#what do you mean list index out of range you were literally working just fine when I tested you before

[otaku553]

Procrastination doodles

[lost-in-the-80s]

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Pairing: Axl Rose x (fem) reader

Words: 2,546k

Requested by: @sugwinter

Summary: You, one of the most prestigious actresses in Hollywood, meet Axl Rose at a party and the two of you just can’t stay away from each other. 

A/N: I’m sorry Tarantino, but the title fitted too well for me not to use it. Thanks for the request, darling! I LOVED this concept!! I hope you like it 💗

Note: This is the second version of it, since I didn’t like the first one. Tell me what you guys thought of it :)

Tag list: @roger-taylors-car @ladieswttda @teasid @metalheartofgold @slashscowboyboots @ginny-rose-sixx @rumoured-whispers @normatural​ add yourself to my tag list :)

Once upon a time in Hollywood, there was a smart young woman named Y/N. She had always been ambitious and very determined so she knew she wanted to be an actress at a very young age.

When she was 16 she started running after her dreams. Coming from a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles, she’d take the bus every day after school and go to Hollywood, distributing resumes at every set she could find, hoping to get any type of work that could bring her closer to her dream.

The chance came a few months later when she was hired to be the director’s assistant. Her work consisted of getting coffee, organizing his table, staying with him while filming and distributing the scripts to all the cast members.

He was directing a sitcom and one day the main actress didn’t show up for the filming, realizing that the two of them looked alike, he asked Y/N to take her place during that day.

She did such a good job, that the following year he called her asking if she would be interested in taking part in a movie.

That was the first of many jobs, 10 years had passed after that. It was 1991 and Y/N was one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood, any movie with her name on, joined countless people in cinema lines just to see it. 

She didn’t just make movies and series, but she extended her career,  taking part in some modeling jobs for major brands and appearing in video clips.

That’s how she met Steven Tyler, the infamous vocalist of Aerosmith. She had said in an interview that Aerosmith was one of her favorite bands and got surprised when the band’s manager got in touch with her a few days later asking if she would want to take part in a video clip of theirs. 

Doing small talk before the footage they found out they had the same zodiac sign, Aries. After that the two of them got really along, Steven invited her to have dinner with him and his wife and soon all of them became good friends. 

That’s how she ended up here, on March 26th in front of his mansion, a bottle of expensive wine wrapped as a gift in one hand while the other rang the doorbell. 

“Y/N! Come in!” It was Steven’s wife.

“Hello, Teresa, how are you?” She hugged her.

“I’m fine!” She smiled tenderly at Y/N.

There was rock music blasting from the speakers sprawled around the living room, where lots of people were dancing and having fun together. Steven was known for having many friends.

“Ste!!” She shouted, lifting her arms to get a hug from the man.

“Y/N! I’m happy that you came!”  He hugged her while smiling.

“Happy birthday!!” She let go of him. “Here, I brought you a gift.”

“Ohh, this is one of my favorites!” He smirked checking out the bottle. “I’ll take it to the wine house before someone decides to drink it.” He gave her a small smile, turning around. 

That’s when she saw him. He was talking to some people, his hair half-covered by a blue bandana. He was already looking at her, smiling in her direction when their gazes met. 

A shiver ran through her body at that moment. He was beautiful, an adjective she hardly used with men. But damn, she had never seen a man like that before. Everything on him looked perfect, his beard, his hair, his eyes and the shape of his face. 

He lifted his beer in her direction and she gave him a small smile, contemplating if she should go and try to talk to him. However, a friend of hers showed up, blocking her plans.

After a few minutes of talking her friend walked away, but the ginger man had disappeared. Walking towards the kitchen she got herself a beer and went to the backyard where some people were smoking, including Steven.

“Can I have one?” She asked, stopping beside him.

He handed her the cigarette, without saying anything. The two of them just stayed there, looking at the night sky in silence. 

“What’s up?” She frowned, turning to look at him.

“What do you mean?” He looked down at her.

“You’re quiet tonight.” She drank from her beer, still looking at him.

“That makes two of us.” He smiled at her.

“Fair enough.” She grinned. “You go first.” Y/N pointed at him with the bottle while taking the cigarette to her lips.

“I was just thinking… I’m already in my forties.” 

“Annd?” She prolonged the question, raising an eyebrow.

“I thought I’d be dead by now.” He said giggling, making her laugh as well.

She shook her head. “Quit using it and I’m sure you’ll live a very long life, Tyler.” 

“I’ll try, I’ll try.” He puffed some smoke. “What about you? What’s going on that little head of yours?” He touched her forehead with his index finger, giggling at his own gesture.

“There’s a guy inside…” 

He raised an eyebrow, instigating her to keep talking.

“He seems familiar.”

“How does he look like?”

“He’s ginger, with a bandana and leather jacket.” She dragged some smoke.

“Oh, that’s Axl. He’s from Guns n Roses.” He threw his cigarette on the pavement, stepping on it.

Realization took hold of her face. “Oh yeah. Paradise City! I remember now.”

“Did he catch your eye?” He asked smirking.

“You know how I am. I’m weak on the knees for a ginger.” She smirked back.

“Let’s go inside then, I’ll introduce the two of you.” 

She followed him inside the house, putting out the cigarette in an ashtray she found on the way.

They found him in the kitchen, putting some punch on a red plastic glass nearby the counter. 

“Axl!” He shouted over the music, stopping nearby the man. “There’s someone here I’d like you to meet..”

Fuck, Steven. You really know how to be discreet. She thought to herself.

“Axl, this is Y/N.” With a hand on her back, he led her closer to him. “Y/N this is Axl.” He grinned at them.

“Nice to meet you.” Axl said, extending his hand for her to shake.  

She shook his hand giving him a small smile.

“I was just telling Y/N that you guys released a new album this year…” Steven looked at her. 

“There’s two of them actually.” He answered while taking a sip from the punch.

“So I’ve heard! But I didn’t get the chance to listen to them yet.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty recent… Did you listen to the previous ones?”

“I did! They’re quite impressive, I must say.”

He smiled at her. “I’ve seen some movies of yours too.”

“Oh, did you? What did you think of them?”

“They’re… quite impressive.” He mocked her while grinning. 

She giggled. 

“Ste, can you help me with something?” Teresa showed up, hugging Steven from the side.

“Of course my darling.” He hugged her back. “Sorry guys.” Giving them a small smile he left with Teresa. 

“Punch?” He asked seeing that her bottle was empty. 

“Yes, please.” She placed the bottle on the counter. 

Axl handed her a glass, their fingers brushing against each other when she took it from his hand, making a strange electricity run through their bodies.

“Do you live here? In L.A I mean.” She asked before taking a small sip of the beverage. 

“I do, even though I’m never at home. I’m out on tour now, came back just for a few weeks.”

“It must be really tiring to be always traveling.”

“Well, it is, but it’s worth it. After all I get to do what I love.” His eyes shined while he spoke and she smiled at his passion. 

A tall guy came to the counter trying to get some punch for himself, making the two of them move.

Starting to lead him towards an adjacent living room, she asked. “Have you always wanted to be a singer?”

“No really, my family is very religious so I started singing in the church’s choir. Then someone told my mother that I could sing and she made me take classes almost every day. It was very exhausting, but it made me realize that I actually liked to sing.”

Arriving at the room, nobody was there and the music made itself lower, allowing them to talk in a normal volume. They sat on the purple velvet couch. 

“I would’ve never guessed. And are you still religious?”

“I mean, I don’t go to church anymore, but yeah, I’m still very religious.”

She nodded drinking from her glass. 

“What about you? Have you always wanted to be an actress?”

“Yes! I remember being 3 or 4 and sitting in the living room, I’d point to the TV and tell my mom that I wanted to do that.” She smiled with the memory, her eyes getting a different glist. 

“That’s a sweet memory.” He smiled at her.

And so they carried on with the conversation, talking about their favorite things and their ambitions, never letting an uncomfortable silence fill in. Even if they were sure that if the silence set in it would not be uncomfortable. The two were too comfortable with each other for this to happen.

Axl was leaning against the couch casually, his legs spread open while S/N had removed her high heels and was sitting with her two legs sprawled on top of the couch.

“And how did you end up in Los Angeles?” She asked.

“Well, when I was 16 or something, this boy from my school, he’s my rhythm guitarist now, he started a garage band with some other dudes and asked me to be their vocalist.” 

He paused getting closer to her.

“In the beginning, I was very shy, there would be days where I’d literally leave before I could sing anything. But after some time I got used to it and eventually realized that it was nice to rehearse with them.”

“However the band didn’t work out and when Izzy graduated high-school he moved to L.A, he said he’d start a band here. He asked me to come with him, but I was kinda scared of coming to a big city like this, so I stayed in Lafayette.” 

He looked around, realizing that the music had stopped. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t listened to anything for a good while. “I think we’re the only ones who are still here.” He giggled.

“No shit! What time is it?” She touched his arm, turning it towards her so she could see the time on his wristwatch. “Fuck, it’s almost 5 am.”

“Wow. We should go then.”

“Yeah!” Getting up she got her heels and purse and followed him through the house.

There were some people passed out in the living room and Steven and Teresa were in the kitchen, nearby the sink, talking quietly.

After saying their goodbyes Axl and Y/N exited the house. The cool breeze involved their bodies, even though they could see the sun starting to shine on the horizon. 

“Did you come driving?” He asked.

“No, I got a taxi actually.”

“Come, I’ll give you a ride then.”

They got into the car and Axl started driving slowly down the street. “Where should I take you to?”

“I live in Venice.”

“Alright then.” He turned right in a bifurcation.

Checking the interior of the car, Y/N realized it was a convertible one. She gasped. “It’s a convertible! Open it up, please!” 

He giggled pressing a button that opened the bonnet. “Why are you so impressed? I’m sure you have at least three of these in your car collection…”

“I don’t have a car collection. I don’t even have a car” She turned around on her seat. The bonnet was fully open and she enjoyed feeling the breeze on her hair.

“Why not?” He frowned, looking at her for a brief moment.

“You’re gonna laugh at me.” She sat still on her seat, placing her feet on the dashboard. 

“I promise I won’t.”

“Fine… I don’t know how to drive.” 

“Wait. What? But what about all those movies where you were driving?” He looked at her, trying to see if she was joking.

“I wasn’t really driving, silly.” She giggled.

He laughed along.

“Anyway, you were telling me about how you ended here.”

“Oh yeah! So, Izzy came to L.A and I stayed for two more years. I got a job and stuff, but I was always getting in trouble. I’d spend the night in jail and they’d let me go in the morning ‘cause it wasn’t a big deal. But then I got in trouble one more time and they told me they’d arrest me for real if they got me again. So I realized I should leave the city.”

“Hmm, so you’re a bad boy…” Y/N smirked.

“I guess so…. But you’re no saint yourself! You’re not best friends with the press…”

“Well...yeah! The problem is that I don’t know how to be politically correct, I just know how to be me, and people don’t usually like when you give them your honest opinion.”

He looked at her and saw that she was looking through the window.

“On top of that, I have a high tendency of not giving a fuck… I like to live, you know? I like to go out and enjoy every moment, I like to live in the present. But apparently, you’re a bad influence if they see you leaving a club at 3 am every weekend.”

With every word she said, the more he wanted to know about her. She was so much more than what he had thought. 

It was a long drive to Venice and accompanied by the soft music playing on the car radio they talked all the way, never getting tired of each other’s voice.

“That’s my building.” She pointed to a big white building in front of the beach.

“Fully delivered.” Axl said smiling, stopping the car in front of it and turning around to look at her.

“I really liked spending time with you.” She smiled.

“Do you think we could do it again on a date?” He asked expectantly.

“I’d love that! What about Friday?”

“Friday’s good for me. I’ll pick you up at 7 pm.” 

“Okay.”

The two of them just stayed still, looking at each other without saying anything. 

“Is it too early for me to kiss you?” He asked smiling.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you try it?” She smiled back.

And so the two of them leaned in, involving each other in a quick kiss that turned into a passionate one.

After a few seconds, she pulled away, catching her breath and opening the car door.

“Goodnight, Axl.” 

“Goodnight, Y/N.”

Little did they know that this was the beginning of a beautiful love story. Full of struggles and problems but that eventually worked out. They found a way of accepting their differences and getting along in a way that few couples could do. And after many years people still talked about them, after all, they became the most iconic 90s couple. 

[shaekingshitup]

Grindin

A/N: EEEPP. This is my first attempt at a reader insert. Reader is always gonna be black. I missed a many of days. Here is the day 3 prompt because I liked this idea! Kind of based off my favorite coffee shop. Maybe I’ll do more for this lil story? 💁🏿 The chime for the door is literally from this song here. 

Summary: Reader goes back home to open a coffee shop and meets a man that stirs some things in her. 

“I love the concept,” you commented, “ I know we were only interested in black and blue originally. But can you do a mock up with gold lettering as well?”

“YAS! THAT! I like THAT! exclaimed Ray

“Already done,” Lulu noted and pulled out a secondary growler mock up from behind the print that you were assessing.

“You know me so well,” you smiled.

“Yeah, your ass is kinda predictable” she smiled back which earned her a tongue out.

This was your first meeting of the month and so far everything was going great. You loved that you could live out your dreams with the two people you trusted more than anyone in the world. Lulu had been by your side since you both realized you were the only two Spelman freshmen who were both from Cali in your class.  By your second semester y’all were so inseparable that everyone thought you were sisters. And by year 2 you were already living together. Thank God y’all had separate interests which kept your friendship and now your business in a healthy and ever growing state. You were engrossed in the world of science. You had been a bio major who often volunteered at the local greenhouse. That helped you establish your small but busy coffee shop a year and a half ago. Lulu was a graphic artist whom also was in charge of all Grindin social media and the unofficial pastry taste tester. Ray had come along when the ladies were rooming together off campus. He was a community college to 4- year transplant at Clark Atlanta but the boy was born and raised in Macon, Georgia and he’d never let you forget it. It was evident that once he met the girls at a mixer in his first week, the friendship was a wrap. That spawned regular visits back to his parents’ homes on the weekends and even some holidays spent in the south. After graduation, the bond never broke. You and Lulu returned to Cali with Ray in tow so that he could use his business degree to help birth Grindin.

You glanced over to Sherell. The Brewista Lead for the morning shift. You knew that Sherell had been strugglin to keep up a healthy sleeping schedule with finals right around the corner and the nerves of her impending graduation from Lincoln. She was a sweet girl and you couldn’t stand to see her bare any more stress. You were so caught up in your thoughts about Sherell that you had missed the very clear topic change amongst your friends.

“Okay, but that nigga’s arms? They biggg. You know what that mean!” sad Ray pointedly at Lulu

“HA” she cackled, “ that don’t mean nothin’. My guy has really soft eyes and you know Y/N loves a guy who is easy on the eyes,” Lu quips

“Bitch, you see the caterpillar above those eyes? We don’t nee her birthin the next Helga Pataki in these streets”

“Ugh” you groaned as you rubbed your temple. “I don’t know how many times we have to have to do this but I do not under any circumstances want you two meddling in my love life,”

“But” they chorused.

“BUT NOTHING! Every human with an assumed penis and who looks like they got more than $150 in the bank becomes a contestant for your little game of ‘Win a Date with Y/N’! I run a coffee shop! Not a dating service. I’m done explaining shit to y’all. Stop harassing my customers and let my ass worry about who I am with! I mean that shit.”

“I told you we should have started addin females to the list,” whispers Ray as you walk over to the counter.

“Raymond Johnson the IV and Eyeluta Nicole Hathaway, if I hear one more word from either of y’all you both gone be banned from any pastries for the rest  of the month” you spat feeling like the unofficial mother of your group yet again. You took a deep breath and continued toward the counter. 

“Sherell, how’s it going?” you asked a you approached the register.

She sighed heavily.

“You know what? You need a break. Go in the back and relax your eyes a bit. I’ll man the front”

“Oh no. It’s really-“

You cut her off. “Get back there and relax a little. I think I know how to run a register,” you winked.

You were on the register and Antwon was pouring at the bar. You two were in a good rhythm. It was either bustling or there was one customer to tend to today. There didn’t seem to be any in between this morning. 

GRINDIN rang out as the next patron entered.

“Welcome!” Antwon called out as you were assessing the stock supply up in the floor.

When you turned around you were met with... Well, you weren’t quite sure how to describe him. Fine was an understatement. Standing six feet tall was a milk chocolate wonder with a physique that his dark turtleneck and three piece suit couldn’t hide.

Keep it professional y/n

Before you could even get a breath out he growled “Y’all really got Clipse playin every time the damn door open?” He said this with his eyes glued to his screen as if looking up was such a difficult feat to conquer at 7:32 a.m.

“Yeah. It’s a signature touch,” you responded to the stranger. At your voice, he looked up and offered a smirk that probably made most women collapse at first sight. You still hadn’t made up your mind though.

“I’m feelin it.”

“Is this your first time here? I’m more than welcome to answer any questions you have about the menu or the store in general” you offered.

“Nah. I’ve been in a time or two before. Never seen you before,” he very openly eyed you up and down, “I normally let my assistant handle this shit though, you know Miss… “

“Y/N. Well, since you’ve been here before then you’re familiar with our unique take on the menu.” you supplied.

“Yeah, y’all rotate teas and coffees quarterly. You seem to keep a few staples- which I ‘preciate and y’all got some corny ass names for these drinks too.”

You bristled a bit at that last part. “There’s nothing wrong with a little creativity.”

“Never said there was, Y/N” At this point you couldn’t tell if you wanted to serve this man or show him the door. You chose the professional route.

“So, what does your assistant normally bring you Mr…?” you trailed off

“Just Erik is fine. My favorite is the single origin. Black.  It’s always the best way to start my day.”

“Mine too.” you smiled. Maybe he isn’t so bad after all

“If you’re into the single origin and you love that bold, black, taste something similar with just a little more sweetness is Brew Thang.”

He chuckled. “See what I be saying about these names? How you expect a grown ass man to order a drink called ‘Brew Thang’?”

“It’s good. Once you have a taste, you won’t have a hard time getting it to roll of your tongue.” you sassed.

Oh fuck . I didn’t mean it like that. I gotta keep this professional. I don’t need a bad review from this guy.

He raised an eyebrow at you. “Oh really? Then lemme get a taste,” he said licking his lips. Your eyes widened slightly but he caught it. 

“Size?” you asked looking down at the tablet screen. 

“Large” he said with a bld and dark stare, “How much I owe you?”

“This one will be on the house. I want to make sure you’re satisfied.”

OH MY GAWD GIRL? WHO ARE YOU? WHAT IS COMING OUT OF YOUR MOUTH. PLEASE LEAD WITH YOUR HEAD AND LESS OF THE PUSSY

“Antwon, let’s switch. I’ll take the bar. You take the register!” You yelled out and quckly you two transitioned so that he could help the growing line of customer and you could bang out the drinks. Erik followed as you moved to the bar where he watched you work your magic. Once you were done pouring his drink you gave it to him. You got started not the next orders not the board but made sure to keep an eye on him as he took the first sip.  

