#and where else would I ask if not in other nerd-adjacent shops
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This was the second time that I went into a comic book store (you know, the places specializing on selling fantasy and science fiction), and asked if they know of a bookshop in that city specializing on fantasy and science fiction novels, just to be met with a blank stare, a what the fuck are you doing here and the very helpful suggestion to look at the fantasy sections in actual bookshops.
"They have fantasy novels in normal bookshops, don't they?"
Yes. Always the exact same ones. Always the exact same ones regardless of the country I'm in. It would be nice to be able to 1) browse around somewhere that can afford to carry some smaller titles, too, and 2) ask someone for book recommendations who actually specializes on this subject.
#like?? it's not that weird of a question??#and where else would I ask if not in other nerd-adjacent shops#aka comic book shops#'eeeek we only sell comics!'#and DVDs and board and video games and collectible stuff#so basically everything nerdy except for books??#(not sure about audio but probably)#WHY ARE YOU ACTING AS IF I WAS INSANE TO LOOK FOR NERD STUFF IN A NERD SHOP??#it wasn't even a book section just information if they know anything about one elsewhere#nerd stuff
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Good Omens Author and Artist Recs
In honor of the tenth month, here are 10 Authors & Artists in the Good Omens fandom who are absolutely giving me joy and life right now. They each have published multiple pieces, and the intended audiences of these works range from general to mature-but-non-explicit to mature-and-quite-explicit.
The stories I most favor — including these recommendations — have happy endings, though not necessarily all works in the portfolios of the authors/artists will, so do read the tags and such for yourself.
(NB: The lists are alphabetical by username; it was hard enough selecting only 5 of each, don't ask me to rank them.)
Authors
ARK | @et-in-arkadia | AO3 Good Omens top-level: Ark
Start with the fic that pulse of my nights and days, a gorgeous, explicit romp that revels in revelations of pining, and love, and literary recitations.The way Aziraphale and Crowley gradually reveal themselves in confessions more naked than their bodies, in their desire to please one another in ways that augment, but are not strictly subject to, the sensual pleasure of the flesh is deeply engaging and soul-satisfying.
If you'd rather plunge into the fic that seared me with Aziraphale and Crowley's adjacent yet solitary pining, splintered me with mutually-recognized reciprocal angst (and Someone have mercy that I know that's a thing now), and finally made me actually cry when all hearts were mended (even mine), try this: these furious passions, these chances. It’s an exquisite agony and fierce, cathartic joy; a true paean to love and desire.
DRAWLIGHT | @drawlight | AO3 Good Omens top-level: drawlight
Start with the series Chiaroscuro, a kaleidoscope array of myth and legend and stories from time out of mind lived by two who would be lovers, would be loved, did they but know it. The tales take us from memory and starstuff, through living and revelations, to futures and syncretism; all of it suffused with light, light, light.
If Crowley's fears hurt, it is because I have held them, sliver-sharp and lying inside my own heart; when Crowley's rapture resounds, it is because each of us secretly knows the sound of blessed water falling on the desert — the echoes of love are built into our very fabric, waiting to reverberate. drawlight takes us through the moments, the tesserae of many colors with an intimate eye for hope, then shows us how the jangled tumble resolves into utter delight. It ends (though their story never really ends) as it begins (where all stories really begin) — in the stars.
FYRE | @amuseoffyre | AO3 Good Omens top-level: Fyre
Start with the series Crossing Paths, a sprawling, currently-41-chapter saunter Through the Ages with Aziraphale and Crowley. Each morsel of backstory is canon-compliant and richly evocative of its particular era, laced with enough detail to make this fellow history nerd’s heart soar (seriously, there are even endnotes giving specific context to the setting and pivotal flow of events).
But these are no dry ostraca, no cryptic, lifeless castoffs; these stories fairly shudder with the countervailing magnificence and wretchedness wrought by humans, each extreme alternately and seemingly arbitrarily condoned by Heaven and Hell. And this crucible of life on Earth refines something unexpected in the natures of both Aziraphale and Crowley — a tiny mustard seed of compassion that may have been intrinsic to their natures, but would never have come to fruition without being deliberately nurtured, sheltered, encouraged. It is something the other angels dismiss, and the other demons forswear. But over and over it draws these two incarnate immortals together, and the adversity that could have seared the heart right out of them instead makes them kind. And every bit of is in character. These stories made me cry and laugh and quail and hope and long for ever, ever more.
JESS THE RECKLESS | Twitter JessWhitecroft | AO3 Good Omens top-level: jessthereckless
Start with the series It's Not The End Of The World, Dear, a light-hearted romance exploring what happens when an ethereal and an occult being come together and have to navigate the supernatural repercussions of their involvement. The opening story picks up where canon left us, in a world saved and remade and spinning on. Aziraphale and Crowley work through what it means to be on their own side the way they do everything else, with snarky bickering and displacement activities and gravitating toward each other like two celestial bodies on close approach.
That delightful domestic fluff, with all its attendant joys and frustrations, gives us the opportunity to fall in love again with our pair of ineffable idiots even as they realize they’ve fallen in love with each other. There are picnics and portents, kisses and divine ecstasy, seduction and human pleasure. And so much outright hedonism, sexual exploration, and joyful fucking it feels positively sybaritic. Yet that’s not the end-all be-all here. Life is infinitely more interesting together, even as they tackle kitchen renovations and making dinner and assembling furniture. As Aziraphale quotes, Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove… The series is an ongoing indulgence, with another update posted just today (Oct-3).
LAURA SHAPIRO | @laurashapiro-noreally | AO3 Good Omens top-level: laurashapiro
Start with the series Leaves of Grass and the not-to-be-missed follow-on stories in the same universe: Working Hard in Damp Places and As Time Goes By. This extended series is everything great sex (and stories about great sex) should be — playful, joyful, loving. Daring. Scorching. An utterly delightful mix of banter and banging, pleasure and emotion, exploration and re-discovery with excellent character voices and interactions. It's incredibly fucking sexy and emotionally satisfying.
And lavish attention to detail makes Aziraphale and Crowley shine through as genuinely supernatural beings sharing the joys of their flesh (and all the very human transcendence that can bring). But there’s so much more, too. Laura weaves the most glorious, fulfilled and fulfilling yearning through every part of these works, and it's breath-taking. It's not just the scope of years for these immortal characters, but the depth, the breadth, the texture of their longing that's so amazing. Those first, nearly invisible tendrils first introduced in nearly offhand ways as "they talked, and they argued, and they dined and drank" ineluctably gather and twine into a great ribald ribbons of longing running through the fabric of their relationship — fascinating and inextricable.
Enjoyment of the wicked wordplay and cackle-inducing snark is left as an exercise for the lucky reader.
Artists
DRAWLIGHT | @drawlight | Good Omens Art Collection on AO3: as beautiful to me as lightning
Start with the piece I’m never getting over: and there, where my head pushed backwards (Original Tumblr post) (Full image on AO3)
Shared breath, shared gaze, shared being. Desire and connection flow through every line, thrilling the senses and stirring the soul. We are gorgeously suspended in the moment with them and know, in drawlight’s words, this is only the first time, never the last. I get happily lost in their soft blush of discovery and joy.
The rest of the collection well repays the looking with sweet heat, tender gestures, and the dawnglow of genuine love.
GEMENNAIR | @gemennair | Redbubble Shop: gemennair
Start with the piece I’m never getting over: Forbidden Friendship (Original Tumblr post)
A glimpse of their first picnic, in Eden. There is absolutely luminous joy in every shaft of sunlight, each dappled fruit, every green-gold leaf. And, of course, in the faces of Aziraphale and Crowley. And there are secrets awaiting notice: lily of the valley, first sprung in Eden, a symbol of hope and return to happiness; the possible origin of Aziraphale’s love for pears; Crowley amiably sheltering under the angel’s wing again.
Everything is soft and nothing hurts and I treasure the time I get to spend there.
GINGER HAOLE | @gingerhaole | Tumblr art tag | Good Omens Art Collection on AO3: Polaroids | Etsy Shop: gingerhaole
Start with the piece I’m never getting over: [CW: This kink is not everyone’s cup of tea. You may wish to preview the SFW Tumblr snippet and description first.] Sounding (Original Tumblr post) (Full image on AO3)
Even the SFW snippet gives me a heartrush. The long, accepting lines of Crowley’s body, the way he’s opened himself entirely to the pleasure being given to him, giving over control even to the point of allowing his halo to manifest.
In the full set of Sounding images, the depth of well-worn affection and tenderness between Aziraphale and Crowley, their reciprocally earned and returned trust absolutely shines. Aziraphale’s Botticelli hands fascinate; his intense concentration captivates. The contrast of a fully clothed Aziraphel reverently pleasuring an enthusiastically nude Crowley is beyond delicious. And Crowley’s trembling compliance enchants; his erotic exaltation thrills.
And the various nonbinary, genderfluid representations in the rest of the explicit Polaroids collection feel as genuine as the mindful, existential bond between the ineffable lovers. The same goes for the non-explicit artwork featuring them on Ginger’s Tumblr, too. Exquisite.
