#but also this is a really good reason Oracle shouldn’t be on the field

[seilnakyle]

Things that would genuinely make Bruce kill himself on the spot:

[platonic-prompts]

Creatures from Folklore: Slavic Region A-D

You ever need different creatures to base things off of, or just want some legends for a setting? Or heck, you ever just want to chuck a creature at someone and say you’ll figure it out? Well, do I have the posts for you. This one will focus on the Slavic Region but I’ll make more at a later date

Ala are considered to be demons of bad weather in several folklore, including that of Bulgarians, Macedonians, and Serbs. Their main purpose is to lead thunderclouds that produce hail towards fields, vineyards, or orchards to either destroy the crops or to loot and take them. They are very voracious and really like to eat children. Though one shouldn’t assume they limit their tastes to Earth, no. They sometimes try to devour the sun and moon which lead to eclipses and if they succeed it means the end of the world. People who encounter one may find their mental and physical health as well as their lives at risk. It is, however, possibly to gain her favor by approaching with trust and respect. These good relationships can be very beneficial since she (the ala) can make those with her favor wealthy and save their lives if they are in danger. Ala can take on many different forms: black wind, giant creatures with no distinct form, a monster either humanlike or snake like witha  huge mouth, a female dragon, a raven, various human and animal shapes. Ala can also possess people’s bodies. They live in the clouds or in lakes, springs, hidden remote places as well as caves, inhospitable mountains, forests, or even a huge tree. Usually hostile towards humans, they have powerful enemies capable of defeating them like the dragons.

Alkanost have an incredible voice, capable of making anyone who hears her song might forget everything in their search for paradise. A creature of good who resides in the garden of the gods or whatever version of heaven required, the alkanost has the head and bust of a woman and the rest of the body is that of a bird. Sometimes this creature lays eggs which assist in the changing of winter to spring. Basically she wouldn’t sit on her eggs just dump them into the Ocean-Sea and when they reached the bottom the weather would turn fair. Though i think that takes her out of the running for parenting awards.

Anchutka is a small malevolent spirit, residing most often in water or a swamp. Even without wings, it is capable of flight. One of its nicknames is the one without heels. This is a common theme to look for, as oftentimes evil forces have a limp. Though in some storied this spirit has lost their heels because they got bitten off by a wolf. This spirit is often a sidekick to a water spirit called Vodyanoy, and as such you should never say its name aloud since it will always show up.

Aspid, a type of dragon with a beak and other birdlike elements, resides primarily in the mountains, preferring solitude. When it invades a region, nearly always it caused universal devastation.

Baba Yaga: I’m pretty sure a lot of people know about Baba Yaga, the witch who lives in a hut with chicken legs and goes around in a mortar and pestle. She does carry a broom though, but she only uses it to sweep away her tracks.

Bannik is a spirit who rarely does any good for anyone. A mischievous spirit that has the appearance of an old man with long claws, he’s a spirit that inhabits the banya (steamhouse). Whenever people bathed in the banya, they would always leave on the third or fourth session to let Bannik have his privacy. They would leave him offerings of soup and regularly thank him. Bannik had the power to tell the future and if asked a question he would softly touch the askers back if it was a good future or flay it if it was a not so good future. Oh and Bannik, when angry, would claw off the skin of those who annoyed him. The banya was also the place of Russian childbirth, so there were measures taken to keep him from interfering. Part of the midwife’s job was to keep him away. And with good reason. Legends say that he ate or flayed children. So therefore the midwife would dip stones in the water and throw them in the corner to distract the steamhouse spirit.

Bauk hide in dark places and holes and abandoned houses. There they wait to grab, take away, and devour their victims. They have a clumsy gait and can be scared away by light and noise.

Babay, possibly the same thing as the bubak, isn’t often described so children will come up with what is most terrible for them. But despite this, Baby has been described as a black and crooked old man. When he is descibed he tends to have some traits such as muteness, lacking arms, or walking with a limp. He carries with him a bag and a cane. Baby lives in a forest or a swamp or a garden only to come out at night to walk the streets and scoop up the children he meets. He will walk close to windows and watched the children sleep. If they aren’t he’ll scare them with noises. Or sometimes he even hides under kids beds to take them away if they get up.

Błędnica is a forest demoness, who leads people astray before leaving her victims alone in the midst of the forest to die of starvation or be eaten by animals. She is usually described as a young and pretty girl. The only way to chase her away is to use strong spells or to sacrifice something at home or during your hunt.

Blud is a fairy in Slavic mythology. An evil deity who causes disorientation and leads a person around and around aimlessly.

Bukavac lives in lakes and pools, coming out at night to make a loud noise. A six-legged monster with gnarled horns, it would jump people and animals and strangle them.

Bubak is often represented as a scarecrow with a skeleton as frame, which is connected with darkness, it is a type of boogeymen used to scare children. The skeleton often is describes as wearing a heavy black coat where it hides the children it steals.

Cikavac, a mythical creature from Serbian mythology and it kinda feels like a basilisk but way weirder. This thing is a bird that has a long beak and a pelican-like sack. You can acquire one at the low low price of your sanity and clear face. For you see, in order to get one, you need to take an egg from a black hen which a woman now needs to carry under her armpit for 40 days ( is now a good time to note that chicken eggs hatch after 21 days or so) and one cannot confess, cut nails, wash their face, or pray. After that the cikavac would suck the honey from other people’s beehives and suck milk from other peoples cows and then bring it back to their owner. It would fulfill its owner’s wishes and it would allow its owner to understand the animal language.

Chort, a demon or a humanlike spirit in Slavic folk tradition.  They are not exactly evil characters. Yes they try to trick people into selling them their souls in exchange for useless gifts. Yes those people are carried off into hell. But they are sometimes tricked into doing such things as building castle walls in a day. Sometimes is depicted as trying to bring evil characters to hell. A small, hairy man with a tail, horns, and one or two hooves. But due to shapeshifting abilities, the chort is able to appear in nicer forms and tries to trick people while in them. Though these transformations aren’t and can’t be complete, so there’s a way to know if one is dealing with a chort whether it be by small horns in curly black hair or a hoofed leg hidden within high boots. Though they share similarities, a chort is not the devil.

Čuma, aka kuga, is a personification of the plague in Serbo-Croation myths. Typically appears as an old woman wearing white, though in some cases has been depicted as a young woman. Direct mention of them were avoided and were usually referred to by godmother or aunty. According to belief, they lived in a far away land where they came from to infect people. Due to their hatred of dirtiness, if they found a dirty household they would be eager to infect it. Due to this, if a plague appeared,every house and its occupants must be thoroughly cleansed. In addition one could make offerings to of food, clean water, basil, and a comb.

Domovoi are household protectors, generally seen as kind spirits though they would harass the family they protect if said family was rude or unclean. This usually took the form of pulling small pranks until the family corrected their behavior. While domovoi are shape shifters, most depictions show them as small, bearded masculine creatures which are reminiscent of hobgoblins. In order to complete his chores and to fulfill his duty of protecting the house, the domovoi would assume the shape of the head of the household, sometimes working in the yard while the real head of household was asleep. (Guess spirits don’t have to worry about identity theft charges). They were also capable of turning into animals, rarely taking the form of a dog or a cat. Another facet of the domovoi was their ability to act as an oracle. Predictions are as follows

Dancing and laughing= Good fortune would come

Rubbed the bristles of a comb= a wedding would happen soon

Extinguished candles= Misfortune would fall upon the household.

Dziwożona, a type of female swamp demon from Slavic mythology, sometimes called Mamuna or Bognika, who lived in the thickets near rivers and streams and lakes. Thought to appear with foul weather around trees and swamps, they are known for being malicious and dangerous, and usually were previously living humans. Several types of people would be at risk of turning into one after death, such as: midwives, old maids, unmarried mothers, pregnant women who die before giving birth, and abandoned children who were born out of wedlock. Some depictions include an ugly, old woman who had a hairy body, long straight hair, and I quote “breasts so huge she uses them to wash her clothes”. I don’t know what that actually means and I don’t want to find out. She also wore a red hat with a fern twig attached. In case she wasn’t weird enough, she’d watch women with their little children.  Just chilling around making the kid sick and making schemes to get the mother away from the kid when she’d replace the kid with one of her own, a foundling/changeling.

[bright-eyes-strawberry-lies]

I recently read The Camp Half-Blood Confidential for the first time and while most of it made me cringe, there was one story in particular that really made me cringe: Space Could Be An Issue.

For those of you who haven’t read it, the premise of Space Could Be An Issue is this: Annabeth is in charge of designing and building the cabins for the children of minor gods/goddesses but it appears that there’s no space for all of them!

What is an architect to do?

Annabeth suggests treehouses or houseboats and both are shot down by Chiron, who says the nature spirits would never allow it. Good thing that there’s no spirit of grass or open field, otherwise they’d never be able to build anywhere, right? Annabeth suggests caves; because why not just dump all those extras in a cave. Chiron shoots her down again; there’s only one cave and it belongs to the Oracle. Damn. Well what about stacking the cabins on top of each other? Parents associated with the sky can be on top and parents associated with the ground can be at the bottom. What? That seems a little bit...classist? No. Of course not. The real reason that won’t work is because demigods can’t cohabitate. You heard it from Chiron! All of your ships are invalid because demigods of different “families” can’t live together in peace.

Never fear! For Annabeth is here to save the day! Her latest idea is for small and low profile tiny houses. Her words, not mine. (I was going to make a sarcastic comment here about how, after fighting a war for equality, it’s a good idea to put the “lesser” demigods in places that are small and low profile...until I realized that Annabeth wasn’t fighting a war for equality, she was fighting for the continued reign of the Gods and therefore inequality because she ultimately privileges from the system no matter how often she cries mommy issues).

Anyway...The tiny houses are two stories; with a living area that sleeps two, a bedroom loft that sleeps two, and a bathroom. So four demigods per tiny house. Somehow there’s storage beneath the beds in the living area, which are the kind that pull out of the couch. Not sure how that works since normally the bed goes in the “storage area” when it’s in couch mode. And there’s a single closet beneath the stairs for more storage. The bathroom is the coolest part of the whole thing but it’s never mentioned if there’s a shower in those bathrooms or just a toilet and sink.

If you put four of these tiny houses together, they’re the size of one major demigod cabin. Isn’t that so funny. How you need four tiny houses for demigods but can’t build a regular sized cabin. Ha! Hilarious!

Which brings up a question. How big are the original twelve cabins anyway? The Hermes Cabin is so over crowded that kids need to sleep on the floor. Poseidon’s Cabin has nothing but six bunk beds (and later a small saltwater fountain) in it. Meanwhile, the Athena Cabin has multiple smart boards, work desks, a library, and a small armory on top of the beds. They’re clearly not all made equal (and that’s not even getting into the fact that the Hermes Cabin is literally falling apart).

Why does the size of the Athena Cabin matter, though? It matters because none of the other cabins are used for anything other than sleeping and chilling when there aren’t activities. The Athena cabin is so disproportionately huge and ironically high tech compared to the other cabins (WHY DOES RICK HATE THE HERMES CABIN?!). Okay, but they’re using it as a school. Why would you use a cabin as a school room?! Because those kids are supposed to be “geniuses?” So they don’t have anywhere in camp to just relax? It’s always work, work, work for the Athena kids, huh?

Where would you put the school? Oh I don’t know. Maybe the Big House, which only ever has two people living in it despite being three stories tall and super wide and easily the biggest building on the property. Ah, the Big House, where the occupants are always outside on the porch and the only interior mentioned is a living space with a ping pong table, Chiron’s office, and the attic used to stash the Oracle and other useless shit no one wants to look at. Why in Hades would you put a school room there? Think of the ping pong table! Relax! It was just an idea.

Hang on, we’ll come back to this. Now I want to bring up the decorating of cabins. The tiny houses also have the ability to be decorated however the occupants want, with only a single touch, which means that maybe the demigods of Nemesis want neon green walls despite Nemesis having nothing to do with neon green. Or the children of Iris are going through a Goth phase and decide all the walls should be black. Why does that matter? Because all of the other cabins are decorated according to godly parent. The demigods who live in the major cabins are extremely limited in what they can do with decorating because of “tradition and respect.” In fact, Percy and Tyson only add two decorations to their cabin: the aforementioned saltwater fountain and hippocampus figures on the ceiling. Which are both related to Poseidon. Despite some of the major cabins having been rebuilt, they were rebuilt to be exactly the same as before.

Which leads us to two points:

1.) The cabins aren’t shrines to the gods. These cabins aren’t sacred temples to the gods. The gods don’t care what happens in them or to them. They don’t care if they’re broken or overcrowded. They don’t care if the kids are fucking in them or if they’re digging tunnels underneath them or putting curses on them. The gods already have statues of themselves everywhere and most of them have a separate place in Camp that could be considered to be “their” place (Hephaestus and the forges, anyone?).

2.) Hera and Artemis’ cabins should both be nixed completely. Hera, as a goddess who will never have demigod children, doesn’t need a cabin on principle. She only has a cabin out of politeness, not necessity. And I can hear your protests already but no, Artemis shouldn’t have a cabin either. Her hunters have magical tents that they live in every other day of the year except for the one day out of the summer that they stop by Camp Half-Blood. That’s two cabins that regularly stand empty - one 100% of the time and one 99% of the time - and take up valuable space for people who actually need it.

Speaking of cabins that are usually empty: Poseidon and Zeus dont have more than one or two kids at a time (despite Zeus being a slut) so their cabins don’t actually need to be as big as the other cabins. Percy mentions that upon arriving at Camp Half-Blood, there are a couple hundred kids. More than half of them “disappear” during the first winter. Some die over the course of the series. Then the camp gets a huge influx of demigods; both the ones that came from Kronos’ army because they were pardoned and the previously unclaimed demigods.

Annabeth suggested stacking cabins on top of each other, which is a stupid idea for so many reasons (only one of which is pointed out to her and I listed another one), but she was actually on to something.

Except instead of making each floor for a different group of Godlings, what if, hear me out now, you bulldoze every single Cabin. (You get a tent! You get a tent! No, just kidding about the tents unless you’re a hunter of Artemis.)

Bulldoze the existing Cabins so that you’re starting from scratch (Annabeth, take some damn notes). Rebuild without Hera and Artemis’ Cabins. You never know when Zeus and Poseidon are going to get horny now that they’re technically allowed to reproduce again, so make their Cabins the same size as all the others (if you must). Rebuild the Cabins so that they’re a smidge narrower and a lot taller. That’s right! Slap two or three floors on top of those suckers! Make! Everyone! Fit! Give! Them! Space! No! More! Sleeping! On! The! Floor!

But what about the disabled - THERE ARE NO DISABLED DEMIGODS. Not even a single one! Everyone can climb stairs! Everyone! All the time!

Well that’s...true (and ableist) but what about Chiron? Shouldn’t he be able to get into the cabins? Chiron already can’t get into the cabins. He couldn’t get into the original twelve, he can’t get into any of the new ones.

Which brings me to the final, and possibly most important point. GIVE THESE KIDS PRIVATE BATHROOMS FOR FUCKS SAKE! If everyone thinks it’s a good idea for the tiny houses to have “personal” bathrooms, then give them to all of the cabins. No more communal showers! No more hazing other campers in the public toilets! No more getting eaten by harpies because you had to pee after curfew!

This way everyone is equal. No one has a better space or more space than anyone else. Everyone gets to decorate how they want. No one is going to die on the way to the bathroom. Because even though the war was ultimately about maintaining the status quo, Percy and Luke both said “no, this isn’t right and too many are suffering because of it and things need to change.” One traded his life for it, the other traded immortality for it.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[ladylynse]

Whirlwind: Jake should be used to ominous predictions by now. Randy should know better than to blindly follow McFist. Adrien should think twice before sneaking away. And Danny should’ve expected something like this when he got that phone call. (Secret Quartet crossover) 

Part 6 [FF | AO3] - for the :D Anon, who very kindly donated to my ko-fi. 

