#cause THAT many people to throw an annual party dedicated to hating you

[moon-andstardust]

That scene. That scene right there is soo telling. We've known since the beginning that Blitz has commitment issues, but we're only now starting to see just how deep they ran and just how much they affect his relationships.

I feel like these words, "I love you," trigger blaring alarms in his head, a panic reaction. Remember what happened the first time he dared to love someone? The first time he tried to confess his love?

Oh, nothing big.

He just permanently disfigured his crush, killed his mother and ruined his sister's life*.

This accident, this event lies in the core of 90% of his issues and problems.

This is why he runs the second things get serious. This is why he dumps Verosica the second she says she loves him.

In Blitz's eyes, his love is destructive. His love only ruins. So if he cuts ties before things get too complicated, maybe the other person won't get even more hurt, even more damaged. It's a twisted and fucked up desire to protect not only himself and his heart but also his loved ones**. It has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy and a never-ending cycle: the more he pushes and pushes and pushes, the more people push back. Because no one likes getting hurt. No one likes having their heart broken. And when these people finally snap, when they've had enough of Blitz's bullshit? He can point and say, see? I told you so! They are better off without me!

Blitz's cruelty doesn't stem from outright malice. It stems from Blitz being deeply broken and damaged.

Before he can start a stable romantic relationship of any kind, he needs to forgive himself for that accident. Otherwise, that deeply rooted self-loathing will continue to get in the way and cause him to repeatedly self-sabotage. And he has to do it himself, Verosika can't do it for him, M&M can't do it for him, Stolas can't do it for him.

The good news is that he is already taking the necessary steps. Making up with Fizz: a step in the right direction. Genuinely apologizing to Stolas and Verosika: a step in the right direction. Letting go of Stolas, realizing that his actions have serious consequences on his loved ones, owning up to his mistakes: all steps in the right direction. I don't know about ya'll but I'm eager to see where this is going and what happens next.

*it was an accident. Wrong place, wrong time, but Blitz sure as hell doesn't believe that.

**I belive this last bit is fully subconscious and Blitz isn't much aware of it. He says it himself: he buries all of it deep in his mind, avoids thinking about it at all costs

[thezodiaczone]

November Forecast for Leo

Your annual “nesting season” has arrived, Leo—and you’re oh-so ready for a little downtime! The Sun is in Scorpio and your fourth house of home and family until November 22, so if you’re already drafting your holiday gifting and guest lists or eyeing decorations, well, blame it on the stars. For you, Scorpio season is all about getting your “hygge” on—the Danish art of perfect coziness that became extra-popular last year. Bring out your ambient lighting, your scented candles and the cashmere throws…then snuggle up with your favorite people!

The November 7 Scorpio new moon is an ideal day to pause and attend to your personal life. If you’re thinking of buying a home or expanding your brood, today could set the wheels in motion. Make a dedicated plan to add regular self-care and downtime to your busy calendar.

But don���t get too comfortable in your newly adorned Lion’s den just yet! Despite the comfy backdrop, November is one bustling month in the stars. Jupiter and Uranus are making major zodiac sign changes, and three planets will move in and out of retrograde. Martha Stewart moment: interrupted! The second you fill an oversized vase with eucalyptus leaves or put a “simmer pot” on the burner, life turns into a hyperactive scene (though the scent of orange peels and clove is still lovely, Leo…).

It starts on November 6, when radical changemaker Uranus, which has been retrograde in Taurus and your career house since August 7, backs into Aries and your expansive ninth house. Between now and March 6, you’ll want to reconnect with a visionary project, or resurrect plans to travel or study that got sidelined after Uranus entered Taurus on May 15. Since last spring, you’ve been busy with exciting career shifts, perhaps even starting on a whole new path or stepping into a meaningful leadership role.

Uranus’ final spin through Aries will make sure you don’t leave your ideals at the door or “sell out” in the name of success. After March 6, the side-spinning planet will settle into Taurus until 2026, not to return to Aries again in your lifetime. Book those bucket-list vacations and set entrepreneurial plans in motion; but prepare for a few plot twists and turns while Uranus is retrograde until January 6, especially if you’re a student or frequent traveler. Life will NOT follow a linear path…so embrace the unexpected and stay flexible with your plans. Any chaotic curveballs might make you frantic in the moment, but they could lead you to an important realization.

The headline news arrives on November 8, when expansive and lucky Jupiter begins a 13-month visit to Sagittarius, amplifying your fifth house of passion, creativity and self-expression until December 2, 2019. Woo-hoo! Not only is Sagittarius a fellow fire sign, but the fifth house happens to be the domain of the zodiac that’s ruled by Leo. Translation: You’ll be hosting the planet of good fortune in YOUR native turf for more than a year. How awesome is that?!

Get your wardrobe and glam squad ready, Leo: Showy Jupiter in this dazzling zone could be a nonstop party. If you’re an artist or performer, this could be the year that your talents gain major recognition since Jupiter in this fame-fueled sector puts the spotlight directly on you. This Jupiter shift will be quite a change from the last 13 months. Back in October 2017, Jupiter decamped to Scorpio and your fourth house of home and family. Your private, personal life took center stage, and while you had plenty of other cosmic action pushing you into the public eye, you still may have spent a lot of time flying under the radar. With Jupiter expanding your foundational fourth house, some Leos moved into bigger spaces, bought or sold homes or added new members to their families.

Now Jupiter turns on the stadium lights and demands that you trade those yoga pants for red-carpet gear. And you might not be strutting down that step-and-repeat alone, either. With global Jupiter in your zone of infatuation, sparks could fly with someone from a wildly different background, perhaps even through a long-distance affair. Single Leos could be fielding multiple admirers, and couples might experience a romantic resurgence. It’s been shown that novelty stimulates attraction because doing new things together causes the brain to release adrenaline and dopamine, giving you a “rush” that feels like the honeymoon phase all over again.

Since the fifth house rules fertility, don’t be surprised if all that excitement leads to the bedroom…and, for Leos of the childbearing set, to a “baby on board” status. Just watch for the drama to amplify with outspoken and leap-without-looking Jupiter in this fiery zone.