“Fuck ma. This shit good” It was your turn to smirk. 

“That’s what I was trying to tell you. So now you’re hooked on the Brew Thang?”

“Oh yeah, I’m definitely satisfied.” You failed to hide your giggle as you called out that Ricky’s order was ready. Erik stuck around for a little after that inquiring about other menu items that you told him not be too quick to judge based on their names. The initial tension had dissolved and you two were in a comfortable rhythm of commenting on both the menu and the changes you’d seen in Oakland during the last few years. Thankfully there wasn’t a rush at the moment and it was fine for your to be off to the side of the bar answering any questions he could put forth. He was attentive to your passion regarding the menu and all that went into the shop as a whole.

“Hol up. You ain’t a barista. This is yo shit?”

“I prefer Brewista and yes. I do co-own this shop with my best friend Ray and we have a great Graphic Artist, Lulu, on deck too” The more he learned about you. The more he wanted to know.

“Okay Miss Entrepreneur. I see you. Damn, does that mean that you tha one that come up with these corny ass names then?”

You scowled playfully. “You keep talkin on my name and you gone catch these hands. I’m a professional. But I grew up on these streets. I can throw blows Erik,”

“My bad baby girl. I respect your grind.”

“Okay. So who really is the corny one here?”

“Whatever,” he smiled. A genuine smile with teeth and this made you want to melt right there. “Anyways, speaking of Brew Thangs, you got  a ni-“

His phone rang and he glanced down cursing. He put up his index finger and gestured that he just need one moment. You nodded your consent.

“What up T?”

In that time that he took his call, you looked up and saw that you had a line out the door. Sherrell came back out to the floor and your two were in a great rhythm getting through the 16 drink orders that had come up. When you looked up again, Erik was no where to be found. Now that the shop was stable you let Sherell do her thang and went into the back to re-convene with Lu & Ray.

“Y/N we need to get you an award for best employer. You really be out here goin the extra mile for your staff,” Lu said. You lifted the corner of your mouth in a weak attempt at a smile.

“Uh uh. Hoe what’s wrong?” Ray said noting your dejected spirt.

“Now? Now you listen to me?!” you yelled. “ALLL the time, I tell yo asses not to intervene in my love life and the one time it may have actually been beneficial y’all were no where to be seen!”

“I know she didn’t” Ray said.

“Yeah. She did” Lu, retorted. “I’m gonna ignore your funky attitude because I can see you’re going through something sis. What’s the deal?”

“I was talking to this guy. This man. And y’all he was so charming and sexy as hell and he wasn’t afraid to talk about shit that matters and I just turned away to make some drinks and he disappeared! I really thought he was gonna make a move. Or at the very least that you two would move in on him and make me sit through another awkward date. But nooooooo, you two finally decided to respect my wishes for once and now Imma die alone!” you monologued.

“You done?” Lu asked.

“Yes” you pouted.

“Aww come here baby,” Ray said with his arms outstretched, “I’m sure he’ll be back.” He hugged your frame tightly and rubbed some circles into your back. “Especially if you turned around when you were in front of him, cuz BABY GOT BACK!!” He yelled.

You and Lu laughed as he started smackin your ass and shakin his own. Soon enough you were all in the back twerkin like it was the first night y’all meet all over again. Hopefully he’d be back.

I’m sorry I forgot who to tag! Soooo if you got tagged and didn’t wanna be I’m sorry. The inverse is the same 😁

@twistedcharismaaa @raysunshine78

@ghostfacekill-monger @yoursoulstea 

@shewrites02 @sarcastic-sunshines

@thadelightfulone

[jamiebluewind]

Fantasy High Theory: Fabian has an eating disorder

TW: eating disorder symptoms, anorexia symptoms, abuse mention, death mention, violence mention, gun mention, alcohol mention, drug mention, trauma mention, smoking mention,...

Word Count: about 2100

I know this is a big assumption to make with what we have, but I couldn't ignore all the data and the warning signs. In fact, I think that even if Fabian does not have an eating disorder at this time, he's certainly at risk for one and needs the issues addressed before it gets worse.

Before I get into it, let me remind everyone that I am about to talk about a very heavy subject. Remember, stay safe and consider the warnings before you continue. You can always message me for a summary of the red flags or for an edited version if you need it. I would rather you be safe than to have you're like on my theory.

Okay? Okay. Let's start by defining a few things.

Eating Disorder: Any of a range of psychological disorders in which people experience severe disturbances in their eating behaviors and related thoughts/emotions. People with eating disorders typically become pre-occupied with food and/or their body weight/shape.

ARFID: Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder is an eating disorder characterized by eating very little food and/or avoiding eating certain foods. It does not include having a distorted body image (as occurs in anorexia nervosa) or being preoccupied with body image (as occurs in bulimia nervosa). People with avoidant/restrictive food intake may not eat because they lose interest in eating or because they think eating has harmful consequences. They may avoid certain foods because of their color, consistency, or odor. When it becomes more severe, it can cause substantial weight loss, slower-than-expected growth in children, difficulty participating in normal social activities, and sometimes life-threatening nutritional deficiencies.

Anorexia nervosa: Diagnosed when patient BMI (body mass index which is a rule of thumb measuring body size vs mass) is low for their age and height. Severity is classified as mild (BMI of greater than 17), moderate (BMI of 16–16.99), severe (BMI of 15–15.99), or extreme (BMI of less than 15). Hallmarks of anorexia include limited food intake, excessive monitoring of the calorie and fat content of food, fear of being “fat”, problems with body image, denial of low body weight, excessive exercise, food rituals, cold intolerance, mood swings, sleeping issues, chronic fatigue, distorted body image, and many more. Eventually, the body goes into starvation which cause a lot of bad symptoms.

Atypical anorexia nervosa: All of the criteria for anorexia nervosa are met, except the individual's weight is within or above the normal range.

Again, ANY BMI can still mean a person has an eating disorder. It is NOT confined to those that are underweight. The BMI is only there as a red flag and to help classify severity of anorexia. I want to make this very clear, not just for my theory, but for the people reading this who recognize parts of it in themselves or others. I'm about to give an example that gets... personal in order to show that people who don't fit the stereotype of being underweight can still have an eating disorder. How personal? My own.

I am overweight to obese (depending on the doctor and the range). I don't exercise much. I eat pretty well around friends. But I have an eating disorder. I just... don't get hungry most of the time, so I forget to eat a lot more often than is healthy. A LOT more. I've been to the hospital a few times due to dehydration. I've collapsed because I literally forgot to eat for two or three days. I could have died at one point because despite being overweight, I was eating so little that things just... stopped working. Again, I was overweight. People and doctors thought I was just lazy. I was told to eat less and exercise more. Even my blood tests came back fine until one day, they didn't. And even then, nobody listened. Somebody doesn't have to look how you expect them to in order to have a problem. Also, don't be afraid to reach out for help if you feel like some of this hits close to home or someone you know is showing symptoms. It's okay to need help.

So remember, eating disorders can affect anybody with any body. The important thing is to be kind, supportive, and encourage professional help such as cognitive therapy.

****

Now to list Fabian's risk factors (I only listed the ones I believe he has)

Dysfunction family: This is a big risk factor for Fabian. His father is chaotic evil and (despite loving his son) puts massive pressure on him and tries to make him conform to his ideal for most of Fabian's life. Fabian has seen his father abuse his crew and snap at the drop of a hat. His mother has been a heavy alcoholic and mostly absent his entire first 16 years and when she gets off alcohol, she puts an extreme amount of pressure on him herself.

Abuse: This is another big one. His parents have been verbally abusive, emotionally abusive, neglectful in a variety of ways, controlling, manipulative, isolating, and his mother rested his food intake. He could have also been physically abused in the guise of sparing.

Genetics: Fabian's mother is very slim. Using images of weights and comparing it to her shape, she in fact fits the underweight shape which may or may not imply a genetic component depending on if the normal body shapes are different for high elves or not.

Exposure to warped body ideals and weight stigma: Exposure to "body ideals" in places like the media (especially if at a young age) can increase body dysfunction and eating disorder risk. Weight stigma can make this worse due to discrimination and stereotyping based on a person’s weight. Fabian has actually been exposed to this a lot due to his father and the crew. He's a kid around very strong muscular people and he feels pushed to get stronger to live up to his dad. It's also very easy to imagine that crew members who were not strong or active enough got a very bad reaction from his father, which would reinforce the ideal. Some of this is conjecture, but it's not so far outside the realm of possibility to be impossible.

Participation in sports: He's on the Bloodrush team and is a fencer.

Pressure to have a certain body shape from family: I think this risk factor is there too, especially when his mother takes over training.

Bullying/Teasing: Fabian was actually bullied by peers when he first starts school, but I believe his parents were bullying him long before that.

Trauma and PTSD: Oh boy, is this solid. He was most likely traumitized by his parents before high school. He saw two new friends die the first day of school and nearly died himself, only saved by Riz. He watched two teachers die by gunshot right in front of him (and a staff member killed by bludgeoning). Fabian mentions having nightmares about Riz killing Daybreak which might have been due to it being via gunshot. He was forced to kill people due to the situation he found himself in. The person who was supposed to have been helping them the entire time (Biz) turned out to be an evil dude who trapped one friend in a palimpsest and wanted to capture another. He was stuck in jail for weeks! His family was attacked, his home was damaged, and his dad died (and by his hand no less). He and his friends almost died to a dragon. That's a LOT of trauma for a kid to try to process and Jawbone mentioned that he never came to visit him, so he probably dealt with a lot of it on his own.

Low self-esteem: This is unfortunately something else he has. Despite all the bravado, he doesn't know how to be a friend or have people like him for who he is (instead of who his parents are or how much money he has). He tries to put up a cool front, but he judges himself very harshly.

Perfectionism. One of the strongest risk factors for an eating disorder is perfectionism, especially self-oriented perfectionism, which involves setting unrealistically high expectations for oneself. If they fail to meet their high expectations, the person becomes very self-critical. Fabian has this type of perfectionism.

History of an anxiety disorder: This one is reaching, but possible. People often show signs of an anxiety disorder (generalized anxiety, social phobia, OCD,...) before the onset of an eating disorder and Fabian stays on edge a lot, worries excessively, puts up a front, and deals with nightmares.

Substance abuse: Fabian has had alcohol and drugs before the age of 16, his parents almost encouraging it. He smokes regularly. Addiction runs in his family as well with his mother being an alcoholic and his father doing multiple drugs. Neither parent even hides the fact that they take drugs and drink alcohol to excess, the crew probably took drugs and got drunk in front of a young Fabian, and Bill offered drugs to his friends upon meeting them.

History of using weight-controling methods and dieting: Fabian exercises a great deal. He skips meals. He has a limited number of things he will eat. There is a lot of evidence to back this up.

Limited social networks: This was a HUGE issue before high school. Fabian was very isolated. He had no friends, limited social activities, and lacked proper social support. Recently, he's been skipping class exclusively which on top of smoking a lot, puts distance between him and other people.

Long story short? Our boy is at risk. Big time.

****

List of common signs of eating disorders (including anorexia)

Limited food intake: Seen when he has mostly protein smoothies, his mother tries to give him limited rations, and when he refuses to eat with his friends more and more as the series goes on. The first incident of it was in Cool Kids, Cold Case where Fabian refused the food he was offered on two separate occasions, passing it to Riz both times. Once was after the battle with Daybreak and being stuck at the police station a good while. The other was when the teens were hanging out at Riz's appartment when Sklonda got takeout. Fabian's mom also makes him earn food as seen in the live show. This mentality could have very well been internalized, even with Cathilda there to try and give him more.

Excessive monitoring of the calorie and fat content of food: He worries about empty calories, how fattening something is, and removed the cheese from a slice of pizza and dabbed the oil

Fear of being “fat” or in a shape that is not the ideal: In episode 1 of season 2, he is very preoccupied with staying trim and tight.

Excessive exercise: He exercises who knows how long every morning plus for Bloodrush plus the times outside of that

Food rituals: This is interacting with food a certain way (like small bites or how it's prepared) which causes anxiety when not followed. The pizza event might be one, but it's hard to say without a pattern.

Sleeping issues: Fabian has issues with sleeping, dreaming, and nightmares. His father confirmed this and he himself mentioned his nightmares.

Weight loss: By comparing his previous official artwork with his new official artwork, it's easy to see that Fabian looks visibly thinner. He's also VERY cut. (very defined muscles requiring very little fat) for his age. He was muscular last year sure, but his chest and abs are much more defined this year. Being that cut means that despite how muscular Fabian is, he has been eating less and probably doing fat burning exercises, getting a lot of his nutrition from multivitamins and whey, and would have less energy than normal.

Negative energy balance/chronic fatigue: This is only a possibility, but it deserves being mentioned. If this is going on, it puts a spin on some of Fabian's other actions in season 2, episode 1. He showed up late on move in day and didn't really move anything (just carried a book), which might have been a character thing, but could have also been because Fabian is running on empty and capable of things like adrenaline fueled busts of energy, but otherwise dealing with low energy and fatigue.

Also, Fabian is smoking now which works as an appetite suppressant as is common among those with eating disorders.

(Signs with no evidence as of this post: problems with body image, denial of low body weight, cold intolerance, mood swings)

~*~*~*~*~*~

TLDR: Fabian is showing a lot of symptoms of an eating disorder and also over a dozen risk factors. The number of both is substantial enough to see a pattern. Enough that I sincerely hope that it's acknowledged during the season because if Fabian does not have an eating disorder, he is at substantial risk of developing one.

PS: I know it's data heavy, I might have missed a few things, and it could be totally wrong, but I seen enough there that I thought it might make for a solid theory. D20 is no stranger to heavy subjects and I think if they do cover it, they will do a good job (as always). If they don't, I still learned a lot making this theory and maybe a few of you will as well. ^_^

[darwin-xf]

Close through the Dark

Just some pillow talk from circa SOSS. Good clean fun. The rest is at AO3. The middle chapter is filthy fun, but you can skip it just fine. If that’s not your thing. Sorry if you saw this. Penultimate chapter of Vox coming very soon! xo-D

————————————————-

“That was it.” Mulder said, some minutes after they had collapsed to the bed.

They lay side by side in the near dark of his bedroom, his fingers laced behind his neck, his eyes idly following the shifting shadows on the ceiling. She was sprawled on her stomach, close but not touching him, her face half buried in a pillow. She emitted an occasional satiated murmur.

“That was what?” she asked, lazily.

“That was the best sex I’ve ever had. Red hot monkey sex, Scully. That was some primitive bootknocking.”

Her laugh settled into a smirk, her eyes still closed.

“Was it ok when I…”

“More than ok.” In fact, their encounter had been playing behind her eyelids as she drifted next to him. She stole toward him and kissed the underside of his jaw, then rested her head on the landing strip of his chest.

“Good,” he said, circling his arms around her and giving her a squeeze. “I would normally, uh, ask first...”

“That’s not bad as a general rule,” she said. “But I think I set the tone, Mulder. For this particular soirée.”

“I picked up on that,” he said, smiling at her.

“I’m not really sure what came over me...”

He shrugged, complaining the furthest thing from his mind. Also, never good for Scully to overthink. In bed, anyway.

His window was open a sliver, allowing the city’s dusky spring hum to wash over them. Bars coughed patrons back up to the sidewalks as happy hour timed out, more carefree and certainly louder. All over the city clusters of tight blossoms weighed down limbs. A night bird trilled nearby and light from a million bulbs worked its way around the edges of his blinds which swayed and rattled in the breeze. A car alarm blared fruitlessly several blocks away.

“Why do the best words for sex all originate from the French?” he asked, leaning down to kiss her mouth. “Tonight’s...skirmish, you might be interested to know, took over the top spot from the rendezvous we had last Thursday.”

“You have a list? Have you been making reports on me from the beginning, Mulder? Taking your little notes?”

“That water isn’t from the faucet, is it Scully?” he asked, gesturing to the half-empty glass they’d been sharing.

“Jug in the fridge.”

“Good. Nothing for the record. It’s all up here,” he said, tapping his temple.

She lifted her head and looked at him. “What did we…?” A slow smile spread across her face. “Oh yeah. Thursday was nice.”

“Last Thursday beat out our power lunch from three Mondays ago, if you must know, which, at this point, is taking the bronze. Nipped it at the wire,” Mulder said.

She looked at him quizzically. Their physical intimacy had been progressing nicely. Which, if pressed, she might admit was an understatement.

“Lunch is a contemporary English word. Nineteenth Century, I think. Luncheon. Power is Latin in origin maybe? But I’m pretty sure it comes to us via Anglo-Norman French as the verb poeir-to be able to. Why aren’t German words sexy, Scully?”

“I can never decide whether your capacity for remembering literally everything except my birthday is more a curse or a blessing,” she said, dragging her fingers through his shorn hair. “You’re so minky,” she muttered, nipped at his pec.

“Me neither,” he said. “But when it comes to this,” he said, wagging his index finger between them, “It’s all good.”

“Hmmmm,” she agreed.

“I’ll work on the birthday thing.”

She snorted. “I won’t hold my breath.”

“We celebrated this year.”

“You invited me to dinner after you overheard Skinner wish me a Happy Birthday.”

“You noticed that? How does Skinner remember your birthday? Why does he? He never mentions my birthday.”

“I’ve never taken a swing at him.”

“You’ve held a gun on him though. And accused him of treason.”

“I guess he’s the forgiving type.”

“Good thing, or he would have canned me ages ago.”

“That's true.”

“There was that one time. Just before we left for Wisconsin? We sang in the bar?”

“Three years ago? I was dying of cancer, Mulder. Even Bill Junior sent a card.”

“Scully, I…”

“It was nice all the same. You don’t often have occasion to see sparklers in February. I never got to eat my Snowball, though.”

Scully peeled herself away and stood at the end of the bed, pressing her arms skyward with hands clasped in a deep stretch, dark in her hollows, not a stitch on. His eyes went soft, taking her in, as his tongue toyed with the sore spot on his freshly split lip.

“There’s a dirty joke there somewhere, but I’m too distracted to think of it.”

————————————————-

They had pulled on some clothes and were at his dining table eating toast and lentil soup.

“Is this from a can?” Scully said, pointing toward her bowl with her spoon. “It’s good. It tastes like my mom’s.”

“It is your mom’s” he said. “She gave me a quart of it from her freezer at Thanksgiving. She insisted.”

“She probably thinks you’re too skinny. And generally a helpless bachelor.”

“I’ll take what I can get. Besides, I like her. I’ve never met a Scully woman I didn’t like.”

“Remember Aunt Maura, my dad’s spinster sister? She’s kind of a drag.”

“With the lavender hair?”

“That’s her. Mom only invites her out of obligation.”

“She seemed like kind of a sourpuss,” Mulder agreed.

“Who spends all of Thanksgiving dinner with people you might see twice a year complaining about noisy children and the lack of amenities on their recent cruise?”

“I kept wanting to ask her about her hair. But I thought it might be rude.”

“You have good manners, Mulder. But, you've never spent time with my mom as my lover.”