JASMINE TWIL | @jasminetwil | Tumblr Good Omens art tag | Etsy Shop: JasmineTwil
Start with the piece I’m never getting over: The first comic adventure of Aardvark!Crowley and Aziraphale (Original Tumblr post)
Playful, snarky, delightful comic-style fanart. There are details that callback to canon (like Crowley’s particular relationship to houseplants and Aziraphale’s tartan bowtie and camelhair coat), and others that exist purely for the joy of them (like Crowley’s demon tattoo appearing on the aardvark’s fur, and the UPC code on the plant pot — seriously, read the last 3 digits…).
Never underestimate the power and worth of laughter.
KHIROPTERA | @khiroptera | Tumblr art tag
Start with the piece I’m never getting over: making sure Crowley has lovely dreams about whatever he likes best (Original Tumblr post)
This is so meltingly soft and tender, I get all misty every time I see it. The deepening crepuscular colors, the scattered twinkles from stars Crowley likely hung himself, the smitten smile curving Aziraphale’s lips, the tender blush of sleep on Crowley’s cheeks give the scene a wonderfully dreamlike quality. I particularly adore this reminder of Aziraphale’s first act of service for Crowley: offering comfort and shelter under the curving expanse of angelic wings. In canon, Crowley’s acts of service tend to be fairly dramatic, increasingly overt gestures impelled by accretion of yearning and dire circumstance, so this homage to Aziraphale’s comparatively understated offerings is particularly sweet.
All the pieces in her portfolio make me squee, every time I revisit them. Truly, every single time. In fact, I was so inspired by her adorable Ineffable Husbands in scarves in the snow (Original Tumblr post), I ended up writing a vignette of ineffable fluff about it.
Postscript to the authors and artists mentioned here: If you would rather I present different links or other information, or if I have in any way mischaracterized your work, please tell me, so I can make corrections. While my words come from a place of love, it would be no kindness for me to gloss over mistakes or cause any of you discomfort. Thank you all. ♥
#good omens#authors and artists#absolutely no one asked for this#but I love them all so#tbh it was hard to limit myself to 5 each#and everyone who graces fandom with their talents deserves praise#thank you all#longform#fanfic recs#fanart recs
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Hobbit High school
Chapter 1: The Stories Exchanged
Fandom- The Hobbit
Characters- Ori X Dwalin, Bilbo X Thorin, Fili, Kili, Dori, Nori, Gandalf, Thlandral, Legolas
Rating- PG13
Word count- 4924
Archive Link- https://archiveofourown.org/works/10027448/chapters/22350188
Summary- Ori and Bilbo meet before class to exchange stories (as the title may suggest) and Dwalin joins the two younger Ri brothers for dinner.
Hey all, here’s the newest from my mind, please keep in mind that I do have dyslexia and I really do try to fix all spelling mistakes but some will always slip through. If you spot some please let me know and I will do my best to correct it. Thank you.
Moria is a quite suburb, nestled prettily between the Lonely Mountain, where Lady Galadriel’s School of Medicine shown bright and the White City. In the old days it was a fairly bustling mining town but now it was just a quiet place between a bustling city and a large college of medicine. This fall morning was windy with a chilling under tone as the sun was only just beginning to peek through the gray clouds at six thirty in the morning. Ori Ri had walked to school with his brother, Nori as usual and now sat in the bleachers watching the football team run through their morning drills. Well more watching Dwalin Stealbuster run through his morning drills, of course Ori would never admit that was why he was there. Whenever asked he always said it was to meet with Bilbo for a quick homework review. This of course only cemented the two younger boy’s reputation as nerds even more, despite the fact that most of the team didn’t believe it. Though the story was hard to dispute when Bilbo always showed up and most of the time papers and note books where passed back and forth between them.
Two months after Ori and Bilbo had come clean to each other about their crushes, Bilbo surprised his friend with the first of what would become many erotic tales featuring Ori and Dwalin. It was only after receiving three such tales that Ori returned the favor in kind supplying Bilbo with ones featuring himself and Thorin. This secret game of gifted tales turned into something adjacent to a competition to see whose story could affect the other more. There was only one rule to this little competition of theirs; they would only receive a story if they both had one to give. Today was one such day.
Ori pulled his too large gray and green horizontal striped cardigan tighter around him as he heard Bilbo step up on to the aluminum. He turned to his friend and smiled as Bilbo’s medium length soft brown hair flew wild in the breeze. Bilbo was wearing one of his father’s old maroon corduroy jackets over a dark blue button down and some well-loved, faded jeans. He had an old brown leather satchel that the two boys had found in a local thrift shop slung across his chest to rest on his right hip. Ori’s smile widened as he thought how much his friend looked the part of a literature nerd, there was no doubt that Bilbo would follow his parents down the path to librarian but he may also add writer to that path as well.
Bilbo is the only child of the Baggins family, who had been personally invited by Mayor Oakensheild to help bring the library up-to-date. Dori and nine-year-old Ori had dragged Nori to the re-opening celebration. While exploring the new building Ori found Bilbo bunkered down in the fantasy section. The two young boys became quick friends over their shared love of literature. Over the years Bilbo became very comfortable in the Ri household, so much so that when Ori brought up the suspected affection for Thorin he had very little trouble admitting to it and wrangling out Ori’s thoughts on Dwalin.
“Windy this morning.” Bilbo said, as he got closer to Ori.
“It’s probably going to rain before lunch.” Ori nodded at the sky.
“Yeah?” Bilbo sat down to Ori’s right.
“I can smell it.”
“When are you going to get rid of this thing?” Bilbo picked at Ori’s cardigan. The striped thing clashed with Ori’s earthen fire hair, besides doing nothing at all for any semblance of fashion his friend might have. Ori wore brown slacks with a brown and teal argyle pull over. Bilbo was fairly certain his friend couldn’t look any more like an old man trapped in a young man’s body if he tried especially with that cardigan.
“I like it.” Ori said brushing Bilbo’s hand away.
“You bought it as a joke; you’re not supposed to wear it all the time.” Bilbo huffed opening his bag and pulled out a maroon binder. Ori shrugged reaching down by his feet for his canvas messenger bag.
“It’s comfy.”
“It’s ugly.”
“It is, Ori.” Thorin said leaning against the field fence before gulping down some water. Both Ori and Bilbo turned to the football captain.
“Shut up, Thorin. No one wants your opinion.” Ori said with playful defiance, Thorin just laughed dropping his water bottle back onto the bench.
“It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. Nerd boy. Isn’t that right Bilbo?”
Bilbo blushed slightly as he smiled. “That’s what I keep trying to tell him.”
Thorin laughed again and ran back out to join his team.
Bilbo watched Thorin’s retreating back with longing. One early spring afternoon two years ago, Ori came to the realization that Bilbo had a heavy crush on Thorin. So, while both boys where sitting in Ori’s room Ori confronted Bilbo about it and was forced to admit to his own feelings for Dwalin.
Ori dropped a black folder onto the binder Bilbo was holding, startling his friend into catching it before it slid to the ground. Bilbo tightened his grip on the folder and turned sharp eyes on Ori, who just shrugged. “What, I dropped it.”
Bilbo smirked. “Yeah right.” But his voice showed his hurt feelings. “And to think I stayed up writing two of these for you.” Bilbo handed Ori the binder.
“Two? Oh, don’t I feel special.” Ori flipped open the binder. “What are they about?”
Bilbo cracked open the folder. “They’re both the same basic idea but I couldn’t decide who should be in what role so I wrote it both ways.”
Ori laughed as he started reading, though the more he read the more he decided he didn’t like this first tale.
Bilbo put away the folder, pulled out a notebook and sat writing quickly. “What are you doing?” Ori asked, Bilbo had never before not at least started the story given to him.
“I forgot to finish the story treatment for English.”
“Geeze, you’re lucky Professor Thranduil accepts hand written stuff from you.” Ori said rolling his eyes in disbelief.
“He would from everyone if their handwriting wasn’t so atrocious.”
“Well most of us prefer the computer anyway.” Dwalin said dropping down onto the bleacher in front of them.
Ori started at his sudden appearance and pulled the binder up to his chest as he asked. “How do you do that?”
Bilbo smirked; he was also surprised by Dwalin’s fairly sudden appearance but not as much as Ori seemed to be. Dwalin’s ability to silently appear had come up several times before and still continued to confound them.
Dwalin shrugged leaning back to look at Ori. “It’s a skill.”
“I imagine.” Ori said relaxing his hold on the binder slightly. Bilbo’s smirk grew, part of him enjoyed watching the two of them dance around each other. No matter how many times he tried to encourage his friend to confess to Dwalin, Ori simply wouldn’t do it. Not that Bilbo could bring himself to be all that upset by it, he got a good show most of the time and he couldn’t say a word to Thorin about his own feeling so he had no right to be upset. There was also the chance that he was misreading Dwalin’s kindness because he knew how Ori felt about the older boy.
“Why do you two sit out here? It’s too cold to just be sitting.” Dwalin asked his eyes never leaving Ori’s face.
Both Ori and Bilbo shrugged in response. “I walk in with Nori and this has just kind of established itself as the place. Besides were else would we go?” Ori said drawing invisible patterns over the story on his lap.
