#Look i am not asking fans or the writers to do full scale research on ethnicity of what is essentially a bg bg character

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

Ok so i havent seen the actual movie yet but i just want to ask does anyone have a clear pictures of Inspector Singh cause from what i have seen he looks like a sikh man and if he were than that means that Gayatri would be named as Gayatri Kaur instead of Gayatri Singh

[michaels-blackhat]

thoughts on evil Forrest 😈

We are going to start out by apologizing. This is very very late. I’m sure when you sent this ask, you meant it to be in the same joking tone that I approach all of my other propaganda posts. Sadly, this is actually going to be a deep dive into a few Evil Forrest related things, including the moment I feel they changed directions, the perfect wasted build-up, and the implications of the change/how it then negatively impacted the story. As I’m sure you already know, by being on my blog at all, I don’t think the story was good to begin with, so we are going to focus on the weird hoops they made themselves jump through to make that story still work. Additionally, I am only going to mention once, right now, how much of a waste it was to not have Forrest ‘fall for his mark’ and complete one of my absolute favorite tropes. Honestly, I think “because I want it” is a completely valid reason to like Evil Forrest. But, the question was “Thoughts on Evil Forrest” and these thoughts have been developing for over a year and a half. So, I apologize in advance.

The majority of this is under a cut, with highlights in the abstract. If no one wants to read this, I understand completely. Go ahead, skip it.

Note: it pains me greatly to not actually have full sources for this essay. Just know that in my heart I am using proper APA citations, I just absolutely do not feel like digging through tweets to find sources to properly cite.

Abstract:

Previous research indicates that Roswell New Mexico has a history of repeating excuses to explain mid-season changes to plots. This essay explores how those excuses are not only loads of crap, but how they hinder the show’s ability to tell a coherent story, misuse the multiple-plot structure to enhance the themes being explored, and lead to decisions that mean the show continuously goes over budget. This also means that characters are not used to their full potential and has led to what some fans consider to be “out of character” behaviors. While these behaviors are not universally agreed on, evidence can be shown that these behaviors directly contradict emotionally important character arc/plot points in the show.

The author of this paper acknowledges that the show took some strides to mend this problem. However, once again no consensus could be found on whether Forrest was a low-level member of Deep Sky and thus just allowed to fuck off on a bus, or his job was recruitment because he did a piss poor job of making Alex not join.

The concept of Evil Forrest has been with the fandom as early as New York Comic Con (NYCC) in 2019, when it was revealed that Alex had a new “blue-haired love interest”. Speculation abounded within the fandom, with some people, including the author, going “yeah, he’s evil” while others rejoiced in the concept of Alex having a loving partner. Speculation increased as fans discussed Tyler Blackburn’s seeming disinterest in his new love interest, prompting some once again to scream “EVIL” at the top of their lungs to anyone who would listen. Very little was revealed, beyond the fact that the new character would show up somewhere around episode 3 of the second season.

Episode 2.04 aired with some commenting on how he barely interacted with Alex- prompting more evil speculation- and others excited to see the characters interact more. The character appears again in 2.06, where he invites Alex to dubious spoken word poetry (which Alex attends); 2.08, where they have a paintball date and go to The Wild Pony; 2.10, where the two are seen writing together briefly at the beginning of the episode; and 2.13, where Alex performs his song at open mic night, tells Forrest his relationship with the person in the song was long over, and they kiss. Forrest was not revealed to be evil during season 2.

Amidst the season airing, Word of God via Twitter post announced that yes, Forrest had originally been planned as a villain, though not the main villain, but it was changed as filming progressed.

The Word of God Twitter post revealed that Forrest had originally been planned as a villain, but they decided that they could not make their “blue-haired gay man” a villain. This mirrors a similar situation and excuse used the previous season, where the character of Jenna Cameron was originally planned to work with Jesse Manes against the aliens, before it was changed because they just “loved Riley [the actress] too much”. Both of these examples occurred while already filming and reflect on a larger problem with the show. Though not the topic of this essay, it is important to note that both characters are white, both in the show and by virtue of being played by white actors. The fact that they couldn’t be villains for one reason or another is not a courtesy extended to the male villains who are all the most visibly brown, and thus ‘other’, members of the cast.

This also highlights the fact that, via Twitter, it has been revealed two other times that occurrences that were reported in season 1 also occurred in season 2. During the airing of episode 1.02, it was revealed that the single best build-up of tension in the show- when Alex walks to the Airstream not saying a word to Michael after a dramatic declaration- happened because one actor was sick at the time and they had to go back and film the kisses later. At the point of airing for episode 2.08, it was revealed that one of the actors were sick and unable to film a kissing scene. Allegedly, this caused the writers to retool the entire scene and deviate from the plan to make that subplot about Coming Out. The execution of this subplot will be explored later in this essay.

The last occurrence revealed via Twitter also revealed larger issues within the show: lack of planning and poor budgeting. During the airing of season 1, Tyler Blackburn was needed for an extra episode beyond his contracted 10. A full explanation was never given, but speculation about poor planning and to fill in because Heather Hemmens had to miss one of her 10 episodes due to scheduling conflicts for another project. During the airing of season 2, yet another tweet came out saying they made a mistake and Tyler would once again be in an additional episode. No explanations beyond “a mistake” were given, though once again speculation occurred. It is the opinion of the author that this was due to changing plot points over halfway through writing, while episodes were already in production. It has been speculated by some that these changes occurred during the writing of 2.08, which was being finished/pre-production was occurring roughly around the time of NYCC 2019.

Previous Literature:

A brief look at different theories of plots and subplots

Many people have written on the subject of plotting, for novels and screen alike. The author is more familiar with film writing than tv, but a lot of the concepts carry over. Largely, the B- and C- (and D- and E-… etc) plots should reinforce the theme of the A-plot. This can be through the use of a negative example, where the antithesis of the theme is explored to reinforce the theme presented by the A plot, or through other examples of the theme, generally on a small scale.

A movie example of this would be Hidden Figures (2016), where the A-plot explores how race and gender impact the main character (Katherine Johnson) in her new job. The B-plots explore the other characters navigating the same concepts in different settings and ways- learning a new skill as to not become obsolete and breaking boundaries there (Dorothy Vaugn) and being the first black woman to complete a specific degree program and the fight it took to get there (Mary Jackson). A TV example that utilizes this concept of plot and theme is the 911 shows. Each of the rescues in a given episode will directly relate to the overall theme of the episode and the overall plot for the focus character. This example is extremely blunt. It does not use any tools to hide the connection, to the point you can often guess the outcome for that A-plot fairly quickly.

This is not the only way to explore themes within visual media. Moonlight (2016) looks at three timestamps in the life of Chiron. Each timestamp has a plot even if they feel more like individual scenes or moments rather than plots as some are more used to in films. Each time stamp deals with rejection, isolation, connection, and acceptance in different ways. So while there is no clear A-, B-, or C-Plot, each time stamp works as their own A-Plot to explore the themes in a variety of ways, particularly by starting out in a place of rejection and moving to acceptance or a place of connection to isolation.

Please note that there are many ways to write multiple plots, there are just two examples.

While there are flaws within season 1 of RNM, overall the themes stayed consistent throughout the season, mainly the theme of alienation. The theme threads through the Alien’s isolation/alienation from humanity which is particularly seen through Michael’s unwillingness to participate and Isobel’s over participation. There is Rosa’s isolation from others, how her friendship with “Isobel” ended up compounding her existing alienation from her support system due to her mental illness and coping mechanisms. We see how Max and Liz couldn’t make connections. This theme presented itself over and over in season 1. While this essay is not an exploration of the breakdown of themes in season 2, it should be noted that there were some threads that followed throughout the season. The theme of mothers/motherhood was woven throughout season 2, with some elements more effective than others. Please contact the author for additional thoughts on Helena Ortecho and revenge plots.

One of the largest problems within season 2 was the sheer number of plots jammed into the season. These plot threads often ended up hindering the effectiveness of the themes and made the coherence of the season suffer. Additionally, a lot of them were convoluted and difficult to follow.

Thesis:

Essentially, season 2 was a mess. To look at it holistically is almost an exercise in futility. Either you grow angry about the dropped plots and premises, you hand wave them off, or you fill them in for yourself. Instead, this essay proposes to look at individual elements to explain why Forrest should have stayed evil.

We first meet Forrest in 2.04 when he is introduced on the Long Family Farm, which we later learn was the location where our past alien protagonists had their final standoff. He’s introduced. He’s largely just there. The audience learns he has more of a history with Michael. In 2.06, we meet him again with his dog Buffy (note: poor Buffy has not been seen again and we miss a chunky queen). There’s mild flirting, Alex is invited to an open mic night, which he attends. For the purpose of this essay, the author’s thoughts on the poetry will not be expressed. Readers can take a guess.

It is after this point that the author speculates the Decision was made. This choice to make Forrest not evil- paired with the aforementioned ‘can’t kiss, someone’s sick’- impacted the plot. We have Alex have a scene with his father- which the author believes could have been pushed to a different episode- and then have Alex go on a date and then not kiss Forrest at the end of the night. Here, the audience sees Forrest hit Alex in the leg, allegedly not knowing he had lost his leg despite ‘looking him up’, which parallels the shot to the leg that happens to Charlie. Besides wasting this ABSOLUTELY TEXTBOOK SET UP WTF, it also takes Alex away from the main plot and then forces a new plot for him. Up to this point, Alex’s plot was discovering more about the crash and his family’s involvement. Turning Alex’s date from a setup for evil Forrest to a Coming Out story adds yet another plot thread to a packed season. It is also the author’s thought that this is where the convoluted kidnapping plot comes in. With Forrest already in 2.10 for a moment, a plot where Alex is evil has Forrest attack him for Deep Sky rather than Jesse abduct him for a piece of alien glass Alex was going to give him anyway and then for Flint to abduct Alex from Jesse. It’s messy. In a bad way. Evil Forrest would have been a cleaner set up: no taking back a piece of alien glass Alex gave to Michael in a touching moment. No double abduction. Instead, there is only Forrest, who Alex trusts, breaking that trust to take him as leverage over Michael.

Implications:

Now, Alex has two plots (Tripp & Coming Out). The Coming Out plot is largely ineffective, as they are only relevant to scenes with Forrest and have the undercurrent of there only being a certain acceptable way to be out. This could have been used for Alex to discover his comfort levels, mirroring Isobel’s self discovery, but there was not enough screen time for that. Additionally, Isobel’s coming out story was about her allowing herself the freedom to explore. Alex’s story was about the freedom to… act like this dude wanted him to. Alex’s internalized homophobia played out often in the series but it was also informed by the violence he experienced at Jesse’s hands and the literal hate crime he and his high school boyfriend experienced. With that in mind, the “kissing to piss off bigots” line comes off poorly. This is a character who experienced what a pissed off bigot could do- reluctance to kiss in public is not the same as not being out. There is more to be said on this topic, but as it is not actually the focus of the essay, it will be put on hold. To surmise: Alex’s coming out is attempted to be framed as being himself, but it is actually the conformity to someone else’s ideals. It does not work as an antithetical to Isobel’s story, as the framing indicates that the conformity/right was to be out contradicts Isobel’s theme.

Further Research:

MAKE FORREST EVIL YOU COWARDS

Author Acknowledgements:

The author of this paper acknowledges that the show took some strides to mend this problem. However, once again no consensus could be found on whether Forrest was a low-level member of Deep Sky and thus just allowed to fuck off on a bus, or his job was recruitement because he did a piss poor job of making Alex not join.

[partly-cloudyskies]

1, 12, 16, 18 + one I didnt pick but you secretly want to talk about

This has run long so I’m putting it under a break. Some thought about my current writing projects, an old abandoned project and, uh, word counts below!

1) Welp I got three WIPs:

This is How We Grow: My first real attempt to fully commit to the heightened romance and emotion of an idealized pastoral setting but sometimes there are shadow monsters plus this also acts as an excuse to see more of Soup’s weblena art.

The Longest Shadows: A future fic where Lena becomes a badass shadow witch and Webby learns that the McDuck legacy is a complicated thing rather than the unalloyed good that she unthinkingly embraced as a youth (Yeah how you doin season 3).

The Glass Factory: A Maebea NITW AU where Mae and Bea find and cling to each other out of a shared sense of alienation as they bear witness to an economically depressed city in its final moments before the shockwave of gentrification turns it into something unrecognizable and hostile (YES I’m still working on it!!)

12) A dumb line from an old WIP... there are so many abandoned projects that are like, two chapters and then a separate file full of quotes that I thought were cool and then I never looked back on them again. I’m sure those hold up. Let me check my old writings folder...

OH NO. I have it and I hate it but I’m going to post it anyway:

Detta rises over the Blackfuse mercenary as he struggled with the debris crushing him. Short even for a goblin, she looms over him like a Titan contemplating the fleeting life of mortals. She raises one hand, closed in a fist that sparks and howls with the wind.

“I’m gonna put a hurricane in your skull. See what it does to your brain.”