“True. You weren’t putting out in November.”

“Not that you know of.”

“Touché, Scully,” he sad. “But you weren’t, right?”

She just shook her head. He went back to his soup.

“Wait. If memory serves, we engaged in some pretty hot premarital intercourse on my sofa not a half hour before meeting your mother for brunch. This was, like, months ago.”

“We did more than that. There was very little room for the Holy Spirit, as I recall. But she didn’t know that. And what, Monster Boy, do you mean by premarital?”

“You know what I mean. Does she know now? That we’re... going steady?”

“Hints have been dropped. Also, we played some serious footsie at brunch. Not to mention I brought you to brunch. She’s not an idiot.”

“Huh. You know what I think, Scully? I think your mother knew what we were to each other long before we did.”

“Maybe she did.”

“I’m not sure how...”

“Well, I’ve heard stories that you can get…a little...intense when I’m incapacitated.”

“You know how the rumor mill is.”

She laughed. Down in the street, someone yelled “Debbie, don’t do this to me!” the plaintive wail echoing up through the corridors of buildings.

“Maybe we should close the windows,” she said.

“It doesn’t bother me. For once I’m about to curl up with my favorite warm body and someone else is acting like a lunatic and going home alone.”

“It’s nice up here,” she said.

“I couldn’t believe your mom gave me your cross to hold, when you were gone. I was afraid I’d lose it. I wore it for a while.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, well I don’t have a jewelry box.”

She smirked at him.

He looked down and smiled, still shy around her from time to time. “I’m just glad I got the chance to give it back.”

“I still have that football video you gave me that day. Somewhere. Maybe I’ll even watch it one day.”

“I was very suave, wasn’t I? Also, a jackass.”

“To me, you were adorable, all sleepy eyed and meek, drowning in some green grandpa windbreaker. You’ve filled out since then,” she said, running her eyes over his bare chest and arms.

“I was so relieved. And petrified. I wanted to scoop you up and snatch you away to my lair forever. Or else turn on my heel and spare you ever seeing me again. I fought those dueling impulses for years, where you were concerned. I was more like the monster from Beowulf than boyfriend material. Grendel.”

“Who wrote Beowulf?” she asked. I had to read that in AP Lit.”

“Anonymous. The same person who wrote Go Ask Alice, a cautionary tale to warn prim young women of the perils of the fast life.”

“Prolific,” Scully said. “And such range. Too bad the name is lost to history.”

“I’ve always wanted to name a dog Grendel.”

“Not a fish?”

He stood up and made his way toward his fish tank. They flashed and scrummed near the surface as he approached—barefoot and boxered, her favorite look—and darted after the flakes as he tapped them into the tank.

“Grendel was hairy and bipedal. Mammalian. Omnivorous and moody. He lived with his mother. All wrong for a fish.”

It occurred to her that Mulder wanted to honor this Medieval mythical monster like a long dead but fondly remembered great uncle, the story of Grendel more plausible to him than Jonah and the Whale to most Christians.

“I’m glad you didn’t succumb to any of those impulses,” she said. “And I’m glad we seem to have found some middle ground.”

Finish at AO3...

[sept-dix]

soulmate! au (bae jinyoung)

summary: soulmate! au with baejin in which he’s still an idol who’s part of wanna one a/n: requested

so how it works is that soulmates share emotions

kind of

whenever your soulmate is feeling any type of extreme emotion, you feel it too

and vice versa

and apparently, according to everyone around you who had already met their own soulmates, you’ll just know when you meet yours?

apparently you’re supposed to feel like a rush of a range of emotions when you meet them for the first time, and you just know in your heart that you’ve met them

or whatever

sounds kinda sketchy to you but ok

anyways the one thing you’re thankful for is that whoever your soulmate was seemed to be relatively emotionless lol

he seemed to rarely feel any type of way extremely enough that you felt it too

most of the time growing up, you’d just feel a random sense of joy now and then

of course there were times when he got sad and angry too but those times were rare

but tbh you kind of felt bad for him bc although you were generally an optimistic and happy person, you’re also super short-tempered

so there must have been times when your soulmate who was having a perfectly good and happy day must have gotten fricking irritated out of nowhere

so you always make a mental note to yourself to apologise to him when you two finally meet lol

ok anyways things were going smoothly for about the first 15 years of your life

until suddenly you started to feel super down all the time?

like on some days you’d be going to school, doing your work, hanging out with your friends, doing whatever you usually do but there’d always be this dull ache and sort of.. hopelessness? at the back of your mind

it started out with you feeling this way for like 1 or 2 days in a few weeks but the frequency started increasing to the point where you were feeling like this almost every other day

the reason why you were feeling this way should have been obvious to you but for some reason you just couldn’t figure it out

guess it’s like how people sometimes miss what’s right under their nose

you try to think of reasons why you were feeling this way because honestly everything in your life was going relatively fine and you weren’t particularly having any big problems

you were having a particularly bad day once when you were hanging out with your friends and they notice

so they start asking you about it and once you confess that you have no idea why you’re so lost

they’re like “omg y/n... it’s obvious isn’t it? it’s your soulmate”

and it suddenly hits you and you’re like oh wtf....

and you get a little overwhelmed bc for some reason you’re thinking about how if you were already feeling so low all the time, your soulmate who was the actual person feeling the full force of the emotions must be going through such a hard time

what’s he going through that makes almost every other day so confusing and hard for him? assuming he’s around your age, he’s kinda young to have gone through anything too horrible

the thought breaks your heart

in fact you somehow feel so bad for him that you start tearing up

your friends are like oh y/n :((((

one thing you hate about all this though is that sometimes your own emotions get buried under your soulmates’

like now and then you feel sad or down because of your own life but because your soulmate was feeling that way pretty often you don’t even know whether you’re the one who’s sad or if it’s your soulmate

and this means you can’t even take care of yourself properly

the inherent flaw in the system tskkk

anyways after a few days one of your friends invites all of you over to her house to like hang out

and one of your friends is having a super bad day bc of her soulmate

wtf this kind of thing makes you hate the soulmate system so much because if one person is already sad then why does the universe have to double the feeling and increase the negativity index in the world? smh

in fact you’re so angry about it that you tell yourself to calm down bc if not your soulmate’s gonna feel it lol

so in order to cheer up your friend your other friend suggests you guys watch the second season of produce 101 which had started airing a while ago

and you’re all eager to agree bc y’all loved the first season

so you guys marathon the first few episodes of broduce and even from the first episode you have your eyes set on the mmo boys

i mean how could you not they are literally talking every five seconds

and their performance of A is not too bad and you’re especially interested in the guy with the pink hair like you think he dances super well

so this means that while watching the show you should be most affected by daniel right since you’re the most impressed by him?

wronggg

there’s this other trainee called baejin who looks super shy and anxious throughout the first few episodes and for some reason your heart breaks every time they show him struggling

like you empathise with him so much that you feel like you almost know exactly how he must feel?

you don’t even know much about this guy but you can tell how unsure and hesitant he is

as the weeks pass it becomes a tradition for you and your friends to come together every friday night and watch broduce together (where can i get friends like these lol)

you’re kind of surprised because in the episode where daniel gets ranked last in his sorry sorry team and the disappointment shines through in his eyes despite his smile

you’re more concerned and curious about what’s gonna happen to baejin

so like although you claim to your friends that daniel is your one pick they all know that it’s baejin lmao

as the episodes pass you are sooo glad and proud to see him gaining confidence

when you guys are watching the final episode and baejin is the center for hands on me you actually cRY because of how happy and proud you are

and when it’s announced that he’s going to debut? there are no words to explain how happy and relieved you are bc ur FAV MADE IT!!!

but as you’re watching the ending moments of the last episode and it’s late into the night and all your friends including yourself are sobbing messes

suddenly there’s a thought that sneaks its way into your mind

tbh you weren’t really feeling all sad and low recently? especially in the past few weeks

and it’s just that of course all of you guys were pretty emo about broduce but you were so particularly invested and focused on baejin

and considering the fact that you weren’t one to get so emotional about stuff like survival shows

you feel like it’s almost as if,,,,,,

never mind, you shut yourself up before you can even entertain the thought because it’s a ridiculous one and your friends would probably laugh at you if you voiced it out loud

so you just let it go and cry happy tears for baejin that night and a little bit more for your original fav daniel who has risen to the status of a king and a little more sad tears for jonghyun & the rest

anyways so yeah the days go on as usual after that and you get so busy with school stuff that you don’t really have time to pay too much attention to wanna one stuff

so like around a month later you’re with your friends as always hanging out when one of your friends is like

“hey guys i think wanna one just released their debut mv wanna watch”

and you guys are like hell yeah

so you watch

and the thing is??? you haven’t seen baejin for so long despite being so attached to him bc you’re so busy but the moment he appears on the screen again you’re so overwhelmed bc wtHECK you love this boy

you’re so happy watching them at their debut showcon

and you’re like wow i’m gonna be this boy’s fan forever he’s so talented and amazing and handsome and funny etc etc etc the list goes on 4ever

but as you’re thinking that there’s the other thought creeping into your mind again and you’re troubled

you think about it for a while

and decide that the only way to understand it is if you could meet him

which is nearly impossible because he’s a fricking superstar

but,,, they’re having their first fansign soon and although you don’t have enough money to like buy hundreds of albums to guarantee yourself a spot in it

you decide that maybe you could apply with just one album

if you got in, then it was the universe trying to make something happen

sounds kinda stupid and highly unlikely even to you but you have nothing to lose so you buy that album

((you get daehwi’s photocard lmao))

when the announcement for who got in is up you’re super anxious and you open the website and ???!!!!!

!?!?!!??!

your name is there??!!

you have to rub your eyes and squint a little to make sure that you’re not hallucinating but yes, your name is right there

you are overwhelmed to say the least

like you had no idea what to make of this because??? you literally bought ONE album?????? this has to be a joke

you know you should be grateful and thanking the lords for the miracle because that’s what this was - a damn miracle

and beyond that you’d never actually expected to make it this far but now that you’re here you have no idea what to do next

like you’re Actually gonna be meeting baejin (at the back of ur mind you’re kinda feeling lightheaded at the thought of daniel up close but mmm yeah)

and you want time to slow down so you can slowly plan everything out but of course not

time moves the fastest when you want it to pause

so when the day comes you spend like 3 whole hours getting ready with the help of your friends who are screaming at you because they can’t believe your luck

you don’t dare to tell them the actual reason behind why you applied bc you’re embarrassed lol

but anyways everything else passes in a blur and before you know it you’re inside the tiny fansign venue and the 11 members are right there in front of you

you purposely avoid looking at baejin bc it makes you super anxious and you’re afraid to do it but you do get a little distracted from your original intentions by the other members lol

after all you were a fan of them all

soon you’re queuing up to go talk to them and baejin is towards the middle of the members

you don’t even remember what you talked about with the first few members but once you get to baejin

and look at him

and he looks up at you and says hi?

you

are

floored

for a fleeting second you wonder if this was the feeling of being starstruck

but you look at him and..,,

why does he look starstruck too

“hi! what’s your name?”

he manages out after a second but his voice is kinda shaky and his wide eyes stay on yours

and you try to reply him but you can’t because your voice has run away

and after a second he just puts down the marker and looks at you with his eyes full of so many different emotions

and as cliched as it sounds, in that moment you know

after a few moments of silence you somehow manage to choke out your name

and baejin somehow manages to write it out and sign your album

just as he finishes signing and opens his mouth as if to finally say something, the security behind him looks over and gestures for you to move on to the next member

and your mind is telling your feet to move but somehow you stay rooted to the spot looking at baejin who looks like he has so many things to say

but in the end the security ends up asking you to move again and this time you do

you can’t say anything to the rest of the members because you are sooo conflicted like first of all??? baejin

second of all?? was this the end? you hadn’t even managed to say anything to him

so the rest of the time is a daze and the reality only hits you when you’re back at your seat

and you see him looking at your direction several times

you’re panicking though because you’ve missed your only chance to talk to him so how is anything gonna work out after this?

but suddenly you remember what your mother always told you about these things

if it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen. the universe will find a way to make it happen

surely enough, when the fansign wraps up and everyone leaves

you’ve just stepped out of the door when a burly big man comes towards you

“excuse me, is this y/n?”

one second you’re lowkey scared but you nod anyway

“i’m sorry, could you come back in for a second? bae jinyoung asked for you. i believe it’s something important”

drop me an ask or message me to tell me what u think! thank uuuu for reading <3

ps requests are open

[golddaggers]

chemistry // part three

pairings: teacher!dylan o'brien x student!reader.

warnings: cursing.

a/n: took me long enough, but it’s out! I really hope you’re enjoying this series as much as I’m enjoying writing it.

word count: 3,6k+

part one - part two

Keeping a secret was never really a big deal to me until I was forced to hold a big, hot potato inside my mouth. Well, not really, it was a pretty crappy metaphor, but the thing was: not telling anyone I had recently made out with my hot chemistry teacher was driving me nuts. I wanted to scream at every popular cheerleader who had picked on me: suck it up, bitches, I scored your dream guy.

Oh, no, that’s lame. I honestly think somebody should charge me in for being a horrible teenager. Fuck, it was all so overwhelming! Plus, keeping it from Karen was suffocating me. We had known each other for over seven years now and in that entire time we told each other everything. Literally everything. From our first period to the excruciatingly graphic details of our virginity loss, which, may I tell you, was definitely not pretty. I needed to vent with her, on the other hand, I could also hear Mr. O'Brien’s words echoing in my mind; I couldn’t put his job on the line because some urge to gossip.

Huffing, I started drawing random figures on the corner of a paper I had over my desk. My English teacher, Mrs. Donaldson, who happened to be an adorable old lady and actually one of my favourite teachers, handed to my class a sheet filled with tips on how to write a good narrative essay. She wanted us to, at least, start a brief story as well; it would be our second exam in the semester. Therefore, everyone was busy trying to come up with ideas, while I, uh, was stuck. To say the minimum.

Normally, I’d be all over the place to do it, because I actually loved writing, but today I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it. My head was too lost in thoughts about last night’s events to focus enough on the blue lines in front of me. Shit, never in my life I wanted to yell so much.

“Miss Smith?” The old woman whispered, her tiny hand touching my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Donaldson.” I shot her an embarrassed smile, biting my bottom lip afterwards. “Everything is fine, I guess, I’m just worried with some personal stuff. I’m going to start this soon, I promise.”

“You poor thing…” She shook her hand, squeezing my upper arm tenderly. “Do you want to wash your face, maybe? Or drink some water? You look a bit sick.”

“It isn’t necessary, I’m-”

“Sh, kid, just go. It’s only ten minutes for this class to be over.” Her eyes rolled as she waved her at me, dismissing my plea. Man, people really should stop interrupting me. It very, no, deeply, annoying. “Just make sure you hand me this done on the deadline, okay?”

Uh, considering I desperately wanted to go out for a little bit of fresh air, she didn’t need to push me so much to leave, so I agreed without thinking twice, slipping out of the classroom quickly and heading to the ladies restroom nearby. As soon as I got inside the quiet place, I understood why Mrs. Donaldson had said I looked sick: my skin was few times lighter, giving me a sour-milk-like appearance.

Inhaling deeply, I turned on the faucet, allowing the water to run through my fingers for a few seconds before actually washing my face with the cool liquid. Whilst doing so, I began to think about my latter actions and I still had no idea why this was bothering me so much. I mean, it was only one kiss. One good kiss. Hell, Dylan was a great kisser. Just amazing, those lips… Okay, focus. The point is: what would happen now? Just back on our regular student/teacher relationship or something else? Fuck, fuck, fuck! I had never felt more lost.

Switching the water off, I dried my hands and face with some towel tissues, firmly deciding I should talk to Mr. O'Brien soon. Things needed to cleared up for me, otherwise a spot at the local hospital’s psychiatric ward would be waiting for me.

“I just don’t get it, Brittany… Why doesn’t he notice me?” Briannah’s voice echoed on the corridor outside, which made me suddenly panic and hide within one of the small cubicles, going up on the toilet so that they wouldn’t see my feet. “I am attractive and successful. A real trophy.”

“Of course you are, Bri, Mr. O'Brien is stupid.” Her nonchalant tone almost made me throw up. These girls were unbelievable.”That’s the only explanation to why he hasn’t noticed you.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not. He’s smitten with that Smith weirdo. I caught him staring at her, like, a thousand times now.” My breath hitched on my throat, eyes growing wide to her last sentence. “Urgh, men are so strange.”

“Agreed.”

“But I never give up on a challenge, I’m still going to make him mine. Whatever it takes. Now come, we don’t want to be late for his class, do we?”

A few high pitched laughs could be heard fading away, a door slamming shut soon afterwards. I slided down to the floor, not sure to what to do with this information; not the part where Mr. O'Brien checked on me, after last night, I was sure I did catch his attention, or he wouldn’t have kissed me, but the ‘whatever it takes’? It’s so creepy and sounds so much like a soap opera thing. Jesus.

Nonetheless, although I wanted to, I couldn’t stay hidden in a restroom any longer. I had classes to attend. His in particular.

“Okay, Y/N, suck it up.” I murmured, getting back on my feet and unwrinkling my white shirt. “You need to be a woman about this, alright? Alright.”

I walked outside, chin up in the air, and went to the English classroom to pick up my stuff, pacing myself for the next forty-five minutes staring at Dylan’s cute tush, cute lips, cute everything. By this point, my hormones were laughing at my face, giving a rat’s ass about what was right. As if they were alive to care.

Oh yes, I’m definitely getting a spot at the psychiatric ward.

“So, can anyone tell me, based on the current graphic, if this reaction is endothermic or exothermic?” Dylan pointed out, his, now that I have come to notice, long, slim index finger pressing the board where a perfect graphic was drawn. “No need to be shy class.”

“Come on, Smith.” Karen whispered, pinching my thigh, erupting a low ‘outch’ to crawl out of my lips, which, in a matter of seconds, earned to myself the teacher’s attention. “Y/N here knows the answer.”

“Oh, she does?”

Chewing my bottom lip, I finally allowed myself to look at him, finding his eyes pierced on me, the irises of a liquid honey. A small smirk pulled the corners of his mouth up, so adorably cute, I couldn’t help but mirror his expression, nearly forgetting we were at a class crowded with people.

“So…?”

“It’s endothermic, Mr. O'Brien.”

“Can you say why?”

“Uh, looking at the graphic, you can see that the enthalpy grows as the reaction progresses, which means it’s absorbing energy while reacting. That classifies it as endothermic.”

“Perfect, that’s exactly it.” A delighted hum fell from his lips whilst he turned his back and wrote the classification above the draw. “As miss Smith correctly stated, an endothermic reaction absorbs energy, in most cases heat, from the environment. It’s not spontaneous, like an exothermic reaction, it has to be provoked…”

So he proceeded on his explanation, eyes sparkling with excitement. It was incredibly adorable, to me at least, the way he loved his profession so much. But I haven’t been the best judge lately. Not when he was involved, anyway. I guess our kiss worked like a catalyst that triggered the crush I had long forgotten back on. Tell me about an exothermic reaction.

