#Bottom is his first life and top is his (probable) fate/last/original self. But it all gets weirder than this.

[rizerugin]

Why are there so many of him.

[justkending]

The Number One Rule. Chapter 15.

Summary: Y/N has always been seen as “Steve’s rambunctious sister.” However, she grew up, graduated, and moved to London to study abroad for 4 years and get her bachelor's degree. The girl that returns looks nothing like the teenager that left, but don’t worry the attitude is still there and stronger than ever. What’s to come of the two grown adults that used to push each other's buttons, but now have a lot more in common than they’ve ever realized.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Y/N Rogers (Steve’s little sister)

Word Count: 3100+

A/N: Ladies and gentleman. This is in one of my top 3 chapters I’ve written in this series. The next one being my number 1;) I hope you enjoy and I would love any and all feedback you are willing to share!! xoxoxo

Chapter Fifteen:

Eventually when Bucky had snapped out of his thoughts, Y/N had long fallen asleep on him. He smiled down at her with a sad smile. One filled with remorse for everything she had gone through, but pride in how she handled it and didn’t let it destroy her. At least not to the extent that a lot of people get into.

She had years to do that, whereas Bucky was fresh on the subject. It would take him time to move on from that for her. He couldn’t help but feel hate for himself knowing exactly what party she was talking about. 

It was one of the few he and Steve didn’t attend. They had planned on it, but Dot wanted a quiet night in, and Steve just didn’t feel like it or something. It had been a while since that party, so he didn’t remember intricate details. 7 years to be exact. And the only reason he could guess which one it was, was because of how she acted after it. A whole month of depression and guilt she sat with and it showed. For the last 7 years Y/N had carried that with her. The only person she trusted to tell to this day was Beck. Now he was the other. 

He gathered her up in his arms, and she drowsily threw her own over his shoulders and hung on in a sleepy daze as he brought her up the stairs. He laid her in her bed, turned on her fan, and tucked her in. 

But as he stood to go back downstairs, her hand clasped around his. 

“Where y’ going?” she asked. The wine was playing a big part in the sleepiness and he could tell by her weak squeeze to his hand. 

“I’m just going to clean up downstairs. I’ll be back up in a second, sweetheart,” she nodded before giving him another squeeze to his hand and pulling the bed covers up to her cheeks. He smiled at her cute self and bent down kissing her forehead. He moved the strands of hair they fell over her eyes and studied her for a second. 

Eventually, he pulled away and went to do what he said. Popcorn kernels trashed and bowls cleaned. Leftover wine in the fridge and beer bottles recycled. He folded the blankets on the couch and set the pillows back in their original arrangement. Lastly, he went and checked to make sure all the doors were locked for the night. He had spent the night there enough to do a lock up without issues. 

Coming back upstairs, he changed into his own pajamas and snuck into the other side of the bed. Careful not to wake her, he gently and ever so softly, pulled her back to him. In her sleep, she turned to where they were face to face. Curling into his chest in comfort, trying to get as close as she could. 

He couldn’t hold in the chuckle that rumbled through his chest as she nuzzled under his chin. He ran his hand up and down her back and noticed her body relaxing with each stroke. He was glad he had that effect on her. It was the least he could offer after not being there for her in those hard times.

Now when he held her, he wasn’t just protecting her, but also trying to shield her from any more pain. He had been doing that his whole life for the family that the Roger’s had become to him. But now was different. This was a different kind of defense. This wasn’t just family protection. This was protection for someone you love. 

________________

The next morning, Y/N was the first to wake. She found herself practically embedded in Bucky’s arms. He had wrapped his giant self around her waist pulling her in close to his body. 

They had cuddled before, and even had a few sleepovers when Steve wasn’t in town, or if Becca wasn’t going to be home for the night and lent them her space. But it was only enough to count on one hand. That, plus, it never escalated to anything other than cuddling and maybe a makeout session here and there. 

Bucky had been gentle and patient in that area. Even if they hadn’t had that talk yet at that point, he didn’t push. Something she wasn’t used to in most of the guys she had dated. Pietro probably being the only other one that was understanding of it. 

Even if they had been dating a little over a month, she was glad they were taking it slow. Even if they had known each other their whole lifes. 

She somehow was able to turn in his arms and see a soft smile on his lips. He wasn’t awake, so he must have been dreaming of something nice. She took a second just breathing him in and trying to wrap her head around how all this came to be. 

Sure she had crushes on him growing up. I mean who doesn’t form a crush for your older brother's hot best friend. Though if she was being honest, she had always thought deep down that it was never a card that would be played in this game of life. 

Little did they know, it would just take time and growth. Then the fates would do with them what they will. Most card games were just a game of chance. You never know what’s going to come around the corner...

Eventually, she pulled herself away ever so gently and quietly to escape downstairs and make breakfast. She was still in her sleep shorts, but at some point took off her sweatshirt in the night from almost overheating. That plus the surprisingly excessive amount of body heat Bucky gave off made it hard to sleep with it on. 

She found a new one laying over her chair in the corner and threw it on before grabbing a hair tie and brushing her bed head up into a bun. 

Tiptoeing to the door, she slowly closed it leaving it open just a crack. 

Just as she took a step on the stairs, she heard the front door unlock and open. Freezing in her spot she waited a second. The only person who had a key besides their mom and her was…

“Hey, sis,” Steve said coming around the corner seeing her at the top of the stairs. 

“S-Steve,” she said in almost a whisper. Panic. Fear. Dread hit her at full force.“What, um, what are you doing here?”

“It’s Saturday and mom’s out of town, and I knew you were home alone. I thought I’d come over and we can go get breakfast or something,” he said with a sweet innocent smile. 

Running down the stairs a little quicker, she met him at the bottom. 

“Um, why didn’t you call? I would have gotten ready. I just woke up,” her voice was filled with anxiety and Steve noticed. 

“I thought I’d surprise you,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “You ok? You seem off?”

“Um, no. I’m fine. I just got a text from work that one of the projects they had me on needs to be done sooner than I expected.” How she came up with that lie on the spot like that? She had no idea, but she ran with it. “Yeah, not the best thing to wake up too. Making me a little nervous.”

“Oh, well do you want to go get breakfast and we can talk about it? I’ve barely heard about anything with your new job. We need to catch up, Mini,” he said, poking her stomach and making her let out a loud laugh, having always been super ticklish. 

Just seconds after that, having heard voices and a loud almost shout, Bucky swug open the door and peered down the stairway where they were both at the bottom. 

Two seconds. 

Two seconds was all it took for Steve to put two and two together in his head. Bucky acting weird lately. Sneaking off randomly and never telling Steve anything, which wasn’t like him in their friendship. Hell, he had even noticed Bucky’s lingering looks, but always put in the back of his mind thinking nothing of it. 

But now. Oh, he was thinking about something now. 

Bucky was frozen at the top of the stairs, eyes locked with Steve. To make matters worse, he only had pajama pants on and no shirt.

Even from the distance of the stairwell, Bucky could see the storm brewing in the blue eyes of his best friend. 

“Steve,” Y/N started placing a hand on his arm. 

The blonde immediately ripped away from her as he turned to fully face Bucky. The alpha male, big brother, pissed off best friend was in a stance ready to fight. 

“Why the FUCK did you just come out of my sister’s room half fucking naked?” Steve growled.

“Steve, you don’t know the full story,” Y/N said softly, but she could sense the tension and for once in her life, she was slightly scared to enter the fight. 

“The fuck I don’t know the full story,” Steve said finally whipping his head back to Y/N. His blue eyes were carrying a category 5 hurricane in those ocean blues. But they didn’t stay on her long as he turned back to Bucky. 

“Listen,” Bucky said, coming down slowly. 

“I don’t know if I want to,” he responded through his teeth. “Take one more step down here, and you’re going to need some serious dental work and a nose job.”

Bucky froze about 4-5 steps away from the siblings. Finally, he looked at Y/N, worry in his eyes, but they were also apologetic. 

Y/N immediately moved around Steve and stood between the two. Closer to Steve to try and hold him back if she needed to. 

“Now wait a damn minute,” she spoke up looking straight at her older brother even if he was sending a death glare past her shoulder. “You need to calm down before we talk-”

“No. You need to go to your room. Bucky and I need to talk,” he said in an authoritative voice. 

“Excuse me?” she retorted back. Her gentleness in the situation was fading and being replaced with aggravation. “Go to my room? Am I a 13 year old girl?” she said stepping in his eyeline so he was looking at her. 

“This isn’t a fucking joke, Y/N!” He shouted. “Go to your room!”

“No,” she replied, folding her arms across her chest. 

The two had this kind staring contest all the time growing up. Anytime there was a fight, they almost never relented with their stubborn asses. Their mom or dad had to send them to their rooms themselves and kept them there. The time ranging from 20 minutes to 5 hours before they calmed down. 

They were two of the most headstrong ornery people to live in this world. And it didn’t help that they were now pitted against each other. This kind of fight looked as if it could be ranging more into weeks or months. 

Knowing and experiencing situations like this with them before, Bucky spoke up again. 

“Y/N, you should listen to him. We need to talk,” he said sedately. 

“I leave and he’s going to beat your ass,” Y/N said, still staring at her brother. 

“I think he’s going to beat my ass either way,” Bucky mumbled. “Really Y/N. Just give us a second.”

“I’m a part of this equation too,” she said. Her tone easing just enough to be noticed. 

“Yes, you are. But right now, Steve and I need to talk first,” he said trying his best to defuse the fire against the heated situation happening in the entryway of their house. 

There were a few more seconds of silence as they glared at the other. 

“Fine, but I’m coming back down in 10 minutes,” she bartered. 

No one responded as she started to go up the stairs backwards. The staredown did not cease until she was even with Bucky on the steps. 

“If he does anything stupid, I’m going to beat his ass,” she said looking at Bucky. 

“I’m sure you will,” he said with a small smile that was forced for reassurance. 

She placed a hand on his shoulder. A silent good luck as they studied the other in a quick second. 

Turning back to look at Steve, she saw he was still in a rigid stance. The tension in his shoulders doing nothing but grow with every passing second. She would’ve sent him one more warning glare if he was looking, but his eyes were trained on Bucky with a look that could kill. 

Eventually she went into her room and shut her door, leaving it open just a crack. They deserved their privacy no matter how bad she wanted to step in. Deep down she knew, as best friends, they needed to talk on their own. 

Bucky looked back down and saw a bull looking at him like he was a red cape.

“Outside. Now,” Steve commanded before stomping off to the back and letting the screen door slam harshly. 

Letting out a long sigh and running a hand down his face, he finally went down the stairs. He grabbed a shirt from the bag he had left down there and headed to the backyard. Steve already in the grass pacing. 

“Steve,” Bucky said softly as he walked down the porch steps barefoot. 

Instantly, a fist collided with his face. He stumbled trying his best to not fall from the impact. When he looked up, grasping his jaw, he sent a glare to Steve. 

“I’m not saying I don’t deserve that, but-”

“Oh, you deserve a lot more than that, but I need you to explain what the HELL I just walked into and you can’t do that with no teeth,” Steve glowered. 

Looking at him while straightening his posture he wiggled his jaw some feeling just a tad bit of blood on his lip. Damn him for teaching Steve how to make a proper swing like that. 

“You gonna punch me again before I talk, or can I fucking explain myself now?” No response, only a stare was given. “Ok, so I’ve been hiding something from you.” Steve raised an eyebrow. 

“You think?”

“Listen, I’m almost as taken aback as you. One day, she’s like a little sister running around with my actual sister, and the next she's a mature grown adult who knows what she wants, exudes confidence, and is intelligent beyond measure.” He paused before adding. “Not that we didn’t know that.”

“I know what my sister is. What I want to know is why you’re sleeping with her?” Steve said, taking a step closer. 

Bucky just straightened up more as if expecting another hit. But then he processed Steve’s sentence. 

“Sleeping with her?” he questioned almost in shock. Steve not breaking his gaze. “I’m not fucking sleeping with her, asshole! I’m dating her.”

The smallest amount of tension released from Steve’s body and his face wasn’t frowning as much.

“You’re dating?” 

“Yes. Dating.”

“So you guys haven’t-”

“No. I’m a little upset that you think that low of me,” Bucky scoffed. “You think I would really just start booty calling my best friend's sister? If I wanted a friend with benefits, I can easily find a girl at a bar,” he said, taking a deep breath and running a hand through his hair. “You’re sister isn’t a girl from a bar, Steve.”

Steve was silent processing it. He still wasn’t happy, but at least it wasn’t as bad as had thought. 

“Listen, Y/N’s been in my life just as long as she has been in yours. We’ve grown up together, created childhood memories together, picked on each other, and protected each other. She would be the last person on this earth I would want to degrade to a one night stand. She deserves so much more than that.”

“Exactly,” Steve said. 

Bucky paused taking note of Steve’s tone. “Exactly? Why do you say it like that?”  

“I mean she deserves a lot,” he said, confirming Buck’s thought. 

“I see. So I don’t make the cut?” Bucky said, now getting frustrated. The silence was enough of an answer to his question. “Wow. 26 years of being best friends and you think that little of me?”

“She’s my sister,” Steve answered. A slight tone of apology behind his words, but he kept the stoic face. 

“Yes, Steve she is! And 2+2= 4! We know this!” he said waving his arms and scoffing as he turned in his spot before turning back. Hands on his hips before one came up and ran a hand through his slight beard. 

“You know what? Screw this. I’m not going to sit here and be that guy that says, ‘Yeah, you’re right. She doesn’t deserve me. I’m not good enough for her.’ You know why, Steve? Because I know that. And it’s because I know that, that I’m going to strive with every muscle in my body and every might of my being to make sure I can be that for her one day. To make sure I can give her everything and more that she deserves. To make sure she never has to see a sad day again. To make sure she only experiences joy if I have any say. To make absolutely sure that no one ever hurts her. Why? Because I love her!”

Out of breath, Bucky chest heaving up and down showed how hard his lungs were working to get air back in them. 

Steve’s posture had almost gone back to normal. The anger no longer there. Whatever emotion he was feeling, Bucky couldn’t tell. 

“How long?” Steve asked. 

“What?” Bucky asked, confused. 

“How long have you loved her?” he repeated, looking down at the ground. 

Bucky paused. He couldn’t actually answer that. There was no specific time frame. Truth was he had loved her for a while. 

“Honestly, longer than I know... It’s just taken me this long to figure out that’s what this feeling was.”

Steve nodded his head as he put his hands in his pockets and continued to stare at the dirt by his feet. 

“Ok.”

Taken aback, Bucky's eyes widened. 

“Ok?” 

“Yeah. Ok,” Steve repeated before he started walking to the back fence that led to the driveway. 

“Wait. You’re just going to leave it at 'Ok,’ and walk away?” Bucky rushed over to stop him. 

Steve slowly turned from staring at the ground and then back at him. 

“You know, I thought that we were close enough that you could come to me with this kind of thing. That you wouldn’t feel like you had to hide it from me. Y/N and you both,” he said with pursed lips. “Guess I was wrong.” 

With that he turned back and walked to his car. Bucky watched as he started the engine, pulled out, and disappeared. 

What the hell kind of mess just happened?

(Tags for this series will be closing soon as it is getting pretty full, please send an ask if you want to be added:)

I’ll post on whatever chapter I decided to close it down here.

The Number One Rule (TNOR) Taglist:

@shadowolf993 @hello-i-am-daydreaming @jessyballet  @emmabarnes @kmuir1  @beautifulrare4leafclover @thefallenbibliophilequote @l0ve-0f-my-life  @shawnie--jo​ @dontputyourfckingdrinkonmytable @asoftie4bucky​ @katiaw2​ @sheeple​ @sznri​ @bxtchboy69​ @taliarosej00​ @bakugouswh0r3​ @stopjustlovethemcu​ @babemendesxz​ @jenniereiji​ @taliarosej00​ @loveyou5everr​ @natdrunk​ @im-a-light-child​

My Lovelies forever:

@natura1phenomenon​ @lauravicente​ @kakakatey​ @traceyaudette​ @notyourtypicalrose​  @laneygthememequeen​ @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce​ @sandlee44​ @thorne93​ @thefaithfulwriter​ @marvelfansworld @essie1876​ @greyeyedsmile14​ @capsiclehan​  @xostephanie​ @averyrogers83​ @awesomenursingstudent​ @gh0stgurl​ @cs-please​ @carls1022​ @jjlevin​ @rainbowkisses31​ @carls1022​ @anise-d-castle6​ @deannotmoose​ @their-bibliophile​ @kitkatd7​ @willowbleedsonpaper​ @mariaenchanted​ @snffbeebee​ @couldabeenamermaid​ @rebekahdawkins​

Bucky Barnes Tags:

@morganclaire4​ @chloe-skywalker​ @charmedbysarge​ @jbarness​ 

@bellamy-barnes

​

Marvel Tags:

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[ladymacbeth3759]

Analysis on Luca Guadagnino’s film (2) - Call Me By Your Name

This is really long, so please have patience while reading this. And because I translated it to English from my original language, there might be some mistakes.

Link to (1):

One of the most significant metaphor in this film is the greek statue. These sensual and ancient figures symbolize the nature of desire and physicality, and also represent the instinctive, irresistible love between Elio and Oliver. As an example, in the scene of cataloging the pictures of the statues, the words of Elio's father express these significance. Another scene also shows this metaphor very well. There is a scene in which the two have a little confrontation and after the subtle fight and jealousy, the camera shows the scene where they lift up the statue from the ocean. This scene can be interpreted as a metaphor that the desire became visible by bringing it above the surface as it began to be expressed as an emotion of jealousy. It means that the boundaries of emotions that were unclear until then have gradually became clearer. After the statue was brought up, the two call each other's names in a swimming scene. If there is a guideline in love, the first step will be recognizing each other's ‘existence’ (metaphysically speaking), and the last step will be taking a full look at each other's ‘existence’, the true self, a state of unity in which the other person becomes the other one, and vice versa, which is the idealistic idea of love. In that respect, it can be said that the two have already entered the stage of destined love. Following this, after making love for the first time, they call each other by their names.

    

In the next scene, the camera focuses on Elio sitting on a bench and reading a book, following the narration:

    

‘The Cosmic Fragments by Herclitus’

    

“The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice but that some things stay the same only by changing.“

    

Human beings are existents that change from moment to moment, and human identity is what grows due to conflicting elements or events. One of the reasons ‘Call Me By Your Name’ is such a special movie is that it can be a movie about love but also can be a movie about growing up. In this scene, Oliver's voice specifically puts the contents of the book as a narration because probably he is the very ‘moment’, the very elicitor in Elio's life. Although it is not revealed through dialogue or narration in this film, Elio has a very important moment of choice. Before making his first love with Oliver, he continues to engage with Marzia. If we learn that some important moment will change ourselves forever, it will probably be confusing and we will try to stay in the stability that we’re standing on right now. So Elio looks forward to meet Oliver, but he also feels nervous that something might change in himself. Perhaps Oliver left the book in an attempt to share the voice of wisdom with Elio? Like a flowing river, humans will always change, and even in the moment of change, we will still be perfectly ‘ourselves’. Perhaps this is the most important narrative in growing into life.

    

In this film, there are many voices overlapping between scenes, which kind of reminds of the act of retracing memories through one’s mind. (When we sometimes try to remember various scenes from the past, some imagery or voices pop up first before continuing to the next scene.) Also when it is a scene that Elio's emotions are maximized, music is inserted, which can be seen as a hint that this was based on Elio's memories. And the scenes where the focus becomes blurry can also be the evidence of this assumption.

    

In an interview, director Luca said that the meaning of true love is to accept difference as itself. In other words, it can be said that true love is not distorting the other into an stereotyped image, but seeing the other’s true ‘self’ clearly. After the scene where Elio realizes his desire and makes a first kiss with Oliver, the camera captures the image of Elio, waiting for Oliver who is too cautious about love, who is trying so hard not to surrender. And the narration comes in the middle of this scene. 'Do I know you?' Elio asks himself if he ‘truly’ knows Oliver. Or Oliver truly knows him. Often in romance movies, looking into each other's eyes is considered a cliché. As it is said that the eye is the window to the soul, the act of looking at the eye is the final gesture of love, the gesture of wanting to understand other’s true soul (the existence, the idée-edea). This is realized when the two make love for the first time and change each other's names. What's interesting here is that it was Oliver, not Elio, who suggested this first. Even though the desire became visible, it was Elio who actively expressed it, and Oliver was the one who relatively rejected it and avoided it. Remind ourselves what Elio's father said at the very end of the movie. “Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot”. Oliver, who is older and probably has some experience with love, is actually being realistic avoiding Elio. The fact that Oliver’s wound from riding a bike became more festered after the first kiss with Elio suggests that the nature has discovered such a weakness (love for Elio) from Oliver. It is also understandable that Oliver, who has completely surrendered for the fatalistic love after this, wants a full understanding of the other. He understands how love can make a person helpless and lead to despair. When people don’t try to see each other as the complete ‘true self’ or accept difference as itself, relationships between people becomes inevitably distorted and tragic. He has rejected the love for Elio because of this fear (including practical reasons), but nature brought him down to a state of exposure. Therefore, asking each other to call as each other's names can be seen that Oliver finally accepted what he refused because he was too afraid of being hurt or hurting the other, and praying only for the complete love from now on.

    

There are two related scenes that are very interesting to see in this regard. There is a scene where Oliver deliberately dances closely with another woman in front of Elio's eyes, and the next day the two confront each other. At that time, in the scene passing through the door, the person who passes through first, that is, the person who leads, is Oliver. And after the two have made love for the first time (when Oliver is completely surrendered by nature of love), in an awkward atmosphere, Elio passes through the door before Oliver. Through these two scenes, we can see that the power dianamic, or superiority in this relationship has been completely reversed.

    

At a square with a monument commemorating the Battle of Piave, the camera takes a brief shot ascending towards the sky. This is the scene where Elio confesses his love to Oliver without saying that he loves him. In previous work of Luca, he used movements of camera to symbolically express relationships and emotions between characters. From that point of view, perhaps it can be seen as a symbol that Elio's desire has risen to its peak, and at the same time, the change in the relationship between the two begins to drive forward. And although it may be a coincidence, the camera takes a shot from top to bottom in the scene where the two go on a trip together, before the scene where Oliver has to leave. And after a moment of the descending camera movement, there is a scene where Oliver remembers the memories of the two at Piave Square while watching Elio, who fell asleep after making love at the hotel. Then he abruptly turns to the side as the news of the sudden breakup attacks(the sound of the train). And immediately after that, the sound overlappes the scene of the train station. It is as if the journey of the two's love was brought up by fate and then settled down again.

    

The timing of this film and the Battle of Piave are also closely related. Because the time where they are in is the summer of 1983, that is, the time of the AIDS wave. They are in a kind of virtual world that is closely connected with the reality around them, as if they were in the eyes of a typhoon. Like Elio, who confessed love while standing next to a statue that symbolizes the damages, death of the war(which can be interpreted as the AIDS situation where hundreds of people’s lives were at stake), the gap between the world in which the two are staying and the real world outside the shell is expressed very interestingly in this film.

    

Another interesting ‘connection’ in this movie is the scene where Elio watches Oliver dancing. There are only two scenes where Oliver dances based on the same song. Elio, enamored with jealousy in the first scene, drinks while watching Oliver, and in the second scene, this continues to Elio being drunk while watching Oliver, and after that he vomits. Personally, I think these two scenes symbolize the beginning and the end. It is the structure of continuation in the movie. Like a formal symbol where a love like drunkenness begins and ends.

    

It is no coincidence that Oliver is the only American in this film, and is set in the position of a student who stays only for the summer. This is because the symbol of the stranger who suddenly appeares in the landscape where everything else perfectly melts into the background means, that the essence of love is that the differences between two world eventually make contact with each other's eyes. Even the difference ‘itself’ is accepted without any distortion. That is the purpose and theme of this film. When I watch this movie, I sometimes think that what this movie is trying to say is completely different from the other typical queer movies. Other queer movies pay attention to the “queerness” of queer, but this movie rather pays attention to the “universality”. The universality of enjoying and appreciating love is shared from all kinds of people all over the world. Despite being a queer film set in the 80s, there are no obstacles between the two protagonists. It is a choice to only show the journey of love, that magical universality. I'm a pessimetic person, so naturally I’m kind of skeptical of this so-called ‘universality’ and ‘nature of love’ that a film like this presents. Can you really accept someone with its full self without any distortion? Isn't the first thing to be addressed is the anwser to the question of ‘what is the essence of human being?’. Human senses inevitably entail distortion, and the brain, where survival instinct and the reason are mixed, attempts to shrink and simplify the multi-layered and obscure nature of humans to a minimum. Isn't the existence of others inevitably bound to collide with another? As other reviews of mine will say, I'm skeptical, but I'm not hopeless. This is because I think that the state of struggling to try is perhaps the only goal that humans should have. Maybe Director Luca have different opinions from mine, but I see this movie as part of that attempt. This fantasy, fairy tale love story looks so perfect and ideal. The director's attempt to present it as some kind of a living experience is definitely admirable.

    

In the last scene, when the camera calmly captures Elio's face and the ending credit goes up, the lingering emotion we feel is quite unforgettable. That scene feels ike they are finally proclaiming that this magical experience was forever over. When Elio's mother calls out towards Elio, what Elio heard was the obituary of the one united person, someone, Elio and Oliver.

[singingwordwright]

It's been so long since your last thread/analysis about #SaveShadowhunters. I see you continue to rts the hashtag, but what do you think? Now that the show is over, do you think it can get saved?

I’ve been looking at this ask for 24 hours trying to figure out how to answer, and I’m still not sure. Because I don’t want to take away anyone’s hope, but at the same time I don’t want to offer false hope.

This is long, so I’ll put it behind a cut. 

I stepped back from actively promoting #SaveShadowhunters and indulging in “cancellation meta” toward the end of last year for myriad personal reasons. More than one person very dear to me had multiple health crises, I was nursing a dying cat including hand-feeding for two months, the holidays were looming, I needed to go help my sister while she had surgery for her brain tumor, my self-absorbed, alcoholic mother finally pushed me to the point of writing her out of my life, finances were a big problem, all of this was contributing to my depression getting worse, and then to top it all off, The Toy Story Incident happened.

That was the final straw for me. I’ve said before that I’m not good at knowing when to give up on something. I was angry about the cancellation, but I was also making a concerted effort to NOT be angry and to accept the 25 Days of Teasers offerings graciously and with a positive attitude and to welcome the coming half season with joy, whatever the outcome for the show. Then that happened and the fact that @freeform was actively deriding and mocking our efforts filled me with such rage that I had to walk away from the whole thing. Because that sort of anger isn’t good for me and I just had too much else already weighing me down. I needed to keep Shadowhunters as a bright spot in my life, and the frustration of trying to save the show was preventing me from taking pleasure in the show.

I also, since that horrid letter from Constantin was released in August, have been firmly of the opinion that we’d had as much impact as we were going to be able to have, and that any decisions that had been made or would be made regarding the fate of the show were no longer within our sphere of influence. It would happen regardless of what we did or didn’t do. I stand by that. While it doesn’t hurt to gently remind people we’re still here from time to time, the messages we needed to send had already been sent.

All that said, your question is, do I think the show can be saved. To which my answer is a qualified “no.”

No, because I absolutely do not believe we’ll get a season four. If the show continues, I believe it will happen in the form of a spin-off (and not a TID spin-off, which I don’t really think of as a spin-off, anyway. That’s another animal entirely.)

Why? For myriad reasons, many of which arise from information that was not available to us early in the cancellation timeline.

Early on, we had a suspicion that the burgeoning Netflix/Disney pissing match had played some role in our cancellation, but the absolute cancellation carnage of all the Marvel shows on Netflix has cemented that tensions between Disney and Netflix are a much bigger factor than we knew.

We’ve also gotten a better picture now into Netflix’s decision-making process, particularly with the ODaaT cancellation. @bonibaru linked a Deadline Hollywood article on Twitter at one point that basically laid it all out. The bottom line is that for Netflix, with series that are not owned and produced by Netflix, there is little to no profitability for shows beyond their third season unless they’re tremendously, HUGELY popular. Like, juggernaut-type popularity. They don’t bring in enough new subscribers (and presumably, not enough subscribers decamp upon cancellation of those shows to have an adverse impact that Netflix would like to avoid.)

So, Netflix is NOT going to be our savior. It won’t happen, and people just need to stop going there. But Constantin has been very clear that they need an international distribution partner for this show, and since Netflix (and maybe Amazon Prime?) are the only international players on the board right now, well…

The other complication that became clear in the Marvel and ODaaT cancellations is this clause Netflix apparently has on all the shows that it doesn’t produce in-house, which is that that show (and characters from that show) cannot appear on a competing service for at least two years following the cancellation. This is why CBS AllAccess wasn’t allowed to pick up ODaaT, and why everyone is saying the soonest we might see the Marvel shows on Disney+ (assuming we do) is 2020/2021. While we don’t have any confirmation that Shadowhunters is subject to this clause, but we have no reason to believe it ISN’T subject to it, because it apparently is standard on all shows that Netflix distributes but doesn’t own.

So, if Shadowhunters were to continue, whether with Season 4 or a spin-off, the soonest it would happen is next year or the year after. Which is probably for the best because, again, it won’t be on Netflix. Freeform wasn’t just a distributor for this show, it was a production partner. Yes, Constantin has the adaptation rights and could start another, entirely new series based on the source material tomorrow. But THIS particular adaptation of the source material (and any derivative properties thereof) is partially Disney property and Netflix isn’t going to touch it. So any international distribution is going to be on either Disney+ or Hulu when they go international, which likely won’t be for another year or more.

So, assuming we could see the show again next year or the year after, why do I believe it will be a spin-off and not season 4?

In part, because of where the show left off. Things are wrapped up. Yes, there is room for continuation, there are places they could pick up the story from where they left it, but I think we would all feel like they were walking back the HEA so many characters got if they did that. There is just more storytelling potential if you introduce a show that has at least some new characters, maybe a few old ones, and then just takes off in another direction. That was sort of the point of pushing the big red reset button on Clary’s story altogether.

Also, Todd and Darren at this point are being very clear that they don’t see the show getting picked up, especially with all the sets dismantled and the props sold, and that maybe, MAYBE there might be a chance for reunion movies at some point, but this is pretty much it for Shadowhunters. I mean, even if I hadn’t stepped back from #SaveShadowhunters, it’s pretty hard to maintain denial in the face of what they were saying.

And then there’s Malec. My impression from Matt and Harry’s (TVGuide? Cosmo? I don’t remember) interview last week is that Matt and Harry are not writing off the possibility of returning in some capacity if the opportunity arose, but they’re not putting things on hold waiting for it to happen. They’re moving on. Harry made a very clear and unambiguous “goodbye, Magnus” tweet thread the day after the finale. And Harry specifically called out life changes like having a baby affecting things like being willing to work 3000 miles away from his family for more than half the year. I honestly don’t see anyone being willing to pick up this show for more seasons without Malec being a central part of it, because where Malec goes, there goes the audience.

So, a spin-off makes a lot more sense. It offers the chance of bringing in a new audience who maybe didn’t watch the original show, or watched part of the first season and was turned off by the low production values. It offers the chance to cycle out the part of the cast who doesn’t want to or isn’t able to return and cycle in new characters with new stories. It resets the clock on things like pay grades for actors who usually get raises after second and/or third seasons and enables the producers to bring in new, unknown talent who would be paid less. It enables a chance to relocate the production if necessary without recreating all the old sets in a new place. It also resets the clock on the “3 season profitability” guideline Netflix adheres to, which we could assume would also apply to other streaming services.

So why am I not talking about TID? Because like I said, that’s a whole different animal. TID will bring in dedicated book fans, but the casual, non-book-based audience who tuned in for modern-day urban fantasy with a strong presence of LGBTQ+ characters won’t necessarily tune in for Victorian gothic/steampunk-tinged fantasy with the only LGBTQ+ character in an abusive, het relationship. The Shadowhunters audience who came in because of the show and not the books will want a spin-off that is more of the same.

So, yeah. I’m not writing off the possibility of a continuation in some form. I just don’t think we can affect the outcome at this point, and what is going to happen will happen.

[looselucy]

December

Rain crashed furiously against the window in Zayn’s bedroom, creating a dense noise to eradicate what was otherwise a completely silent atmosphere.

Still dressed in black, I lay on top of Zayn’s bed on my side, his body mirroring mine as we lay in silence, wallowing in our desperate sorrow. “Just makes me sad.” He gulped. “It all feels… really rushed. I was still in the hospital this time last week. It just… it feels so rushed. Like you need to rush through the grieving process and… try and get back to normal in a week. It… It’s horrible.” Harry had driven us to Mike’s home town for the funeral that morning, Zayn sat in the back and trying hide the fact that he was clearly terrified about being in the car. If he was the only one in the accident, I knew things would be different. If it was just him who got hurt, broken bones and all, he wouldn’t be fazed by getting back into a car. But things weren’t as simple as that. He wasn’t alone in the car, and it changed everything. One person in one place at the wrong time. Thoughts played out in my mind so often. Not just the obvious ones, like cursing the black-ice they’d hit and wishing they’d never gone out for a drive in the first place, but more just about how one person being in one place can change everything. Mike had decided to see his friend Zayn and to go for a drive, and now a sturdy brick wall had been left broken and crumbled. Mike had been feeling down, and now someone who used to call herself a mother, felt like she couldn’t anymore. Mike had told Zayn not to worry about the weather, and now his bedsheets had remained cold and untouched since, still thrown back, just as he had left them that morning. Mike wanted to spend time with his friend, and now Zayn was scared to get in a car. One person. One place. So many changes, both big and small. We were still trying to grasp at the fact he wasn’t with us anymore. “I used to believe in fate.” Zayn whispered, wincing as he grabbed his sore side. “Not anymore. Because… there’s no way in hell, that Mike deserved that.” I recalled how sad I had been when I realised I wouldn’t be living with Mike in our second year, how I couldn’t imagine not always having him there, being happy, telling stories, kissing my cheek when I offered to make brews. That thought in itself had been hard to swallow. Now I knew it was something I’d never have again, and it was killing me. “I just can’t believe it.” My words were getting caught in my throat as an onslaught of tears doomed me. “Did… Did you see the look on Graces face?” I hid my head in his pillow and burst into tears, drooling, almost screaming, a physical pain attacking me and weakening me. I had never felt a pain like that. I had never known that my body could ache in ways that seemed so physical that I expected there to be blood and scars and scratches all over my body. And Zayn was right, Mike Jones had put nothing but positivity into the world. He was gentle, kind, sweet, humble, funny, innocent and pure. Mike was intensely beautiful, his soul was refreshing, and I had been blessed to know him. Fate couldn’t be real, because there was absolutely no upside to this. No possible good outcome or repercussion. I didn’t imagine any kind of power would be so cruel as to take him. I was also overwhelmed by the feelings I had on Zayn’s behalf. A few nights earlier, we’d had a screaming match; fully shouting at one another. He had been talking about how guilty he felt, how it was all his fault, and I’d flipped. I’d never yelled at someone so much in my life, and I knew he was hurting, probably more than any of us, but I just couldn’t hold it in. I’d just repeated how stupid he was, how idiotic he was being, how it wasn’t his fault and everyone knew it wasn’t his fault and he needed to start dealing with it differently, because there wasn’t a chance I was going to let him carry that on his shoulders. I wouldn’t let him, and maybe yelling at him wasn’t the best way to go about it, but our feelings were scattered and amplified after losing Mike, and we all knew something like that was going to happen. I had nothing but good intentions, but we were all hurting so much, and we had no idea how to handle it. I just wanted to make sure that Zayn was never burdened with guilt over what had happened. It hurt enough already, he didn’t need any more agony. I didn’t know what it would take to change the way he viewed the accident, I wasn’t sure it was actually something I could alter, but I was willing to try anything. “She couldn’t even speak.” Zayn began crying too. “I asked her if she was okay, and… and she couldn’t even fucking speak… Fuck.” I wanted to move and hold him, both of us just sobbing together but not touching, but every unnecessary move hurt him thanks to his injuries. He needed to be stationary as much as he physically could, and it felt like such a kick in the teeth, because he’d never needed that kind of contact more in his life, and yet that was the kind of thing that hurt him. Everything was just so erroneous. Of course it was more apparent and consuming on the day of his funeral, but that didn’t make it any easier. As we lay crying together, I couldn’t picture myself ever feeling better. I couldn’t comprehend the thought that a day would arrive where I wouldn’t need to cry like that. I couldn’t see myself ever being okay. Because that scared me enough in itself, the thought that something that was breaking me would one day just be the memory of a boy I had known and loved, a fleeting thought on the anniversary of his death or on his birthday. It terrified me, the thought that something can change you and leave fragments of your former self shattered on the floor, and yet you always find a way to deal with it, you just move on with your life. That kind of strength and resilience, that core power that was held in the human race, was frightening to me just as much as it was impressive. Our tears calmed after a while, the two of us having splitting headaches from the amount we’d cried throughout the day, and we calmed again, Zayn having to really concentrate on his breathing so he didn’t cause any more pain. “I love you.” My breathing was heavy. “I hope you know.” “Of course I know.” He huffed sadly. “But it’s nice to hear it. It’s always nice to hear it.” I had just wanted him to know, and he had just wanted to hear it. There was a quiet knock on his bedroom door just seconds before Harry let himself in, face low, but attempting a smile. “Your mums here, Zayn.” I could see the mix of emotions on Zayn’s face, how excited he was that his mother had arrived and he was going home for a few days, but petrified about the journey back. He just nodded, preparing himself by just shutting off his throat as much as he could, before he moved upright to get off the bed, pain deflating his already exhausted exterior as he got to his feet. Harry grabbed Zayn’s bag for him to save him the trouble, and I followed the two of them downstairs, aiding Zayn as he took each step slowly, holding his hand, trying to ignore how his frustration that the simplest tasks were now just painful and difficult. Anguish emitted from his every move. Zayn’s mother was different. The first time we’d met her, she was so upbeat, so cheerful and carefree. When she’d arrived at the hospital the week before, and seeing her then, she seemed like a different woman. She could barely smile. She didn’t say a word. Harry passed her Zayn’s bag, the exchange silent and uneasy. A natural part of me wanted to say get home safe, but it felt almost forbidden. It felt like it was stir something in all of us. It was too soon, it was too hurtful. “We’ll see you soon.” I choked. He needed some time away, to be with his family and to escape university. He really needed some space to breathe, to distance himself and come to terms with everything. With a shy little wave, Zayn left our home, his mother shutting the door behind them as I stood on the bottom step, my heart in my throat as I watched him go. Though we were all in pain, we felt even worse for Zayn. Harry came to me, both the same height since I was slightly lifted from the floor, and we wrapped our arms around one another. He nestled his face into my hair, our breathing calming as we embraced. I’d never known anything like that, where just being held by someone could help you forget your pain, even if it was just for a moment. Because having Harry’s arms wrapped around me was my remedy, the only cure I had found. Amidst all the chaos in my mind, he somehow created a calm, one that wrapped around me, hypnotized me, created a heat deep within my chest that made me feel as though my heart was expanding, growing and reshaping because it simply wasn’t big enough in its original state to handle the love I felt for him. “Are you okay?” He asked. “Umm… yeah… I’m… Yeah. Are you?” I asked, pulling out of the hug and caressing his face. “I want to go home.” He said firmly. “I think I just… want to be at home, for a few days. I feel really tired. I’m exhausted. Think I need to spend some time with my dad’s.” I nodded, trying to swallow the lump in my throat as I continued to rub my thumb under his eye, noticing the way his green gems traced over me as though he was just waiting for me to burst into tears again. “Okay.” I breathed. “You should. I think you’ll be more relaxed there. I think it’ll be good for you.” “Will you come with me?” He asked, lightly kissing my bottom lip. “I don’t want to be in the way.” “I don’t want to go without you. Please come with me. Ben and Kev really want to see you, too. I know they’d love it if you stayed again.” Being with Harry’s parents had been amazing the first time round, so the thought of repeating that but being even more comfortable the second time around, was something I couldn’t say no to. We were both in need of that home comfort, too. Ben and Kev did everything for Harry, and there was no denying we wanted to make the most of that. Because everything was so tiring, even the simple things like having someone else cooking for us, was something we kind of felt we needed. “I’d love to come with you.” I smiled. “Good. All I need to do is pack a bag, so we’ll go when you’re ready, alright?” “I’ll just sort a bag now and we can go.” “You sure?” He worried. “Don’t rush yourself, or anything.” Harry was very sweet with me. He had been very sweet with me for a long time, but over the past week, for understandable reasons, he was even sweeter. I didn’t even think it was a conscious effort he was making, he just had this need within him to make sure every other part of my life, other than the obvious, was going well, and I couldn’t physically find anything else that would upset me. I kissed him again, drawn out, trying to portray how much I loved him just through my touch. “I’m sure.” I whispered. “I’ll go pack.” + + + I wondered how long it would last, people looking at me and my friends like we were damaged. Kev swung the door open to me and Harry with that look on his face, the look we had seen countless times that week. That look that read, I don’t know what to say, I don’t how to explain my empathy, I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I feel for you… I just don’t know. “C’mere.” He ushered to his son. Harry took the step and the two held each other tight, slapping themselves around one another. I saw Kev grip his eyes shut, nestled into Harry’s shoulder. I realised then, that being back at Harry’s place wasn’t merely for us. Kev had needed to see Harry, he had needed to hold him like that. Because it doesn’t really matter how old you get, I don’t think, nothing reminds you that everything is going to be okay in the same way as having a family members arms wrapped around you does. It’s a beautiful reminder that someone is there for you, and always will be. It was little facts like that which had made me long for a family my entire life. The thought that one day, I would wrap my arms around my child and they would have this overwhelming feeling that everything was going to be alright, was enough to keep me going through anything. “You okay?” He whispered, grabbing the back of Harry’s neck when they’d parted. “I’m a little shook up.” Harry gulped. “I know. I bet.” “Where’s dad?” “He got a bit upset. Think he needs some time to calm down before he sees you.” “I thought he might.” “Pippa.” Kev turned to me, opening his arms. “It’s good to see you.” I closed the gap and held him, smothered in his large, muscular frame, gripping my eyes shut and forcing myself not to cry again. It was too tiring, and I so, so wanted to be strong. One of the reasons for that, was the thought of what Mike would say if he saw that I had been crying so much. He would just laugh at me. He would tell me to pull myself together, to stop being so upset about it and to just get the hell over it. I could hear his voice in my head, so clearly. C’mon, do you really want to give Harry the satisfaction of knowing the name Pip-Squeak really was fitting to you this whole time? I could almost hear him laughing at me, and if I couldn’t stay strong for myself or for my friends, I would definitely stay strong for him. “Good to see you too.” I replied, relatively strong. “Come in. It’s freezing.” He stepped aside and welcomed us. A drum of heat rushed over me as soon as we were inside, partly because we were indoors, but mainly because it felt so wonderfully familiar and homely to me. I’d only spent a week there, but with every memory I had made in those walls and around them, it could have been a lifetime. As we wandered down the hall to the kitchen, I glanced into the living room, remembering watching Harry there falling asleep on the sofa. Once we were in the kitchen, I recalled the mornings we had spent in there, eating breakfast and noticing the way my stomach altered slightly when Harry’s arm brushed mine. I looked out into the garden, picturing the small trickle of water in the woodland out back where Harry had sat the morning after our first kiss, staring at the water as though it would give him some answers to the flurry of questions that had drowned him since I entered his life. I loved his home. I loved how I felt when I was there and I loved what being there had done for us. It was strange, how being there automatically made me feel better. “So tell me now.” Kev said, flicking the kettle on. “Do you want to talk about it, or not?” Harry looked to me, waiting to see how I felt. I didn’t want to talk about it. It felt like all we’d done was talk about it, wallow in it. We’d been to his funeral that day, seen the heartache on his families faces, and I couldn’t do it anymore. Maybe that was why funerals tend to happen within the first week or two. Maybe it is best to rush the process, to try and go back to your regular life as soon as you can. It seemed so unhealthy, already, the way we were bathing in the pain. We did need to start healing, even though the scar was so large. We really did need that. I sharply shook my head. “No.” Harry replied to Kev. “Let’s talk about something else. Anything else.” “Okay.” He nodded. “I’ll start by congratulating you, Pippa.” “Me?” I gawped. “On getting back into photography, and with the competition. That’s excellent, well done.” “Oh.” I blushed. “Thank you.” Of course, the congratulations were nice enough all on their own, but I was also blushing over the fact that Harry actually spoke to his parents about me, told them about me and what was going on in my life. It made me smile even more knowing that he had previously spoken so negatively about me to Ben and Kev. I wondered if they had slowly seen his love grow with every single time he mentioned me, I wondered if they had spoken about something maybe happening between us as his words got fonder and fonder. The kettle clicked as Kev moved to a cupboard and got out four mugs, predicting Ben would join us soon. “How is the photography going?” He asked. “Umm, well, I missed this week’s lesson but, obviously my teacher understood why. Other than that, I think it’s going pretty well, I think. I hope. Thank you for having me again, by the way.” “Pleasure.” He nodded. “Been excited to have you back ever since Harry mentioned you’re finally an item.” I glanced up to Harry, seeing his eyes squint, and I was laughing already, because I was just waiting for him to say something. “Please don’t embarrass me.” He groaned. “Would I ever?” “Yes.” “He rang us pretty much straight away.” Kev turned to me, and I laughed harder. “Told us he’d broken up with Minnie. And we’re like, oh okay, why? But we knew why.” “You knew?” I cried. “Bloody hell. I didn’t!” “More fool you.” He chuckled. “We’d been waiting for that bomb to drop since you came to stay with us in February.” “You better stop right now.” Harry scalded. “Once over the summer-” “I’M BEING SERIOUS, DON’T!” “-he got back from a night out, absolutely wasted, woke us up-” “I swear to god, dad, shut up.” “-and started making a complete racket. So we went downstairs, saw him tearing the kitchen apart, and we asked him what he was doing.” “I hate you.” Harry tutted. “And he told us, that he was looking for the picture you had taken when you were last here, the one we printed for you. Said he wanted to feel close to you. Said he wanted to see the universe.” Harry looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole, obviously not really fond of the story that Kev was telling. I however, loved the story. I couldn’t hear the story enough. I was literally hoping he would repeat the story again just seconds after he had told me. It just felt so nice, thinking back to those summer months when I had craved and missed him, wondering how he saw me, wondering how he felt and if he liked me in the way I liked him. He did. He was so obvious about it that his parents knew. It was just so nice to hear that from someone other than Harry, to just hear the proof of it. I honestly just wanted to hear story after story, even if it was just tiny things that he’d done that hinted towards his affections, I wanted to know it all. “You’re a bastard.” Harry groaned. “That never happened.” “It did, Harry. Deny it all you want, but it happened.” “What a loser.” I scoffed sarcastically. “Absolutely pathetic.” He came up behind me, locking one arm around my neck and using his other hand to slap over my mouth and shut me up as I squirmed and pretended I wanted to escape his hold. I didn’t want to escape his hold. Not then. Not ever. + + + Once Ben had finally plucked up the strength so socialise, all it had taken was one look at me and Harry and he’d broken down again, sobbing into his hands. I’d decided to give them a little time to talk. To just sit down as a family, to talk and discuss and try coming to terms with things. Because the two of them had never met Mike, but they knew how much he meant to Harry, they knew how much this would be affecting him and it was something they hadn’t been able to discuss quite yet. So I’d gone up to Harry’s room to give them their alone time, knowing that they would all feel much better at the end of it, and I was glad it was happening. I sat with my legs crossed on the top of Harry’s bed, flicking through some recent photos I had taken on the camera that Harry had gifted me, something completely mundane playing on the TV that was attached to his wall. It was really nice to be back in his room. It was dark, the rain that had been persistent all day was now merely tapping away at the window in a kind manner, the lamp dull and orange as it gave as much light to the room as it could. I just felt so comfortable there, I could have been at my own home. My phone lit up down at my side, vibrating gently on top of the white sheets, Louis’ name on the screen. My mood lowered, because I knew he was going to talk about Mike. Ever since the festival, Mike and Louis had gotten really close. I hadn’t often seen one without the other. They had bonded very quickly. That day, at his funeral, Louis hadn’t been in a good way. I figured he was ready to talk. “Hey.” I spoke gently as I answered, but he didn’t say a thing. “How are you?” “I started a book.” He coughed. That wasn’t exactly the conversation starter I had been expecting, but I was glad of it. He seemed tired, his voice low and mellow, everything unrushed, but he wasn’t crying and that was something I was truly happy to hear. “Right.” I baffled. “What kind of book?” “The book we always said we’d write.” He spoke. “I just… I wanted there to be more to it before I told anyone, but things… things changed, didn’t they?” “What book?” I asked, shutting off the camera. “The book of Mike quotes.” I think my heart stopped beating, for a second. We’d mentioned it as a joke so many times, and I had genuinely considered it myself, but Louis had actually taken the plunge and he hadn’t told anyone about it. I knew his original plan wasn’t to reveal it like this, maybe he would give it to Mike for his 20th birthday, maybe he wanted to surprise all of us with the book at the end of university, when there were more quotes in there, more stories, more anecdotes, but he was right. Things really had changed. “You started it?” I gasped. “Yeah. I was just looking through it. Wanna hear my favourites?” “Yeah.” I choked, tears in my eyes but a smile on my face. “Okay, I loved this one. So I said to him, truth be told mate, I haven’t once ever said that I would have sex with a zebra, but if there was one in front of me and if I’d been drinking wine all day, I’d be open to suggestions.” I was laughing, really laughing down the phone, and it felt so good. It felt incredible to finally be laughing about something to do with Mike, rather than crying. I could hear his voice, floating through the air in my vicinity, making me close my eyes and take note of the fact that in a way, he would always be there. I’d always remember him, I’d always remember his stories and his kindness and the love that sheltered every single action and move he ever made. Mike wasn’t the type of person who would fade, who would be forgotten. That type of kindness, that type of sincerity, wasn’t something that could disappear. “Incredible.” I huffed. “Another, from the festival,” He continued, and I could hear the smile on his face. “So then I was like, mate, if you want to buy a puppy, go ahead, but I will never, ever, eat spinach with you.” “More.” I laughed. “Give me another.” “Okay, give me a second.” I could hear him flicking through pages. “Oh, this one is great. I once had sex with a girl who was allergic to peanuts, which was weird, because I’d eaten a bag of peanuts the day before. I hope she didn’t die.” The first tear dropped from my eye, but I was still laughing, still hearing his voice and lapping up every word Louis was uttering down the phone. I had a bunch of feelings that were caught in my heart at that moment, sadness, longing, happiness, joy, pining, but the feeling overall wasn’t a negative one. It wasn’t something I had felt before, it was completely foreign to me, but it was okay. It was… It was quite nice. “Wanna know my favourite?” He gulped, voice dropping. “Yeah.” “So I said to her, life isn’t about how many cans of beer you have in your fridge, young lady, it’s about the energy you put out into the world, it’s about the love you can inject into people’s hearts and the lives you touch.” I wiped away the one tear that had fallen, and surrounded myself in his words for just a few moments. Because if that was how Mike felt, he had done exactly that. It was horrible, that he wasn’t granted more years to continue emitting that kind of joy into the world, but he had done what he wanted in the little time he had, and that was beautiful. Then, Louis finished his quote. “So I took her last beer and told her to stop whining. Hate that bitch.” That was the perfect end to a perfect quote, because as lovely as it was, it wasn’t quite Mike without that last bit. I shook my head, grinning down to the way my fingers were messing with the bedsheets, stuck for something to say because I was little bit in awe of the boy I’d never see again, in awe of everything about him. “You okay?” I asked after a long silence. “Yeah, I will be. Are you?” “Will be. Give me time.” “That’s all I wanted to say, really.” He sighed. “Just wanted to let you know about the book.” “I have some notes saved in my phone, of things he said. We’ll get together.” “Good idea. Love you, Pippa.” “Love you too, get some sleep.” “Will do. Night.” “G’night.” I hung up, and stared at my phone for a few minutes, just staring at it in my hand. Suddenly, I was thinking of everyone else. I just hoped that all my friends would get through this and they would all be okay. Funerals, as sad as they are, are often a very cleansing process. It seemed to be helping everyone. We’d finally had a day where we could reflect on what had happened and how wonderful Mike was, rather than just being sad about it. I really just wanted everyone to be okay. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but in that moment, that was my only desire. I moved off his bed, leaving my phone there and sulking off into Harry’s en-suite bathroom, pulling my hair into a bobble and grabbing a makeup wipe. It can’t have been that late, but I was so worn out, all I wanted to do was sleep. The sound of Harry finally coming into his bedroom, and closing the door behind himself, was an extremely welcoming one. “Pip?” “In here!” I called. He came and stood in the doorway, watching me remove my makeup in silence, leaning against the frame as his eyes just travelled me. I think he liked seeing me like that, for some reason, looking like pure shit as I took off my eyeliner and foundation, revealing my natural blotchy skin to him. I don’t know why he liked it, but he did. “I’m knackered.” He exhaled. “Me too. How was your chat?” “It was… y’know. It is what it is. Ben cried, a lot. But I think we all feel a bit better.” He left the doorway, and went to clamber onto his bed. A thought itched in my head, one that had been there previously, but never more than it had in the past week. It was something that had been bothering me for a quite a while, and I knew something finally needed to be said about it. I walked back into his room, grabbing the remote and turning the TV off and staring at him, still stood as he lay flat on his bed, gazing back to me, a questioning look in his eyes, like he was just waiting for me to say something. I moved gently onto the bed, laying my body against his side, leaning so I could look down to him, stroking the back of my fingers against his cheek. I gulped, seeing him take me in, silently looking to my face with such a beautiful innocence. I didn’t even know where to begin. I didn’t know what to say. But I had to try. “I’ve lived with you for over a year now.” I began, being as soft as I possibly could. “We’ve talked about a lot of things, we’ve been through a lot of things. We’ve spoke about your mum, we’ve spoke about the way you were bullied when you were younger. We’ve been through so much, and today we went to one of our best friend’s funerals. And… and I still haven’t seen you cry, Harry. I haven’t even seen you close.” He looked up to me, with an almost worried expression. I’d thought about it before, how strange it was that I’d never seen him cry, but for the past week I’d just been waiting for it. He’d lost someone, a good friend, someone he lived with, and then on top of that, he’d seen the way it had broken everyone around him. So many important people in his life had been shattered for a week, and I’d still not seen him cry. I had just been waiting for something to break him, something to tip him over the edge, but nothing ever came. He had remained calm and collected throughout everything, and it made me feel so uncomfortable. It just didn’t seem right to me. I knew I was hardly one to talk, because of the amount I cried, but I knew that day that I wasn’t the only person who was thinking and pondering over Harry’s lack of tears. We had sat there, watching Mikes coffin being carried by weeping family members, every single one of us in pieces, apart from Harry. That wasn’t something I could ignore. He looked shaken, like he had no idea what to say to me. My touch intensified as I gripped his cheek with my palm, stroking my thumb down his jaw. “I think this is something to do with how you need power.” I continued. “And maybe you think crying makes you weak. It doesn’t, Harry. The only thing that’s making you weak right now, is that fact you haven’t cried.” His chest was heaving, but his eyes didn’t leave mine for a second. He was getting worked up, but I didn’t know if he was angry or what he was feeling, but something was happening that I couldn’t quite comprehend. He didn’t speak. I sat and waited for him to say something, but nothing came. He just looked up to me, his eyes glistening as they went over every single feature on my face. I’m not even sure he blinked. “Please.” I whispered. “You’re here, with me. You need this. I know you need this. You know you need this. Please, Harry… Please.” Silence. He reached a hand, and returned my gesture, clutching my right cheek in his palm, and I could feel his hand shaking as he gazed to me, still not blinking. But I think he realised that he was safe with me, he realised he didn’t need to protect himself and keep his walls up because it was me. I watched as his bottom lip began to shake, the way his eyes began to shine and his nose crinkled. And he began to cry. His pain pressed out of his mouth, and he hid his eyes automatically, sobbing loudly as his whole body seemed to cave in on itself. I moved my arm around his neck and within seconds, he wrapped around me too, laying us both on our side as he cried into my neck uncontrollably, both arms clasped around my back as he shuddered. I’d never been so happy to see someone I love crying so deeply. He held onto my tightly, his snare so constricted I was close to being in pain, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure what Harry would be like if he didn’t have that release, what could happen to him over time if he didn’t let himself cry like that when he really needed it. I wondered how long it had been, how many years had passed without Harry letting a single tear slip from his gorgeous eyes. “I’m sorry.” He wept, his voice in tatters. “I don’t know how to do this. I’m so sorry.” “Don’t be sorry.” I hushed, stroking through his curls. “I’m in so much pain, Pip.” He howled. “I-I don’t know how to deal with this.” None of us did; this wasn’t something any of us were familiar with, but I knew that Harry literally had no idea where to start, no idea how to conquer this kind of pain. I knew crying would help him. Maybe he couldn’t see that in those moments where his tears were still warm and constant and crashing against the skin of my neck, when his throat was so strained and blocked by his sorrow, but I knew this eventually would be something that would help him to heal. I didn’t cry, I just held him, I let it be his time. I ran my finger up and down the back of his neck, my other hand in his curls, remaining as calm as I physically could as he finally began to let go of his pain. I had to wonder what those tears represented, how many of them weren’t just for Mike, but everything else he had been holding in. The tears were uncontrollable, for a very long time, and not once did he reveal his face to me. He stayed tucked up into my neck, protected, safe. “It’s okay.” I whispered to him, kissing his head. “I’m here.” “I love you.” He blubbered. “I’m so sorry I’m like this. I don’t… I don’t know why I… I’m so sorry I can’t be strong. I’m sorry.” “Please stop saying you’re sorry.” My fist clenched loose in his curls. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He knew he didn’t have anything to be sorry for, deep down he knew that, but he was lost. He was only in the beginning stages of finding himself, and I was so glad I was there doing it with him, helping him discover a side of himself he hadn’t been familiar with for years. He remained nestled in my neck until he was calm. Even when his tears had halted, he stayed against me until his breathing was regular, leaving a few chaste kisses against my neck before he pulled away, the tip of his nose red, both his eyes and lips puffy and swollen. I played my fingers against his bottom lip and looked into his eyes, that lost look still on his face, just as it had been before the tears. I think he was in shock. “You can’t be scared to do that, Harry.” I whispered, kissing the tip of my nose against his. “But… I think am scared.” He whispered. “Of what?” “I’m scared you… think I’m emotionless.” He sniffled. “I-I’m not! I’m not, Pippa. I promise. Please just… I don’t… I don’t know how to deal with it. It’s like I lost touch, at some point. When I grew up, after my mum and after everything when I was younger… I lost touch. I decided it was easier not to have feelings and… That’s one of the reasons I was with Minnie, y’know? I wasn’t really attached to her. But meeting you, and being at uni… I’ve let my walls down. I’ve let myself… feel things again. And this week, I’ve been so mad at myself, for… letting myself get so attached to everyone and I was angry. But… I don’t want to be like that anymore. I don’t want to be scared anymore.” It did explain a lot, him saying that to me. Maybe it wasn’t just the way I saw things. Maybe Harry wasn’t such a nice boy when he first moved into our halls.  Over the past year, he’d softened, he’d started letting people back into his life and letting himself love people again, with no limits, with no guards. Harry had avoided a relationship with me because he was scared. He’d been in a relationship with a girl he didn’t really like, because he was scared. So many choices in his life had been fuelled by fear, and he was desperate to change, he just didn’t know how. “Okay.” I nodded, my voice barely a whisper. “But I’m not emotionless, I promise. I’m just… I’m learning. Please… please give me the chance to learn.” “I’ll be here. I’ll help you.” “You promise?” He cooed hopefully. “I promise.” “Are you mad at me?” “No.” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I just want to help you see that loving people doesn’t make you weak. Crying doesn’t either. But I know you’re not emotionless, Harry. I’ve seen the very best in you, and I have done for months. Nothing’s changing that.” He nodded, visibly comforted by my words. I came to terms with that fact Harry had always, in a way, been pushing people away. Anything he didn’t like, he’d fight. He always said that families were fucked up even though he had such a beautiful example of one. The only real friend he had at home was Niall, a boy he had known for years. Even to that day, though I knew he loved me, he hadn’t asked me to be his girlfriend. Everything about him was just adding up and making sense, though he had improved such an incredible amount, and he had let people past his barriers, it was still making sense. He had been rude this time last year, he had been obnoxious and arrogant, because he wanted to make sure he could keep people at a healthy distance. Subconsciously, that had changed, and I was almost sure I was one of the main reasons for that. “I love you.” He hushed, his eyes drooping shut. “And… I hope you know that… I’m thankful that… I have you. Thank you for being here for me. Just… I’m sorry. I wanna keep it this way. I don’t wanna lose you. Ever.” I kissed at his lips tenderly, feeling him pucker and return the gesture as much as he physically could as exhaustion took over him and finally began to drag him under. We stayed on top of the sheets and I lay my head on his chest, resting my hand over his t-shirt where his tattoo was, closing my eyes, noticing how his breathing calmed and calmed until I knew he was asleep, and that’s when I decided to reply. “I love you too.” I whispered, though I knew he couldn’t hear. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

[crusherthedoctor]

Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 6: KING ARTHUR & MERLINA

There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don’t like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That’s where this comes in.

This is a new mini-series of mine, in which I’ll be going into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don’t bite. :>

Anyhow, for today’s installment, we’ll be fighting the knight while living life as we discuss the dark spirit of Sonic and the Black Knight, as well as the schemer behind the scenes: King Arthur & Merlina.

The Gist: Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a peaceful kingdom was threatened by the rule of a corrupted king. A young wizard named Merlina valiantly defied this monarch, the famous King Arthur, and attempted to escape the clutches of his evil army, but alas, she was cornered like a poor little lamb. In desperation, she called upon a brave and noble hero to help save her kingdom.

She got a blue hedgehog instead.

He did it guys, he did the thing, we can all go home now.

Eager to fight the villain of the week, Sonic was instead put aside by Merlina, who explained to him that as long as King Arthur had the scabbard of Excalibur in his possession, he was basically Jesus and couldn't be wounded in any meaningful way. She also explained that the king was once a noble soul, until the Lady of the Lake, Nimue, lended Excalibur to him, presumably under the belief that granting an ambitious ruler immortality and the power to pluck monsters from the underworld couldn't possibly be a terrible idea.

It was.

Luckily for Sonic, Merlina guided him to a forest where a poorly guarded sword was held, the one weapon capable of dealing some real damage to the evil king. Sonic even got a chance to make it count when Arthur himself showed up right after, but since this was still early on in the game, he fucked up so badly that Arthur and the sword itself - yes, the sword itself - were both laughing at him for his incompetence.

By the way, I hope you like desaturated cutscenes.

Nonetheless, the sword - who went by the name of Caliburn - decided to give the cocky teenager a chance in spite of his own reservations, and granted him the honorable title of Knave the Hedgehog. Sonic took issue with this title, because he didn't want to be mistaken for a fancharacter (probably). As they discussed their next course of action, Merlina waxed nihilistic poetry about flowers for some strange reason.

Because that's how nature works, silly girl.

So after a trip to the Blacksmith to get Caliburn in tip-top shape for regicide, Sonic went off to seek out Nimue in order to get an idea of what to actually do. Upon visiting her, he was asked to locate and gather the sacred swords, though he was forced to detract from his mission for the sake of saving some helpless townspeople from a cruel dragon, because that's just the kind of guy that Sonic the Hedgehog is... Just as well then that it was part of Nimue's test all along! (Just as well also that King Arthur was presumably patient enough to wait for Sonic to pass his tests instead of using that time to destroy the kingdom.)

All the while, he confronted the Knights of the Round Table, who - being the king's most trusted and most capable soldiers - did nothing other than get their asses handed to them.

Pictured: Useless twats.

Until at last, when everything that had to be done was done, Sonic and Caliburn went to the Faraway Avalon, where King Arthur himself dwelled. The battle was intense to say the least, but with a little help from the sacred swords, the Blue Blur prevailed, and the corrupted monarch who plagued the kingdom... dissipated? Like the Knights of the Underworld before him...? Well at least they got Excalibur back.

Seeking to get to the bottom of this mystery, Sonic brought it to Merlina's attention, who revealed that the King Arthur the hedgehog slayed was a fake, and that there never was a true King Arthur to begin with, as he was an illusion created by Merlina's grandfather, the great Merlin himself.

She also revealed the slightly more important fact that she's an evil bitch who used Sonic for her own gain, and proceeded to use Excalibur to give the hero a very bad time.

Holding a sword like that with her hair so close? Bitch is mad.

After some reassurance that all was not in vain, Sonic convinced the Knights of the Round Table to stop kissing the now-deceased Arthur's feet and help him save the kingdom for real. Using their sacred swords, the Knights formed a powerful barrier around the kingdom's castle, and then immediately proceeded to go right back to being useless.

Just kidding. The barrier wasn't even strong enough to amount to much. That puts the Knights' usefulness points right back to zero.

“Why do people call this our last hurrah again...?”

When Sonic finally confronted Merlina in her domain, with the understandable query of why she was such a manipulative witch, she revealed that her motives are less “cackling rapscallion” and more “morally grey”. You see, with the supposed rift between Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain, and the eventual downfall of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in general, the kingdom was doomed to suffer an undesirable fate no matter what. Seeking to fix her late grandfather's mistakes, she wanted nothing more than to create a world that would never end, for ultimate peace and prosperity... as far as she knew.

Sonic had none of it and promptly called her out on her selfish desire, but the wizard proved too much for him to handle, as evidenced by the surprisingly savage beatdown that he received immediately after. Caliburn got broke in half for his troubles, and the Knights commanded the hedgehog to get the hell out of there, but Sonic remained stubborn, as he never backs down no matter the opponent. This eventually paid off for him, as his heroic nature inexplicably summoned the power that granted him a new form: the knight in shiny gold armor, Excalibur Sonic. This was fortunately just the right amount of power necessary to defeat Merlina's final form of King Arthur 2: This Time It's Personal.

Beaten, but not outright killed, the depowered Merlina was left a broken woman. But Sonic wasn't afraid to show a bit of compassion to the wizard, as he gave her the advice that while the world may not last forever, we must live our lives to the fullest, and make the time that we do have count.

"Well yeah, that’s easy for an iconic mascot like you to say. As soon as this game is over, my career is finished. Eat shit, rodent.”

Also, Sonic turns out to be the real King Arthur. Because self-inserts are canon. Credits!

The Design: King Arthur's design is a bit on the generic side for Sonic standards, but it's decent enough for the type of villain that he is. Though you do have to wonder how he can stand upright with those gigantic shoulder pads of his.

This photo was taken moments before his kneecaps crumbled into dust.

Meanwhile, Merlina heavily resembles Shahra from Black Knight’s predecessor, as befitting of her initial role as Shahra's replacement for Black Knight, as well as making her true role all the more surprising.

“Shahra? No. I'm my own original character... Backstabbhra.”

When the latter becomes the Dark Queen, she initially settles for turning purple and gaining some fashionable feathers, before unleashing her final form which basically amounts to a collection of blue and black tentacles.

Typical angsty teenage phase.

Arthur and Merlina's designs overall are... okay. Just okay.

The Personality: As someone who is more a force of nature than an actual character, King Arthur's personality amounts to saying a bunch of evil things and not much else. That's alright though, since Merlina is the true villain of this particular story, so it’s her personality that counts here.

But here's the problem... Merlina doesn't have much personality either. She spends the first half of the story taking the role of the typical assistant, and the second half whinging about how her kingdom will be ruined unless she does something about it. That is all you get with her. Yes, there is clearly meant to be more to her, as evidenced with her misguided beliefs and her relationship with her grandfather, but very little is actually done with those aspects beyond giving Sonic more things to lecture her and shout at her for.

The Execution: On paper, Merlina is a character who should be among the greatest of Sonic villains.

On paper.

But you see, while she is unique in the sense of being the rarity of a female villain AND an anti-villain in a Sonic game... there really isn't anything else going for her. Once you get past those two initial brownie points, you don't have much of real interest left. You may get a cool moment like the aforementioned beatdown of Sonic come the endgame, but you're given no reason to actually care about the person doing the deed, despite the game wanting you to do so.

“I've not been given any particular reason to do so, so no.”

There's a lot of telling with Merlina, rather than showing. She's presented as a well-intentioned extremist, but we're given no reason whatsoever to actually bother trying to see things her way, even if we would still ultimately acknowledge that what she's doing is wrong. Even Sonic himself doesn't bother considering her side of the story for a second, and while that is certainly in-character for the Blue Blur, it makes Merlina's anti-villain status - one of the very aspects that makes her unique among Sonic villains - fall flat all the more. Likewise, the only information we get about why the kingdom is destined to be doomed comes straight from Merlina's mouth, and that's it. We're never shown an example of what exactly she wants to prevent aside from vaguely alluded ruination, therefore we're given less reason to express actual interest in her motivation and goals.

Also, it must be stated: There wasn't nearly enough foreshadowing with her true intentions. Of course you don’t want to beat the player over the head to the point where they can see the twist coming from a mile away, but you still need a decent amount of build up to make a twist work, otherwise it practically comes out of nowhere. And since you don’t even need to count the hints with one hand in Merlina’s case, it does feel out of nowhere.

Overall, Merlina - and King Arthur, for that matter - are just kind of forgettable at the end of the day. Not terrible. Not outright bad. Just forgettable. And it's a huge shame, because Merlina COULD have been amazing. She had all the ingredients to stand out and be in the same tier as the likes of Eggman and Erazor. But she simply can't live up to the likes of them because there wasn't enough sufficient effort to make her truly blossom as the type of antagonist she was intended to be. There was something good going on with her, I can acknowledge and appreciate that there was something good going on with her... it just wasn't enough.

Which is kind of how I feel about Sonic and the Black Knight in general. It doesn’t do an awful lot with the things that it gets praised for. And the story as a whole - while serving as a great character analysis for Sonic himself - is just kind of boring for an actual narrative in a Sonic the Hedgehog game.

My favourite Sonic game is the one where Sonic made fun of attempted suicide.

Crusher Gives King Arthur & Merlina a: Thumbs Sideways!

[teshknowledgenotes]

HOW I BUILT THIS - GUY RAZ

What I love most about starting your own business is the journey of coming up with a big idea and turning it into something tangible, though it would take me until my late thirties to start to feel even a tinge of confidence about some of my ideas or my ability to execute them. For most of my career before then, I struggled with the kinds of worries I thought charismatic entrepreneurs never confronted: anxiety, fear, imposter syndrome, even depression. But over the course of my time doing deep-dive interview with hundreds of busienss founders and CEO's for my shows, I've come to understand that, for the most part, they are just like you and me. Which is to say, they're human. They all have sleepless nights and midnight terrors. Most of them, at some point, feel like omposters. They are not natural superheroes, they are all Clark Kents. The only difference between them and you, at this moment, is that when opportunity presented itself, they went into the phone booth and put on the cape. They took the leap. That's basically it.

PART I: THE CALL

1) BE OPEN TO IDEAS People start businesses for all kinds of reasons. They do it to satisfy a dream or so solve a problem or to fill a void in the market. Some people want to improve on something that seems obsolete, and others want to reinvent an entire industry. There are literally dozens of on ramps to the entrepreneurial journey. But no matter which one you take, at some point you are to need an idea. Something specific. Something concrete and unique and new. An idea that makes life better or more intersting and delivers on the reason you wanted to start a business in the first place.

Sounds simple enough right? After all, ideas are a dime a dozen. Or atleast that's what many of us are led to believe. That ideas are easy and abundant. That what matters is execution. And all of that is true to some extent. It's just not the whole truth, because coming up with a good idea is hard. Good ideas are hard to find and hard to get right. But once you find one, they are also very hard to turn away from. That what makes good ideas so initimidating. Not that you won't ever find one, but that one day you will, and when you do, it's very possible that your life will never be the same again.

So where do you find one of these good ideas? Where do you look? Can you look? Or do you have to wait for the angels to sing in your ear and the light bulb to go on over your head? Some people are lucky, and this epiphany happens for them early. An idea hits them out of the blue and sends them on their way. For most of us, though, it isn't so simple. We have to look for a good idea, or at least be open to receiving it.

It's one of the eternal entrepreneurial questions: Can you actually find a good idea, or does it have to find you? The answer it the same for both option: yes. The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of start up ideas, it's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself, It sounds obvious to say you should only work on problems that exist. And yet by far the most common mistake startups make is to solve problems no one has. - Paul Graham There is a name for a person who creates something purely out of passion: hobbyist. There is a name for a person who creates something out of passion that solves a problem only they have: tinkerer. There is a name for a person who creates something out of passion that also solves a problem they share with lots of other people: entrepreneur.

2) IS IS DANGEROUS OR JUST SCARY?

Michael Dell the creator of Dell at the age of 19, was told by his parents not to start a business and to focus on school. For Michael's parents coming from a family of well-educated people at a time when personal computing was mostly a curiosity that was often dismissed as a fag, leaving school to tinker with computers and resell them must have felt like their son was in danger of throwing his life away. What is more dangerous to a parent than a child taking their first steps out onto the high wire act of adulthood and doing so without a net?

But for Michael, there was nothing at all dangerous about his idea. He loved working on computers. He knew them well enough as a teenager that professional adults with even more to lose than he did trusted his insight and his work. He was solving their problems. Moreover, having found early success and having seen what was on the other side of this big leap, it was impossible to go back and see the world in the same way again, to ever again see it as his parents had. He knew the rules of this new world, and becaues of that, any last vestiges of danger melted away. And, hey if it didn't work out for whatever reason, he could always just go back to school and slot right back into the premed program. He was nineteen years old, he had his entire life ahead of him. The reality was the scariest part of starting Dell Computer Corportaion was the same thing that is scary about starting any business: it's the unknown. What did a teenage Michael Dell know about running a business? About hiring? About leading people? About find and leasing office space? About corportate taxes? 

What do any of us know about that stuff before we confront it? Nothing. That is truly terrifying to the first-time entrepreneur. But it is also eminently knowable, if you choose to learn it. Even though it comes from an old French word "entrepreneurship" is a fairly new term in the vocabulary of business. Founders today self-identify as entrepreneurs in a way that the generations who came before them struggle to understand, mostly because they didn't have the language back then to describe what they were doing as they built their businesses. Fundamentally though they were doing the same thing. They were taking the detour, taking the leap away from the type of professional life they didn't want, and toward something new and exciting and their own.

As a group they have made entrepreneurship both less scary and less dangerous. By developing a lexicon for the process of starting a business, by giving it a name, many of the modern founders whom you will meet in this book have helped to demystify the prospect of taking the leap. By breaking new ground, the older generation of foudners of which Jim and Mike are a part have made taking the leap seem almost normal.

They are why you can trust the rope threaded through your harness by experts and counterweighted by mentors, and have fait that the anchors hammered into the cliff face by those who came before you will hold, as you take that first big step backward off the cliff and into the unknown. Because they know what it means to take you fate into your own hands and to feel that you've got a real grip on this idea that has it's own grip on your soul.

3)LEAVE YOUR SAFETY ZONE... BUT DO IT SAFELY

There is something romantic about the struggle to do something new, isn't there? About taking the leap. At one point or another, all of us who are enamored of the pursuit of big ideas have ourselves enthralled by the origin story of a successful enterprise: the marathon coding sessions, the all-nighters that stretch across an entire week, the four friends stacked on top of one another inside a one bedroom apartment, meeting every evening at the kitchen table in the "boardroom". In commencement addresses and keynote speeches, famous founders talk wistfully about these memorable and crucial moments. Being down to their last dollar, maxing out their credit cards, eating nothing but ramen noodles and drinking nothing but Mountain Dew for months on end.

Those were the good old days.

There are some people who find those stories exhilarating, others, terrifying. For the longest time, I would have counted myself as one of the latter. And to an extent, I still do. I mean, what kind of maniac would just throw caution to the wind as Reid described? Who in their right mind would ever take such a huge risk? If building a company or creating something big and new is like jumping off a cliff and hoping to put enough pieces together before it, and you, die a horrible death, the question I always want to ask founders and creators is, Why do it? 

What are you thinking? Why whould you ever jump? Most of the successful entrepreneurs I've met left the comfort of their previous lives as safely and smartly as possible. And they did this in one of two ways: either they stayed in their "real jobs" until their startups demanded more time than they could spare, or they went for it with a fallback plan in their hip pocket, which made the risks inherent in entrepreneurship manageable enought for them to be able to sleep at night.

Having a fallback plan does not mean you are building an escape hatch from your dream. It's not an excuse not to try hard, nor is it a ready made reason to quit. It just means you've give yourself a cushion at the bottom of your entrepreneurial leap of faith that if you do crash, you can bounce back to fight another day.

4) DO YOUR RESEARCH

5) FIND YOUR CO-FOUNDER Many of the same founders I talked about at the beginning of this chapter, whom we have now elevated to godlike status in our culture, have talked openly about the importance of the partners they had in their early fight to bring their ideas to fruition, many of them while the fight was still happening.

"My best business decisions really have to do with picking people" Bill Gates said in a 1998 conversation with Warren Buffett on the campus of the University Of Washington. "Deciding to go into partnership with Paul Allen is probably at the top of the list, having somedboy who you totally trust, who's totally committed, who shares your vision and yet has a little big different set of skills, and also acts as a check on you, and just the benefit of sparking off of somebody who's got that kind of brilliance, it'snot only made it fun, but it's really led to a lot of success"

In a 1985 Playboy interview, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs talked about the importance of both his partner Steve Wozniak's differing interests and their shared lack of a vision. "Neither of us had any idead that this would go anywhere, Woz  was motivated by figuring things out. He concentrated more on the engineering and proceeded to do one of his most brillian pieces of work, which was the disk drive that made the Apple II a possibility. I was trying to build the company, I don't think it would have happened without Woz and I don't think it would have happened without me" Jobs said.

The power of partnership is not just a modern tech phenomenon. Partnerships are a hallmark in the history of innovation, regardless of the industry. Many of them are cultural icons we know by the name on the door: Ben and Jerry. Hewlett and Packard. Harley and Davidson. Wells and Fargo. Procter and Gamblr. Aso for Warren Buffett and his part in that conversation with Bill Gates in 1998, he was in complete agreement about the importance of picking people: "I've had a partner like that, Charlie Munger, for a lot of years, and it does for me exactly what Bill is talking about."

6) FUND THE BUSINESS, PART 1: BOOTSTRAPPING

7) GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT Telling your story is a more cost-effective way to take your advertiseing beyond usefulness and effiacacy and efficiency as topics of conversation. It's like a growth hack that enables consumers to connect to your brand in a deeper, more personal way, which is a big part of how you differentiate and de-commodify your product, create brand loyalty, and set yourself up for long term success. While many legacy companies struggle to see the innovation and origin stories right under their noses, it is nevertheless as true for them as it is for young upstart brands that their busienss is a story, that every business is astory. The store, more than anything else, is what connects you and me and everyone out there to the thing you're building. And every defining element of that thing you're building, of that business, helps to tell its story. This goes from the name and the logo, to the function of the product or the style of the service to the partners that founded it, all the way to the customers who partronize it. The purpose of that story changes with time and with whom it is being told to, but fundamentally its goal is to answer a hundred different variations on the simple question: Why?

Why should i buy your product? Why should I join this company? Why should I be excited to work here? Why should I invest in this company?

These are just a few of the variations identified by Ben Horowitz the brilliant tech entrepreneur, best selling author, and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He describe in 2010 how his company evaluates CEO's, whose main job, he contends it to be "the keeper of the vision and the story" A few years later, in talking to Forbes, Horowitz put the role of the company's story even more succinctly: "The story must explain at a fundamental level why you exist." It is a story you have to tell to you customers, to investors, to employees, and ultimately to yourself. Kind of in that order, in fact, from the bottom up, like the old food pyramid or Maslow's legendary hierarchy of needs.

One of the reasons for this approach seem prettty obvious: in most markets there are already plenty of options to choose from, so you need to give us a really compelling reason why we should choose yours. And in the cases where you're making something no on has ever seen before, when you're creating an entirely new market, it's not always immediately clear what we have been missing. As such, you need to tell us why we need to choose anything new at all. The other, slightly more complicated reason you need a terrific story is that there are so many other questions one could ask in an effort to understand why you exist, and your current answers don't reveal very much: what you do, where you dot it, how you do it, whom you do it for. Those are just discoverable facts. I can search for them on Google. I can buy market research reports. I can hire someone to reverse engineer your product or go through your process. I can read books and articles about all of it.

But the key here is: Why do you do what you do? Or, Why should we care? I can't know the answers to those questions until you, as the founder want me to know them, because they exist first in your mind. And like most concepts that are unquantifiable, the answers to these basic questions are suually best understood and best shared with the world through a story.

Whitney Wolfe has a story. She knows it well. To hear her tell it is to get to know her and the history of her dating app, Bumble. It is to know what she is trying to do with her app, why we should all care about it, and how it has managed to succeed despite the fact that by the end of 2014, when Bumble was launched, if there was one thing the world didn't need any more of, it was dating apps. There was already Match.com, Plenty Of Fish, IkCupid, eHarmony, and Hinge, along with all the niches sites, such as Jdate, BlackPlanet, Christian Mingle, and way on the other end of the spectrum. SeekingArrangment and Ashley Madinson.

And then there was Tinder, the behemoth, which Whitney founded in 2012 and had recently left under some of the worst possible circumstances not just for a co-founder but for a woman and a human being. There was both a professinoal and a romantic split with one of her co-founders, there was a very public sexual harassment lawsuit, and there was an avalanche of despicably hurtful online vitriol aimed directly at her. By the time she left Tinder in early 2014, Whitney wasn't just done with the dating business, she was done, period.

The stories of Bumble & AirBnB are unique to themselves, but what is true across industries and across time is that all businesses are stories, and all stories are a process. They are a mechanism for thinking deeply about yourself, your product or service, your employees, your customers, your market and the world. They explain each to all the others in a way that facts and figures never can.

Ben Horowitz is right knowing your story and being able to clearly articulate to the world why you exist is one of your most important challenges as an entrepreneur. Not because it helps you sell more product, or build a cooler brand, or make your money through all those things are true.

Rather the basic story that answers the big "why" questions is the one that creates loyal customers, find the best investors, builds an employee culture that keeps them committed to the venture and keeps you committed and grinding away when things get really hard and you want to give (and you will). There are a millions reasons for any one of these groups to quit or to say no. Your job is to give them one of the few reasons to them the story, that gets them to keep listening and to say yes.

8) FUND THE BUSINESS, PART 2: OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY(OPM)

Some people have distinct, tangible advantages that make it easier for them to pull together enough OPM to get their businesses on solid footing and pointed in the right direction. Recognition of this fact, especially for the entrepreneurs who enjoyed some of those advntages going in, is why I always ask my podcast guests how much they attribute their success to both luck and hark work. 

Acknowledging privilege and recognizing advantage are essential to understanding the nature of success, both yours and others. That does not mean privilege should define or predertermine success, any more than lack of privilege should preclude it. While not everyone has the same privilege of circumstance, everyone has intangible advantages of one kind or another that they can leverage in pursuit of success. Personality is an advantage. Will is an advantage. Likability, unflappability, resilience, having a good memory, those are all advantages that anyone who possesses them can use much the way anyone who possesses privilege uses theirs.

But where does that really leave those of us who may not be lucky enough to have a parent who can write a $10,000 check compared with those whose parents casually carry around $10,000 in cash? It doesn't leave us in the same place, but it does put us in the same race on the same track. Although out access to money differs, the process for securing it is the same, no matter who we are, where we live, how we grew up, or what we're trying to build. In every case, a conversation takes place in which a founder has to describe what they're trying to do and then ask another person for some amount of money, in the form of investment, loan, gift, whatever, to help them get there.

Here's where those early fundraising stories from the priviledged and the less-than-privileged start to sound surprisingly alike. To a person, all of these entrepreneurs will tell you that fundraising is brutally hard at every level. It taxes your time, your energy, your ego, and sometimes your relationships. You will have hundreds of conversations. You will have to tell your story hundreds of times and answer ten times as many questions, a lot of them the same, some of them invredibly frustrating, especially form people who think are supposed to support you or whom you have always called a friend. You are going to need a thick skin, like the heat shield on a space shuttle trinyg to punch through the incredible resistance of the surrounding atmosphere and not break apart. This is true whether you are blue blooded or blue-collar, just as it is true that this process starts the same way for everyone, with a conversation, with the people you know.

First a parent, then an uncle, then a family friend, then a mentor, then maybe a kid you went to high school with who also started their own business, and on and on from there, until you've exhausted your total personal network and have, by then hopefully, raised all the money you need. I think about it like a series of concentric circles. You start with the circle of people who are closest to you, the people who names you don't have to dig to the bottom of your contacts to find, because they're right there in your text messages and the call log on your phone. Maybe you start with a best friend and as to borrow a few hundred dollars. Does your friend know someone, a relative, possibly whom you can call for a little more, maybe $500? Does that relative know of someone interested in helping out a startup like yours?

The lesson here is that despite the sometimes daunting advantages that privilege can cofer, this process for raising early money really is available to anyone. Everyone exists at the centre of their own set of concentric circles. The built-in advantages or privilege do not change their shape, they only reduce the number of outer circles one might need to explore to reach one's fundraising goals. And that, comes to OPM and entrepreneurship, whic which I mean, once someone has raised money, even if it was easy for them and there is more where that came from, they still have to do something with it. I can't point to a single example of an entrepreneur I've profiled who raised a bunch of friends and family money early on and then merely sat back, resting on their privilege, to watch their business grow organically with no effort.

9) ITERATE, ITERATE, ITERATE

Take a look around you right now. At the seat you're sitting on. The shirt you're wearing. The light bulbs illuminating the space you're in. The phone in your pocket. Maybe the earbuds in your ears. Even the cover of this book you're reading or listening to.

If these items have anything in common, it is that none of them looked like they do now when they were first conceived by the people who invented or designed them. And that' because a lot happens between conception and first production for nearly every idea that gets turned into a business. Shape changes. Materials change. Offerings change. Names change. Process changes. Construction methods change. Look and feel and tast change.

Typically there are two phases to the iterative process prior to launch. The first involves tinkering with your idea until it works and you, as its creator, are satisfied with what you have. The second entails exposing the working idea to the public and tweaking the product based o ntheir feedback until it catches on, either with a buyer, a major investor, a retail partner, or a critical mass of your customers.

As the creator of AllBirds, Time made clear was that it's important to spend enough time in this first phase to really get comfortable with your product and your story and really get to know the business you're trying to build. Tim, arguably, spent five productive years there. Whitney Wolfe, in contrast, took less than a year to get the version of Bumble out into the world and onto people's phones, in part because she already knew the busienss from her time at Tinder and she'd lived every moment of the Bumble story from the day she left Tinder for good. The exact amount of time you spend in the first phase of development isn't as important as making sure you don't get stuck there for too long. Every idea, no matter how great, has a shelf life. If you don't get it off that shelf and out into the world in time, no amount of feedback you get during the second phase of the iterative process can overcome a lack of insterest or mitigate first mover advantage if someone beats you to the punch.

Moving to phase two can be tough for people who don't handle criticism well, or who are dogged by that familiar yet unattainable form of perfectionsism that has trapped the next great American novel on the desks or hard drives of countless aspiring writers since forever. Like asking friends and family for money, exposing your idea and all your hard work to feedback can be very uncomfortable, which can make the first phase of internal development feel like a safe space out of which you would rather not poke your head until you're absolutely sure. Except "absolutely sure" doesn't exist.

I would love to tell you a story about an entrepreneur who suceeded in spite of the paralysis of their perfectionism, but I don't have one, because such people generally don't create companies. The creators and innovators who I meet, if they do struggle with criticism and perfectionism, also understand the importance of allowing their product to be judged by the marketplace, and the opportunity that users' feedback presents to make the product better as a result. They know that they need an abundance of feedback to dial in their product. They actively seek it out, in fact. Because while they know what they want to do, and they know why and how they want to do it, they also know that they have no idea if anyone will actually like what they're making. And that's always essential to keep in mind.

PART II THE TESTS

Most of the entrepreneurs I've interviewed have a healthy fear of failure. They konw it's possible at any moment. Even likely. When it happens, and believe me it will happen they certainly don't like it. It's not comfortable, and it's definetely not fun. But that never stops them.

Good entrepreneurs, succesful ones, have a way of not letting their fear of failure slow them down. They are defined instead by a seemingly inextinguishable belief in their idea, the idea that has pulled them out of their comfort zone and driven them across the unknown to explore new possiblities. 

They are convinced that, if they can just get there (where "there" is), if they can just get their idea off the ground, it will succeed. If. That's really what entrepreneurs fear at this stage. The uncertainty of whether they wil be able to cross that vast space between inspiration and execution, full of tests and traps, twists and turns. A gauntlet that every entrepreneur must pass through, with challenges that are generally the same for everyone, but that take different forms and present in a different order with each trip across the unknown territory of starting a business.

Indeed, every entrepreneurial journey is a new and different story. No two paths are the same. Everyone will proceed through many of the same pivotal points, but your path will inevitably be unique to you, to your idea, and to the time and place through which it passes.

Fortunately, it's never been easier to make this journey than it is right now. So many entrepreneurs have done what you are about to do. You have the chance to prepare for what's coming your way, if you are willing to learn from these unwitting helpers. They've made every mistake. They've falled into every trap. They've taken every wrong turn. And the good ones, the successful one, only made those mistakes, fell into those traps, took those wrong turns, once. 

Because they borrowed from the entrepreneurs who came before them as well. They heard the stories and learned the lessons. Now it's your turn.

10) GO IN THROUGH THE SIDE DOOR

Most new businesses aren't doing something completely novel or aren't doing it in a totally new way or new place, you should be thinking long and hard about how else you might enter your market besides knocking on the front door and asking for permission to come in. This is something that female and minority entrepreneurs have long had to contend with, whether it means breaking through glass ceilings or breaking down walls built by prejudice. All of which is to say, figuring out how to sneak in through the side door is not new ground you will have to break. A legion of resourceful geniuses have come before you. And what many of them have discovered is that the side door isn't just less heavily guarded, it's often bigger. Or as Peter Thiel put it in a 2014 lecture at the Standford Center for Professional Development titles "Competition is for losers" "Don't always go through the tiny little door that everyone's trying to rush through. Go around the corner and go through the vast gate that no one's taking"

For Manoj Bhargava, the founder of 5-hour Energy, his side door into the energy drink market did not take the shape of a small niche, but rather of a small product. In early 2003, a few years removed from his retirement from a plastics business he'd turned around and profitable, Manoj was attending a natural products trade show outside Los Angeles looking for inventions he might acquire or license in an efford to create a business that would generate an ongoing residual income stream for him in his post plastic years.

Walking the floor of the show, he stumbled upon a new sixteen ounce energy drink that produced long-lasting effects he'd never experienced with other energy drinks "Well this is amazing", he said to himself, exhausted from a long morning of meetings and now energized enough to continue walking the trade show floor. "I could sell this" He thought. The drink's creators disagreed. They were "science guys with PhDs" while he was "just a lowly business guy". They refused to sell their invention to him or even offer him a license on their formula. When they effectively told him to hit the road, Manoj decided to hit the lab instead and to create his own version of the energy drink that had fueled him up and blown him away.

"I looked at their label and said, I can do better than this. How hard can it be? I'll figure it out." Manoj said. With the help of scientists from a company he'd founded for the express purpose of finding inventions just like this one, he had a comparable energy drink formula in a matter of months. It would turn out to be the easiest part of the process.

The hard part would be getting his invention into stores "If I made another drink" Manoj said of his thinking at the time, "I've got to fight for space in the cooler against Red Bull and Monster Energy. I've also got to fight Coke, Pepsi, and Budweiser for space. So you're pretty much dead if you want to try that. He was dead because he would be fighting for a finite amount of space in brick and mortar stores, against the compeition not just in his own niche but in the entire beverage industry, which is dominated by some of the biggest companies in the world. If you own a 7-Eleven or you're the gneral manager of a grocery chain like Kroger or Tesco, are you really going to turn over a Diet Coke, Mountain Dew, or Snapple rack to a new energy drink that on one has every heard of? Especially when, in 2003, in energy drink sales had yet to really spike and there were already two major players, Red Bull and Monster energy, in the nascent market. Even if you were inclined to give a little guy like Manoj Bhargava a shot, once the regional sales reps and distributors from Coca-Cola and PepsiCo got wind of your decision, they would likely wield their Microsoftesque price discretion against you like a baseball bat, or just pull their products from your store altogether.

Those were the barriers to entry that Manoj was looking at. If he was going to get into this market, he'd have to find some other way. That's when it dawned on him. "If I'm tired why am I thirsty also?" By which he meant, why should we have to chug ten to sixteen ounces of a cloyingly sweet liquid in order to get an energy boost? "It would be like Tylenol selling sixteen-ounce bottles", Manoj explained by way of analogy. "I just want to do it quick. I don't want to drink this whole thing", he thought. This is how Manoj arrived at the idea of shrinking his product down from the standard sixteen-ounce drink to a two-ounce shot.

Quickly, everything changed. In less than six months, he'd hired a designer to make his distinctive label, and he'd found a bottler who could produce two ounce versions of his energy formula. "And at two ounces, it's really not a drink, it's a delivery system"

This was 5-hour Energy's side door. It wasn't a drink, so it wasn't an immediate threat to Red Bull or Monster Energy. At two ounces, it also didn't need to be refigerated or given a large, dedicated shelf, so retailers didn't have to worry about space. They understood that the perfect spot for it would be at the cash register, right next to the Slim Jims and pickled eggs!

"It just belonged there" Manoj said "You could tell it just looked that way that it should be there" Moreover because the ingredients that way, that it should be there." Moreover, because the ingredients that went into 5-hour Energy were actually less about energy and more about focus, "vitamins for the brain". He could position his product beyond the beverage verticals and outside the grocery or convenience store channels. In fact, the very first place he went with 5-hour Energy in 2004 was the largest vitamin store, GNC, which decided to put the product in a thousand of its stores.

GNC turned out to be a genius side door into the energy "drink" market for a couple reasons. The first is obvious, there was much less competition compared with grocery and convenience stores, but the second is more interesting. "It turns out GNC is always looking for new products, because once a product gets mass distribution, GNC is sort of out of it, if it's in Walmart, nobody's going to buy it at GNC" Essentially, GNC was an easier route to retail distribution than a place like 7-Eleven or Safeway, and thankfully the tolerance for a slow start was higher as well, because in the first week they sold only 200 bottles. "Which was horrible" Manoj admitted. But they waited it out, manufacturer and retailer together, "and at the end of six months it was selling 10,000 bottles a week" 

From there Manoj went to drugstores like Walgreens and Rite Aid, which snapped it up, now a 5-hour Energy is near the cash register in most stores basically everywhere.

This is the great irony of circumventing the barriers to entry that your competitions's apparent monopoly power constructs and then fighting you way in through the side door. If you're successful, you stand a very good chance of achieving market domination of your own. Of digging and widening your own moat and building the toll that bridge that crosses it. Of massive, unbelievable success. For many entrepreneurs, that is the goal.

11) IT'S ALL ABOUT LOCATION

12) GET ATTENTION, PART 1: BUILDING BUZZ If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one to hear it, does it make a sound? I think there is a business analog to that: If a company opens it's doors and no one hears about it, does it ever really exist? Or is it just one of the 170,000 new businesses that year that didn't make it to its first birthday and whose existence you can only infer from a table of numbers in a Bureaur of Labor Statistics Report?

The answer, I believe, is of course it existed! If you took that leap off the cliff while attempting to build your own airplane on the way down, you deserve to be known. But as the builder of that plane, it's also your job to be the creator of the buzz from that plane's engines.

It's your job to make sure that the sound of your doors opening reaches past your front steps and far enough out into the world for potential customers to hear it. It's your job to get attention for the product or the service you are bringing to the market.

It's usually not easy, and you are going to need help from all forms of media to make it happen, because like Jen Rubio said, nobody wants to hear you talk about yourself. But it's doable, particularly when you are able to build buzz among many possible customers while at the same time engineering work of mouth among your ideal customers.

Take one look around you at all the things you observed at the start of this chapter. The people who made these products were sending a version of their idea out into the world that they could stand behind and that could itself stand up to the criticism they were inviting. That is the real recipe for success in the iterative process, and one every creator needs to get right if they want to turn their idea not just into a product, but into a business that is poised for real, sustained growth.

13) GET ATTENTION PART 2: ENGINEERING WORD OF MOUTH

14) SURVIVE THE CRUCIBLE

15) FUND THE BUSINESS, PART 3: PROFESSIONAL MONEY

The first thing to understand is that raising venture capital is about making a promise. A promise that you have a product or a service that people will pay money for, that you have a plan to reach as many of those people as possible, and that in exchange for lots of moeny, you will bust your butt to reach them. The next thing to understand is that good investors know the promise you are making to them is just that, a promise. They know you can't make any guarantees. You can do everything right, but if the world shifts under your feet, there's nothing you can do about it. Venture capital is by its nature a gamble, it's right there in the name, and every gamble comes with the risk of heavy losses. Professional investors know and accept this fact, which is why the also do everything they can to mitigate the risk before writing very large checks.

One of the principal ways they do this, especially if they are unfamiliar with your industry, is to ask lots of questions:

How do you expect to scale this? Where is the growth going to come from? Who is the customer for this? Doesn't something like this already exist? How will you get costs down? Where will you manufacture? Where will you be based? What's your marketing strategy? Why does anyone need this? Why would anyone do this?

16) PROTECT WHAT YOU'VE BUILT

17) WHEN CATASTROPHE STRIKES

18) THE ART OF THE PIVOT

PART III THE DESTINATION In many ways, the scariest part of entrepreneurship is success. It's reaching your destination, your objective. Because that's when the work really starts. Why you've got to decide: What now? What next? Do you keep moving and do it again? Do you stick around? Do you build? What do you build? How big? With what? And why? Getting here was difficult enough. The anxiety that comes with the responsibility of continue success isn't making things any easier. Why continue to put yourself through all this?

These questions are difficult to answer. And the answers are often hard to get exactly right. Because in the beginning, all you're worried about is trying to survive. You're not aiming for perfection, you're just hoping to avoid pitfalls. You're not thinking about legacy, you're just focused on lasting one more day in your quest across the unknown.

Eventually, though, these questions will become paramount if you want to ubild a business that stands the test of time. Something more than just a vessel for the idea that drove you in the beginning. Something that reflects you mission and your values, that honors all the work you put in, and that treats the people who helped you get here well.

Figuring out your answers to these questions is also what will make you feel successful, no matter what your next move is: whether you stay and build and lead, whether you go, whether you move on and try to repeat your success in another area. If you're not doing it for reasons that are authentically yours, if you've lost sight of what inspired you from those very first days, then the long, arduous entrepreneurial journey you just endured might very well fill you with regret. Like promise unfulfilled.

Forget feeling successful. You can feel like a downright failure when you get to the right place for the wrong reasons, no matter how much money you have. That's because the path to true entrepreneurial success is not strictly about profit, it's also about finding and fulfilling a deeper purpose. That has been the destination all along. Knowing that, and recognizing when you've reached it, is when the rewards truly begin to accrue.

19) IT CAN'T BE ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

The Beatles told us that money can't buy you love. Rousseau taught us that money doesn't buy you happiness. The Bible warns us that the love of money is the root of all evil. And these casualities of the subprime mortgage crisis showed us that money can't be the primary motivating force behind our businesses. A company that is successful and resilient and that acts as a force for good in the world long after you're gone has a larger purpose, a mission at it's center. One that you as founder are responsible for indentifying and articulating from the very beginning, then guarding during times of plenty and leaning on during times of difficulty.

Founders who approach their business with a “mission first” focus tend to be better equipped to handle the lure of unrestrained and manic growth that has damaged or even sunk so many companies with early potential. But having a defined mission is even more valubale when money is scarce or growh is anemic, especially for younger companies, because it gives them a reason to keep on fighting. In contrast, if they are operating with a “money first” mind-set, money's absence makes it so much easier to abandon what they're doing and to pivot before they should, to give up on their original idea at the first sign of trouble, or just plain old quit.

More than just stoking the flames of a fighting spirit when things aren't going your way, the mission is what gives your business, and you, direction. It helps you identify opportunities. It helps you categorize and prioritize the field of choices in any situation, from those that advance the intersts of the business to those that subvert it or hold it back. This is perhaps the most important thing that a mission does for a young company, because with everything swirling around you, whether it's product development, funding, hiring, or marketing, it's very easy to lose your sense of direction both individually as a founder and collectively as the business. Once you lose your sense of direction, the chances of keeping hold of any sense of mission become slim. After all, if you don't know where you're going, it's hard to know why you're going there.

Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk from the southwest of England, had a mission to demystify meditation and make it accessible to as many people as possible.  The first step on the journey once he was back in the United Kingdom was to figure out the how and the why of this whole experience and then to find a plae where he could teach clients one on one. The goal he said was to give people just enough to be inspired or to get excited to try mediation, because a lot of people had heard and read about it, but it's only really in the experience of it that you can get them to make that leap in terms of actually getting the benefit. So he started to use a lot more storytelling in his practice. He took a lot of metaphors and analogies from the Tibetan tradition, but he changed them just enough to make them “more approachable and accessible.”

At his first teaching space, a clinic room in a London integrative health center fun by a doctor who had heard a lot of good things about “mindfulness”. Before too long, Andy was seeing six to ten people every day, all with very mainstream problems. They were struggling with depression, anxiety, insomnia, stress, mirgraines, many of the things that we all suffer with now in a life of just sheer overload. He'd see each person for an hour a week for ten weeks, gradually developing in the process a ten week long modular course from which everyone can benefit. Any by everyone I mean everyone, because everything you hear in the Headspace app is now is build built on the content and the language that was developed during that time. It was a really important trainign ground in terms of understanding what worked and what didn', what language connected and what didn't.

Before he got to the Headspace app, which by mid 2018, had more thatn 30 million users and a million paying subscribers, Andy first had to figure out how to move beyond the one on one clinic experience. Not to make more money, though he certainly could have used it, but to reach more people more quickly. ”I wanted to get meditation out. I wanted to get more people meditating. I just didn't know how to do it outside of the clinic” he said.

20) BUILD A CULTURE, NOT A CULT

At Reed Hastings first company Pure Software, the "culture first" approach he used at Netflix didn't come naturally. He did things another way which was "me first". Not that he was selfish, just the opposite was true. He did everything or at least he tried to do everything, himself. "I thought if I could just do more sales calls, more travel, write more code, do more interviews, that somehow it would work out better," he said. In his mind, if there was a problem to be solved or a bug in the code to be fixed, as the founder and CEO of the company, which was his brainchild, he was the obvious and best choice for doing what needed to get done. Eventually, wearing all those hats got to be too much. "I was coding all night, trying to be CEO in the day, and once in a while, I'd squeeze in a shower" he said. It wasn't working Hastings had to figure out a better way. This is when he made the mistake from which the culture deck would eventually be born. Now whenever they had a problem at Pure Software, instead of tring to fix it himself, he tried to implement a process that would prevent the problem from ever happening again. The real problem was that he was trying to dummy-proof the system, and then eventually only dummies wanted to work there. Then, of course the market shifted and the company was unable to adapt.

Pure Software was eventually acquired by its largest competitor, and Reed Hastings used the financial windfall from that sale to co-founder Netflix, where he made sure not to repeat his process-obsessed, founder-centric mistakes. He was fortunate. Many founders have not been so lucky. Any successful founder will tell you that the impulse to do everything yourself, to believe that only you know best and then to build processes that reflect that belief, is endemic to entrepreneurship and has the potential to be incredibly destructive. When the processes don't work and your conclusions continually prove wrong, your assumption is that if you just take on a little more and work a little harder, everything will be fine. But that approach can wear you down physically and mentally. Plus, as Reid Hoffman put it in his episode with Hastings, "more work is never the real answer. To succeed as you scale, you have to leverage every person in the organization. And to do that, you have to be very intentional about how you craft the culture." This may sound like common sense, because it is! But I've been surprised at how often entrepreneurs I've encountered make the mistake of trying to do everything themselves as the company begins to grow. What happens in the end is that everything about the business starts to be about the founder rather than the business.

This is one of the hardest traps for even the most well-intentioned entrepreneur to avoid, let alone spot. For the longest time in the beginning, it can feel like it's just you and your idea. The seed gets planted in your mind, you water it with inspiration until it germinates into an idea, you feed it with research until it pokes up through the soil and sees the light of day as a product, which is when it first finds the warmth of attention from an audience, and then if you're lucky, it starts to blossom into a full fledged business.

Getting to that point is an all-consuming process. It takes all your time, energy and focus. It's all you think about, and after a while the line between you and your idea can start to blur. It becomes difficult to know where you end and the company begins. It becomes impossible, especially in the leaner, trying times, to fathom that anyone could understand the business or its problems in the way that you can. So when someone on your team levels the charge that you're making everything about yourself, it almost doesn't compute. Everything you do, you do for the business. You've given everything have to it. If you could give more, you would. But when you and the business are indistinguishable, when you've allowed your identity to merge with the company's how does it not appear to be the case, from outside at least, that your singular focus on the business is also a singular focus on yourself?

It turns out there is a name for founders who fall into this trap. They're called "monarch CEO's" according to Professor Jeffery Sonnenfeld, who stuides CEOs at the Yale School of Management. "Their business is defined around them and their life is defined around the business", he told the Washington Post. The most notorious of these figures in recent years was Dov Charney, the controversial founder of the now-defunct clothing retailer American Apparel.

American Apparel was a juggernaut in the clothing business and in the culture during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Their advertisements were edgy and sexually provocative. Their retail stores were on the best streets in all the right cities. They manufactured their clothes out of a large, old factory building in downtown Los Angeles. Their clothes were everywhere and on everyone the entire decade. I still own a couple American Apparel T-shirts and hoodies that I wear in regular rotation.

American' Apparel's rise from a domestic clothing manufacturer and wholesaler into an international retail brand was as fast as its fall. They moved into their famous downtown LA factory in 2000. By 2005, they were one of the fastest growing companies in America. By 2011, the company had more than 250 stores with revenue well north of $500 million. And then, by 2014 amidst a tangle of sexual harassment lawsuits and bad financial deals, Dov was kicked off the board of the company he founded. By 2015, American Apparel was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. By 2017, the company as Dov Charney knew it was gone, all ties to the founder severed, it's intellectual property sold at auction to a competitor, Gildan Activewear for less than $100 million, it's retail stores shuttered. It's a sad cautionary tale. Dov Charney was American Apparel. American Apparel was Dov Charney. And that was the whole problem. Everyone saw it. The New York Times said, "Charney himself had no other interests ouside his company. He viewed himself as indeispensable" The Financial Times said "It is almost as if Mr.Charney believes that the scandalous behaviour he has so often been accused if is inextricably tied up with the image of his often lauded but deeply unconventional fashion label" It's a sentiment Charney would not reject. He told the Financial Times reporter "I am a deep part of the brand".

The depth of their synchronicity is where the trouble for American Apparel started. At various points well into the history of the company. Charney was the CEO, the designer, the main photographer, the male fit model, a centerpiece of their advertising and their biggest liability. Not just legally either. As often happens when a founder loses themselves inside their business, he became a control freak. He had store managers calling him directly. He famously moved into a warehouse that was having some problems and had a shower installed so he could live there twenty four hours a day monitoring the work. Once when there was a traffic jam in the parking lot of American Apparel's LA headquarters, Charney went downstairs and personally directed traffic until it cleared.

These might be humble, romantic gestures of a leader willing to do whatever it takes if they weren't actually a reflection of a founder who had turned into a relentless micromanager as the company grew. "A lot of founders have difficulty making this transition" said Professor Sydney Finkelstein of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in the wake of Charney's ouster from the board. "When you're a smaller company, micromanagment is not necessarily a terrible thing. It's when you cross the line and have to grow, you've got to have management talent around you.

"If the cultural roots are strong, then new leadership is developed in that model, and will often continue the culture" - Reed Hastings If the roots are unstable however and the leadership is constantly changing, the culture will be, too. By consistently firing or driving away talented leaders, Charney managed to yank out by the roots whatever culture there was to speak of at American Apparell, and in filling the vacuum with himself, the culture of American Apparel became the Cult of Dov. As Dov imploded, so did American Apparell.

Tristan the owner of a skincare brand. If he hadn't been careful, Tristan could have very easily found himself on a self absorbed Dov Charney style trajectory. Instead, he found a problem to solve "for people who lookied like me", as he put it. He developed a set of solutions that could become a business that employed a lot of people, if he just cultivated the seed of the idea and tended to the soil with enough care to make sure the idea blossomed and flourished. Almost immediately, Tristan's goals changed. Instead of being singular and self-focuesed, they were multiple and communal. He recongnized that for a business to last 100 years, which was one of his new goals, it can't be about you, because "you don't scale". Only your idea, and your story, and your values do. As long as you know them and share them.

"Knowing your values gets you on the same page with your employees. They get you on the same page in this noisy world with your consumers, but more importantly they give you your purpose," Tristan said "Without knowing your values, you're going to make decisions that are inconsistent and you have to have consistency to inspire your sanity."

I would argue that you also need consistency to inspire your people. And there is nothing more consistent than a set of clear values written down on the page for everyone to see. Just ask Reed Hastings or better yet, ask his 7000 employees.

21) THINK SMALL TO GET BIG

22) MANAGE PARTNERSHIP TENSIONS

23) KNOW THYSELF

When I started podcasts my friends thought I'd lost my mind. they were right to be skeptical. We were still a few years away from the podcast boom that began to swallow traditional radio.

Podcasting let me be the most genuine version of my personal and professional self, and it unexpectedly put my career into ascendancy as a result. Embracing my storytelling sensibilities helped put my production ecompany on the same track. It guided me to, and through, every decision in every phase of our growth, whom to hire, who to profile on the show, what to say no to, and it also kep us from falling off the righ track.

When growth begins to accelerate, it's even more critical to know who you are as a founder and who you are as a company. That understanding helps point you in the right direction when you have opportunities to pursure lots of different things. It's a constant reminder of what business you're actually in, which is something that is surprisingly easy to forget or lose sight of once your business starts to expand, evolve, and change shape. Believe me, I've been there, and so have most of the founder I've interviewed.

Andy, one of the co-founders of Bonobos was dealing with problems in the workplace. "I was a confused person, I got depressed, and I kind of had to fake it at work that I was doing okay. It was super tough to navigate." He also struggled with direct conflict and confrontation. "I valued harmoney over the difficult conversations until the situation became really difficult", he said, "and then I'd take it on" Compbined with the normal stress and insecurity that come with running a succesful startup, one that wasn't even his idea to begin with, these personal issues started to steer Andy toward poor decisions, including fighting with his co-founder in front of the team, which exacerbated the company's identity crisis.

24) WHEN TO SELL AND WHEN TO STAY

Now entrepreneurs don't have to raise professional money if they don't want to. They don't have to accept it in the amounts or at the valuation that may be available to them. They don't have to realize the potential idling within their ideas as quickly as others may want either. They can take it slow. They can defer compensation. They can wait to make a lot of money and let the company grow at a more natural pace. It wouldn't be an unfamiliar place from which to operate for most entrepreneurs, since founders typically pay themselves about as much as they could make if they were employees, and much less on average than a CEO would make coming into the company. Fundamentally it comes down to what a founder thinks is best for the company and best for themselves. Neither choice is by definition better than the other. It all depends on what a founder's goals were when they started their company, and where theose goals have evolved in light of their success.

Except I don't think money and control are your only choices when you are wrangling with a growing and successful busines. I don't believe they are the only two major forces that motivate an entrepreneur's decision making either. I think there is a third. A consider that tends to play a lesser role during the fundraising part of growth, but is especially active once a founder has grown their business beyond what they ever imagined possible and the opportunity to sell presents itself. I'm talking about happiness. Contentment. Making a decision that feels right.

25) BE KIND

26) WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR LUCK

Every successful entrepreneur I've met has a story about working eighteen hour days for months on end or eating ramen and cereal and rice to get by, but none of them has ever worked harder in their capacity as a founder than a dishwasher or a gardener or a construction worker or a waitress works every single day. Every founders stories has a strong strain of luck running through it. But I'm not talking about luck in this context as any sort of admonition against these founders being proud of all the hard work they put in. I mention it in order to, I hope, help aspring entrepreneurs understadn that the luck these founders experienced was not some desembodied magical force. It didn't happen in a vacuum. It didn't happen to them. Luck when it comes right down to it, is really just an opportunity waiting to be taken advatage of, and they took advantage of it.

Maybe you were lucky enough to have a good network, or a stable home, or a good education, or maybe you were lucky enough to be born with the kind of personality that makes you more resilient, more willing to accept rejection, more willing to do whatever it takes, without the massive ego that prevents so many from sticking with it during hard times. A personality like Daymond John's with the drive to work hard and the resilience to push forward through all the nos until he got to a yes.

Whatever the case, the question you will need to answer for you self as an aspring entrepreneur isn't whether you will have any luck, you will, you probably already do. It's what you are going to do with the luck that you have. Are you doing to take advantage of it? Are you going to do the work? Are you going to take the leap? Are you going to write that twenty-fifth investor email? What about the twenty-sixth? Are you going to pay all the friends in your network to buy your product so the stores think its super popular right away, like Sara Blakely did with the first five stores she got Spanx into? Are you going to physically move your product in those stores to a more optimal location like she did, too? Those are choices you will have when you realize how lucky you are and you spot the opportunities that come with that luck.

You and I, we are both lucky. I had the opportunity to write this book, you had the money to buy it (or the patience to wait for it at the library) and the time and inclination to read it. I've had the privilege of meeting and interviewing some of the world's most succesful innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists in order to help them tell their stories, you somehow found you way here, where you can learn from the lessons their stories hold.

[mthaytr]

Alphonse give Roy the shovel talk when he finds out Roy and Edward are dating

I’m gonna go ahead and cheat on this one :’D because I’m really proud of a shovel talk I’ve already written, for a fic that actually only ever got published as original fiction, by a publisher, for like, money and shit XD

The morning after was far and away one of the worst things about getting older.  He supposed it must have been his fault, though: when he had been younger, he had used to brag about how he never got hangovers, no matter how much he had imbibed.  In retrospect, he decided that this had probably been tempting fate something awful, because sometime around his 25th birthday he had gotten his first hangover, and it had hit him like an arrow to the head.  For the next several years, they were mostly mild – a couple of hours at worst, although sometimes they were truly sumptuous.  But as the years went by, the punishments for his indulgences just kept getting worse, and longer, until sometimes the headache and dizziness and nausea would haunt him for two days after he made some spectacularly bad choices.  

God, if you’re out there, please let this be more like one of my mid-twenties hangovers than my late-twenties ones, he thought, although he had little hope of that.  He allowed himself a single groan of self-pity as he forced his eyes open

The clock on the wall failed to materialize out of the early-morning fuzz on his eyes when he first turned to it: he had to stare at it for at least thirty seconds before making any sense of it.  Once he had managed to process the time, he gave himself a great heave and stumbled up out of bed.  He threw an irritated glance at over-bright world through the crack between his curtains, indescribably glad that it was a Sunday and he didn’t have to show up anywhere in particular.

It wasn’t until he was standing in his bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth, confronted by the evidence in the mirror, that the memory of exactly why he was so hung-over hit him.  He groaned and slapped a hand to his neck, as if by covering up the little dark mark that had been staring him in the face, he could actually make it disappear.

Shit.  Shit shit shit shit.

He spat out the toothpaste and hunched over the sink, hands spread to support his weight.

Or maybe he deserved a late-twenties hangover.  Maybe he deserved the worst and longest hangover of his life, because he had just made a series of decisions – if you could even call them “decisions” – that could make a strong play for the title of stupidest goddamn thing you’ve ever done.

You spend years fighting this off, and then all it takes is a couple of drinks and some pretty smiling to break you down?  You’re pretty pathetic.

“But he was flirting with me,” he moaned, leaning forward until the top of his head was pressing into the mirror.  “What was I supposed to do?”

Have some self-control, the bitter part of him shot back.  What part of “off-limits” don’t you understand?

– but what if he really wanted it?  It seemed to me like he did, at the time.

Don’t be stupid.  He was drunk, and he’s eighteen and probably horny as hell.  What’s more likely – that he’s actually attracted to a man eleven years his senior, a man who is also nominally his commanding officer, or that he had had too much alcohol and didn’t know how to say no?

He groaned again, and turned the tap on before bending over to take a long drink from the running water and standing up again.  He looked himself in the eye, taking in the stubble and the dark circles under his eyes and the messiness of his hair, and decided that he didn’t have enough energy to fix any of that just yet, so he turned back out into the hallway, shuffling along the flimsy faux-wood floor until he came to the top of the staircase.

What he saw at the bottom paralyzed him: he froze with one hand on the banister, a deep chill running down his spine.

There – sitting at his kitchen table, calm as anything – was Alphonse Elric, with a pocketknife in one hand and a small whetstone in the other, sharpening the blade with slow, deliberate motions.

“Good, you’re finally awake,” Alphonse said, casually, as if they were roommates and this scene wasn’t straight out of a Hitchcock film.  “I was wondering when that was going to happen.”  He had his brother’s eyes, set in a round, earnest face, upon which the cold look he wore was utterly out of place.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” Al responded, as if Roy were slow for not having caught it yet.

“Yeah, but you’re in my house.  Breaking and entering is a crime,” Roy replied, automatically, feeling stupid the moment he said it.

“I’m aware.  Technically, it’s also a crime for a soldier to have sex with another man, and in this specific situation, the power differential between you and the man you decided to do it with isn’t going to help your case.  So sit down,” Alphonse said, giving a wave that indicated the empty chair across from him, “and we’ll talk, and nobody will press charges – no matter how much they want to,” he added, icily.

This is really some Twilight Zone-style mindfuckery, he thought as he walked down the stairs to join his unexpected guest at the table.  Alphonse being this angry was like something out of an urban legend.  Normally, the younger man was a paragon of Buddha-like calm – he had to be, in order to deal with Ed’s mood swings and occasional aggressiveness and manic bouts and general lack of common sense.  Seeing Al with that cutting expression on his face – not to mention that knife in his hand – genuinely made Roy worry for his own future well-being.

He folded his hands together on the table, and let his elbows support most of his weight.

“If you’ve come to kill me, I’d really rather you do it before the hangover wears off rather than waiting until afterwards,” he said, still squinting some to keep the bright kitchen light from piercing his eyes.  “Do me that one small mercy.”

Alphonse laughed and set both knife and sharpening stone to the side, then laced his own fingers together.

“Oh, I haven’t come to kill you,” he said, in a tone that was cheerful but did nothing whatsoever to reassure the older man.  “I’ve just come to talk.”

“Alright, then, talk away,” Roy said, wishing very much that he could postpone this conversation long enough to get a cup of coffee.  

“I will.  I take it you know why I’m here,” the younger man said, back straight as steel.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea, yeah,” Mustang replied.  “At least, I know what I did.”

“Explain it to me in your own words,” Alphonse said, almost like he was talking to a child.

“Abuse of authority, poor decision-making, drinking with someone under 21.  Having sex with your brother.  Putting his career in danger.”

The look that Al returned to him was surprised, almost even confused.

“Well – hm,” he started, examining the other man carefully, expression turning thoughtful.  “Not exactly.  I suppose that generally, yes, it has to do with you having sex with my brother – you certainly made some poor decisions,” he said, tone turning cutting again; Mustang winced.  “But I guess my brother was telling the truth – you really are missing some more general information that would allow you to connect all of these dots.  Let me tell you a story,” he started, picking up the knife and beginning to clean his fingernails with the point.

“Let’s start with four years ago, when all of us met.  You find us at that technology show and talk to us, find out our – history,” he said, delicately.  “You then buy us a hotel room and go all out to get West Point to accept us as students, even though he’s fourteen and I’m thirteen.  He’s three years younger than the admissions age, but you manage it anyway, and they tell me I can join when I turn fourteen, too.  So you get us a place to live in a dorm on campus.  My brother decides to do a little research on you, finds out about your purple hearts and your contributions to mechanical engineering and hero-worships you very briefly.  Then he decides that you’re a huge pain, and then, a bit later, you two sort of settle it out.  You became friends,” he said, casually.

“Yes, I suppose we did,” he agreed, so he didn’t have to sit there in silence like an idiot.

“Well, here’s the part of the story that might be new to you.  Remember when he turned sixteen and got that boyfriend?”  Roy nodded: how could he forget?  That had been a turbulent time, to say the least.  “Well, you know how he figured out he was gay?  Because he realized one day that he’d been in love with you since he met you, or something like it.  He just hadn’t noticed up until that point.”

Those words hit him like a lance to the gut: pain clutched at throat, and confusion churned in its wake.

“I’m – he what?” he said, unsure whether the sudden swell of nausea had more to do with the hangover or the conversation.  

“I meant it,” he said, entirely serious.  “The reason he didn’t do or say anything about it at the time was because he knew he was underage and that anything that happened between you could potentially get you in a lot of trouble, not to mention ruin your relationship entirely, which was the very last thing that he wanted.  But regardless of anything he did or didn’t do, he is absolutely in love with you.  Are we clear on this point?”

Mustang barely even managed to sputter another “What?” before Alphonse continued on.

“Good.  Now, there’s a second thing you’re going to need to understand.  That boyfriend Ed got caught holding hands with?”  A pause: Roy nodded.  “Yeah, the guy disappeared after that first beating.  Ed never saw him again after that, and he hasn’t been with another guy since.”

That sinking feeling must have been his heart, or the weight of guilt laying heavy in his stomach.  

“So that means…”

“Yes.  Last night – before you got to him, anyway – he was a virgin.  He’d been kissed, but I’m pretty sure that was more or less the extent of it.”

A flash of memory: the look of exultation on Ed’s face as Roy’s fingers had worked inside of him, the noises he made when he was riding the older man’s cock – that was why he had looked so amazed by the whole thing.  That was why his attempts to reciprocate had been sparse and uncertain.  

The fact that they had gone at it drunk in a bathroom had been bad enough before he had known.  Now –

“Oh my god,” he said, his head sagging forward.  “I’m so sorry.  I had no idea.”

Al nodded slowly, appraising.

“I know.  That’s high up on the list of reasons why I haven’t killed you yet.”  He paused, and looked the colonel straight in the eye.  “You hurt my brother.  I think you hurt him a lot, last night, by treating him like some throwaway one-night-stand and telling him you regretted it.”

“I didn’t tell him I regretted it,” the colonel said, trying anything at all to make the guilt hurt less.  “I said I thought he might.”

Al raised his eyebrows, an irritated twitch to his lips.

“Which is basically code for ‘This was a bad idea and I hope you’ll come to your senses about it tomorrow.’  So you were invalidating his choices and telling him you weren’t interested, all in one sentence.  Nicely done.”

Mustang could have explained further, but it would all just have sounded like excuses.  Nothing he could say was going to make this any better.

“I’m so sorry.  I really wouldn’t have done it, if I had known.”

“He knew that, which is why he didn’t tell you.  He had been hoping to – I don’t know.  The plan had been to confess to you last night, or something.  Probably something a lot less mushy than that.  But in any case, he had intended to make his move.  And he did, I guess, though without communicating very well.  But then you go and make it clear that only your dick is interested in him, and so he comes stumbling back up to the dorm room, drunk and depressed and alone, when he should have been at your place, in your bed, all night.  Even if you didn’t actually want a relationship with him, I would have thought that you would have had the courtesy to do that.”

I would have, too.  Idiot – I thought you were better than that.  I never thought you’d let your body get the better of your common sense so badly.

Good job.  What a thing to prove yourself wrong about.

“What can I do?”

“Well, you’re going to apologize to him, for starters,” the younger man snapped.  “Get down on your hands and knees and beg for his forgiveness.  Second of all,” he continued, a dangerous glint in his eye, “You’re going to make it up to him.  I don’t suppose I can force you to get into a relationship with him – it would be meaningless to you both.  Though don’t think I haven’t considered it,” he added.  There was a pause.  “But you had better make this up to him somehow.  If three days go by and he still feels like a steak you sent back to the chef, then I’m going to seriously reconsider my decision not to press charges against you.  How does that sound?” he asked, whittling dirt out from under his left thumbnail.

Roy thought about it for a moment.

“…fair enough,” he replied, sighing.  “Any ideas?”

The look Al gave him as he stood was just dripping with condescension.

“You’re a smart man.  I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he said, and Roy didn’t dare say another word to him as he left.

[nacchi-nacchi-nacchi]

Advanced Darkness

When Bikini Bottom is destroyed by Godzilla, the carefree lives of SpongeBob, Squidward and friends change in an instant.

Pain, loss; fear of death is etched into our bodies and minds. And so we are dragged forward, whalefalls into stiller and stiller seas. Will there still be a feast, when we arrive at last?

By Nacchi.

Squidward took a long draw from his cigarette and flicked the still-lit butt onto the prostrate Sandy. The cherry-red flame burrowed carelessly through her plastic suit and sunk with a hiss into the sea of soft fur below, a dying star in the starless dusk of Neo Bikini Bottom. A wisp of greasy smoke curled up from the wound, the stench of burning hair joining the odors of piss and rancid oil in the alleyway.

"Everyone is in pain all the time, Sandra. Either you master that pain, or you learn to crave it."

Sandy's hands were leaden, her arms like sponge. Her once-muscular body had collapsed around the willpower which had built it up, a dead weight all the greater for the life she had spent in it. She could not even brush the cigarette from her back. Finally, with an impossible, defiant effort, she brought herself to her knees.

"No," she said through gritted teeth. Her mouth moved uselessly around the next words, opening to release not sound but foamy, pink blood. Squidward snickered.

"No? Is that all y—"

"No."

Sandy lifted her head to look Squidward in the eyes. For one moment, though he would never have believed it himself, the octopus felt true fear.

"That's just… what you tell yourself. That's just… how you justify hurting people." Sandy spoke more forcefully now, spattering the front of her helmet with blood.

"Because… it feels good. Because… because… you're weak! Weaker than a… Y-you-"

Two of Squidward's heels crashed down with an explosion of glass, and night came to Neo Bikini Bottom.

Neo Bikini Bottom resembled its predecessor in name only. It was a dark stretch of filthy concrete that sprawled out across the sand like a great scorch mark, punctuated with ugly steel buildings jutting from the earth with neither rhyme nor reason. Never before had the capacity of modern industry to create entire towns without a moment of thought or a single happy coincidence been so clear. The entire city was a bare-minimum, disposable stage on which the survivors could act out bare-minimum, disposable lives, forever stumbling after the dream of a day when they might lose themselves completely in the performance and forget the cheapness and flatness of the set. No one who had witnessed the original town's fate would believe in any other sort of place, or in any other sort of life.

Tragedy, as always, had been sudden and ridiculous. One summer day the blue horizon had darkened, and moments later the sunwashed Bikini Bottom was gone, transfigured instantaneously into a giant handful of rubble strewn across the vast seafloor. Only later would survivors piece together a fragmented tale—some godlike, titanic being, dragging itself across the floor of the Pacific, had plowed straight through their small pocket of civilization. It had probably been a totally arbitrary and thoughtless action—that Bikini Bottom was in its path was simply another coincidence of physics, as random and cruel as the reactions in the primordial brine from which life was first born.

Mr. Krabs had been killed instantly, dashed against the splintered remains of his favorite money-counting desk. SpongeBob, too, had been flattened, but fate was not so kind to the sponge; without any organs to crush, he would live on past the world into which he had been born, would live on to see the carcass of the town putrefy beneath its concrete shell. For the rest of his life he would be searching for bloodstains washed too quickly away in the name of reconstruction, desperate to convince himself of the reality of a past the others would sooner forget. Only SpongeBob had resisted Plankton's so-called rebuilding of Bikini Bottom, dragging out a series of grim protests that even he knew were doomed from the start; Embarrassed on his behalf, most of the town averted their eyes from what amounted to little more than public self-flagellation. When the sponge accepted Plankton's offer to work at the hollow shell of the Krusty Krab, the townspeople of Bikini Bottom were merely relieved to see the painful memory pass through its death throes and at last grow silent. And so SpongeBob was granted the small mercy of being allowed to vanish quietly into history, and nurse his festering wounds alone in the darkness. Plankton never even bothered to ask him the secret formula for the once-legendary Krabby Patty; there was no point anymore, nothing to compete with.

Ironically, Mr. Krabs himself would be remembered as a hero. He was cast in bronze and placed at the site of his old restaurant, gazing proudly off into the horizon on which death had first appeared. This was a particularly cruel trick on Plankton's part: the money-grubbing owner of the restaurant would be remembered as a beloved son of Bikini Bottom, forever honored with a view of his rival's absolute success. No trace of the crab himself remained beneath the gilded veneer of heroism; Eugene Krabs had at last been destroyed completely, wiped even from history.

Squidward, upon returning from a vacation to find his home destroyed and his workplace somehow even worse than before, had stood before the wreckage for hours, wordlessly holding the broken halves of his clarinet. There was nothing to say, and nothing to do. Reality stood before him, a smoking ruin, a bloodslick strip of sand. Bikini Bottom had always been nothing, he realized. Anything that had been anything wouldn't have vanished like this. Wouldn't have been so dwarfed by the monster that had trampled over his entire life. A life lived amongst nothing, worth nothing. Death would have been preferable, but suicide suddenly seemed an absurd proposition—how does one throw away nothing? It was meaningless, a logical impossibility. For as long as he lived he would suffer, and that alone was something onto which he could grasp. The pain deep within him compacted into a hard, heavy core, colder and denser than steel. An anchor to life. He dropped the shards of his clarinet and walked onward, onward into the endless and directionless open sea, not to be seen again for years.

When the Americans first contacted him in a panic, somehow reaching his shellphone with their sob stories of the same beast incinerating their great cities and slaughtering their masses, it was only with great effort that he had refrained from laughing at their arrogance. He had always heard of the amazing industry and frightful power of the human race—all come to nothing, in the end. But there was one thing that had chafed against him: as long as this godlike beast, this Godzilla, lived, the humans could spin their fairytales, could see themselves as a race of defiant underdogs. Only by destroying Godzilla and leaving in its place the haunting memory of their absolute powerlessness would their humiliation, and by extent the complete affirmation of the emptiness of the world from the top down, be complete. Or was that just his own personal fairytale, one final attempt to deceive himself into believing that the choice between murder and certain death meant anything? Either way, when the Americans' pleas for compassion inevitably turned to threats of violence, Squidward was ready.

The Americans planned to use a device called the Oxygen Destroyer, which had apparently been deployed in the past to obliterate a similar creature. A single unit would render a good portion of the Pacific Ocean an anaerobic graveyard and strip the flesh from the bones of every organic lifeform unfortunate enough to be trapped within its waters. It seemed the scientist who had developed it had given his life to ensure that it would never be used again—Squidward envied him. He must have died believing firmly that he could stand in the way of the proliferation of destruction, a pursuit to which humanity had always been willing slaves. In the end, he had only slowed the Japanese government's efforts to recreate the horrific device, which in turn would be stolen by the Americans and, at great expense, strengthened well beyond any reasonable point. Squidward couldn't help but admire their drive; if lives were worthless, and ending them profitable, America had—perhaps predictably—thrown itself wholeheartedly into an exceptionally lucrative industry.

Sandra was unlucky. She had cornered Squidward in an alley as he hauled the device home through the murky evening of the reconstructed city. It seemed the Americans had reached out to her first, and revealed too much in their haste. Once, long ago, he would have feared her. But she had been at her home when disaster struck, and had spent hours pinned beneath her great tree, blanketed in broken glass. Her muscles were scarred and atrophied, her once gratingly loud voice a painful rasp. With a fatal, stupid defiance, she had attempted nevertheless to stop him. And so he stepped forward into the lightless future, expecting to plummet into a chasm too deep and dark to ever return from. Only, there was no chasm—or rather, he had already been at the bottom all along. Killing, dying, saving, living. It was all the same within the terrible shadow of the past.

Wasting no time, Squidward immediately began preparing to bring about the end of days. It seemed only appropriate, however, that he should deploy the Oxygen Destroyer somewhere with a nostalgic backdrop. Some trace of the old Squidward still remained in him, it seemed—he would kill that lingering piece there, in the awful restaurant which had made him so miserable back when he still had the capacity to feel misery. It was hardly surprising to him that SpongeBob was still in the back of the restaurant even in the dead of night, and even less surprising that he was easily able to overcome the sponge, shoving him into the meat freezer with neither hesitation nor explanation. Even so, SpongeBob knew enough. He could see a terrible resolve in the octopus's eyes, and the shadow of death was reflected in the dull metal of the device.

His pores beginning to fill with ice, the sponge could only stare helplessly from the freezer as Squidward set about turning Neo Bikini Bottom into a cemetery. For a moment Squidward stared blankly into the blue water, toward the ruins of his old house. SpongeBob wondered if he might be remembering better days. Things had been so carefree then. It was still beyond comprehension that all throughout those grease-scented years something incomprehensible and unstoppable had been slumbering deep within those frigid, dark, ancient places beyond even Rock Bottom. That all of their petty struggles over the Krabby Patty formula, all of their trials and triumphs, had been inevitably bounded by that deferred horror, minuscule, invisibly small in proportion to it. Perhaps, SpongeBob thought, all happinesses were small happinesses—moments, trapped in fragile bubbles of ignorance, where you might find some effervescent bliss, or at least a pocket of numbness, just enough to seduce you into enduring another day within the freezing sea of time. And then, as Plankton placed his arms on either side of the Oxygen Destroyer, the coldness became absolute, and SpongeBob thought nothing at all.

Squidward's face was blank as he turned away from the activated Oxygen Destroyer. He himself could not decide what it was he had done. Had he made the only choice available to him, or had he at last exacted revenge for all those worthless days, those long, corrosive years of pointless work and restless evenings that had eaten away at his soul? What did he feel? Why did he still feel nothing?

Sandy, SpongeBob, all the inhabitants of Neo Bikini Bottom… were they merely a casualty of his quest to destroy himself?

Lost in thought, Squidward turned just in time to see a restaurant table seemingly suspended in the water inches from his face. For a moment it was as if it were moving in slow motion, and then reality snapped back into motion along its horrible trajectory. His world spun, reorienting itself painfully against the floor with a burst of stars and a fountain of blue blood. Over him stood Patrick Star, dumb, uncomprehending, unstoppable, half of a dripping Krabby Patty in hand. Death incarnate.

Still reeling, Squidward grabbed the spatula SpongeBob had left on the grill. It was red hot, and the half-melted plastic handle seared his tentacle as it closed around it, but he hardly noticed. Patrick, of course, was oblivious, shouting some nonsense about his friend. It seemed he was working himself into a rage intense enough to boil over his brainless lethargy.

"And," he shouted, standing over the mangled Squidward, "Here comes the giant fist!"

So, this is it, thought Squidward. This was not a punishment for the others, though Patrick probably meant it as such. It was just the order of things. The will of Patrick which set his fist into motion, the machinations of Squidward which would bring the ocean to ruin, all were merely expressions of the unchallengeable gravity which dragged each of them along from moment to moment. Always downward, downward, toward the unknowing, lightless void at the bottom. Entropy, inanimate and inviolate; an emptiness more perfect and infinitely more cruel than any god.

If random violence was the order of the world, then reproducing that power was neither radical nor admirable—to forever pantomime the currents of nature, throwing one's own body again and again upon pyres erected to no purpose, that was the hell of beasts. But, then, what else was there but the tyranny of that understanding? Was an octopus not a beast? Was it not right and proper, or at least blameless and inevitable, that he should injure, kill, be injured and be killed? It had nothing to do with pleasure. Yes, that was it! That was why he had felt nothing! There was no room for joy, and no cause for guilt, as they all inscribed their memories, their wounds, upon each other's rotting minds and bodies. This world was endlessly blasted by lightning-bolts of agony—Squidward was made of conductive flesh, and so he conducted. There was nothing else, no sins to absolve and no ablutions to perform.

When the beast first passed, some thought to sate its thirst for blood, and so win its cooperation. The rich smoke gave them away. For days the scent of alder and salmon fat hung over the remains of the Kelp Forest. Arrogant fools, to think that our flesh was worth anything at all…

The fist came, and at the same time Squidward drove his burning spatula deep into the core of the starfish, propelled by instinct as much as any desire for vengeance. There was a shout, a cloud of steam, and the impact of Patrick's blow—a torrent of confused sensations that overflowed the octopus' brain as it was pulverized into a viscous fluid. Carried over its liquifying circuits at the last moment, the taste of Squidward's own blood in his mouth was just like that of a Krabby Patty.

Patrick stumbled over to the refrigerator door and put his immense brute strength to work peeling the steel from its hinges. He knew something was wrong with him, but he didn't know what—he had to ask SpongeBob, whose frozen form he could just barely make out through the glass. As he flung the door behind him, Patrick's momentum sent him careening across the bloodied floor with a crash. He felt… funny. As though something that had been hanging on by a thread for years had finally snapped, and the tension which had been tugging at the edges of his conscious for all that time had instantaneously vanished. His arms fell to his side, limp and immovable, as he drifted weightlessly through daydreams, abstract impressions that spun outward from whatever had passed for thought, unravelling as they went. Patrick, always separated from reality by a lacy veil of ignorance, hardly noticed as the last embers of his primitive mind smoldered out and the soft dreams gave way to a velvety, opaque sleep.

Shivering, melted frost evaporating off of him in great puffs of steam, SpongeBob cooked. He slid the spatula ever so carefully beneath the patty, savoring the slight give of the browned meat coming off of the grill and the subtle flex of the burger as it flipped through the liquid aether. Beyond the glass walls of the Krusty Krab, shimmering in the chemical haze, the dawn sun was rising incarnadine.

The patty landed with a soft pat and pronounced sizzle. It was perfect.

Yes, thought SpongeBob, as the first bubbles began to lap at the windows, This is good.

He stepped over the twin wrecks of Squidward and Patrick, leather shoes slippery against the gory floor, and gathered together two golden-brown buns, the crisp lettuce, the just-so pickles. There, in the sizzling silence, warmed by the grill, SpongeBob constructed the perfect Krabby Patty.

It's okay now, he thought. Things will be right again, soon enough.

The dull sounds of a faraway hysteria reached the kitchen, dying out just as a fizz signaled that the front door of the Krusty Krab had been breached. Shutting the kitchen door, SpongeBob went into the cupboard and found the small jar of secret ingredient that he had stowed away all those years ago, scraping it from the ruined floorboards and picking out the splinters. There, in the twilit confines, he savored an authentic Krabby Patty. At last, it was exactly as he had remembered. A dusky illumination bled in through the cracks of the door, dyeing the shadows a dark red. He closed his eyes and let the old memories envelop him in a warm ignorance. He had been away so long in a strange world, separated from his home by a growing and impassable sea of time. But now he knew.

The dead ocean would not become a cemetery. A cemetery was something the living bore inside of them, their hearts growing heavier and heavier with the ghosts of the past until at last the weight of their loss dragged them down into the darkness. Something they projected onto stones and mounds and urns quite content to sit silent until the end of time. No, this time it would be a real, proper end. A complete death sweeping in and leaving only bleached bones and chitin and sponge, white and smooth as fresh-fallen snow. With no scars to read, and no one to read them.

SpongeBob felt joy blossom in his breast for the first time in all those years. He did not fear disappearing back into the blinding, glimmering whiteness. No, far from it.

He was ready.

Originally posted June 2018. Description updated when I decided the old one was really bad.

[sweetlifetownsville]

To End The Year, A Mini-Magpie With A Mini Mystery.

Has mega-fraudster Craig Gore skipped Australia? And if so, why hasnt this been reported in the media especially since he is supposed to have made a midnight flit the very day after a judge refused to allow him to leave? In other matters, one has to admit that the Townsville Bulletin is consistent it has ended the year as it started, continuing its weekly Olympic-standard shambles. And Mongrel the Barrister has left us lawyer Mark Donnelly, the man who inspired a much loved Magpie character has passed away. and our final visit to Trumpistan for 2018. But first Its hard to keep a good man down, and our fav toonist Bentley is nothing if not a good man. Even in the holiday season, he casts his jaundiced eye over the news, and brings us a different and rib-tickling perspective. This week, he was much taken as most of us were with the drone drama at Gatwick Airport in the UK. A professional drone was reported in the airports approach and departure air space, and thousands of travellers were stuck when the whole shebang was shut down for a couple of days while the wallopers tried to go hi-tech and trace the source of the bastardry. Its not fully sorted yet, but Bentley thinks the drone may have already met its fate.

Why Arent All The Gore-y Details Available?

Will ye no come back agin, laddie? Now to our mini-mystery. On December 19, this report appeared in the Courier Mail. Judge denies disgraced former rich-lister Craig Gore request to travel overseas Vanessa Marsh, The Courier-Mail December 20, 2018 2:21pm A DISGRACED former rich-lister accused of ripping off almost $800,000 from investors has broken down in court after a judge refused his request to leave the country to visit family. Lawyers for alleged fraudster Craig Gore today launched an application in the Queensland District Court, seeking for the former businessmans bail conditions to be altered to allow him to travel to Sweden to visit his wife and children. But Judge Paul Smith denied the request, saying Gore faced a long time in prison if convicted and there was a real risk he would not return to Australia to face trial. Gore is facing 12 charges of fraud over allegations he swindled about $800,000 from self-managed super fund investors in 2013-14. He also faces three charges of managing companies while disqualified. Now that seems pretty definitive and eminently sensible. But The Magpie was informed two days later, by a regular contact and mate who has always been on the money in the past, that Gore went back to court the next day on another application, and had his passport returned so he could be with his family in Sweden at Christmas. He was to return in three months to face trial and possibility of a lengthy striped suntan. The Pies contact says Gore was on a flight out of Brisbane that night at 11pm, accompanied by a lawyer (that was apparently part of the arrangement) who will return with certain paperwork. Gore will be expected to make his own way back to face his fate in March. Yeah, right. Now all that is as it may be, BUT THIS SPECTACULAR REVERSAL OF A JUDGES IMPLACABLE DECISION HAS BEEN NEITHER EXPLAINED OR APPEARED IN THE MEDIA. Well, not that The Magpie can find, after days of searching to verify. If it is true, there will be a hell of a lot of very pissed off people Gores victims and the tireless investigators who nailed him who know just how long are the odds that we will ever see this shyster again. Shades of Skase!! Perhaps we will never know how this came about if it did come about because there will be a lofty judicial silence of unaccountability if he is a no show but surely the second hearing was an open court? Hard to fathom why it wasnt reported. Mongrel The Barrister Is No More The Magpies good mate Mark Sludge Donnelly the man who partially inspired the popular Magpie character Mongrel the Barrister, died in his family home in Cairns last weekend. It is fair to say that Mark was my best mate in the halcyon days of Portraits Bar in the Exchange Hotel all through the Noughties, the years when I was reporting court matters for the Bulletin. We were part of a memorable and disparate group, the bar crowded with our marvellously mixed group every Thursday, Friday and sometimes Saturday nights. (The fondly remembered Portraits became Poseurs Bar in the newspaper column and then in this blog.) Mark was universally known as Sludge, which he happily answered to, but never fully explained, even to me, its origins apparently it had something to do with a memorable comment from a lecturer or senior teacher suggesting Marks behaviour at that time some comparable to something from the bottom of a pond. Sludge was one of the wittiest people Ive known, and his memory was nothing short of astounding, not just for quoting legal precedents but in all things, particularly pop music. He always commandeered the music machine at parties, and was a pretty good DJ. He also had an eye for a well turned ankle, and his way of getting ladies to talk about themselves endeared him to more than one. Like many a member of the Portraits push, Mark liked a drink, and some believed he was a bit too enthusiastic in this direction. But I would say that rather than having a battle with the bottle, he just had frequent skirmishes with it, as we all did and any excess rarely affected his work at the other more sedate bar, where he often shone. Mark left Townsville when his father died, to live with his mother in the family home in Cairns. He didnt practice in Cairns, and went into virtual retirement, which was plagued by ill health for some time. He returned to Townsville annually for his birthday, but I lost touch in the past few years, for which I feel a bit miserable now. Sludge is now undoubtedly arguing the finer points about the Laws of Entry with St Peter for that is certainly where this witty, soft-hearted old friend of mine now is because we all know God loves a larrikin. Mark was 62. They Really Dont Understand Language at The Astonisher, Do They? And they even get the wrong WORD for a headlines. Even when theyre trying to make a pun, which kinda depends on the right word, yes? But we got a headline quoting some bizoid saying Townsville is bracing for a great 2018. Bracing for? Ahem. Youve managed to say EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what you meant. Heres the dictionary definition of bracing. verb[withobject] prepare (someone or oneself) forsomethingdifficult or unpleasant:both stations arebracingthemselvesforjoblosses|policeare braced fora trafficnightmare. So although this paper goes through life like a bouncing Hari Krishna whos visited the medicine cabinet once too often, giving us totally unquestioning, unexamined glop about our economy (usually from someone with a vested interest), it seem to have inadvertently hit on the truth here. However, the most tedious aspect of the paper of late is the dreary attempts at humour in headlines, particularly about crime, a subject no one in Townsville with the exception of you folks in Flinders Street, finds the least bit funny. AND EVEN THEN, LANGUAGE FAILS YOU let alone a sharp sense of humour.Take this major front page fail on Thursday.

Swindler? My dear headline writer, stay with me on this and read slowly, feel free to move your lips as you must. Now lets see, a swindler is someone who fiddles some unsuspecting victim out of something. That person would be called a fiddler, and if hidden in a ceiling, could be described as ta da a Fiddler In The Roof. You see, this would then coincide with the hit musical of the same name oh, how we would have all fallen about, clutching our sides in mirth, and holding your superior wit in such esteem!!! But swindler? Now weve just got a headache from smacking our foreheads yet again. And this one in simply NOT TRUE. This online

The actual number of people who said (or may have said, who knows, its probably a fiddled fantasy anyway) was 55% of the 700 or so people who responded to a totally uncontrolled survey. If there area 220,000 potential readers (ha! you wish) in the circulation area, the percentage is not even .5 of one percent. But we all know that the on-line edition is sloppy, so the paper itself will temper the outlandish claims, wont it? Errr no.

This is simply lying, and treating people like morons. And still they wonder But barely have we swallowed our anger before we start scratching our heads over weird genuinely weird stories like this, which would suggest that English isnt TEL boss Patricia OCallaghans first language, or she was suffering mild sunstroke when she was penned the media release from which the story was transcribed.

This story is selective twaddle certainly straight off an unedited media release from the Dudley Do Nothings, meaningless twaddle in which Ms OCallaghan specialises. It has often been said of her that she has the gift of the gab, and aint that the truth, just about all of what she has to say, in The Pies experience, is just that meaningless gabble that sounds good until it is more thoughtfully examined. Like this: The Museum of Underwater Art, located within the heart of The Great Barrier Reef, is a proposal based on the works of international sculpture and underwater artist Jason deCaires Taylor. Whats that bit located in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef? Has there been a Krakatoa-like geographic shift we havent noticed? The Underwater Museum, one of several planned along the coast, will be, at last report, just of Maggy Island, the GBR is a at least an hour or more away by fast cat . But in it goes to the story, with a newbie cub reporter just churning out this PR bumf. But wait, theres more. We then get this prize piece of meaningless gabble from the top executive charged with attracting and promoting tourism to Townsville: Its a project that is going to enhance the Great Barrier Reef experience and also educate visitors on how we manage and live with the reef everyday Ms OCallaghan said. That is absolute poppycock that is totally meaningless. And We? Bloody WE? FFS, girl, get a bloody grip. Insulting, uppity tripe from Ms OCallaghan and lazy, presumably unsupervised reporting (read: select all, copy and paste) by a very uncurious junior reporter (read: stenographer). Really, a monkey using scrabble board wouldve made more sense. The clusterfuck continues no wonder were so deep in the shit. Other matters As if golf didnt already have enough hazards.

Words of Wisdom From Two Funny Men

Frankie Boyle The cleverest quote of the week comes from the Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle in the Guardian. But first, his preamble touched a chord for The Magpie, who can vouch for it when Mr Boyle writes: The plight of the satirist, such as it is, is a compulsion to look at the grimmest, most important thing they can think of, and then for reasons that probably wouldnt survive a really good therapist, try to make it funny. To try to address the iniquities of their society, the satirist must manufacture some hope that what theyre doing might make a difference, then type it all up and send it off somewhere before they remember that it never does. Looking back over the events of this year is a bit like holding a doll for a therapist and pointing to where the bad man hurt you. Mr Boyles point is a universal one, which can be shared by Townsvilleans looking back over the past shambolic year. But his prize quote is so subtle, that you may have to think about for a while The Pie roared after a few seconds. The murder ofJamal Khashoggiby Saudi Arabia is another very difficult subject to find the lighter side of, unless someone in the Ecuadorean embassy has clipped the story out and stuck it to the fridge. (Sigh) Dear Mystified of Mysterton, it means that the Ecuadoreans might be giving their Wikileaks guest Julian Assange a hint.

Dave Barry The other funnyman worth a quote is the inimitable Dave Barry , the American columnist who talks about Florida the way The Magpie talks about Townsville only he is far funnier, proof being that The Magpie pinches more of his lines (many) than he does of The Magpies (none). This was his challenge to a graduating class, but it can just as well apply to the year 2019. How are you, Class, going to respond when the Clock-Radio of Challenge emits the Irritating Buzz of Opportunity? Are you going to roll over and hit the Snooze Button of Complacency? Or are you going to wake up and, after performing the Bodily Functions of Preparedness, boldly grasp the Toothbrush of Tomorrow? And no matter what you do in the coming year, make sure youre always politically correct, so no snowflakes will melt before your harsh words.

And So To This Week In Trumpistan First, compare Trump as Commander In Chief of real US soldiers, on his surprise visit to Iraq

Guess whos wondering if she packed the shampoo? with this.

And now to our final gallery of the year about the man Frankie Boyle described as this troll-doll King Lear, who looks like something youd pick off a baking tray after cooking pizza above it.

And Finally How The Hell ? The Pie has been occasionally upbraided for the use of naughty words in this blog well, one word in particular. He is aware that it can be confronting, but it is the other F word Frustration that compels him to sometimes resort to other for emphasis. Anyway, so what, if its good enough for Sesame Street, its good enough for The Pie. .. So that was the year that was, and what a rip-snorter we have coming up. Turns out this edition wasnt so mini after all. Comments run throughout the holiday break 24/7, so you dont have to wait to have your say. And the New Year will look even rosier for the old bird if you think the Nest is worth a small donation to keep it neat and tidy. The how to donate button is below. HAPPY NEW YEAR, YALL. http://www.townsvillemagpie.com.au/to-end-the-year-a-mini-magpie-with-a-mini-mystery/

[namjoonchronicles]

Handcuffs & Pretty Boys - [EXO] Chanyeol Detective!Au #29

[Part 28]

[A/N] I think’s Baekhyun’s fingers are very pretty. So pretty that sometimes I wish I could take... a zoom up picture of it. /what did u think i was gonna say/

Vengeance; it's a wretched thing to keep. It's an inevitable matter when it comes to dealing with human, among hatred and envy, it's one of the most despicable human emotions that precipitates even in the most kindest soul. It lingers, and manifests, latching themselves on you, that sometimes, it consumes you.

Vengeance of a wife to her husband, a man to his job, a girl whose heart was broken, a young lad with his life ripped apart against his will, a hopeful dreamer with their dreams taken away from them; there's a lot.

"Did you knew what father did, mother? How far did you know?" You asked, manicuring her nails, they've gone darker due to lack of blood from the chemo treatment. "Too much at once, and none at all." She answered weakly. "Were you uncomfortable with the things he did?" You asked, glancing at her from time to time. "...I was. But not at him. At his job. But that wasn't all." When she was diagnosed with cancer, shortly after Sanha's was born, money became short. So father had to do side jobs to cover her treatment. The side job included him to lower his integrity for a flimsy pay. Mother didn't approve that. She refused to watch her husband lower himself before a slothful human called the vice president just to earn more money so she could have treatment.

So she asked father something he never dreamed of doing. To divorce her. She wanted Sanha to only remember her being healthy. She wanted people to remember her in her best and not her crippling self that she is now. "I told him to make you hate me. To forget me."

"I could never really hate you mother, you've gone through a lot. I don't think I could hate you properly." You smiled. "You're the best mother anyone could had." You added. "So kind." She let a tear roll down her cheek. "...The young man, Chanyeol? Are you in love with him?"

You shrugged. "...So he's in love with you." Mom accused. "...Don't let this one go, no matter how horrible he was to you." Mom patted your hand lightly. "How were you able to love someone who was married to two other women before you?" You look up. Mom averts her eyes to the open window, where the trees were dancing in the wind. "...I chose to stay with him for all the things he's done right, not the one thing he's done wrong. I chose to forgive." She smiled weakly. Life was too short to hold vengeance. You know deep in you that Chanyeol was fate.

Vengeance was what led Baekhyun to do what he did to Chanyeol.

The night starless sky mocks the living beings underneath it. Bringing the news to Chanyeol isn't going to be easy, but it has to happen. When Chanyeol was busy arranging the plans to enter Kyungsoo's casino villa, you were busy finding out who put Chanyeol in jail. Even for a brief moment, an innocent man is innocent until proven guilty. The thing was, Chanyeol was never proven guilty, but he spent the night in jail nonetheless. It was unfair. What started as a method to clear Joonmyeon's name ended as a search through old files, back when Baekhyun was arrested.

Like Chanyeol said, Baekhyun was released under police bail, considering he had not done any criminal records, and the arrest was his first felony. But what Chanyeol didn't know was what he did after his release. You met Kim Jongdae and talked. "Why did you do it?" The infamous police one-liner seemed to amuse Jongdae. "I understood Baekhyun's anger." He answered easily, with a drop of his gaze to his lap, where his cuffed hands laid. "It's not like he did it because he wanted to, it was because he can." Baekhyun, was caught red-handed, trying to sell his designer drug he claims to have made himself. He was a chemistry student, eager to test chemicals in their utmost potential.

Baekhyun is working towards a brain boosting drug he called : Limitless.

He was almost there.

But after being caught, he was denied entry to his original lab, expelled from his university due to criminal records and disowned by his family. Baekhyun hits rock bottom. He was homeless, jobless and angry. It was the deadliest combination. "He's young and able, he could have found jobs anywhere." You debated. Jongdae scoffs. He finds what he heard from you was unbelievable. "He wants you to come for him. He is exactly where you think he is. You're the reason why he had so much vengeance." Jongdae's word stayed with you for awhile.

If there's something regretful about having exceptional memories, it will be this. To remember everything. You heard the car door opened and closed from the side of the curb, and a man in a black jacket walks out. He stepped out of the car and looked straight at you who was sitting at the outdoor section of the restaurant, at night and alone. He walks across the street and entered the restaurant with a conflicted face. "This isn't like you to call me out on a work night for a drink." He pulled out a chair and sighed as he sat to receive the menu.

"...Sorry, but I need someone to talk to." You mumbled lazily. "A glass of warm honey lemon please," he said to the waiter and clicked his tongue to you, "What is it that you can't talk to Chanyeol." Joonmyeon looks up. He look rather different from what he usually wore in the office, and it made him look younger than he really is. He appeared casually poised and is approachable. "Before Chanyeol came, all we do is talk. I guess I missed that." You reminisce the days you'll spend with Joonmyeon on top of the building. It could be your recent worries, your troubled relationship with your father, and will to work. Something you know Joonmyeon would be good at.

"You should go for guys your own age, you know that." Joonmyeon straightened up in his seat, looking relaxed. "It's not that. I understand how you feel about me. I just need to talk to you about... things." You paused. And at this Joonmyeon didn't interfere. He averts his eyes outward, to the streets, where passerby would throw a glance at him, once or twice. Probably due to his handsome good looks. From afar, you two looked like a divorced couple, meeting for a negotiation. But most of the time, you both are actually more like siblings than colleagues.

"I'm tired of telling myself everything's going to be okay, everything's going to be okay..." your voice softens, "...and it's not. It's not okay." Joonmyeon took his chair and sat next to you, then he placed his arm over your shoulders and rested your head on him. "I can't keep lying to myself. It hurts." You started to sniff. He rubbed your head gently, patting them. "No matter what I do, I can't seem to forget what people say, or do, or how they say it... You told me I'm kind, but how does a kind person have vengeance as much as I do?"

Joonmyeon is a wolf at work, but he is also a wolf by nature. He leads, and protects. He placed the vulnerable ones before him, and he was the reason why everyone is on their own pace. He is the living example of a leader walking behind everyone. He is the proof that leaders aren't necessarily at the front. They could be behind everybody, keeping them safe. "What is this about." He whispered, leaning back into his seat, crossing his arm at you. "I have to arrest Baekhyun tomorrow." You looked at the view far ahead of you while Joonmyeon studies your side profile with no smile on his face. "He was the one who paid Jongdae to hack the surveillance system, and framed Chanyeol." Joonmyeon looks at you with big eyes, it seems like he's heard of it the first time.

It didn't match. what broke you down earlier, and your plans tomorrow. "...What vengeance do you hide?" Joonmyeon walked you to your car. You smiled sadly. "Remember I told you there's a guy back in college who fuck and bail on me?" You opened the car door, and hung your arms around it. "...I thought I enjoyed seeing him in jail, but I didn't." You shrugged and entered your car. After a brief farewell, Joonmyeon stayed to watch you drove off. "Despite everything you say, you're still kind." And Joonmyeon thought to himself, "If only you knew."

With a signed warrant from the judge, you entered Baekhyun new premises, situated in the abandoned pier along with your team. You found Baekhyun waiting on his desk and a Fedora cap on. "You're late." He said with a cunning smile. He lifts his right wrist, and then he stood up. The policemen were aiming to shoot, should he try to escape. He spun around welcoming you. "I thought I should give one more look to the person who made me loss my hands, and now I figured, that maybe I deserved the punishment." He set each of his hands apart, far left and far right. Then he lifts his left hand, and you could catch something metal. "I can't feel anything on this hand." He wriggles them. To your horror, the metallic thing was his hand. Extending from his wrist to all his five fingers, it was all, prosthetic metal wrist and fingers and thumb.

"See what he did to me? He broke my wrist. Bastard." He cussed to his hand. His tone was oddly calm. And that's when you realized why he couldn't find job although he was young and able. Baekhyun was disabled. By Chanyeol. It explained why he framed Chanyeol, it explained the anger, it explained pretty much everything related to the matter. Chanyeol broke Baekhyun's wrist and ruined his future. Baekhyun some how made enough to purchase Jongdae's work, and Jongdae hacks into the system to help Baekhyun framed Chanyeol. But it didn't last long because you caught the tape before it got to someone else. You wondered, what could have happened if Joonmyeon were to obtained the tape first, and how different this arrest would be. Baekhyun intended the tapes to be in your possession. He wanted you to catch him. He wanted to see the face Chanyeol cared so much for. "That night in the club was too dim that I can't see you properly, and now I did, I understood why he cared so much."

Baekhyun was tasered and brought down to the floor. The whole area was filled with roaring commands from the officers but what Baekhyun said upon his arrest made you shivered with extreme discomfort. He was brought, passing you in cuffs, with a smile. "All the while we're talking here, I wonder how Chanyeol's progressing with Sanha's investigation? How did Sanha end up being in Kyungsoo's lair? I wonder how my good friend Kyungsoo is doing? He is one of my loyal customers. My designer drugs are very useful for his bitches." Baekhyun turns away with lingering smile on his face and when you looked at the time, you knew that Chanyeol has gone somewhere without you.

His phone isn't dialing. Chanyeol knew you will look up his case so when it distracted you, he was going to search for Sanha. He was going to search for Sanha, gambling Minseok's life, and he's going walk in Kyungsoo's villa, without the assurance of ever walking back out, alive.

[Final: Part 30]

[A/N] Where’s my fucking kiss, because same.

[kansascityhappenings]

‘Toy Story’ lives on, but should it have?

NEW YORK — Like “Casablanca,” ”Toy Story 3″ concluded with the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

It’s an ending that has very possibly produced an ocean’s worth of tears, not to mention countless awkward moments for children mildly embarrassed by their parents suddenly turning into waterfalls. “Um, dad, it’s a movie about a toy cowboy.”

But the sentimental crescendo of the “Toy Story” trilogy was real. The films’ young boy, the one whose name was emblazed on the bottom of Woody’s foot, had grown up. Andy was going to college. The fate most feared by the toys — boxed up in the attic — was miraculously avoided when Andy gifted his beloved playthings to a young girl named Bonnie.

As he drove off, after one last imaginative romp in the yard, Woody watched Andy go like a wistful father. After three brilliant and heartfelt parenting parables that ruminated on aging, loss and impermanence alongside the pitfalls of arcade claw machines and toddler daycare centers, this was the final goodbye. Goodbye to Andy, yes, but goodbye to childhood. “So long, partner,” said Woody.

Big gulp.

The finale was immediately received as a classic Hollywood ending. “The chances of topping this one are infinitesimal,” New York magazine wrote at the time. “Toy Story 3” won the Oscar for best animated film. Everyone, including the film’s makers and cast, believed they had neatly, perfectly wrapped up their trilogy.

“From the inside, ‘Toy Story 3’ was definitely the end of it,” said Tim Allen, the voice of Buzz Lightyear. “That one scene was it.”

But, of course, that wasn’t it. “Toy Story” has returned, nine years later, with “Toy Story 4.”In today’s movie business, nothing is safe from ongoing sequelizing, not even a story about the very necessity of letting go and making peace with the passage of time.

That movie franchises have been extended well beyond their natural cycle is nothing new. But “Toy Story 4” may mark when Hollywood officially gave up saying goodbye.

It’s probably a fool’s errand to wish for prudence from a corporate-made, multi-billion dollar property that was, from the outset, designed to sell as many toys as it jerked tears. “Toy Story 4,” which opens in theaters Friday, is widely expected to make around $150 million over the weekend and gross close to $1 billion over its worldwide run, just like “Toy Story 3” did.

And, for some, Woody is again coming to rescue. The Walt Disney Co. release will break a spell of underperforming sequels . The box office has recently slumped about 7% below last year, partly due to a string of disappointing returns for badly reviewed (or just plain bad) sequels: “Dark Phoenix,” ”The Secret Life of Pets 2,” ”Men in Black: International.”

As Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations notes, it’s difficult for any studio, even Disney, to leave $1 billion on the table.

“Audiences might not actually need ‘Toy Story 4’ but theaters desperately need it,” said Bock. “It’s very reflective of where we are today with sequels and continuing sagas. We’re at a point where three is no longer the magic number. It’s beyond that.”

It would be an unfair Buzz kill to call “Toy Story 4” simply a blatant cash grab. Quality control is too high at Pixar to give us a “Toy Story” sequel on par with, say, “Jaws: The Revenge,” or something that we collectively pretend never existed, like “Godfather 3.” ”Toy Story 4″ is quite good, critics say . Though many reviewers have questioned its necessity, the film rates 99% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Directed by veteran Pixar animator and first-time feature filmmaker Josh Cooley, “Toy Story 4” finds Woody and the gang now settled in with Bonnie. But Woody slips into another existential crisis of self-worth when Bonnie favors other toys, especially one she quickly crafted herself out of a spork and some kindergarten trash. She names him Forky, a neurotic character voiced by Tony Hale. When Forky goes missing on a family road trip, the resulting adventure forces Woody to confront the possibility of not only post-Andy life, but post-kid life.

It’s become standard business for franchises to slowly abandon the numbers that might too bluntly remind fans of their lengthy runs. The “Fast and the Furious” series understandably chose to title its upcoming installment “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbes and Shaw” over its almost shocking actual numerical value: “Fast & Furious 9.” Pixar, at least, hasn’t shied away from where this “Toy Story” fits in, even if its lead actor would have gone a different direction.

“It really should be called ‘Toy Story: Forky,” said Tom Hanks. “Because it’s all about the Forky.”

Sequels have always been a somewhat touchy subject for Pixar. Since its groundbreaking first feature, 1995’s “Toy Story” (the first full-length computer generated animated movie), Pixar has, for much of its existence, eschewed repetition for originality. In his 2014 book “Creativity, Inc.” , Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull called quality “the best business plan” and suggested sequels can lead to “creative bankruptcy.”

Lately, things have been changing at Pixar, and not just because of a recent preponderance of sequels including “Finding Dory,” ”Cars 3″ and “Incredibles 2.” Former Pixar chief John Lasseter, who directed the first two “Toy Story” films, exited the company last year after acknowledging “missteps” in his behavior with female staff members. In 2017, Rashida Jones departed “Toy Story 4,” which she was helping to write, and said then that the company had “a culture where women and people of color do not have an equal creative voice.”

“Inside Out” and “Up” director Pete Docter, who has a story credit and is an executive producer on “Toy Story 4,” last year took over as Pixar’s chief creative officer. The studio’s next two releases will be originals: “Onward” next March and Docter’s own “Soul,” in June 2020.

And given Pixar’s unique stature as one of Hollywood’s few remaining factories of fresh storytelling capable of reaching mass audiences (its last original, “Coco,” grossed more than $800 million), some are rooting for “Toy Story 4” to — really this time — be Woody’s last go-around. Not because they won’t watch another one, but because they will. In a movie world of endless “Star Wars” episodes and even actors who can be digitally resurrected, closure — the kind preached in “Toy Story 3” — is increasingly a hard-to-come-by commodity. Not everything is meant to keep going for infinity and beyond.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/06/19/toy-story-lives-on-but-should-it-have/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/toy-story-lives-on-but-should-it-have/

[flauntpage]

The Soul-Crushing Irony of Charlie Brown, the Athlete

When I was a kid playing sports, adults told me that it didn’t matter if I won or lost. I did a tremendous job taking this to heart. I dogged it on sprints, turned in REAL mediocre performances day after day, and basically stopped thinking about whatever game I was playing the second I left the field. “Eh, whatever,” was the call of my athletic career, my demon’s yawp, deep from the bottom of my lungs. In retrospect, this was probably not the best thing I could have done with my time on the field. There was a second half of that saying that I did a pretty spectacular job of ignoring, though: “It’s the way you play the game."

There were lessons to be learned from devoting oneself to the pursuit of a certain kind of personal excellence that sports can manifest, and I cast them off and mostly didn’t give a shit. Instead of gassing myself out on the field, I loafed. Instead of devoting myself to understanding the nuances of The Game, I did what occurred to me up top and shrugged my shoulders when it didn’t work out. Instead of devoting myself to TRAINING, I kicked back in my room and read a giant fucking pile of Peanuts anthologies I bought at a garage sale.

Last week, @Peanuts50YrsAgo, a fabulous Twitter account that posts the edition of Charles Schulz’s sprawling comic strip masterwork that was originally published 50 years ago that day, told a sports story that is the opposite of my own. A tale of failure that is not yanked out from the root, as mine was, but instead allowed to take hold and sprawl and reach out towards the sun, a hideous, life-annihilating monstrosity that is the manifestation of a dystopian application of a particular sort of self confidence and desire that I will call the Athlete Mindset.

The story begins with our hero, Charlie Brown, standing on the baseball mound, the site of so many of his most profound failures. For those not familiar, in his ill-defined neighborhood team’s structure, Charlie is, seemingly because he is the only person who wants it, his team’s manager and pitcher. He is not very good at either task, getting lit up in strip after strip, for year after year, occasionally suffering the pure indignity of a line drive hitting him and knocking all of his clothes off, while the rest of his teammates—including his dog, the consensus best player—just kind of don't give a shit. There's a very simple reason for this grim outlook: you don't make the finest work of comic art of the latter half of the 20th century by writing a comic where the main character gets what he wants, you do it by distilling your tremendous depression into a daily comic strip aimed, presumably, at children.

Anyway, Charlie looks out and sees “The Little Red-Haired Girl,” a girl never once seen by the readership, who is the object of all his romantic desires and dreams. She is watching his baseball game, and he sits there, alone on that mound, and just dreads.

One presumes that Charlie is going to be embarrassed in his customary manner, a line drive stripping him to his skivvies, becoming the object of Lucy’s ridicule. But Schulz must have been feeling particularly ornery that week, because the fate he manages to cook up for the pen-and-paper manifestation of all the worst things we imagine about ourselves is EVEN FUCKING WORSE.

Instead, Schroeder, game-managing catcher and dispassionate, the technically-gifted artist that he is, asks what is going on. Charlie Brown tells him the subject of his distant, tormented affection is in the stands. Schroeder, who knows his man is just, like, entirely too in his head to really make it happen—whether that's pitching, or talking to that girl, or ANYTHING, really—walks away while Charlie Brown makes a whole world of his own success in his head. It lasts exactly one panel.

Charlie Brown, apparently playing in a league without balk rules, immediately seizes up and cannot throw. He shakes and proceeds to have what is, for all intents and purposes, a panic attack. Lucy also calls him a dog, which, I mean, he is a blockhead and it’s hard to act like he doesn’t deserve it, on some level.

Charlie Brown’s best friend, Linus, feeling for his man, guides him off the field and takes him home, where he gets into bed and continues freaking the hell out, trying to use his vision of a better world to coax himself out of his lengthy panic episode.

For those who are not intimately familiar with anxiety disorders, this does not work. Ever. Generally, you are supposed to accept the worst case scenario, accept that it could probably happen, and try to move on from there, devoting yourself to doing your best and hoping it turns out okay. Unfortunately, Charlie Brown hasn’t been told this, yet. God hopes he was, eventually.

Three hours later, presumably, Charlie Brown feels better and heads back to the field, where he is informed that the game went on without him—probably a good move, considering he was having a debilitating anxiety episode—that Linus pitched, very well, and his team, which never manages to win for some reason or another, has won in his absence. AND THEN, just to add insult to injury, The Red-Haired Girl got up, ran to the mound, and gave Linus a big hug on account of his tremendous athletic prowess, the very dream scenario Charlie envisioned for himself before reality burst that bubble.

Charlie is relentless, though. Just likeC.J. McCollum has spent the entire summer displaying the purity of the Athlete Mindset by aggressively reminding everyone that he is, in fact, not a loser just because he doesn't play for the Warriors and quite frankly WANTS TO WIN THE RIGHT WAY, Charlie Brown will die on this hill, which is more of a mound, but whatever. He fucking refuses to get off that thing even though, clearly, Linus or Snoopy or whoever the fuck is dramatically superior at pitching than he is. He refuses to stop declaring himself the manager, desiring control of everything, even though no one listens to him and Lucy, his teammate, seems to be playing almost entirely to belittle him. He ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT try a game that isn’t baseball, because the subject of those rambling dreams in his head is baseball, and he figures that, goddammit, all he needs to do is POWER THROUGH and he can MAKE MANIFEST THE VICTORIES OF HIS DREAMS.

This works, when you have talent! High level athletes are psychos in this exact way, creating fantasies about themselves and bleeding and dying to make those fantasies reality, managing to climb mountains of money to look out on the horizon and survey the vast kingdoms of their victories, one right after another, while still never being satisfied.

What Schulz creates in Charlie Brown’s baseball career is a pure neurotic flip of that dream, a nightmare where a young man is given pure Athlete Mindset, a need to succeed on his own terms and a craving for success and the love that comes along with success, that is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY impossible due to a combination of his pure lack of physical or tactical talent and the immense neurosis growing out of that need.