Dwalin half smirked. “Inside, the library or something. The school is open you know, just somewhere else so you don’t have to sit out here in the cold.”
“Stealbuster!” Coach Boromir shouted from the field, Dwalin looked back at the field and the familiar weathered face. “Leave the worlds quietest cheer squad alone and get back down here.” Dwalin rolled his eyes at his teammates who were silently mocking him behind their coach and stood. He smirked again as he hit the field and he heard Ori and Bilbo let out an unenthusiastic, “Go team. Fight.” before returning to what they had been doing. Coach Boromir chuckled briefly but quickly went back to barking orders at the team.
Ori watched the team for a while but didn’t want to seem like a creeper and eventually turned back to the story Bilbo had given him. He never really cared for the stories in which Dwalin was almost submissive to his every wish and this one was getting to be too much in that vibe. He read on a bit longer before turning to the second story. Bilbo closed his note book and glanced at his watch as he put it away. They still had about twenty minutes so he opened the folder with Ori’s story in it and began to read.
Coach Boromir gathered his team and sent them inside to get cleaned up. As he picked up the last of his papers, he noticed the younger Ri and his friend still on the bleachers reading. With a sigh he walked to the bottom of the bleachers and called out to them. “Ori, Bilbo” The two boys looked up. “You should be heading in too.” The boys glanced around and noticed everyone else had moved inside and began to gather themselves up. Once done they trotted past him with an apologetic. “Sorry Coach.”
“Just get inside.”
Nori was showered and dressed first as per- usual having thrown around his power as ‘Most bad-ass on the team’ the entire team did not agree with this statement. They did however agree that he was one of the funniest and had the best beard. While they all sported pretty impressive beards for young men still in high school, Nori had already set his into interact braids and patters that hinted at the star pattern he would be known for in his adult life. He had his reasons for wanting to be out the door first. One he needed more time for beard matiness and two he wanted to get to Ori. Since the rumor that Nori was “screwing Ori senseless every night” had made its way to his little brother. Ori had blushed so hard upon hearing the rumor that his cheeks almost matched his earthen red hair while he sputtered out denials that were sadly less then convincing. Ori had begun pushing him away and the only time he was allowed to be with Ori publicly was in the early morning.
Nearly done primping in the mirror a ruckus broke out in the showers, so reluctantly Nori peeked in, to see what was going on. Two of the younger boys, Fili and Kili to be exact had started some sort of water fight. Nori sighed; he had no intention of dealing with them so he turned to Thorin who was toweling off nearby. “Thorin, your idiots, blond and black.”
“God, damn it!” Thorin grumbled pulling on a pair of dark jeans and marching back toward the showers. “Fili! Kili!”
“Yeah, yeah” Fili answered, he was the more brazen of the twins and enjoyed riling his ‘uptight’ Cousin.
Nori smirked as Thorin began verbally leaning in on his cousins in that almost kingly tone of his. It was times like these that Nori and Dwalin thought he sounded like his father, Mayor Oakensheild at one of his many speeches. Nori was tightening that last tight into his beard when Dwalin appeared in the mirror beside him. “You know if you keep playing with it, it’s going to fall off.”
Nori rolled his eyes. “Is that why you just let yours flop there?”
Dwalin stood a good head and a half taller than Nori; his beard matched the deep black of his hair and falls more naturally, so that from the side it almost looked like extensions of his hair that ended about an inch off his chin. “It does not flop.”
Nori reached up and smushed Dwalin’s beard. “Yeah you’re right, it’s too short for that.” Dwalin shoved Nori away from him.
“I hate you.”
Nori laughed at Dwalin, Thorin walked back into the locker area behind them in a huff, pulled on a dark blue shirt before grabbing his brush and going to town on his hair. “It’s like they do it on purpose, like I don’t have enough to deal with!” Thorin grumbled.
“I don’t get why you take responsibility for them.” Dwalin said with a sidelong glance at Thorin.
“Because if I don’t and they get into trouble, I get blamed for it.”
“Well, sucks to be you don’t it.” Nori threw over his shoulder walking to the door.
Ori stopped in the hall to fix his bag. Bilbo smirked; to anyone else this wouldn’t seem all that odd except for where they stopped and that they stopped there most mornings. The locker room door opened and Nori practically leapt onto Ori’s back. “Ori! I love when you wait for me!”
Ori tightened the strap on his bag and braced himself to take on Nori’s weight. “Well if I don’t you chase me down the hall, jump on me and make me fall over. So it’s just better to stand here.” Nori laughed loudly as he tightened his hold on Ori.
Immediately following the Ri parents’ death, by car accident, Nori acted out for several months, causing quite a bit of trouble for his eldest brother and now legal guardian Dori in the process. When nothing seemed to be working to straighten the young Nori out, Dori gave a last ditch “God Help Us” effort, by placing a seven-year-old Nori in charge of the five-year-old Ori. To Dori’s and many other’s surprise, Nori took to the task extremely well. Because of this the younger siblings developed an exceedingly close bond. As they grew Nori began to show his affections more publicly, randomly hugging his younger brother or finding other ways to have some sort of physical contact. This struck Dori as a bit odd but he was sure it would come to an end as Nori entered High school, it did not. When two years later Ori entered high school himself, the displays became even more overt, to the point that Nori was often seen hanging off of his brother in the hallways.
Ori for his part enjoyed the attention from his brother, though sometimes Nori could be a bit embarrassing. There were times when he wished Nori would stop but on the whole, he did truly enjoy knowing how much his older brother cared for him. Dwalin looked away from the two brothers as Nori snuggled into Ori’s cheek causing the younger boy to blush and turn away.
Thorin smiled and wrapped his arm around Bilbo’s shoulder as he chuckled at his friends. “Why are you friends with these weirdoes?”
Bilbo used his answering shrug as an excuse to brush closer against Thorin as he looked up and said. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Thorin shrugged in return as he ruffled Bilbo’s hair. “I’m pretty much stuck with them at this point.” Dwalin started down the hall without them. “Even if I stopped hanging out with them I’d still be associated with them through family. So, you know what’s the point.” The Oakensheild’s, Stealbuster’s and Ri’s had been dear friends and figureheads of Moria since the town’s creation.
Bilbo smiled again as he tried to get his hair to lie properly. The group fell into step with Dwalin and an easy joking atmosphere began swirling around them. Almost a half hour later the halls where filling too much for Ori and he began to pull away from his brother. When they stopped at Ori’s locker Ori had to physically push Nori off of himself. “Get off me!” Ori said half laughing half panicked as he swatted Nori’s returning hands away. Ori’s ritualistic morning please and shove, rang in Dwalin’s ears and as the first bell sounded Dwalin dropped a hand on Nori’s shoulder. When Nori didn’t move Dwalin grabbed him by the shirt collar and began dragging him down the hall. Thorin chuckled as he turned for his own class.
Ori and Bilbo settled into their seats and muttered to each other that whoever came up with an eight AM Math class was clearly the devil. The teacher began roll call as Kili and Fili sauntered into class. She paused and disappointedly watched them head for their seats. “Please try to be here on time gentlemen.” Kili just nodded while Fili turn and smiled at the teacher, flashing some charm.
“Yeah, sorry about that Coach was talking to us.” The teacher made a notation on her roll book and continued call. Fili settled next to his brother two seats behind Ori and Bilbo. As the lesson started Bilbo pulled out the folder from Ori and some blank paper so that it looked like he was taking notes. Ori sat with the binder-spread open before him; he twirled his pen in his fingers as he began reading Bilbo’s story again.
The day proceeded normally, Ori and Bilbo did their best to stay as far away from Fili and Kili as they could and as per- usual they had one minor run in with the twins. Thankfully though the run in was a small one with only the twins throwing sad reference to the rumor about Ori and Nori at them as they separated for their next class. When Ori and Bilbo got back together for lunch Ori sat across from Bilbo and with a lowered head handed back the first story.
“Not this one, Bilbo.” Ori hated when he gave back a story, he felt as if he didn’t appreciate them. But these types of stories were always strange to him and left him feeling very bothered so he never kept them.
“I thought as much.” Bilbo said shaking his head as he slid the story back into his bag. “You have a weird aversion to the idea of him treating you like that.”
Ori pushed at the mashed potatoes on his tray a slight blush creeping onto his cheeks. “It just doesn’t feel right…natural? I guess.”
“I don’t know about that?” Bilbo said picking up a carrot, Ori eyed his friend. “I just call it like I see it, Ori.”
“Then why don’t you call Thorin like you see him?”
Bilbo glared at Ori. Fili turned toward the boys a table away at the sound of his cousin’s name. “It’s not that simple, he’s only nice to me because he thinks he has to be.”
“What, is that supposed to mean?” Ori laughed.
“Because of his dad.” Bilbo rolled his eyes.
“Okay that is utter bull shit and even if it wasn’t, which it is. How is that any different then what I’m dealing with?”
“He doesn’t have to be nice to you.”
“He’s my brothers’ best friend of course he’s not going to be an asshole.”
“I don’t understand why you simply refuse to see it.”
“Fili!” Kili snapped as he leaned into his brother. Fili turned back to his dark haired baby brother with a smirk. “I’m talking to you, what the hell are you looking at?”
“Sorry Kili, but I think I have an idea.”
“Oh yeah?” Kili sat back and pouting, shoved a fry into his mouth. “About what?”
“A little prank we can play on the fag and his book worm.” Fili nodded at Ori and Bilbo so Kili would look, the two would be victims looked as though they were starting to fight with each other. A smirk settled on Kili’s lips, they were generally speaking his favorite victims, fairly easily frazzled and quick to freak out, you just had to know the right buttons to push. Though lately Ori had grown immune to any menschen of the rumor he and Fili had started about Nori screwing him senseless almost nightly. So maybe a new topic wouldn’t be such a bad idea for a while.
“Hmm, what brought them to mind?”
“They were just talking about Thorin and I think we should teach them to stop relying on our dear cousin’s kindness all the time.” Fili’s smirk darkened. “Just give me some time to fine tune it and we’ll have our fun…” The bell cut through the cafeteria and Fili’s sentence. Fili watched Ori and Bilbo stand and walk out the door with a mob of other students. Fili and Kili fallowed at a safe distance and watched as Bilbo opened his locker put his math and soc books inside along with the folded returned story as he grabbed his German text. Fili crept closer and when Bilbo turned pushing his locker closed as he walked away into the hustle of the quickly moving hall. Fili reached out and grabbed the locker door before it slammed shut, pulling the door open he grabbed the folded story and shut the locker before merging back into the crowd.
At the end of the day Ori stood at Bilbo’s locker and apologized for their little tiff at lunch while Bilbo filled his bag. Nori and Dwalin came up and stood on either side of Ori ready to walk home. Ori and Bilbo said their good byes, Dwalin waved and Nori just threw himself on to Ori’s back. Just before closing his locker Bilbo reached in for the story but couldn’t find it, thinking he must have already put it in his bag while he was talking to Ori he shrugged and closed the door. He would find the story later when he got home but right now he had to get to violin lessons.
Ori walked quietly beside Nori, thankful that he had managed to get his brother off him but now he was impatiently waiting for Dwalin to deviate down his own street. He was tired and an afternoon nap was looking great right now, he smiled at the thought of it. Until he realized that Dwalin should have left them two streets ago he glanced up at Dwalin and unconsciously asked. “Wha?”
“Dwalin can’t go home right away today so he’s staying with us for dinner.” Nori answered and nudged Dwalin’s shoulder. “I told you he wouldn’t remember.”
“Oh.” Ori glanced at the ground, he vaguely recalled Nori mentioning something about this a few days ago.
“Mom’s having the carpets cleaned and I’m not allowed in until they’re dry.” Dwalin offered up as explanation.
“That’s just the nice ‘mom’ way of telling you that you’re gross and disgusting and she doesn’t want you around for a while.” Nori jabbed.
Ori sighed as the thought of his afternoon nap evaporated.
“Then why would she send me to your place?” Dwalin arched an eyebrow confidently.
Ori let out an audible huff as he realized he was going to have to make dinner, Nori looked at Ori who had picked up the pace in his growing frustration.
“Oh, come on Ori.” Nori wrapped his arms around Ori’s shoulders and leaned against his back. “Dori’s supposed to have left us stuff for fajitas.”
“Really?” Ori smiled slightly.
“Yep.”
“I’m not doing dishes.” Ori said pushing Nori off of him and crossing his arms.
“Well, duh. I mean he’s got to do something to pay for eating my delicious fajitas.”
“Nice.”
“Excuse me! I am the guest!” Dwalin sounded almost appalled.
Ori walked up the step to the front door in a much better mood. It looked like that afternoon nap was going to happen, along with Nori’s famous Fajitas and dinner with Dwalin. He opened the door, kicked off his shoes and dropped onto the sofa. Today was turning from fairly good to pretty great. Nori dropped his bag on the coffee table and dragged Dwalin into the kitchen to wash all the veggies and dishes he needed.
Nori flipped the meat and vegetables into the air again and smirked at the grumble Dwalin gave him while setting the table. “Hey, do me a favor.”
“What now?” Dwalin said dropping the last plate unceremoniously onto the table.
“Go wake up Ori for me, it’s almost done.”
“What?” Dwalin’s tone softened.
“He’s usually asleep by now so go wake him up.”
“You mean he’s usually in here cooking and you’re falling asleep.”
“Yeah, when you guys are over. Rest of the time I’m doing shit around the house and he’s passed out on the sofa.”
“Really?” Dwalin chuckled.
“What are you laughing at?”
“It’s just weird to think of Ori as the lazy one.”
Nori narrowed his eyes at Dwalin. “Do you know why Ori comes to morning practice with me?”
“So he and Bilbo can check each other’s homework, how nerdy is that by the way?” Dwalin smiled leaning against the counter.
“No.” Dwalin’s smile fell. “That is just some stupid cover story. He comes to practice with me because if I didn’t drag his ass to school every morning then he wouldn’t show up.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Nope, he does this all the time. Comes home takes a nap, has dinner, goes to his room and does whatever the hell it is he does until some unheard of hour of the night then morning comes around and I have to drag his whinny ass out of bed and the whole cycle starts all over again.”
“Aww, that’s kind of adorable. You being a caring big-“
“Just go get him.”
Dwalin laughed as he walked out into the living room still not believing Nori in the slightest. Ori lay on the sofa, his head back, mouth slightly open, his legs sprawled wide over the rest of the cushions, he had twisted himself somehow so that his shirt had rolled up and exposed the milky skin of his stomach. Dwalin’s eyes caught and hung there memorizing the slight rise and fall of his breath.
Walking closer Dwalin told himself that he would just grab Ori’s shoulder and shake him awake but his out stretched hands ignored him and instead did a gentle, ghostly glide over the exposed skin. He let out a quiet sigh at how soft it was and spared a quick glance back to the kitchen door but thankfully Nori was still preoccupied. Turning back, his fingers ghosted across the exposed patch and played in the red trail that linked Ori’s navel to his groin.
Ori moaned as his left arm vacated its perch on his chest with a swipe to settle on his stomach. Dwalin pulled his hand away barely avoiding detection. Silently berating himself for what he had done. Dwalin took Ori’s shoulder and shook the boy awake.
Ori grumbled once before opening his eyes as soon as he saw Dwalin leaning over him he shot upright an embarrassed blush creeping over his skin. “Dinner’s ready.” Dwalin said as he forced himself to look away from Ori’s quick fidgeting fingers and walk back into the kitchen.
“Thanks.” Ori said quietly pulling his shirt down.
Dinner was full of corny jokes, bad impressions of Dori and Coach Boromir, old stories and embarrassing ones. All three boys laughed hard and often; Ori was glad for it too because there was something really embarrassing about having Dwalin wake him up. The festivities were interrupted by a knock on the door; Ori excused himself to answer it. “Hello Sheriff Stealbuster.” Ori smiled up at the man Dwalin would be in twenty years. Dwalin really was the spitting image of his father only not balding and rundown looking yet.
“You don’t have to call me ‘Sheriff Stealbuster’ it’s either ‘Mr. Stealbuster’ or just ‘Sheriff’.” The man chuckled it was a low warm sound that washed over Ori.
“Yes I do, it’s what you are.”
“Does that mean I should call you ‘student Ri’?”
“If you want but it might be kind of hard to distinguish me from my brother.”
The Sheriff chuckled again as he fallowed Ori back into the kitchen. “There’s no problem there, you’re the good kid in this family.”
“Hey dad.” Dwalin said dropping his plate in the sink.
“Dwalin.” The Sheriff smiled at his son and turned to Nori with a nod.
“Hey” Nori grumbled as he slid down in his chair. “I could hear you, you know.”
“So are we clear for reentry?” Dwalin asked.
“Yep, so let’s go before she thinks we got shot or something.” They all smiled at the idea of it, as Dwalin gathered his bag and put on his shoes. “Thank Dori again for me would you Nori.”
Nori scoffed. “Why, what the hell did he do?”
The Sheriff looked around the house. “Where is he anyway?”
“Minas Tirith medical conference.” Nori supplied.
“Oh” The Sheriff’s voice was tinged with concern as his eyebrows raised.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. I just always thought Dori liked Ori alive.”
“Nice! Get out of my house.” Nori glared.
“Hey now, if you don’t knock off this threatening behavior I’m going to have to take you into custody.”
Ori sighed, this game was old. “I’m going to go do homework. It was nice seeing you again Sheriff Stealbuster.” With that Ori snagged his own bag and climbed the stairs. About thirty minutes later he heard the Sheriff’s car pull away.
#ori the dwarf#Ori#dwalin#dwalin x ori#dwori#thorin oakenshield#thorin x bilbo#Bilbo Baggens#Nori#Dori#Fili#Kili
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NYE | S.H.
Requested: nope!
Summary: your average friends-to-lovers trope!! I’m sorry I’m one big cliche!!
Rating: PG-13: mild cursing, kissing, nothing too wild!
Your phone had been beeping nonstop all day, you figured that was to be expected when you’d been included in the Holland boy’s (Harrison included, obviously) group chat. They were throwing a party tonight, and Sam had added you in. “They’re basically family anyway, guys!”
They’d all agreed in a heartbeat, and ever since you’d been getting almost hourly updates on the craziness that was the clique of boys who you loved dearly.
What the boys didn’t know, was that you were far closer to family than they expected. You and Sam had been dating in secret for weeks, months, really.
You hadn’t gotten around to telling the boys simply because you wanted to make sure things were steady and comfortable before subjecting yourself to the teasing and “I told you they’d get together!”s that came with presenting your relationship to the family.
Now, it was simply habit to act as though you were just friends in front of the boys, now it felt as though you weren’t sure how to break the news after all this time.
It was cliche, it was stupid, you and Sam both agreed on that. Yet, you had yet to reveal our relationship status to the boys. Obviously you and Sam had had your share of close calls, but overall you’d manage to keep things on the down-low.
Now it was a few hours to the New Years Eve party and you’d been put in charge of buying cups and snacks, and Sam had been put in charge of ordering the pizzas and drinks.
Naturally, the two of you went to the store together, his hand interlocked with yours until yo needed bth to push the shopping cart, Sam occupying himself with callling the pizza place to confirm the large order was coming along alright, all he while making funny faces at you and throwing various junk foods into the cart every few aisles.
Sam hung up after thanking the worker on the other end of the line for being so helpful, and shoved his phone into his pocket.
“Babe,” he called, throwing in another package of cookies you were convinced weren’t necessary. “Hm?” You replied, scrolling through the hopping list on your phone.
“Are you excited for tonight? It’s gonna be midnight in a few hours!” You nodded. “Yeah, it should be fun, we’ve thrown some kick ass parties,” you grinned, face falling when you saw Sam teasingly roll his eyes. “What?” You questioned. Sam hopped on the front of the cart, hand clutching the edge of the wire basket. You pretended for a momen to be exhausted by the extra weight an you both giggled.
“You’re supposed to say you’re excited to kiss me at New Years, duh, YN!” You both laughed again, Sam now trotting beside you.
“Well, I guess I’m not particularly dreading that moment,” you spoke, looking up at Sam who wore a smirk, eyebrows raised a bit.
“Oh yeah?” You nodded “Yeah, I think it just might be an alright time, Holland.”
He smiled. “Maybe we should practice, just to be sure?” You laughed harder now. “Practice, huh?” He nodded. “I’m sure all the pros are doing it, gotta warm up yeah?” You were both laughing hard, cheeks flushed. “Professional kissers, huh?” You said, pausing your movement with the cart to look for the right kind of chip dip.
You found it and placed it gently in your cart turning back to face Sam. “Yeah, theyre the best,” he nodded, stepping closer to you. Your hands gripped at his teeshirt and you pulled him slightly closer. “Couldn’t hurt, right?” You asked, and be shook his head briefly before closing the distance between the two of you.
After a moment you feared someone else would enter the aisle and pulled away, both of you grinning.
“Well, who knew the store was so romantic?” He spoke, wiggling his eyebrows for effect.
“You’re a nerd, Holland. A real nerd.”
“Well, jokes on you because you love a nerd.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
Sam had brought the clothes he needed for the party in his car when he came to pick you up for the store, so when he dropped you off, neither of you could find any reason for him not to stay while you got ready.
He watched as you did your hair and makeup and finally changed into your outfit for the night, looking back in the mirror you couldn’t help but feel something was missing, looking down at the hodgepodge of items in your bathroom, you pulled open a drawer and Sam watched as you swiped the prettiest shade of red he’d ever seen onto your lips, starting with a liner and then filling in the majority of your pout with the second color.
“Is this too much? It’s kind of a chill party I don’t want to be the only one looking so done up-“
“It’s perfect!” Sam exclaimed, striding into the bathroom and hugging you close to him, hands locked around your hips.
“Well, if you say so,” you grinned. “I do,” Sam quickly affirmed, leaning towards your lips for a kiss. You stopped him with a gentle hand that cupped his face.
“Sam, this lipstick will transfer,” he looked as though he wasn’t quite sure how your explanation related to him not being allowed to kiss you, so you continued. “The color will transfer to your lips, they’ll be tinted red,” you giggled. Sam nodded. “Alright, but only because I know you care about your makeup, I wouldn’t mind having an iconic red lip for the evening,” Sam said, a laugh quickly bubbling from his lips. You followed suit, laughing at his words.
“We’ve hung out too much, you’re starting to sound like me with all the makeup talk” he nodded. “Well, I guess I’ll have to live without kissing you,” he sighed dramtically, leaning in again but kissing your forehead and cheeks and jaw. You laughed, resting your hands on his chest to distance yourself to catch a break for air. His cheeks had tinted pink, you had been together for months and yet he still went red in the face after kissing you at times.
“Well, Sam, looks like it’s time to go set up with the guys, don’t ya think?” Sam interlocked your fingers as you grabbed your shoes and walked towards the door, making sure to grab all the party materials you’d gotten earlier, tossing them into the backseat and speeding towards Tom’s house. The two of you arrived in the driveway and Sam gave a final kiss to the top of your head and you shared a look that communicated how stupid this whole hiding thing was to both of you. You’d figured the holidays weren’t the time to spring long withheld news on Sam’s family so here you were, still keeping everything on the down-low.
You grabbed the groceries in your arms and Sam did the same, leaving a hand free to lock up the car and then rap on the door once you’d walked up the long driveway.
“Coming!” Harrison screeched from inside, the door quickly swung open and there stood Harrison, a paper party hat lopsided on his head. “Well, don’t just stand there, party’s in like two hours!” He playfully chided, pulling the two of you inside. “Here they are! Late as always!” Harrison shouted into the house, laughter erupted from who you already knew to be Harry and Tom.
“Well, better late than never, especially because we brought the food, right?” You questioned, making a bee-line with the kitchen with Sam hot on your trail. “I guess, but only because of the food factor,” Harrison laughed. “Harry just got back a few minuets ago from the firework stand, all I can say is the neighbors may not be too happy,” He laughed. You shook your head, a smile on your lips. “I can only imagine,” You replied simply as Sam helped you load all of the food into the fridge and into large bowls on the counter.
it took far less time than anticipated to set up the house for the party, so consequently, all five of you ended up sprawled on the couch with half of an hour left to spare before those invited should be arriving.
“So, Harry sat up on the couch next to Tom. “Have we all got dates for this evening?” His mouth formed a grin and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes at the question with the others. “When did this become a gossip circle, good lord, Harry!” Sam laughed, sat close to you on the sofa adjacent to where Tom and Harry Sat, with Haz sprawled out on the floor. “You’re just jealous because you didn’t swing a date,” Harry continued. Sam shook his head. “You don’t know that,”
“You surely would’ve mentioned it by now, dude,” Harry laughed. Sam shrugged. “Tom’s the one with the big mouth around here, not me!” Everyone shared a laugh, Tom crossing his arms in mock offense.
At that, the doorbell rang and you and Sam shared an amused and relieved look that the two of you hadn’t been exposed just yet.
“Hey, guys! It’s Zen and Laura and Jacob!” Tom called, swinging the door open. Zendaya held a bottle of champagne tightly in one hand, using the other to hug everyone in the room. “YN!” She exclaimed, “I haven’t seen you in forever! I missed you, babe!” You grinned, sharing hug with her and agreeing the two of you would have to find a time to catch up. Soon, the house was flooded with guests, cars lining the driveway and the street for the entire block as well as the lawn. Music played from a Spotify playlist Sam had been crafting for weeks in advance, and the two of you busied yourselves with having a great time at the party, you and Zendaya found a spot to chat in and Jacob started a game of pool in the basement lounge which attracted many of the guys, who were all at least somewhat competitive.
“So, the whole Sam and you thing, how’s that going?” Zendaya questioned and you couldn’t help but spill your guts about how well things were goin between the two of you. Time moved by faster than you expected, and before you knew it, the annual New York ball-drop was on the television. You turned your head to watch, standing behind the crowd a bit when you felt a tap on your shoulder. “Hey, YN, mind helping me with something in the kitchen for just a moment?” Sam spoke close to your ear so you could hear what he was saying above the multitude of noises, and offered a wink so subtle you almost missed it, followed with the smile you loved so much. You nodded, taking his hand and following him into the deserted kitchen. “I figured the ball was about to drop and it’s almost New Year’s and if you still wanted that kiss?” HIs cheeks were faintly pink and you smiled, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. The countdown from ten had already begun, rhythmically chanted form the living room.
“Oh- Sm, I forgot, my lipstick- everyone will know?” You spoke quickly, the countdown failed to halt as it neared the finish and Sam grinned lovingly at you. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”
With that, the countdown reached “one” and you breached the gap between you and Sam once again as the partygoers all cheered.
you pulled away after a moment, eyes drifting from Sam’s eyes to his lips, sure as day they were tinted a shade of red that couldn’t be described as subtle.
“Well, now’s a good a time as any to go break the news, right?” The two of you joined hands, leaving the kitchen to rejoin the party with the biggest smiles painted on your faces.
#this is high key bad but I wanted to do something for the holidays so sorry!!!!#tom holland#sam holland#Harrison osterfield#zendaya#laura harrier#Jacob batalon#new years eve#nye 2017#nye 2018#fluff#alcohol mention#food mention#sfw
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Employee #1: Apple
Employee #1 is a series of interviews focused on sharing the often untold stories of early employees at tech companies.
Bill Fernandez was the first employee at Apple after Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Mike Markkula incorporated it. He’s currently working on his own startup, Omnibotics.
Discussed: Growing up in Silicon Valley, Introducing Jobs and Woz, Startups Before Startup Media, Apple’s Early Days, Moving to Japan, Returning to Apple, Advice for Early Employees and Founders, and Life After Apple.
Bill : Did you want me to just start a narrative or do you have some questions you want to start with?
Craig : You can just give it a go and I’ll just jump in, if that’s cool.
Bill : Okay, sure. When I was five my parents moved to a street in Sunnyvale, a new little housing tract that was developed primarily for Lockheed engineers. Lockheed had a location adjacent to Moffett Field Naval Air Station. Across the street and three houses over was the Wozniak family. Jerry Wozniak was a mathematician and engineer, he was a real genius and worked on top secret projects at Lockheed. He had two sons and a daughter. His eldest son, Steve Wozniak, was into electronics.
He did ham radio and science fair electronics projects and so forth. He and I both went to Homestead High School which was the local high school. He was four years ahead of me so he got out one year before I got in. But I grew up across the street from him so I kinda knew about him.
My dad and Jerry were friends so Jerry was over a fair amount. But it wasn’t until I was in high school and was seriously an electronic hobbyist that I hooked up with Woz and we became friends and fellow electronics nerds doing projects together. We did a TV jammer, we did an audio oscillator, and one summer we did a computer in my garage. So that was the Woz connection.
When I was in seventh and eighth grade I went to Cupertino Junior High School, which was just behind my backyard fence. I think maybe halfway through seventh grade Steve Jobs came to the school. He and I were both deeply introspective, very philosophical. Neither of us wanted to play the social games that you needed to play to be accepted into any of the numerous cliques that define the social scene for 13 and 14 year olds in junior high school. So we eventually gravitated towards each other and started hanging out. We became fast friends. I got him interested in electronics and so…
Craig : Wait, really?
Bill : Yup.
Craig : Was there a particular thing that you showed him that piqued his interest?
Bill : I don’t remember any one thing specifically. I do remember that in junior high school I was working on electronic locks. I’m not sure what else I was working on then. But we were over at each other’s houses all the time. My mom considers him her fifth son.
Craig : [Laughter]
Bill : It was in our house that he learned about Japanese art, Japanese woodblock prints, spartan design, clean lines and so forth. It was a big influence on his design education and proclivities.
Craig : Neat. So how did Jobs and Woz meet?
Bill : So, I had known of Woz since I was five. Jobs and I became friends when we were like 12 or 13, then we transitioned into high school so Jobs and I both started going to Homestead High School. Maybe my freshman or sophomore year I started doing a lot of projects with Woz.
Across the street from Woz’s house was Mr. Taylor. Mr. Taylor used to have an electronics surplus store. He had closed his store and moved his remaining stock into his garage. I would go across the street and do yard work, like pulling weeds, and we’d keep a little log, and every now and then I’d go over to Mr. Taylor’s house and say, “Mr. Taylor I need a transistor or I need a capacitor.” And I would trade my hours for parts.
So one day Jobs had bicycled over to my house and we were going to hang out and I needed to go to Mr. Taylor’s house to get some parts, so we walked across the street. Woz was out on the street washing his car and I thought to myself, “Well you know, here are two electronics buddies. They might be interested in meeting each other and doing electronics stuff.” So you know, we walked over to the car and I introduced them.
Craig : Amazing. Were they fast friends?
Bill : Well, not in an instant spark of brilliant light, no.
Craig : [Laughter] Sure.
Bill : But you know, they eventually became friends and started doing projects together. It turned out that Woz loved pranks and Jobs had a very countercultural streak. One of the first projects they collaborated on was this huge sign of a hand with the middle finger raised. It was a huge cloth poster and they put it up on the roof of our school and weighted the ends with rocks, I think. This was the end of the building that all of the parents faced during graduation. And the idea was that during graduation they would cut some strings which would release this thing to roll down over the side of the building and it said, “Best Wishes, Class of ’72!” and it was giving them the finger.
Craig : That’s amazing.
Bill : So that was like, their first prank together. And then they went on to doing blue boxes together and so forth.
Craig : So if Woz was four years older than you guys, what was he doing at the time?
Bill : Let’s see, I think he went to Colorado State and got kicked out. Then he worked for a while at places like Call Computing, which was an early timesharing computing company. Then he went to Berkeley and that was the blue box era. It was also the era of Ramar the Mystic.
Craig : What’s that?
Bill : [Laughter] It’s a great story. So Woz was at Berkeley and lived in the second story of a dorm and kinda outside his window out on the street was a telephone booth. This was in the days before cell phones so everyone used telephone booths to make calls. Sometimes, like when a student was entering the telephone booth, Woz would call the telephone booth and it would ring and student would answer it. Then Woz would say, “This is Ramar the Mystic. I see wetness in your future,” and as the guy is saying, “What?” Woz would throw a water balloon at him from the second floor. The guy would be all angry and Woz would say, “Well, Ramar was only trying to help.”
Craig : [Laughter] That’s so good. And what were you doing at the time? Just kind of like electronics hobby stuff in high school?
Bill : Well, let’s see. Yes, I was going through high school and then after high school I worked for Siliconix and then for Antex. Then I went to college and went to Hewlett-Packard for the summer but ended up staying there for three years.
Craig : What were you doing at HP?
Bill : I was the only electronic technician in a research lab of electronic engineers. And that was the division that made handheld scientific calculators. So the HP-35 during my high school years was this breakthrough handheld 10-digit precision scientific calculator for $395, which was an enormous amount but it was all battery-powered and handheld. And then later Woz went to work there as an engineer. I went to college, he called me and asked if I wanted a summer job at that lab and so for the summer I went there and then I stayed for three years. He and I were both working on electronic handheld scientific calculators.
Craig : So at what point do Woz and Jobs come together and decide that they want to start working on Apple?
Bill : Okay, well during this Hewlett-Packard period when Woz and I were both there, Woz in the after hours designed his own Pong game. Pong was the first really popular, you know, video game that bars and pizza shops and restaurants could buy and put it in stores and people would come and put quarters in and play. So he built his own circuitry and used it with a small black and white TV set as the display.
Then a couple of things happened. He started working on building his own computer and he started attending the Homebrew Computer Club that was happening at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, SLAC.
So all of those things happened at the same time and then as his computer came together he would take it and show it off after the meetings. At some point there was enough interest shown that Jobs became aware of this. I don’t know if he went to the Homebrew Computer Club or just when he and Woz were together Woz was talking about it. Basically Jobs said, “You know, we could make printed circuit boards and just sell the computer already assembled so people wouldn’t even have to buy all the parts on the open market and figure out how to wire them together. We could just do it for them.” And so that was the beginning of Apple Computer.
Jobs got a printed circuit board made and he figured out where to get all the parts. They decided what to name the company and then, this is funny, Jobs got a front office front. There was a company at 770 Welch Road. If you look at the old literature that was their address, Apple’s mailing address. So there was this company on the second floor that had people who would answer the phone and depending upon what number was called would say, “Hello, this is Apple Computer, how can I help you?” And would receive packages mailed to Apple Computer and would mail things from Apple Computer. Jobs was working in his father’s garage and in his bedroom, you know, and this was like our front to make it look legit.
Craig : [Laughter] That’s fantastic. And so at what point do they call you up and say, “Hey, we need some help?”
Bill : Right after they incorporated. It was like, ’76 or ’77. They incorporated and they needed employees and the first one they wanted to hire was a good electronic technician. Both of them said I was the best that they knew — I think Woz mentioned that in one of his books — so they asked if I’d quit Hewlett-Packard and come work for them in the Jobs family garage.
Craig : How did the pay compare between HP and Apple?
Bill : Well, even with no benefits I thought the pay was good enough. I don’t remember exactly but clearly it was good enough. The major decisions for me were that Hewlett-Packard was the premier electronics company and that was a big plus for an electronics dude, and their benefits were really good and it was very stable. It was very secure. But, you know, I figured that this could be pretty interesting and I was living with my parents and my car was paid off and I was very employable. So I figured that if this fell through that it would be easy for me to get another job and there’s no big loss, right?
Craig : And how old were you at the time?
Bill : Maybe 22. If it was 1976 and I was born in 1954 then I would have been 22 at the time.
Craig : Okay, cool. So you say, “All right, I’ll do this.” Now I’m curious, could you provide any sort of context around how people were thinking about tech startups at the time and why it was attractive to you to jump in on something like this?
Bill : Sure. Well, first is that in those days everything was hardware. There basically were no software startups to a first approximation, okay? And what was then called Silicon Valley became that because there had been a whole bunch of basically hardware startups. There had been Varian up the peninsula, which had built microwave vacuum tubes for transmitters and for radars. There was Fairchild Semiconductor, which was one of the very first semiconductor manufacturers. And then there were a whole bunch of others eventually.
Over the years the peninsula — say from San Jose to San Francisco — had developed an ecosystem that was very hardware oriented. There were a number of electronic surplus stores where people interested in Homebrew and do it yourself stuff could go buy surplus parts and surplus equipment to tear apart. There were a bunch of supporting shops. There were metal shops and PC board shops and a number of the major electronics distributors.
Then we also had a number of major companies like Hewlett-Packard where they did a lot of work to hire a lot of electronics people, primarily electronic engineers and mechanical engineers and so forth. Over the decades that area had built up a bunch of educated people and an ecosystem for supporting the needs of the electronics industry.
Then a sort of history of new businesses being formed by people who spun out of or left big companies for one reason or another was created but that took decades to build up. It started back in the 40s or 50s and now we’re talking about the 60s and 70s. You know, so at least 30 years to build all of that.
So in that environment, Woz and Jobs and I grew up. Woz’s father was an engineer working at Lockheed. I would go up and down the street to engineer neighbors on the street who would mentor me in electronics. We would read Popular Electronics, which was a magazine for hobbyists and do it yourselfers, and before the internet these magazines were like, your main way of learning things.
When you were casting about for something intellectual rather than sports oriented to do, electronics was something you could do as a kid. It’s something you could aspire to, projects that were interesting and so forth. In that environment it was natural for Woz and Jobs and I to build whatever circuits were interesting along the way.
During that period when I was in high school particularly, there were more and more people around the peninsula who wanted their own computers. And there was more and more a sense that maybe it might be possible finally for people to build their own computers. Woz, throughout high school had always wanted his own computers and he was always doodling circuits saying, “You know, if I were going to design a computer this is how I’d do it.”
This built up to a time when in late high school or just right after that, there was the Homebrew Computer Club and there was a lot of surplus computer gear for people to put together. There was a pent-up demand among all the electronics hobbyists, the people who wanted to build their own computers.
It was possible to conceive of how to do these things. Microprocessor integrated circuits had recently come on the market and had recently come down in price enough that a hobbyist could afford them. We were just barely seeing the first semiconductor memory. So, when I was in high school, we dreamed of getting an old magnetic core memory where you have these tiny little doughnuts of magnetic material, like hundreds of them wired together with this little web of woven tiny little wires, you know? And that was the premier memory, you know, and maybe you’d get 500 bits or something, you know? We aspired to find a surplus one of those and get it working so we could build our own computer, see?
Craig : That’s so cool.
Bill : Yeah, so there were a lot of themes that all kind of coalesced. The infrastructure was there so you could say, “I want sheet metal done. I want a printed circuit board made.” You could just go out and someone would do it for you. “I want to buy parts,” someone could do it for you. We had the aspirations of all of these people throughout my high school years and thereafter saying, “Not only do we want our own computer but we think it’s finally possible. You don’t have to build an ENIAC [Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer] and take up a whole room and have tons of circuits and vacuum tubes.” We had integrated circuits that made all of that circuitry small and lightweight and affordable.
Craig : So the fact that you can get all this with a short trip to all these stores, that makes a ton of sense. The environment makes a ton of sense. Was there anything in particular about the Jobs and Woz that made you think, “I want to work with them,” or did you just think, “Oh, this is kind of neat, it’ll be a fun project regardless”?
Bill : Well, I definitely wanted to work with them. You know, I had worked with Woz and Jobs on projects for years and they were two of my closest friends and we got along well together. And sure, it was great working with my friends. It was also great having the opportunity for us to build our own computer, so yeah. It was great. I just thought, “Let’s go build our own computers. This is awesome.”
Craig : Yeah, I love their mindset. And so what was your job in the very beginning?
Bill : Okay, so technically my title was electronic technician. What that really meant was that I was a very intelligent and capable jack of all trades and gofer. So, Jobs was always sending me around to pick up parts or to deliver things, or in the garage I’d have to build test fixtures and boxes where I’d troubleshoot boards. Pretty much any kind of technical or gofer related thing you know, was my job.
Craig : And how long did that period last?
Bill : Well, we were in the garage for a while and then we moved to our first building. It was an office suite in a little one story office center. It was 20863 Stevens Creek Boulevard Suite, B3.
Craig : [Laughter] You have a great memory.
Bill : Yeah, and it was right next to the first Good Earth Restaurant, which had just been a failed pie restaurant and then Good Earth took over and did their thing. So we’d always eat over there.
Okay, after we outgrew that space we had to rent a second suite just adjacent to it and then we outgrew that and then we rented a building on Bandley Drive a couple of blocks away. That’s where we had our first building, Bandley Drive, and then gradually over the years we ended up with about eight buildings on Bandley Drive. Each time they built a building we’d rent it, because we were growing so fast. And during that time, you know, we built up. In the garage it was just me and Jobs and Woz. Woz was still living in his apartment and still working at Hewlett-Packard. He didn’t want to leave Hewlett-Packard.
Craig : Wild. I didn’t know that.
Bill : Eventually Mike Markkula had to prevail upon him to say, “You have to leave and go full-time. We’ve got this investment and I put my money in and you gotta do it.”
Craig : Yeah, can’t moonlight forever. And so how long has the company been around at this point?
Bill : Well, about a year and a half. We were in the garage and then we moved into our first little office and that’s where we started getting serious. We had a secretary and we had an accountant. We hired some more engineering technicians. We hired a manufacturing guy, we hired an industrial designer. Right between that transition we got Rod Holt from Atari to come and be our head of engineering and so forth. He’s the guy who designed the brilliant power supply for the Apple 2 computer.
Let’s see. Then we moved into Bandley Drive and we had a separate manufacturing area, separate engineering area and a separate administrative area, and we hired a guy and a secretary to do international sales. We were building custom units made in black for Bell & Howell who wanted to sell under their label. We had a marketing guy in addition to our president and our accounting guy.
Craig : Was it uncommon at that point to be growing at that clip?
Bill : I personally don’t know. All I can tell you is that everything I’ve read is that it was phenomenal and unprecedented.
Craig : And so what did you make of it at that point? What did you think of the environment?
Bill : Well, there were a couple of aspects about that. Starting back in the garage era, I would say that there was a tangible sense of magic in the air. Every now and then Woz would come in and he’d say, “You know, I just was at Homebrew last night and look at this piece of software that this guy wrote that runs on our computer.”
At first we had the Apple I and it was all text things, like the Hamurabi game. Then we had the Star Trek text game, then after the Apple II Woz would come in and he’d say, “Look at this amazing color devil that this little high school student named Chris Espinosa made.” And he’d be putting all sorts of colored blocks on the screen and kaleidoscope patterns and stuff, so it was pretty magical. It was really the sense that we were going to bring personal computers to the masses.
Craig : So a year and a half in, what are you doing?
Bill : Well, a year and a half in, everything is growing and diversifying. We have a bigger building, it has more departments, it has more people, we have an international guy as well as a domestic guy, you know, and so forth. Everything was kinda just like, exploding in complexity and diversity. My particular job, it pretty much stayed the same, real electronic grunt work, and I was getting pretty bored with that.
Craig : Okay, so what were your aspirations at that point?
Bill : Yeah, well, I had an engineering mind without the engineering education that a degree would have given me. I went to school for an engineering degree and dropped out so I never finished that degree and never got the range of knowledge that I would need to actually be an engineer. And so I was really working way under my intellectual potential, which became very boring.
Craig : And did you verbalize that you wanted to do more at any point?
Bill : I probably did, although you know, I wasn’t as self-assured then as I am now. I mean, you know, I was just a kid. You know, I’d just gone through high school where everyone chose my courses for me, right?
Craig : Yeah, that insecurity can manifest in different ways. Like some people at 21 admit they don’t really know and others just amp up the ego even though they also don’t know what they’re doing.
Bill : I didn’t really know what my options were at that point and it wasn’t like now where we have a huge social media push for makers, do it yourself, startups, incubators and stuff. None of that existed. None of that mindset, none of that advertising, none of those thought processes, none of these kind of like, dreams or stories about dreams you could have were around. You know, the thought process was basically you find a good company like Hewlett-Packard and you work there for all your life and then you retire. Going to Apple was this huge risk.
It wasn’t like this glamorous thing. It was this huge risk. Basically people would say, “Why would you quit Hewlett-Packard to go work for a couple of lame ass guys, you know, one of whom is like this hippy guy who wears Birkenstocks and torn jeans and dropped out of school and had to sell a beaten up VW van to just afford to get started on this. Why would you go work for these jokers when you’ve got a job at Hewlett-Packard?”
The short way of saying this, I guess, is there was no startup culture.
Craig : Yeah, that’s kinda what I was leading at before when you were explaining the ecosystem, because it both seems like the ground was incredibly fertile, like there were all these places to get the components but without the media environment you’re still kind of on your own, you know?
Bill : Right, completely on your own.
Craig : Yeah. So did that notion precipitate you leaving Apple in the beginning?
Bill : Well, when I was working at Hewlett-Packard I thought that working with my friends on making it possible for people to have their own personal computers was really exciting. And as I said, there was basically no risk in my mind. I could easily find another job if it didn’t work.
Now, after a year and a half of all these people being hired in and other people growing and me going nowhere professionally and getting really bored, I had some people I’d worked with previously at a job just out of high school who wanted to hire me as a product engineer for their little company. I thought that that was a lot better because I’d actually be able to do engineering.
So I jumped shipped and I went to work for them, and then after them I went off to Japan for a couple of years.
Craig : Why did you end up leaving them so quickly and going to Japan?
Bill : Let’s see, those are actually two separate things. I worked with them for several months and they, instead of having me design things which is what I wanted to do, they had me doing a lot of technician work because their product line needed a lot of technician work.
Craig : Which is what you were doing at Apple.
Bill : Yeah, so it was boring again and therefore I wasn’t performing to their expectations and so they laid me off.
Craig : Ah, okay.
Bill : I had been thinking of going to another country to teach my religion, the Baha’i Faith, and so I decided to do that in Japan for a couple of years. I also got my black belt in Aikido while I was there.
Then when I came back I worked for a friend who was working on a TV project and I was doing engineering and technicianing for that project, and then Jobs hired me to be like the 15th person on the Mac project.
Craig : So then you’re back in the fold. How did you view the work at that point?
Bill : Well you know, Apple had changed a lot and it was really a different company. But I wanted a job and Jobs hired me into the Mac group and the Mac group turned out to be pretty cool.
Craig : Agreed. You stayed there until the 90s, right?
Bill : Yeah, let’s see. I went back in 1981. I think October of 1981, and was there until what, ’94? Something like that. I think including my first year and a half it was about 12 years total.
Craig : Okay, and you were doing a lot of interface stuff at that point, right?
Bill : Well my job morphed a number of times over the years. I did facilities planning, laying out our two new Mac buildings as we moved from one building to another and grew. I did general engineering support. I was the lab manager and managed the technician and kept the engineering lab running and stocked with parts. I did some programming. Ultimately I migrated into user interface design for my last years at Apple and actually was quite good at it.
Craig : That’s so funny. The 90s seems like fairly early days for that field. Are there any vestiges of your work still around in the interface?
Bill : Yeah, you know in the Macintosh finder when you’re showing a list of folders and there is the column of triangles along the left side?
Craig : Yup.
Bill : And then if you click on a triangle then it expands an indented list of subfolders and so forth?
Craig : Yup.
Bill : I had a hand in that. The system software people came to me with this new feature they wanted and I suggested they put a line of controls down there and the icon I suggested was a circle which could be empty or grey or black. And someone else changed it into the triangles, which I thought was brilliant, but having the column of controls to open and close folders, that was my idea.
Craig : That’s really cool.
Bill : Yeah, and there are few other vestiges but that’s the easiest one to point to.
Craig : It’s been a while now since you were there. How do you think about Apple? Do you even think about it much anymore?
Bill : I use Apple products all the time and yeah, of course I follow it, I had so much invested in it, you know?
Craig : Yeah. You left in the 90s. What was the public opinion of Apple when you left?
Bill : It’s hard to tell because Apple’s fortunes in the media and public eye have been up and down so much but I think we were up at that point. I think we had done the Mac II and brought color to the Mac. We had the Mac II and the Mac IIcx which was a smaller Mac II. We had slots and color. And we had started using hard drives instead of just floppy drives. So those had been around for a while but we put those in and we had recently introduced the first sort of widely available CD-ROM drive so that people could start using CDs. That enabled everyone who do things on CDs whether it was multimedia presentations or just distributing software. All of that was enabled by Apple biting the bullet to build a CD drive when there really weren’t any CDs available.
Craig : Man, that’s wild. So when you think back on Apple, are your memories fond?
Bill : Well, they’re complicated but fundamentally fond, yes.
I mean, there were times when morale was so low that people were putting this poster all over saying, “Life is hard and then you die.” And that was kinda how people felt at that time.
But there were also very wonderful and exciting times, you know. A lot of those, so…
Craig : How did you feel through all that tumult as a non-founder but someone who was there in the beginning?
Bill : Well, to succeed early on you have to be a self-starter. You have to be self-empowered. You have to have a sense that, “I can do whatever needs to be done even if it’s never been done before. Even if you’ve never done it before or it’s never been done before.” You have to have that belief that, “I can do it.”
Now, Jobs as a founder had a lot of drive. He also had a lot of hustle. He was moving all the time. It takes that and I was always being presented with new challenges saying, “Well, you know, we need to build a burn-in box.” I’ve never done that before. “We need to provide reliable power to like, a dozen things.” Well, I’ve never done that before. “We need to figure out a fixture for doing this.” Well, I’ve never done that before. You know?
Craig : And now that you’re running your own thing, have you learned lessons about being the head person?
Bill : Oh yeah, I’ve learned a lot of lessons. One of them is that over the years, by being observant, I have seen all the pieces it takes to put together a company. And you may not have them all on the table at the beginning, but it’s easier for me to look ahead and see where the company is going to have to grow.
When I was designing software for people I would always think, “Where is this product going to grow, and let me design it so that you could add features that would look like natural extensions of the product, you know, rather than tacked on stupid things.” So as I build a company I’m thinking about all those things too. How do I anticipate the growth?
Another thing that I learned is that you’ve got to hustle and you’ve got to be everywhere and do everything. There are a million jobs to be done and when you’re one guy, you have to do all million. And when you have two people you only have to do half a million and when you have four people you have to do a quarter million, okay? But you still have to be very versatile.
Craig : For sure. So do you have any advice for someone who is thinking about joining an early company?
Bill : Yeah. Be prepared to do anything and everything that’s needed. You need to be cool with that. Whether it’s taking out the garbage or clipping the bushes or cleaning up vomit or going to a meeting and pretending you’re the marketing manager, whatever it is, be ready to do anything that needs to be done. And if you’re not up for that, don’t sign on.
Another thing about being an employee is that it is entirely unpredictable. Is the company going to be successful or not? Is it going to go places or not? Are the founders going to be happy or sad or anxious or angry or whatever? All of it could change from moment to moment.
So be a person who can survive with chaos and uncertainty and realize that you know, it’s not because of you and that that’s life. This is part of the deal.
Also, be prepared as either a founder or an employee to spend your life on it. Be prepared to give your life to the enterprise. Forget about family, forget about children, forget about your pets or your garden. It is going to be all-consuming and that’s one reason why I’m starting my startup so late. I waited until I could neglect my children without harm to them.
Craig : [Laughter] How so?
Bill : They’re out of the house now so I figured, “Okay, now I can do what I want.”
Another thing is that as a startup founder you figure that there are 1,000 things that are going to have to be done that require 1,000 different specialties and you’re only going to be good at 5 of them. Then you’re really only going to be interested in doing 10 of them and there are going to be 200 of them that you absolutely hate and cannot stand. But you have to do them all.
For example, many people, many engineers are really great at designing a product but absolutely terrified to actually tell anyone about it or to promote themselves or to say it’s good. So marketing and sales are complete anathema to them. But you’re going to have to step up to the plate and do some of it.
Craig : And so how do you prioritize?
Bill : It helps if you can plan ahead and plot a trajectory for things. It helps if you’re savvy enough to plan ahead and say, “What does it take to build a business?” And that will tell you at what stages things need to be done.
For example, at a very early stage you have to figure out, “What do I want to do?” Right after that, you’re going to have to choose a name, you’re going to have to incorporate, you’re going to have to get a checking account and so forth. The priority is built into the sequence to some extent. So, if you understand the stages of building a business, to a large extent you can predict when certain things are going to become priorities.
And you might find that, “Okay, I can put off marketing for a while and maybe while I’m putting it off, while I’m developing my product, I will search for a marketing firm or a marketing person so that when marketing becomes the priority I won’t have to do it myself.”
Understanding as well as possible what you’re getting into so that you can plan effectively is a really good strategy. Otherwise everything is going to be a surprise, everything is going to be immediately urgent, and everything is going to be a new learning experience. You’re going to be clueless. So you know, it’s a long answer to your short question but it’s the real answer. The better you can predict your growth path and the sequence of the challenges you face, the better you can plan for them. And the fewer emergencies you’ll have, the fewer unexpected obstacles you have, the better able you’ll be able to face them with grace and efficiency at a low cost and a low stress level in a timely manner. And to a large extent the priorities will unfold with the plan.
One thing that’s wonderful is that there’s a lot of information available. There are a lot of books, there are a lot of incubators, there are lot of blogs and so forth that there never were before. And of course, information gleaned off the internet is, you know, hugely unreliable. But given you’re good at dealing with that — and that’s something everyone ought to be good at — there’s a huge amount of free information out there that’s really useful. And you’re going to have to be — here’s another way of putting being a founder — you’re going to have to be a student.
You’re going to have to be a self-learning student, a self-taught student. You’re going to have to teach yourself marketing and sales and accounting and cash-flow and engineering and testing for regulatory certifications. You’re going to have to become knowledgeable about a huge number of things. So being effective at self-study and self-learning is a huge part of it.
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