On November 16, a little wrench gets thrown into Jupiter’s plan because Mercury, the planet of communication, technology and travel, will turn retrograde until December 6, spending the bulk of its pivot in Sagittarius. Back up your most important data and erase those raunchy photos from your online albums! Mercury retrograde can mess with all your electronic files and devices and could also bring an embarrassing public gaffe (like we said: delete those photos). Retrogrades reconnect us to the past, so in your love life, unresolved tensions can flare—or you might see the return of an ex. Maybe you finally get some closure on some ancient history or put that stupid fight to bed already. For some Leos, a romantic reunion could be in store. Proceed with caution: Mercury retrograde isn’t the best time for binding decisions!

You’ve had your share of this already because Venus, the planet of love, has been retrograde since October 5. With the planet of harmony and attraction gone awry—which happens every 18 months—relationships and friendships were on the rocks. On November 16, Venus will turn direct (forward), bringing back the love; but you’ll still have to contend with Mercury’s mayhem for a little bit longer.

On November 22, the Sun will join the party, moving into Sagittarius for four weeks and kicking off the holiday festivities. It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S., and you’ll have plenty to be grateful for during Sagittarius season. Your joie de vivre and “It factor” will go through the roof, especially on November 26, when the Sun and Jupiter make their annual conjunction. Many astrologers consider this the luckiest day of the year. Certainly it’s one of the most charismatic, with the revitalizing Sun and optimistic Jupiter combining their superpowers. And since it’s happening in your head-turning fifth house, don’t be surprised if the world takes notice of you!

While you’ll revel in being the star, there’s one day when you’ll want to focus on being an awesome team player. That’s November 23, when the year’s only Gemini full moon beams into your eleventh house of collaborations and humanitarian endeavors. The next day, November 24, healing Neptune ends a five-month retrograde in your eighth house of transformation and wealth. Get your holiday giving underway, Leo, whether you raise funds for a charity drive, grab tickets to a benefit ball or press “donate now” on the website for your favorite cause.

Love & Romance

Relationships are heating up! Spicy Mars is spending yet another full month firing up your committed partnership houses. Until November 15, the red planet is in Aquarius and your dynamic duos zone (where it’s been since September 10), turning up the temperatures AND the tension. On the downside, couples may fight more and single Leos could feel the pressure to pair up. Watch out for the tunnel vision now!

With Mars here, though, you’ll be highly attracted (and attractive) to people who are looking for a real-deal romance. This month, you could meet someone who has the potential to stick around for the long haul. Coupled Leos could bring some sexy excitement and adventure into your bond, prioritizing your one-on-one time. Things will get even steamier starting November 15, when Mars blazes into Pisces and your erotic eighth house for the rest of the year. Just watch for a streak of jealousy and possessiveness that could flare up.

Meantime, Venus is wrapping up a six-week retrograde on November 16, spending the first couple weeks of the month adrift in Libra and your communication house. With Mars pushing your buttons, you could be quick to bite people’s heads off. Maybe someone’s getting on your nerves or your stress levels max out, and you end up (regrettably) snapping at someone. Save the big talks for November 9, when Venus and Mars unite in a cooperative trine (120-degree angle), helping you clear the air and return to productive dialogue. If you need to apologize today, please do so!

On November 8, lucky Jupiter starts a 13-month visit to Sagittarius and your fifth house of true love. This could be one of your most adventurous romantic years in over a decade—but there could be a brief interruption a week into this transit. Communication planet Mercury turns retrograde from November 16 to December 6, mostly in Sagittarius, causing another round of the “ex factor” or possible bruised feelings—and egos—in the game of love. Slow down and think before you speak or rush under the mistletoe with anyone.

Key Dates

November 30: Venus-Uranus Opposition Talk may be cheap, but under this potentially game-changing transit, you or your sweetie could initiate a dialogue that radically shifts the relationship. You may discover something about your mate that alters the state of your union. Good news? Bad news? It all depends on how you both handle it.

Money & Career

Don’t hate, collaborate! Competitive Mars is spending all month—and the rest of the year, really—in the partnership houses of your chart. From September 10 to November 15, the red planet is booked for a stint in Aquarius and your seventh house of contracts, strategic alliances and balance. Working well with others is the goal here, and Mars could speed up any dynamic duos you’re considering.

You may feel pressured to sign on the dotted line, and if you’re ready, do it quick! On November 16, communication planet Mercury will turn retrograde until December 6, which is a less favorable time to sign paperwork, since details and fine print can be overlooked by accident. There can also be technology crashes and data losses, so back everything up to the cloud and strengthen those passwords.

On November 15, motivator Mars zooms into Pisces and your eighth house of joint ventures and long-term finances. You could feel the intensity of those holiday expenses coming up, so make a budget! Some Leos might be considering an investment or a large purchase (such as a car or home). With galactic galvanizer Mars at the wheel, this could all move quickly. Be sharp and strategic about how you use your time, energy and resources now. Do your research instead of rushing in, even if your instincts say “go!” But don’t take too long, because you could miss out. Strike while the iron is hot—but be sure to polish and sharpen your weapon first.

Work pressure will lift a bit after November 6, because disruptive Uranus will take a four-month vacation from Taurus and your career sector. You’ll get a little break from the constant change that’s been happening since Uranus entered this sign back on May 15, keeping you on your toes at all times professionally. Uranus will dip back into Aries until March 6, which could bring exciting chances to study, publish your work or start an indie business. Take your time while Uranus is retrograde until January 6, but revisit some plans that got sidelined and see if there’s still gold in them hills!

Key Dates

November 19: Mars-Jupiter Square The stability of a collaboration could be threatened under this power-tripping transit. A larger-than-life personality (is that you, Leo?) may be looking for a bigger half of the pie than what was originally agreed upon; or one party might be doing all the heavy lifting while the other is “busy” playing Candy Crush Saga.

Love Days: 13, 18 Money Days: 24, 29 Luck Days: 23, 31 Off Days: 29, 16, 20

[rickthaniel]

Avatar Aang, Feminist Icon?