Fine, no more chemistry puns. No one needs those, plus I’m the only who finds them amusing; wait, maybe if I told them to Dylan he would think it’s a funny trait of my personality. Or probably that he made the terrible mistake of being with a crazy girl.

My own thoughts made me chuckle while I copied the informations O'Brien had already put on the blackboard. He wasn’t exactly a writing person, but each topic the man considered important for our exam, and personal learning as well, was perfectly listed there. This organisation was perfect for later studies.

“Psht.” My best friend muttered, her shoulder lightly brushing mine. “What is up with you?”

“This is the fourth time today I tell you there’s nothing wrong. I also texted you three times saying I was good. Why do you keep insisting?”

“First things first, you never told how your ‘class’ went.” She said, rolling her eyes and glancing over her shoulder to see if no one was paying attention to our small conversation. “Second, Mr. McHottie-”

“Don’t call him that!”

“Mr. McHottie hasn’t taken his eyes off of you today. What is up with that?”

“Shut up!” I exclaimed, lowly, my eyes narrowed whilst I shook my head. The brown haired girl solely sighed, her green eyes seeming bored. ��Look, I told you nothing happened. Plus, if people hear you talking that-”

“I don’t fucking care, Y/N!”

“Is there are problem, miss Smith and miss Williams?” Dylan queried, ceasing his extensive monologue due to mine and Karen’s angry whispers.

“No, Mr. O'Brien.” Karen denied, straightening herself back on her place. “We’re fine, aren’t we, Y/N?”

In an attempt of keeping myself together, so I wouldn’t fight with her in front of everyone for a silly reason, I took a deep breath and nodded. I knew Karen was upset with the way I was acting in the past two days; to be honest, I didn’t fully comprehended what the hell was going on with me, nonetheless, she needn’t to act like a child about it.

However, before I had even time to, I don’t know, write her a note or something, saying I would explain things later, the bell rang, announcing the end of the class. She gazed over her shoulder at the door one last time, her eyes soaked in upsetness.

Fuck.

I shoved my books back into my blue backpack with an angry huff, placing the right handle on my shoulder.

“Miss Smith? Could you wait a little bit? I want to speak with you.” Spinning on my heel to face him, my eyebrows knitted together, I shot him a confused glance, not knowing why he was asking me to “talk” when a couple of geek girls were still inside the room. “It’s about your grade.”

“Oh, oh, yeah. I totally meant to talk to you about it too.”

O'Brien placed his warm palm against my back, leading me, who was formerly standing next to the exit, towards his desk. Oh God. I knew it was innocent, believe me, I did, but I just couldn’t help the rough wave of electrical shocks that hit me when his hand tenderly pressed my upper back.

He, then, near his stuff, began fumbling through his papers, also leaning in to search on his drawers too; however, if I’m allowed to make a side note, I was damn sure I had the very exam he mentioned carefully stored home inside a file on the back of my school compartment, which means this was some lame excuse for us to talk in private. Smooth, Dylan, just smooth.

I put my hands on my waist, allowing a soft sigh to crawl out my lips, gazing back to find that Angela, a sweet brown eyed girl with glasses and a high ponytail, was closing her notebook and placing it within her greyish backpack. The other one, her friend, Marcia, was positioned by the exit, waiting to go.

“Okay, all set. Bye, Mr. O'Brien. Smith.” She mumbled awkwardly, trudging to the threshold where the blonde teenager awaited for her.

“Bye.” We both replied, waving goodbye.

The second the tall wooden door was slammed shut, Dylan ceased looking for my “wrong” test. Instead, he walked up to me, opening a space between me and his table. For a moment, I got lost on his whiskey coloured eyes, this time filled with doubt. I knew it must have been just as conflictuous to him as it was for me.

“We should-”

“Yes, but not in here.” He said, shaking his head. “It isn’t safe.”

“Then where?”

“Uh, I’d offer my place.” Under those words, I felt myself grow numb and my heart skipped a beat. “Yet, I don’t think it is suitable. Just… Just meet me at this bar later, at eight.”

“I can’t go out tonight, my mum wouldn’t let me.” O'Brien frowned, his forehead wrinkled in exasperation. “Oh what the hell, I’ll figure out some excuse. Just write the address and I’ll be there.”

“Are you okay with this?”

“Of course I am, we need to talk about what happened and if can’t be here, it has to be somewhere else. I don’t really care.”

“Okay, I’ll just write in here and, uh, I’ll be waiting for you there.”

“Fine.”

Convincing my mother to let me go out at night was the hardest thing I have done in my life, however, I managed to succeed at it, promising I would behave and not get into trouble. The rule she established was that I should be home before midnight; what wouldn’t exactly be a problem, because I didn’t think the talk was going to last long. He was probably going to say that it had been a mistake, that we shouldn’t do it again, then I’d be back home. Yes.

Nevertheless, the fact I was most likely getting rejected by O'Brien, despite knowing the undeniable spark we had between us, didn’t stop me from picking up the nicest dress I had in my closet. Well, it was nothing fancy, just a tight black dress with a considerable cleavage on the front that would get his eyes glued to the exposed area of my chest. A girl can try to be sexy, right?

A laugh fell from my mouth as I finished applying the last layer of red lipstick. Giving myself a small wink, I went downstairs, heading out where an Uber was already waiting for me. I quickly got inside, finding a sympathetic looking old man behind the steering wheel.

“Where are you going, miss?”

“It’s a small place downtown called ‘Rojo’ or something like that.”

“Oh.” His forehead wrinkled whilst he scratched his beard. “I know where it is. It’s a bar… Are you sure you’re not too young to be going there?”

“Uh, I think it’s none of your business.” Shaking my head, I fastened my seatbelt. “Now could you please drop me off there?”

“As you wish, young lady.”

The next twenty minutes were painfully slow and quiet; the driver was probably pissed at the way I responded him, not that I cared anyway. If there was something I hated, it was people invading my personal space. Like, he had no business on what I would do at that bar. Ok, I perhaps shouldn’t have come off so strong, the poor man was just being nice to me…

Oh bite me, as if I hadn’t enough to worry about already.

Trying to keep those thoughts away, I shook my head, inhaling a good deep breath and watching the trees pass by me in a blur. Once more, possibly the nth time today, my mind flew back to last night’s kiss. To be honest, I was still in awe, the silky touch of his lips pressed onto mine, his grip on my waist, his hands bringing us closer… Shit, that brown haired, mole speckled man was purely intoxicating. Like a very addictive drug flooding my blood, providing me with a overdose of serotonin.

And I should definitely dim down on the cheesy stuff, because, man, it feels weird. I was getting too excited. What the hell was going on with me?

“Girl, we’ve arrived your destination.” The Uber drive muttered, glancing over his shoulder. “That will cost $20.”

“Thank you.” I mumbled, handing him a twenty dollar bill and quickly walking out of his car, watching the poorly lit place I was currently about to enter whilst hearing the tires screeching as the driver sped out.

“Okay, now I totally see what his point was.”, I thought, gripping my small purse strongly and heading towards the small bar. At a first glance, you would think this was a haunted house due to the entrance aspects, however, once inside, the pub was actually pretty cosy. A light jazz music was playing in the background, small booths perfectly arranged… I could risk myself saying it was a tad romantic. Plus, it was the kind of place no one I knew would visit, which was probably the reason why Dylan chose it.

Speaking of the devil, he was here already, sitting carelessly at a table in the back. Hell, he was looking good. His chestnut brown hair was tousled, beard carefully trimmed, framing those pink lips of his in a way they shouldn’t, a thin grey shirt tight around his muscles… Fuck, I wanted nothing more than to jump onto him and scatter kisses on all of him. Savouring that minted flavour once more.

I clamped my bottom lip between my teeth, trying to contain the sudden rush of adrenaline that ran across my form. He didn’t have to know how his mere presence affected me so much. God he made me feel like a fifteen year old finding out about boys.

“I thought you weren’t coming.” O'Brien muttered, as soon as he acknowledged my presence. He, then, sipped at a white liquid from a glass that was on his table, eyes still gazing down to the cup. “I’m surprised you did.”

“We needed to talk.” I shrugged, taking a seat in front of him. “Plus I never back away from the things I say.”

“Yes, I wouldn’t expect less from you.” His honey irises eventually risen to face me, incredibly hardened this time. “You’re such a mature person, Y/N, I guess it was why I forgotten you are my student last night.”

“Mr.-”

“No formalities, please.” He rolled his eyes, excusing me with a wave. “We can excuse them for a moment, just let me talk, alright?”

“Fine, Dylan, go ahead.”

“First I want to apologise for what I did, I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”

“Excuse me? Are you honestly apologising for kissing me?” This time it was my turn to act annoyed, my hand unconsciously landing over his while I huffed. “I really, really, enjoyed it. Also, it isn’t like you have forced me into it anyway. I kissed you just as much as you kissed me.”

“Yes, but I am the adult. I should know better than letting my impulses get the best of me. I feel like I-I corrupted you or something.”

“Of course you didn’t, that’s silly. I’m seventeen, not five years old.” A small giggle fell from my mouth, my thumb still circling the back of his hand. “But, if you feel uncomfortable, then we can pretend it never happened.”

“This isn’t about being comfortable, it’s about doing what’s right. If we were in a different situation, I’d choose to be with you anytime.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because it could get you in trouble. Both of us.”

“I don’t care. Not when doing what’s wrong feels so right to me.” Our gazes linked, so filled with emotions I felt overwhelmed for a second. His fingers intertwined with mine, causing my heart to beat irregularly; the electrical waves were back too. “Doesn’t it feel good? Please tell me I’m not wrong about this.”

“It feels amazing, Y/N.” Dylan traced a wet line on his bottom lip, squeezing out palms together. “Can I… Just one last time…?”

“Kiss me? Yes, you can. We don’t have think about the consequences now, do we?”

“No, we don’t.”

Without breaking the skin contact, I hushedly moved to sit beside him, crashing my lips onto his the second my butt was pressed against the cushioned booth. He didn’t hesitate either, hands going down to grasp my hips, digits massaging the region at leisure whilst the man hungrily searched for my mouth, tongue slipping in, fighting with mine. Man, he was a good kisser. I had shudders slapping my form whenever he locked my lower lip between his.

I laced my arms around his neck, pulling our bodies closer and deepening the fond action, wishing I could make this moment last forever. However, a minute or two later, the air ran dry, making us pull away, noses still brushing one another, eyes still connected, foreheads still glued. Everything fit perfectly, like it was meant to be, no matter what the external rules were.

“Oh fuck…” The whiskey coloured eye man whispered, breathlessly. “I fantasized about this a hundred times. I knew it was wrong but I wanted it anyway.”

“You said if we were in a different position, you’d choose me. So… Let’s pretend you’re not Mr. O'Brien and I’m not Miss Smith. We’re Dylan and Y/N, two people who happen to fancy each other. ” Leaning forward I, stole a peck from his perfectly shaped lips. A chuckle escaped afterwards. “What do you say?”

“Yes. I think I can do that. We just have to be Mr. O'Brien and Miss Smith at school.” Dylan dragged his mouth across my face, scattering feather light kisses on my cheek, erupting goosebumps all over my body. “Now what do you say we kiss one more time? For luck.”

“Uh-huh. Anything you want.”

While I surrendered to his gentle touch, I couldn’t help but think that he was everything I never realised I wanted before. And now that I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t let him slip away from my fingertips.

[minisception]

Initial Impressions of the Black Legion in Codex: Chaos Space Marines (2017)

The short version?  It’s all about this guy.  A Despoiler for every season.

Ok, so, we’ve seen previews and spoilers for the Black Legion, and for the new Chaos Space Marine codex in general, both official and unofficial:

the official Warhammer Community legion focus article

rules spoiled by Winters SEO on youtube

points changes spoiled by Miniwargaming on youtube

There might be a minor stat or point difference that the previews missed, or a rule change or stratagem here or there that managed to go unspoiled, but for the most part, we pretty much know what we’re getting at this point.  So, at first glance, where does that leave our beloved Black Legion, the arch-enemies of the setting?  Perhaps I’m being uncharacteristically optimistic, but actually I think we’re going to be in a pretty good place.

Look at these idiots with all their different weapons.  Don’t they know the Black Legion uses bolters and only bolters?  That guy in the front gets it.

To get the negatives out of the way, I'm on record as despising our legion tactic.  The leadership buff is fine, but the other part is only usable with rapid fire weapons, which for CSM means bolters, lasguns, and plasma guns only, making this a very narrow tactic.

A tactic that only works on rapid fire isn't so restrictive for loyalist marines, since most of their units only come with bolters by default, and they have at least two decent rapid fire special weapon upgrades, but for chaos marines many of our units don't have rapid fire weapons at all (including black legion staples like possessed and berserkers), and many of the units that /can/ have rapid fire weapons have the option to trade them for close combat weapons, so trying to use this tactic means /taking away/ options that are already there, which is literally the opposite of what Black Legion are about.  Further, fluff wise we're aggressive and like to get stuck in, if our tactic was going to favor anything, it should have been the melee builds that this tactic specifically discourages.

Black Legion bikers, a saving grace for our terrible legiontactic?

And I still don't think it's any good for anything apart from maybe bikes and maybe infantry horde (and even then exclusively led by abaddon, never without him ever).

Bikes get a nice points drop in the new book, they’re armed with rapid fire weapons AND melee weapons by default so you can take advantage of the tactic while still playing them aggressively, and they have a set advance distance so you don’t have to give up a bunch of their firepower to use the tactic only to end up rolling a measly 1″ advance move.

And big hordes, of cultists in particular, don’t ride rhinos anyway.  With Abaddon to keep them in line, the hit penalty isn’t as bad, and you aren’t going to suffer the huge losses from morale that large squads invite.  This could work particularly well with the new ‘tide of traitors’ stratagem.  The enemy killed 30 of your 40 man cultist blob?  For two cheap command points (which Abaddon will courteously provide himself), remove the 10 that are left and have the entire unit of 40 walk back on from any board edge.

I wish the official cultist models looked like their design in Dawn of War

But even for the units that can make best use of it, I don’t think this tactic is particularly good?  I mean, rapid fire weapons are good for the double tap.  You should never want to give up half your firepower AND take a penalty to hit on the other half, just for d6 extra inches of movement.  So the tactic is really only worth using if you're outside of rapid fire range to begin with, which means you knock out maybe one round of shooting with it per game?  Not even one, if you go second against an aggressive enemy (far more common in 8e than 7e), or if you use transports.  Or are fast like bikes.  And heaven help your shooting if you're stuck targeting something that imposes an additional penalty to hit, or benefits from cover.

60 bolter buddies using this tactic, even with abaddon to help, will inflict less than four wounds on average against marines in cover or smoking rhinos.  Alphas or Raven Guard in cover will take even fewer.  120 cultists don’t fare any better.  If the extra shooting you get from that one round while advancing at long range does so very little, why bother in the first place?  The sort of army the tactic most benefits would have been better off with some other benefit, like the night lords trait which would protect the units with a shrouding effect while they close into range, or the iron warriors tactic that helps those shots injure things in cover once they do get close enough to rapid fire.

So, a handful more wounds caused on the way in, maybe, and only if you're building that specific kind of list - rifle armed horde infantry led by abaddon.  deep strikers?  you get nothing.  build for melee?  you get nothing.  in a transport?  you get nothing.  msu?  you really probably shouldn't.  I don't personally got time for that.

$10 adds up fast if you’re only using 3 models, and you want 120 of them

And while a cultist horde with abaddon using this tactic and the cultist stratagem to replenish losses sounds nice, but it's kind of prohibitively expensive, since there is no multipart cultist box where you can build all the models with rifles.  The cheapest rifles come is three mono-pose models in a box of 10, and those three are going to start looking very repetitive if you try to build huge units out of them.  And cost a lot.  At 3 for $10, you're looking at more than $250 for 80 of them.  And with a new starter box out, the DV cultists are less common and less cheap on the secondary market.

Anyway, yeah, I don't like the tactic, don't think it's good, don't think it's a good fit for our legion, and don't think the particular builds it encourages are a great way to go regardless.

- HOWEVER -

“I feel like being positive and optimistic for once!” “Start your post with a several thousand words of pure negativity.”

Despite not liking our legion trait AT ALL, not on its own and not for the Black Legion in particular, I’m still pretty happy with the list overall.

I love that command trait - especially with the melee-leaning builds that I prefer for Black Legion.  Sure, it's situational, in that it only works against imperials, but the Black Legion more than any other CSM force should be all about hating imperials, and since warlord traits are chosen at the start of the battle, you can just pick something else if you aren't playing against an imperial army.  Probably unholy fortitude.  Abaddon is always stuck with it, but he has so much else going on that you'll hardly notice if one of his many amazing abilities isn't working in  a given game.  Point is, the command trait is fluffy as heck, which matters the most to me.

I knew him, Horatio.  He was a weak and pathetic fool.

And I love the stratagem - Re-rolling ones to hit is redundant with character auras from lords/abaddon, but also lets you spread out a bit without worrying about losing those re-rolls.  In particular, you can play the deep striking terminator plasma spam game without paying for a babysitter, which frees up your Abaddon I mean your warlord to support the body of your force.  And with the slaaneshi stratagem that plasminator game is more deadly than ever - just 5 terminators can put out 20 overcharged plasma shots on the turn they arrive, re-rolling ones thanks to the black legion stratagem.  Sure, that's three whole command points spent in a single maneuver, but it's a maneuver with the potential to break the back of an opposing army in a single devastating round of fire.

The artifact I'm not as enamored of - d3 mortal wounds is, frankly, just not enough for a one use item - but then again basically every generic artifact is built for melee.  If you're running a lord or exalted champ, then you should be giving them one of the artifact weapons, no question, since for some stupid reason we don't get master crafted weapons.  But what if you aren't?  Sorcerers apart from tzeentch don't care for any of the artifacts, and even then we have better options for psykers than smite.  Slaanesh and Khorne daemon princes like their respective aligned artifacts, but nurgle can't use theirs and for tzeentch, again, we have better options for spells than smite.  So if you're running a lord or champ, or a daemon prince of khorne or slaanesh, then the eye of night is garbage; but if your army doesn't have any of those (your HQs are, say, Abaddon plus a sorcerer; or Abaddon plus a warpsmith, or a nurgle prince casting shroud on possessed, or w/e), then d3 mortals once per game is still underwhelming, but it's better than nothing, I guess.  A warpsmith could use it to knock the last couple wounds off a knight that survived a use of the killshot stratagem, or something.

I still think it should have targeted a point on the field, hit everything within 3" of that point for d3 mortal wounds, with vehicles suffering d6 mortals instead.  And, even more than that, I think we should have gotten something else entirely.  If they were going to bring back an old BL relic, I would much rather have seen a new and improved version of the spineshiver sword, or the last memory.  And I think a named suit of terminator armor would have been a lot cooler than any of that.  Or a return of the Kai gun would have at least gone well with that legion tactic I don't like.  but whatever.  Point is, I may not like the Eye of Night, but I don't think it's completely useless.

