#also false deciding the more fun option is obviously correct

[applepixls]

absolutely loving the permitmaster episode, especially the melon task because of how everyone did it

joel got more and more panicked with each slice he ate and eventually started punching grian and cub to get them to want to punch him even though they were already punching him on request

cleo broke it and then it didn't drop as slices so they were being clever and assuming cub and grian had done something tricky while simultaneously being silly cause. silk touch axe. also "you can't see it therefore it doesn't exist. object permanence is a lie"

beef going all "ce n'est pas une pipe" and saying 'the melon's demolished its now melon slices?' and his very convenient lava

the sound effect in grian's pov for false loading after reading the task and then her deciding damaging herself to eat melon is more fun and therefore better than just throwing it away

joe shooting a rocket and saying "oh no it exploded" and committing to pretending the melon was gone

they're all crazy and i love them

[skeptycats]

Vicky Archives #4

CODE OF THE CLANS - A little light humour

Vicky Holmes, the former editor of the Warriors series, has been doing short extract readings on Facebook since the start of the UK lockdown back in March. There’s some really cool anecdotes hidden within some of these videos, so I decided to begin penning them down for posterity and easy reference.

I won’t be transcribing filler, hedging and false starts but I’m including some amount of preamble just to be comprehensive.

A little short one this week! My health is a little poor at the moment so it’s a couple days late anyway, but I hope you enjoy!

#1 Into the Wild | #2 Forest of Secrets | #3 The Darkest Hour | #4 Code of the Clans | #5 Firestars’ Quest | #6 Twilight | #7 Long Shadows | #8 Leafpool’s Wish

---

Hello! It is Tuesday, March the 31st, last day of March, and I’m in a bit of a down mood today, I’m sure a lot of us are. The realities of lockdown are setting in, I’m bored, I want to go shopping - and I never want to go shopping! I’d just like a change of scene.

I decided today to go for some light relief. I’m going to do a reading from Code of the Clans, which was I think the first book I wrote completely on my own, so I storylined it, brainstormed it, and actually did all the writing on my own. It’s a lot harder without Kate or Cherith to help because obviously I was responsible for all of the words, but I was also able to play with the Erin Hunter voice myself. It was lovely, and I really enjoyed it.

Code of the Clans is something which we call non-fiction. Obviously it’s still fiction, but it was delving into the world behind Warriors. The structure, the heritage, the religion. It was just a pure exercise in fantasy, it was a delight. 

I’m going to read a short section from Code #11, which is ‘boundaries must be checked and marked daily. Challenge all trespassing cats.’ I’m going to read a short scene in which Whitestorm teaches border tactics to some familiar faces when they were apprentices. I can remember when I wrote it I was smiling, and giggling to myself. I’m probably going to do the same now, so forgive me for effectively laughing at my own jokes. We all need a bit of humour today. 

Is every cat here? Firepaw, Graypaw, Ravenpaw, Sandpaw, and Dustpaw? Dustpaw, stop trying to push Firepaw into the brambles. I’m not blind; I can see what you’re doing. Firepaw, go to the other end of the line. Sandpaw, he does not have fleas! Stand still, all of you.

As Lionheart told you, we’re going to practice border defense today. You can be the patrol, and I’ll be a deputy from another Clan who’s crossed the boundary. Who’d like to lead the patrol? Don’t look so terrified, Ravenpaw. I won’t make you be the leader if you don’t want to be. Graypaw, why don’t you have first turn? If you could just pick up that stick in your mouth and use it to draw a line across the sand, we’ll call that the border. Sandpaw, it doesn’t matter that the line is wobbly. Boundaries aren’t whisker-straight, code are they? So, you’re on that side, walking along on a dawn patrol. Off you go, patrol!

Did you really need to yawn like that, Graypaw? Oh, I see, it’s because it’s the dawn patrol, and you’re tired. Well, let’s pretend you all had a really good night’s sleep and are full of energy. Now, what should you be doing? Yes, sniffing, tasting the air—what for? That’s right, Sandpaw. ThunderClan border marks. And what else? Yes, Firepaw. The border marks of the other Clan. But only where the two borders meet. Beside the river and the Thunderpath, it would be bad news to find any scents of RiverClan or ShadowClan, because it would mean they’d crossed over from their side. So keep sniffing.

Maybe not that much, Sandpaw. Have a good sneeze and you should get the sand out of your nose. So, border marks, border marks. Can you smell both sets? Good. But what’s this? A cat from another Clan has ignored the marks and stepped over your border?

No, Ravenpaw, I didn’t mean we were actually being invaded. The cat from the other Clan is me. See how I just stepped over the line in the sand? What are you going to do about it? Wha . . .whoa! Stop treading on my ears!

Well, yes, Dustpaw, launching an attack and knocking me back across the border is one option. But is it wise to take on a cat twice your size? Or a trained warrior with more experience than you? The purpose of a patrol is to assess the situation and report back to your Clan leader. You won’t be able to do that if your pelt is clawed to shreds at the farthest part of the territory from the camp. Any other ideas?

How about asking what I’m doing? I might have a valid reason for crossing the border, especially if I’m alone. That’s right, Graystripe: [TN: Vicky points out the name error here] What do you want? is a good way to start. Don’t be too hostile: Remember, you are in the stronger position, because this is your territory and you have the right to defend it. Unless I have a very good explanation for crossing your border, I don’t have any rights at all. What do you think my reply might be?

Yes, Ravenpaw, I might need your help. My Clan might have been invaded, we might have serious trouble with prey, or we might have sickness that needs your herbs. All these reasons would mean that I am weak, so you can allow me into your territory but never out of sight.

If I am hostile, then meet me with hostility—which isn’t the same as aggression, Dustpaw. You’ve started with a strong challenge—What do you want?—and now you need to give me some sort of warning. Ravenpaw, what would you say?

Hmmm. If you’re going to threaten to claw a cat’s ears, you should try not to look so terrified at the prospect. Firepaw, would you like to try? Ah, yes, I like that you indicated the rest of your patrol. It’s always good to let the enemy know they’re outnumbered. Sandpaw, put that fire ant down. No, I don’t care that Firepaw might not know what it is. Now is not the right time to show him—and he certainly doesn’t need to get bitten by one.

So, you’ve challenged the trespasser, warned me that there’s a whole patrol here that can take me to your Clan leader if that’s what I wish; what next? That’s right, Graypaw, let me—the intruder—speak. If I can’t give you a convincing explanation for what I’m doing on your territory, if I don’t ask to be taken to Bluestar at once, then chase me off with no more questions. Don’t provoke a full-scale war—chasing means chasing, not catching and clawing. Just make it clear that you will defend your boundaries from any kind of invasion, even one paw across the border. A good warrior is always ready to fight, but only if it’s absolutely necessary: A good warrior will seek a peaceful, claws-sheathed solution first.

You will all make good warriors one day. Don’t look so doubtful, Ravenpaw. You need to find only a little more courage to be as good as your denmates. Your hunting skills are excellent— Dustpaw, you’d do well to watch him. Who knows? You might even lead this Clan one day!