“Who’s your favorite character?” I hear that question come up a lot over Avatar: The Last Airbender, a show particularly near and dear to me. Iroh and Toph get tossed around a lot. Zuko is very popular. Sokka has his fans. But something I’ve noticed? Aang very rarely gets the pick. When he comes up, it’s usually in that “Oh, and also…” kind of way. Which is strange, I think, considering he’s the main character, the titular airbender, of the entire show.

I never really thought much about it until a couple weeks ago when I finished my annual re-watch of the series and found myself, for the first time, specifically focused on Aang’s arc. Somehow, I never really paid that much attention to him before. I mean sure, he’s front and center in most episodes, fighting or practicing or learning big spiritual secrets, and yet, he always feels a little overshadowed. Katara takes care of the group. Sokka makes the plans. Zuko has the big, heroic Joseph Campbell journey. Aang…goofs around. He listens and follows and plays with Momo. And yes, at the end his story gets bigger and louder, but even then I feel like a lot of it dodges the spotlight. And here’s why:

Avatar casts the least traditionally-masculine hero you could possibly write as the star of a fantasy war story. Because of that, we don’t see Aang naturally for everything he is, so we look elsewhere.

To show what I mean, I want to talk about some of the show’s other characters, and I want to start with Zuko. Zuko is the hero we’re looking for. He’s tall and hot and complicated. He perseveres in the face of constant setbacks. He uses two swords and shoots fire out of his hands. He trains with a wise old man on ship decks and mountaintops. Occasionally he yells at the sky. He’s got the whole 180-degree moral turn beat for beat, right down to the scars and the sins-of-the-father confrontation scene. And if you were going into battle, some epic affair with battalions of armor-clad infantry, Zuko is the man you’d want leading the charge, Aragorn style. We love Zuko. Because Zuko does what he’s supposed to do.

Now let’s look at Katara. Katara doesn’t do what she’s supposed to do. She doesn’t care about your traditionally gender dynamics because she’s too busy fighting pirates and firebenders, planning military operations with the highest ranking generals in the Earth Kingdom, and dismantling the entire patriarchal structure of the Northern Water Tribe. Somewhere in her spare time she also manages to become one of the greatest waterbenders in the world, train the Avatar, defeat the princess of the Fire Nation in the middle of Sozin’s Comet and take care of the entire rest of the cast for an entire year living in tents and caves. Katara is a badass, and we love that.

So what about Aang? When we meet Aang, he is twelve years old. He is small and his voice hasn’t changed yet. His hobbies include dancing, baking and braiding necklaces with pink flowers. He loves animals. He doesn’t eat meat. He despises violence and spends nine tenths of every fight ducking and dodging. His only “weapon” is a blunt staff, used more for recreation than combat. Through the show, Aang receives most of his training from two young women – Katara and Toph – whom he gives absolute respect, even to the point of reverence. When he questions their instruction, it comes from a place of discomfort or anxiety, never superiority. He defers to women, young women, in matters of strategy and combat. Then he makes a joke at his own expense and goes off to feed his pet lemur.

Now there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, and it’s the one that shielded Aang from the heroic limelight in my eyes for ten years. The reasoning goes like this: Aang is a child. He has no presumptuous authority complex, no masculinity anxiety, no self-consciousness about his preferred pastimes, because he’s twelve. He’s still the hero, but he’s the prepubescent hero, the hero who can’t lead the charge himself because he’s just not old enough. The problem is, that reasoning just doesn’t hold up when you look at him in the context of the rest of the show.

Let’s look at Azula. Aside from the Avatar himself, Zuko’s sister is arguably the strongest bender in the entire show. We could debate Toph and Ozai all day, but when you look at all Azula does, the evidence is pretty damning. Let’s make a list, shall we?

Azula completely mastered lightning, the highest level firebending technique, in her spare time on a boat, under the instruction of two old women who can’t even bend.

Azula led the drill assault on Ba Sing Sae, one of the most important Fire Nation operations of the entire war, and almost succeeded in conquering the whole Earth Kingdom.

Azula then bested the Kyoshi Warriors, one of the strongest non-bender fighting groups in the entire world, successfully infiltrated the Earth Kingdom in disguise, befriended its monarch, learned of the enemy’s most secret operation, emotionally manipulated her older brother, overthrew the captain of the secret police and did conquer the Earth Kingdom, something three Fire Lords, numerous technological monstrosities, and countless generals, including her uncle, failed to do in a century.

And she did this all when she was fourteen.

That last part is easy to forget. Azula seems so much her brother’s peer, we forget she’s the same age as Katara. And that means that when we first meet Azula, she’s only a year older than Aang is at the end of the series. So to dismiss Aang’s autonomy, maturity or capability because of his age is ridiculous, understanding that he and Azula could have been in the same preschool class.

We must then accept Aang for what he truly is: the hero of the story, the leader of the charge, who repeatedly displays restraint and meekness, not because of his age, not because of his upbringing, not because of some character flaw, but because he chooses too. We clamor for strong female characters, and for excellent reason. But nobody every calls for more weak male characters. Not weak in a negative sense, but weak in a sense that he listens when heroes talk. He negotiates when heroes fight. And when heroes are sharpening their blades, planning their strategies and stringing along their hetero love interests, Aang is making jewelry, feeding Appa, and wearing that flower crown he got from a travelling band of hippies. If all Aang’s hobbies and habits were transposed onto Toph or Katara, we’d see it as a weakening of their characters. But with Aang it’s cute, because he’s a child. Only it isn’t, because he’s not.

Even in his relationship with Katara, a landmark piece of any traditional protagonist’s identity, Aang defies expectations. From the moment he wakes up in episode one, he is infatuated with the young woman who would become his oldest teacher and closest friend. Throughout season one we see many examples of his puppy love expressing itself, usually to no avail. But there’s one episode in particular that I always thought a little odd, and that’s Jet.

In Jet, Katara has an infatuation of her own. The titular vigilante outlaw sweeps her off her feet, literally, with his stunning hair, his masterful swordsmanship and his apparent selflessness. You’d think this would elicit some kind of jealousy from Aang. There’s no way he’s ignorant of what’s happening, as Sokka sarcastically refers to Jet as Katara’s boyfriend directly in Aang’s presence, and she doesn’t even dispute it. But even then, we never see any kind of rivalry manifest in Aang. Rather, he seems in full support of it. He repeatedly praises Jet, impressed by his leadership and carefree attitude. Despite his overwhelming affection for Katara, he evaluates both her and Jet on their own merits as people. There is no sense of ownership or macho competition.