But back to more positive notes, I love abaddon himself.  the extra command points, combined with some absolutely glorious stratagems, make him too good to pass up in any game big enough to afford him.  Abaddon alone is the biggest boon granted to the Black Legion in this codex, and on his own he makes this subfaction a force to be feared.  On top of his already impressive qualities from the index - reroll all failed hit rolls for nearby black legion units, in both shooting and assault; automatically pass morale for all nearby black legion units; his own highly impressive offensive and defensive stats and abilities - he’s now 13 points cheaper (one point cheaper for each Black Crusade) AND comes with two extra command points if he’s your warlord.  With the many impressive stratagems this book has, those extra points are absolutely golden.

The Warmaster in all his dark glory, now with game rules to match!

Altogether, Abaddon is a fantastic warlord, and in particular a fantastic fit for the Black Legion, since his abilities are so versatile that they can support literally any way of fighting.

Want to walk up the field with a bunch of rifles like the tactic thinks you should?  Well, Abby does that, rerolling misses to help with the hit penalty, keeping your cultists from running, and will pay for a use of tide of traitors to replenish losses.

Want to play a backfield tank-based gunline?  Abby will keep your cultist screens in place, pay for a couple killshots for your predators, and his re-roll to hit aura will make sure those deadly shots don’t go to waste.

Want to run a transport-based assault rush?  Throw Abby and an Exalted champ in a land raider with some berzerkers or possessed, support with some rhino-mounted melee-armed CSM squads and a couple maulerfiends or heldrakes and ram your army down the enemy’s throat, wrecking face with re-rolls to hit and wound from your character auras.

Want to run a deep strike assassination run?  Drop abby with some termie sorcerers, warptime him into position, buff up his offense and defense, and watch him eviscerate even the most intimidating enemy warlords, and laugh as your opponent tries to deal with the rampaging Despoiler in their midst while the rest of your army moves into position unopposed.

No matter how you’re running your Black Legion, They’ll always fight longer and harder when the Warmaster’s personal favor is on the line.

Don’t forget everyone else!  The Despoiler can’t have ALL the fun

And while that’s kind of it for Black Legion specific stuff, there is a lot to be said for the general changes to units and points values in this book, even if those changes aren’t Black Legion exclusive.

The point changes are all more than welcome, especially the 60+ point discount on defilers, a unit narratively associated with the Black Legion even if they aren't exclusive to them on the table.  The bike discount is also very nice, particularly as they're one of the few units that I think might be worth using the legion tactic with, though I'll need to look into re-converting my melta-bikes into plasma-bikes.  The Lord of Skulls discount is huge, actually making it a real contender with knights for lord of war slots.  I may have to start saving up for one.  The fist discounts are great for our champions and terminators.  Points drop on cultists is great if you want to try to run the lasgun-spam cultist horde with Abaddon, though again I find that prohibitively expensive in terms of real world munny. 

The daemon forge stratagem is very nice, particularly alongside the discounts for defilers and lord of skulls.  The veterans of the long war stratagem is fantastic.  The fire frenzy stratagem is great for helbrutes, though unfortunately it isn't written with the keyword type face, so it probably doesn't work with forgeworld dreads like I had first hoped.  The spell familiar stratagem isn’t too impressive for regular sorcerers, but is fantastic for aspiring sorcerers in Rubric squads.

Double wounds on possessed is great.  Double the firepower on Obliterators is too, especially if you give them the Mark of Slaanesh to shoot twice on the turn they deep strike.  The new equipment options for Plague Marines are great, letting you build them as a melee beatstick in addition to the medium range attrition game they were already decent at.

The aligned psychic buffs and stratagems are particularly great, and, as already mentioned, not only does abby help you pay for the stratagems, but you can also stack all those buffs on the despoiler, turning him into an absolute monster.  Usually they'll be better on a unit, but if abby's about to throw down with a particularly scary mofo - say he's about to solo a primarch - then the ability to 'redirect all power to the despoiler' will be more than awesome.

What's that rowboat?  you want a piece of this?  Sure, sure, let me just have my three sorcerer buddies give me shrouding and fnp, boost my invulnerable save, negate yours entirely, give me +1 to hit (I know I still miss on a '1', you buffoon), and, why not, throw a couple mortal wounds on you before we start; then with stratagems I'll heal up any damage I took previously, shoot you twice with the talon of horus, and then lay into you with 12 talon of horus attacks and 2d6 drachnyen attacks (plus extra attacks on every 4+ to hit thanks to that prescience), re-rolling to hit because I'm so cool and re-rolling to wound thanks to the khornate exalted champ rounding out my 'one advisor of each alignment' cheer leading squad.  And if by some miracle you're still alive, that champion also re-rolls all to-hit and to-wound rolls, and they're carrying a murder sword with your name on it.

Ha ha, fun times.

WE ARE RETURNED!   DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!

Black Legion isn't the best legion out of this book.  It just isn't.  That honor probably goes to Alpha Legion, with several of the others in line before us.  Heck, if you aren’t fielding Abaddon we’re probably tied for last place with the Word Bearers.

But I'm ok with that - who cares if other chaos armies are stronger, so long as the Imperium is getting their tails kicked in?  Even if we're not the best, and even if I hate our tactic, I still see a lot of good things and a lot of potential for us in this codex, both in terms of general Chaos Marines rules and Black Legion rules in particular.  As for how to use those rules?  Well....

I'm not sure what the best overall build for Black Legion will be yet.  Honestly, I hope there isn't one, because versatility and variety is what we're supposed to be about.  Telling your opponent you play Black Legion shouldn't tip them off to the kind of army you play, which is the biggest problem I have with our legion tactic.  Though again, I think the tactic is weak enough even for the few builds of the few units that can benefit from it that you can probably safely ignore it and build whatever anyway.

And while Abaddon is so good that I think people will take him, if anything, a little too often, he's so super versatile that fielding him shouldn't pigeon hole you into a build.  The only units he doesn't pair well with is dark apostles and generic lords, since he renders their various auras irrelevant, though, as with our stratagem, they do let you spread out a bit.

Abaddon the Despoiler, from Codex: Abaddon the Despoiler (2018)

All in all, I'm pretty happy, despite hating the tactic and finding the artifact rather lackluster.  Honestly, if I could change just one thing it wouldn't be either of those, it would be to give the exalted champ an option to take terminator armor, so that he could deep strike with Abaddon.

Well, I'd change that, and I'd change Abaddon's model.  His rules are so good in this book that it really is a crying shame that he’s still stuck with that tiny old 2nd edition model.  That said, it's not too hard to convert a decent Abaddon model out of the generic plastic terminator kit.  That’s what I did:

And while a new official model would of course put this conversion to shame, I’m fine running it for another year or two while I wait.

And if you play in an independent store instead of a GW shop, you can always use this third party model:

wargameexclusive dot com/shop/chaos/chaos-master-of-crusade/

Which is actually really nice.  Even though I’m happy enough with my conversion, I’d probably replace it with this guy if I didn’t play in a GW store half the time.

.............................

And with that, I’m done posting about the new codex for at least a week or two.  I’ve spent far too many hours over the last week hanging on every preview, combing through every spoiler video, ranting and debating about the legion trait, trying to arguing down people who seemed to be overrating the stuff we are getting, trying to build up people who seemed depressed about the stuff we aren’t getting, and writing out big huge posts of all of my thoughts and feels, whether here or on the bolterandchainsword forum or in the comment section of BoLS and natfka articles, and as a result I’m far behind on all sorts of other things I meant to be working on, including getting some of my models painted to play with the new book.  So it’s time for me to take a break.

I’ll be back in a few weeks.

[charlinert]

As Easy as Falling 21/?

New Chapter of As Easy As Falling….

Summary:  Felicity Smoak had everything figured out until tragic news causes her to rethink her life. As part of dealing with tragedy she embraces her adventurous side in the form of skydiving. Will love be waiting for her between the clouds or will she let tragedy keep her away from falling?

Read from the BEGINNING AO3

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

CHAPTER 21

He slowly sips the hot coffee out of the take away container as he stares out the window. His heart feels constricted and the uncertainty of the conversation that’s about to happen is making him feel uneasy.

He thinks back to the events that led up to this moment…

Since their picnic, they have grown so much closer, but life had grown so much harder for the woman he loves. If the side-effects she was experiencing before the picnic were bad, they became way worse the more she went for treatment.

Good days had become a luxury for her, but he was there supporting her whichever way he could because he needed her to fight, he needed for her to understand that he wanted her to find a reason to fight, that maybe he could be a reason for her to fight.

He loved her and even though he hadn’t actually admitted it to Felicity yet, everyone could see it. Donna and Thea had been encouraging him to tell Felicity, but he hadn’t felt that the moment was right yet. There was so much going on and the last thing he wanted was to add something as big as that to the mixture when she might not be ready to hear it.

He’d noticed a few changes in her lately. At first he thought it was his imagination but then it started happening more frequently. Irritability, mood swings and lots of frustration – those were all part of the side-effects and it was completely understandable. With everything that she had been dealing with ever since she found out she was sick, it’s a wonder these things hadn’t surfaced earlier.

The fact that she was feeling sick the whole time made it difficult to try and help her fulfill the last remaining items on her ‘bucket list’. Thankfully Thea gave him a beyond brilliant idea with one of their early morning coffee runs.

Since he’d been going over to Felicity’s after work every night, it left little to no time to spend time with his sister. So she started surprising him by arriving with coffee every morning and then they’d jog together before he had to head out to work. He treasured their new found relationship and she became a confidant and surprisingly she had very good advice.

He never wanted to use his trust fund money because of what happened with his dad, but making Felicity’s dreams come true, was a very good reason to start using it – it almost felt like atonement for what happened with his dad, like he was using the money for ‘good’.

He had a quick chat with Dr. Isaacs during Felicity’s treatment earlier the week and after the go ahead from her doctor the plan was a-go.

He was extremely excited and he couldn’t wait to share the surprise with Felicity. He just wasn’t sure if he should do it tonight, since it was her second last treatment before they would start with the tests to see if it worked.

He got ready for his last customer of the day, and couldn’t wait for the last jump to be over so he could go and see his girl. His beautiful blonde girl – he stared into nothingness as he thought about the woman he loved when his phone rang. His heart nearly stopped when he saw Curtis’s name appear on his screen. It was his turn to take Felicity to her treatment and she should have been home by now. Come to think of it, he hadn’t received any message from her to inform him she was home like she always did.

“Curtis? Is everything okay?” he hesitantly answered, not sure what to expect.

“Hi Oliver. Actually…I know you have a hectic schedule but is there a way we could meet for a quick coffee?”

“I have a client that’s arriving within the next five minutes, but what about after? Let’s say in about two hours? Will you be able to make that?”

“Yes, I’m free for the rest of the day.”

“Curtis? Is Felicity okay?”

“Yes, she’s home safe, but I’m not sure if she’s okay though. I don’t want to worry you and maybe it’s nothing, but I’d rather speak to you in person.”

“I understand. I’ll see you later.”

They ended the call and even though he tried to keep an open mind, all sorts of scenarios were playing out in his mind. There’s nothing Oliver hated more than uncertainty and this was exactly what he was feeling.

The jump couldn’t have gone quicker and before he knew it, he was on his way to Starbucks as arranged with Curtis.

As he stares out the window the scenarios keep on turning in his head and it makes him crazy not knowing what’s going on. He’s just about to phone Curtis, when his new friend walks through the door.

He takes a seat opposite Oliver, but he looks anything but happy.

“Hi Oliver, sorry I’m late, I had to handle a crisis at the lab and since Felicity’s not there…let’s just say I’m learning new things every day.”

Oliver gives him a weak smile and pushes the vanilla latte forward to Curtis.

“Thank you, I need this today.” he smiles back, taking a sip.

“So…tell me what’s going on. It’s been driving me crazy since you called.”

“I know you spend way more time with Felicity than I do, that’s why I rather wanted to speak to you instead of Donna…Felicity’s been acting strange lately.”

“Strange how?”

“Well, for one she’s been way more irritable than normal and her mood swings quite literally give me whip lash, but I know it’s part of the whole side-effects thing, that’s why I haven’t said anything or quite frankly react towards her when she’s like that because I know Felicity, and this is not her.”

Oliver only nods, thinking about how he’s picked up on it as well, but he doesn’t disclose anything yet.

“So, since last week, a new component has come into the mix. She’s become very distant towards me. She barely talks to me and I’m not expecting her to talk the whole time, but the things we normally talk about and things she used to ask me to help her with…let’s just say I found out last week that she called her assistant at QC to go and buy stuff for her that I normally do.”

“Maybe she just feels like she’s inconveniencing you Curtis, it doesn’t mean that she’s distant.”

“True, but…you know that ‘rule’” he gestures the inverted commas next to his head with his index fingers, “about no one being allowed in the room with her, that it’s actually a made up rule for her mom because she drives her crazy while she’s in the room?”

“Yes?”

“Well, normally Felicity and I would work through some science geek magazines and things that keep her occupied during that time. So today, I went into the cafeteria like a I always do to get some coffee and sour worms and when I approach her room, the nurse tells me that Felicity requested me to stay in the waiting area.”

The crease between Oliver’s eyes deepens. He has no idea what to make of this information. This doesn’t sound right. Curtis has been the one Felicity has confided in since the beginning. It makes no sense that she would push him away like that.

“Did she say anything on your way home?”

“No nothing. She was silent all the way home, and I also didn’t push. When we stopped at her apartment and I tried to open the door for her to help her out and into her house, she pushed my arm away and told me she was fine, I could go home…and that’s when I decided to call you, because I have no idea what I did for her to react this way.”

“Okay, I hear what you’re saying and you’re right. This isn’t like Felicity. Do you know if she’s done anything like this towards Donna?”

“No, I haven’t spoken to Donna about this. I wanted to speak to you first, because I can’t really tell her what I told you now and not hurt her feelings about Felicity not wanting her in the room with her.”

Oliver nods, thinking about the information he just received.

“Okay Curtis. Thank you for telling me. I’ve also been picking up small things, but nothing as major as what you’ve just told me, so I’ll monitor the situation more closely and maybe also just give Donna a courtesy call tonight to find out if anything has happened to her.”

“I’m worried about her Oliver. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

“I know. I don’t think we have any idea really what she’s going through and what she needs to deal with. Maybe the thought that the treatment didn’t work is weighing on her? I don’t know, but all we can do is to continue showing her we are there to support her, we love her and that she’s not alone.”

“I agree. Please let me know what you find out.”

They give each other a hug and Oliver heads for his car. He doesn’t waste time and immediately dials Donna’s number.

“Hello?” she answers.

“Hi Donna, it’s Oliver.”

“Oh, hi Oliver!” she yells over the phone and Oliver is relieved he isn’t holding the headset to his ear.

The screeching sound dies down and immediately her voice turns serious.

“Is my baby okay? Is anything wrong?”

“Yes, yes, everything’s okay Donna, there’s no problem.”

“That’s wonderful news.” he can hear the relief in her voice.

“Donna, why I’m calling…I…I wanted to know if you’ve picked up anything strange about Felicity’s behaviour these last couple of weeks?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, has she been acting strange? Maybe out of character of some sorts?”

“Actually I haven’t spoken to Felicity in two weeks Oliver.”

There’s complete silence and Oliver’s head spins with the information. It doesn’t make sense. How could she not have spoken to her daughter in two weeks?

“How? Donna, how could you not have spoken to Felicity in two week when you have taken her to treatment twice these last two weeks?”

“No I haven’t.”

“Then how did she get to the medical center on the days you were assigned?”

“She called me last week and told me that you’ve made arrangements to take her on those days. I didn’t question her, because I know she’s fragile. It hurt me though, because it feels like she’s pushing me away, but if you’re what she needs right now, then I’m not going to stand in the way of that. I tried to phone her a few times, but she never answers my calls.”

“Donna…I didn’t take her to the treatment either…”

Thank you to everyone who’s supporting this fic by reading and commenting and liking and such! You guys are truly awesome!!!

Please let me know if you would like to be tagged or untagged OR if your URL has changed please :)

Amazing people under the cut:

@aguscha333 // @alemap74 // @almondblossomme // @angelalafan // @angelicmisskitty // @aussieforgood // @bluemorgana // @ccdimples88 // @cinfos // @coal000 // @diggo26 // @dontyou-forgetaboutme89 // @fandomlove130 // @foggydefendorgiver // @geneshaven // @georgiakblog // @hope-for-olicity // @hopeful-warrior // @jaspertown // @jcc04220 // @kajunblueyes // @kebarr // @karenanderson32 // @laurabelle2930 // @lesanchea // @lgtwinkie99 // @lou-lou26 // @love2luvyyou // @lucymtz16 // @lynaye1993 // @mel-loves-all // @miriam1779 // @missafairy // @olicity4ever01 // @oliverfel4 // @pimsiepim // @puddintan3 // @quiveringbunny // @scu11y22  // @smkkbert // @storyteller0311 // @tdgal1 // @thegirlandthegrounder // @tinaday3w // @to-dwellondreams // @turnupthemusicandscream // @victoriapolicity // @yespleasehawkeye // @yolandi-l // @yourebeautifuleverylilpiecelove // @yryssss // @felicity-said--yes

[bettydgunter90]

083: “If Only I Had Known!” – What Every Rookie Land Investor Ought to Know

  Wouldn’t it be great if we could travel back in time and give ourselves advice based on the information we know today?

Just imagine how much faster you’d be able to focus on what works and stop struggling on the paths that lead nowhere.

In this episode, Jaren and I are talking about the things we wished we had known back when we started our land businesses. Everything from the value of experience to the importance of time management, and a whole lot in between.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a time machine, but the next best thing we can do is learn from our mistakes.

I think this conversation will be particularly helpful for anybody who is thinking about getting into the land business or who is already in it, but still in the “beginner phase”.

And for people who have been in the business for a while, you’ll probably agree with a lot of the stuff we’re going to cover here. Likewise, if you have other things you want to contribute to what we’re talking about, you’re more than welcome to do that in the comments at the bottom of this page!

Links and Resources

How to Build a Buying Website

A Closer Look at My Blind Offer Template

Profit First Changed My Life. It Will Change Yours Too.

REtipster Land Coaching

Why Seller Financing Makes Sense

Kolbe Index A Test

How to Close a Cash Land Transaction In-House (Full DIY Instructions!)

How Land Investors Can Leverage the Power of Real Estate Agents

I Just Paid Off My House. Am I Smart or Stupid?

048: Investing in Belize Real Estate – Upsides and Risks

Share Your Thoughts

Leave a note in the comments section below!

Share this episode on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn (social sharing buttons below!)

Help out the show:

Leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts Your ratings and reviews really help (and I read each one).

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

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Thanks again for joining me this week. Until next time!

Right-click here and “Save As” to download this episode to your computer.

Episode 83 Transcription

Seth: Hey, everybody. How’s it going? This is Seth Williams and Jaren Barnes with the RETipster podcast. And today you’re listening to episode 83. In this episode, it’s just Jaren and I, and we’re going back and forth on an interesting topic. We’re talking about the key things that we wish we had known about land investing back when we got started.