Now, back to camp, all of you, and leave this old warrior to enjoy the sun in peace.

BEHIND THE SCENES

That was fun. Always cheers me up to revisit some of the humour, and there was a lot of humour in Warriors. Both Kate and Cherith excelled at introducing some comedy, especially around kits interacting with the older cats.

That’s something I was very aware of when I was writing the ‘non-fiction’ books like Code of the Clans and Battles of the Clans. It’s very easy to think of Warriors as super intense and super involved and traumatic and emotional, but you can’t sustain that. It’s exhausting to write and it’s exhausting to read, just as it’s exhausting to live. I think at the moment there’s a danger that we’re all sort of living on a bit of a knife’s edge, living on our nerves, and I’m certainly starting to feel that. It’s okay to take a break, with your writing and with your general day-to-day life. Laughter is the best medicine, literally. Writing about kits just gives me the giggles every time. And yes, it feels self-indulgent to laugh at my own jokes, but hey, I’m on my own, I have to make my own jokes.

It was very interesting there because of course I spotted a typo - one of my famous errors! - that Graypaw had been referred to as Graystripe. Obviously I wrote Code of the Clans when we were probably on series two at least, if not three, so I was thinking of these cats as their warriors names, and obviously forgot I was supposed to be calling Graypaw ‘Graypaw’ there. I have obviously made lots of mistakes over the years. I think my favourites are the fact that Heavystep died and comes back to life several times, and Rowanclaw started off as a she-cat and then pops up as a tom. So we could perhaps claim the first transitioned fictional cat? But it was an honest mistake.

One of my fondest memories from going on tour is when I would turn up in a bookshop and some very earnest little child would turn up with a book full of post-it notes, and they’d solemnly say that they’d pointed out all the typos and errors in the book and marked them with post-its, and would I like to take the book away so I could do the corrections. No, is the short answer. I’m sorry for the mistakes, but it’s not up to me to correct them. That’s the publishing, that’s further down the line. We have corrected errors in some books, but it has to be big mistakes, you have to go in and change the printing plate. All I can humbly say is ‘I’m sorry’. I’ve written a lot of words, they’re not always going to be the right ones. 

[ergomaria]

The Past is Gone (but something might be found) Preview Pt. III

Somehow, the text from the original post was deleted when I tried to edit the tags to make this easier to sort. I’ve restored it. Once again, I’m just posting this as a reminder that I’m alive and still trying to write!

PLOT: Vann, Meetra, and Carth touch the wrong thing at the wrong shrine and are turned into themselves at 18. Alek finds himself paying his penance to the Force when he has to simultaneously watch over the trio while trying to figure out how to restore them to their proper ages.

Now saddled with three teenagers and very few clues, Alek nodded in acquiescence as he trudged back towards the Hawk. Luckily, they were all fairly well behaved during the walk. Once they reached the ship the real fun began.

“So, do any of you know the codes to get back on the ship?”

There was a long bout of uncomfortable silence during which it became clear that no adult knowledge about the freighter had stuck with the teens. The worst part was that Alek did know the codes but couldn’t admit that fact without seeming suspicious. The next best option was to rewire the door panel and go from there.

“Alright, here’s a better question. Do any of you know how to rewire a hatch?”

Predictably, it was Deran who raised his hand. “Obviously I can, at least if I have the correct tools. Unfortunately, I don’t have my normal gear…”

The amount of places that Vann had broken into or out of during his search for the Star Forge still grated on Alek’s nerves. He knew for a fact there was a multitool tucked somewhere in that worn black jacket, but it was yet another fact he couldn’t openly share. “This might sound absurd, but everyone check your pockets. If your clothing originally belonged to spacers, and it looks like it did, the original owners may have left something useful behind.”

It was a risky gamble since there was always a chance that one of them had identifying documents on their person. But Alek was hoping they’d left those behind to perform a mission as covert as hiding a highly dangerous Sith holocron. Onasi’s civilian clothing was the best indicator that this might be the case. For once the Force was on his side and the search produced nothing but various odds and ends. An extra reload for the blasters, a few credits, a ration bar, a medpac, and finally a multitool that Vann had definitely purchased illegally.

Deran was predictably pleased to find the item and immediately set to work rewiring the door to his own ship. Meanwhile, Alek quietly filed that irony away for later. When the exit ramp slid open with a smooth hiss, Onasi practically cracked a tooth in his desperate attempt to not look impressed.

The inside of the Hawk was in partial disarray, though it was hard to tell if this was from whatever had transpired to turn three adults into teenagers or the mere fact that it was Vann’s ship and thus naturally full of clutter. Either way, the mess made it easier for Alek to order the teens to remain in the main hold where it was neater and theoretically ‘safer’ while he ‘checked’ the rest of the freighter. As soon as he was sure they would stay put, he moved into the cockpit to look for further clues.

Despite his tendency towards random piles of mechanical parts, Vann was absolutely fastidious when it came to researching locations and making notes about what he discovered. Before the original trip to Dromund Kaas he’d compiled an entire datapad full of files on the history of Sith purebloods, their laws, and their customs. While Nirauan had significantly less information recorded, there was still a pad with multiple paragraphs discussing the planet’s connection to both the Rakata Infinite Empire and the Force itself. It seemed that the crew was aiming to land near a series of suspected Rakata ruins that had a notable presence.

Datapad in hand, Alek peeked into the main hold to inform his charges of his next step. “Just so you’re aware, I think I found a series notes mentioning that this planet has a strange connection to the Force. I don’t know if it has anything to do with your current situation, but we can’t rule it out. I have a friend who might be able to untangle the few clues we currently have, so I’m going to comm her using the ship’s unit. Just wait here until I’m done.”

“Is she a Jedi?” Meetra was sprawled across two seats looking dangerously bored.

“She was at one time, but she’s since left the Order. However, she’s very knowledge about certain subjects and I feel that her input will be extremely helpful.” One of the subjects she had a great deal of experience with was being a Force prodigy and another was ancient artifacts from the Infinite Empire, currently making her the galaxy’s only authority on the situation. When there were no further questions, Alek hurried away to contact Rakata Base in the hope of begging Bastila for assistance.

“Vann?” The young woman’s face immediately darkened when she saw who was on the other end of the call. “Why are you there and where is Vann?”

“I’m here because Meetra contacted me when there was a complication with their current mission,” Alek hissed as quietly as possible. Noting the concern that immediately overtook Bastila’s face he assured her, “Everyone is healthy. I hesitate to say ‘fine’ because, well… Somehow, through a combination of some Rakta ruins and a Sith holocron, all three members of this crew are currently teenagers with no memories of their adult selves. I’d estimate them between seventeen and nineteen, if I had to guess.”

The incredulous glare was absolutely scathing. “You’ve picked a poor time to develop a sense of humor.”