Contrast this with Zuko’s reaction to a similar scenario in season three’s The Beach. Zuko goes to a party with his girlfriend, and at that party he sees her talking to another guy. His reaction? Throwing the challenger into the wall, shattering a vase, yelling at Mai, and storming out. This may seem a little extreme, but it’s also what we’d expect to an extent. Zuko is being challenged. He feels threatened in his station as a man, and he responds physically, asserting his strength and dominance as best he can.

I could go on and on. I could talk about how the first time Aang trains with a dedicated waterbending master, he tries to quit because of sexist double standards, only changing his mind after Katara’s urging. I could talk about how Aang is cast as a woman in the Fire Nation’s propaganda theatre piece bashing him and his friends. Because in a patriarchal society, the worst thing a man can be is feminine. I could talk about the only times Aang causes any kind of real destruction in the Avatar state, it’s not even him, since he doesn’t gain control of the skill until the show’s closing moments. Every time he is powerless in his own power and guilt-ridden right after, until the very end when he finally gains control, and what does he do with all that potential? He raises the rivers, and puts the fires out.

Aang isn’t what he’s supposed to be. He rejects every masculine expectation placed on his role, and in doing so he dodges center stage of his own show. It’s shocking to think about how many times I just forgot about Aang. Even at the end, when his voice has dropped and his abs have filled in, we miss it. Zuko’s coronation comes and we cheer with the crowd, psyched to see our hero crowned. Then the Fire Lord shakes his head, gestures behind him and declares “the real hero is the Avatar.” It’s like he’s talking to us. “Don’t you get it?” he asks. “Did you miss it? This is his story. But you forgot that. Because he was small. And silly. And he hated fighting. And he loved to dance. Look at him,” Zuko seems to say. “He’s your hero. Avatar Aang, defier of gender norms, champion of self-identity, feminist icon.”

[rainyrami-blog]

Mea (Draft)

Since I’m bored, let’s write this short piece of memory down.

There was a boy attending a swimming marathon.

To be more precise, it was the annual swimming test, where they graded the participants.

You would swim one kilometer. The time you had for that length would be measured and the grades were made with that information.

Anyway, on that day, the sun was shining and the rays were projected on the water surface, the water split the light and thus it was sparkling.

The boy wasn’t really into sports, he wasn’t good at them either, but he still looked forward to the weekly swimming lessons.

Incidentally, the annual test would happen instead of one of those lessons..

He disliked it when the teacher declared it to be a “free-lesson”, the boys would start to shrink into little brats again and play in the water while shouting and laughing loudly. It was just a plain annoyance to him.

He was already content with just swimming laps, no long speeches or explanation or even something which resembles a swimming lesson where the teacher actually teaches you something.

Of course, he wasn’t good at swimming or something, but laps really weren't too much of an effort for him compared to other competing types of sports; or running marathons, which always left his lungs screaming and feel the pain on different places. Obviously, nobody would care and just call him weak and lame instead.

The exercises in the water where when he could just force his body to do the troublesome task while his mind would fly somewhere else. He could just space out and let his body exhaust itself. The feeling of pure exhaustion and fatigue would come only afterward anyway when he would get out of the wet.

So on that day, when there was this swimming marathon, the boy was actually happy, even if he knew that he probably would get bad grades again.

With the signal from the teacher, everyone, only males naturally, jumped into the water and began to swim…

And so did he, his head dived in first, his torso followed and soon were his two feet swallowed by the sparkling liquid as well.

Everything turned blue, to be more precise, the floor of the pool was painted blue thus the water seemed to be blue as well, even if he was aware of that, it still felt like something was transforming...

While the world started to change its colors, he also started. He started to tell a tale when is mind slowly faded away…

(´～`)

The tale was about a boy, who was going to attend one of the most crucial turning points in his life.

The sun was shining and the flowers were blooming, it was one of those wonderful days.

He hated the physical activity which was awaiting him, due to the confrontation with it in his past although at the same time he was looking forward to it. It was something like his fate after all.

Today was a special day, a day where he could prove something important to himself and his ancestors. Something which would change his life, regardless if he won or not. It was something he really worked hard to gain, so a loss would throw him away while a success would give him the power to finally take the next step.

Thus, when the instructor gave his signal, he jumped into the cold water without hesitation. The arms first, the torso followed and the feet as well. Everything distorted, the sounds became dull and he started to lose his consciousness.

His eyes closed, he relied on his own yet weak body to accomplish this task, letting it create the one story he always yearned for. The story he suffered, bled and screamed for this whole time.

(ㆆᴗㆆ)

There was a girl.

To be more precise, a nymph.

For some reason, she ended up in the swimming pool of a certain school.

That place of education and improvements itself was infamous for teaching children to become adults. To be more precise: thiefs, which have the ability to hide their presence and attack with stealth, clerics, who were taught to the holy teachings of the religion and have great divine abilities to heal even the most severe wounds,  archers, who were blessed by the goddess of the hunt, wise users of the bow and arrows,  knights, who were  strong and full of courage, they wouldn’t back off even in front of the most disgusting or ominous monsters and  wizards, who were masters of one specific type of element.

The education system would provide those youngsters’ support and help them to choose their path. Make them useful for the society. To make them able to become adventurers eventually.

A person which was called good for nothing a long time ago, since it was more like an unsteady job, unsteady in the income. It was certainly possible to get rich quick, but the amount of money was based on the difficulty of the different tasks and the danger behind those.

You could not only lose everything, but you would lose everything when you fail.

The school was created by certain, poor adventurer, also a good for nothing which became later a hero.

As a hero he found himself drowning in a fountain of wealth, thus he decided to build a school to create strong adventurers.for the future.

Basically, the school was created to protect the world even after his death, it was his last gift to this world.

Incidentally, the hero eloped with a certain, mysterious girl and left the school for his party. The party consisted of a thief, a cleric, an archer, a knight, and a wizard. Since they were the party of the hero, of course, they were all outstanding by themselves and created the main categories of the school.

