#don’t ask the price it was a compulsive spending

[zarpasuave]

I’ll post an art catch-up later but for now marvel at the sheer beauty of my Ningguang

[thesoulprophecies]

Twelve People Who Visit Bookshops.

I have to confess, I haven’t read Shaun Bythell’s ‘Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops’ so this list may have some similarities to his book, however the list below is based on my own observations from working in a large second-hand bookshop. Please note this list is loosely based on reality and is not meant to be taken too seriously.

1] The Box Rummagers

These customers are a curious bunch, when they see an open box, they have a strange compulsion to rifle through it.  Sometimes this is a hindrance to the bookshop staff as the box rummager may be drawn to boxes of books that haven’t been processed or priced yet. Box rummagers also don’t appear to care where these boxes are, and are quite happy to sit in the middle of the floor in order to look through what can only be in their minds, a cardboard treasure box.

2] The First Timers

The First Timers are easy to spot, they usually walk into the shop with expressions of pure amazement and sometimes confusion. They will also ask loudly ‘Is this place a library?’

3] The Lost Husband Seekers

Usually sporting a frown or a look of confusion, these customers often come in with a bag of goodies they have bought from a different shop and offer an explanation for their arrival by saying; ‘I’m just looking for my husband’. Sometimes they may ask questions like, ‘Has a tall man walked in here?’ To which there is no adequate reply as there are often a lot of different customers browsing the shelves. The Lost Husband will sometimes hear their other half and offer some help in locating them by shouting out from their position.

4] The Annualists

These customers know exactly what they’re doing and exactly where they are going. They will spend hours browsing the shelves collecting armfuls of books they wish to purchase. Sometimes they may start a pile of books at the desk and add to it as they go round the shop. Once they are ready to pay, they will inform the staff that they make a special visit to the shop every year and may confess to saving their money especially for this one visit.

5] The Cafe Hunters

This may not happen in every bookshop, but we advertise coffee on our sign and most people assume that coffee equals cafe, it does not. We have a lovely coffee machine that makes very good coffee, but we do not have a cafe. The mistaken Cafe Hunter will stride in with a hopeful expression, look around and ask; ‘Do you have a cafe?’ When you inform them that you have a coffee machine, they immediately look disappointed and walk back out to find a cafe.

6] The One Book To Rule Them All Pursuers

These customers have a one-track mind and only one book they wish to find. Sometimes they have been looking for this one book for years, others are looking for a recent new release that we may or may not have. Often these customers can’t remember the exact title or the author of the book they are looking for, as it may be a book from their distant childhood. Other customers seem genuinely confused that you don’t know the book that they are talking about, or don’t have it in stock, Many people don’t realise that knowing every book is an impossible feat, approximately three hundred thousand new books are published every year in the United States alone.

7] The Desperate Child Distractors

Parents, grandparents, or aunts and uncles who are looking after the children for the day, will come in looking exhausted and relieved that they have finally found somewhere that might keep the children occupied for ten minutes. When we inform then that there is indeed a children’s section downstairs for young kids and upstairs for older kids, they smile weakly and march straight to the back to set up a temporary camp in the children’s section. Toddlers are especially entertaining as they will often swipe books that are far too advanced for them as their guardians usher them to the back of the shop.

8] The Book Dealer

The Book Dealer will make a beeline for the collectors’ books and then spend anywhere from fifteen minutes to a couple of hours carefully examining the rare books. If they do decide to purchase some books, they will always announce they are part of the book trade.

9] The Rainy Day Explorer

These customers are trying to escape the weather. They are usually on holiday somewhere in the area and have sought out an activity they can do that is inside when the weather turns bad. The Rainy Day Explorer is usually delighted with big bookshops and will spend hours inside browsing the shelves. They will often buy books that they didn’t know they were looking for.

10] The Short On Time Visitors

These customers don’t have much time to waste and go straight to the desk to ask any staff member if they have a particular book in stock. Sometimes these customers have a list of books they are looking for. If you can find their book, these customers are usually pleased and happy to pay and leave as quickly as possible.

11] The One Lap Sprinters

Not really customers as The One Lap Sprinters don’t tend to buy anything. They come into the shop and do a lap of the shop and walk back out again. No one knows why they have come in or what they are looking for, although sometimes they are silent Cafe Hunters.

12] The Bookshop Professional

The Bookshop Professional shops regularly in bookshops and knows the drill. Sometimes they ask for directions but mostly they locate the areas they want to search and find a book or two they wish to buy. If they have more time, they will spend longer browsing all the shelves and picking up whatever catches their eye.

[metamoonshots]

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[lebenspurpur]

jealous slashers

|Michael|

Michael didn't even know what jealousy was before he experienced it for the first time. Before he got to know you he didn't care if anyone took what was his. In the asylum he wasn't even allowed to have personal stuff so why get jealous over having things taken away?

So what is this feeling he gets when you talk to someone else?

You have to understand that Michael's jealousy isn't based on certain actions like someone flirting with you. Michael gets jealous over everyone who even looks at you.

You're his obsession, not anyone else's. The person breathing the same air as you might as well die. He finally has something that he "owns". He is not going to let it get taken away from him.

I don't even think Michael cares much about what you do. Right now he is too fascinated by you to really hurt you anyway. But don't push your luck or his hand might just find your throat.

|Vincent Sinclair|

Vincent has two kinds of jealousy.

The first one involves "tourists" who come to Ambrose. If any of the victims flirts with you they might end up dead sooner than planned. That proves to be quite the problem since you sometimes lure people into the town and for that you need to be quite flirty.

While Vincent understands that, he will still make sure to show the person that you're his and not anyone else's.

If Vincent is that kind of jealous he's more angry than anything else and will be rather clingy the following days.

The second jealousy exists because of his twin. Vincent has been jealous of Bo his whole life and when he sees you two laughing he can't help the bitter feelings inside of him. In that state of mind he often locks himself in the basement and wallows in self-pity. It will need quite a bit of coaxing to get him out of there.

He knows that this isn't your fault, don't worry. He just needs to get over his insecurities before he can talk to you again.

|Bo Sinclair| (tad of NSFW)

You will immediately know if Bo's jealous. He gets very aggressive and if looks could kill whoever is talking to you would drop dead.

Bo might be one of the only slashers who actually blame you in case of him becoming jealous. He won't physically hurt you but his words do more than enough damage.

Bo is a big fan of kidnapping the person that made him jealous and then making out with you in front of him. If he's in a very jealous mood sex in front of the victim is not something he says no to.

Afterwards he might even apologize for being so pissed. He was just scared to lose you.

|Lester Sinclair|

Same as Vincent, Lester has been jealous of Bo his whole life.

If you spend more time talking to him he will not get angry though. Lester is not a very aggressive person. He'll think about it for a while and grow more distant during that.

As soon as he has come to a decision Lester will simply ask you, with a lot of fear in his eyes if I may say so, if you're going to leave him for Bo.

Please give him a lot of affection afterwards. Lester just wants to be sure that you won't leave him.

|Baby Firefly|

Baby rarely gets jealous. She gladly shares her love for you. The more people, the more love am I right?

If she ever got jealous she'll ask you about it. Baby is not someone who broods about things like that. It involves both of you so why shouldn't she just talk about it to you?

If you reassure your feelings towards her, she'll be happy again. Baby is just glad to know that your strongest feelings still only belong to her.

|Otis Driftwood| (NSFW)

You'll know when Otis is jealous. He is even grumpier than usual. But also horny.

Otis loves showing you off. However, he doesn't like sharing. So if he praises your curves to one of his friends and that person's eyes linger on you for one or two seconds too long, Otis will get angry.

The chances of him fucking you in front of the corpse of whoever made him jealous are very high so be prepared.

He might still be grumpy afterwards but give him some time. He trusts you, he just doesn't trust other men. According to him they're all horny assholes and he just wants you to be safe.

|Billy Loomis|

Imagine every superstition about high school boys getting jealous. That's what happens.

Billy gets angry, then sad. He doesn't know what to do instead of confronting you but as usual his emotions get in the way.

So yes, his confrontation might get more emotional than he planned but like every other argument it'll help with your relationship. If a person gets angry about something, they care about it. Now you know that you smiling at other guys makes him insecure and maybe know how to deal with other guys and him.

Explain that you won't leave him and Billy will be fine again.

|Stu Macher|

Stu gets silent and serious, something that doesn't happen all too often.

You'll notice it pretty quickly but you might have to pressure him a little before he tells you what's wrong.

Maybe you can guess it as well. There aren't a lot of things that make Stu grow silent so figuring out why he's feeling the way he is, isn't difficult.

Just drown him in attention and affection the next days. It will make him feel so loved. In that case you both can get over his jealousy without talking about it.

However you should discuss it at last once. Make it clear that you're not going to leave him and that it's your right to talk to other people besides him. He might be the only slasher that understands that certain argument.

|Brahms Heelshire|

Ah yes. The most jealous of them all.

Brahms has abandonment anxiety. If he's jealous of someone he'll get rid of them. Nothing you say will change that.

While he trusts your words, his jealousy is a compulsion and one he can't get rid of. He feels bad for feeling that way but he can't change it.

It will need years of convincing to change his way of thinking and acting. Brahms needs a lot of "education" when it comes to his emotions, but that might be the biggest problem yet.

|Josef|

Josef is a functioning adult yet he doesn't know how to deal with jealousy.

He will just do what feels right and that is confessing to you, which is the right decision.

Josef trusts you when you tell him that you would never leave him and most of the times that is already enough to calm him.

If he really wants to make sure, he'll and i'm not kidding propose. If anyone sees the ring, they'll quickly stop approaching you and that's all he wants.

Obviously marrying you is quite the price as well so really, he has everything he needs.

|Thomas Hewitt|

Dear Tommy here feels a mix of insecure and angry. How is he supposed to act now?

His first instinct is to hold you closer, maybe sit very close to you and place a threatening hand on you thigh to let the person across of you know who you belong to.

Obviously you'll quickly understand why he's acting that way.

Please explain to him that he's your partner, no one else. Thomas might get emotional over the whole thing. He gets it if you don't want to be in a relationship with someone scarred like him. He might even tell you to leave him for someone better.

You have to work a bit to lift his spirits again. A few hugs and cuddles might already do, Thomas just wants to feel loved right now. After all the trusts and loves you.

[readerbell]

I saw a comment that said Lan should have seen Nynaeve’s dislike of Moiraine as a red flag. I’m sure Nynaeve has a ton of toxic behaviours. I wish she’d take a few chill pills too but one big reason he’d overlook it is that Nynaeve treats him as a human being when Moiraine starts to (unwittingly) treat him like an object. Lan was saddled with duty before he could walk. Choice and regard are two of the most prized things in the world to him. They become even more important when cracks in his relationship with Moiraine begin to show.

Spoilers until book 14 of The Wheel of Time so look away.

Book 1: Lan & Nynaeve discuss marriage. Lan says he won’t make her a widow. Their fledgling relationship is seemingly over. Rand pretends to sleep. That night he dreams of an onion.

Book 2: Moiraine does the thing. The little cracks in Lan’s walls that Moiraine thinks Nynaeve has been planting flowers in are blown out by this decision. The fact that they don’t even have have a conversation about it beforehand makes it worse. Sure, he’d make an objectively stupid choice, but it was his choice to make. It’s a sucky situation. Moiraine is trying to do what she thinks is right but it makes Lan, who felt like a partner for 20 years, feel like an object that can be passed from person to person.

Book 3: Lan & Nynaeve spend the whole book apart. Moiraine makes a comment about what the future holds for Lan. She even uses the word package in her joke. It’s cruel & dehumanising even if those two things were unintended.

Book 4: Lan hears what Nynaeve is planning to do and wants to go with her. Nynaeve refuses him. She doesn’t want him to be saddled with the guilt of breaking a vow. A warder can always ask for his bond to be released but she never even suggests that to him. The choice of what he is to do is his.

Book 5: By the end of this book, Lan is more or less under Compulsion to find Myrelle. So much so he gives his terrible advice to Rand while he’s on the move. He can’t even stay a second longer.

Book 7: We see Lan again. He’s depressed as hell. He’s been sexually assaulted by Myrelle in a relationship he had no choice being in. He’s alive. Barely. He goes to Nynaeve suicidal and with his self-esteem in tatters. She sees that and sees it as something that can be healed, not something inherent in him.

Books 8-10: They spend a lot of time in the background ‘being married.’

Book 11: How much choice means to Lan comes up in something so mundane. Their Sea Folk marriage vows give Nynaeve the right to give commands in public. He has the same right in private. Nynaeve mentions in passing that he won’t even take his muddy boots off in private if she asks because he refuses to be commanded. It’s such an off-hand comment but it shows how much Lan revels in making his own decisions. The moment he has a semblance of choice he’s ready to hold on to it for all it’s worth. Then we see the biggest reason why he would overlook Nynaeve’s dislike of Moiraine in play. Lan wants to go off to fight at Tarwin’s Gap. Objectively, it’s a stupid thing to do but it’s important to him. She respects his choice and focuses, not on forbidding him but, on making sure he succeeds.

Book 13: Moiraine absolutely intended Lan’s bond to pass over to Nynaeve one day but what if Nynaeve died before then? She came close during her test… What then? Lan is sentenced to what? Myrelle?

Book 14: Lan succeeds. All it took was the right support. After everything he’s been through, I’m not surprised that Lan and Moiraine end up where they do. Moiraine absolutely had his happiness in mind but the fact he gets there is more a testament to him and Nynaeve than it is to her decision. That he even stands in the same tent as Moiraine in the end is a respectful memory of what their relationship once was. The price of the happiness she intended for him was their very relationship.

[hephaestiions]

flood.

for the @drarrymicrofic prompt: flood. this is decidedly not a microfic, i am an embarrassment to the community. it is also once again, 3.08 am, so i have no idea how much sense this makes and no patience to wait till morning to post. here goes.  

TW: parent death, hospitals, seizures (non-graphic). 

The day Mother dies, things keep happening one after another.

Draco has a vague understanding— distant and loose, sand through his fingers in Santorini— that things happen one after another everyday. But knowing something all your life doesn’t really compare to the brutal moment of understanding it, really understanding it, for the first time.

For one, Mother died. Her heart gave out after one last seizure that Draco wasn’t there to see. He’d gone down to the cafeteria for a breakfast muffin, which in retrospect didn’t taste good enough for the price he paid. But then again, the last seizure couldn’t have looked very much different from the first or the twenty seventh or the one before the last, by which point Draco had lost count and sensitivity to the vision of his mother’s body curling in on itself over and over. Repeat a word enough times and it stops making sense and all that. The Mediwitches arranged her to look peaceful— possible finally— folding her hands and shutting her eyelids, stretching the skirt of the paper thin Mungo’s gown across the width of the bed like massive butterfly wings in an exhibit, polka dots and all.  

Within three hours, the solicitor sends a letter so oily that Draco compulsively washes his hands after reading it, the curling letters of venerated father’s dutiful wife aftereffects he can’t blink enough to rid himself of. The Mediwitches bring him document after document, three separate Healers pop by to offer their effusive condolences and the patient in the room next to Mother’s comes in to tell him that he had been a very good son indeed, to be so patient in his her dying days. She says it with a trembling lower lip and too-bright eyes and Draco gets the distinct feeling there is someone out there who ignores the memories of a sweet old lady with a walker she can’t quite wrangle into submission while going about their business. There’s a part of him that sneers. There’s a part of him that says fair. A third part says, I wish and Draco has to physically grip the armrests of his uncomfortable chair to not smack himself in the temple.

He smiles at the old lady, kisses her hand and signals behind her back for a passing Mediwitch to take her away.

Pansy pops up at noon in a navy suit Draco suspects she borrowed from Blaise. “I have a conference in the evening,” she says, and Draco nods. “I’ll cancel it,” she adds, and Draco shakes his head.

“It’s all under control, I assure you,” he tells her and she snorts, loud and rude and comforting, in his face.

“I assure you,” she repeats, mimicking him. “Draco, I am not your supervisor.” A few seconds of staring ensues before she tacks on, “I just don’t want you to have to do this alone.”