“Why in Sith hells would I joke about this? I currently have three teenagers in the hold of this damn ship who are convinced that I’m a Jedi Sentinel named Naver who happened to sense a disturbance in the Force. Since it’s blatantly clear that my creativity it lacking, you can be sure that I couldn’t make this bantha fodder up if I tried!”

“Dustil, can you please come here? Our former ‘master’ is on the comm and he believes that he’s being hilarious. Perhaps you can convince him to tell me what’s really going on.”

“What the hells is going on now, Malak?” The younger Onai looked supremely irritated, which actually mirrored how Alek was currently feeling.

“That’s not my name.”

Appearing unbothered by the correction, Dustil sneered for a moment before snapping, “What kinrath nest did Vann get my dad into this time?”

“Oh, did he not tell you? Supposedly through the will of the Force, Vann, Meetra, and your father are now teenagers with no memory of their adult lives.” Bastila looked equally unamused. “Funny, yes?”

“Hi-kriffing-larious.”

Alek was about two second from hanging up and hoping that Rand would be more helpful, if only to get Meetra back into her proper body, when a slender figure crept into the room just within view of the comm unit.

“Um, Knight Naver, I apologize for bothering you but…”

There was a loud pop of static from the other end of the comm, which turned out to be Bastila covering the microphone with her hand so that she could curse for about thirty seconds straight.

“Yes, Deran? I was actually just telling me friend Bastila a bit about you and the others in the hope that she’d be willing to assist us in figuring out what happened. Perhaps you’d like to speak with her about your current situation? It could be useful.”

It was hard to tell who was more bewildered by the entire scenario. Luckily, Deran’s natural curiosity quickly took hold and he slipped over to the console and situated himself before the camera. “Hello, Bastila was it? What did you want to ask me?”

“Oh stars…” The young woman was doing a poor job of disguising her surprise, though she still managed to stutter, “I apologize for my lack of manners. You just… remind me of someone I know. No matter. Actually, Deran, I was just wondering how, ah, how old you are.”

“You really aren’t a Jedi, are you? Sorry, that was rude. It’s just… everyone in the Order always seems to know everything about me. But uh, I turned eighteen a few months ago.”

“Two years before Knighthood…”

“Bastila, be careful. You don’t want to scare the boy!” While it was technically true that Deran became the youngest Knight in the order at age twenty, that wasn’t information his eighteen-year old self knew. It wasn’t until nineteen that his trials actually began.

Plastering on a false smile, the young woman quickly stammered, “That’s just a guess on my part. Though, of course, I could be wrong. It’s not like I can see the future and you’re so very… young.”

Unfortunately, just the mention of Knighthood had made Deran’s back go stiff, his jaw ticking in the corner even as his expression remained stoic and proper. “Well, that’s for the Council to decide. They know best.” Even at this age he sounded thoroughly unconvinced. “What else do you want to ask me?”

“That’s… that’s it.” Turning to Alek, Bastila stated, “I believe you and I’ll do whatever I can to help. Just tell me what you need.”

“I’ll send you all of the data I have in a minute. Let me just find out what brought Deran in here in the first place.”

“I came in to let you know that Carth and Meetra left the ship. They said that they got tired of waiting for you and decided to explore on their own.” The teen winced slightly. “Also, they may have been flirting? I’m not always great at telling that type of stuff, but it’s possible they just went to go and… you know.”

The snort of hysterics from Dustil was all the confirmation that Alek needed to know that this entire situation was his punishment from the Force. Part of him considered letting Meetra and Onasi do whatever they wanted. Someone else could deal with the fallout. But he also needed to get Deran out of the room to prevent him from snooping. “I’m concerned that they’re going to get themselves into trouble. There are some very powerful ruins on this planet and I’d hate for them to make the current situation even more complicated. Can I trust you to find them and bring them back safely?”

It was an underhanded ploy. Alek was fully aware that Deran’s facade of teenage bravado combined with his crippling fear of failure would make him agree to almost any task without question. But the former Sith didn’t have time to chase two teenagers down, all while trying to keep a third from learning that he was currently speaking with his own kriffing Padawan.

As expected, Deran immediately nodded. “Of course. I’ll bring them back as quickly as possible.”

It wasn’t until the teen’s footfalls disappeared off the ship that Alek sat down with a sigh, his head pounding from the sheer mental acrobatics required to keep this situation moving forward. As he uploaded the information from Vann’s datapad he grumbled, “For Force sake, Dustil. I thought your father would be the responsible one!”

The damned kid was still laughing. “Just checking, but is Meetra the teenager as pretty as Meetra the adult? Big blue eyes and wavy blonde hair?”

Attempting to be objective about the attractiveness of someone who was like a sister to him, Alek shrugged. “I suppose? She was more petite at this age, almost willowy. I honestly think she looks better with some muscle. Less delicate.”

“I don’t care either way, it’s just… My dad kinda has a type. Or, at least he did at that point in his life. My mom was petite with wavy, honey-brown hair. They met when he was twenty.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Nope, you can look up the files for Morgana Onasi if you want. I um, I have. Just to see her, you know? It helps me to remember her face…” Shaking away his melancholy, Dustil cleared his throat. “Ah, anyway, at eighteen my Dad was really responsible when it came to official things. Training and studying? He was incredibly dedicated. But when he had time to himself he kind of… let loose. Nothing really bad, just a lot of drinking and fooling around with his fellow cadets. Put a bunch of bored, horny teenagers in the same dorm and stuff happens.”

Alek had lived in the Jedi dormitories during puberty and was well aware of what could happen. He winced.

“The good news is that my dad definitely liked men at that age as well… Please don’t ask how I know this. It was a really awkward conversation that only happened because I got mad at him and… ugh. But the good news is that he might rediscover how amazing Vann is. He is really great at this age, right?”

“He’s actually an anxious mess who likes to pretend he’s confident, which just comes off as arrogance. It doesn’t help that he’s actually good at whatever he does. Honestly, I think your father currently wants to throttle him.”

“Ouch. Well, maybe they’ll lose all memory of this once they get restored to their actual ages!”

“We can only hope the Force is that kind.” Rubbing his forehead, Alek asked, “Bastila, have you looked over those files I sent?”

“I’m reading them now and I’ll run them through the Rakata archives when I’m done. But you should be aware that, while we have a significant amount of information on the Infinite Empire, we don’t have much else. Vann tries to update what he can, but it’s still nothing compared to what the Jedi possess.”

“Do your best, it’s still more than I have access to on this ship.”

“I do have an idea, but you’re not going to like it one bit.” Upon noting Alek’s hopeful expression, Bastila sighed...

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.4

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in chapter 6’s investigation, one of Shuichi’s flashbacks contained fake memories of real people and was therefore genuinely inspiring for once, Tsumugi rather tellingly pointed us to a ridiculous red herring about Kaede’s twin instead of anything actually helpful, Himiko was being just a little bit Kaito to compensate for how useless she feels in this investigation, and the hidden room contained a bunch of clues about the real mastermind’s identity and the truth of Kaede’s case.

Now, we’re headed to the Flashback Light classroom.