FOR CONTEXT, this is an old WIP from, like, 2016. It was a World of Warcraft fic that I REALLY wanted to write. It took place during the Panderia campaign and was set entirely in Bilgewater Harbor, an island city of goblins that is almost entirely empty in-game but I always liked its chaotic design. It was about Detta, a goblin Shaman who had given up adventuring and became a freelance problem solver in Bilgewater. She had a Storm Elemental she named Dizzy who she used as a secretary. One day Korkron troopers loyal to Hellscream bursts into her office and tells her they want to hire her to track down a criminal. Tozz, one of the troopers, is assigned to stay with her to make sure she stays on task. Eventually they would find the criminal only to learn he’s a Twilight’s Hammer cultist who had been in Orgrimmar instructing Hellscream’s forces on the secrets of Dark Shamanism and Hellscream was hiding this by killing everyone involved. You can take it from me that it was VERY lore compliant while filling in the spaces that the game devs had left CRIMINALLY underdeveloped and was going to be a dramatic story in the vein of film noir, with intrigue and divided loyalties and shifting motivations all on the eve of war and rebellion and WoW DESERVED to have better story than it did and you know what I’ve decided that is actually a brilliant line and I am PROUD of it and --

You get the picture. Next question!

16) Hm... this is a question that I don’t really have an answer for because all worldbuilding is good worldbuilding if you ask me. I think the thing about worldbuilding is that a good 90% of it doesn’t make it to the page and we kind of struggle with that because if you have all this research material then you might feel compelled to splash it all out on the page so you’d have something to show for all the time you spent. But that’s not what it’s for, it’s so that you have something to refer to when you need it. It’s the big part of the iceberg no one else gets to see. So maps? Spreadsheets? Research? None of it is ridiculous. All of it is good.

I guess the most of it I’ve ever done was for the novel that I wrote. I had a lot of material for that. I drew a map and I even tried to keep it to scale by sketching it out using travel route lines in Google Maps. I guess that is a little ridiculous, but I’ve no regrets.

18) I hate title and I don’t really spend much time on them. I certainly don’t keep track of how many titles I come up with before settling on one. I tend to be direct, I think.

Glass Factory is called Glass Factory because there’s a glass factory in NITW and my story takes place in an art studio. There’s an art studio in Alexandria called the Torpedo Factory, and that and its surroundings is what inspired that story, so Glass Factory. ez.

Longest Shadows is about legacy, the shadows cast by Scrooge and Magica and how Webby and Lena fall under those shadows. Plus it’s Lena so there’s almost a 100% chance any story with her has some kind of shadow reference in the title. So that’s that.

This is How We Grow was probably the most agonizing of my recent WIPs in terms of title. I think it’s a little clunky. But it’s about the two main characters growing and it’s... there’s farming. Plants grow. So... uh, that’s it. I might not be a huge fan of the title but I’ve never considered changing it. Never look back, when it comes to titles. That’s my motto.

Now for a question of my choosing...

14) I can knock out 500 words pretty easily on a good day, like on a real good day I can do a 1000 in half an hour. I’ve had times where I got an idea in the morning, wrote 2000 words about it, edited it by lunch and posted it by evening. But good days are few and far between and mostly I just put in a paragraph or two where I can.

I used to be very obsessive about word count. Like, I still look at it today but now it’s just like “oh, that’s how many words are in this file, okay”, but years ago I practically lived by it. I think part of it was me chasing that NaNoWriMo dragon, which was something I used to be pretty focused on. Now that I’m older I wonder if NaNoWriMo actually helps or does more to hurt aspiring writers. I mean, it’s not like there’s any external consequences to falling short but when you’re young and you’re looking to commit yourself to something, it sucks real hard when you inevitably fall short and it can be discouraging.

These days I’m more in a “what’s important is that you’ve written something” frame of mind. It doesn’t matter if it’s four pages or it’s literally a single word. I’ve had single word days. And it’s okay! It’s okay to write a single word. Progress is progress, when it comes to writing. Now, if I look at the word count, it’s because a chapter I’m in is running longer than I would have liked and maybe I should consider splitting it in two or something because I am the kind of person who likes the idea of a uniform amount of words per paragraph thank you very much. Beyond that, I don’t pay word count much mind and I think I’m a happier writer for it.

So yeah!

[vohalika]

hello, this is random but.. could u please tell me some of your fav things about vex? i don't often see people who Really Like Vex and we need more of that

Well, well, well, anon.

I have literally no idea how long it has been since you asked this of me, but rest assured I have not forgotten! Well, okay, I had for a while, then I saw it again and was like “oh, right, huh… And would you look at that, I’m about 100 posts away from 100,000… Wouldn’t that be a good one…”

So. Here we are! An unstructured rambling of all the reasons I really, really love Vex, somewhere between superficial and embarrasingly personal, to celebrate this arbitrary number of things I have spread around on this hell site.

Okay, first of all, the only thing Laura had to say to Kit Buss for the official art was “make her hot”. That is a Statement. And boy did Kit and also everyone deliver on that.

Like seriously. I didn’t use to be a fan of feathers in hair or white armor, but good god does she make it work.

Hey, I said this was going to be extremely superficial

Another thing I really didn’t use to like, twins. Overdone and usually poorly executed. But our girl made a Point out of being as different from her twin as she could be while at the same time being completely believable siblings.

I swear to god I’ll do my absolute best to mention Vax as little as possible. This is not about him.

Third thing I really couldn’t stand! The one, usually female, team member with a pet! Closely related to the one with the nature powers! I don’t know, these just always rubbed me the wrong way in media before, probably because I also never really cared for shows or movies about animals. Fight me.

And yet here she is, and she is not the “won’t somebody think of the children animals!” type of gal and Trinket is amazing and it still ties into her personality on a larger scale without being preachy.

I have a fourth thing. I also really don’t care for elves, ever. Everybody hates them. And then she turns around and makes me cry about the elf thing. Good god.

Yes, watching the first episode way back when was an uphill battle. There’s a reason I started with episode 69 and then watched the rest.

Nice.

Vex has the best worst sense of humor. No, really. I’m not even talking about that time she made a comment about the boy with the shot off fingers not having much of a future as a musician. But I’m also talking about that. And that time Scanlan tried having a meaningful monologue about having a daughter now. “I’ve defined most of my life by the people I slept with, and now…” - “Well, technically, this is still kinda defined by that.”

(Shoutout to Percy “I was just thinking that”)

Also, “We don’t do anything with dignity”, “I only serve gods with big dicks”, “You might live forever, but you will still be fucking ugly”? Girl is iconic, even if her sense if humor is usually pretty inappropriate for the given situation, she just can’t help it. I relate.

On a related note, it is so easy to play a similar archetype and have her just be this always dignified and above the humor kind of stuck-up. It’s basically how most people would have written her (and a certain someone did). But not our girl, oh no.

Also, I recently made a post about this, but we really, really don’t talk enough about how she’s just the leader of the party. She is. No, really, lower your bitch sticks, y’all. She’s the one to talk to the most NPCs, she’s the one to usually say go, and everyone just naturally adheres to her. It’s never forced, it’s never an “I, as the leader” moment, and she doesn’t try to wrestle her way into the role. It’s just what happens naturally.

Which also means she’s good at stepping back and letting other people shine for a bit. But still, Vex is the reason they didn’t just flounder around like a chicken without its head after Scanlan left. Laura was late to two sessions in campaign one; the first one was already in an extended battle scene, and the other was literally spent in a bedroom in hell waitinig for Vex to tell them what to do.

This is why scholars are generally of the opinion that Vex is the only Top in VM. And also what intellectuals refer to as Big Dick Energy.

Let’s talk about what the assholes call Greed. Yes, Vex is, out of all of them, the most pre-occupied with gold and loot. But she NEVER hoards anything for herself, never spends any of her own gold on herself even until the timeskip, leave alone the party funds.

She looks out for the interests of the group, makes sure they get the best possible deals and are paid what they are owed. And she’s the only one to ever worry about money, too, whereas everyone else never bothers to think about it. Hence why her and Vax split the cost of paying their staff after the party spent all the funds early on.

Look, I find her worries very indicative of growing up in poverty with her mom, than surrounded by rich and important people but locked out of the loop, and then poor and on the road again with Vax. I find it very relatable, and everyone who claims that looking out for the financial well-being of the party is “greedy” is lucky enough to never have had to worry about eating next month while also making rent.

There’s Safety In A Fist Full Of Diamonds, okay?

No really I need y’all to read that and send it to the annoying bitches who complain.

Vex is literally never stingy when it comes to helping people with the money she made sure they have. Remember how she didn’t even flinch at spending a five digit number to free angel boy slaves?

WHICH LEADS ME TO ANOTHER POINT. Vex. Vex has a serious hoarding problem. But not when it comes to money of earthly possessions. No. When it comes to PICKING UP STRAYS.

It’s how she got Trinket.

It’s how she got the angel babies.

It’s what she tries to do with the grey render baby.

It’s what she suggested they do with the dragon eggs in the Raishan fight

(LET! VEX! HAVE! PET! DRAGONS!)

IT HOW SHE GOT HER OWN GODDAMN HUSBAND OKAY.

I have no idea how she hasn’t adopted her own zoo by the time VM forms. Though I can totally see her opening orphanages in Whitestone, both for people and animals and creatures of all kinds, really.

Remember when she was the only one to protest the punching of a spectral ghost cow?

The hardships of her youth made her, yes, very afraid of being out of money, but also made her compassionate as fuck. She’s always down with helping people even if there’s little to no coin in it, okay? Stop overlooking that, assholes.

SPEAKING OF COMPASSION. Remember what her original beef with the Vasselheim potion seller was? That he took advantage of Grog being intellectually challenged. Which is what he did! Blatantly so! And he wasn’t the least bit sorry about it!

I mean, I bet he is by now, but, you know. Karma.

When Laura says Vex just wanted justice and then everyone else escalated that scene she is goddamn right, rewatch your own footage Matthew.

Oh god do I have to talk about broomgate now. I don’t want to talk about broomgate.

OKAY

Broomgate is literally the only time in the entire series that Vex ever takes something for herself. Was it the morally right thing to do? Maybe not. Though to keep in mind that a) Hardwick is a piece of shit, b) they literally met Gern when he had the skeletons of Kiki’s dead civilization dancing for him; Vax shanked Nothics for less, c) and this was hot off the heels of fighting a necromancer in the last big arc, too, d) they were on a mission to kill dragons. That fly. With no method of flying for the majority of the party. Vex always intended to use the broom for that purpose, so you could make the legal argument of commandeering it instead of stealing, and, finally, e) SHE HAD JUST FUCKING DIED

Why do we never talk about that

Other characters get cut all the slack for what they do after just dying

Other characters get cut all the slack when they steal from other guests

Other characters get cut all the slack when they withhold loot for the party

Other characters DIDN’T GET AN ALIGNMENT DROP FOR DOING WORSE SHIT THAN THIS

WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT BROOMGATE

WHY WAS BROOMGATE EVER EVEN A THING

okay

okay

MOVING ON

Hey, while we’re at dying. Remember how Vex spent the day after she, literally, died, trying to make sure the person who was to blame for her death was okay? She did that. And Percy was uncomfortable with it, visibly so, but also too guilty to call her out here.

And no one. NO ONE. EVER. Bothered to check in on how she felt after dying.

Vax made it all about the sacrifice he made, Percy felt too guilty, NO ONE ELSE CARED.

And what does she do? Soldier on. Try and cheer Vax up and support him in any way she can.

Honestly, learning the Raven Queen book by heart and then telling him that being the champion of a god is really fucking cool? Relatable. Relatable as fuck. You go girl.

And TO THIS DAY. ACROSS TWO CAMPAIGNS. Vex has been the only one. THE ONLY ONE. To EVER check up on someone after they died. Jester might eventually be the second one, but, you know. I am a big advocate for post-death and just post-big-battle-in-general aftercare cuddle piles or whatever. Someone tell the cast to implement that immediately.

And while we’re at death, let’s talk about THE DARKNESS

There are dark facets to her character. Vex never makes her own issues everyone else’s problem and they go largely unadressed, but they’re there.

Saundor brought up the story about how she got Trinket and had to kill for the first time while doing so.

(Sidenote: Saundor doing more research into her character than an actual writer is extremely telling.)

That was definitely traumatic for a young girl and I don’t mean to dismiss that, but that’s also the part I can understand Vax dismissing when they talk about it later on. They do kill a lot of people after that and this was self-defense, so hey, okay. Fine.

HOWEVER

That short story was indicative of many other things that torment Vex. Mostly her low sense of self-worth.

Like, her entire inner monologue is centered around how stupid she was for getting into this situation in the first place (= for being taken advantage of by criminals at the tender age of probably like 15), and how this would never have happened to Vax, who was away in the city to take care of them.

And we see that low sense of self-worth bleeding into Vex’s character throughout the campaign. That’s part of the reason why she spends the day after her first death making sure everyone else is okay. That’s also part of the reason she blames herself for Scanlan leaving and acts like she’s completely fine when he returns just so he’ll stay.

Honestly that short story is so insightful and explains so much about her, I don’t know how anyone could claim to have any grasp on her character without reading it.

(Also, Laura should write more, she’s talented)

Now a significant part of her self-worth issues obviously also ties back into her time at Syngorn. I can just hear people getting out their tiny violins, oh, waaah, she wasn’t one of the rich, cool kids in elf school, poor her.

But that’s not entirely it?

Like, just that is already plenty to fuck a person up. I’ve been there, too.

But let’s just say the fact that her dad was also cold towards them and acted like they were unworthy is a BIG part of what fucked her up. Call it daddy issues if you feel like being dismissive about a genuinely traumatizing upbringing, but that’s how it is.

