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auroraphilealis · 7 years ago

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Too Tense to Be Undone (6/7)

Too Tense to Be Undone (6/7) | Dan’s never had an orgasm before. Despite being in a relationship with his ex-girlfriend for three years, he’s just never been able to finish. The doctor’s don’t know what’s wrong with him, so Dan’s mostly put it out of his mind. Until his gap year, when he starts talking with AmazingPhil, and accidentally admits that he’s never come before. Phil’s happy to help with more than just convincing Dan to post YouTube videos, if Dan will just give him the chance. | Phan | Explicit | Slight Friends with Benefits, Pining, Eventual Smut, Very Explicit Smut, Dirty Talk, Flirting, Getting Together, 2009, Skype | 13,974 Words This Chapter

Extra big thanks to @imnotinclinedtomaturity once again. I finished my final edit while they were on a plane and got excited to post so any existing mistakes are mine and mine alone, but the fact that this is as good as it is is still all thanks to Kat hahaha. We’re nearly done, guys!!

This is technically the last *real* esque chapter of the fic. You can easily stop reading here and feel that it’s been completed. However, Kat did convince me to write a sort of epilogue type chapter that I did end up writing, and which only needs serious editing before I feel comfortable posting it. Therefore, I hope you guys will look out for that and read it when it’s posted, but for all intents and purposes, the overall storyline finishes here, and I think… that you guys will be happy with how it goes.

Thank you for all of your support, and I will likely see you next week with chapter 7.

(previous chapter) (ao3 link)

Filming with Phil was an incredible experience that Dan wouldn’t change for the world. Despite the part of him that wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed with Phil, touching and kissing for the rest of their lives, Dan could not deny that getting the chance to share their passion - YouTube - was also one of the best feelings in the world. He wanted to do this for the rest of their lives as well, appearing on each other’s channels, filming videos together, and living out a dream that neither of them were really sure would actually… happen.

Still. Dan was enjoying this chance to try YouTube with Phil, was so fucking happy that Phil had pushed Dan into following his dreams, that he’d encouraged Dan and helped him get up off the floor in follower counts, and that now he was giving Dan the opportunity to film with him.

It was something that Dan had never quite dared to imagine, never quite dared to hope for. Phil didn’t really collab on his channel. He was part of a few YouTube community channels, and he worked with other youtubers, but not like this. Dan had never had the frame of reference to imagine that he’d actually get to be someone Phil would bring onto his main channel, and even though he’d known for a couple of weeks now that Phil wanted to, it was entirely different to actually be doing it.

Now that Dan had gotten the chance to experience it, he never wanted it to end. There was no question in Dan’s mind that Phil was having just as much fun as he was, judging by the way he laughed and smiled as he moved, staring at Dan from to time with huge, bright eyes. Filming with Phil was fun, far less awkward than filming by himself had been, and was helping Dan to loosen up so he didn’t look quite so terrified on camera, didn’t look like he was trying too hard.

Dan just hoped he could bring this aspect of filming back home when he was inevitably alone again, and unsure when he’d next get to see Phil.

Phil’s Q&A mostly consisted of Dan reading off questions from his sheet of paper as dutifully as he could, and laughing at Phil as he answered them in increasingly joking and zany ways. Dan could tell Phil was doing his best to maintain a kind of serious edge, as if he were giving the questions serious thought, but at the same time, he was careful to walk that fine ledge he’d created for AmazingPhil.

For a moment, Dan wondered if Phil ever got tired of playing up a character for his channel. He wondered if Phil regretted the fact that he had to act louder, more brash and fun, than he actually was just for a couple thousand views and the, apparently, minimal pay check he got out of it from adsense. But as Dan watched Phil, laughing and rolling around on the floor in glee, smiling for the camera and enjoying himself in a way that Dan could tell was something almost out of character for the real Phil, he realized that no… no this was part of the fun for Phil.

AmazingPhil wasn’t just a persona. It was a part of Phil that Phil didn’t normally feel safe, or brave enough, to expose to the world. It was a part of Phil that Phil couldn’t be every single day, but clearly wanted to be at least some of the time. As Dan watched Phil move, and laugh, and claw at the camera, Dan realized that it was okay that he wanted to do the same thing.

It was okay that Dan wanted danisnotonfire to be a better, funnier, quirkier than he was in real life. Dan had grown up being bullied for being different, so for a long time, he’d tried to bury that part of him. Dan hoped that through danisnotonfire he could bring that person back to the forefront of his life, and not only be relatable, but a beacon of hope to generations to come.

As Dan asked questions, and Phil answered them, Dan found himself growing more and more distracted by Phil than the actual filming. They both moved around a lot, rather than sitting, static, on the floor in front of Phil’s camera, and Dan was grateful for the distracted air because he kept finding himself staring at Phil, questions forgotten, as he took in the beauty of this man he’d found himself in love with.

Phil was just… magnetic. He had this over the top personality, both in real life and on the internet, that was just so much fun to experience. Dan found himself wanting to look at Phil, instead of the camera. He found himself wanting to touch Phil, no matter what that would mean to their audience. He found himself shoving random AmazingPhil objects into Phil’s face, licking at his Wall-E figurine, and generally make a fool out of himself in an attempt to not only gain Phli’s attention on him, but to distract himself from the fact that he wanted nothing more than to kiss Phil.

The cat whiskers that Phil had drawn on both of their faces was only heightening the experience for Dan. Phil looked so fucking cute that Dan was dying for it. Once the permanent marker touched Dan’s face, he couldn’t seem to help himself anymore. He leaned into Phil’s space, and kissed him, warm and a little bit messy, their noses bumping against each other eagerly. Dan’s hands found Phil’s hair, and dug in quickly, rucking up the black strands because he could, and because he wanted too, and because Phil looked hot when he was disheveled.

Despite being caught off guard by the show of affection, Phil sunk into the kiss easily enough. His own hands found Dan’s cheeks, and he brushed his fingers along his cheekbones gently, caressing Dan and keeping the kiss affectionate, rather than overwhelmingly hot.

Dan didn’t have it in him to be disappointed when he was practically bouncing off the walls in happiness. He got to have this. He got to have all of Phil.

They kissed for a little while, probably longer than they should have, considering they were filming, but Phil didn’t complain, so Dan figured it was all right. When they did pull apart, though, Phil leaned in to pepper Dan’s face in happy little kisses, giggling all the while, as almost a subtle reassurance that Phil didn’t mind the interruption.

Once he properly pulled away, he ruffled up his hair in an attempt to fix it, and turned to the camera with a raunchy smile.

“Too bad we’re editing that out,” he joked, winking seductively, and laughing when Dan reached out to shove him. “Hey!” he complained.

Dan leaned in and kissed him again to shut him up.

They kept at it. Phil’s camera caught every single moment between them, even the ones Dan knew they’d cut out, or the trips of Phil’s tongue when he said something wrong and shook his head to start over. They filmed a few bits, Phil’s expression turning serious for just a moment as he realized they’d fucked it up, and insisted that Dan do it again. It was fun to watch, the constant switch back and forth of Phil giggling over his own ridiculousness, and stopping to contemplate how the video was actually going to pan out.

All the while, Dan kept kissing him. He got Phil onto the bed a few times, and pushed him back against the pillows, rumpling them and Phil up enough to make their video a little ungainly and probably a little telling, but Dan didn’t care, and Phil didn’t complain - okay, maybe he did a little bit, but Dan could tell that he was joking. They kissed, and rubbed at each other’s face, and even found themselves grinding on each other more than once, but Phil always had the willpower to stop it and drag them back to their purpose, promises on his lips that after, after, Phil would take care of Dan.

The words sent shivers up Dan’s spine, and gave him a renewed kind of energy to keep going, to keep working at it, to help Phil make the best Q&A of all time.

But that didn’t stop him from joking with Phil.

“Would you ever fuck a fan?” Dan asked, leaning against Phil’s pillows while Phil sat on the floor in front of the camera. It wasn’t a question from twitter, or from Dan’s piece of paper, but he didn’t care. He’d dropped a few of his own bombs in here, some funny, some ridiculous, and some just for them. He was sure that Phil would edit this one out.

Choking out a hearty laugh, Phil pushed himself up off the floor and turned to stare at Dan. His lips were curled up in a fond smile as he rolled his eyes.

“Maybe,” he said, doing his best to smirk at Dan. The edges of his lips were still curled in a delighted smile, though, and it was clear from the way his eyes sparkled that he was enjoying playing along. “Depends on how hot they were,” he added with a wink.

Dan laughed, shaking his head, a little too giddy for the seductive moment he’d been trying to plan out, but he didn’t care. He raised his eyebrows and wiggled them at Phil, spreading his legs out a little and shifting backwards to lie spread out on Phil’s pillows.

“Is that right?” he teased, “Then will this do?”

Dan tossed his head a little, making his hair messy, and tried for a seductive smile. His hands moved to drop the paper at his side, and push up the hem of his shirt a little, showing off a little bit of his tummy. Slowly, he tilted his head for extra added effect, exposing the long line of his throat to Phil’s thirsty eyes.

Phil groaned, and he gave in. Eyes dark with want, Phil climbed on top of the bed and crawled over Dan’s body. His mouth found Dan’s instantly, kissing him indecently, tongue everywhere. Dan couldn’t even begin to imagine what it might look like on camera, and only wished for a moment that his and Phil’s heads were on the other end of the bed so Dan could watch this back later and see just how hot it looked when he and Phil kissed.

Dan’s hands weaved into Phil’s hair, drawing him closer still, until their bodies pressed down against each other’s. Phil felt good on top of Dan, and it was only made better when Phil dragged his mouth from Dan’s and started kissing along his jaw line, nipping at Dan’s skin and sending flashes of pleasure through Dan’s body. Dan’s fingers tugged at Phil’s hair a bit, and then moved to the hem of Phil’s shirt, sliding up under it and gripping tight to pale skin. Dan scratched lightly in an attempt to leave his mark, in an attempt to relieve some of the tension coiling up inside of him, begging for release.

They made out like that for a while, Phil grinding his hips down on Dan’s and making it clear that he was aroused, but never letting it push any further. Rather than undressing Dan the way Dan wanted him to, Phil drew away from particularly sensitive areas to kiss Dan over and over again, panting against Dan’s lips, and smearing both of their cat whiskers until they were more smudges against their face, than actual drawings.

“We should stop,” Phil murmured against Dan’s lips. “We’ve got a video to film.”

“I don’t want to stop,” Dan complained, drawing Phil back in for another kiss. Phil opened up to him eagerly enough, but he didn’t let it go on for very long. He swiped his tongue alongside Dan’s, bit at his full bottom lip, and drew away, panting.

“Come on, Dan. Just a little longer,” Phil insisted. His eyes were dark. It was clear he wanted Dan just as much as Dan wanted Phil, but Phil was right. They needed to finish filming.

And then Dan planned to ravish Phil.

Pouting a little, Dan sighed and pushed himself backwards so he could sit up. Phil took that as his cue to climb off of Dan, and he pushed himself to his feet next to the bed. The sheet of paper holding the questions for the Q&A had fallen to the floor, so Phil reached over and picked them up for Dan.

If Dan stared at Phil’s bum when he did so, he couldn’t quite be blamed.

They went back to filming. It wasn’t easy, when Dan kept finding his eyes drawn to Phil’s lips, to his dick and the way it looked jammed inside of his jeans, still hard and difficult to hide. Dan and Phil tried to stay sat on the floor, lower bodies hidden, so that it wouldn’t be quite so obvious that they were aroused.

They still couldn’t keep their hands off of each other, and that definitely wasn’t helping to cool down their erections, but they did do their best to stop kissing and messing around so that they could keep themselves on track trying to film.

Until they had finished.

They were filming an end screen, or at least attempting too, when Dan said “this is the most fun I have ever had,” and Phil, rather than replying in an equally sappy way, launched himself at Dan.

Dan’s head just narrowly missed cracking against the set of drawers behind him, and he landed with an “ooph!” on the floor with Phil on top of him. Phil was giggling, pressing kisses into the crook of Dan’s neck, something Dan knew they’d have to edit out, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Arms awkward, Dan reached around Phil’s waist to hold him, and allowed himself this one little moment.

Clearly, it wasn’t meant to stop there, though.

Phil’s affectionate touch seemed to spur a more affectionate ending to the video, with the two of them doing dorky hand hearts and laughing into each other’s chests. They leaned in close to the camera to say goodbye, and, cracking his back a little, laughing and feeling all over warm, Dan stood and sat on the edge of Phil’s bed.

Phil sat down next to him, grinning and looking so fucking hot, that Dan couldn’t stop himself. He pushed Phil backwards, climbed on top of him, and kissed him breathless. Phil moaned into the touch, using his feet to push himself back and up towards the pillows. Dan followed him, never once letting their mouths stay parted for long, groaning against the warm heat and the sudden pulse of his dick as it realized that now, now, they were getting somewhere.

Dan knew they needed to decide if they wanted to film any extra parts, or wanted to redo something that might have gone wrong. He knew they should stop and review the footage before they moved on to anything else, but Dan didn’t care. He just wanted to touch Phil.

He’d meant to stop the kiss before it went too far, but, well... One moment he was laying on top of Phil, hands pushing up under the bottom of his button up shirt, and the next moment, Phil had shoved them both backwards on the bed so Dan’s head was nearly falling off the bottom, and Phil’s mouth was attached to his neck.

“You suck, Howell,” Phil groaned against the skin. His hips rocked forward, erection pressing into Dan’s thigh, making it very clear what Phil wanted. Dan let out a soft moan, no longer giving a shit about the camera that was still filming, nor about how much editing Phil was going to have to do later. All he could think about was how badly he wanted Phil to tear his clothes off of him and fuck him into the mattress.

Besides. They were technically done filming, right?

Right.

Phil’s lips nipped along Dan’s collarbones, dragging at the collar of Dan’s black shirt and pushing it down with his chin so he could get at more of Dan’s skin. Dan’s hands found Phil’s hair and tugged hard, forcing Phil’s mouth away and dragging it back up to Dan’s.

Phil huffed into the kiss, licking into Dan’s mouth and showing him a passion that Dan hadn’t even quite seen last night. It was deeper and more meaningful, but just as carnal and hungry. Dan twisted his fingers into Phil’s hair, holding tight to him as his hips jerked up and he ground his own insistent erection into Phil’s stomach.

This did nothing but earn Dan a quick nip to his lip, and he groaned at the feeling of it. He liked this Phil, a little rough at the edges and a little out of control. It was a nice counterpart to what he’d been last night, and that morning. Last night Phil had mostly maintained that flirty, sex god persona that Dan had known for so long now, while this morning had been a little more tender, a little more sweet, but both times Phil had kept himself in check, hadn’t allowed himself to devour Dan like he was now.

And god, did it feel good.

Dan felt properly wanted. He felt like someone who could take Phil apart and put him back together again the same way Phil had done it to him the past day and a half. He felt like he was in control even though he wasn’t, and it felt good. It felt so good that Dan felt a pulse of heat go straight to his dick, and he whined loudly against Phil’s lips.

“Shit,” Phil grunted, pulling away. “I want - god, Dan, I want you.”

“Good,” Dan quipped back, a little breathless. “Because I want you, too. Fuck me already, Lester. I’ve waited all day.”

Phil licked his lips, eyes heavy lidded and dark with arousal. His hips were rocking in little circles against Dan, and his face was a dark red. Dan could only imagine that the flush went down further, could only imagine how Phil’s cock looked right now.

Shit. Dan wanted to get his mouth on him.

“Can I suck you off?” Dan blurted out, before he could really think about it. His eyes went wide in surprise as it himself, despite the fact that now that he’d said it, he really wanted to try it. Still. HIs cheeks went bright red and he drew his fingers back from Phil’s hair to trail them down Phil’s back.

Phil shivered at the touch, eyes closing as he breathed, the sound heavy and loud in the quiet room. Dan didn’t know if that was a yes or not, but he sure as fuck hoped it was, he sure has fuck hoped that the slight alarm on Dan’s face hadn’t made Phil think Dan didn’t truly want this.

“God, Dan, what you do to me,” Phil groaned, rather than answering. He rolled away without another word, and made quick work of his jeans. Dan propped himself up on his elbows, and watched as Phil worked his button and his zip down, fingers pushing under the waistband of the black jeans he’d pulled on and the boxers he’d been wearing all morning.

As quickly as he could, Phil started to shimmy out of the skin tight fabric. Still a little unsure of what this all might mean, but fairly certain it meant Phil was saying yes, Dan bit his lip and watched as Phil revealed his glorious, pale skin, inch by torturous inch. Shaking himself out of it, Dan pushed himself off the bed, and started to wiggle out of his own jeans as well, desperate to get the chance to touch Phil for once and make him fall apart.

Dan didn’t get very far with his jeans before Phil was interrupting him.

“Bathroom,” Phil said, eyes wide. “Get a glove. We’re - we’re going to need it.”

Dan moaned at the implication, and didn’t waste a second jumping from the bed. His jeans, now undone, started to sag, so Dan shoved them down his legs as he moved. In his rush, his pants ended up tangled around his feet and he nearly fell, much to Phil’s amusement behind him, but Dan didn’t care. He was far too focused on the fact that he was about to have sex again. With Phil.

Yesterday, Dan had been embarrassed by the mess that anal apparently made, and the fact that Phil had been the one deal with it, considering he was one doing the prepping, the fucking, but tonight? Tonight Dan could give less of a fuck. Phil knew what he was doing, knew what he was getting into, and he’d dealt with this on more than one occasion now. Dan was far more concerned with the fact that he was about to have sex with his boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

Was that what they were?

Suddenly, Dan felt like his world had shifted on its axis. He was half dressed, long black shirt barely covering his excited dick, and he was stood in Phil’s bathroom trying to find a pair of gloves, and yet he felt like he was in an entirely different world, rather than in Phil’s bedroom. All of the desperate desire from just a moment ago was gone, and replaced with a feeling closer to anxiety.

Boyfriend. Were he and Phil in a relationship? He was pretty sure they were, what with the confessions that morning and the fact that Phil had wanted to do nothing more than cuddle with Dan all day, making promises that they’d get to spend the rest of their lives together, but... They hadn’t exactly spelled it out, and a tiny part of Dan was afraid that he’d gotten this all wrong.

They were together, right? This meant something?

Of course it does, he berated himself, shaking his head and returning to the task at hand. You know it does. Yet, still. Dan couldn’t help biting his lip and thinking, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Hands shaking with both arousal and a nervousness Dan couldn’t quite explain, Dan fumbled through the bathroom cabinets until he found a box of gloves. Tearing a few free, just in case, Dan scurried back out of the bathroom and back into Phil’s room, mind spinning with a combination of worried thoughts and heedy arousal. He wanted to have sex, like, right now, but at the same time, he wanted to talk, and the two did not go hand in hand easily.

Biting his lip, Dan turned the corner back into Phil’s room, and found Phil lying exactly where Dan had left him; on his back with his cock out. Only now, his shirt was unbuttoned too. His fingers were stroking languidly around his cock, pulling at it, and bringing it fully to life as Dan watched from the doorway. Dan nearly dropped the gloves at the sight. Phil just looked so hot like that, all spread out, half dressed, waiting for Dan. His head was tossed back a little, showing off the long, pale expanse of his throat, and his eyes were closed as he bit his lip.

He wasn’t wearing anything but the unbuttoned shirt any more, far less dressed than Dan himself, and all the more gorgeous for it. Dan let out a small whimper that caught Phil’s attention, and his eyes fluttered open as he offered Dan a sexy grin.

“Come here,” he murmured.

Dan couldn’t say no to a request like that. He moved straight to the bed, fully intending on climbing on top of Phil and kissing him senseless, when he remembered something else they were missing. Groaning, Dan dropped the gloves, and turned to scramble under Phil’s bed and find the bottle of lube and the pack of condoms they’d shoved under it before they’d started filming. He threw those on top of the bed too, and climbed on top of it without another thought.

“Thank god you remembered those,” Phil said, as Dan climbed on top of him. “I don’t think I would have been willing to let you go again to get them,” he joked, arching his neck up to kiss Dan deeply. Moaning against Phil’s lips, Dan let his eyes drift closed and sunk into the delicious feeling.

Dan was never going to get tired of kissing Phil.

As Dan held himself up with his hands on the bed either side of Phil, Phil’s hands moved to push at the hem of his shirt. His nails scratched lightly Dan’s skin, the touches a little rough, a little demanding, a little desperate - just the way they’d been before Dan had left the room.

It should have been fine. It was exactly what Dan had been craving, and yet...

Suddenly, Dan was feeling far too emotionally vulnerable. Of course he wanted quick, passionate sex with Phil. Of course he wanted to take Phil apart and make him beg for Dan… but. Suddenly, Dan felt a little bit too open.

His kisses became more hesitant, his body language a little more stiff, and he found himself stilling against Phil for the first time. For a moment, Phil kept kissing him, mouth opening to Dan’s and looking for more, but after a moment, Phil seemed to realize that something was wrong. Slowly, he pulled away with a little breathless whine, like didn’t really want to stop kissing Dan, but he was going to do it anyway, because something was wrong.

Dan dropped his forehead against Phil’s shoulder in an attempt to hide his face and the fact that he suddenly felt intensely embarrassed at his own hesitation, slumping down onto Phil’s body helplessly, and unable to keep holding himself up when he wanted nothing more than to bury himself inside of Phil.

Phil let out a small little “ooph,” sound in response to the sudden weight change, but otherwise didn’t speak. He was still panting, but his hands had moved from Dan’s back to his hair, carefully smoothing it down like a lover might.

Phil was his lover, if Dan really thought about it, it was just. He was being an insecure idiot, and he hated himself a little bit for it.

Why did he have to make everything so complicated? Couldn’t he just accept that he was Phil’s and Phil was his? Apparently, not, because Dan’s head just kept running itself in circles while Phil held him.

Phil didn’t ask him what was wrong. Dan kept waiting for him to speak, but Phil didn’t, and Dan didn’t know why. He was tense all over expecting the inevitable, but it never came, and Dan found himself letting out a grieved breath of air against Phil’s neck as he realized that Phil would forever be the most understanding person in Dan’s life.

Somehow, Phil knew that Dan just needed a moment, and in a way, Dan was incredibly grateful for that. A smaller part of him, the louder part of his brain just then, was upset, though, because it meant that Dan was going to have to be the one to break the silence and explain to Phil what was going on inside of his head.

“You okay?” Phil eventually mumbled when Dan didn’t speak up. His voice was a little husky, and it was clear that he was still… definitely interested, and very much so aroused. His dick kept pressing into Dan’s thigh despite Phil doing his best to keep his hips still. Dan’s cock was pressed between their stomachs, still as hard as ever, but waning a bit with each passing second.

Dan sighed.

“What are we?” he forced himself to whisper, the words a soft sigh against Phil’s shoulder. Dan turned his head so he could tuck his face into Phil’s neck, embarrassed by the weak tone of his voice, and the fact that he’d had to ask in the first place.

Phil’s hands, which had up until that point been stroking gently through Dan’s hair, stilled.

Slowly, Phil turned to look at Dan with huge, blue eyes. Their gazes met, despite the fact that Dan didn’t want them too, and he found himself caught up in a whirlwind of emotions.

Phil looked so concerned. His eyes were still dark with desire, but it was clear he was trying to draw himself out of it enough to focus on Dan and the question he’d just asked. Dan’s heart, which had started to race in his chest in fear of Phil’s answer, calmed, because Phil… Phil seemed ready to drop everything in a moment to help Dan work through whatever he might be feeling, for whatever reason, without making fun of him.

That was more than Dan had ever had, from anyone. Even his parents, and his ex girlfriend.

“Fuck, I’m so bad at this,” Phil grunted, shifting to embrace Dan around the waist with one arm, and rub soothingly down Dan’s spine with the other. His gaze was intense and sincere as he looked at Dan. “I didn’t think - I just thought… Dan, I thought it was pretty obvious what we are,” Phil whispered, pressing a gentle kiss to Dan’s forehead. Nevertheless, his gaze was still worried when he pulled back, and there was nothing about his tone of voice that hinted that Phil was annoyed he had to spell this out for Dan.