This very heavy rubble in the way which requires all 4 Friendship Power to move happens to be the shelves of music CDs and the entire piano from Kaede’s lab, which is through the wall to the left. It’s kind of neat how they thought about what rooms the rubble would have come from and made it match, even if this sadly means that Kaede’s lab is totally ruined now.

We can see the full moon outside the hole in the wall of this classroom. We could also see the full moon outside of Kaede’s lab during that scene where Shuichi was mourning her… and that was weeks ago, but only something like two weeks, not four. Yep, that’s a projection, isn’t it. (Or probably just a developer oversight. After all, you’d think Kaito or Gonta or anyone at all would have noticed, hey, the moon’s been full for over a week now, something’s up with that.)

The Flashback Light setup computer has all kinds of tantalising options available that it’d be fun to look through… but unfortunately Shuichi’s inner monologue funnels you into picking only the options you’re meant to pick, and you can’t see anything else. Boo, game designers, not writing optional text for this; it would have been interesting! Buuuut it would have been a lot of branches of text for something entirely optional, so fair enough.

-      The survivors on a different planet

-      Other survivors in the Ark

-      There are no survivors

Note how there’s no option for them to remember that actually there were some survivors on Earth and it wasn’t quite as devastating as they’d been led to believe. So apparently the memory of the apocalypse really did involve them remembering that literally everyone on Earth must be dead, with such certainty that future memories weren’t allowed to contradict that. Meaning no possibility of an audience, not even a small one. Meaning that, once Kokichi saw the Flashback Light in the Virtual World containing the memory of this apocalypse, he had to have known Flashback Lights were fake, if he hadn’t already figured that out when he saw the outside world in the first place.

Shuichi:  (And these categories… there are several inconsistencies about the survivors. Do I… have to select the correct one?)

Come on, Shuichi, you must know that doesn’t make any sense. You’re going to be quizzed about this thing you don’t remember, and you have to get it right before you’re allowed to remember it! That seems incredibly silly and unnecessary. The real implication of this should be immediately obvious.

Adjusting to match other memories.

Haha, yeah, that’s also not a thing that real memories should need to do. Though it’s neat that the computer has a built-in system to keep track of everything that’s already been decided as the “truth” for them and make everything else consistent with it. That could cause issues otherwise.

Shuichi:  “… Is there more than one truth…?”

There is something beyond the “truth”, just like Kaito knew you could reach, Shuichi!

Himiko suddenly shows up, despite having been trapped behind rubble in the hidden room last time.

Himiko:  “Be happier that I survived! I was able to make a spectacular escape from that sealed room!”

Yes, the Amazing Himiko’s Spectacular Sealed Room Escape Act, never performed before and improvised on the spot!

Himiko:  “Nyeh? You don’t understand how I escaped from there?”

Shuichi:  “…No?”

Himiko:  “Hmhmhm, I see… you don’t get it… You don’t know how I escaped… Then I shall tell you! I escaped from that sealed room with my magic!”

I love how gleeful she is about having done something he can’t figure out even though it wasn’t a prepared and practiced magic trick. She’s finally got something that she can claim really was her using her magic, rather than having to constantly make excuses about why she can’t use it!

With a bit of prodding, Shuichi convinces her to actually tell him.

Himiko:  “G-Got it. I’ll tell you… I definitely used my magic, but another thing that helped me escape that sealed room… was the girls bathroom on the 1st floor of the school building.”

It’s okay, Himiko, that still used your magic. Finding secret passageways is definitely something mages are good at (and obviously not because they use hidden passageways a lot in their acts), right? Like, with some kind of Detect Hidden Things spell? Totally.

Himiko:  “Nyeeeh!? That’s a Flashback Light!”

Shuichi:  “Y-Yes, but we shouldn’t use it…”

Heh. Shuichi has finally started to realise that maybe they shouldn’t really have been using any Flashback Lights at all this whole time.

Shuichi:  “… This is an emergency. Nothing I can do about that. Ah, now’s not the time to be thinking about boys and girls bathrooms… Alright, I’ll do it.” (I repeated several excuses in my mind as I stepped into the girls bathroom.)

This kind of (perfectly understandable and gentlemanly) mindset is why Shuichi didn’t find this hidden passageway in chapter 1 and save everyone except possibly Rantaro. Kyoko had no such qualms, but she was a very different kind of detective than him.

Himiko:  “Geez… Caught up on past killing games… That’s typical of a Remnant of Despair.”

It’s also even more typical of a Danganronpa fan.

Motherkuma:  “I can’t birth Monokumas unless the designated person specifically says the word ‘birth’…”

One might wonder why Motherkuma was set up so that he even needed to be given an order from the mastermind to be able to make another Monokuma and couldn’t just make them on his own, but it does make sense if you think about it. Monokuma is a psychopathic AI programmed to cause suffering for entertainment – they’d want to have failsafes in place in case he decided to go rogue and carry out that purpose of his on some “real” people beyond what he was meant to do. So they limited the physical power he had, first by having the Exisals only able to be controlled by the relatively harmless Monokubs and not Monokuma himself, and then also by making it so that Motherkuma can only clone Monokumas when the mastermind deems it necessary and not just on his own whims. That way there’s no risk of a sudden Monokuma robot uprising because he’s decided it’ll make good entertainment.

Himiko:  “Even I, the wise and powerful Himiko, panicked a little bit when I saw I was trapped in here.”

I really like this new Himiko who’s trying to put up a bit of a façade of false confidence, even if it’s obvious to everyone else that it’s a façade. It’s so Kaito of her!

And the more I think about it, the more I realise that Himiko never really did this kind of thing before this chapter. She was pushing herself to act positive, but not showing overblown confidence in her ability like this. Which makes it all the more likely that she is deliberately trying to imitate Kaito in his honour, and that’s adorable.

Himiko:  “W-Well? Was I… useful?”

Of course you were, Himiko! This hidden passageway you just found is a vital clue!

But Shuichi just kind of brushes her off at first and doesn’t tell her that. This is unfortunately not the first time he’s been so in detective-tunnel-vision that he’s been unintentionally dismissive towards his friend who really wants to know that they’re being helpful to him.

Himiko:  “…”

Shuichi:  “Hm? Something wrong?”

Himiko:  “J-Just tell it to me straight… like a man.”

Himiko’s even correctly invoking Kaito’s concept of manliness! Don’t beat around the bush, just be open and honest about how you feel about things! Even if the truth is that she wasn’t useful, Shuichi should just come out and say it instead of trying to hide it.

Himiko:  “I-I want to be useful for my friends. But I can’t help much in investigations, can I? I couldn’t find the mastermind…”

She’s also doing a little bit better at actually applying that manliness herself than Kaito was when he was having similar issues, because Kaito never directly admitted to how badly he wanted to be useful and how useless he was feeling.

Shuichi:  “Himiko, not only were you *useful*, you may have cracked the case wide open.”

Himiko:  “Really!? If I found such an amazing clue, that’s proof I’m no ordinary person! Hiii hee hee hee! I’m terrified of my own magical power!”