And don’t get me wrong, if this were the traumatic childhood olympics, it’s not exactly up there and relatively tame for the background of a character in a fantasy story, but it is very true to life and extremely relatable, and Laura just executes it so well. So, so well.

That’s part of what makes the entire stretch of Feywild episodes so great. From what we see of Vax’s reaction later on, Percy is the only person she ever talked to about this - or at least the only one who ever listened - and he immediately got it. And instead of yelling at her about how amazing she is, he did something to make her feel better about herself. Without making it about himself, by the way.

I enjoy a fake married plotline as much as the next gal, but Percy giving her a title she’d have to earn by her own merits is soooo much more meaningful than just putting a fake ring on her, okay?

Yes, at the end of the day, this is basically a Cinderella fantasy. So what? No, really. One of the best things about Vex and her arc is that it validates feeling upset about not measuring up in superficial, material ways. And it validates getting your come-uppance. These are, as mentioned above, experiences that can really mess with a person, but we’re usually supposed to be above it all because money and titles don’t make you happy.

Also something only people who never struggled financially can say/believe unironically and without specifying.

Hell, that’s about 70% of the reason I’m considering getting a Ph.D. if I happen to get the grades.

I’m also not a big fan of the term daddy issues, but I can’t deny that this is a thing here

not the thing they went into the Feywild for, buuuut

ahem

So. Remember when Laura said during the campaign wrap up that Vex thought of Scanlan as a father figure and everyone was like whaaaaat? And I was like ahahahaha, I knew it.

This is so tragic, really. Because she tried so hard so many times to help Scanlan and be nice to him and he just brushed her off. And then she’s the one who volunteers to spend the night all by herself in some dirty pub far, far away after opening up to his daughter about her own issues to bring him back alive, and then gets yelled at, and never apologized to.

And then he comes back and tries to erase her memory and not only is that never even brought up, she also just doesn’t even think she might be owed an apology because a) she still blames herself for him leaving because, you know, they never really talked out what happened there and b) she’s just too happy for at least that father figure returning to them to make much of a fuss about it, and Percy, bless his heart, TRIES, but it’ll take a few more years of marriage to talk through all of her issues

And like. I am not wild about anything that happens after episode 99. If I’m known for anything in this fandom on this platform it’s probably for that time I was really into the Ioun discourse, which I still stand by, btw. And I personally would have preferred for Vex to maybe get someone like Sehanine as her patron, as fitting as giving her yet another unworthy and disapproving father figure in her life might be

But there is also something somewhat gratifying about everyone talking about how great she is. And she had been sort of working for Pelor before that. Also, the headcanons about her having sun spots or starting to glow when she gets emotional after this are amazing.

So I made my peace with that. She deserves better, but hey, she always does.

She is so smart. So extremely smart. People roll their eyes at her battle plans and say it’s all Travis feeding Laura information, but Travis fed her nothing that time she schmoozed up to the Briarwoods while also making herself appear extremely superficial and unthreatening. Honestly. That dinner scene? Prime Vex. Amazing Vex.

Her battle plans are also so good. Pokeball-ing Grog out of the kill box? Using the Goristro against Vorugal to save the party a trip into the abyss? The only plan of Vox Machina that ever worked out basically perfectly? Amazing. And even IF Travis told Laura these ideas, that means literally nothing in relation to how smart Vex is.

And btw I don’t believe that for a second. People just aren’t good with acknowledging that sometimes, D&D playing women might actually have good ideas.

And she just is so street smart. With her skills, her battle plans, and just her way of handling people. There’s a reason she is the natural leader when it’s not someone’s turn in the spotlight at the time.

Like, the two things holding her back were that her class was extremely underwhelming, so much so that it got completely revamped in the Unearthed Arcana to make up for how bad it was in the PHB, and the fact that she just. Has, what. 1.5 episodes of her own storyline? Even Pike got 2. It’s amazing that I can even say this much about her with how little narrative focus she got throughout the series. And most of what she did was literally due to Percy using his plot clout and putting a foot in the door to force her into the spotlight.

Speaking of which. Percy’s best quality, next to being self-aware of how fucked up he is and actively trying to do better and be kept in check, is how he realizes Vex is the coolest, smartest, most amazing person around and treats her accordingly. The way she deserves to be treated.

Oh hey I mentioned to get this far without even mentioning the romance arc. And oh my god THE ROMANCE ARC. The pining. The slow burn. And the fact that we actually saw them together and later married for like 35 episodes. They were so good for each other.

And yes, PERCY WAS GOOD FOR HER. And Vex was not his therapist and manic pixie dream girl. None of that bullshit here. Percy was already firmly on the path to being better before he even considered that crush he has had on her for forever to turn into something more.

And by he was good for her I mean that he actually UNDERSTOOD her and where she was coming from. Refer again to the titling issue, where Vax is just confused and kind of pissed, Percy got it. And that’s important.

Something I have not made a post about so far, by the way, is also something people have called problematic and co-dependant is how Percy shares his darker impulses with Vex in hopes she’ll talk him out of it. Which she does, and it’s never hard, but that also means so much to her? Because he involves her and tells her exactly what is going on with him and values her opinion? And that is just exactly what she needs? And they’re so good? THEY’RE SO GOOD.

WHEN DOES YOUR OTP EVER

HE COULDN’T HAVE ASKED FOR A BETTER DREAM

This is more on Laura, admittedly, but also, it was just so great to see her unapologetically pursuing this romance? There’s a place at the table for a 72 episode slow burn, and she’s gonna go for it, and there’s nothing any of the dudebros who are just here for the fighting can do about it.

And also Vex is just so unapologetically sexual at the same time. From episode 1 onwards, really, and in general and just limited to Percy. And no one ever treats that as weird or bad or anything. It’s just who she is and that’s great.

And she fought. So hard. For that happy ending of hers. Kicking and screaming, against the world and against Taliesin’s determination that Percy is irredeemable and not capable of getting a happy ending. Defy that auctorial intent, my girl. You deserve it.

Seriously. Seeing her get that happy ending against all odds was unfathomably gratifying and validating and I’ve never connected to any single character or narrative at large for that matter this much and this intimately, and considering how I came across this story at one of the darkest times in my life, I probably never will feel so strongly connected to anything ever again.

Which is probably for the best, but hey. 

Aaaand there you go. An almost unstructured, epically long list of reasons I love Vex. Dammit, I talked about other characters way more than I intended, buuuut hey. That’s how it goes when you’ve got an ensemble piece, they’re all kinda interwoven.

Thank you this wonderful ask, anon, and reason to celebrate my 100,000th post on this site in style.

[jimlingss]

pt.2 of yesterday

I don’t want to flood people’s dashes, so hopefully answering your messages here will suffice!

anonymous asked: Hi! I wanted to tell you how much I love your work and how you make me enjoy every Monday thanks to your regular updates ! I saw a previous anon telling you how your writings lacks of emotion and I totally disagree with them... obviously everybody won’t like it but your stories just DON’T lack of love or emotion this is madness I want to thank you for publishing your amazing stories freely here for everyone to read. (Sorry if my English is weird I’m french ejfjekfjd)

“this is madness” LOL

You’re hilarious, anon. And your english is perfectly fine!!!

anonymous asked: Hello! Im the culinary student anon who sent you an ask a while ago and i saw you received an ask about the lack of emotion from your stories. I read kitchen romance and i actually really really like it and don’t quite understand how it lacks in emotions as I interpreted the stories more like the beginning of the oc and jin’s love story and they are only starting to open up to each other so i guess thats why anon might feel like it lacks romantic vibe from both of the characters. (1)

Anonymous said: Just want to tell you that you’re one of the best writer and ive been following you for 2/3 years now, you never failed to amaze me with your writings!! All your stories are so well written that i sometimes wonder how do you come up with such an amazing plot every single time and your stories are always nice to re-read and the effort you pour into creating your stories is also admirable (2)

while i was reading kitchen romance and ive only started s&c (currently on chapter 4) i can say that its pretty similar with how it is irl (and the part where we find out jk is an iu fans reminded me of my ex-crush whose also a culinary student, i would like to tell you a story about it but ill just waste your time lol) , just want to send you a few encouragement and love for you and your writings *sending virtual hugs* (3) -👩🏻‍🍳anon

You’re too kind, thank you (and also, welcome back!). I’ll be frank, there was a hot second I was considering taking down Kitchen Romance but I didn’t cause I don’t want my efforts of editing it to go to waste asdfghjkl. I can’t believe you’ve been sticking around me for so long :’) it’s always nice to know some folks stay. Anyway, I’m glad that Sugar and Coffee is pretty similar to how it works irl since I tried my best to do research. I definitely love a good storytime as well so don’t worry about wasting my time :>

Anonymous said: a good majority of your fics display an unfathomable amount of DEPTH. regarding character development. plot. even the shortest lines of dialogue reveal so much more to the character and unveil their true emotions. i personally think the more REALISTIC side of love may be perceived as 'bland.' ‘emotionless.’ whatever you want to call it. nothing’s wrong with portraying a relationship that isn’t overboard with a whole lot of tooth aching fluff or lowkey annoying pda. +1

Anonymous said: there’s nothing wrong with taking out a bit of emotion to fit the PERSONALITIES of the characters. some people out there don’t necessarily feel a lot of emotions. so it’s honestly not really a mistake if a story lacks it (unless it was unintentional). subtlety is an art that is hard to master, but you’ve done it! and to respond to the anon, sometimes, if you skim through a fic without reading every word the author intended for you to read, +2

Anonymous said: then it’s quite common to not feel the full extent of the emotions you were supposed to feel. just a thought but no hate. we’re all entitled to our opinions. but besides that, kina, you write on a vast scale ranging from hardcore angst to diabetes-inducing fluff. and you do it beautifully. sure there are some stories that are better than others, but i believe a LOT of it comes down to personal preference and taste. +3

Anonymous said: even if you are feeling creatively limited, you work hard to continue writing for your readers, and your determination and diligence wILL NOT GO UNNOTICED. i just want you to know that you write amazingly. your syntax is practically immaculate, your characters feel real… the endings of your stories always wrap something up and the strings are tied—even if it isn’t necessarily a happy ending. you can convey hundreds of different characters through WORDS. +4

Anonymous said: i’ll have you know that it’s hard to write. it’s even harder to write about people who aren’t YOU. so as someone who looks up to you a lot, i want to commend you for your writing. some of your fics that i read on a monthly basis: tears of a villain, a piece of the moonlight, head over heels to hell, ghost in the machine, a mark of betrayal, a kiss of poison, until yesterday, the truth between us and arcadia. +5

Anonymous said: to be fair, there were way more fics but i didn’t want to make this message any longer than it already is LOL. i find these pieces wonderful. heart wrenching. and SO DAMN EMOTIONAL IT PLAGUES MY MIND FOR DAYS. also you’re literally one of the few fucking people who can use the em dash correctly. thank you so much for sharing your talent with us! +6

Oh my goodness. I don’t even know what to say, anon. This is a whole damn thesis and it’s about my fics :’> You know, it’s easy to brush off fanfiction as a ‘whatever’ thing and indeed, it isn’t that big of a deal compared to some things in the world. But I really do take all my stories seriously and put forth a lot of effort - so to see it recognized and appreciated it makes me beyond happy. It’s good to know that my efforts haven’t gone to waste at all and that there are people out there who will support me no matter the endeavours I take. Thank you so much. You don’t know how much this means to me.

((Also, honestly I picked up the em dash usage after I wrote The Truth Between Us with gukyi who used it. I’m pretty sure I’m not using it right but to hear that I am, god damn that’s a breath of relief right there))

backtobleuside submitted: Are you kidding me!? Your stories don’t lack love at all. They’re the kind of fics that you read, soak it all in and then come back for more. I’ve cried so much when I read Beyond reach, Boo-lieve in me, A piece of the moonlight, His name, Tell me lies etc. etc, and also laughed and felt the emotions of not just the OC, but also the other characters. Kitchen Romance was also so fluffy and sweet and personally, I don’t think that anything needs to be added to it. Anyway, your fics do not lack emotion—you’re probably the first author I send a message to because your stories impacted me a lot and left a strong impression on me. I even imagine your characters as real people who have real lives that continue on even after the story is done.

asdfghjkl thank you :’) I see you every week and sometimes several times at that. I really appreciate your consistent feedback and following. You never fail to send me a message too which I appreciate a lot. I’m glad you’re enjoying everything I’m producing!!

youngfleurever said: Would just like to say that your fics do in fact make me violently sob to the boy where my eyes are so swollen I have trouble opening them the next day and I wake up feeling like there’s sawdust in my mouth because I’m dehydrated.

oh my god. please keep yourself hydrated hahahahhaha more importantly, how do you know what sawdust in your mouth is like. WHAT have you been doing LOL

Anonymous said: I’ve felt emotions that I’ve never felt before when I read your fics.... so as a person that has read your entire masterlist, I DO NOT think that your fics lack emotion.... I hope you don’t feel disheartened because you’re one of my favourite writers, not just on tumblr but like, evER 💓💓💓💓💓💓

Please, even if I was disheartened, the overwhelming amount of feedback and praise has completely overridden it :’)

joonie-mono said: when tumblr deletes the first part of your ask 🙄😌✌️

LOOOOOOOL

haylo4ever said: Sorry had to add my 10 cents. You're such a talented writer,,, I WISH I could write a smol smol 1/1000000000 that you write,,, like I remember when I followed you bc I was in awe of your writing.... I mean?? Sure maybe not every fic hits it with someone but it's just ridic to name drop (a friend nonetheless) when you're all extremely talented writers.

Trust me, writing comes with practice!! I should honestly just tattoo that on me. God knows my first fanfic was absolutely GARBAGE. I didn’t know pacing, didn’t know that I should separate chunks of paragraphs, how to write dialogue or describe scenes properly. I went in blind. Even my second, third and fourth fanfic was garbage. You could definitely get to “my level” or even far surpass it with enough dedication and practice. I mean I’ve been writing for four years, so thank GOD there’s been improvement. I wouldn’t be natural if there wasn’t. But clearly the more you practice, the better you improve! That applies to anything.

The me in ten years will certainly be better now.

Anonymous said: Hi kina! I’m here in support of kitchen romance! I actually didn’t feel like it was missing a ton of fluffy moments (and I say that as a huGE LOVER OF FLUFF) but the story was just as entertaining in the whole chase of them getting closer to each other! It’s honestly one of my favorite one shots I’ve read lately and I’m not saying that lightly! Also, that anon that said your work lacks emotion has probably not read like half of your masterlist bc oO MAN QUEEN OF MAKING ME CRY- black heart anon🖤

Thank you :’]

Anonymous said: Ok I’m very offended wow the audacity!Specially coming for my baby kitchen romance like that story made me feel so much and it’s only one of the many fics you have written kina like I’m literally baffled like dynasty has made me cry scream happy and hot all at the same time and I was literally just thinking about it that whole weekend and this anon has the nerve to say your stories lack emotions?When you are literally the queen of show casing all types of emotions in your stories!You did it all

Anonymous said: Also 😭😭😭😂😂😩hoooooooow and whereeee did they see any lack of love and emotions like have you read jungle park???? Inside my mind??? FREAKING SUGAR AND COFFEE (like this fic is made with love and I- ) Actually you know what , just read the whole masterlist😩😩💗💗💗

LOL tbh I didn’t expect Dynasty to receive the love it has. I was actually kind of wary when posting it cause it’s kind of Wild. 

bangtans-peaceful-piegon said: just gotta say u handled that whole anon thing so well which not only makes me admire u as a writer but even more as a person :] (i mean i knew u were gr8 before the whole deal but yeah love ya 💛)

tbh, I’m not sure how well I handled it cause I was flooded with over 30 messages afterwards (evidently) ;_; which I love and appreciate but I’m not really as hurt as some people think hahaha criticism should be received well but it’s still hard not to take personally tbh. It’s gonna have to be something I work on or perhaps it’ll be one of those things that I’ll take better with age.

[eisforeidolon]

Episode: Raising Hell

So, uh, basically I have no idea why anything in this episode happens or what its point is supposed to be. Having looked up who wrote it somewhere in the middle, I am completely lacking in surprise.

I mean, the first bit pretty much sets the tone.  Chatty Corpsy spouts exposition a mile a minute, then gets killed, and the ghost stands over her and spells disembowel.  Is that actually supposed to be scary?  Funny?  Anything but an absolutely bizarre waste of my time?

A bunch of dudes with basically nothing but FBI jackets and a bullshit story to back themselves up with convince an entire town to camp out in the local high school for two days without anybody figuring out they're full of shit.  You know, what with smartphones existing and all.  Plausible!

Furthermore, I have become convinced that everyone in this writer's room genuinely believes there is nothing scarier than a bunch of random antagonists standing around in a room pontificating at each other.  It's all demons do anymore. It's all angels do anymore.  Oh, fucking look, here's a bunch of goddamn ghosts doing it, too!  A fucking thrill a minute, I tell you.

Also, you know how the episode with H.H. Holmes was actually scary?  Whether or not you think it's in questionable taste for them to use real life serial killers at all, the reason they included him was because the whole murder castle deal and semi-mythical legends about him made for a scary premise they actually used in the episode.  I ignored the thing with it being Gacy before in Lebanon because there was more important stuff going on, but contrast the current writers' choices with him and this Jack the Ripper guy with the use of Holmes.  Here they're just throwing out the names of real life murderers to try and make their villains scary in the cheapest, fastest way possible.  Just like bringing back “Bloody Mary” that just kills whoever, this loudmouthed windbag has nothing to do with the name they're stealing to try and make him scary.

Also, the spell demon guy did is keeping the ghosts in, right?  Sure, it's going to fail, but at the moment, it's supposed to be an impassible barrier, yes?  So why, exactly, is it necessary for Sam to call in his goon squad to join the four of them in wandering into the danger zone to shoot at 'em? Seriously, why?  Shooting them dissipates them for a few seconds, maybe minutes.  They’re not laying out additional salt or iron lines or doing anything that might genuinely help contain the ghosts, they’re just putting themselves in danger because ...?  The mooks could also be better spent guarding the major entrance points to the town and/or the townies and/or doing research back at the bunker into what they're going to try next after the barrier fails.  But those things would actually make sense and prevent the shambling zombie that is the writers’ pathetic attempt at a plot in this episode being pushed into something vaguely resembling action. 

I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that Rowena is now suddenly unable to do something with her powers that she did before.  Hey, remember when she stole that page out of the damned book to make herself more powerful to unseal her full powers (even though they touted her as the most powerful witch ever to begin with) and that was in season 13, well after the ghost-crystal-bomb thing?  But LOL, now she's even weaker?  This is exactly why nothing matters anymore.  Things that worked previously (angel powers, witch powers, the Colt, whatever) suddenly and randomly don't work to do the exact same jobs for … reasons.  The thing that makes it even dumber is they could have said that the ghost containing spell and crystal ghost sucking spell interfered with each other somehow.  Still at a bullshit level of convenience, but it doesn't involve making everyone and everything's powers completely arbitrary just because fuck continuity, that’s why!

Then Ketch shows up to save the Winchesters from their sudden attack of brain damage.  The show has provided an entire. fucking. town. full of angry ghosts straight from hell.  But actually bother to write a scene of Sam and Dean legit getting over their heads in a believable way?  Why fucking bother when you can just make them astoundingly incompetent.  It is literally unbelievable that Sam and Dean would not recognize those people as possessed fucking immediately.  Yet they stand there with rock salt filled shotguns doing sweet fuckall confronted by three fucking ghosts so Ketch can make a big entrance.  Is there a rule on a board somewhere in the writer's room that Sam and Dean have to be made to look incompetent at least once an episode?  Is this some kind of revenge for having to still write the main characters they're so clearly bored with?  Are these idiots just so fucking stupid they don't realize how insulting this is?  Did they run out of money for extras and the stunt coordinator?  

Also, someone explain to me how tiny flakes of metal are going to be less harmful to a human body than rock salt.  I'll wait.  They just really really wanted Ketch as one of the BMoL guys to have some kind of specialized gadget but couldn’t give him something actually potentially useful for the situation at hand.

Again, these writers really want to be writing a bad soap opera with occasional supernatural elements.  So despite that it's the final fucking season, we have time for Rowena and Ketch flirting.  Not to mention that they also give the only major female character even more relationship drama with the Jack the Ripper guy later.  If it's not questionably skeevy, it's not Bucklemming! 

Also, Castiel is not good at inspirational speeches, just like he’s frustratingly almost never good at anything else these days (those healing powers that were working last week? ha! forget it!).  Anyway, why do they keep having him make them?  Are we as the audience supposed to find them convincing though they never work on the target?  Are we supposed to feel bad for all the ~*feelings*~ Castiel supposedly has despite being an angel who isn’t supposed to have emotions the same way humans do?  I guess this particular one is to further show that Dean’s still mad (which I am absolutely 100% behind) but eh, whatever.  Though I guess that still ranks it above most of the episode sitting at a solid WTF, no really, WTF?!

Now we get to the part where they bring Kevin back for no fucking reason beyond that he's a “fan favorite”.  None of it makes a single tiny speck of sense.  Let's skip right past the fundamental absurdity of how Chuck apparently did this for literally no reason just to be a dick when he was actively trying to pretend not to be a dick.  Kevin has a “bad boy” reputation (come the fuck on) because God Himself cast him down - so him being in hell would have to be fairly common knowledge, for it to result in him having a reputation.  Except literally no demon Sam & Dean ran into between 11.21 and now taunted them with it?  Crowley, who was still alive and fucking King of Hell through season 12 never noticed and either told the Winchesters or tried to trade on it?  BULL and SHIT.  This is pretty close to the same scale of insult to continuity and the audience’s intelligence as these two fuckwits suddenly writing Lucifer as the older brother. 

Then in typical fashion, Sam & Dean discuss their plans to totes send Kevin to heaven in front of demon guy just so they can be told OH NOES!  He totally can't go to heaven!  So sad!  The poor widdle woobie!  Fuck off with this shit, show.  Not even to mention that they take the word of a demon as gospel truth when there is no time crunch or clear lack of better options.  It's all those many many hits to the head, I guess.  That I do actually find quite sad.  I mean, I don't actually want Kevin hanging around like a bad smell while they divert from actually important shit to try and get him to heaven where it makes no sense for him not to already be.  But at the end they don't even arrange some way to keep in touch just in case the fucking demon might be (gasp) lying?

Hey, I did actually like the exchange between Dean and Sam over Chuck poking his corresponding wound.  Oh, look, it's Sam's “I'm totally lying” face, followed by Dean's “I totally know you're lying but I'll let it go for now, Sam” face.  It was a great moment that required very little dialogue to work quite well.  It's such a shame nobody's making a show about these two characters!  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The absurdity keeps on coming, too.  In the whole two days they've been wasting time in Sunshine Daylightville they never discussed how long the spell would last?  Oh, right, they were too busy wandering into the ghost zone to shoot at 'em for shits and giggles to care about that, I guess.  Not to mention the whole “just cast it again!” is remarkably blasé about it requiring a 'fresher the better!' human heart.

More ghosts blathering at each other.  Yay.  This supposed Jack the Ripper guy is just always in the right place at the right time to hear all the gossip, knows every random thing he could possibly need to, and already has the power to intimidate and attack other ghosts. He's basically ghost!Asmodeus, who also steals AU!Michael's original idea of how to get through the barrier, because we really needed time spent discussing the world's most obvious plan.  Also, we've seen ghosts able to attack and absorb the power of other ghosts, but it was because they had already been doing it for a while.  This guy is just as fresh out of hell as everybody else, but he's more powerful and knowledgeable and totes threatening!!!  Well, I'm convinced and not on the verge of napping from boredom.

Naturally for reasons, Rowena goes into town entirely by herself without protection with their only real hope of containing the ghosts before the barrier breaks down instead of anybody insisting on her going with backup.  That's what anybody with a brain would do!  

Of course no one asks where Ketch has been the whole time.  Or even thinks of trying to test him after he was last seen literally knocked unconscious in the middle of ghost central where we know there are plenty of ghosts angry enough to be capable of possession.  Nope, why would anyone even think to do that?  Everything in this “plot” that happens requires all of the characters to be completely fucking stupid.

I'm going to assume by “you” Ketch meant “you Winchesters” because Mary wasn't there.  It probably didn't, because Bucklemming, but fuck it.  It's the least egregious stupidity in this episode that's a cornucopia of choices for the worst.

I … actually like the scenes with Chuck and Amara?  So, you know, that's something!  

Then the episode ends with the guys looking at all the ghosties still shooting up from hell and wring their hands about what they're going to do and maybe they should get on that!  Again, if Sam's flunkies aren't all dead, why aren't their worthless asses already researching this shit over the past two days?  It's not like it's new news that there was a big open hole to hell at the center of the problem and there was honestly nothing but wrangling some cranky civilians to interfere with trying to think ahead to that.

In summary, this episode is a constant showcase of the problems that result when you set incompetent morons who don't recognize their own inadequacy to write characters who are actually supposed to be intelligent experts at their work.  It's a joke – except not at all funny.

[fmservers]

The tactics behind The Athletic’s breakout success in sports subscriptions

Local newspapers may be shuttering and people may be consuming most news on social media, but don’t tell Alex Mather that a subscription news publication can’t grow like a unicorn startup. His 2-year-old sports publisher The Athletic has gained over 100,000 paid subscribers (60% under age 34) and has a 90% retention rate.

Having already raised $30 million in its short life, the company announced a new $40 million Series C yesterday, led by Founders Fund and Bedrock Capital. It reportedly values The Athletic around $200 million.

I interviewed Alex Mather (The Athletic’s CEO) and Eric Stomberg (Partner at Bedrock Capital) to understand what’s behind the breakout success and why they think this publishing startup can scale to become a multi-billion dollar company.

EP: Bedrock makes concentrated, contrarian bets. Explain how The Athletic fits that.

ES: I first met Alex and Adam in 2016 during Y Combinator. The popular view then, as it remains now, was that people just aren’t willing to pay for content online and that to win in media you have to put out a high volume of free articles on social.

The Athletic took the opposite approach. It’s a narrative violation. Everything is part of a paid subscription, with the belief that instead of writers needing to post 3-4 pieces per day, they should focus on deeper stories that add value to paid subscribers over time. That worldview resonated with us. If you can create content at scale that people are willing to pay for, that’s a powerful economic engine.

There’s so much sports coverage already out there, by professionals and amateurs alike, so why are people willing to pay for The Athletic?

AM: While there appears to be an abundance of content, most of it is aggregated, shallow content for a broad audience. We produce fewer stories and target a diehard fan. Our subscribers consistently tell us that no one else produces the same depth on a daily basis.

How did you determine the $60/year price point?

AM: We think of $60/year ($5/month) as less than the average NBA ticket. It’s a meaningful price but not prohibitive, especially when we do discounts in the first year. Like all subscription companies, whether we like it or not, we have to consider how our pricing stacks up against Netflix. For $10/month, you can subscribe to Netflix which is spending $8 billion per year in content.

Is The Athletic profitable?

AM: We expand by launching in local markets. We are in 47 thus far. The operational focus is on building a local team and becoming profitable in each local market. I can tell you that most markets are profitable in the first year–currently all of our markets over one year old are profitable and most of those over 6 months old are profitable.

(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

Explain your growth strategy in terms of coverage: which sports did you start with and at which level (local vs national)?

AM: Direct-to-consumer businesses have to work really to earn their subscribers’ hard-earned money. We have to obsess over where we can be different. In the beginning, that was with hockey and baseball, because those have been de-prioritized by the bigger players. That shifted as we gained more subscribers: we needed to become comprehensive. We hired folks to cover the NBA, to cover the NFL, to cover soccer.

Do subscribers usually come just for one local sport or for the broader bundle?

AM: We’ve built a powerful bundle. A local newspaper has local politics, local restaurants, and then local sports. We have just the sports, but add a national perspective and a nationwide bundle. Most of our subscribers are “super bundlers,” meaning they subscribe to content from multiple cities plus at least one national product and usually a college product that’s not local. We provide all that for significantly less than competitors.

Eric — as a VC looking for multi-billion dollar exits, how are you analyzing the potential scale of a subscription publication like this? Even most people who are bullish on subscriptions believe it’s a choice of going for a niche audience and staying small.

ES: There are two things we look for in a subscription business: retention and a positive flywheel.

Retention. In any subscription business, the key question is: can they maintain their subscribers over time? Most of them don’t. Spotify does, Netflix does, and The Athletic does as well. The Athletic is off the charts, which sets it up for scale. You want to see deep engagement over a very, very long period of time — years.

A positive flywheel. The more you build your subscriber base, the more you build your revenue base. That allows you to get better content, to hire unique writers, to build greater depth. In doing so, you attract people who weren’t ready to subscribe in the early days but now you have writers they follow and content they want. Technology is important here too: as you build a bigger platform with more content, serving the right content at the right time to each user is a key advantage. When this flywheel is working it’s actually quite hard to put a ceiling on the business.

Most publishers did a so-called “pivot to video” over the last couple of years. You’re anchored in writing. Why not more video at the start?

AM: We’re obsessed with the consumer and all our research in the beginning said that people still like to read books and articles. Advertising with text may not be as good as with video, which may be why so many other companies “pivoted to video,” but we think the written word is still the best way to convey certain types of stories. It’s straightforward, it doesn’t require headphones.

There’s an incredible amount of talent out there that can produce these stories and that has been cast aside by many entities. We saw it as an opportunity to give them great jobs and bring value to our subscribers. That has paid off for us.

  What are your plans for video or other content formats in the future?

AM: We raised this Series C with audio and video in mind. We can tell even more stories when we add in audio and video possibilities. Our goal is to serve the subscriber: some love to read, some love to listen, others prefer to watch. We look up to things like The Ringer, Andre the Giant on HBO, VICE News, Gimlet, and The Daily by the New York Times all as incredible storytelling, and we ask ourselves “how can we do sports versions of those?”.

Why focus on hiring experienced, full-time writers rather than a stable of contributors or curating from the vast pool of content by fans? Lots of amateurs pay close attention to sports.

AM: What’s really important to us is a growth mentality — that by Day 100 on our team a writer is thinking very differently. We’re providing lots of data, lots of feedback. We invest in great people who will figure this out with us over time. Also, scaling so quickly from 0 to 300 editorial staff was possible because we recruited experienced talent who know what to do already.

We do have about 400 contributors as well. These are folks who may be lawyers or accountants but are passionate about the teams they cover. We are a way for them to reach a premium audience. We can pay them really well and give them world-class editors formerly with Sports Illustrated and ESPN.

How are you acquiring your subscribers?

AM: When we expand into a new market, we gain new subscribers by hiring writers who have a following already and by word of mouth from existing subscribers. Then like any direct-to-consumer brand, we are acquiring subscribers through Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

You financially incentivize your writers based on them acquiring new subscribers through their articles or by promoting The Athletic with their followers online. That is very uncommon in publishing. Explain that strategy.

It ties back to our focus on building for the long term and investing in talent that will grow with us. We like to assign incentives that give us the best chance of building a sustainable business and we think about compensation in that way. We give our team equity in the company and for many, we tie a portion of their comp to the performance of their team, sport, city. It’s a great way to share in the responsibility and success of the business.

At the bottom of articles, you ask readers to rate each story as “Meh”, “Solid”, or “Awesome”. I wish every publisher did this. How do you use this data? How do a writer’s scores impact them?

AM: It’s about feedback loops. Our writers gauge feedback when they share on Twitter. This is another data point. It helps paint a more complete picture. NPS alone isn’t enough of course though. We look at whether articles drive new subscribers, drive deep engagement, drive comments, etc. We don’t use pageviews, but we certainly use metrics. Usually, this results in a writer producing very different work on Day 100 than they were on Day 0.

Explain the interaction between subscribers. It’s not unique to have a comments section: there are bad comments sections, good comments sections, and comments sections that go unused. At a tactical level, how do you think about building community?

My co-founder and I met at Strava, the social network for endurance athletes. I ran the product team and we were obsessed with community. We see an incredible connection between community engagement and subscriber retention. The question that drives us is how can we connect users in an authentic way, how can we connect users to our staff in an authentic way, how can we connect users to athletes in an authentic way. We’re doing a lot of experimentation here. We have a distinct opportunity because of our paywall: most of the comments on The Athletic are saying substantive things.

Via Eric Peckham https://techcrunch.com

[sarafinamagazine]

Genna Gardini is a writer and teacher. She is the author of Matric Rage, which was published in 2014 by uHlanga Press. In 2012, she was awarded the DALRO New Coin Poetry prize and was chosen as one of the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans for 2013. She is also the co-founder of Horses’ Heads Productions and has had several of her plays produced at the National Arts Festival including WinterSweet and Scrape, both of which went on to win Standard Bank Ovation Awards. In addition, she also works as the poetry editor of Prufrock Magazine, a journal in which her own work has featured.

Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in the arts?

I don’t know that it was necessarily a person. My parents are wonderful but I suppose are quite “normal”…whatever that means. My dad is an accountant and my mom was an administrator. She started working from home and she took care of me when I was a kid. So the arts are not a world that they are necessarily steeped in. I guess I came out quite precocious. I don’t really know why. I always wanted to be a performer and I always wanted to write. I was always doing both. When I was about nine or ten, I wrote fan fiction about myself: It was about me going to New York and becoming the understudy for Annie. But then, in the story, the lead actor became ill so I took over and took the town by storm. I was fairly narcissistic, I guess, which hopefully I am not now.

I read in an interview where you said that you wrote your first collection when you were six or seven years old?

The Shnozzcumber. I think I had been reading a lot of Roald Dahl poems at the time because they were pretty much a complete knock off of his work. There was a character called Nurse Betty who I had made up. It was before the Renée Zellweger movie that was called Nurse Betty as well. In this poem, I wrote something like, “Nurse Betty is a violent thing, upon her finger sits a ring.” but I had spelt upon as ‘apone’. I don’t know where I got that image from. My mom watched a lot of soap operas, like a lot of The Bold and the Beautiful, so maybe it was a character who I had seen in one of those?

Photo credit: Chris de Beer

You seemed to have this natural inclination towards writing but then also wanted to pursue a career as a performer and went to the University currently known as Rhodes. What was your time like there?

It was actually quite a difficult time for me. I was struggling with various things that made it difficult. But I’m really glad that I was there during that time because I met the people who I work with still to this day and the people who are my dearest friends. The greatest thing is to find your community. I found people that I wanted to work with and who really changed my life in a lot of ways. I was also taught by amazing people. Janet Buckland was a really important teacher for me and one of the first people to be interested in the work that I wanted to create and encouraging of it. Alex Sutherland was also my teacher there and Andrew Buckland and Reza de Wet as well. She was teaching at the time that I was there and was such an important presence to meet and to be taught by. To hear about her work and then also to see her work as well was incredibly important. A very important three years of my life but also tumultuous in its own way.

How do you feel that training has lent itself to the work that you do now?

I decided not to pursue performing because I realised that what I wanted to be a part of was less the magic of performance but more the moments before anyone sees anything. The secret of performance and the community that is created there, that to me was so much more interesting. I was writing my own stuff and, in third year, started to put on my own work. Suddenly to see my words and my ideas animated in front of me with real people saying them was quite revelatory. I became more interested in that. I was always writing. That was something that felt natural to me and performance felt like a pathway into creating work. I think that I’m always going to be interested in live performance. It’s always the base of what I want to do with writing because I think that writing should be performed in some way. I think that when you write something, you need to hear what it sounds like to see if it works. If you don’t hear the rhythm of it then it’s dead. It’s flat.  I teach within a drama department because the world of drama and the world of theatre is one that I feel very at home in. Even if that is not necessarily the work that I am producing all of the time, it definitely is a space that I feel very comfortable in.

Photo credit: Chris de Beer

I watched Performance Scale, the piece that you did with Amy Louise Wilson and I thought it was incredible to hear your words through an actress’ portrayal. What was it like creating that piece with her?

That was a project for the ICA. I knew that I wanted to make a larger work about diagnosis and I had written this poem which was about my diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis. I asked Gary Hartley who is in the company Horses’ Heads Productions with me and also one of my besties, if he would direct it and I asked Amy if she would be in it. It was really important to me that it be performed, shot and made by people who had some relationship to MS. And obviously they have a relationship to it because I’m their friend and they love me. It’s something that has affected my life but it’s also affected theirs. That was really important to me because I was starting to research what would eventually become part of my PhD project, looking at people telling their own story of sickness through performance. With MS, when people who do not have it tell stories about those who do, often specifically women, it’s mostly stories of inspiration or stories where we are a great burden to others. So either we burden people or we inspire them and, in many of these stories, we die at the end and our death is this great lesson to everyone else. This is not my experience of illness. I’m at home, I’m watching Buffy, I’m eating pizza. I don’t think that I am a great inspiration to anybody. These are not the stories that I had experienced so I thought that it was quite important for this project to be an opportunity to tell stories about MS and to tell them through the perspective of people who actually have it or people who are affected by it. Not in terms of MS being this horrific burden on them, necessarily, but in a real and complex way. That is why I asked Gary and Amy to work on it with me because they are creatives who I really trust, respect and admire. I’ve worked with Amy repeatedly and I love and respect her so much. I think she is an extraordinary actor. We sat down with the text and spoke about it, which I really like doing, tried to figure out what the different parts of it meant, what the secrets were that were embedded into it, to give her an understanding that she could take into the performance. What I thought was really interesting about how she performed the poem, is that it is so different to the way that I would read it because, of course, it means something different for her. I think it’s emotional for her in a different way and for me, when I read it, I find the situation sometimes funny and ridiculous and all of that goes into it. Obviously that is not her experience of it at all and to see that made manifest in the video was quite interesting. This is also something that I am trying to explore now in my studies but we’ll see how that goes.

I’m curious about your writing process. Are you someone who has to force yourself into a routine of writing everyday or do you write when inspiration strikes?

No, it’s a routine. It has to be a routine. I think it was quite different for me when I was younger but certainly, as I’ve become older, it has to be a routine. I teach, I am studying as well and I am trying to write my own work at the same time. I have to have a certain amount of hours that I set aside to do each thing and then there is also the admin, the work that comes with having a chronic illness as well which is something that is a part of my life and something that I need to allocate time to. Luckily, I am in a position right now where my health is not necessarily something that takes whatever time it wants from me. But that could change and it it is the case for many people who have chronic illness. I try to stick to my schedule as best I can. I don’t know how good I am at it but I have to force myself into doing it or I just won’t get anything done.

Photo credit: Chris de Beer

Do you work on one thing at a time or do you have multiple pieces of work in development at once?

Generally, I have to have a couple of things going on but not of the same magnitude. I have to have a poem or something that I am figuring out, that is percolating in me, and then, at the same time, I have to have another kind of work happening. I need to know that, “Ok, I’ve got to do this for my work as a lecturer or I’ve got to do this for my studies as well or I’ve got to do admin.”  I think that I need to have quite a lot going on but at the same time, I also need to zone in and focus. It does not work out all the time, quite rarely actually but I guess this is my ideal of how I would work. I’m not always successful at it, though.

I think it’s safe to say that you are incredibly young and have accomplished so much in terms of the work that you have produced…

I don’t know about either of those things. I’m turning 32 this year and my great panic and joy around it is that I’m going to be the age that Lorelai Gilmore was at the beginning of Gilmore Girls. When I started watching that show, I was 16, the age that Rory, her daughter, was. Now I’m going to be the age that Lorelai was. Lorelai had a child, was a manager of an Inn, had a fiancé who packed a town full of flowers for her at 32. I do not have quite a few of those things.

But she didn’t have a book published! I think you’ve one-upped her in terms of that.

Thank you. I think that’s probably the only thing.

Photo credit: Chris de Beer

What was the journey around having Matric Rage published? I was also wondering if maybe you can talk a little bit about the independent publishing game.

There were a collection of poems I had been writing from when I was around 18 to when Nick Mulgrew asked me if I would be interested in publishing it. I had wanted to make something out of them for ages and had sent them off in various iterations but at those times they weren’t ready to be a collection yet. By the time Nick asked me if I was interested, I think that it was a point where I was ready to try to make something out of the work. Also, Nick is somebody that I trusted and thought was a good person to work with and he has become someone who I’ve worked with repeatedly since. That was the time when he was starting uHlanga. The first three books that he would publish were by me, Thabo [Jijana] and himself. It was really exciting to be in the first flush of what uHlanga would become, of this publishing company that I think has really changed the face of poetry and publishing poetry in South Africa. I think that we came from a tradition of South African poets who were published often being older white men, although of course Modjaji press, which is so fantastic, was putting work out specifically by women. I think uHlanga really exploded old, confining ideas about publishing poetry and challenged it in an important way.

Your first collection was met with such a positive response. Did you suddenly feel pressured after having that work published?

That is not how it felt. It was exciting to have it published and exciting for it to be in the world, but it also felt like work. Which is not to say that people’s positive responses aren’t important because of course they are. I’m human and like anyone else I like affirmation, it’s great. That can’t be the point though. It can’t be because if that becomes the point then the work is all about that and then the work is empty. But I don’t know how to really answer that question. I do think that if you realize you have kind of a platform, no matter how small, you should think about what you are going to do with that platform and how you can use that in some way to be helpful in this world which is already such a bad world. With Nick, he used his platform to create this publishing company that is doing such amazing work. I am so admiring of it and I think that is a good template for how to be in this world as a creative.

Photo credit: Chris de Beer

How do you ensure that you stay true to your voice in terms of the work that you create?

I guess it’s been different at different points in my life. I can only really speak about this point and how I’m thinking about what I am making now. I want to make work that is in some way relevant to what is happening in the world now, but specifically what my experience of the world is. The work that I am doing now is very much about looking at illness, looking at autobiographical performances around illness and a reclamation of stories about people’s personal experiences of illness. This is because, like I was saying, I think those stories are so often told as inspiration porn. It’s certainly not my experience and, I’d imagine, not the experience of all of the complex, interesting people who I know who have chronic illness, who are disabled. I am interested in telling my stories but also facilitating people telling their stories.  That is the thing about teaching, as well. How can you facilitate space where a person feels they can tell their story?.

What advice would you have for young women who are thinking about embarking on a writing career?

I never know how to answer this. I am never sure. I guess, to trust the fact that it’s alright for you to be telling your story if it is not hurting anyone who didn’t hurt you in the first place, if you know what I mean. We often don’t trust that we have the space to be able to do that. Like I said, I am terrible at answering this question. I am not sure except to say, if you want to write and you want to be making that work and it is not harming people, then why not? Why not try?

What was the best piece of advice you received during your career?

It’s not advice that I received personally but the quote, “Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” I think it’s Doris Lessing. That always stuck with me because so often it just feels like there is no time to be able to do something. That is something that I carry with me all the time because if I don’t do it now then I probably wont do it, so I should just do it now. I tell this story quite a lot but when I was doing [my] undergrad, Reza de Wet was taking us for a practical class in drama and she let all of us start walking across the stage in front of her. Then we would walk in front of her by ourselves. She watched us and said where she felt the power centers in our bodies were. I felt very weird and awkward about doing it, but I did it and afterwards she told me that I had two power centers: one that was in my groin and one that was in my throat, and what was in my throat was blocking me being able to say things that I needed to say. I was so scandalised when she said that. My groin?! I felt very shy but it really was some of the best advice I have ever received, unplugging whatever was there and feeling like I should say the things that were in me and that had to be said.

  I’d love to hear more about your involvement with Prufrock.

We are busy finalising the new issue which is really exciting. I had some poems published in that magazine before and then they asked me later to come on board as the poetry editor. That was something that I was beginning to be really interested in, editing poetry, and I’ve worked for uHlanga as well as an editor. So, I began to work at Prufrock and it’s been such a fantastic opportunity. It’s a great space for people to begin to try sending out work and see that work published. It’s questioning the idea of what a literary journal is and trying to make something that is younger, more inclusive in terms of languages being published in those spaces, and allowing more voices to be anthologised.

Who are some South African women in the arts that inspire you?

I had really good teachers. Specifically, Gay Morris [and] Sara Matchett at UCT, who were the first teachers to really encouraged me in terms of scholarship and challenged me in a lot of ways as both a young person in academia and as a human being, as well. I am so admiring of people like Nadia Davids, Buhle Ngaba and Koleka Putuma who are theatre-makers but are writing work in other mediums as well. Nadia is someone who I really admire as an academic, as well. Amy Louise Wilson, who I’ve spoken about, is such an important talent and also such a strong, feminist voice and not afraid to say what she thinks. I would be remiss if I didn’t add that it’s really important for us to be celebrating women and it’s also important to remember gender non-conforming folks who are so incredibly talented. It’s vital for us to be mentioning them within feminist spaces [and] within queer spaces as well.

You can follow Genna via Twitter or Instagram.

To purchase a copy of Matric Rage, please click here.

Special thanks to Chris de Beer and Genna Gardini.

All photos were taken by Chris de Beer on February 8th 2018.

Sarafina Magazine and Chris de Beer maintain copyrights over all images. For usage or inquiries, please contact us.

We chat with @gennagardini about her career, publishing #MatricRage with @uHlangaPress, editing @prufrockmag and turning the same age as Lorelai Gilmore. Photos: @chrs_debeer Genna Gardini is a writer and teacher. She is the author of Matric Rage, which was published in 2014 by…

[goldeagleprice]

How many 1929 sheets did Col. Green have?

Col. Edward Howland Robinson Green, collector extraordinaire. (Library of Congress photo)

By Peter Huntoon

As I write this on Saturday, Aug. 1, lot 67 in the Stack’s Bowers Auction at the American Numismatic Association Auction, Session 1, labeled as U. S. Coins Part 1, consisting of 575 lots is about to go under the hammer. From my perspective as a paper money researcher/writer, lot 67 is the most important item in the entire sale.

Lot 67 is a carbon copy of Frederic C.C. Boyd’s 1937 appraisal of Col. Edward Howland Robinson Green’s vast numismatic collection. Green was the son of Hetty Green—the witch of Wall Street—the richest woman in America in her day.

Boyd’s inventory tallies 51,018 coins, medals and tokens that we really don’t care about.

Of supreme interest to us though is the total of $839,688.92 in face in U.S. currency. Of that, $198,256 worth was considered uncollectible.

This left 62,434 notes with a face value of $641,432.92 to which Boyd attached a total premium value of $21,433.26. The premium works out to a little over 3.3 percent above face.

Boyd’s inventory states that the undesirable $198,256 was “delivered to the Redemption Department of United States Treasury, Washington, D.C., and destroyed.”

The redeemed notes are just cause for you to gnash your teeth. In reality, the bulk of it consisted of high denomination notes of which the colonel was particularly fond. He thoroughly enjoyed flashing $10,000 notes around in his younger days.

Gold notes large and small of all denominations were included, because, of course, by then they were supposed to be turned in as per President Roosevelt’s April 5, 1933 Executive Order 6102 requiring everyone to relinquish their gold, gold bullion and gold certificates. The gold notes totaled $33,370.

And then there were severely damaged formerly very collectible type notes spanning the federal issues that had been stored in acetate holders. The acid from the plastic had eaten them up and made them as brittle as paper-thin glass. Sigh.

Extraordinary Arizona note from a sheet that owed its survival to Col. Green. When George Blake offered to buy for Col. Green their No. 1 sheets at a modest premium, his offer sounded like found money to many bankers from around the country during the Depression.

Boyd’s inventory consists of 442 pages of 14 x 18-inch ledger pages. Obviously, for the most part, it is not a line-item listing of 113,452 items. But there is a gold mine of insight contained therein, particularly for currency aficionados.

We get to glimpse the scope of the colonel’s Series of 1929 serial No. 1 National Bank Note sheet holding, and what a glimpse it is. Green’s hoard of 1929 sheets was the source for most of the No. 1 sheets and notes that grace your collections.

How do you inventory 113,452 numismatic items? Boyd faced a gargantuan task. The material was stored in trunks in the colonel’s vault in the basement of his Round Hill Estate in South Dartmouth, Conn., overlooking Buzzards Bay.

On Oct. 25, 1936, the small objects that the colonel collected—he also collected stamps on a vast scale, jewels by the pound, and other things—were transferred from South Dartmouth to The First National Bank of Boston. The move involved eight armored cars, 16 private guards and seven state policemen.

What Boyd did was simply list the contents by trunk in the order in which they were opened. The 1929 sheets came from trunks 4, 6, 15, 17, 18, 21, 26 and 41. He provided counts of them by denomination along with their face value.

Their appraised numismatic value was figured at face. After all, it was 1937 and the things were still in circulation. Hey, at least he did not have them shunted directly to the redemption agency with the other $198,256.

This inventory was F.C.C. Boyd’s copy, which was last sold in the 2004 Stack’s-Kolbe Sale of John J. Ford, Jr.’s reference library, Part I, lot 518, where it brought $42,550. The Green Estate copy was sold in Kolbe & Fanning’s 2012 New York Book Auction, lot 287, for $40,250. Those yields in my opinion represent a lot of money for a non-itemized listing.

I didn’t learn about the inventory coming up in the Stack’s Bowers sale until a couple of days ago. I hadn’t planned on going to the show. But I had to get the information. Plan A was to drive or fly up to Denver to see the volume, but I was quickly disabused of that idea because when I got on line I saw that the thing was going to be hammered down tonight and I simply couldn’t get there beforehand.

I desperately came up with plan B. This was the make-a-big-pain-in-the-neck-out-of-myself option. I frantically emailed my friend Dave Bowers yesterday and asked if he could somehow arrange for me to get the data on the 1929 note. I knew he was busier than a one-armed paper hanger at the moment getting ready for the show and the auction, and the last thing he needed was a request like this.

Entrance to the vault in the basement of Col. Green’s Round Hill mansion, which contained most of his numismatic treasures including the 1929 sheets. (Photo from Bedell (2003, p. 34).)

Well, the fact is, I immediately got a gracious reply for which I am greatly indebted, and he fobbed my request off on two unwitting associates who were on the ground with the lot; specifically, John Pack, executive director for consignments, and Christine Karstedt, executive vice president, both with Stack’s Bowers Galleries.

Good grief, did I feel like a heel. But within a short time both fired back images from the inventory using their cell phones that allowed me to hone in on the red meat. Before I noticed I was disturbing an executive vice president, I emailed Christine that I needed pages 439, 440 and 441. I got a late-evening reply that she would send them today, and she did.

Then I got an email from David Fanning of Kolbe & Fanning Numismatic Booksellers, who were offering the lot in association with Stack’s Bowers asking how he could help. What thoroughly decent folks.

When it comes to something important like getting these data before they go under the waves in another recluse’s book collection, one has to have a backup plan. In this case, my plan C was to call Gerome Walton in Colorado Springs, Colo., last evening. He’s the Nebraska National Bank Note specialist who co-instructs the ANA summer National Bank Note short course with me. What I like about Gerome is that he is the type of guy who also can get very fired up about information like this.

Once I told him about lot 67, he immediately dropped what he was doing today and made plans to get to Denver with camera in hand to record the critical data. So, we are backed up.

I’ll tell you how hard core Walton is when it comes to pedigree information. He even has Amon Carter’s driver’s license in his collection to go with the Nebraska nationals that came from Amon’s collection.

All of these people’s sole compensation for being so generous is that they know I’m going to get this information out for you to read. All of us recognize that this is big news.

  So just what do we have?

We have totals—the big picture—information that never has been published before.

Green had 3,293 full sheets of six notes and another 15 part-sheets of from two to five subjects, all serial No. 1.

The full sheets break down by denomination as follows:

$5 946 $28,380 $10 1,233 $73,980 $20 1,087 $130,440 $50 16 $4,800 $100 11 $6,600

3,293 $244,200

This is 1929-1935 money folks, when a dollar was worth something.

Entrance to Col. Green’s mansion at Round Hill, South Dartmouth, Mass., complete with a Hupmobile parked in front. (Photo by my uncle John Klemann, Jr. Sept. 23, 1931.)

Look at these data this way. The typical banker sold two to three sheets to George Blake, who was serving as intermediary in assembling this hoard. That means that there was something like 1,100 to 1,650 different banks represented in Green’s holding.

Think about those numbers. There were 6,996 banks that issued Series of 1929 notes. Green got sheets from something like 15 to 25 percent of all of them. If this doesn’t blow your mind, I give up on you.

No, we don’t have breakdowns by state. Too bad. However, you can deduce a bit of that picture by logging onto the National Currency Foundation census website and seeing what is out there. Just set the search for 1929 sheets, then do it again for No. 1 1929 notes. Green’s holding is where most of what you will find came from. If you are real parochial, add the name of your state to your search.

Also make no mistake about it. Many if not most of Green’s sheets were redeemed. William Philpott (1970) tells their fate. Material in the square brackets was added by me.

“After Green died and his estate was administered, there was little interest among collectors in these sheets. A few of us borrowed money and bought (at 15% above face) as many sheets as we could afford. A few months later the large remainder of this sheet hoard was [deposited as cash at the Chase National Bank in New York in 1948 and] turned in to the Federal Reserve Bank, New York. [The cashier at the New York Fed] segregated the sheets, according to the twelve districts [instead of sending them to the Treasury for redemption]. Each of the other 11 banks received a list of sheets from banks in the respective districts, offering the sheets at face for the eleven banks to distribute, ‘as a public relation act,’ sheets to the national banks of issue.”

Some of the cashiers in the other Federal Reserve Banks took the New York Fed up on the opportunity and offered the sheets back to their original issuers. Then some of those bankers bought them back at face. But the orphans were redeemed with the Treasury in 1949 or so.

Philpott went on to explain what happened to the sheets earmarked for the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. Recall that Philpott was the secretary of the Texas Bankers Association.

“When the Dallas bank received a list of the 11th District sheets available, and the New York bank’s suggestions of a ‘good will’ gesture, this letter was referred to me, saying I could have any or all of the Texas No. 1 sheets at face value. If I did not want them, the Dallas bank would write New York to dispose of the notes elsewhere, as there was no interest in Texas.

“Again, I heaved a sigh, signed another large note or two at my bank and rescued another score or so of uncut Texas sheets, all No. 1. I learned later that the remainder of sheets from the 11th District were eventually sent to the Treasury for redemption.”

A convoy of Brink’s armored cars with police escort moved the small, high value objects from Col. Green’s Round Hill mansion to The First National Bank of Boston on Oct. 25, 1936. (Photo from Seng and Gilmore (1959, p. 64).)

When you do your search for sheets or No. 1 notes from your state and you find few listings, you’ll have evidence that the cashier of the Federal Reserve District bank in your district probably didn’t want to be bothered with handling the sheets.

The letters from the conscientious cashiers went out to the national bankers in 1948. The colonel died June 8, 1936. The sheets had sat around in his estate for a dozen years, just long enough to be viewed as curious out-of-print money to those who decided to spring for them. This lapse of time was just long enough to save many of the sheets.

I’m polishing this up on Aug. 3, and Gerome has just called to tell me that Boyd’s inventory sold for $30,550 this time around.

  Sources of information and dynamite Reading

Bedell, Barbara Fortin, 2003, Colonel Edward Howland Robinson Green and the World He Created at Round Hill: published privately, 150 p.

Huntoon, Peter, and Bedell, Barbara Fortin, Jan-Feb 2009, Colonel Edward H. R. Green, collector extraordinaire, and the story of the number 1 Series of 1929 sheets: Paper Money, v. 48, p. 34-56.

Lewis, Arthur H., 1963, The Day They Shook the Plum Tree: Buccaneer Books, Cutchogue, N.Y., 247 p.

Numismatist, July 1936, Deaths, Col. E. H. R. Green: The Numismatist, p. 542-543.

Numismatist, December 1936, Colonel Green’s collection transported to Boston: The Numismatist, p. 1005-1006.

Philpott, William A., Nov. 10, 1970, Why No. 1 sheets, Series 1929, are not too rare: Numismatic News, p. 14, 27.

Seng, R.A., and J.V. Gilmour, 1959, Brink’s, the Money Movers: R. R. Donnelley and Sons, 128 p.

Slack, Charles, 2005, The Genius and Madness of American’s First Female Tycoon: Harper Collins Publishers, New York, N.Y., 258 p.

Sparkes, Boyden, and Moore, Samuel Taylor, 1935, The Witch of Wall Street, Hetty Green: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., New York, N.Y., 338 p.

  This article was originally printed in Bank Note Reporter. >> Subscribe today.

  More Collecting Resources

• The Standard Catalog of United States Paper Money is the only annual guide that provides complete coverage of U.S. currency with today’s market prices.

• When it comes to specialized world paper money issues, nothing can top the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money, Specialized Issues .

The post How many 1929 sheets did Col. Green have? appeared first on Numismatic News.

[livefreeshop]

In this post we will show you exactly how we execute high quality content creation at scale! (including sharing all of our standard operating procedures and article briefs for free!)

I have been a long time fan of Spencers and the NichePursuits audience, and up until recently (~6months) I had a demanding day job and had to focus on building systems to be able to operate my online business. Leveraging systems for creating great content I have built up my portfolio of websites to earn over $14k/month and I have left the day job to pursue my online ventures full time.

This is a giant guide but I will try and make it as actionable as possible!

Quick Reference:

Get 7 standard operating procedures and article writing briefs (FREE) – HERE

Get an exclusive and limited discount for done for you content marketing at ContentRefined (10% off!) – HERE (use coupon code “spencer” to save 10%)

In this post I am happy to reveal here many of the article briefs and SOPs we created as part of launching ContentRefined into a leading done for you content marketing service.

This post is a MONSTER and I hope it doesn’t overwhelm you as everything that we do gets shared.

If you are a website owner like me, you understand how difficult and time consuming it can be to maintain your sites, producing and publishing consistent content is tough!

Over time, I have accumulated over 60 active money websites, most of which are affiliate sites, blogs or FBA businesses. Although this portfolio of sites is still really fun to build out and make money off of, other aspects of my online business have really become a large focal point and I have less and less time to spend on my site portfolio.

With the number of projects I have (fellow willing sufferer of the bright shiny object syndrome like Spencer), in order to achieve sustainable I have to be crazy focused on systems!

Although all of my sites are a little bit different, a major commonality they share is that they all require great content marketing to sustain/grow. As you know, the quality of your content is something that is becoming more and more crucial to any site as Google keeps raising the quality bar and finessing their algorithms.

Because of my many projects I hired a new team member to help me run my money site portfolio and specifically focus on creating the systems to publish great quality content. I wanted more than just help maintaining my sites, I wanted my portfolio to have solid processes in place to ensure systematic quality without feeling like I had to do much myself.

It originally took a few months of really hard work, messing with different content marketing tools, and making a ton of mistakes to figure it out, but we have been able to create and execute a company SOP around systematic, high quality keyword research, content creation and content publishing. As a result, we have noticed that our rankings have been consistently increasing and the portfolio is experiencing pretty solid and consistent growth (as shown below from my income report).

As the site portfolio management started getting more and more efficient with this SOP, we saw potential for expansion as the need for quality content is a common problem for not only myself, but also for most site owners.

I pitched this idea (done for you content marketing) to a few members of my list, and as a result we got a few beta testers to see if the service would actually work for their sites and if they would see value in our processes. After a few months of tweaking our procedures and figuring out where our sore points were, we launched Content Refined, a one stop shop solution for your online content.

Now this blog post is all about sharing the tools, SOPs and insights created/learned in the creation of this system.

  We truly believe that good quality content creation is attainable for everyone regardless of budget and we would like to share some tips, secrets and even some of our documentation with you so that you can either do it yourself with your own team, or choose to try out Content Refined if it makes sense for you and your business.

The next section will show you how to SYSTEMATIZE and OUTSOURCE EVERY STEP in the process!

Hire Your Team

Complete Keyword Research

Assign Article(s) to Your Writers

Writers Write the Articles

Systematically Edit the Articles

Publish the Articles

Do it Yourself with your Own Content Team:

If you want to create your own content using the Content Refined process, your best friend is going to be Upwork. Upwork is a great platform to hire a small team which should consist of at least one writer and a Virtual Assistant.

DIY – ONE – Hiring a Team:

Hiring consistent and high quality writers is an ongoing battle and something that we are constantly doing- However, we have managed to build up a really good core team of writers that have been with us for a long time and who produce a lot of content for us on a monthly basis by following our Hiring SOP and keep reading to see exactly how to do it on upwork.

Our 5 fundamentals on hiring/managing writers on Upwork is the following:

Hire fast with no interview

Hire more than you will eventually need. For example, if you have the need for 1 writer, hire 3 or 4

Fire quickly-  as soon as it is clear that the writer is not going to be a good fit for you fire them

Keep them consistently working! No freelancer wants a dry week. This is their livelihood and they will prioritize another client over you if you don’t have consistent work for them.

Make sure you have a system in place to manage their output and that you give them great instructions and feedback! Here are the General Instructions we give potential candidates for their test articles!

Note, me and my team have A LOT of experience on UpWork with 1,661 hires and over $400k in lifetime spend! So the tips above and below have been hard earned.

How to post a job and vet good potential candidates on upwork:

Part A: Posting your job post

Step 1: Log in to your upwork account

Step 2: Go to the Jobs tab and click on “post a job”

Step 3: Select “part time” unless you’re looking for a dedicated full time writer

Step 4: Create your Job posting

Step 5: Make sure that the category is “writing” and the subcategory is “web content”

Then- describe the job with the requirements. Generally what is listed below should suffice

Step 6: Add a screening question to weed people out! Generally with our screening questions, we ask candidates to fix a sentence that is grammatically incorrect so that you can just skip over their profile and application if they answer badly

Step 7: Click “post job”.

DONE! You’ve posted your job!

  Part B: Hiring Your Writer(s)

Step 1: Wait 12 hours and check your job posting, you should have a few freelancers on the list at this point when you check your job posting

Step 2: Click “Review proposals” and you will get to a list of those who have applied

Step 3: Things we look for

Budget: Does the bid fall within the budget that you specified?

What have other clients said about this freelancer? We look for 80% job success minimum

They have to be North American. Either from the USA or Canada. We’ve struggled with international writers with language capabilities, time zone changes etc.. The best writers for our business have consistently been from North America and educated in North America.

Step 4: If you find one you like and meets the metrics, click “hire freelancer”

TIP – In a world where hiring and firing has almost no cost the risk you are mitigating with an interview is not worth your time. Hire fast and fire fast!

Step 5: Make sure the budget is deposited and give them 3 days to complete their first test articles using these General Instructions.

Step 6: Once you get the articles back, it’s time to review the articles for your quality assessment. You’re going to want to look for the following things:

Assess grammar and language capabilities to see if the article meets your expectations

Copy and paste text of the article in Copyscape to make sure that the article isn’t plagiarized

           a. http://bit.ly/2lDUuqt (or free option – http://bit.ly/2lYx8qY)

Step 7: It’s time to make a decision and use your judgment in hiring/firing decisions. If you like what you see then give them a shot and you’ve got yourself a new writer!

TIP – Tools like MarketMuse or Grammerly can help systematize your evaluation of writers.

Now it is time to keep building your content creation team. Just a writer is not enough if you want to build a team to execute the entire strategy!

  Hiring a Virtual Assistant for Keyword Research and for Content Publishing:

Let’s face it, Keyword Research and Content publishing can be complicated, technical and very time consuming. To understand the fundamentals of Keyword Research, check out the Longtail Pro University course for a really great, in depth look at how to do great Keyword Research.

For more technical tasks such as Keyword Research and publishing, I have traditionally hired a talented virtual assistant to help me with this. Now hiring a VA can be tricky, but for anyone who is trying to build up a good website or online business, I believe a VA is essential. Read below for a step by step guide to finding a qualified VA quickly on upwork.

Step 1: Log in to your upwork account

Step 2: Go to the Jobs tab and click on “post a job”

Step 3: Select “part time” unless you’re looking for a dedicated full time Virtual Assistant

Step 4: Create your Job posting

Here I will put down the requirements for each task that I need completed in the job description.

For Keyword Research I generally write something like this the job description:

“ I need someone to execute high-level keyword research using advanced keyword research tools that we will provide to the right candidate. Candidate must be able to do website research to make sure that there is no overlap in existing content, must have experience with Keyword research and must be able to come up with creative and competitive post titles. Ideal candidate will be either a Native English speaker or proficient in the English language”

Whereas for publishing tasks, I’ll get into the nitty gritty of what I need done for my Content publishing tasks:

Publishing professional articles onto various WordPress sites and posting images that are copyright free and relevant to the article

Embedding comparison tables using HTML and/or plugins

Finding and posting relevant videos

Finding authority sites with high DA and PA in the same niche and linking externally

Linking internally to other related articles

Adding meta descriptions

Understanding Keyword placement

Understanding YOAST scores

Great English communication with the Project Manager is a must

Step 5: Click “post job”.

Step 6: Let some time pass ( 12-24 hours or so) and then it’s time to sort through your candidates

Here we are going to look for 4 things:

How many hours has the person worked on UpWork (~30% weighting)

The general rule of thumb is “the more hours the better”. What can happen a lot is that someone will sign up on UpWork, apply to a job but then just never complete the assignment. Someone who is dedicated and who has a career in freelancing on UpWork will absolutely deliver results for you as they will want to ensure that they will be receiving positive feedback and future work.

UpWork Feedback (~30% weighting)

General rule of thumb on this one is that if someone is below a 4 rating I would stay away. Reviews are useful to read but don’t take one negative review too seriously if they have many positive reviews as well.

Matching Skill Set (~20% weighting)

In my case I am generally looking to find  someone who has done this kind of work before. WordPress experience is a must, whereas for keyword research this is something I am willing to teach based on my own preferences.

English Skills (~20% weighting)

Communication is essential to this business and I want to find someone who does not have any broken English in their application. What I’ll also do is send them a message via upwork and try to have a real time conversation with them in order to assess their English.

Step 7: Hire 2 of the best VA’s and Give them a Test

The best method that I have found is to do a blind experiment with my VA’s instead of an interview. In real life, the costs of making a hiring mistakes are high. In the online world, ending a contract only costs a few hours of work. You can save yourself tons of time by not doing interviews.

Assign each VA a short term publishing assignment and a short terms Keyword Research Assignment. It is important to send the instructions and assign the tasks right after you have hired them. The assignments I am looking to assign are going to be  something that is simple and but that will test them on skills sets that are required for the job.

Step 8: Time to Review and Compare the VA’s work

The most important first step of the review you’re going to have of them is the initial communication. Questions are great- but in this case, the tasks I need completed are going to be simple and if they actually have the experience that they said they have, I shouldn’t be getting a ton of emails asking simple questions like “how do I save a post to Draft Mode” or anything they could easily learn on Google. If they do, then they will undoubtedly be a burden on me. If they are able to execute the tasks I give them properly, in a timely fashion, and without much guidance, I know that they will be good fit.

Using this method for testing VA’s has saved me so much time and has been a huge help to me and my team in terms of weeding out low performers without spending too much time on it.

Basically the 4 skills that I am looking at during this testing phase is:

Speed of communication

Quality of communication

Quality of questions they ask

Quality of final piece of work

CONGRATS! You now have a team to start managing the creation of your content for your sites!

  DIY – TWO – Keyword Research

So now that you’ve got your Virtual assistant, you can start thinking about Content Creation. The first obstacle is finding solid Keywords and Article Titles for your articles. This is a process that we have nailed and it’s really simple. As I mentioned above, Long Tail Pro University is a great way to educate yourself on how to use the tool properly or you can follow this simple guide on how we conduct solid Keyword Research.

To give you some background, LTP has a few different subscription options that you can choose from. You can read more about the differences between each package here. If you are unsure about buying LTP, you can also sign up for their 10 day free trial.

Step 1: The first thing you do once you have LTP is set up a new project. You can do this by clicking on the green Add Project button.

Step 2: Now that you have a new project, you are able to find some keywords to analyze. You want to click on Find Keywords. Here you will have the option to add your own keywords or add Seed Keywords. If you add your own keywords, it will only analyze those keywords, however if you use the Seed Keyword section, it will find keywords related to the keywords you type in. I like to use the Seed Keyword option as it will bring up keywords you may not have thought of and it will widen your search.

Go ahead and input different keywords into the Seed Keyword option and we like to use these settings:

Max result per seed keyword: 50

Monthly Searches Min: 200

Monthly Searches Min: 6000

Suggested bid: We leave this blank

Advertiser competition: We check all

Then click Retrieve Adwords Suggestions.

For this example I am going to type in the following seed keywords:

cheap 7 inch tablets

Best tablets for kids

tablet reviews

compare tablets

Once LTP gathered all the data, I was left with 62 keywords:

Step 3: Now we will need to do a competitor analysis.

So here, we are looking for at least 4/5 following metrics:

3+ sites that have a Domain Authority of 30 or less

3+ sites that have a Page Authority of 30 or less

4+ sites that have 30 page links or less

0-3 sites that have an exact match keyword title

1+ sites that are less than 3 years old

What makes this option the quick and easy option is that it gathers all the metrics for each keyword for you! What you need to do is click on each keyword one by one.

For this example, I am going to look at the keyword “tablets under $100”

You will want a place to keep this information, so I have created a document that you can download to help you organize your information.

Another good feature that LTP has is the ability to download the keywords you find into a .csv file onto your computer so you can open it up in Excel. This makes it easier for you as you will not need to type out all the keywords along with their titles, Suggested Bid, and  Local Searches. If you have Long Tail Pro Platinum, it will also give you the Avg. KC.

From the above photo, we can conclude that;

0 sites have an exact match title

5 sites have a Domain KC of less than 30

6 sites have less than 30 page links

3 site in less than 3 years old

As we can see from our analysis (green=good), this keyword meets 5/5  of the metrics we wanted, so this would be a good keyword to go after.

After you have your main keyword (keyword with over 1,000 monthly searches) you will then want to find some long tail keywords relevant to your main one. These will help to generate traffic  (in turn more income) to your site and allows you to tie in more products to your site.

DIY – THREE – Assigning Articles to Your Writer

So now that you’ve got your keywords, you can start thinking about Content Creation.

Once you have your keyword that fits within these metrics, you want to create an article title that has the main keyword in it, generally at the beginning of the title. For example, if the keyword is “Survival Tents”, you want the title to be something like “Best Survival Tents for Winter Camping”.

Now, I believe that this part of the process is where we really stick out and where we have really invested in the quality aspect of our content. As you probably are already aware of, Google ranks content based on a number of different metrics. There is so much garbage and terrible content on the Internet that google wants to reward websites who have the best content to encourage quality content creation.

One measure that Google will take is the “In-Depth” article metric. The idea of this is to ensure that a piece of content covering a topic isn’t simply stuffing the article full of low competition keywords, rather they are discussing several topics that broadly cover the “Focus Topic” to give the reader a better understanding and therefore rendering the article more useful to the reader. This is all about LSI keywords and the Hummingbird update (Neil Patel did a great case study here).

So how do we make sure topics are being covered thoroughly? It is difficult for writers to have the knowledge base on every topic assigned for them to cover it “thoroughly” and with accordance to what Google believes is “thorough” and “ in-depth”. To address this problem and in order to setup our writers up for success, we invested in a really great tool called MarketMuse.

MarketMuse is a piece of online Software that allows you to grade your content by comparing it against other high ranking posts on on the same “Focus Topic”. It will help if you assign your articles to your writer and ask them to include topics and other keywords that will lead to different content opportunities.

What we’ve done, is we’ve basically built a brief for each article based on MarketMuse outputs with subheadings and sub topics that will guarantee that our writers won’t miss the ball on the article in terms of content depth.

For example, if I’m going to assign the article “Best 8 Inch Tablet”, I’m going to plug it in to MarketMuse BEFORE the article is written to see what it will suggest to me. See screenshot:

From the Screenshot, you can see that the Focus Topic has been analyzed. Three Metrics from this screenshot will help me determine my approach for my article on this topic.

This is keyword research going beyond what keyword research tools reveal and actually showing how competitive the top pages are in terms of the likely quality of their content.

Content Score:

The Average Content Score is 28 whereas the best article on the internet for this topic has a score of 53

Related Topics:

MarketMuse will output a list of “related topics” that should be mentioned in the article. Copy this list to be able to provide it to your writers.

Content Wordcount:

This isn’t a huge factor for us, but definitely helps us figure out how long our article should be in order to compete online.

So with these metrics in mind, check out the Review Article Brief that I would send to my writer for this article here! Moreover, including an appropriate word count in combination with the suggested keywords and topics, will almost guarantee that your writer will cover the topic properly and that your article will be of high ranking potential.

As an FYI- We have a few different types of articles that we assign to our writers, you can check out our writing brief templates below:

Review Article Writing Instructions

Blog Post Article Writing Instructions

How to Post Writing Instructions

Buyer’s Guide Writing Instructions

List Post Writing Instructions

DIY – FOUR – Writer Writes the Article

Based on the instructions provided in the section above your writer now writes the article.

DIY – FIVE – Editing Using MarketMuse:

Now do not fear! If your writer didn’t follow the instructions properly while writing your article, you can still salvage it and enrich it using MarketMuse. This step by step guide will show and explain how to use the tool MarketMuse to create better, more valuable and in depth content for  your website!

Step 1: Go to the website of MarketMuse and login with your credentials if you have an account

Step 2: Once you sign in, this will be your view. You might have to click on “dashboard” or “content Analyzer tab” to get to this view if it’s your first time signing in

Step 3: Take the article that you will be editing and simply copy and paste the focus Topic, the Title and the article in the correct areas. The click the “analyze” button

Hint: The focus topic will be the Keyword which is always in the title of the article

Step 4: It might take a minute or two to analyze, but at the Final analysis should look like this. I’ve pointed to the Content Depth Score, the Average Content Score Target and the Best Content Score.

We generally want our articles to be above the average content score target. So for this one, we can clearly see that it needs some work

Step 5: Read the Article from start to finish

Step 6: Now this is a judgment call. IF you feel like the article is badly written or has not been written by a native english speaker ( Basic grammar + sentence structure issues, odd choice of words etc..) you should probably have it re-written by another writer just throwing out the bad article.

IF not, then you should proceed to step 7

Step 7: After you’ve read the and corrected the errors in the articles, you’re going to look on the right side of the page and look at some of the keywords+topics listed.

Step 8: Without “ Keyword Stuffing” or inserting Keywords that are unrelated, start going through the article and adding suggested keywords where they fit and add value. You will see that it is really easy to get the article up to well above average by just adding a few value added sentences addressing any keywords mentioned.

Step 9: Now that we’ve got our content up to a reasonable standard by just using different words, take a look at the missing words on the list of keywords. They will generally identify a missing subject from the article. Here you can see that the writer didn’t think to include anything about Android tablets which is clearly an important thing to mention if the keyword is high up on the list.

Step 10:

This is where your chance to do some content writing fits in. Simply add in a small paragraph that talks about windshield insurance. It doesn’t have to be extensive.

DONE! You have a great article ready to be published!

DIY – SIX – Publish Your Article

Now that you have your crisp piece of market competitive content, it’s time to publish your article. You can either do it yourself if you don’t have a Virtual Assistant, or you can assign it to your Virtual Assistant. Either way, to ensure that all the SEO functionality is being covered, follow these steps:

Step 1: Login

Step 2: Adding a new post to the website

Once you are on your sites dashboard page, you will need to go to either the left hand side and click on Post —> Add new post or go to the “edit with Thrive” depending on the site

If you don’t know how to edit with thrive look at these tutorials! They are super useful and will help you figure out Thrive, which is in my opinion the one stop shop for WordPress publishing!

Step 3: Inputting the article into the post

Enter the title of the article

Copy and Paste the content from the article into the body section

Step 4: Editing articles

Ensure all subtitles are formatted to Heading 3 and any other types of formatting edits you want to do! I suggest the following:

Embed comparison tables using HTML and/or plugins

Find and post relevant videos to your article

Find authority sites in the same niche and link externally

HINT*

Find some relevant popular terms in the article to link to authority sites. So for example, in this article we could link the keyword “graffiti” to the wiki page for graffiti – http://bit.ly/2lE3Pyt

You can do this with different sites such as About.com or any other general authority sites.

Link internally

Link internally to other article on your site

  Add meta descriptions with the keywords

Add Tags

Add Tags For the Post, Use 1-4 tags that are related to the article. In this case the article was about becoming a pressure washers so here are some example tags below:

SEO (Copy the Title of the post into the SEO Title Box and add the first 1-2 sentences into the Description Below (Each Site Will Have A Slightly Different looking SEO Section here)

  Categories

IF there is a category, select the category (sometimes you won’t have one for your article, which is ok!)

Step 5: Publish your article!

Once you are done, publish your article and make sure that they YOAST scores are either yellow or green!

Good:

OK:

Bad:

The downside of the Do It Yourself Model

Although this all seems pretty straightforward (which it is), one thing we haven’t really talked about is cost.

Downside 1 – Cost of Writers and Tools:

Unfortunately, the tools that we recommend using in order to have a competitive advantage are quite pricey, and it really only makes sense for people who are crushing out massive amounts of content and really making a business out of their websites to invest in these tools.

LongTail Pro Pricing: Depending on the package you get, you’re looking at between 30-100 dollars/ month for the Keyword Research tool.

MarketMuse: Again, depending on the package you get, you’re looking at spending between 200-500 dollars/ month for the Marketmuse tool.

Paying your writers and your VA’s: To get a good writer, you’re looking at around $50 an article and to get a good Virtual assistant you’re probably looking to spend between 5-10 dollars an hour.

In total, if you’re doing this yourself you’re probably looking at around 500-800 dollars a month for solid content creation for one website. This doesn’t even include images if you’re sourcing from a stock image account. There are ways to not do everything outlined in this guide and you will be able to save money.

Downside 2 – Time to Setup and Manage the Team

There are a few moving parts in this process that all need to be managed. Getting someone on your team responsible for the overall management of the process including the keyword research and publishing can add a lot of time/cost/complexity to the process.

If you are needing articles right away it can be very slow to get this entire process setup.

Done For You Content Marketing – ContentRefined.Com

This blog post was to give you insight into the exact process we have for content creation so that you have the resources and information at your fingertips to build out a similar system for your own sites.

We hope all the article brief templates shared will be helpful!

Get Your FREE SOPs and Article Brief Templates Here

7 of our KEY templates all shared for free! Steal Them All While They Are Available!

All this free information I am sure will provide a lot of value to many people within the NichePursuits community.

However, for those that are looking to scale their business or find a method to get great content created we have a special offer for you!

NichePursuits Audience Receive 10% Off!

(use coupon code “spencer”)

ContentRefined.com has scaled rapidly since its launch and now delivers a couple hundred great quality posts per month to clients with Affiliate Sites, ECommerce Sites and SaaS businesses.

At ContentRefined we are a marketing first focused content creation service that does everything for you from advanced keyword research through to blog post publishing.

As shown above we believe in being fully transparent and here is our exact process…

As a special for being a NichePursuits member we have a discount for you to give you a 10% discount for the first month using “spencer” – to signup click here

Make sure to use the limited coupon code “spencer”!

The post The Ultimate Content Creation Guide appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

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