I think this will be particularly helpful for anybody who is thinking about getting into the land business or anybody who’s sort of already in it, but they’re kind of in the beginner phase, like maybe you’re in your first year. And for people who have been in the business for a while, I think you’ll probably find this kind of interesting as well. You’ll probably agree with a lot of the stuff we’re saying. And if you have other things you want to contribute to what we’re talking about here, you’re more than welcome to do that in the comments which you can find in the show notes at retipster.com/83.

So, we’re just going to jump into the things that we wish we had been better aware of, because I think everybody out there can kind of relate whenever you decide to get into a new business like this, you usually make that decision based on the highlights. Like the really great things about the business that you were told or that you were led to believe. Most of that stuff is like totally true and legit, but the stuff that you’re not really told about, or you don’t really figure out until you just start doing it, it’s like, “Oh, I see. Well, that kind of stinks. That’s not fun.”

This is just a reality of life. I mean, this happens with literally everything. Think of any product you’ve ever bought, any business you’ve ever tried. Anything. There are always these downsides or downers. It’s not necessarily just downers, but just things that would have been really helpful. If we had known better. I probably could have made better decisions or chose to focus our energy on certain things rather than others. So, we’re just going to pick apart some of the first things that come to mind for us. I’ve got my own little list and Jaren has his list as well. So, we’re going to go through that.

Jaren: I’m really excited because like you said, I think that this is going to be very insightful for people who are just getting started or are in the beginning phases of their land business.   Seth: Why don’t you kick it off? What’s the first thing that comes to mind for you?

Jaren: So, for me, the very first thing I wish I knew when starting my land business was the time that it takes to sell a property in land. Now I have sold property within five days of it being listed on the market. So, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to sell property faster than this, but I found that on average, I sell properties within three to six months. And I used to get really frustrated when I was doing everything right, doing everything according to what everybody says you’re supposed to do. Listing on Facebook marketplace on Zillow and buy-sell trade groups and Land Wash and Craigslist and the whole thing. But I wasn’t selling property. I thought that there was something wrong with me or there was something wrong with what I was doing. And I was doing everything right. I just needed time.

And so that’s for me, the biggest mindset shift that I had to adjust to within land compared to houses. Because when you’re coming off of working at Simple Wholesaling and the wholesaling space in Indianapolis, I mean, if we were holding onto a property for more than a month, we had a bad deal on our hands and it was very costly.

And so, for me to adjust and say, “Oh, okay. If I have inventory for three to six months, I’m fine.” Like, I don’t even touch, adjust the price or touch a header on like a listing or any of that for at least three to four months, I don’t even consider it because it takes longer to sell, at least in my business.

Now I want to say a big caveat out there. People might have other types of businesses and markets might be completely different but for my experience, both in Indiana and in Florida, it’s been more so that I’ve had to wait three to six months on average to sell a property. And having that understanding allowed my heart to be like, it’s okay, everything’s good. I got everything out there. And I’m just in the waiting game, work on my leads, have fun, enjoy the process. And then on the other side, they always seem to sell.

Seth: I’m curious, what role does the amount of responses play in that? Say if you don’t get a single email, nobody asks “Is this available?” on Facebook, just total crickets for three to four months versus like you’re getting maybe an inquiry per week or something like that. In terms of like, whether or not you touch the pictures of the description or the headline or the price or anything like that, how much weight do you give that whole thing about the number of inquiries you’re getting?

Jaren: Personally, not much. But again, I mean, everybody’s business is different. I can only speak from my own experience. But I’ve had situations where I didn’t get any bites at all for like the first month or the first two months. But then all of a sudden at month three, I have a bunch of interest.

Seth: And that’s without changing anything?

Jaren: Without changing anything, yeah. So, I think that it can happen that way. Now if you’re getting absolutely no interest and no bites at all, you could change it sooner. Like I’m not telling you that you have to not touch anything for three months. I’m just saying in my business, I just don’t.

I kind of break up my land business on the disposition side in phases. So, phase one is preparing the property for sale. I get the pictures, area map views, and I get all the descriptions written up. And then phase two is actually listing the property and having it be on the market. And I stay in phase two for a long time, that three- to four-month mark. And then if it hits four to six months and I still haven’t sold the property, then we enter into phase three where I am adjusting the price, looking at possibly offering seller financing, adjusting the headers, looking at the pictures, trying to understand if I should redo my copy. That’s where I’m like, “Okay. Let me tweak around.” But I really give it some time before I make that call.

Seth: Yeah.

Jaren: What about you?

Seth: For me, I would say that three- to six- month time range has been pretty typical in my case as well. Again, sometimes you’ll sell it the next day, sometimes you’ll sell it in a month. If it’s three to six months, that’s not abnormal. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong or you’ve done something or somehow screwed something up.

I think I tend to monkey around with stuff a little sooner than that. And it’s not saying that’s right either. I am one who tends to, if things aren’t happening within like a month or so, like if I don’t see any activity, I just start thinking, “Hm, maybe something’s wrong. Maybe something has to change.” As I look back, I think sometimes I can see a notable difference when I do that stuff.

But usually the difference has to do with the price itself or how I am framing the property in the headline. If I’m drawing attention to, “Hey, pay X amount per month for this instead of a flat-out cash amount.” Again, that’s only if I’m even going down the seller financing track, which I usually don’t.

But all this to say, I don’t think your way is wrong, Jaren. I was just curious, how much weight do you give to lack of any inquiries at all? Does that cause concern for you or give you reason to mess with things or you pretty much almost put a calendar reminder, like “Don’t even look at this for another three months regardless of what happens?”

Jaren: That’s how I do it. Yep.

Seth: I’m sure that probably frees up your mental head space that you don’t have to think about stuff like that. So, there’s something to be said for that.

Jaren: What’s your number one?

Seth: I don’t know if this is in order of priority. It’s not like a one, two, three, four or five kind of thing. But for me, this was a very, very time-intensive business, especially in the first year. I just remember I was talking with a few other people who were doing this alongside me way back in the day. And that was the thing we kept talking about. I was like, this just takes so much time setting things up, like figuring out, okay, phone system, website, new email address, just getting things established. And then the first time I ever get a list, figuring that a lot. And the first time I ever sent out a direct mail campaign.

Every step, it was just such a big learning process. It got way faster after that for a year or so. I just remember in those first 12 months, it just seemed like it was such a massive time suck and adding to that was the particular way that I was doing. It was also not the most time-efficient way to do it, where I was sending out a neutral message to somebody and inviting them to call me and only giving them that option. Then I would try to call them back. We’d play phone tag. We talked for 30 minutes. I’d write up a full contract and send it to them. They’d say, no.

The other way I could have wasted more time was if I answered calls live and that it would have totally destroyed my life. But the way that I was doing it in the very beginning, there are some advantages to that. But like, man, it was just such a time-consuming ordeal. And there’s certainly things that I would do differently starting today, which I have done.

Had I known back then I would have gotten a buying website set up pretty early on. Again, not that you need this, but it can be very effective at those phone conversations, taking them off your plate in terms of gathering the information. And also, the idea of blind offers. That was something that I was totally oblivious to for several years. And again, not saying blind offers are right for every person’s situation, but there’s a lot of time efficiencies there.

And I wish first of all, that I would have just known how much time it’s going to take just so I could have gone into it with the right expectations. I think that’s kind of inevitable in your first year of anything. There are just tons of new stuff you have to figure out, but also just knowing like, “Hey, there are other ways to handle this too.” You don’t have to do the most time-consuming approach. And just kind of knowing all the options on the table now it’s just really helpful to know, “Oh, okay. I could do it this way. I could get that way. If I’ve got more money, I could go that way,” that kind of thing.

Jaren: I love it, man. That’s awesome.

Seth: What about you? What’s your next one?

Jaren: So, my next one is a really big deal actually. When I first got started in land, I was coming off the coattails of a very large company that was doing 25 to 30 properties a month on average. And we were spending a lot of money on direct mail and on staff and all this. And so, when I first got started, I was operating underneath this mindset of like, I’m just going to throw money at anything and everything that I have to and just growth at all costs. And so, I tried to hire somebody full time when I first got started.

Seth: Really?

Jaren: Yeah. And I tried to commit to doing a large amount of direct mail every single month. It was not wise. I think the biggest piece that I struggled with as a business owner was understanding how to manage money. And so, I’ve been saying it a lot lately around the community. I wrote a whole blog post all about it. But Profit First and implementing Profit First in my land business has been a huge game changer because it’s given me a financial management system that, I mean, you have to set it up and there’s a lot of work to set it up.

But once it’s in place, it’s really intuitive. And I don’t want to say easy because nothing worth doing is easy, but it’s simple and it’s intuitive. And it makes a lot of sense and puts things on autopilot in a number of ways. So, I committed, I think at some point in my land business, to doing direct mail every single month without fail, no matter what. And I think that was a big mistake when I first started out.

I think that the smarter way to run your direct mail is to do it in a cyclical manner. So, you run your business from direct mail campaign to direct mail campaign. So, you do direct mail, you work all of the leads all the way to sale on that one direct mail campaign, allocating a certain amount of the profit from each property and putting it toward a marketing account.

And then once you’ve exhausted all of the leads that have come or the majority, because you might have one that will call you a year from now or whatever, but at least the majority of the properties that have come in for that direct mail campaign are waiting until you have some significant money set aside for your next direct mail campaign.

Because overhead in the land business is really small except for direct mail. You’re looking at maybe $200 to $500 a month depending on software and listing sites and stuff that you can do. That’s the numbers in session two of our coaching program, I actually have a sample budget. And that’s where I got that number from. I’ve written out like DataTree and phone service and all these things. And it’s not that much of overhead, but then if you throw in $2,000 a month for direct mail cost, all of a sudden that’s a lot. That’s $24,000 a year.

I would heavily encourage people, especially in the beginning to only send out direct mail when you have the money to send out direct mail. Send it out with your seed money, get properties, sell your properties, make revenue, and then operate your business off of the real revenue that’s actually there. And don’t try to borrow and don’t try to scale too quickly.

Seth: I think some of that kind of evolves with time, like when you’re first getting started, you don’t really know what you’re doing yet. You don’t know what works. You don’t know if you’ve got the right market yet. There’s just so many unknowns. I would agree that in those early stages, you don’t want to just start throwing tens of thousands of dollars to something you don’t fully understand yet.

I know a lot of people who do have a full-time thing now, and they’re doing a lot more volume. I don’t know that they’re doing that, that there is mail going out every single month, but they also have it fine-tuned down to a science and they’ve got a lot more money coming in. So, it sort of shifts a little bit, I think. Or it can shift as you start to grow.

Jaren: A hundred percent.

Seth: I think part of it is understanding how to manage the money. But the other part of it is just understanding like that idea of sending out tons of direct mail when you don’t really know if you have it all figured out yet, it probably would make more sense to do smaller batches in a few places to see what happens. And then once you have a pulse on what’s going on, then start opening up the floodgates.

But it seemed like you were more just like, “Nope, we just got to spend money and get it out there.” And do you think it’s accurate that you just didn’t know yet what you were doing when you started spending the money?

Jaren: Yeah, it was that. And I was kind of operating at Simple Wholesaling. It was almost like I had an unlimited budget for marketing and branding and stuff when I was there. Like, it wasn’t truly unlimited, but there was a lot of threshold. There was a lot of slack that I could play with.

But when you’re in your own business and you’re a startup and you’re trying to grow, if I may use Brett’s… I know Brett’s story really well. He started with one wholesale deal that he bought off of eBay. He bought it for $10,000. He put in $5,000, his dad put in $5,000, and he did one deal and he didn’t know what to do with it. He didn’t even know wholesaling was a thing. So, he just bought it and then he turned around and sold it for $15,000. And he made $5,000. And then he did another deal. And then he did another day. And then he worked a full-time job for a year, doing deals on his own, on the side for that entire year, before he branched out onto his own.

And most people that are full-time into their entrepreneurial thing, whether it’s real estate, they transition into it slowly. They do it in a way where they can course-correct if something starts to go south. Why didn’t they do that? I was like, I’m going to go all in. I’m going to put all my money. I’m going to put all my eggs in this basket and I’m going to go hard. And so, I did that, but I wasted a lot of money in the beginning. It was not the right move. I always thought before I read Profit First unconsciously that the purpose of a business was to grow at all costs.

But the goal of the business isn’t to grow at all costs. You need to grow to the point where you’re making the kind of money that you want to make. But the overall objective of your business is to make money. Profit First actually is the objective of a business. That’s why businesses exist—to make money.

Seth: To make profit, you mean.

Jaren: To make profit. Yeah. So, in my mind, I didn’t have that framework. I didn’t understand, “Okay. I need to make profit; my number one priority in my business.” I thought it was growth. So, I threw everything I could at the wall to see what would stick and it cost me.

Seth: Yeah, that’s something to know about Jaren. I don’t know how many people out there have taken the Kolbe index A test, but Jaren and I both took it and other people at RETipster have taken it. It scores you based on four different ranking factors. And one of them is called quick start. So, somebody who is really good at like, you don’t fall into analysis paralysis, you just start moving and you make things happen very quickly. And that’s actually like a superpower and that’s something a lot of people don’t have.

But the downside of a quick start is that sometimes you just start moving before you really know what you’re doing and you just full speed out of the gate without a very clear direction. And so that’s kind of like everything has its tradeoffs. That’s one of the quick start tradeoffs.

Jaren: Yeah, for sure. I wish that I had Profit First and I wish that I knew that it was okay to grow slowly. And it was okay, if I had to work another job and build my land thing on the side, that’s okay. I’m not a less of an entrepreneur because I have a W-2 income. That was a dumb mindset that I had to fight with in my early days.

Seth: Yeah, I got you, man.

Jaren: So, what about you? What’s your next one?

Seth: Yeah. So, for me, and we’ve talked about this many times in the past, but I wish I’d understood. I think I sort of understood the importance of working in the right market, but I didn’t really have any idea how to even figure out what the right market was. I was like, “Hey, is there a land there? Well, it must be fine then.”

And so, I just started in Michigan and it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t necessarily the best place either. And so, I kind of struggled with slow turnaround for years because of that. I mean, it wasn’t always slow. It’s not like it was doomed to fail or anything, but I just think it was sluggish for a lot longer than it needed to be. And it wasn’t till I started just trying other markets that I realized in some places, this is a lot easier to sell stuff or it’s a lot easier to value properties and blind offers work better in some markets than in others. And it’s just easier to come up with pricing and that kind of thing.

So, I think I would have tried a lot sooner to explore maybe a few different markets at a time to figure out, okay, this one seems to be lower barriers just from the whole, not only buying, but also selling and state laws and stuff like that. I just had this idea of like, “Nope, got to work in Michigan because that’s where you live,” and not even a point to look anywhere else. And I didn’t really get that. It took me a long time to figure it out.

Jaren: Mine is very similar. It’s on market research and I feel like it was at least a six-month period where every week you and me, we’re going back on market research and really trying to wrap our head on what makes a good landmark versus a bad one. And I’m not convinced that you can even really have that framework of this is a good land market and this is a bad market.

I feel like the land business will work in any market based on a few principles. If you’re in the path of growth or you’re in a county that for whatever reason, people value land there, whether that’s where people go to vacation, or maybe it’s a cheaper adjacent county to a really hustle and bustle area.

Now there are a number of different factors that go into it. But at a high level, you’re trying to quantify desirability. And so, looking at things like job growth and population growth and crime rate. And even some guys will look at building permits and a number of other metrics that kind of help you determine, “Okay, there’s a lot of desirability for this area.”

And understanding that shift in my mind was really helpful because Florida has been a completely different animal than Southern Indiana. Southern Indiana, for me at least, was just very hit or miss. It was like sometimes I had really good properties and then other times it didn’t go so hot and it was just hard to sell and hard to move stuff.

And a lot of that might’ve been like beginners, like learning curve and due diligence issues and things like that. But I mean, it’s just the demand in Florida is just way higher because you have an international desirability. You got people even from Europe that go to Florida every year for vacations and stuff.

So, if you’re in a place like Arkansas or South Dakota, where there might not be a lot of population growth, you can still use those high-level principles and still do well in those places. And might have less competition too. But you want to just ask yourself, “Where are people wanting to buy land in? And can I afford to do business there?” If you find that out, then that’s a really good indicator of where you want to do the land business.

Seth: Yeah. And even that, if you are knowing nothing else, those are definitely good things to look at. But there can be awesome deals in bad markets too.

Jaren: Yeah. It’s true.

Seth: As with anything in life, you can’t just generalize stuff, but when you’re getting stared at, you just sort of have to, when you know nothing else and you just want some very basic pointers on where to go. Yeah. I know what you mean.

Jaren: What’s your next one?

Seth: Next one for me on my list was just knowing that people are incredibly flaky, especially buyers when you’re selling land and sellers as well. But there were so many times when I just got really annoyed by people who said, “Yep, I’m going to buy the property, take it off the market. Here are some of the bridges and I do all this stuff,” and they just ghost me and go silent. Or a photographer I find on Craigslist. Like, “Hey, go get the pictures for me. I’ll plan on next week, Tuesday.” And they just never respond to me. And I just wasted a week. Dumb little stuff like that.

Just do what you say you’re going to do. This is not a hard thing. If you can’t do it, then don’t say you’re going to do it. I think if I had just known to kind of expect this, I wouldn’t have gotten so frustrated. This is just kind of how people are. And also, there are ways you can have these conversations that you sort of get a person to verbally commit. Again, it doesn’t guarantee they’re going to do it, but you sort of like put a person on the hook a little bit better saying things like, “Tell me, sir, if you take a look at this property, it meets everything you’re expecting and it’s beautiful, amazing and ready to go. I’d be ready to buy this thing by the end of the day today, do you have the cash on hand? Are you ready to commit?” Kind of framing it up in a way that it’s like, I’m not messing around here. Like, I’m ready to go, I expect you to be ready to go too. Again, it’s not like a guarantee that people are going to do it, but it sorts of sets an expectation so that if people are just screwing around with you, they can just stop and go do that with somebody else.

Jaren: Yeah. And I’ve been having my fair share of that with contractors. You think that it would be simple for somebody to just have good communication and be like, “Hey, I can’t come today because X, Y, Z. So, I’m going to come next week.” But for whatever reason, I don’t know, people just have a really hard time initiating good communication. And again, it doesn’t make sense to me either, but that is a big deal.

Seth: I can sort of understand the flakiness with land buyers because it’s just something they found on the internet. It’s not their livelihood, who cares? But for a contractor you think like, it’s your livelihood, it’s your reputation at stake. Why would you not pay more attention to that as being somebody who does what you say? But I agree. It’s shocking the level of irresponsibility out there.

Jaren: I can’t even begin to wrap my head around why. My next one, now this is one that is, I want to be careful about because it’s specific to me and what works best for me. And I can’t say that this is the right path for every other land investor out in the world. But I always want to go through a title or a closing attorney, if I’m in an attorney only state.