The hero himself and the girl were never seen again. Some people say that they became ghosts and were still watching over the school this day, but only nymphs would know that for sure.

Our water nymph here, certainly never saw him, even though she was a nymph of a near river. It was actually right in front of the school entrance.

The river was practically isolating the school from the country, people say that the hero himself made it as a sign of independence. It wouldn’t surprise anyone since the hero could easily afford to buy off the country from the king.

Only one single bridge was the connection which let many aspiring (maybe) future adventurers enter the school. Every year, when the new ones came, the river seemed to glow and sparkle. As it was welcoming the freshmen.

This would make the river a graceful and elegant thing, the pride of the school. However, there was also the day before the new students came. The day was the old ones graduated.

The school ends in a season where the weather is remarkably bad, thunders and flashes of lightning were showing up frequently and the river stream becomes so strong, that it even splashes over the bridge. Every time a graduate would try to leave the school and become a proper adventurer, the water would push the people from the bridge and spit them out on the other side, the side which wasn’t school territory more. A rather tough farewell, indeed.

Naturally, the person responsible for this was no one else than the water nymph. She didn’t like to say goodbye and was always melancholic on the graduation day.

A further sad moment for her was, that those two days were the only ones where she was active. The other days she would just peacefully watch the nature or listen to the children who admired the school from the outskirts. Since there was nothing more than the bridge at the outside of the school walls and because the school was basically a big, flowering city at this point, there were only rarely people who would cross the bridge on other days.

Usually during the vacations, where few students decide to visit their families. The wouldn’t wear their school uniform on those days but the clothes which they had on the first day, so she didn’t dare to mess with them.

One day, a certain day where again people were leaving the school for their reasons, she somehow was floating under the bridge and was eavesdropping on them.

Thus she heard about the annual event for the wizard classes. An event which involved her very own element.

The examination to find wizards who were able to create water with their mana. The element of water was the rarest of all. The reason was that it wasn’t needed by humans anymore. Water was everywhere and during the age of the hero, humans and nymph learned to live together peacefully and stopped fighting each other, which had lasted since then.

Water nymphs are incidentally the most common nymph types, they would keep the rivers, lakes, and seas clean in exchange for something. Such deals became the only natural between them and humans.

Combat-wise, water magic doesn’t seem to be useful at all. It was possible to create ice with it, sure, but that was also possible with the element of fire. The wizard of the hero’s party was also called “Researcher of Magic” besides “Master of Elements”. I don’t think that the second one needs an explanation.

As a researcher, he tried to come up with new, innovative ideas of using magic and thus he figured out a way to completely replace the combat abilities of water magic with fire.

The only thing water magic was still good was the healing and cleaning of the body and soul. Nowadays there were many resorts led by nymphs who would do that for a cheap price.  

Because it was the wizard’s fault for making the water magic useless for humans, he decided to create an annual event dedicated to the water element.

That event should help people grasp the sparks of the element water. It was said he was chanting and cursing many spells on that pool. The water would never get dirty but swimming in it was a still a difficult task, since it was able to cause pain in many different locations of the body to trigger the ones own mana.

The nymph of the river heard all of this and decided without thinking twice that she had to witness that exam.

She, which had the water element as its own essence she was able to do even more than a normal human water magician was capable of.

She pressed her whole being in one single water drop, evaporated it and then slowly rose over the walls of the school to then became liquid again and dropped on the head of a female teacher.

(ㆆᴗㆆ)

After many hardships, she eventually reached the pool of the wizard. Incidentally, it didn’t harm her anyway since she already mastered the element of water to 100%. Which was even for a water nymph extraordinary. Maybe the river was also enchanted and made her, who was inhabiting it, stronger.

She was exhausted and was floating in the water while observing those boys who got their bodies examined.

As the essence of water, she was able to compress herself to anything which contained the element of water in one way, it was difficult to move through airs due to the many different mana convection which was emitting from the instructors as well from some strong students. Thus she chose the hard way with body contact.

Everytime her current subject would touch someone, she would go to that person until she found someone who was related to that rumored examination.

Eventually, she found the person who was in charge of judging today’s attendees. Still shocked by the last teachers which were having “their sweet time” together she wasn’t able to correctly recall the way he took.

She just found herself in the pool at some point, apparently, the judge checked the temperature and touched the water with his fingers which transferred her again to a big water spot which started to fill her again with energy.

And there she was now, watching all those young men preparing for their examination. Their muscular bodies illuminated by the bright sunlight. A truly glorious spectacle.

While drooling, if that is what you call it in the case of a water nymph and observing those Heracles-like bodies she noticed him.

He was one of them, a boy with black hair and cold, blank, blue eyes which were directly staring at her.

After a while, she understood that he wasn’t staring at her but at the pool itself. He looked determined even though he seemingly looked like the weakest of all those men.

He wasn’t talking, laughing or goofing around with the others which treated the examination like a piece of cake or just didn’t cared enough for it since the exam was about the element water which was certainly unnecessary for the eyes of that time.

The single boy was the only one who was staring at the water and clenching his fists. He seemed determined.

The instructor gave his signal and his body immersed in the pool. The others started to groan but still continued to swim, while he was just diving in deeper.

No, he wasn’t diving, he was sinking.

The nymph, who had the feeling of concern and curiosity welling inside deep within her, approached him and also created a connection to his mind. He wasn’t aware of it of course...

How was she able to do that? A nymph-like herself, someone who mastered every possible part of the magic element water, was naturally able to enter every kind of flow.

In other words, since she was that one nymph who was inhabiting the river which was blessed by the hero, she was constantly confronted with the magical flow of his mana which was accumulated there. A mana which was created of someone who could be considered as supreme in that world.

Thus it is a natural conclusion, that she herself cannot be an ordinary nymph but something far above that and is also able to do way more than just usual.

The thought process of humans can be also considered as a flow, there were naturally some which were still able to engage in combat without thinking but usually, everyone thinks, even unconsciously which makes them forget about what they thought and gives them the illusion that they weren’t thinking about anything.

A flow certainly exists regardless, as there were currents of mana emitted by everything, there were also the flows of mind and soul which were visible for those who mastered the essence of that special movement. Just try to create an image of it in your mind, what does come first?

She wanted to enter the mind of the boy immediately after she saw his eyes. They were blue like hers when she was in her human form but for some odd reason, they were emotionless, cold as his soul was seemed to be broken as well..

His thought process was unexpected. It was not the usual mind which just consists of random words appearing and disappearing and were pretty hard to make sense out sometimes.

It was as he was actually talking. As he was telling someone a story. It was a monologue of the current situation and it was also explaining the reason of his cold gaze by telling/spilling everything out from the beginning, again and again.

(´～`)

His memories, told by the gentle yet cold voice of his soul.

The rival of the wizard which only mastered the element of water.

His lineage.

A clan

Mockery because he didn’t possess any elemental powers.

Domestic violence, pain inflicted by his own family because he was a failure. His parents beat him up after he lost to his siblings for the 100th time, needless to say, that they attacked him with strong water attacks which made his lungs scream for air each time.

Loss of the people who he thought were his friends, everyone started to look away from him and some even started to bully him because he wasn’t able to defend himself anyway.

The girl he loved not only rejecting him and telling him about her love to that talent. A kid who was considered to be a prodigy and was beloved by everyone. The boy knew he didn’t possess the right to get angry or jealous thus he just apologized to the girl and wished her good luck.

Eventually, he got banned from the clan, left with nothing. The just threw him somewhere in the desert, a place which didn’t possess much water and for him which lived in the clan of a water mage, it was something really unsettling. He understood that they hoped him to die there.

He begged traveler for water and food, he didn’t cry because all his tears were already gone after the nightmare which was once his home.

Most of the travelers just ignored him, some gave him food and he always bowed deeply when they did that. One traveling merchant picked him up and saved him.

They traveled together and thus they boy not only gained knowledge besides the water magic. How to calculate, how to kill monsters even without any mana or physical strength but only with intelligence.

The merchant was a healthy, round man who always said that the lazy lifestyle would acquire a large amount of wisdom. Since the sloth was at the end always the smartest.

The boy still stayed thin because he knew how precious food was and how even a low amount of it was able to keep him alive for one day with certain techniques. Incidentally, the merchant was although his appearance the very person who taught him that.

After one year the boy left merchant after repaying him everything he earned on his own. The boy learned from his mastered and was able to give everything back to him. He thanked and apologized before he parted ways with the merchants.

The boy eavesdropped too on a certain day when he was making some deals, about a certain school, about the wizard from the hero’s party and that pool of magic.

An annual examination which was able to trigger the element of water which could reside within a person. If he truly was someone from that lineage he could finally acquire the element of water, the very element which caused him so much pain and suffering.

And now he was sinking deeper into the water and cursing the new pain which was caused by the wizard’s pool, it felt like bolts of lightning running through his whole body, shocking him everywhere. Without showing any hints of his suffering in his expression he just endured quietly.

It was then when the girl felt that something was off. Something didn’t feel right at all. At the moment the boy was just enduring the pain while he unconsciously recalled the pain he once endured at his home. That pain from the past seems to change frequently, describing sometimes something completely different, something which didn’t fit with the memories of the boy at all.

The nymph wanted to help the boy. She radiated a bit of her power through the body of the boy. It was the non-combat power of the element, a soothing and healing effect. She knew that the boy wouldn’t forgive her when she’d help him cheating but at the same time she wasn’t able to watch the boy suffering and blaming the element for his pain.

He felt that pain became a bit dull thus he started to move his arms and also swam no laps. The nymph followed him.

Nymphs are creatures who never do things for free, as already mentioned the always want something from the humans if they ask them to clean the rivers, lakes or seas. The nymph which inhabits the river in front of the school wasn’t different.

She pitied him, she suffered with him and she helped him. Now she wanted to have her repayment and because the boy had no idea that she was doing things behind the scenes, she decided what she wanted without actually communicating with him. She went deeper into his mind while hiding her presence.

She was curious about the irregularity in his memories thus she went in to not only read and hear his thoughts and voice of mind but actually also able to see his visions.

◑.◑

What she witnessed was more pain. More suffering but this time there were also other things involved. Many strange, disturbing and cruel things.

The boy just suffered all on his own, praying to nothing special and hoping for a miracle which would save him somehow, it never came.

Only one single lap and then it was over, the boy wasn’t feeling any exhaustion but only determination. At the same time, he was hoping that he wouldn’t pass out when exits the wet.

She, who witnessed everything vowed, that she would stay with him. She wasn’t sure if she could become his miracle but she vowed to become the one person who would stay with him, who would take away, even if it is only a bit, his terrible loneliness, always.

The last lap ended, obviously, they were just those few moments which feel like an eternity but time doesn’t care about that. In the end, they are mere moments and nothing more.

He panted heavily but was also satisfied with himself. Although he wasn’t thinking how good his time was nor how he was still able to stand properly without kissing the floor.

Obviously, the latter was yet again just a confirmation that even if he thought many things were painful and he hated them. They couldn’t be like that at the end because he was still healthy and alive after all.

The boy sighed and slowly headed to the showers not giving a single glance to the board where the grades of each swimmer were listed, for some odd reason the teacher liked to show all grades to everyone instead of keeping them private or at least discrete.

Naturally, he didn’t give a glance because he already knew for a fact that he did badly. There were only a few swimmers left which indicated that he was one of the last ones.

Before leaving the swimming hall, he turned around for one last time and smiled. He hid it with his hands because he didn’t like to show those rare occasions to others though. He thought while his chest began to warm up slightly:

“Gotcha! I hope we’ll get along and thanks for taking care of me from now on.”

(σ≧∀≦)σ  ＜(。_。)＞

[terrancedkennedy]

The fundamental lesson of the forces governing scaling startups

  Idealistic founders believe they will break the mold when they scale, and not turn into a “typical big company.” By which they mean: Without stupid rules that assume employees are dumb or evil, without everything taking ten times longer than it should, without wall-to-wall meetings, without resorting to hiring anything less than the top 1% of the talent pool, and so on.

That is, keeping the positive characteristics of a tiny organization, avoiding the common problems of a larger organization, by preserving their existing values and processes, just doing it with more people, and figuring it out as we go along, exactly as we always have.