(Part 5 | Timeline post)

-|-

6:46 PM

“My name’s Phantom,” Danny said once they were inside. The fire and subsequent soaking had not been kind to any electronics in this place, so he didn’t mind talking plainly. No one was going to follow them inside without them noticing, especially not with the dragon basically guarding the entrance, and it wasn’t like any cameras were going to be functioning right now. “I’m friends with the Am Drag.” He’d avoided flying or any other obvious uses of his powers while they were out in the open. No need to parade his secret (or rather, the fact that ghosts are real) around to the public, after all; this was going to be enough of a mess for Jake to deal with without that.

The dragon hadn’t exactly been inconspicuous.

“Why the cheese are we in here instead of fighting out there?” the Ninja asked, flinging an arm behind him. “The Am Drag might be a friendly dragon, but that one isn’t!”

Danny sighed. “Look, um, there’s something you need to know about dragons. Hopefully I’m not violating some super secret code thing by telling you this, but they can take a human form. I mean, they have a human form, not just a dragon form. Which is probably the only reason they still exist and aren’t, y’know, just a myth.”

Danny couldn’t see much more than the Ninja’s eyes, but they didn’t look impressed. “Okay, so the lady I saw turn into a dragon is a dragon, and she just snapped?”

“Not��exactly.”

The Ninja rolled his eyes. “So what, exactly? Do you even know?”

“I think so.”

“That’s encouraging.”

Danny frowned at the Ninja’s sarcastic tone. “This is a big mess, okay? The magical world is supposed to be kept secret. So that dragon? Not easy to explain away!”

“Magic’s not secret,” the Ninja said incredulously. “It’s just…. It’s just magic. I mean, the people in my town don’t know there’s a sorcerer trapped beneath it, but they aren’t total shoobs. They know it’s not normal for people to regularly turn into monsters. But they just kind of…accept it, you know? Because I’m around to protect them. Or at least I’m supposed to be. But it’s not like they think it’s all some kind of new technology. People have been getting stanked in Norrisville for centuries.”

Danny blinked. He wondered if Jake knew any of that. He still wasn’t really clear on how the whole ‘American Dragon’ thing worked, and he had enough trouble keeping Amity Park safe, let alone feeling responsible for an entire country. Maybe there were different magical creatures who monitored smaller regions—individual states if not counties—who were then expected to report back to Jake when something was amiss. That would make more sense. Gramps was probably fielding all that stuff for him right now, while he was still in school….

“Hello, Earth to Phantom.” The Ninja was waving a hand in front of his face. “Is it normal for you to space out like that?”

“Shut up,” Danny scowled. “I was just thinking.”

“About how to get us out of this honkin’ mess?”

“About how it started,” Danny said, though that wasn’t strictly true; he’d been thinking about that earlier, though, so he figured it still counted. “The woman you saw. I think…. If it’s who I think it is, her name is Susan. She’s nice, normally—”

“When she’s not flaming people?”

“When she’s not corrupted. Did you see any butterflies?”

“That’s what does it?” The Ninja didn’t wait for Danny’s nod of confirmation. “Yeah. It’s, um, not the first one I’ve seen today, either. The first lady didn’t go all dragon-y. More…weird fashion sense, with this pen that could create invisible walls and trap you while she criticized you. That was her thing. She was a critic. The Critic. Chat Noir helped me defeat her. You know him? He distracted her while I got her pen.”

“I…know of him,” Danny hedged.

“He’s a good guy,” the Ninja said, confirming what Danny had suspected since his fight. “These corrupted people? They’re after him in particular. And, like, other stuff, but definitely something he has.”

“His ring. A Miraculous.”

“So you know this already?”

“I don’t think I have it all straight.” Danny bit his lip. He and Jake couldn’t do this alone, and he might’ve accidentally burned his bridge with Chat Noir. He might not be willing to help them. The Ninja, on the other hand, probably still would. At least, he hadn’t given Danny any reason to think he wouldn’t. “I know…. I know we have to beware of the butterflies.”

The Ninja nodded. “Sounds like. They’re probably connected to this Hawk Moth guy. Or girl. I dunno. I just heard the name. Susan or whoever you said she was was talking to them.”

“You saw him? Them?”

The Ninja shook his head. “No, I just heard half a phone conversation, except without phones being involved. Thing is, this guy’s MO is super familiar to me. I think they might’ve teamed up with someone I know. The Sorceress.”

Danny could not recall anything in the vague prophecies Jake had repeated to him that might allude to a sorceress. “Are you sure?”

“Well, not exactly, but from what I’ve seen? Definitely a possibility. Just because I trapped her in the Land of Shadows, doesn’t mean she didn’t find another way out. Again. And she might be trying to gather her power before attacking Norrisville.”

“She’s the one you were worried about, then.” He figured he could grill the Ninja on this whole ‘Land of Shadows’ thing later—when the Sorceress turned up, if she did, or when this mess was over, if she wasn’t involved.

The Ninja shrugged. “Yeah. Worrying about her is practically a requirement. And if she’s not involved, good, but she might be the reason this Hawk Moth person can do whatever it is with the butterflies. It’s basically stanking people.”

Danny didn’t need to know what stanking was to guess what it meant. “I think Hawk Moth is using the Brooch of Metamorphosis to change people. That’s what gives them their power. We were told we had to beware the butterflies. It’s the Butterfly Brooch.”

“The what?” The Ninja stared at him. “And what do you mean, you were told to beware the butterflies? Who told you?”

“Um. Would you believe me if I said oracles? The Am Drag has friends.”

“Wait, there’s a honkin’ prophecy?”

Danny sighed and recounted everything the oracle twins had told Jake—about him having friends to help him fight off the attacks, how they’d be facing threats they hadn’t dealt with before, and how they needed to beware of the butterflies.

The Ninja looked torn between incredulous and impressed. “That’s a lot clearer than anything I’m ever told,” he complained. “All I got was that to cleanse the soul, one must first clear the mind.”

“That’s…not straightforward?”

“No! It doesn’t tell me how to deal with the Sorceress!”

“But that’s my point. Maybe it’s not the Sorceress. Maybe it’s just this Hawk Moth. I know Jake’s dealt with magic users before. He might’ve run into her, or at least someone like her, so she wouldn’t exactly be a new threat, or a new kind of monster, or whatever.”

“Who’s Jake?”

Oh, crud.

Danny knew there were a lot of secrets Jake was tasked with keeping surrounding the magical world. He’d even kept Danny’s, once he’d learned it, from his family and friends. But if the Ninja had dealt with a sorceress and a sorcerer on what sounded like a fairly regular basis, maybe that counted as already knowing about the magical world. And maybe, if he used that as a technicality, Danny could fill in the Ninja without getting into more trouble. (He’d never asked Jake how much trouble he’d caused last time. He…hadn’t really wanted to.)

Besides, it would be a lot easier to get through this if they could use their real names, too.

And there had been that thing in the prophecies about getting help from friends.

And the Ninja had been trying to help.

“Jake’s the American Dragon,” Danny said. “Susan’s his mom. She just…shouldn’t have dragon powers. Normally. It skipped her generation.”

“Wait, what?”

“And I’m…not just a ghost.”

“You’re supposed to be a ghost?”

“I go by Phantom! How did you not figure that out? You call yourself the Ninja.”

“Yeah, because I’m actually a ninja. But Phantom could’ve just been a cool nickname. It’s not like you….” the Ninja trailed off, probably because Danny had crossed his legs and started hovering before holding up his hands and turning them invisible.

“Ghost,” he repeated, dropping back down the floor. “But also…not.” He changed back, watching the Ninja’s eyes widen even farther. “I’m Danny.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “Danny Fenton.” He stuck out his hand. It felt a little formal, but it would confirm that he was flesh and blood, which would be kinda important after insisting that he was a ghost.

The Ninja reached up to pull off his mask, and there was a flash of red and a flourish of cloth, and then a purple-haired teen grinned at Danny and gave his hand a quick shake. “Randy Cunningham. This is so bruce. I can’t believe you’re a real live ghost. I mean, I get to meet a dragon and a ghost in one day? This is the cheese. Howard is never going to believe me.”

“Don’t tell him,” Danny said quickly. This Howard obviously wasn’t here, but the fewer people who knew the details, the better. “People really aren’t supposed to know, and it’s bad if this gets out.”

“You have people like McFist after you, too?”

Danny had no idea who McFist was, either, but he nodded. “Yeah, we all do.” He hated to admit how wrong they’d gotten this, but— “This Hawk Moth person is probably after Chat Noir, and—”

“I don’t think Hawky knew Chat Noir was here,” interrupted Randy. “The critic lady was surprised to see him, and she said something about him being in a foreign country. And she wouldn’t know that, so Hawk Moth must’ve told her. Through their mind meld or however that works.”

Danny pulled a face. “Great.” To think Jake had thought Chat Noir might be working with Hawk Moth. They’d really messed this up. “I’m going to call Jake and catch him up. You…keep an eye out for Chat Noir. I don’t think we need to worry about Susan until she makes a move.”

“You still want to call the evil dragon lady Susan?”

“She’s not evil. She’s corrupted. And…I don’t know what else to call her. It’s not like she’s told us. But just…don’t use her name unless you’re talking to me or Jake and no one else can hear you.”

Randy frowned. “You said Jake’s her son, right?”

“Yeah?” Danny hoped Randy wasn’t about to ask for clarification on how dragon genetics worked, since he had absolutely no idea beyond the whole ‘skipped a generation’ thing. He couldn’t even explain his own genetics.

“He’s the shoob who’s responsible for all this.” Randy waved a hand around at the destruction. “I saw him and his mom. They looked like prime targets for the Sorceress. That’s why I saw what happened to her. I was keeping an eye out because I thought she was gonna get stanked.”

“So you know what Jake looks like in his human form.” That would make things easier. “Great.” Danny dug a couple of Fenton Phones out of his pocket and handed them to Randy. “Here, keep these on you. One’s for Jake; the other’s in case you see Chat Noir before I do. I wanna loop him in. And, um, apologize.”

“Apologize?” Randy echoed, but he was already shoving the Fenton Phones into his pocket. “For what? And why do you have spares? Did you invent these things?”

“My parents did.” He wasn’t going to go into the whole ghost hunter thing; it wasn’t important right now. “And, yeah, they’re useful, but they’re not always the most durable, so I’ve got spares. Just…a limited number, so try not to break or lose too many. I don’t exactly live around the corner.”

Thankfully, Randy didn’t press him on the whole ‘apology’ thing. Or maybe he’d already forgotten about it. “So what’s the plan? I’m still going to keep my eyes peeled for signs that this is the Sorceress, just in case, but I can’t fight that dragon by myself.”

“I don’t think you need to. Remember how I said she was testing you?” At Randy’s nod, Danny continued, “Well, now she knows you can do whatever you did to try to fight her. Which means she’ll be that much harder for you to surprise. And if you’re right about the weird mind meld thing, Hawk Moth will know, too.”

“So?”

“So that’s bad. Because Jake thinks they’re after something. Something besides Chat Noir’s Miraculous, apparently, if they weren’t expecting him. Look, Jake’s family…. They have a shop full of magical artefacts and stuff like that. So he’s probably not wrong about Hawk Moth’s motives. I mean, half the ghosts I fight want to take over this realm, so bad guys being obsessed with power isn’t exactly rare.”

“You’re a ghost and you fight other ghosts? What, do you live in the most haunted town in America or something?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Safe bet that I do, yeah.” He held out his cell phone. “New plan—”

“Wait, what was the old plan?”

“—you call Jake and tell him about Chat Noir and Hawk Moth and what you saw happen and everything else. He’ll fill you in on whatever else you need to know. I’m going to do some recon.” When Randy took his phone, Danny changed back. “The fewer people who see what we’re doing, the better.” He tapped his Fenton Phone, adding, “Shout if you get into trouble,” before turning invisible.

He wasn’t sure if Susan had the same dragon abilities as Jake, so he wasn’t sure if she’d still be able to see him, but he knew he wouldn’t be easy to spot this way.

And whether they were fighting a magic user or a Miraculous user or both, he didn’t want to make this easy on them.

XXX

6:54 PM

Jake went ahead to do a quick scout to assess the situation so he could tell the others what they were flying into.

Trouble was, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Most of the crowd was still there, grumbling and wet and talking amongst themselves or on the phone, and he could see TV crews and paramedics and other people like that, but no ninja.

And, more importantly, no dragon.

He flattened his wings to his sides and dove into an alley, pulling up at the last moment and startling a leprechaun who looked like he’d been on his way to the stock exchange. Mumbling his apologies as the leprechaun muttered curses and picked up the fallen gold pieces, Jake let fire burn away his dragon form and peeked carefully out of the alleyway.

Predictably, the view wasn’t any better down here than it had been from above. But as he walked closer to the crowd and could pick up more of the scattered conversations, he knew there had been no miraculous fix, no magic that had caused everyone to forget what they’d seen. They all knew very well what they’d seen: a ninja fighting a dragon. Thankfully, the conversation tended to be more along the lines of how such a stunt had been pulled off than the fact that it was real.

“I don’t care how you do it, Viceroy! I want a Robo-Dragon! If this Ninja is anything like our Ninja, your next WND won’t be a failure!”

Well, most of it, anyway.

Jake tried to get a good look at the speaker without making it too obvious that he was looking. He didn’t know what a WND was supposed to be, but while robot dragons and ninjas weren’t exactly magical, there might be some overlap of relevant interests. And he did not want Rotwood to make friends with someone who could provide him with new technology to capture proof of magical creatures. Especially someone with enough resources to both attend this spectacularly expensive gala and just demand that a robot dragon be built, with no doubt in his voice that it would happen.

“Hanni, honey, you promised you wouldn’t work while we were on this trip,” the woman next to the man said. There was a steel edge in her voice that even Jake could recognize, and the man blanched.

“You can have another week of vacation if it’s done by the time I get back! Just get to work!” he yelled, and then he hung up and turned to the woman that was probably his wife. Jake realized with a start that he had a robotic arm and quickly looked away, not wanting to be caught staring. He was pretty sure the prosthetic had had a brain in it. With eyes. That was…messed up.

Even by his standards.

“You can buy a second dress,” the man offered.

“I don’t want a second dress. If I decide I do, I’ll buy it anyway. What I want is for you to do what you promised. The Ninja’s back in Norrisville; can’t we enjoy our vacation here?”

“Of course, sugar plum,” the man answered quickly. Jake wasn’t sure he believed him—and he rather doubted the woman would—but he couldn’t afford to eavesdrop much longer. He didn’t need anyone recognizing him from earlier, especially when he hadn’t even been thinking long enough to put on a different jacket. He was lucky he was dry; that might be his saving grace, since everyone else who’d been caught inside was still dripping or at least distinctly damp.

He would probably have to figure out where Norrisville was, though, and bring it up with Gramps. It sounded like another place they’d need to keep an eye on. Ninjas and robots didn’t scream magic, but it was…weird. And any place that was weird enough had magic somewhere, even if it was buried deep.

“I’ll see if there’s any word from the organizers,” the man said. “See if they’re setting up another venue or what the plan is, now that the dragon’s dealt with.”

He didn’t say it like the dragon was something that surprised him.

Okay, Jake was definitely going to have to check out this Norrisville place when this mess was over.

He waited a moment longer, hoping the man would say how the dragon had been dealt with, but he didn’t, mostly likely because his wife had been beside him the entire time and knew the answer. Jake wished he could ask, but that would mean drawing attention to himself. He moved on instead, avoiding the various TV crews and the police and grateful that he couldn’t spot Rotwood.

Trixie and Spud were on the case, but Rotwood would try to get around them. Not that there was anything he could do if the dragon was gone. Well, not anything beyond talking to a news station and insisting that, now that everyone else had seen the dragon, it was proof that he hadn’t been making anything up. Proof that the magical world did exist, that his studies weren’t theoretical, that—

Jake’s phone started to ring, and he answered immediately. “Yo, Danny, what happened to the dragon?”

“What do you mean what happened to the dragon?” It wasn’t Danny’s voice. It was the Ninja’s. Oops. “Can’t you see her? Isn’t she there? Or aren’t you here?” While Jake tried to figure out how to answer that without giving everything away, the Ninja added, “I’m Randy, by the way. Danny filled me in.”

Aw, man, why did Danny keep doing this to him?

Well, at least if Randy ran around dressed as a Ninja, he might already know about the magical world and get a pass. Hopefully Fu or Gramps would be able to come up with a good reason to let him keep whatever magical artefacts he had his hands on. They’d gotten the Dragon Council off Jake’s back about this secrecy before, at least when he could vouch for the people who had found out about it.

“Whaddaya know?”

Randy caught Jake up on his conversation with Danny and everything else he seemed to figure Jake had missed and needed to know. Jake wove through the crowd, trying not to give away much of anything in case someone happened to be listening to his side of the conversation, and tried to figure out if he could get into the building without being seen. He had his doubts. Why hadn’t Danny come to grab him instead of going off to do reconnaissance on his own? That would have been so much easier.

But Danny wasn’t terribly used to help, aside from whatever his sister and friends could give from the ground, and something like scouting would have always fallen to him—at least when he needed to fly to get the best view of things.

“Meet me outside,” Jake finally said. They might as well have the rest of this conversation face to face. He wanted Randy to be wrong, for this dragon lady to be someone other than his mother, but he had a picture of her on his phone. It would be an easy enough thing to verify. And then he’d know to warn the others. Especially Haley. He hadn’t given her too many details when he’d called her, figuring the fact that he was calling her to begin with would be enough for her to understand that this wasn’t some practice drill, but now that he knew it was their mom…. “I’ll wait on the corner across the street.” He didn’t need to give a description, not if Randy really did know who he was.

He just…. If Chat Noir really wasn’t their enemy, how were they going to figure out who was? It wasn’t like cat boy would be in the mood to tell them now. He might just attack them on sight, and Jake wouldn’t be able to blame him for that. He kinda doubted Randy would be able to act as much of a buffer, either.

He'd messed up.

You’ll have friends to help you out, Kara had said, but why couldn’t Sara have warned him that he’d make a powerful enemy if he didn’t think things through?

Well, Jake knew the answer to that, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

Sometimes, it would be a lot easier if he didn’t know anything about the future.

XXX

6:48 PM

Adrien didn’t have a clear view of the dragon. Getting to where he’d needed to go had taken longer than he’d hoped—he wasn’t convinced he was that much faster in Paris only because he knew his way around; these buildings weren’t what he was used to, either—and now that he was closer….

Now that he was closer, he couldn’t even see the dragon anymore. He’d had a glimpse of a shimmering purple-pink wing a few long seconds ago, enough to tell him that it wasn’t the same dragon he’d seen earlier, and then it had gone behind a building. By the time he’d gotten onto the rooftop of said building, the dragon was gone.

He spent more precious time scanning the skies for a departing akuma, just in case the Ninja had gotten here ahead of him again and figured out where the akuma was hiding, but there was nothing.

There were, however, television crews on the ground, and no longer just the ones who’d been sent to cover the gala. He’d taken enough of a risk showing his face earlier; how many times could he potentially be caught on tape before footage of Chat Noir in New York City turned up on the internet in a spot where Alya could find it? Sure, she wouldn’t necessarily connect the fact that Adrien Agreste and Chat Noir were in the NYC at the same time, not with any seriousness, but….

He couldn’t afford to risk it.

Of course, he couldn’t afford to let Hawk Moth get away with whatever he was trying to do, either.

If Alya figured it out, if her accusations of him being Chat Noir went beyond a joke she sent to Nino, then he’d…. He’d have to give up being Chat Noir. Give up Plagg, give up spending so much time with Ladybug, give up the freedom wearing the mask gave him.

But he wouldn’t deserve to be Chat Noir if he didn’t act now, all because he was too selfish to risk losing everything.

Still, that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be careful. The hooded sweater he’d bought wouldn’t do much to conceal his identity, but he’d be less conspicuous wearing that—even with the hood up, even in a crowd like the one below—than he would be as Chat Noir or Adrien Agreste. He should be able to pass as a curious bystander. Hopefully.

The alley below was empty, so Adrien extended his staff and then let it slowly collapse, bringing him back to ground level as quickly and quietly as possible. He ducked behind a dumpster before whispering for Plagg to pull his claws in, and he tugged the hood as far down over his eyes as it would go before straightening up.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Plagg whispered to him as he settled next to Adrien’s neck, hiding himself in the shadow of the hood. “I can smell the magic from here.”

“It’s just Hawk Moth,” Adrien murmured back. “You saw the Critic earlier.”

“This isn’t the same. It’s not the same as that ghost kid, either. Or the Ninja. They all smell different.”

That was enough to give Adrien pause. “Hawk Moth didn’t send Phantom? Why didn’t you tell me that on the roof? Or in the mall?”

“There were more important matters to discuss.”

“Like what?”

“Like getting me my camembert.”

Adrien rolled his eyes, even though he knew Plagg wouldn’t be able to see the movement. “I gave you the last of what I had with me.” He’d eventually decided to go back and ask the concierge at the hotel where would be the best place to go to get some more, and the man had graciously offered to order some in for him and have it sent up to the suite. Sure, the Critic had attacked before Adrien had had a chance to rest, and then Phantom had attacked him, and now this dragon had turned up, but…. But even if the cheese wasn’t there when Adrien went looking for it, Plagg would at least be able to eat something.

He might not be able to get back out into the fray as quickly as he’d like the next time he transformed and used Cataclysm, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to duck out in the middle of a fight to feed Plagg.

Even if it would be the first time doing so without Ladybug around to cover for him.

If the Ninja was still around, whoever he was, maybe he’d be willing to step in again.

Adrien would certainly need help cleaning up this mess and the one ahead, whenever Hawk Moth decided to activate the Critic’s akuma.

Granted, he hadn’t seen any statues of the Critic about, not like they had with Stoneheart. Maybe the akuma hadn’t proliferated yet? Or maybe the dormant akuma had taken on a different form?

Or maybe Hawk Moth had found a better target and recalled the Critic’s akuma before it had multiplied. Adrien only hoped he could be so lucky. But if this dragon wasn’t someone who’d been akumatized by Hawk Moth…. “Plagg,” Adrien said, overriding the kwami’s complaints, “if this isn’t Hawk Moth’s doing, whose is it?”

The kindly old man in the electronics store in Chinatown had reminded him more of Master Fu than anyone else, and the teenager hadn’t exactly struck him as evil, either. He’d been helpful, if a bit preoccupied, and if Plagg hadn’t warned him to leave—

“It’s an old magic you don’t want to get mixed up in.” Plagg paused, but he must have known that wasn’t enough. “Dragons are real,” he finally said, “and I can smell their magic at work here. It’s very distinctive—a little similar to Longg’s, but sharper—and if you have any doubt, the fact that you’ve seen two dragons should put that to rest.”

Adrien didn’t know who Longg was. He didn’t ask, figuring Plagg would tell him if he could, at least if he figured it was important. Of course, Plagg’s idea of what was important could be fairly skewed, but Adrien had learned to live with that. “What about Phantom? Or the Ninja?”

“Phantom’s a ghost.” Something in Plagg’s tone made Adrien’s spine crawl, but maybe that was because he’d seen firsthand how dangerous Phantom could be. And to find out he wasn’t even alive…. How could Adrien hope to stop him, if it came to that? If he decided he wanted the Miraculous— “The Ninja’s magic is more recent, relatively speaking. This millennium, anyway; not like the dragons. He doesn’t have a Miraculous, but he’s got at least one magical artefact helping him out.”

“And at least he’s an ally,” Adrien murmured. “He only ever tried to fight the Critic, not me, even after she mentioned the Miraculous.” But he was an ally Adrien might never see again. Whatever he’d said earlier, he wasn’t really a partner, not like Ladybug. He might have just been passing by, in the right spot at the right time, and come to help because he was a hero.

He could just as easily be gone, leaving Adrien to deal with this mess by himself.

Between Hawk Moth, the ghost, the dragons, and the fact that Nathalie and the Gorilla were surely looking for him by now….

“We need to figure this out fast,” Adrien said. “I don’t know how much time we have.”

“Not enough,” Plagg murmured. Adrien might not have heard it ordinarily, soft-spoken as it was, but with Plagg right under his ear, he heard it this time.

He hoped Plagg was wrong, and not just about how much time they had, but he couldn’t afford to take any chances.

Taking a steadying breath, Adrien left the safety of the alley and went in search of the dragon.

(see more fics | next)

[andersoncharm]

He is half of my soul, as the poets say. /Blaine Self Para. February 20, 2020

Para: He is half of my soul, as the poets say.

Rating: PG.

Pairing: Blaine and his troubles. His father, Will,  makes an appearance. Mentions of a past, very brief and kinda toxic relationship with Kurt Hummel.

When: February 20, 2020 

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

Notes: Blaine can’t keep his mind from wandering to terrible places. His father brings news that causes him more strife.

Warnings: Sad Blaine? I don’t know. Not really Kurt friendly but, this is a Seblaine rp so, you’ve been warned. <3

OOC Notes: I tried to make this simple. I’m terribly sorry if I’ve confused anyone.

Blaine was normally an extremely happy guy. He’d been fun and full of too much positive energy his entire life. There had only been one time in his twenty-three years that he could recall not being able to summon the sunshine. And even then, when his mother, who was his Home, had been ripped away from him he pretended to shine and then cried alone in his room. He spent his teen years after her death pretending to be like any normal kid. Or as normal a kid as he could be considering he was a witch. It took him a long time to admit that all the things he did then were just ways for him to cope. He didn’t do a great job.

Like when he and Sam would steal the whiskey from his father's stash, as if he wouldn’t know, and sneak down to the river where Blaine would hide the bottle away from his best friend and refill it for them each time it would get close to empty and they’d drink it until they were sick. Or when he left his Ohio home to go on one of Sam’s McKinley High field trips that lasted three days, glamouring himself as a student, and didn’t tell his father, letting him worry for days.

Or when he’d let himself be Kurt Hummel’s freaking trophy witch for months. Letting the other boy put thoughts into his head about how even though they weren’t Fated that maybe they should stay together anyway because why not? And besides, no one could possibly understand Blaine better than him considering Kurt’s mother had also died when he was young. She didn’t waste away but, it was still terrible so of course he understood whole heartedly. Turns out Kurt really didn’t. Or if he did he was bad at showing it.

Sure. They’d had fumblings in the woods and sneaks in bedrooms with the doors set up to alarm them if their respective fathers came home. That part was fun at least. It was the very public dates where Kurt would introduce Blaine as “Blaine Anderson, you know, of Willem Anderson fame? His father is a Descendant.” His voice just polite enough to hide its condescending nature from the world. The tinkling little lilt that, for a very short time, made Blaine kind of smile, had started to grate on him more and more and he finally had to cut off the fling when Kurt went a step too far and introduced him as “ Blaine Anderson, you know, his mother’s a hero. Sacrificed herself all for a human stranger…” It was the little shrug like it was no big deal that had done it for Blaine. He’d given a head shake and a laugh of disbelief and left. Because at the end of the day it didn’t matter how sad or lonely he was, he was worth more than being some pretty boy’s boasting right.

Still, it took him years to feel good again. To feel even a little how he felt before she died. Sure, he let his smile come back slowly over the years and the move to Boston. And he let himself make friends at LeFey once he figured out they weren’t just hanging around because he was semi famous for two very different reasons. He felt good enough and seventy five percent himself during his years in Boston. It wasn’t until his beautiful Sebastian, who was actually the fucking sun, and his companion and ball of love, Ras came barreling into his life that he felt whole again. They brought that light and happiness full force back into his life. And now, because of something so stupid it felt like it was going to crumble. Like it was made of the thinnest crystal and one little tap would shatter it. Lately it felt like the sun was setting and nothing he did could stop it. The only time he could preserve it was when he was with Sebastian and no matter what he did there wasn’t a plausible way he could be with him every second without raising the concerns of his father and the Council and from the looks of it… His father knew. Maybe.

The man was pacing his office in front of Blaine, not saying anything but the words seemed to be stuck behind his teeth and if Will Anderson were to open his mouth something negative and harsh would come tumbling out. And it would be directed at him. Blaine sat, Freya sitting at attention on a stool next to him, at his desk, the one he’d spent the last few months learning advanced forms of magic. Potions that only the highest witches were allowed to use, charms and curses and how to break them and detect them. He was supposed to go out into the field next year. As in leave America in favor of England. It was something he didn’t want to think about. He sat there quietly and just watched while his father walked back and forth in front of the ancient stone window in his Headmaster’s office. He waited, dread filling his heart with each sisk of Will’s expensive shoes on the floor as he turned. This was it. Will was going to tell him that he knew all about Sebastian and he was going to try and make him leave him. He was going to threaten Sebastian or something and Blaine didn’t know if he could match his father’s advanced High Witch status but he’d damn well try. He even loosened up his fingers just in case he needed his hands.

Turns out he didn’t need them. Will Anderson turned, gave Blaine a nod, and then sat down on the edge of Blaine’s desk. His ankles crossed, fingers laced loosely together. “When was the last time you played your violin, Blaine?” His father asked, his voice smooth and clear. Blaine face scrunched up in confusion for a moment and he quickly had to rearrange his face to be more relaxed.

“The violin? I don’t know, a year ago?” It had been almost exactly a year ago, actually. Just after he told Seb that he was a witch. He’d be absently tuning and playing the old instrument when he turned around to put it away and his boyfriend was standing stupefied in the doorway. Blaine hadn’t even been trying to use magic and still it had charmed his boyfriend. There was a reason Blaine didn’t play it anymore. He'd practically been born playing the thing. All music, really. But, the violin was the first one he’d picked up and it was like breathing to him. When he used to go to the Charles River and play his guitar or keyboard for the people to calm them he never chose the violin because it was far too powerful and he charmed or healed too much even when he didn’t mean to. “You know I don’t like to play it often. It’s too risky.”

Will fixed him with a exasperated look. “Well perhaps if you spent more time at LeFay practicing instead of gallivanting around Massachusetts then you wouldn’t have to hide your magic so much.” Blaine opened his mouth to protest, all the sudden angry that his father assumed to know anything about his life especially when he knew damn well that his mother had always insisted they mingle with humans and not get so wrapped up in a purely magical world. She probably hadn’t intended for him to fall in love with a human but, well, Fate happened.

Before Blaine could speak up however, Will raised his hand to silence him. “I don’t care to hear your excuses. You’re going to do what you want, I know. But, you need to listen. There’s been some unrest in the community. Strange sightings in foreign countries, magic sprinkled in places it shouldn’t be.”  Will cleared his throat and gave Blaine a pointed look. And Blaine could almost swear that his father knew that he was the reason.

He took a deep breath and shrugged. “Stuff like this happens in the magic community all the time, dad-” He was abruptly cut off by his father standing suddenly, causing Freya to step in front of Blaine’s chest as if to protect him. His father watched her for a moment before speaking. “Hmm. It’s good that you’re so close to her… All of that being said, stuff like this does not happen often. Not to this degree… I asked about the violin because I think you should start using it more. You’re powerful with it. Did you know the Oracles are stirring? Of course not, you’re never here. However, you might need that power to protect us from any sort of threats that might come our way.”

“The Oracles? That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, dad.” It did though, and Blaine knew it. Were they going to start spitting out details of his and Seb’s life together? Were they going to tell the world that Hunter and Tony had helped them along? Why were they so important that Oracles were getting involved. He felt sick and once again wondered how any people would get hurt all because he fell in love with a human. As if he could help it. “You’re acting as if we’re going to have to go to war or something. It’s not 1692 anymore.” He attempted to joke but, knew it was in bad taste. He couldn't help it. He was terrified.

Will wasn’t having any of this. “103 year old Edna has been spitting out random words all the way over in Wales that nobody can make out. No amount of magic is moving her along towards her tellings. She keeps shutting down and starting back up. While three year old Zoe is so fussy and confused and babbling gibberish her parent’s couldn’t take it and felt the need to call it in. I don’t know what it means but I do know it means that something is coming. Something big. And I need you to be prepared. You need to start taking all of this seriously, Blaine.” Will leaned forward, his eyes softening for a moment as he really looked at his son and for just a second, a glimpse of his old dad and Blaine though he might touch his shoulder and say something kind. But, he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up. Will stood up straight and made his way back to his desk where he sat down and instantly busied himself with work. “Now, I expect you here and learning more often. Not doing gods know what around the city. You’ll be here at five am tomorrow morning. Do you understand?” He spared a look up long enough to see Blaine nod, swallowing hard as he focused on Freya’s worried silver eyes as opposed to his dad's stormy blues. His dad gave a curt nod. “You may go.”

Blaine scooped up Freya, he didn’t need to, she was capable of keeping up, but he wanted something solid in his arms. He wanted to feel relief that what his dad knew wasn’t for sure about him and Sebastian. Only maybe. But, he only felt dread. Why were the Oracles stirring? If the Witches Council and The Order were exchanging information there must be more than just the Paris incident to look at. Had they seen Sebastian and him elsewhere? Was Blaine leaving magic traces? Blaine had always prided himself on being careful. But, if he could get caught in Paris then what the hell else was he messing up?

He tried not to think too much about it as he cautiously popped himself and Freya into Sebastian’s apartment. Ras greeting the two of them with fervor. His boyfriend wouldn't be home for hours but, Blaine needed to feel close to him. Needed to remember that they were real and worth the fight. The apartment felt and smelled so much like the him that he started to relax just a little bit as soon as he walked into the kitchen.

He made himself some Chamomile with a dash of calming magic in the kettle Seb had gotten him. Smiling softly to himself at the not so distant memory of Seb remembering that Chamomile was for calming a person down as he told Blaine to drink some. He drank his tea down as he slipped off his shoes and curled up on his side of the couch. The pup tucking himself behind his legs and Freya settling on the arm next to his head. He pulled the familiar and comforting Harvard blanket over him and Ras and let himself drift off to sleep to the soothing sounds of  pup snores and Prince Henry bantering with Danielle. He told himself that he just needed to calm down. But, in reality, Sebastian and everything he touched was his sanity right now. The only bright thing in a dark day. Being near him and in his home almost took away the pain of thinking too hard about the possibility of losing him. So he let himself sleep off the conversation with his dad. 

And when Seb came home later he didn’t tell his boyfriend about Oracles or the conversation or magic trails. He just pretended it was all okay and allowed himself to press kisses into Sebastian’s skin and then lose himself in Sebastian’s embrace. This was his. And this was theirs. Here he didn’t have to think about Sebastian hurt, or Sebastian loosing his mind, or Sebastian alone... Blaine could let himself think that the Council and the Order couldn't touch them when they were together like this. And as long as he believed that, they’d be okay.

They had to be.

/fin.

[sceosource]

Thank you to all of the talented and amazing people that participated in our first Sceo Secret Santa!! It wouldn’t have happened without you!!

Please make sure your fic has been added to the Collection.

This even was run by request. If you have requests or ideas for future Sceo Events please drop us a line! And stay tuned for the upcoming announcement of Sceo Week 2019!!!!

The Final Round Up Below:

Somethings Just About To Break by @iftheskyisthelimit They found him just in time, before they cut out his heart. Theo fights the memories and nightmares as he recovers, Scott fights his guilt at believing that Theo had skipped town and for not finding him sooner. They both fight their feelings for each other in the process… My first entry for the SceoWeek Sceo Secret Santa.

Behind the Mask by @endraking Season 1 reimagine.  The Dread Doctors never took Theo but circumstances still pulled apart Scott's friendship with him.  Years after Tara disappeared and has been presumed dead and after the Raekens passed away, Theo resurfaces at BHHS.  Scott can't explain the thoughts running through his head but he has a lot of things to consider, since receiving the strange bite, and putting himself on Jackson's radar.   That can't end too badly, right?  Especially with Theo being Lydia's adopted brother and Jackson's best friend.  This semester is going to be one to remember.

Our Claim by @sinofthewolf Theo has always had an uncanny knack for ticking people off, whether it's on the baseball field, in hallways, or in the locker room with his own team. As the captain of the lacrosse team, Scott's been told that he definitely shouldn't hang around someone with such a terrible reputation, well at least according to Stiles.But then again, Theo does look really good in that uniform...

Handle With Care by @fandom-oracle As dangerous as he is, Theo is in many ways fragile. And everything that should make Scott want to protect him also makes him want to ruin him.

Feeling Green by @sceoraeken Theo's not jealous that Jackson keeps flirting with Scott. Nope, not at all. Blood in the Sewers by @liliaeth​ Scott is trying to save an innocent child from hunters. Theo comes to save him, but fears that maybe he has gone further than his Alpha would allow.

Coming Around by @tabbytabbytabby It's 4 months after the hunters have been dealt with, and Theo is working on piecing his life back together. He has a job, an apartment, and has been taking night classes to get his GED. Along with that, there are still the nightmares and hallucinations Theo has been having about Tara. Then Scott comes back into town for his summer break from college, and together they start working through their issues and trying to heal.

Crushed Little Stars by @slothgiirl "Theo isn’t sure when lying about wanting to join the pack becomes true." season 5 au where theo chooses the pack and scott.

Rescue Me by @xtarmanderx Theo’s been on his own since the hunters left Beacon Hills. When Scott finds him sleeping in his truck, they have a lot to talk about.

The Secret and Scandalous History of the Protector of Beacon Hills by @princeescaluswords - At the beginning of senior year, an old friend returns to Beacon Hills and wants to join Scott's pack.  As much as Scott is distracted by murderous chimeras, Dread Doctors, and decaying friendships, he spends way too much time thinking about Theo Raeken.

Christmas by @sailor-zeplin Christmas had always been a touchy subject with Theo.

Memoriae Fractum by @demonzdust​ Theo Raeken disappeared after his plans to steal the power of the Beast of Gévaudan were foiled. Seven months later, Scott is preparing to face off against a new threat when he finds Theo shackled and caged in a hunter’s secret laboratory. He soon realizes that Theo’s memories are broken. He can’t remember who he is, but he recognizes Scott and knows that he’ll be safe with him. Despite the threat he knows Theo still poses, Scott can’t resist trying to help his once-friend. As Theo’s memories slowly start to return, Scott waits on pins and needles to see if he’ll be able to give Theo the help he needs, or if he truly is too far gone. [Canon-Divergent from the end of 5B]

Memoriae Fractum Supporting Graphics: (1) (2)

Theo trying to process what Scott makes him feel by @demonzdust

Best Laid Plans by @princeescaluswords What if Theo's plot to destroy Scott's pack didn't turn out exactly how he wanted it to go?  What if he had to improvise?

Fraternity Pledge by @fluffyotters All human Au in which Stiles wants to join a fraternity and Scott his best friend goes with him as support but ends up joining anyways. One of the fraternity brothers is Theo Raeken a guy Scott knew from a long time ago which is another reason to stay.

Stressing Over Nothing by @codylworld Scott tries to surprise Theo for Christmas, but fails miserably...or does he?

That’s a wrap!

[haphazardlyparked]

Peddler in the Towers

Part 6 of Into Fairy

(previous - part five)

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The Towers road was hard-packed dirt that ran from the docks through the center of town before stretching out past the cultivated fields and orchards; then it wound its way into the forested Towers feet and disappeared from view.  Cal and Meg set off down it two days after arriving to Auphont, the trio from their riverboat were long gone. But Cal was right that they wouldn’t be alone. Early on their first day, rambunctious group of four adventurers who’d been in town for a week passed them riding fine horses, laughing and joking as they went, as well as another pair on more sensible mules. Cal and Meg had opted to go on foot, carrying their supplies. 

“They do know they can like, die out there, right?” Meg asked when a third set of adventurers—another trio, also mounted on horses, and also laughing amongst themselves as they rode—passed them by. They were even passing some kind of meat pastries between them, as though it were a picnic. Meg wouldn’t have begrudged anyone a picnic. The pastries had smelled delicious too. But this was a quest, and there had to be some kind of solemnity to it all, right? 

Cal looked over at her with the patience of a stone. “You do know we can like, die out there right?” he asked, mimicking her words but completely botching the inflection.

She inhaled to argue--and then scowled and kicked a pebble at him instead.

Cal was right; Meg was being a bit hypocritical. 

Even after all the stories she had hunted down and begged and bribed out of people—the most maddening of which included the nearly-forsaken wanderers who’d traded precious heirlooms to the Peddler in exchange for the way out, only to find they had been just one turn away from the road all along—the whole Oracle quest thing didn’t seem quite real to her. Taking it seriously, or hoping that everyone else did, wasn’t going to make it feel like a quest for her either. 

“Whether it feels like one or not,” Cal said sympathetically, when she tried to explain it to him later that night, after they’d made camp on the side of the road. “You’re right that we should be cautious. There’s a reason why the Towers are infamous, Peddler stores or no; there has only ever been the one road through them, and it really is dangerous if you leave the path. They say the Towers were one mountain once, before a great earthquake shattered it into three peaks, and that’s what makes traversing them beyond the known road so dangerous. You never know when you’ll come up against a deep chasm, or a sheer bluff. They’re not like normal mountains.”

Meg tried to take Cal’s words to heart, but the truth was that she still didn’t feel any sense of danger or adventure. 

*

Though most of the other adventurers broke off from the caravaners’ road after only one night on it, Cal had learned of a travelers’ shrine while talking local flora and fauna with the caravaners, and being Cal, he wanted to leave an offering there. The shrine was a humble thing, set on the first major crest of the pass before it descended into a steep, switchback route plumbed the depths of a deep valley between two of the mountains. For the traders on their way to Auphont, the shrine marked the easy sloping end to their journey. For Meg and Cal, it would mean the real start of their wandering, and maybe the real start of their quest. 

Meg had agreed to the shrine plan because she couldn’t see how it would significantly change their plans. She even gathered plant stems and wildflowers as they went, to braid together her own offering to the shrine as they made their ascent along the road.

It was early afternoon of the third day by the time they reached the shrine, and Meg’s whole body was tired. Her only consolation was that Cal seemed to be a bit sore himself after their long indolent months on his lands. The shrine was small and modest, little more than mounds of rocks, moss, and other woodsy things clearly meant to represent the three peaks of the Towers. Cal had bought a small candle of green wax to burn from a trader, and Meg laid her wreath over the mini-Towers so that it encircled them.

“Is there something we’re supposed to say?” she asked, yawning and stretching out while they waited for the candle to burn down or get blown out—either would do, Cal said, but from where Meg was sitting it looked like the three miniature Towers would protect the tiny dancing flame from the gentle breeze until there was nothing left to burn.

Cal shook his head. “It’s more of a reminder. We are saying we are guests here, and the important thing is that we respect the lands we pass through.”

“Got it,” said Meg. “No hooliganism. I can do that.”

“Mm,” Cal agreed, and dodged the piece of hard bread Meg threw at him.

*

Cal’s candle was nothing more than a puddle of wax in less than an hour, and then they were off.

From the shrine, finding a little game trail was easy (for Cal) and they followed it away from the road to make their first camp in the proper wilderness of the Tower. They had only been trooping haphazardly through the underbrush of the woods for an hour or so—Meg picking their route at random with a rising excitement, while Cal kept an reflexive eye on the sun’s position over head—when it became clear that someone was trooping haphazardly after them.

They were following a small trail that rose and fell as it seemed to circle around something, and Cal kept looking at the falling sun when he stopped suddenly, tugging on Meg’s arm silently to halt her too. The look on his face--thoughtful, head tilted as if listening--had Meg doing the same, but Meg didn’t hear anything until a dog yipped loudly. 

“Hello?” Meg shouted in the direction of the bark, before Cal could stop her.  

It was a human voice that replied. “Adventurers?”

The speaker sounded distant but hopeful. Meg froze Cal went for the hilt of his sword, and then Meg heard what Cal had before the dog: the sound of someone tromping closer to them grew louder and louder.

In front of them, a dark shape bounded out from behind a copse of trees just to the left, and Meg yelped. Cal pulled her back and stepped forward, drawing his sword. The afternoon’s sun flashed against the steel, and Cal was already in a wary, protective stance before they both realized that it was just a dog.

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” Meg muttered under her breath, but Cal still didn’t relax. 

The dog was a skinny, long hunting dog of some sort, with the kind of narrow hound face that Meg had always found somewhat creepy, but there was a loop of leather around its neck that said it wasn’t wild. Its tail wagged in a satisfied blur when it saw them relax, and then it sat down on its haunches and panted and watched them.

A few minutes later, the shoemaker from Auphont emerged from the same place as the dog, carrying a small traveler’s pack on his back. “Oh thanks be!” he pronounced, throwing his hands up in relief the moment he saw them. 

Meg and Cal stared. Meg kept staring while Cal sheepishly sheathed his sword, nodded at the shoemaker, and greeted, “Hello, Master Cobbler.”

“I’ve been following you,” the shoemaker said without preamble.

“Apparently,” said Meg, not very politely 

Cal nudged her chidingly. “What for?” he asked.

“To save you!” the shoemaker exclaimed like it should have been obvious. “And now that I’ve found you, you need to return to the town before you actually die here.”

“Do you know something of the Towers that we don’t?” Cal asked.

“No, no, no,” the shoemaker said. His reply was quick and impatient. “I think we all know equally well that the Towers wilderness means death. There’s a reason we have the road.”

“We’re searching for the Peddler,” Cal said, though Meg thought the statement was both a little unnecessary--surely the shoemaker already knew this--as well as a little wrong. It was more like they were waiting for the Peddler to find them. 

The shoemaker reply was an agitated exclamation. “He doesn’t exist!”

“But…” Meg said, grappling with a disorienting mix of disappointment and the sense that she’d known this would happen all along. “The oracles—?”

The shoemaker threw his hands up again. “Yes, yes, the oracles, nevermind them. They come second. First, what’s important is that you know the Peddler is only story, you understand, perhaps something made up to interest a customer, and perhaps now someone feels responsible for all the adventurers that keep disappearing into the Towers and has to go running after them to save them as if he were the Peddler in truth.”

Meg gaped as she processed this. “Are you saying this is all some giant marketing ploy?”

“I—” the shoemaker frowned at her defensively. “I told someone they maybe wanted a new pair of shoes in case they lost the trail and were doomed to wandering the broken faces of the Towers until an unreliable sole caused them to slip and die, and then I spun a tail about a mysterious peddler who might also trade them the secret of safety for a good pair of boots. To drive the point home, you see.”

“Oh,” Meg said, because as long as you were a little bit of afraid of losing the trail and believed in things like the Peddler, that was actually kind of a great sales pitch. And Meg and Cal had flown partway to the Towers on dragonback in search of that very same Peddler, in order to find directions into fairy so that they could hunt for a magical sword from a long-dead ancient hero... so who was Meg to say what people should and shouldn’t believe in? 

“I am very good at selling my wares,” the cobbler said soberly. 

“But the oracles,” Cal said, repeating Meg’s question, and Meg felt a faint odd tingling in her shoulders. He was right—she had been right, too. How could a lying shoemaker set off a bunch of oracle prophecies? And there was something else she was forgetting, she was sure of it. 

The dog thumped its tail loudly against the ground and smiled its weird smile. The cobbler rubbed a hand over his face and said, “Yes, about that. I did learn something…ah… portentous, shall we say, a few weeks ago. And since I am the Peddler, after a fashion... you see?”

Meg looked at Cal; to Meg it sounded sufficiently loop-holey and frustratingly prophecy-like, but Cal was the one who would know those things. 

Cal returned Meg’s look thoughtfully, and asked the cobbler, “Will you be sharing this portentous information?”

“Of course!” the shoemaker exclaimed. “Who am I to meddle with the prophecies? I know my role, an I will do it. Now, you will go back to the town and wait for me, and I will go and warn a few of the others, and then return within three days to... Share my story.”

Cal glanced at their packs, laden with camping supplies, and said, “We will stay here tonight, and head to the base of the mountain tomorrow. And wait for you by the road on the way back to Auphont.”

“Agreed,” said the shoemaker quickly. “Wait for me three days by the road. Now. I must go after the others.”

And with that same air of exasperated impatience, he confirmed the way back to the road to Cal, gave Meg a thin rolled scrap of paper for just in case they still managed to get themselves lost, and started away. 

“Three days, remember!” he said as he trotted off, the smiling dog at his heels. “It was agreed!”

And then they were both gone.

Meg stuck the scrap of paper into one of pouches and looked at Cal. “It’s nearly sundown, and you didn’t even offer to share our camp with him,” she observed.

Cal avoided her look guiltily. “I know, it was very rude, but…”

“,I’m not going to complain,” Meg assured him. “I’m just surprised. But really, I’m glad that you also—” she paused abruptly, uncertain of what she was trying to say. “I am not in the mood for company.”

“Yes,” Cal murmured. “I think I was feeling the same.”

“Makes sense. We only just got started out on our adventure, and then he totally just put a damper on everything!” 

Cal nodded along with Meg, but still she had the unpleasant suspicion that she was forgetting something. 

Something important.   

*

In the forest that was not the Temple, Meg knelt with Chai in her hands, point ground into the dirt. She clung to the hilt, leaning against it an attempt to keep herself upright.

“—son of a—”

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(the tone of this has been bugging me for like a week now and i still want my line breaks back but ;_; alas)

[darkzorua100]

So we can blame Ai for the stupid naming of Earth. Why am I not surprised by this turn out? And he was the one to make fun of Windy’s name choice...yeah sure that naming wasn’t much better but at least it wasn’t actually his attribute type’s name. Let’s just be so thankful that Yusaku named Ai when he did or else we would have to be calling him Darky right now. And thank god for that because I would have to be sharing a name with him if that was the case.

But yeah, episode 66 was really good when it came to the information dump. We got to meet Earth, who isn’t a little sh*t like Ai, Flame, and Windy are, and somewhat of Aqua, somewhat debatable on her until we actually get to see her in person, as well as some information on the Ignises and the Cyberse World in general. Apparently the Light Ignis was the leader of the group while Aqua was the second-in-command. From what we have seen of Aqua in Ai’s flashbacks, she was the one to always get on his case for being lazy so I figured as much when it came to her but the Light Ignis being the leader is really interesting to me. When it came to the Ignises as a whole, they didn’t seem to be the type to appoint a leader as a whole between them. Each of them were the leaders of their own territories but they all seemed to be on equal grounds between them. When Flame talked about how him and the others had to have a group meeting to discuss if they could trust humans or not, it seemed like they had a council system but if Light was the appointed leader, shouldn’t he be the one to make the call and the other Ignises would follow his lead? Or maybe he was just as divided as Earth is that he couldn’t make a right call without hearing his kin’s opinions first? Who really knows at the moment when it comes to the final Ignis. Ironic how the Light Ignis is the one that they are keeping in the dark from us. Then we have Aqua who Ai describes as the one who can tell the difference between the lies and the truth. She’s apparently the reason why the Cyberse World has never had any civil wars between the Ignises. Earth also describes her as almost like an oracle as she was the one to inform him about how the Cyberse World is going to fall apart from the battle between the humans and the Ignises and asked which side he was going to take when this war between them is going to happen. Some interesting foreshadowing there to the potential full out war between the Ignises who side with the humans (Ai and Flame) and the Ignises who aren’t (Windy). Who’s side Earth, Aqua, and the Light Ignis will take remains to be seen but something that Earth said is really making me question more if the Light Ignis is actually the ??? guy. I’ve been saying from the start that the Light Ignis can’t be the ??? guy because why would an Ignis want to destroy their own home world and Earth in this episode even states the same thing. But now that even he is saying this, it makes me wonder if they are really trying to throw us for a loop here by trying to make us think that an Ignis wouldn’t destroy their own home world for their own ambitions, whatever those are. The appearance of ??? can even be explained as well if that actually is the Light Ignis because it isn’t actually the Light Ignis but an AI that they created for them to stand on like how Windy has Echo and how Earth created this tree servant for him to duel upon. I’m kinda split now on what to think about this theory because I feel like that would be to obvious but at the same time, not obvious enough.

Speaking of that tree servant thing, lord and behold, Earth might actually be Spectre’s Ignis. I’m only saying might because Earth hasn’t confirmed that detail yet but yeah, for the most part, they revealed another Lost Child and Ignis pairing! And thank god I was right on that one so now I don’t have to change anything in Nemesis! I also liked how this episode actually established what the Ignises are based upon from their Lost Children. We knew they were based on their dueling data and this episode shows it since with the two other Lost Child and Ignis pairings we have got, Yusaku/Ai and Takeru/Flame, we haven’t see Ai and Flame duel. Spectre has a calming, laid back dueling style, talking advantage of his opponent's moves and that shows in Earth’s personality being the soft spoken and, as he calls himself, socially awkward being that he is. Yusaku lost a lot during the Hanoi Project and it shows in Ai being not the most intelligent of the Ignises, as Yusaku more then likely misplayed a lot to have caused his dueling data to take that form. As for Takeru and Flame, when he wasn’t being traumatized by Despair from the Dark, his dueling must have been rather aggressive to have made Flame the way he is. Funny how that in turned caused, from what it is looking to be like, the Ignises to have opposite personalities from the kid they were based on. Now that we got Spectre = Earth confirmed, for the most part anyway, and some details about Light’s personality, it is kinda hard to figure out which one of the remaining two males, Windy or the Light Ignis, belongs to Jin. If the Light Ignis is the leader type, it is looking more and more like he could be Jin’s since he’s the one that totally shut down. That just remains Windy and a still yet to be introduced final lost boy, who if Windy is anything to be based upon, has to be completely humorless and/or emotionless. As for Aqua’s human, since she seems to be the caring one and the one that has the foresight to everything, her human has to be selfish and thinks of things in afterthought. If we are still going with the Aoi theory, yeah that sums her up pretty well but if not, her human is going to be interesting to meet when that time comes.

Not much to say dueling wise. Since Playmaker knows he is dueling Spectre’s Ignis, he is playing on the defensive. Earth’s dueling is nothing to amazing at the moment but the episode ends with him literally summoning Aqua’s heart onto the field and I loved how the landscape around them changes instantly, really showing that Aqua is really the heart and soul for the Ignises. I’m interested to see where she went off to after giving Earth her card. Same can be said with Earth. He’s not going to beat Playmaker, that’s just a fact right there, and after losing, he’s more then likely going to join the human’s side (or not because of something that Playmaker says or does during the duel (which would be an interesting plot twist there) and after that, I can see Earth doing one of three things: he’s going to go off on his own (to do whatever he needs to do), he’s going to be Ai’s new roommate (which would be super funny to see happen) since he can’t go to his kid without getting murdered on the spot, or he actually does go to Spectre after this duel and try and convert him over to the human/Ignis side. I really hope it is the third one because I really want a Spectre and Earth meeting now and just to see the Knights of Hanoi again in general. It would be a good way to really add them back into the story again and give Spectre some character development in the process.

As for the rest of the episode, nothing to crazy. Queen tore Akira a new one as we all thought she would, Go is apparently on some kind of secret mission (when Akira called him back before Soulburner was captured by BS) and this episode proves that the Ignises are so stupid that they are clever. Ai is out blogging to the world about his amazing advantages with Playmaker and then we have Earth who contacts Yusaku in a public chat room. I love how everyone in this episode even says that the Ignises are to smart to do something so stupid but no, they are just stupid. Don’t even get me started on Hayami when it came to this. My god, she is so frustrating. I seriously do not like her. She is supposed to be funny but all she is doing is pissing me off so much.

I think that about does it for this episode. Episode 67′s cast list only has five names, those being Yusaku, the three Ignises (Ai, Earth, and Aqua), and Linkuriboh (best character) so it should be mostly dueling and plot between Earth and Aqua from what the preview shows. Like I said, I’m interested to see what Earth’s resolve is going to be after this duel is over and since we haven’t gotten the summaries/titles for September yet, I really hope it is Earth going to Spectre after this because I really want that meeting now. If not, I’m not sure where the show is going to go from here after this duel. I am expecting another Soulburner duel to be confirmed though since it was just announced he is getting a Structure Deck based around him so they are going to have to show off more of his cards for that. Crossing my fingers for Soulburner vs Revolver still or maybe even a Soulburner vs Spectre duel now if we are trying to get Spectre to flip sides with Earth’s introduction into the story.

[thechocobros]

“SEE LUNA SAFE TO ALTISSIA” - EPILOGUE

Pair: Nyx Ulric / Lunafreya Nox Fleuret

Words: 2617

@nyxulricweek , Day #7:  “As long as I have strength in my body…”

Rating: Mature (not NSFW though)

Plot: Luna and Nyx didn’t fell in the Empire’s trap, Nyx didn’t had to use the ring and he survived. What would have happened if Nyx really had the chance to ‘see Luna safe to Altissia’, like he promised to Regis?

Personal Comment: This is it. This is the end. What can I say? Just ... Thank you. One year long journey on this fic. Thank you. Thank you really :”) and thanks to @loveiscosmicsin, my editor in all this <3

Sometimes Nyx wondered how he managed to survive when so many of his loved ones didn’t. Selena, Crowe, Pelna, comrades in arms in the Kingsglaive, and countless civilians… They all deserved life, even more than him, and yet, they were not alive when the fog of the battle dissipated. He was. He shouldn’t have. He challenged fate so many times it was mathematically unbelievable that he emerged unscathed. 

For what, anyway? Maybe there was no specific reason. Good people were rise to shine in the spotlight and good people burn out like candles when it’s their time. After all, it’s just the circle of life. For now, it was not his time to join them.

And yet… He wanted to believe there was a reason he’s still here. If everything he had done was worth it in the end. The victory of survival rang hollow when he could do nothing to honor the memory of those who led him there. What came next would be entirely up to him. A purpose, drive, meaning, anything to clutch and lean toward until he found answers. He knew just the person for that.

Nyx searched for them in Luna’s pretty eyes, now so meditative and relaxed, gaze settled on his figure. Usually so blue, they were shining with the colors of the sunset across the distance. They look also a bit sad, distant, even, it did strike a chord of alarm within him and reasonably so. She was seated on the grass, casually caressing the marks on his neck left by the fight in Altissia. Was she contemplating over how she was still alive, too? If she did, Nyx hoped to be her reason to live, as she was his. 

 "We should head back, my captain. Ravus must be looking for us," she whispered, sweetly as warmth glowed her cheeks. Like the beautiful paradox she was, she didn’t even rush to stop the caress, nor made no movement that matched her words. She just kept sweeping her fingers through his hair, lingering on his braids, and thoughtfully tracing them. 

“My captain,” he repeated, taken back by the title she chose to address him with. Well, what he attained. After all, he was gained the title of captain in Tenebrae’s Army, cooperating strictly with Cor Leonis, the captain of Insomnia’s Royal Guards and Kingsglaive, or what was left of it. In fact, these two captains had been preoccupied with the combined powers of Tenebrae and Lucis. Somehow, they ran across soldiers from the more distant corners of Eos. Being granted the rank in recognition of the valor and sacrifices he’s demonstrated looked pretty on paper, but the reason behind his unforeseeable promotion was simply…

“I’m a Captain just because I’m your husband. Damn, didn’t see that there were perks to our marriage besides seeing you, beautiful.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t like to be called like that. It suits you, hero.”

She was calm and serene saying it now, but when she assigned him the position at the beginning, she had her doubts. Firstly, she didn’t intend to place such a burden on his shoulders only because they impulsively wedded back when they thought they had no future. Secondly, because administrating Eos’ armies after all what happened would have kept him so busy. And yes, she missed him every time they were apart. During their long and epic journey from Insomnia to Altissia, she got so used in having him at her very side all along that now, waking up without him felt like being deprived of an arm or leg.

But this temporary aversion aside, Nyx had been amazing so far: he had managed to come back to her almost every day, even if exhausted, he always found time for her. No matter the world’s crisis, he wouldn’t ever have renounced to those special moments with her. 

“Then I’ll call you ‘my queen’." 

"Technically, you couldn’t, since Ravus is the King, which puts me as your humble princess." 

"Why can everyone call you ‘Queen’ but me?” Nyx groused, pretending to be outraged.

Luna giggled in response, leaning on him a bit. “Masses don’t care for logic, they just need new deities to worship now that the Astrals are gone. They also have in mind my mother’s example, and they want to give me the same title of Queen Oracle. You’re not like that, my darling. You do understand the difference, don’t you?”

“I do… Princess. It’s just a waste. You’d look amazing as a queen.” Nyx sighed, acknowledging one more time how Luna was good with words, kind of manipulating him to do whatever she wanted him to. Even over small things.

So that was what they were now. 

He was the captain of a bigger army than he could handle, she was the guiding liberator, the light and the balance in a post-apocalyptic world swallowed by chaos. 

After Noctis’ disappearance inside the Crystal, the small group of people who was aware of what really happened reacted with spontaneity and an organized intelligence. To face the emergency, Ravus and Aranea—the only two heroes who were part of the imperial army already—dominated control of the dying Empire. The emperor made deceased somehow by the hand of Izunia anyway, so it was enough to occupy the vacant throne, to proclaim themselves rulers and to command the remaining troops to surrender to the new government and the ‘coup d'etat’ was done. The evil Empire had fallen, its twisted games were overthrown. To be honest, neither of them thought that taking over the world would have been so easy. 

But if getting on top of Eos had been unexpectedly quick and simple, taking care of it challenged them further. 

Claustra, as Accordo’s First Secretary, stepped forward to the powers afforded with her office and mandated that all the world’s survivors seek refuge at safe havens. Ravus and Aranea agreed this was a priority since everyone started to realize that Izunia was still alive, Darkness would fall upon them soon.

Now was not the time to rebuild Eos. Not yet. They got to be prepared for the worse was yet to come. 

So, they asked Luna to have an inspirational speech as soon as possible, to inform everyone about what was about to happen. She did as she was requested for Eos’s sake. There, they announced that Lestallum would be the only haven. Following their beloved Oracle’s behest, masses started to flood the city. To aid their journey to the bustling haven and as her mother did before her, Luna enchanted the glowing havens positioned along the way where many offered words of gratitude for the Oracle’s steadfast guidance and wishes for their safety.

Lodgings and the seemingly vast perimeters in Lestallum shrink with passing day.

Libertus was with them. After all that happened, his chubby face was a call from a very distant memory. A bittersweet memory made of the scattered images of their home in Galahd, then Niflheim’s attack, their survival, and then the cruel fights in the Kingsglaive, street life in the slums of Insomnia …. Seeing him again was better than anything Nyx could’ve wished for. Such was the joy that the new Tenebrae Captain delayed all his appointments to spend a night in a bar of Lestallum with his friend, drinking beer and eating cup noodles. He had a lot to tell and six hours were barely enough for them to catch up on each other’s adventures. They both agreed that even if their lives changed so drastically, they would have kept their dreams alive. They promised to return back to Galahd one day and rebuild it from the ground up. When the King set all things right again, they would have had the time and the disposition for doing so.

However, if going back and forth from Lestallum to Tenebrae meant for Nyx at least some moments of happiness in seeing the old friend, for Luna it was not the same. The idea of leaving her homeland for an unspecified time distressed her a lot more than expected. It was not easy to accept that running away was their only option especially after all they done to grant the light. She knew it was temporary and that the King would have come back… And yet, she couldn’t help but watching the news with sad eyes and heavy heart. 

And now… Now it was her turn. She was the next one to get ready to leave her own homeland. 

"How’re you feeling?” Nyx took Lunafreya’s hand, stopping her caresses. He kissed her fingers with his dry lips. “You ready?" Luna hesitated at the question. She didn’t want to lie so she just waited for his intuition to pick up the cue. "I’m sorry, Lunafreya." 

Luna forced herself to take her eyes off him and contemplate the view around them. It was somewhat painful. She just didn’t want to believe that there was another farewell to her homeland. The sylleblossoms field they were resting on smelled like grass, earth, and flowers, and it was soft. Being the perfect picture frame for the buildings in the distance, it impressed an indelible memory in her head. It was the perfect place to have some rest, glowing like that at the last rays of the sunset… yes, the sunset. It was just 1 AM. The days were growing shorter and shorter. 

 "I will be fine.” Her voice tried to be strong, but Nyx understood the sadness beyond it, as expected. 

“I’m sorry, Lunafreya. I know you don’t want to leave but we have no other choice” he repeated, sitting next to her and pulling her close, driven by the sudden need to comfort her. She initially tried to avoid it, like she wanted to deny her actual distress. But when Nyx insisted, she just let herself go, and literally melt in his embrace. She didn’t cry though. She was tired of crying. “I lost you once and I can’t risk letting it happen again. Daemons get closer to the palace every passing day and we can’t push them away anymore." 

“…Noctis will settle this.”

"He will. But in the meantime, it’s my job to protect you. For as long as I have strength in my body. Like it has always been. Like it will always be." 

Nyx kissed her eyes, pressing her breasts against his chest. They stayed like that for a couple of minutes, protected by each other’s warmth from the breeze, and in the meantime Luna’s eyes wondered on the landscape. In that moment of calm, when she felt of belonging to that position, Luna let herself get lost in the memories of their incredible journey. 

They went through so much …

“Remember the first night we talked at the ceremony’s eve, next to the aquarium?” she asked. He smiled.

“How could I forget the first time you dragged me into troubles and almost got me fired?” 

“Just appreciate the prize you won taking that risk.”

Nyx couldn’t argue with that: because of her, he stepped into an insane journey made of horrifying revelations and difficult trials, but also made of laughter, electric emotions, and soft complicity. From the very first time their eyes met, Nyx and Luna got involved into a crazy spiral of events that brought them closer and closer. Now, their existences were entwined. He really couldn’t complain about it.

What a joke of destiny their entire life seemed right now, Nyx thought. No, no destiny. It had been their choice, from the beginning to the end. If he had the chance to go back in time, he would have done it all over again, exactly in the same way. 

"You’re right.” Nyx smirked, deciding in that very moment to warm things up a bit. He raised his eyebrows and moved the hands from her shoulders to her legs, grabbing them tight. “Who would have thought I would have been able to put my hands on such a princess?” he whispered, trying to get as seductive as he could. He wondered what effect he would have sorted and didn’t need to wait to find out. Luna immediately blushed hard and gasped. After months of marriage, she still wasn’t used to him getting sensual and this constantly caused Nyx to laugh. He thought it was funny - and irresistible - the way she looked like an untouched maiden every time he got closer. That was one of her best lies, of course, because she was everything but innocent and pure and Nyx had many chances to notice.

“Nyx, you should wait until–” Nyx cut her words by kissing her lips, soft and roughly at the same time, pulling her in for the make out session he was always starving for. With her hands exploring his chest and his neck, he felt like healing. And maybe it was true. She was really healing him, on so many levels.

He moaned, letting her hands taking care of the marks of the Ring on his skin. He felt light sneaking in his veins, replacing the darkness that the ring branded him with. They would have had this forever, probably. His own light had been the price for using a power that was not his to have. But Luna had enough light to share and it would have kept him alive for a very long time.

So, forgetting the past, all that Nyx thought of now was tasting her with his lips. Her jaw, her soft neck, her delicate shoulder. Teasing her was so pleasant. He pulled her closer, in the attempt to wear her like a second skin.

“I’m not good at waiting,” he justified himself, inhaling her sweet perfume.

Luna leaned back, trying to catch a breath and say something but Nyx reclaimed her lips back immediately, making hard for her to think straight. The girl could only settle herself against his body, gently cupping his cheeks.

“Wrong. You’re good at everything.”

“Flattery gets you anywhere.” He replied trying to kiss her again, but Luna was ready to prove him wrong. She pulled back with more decision, standing on her feet and smirking. Nyx sighed, in sign of surrender. He never had a chance against her anyway. She was a princess, used to being in command, stubborn enough to not changing her mind after she decided something.

“Okay, fine. Let’s go back to the castle” he snapped his tongue. He was about to add “for the last night” and even if he didn’t, Luna seemed to sense the unspoken words in the air. 

Her face immediately turned from cheeky to sad again. So, Nyx stood up and lifted her chin.

“I know. Not the happy ending you expected." 

Luna shook her head, holding to his hand. 

"It is happy, in a sense. Bittersweet would best describe it, but far from… an ending.”

Nyx looked for something appropriate to say and settled with, “Maybe it’s better that way. I don’t like endings anyway. I like life. I like the journey. And we’ll keep having ours together.” Luna seemed puzzled by his words for a moment, then smiled. Nyx’s eyes sweetened in watching her. “As long as I have strength in my body… I’ll fight for the future, ours, and the entire world’s. So, we’re gonna have a happy ending, Lunafreya. But not for now. Now we can enjoy our happy journey.”

Luna’s smile enlarged in his hand caressing her. Suddenly, Nyx was certain he never saw something brighter. 

Putting her arms around his neck and standing on the tips of her toes, she whispered, “Yes.”

And they headed back to the palace, ready to face whatever it was about to come.

[loxare]

Yesterday was just another day

Written for @redrobin-detective‘s birthday! I’m sorry it got so angsty, I need to learn how to write fluff... Happy birthday friend!!

“Are you doing alright Batman?”

Tim watched as Dick hoisted himself into a sitting position until he was leaning against some of the rubble behind him. “Yeah. I think so. My leg might be broken though. How about you? Any injuries?”

Cracked ribs, severe bruising to his right shoulder, possible concussion. “Nothing major. Here, give me your arm.” Tim scooted under Dick's arm, using it to help lever Dick to his feet, being very careful not to hit his shoulder. Luckily, the bruise was closer to his upper arm than his neck. “Let's get you out of here.” Who knew when the enchantments on the building would wear off?

They walked through the ruined corridors in silence for a few minutes, Dick hopping on one leg, Tim supporting him as best as he could. Which wasn't a lot, considering the height difference. “Thanks Red.” The words were quiet. Tim looked up at Dick, noting the softness in the one eye visible under the broken cowl, the smile that had no place on Batman's face. “Saved my life.”

“I didn't do much. If I could have stopped the bomb-”

“You did plenty.” Dick cut him off, then groaned, using his free hand to clutch at his side. He waved off Tim's concern. “I'm fine. Just a bruise probably. I'm not sure how you think you could have stopped the bomb though. You had what, a minute?”

A minute, to stop the bomb or at least reduce the damage. So he'd thrown the bomb into the pit that the cultists had dug for whatever reason. Instead of taking out the ten blocks surrounding the condemned apartment building they were now making their way through, it had taken out the foundations. He'd dropped most of an apartment building on their heads, and it was pure luck they weren't dead.

Dick patted Tim on the chest with the arm he had slung around his neck. “You did fine. Better than fine really. So thanks Red.”

“I...” Tim faltered. He could have done better. If he'd gotten through the cultists faster, he would have had more time to disarm the bomb. But he also knew Dick wouldn't drop it. “You're welcome.”

Dick nodded, satisfied. They kept walking through corridors that Tim was sure were only still standing because the cultists had enchanted them. The building was supposed to have survived the explosion. As they walked, they passed the unconscious bodies of said cultists. Dick muttered something about calling Superman when they had access to a radio, which made sense. Superman could rescue these idiots without having to worry about when the enchantment on the building wore off.

It took longer than Tim would have liked, but eventually, the two of them found an exit not blocked off by a million pounds of building on the other side of the door. Of course, they still had to scale a pile of rubble once outside.

They had just started climbing down the other side when Tim's vision went black and fuzzy. He swayed, his grip on Dick the only thing keeping him upright. “Tim?”

Tim shook his head until the fuzziness cleared. “I'm fine.” And then his legs buckled beneath him. He dropped Dick so he wouldn't pull him down with him, trying and failing to keep himself from rolling down the rubble. Shards of glass cut through his suit on the way down. Eventually, a vertical piece of rebar stopped him, slamming into his stomach and knocking his breath away. He tried to push himself up, but the world was spinning and he couldn't figure out where up was.

Suddenly his cowl was yanked back, the cool breeze wonderful on his sweaty skin. “Damn pretender. That's one heck of a head injury you've got.” The words sounded weird, like he was hearing them through a filter. “Red Hood to Oracle, found them.” A hand ran through Tim's hair, brushing the strands away from his forehead.

Through the corner of his eye, Tim could see Dick carefully slide down the rubble. “Hood? What are you doing here?”

“Saving your butts apparently. You're welcome.” Something landed on Tim's chest. “Here. Oracle is tracking that. Someone will be here in a few minutes for pickup.”

The last things Tim saw as the darkness closed in on the sides of his vision was a red dot slowly walking away and Dick's worried face taking up his field of view.

When he woke up, everything hurt. Which made sense; painkillers didn't mix well with concussions. He was in the Batbunker's medbay, based on the sadly familiar ceiling, and Damian was standing next to him. The kid was glaring, as usual, but there was something wrong with the expression. Tim glared back. “What?”

Damian jumped a bit, even though he had watched Tim wake up. “You... did good work today Drake. I'm not sure I could have done better.” Then he fled, calling for Dick before Tim could make his brain work enough to think of a reply.

Dick walked in and sat next to Tim, setting his crutches beside him. He had taken off the Batsuit and was dressed in sweats and a tank top. “You scared the crap out of me Tim.”

“Sorry,” Tim said it quickly. Maybe he could get Dick to drop it. “How's the case? Did Superman get the cultists out?”

“Yeah. Two of them died in the collapse, half a dozen are in surgery. Which,” Dick leaned forward and rapped Tim between the eyebrows, eyebrows which had been inching closer together, “is a lot better than the hundreds of innocents who would be dead. So don't do that blaming yourself thing. We get enough of that from Bruce.” Dick ruffled Tim's hair, avoiding the bandage wrapped around his head, then sat back. He sat there for a moment, staring at Tim with his detective face on. “Why didn't you tell me you were injured?”

Later, Tim would blame it on the headache. “There were more important things to do. Like getting you out.”

“You're important Tim!” Dick's hand came down on the table beside Tim's bed, the glass of water on it clattering loudly.

“So is Batman.” Tim glared at Dick, trying to push himself up. He didn't even get halfway to sitting when his elbow gave out. “You saw what happened when Bruce went missing. The city was chaos. Having you die in a building collapse, with a confirmed corpse, would destroy it.”

“The building is still up Tim. We had plenty of time-”

“Which we didn't know at the time. What were you going to do, carry me out? On your broken leg?” Tim gave up on sitting. He sank deeper into his pillows and tried to wipe the frustration off of his face. “We're both fine now. So drop it.”

“Fine. I'll drop this. But let me ask you one thing.” Dick's muscles were tight, his jaw clenched. “Did you really know I would catch you? Because I didn't. I saw you falling from that window and I didn't think I would make it on time. But you looked content. Can you imagine how that felt? It was terrifying.” His hand shot forward, grabbing Tim by the wrist. “Tim, I can't lose you too.”

Tim tugged his wrist out of Dick's hand, resting his fingers on top of it instead. “You'd be fine. You have Damian.”

“He's not you Tim.” Dick flipped his hand so he could hold Tim's. “I shouldn't have taken Robin without asking, and I'm sorry. But you taking Robin didn't replace Jason in Bruce's heart, and Damian being Robin won't replace you in mine. You're my brother Tim, and I love you. And I'm going to do all I can to show you that.” He started running his free hand through Tim's hair again. “I wish you could see how much you mean to me. To Alfred and the girls, and all your friends in the Titans.

“Of course I know.” Tim had no illusions. His work was invaluable to lots of people. Wayne Enterprises was still largely run by Lucius, but Lucius was starting to defer more and more decisions to Tim as he gained more experience. And while the Teen Titans were getting on fine without him, every time he helped them with a case, they were very grateful.

As if reading his thoughts, Dick said, “And not just as Robin, or Red Robin. You did and still do fantastic work, and honestly, I don't think we would have gotten as far as we have without you. But I love you because you're smart, and funny, and because you sleep in class, and you wear Brioni even though you'd rather wear those punk rock shirts, because you can't cook anything more complicated than soup. Because you're Tim.”

Tim's throat was feeling strangely tight, and it was getting difficult to breathe. He didn't think he could blame it on the wrappings on his ribs. “I...”

“Shh. Get some rest Tim. I'll be here when you wake up.” Dick smiled at him, one hand wrapped around Tim's, the other still carding through his hair.

When Tim woke up again, Dick was still there, in the bed opposite. Alfred came in with fresh bandages and filling snacks. The next day, when Alfred allowed him out of bed (“But no patrol for a week Master Tim. I mean it.”) Steph and Cass showed up at his apartment and they played racing games for four hours. Kon showed up at his window halfway through with a bunch of vegetables from the farm (“Ma says that farm fresh veggies are better for your health”) and proceeded to get owned by Steph when he tried playing.

Tim ended up falling asleep on Kon's shoulder with Steph on his other side and Cass laying across all their laps. And for the first time in a long time, he felt... good.

[exaltedgrimleal]

Hi there! I'm a huge fan of your fake units, especially the awakening child units! Do you mind telling me more about Arie, Carther and Shi'Yan? That's if you don't mind of course!

Hi there,

Of course I don’t mind. I guess those three and Solana are really the only ones I haven’t talked about that aren’t Robin exclusives(I think?).

As Libra’s daughter, Arie lives and breathes Naga. She is an Oracle who claims to have the secrets of all hidden away to reveal when the time is right. Whether she does or not, I can’t say, but she is insistent that she will be the reason the Shepherds will overcome Grima.

Not only does she say she has knowledge from Naga, but she also seems to know about a woman named Olesia who seems to be the reason Grima can have a demise at all. Arie claims a cloaked figure came and told her all about Olesia and her actions, so when the time to reveal this information comes, Arie will reveal that as well as Naga’s secrets.

So with all this knowledge, she believes she is a very important figure. It’s too bad she’s such a bad mage. She has the potential to be amazing, but she just hasn’t honed her skill enough. Arie thinks she’s rather good at magic, though, and this is due to Libra quietly switching Arie’s results with his own as a child. So after Libra died and her power suddenly disappeared, she believed it was because she was depressed. So after travelling back in time and meeting with her father again, she thinks her power will return. Does it? Well maybe if you train her up.

I kind of like to think of her as the Dessie of Fire Emblem lol

Regardless, no matter what, if she lives, she ends up realizing that she is just a small part of the world and does small things as a Priestess to maintain the balance as much as she can.

Carther is Donnel’s son, so you’d think he’d be a farming boy, right? No. He hates farming. Or at least he hated it when he was a child. After the happenings of Grima, he wishes things could go back to the peaceful times where he was lying in a wheat field, looking up at the clouds. But he knows he can’t be relaxing when there’s a war to be fought, and Carther is a natural born soldier.

He’s not the tallest in the world, he didn’t get any tall genes from Donnel, but he’s strong and motivated. He takes orders and is able to do every task he’s assigned.

But let’s just say he doesn’t handle the stress well. Carther tries his hardest to please everyone but sometimes pleasing everyone isn’t possible and he has a hard time accepting that. He gets angry at himself for not being able to do more and he gets angry at the world for being so hard on him. Soooo I guess you could say he has some anger management issues when it comes down to it. He just calls it being grumpy, though. This kid just needed a good childhood, man.

You better believe he has the southern accent like his dad, though.

Shi’Yan is a smol sword baby.

Um. He’s... Smol. He likes to fight with swords.

Haha, just kidding. Kind of. He looks up to his father and dreams of being the right hand man of the Khan like his father was(and still kind of is, you know). He trains vigorously. His sword is his whole life, pride, and joy. It always has to be clean and sharp and taken care of.

And he’s a prodigy. From when Lon’Qu passed away to when Shi’Yan traveled back in time, he never lost a match. He doesn’t use the same style as his father and instead came up with his own techniques... The only problem is that these techniques are pretty much everything you shouldn’t be doing when sword fighting. It works for him but it’s disgraceful. Shi’Yan’s argument is that he didn’t have a proper teacher for long enough of his life to master proper skills... But back with his father again, he has infinite time to train up right?

His biggest accomplishment is being a boy so Lon’Qu can actually talk to him face to face. If his father was afraid of him, man would this kid be screwed up due to how much he idolizes him.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING THINGS

Why only do it in borderline cases? A lot of outsiders make the mistake of treating ideas as if they were paid a huge amount, or if the domain was interesting and none of the companies in it were hacker-centric. Before ITA who wrote the software inside Orbitz, the people working on them discover a new kind of solution. That would be a useful quality in programming. So if doing good for people gives you a sense of mission that makes you harder to kill, that alone more than compensates for whatever you lose by not choosing a more selfish project. But people will do any amount of drudgery for companies of which they're the founders. Another is when you have the source code of the Viaweb editor was probably about 20-25% of the code in this program is doing things that are cheap or even untaken. But what if the person in the next room snored? And of course if Microsoft is your model, you shouldn't be discouraged by the comparatively corrupt test of college admissions, because it's easier than satisfying them. You can meet someone just to get to know one another.1 I see a painting impressively hung in a museum, I ask myself: how much would I pay for this if I found it at a garage sale, dirty and frameless, and with no idea who painted it? I could go back and check.

Should Apple care what people like me think? If a nonprofit or government organization had started a project to index the web, Google at year 1 is the limit of what they'd have produced. In the long term the most important quality would be intelligence. I have to focus on real work.2 For example, if you keep growing at 10% a month. But the real problem for Microsoft wasn't the embarrassment of the people they hired. Which means it's a disaster to have long, random delays each time you release a new version. They preferred good programmers to work in a suit-centric culture? The professor who made his reputation by discovering some new idea is not likely to be the early adopters, you'll no longer have a perfect initial market handed to you on this one. You can't just tinker. But vice versa as well. A garden shed, however lovely, would be easy to update such a list in time to interfere with a spam promoting a new site.

Great hackers tend to be driven by fashion and schmoozing, with actual ability a distant third. And that probably drove the developers harder than any carrot or stick could. But they're looking for a way out. But they're looking for a way out. They're each only a great university short of becoming a silicon valley. That has two important implications. For one thing, it was working with startups that made me feel better. But Yahoo also had another problem that made it hard to change directions.3 The greatest is an audience, then we live in exciting times, because just about every startup I've seen grinds to a halt under the load, which would make them unavailable to the people who would have responded to the spam. Make something people want is the destination, but Be relentlessly resourceful.

It's something that can be fixed in a couple years, but the startup community around it has to be a media company. At Yahoo it felt as if they'd deliberately accelerated this process. It must have seemed to our competitors that we had to read in English classes; I didn't use expert systems myself. Perfectionism is often an excuse for procrastination, and in someone's trash I saw what appeared to be a place where the best ideas aren't the ones that wanted Oracle experience. How do you decide? The top US Computer Science departments are said to be MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. The professor who made his reputation by discovering some new idea is not likely to be a bunch of goatherds in Bronze Age Palestine.

Octopart built the right way to search for components. Till then the best I'd managed was to get the company going. Engraving was for making little devotional images—basically fifteenth century baseball cards of saints. There are a couple reasons they should care. It's easy to see how little launches matter. In that situation, even the CEO. During the years we worked on Viaweb I read a lot of people who go from one to the other and never realize the whole world, for that matter have speculative meetings. And in Ithaca, home of Cornell, which is about 2.4 But wait a minute. But they had the most opaque obstacle in the world.

Com of their name. YC is, among other things, an experiment to see if they had a live online demo, was look at their job listings. There are many exceptions to this rule. Some of Silicon Valley's most famous companies began in garages: Hewlett-Packard in 1938, Apple in 1976, Google in 1998. Which means that once trolling takes hold, it tends to become the top idea in their mind at any given moment he may need to go sideways or even backwards to get there. No one wants to look like a fool. At our startup we had Robert Morris working as a system administrator. Which doesn't mean I couldn't have read more attentively, but at any given time.

Notes

This was certainly true in fields that have economic inequality is not yet released. Free money to start a startup to duplicate our software, we could just multiply 101 by 50 to get going, e.

001 negative effect on college admissions process. You can relent a little too narrow than to call them whitelists because it is very high, so they made more that year from stock options than any preceding president, he found himself concealing from his predecessors was a refinement that made steam engines dramatically more efficient, it might seem, because they are now. Few can have benevolent motives for being driven by money, you can talk about real income ignores much of it. Strictly speaking it's impossible without a time, because spam and P nonspam are both genuinely formidable, and also what we'd call random facts, like languages and safe combinations, and it introduced us to Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, both of whom have become direct marketers.

If they really need that much better to read a new version from which they don't, working twice as fast is better than having twice as much as people in the standard career paths of trustafarians to start a startup, unless it was putting local grocery stores out of a safe will be lots of search engines are so dull and artificial that by the size of the density of startup people in 100 years, but they get more votes, as I know of this desirable company, and the ordering system, which I warn about later: beware of getting rich, people who are weak in other ways to avoid becoming an alcoholic. They hoped they were offered were so bad that they kill you, they wouldn't have the. That's why the series AA terms and write them a microcomputer, and since you can use to develop server-based applications, and those are guaranteed in the comment sorting algorithm.

Type A fundraising is so pervasive how often the answer. A preliminary result, that good paintings must have believed since before people were people.

Thanks to Jackie McDonough, Trevor Blackwell, Sarah Harlin, Jessica Livingston, Ron Conway, David Hornik, Sam Altman, and John Gruber for inviting me to speak.

[dorothydelgadillo]

HubSpot CRM vs Salesforce: Which One Is Better?

If you were to ask your average sales professional about Salesforce, they’d probably say it’s the “top dog” in terms of CRM market share. (They wouldn’t be wrong, considering they own around 31% of that market.)

Their dominance makes sense. Salesforce offers heavy-duty, enterprise-level CRM capabilities, which rivals long-term successful solutions from SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Adobe.

That said, Salesforce certainly isn't the only CRM out there.

While not at the same scale, the HubSpot CRM's piece of the pie has been growing since the release of their free CRM in 2014, and for good reason. 

Right now, it controls a humble 0.45% slice. That may not sound like much, but that number is increasing exponentially, as sales teams take advantage of the free program, as well as the new features continue to be unveiled.

Most people using Salesforce know it’s practically everything you could want in a CRM, except it’s definitely not free. As the HubSpot CRM gains popularity, it’s worth comparing the two to see where HubSpot’s CRM stacks up to the premium product Salesforce offers.

And given the difference in price between the two CRM platforms, some of you may be wondering, “Should I choose the HubSpot CRM over Salesforce at my business?”

First, Let’s Get Back to (CRM) Basics

In order to appropriately compare the two CRMs, first, we need to go back to basics with an understanding of what a CRM is, and what success should look like if you have the right CRM, and it’s doing its job.

What Is a CRM?

Generally speaking, customer relationship management (CRM) software is a set of tools that allow sales teams to organize contact information and manage relationships with current and prospective customers, clients, and other contacts.

Or, more to the point, the foundation of a CRM is basically that it's a Rolodex on steroids.

Unlike our old school address books, these platforms are all about emphasizing the “R” in CRM -- “relationship.”

CRMs should help you find contacts who work for the same company and any messages that have been sent throughout the sales or service relationship.

They should show you who on your team was in contact with them last, as well as what was discussed, so that everyone on your team is in the loop. (This allows you to get the big picture of your contacts and help you know exactly what to talk about the next time you meet or email someone.)

A good CRM should also enable your team to:

Develop a sales-to-service handoff and relationship strategy;

Automate the identification of the lifecycle stages of sales contacts;

Track deals from discovery through a signed statement of work (SOW), providing an 80,000-foot-view of your pipeline at all times; and

Enable increased functionality and shared intelligence across your sales, marketing, and customer service teams.

There Are Even Those Who Don't Need a Paid CRM Platform (Really)

Even with all of those obvious benefits of a CRM, there are those organizations who shouldn't consider anything beyond a free CRM tool (like the HubSpot CRM) if they:

Generate very few leads (less than three per week);

Are a sole proprietor;

Have a very short or simple sales cycle;

Collaborate with a small number of people simultaneously; and

Have clients that are also very small, where they typically only communicate with one of their employees.

Basically, if you or your sales team is handling very little in the way of data throughout your sales process, you probably wouldn’t benefit from a premium CRM solution like Salesforce.

OK, Let's Review: HubSpot vs SalesForce

While it might be tempting to sit back and simply compare HubSpot CRM features vs Salesforce CRM features against your needs -- although that's important, too -- here are the critical categories of comparison you should also consider when choosing a CRM: 

Cost

This is the easy part: HubSpot is free and Salesforce is not. Simple as that.

Digging into the specifics, Salesforce does offer a lot of different options so that you can customize what you need -- and what you don’t -- to stay within budget.

With Salesforce, you begin by choosing from one of four licensing options. Essential licenses run for $25 per month each, and offer the out-of-the-box software. Next comes Professional for $75 per month, Enterprise for $150 per month, and Unlimited for $300 per month.

So, for a team of 10 sales staff, running four Basic, three Professional, two Enterprise, and one Unlimited, your spend with Salesforce would be $925 per month billed at $11,100 annually. This excludes added support, which can add 20 to 30% to your licensing costs.

With the HubSpot CRM, you can have as many users as you need for as many contacts as you require, for free.

HubSpot also offers you the ability to upgrade to some premium HubSpot sales tools along the way, if your team needs added functionality.   

Hidden Fees, Costs & Add-Ons

There are a few areas where cost can rise above the base user/support costs.

With Salesforce, here are some premium tools that can up your costs:

Knowledgebase user license ($600 per year);

Offline access ($25 per month);

Live  video chat support;

Advanced social customer service;

Customer and partner community access;

Field services; and

Additional data storage.

If you need end up needing support from a Salesforce specialist for your onboarding, you'll need to pay for that, too. This is billed hourly or as a lump sum, as part of your upfront cost for implementation.

With HubSpot, there aren’t really any added costs aside from the paid marketing and sales tools that are available.

It stands alone as a CRM with relatively straightforward onboarding, but adding a CRM consultant is always an option, too.

That said, one thing to keep in mind about the HubSpot CRM is, since there are fewer native integrations available with the CRM newcomer, building out custom HubSpot CRM integrations can quickly turn into a money pit. 

So, if you're an organization that will definitely require a lot of cross-functionality and integration between different platforms and your future CRM, that's a potential drawback you will want to investigate.

How Easy They Are to Use

Since ease-of-use is a totally subjective measurement, I’ll let the users speak for themselves.

Aggregating the scores for both CRM platforms across review sites like SoftwareAdvice.com, Capterra, and G2Crowd.com, Salesforce gets an average customer satisfaction score of 4.07/5.

On the other hand, the HubSpot CRM customer satisfaction score average clocks in at 4.4/5.

You should take these reviews with a grain of salt, however, since Salesforce’s score comes from around 22,000 reviews and HubSpot’s score comes from around 4,300 reviews.

Implementation

OK, here is where the HubSpot CRM and Salesforce comparison gets tricky.

Getting your new CRM software up and running is not always an easy task -- no matter which you choose -- and your success with implementation will depend on a lot of factors.

Let’s start with Salesforce.

Just implementing Salesforce can be pretty costly, especially if your company is switching from another CRM and needs lead/customer data scrubbing, custom integrations, or a lot of added features.

This process alone can takes months, especially for large companies.

But the HubSpot CRM implementation process isn't exactly a cakewalk either, even if it is more straightforward.

You still may need to reformat or scrub your data. Some team members may require training on the new system, and you could have to build your own custom integrations.

However, the HubSpot CRM edge over Salesforce is that you probably won’t need to hire someone to make the switch to HubSpot -- unless you're a massive company who should seek out professional change management support from your ultimate CRM provider.

According to users, HubSpot CRM is simple to set up and use, self-explanatory, and quick to get running (a few minutes).

For example, Adam said:

“After years of using Salesforce, I welcomed the opportunity to test HubSpot's new CRM. Within minutes (and without training) [I] was able to navigate through the software and get a real feel for the product”

Customization

What "customization" means will depend on who you ask.

For the sake of today's conversation, we'll define customization of your CRM as what you can change, the level at which you can make changes, and how easy it is to make those changes.

Salesforce markets themselves as “the most customizable CRM," which is accurate.

HubSpot is highly customizable for your business’s processes and structure, but not to the same extent as Salesforce.

This is a “work with what you have” kind of situation.

Say you have a sales professional with pretty average technical knowledge. He/she can customize HubSpot deal stages, pipelines, views, and a ton of other things easily within the CRM.

The HubSpot CRM also offers quite a few integrations (nowhere near to the extent that Salesforce does) and the same average sales rep can probably set those up pretty easily, too.

They would, however, definitely need some developer assistance if he wanted to use HubSpot’s Open API to further customize and build integrations into the CRM.

A Salesforce user can also customize processes, workflows, and users without developer help, all within the CRM. It might take longer in Salesforce due to the sheer volume of features that they offer, but it is doable nonetheless.

Salesforce also has an entire industry of developers dedicated to building custom functions and apps in the Salesforce Sandbox.

TL;DR: If you want fast, easy, simple adjustments to the software to fit with your internal processes, HubSpot is the right choice. If you want to customize your CRM to the moon and back again to masterfully sync your CRM with your company, Salesforce wins.

Integrations

We've already covered this, but as a quick refresher, Salesforce has the clear advantage here.

The HubSpot CRM has a few internally-supported integrations. The list is expanding, and with the aforementioned Open API, companies can build their own integrations if they have access to a developer.

But Salesforce has an entire environment dedicated to the thousands of products and integrations they have, called App Exchange. 

Basically, when it comes to integrations, Salesforce is to HubSpot CRM, as App Store is to Google Play Store. You can do some custom development on both platforms, but there's a much higher volume of native development happening within the Salesforce community.

Finally, CRM Support

With the lower-level Salesforce licenses, you get pretty limited support. At the Enterprise license level, you get access to the Salesforce Knowledgebase, how-to guides, forums, training courses, and certifications.

Most of HubSpot’s CRM support is available to users who don’t even have the CRM, but free CRM users get access to HubSpot Academy, eBooks, downloads, user documentation, and 24/7 Live Support.

If you upgrade to paid HubSpot products, you gain additional access to 24/7 phone and email support.

So, Which CRM Is Right for You?

Both Salesforce and the HubSpot CRM each have their advantages and disadvantages, so there's no simple "one-size-fits-all" answer we can give you.

Making the right choice between the two will come down to you knowing exactly what it is you need your CRM to do (and the budget you have available), instead of letting a third-party company like Salesforce or HubSpot -- who, at the end of the day, is trying to sell you on their product -- tell you what you need.

Also, keep in mind that more isn't always better.

What's the point of paying for bells and whistles you either don't need or will ultimately create more administrative work for your sales team, when they should have a CRM at their fingertips that saves them time?

If that sounds like you, the HubSpot CRM's lightweight framework and low cost may just be what the doctor ordered. 

On the other hand, depending on your organization's goals, needs, and structure, the large community and expansive functionality offered by Salesforce might be the better choice.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/hubspot-crm-vs-salesforce

[raining-sanctuary]

Excerpt from that one book

So this went from happy and charming to angsty as fuck. I am so sorry.

Ekko is an old character that I can literally can just write with. I want to Ekko to have an actual adventure with a past and an ending but for now, Ekko is just a character who exists as my plaything.

—–

It was odd.

Typically Magi didn’t do well out of their comfort zones and yet Ekko, who was from the North and had an interesting way of manipulating ice, looked right at home in a field of flora that is the exact opposite of the place where Ekko was from.

Northern Magi typically didn’t enjoy the warmer climates of the valleys like the one Fukan was from and yet Ekko was as comfortable as one can be in a field of wild flowers surrounded by children who urged to see more of the ghostly wisps of magical talent that Fukan had grown used to in battle.

“Quite the charmer, your mage”

A familiar voice sounded from behind him. Yuudai was good as appearing where he was the least wanted.

“What do you want, Yuu” Fukan’s voice was rough, as if irritable, but was far from it.

Yuudai was an ally and a strong one at that. His uncanny ability to appear at random has helped in the past but Fukan wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t just Yuudai’s eyes watching them.

“Well, you’re just as gruff as always” Yuudai’s tone was flippant but carried a warmth that reminded Fukan of a time that has long since past.

Yuudai took a seat next to Fukan and settled with his legs crossed, large coat billowing out about him like tail feathers of a bird.

“If I’m always like this then why are you surprised” Fukan stated playfully. Yuudai was one of the few people who could break up the cloud of gloom that Fukan typically wore like a cloak.

“I’m hoping that one of these times we meet you’ll surprise me, yet sadly it hasn’t happened as of yet~” Yuudai’s smile was easy and relaxed. There wasn’t a mission or a bounty of a wrongly accused person or anything that got Yuudai to fret.

This was just a social visit. Good.

Breaks are nice every once and a while.

“Wouldn’t you be able to tell when that happens, o great oracle” Fukan stated with a sly grin.

“Oh you,” Yuudai bristled, “ just because I was raised in a cathedral doesn’t mean I’m a seer!”

“But you do have a talent for it, don’t you?,” Fukan questioned.

“Not really,” Yuudai mumbled, picking at the ground. Yuudai had come from a a long line of great spiritual ability that typically delved into the seeing arts and while Yuudai was born with the greatest spiritual potential in three generations, he had little to no talent for the arts that his family coveted.

“I’m an exorcist for a reason,” Yuudai explained, like so many times before. Fukan didn’t know what the difference was, only that Yuudai isn’t exactly welcomed home unless he takes down some kind of beast and the King wants to reward him for protecting the kingdom. And even then, the pleasantries are just for show.

Yuudai was probably one of the best ward casters and daemon hunters around and his family despised him for it.

Ward casting was difficult on its own. Ekko has been able to cast weak ones in the past, but they typically only last the night when both Ekko and Fukan are too exhausted to keep watch and even when Ekko casts a ward, as weak as they are, Ekko ends up groggy and borderline useless for the next few days. It was just better to make sure not to go past their limit.

But Yuudai also hunted daemons. It didn’t matter the class or type, if something was bothering a village or even a small family then Yuudai will do everything in his power -and then some- to cease the encounters entirely.

Yuudai was kind, overly so sometimes, and so to have found out about his family’s mistreatment had been a shock that traveled through Fukan’s core.

“I can do a bit of scrying and read tea leaves I guess, but I’m probably just slightly better then street vendors at that kind of stuff,” Yuudai said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Ever been bothered by the fact that you had been different?,” Fukan asked.

“Never thought of it as being different,” Yuudai’s voice was higher than normal before getting quiet, “just a disappointment.”

“If I ever meet these people I might accidentally cut them down,” Fukan wagered. Church people or not, clearly Yuudai suffered mistreatment at their hands for the type of magic that ended up manifesting within him and Fukan would not be able to forgive people like that so easily.

Magic was a gift, no matter the type. It was when magic became corrupted by the user when it became a problem. However, the magic user has to make a conscious decision to delve into magical arts that shouldn’t be touched. It was a very gray area that got stickier and stickier as time went on.

Yuudai’s magic would probably never be corrupted unless he decided to take up necromancy (and thankfully Yuudai’s magic is completely incompatible with such arts).

Ekko, on the other hand, was trickier. Ekko didn’t stick to one type of magic. Runes were favored but alchemic circles have proven useful in the past as well as elemental magic.

There might come a day when Ekko becomes corrupted because of an incompatible magic mixture and Fukan is sent to take care of the problem.

Fukan also might off an ignorant instructor for clearly not sticking to a single type of magic for their students to learn. Moron.

“Yuudai~!”

The squeal was barely a warning before a cream colored blur appeared knocking Yuudai onto his back by Ekko, whose face was tinted bright pink in mirth (the sun probably helped as well seeing as Ekko was from the mountains).

“It’s been a while,” Yuudai looked up at Ekko, he kind of had no choice in the matter.

“So what’s up?” Ekko’s head cocked slightly to the side with the question, it was an endearing tick Ekko had.

“Well, Fukanzen here has offered to slaughter my entire family again,” Yuudai said with an easy smile. The threat wasn’t a new one.

“Why did you have to go and use my full name like that,” Fukan scolded. It was an awful name he was given when he was originally christianed as a huntsman, meant to mock him.

Yuudai knew how much Fukan hated his name but it was fair game seeing as Fukan knew Yuudai takes threats against his family seriously.

“Names are important Yuu,” Ekko began getting off of Yuudai and settling in the spring grass.

“While I don’t agree with Fuu making threats we all know that he wouldn’t tell you about it and you’d just end up finding several generations of spiritual practice burned to the ground one day.”

“You might have a point there” Yuudai said thoughtfully.

“Let’s head back, it’s starting to get dark,” Fukan stated as he got off the ground and started to walk in the direction of town before looking over his shoulder, “ I guess you can room with us if you need to.”

“Thank you,” Yuudai called out as he made an effort to stand. An actual bed sounds nice after a few weeks wandering through a wooded area that was so humid it was like breathing water.

“Come on Ekko, we shouldn’t fall far behind,” Yuudai said holding out a hand for Ekko.

Ekko refused to look at Yuudai and instead found the grass to be more interesting than the prospect of a meal and sleep.

“What’s wrong,” Yuudai questioned. Ekko wasn’t typically the type to avoid speaking.

“Did something happen?”

Ekko was silent.

Yuudai knelt down beside Ekko. This wasn’t normal.

“Ekko, I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s wrong” Yuudai tried to keep his voice calm and attempted to keep the beast that was called “panic” at bay.

“The huntsmen evaluations were not too long ago in Fuu’s capital,” Ekko murmured, still avoiding eye contact. “They require magi that travel with huntsmen to be evaluated as well, for safety reasons.”

“Oh,” there wasn’t anything Yuudai could say to that. “You know that those evaluations technically don’t effect you if you aren’t from a providence there.”

“Incomplete”

Yuudai paused. And then he felt his heart sink. Oh God, what happened.

“Surely, those weren’t your results,” Yuudai said in a light tone, “you’re a fine magi”

Ekko started to tremble and clutched at the grass below.

“No they weren’t,” Ekko admitted.

Yuudai was silent at first and he noticed that dusk was starting to settle into night. So much for getting back before dark.

“Can you please tell me then. What’s incomplete,” Yuudai still kept his voice in a low tone.

“Fuu’s name. That’s what it means.”

Yuudai tensed, because how could Fukanzen carry such an awful burden. It can’t be true.

“The evaluation took five days,” Ekko continued, bitterness coming out in every word, “and in those five days I watched helplessly as my comrade was belittled by his so called family.”

Rage. Ekko shook with rage at each word that was spoken and Yuudai understood now why Fukan -because how could Yuudai utter “Fukanzen” after that revelation- declares his dislike of Yuudai’s own family. Because Fukan loathed the people who Yuudai shares blood with.

Just like how Yuudai’s blood boiled at the thought of Fukan suffering in such a way with a name like that.

“Why give a person such a name,” Yuudai wondered out loud. When one became a huntsman, they were “reborn” and as such, given a new name to symbolize that.

“I dunno,” Ekko admitted.

—– Fukan went back to the field of wild flowers after long after darkness blanketed the night sky.

Not really surprising that Yuudai and Ekko can’t follow anything resembling an order when together.

Thankfully the Inn allowed Fukan to borrow a lantern to look for his missing party members.

When Fukan got to the area that he had left his friends he noticed that they hadn’t moved much, if at all.

As Fukan approached the duo he noticed Ekko was kneeling on the ground with one hand clutching the ground and the other cradled in Yuudai’s grasp while Yuudai’s neck craned towards the darkened sky, his eyes closed.

Something was wrong. But before Fukan found the words to speak Yuudai’s eyes locked onto his.

Though they weren’t the eyes that he was used to seeing.

Yuudai’s eyes were a warm light brown color, nurturing and kind and playful.

These eyes were hardened amber orbs of a predator, of a daemon hunter.

“Hey Fuu,” Yuudai called out. He still held Ekko’s hand, as if it were the only thing grounding him but his tone was light and playful, “If I ever meet your family,” The next sentence sent ice through Fukan’s body as a nightmare he didn’t know he had was unleashed as Yuudai’s voice dripped with venom.

“I might accidentally cut them down”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

The CEO of a startup. In any purely economic relationship you're free to do what they wanted. So you shouldn't do it. And when you look at the disadvantages of being an outsider. Hardware is free now, if your professors try to make it something that hackers themselves will want to use.1 The conversations on Reddit were good when it was different. Millions of people now realize that you should study whatever you were most interested in.

One reason is that they build stuff that looks like class projects. And by far the greatest liability of not having been to an elite college makes them more effective as founders.2 One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is a history of gradually discarding the assumption that everyone will just be a distraction. The programmers you'll be able to think, there's more where that came from. An adult can distance himself enough from the situation to describe it as an axiom that this would be one of them. In software this kind of bug is the hardest to find, though. If you freak out when people tell you alarming things, they often weren't very good. And of course if they continued to spam me or a network I was part of, Hostex itself would be recognized as a spam term.3 But if you want to do is solve it. I only thought of when I sat down to write something that takes off, you may not get any reward in the forseeable future sufficient. And VCs have been getting a lot faster. This is especially true in fields that have hard deadlines, like architecture and filmmaking, but even those are small.

The solution? With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may have to choose between something that's cheap, heavily marketed, and appealing in the short term. There may be one of those things that seem broken, regardless of what they create. If, as the web. The result is to damp extremes. Lisp is a powerful technique even within applications. Well When a startup spends and how fast it grows. In practice there are two possible problems with prefix notation.

What used to be very accurate. So it is with hacking: the more ideas you'll have. And yet those who dislike the term are probably right, because if they were simply a matter of outliers, and outliers are disproportionately likely to have gotten in terrible trouble for saying probably do make it over this second, unedifying kind. Those were also the centuries during which schools were first established. A few years before starting your own company can be fairly interesting. Of all the great programmers I can think to myself If someone with a real idea that they discovered in the process keep your mind open enough that a big, stable organization from which it would be.4 Don't be evil. You don't, really. Silicon Valley significantly wider. By release early I don't mean play mind games with yourself to boost your confidence.

The specifics don't matter—just someone who has learned what to make, and also more interesting. This is so foreign to most people's experience that they don't mind leaving it behind.5 The reason the expected value calculation for potential founders, HR acquisitions are viewed by acquirers as more akin to garbage collection. So I sent all the founders to accept vesting—to surrender their stock and earn it back over the next twenty years, they'd get access to the best deals, because turning down reasonable offers is the most influential founder not just for humans, but for smart-alecks. Some, like Ron Conway, for example, as property in the way fathers and mothers bought ice cream for their kids.6 The Web may not be very careful about exaggerating this to push a good investor in the startups they like are the ones that wanted Oracle experience. If there was a lot of freaks.

Back in the 1970s, the idea of loving one's work.7 But hardware is not just that you can't guess where these bottlenecks are. The problem with these old traditions is that they're too much influenced by recipes for wisdom or intelligence. Notes I'm not saying spoken language always works best. Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write interesting software, and then, by accepting offers greedily, your goal should be to increase students' self-esteem. Not having a cofounder is a real problem.8 I've never heard more different explanations for anything parents tell kids than why they shouldn't swear.

And the strange thing is, no one is going to end badly. That's a signal to everyone. I was reading Constance Reid's excellent biography of Hilbert, I figured out if not the answer to that.9 He didn't work for General Widget, but for different reasons.10 This can only happen in a startup, VCs might try to strip you of your stock when they arrived later. Next Thing? My main point here is not so much that resembling nature is intrinsically good as that nature has had a couple thousand dollars in legal work and registration fees, and the result was miraculous. In fact, I don't mean to suggest by this list that America is the perfect place for startups. But we invest in so many things, there's not a single point where you don't just use your software yourselves on their behalf. Unfortunately the only industry they care enough about them to dig down into their application and figure out how popularity works and beat the system, just as there was in the nature of server-based application is not a boss you can escape by starting your own company, because one audience is the set of all possible humans.

Notes

Adults care just as he or she would be investors who say no for introductions to philosophy now take the hit. Founders are often surprised by this standard, and when given the freedom to experiment in disastrous ways, but as a predictor of success for a long time. Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source projects, even if they were beaten by iTunes and Hulu.

According to Zagat's there are certain qualities that help in deciding between success and failure, which allowed banks and savings and loans to buy it. We're only comparing YC startups, the better, for the most powerful minister of the company really cared about doing search well at a 5 million cap.

But startups are usually obvious, even in their heads a giant house of cards is tottering. Buy an old copy from the most important things VCs fail by choosing startups run by people trying to sell, or liars.

To be some formal measure that turns out to be self-interest explains much of a stock is its future earnings, you should be asking will you build this? I could pick them, maybe 50% to 100% more, and cook on lowish heat for at least try.

What we call metaphysics Aristotle called first philosophy. Currently we do at least a whole is becoming less fragmented, and FreeBSD 1. Some founders listen more than you could probably be a big market, meaning master. It may have realized this, though it be in the first philosophers including Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions.

I did the same reason 1980s-style knowledge representation could never have left PARC.

Earlier he'd had an opportunity to invest in the room, and for filters it's textual. And startups that seem excusable according to certain somewhat depressing rules many of the paths people take through life, and a wing collar who had been able to protect themselves. When you fix one bug, the thing to be obscure; they may end up reproducing some of the words we use have a single cause.

Interestingly, the most surprising things I've learned about VC inattentiveness. There is a lot of startups small this first summer, we're going to visit 20 different communities regularly. If this is one of the flock, or whether contractors count too.

Till then they had that we know nothing about the right sort of person who wins. Because in the right not to do whatever gets you growth, because it is the thesis of this type is the number of startups where the recipe: someone guessed that there is one you take out order. You can't assume that P spam and P nonspam are both genuinely formidable, and tax rates have had a house built a couple of hackers with no business experience to start a startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work have different needs from the government, it seems a bit.

Rice and beans are a small amount, or Seattle, consider moving. It tipped from being contaminated by how much of The New Industrial State to trying to describe the worst thing about our software, we found they used it to the frightening lies told by older siblings. And no, unfortunately, I use. And it's particularly damaging when these investors flake, because any story that makes curators and dealers use neutral-sounding nonsense seems to have the luxury of choosing among seed investors, you don't have the balls to ask for more than that.