locked door, only to find a table in his way, which he also removed from the equation. Garran entered the room and I followed suit.

Hayden had his knives out and was facing Rubella and her alchemical bombs. Sai was…it’s difficult to describe. Her face was inhuman, she looked a bit like a monstrous humanoid bat. I’ve yet to ask her just what the cause of this form was, but she seemed fairly adept at it seeing as she took a good chunk off Rubella’s arm with a vicious bite.

I drew my bow as I entered the room and trained it on the other alchemist. I asked Rubella if she was the one who’d made and was planning to distribute a powerful new form of shiver, to which she agreed. I loosed an arrow into her, and told her that this was a waste of her alchemical talents, ruining others’ lives with her creations rather than helping others. She laughed at me, called me naïve for looking down on her choices. I argued that there are other ways to make money with alchemy, ways that help others and nurture them rather than harming and corrupting everything they touch.

Rather than reply to me, Rubella downed an invisibility potion. There was an open trapdoor nearby, which one of Gaedren’s other minions had escaped through before I’d entered the room. It was certain she’d made her escape through there, and Orda ran to follow after her. I would have gladly joined him, but the vicious little gnome had appeared behind Hayden and he looked like he needed some help. As I stepped into the room and got the gnome’s attention, there was a shout from the room I’d just left and manic laughing. Garran had been attacked by a crazed half-orc who called himself “Giggles”.

I told Hayden to try to back out of the room to give me room to use an explosive without catching him in it. The gnome didn’t take kindly to this and took a swipe at me. I’m quick on my feet when necessary, however, and I managed to avoid his attack. Then I followed up with my own attack. Not with a blade but with a bomb. The gnome knew he was outclassed, and expressed that the money just wasn’t worth it. I told him to run, then, because the only blood I was looking to spill was his boss’. I doubt the vicious little gnome learned his lesson, but perhaps he at least learned enough to find a low profile job that won’t end with adventurers out for his head.

I then went to help the others take care of “Giggles”. It was close quarters, forcing me to forego any explosives at first. However as the half-orc kept getting in swipes at Hayden and Garran, Hayden forcefully told me to hurry up and use a bomb, and not to worry about him. Garran assured me that tieflings are resistant to flames and that he’d be alright, too. Despite my misgivings, I did as Hayden demanded and loosed a bomb at the gleefully murderous half-orc. The others finished the job, and I made a beeline to the trapdoor to catch up with Orda and Sai.

Just in time, it would seem. Orda was trying to save a child who was hanging above a pit with a large alligator inside, and Sai had been deafened by a thunderstone and was being ganged up on by Gaedren and his minion who’d fled earlier.

In that moment, all other thoughts were lost to my rage. Finally, Gaedren was right in front of me. My brother’s murderer was right there. I forgot about everything else that was happening around me as I approached the scumbag. He mocked me, saying that he remembered my brother. He said I had the same weakness behind my eyes as my brother did. He laughed. That disgusting piece of trash laughed at the memory of my brother falling to weakness and dying of his drug.

I barely remember throwing the bomb. I know I said something to the man as I did, but it was all a blur. The next thing I knew, his charred body was on the floor at my feet. It was so easy. It was so, so easy to snuff out his life. I felt a knot of disgust and anger inside which hasn’t completely gone away even as I write this. There was no remorse in that piece of trash human. He didn’t beg for mercy or forgiveness. He laughed at what he did. He deserved what he got. He deserved what he got, he ruined so many lives, wasted so many peoples’ potential, just to make money off their suffering. He deserved to die… and killing him did absolutely nothing. My brother is still dead. His other victims are still dead. I’m still alone. All I accomplished was dirtying my hands. I’m a doctor, a healer. I’ve never killed someone in my life before now.

I feel sick, but this is not a disease I can cure myself of with any medicine.

The rest of the night was a blur. Someone set the building on fire. Sai fed Gaedren’s body to the alligator and freed it from its captivity, for better or for worse. Apparently she can speak to animals and convinced the predator that we were its allies. An extension of that bat-like form I saw before I’m certain. Zellara took in the orphaned children who Gaedren had been using as pickpockets, and we buried her head, which Gaedren had kept in a box as some twisted trophy.

We gathered at the inn where the others had been staying and looked through all the items we’d collected from Gaedren’s hideout before it burned to the ground. Of interest was a key shaped dagger which Hayden was convinced was cursed or haunted, and which bore a disturbing resemblance to the weapon used by the key-lock killer. I do hope it isn’t cursed, the last thing we need to be carrying around is an evil dagger. We also found a broach which bore the royal family’s insignia on it, and which we deduced had probably been stolen from the queen herself. We decided it would be prudent to return it.

I then returned home and collapsed for the night. I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted in my life. I do not envy the life of adventurers, if this is how it always is.

Unfortunately, it seems I am not destined to walk away from this group. In the night, I had a strange dream, which the others later told me they each had as well. An unrecognizable voice was speaking in my mind. They told me that we were going to become great heroes, protectors of the weak and innocent. I saw each member of our group in a battle against a large beast. Each member fought with the skill and power I’d only heard about in stories. Even I was there, using powerful formulae I could only dream of with my current skills. Some of the feats, frankly, looked impossible. Like something the Heroes of Sandpoint would do, not like something a ragtag group in Korvosa could ever pull off. Yet the voice promised we would get there someday.

I…have feelings about that. Not all of them positive. I don’t like that idea that I’m being tugged around by some invisible fate. I don’t like the idea that I’ll have to fight and kill again. I’m just a doctor. I’m the simple kind of hero, the kind who heals the sick and looks for ways to make the common person’s life better. I don’t need the flashy titles, the power, the danger of adventuring. I’d rather leave that to someone strong and capable like Orda, or someone like Garran, who is looking for that kind of adventure.

I feel as though I don’t have much choice, however. I am out of time to continue writing for now, it is late and I have things to do tomorrow. But I will say this: Korvosa is changing, not for the better. This city, my home, is in chaos.