This is so adorably like the kind of immediate bouncing back that Kaito would have done if Shuichi had ever told him something like this. All in a day’s work for the Luminary of the Stars! Himiko being like this too is lovely.

Kaito’s continued insistence on presenting himself like a hero when he no longer truly felt like one and when everyone else was sure he was still sick was essentially him showing them a fiction in the hopes of inspiring them and keeping their spirits up. Himiko’s constant commitment to her act even when she’s not on stage and even when everyone’s perfectly aware it’s not real magic really is a lot like Kaito in some ways. Her doing her best to fill Kaito’s shoes like this is going to be a great help for boosting Shuichi and Maki’s mood once the three of them are living outside and trying to cope with all this. And the fact that Himiko has her own issues that she’ll need help with too outside of this fiction she presents isn’t going to dampen that, despite what Kaito thought on that front. Kaito was afraid his fiction was only a lie, that everyone believed it was true and it’d stop working on them if they knew it wasn’t, but that was never the case.

While Shuichi and Maki’s talents are necessary for their arcs and for the overall plot, it might seem like an arbitrary choice for the third survivor to be a magician, and that Himiko’s talent really could have been anything else. But I think this was still probably chosen on purpose, because Himiko presents fictions that are meant to cheer people up and make them smile, and that’s wonderfully relevant to the overall theme.

Maki:  “What… were you doing? Why were you in the girls bathroom?”

It’s pretty awkward writing that Maki has this immediate scandalised reaction to this. She’s supposed to have lost the instinctive sense for gendered bathroom taboos, based on the time she casually offered to check on Kaito in the bathroom without realising it’d be the boys’. Also, like, come on, Maki knows Shuichi, she’d know he’d never do that unless there was a reason that was actually important and relevant to the case. Danganronpa writing, please stop shoving this annoying talk of pervertnedness into everything, it’s chapter 6, now is especially not the time.

Anyway, Maki has the photo of Rantaro.

Shuichi:  (With this… I can fight. I can fight the mastermind behind this killing game. …And I believe I can end it all.)

Look at Shuichi believing in himself! He’s got so much more genuine confidence now than he ever used to, without anyone else needing to encourage him to feel that way! Kaito would be so proud of him. And it’s thanks to Kaito that Shuichi’s come this far.

Shuichi:  “Monokuma… you’re the one who calls these class trials… But not this time! This time, *we* choose to call a class trial! One to end them all!”

He’s become such a protagonist and such a hero! Look how far he’s come! Kaito would be so proud of him! Of course, Kaito already saw Shuichi as this much of a hero in the first place, but now Shuichi’s really started to realise and embody that image Kaito had of him, so that everyone can see him the way Kaito did!

Monokuma:  “And I think it’s pretty interesting that you guys are on board with holding a class trial. In fact, I welcome your initiative! This turn of events will make things very interesting!”

Unfortunately… that’s still exactly what the gamemakers wanted Shuichi to do. This was the plan for him all along. (That’s even exactly why they killed Kaito.)

To keep the stakes high, Monokuma threatens to kill them all if they can’t expose the truth and provide an interesting class trial, and he asks if everyone else has as much resolve as Shuichi does.

Maki:  “I’ll trust you. But if you screw this up…” [she smiles] “…I’ll kill you before Monokuma can.”

Shuichi:  “…Y-Yeah, I believe you.”

I love how this would seem on the surface to be an “I’ll be mad at you if you mess this up”, when what it really is, since Maki specialises in quick and painless deaths, is her saying, “If we fail, I won’t let Monokuma make you suffer.” Shuichi is smiling, too, because he understands that. This is the second time Maki has offered to help her friends by killing them painlessly if it becomes necessary to do that, and it’s weirdly adorable?

Himiko:  “I have friends I can trust! There’s nothing to be scared of!”

Oh, Himiko. Most of them, at least.

Shuichi:  “Our hope is going to end this game of despair!”

Shuichi, no, you’re now sounding far too much like a perfect scripted Danganronpa protagonist and not enough like your own person doing this for your own reasons that have nothing to do with that bullshit Flashback Light that brainwashed you all.

Keebo:  “Do you really think that ending awaits us? It sounds too good to be true, honestly.”

Yeah, because obviously there’s only two options here, the hope ending and the despair ending, right? That’s definitely how this works. Even without his inner voice right now, Keebo still instinctively thinks that.

Shuichi:  “That ending *is* hope for us. …And we can’t give up on hope.”

Shuichi is basically just tautologically saying “the hope ending is hope”. Come on, Shuichi, shake off that brainwashing, dammit.

What’s really going to happen in the end, though, is just an ending, a permanent one, for the whole killing game. And that really is something that they would all genuinely want to hope for.

Tsumugi:  “Keebo… let’s trust Shuichi here.”

Tsumugi also wants this class trial rather than Keebo’s continued rampage, because of course she does.

Shuichi:  “Our final battle! Our hope will defeat your despair!”

Monokuma:  “Puhuhu… puhuhuhu… Ah-hahahahaha!”

Shuichi:  “Why are you laughing…?”

Because you’re giving the audience exactly what they want, Shuichi! This isn’t supposed to be about a battle between hope and despair like it’s just good versus evil, but the audience sure wants it to be!

Tsumugi:  “I-It’ll be okay! He’s probably just bluffing!”

And Tsumugi does not want them to think too hard about why Monokuma’s so happy about all this.

Shuichi:  (But it was still much easier than I imagined it would be. …No sense worrying about that now.)

No, this is definitely something you should be worrying about, Shuichi! If Monokuma wants something to happen, it’s not a good thing! Remember last trial where you forgot until it was too late that Monokuma is always the real enemy?

Tsumugi:  “The four of us, and Keebo… By combining the marks of our friendship… we can overcome this class trial!”

These words from Tsumugi sound way more trite than anything anyone else has ever said about friendship in this game. How do you even “combine the marks” of friendship?

Finally we can walk freely without a stupid time limit. The courtyard has a few half-hearted piles of rubble here and there but is otherwise looking remarkably intact for having been the battleground of a huge robot war all night. Methinks the developers were being a bit lazy here. (But at least the training spot is okay and that is good.)

Maki:  “Up until now, we had to find the culprits among the people in our group during the class trials. That’s why we couldn’t work together even if we wanted to. But… this time, it’s different.”

Tsumugi:  “Ah, since there isn’t a culprit among us, we can work together without any doubts.”

Himiko:  “We’re all going to be working together this time… I already feel more at ease!”

Shuichi:  “…”

Shuichi already knows what’s up. He’s realised the that the clues indicate the mastermind is one of the five of them. He should be able to realise exactly who it is, too, but in the trial he doesn’t seem to have figured that out until shortly before he tells everyone. Maybe he does know, though, and just doesn’t want to admit it to himself because he still hates accusing his friends.

Keebo comes back with all his weapons removed and his antenna replaced, meaning his inner voice is back.