But the reason why is in the beginning, I did a lot of self-closings and I hired a VA to do title searches for me and I did title searches to the best of my ability. But I had a handful of properties that I bought that way on the sales side when I had a buyer in place, come up with some severe title issues. And there were a couple really close calls of me, like losing out on the deal and wasting money on the property. One guy lived in the Bahamas and we had to track down his son in the Bahamas. And just this crazy like, “Well, I’m probably going to lose money on this deal.”

Seth: Was this something that you had already bought the property and you were selling it and that’s when the title issue came up?

Jaren: Yeah.

Seth: And you had to go, “Oh, man.”

Jaren: Yeah. And it’s not happened like once. It’s happened probably at least five times on five different properties. So, for me, even if I’m going to buy a property for $1,000 or $300, I’m going to spend that $600 to $1,000 on closing costs because I want to have the title insurance.

I realize now, in hindsight, that title professionals spend 40-plus hours a week working in title. You have title researchers that that’s all they do. And yet even then, 40 hours a week, all day, every day, they still have title insurance for a reason. It’s because people make mistakes. And I don’t want to have to deal with that ever again in my land business. So, for me, I always want to go through title.

Now, if you’re doing seller financing or you have your business set up in a way where it’s more like an eCommerce business where people buy directly from your website, that’s a huge bottleneck to have to always go through title. And so, I get it that for other people that might not be the case for them, but for me, at least for the foreseeable future, unless something drastically changes in the way that I do the land business, I always want to go through title.

Seth: Yeah. That’s a great point, man. I’m glad you said that. I’m similar. I’ve done one self-closing in the past year, but that was kind of an anomaly. Like I really try not to. It’s not because I don’t know how, I definitely do and I’ve done it plenty, but like you said, there’s a lot of opportunities to screw stuff up. Even if you do a perfect job, it’s really time-consuming. And just the issue of exchanging funds. That issue alone is like its own separate problem. You have to overcome, like you gotta trust them and they gotta trust you. I don’t know. It’s just a hassle. And this is why title companies exist. They make it way easier. And granted, they’re slower, and sometimes they get stuck on a really stupid problems that aren’t actually problems.

But, I don’t know, in the end, there’s a lot to be said, they’re almost sort of like a little employee that just handles your closings and you just pay them to do that. It may make sense to just work with properties that have enough profit on the bone to pay for that. If it’s super cheap, if you’re only going to make like a thousand bucks anyway, I mean, I guess you can do that. It might be a helpful learning experience.

But the thing that I kind of struggled with, and I remember back when I first started like making blog posts about this stuff, like how you do it. I struggled a lot with should I even be putting this out there? Even if I explain it perfectly, people can still read this and screw it up on their own and then blame me for it because they messed it up. And some people are very proficient at this stuff. They’re really good at catching the finer details.

Basically, people who are our lawyers are trained attorneys, they really know how to make sense of the weird stuff that gets written in deeds and dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s because that stuff really matters. You can actually screw up title if you get one little digit wrong. It’s important to know yourself and what you’re good at. And if you know you’re good at that, you could probably do it with no problem. If you don’t have a history of doing well with that kind of thing, or if you just know you struggle with the details, it might not be the best job for you.

Jaren: And a title company is really amazing at being a resource for you. If I am writing up a deed or I’m writing up something, I can call my title company and ask them to give me the full legal description of the property. And whereas even DataTree, even though they have it, in many cases, it’s still an abbreviated version. And so, there’s a number of different things that I’ve used my title company for. If I’m talking to a seller and they want to vet me, they’re sketched out to see if I’m like a scam artist or not. I can just straight up say, “Hey, why don’t you call my title company and ask them how many transactions I do and if I close or not?” And they say, “Sure, that works.” Then they call my title company rep and that makes it a new point. But it’s huge.

Seth: That’s a good point.

Jaren: There’s a lot of value in establishing a solid relationship with a title company.

Seth: Absolutely. That was a great one. Thanks for bringing that one up. So, for me, the next one was kind of related to seller financing. Because I know the first time I ever heard about seller financing, I actually was part of a panel discussion about this earlier this week on a different podcast, but seller financing, especially with land, it is a pretty awesome thing for a lot of reasons. It makes a ton of sense with the land business.

I totally support the idea and think it’s a great thing to be aware of and understand how it works. For a lot of people, it really has made the difference between them being able to go full time versus not. It’s that big of a deal. However, it’s not without issues. I think the way that it’s explained in a lot of cases, people just explain the great things about it without mentioning all of the really annoying, monotonous hassle type things that come along with it, like getting the right documentation that is actually correct, to using your specific state and understanding state laws, and what’s involved if you need to take a property back and the likelihood that a lot of borrowers will stop paying you. This is not something that might happen, it will happen.

And collecting payments and communicating and every seller finance deal you create, that is a relationship you are creating that’s going to last for as long as that loan exists. It’s not that any one deal is that difficult, but when you get like a hundred of them going, it’s a lot of stuff to juggle and you need good systems in place. And a lot of people don’t think about this until they just start doing it. They either do it wrong or they try to do it right and they’re like, “Whoa, this is like a lot of work. It’s kind of hard.”

It took me a long time to understand all this. It wasn’t until I think it was 2016 when I tried to do this really ambitious project of very clearly documenting how seller financing works in all 50 states, which in hindsight, now I know was just a crazy thing to even try to do because there are so many variations. I don’t think there’s even a single lawyer on earth who knows how it works in all 50 states.

So just understanding that, if you’re going to do that, I would pick a handful of states max and just become a specialist there. Don’t try to understand every state and how it all works. And get an attorney in that state to review and approve of the documentation for that single state, get some good software or a loan management company to manage these deals.

Don’t forget that this is not permanent to passive income. It will stop at some point. So, it is not the same as a “buy and hold” property where that stream of income doesn’t go away as long as you own it. All of these are like caveat kind of things that nobody ever explained to me, I kind of had to figure it out the hard way. And I wish I would’ve known that.

Jaren: Yeah. A hundred percent. And there’s a lot of depreciation and tax benefits to buy and hold real estate that other land seller financing just doesn’t have. So, my last one that I have on here is about land agents, land specialized real estate agents. When I first got started in land, everybody, everyone I talked to said that agents are a waste of time. I even had people say when I’m buying properties, that if it’s listed with an agent, just walk away because you’re just going to waste your time. Agents are incompetent and they’re this and they’re that.

I’m going through my memory right now. And I’m seeing images of Facebook posts and forums and Facebook groups that say, “I never use agents. They don’t know anything. They ruined deals.” And I think that there’s validity to that if you’re dealing with an agent that specializes in residential transactional real estate.

Seth: Like houses?

Jaren: Yeah, houses. If they help you buy and sell houses, that’s what they specialize in. So, obviously they’re not going to know anything about land or wholesaling or flipping or whatever, because that’s not what they specialize in. They don’t know about it. But if you find a land-specialized real estate agent, then it’s a totally different conversation. And they’re out there.

And the last, I don’t know, six months to eight months in my business, I’ve actually been exclusively using land-specialized agents to sell because it outsources all of the bottleneck for me. I’m really busy. I work at RETipster and I do a bunch of other things. And so, for me, the biggest time suck in my land business was like posting on Facebook marketplace and on Craigslist and dealing with those buyer leads and all that stuff that I was doing when I first got started.

And I’ll tell you what, it’s been a completely different situation. It’s been amazing because when I work with a land-specialized real estate agent on the due diligence side, when I am buying my property, they’ll go to the property for me, walk it, and give me feedback on it.

For example, in Florida, if you have cypress trees on the property, in practicality, it’s wetlands. I may not show up on the wetland’s mapper as wetlands. But if there are cypress trees on there, it’s pretty much wetlands. So, one of my agents goes and walks the property and he sees cypress trees there. He says, “There’s a bunch of cypress trees, Jaren, let’s move on to the next one.” That’s gold. That’s worth its weight in gold.

My agents will also give me my list price. So, I’ll do my comps and I’ll go as far as I can. But at the end of the day, I can just call my agent and say, “Hey, what can I sell this property for within three to six months?” And they give me a price to sell lists or list price. And then I work my numbers backwards. And I say, “Okay, if I’m going to list it for this, let’s say 20% from the list price is going to be roughly what we’re going to sell it for. I know I can offer this and make the spread that I want to make.” And that’s huge. They deal with all the buyer leads. They deal with all the showings.

Practically after I get a deal and I go to a title company. I hand it off to my agent and then I just wait and I collect a check. So, when it comes to automation, it doesn’t get much more automated than that.

But there are drawbacks to it just like everything else. I’m not going to sit here and try to say that this is the best thing since sliced cheese and this is what everybody has to do. You can’t really do seller financing with agents because how are you going to figure out their commissions? You can’t really do extremely cheap property. Like if I’m buying property for $500 and selling it for $3,500, that’s not much motivation for my agent to take my property as top priority. So, I have to be a little bit of a higher tier.

I’m typically buying property within $8,000 to $15,000, selling it within probably $15,000 to $30,000, somewhere in that range. And that’s enough to keep them happy because it’s volume-based and they know that there’s going to be repeat business in the future. So, it’s been a huge revelation in my real estate journey to use land specialized agents and I recommend it for the right people.

Now, if I was full-time in my land business, I don’t know if I would exclusively use agents because if I go to a new market and I can’t find a good agent, I’m struggling. That creates a bottleneck in my business. I don’t have as much control. There’s a lot of control in having your own buyers list and your own brand. So, if I were full-time, I don’t know if I would put all my eggs in this one basket, but as a side business, it’s perfect. It’s a really good system for me. So, agents are out there that are worth their weight in gold. You just got to find them.

Seth: Yeah. And that “you just got to find them” thing, Jaren actually does have a really good blog post about that, that I’ll link to in the show notes. You can find that at retipster.com/83. It answers a lot of the questions like where do you look? What questions are you supposed to ask? How do you vet them and figure out like, is this person worth their salt or not? Because yeah, a lot of people aren’t.

But it’s interesting you say that Jaren, because I can attest. Every bad experience I’ve ever had with an agent in the land business has been a house-selling agent that has not been a land-specialized agent. So, it’s a very important thing to distinguish and that blog post can help people figure out how to find them.

Jaren: On that too, I probably need to do a slight update to that blog post for the listeners. Today you guys can get kind of the updated version on that. Zillow has an agent profile that you can look up. So, if you see a land listing, like take those, the principles on that blog post, and go look up good listings and all that. But when you find them, look at the agent’s profile on Zillow and look at past listings. And look at the ratio of land to how sales are other types of real estate sales. And if the majority of what they’re selling is land, there’s a high chance that they’re a good land agent. That’s another really big piece that didn’t make it into that blog post yet, because I just really recognized that pattern in my business recently. So, I need to update that.

Seth: That’s great to know. Thanks for pointing that out. For me, the last big one on my list and its sort of a lot of things lumped into one, but I’ve kind of hit on this earlier as well, but just understanding that there are downsides to every approach to everything you do.

For example, if you get your list from the delinquent tax list versus a data company, guess what? Both ways have a downside to it. If you use postcards versus blind offers, both ways have a downside to it. It’s not like one is the ultimate perfect, always the best option. It’s that both of them have strengths in different areas and it’s important to know what you need as an individual and what you work well with and your financial situation, how much money you do or don’t want to spend, how much time you do or don’t want to spend. It’s like probably one of my biggest pet peeves is when I hear somebody somewhere just saying like, “Always do it this way,” or “This is always wrong.” It’s just like, no.

And granted for that individual, that may be accurate maybe because they’re terrible at talking on the phone, they shouldn’t be on the phone with people, or if they have no money, then they shouldn’t be sending out $10,000 blind offers. I’m not discounting that for them. Maybe they figured that out for themselves, but to just advise the whole world of what always works. And this is something that just takes a lot of time in testing on your own to figure out what am I good at doing? And I’ve had lots of time to do that. And so, I know that now, but man, I was very clueless back in the beginning and it’s easy when you don’t know any better and you hear somebody just give very pointed advice on something that may or may not apply to you. It’s easy to assume, “Well, they must know what they’re talking about. They sound pretty confident. So, I’ll go with what they say.”

I think any advice anybody gets, it’s important to just discern and just realize like, I’m probably not hearing the whole story here. There are probably things I need to investigate for myself. Not close the book on an issue before you really have gotten to the bottom of it. And I think if you figure out something that is clearly working, then you probably don’t have to investigate that further. But if it’s not working, realize there’s probably another path out there that may make more sense for you.

I think the bottom line is experience is a huge deal. There’s just a lot of stuff that you will discover for yourself when you get into any kind of business. These are the things that we wanted to highlight for the land investors out there. Anything else you want to hash out on that, Jared? Or did we kind of cover it?

Jaren: I think that that was a really good piece of content we put out in the world there, man. I really wish that I listened to this episode about three years ago at this point.

Seth: Yeah, I wish it existed back then. Okay. So, let’s wrap this up with an unrelated question here. The question today is if Jaren and I won the lottery and had a million dollars after taxes to invest in real estate, what would we do with it? What would be the way that we would throw it out into the world and create streams of income or double or triple or quadruple that money?

Jaren: So, if I had a million dollars, the very first thing that I would do is I would pay off all of my debt, including my house.

Seth: Really? Interesting. So, you’re going to go that route? Because I know a lot of people think that’s ridiculous.

Jaren: I go back and forth on it. I understand why you would consider not looking at your house as an asset, but as a liability. I think for me, my house it’s kind of a half-investment, half-not investment. It’s a security thing. My home is where my son grows up. It’s where I have memories with my family. It’s our safety place. And to be able to have that, at least right now, we’ve got another child on the way. And we just got a lot of things that in this season in my life to be 100% debt-free plus including the mortgage, would be a big deal. But I will tell you, I probably would take an equity line of credit out of my house and I would invest based on that. So, I’d still probably use the equity.

I would definitely pay off the mortgage for sure. And then what would be left, I would either buy rental properties. I might buy like one, I don’t know, larger unit, maybe like a 25 unit or larger, if not cash, I would leverage the remaining to buy and hold real estate or get into vacation rentals and buy a couple of exotic places that I Airbnb throughout the year. I really would like to get into that.

It’s on my bucket list to own property in Belize ever since that interview we had. I talk about it all the time and people ask me what my dreams are. I’m like, to own a property in Belize, man. So, I think it’d be awesome.

I’m slowly trying to develop my life in a way where me and my family travel heavily through the months of January through March. So, I don’t think we’re there yet. I think we’re probably at least three to five years off. But my goal is to slowly inch toward this lifestyle where one to three months out of the year, we’re pretty much traveling and we’re planning on homeschooling our kids. And a large reason behind that as opposed to like public school or private school is because I want to be able to have the flexibility to travel with them.

Traveling for me, I didn’t go to university, I went to my freshman year and then I dropped out and stuff. And traveling and books have been the 80/20 of my personal development. And I think that traveling is extremely important to help you become a more well-rounded person.

People buy sports cars or big TVs or big houses or whatever. I think my thing is I want to be able to travel. I think it’s important to me, something I’m working toward.

Seth: I don’t need to travel anywhere. Once I’ve seen America, I’ve seen the greatest this world has to offer.

Jaren: I’m not going to argue with you there.

Seth: I’m joking by the way.

Jaren: There are some great things out there in the world.

Seth: The land of McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A, that’s all we need from this world.

Jaren: Most of is the Chick-fil-A. Everything else is subservient to Chick-fil-A, it’s the greatest fast food on the planet.

Seth: For me, I was thinking about this a little bit and I was having a really hard time coming up with one definitive answer because there’s so many different ways you can go with this. Like so many different types of property or you could use it in an active business to make money even faster and that kind of thing. And I think where I’m at in my life now, I’m looking for the passive stuff. So, buy and hold.

I think what I struggle with right now, it’s much harder to find high-equity, super cheap deals today than it was 10 years ago. Obviously, I would find something that cash flows and I would probably leverage it, leverage that million bucks to buy four or five properties that are worth a million each or something like that. And would cash flow and pretty much be set for life, I think. All I would really need.

But yeah, I liked that idea of something, preferably something triple net so I don’t have to manage it and the numbers make sense. I know the opportunities are out there. I feel like though this may be a ripe market to actually do new construction on certain kinds of things. Just because properties are so crazy expensive right now. And granted, I think that will probably change in the next year. So, I don’t want to jump the gun on that, but I’m wondering about that.

Jaren: Well, it’s so funny you said that because within the last 24 hours, I’ve heard three people, including you, say that about new construction. Because apparently the market’s getting so hot, the cost of building is still staying cheap. It’s not rising with the cost of real estate. So, it’s actually really cheap.

I literally had somebody who came earlier to my house today, a contractor, they gave me a bit on the roof of our new house and he said the exact same things. He said a lot of people are looking at new builds right now.

Seth: That’s what kind of makes you nervous because you might be looking at like 9 to 12 months to finish a construction project depending on what it is and who your builder is. And a lot could change in that time right now, given where the world is at, there’s tons of unknown.

Jaren: I have friends that are way more sophisticated and intelligent than I am. And a lot of the big wig guys in the apartment syndication space, a lot of the thought leaders and stuff, they’re all saying that within the next year to two years, there’s going to be a lot of bad things to come on the same for the world. Like we’re going to have a pretty major economic downturn.

So, it feels like ever since 2008, everybody since 2008 has been expecting the next economic downturn. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I feel like there’s a bunch of people that just have huge amounts of savings set aside to gobble up property when they can.

So, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if that’s going to like, inflate the market or prevent us from actually having it be as bad as it could be. But a lot of people are saying foreclosures are going to start entering the scene and all kinds of stuff.

Seth: I don’t think there’s ever been a year since 2008 when I haven’t heard somebody say, “It’s all going to fall apart next year.” That is a very common recurring thing I hear from people who are smart. I would think they would know, but they haven’t.

Jaren: And it’s funny too, because a lot of the gurus or thought leaders, they predicted each year because when it does happen, there would be the guy that called it and they can brand that, right?

Seth: Pretty much. But yeah, it would be nice to have a million bucks one way or another. Cool man. Well, if anybody out there wants to follow along with what we’re doing, feel free to take out your phone and text the word “FREE.” F-R-E-E to the number 33777.

You can get access to some top-secret resources, text the word “FREE” to 33777 and you’ll be glad you did. I promise.

And again, if you want to check out the show notes for this episode, it’s retipster.com/83. Thanks again for listening and we’ll talk to you guys again in the next episode.

Jaren: Later guys.