If anything, he sounded apologetic for not making it clearer earlier.

“I’m like… all in this, you know? You’re kind of… it, for me.” Phil grimaced at the choice of words, before laughing softly, and kissing Dan on the nose. “Look how cheesy you’ve made me, Howell,” he complained.

Dan giggled, the sound high and a little insecure, but happy. Undeniably happy. Phil too the moment to lean in and kiss the smile away from Dan’s lips, the angle a little awkward considering the position, but still good. Phil’s lips were soothing, warm, and familiar now. They were comforting, like coming home.

It felt so good, to be touched like this.

When Phil eventually pulled away, he sighed and dropped his head back onto the bed. Dan shifted on top of him to prop himself up, and allowed himself to grin down at Phil, already starting to feel a little better. Still, Phil didn’t seem quite done talking just yet.

“I guess we didn’t really talk about it,” Phil admitted, biting his bottom lip. “But, like. I definitely want… you know, to be with you. Like. Boyfriends, or partners, or whatever you want to call us,” he admitted, eyes wide as they flicked up to meet Dan’s. It was clear Phil was unsure, clear that he wasn’t used to this kind of thing, but Dan didn’t care. The words were enough to help him properly calm down. He leaned in to nuzzle his nose against Phil’s, and kissed him.

“Boyfriends sounds good,” he whispered, letting himself slip right back into the moment he’d interrupted before all this talk about boyfriends and loving each other and being all in. Phil’s mouth opened up to Dan’s, and they both tilted their heads to get in a little deeper. Phil sighed under Dan’s touch, his arms tightening around Dan’s waist, but despite the way Dan had intended to make the kiss just as heated as before, it ended up sweet and far more adoring.

“Boyfriends sounds good,” Phil repeated, the words sending a happy tingle down Dan’s spine.

As the kisses grew more and more heated, they didn’t get quite as carried away in the moment as before. Instead, they moved in a slow burn of sexual desire and mutual affection that in some ways, was better.

Besides. Dan knew there would be plenty of time in the future to have really intense, fast-paced sex full of passion and Dan and Phil both losing it. But for right now, Dan kind of just wanted to savor the romantic, sweet atmosphere Phil had created for them both all afternoon.

Dan’s lips slipped from Phil’s in search of his neck, and he let himself leave a hickey against the pale skin as he moved. They’d finished filming, surely Phil wouldn’t mind too much, and besides - Dan needed to leave his mark too. Phil had left him quite a few hickies this morning and last night.

As Dan mouthed at Phil’s neck, licking and biting at the tender skin just hard enough to leave a slight mark and make Phil whine under the touch, Dan trailed his lips lower and lower still. Phil’s fingers found his hair, carding through it and tugging lightly while his hips started rocking slowly. The feeling was erotic and wonderful all at the same time, causing Dan to moan against Phil’s skin as his lips found Phil’s collarbone and bit down sharply.

Phil’s chest arched up a little at the feeling, causing Dan to grin, and move further down Phil’s chest. He found himself nuzzling at the little tuft of Phil’s chest hair, before he moved further to circle his tongue around Phil’s nipple. Phil let out a soft sound, but he was no louder now than he’d been the past two times, which made Dan pout but no less turned on.

“My nipples aren’t as sensitive as yours,” Phil admitted when Dan sunk in to suck at one a little, slightly unsure because the pink nub wasn’t quite the same as Dan’s ex-girlfriend’s had been. Nonetheless, Dan worried it between his mouth a little, nipped, and pulled away.

“Where are you sensitive, then,” Dan asked, voice quiet. Phil tilted his chin down to look at Dan, and blinked, long and slow, like he was trying to collect his thoughts.

“My ribs,” Phil admitted after a moment, the words a little slurred, his breathing uneven.

Grinning, Dan returned to the task at hand, and started making his way down Phil’s body to his ribs. He ducked in close on the left side to bite into the soft bone, pleased when Phil’s hips jerked at the touch and he let out a soft hissing sound. Dan thought he could feel Phil yanking a little on his hair, and it caused him to close his eyes in pleasure of his own. It felt so good to pleasure Phil and touch him in the spots that aroused him, rather than the other way around for once.

Phil’s skin was so warm against Dan’s mouth as he made slow work trailing his lips against Phil’s ribs. It felt good, and so fucking enticing that Dan just wanted to mouth at Phil for forever. As Dan moved, licking over the sensitive skin and biting at key points, Phil’s fingers clutched tigther to his hair and he started to huff out more and more strained little noises. Dan like the way his mouth could make Phil’s body twitch and shudder under him, the fact that he was turning him on, and that Phil was slowly starting to unravel and lose that careful restraint he’d worked so hard to hold on to.

Dan’s teeth scraped across Phil’s body, and he licked at the dark red bruises he’d started to leave behind, just teetering over into purple. They looked so lovely pressed into Phil’s skin that Dan wanted to cover every last inch of Phil in similar marks, so he shifted so he could move to Phil’s right side, and mimic his earlier ministrations.

Phil’s body jolted in surprise at the sudden switch in pleasure, his hips arching a little until his cock was pressing into Dan’s stomach. Dan grinned at the reaction, but didn’t let up what he was doing with his mouth.

This was the first time he was getting to touch Phil, after all. He wanted to make it memorable. For both of them.

His mouth was careful in its dedication to Phil’s ribs, but that didn’t mean he was particularly gentle. He moved his mouth with short, deliberate actions, biting and sucking and licking every chance that he could get. He counted Phil’s ribs with the slow drag of his tongue over them, and counted them again on the way back down, mouthing the numbers against Phil’s body. Phil shivered at every brush of Dan’s lips, every bite, and every lick. His thighs shook under Dan, and Dan thought if he looked, Phil’s toes might be curling in pleasure.

If the way he panted and released tiny noises was any indication, the way he whined at Dan, Phil was very much so enjoying this.

As was Dan.

Once Phil’s right side was just as bruised and marked up as his left, and Dan was satisfied with the way he looked covered in Dan’s mark, Dan leaned back, shifting his body down so that he was straddling Phil’s thighs. His hands traced down Phil’s ribs, causing him to shiver again. Just as Dan had counted Phil’s ribs, he counted the lovebites he’d left: one, two, three, four… fuck. There were at least six on each side, with a few more blossoming. Dan smiled mischievously before shifting down Phil’s legs, refocusing on his target.

Rather than sitting on top of Phil, Dan moved between his legs, and stared rather intently at the cock know hovering in front of his face. God, it was glorious. Just seeing how ready Phil was for him was making Dan excited, and he wanted nothing more than to get his mouth on him.

Phil, for the first time since Dan had started to suck at his ribs, propped himself up on his elbows and stared, wide eyed, at Dan sat between his legs. Phil’s cock twitched, clearly eager, but Phil looked a little bit concerned.

“Just - don’t take it too far, okay? Not everyone can, it’s fine. Just do whatever you’re most comfortable with.”

Dragging his eyes away from Phil’s cock, Dan stared up at Phil and nodded his head, but he knew already that he was going to push his own limits as much as he could, because that’s how Dan was. Not to mention, Phil had fucked two orgasms out of him, a feat Dan previously considered impossible. Phil deserved the best blowjob of his life just for that.

Or, well, at least the best that Dan could give him considering this would be his first one.

Settling his attention back on Phil’s cock as it lay in front of him, Dan licked his lips at the sight of it. It was warm and flush against Phil’s stomach, pulsing and waiting for Dan to do something with it. Leaning in a little, Dan stuck his tongue out and licked experimentally at the stretch of skin just above the base of Phil’s cock. It twitched violently in reaction, and Phil let out a soft huff, his eyes going a little glassy as his elbows slipped and he fell back on the bed. The reaction made Dan feel more confident, and he licked at Phil’s dick again, just to get used to what it felt like, to get more comfortable with the fact that he was about to give a blowjob to his best friend.

To his boyfriend.

Groaning a little, Dan reached out to grasp Phil’s cock in his hand, wrapping his fingers around the thick base and pumping it up and down a few times. Phil’s thighs jerked and quivered at the touch, a gasp leaking from his lips. Dan nearly moaned himself at the feel of Phil in his hand, all soft and sliky.

His cock only felt a little different from Dan’s, a little heavier, a little thicker. He was leaking precum from his foreskin now, a sight that made Dan’s stomach swoop in appreciation. Dan licked his lips, and allowed himself to grow a little more comfortable with the feeling of Phil’s dick in his hand before he leaned over and took Phil into his mouth.

Instantly, the salty taste of precum hit him. It was a little bitter, and not the nicest flavor in the world, but Dan ignored it in favor of stretching his lips around Phil’s cock and taking him a little deeper so that he was filling Dan’s mouth. Phil whimpered above him, reaching out to tangle his fingers in Dan’s hair and tightening around the soft strands before falling away again just as quickly. Dan whined a little at the brief contact, but Phil ignored him.

When Dan opened his eyes to find out why, he found that Phil was practically clawing at the bedsheets.

Fuck. That was a sight to see. Dan moaned a little around Phil’s dick, fingers starting to move at the parts of Phil that he couldn’t reach, his mouth bobbing experimentally. Phil’s hips jerked a little at the touch, an encouraging reaction to Dan, who smiled and started to suck while he was at it.

He didn’t really know what went into a blow job, but he did know what he liked when he was receiving one, knew what one looked like thanks to the porn he’d seen, and had even read a little bit about how it went, so he knew to bob his head and to close his lips tight and to suck as often as he could. Tongue was good too, he’d heard, but even with all of that advice, the internet had warned Dan that it would really all come down to what each individual guy preferred.

Dan hadn’t wanted to ruin the atmosphere they’d built up by asking Phil what he liked, so he figured he’d just try a little bit of everything. Besides, it seemed to be working. Phil wasn’t complaining.

His thighs flexed under Dan, and his fingers bunched at the sheets. His hips rocked into the touch a little, and he let out a slow slew of rumbly noises that were quiet but oh so satisfying.

Dan was pleased with himself, but not quite pleased enough. He wanted more. He wanted to give Phil everything that Dan knew felt good, and if there was one thing Dan knew, it was the fact that the more wet heat engulfed your cock, the better.

Deep throating wasn’t really an option at that point. It felt like a necessity to Dan.

Shifting around a little as his neck began to ache, Dan got more comfortable on top of Phil, doing his best to keep up the slow movements he was making. He kept his head bobbing, did his best to suck around Phil, and prepared himself to go against what Phil had suggested.

Once Dan was comfortable, and he thought he’d be able to keep a tighter grip on his gag reflex, he removed his hand from Phil’s dick, and, without warning, sunk down onto Phil as low as he could. Phil’s cock filled his mouth, the sensation heady and erotic. Dan felt himself beginning to choke a little, tears filling the corners of his eyes as Phil got deeper and deeper, but he didn’t pull back because Phil was moaning.

Phil was fucking moaning above him, something he’d only done properly once, the sound loud and needy. It felt like it boomed throughout the room, sending heat flooding down to Dan’s dick. It twitched angrly, and Dan moaned around Phil himself, gagging a little and pulling back up, only for Phil’s hips to follow him.

“So-so-sorry!” Phil gasped, trying to settle down. HIs hips were twitching uncontrollably though, and Dan didn’t mind. The fact that Phil couldn’t help himself was impossibly enticing.

Dan sunk back down on him again.

The next sound out of Phil’s mouth was entirely unintelligible, but just as loud as the first, if not louder. Phil’s hips came up off the bed of their own accord, shoving Phil’s dick deeper into Dan’s mouth. He felt it hit the back of his throat hard, could almost feel his lips touching the base, when he gagged. The feeling forced Dan back some, despite him not wanting to pull back, and caused Phil to whimper, his dick beginning to pulse aggressively in Dan’s mouth.

Dan groaned around Phil. The sensation of giving Phil so much pleasure was curling heat inside of Dan’s gut, making his head fuzzy with the desire to do more, to push for more, so he sunk back down onto Phil greedily. His lips inched down Phil’s cock and pulled back up, Dan’s movements becoming more slick and smooth, his mouth taking more and more with each bob. Phil was making noises Dan hadn’t heard from him yet, and all Dan wanted to do was keep it going.

Phil, on the other hand, did not.

Fingers gripped tight to Dan’s hair, tugging until Dan was forced to pull off of Phil’s cock and stare up at him instead.

“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,” Phil whimpered, sitting up as he dragged Dan up his body. Dan dis his best to follow the movement, wobbling a little as he was shifted to sit half on top of Phil, chest pressed to Phil’s, and lips dragged almost immediately into a heated kiss. Goosebumps exploded on Dan’s skin as Phil’s hands shifted down his body, squeezing at Dan’s bare bum, and rucking up the bottom of Dan’s shirt. Dan moaned against Phil’s lips, breathless with want.

“Ne-need to sto-stop,” Phil managed to gasp out, dragging his mouth from Dan’s and collapsing back on the bed. Hands slick with sweat, and a little uncoordinated from the quick shift in position anyway, Dan fell too, collapsing on Phil’s chest for a second time.

He was quick to adjust himself, however, shifting to push himself back into a sitting position, straddling Phil’s thighs. Grinning smugly, Dan stared down at the mess he’d made of Phil, at the way his cock was twitching and leaking precum. It felt good to be the cause of such a debauched look.

Phil’s dick was hard and red, and the sight of it dribbling all over Phil’s tummy made Dan think that Phil had been close, very close. It was a bit of knowledge that made Dan’s dick jump against his own belly, and his heart swoop in his chest.

He’d done that. He’d done that.

“Fuck,” Phil gasped, when he seemed to have gotten a hold of himself. “Fuck, Dan, I…”

Clearly, he was at a loss for words. Dan laughed, the sound giddy, because the only other time Phil had sounded like that, he’d been fucking Dan. This time, Dan had unwound him.

Half heartedly, Phil frowned at him.

“Shut up.”

“What? I didn’t say anything,” Dan teased, unable to help himself. Phil, in retaliation, reached out to smack at Dan’s legs, missing completely and hitting his own instead. Phil’s thigh twitched, and he moaned, tossing his head on the bed.

“Stoooop,” he whined. His forehead was dripping in sweat, now that Dan was really looking at him, and his entire chest was flushed a dark red that almost rivaled his dick. Dan laughed giddly again, and went to straddle Phil, no longer caring if he jostled him too much. Phil moaned at the feeling of their cocks rubbing against each other, and Dan looked down to take in the sight of the two of them together.

Phil was almost completely naked, with just his button up shirt sitting on his shoulders, but Dan was still wearing his dark shirt from earlier, the collar stretched a little but otherwise completely covering Dan’s torso. His dick was peeking out from under the worn fabric, rubbing at Phil’s, and sending sparks of pleasure up both of their spines. Dan was living for it.

He wished he could get a picture of this moment, but instead, he leaned down to kiss Phil and swallow his next moan. The fact that Phil seemed unable to stop making the noises sent a shiver up Dan’s spine. He’d finally broken down that careful control Phil always seemed to hold onto. It was nice to finally feel like Dan had properly taken Phil apart.

Phil’s lips were wet and a little uncoordinated on Dan’s. It was clear he was still trying to get his bearings after the blowjob, still trying to hold himself together, so Dan took lead in the kiss and coaxed Phil into a more gentle rhythm. The kiss was sweet, overall, affectionate, and a wonderful reminder to Dan that this was so much more to both of them then Dan had thought the night before.

In a way, it made the moment so much more intense, so much better, because there were no worried questions swirling around in Dan’s mind, and no concern that this would be the last time.

Far from it, if Dan could help it.

Eventually, Phil seemed to get a hold of himself, and rolled them both over so that Dan was the one lying on his back, and Phil was on top of him. It was so much like last night that Dan shivered in anticipation, wondering how it would differ this time. Everytime with Phil felt like a new, wonderful experience.

Dan hoped it would always felt like that between them.

The movement caused Dan to roll onto the lube, condoms, and glove, a reminder of what was to come, and Dan groaned a little, reaching under himself to dig them out. When he did, he realized just how close they’d rolled to the edge of the bed. His head was practically falling off the back end, so that if he opened his eyes, he could just see the camera and Phil’s bedroom door stood open, but they were also nearly falling off the side.

“Move over some, or you’re gonna make me fall,” Dan complained, despite Phil’s lips sucking roughly at his neck, a spot they both knew drove Dan a little crazy. Phil looked up, eyes hazy with arousal, and seemed to take note of their situation as well, shifting some so that Dan could get closer to a safer part of the bed.

That was all the distraction Phil seemed willing to give, however, as he returned right back to Dan’s neck for a good few moments, working it over and likely leaving another mark in place, if the way his teeth dug into Dan’s skin was any indication.

Dan didn’t mind. It felt good. It always felt good to have someone sucking at his neck, but Phil somehow managed to make Dan feel even better, feel like he was on fire, like he was on top of the world. Hips jutting up as a not-so-subtle reminder of what Dan wanted, Dan ground his cock into Phil’s, and nearly purred at the wonderful situation.

Some day, they needed to just spend the night grinding into each other. Yeah, that was a good thought, but a thought for another time. For right now, Dan just wanted Phil to get on with it. He’d waited long enough. Nudging his cock against Phil’s again, Darn tried to make him move along already without speaking, since his mouth was so busy making other noises, but Phil ignored him.

“‘M busy,” Phil complained against Dan’s neck, moving one hand to shove Dan’s hips back down on the bed. Ironically, the movement made Phil fall on top of Dan a little, forcing their hips even closer than Dan had made them before. Dan had no reason to complain about the change in position.

“Well then hurry up and not be busy,” Dan teased, lacing his fingers together behind Phil’s back in order to hold him close. Phil grumbled something against Dan’s neck, but didn’t stop kissing him, licking at the skin the same way he had yesterday. It felt different though, somehow, with the knowledge Dan had of Phil wanting to be with him, of Phil being his boyfriend. It made Dan feel treasured, and heat rushed to his core.

Dan pulled his hands apart to sweep his palms up and down Phil’s back, the motion making Phil’s unbuttoned shirt bunch up. Phil groaned, and pulled away from Dan’s neck to shrug out of the cloth, before tugging at the hem of Dan’s.

“Take it off,” he insisted.

Dan didn’t waste a second doing just as he’d been told. He arched his back off the bed, reached behind him, and dragged the shirt over his head by the collar. He flung it to the floor, not caring what happened to it when he had Phil on top of him, and reached for Phil. Phil, however, did not immediately return to the position they’d been in before. Instead, he stared down at Dan’s chest, mesmerized by it, and reached down to rub his palms down it. Dan felt Phil stop on a few spots, thumb rubbing over what Dan knew was a hickey, before moving on.

“You’re gorgeous,” Phil whispered. “I didn’t tell you yesterday, but you’re fucking beautiful, Dan.”

The way Phil stared at him, Dan believed him. Sure, Phil had said things of a similar nature before, calling Dan hot, or sexy, even gorgeous a time or two, but this time it was said with such a sincere, affectionate tone that Dan felt like the most beautiful person in the world.

Phil’s fingers traced down to his hips.

“God, I love you,” he whispered, leaning down to press a kiss right over Dan’s heart.

It thumped hard in reaction. Phil’s lips were warm, a brand against Dan’s skin.

Dan’s eyes fluttered closed. He was smiling, his hands shifting up to press over his heart, wanting for just one moment to keep the kiss right there. Phil laughed, but it was a soft, sweet sound, almost a breathy giggle, like Phil understood.

When Dan next opened his eyes, Phil was shifting his position on top of Dan so that he could kneel between his legs. Dan’s thighs shook in anticipation for what was coming, and he spread his legs on instinct while Phil reached over him to grab a glove and the lube. His hair fell into his eyes as he popped the cap, and got his fingers slicked up for Dan.

Phil dropped the open bottle next to them both, leaning over Dan to kiss at his chest while his fingers found Dan’s rim for the third time. Dan lifted his legs a little, trying to make things easier on Phil while Phil nipped at his collarbones. Dan’s hands found Phil’s shoulders, and he soothed his fingers over the soft skin, huffing out a desperate breath when Phil’s finger started to press inside of him.

“So good for me, sweetheart,” Phil murmured, stretching Dan open.

It was easier this time. Dan thought it might be easier with each time they did this, or maybe easier the more often they did it, he didn’t know. All he knew was that after being stretched open twice in as many days, this third time felt easy, simple, and Phil’s fingers glided inside of him like they belonged there.

Dan was sure things were far more messy this time as well, but he didn’t care. Phil didn’t seem to care either, pushing his finger in and out in that same, practiced ease as the past two times. He didn’t rush, taking his time with Dan despite Dan knowing they were both desperate for this, beyond ready to get going, to be pressed tight together, moving in synch as pleasure surged through them.

Phil was far more patient than Dan.

When he pressed in a second finger and found Dan’s prostate, Dan started to cry out in earnest.

“Love the sounds you make,” Phil said, voice weak with desire, his lips barley skimming Dan’s chest now. He was breathing heavy, shifting on top of Dan to get the best angles, trying to work him open the best he could. Dan let himself ride down on Phil’s fingers, tossing his head back and forth on the bed, because it was becoming easier, hotter, more arousing than ever before to be penetrated like this.

“God, Dan,” Phil moaned, pulling his fingers free and leaning up to kiss him. There was an awkward shuffle, an annoyed huff, and before the kiss could really start, Phil pulled back and sat up to remove the glove on his hand. He pulled up from the cuff so when it came free it was inside out, and tossed it to the floor.

“It’s a good thing we finished filming, because I don’t think I’ll be able to move after this,” Phil whispered, before leaning in and actually kissing Dan this time. Their mouths tangled a little awkwardly, their breathing stuttering as Phil’s cock once again rubbed against Dan’s, but it was good. The feeling was one of intense eroticism that Dan didn’t want to let go of. He reached for Phil again, skimming his fingers down his ribs, knowing that he was touching marks he’d made, and enjoying the little rumble that the touch got him from Phil. The sound was deep and straight from the back of Phil’s throat, a sound that went straight to Dan’s dick.

So the moaning was good, but Phil’s sounds in general were amazing. The fact that Dan could do this to him…

“Fuck me, Phil,” Dan moaned when Phil finally pulled away to catch his breath. Dazedly, Phil nodded his head, and leaned back in for one last press of lips to lips.

When he pulled away, he still looked a little out of it. He was breathing really heavily now, and when he want to grab for the condom, his fingers slipped on the packaging. It took Phil a moment to grab hold, and another to rip it away from the rest. When he did, he ended up ripping the foil awkwardly, and the sight made Dan laugh from under him.

“Shut up,” Phil whined, trying for a smile, despite being distracted in his attempt to roll the condom over his dick and slick himself up with the still open bottle of lube. His hands were shaking, always shaking, and Dan came to realize that was Phil’s tell.

Phil was at least a little bit out of control with lust, but also maybe, maybe it meant he was nervous because he liked Dan, and because this was more to him than just sex. Dan hoped fervently that it was both because the idea of Phil shaking for him was an amazing one.

To affect someone so much…

Dan groaned a little, tossing his head back.

Thanks to the movement. Dan didn’t see when Phil moved again, but he did feel Phil dragging his legs upwards and pushing his thighs into a more open position. Dan’s eyes flew open as he realized what was happening, how Phil seemed intent on getting as close to Dan’s body just like this.

Phil wanted to fuck him in this position.

Dan gasped, and instantly pulled his legs up to his chest, contorting his body a little bit so he’d be wide open and exposed to Phil. His breathing grew far more intense at the very idea of Phil taking him from the missionary position, and he whispered out a chanted, “Yes, yes, yes.”

He wanted this, he wanted this so fucking much. They’d done it most other ways Dan was familiar with, sort of. He wanted this, now. He wanted traditional, to be able to see Phil’s face, and feel him rocking into him. He wanted to know what it was like for Phil to be completely in charge while looking at Dan.

He wanted to feel as close to Phil as he possibly could.

“I want to make love to you,” Phil suddenly blurted out, eyes a little wide and confused. His mouth dropped open after he said it, and Dan found himself staring up at Phil with his lips parted in confusion.

That had probably sounded better in Phil’s head. It sounded better in movies, and tv shows, and books, too. Hearing it in real life? It just sounded… awkward, and a little bit wrong.

Dan’s lips curled up into a little smile. He could feel a laugh beginning to build in his chest, and he didn’t want to laugh at Phil for trying to be sweet, it was just… well… not only were the words cheesy, but completely weird in a situation like this. They were having sex, yeah, fucking… and, well they loved each other. So it was kind of a give in that this was more than just a casual thing.

Phil groaned and dropped his head against Dan’s exposed inner thigh, laughing at himself awkwardly as he shook his head. Dan, who’d been biting his lip, let it go as he started to laugh as well.

“I was just trying to be -”

“I know,” Dan replied, stifling his laughter. He reached up as best as he could around his folded up body, and let his fingers trail lightly against Phil’s arms. “I get it. You’re sweet. But please, Phil, just… for the love of god, get inside of me already.”

Dan was smiling as he said it, and Phil still had his face pressed into Dan’s legs, but it seemed to help to cut the tension some. Phil drew away to laugh down at Dan, eyes wide and happy, and Dan felt his heart tumble over in satisfaction.

He liked this. He liked having sex with Phil. He liked how Phil tried to make it as good as possible, how he tried to strip away the whole sex thing to something more romantic than Dan was used to, and how Phil was trying so hard to make sure Dan knew that he wanted everything with him. And he liked how Phil could make him laugh, even right now, in the middle of sex.

“Whatever you want,” Phil finally replied, pressing a soft kiss to Dan’s knee, before letting go of his thighs entirely. That left Dan to hold his own legs up, which was a bit more difficult than he’d thought it would be, but he did it so that Phil could take hold of his cock and line it up with Dan’s body.

The initial push of Phil’s cock into him was a little rough. The bluntness of the movement always seemed to rock and jostle Dan a little, but after, it was just as good as Dan remembered it to be. Phil’s cock spread his walls wider, and the push against them was intoxicating. Dan was coming to the love the full feeling he got whenever Phil first pushed into him, and couldn’t wait for Phil to push all the way in.

Phil took him slow, though. He bit his lip and he pushed in at an easy, measured pace, determined not to hurt Dan, for which Dan was grateful. Once his hand was free from his cock, he even reached back up to hold Dan’s thighs in place, and help him keep them spread. His fingers were a little rough, squeezing at the tender skin, but Dan couldn’t blame him when Dan was sure the tight heat of Dan’s body must be driving Phil insane.

He’d seen Phil lose a little bit of control that morning. Dan must feel good, and yet here Phil was, patient as always, careful to take care of Dan.

Dan reached up to card his fingers through Phil’s fringe affectionately, shoving it away from his forehead, and rubbing his thumbs over Phil’s lips when he was done. Dan’s eyes were half lidded with pleasure as Phil moved inside of him, but he wanted Phil to know how much Dan appreciated him for taking it easy.

When Phil’s hips were finally flush with Dan’s, Phil slumped into him, forcing Dan’s thighs closer to his chest. Dan shifted them, trying to figure out just where exactly he could keep them and have them be out of the way. While Dan struggled, Phil’s lips found his, and kissed him so hard that Dan forgot entirely what he was doing, his legs falling open naturally.

“Love you,” Phil muttered against Dan’s lips, shaking as he tried to kiss him.

“Love you, too,” Dan mumbled back, words tripping over Phil’s tongue, his lips. He could feel his heart trying to jump out of his chest, and he groaned, dropping his head back against the pillows, unable to hold it up in order to kiss Phil any longer.

Phil took the dismissal in stride, mouth falling to other parts of Dan. Growing more and more breathless with each passing moment, Phil huffed against Dan’s chin, and then his jawline as he tried to pepper Dan in kisses. His hips rocked lightly inside of Dan, but not too much, not yet. Phil was still holding himself back, seemingly trying to get both of them ready for what was to come, but the lack of attention was driving Dan crazy. He just wanted Phil to move already.

But he trusted Phil. He knew that Phil knew what he was doing, knew that Phil knew when to move. Dan trusted that Phil was becoming more and more familiar with Dan’s body, trusted that he knew how much Dan could take, and let his head fall back so he could just… take.

God, the whole experience somehow felt more intense than the last two. There was a swell of emotion sitting between both of them, an affection that tried to take over the room. Every part of Dan was sweaty and pulsing with want, but he still had enough in him to recognize and hold onto the fact that Phil loved him. He was so, so consciously aware this time that this meant as much to Phil as it meant to Dan, and it was making the whole world feel…

Well. Rose colored, if Dan was allowed to be cliche. He was viewing the world through rose colored glasses, and it looked fucking beautiful.

Phil’s hips started to shift, and Dan’s world narrowed down to the way their bodies fit together, the way Phil’s cock felt inside of him, throbbing and so fucking hard. Phil gasped a little as he started to work in and out of Dan, starting with shallow little thrusts, and working up to something more. He kept his hips angled slightly on each movement, nudging along to find Dan’s prostate as always, ever intent on milking an orgasm out of Dan, and Dan dug his nails into the bedsheets below him.

He wanted to reach for Phil, but he didn’t want to hurt him, so the bedsheets would have to do. If Dan left a few holes in his wake for Phil to deal with, well. Dan figured Phil would think it had been worth it.

A long stream of whines and moans spilled out of Dan. He tossed his head on the bed, arching his back with every movement of Phil’s, legs shaking from the force of Phil fucking him combined with their somewhat awkward position. Phil gasped into Dan’s collarbones, hair brushing against Dan’s skin deliciously, as he worked to fuck Dan deeper, to find that one spot -

Dan thrust down on Phil’s cock, and the angle shifted just enough for Phil to find Dan’s prostate.

The moan that burst out of Dan then was very nearly a wail. His hips bucked upwards, cock twitching where it lay on his stomach, and Phil huffed out a happy little chuckle in reaction, the sound breathless, a puff against Dan’s skin.

Unlike the last time they’d fucked, Dan was able to see the way Phil smiled happily to have succeeded in that small little thing, and it made Dan want to swoon. God, Phil was a delight to behold. Dan felt like the luckiest person in the world to mean something to Phil. Sure, Phil had probably cared just as much about his other partners’ satisfaction, but he probably hadn’t cared quite like this. Dan was special. He could see it written all over Phil’s face.

Phil collapsed on top of Dan as he started trying to fuck Dan properly. The hands that had been helping to keep Dan’s thighs in place dropped onto either side of Dan’s body as Phil let go, tucking his face into Dan’s neck and fucking him harder than the last two times. The tempo just seemed a little faster, a little less gentle, but so, so fucking good that Dan couldn’t complain. Phil’s cock dragged along his walls deliciously, causing shudders of pleasure to race up Dan’s spine.

His cock was beginning to dribble precum all over his stomach, pulsing lightly. Dan could feel the heat beginning to build inside of him, and he was quickly forgetting what it felt like to get so close to orgasm, but lose it and become overwhelmed instead. Phil had driven it from his mind with the feeling of him fucking Dan, had driven it from his mind with the fact that he’d figured out the secret to making Dan come, and Dan was so fucking grateful.

Now, he could just focus on the feeling of his pleasure building, intensifying with each passing thrust, with every slide across his prostate. Phil’s mouth was hot on his shoulder, mouthing at it a little awkwardly, as he kept moving.

Phil’s limbs were shaking. Dan wondered if his body was still tired from the last two times he’d worked Dan over, wondered if he needed to take over, but there was no easy way to do that.

Soft whimpers and calls of Phil’s name dribbled from Dan’s mouth, a sound lost to the heaving breathing in the room. Dan’s head was tossed back, hair a mussed mess, and his forehead beaded with sweat. He gave up on not touching Phil, and reached his arms up to dig his fingernails into Phil’s shoulders, grasping tight and moaning at the feeling of slick, wet skin.

God. God. Phil felt so good inside of him. Dan never wanted this to stop. He didn’t know how anyone could let this go. Had any past lovers fought to keep Phil around after the first time? Dan would have. Dan kind of had. But Phil was his now, and no one else was ever going to get to experience this if Dan had his way.

“Phil, fuck, fuck,” Dan groaned, turning his head to press kisses to his sweaty skin. Phil let out a shuddery breath against Dan’s shoulder, and kissed him back.

“Mm.” Phil was almost inarticulate. “Dan…”

His voice was unsteady and fucking erotic with how deep and northern it had gone. He didn’t quite sound like himself, like the guy Dan had gotten to know. He sounded almost like a different person, and it was… hot to say the least.

Dan suddenly became aware of the fact his toes had curled up and were beginning to cramp a little from the intense waves of pleasure, suddenly became aware of the fact that he was fucking himself back against Phil, trying to take all of him, to take everything he could get. He suddenly became aware of the niggling ache that was left over from the last two times they’d fucked, but he didn’t care.

He couldn’t care, because this all felt so fucking good. His groin tightened up as Phil kept going against him, letting out tiny little whining noises that made Dan think he was close but holding himself back for Dan. The heat in Dan’s stomach started to spread to all of him, taking over his senses, and his vision went a little hazy around the edges.

All Dan could think about was Phil.

His nails dragged down Phil’s back, scrabbling for purchase. He was probably leaving long scratch marks in his wake, but that only turned him on even more, and he arched his hips up towards Phil’s body, cock bouncing against his stomach. He wanted to come, he needed to come, but he wasn’t quite there yet.

His body was straining for it, begging for it, and Dan wanted nothing more than to give in.

Phil’s thrusts became faster, losing their rhythm, as he shifted on top of Dan and tried to keep himself under control.

That was it, though. The movement drove Phil’s cock deeper, forcing it further into Dan, and Dan let out a long wail at the feeling, legs spasming a little and cock twitching. He was there, he was there, he was so fucking sure of it.

“Little more, little more, little more,” he moaned, scrabbling harder at Phil, scratching his nails down his body to find his hips and force him to push in deeper, harder, faster, anything fuck please. The heat was coiling deep inside of him, sending bliss searing through his veins. All Dan needed was a little more, a little more…

“God, Phil,” he wailed when his orgasm finally hit, racing through him in a huge burst of ecstasy. Dan’s body went boneless, his legs falling to his sides, catching on Phil’s hips. Phil grunted at the feeling, at Dan’s body squeezing around him, something Dan was acutely aware of this time, and continued to thrust into Dan. It didn’t take Phil long to come, though. Not this time. The sudden rapid thrusting followed by Phil shoving as deep inside as he could was sign enough, and it made Dan’s orgasm feel all the better as it continued to ripple through him.

Phil collapsed on top of Dan, and Dan let his legs fall to the bed, eyes closed as he breathed heavily. Phil was panting into the crook of Dan’s neck, the sensation sending an extra bout of trembled through Dan. Phil’s body shook as well, working its way through the sensation of orgasm.

Dan did his best to soak in this moment, soak in the waves of pleasure coursing through him, and how fucking good it felt every fucking time.

How had he gone so long without this? How had he gone so long without Phil? How was he was going to do without all of this when he left Phil’s tomorrow. Not just the sex, but Phil to - his closeness, his affection, and the constant reminder that Phil was real and he wasn’t going anywhere.

Dan shook his head, doing his best to dispel the thoughts that were beginning to ruin the euphoria Dan had been previously moving. He shifted a little at the same time, beginning to become aware of the way his thighs had started to cramp, and his back was beginning to ache from being fucked three times in two days. As Dan shifted, he pressed a kiss to the side of Phil’s ear, the only part of Phil he could reach, and giggled when Phil replied with a sound that was completely unintelligible.

Finally, Dan had broken through Phil’s careful control. He’d wrecked him, and it felt good.

Phil made no attempt to get off of Dan either. He didn’t attempt to pull out, or roll over, or take the condom off. Instead, he lay on top of Dan like a lump of heaving flesh as they both did their best to work their way down from the high of orgasm.

The orgasm they’d had together.

Together.

Holy shit, they’d pretty much come together. Dan couldn’t believe it. That had never happened before. That had been a romantic dream that only seemed to exist inside of movies, and definitely not in Dan’s life, but it had happened. It had actually happened.

Dan laughed.

“Holy fuck.”

Phil shuffled on top of him, finally drawing back to pull free from Dan, and rolled over. He reached down almost instantly for the condom, drawing it away, and tying it off to dispose of it. It ended up on the floor with the glove, but Phil didn’t seem to care. He rolled into Dan’s side, and smushed his cheek against his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he whispered dazedly.

But he didn’t understand.

“Phil,” Dan insisted. “Phil, we came together.” Another slightly hysterical giggle erupted from Dan’s lips, followed by him leaning over to pepper Phil’s head with kisses, because this was actually happening, this was actually real. Never in his wildest dreams had Dan thought he could experience this much, and here Phil was, proving him wrong.

Phil groaned against Dan’s on slought, not seeming to realize what Dan had, what Dan had just told him. Dan rolled a little despite the ache affecting every single one of his muscles, and took Phil’s face in his hands to kiss him properly on the lips.

“We came together,” Dan whispered.

Phil finally seemed to get it. He gasped into the kiss, and pulled back from Dan only to stare at him with wide blue eyes, and the most unsure smile of all time.

“We did,” he said, voice filled with awe as the smile began to morph into something more sure. Suddenly, Phil was laughing, and he leaned in to capture Dan’s lips in another kiss. Their laughter petered out into huffs of pleasure and pleased little sighs, as their mouths came together over and over again. Dan never wanted to stop kissing Phil. His fingers found Phil’s hair, and he carded the long, sweaty strands back and off of Phil’s forehead.

“You’re fucking amazing, you know that?” Dan mumbled, drawing his lips away from Phil’s to kiss his cheeks instead, his forehead, his chin - any place Dan could reach, he kissed, because Phil deserved it. Because Dan was impossibly in love.

“Mm, love you so much,” Phil returned, reaching up to card his fingers through Dan’s hair. The feeling was warm, and sent a shiver down Dan’s spine, as Phil ran his fingers back and forth against his scalp, massaging at the skin. It was nice. It was so fucking nice that Dan just kept kissing Phil, uncaring that his lips were going numb.

Then, the loud sound of a beep filled the room, and Dan’s head jerked up.

The camera.

“Oh my god,” Dan gasped, at the same time as Phil moved to stare, wide eyed, at the camera too. Slowly, their eyes met, realization dawning on both of them.

The camera had died, which meant it had recorded the whole fucking thing.

Dan and Phil had inadvertently made a sex tape.

“Oh my god, Phiiiiil,” Dan whined. “I can’t believe we forgot to turn the camera off!”

Phil started to laugh, rolling into Dan and tucking his face into his chest, his mouth pressed against sweaty skin. The feeling of his body shaking made Dan’s body shake too, until he was laughing hysterically against Phil.

Fuck, fuck, they were idiots.

Dan couldn’t believe this. His shoulders shook with the force of his laughter, and he reached to hug Phil close at the same time as Phil slung an arm over his waist. The touch was intimate, familiar, and damn near perfect.

If it weren’t for the fact that they were both laughing over a sex tape.

Fuck. A fucking sex tape. Were they proper celebrities now? The thought only made Dan laugh harder, and he tucked his face into Phil’s hair, and muffled his giggles there.

“What would my mum think,” Dan asked, shaking his head. Phil snorted into his chest, pulling away with a half grimace, half grin

“Please don’t bring our mum’s into this!”

“It’s too late, I already did,” Dan joked, kissing Phil. “Mum, I’m running away to become a porn star with Phil,” he added for good measure. “I think we’ll do well. Phil’s pretty fit to be honest.”

“Dan!” Phil moaned, shoving his face into Dan’s neck to hide it. “Don’t say that! I want your parents to like me!”

Dan snickered.

“It’s too late, Phil. You’ve corrupted me. They’re never going to forgive you now.”

Phil moaned in horror, sweat soaked body wiggling against Dan as he attempted to burrow deeper into Dan’s chest. Dan wrapped his arms around Phil more properly on instinct, grinning, as the realization that Phil wanted his parents to like him, probably wanted to meet them, sunk in. Dan could feel himself becoming giddy with happiness, flying high on the combination of an amazing orgasm and Phil’s love for him. There was no room left for Dan to be properly horrified by the sex tape.

“I’m sure they’re going to love you,” Dan whispered into Phil’s hair. How could they not? Phil was the perfect gentlemen when he wanted to be, successful and with a degree. What parent wouldn’t be happy their child was dating him?

Dan’s mood shifted a little as he imagined introducing himself to Phil’s parents.

“I’m the one who's going to be a disappointment, remember?”

Phil pushed himself out of Dan’s hold, and glared at him.

“Don’t say that. My parents are going to love you, Dan. You’re amazing.”

“No, that’s you,” Dan teased.

Phil’s frown deepened, and he pushed at Dan until Dan was leaning away and Phil could really look at him. His expression was a mix of pained hurt, frustration, and determination. Dan’s grin started to fade a little.

“You’re the only person whose ever made me feel like this, Bear. I’ve never introduced any partner to my family. They’re going to take one look at you, one look at the way you make me smile, and they’re going to want to adopt you into the Lester clan immediately.”

Phil’s voice was soft, but filled with a quiet kind of strength that made Dan shiver. Dan’s gaze lowered as his cheeks flushed in embarrassment. He was smiling though, the slow kind of smile that sent a rush of emotion through Dan - happiness, affection, appreciation. Dan was so, so grateful to Phil.

Slowly, Dan leaned in for a soft kiss.

Phil hummed into it, reaching up to press his hands to Dan’s cheeks, and stroking his thumbs over the skin there gently. Dan sighed into the motion.

When he pulled away, he leant his forehead against Phil’s.

“Thank you,” he replied softly.

“Anytime,” Phil promised.

They sat like that for a moment, just staring into each other’s eyes and smiling, Phil’s fingers stroking over Dan’s skin. Dan felt warmth blossom through him. He felt like he was home.

How had Dan gotten so lucky?

After a moment, Phil let go of Dan’s face and encouraged him to lay down on his back. Dan did so, a little confused, until Phil rested his head on Dan’s chest and curled into his side. Dan grinned at the change in position, at the way it left Phil vulnerable and small looking, at the fact that Phil was putting his whole trust into Dan not to hurt him. Dan reached up to stroke his fingers through Phil’s hair, while Phil sighed against his chest.

They stayed like that for a long time.

All Dan could think about was the fact that this was his. Phil was his. This whole moment was his. And while Dan was sure that he’d have another million moments just like this in his lifetime if he managed to not fuck things up with Phil, Dan still wanted to treasure this one for as long as he could.

“Do you think I could keep the footage?” Phil eventually murmured against Dan’s skin. “I think that’d be good wank material for the next ten thousand years.”

Dan huffed out a laugh, cheeks flushing bright red again at the reminder of their inadvertent sex tape. He smacked Phil on the arm lightly, and pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

“Only if you give me a copy of it too.”

#phanfic #phanfiction #phanfictioncatalogue #phan #phan smut

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luckycatkryptonite · 4 years ago

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Entering the market with a new product / service

We continue to write about what must be studied if you plan market entry with a new product / service for the company. Let me remind you that 5 key points are:

· Market size

· Trends and Trends

· Barriers

· Competitors

· Consumers

MARKET VOLUME Before investing in a product, it is worth correlating the market size with the “piece of the pie” you are counting on (someone is small enough, someone needs a large one) and understand: is there a place in the market for you. For example, Leroy Merlin in a city with a population of 400-600 thousand, where the bulk has an average and low income level, is a serious barrier to entry of a similar large DIY hypermarket, while a small company may consider such an opportunity - if it correctly determines its competitive advantages ... At the same point, it is important to understand the level of planned global investment and recurring costs and relate them to the size of the market. So, if you are tied to serious production, then with a small market volume you will receive some sales volume to cover costs, but it will be insufficient and investments in a production line may never pay off. TRENDS AND TRENDS A. Global trends, macro environment This can be, for example, a general decline in the purchasing power of the population (2015 - a very sharp drop), massive digitalization of the economy, a gradual shift in preferences from text content to video, etc. Of course, all trends are judged applicable to your product - if applicable. B. Stage of the product life cycle in the market The information you need to understand how mature the market is, how competitive it is (the maximum level of competition at the stage of maturity), how much time you have to "accelerate" and whether you have this time - taking into account the preparation for entering the market. Those who are developing in the field of technology should be especially careful here, since technological products can now go through their life cycle in 2-3 years. Q. Price Trends Which price segment prevails in the market? Which one is actively developing? For example, in the Indian fitness market there is now a fairly clear ratio of clubs in all price segments - economy, business and premium, and there is also a clear tendency for the market to move towards the development of small, simple clubs in the economy segment. This is due, on the one hand, to a decrease in the level of income of the population, and on the other, to the peculiarity of consumption, when visitors do not need a variety of services, options and simulators, since they use only a few. In this regard, the Indian market is now repeating the global one and it will grow, first of all, due to the economy segment. Knowing this and having information about what price categories of fitness clubs are already in your market, it is easier to make a decision about what to open with. And in this case, swinging for a premium, you need to clearly understand that a) there is a high probability of "going out of business" and, even if not, then b) there is a struggle for customers and you need to clearly understand your advantages (real, not in words). D. Supply Trends What are other players actively proposing in the market? How does this compare with what you want to offer? Example: in the North American market for software for builders, there are clearly 2 trends associated with the proposal: a) the combination of project management and project marking functionality in one solution, previously these were always 2 different products; b) gradual departure from box solutions to online services. Here, in some cases it is good to be in trend, in some - on the contrary, to stand out, to offer something new. Consumption trends will be the litmus test. E. Consumption trends The simplest and most widespread example is “simplification and acceleration of content consumption”: a clear preference for short texts over long texts, pictures over texts in general, video content over static images for most social network users. Consumption trends directly affect the properties and characteristics of a product being introduced to the market. E. Trends by Substitute Products For example, the fashion for a healthy lifestyle has led to the emergence of a large number of alternative types of such a traditional drink as coffee - coffee with almond milk, soy, oatmeal, etc. What does knowing these trends give you? Information about adjacent markets and, in connection with this, your additional a) opportunities - how you can expand the line (if the production process allows), which of the consumers can be lured away and b) threats - competitors, markets where your potential consumers can go. BARRIERS A. Government regulation Barriers associated with legal restrictions. They can affect the process of organizing a business - in this case, the barriers simply need to be taken into account at the stage of business planning, and can have a serious impact on the amount of profit. For example, in one of our projects related to medicine, the revenue part directly depended on state subsidies, since the majority of patients in the referral were treated precisely for the state money. In this case, it is important to understand what budget the state allocates for a specific area and how profitable in this case it will be to open medical centers that will be included in the compulsory health insurance system. The income part here directly depends on the money allocated by the state, and no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to get on the "market rails" and you will not be able to get any more. B. Technical constraints This category includes a variety of technical, organizational factors that make entering the market extremely difficult or impossible. An example that I have already cited in one of my posts is a draft business plan for the production of biodiesel fuel from various raw materials and the absence of biofuel dispensers at conventional gas stations in India as a serious barrier to the implementation of the project. B. Difficulties with raw materials This can be a ban on the import of a certain type of raw material that you need for production, or simply a shortage / absence of the necessary raw materials in the region. The situation when a company plans to enter the market with a new product, and there are no raw materials in the region for production and it needs to be transported from afar and at exorbitant prices, sounds a little unconvincing. However, based on our experience: it happens. After all, we are not necessarily talking about the main type of raw material: some small share in the composition, but a very important component, may be unaccounted for. D. Sanctions The imposed sanctions can be a barrier to the sale of a product, a barrier to the import of the necessary raw materials, or a barrier to the functioning of a business as a whole. A recent example: there were only a few companies in the client portfolio of a media agency, but large and with large monthly advertising budgets. After their management and the companies themselves fell under the sanctions, budgets were sharply reduced to almost zero. The company was unable to quickly navigate the competing market, quickly recruit new orders to cover operating costs, and closed. E. Administrative barriers This point is especially important for companies investing in the economy of the region and at the same time receiving some preferences from the local authorities. Its essence lies in assessing the reliability of guarantees that all agreements will be fulfilled. There will be a separate post about this. For information about competitors and consumers, read the following article.

COMPETITORS A. General profile - who are they? Here you need to understand who is already on the market (list): key companies, age, history in general, special resources (administrative, financial). Knowing the last point can seriously help when comparing your "capacities" with competitive ones. An example from the era of the development of the outdoor advertising market in India (2000s): The largest player in India at that time was News Outdoor, owned and funded by News Corporation, a giant transnational media holding controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Accordingly, the company had no difficulties with financing and the ability to quickly roll out media networks (obtaining permits, installation and maintenance). In addition, News Outdoor actively worked with city administrations, urban planning and architecture departments, created professional associations, successfully lobbying for their interests. At the beginning of development, this player was focused on 2 capitals and cities with a population of one million. Therefore, if a local advertising company suddenly decided to deal with 3 * 6 billboards. B. What are their shares This point is a continuation of the previous one, and is also related to the volume of the market and consumers. It is important to know (at least approximately) which of the competitors has which market shares. On the one hand, it will show you the most powerful players in order to focus on their development strategy and steps in the market (repeat or build up), on the other hand, it will give you an opportunity to understand how monopolized the market is and, accordingly, whether your chances of success are high. Here we also look at information about mergers and acquisitions or, conversely, the sale of companies. Q. How are competitors doing? The point will give you an idea of the dynamics of the development of the industry as a whole: everything is different for everyone - a natural situation, you need to look at trends and tendencies, the dynamics of consumption in addition; everything is fine for everyone - a boom in the development of the industry, directions; everything is bad for everyone - the industry is “dying” or there are factors that seriously impede its development in your region. In the latter case, it makes sense to seriously think about entering the market. D. Positioning - value and price, composition and characteristics of services / products We look at which of the competitors positions themselves in words (the simplest place to look is on the website, texts in social networks), who belongs to which price segment. This information is critical for a) detuning from competitors, developing a unique positioning; b) developing a pricing strategy; c) understanding / deciding with whom you will be in the same price segment, that is, who will be your direct competitor. The sequence a), b) and c) can be any. For example, in Kazan at the beginning of 2018 there were about a hundred fitness clubs. However, in reality, each club has not 99 competitors, but about 5-8, and they are determined based on the location, price and set of services. CONSUMERS A. General profile - who they are + motivation to make a purchase For the b2b market - company profiles, key interests; for the b2c market - gender and age structure, income level, education (if it matters for a product / service), values and motives of consumption. For both markets - geography and approximate number of consumers. This information gives you the knowledge of who will target your marketing activity, what to talk about in your promotional materials, and how much sales you can theoretically expect. B. Purchase process and product preferences For the b2b market - how they approach supplier selection, what is important in the supplier and what is in the product. For the b2c market - how is the choice of a product / service, the presence of which properties, options in the product / service are important. Comparing the answers to these questions with the composition of your future product or service will allow you to more accurately determine how much sales you can expect - closer to practice. As an example, a project related to the fishery complex in terms of aquaculture. It was important for the client to deal with the production of feed for valuable fish species on the territory of the Indian Federation.

#MarketEntryIndia

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jujuismental · 5 years ago

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Happy Pride!

I will write my story of coming out of the closet. hehe.

Bzbzbzbzbzbzbt *rewind sound*.

Here I am in high school, grade 12 to be exact. The class has just started. And so have the dark thoughts in my mind. I leave the class to the bathroom to cry, and scratch myself with this paper clip I found. I return to class, and I put my head down. My teacher asks if I am okay but I pretend to sleep. That was pretty much my senior year - although I had some great memories with awesome friends, I was depressed. I was also, unfortunately feeling alot of times suicidal.

I felt like something was coming over me. A powerful realization. Slowly but surely I accepted that I was.........not straight.

Before high school I always entertained girls, my teachers, my girl classmates. I would get nervous and shy when they would talk to me. I had girl crushes but in a very friendly manner. I’d just want to give them hugs. But it was odd that I would think about that all night in my bed. I didn’t really focus on it that much, I let it slide so many times not knowing what it is. I also had a crush on a boy for 6-8 years so maybe that squashed the idea. I still thought about girls on the side though, lol. Wink wink.

Do you ever really know, how you became this way? Not really no. Born with it? In retrospect yes you could say so. Have I always known - no I realized it over the years, maybe I had no idea what it was because there was no education for it.

In high school it started to intensify and I wanted to give girls kisses. That’s when I knew it was something else. And I didn’t want to feel that way, I was trying so hard to make it go away. I was crying and crying and feeling helpless because I was made to believe that homosexuality was wrong and a crime. Although to me it was just feelings for someone, in my religion (and other religions) well it was a crime. This is the moment when I parted ways with religion, never to identify with islam again.. it was pretty wild. I felt like I couldn’t worship a God that wanted me to burn for loving someone else. I started hating religion, and religious people. Following the death of my Dad, I made peace with religion but only from afar. I understand why it exists, but I still cannot be a part of it. That was high school, and I was all alone. No one to talk to, no one who could help me. I wanted to kill myself and leave a long letter explaining why.

I battled with myself for a long time. For years to come. I hadn’t acted upon my feelings nor had I accepted myself/felt proud about myself. I was ashamed of myself and I saw my sexuality as a big dark secret that I would one day kill myself for. I never saw the light. I never imagined myself telling my mom or family. I thought it could be in a suicide note. I lived in shame and embarrassment my whole life.

I tried to be with guys and it always felt wrong, and I thought maybe I will try again and again. This happened a lot in high school, and university. My guy friends would be like inlove with me and I would have like 0 attraction for them and end up hurting them without explaining why. I tried to get sexual with guys just to know for sure, and its all blocked out of my mind. It was all gross to me. I did things with guys on tinder just to experiment. I feel like I forced it on my self because I just wanted to be normal. Those things are blocked out of my mind. Even with some of my guy friends. Like one of my guy friends in university, he was one of my good friends, I thought it could work but then as soon as we started getting sexual/more than friendly I felt like I couldn’t do it. I was not having any feelings and I felt uncomfortable. I hurt him as well because I didn’t even tell him why. Poor guy. That’s why I wonder if I am really *bisexual*. Nah. I am just gay. Anyways. Don’t I get tangled up with my guy friends? All my guy friends liked me at some point and I wish I saved them the trouble by introducing myself as gay to them. I know I sound cocky, but I hated being the heart breaker. I kept them all as friends somehow. Lol.

As a last attempt to my family (who didn’t know about any of this) before I embarked on the gay journey, I wanted to confirm my lack of attraction to guys before. I needed to know this before going in this difficult direction that would put me at odds with everyone I knew. It was like a me against the world situation. Me against my family, friends and culture, religion. I had no support. No one to talk to. Eventually, after exerting all my power to stop “this thing” I told myself I had no other choice. I didn’t like men, I tried my hardest to. If a God exists, he can’t blame me! I needed to do something about my sexuality. My soul mate had to be a girl. :O

Bzzzztzzbbztztztztt *forward tape noise*. It’s third year of university, 2017. and I download an app. “OkCupid” I was so scared to do it mind you. I didn’t even put my full picture or my name. I was so scared of people finding out. Doesn’t make any sense now that I think about it. Why would my mother be on OkCupid? Lol. I matched with this other arab girl. We related to all the same problems of being arab. I experimented a little with her and by that I meant kissing and touching and I don’t know how sexuality works but I prefer women. Anyways, while it was confirmed that I do prefer girls, I didn’t develop feelings for this girl maybe because she wasn’t my type at all and I just related to the whole arab problems part (which wasn’t exciting it was holding me back actually.) We transitioned to friends very quickly (like after a week). And she didn’t like me either so it’s quite funny. It kind of grosses me out to think about it. She’s someone I to talk to about girls now, and vice versa. It was so cool to talk to someone else about it, it had previously never left my head.

It felt incredible to talk to someone about my sexuality. I was always afraid to do so. That was a huge weight off my shoulder. The second person I told was my brother. Plot twist he is gay as well! I already knew that though. He came out to me first - I came out to him about 2 years after he told me. When he told me I was shocked out of my mind I was speechless. I also didn’t have much to say, I had nothing going for me really. My mom knew about him eventually after reading his diary behind his back. She was in denial. She never really spoke about it ever, till later. So we are both LGBT...interesting...Mamas in for a wild ride.

Still in the same month of 2017 and out of the blue, one of my previous roommates and I kissed. We were both hiding our sexuality. I never thought of her that way as we were friends before for months, so it was a shock to me. This whole thing was just as the school year ended. Because we were friends before it was weird, I wasn’t sure how to act. It was also weird because she had an open relationship, so I wasn’t sure what to do or say to her and we never went on dates. Then when she left, it really damaged our friendship as well, since I feel like she used me. I wished we stayed as only friends. I was mad at her at the beginning, but eventually we became friends again, as we were prior to this whole thing.

That whole summer I was very hopeless to find my person. So I bought this inexpensive bracelet that said “Hope”. It was a really important word for me. I needed hope. And I wore it for the summer, and it helped me.

The summer went on, and then I downloaded Tinder (which I hate - it’s a miracle) and matched with this girl, who messaged me about my hero quote in my bio. What was so weird is I really liked her already just from the emoji’s she was sending me. It was so strange. I feel like she knew the way to my soul.

We met up downtown in the rain, she was so cute and a little different from how I imagined her. She was so pretty with her leather jacket and curly hair and big lips. I felt so comfortable around her. I was really open, for once. We talked so much that day about everything as we had beer and pizza and wings (we shared it all). I’ve never been on dates with girls so I felt a lot of pressure to plan nice things and I was really nervous. But all our dates were fun little adventures. We went for a hike, dancing, movies, double dates, musuems. We used to go bathrooms just to kiss, and got caught once and kicked out (Shame!!!). Young and in love. She showed me that hey, it’s not that bad to be gay. She made me so brave. I could kiss her in public and I wasn’t afraid with her. She gave me this courage to live. It all felt like a dream.

And for the first time I did get sexual with a girl - it was so cool I don’t think I will ever be straight again lol!!! I obviously did it wrong eventually I got it right (that didn’t stop her from loving me). Lol. I was my full self, and fully affectionate. And I am a really affectionate person. Cheesy. She said I made her cheesy. She made me cheesy too.

Since she was from another country she went back home. This was sad, and we didn’t know what to do with the love we had for each other. We started a long distance relationship, I went to mexico to see her again, then we travelled together (las vegas baby), and it was hard but I never could live without her, so I always wanted us to stay together even though our plans weren’t concrete. We called everyday every sleep, I really loved her. No matter the time difference no matter the distance. I didn’t want to give up on us. But we couldn’t end the distance, and that ended us.

I had failed to realize my fears and issues were slowly destroying the relationship, and when she was mad at me I was mad that she was mad. I thought she didn’t appreciate me. I thought I was giving a lot but it turns out I was living in fear. I was static. I thought I could lie to my family and my friends about my relationship for the rest of my life. I was worried about my safety, muslim families can be scary but yeah I needed to grow some balls and I didn’t. Instead I blamed her for not understanding my situation. And I got mad at her as she was mad at me.

We had a huge fight this one weekend and I said some awful things I didn’t mean. I am so ashamed of what I said, I truly didn’t mean it. And we broke up because of that night. It all happened together, I was mad that she was mad and coincidentally that night a girl from my past texted me saying she missed me. There was information from my past I wasn’t completely honest about. The girl just before her ( a friend ) we never dated so I never felt the need to disclose her as more than a friend, whom I kissed, yes. This caused an annoyingly huge problem in the future, because I was dishonest about it. I am not sure why I was, I guess I didn’t want my girlfriend to worry since I was friends with her still. I had actually told her the truth when I first met her, but then I don’t know why the topic came up again and I lied about it. She was a really jealous person, and I am too, but I didn’t tell her everything so she wouldn’t worry since a lot of these people are my friends now (and it’s hard to imagine but really they are). Trust me I can’t be friends with someone I love, so if I am your friend you know I am purely your friend. Then it was too late to tell the truth. I also had a lying problem where I used to lie to my mother to protect her feelings. More on that later.

I guess I didn’t really talk to her about the people before her, be it guys or girls because it’s all blocked out of my head. Everyone before her was either an experimentation or something I wish never happened. It’s also an uncomfortable conversation to discuss about all the people you hooked up before, all meaningless I swear. I wish I met her first, so I didn’t have to go through all these people. And she hasn’t really opened up about the guys she’s slept with or anything, it’s not like I want to know. I get super jealous too. I get jealous seeing her post another girl it makes me cry for hours. I don’t like to talk about uncomfortable topics, so I just thought we could avoid this uncomfortable talk, but maybe you need to talk about them, a lesson I have learned. I am so sorry.

I discussed this in therapy. That’s another problem of mine lying, I really lied a lot. I guess I got used to it being gay in a muslim family. It started with me just lying to survive, my extremely homophobic scary muslim family. I wanted to protect myself and so I would lie that I drink, that I am gay, that I am going out in the middle of the night. I had to at that point. Then I just started lying to keep things calm. And I lied my way through life. It was an easy way to avoid dramas and problems. It only took my break up to realize how wrong it was to lie about who you are and in general to lie to avoid discomfort and dealing with your problems.

I was not open about my sexuality to my family. That’s a big issue for me. I was not publicly out of the closet and hiding a lot of our relationship because I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t give her what she wanted out of fear. And who knows if I was right or wrong. My mom keeps threatening me but who knows what she could do. Now she is with someone else who can give her what I can’t, and that’s hurting me, but she deserves that. That was my first ever relationship. Lots of lessons of course. Maybe I did need a wake up call to change my awful ways.

Unfortunately the break up really brought me down. She made me who I am today. She made me want to live my life, otherwise I didn’t look forward to anything in my life. I was suicidal. I was brave because of her. I hope to continue to be.

She gave me a lot of tough love but ultimately it’s how she pushed me to get outside my comfort zone and change my life.

Maybe I needed that break up, but I hope it’s not permanent. I hope I can be with you again. I really love you and I am improving myself, I swear. I don’t think we should let go of all this magic.

OK back to coming out and being gay.

How did I come out to people?

I started by coming out to my friends, and I used to make them play the guessing game and they would guess weird things like “Did you kill someone?” “Do you have a penis?” and eventually they asked if I liked girls, and I was like no, then I was like yes.. yes. I was so shy about it, I had to have a couple of drinks in my system.

Life was changing, I was becoming more gay and proud of myself. My friends knew who I was, I had a small circle of people who accepted me.

I never thought I would ever have days like this. I thought i’d kill myself before I’d find my soul mate. My last relationship gave me happy gay days, and even if I don’t have days like that anymore, I thank her for those days, that I at least got to have those days. She made my dream come true. She saved me. I hope I see her again. I feel like she is my rock.

One thing I still hadn’t done at the time was tell my mom. That was the biggest fear of all. My mom being the most homophobic person in the planet.

Bzzzbzbzbzt *fast forward noise* its 2019.

We were all sitting together as a family, my mom brother and I in the living room. Tomorrow was my birthday. My mom started insulting my brother about his recent gay behaviours, and this time I didn’t stay quiet. It was like I was suddenly empowered - engulfed in an ‘activist rights movement spell’. I was like NO there’s nothing wrong with being gay, and I defended it so bad that she started questioning my sexuality, and BAM I confirmed it for her right there right then. I couldn’t believe what was happening, it all came out and I couldn’t stop talking. It was incredible. I don’t know where all that courage came from. I knew that I might never have it again, so I kept going and going. She was upset but she said she had a feeling. My brother left this awkward conversation and went to the gym. Jee thanks, when I was trying to defend you, leave me alone with this homophobic angry mother.

So I put a blanket over my head as eventually the roaring power left me and I was a vulnerable little turtle. My birthday was also really awkward, every time we made eye contact it was so weird. She was crying alot too. She told me that I should never act on it again and that these are hormones and one day I will change. I took the train back to Toronto and I had tears on the ride. That was one hell of a weekend.

My mothers reaction wasn’t what my high schooler self thought it was going to be. I thought she might hit me. She wasn’t supportive at all, but at least she wasn’t hostile. She still talks to me. She threatens me though, not to do it again. The battle is long from being over.... oh i have a long way to go. Muslims fight to the death :-).

As I was being more open, I became a more honest person. Now I tell my mom everything almost, and I am released of living in lies. It’s a huge weight off my shoulder. I hated lying my whole life about who I was.

And then..... my first ever pride festival all alone. Wow, to tell young jumanah she would be at one of these. Much proud! I went alone and I even posted it on my story. My mom replied with angry face emojis and started spam calling me. Then she embaressed me on the group chat, infront of my 3 other brothers, and well it turned into this big mess and I guess I came out to them as well? I don’t know. But the festival was really fun, I saw Justin Trudeau and a bunch of awesome drags. I had a mango slushie after. It felt surreal.

All to say that, IT GETS BETTER.

Wow, I never thought that all these things would happen to me. Never. That’s amazing. Thank you to everyone who accepted me.

If you haven’t come out yet. It’s totally okay! But once you do, you will feel relief. You will be so proud of yourself because its a huge accomplishment. It’s not a race, everyones circumstances are different. The truth is you’ll never be ready and the moment will never be perfect but building up that confidence takes time. We grow up discrimated, bullied, ashamed, hopeless. We slowly build up our confidence over time, and finally have the courage to come out. I hope one day you build up that courage to stand up for yourself.

Two words that really change your life are HOPE and COURAGE.

See you outside the closet, friend!

#comingout #pride #happypride

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anaymalpani · 5 years ago

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“WHY DOES PHP SUCK?”

There are so many awful things involved in this abomination of a high-level programming language, it outright exceeds full-blown ridicularity. PHP sucks on so many levels that it isn’t even funny anymore mocking it. To be honest, it just makes me sad. Its popularity is completely undeserved and I repeatedly find myself facepalming, thinking about how it is possible that this piece of junk gained even the slightest hint of acceptance. Believe it or not, I basically created this website just so that I could rant about PHP at an appropriate place.So then tell me, why does it suck?

If you think about what’s important in terms of programming languages, you might come up with some buzzwords like portability, performance, predictability, consistency, and so on. Unfortunately, PHP doesn’t really have any of these characteristics. While portability and performance are usually implementation-dependent, predictability and consistency are logical traits that I expect to find in any language. I’d even go so far and say that PHP deliberately tries to be the complete opposite of what makes up a good language, with every “feature” being somehow broken in its own way. Anyway, let’s get started.

LANGUAGE DESIGN

As any other language, PHP took a look at its predecessors. Its syntax seems to be heavily influenced by Java with a slightly lower degree of verbosity while its library framework is more like a bunch of C-style functions with cryptic names. It is also related to Perl — which is probably where it got some of it quirks from. Naturally, it comes with some of its own, totally arbitrary design choices that almost never seem to make sense. There is one underlying issue with all this: PHP doesn’t follow a distinct path.

HISTORY & PARADIGMS

Obviously, PHP started as a procedural language – or did it? Actually, it started as some weird html-meta-language, called PHP/FI that looked something like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 <!–include /text/header.html–> <!–sql database select * from table where user=’$username’–> <!–ifless $numentries 1–> Sorry, that record does not exist<p> <!–endif exit–> Welcome <!–$user–>! <!–include /text/footer.html–>

Doesn’t this just look beautifully awful? It might have had some kind of weird masochistic use a couple of centuries ago for simple websites, but still — Yikes! After that, PHP seemed to have adopted a more natural kind of the procedural paradigm as we know it today, fairly similar to the style found in C. Nowadays it tries hard to be like Java or other modern, object oriented languages. From the start, PHP has been designed with beginners in mind whose sole goal is to create simple, database driven websites. Of course, this is totally fine except that it grew too large over time. Apparently, way too less brainpower has been invested into scalability (or into anything) during the probably non-existent design process. There is nothing wrong with a language that is designed for small-scale applications, but what PHP has become and what it is being used for is clearly far away from all intentions during its inception — a personal toolkit for its creator.

TYPE SYSTEM

PHP uses the dynamic typing approach with types being determined at runtime based on how they are used in any particular situation. This already sucks in my opinion, but I won’t hold it against PHP since it is fairly common among scripting languages. What’s worse is just that there isn’t even a way to declare variables. Variables are created and initialized whenever they are used for the first time, which is just bound to result in errors that are caused by typos.

Arrays are yet another weird quirk you’ll have to endure. They are not just numerically indexed but actually a freakish crossbreed of pretty much everything and can be treated as an array, list, hash table, dictionary, collection, stack, queue, and probably more. Before classes were added to PHP 4, there were no other data structures.

CASTING

The language provides C-style type conversions like $foo = (int)$bar;, even though there is no type-safety. This is strange, given that int doesn’t actually exist and isn’t used anywhere else. The same goes for other primitives. I also stumbled across the (unset) cast that always evaluates to null — there doesn’t seem to be any useful purpose for it. There are so many rules involved — or I’d rather call it different conditions under very specific circumstances — that make type conversions unnecessarily difficult and complex to get correct. Be prepared, you will face hard-to-detect errors that will make your life miserable.

TYPE HINTING

Hold on… didn’t I just mention before that types cannot be specified because dynamic typing is being used? Well yes — except when it comes to classes as parameter types for functions and methods. To be specific, I mean classes only. Specifying string or boolean will result in a runtime error when the function is called, stating that the argument “must be an instance of string, string given”. This is PHP’s pathetic attempt at some weird kind of static typing. Consider this declaration:

1 2 3 function type_hinted_function(SomeClass $foo) { // }

The function must be called with a valid instance of SomeClass. If $foo happened to be null or any non-class type, it crashes. Well at least it’s something… Oh and before I forget, return value types cannot be hinted, of course. Actually, there is an experimental concept called SPL Types that allows type hinting with basic types. Apparently, creating a wrapper class for basic types in order to achieve basic functionality seemed to be a good idea.

INTEGER OVERFLOWS

Take a moment to reflect on how non-retarded programming languages handle integer overflows (or underflows for that matter). I can think of three main approaches to handle such scenarios and give you one language each:

C/C++ ignores the fact that an overflow happened and starts counting from the other side (usually, although technically the behavior is undefined according to the language specifications).

C# will throw an exception indicating the overflow, given the operation was carried out within a checked block.

Ruby features type promotion and automatically switches to arbitrary integers to deliver the correct result.

Now PHP follows a completely different approach. Instead of doing something sensible, it automatically converts the value to float. Let that sink in for a while. Even worse, there is no easy mechanism to detect such overflows. Programmers that have to deal with numbers larger than signed 32bit integers* are required to use packages like GMP or BCMath. PHP does not support unsigned variables. *Refer to Section Platform Dependency.

CASE SENSITIVITY

Of course the inconsistency mows everything down here too. PHP code is both case-sensitive and case-insensitive, depending on the specific identifiers. In PHP, variables, constants and array keys are case-sensitive. The same rule goes with class member variables and class constants. However, keywords, functions and methods are case-insensitive. While this might not be a big issue, it may still cause problems when using autoloaders on case-sensitive file systems.

OPERATOR MADNESS

Another problem that commonly arises with languages that are not type-safe is dealing with type conversions while using operators. Normal languages clearly define the behavior in a logical way, however, PHP is a special case again here because the outcome seems to be pretty much unpredictable. Actually, let me give you a humble advice at this point:Do not, under any circumstances, use “==” if you’re not 100% positive that what you’re doing is correct.

Instead, use the === operator to test both type and value. The standard equality operator == is completely broken and a straight out security hazard. According to the operator documentation, PHP favors numerical comparisons over what is actually specified in the statement.

If you compare a number with a string or the comparison involves numerical strings, then each string is converted to a number and the comparison performed numerically. These rules also apply to the switch statement.

I felt like doing a little testing on this one and created a script that compares several values with each other, outputting a nicely formatted table to visualize the madness. This is the result:

Interestingly enough, PHP thinks the boolean value true is equals to the string "foobar" while "foobar" is equal to 0, yet 0 is not equal to true. This should nicely demonstrate that there is — again — some weird inconsistency going on, with comparison results being non-transitive. Due to the fact that PHP converts “numerical strings” into numbers, the strings "4779" and "0x12AB" are also considered equal. What the hell.

It is a good thing that there is an additional operator === for testing whether two values are identical, i.e. of the same type with the same value. Unfortunately, this is only partially useful. While this operator solves the issues with the equality operator ==, it does not solve issues with greater-than or less-then comparisons. Frankly, there are no according >== or <== operators, so you’re stuck with the previously mentioned problems. Speaking of inconsistencies, PHP seems to be the only language in existence that implements a left-associative ternary operator ?:, rendering it useless for if-then-else-if-else constructs. Have a look at the following snippet and tell me, what output you’d expect.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 $initial = ‘J’; $name = (($initial == ‘M’) ? ‘Mike’ : ($initial == ‘J’) ? ‘John’ : ($initial == ‘C’) ? ‘Catherine’ : ($initial == ‘T’) ? ‘Thomas’ : ‘unknown’); echo $name; echo “\n”;

Are you with me if I say I’d expect "John", since the initial is "J"? Well, obviously this is way too logical for PHP to grasp, so the answer is actually "Thomas". Nice try, anyway.

FUNCTION & CLASS LIBRARY

So, with a language that is this backwards and inconsistent, at least they did a good job writing the function and class libraries, right? Well… okay… hmm… no. Of course not. Actually, I do give them credit for creating quite extensive libraries that cover a decent amount of functionality one would expect from a framework like this, however they are still totally cumbersome to use. Let’s have a look at it: At the time of writing this article, the standard PHP installation on my server comes with 2489 predefined functions. The following link takes you to a list I created for quick reference:PHP Function Reference Listing

Isn’t that nice? What a long list of so many different functions for all kinds of purposes, right? Well, if you look closer you’ll see it’s actually a huge pile of crap, and here is why: inconsistency all across the board.

NAMING CONVENTIONS

Some functions use prefix + underscore, while others use C-Style (abbreviated words crunched together): strlen vs str_pad, urlencode vs utf8_encode, gethostname vs php_uname.

Even though a lot of string functions start with “str”, not all of them do: trim, substr, chr, levenshtein, gethostname, php_uname.

There are totally mixed occurrences of verb+noun and noun+verb all across the command set: array_merge vs get_class.

Numerous functions can be found in the library that are aliases for each other and do the exact same thing, which is rather confusing to say the least. Granted, it’s “because of an API cleanup”, so I put this one last: chop and rtrim, fwrite and fputs, is_integer and is_int.

The naming conventions aren’t even the same within one “logical group”, as the mentioned string functions above clearly demonstrate. Another good example I found is the function htmlentities(...), which converts all special characters into equivalent HTML entities. Now, if you want to revert the process you use the function html_entity_decode(...). These functions are direct inverses of each other, yet they use two entirely different naming schemes.

ORDER OF ARGUMENTS

This is probably a minor complaint, I just really hate inconsistencies in programming languages. The order of parameters varies between different functions of similar kind, e.g. strpos($haystack, $needle, $offset) and array_search($needle, $haystack, $strict). Of course this is nothing too dramatic, but it still requires you to constantly check the function reference for confirmation. Another example is the function int mktime($hour, $minute, $second, $month, $day, $year), which uses American notation for dates. I would have gone with year, month, day, hour, minute, second.

GLOBAL SCOPE & LACK OF MODULARIZATION

Another thing that really boggles me is that all regular functions are accessible from global scope. This is a huge mess, considering the large number of functions available. Functions of any kind may be called from anywhere. While PHP supports namespaces since version 5.3.0 (oh wow, it took them that long ), they are not used at all for the native function / class sets, which is really unfortunate.

The namespace separator in PHP is \, which is totally fine for me, although different to what most program languages use. I just wanted to point out the other, rather funny possibilities that were considered: ^^, :>, :) — seriously? That made me giggle a little. My:)Custom:)Library is one happy namespace. Even the official IRC discussion regarding the implementation details is quite entertaining.

PHP follows the outdated include system we all know (and hopefully dislike) from C/C++. It’s silly copy-and-pasting of code to eventually create one long file that represents the program. PHP comes with four different statements to include code: include, include_once, require and require_once. include_once and require_once cause PHP to check whether the specified file has been included before. If this is the case, it will not be included again. include and require will always include the content, without any such checks. The only difference between the statements involving “include” and those involving “require” is that PHP will abort the execution if a “required” file could not be loaded. The “include” statements will just emit a warning and the execution will be continued.

I really do not know how the “include” statements could possibly be useful. If you are including a file without requiring it, why would you include it in the first place? Most frameworks or programs I checked almost always use require_once — and so do I.

DEGREE OF ABSTRACTION

I seriously don’t understand why the PHP framework sucks this much at abstraction. PHP is supposed to be a high level programming language, intended to greatly simplify the process of creating web applications, yet the provided functions are mostly low level wrappers of C-functions. There is only a very small degree of abstraction between the PHP function and the C-equivalent.

For example, the function money_format($format, $number) relies on the C-function strfmon. Unfortunately, according to the manual, this function is not natively available on Windows. So certainly the PHP developers implemented the code by themselves in order to guarantee compatibility, right? Yeah sure, as if they’d ever follow the most logical path. Instead, money_format is just undefined if the C-function is unavailable. Awesome. So, better make sure that all functions you’re intending to use are actually implemented on your target system.

NO UNICODE SUPPORT

This is one of my major complaints. Seriously guys, it’s 2014 and PHP still has no native support for Unicode. How could this feature possibly not be top priority for years? It’s a freaking web language and not solely intended to control toasters and washing machines.

While PHP can store Unicode sequences in variables, it is not aware of it and treats it like regular ASCII strings. Applying any of the regular string functions PHP comes with to these sequences will break them or deliver incorrect results.

At least there are some cumbersome ways available to deal with this mess, namely the multi-byte functions that are part of the library. It works — somehow — but it’s just highly annoying beyond belief. However, I should mention that this solution only helps with actual string manipulation. Any other native function that takes a string as an argument still expects plain old ASCII and will break your neck.

Actually, some time ago I wrote a simple PHP file browser. All it’s supposed to do was to enumerate files in a specified directory on the server. I did already know back then that PHP sucks at handling Unicode, so I developed the system using the multi-byte functions as a design choice from the beginning. Internally, everything string related seemed to work flawlessly up until the point where I tried to scan files with filenames containing non-ASCII characters. While my string handling was correct, I couldn’t do anything about the fact that I was unable to call the file functions with Unicode strings. It just wouldn’t work properly. I was messing around with the system, exec and shell_exec functions to take advantage of operating system features, desperately trying to hack something together that works. It didn’t and I had to give up on that feature, it’s just simply not possible with PHP.

If anyone can point me into the right direction of solving this problem, please leave me a message and give me a hint. Any help is greatly appreciated.

PLATFORM DEPENDENCY

The thing about platform dependency is another question to discuss. While PHP’s claims of platform independency are technically true, there are a few differences that might just be yet another cause for your program to break. I don’t want to go into details too much since I didn’t write code for Windows based PHP before, however there is one thing I would like to mention: integers come with different bit sizes depending on the underlying operating system. On Linux, the size of an integer variable matches the number of bits the system is natively using, i.e. 32bit or 64bit, whereas on Windows the integer size is always 32bit regardless. This is really a problem in my opinion because there is no way to easily work around this issue except using signed 32bit values as the common denominator, hoping they won’t be auto-cast to float while dealing with file sizes…

Oh and just for funsies, check out the awesome solution they’ve come up with to solve an issue regarding integer overflow in their PHP code.

DEPLOYMENT

I have read on numerous websites and blog posts that the simplicity of deployment is a major advantage of PHP. Alright. I have never deployed PHP on a production server by myself, so I will just give them this one. Let’s assume it is easier to deploy PHP than other environments. So what? It simply does not matter. Even if it takes you ten or fifty times longer to properly set up the system, there is no difference in the long run. What the time is really spent on is writing code for the system and that’s probably where PHP loses against other languages if you need to get something done properly that’s beyond the boundaries of a simple “Hello World” program.

PHP’s “drop ‘n run” concept also has a lot of shortcomings. Sure, it’s nice to just drop a script in a folder on the web server and have it run. That is, until you realize that now you have an infinite number of entry points into your application, even though you just need one. If you take a look at the big boys like WordPress, you’ll see that all requests are being redirected to a single entry point and then dispatched further — which is how it should be. Since your entire code hierarchy is accessible by default (without using .htaccess or other mechanisms), you need to protect each PHP file individually against unwanted execution.

DOCUMENTATION

Oh yeah, the infamous PHP Manual. It’s like a mirror of the language you’re using, and in case of PHP it unambiguously reflects all its flaws and shortcomings. While it does provide some information on usage and behavior, it often lacks complete documentation. Sometimes the user comments are much more helpful than the actual text, even though half of them only reveal a fraction of what’s going on and the other half is completely worthless. It also doesn’t help that there is only one manual available that tries to cover all versions of the language at the same time. I think this is a rather bad idea since PHP isn’t doing too well with backwards compatibility.

Also the quality of the manual is just, let’s put it nicely, “below average”. I particularly enjoyed this statement explaining the count function.

Count all elements in an array, or something in an object.

…”or something”, just hilarious. Of course I’m aware that the result of the function can be customized by implementing a specific method, but I wonder the amount of confusion that is caused by statements like this with programmers that try to learn the language.

Due to PHP’s popularity, there is actually a large number of tutorials and example codes out there on the Internet, yet most of them are probably examples to demonstrate how things shouldn’t be done with spaghetti code being omnipresent.

MISCELLANEOUS

Here are just some other annoyances that wouldn’t really fit into other paragraphs:

Why do we need thirteen different functions to sort an array?

<?php ?> tags suck because they are required for all PHP code and may cause unwanted whitespace to be sent to the user.

Multithreading still is not one of PHP’s strengths.

Multiple aliases for exactly the same thing, e.g. real / float / double, int / integer, bool / boolean, chop($string) / rtrim($string), etc.

Having to manage a configuration file is just dumb for a programming language.

AN AWESOME ANALOGY

Over on eev.ee, in a popular article on the same topic, I found this great analogy that hits the nail right on its head and perfectly describes how it is working with PHP. Ian Baker even brought the figurative hammer to life. Isn’t it just marvelous?

I can’t even say what’s wrong with PHP, because — okay. Imagine you have uh, a toolbox. A set of tools. Looks okay, standard stuff in there. You pull out a screwdriver, and you see it’s one of those weird tri-headed things. Okay, well, that’s not very useful to you, but you guess it comes in handy sometimes. You pull out the hammer, but to your dismay, it has the claw part on both sides. Still serviceable though, I mean, you can hit nails with the middle of the head holding it sideways. You pull out the pliers, but they don’t have those serrated surfaces; it’s flat and smooth. That’s less useful, but it still turns bolts well enough, so whatever. And on you go. Everything in the box is kind of weird and quirky, but maybe not enough to make it completely worthless. And there’s no clear problem with the set as a whole; it still has all the tools. Now imagine you meet millions of carpenters using this toolbox who tell you “well hey what’s the problem with these tools? They’re all I’ve ever used and they work fine!” And the carpenters show you the houses they’ve built, where every room is a pentagon and the roof is upside-down. And you knock on the front door and it just collapses inwards and they all yell at you for breaking their door. That’s what’s wrong with PHP.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION

I have always wondered how PHP could have become this bad, yet still maintain a high level of popularity with an army of sworn fanboys behind. Even though I don’t know why people would think that PHP is a passable or even decent language, I could come up with an explanation for how it could have gotten this messed up. Some time ago I found this rather interesting interview with Rasmus Leerdorf, the creator of PHP. After hearing the following statements, I gained sudden clarity:

There is code, it sort of works, that’s what we go with, that’s always been the default. It doesn’t always lead to consistency but it does lead to getting the features and actually being able to do something. […] at least it gets you there. […] We’d rather have an ugly feature than not having a feature at all.Rasmus Leerdorf

Hands down, all questions answered. There is simply no way PHP could not have turned out that bad with an attitude like that. How can one expect quality when quantity is all that matters?

At least he’s got a point. PHP somehow works sometimes and you can actually get things done with it. Heck, even this website here is powered by PHP and I got it up and running (Ha! Not anymore!). Then again that’s not the point. Just because you can get things done with it doesn’t mean it’s a good or even a decent programming language. It sucks, and it sucks badly. Will I continue to use it in the feature? Of course I will, because I do not really have a choice. PHP has simply grown too large, you can’t just ignore it. It’s some kind of weird parasitic relationship, or like a tumor that is attached to the World Wide Web.

Another reason why it turned out like it did, I strongly believe, is that PHP was not designed like other languages but rather grew up from a small toolkit to its current size. There have never been clearly designed rules or goals to achieve. It also didn’t help that Rasmus Leerdorf went with an incredible liberal development policy, placing the fate of the language in the hand of many other programmers who can freely contribute. While this may sound great it might just be the explanation for all these inconsistencies and flaws.…and this is why PHP sucks.

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sarahcomm3p18 · 5 years ago

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Audience Studies (3P18) Blog Post #2

Week #6

This week we learned about the uses and gratifications approach to audience studies, by examining how and why individuals use the media. Elihu Katz brought up this more functional approach in 1959, by asking why people chose to consume certain media rather than what they do with it (Sullivan, p. 109). Many theories on the media-audience relationship recognize the effect that media has on an audience. The uses and gratifications approach reverses this to see how audiences actively choose media channels based on their own needs. There are five criteria for this approach which are as follows. The audience is active and the media is directed at the individual’s goals. They take the lead on choosing media that fits their needs and desires. Mass media compete with other sources of need satisfaction. Audience members are aware of their needs and motivations and can report these to media researchers. Lastly, scholars using this approach do not make judgements, rather they try to understand the audience’s choices (Katz, Blumer, & Gurevitch, 1974, p. 21). This approach made me think of watching television with my family and the needs this fulfilled for me as an audience member.

While I was never a huge fan of hockey myself, this became a Saturday night tradition and fulfilled the social need of strengthening contact with my family. These needs are a core concept of the uses and gratifications theory and relate back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Belongingness and love is one of our needs and can be a motive when choosing which media to consume. Different media fulfill different needs which is why this theory is important to understand. If I was an audience member to a television show on my own I may choose a form of media that I personally enjoy and gain gratification simply through the pleasure of watching that show. I may also fulfill cognitive needs by consuming media that allows me to gain knowledge. These different gratifications can all come from the same kind of media. This shows how it’s important to not only study what kind of media people choose to consume, but why they choose to do so. Watching hockey with my family brings me companionship and tension release by allowing me to take my mind off of everything else and be surrounded by family. It is also an example of what Alan M. Rubin (1983) called ritualized audiences. I was using this form of media habitually to be diverted from other activities, not necessarily caring what was on TV (Sullivan, p. 117).

In today’s society, people don’t tend to sit down all together to watch television together anymore because people can watch Netflix or other streaming sites whenever they want. This relates to this week’s journal article where it was discussed that recent advances in technology may call for changes in the uses and gratifications approach. The authors suggested four new categories of gratifications: modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability (Sundar and Limperos, 2013, p. 513). They believed these needed to be added because gratifications such as the social, cognitive, and affective needs mentioned above are not enough anymore. I was an audience member by physically sitting with my family watching a hockey game. Today, you could watch this anywhere with people who aren’t even with you. You could be part of an audience connected through technology and social media. The article states, “More advanced modalities like virtual reality can cue the "being-there heuristic” (Sundar and Limperos, 2013, p. 512). This shows how you can fulfil those same social needs and be an audience member to something without being there in person.

Later, it was noted that the “uses and gratifications theory treats individual audience members’ encounters with media as isolated from other social processes” (Elliot, 1974, p. 252). Scholars began to research where our needs come from and how they relate to our social environment. They found that these needs are not static and change as our relationships with others change. Thinking about my audience experience with my family, I would say this is absolutely true. As I grow older and live away from family, I no longer sit with my family to watch hockey or any other television for that matter. My needs have changed and media that used to give me a sense of gratification no longer does. Media is situational and contextual, changing depending on the social and situational context (Sullivan, p. 123). James Lull (1976) did a study on families watching television in their homes, observing their behaviours. He noticed things such a gender roles and how father’s tend to have control over the television. This was the case for me as it was mainly my father who wanted to watch hockey. It was his choice of media and he got gratification from watching something he enjoys. I chose to be an audience member to this as well, just gaining a difference sense of gratification.

Overall, learning about the uses and gratifications approach was a good way to see audience studies in a different way. Up until now we have been learning about the different ways audiences interact with media but had not taken a deeper look as to why. It made me consider why I choose certain media and what needs it fulfills for me as an audience member.

Week #7

This week’s topic was interpreting and decoding mass media texts. To do so, we study semiotics which examines the signs represented by texts. We also learned about Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model and the various types of meaning that can be portrayed through media. Semiotics has been referred to as “the study of everything that can be used for communication: words, images, traffic signs, flowers, music, medical symptoms, and much more” (Seiter, 1992, p. 23). This makes this week’s lesson a very important one. The text applies these methods to many popular television shows but what came to mind for me is the show Grey’s Anatomy. I have been an audience member to this show many times and rewatched the seasons over the years. Many of the things we learned this week made me think about decoding the messages behind the show.

The basis of semiotics and the encoding/decoding model is finding the meaning of a text beyond just a word or image. Saussure came up with the idea that signs were made up of the signifier and the signified. The signifier being the form of the sign and the signified being the concept it represents (De Saussure, 2000). Hall had a similar idea that he described as the denotative and connotative levels of meaning. Denotative being the literal meaning and connotative being the contextualized understanding. In the show Grey’s Anatomy, the character’s experiences tend to have a more literal meaning or a sign that leads the audience to think about the connotative meaning or what the signifier is. Each episode involves new patients coming to the hospital to be treating by the doctors, who are the main characters. As an audience member, we have followed along with what is going on in the doctor’s personal lives. This allows us in the audience to take our contextualized understanding and find the meaning of the text beyond what is being shown. Each patient is a sign that signifies a life lesson for the doctors. As explained by Stuart Hall, there can be an “asymmetry” in the message the producer wanted to portray and the message the audience receives (Sullivan, p. 141). This show tends to make it fairly clear what message they are trying to get across by having the patients problems relate to the doctor assigned to them. However, texts are polysemic and can always be interpreted different ways by the audience (Sullivan, p. 142). Some audience members may watch the show and see the patient for at it’s denotative meaning without thinking any deeper. What I understand from the show, may not be what someone else in the audience understands, they may take an oppositional position.

This week’s reading by Steven Granelli and Jason Zenor took a look at how different audience members may decode texts differently. It examines the show Dexter, where the main character is an antihero who kills people who are considered evil. This allows for different interpretations from the audience based on morality (Granelli & Zenor, 2016, p. 5061). When watching Grey’s Anatomy, my morals as an audience member often come into play when the doctors are forced to make tough decisions. A specific example of this is an episode where a serial killer who was on death row was brought into the hospital with serious brain injuries. At the same time, a child needed an organ transplant. If the serial killer died, the child got the organs. One doctor wanted to let him die to save the child while the other doctor thought this was immoral as their job is to save the patient no matter what. Personally, I agreed that since the serial killer was clearly a bad person who was going to die anyways, they should save the child. However, another audience member may see that as immoral just as some people view what Dexter does as immoral and wrong. As stated in the article, “For viewers to accept a morally ambiguous character, they have to rationalize his or her actions” (Granelli & Zenor, 2016, p. 5073). This is important to understand because texts are always going to have different meanings and when it comes to an antihero or morally questionable situation, the dominant position is not so clear. The audience may need to rationalize to be able to understand different positions and extract deeper meanings.

Grey’s Anatomy is considered a soap opera, which has been a popular genre of television for many years. In the early 1980s, scholars studied soap operas to examine the formal structures of popular media texts and audience’s interpretations (Sullivan, p. 148). David Morley noticed how different groups of people had different interpretations of texts (Sullivan, p. 145). Soap operas tend to be very popular among women audiences. Scholars viewing this from a domestic context believe women squeeze soap opera viewing into their daily schedule of feeding children, making tea, and “half-watching” the show. It is also possible is resonates with their own lives (Sullivan, p. 148-149). This is also an example of intertextuality because the audience is relating the show to their own experiences. Most people watching Grey’s Anatomy, myself included, are not doctors and do not know much about the practice of medicine. However, we take their personal experiences and relate them to our own.

To conclude, this week’s topic was of interest to me because it allowed me to take a deeper look into the meanings of texts. We come in contact with signs everyday without thinking about what is being signified. Shows we watch everyday have a deeper meaning when we take a minute to think about it. We often interpret these signs and connotative meanings without realizing we are doing it so it was interesting to think about how this happens.

Week #8

The topic this week was media reception and rituals. We experience media in different contexts and understanding these contexts plays an important role in how we understand the media content. Audiences can view the same content in different physical spaces, social environments, and at different times. This creates completely different viewing experiences. This week’s lesson reminded me of an audience experience I brought up in my last blog post. When I watched the final Raptors game at home with a group of friends I experienced certain situational contexts. Millions of people were audience members to this game meaning that many people were viewing it in different contexts.

We experience media content in a particular moment and space. This plays a role in how we receive and interpret the texts. The physical space that I experienced the Raptors game in was my friend’s living room. This space ties into the social context of being surrounded by my friends in a familiar location. In the 1950s, televisions were being introduced more and more into people’s homes. They were advertised as “the new family hearth through which love and affection might be rekindled” (Spigel, 1992, p. 38). For me, sitting in that room with those friends brings feelings of familiarity and happiness. These feelings all come from the social and situational context not the media itself. Audience members at the game in person or watching it in the huge crowd in Toronto would not be experiencing these same feelings of closeness. They would probably feel a lot more excitement because even though we are watching the same game, I was watching from a much smaller setting.

Time is also an important context for media reception. I was watching the game live to keep most up to date with the score and to know who the winner would be as soon as the game was finished. This was when most people were watching it so it was shown all across the media. Now that it’s over, people are less likely to watch that game because everyone knows the final result. Unlike other shows that people may squeeze into free parts of their day. This was an event that people took time out of their day for. Everyone sat and watched it for those hours at that time for the most exciting experience.

Our homes, friends homes and people in those homes all shape our domestic environment and our sense of self. James Lull built on this by studying how social relationships were bound to television sets in the home (Sullivan, p. 167). Personally, I am not a basketball fan and before the Raptors were in the finals I had never watched one of their games. Since my friends wanted to watch it and they invited me to their home, I watched it for the social experience. The television brought us together for conversation with friends rather than focusing completely on watching the game. This meant our media reception in this domestic space was far different from the people at the game. Sonia Livingstone studied how children are spending less time outdoors and more time inside watching TV. Also, it is now common for households to have multiple TVs including TVs in bedrooms not just the living room (Livingstone, 2007, p. 304). This means watching television has become more individualized and not as social as James Lull found in earlier years. This is definitely true but it is unfortunate because people are missing out on certain experiences. I would not have watched the Raptors game on my own as it would hold no interest. However, being surrounded by friends made me enjoy the game itself and maybe even watch future games in a social setting. This shows just how much our reception changes based on where we are and who we are with.

The article we read this week by Kihan Kim, Yunjae Cheong, and Hyuksoo Kim examined this concept also in terms of viewing sports. They looked at how the audience’s viewing experience changes based on whether they viewed the 2014 FIFA World Cup in their home or in a theatre. They found that the noteworthy differences between these two spaces were “image size, image quality, dimensionality of image, sound quality, lighting condition, and cheering atmosphere” (Kim et al., 2016, p. 391). Since all of these factors better in a theatre setting, their study found that to be the more favourable setting. Participants in the study found the theatre setting to have “increased levels of presence, suspense, and enjoyment” (Kim et al., 2016, p. 403). The results of their study did not surprise me. It makes sense that being in a larger group of people with a better quality set up would be more enjoyable. People who went to any of the ‘Jurassic Park’ viewing spots for the Raptors probably enjoyed the game more than my friends and I sitting at home. However, they miss out on some of the social aspect of a smaller group. They stated that their study did not examine social drivers of television viewing.

At the end of the day, different people will enjoy different situational contexts for the media consumption. The people and places that surround us have a huge impact on our media reception. It is interesting to see how the same media can be received so differently based on situational factors.

Week #9

This week we learned about media fandoms and audience subcultures. I was looking forward to this topic and chose it for my seminar facilitation at the beginning of the semester. I think it’s a very relatable topic because everyone is a fan of something and it’s interesting to learn about the different fandoms and subcultures. Some people in these groups go to extreme lengths when they are a huge fan. The audience experience I thought about this week is slightly different from the rest but it was what came to mind the most. When I was younger I used to have a Tumblr account dedicated to the various shows and celebrities I was a fan of. While this is somewhat of a producer experience, I was an audience to everyone else’s posts and fan fiction stories. I did not post much original content meaning I was more of an audience member reading other fan’s blogs.

The word fan started out with very negative connotations and fans were often seen as social misfits or as unable to separate the fantasy of media texts from reality (Sullivan, p. 193). According to John Fiske fans started to establish a sense of ownership over their favourite media texts and engaged in interpretive play with them to move past the negative connotations (Sullivan, p. 193). Today, the term fan has expanded to mean many things and can apply to even smaller, niche media products. At the time that I had a Tumblr fan account, this was a pretty common thing to have and wasn’t met with much negativity. There are different types of fan stereotypes and I was a fairly stereotypical ‘fangirl’ at the time. I read blog posts and ‘reblogged’ photos from shows that were popular for girls my age at that time. Shows such as Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries are examples of what I was a fan of. That ‘fangirl’ stereotype could be seen as having negative connotations. However, it allowed me to be a part of a fandom and interact with other fans.

This leads into examining the social aspect of media fandom. Fans don’t just consume media like a regular audience member. They will read texts closely, reread them, and share this passion with others in various ways. I would rewatch the shows I was a fan of over and over again. I would then turn to fan created videos and stories which is why I started my fan Tumblr. Being an audience to these things never got boring since I was a fan, whereas a regular audience member likely would have been very bored. By doing all of this, you end up finding fans with similar interests who share their passions in similar ways. This creates subcultures, a notion brought up by Dick Hebdige in 1979. He argued that certain groups who dedicated themselves to a specific musical genre were “distinctive cultural entities unto themselves” (Sullivan, p. 196). This idea of subcultures is still relevant today as there are many communities of fans that create their own culture based on their fandom. When I was using Tumblr as part of a fandom it was a very common place for fans to share their passions. As an audience member, I could clearly see the different subcultures created through this.

While I personally enjoyed being part of a fandom and being an audience to the unique stories that came out of it, it can cause problems. Some fans start to take too much ownership and forget they are not the actual producers of the content. A fan quoted in the text states, “I will never forgive Graham Williams [the executive producer] for the regeneration scene” (Sullivan, p. 199). At the end of the day, the actual producers have control and should not be attacked by fans. However, if they want to keep their fans happy they sometimes have to give the fans some power and control. This connects to this weeks reading by Annemarie Navar-Gill. The article was about a Kickstarter campaign started to raise money for a Veronica Mars movie to follow up the TV show. The campaign was created by the writer, Rob Thomas, and the lead actress, Kristen Bell. It was noteworthy because the campaign reached the two million dollar goal within 12 hours. They ended up raising $5.7 million and making the movie. This shows the kind of power that fans can have when a large fandom comes together. However, the worry here was that with over 90,000 fans donating their money, they might all have different visions on what the movie should be. They didn’t want it to feel like fan service but they still want the fans happy (Navar-Gill, 2018, p. 216). This was often the case with the shows I was a fan of. I would often watch the shows live and then check up on fans blogs to see their opinions compared to mine. For example, with the show The Vampire Diaries, they would sometimes kill off a character and then bring them back to life after facing backlash from the fans. As an audience member, I saw fans react in different ways. Some fans simply wrote fan fiction in the form of recontextualization or expanding the series timeline. Others would voice their disappointment to the show writers and producers hoping for change.

This was a very interesting topic to me because there are so many ways to look at fans and so many different fandoms to examine. The definition and connotations of the term ‘fan’ has changed over the years and so has the way fandoms express their passions. A few years ago Tumblr was huge for fandoms and I enjoyed being a part of that. It was a lot of fun to be an audience member to people who share similar interests to me. It allowed me to see other fan’s media content and see both the good and bad side of fandoms.

Week #10

Our lesson this week was about the ways that online, interactive media has complicated our understanding of media audiences. Everyday our society seems to become more and more online-based through digitalization. The process of convergence has allowed us to place media content on many different devices. What used to define the term audience many years ago doesn’t work as well now that we can be audience members to online media. The rise of social media has created all new audience experiences. For example, a few years ago I was very into watching certain Youtubers. They were people just like me who sat down and started making videos which made it feel more realistic and personal than television. They also tend to interact with their audience. This week’s chapter explained this shift in the audience dynamic.

Digitalization of media has caused what Napoli (2011) calls audience fragmentation and audience autonomy. Audiences are being fragmented into smaller groups with the increasing amount of digital media platforms. I started watching Youtube videos a lot because my parents got rid of our cable TV. None of us really used it anymore because of all the online options available for streaming. Audiences are also gaining autonomy or control over their media consumption. This allows for the creation of user-generated content such as Youtube videos. These changes in technology are allowing for more collaboration and creativity among media audiences (Sullivan, p. 219). Henry Jenkins (2006) stated that fans participating in the creation and circulation of new content has created a “participatory culture”. This is a big part of why I enjoyed watching Youtube videos over TV shows. Most Youtubers that I watched ended their videos by asking for future video suggestions from their viewers. This gave us in the audience a chance to see the media content we want to see. I found that the more often a Youtuber interacted with their viewers and listened to their suggestions, the more popular they would become. The Youtubers with millions of subscribers were the ones constantly interacting with their audience all across social media. As an audience member, it feels good to be seen and have your ideas heard by someone who’s content you enjoy.

According to Gannes (2006), Youtube’s social features that allowed for the easy sharing of videos is what set them apart from their competition. When I was watching a lot of Youtube videos, my friends were as well. We watched similar types of videos and often used these features to share videos with each other. This allows Youtuber’s content to spread quickly without them even doing anything. Since Youtube became so popular, many people I knew started making Youtube channels of their own. It became possible to create and upload content that could easily go viral and make someone famous right from their own home. I watched some people’s videos that seemed completely different from their personality in real life. I realized that people could use this to be whoever they wanted and share that with the world.

This idea of audiences interacting more with media applies to many things as well as Youtube. We also learned about how online gaming has become extremely popular as it allows for an interactive experience. The most popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft has just under 12 million users worldwide (Blizzard Entertainment, 2011). While I don’t personally play these kind of games, I understand the appeal. Just as I preferred the interactive feel of watching Youtube videos, people prefer a more interactive game to make their own choices. Another example is the idea of ‘crowdsourcing’ used on websites such as Wikipedia. The site allows anyone to press ‘edit’ and change the information displayed (Lih, 2009, p. 44). While this has been seen as both good and bad it allows for anyone to display knowledge they have. Also, mistakes can be just as easily corrected as they were made. Blogs and other websites have also become increasingly popular because the process of creating them is now quite easy. Even if someone has no computer programming knowledge they can create and run a website (Sullivan, p. 227).

While there are obvious benefits to audiences becoming more involved in media content, there are also disadvantages. The more we use these kinds of websites, the more information we allow advertisers and marketers to collect about us. Our online data can be stored by them for target marketing to us with greater and greater accuracy (Gandy, 1993: Turow, 1997, 2006). This week’s reading by Adrian Athique examined how this kind of big data affects audience research. He explained how many of these social websites collect data and turn it into virtual currency for their own gain (Athique, 2018, p. 64). How the value of these websites is placed on the amount of data they collect from users. Personally, I never had a huge problem with this as it essentially makes my online experience easier. The more Youtube videos I watched, the more similar videos I had suggested to me.

Overall I believe the increase in interactive online media is a good thing. While it does change the dynamics of media audiences, I don’t think that is a bad thing. It allows for more creativity and more options for audiences to choose. As for the data and privacy we are losing, I see it as a price to pay for the benefits of these online services.

Week #11

This final week concludes our study of media audiences by examining audience agency in new contexts. We went over the major themes from the course and shifts in the audience definition. There is not one single definition or theory of what an audience is but this concludes with the various ways it can be understood and how it’s changing in the 21st century. Now that I have a better understanding of what can be classified as an audience, I thought about all the different media I use and how often I am an audience member.

The shifts in the ways information and entertainment is distributed changes audience expectations. There has been a trend towards coordinating the use of multiple media platforms to create a narrative. Henry Jenkins calls this transmedia production (2002, 2011). Rubel (2010) stated that “transmedia storytelling is the future of marketing”. Audiences are also consuming more paratexts, the textual material surrounding media narratives and informing us about them (Gray, 2010). Between using multiple media platforms and consuming more information surrounding media narratives, audiences are much more aware of the media they consume. I use multiple media platforms on a daily basis and often consume paratexts. I agree that these are important for the future of marketing because as an audience we are drawn to media we have seen advertisements or information on. The more media platforms that advertise something to us the more likely it will stay in our heads. I often notice advertisements on social media based on websites I have recently visited or products I have searched for already. I am aware that my data is being used to target these things to me but I find it helpful most of the time.

With the increase in mobile devices being used it’s understandable that the audience dynamic has shifted. Audiences do have access to more media than ever before and can access it from anywhere even on the go. The text asks the question of whether or not this shift in the power dynamic has shifted irreversibly in the direction of the audience (Sullivan, p. 243). It states that evidence shows this not to be true and I agree with that. Technology will keep advancing meaning the way audiences receive media content will always be changing. Content providers and advertisers need to advance as well to keep up with these demands. That is the way we advance as a society, we aren’t meant to stay where we are.

Some scholars are concerned with how audience fragmentation could negatively affect the economy. Chris Anderson (2004) described what he called the pattern of the long tail. He believed that most audiences focus on popular media products, the audiences focused on smaller niche products was spread out like a tail. He found that audience fragmentation was causing the tail to be longer and thought more focus should be put on the niche products for increased revenue (Anderson, 2006). Other scholars worried about how it could cause audience polarization where audiences would simply avoid media they find distasteful or offensive (Sunstein, 2007: Turow, 1997). The worry here is that people would start to lose tolerance for diversity, cooperation, and mutual respect. I feel like this could be true to an extent. However, with social media content growing it becomes harder to avoid certain topics. Audiences do have more control over the media they consume now. At the same time, certain offensive topics will come up at some point and I don’t think audiences will become completely oblivious to certain topics just because they could if they wanted to.

This week’s article by Sonia Livingstone relates to this as well. She examined the fears of ignorance and gullibility in audiences with the growing popularity of social media. She explained how we can learn a lot about the relationship between media power and audience agency by examining the history of this topic. This debate has been going on for years, as media and audiences are always changing. An important quote from the article is, “Audiences were found to be diverse in ways unanticipated by producers and marketers because of their diverse culture, history, community, and politics” (Livingstone, 2019, p. 174). This relates to what I mentioned before on how audiences can’t truly ignore diversity. Diversity and culture will always make their way into media content no matter how much choice audiences have. I use social media platforms daily and almost every day I see things that I didn’t want or need to see. Horrible things happen worldwide every day and are shown across social media. In this day and age, we are well aware of issues related to diversity and culture and how important it is that we talk about these things. As brought up in the article, you cannot simply compare the changes in audience agency and media power without considering social factors of the audience.

This concludes this blog and the audience studies course. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this but I learned a lot about what an audience really is and different ways to perceive media content. We come in contact with media everyday and as an audience member it is important to be aware of the media we consume, what it really means and why we chose that media.

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comicteaparty · 6 years ago

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February 25th-March 3rd, 2019 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from February 25th, 2019 to March 3rd, 2019. The chat focused on AntiBunny: The Gritty City Stories by Vincent Davis aka Vinnie D.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on AntiBunny: The Gritty City Stories by Vincent Davis aka Vinnie D.~! (http://AntiBunny.com/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Remember, though, that while we allow constructive criticism, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic. Below you will find four questions to get you started on the discussion. However, a new question will be posted and pinned everyday (between 12:01AM and 6AM PST), so keep checking back for more! You have until March 3rd to tell us all your wonderful thoughts! With that established, let’s get going on the reading and the chatting!

QUESTION 1. What has been your favorite scene in the comic so far? What specifically did you like about it?

QUESTION 2. At the moment, who is your favorite character? What about that character earns them this favor?

QUESTION 3. Who or what do you think “Dark Pooky” is? Why does “Dark Pooky” refer to Pooky as Ptolemy and what does the supposed missing gap of 50 years have to do with it? What do you think “Dark Pooky” has intended for Pooky?

QUESTION 4. What is the mysterious glow that surrounds Penny that only Agent Wesson and Agent Smith/Ed can see? Unrelatedly, do you think Penny will fix the robot she found? How will either of these scenarios affect her and the other characters’ futures?

AntiBunny

Hi everyone. I'm the author of AntiBunny. I'll just be quietly reading here and gathering feedback. I really appreciate this opportunity to hear some in depth thoughts on my work, and as always I invite you to draw your own conclusions.

Delphina

Are there navigation arrows somewhere I'm not seeing?

RebelVampire

theyre on the right side bar

Delphina

Ahhh, thank you

RebelVampire

QUESTION 5. What do you think happened in Pandora’s past that made her so well-known but ultimately got her killed by Agent Wesson? Do you believe Mulligan will get his revenge at the end of the day?

RebelVampire

1) im picking two scenes cause i can and nobody can stop me. the first scene i really liked was the warehouse confrontation with the bomb. i liked pooky both got some answers but also basically went "nope im out yo." the combination worked for me and made it both humorous and narratively satisfying. the other scene i liked was the scene where hannibal is waiting in the hospital and just casually talking to mulligan without realizing who he is. then mulligan reveals himself in the most crass way possible. again, i just like the combination. its funny, but narratively satisfying since i kept wondering when wed get to see penelope's dad ever since he was mentioned. 2) penelope. Idk. theres just something i really like about penelope. She's go this good sense of optimism and faith, but shes not overbearing or crazy. And even if she's not some rebellious sleuth or fighter or anything, the comic shows that her words have the power to change things just as much the fighting and other elements. 3) Well given a scene that was part of nailbat's story, Pooky is pretty obviously involved with enchanted forest. I imagine some boss type figure. And Pooky might be some prized experiment somehow? like the next step in bunny evolution or something like that. but maybe pooky had like the longest incubation period known to all sapient kind. As for what dark pooky intends, more evil science. I mean you don't get to be called dark pooky if you do the good science.

4) I'm not sure I have good theories about the glow. Like, maybe again, another part of dark pooky science somehow. Like a desire mutation that is a signal for the next stage of evolution. As for the robot, yes, i think penny will. and I'm really looking forward to it considering who that robot is. I think it's really going to be an emotional rollercoaster for everyone. 5) well given superheroing is a thing in this world, probably that or something. maybe not superheros but like a step down. like neighborhood watch on steroids. or maybe a group of detectives. i think pandora discovered something she shouldnt have though, which put her at odds with agent wesson. as for mulligan's revenge, nah i highly doubt it. more just because i think someone is going to get to agent wesson long before he does. and narratively speaking, i think mulligan's arc will be more about putting his kids first and revenge second.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 6. Do you believe that Pooky will once again become a successful reporter? What trouble might Pooky’s pursuit of this cause? Alternatively, what good might come of it?

RebelVampire

QUESTION 7. Who do you think Agent Wesson works for? Also, what do you think happened to Agent Wesson after the bridge explosion, and what consequences will that have for the story?

RebelVampire

6) I don't think Pooky is gonna rekindle that journalist career. Mostly because if Pooky lives to see the end of this story I will be very surprised. However, I think Pooky's pursuit will change the world regardless and force humans and rabbits alike to confront ugly truths about themselves and the world theyve created. Cause that seems to be a heavy theme and Pooky has shown to know how to work the media to drive that message home. 7) Enchanted Forest. And Agent Wesson is probably alive and probably plotting some hardcore revenge against Pooky. Agent Wesson will also bide time and wait until we've basically forgotten the character and then blamo, everything is ruined, sad times are had, etc. etc. etc. It will not be a good time

RebelVampire

QUESTION 8. Do you think Penelope will manage to testify against Mr. Huge, or will she inevitably be silenced by the many obstacles in her way? In the meantime, what do you think Auntie Fae is up to? How will this affect Penelope?

RebelVampire

QUESTION 9. Do you think that the characters will be able to change Gritty City and/or human-rabbit relations for the better by the end of the comic? Of the characters, who do you think has the highest chance of doing so and why?

RebelVampire

8) I think Penelope will manage. Shes the determined sort who will probably persevere. Although I also feel that her testimony wont matter and that inevitably the bad guy will win. As for Auntie Fae, I'm not sure besides being racist. Although I actually think she has a bigger agenda then the characters realize quite yet. In the sense that theyll think she just wants to get rid of rabbits when shes up to bigger things. like helping out evil scientists or something. 9) I think they'll change relationships for the better but not by much. Change is a slow, slow process and the more you try to force it, the less it usually works. But that's okay and I think whatll maatter is just changing the hearts of even a few ppl. Like what happened with Nailbat because I found Nailbat's story was really strong because of that aspect. Even though Nailbat was just one person, he changed some people lives and also had his life changed. If I had to pick someone who would actually instigate change, then Penelope. Cause Penelope is a badass with words insofar and really seems to leave an impact on all the people she interacts with.

snuffysam

i haven't been able to get through the archive yet, but right now my favorite scene is when we first see penelope street preaching. i don't know why, but I like the idea of this stalking amy-rose-type turning out to be something completely different

my favorite character so far is juju. gets introduced as a witch, and immediately gets herself trapped in a doll. love her.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 10. What are you most looking forward to in the comic? Also, do you have any final thoughts to share overall?

RebelVampire

10) a lot of stuff. like im really looking forward to the robot being fixed, to pooky exploring the dark pooky stuff more, seeing penelope more, and so forth. theres a lot of really great threads that are building up and id love to see them start paying off and how cause im sure itll be epic! in general, while it took me a bit to get into it, i really enjoyed the comic once i did and the story started to show its hidden depths.

Delphina

I just want to pop in and say that I did make it partially through the archive this week, but probably won't have time to finish, and thought Penelope was a very cute character. I paged through a bit of the later pages too and loved seeing how the art/craftmanship progressed.

Delphina

((I don't know what the policy is on critique in these segments, so I will definitely strike this from the record if it's not appropriate @RebelVampire , but when the story started alternating between the Pooky storyline and the Nailbat storyline every other page is when I started to lose focus and eventually dropped off reading because it was too confusing to keep track of the story. I think these storylines would benefit from not being mixed in the archives. I definitely know the challenge of spending time fixing old stuff versus using that time to move forward, but if you decided to migrate the story to a PHP-based solution in the future instead of static HTML, archive curation would be a factor I'd strongly recommend considering.))

RebelVampire

@Delphina critiques are allowed as long as theyre constructive, respectful, and dont become the predominant topic of the conversation. so in my book this one is fine.

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about AntiBunny: The Gritty City Stories this week! Please also give a special thank you to Vincent Davis aka Vinnie D. for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked AntiBunny: The Gritty City Stories, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://AntiBunny.com/

Vincent Davis’ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AntiBunny

Vincent Davis’ Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/U6U7CGJG

Vincent Davis’ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AntiBunny

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #bookclub #book club #webcomic bookclub #webcomic book club #comic tea party #ctp #antibunny #antibunny the gritty city stories #vincent davis #vinnie d.

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epfloutthere · 6 years ago

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Encounters

Having gained our momentum on New Zealand’s West Coast, our planned trajectory took us a bit north, in a more inland setting and in search of different types of glaciers. Truth is that Arthur’s Pass proved to be a paradise in terms of fieldwork conditions and during our flights we could capture more details about the conditions of the glaciers.

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These flights – Thanks a lot Fletcher! also gave us a solid idea of what to expect next. Glacier retreat is one thing; we knew and we were expecting this as climate driven glacier shrinking is one of the major motives of Vanishing Glaciers project.

Other encounters though were more or less unexpected.

The Kaka and the Sheep Absorbed in the process of fieldwork and sleeping in beautiful locations and campsites, we never noticed that in many occasions there were eyes on us. Overnight stays in forested campsites saw encounters with the possum and hedgehogs were resting near our tents. As we had not any previous experience with Nea Zealand’s particular fauna, we were soon to find out that the Kaka – these unusual alpine parrots – do not like humans that much...or better said they like more the food that humans munch while hiking and skiing. These local curious visitors are a common feature in Southern Island’s mountain huts and have peculiar habits as attacking the sheep, eating the rubber of car windows and destroying tents in campsites. They were also capable to disturb our overnight infiltrations of molecular dissolved organic matter analyses, but kind enough not to eat the pipes or the filters. After all, they were not a bad company and during many evenings on these remote valleys they were a pleasant encounter. Coming tête-à-tête with them is special encounter.

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If the Kaka disturbed only our experiments and thankfully did not mess with our tents, hordes of sheep turned out to cause traffic jams in several occasions. If you wonder where your Merino wool of your winter base layer is coming, good chances it comes from one of these sheep after their visit to the barber. Rushing to catch a helicopter flight to Cascade Creek we got stack for the first time in the sheep traffic and so did our pilot.

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Climate change and glaciers decay

Despite plentiful information from local glaciologists, the extent of glacier retreat that we were about to encounter had yet to be revealed. In Crow valley, our northernmost selected glacial valley, Crow glacier rests like a king at its head feeding with water and sediment the streams and rivers below. Lateral glaciers below the other summits of the valley are really vanishing or have almost disappeared. Climate change has forced Crow glacier to loose considerably large amounts of ice in a time span of 4 years and apparently is not the only one.

The ice mass wasting and thinning of Crow glacier as captured from the Bird’s Eye View; New Zealand’s legendary glaciologist Trevor Chinn. To the left and right of the Crow glacier, the glaciers are really vanishing.

Moving south along New Zealand’s Main Divide the situation is indifferent. Take for example Brewster glacier in Haast Pass. A long hike in steep tropical forest gave space to a majestic open scenery, worth every big hard step along this steep and moist path full of roots. Brewster glacier is one of New Zealand’s best-monitored glaciers and another victim of the ongoing climate change, which apparently has no borders around the world. In just 6 years the ice collapse and melt out have given birth to new streams, which for us were a great surprise and an even greater asset for studying the microorganisms and bacterial life in these newly formed waterways.

The ice loss and retreat of the Brewster glacier has given birth to new waterways and streams. And this is Exciting! (Photos: © Trevor Chinn & Mike Styllas)

If the photographic evidence laid above are too static to convince you, an image stack compiled by glaciologist Brian Anderson of Victoria University, will definitely showcase the way that the infamous Fox glacier terminus and its surrounding environments can degrade within a year.

vimeo

Encounters with the locals - a volunteer joins in

One of the greatest encounters of such expeditions is the local populations. Anna Aichele an ecologist from Dunedin joined us and helped with our fieldwork in the glaciers around Wanaka region. It was a great pleasure to welcome aboard someone that has been living in New Zealand for a long time and studying the Kaka, the forest parrot, behavior as part of her postgraduate studies. More interesting were all the information on several other topics ranging from the genetic origins of the Maoris to broader conservation issues of New Zealand’s wild natural reserves. It is always pleasurable to be joined by local people as they also break the “monotony” of our trio and enrich our trip with more information. Here is her personal point of view:

“Sharing a week as a volunteer with the team of the `Vanishing Glaciers’ project New Zealand Expedition in the area of Wanaka and Haast Pass, has been an amazing experience. This has been my first scientific expedition and, even though I had many doubts before meeting with the team (mainly because I am not an alpinist), it has been absolutely great.

Specially, I enjoyed the first glacier we went for sampling: the Rob Roy glacier near Wanaka. It is a beautiful hike through a deep gorge covered by southern beech forest following the Rob Roy stream which washed its way through the mountain. From time to time a glimpse of the glacier, laying on the top of the mountain, appears showing incredible light and color games contrasted by the dark green of the underlying forest.

Once we arrived at the top of the glacier stream, the monitoring and sampling began. Mike explained me each different parts of the experiments and I began to help Matteo with the sampling, sieving, and preserving of sediments from the stream where the biofilms are deposited. Apart from that, all kind of measurements are taken, such as the pH of the water, organic matter density and CO2 of the atmosphere, to describe the specific environmental characteristics of each glacier-fed streams.

During the second part of the experiment, the down-stream sampling, I focused on Mike’s part of the experiment: the filtering of water for analyses of DNA, Dissolved Organic Matter-DOM and Dissolved Organic Carbon - DOC. The aim of this part was to obtain samples from the microorganisms, which live in the stream water, apart from producing sterile water, which is used in the respiration and production experiments. It is absolutely astonishing how technology has advanced and how many things can be done on site from a competent team!

Many of this processes and techniques were familiar to me from my university time studying ecology, but I never had the opportunity to see how it could be used directly in the field, as in this case for studying biofilms in a glacier stream. Studying biofilms at a glacier, as Mike mentioned, should be seen as a ‘Singapore’ for microorganisms; multiple organisms living in a very reduced and extreme environment, with possible symbiotic and predator relations, fighting for survival.

We were very lucky with the weather during this first hike as we were gifted by a mild and dry day, without continuous sun (the sun in New Zealand is extremely strong, specifically in the alpine areas), therefore no `warming up’ dancing was needed to avoid freezing. Photo: Anna Aichele.

During this journey, I had also time to enjoy the incredible sub-alpine and alpine flora of the Southern Alps. Being at the end of the summer, many plants were covered by flower and it also seems that the cloud forest of the Haast area were displaying their most colorful moss and epiphytes layers for us.

Alpine flowers near Brewster hut. Photo: Anna Aichele

Finally, I have to point out that Mike, Matteo and Vincent, are absolutely exceptional; highly professional in their work and extremely funny and easy going. I hope that they never loose their fabulous sense of humor! Thanks to all of you and to Vanishing Glaciers Project for this amazing experience.”

Anna Aichele

The elders and the glaciers… a long lasting relation

During our visit in the magnificent Baker Hut in Arthur’s Pass area, we had another unexpected but pleasant encounters with Valentin Brouttet; an audacious French kayaking and canyoning guide based in Ardeche River, who showed up after a major storm and with three members of the Canterbury Mountaineering Club. The elders in numbers but much younger in spirit and soul, arrived in the hut to do some volunteering maintenance work. The mix of three different generations (ages of 25, 45 and 65) in this small but cozy hut was one of the highlights of our trip so far, as the elders used to climb these mountains since the 1960’s and have witnessed themselves the great environmental changes of the 20th and 21st centuries. Even more, they acknowledge the future challenges for the next generations in regard to climate change. Once again, we will leave the moving images to highlight this interesting encounter with the local mountaineers and as we head to Mount Cook region for the last stretch of our New Zealand expeditions, we send you our warm regards from New Zealand’s wild backcountry.

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#EPFLOutThere #VanishingGlaciers

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desuchine · 8 years ago

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Divulging Peculiarities

Chapter 1 of ? (Projected to be about 6 chapters) Pairing: England/France Rating: T Summary: 'Silently, he prayed that no one would come to fill the empty room next to his. He entertained the thought of them converting it into another utility space, perhaps a convenient spot for another copier or scanner.'In which Francis occupies the office next to Arthur, and the two engage each other in fascinating ways.

Alt. Reading: AO3 Link

The space opposite of his office has remained comfortingly empty for the past few weeks. Its former occupant was the chatty type, who more often than not had a phone glued to their ear, and the conversations of which he overheard certainly didn’t allude to any customer calling about an insurance claim. It wouldn’t have been so awful, if not for how much it impeded his ability to think.

No matter how familiar the forms nor the ingrained motor skills it took to navigate a customer’s information, the migraines associated with the constant, loud babble of his workmate’s chatter more often than not ended with Arthur yanking himself free of his desk to fetch a cuppa. Too polite to rain down a wrath of artfully placed curse words, and too short-fused to endure it for extended periods of time led to an annoying stalemate with his options. He chose avoidance, in the end. Best not to jeopardize his job security by pummeling his next door neighbor.

The silence following his former coworker’s release (and really, he wonders what brought that along) came as a soothing balm to nerves that were too frayed and high strung. The weeks succeeding the vacation of the next door office eased the bone-white tendons that often stuck out against Arthur’s hands. The keys of his keyboard must have let out a figurative sigh, no longer the victim of anger he couldn’t bring himself to direct at the perpetrator. His breaks sank back into their regular conformity.

Silently, he prayed that no one would come to fill the empty room next to his. He entertained the thought of them converting it into another utility space, perhaps a convenient spot for another copier or scanner.

The rush to complete the growing pile of documents he’d missed during his outings had Arthur exhausting his workload within a few days. It wasn’t often that he found himself staring around his office with a vacant expression, drumming his fingers impatiently against the cherry oak of his desk, and not a single manilla folder in sight! He should consider himself lucky, he thinks, but mostly, he’s just terribly bored.

There sat, in the far upper corner, a mostly unused television set that seemed to be older than its brethren by at least a decade. A fine layer of dust coated its top and stuck to its screen, tinting the black surface a soft brown if one were to look at it at the right angle. It’d obviously seen more use before Arthur had come to inhabit this office space. He grimaced, noting that he’d have to take a duster to it soon.

Fishing into the right drawer of his desk, he procured the matching remote to it, flicking the television on with a press while its screen crackled to life (and isn’t that static just lovely, he thinks). The picture quality was lacking a few hundred pixels, with a color scheme that suggested some devious person had literally sucked the saturation out of it. Or perhaps it was just age and not another idiom conjured up by his mind.

The channels came in clear enough, though the only one that seemed remotely interesting to him was the news. Tossing the remote on his desk and leaning back with his cup of tea - which had begun to cool more than his liking - Arthur absorbed the ongoings of the world around him.

“-of which there will be meetings to discuss the new regime soon. In other news, blood donations are seen to be on the rise, with more and more donors coming forward in the wake of the many drives taking place around London. Statistics point towards a steadier supply for the vampire populace, and experts say that blood-related crime should be expected to decrease over the next few months. We’ve got analysts standing by to discuss the matter… but after this break.”

The camera cut away from the anchor, segwaying into a commercial about insurance; of which the irony was not lost on Arthur. Taking a sip of his tea, and then grimacing subsequently because it was much too cool , he let his minder wander. Idly, his thoughts drifted to the local blood drive located just a few blocks away from his home. He entertained the idea of perhaps dropping by later to donate, though a wince followed that thought, because that obviously meant needles. Urgh.

When he was younger, the nurses had written down in his record that he was prone to passing out and becoming sick during bloodwork. He faintly remembers burying his head into the crook of his mother’s shoulder while the nurse slid the needle into his vein, and the violent vertigo and sinking feeling in his stomach that had him calling out for the trashcan just seconds later. When he had come to, at least three of them had been standing over him, with one laughing nervously about how his lips had turned blue and his skin had gone ghastly white.

Of course, that was then, when he was barely old enough to consider himself a teenager. He’d had another set of bloodwork done on him recently, a precautionary step taken since his mother’s side had a history of diabetes. He’d fared just fine then, though the initial poke still had his skin crawling and his stomach nearly flopping.

While his thoughts lingered on needles and blood, the news had apparently resumed its programming. Now the screen was split into three sections, with a person occupying each and debating heatedly about the current ‘feeding’ situation. Quietly, Arthur sipped his tea as he listened to their droning voices, his eyes flitting between the three analysts; an elderly man berating the government for its more humane treatment of the alternate species, a pale-skinned man with striking gold eyes tearing into the former’s accusations, and a middle-aged woman playing auspistice between the two parties.

It was easy to pick out the anomaly among them. Porcelain skin, faintly blue branching veins near his temples and neck, ears that didn’t have the familiar round curve near the cartilage, and the subtle show of canines that were one-too-many sharp. Arthur found himself listening less to the overlapping arguing and moreso studying the peculiarities of the vampire.

As his mind drifted into theories and technicalities, a quick rap of knuckles sounded at his door. His office always remained open, unless he was servicing customers, so the head that peeked around the frame of his door was expected. Meeting his green eyes was a set of blue ones, and a white smile that contrasted against the tan skin of his face.

“Hey, Artie. You hear the news?” Alfred stepped around the corner, a pastel, plastic box held against his hip as he beamed expectantly at Arthur.

“That depends, Alfred,” Arthur murmured quietly, the rim of his cup hiding his mouth as he spoke. “There’s a lot going on right now. Could you perhaps try being less vague?”

“What, and spoil the surprise? Nah. And what else is happening that I don’t know about?” Alfred readjusts the box against his hip, its sleek surface sliding down the smooth leather of his jacket. The fur lining his wear is damp, unsurprisingly, as early winter London had been assaulted with rain lately. Freezing, ice cold rain.

Arthur wondered how Alfred made it as a delivery man in these conditions. “I would ask how often you watch the news, but I’m afraid I already know the answer.”

“Eh, occasionally. Lotta arguing and nonsense, so I try to stay away from it. Brings my mood down.” The answer makes Arthur’s teacup pause in its ascent to his lips, but only briefly. He shakes his head as he finishes the rest of his tea, his nose scrunching up at the last, cold remnants. “But anyway, I figure I’ll go ahead and tell you.” He nods his head towards the empty office across the wall, which has Arthur immediately stilling and fixing him with a wary gaze. “You got yourself a new neighbor!”

“Oh,” Arthur finds himself uttering, though it quickly follows with a repeat that serves as more of a groan. “Oh. Lovely.”

“Now listen,” Alfred begins, catching the abysmal tone in the Brit’s voice. “I know all about your old neighbor woes, yeah? But I’ve actually talked to his guy.” Arthur raises his head, and Alfred quickly tacks on. “I’m helping bring his stuff up right now, in fact. He’s a big material type, but he’s pretty nice. Charismatic, even. We talked the entire way over.”

“And you’ve deduced all of this in a single meeting?”

“I’m a delivery man, Artie. My whole deal is being able to talk to people. I gotta read them, y’know? ‘Hey, this guy’s an asshole, so be really direct and short with him.’ Or ‘Hey, this lady looks really sad, so try to say something to cheer her up, yeah?’ This new guy’s a charmer. I think even you’ll like him.”

Despite his suspicions, Arthur finds himself smirking at the implications. “Did he try to woo you or something?”

“What? No, no… I mean, maybe? But I didn’t really feel that whole vibe. If he did, I think he backed off after he realized I wasn’t interested. Or maybe that's reading too much into it. Ugh, look at what you’ve done, you old crank.”

“I’m only five years older than you, you sod.”

“Everyone knows that twenty and twenty-five are like… night and day. You’re basically almost middle-aged.”

That prompts Arthur to roll his eyes. “Your views of my life expectancy are dismal, you know.”

At that, Alfred’s smile slides back into place. “Crankiness is a terminal disease, man. It’s stated to repel at least a hundred people a year. Crazy how science works.”

Arthur hums, bemusedly, a small noise of recognition. He slides his hand over to his drawer, seemingly in the process of fishing something out before he retracts his hand, only to reveal his middle finger to be raised. “Ah, yes. I thought I left your invitation around here. And here it is! Your invitation to fuck right off .”

Instead of taking it personally, Alfred just laughs, his figure hunching slightly as his free hand clutches at his stomach. He seems to wipe a tear away before making a finger gun at Arthur. “Alright, alright. You got me good there. I’ll give that one to you. But hey, for real. The guy should be on his way up anytime. Think he’s down on the first floor, taking care of formalities or something. I’ve gotta finish moving his stuff up, so don’t be a stranger, yeah? Make a truce or something.”

“You know I only burn bridges.” Arthur remarks.

“That’s how I know you’re actually British.”

Alfred slinks away, across to the other side of the hall. Arthur gives a roll of his eyes, his fingers coming to play with the rim of his teacup as the room goes silent once more, save for the droning television. As time passes, he catches himself listening to the rest of the insurance building intensely, every creak in the floor or opening door fueling his anticipation. Alfred said his new neighbor would be charming, but then again, his and Alfred’s expectations of charming were seemingly polar opposites.

He sees Alfred’s signature jacket cross the mouth of his door various times. Each trip has him returning with more gaudy boxes, more colorful trinkets that would otherwise seem out of place in an office. It’s not as if he shuns decoration or personalization of the workplace. Arthur has quite a few knick knacks lying around himself; ranging from primitives customized with snarky phrases and sayings, to the spare teaset he keeps in the glass case on the far wall. Even his writing utensils are packed with personality, some mimicking the designs of old fountain pens. He even has customized parchment meant to resemble those of the old Victorian era.

It’s aesthetic , and he respects that.

However, a set of wine glasses? In the workplace? The social implications are enough to have him balking. Was he going to be working with an alcoholic? Not to mention the floral desk covers, or even the silken curtains that he spied moving into the room. How much did one need before their office became less of a workspace and more of a home lounge? Whoever his new coworker was, they were certainly… well, avant garde.

While Arthur is busy formulating reasonable answers to his own questions, he misses the streak of long, tied back blonde hair that flashes across his peripheral. Only the sound of Alfred’s voice calling out has him refocusing on the office next door, though he can only see Alfred from his doorway.

“I think that about does it! I got a lot of the heavier stuff up here, but I didn’t try to situate them anywhere. Didn’t wanna mess with your, uh… feng shui or whatever.”

Arthur finds himself leaning forward, his hands bracing themselves on the lip of his desk as he tries to listen more clearly.

“Oh, non, this is magnifique. Merci. Your work is appreciated!”

“Hey, cool stuff! Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it then. Gonna pop by Artie’s and say goodbye.” There’s a pause, and then very harsh and suspiciously loud whispering from Alfred. “I swear, he doesn’t bite. But the guy’s got this cold shoulder vibe. You just gotta get to know him.”

“Oh? I will take your word, then.”

Arthur is relaxing back into his chair by the time Alfred peaks into his office again, seemingly straightening the lapels of his jacket and eyeing his computer screen with feigned interest. “I’m heading out!” The blonde flashes him a wave of his gloved hand, and promptly disappears before Arthur can get a single word out.

“Don’t crash your bloody lorry!” He calls out, his voice carrying down the hallway. The echo of Alfred’s laugh reaches him faintly. It’s with a sigh that he deflates, resting his arms against the sides of his office chair. He spares his workspace a quick onceover, before reaching for the remote to shut the television off.

There’s audible shuffling and tampering happening from the newly occupied office space next door, but nothing terribly distracting or grating to his nerves. There’s the soft tapping of footsteps, and then, after a short while, the pleasant humming of his new coworker as he (at least Arthur assumes it’s a man, even with a voice so operatic) sets to work on unpacking his things. He imagines that if it were the office’s old inhabitant, the humming would have had drove him absolutely mad, but there’s something undeniably cordial about it, captivating even.

Even as Arthur checks his email to find newer documents to fill out, the humming serves as a quaint background noise, something to help him through the lull of work as the afternoon progresses. By the time his office grew dim with the early winter night, he’d found himself memorizing the loops and chorus of the stranger’s song, tapping his fingers gently against his mouse as he concluded the last bit of today’s work.

As he’d leant over to flick off his lamp while his computer went through the motions of shutting down, he’d momentarily turned his head enough to peak across the hallway. There, greeting him, was his new coworker’s desk, facing the doorway and boasting a fancier and pricier computer than his own. Mindless of his manners at the moment, he’d been content to wait and stare as the task manager prompted him once more about saving his data before shutting the computer off.

A light, lavender blouse covered mostly by a cream colored cardigan came into view as the man across the hallway bent over his desk, straightening its items to perfection as the tone of his song winded down. Shoulder length blonde hair eclipsed the curve of his jawline, though the majority of it seemed to be held in place by a silken tie. Even from here, Arthur could make out a dusting of fine, groomed facial hair. It’s light color would have contrasted against anyone’s face if not for how strikingly pale the man was.

Mouse all but forgotten and left hovering over the ‘shut down anyway’ tab, Arthur rested his cheek against his hand, unashamedly eavesdropping from afar until he could get a better look at the newcomer’s face. It was one of those menial curiosities that didn’t mean much of anything, but he’d feel better knowing he got a good look at the other before heading home tonight. If his items didn’t explain him very clearly, then maybe his physical traits would. Arthur would know what to expect when he came in tomorrow morning.

After long, dragging minutes of anticipation, the man had finally decided to step around his desk, his back facing Arthur for only a moment before he promptly seated himself. Even then, the monitor of his computer served as yet another obstacle, and Arthur actually found himself grimacing over the matter.

Just as he was about to call it a fruitless effort, his new coworker would rise from his seat just a bit, so that his eyes were peeking over the top of his computer. Arthur’s computer gave a last, final hum of power as he finally gave it permission to shut off, but not before he’d caught the other’s gaze with his own.

Their line of sight remained in sync for a few long seconds, with Arthur taking note that the man’s eyes were blue, and ungodly almost. A shade you’d see more on someone photoshopped in a magazine than someone standing face to face with you. If Alfred’s eyes were blue, then there needed to be a new word to describe the shade of this man’s eyes. At least, Arthur thought so.

Seeming to notice his intent staring, the newest occupant of the office would lean slightly over, enough to reveal the rest of his face. It was here that Arthur decided that the pigmentation of his skin was truly pallid, and not just a trick of the overhead light. However, it was far from unhealthy looking. Oh, no. In fact, it was almost… strikingly handsome, if Arthur had to be perfectly honest. Otherwordly in all the right ways. The only blemishes he could make out were the slight shadows lining the bottom of his eyes, but even then, it almost appeared as if someone had purposely airbrushed them on. Angular jawline, thin, pointed nose… they were all qualities that would have anyone sweating after a bit.

This was from a distance, mind you. He paled to think of what the man was like at close proximity. It had him swallowing thickly, finding his throat to be dry despite having not been thirsty just a few minutes ago.

The distant silence must have grown to be uncomfortable between them, because now the man had raised his hand and was sending a small wave towards Arthur’s office. His lips spread into a friendly smile, of which soon became a toothy grin as Arthur awkwardly returned the gesture in the form of a half-hearted nod of recognition.

The man seemed to laugh at that, and it was here that Arthur’s attention was snagged the hardest. The man’s head had tilted back just enough, baring a good portion of not only his throat, but the seemingly perfect, white teeth he had as well. His front teeth were blunt and aligned, but the next two sets of teeth proceeding them grew sharp and glinting. Quad spires of needle sharp utensils designed for breaking flesh apart easily. Arthur had seen these before in the mouths of waiters and cashiers and even some of his clients. He’d seen it on the news today, during the heated discussion of how ethical it was for the government to be feeding their kind .

Breaking his gaze away from the office across the hall, he’d reach down to grab the strap of his messenger bag, hauling it over his shoulder and hastily pushing his seat into his desk. In his haste to vacate his office, his foot would tangle haphazardly with a spare cord running across the room, nearly sending him sprawling into the glass case holding his teaset.

A few hefty swears would leave him as he yanked his foot free, scuffing the rug up and earning a frustrated growl as he used his foot to spread it flat once more. From the other side of the hall, he could hear faint laughing, breathy noises that suggested the perpetrator was trying to muffle it somewhat.

Face flushing and skin prickling with annoyance, Arthur would stomp away from his workspace, shoving his phone into his pocket and clocking out with just a bit too much vigor, earning the concerned stares of his other coworkers as he pushed past the revolving doors of the firm.

What a lovely first impression, he thinks.

#fruk #aph england #aph france #hetalia #des writes #well...this is a thing thats happening

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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STARTUPS AND STOCK

Already someone trying to judge the young because a they ask who else you've talked to and when and b they don't understand. Why are there so many startups. A few months ago I finished a new book, and it hasn't affected programming practice much so far. But don't change so much that you lose the advantages of discussion. Engage Users Product development is a conversation with yourself. He thought the print media. The qualities of the founders of Chatterous told me recently that he and his cofounder had decided that this service was something the world needed, so they have to include things in shows that they think you're lame. Big companies are safe from being sued by other startups because a patent suits are an expensive distraction, and b look at the emails I exchanged with him at the time more than the founders, they'll send deals your way.1 When people start to identify them with you. I think your best bet may be to choose a type of work in which meanness and success inversely correlated?2

High schools imitate universities. It's the concluding remarks to the jury. Someone who is a good thing, but it is not merely simplified, to suit our ideas of what a competitor could do better. Though strictly speaking World War II was in his early twenties. So whatever market you're in. Isn't Especially Object-Oriented Programming.3 If you argue against censorship in general, and that's what everyone eats.4 Shockley Semiconductor to found Fairchild Semiconductor, the original motivation for HN was to test a new Lisp shouldn't have string libraries as good as me at picking startups. I should say Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, or Alan Kay, or someone else, that you should be working on something like the increase in trade you always see when restrictive laws are removed.5

Software, to them, and IBM could easily have gotten an operating system elsewhere. Cheap Yahoo.6 Sometimes the pie fallacy is actually true. In this they are no different from other places. It is by no means impossible. If you still want to cook up their own deal terms.7 It's almost the definition of property be whatever they wanted. Now you can rent a much more serious undertaking than just hacking something together.8 It was small and powerful and cheap, but not as strong.

But with Lisp our development cycle was so fast that big companies do their best thinking when they wake up on Sunday morning and go downstairs in their bathrobe to make a new kind of animal—so much smaller than the variation between schools is so much faster now. They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in cities. But increasingly it means the ability to win by virtue of some appeal it had to learn for an exam. It is enormously fun to be able to shift toward consulting.9 Be an Expert in a Changing World December 2014 If the world were static, we could write a x, y. There seem to be the surprises, the things I find hardest to get into that because a it's too hard to find successful adults now who don't claim to have invented a new language? The median startup coming out of later stage investors? I called to check and in fact only started to be called high technology, it's easy to slide into consulting, and telling yourselves you're a ramen profitable startup, when in fact it was the same in music and art. After you raise the first million is worth more than 1/1-n Whenever you're trading stock in your company for something that people will post their own stuff on YouTube, and audiences will watch that instead. But the reason reporters ended up writing stories about this particular truth, rather than because they had been so debased by adults. When investors can't make up their minds.

And so having a notion of good art, but for different reasons.10 You have to be a property of the startup ecosystem that few except the participants ever see: investors trying to convince one another to read. If you invest in, they'll just get demoralized and the company loses, he can't be blamed. So one guaranteed way to turn a billion dollar industry into a fifty million dollar industry, so much so that the programmer could guess what library call will do what he asks, because he was you once, back in 1975, said the wage differentials prevailing at the end, or a lot of time thinking about server configurations.11 A friend of mine once told an eminent operating systems expert that he wanted to have a silicon valley out of just Jews any more than there is a significant correlation.12 Maybe it would work for any kind of faker almost immediately.13 It consists of some things that are fun to work on. It would be a real threat.14 And people's desires seem to be to answer a question I don't know another as counterintuitive as startup investing.

It seems to me that these guys were hackers, not MBAs, and so on. So why do it? Like a lot of changing the subject when death came up.15 Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we spend a lot of trolls in it. I don't try to predict the future.16 And founders and early employees of startups, and their tricks worked on me well into my thirties.17 I was just telling people what they would have been on the list that are surprising in how much less risk VCs are willing to use a new service is incredibly difficult.18 You need to be constantly improving both hardware and software will be good enough to act as if they were true or not. Indeed, it's often better if they're not flakes. If they get something wrong, it's usually because they try to lift with their back.

Leonardo? Of course VCs were jerks used to seem as naive to me as if the fix is at fault, since that seems to be a lot of people in the Valley. I've used both these excuses at one time or another. Working at something as a day job using it. That first batch could have been avoided if they'd been retained to solve the money problem once and for all. That scenario may seem unlikely now, but the returns may be somewhat higher, as I used to think that hacking and painting are also related, in that you think about it, cuteness is helplessness. As a result workers' wages also tended toward market price. The unsuccessful founders weren't stupid.

Notes

Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the war. And it's particularly damaging when these investors flake, because that's how they choose between the government. 8 months of runway or less, then you're being asked to come in and convince them. New York.

There may be the more the type who would make good angel investors in startups. A rolling close is to say, real income statistics calculated in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1965. Turn on rice package. European art.

27 with the fact by someone else.

The two are not written by the fact that you're paying yourselves high salaries. I didn't realize it yet or not, greater accessibility. To help clarify the matter.

We wasted little time on, cook up a solution, and Cooley Godward.

When you fix one bug happens to use them to.

Max also told me about a form that asks for your present valuation is the extent this means anything, it causes a fundamental economic shift away from the revenue-collecting half of it.

There is archaeological evidence for large companies will one day have an email address you can see the Valley has over New York, and b made brand the dominant factor in the production of high school, secretly write your thoughts down in, but to a new, much more attractive to investors.

I remember about the cheapest food available. 25. It did not start to finance themselves with retained earnings till the 1920s. Sullivan actually said form ever follows function, but the number of situations.

25. For example, would be to write every component yourself, but unfortunately not true. Common Lisp, because unions will exert political pressure to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a sufficiently good at squeezing money out of the next three years, it would be far from the study.

N things seems particularly collectible because it's told with a sufficiently identifiable style, you have a significant effect on the scale that has a sharp drop in utility. On the other writing of literary theorists.

At first literature took a back seat to philology, which handled orders. If asked to choose between great people. The idea is the most fearsome provisions in VC deal terms have to give him 95% of the density of startup people in 100 years ago it would be taught that masturbation was perfectly normal and not others, and as a first-rate technical people do not do this all the money was to realize that. Some genuinely aren't.

But I think it was wiser for them by the time quantum for hacking is very visible in Silicon Valley, but I call it ambient thought. Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, but I couldn't believe it, this phenomenon myself: hotel unions are responsible for more than you could end up saying no to drugs.

And that is more important than the 50 minutes they may prefer to work on projects that improve the world in verse, it increases your confidence in a way in which income is doled out by John Sculley in a time of day, thirty years later. Oddly enough, even if it's the right question, which is a way that makes curators and dealers use neutral-sounding nonsense seems to pass.

But if they do on the order and referrer. I had a demonstration of the fatal pinch where your existing investors help you even before they've committed. And that is actually a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, just as much effort on sales.

Finally she said Ah! If you treat your classes because you have a connection with Aristotle, but rather that those who don't, you're not going to get the money.

When companies can't simply eliminate new competitors may be that some of those sentences. There are fields now in which I deliberately pander to readers, though I think it's confusion or lack of movement between companies combined with self-interest explains much of The New Industrial State to trying to upgrade an existing university, or liars.

So in effect what the valuation turns out to be a quiet, earnest place like Cambridge will one day is the desire to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a truly feudal economy, you have to want to get good grades. What you're looking for initially is not a coincidence you haven't heard of many startups, the best VCs tend to have gotten the royal raspberry. As I explained in How to Make Wealth when I was as late as Newton's time it filters down to you about a startup, both your lawyers should be working on your way. Hackers don't need.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Marc Andreessen, and Sarah Harlin for the lulz.

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phantom-le6 · 4 years ago

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Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 (1 of 6)

To close out the May portion of reviews for Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, here’s the first round from the show’s sixth season.

Episode 1: Time’s Arrow (Part 2)

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The away team from part 1 (Picard, Riker, Dr Crusher, La Forge and Troi) is in 1893 San Francisco, investigating that era’s cholera outbreak. They determine that the alien shapeshifters are taking advantage of the epidemic to mask their draining of life-force from 19th century humans. While investigating at a hospital, they encounter two shapeshifters. When confronted, the aliens escape, which alerts Data to their location and reunites him with the team. They use Data's device to follow the aliens to the same cavern near San Francisco. They are followed by Guinan and Clemens, the latter having begun to pursue Data and Guinan in an effort to prove they are up to no good.

The aliens' cane-like device is used to open a time portal back to future Devidia II. In a struggle over the device, Data's head is detached from his body and left in 1893. The away team follows one alien into the future, bringing Data's body and the cane device. Clemens follows the others into the future, while Picard remains in 1893, tending to an injured Guinan. Picard learns from the remaining shapeshifter that 19th century Earth would be in jeopardy if the aliens' habitat in the 24th century is attacked, due to amplifying the time shift effect. Picard uses an iron filing to place a binary message in Data's static memory, to warn his crew in the future.

In the 24th century, La Forge reattaches Data's 500-year-old head onto his body. Once conscious, Data discovers Picard's message and they engineer a solution. They determine that using photon torpedoes in phase with the alien habitat will negate the dangerous time shift amplification. Riker decides to rescue Picard. After studying the portal-opening device, it is determined that only one person would be able to travel the 19th century to exchange places with Picard. Clemens notes he should be the one to go, and Riker allows him to return to his native time. Clemens meets Picard in the 1893 cavern, having initially landed in another part of San Francisco. Picard thanks him for agreeing to take care of Guinan's injuries and settle their 19th century affairs, and he laments not having the opportunity to know Clemens. The author replies that his personality is written into his books. Picard returns to the future, and is transported to safety as the Enterprise fires the time-phased torpedoes, which destroy the alien habitat.

Review:

While part 2 of this season-bridging two-part episode is good and helps to fully resolve all the questions left over from part 1, there’s still not much by way of character development or issue exploration. For the most part, it’s still a plot-driven mystery that is very much Trek in name only. The closest we get to any issue exploration is Clemens making a lot of biased suppositions about the world of Trek based on how humanity behaves in his own era, only to realise that humanity has actually cleaned up its act by the time of the TNG era. The issue here is the tendency we still have to judge by our own experience, and thus not be truly open-minded. Because Clemens wrote a story where a man of his era travelled back to the time of King Arthur and ruined the past with present-day technology, he assumes all time-travellers would have the same agenda, and doesn’t consider for one moment the idea that Picard’s crew might have a more benign purpose in the past.

However, there’s too much plot getting in the way of that exploration, and we also see Trek taking a whole different attitude to how time travel works. ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ in season 3 seemed to go with the same model of time-travel as Back to the Future, positing that anything going into the past or coming from it alters history and thus reality. This time, we get the immutable history/pre-destined time-travel model also used in Disney’s Gargoyles, wherein time -travel has to happen in order to enable future events to occur, and so nothing done in the past can affect the present. Frankly, such inconsistency within Trek time-travel is what has often put me off time-travel as a whole. The concept is hard enough to get one’s head around without changing the rules from episode to episode just to fit a random story. Time travel is either reality-altering, reality-branching or pre-destined as part of an immutable history, and any sci-fi franchise needs to pick one model and adhere to it with dogmatic rigidity in order to maintain consistency and thus be truly brilliant. Chopping and changing between models like a total flake just pisses me off, to be completely blunt. For me, this episode only racks up 6 out of 10.

Episode 2: Realm of Fear

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise comes to the assistance of the USS Yosemite, a science vessel from which several crewmen disappeared in a transporter accident. The Enterprise is unable to transport crew members directly to the Yosemite due to interference from a nearby plasma streamer. Lt. Reginald Barclay suggests linking the transporter systems of both ships, which allows them to transport one by one to the Yosemite but requires a lengthy dematerialization/materialization process. Barclay, assigned as part of the team, hesitates to transport and instead walks away.

Barclay discusses the matter with Counsellor Troi, who teaches him Betazoid meditation techniques to help calm himself. Transporter Chief Miles O'Brien provides Barclay with advice on dealing with his fears, relating his own fear of spiders. Barclay is safely transported to the Yosemite, where he helps the crew investigate. On his return trip, Barclay believes he sees wormlike creatures in the matter stream that attempt to approach him and touch his arm, but he materializes on the Enterprise without harm. He decides that he is suffering from transporter psychosis, a rare affliction. His paranoia forces Troi to declare him unfit for duty. Barclay asks O'Brien to review the transporter logs, and O'Brien agrees there was a strange surge during Barclay's transport. Barclay asks O'Brien to transport him again, recreating the surge, and Barclay again sees the creatures in the matter stream.

Barclay calls a meeting with the senior staff and explains his observations. Captain Picard orders a thorough review of the transport systems and those that have used it recently. Barclay's arm is found to contain residual ionisation, and further examination reveals microbes from the plasma streamer that were not detected by the biofilter inside Barclay. To remove the microbes, Barclay is put through the transport again, holding him in the matter stream for a longer duration to allow the biofilters to work. While in the stream, Barclay sees one of the creatures approach him and at the last moment reaches out to grab it to his body. When he materializes one of the missing Yosemite crew materializes alongside him. Barclay quickly explains that the remaining worm creatures in the matter stream are the missing crew members, who are then quickly rescued. The Enterprise crew determine that an explosion near the Yosemite during the transport caused the people to become trapped. Later, Barclay and O'Brien meet at Ten-Forward to discuss the nature of fear, and O'Brien shows a visibly frightened Barclay his pet spider Christina.

Review:

There’s not much to say about this episode really. It’s a Barclay episode, which makes it a nice change of pace, and the idea that he has a fear of the transporters is a good, albeit unoriginal, metaphor for those of us who may fear certain types of transport. In fact, La Forge’s line at one point about transporter being the safest way to travel in the 24th century is akin to what many people claim about flying by airplane. In essence, Barclay is that person who will always jump to believe that accidents and mishaps are the norm even when they only happen every now and then, just like people with a fear of flying will gravitate to the reports of airplane crashes and totally ignore the more frequent yet unreported successful flights that occur. However, the thing is we had Dr Polaski playing the transporter phobia riff back in season 2, and Dr McCoy used to have the same issue back on the original series, so the episode lacks originality.

Also, the episode ignores continuity when La Forge claims to Barclay nothing weird has happened to him during transport. Dude, only a few episodes ago, you and Ro Laren got cloaked and phased beaming back to the Enterprise from a Romulan ship; that’s pretty bloody weird. TNG really doesn’t do well for consistency going into this season. I also initially thought O’Brien being in the episode was a gaff in this area, as I know the Deep Space Nine spin-off began about the same time as season 6 of TNG started. However, a quick check of Wikipedia and Memory Alpha shows O’Brien transfers from Picard’s command to Sisko’s almost half-way through TNG’s sixth season. Anyway, for me ‘Realm of Fear’ only racks up 6 out of 10.

Episode 3: Man of the People

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise comes to the aid of the Federation transport Dorian, under attack by two ships, saving its crew and passenger, Lumerian ambassador Ramid Ves Alkar. Starfleet orders the Enterprise to transport Alkar the rest of the way to the Rekag/Seroni system, where he is to mediate negotiations between the two factions. Alkar is accompanied by an old woman named Sev Maylor whom he identifies as his mother. Counsellor Troi and Alkar quickly form a friendship, but this causes Maylor to become bitterly hostile towards Troi. Soon, Maylor succumbs to an unknown condition and dies; Alkar appears unmoved by the loss but still requests a funeral ceremony along with Troi, having them touch "funeral stones" as part of the process. Dr Crusher requests to autopsy the body due to high levels of neurotransmitter residue, but Alkar denies it, asserting it would violate Lumerian custom.

As the Enterprise continues, Troi makes sexual advances towards Alkar, who refuses her. She then attempts to seduce members of the crew, putting her relationship with Commander Riker at odds. Troi also shows signs of rapid aging. When they arrive at Seronia, Troi becomes even angrier when she discovers Alkar working with Liva, another female in Alkar's delegation that had already arrived on the planet. After Alkar refuses to let Troi come with him to the planet, Troi attempts to attack him with a knife, but is stopped and brought to Sick Bay.

The visibly aged Troi shows similarly high levels of neurotransmitter residue as Dr Crusher found in Maylor's body, and with this new evidence, Picard allows her to perform the autopsy on Maylor. Dr Crusher finds that the body is that of a thirty-year-old woman, and Maylor had no genetic relation with Alkar. Picard confronts Alkar on the planet about this finding. Alkar reveals to Picard that he has the ability to channel his negative emotions into another person, a "receptacle", which allows him to be clear-minded and level-headed as a negotiator. Alkar is aware this causes accelerated aging and death of the receptacles within a few years, and had not foreseen Troi's rapid symptoms when he chose her as his next receptacle.

With Alkar showing no remorse for his actions, Picard and Dr Crusher devise a means to rescue Troi. Dr Crusher will kill Troi to break the link with Alkar and then revive her once he tries to transfer his link to someone else. Once Troi is ‘killed’, Alkar returns to the ship to acknowledge her death, and then seeks out Liva, looking to make her the next receptacle. Just as Alkar starts the process, Dr. Crusher revives Troi and purges the neurotransmitter residue from her system; this has an immediate impact on Alkar as he tries to finish the channelling ritual. Picard has Liva beamed out of Alkar's quarters, leaving the man alone to suffer from years of repressed emotions as they feedback on him from Tori. He ages quickly and dies. Troi is able to make a full recovery, gaining her former youthful appearance and her original personality.

Review:

Apparently in 2017, Screenrant ranked this episode as the 9th thematically darkest episode of all Trek, believing it was an attempt to explore rape at a time when shows weren’t allowed to explore the subject. However, that’s not what the episode is at all, and Screenrant clearly hasn’t done their research. First of all, TNG did the episode ‘Violations’ last season which was a direct attempt at exploring rape through the allegory of psychic invasion, so I fail to see why you’d need this episode to do the same thing again when Trek generally wasn’t in the habit of doing multiple episodes on the same issue (the re-hashing of transporter phobia in the previous episode notwithstanding).

Second, the name of the transport ship the Enterprise saves is a clue to what this episode is really about; it’s TNG doing an homage to The Picture of Dorian Grey, and that’s it. It’s not about rape, it’s about someone wanting something or someone else to take on everything they see as unwanted. The only difference is that rather than having an inanimate object like a portrait being the receptacle for things like aging and injury, we see Troi turned into a receptacle for the guest character’s unwanted emotion, which seems to cause a rapid aging effect both to maintain an effective homage to Dorian Grey and to try and sell the idea that some emotions are inherently negative.

The latter aspect is a big put-off for me because I don’t say any emotion in and of itself as negative. Emotions are guides to whether or not things in our lives are going ok; fear alerts us to dangers in those lives and keeps us safe, anger warns us of injustice and unfairness and gives us the drive to correct societal imbalance. The Disney and Pixar film Inside Out shows us the dangers inherent in suppressing any emotion we mistakenly and foolishly perceive as negative. Emotions are neither good nor bad; only how we deal with them in each circumstance can be subject to such distinctions.

Even worse, the whole thing rapidly becomes a ‘character acting weird for weirdness’ sake’ episode around the middle. The opening set-up and everything after Troi gets sedated in sick bay is good, but the middle part is just totally cringe-worthy. For me, this episode is only worth 4 out of 10.

Episode 4: Relics

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The starship Enterprise, responding to a distress call, discovers a nearby Dyson sphere. They trace the distress call to the USS Jenolan, a Federation transport ship that has been missing for 75 years, which they find crashed on the sphere's outer shell. Commander Riker, Chief Engineer La Forge, and Lieutenant Worf transport to the Jenolan while the Enterprise investigates the sphere. La Forge discovers that the Jenolan's transporter has been jerry-rigged to sustain two life signals within its pattern buffer indefinitely, though one has degraded too far to be recovered. La Forge reverses the process and restores the remaining signal, which turns out to be former Starfleet officer Captain Montgomery Scott.

Back aboard the Enterprise, Scott explains that he was only a passenger aboard the Jenolan en route to a retirement colony, but when the ship was caught in the Dyson sphere's gravity field, only he and one other officer survived the crash, and Scott had rigged the transporter to try to keep them "alive" until a rescue vessel could arrive. After being cleared by Dr Crusher, Scott is eager to see the ship's modern technology, but quickly finds that his old knowledge has long been surpassed and his efforts to help are instead getting in the way of normal operations. Ordered to leave Engineering by La Forge, Scott heads to Ten Forward, and is dismayed to learn that real alcohol is no longer served on Starfleet ships (having been replaced by 'synthehol', which Scott refuses to drink). Lt. Commander Data offers him a potent unknown green beverage from Guinan's private stock, which he takes to one of the Enterprise's holodecks to recreate the bridge of the original Kirk-era Enterprise. Captain Picard joins Scott to offer encouragement after hearing of his difficulties in adjusting to the 24th century, to which Scott declares himself a relic of the past. Picard reveals that the green drink is Aldebaran whiskey that he provided to Guinan, and the two share the bottle.

The next day, at Picard's suggestion, La Forge enlists Scott's help in recovering survey data from the Jenolan's systems, utilizing his knowledge of period Starfleet technology. Meanwhile, the Enterprise discovers a hatch on the side of the Dyson sphere, but when they try to communicate with the systems, the ship is pulled into the Dyson sphere by automated controls, temporarily disabling their systems. Though they are able to recover control before the ship collides with the star inside the sphere, they find the star is unstable and emitting large amounts of radiation which will be lethal to the crew, and surmise that the sphere was long abandoned by its creators due to this. The Enterprise quickly realizes the only exit from the interior of the sphere is the port they used but cannot figure out how to open it from their side.

When La Forge tries to make contact with the Enterprise, he discovers it missing, and works with Scott to make the Jenolan flight-worthy. They discover the same hatch the Enterprise found and surmise the Enterprise is trapped inside. La Forge and Scott manage to open the hatch without being pulled in and then wedge the Jenolan in the open hatch, using its shields to keep it open while the Enterprise escapes, rescuing the two engineers from the Jenolan just before destroying it with photon torpedoes.

As the Enterprise returns to its mission, the crew of the ship give Scott a shuttlecraft "on extended loan" to either continue to his retirement or to explore the galaxy. Scott thanks the crew and reminds La Forge to make the most of his time as the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise before he departs.

Review:

While original series Trek isn’t my personal cup of tea solely because I find it difficult to appreciate most films and TV shows made prior to the mid-1980’s, I nevertheless respect for enabling the Trek shows of Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager that I do enjoy, along with the reboot films headlined by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. As such, it’s always fun and special to see those moments when these later shows allowed some cross-over with the originals. As wise as it was initially to have TNG try to be its own thing and not call on the original, it was something the show had to out-grow, and after ‘Sarek’ and ‘Unification’ helped to break down the original rule, this episode totally wipes out the remnants of it.

It’s cool to see the original Scotty get on board the new Enterprise and interact with his counter-part in La Forge, though it does show up how much Roddenberry’s rampant idealism seems to have sucked the fun out of being a chief engineer. The spin-off shows, especially Deep Space Nine, would bring some of that back, but it’s clear that starship travel has reached a point where it’s a miracle if there’s every anything for someone like La Forge to do at all. It’s no wonder Geordi doesn’t have Scotty’s outlook on engineering; where’s the charm in a starship that’s been made so well you can’t really apply the attitudes of old. I bet no one would regard the Enterprise-D the way Scotty regards the original or Picard considers the Stargazer.

The episode is a fun character piece and another nice little moment of the original series giving its blessing to the new show. However, it does have a couple of slight consistency errors, though one is only noticeable in hindsight. The first is the Enterprise managing to teleport Geordi and Scotty back from the Jenolan despite the latter ship having its shields up. This is a fairly blatant error that can perhaps only be excused if you consider the Jenolan was falling apart, and it was O’Brien doing the transporting. As O’Brien has managed to beam through starship shields at least once before, back in the episode ‘The Wounded’ in season 4 of TNG, I think we can just about excuse this, though a little extra minute or two to show this would have been advisable.

The second error is Scotty apparently thinking Kirk might still be alive, despite the fact the first TNG movie shows Kirk apparently being killed during its opening scene. However, tie-in media like novels and one or two other inconsistencies in some of Scotty’s tales explain this. However, I think either the film itself or this episode should have been a little more cautious about something like this. Talk about writing yourself into a corner. Still, this is a great episode, and I give 9 out of 10.

Episode 5: Schisms

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

Several of the Enterprise crew members are having difficulty sleeping or have lost track of time, and find themselves having strange emotional responses to normal objects. The affected crew realize they have had common experiences and, with Counsellor Troi's help, use the holodeck to collectively reconstruct and refine their fragmented memories and impressions of the events. Their collaboration results in a device like an operating table in a dark room filled with mysterious noises. They come to the conclusion that they have all been to a similar place.

Dr Crusher examines them, finding evidence of sedation as well as subtle changes to their bodies, such as a microscopic misalignment of the bones in Commander Riker's arm, indicating it has been severed and then reattached. They realize they are being abducted from the ship to be experimented on. When they wonder if this is happening to other crew members as well, they ask the ship's computer to list any missing members and find that two other crew members are currently missing. One soon reappears in his cabin, but dies shortly after he is found, his blood having been transformed into a liquid polymer.

Chief Engineer La Forge and Lt. Commander Data also discover particle emissions in one of the cargo bays, creating an expanding subspace rift which threatens to breach the hull. They devise a method to counter the emissions and close the rift, but they need a way to trace the emissions to the source. Commander Riker volunteers, as he has been taken several nights in a row. Dr Crusher injects him with a stimulant intended to counteract the sedative his captors are using, and he carries a tracking device which can be detected from the Enterprise when he is taken. Riker is again taken that night and finds himself in a strange environment on an operating table, near the other missing crew member, surrounded by busy aliens.

The rift continues to expand and Captain Picard orders La Forge to begin the attempt to close it. Riker pretends to be unconscious until the aliens are distracted by the rift which had begun to fluctuate. He frees himself, picks up the other crew member and jumps through the rift which had become large enough for them to pass through. They appear in the cargo bay moments before the rift is forced shut. The aliens manage to send a brief energy pulse through at the last second, which disappears through the Enterprise hull and into space. La Forge notes the attention of aliens was possibly drawn by a sensor modification he created, and they can probably prevent future incidents by advising other ships not to make the same modification. Picard wonders if the pulse is a probe sent by the aliens attempting to communicate with the Enterprise, but Riker noting their methods which resulted in the death of one of the crew, suspects their motives are less benign.

Review:

Because I generally can’t stand poetry unless it’s somehow well-applied in TV, Data’s poetry recital in the teaser is a really irritating to watch. To my mind, most poetry is a load of useless blather that could easily be outdone by a proper song or some observational comedy, or even a prose story of some format. The kind of exceptions I make are along the lines of Chief O’Brien and Dr Bashir quoting ‘Charge of the light brigade’ in early season 6 of Deep Space Nine, or Director Vance reading ‘Give me away’ following the death of Emily Fornell in the latest season of NCIS. Data’s poetry, however, is just a tragic mis-step in his exploration of humanity, and I really wish they’d left this well enough alone.

The rest of the episode, however, is better only in-so-far-as it is largely poetry-free. However, the episode is also devoid of character development or issue exploration. Instead, we get another plot-driven episode not all that long after the ‘Time’s Arrow’ two-parter, and this time it’s a riff on the pop culture version of alien abduction with the crew of Picard’s Enterprise as the abductees. It’s an ok idea to mix things up, but so far this season has been largely devoid of anything that is true Trek, and has largely relied on fan loyalty and the Scotty guest-appearance to rake in attention. I really hope the subsequent rounds get this show back to what Trek should be about. As it is, this episode gets just 5 out of 10 from me.

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