Keebo:  “I acted recklessly and put you all in serious danger… I’m sorry! I’m very, very sorry!”

As he should be, really. He was willing to kill all his friends, and now he’s realised that maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

Keebo:  “I was wrong to try to destroy everything just to avoid losing to despair… Even if I had followed throough, there would have been no hope or future left afterward. In which case, my actions would have merely resulted in a different despair altogether.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what he would have done, and at least he finally realises this. The narrative is not doing a great job of hinting that Keebo’s inner voice is effectively mind-controlling him, because he’s being more rational and making more sense now that he’s mind-controlled again than he did when he wasn’t.

Granted, as it turns out, searching for the truth and holding this class trial is exactly the kind of thing the audience wants, and maybe it would have been better for everyone to just be randomly killed by Keebo’s rampage and give the audience a boring ending that might end Danganronpa for good. But since Keebo doesn’t know anything about the audience or what they want, then as far as he knew while he was doing it, his rampage was completely illogical and wouldn’t have achieved anything worthwhile.

Keebo:  “But… will you allow me to fight alongside you!? I want to help you find the truth! Please!”

Shuichi:  “Of course, Keebo. That’s what I’ve wanted from the start.”

Maki:  “If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have been able to do all this.”

Sure would have been nice if Keebo had realised that he could use his weapons to help them find the truth earlier. You know, like in chapter 4 when four more people were alive and could have also potentially been saved.

Tsumugi:  “…”

Keebo:  “Oh… You seem angry, Tsumugi. Would you prefer I not help…?”

Tsumugi:  “I’m not mad… I’m just holding myself back.”

Tsumugi goes on to explain that she’s just “holding herself back” from making what sounds like some kind of reference to something that would ruin the mood. This moment would otherwise maybe seem like a hint that she’s the mastermind and is angry at what Keebo just did, but then that bit just makes it awkward because apparently she isn’t actually angry at all? Unless she made that excuse to try and cover up her genuine anger, but you’d think her acting skills would have prevented her from even showing it in the first place.

There’s also the fact that, although she definitely was mad at Keebo going off-script, she’d have been most angry about that while it was happening, and would just be relieved now that he’s got his inner voice back and is acting like he’s supposed to again.

Maki is still carrying the Bugvac, so Keebo offers to look at it with the zoom function he’s installed on himself. This is something that Kokichi also could have asked Keebo to do while he was alive. It’s possible, as I mentioned before, that Kokichi didn’t realise the Bugvac was finished until after trial 4, at which point it’d be basically impossible for him to ask Keebo for help… but it’s also entirely possible that it just didn’t even occur to Kokichi that Keebo could help here, because lol he’s just a thing he’s not a person it’s not like he could ever help with anything at all.

Keebo:  “Because I’m a robot, I can evolve in ways that are simply not possible for a human. I’ve… finally accepted that. There are notable differences between us, but they’re nothing to be ashamed of. Because… with my talent, it’s possible that I can save you all.”

This is the most half-assed attempt at making it seem like Keebo has actually had a character arc here. There was no kind of build-up to this at all. The change that made him decide to put on all his weapons was his inner voice being gone and had nothing to do with character growth, so now that his inner voice is back, he should be back to how he was before, which was apparently not wanting anything sci-fi at all.

…I say apparently, because whenever Keebo did happen to make use of his other functions like his recording function and his flashlight, he was always quite proud of himself and happy to be making himself useful in ways nobody else could. And yet he also kept saying that he didn’t want to be sci-fi and adamantly refused to install far more useful functions until now, which seems rather contradictory. I suppose you could handwave that the previous functions are too basic for him to consider them “sci-fi” and be averse to them? But even then, his speech right here implies that it’s less about what counts as “sci-fi” and more simply being able to do things that set him apart from humans that (supposedly) made him uncomfortable.

The writers, and I mean the out-universe ones here, really just did the absolute laziest job at what should be a vital piece of character work to justify why this killing game didn’t end in chapter 4 like it really should have. At least they did a pretty good job of justifying all of Kokichi’s terrible decisions that were vital to the plot having them be fairly plausibly linked to all of his issues, but man, they barely even tried with Keebo.

Clearly the Nanokumas need to be bear-shaped and just holding tiny little cameras, right. It couldn’t possibly be more efficient to just have their entire bodies be cameras with wings.

They talk about how these tiny cameras prove that Kokichi was right to use the Electrobomb in his plan.

Tsumugi:  “Umm… the more I learn, the more I wish that Kokichi had just worked with us normally.”

Yup. That sure would have been fucking helpful of him, wouldn’t it!? And that’s definitely not exactly why you wrote him to be the kind of person who’d never be that helpful and would never want to trust or work together with anyone, not at all.

Tsumugi:  “Gonta discovered it, Kokichi made a design, Miu built the device… It was because of all of them that Keebo was able to find the final clue. It’s almost like… everyone is cheering us on.”

Yeah, because Kokichi and Miu totally cared about helping us with this Bugvac, that’s definitely why they, you know, let us know they’d made it and didn’t just leave it for Maki to discover by chance through a lot of tedious effort, right.

Maki:  “Relax. If we end up failing, and it comes time for me to kill you… I’ll make sure to end your life swiftly, so you won’t have to suffer.”

Shuichi:  “…Th-Thank you?”

Aww! Though I’m sure Shuichi already knew that that was what she meant when she “threatened” to kill him earlier and she didn’t actually need to clarify. I also love Shuichi’s awkward thanks – he does appreciate the gesture, but this is an odd thing to be thanking anyone for.

Shuichi:  (There’s no point in worrying anymore. Right now… we only need to think about getting out of here alive.)

Ahahaha. They’re still blissfully oblivious as to what the attempted end goal of this trial is going to end up being.

Shuichi:  (I’m sure… this is the end of despair. And the beginning of hope.)

noooo Shuichi stop it

Shuichi:  (The killing game of Hope’s Peak Academy… The killing game of Jabberwock Island… And the killing game of this Ultimate Academy. How much more until they’re satisfied?)

Yeah, definitely just these three, right? They definitely haven’t had way more than that and still aren’t at all satisfied.

Shuichi:  (This is the end of it. I’m… tired of this. We’re going to end it. We’re going to end this cruel game.)

This is very, very true, though, more than he realises right now.

I once saw an LPer observe that this final trialground looks kind of like the set for a game show? Which is quite appropriate, really.

Monokuma:  “Puhuhu, it’s not up to you or me to decide whether or not this is the end.”

Oh boy, it sure isn’t. But we’ll get to that problem (and I mean that as an out-universe problem and not just an in-universe one) in several more posts’ time.

Monokuma casually threatens to murder his cubs if they don’t help him out during the trial. (Yeah, they’re still here, in case you forgot. I’ve been sparing you from them.)

Shuichi:  “…You really are the worst.”

Monokuma:  “I’m the best at being the worst, don’tcha think so? Puhuhu… I tell ya, people can’t get enough of my crude antics!”

