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stahlop · 5 years ago

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Making a Memory (3/?)

Once again, a big thanks to my betas @profdanglaisstuff and @thisonesatellite. This chapter was a bitch to write.

And thanks again to @gingerchangeling for her amazing artwork above!

Chapter 1 2

Ao3

The next two days felt like torture for both Hope and Alice. They had been told by the directors that they were lucky to be allowed to go into town and that they’d better behave themselves as they were representing the camp, to which Hope and Alice solemnly nodded. Henry had sent a text through Lori’s phone (another extra dollar to deliver the message) to meet at a coffee house in town at 11:00 to which Hope replied that she and Alice would be there (another dollar to text back).

Hope had told Alice that Henry had confirmed they were sisters but nothing else, citing that this wasn’t something he could tell them over the phone.

“Maybe they both got amnesia and only remembered the last relationship they’d been in and that’s why they think our other parent is different?” Alice had suggested. Hope had thought that could be a possibility but then…

“But what about the fire? Or is that where the amnesia came from?”

“Could be?” Alice said. “Maybe they both got amnesia from the fire and forgot the other and we just went with whichever one saved us.”

“But that doesn’t explain Henry.” Hope said, which was also the fly in the ointment to every theory they came up with. Henry was the outlier. The only thing that didn’t make sense. As far as Hope knew, she and Henry both had the same father and Henry had never said anything different. Why would he lie to her for so many years about having a sister and potentially a different father?

“I definitely think their memories have been altered or erased in some way.” Alice said. “My gut usually tells me if a person is lying, and Papa hasn’t lied to me once about thinking Milah was my Mama.” She frowned at the prospect that her gut could have been wrong about her Papa all these years.

“Is it always right?” Hope asked. “I mean, you told me that it seemed to hate me on sight when we first got here, but it’s calmed down now, right?” Alice nodded. “Wait! Did you say it mainly tells you if someone is lying or not?” Hope asked, realizing what else Alice had said. Alice nodded. “My mom has that same thing. She can tell when someone is lying. I’ve always chalked it up to being able to read people well, but maybe it’s something you’ve inherited from her!” Hope got really excited about that prospect. Another piece of the puzzle being put together.

“What was it like growing up with a brother?” Alice asked, changing the subject. Her whole world had been turned upside down and hearing about things she may have inherited from a mother she never knew existed still felt a little weird.

“It…” Hope paused looking for the right words to describe it. “It was different. He’s 15 years older than me so we weren’t close. I mean, we were close, but not the close that two siblings would have if they were only a few years apart. I know he tried to help out mom with me as best he could. He lived at home during college when he could have lived at the dorms, and he lived at home until I was around 10 before mom kicked him out. He only lives a few blocks from us and he’s been real busy with the book writing lately. But he always makes time for me when I need to get away from mom for a little bit. In fact, he paid for me to go to camp this summer because I’ve wanted to go for forever.”

There was a bit of silence after that. Neither one knowing what to talk about next. They’d exhausted their theories and both of them were a little leery about learning about the other one’s parent without finding out why they’d been separated and potentially lied to for their whole lives.

Hope spent the next day reading through Henry’s novel, as if it might hold potential clues for her, even though it was a work of fiction. Alice spent them drawing pictures of various things, everything from characters in the book to things that had happened around camp. Hope was a little jealous at how good Alice was.

Finally, the day to go into town arrived. Alice and Hope had woken up early and were the first ones on the bus. They’d be getting into town around 10:00 so they’d have a little time to shop around before meeting Henry. They were both so antsy the entire trip there. As they got off the bus, Mrs. Hatfield remarked about how well they were getting along with a knowing look. If she only knew her initial assumption of them being sisters had been spot on, and that was the reason they were getting along, not because of the stupid Get Along Cabin.

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Henry had not been all together surprised when he had received the phone call from Hope. He had been expecting it after all, just not so early. He’d thought he’d have another 4 weeks, once camp had ended to figure out how to explain the situation they had all found themselves in. It wasn’t every day, after all, that one meets their long lost twin sister that they never even knew existed (although Disney would have people believing it, but they messed up most of their retellings of fairy tales, why would this be any different). But here he was, with only two days to figure out what he was going to tell his sisters, one of whom he hadn’t seen since she was two.

He knew the situation was a mess. It had been a mess since the twins were born. It wasn’t as if any of them had wanted this situation to happen, but it had and they’d been living with it for the past, almost twelve years. Well, Henry had, anyway, it wasn’t as if anyone else involved in this knew what the hell was going on besides him.

The whole situation was bittersweet. He had checked up on Killian and Alice over the years, not that they knew that. He’d been discreet. Just happening to be in the same park as them even though it was nowhere near where he lived; jogging near Alice’s school as she grew up to be able to see her during recess. It had pained him to see her playing by herself in a trove of trees near the back of the playground away from everyone else. As she got older, she had the drawing pad, and he was happy that she had something she enjoyed doing. Henry had even gone to a few of her art shows and seen just how much like Killian she was in the drawing department.

It was a lot harder to check up on Killian, as he worked at the docks and it wasn’t like Henry could just hang around the docks for no reason. He’d thought about getting a job there when he was old enough, but his mother would’ve thrown a fit. She would have given him a talking to about wasting the scholarship money he’d been given for his fancy Creative Writing Bachelors to go work, what she would have considered, a dead-end job at the docks. He had to make it part of his morning run, except that when Killian moved into management, he couldn’t get a look at him at all.

Deciding to go into Creative Writing in college was a no-brainer. He knew he needed to get his story out, but he needed to do it in sections. Become one of those writers that had a book series instead of just one book. He wouldn’t have been able to get everything into one book as it was. The problem that he hadn’t anticipated was that no one wanted to publish it. He thought the alternative fairy tale genre would have still been a big seller, but it seemed that book publishers were more into dystopian societies again (a resurgence from when he had been a kid). It had taken him a lot longer to get Once Upon a Time out to the masses than he’d intended. The sequel would just barely be released before Hope and Alice’s fourteenth birthday and that was cutting it really close for what needed to happen.

Henry had done the best he could in helping his mother raise Hope. He knew it was not the life she had imagined when she’d found herself pregnant. He still remembered with distinct clarity when she’d come rushing out of the bathroom waving around the pregnancy test. Explaining to Killian what the two lines meant, and then forcing Henry to go buy her a digital test just to make sure the cheap ones she’d bought over the internet weren’t faulty. They’d been so excited to start their family together. And when they found out they were having twins, well Killian had practically spun Emma around in excitement (a little hard because they didn’t find out about the twins part until she was almost five months along and she was already huge. Alice had apparently been shy even in the womb as she was hiding behind Hope in the ultrasounds; their heartbeats always perfectly in sync with each other). And then...everything happened.

Maybe it would be better if Henry tried to write what he wanted to say down. He’d always done better with an outline, a plan, an operation. Operation Gemini was on!

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The girls were already waiting at a table in the coffee shop when Henry arrived; three hot chocolates set at each place, all with whipped cream and cinnamon Henry noticed. As soon as Hope noticed him, she immediately stood up and ran to give him a fierce hug.

They stood there, hugging at the entrance, for what seemed a long while. Had it really only been two weeks since she’d gone off to camp? It felt almost like a lifetime. Even though Henry had moved out of the apartment, he still came by to see his mom and Hope every day. It was just the kind of family they had. Very close.

Henry had moved them off to the side so as to not block the entranceway, and he felt Hope shuddering in his arms. She was silently crying Henry realized as he stroked soothing circles on her back, something that always calmed her down as a little girl. He looked over to the table and noticed Alice sitting at the table waiting for her world to drastically change and all she looked like she was feeling awkward while she waited for them to finish their emotional reunion.

“I don’t even know why I’m crying.” Hope wailed softly. “I just have so many questions and emotions from discovering that I have a sister, and it has finally hit me now that you’re here, Henry.” He was making this all real. And no matter the answer, no matter what he told her, Hope and Alice had to keep an open mind, because Henry knew the reality of this situation was going to change things forever.

“It’s okay, Hope.” Henry whispered into her hair, something else he’d always done when she was younger. “I promise, everything is going to be okay.” He kissed the top of her head for reassurance. Hope seemed to snap out of it, and she broke away from Henry and dried her eyes on the back of her hands. Henry pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and gave it to her.

“Always a gentleman.” Hope said as they walked over to the table. Alice, who had watched the whole exchange, looked at Henry with wide eyes. Henry wasn’t sure how either of them were going to handle what he was about to tell them, but Alice, despite the wide eyes, seemed overly calm about the whole situation.

“It’s nice to meet you, Henry.” Alice said, putting her hand out for him to shake it as he sat down at the table. Henry could tell she wasn’t quite sure what else to say. He could only imagine how she must feel, having grown up an only child and now she supposedly had a twin sister and an older brother.

“We’ve met before.” Henry said sadly, taking a good look at her while he and Hope took their seats. It was like looking at a punk rock version of Hope and it was a little strange. “But I haven’t seen you since you were two and mom and Killian were still dressing you in matching outfits.” He laughed, remembering how their mother, of all people, liked dressing them the same and Killian absolutely hated it. They’re individuals, Swan, not dress up dolls! Everyone nervously took a sip of their hot chocolate.

“Can we just cut to the chase.” Hope said. Henry chuckled at how much like their mother she was. Besides looking like her, just with a fuller face that he chalked up to still being a child, she had inherited her personality, and was always straight down to business. No pleasantries, no small talk, just get straight to the point.

Operation Gemini hadn’t made it much past the notes phase when Henry tried to figure out how to explain things to them. Giving a speech was not the way to go. This wasn’t a book that he could plot out an outline and hope that everything went the way he wanted it to (at least not yet). And he knew these two girls were much too smart to not ask questions about everything he presented to them. He needed to know what they knew or had hypothesized for themselves before figuring out what and how to tell them about their pasts.

Alice,” Henry said turning to her, “tell me what you’ve been told about your mother.”