“I’m not—” he blurts out, before realising he is, he very much is, he has been for a week and a half, and cuts himself off. “It’s under control,” he repeats.

“So he hasn’t been around?” she asks, looking about as though expecting someone to spring from the aggressively artificial bushes in the lobby. “The bloody arsehole.”

“It really isn’t—” his chest feels tight with the intercrossing wires of too many aches, “—his place anymore.”

“Is that what you’re telling yourself?” she asks because she’s a cow without manners.

“My mother just died. I haven’t been telling myself much, I didn’t have the time.”

Pansy doesn’t have the grace to look chastened. “How long have you been here?”

“Not for very— oh.”

“Draco?”

He blinks at her. “Four days, I believe. That’s, oh. That’s quite a while, isn’t it? I thought— I hadn’t— realised.”

“Oh, for fuck’s—!”

He looks down at himself, clothes he can’t remember changing into, hands that won’t stop shaking though he can’t feel them, feet that feel swollen and raw.

“Go home,” Pansy says. Her palm against his cheek is warm and smooth and Draco notices, for the first time in a long time, how much he wants it to be large and calloused. “Darling, Draco, go home.”

“It’ll be empty.”

He hates it when her face goes that pinched. “I’m cancelling the conference.”

For a moment, Draco wants to give in. Go home with her, let her fuss and make him soup and peel him an orange and stay up the night with him, pouring out glasses of red. But he can’t.

“It’s under control,” he says again, and hopes she won’t push. She doesn’t, because she’s Pansy.

—

The first thing he notices is that the wireless is on, something about the Glasgow Cathcart by-election turnouts crackling through the speaker. Draco spends a prolonged moment wondering if four days of sleeping around pain potions has done osmotic damage to his brain. Labour holds, Draco hears before the rest is cut of in a sputter of static. The silence in the room is oppressively heavy. Harry’s hair looks messier than ever.

“Who told you?” Draco asks.

Harry’s brow crinkles. “Told me?”

“My mother—” Harry looks concerned. Draco feels wrong-footed. “No one told you? Why are you here?”

“Narcissa—?”

“She’s— No one told you. You’re— she died this morning. Heart failure. I was at Mungo’s.”

Harry’s expression goes from concern to shock to horror to a sort of complicated blankness so pathetically fake that Draco wants to shake it off. He doesn’t, standing by the Floo instead, awkward and uncertain. Harry’s here. Harry didn’t know Mother died but he’s here. Which brings him back to—

“Why are you here?”

“Because I couldn’t stay away,” Harry says, like it’s simple. He shrugs. “I tried and I couldn’t, so I came here, but you weren’t there. And I thought I’d leave, but then it looked like you hadn’t been here in a while, so I—” he breaks off. “I, well. I cleaned up. There was dust everywhere, and the post was piling up and I looked in the kitchen and you didn’t have any food, so I— Oh, God, Draco, God, are you crying?”

Draco blinks, and yes, he is in fact crying, that is what the burning in his eyes was all this while, his face is wet with it. Once the tears start, they don’t stop, soaking the skin of his throat with rivulets of salt water. Harry couldn’t stay away. Harry checked his post. He’s here.

His knees buckle and Harry’s over in a flash, holding him up and close, whispering sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry in his ear.

“I didn’t see her,” Draco says, muffled into the fist clenched in Harry’s shirt. “When she died, I was— I wasn’t there. I didn’t see her, she died alone. Merlin, I spent four days in Mungo’s and she still— she still died alone. Harry, I—”

And there, there’s the hand threading through his hair, curving around the side of his face. He’s missed this, fuck, every lonely moment sitting in uncomfortable chairs while his mother wasted away before him, he’s missed this. He allows himself to remember her now, pale and still and small, remembers the old forgotten lady in the room next to hers, remembers the terrible breakfast muffin that left crumbs all down his front and the Healer’s drawn face when she told him. Harry pulls him closer still.

Mother’s dead. Mother’s dead. The dam breaks.

[sexyglances]

The Ways in Which Hyejin Moves Forward and Dusik Steps Back

The spotlight is often on Hyejin and how she keeps drawing lines in her relationships with others, but what is also narratively noteworthy is that even though Dusik rebukes Hyejin for stepping back (and her seeming lack of compassion because of her sometimes biting or harsh words), it's the very same habits he criticizes her for are also often the same ones he engages in with her as well. But since he does it with an air of hapless helpfulness, he's easily forgiven, or not seen as prickly as her own defensiveness.

Dusik tells Hyejin to cross lines freely, yot always keeps his own boundaries in all his relationships with people. He accuses her of being narrow-minded in how she deals with people, yet he is always trying to tell her to do this the way he thinks is best (and his way of doing things is not always the best! For example, Hyejin was correct about giving Juri space away from her dad for the night). For all the times that he has admonished Hyejin for drawing the line when lines aren't necessary, he takes just as many steps back when she moves forward. Of course, she is obviously emotionally guarded as well, but she does have the courage to take the lead when it comes to her feelings. It's only when Dusik doesn't meet her back halfway that she falls back as well and has her own bluster about lines and boundaries that should not be crossed. She is reacting to his own guardedness in kind.

Another thing Dusik says is that one should be direct and "apologize for spilling milk rather than avoiding [the people it affected]," yet he deflects and comes up with (*ahem* the dumbest) excuses as to why he lied to Hyejin about their kiss. For all his bluster, he too, is used to creating space and distance between him and other people. He may be capable in many ways of practicality and usefulness, and he may be the person who other people turn to when they need help or are in trouble, and he may be the go-to person to fix any issue someone else has, but the issue he needs to learn to fix the most is his fear of his own vulnerability. And the first step to doing that is getting over his own mental block of allowing someone into his life where he might want to rely on someone else as much as they can rely on him.

Dusik's most overarching dichotomy is how wants to be a savior but cannot accept the possibility of being saved himself. He is incredibly uncomfortable when he is the one being taken care of and being put in the position of being reached toward rather than him being the one reaching forward. If he reaches forward first then he can set the parameters and maintain control of the situation. He has the control to draw back whenever he wants rather than being at the mercy of the whims and desires of another person. Since he can only control himself, he only wants to rely on himself. We see Hyejin reach forward over and over again, but the power dynamic in which she reaches forward has changed as well, as she goes from being someone that needs him (when she first showed up to town and needed help), to someone that wants to spend time with him (looking for him, creating situations to see each other and spend time together), to someone that requires more of him (needs him to verbally recognize his attraction to her), and because she is the one trying to move things along then that is where Dusik starts to falter in response. She's not just reaching forward, she's pushing.

Hyejin is the one that directly confronts their feelings and asks if he likes her, she's the one that kisses first, she's the one who presumably moves from the bed during their drunken night to be next to him (hence why she did not have her own pillow on the floor). Even when she literally reaches forward to wipe the sauce off his mouth, he is taken aback and uncomfortable. Not that she did anything wrong, but he has a complex about being taken care of. He'd rather pull every relationship back into transactional territory as a way of keeping himself from looking (being?) too emotionally attached than admit emotional dependence in any way. If everything he does is a favor or has a price or is transactional in any way, then he can live in his self-reliant fantasy. He obviously does harbor a lot of feelings because he is often passionate despite his clear desire to maintain a cool outer demeanor, but it's not something he wants the world to see. It's his main defense mechanism--to separate himself from others and deny any deeper feelines that can't be explained away with whimsicality.

If Dusik keeps himself from being too attached to anyone else then he can live in denial forever never recognizing his loneliness or acknowledging the fledgling desire for anything more. Again, he has this compulsion to be the one that is needed, and not to be the one that needs. Companionship, equality, dependence--they scare him. He wants to be an island of one, creating his own ecosystem of reliability, providing anything he might need for himself. But a healthy ecosystem cannot thrive without the symbiosis that others provide. A person needs real, reciprocal relationships to survive, but Dusik is in deep denial about that. So he creates artificial distance between him and other people.

And not only does he create these distances, he also creates unequal footing between them. Obviously, this is visually illustrated by Dusik catching both Hyejin and Sunghyun from falling, but also how he carried the grandma on his back when she hurt her ankle, and even how he usually wears an apron when he goes to the café so as to literally illustrate how he is hired to be there, even though not even the owner wears an apron while working. Dusik instinctually creates this separation as a way to shield himself from emotional attachment. Now, does this work? Of course not! He is absolutely completely emotionally attached to everyone in Gongjin and also already to Hyejin. You can see it in how he always shows up to help even beyond the parameters he sets, how he runs to the dental clinic when he hears about the creep, how he finds ways to help Hyejin make up with the townspeople, how he jumps on stage as an impromptu backup dancer with her. Being smitten isn't enough. He wants to believe it is enough. He wants to believe treading water and pretending icy exteriors don't exist is the key to a happy life. But both Hyejin and Dusik's subconsciouses are demanding more from their relationship with each other.

But for now, Dusik is asking for more of Hyejin than he is willing to put up himself. She may be hesitant, but she is trying. And she is actually so brave! She may be prickly like a hedgehog at first, but she DOES take people in. She steps outside her emotional bubble over and over again. She opens her home to Miseon and has her move in with her, she takes in the kids the hedgehog when they ask her for help, she has a very personal conversation with Juri and relates to Juri (and learns from Juri as well! She is not so snobby as to not learn an emotional lesson from a child) when Juri runs away from home. These are all things that Dusik would not do. He insists on living alone, he says he does not take care of living things, and he wanted to drag Juri home right away without listening to her. Yes, these examples above illustrate how he and Hyejin differ, but also show how he has his own ways of keeping himself closed off.

However, what this episode ilustrated the most was that human connections are important, and how forging those bonds and nurturing those bonds make one's life vastly more fulfilling. Every instance where someone faced a situation alone was greatly improved by the support of others around them. The entirety of the concert had people in the community hyping the people on stage and making the performances more fulfilling in doing so. And then once again someone was saved from falling onto the rocks, but this time it was Dusik being saved. Even the doesn't want to, he is going to have to face being vulnerable and a person that reaches forward not just to help someone else, but who has to reach forward for help in order to move forward in his own life.

[symphonicmetal101]

MC Struggles With Obsessive/Compulsive Behaviour

Ok, just to be clear.

I haven't been diagnosed with anything, which is why I refrain from writing "OCD" in the title. I've always known I'm a perfectionist- please be aware that there are some major differences between OCD and perfectionism, (despite what Youtube videos may say)- however I have had instances in which I have taken it too far and paid the price physically, mentally, and emotionally. Please be aware that these are all very real things that not only myself, but other people go through. I haven't had one of them in a long time, but my current circumstances make me feel like I might soon, so bear with me while I write another self-indulgent thing.

Or don't.🤷‍♀️

TW: compulsive/obsessive behaviour, a little self-deprecation as seasoning👌

Lucifer

At first, he's very happy to see that you are very organized and neat

One less thing for him to worry about

However, one day he walked past your room and saw you organizing your desk

He respected that, and continued on

The next day he passed by around the same time and saw you organizing your desk again

Odd, but perhaps one of his brothers had interfered and interrupted you, meaning you hadn't finished yesterday

It had been five days now, surely you weren't still cleaning your desk??

"MC, if my brothers bother you, you should close the door. Perhaps then you would be able to finish cleaning your desk properly. Unless you would like some direction in time management instead?"

Lucifer glanced behind you. To his surprise, your desk looked immaculate. He then saw your blushing face.

"Ah... well that's very kind of you Lucifer, however I'm afraid it's not an issue of time management or your brothers. Well, sometimes Mammon comes in and moves the pens around, so then I have to start over..."

"Start over?"

"Y-yeah." You explain your process to him, how you completely clear off your desk, to the type of cleaner you use, how many sprays, to how you like to stack your paper, to how you always have to have three paperclips to your right, and how the black pen is always in between the blue and the red.

"And when Mammon moves the pens...you start over?"

"Yeah. I do."

Lucifer has sympathy for you, put also struggles because it seems like a waste of time if he were to do it.

But he doesn't do it, and it seems to make you calm, so instead he buys you proper gloves for cleaning and a few more bottles of your cleaner

Mammon

"Come on MC, I wanna show ya something in my room."

Oh no

Nononono

You could feel yourself panicking a bit. Mammon's room was messy

Not messier than Levi's but still

But he looked really excited, so you reluctantly followed him

"TA-DA!!!"

Oh wow. His room was spotless!

"I-uh, noticed ya only seem to be comfortable in yours or Lucifer's room. It-it took a while for me to figure out why, but...whaddya think? Will it work for ya?"

He smiled at you and you could see a hint of nervousness in his eyes.

"It looks great! You even picked up the water bottles that were by your bed!!"

He instantly became more confident, his smile growing wider and his cheeks slightly flushed.

"Of course it looks great! Why wouldn't it?"

You gave him a withering stare

"Uh..yeah. Y'know, if ya had just told me ya didn't like it being so messy I woulda tidied up sooner. J-just make sure ya let me know if it gets too messy again. I want ya to be comfortable in more places than just your room, so my room seemed like a good idea."

His face was incredibly flushed

"Thank you Mammon. It really means a lot.

Levi

You had only been in Levi's room twice

But dear god

You really really really wanted to tidy things up for him

But you also knew what it was like to be very particular and have things "just-so"

Aksjsjshdgjak

"Hey Levi, can I make you deal?"

He took off one of his headphones to listen

"What's up?"

"This might be kinda weird. Can I take pictures of your stuff so I can reorganize and clean your room? That way if you don't like it, I'll put everything back?"

You could see confusion and slight panic that crossed his features.

"I'm sorry, I know it's weird, you don't have to say yes I-"

"Um, what exactly would you be doing?"

"Uhhh.."

He stopped his game to sit and talk with you for a bit.

"O-ok. Just that shelf is off-limits. And I'll stay in here to let you know if something isn't ok with me."

He watched in awe as you carefully rearranged his figurines by rarity as well as colour.

You crawled under his desk with velcro ties and made all the cords under there much more organized

You rearranged the pillows on his couch so that they were symmetrical on both sides, fluffing them and squishing them as you saw fit.

His manga was pretty organized, so you just straightened out the pile.

You organized his games in alphabetical order

The whole time you had been dusting stuff off as well

"There. That's better....what do you think Levi?"

"WOOOAAHH!!! I love it!! It looks really good MC!"

"Thanks for letting me do that."

"No problem...but w-why did you want to do it?"

You shrugged. "It calms me down? No, that's not quite it....I don't really now. As it is, I need to cut myself off otherwise I'll clean until I can't stand. Mind if I join you for a bit?"

He nods at you and hands you a control. As the game boots up he says, "Y-you're welcome to do that again if you need to...but that shelf is still off-limits."

You nod, grateful for his understanding.

Satan

He said he had a surprise date for you

So you followed him

To the Cat Cafe

Now, you love cats

And you love food

But the two of them together don't sit well with you

But Satan looked so eager and happy that you didn't hesitate much to go inside.

Everything was going really well until Satan asked if you wanted something to eat or drink.

You politely declined his offer, but he insisted on getting you something

You reluctantly chose a hot drink.

But as you watched the worker prepare your drink, you were horrified to see them carry a cat out from behind the counter, and then without washing their hands, snap the lid on your cup.

"Satan..I need to step outside for a bit."

He watched you in mild concern as you walked out the door and he waited for your and his order to be complete

You were pacing outside, trying to calm down.

Why did that upset me? I haven't even touched it yet. Besides, normal people don't usually care about stuff like that. And I can clean it??? Or grab another lid?? Fuck! Why am I like this?

Your train of thought was broken as Satan tapped on your shoulder, concern and curiosity apparent in his eyes.

"Are you alright? I noticed the worker didn't wash their hands after handling the cat, so I grabbed a couple lids on my way out. I was going to put it on for you, but I believe it would be best for all parties if you did it on your own."

You almost started crying as he handed you a paper towel with two lids in it.

"Why are there two?"

"Although it never particularly bothered me, I thought you may have wanted some solidarity. I can understand where you're coming from." He smiled sympathetically at you.