His is the story of the kid Max Scherzer struck out looking time after time in high school, the poor, committed sap Allen Iverson dominated when he was 12, the myriad high schoolers who dreamed of quarterback glory only to watch Matt Ryan steal it away from them, the kids who might have the same ambition and drive and craving for glory of even the fringiest European NBA Prospect, but who quite simply didn’t have the talent or the mental gifts to come even close to making it happen. It wasn’t me, of course, and thank God for that. That shit is a curse more than it’s a blessing, unless you’re walking around with the tools to make your dreams come true. Without those tools, you'd probably lose your shirt, too.

The Soul-Crushing Irony of Charlie Brown, the Athlete published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[suzhangyi]

Interactive narrative game

The subject of an interactive narrative is a story, more like an artistic representation of a story. This relationship is similar to a text-based art form such as a novel film. A novel is a story in terms of a text language. The film is in audiovisual language. In these art forms, the story is a nuclei (although sometimes it may be larger than the kernel. ). The interactive narrative is a player-led story to complete. A good story is a metaphor for life. This story is not simply a running account, but it needs to have a certain meaning. The meaning of the existence of this meaning is exactly the meaning of the story. There is no direct relationship between interactive narrative and the game itself. The purpose of the game now seems to be to obtain a certain level of pleasure. If this pleasure is stuck at the sensory level, it will not be beneficial for interactive narrative. However, the game is the most familiar way for man-machines to interact in depth. Because interactive narrative depends on human-computer interaction, interaction itself may be used as a reference. In general, interactive narrative is the art of the door.

Chris Crawford's discussion of interactive narrative has had such an impact on me: There is an art form in the world that emerges from the game but is higher than the game—interactive narrative. In the past, all the narrative contents of the game could not lead to this art. They exist. The fatal flaws of their own development.

It is not an exaggeration to say that interactive narrative is a kind of metaphysics, because it has no real existence yet, and no one can accurately make it complete. In this sense, the art form of this future generation is still at the moment. The other side of the cloud can't be imagined like high-dimensional space-time. However, according to the book, the pursuit of this form is about the same as the history of video games. A great deal of great designs have been born over the past decades, allowing us to take a glimpse of the skirts of interactive narratives. However, the more I understand, the more I feel that this end point is inaccessible. If the interactive narrative is truly a great day, it is bound to be not a genius of imaginary gods, but only the accumulation of several generations of geniuses, made up of corpses.

Another thing that can give us a glimpse of its realm is Western World. In the story world conceived by the author, the NPC characters can automatically interact and interact with each other and advance the dramatic storyline automatically. Each character has a personality attribute and a story of origin, and at the same time, it is subject to the top-level "Fate". Able to enter the game world for a considerable degree of freedom activities, the story world and its role in the user will make feedback for each type of behavior - that is, interaction; the story world can continue to communicate and dialogue with the user, so the user can experience The same sense of vividness and surreality as in the real world. This part of the content is precisely reflected in the TV drama.

Only differences are the means of realization and the pursuit of the world of stories. The Western world is based on a two-point theory and the pursuit of the world is a certain period in the restoration of reality. The author of this book is more indulgence: for the technology to be difficult to achieve the decisive discard, for the details of their own focus on the same is discarded. Therefore, the story world must be much larger than the real world. This is correct. I have always felt that it is not necessary to stick to the existing world in building a new world. Although this already existing world will provide you with many important ideas in the early days, the difference in the goals of service is the key.

The primary stage of interactive narrative may be animal-level interaction. The behavioral characteristics of animal groups have been sufficiently complicated. It's your turn to build your own new world, the rules will be new, and the biometric geography rule space dimension will be entirely new to the time and velocity, and even completely absent, and then introduce new elements.

To build a "living" world, you are doing what is created by the Creator, and you are closer to God than to creating any kind of artistic work. Then you can have a glimpse of what he thinks.

The author provided an overly detailed method of how to implement this world, but it was like a plan to explain the document to the programmer. He uses mathematical methods to define the boundary of world elements and personality attributes in a bottom-up manner. First, he ensures that the storyline needs to be able to meet the minimum scope, and then the foot expands the stage and scenery to introduce more dramatic needs and role requirements. And rule requirements, then choose to meet or give up one by one.

This is the reason why I think the end point is not reachable. From the bottom up, the complexity will eventually lose control due to expansion, leading to a total collapse, and the author's own game will eventually fail. Mathematics is the right point of entry. The foundation of our real world is mathematics. Mathematics can be used to explain everything, including interaction. Only his way of thinking has gone too far in details, introducing too much interference and losing focus. This may be because they are too knowledgeable about technology and have confidence in existing technologies. They always try to prioritize what they can achieve and then try to pursue the rest. However, I feel that before a truly feasible solution, any implementation only has the meaning of testing ideas. The most important process of constructing a world is to extract basic elements and to summarize the composition of all things in the world. They are both numerical and monitoring variables, and they are also parameters of combinatorial calculations. This process is also the most difficult and longest.

[autolenaphilia]

I, Robot The Shame of Mystery Science Theater 3000 by Chris Fujiwara

(This article has disappeared from the Internet, though you can find it archived on the Wayback Machine here I find it quite interesting and it articulates some of the concerns I have with MST3K and “bad movie culture” in general, so I’m reposting it here. The article is written by Chris Fujiwara and belongs to him. If he wants me to take it down, I will.)

One sign of the death of the cinema is the zombie-like persistence of the "bad film" cult that rose to public-nuisance status in the late Seventies, feasting noisily on things like the Ed Wood films. From the start, this was just an especially obnoxious manifestation of a general intolerance for films that try to free themselves from the dominant mode of cinematic realism. Thus it's but a short step from sneering at the budgetary deficiencies of Plan 9 from Outer Space to scoffing at, e.g.:

1. Any non-state-of-the-art special effects and visions of the future, even though these things date themselves anyway from period to period, and future generations may find Independence Day less "realistic" (whatever that will mean) than the 1956 aliens-smash-the-state programmer of which it is an unacknowledged remake, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers;

2. Overtly non-realistic visual and acting style used for expressive purposes, as in Soviet master S. M. Eisenstein's outrageous Ivan the Terrible, which uses actors' bodies as components of a delirious architecture;

3. "Implausible" plots like Vertigoas if we're supposed to ignore the holes in the stories Hollywood tells now just because men don't wear ties to walk around the block and no shot lasts longer than 1.4 secondsand "banal" ones like the potboiler-like thriller stories from which Orson Welles made his superb Lady from Shanghai, and Touch of Evilas if Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes working together could have come up with an original story or cared less about it;

4. Mythic dialogue and situations like those in Rebel Without a Cause and Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind, The Tarnished Angels, and Imitation of Life, whose emotional power intimidates audiences lulled by the rituals of appeasement enacted in nighttime soap operas.

The irrelevant yocks that frequently greet the films just mentioned when they show at a revival house or a college auditorium are the voice of a viewing public paralyzed by fear, desperate for any externalization of a comforting "distance" to protect them from recognizing their own anxieties writ large in the image unspooling from the past not dead enough to suit them.

Such a distance is abundantly provided by the robots on the cable (now also broadcast-syndicated) show Mystery Science Theater 3000, devoted to stomping on "the worst movies ever made." The big gimmick (the "plot" behind which isn't worth explaining) is that these robots are sitting in a mockup of a theater and we the lucky TV audience are watching the films from over their shoulders and ostensibly being entertained by their scornful running commentary. The numbing, irritating effect thus achieved is not unlike watching a Josef vos Sternberg film in the eighth row of the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square the week after midterms. What is most amazing about MST3K (the acronyum preferred by the show's adherents) is that the robots can blather on for an hour without saying anything witty or interestingand people can't get enough of them! (As of this writing, MST3K, which has been in hiatus, is due to be "revived" in new episodes [it wased]; meanwhile, the repeats are still shown contantly on Comedy Central.)

(A similar dead-end sensation can be found by watching what is supposed to pass for heady, unsettling stuff in recent cinema. I refer to the ubiquitous superficial irony that has become the stock-in-trade of Robert Altman, the Coen Brothers, and many less skillful directors, the maddening profusion of brain-eating detail in one of Terry Gilliam's nasty conceits, and the pompous theatricalized events of Peter Greenaway.)

I'd like one of the misties (in-group code for the shows devotees) to explain to me (a letter in care of the editor of this magazine will do, thanks) why if these mechanical creeps are such Oscar Wildes don't they take on something just a bit juicier, a tad more worthy of their withering satire than The Beasts of Yucca Flats. What about, say, Fellini's La Dolce Vita? There's a film that has everything the robots love to disdain: pretentious dialogue, long dull stretches, and people with funny clothes and big asses. Obviously, the contempt for cinema, history, and the audience that fuels the whole robot insanity can be applied to low-budget horror and exploitation filmmaking.

MST3K isn't really about "bad movies" anyway. This is proved by the choice of 1955's This Island Earth as the film basted in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, the recent theatrical spinoff from the show. In a kinder, gentler era of genre film appreciation (whose tone was set by Forrest J. Ackerman, the benevolent editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland), This Island Earth was regarded as a classic. Whatever you think about the film, to rank it one of "the worst movies ever made" is clearly absurd. Of the 30,000 features released in the United States from 1915 to 1960, This Island Earth is probably in the top 3,000-4,000. Considering that countless films have been made since (most of them bad in ways that could scarcely have been imagined in 1955), I would guess that This Island Earth is sitting comfortably in the top five percent of all films. (That's right, I'm saying that 19 out of every 20 films are worse than This Island Earth. Prove me wrong.) Why pick on This Island Earth? To raise the intellectual stakes a little ? Probably notit's doubtful that many members of the intended audience of MST3K:TM had ever heard of This Island Earth or could distinguish it from Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. Anyway, the level of humor in MST3K:TM is preposterously low: roughly a third of the robots' remarks are alarmed, sniggering references to homosexuality, putdowns of the hero's sidekick's virility, and other manifestations of male adolescent sex-role anxiety. (Another third are mostly farting and toilet jokes, which possibly belong to the same category.) In its treatment of Faith Domergue's sexy scientist, This Island Earth may betray what we now recognize as the sexism of the Fifties, but what are we to make of the fact that the woman aboard the MST3K spacceship is a maternal vacuum cleaner with no arms? MST3K is obsessed with sexuality and afraid of it. The absence of women highlights the show's treehouse psychology.

MST3K's use of robots for heroes is no accident. MST3K's sarcasm at the expense of the past is techno-elitism at its most self-congratulatory, asserting mastery through acts of cultural misrecognition. Perhaps the reason the MST3K people despise so much that they choose to mount an attack on it in the nation's theaters is that they're disturbed by the way the film reduces the unimaginable future of interplanetary communication to the level of an erector set. MST3K's creators, who resemble science nerds using their first grant as an excuse to lord it over their former peers, would probably be thrilled to be drafted for a totalitarian planet's nuclear program (the fate of the protagonists of This Island Earth).

The robots on the bottom of the MST3K screen are scotomas that indicate a more fundamental visual disturbance, the inability to see anything in films except the same things over and over again: hot women, men who match masculine stereotypes either too well or not enough, and supposed defects of representation (too slow, too cheap-looking, not realistic enough, etc.).

Then there's The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide. Just as MST3K represents a depressing low in "golden turkey" television, TMST3KACEG marks a stupefying new milestone in "golden turkey" film books by having no information about any film, apart from short, inaccurate plot summaries. Instead, the book recounts supposed highlights of the robots' parasitic interventions and explains how the robots behind the robots "strived to make [the films] funny." Readers are thus treated to 172 large-format, haute-design pages filled with pointless descriptions of robot skits and unreadable writing-room anecdotes ("I recall this episode as being the first time we decided to write sketches having nothing to do with the movie..." from the section on Monster a-Go-Go). Nauseatingly self-important, TMST3KACEG leaves wide open the door I wish had remained shut; I expect to see a new wave of film books that focus on the writers' bus rides home.

The book exposes the cluelessness behind the smug sensibility evident on the show. MST3K writer Kevin Murphy proclaims reverence for Frank Zappa (and in real goo-talk yet: "When all his tapes are played and his music is studied, I'm guessing he'll go down as one of the finest composers and performers of the century," p. 109) but makes fun of an angry viewer for wanting to hear Eddie Cochran in Untamed Youth without robots talking (p.16). It makes sense that someone who thinks it's cool to put robots in front of The Killer Shrews would have no problem revealing in print that he thinks the composer of "Don't Eat Yellow Snow" and "St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast" is a greater artist than the man who recorded "Something Else" and "Nervous Breakdown."

There's nothing new about MST3Kit's just a tasteless crossbreeding of the tradition of the TV horror host (Zacherle, Ghoulardi, the Ghoul, Elvira) and the "Golden Turkey" way of misreading films that was codified by inane right-wing reviewer Michael Medved and his equally vapid brother, Harry. All this comes indirectly from the surrealists, but the MST3K robots, following their idols the Medveds rather than Andr Breton and Ado Kyrou, deny and trivialize the power of strange films to disturb, confuse, and give hope.

It's time the "bad movies" movement died a quiet death. This goes not just for MST3K-style vendettas against low-budget films but also for the would-be more sophisticated "camp" onslaught against glossy major productions like "Valley of the Dolls" and the Delmer Daves-Troy Donahue cycle (A Summer Place, Susan Slade, etc.). Of the many possible ways of enjoying a film that deviates from standard criteria of adequacy, the least interesting is to treat it as a source of unintentional humor. Robot Monster, The Sinister Urge, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Hercules and the Captive Women, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Aleksandr Ptushko's fantasy films"bad" as some of these films may be (although many of them are, in fact, "good"), all of them will be admired long after their potential for robot humor has been exhausted (i.e., starting right now) for the unique aesthetic experiences , strange personal visions, and precious cultural documentation they offer.

Someone should invent MST3K glasses with the robots printed on the bottoms of the lenses for people to wear to movies, except that it would be unnecessary, since the robots are already built into the cognitive and aesthetic faculties of an entire culture. MST3K assumes its audienes are so impotent that they can't enjoy even "bad" films first hand but can derive pleasure from them only over the shoulders of robots.

[vellusia-blog]

Vellusia In-Depth

An in-depth look at Vellusia Thorne (because I didn’t want to crash TRP). Scroll to the bottom of this post for my RP Style.

“Rose petals and thyme…mother put them in my pillowcase at night. She said that it would protect me, keep me safe. It hasn’t—what good are a handful of crushed leaves and petals when the nightmares are real? But I do it anyway…I do it always.”             

                                      -Vellusia to the Druidess Fawnwood ((March, 2017))

Physical

Lower Middle-Class Gilnean: Vellusia’s eyes are a vibrant green, her hair afire with strands of auburn and ginger. Her skin is as pale as any child of a storm-wrought landscape, and is likely unable to tan. A spray of freckles cover her face, most densely gathered on the bridge of her nose. She is neither especially tall, nor short, but hers is an athletic build. Nimble and resilient, her physique is almost diametrically healthier than her mind.

Psychology

A Conflicting Nature: Human at her core, Vellusia is eager and excitable, with a spirit full of mischief and a heart that longs for adventure. She can, at times, be witty and sarcastic, and is unwaveringly loyal to her friends. Strong willed to a fault, Vellusia doesn’t suffer bullies quietly, and in an argument, tends to become frustrated and retaliatory.

Completely at odds with her original (human) personality, Vellusia is haunted by her Worgen Affliction, which she views as a curse. Due to complications with her transformations (see History below), Vellusia is horrified of “losing herself” to the animal within. She has no greater fear.

Having survived a difficult youth before the curse, Vellusia subconsciously fragments herself in times of duress—should she panic or suffer physical harm, she tends to accidentally slip into her own mind for protection leaving nothing but the animal within to steer the ship. This defense mechanism has come at a heavy cost: while in this state, Vell is nearly completely unconscious of her actions, and awakens later to discover what she has done.

Knowing that, as a Worgen, she had mauled a friend in the past, there is nothing in the world she fears more than herself—and that fear feeds into itself, perpetuating the cycle. Determined to fight this fate, Vellusia struggles to gain control, acceptance, and balance within herself...and within her wolf.

The Wolf Within: Vellusia (as a neglected child) had always felt a natural resistance to authority, though, if the position of leadership is made through friendship and respect, she will happily follow orders. Conversely, with Worgen blood now pulsing through her veins, she has a very difficult time denying an order made by whoever she perceives as the alpha of a group. She may resist, but eventually succumb to a command she disagrees with. Vellusia resents this aspect of herself, as she prefers to be a free-thinker and struggles with the concept of losing her free will to blind instinct.

Having suffered an exceptionally rocky transition to Worgen, Vellusia tends to trust and relate to humans most. She is unsettled by Worgen, not out of distaste, but out of insecurity. Their wolfen manner of expression reads as a foreign language to Vell--but, unable to deny her instincts entirely, she has begun to feel the “pull of the pack” when around confident Worgen. Still at odds with herself, the power of influence from Worgen to Worgen frightens her, and she attempts to avoid it.

Vellusia has subconsciously begun to see her human and elven companions as “her pack” and when a member is lost, she suffers deeply.

History

Early Life: Vellusia has told more than a few lies about her past. She spins colorful tales of heroism and tragedy, painting her family as brave and celebrated Watchmen, standing vigil at the mighty eastern-wall tower against a forsaken enemy. She has also been known to include stories about her 7 younger brothers--none of whom exist.

Much as she enjoys a good bit of mischief, Vellusia doesn’t lie for her own amusement, but rather, out of shame. The truth, the reality of her life is something she has always attempted to escape. Her pretty, red-haired mother, Amelia, was not a bold guardian, but suffered from extreme mental instability (manic schizophrenia). And her father, Edgar, was no heroic warrior of the wall, but an apathetic drunk.

The Thorne family had watched over the small tower beside the eastern bridge of scenic Gilneas for five generations, but Vellusia would be the small plot’s final inheritor. Her parents, as she knew them, were incapable of acting as true watchmen.

In rare moments of clarity, Amelia would tell Vellusia stories of brighter days before her breakdown and Edgar’s subsequent alcoholism. If there was a cause for Amelia’s madness, it was never spoken of, and Vellusia could not remember a time when her mother was sane. So frequent were her attacks, that Amelia could go from acting as a sweet and doting mother, to gibbering nonsense, to fits of hysteria and accidental self-harm. Her father only seemed to break from his stupors to save Amelia from damaging herself, just to return swiftly to the bottle.

Witnessing these frightening and chaotic swings at a young age were the cause of Vellusia’s subconscious creating safe places within her mind. Even as a child, she’d run off alone to play in the Blackwald, and pretend her life was something greater.

In many ways, Vellusia raised herself, struggling to balance caring for her parents and making the long trek to the Stormglen Village schoolhouse on foot. Her unfailing optimism and enthusiasm carried her through those early years, and though she was poorer than many of the other village children and was occasionally picked on by bullies, she strode forth, chin-high and determined for a better future.

As a young adult out of options for real change, Vellusia saw her broken parents and considered the very real possibility that she would share their fate: Well-intending, but stagnant, drunk and riddled with madness. Horrified by this concept, she ran away into nature, living in the Blackwald for two whole months. At first, she found living in the dark forest freeing, soothing--but survival on her own proved too difficult to last. Foraging and stealing (when she must) to survive, she finally decided her avoidance was futile: She would become just like her parents.

But returning home, Vellusia found her parents dead. Amelia seemed to have ingested paint in the shed, while Edgar had fallen down the narrow tower steps, his favorite tankard still in his hand. Though she mourned her parents, Vellusia saw their deaths as a mercy to their long suffering. On her last night in her small, tower home, she felt the impression that in some way, her parents had released her. Though, she would always carry the shame of their less-than-glorious deaths.

Packing up what little she had, Vellusia resolved to move to Gilneas-city and leave her troubled home-life far behind. Before departing, she found a false panel in her mother’s narrow closet and discovered an altar. The tiny table was topped with carved boxes, candle stumps and wooden sculptures of dancing figures coated in leaves and vines and thorns. Herb leaves and dried flowers littered the surfaces, alongside small jars of salts and liquids. At the forefront was a dark-silver, crudely wrought necklace: a locket with a five-pointed star across its face. Shocked by this discovery, Vellusia took the strange necklace, but allowed her mother’s secrets to rest.

Attack and Evacutation: Vellusia made her way to Gilneas-city and lived in a tiny hostel with four other women in the shoddy end of town for a mere three months before the Worgen curse tore across the land. Hurrying home after a long shift cleaning tables at the nearby tavern, Vellusia was cornered by a savage, red Worgen with bright yellow eyes. She attempted to reason with him, attempted to defend herself with a nearby plank of wood--but nothing would come between the snarling hunter and his prey.

Quick and violent, and completely devoid of human recognition, the Worgen slammed her against the nearest building and sank his teeth into his shoulder. He probably would have ripped her throat out if a passing nobleman hadn’t fired a shot into the beast’s back. The attacking Worgen whined, released Vellusia, and ran off into the bloody night.

The stretch of time that followed Vellusia’s bite was a blur of horror and delirium. Gilneas had fallen, and with it went Vellusia’s entire world. She doesn’t remember how exactly she survived the early days of her curse, or the evacuation of Gilneas, or the “cure” delivered by the Night Elves. Her transformations were never stable, sometimes overcoming her in her sleep, or in times of extreme stress. In addition to becoming a Worgen, she found herself changing into other animals as well: a large cat, a deer. Even when other afflicted Gilneans grew comfortable with their dual-forms, Vellusia remained lost in a disorienting tempest of animal-takeover. 

After fleeing Gilneas, Vellusia befriended a fellow refugee, a Keel-Harbor girl named Collette Worthington. They looked after one another as the pair, and so many others, migrated to Stormwind--but not one day after their arrival, things went terribly wrong. Vellusia, having suffered a post-traumatic nightmare, shifted into her Worgen form and attacked the refugee camp. Awakening in bonds, Vellusia was horrified to hear that she had torn apart three tents before biting Collette’s throat and dragging her down the road. It’d taken four shifted-Worgen to break her from her rampage. The girl, Collette, was lucky to have survived, but she never again spoke to Vellusia--not even to hear her tear-streaked apology.

After that day, Vellusia kept to the shadows, drank more coffee than any human should, and avoided other people as much as possible. Awakening one morning in Elwynn forest beside a hunter’s trap, blood dripping down one shoulder, her long hair severed and laying in ribbons all around her (as she’d apparently torn herself free), she came to the conclusion that if she didn’t find help soon, she would die or worse, kill someone.

It is that realization that drives her to seek the aid of strangers. If the people of Stormwind cannot help her, who can?

Now: Vellusia has begun to make the first real friends she’s had in her life. With their help, she is on a path of recovery. She has, and continues to learn about herself, to grow from each and every experience, and to absorb the wisdom, trust, and acceptance offered to her. With these friendships at the heart of her evolution, Vellusia has already taken ground-breaking strides in the controlling her Worgen form--she refuses to allow herself to harm the people she cares about, and though her troubles are far from over, this has become her strength.

Having recently discovered that her mother had secretly been a harvest-witch before her decline, Vellusia has reclaimed Amelia’s Book of Shadows and seeks to unravel the mysteries within its pages. She hopes that here, she will come to discover the reason for Amelia’s madness, the key to her own shape-shifting complications, and perhaps connect to a magic that runs deeper in her bloodline than she’d ever known.

Vellusia hopes to return the help she’s received from her friends, and someday, to defend Azeroth and make a difference in her world.

((If you’re reading this, you deserve a medal. No, seriously, treat yourself. You’ve earned it!))

((OOC Corner)) My Roleplay Style

Deep RP ...with humor! OOC I’m very easy going and friendly. Though I’m no perfectionist, I prefer immersive RP, and enjoy allowing my character’s interactions with others actively to define how she feels and who she ultimately becomes. My character will remember most interactions, and develop lasting memories and feelings relating to those encounters. I also enjoy “day-to-day” RP as well as “epic” RP.

Although Vellusia has an intense history, she’s also always on the lookout for fun (if the situation allows for it) and hopes to embark on adventures of every kind. She loves a good joke and has been known to contribute some sarcastic and charismatic humor of her own.

OOC is OOC and IC is IC I say this only because I’d like to be super clear that my character is a character, completely independent of my own personality and feelings as a player. If your character throws a drink in Vellusia’s face or embroils themselves in an argument with her, I’m not going to be angry OOC. In fact, as long as everything is logical and true to character, I’ll probably be laughing. If your character flirts with Vellusia, I’m not going to ask you for a phone number. I have my life. Vellusia has hers. That, I believe, is the gist of it. Happy RPing!