The post 083: “If Only I Had Known!” – What Every Rookie Land Investor Ought to Know appeared first on REtipster.

from Real Estate Tips https://retipster.com/083-if-only-we-had-known/

[gus-the-icreamman]

The Millionaire Guide On SEO 2019 To Help You Get Rich

A wide range of SEO techniques exist regarding improving the search engine ratings of web sites and their particular individual pages. The main stage of SEO is to become friendly both to users plus search engines. Based in Colorado springs municipal airport terminal, CO, SocialSEO has been the particular preeminent digital marketing firm within Colorado since 1996. Although the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION experts provide great SEO providers for their clients, there are usually a few who ruin the particular internet design industry through their own greed in marketing efforts plus manipulate search engine rank. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION may target different kinds associated with search, including image search, regional search, video search, academic lookup, news search and industry-specific up and down search engines. The benefits of successful digital marketing plans are quite 15 Ways To Learn SEO 2019 Effectively much proven throughout the board nevertheless when it comes to organizations within the photography industry this SEO components of the marketing approach really do make all involving the difference to helping some sort of photographer stand out from typically the crowd. HISTORY LESSON: Old SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION advice suggested you connect along with websites and trade links along with each other True, a large genuine site linking to you may boost up your ranking, yet, it's not going to assist your relevancy score when the particular linked content isn't related in order to the website sharing it. 10. Quality back back links need to be built upward to your site for efficient SEO. SEO is about attracting individuals to your site to start with by making sure this shows up searching queries.

There will be no magic wand in your own hands to regulate or manage your competitors' strategies or administration, Google analytics update, or client's behavior communicate business but a person can manage your SEO. In this particular new environment, the digital marketing expert who views SEO in the broader context will definitely come out there ahead of the competition within 2018 and beyond. Good SEO textbooks explain in detail how greatest to use keywords and exactly how to structure your entire internet site to attract the attention associated with search engine spiders and associated with human visitors, and a posting such as this cannot perform the topic justice. While businesses begin on an SEO advertising marketing campaign, they should realize that a good entire marketing campaign can drop flat on its face when a business is unable in order to reach the masses, that is definitely, their target audience. If your own pages were designed to obtain the most out of Search engines, with commonly known and right now outdated SEO techniques chances are usually Google has identified this plus is throttling your rankings within some way. A lot of business people find keeping upward with the "moving target" associated with SEO distracts them from day-to-day priorities more than they actually imagined, so it's good in order to appear closely at what can make sense for every business. The program process for the SocialSEO Electronic Marketing and SEO Scholarship is definitely done 100% electronically and needs these list of materials. Getting SEO right can easily influence your business hugely while you start to build natural traffic to your site which usually will naturally grow without this need for any underhanded SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION tactics or even spending tons of money on perfectly powerful but pricey solutions such while Pay Per Click or lavish ads. Searchmetrics is very pleased to have this partnership along with Elephate, a leading content plus SEO agency with years associated with invaluable experience. However, the particular webmasters can grasp search motor optimization SEO through websites. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION offers incredible opportunity and gain access to (it's an inherently free marketing and advertising channel) to inbound traffic, yet it can be hard in order to know where to start plus what advice to follow. Video can become an important contributor to your own overall SEO and digital marketing and advertising strategy, but it's important in order to be superior on how video clip is going to help a person achieve your marketing and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION goals. If you have got ever been into black-hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, spam, and un-natural links, Search engines will never forgive you plus you may be penalized by google at any time. As mentioned earlier, SEO companies are usually the most experienced in working with various verticals of online marketing, mainly credited to the nature of their particular work. Monitoring: Often overlooked, but one associated with the most important areas associated with successful SEO, this section strolls through how you can monitor your success and tie your own efforts back to real visitors and business, which gives a person the chance to future fine-tune and optimize your programs.

Without the doubt, one of the greatest trends that has already started to take place and may continue well into 2018 will be the consolidation of niche MarTech gamers by larger content cloud suppliers, with the role and significance of SEO increasing significantly all through this transformation. SEO Internet marketing offers major components, which develop the particular website traffic, and top research engine rankings. SEO is brief for Seo, and there is usually nothing really mystical about this particular. You might have heard the lot about SEO and exactly how it works, but basically exactly what is a measurable, repeatable procedure which is used to send out signals to search engines that will the pages are worth displaying in Google's index. Topic clusters have got been lauded since Blog9T the future associated with SEO and content strategy, yet are widely underreported on (so now's the time to hit! ) 93% of B2B companies use content marketing. 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The basics of GOOD SEO hasn't changed for years - although effectiveness of particular elements offers certainly narrowed or changed within type of usefulness - a person should still be focusing upon building a simple site making use of VERY simple SEO best practices - don't perspiration the small stuff, while all-the-time paying attention to the essential stuff - add plenty of unique PAGE TITLES and lots associated with new ORIGINAL CONTENT. Keyword research is definitely THE first step of any kind of SEO campaign.

Keep in mind that will links, content, and user encounter are all major SEO rating factors. Could holistic approach will ultimately eliminate a lot of the particular issues created by some SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION practitioners over the years, We suspect that search engines' technicians will initially overestimate the accuracy of their AI, resulting within Penguin-level collateral damage. SEO (Search Motor Optimization) is the process associated with making a website more noticeable in search results, also called improving search rankings. Siteimprove SEO furthermore provides in-tool tips on where to start as well as how to get the most out associated with your keyword research and supervising. We've already been operating in the SEO plus content marketing industry since last year and know how search motors work. Presently there are a great number associated with resources out there surrounding competing link analysis (and a great deal that have been authored simply by me! ) but whenever I actually speak with people that are usually working on SEO projects, really always one of those "yeah, I am aware I should do this more" tasks. Amy Kilvington, Marketing Executive at Custom Drapes, believes that SEOs are heading to have to optimize social media marketing more as Google indexes this and prioritizes it over their particular sites' pages. Social media is definitely the easiest and most efficient way to push out the SEO-based content. However, presently there are some easy adjustments that will you can make to the particular search engine optimization (SEO) component of it, which will ideally enable you to get fantastic results.

But definitely, the acronym many people ask about is SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, or search engine optimization. Between this plus 2017's Best SEO Campaign prize from the UK Search Honours, it's clear the world is usually starting to recognize Elephate since one of the most trustworthy SEO and Content Marketing companies in Europe. To understand how SEO functions to improve search rankings, we're going have to break it straight down a little. Whichever way you choose in order to categorize keywords, one of the particular most important steps in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION does keyword research. Some illustrations of White Hat SEO consist of optimizing META tags, putting key phrases in URLs, submitting sites in order to directories, making sitemaps, obtaining hyperlinks on related sites, and developing keyword-optimized content. An SEO Executive optimizes sites for making them show up increased on search engines like search engines and gain more website website visitors. Nevertheless, the fresh trend in SEO is ideal for long-tail keywords and even more conversational searches. SEO is the great marketing tool for the particular websites promoting their businesses on the internet. Still, the keyword element of SEO is becoming more and more difficult with Google Adwords concealing volume data. Making use of advanced Search engines semantic search algorithms, we link the gap between old college SEO and the new content material marketing. Tug has been appointed specifically to roll out a multi-lingual search engine marketing techniques campaign using its knowledge in international SEO and PAY-PER-CLICK. Presently there are a few fundamentals that will can help boost the technique, but SEO, or seo, is usually hardly ever considered. While employing the services of a great SEO agency can get a person good marketing copy for the particular website and an effective make use of of the related keywords, getting a brilliantly designed website may help a lot when this comes to attracting people plus even the search engines in order to your website. You are able to get into important SEO-related data like the particular page title, description, and key phrases for every page or a person can have the system immediately populate this data depending upon a document name or various other fields. SEO has become broadly adopted as an online advertising strategy due to its effectiveness. Creating high-quality content along with SEO in your mind through the beginning boosts search presence. In contrast, dark hat SEO is about attempting to take shortcuts and video game search engines. You may also use Google Analytics in order to find SEO keywords for content material optimization. Keyword research is the particular process SEOs value to discover what search queries consumers get into into a search engine regarding a given topic. Within today's rapidly shifting world, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques can change on the dime—and the worst part will be that you might not actually know it. Hacks that can have won you a front-page result as recently as 2016 are not only obsolete today, but they may even harm your website's rankings.

Register and raise a new free donation for SEO London, uk every time you shop on the internet. Local SEO - Optimize that localized content on your internet site to properly leverage local signs, online reviews and business entries. Learn more about content material optimization for SEO here. Along with paid-search it offers a very focused audience, visitors referred by SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION will only visit your web site if they are seeking particular home elevators your products or even related content. From keyword filling to link buying, the SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING landscape has seen numerous black-hat tricks — and Google often catches on. Chris Gregory, founder plus managing partner at Jacksonville dependent firm, DAGMAR Marketing, predicts that will AI and machine learning might have a big impact upon SEO in 2019 and SEOs who aren't technical will end up being left in the dust. Some SEO specialists also advise that anchor textual content should be varied as a lot of pages linking to one web page using the same anchor textual content may look suspicious to find motors. SEO trickery such because keyword ‘stuffing' in irrelevant written content simply won't cut it throughout the current day, with Google's algorithm taking over 200 elements to ensure that it's ratings provide results with valid plus authoritative sites, it is close to on impossible to accomplish anything various other than work with the research engines to make sure top rated quality SEO results. From a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION perspective, the principal keyword need to be at the beginning implemented by the other relevant key phrases.

[itsworn]

Understanding Driveline Alignment and Eliminating Driveshaft Vibration and Failures

When putting your car together after an update, or when building up a car from the frame off, you need to consider the drive line alignment when mounting the engine and rear end. Because this is one of the basic design features of the car, it can and must be done initially to save a lot of work later on. The quality of the final product depends on this.

This topic was discussed as far back as the mid ‘60s in car magazine as one of the most important considerations for hot rodders in general. It was firmly impressed upon the readers that if you didn’t get this right, there could be plenty of problems down the road. That fact has not changed over the years.

When working with high horsepower applications and when making modifications, we need to consider that our driveline angles may be changing in the process, and that each part will be taking much more force and must be upgraded if we don’t want to run into serious problems with broken driveshafts, yokes and bearings.

We now have available a good amount of information about drive shaft technology and geometry. This technology had initially been developed for production cars, but high horsepower applications require a closer look and slightly different approach to this information. The advantages of this knowledge are in the area of reduced power loss and increased component life. To begin with, we need to know what to call the various components related to our driveshaft.

Drive Line Terminology – The component names for the driveline parts are as follows:

Slip Yoke – this is the yoke at the front of the driveshaft that goes into the transmission and can slip to take up the slack of chassis movement.

Weld Yoke – is the yoke at the each end of the drive shaft that attaches to the pinion yoke at the rear end and the Slip yoke at the front. These are welded to the shaft tubing.

Universal Joint Kit or U-Joint (UJ) – is the actual part that forms the rotational connection between the driveshaft and the transmission and rear end.

Tubing – is the metal tubing between the weld yokes.

Pinion Yoke – is the yoke that is attached to the pinion shaft at the rear end.

Controlling Driveline Vibration – The sources of vibration in our high performance drivelines, in order of importance with the most critical at the top, are:

1) Run-out

2) Improper Drive line Angles

3) Looseness in the fit of any of the parts

4) Unbalanced parts

5) Component Deflection

6) Reaching Critical Speed

We will examine some of these causes and see how we can cure many of them just by using better parts that are designed for the high horsepower environment.

Drive Line Angles – Basically the transmission output shaft and the pinion shaft need to be parallel to one another, and if they are, the angles they make with the drive shaft will be the same and opposite. And, when a U-Joint operates with any significant amount of drive line angle, it creates a problem. The bearings speed up and slow down twice per revolution of the driveshaft. This causes an oscillation in the power train. The more angle that we have, the higher the peaks of oscillation we see and therefore the greater chance of vibration.

Drive shaft angles are not only measured from a side view, but also from a top view.  Some designs can have a lateral displacement of the rear of the drive shaft from the front. That creates a drive shaft angle at both the transmission and the pinion. So, we can align the drive shaft from a side view to zero angle and still have some degree of drive shaft angle present.

There is the thought that the driveshaft must have some angle to the pinion and transmission yoke so that the U-Joint bearings will rotate to help lubricate them. This is true, but we should keep the driveline angles as low as possible and most importantly keep the angles equal and opposite at each end of the drive shaft.

Changing Driveline Angles – We can change either the front (transmission output shaft angle) or the back (pinion angle) height of the driveshaft. The front may take more effort, so we usually make changes to the back, or pinion angle to match the transmission angle.

To change the driveline angles, you need to check to see if the overall driveshaft to pinion or transmission angle is excessive. In almost every case, the transmission shaft is higher than the pinion shaft. So to reduce the angle to the driveshaft, you would need to drop the transmission mount height and angle the engine/transmission down to the rear.

Over four degrees could be considered excessive for transmission/pinion to driveshaft angle. In this case, you will need to change the engine/transmission angle first. This can possibly be done by changing the height of the transmission mount. This may, or may not, be possible.

Then you can change the pinion angle by adjusting the lengths of any links in a typical four link aftermarket system. For older leaf spring systems, companies offer wedge inserts that go between the leaf spring and the spring pad on the axle tube. These are available in different degrees of angle.

If your car must have drive line angles from a design standpoint, the angle of the drive shaft to both the transmission output shaft and the pinion shaft should be equal and also opposite.

Yoke Design – The only attachment design for holding the U-joints that is suitable for high performance applications is the strap design. The U-bolt attachment that is commonly used on passenger cars and trucks is not considered acceptable for several reasons.

One reason is that it has less strength than the strap design, two it may distort the bearing caps if over-torqued, and three, it grips the cap at three points whereas the strap design grips it in four places which translates to less distortion of the caps.

U-Joint Kit Designs – There are basically two designs of U-joints available. The popular standard zerk designs are used for production vehicles and have a zerk fitting for lubrication.  Inherent in this design are hollow shafts that provide the means for the grease to reach the bearings. This hollow design also makes the part weaker than if it were solid.

The other design is called the Sealed Design, or Solid U-joint and has no grease fitting and therefore a solid core.  This unit has precision seals that keep the lubricant with the bearings while also sealing out dirt.  Because it is solid, the sealed design is therefore much stronger.

Proper lubrication of the sealed U-joint is simple but can be overdone.  We always want to coat the bearings, but not excessively. We also need to fill the trunnion cavity with grease, but not overfill it. If too much grease is applied, then when we attach the caps, the pressure from the grease trying to escape will literally blow out the seals and ruin them.

Adjusting Run-out at the Pinion Yoke – A major cause of driveline vibrations is when the pinion yoke has a measurable degree of run-out.  We can test the run-out after the installation of the U-joint in the pinion yoke by using a dial indicator attached to the rear end housing.

We measure at both sides of the u-joint and then if the offset is different, we must remove the pinion yoke and rotate it on the pinion shaft to find a position that will index more correctly. This is a very important and necessary step in reducing driveline vibration.

Balancing the Drive Assembly – The only true way to balance a drive shaft is through the use of a Two Plane balancer, or one that simultaneously balances both ends and has the capability to Cross Talk between ends. This allows the equipment to derive a dynamic model of the forces of the imbalance to determine the force vectors involved and formulate a solution that takes into account both ends influence in the overall balance of the shaft.

A simple automotive drive shaft balancer is fine for grandma’s car, but for high performance and drag racing, with the very high RPM we experience, we need more precision. It would be a very good idea to send your driveshaft off to a company with a proper balancer rig if your area does not have one.

And remember that the higher RPM your driveshaft will encounter, the larger the diameter of the tubing you will need. In the above list of causes of vibration, the last one, Reaching Critical Speed means that if the tubing is too small, it will flex at high RPM and wobble. The larger the diameter of the tubing, the less chance this will occur.

Snap Ring Failure – A common failure in high performance drivelines is when the retainer snap rings come out of the yoke.  There is a simple and easy way to reduce this occurrence by applying a spot of epoxy to the ring. This prevents the ring from collapsing and falling out of the ring groove. Be sure that the snap ring is seated completely inside the groove in the yoke before applying the epoxy.

Conclusion – The important things to remember for high performance applications are to use drive line parts that are made specifically for extreme use when possible. Make sure you install the components correctly to reduce drive line vibrations and parts failures.

Check the alignment of your system and correct any miss-alignment. When buying the drive shaft, make certain it is up to the task for the intended RPM and horsepower range you will be running in your type of car. Periodically check driveline parts for cracks or for signs of a bent or dented shaft.

The professional drag racing teams that run the top series always use new drive line parts for each race. We don’t necessarily need to do that at the street level, but knowing they do that says something about the importance those teams place on the driveline components. That same concern should be shared by all high performance automotive enthusiasts.

The driveline in our high performance cars includes the transmission output shaft, the driveshaft, the pinion shaft and the U-joints that connect these three. All of these components need to be in proper alignment and designed to withstand the stress of high performance driving. We’ll tell you how to do that.

The parts that make up a Sealed U-joint are shown here. The thrust washer shown at the ends are crushable to allow for a very tight fit that further reduces a source of driveline vibration. These are solid U-joints and much stronger than the ones with grease fittings.

Yokes that are specifically designed for high performance applications are all machined parts and are built much stronger to reduce ear deflection. Note the reinforcing webs that help prevent ear deflection.

Drive shaft alignment is critical to reducing power loss and vibrations that can kill components. Basically the transmission output shaft and the pinion shaft need to be parallel to one another, and if they are, then the angles they make with the drive shaft will be opposite. Modern high performance cars should have near zero pinion and transmission angles measured in relation to the drive shaft.

To test for excess run-out at the pinion shaft yoke, you can attach a dial indicator to the rear end housing and measure to the end cap surface. Then lift the plunger, rotate the pinion 180 degrees, and re-measure. If the difference is more than a few thousandths, you need to re-position the pinion yoke on the pinion shaft and measure again until you eliminate most of the run-out.

This aftermarket high strength yoke has been drilled for balancing. This is obviously more important for higher RPM ranges, but the life of your U-joint bearings and pinion bushings will be longer when you have everything balanced.

When greasing the needle bearings in the U-joint caps, spread the grease to cover all of the bearings, but don’t apply too much. If you do, when you press the caps over the shaft, you’ll blow out the seals.

The U-bolt type of attachment for U-joints is considered inferior to the strap design, shown here, for several reasons. The strap is stronger, is less apt to crush the bearing cap, uses stronger bolts which cannot over-tighten the bearing caps, and it holds the cap at four points as opposed to the U-bolt attaching at only three points.

This assortment of yokes shows the evolution of high performance slip yokes. The yoke on the far left is a standard truck yoke that is sometimes used as a replacement for the stock units for high performance applications. The middle yoke is a modified unit that improves the performance over the stock unit. The one on the right is specifically made for high RPM applications and is a stronger, lighter and more efficient design that puts the U-joint closer to the support bearing to reduce vibration and breakage. The driveshaft length may need to be adjusted when using these.

Sources:

Classis Performance Products; 866/593-2423; ClassicPerform.com

Drive Train Specialists; 800/556-6126; DriveTrainSpecialists.com

Energy Suspension; 888/292-1250; ENERGYSUSPENSION.COM

Performance Online; 800/638-1703; PerformanceOnline.com

Performance Suspension Technology; 877/224-1699; P-S-T.com

QA1;  800/721-7761 QA1.net

Quick Performance; 515/232-0126; QuickPerformance.com

Strange Engineering; 847/663-1701; Strangeeng.net

Summit Racing Equipment; 800/230-3030; SummitRacing.com

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