Why do they never succeed? Why is this impossible when you have 500 employees? What are the fundamental forces that transform organizations at scale?

From Brittle to Robust

A “team of one” is the fastest, most efficient team, as measured by “output per person.”  Communication and decision-making occupy the minimum possible time. And maybe the person working on that thing is a “hero” — working extended hours and experienced with the problem space. Small companies operate this way by necessity, and it works!  It’s a big reason why they move quickly.

But, an illness takes the velocity of the product or quality of support from heroic to zero. And if that person leaves, you’ve just lost six months to hire and get back up to speed on that thing.  Or nine months because there weren’t any processes and documentation in place — again because it was just one person, who didn’t need that stuff, because after all we’re moving so quickly!

Or it’s fatal because that was a co-founder. “Founder trouble” is a leading cause of startup death (though data also show that companies with only one founder are more likely to fail, so the conclusion is just that startups are just always likely to fail!)

A team of one is brittle, but fast.  When you’re small, this is a good trade-off, because speed is critical for combating the things that are constantly about to kill the company.  When you’re large, and you might have 15-25% annual employee turnover, not to mention illness, vacation, and family, the same structure would sink you immediately.

So, no project can have fewer than, say, three people dedicated to it, plus people management and possibly some form of Product or Project Management. But that team of four will not be 4x more productive than the one-person team; per-person productivity goes down in exchange for robustness and continuity.

On the other hand, while the small company loses 9 months to the loss of a key employee, or even implodes, the big company is the steady turtle that adds thousands of customer per month like clockwork and wins the race.

Predictability

When you’re small there’s no need to predict when the feature will ship. Marketing isn’t scheduling a launch and recruiting isn’t timing the start-dates of the next 50 hires in customer service and sales. This means you can — and should! — optimize myopically for speed-to-market.

Small companies brag about their speed as an advantage, but it’s easy to see why the larger company actually has a massive advantage. Sure, when WP Engine launches a new product, the marketing department needs predictability for the launch date, but that’s because it’s a highly-skilled, well-funded group, which explodes with press, events, campaigns, social media, and newsletters, grabbing more attention in a single week than a smaller company might garner in a year. There’s also an armed globally-dispersed Sales and Support teams, so we’re selling to our 70,000 existing customers as well as thousands of new customers per month, which means we’ll end up adding more new revenue in one month than a small company will take in over a whole year.

The tradeoff, however, is predictability. We didn’t line up that press and have those sales materials and ensure code-quality high enough to scale on day one, without predictability. Predictability means going slower. Predictability requires more estimation (takes time), coordination (takes time), planning (takes time), documentation (takes time), and adjusting the plan when it inevitably unfolds differently from the prediction (takes time).

Predictability is also required for healthy team-growth. Consider the timeline of adding a technical support team member. First, Recruiting is casting about for potential candidates. Then scheduling and performing interviews. Then waiting for them to quit their job and take a week off. Then new-employee-orientation. Then classroom training. Then paired up with senior folks on the floor as they ramp up their skills and comfort. Then finally, after (say) four months, they’re up to speed.

Since that takes four months, we have to be able to predict the demand for technical support at least four months in advance, because we have to be hiring for that future demand right now. If we under-estimate, our support folks get overwhelmed with too much work, their quality of life suffers, and service to each customer suffers; if we over-estimate, we have too many people which is a cost penalty. Of course, the latter is a better failure mode than the former, but both are sub-optimal, and the solution is predictability.

“The future is inherently unpredictable,” insists the small company, spurred on by Lean and Agile mindsets. Indeed, blue-sky invention and execution are hard to predict. But this is also a self-fulfilling prophecy; to insist the future is unpredictable is to ignore the work that could make it more predictable, which of course makes it in fact unpredictable to that person.

Small companies don’t have the data, customers, institutional knowledge, expertise, and often the personal experience and skillset to predict the future, so they are usually correct in saying it’s impossible. But it’s not impossible in principle, it’s impossible for them. At scale, it becomes required. Not because Wall Street demands it, or investors demand it, or any other throw-away derogatory excuse made by unpredictable organizations, but because it’s critical for healthy scaling.

Materiality Threshold

If Google launches a new product that generates $10,000,000/year in revenue, is that good? No, it’s a colossal failure. They could have taken the tens of millions of dollars that the product cost to develop, and made their existing operation just 0.01% more effective, and made the same amount of money.

At nearly $100B/year in revenue, Google can only consider products which have the potential to generate $1B/year in revenue as an absolute floor, with the potential to grow to $10B/year if things go better than expected. Things like YouTube, Cloud, and self-driving cars.

This principle is called the “Materiality Threshold,” i.e. what is the minimum contribution a project must deliver for it to be material to the business.

With a small business, the materiality threshold is near $0. A new feature that helps you land just a few new customers this month is worth doing. A marketing campaign that adds two sign-ups/week is a success. Almost anything you do, counts. That’s easy, and it feels good to be moving forward. But it’s only easy because the bar is so low.

The financial success of the larger company dictates a non-trivial materiality threshold. This is difficult. Even a modest-sized company will need millions in revenue from new products, maybe tens of millions in the optimistic case. Very few products can generate that sort of revenue, whether invented by nimble, innovative startups or stately mature companies. As proof, consider that the vast majority of startups never reach a $10M/year run-rate, even with decent products and extraordinarily dedicated and capable teams.

Yet, it’s the job of a Product Manager at that mid-sized company to invent, discover, design, implement, and nurture those products — something that most entrepreneurs will never succeed at. Tough job!

Recruiting

Employee #2 will join a startup for the experience. Even at a significant salary cut, and even if the company fails — the most likely outcome. It’s worth it for the stories, the influence, the potential, the thrill, the control, the camaraderie, the cocktail-party-talk.

Employee #200 won’t join for those reasons. Employee #200 will have a different risk-profile regarding their life and career. Employee #200 will be interested in different sorts of problems to solve, like the ones listed in this document instead of the ones where you’re trying to understand why 7 people bought the software but the next 3 didn’t. Employee #200 will not work for a pay-cut.

Small companies could view this as an advantage, and certainly it’s advantageous to recruit amazing people at sub-market rates. But there are dozens if not hundreds of employees at WP Engine today who are much more skilled in their area of expertise than I’ve ever met at a small startup. Why? Because after developing that expertise, they find it’s only possible and enjoyable to apply their skills within a larger environment.

For example, there are advanced marketing techniques that would never make sense with a smaller company, that are fascinating, challenging, and impactful to the top line at a larger company. There are talented people who love that challenge and would hate going “back to the Kindergarten of marketing” scratching out an AdWords campaign with a $2000/mo budget or assembling the rudiments of SEO or just trying to get a single marketing channel to work or being called a “growth hacker” because they finagled a one-time bump in traffic.

But, this has implications around compensation, how you find that talent, and why that person wants to work at your company instead of the one down the block who can pay a little bit more. Therefore, it’s critical to have a mission that is genuinely important, have meaningful and interesting work to do, connect everyone’s work to something bigger than any of us. These matter even more at scale, because they’re the anchor and the primary reason why talent will join and stay.

  Communication

With four people in a company, any information that needs to be shared can be told to just three other people. Everyone can know everything. If there’s a 5% chance of significant misunderstanding, that event doesn’t happen often.

With four hundred people, it’s never true that a piece of information can be reliably communicated, in a short period of time. A 5% chance of misunderstanding means twenty people are confused. In software terminology, communication challenges scale as O(n2).

“Slack” is not the answer. “Email” is not the answer. (Your emails are probably misinterpreted 40% of the time, by the way.) Repetition is the answer, in different formats, at different times, by many leaders, and even still it’s never 100%.

Technology & Infrastructure

Managing 10,000 virtual servers in the Cloud Era sounds easy. Automate everything, then any process that works for 100 servers, will work for 10,000 servers just by doing the same thing repeatedly — exactly the thing computers are excellent at.

It never works like that. Reddit took 18 months to get the “number of likes” to work at scale. StackOverflow took 4 years to get everything converted to HTTPS. Wired did that conversion in a “mere” 18 months. Everything is hard at scale.

What are the patterns in those stories?

One is that scale makes rare things common. Rare things are hard to predict and can be hard to prevent. Often they’re hard to even identify and sometimes impossible to reproduce. This is fundamentally difficult.

Another is continuity or compatibility with existing technology. New companies get to start from scratch, but at-scale companies must transform. New companies like to make fun of large companies for how hard it is to transform, neglecting that the cause of the difficulty might also be generating $100,000,000 in revenue.

Another is bottlenecking. All hardware and software systems have bottlenecks. At small scale, you don’t run into any bottlenecks, or at least the ones you do can be solved with simple techniques like increasing capacity. Eventually something difficult breaks and you have to rearchitect the stack to solve it. Even something simple like converting HTTP links to HTTPS or updating “number of likes” in real-time, becomes a monumental architectural challenge.

Not only does this slow down development, it adds investment. There will be entire teams who focus on infrastructure, scaling, deploys, cost-management, development processes, and so forth, none of which are directly visible to or driven by the customer, but which are necessary to manage the complexities of scale.

Risk-mitigation

For a small company, the most likely cause of death is suicide. Usually it’s starvation — can’t get enough customers (distribution) to pay enough money for long enough (product/market fit). But also things like founders splitting up, not getting enough traction to self-fund or to secure the next round of financing, having to go back to a day job, and so on.

At scale, the risks are completely different. There is very low risk that WP Engine will not sign up thousands of new customers this month. Other risks, however, are not only possible, but likely. Addressing those risks head-on, is required for a healthy and sustainable business that can last for many years.

Take the risk of business continuity during a disaster scenario. What if all availability zones of Amazon in Virginia are disabled for a week? How quickly could we get all our customers back up and running? Would that be true even though thousands of other businesses are also trying to spin up servers in other Amazon data centers at the same time? Could we communicate all this with our customers quickly and simply, so that our support team isn’t overwhelmed by repeating the same message to nearly a hundred thousand justifiably-worried customers?

Risk-mitigation can even result in growth. Serious customers want to see that their vendors understand and mitigate risk; this maturity becomes a selling point. That’s why enterprise suppliers are constantly flouting their compliance with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 and all the rest. Small companies make fun of those things as being unnecessary at best or a false sense of security at worst, but while they’re busy making that point, the larger companies are busy signing three-year multi-million dollar clients.

Early on, you do not need a disaster-recovery plan. That won’t be the thing that will kill the business, and your customers will understand if a young business is subject to that sort of risk. Later on, this becomes critical, and worth investing in.

The fundamental challenge of scaling: Embracing and implementing the shift from Small to Large

These forces cause larger companies to be fundamentally different than small ones. This isn’t a bad thing or a good thing. It’s a different thing.

Some idealistic founders believe the root cause of scaling issues is the “command-and-control” organizational structure. But none of the examples above make reference to any organizational structure. It’s universal. This is why Holacracy and Teal Organizations do not solve these problems in practice. It could be a fantastic idea to experiment with organizational structure, but the fundamental forces above will not be eliminated through recombination of roles and organization.

Scaling is hard, the road is foggy and bendy, it lasts for years, the set of people you need might be different, and no one emerges unscathed. So, it is not a sign of disaster if you have difficulty wrestling with these forces. Everyone does.

Disaster is when a company is scaling, but the leaders don’t appreciate these forces, don’t work constantly to morph the organization accordingly, don’t bring in experienced talent, decide they can figure it all out as they go along without help. Rather, it should mean new people, new roles, new values, new processes, new recruiting, new stories, new constraints, new opportunities.

Too many founders and leaders want to believe that “What got us here is what’s important and unique about us, and thus we should preserve all of it. Other companies fail because they ‘act like big companies,’ but we’ll avoid all that because we’re smarter than they were. As evidence of our acuity, just look at our success thus far. We will continue to succeed in the future as we have in the past.”

But they’re wrong.

There should be a few values that are kept constant, that’s true. Otherwise none of it means anything. But the details must change.

Many founders and leaders can’t make the shift. This always hurts the company, and sometimes kills the company. The world is full of those horror stories. It’s sad, because it’s an avoidable waste of opportunity and sometimes hundreds of person-years of effort.

Don’t become one of those cautionary tales.