Yep, Monokuma knows exactly what he’s here for – to play the villain and make himself hateable in an entertaining way (not that anyone should hate him for wanting to kill the Monokubs, but, you know). This is yet another thing he and Kokichi had in common.

…And the part where Monokuma was furious at Kaito for dying his own way? He was probably kind of okay with that having happened, too, beneath it all. He’s the villain, after all. He knows that he’s really here to make you root for the good guys to beat him and feel triumphant when they do.

---

[Next post]

[onemattwolf]

Weird how sometimes you may correct someone on misinformation, and they argue that they don't care because the misinformation is fun so they'll do it anyways. Humans love a story, it's true. We're hard-wired for story telling. It's arguable that story-telling is one of the main things that makes humans, humans. But, I think we need to be taught to think more outside ourselves; more outside our circle. And think retrospectively on why things we are perceiving as just fun stories may end up harder to certain individuals, or even vast swatches of other circles.

Social Media is such that any misinformation spread can get spread way beyond our immediate circle. I've seen this misinformation—that some laugh off as something that is "obviously" not true, but makes a fun story—reach folks who are unable to think critically about it. Either those who aren't educated; mentally ill; developmentally challenged; and more. I can count myself in the last 2 options—when I am less well, I have to be SUPER careful with what media I consume.

At this point, they aren't stories anymore. They become facts to this population and may trigger other, more extreme, beliefs. When I am psychotic, I take some "fact" that is vaguely plausible and I run with it. I am very imaginative, a natural story teller. But due to the extreme times where I believed the stories my creative brain came up with when I wasn't well, I am still fearful of coming up with stories.

If you see something not true, that's not blatantly a joke (like, a post made by a well meaning, but incredibly misinformed person), or, maybe a falsely cute animal video, please don't share it.

As an aside, I am also frustrated by those with excellent photoediting skills/computer graphic-abillities seeing unsourced information and designing a very professional looking graphic to advertise this misinformation. That's what people share the most without thinking. I think this pens from the fact that the more advanced tech used to be oy accessible to those in the field that would be hired to make these sort of PSA's. But it isn't like that anymore. Hell, I have no design training, but I'm pretty handy with Photoshop, and can make decent infographics if I decide to put in the effort. I pirated my copy of photoshop, so I didn't even need the finances usually needed to make the purchase.

Honestly, ya'll should just take a moment to breath and spend 2min on a google search. Most of the information gets googled so much, the most valuable search results (i.e, properly sourced, professional articles or scientific studies), are towards the top of the search results. Or, hell, a reddit result is better than nothing. Reddit is just a circle of angry folks that want to be right, so if you scroll in a thread, you usually find a very correct angry person, who has the right documentation to proof how correct they are.

Anywho, I'm just a nobody stranger on tumblr with very few active followers. This is just my 2cents, nothing more.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN IMPLIES

You haven't made anyone else poorer. If we wanted to improve, but if so this is a valid approach. I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work. I left in my landlady's attic back in the US are all young-feeling towns. 5% with less than. 03% false positives means that filtering is not an irrational fear: it really is hard to measure in large organizations, and the threat to them isn't mortal.1 It turns out, though, that there are good ideas that seem bad are bad.

It's especially alarming here because those two sets of numbers might yield opposite conclusions. But you can run into a problem when you use it to attract attention by falsely claiming the list is an exhaustive one. Or is it just something nice? All they care about is what you think about as you fall asleep at night and then go home. Viaweb. Startups are still very rare. Only 13 of these were in product development. At Viaweb we were always up against this. If you use a technique called functional programming. At best you end up looking at when you get filters really tight. Which means it's a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top idea in their mind at any given time.2 What they need to do.

Microsoft deliberately built their business in IBM's blind spot. Writing mainframe software required too much commitment up front. Intelligence does matter a lot of money. Software licenses to Orbitz. I think it was because they had better software. Slowness is to the advantage of investors, who have the most to lose, seem to see the inevitablity of moving some things off the desktop and onto servers a future even Microsoft seems resigned to, there will always be a few people made fun of me for writing something whose title began with a number. Measurement alone is not enough. But in the US own one. And there is no way to get rich for hundreds of years. Desktop software breeds a certain fatalism about bugs.3 I think it's a good idea, why did it lose last time? It has to be watching the servers, because you don't want to see another era of client monoculture like the Microsoft one in the 80s and 90s.

Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. That hurt Microsoft a lot starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In most people's minds, spending money on luxuries sets off alarms that making investments doesn't. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand. And they pretty much all make the same decision: as hard as you can get a job. A real essay, as the name implies, is dynamic: you don't know you need to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones you want to make a million dollars for a custom-made online store on their own server. I consider it a sign of something you need to be very hard to contain parents' efforts to obtain an unfair advantage for their kids, so it's those specifically the city has to appeal to programmers is with software. The most common way to do this, and stupidly, as we did, using a desktop computer as a server.4 But by no means impossible. How about that for counterintuitive?

As you think of more points, you just add them to the demo days we organize for startups to have traction before they put in significant money. Web 2. When meeting people you don't know anything about business. Fundraising is still terribly distracting for startups. In a list of n things. It's what acquirers care about. We had 2 T1s 3 Mb/sec coming into our offices. If people who are mistaken, you can't make for yourself. It's always alarming when two people trying the same experiment get widely divergent results. Our policy of fixing bugs on the fly changed the relationship between the founders has to be planted in the right soil, or it won't germinate. Millions of people now realize that you should have cited. I first realized the worthlessness of stuff when I lived in Italy for a year.

Someone probably will eventually. After many email exchanges with Java hackers, I would have shelved most of these ideas, for a while at least.5 S def inc self, i: self. Obviously that's false: anything else people make can be well or badly designed; why should this be uniquely impossible for programming languages? Microsoft wasn't the embarrassment of the people that make it Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings. Early union leaders did make heroic sacrifices. More libraries get written for popular languages, because they contain urls. You can't decide, for example, because although it's full of students. The rest will come in time. But investing later should also mean they have to be administering the servers, it would be a lot easier for a couple of hackers to figure out.

Notes

You could probably starve the trolls of the river among the largest in the narrow technical sense of the x company, though sloppier language than I'd use to develop server-based apps to share a virtual home directory spread across multiple servers. When we work with an online service. An investor who merely seems like he will fund you one day have an edge over Silicon Valley, but those specific abuses. Some of Aristotle's immediate successors may have no representation more concise than a Web terminal.

Few can have escaped alive, or invent relativity. That may require asking, because at one remove from the government. In ancient times it covered a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our scholarship though without the spur of poverty.

I should degenerate from uppercase to any-case, not more startups to kill their deal with them in their IPO filing. But it's hard to imagine cases where you read them as promising to invest in successive rounds, except when exercising an option to maintain your target growth rate has to be obscure; they may then, depending on how much effort on sales. A professor at a regularly increasing rate.

That will in many cases be an instance of a correct program.