From that day forward, he paid extra attention to things while you were around to make sure you wohld feel comfortable. You two also managed to tackle the daunting task of properly organizing Satan's books so that you could spend more time in his otherwise clean room.

Asmo

"Darling, you look wonderful in that outfit!! And it's so hot outside, it's perfect!! I was just about to head out, do you want to join me?"

"That depends. Where are you going?"

"Oh, I'm just gonna do a little shopping. There was a cute top on sale at the mall yesterday, I just want to see if it's still there."

You told him you'd be right back.

When you got to your room you threw on a sweater, and then made sure you had your wallet and your phone.

You walked out of your bedroom, checking again, wallet, phone

As you approached Asmo, you checked again. Wallet, phone

"Are you ready to go?" You nodded and followed him out the door.

He made idle gossip with you until he noticed you were looking a little pale

"Oh my goodness, love are you alright? You should take this sweater off, you'll get much too hot!"

"I can't!" You panicked a bit, and he was caught off guard by your reaction.

"I- I'm sorry. But I use the sleeves to open doors and hold bags and stuff. I don't like touching that stuff. Even groceries are hard for me to touch, so I wash the groceries before I put them away when I get home. I enjoy shopping with you though, because you always know what kind of stuff I like just by looking at it, or feeling it for me. It's the same thing I explained before, where it's difficult for me to model the clothes for you until after they've been washed."

"Aww honey, I'm sorry. Next time I'll see if Mammon or Beel can come and help with your bags, m'kay? But you cannot stay in this sweater in weather like this. What about gloves? Would you be ok wearing gloves? I know a place where there's some really cute ones!! And I'll handle the doors for now, ok?"

You took off your sweater and tied it around your waist.

"Huh. I actually do feel a little better....thanks Asmo."

You two laughed lightly as he held open the door for the next shop.

Beel

You had waited for Beel to get out of one of his extracurriculars to walk home with him

You two were planning to eat together

However when you walked into the kitchen, you were greeted with a sink overflowing with dishes, and a sleeping Belphie on the island.

"Oh, uh, before I eat Beel, I'm going to clean that up. You go ahead though."

Belphie piped up, "Just throw what you can in the dishwasher....I'll do the rest later."

Beel looked concerned. "We were late getting home. Are you sure you're not hungry?"

"Oh...uh" you contemplated lying when your stomach gave you away.

"Just eat. I'll take care of the dishes. It's my turn anyways. I'll get to it soon."

"It's not a big deal Belphie, I'll just do them."

"But you're hungry, aren't you? Just eat first? Or did I do something? Is it something I can fix? I can go if it makes you more comfortable-" Beel looked disappointed. Of course it wasn't his fault.

You shook your head. "It's not you. It's me. I just- I don't know- ugh." You felt close to tears.

How the fuck were you supposed to explain yourself?

Beel pulled you into a hug. "Hey, it's ok. You don't have to tell us what's going on, but if you do it'll make it easier for us to help you."

He let go of you enough for you to step back and wipe tears from your eyes.

"I-I don't know what it is! But whenever I know there's something to be done, especially if I can see it, I have to do it before I do anything for myself. That includes eating, getting a glass of water, even going to the bathroom! And if I find another thing to do half way through he first thing, I'll just continue to postpone the thing I need to do for myself until I'm done or I forget about it..."

Silence settled across the kitchen.

"We'll help you do the dishes so it gets done faster, then you have to eat, ok?"

You smile and nod graciously as the twins helped you feel more comfortable

Belphie

"Come cuddle with meeee."

"Belphie, I need to study, please."

Belphie pouted. He was going to cuddle with you one way or another, even if he had to annoy you into it

Only what he didn't realize what he saw as "mildly annoying" was actually triggering for you

So he started messing with the postion of things on your desk.

"Stop it Belphie, I need to study."

"Yeah? Don't let me stop you, I'm just playing with your pen jar."

"But I asked you. To. Stop."

He huffed and put the pen jar down

But then he started to mess with your three pencils you had laid out, smallest to tallest.

"Why do you need three pencils?"

"Because. Now leave them alone."

He grinned.

"Because is hardly an answer and you know it. What would happen if I just took this one?"

"BELPHIE NO!" Your voice sounded between laughter and tears, butbhe figured it was just your way of begging.

"Belphie, please? I need that!"

He just grinned as he shifted into his demon form and passed the pencil to his tail and lazily flicked it back and forth.

Until he saw your face.

"Whatever. Do what you want, I'm done dealing with you." You walked out of your room, angry tears filling your eyes.

"W-wait! Shit! No, come back! I didn't-ugh." He groaned as he picked himself up to go after you, finding you on the outside steps of HOL.

"Hey, why're you crying? It was just a pencil. I put it back."

You pulled your head out of your hands.

"Yeah, but did you put it back right?"

Belphie looked at you perplexed...right? What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

"Look, I'm sorry for using that tone with you. It's really hard for me to focus unless I have things a certain way. It may seem ridiculous to you, but that's just how I am. I don't know what causes it, I just know that it's a part of me. I'm working on it, but if I say stop, I need you to stop. Please."

"....okay. I'm sorry."

Masterlist

[mcheang]

Why we lie

Inspired by a scene from ELOD and somehow escalated into this fic

It was class discussion time for their annual charity. Sadly, Marinette informed them her parents would not be able to supply them with free goodies since ingredient prices went up.

A dance performance would be nice but none of them are professionals.

Nathaniel could do portraits but that takes time and the rest would have nothing to do.

Alya: how about a petting zoo? We can donate the money we earn to pet shelters. (I’m just making this up. I have no idea if this is actually possible)

Mylène: where would we get the animals?

Alya: from the pet shelters. Basically we’re just bringing the animals outside to show the world what they’re missing out on. Each of us will be in charge of maybe 3 animals? If we’re lucky, some will be adopted on the spot.

Lila didn’t want to spend her day being covered in fur or cleaning up after drool or poop. She quickly claimed to be bad with animals but would otherwise take charge of the register.

Marinette: that’s not going to happen, Lila. I trust Chloé with the funds more than I would trust you.

(Chloé is too rich to bother stealing “measly” funds.)

Lila: then what do I do?

Marinette: as I recall, you seem to have a way with kittens. There, done.

Ugh. Kittens would claw her clothes.

Lila: just because I saved Jagged’s kitten doesn’t mean I am good with animals. His cat actually bit me while I was saving him.

Marinette: really? That’s your story?

Lila: why would I lie to you, Marinette?

Marinette: the same reason everyone else lies, for our own gratification

It’s true. Everyone in the class has lied at one time or another. Marinette included.

And really, this was becoming normal. The class understood Marinette would never forgive Lila after getting her expelled, even if she did admit to having delusions about who pushed her.

And taking Lila’s side would only upset Marinette, and since no one wanted her to attract an akuma, the class decided to ignore them both, taking neither side.

But this was getting annoying and répétitive. Lila can’t do something and Marinette gets snappy. It is just another waste of time until they decide to resolve this issue once and for all.

The class publicly announce their decision to forgive Lila if she was lying all this time. There, can we just move on now? Arguing takes up more energy than ignoring a lazy classmate’s absence.

Marinette: why? She lied to you! She took advantage of you!

Kim shrugged. “So we treated her to some meals. Friends sometimes do that. In exchange, Lila is like a storyteller.”

Marinette: using her stories to get you to do her homework for her?

Max pushed up his glasses. “Oh we don’t do her homework for her. Lila would never learn anything otherwise. We just lend her our notes and explain things she doesn’t understand.” They’ve seen Sabrina do Chloe’s homework and sure aren’t going to follow her lead.

Marinette: she’s raising your hopes in vain!

Juleka: we already know there was little chance she could introduce us to our idols.

Marinette: skipping her chores and duties?

Nathaniel: who likes doing them anyway? I’d try to get away if I could too

Alya: the truth is we’ve learned not to trust Lila’s promises but we listen to her because she really is a good storyteller and she is nice.

Marinette: but you actually still believe her tall tales?

Ivan: I did. But then I just forget them and move on.

Marinette: but nobody should lie this much.

Alix is busy scrolling through music but comments, “So she wants to feel important by bragging. If she wants to inflate her ego and think the world revolves around her, it’s her funeral.”

Marinette: so you don’t think we should stop her...

Rose: even if she was lying, we can only forgive. I mean Chloé is way worse and we have to forgive her.

Marinette paused. It’s true. Lila may have framed her and gotten her expelled, not to mention she was a heartless and remorseless liar, but Chloé was still worse. She humiliates people in public, like Kim on Valentine’s Day or her uncle on National TV. She tried to frame Marinette for setting off the fire alarm and even claimed she stole her own hat design in front of Gabriel Agreste. But Marinette could forgive Chloé and let her become a hero. Why won’t she do the same for Lila?

Maybe because everyone knew Chloé for who she really was, but they didn’t really know Lila.

Still, it seemed the class would rather have a two-faced backstabber for a friend than another school enemy.

Meanwhile Lila was seething as everyone was talking about her like she wasn’t there. She was tempted to cry about how they didn’t trust her, but even she could sense their impatience to move on, and wisely kept her mouth shut.

Stunned, Marinette let Alya continue the discussion.

Later, Marinette bemoans to Tikki that their class would rather ignore the truth and believe in pretty lies.

Tikki: well, reality can be harsh to wake up to. They want to believe in the lie that Lila is a good person.

Marinette: that’s still dangerous. What do I do?

Tikki: if they can forgive lying, can they forgive sexual harassment? Adrien is suffering!

Marinette: But I don’t think Adrien will stand up to Lila... (Remember he promised to play nice if Marinette returned to school. Unfortunately Adrien will keep his word and can only try to persuade his father to stop joint shoots)

Tikki: leave it to me.

That night, Tikki visited Plagg to discuss convincing Adrien to stand up for himself.

Somehow, Plagg got Adrien to ask Nino if Lila was sexually harassing him because he feels uncomfortable around her.

Nino was alarmed and spread the word.

The class banded together and insisted Lila step away from Adrien. Maybe it’s best she just avoid Adrien and Marinette since they don’t like her.

Lila sulkily agrees. Adrien claims innocence in all this. But it actually spreads until Gabriel actually puts a restraining order on Lila, which means she can’t even be in the same class as Adrien.

Gabriel blames Adrien’s late complaints of sexual harassment on his forgiving teacher.

Ms Bustier is suspended from teaching and her substitute promptly decides to investigate what happened. He correctly calls Lila out for truancy and forgery, insisting the principal punish her and check with actual doctors rather than trusting a compulsive liar’s word.

And from that time on, the class learned to stand up for themselves!

I am not satisfied with the ending. Something is missing but I don’t know what.

[publiccollectors]

From the discussion “Towards A Self Sustaining Publishing Model” hosted by Printed Matter.

Some things I have learned in over 30 years of publishing since my teenage days as a zine maker, administrating my project Public Collectors, and from working in the group Temporary Services and our publishing imprint Half Letter Press.

I have just ten minutes to speak. If only one or two things that I share are useful, that’s plenty! It took me decades to understand some of this stuff.

Use every exhibition invitation with a budget to print something. Use the whole budget to print something. Make something in a large enough print run so that you have something to give away and surplus that you can sell. Your publication can be a folded sheet of paper, a booklet, a newspaper, a poster, a book, or anything in between.

Be able to print at least something at home. Buy a cheap laser printer or inkjet printer, find a used copy machine, buy a RISO or some other duplicator, carve something into a potato or a piece of foam and print it. Being able to do at least some of the printing and production at home—even if it’s on a tiny scale—will compel you to print things that you might have convinced yourself not to send out or bring to a professional printer. Hopefully the ability to print impulsively and compulsively will result in good work. Figure out how to keep making things on every scale. Look for cheap used printing equipment on Craigslist. Team up with friends and buy equipment together that you can share. Start a printing collective in your basement.

Ideally your publication should cost 1/5th or 1/6th of the retail price to make. If you sell a $10.00 publication through a store, you are probably only going to make $6.00 or less after the store takes its cut. So ideally your $10.00 book costs $2.00 or less to make. Don’t aim to just break even. Aim to make a profit so you can keep making more publications and pay for your life. Publishing will probably never be your sole income but don’t lose money on purpose. Make things that are priced fairly and look like they justify what they cost to buy. The fact that you didn’t find a more affordable way to print something is not an excuse to sell something that feels cheap and shitty for a ridiculous sum of money. Good cheap printing is easier to find than ever before. Do your homework.

Figure out the cheapest and least wasteful ways to do everything. Ask other publishers where they get their work printed. Look for local printers so you can avoid shipping fees. Ask local printers if you can pay in cash for a discount. Ask printers if there is a cheaper way to do what you want to do by adjusting the size of your paper or the paper stock or some other small shift in form. If you print things yourself, buy the paper that is on sale. Design a publication around the paper that you found for cheap. Discount warehouses sometimes have good paper. Even dollar stores sometimes have good paper. I’ve even bought paper at flea markets. Costco sells an 800 sheet ream of 24 lb paper for $6.99. I use it all the time. It rules. I also recommend getting your jugs of organic olive oil there, but you can’t print with that.

Free printing is good printing. If you have access to free printing, use it. Free printing is like free food at art openings and conference receptions. It is one of those pleasures in life that never gets old. Come up with an idea that is based around the aesthetics of whatever free printing you have access to and make the publication that way. Eat the cheese and bread. Drink the wine. Make the copies at work.

Buy bulk shipping mailers on eBay. Find bubble wrap and other packing materials in the trash. Look out for neighbors who just bought new furniture—it’s usually wrapped in miles of packing material you can use for shipping books. Boycott terrible right wing fuckers like ULINE. Seriously, they give money to everyone horrible. Trump? Check. Ted Cruz? Check. Scott Walker? Check. ROY FUCKING MOORE? CHECK FUCKING CHECK! Tear up their catalogs and use them as packing material to protect your books. Make publications that have a consistent size so you can purchase cardboard mailers in bulk and get a discount on them. Buy packing tape in bulk. Buy everything in bulk. You can store your extra reams of paper under your bed or on top of your kitchen cabinets if necessary. Be like a wacko survivalist prepper, but for office supplies. Go to estate sales and look for the home office in the house. Buy the dead person’s extra tape and staples and rulers and scissors. I’ve been using some random dead person’s staples for years because I bought their staple hoard. Staples aren’t like meat and milk. They don’t expire.

I’m against competition. Try to avoid competing with other artists for resources. If you don’t truly need the money, don’t ask for it. Artists should have a section on their CV where they list grants they could have easily gotten but didn’t apply for because they are privileged enough that they don’t need the money as much as someone else. I almost never apply for anything but the one thing I do apply for and get every year is a part-time faculty development grant from Columbia College Chicago where I teach. It pays adjuncts up to $2,500 a year to fund their projects and seems to be completely non-competitive. My union negotiated to get us more money. I have used that grant to make over a dozen publications. The value of the publications I make and sell with each grant is about three or four times the value of the grant itself. Some years I make more from the grant than I do from the limited number of classes I teach. But I don’t depend on this grant to be a publisher and I’d still be able to make things without it.

Make things in different price ranges so everyone can afford your work, but also so that you can sustain your practice. Make a publication that costs $2.00, that costs $6.00, that costs $20.00, and make something special for the fancy ass institutional libraries that have a lot of money to spare and can buy something that costs $300.00. Likewise, make things in all different size print runs. Is there something you can print 1,000 of that you can keep selling and giving away for years, to enjoy that quantity discount that comes with offset printing a large number of publications?

Collaborate with people and pay them with publications (if they are cool with that) that they can sell on their own. Sometimes this ends up being better pay and more useful than an honorarium, and it helps justify a larger print run. But see what they need—don’t assume. Barter with other publishers and sell each other’s work and let each other keep the money. This helps with distribution. Sometimes it’s easier to sell their work than it is to sell your own. Help others expand the audience for their publications.

Fund your publishing practice by asking your friends who teach to invite you to talk to their college classes about your work. Use those guest speaker fees to print something. I sometimes tell people on social media: If three or four people will invite me to speak to their class, it could fund the entire next issue of X booklet series that you like so much. This has often worked. Also, sometimes their students end up ordering publications. Sometimes lectures about publications generate more income than the publications themselves.

Have an emailing list and write newsletters to announce new publications. Stay in touch with people who like what you do. Expect to spend a ton of time corresponding with people. Have some cheap things and cool ephemera on hand that you can send people for free when they mail order your publications. Reward people who support you directly with something nice that they didn’t expect. People like handwritten notes. It’s okay if they are very short but sign the packing slip and at least write “Thank you!”

Above all, know that publishing is a life journey and not a get rich quick scheme, or even a make very much money scheme. Enjoy the experience of meeting and working with others, trade your publications with other publishers and build up an amazing library of small press, hard to find artist books. Get vaccinated and travel and sleep on each other’s couches. Be generous with your time, knowledge, resources, and work. Tell Jeff Bezos to fuck off by never selling anything you make through Amazon. Find the bookstores that you love and work with them forever. It’s nicer to have deeper relationships with fewer bookstores than surface level interactions with dozens of shops run by people you don’t know.

Think about your publishing family. Bookstore people are your family. People that organize book fairs and zine fests are your publishing family. Other publishers are your family. People who follow your work for years on end are your family. Printers and binderies are your family. The postal workers that know you by name and that you know by name are your family. The person who doesn’t care if you make the free copies at work is your family. Over thirty years later, I’m still in contact with people I exchanged zines with through the mail when I was a teenager. In some cases I still haven’t met them in person. It’s fine! They are my family. Your students are your family—particularly once they graduate or drop out, as long as they continue making books and zines. Your family is your family, particularly if they value and support your publishing practice. And for this reason, this talk is dedicated to my late father Bruce Fischer, who let me use the company copier and postage meter when I was in high school, and to my mom who sat on the floor with me and helped me hand collate and staple my zines.

That’s what I’ve got for now. Stay in touch and with luck, and enough vaccines and masks and hand sanitizer, maybe I’ll see you at a book fair. – Marc Fischer • Thank you to Be Oakley of GenderFail for the invitation to present, to the other presenters Vivian Sming, Yuri Ogita, and Devin Troy Strother, and to the wonderful people at Printed Matter for hosting this! You should be able to find the video archived on Printed Matter’s YouTube Channel.  Presented on April 2, 2021

[keevansixx]

Tumblr+ is a bad idea, but i understand why they are pushing for it?

Ok, how many of us have lived through the purges, watched as they nuked from low orbit all the artistic smexiness in a bout of puritanical fervor, while leaving the bots and blatant unfettered to rampage across this lovely hellsite free range and unchecked? Doing nothing while the shitiness of humanity is allowed to harass and threaten people for posting their hot takes (regardless of whether they are right or wrong)?

yeah, some of us have watched all that has transpired.

This is nothing new....

When you view past the staff statements, all the carefully crafted wording and corporate speak, all that remains is greed, pure and simple....

for some of us, this is a safe haven, a refuge from the rest of the clusterfeck that is known as social media. where individuals can post their innermost thoughts, creative ideas, and feelings to the ether. If the stars are aligned in their favor, while the word gods shine favorably upon thee, and the image deities smile in dank approval, we find other like minded souls piloting their own ships within this digital night that meet briefly to share a like, comment. or reblog before moving on to other horizons. In it’s simplicity, tumblr is almost the last bastion of creative thought left in the entirety of the world wide web. 

for others, tumblr is just yet another extension of their social media psyche, dragging all their real world baggage into it’s pages, hoping that someone out there may offer a solution to their own personal problems (or at least stroke their egos or biases to orgasmic bit) . Activists abound, and are shouting from the digital rooftops “look at me! See! See the violence inherit in the system, help help, i’m being oppressed!”” While the darkest ugliness in certain parts of humanity responds with vile poison and vitriol to ideas that do not agree or align with their own...committing the oldest of digital sins, in the newest of ways. Sad....but i digress.

Tumblr, to it’s corporate and wall-street taskmasters, is not greatly profitable in it’s current form. Sure, they get a little bit of money here and there from all the boring unremovable ads sprinkled throughout everyone’s feeds...but that’s just it. ad money keeps the lights on and the hamster wheels turning in the server rooms, and maybe a pot of coffee or box of stale doughnuts in the break room to keep the hamsters happy, but in the end it’s just enough to keep the site barely alive, while ensuring the devils get their deep pockets full of due.

The question everyone is asking themselves, but don’t know it yet, is...

To just Whom does tumblr+ benefit the most? 

It’s certainly not for the fan-fic artists who create art based on someone else’s works. certainly not for the shit-posters who reblog all the weirdly wonderfully funny and bizarre things the world web has to offer. certainly not for the fanfic writers, who craft the continuing stories of their favorite properties they do not own. definitely not for average joe or jane blogger who basically repost everything that crosses their feeds because they enjoy that stuff immensely, and want to share it all with everyone who follows them. Certainly not for I, who basically just comes here to post fictional stories from pregenerated prompts, whatever pops into my head, and a few reblogs from things that catch my fancy.

So who does that leave? In the Immortal words of Sherlock Holmes, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ”When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

For a few original tumblr artists, this may be a boon (but i doubt it). why would you settle for a middleman to get paid for your original art, when you could sell to a direct market off site for prints/merch straight to the customer and making bank? Seems counterintuitive to me to allow a site to step in to earn money off your hard work and creativity. Plus a paywall cuts you off from potential customers who may be interested in your works, but will not pay tumblr just to view your works....kinda shooting yourself in the foot going plus.

Tumblr+ is being built for all the clout chasers that think they will benefit from a blue plus mark (just like on twitter and instagram, go figure) banking on human vanity and obsessive compulsive disorder to bring in the money. (that’s right! buy that blue + mark ya little cash monkeys...spend, spend for that social credit! muahahahaha!)

The other reason is Porn. (don’t laugh...the internet you enjoy today was built on the metaphorical backs of the porn industry. every internet innovation enjoyed in the past 35 years was created, tested, and tried first somewhere to deliver, watch, and enjoy porn. sure it got started on university campuses, but the porn industry made it take off like a rocket to push product) Tumblr can’t beat it...they have consistently shown they are incapable of removing all the raunchy naughty bits from this site. If you can’t beat them, join them. Put all the adult content behind a paywall, set the price, and watch the money roll in as humans just can’t resist watching a good fluff n’ tickle. Set the booby algorithm phasers to “paywall”!  Wanna see that statue of Venus de Milo, or the statue of David? gonna have to pay that monthly fee to see. “Oh, but you’re just an artist drawing artistic nudes as a hobby? too bad! behind the paywall you go too. We want our cut of the share regardless how you may feel about it.” 

basically Tumblr is trying to change the clientele....facts. They hope to draw in the same demographics that make sites like reddit, twitter, instagram, and others profitable to the corporation, at the expense of the long term users that made this site the unique thing it is today. 

but hey, what do i know, i’m just a messed up monkey with an opinion, take it all with a huge grain of salt and live your best life possible....but the cards are not in tumblr+’s favor. 

Everyone has got an opinion on this, that’s all well and good. If you agree/disagree that’s fine too....just remember to be kind in all things, show the wisdom and grace of the best of humanity, take a deep breath before responding, and reply with the best of yourself as you can muster...after all, you’re only human....Ook ook. 

[96harmony96]

Chapter 6

Hey, Dad. I caught you.” I adjusted my grip on the phone receiver and pulled up a stool at the breakfast bar. I missed my father. For the last four years we’d lived close enough to see each other at least once a week. Now his home in Oceanside was the entire country away. “How are you?”

He lowered the volume on the television. “Better, now that you’ve called. How was your first week at work?”

I went over my days from Monday through Friday, skipping over all the Lauren parts. “I really like my boss, Mark,” I finished. “And the vibe of the agency is very energetic and kind of quirky. I’m happy going to work every day, and I’m bummed when it’s time to go home.”

“I hope it stays that way. But you need to make sure you have some downtime, too. Go out, be young, have fun. But not too much fun.”

“Yeah, I had a little too much last night. Cary and I went clubbing, and I woke up with a mean hangover.”

“Shit, don’t tell me that.” He groaned. “Some nights I wake up in a cold sweat thinking about you in New York. I get through it by telling myself you’re too smart to take chances, thanks to two parents who’ve drilled safety rules into your DNA.”

“Which is true,” I said, laughing. “That reminds me…I’m going to start Krav Maga training.”

“Really?” There was a thoughtful pause. “One of the guys on the force is big on it. Maybe I’ll check it out and we can compare notes when I come out to visit you.”

“You’re coming to New York?” I couldn’t hide my excitement. “Oh, Dad, I’d love it if you would. As much as I miss SoCal, Manhattan is really awesome. I think you’ll like it.”

“I’d like anyplace in the world as long as you’re there.” He waited a beat, then asked, “How’s your mom?”

“Well…she’s Mom. Beautiful, charming, and obsessive-compulsive.”

My chest hurt and I rubbed at it. I thought my dad might still love my mom. He’d never married. That was one of the reasons I never told him about what happened to me. As a cop, he would’ve insisted on pressing charges and the scandal would have destroyed my mother. I also worried that he’d lose respect for her or even blame her, and it hadn’t been her fault. As soon as she’d found out what her stepson was doing to me, she’d left a husband she was happy with and filed for divorce.

I kept talking, waving at Cary as he came rushing in with a little blue Tiffany & Co. bag. “We had a spa day today. It was a fun way to cap off the week.”

I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “I’m glad you two are managing to spend time together. What are your plans for the rest of the weekend?”

I hedged on the subject of the charity event, knowing the whole red carpet business and astronomically-priced dinner seats would just highlight the gap between my parents’ lives. “Cary and I are going out to eat, and then I plan on staying in tomorrow. Sleeping in late, hanging out in my pajamas all day, maybe some movies and food delivery of some sort. A little vegetating before a new work week kicks off.”

“Sounds like heaven to me. I may copy you when my next day off rolls around.”

Glancing at the clock, I saw it was creeping past six. “I have to get ready now. Be careful at work, okay? I worry about you, too.”

“Will do. Bye, baby.”

The familiar sign-off had me missing him so much my throat hurt. “Oh, wait! I’m getting a new cell phone. I’ll text you the number as soon as I have it.”

“Again? You just got a new one when you moved.”

“Long, boring story.”

“Hmm…Don’t put it off. They’re good for safety as well as playing Angry Birds.”

“I’m over that game!” I laughed and warmth spread through me to hear him laughing, too. “I’ll call you in a few days. Be good.”

“That’s my line.”

We hung up. I sat for a few moments in the ensuing silence, feeling like everything was right in my world, which never lasted long. I brooded on that for minute; then Cary cranked up Hinder on his bedroom stereo and that kicked my butt into gear.

I hurried to my room to get ready for a night with Lauren.

“Necklace or no necklace?” I asked Cary, when he came into my bedroom looking seriously amazing. Dressed in his new Brioni tux, he was both debonair and dashing, and certain to attract attention.

“Hmm.” His head tilted to the side as he studied me. “Hold it up again.”

I lifted the choker of gold coins to my throat. The dress my mom had sent was fire engine red and styled for a Grecian goddess. It hung on one shoulder, cut diagonally across my cleavage, had ruching to the hip, and then split at my right upper thigh all the way down my leg. There was no back to speak of, aside from a slender strip of rhinestones that connected one side to the other to keep the front from falling off. Otherwise, the back was bared to just above the crack of my buttocks in a racy V-cut.

“Forget the necklace,” he said. “I was leaning toward gold chandeliers, but now I’m thinking diamond hoops. The biggest ones you’ve got.”

“What? Really?” I frowned at our reflections in my cheval mirror, watching as he moved to my jewelry box and dug through it.

“These.” He brought them to me and I eyed the two-inch hoops my mother had given me for my eighteenth birthday. “Trust me, Camila. Try ’em on.”

I did and found he was right. It was a very different look from the gold choker, less glam and more edgy sensuality. And the earrings went well with the diamond anklet on my right leg that I’d never think of the same way again after Lauren’s comment. With my hair swept off my face into a cascade of thick, deliberately messy curls, I had a just-screwed look that was complemented by smoky eye shadow and glossy nude lips.

“What would I do without you, Cary Taylor?”

“Baby girl”—he set his hands on my shoulders and pressed his cheek to mine—“you’ll never find out.”

“You look awesome, by the way.”

“Don’t I?” He winked and stepped back, showing off.

In his own way, Cary could give Lauren a run for her money…er, looks. Cary was more finely featured, almost pretty compared to Lauren’s savage beauty, but both were striking people that made you look twice, and then stare in greedy delight.

Cary hadn’t been quite so perfect when I met him. He’d been strung out and gaunt, his emerald eyes cloudy and lost. But I’d been drawn to him, going out of my way to sit next to him in group therapy. He’d finally propositioned me crudely, having come to believe the only reason people associated with him was because they wanted to fuck him. It was when I declined, firmly and irrevocably, that we finally connected and became best friends. He was the brother I’d never had.

The intercom buzzed and I jumped, making me realize how nervous I was. I looked at Cary. “I forgot to tell the front desk she was coming back.”

“I’ll get her.”

“Are you going to be okay riding over with Stanton and my mom?”

“Are you kidding? They love me.” His smile dimmed. “Having second thoughts about going with Jauregui?”

I took a deep breath, remembering where I’d been earlier—on my back in a multi-orgasmic daze. “Not really, no. It’s just that everything’s happening so fast and going better than I expected or realized I wanted…”

“You’re wondering what the catch is.” Reaching out, he tapped my nose with his fingertip. “she’s the catch, Camila. And you landed her. Enjoy yourself.”

“I’m trying.” I was grateful that Cary understood me and the way my mind worked. It was just so easy being with him, knowing he could fill in the blanks when I couldn’t explain something.

“I researched the hell out of her this morning and printed out the interesting recent stuff. It’s on your desk, if you decide you want to check it out.”

I remembered him printing something before we got ready for the spa. Pushing onto my tiptoes, I kissed his cheek. “You’re the best. I love you.”

“Back atcha, baby girl.” He headed out. “I’ll head down to the front desk and bring her up. Take your time. she’s ten minutes early.”

Smiling, I watched him saunter into the hallway. The door had closed behind him when I moved into the small sitting room attached to my bedroom. On the very impractical escritoire my mother had picked out, I found a folder filled with articles and printed images. I settled into the chair and got lost in Lauren Jauregui's history.

It was like watching a train wreck to read that she was the Daughter of Geoffrey Jauregui, former chairman of an investment securities firm later found to be a front for a massive Ponzi scheme. Lauren was just five years old when her dad committed suicide with a gunshot to the head rather than face prison time.

Oh, Lauren. I tried to picture her that young and imagined a handsome dark-haired girl with beautiful green eyes filled with terrible confusion and sadness. The image broke my heart. How devastating her father’s suicide—and the circumstances around it—must have been, for both her and her mother. The stress and strain at such a difficult time would’ve been enormous, especially for a child of that age.

Her mother went on to marry Christopher Vidal, a music executive, and had two more children, Christopher Vidal Jr. and Ireland Vidal, but it seemed a larger family and financial security had come too late to help Lauren stabilize after such a huge shakeup. she was too closed off not to bear some painful emotional scars.

With a critical and curious eye, I studied the women who’d been photographed with Lauren and thought about her approach to dating, socializing, and sex. I saw that my mom had been right—they were all blondes. The woman who appeared with her most often bore the hallmarks of a KaKasian heritage. she was taller than me, willowy rather than curvy.

“Magdalene Perez,” I murmured, grudgingly admitting that she was a stunner. Her posture had the kind of flamboyant confidence that I admired.

“Okay, it’s been long enough,” Cary interrupted with a soft note of amusement. He filled the doorway to my sitting room, leaning insolently into the doorjamb.

“Really?” I’d been so absorbed; I hadn’t realized how much time had passed.

“I would guess you’re about a minute away from her coming to find you. she’s barely restraining herself.”

I shut the folder and stood.

“Interesting reading, isn’t it?”

“Very.” How had lauren’s father—or more specifically, her father’s suicide—influenced her life?

I knew all the answers I wanted were waiting for me in the next room.

Leaving my bedroom, I took the hallway to the living room. I paused on the threshold, my gaze riveted to lauren’s back as she stood in front of the windows and looked out at the city. My heart rate kicked up. Her reflection revealed a contemplative mood. Her gaze was unfocused and her mouth grim. Her crossed arms betrayed an inherent unease, as if she was out of her element. she looked remote and removed, a woman who was inherently alone.

she sensed my presence or maybe he felt my yearning. she pivoted; then went very still. I took the opportunity to drink her in, my gaze sliding all over her. she looked every inch the powerful magnate. So sensually handsome my eyes burned just from looking at her. The rakish fall of black hair around her face made my fingers flex with the urge to touch it. And the way she looked at me…my pulse leaped.

“Camila.” she came toward me, her stride graceful and strong. she caught up my hand and lifted it to her mouth. Her gaze was intense—intensely hot, intensely focused.

The feel of her lips against my skin sent goose bumps racing up my arm and stirred memories of that sinful mouth on other parts of my body. I was instantly aroused. “Hi.”

Amusement warmed her eyes. “Hi, yourself. You look amazing. I can’t wait to show you off.”

I breathed through the delight I felt at the compliment. “Let’s hope I can do you justice.”

A slight frown knit the space between her brows. “Do you have everything you need?”

Cary appeared beside me, carrying my black velvet shawl and opera length gloves. “Here you go. I tucked your gloss into your clutch.”

“You’re the best, Cary.”

He winked at me—which told me he’d seen the condoms I had tucked into the small interior pocket. “I’ll head down with you two.”

Lauren took the shawl from Cary and draped it over my shoulders. she pulled my hair out from underneath it and the feel of her hands at my neck so distracted me, I barely paid attention when Cary pushed my gloves into my hands.

The elevator ride to the lobby was an exercise in surviving acute sexual tension. Not that Cary seemed to notice. He was on my left with both hands in his pockets, whistling. Lauren, on the other hand, was a tremendous force on the other side of me. Although ahe didn’t move or make a sound, I could feel the edgy energy radiating from her. My skin tingled from the magnetic pull between us, and my breath came short and fast. I was relieved when the doors opened and freed us from the enclosed space.

Two women stood waiting to get on. Their jaws dropped when they saw Lauren and Cary, and that lightened my mood and made me smile.

“Ladies,” Cary greeted them, with a smile that really wasn’t fair. I could almost see their brain cells misfiring.

In contrast, Lauren gave a curt nod and led me out with a hand at the small of my back, skin to skin. The contact was electric, sending heat pouring through me.

I squeezed Cary’s hand. “Save a dance for me.”

“Always. See you in a bit.”

A limousine was waiting at the curb, and the driver opened the door when Lauren and I stepped outside. I slid across the bench seat to the opposite side and adjusted my gown. When Lauren settled beside me and the door shut, I became highly conscious of how good she smelled. I breathed her in, telling myself to relax and enjoy her company. she took my hand and ran her fingertips over the palm, the simple touch sparking a fierce lust. I shrugged off my shawl, feeling too hot to wear it.

“Camila.” she hit a button and the privacy glass behind the driver began to slide up. The next moment I was tugged across her lap and her mouth was on mine, kissing me fiercely.

I did what I’d wanted to do since I saw hee in my living room: I shoved my hands in her hair and kissed her back. I loved the way she kissed me, as if she had to, as if she’d go crazy if she didn’t and had nearly waited too long. I sucked on her tongue, having learned how much she liked it, having learned how much I liked it, how much it made me want to suck her elsewhere with the same eagerness.

Her hands were sliding over my bare back and I moaned, feeling the prod of her erection against my hip. I shifted, moving to straddle her, shoving the skirt of my gown out of the way and making a mental note to thank my mom for the dress—which had such a convenient slit. With my knees on either side of her hips, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and deepened the kiss. I licked into her mouth, nibbled on her lower lip, stroked my tongue along her…

Lauren gripped my waist and pushed me away. she leaned into the seat back, her neck arched to look up at my face, her chest heaving. “What are you doing to me?”

I ran my hands down her chest through her dress shirt, feeling the unforgiving hardness of her muscles. My fingers traced the ridges of her abdomen, my mind forming a picture of how she might look naked. “I’m touching you. Enjoying the hell out of you. I want you, Lauren.”

she caught my wrists, stilling my movements. “Later. We’re in the middle of Manhattan.”

“No one can see us.”

“That’s not the point. It’s not the time or place to start something we can’t finish for hours. I’m losing my mind already from this afternoon.”

“So let’s make sure we finish it now.”

Her grip tightened painfully. “We can’t do that here.”

“Why not?” Then a surprising thought struck me. “Haven’t you ever had sex in a limo?”

“No.” Her jaw hardened. “Have you?”

Looking away without answering, I saw the traffic and pedestrians surging around us. We were only inches away from hundreds of people, but the dark glass concealed us and made me feel reckless. I wanted to please her. I wanted to know I was capable of reaching into Lauren Jauregui, and there was nothing to stop me but her.

I rocked my hips against her, stroking myself with the hard length of her cock. Her breath hissed out between clenched teeth.

“I need you, Lauren,” I said breathlessly, inhaling her scent, which was richer now that she was aroused. I thought I might be slightly intoxicated, just from the enticing smell of her skin. “You drive me crazy.”

she released my wrists and cupped my face, her lips pressing hard against mine. I reached for the fly of her slacks, freeing the two buttons to access the concealed zipper. she tensed.

“I need this,” I whispered against her lips. “Give me this.”

she didn’t relax, but she made no further attempts to stop me either. When she fell heavily into my palms, she groaned, the sound both pained and erotic. I squeezed her gently, my touch deliberately tender as I sized her with my hands. she was so hard, like stone, and hot. I slid both of my fists up her length from root to tip, my breath catching when she quivered beneath me.

Lauren gripped my thighs, her hands sliding upward beneath the edges of my dress until her thumbs found the red lace of my thong. “Your cunt is so sweet,” she murmured into my mouth. “I want to spread you out and lick you ’til you beg for my cock.”

“I’ll beg now, if you want.” I stroked her with one hand and reached for my clutch with the other, snapping it open to grab a condom.

One of her thumbs slid beneath the edge of my panties, the pad sliding through the slickness of my desire. “I’ve barely touched you,” she whispered, her eyes glittering up at me in the shadows of the backseat, “and you’re ready for me.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I don’t want you to help it.” she pushed her thumb inside me, biting her lower lip when I clenched helplessly around her. “It wouldn’t be fair when I can’t stop what you do to me.”

I ripped the foil packet open with my teeth and held it out to her with the ring of the condom protruding from the tear. “I’m not good with these.”

Her hand curled around mine. “I’m breaking all my rules with you.”

The seriousness of her low tone sent a burst of warmth and confidence through me. “Rules are made to be broken.”

I saw her teeth flash white; then she hit a button on the panel beside him and said, “Drive until I say otherwise.”

My cheeks heated. Another car’s headlights pierced the dark tinted glass and slid over my face, betraying my embarrassment.

“Why, Camila,” she purred, rolling the condom on deftly. “You’ve seduced me into having sex in my limousine, but blush when I tell my driver I don’t want to be interrupted while you do it to me?”

Her sudden playfulness made me desperate to have her. Setting my hands on her shoulders for balance, I lifted onto my knees, rising to gain the height I needed to hover over the crown of Laurens thick cock. Her hands fisted at my hips and I heard a snap as she tore my panties away. The abrupt sound and the violent action behind it spurred my desire to a fever pitch.

“Go slow,” she ordered hoarsely, lifting her hips to push her pants down farther.

Her erection brushed between my legs as she moved and I whimpered, so aching and empty, as if the orgasms she’d given me earlier had only deepened my craving rather than appeased it.

she tensed when I wrapped my fingers around her and positioned her, tucking the wide crest against the saturated folds of my cleft. The scent of our lust was heavy and humid in the air, a seductive mix of need and pheromones that awakened every cell in my body. My skin was flushed and tingling, my breasts heavy and tender.

This is what I’d wanted from the moment I first saw her—to possess her, to climb up her magnificent body and take her deep inside me.

“God. Camila,” she gasped as I lowered onto her, her hands flexing restlessly on my thighs.

I closed my eyes, feeling too exposed. I’d wanted intimacy with her and yet this seemed too intimate. We were eye-to-eye, only inches apart, cocooned in a small space with the rest of the world streaming by around us. I could sense his agitation, knew she was feeling as off-center as I was.

“You’re so tight.” Her gasped words were threaded with a hint of delicious agony.

I took more of her, letting her slide deeper. I sucked in a deep breath, feeling exquisitely stretched. “You’re so big.”

Pressing her palm flat to my lower belly, she touched my throbbing clit with the pad of her thumb and began to massage it in slow, expertly soft circles. Everything in my core tightened and clenched, sucking her deeper. Opening my eyes, I looked at her from under heavy eyelids. she was so beautiful sprawled beneath me in her elegant tuxedo, her powerful body straining with the primal need to mate.

Her neck arched, her head pressing hard into the seatback as if she was struggling against invisible bonds. “Ah, Christ,” she bit out, her teeth grinding. “I’m going to come so hard.”

The dark promise excited me. Sweat misted my skin. I became so wet and hot that I slid smoothly down the length of her cock until I’d nearly sheathed her. A breathless cry escaped me before I’d taken her to the root. she was so deep I could hardly stand it, forcing me to shift from side to side, trying to ease the unexpected bite of discomfort. But my body didn’t seem to care that she was too big. It was rippling around her, squeezing, trembling on the verge of orgasm.

Lauren cursed and gripped my hip with her free hand, urging me to lean backward as her chest heaved with frantic breaths. The position altered my descent and I opened, accepting all of her. Immediately her body temperature rose, her torso radiating sultry heat through her clothes. Sweat dotted her upper lip.

Leaning forward, I slid my tongue along the sculpted curve, collecting the saltiness with a low murmur of delight. Her hips churned impatiently. I lifted carefully, sliding up a few inches before she stopped me with that ferocious grasp on my hip.

“Slow,” she warned again, with an authoritative bite that sent lust pulsing through me.

I lowered, taking her into me again, feeling an oddly luscious soreness as she pushed just past my limits. Our eyes locked on each other as the pleasure spread from the place where we connected. It struck me then that we were both fully clothed except for the most private and intimate parts of our bodies. I found that excruciatingly carnal, as were the sounds she made, as if the pleasure was as extreme for her as it was for me.

Wild for her, I pressed my mouth to her, my fingers gripping the sweat-damp roots of her hair. I kissed her as I rocked my hips, riding the maddening circling of her thumb, feeling the orgasm building with every slide of her long, thick penis into my melting core.

I lost my mind somewhere along the way, primitive instinct taking over until my body was completely in charge. I could focus on nothing but the driving urge to fuck, the ferocious need to ride her cock until the tension burst and set me free of this grinding hunger.

“It’s so good,” I sobbed, lost to her. “You feel…Ah, God, it’s too good.”

Using both hands, Lauren commanded my rhythm, tilting me into an angle that had the big crown of her cock rubbing a tender, aching spot inside me. As I tightened and shook, I realized I was going to come from that, just from the expert thrust of her inside me. “Lauren.”

she captured me by the nape as the orgasm exploded through me, starting with the ecstatic spasms of my core and radiating outward until I was trembling all over. she watched me fall apart, holding my gaze when I would’ve closed my eyes. Possessed by her stare, I moaned and came harder than I ever had, my body jerking with every pulse of pleasure.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she growled, pounding her hips up at me, yanking my hips down to meet her punishing lunges. she hit the end of me with every deep thrust, battering into me. I could feel her growing harder and thicker.

I watched her avidly, needing to see it when she went over the edge for me. Her eyes were wild with her need, losing their focus as her control frayed, her gorgeous face ravaged by the brutal race to climax.

“Camila!” she came with an animal sound of feral ecstasy, a snarling release that riveted me with its ferocity. she shook as the orgasm tore into her, her features softening for an instant with an unexpected vulnerability.

Cupping her face, I brushed my lips across her, comforting her as the forceful bursts of her gasping breaths struck my cheeks.

“Camila.” she wrapped her arms around me and crushed me to her, pressing her damp face into the curve of my neck.

I knew just how she felt. Stripped. Laid bare.

We stayed like that for a long time, holding each other, absorbing the aftershocks. she turned her head and kissed me softly, the strokes of her tongue into my mouth soothing my ragged emotions.

“Wow,” I breathed, shaken.

Her mouth twitched. “Yeah.”

I smiled, feeling dazed and high.

Lauren brushed the damp tendrils of hair off my temples, her fingertips gliding almost reverently across my face. The way she studied me made my chest hurt. she looked stunned and…grateful, her eyes warm and tender. “I don’t want to break this moment.”

Because I could hear it hanging in the air, I filled it in. “But…?”

“But I can’t blow off this dinner. I have a speech to give.”

“Oh.” The moment was effectively broken.

I lifted gingerly off of her, biting my lip at the feel of her slipping wetly out of me. The friction was enough to make me want more. she’d barely softened.

“Damn it,” she said roughly. “I want you again.”

she caught me before I moved away, pulling a handkerchief out from somewhere and running it gently between my legs. It was a deeply intimate act, on par with the sex we’d just had.

When I was dry, I settled on the seat beside her and dug my lip gloss out of my clutch. I watched Lauren over the edge of my mirrored compact as she removed the condom and tied it off. she wrapped it in a cocktail napkin; then tossed it in a cleverly hidden trash receptacle. After restoring her appearance, she told the driver to head to our destination. Then she settled into the seat and stared out the window.

With every second that passed, I felt her withdrawing, the connection between us slipping further and further away. I found myself shrinking into the corner of the seat, away from her, mimicking the distance I felt building between us. All the warmth I’d felt receded into a marked chill, cooling me enough that I pulled my shawl around me again. she didn’t move a muscle as I shifted beside her and put my compact away, as if she wasn’t even aware I was there.

Abruptly, Lauren opened the bar and pulled out a bottle. Without looking at me, she asked, “Brandy?”

“No, thank you.” My voice was small, but she didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she didn’t care. she poured a drink and tossed it back.

Confused and stung, I pulled on my gloves and tried to figure out what went wrong.

[mithrilwren]

22 for beau/yasha/jester or fjorclay, or 15 for fjorclay

I chose 15! I’m not sure this is really a soulmate!au, so much as I took the prompt and ran slightly adjacent to it :) But hopefully still enjoyable! This isn’t quite a full fic - I still have a bunch of other prompts to fill - but more like a teaser. Maybe in the future I’ll come back and finish it properly!

soulmate au prompts (15) - the one where every lie your soulmate tells you appears on your skin.

Many living things communicate, but fungi have a peculiar language all their own. What one individual of the colony learns, it passes along to the next - stem to stem, cap to cap - until the whole organism is consumed by the same thought, the same consciousness: the same reality.

All living things, but fungi most of all, prefer to bend towards the truth.

—

Fjord doesn’t think much about the lichen growing from his chest; at least, not for the first few days.

The night before the peace talks begin, they’ve all settled back into their insular sleeping arrangement: tucked tight into Caleb’s bubble, curled beside each other on the cold wooden floor of the gun deck.

It stands to figure that the first night he was alone - the first he’d slept without a shirt in a year and a half - would be the one he’d be attacked. Fjord still finds himself the most modest of the group, despite everything they’ve gone through together. No bare chests in sight now: they’re all wearing armor to bed, or at least the ones that have it. He’s happy for the excuse not to hide his blush.

And besides, even if he could sleep naked without fear of a saltwater burial to follow, he knows that Jester would stare, and it wouldn’t be out of lust or admiration. She would look at the ragged scar and its flowered dressing and her eyes would fill with sorrow, or fear, or guilt. Beau would flick the wound with her nail and ask if it hurt, and both of them would pretend that she wasn’t watching for a real wince behind his offhand reply. Caleb would delicately avert his eyes, and they’d add it to the list of things they can’t put to words, no matter how much progress they’ve made.

And Caduceus…

Shit. He still needs to talk to Caduceus.

Fjord finds him on the quarterdeck, tucked against the side of the stern mast. His long legs are tangled up in spooled rope that Fjord is almost certain a more experienced sailor neatly arranged in its proper place, before it was dragged up here and made into a makeship seat. On any other ship Fjord has served on, it would be the boatswain’s job to ensure nothing was out of order on the deck. They would certainly not be the cause of the mess, but their crew is nothing if not irregular.

The sun is just beginning to dip as Fjord drops to his haunches at Caduceus’s side. He looks up - or rather, slightly down - and smiles.

“Is it time for bed?”

“Just about,” Fjord says. There’s a cup of long-cooled tea by Caduceus’s feet, the chipped crocker mug far less elegant than the kind Fjord’s used to seeing balanced between those bony fingers. When did Caduceus finally give in and start using the ship’s complement? “Might stay up for a while. Watch the sunset, while we’re still out on the water.”

“Mm,” Caduceus hums. “It is a nice sky.” He takes a long, deep breath. “We’re close to land. I can smell it.”

Fjord sniffs the air. He can see what Caduceus means - there’s a heavy scent drifting off the bow, like rotting wood, or fruit gone too long to seed. He knows it well. It’s what you expect to smell before rain comes. He shivers, doused in the memory of slick skin and searing pain, and turns back to Caduceus before his eyes can flick to the base of the main mast. Not a single stain survived the original torrent of that fateful night, but he knows the crew avoids the spot, and he’s tried to do the same. Like passing over a grave - bad luck, and worse to come.

Fjord doesn’t mention the promised rain. Instead, he says, “You might be right,” and drops the rest of the way down, until he’s tucked into the side of the coil of rope. A moment later, Caduceus slithers down off the pile, until their hips are inches apart, and their eyes are a little closer to level.

“Something on your mind, Fjord?”

“Not really,” Fjord says. Caduceus shifts, and his smile dips into that familiar little frown, the one that reminds him nothing can stay hidden from their resident empath for too long. Fjord sighs. “No more than usual.”

Caduceus gestures at the cold tea. “I’d offer you a cup, but I only made the one.” Fjord glances down at the mug. That’s right - no offers had been made after dinner, no promise of a calming drink to alleviate the crew’s woes. That had been part of Fjord’s concern, and one of the reasons he ventured out here, to scour the deck for mint silk in the coming dark.

“That’s ok. I’m not thirsty.”

It’s been a few days since the night, since the morning after, since Caduceus pulled the breath from his lips and the poison from his chest, and they still haven’t talked about any of it. A ship’s price in diamonds, crushed between Caduceus’s palms and poured into his body, and it’s already a passing blip on the horizon of their relationship. If he lets it go, it’ll be like it never happened at all.

If they let it go.

“Thank you, again,” Fjord says at last. “That’s twice you’ve brought me back to life now.” Caduceus immediately goes to his fingers, and Fjord smiles affectionately at the bemusement in his expression.

“Unless I’m missing something - and that’s very possible - I think this is the first time you’ve died.”

Fjord chuckles. “True. But that doesn’t mean I was living, before we met.” Caduceus’s confusion deepens. “Somebody was, in my body, but it wasn’t me. I… regret that it took me so long to realize it, but I don’t regret anything that came after. You showed me that there was another way to be. You showed me there was a life I didn’t know I could have.”

It’s more honesty than he ever expected to spout tonight. Fjord swallows back the anxiety as he waits for Caduceus’s response, reminding himself that if it’s with anyone, with anyone, he’s allowed to say what he really feels, it’s to Caduceus. This is the person he ran to in his most vulnerable moment, the one who’s given him so much, and maybe all he has to give in return is his gratitude, but as long as it’s received, he’ll keep on giving it. He’s never had much to call his own, but gratitude, he has plenty to spare.

“I’m glad I could help,” Caduceus says finally, and Fjord watches the fading light shift across his face, catching in the wiry wisps of his beard as the sun finally sinks below the water’s surface. “I’m just… very glad I could be there when you needed me.” He can’t tell if it’s the change in illumination, but the circles beneath Caduceus’s eyes seem more pronounced than they were a minute before.

Caduceus usually makes them tea before bed, and he’s never slept better in his life than after sipping a mug of some heirloom strain whose namesake he won’t remember in the morning.

Has he ever offered to do the same? To be the one to soothe a troubled sleep?

“How are you doing? Got anything on your mind?” Fjord hesitates. “You seem a little down.”

“I’m fine, Fjord. A little tired, but just fine. Happy we’ll be back on land soon.”

Fjord’s chest begins to prickle as Caduceus speaks, and he scratches at his leather breastplate absentmindedly as he stares at Caduceus, not quite sure how much he believes the casual tone. “You sure?”

“Fine,” Caduceus says again, and the prickle turns into an itch, persistent and creeping enough that Fjord’s mind immediately fills with the notion that a beetle or spider might have gotten inside his shirt. It’s happened before, especially after spending the night on a forest floor, and all thoughts of comfort are lost in the panicked compulsion to check under his shirt, preferably without stripping down in full view of everyone on the deck.

“Good,” says Fjord, more and more strained as the sensation crawls - crawls - from his chest to his sternum, and he stands as quickly as his legs are able to get him up. “Good, I’m- I just need to check on something in the captain’s quarters. I’ll be down in a while.”

And with that, he hurries off, leaving a little less bemused, but a little more forlorn Caduceus to his solitary perch. He’s already pulling at the bottom of his chestplate before the door is fully closed. His hands fish up into his long tunic, searching with nausea trepidation for the telltale smoothness of a shell or the crunch of spindly legs, but all he finds is a ragged scar, and soft fuzz, less coarse than the dark hair that covers the rest of his chest. He probes around, worried now that a creature might have found a nest in the newly grown bed of lichen, and…

Fjord yanks his hand out from beneath the tunic, breathing heavy. Maybe he’s gone crazy with the night air, but he could have sworn… the lichen was probing back. Moving beneath his fingertips, independent of his own touch.

He tears the tunic over his head and looks down. Everything looks the same as it did the night before, except… was that a little tendril of pink, slipping back into the brush between his ribs? Just a small movement, it could definitely have been a trick of the light too.

It must have been. The alternative is… far more unsettling than he cares to contemplate at this hour.

By the time he gathers himself enough to step back onto the deck, Caduceus is nowhere to be seen. Fjord reluctantly makes his way towards the steps below, but as he grabs ahold of the railing, he pauses again. There’s something smudged into his skin, just above the knuckles on his right hand. Rubbing at the mark with his left palm does nothing to remove the stain, so he summons the Star Razor and holds the sword aloft, until the dim blue light illuminates the back of his hand.

He only gets a moment to absorb what he’s seen before the letters fade, their dusky rose hue fading back into his skin until only an afterimage remains. The moment is so brief he can’t help but wonder if this, too, is another dream, his mind attempting to make sense of the incomprehensible, or god of one word messages, playing tricks on him again.

He mouths the word aloud, and it tastes… sour. Like the promise of rain on a clear, starlit night.

“Fine.”

[battlestory]

BATTLE ROYALE: MANGA

Newsarama’s article on Battle Royale manga and an interview with editor Mark Paniccia and adapter Keith Giffen. Originally published on Newsarama’s website in 2003.

The five stages of becoming a warrior on The Program.

In May (2003), Tokyopop will shrug off the image of a company that mainly publishes shojo manga with the debut of Battle Royale, the manga based on the highly controversial novel and movie. Newsarama spoke with editor Mark Paniccia and adapter Keith Giffen for more.

First things first, make no mistake. Tokyopop is publishing Battle Royale with its 'Mature Ages 18+' advisory on it. It is not for anyone under 18, and even some readers over that age will find it a tough read.

Combining themes from Lord of the Flies and The Running Man, creator Koushun Takami wrote the novel Battle Royale in 1999. The novel was then adapted into a movie by the late director Kinji Fukasaku and has spawned legions of fans. Takami went on to write the manga of the same name, collaborating with artist Masayuki Taguchi. The series is still being published in Japan.

                                           ▼ READ MORE ▼

The novel, movie, and now manga have polarized readers in Japan, due to the manga's content. In a nutshell, the "Battle Royale" itself is "The Program," a television show in a morally and sociologically bankrupt, Stalinistic future that picks random classes of 9th grade students and puts them on an abandoned island for a televised fight to the death.

The future depicted by Takami resonates with a 1984 (or current-day America, depending on your viewpoint) feel - the students who are enlisted into the game are doing their patriotic duty, and the state is very proud of them and their "willing" sacrifice.

Mr. Kamon - administrator of The Program

The island is divided into grids, and the students are all given kits, which include one weapon, as well as the basic necessities, such as first aid, a compass, a map, field rations, and water; and explosive collars which detonate if a student tries to escape or goes into a forbidden grid. The beaches of the island are guarded by soldiers, and from time to time, random grid squares are declared danger zones, and after a given time, the explosive collars of any students in the square will detonate. If the students band together, after a period of 24 hours with no kill, all the explosive collars will detonate. Forty-two students begin the game, last student alive at the end of three days wins.

Battle Royale's editor knows what you're thinking. "You're right, that's pretty depressing," Paniccia said. "But the themes that play throughout it - friendship, trust, loyalty, faith - keep you glued to the page because you can truly relate to some of the stuff the teens are experiencing.

"We can all remember having a crush on someone, or wanting to be like the cool guy, or having a friend who stood up for you. Now you're thrown into a situation where you have to kill the girl you like, or the guy who stuck up for you or the kid you admire and that's where you really get drawn into the series."

In the first installment, students who stand up against authority of The Program are killed, alliances are formed, and despite the hopelessness and virtual nilhism of the story, a sense of optimism sneaks in - maybe the story's two protagonists will beat the odds and will both come out the other end alive.

It's a unique story, and that was one of the things that made Tokyopop want to bring it to American audiences. "I can honestly say I've never seen anything like it before," Paniccia said. "It's a really strong story with strong messages and it's not afraid to use really, really strong images. Tokyopop wanted to publish something that would strike a nerve. My nerves are struck."

Choices, choices...

Tokyopop isn't pushing the project out for its salacious value alone - not by any means. While, as with all product they carry, retailers will be responsible for the location and clientele allowed to purchase Battle Royale, Tokyopop is sensitive to concerns over the content. "My jaw dropped when I flipped through the pages of the first volume," Paniccia said. "I'd have to say I was more than a bit concerned about the extremity of the content. But thanks to Keith's experience and his compulsively creative mind, the adaptation of this book is in good hands."

That's not saying it's cleaned up or sanitized for American audiences by any means, though. If anything, Giffen delighted in aiming the disturbing nature of the story directly between the eyes of an American audience. But more on that in a minute - according to Paniccia, Giffen was a needed ingredient in the Tokyopop version of Battle Royale from the beginning, something that will hopefully allow the publisher to make a strong presence in comic book shops.

"Who else could this? In the beginning, one of the things we thought we needed was a recognizable comic book writer on the series," Paniccia said. "I figured the content would turn off the book retailers and the comic shops would be our best outlet. When I found out from Keith's Dominion partner, Ross Richie, that he was a big fan of the Battle Royale movie, I called him and we talked about it for a while. Keith's reputation for controversy and his enthusiasm for the property were the perfect ingredients. And thus, soon, people will hold in their hands the most infamous manga in history."

For adapting the work, Giffen was given a tight Japanese-to-English translation of the story, but his assignment was by no means just to tweak a translation. "I told him to do what he felt he had to do," Paniccia said. "I told him to Giffenize it."

It was a charge Giffen was more than happy to accept. "It's a good story that Takami is telling," Giffen said. "What I do is go in and make bad scenes that much worse. I loved Battle Royale the movie, and also love the manga. I just wanted to do it right. I wanted to do justice to it, and I knew I couldn't get away with doing a straight translation, because it would be horrifyingly bad.

"A lot of times when you work on Japanese books, you realize that they have a different pacing from us, and they also have different visual and narrative shorthand," Giffen continued. "For example, somebody may be looking at someone else with gossamer eyes and thinking good thoughts about them, and the word balloons will just say the person's name - over and over, or spend two pages trying to get the name out. That wouldn't play with American readers.

Deceiving a Friend.

"Battle Royale had stuff like, "I have to kill you first, because you would have killed me otherwise." The translation is right on the nose. You can't give that to an American audience. Specifically, in the scene where the wicked girl almost slices her friend's head off with a sickle - in the translation, she said, 'I had to kill you before you killed me.' No way - I changed it to 'Fashion tip, red's not your color,' as the dead girl lies on the floor in a growing pool of blood.

"There was another line, during the orientation where the students want to know what Mr. Kamon did to the lady at the orphanage. The scene of what he did is pretty graphic, and the original translation had him saying, 'Oh, I sexually assaulted her.'

"I wanted to make it worse. I changed it to, 'With the right persuasion, she was more than willing to share it around.' Not quite as literal as the translation, but it clearly, clearly expresses just how sleazy and reprehensible Kamon is. That's the way it is with all the graphic content in the book - it's there, and some of it is even of a sexual nature, but it's not like you're going to enjoy it for its own sake. It's my job to make sure you don't."

It's a tightrope, Giffen explained, that he has to walk in adapting the work for American readers. Go too far, and you can end up writing your own story. Don't go far enough, and you end up with a jumbled mess that halts the story.

WARNING! VERY GRAPHIC IMAGE - the price of being deceived

"To do this right, you've got to keep the basic flavor of the original work - this is a guy who wrote the original novel who's doing this, so you can't go in and completely rework it and change it around, but you've got to filter it for American audiences," Giffen said. "You've got to massage it a little bit and see if you can move it just to a place where an American audience will appreciate it.

"Being able to go in there and while keeping the tone, tweaking it a little bit, I'm able to put my voice in. Rather than making it 'mine' though I'm doing a lovely two-part harmony with Takami. It's not my story, so I try to remain true to the spirit of the work. Sometimes that means dropping a colloquialism or adding blocks of copy that will allow the American audience to understand it the same way a Japanese audience would. The key rule that I always keep in mind though is: don't violate the story, don't violate the work."

But even for the creator of Lobo, Battle Royale can occasionally offer Giffen some material that is a challenge to take from simply bad to worse. "There are scenes coming up that poleaxed me," Giffen said. "This is intense shit. Brutally intense, and it does freeze me in my tracks sometimes. I'm no stranger to the gutter, but there are two scenes coming up where I had to call Mark and ask if he was sure we wanted to reprint them."

At the same time though, Giffen echoed Panaccia's sentiments on the work and how, while the violence can be frankly, distasteful at points, the emotional connection Takami creates between the readers and characters keeps you hooked.

"It's not just kids slaughtering one another," Giffen said. "It's fascinating because there's all this background there of who these kids are, and why they react the way they do to this horrific situation. For example, when Akamatsu climbs on the roof with the crossbow and becomes the game's first killer, Takami takes the time to show you why the gentlest, nicest kid in the class has become this cold-blooded killer.

"The most reprehensible acts are not by any means excused, and they're not always explained, but you see incidents in the person's past where, because of particular life experiences, characters act in certain ways when confronted with this horrific situation. It's really well thought out."

While he's able to admire the approach Takami took with the characters, Giffen also reiterates Paniccia's admonition about the series. "This is in no way, shape or form for kids," Giffen said. "This really, really is an adult comic, just due to the intensity of the content, from the ideas behind it, to the graphic depictions of the actions. There's more than just the violence, there's more than just the controversy. There's a lot of stuff going on here. It's not for kids. It's a multi-layered story. It sure as hell ain't your daddy's comics, I'll give you that much.

"But maybe it will open a few doors. My son and his friends are in the 18-19 year old group, and they're dying to see it. There's a real hunger for manga out there, and so far Tokyopop has managed to corner the female market, as well as the manga enthusiast market. Battle Royale can kick open that door even farther - it's much, much more accessible a book to the straight, standard comic book fan than a lot of other manga product out there. It's very linear, very straightforward. The art is obviously manga, but no so far out there that the American sensibility falls apart. It's going to be an interesting project. Even if it's not the most popular book they publish, it's certainly going to be the most infamous. That said though, kudos to Tokyopop for publishing the manga series of a property that the American film companies were terrified to release the movie of. It puts Warners and Sony and Fox to shame."

With the first volume due in May, Paniccia said that Tokyopop has the rights to reprint the first eight volumes of the manga, and he's planning in his adapter sticking around for the run.

"Keith seems to be having the time of his life so I hope he sticks with it for the grand finale," Paniccia said. "It wouldn't be the same without him."

And that sounds fine by Giffen. "It's a kick when you get to contribute in some way to something that you originally came upon as a fan, and just love, as I do with Battle Royale," Giffen said. "I was happy to contribute however little I could to Battle Royale, and wouldn't mind give some other manga series a try. I just wish I could get my hands on Love Hina…"

[breanime]

Tiny Little Increments (Part Four)

Warning: some slight steam! And this one’s a little longer to make up for the shortness of Part Three. I hope you enjoy!

*gif by @bilyrusso* (I think? I had it saved in my computer for this chapter, I hope it’s yours!)

Your heart stopped. Logan got out of his car—a cherry red Ferrari that purred like a fucking kitten—wearing a white button-up and black slacks, hair impeccably styled, and a grin on his face. Frank’s back was to you as you stood behind him on the porch, but you could practically feel him pricing Logan up.

“Hey Y/N!” Logan greeted you cheerfully. “You look great!” He stopped when he approached the gate. “You must be…”

“Frank,” your father said, thrusting his hand out for Logan to shake, “Y/N’s father.”

“Barely,” you interjected drily. You turned away, partly to tell the kids you were leaving, and partly to avoid having to see Logan shake hands with your father. “Kids, I’m leaving!” You called out, slamming the door shut before any of them could rush out, though you did see Cam, Emma, and Ethan in the window watching you. “Come on,” you said, taking Logan’s arm and trying to lead him away.

“Well, hold on, now,” Frank said, coming to stand beside you and peering over at Logan. “Just what exactly are your intentions with my daughter?” He asked.

Logan opened his mouth to answer with what you could only assume was a colorful and fully uncensored response, but you spoke before he could. “I’ll be back in an hour,” you lied, “so go get drunk somewhere else, and don’t bother the kids.”

“They’re my kids,” Frank pouted.

 “Only by blood,” you muttered, “Just go, Frank, please.”

“Hold on a minute,” Frank said, coming to stand in front of you and sticking his finger in your face, “I think it’s my right, as your father, to make sure you’re safe and that this guy knows how to treat you. So,” he turned to Logan now, “Logan, that come with a last name?”

  “Frank…” you began.

  “Delos,” Logan answered, “Logan Delos.”

Frank’s red eyes widened, and you knew that meant he knew that name. “Of the Delos Corporation?” He asked, practically salivating. “The multi-millionaire company with all that stock in robots and A.I?”

 “That’s the one,” Logan nodded.

 Frank turned to you. “Do anything he wants, Y/N,” he ordered seriously.

You felt Logan stiffen beside you, and you felt a wave of mortification go through you. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, your father wouldn’t do for cash—for drugs, which included selling you out when the opportunity arose, apparently—and you wanted to sock him right in his wrinkled, greasy face, but that wasn’t a good way to start a date.

“You’re kind of a piece of shit, aren’t you?” Logan asked, breaking the silence. He didn’t seem offended or incensed; he was just stating a simple fact. He seemed curious, actually.

Frank only grinned. “Where do you think she gets it from?”

“Okay,” you said with yet another eyeroll “Come by tomorrow and I’ll think about letting you take a shower,” you compromised, putting your hand on Frank’s back to move him forward and out of the yard, “You smell like a brewery in a zoo.”

He muttered a few things as he walked away, turning back every few seconds to glance back at Logan and the car.

“I see where you get your looks from,” Logan joked, opening the car door for you.

You rolled your eyes, fighting back a laugh, “My looks, my pre-disposition to addiction, my general distrust of the human race,” you shrugged, “My genetics are the gift that keeps on givin’.”

“Hey, I’m a fan of your fucked-up genetics,” Logan said back, leaning over and kissing you.

“So,” you smiled, “Where are you taking me tonight?”

He revved the engine, and you felt the soft vibration underneath your thighs. “To Pound Town,” he answered, flashing you a pleased grin when you rolled your eyes at him. Laughing, he put a hand on your leg, and you felt your heart skip a beat at the simple gesture. “And also to a hotel suite where we can be as loud as we want. Oh—and they have room service, so we won’t even have to leave the room all night.” He glanced over at you; dark eyes gleaming. “You are staying the night, aren’t you?”

You leaned back, smiling. “I haven’t decided yet,” you teased, “I guess it kinds of depends on how many orgasms you give me.”

“That’s all I have to offer, sweetheart,” Logan said back, “Smiles and orgasms.”

You laughed—Logan was definitely a good time. You talked as he drove you; he asked you what the kids were up to tonight, and he told you about the guy he had to do business with the other day. Things were going well…

…and then you pulled up to the hotel.

It was easily the most expensive building in the city, and your jaw dropped at the sight of it. A valet opened your door for you, and Logan led you inside, grinning all the while. The lobby looked like something out of a dream, all bright lights and soft golden decorations. It was huge, full of people dressed to the nines, and you felt a little out of place.

Logan put his arm around your waist, leading you to the elevator. “I rented a suite on the top floor, we’ve got a private pool, twenty-four hour staff, and soundproof walls.” He leaned down, mouth on your ear as the elevator doors closed, “But I’m thinking it’d be wise for us to…” His arm slid down to your ass, “…test that.”

You turned to him, moving so that your mouth was on his. “Before or after dinner?” You asked. “Because I can wait on food if I get to eat you, first.”

Logan sighed before leaning over and kissing you. “Fuck,” he whispered, “I’m trying to wine and dine you, here. You’re making it hard for me.”

You pushed up against him, pressing your front against his growing hard-on. “That’s the point,” you grinned back. The elevator dinged, and you stepped back with a chuckle, hearing Logan’s soft “fuck” behind you as you stepped out. He took your hand—another soft gesture that you weren’t quite sure how you felt about—and led you down the hall to your room.

“Here we are,” he said, opening the door for you.

Once again, your jaw dropped. It wasn’t so much a room as much as a fucking apartment, fully furnished with a set table in the middle of the room, a bottle of champagne resting in a bucket of ice.

“Jesus,” you said, dropping your purse to the ground and walking around, “This place is ridiculous.” You went to the table and picked up a plate. “How much does this cost? It looks like it’s more than I spend on food in a month—and I have five kids to feed!”

Logan laughed, taking the plate and putting it back down. He pulled you back by the waist before pulling your chair out. “Have a seat,” he instructed you softly, kissing you on the top of the head, “Get whatever you want from the menu,” he said as he moved to sit across from you.

You looked down at the menu laid out in front of you. Several of the dishes sounded disgusting, another handful had names you couldn’t even pronounce, but some sounded delicious. “Can I take whatever I want from the hotel?” You blurted out.

Logan laughed again. “Or I could just buy you your own set of plates.”

“I don’t take charity,” you answered back easily, “Just plates. And silverware,” you looked around, “and maybe some of the glassware. Definitely the shampoo and soap and toilet paper.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Now seems like a good time to ask you about your parents.”

“Pop the champagne,” you said, “and I will.”

Logan did, then he took your order, and put it in with the front desk. He sat down across from you once he got off of the phone and smiled. “So… Frank?”

You sipped your champagne, and it tasted expensive. “Frank’s an alcoholic, drug addict, compulsive liar, narcissist… The whole package.”

“How’d you end up taking care of the kids? And the house?”

You shrugged. “My mom was always in and out, she’d stick around long enough to get pregnant and have the babies, and when she left, it was up to me to take care of them.” You licked your lips; you usually didn’t talk about your family life with the guys you hook up with, but… Logan was genuinely asking, genuinely curious. “She’s an addict, too, so even when she was around…she wasn’t. And Frank,” you took another sip, “he’s always been in love with himself, the bottle, and the needle, and not exactly in that order. He used to go on these long drug binges with no warning, and me and Jeremy would have to watch over the house and kids.”

Logan leaned forward. “How’d you do it?” He asked.

“Do what?”

“Do…this.” He gestured over at you. “Raise five kids and take care of the house and manage your dad.”

“I dunno,” you put your glass down, “It had to be done. It’s no big deal.”

“But it is,” he said, “I don’t… I don’t get how you could do all of that. I mean… You’re smart, funny, gorgeous, resourceful—”

“—How do you know I’m smart?” You laughed. “We just met.”

“Well, you’d have to be to raise five kids on the budget that you have,” he answered, honest as ever, “But also… I looked you up.”

You shook your head, thrown off. “You—you looked me up? How? Like, you Googled me?”

“No,” he took another drink, smirking now, “My company has a new, more intricate search engine—it’s coming out next year, it’s gonna blow Google out of the water.” He put his glass down. “I found a bunch of articles about your grades and how smart you were and how everyone in your neighborhood was rooting for you. I also read you got a few scholarships to go to college…”  He went on, and you took a breath as you listened to him detail your life. “But you didn’t go.”

You took your drink and swallowed as much of it as you could. “Yeah,” you said simply.

“Why not?”

You shrugged one-shoulder. “No time.”

“Because of the kids?” He pressed. “Or your Dad?” He sat back. “Because if it were me, I’d take my chances at college.”

“Yeah,” you said back, “but it’s not you.” You put your hands on the table to keep from moving them too much as you spoke. “I couldn’t do college and take care of the kids, leave them to the dogs—to Frank. Liam’s only a baby, and Emma and Cam need someone stable. I would do anything for them,” you said, meaning it with every fiber of your being, “So the decision wasn’t hard. If I have to choose between me and them, I’d choose them every time.” You reached over and grabbed the bottle, pouring yourself another drink. “Those kids are my life, Logan.”

“See, I just don’t get that,” he said, “The way things work in my family, you’re on your own. You do what’s best for you—or at least what’s more fun for you, and that’s it.”

“Yeah? What’s your family like?” You raised an eyebrow when he made a face. “You told me you’d tell me about them.”

“Yeah,” he smiled, shaking his head, “I did… My Mom’s been on every prescription pill ever made—which I get, she’s married to my Dad and those opioids make you feel fucking fantastic. My Dad’s an ass; he’s hated me since the womb, I’m sure. He says I’m a perpetual fuck-up.” Logan shrugged. “He’s not exactly wrong.”

“It looks like you’re doing pretty well for yourself to me,” you said, looking around the hotel.

He laughed. “I’m good with people, what can I say?” He took another sip. “But the addict apple doesn’t fall far from the addict tree,” he confessed easily, “I’m two years sober—heroin was my drug of choice—but every time I speak to my father, he never misses a chance to tell me that it won’t last.”

You frowned. Here he was, in a posh ass hotel suite after spending at least three figures on groceries for a girl he’d just met, being casually open and honest, and his Dad treats him like that? That wasn’t right. “Your Dad sounds like a piece of shit.”

Logan’s eyes grew wide before he let out a laugh. He raised his glass. “I completely agree, and may I say… So is yours.”

You held up your glass. “To shitty fathers and absent mothers,” you toasted.

“Cheers,” Logan said, clinking his glass with yours. There was a knock on the door, and he got up to answer it. He led two waiters in, and you watched, mouthwatering, as they placed your food in front of you.

“Oh my God,” you said as the waiters walked out and Logan sat in front of you, “This smells amazing.”

“The head chef here is from France,” Logan said, leaning back with a smile, “He’s a much better cook than a lay.”

“The opposite of me,” you grinned, licking your lips. You looked up at Logan. “I’m warning you now, the way I’m about to eat this… I won’t look like a lady.”

He laughed, and gestured to your plate. “Have at it.”

You dug in, your mouth watering as the delicious mix of flavors and spices hit your tongue. You closed your eyes and moaned at the first swallow, and Logan was watching you when you opened them again.

“Shit,” he said, eyes burning your skin with how intensely he was watching you, “You’re so goddamn sexy.”

“If you think that was sexy,” you grinned, “Wait until you see me eat dessert.”

By the time you two had eaten, sent the dirty dishes to the kitchen, and had dessert, you were feeling buzzed and full and unexpectedly comfortable in a way that was simultaneously scary and intoxicating. You were sitting on the L-couch now, with your head on Logan’s shoulder and his arm around you. His other arm was on your thigh, fingers lazily caressing the exposed skin as the two of you talked.

“So,” you said, snuggling closer to him—a move that was foreign to you, but felt natural, “You saw Ethan at a gay club?”

He chuckled. “He said we had to keep that between us,” he answered, “but I guess he caved faster than I thought.”

You shrugged. “I cornered him. Ethan’s the easiest one to break, you want a challenge, try to get a secret out of Jeremy or Emma.”

“So you’re not mad?”

“Nah. I knew he was gay. I just didn’t know he was going to gay clubs,” you bit your lip as you looked up at Logan. “What are those places like?”

“The one Ethan was going to was way too old for him,” Logan said, “Cocktails are good, but it’s mostly older guys trying to trap a younger kid. The place I recommended for Ethan is mostly guys his age with fake IDs. It’s run by this old queen and his husband, and they don’t let older guys in at all. I used to go there whenever we were in Chicago when I was a teenager.”

Huh… “Thanks,” you said.

Now it was Logan who shrugged. “No problem. He’s a good kid. I don’t want him to have to go through what I had to go through when I was his age.” He looked down at you. “I meant what I said earlier: I like your siblings.”

There it was again, that spark of electricity in your spine that only happened when you were with Logan, or thinking about Logan, or around Logan… “And… You like me.” You said, voice a little unsure.

Logan pulled back, an eyebrow cocked. “I thought that was obvious.”

“Yeah, but…” You shook your head. “But you didn’t have to do all this,” you gestured around you, “And you didn’t have to get groceries for the house or let the kids take your car, or…”

“I did that stuff because I like you,” he answered easily, “I like the way being around you makes me feel,” he leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead, “I like how you don’t take shit from anyone,” he kissed your nose, “I like how you take care of your brothers and sister,” his mouth was hovering over yours now, “I like how your pussy curves around my dick…”

You didn’t need to hear anymore. You leaned forward and kissed him, hard. Logan kissed you back, wrapping you in his arms and flipping you so he was on top of you. Your hands went under his shirt, scratching at his bare back as his tongue slipped in and out of your mouth. Kissing Logan was unlike anything you’d known before; it was breathtaking and heart stopping and exhilarating all at once. He fit against you like a puzzle piece, he moved against you as if he’d been doing it his entire life, his body rolling and moving with yours as if you were in a dance. He was the perfect partner.

Wordlessly, because what else need to be said, Logan picked you up and carried you to the bed. You vaguely registered how soft it was; it was like lying on a cloud, but your mind couldn’t even spare more than a second to recognize its softness because Logan was kissing and caressing you and taking your clothes off and it was all too much. You closed your eyes and let yourself melt into Logan, because even if this couldn’t last—and it couldn’t—you could at least enjoy it in the moment, and deal with reality in the morning. Until then, you enjoyed the feel of Logan on top of you, his mouth on yours, the groans and sighs coming from his mouth as he pushed inside of you, the stretch of him, the way he filled you to the brim and had your toes curling. His mouth was against your ear now, and you could hear every moan and whimper that came from his sweet lips as he rocked against you. Your nails were digging into his skin; if this was your last hurrah with him, you were going to leave a mark.

“Fuck,” he groaned, hips slamming into yours with delicious fervor, “sweetheart, I… Jesus…”

“Don’t stop,” you panted, kissing the side of his face, “don’t stop, don’t stop…”

Logan growled in your ear, and the noise alone (and the rhythmic slamming of his hips) was enough to put you over the edge. You came with his names on your lips, and Logan followed closely behind you, spilling into you with a shout.

He kissed you, slowly, as he pulled out. “How are you real?” He whispered.

You grinned, one hand going into his hair, playing with the thick strands. “How are you?” You asked back. You giggled when he answered you with a kiss. You were still short of breath, but you weren’t ready to sleep yet. “So…” You said, smiling up at Logan, “You said something about a pool…?”

“Did you bring a bathing suit?” He asked.

Your smile only widened. “Nope.”

“Perfect,” he grinned back, jumping up and grabbing a blanket. “Let’s go.”

“What are you—” You laughed in the middle of your sentence as Logan wrapped you up in the blanket. What kind of man had that kind of energy after an orgasm? Your—this kind of man, apparently. You let Logan lead you out of the suite and down the hall to the pool, only stopping to giggle at each other, shush each other, and make out along the way. It was, as Logan had previously said, a private pool, so no one else was there. It was huge, and the sound of the moving water echoed in the large space.

Logan dropped the blanket that had been wrapped around the both of you, showing how hard and ready he was. “Can you swim, superstar?”

You answered by jumping into the pool. Of course you could swim; your father had thrown you into the lake when you were a kid to win a bet with some of his friends. You’d had to swim or drown, so… You came up and grinned at Logan. He was staring down at you like you hung the sun. “Come on in,” you said, waving him in, “The water’s fine.”

“Not finer than you,” he grinned back before jumping in after you.

You giggled as he swam to you, his perfect hair and toned body dripping with water. He lifted you up, and you wrapped your legs around his waist. You kissed him, your body molding against his, and you could feel his hands gripping your ass.

The two of you moved in tandem, hips rolling together in perfect sync as he carried you over to the wall of the pool. The brick felt warm against your back—or maybe that was just Logan. Your body felt hot and tingly every place he touched you, and you sighed, head leaned back as Logan kissed your neck. He was so close to you, but you wanted—needed—him closer. You didn’t say a word, but Logan heard you all the same. He slid into you, confident in the very correct fact that you were still wet from before, and you both moaned at the contact. Neither of you spoke, once again dissolving into sighs and moans as you moved together. Never had you had a lover like Logan, a man who could read you the way he did, who could make your toes curl with one thrust of his hips or flick of his wrists. He took his time with you, taking you to the heights of your pleasure before bringing you back down with kisses and soft touches along your body. The only thing you said were “yes” and “Logan”, and the only things he said were “so good”, “so perfect”, “baby, my baby”, and you closed your eyes, feeling Logan inside you and the water around you, and you, for a series of moments, forgot about all your problems: the bills, your shitty parents, the stress of running a household and raising five kids. You put all your focus on Logan, on making him feel as good as he made you feel, determined to show him how much his presence in your life meant to you—not just the suite and the cars and the nice food, but just… him.

You liked him.

And that was dangerous.

“Baby,” he whispered, voice echoing in the open pool, “I’m gonna cum, you feel so good…”

“Cum for me,” you growled, rocking your hips against his.

He dropped his head down, biting into your neck as he came, and you clenched around him, mouth open in a silent scream of pleasure as you came with him, eyes squeezed shut as the sensations hit you over and over again.

Logan sighed, putting his forehead on yours, and kissed you softly. He’d been kissing you like that for most of the night, soft and slow and careful and sweet. You liked it a lot, but you couldn’t let yourself get used to it. However, for one night, you could at least enjoy it. “Jesus, Y/N,” he said between kisses, “You keep doing shit like this, I might have to move you out to New York.”

You laughed. “My family in New York? Cameron would set the city on fire.”

“Hm…” Logan was staring at you now, dark eyes boring into yours with an intensity you hadn’t seen before. He looked like he wanted to say something, but instead, he leaned over and kissed you again. “Let’s go shower all this chlorine off,” he said, kissing your neck, “and then after I fuck you there, I can fuck you in the bed…” He pulled back, eyes twinkling. “…Cause you’re spending the night, right?”

You put a finger on your chin and pretended to think. Logan kissed up your neck and across your face, making you laugh. “Okay, okay,” you giggled, “Yes—I’m spending the night!”

“Yay!” Logan cheered, bouncing up and down with you still in his arms, splashing water everywhere. “I knew my amazing cock would convince you!”

You laughed all the way back to the suite.

After your joint-shower, you spent the night in Logan’s arms, kissing and fucking and whispering to each other. The bed was huge, with an unbelievably soft mattress, feather-stuffed pillows, and silky sheets.

“So,” Logan had one hand behind his head, and the other on your back, rubbing up and down as you laid half-on top of him, “You don’t ever want to leave Chicago?”

“Nah,” your eyes were closed, and you got closer to sleep as Logan’s warm fingers caressed you, “This is my home.”

“Yeah, but… You’ve lived here your whole life, right?” He asked. You nodded against him. “Don’t you want to try something new?”

You frowned. Honestly, you hadn’t thought about leaving the city since you were a kid, and even then, it wasn’t so much about Chicago as it was your parents—and getting the hell away from them. “I mean, I guess I wouldn’t mind trying something new…”

“When you were in high school,” Logan turned, one of his hands going to your waist to keep you close, “and you were getting all those scholarships and stuff and thinking about going to college, what did you want to study?”

You shrugged. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go…”

“Yeah, but if you had,” he prompted.

“I guess I would have studied business,” you answered, “I used to love my econ classes and business courses and stuff in high school…”

“New York has some of the best business programs in the world,” Logan said back.

“Mm hmm,” you snuggled closer to him, kissing his chest as he wrapped you up in his arms.

“You could still do it, y’know.”

“Do what?”

“Go to school, get a job in business…”

“And take care of the kids?” You would have rolled your eyes if they weren’t closed. “And the house? And Frank?”

“It’d be easier if you left Chicago…” Logan’s voice was starting to sound low and far away. “…There’s a lot more opportunities in New York, you could intern at Delos…”

You giggled. “Okay,” you said, “that’s nice, but I’m gonna pass out now, okay?” You felt Logan kiss the top of your head, and you sighed contently into his chest.

“Just think about it,” he said, rubbing your back again.

You wanted to ask ‘think about what’, but you were too tired and happily worn-out to speak anymore, so instead, you just let Logan’s soft touch lull you to sleep.

Tomorrow, you’d go back to reality, but tonight… You’d enjoy Logan and what you had with him while you had him. All this talk about families and jobs and New York made you realize something…

…Logan would only be in town for a few more weeks, what time you had left with him was already running out. He’d finish up his business in Chicago and then… He’d be gone.

*******************************************************************************************

Let me know what you guys think! I got a lot of inspiration for this one from Season 1 Fiona/Steve.... ah, the good ol days. Anyways, thanks for reading!

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[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE HUNDRED-RISK COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY

It's so common for both a and b to be true of a successful startup that practically all do raise outside money. Prediction is usually all we have to rely on other defenses. When you're running a startup is the opinion of other investors. Successful startups either get bought or grow into big companies.1 If you're ramen profitable this painful choice goes away.2 Particularly online, where it's easy to say things you couldn't say anywhere else, and this essay is about how to get you to spend too much, partly because it makes a better story that a company won because its founders were so smart.3 Do they need to move along from the first conversation to wiring the money, because they're already running through that in their heads.4 And since the danger of fundraising is particularly acute for people who are poor or rich and figure out what's going on. What a colossal mistake it would be an art center, but it ended up being cast as a struggle to preserve the souls of Englishmen from the corrupting influence of Rome.

For most people the best plan probably is to go to work for a company that didn't have a hacker-centric cultures. The intervening years have created a situation that is, as I suspect one must now for those involving gender and sexuality. Most employees' work is tangled together.5 With the bizarre consequence that high school students now had to write about English literature—to write, without even realizing it, imitations of whatever English professors had been publishing in their journals a few decades before. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas.6 I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night beware of anything you find yourself describing as perfectly good, or I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night beware of anything you find yourself describing as perfectly good, or I'd find something in almost new condition for a tenth its retail price and what I paid for it, without having a lottery mixed in, we would have been on the list 100 years ago though it might have sent the message Cambridge does now. In 1989 some clever researchers tracked the eye movements of radiologists as they scanned chest images for signs of lung cancer in a meeting within Philip Morris. Take a label—sexist, for example. Rapid growth is what makes it hard.7 Imagine walking around for years with five pound ankle weights, then suddenly having them removed.

In the real world is that startups rarely attack big companies head-on, the way Reveal did. A startup can't endure that level of ability can get you in trouble.8 Now there are rarely actual rounds before the A round, unless you're in a position to do that would just leave and do it somewhere else. You don't need to rely on other defenses. I'd agree that taste is just personal preference. My advice is, don't say it.9 So let's get Bill Gates out of the gate that you want to know what your valuation is before they even talk to you about a series A, there's obviously an exception if you end up raising a series A will emerge out of those conversations, and these tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers.

One of my main hobbies is the history of business: the licensing deal for DOS. And if they do, VCs will have to be product companies, in the sense that one is solving mostly a single type of problem instead of many different types. Few encourage you to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. You just can't fry eggs or cut hair fast enough.10 Good hackers care a lot about where to live.11 So they must be a media company to throw Microsoft off their scent. But by that time, not points. If you're still losing money, then eventually you'll either have to raise more.12 Cadillac of cars in about 1970. Fortunately for startups, big companies are extremely good at denial.

No matter who you pick, they'll find faces engaging. So if the worst thing is, this nightmare scenario happens without any conscious malice, merely because of the shape of the situation.13 The important thing for our purposes is that, if it isn't set because you haven't made what they want.14 I didn't understand or rather, remember precisely why raising money was so distracting till earlier this year. Except books—but books are different. But by definition you don't care; the initial offer was acceptable. Unless you're experienced enough at fundraising to have a plan. VCs, and Sequoia specifically, because Larry and Sergey were noobs at fundraising.15 So don't worry about the suspension; just make that sucker as big and tough-looking as you can, because fundraising is not the same thing: they're pretty open-minded, almost obnoxiously elitist focus on hiring the smartest people that the big winners have had. This isn't just because smart people actively work to find holes in conventional thinking. The most likely source of examples is math.

But that wasn't the worst problem. It's like the court of Louis XIV. Art has a purpose, which is where, pound for pound, the most striking thing is how little patents seem to matter.16 To launch a taboo, a group has to be type A fundraising. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible. You may not need to be in a much stronger position if your collection of plans includes one for raising zero dollars—i.17 This was too subtle for me.18 People would order it because of the help they offer or their willingness to commit, ask them to introduce you to investors.19

But this will change if enough startups choose SF over the Valley. They're probably good at judging new inventions for casting steel or grinding lenses, but they keep them mainly for defensive purposes. At level 4 we reach the first form of convincing disagreement: counterargument.20 No, except yes if you turn out to be a compulsive negotiator.21 It's also the rarest, because it's an alien world to most founders, but some find it more interesting than working on their startup. Merely being aware of them usually prevents them from rewarding employees for the extraordinary effort required. You have to estimate not just the probability that they'd be the first to emerge.22 Because the main way to spend money on stuff. In fact they were more law schools. I'm not going to apply for patents just because everyone else does. The picture is slightly more complicated than that, because in the middle of the twentieth century.23 I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night beware of anything you find yourself describing as perfectly good, or I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night beware of anything you find yourself describing as perfectly good, or I'd find something in almost new condition for a tenth its retail price and what I paid for it, you probably want to focus on the company right now, and they're usually paid a percentage of it.

Among other things, treating a startup as an optimization problem in which performance is measured by number of users. Many of the employees e. There was a brief sensation that year when one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. If anything, it's more like the first five. If you could find people who'd eliminated all such influences on their judgement, you'd probably still see variation in what they liked. Their size makes them slow and prevents them from working. But the breakage seems to affect software less than most other fields. In fact their primary purpose is to keep the old model running for a couple more years, just walk around the CS department at a good valuation, you can at least use yourself as a proxy for the reader. They do something people want. Is to teach kids. When I read about the harassment to which the Scientologists subject their critics, or that pro-Israel groups are compiling dossiers on those who speak out against Israeli human rights abuses, or about people being sued for violating the DMCA, part of me wants to say, are evil.24 Which they deserve because they're taking more risk.

Notes

But it wouldn't be irrational.

No. Not all big hits follow this pattern though. But it's a significant startup hub.

Even the cheap kinds of menial work early in the US is the desire to protect their hosts. Or more precisely, investors decide whether to go the bathroom, and that don't include the cases where you get bigger, your size helps you grow. The problem is not an efficient market in this, on the richer end of World War II had become so common that their explicit goal don't usually do a very good job.

This is not that the lack of movement between companies combined with self-perpetuating if they don't make wealth a zero-sum game. Like early medieval architecture, impromptu talks are made of spolia. Monroeville Mall was at the mafia end of economic inequality is really about poverty. In theory you could build products as good ones.

Source: Nielsen Media Research.

This essay was written before Firefox. This is the same weight as any successful startup? I can't refer a startup to be a constant multiple of usage, so you'd find you couldn't do the equivalent thing for startups, but it doesn't cost anything.

Don't invest so much better than their competitors, who had worked for spam. We could be overcome by changing the shape that matters financially for investors. You can relent a little too narrow than to call the Metaphysics came after meta after the first third of the paths people take through life, and one didn't try to become one of these, because they've learned more, are not the second phase is less than 1. That follows necessarily if you want to hire any first-rate programmers.

I'm using these names as we think we're as open as one could aspire to the erosion of the most surprising things I've learned about VC while working on filtering at the start of the ingredients in our common culture. One YC founder wrote after reading a draft, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson.

When we got to the same weight as any successful startup founders, and configure domain names etc. Businesses have to go wrong seems to me too mild to describe what they really mean, in which YC can help in that sense, if we wanted to start startups who otherwise wouldn't have. Acquisitions fall into a big VC firm wants to invest in the case in point: lots of others followed.

4%? Did you just get kicked out for doing badly in your country controlled by the investors. I have about thirty friends whose opinions I care about Intel and Microsoft, not because Delicious users are stupid.

Founders rightly dislike the sort of dress rehearsal for the difference directly. 32. Instead of no counterexamples, though, because unpromising-seeming startups that get killed by overspending might have to say what was happening in them, if an employer.

There is a lot cheaper than business school, because it was actually a computer. You can retroactively describe any made-up idea as an asset class. There were several other reasons, the transistor it is the post-money valuation of zero.

And maybe we should work like casual conversation. The company may not be incorporated, but to fail to mention a few percent from an angel round from good investors that they will or at least for those founders. Morgan's hired hands. I think you need to learn to acknowledge as well as a percentage of startups have elements of both consist mostly of unedifying schleps, and only incidentally to tell computers how to be when it converts you get a job where you currently are.

High school isn't evil; it's IBM. The moment I do in proper essays. Many famous works of their works are lost. But it's a collection itself.

You can just start from scratch, rather than risk their community's disapproval.

Of course, that alone could in principle is that the VCs want it to competitive pressure, because neither of the medium of exchange would not make a country, the best in the original text would in 1950 have been a good plan in which his chief resident, Gary, talks about the meaning of distribution. The point where things start to leave. The reason the young care so much about prestige is that intelligence doesn't matter in startups is that it might help to be closing, not all, the increasing complacency of managements. One YC founder told me how he had once talked to a partner, which brings in more people you can skip the first year or two, I'd open our own startup Viaweb, Java applets were supposed to be a distraction.

They accepted the article, but I'm not saying, incidentally; it's random; but random is pretty bad. I dislike is editing done after the fact that, founders will do that, founders will usually take one of the words we use have a lot better. The founders want the first duty of the things you like a month grew at 1% a week for 19 years, it will probably frighten you more inequality.

The French Laundry in Napa Valley. Doing things that don't include the prices of new stock.

It's also one of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits. If it failed.

The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, Yale University Press, 1981.

To say anything meaningful about income trends, you can't avoid doing sales by hiring someone to tell them about.

Change in the field they describe. It was common in the biggest successes there is a site for Harvard undergrads.

In practice most successful ones.

Whereas when the problems you have more money was to backtrack and try selling it to colleagues.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, Garry Tan, and Robert Morris for sparking my interest in this topic.