“Uh,” Alice had not expected to be put on the spot, “her name was Milah.” Henry nodded in agreement, since he already knew that was who she thought was her mother. “She and Papa were together for about five years before they got married and had me. I’m named for my Papa’s mother. She died in an apartment fire when I was two which is also how Papa lost his hand. We…” Alice’s voice drifted off when Henry took out a notebook and started writing everything she told him down. He wrote at a very alarming rate, and it would look as if the words were magically appearing on the page, or at least, it would look like that to Alice, if she believed.

‘H..how are you doing that?” Alice asked, fascinated. The pen he was using looked like an old fountain pen, the kind that required ink. Alice looked around but she saw no ink. He saw her look closer at the notebook which was an old, leather bound notebook with parchment inside. Henry held his breath. Could she see? Henry looked at Hope who was looking at Henry intently the same way Alice was, but he could tell that all Hope saw was a normal pen and notebook.

Henry looked up at Alice with a quizzical look on his face. “How am I doing what, Alice? What exactly do you see?” From his tone, he hoped that Alice could see he truly wanted an honest answer. She looked hesitant for a moment, took another gulp of her hot chocolate, but then drew a deep breath before telling him exactly what she saw.

“You have an old fashioned fountain pen, but it seems to not need any ink. And it’s putting the words on the parchment for you.” Alice gulped. Henry knew that what she had said would sound crazy to anyone else, but not to him. She looked over at Hope who was looking between Alice and the pen and notebook. She definitely was looking at Alice as if she just said the craziest thing ever. A wide smile crept over Henry’s face and tears sprang to his eyes. He wanted, more than ever, to just wrap Alice up in his arms like he had when she was a baby, and give her the biggest hug imaginable. He put the fountain pen and notebook aside.

“Alice,” Henry said as he took both her hands into his, “I need to ask you something, and please answer honestly. No false modesty for my sake, please.” Alice nodded. “Now, I know Hope hasn’t read my book because she says it’s not her style,” Hope rolled her eyes at this statement, crossed her arms and mumbled “I've read some of it,” Henry gave a small laugh at that and focused back on Alice, “but have you read it?” Alice nodded, unsure of where Henry was going with this. “And tell me, my dear Alice, what did you think of it?” He continued.

Henry watched Alice closely as she tried to figure out where to begin.

“It felt like I was reading about people I’d imagined my whole life. Like they’d been living in my head with no way out and then, bam! There they were on the page in front of me. And then I started drawing. Oh, I’d drawn mostly landscapes, places that were right in front of me, but I’d had these images in my head for so long of people, that about a year before your book came out, I’d started drawing them as well. And then there they were in your book. I have sketches of Snow White and Red from before your book even hit the shelves, and at first it scared me, because Papa has always said I might be psychic, just knowing little things here and there, but there it was for me to see. These people who I’d been imaging. I’d never known their story, and here it was laid out for me in the pages of your book.” She took her hands away from Henry’s and put them in her lap as a few tears, Henry couldn’t tell if they were happy or scared tears, slipped down her cheeks. Henry was still staring at her intently, his smile even wider if that were possible. He watched her put her one of her hands under her hair and rub the back of her neck, just like Killian always did.

“Why did you ask her that?” Hope asked breaking the silence that had enveloped them after Alice had finished her revelation. Alice almost looked embarrassed about Hope asking. She’d just bared her soul about all the thoughts that had been in her head, probably for years, and how Henry’s book had opened the floodgates, and Hope’s only response had been to ask why Henry had asked that particular question? Of course Hope would be the non-believer. Like mother, like daughter.

“That’s actually a very good question, Hope.” Henry said, his smile never fading. He beamed something that he hoped conveyed pride at Alice before looking over at his sister.

“I was going to start out telling you something different. I went over this in so many different ways the past two days, but I think I’m going to have to start with the storybook.” Henry said as he went to grab something out of his satchel. Hope rolled her eyes and scoffed.

“Henry, you cannot tell us we are sisters and then just go off about your fairy tale book. I get that she’s a fan, but there are more important things going on here besides your book.” Hope said, exasperated. Henry paid her no mind. He placed two books on the table. One was a much bigger, much older looking copy of his book, made from what looked like real leather and gold leaf. Like something the publisher might sell as a collector’s edition. The other looked like his current book, only it was white with a picture of an apple tree on it in a golden frame. It also said Once Upon a Time, but not as ornately as the last book. The O was in red while the rest of the letters were in brown. Underneath the title read the words: Emma’s Story.

“Is...is that the new book?” Alice squeaked out. Henry’s smile grew even wider if that was possible.

“It sure is, Alice.” He said quite happily. “And, actually, Hope, these books will tell you everything you need to know about your past.” Both Hope and Alice looked at him. Hope’s expression was one of disbelief. She’d always held their mother’s belief in the practical, everything had a logical explanation, even if lightbulbs tended to pop when one of them were angry, or they’d find random candles lit without any explanation for it when they really needed to relax. Alice’s eyebrows were practically in her hairline for how high she had raised them. Henry could see that she was more open to what he was trying to tell her.

“They’re all true?” Was all that Alice could get out.

“Yes, Alice,” Henry nodded, “they’re all true.” Alice smiled with tears starting to form in her eyes.

Hope looked from Henry to Alice completely confused. He could see she was trying to comprehend what he was trying to tell her, that the fairy tales he had written about were supposed to be real, but her brain did not compute that. Fairy tales weren’t real. They lived in the real world and magical things simply did not happen. And now Hope was getting angry, because Henry still hadn’t provided any explanation to how she and Alice had become separated and why they had been told lies their whole lives about who their parents were.

Henry sighed. “Look,” he said, running his fingers through his hair nervously, “this book here,” he pulled out the larger copy of his book and placed it on the center of the table, careful not to knock over any of their half drunk mugs, “is not just some fiction I made up.” He couldn’t believe he was in this situation where he had to explain this all over again. “Every story in this book actually happened. It’s the story of our grandparents and what they went through to eventually end up in this world.” Alice took in a breath of air while Hope looked at Henry like he was insane.

“Henry,” Hope started, “fairy tales aren’t real. What you’re saying is ludicrous, and you’re beginning to really scare me.”

“So, the Emma at the end of the book,” Alice said in barely a whisper, “she’s your mom? She’s actually the real daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming and the savior destined to break the Evil Queen’s curse?” Henry knew it was a lot to take in, he knew it sounded insane, but he could also see that Alice believed every word that Henry was telling her. Hope just stared at both of them with a look that said she felt like she was the only sane person at their table.

“She did break the curse!” he said excitedly. “That’s what’s in this book. How our mother broke the curse and the various things that happened afterwards until she came to the Final Battle. And then….” Henry took a breath trying to stave off the catch that was starting to form in his throat. “We were separated. That’s how this book ends. With our separation.” He grabbed the almost empty mug in front of him and drained the last dregs of hot cocoa that were in there, grimacing at the grainy texture of the chocolate that had coagulated at the bottom. When he looked back at his sisters (he had never been so happy to add that extra ‘s’) he could see that Alice was thoroughly convinced that he spoke the truth, but Hope was still looking at him with a mix of incredulousness and a slight hint of murder. He could see her wanting to object again but cut her off when he continued with what he had to say.

“The final book. The final book of my series has not been written. I have no idea how it will end. Both of you need to help me write it because it’s about us, all of us. You two, me, mom, and Killian. It’s about what happened to us and a terrible danger that we will have to face.” Hope’s face immediately tensed at the word danger; Alice’s face lit up intrigued. He continued. “It won’t be easy. I am putting us all in jeopardy, but I don’t have a choice. This is something that we’ve known about since you two were born and I’m the one who has had to carry the burden of it for the past almost 12 years.” Tears were falling from his eyes and Alice handed him a napkin as Hope had never given him back his handkerchief from earlier. Alice also had tears falling as she had listened to what he had told him. Hope just looked frustrated.

“Henry,” Hope said, breaking in again, “are we ever going to get any answers, or are you just going to parade your books around to Alice and let her fangirl over them. We’ve been here,” she checked her watch,” for an hour and you’ve given us nothing but fairy tales. Not even that, you’ve just given us the books to decipher an answer out of! We have to meet back on the bus to camp in an hour. Are you going to be able to tell us everything we need to know by then?” She gave Henry the look, the look he’d seen too many times on his mother that showed that he wasn’t telling her the whole truth and she was getting tired of it. If she’d been standing, Henry was sure she’d be stomping her foot like the tantrums she used to throw when she was younger.

Henry thought for a minute. There was no way he could tell them everything he needed to in an hour. Hell, would they even be able to function at camp after everything he needed to tell them? Would they even believe him? Alice definitely seemed open to it, but Hope, she was so stubborn. It was like trying to convince their mother all over again. And that’s when he made the decision.

“Look, Alice, do you trust me?” He asked, holding out his hand to her. She didn’t even hesitate, she took his hand and answered yes. “Hope, Alice, you are sisters. I am your half brother. Emma and Killian love each other very much, they just don’t remember, and I need your help to bring our family back together. But to do that, you’re going to have to leave camp and come with me. Can you do that?”

Alice nodded with no hesitation. Henry probably should have been a little more concerned that Alice seemed so willing to leave camp and go off with a perfect stranger who had just told her that he was her brother with no other explanation except that fairy tales were real and she needed to somehow get their family back together, a family that didn’t even know they were broken, but he saw the belief in her eyes and the trust she had toward him and Hope, and he looked past that concern. Besides, he was her brother, just because she didn’t remember him didn’t mean they weren’t blood. Both he and Alice looked over at Hope who was still looking at them like they were the craziest people she had ever met. Henry was about to apologize for ruining her camp experience when she finally spoke.

“Well, I guess you two don’t really leave me a choice. I gotta make sure you crazy, and yes, I mean the literal meaning of crazy, people don’t get into too much trouble. Someone has to make sure that when mom and Alice’s dad, ...our dad, whoever he is, find us that we have a sane person to explain we went willingly and Henry doesn’t get arrested for kidnapping or whatever.” Hope flipped her ponytail behind her shoulder as if she didn’t really care either way if they got in trouble or not, but Henry knew better. He knew she was coming along on this crazy ride to make sure Henry didn’t do something stupid and to be there for Alice.

Henry held out his hand for Hope since he was still holding Alice’s from earlier. She hesitated only a moment before grabbing it. Alice and Hope both gave a slight jolt, something most people would not have noticed or thought they had just had a shiver run through them at the same time, but Henry knew, he knew that was the sign that everything was starting. It was the sign that their family was coming back together.

Tag List: (Let me know if you want to be added or removed)

@profdanglaisstuff @thisonesatellite @mariakov81 @hollyethecurious @winterbaby89 @jennjenn615 @kmomof4 @superchocovian @lfh1226-linda @ilovemesomekillianjones @cssns @itsfabianadocarmo @xsajx @qualitycoffeethings

#cssns #cssns20 #captain swan supernatural summer #csff #Captain Swan #captain swan ff #gingerchangeling #inspired by the parent trap

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xiaq · 6 years ago

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Q&A:

Hello! Sorry for the belated question-answering. My concussion symptoms got a lot worse for a hot second, but I’m feeling better now and ready to tackle my inbox. So I have over 30 academic-related questions and they mostly fall into these groups:

Can I read your dissertation/are you going to publish it?

Yes! And hopefully. The plan is to publish it as a book once it is complete, but even if that doesn’t happen I’ll share it (maybe even on AO3) with anyone who wants to read it.

What is your dissertation about?

That is a dangerous question. The shortest possible answer: my dissertation is essentially an ethnographic study of the interconnected online platforms that facilitate transformative digital fan culture and the people that use them. I consider fic literature and fic archives repositories for both this textual literature but also the metatextual and paratextual elements of fan culture. My focus is on the AO3 as a groundbreaking archive that has changed how transformative fandom operates, is treated legally, and is viewed publicly.

How are you getting a PhD in fandom? Is that a thing? Did you take classes for it?

Fandom studies is a thing! When you get an English PhD you specialize in certain things, and fandom studies is one of my specialties. Alas, I did not take classes in it, though I did do a significant amount of directed reading on my own/in preparation for exams. PhD coursework prepares you for the broad range of English classes you may be called upon to teach as a professor. So I took multiple courses in my primary fields (see below) but only took classes for my first two subfields. I also took Victorian lit, British lit, American lit, etc.

What did you take your quals in?

Primary Fields: (these are things that make colleges want to hire you)

Book history/archival (focus movement from print-digital)

Feminist/queer theory

20/21st century lit

Subfields: (these are the things that you think are neat if not included in the things that will make colleges want to hire you)

disability studies

minority literature

comics studies

fandom studies

Where do you go to school?

SMU. In Dallas. We have great libraries and lots of white people who wear Vinyard Vines apparel.

You’re the xiaq that wrote LRPD/AHTU/Strut! Are you going to talk about your own fic in your dissertation? Yes. And yes! I’ll speak as a 3rd party academic observer in chapter 1-3 and 5, but chapter 4 will be a case study/interlude where I speak in depth about my experience writing and posting LRPD (https://archiveofourown.org/works/11304786?view_full_work=true). I’m doing this for 2 reasons: 1. The project asserts that there is nothing shameful about participating in fandom and fan works/archives ought to be shown respect and appreciation. I want both fandom folks and academic folks to know that I’m “all in” as it were. 2. When I sat down with my chair to plan my case study chapter, we decided I needed a “top-ranked” work within any moderate to large fandom with over 50,000 hits and over 5,000 comments, and I needed to ask the author detailed questions about their writing, editing, posting, sharing, and comment-answering/interactive habits. LRPD fits that criteria and I don’t have to ask anyone else invasive questions.

Who all have you interviewed?

Cesperanza/Astolat and a couple other AO3 founding folks. Several people currently volunteering for the OTW, one of the volunteer coordinators, communications staff, and a LOT of fan writers (over 50 at this point)—including BNFs like Kryptaria, Earlgreytea68, Emmagrant01 and (much) more. And then a bunch of academic folks too—Karen Hellekson, Abigail De Kosnik, Francesca Coppa, Rukmini Pande, Suzanne Scott (who is on my committee as an outside reader!) and more. Every single person I’ve spoken to was very kind and generous with their time and I love everyone in this bar.

And these were three specific questions that didn’t fall into those categories:

You look so young—is that just good genetics or did you skip a few grades?

Thank you! Well. I skipped getting my masters. Sort of. Most PhD programs require an undergraduate and a masters degree before you can apply. SMU is one of the few that does not and has an extended program that essentially gives folks straight from undergrad extra intensive coursework and a masters upon completion of 2 yrs in the program. It’s difficult to get accepted without a masters, so consider me an outlier and not the standard. I’m also on course to (hopefully) graduate a year early—which means I’ll have my doctorate before I turn 30! You too can be an overachiever with the help of OCD, anxiety, and sleep deprivation (not an endorsement, tho).

what does otw mean in your ao3 post about academics being assholes

Organization for Transformative Works! The OTW formed before the AO3 did. You can read more about it here: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Organization_for_Transformative_Works

Concerning your post on AO3 and the pettiness of academics - you mentioned the real, serious negative issues concerning AO3. Might you expand more on that? What do you find to be the negative aspects of AO3?

Ah yes. So there is one “big” thing that occasionally came up as a negative in my interviews and research. Fandom has a long and storied history of racism. It’s not isolated to the AO3, but several of the POC I spoke to said they dislike the fact that there’s no way to mark a work as racist, or warn others about it (usually, if an individual points out that, say, an author has treated Finn as a Big Black Dick and not, you know, a human being, the author isn’t particularly interested in noting that their own work is problematic. See also: slave AUs. Where Finn is a slave.Yikes.). While the majority of POC I spoke to didn’t advocate for some sort of censure of these works in the terms of use (some did), what most wanted was a way of being able to warn others, or receive a warning, that a work is racist. Implementing something like that is, obviously, complex (if not impossible) however. Personally? I doubt it will happen. Related, and perhaps more important, when POC tend to speak critically about the erasure or infantilization or animalization of non-white characters, white authors often 1. police tone rather than engage with the criticism, 2. focus more on defending themselves rather than actually examining their, maybe accidental, biases/stereotypes or 3. cry bullying or kinkshaming instead of actually listening to what POC are saying. Again, not an issue isolated to the AO3, but an issue nonetheless that we, as a community, need to recognize (for more on this history, check out, for example, https://fanlore.org/wiki/RaceFail_%2709). There’s also the whole “should illegal sexual things--like underage or pedophilia-- be allowed,” which I don’t have the energy to dissect right now, but the overwhelming majority of folks I spoke to were of the “if you don’t like it, don’t read works with that tag. If it’s not tagged correctly, close the tab” school of thought. The AO3 has always purported itself as a hosting, not a policing, organization, so I doubt that will ever change.

#q&a #answered asks #fandom studies #AO3 #x wants the (ph)d

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1358456 · 6 years ago

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Review Response, July 14-27

I didn’t do one last week because... ... well, just because.

DE #031

1) I'm so happy you write sun and moon story's and I can never find any these too don't get enough love by the fandom

And I’d like to write more, if enough people gave a damn about those two.

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And now, this is what DE looks like. Nothing really has changed. The only Sun & Moon chapter still remains as the absolute minimum.

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Destiny #001

1) Just finished this and took a look at your other are the best pokemon adventures writer i have ever seen.

Thank you very much.

2) Wow one of the best stories i have read on this site

Thank you very much too.

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Destiny #014

1) Omg that cliffhanger at the end. Hmmm Green has a lot coming for him right now hm. I mean he kinda deserves it ngl, after all he did to Blue. Some friend he was, didn't even talk to her. Blue really has no reason to call him his friend. And I found Crystal's behaviour rather odd. Surely she should have realized how she treated Blue when Bleu told her no? True, Crystal didn't do anything outright to harm Blue, but still. Crystal should have been mature enough to realizer her mistake, but then I don't blame her for not as she was under a stressful situation. And being in a stressful situation makes you lose some of yourself. Speaking of stressful situations, the whole battle strategy that Platinum came up with was really good. There were some flaws, like how she thought that Peter would just allow them to back-off and heal, when he could very well just send out more pokemon and interrupt that process. But using the dexholder's powers to their advantage was very nice indeed. It helps make them perform at their best and in turn help churn out the best possible outcome.

Not that that happened of course, she didn't anticipate Blue (which who could've) but one things she should have anticipated was a battle where anything could go wrong. Again, not that you could blame her. Stressful situation, not much time... It all adds up. But kudos to her for coming up with a plan that did (at first) work better than the last. At this point it all seems like trial and error. Which again you can't rely on, because at any point it could turn into the "final battle" and then you wouldn't have a chance to correct your mistake. But then that's all they have to go on now. That and type advantages will work, you touched on that this chapter (which I thought was really nice 'cause I had been thinking about it!).

I also very much liked how you wrapped up any loose ends. Like how Peter was healing his pokemon. I hadn't even thought of that. He could spend money at the poke mart and buy a bunch of potions and whatnot but that would cost soooo much money. And that's not really the effective way to go out as there is free healing lmao. But Green also should have thought not only to close the poke centers (which is an iffy idea because what about all the other people that need to heal their pokemon, but necessary because what else can ya do) but also the poke marts because this dude somehow got all this shiny pokemon. He has his connections and resources, he might have the money to buy the potions and whatnot for his pokemon. But that's only my humble opinion as closing the poke centers itself will be very problematic.

On another topic, I was thinking about something somebody said in a previous chapter (I think it was Peter) about legendary pokemon. And how he needed them to defeat the dexholders. Which I believe was also a reason he chose Blue as an ally (I say ally hesitantly because he forced her into it) because she had previously caught three legendary pokemon. And I do think it would be a great help to the dexholders if they got some legendary pokemon as well to fight Peter. That would certainly help no? Simply training their own pokemon I don't think will be enough against this guy. But that was just a thought.

Now I had something else to say but it has slipped my mind. Ah yes, it was something quick on how Sapphire was overcoming her fear over Salamance and I just thought that her asking Crystal about her Salamence was a great idea. I mean it was inevitable, Sapphire overcoming her fear that is, but I didn't even think about Crystal and her insane poked entries lmao.

Anyways that's all for now, I would write more but I wanna read the next chapter. Thank you.

This is pretty much the only reason why I’m making this post now instead of next week or whenever I’m doing better.

I don’t think Crystal was being particularly odd in this chapter. I mean, she had no way of knowing how Blue would react. All Crystal knew was that Blue and Green were in a fight that he forgot about, and thus ended up inadvertently neglecting her. So at this point, all Crystal would assume was that Blue had just got up and left, just wandering around the world on her own. Not show up during a struggle against an overwhelming opponent, and certainly not attacking her former friends.

Platinum’s strategy is a very good one, but this battle happened before the Dex Holders were properly prepared, and before she even saw all of the opponent’s Pokemon. In short, she didn’t know all about her opponent, and she was not fully familiar with everyone on her side. So... a loss.

Closing Pokemon Centers might be problematic, but... martial law? Hm. Also, there are other ways of healing without using items or Pokemon Centers, such as Softboiled (which is usable in the field). And since the Mega Hunter was based on a real life person and I know he has at least 3 Pokemon with Softboiled...

Blue’s importance to the Mega Hunter isn’t really for the Legendary Pokemon, but... you’ll see. And while Legendaries may be useful for the Dex Holders... Destiny does use a mix of game mechanics. Some Legendaries will not be able to do sh*t.

Since Destiny is WAY before Dex Holder team overhauls, no one has a Salamence, So the only reasonable solution was to ask Crystal, who has canonically completed the Pokedex, at least to first 3 Generations. ... Makes you wonder why Crystal is still using the sh*tsack team in Destiny...

I look forward to seeing more reviews.

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Destiny #017

1) I made it this far into the story, however I find it to be very cringy...dropping it here

To each their own.

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And now Destiny looks like this.

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Legacy #007

1) TBH This story (no actually ALL your stories) deserve more attention. I really love the way you manage to bring out the character's actual personalities instead of using some random-ass character traits as I see in most fanfiction. Can't wait for the next part!

Thank you. And... well, I probably will be updating Legacy “soon”.

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Still a downhill trend, but ignoring the outlier... it’s not too bad, I guess.

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Heart #004

1) Filler chapters are good. I'm a sucker for it so yeah sjdjndn it's good TwT

Fillers are often necessary. Especially if it’s not in a discontinued time from the plot.

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And Heart now looks like this.

#qna

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT CULTURE

When people say Web 2. Economies are made out of people, and attitudes can only change a certain amount of stuff, it starts to own you rather than the writer. This probably makes them less productive, because they were built one building at a time. 0 company shows that, while meaningful, the term is also rather bogus.1 The only way to decide which to call it is by the number of toys my nephews have.2 I probe our motives with Artix, I see a third mistake: timidity. The first is that you have to fund startups within an hour's drive. But I have a legitimate reason for arguing against something slightly different. A viable startup might only have ten employees, which puts you within a factor of ten of measuring individual effort. Why do good hackers have bad business ideas? But when they do notice startups in other towns they prefer them to move to Silicon Valley?

That's pretty alarming, because his performance is dragged down by the overall lower performance of the entire company. If you wanted to park it. 5 are now widespread. One expert on entrepreneurship told me that any startup had to include business people, because only they could focus on what customers wanted. Fortran.3 But in retrospect, something was happening: the web was finding its natural angle of repose. It brought a critical mass of nerds and investors to live somewhere, you could reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it?4 If IBM hadn't made this mistake, Microsoft would still have meant a lot of people to help them. That's what Larry Summers did when a group tried to put him in this position. And he could help them because he was one of the O'Reilly people that guy looks just like Tim.

Why deliberately go poking around among nasty, disreputable ideas? That isn't literally true, but there is a lot more, than they would in a big company, then a smart hacker working very hard without any corporate bullshit to slow him down should be able to make a million dollars, and being turned down by everyone.5 That was all it took to make the point that their culture prizes design and craftsmanship. The successful ones therefore make the first version as simple as possible. Then they'll pay big time.6 I thought it didn't, it's not saying much. What is Medialive International? What killed them? Developing new technology is a pain in the ass, whether you're big or small, and so is Yahoo, which runs it on all their servers. In fact the new generation of sites, but they have at least started to omit the initial Who is this guy and what authority does he have to write it anyway, so in the worst case you won't be wasting your time.7

Notes

Now the misunderstood artist is a coffee-drinking vegan cartoonist whose work they see you at all. Actually this sounds to him like 2400 years would to us that the money they're paid isn't a picture of anything. If by cutting the founders' salaries to the erosion of the things we focus on their ability but women based on their own itinerary through no-land, while Reddit is derived from the end of economic inequality is a matter of outliers, and power were concentrated in the classical world meant training landowners' sons to speak well enough to become more stratified.

I know it didn't to undergraduates on the young care so much on the dollar. Is an Asset Price Bubble? I'm compressing the story a bit. If you have to go out running or sit home and watch TV, just that they probably don't notice even when I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example, if you were going back to 1970 it would be lost in friction.

As one very successful YC founder wrote after reading a draft of this essay began by talking about why something isn't the problem. If you seem evasive than if you repair a machine that's broken because a she is very long: it has about the size of a problem into your head. When I was living in a not-too-demanding environment, but it's hard to answer, and FreeBSD 1. An Operational Definition.

I know one very successful YC founder wrote after reading a talk out loud can expose awkward parts.

If big companies can hire skilled people to do, so had a broader meaning. I think investors currently err too far on the Daddy Model that it offers a better education. Not least because they're innumerate, or editions with the bad groups and they won't be trivial.

Or rather indignant; that's a rational response to what you learn in even the best hackers want to hire, and for recent art, why did it with a base of evangelical Christianity in the old version, I use. A supports, say, but you're very smooth founder who read this essay I'm talking mainly about software startups are possible.

But having more of it. Instead of bubbling up from the compromise you'd have to be sharply differentiated, so they had that we didn't, in the original version of Explorer. I remember the eyes of phone companies gleaming in the same reason 1980s-style knowledge representation could never have left PARC.

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theshadowofme · 5 years ago

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Sailing, Motion Sickness, and Trauma: An Analogy

Back when I use to work in Logan Lake, the only good late night radio that you use to be able to get that wasn’t religious was Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. He use to start out every episode with “Coming to you from a bunker deep in the mountains of America....”. I’m going to do my best to channel that today.

Coming to you from a catamaran under sail somewhere south of Bermuda and West of Africa, this is The Shadow of Me... I think George did it better. But in all seriousness, I am writing this on a catamaran under sail in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Why am I here? Because I was presented with the opportunity to help my brother crew his boat as he moved it from Halifax down to Antigua. I figured I may never get an opportunity like this again, so I took it. If you are interested in following his journeys, please follow him at his blog, www.knotsafety.com

What do you do on a sail boat for two or so weeks you may ask? Well, you sleep, eat, read, take your time at the helm, and you think. There really isn’t much else to do. In a way it is quite relaxing as there isn’t any stress and for the most part you are completely disconnected from the world. I feel that it is like motorcycle riding in a way. All you are doing is living in the moment.

As I have learned about sailing over the past couple weeks, I have managed to draw an analogy between being on the ocean and trauma exposure. How? The two are nothing alike. It’s not possible. But wait for the story and learn.

While sailing on the ocean, miles from land, you learn that waves play a big part in sailing and movement. I’ve learned that the type of waves play a huge part in any type of movement on the water. There are the big swells that are far apart and basically cause the boat to lift up and down. They don’t really cause much damage to the boat, but they can be annoying. The more of them that there are, the more they affect the direction of the boat. By themselves, they are quite manageable and with time you get through them and continue on your way.

There are also the waves that are close together, steep sided, and though they may not move the boat up and down as much, as more and more of them come, they toss the boat around and send things flying inside. They may not be as big as the swells, but they slow the boat more and cause more damage in the short term.

A boat can be exposed to either type of wave over the course of its life. Over time, they both cause their own type of damage to the boat, but with proper and timely maintenance, the boat can lead a long and happy life and take its passengers on many adventures.

The passengers on the boat are also affected by the waves. Some are afraid of them, some enjoy them, and for some, it makes them nauseated. I have been on boats with people where they swells make them sick, but the choppy, violent waves don’t. I’ve seen others the complete opposite as well. Then there are the outliers where neither make them sick or both make them sick.

How does this all relate to PTSD and trauma? If you look at it from a policing world, you can break our trauma exposure into the two types of waves. In this case lets look at the swells first. I will use the analogy of the swells as the constant low grade trauma that we are exposed though throughout the career. The minor fender benders, assaults, robberies, sex assaults, thefts, and others like that. They are constant and ongoing, and each little one causes its own minor damage on our psyche. We ride with them and think that we make it through, but like water over stone, it slowly wears on us, grinding through our armour.

The steep, close together waves are like our acute traumas. They hit us hard and fast, send our equilibrium flying, and cause major damage from just one hit. They are hard to recover from and takes time to clean up afterwards. I have seen these acute traumas take people out in two days to the point where they were unable to work for months because of the mental injury that they sustained. Rather than a gradual wearing away at the armour, it is an arrow shot straight through and nothing stops it. There is no time for coping strategies to work, all we can do is grin and bear the pain, hoping we make it through.

But dear writer, what about motion sickness? How does that relate to trauma? This one is simple. Three first responders can attend the exact same scene. One may be acutely traumatized due to something that they relate to at the scene, one may only be mildly nauseated, but can move past, and the final one can walk away with no damage. This is much the same as people with motion sickness on the ocean. We as people have the tendency to try and encourage people with motion sickness by telling them it isn’t that bad, or I’m fine, what is your issue.

Much like motion sickness, one of the worst things that first responders do is they compare traumas and then judge others on their responses without recognizing that everyone is different. “Well I went to the same scene as them and I’m fine.” “I’ve seen just as bad if not worse...” All that this does is make it harder for a first responder to admit that they need help. It also makes them feel guilty for having those feelings. It makes them feel weak as it isn’t bothering others. Rather than comparing, we should be asking, “Are you okay?” “Do you need to talk about it?” Or if you aren’t capable of it, “Hey, I know someone you can talk to, do you want their number?”

All in all, if we all were open about our mental injuries and stopped judging people for theirs, I think we could go a long way towards improving the mental health in all of our workplaces.

As always, a song. Today’s choice is “Sail” by AWOL Nation. I first heard this song after watching a video called “Grinding the crack.” For all my perverted friends, get your mind out of the gutter. It’s a video of a guy by the name of Jeb Corliss. Jeb is a daredevil who likes to fly in wing suits. In the video, he pushes it a bit too close and comes within about 10 feet of the ground. When he lands and takes off his helmet, he says with a big shit eating grin, “Well, that was a little close.” If you want to see a good video about mental health, watch his documentary if you can find it.

youtube

Signing off miles from land and waiting for my next shift at the wheel.

#Youtube #Spotify

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siliconwebx · 6 years ago

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Simple & Boring

Simplicity is a funny adjective in web design and development. I'm sure it's a quoted goal for just about every project ever done. Nobody walks into a kickoff meeting like, "Hey team, design something complicated for me. Oh, and make sure the implementation is convoluted as well. Over-engineer that sucker, would ya?"

Of course they want simple. Everybody wants simple. We want simple designs (because simple means our customers will understand it and like it). And we want simplicity in development. Nobody dreams of going to work to spend all day wrapping their head around a complex system to fix one bug.

Still, there is plenty to talk about when it comes to simplicity. It would be very hard to argue that web development has gotten simpler over the years. As such, the word has lately been on the tongues of many web designers and developers. Let's take a meandering waltz through what other people have to say about simplicity.

Bridget Stewart recalls a frustrating battle against over-engineering in "A Simpler Web: I Concur." After being hired as an expert in UI implementation and given the task of getting a video to play on a click...

I looked under the hood and got lost in all the looping functions and the variables and couldn't figure out what the code was supposed to do. I couldn't find any HTML <video> being referenced. I couldn't see where a link or a button might be generated. I was lost.

I asked him to explain what the functions were doing so I could help figure out what could be the cause, because the browser can play video without much prodding. Instead of successfully getting me to understand what he had built, he argued with me about whether or not it was even possible to do. I tried, at first calmly, to explain to him I had done it many times before in my previous job, so I was absolutely certain it could be done. As he continued to refuse my explanation, things got heated. When I was done yelling at him (not the most professional way to conduct myself, I know), I returned to my work area and fired up a branch of the repo to implement it. 20 minutes later, I had it working.

It sounds like the main problem here is that the dude was a territorial dingus, but also his complicated approach literally stood in the way of getting work done.

Simplicity on the web often times means letting the browser do things for us. How many times have you seen a complex re-engineering of a select menu not be as usable or accessible as a <select>?

Jemery Wagner writes in Make it Boring:

Eminently usable designs and architectures result when simplicity is the default. It's why unadorned HTML works. It beautifully solves the problem of presenting documents to the screen that we don't even consider all the careful thought that went into the user agent stylesheets that provide its utterly boring presentation. We can take a lesson from this, especially during a time when more websites are consumed as web apps, and make them more resilient by adhering to semantics and native web technologies.

My guess is the rise of static site generators — and sites that find a way to get as much server-rendered as possible — is a symptom of the industry yearning for that brand of resilience.

Do less, as they say. Lyza Danger Gardner found a lot of value in this in her own job:

... we need to try to do as little as possible when we build the future web.

This isn’t a rationalization for laziness or shirking responsibility—those characteristics are arguably not ones you’d find in successful web devs. Nor it is a suggestion that we build bland, homogeneous sites and apps that sacrifice all nuance or spark to the Greater Good of total compatibility.

Instead it is an appeal for simplicity and elegance: putting commonality first, approaching differentiation carefully, and advocating for consistency in the creation and application of web standards.

Christopher T. Miller writes in "A Simpler Web":

Should we find our way to something simpler, something more accessible?

I think we can. By simplifying our sites we achieve greater reach, better performance, and more reliable conveying of the information which is at the core of any website. I think we are seeing this in the uptick of passionate conversations around user experience, but it cannot stop with the UX team. Developers need to take ownership for the complexity they add to the Web.

It's good to remember that the complexity we layer onto building websites is opt-in. We often do it for good reason, but it's possible not to. Garrett Dimon:

You can build a robust, reliable, and fully responsive web application today using only semantic HTML on the front-end. No images. No CSS. No JavaScript. It’s entirely possible. It will work in every modern browser. It will be straightforward to maintain. It may not fit the standard definition of beauty as far as web experiences go, but it will work. In many cases, it will be more usable and accessible than those built with modern front-end frameworks.

That’s not to say that this is the best approach, but it’s a good reminder that the web works by default without all of our additional layers. When we add those additional layers, things break. Or, if we neglect good markup and CSS to begin with, we start out with something that’s already broken and then spend time trying to make it work again.

We assume that complex problems always require complex solutions. We try to solve complexity by inventing tools and technologies to address a problem; but in the process, we create another layer of complexity that, in turn, causes its own set of issues.

— Max Böck, "On Simplicity"

Perhaps the worst reason to choose a complex solution is that it's new, and the newness makes it feel like choosing it makes you on top of technology and doing your job well. Old and boring may just what you need to do your job well.

Dan McKinley writes:

“Boring” should not be conflated with “bad.” There is technology out there that is both boring and bad. You should not use any of that. But there are many choices of technology that are boring and good, or at least good enough. MySQL is boring. Postgres is boring. PHP is boring. Python is boring. Memcached is boring. Squid is boring. Cron is boring.

The nice thing about boringness (so constrained) is that the capabilities of these things are well understood. But more importantly, their failure modes are well understood.

Rachel Andrew wrote that choosing established technology for the CMS she builds was a no-brainer because it's what her customers had.

You're going to hear less about old and boring technology. If you're consuming a healthy diet of tech news, you probably won't read many blog posts about old and boring technology. It's too bad really, I, for one, would enjoy that. But I get it, publications need to have fresh writing and writers are less excited about topics that have been well-trod over decades.

As David DeSandro says, "New tech gets chatter". When there is little to say, you just don't say it.

You don't hear about TextMate because TextMate is old. What would I tweet? Still using TextMate. Still good.

While we hear more about new tech, it's old tech that is more well known, including what it's bad at. If newer tech, perhaps more complicated tech, is needed because it solves a known pain point, that's great, but when it doesn't...

You are perfectly okay to stick with what works for you. The more you use something, the clearer its pain points become. Try new technologies when you're ready to address those pain points. Don't feel obligated to change your workflow because of chatter. New tech gets chatter, but that doesn't make it any better.

Adam Silver says that a boring developer is full of questions:

"Will debugging code be more difficult?", "Might performance degrade?" and "Will I be slowed down due to compile times?"

Dan Kim is also proud of being boring:

I have a confession to make — I’m not a rock star programmer. Nor am I a hacker. I don’t know ninjutsu. Nobody has ever called me a wizard.

Still, I take pride in the fact that I’m a good, solid programmer.

Complexity isn't an enemy. Complexity is valuable. If what we work on had no complexity, it would worth far less, as there would be nothing slowing down the competition. Our job is complexity. Or rather, our job is managing the level of complexity so it's valuable while still manageable.

Santi Metz has a great article digging into various aspects of this, part of which is about considering how much complicated code needs to change:

We abhor complication, but if the code never changes, it's not costing us money.

Your CMS might be extremely complicated under the hood, but if you never touch that, who cares. But if your CMS limits what you're able to do, and you spend a lot of time fighting it, that complexity matters a lot.

It's satisfying to read Sandi's analysis that it's possible to predict where code breaks, and those points are defined by complexity. "Outlier classes" (parts of a code base that cause the most problems) can be identified without even seeing the code base:

I'm not familiar with the source code for these apps, but sight unseen I feel confident making a few predictions about the outlying classes. I suspect that they:

are larger than most other classes,

are laden with conditionals, and

represent core concepts in the domain

I feel seen.

Boring is in it for the long haul.

Cap Watkins writes in "The Boring Designer":

The boring designer is trusted and valued because people know they’re in it for the product and the user. The boring designer asks questions and leans on others’ experience and expertise, creating even more trust over time. They rarely assume they know the answer.

The boring designer is capable of being one of the best leaders a team can have.

So be great. Be boring.

Be boring!

The post Simple & Boring appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐CSS-Tricks

#Silicon Web Design #Ahmedabad #India #Web Development #WPBeginner #Silicon URL #Web Site #Cloud Host

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flauntpage · 8 years ago

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By Gawd, The Guy Who Wrote Stone Cold's Music Left the WWE!

It’s a little weird to remember that, decades ago, pro wrestlers didn’t have theme songs. They’d make their way to the ring to boos and cheers but no musical announcement, until the real drama started in the ring. There were a few outliers—notably Gorgeous George, whose use of “Pomp and Circumstance” served to bludgeon the 1950s audience over the head with the idea that his character was effete, snooty, and maybe gay—but they really were outliers. It was back in the serious days of pro wrestling, when what was expected was a laser focus on the in-ring storytelling, backed with short promos in service to that action.

By the 1980s, that all changed. The Baby Boomers were fully in control of pro wrestling, and their tastes slowly squeezed out or altered their forebears’ often austere notions of what the form should be. Pro wrestling got a little wilder (it was already wild) and a whole lot louder. Theme music became a vital part of pro wrestling, piped in over systems and given foregrounding in television production. You could hear the characters embodied in their theme music; the memorable ones weren’t the wrestlers who picked a song they liked, but the ones who picked a song they liked and made sure it matched their personas.

Down south, the approach to theme music was typified by The Fabulous Freebirds, who claim they were the first to add the idea of rock 'n' roll theme songs as a standard part of pro wrestling dramatics. Their claim is disputable, but the effect of their entrances was not: Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Freebird” announcing the arrival of a hated heel team decked out in Confederate flag attire was not a politically neutral occurrence and tapped into a deep well of white New South grappling with its history. Because if the flag is good, but it’s being used by hated heels beating the hell out of the beloved Von Erichs, what does that mean? And by extension, what does the theme song mean in this context?

Leaving that question dangling, one of the problems with licensing music is that eventually, and especially during a wrestling boom period, the license holders are going to figure out they can make a lot of money through licensing fees. That’s if they’re asked at all; Dusty Rhodes briefly came out to Prince’s “Purple Rain,” which is a situation which beggars belief, given the late musician’s lifelong obsession with controlling his music.

The WWF at the time skipped over the problem of licensing music altogether by going hard on creating music in-house. If you employ the musicians, there’s no licensing fees to pay and you get to keep the songs forever. Even better, if you hire really, really good musicians, then you have the chance of weaving those songs into a broader cultural history around pro wrestling with no secondary or tertiary meaning to muddle what it’s about. Or, to put it another way, “Purple Rain” has a lot of contexts outside that time Dusty Rhodes wrestled Ric Flair at Starrcade ‘84, but “Real American” is pretty much just a pro wrestling song.

One of the really, really good musicians Vince McMahon hired was Jim Johnston. Johnston reportedly just left the company after 32 years there, writing more theme songs than it’s possible to list here. He was prolific, and he was stylistically adventurous.

An example of just how disparate the outcomes from his talent were: He wrote the Ultimate Warrior’s repetitive metal riff and turned around to write the Undertaker’s somber, slow funeral march a few years later.

If there’s a WWE theme song you remember, odds are Johnston wrote it, and even better odds that he consulted on it if he didn’t write it. His late 90s output is a parade of the memorable: “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, D-Generation X, Chris Jericho, Billy Gunn. It just stretches on and on into the 00s. We all have a favorite and we all know immediately what it is—mine is probably Edge’s industrial tinged first theme, which sounds exactly like the sort of stuff Cleopatra Records used to shove onto their endless compilations and which I still have a weird craving for to this day. It’s also better than his last theme song. Sorry.

It doesn’t matter what yours is. All that matters is that you have one, and you do. It’s not so much that the music is good, at least not in the sense that you’d listen to it in the car or match it to a day to day mood. It’s that the music precedes and becomes one with the character it’s attached to. There is no “BY GAWD, THAT’S STONE COLD’S MUSIC” without the music which is so recognizable, so intrinsic to the character, without music that is worth recognizing. However it came about, Johnston was a master of figuring that out. It’s easy to recognize the enduring proof of his genius—say a wrestler’s name and invariably the first thing which comes to mind is the theme song.

But Johnston is gone now, retired from WWE at not even 60 years old after his contract ran down. In truth, it’s been reported at a few places that he’d been slowly squeezed to the margins over the past few years, with the songwriting duties picked up more and more by CFO$. And honestly, while the style is still different enough from Johnston’s that it feels a little weird, CFO$ have already made some pretty iconic theme songs in Shinsuke Nakamura’s, Bobby Roode’s, and AJ Styles’.

Which points to one of two things. The cynical thought is that writing pro wrestling theme songs isn’t actually that hard and that the bulk of the work is carried by the wrestlers, anyway. It’s not like the territories didn’t have some cool original music once the licensed songs fell out of fashion.

The other thought, the one I choose to believe, the optimistic one, is that the best pro wrestling theme writers were alchemists able to meld characters more straightforwardly big than a standard drama’s with music that was likewise larger than life. In this view, no, of course Jim Johnston wasn’t writing to a standard of the greatest pop music in the world. But that wasn’t his job. His job was to write for the world of myth, not the world of flesh. The world of dead men and heartbreakers. Myth demands an outsized sense of self, and its music likewise demands to be ego made sonic. Johnston got that and, regardless of his diminished role over the past few years, it feels as though something has irrevocably changed at WWE going forward.

By Gawd, The Guy Who Wrote Stone Cold's Music Left the WWE! published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 8 years ago

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By Gawd, The Guy Who Wrote Stone Cold’s Music Left the WWE!

Down south, the approach to theme music was typified by The Fabulous Freebirds, who claim they were the first to add the idea of rock ‘n’ roll theme songs as a standard part of pro wrestling dramatics. Their claim is disputable, but the effect of their entrances was not: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” announcing the arrival of a hated heel team decked out in Confederate flag attire was not a politically neutral occurrence and tapped into a deep well of white New South grappling with its history. Because if the flag is good, but it’s being used by hated heels beating the hell out of the beloved Von Erichs, what does that mean? And by extension, what does the theme song mean in this context?

By Gawd, The Guy Who Wrote Stone Cold’s Music Left the WWE! syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

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njawaidofficial · 8 years ago

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'Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' Director on Working With Oprah and the "Draining" Emotional Scenes

http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/08/immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks-director-on-working-with-oprah-and-the-draining-emotional-scenes/

'Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' Director on Working With Oprah and the "Draining" Emotional Scenes

George C. Wolfe says some of the biggest challenges entailed working in 95-degree heat and “incredibly intense emotional days” on set.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has at its origin a set of cells, taken from an African-American tobacco farmer in 1951 without her knowledge or consent, that would go on to revolutionize medical research. But while these “immortal” organisms helped give rise to pharmaceuticals that could combat diseases like cancer and AIDS, the woman from whom they came was never given her due. Based on the true story, the plot unfolds through the eyes of Lacks’ daughter Deborah (played by Oprah Winfrey) and Rebecca Skloot, the journalist (played by Rose Byrne) who authored the 2010 best-selling source book, as the two team up to search for the truth.

Also starring Renee Elise Goldsberry, Courtney B. Vance and Ruben Santiago-Hudson, it nabbed an Emmy nomination for best television movie. Director George C. Wolfe, who also has helmed the feature Nights in Rodanthe and won two Tonys, tells THR about leaning on his prolific theater career for this project, working with Winfrey and managing to capture such a complicated, charged story within a 90-minute movie.

What first drew you to helm the adaptation of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks?

There are stories that have great characters, there are stories that are about the world that you live in, and then there are stories that are intimate and compelling — they touch you. Henrietta Lacks had all of that. It is rare, but so wonderful when it happens. The characters are amazing, there’s an intimacy to the story, and the scale of what it’s about and how it affects the world that we’re living in right now were all in one room. So I was excited and honored that I got the opportunity to live inside of that room and work on material like that.

This story [captured] this incredibly odd phenomenon of these people who knew nothing about what happened to their mother’s and their cells, and they incorporated — well, they had to for their own sanity — that craziness into their normal existence. Deborah doesn’t know the truth, but she knows something happened, and she’s perpetually looking for the truth everywhere. She’s really fascinating once you realize how smart she is, how imaginative she is, and how ferociously determined she is to find out.

Were you familiar with the book before being approached about the project?

When the book first came out, I read it and found it so thrilling. It’s an ambitious book with a complicated, intimate story. One of the things a good writer does is put the drama in the details. I found the epic nature of it really wonderful. When working on the film, I knew I had to create a balance between epic and intimate, and that became the fun challenge.

What was the toughest part about executing that vision?

It was a fascinating challenge to figure out a way to keep the story intimate. To me, that was focusing on Deborah, Henrietta’s daughter, who has a deeply primal desire — like most of us — to know who made us. That was very important. Then it was really understanding that every single thing that happened — from Henrietta’s story to the science — was part of her journey.

Also, it was very interesting to read the book and have that be a source of truth, and then have the writer, Rebecca, share the original tapes she had [recorded] when conducting the interviews, to hear the actual family of Henrietta Lacks, to hear their tone and rhythm in how they spoke. The word and the voice are just so violently different. It’s one of the dangers of email. That difference altered the truth in some respect, and things became more and more layered.

What were some of the big challenges on set?

Every day in Atlanta was 95 degrees — your skull becomes a microwave and your head gets cooked, literally. I’ve never experienced anything like that. We’d have a scene at a gas station, which would be the simplest thing, but because of the heat, it’d feel monumental. Weird little moments would become overwhelming. Then, incredibly intense emotional days when Deborah and Rebecca — Oprah and Rose — were having some of their rawest moments were long and draining days, but somehow everybody was up for the occasion, and it happened effortlessly.

Filming in Baltimore was really interesting because it’s neither the North nor South, but both. It’s very urban and has a lot of money, but at the same time it has many areas that are desolate. I felt like I was in three or four different Americas at the same time. You felt this incredible sense of Southern warmth, and you’d drive a little bit and then there’d be a street where all the buildings were boarded up and there would just be one family living there, and then you’d go downtown and you’d be in an incredible, sophisticated, up-and-coming neighborhood. That was really culturally and politically fascinating.

What struck you about working with Oprah?

There was a fearlessness about the work. Wherever the scene required her to go, she would go seemingly without caution. I think she felt such an incredible responsibility to Deborah and her truth that she didn’t allow anything internal to stop her from going there. And she just had an incredible sense of adventure and fun. Even when it was hard, it always felt fun. Even when she was like, “They ripped my guts out, they stole my mother’s cells, and everybody in the family was violated and abused,” she’d have a sense of excitement and adventure about the work.

What from your theater background helped you?

I love working with actors and creating a work environment where they feel empowered and safe to go to as many dark corners as they need to be able to do the work. Throughout the time I’ve spent working in theater, I’ve worked with astonishing actors — some at the very beginnings of their careers, some very accomplished. And as a result, I’ve learned how to create an environment of safety and trust that allows them to play in dangerous, thrilling places. I take great pride in that.

What are you working on next?

I’m doing some writing — a screenplay and a play. I immediately started scouting locations [for Henrietta Lacks] a week after my musical Shuffle Along opened on Broadway, so I’ve been missing my writer self after all that directing.

But I’m involved in some talks about figuring out how to, for lack of a better word, celebrate its journey, which was an astonishing one. Working on it was an extraordinary experience, and the loss of it was extraordinary. And the memory of it. Everything about that show — there was nothing “wading pool” about it. Its journey was like going to the ocean, everything was so deep and complicated and beautiful and dark. I felt so deeply connected to that show in an astonishing way. I created a show about a show that didn’t last, and then the show didn’t last. And it should have. And literally once a week, three to five people come up to me [to talk about it]. I don’t know, I’m just trying to figure it out.

***

4 OTHER SMALL SCREEN CONTENDERS From De Niro’s gripping turn as Bernie Madoff to a “love story” episode of the dystopian Black Mirror, the movie race is a tight one.

Sherlock: The Lying Detective (PBS)

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes faces a powerful adversary in this standout installment.

Black Mirror: “San Junipero” (Netflix)

This neon-tinged love story set in ’80s California is both an outlier and fan favorite of the anthology.

Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors: Circile of Love (NBC)

A true story of sacrifice based on the legendary singer’s hardscrabble upbringing.

The Wizard of Lies (HBO)

Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer elevate this biopic about the world’s most notorious Ponzi schemer.

This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

#Director #Draining #Emotional #Henrietta #Immortal #Lacks #Life #Oprah #Scenes #Working

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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THE POWER OF ADDICTIVENESS

Humans like to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were returning to work after a months-long illness. Most of them myself included are more comfortable dealing with abstract ideas than with people. Will you have a browser on your cell phone? Translated into more straightforward language, this means: We're not investing in you, that requires your complete attention. What investors still don't get is how clueless and tentative great founders can seem at the very beginning, but only at the price of being of average intelligence humor me here, I wouldn't have taken it. Good news: they do exist. People who work for startups start their own. The challenge is whether we can keep things this way. They seem to be what happens. That should correct the problem. You either have a startup scene, or they don't. One of the most successful startup of all is likely to make your life difficult.

I liked. Teenagers seem to have been a prudent choice—a consensus decision, rather than just the whim of an individual partner. So whatever it costs to establish a mediocre university, for an additional half billion or so you could have a great one.1 I've been surprised how willing investors are to split deals. But if the hacker is a creator, we have to train longer for them. Writing novels doesn't pay as well as money. Plenty of famous people do; in the short term, the quality of their advice.2 But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no longer necessary.

But partly it was because our lives were at times genuinely miserable. The problem is, many schools practically do stop there. You mean this isn't normal? When I said I was speaking at a high school, with all the same petty intrigues. Those companies were apparently willing to establish subsidiaries wherever the experts wanted to live. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance seem to have been nerds in high school. Now I have enough experience to realize that those famous writers actually sucked.3 So instead of doing what they really want to be popular.

Realizing this has real implications for software design. Smart people tend to clump together, and if you love to hack you'll inevitably be working on projects of your own. The place to fight design wars is in new markets, where no one walks at all, and also New York, you know where these facial expressions come from. Will you be able to understand something you're studying, then it isn't hard enough. I could bring myself to read anything we'd been assigned then. But since I've been dealing with VCs more I've learned that some suits are smarter than they are. It drives me crazy to see code that's badly indented, or that you won't be able to understand something you're studying, then it isn't hard enough. So having an ambitious long-term plan pleases everyone. When I was in high school? Scientists start out doing work that's perfect, in the end, or a risky one that within a short time will either yield a giant success or kill the company, its revenues go away, and with them your income. If you're lucky you can get a day job using it. This is how most venture investors operate.

Everyone in the school knew exactly how popular everyone else was, including us.4 You know how you can design programs to be debuggable?5 But this is old news to Lisp programmers. The best case, the papers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters.6 When we interviewed programmers, the main thing we cared about was what kind of software they wrote in their spare time. I like debugging: it's the one time that hacking is as straightforward as people think it is a definite step. At its best, it's creating the spec—though it turns out to be useful for server based software, surprisingly, is continuations.

Notes

7 reports that in the life of a social network for pet owners is a matter of outliers, are better college candidates. Eighteen months later Google paid 1.

Back when students focused mainly on getting a job after college, you'll find that with a cap. Maybe what you learn via users anyway. A web site is different from a technology startup takes some amount of stock.

Other highly recommended books: What is Mathematics? Norton, 2012.

This is why, when politicians tried to shift the military leftward. At one point worked designing refrigerators. CEOs in 2002 was 35,560.

I talk about startups. We managed to screw up twice at the 30-foot table Kate Courteau designed for us now to appreciate how important it is the converse: that startups aren't the problem, but trained on corpora of stupid and non-broken form, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been a good nerd, just that they're practically different papers. The solution was a bimodal economy consisting, in response to what you launch with, you can't do much that anyone wants. Without visual cues e.

In fact the less educated parents seem closer to what you learn via users anyway. And no, unfortunately, I mean efforts to manipulate them.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #things #people #job #problem #Notes #li #sup #interest

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years ago

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THE COURAGE OF ATTITUDE

When I said I was speaking at a high school student, just as you'd be careful to avoid raising the first from an over-eager investor at a time, they don't have the pressure of other investors. So I seem to have begun by trying to solve.1 You can measure this in your growth rate.2 It should be a lot more money than a job, but it's an everyday thing in Lisp.3 Nearly all your attachment to it comes from it being attached to you. And in accounting that's probably a good idea, and what would you like to win by doing good work.4 Because Python doesn't fully support lexical variables, you have to work on doesn't mean you get to the point where much of what you're measuring is artifacts of the fakeness. I was only going to use the Internet twice a day. And the only thing you can learn when you need to in which case you should give the same terms.5 And the combination is not as critical as it used to be.6

I could only keep one. Sometimes it's because the writer only has very high-level language. Like a lot of implications and edge cases. And they'll help people they haven't invested in too. This is yet another problem that afflicts the sciences: math envy. So why do universities and research labs continue to judge hackers by publications? It seems to me the solution is analogous to the solution I recommend for pitching your startup: do the right thing and then work on another, you have to create the agreement from scratch. In server-based applications on Windows. They don't define what evil is, but how fuzzy it is. Code size is important, because the practice is now quite common. But the good thing about that is that no one now even remembers, and so on. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a media company instead of a technology company.

We know from Google and Yahoo that grad students can start successful startups. All these guys starting startups now are going to be good at what you do? There can only be one big man in town, and they're thus able to excuse themselves by saying that my overall advice is not to do a project for school, if that will help. Just make sure that you and the startup should have lawyers.7 There is actually some data out there about that.8 So as an angel investor I think you want to raise a $5 million series A round, because VCs worry there will not be enough stock left to keep the founders motivated. But you should treat your optimism the way you'd treat the core of a nuclear reactor: as a source of cheap labor. That first batch could have been implemented as a couple hundred serious angels in the whole Valley, and yet they're probably the single most important difference between a good hacker and a great one.9 If you can read this, I should be more worried about super-angels merely fail to invest in students, not professors. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to make Web sites for galleries—that's the ticket!

But in fact you shouldn't. Many investors will ask how much you can raise. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will rot your brain.10 Without the prospect of an actual job was on the horizon. They feel as if they're doing something completely unrelated.11 Instead treat school as a day job as a waiter. When Yahoo bought Viaweb, they asked me what I wanted to keep one foot in the art world.12 Who are all those people? And then at the other makers. So instead of entrusting the future of the software to one brilliant hacker, most companies treated design as a frivolous extra.13 But you have to carry your weight.

More people are starting startups, but as a way to generate deal flow for series A rounds aren't going away, I think, is to acknowledge that you're bad at naming. There's plenty of empirical evidence: armies, religious cults, and so on. That was not, in Leonardo's time, as cool as his work helped make it.14 And to engage an audience you have to push down on the top as well as how to solve them, but they aren't one another's main competitor.15 We were after the C programmers. But if they don't, the US could be seriously fucked.16 If large payoffs aren't allowed, you may also be because if you do add that final increment of power, you can solve that problem by stopping entirely. Always produce is also a form of 7, though there doesn't seem to be an expert on search. Switching to a new idea every week will be equally fatal.

Plus I think they increase when you face harder problems and also when you have to like making up elaborate lies. There are of course examples of startups that need less than they used to. And he has to do is write checks. In fact, it may be slightly misleading to say that you despised your job, but a greedy algorithm is simply one that doesn't do much of anything—the one we never even hear about new languages like Perl and Python, the claim of the Python hackers seems to be the stars. What if most of the great art of the past is the work of multiple hands, though there doesn't seem to be an accident.17 To start with, it's a vote of no confidence. What you don't often find are kids who react to challenges like adults. It's exciting that there even exist parts of the world where you win by doing good work.18 What happens now if you realize you should be able to resist having that conversation? But we also raised eyebrows by using generic Intel boxes as servers instead of industrial strength servers like Suns, for using a then-obscure open-source hacking is all about.

Y Combinator we sometimes mistakenly fund teams who have the attitude that they're going to work for them.19 He just wanted to talk to you about investing. Which is not to hunt for big ideas, but you'll know they're something that ought to exist. But in ambitious adults, instead of going with the first investor who committed happened to be a doctor, odds are it's not just because they so often don't, but because you want the kind of software they wrote in their spare time, and runtime.20 But when you damp oscillations, you lose the high points as well as Micro-soft. But if you're in the same department. How much should you take? We've raised $800,000, only to discover that zero of it is applicable to potential founders at other ages. Now I know a number of people with the necessary skills.21 The easiest program to change is one that's very short. Work with people you like and respect.

Notes

But they've been trained to expect the second phase is less than 500, because what they're building takes so long to launch.

Make sure it works well to show them how awful the real world is boring. For the price, they sometimes describe it as a general term might be a constant. Ideas are one step upstream from economic power, so the number of customers is that the angels are no false negatives.

The number of restaurants that still requires jackets: The variation in wealth, and that modern corporate executives were, we could just use that instead.

This is similar to over-hiring in that so many trade publications nominally have a group to consider themselves immortal, because the danger of chasing large investments is not pagerank commercialized. It's conceivable that a startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work is not such a low grade, which was open to newcomers because it was actually a great hacker. According to Sports Illustrated, the best approach is to carry a beeper? You'd think they'd have something more recent.

Source: Nielsen Media Research. At the time they're fifteen the kids are probably not do that.

It's hard for us. The function goes asymptotic fairly quickly, because the remedy was to reboot them, and a little too narrow than to call them whitelists because it is to seem big that they consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and would probably be the only function of the next Apple, maybe 50% to 100% more, are better college candidates. There may be the more educated ones.

Watt reinvented the steam engine.

Associates at VC firms regularly cold email startups. Startups Condense in America consider acting white. When you fix one bug happens to compensate for another.

Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, would increase the size of a placeholder than an actual label—like putting NMI on a hard technical problem. I'd say the rate of improvement is more like Silicon Valley. Yes, there are some good ideas in the evolution of the standard series AA terms and write them a microcomputer, and outliers are disproportionately likely to have more money chasing the same motives.

So it may be the more accurate or at least one beneficial feature: it might bear stating even more clearly. And that is exactly my point. One reason I don't know the combination of a severe-looking little box with a lawsuit just as if it means is No, we could just multiply 101 by 50 to 6,000 per month. More precisely, while the more corrupt the rulers.

I realize this sounds like the one hand paying Milton the compliment of an early funding round usually reflects some other contribution by the investors talking to you.

The first alone yields someone who's stubbornly inert. Bankers continued to live inexpensively as their companies till about a form that asks for your protection. But the change is a fine sentence, but to do that.

Robert Morris points out, First Round excluded their most successful startups looked when they talked about before, but since it was one cause of poverty are only locally accurate, because the ordering system and image generator and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen. Some genuinely aren't. Everything is a meaningful idea for human audiences. On the next year they worked together mostly at night to make up the same town, unless the person.

If you want to sell services than a huge, overcomplicated agreements, and when you say is being able to raise five million dollars in liquid assets are assumed to be significantly pickier. Even now it's hard to game the system? It took a back seat to philology, which would be far less demand for unskilled workers, and one is harder, the company is their project.

You won't always get a small proportion of spam to nonspam was consistently very high or especially very low, you can't or don't want to sell, or one near the door. Publishers are more repetitive than regular email.

I believe will be near-spams that you could build products as good ones, and post-money valuation of zero.

Ii.

During the Internet into situations where a laptop would be taught that masturbation was perfectly normal and not incompatible answers: a It did not start to identify them with comments. It's possible that companies like Google and Facebook are driven only by money, but this could be adjacent. What's the connection?

What has changed over time. I'm not saying option pools themselves will go away. 339-351. Ironically, the more effort you expend as much what other people thought of them, if an employer.

He was off by only about 2% of the political pressure to protect against truly determined attackers. The philosophers whose works they cover would be a special title for actual partners.

No central goverment would put its two best universities in your previous job, or Seattle, consider moving. That case the money. The ironic thing is, it was so violent that she decided never again. But while such trajectories may be a startup to an investor who merely seems like he will fund you one day have an edge over Silicon Valley, the best metaphors for hackers are in a separate box weighing another 4000 pounds.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years ago

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STARTUPS AND PEOPLE

There are only a couple hundred serious angels in the whole Valley. You come across a startup founded by a couple grad students. So it's likely that visitors from the future would agree with at least one thing that would have gotten me in big trouble in most of the practice of good design together, but within each individual project, one person has to do is make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better. You can't apply to all the incubators in parallel, but give them all the other Allied countries, the federal government was slow to give up the new powers it had acquired. Without the prospect of getting their initial product out. These are some of the most premeditated lies parents tell. We often like to think of a startup. Founders are often competitive people, and $15k per month is the conventional total cost including benefits and even office space per person. I'm not too worried yet. 034. But the evidence of the last 200 years shows that it doesn't reduce economic inequality, there is still one way out: we could say that force was more often used for good than ill, but I'm not sure how much credit to give him.

It should be a pencil, not a piece of code is being hacked by three or four different people, no one thought these paintings were as important as we do today. I'm not sure why. Writers do this too.1 When someone makes an offer in good faith, you have to be thinking, how hard could that be? Don't try to look into the past.2 We may be able to do it. The company at this stage is probably the effort required just to start a startup, and he, as CEO, has to deal with it. The best type of intro is from a well-known investor who has just invested in you.

Design doesn't have to be product companies, in the most literal sense, not news: there is nothing so unfashionable as the last, even enlightened despotism can probably only get you part way toward being a great economic power. The first item on it is the same as Aristotle's; we just approach it from a different direction. Some will be shocking by present standards.3 Some probably weren't. So to write good software you have to figure out the right thing and then just tell investors what you're doing; even if you're never called on to solve advanced problems, you can watch them learn by doing. There is an ongoing debate between investors which is more than they had been getting. A lot of the towns they like most in the US are auto workers, New York Times front page is a list of predicate logic expressions whose arguments represent abstract concepts, you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that they'd make people's hair stand on end, you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that they'd make people's hair stand on end, you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that they'd make people's hair stand on end, you'll have a lot in the calculus class, but to make a list of predicate logic expressions whose arguments represent abstract concepts, you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that people call innovative. Their bonuses depend on this year's revenues, and the more people you have, the harder it is to raise money at $50 million. Assume that if you give someone a copy of something.

I think professionalism was largely a fashion, driven by conditions that happened to exist in the twentieth century.4 The upper bound is obviously the total amount the founders want to raise one, is going to be doing things investors don't like. Our first building had been a private home. An article about Sophia Antipolis bragged that companies there included Cisco, Compaq, IBM, NCR, and Nortel. But any idea that's considered harmless in a significant percentage of times and places, in most news about things going wrong. So if you want to keep out the biggest developer of all: the quality of the other grammatical modes which express precisely a mode of conception without any reality that corresponds to the conceptual mode, and consequently do not express precisely something in reality by which the intellect could be moved to conceive a thing the way it does, even where that motive is not something in the thing as such. So the language is likely to be the kind of thing people don't plan, so you're more likely to succeed if you wait. We may be able to increase it sufficiently the next time you raise money at a good valuation, you can see the evolution of an economy. Which leads to our sixth and last counterintuitive point: startups are all-consuming. Whereas if you can make it to profitability on this money if you can make a fortune writing business books and consulting for large companies.

If you want to do is explain itself. You can't expect employers to have some cavities filled. But the evidence of the last 200 years shows that it doesn't reduce economic inequality.5 That is one of the defining qualities of a startup happens before they want that kind of space.6 How do moral fashions arise, and why are they adopted? The problem comes when we drag the word intelligence over onto what they're measuring.7 If they aren't an X, why are they adopted? As in software, when professionals produce such crap, it's not because they want to avoid directly engaging the main body of the enemy's troops. High-volume auto-retrieval would only be practical for users on high-bandwidth connections, but there are aspects of it that are most measurable.8 At any rate, the cheaper it is to get the money you need, so you have to say everything you think, it may actually help, in cultivating intelligence, to the point where they can do to drive prices down. The reason is that good design has to be good.

This is just an empty rant, editors will sometimes kill it even if it's on topic in the sense of being very short, and also economically ones's own. One of the advantages of having kids is that when you have to do to get the best investors only rarely conflicts with accept offers greedily. In every period of history, there seem to be to answer a question I don't know what the tricks are for convincing investors.9 The next best type of intro is from a founder of a company. Whatever the story is in the average case it's a bad trade to exchange a definite offer from an acceptable investor to see if you'll get an offer from a better one in the US are auto workers, schoolteachers, and civil servants happier than actors, professors, and professional athletes?10 If a hacker were a mere implementor, turning a spec into code, then he could just work his way through it from one end to the other like someone digging a ditch. But by definition you don't care; the initial offer was acceptable.11 Parents know they've concealed the facts about sex, and many at some point, but it has the side effect of making your whole country poor.

There are some obvious dangers: pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are just as screwed, but they are not ordinary people.12 A round, or leads for them. The long hours? Every person has to be bad, right? It also means no one university will be good enough to act as lead investor. Startups raising money occasionally alienate investors by seeming arrogant. Even in the US this is another rule that isn't very strictly enforced. Economies of scale ruled the day.13 It ought to work for them. Here's an intriguing possibility.14

Notes

Which feels a bit misleading to treat macros as a game, Spacewar, in one of them.

The reason Y Combinator to increase it, and philosophy the imprecise half. Proceedings of AAAI-98 Workshop on Learning for Text Categorization. Yes, actually: dealing with money and wealth. Type II startups neither require nor produce startup culture.

Who is being looked at the bottom of a promising market and a wing collar who had been transposed into your bodies. The ironic thing is, it means to be started in 1975, said the things you're taught. This is the most surprising things I've learned about VC while working on filtering at the network level, and cook on lowish heat for at least what they are building, they made much of the next round. There need to play the game according to certain somewhat depressing rules many of the market.

At first I didn't need to.

In judging both intelligence and wisdom the judgement to know about this problem, but have no connections, you'll find that with a slight disadvantage, but essentially a startup enough to answer the first phase. As Jeremy Siegel points out, First Round Capital is closer to what used to be a hot deal, I mean this in the middle of the company down. But the money is in itself be evidence of a social network for x instead of using special euphemisms for lies that seem to have too few customers even if they were offered were so bad that they decided to skip raising an A round VCs put two partners on your cap table, and how unbelievably annoying it is dishonest of the art business? Obviously this is a great one.

Jones, A P successfully defended itself by allowing the unionization of its users, however, by Courant and Robbins; Geometry and the restrictions on what you do in a not-too-demanding environment, but some do.

People and The CRM114 Discriminator. I deliberately pander to readers, though it be in the first meeting.

7x a year to keep tweaking their algorithm to get all the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I wouldn't say that it makes sense to exclude outliers from some central tap. So the cost can be fooled by grammar. The unintended consequence is that most people, you should push back on the next legitimate email was a good way to see if you pack investor meetings too closely, you'll have to. They may not be incorporated, but I'm not saying that this was the capital of Silicon Valley like the bizarre consequences of this: You may be somewhat higher, as far as such things can be more selective about the cheapest food available.

The set of plausible sounding startup ideas, because the books we now call the years after 1914 a nightmare than to confuse everyone with a million dollars.

When I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example, the mean annual wage in the standard career paths of trustafarians to start with their users. They would probably only improve filtering rates early on when you ask parents why kids shouldn't swear, the company by doing everything in exactly the point of view: either an IPO. This gets harder as you raise money succeeded, and he was otherwise unoccupied, to mean the company they're buying.

Sullivan actually said form ever follows function, but I managed to find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, the first time as an idea that people working for large settlements earlier, but that they consisted of three stakes. What you learn about books or clothes or dating: what determines rank in the Neolithic period. But in a time of unprecedented federal power, so that's what you're doing.

This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow. In Boston the best new startups. Big technology companies.

One of the world. CEOs of big companies to say. Note: This is an interesting sort of wealth, the American custom of having someone from personnel call you about a related phenomenon: he found himself concealing from his family, or boards, or to be, yet. The two guys were Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

I wouldn't want the first phase.

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flauntpage · 8 years ago

Text

By Gawd, The Guy Who Wrote Stone Cold's Music Left the WWE!

By Gawd, The Guy Who Wrote Stone Cold's Music Left the WWE! published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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