These false positive rates are untrustworthy, as reported in the body or header lines other than those I mark. Part of the company really cared about doing search well at a famous university who is highly regarded by his peers, couldn't afford it. Analects VII: 36, Fung trans.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

Apple could never have imagined. It may look Victorian, but a question. There are billions of people, each with their own opinion; on what grounds can you prefer one to another?1 Telling me that I didn't want to think clearly. I know, managed to be mistaken only once, and that it literally meant being quiet.2 Steve Jobs is, because there hasn't been anyone quite like him before.3 How do you make them? Fashion doesn't seem like that much extra work to pay as much attention to the author's choices as to the story. After having been told for years that everyone just likes to do things their own way, he is unlikely to head straight for the conclusion that a great artist is something that's good for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. It's true they have a long tradition of comparative open-mindedness is no guarantee.4 And if you want to do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that a bunch of guys who get together to go hunting.5 The same principles of good design crop up again and again.6

Simple as it seems; those VPs' cushy jobs were probably payment for work done earlier.7 There's obviously the direct cost in time of the people they never got.8 In principle you could take a huge VC investment, put it in treasury bills, and continue to operate frugally. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. This is one reason Y Combinator has a rule against investing in startups with only one founder. We have such labels today, of course, but when they do they're ruthlessly pruned. Aiming at timelessness is also a heuristic for finding the work you love, you're practically there. There is no prize for getting the answer quickly. So let's be clear about that.

Hapless implies passivity. Except sinecures don't appear in economic statistics. And the boneheads who designed this stove even had an example of this book, because it's hidden behind a thick glass wall and surrounded by a frenzied crowd taking pictures of themselves in front of the other differences between startups and what passes for productivity in big companies, but it ended up being cast as a struggle to preserve the souls of Englishmen from the corrupting influence of Rome. Startups often make things cheaper, so in that respect they're better positioned to prosper in a recession than big companies. Should you take it?9 I were drawing from life.10 Remove them and most people have no idea why.

Why would they go to extra trouble to get programmers for the same reason I did look under rocks as a kid: plain curiosity. In fact, getting a normal job.11 Murder for example. Well, I suppose we'd consider it, for the right price.12 When you change the angle of someone's eye five degrees, no one got far enough to ask that. So the cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to travel widely, in both time and space. So it turns out to be ridiculous, it's almost certainly inside that head. I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine. I don't mean to suggest they do this consciously.13 They would be in the way.14

If your valuation grows 3x a year, the total cost in stock of a new hire's salary and overhead into stock you should multiply the annual rate by about 1. You can't write or program well in units of half a day at least.15 How has your taste changed? Ultimately you always have to adapt to this. Both did. Better to arrange the dials? Our fathers weren't that stupid.

It used to be very impressed by airbrushed lettering that looked like birds, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So if you want to get rich by creating wealth in your country, people who propose new checks almost never consider that the check itself has a cost. For cases like that there's a more drastic solution. If your company seems evil, the best programmers could collect in just a few hubs.16 As a kid there's a magic button you can press by saying I'm just a kid that will get you out of most difficult situations. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners.17 My hypothesis is that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is more interesting to people. In retrospect I think one may have: the private jet pilot.18 Telling me that I didn't realize when I was younger.19

Traditional economists seem strangely averse to studying individual humans.20 I think startups are a good thing for the world if people who wanted to do that is not merely simplified, to suit their developing minds, but sanitized as well, to suit our ideas of what kids ought to think.21 But instances of inequality don't have to answer them. The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they don't have any is that they don't have any. Maybe mostly in one hub. He's not just generally correct, but also practically, in the sense that hackers and painters are both makers, and this source of new ideas is practically virgin territory. The winners slow down the least. The old answer was no: you were supposed to read Hugo's Les Miserables. They probably assumed we were on the same VC gravy train they were. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios; if you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to write one day as an opiate. Godel's incompleteness theorem seems like a practical joke. And it did not seem to exist.

Notes

The company is their project. Internally most companies are run like Communist states. Alfred Lin points out that it's a significant cause, and unleashed a swarm of cheap component suppliers on Apple hardware. When Google adopted Don't be evil, they very often come back with a potential acquirer unless you want to.

I don't know of this essay wrote: After the war it was overvalued till you see them, just as if you'd invested at a time before photography had a demonstration of the accumulator generator benchmark are collected together on their utility function is flatter. Every language probably has a title. Roger Bannister is famous as the cause.

The philistines have now been trained to paint from life, and no one on the programmers, but those don't involve a lot of money from mediocre investors almost all do, but whether it's good, but for the same people the freedom to they derive the same time. Why Startups Condense in America.

1300, with the melon seed model is more of it. I wouldn't say that Watt reinvented the steam engine. I suspect most of them.

But it can buy.

She ventured a toe in that respect. One way to pressure them to.

This is almost always bullshit. There are a handful of ways to help their students start startups.

I. A Spam Classification Organization Program. In fact it's our explicit goal don't usually do a very misleading number, because it depends on the grounds that a company just to steal the ball away from taking a difficult position.

If near you doesn't mean the hypothetical people who start these supposedly local seed firms always find is that it makes the business, A P successfully defended itself by allowing the unionization of its own. Doing things that will cause the brand gap between the government.

If you're expected to do it mostly on your board, consisting of two things: the separate condenser. If you were expected to, but there has to be a few stellar exceptions the textbooks are similarly misleading. This is one of these companies when you depend on closing a deal led by a combination of a reactor: the editor written in Lisp, you can control. There's no reason to believe this number could be done, lots of type II startup, and when given the freedom to they derive the same ones.

Digg is notorious for its lack of movement between companies combined with self-perpetuating if they could then tell themselves that they probably don't notice even when I was once trying to decide whether to go away. Bad math is merely a complicated but pointless collection of qualities helps people make investment decisions well when they're on the group's accumulated knowledge. Surely it's better and it doesn't change the world.

25. Some founders deliberately schedule a handful of lame investors first, and large bribes by Spain to make programs easy to imagine cases where you have to solve a lot of face to face meetings.

The second alone yields someone who's stubbornly inert.

More often you have to track ratios by time of its completion in 1969 the largest of their due diligence tends to be significantly pickier. Download programs to run spreadsheets on it, this is the kind of people who start these supposedly local seed firms.

What you're looking for something they wanted, so I called to check and in a bar.

They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in a series.

There were lots of opportunities to sell the bad VCs fail by choosing startups run by people who might be digital talent.

Well, almost. If someone just sold a nice thing to be obscure; they just don't make their money if they don't know the answer is simple: pay them to lose less on investments that generate the highest price paid for a name that has a power law dropoff, but more often than not what it would have been lured into this tar pit. So, can I make the people who should quit their day job is one of the current options suck enough. You can't be buying users for more than serving as examples of other VCs who understood the vacation rental business, which is the last step is to tell them to ignore these clauses, because a there was a kid, this is also a second factor: startup founders and realized they were more dependent on banks for capital for expansion.

There were several other reasons.

Photo by Alex Lewin.

So it's hard to make people use common sense when interpreting it. If our hypothetical company making 1000 a month grew at 1% a week before. Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable.