#I know they were mostly trying to capitalize on the success for money’s sake but at least we still got cool merch from it

[reno2005]

So while looking into the 90’s/early 00’s RE comics some more I noticed this interesting detail of Leon going with Claire to Europe to find Chris after the Raccoon City incident.

While most of these comic stories are not considered canon and more so "what if" or "inspired" stories instead of retellings, it's interesting to see how the comic writers for this comic magazine imagined the lore for the series would happen considering how little they were given to work with.

[eliothochberg]

A dumb idea that might save Capitalism: Meta-Capitalism

Ok, so maybe using "Meta" isn't the best branding, but it's the only way I can think of to designate the idea.

What is the main problem with Capitalism? Despite all of the good it has done for the progress of humanity, Capitalism's weak point is greed. When a successful Capitalist learns how to maximize profit for greed, a significant proportion of them push towards money for money's sake. They often lose connection with the communities they originally sought to improve, and, often from a place of fear, work to shave off every dollar they can to keep for themselves. Some do it as a trophy. Others are competing with their fellow greedy Capitalists. But the net effect is that of bringing in money without concern for the consequences.

Another problem Capitalism has is the impact of greed for money and power on government. We are in another cycle of corruption in the US, and this is a big one. So big that programs and policies a majority or even a super-majority of Americans want don't happen because one or more of them would negatively impact the bottom line of a greedy Capitalist. That person then uses their money to influence decisions and policy.

I've long thought that instead of trying to squash this sort of thing, we should give it structure. Let's face it, no matter what you do, the busybodiest and wealthiest and power-hungriest people are going to find ways to try and sway those in power in politics to do what they want. What if, instead, you organized that and tried to use it for good?

When I thought this way, I envisioned a sort of third house of Congress, call it maybe the Representariat. I don't know, I'm not nailing the naming of stuff here, but I think it will do.

In this body, if you had enough above some very small minimum of supporters with a common cause that wasn't already in, you could elect someone to represent your interests. From religions to industry groups to community action groups, every niche of people could be represented in government. This house of Congress could also propose legislation, but because it would be so large and unwieldy, their approval would not be required for passage. However, they would still vote on every piece of legislation to show how they felt about it, and have a chance to give their opinion on each one.

Most importantly, though, they would be the ONLY ones who could lobby Congress. If you wanted to be represented as a lobbyist, you'd have to be in this body.

I know, ridiculous.

But I was just trying to work out a way to allow lobbying and influence, while providing some kind of societal control and monitoring.

Meta-Capitalism is another one of these ideas.

If you play any board games, you'll know about Victory Points, or VP. These points are what you ultimately need to win the game in the vast majority of games. A lot of these games, like the classic Monopoly, use money as VP. Another large group literally uses VP. And then many games rename these to something else, but they all boil down to VP. When you play a game, your ultimate goal is to work out how to get the most VP.

That's what a lot of greedy people are doing with Capitalism. Since the VP in the game of these United States is money, at a certain point, once you've accomplished most of your dreams, when you look for what to do next in Capitalism, you often look at the VP structure and say "Well, how can I make more money?" There are other reasons, too, but the bottom line is, money becomes an end in itself.

The reason this is bad is because it actually isn't the "victory condition" that our founders wanted for the country. From stuff I've read, it seems that most states were against corporate structures, and that dislike appears in their original constitutions. It's not in the US Constitution, but in many states corporations were illegal, mostly I suspect because those structures had helped Great Britain make things unpleasant for the colonists.

When this changed, the idea was that a corporation could do more than an individual could, and that it would benefit the community. It was never done because people wanted only a few people to have money.

What, then, is our victory condition? If we go by the Constitution, it's "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Nothing in our Constitution extolls the virtues of greed. There is a bunch about property, but nowhere is it guaranteed that you can have all of it to make others destitute. To be fair, it doesn't say you *can't* do it, but we have seen that as a nation, we want to avoid that. Just look at all of the anti-trust cases there have been over the years.

Now, let's go back to our board game analogy. If money shouldn't be VP, then how do we get Life, Liberty, and Happiness to be VPs? What I've thought of is another form of currency, I'll call it LLH since I'm being bad at naming things right now.

I would define LLH as a progressive currency. That is, something you gain when you do something significant to improve society. This currency's main use would be to guarantee time with elected officials. The more good you do, the higher up the chain you can go. This LLH would be specific to a person; non-transferrable. That way, in theory, you couldn't be bought by a normal greedy person to push their views.

LLH might need to be more powerful than that, though. For instance, let's say your company raised all of its' wages to 150% of the minimum wage. Perhaps they would earn some LLH, and could use that to pay taxes or gain advantage in a government contract.

The idea would be to somehow create a VP that the wealthiest and most influential would want in order to do what they already do: tell politicians what they want them to do.

The only difference is, they would have to do something to earn it.

I know, such a thing would be almost impossible to manage. How do you value inventing a new car safety item, or helping a school get new equipment? What if you lobby for a health and safety law? How many LLH would you get? I have no idea.

But imagine a world where what people are greedy for isn't anonymous money, but the satisfaction of making the world better.

This is the best I've come up with so far.

[monkey-network]

My Issues with Butch Hartman

Call this the sequel to my post on Mr. Enter. But honestly compared to Enter, Butch Hartman has made himself look far worse in so little time. Not only with how he uses his influence, but he basically showed his true colors not long after he left Nickelodeon. With Enter, the worst you can say about him is his opinions on media and his politics. With Hartman, there is a surprisingly lot more under his belt that made the hate towards him .

To preface this, while I’m gonna shit on this dude, I’m not shaming anyone who still likes his past content. With that said, bibbity Boppity boopity. Let’s look at the fucking scoopity.

The Telltale Oaxis

This really takes the cake as the scummiest thing Butch has done. Words and opinions can be one thing, but using your platform to basically trick some people out of their money for a project you abandoned for the most part grinds me gears a lot more. As bad as his marketing strategy was, at least Enter provided effort in his indiegogo project beforehand for god’s sake. Oaxis is one of the most pitiable crowdfunded projects I’ve seen.

It’s nearly two years since Butch got Oaxis funded and what have gotten beyond pure dead silence. Nearly two years and little to no significant updates for Oaxis’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, his Youtube, or the site’s official account. No wait, that last part’s kind of a lie. They had monthly updates on the official site up until September 2019. Could’ve posted this on their social medias but you take what you can get. 

The major takeaway from the updates, in all fairness, was that the kickstarter wasn’t enough and they still need to raise more funds for the service. The “capital-building” stage he calls it where he’s looking for more investors in addition to getting actual programs onto the service. That and Oaxis is a big vision for Butch and his wife in spite of not only giving up the monthly updates and basically secluding any mention of Oaxis from any place else. That’s basically it and I legit feel sorry for everyone that couldn’t get their refund back.

This isn’t HBO Max or Disney+ where you just expect them to have something together after their initial announcement because they’re already media conglomerates, this is an independent project. One that people, your fans included Butch, put over 200K thinking you would at least give people something. But beyond a “sizzle reel” that said nothing aside from Oaxis going to be a thing, you have presented jack after two years. I don’t expect the ins and outs of every business meeting with executives, but staying silent about everything except for monthly newsletters that offer very little encouraging progress and hasn’t updated since September of last year is not a good sign. And I’m especially hard on this topic, Butch, because this is the biggest point where it is seriously hard to trust you. It’s not criticizing your ego when after having too many cracks in your story, you really haven’t put your money where your mouth is.

I don’t wanna presume the guy’s given up on it, hoping everybody would forget it after a while, but he’s really put the effort in to make Oaxis feel like a afterthought. I’m not an expert in business, but even I can believe that after his non-apology for not being upfront with his initial intentions, that he’d try to provide updates on the project to not come off as the scam artist people have accused him as. Even with his Youtube channel that I’ll get to later, I don’t think it’s hard consistently posting about your so called vision if you have that much faith in its success. You’ve already gotten thousands of bucks initially with the crowdfund, people deserve more than your pitiful wishful platitudes and I unfortunately can’t believe you’ll have anything after a few years. It’s not that everyone forgot about it, but you mostly took the money and ran. If Butch pops up with something if he sees this somehow, I’ll eat that crow, but I sincerely doubt it after this long. Like at least post something on the Twitter, I get depressed just looking at it; that account is the textbook definition of famine.

The Childhood Reposter

I’ve brought up Butch’s youtube channel a couple times, and it’s when every time I look at it, it’s a little sad. When it comes to major creators, I typically think that after finishing their projects they’d move to newer things. People like Lauren Faust, Mike Judge, CH Greenblatt are all continuing to make new works under differing studios while new creators are getting the spotlight. Butch though? I mean, he has a new cartoon that I swear you’ve never heard about but other than that, the dude looks like he has little to say for himself nowadays beyond the 2 shows he’s famous for, Fairly Odd Parents and Danny Phantom. I would’ve added TUFF Puppy and Bunsen is a Beast but I can see that those two aren’t his major players seeing as how they’re rarely ever mentioned on the channel.

If it’s not some watchmojo level meme video, almost every other video is about either two of those shows in some varied fashion. I get that he “created your childhood” and made credulous bank from Nickelodeon, but it’s like Danny Phantom is all that stands between him and having an audience. That and drawing anime characters in his style which is... y’know, I’ll leave that to you. It’s like he retired and yet goes on about the good old days like a fluctuating ego. He’s still making a cartoon but to him that’s hardly a factor compared to his known successes.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to just be known as the guy who made two of your countless beloved cartoons. Not that that’s all he talks about, but it’s the insistence of his legacy that unfortunately gives me Bojack Horseman vibes. He no doubt has a good thing going but I believe that this isn’t gonna last. Just saying, dude has 850K subscribers and unless it’s a real hook like with the recent Danny Phantom/Jake Long death battle, he’s hardly getting a good fraction of views anymore. There’s only so many times you can milk Danny Phantom as your masterpiece before everyone moves on.

The Holy Boast

I wanna make this short because I’m not a huge talker of religion, but I stand to say that you should NOT, under any circumstance, believe BPD, PTSD, autism, fucking heart & kidney failure can be “cured” or “healed” through sermons of prayer. This here? This is genuinely something else.

https://www.healingjourneys.today/

For clarity, this was a gospel conference hosted by Butch and his wife and yes, they openly proclaim that BPD, austism, and heart disease can be cured through prayer of holy worship.

Now, I’m gonna give a full disclosure right here because this most certainly biases my point here, like I’m gonna own this. But my grandpa was a religious man that suffer from health problems. He notably prayed to carry on, yes, but at the same time he sought medical help. Even he told me that prayers wasn’t gonna keep the pacemaker going, he went to the doctors and actually did more than read the bible to improve himself. He unfortunately passed, but he was in his 70s and I honestly couldn’t believe, as hard as I try, that he was gonna live forever. My grandpa would’ve no doubt died far earlier if he followed this conference’s logic.

My point is that this is personally unsettling. I seriously cannot believe this is how autism and religion works and it blows my mind that him and his wife thought this conference was a suitable idea. I’m not bashing them as christians, but thinking mental disorders and bodily diseases can be done away with motivational seminars because that’s basically what they are is a legit slap to the face. And the seedling idea that they’ve done this before blows my mind.

The Financial Flaker

This is very recent and everything is generally explained in the 12 minute video but long story short: Butch hired an artist and never paid them for their work. The artist in question, Kuro, describes what happened between him and Butch in this video and provides receipts. Can’t really add anything to this myself beyond this just builds to the idea that Butch cannot be trusted as a professional business maker. I believe he still has people working for him but from this video, it tells me that Hartman will gladly use those lower than him in favorable pursuits and will gladly throw ignorance when he wants to because his cartoon veteran status presents that shield from thinking he can do no wrong, which can mean throttling his hires.  Let’s end this.

The Conclusion

When I get down to it, Butch is almost a Machiavellian character in a way. It’s amazing how much the trust people have had with Hartman have evaporated in less than a couple years. It’s amazing how much his ego has truly shown after he stopped being a namestay in Nickelodeon. Haven’t even mentioned the times he arrogantly deflected criticism because he was a namestay at Nick and how a couple who’ve worked with are well aware of his ego. I can’t help but believe that even after everything, he claims ignorance to his fall from grace and keeps going. Even when more and more are knowing his true self, he’s mostly just doing what he’s been doing for the past few years.

It’s respectable in a way, but shows that the world will move on without him. Again, if you like Danny Phantom and Fairly OddParents, I won’t judge you for it nor say you should be ashamed. This isn’t about cancelling Butch, or get him to stop spreading whatever wacky things he believes in. It’s my personal take of how this man whom I once respected because of what he made before has lost every bit of that from me. It really feels like he grew up with that “I Created Your Childhood” mentality being a 4 time showrunner for almost a couple decades. And when he finally left Nickelodeon, I guess the chance to be that stand out self-made success got to his head and he finally showed his true colors. I now find it hard to believe Butch cares about the little guy that were his fans as much as he rides off his success and others who tolerate him. As such, like JK Rowling, more are seeing this side of him and leaving him behind. Meanwhile Butch is gonna chug on until he just loses steam. It’s kinda like Icarus where the guy will make every effort to fly to the sun. But sooner or later, he’s gonna fall, and in the end I doubt anyone’s gonna care to see it. I know he won’t.

[fyrapartnersearch]

SHAME SHAME SHAME

everybody's people watchin' everybody’s punch clockin’

hey how are ya my name is emmy and i’m here to search for a new rp partner. a bit about me, i’m 22, canadian, work two part time jobs and attend uni full time and i go by she/her pronouns. i reside in the mountain timezone and i am thrilled to hopefully start writing with you. 

why should you write with me? because i promise that if i pick up an rp with you i’m gonna put 100 and 10 percent of my effort into our story. i’m looking for a long term gig, someone who i can really weave a plot with, someone who digs the cut of my jib. i want us to be able to sob over our characters together late into the night. i want us to exchange songs, playlists, posts found on the internet, aesthetic boards, whatever reminds us of our characters/our plot.

i will probably spam you with pictures of my character’s playby and i want to see mad pics of yours, too. i want us to go through our character’s struggles together as well as be able to cheer together when our characters get a hold on their situation and come up on top. i want us to inspire one another with our writing. it’s gonna be great. you & me honey. 

right now I'm looking for 1-2 new rp partners who are interested in something long-term and fully fleshed out. think 'mains'. 

gee, that sounds nice! i’m inclined to agree! but a few things you should know before you go any further: i write anywhere between full lit to lit + to novella style, so expect posts of at least 4 - 6 paragraphs baseline. sometimes i crank out 10. or just 5. depends entirely on what’s going on. i write according to situation, with a great amount of detail spent on what my character is thinking/feeling in response to yours. the replies you get will be fully fleshed out & enthralling. i am a stickler for grammar and spelling, though nobody’s perfect, i do occasionally have my slipups. all lowercase text is strictly kept to ooc communication. i can be sporadic with capitalization ooc but still keep good spelling. i will never pressure you into posting or writing ridiculous amounts just to match my post. i want you to have fun too! if i’ve had a bit too much to drink or am about to hit the hay, i’ll wait to post until i can give my post my full attention. usually i’ll be able to post at least once every week, sometimes multiple times a week depending on work & schoolwork. i'm available for ooc chat almost all the time. i also totally understand life happens and sometimes we just need a breather. ♥ i have bipolar depression, and sometimes my depression kicks my ass, but i’ll let you know when that happens.

oh goodness, what else? i write predominantly m/m pairings but i am open to m/f and f/f as well. i do not write high fantasy settings, sorry doll. my interests mostly align with modern day, slice of life kinda stuff, aside from the fandoms i do have. i don’t have many limits besides excessive gore, scat, mpreg, and writing smut for sake of smut. i love my romance just like anyone else does, but it’s got to have plot. our characters have to have chemistry or else i get bored. i haven’t doubled before but i think i’d be down for it with the right plot. usually i prefer that we play one character each, or we play multiple characters within a plot, but not usually more than one plot at the same time. but!!! i am totally willing to try new things!! just be patient with me as i learn m'kay? i have had several threads going at once with one partner which can be super fun. also most of my characters are pretty kinky but like, i prefer that we talk about kinks and limits one on one as opposed to airing out my character’s laundry. also- i wanna be your friend ooc. let’s chat. i find it’s so much easier to have muse and post if i enjoy the virtual company of the people i’m writing with.

ok but what do you write? 

what *don’t* i write? kidding. here’s a bit of fandom for ya. if i’ve got plots listed, they’re the ideas i have, but i’m totally open to yours as well. stars denote how much i’m craving them. i’ll list the canon characters i write after i list the fandom: 

mafia 2: vito scaletta  ***plot for mafia 2 a: we explore the dynamics of a relationship between vito and your oc. your oc could be in a position of great risk- think outside of the mafia, possibly a police officer, prostitute. some position where power dynamics could be played with. if the pairing is m/m we also deal with the themes of internalized homophobia and coming to terms with one’s identity. 

*bioshock 1, 2 & infinite: brigid tenbenbaum, andrew ryan, frank frontaine & eleanor lamb, sofia lamb & booker dewitt 

**marvel cinematic universe: tony stark, steve rogers

***greater marvel universe: logan howlett, carol danvers  ****random plot: we do a crossover and we ship sharon carter/carol danvers. i just. uuugh i have a lot of feelings about them and i have hella muse for these babes. lemme know if you’re down to give this a shot i will love you forever no word of a lie. 

but honestly where my heart lies is within oc rp. here are a few plots i have of mine, stars denote how much i’m craving them:

****(m/m) power & politics: my oc is a prestigious state senator, who lives a double life. he is currently in the closet with no intent on leaving it anytime soon. however, a certain someone falls into his life, making him question what he thought he knew for certain. your oc breaks down the walls my oc has put up and changes him into a softer, better man. however, with an upcoming presidential campaign on the horizon for my oc, the limits of the secret relationship will be pushed and pulled beyond what both parties have ‘signed up for.‘

****(m/m) the guardian: your oc is a newcomer to the nhl but is quickly making waves- think connor mcdavid style. he’s young and impressive, but mostly, impressionable. he starts to get battered around by both his teammates and opposing teams. after a few hard hits and fowl play within the game that have cost your oc bench and recovery time, the team’s coach calls in reinforcements to boost the team’s morale and serve as a protector to your oc. my oc is a player who hasn’t got the talent part but has got a huge heart. not to mention… huge hands. good for makin’ fists. good for fightin’.  my oc protects your oc during the games, coming to your oc’s aid, picking fights for your oc and protecting him on the ice. as such, the two players grow attached to one another.. perhaps too attached for the captain to be comfortable with. possibilities for a love triangle and other complications, for sure

***(m/m) too good to be true: our ocs start out in the whl, both as promising wingers. their good chemistry is vital to bringing back their team’s success. however, one of our ocs starts to get too attached to the other, and when an nhl draft separates them, one of our ocs is all too eager to cut contact and try to forget. the two excel in their nhl careers without one another, and end up on nhl teams with a history of deep rivalry. occasionally, the gloves hit the ice, fueled by the tension of unresolved feelings and the pressure of the respective teams to keep up the rivalry. the two are reunited when they are both chosen to play nationally for the same team, and are forced to reconcile what they have both buried so deeply within them. 

***(m/m) big money: these two ocs play for rival teams in the nhl. while their teams have a history of tension, our two ocs take it to the next level. audiences are more excited to watch these two fight than they are to watch the game itself. there’s a market in the violence between these two, and a reputation to maintain on both ends. if the public found out that these two were secretly seeing one another, their careers would both be over. 

**** (m/m) sugar daddy: my oc is a law student studying in your oc's country in order to get their degree abroad. they're from eastern europe and uh. broke af. they settle into an arrangement with your oc where your oc agrees to ~pay him for his company after they meet while my oc does camming online to make ends meet. we could take it anywhere- your oc could whisk mine off his feet and 'save' him or. be toxic & trashy and make my oc's life hell.

okay and, here are just some general prompts that could be intertwined with the plots above, or could be something we use to springboard into our own rp:

my oc has serious commitment issues. they often go around ‘ghosting’ individuals after 4-5 dates, with little to no explanation of why. your oc falls for mine, and is the first to confront my oc about their shitty habits. 

your oc and my oc were best friends, but they lost touch over a stupid fight they had when they were preteens. they can’t believe that they’re seeing one another in a bar, halfway across the world from where they met. 

your oc and my oc were flames. my oc proposed to yours, but yours turned them down. they never spoke again… until they were sharing a crammed elevator, with my oc being completely intoxicated, and still confessing their feelings for your oc. 

your oc is a huge fan of my oc’s nhl career/political career. your oc wins a contest to meet and have dinner with my oc. while my oc expects a boring night out, my oc is completely surprised by how well they hit it off with your oc. 

my oc, your first oc and your second oc all grew up together. your first oc has always been pining for my oc’s attention, and is thrilled when my oc and your first oc finally get together. they develop a long term relationship, but my oc knows it would devastate your first oc if they told them that they have been seeing your second oc for most of the relationship. 

i recognize that a lot of these focus on the nhl/the lives of professional hockey players- please don’t be worried about hockey knowledge/nhl jargon/whatever else goes through your head! i’m more interested in sport as a realm for drama than i am for following the rulebook and being 100% accurate to life when it comes to hockey. there’s a lot i don’t know and am still needing to learn, myself! if you know a lot, great!! if you don’t, let’s figure things out together! as for general oc ideas, here’s a list:

professor x student

veteran x civillian

cop x criminal 

psychiatrist x patient

** OC superheroes (I have a lot of muse for this one!)

street racing, fast-and-furious-esque setting

rival gangs 

** nhl/hockey based (lol obviously)

small town canadiana or americana 

fun, fluffy romance based modern settings

darker themes such as addiction, abuse, etc - i find it cathartic sometimes to write about violent material buuuut this has to be really fleshed out between us

historical setting- preferably, the second world war/1940s-1960s 

light worldbuilding - new to this but wanting to learn

honestly whatever you can pitch to me that isn’t high fantasy :)

i can expand on and work with any of these ideas, these are just like, topics. whatever i do with you, i promise it’ll be fleshed out, with tons of opportunity for drama. 

hell yeah let’s do this pal 

if any, and i mean any, of this piqued your fancy, pleaaaase shoot me an email at 

↳ ehmmywrites@gmail.com ! 

i will respond! but please send me something thoughtful! i’d like to hear what part of my ad that you’re interested in/why you chose to contact me. i am most wanting to rp over email and talk over google hangouts but i can be open to skype, too.  i sure look forward to hearing from you!   ♥

emmy

[aeniith]

WIP: Crypt of the Mind

This is a short story about a Tosi guy named Kel whose older sister Koma decides to leave and join the war with the Ríli. Because Tosi society is a matriarchy, it’s not common for young men to be living on their own (especially in middle class homes like this one), and he feels abandoned by his sister and worried for her safety. Soon, he finds that the strain of being left alone is aggravating some mental problems he’d had in the past. Problems increase for Kel when he starts to discover some unsettling facts about his family’s past, and discovers that his ancestral home may be haunted by secrets unknown, both figuratively, and maybe literally. 

Genre will be fantasy/scifi/paranormal with tinges of romance and adventure. Rating is at M for now just to be safe. Nothing to warrant the rating so far though. CWs for mental illness, mild violence, mentions of death, and paranormal scariness. 

Feedback is welcome if you feel like reading! 

If you asked his sister, there was always something to be angry about. Frankly, it scared him sometimes. Sometimes shescared him. Just like Māha had. But Koma was not their mother. She was just as fierce but her fierceness was driven by a stark ambition, an ever-present desire to climb higher andhigher. Māha had been content with her life, a bookkeeper for an agricultural family. Koma was not content. Koma was never content with what she had, always she had to have more and more.

If there was one thing he knew in his life, it was that Koma would be like this until the day she died. No amount of success or power was sufficient for her. It was tiring to him. Why couldn’t she just be happy with what she had achieved? Why did it always have to be more? Why couldn’t she have been endowed with their mother’s wisdom as well as her temper?

“Kel!” her voice rang out in the large, mostly empty foyer. “I thought you were buying more wine? Where is it?”

Kel peered around the wall from the darkness of the sitting room. “I was about to go into town.”

“Well hurry up. I have been working all day and I need my goddess-damned wine!”

“I know, I’m going now,” he replied, and went to the cloakroom to get his shoes and scarf. Not cold enough for a coat, not warm enough for no outer layers. Autumn was starting to turn towards winter, and living in the northern-most of the larger Tosi cities meant winter actually didsomething except make it rain a whole lot, such as it did in the Capital City.

She reallyshould stop drinking so much, this much he certainly knew. But it was so tiring to try to stop her—to try to stop her from doing anything. His sister seemed to have endless fight in her, and she didn’t choose her battles—everything was a battle with her. He had partially given up trying to fight her—on most things anyway. He couldn’t give up on other fronts. He still loved her too much. It was impossible for him not too—his only sister, who had practically raised him and his brothers since Māha’s untimely death. He owed her much, and his life revolved around her. He could no more help loving her than he could breathing. She was his older sister, his nas, and they were tied inextricably together. It was their nature.

Kel lifted the gezil weaving as he exited the front door. It was getting frayed and faded—possibly time for a new one. He shouldn’t feel excited about having to replace an old gezil—they were rather costly after all. But he couldn’t shake the feeling when he thought of who he wanted to commission a new one from. Hopefully, she would be at the market that day.

~

The sun was low in the sky in the late afternoon, filtering through the colored tarps and tents of the marketplace. Kel held his hand up to shade his eyes from the orange fire in the sky as he scanned the main square for a familiar face. Her stall was not always in the same spot since she didn’t always come to market.  At last he spied the telltale golden braids wrapped around her head. She wore a long deep purple robe and blue sash around her waist. Mīve, the best gezil mol, or weaver of geziltapestries, that the city could offer. She was not well known outside the south quarter at this point in her career, probably owing to her relative youth, but Kel knew her, and he knew her talent.

He approached the stall and bowed politely, his hand over his heart and his eyes briefly closed, as was the custom for men to show deference to women among the Tosi. She smiled sweetly and waved her hand back and forth in front of her face, signaling “no need” for such formalities, though this itself was a formality. Kel raised his gaze and smiled back. She was stunningly beautiful in the lowering sunlight, the warm hues lighting up her golden hair like fire, gleaming like mica in a river rock. He felt a surge of warmth through his cheeks and realized he didn’t know what he was going to say. I need a new gezil? How are you? I’m glad to see you again? No, he thought, these were all supremely stupid options, and he started to panic.

Fortunately, Mīze’s innate politeness kicked in and saved him the terror of having to choose the right greeting.

“Kel! I haven’t seen you here in months. Does your sister not let you out of the house much?”

She winked to indicate her joking manner, but Kel did not want to tell her how this was almost close to the truth. Besides when she had him running errands for her, Koma frowned on her brother wandering around the city unaccompanied. Sometimes she sent a servant or roped one of her friends into going with him, but this “monitoring” removed so much of the joy he had in simply walking and exploring by himself. He often took to the next best thing—taking advantage of the extensive and largely unused collections of books in his sister’s house.

“It’s, well,” he faltered. “I’ve been…busy.” This wasn’t remotely true—he’d been more bored than ever, but he felt he was slowly turning into a shut-in.

“I’m glad you finally made it out then. Are you in the market for a gezil?” she asked.

“Yes, actually. I noticed ours is fraying terribly—it is pretty old. Koma will be irritated if she spots it before I replace it.”

“Well I am glad to serve you!” she gave him an exaggerated bow with a flourish of her silver-ringed fingers. Kel nervously glanced up upon noticing how the movement exposed the tops of her pale breasts—white as eggs, he thought, hoping his blush was not evident.

“What design does she want? I have ez, kista, nazelu, ek kos…maybe even some with gold thread in here.” She started to pull out troves of carefully folded gezil, in a myriad of dizzying designs and colors, some embellished with glass beads, precious gems, pearls, silver amulets, and other finely made trinkets. Mīze was a truly gifted artisan. Kel wished he could buy them all.

“My sister’s tastes are more subdued than mine, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Now that surprises me,” Mīze replied, her eyes twinkling. “She doesn’t have taste in craftwork that matches her personality?”

“She likes muted colors: olive, mauve, brown, maroon.”

She narrowed her eyes. “A bit ironic. Surely she wouldn’t punish you for getting something a littlemore interesting?”

“To be honest, she probably won’t notice the design much. But she hates things getting old or messy, so I have to buy one.”

“Hmm, in that case, I’d say you could probably get away with something more festive than mauve, for Tek’s sake!” She shuffled the tapestries around and pulled out a few in deep crimson and vermillion hues, bejeweled with gold bells and glossy dark blue glass beads that glimmered like drops of oil in the sunlight.

“That one,” said Kel decisively, pointing toward the brightest of the bunch. Mīze smiled brightly and pulled it out for him to inspect more closely.

“A very good choice,” she said with practiced ease. She was so charming, Kel was sure her sales had to be through the roof. From the looks of her fine clothing, she was in no way hurting for money. Still, he loved seeing her so much, he felt sincerely happy to give her business.

“I’ll give you a discount too,” she added. “If you promise to come out more often! Surely your sister doesn’t mind? You should come with me to the new bar on Gasti Street, it just opened! I know you like opol ale.”

Kel felt his lips twitch with a smile. “How did you know that?” He had never told her any such thing.

“You’d be surprised the things I come to know around the marketplace. Everyone knows something interesting.” Still her ever-present, gleaming smile. Her teeth were far too white. Her eyes shone and a tiny dimple indented her right cheek. Kel felt he couldn’t stand to look into her eyes for too long at once.

“Well, if you insist, I’m sure I can find a way to get out. What time did you have in mind?”

“Right after the market closes, if you can!” She started to fold the gezilup and wrap it in burlap, placing it in a sack for him.

Kel felt a wave of apprehension. It would be difficult to get away. He’d have to make up some excuse. But he was nothing if not clever, and he knew it—he would figure out a way to leave and meet her. He couldn’t miss this chance.

He turned and paid her the amount she indicated—a good twenty percent less than her ticketed price, he noticed. He thanked her, took the gezil, and started off toward home. He was so distracted by his wandering (and admittedly somewhat frenetic) thoughts that he almost forgot his sister’s wine.

[ancientbrit]

Natter #4    7/4/2020

MI MG Natter #4  4th July 2020I hope you all have had a happy fourth - all fingers still attached and tummies filled. Pickle seems to be getting used to the bangs this year, or perhaps he is a little deaf. Usually, at the first bang, he disappears and hides under my bed. This time he has wandered upstairs and downstairs and doesn't seem to register the bangs much at all - which is good.

I am in contact with a guy back home who runs a regular allotment (PeaPatch here) blog, giving timely advice and other information related mostly to veggie & fruit culture. I find this very helpful as he jogs my memory on those extremely rare occasions when I forget. I know you think that I never forget, but I have to admit that there has been the occasional lapse ever since I stopped eating peanuts. Strange thing that. His words for July remind us that this month is the time to sow seeds for Fall and Winter veggie crops such as Chicory (does anybody actually grow this?), Chinese Cabbage, Kohl Rabi, Lettuce, French Beans, Beetroot, Carrots, Radish, Turnips, and Peas - pick early varieties - early Snow peas are an especially fast to crop

.If you have had the forethought to already start Leeks from seed, now is the time to plant out those starts. The easiest way to do this is to use an old broomstick handle and thrust it vertically into the soil to a depth of about 5-6".Just drop the seedlings carefully, roots first into the holes and then just water in - that's all you need to do. The water will wash soil from the sides of the holes down onto the roots and it will remain cool and moist enough to thoroughly root the seedlings well. The idea of doing it this way, apart from the ease of planting and gaining support from the sides, is that the hole blanches the stem of the leek as it grows to gain more usable parts of the plant. If they are kept reasonably moist they should grow quite rapidly through the Summer and be ready to make fabulous potato-leek soup in time to keep cold days at bay. If you have never eaten P-L soup accompanied by chunks of Crusty artisan bread generously spread with butter - you haven't lived. Food of the Gods this! If you have been growing spuds and have lifted them already, you can follow with a crop of French beans to both nourish yourself and the soil, or if beans aren't your thing try a green manure crop such as Mustard. However, bear in mind that if you have ever had Club Root on your cabbage family plants, do not use Mustard as it is also a brassica. Use one of the Pea family, both for the Nitrogen root boost, but also for the foliage. And now for something completely different:- Once more my friend Valerie Robertson has presented her view on things English on the other side of the pond and is sent all over the world.

Val is a very  highly qualified State Registered Nurse who knows whereof she speaks.

Here we go.

From: Valerie Robertson GAG 14 Hope all is well with all. All Quiet in the Western Front over this way. Seattle’s CHOP was liberated leaving an appalling mess The pubs are open  today so the protesters have disappeared. BLMUK. is proving to be an embarrassment to those who donated, bent the knee and supported a cause that advocates the abolition of the nuclear family (that means dad is superfluous), defund the police,  destroy capitalism and support censorship plus the necessity for every white person to acknowledge that they are all subconsciously racist and privileged, and own up to the “fact” that every institution is inherently racist and disproportionally  White supremacy managed. That’s a big ask, which has bewildered the millionaire black footballers, academics & artists,   Labour leader Sir Keith what’s his name, (why would a Labour leader accept a knighthood?)  and all the national institutions taking the knee, which the other men in the street saw, as bowing to street fighter activists outrageous demands. Ie supporting racial divide and suppressing diversity of opinions and abolishing history. Our moral leader Canterbury Arch Runcton, is also confused. He’s a woke bloke that got it wrong at Easter. Streaming his Easter service from his kitchen with his toaster in the background. For God's sake, he must have a parlour with a row of books as a backdrop, in his palatial abode. He’s now having a think about the effigies in the Cathedral and wondering which ones to get rid of. Should he paint Jesus black?  Jesus loves all the children of the world, be they yellow, black or white. What about the brown ones?  They were precious in His sight too? He’s going to need a lot of colours. The Bournemouth beach sunbathing nutters are bright pink still. The Cambridge academia have just funded a two-year study into the history of slavery to enable the oiks to confront their iniquitous past and say sorry to all offended by history. Waste of time, as it’s been done before, over and over and you can’t change it. I’ve got a better idea for them to study.   Research the Benin bronzes. There are 3,OOO of them but only 500 left in Nigeria, the rest in Europe and USA museums. They are exquisite. The Portuguese kicked off the Atlantic slave trade in 1400 from the port of Benin with gold, which the Africans turned into these fantastic plaques, I think but not sure. I’m too busy doing my epidemic virus studies to go to the British Museum and find out. And we are not allowed yet, to visit Portugal unless keen enough to fly to Spain and walk across the border to check up on the museum artifacts in Lisbon. It’s good to see Lewis Hamilton constructively addressing inequality in the motor racing world.  The aggrieved black community can be placated and inspired by their own incredibly successful race if they listen. We have diversity, we have opportunity, we have laws, education, healthcare, social services, state welfare funding and overall, a tolerant multicultural society, who are very tired of the woke politically-correct champagne socialists agenda over the last decade.  There are deep social and economic injustices which are nothing to do with slavery or racial prejudice. Lewis Hamilton lives in Monte Carlo to save paying a hefty U.K. income tax liability. He was raised in Stevenage and lived in a council house with his family partially supported by the welfare state. Is he a philanthropist who promotes the welfare of others by donating money for schools etc.? No he’s not if he’s a British citizen tax evader. Is he a Monacoan now.? Is he a hypocrite? I don’t know?  Perhaps the academics can ask the uni students to research,  write a paper and make up their own minds. Estate agents will not in future be using Master Bedroom in their ads. Connotations of slave masters etc. Uncle Bens rice is to be repackaged without the jolly black man, Aunt Jemima also and awaiting more news re. MasterCard, Master chef, Master Mind, Headmaster ( the lefty teachers union still keeping schools shut) Masters degree, a tricky one for Cambridge. We are living with the virus and hanging in with our self-imposed restrictions and socially distancing. The copper masks and latex gloves worked a treat when John needed to visit the GP surgery for a blood test to check prostate antigen level insomuch not coughing. Although London has seen a slight rise in the R rate, no doubt due to the mass protests, the infection rate remains stable and patients being more successfully treated with drugs, to avoid intensive care. The disproportionate ethnic infection rate is due to blood group, genetic disparity, and body mass ratio, and a difference in the percentage of T cells. These cells decline with age and are responsible for fighting off infection without causing a major auto-immune response. People past 65, have very few left.   This theory explains why the young can come in contact with the virus but don’t succumb, however, if repeatedly exposed will catch it and manufacture antibodies and can still remain asymptomatic. Mass testing suggests that 40 percent of the population has been exposed with few symptoms, the silent spreaders who have the herd immunity. So we know the virus is still around and can’t trust the idiots to self-isolate if positive. All we can hope for is that they wear a mask and keep away from the elderly. Once the herd immunity and those who have recovered from it reach 60 percent, providing the medically vulnerable and fatties avoid it, the virus will find no host, cannot, therefore, multiply and shed and theoretically die away.  So it’s a balance. As the months go on there is hope for more preventive medication to alleviate the symptoms and of course a vaccine. Last October, the WHO  found that U.K. and USA  were the best in the world prepared for a pandemic.  Cameron had placed an order for millions of PPE equipment with a French company with the deposit to fund the manufacturer to make it.  By the time U.K. needed it, we got the deposit refunded but the stocks were needed in France and they had sold some items at a higher price,  to Italy.  That’s Globalisation for you and the free market. Meanwhile, a couple who were distilling boutique gin in the midlands, altered their equipment to distill hand sanitizers and viral cleansing fluids as NHS  were buying it in from abroad at an inflated price. They now supply the NHS cheaply and in the past 12 weeks have made 30 million pounds profit. Well done as they are donating a substantial amount to Covid research. No doubt as a tax saving incentive, but still commendable. There’s a lot to be said for self-reliance.  The govt. with its 80 strong SAGE - the Scientific, Advisory Government Epidemic advisors, have caused the pandemonium. At the outset, the models and graphs predicting the scale have been proved wrong. Simple precautions were overlooked.  Emptying geriatric wards, filling up care homes with staff untrained in infection control was scandalous. Mask wearing should have been made compulsory on public transport, supermarkets and shops at the outset and at least some sort of temperature checking and contact tracing at airports and ferries. So, onto local lockdowns and long term containment.  Boris is getting on with Brexit and left Hanlon to contain the virus,  Hope the strategy works. I have faith in the laboratory’s scientists and the trials and the guinea pigs testing the emerging vaccines. Meanwhile, tomatoes coming along, being well-nourished and in good shape and we are up to four playing again at croquet. Sainsbury delivering without hassle and Miles and Giles still surprising me with a tablespoon of Baharat in a nifty environment-friendly container. It made the lamb taste different. The kennels are open but missed the boat as all the  rescue dogs are  adopted and long waiting lists for puppies.

A dog called Nigger, I imagine a black or brown Labrador,  who was loved and died in 1878, had a headstone in the animal cemetery in a Sussex village graveyard. The local stonemason has ground away the name as the villagers thought it might cause offence to visitors and that dog’s owners would understand as they were dead anyway and not around to ask permission. Just love kind people. The drought's over and it’s cool as we are and hope you are too. Take care Love from Val And from your fearless leader,Gordon

[druidcandy]

I’m taking a break from drawing to type, because I guess I hate my hands???

Whatever I’m done with the bullshit time for other bullshit

Here’s a bunch of worldbuilding questions that I’m answering for Clark Monroe, private detective and accidental blood mage

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with? Clark has his older brother Brandon, and his younger siblings Julie and Charlie. Clark is closest with Charlie because A) He still lives in Leviathan so they get to hang out a lot and B) Brandon’s over-competitiveness and Julie’s brattiness (which she’s grown out of) kept Charlie from hanging out with his siblings except his very chill second oldest sibling.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like? A little bit of that new england bostonian kind of “oh, ma” kind of thing. He’s a little exasperated at her a lot because she still tends to treat her kids like they’re kids, but he knows she means her best and is looking out for them still.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like? Kind of respectful, but lightly distant. Clark definitely gained his love of noir movies from his dad, but neither of them are particularly great communicators. That said, when Clark suddenly quit his job on the force (due to a very messy divorce), he was ready and able to quickly secure him a job as a landlord (that kind of fell off with time) and he helped get a private detective office.

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know? One time he shot a man in self defense and gained magic powers Less of a sudden change in self and more a massive realization of something that’s been happening his entire life, but yes. It takes place a fair amount of the way within his story so I don’t want to out and out say it, but Charlie is the first to know and keeps it secret until Clark tells the rest of his friends/family.

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets? Phone, wallet, several kinds of keys and keyrings, and a small notepad + pen.

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams? Sometimes he dreams about the lives of the people who were sacrificed in the ritual he accidentally finished. Usually once he realizes it, it turns into a mishmash of their lives, his, and various experiences and memories mixing themselves together.

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares? Sometimes he also dreams about their deaths too.

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target? He was a cop, so yes. His mom kept him from even getting near a gun until high school, where he started practicing on a shooting range with nothing larger than a pistol.

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up? He’s a little more broke than he was before, but considering he’s still got a hell of a lot of job and financial security he’s still pretty well off. Not suburban castle rich like Brandon, but doing pretty well.

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing? Clark will go to a beach in a tshirt, maybe a very conservative chopped tshirt bro tank if he’s gonna be somewhere really hot. He’s really uncomfortable with his shirt off in front of other people and he doesn’t really know why.

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been? I said it earlier as a joke, but literally singlehandedly stumbling your way into an occult ritual and having to shoot a crazy dude in self defense while lights swarm around him, leading said lights to swarm around you and lift you into the air before turning your gun into gold and sending out a shockwave that breaks windows before it all goes into your body is super terrifying when you have 0 context for the supernatrual and suddenly it’s all happening to you.

In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been? The week after his honeymoon. No more upcoming events, no deadlines, no nothing but a break from work and relaxing with his wife.

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way? It makes him nervous about where the blood came from and he thinks it’s gross to touch, but otherwise he’s completely fine.

Does your character remember names or faces easier? Faces, but he has a fantastic memory either way.

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not? No, because he’s managed to get himself into positions where he doesn’t really need a lot of capital or physical items for his job. He likes jewelry and jewelry making, and starts to take that interest from “quiet shame” to “thing I enjoy” when he learns he’s good at enchantment spells, but it’s more for utility than aesthetics and he’ll gladly enchant something ugly/cheap if it has a strong enough emotional connection to the person (because that usually makes the spell way stronger).

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success? In his mind they’re interchangable. He likes doing a good job at things. At the end of the day though he’s more into happiness.

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child? He was really into batman and had some cool action figures. Brandon calls him “boy wonder” sometimes still.

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others? Wisdom. He’s seen too many movies where the ambition of man leads to hubris and a downfall.

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before? He’s a doormat who will take a lot of nonsense from people he’s seeing until it all boils over at once, and tends to not start arguments but definitely continue them. He’s also overly negative/critical at times. This lead to an incredibly messy divorce that lead him to resign from the force (since his ex worked with him) and kind of distance himself from most of his friends.

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism? He mostly compares himself on a professional level to criticize himself, although there are moments where he mentally goes “I’m a tall sack of crap in a crappy trenchcoat and this person looks astounding”.

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others? He usually thinks “this is just a thing that happens”, but most of the time if he’s blaming things he’s blaming himself.

What does your character like in other people? He likes honesty and straightforwardness, along with the ability to have fun with themselves.

What does your character dislike in other people? Coldness and callousness. He likes people who are honest, but you can only take it too far before being an asshole at heart.

How quick is your character to trust someone else? Depends on what they need to be trusted in and what they do. Clark believes actions are louder than words, and some of his actions are 

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person? If there’s reason to investigate, there’s reason to investigate. That said, if he knows the person, he often goes to them first to try and get the story of what’s happening before getting them in real trouble.

How does your character behave around children? Cool uncle. But like, a chill cool uncle. Benji, one of his nephews, has literally ran away to end up at his house after getting in a fight with his parents before.

How does your character normally deal with confrontation? He tries to be a calming and defusing presence, but is quick to action if he thinks someone could get hurt.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation? Quick if they’re hurting something or doing something that could hurt others, slow otherwise.

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true? Clark basically always thought detectives were cool. He got real interested in cooking in high school, but by then it was too little too late.

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting? Gross food, unclean kitchens, and slutwear in public. Satur, an incubus who’s bonded to his freeloading roommate, typically is responsible for two of these at all times.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable. Watching Casablanca for the millionth time and eating good food.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable. Having to introduce his real life friends to magical elements, especially if they have a fear of what he’s introducing.

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve? Defensive, but he won’t say anything about it out loud. He’ll usually get mad quietly, and rant about it later. He takes criticism better if someone means well by it.

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method? If it’s meant to work in that situation (whether or not it still does), he’ll try over and over before finally moving on. If it’s just a guess or an idea, he’ll just as quickly jump ship onto something that will possibly work.

How does your character behave around people they like? He is the unfortunate but necessary Dad Friend. But like, a cool dad. He tends to get worried for other’s safety easily and he’s always willing to lend a hand or an ear to people.

How does your character behave around people they dislike? He’s somewhat unsubtle in his contempt of people he dislikes, but tends to avoid rather than cause a scene if they share mutual friends or it’d be a bad time to get in a fight.

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status? Honor. Clark doesn’t really care about his position in life, but likes to think of himself as a good person and secretly tries styling himself after a noir hero.

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat? He is more likely to remove the threat than remove himself, if it’ll help other people.

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)? Got bit by a class rabbit once. Ever since, he’s been nervous around animals (which is why he prefers living in a city).

How does your character treat people in service jobs? He’s polite, tips well, and is generally understanding about stuff, but he’s the kind of person who will pull out case notes and sit for hours looking over his work without actually ordering anything.

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first? Clark usually feels like he needs to earn things, but he still gets frustrated when he doesn’t get them right away.

Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them? He’s had role models, but never a parental figure other than his own.

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them? He’s had a freeloader (who became a capable adult with the help of an incubus), a “son” (not flesh and blood but made of magic), and someone else’s kid after they disappeared suddenly.

How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it? The other person has to say it first usually, and he usually doesn’t say it unless he’s in a setting where it’s just him and the other person. He’s not a big fan of vulnerability in front of more than one person. He can’t say it without meaning it, too.

What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them? The thing that scares him is most blood mages just get really good at not dying. He’s scared he won’t, anymore.

[special-agent-fiction]

Duo - Chapter 9

New York City; 1961

1960’s London was one thing, Eva mused as she gazed lovingly at the wondrous city and country she had left all those years ago, but 1960’s New York was definitely where they were meant to be; one look at the love-struck grin on her husband’s face told her they’d made the right choice.

The vaguely worded letter from the CIA had been sat on their welcome mat for months and tearing into the envelope as they collapsed onto the sofa mere hours after touching down from another far-flung mission, the urgent words had prompted a crease between Napoleon’s brows that hadn’t shifted until they’d managed to get a call through to the Virginia based offices.

Being re-called to one’s home nation at the drop of a hat was expected when you pledged your allegiance to a specific flag but it had been surprising with just how much time they’d allocated their thief-turned-Agent to pack up his life and return to the States. Even more surprising had been their insistence that he bring his wife.

She’d never seen Waverly’s eyebrows rise so far when she showed him the letter.

Things were better between them now, in the 14 months since she’d wed Napoleon, the pair had more successful missions under their belt than any agency thought possible; but they’d proved themselves. Long haul flights and all-nighters all added up to a 100% success record and all without causing too big an international incident.

The MI5 boss had slowly come around to Napoleon, despite never meeting the man (“covers must be maintained Eva; an American spy knowing who exactly I am is asking too much of the agency”) and upon their return from Paris, a small potted plant sat next to an embossed photo album containing photographs of their wedding that they could only have dreamt of; she’s yet to ask how he managed to clear the use of high level security clearance gadgets for their wedding and to be honest…she didn’t want to know; the simple fact that he, the man that had taught her so much, had been there was enough.

And so, with the promise of making contact once they were settled, he had waved her off to another continent.

Truth be told, Napoleon was glad be back in semi-sunshine after the almost constant dreariness of London. Don’t mistake him; the capital was absolutely beautiful and the rainy days had provided many an excuse to wander around galleries and museums but it was the days when the grass was crisp and the air dry that he remembered with most fondness.

But this, he noted as the cab driver unloaded their bags, this was home. Not only were they back in America, but they were in the unofficial second capital; NYC.

He watched with glee as Eva frowned up at the looming Brownstone in front of them and knew she was waiting for him to speak first. He remained silent though and with a nod to the driver; their two small bags that contained only the things they could not live without, were whisked up and into the building; deposited in the foyer before the driver sped away.

“Napoleon…” He let his grin bloom as she turned to him.

“Yes dear?” She scowled at the tone he was using.

“Why are we in the suburbs when the CIA themselves sent us the address of an apartment block?”

“Well…” He trailed off, shoving his hands into his pockets and relishing in the sun’s rays warming his face. “…it was such a dreary part of town.” He drawled, his smile growing at his wife’s huff. “And we deserve so much better.”

“We’ve been here…” She checked her watch. “…two hours, Napoleon.” She frowned at him. “Two hours and you’ve already irritated them.”

He simply shrugged, removing his hands from his pockets and taking her hand.

“I’m tired of apartments.” He told her. “The people are lovely and a view from a high floor is an obvious plus-”

“But?”

“But I want a home, Eves.” He told her, squeezing her hand and nodding up to the building. “I want stairs and a loft…my own front door…” He trailed off again. “And I want it with my wife.”

He watched as her eyes moved from window to window before finally settling back on him.

“It’s ours?”

“All bought and paid for.” He told her proudly, choosing not to add the exact source of the money until she’d fully come to love the place.

“Our own home.” She mused and he felt himself fall for her all over again as she turned to him fully and grinned. “I love it.”

“I love you.” He told her earnestly and watched her blush slightly. “Which means that we’re going to do this right this time.” She frowned at his words but soon laughter was bubbling out of her as he scooped her into his arms and her own looped around his neck.

“You’re going to carry me over the threshold?” She laughed.

“I would have in London but were both incredibly drunk and lived on the fourth floor; we barely made it up the stairs anyway.” He reminded her as she nestled further into his hold, legs swinging from their draped position over his left arm.

“Then lead on.” She nodded to the doorway and after pressing a kiss to his beloved wife’s cheek, bounded as fast as he could up the stone steps before dramatically stepping over their threshold, setting her down, shutting the door and promptly pressing her back against it; ready to continue with the re-enactment of their wedding night.

A month later and Eva was impressed by how much they’d achieved; they had made the empty house a home; complete with comfortable sofas and bursting bookshelves and a fully modernised kitchen.

Everything that had been deemed ‘unimportant’ had been shut away in an unused bedroom and they had been living here in bliss while they awaited word from Langley.

A part of her did miss their old London flat; the small space had been cosy and being only a few steps from everything had been…convenient. The views though, well they were mostly the same and often, if she shut her eyes tight and just listened; she could mistake the sounds from the open windows as those of London.

The house still floored her every time she stepped inside; the sleek floors and high ceilings often had her pinching herself and the fact that there even was a spare room housing nothing but boxes was amazing.

Growing up, she’d lived in a small but comfortable house with her parents, but after losing her father and her mother growing ever distant…space had never been something she’d considered; she was happy to lock herself away in her bedroom and just relax there in that small room.

But here, here they had more than enough space and sometimes she just wanted to shut them away in one room and just be together.

The fact that they now owned so much space was the topic that seemed to be constantly on Napoleon’s lips. First, he had boasted about it; clearly proud to have come so far in life but now, now he was being covertly pushy about a certain topic…one that she had tuned out of a long time ago.

“Eves?” She turned her head to him and watched him sigh from his braced position at the breakfast bar. “Eves, you’ve got to at least talk about this.” She mirrored his sigh as she pushed off the counter facing the window currently bathing their kitchen in light and faced him.

“Talk about what?”

“You know what!” He bit out, running a frustrated hand through his hair.

“No, Napoleon, I don’t.” She told him, crossing her arms defensively as they squared off. “I don’t know because you only talk around the subject without ever actually saying anything.”

“You know what I mean, Eves…I just don’t-”

“Don’t know how to word it?” She finished for him. “Maybe try something more specific than constantly mentioning how many bedrooms we have or how safe the sidewalk seems to be.” She watched him expectantly.

“Eves…”

“Just say it.” She bit out each syllable and a silence fell over them as he pushed off the bar and stared at her.

“Kids.”

In retrospect, running from the house, down the pavement and skidding into a park…had probably not been the best way to respond to that one word.

In fact, Eva told herself as she sat in a quiet corner of the lusciously green space, it probably wasn’t a good way to respond to anything.

Usually, they solved any marital problems rationally; she refused to sleep with him and he stalked around for a few days before one of them almost gets shot on mission and then…well then they have I’m-so-angry-but-I-love-you-and-you-almost-died sex, and then they’re friends again; the cause of their obviously pointless argument forgotten.

But this, this wasn’t something they could get past. She honestly wasn’t sure how she felt about the whole…children…thing.

She loved children. She reminded herself as in her peripheral vison she caught sight of a young group of kids playing together. They were adorable and she never wanted to put them down but at the first sight of a tear or the subtle paling of the cheek that signalled vomit and they were back in their parents’ arms and she was safe.

Safe.

That’s the one thing she kept coming back to. She’d been here an hour and it was the word that she couldn’t shake.

They were spies for Christ’s sake.

This time last month they were uprooting their entire lives to a new continent because Napoleon had been recalled. The month before they were being shot at while trying to organise said move.

Their lives were filled with danger and uncertainty and every time they entered a fight there was good chance only one of them was going to be coming home.

Adding a third, very needy person to their world was just asking for trouble. She’d had to stem laughter when, twenty minutes ago, she’d first pictured herself in her jumpsuit, gun in hand and a baby on her hip drooling uncontrollably.

It just wasn’t practical.

And yet, there was a part of her that did want exactly that. Some nights she woke in cold sweats from dreams where Napoleon walked out of the door and didn’t come back leaving her with a house full of children to raise by herself.

Because dammit, she wanted it. A perfect child with his eyes and her hair or her eyes and his hair; she didn’t care…they’d be perfect no matter what. She wanted to produce something that was half her and half him and undeniably theirs; tying them together forever in a way that nothing else can.

And then the night terrors come and she’s alone; either bleeding out and abandoning her family or losing him. And life without him, now she’d lived it at his side, was unthinkable. Napoleon Solo had changed her from the very moment he handed her a pen in a stuffy meeting room.

The bench squeaked as a body lowered itself onto its ancient wooden slats and she refused to look around, to acknowledge the body that she’d already identified by scent alone.

“Ev-”

“Can you really see us juggling international espionage with hourly feeds and nappy changes?” She asked, still facing the park before them.

“Nappy changes?”

“Diapers, Napoleon.” She told him, irately turning to face him. “You know; those things that babies wear?” She sighed as he remained silent; hands tucked neatly into the pockets of the trench coat she still associated with rainy days and rumbling buses. “It just isn’t feasible; not with our jobs.”

“You-”

“If the next thing out of your mouth is a suggestion for me to give up work; I’d stop now.” He closed his mouth and she fell against the back of the bench, slumping slightly and beginning to envy his coat as the crisp air pricked at her bare arms. “My job is as important to me as yours is to you.”

“I know.”

“And we’ve only be married a year.”

“I know.”

“And-”

“I know, Eves.” He captured her hands with his and she felt her skin lap at their warmth. “I know and I understand.” She relaxed slightly. “I’m not looking to knock you up tomorrow.” She forced a laugh at his lovely way of phrasing it. “I just…need to know if it’s something you want.”

“I want it Napoleon.” She told him, eyes downcast and voice barely above a whisper. “I want it so much.”

“Then discussion over.” He reached out and lifted her chin to force eye contact. “It’s not something for tomorrow, or next week or even next year…but at some point, the CIA and MI5 are probably going to retire us and…I’m just looking for something to look forward to.”

She was silent as she took it all in. Visions of the drooling hindrance baby began to vanish and instead she saw them slightly older with Napoleon dutifully sitting through tea parties while she searched for a school that would teach their son Rugby not Soccer. She saw it and she held onto it; tucking it away in a mental file marked ‘later’.

Retirement plans were common talk amongst spies; most involved beaches and women, but then again, most spies were single men. Having something different, and knowing that Napoleon wanted it too…

She was pulling him into a kiss within seconds and melted as his hands wrapped around the waist and pulled her along the bench until they were side-by-side and utterly oblivious to the world around them.

“Besides…” he began, pulling away from her slightly and shrugging out of his coat. “…I’m far too young and lively to be a father.” She laughed at the unspoken promise in his eyes as he placed the coat around her shoulders: nothing until we’re ready.

[rueur]

Morning Pages #39 (03.03.2017)

Friday 3rd March - 10:18 a.m.

So it’s been two days since I wrote, but at least I’m writing in the morning again. I’m going to the gym in a bit, after my breakfast has had time to settle in my stomach, and then I’m going to be on my way to Northcote for the weekend and also for most of next week. I’ll have a bit of work to do over the weekend but hopefully nothing major, because Evan and I have a bit of a big weekend planned. I’m trying not to think about it yet though, because I am seeing him TOMORROW and I am incredibly excited for that. But I also acknowledge that there are things I’ll need to do before that happens, like my university readings for next week and my tutorial responses for two subjects. I also need to write my pitch for my journalism class, and I think I’ll have to do something for advanced screenwriting too, I just don’t know yet? I don’t know, it takes some time to get back into the habit of studying every week and getting to grips with coursework is perhaps a skill that one never really masters. At any rate, it’ll be nice to be on my own at Emily’s for this weekend, that is when Evan won’t be over. He’s coming over on Saturday, and again on Sunday. He’ll be staying over on Sunday, which I’m looking forward to because I was at his house yesterday and was very tempted to stay the night. It didn’t help that he was asking me to, of course, but the matter was settled when I received a phone call from my mother who wanted me to come home. He then took me to the station and I managed to catch the second last train (the 11:58 p.m.) back to South Morang, and managed to get to the station at 12:20 a.m., and thathi picked me up from there and took me home. I texted Evan good night when I got home, and then stayed up till about 2 in the morning packing my bags to take to Northcote today. The thing is, I haven’t actually told ammi and thathi that I’ll be in Northcote this weekend, or at least I don’t think I’ve said it. Okay, I’m halfway through this first page and I think I might finish this after the gym, after I’ve unpacked at Northcote? Because I just realised that it’s 10:30 a.m., and I can assume I’ll be at the gym for maybe an hour or so, which means I’ll be on my way to Northcote around noon if I’m lucky, maybe 12:30 p.m., and then I’ll have the rest of the day to do some work. I also have to go and see Lauren today, but I don’t know how that’s going to work. Like do I feed the cats first or do I feed them when I get back from seeing Lauren? I’m supposed to go and see her at 3 p.m., but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do that because I have a responsibility to the cats. I need to send her a message and sort this out. It might mean heading down to South Yarra earlier, like around 1 maybe so that I can be home around 7 or 8 and then feed the cats then. Yes, that sounds good. I’ll sort that out in a bit, I just need to get the rest of my plans in order.

I won’t need a printer for this weekend because I don’t have any major assignments until the end of this month, but I will need to print out some resumes before I head out so that I can hand them out over the weekend. I think maybe fifteen should be fine, though that might even be a bit too much. Still, it’s better to have more than to have less, such is the way of this capitalist system which we both inhabit and maintain. I’m getting really frustrated with capitalism, which tends to happen with every new semester. I think all arts students are hyper aware of the failings of the structure of our global economy because it affects them a lot more than people who have more useful degrees. Artists can only thrive in prosperous nations, nations that have money to waste on the arts. That’s why the evolution of Colombo, Sri Lanka has been such a big deal not just for Sri Lankan citizens, but also to the international Sri Lankan community. It’s just such a blessing even watching the re-prioritisation of modern culture and artists in Sri Lanka following the civil war. Evan’s dad, Brian, and I had a rather interesting conversation about the Sri Lankan civil war amongst other things to do with my background, which he was very interested in. Okay, I’m going to have to talk about this later if I want to stay ahead of time today. I’m going to go and get ready for the gym and have a really great session today, and then I’m going to head off. I’ll return to today’s pages in a couple of hours, I think, at which point I’ll write a little more about seeing Evan’s place and meeting his parents, and WATCHING HIM PLAY!

I’m so sorry. It’s actually Saturday now, the 4th. It’s 11:14 a.m. and I am totally to blame for this massive spillage into today. I have decided however, that I will finish yesterday’s pages as well as do today’s pages later on today, just because it’s the weekend and I have time to kill. I’m also getting really into ‘The Progress of Julius’, the book by Daphne du Maurier that I bought in Northcote. I just listened to the song ‘Heaven Must Have Sent You’ by The Elgins and the whole time I was thinking of Evan. Now my computer is playing ‘Heaven Knows’ by Absynthe Minded. Elsa just died in ‘The Progress of Julius’ and she died knowing full well that Julius could have saved her life, and that he never had any intention of sending her to Switzerland to recuperate from her tuberculosis, but instead left her to die in England in the back room of his booming business (his one true love being his capital). She died staring right at him, wordless in her weakness, but her eyes revealing her knowledge of his betrayal, his abandonment of her. There seems to be a trend here. The whole world seems to be talking about love right now, and I know that the world generally does tend to talk about love. Love is perhaps the most important thing that could ever be. It’s the only positive thing we humans have managed to hold onto that exists in the ‘animal’ world, the world which we’ve mostly attempted to distance ourselves from by constructing our own world and then by filling this new meagre world with a plethora of endless distractions, distractions that cross over into one another so that there may never be a time that exists with little distraction. With any hope, a modern human being can cruise through their entire life without ever having to think at all. The three months leading up to her death, Elsa was oblivious to her forthcoming doom, only aware she was dying in her last few moments of life. Julius held her desperate hands in his own and just stared down at her, watching the life leave her with such a cruel detachment, feeling perhaps no remorse at all for lying to her during her last days on this earth. But in a way, Elsa also allowed herself to be distracted. She didn’t think at all about the fact that she was suffering, that she was on her deathbed even. She was so caught up in the thought of travelling somewhere else, leaving all of the ill fortune she had experienced in London, and going on to Switzerland which in her mind was so romanticised that it was definitely symbolic enough to be a kind of heaven for her. In a way, her travelling to Switzerland would have been a death in its own, and she was looking forward to it for that reason. She wasn’t happy in her life, she wanted to leave it. She just didn’t want to die.

I saw Lauren yesterday and we spoke about this briefly, how people will spend their lives being unhappy just for the sake of achieving something in lieu of happiness, usually money. People will devote all their time and energy into securing financial stability, believing financial stability to be the modern elixir of life and thus, of lasting happiness. She told me about a girlfriend she once had who had organised her entire young adult path and her subsequent career path into attaining monetary success, furthering herself in an academic field she had no interest in and then devoting herself to an industry she had no passion for, just so she can reach some abstract level of prestige. Lauren would try and reason with this person, and very often also questioned their decisions. Lauren asks questions from everybody she meets, myself included. They can actually be very helpful, and they were for me yesterday too. But I’ll get to that in a second. Anyway, when Lauren began to question this person, they would shut that conversation down almost immediately. And after a while they just broke contact with her all together, because they didn’t want anybody challenging their mindset and their plans, because it had taken enough self-persuading and conditioning of themselves to follow these plans in the first place. They have essentially done everything in their power to repress their true selves in any way available to them. Oh, I should also mention that this person is gay but nobody knows about that side of them, and they have no intention of coming out of the closet any time soon and Lauren was also baffled about that too. It’s like this woman didn’t really like herself at all.

I don’t know I’m writing about all of this. It just feels like the thing to be doing right now. I’m kind of waiting for Evan right now, and I’m getting antsy. He’s supposed to be over any second and I have music playing and I’m typing at breakneck speed right now, sitting on the couch at Emily’s place and just kind of...distracting myself. Passing the time. I’m singing a lot. Right now I’m singing ‘Love Lockdown’ by Kanye, which is an unbelievably sexy song for me honestly. I think it’s because they played it in ‘skins’ when Panda lost her virginity to Cook despite the fact that she had spent the entire night crying and missing Thomas. That episode was so powerful, holy shit. The entire show is fantastic, honestly. So well-written, so raw, and sincere. They seriously covered all the bases, I mean young people in the United Kingdom must feel so supported because their media is just so inclusive and non-judgemental. It’s a little infuriating looking at our media in comparison to theirs. I mean the ABC is good, and SBS is also fairly well-organised to an extent, but there’s very little there that’s been written for young adults. It’s either for children or middle aged people. Or older people, even. Maybe this is what I should be focusing on, in my writing. I should be writing for young people. Honestly though, I feel like that’s all I’ve been doing for a while. My film for example, is easily relatable to young people regardless of whether they’re ethnic or not. It’s all about fitting in anyway, and young people are usually the people who struggle in that field, because they’re still young enough to be self-conscious and to think that what other people think of them matters. Lauren was telling me that she’s grown past that now, and at the age of 21 she no longer feels stifling levels of being self-conscious. She just allows herself to live. I would like to reach that someday. Lord knows I need it. I waste so much of my energy fretting. I’m fretting right now. I’m very much over it.

[ancientbrit]

Natter #5  4th July 2020

MI MG Natter #5 4th July 2020I hope you all have had a happy fourth - all fingers still attached and tummies filled. Pickle seems to be getting used to the bangs this year, or perhaps he is a little deaf. Usually, at the first bang, he disappears and hides under my bed. This time he has wandered upstairs and downstairs and doesn't seem to register the bangs much at all - which is good. I am in contact with a guy back home who runs a regular allotment (PeaPatch here) blog, giving timely advice and other information related mostly to veggie & fruit culture. I find this very helpful as he jogs my memory on those extremely rare occasions when I forget. I know you think that I never forget, but I have to admit that there has been the occasional lapse ever since I stopped eating peanuts. Strange that. His words for July remind us that this month is the time to sow seeds for Fall and Winter veggie crops such as Chicory (does anybody actually grow this?), Chinese Cabbage, Kohl Rabi, Lettuce, French Beans, Beetroot, Carrots, Radish, Turnips, and Peas - pick early varieties - early Snow peas are especially fast to crop. If you have had the forethought to already start Leeks from seed, now is the time to plant out those starts. The easiest way to do this is to use an old broomstick handle and thrust it vertically into the soil to a depth of about 5-6". Just drop the seedlings, roots first into the holes and then just water in - that's all you need to do. The water will wash soil from the sides of the holes down onto the roots and it will remain cool and moist enough to thoroughly root the seedlings well. The idea of doing it this way, apart from the ease of planting and gaining support from the sides, is that the hole blanches the stem of the leek as it grows to gain more usable parts of the plant. If they are kept reasonably moist they should grow quite rapidly through the Summer and be ready to make fabulous potato-leek soup in time to keep cold days at bay. If you have never eaten P-L soup accompanied by chunks of Crusty artisan bread generously spread with butter - you haven't lived. Food of the Gods this! If you have been growing spuds and have lifted them already, you can follow with a crop of French beans to both nourish yourself and the soil, or if beans aren't your thing try a green manure crop such as Mustard. However, bear in mind that if you have ever had Club Root on your cabbage family plants, do not use Mustard as it is also a brassica. Use one of the Pea family, both for the Nitrogen root boost, but also for the foliage. And now for something completely different:- Once more my friend Valerie Robertson has presented her view on things English on the other side of the pond. From: Valerie Robertson GAG 14 Hope all is well with all. All Quiet in the Western Front over this way. Seattle’s CHOP was liberated leaving an appalling mess The pubs are open  today so the protesters have disappeared. BLMUK. is proving to be an embarrassment to those who donated, bent the knee and supported a cause that advocates the abolition of the nuclear family (that means dad is superfluous) defund the police,  destroy capitalism and support censorship plus the necessity for every white person to acknowledge that they are all subconsciously racist and privileged., and own up to that every institution is inherently racist and disproportionally  White supremacy managed. That’s a big ask, which has bewildered the millionaire black footballers, academics, artists,   Labour leader Sir Keith what’s his name,  and all the national institutions taking the knee, which the other men in the street saw, as bowing to street fighter activists outrageous demands. Ie supporting racial divide and suppressing diversity of opinions and abolishing history. Our moral leader Canterbury Arch Runcton, is also confused. He’s a woke bloke that got it wrong at Easter. Streaming his Easter service from his kitchen with his toaster in the background. For God's sake, he must have a parlour with a row of books as a backdrop, in his palatial abode. He’s now having a think about the effigies in the Cathedral and wondering which ones to get rid of. Should he paint Jesus black?  Jesus loves all the children of the world, be they yellow black or white. What about the brown ones?  They were precious in His sight too? He’s going to need a lot of colours. The Bournemouth beach sunbathing nutters are bright pink still. The Cambridge academia have just funded a two-year study into the history of slavery to enable the oiks to confront their iniquitous past and say sorry to all offended by history. Waste of time, as it’s been done before, over and over and you can’t change it. I’ve got a better idea for them to study.   Research the Benin bronzes. There are 3,OOO of them but only 500 left in Nigeria, the rest in  Europe and USA museums. They are exquisite. The Portuguese kicked off the Atlantic slave trade in 1400 from the port of Benin with gold, which the Africans turned into these fantastic plaques, I think but not sure. I’m too busy doing my epidemic virus studies to go to the British Museum and find out. And we are not allowed yet, to visit Portugal unless keen enough to fly to Spain and walk across the border to check up on the museum artifacts in Lisbon. It’s good to see Lewis Hamilton constructively addressing inequality in the motor racing world.  The aggrieved black community can be placated and inspired by their own incredibly successful race if they listen. We have diversity, we have opportunity, we have laws, education, healthcare, social services, state welfare funding and overall, a tolerant multicultural society, who are very tired of the woke political correct champagne socialists agenda over the last decade.  There are deep social and economic injustices which are nothing to do with slavery or racial prejudice. Louis Hamilton lives in Monte Carlo to save paying a hefty U.K. income tax liability. He was raised in Stevenage and lived in a council house with his family partially supported by the welfare state. Is he a philanthropist who promotes the welfare of others by donating money for schools etc.? No he’s not if he’s a British citizen tax evader. Is he a Monacoan now.? Is he a hypocrite? I don’t know?  Perhaps the academics can ask the uni students to research,  write a paper and make up their own minds. Estate agents will not in future be using Master Bedroom in their ads. Connotations of slave masters etc. Uncle Bens rice is to be repackaged without the jolly black man and awaiting more news re. MasterCard, Master chef, Master Mind, Headmaster ( the lefty teachers union still keeping schools shut) Masters degree, a tricky one for Cambridge. We are living with the virus and hanging in with our self-imposed restrictions and socially distancing. The copper masks and latex gloves worked a treat when John needed to visit the GP surgery for a blood test to check prostate antigen level insomuch not coughing. Although London has seen a slight rise in the R rate, no doubt due to the mass protests, the infection rate remains stable and patients being more successfully treated with drugs, to avoid intensive care. The disproportionate ethnic infected is due to blood group, genetic disparity, and body mass ratio, and a difference in the percentage of T cells. These cells decline with age and are responsible for fighting off infection without causing a major autoimmune response. People past 65, have very few left.   This theory explains why the young can come in contact with the virus but don’t succumb, however, if repeatedly exposed will catch it and manufacture antibodies and can still remain asymptomatic. Mass testing suggests that 40 percent of the population has been exposed with few symptoms, the silent spreaders who have the herd immunity. So we know the virus is still around and can’t trust the idiots to self-isolate if positive. All we can hope for is that they wear a mask and keep away from the elderly. Once the herd immunity and those who have recovered from it reach 60 percent, providing the medically vulnerable and fatties avoid it, the virus will find no host, cannot, therefore, multiply and shed and theoretically die away.  So it’s a balance. As the months go on there is hope for  more preventive medication to alleviate the symptoms and of course a vaccine. Last October, the WHO  found that U.K. and USA  were the best in the world prepared for a pandemic.  Cameron had placed an order for millions of PPE equipment with a French company with the deposit to fund the manufacturer to make it.  By the time U.K. needed it, we got the deposit refunded but the stocks were needed in France and they had sold some items at a higher price,  to Italy.  That’s Globalisation for you and the free market. Meanwhile, a couple who were distilling boutique gin in the midlands, altered their equipment to distill hand sanitizers and viral cleansing fluids as NHS  were buying it in from abroad at an inflated price. They now supply the NHS cheaply and in the past 12 weeks have made 30 million pounds profit. Well done as they are donating a substantial amount to Covid research. No doubt as a tax saving incentive, but still commendable. There’s a lot to be said for self-reliance.  The govt. with its 80 strong SAGE - the scientific, advisory government epidemic advisors, have caused the pandemonium. At the outset, the models and graphs predicting the scale have been proved wrong. Simple precautions were overlooked.  Emptying geriatric wards, filling up care homes with staff untrained in infection control was scandalous. Mask wearing should have been made compulsory on public transport, supermarkets and shops at the outset and at least some sort of temperature checking and contact tracing at airports and ferries. So,  on to local lockdowns and long term containment.  Boris is getting on with Brexit and left Hanlon to contain the virus,  Hope the strategy works. I have faith in the laboratory’s scientists and the trials and the guinea pigs testing the emerging vaccines. Meanwhile, tomatoes coming along, being well-nourished and in good shape and we are up to four playing again at croquet. Sainsbury delivering without hassle and Miles and Giles still surprising me with a tablespoon of Baharat in a nifty environment-friendly container. It made the lamb taste different. The kennels are open but missed the boat as all the  rescue dogs are  adopted and long waiting lists for puppies. A dog called Nigger, I imagine a black or brown Labrador,  who was loved and died in 1878, had a headstone in the animal cemetery in a  Sussex village graveyard. The local stonemason has ground away the name as the villagers thought it might cause offence to visitors and that dogs owners would understand as they were dead anyway and not around to ask permission. Just love kind people. The drought's over and it’s cool as we are and hope you are too. Take care Love from Val And from your fearless leader,Gordon

[fyrapartnersearch]

EVERYBODY'S PEOPLE WATCHIN'

everybody’s punch clockin’

hey how are ya my name is emmy and i’m here to search for a new rp partner. a bit about me, i’m 21, canadian, recovering from minor surgery, starting uni on september 8th and i go by she/her pronouns. i reside in the mountain timezone and i am thrilled to hopefully start writing with you. 

why should you write with me? because i promise that if i pick up an rp with you i’m gonna put 100 and 10 percent of my effort into our story. i’m looking for a long term gig, someone who i can really weave a plot with, someone who digs the cut of my jib. i want us to be able to sob over our characters together late into the night. i want us to exchange songs, playlists, posts found on the internet, aesthetic boards, whatever reminds us of our characters/our plot. i will probably spam you with pictures of my character’s playby and i want to see mad pics of yours, too. i want us to go through our character’s struggles together as well as be able to cheer together when our characters get a hold on their situation and come up on top. i want us to inspire one another with our writing. it’s gonna be great. you & me honey. 

gee, that sounds nice! i’m inclined to agree with ya! but a few things you should know before you go any further: i write anywhere between full lit to lit + to novella style, so expect posts of at least 4 - 6 paragraphs baseline. sometimes i crank out 10. or just 5. depends entirely on what’s going on. i write according to situation, with a great amount of detail spent on what my character is thinking/feeling in response to yours. the replies you get will be fully fleshed out & enthralling. i am a stickler for grammar and spelling, though nobody’s perfect, i do occasionally have my slipups. all lowercase text is strictly kept to ooc communication. i can be sporadic with capitalization ooc but still keep good spelling. i will never pressure you into posting or writing ridiculous amounts just to match my post. i want you to have fun too! if i’ve had a bit too much to drink or am about to hit the hay, i’ll wait to post until i can give my post my full attention. usually i’ll be able to post at least once a day, sometimes multiple times a day if we’re in the same or a similar time zone. i also totally understand life happens and sometimes we just need a breather. ♥ i have bipolar depression, and sometimes my depression kicks my ass, but i’ll let you know when that happens.

oh goodness, what else? i write predominantly m/m pairings but i am open to m/f and f/f as well. i do not write high fantasy settings, sorry doll. my interests mostly align with modern day, slice of life kinda stuff, aside from the fandoms i do have. i don’t have many limits besides excessive gore, scat, mpreg, and writing smut for sake of smut. i love my romance just like anyone else does, but it’s got to have plot. our characters have to have chemistry or else i get bored. i haven’t doubled before but i think i’d be down for it with the right plot. usually i prefer that we play one character each, or we play multiple characters within a plot, but not usually more than one plot at the same time. but!!! i am totally willing to try new things!! just be patient with me as i learn m'kay? i have had several threads going at once with one partner which can be super fun. also most of my characters are pretty kinky but like, i prefer that we talk about kinks and limits one on one as opposed to airing out my character’s laundry. also- i wanna be your friend ooc. let’s chat. i find it’s so much easier to have muse and post if i enjoy the virtual company of the people i’m writing with.

ok but what do you write? 

what *don’t* i write? kidding. here’s a bit of fandom for ya. if i’ve got plots listed, they’re the ideas i have, but i’m totally open to yours as well. stars denote how much i’m craving them. i’ll list the canon characters i write after i list the fandom: 

fallout: new vegas & 4: arcade gannon & elder maxson, paladin danse - also got a ton of ocs for both *plot for fallout 4 a: we explore the cut ending to the brotherhood of steel questline, wherein the sole survivor and paladin danse refuse maxson’s final orders for danse, and fight for danse to become the leader of the brotherhood of steel. would likely require you playing maxon or danse and me playing the other, with one of us playing the sole survivor.  *plot for fallout 4 b: your/my oc is a double agent for the railroad, with the mission to infiltrate the brotherhood of steel and send intelligence back to the agents back at home base. your/my oc becomes unexpectedly attached to elder maxson through work and circumstance. eventually, your/my oc must make a choice of where their allegiance lies: within the arms of arthur or with the faction they are fighting for. (potentially, we could double and do plot a & b at the same time.) 

mafia 2: vito scaletta  ***plot for mafia 2 a: we explore the dynamics of a relationship between vito and your oc. your oc could be in a position of great risk- think outside of the mafia, possibly a police officer, prostitute. some position where power dynamics could be played with. if the pairing is m/m we also deal with the themes of internalized homophobia and coming to terms with one’s identity. 

*bioshock 1, 2 & infinite: brigid tenbenbaum, andrew ryan, frank frontaine & eleanor lamb, sofia lamb & booker dewitt 

**marvel cinematic universe: tony stark, steve rogers

**greater marvel universe: logan howlett, carol danvers  ***random plot: we do a crossover and we ship sharon carter/carol danvers. i just. uuugh i have a lot of feelings about them and i have hella muse for these babes. lemme know if you’re down to give this a shot i will love you forever no word of a lie. 

but honestly where my heart lies is within oc rp. here are a few plots i have of mine, stars denote how much i’m craving them:

****(m/m) power & politics: my oc is a prestigious state senator, who lives a double life. he is currently in the closet with no intent on leaving it anytime soon. however, a certain someone falls into his life, making him question what he thought he knew for certain. your oc breaks down the walls my oc has put up and changes him into a softer, better man. however, with an upcoming presidential campaign on the horizon for my oc, the limits of the secret relationship will be pushed and pulled beyond what both parties have ‘signed up for.‘

****(m/m) the guardian: your oc is a newcomer to the nhl but is quickly making waves- think connor mcdavid style. he’s young and impressive, but mostly, impressionable. he starts to get battered around by both his teammates and opposing teams. after a few hard hits and fowl play within the game that have cost your oc bench and recovery time, the team’s coach calls in reinforcements to boost the team’s morale and serve as a protector to your oc. my oc is a player who hasn’t got the talent part but has got a huge heart. not to mention… huge hands. good for makin’ fists. good for fightin’.  my oc protects your oc during the games, coming to your oc’s aid, picking fights for your oc and protecting him on the ice. as such, the two players grow attached to one another.. perhaps too attached for the captain to be comfortable with. possibilities for a love triangle and other complications, for sure

***(m/m) too good to be true: our ocs start out in the whl, both as promising wingers. their good chemistry is vital to bringing back their team’s success. however, one of our ocs starts to get too attached to the other, and when an nhl draft separates them, one of our ocs is all too eager to cut contact and try to forget. the two excel in their nhl careers without one another, and end up on nhl teams with a history of deep rivalry. occasionally, the gloves hit the ice, fueled by the tension of unresolved feelings and the pressure of the respective teams to keep up the rivalry. the two are reunited when they are both chosen to play nationally for the same team, and are forced to reconcile what they have both buried so deeply within them. 

***(m/m) big money: these two ocs play for rival teams in the nhl. while their teams have a history of tension, our two ocs take it to the next level. audiences are more excited to watch these two fight than they are to watch the game itself. there’s a market in the violence between these two, and a reputation to maintain on both ends. if the public found out that these two were secretly seeing one another, their careers would both be over. 

okay and, here are just some general prompts that could be intertwined with the plots above, or could be something we use to springboard into our own rp:

my oc has serious commitment issues. they often go around ‘ghosting’ individuals after 4-5 dates, with little to no explanation of why. your oc falls for mine, and is the first to confront my oc about their shitty habits. 

your oc and my oc were best friends, but they lost touch over a stupid fight they had when they were preteens. they can’t believe that they’re seeing one another in a bar, halfway across the world from where they met. 

your oc and my oc were flames. my oc proposed to yours, but yours turned them down. they never spoke again… until they were sharing a crammed elevator, with my oc being completely intoxicated, and still confessing their feelings for your oc. 

your oc is a huge fan of my oc’s nhl career/political career. your oc wins a contest to meet and have dinner with my oc. while my oc expects a boring night out, my oc is completely surprised by how well they hit it off with your oc. 

my oc, your first oc and your second oc all grew up together. your first oc has always been pining for my oc’s attention, and is thrilled when my oc and your first oc finally get together. they develop a long term relationship, but my oc knows it would devastate your first oc if they told them that they have been seeing your second oc for most of the relationship. 

i recognize that a lot of these focus on the nhl/the lives of professional hockey players- please don’t be worried about hockey knowledge/nhl jargon/whatever else goes through your head! i’m more interested in sport as a realm for drama than i am for following the rulebook and being 100% accurate to life when it comes to hockey. there’s a lot i don’t know and am still needing to learn, myself! if you know a lot, great!! if you don’t, let’s figure things out together! as for general oc ideas, here’s a list:

professor x student

veteran x civillian

cop x criminal 

psychiatrist x patient

OC superheroes (I have a lot of muse for this one!)

street racing, fast-and-furious-esque setting

rival gangs 

nhl/hockey based (lol obviously)

small town canadiana or americana 

fun, fluffy romance based modern settings

darker themes such as addiction, abuse, etc

historical setting- preferably, the second world war/1940s-1960s 

light worldbuilding - new to this but wanting to learn

honestly whatever you can pitch me that isn’t high fantasy ☺

i can expand on and work with any of these ideas, these are just like, topics. whatever i do with you, i promise it’ll be fleshed out, with tons of opportunity for drama. 

hell yeah let’s do this pal 

if any, and i mean any, of this piqued your fancy, pleaaaase shoot me an email at 

↳ 

ehmmywrites@gmail.com

 !  i will respond! but please send me something thoughtful! i’d like to hear what part of my ad that you’re interested in/why you chose to contact me. i am most wanting to rp over email and talk over google hangouts but i can be open to skype, too. 

i sure look forward to hearing from you! 

✌ & ♥

emmy

[fyrapartnersearch]

EVERYBODY'S PEOPLE WATCHIN'

everybody’s punch clockin’

hey how are ya my name is emmy and i’m here to search for a new rp partner. a bit about me, i’m 21, canadian, recovering from minor surgery, starting uni on september 8th and i go by she/her pronouns. i reside in the mountain timezone and i am thrilled to hopefully start writing with you. 

why should you write with me? because i promise that if i pick up an rp with you i’m gonna put 100 and 10 percent of my effort into our story. i’m looking for a long term gig, someone who i can really weave a plot with, someone who digs the cut of my jib. i want us to be able to sob over our characters together late into the night. i want us to exchange songs, playlists, posts found on the internet, aesthetic boards, whatever reminds us of our characters/our plot. i will probably spam you with pictures of my character’s playby and i want to see mad pics of yours, too. i want us to go through our character’s struggles together as well as be able to cheer together when our characters get a hold on their situation and come up on top. i want us to inspire one another with our writing. it’s gonna be great. you & me honey. 

gee, that sounds nice! i’m inclined to agree with ya! but a few things you should know before you go any further: i write anywhere between full lit to lit + to novella style, so expect posts of at least 4 - 6 paragraphs baseline. sometimes i crank out 10. or just 5. depends entirely on what’s going on. i write according to situation, with a great amount of detail spent on what my character is thinking/feeling in response to yours. the replies you get will be fully fleshed out & enthralling. i am a stickler for grammar and spelling, though nobody’s perfect, i do occasionally have my slipups. all lowercase text is strictly kept to ooc communication. i can be sporadic with capitalization ooc but still keep good spelling. i will never pressure you into posting or writing ridiculous amounts just to match my post. i want you to have fun too! if i’ve had a bit too much to drink or am about to hit the hay, i’ll wait to post until i can give my post my full attention. usually i’ll be able to post at least once a day, sometimes multiple times a day if we’re in the same or a similar time zone. i also totally understand life happens and sometimes we just need a breather. ♥ i have bipolar depression, and sometimes my depression kicks my ass, but i’ll let you know when that happens.

oh goodness, what else? i write predominantly m/m pairings but i am open to m/f and f/f as well. i do not write high fantasy settings, sorry doll. my interests mostly align with modern day, slice of life kinda stuff, aside from the fandoms i do have. i don’t have many limits besides excessive gore, scat, mpreg, and writing smut for sake of smut. i love my romance just like anyone else does, but it’s got to have plot. our characters have to have chemistry or else i get bored. i haven’t doubled before but i think i’d be down for it with the right plot. usually i prefer that we play one character each, or we play multiple characters within a plot, but not usually more than one plot at the same time. but!!! i am totally willing to try new things!! just be patient with me as i learn m'kay? i have had several threads going at once with one partner which can be super fun. also most of my characters are pretty kinky but like, i prefer that we talk about kinks and limits one on one as opposed to airing out my character’s laundry. also- i wanna be your friend ooc. let’s chat. i find it’s so much easier to have muse and post if i enjoy the virtual company of the people i’m writing with.

ok but what do you write? 

what *don’t* i write? kidding. here’s a bit of fandom for ya. if i’ve got plots listed, they’re the ideas i have, but i’m totally open to yours as well. stars denote how much i’m craving them. i’ll list the canon characters i write after i list the fandom: 

fallout: new vegas & 4: arcade gannon & elder maxson, paladin danse - also got a ton of ocs for both *plot for fallout 4 a: we explore the cut ending to the brotherhood of steel questline, wherein the sole survivor and paladin danse refuse maxson’s final orders for danse, and fight for danse to become the leader of the brotherhood of steel. would likely require you playing maxon or danse and me playing the other, with one of us playing the sole survivor.  *plot for fallout 4 b: your/my oc is a double agent for the railroad, with the mission to infiltrate the brotherhood of steel and send intelligence back to the agents back at home base. your/my oc becomes unexpectedly attached to elder maxson through work and circumstance. eventually, your/my oc must make a choice of where their allegiance lies: within the arms of arthur or with the faction they are fighting for. (potentially, we could double and do plot a & b at the same time.) 

mafia 2: vito scaletta  ***plot for mafia 2 a: we explore the dynamics of a relationship between vito and your oc. your oc could be in a position of great risk- think outside of the mafia, possibly a police officer, prostitute. some position where power dynamics could be played with. if the pairing is m/m we also deal with the themes of internalized homophobia and coming to terms with one’s identity. 

*bioshock 1, 2 & infinite: brigid tenbenbaum, andrew ryan, frank frontaine & eleanor lamb, sofia lamb & booker dewitt 

**marvel cinematic universe: tony stark, steve rogers

**greater marvel universe: logan howlett, carol danvers  ***random plot: we do a crossover and we ship sharon carter/carol danvers. i just. uuugh i have a lot of feelings about them and i have hella muse for these babes. lemme know if you’re down to give this a shot i will love you forever no word of a lie. 

but honestly where my heart lies is within oc rp. here are a few plots i have of mine, stars denote how much i’m craving them:

****(m/m) power & politics: my oc is a prestigious state senator, who lives a double life. he is currently in the closet with no intent on leaving it anytime soon. however, a certain someone falls into his life, making him question what he thought he knew for certain. your oc breaks down the walls my oc has put up and changes him into a softer, better man. however, with an upcoming presidential campaign on the horizon for my oc, the limits of the secret relationship will be pushed and pulled beyond what both parties have ‘signed up for.‘

****(m/m) the guardian: your oc is a newcomer to the nhl but is quickly making waves- think connor mcdavid style. he’s young and impressive, but mostly, impressionable. he starts to get battered around by both his teammates and opposing teams. after a few hard hits and fowl play within the game that have cost your oc bench and recovery time, the team’s coach calls in reinforcements to boost the team’s morale and serve as a protector to your oc. my oc is a player who hasn’t got the talent part but has got a huge heart. not to mention… huge hands. good for makin’ fists. good for fightin’.  my oc protects your oc during the games, coming to your oc’s aid, picking fights for your oc and protecting him on the ice. as such, the two players grow attached to one another.. perhaps too attached for the captain to be comfortable with. possibilities for a love triangle and other complications, for sure

***(m/m) too good to be true: our ocs start out in the whl, both as promising wingers. their good chemistry is vital to bringing back their team’s success. however, one of our ocs starts to get too attached to the other, and when an nhl draft separates them, one of our ocs is all too eager to cut contact and try to forget. the two excel in their nhl careers without one another, and end up on nhl teams with a history of deep rivalry. occasionally, the gloves hit the ice, fueled by the tension of unresolved feelings and the pressure of the respective teams to keep up the rivalry. the two are reunited when they are both chosen to play nationally for the same team, and are forced to reconcile what they have both buried so deeply within them. 

***(m/m) big money: these two ocs play for rival teams in the nhl. while their teams have a history of tension, our two ocs take it to the next level. audiences are more excited to watch these two fight than they are to watch the game itself. there’s a market in the violence between these two, and a reputation to maintain on both ends. if the public found out that these two were secretly seeing one another, their careers would both be over. 

okay and, here are just some general prompts that could be intertwined with the plots above, or could be something we use to springboard into our own rp:

my oc has serious commitment issues. they often go around ‘ghosting’ individuals after 4-5 dates, with little to no explanation of why. your oc falls for mine, and is the first to confront my oc about their shitty habits. 

your oc and my oc were best friends, but they lost touch over a stupid fight they had when they were preteens. they can’t believe that they’re seeing one another in a bar, halfway across the world from where they met. 

your oc and my oc were flames. my oc proposed to yours, but yours turned them down. they never spoke again… until they were sharing a crammed elevator, with my oc being completely intoxicated, and still confessing their feelings for your oc. 

your oc is a huge fan of my oc’s nhl career/political career. your oc wins a contest to meet and have dinner with my oc. while my oc expects a boring night out, my oc is completely surprised by how well they hit it off with your oc. 

my oc, your first oc and your second oc all grew up together. your first oc has always been pining for my oc’s attention, and is thrilled when my oc and your first oc finally get together. they develop a long term relationship, but my oc knows it would devastate your first oc if they told them that they have been seeing your second oc for most of the relationship. 

i recognize that a lot of these focus on the nhl/the lives of professional hockey players- please don’t be worried about hockey knowledge/nhl jargon/whatever else goes through your head! i’m more interested in sport as a realm for drama than i am for following the rulebook and being 100% accurate to life when it comes to hockey. there’s a lot i don’t know and am still needing to learn, myself! if you know a lot, great!! if you don’t, let’s figure things out together! as for general oc ideas, here’s a list:

professor x student

veteran x civillian

cop x criminal 

psychiatrist x patient

OC superheroes (I have a lot of muse for this one!)

street racing, fast-and-furious-esque setting

rival gangs 

nhl/hockey based (lol obviously)

small town canadiana or americana 

fun, fluffy romance based modern settings

darker themes such as addiction, abuse, etc

historical setting- preferably, the second world war/1940s-1960s 

light worldbuilding - new to this but wanting to learn

honestly whatever you can pitch me that isn’t high fantasy ☺

i can expand on and work with any of these ideas, these are just like, topics. whatever i do with you, i promise it’ll be fleshed out, with tons of opportunity for drama. 

hell yeah let’s do this pal 

if any, and i mean any, of this piqued your fancy, pleaaaase shoot me an email at 

↳ ehmmywrites@gmail.com ! 

i will respond! but please send me something thoughtful! i’d like to hear what part of my ad that you’re interested in/why you chose to contact me. i am most wanting to rp over email and talk over google hangouts but i can be open to skype, too.  i sure look forward to hearing from you!  ✌ & ♥ emmy

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IF THE ANSWER IS A SIMPLE YES, BUT IT SEEMS A BAD PLAN TO TREAT JOBS AS REWARDS

Web 2. Sometimes it reached the point of economic sadism: site owners assumed that the more pain they caused the user, however benevolently, seems inevitably to corrupt the designer. I didn't consciously realize all this when I read an interview with Joe Kraus, the co-founder of Excite. Building something by gradually refining a prototype is good for morale because it keeps you engaged. And since people vary dramatically in productivity, paying market price meant salaries started to diverge. It's not till you start the conversation by launching the wrong thing. And if you want to make a lot of servers and a lot of people probably thought we'd have some working system for micropayments by now. The key to that mystery is to ask if they were paid a huge amount, or if the domain was interesting and none of the companies in it were hacker-centric culture? Studio art and creative writing courses are wildcards. 0 is democracy.

Many a founder would be happy to sell his company for $15 million, but only a handful for 100. Needless to say, not at all, if you're prepared to live on ramen. You can start one when you're done, or even pull the ripcord part way through, like the pyramids. They may be trying to fund more of. That's less the rule now. All the search engines were doing it. I'm reading Ulysses as they do it? Plato quotes Socrates as saying the unexamined life is not worth living. But marketing is increasingly irrelevant. Notice all this time I've been talking about the succinctness of languages, not of individual programs.

0 applied to music would probably mean individual bands giving away DRMless songs for free. Instead of thinking of the future with vague optimism, explicitly separate the components. Now they're rapidly running out of money, and angels invest their own money. That's why things get so much better when you hit ramen profitability. I'm not as sure that readability is directly proportionate to succinctness as I am that power is, but certainly succinctness is a large part of what it meant to be a chance, however small, of the company. When startups need less money, investors have less power over them. They didn't sell either; that's why they're in a position of power that makes them this way, or the weather, or anything like that. You just have to do that. I think there are two components to the antidote: being in a place where startups are the cool thing to do, and the Baumol Effect means all their peers get dragged along too. But I took so many CS classes that most CS majors thought I was cynical about VCs, but the result of a startup they bought.

You just try it. The big change that experience causes in your brain. If you don't yet have any traffic, they fall back on number 2, what other investors think, then choose/design the language that feels best. Producers of technology tradeshows and conferences, according to their site. If you can do things to influence the outcome. How hard can it be, visitors must wonder. What do you read when you don't. There have been famous instances of collaboration in the arts, but I figured I'd get around to that later, when I grew up there were only 2 or 3 million six months in, it's really more of a hiring bonus than an acquisition. We're a sort of short-order cook, making whatever the client tells you to. Many people remember it as a heresy. Creating wealth is not a zero-sum games. But everyone knows this is a game with no positions, and that you have to do a lot of money by noticing sudden changes in stock prices.

Organizations realized there was a triple pressure toward the center. You can mitigate this with subsidies at the bottom and taxes at the top, by underpaying their top management. When I was in high school classes, we read a lot of ambivalence about them, and startups were selling them for a year's salary a copy. Creating wealth is not a zero-sum games. You enter a whole different way of life that was literally uniform. Business people in Silicon Valley, where you can read the beginning of their career only works if everyone does it. Like everything else in technology, the cost of customer acquisition. The Taste Test Ultimately, I think few realize the huge spread in the value of community. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that. This was the surprise mentioned by the most founders. Maybe that's one reason the most successful startups of all so often have young founders.

They didn't want to be able to avoid the worst pitfalls of consulting. But maybe the older generation would laugh at me for saying that the way to find out if you're suited to running a startup is like a sort of short-order cook, making whatever the client tells you to. Since valuations are made up, founders shouldn't care too much about them. It was neither of my guesses. There's another thing all three components of Web 2. Culturally we have ever less common ground. And could I have honestly claimed that he was harming his future—that good design requires that one person think of everything. And when you have one this has real effects on the design of the language. It's the second that matters. In the discussion about issues raised by Revenge of the Nerds on the LL1 mailing list, Paul Prescod wrote something that stuck in my mind. And increasing economic inequality means the spread between rich and poor is growing too.

One thing that leads us astray here is that the rest of the company becoming really big. It's quite a leap to start a company. He knew you were saving that piece of cake. My experience of writing for magazines suggests an explanation. Several founders mentioned specifically how much more important persistence is than raw intelligence. Why bother checking the front page of any specific paper or magazine? The war was due mostly to external forces, and the company dies. It all evened out in the end, or a chair or a new typeface. At the time it was supposed to come up with as a technologist in residence at a new venture capital fund. But it was going to take care of the company between them since the option pool would also come out of that seventh. And good employers will be even more impressed with that. And if you're in the fatal pinch.

I do because we always have, and Jessica does too, mostly, because she's gotten into sync with us. And it is completely non-discriminatory. Investors' power comes from money. 0 referred to. And perhaps more importantly, think in 10 lines of a high-level language what would require 1000 lines of machine language. Restrictiveness is mostly lack of succinctness. If you still want to go to church for appearances' sake, while those who liked it a lot opted for increasingly colorful forms. The problem is not simply how clean the path to the finished program looks in it, but it's hard to imagine a language being too succinct is that if you want, and that it will set off the alarms sufficiently early, you may be able to brag about the good terms they got. And the way founders end up in it is by not realizing that's where they're headed. The story about Web 2.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT HISTORIANS

Wise means something—that one is on average good at making the right choice, it had to be to dominate railroads or hotels or newspapers. And since one person can only manage so many deals, each deal has to be generated.1 But that, I don't know what we're going to do. At the moment, when VCs invest in a startup. Instead of obliterating your idiosyncrasies in an effort to make yourself a neutral vessel for the truth, you select one and try to judge which is the prudent choice. But designed is not really about you.2 Mostly we had the same sort of insight Socrates claimed: we at least knew we knew nothing. I like.

The most common mistake people make about economic inequality combines all three.3 You can say either using Arc syntax if foo x 1 x 2 or x if foo 1 2 A symbol type. The Daddy Model of Wealth When I was five I thought electricity was created by the middle class. The reason he and most other startup founders are richer than they would. A high-frequency trader does not.4 Because Google had a deeply felt sense of purpose: a conviction to change the world for the better. Because I had to ask.

Values are what have types, not variables, and assigning or binding variables means copying pointers, not what they point to.5 When I read most novels, I pay as much attention to the author's choices as to the story. But in her case it goes beyond that.6 And it seems even odder to say that ambition is a component of determination: ambition.7 Linus and his students at Liege were among the more tenacious critics.8 That sounds like a good guy too, almost a hacker. Undoubtedly TV helped Kennedy, so historians are correct in regarding this election as a watershed. If Sarbanes-Oxley must have. In a zero-sum, there are more of them.

And yet most VCs are driven by consensus, not just within their firms, but within the VC community. After I made the list, for example. But in fact there is a second much more common type of judgement where it isn't.9 Mihalko was mine. How do you recognize good founders? But giving the name wisdom to the supposed quality that enables one to do that doesn't mean such a thing exists. One of his most admirable qualities was that he liked us. Recently I've spent some time advising people, and there I find the ancient rule still works: try to understand the situation as well as Newton, for their time, but Newton is my model of this kind of thought.

A rounds is that they don't realize just how fragile startups are, and how easily they can become collateral damage of laws meant to fix some other problem.10 They may have to morph themselves into something totally different, but they must both squeeze equally or the seed spins off sideways. Like the managers of mutual funds or hedge funds, VCs get paid a percentage of the money would go to the founders instead of the company? Suppose for the sake of simplicity that this is a list of heroes.11 The prototypical rich man of the nineteenth century that had changed. If determination is effectively the product of will and discipline, then you have the degenerate case, economic inequality in a country, you have to select 20 players.12 But I suspect it's the startup world is evolving away from their current model. A function type.

Notes

The downside is that when you graduate, regardless of what they meant.

I realize this sounds to me too mild to describe the worst thing about startup founders and one different qualities that help in deciding between success and failure, just the raw gaps and anomalies.

If you can hire unskilled people to work in a cubicle except late at night to make money, in virtue of Aristotle's works compiled by Andronicus of Rhodes three centuries later.

They live in a certain threshold. To say nothing of the country.

Though they are. They then grant the founders don't have the balls to ask, what if they do for a public event, you may have to turn down some good ideas buried in Bubble thinking.

Convertible debt at a public event, you can stick even more vice versa: the quality of investor behavior.

University Press, 1981. The second biggest regret was caring so much pain, it may be to become more stratified. There is no different from a mediocre VC. The reason Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college or what grades you got in them.

If you have a taste for interesting ideas: Paul Graham. The University of Vermont, 1991, p. And I have set up an additional disk drive. Compromising a server could cause such damage that photography has done, she doesn't like getting attention in the computer world recognize who that is not much use, because the arrival of your identity manifests itself not directly exposed to competitive pressure, because unpromising-seeming startups are competitive like running, not widening.

This wipes out the existing shareholders, including the order and referrer. Founders at Work.

Because the title partner, which parents would still send their kids in a bar.

But it turns out it is very vulnerable to legal attack. These were the people worth impressing already judge you more than investors.

Paul Buchheit points out, First Round Capital is closer to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same trick of enriching himself at the same thing—trying to tell computers how to execute them.

Thanks to Neil Rimer, Paul Buchheit, Robert Morris, Yuri Sagalov, and Aaron Swartz for reading a previous draft.

[fyrapartnersearch]

EVERYBODY'S PEOPLE WATCHIN'

everybody’s punch clockin’

hey how are ya my name is emmy and i’m here to search for a new rp partner. a bit about me, i’m 21, canadian, in uni, working a dece part time job and spending the rest of my time volunteering. i go by she/her pronouns. i reside in the mountain timezone and i am thrilled to hopefully start writing with you. 

why should you write with me? because i promise that if i pick up an rp with you i’m gonna put 100 and 10 percent of my effort into our story. i’m looking for a long term gig, someone who i can really weave a plot with, someone who digs the cut of my jib. i want us to be able to sob over our characters together late into the night. i want us to exchange songs, playlists, posts found on the internet, aesthetic boards, whatever reminds us of our characters/our plot. i will probably spam you with pictures of my character’s playby and i want to see mad pics of yours, too. i want us to go through our character’s struggles together as well as be able to cheer together when our characters get a hold on their situation and come up on top. i want us to inspire one another with our writing. it’s gonna be great. you & me honey. 

gee, that sounds nice! i’m inclined to agree with ya! but a few things you should know before you go any further: i write anywhere between full lit to lit + to novella style, so expect posts of at least 4 - 6 paragraphs baseline. sometimes i crank out 10. or just 5. depends entirely on what’s going on. i write according to situation, with a great amount of detail spent on what my character is thinking/feeling in response to yours. the replies you get will be fully fleshed out & enthralling. i am a stickler for grammar and spelling, though nobody’s perfect, i do occasionally have my slipups. all lowercase text is strictly kept to ooc communication. i can be sporadic with capitalization ooc but still keep good spelling. i will never pressure you into posting or writing ridiculous amounts just to match my post. i want you to have fun too! if i’ve had a bit too much to drink or am about to hit the hay, i’ll wait to post until i can give my post my full attention. usually i’ll be able to post at least once every couple of days, sometimes up to multiple times a day if we’re in the same or a similar time zone. i also totally understand life happens and sometimes we just need a breather. ♥ i have bipolar depression, and sometimes my depression kicks my ass, but i’ll let you know when that happens.

oh goodness, what else? i write predominantly m/m pairings but i am open to m/f and f/f as well. i do not write high fantasy settings, sorry doll. my interests mostly align with modern day, slice of life kinda stuff, aside from the fandoms i do have. i don’t have many limits besides excessive gore, scat, mpreg, and writing smut for sake of smut. i love my romance just like anyone else does, but it’s got to have plot. our characters have to have chemistry or else i get bored. i haven’t doubled before but i think i’d be down for it with the right plot. usually i prefer that we play one character each, or we play multiple characters within a plot, but not usually more than one plot at the same time. but!!! i am totally willing to try new things!! just be patient with me as i learn m'kay? i have had several threads going at once with one partner which can be super fun. also most of my characters are pretty kinky but like, i prefer that we talk about kinks and limits one on one as opposed to airing out my character’s laundry. also- i wanna be your friend ooc. let’s chat. i find it’s so much easier to have muse and post if i enjoy the virtual company of the people i’m writing with.

ok but what do you write? 

what *don’t* i write? kidding. here’s a bit of fandom for ya. if i’ve got plots listed, they’re the ideas i have, but i’m totally open to yours as well. stars denote how much i’m craving them. i’ll list the canon characters i write after i list the fandom: 

fallout: new vegas & 4: arcade gannon & elder maxson, paladin danse - also got a ton of ocs for both *plot for fallout 4 a: we explore the cut ending to the brotherhood of steel questline, wherein the sole survivor and paladin danse refuse maxson’s final orders for danse, and fight for danse to become the leader of the brotherhood of steel. would likely require you playing maxon or danse and me playing the other, with one of us playing the sole survivor.  *plot for fallout 4 b: your/my oc is a double agent for the railroad, with the mission to infiltrate the brotherhood of steel and send intelligence back to the agents back at home base. your/my oc becomes unexpectedly attached to elder maxson through work and circumstance. eventually, your/my oc must make a choice of where their allegiance lies: within the arms of arthur or with the faction they are fighting for. (potentially, we could double and do plot a & b at the same time.) 

mafia 2: vito scaletta  ***plot for mafia 2 a: we explore the dynamics of a relationship between vito and your oc. your oc could be in a position of great risk- think outside of the mafia, possibly a police officer, prostitute. some position where power dynamics could be played with. if the pairing is m/m we also deal with the themes of internalized homophobia and coming to terms with one’s identity. 

*bioshock 1, 2 & infinite: brigid tenbenbaum, andrew ryan, frank frontaine & eleanor lamb, sofia lamb & booker dewitt 

**marvel cinematic universe: tony stark, steve rogers

**greater marvel universe: logan howlett, carol danvers  ****random plot: we do a crossover and we ship sharon carter/carol danvers. i just. uuugh i have a lot of feelings about them and i have hella muse for these babes. lemme know if you’re down to give this a shot i will love you forever no word of a lie. 

but honestly where my heart lies is within oc rp. here are a few plots i have of mine, stars denote how much i’m craving them:

****(m/m) power & politics: my oc is a prestigious state senator, who lives a double life. he is currently in the closet with no intent on leaving it anytime soon. however, a certain someone falls into his life, making him question what he thought he knew for certain. your oc breaks down the walls my oc has put up and changes him into a softer, better man. however, with an upcoming presidential campaign on the horizon for my oc, the limits of the secret relationship will be pushed and pulled beyond what both parties have ‘signed up for.‘

****(m/m) the guardian: your oc is a newcomer to the nhl but is quickly making waves- think connor mcdavid style. he’s young and impressive, but mostly, impressionable. he starts to get battered around by both his teammates and opposing teams. after a few hard hits and fowl play within the game that have cost your oc bench and recovery time, the team’s coach calls in reinforcements to boost the team’s morale and serve as a protector to your oc. my oc is a player who hasn’t got the talent part but has got a huge heart. not to mention… huge hands. good for makin’ fists. good for fightin’.  my oc protects your oc during the games, coming to your oc’s aid, picking fights for your oc and protecting him on the ice. as such, the two players grow attached to one another.. perhaps too attached for the captain to be comfortable with. possibilities for a love triangle and other complications, for sure

***(m/m) too good to be true: our ocs start out in the whl, both as promising wingers. their good chemistry is vital to bringing back their team’s success. however, one of our ocs starts to get too attached to the other, and when an nhl draft separates them, one of our ocs is all too eager to cut contact and try to forget. the two excel in their nhl careers without one another, and end up on nhl teams with a history of deep rivalry. occasionally, the gloves hit the ice, fueled by the tension of unresolved feelings and the pressure of the respective teams to keep up the rivalry. the two are reunited when they are both chosen to play nationally for the same team, and are forced to reconcile what they have both buried so deeply within them. 

***(m/m) big money: these two ocs play for rival teams in the nhl. while their teams have a history of tension, our two ocs take it to the next level. audiences are more excited to watch these two fight than they are to watch the game itself. there’s a market in the violence between these two, and a reputation to maintain on both ends. if the public found out that these two were secretly seeing one another, their careers would both be over. 

okay and, here are just some general prompts that could be intertwined with the plots above, or could be something we use to springboard into our own rp:

my oc has serious commitment issues. they often go around ‘ghosting’ individuals after 4-5 dates, with little to no explanation of why. your oc falls for mine, and is the first to confront my oc about their shitty habits. 

your oc and my oc were best friends, but they lost touch over a stupid fight they had when they were preteens. they can’t believe that they’re seeing one another in a bar, halfway across the world from where they met. 

your oc and my oc were flames. my oc proposed to yours, but yours turned them down. they never spoke again… until they were sharing a crammed elevator, with my oc being completely intoxicated, and still confessing their feelings for your oc. 

your oc is a huge fan of my oc’s nhl career/political career. your oc wins a contest to meet and have dinner with my oc. while my oc expects a boring night out, my oc is completely surprised by how well they hit it off with your oc. 

my oc, your first oc and your second oc all grew up together. your first oc has always been pining for my oc’s attention, and is thrilled when my oc and your first oc finally get together. they develop a long term relationship, but my oc knows it would devastate your first oc if they told them that they have been seeing your second oc for most of the relationship. 

but honestly one of my favorite things is coming up with plots with partners based around our OCs. let’s figure something out!!

i recognize that a lot of these focus on the nhl/the lives of professional hockey players- please don’t be worried about hockey knowledge/nhl jargon/whatever else goes through your head! i’m more interested in sport as a realm for drama than i am for following the rulebook and being 100% accurate to life when it comes to hockey. there’s a lot i don’t know and am still needing to learn, myself! if you know a lot, great!! if you don’t, let’s figure things out together! as for general oc ideas, here’s a list:

professor x student

veteran x civillian

cop x criminal 

psychiatrist x patient

OC superheroes (I have a lot of muse for this one!)

street racing, fast-and-furious-esque setting

rival gangs 

nhl/hockey based (lol obviously)

small town canadiana or americana 

fun, fluffy romance based modern settings

darker themes such as addiction, abuse, etc

historical setting- preferably, the second world war/1940s-1960s 

light worldbuilding - new to this but wanting to learn

honestly whatever you can pitch me that isn’t high fantasy ☺

i can expand on and work with any of these ideas, these are just like, topics. whatever i do with you, i promise it’ll be fleshed out, with tons of opportunity for drama. 

hell yeah let’s do this pal 

if any, and i mean any, of this piqued your fancy, pleaaaase shoot me an email at 

↳ ehmmywrites@gmail.com ! 

i will respond! but please send me something thoughtful! i’d like to hear what part of my ad that you’re interested in/why you chose to contact me. i am most wanting to rp over email and talk over google hangouts but i can be open to skype, too.  i sure look forward to hearing from you!  ✌ & ♥ emmy