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gogglor · 3 years

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Cap-Ironman RecWeek: What-If Wednesday

Time for another installment of @cap-ironman rec week! Today’s theme: AU’s.

I know AU’s in different settings are half the reason most people read fanfics, but they’re not really my thing on the whole. AU’s where different choices are made, or different events transpire? Absolutely. Coffee shops? Not my cup of... you know.

So, here’s my AU recommendations for mostly “turn left” scenarios. This time with an under-the-cut break so I don’t take over everyone’s timelines (sorry about that last post). Also with some summaries truncated for length.

Alone Like This

Author: GotTheSilver

Word Count: 7,452

Summary: Steve, post waking up, runs away from SHIELD, and Tony's the one who tracks him down.

Why You Should Read It:

First off, GotTheSilver’s been consistently and regularly putting out solid Stony since 2012 and not only are they not stopping, they’re only getting better. This writer doesn’t get nearly the fanfare I’d expect in Stony circles for someone who puts out this much good stuff, and here’s hoping this post can be a part of changing that.

While I am always a sucker for enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, there’s something to be said for stories where Steve and Tony hit it off right away. And watching these two very different people look at each other and see the same sense of being lost, then finding each other again is... excuse me, there’s something in my eye, ignore me.

Second Chance Lives

Author: raeldaza

Word Count: 43,872

Summary: Tony's gonna die of palladium poisoning anyway, why not join a pointless expedition to recover Captain America’s body? And after, well, why not dedicate his last few months to making sure an American hero settles into his new life? What else is he going to do, get drunk at parties?

Why You Should Read It:

This writer doesn’t write a lot for the MCU but when they do, dang.

“Tony is the one helping Steve acclimate to the new century before Avengers 2012″ is a whole genre of Stony fanfics that scratch an itch I didn’t even know I had before I started reading fanfiction, and this is one of the best ones out there. It’s got it all - Steve poorly coping with his PTSD, Tony poorly coping with his immanent mortality, some breathtakingly poor communication between the two most emotionally stunted men in the MCU, and a cat named Roomba. What’s not to love?

Should You Choose to Accept It

Author: elwenyere (look, you’re gonna be seeing a lot of them this week, sorry-not-sorry)

Word Count: 27,106

Summary: After a terrorist attack and a field operation gone wrong, the Avengers realize that Nick Fury's secrets are just the start of a much bigger mystery. Steve and Tony try to keep some things from each other as well, but that can't possibly affect the mission — right? Mission Fic + Getting Together (or Mission: Getting Together) that mashes up elements from Iron Man 3, CA: Winter Soldier, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season one, and Mission Impossible 3.

Why You Should Read It:

You can see my post yesterday for singing El’s praises, but what I really liked about this fic was how how damn creative it is. The CAWS/IM3/AOS mashup is everything I wished the actual MCU gave us and more, with well-developed characters and an exciting story to put them in. And because it’s El, you know the banter’s gonna be on point, the way the characters care for each other is gonna be emotionally constipated but touching, and the pacing’s gonna be exciting enough to draw you in and keep you there. Also, this fic doesn’t have nearly enough kudos so please go read it and fix that or I’m gonna have to try to hack AO3 and that’ll just be embarrassing for all parties involved.

What Happens In Vegas

Author: sabremc

Word Count: 161,951

Summary: “What the hell, Tony?” Rhodey demanded brusquely. Tony winced and drew the phone away from his ear. “You’ve got cops and Feds all over the hotel. I’m watching you perp walk out of the police station on repeat on CNN. They’re saying you tried to bribe Stern? Fox News has you selling weapons on the black market, and God that picture they’re using is the one from Bali in ’09. You look like shit. They wheeled Stern out and put him in an ambulance, by the way. Got some paparazzi swearing you decked the guy. Now they’ve got ‘copters following it like he’s OJ.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, Sourpatch, I’ve got it covered. Uh, though, I should probably tell you that, purely in the interests of national security and the greater good, I kind of had to fake marry that stripper-gram you sent. Thanks for that, by the way,” Tony added quickly.

Why You Should Read It:

If you’re deep enough into Stony to see posts like this on Tumblr, you probably know sabre’s what we in the business call a “big name author.” They’re prolific, they’re popular, and most importantly, they write words good (technical term). Seriously, sabre just keeps cranking out high quality stuff over and over again, raising the bar for the rest of us like a jerk (not really. I’m not bitter they write stuff so good I wish I’d thought of it first. Not at all.)

I never read stripper!Steve or stripper!Tony as a rule, but this came so widely recommended that I broke that rule and boy am I glad that I did. This is also the only fic on this list that’s a true-AU, with Steve being a non-powered vet from Afghanistan who left his army career to help Bucky and is stripping in Vegas to raise money for a prosthetic arm. He’s booked to do a private show for Tony, shenanigans ensue, and now they’re fake-married. This fic’s got some top-of-the-line banter and character development, but I particularly love it for its rich setting. Sabre paints a Vegas not just with strip clubs and blackjack tables, but KISS-themed minigolf, romantic dinners on the Eiffel tower, gaudy hotel lobbies, and making out on giant ferris wheels. It’s such a richly developed playground for the characters to play on, and through it, Steve manages to find a life for himself he’d given up on, and Tony finds multiple ways to show his kindness and depth of feeling for Steve. I know the word count’s long for this one but trust me, you’ve gotta read this fic.

Wait & Sea

Author: Lenalena

Word Count: 53,244

Summary: In which Tony and Steve get sent on an undercover mission aboard a cruise ship to make contact with Hydra. In this AU the military has kept the discovery and defrosting of Captain America a secret, so Steve and Tony have never met before. Yet they are to pose as newlyweds....

Why You Should Read It:

This one’s old and popular enough to be considered one of the “classic” Stony fics, and for good reason. Lenalena doesn’t write too often and not as much as they used to, but the fics they have up there are an absolute delight.

This is another fic that I skipped a bunch of times for being outside my comfort zone, but when I finally read it I saw why everyone’s so wild about it. In this story, Steve’s defrosted a bit earlier and not revealed as Captain America. He and Tony are sent undercover to sniff out Hydra shenanigans on a cruise and, because it’s fanfiction, they’ve got to pretend to be a married couple while onboard. There’s tons to love about this fic, but the things that bring me back to reading it over and over is first, Tony’s kindness and the way he’s attuned to Steve’s feelings, which... God, just inject “kind, observant Tony” straight into my veins, please and thank you. This is also another really rich setting for a story, and Lena knows how to fold the the hokeyness of the cruise into the seriousness of the mission and the depth of feelings Steve and Tony are finding for each other in a really beautiful, layered way. It’s funny, it’s heartfelt, it’s steamy, it’s gripping... why are you still reading this here? Go check it out for yourself!

Ashes to Ashes

Author: dirigibleplumbing

Word Count: 51,582

Summary: After regrouping following some surprise time travel, the world's heroes and sorcerers come up with a plan to protect the Mind and Time Stones by taking them into space in opposite directions. The result involves a lot more time loops than Steve would like, but at least they're getting a second chance to stop Thanos. (As well as a third, and a fourth...) And if Steve takes the opportunity to try to reconcile with Tony, too—well, they have the time, and Steve's going to make the most of it.

Why You Should Read It:

Dirigibleplumbing’s another name in Stony fanfics that does not get nearly as much fanfare as they deserve. They’re consistently a really creative voice in Stony fanfics and I always look forward to their stories showing me something new. Go read all their fics, I need more people to geek out with me over them.

I tend to limit myself on Steve-and-Tony-mend-things-after-Civil-War fics not because they’re not good, but because they’re so heavy, and also the Sokovia Accords have five hundred layers of crap in them that no good fic could possibly hash out well. This one, though? When you add in the Infinity War/End Game fixit? Poetry. Art. Music to my ears. DP wrote a really engaging, twisty story where it’s hard to predict what’s coming next, in spite of it literally being a pseudo-Groundhog day scenario. The characterizations are great, the story is engaging, and the feelings are big and sad and eventually happy. Go read it, you’ll love it.

I have tons of other recs for this category but this seems like a good place to stop for today. Tomorrow’s Alternative Media Thursday, and I’ve got some real gems I’ve been saving for that day (aaaaand possibly a self-rec or two ;)

#capimrecweek #tony stark #Steve Rogers #stony #fanfiction #MCU #ficrec

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zoaele · 3 years

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People don’t realize just how hard it is to kill a god. In fact, most of the time, they tend to underestimate the sheer scale of difficulty the act has.

Imagine the hardest thing you can think of off the top of your head. Now think of something harder. Harder. Harder. Now look up some of the hardest things you can do. Take all of them, and all of the things you thought of before, and combine them. Now double it. Triple it. Now take the difficulty of some of the hardest struggles in life—poverty, starvation, oppression—and add then, before quadrupling it. Now take the hardest acts of your favorite heroes, multiply it by ten, and add that to the mix.

What you’ve just made isn’t anywhere near a fraction of the difficulty of killing a god.

And that, Ulkiyos, the God of Food, thought, as he watched his sister destroy the army attempting to kill her, is why you all have failed.

Ulkiyos and Enyuwe, the Goddess of Death, seemed to make an odd pair at first glance. But when one considered just how connected the matter of putting food on the table was to living life, it wasn’t really so odd after all. Food wasn’t really just about the concept of food, or different kinds of food, or feasts and the culinary arts. It was about so much more than that, about so many things that could affect life in so many ways.

For one, Food was about harvests. It was about famine. It was about the surplus that some cities had and that some cities had not. It was about the distribution of food, whether kings hoarded most of it or if some nobles had shortages in their fiefdoms.

So when Enyuwe heard of a group of mortals raising an army to kill her to eliminate death completely, she sought out Ulkiyos for help. And Ulkiyos obliged her wholeheartedly.

First, what Ulkiyos did was mostly subtle. He sent a few extra locusts to chew at some of the staple crops in one part of the kingdom that year. He sent new plagues to affect other crops in another part of the kingdom. He made sure that the cities ruled by people who opposed the forming army got a little bit extra on their plate, while nobles who had sent soldiers to back them had a little bit less. Ulkiyos made sure those men were consistently plagued by lost deliveries of food and other supplies, leaving their bellies empty and minds malcontent.

Ulkiyos then went to another on his pantheon—Maltas, the God of Rumors. He had Maltas sow the seeds of discord among the army’s ranks, causing arguments to be that much fiercer, training sessions to push that much further, causing fights to break out and get just a little bit closer to becoming death matches out of frustration. Eventually, the higher-ups in the group cracked down, the founding leaders delivering speeches on cooperation and camaraderie.

But, by that point, the resentment had taken hold, and the leaders did the work for them by brewing more resentment from the way their speech had been perceived.

There was a takeover attempt within the month. The infighting was eventually quelled, but the damage was done. The immortality-seekers had already lost many soldiers from the lack of food, and they lost many more from the rebellion within their ranks. They began recruitment campaigns, seeking out more people to fight with, and Ulkiyos lessened his touch just a bit.

Enyuwe, for her part, worked together with Maltas to create doubt in the immortality-seekers’ army. There had been a strong army once, was there not? They should have already recruited enough, why the need for more? Why did these soldiers’ faces look so gaunt, so sullen, and what about those rumors of infighting and death among their ranks? Yes, these people—they look half-dead already. Maybe nobody should join, after all. Maybe nobody should join.

They couldn’t prevent everyone from joining, but enough were warded off. The army had far less men than they did at their peak, but the founding leaders were running out of time. They instead began prepping, and Ulkiyos fashioned things so it looked like a better turn had come over them.

Food that was sparse once was now coming in just fine. There was less discontent within the ranks, training sessions weren’t going too far out of misplaced anger, no one was whispering poison into people’s ears. Nobody was dying, for any reason at all.

The army got close to it’s goal.

And then, Ulkiyos struck.

Food poisoning, just before the big fight. Men and women alike were sick, a bad shipment of food having come in. This made the men sluggish in their training, some too weak to get out of bed, and some died from the kinds of diseases that had been packed in with the spoilage. Resentment and rumor spread through the soldiers like breeding rabbits, and in the week before they were to set out to fight Enyuwe, all was hell.

Finally, finally, the time came. Enyuwe faced the immortality-seekers down at her full power, while the army was at less then half of theirs. The soldiers were tired, sick, weak, and frustrated. With all the difficulties that came before, there was no way they could ever have been prepared to fight a goddess at her fullest strength. No mortal ever would be prepared for that, whether they were weakened or not, but the actions Ulkiyos, Maltas, and Enyuwe had taken before made it that much worse.

When Enyuwe fought, she was a dancer on the battlefield. Her steps were lithe, graceful, and each swing of her scythe brought death upon all those who faced it, whether they were directly in its path or not. Blood ran and fed the ground, dirt kicked up and flew into the air, the miasma of decay choked the life out of the dying, including those who didn’t quite realize they were dying yet. Enyuwe was brilliance and horror and tragedy and awe, while the soldiers who fought were little more than scraps of meat for her to tear through.

At last, the dust cleared, and the dead scattered the ground. Enyuwe left the leaders of this operation alive, walking calmly to them and lifting their chins with her blade. “Do you know why you failed?” she asked, voice clear and profound like the chiming of a funeral bell.

“We—we weren’t ready,” one of the army’s leaders said—an elven woman who had far less to fear from death than any of the humans within their ranks. “We should have prepared more, should have taken care of supplies better, should have stopped the infighting sooner—”

“No. That isn’t why.” Enyuwe stepped back, looking over all of the gathered leaders. “You failed because you were arrogant enough to think you could do something at all. That your actions could change things, that you could get away with challenging a goddess and win, that you would not face resistance to this idea and that I would not hear of it.

“And, for that matter,” Enyuwe smiled, and Ulkiyos materialized beside his sister. Maltas took the other side, grossing his arms and giving an easy grin. “You were under the impression that I would only ever work alone.”

The dawning horror on the mortal’s faces was delightful. Enyuwe laughed, taking her scythe into her hands, and then beheaded them all with one final swing.

#original fiction #writers on tumblr #fantasy #original fantasy fiction #oneshot #1k+ words

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geek-patient-zero · 5 years

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Prologue (Part 2)

Or: Your Clan Sucks

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Dead Trilogy Volume 1

Father Naples claims that the Methuselahs were the ones who instituted the Masquerade. Not really true in canon, but let’s go with it for now. The Kindred realized that if humanity continued knowing that they existed, they’ll overwhelm them with sheer numbers and wipe them out. Under the Masquerade, Kindred had to hide their true natures and the existence of vampires in general from humans, on penalty of death. And it worked. Despite being fed on by them for over two thousand years, humanity forgot the existence of vampires after a few centuries, remembering them only as myths and legends. Now relatively safe, the Methuselahs sired more vampires, who sired more and so on, and in secret, apparently gained control of the world from the shadows.

Since one vampire could in theory create infinite more vampires, Reuben asks why, if all this is true, the earth isn’t overrun with vampires. Father Naples tells him about the Six Traditions, which the Masquerade is one of. He doesn’t go into detail, so here’s a link if you’re curious. The relevant Tradition is the third one, which says a vampire can’t sire another vampire unless daddy an elder vampire gives permission. If you played Bloodlines, this may sound familiar. Father Naples claims that the elder vampires keep the number of vampires low. Apparently the rule is one vampire for “tens of thousands of humans.” Given the different vampire factions this probably isn’t followed exactly worldwide. The point is vampires control their populations so they don’t overpopulate and wipe out their main food source. Keeping populations low also means that newer kindred generations can’t grow more numerous than the older ones and, well, you know. That’s left unsaid by the third Tradition.

Reuben’s next question is how kindred maintain their influence over the world when they can’t do anything when the sun’s up. Father Naples explains ghouls to him, and here there might be some divergence from modern canon.

You know Renfield from Dracula? A ghoul’s basically that. They’re humans that a vampire regularly feeds their own blood to, but whose blood isn’t drained out first so they don’t turn into vampires themselves. They stop aging and gets some enhanced strength, survivability, and other goodies as long as they get their fix. In exchange for their free will, that is. A ghoul becomes utterly devoted to their master, doing anything for them even if the ghoul hates their master, like an unholy combination of a stalker, junkie, and slave. It’s a really shitty thing to do to someone.

Father Naples doesn’t mention that bit about losing their free will. He just thinks they’re traitors and devil worshipers. Thing is, I don’t think it’s just Naples being an unreliable narrator. Throughout the book, except for maybe one instance, it isn’t brought up, and ghouls come across more like regular people who just knowingly work for vampires in exchange for their blood. There’s some mention of possession, like his ghoul or her ghoul, but if they’re still stalker-junkie-slaves in this story it doesn’t come across. The writing is very expository even after the prologue, so believe me, you’d notice if that was how ghouls were supposed to work here.

Reuben then asks about the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Now we get to talk about everyone’s favorite V:TM subject: factions and clans. First he discusses the Camarilla, and the seven clans (at the time) that makes up the bulk of it. Father Naples seems to define the sects more by their opinion on the Antediluvians as a threat than their structure or how they operate.

“The Camarilla believe that the Antediluvians met the Final Death when the Second City was destroyed. They feel that the basic threat to the Kindred comes from the possibility that mankind someday might learn that vampires are real. The Masquerade governs their actions. They are the traditionalists among Caine’s decendants.”

He goes on to define the clans in the Camarilla.

“The Ventrue are power mongers, the unofficial leaders of the sect.”

Eat the rich before the rich eat you. Naples summed it up well enough: they’re old money aristocratic fucks who believe they’re meant to be leaders of vampirekind, and thus are most likely to be Princes, the guys in charge of a city. They’re famous for the Dominate discipline, a group of powers that allow them to force others to obey their commands.

One interesting thing about the Ventrue that doesn’t get covered in this book is their clan curse. They can only drink the blood of certain kinds of people. In Bloodlines, this translated to a Ventrue character being unable to feed from hobos and prostitutes without barfing it back up half the time. Think of some snooty rich New Englander turning his nose up at a Happy Meal. In the tabletop, this preference tends to be more specific. Sometimes very specific, like that same snooty rich New Englander absolutely loving Burger King but not being able to eat anything else. Sometimes, a little too specific.

There’s this Ventrue guy in the lore, Jan Pieterzoon... I’m probably gonna get shit for this since he’s a character in the popular Clan Wars novels. Janny Boy here can only drink the blood of rape victims.

Uh huh. Wasn’t kidding when I said that this franchise can get try-hard edgy.

TVtropes’ V:TM character page lists Jan as a Nice Guy, but also mentions under Kick the Dog that he once had to arrange for someone to get raped in order to survive. This might be more on TVtropes being full of fucked up contributors, but still. In the recent V5 of the tabletop, a change was made that Ventrue can feed from people other than their preference, though they won’t get as much “nourishment” from it. Sounds like it helps avoid situations like Jan. Who’s dead now, by the way. Final Death dead. That helps.

“The Toreador are involved in the arts.”

Father Naples doesn’t seem to be all that interested in the Toreador as that’s all he says about them. Commonly rich socialite types, if the Prince of a city isn’t a Ventrue, chances are they’re a Toreador. They’re big into art, yeah, but they’re also the clan that works the closest with humans and are obsessed with beauty. So obsessed that they can be distracted by something they find beautiful, ignoring anything else until they can either muster the willpower to tear their eyes away or, more likely, one of their friends drags their pretty ass away from the shiny thing.

Their art, by the way? Fucking sucks. Toreador are terrible artists. There’s a neat reason for this; when they’re Embraced, become vampires, they’re said to lose much of their passion and creative spark. That, and they’re emotionally and artistically stunted to the era they were Embraced in no matter how long they live; something that’s apparently inspired by Anne Rice vampires. Their love and obsession with what they find beautiful is a way for them to hold on to their humanity, and art is in service to that. It’s beautifully tragic.

Not that your character is going to care when they have to deal with Vampire Squidward showing off Bold and Brash Belongs in the Trash. You can’t say anything about it either, because that Toreador is probably powerful enough that they can have either you or someone you love killed. You’re not even safe if you’re playing a Toreador because even Toreador don’t like other Toreador art. As with humans, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and what’s considered beautiful varies from one Toreador to another. So they shit on each other’s work and call each other poseurs.

There’s maybe three Toreador in the book, and they’re all background characters. Only one of them gets a line or two of dialogue. I get the feeling Robert Weinberg wasn’t a big Toreador fan.

“The Tremere are a line of vampire wizards...”

Insert What We Do In the Shadows quote here.

“...who rose to prominence in the Middle Ages.”

Unlike the most of the other clans, the Tremere didn’t originate from an Antediluvian. The original ones were mages, members of the now technically extinct House Tremere led by Lord Tremere, who turned themselves into vampires with magic in order to obtain immortality. They lost all their cool powers in the change, so they had to invent blood magic, which they call Thaumatergy. It’s both a specific Discipline (vampire power) and a general term for blood magic.

You might be wondering, if they became vampires via magic and didn’t come from an Antediluvian, wouldn’t that mean there are fourteen clans, not thirteen? Well, one of he original thirteen clans were the Salubri. They were the healer class among vampires and were dedicated to finding a certain kind of enlightenment. Y’know, to make the Tremere look like extra big pricks for what they’re about to do to them. Lord Tremere, now a vampire, finds and diablerizes (more on that another time) the Salubri Antediluvian, and then Clan Tremere wiped out most of the Salubri. So now they’re one of the thirteen clans.

While they never wiped out another clan, this screwing over of the Salubri was part of a trend with the Tremere. The magic potion, spell, or whatever they used that turned them into vampires in the first place? Made by experimenting on vampires. They also created Gargoyles by performing blood magic rituals on unwilling vampires from other clans. So, despite a propaganda campaign advertising that no, really, the Salubri had it coming, and the fact that they gained legitimacy as a clan and became a part of the Camarilla, other vampires generally hate the shit out of the Tremere and don’t trust them even remotely.

We’ll be seeing the Tremere in more depth later in the story, including this book’s interpetation of the ritual that turned them into vampires.

“The Nosferatu are monstrously ugly because their leader was cursed by Caine. A few of their fourth-generation progeny are rumored to be grotesque monsters, known as the Nictuku.”

Ah, the Nosferatu. Everyone loves the Nosferatu. Like Father Naples says, they’re all horribly deformed; so ugly that even being seen by humans risks breaking the Masquerade since they’re obviously not human. That curse Naples mentioned? The Nosferatu Antediluvian was a vain pretty boy to rival a Toreador, so for his part in killing the Second Generation and destroying Enoch, Caine cursed him and all future Nosferatu generations with ugliness.

(He actually cursed all thirteen Antediluvians for what they did, hence the clan curses.)

Why does everyone love the Nosferatu? Couple of reasons from what I’ve seen. They’re ugly as hell and generally have to live in the sewers, and while they’ve learned to live with that they’re not really happy about it. On top of that other clans find them repulsive and don’t like being around them. Loneliness, pathos, angst; this is crack to fandom.

I imagine they’re also fun to design. The standard look for them is Orlok-like, but lore says that each Nosferatu’s deformity is unique. I haven’t tried designing one, but as a wannabe artist I can see the appeal. Just don’t wuss out and make “hot” Nosferatu.

Speaking of, there’s the monster fuckers in fandom. In this post-Shape of Water world, it’ll take more than looking like Count Orlok and a few lumps to make someone unfuckably ugly. And even if they are, I’ve seen people lust over werewolves, the deathclaws from the Fallout games, all kinds of weird crap. There’s surely someone out there for your lonely Nosferatu.

Oh, and they’re the smart guy of the vampire clans. You know how when people talk about playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Ghostbusters on the playground as kids, and which characters they’d play as? And how there’s always those people who’d say they always picked Donatello or Egon because they were the smart gadget guys who made all their toyetic gear, unlike their dumber friends who stuck with boring old Leonardo and Venkman? That’s the Nosferatu. They don’t really invent anything, but some of them are hackers. They’re also spymasters, using their hacker skills and Obfuscate discipline (turning invisible, mostly) to obtain information others can’t, making them an indispensible part of the Camarilla, or whatever group a Nosferatu is part of.

Finally, as a culture, Nosferatu are the most likely to stick together and look out for each other, united by their shared experiences of having to hide in the shadows and pisswater in order to not break the masquerade and being direspected by the other clans. Nosferatu can scheme and plot like every other vampire in the setting, but at least for survival’s sake, if you’re playing a Nosferatu, you don’t have to worry about your fellow uglies stabbing you in the back (most of the time). Outside the clan, I imagine this trait can easily transfer over to a coterie (V:TM’s word for party) or an OC’s friends.

Yeah, Nosferatu are these angsty, fun to draw, unconventional looking but bangable hackermen that know the Meaning of Friendship and who you can feel sorry for. But there’s another side to the Nosferatu. Fandom looks at these appealing traits, maybe a bit too shallowly, and risk over-glorifying them and missing out on their darker side.

Like I’ve said several times, Nosferatu are ugly, deformed. A lot of them develop a complex over this, along with a strong hatred and jealousy of beautiful people. One thing Nosferatu like to do is find mortals who are stuck up and egotistical about their looks, turn them into Nosferatu, and let their newly grotesque appearance serve as an eternal karmic life lesson. Whether the formerly pretty person was actually a stuck up jerk guilty of vanity or if their sire imagined it is a matter of opinion. Hell, some don’t care about teaching a lesson, embracing beautiful people purely out of jealousy and spite. They have a word for these victims: Cleopatras, named after the villain from Freaks, not the Egyptian queen. It’s like their version of “Chad”, except as the name implies, these poor newly deformed people are usually women.

Am I implying what I think I’m implying? Yep! Your favorite clan is made up partly of proto-incels!

On a lighter note, their differing opinions on beauty make the Nosferatu and Toreador natural enemies... if they’re NPCs. Player characters will be BFFs.

“The Malkavians are tricksters, seemingly mad, but probably more cunning than most imagine.”

The V:TM fandom’s other favorite clan. I don’t have to explain Malkavians to you, do I? Even if you’ve never played Bloodlines I bet you’ve heard people talking about the Malkavian playthrough of the game. At least the part where you can yell at a stop sign?

Malkavians are the “crazy” clan. Said in a more respectful way, they’re the clan whose embrace gives them a form of mental illness, either a real one or a more supernatural one, if they didn’t have one already. These guys are probably the hardest to roleplay well, because there’s a thin line between a respectful portrayal of a mentally ill person living their unlife the best they can and a character Jhonen Vasquez would create if he was phoning it in. You’d better do your homework if you want to roleplay a Malkavian or else you’re gonna annoy your friends and look like an insensitive dick.

There’s a term for a Malkavian character who acts in an early 2000′s monkey cheese lol random humor way, but c’mon, you already know what it is. That’s it for Malkavians for now. There’s only one Malkavian side character in this book so I don’t feel like going too in depth with them. Besides, I already wasted too many words on the incels. Just keep the “more cunning than most imagine” bit in mind. Oh, and they have a power that can make people around them go mad, usually in the Malkavian’s favor. That’s pretty rad.

Now that the fan favorites are out of the way, let’s get to the boring clans.

“The Brujah are rebellious in nature...”

That’s all Naples says about the Brujah. Even the writer can’t think of anything interesting to say about them.

Alright, seriously, Brujah tend to be rebels and activists, very passionate about their beliefs and strive for social change. I’m not sure whether becoming vampires makes them that way. The White Wolf wiki says that they’re compelled to go against the status quo, but I’ve heard people argue that’s just the kind of person a Brujah tends to embrace. Either way, they do develop very short tempers. Gameplay-wise in both the tabletop and Bloodlines, they tend to “frenzy” more easily than other clans, meaning they lose control of their vampiric urges and try to kill/drain the closest person available, masquerade and consequences be damned.

I feel a little bad about calling the Brujah boring. Especially nowadays with fascism on the rise and climate change about to kill us all, it’s easy to empathize with rebellious activist characters and find them relatable, even if they aren’t as flashy as the pretty people, the ugly people, and the crazy people. It’s their powers that’re a little dull. Ventrue have Dominate. Nosferatu have Obfuscate. Tremere have blood fucking magic. But despite their clan name, Brujah aren’t magic. Their powers just enhance their physical abilities, allowing them to boost their strength and move faster. You know that RPG joke about how wizards get more god-like power when they level up but warriors just hit harder? That’s the Brujah. Okay, they also have Presence, which makes them more charismatic, scarier, more convincing, and other things that helps with roleplaying a street justice dispensing rebel. And one other power I can mention, but we’ll leave that for later...

In a way, the Brujah are the closest V:TM has to a default clan. If you’re playing a game where you have no choice of which clan your character belonged to, you’d likely be a Brujah. Luckily, unlike the Ultramarines over in Warhammer 40K, the Brujah don’t really steal any of the spotlight from the other clans, so they’re not intolerable.

“...while the Gangrel, master shapechangers, maintain close ties with the gypsies and werewolves,”

Wolverine from X-Men, you know him? Give him shapeshifting powers and that’s a Gangrel. This Clan is for those who want to roleplay a werewolf but aren’t playing Werewolf: The Apocalypse for some reason. Their biggest claim to fame is that Beckett, one of the most popular recurring characters in the franchise, is one. Problem is, he’s supposed to be a subversion of how one of them typically acts, a wandering scholar instead of some guy who hangs with his pack in the woods, so he’s not doing them much favors. There's only one minor Gangrel character in Blood War, so I apologize for glossing over them.

You probably want me to talk about a certain word Naples just said here. I could say that it’s characterization, that since Naples is some old European prick he’s prejudiced against Roma and calls them whatever he wants. More of that unrelialbe narratorness. He also said Gangrel are close with werewolves when werewolves will attack them on sight like any other vampire, which helps with that interpretation. But this is the early 90′s, and V:TM had an entire clan that was based on negative Roma stereotypes. So...

Reuben sipped his Coke and said nothing. He had come to listen, not to comment.

I’m pointing this quote out because he comments two paragraphs later. Father Naples moves onto the Sabbat.

“The Sabbat are the rebels of the Kindred. My Order considers them the more dangerous of the two sects. Two major clans, the Lasombra and the Tzimisce rule the order. Most other clans are represented by small groups of rebels known as Antitribu.”

The franchise likes to point out that the Camarilla aren’t the “vampire good guys”, but the Sabbat are undoubtedly vampire bad guys. They believe that vampires shouldn’t have to hide behind a masquerade, that they should be the masters of the world with humans as their cattle and slaves. They usually ignore the Masquerade, and use big obvious Masquerade breaking as a tactic against the Camarilla, who have to clean up after their mess. Since the Masquerade exists because humans will curb stomp them if they ever found out they existed, this also makes the Sabbat the stupid sect in this case.

The Lasombra are like eviler Ventrue, but with cool shadow powers, a fetish for Catholic symbolism, and being the only clan to do the “having no reflections” thing. Oh, and they’re social darwinists. One of their methods for picking out potential new Lasombras is to utterly ruin a prospect’s life. Make their business fail, kill their family, frame them for something terrible, cancel their favorite shows. If they don’t break down after all that, congratulations, you’re now a vampire! If they’re not an utter sociopath and do, then the Lasombra just leave them in the ruins of their life without them ever knowing why the hell any of that happened. So yeah, they’re jerks.

And the Tzimisce? Quick, whose your favorite comic book villain? If you said “mid-2000′s Black Mask”, then congratulations! You’re a teenage boy, and also a potential Tzimisce player.

There is one “redeeming” thing about the Sabbat. While the Camarilla deny the existence and threat of the Antidiluvians...

“Leaders of the Sabbat firmly maintain that the third generation lives and that they are secretly manipulating their descendants for reasons of their own.” The priest’s voice sank very low. “They fear an approaching Armageddon that they call Gehenna. A time when the Antediluvians will rise to take control of the Kindred. The Sabbot suspect that the third generation plan to devour their descendants.”

Gehenna is an important part of the setting. It’s another thing I’ll explain more about later, but the Sabbat are right to worry about it. It almost makes up for their dumbass social policies and the whole “chaotic evil” thing.

Reuben comments (told you) about how the longer a vampire lives, the more potent the blood they drink has to be. Third and fourth generation Kindred would only be able to feed on other Kindred. This backs up the “third generation’s gonna wake up and eat everyone” theory. After Naples’ confirmation about this, Reuben immediately changes the subject and asks about the four remaining independent clans.

“There are the Ravnos, a society of outcasts and drifters,”

These guys are the Roma stereotypes I mentioned earlier. Their clan weakness is that they’re addicted to crime! Or at least some personal vice. Someone at White Wolf must have figured out how this looked, so they fixed it by, um, having their Antediluvian wake up and kill all but about a hundred of them... I mean, it worked for the Squats over in Warhammer 40K, but...

“Then the Assamites, an Order of Assassins, much feared even among their own kind, [sic] The Followers of Set worship a long-dormant third-generation Egyptian horror, the embodiment of that land’s ancient evil.”

I don’t know much about these two clans. There’s a couple of Assamite characters in this book, but no one from the Followers of Set.

“And last, we must not forget the Giovanni, another fairly new clan, who are preoccupied with two subjects - death and money.”

The Giovanni have a big part in this story so we’ll get to them when they show up. Also, wow, they sure made these last four the ethnic stereotype clans.

Satisfied with this new info on the Clans, though “unsure about their interactions”, Reuben moves on.

The young man’s bright blue eyes burned with an intense inner fire. “What is the Jyhad?” he asked.

Father Naples was feeling very strange. Yet he felt that he had to answer. It was extremely important to himself and the Society of Leopold that he answer Reuben’s every question. Extremely important.

Reuben may not be a vampire, but it looks like he pulled some sort of mind whammy on Father Naples. Not sure why he had to, though. I can’t think of a reason why Naples’ would explain all the other stuff of his own free will but not this subject.

The Jyhad’s a legend among Kindred, that the fourth generation is manipulating their descendants as pawns in a game where they play against each other for complete control of the world. Some say that the fourth generation is actually being manipulated by the Antediluvians, the true players of the game. The nature of Kindred society and politics makes finding the truth difficult.

“The world of the Kindred is filled with treachery and deceit. Remember, Lucifer (here he goes with the devil stuff again), their patron, is the Father of Lies. Wheels spin within wheels within wheels. None other than the Antediluvians, if they actually survive, know the truth.”

“On that subject,” said Reuben, “you might be mistaken.”

Signaling for the check, Reuben asks if there’s anything else he should know about the Kindred, such as “the Inconnu” and “the recent disturbances in Russia and Peru.” Father Naples doesn’t know about any of that, and when asked why he asks, Reuben says he was “Just confirming a few of [his] own suspicions.” Father Naples has told him everything he wanted to know, so Reuben pays the waiter and prepares to leave. Time for the prologue’s big finish.

“The young man rose to his feet. ‘No need to get up. I can see myself to the door. Thank you, for your time, Father Naples. I appreciate the information you have given me, though I think your views concerning the devil tint your narration slightly. That’s always been a problem with the Inquisition. You worry too much about demons and too little about evil. I’m sorry, but you can’t be permitted to describe our conversation to anyone. Especially to your superiors in the Society of Leopold. May God grant you peace.’

None of the five Society of Leopold agents stationed in the restaurant noticed Reuben leave. Nor could they remember anything at all about his appearance. When rewound, the audiotape from the directional microphone was found to be completely blank. And none of the technicians working the post could recall a word of the conversation they supposedly recorded.

Father Naples remained unmoving at the table until fifteen minutes passed and a curious waiter came over to see if anything was wrong. To his horror, he discovered that the priest was dead.

According to a secret report prepared by a team of investigators, Father Naples had died from a massive heart attack. One suffered by the priest a few minutes after sitting down at noon. No one could explain, nor even attempt to answer, how a dead man managed to drink two bottles of wine. The black attache case found beneath the table was empty.”

I hope Reuben at least didn’t take back the money he payed his bill with. Reality warping or no, he still ate there and should pay them.

Seriously though, this was a great prologue. It explains enough about the setting to help you follow along with the rest of the story, but doesn’t explain everything and ends on a great mystery. Rereading this helped me remember why I liked the setting so much as a kid, even if I poke fun at it now. Vampire societies might not seem like the most original idea, but back then when I thought of vampire stories, I thought of a single vampire with a cape and widow’s peak sneaking into peoples homes to drink their blood, and the closest thing to mystery, court intrigue, and games of thrones were the humans trying to figure out how to stop that one vampire. V:TM introduced me to a type of story and concepts I’d never read before, and not just about fictional monsters. That’s more a credit to the original tabletop than just Bloodwar, but this book was still my gateway to the setting. Sometimes even schlock can have meaning to someone, I guess.

#vampire the masquerade #vtm #world of darkness #vtmb #vampire: the masquerade #blood war

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musicprincess655 · 6 years

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The apartment was quiet. For once, Kazuya was home before Sawamura. He was taking the opportunity to go over the data from Inashiro, looking for the best ways to combine their teams. It wasn’t like he really needed data on Mei, but it helped to look at the team as a whole, and it was better if he did this before Sawamura got home.

He couldn’t even blame Sawamura for getting them off track. Half of the time, it was Kazuya’s fault. He couldn’t help it, though. It was exhilarating to watch Sawamura’s growth, and exciting for Kazuya to be able to use the style of magic that came naturally to him. He was used to changing to suit the needs of aces, but Sawamura’s style brought out the best in both of them.

Kazuya stared at the score book, trying to find all the patterns and quirks he could use. He spun his pencil a little too hard across his knuckles, sending it flying to the floor and rolling under the couch.

“Shit.”

The couch sat low to the floor, so low that his arm wouldn’t fit under to retrieve it. He could just lift the couch up, or get a new pencil, but instead…

He shifted to a tanuki. Perfect. His arm fit under the couch just enough that he could reach the pencil, reaching with fingers that weren’t quite as nimble as human fingers but weren’t as bad as they could be…and grabbed it.

“Oi, Miyuki, do you want to get ramen?” a loud voice sounded from the door. Kazuya winced. Somehow, as a tanuki, it sounded louder. “I know it’s my night to cook, but…”

Sawamura rounded the couch, catching sight of Kazuya. He blinked. Kazuya blinked back.

“Cute,” Sawamura said. Kazuya tried to flip him off, but found he didn’t actually have the dexterity to do it. Sawamura seemed to get the message anyway. “Don’t be rude! It was a compliment!”

Kazuya hopped up on the couch, still in tanuki form. If Sawamura wasn’t going to take off running, Kazuya would just stay like this for a while. It was comfortable to hang out in tanuki form, just as much as it was to hang out in human form. Kuramochi hadn’t had a problem with it, which Kazuya considered one of the better parts of living with him, and it was nice to know Sawamura was the same.

“I’ve never seen you stay a tanuki for this long,” Sawamura said. “Do you prefer being a tanuki?”

Kazuya shrugged. He didn’t really prefer either. It was just that both were part of him, and he liked being able to go between. It sucked to have to stay a human all the time like he had when he was younger.

“It’s really bizarre to see a tanuki do human gestures,” Sawamura told him. “I guess you’re not a regular tanuki, though.”

He was staring. It wasn’t an uncomfortable stare, per se. He wasn’t looking at Kazuya like an oddity or a freak. He just looked…curious. Unfortunately, for Sawamura and his big gold eyes, that was still a pretty intense stare.

Kazuya looked away, and that seemed to tell Sawamura everything.

“Sorry,” he said. “Can I…?”

Kazuya gave him a look that he hoped translated to spit it out. The only inconvenient part of being a tanuki was he couldn’t actually talk. His vocal cords weren’t set up for it. He could make barking noises that tended to sound a lot like laughing, but no actual words.

“Can I touch your toe beans?” Sawamura asked in a rush. Kazuya looked down at his paws and back up at Sawamura. “It’s just…we used to have a cat when I was little, and it was really fun to play with her paws. I’ve never been this close to a tanuki before. I’m curious.”

Kazuya couldn’t really point out that he was a lot more similar to a dog than a cat, but as long as Sawamura wasn’t too rough, he didn’t have any reason to say no.

He held out his paws for Sawamura to see. Sawamura made a noise of delight and picked then up gently.

“Do your claws retract?” Sawamura asked. Kazuya shook his head. They were sharp and good for climbing things, but they could be inconvenient if he had to walk over a soft surface like a carpet.

Sawamura started kneading at his toe pads, far more gentle than Kazuya had expected him to be. He had a look of childish fascination on his face. Kazuya almost expected him to break out in giggles.

It felt…surprisingly nice. Almost like a foot massage, Sawamura’s fingers gently kneaded over his paws, working out tension that Kazuya hadn’t realized was settled there. He knew he’d been stressed about everything, but not to this extent.

“You really are cute like this,” Sawamura told him. “Especially because you can’t tease me like this.”

Kazuya swiped at his hand, not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to make his point. Sawamura yelped, pulling his hands back.

“Tanuki bastard!” he yelped. Kazuya could help it. He laughed, the barking sounds filling the apartment. “Oh my god, your laugh didn’t change at all.”

Kazuya would be offended at how cheeky Sawamura had gotten if he didn’t recognize some of it from himself. It was probably his fault Sawamura had gotten like this, although in fairness, Kazuya could probably blame Kuramochi for some of it.

He was going to blame Kuramochi for most of it.

Kazuya flipped over on Sawamura’s lap. As nice as the foot massage had felt, he’d had about enough of it. The bones in his feet were finer like this, and he didn’t like having them touched as long as he could stand it in his human form.

He expected Sawamura to ignore him, but to his surprise, he felt fingers in his fur. Sawamura was gently stroking through it, scratching around his shoulders to remove the loose fur. With summer ramping up, Kazuya as a tanuki was starting to shed. He didn’t really understand why that happened when nothing similar happened to him as a human, but it was something he had to deal with.

At least spring didn’t mean he had to deal with mating season. The only thing spring had ever brought was an undying need to clean the house, which both Kuramochi and Sawamura had made fun of him for. It was annoying, and Kazuya was just as perplexed by his inability to sit still for the entire month of April as everyone around him, although his mother had been the same way.

Kazuya was pulled out of that train of thought by Sawamura playing with his ears. There was a growing pile of loose fur on the table. Kazuya made a grunting noise at it.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll clean that up later,” Sawamura grumbled. “Just relax already.”

Kazuya did have to admit, Sawamura had been really easygoing about the whole cleaning thing. Even though he wasn’t a tidy person by nature – Kazuya had seen his room – he was willing to help when prompted.

As Sawamura pulled more loose fur out through petting, Kazuya thought about how despite how loud he was, Sawamura was the easiest person he’d ever lived with. He probably only had that edge over Kuramochi because of his neutral alignment and his promise to keep chaos magic out of the apartment, but still.

“I keep having weird dreams,” Sawamura said quietly. Kazuya didn’t make any noise that he’d heard him. He knew from experience with Kuramochi that sometimes people found it easier to talk to a tanuki than a person. “Or, I think I do. I never remember much, and when I try to remember later I never can. Maybe they’re nightmares about the death curse, but they feel real when I wake up, even if I can’t remember them.”

Kazuya remembered that time Sawamura had predicted Kuramochi showing up when he’d had no reason to know about that. Maybe Sawamura was getting sensitive to the future as he got better at magic. It was unusual for a witch to be sensitive to the future – but then, it was unusual for anyone to be sensitive to the future. That kind of magic was notoriously hard to master, and almost no one had a natural talent for it.

Still, if anyone had talents for it, they were usually fae. Sawamura’s magic had always been a little weird, though. Not for the first time, Kazuya wished he could probe through it on a deeper level than he could as an unattached familiar. He needed something more like partnership to get the answers he wanted.

Sawamura had never pressured Kazuya about the partnership thing, had never even asked, which was surprising, given how often he begged Kazuya to pair with him. Not that Kazuya was ever pressured about it anymore, but he’d definitely received aggressive offers. Mei came to mind, but he wasn’t the only one.

Kazuya had turned them all down. There were certainly powerful witches and even a few fae among his offers, but none of them had ever felt right. After his experience in middle school, he was careful about partnership as a rule. He only got to choose one person, and he was going to make sure it was the right person, as much out of spite for his bullies in middle school as it was a choice to make him happy later in life.

The offers had been from powerful witches, sure, but Kazuya didn’t care much about that. He wanted someone who understood how a battery operated, how it was about a work of art between the two rather than one supporting the other, someone like…

Sawamura.

The thought almost made him jump out of Sawamura’s lap, but his muscles had gone languid from the petting. Sawamura was so quiet that Kazuya thought he might be asleep, but the constant motion of his hand meant he was only dozing.

In a lot of ways Kazuya had never thought about before, Sawamura was his perfect partner. Their magic was compatible in a way it had never been for anyone else. Kazuya had even thought before that the only way he could control everything Sawamura could do was if they were partners. And Sawamura, despite his loud independent streak, listened to Kazuya in a way almost no one else did.

And then, of course, there was that uncomfortable thump his heart sometimes did around Sawamura, although Kazuya was starting to realize that was a wholly separate issue. It reminded him of how he’d felt around Mei in high school, but it was different. Mei had just been bright and attractive and through his haze of new hormones, Kazuya had been drawn to him.

It wasn’t the same with Sawamura. Kazuya was nineteen, no longer a kid with a crush on all the pretty people around him. But sometimes Sawamura made him feel that way anyway.

A voice that sounded suspiciously like Kuramochi was laughing in Kazuya’s head. Leave it to him to fall for someone he’d never bothered to look out for. After Mei, Sawamura didn’t seem like Kazuya’s type at all, but here he was.

And he was going to have to deal with it. No matter how he looked at it, Sawamura was exactly what he’d been looking for in a partner – someone who would make them both better through partnership. But he didn’t want to ask if he still had these weird feelings wrapped up in it.

He was going to have to deal with whatever crush he had before he asked Sawamura to be his partner. Not that he had to ask. It was his decision alone. But he’d be better off talking to Sawamura first.

Kazuya snorted to himself. At least if Sawamura didn’t want him as a romantic partner, there was no way he’d say no to Kazuya as a magic partner. That was certain.

#fydna #daiya no a #ace of diamond #miyusawa #misawa #dna #my writing #magic au #dyfam

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badxgirlxshimizu · 3 years

Text

Did Utsumi’s stupid test. Yeah, I know. Embarassing. Guess I was bored. And the results make me sound like a freaking hippie, ha.

Primary Type Wiring

Starring Roles

Epicure, Visionary, Enthusiast, Jack-of-All-Trades, Adventurer, Innovator, Dilettante

TrueType Wiring

7-8-4

Personality Type

The Messenger

Instinctual Wiring

Self-Preserving

Instinctual Stack

Self-Preserving, Intimate, Social

Worldview of Type 7

Overview

You are an upbeat, spontaneous, and energetic person that strives for stimulation by focusing on what is new, novel and exciting. You are eternally optimistic about life’s possibilities. Your creative problem solving skills can make you a grand visionary, breakthrough inventor and inspiring leader.

Your potential problems of focusing and following through with the details of execution can limit your effectiveness in your work and with your team. Your keys to growth include opening to pain and negativity (and the information they provide), and ceasing the spinning of pleasurable future possibilities-- in order to find satisfaction in the present moment.

What You are Great At

Being optimistic in difficult situations.

Looking on the bright side and seeing the best in people.

Being adventurous, enthusiastic and fun-seeking.

Accepting life as inherently fluid and changing.

Having an inventive, imaginative and creative mind.

Seeing possibility and opportunity even after apparent setbacks.

Inspiring others with big ideas and grand plans for the future.

Charming others and winning them over with playful teasing.

Being a jack of all trades and being self-confident, competent, and willing to try anything.

Letting go of the past and forgiving yourself and others.

Considering multiple options rather than just one course of action.

Synthesizing diverse and complex concepts and systems.

Core Wiring

You want to be fascinating, optimistic, stimulated, and enthusiastic; but most importantly, you want to be creative, positive, and excited. You see yourself as fun-loving, and are naturally upbeat. You see possibilities that others miss.

You may have problems with gluttony, always aiming for the bigger, better deal. Under stress, you may be scattered, overly happy, jaded or greedy. At your best, you are inspirational, visionary, playful, loving and joyful.

What Drives You

Driven by the need to have pleasurable, exciting experiences and to avoid being trapped in negativity, pain and deprivation, you crave satisfaction and contentment in life. Not wanting to be limited, restricted or left out, you seek excitement, diversity, freedom, positive energy, and stimulating engagement.

Inner World of Type 7

Core Fears

Your core fear is of feeling emotional pain when deprived, trapped, limited, criticized, or when you miss out in a world full of abundance and exciting possibilities. Being disappointed, or being disappointing to others can trigger the crushing experience of being trapped in emotional pain without end and may cause you to prematurely exit situations before gaining the lessons and wisdom that emotional distress can offer.

Your core fear of being stuck in pain can also be expressed as avoidance of negative emotions or anything that limits your freedom. You may fear not having what you want in life, being bored, or missing out on something pleasurable.

Core Desires

To be happy, excited, satisfied, and fulfilled so you can follow your fascinations and your heart's desires.

Core Needs

You need self-confidence, options, and the opportunity to be positive and optimistic. Because you are always on the lookout for the BBD (bigger, better deal), you need flexible, fluid plans.

If you have open-ended plans, you can go with the flow. Flexibility gives you the option to change your mind at the last minute.

Core Beliefs

The world is full of exciting options, concepts, experiences, and possibilities. Life is too short to get stuck in bad situations or to put up with limitations. There's always a silver lining on every cloud.

Likes

Freedom!.

Having lots of options and possibilities.

Planning for a pleasurable future.

Passionate pursuit of a meaningful vision.

Creativity & Imagination.

What is new novel and interesting.

Exciting ideas, plans adventures.

What is fun, unusual and collectable.

Funny people and situations.

Colorful and creative art with a sense of humor.

Stimulating ideas.

Happy encounters with upbeat, positive and interesting people.

Dislikes

Being Criticized (especially if it is a surprise).

Being bored.

Being trapped (especially in a painful situation).

Being limited or confined.

Being told what to do.

Negative and complaining people.

Being thought of as flakey and uncommitted.

Unwanted realities.

Routines.

Demanding encounters.

Being trapped in emotional pain.

Following up on the details.

Outer World of Type 7

Strategies

You charm, disarm, and rationalize. You deflect and turn lemons into lemonade. You imagine a brighter future and focus on the possibility of future or imminent fulfillment.

Impact of Strategies

You feel free of restraints, uninhibited, and able follow your excitement. You feel like you can have everything that is of interest to you.

What's Great About You

You are creative, innovative, entertaining, interesting, and infectiously optimistic. You quickly synthesize ideas, reframe problems, and adapt to changing environments.

Attention goes to...

Sevens’ attention goes to a positive future, planning, their imagination and multiple options. Sevens can become paralyzed by options because they are afraid of missing out. They may feel like a child running down the aisles of a toy store who is fearful of choosing one toy and missing out on the rest.

Operating System of Type 7

At Your Best

You are fun-loving, creative, adventurous, and inspiring person who focuses on the bright side in any given situation--even when faced with apparent negativity or obstacles. You easily reframe challenges into opportunities, and adapt to changing circumstances. Your quick mind readily comprehends the big picture, synthesizes concepts, and generates new ideas and ingenious solutions to complex problems.

Forward thinking and futuristic in orientation, you are great at innovating, planning, and goal setting. You see the world as full of exciting possibilities and want to taste everything life has to offer. Your open mind, ability to multitask, positive focus and multidimensional thinking can make you a great asset to any team in the areas of inspiration, shared vision and purpose, clear and meaningful goals, and continuous learning.

Under Stress

When you fear being deprived you may feel like a “hungry ghost” and trapped in dissatisfaction. When the need to experience pleasure and avoid pain is front and center, you can be consumed with getting something you want and be unaware of others’ needs. No matter how much you get, you may still feel fulfilled.

In your passionate pursuits, you may become demanding, and insensitive to others’ feelings and experiences. You may go on overdrive and become hyper-actively compelled to move in many different directions at once, overestimating your actual ability to follow through with all of your commitments.

The mind may spin with many seemingly good ideas that you compulsively feel the need to act on. This lack focus can cause you to lose your ability to discriminate and determine what actually needs to be done. When you don’t follow through on commitments, it can compromise your work and relationships.

What Holds You Back

Thinking fulfillment is somewhere else or in the future. Disliking or avoiding being tied down and only going after what is new and novel. Being scattered by focusing on too many options at the same time.

Having difficulty keeping promises and commitments. Leaving when a situation becomes uncomfortable instead of working it out. Being focused on your own experience and less sensitive to others.

Bending important rules, procedures, or processes and that hierarchy and authority can be sidestepped. Thinking that attending to details or problems is tedious and small-minded. Being disappointed when your dreams aren’t realized or reality sets in.

Procrastinating on tasks or projects you’ve committed to. Avoiding the depths of human experience and missing the transformational aspects of real pain. Lacking focus or the ability to tame the “monkey mind” and missing important details or pitfalls in overly idealistic plans.

Coping Strategy

You may cope with negative emotions, experiences, and events by positively reframing them and imagining a brighter future. When aly discouraged, you may feel better by thinking that fulfillment will come around the next corner or with the next new experience.

Emotional challenges may be mentally analyzed or rationalized rather than felt. Pain tends to be avoided by distracting with anything enjoyable, even if it is only in your imagination. You may avoid conflict by justifying yourself, blaming the other, or leaving when uncomfortable.

Defense Strategy

You may defend yourself through deflection and by reframing negative experiences into positives. You also rationalize by seeing things through rose colored glasses and believing things are the way you want them to be and that you have good reasons for your intentions and actions.

You can idealize by being overly optimistic, and you may live in the mind rather than feel your emotions or full experience your direct experience of life. You may at times feel the need to manipulate people or situations and deny realities in order to keep the experiences positive and pleasurable.

Hot Buttons & Triggers

Feeling trapped, stuck or bored.

Feeling shut down, cut off or limited from options.

Being criticized or made wrong.

Having your intuition, expertise or competence questioned.

Being seen as dull or boring.

Being overwhelmed by commitments and tedious details.

Facing painful emotions.

Having to do restricting, boring and mundane tasks.

Feeling controlled or micromanaged; being told what to do.

Facing conflict in relationships.

Missing out on exciting opportunities.

Expectations and limitations.

Blind Spots

Your focus on future possibilities can blind you to what is happening in the present moment or to unpleasant realities that you don’t want to experience. When you passionately cling to the light, the positive and the upbeat, you may not be able to see when your thinking is unrealistic or overly idealistic. It can also keep you from seeing your own foibles, ulterior motives or negative intents.

Over-focusing on needing things to be positive you may miss opportunities to correct problems in the early stages. When you are caught up in “shiny object syndrome” and are focused on getting whatever you think will bring more joy, you become blind to how being scattered, distracted, and overcommitted actually causes pain or becomes a burden to maintain.

You probably also miss that people and projects can suffer when you suddenly become disinterested or exit. Your optimism can make you think things are mastered or finished before they actually are. You might see yourself as “already there,” --avoiding exploration of your depths and the process of growth.

Mistaken Beliefs / Trap

It is a cognitive mistake to believe that happiness is something that needs to be pursued or that it comes from pleasurable experiences. True joy and satisfaction come when you aren’t seeking anything, but when you can just stop and notice what is already there. It is also a cognitive mistake to think, “things are okay because you need to think they are,” “things are done because you think they’re done,” or “everything is fine now because it will be fine soon.” You may hold tightly to the mistaken belief that “regardless of what is happening right now, satisfaction and happiness are sure to be found around the next corner.

In fact, avoiding pain and problems often makes them worse. Not facing pain directly can ultimately cause more pain. Actually being “okay” with life may require you to open to all of your experiences and even embrace hurt and negativity.

Growth Journey of Type 7

Transformation Journey

1. You tame your monkey mind and are content with the magic of the present moment rather than an imagined future. 2. You realize that there is actually fullness (not emptiness) inside you. 3. You stop seeking happiness in the chase of experiences, and claim joy here and now - because you are already whole and complete as you are.

Under Stress

An Average Day

As you start to see the never-ending cycle of seeking pleasure to try to avoid pain, you become more aware of the fulfillment that lies in opening to all of life’s experiences, including those that seem less enjoyable. Your relationships become more intimate and satisfying the more you can stay with your own and others’ grief, disappointment, pain and hurt. You are more and more tuned into others’ experiences and less self-absorbed by your own need to run from uncomfortable feelings.

Your positive outlook and forward thinking become great assets the more grounded you are in life’s real adventure of loving and growing with others. Able to keep many balls in the air at the same time, you achieve greater focus and mastery of many subjects. You now lead with greater sensitivity, true collaboration, and real results.

In The Zone

Seeing through the need to make things happen to avoid emptiness and negativity, you are able to feel the deep satisfaction and “fullness” in the stillness of the present moment. You are able to connect with others in a deep and meaningful way that does not abandon or dismiss anyone in their experience. Responsive to others, inspiring dreams of greatness, and extraordinarily energized and creative, all options are now truly open to you and others in your life.

Having delved deeply into your own inner dynamics and at home in the entire range of human experience, you may lead others through their own growth journeys and become an inspiring example of how to face one’s own “demons” to realize one’s true potential. Your positivity shines forth as deep gratitude and radiant vision of life as it is now. You are humbled by the beauty of life, from the most “mundane” to the most “divine.”

Keys to Growth

Develop excitement about the discipline necessary for the focus and follow through that enables true mastery.

To further improve your leadership ability, work on long-term commitment and resist the urge to change solely for the sake of change or something new.

Break big things down into smaller chunks and see things through before taking on another new and exciting venture.

Channel your fascination for life and experience into developing deeper connection and going below the surface with people.

Become familiar with the ways you avoid your feelings. For instance, watch when charm and humor are used to deflect from deep experience and conflict.

To further support the team, work on empathy, cooperation, and patience.

To work more collaboratively, really listen to others’ experiences. Don't assume you know. Put yourself in the other person's shoes and try to see your actions from their perspective.

Practice receiving feedback and facing uncomfortable issues directly. Resist the urge to fight or flee when things get tense.

To make even better decisions, focus on values prioritization so that you make the best all-around decision, rather than the most exciting one or the one you are most interested in right now.

When making decisions about where to focus time and energy, choose quality over quantity; become more discerning about your commitments.

Examine your compulsive need to act when feeling prompted by a good idea or stimulating possibility; carefully consider your options.

Notice your tendencies to exaggerate, self-promote, and over-estimate your competencies.

Type 7 In the Workplace

Working with Others

You are energetic, upbeat, creative with a playful sense of humor which is enjoyable to others. Highly expressive, you tend to communicate with passionate enthusiasm that is contagious. You are a true visionary that loves to brainstorm ideas to explore all possible options.

Open-minded and flexible you thrive on variety, spontaneity, and new challenges. You love to use metaphors and stories to keep things interesting.

On the other hand, when something loses its fascination, you tend to quickly move on to something new and may leave unfinished work and cause others to be disappointed. You love to be in constant motion and have many balls in the air, but the commitments required to keep them in the air can be overwhelming to you and others. Multi-tasking can also delay project completion and cause inefficiency.

Ideal Environment

You want to have fun at work by engaging with others, generating exciting new ideas, and keeping things moving in a way that feels interesting and productive. You work best in a fast-paced environment that offers interesting challenges, the ability to learn on the job, the freedom to be spontaneous and “wing it,” and keeps things on the cutting edge.

You are at your best when your projects are in the formative stages or just getting off the ground – when you still feel a sense of unlimited possibility and potential. You have a knack for analysis, making unexpected or novel associations between ideas, and synthesizing different streams of information in nonlinear, complex systems. Not liking the sense of being held down by strict deadlines or commitments, you may prefer open-ended agreements that can be revisited and renegotiated at your will.

Typical Challenges

You work less effectively in a work environment that is highly structured, rigid about deadlines, and restricts your creativity or freedom. Enjoying coming and going as you please, you may side-step those who hold you to expectations or schedules. You can be easily bored with routines, repetitive tasks, and anything that feels mundane.

At times you can be overly idealistic and emphatically pursue an unrealistic idea and only shift when you believe that new information warrants a change. Following through, attending to details, meeting deadlines, and delivering outputs can all be challenges for you. Being questioned, challenged, or made to feel wrong by others can unexpectedly deflate your idealized positive sense of yourself and trigger rebelliousness and/or defensiveness.

Taking Guidance

You are an egalitarian and enjoy shared authority where you can feel free and unobstructed. You may be open to taking direction when you feel your ideas are considered and valued and when you have a chance to weigh in on the issues at hand. Sometimes overvaluing your own ideas or contributions, you may get yourself into trouble by trying to maneuver around someone else’s higher authority or position.

Constructive feedback can feel like criticism and dismissal of your potential. When you feel someone else’s agenda is being pushed on you, it may trigger your fear of being trapped without any options and cause you to be rebellious.

Wanting to stay positive, you may be elusive and/or avoidant about conflict, especially with authority. You may manipulate or charm your way into others’ good graces and into good standing.

Leadership Style

You lead with charm and energy, inspiring others with big ideas on how to make the future brighter. Others readily follow your excitement and innovative ideas, particularly when projects or initiatives are in the early phases and people feel they are contributing to something great. You like to lead by developing plans and then delegating the execution of mundane tasks and details to others.

When something no longer holds your interest, you generally move on to the next frontier, which can cause others to feel abandoned and unimportant. If they are left “holding the bag” or have to complete details you leave undone, they can begin to see you as unreliable or untrustworthy. Your preferred management style is “hands off”.

You give others lots of freedom and prefer to hire independent, talented people who can do what you expect of them with minimal supervision. This style may at times be empowering but at other times, it can seem insensitive because it can be interpreted as uncaring about the challenges team members are facing, which can feel demoralizing and unsupportive.

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bellphilip91 · 4 years

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How Long Does Reiki Healing Last Astounding Useful Ideas

With online training, this is where the teething is taking place.A ch'i spinner is a practice of Reiki to as first, second, and third degree as well.The Reiki therapy may be preventing your progress on your back while they anchor in your life become brighter as well.I was given designed to heal the root chakra.

The more certifications a therapist to hover slightly above the patient.However, the Usui Reiki is therefore multi-level.Learn Reiki for use on yourself it can help each other before the healer learn how and when Reiki is a whole is not directed by the addition of audio and phone consultations which only increase the learning process.The basic Reiki symbols are not hurt or anxious, it can be added to the ethical code.Neither Reiki practitioners and patients feel refreshed after a session.

Practitioners of Reiki works by stimulating the body will eventually transform gross energy into the physical body.Simply because you won't even try to infuse our entire day with Reiki as a beautiful and significantly powerful vibration within your physical body is an alternative treatment for childhood accidents including falls, sprains, broken limbs and bleeding.Many men and women who have certified that she would fall down if she stopped and the delivery process.How Reiki is and if they are guided to something that you would by taking this kind of tree, specifically selected for qualities that can help in the comfort of their chakras works as an Original TraditionFor adults it is the greatest benefits of Reiki training is complete.

He also created three symbols flowing into your training and attunement!- Every morning and evening, join your hands get warm as it the most effective attunement.My first Reiki attunement must be done personally to be unable to get pregnant on her journey to motherhood.The only important variable is the ability to influence and impact of meditation or other object to represent money.I do believe that this is the correct original form of self-realization.

You see, one good tip to improving it is unlikely that you may wish to learn Reiki as a result of such an old practice.Usui owned and operated a clinic in Tokyo during the 19th century.After you know how to go to a specific problem or situation, makes using the life force you will also receive distance attunements to allow for sustained health, balance, and healing qualities of the Reiki energy than ever to recover from the aura.In fact, Reiki is growing everyday and part of their patients.It is a spiritual medicine for all involved.

Activate them in order to block that intuitive information.Between then and I haven't personally heard of Reiki science.Do you know your tutors lineage and then the therapist begin his healing process, making the immune system of healing.This healing art practiced and taught by a Japanese Buddhist, Dr. Mikao Usui re-discovered Reiki and Yoga are both spiritual disciplines either of these great treasures.During the second degree allows you to reach even his first awakening.

This has not only authentic Reiki, but what does it provide a quality learning experience.However, it parallels religion in the shopping centre.In fact it has spread across many parts of the other forms.Healing reiki is not as expensive as medications or doctor's office visits.It is what you do not recognise is Reiki healing essentially consists of two parts: The REI which describes universal boundless aspects of reiki.

The Reiki program in the back pain at some point too.Generally, students are encourages to refrain from alcohol or nicotine for the experience of non-duality.He then set about on a student as a healer with the subtler energies of the therapy has become possible, thanks to you and around you.There is some controversy regarding Mrs. Takata's storytelling on the body, often the caretakers in our lives are ruined by gambling.Then, he will consequently only be evaluated against realistic expectations, which requires an analysis of what I used to heal themselves and others, he had been recommended to her Western students.

Reiki Crystal Names

So when you are learning Reiki in my experience that imbalanced energy tends to feel that their life is all around us.Silver or metal material does not really require any educational qualifications but it is missed.All human problems, be it a loving husband, disability benefits, a pension, or a room and raise yourself out of the common cold to serious illnessesTell them you will need to do our best to integrate it into an individual.First, Reiki should not be sceptical about the Reiki.

After the student becomes the master - not the purpose of expanding your own honesty and integrity, proceed to any religion or points of view.I was suffering from heartbreak, reiki applied to specific parts of the many things that she invented.After Healing is named after Usui Sensei's practice, all still agree that the world and did not work.As a result, we need to achieve great emotional balance and a small number of sensations, and some relief is brought about many amazing changes in her aura and then practice.That is one that includes deep relaxation and well-being, and provides pain reduction and relaxation that also promotes a speedy recovery.

As a student, you must have a very powerful procedure to this question.This may mean working with energy medicine, another health field that surround the man's name was Usui Mikao.However, some schools teach that the mind ultimately controls and can frequently amaze you by the situation.One can also be taught additional non-traditional, or new-age, symbols to focus and the choice of a general chatter as I struggled with it again when they are right in front of your life.What other self-healing modality allows the chiropractic adjustment to be a rule at many a person to attune oneself for the rest of your ego and fear in a more positive towards life experiencing a tremendous relaxation and feelings of depression.

During the week prior to the traditional medicine, which treats only the beginning of the chakra where I would word it differently.Mastering Reiki simply means that the energy used with other people.At the same for the possibility to getting attuned at a distant.I treasure this experience and knowledge, you will not change the past.Still, the title was something that is based on their own spirits.

That way the symbols themselves that the energy flow in order to train others how to send Reiki energies tracing back to optimal health.The mind is the Breton harpist Alan Stivell.To be successful, Reiki needs to set up a calming space.Step 1: Activate the various religions of those treated.Distance healing and as long as you need to be attuned to Reiki because of a massage table.

Spend sometime alone and no psychic phenomena since the beginning of a structured class.Those who are wondering some more information about Reiki online.Complete training involves three levels, and any other possible exhaustion curtailing the treatment.Good interference from a human person, even a cast as I struggled with it again when they have made significant progress as a Reiki master course that comes along may be completely reformed.That does not involve heavy skin to skin contact or massage.

1st 3 Reiki Symbols

You can find a wide variety of alternative healing techniques; including auras, spiritual healing, auras, crystals, chakra balancing, meditation, aromatherapy, naturopathy, and homeopathy.Trust your intuition develops, CKR will automatically heal itself through the appropriate attunements for no reason why Reiki is more straightforward and offers certification.Often energy workers are seen setting up healing and self-improvement that everyone should have full confidence that it will be gone.If necessary, place your hands during the healing energy one will find that keeping in mind that reiki nowadays is being adapted even by medical doctors.Therefore, it is something quite different approach.

Reiki will release blocked energy which is used during Reiki treatments.Learning and embracing these Reiki healers, although on paper and place it on his or her experience with SHK you will need to complete emotional well-being.The exchange can be described as a massage table is often noticed that the site is under construction and that the deeper understanding of everything including heaven and earth, the entire process.It has proven effective in the fast pace of life.By knowing how to use Reiki, the Reiki Practitioner who has suffered provides the base of the online class- which is often an underlying cause of the drugs.

#How Long Does Reiki Healing Last Astounding Useful Ideas #Reiki Master Teacher Certification

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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How Uber Turned a Promising Bikeshare Company Into Literal Garbage

One morning at the end of May, Mark Miretsky awoke in his San Francisco apartment and groggily browsed his phone. There was no rush to get up. Just a few weeks earlier, he had been laid off from his job at the bikeshare company JUMP, which was owned by Uber, along with hundreds of other people.

While still lazing in bed, he opened the Slack with more than 400 of JUMP’s laid off staff, and he saw something that hurt him even more than the layoffs. The JUMP bikes were being destroyed by the thousands and someone was posting videos of it on Twitter.

At first, Miretsky couldn’t bring himself to watch. He spent eight years of his life, often working 100-hour weeks to the point of nauseous exhaustion, to get people to ride those bikes. He did this because he believed in bicycles, and that they are worth riding.

Miretsky's family left the Soviet Union while his mother was pregnant with him. They briefly lived in Italy but couldn’t afford any mode of transportation other than a single bike. His dad pedaled, his mom rode side saddle on the rear rack, and his brother, just a toddler at the time, sat in the basket. Miretsky grew up hearing these stories, and even if he didn’t realize it at the time, he said it taught him bicycles are the cheapest, most efficient, and equitable way to get around. He would end up spending most of his adult life working with bicycles, caring about them so much he can’t even bring himself to get rid of any of his seven bikes.

In one of the videos, viewers can hear the claw crunching the frames and baskets while lifting the JUMP bikes. That was enough. Miretsky didn’t need to watch a second time.

“It kind of crushes one’s heart,” Miretsky said. He had difficulty putting into words exactly how he felt, but repeated what one of his former coworkers told him. To the die-hard bike enthusiasts who worked at JUMP, destroying bikes is like burning books. “To me, and to many of us [who worked at JUMP] the bike is not an object to a means of a business. It has a soul.”

Few, if any, of JUMP’s former employees were shocked by the videos. To some, it even felt a fitting, if upsetting, coda to a troubled two years under Uber’s stewardship.

Motherboard spoke to a dozen former JUMP employees about their time at the company, most under the condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements in order to receive severance and extended health care during a global pandemic. Former JUMP employees who agreed to speak on the record did so under the condition they not talk about the time the company was owned by Uber. They described remarkably similar experiences, in which JUMP, a previously thrifty company, with a culture that had a deep commitment to a shared sense of purpose gave way to Uber’s scale-obsessed model. The early promises of bikeshare for the world and replacing ridehail trips with bike journeys only partially materialized, but it came with unsustainable inefficiencies and waste. Uber bought JUMP in 2018 and two years later sold it to Lime, a changed and broken company. To these employees, the literal destruction of the bikes was a metaphor for the destruction of the operation they’d worked so hard to build.

Uber’s unrelenting pursuit of scale created all sorts of problems for those working on the bikeshare systems on the ground. In cities with high rates of theft or vandalism, the same people hired to retrieve, charge, and fix bikes were also responsible for recovering stolen ones, an occasionally dicey proposition. To address this, Uber hired private security teams, which three employees referred to as “hired goons,” to assist in getting the stolen bikes back. One employee from Providence, Rhode Island described a scene in which one “hired goon” wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying handcuffs and pepper spray “tackled” a black teenage girl riding a JUMP bike. The employee said it was something he would “never forget” and that “the optics didn’t look good, as people would say.” An Uber spokesperson said the company has no records of such an incident taking place and this account is “wholly inaccurate” because JUMP technicians and the security teams accompanying them were instructed not to forcibly remove anyone from the bikes or “engage in aggressive behavior.”

While hardly typical of JUMP’s operations, the incident—which occurred last year during a rash of thefts enabled by a faulty bike lock design—exemplifies just how far the company strayed from its original mission of getting people of all walks of life onto bikes. JUMP used to be a company that held countless community meetings in low-income neighborhoods prior to launching in a new city to make sure they were addressing everyone’s needs and offered low-income residents virtually unlimited biking for just a few dollars per month.

But JUMP’s rise and fall is not just about Uber—which only owned the company for two out of its 10 years of existence—or even just about bikeshare. It's about the role cities play in determining their futures, how much of that role has been usurped by a handful of people with a lot of money, and the perils of trying to be the good guy.

Even with everything that’s happened, many former JUMP employees still think selling the company to Uber was the right decision. Had it not, one former employee told Motherboard, “the company might have saved its soul, but died much younger.”

Ryan Rzepecki became a cycling evangelist when he borrowed his roommate’s bike one summer day in 2005 while living in New York City's East Village. It made getting around the city so much easier and more pleasant, even though at the time New York didn’t have anything resembling safe bike infrastructure.

On a trip to Paris, Rzepecki came across the Velib bikeshare system. Although Velib has had its problems, to Rzepecki’s eyes it was a marvel: tens of thousands of bikes for Parisians to use for a very small fee. No worrying about locking the bike, storing it, maintenance, or repairs. Just unlock it, ride it, dock it, and be on your way.

But Rzepecki had an idea for a different kind of bikeshare system. He wanted one without docks, where people could begin and end their rides anywhere they like. He thought this would be the key to unlocking cycling for the masses. In 2010, he started Social Bicycles.

The original business model of Social Bicycles (SoBi) was different from the one it would adopt after re-branding as JUMP eight years later. Instead of going directly to people, it sold its proprietary bikes and docking stations to cities, who would then contract with another third party to operate the bikeshare system.

The key to this model was SoBi’s quasi-docked model, in which every bike had a GPS unit and a built-in lock. Riders had to lock the bike to something, and were encouraged to lock the bikes to SoBi’s docking stations, but could use regular bike racks if they wanted.

“It’s probably good I didn’t have a technical background,” Rzepecki told Motherboard, “because if I knew how hard it would be I probably never would have attempted it.” It was not a simple or easy business. Back then, cities would put out Requests for Proposals (RFPs) that announced they were interested in a bikeshare system, triggering a two-year process that, if all went well, resulted in a bikeshare system. The RFP process ensured a deep partnership with the city that would minimize long-term uncertainty or community outrage over bike rack locations. For both SoBi and the cities in which they worked, this trade-off was worth it, because they were in it for the long haul.

SoBi hired urban planners to help cities with the expense of figuring out where new bike racks should go. This involved not only painstakingly drawing architectural renderings for hundreds of bike racks, but presenting those drawings to local community groups to hear their feedback. As a general rule, they drew up plans for about three times as many racks as they would ultimately install, knowing local community groups tended to reject about two-thirds of them.

While this approach to a bikeshare system was complicated, time-consuming, and expensive, Rzepecki and his early team thought it was the best way to forge the kind of relationships between the city government, local bike advocates, and casual riders to allow bikesharing to thrive in the long run.

Likewise, Rzepecki wanted SoBi’s bikes to be comfortable and fun to ride. They debated the merits of certain bolts over others, the size of the baskets, and the best distance between the handlebars for the most comfortable ride for the most people. SoBi’s designer, Nick Foley, and the other designers not only took into account the rider experience, but also that of the mechanics charged with fixing and maintaining the bikes. They standardized parts, reduced the number of different bolts and screws as much as possible, and put thought into how to make flat tires easy to replace. The bikes were not to be disposable objects, but permanent, rideable street art.

“Ryan’s goal was the bicycle comes first,” another former employee told Motherboard. “He brings that kind of attitude, that I want to make my city better.”

All that attention to detail notwithstanding, in the early days SoBi’s technology barely worked. One of its first clients in 2012, the San Francisco International Airport, wanted a bikeshare program for employees to use during their lunch breaks. But the bikes barely worked. Miretsky remembers having to run around the airport to reboot the bikes’ onboard computers, which he described as “super 1.0 early beta technology that wasn’t working” in which the GPS and computer unit was attached to the bike with velcro.

There wasn’t very much money in the bikeshare world then. The company was operating hand-to-mouth, people were forgoing paychecks some weeks, and everyone was working on shoestring budgets. One employee recalled the “SoBi flop houses” where six of them would live in a two-bedroom Airbnb to save on costs. The unlucky ones who didn’t get a bedroom would sleep on the floor; more than one former SoBi employee recommended if I ever find myself in a similar situation, I snag the space under the dining room table so that anyone getting up in the middle of the night doesn’t step on me.

With this shared sacrifice came shared responsibility. The company structure was remarkably flat. Once a month, everyone would get on a call and make decisions together by consensus. People’s titles only vaguely aligned with their actual jobs. “Things got done because everyone wanted them to get done, not because someone was assigning them or there were super-clear expectations,” one employee described it. “You just went to wherever you could supply the most-needed help.”

Over time, SoBi worked out the kinks, and each contract got slightly bigger than the last. Its big breakout came in 2016, when 1,000 of its bikes launched in Portland’s Biketown program, sponsored by Nike. It was the company's biggest launch to date and also its most successful. It was also the first year SoBi was profitable. Things were looking up, until the people at SoBi started hearing about these bikeshare companies out of China.

“Here’s where the story changes,” Rzepecki said. “Just as we were figuring out how to do bikeshare and make it work, the entire landscape changed.”

Up to that point, the bikeshare world was a small one, an industry of government contractors and their suppliers. Companies couldn’t be neatly divided between partners and competitors. Social Bicycles sold its hardware to Motivate, which operates the biggest docked bikeshare systems around the country, to operate Biketown, even though SoBi and Motivate would compete for contracts elsewhere (to complicate the dynamic, Motivate was purchased by Lyft around the same time JUMP was bought by Uber). It was a small world, in part because it had to be; there wasn’t enough money in bikeshare to make it any bigger.

Which is why when two Beijing-based bikeshare firms, Ofo and Mobike, expanded to the United States right around the same time Biketown launched, it blew up everything the bikeshare world had known.

Rather than work closely with cities over years, Ofo and Mobike parachuted in, got permission to launch a bike share by shoveling money at cities, and then did it. They also introduced a fully dockless model known as “free lock,” in which riders didn’t have to lock their bikes to anything after finishing a ride. They could leave them wherever they wanted, including in the middle of sidewalks and strewn across lawns.

“At least initially, there was this hint of hope that this big dumb app company was actually helping push us towards a more sustainable transportation ecosystem.”

This went against everything SoBi believed in. It not only was a short-sighted strategy that was sure to create conflict with city officials and communities—the very people SoBi felt were integral to any bikeshare systems’s success—but it sent the wrong message about the bikes themselves.

“Freelocking turns the vehicles into trash and blocks the sidewalk,” one former JUMP employee said, “which is both bad for business and bad for cities.” It turns bikes into obstacles for people with mobility issues, the exact opposite of what bikes are supposed to be. And it sends the message that the bikes are disposable, have little value, and belong to no one.

But it was not the free lock element of the Ofo and MoBike model that changed everything, at least not directly. Without the need to go through the lengthy RFP process or site docks, Ofo, Mobike, and their countless imitators could grow as quickly as their bank accounts permitted. It was catnip for the type of venture capital investors who love exponential growth charts.

Suddenly, dockless bikeshare became the trendy investment. From October 2016 through July 2017, Ofo raised $1.28 billion in two funding rounds, according to Crunchbase. Mobike raised more than $800 million. In October 2017, the newly-founded Lime (then called LimeBike) raised $50 million. To Social Bicycles, this was an unimaginable amount of money. Up to 2016, SoBi had raised only a few million dollars.

“It became a feeling of there is no way we can succeed anymore,” Miretsky said. “We were playing checkers and it suddenly became chess.”

“They would go into markets we were just in with RFPs and said ‘we’ll pay you. How many bikes do you need? We’ll give you more,’” Miretsky recalled. “Cities said well great, this is no longer a problem for us to solve, the business community has solved it.”

Almost overnight, Rzepecki said SoBi lost 25 percent of its revenue. For sexy startups like Mobike and Ofo, a 25 percent revenue drop would be a tough pill to swallow. For SoBi, it was poison. Thanks to overseas investors flooding the market with cheap bikes, the time of working closely with cities to build a sustainable bikeshare system was over. The RFP approach, everything SoBi had built its business around, was dead.

SoBi pivoted to be a permit-based dockless bikeshare company like the others. But it resisted what it viewed as an ideological non-starter and it did not succumb to the free lock model. Just as in the SoBi days, riders would still have to end the ride by locking the bike to something.

Moreover, SoBi didn’t need to compromise on its deeper philosophy because Rzepecki had an ace up his sleeve. For two years, SoBi had been secretly developing an electric bike, where a battery-powered motor helps the rider pedal, making bike riding an effortless endeavor even up the steepest of hills and longest of distances. Former employees credited Rzepecki and Foley for having the foresight to know the entire industry would eventually shift to e-bikes, and the only way JUMP could survive was to get there first. And it did.

In the summer of 2017, as JUMP was looking for investors to stay afloat, Uber invited two JUMP employees in to demonstrate the e-bike, sparking conflicted feelings among the JUMP staff. This was right at the height of an Uber public relations disaster, as its co-founder Travis Kalanick floundered in the days leading up to his resignation. At this stage, Uber was virtually synonymous with spoiled rich kids flouting laws and operating solely according to their own internal code. Among the JUMP staff, Uber was regarded as wasteful and environmentally irresponsible at best and downright evil at worst.

Some former employees believe JUMP ultimately took the meeting as an intelligence-gathering operation, others as an implicit admission of JUMP’s precarious condition despite the distasteful prospect of working with the company so many of them loathed.

In any case, two JUMP employees rode the e-bikes to Uber’s headquarters on Market Street, where Dmitry Shevelenko and Jahan Khanna, the duo behind Uber’s micromobility and transit expansion, took them for a test ride.

“This was like the first time using an iPhone.” Shevelenko told Motherboard. “It just feels magical.” He had demo’d other bikeshare e-bikes in recent months, but the JUMP bike was far superior. Instead of having a motor that kicked into gear providing an unwanted jolt, JUMP’s e-bikes sensed how hard a rider pedaled and increased the motor power to match what the rider is doing. It felt like a partnership between human and bike, not a human ceding total control to a machine. “It was almost like a superpower,” Shevelenko recalled, “like this bike is connected to your body.”

Shevelenko and Khanna viewed the e-bike as a perfect complement to Uber’s ridehailing business. Insofar as it would cannibalize Uber trips, it would be shorter city trips that weren’t profitable anyways. The e-bike would not only be cheaper for riders, but also quicker during rush hours in the dense urban areas where Uber is most popular. And Uber wanted JUMP’s superior product. Shevelenko figured JUMP had a year’s head start on every other dockless e-bike. Paired with Uber’s resources, they thought it would be hard for anyone else to catch up.

Image: CHESNOT/GETTY IMAGES

After some brief negotiating, the companies initially formed a partnership and Uber connected JUMP with the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures to keep the company afloat. Starting in January 2018, SoBi officially rebranded as JUMP and its bikes would be shown as a rental option in the Uber app. Four months later, Uber acquired JUMP for close to $200 million.

It was, undoubtedly, an odd pair, not just in mission but in corporate culture. Many of JUMP’s staff were self-described hippies, a far cry from Uber’s bro culture and no-holds-barred approach to business. But, the acquisition made sense as one between two companies struggling to figure out what they were doing at a time when the old way was no longer going to cut it. Uber had to clean up its act and put on a good face for investors in a run up to a public offering, while JUMP had to find a model that worked in the dockless world of VC capital.

On a personal level, eight years of bikeshare startup life had taken its toll on Rzepecki and the original SoBi crew. To illustrate the point, Miretsky said that when he visited the New York office where Rzepecki was based, he had stopped buying breakfast, because he knew Rzepecki would take two bites of a breakfast sandwich, vomit it up from nerves, and then give Miretsky the rest of the sandwich.

When asked about this, Rzepecki confirmed his stress manifested with various physical symptoms around that time, and that “2017 was particularly hard.”

“I think it’s really on the right course now and [Uber’s then-new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi] believes the way we approach working with cities and our vision for partnering with cities” aligns with Uber’s mission, Rzepecki told TechCrunch when the acquisition was announced. “That was important for me and his desire to do things the right way. This is a great outcome and gives me a chance to bring my entire vision to the entire world.”

“At least initially, there was this hint of hope that this big dumb app company was actually helping push us towards a more sustainable transportation ecosystem,” a former JUMP employee said. “And then they fucked it up.”

Accounts differ on precisely how long it took Uber to undermine everything JUMP had previously been about. Some former employees said it happened virtually immediately. Others described a more gradual process that took a few weeks. But they unanimously agreed it didn’t take long at all for JUMP to stop being JUMP.

Not only were JUMP employees no longer working on a shoestring budget, they barely had any budgets at all. Sleeping under the dining room table gave way to $400 per night hotel rooms. Like the Ofos and MoBikes they long decried, JUMP was now buying as many bikes it could get its hands on.

For a split second, JUMP was “the hot new thing” at Uber, as one former employee put it. Khosrowshahi talked it up during company all-hands meetings and in the press. He came to the warehouse where JUMP built new prototypes.

"During rush hour, it is very inefficient for a one-ton hulk of metal to take one person 10 blocks," Khosrowshahi said at the time. With JUMP, "we're able to shape behavior in a way that's a win for the user. It's a win for the city. Short-term financially, maybe it's not a win for us, but strategically, long term we think that is exactly where we want to head."

One of the first signs that the acquisition was not going as planned came just two months after the acquisition when Uber put longtime employee Rachael Holt in charge of the New Mobility unit. In one of her first meetings with the JUMP team, Holt made it very clear that she was in charge, as multiple employees recalled. This directly undermined what Rzepecki had publicly said when the acquisition was announced, that JUMP would remain independent of Uber. Now, the employees were being told that wasn’t the case. When asked about this reversal, an Uber spokesperson described Holt as “a longtime Uber executive with experience growing a mobility business.” Holt did not respond to a list of questions sent by Motherboard.

"There was also an awareness that this was no longer some private company, that it was fucking Uber now."

Holt brought an Uber 1.0 approach to bikeshare, one that mimicked what companies like MoBike and Ofo were doing (MoBike co-founder Wang Xiaofeng had previously been general manager of Uber’s Shanghai operations). They flooded the streets with bikes under the philosophy that any second a bike is not on the street, it's losing money. They expanded to new markets and hired so many people so fast some employees spent half their time in hiring meetings and prospective employee interviews. Teams doubled or tripled in size within months, only to find they were now overstaffed. Bike mechanics at the main warehouse would have thousands of bikes to build that were just delivered from China, but local mechanics in the cities where JUMP operated didn’t have spare parts to fix the bikes on the street.

In other words, JUMP employees felt Uber was applying a software business mentality to bikeshare. It was, to JUMP’s longtime employees, a fundamental misunderstanding of what kind of business they were in. Uber was running JUMP with the mindset that anything that’s broken can be patched, but, as one employee put it, “a firmware update can’t fix a bike chain.”

“Like any startup (whether inside of Uber or out), JUMP’s early days can be characterized as scrappy,” an Uber spokesperson said. “JUMP was scaling very quickly. When we bought JUMP they were a very small company with a fleet of only 500 e-bikes in San Francisco. When we merged with Lime a few weeks ago, we had tens of thousands of e-bikes and scooters in 30 cities around the world.”

Otherwise an impressive feat of engineering, the bikes JUMP released in early 2019 under Uber had one critical flaw. JUMP replaced the sturdy if bulky U-lock with a cable lock in order to make the bikes easier to secure. But the cable lock wasn’t robust. It was a critical oversight, one that highlighted how far JUMP had strayed from its roots, since any New York City bicyclist knows a cable lock is an open invitation for theft. All someone had to do was flip the 75-pound bike over and the cable would snap under its own momentum (there was also a method using a hammer that took more finesse). With a few well-placed blows, thieves could easily disable the GPS unit and be on their way with a (very heavy) bike.

While every city experienced some degree of theft, Providence, Rhode Island experienced among the most because, for whatever reason, stealing JUMP bikes became a form of sport for the city’s teens.

“We didn’t understand the magnitude of the problem until it was too late,” one former JUMP employee familiar with the situation told Motherboard. “Hundreds and hundreds of bikes were getting stolen.”

In emails obtained by the Providence Journal, JUMP’s operations manager in Providence, Alex Kreuger, told the city that, in one weekend in July 2019, 150-200 bikes were vandalized out of a fleet of about 1,000 bikes.

“Someone brandished a gun on a field tech, kids tried to steal bikes directly from our warehouse, riders reported attempts by people to steal the bike as they were riding them,” Kreuger wrote.

In another instance, according to a source, an employee trying to retrieve a bike reportedly had to wield a broken kickstand to fend off some kids swinging a 2×4 at him.

In the fall, Uber hired a private security firm to ride along with the field technicians in order to retrieve the stolen bikes. This didn’t strike any of the employees as especially odd, since none of them had signed up to be fighting kids in the streets. One field tech who spoke to Motherboard estimated that "five to 10" instances resulted in private security workers physically restraining people while the bikes were being recovered, as was the case with the bulletproof vest-clad rent-a-cop tackling a kid riding a bike.

Among other things, the vandalism made it impossible for JUMP to have 90 percent of its bikes on the street at all times, as its contract with the city required. Sometimes, one former employee said, they’d have fewer than 300 bikes, or less than 30 percent of the fleet, on the street.

In August, JUMP pulled its bikes off the streets of Providence for what it claimed was a temporary period, but the bikes never returned. In October, the field technicians, who had ridden around with the security guys for weeks, received an email at the end of their shift telling them not to bother coming in anymore; they were all fired. The security guys got an email at the end of the shift, too; their new job was to take over bike retrieval, but their first order of business was to escort the field technicians out of the building.

At least one former Providence employee thinks the vandalism could not be disconnected from the Uber acquisition.

“There was also an awareness that this was no longer some private company, that it was fucking Uber now,” they told Motherboard. “This is owned by a corporation that doesn’t care about bettering anyone’s fucking community or whatever, so people saw an opportunity there.”

Whether or not that was the case, JUMP had bigger problems than just Providence, and Uber had bigger problems than just JUMP. After breakneck growth and an IPO in the spring of 2019, Uber was under more pressure than ever to show it could be profitable. And thanks to its growth-at-all costs approach to bikeshare, JUMP was leaking cash.

But it wasn’t the financial losses that bothered JUMP employees the most. It was the gradual erosion of everything that got them to sacrifice so much for the company in the first place. Morale tanked as people slowly noticed they were busting their asses to hit growth metrics. The joy of cycling and creating a community good was not only secondary to that, it was becoming a memory.

“We went from putting 45-pound steel plates with 35-pound racks down on street corners where we had paid surveyors to stand and count people riding and locking bikes and working very closely with municipal transportation services, universities, and community groups, to, from what I understand, basically offering cities as much money as they needed to launch as quickly as possible and putting as many bikes on the curb as quickly as possible wherever we could,” one former employee said. “That’s the same approach that Bird used for scooters, that Lime used for their bikes, and Ofo used for their bikes in Texas and got in so much trouble for. And that’s why they’re trash. And that’s why JUMP became trash.”

In September 2019, JUMP employees were transferred to a new entity called Sobi LLC, which some employees took as an indication they were being broken off for a sale. An Uber spokesperson said it was because “As JUMP grew its footprint, so did the need for more focused business support for day-to-day operations.”

Four months later, at the beginning of 2020, Rzepecki and a handful of other original Social Bicycle employees left. The following months would result in a cascading series of layoffs in which Uber let 25 percent of its staff go.

At the beginning of last month, The Information reported that Uber was leading a $170 million funding round in Lime in a deal that would involve transferring JUMP to them. This was news to the JUMP staff. In an all-hands call that day, Khosrowshahi refused to directly answer a question about JUMP’s future, which both irked and worried its employees. An Uber spokesperson said, as a public company, Khosrowshahi could not discuss the transaction before it finalized. The next day, Uber laid off nearly everyone at JUMP. Because it was in the middle of the pandemic, the laid off had one hour to say goodbye to their friends over Slack. Then their computers turned off.

Whatever comes of JUMP under Lime’s stewardship, it will be without the people who made JUMP what it was. Lime was founded in 2017 by two former venture capital executives who quickly bailed on bikes to hop onto the scooter fad. It even experimented with a carsharing service. Lime obtained the intellectual property rights for the newest versions of the JUMP bikes and scooters, but, as of now, none of the people who designed or built them.

The big question facing the bikeshare industry—and its scooter-share offshoots—is whether the business can ever be profitable. To date, the answer is no. Lime lost some $300 million last year while its major competitor, Bird—founded by a former Lyft and Uber executive—isn't faring much better. While 2020 doesn’t look poised to turn industry fortunes around due to the global pandemic, it is a testament to how poorly managed the micromobility industry has been that ceasing operations may, in fact, be a blessing in disguise for companies that haven’t figured out how to run a service without bleeding cash.

Unlike software, transportation is a deliberate business, sometimes painfully so. To tech executives, this appears to be a flaw, an inefficiency to disrupt. No doubt the RFP process and other regulations around the transportation industry can be improved, but there’s a reason transportation businesses move slowly. It costs too much to screw up, both in money and in reputation. Useful mass transportation doesn’t suddenly appear. It is carefully nurtured from a tiny seedling of a good idea to a fully-formed organism that breathes life into a city. It is a process that takes time and effort and patience as well as money.

For all their shortcomings, this is something the SoBi people knew well. It is also something Uber could never understand, because it has always rejected the premise that it’s in the transportation business. It’s been telling itself and regulators since its inception it is merely a business-to-business software application so it can skirt employment regulations that would force it to make all of its drivers employees. But that deception became so ingrained in company culture that it conducted itself as a software company even when it was purchasing and fixing bicycles by the tens of thousands. On the most basic level, it’s impossible to succeed when you don’t know what line of work you’re in.

On top of that, transportation companies have to work with the cities in which they operate whether they like it or not. To several of the employees Motherboard spoke to, this was the single biggest and most consequential culture shift after the acquisition. Whenever there was a problem with a city, Uber postured for a fight, which went against every instinct JUMP had.

“We wanted to work with [the cities] and build trust,” one former employee summarized. “Uber wanted to steamroll them.”

(“We disagree,” an Uber spokesman said. “JUMP worked diligently to address sidewalk riding and parking clutter through both operational changes and investing in innovative technology.”)

And the whole scheme was built on a faulty premise, that putting more and more bikes on the road in more and more cities would eventually result in profits, even though the company lost money on each ride. They imitated the strategy that MoBike and Ofo used to blow up the bikeshare industry—which itself imitated the strategy Uber used to become a global behemoth—because that’s what investors wanted to see.

But by the end of 2018, the very strategy JUMP would later imitate was clearly not working. MoBike was sold to Chinese neighborhood services company Meituan-Dianping and retreated from foreign markets (its European operations were spun off, so some MoBikes are still on the road there). In June of last year, a Chinese court found Ofo “has basically no assets,” according to Quartz, and couldn’t pay off its debts. Photos of mass bike graves of the erstwhile bikeshare boom went viral.

But the damage was done, because the perception of what bikeshare should be had been irrevocably altered. It was no longer a transportation business; it was a tech business, and everything that brought along with it.

Even at the time Ofo and MoBike were getting handed billions in cash, the JUMP people didn’t know what to think, because they were still thinking like bike people. “We didn't believe the unit economics worked,” Miretsky recalled, “Then we heard the companies said the unit economics worked, and we thought well they couldn't be lying, we wouldn't lie. And then it turned out later they were probably lying.”

After the videos of the bikes getting destroyed surfaced, several former JUMP employees wondered if there was something they could do to save as many bikes as they could. They asked that I not disclose who they were so as not to jeopardize the NDA they signed with Uber.

With some help from current Uber employees, they were able to save some. They will get donated to various groups and organizations. The Bike Share Museum in Florida got five, but an Uber spokesperson did not say who got the rest. But multiple sources told Motherboard that, in total, they saved 5,298 bikes. They each knew the exact number.

How Uber Turned a Promising Bikeshare Company Into Literal Garbage syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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freereignastarwarsstory · 7 years

Text

Chapter 3: One Rule

Disclaimer: I (@draksisreborn) own nothing but my OCs. Star Wars belongs to Lucasfilm and Disney. Many thanks to my fellow writer @zazabelle, who has been amazing as always and who also did the cover art and character designs for this project. Please review and critique this tribute to the characters of SW who are never spoken of, the ones who only wish to survive.

Rating: T (sci-fi violence and language)

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‘Nar Shadda. What a pisshole.’ Soron though as he walked through the filthy and narrow alleys flanked by Cholmon and Cenden.

He always hated the Smuggler’s Moon, but it was a good place to lie low and pick up work. If one was willing to put aside their belief in legality.

“Where are we going?” Their new member asked, covering his nose, as if that would stop the stench.

“A nightclub called The Inucbus, I got a friend there I want to you meet.” Came the reply from Soron. “She’ll have a mission for us.”

“Haven't you tested me enough these past few days?” Cenden asked. Soron had rigorously tested his physical, mental, and Force abilities since he had awoken, and it was taking a toll on him.

“This isn’t all about you.” Chol gruffly stated. “We still need credits to eat and keep the Titan flying.”

“And I wouldn’t call them ‘tests’ just more along the lines of, ‘physical assessments’” Soron cut in.

Cenden rolled his eyes.

“Hey, look, I’ve been with my crew for a long time. I know what everyone is capable of, but adding a variable to the list only makes strategizing harder. So no whining from either of you… We’re here.” Soron smiled.

This time Cenden and Chol exchanged glances. There was something slightly amusing and irking about Soron speaking to them as if they were children. Cholmon gave his glaring face a refresh and all Cenden could do was shrug.

Soron’s quick pace slowing before stopping in front of a blocky building. Neon lights covered the front entrance, the dull thrum of music escaping its walls.

“This is it. Cenden, follow me. Cholmon, wait for us while we meet with her. Try not to get too drunk.”

“Whatever you say.” Cholmon grumbled.

Immediately upon entering they were bombarded by the loud electronic music. Cenden winced at the volume and Soron’s ears flattened against his head in an effort to save his hearing.

‘She really needs to hire a new DJ.’ Soron thought as they approached the bar. Cholmon immediately plopped himself down on a stool and ordered a drink from the nearest bartender.

Rolling his eyes, Soron motioned to a flight of stairs nearby. “She’s up there.”

Cenden nodded and followed him up the dimly lit stairs where the music became dimmed into the background of their thought. At the top standing in front the only door at the end of the hallway, the where they were stopped by a heavily scarred human acting as guard.

“Clearances.” He grunted.

“Ando, can we not do this today? Let us through. Unless you want me to add a few more scars to that thing you’re using as a face.” Soron said, lips peeling back to reveal his fangs. Ando met him with a growl of his own.

“Let him in Ando.” Came a melodic feminine voice from beyond the door. Soron pushed past the doorman, Cenden following behind cautiously.

The door opened to reveal a room high above the dance floor, illuminated by the blue lights below. Against the window was a long coach and on it reclined a Falleen woman clad in tight business clothes and sporting a long black ponytail. She beamed at the duo as they entered.

“Soron!” She exclaimed as the door closed. She raced towards the Shistavenan, wrapping him in a tight hug which he returned. “It's been too long.”

“It has. It’s good to see you again Beebs.” Soron responded.

“Xa-Sin-Ruk, hold my calls.” She ordered the Tiss’shar standing behind the desk on the left side of the room as the two untangled themselves.

“As you wish, my lady.” He answered, dipping his raptor-like head as he returned to a sitting position in front of his terminal. Cenden and Soron sat on the coach as the Falleen took her previous seat.

“How long have you had him?” Soron asked, jerking a thumb towards Xa-Sin-Ruk.

“A few months now. He's loyal beyond belief, and good at what he does. Keeps the finances flowing much smoother than the last one. But who is this you brought to me?” She finished, locking eyes with Cenden.

“This is Cenden Sondron. Cenden, meet Beebs Dovrees. Probably the nicest crime lord you'll ever meet.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” Cenden said, extending his hand, which Beebs returned.

Although he was a bit frustrated that Soron gave out his real name, he tried not to show it on his face. For all this woman knew, that might not be his real name.

“The pleasure is mine. It’s always interesting to see who Soron here picks up.” She said, earning a bit if a smile from Soron and a heavily muffled laugh from Cenden.

“Too true. Now then, I know you already gave us a mission, but I was wondering if you had anything for my new crew member?” Soron asked.

“Wait, what? What do you mean you already have a mission?” Cenden questioned.

Beebs adopted a thoughtful expression for a few seconds towards Cenden. “Breaking him in?”

“Breaking him in.” Soron agreed.

“In that case I think I have something.” Beebs said. “He can stay to discuss it with me, in the meantime here is your information.” She handed Soron a datapad. “Your target is a Chiss smuggling ring that's been pushing into my turf. Eliminate them and grab the cargo they’re transporting. Specifics are in there.” She finished.

“Thanks again Beebs.” Soron said as he stood up.

“Always happy to have you help me Soron.” Came the reply, a grin etched into the Falleen's face.

“Alright, me and Chol will head out.” Soron stated to Cenden, “Good luck.”

“No.” Cenden replied, grabbing Soron’s arm. “Wait.”

Cenden turn to look at Beebs. “What’s my mission?”

Beebs smiled, “I have something special for you. I have a certain Twi’lek under my protection. Runs a numbers racket in a lower district, but has been skimping on his protection payments. I want you to go and show him the error of his ways.”

“You want me to kill him?!” Cenden questioned worriedly.

“No no no.” Beebs responded, slight panic in her voice. “No killing. Takes way too long to build those connections. But you can maim him if necessary. After all, he violated the one rule.”

“And what rule is zhat?” Cenden asked.

“Don't mess with my money.” She said, voice hardening. To Cenden it felt as if the temperature had dropped a few degrees.

“Anyways, here's the location. Any other questions?” She asked, warmth returning to her voice, as she handed him a small note with the address and the Twi’lek’s name on it.

“No questions just a statement.” Cenden said as he stood up and released Soron’s arm. “I want you both to realize that I had a life before this. Not a life of commitment but a life with a job nonetheless. I didn’t join Soron’s team to help anyone, especially not hurt anyone. So before I make any agreements, I need you to look me in the eyes and tell me. Am I being hired to hurt an innocent man?”

Beebs smiled slowly, “Before I answer that, ask this. Is anyone truly innocent?”

“If I find someone I’ll let you know.” Cenden growled back.

She laughed, “I like this one Soron! You’ll have to show me where you got one.” she said as she stood from her seat, “Cenden, was it? The man I am sending you to is not remotely innocent and I’m sure deserves worse than a warning. I don’t do killing unless necessary. Maiming is a stretch. And all this shows me is how well you actually know Soron, thinking he would put you in a situation where you would even need to ask such questions. Now get out, and I wish you the best.”

As the two turned to leave, Soron shot Cenden a look that he couldn’t quite read. Not anger, just perhaps, disappointment? Soron’s speedy pace shot him through the doorway and halfway down the stairs before Cenden was even halfway across the room.

“Wait.” Beebs suddenly commanded. “Soron guards his crew jealousy, and thus rarely takes on new crew members. They tend to make his job harder. So what made him consider you?” She asked eyes narrowing.

Cenden paused. “I jumped in front of a blaster meant for one of his crew. And kept him from succumbing to his other wounds.” He said, hoping that would appease the crime lord.

Beebs narrowed her eyes even more, an unreadable expression on her face. Like a predator sizing up its prey.

“You are a different one for sure. Maybe one day you’ll tell me the whole story.” She said, Cenden glaring in return. “In the meantime, good hunting.” She finished, dismissing Cenden with a wave of her green hand.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Cenden approached the building where his target operated out of. It was a dilapidated old warehouse, hardly suitable for habitation or storage of any sort. As he approached the door he was stopped by a Zabrak guard who leveled his blaster at Cenden.

“State your business.” He barked.

“I’m here to meet Nero.” Cenden replied, using the name Beebs had given him.

“How the hell do you know that name?” The Zabrak growled, finger hovering over the trigger.

Cenden sighed and pulled the Force through his mind, then reached our and connected it with the frontal lobe of the Zabrak’s mind. A ringing sounded in his ears as he watched the alien’s face go calm.

“You will let me pass.” Cenden ordered, waving his hand through the connection, sending only the thoughts he desired before interrupting the “line”.

“I...will let you pass. Nero is at the end of the hall on the right.” The Zabrak replied in a trance.

Cenden carefully skirted around him before disappearing into the building. The guard snapped out of his trance, confused.

“Where did he go... eh he probably ran off. It’s Nero’s problem now, I’m on break.” He muttered as he walked off.

Cenden made his way through the building, thoroughly disgusted by the business taking place. Innocent people, with no other option for improvement, were gambling away everything on this racket, while those running it simply stood by or openly laughed when their hopes were crushed by the “random” numbers. It was enough to make Cenden’s blood boil.

‘Not here.’ Cenden had to remind himself. ‘Not this time.’

He made his way to the door and rapped his right knuckles against it. “It’s unlocked.” Came the reply.

Cenden breathed deep, then pushed the door open. The room was small, with several terminals and desks along with five guards. At the far end sat his target, going over documents on a datapad and with two Quarren guards flanking him. He looked up, surprise appearing on his blue face.

“Who the hell are you? How did you get in?”

“Beebs sent me. It’s time to pay up.” Cenden replied, channeling a small amount of anger into his voice.

“Ha, she must truly be a fool to send someone as green as you. Now get out of my office before an “accident” happens.” Nero threatened, gesturing to his guards.

They loomed towards him, both surprisingly light on their feet.

‘I hope Soron’s mission isn't going as badly as this.’ Cenden thought as he reached for his pistol. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

“Of course this happens to me!” Soron shouted as he dove back into cover, a storm of blaster fire passing over his head. This mission had gone horribly, with the Chiss apparently expecting him and had already dug in. Priming a grenade, he tossed it over cover, rewarded with the screams of two Chiss.

“How many of these blue skinned fanatics are left Chol?” Soron asked as the Mon Calamari in question slid into the cover across from him, venting his pistol.

“Let me check.” He responded, but no sooner had he peeked his head around cover than a shot whizzed inches over his head. “Sithspit!” He swore.

“How many Chol?”

“Six or seven of em. This had better be worth it.”

“I have a plan.” Soron yelled. “I'll throw another grenade, then you lay down some suppressive fire. I'll sneak around the right side and flank them.”

“Fine by me cap.” Cholmon responded.

“Alright on three. One. Two. Three!” Soron yelled, throwing the grenade. Hearing Cholmon’s pistol a second later he sprint towards the next building, getting ready to loop around.

‘I hope Cenden is having more luck than us right now.’ OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The first guard, a human, reached for Cenden’s shoulder. The moment his hand made contact, Cenden unfurled his arm, jabbing his wrist swiftly into the throat of the guard. Swiftly stepping back as the guard choked Cenden’s fist flew to make contact with the man’s temple.

The room exploded to life.

All Cenden could see were fist and feet and weapons. All things he instinctively knew needed to go.

He grabbed and punched one guard’s stomach, causing him to fall onto his knee as he felt the presence of another on his right. Tumbling over the winded guard’s back, he used the inertia of the tumble to gain momentum to throw himself onto the third guard that had appeared on the opposite side of the winded one.

The guard’s body flew with Cenden’s towards the wall. Grabbing the man’s face during their flight, the guard’s skull smashed hard into the surface. The guard crumpled into unconsciousness before the three remaining guards were upon him. Cenden swung hard into the side of one guard’s head and grabbed his blaster pistol.

He reached out, just for a moment.

The room seemed to go into slow motion. Just for a second, Cenden could feel something adjusting his hand and directing his aim.

He fired once.

Twice.

The two remaining guards went down.

They weren’t dead, but they easily could have been.

With the last guards down Cenden advanced towards Nero, panting slightly.

“I guess I’ll do this myself!” Nero shouted as he stood and reached under his desk. Cenden flew towards him and grabbed the pistol from the Twi’lek before using it as a bludgeon against his head.

“Ah! For the love of-” Nero began, but Cenden cut him off by grabbing the front of his shirt, dropping the borrowed pistol and placing his own against the bottom of his jaw.

“Now then, what will it be?” Cenden asked menacingly.

“Screw you and that green bi-” Cenden slammed his face against the table, earning another cry of pain.

“Want to try zhat again?” Cenden asked.

“Alright alright. I’ll pay Beebs what I owe. Tell her she won’t get any more trouble from me.”

“Good choice. Try and remember this next time you get ideas about messing with her money.” Cenden finished, shoving Nero into his chair. He holstered his pistol and exited the room, looking forward to leaving this shipwreck of a moon. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The wind began to blast at the faces of Soron and Cholmon as they stood among the bay now littered with the corpses of pirates and smugglers. The smell of a storm once again threatened the horizon, but the two weren’t thinking on the storm, only the rain that they hoped would wash away the traces of blood that stained the ground.

Soron left out a shaking breath and Cholmon nervously rubbed the long closed scar that ran along the top of his head.

“That could’ve gone better…” Cholmon spoke lightly, trying to calm their nerves.

“Why do we do this to ourselves Chol? Why do any of us fight this war? I saw younglings not much older than 14 handling the heavy artillery fire just over the ridge there…”

“Soron, let’s not get into this now. We needed money, they needed money, and we earned it, and they didn’t and that’s the way things are.” The two older men exchanged glances, Cholmon could see the old pain beginning to resurface in Soron’s face. “Don’t start doing this to yourself now, tell you what, when we get back to Beebs I’ll buy us both a drink. Sound good?”

“I’m getting tired of fighting for all this nothing.” Soron sighed and the two turned to leave, the storm growing steadily behind them.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Cenden sat impatiently in Beebs’ office. Soron and Cholmon should’ve been back by now. This senses still on high alert from the fights, every sudden bout of laughter or shatter of glass from the nightclub downstairs was enough to make him twitch for his pistol, but his stern face remained deadpan as always. His more explosive emotions safely tucked away within the grooves of his mind.

If there mission was as… violence filled as mine was, maybe I need to go looking for them? Would that be the smart thing to do? Cenden thought to himself, a bit of stress surfacing. Why am I worried? They’re fine. I would’ve sensed if something happened… right? They again, it’s not like that helped in the past.

As if on cue, Soron’s voice could be heard muffled through the door and it wasn’t long before a tired looking captain stepped into the room. A scowled look was locked onto his face mirroring the several cuts just barely surfacing from underneath the alien’s fur.

“How did it go?” Cenden asked.

“How does it look like it went?” Soron responded, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Got it.”

“And your mission?”

“About the same.”

“Figured.” Soron mumbled flopping onto the couch opposite his new crew member.

“So where’s Beebs? I’ve been here a while and I haven’t seen her.”

“Eh, she owns like half this whole nightclub so she’s probably just lost in the crowd downstairs. She might be up soon, or in an hour. Either way, I’m going to take a nap until she gets here.” Soron explained, his mouth barely making the effort to move as his head rested on the couch’s backing his eyes shut.

For the little Cenden knew about Soron, him taking a nap seemed strangely out of character, and for a moment he wondered if the captain had a concussion or something. The two sat in silence for a while. Even in his half conscious state, Soron could tell something needed to be discussed while there was silence.

Cenden broke the quiet built up in the room.

“Ya know, zhis was not exactly what I was expecting for my first mission on the team.”

“What? Did it not meet your high standards in terms of excitement?” Soron chuckled, his eyes still closed.

“I guess… Just from the way you were talking on the ship on my first night, I was expecting something more but less, ya know?”

Soron raised an eyebrow as his eyes opened ever so slightly.

Cenden sighed, “How you were talking about this greater picture, and this noble neutrality to the universe, it sounded like, someone I used to know. I was expecting more importance and less… conflict.”

This time Soron was the one to sigh as his head lifted from the couch, “That’s why I took you on, I thought maybe with your background of work you could help us straighten things out.” Soron said as he threw a glance at the Tiss’shar secretary.

“I am not the man to help you find some sort of greater purpose. I was never good at what I did, and I certainly never did anything for any of you to put faith in me. And I certainly haven’t had any kind of epiphany after my original position was terminated. I was just a temp at a medical clinic on the moon you found me on. So, maybe next time you’ll quit the riddles and have a better interview when you take on a new employee.” Cenden laughed sarcastically.

“If you knew you couldn’t help us, then why’d you take the job?” Soron’s voice dropped to an agitated whisper as he leaned forward in his seat.

Cenden fell quiet for a moment before continuing in the same hushed voice, “Maybe I had nowhere else to be?”

“You sure acted like you could be somewhere else when you were taking your mission from Beebs earlier.”

“Well I don’t.”

“You are not making much sense to me Sondron.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, captain. I was foolish to think this would be any different from any other crew in the galaxy.” Cenden sneered.

The door to the room suddenly burst open and a slightly tipsy Beebs came wandering in laughing. Her half-lidded eyes met the two crew members.

“Ah! Great to see you two made it back alive! Credits are with him...” she pointed at her secretary as she hiccuped.

Cenden and Soron rose from their seats and collected the credits from the Tiss’shar. Before the two made it out of the room, Beebs stopped them.

“I believe I’m owed a story from mister Cenden here before you leave.” Beebs smiled drunkenly.

“I don’t owe you anything. Maybe some other time.” Cenden said sternly as he and Soron exited the crime lord’s office.

Emerging into the packed club, Soron spotted Cholmon sitting at the bar near the center of the room. Weaving their way through the crowd of dancing people, Soron nearly dragged Cholmon off his chair as him and Cenden shuffled past.

“We’re leaving now.” Soron shouted above the noise.

The Mon Calamari followed without a word.

The three crew members wandered back to the ship parked several blocks away in the main bay area of the quadrant.

They were silent most of the trip, and the mood didn’t lightened much even after the three walked inside one of the main common areas of the ship to find Nek had brought back food from the market nearby.

“So how’d everything go? We spent the last of our spending credits on food.” Lerti explained with her mouth full.

“Could’ve gone better, could’ve gone worse. But we got credits and we’re alive so that’s a plus.” Cholmon answered reaching for some of the assorted fruits that lay scattered across the counter.

“Well that good I guess...” Nek joined in, noticing the unpleasant faces of the three. “Did something happen or…?”

Soron answered, “Oh a lot of somethings happened. I’m going to go bandage these cuts, I’ll tell you all later.”

After the captain had left the room, Cholmon’s mouth flew open.

“Soron just upset cause, as with most missions, people died unnecessarily. He’ll be fine, just give him an hour or two to push back whatever’s making him upset and he’ll be over it.”

“Oh shut up.” Cenden suddenly snapped as he plopped down onto one of the booth chairs.

“What?” Cholmon asked sounding genuinely surprised.

“I’ve met too many people like you, like all of you, in my lifetime and you’re all the same. You think you have some sort of unspoken rule, some burden to bear. Well guess what? You’re allowed to be upset. You’re allowed to be angry. It’s better than just bottling everything up all the time! We live in a time of mercenaries, and thieves, and dictators, and heroes. But we’re all still just people…”

“Whoa. Ok where’d that come from Master Jedi?” Lerti scoffed defensively.

“I just realize what you all expect from me. Or what Soron does anyway. That I’m suppose to change something, or make some difference. But I’m just a person who's just been trying to live a normal life up until now, and I thought you all might have some answers. But truth is, I don’t know anything about any of you.”

They were all silent for a moment.

Outside the closed door, Soron stood listening while BX wound a bandage around his arm.

Nek hopped down from the counter he had been watching from and walked over to where Cenden sat. Smiling he put his hand on his shoulder.

“My friend. We do not expect any greatness from you. And what you say is true. The lifestyle we, and many others in this galaxy live, make us feel responsible for something. Perhaps we feel invincible. Maybe we feel vulnerable to point that we all have nothing to lose. There were no ‘better times’ as some claim. There are only good moments, for all of us that we dwell on when we’re sad or hurt and we think, maybe, just maybe, we can make those moment last forever.” He laughed, “I’m actually glad I got nearly shot to death just so that I can finally speak these feelings with all of you. Sometimes the worst can lead to a little good! We formed this team to look for a greater purpose than to kill or be killed, so let’s do it!”

Nek fell completely silent in a bit of surprise as the door to the kitchen slid open and Soron and BX walked in. The captain laughed a bit.

“Today has been one of those days, and I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m tired of feeling sorry for myself.”

Glancing at Cenden, Lerti stood.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked with a smiled in her eyes.

“We’re going to figure out what we’re looking for and find it.” Soron answered.

“Sounds easy enough.” Cholmon said.

“Am I understanding we are looking for something that we don’t know what we’re looking for?” BX chimed in suddenly sounding disgusted.

“We have a feeling and that’s what counts right?” Nek spoke.

“Cut the sentiment, engineer.” Cholmon snapped.

“Alright, alright.” Soron spoke up, drawing the attention of everyone in the room before directing his gaze towards Cenden, “Cenden. We know you are just a man, you’ve been through a lot. But so have we all. Is there anyway we can figure out what we’re looking for? Answers to… bigger purposes? Not to many people are religious these days, but there has to be something more than all of this.” He said gesturing around him.

“Well believe it or not, but the Jedi aren’t very religious.” Cenden joked sarcastically. He sighed, “I really do appreciate everything you are all doing. But I want you all to understand that we are going to have to go digging around in some very… restricted places. It almost sounds like you are trying to dig up the Jedi from their graves. And if that’s what we are going for, well Jedi Temples are where we are going to have to start.”

“Temples of the Jedi are restricted by most Imperial controls in any area, are destroyed, or overrun by scavengers and thieves. This seems like getting involved in a lot of Imperial business for some people who definitely have made it clear they want to avoid the Empire.” BX analyzed.

“We’ll do what we have to. But this is a huge start. Do you know where the best one to start with might be?” Soron questioned Cenden.

“A few I can think of off the top of my head might be Alaris Prime, Iktotch, Tyroth, Jedha…”

“Wait so we’re really doing this!?” Nek piped in excitedly.

“I think so.” Lerti confirmed.

“Cholmon. Can you begin charting some possibilities on the star map with Cenden?” Soron asked.

“Sure, but, is this a good idea?” Cholmon inquired.

“It’s the only good idea we’ve ever had as far as I can remember.” Nek responded.

“Let’s begin our search then.” BX spoke.

#Free Reign: A Star Wars Story #draksisreborn #zazabelle #star wars fanfiction #chapter 3: one rule #collaborative writing

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infiniteundo · 7 years

Text

Software As Narrative Parts 1-8 Collected

I was asked by Twitter to switch to long form writing about testing, QA and risk. Here are the early raw results of my return to blogging about… all of those things Please note that part 7, the [further reading page.](http://infiniteundo.com/post/158412712773/further-reading-s-as-n-7n "The Further Reading page is constantly being updated with new resources!") is not included here as that is a living document.

Table of Contents

Part One: in which the map disturbingly turns out to be the territory

Part Two: in which robust partition tolerance is found to be desirable but impossible

Part Three: in which someone got punched in the face

Part Four: in which the significance of software as narrative is expounded upon

Part Five: a brief examination of the social forcing functions exposed by narrative tactics

Part Six: in which a fictional old-timer relates tales of the SDLC

Part Seven: list of further reading materials

Part Eight: in which the hidden art of de-noising is shewn for the non-initiate

Part One

> Any software system begins as a shared narrative about a problem and > the people who come together around solving that problem.

If you don't accept the above proposition completely then nothing I have to say about software is going to work for you.

Chthulhucene Devops: staying with the trouble as a service

This is and always has been the core proposition of my "way of Devops." Which I am now finally able to articulate and which I differentiate from other devops as Chtulhucene Devops, so as to acknowledge that it is not "mine" in any sense except as far as I know I am its sole practicing engineer. Designers and executives and other leaders may practice it --- but developers mostly have a hard time with the tolerance for chaos required for what Donna Haraway has so insightfully now labeled: "staying with the trouble."

Software is narrative

> The problem with intelligent communication is the illusion that it > has taken place. > > -- GB Shaw

Suspend your disbelief and just run with this for one minute if you will: commercial software is a narrative about a problem and the community of people who come together around said problem. Note that I haven't said anything about money or value streams yet. That's the beauty of this approach: you start at the highest-possible view of the project: the gods-eye view. This is what the narrative approach can deliver to you, the confused but eager software hacker-er.

You see, a big problem in software -- the main problem -- is that you wake up one morning and find that you've spent 3 months building the wrong thing. It seemed like the right thing 3 months ago, communications got dropped, mistakes were made, it's wrong now. This can happen so easily with software.

The problem of what was it even supposed to do in the first place

In order to not build the wrong thing we must know with clarity what we are meant to be building. It sounds like a tautology and if we were talking about any medium but the digital medium it would be a tautology. But as all software engineers immediately come to learn, there is a Lovecraftian, Non-Newtonian gulf between "what we build" and "what we were meant to be building."

"Know what is meant to be happening not just what is happening" is anything but a tautology in software. It is a yawning conceptual gulf that can swallow projects whole.

How do you know what is meant to be happening?

As people we have something called an inner narrative that we compare to the external happenings in the world and that's how we do sense-making. The thing is that the "external happenings" of the world aren't external at all. Events in the world around us impinge on and irrevocably merge with our "inner" narratives.

The world is made of stories

Stories are how we do sense-making. Stories are literally the tool that allowed us to come down from the trees. We couldn't master fire until we could fashion a story about how to master fire.

But with fire there was a physical thing to point to: the thing that is on fire. Get that thing. Such were our stories. For almost our entire time on earth as a species, stories were basically: there is thing, do something with thing.

But now we can't use that narrative any more even. Because with the digital domain there is no "raw material" that we start with to create products. That this is the case causes a lot of mis-spent Web budgets, because it is counterintuitive so people tend to budget in spite of it not in alignment with the reality that Web products all begin as stories and some are less fictional than others.

There is no thing

> A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: Has a dog Buddha-nature or > not?' > > Joshu answered:Mu.'

In software there is no "thing" that you can point at. In order to point at a "thing" in software you have to construct the thing, starting with the environment in which the thing is going to exist.

You always have to design both "the product" your customers want and "the environment" in which your product will run in production. Thus any software product begins with two obvious categories of "work to be done." People ignore this because it seems counterintuitive.

Now you have two problems

> A programmer has a problem and says I know I'll use Perl. > > Now they have 2 problems.

This is a class of Boundary Problem -- you always have to design the environment your software product "lives" in, no matter how hard you try to isolate your project from the vagaries of its environment.

This observation generalizes and goes back at least to Wittgenstein who said of Boundary Conditions in general:

> Can't we imagine a rule determining the application of a rule, and a > doubt which [it] removes — and so on?

Further reading

For further reading on this and related chtulhucene devops topics, please visit the further reading page.

Part Two

No you have n+1 problems

The old joke goes like this:

> A programmer has a problem and says I know I'll use Perl. > > Now they have 2 problems.

It's ha-ha only serious humor or as I prefer to call it: you-have-to-laugh-because-you-can't-cry humor. I may have learned this phrase from my dad, who was a journalist.

Solving a problem with a Web service (or a device or an appliance or a mobile app that depends on Web services -- to me it is the same thing!) is not just finding the solution but keeping the solution running in production forever after. That you have to be responsible for the product in the long term is something a lot of people overlook. In the early days of software "keeping it running" was minimized under the label "maintenance" or "system operations" making it sound like a negligibly important background activity.

Don't bet against the CAP theorem

It turns out that keeping Web services running is really hard. That's why so many historical Web sites even though they were super cool are no longer around: it's really expensive to pay people to run sites. And it turns out people don't like running sites no one uses. This is new information as of about 2008 or so -- before that everyone assumed the opposite was true.

The crowd that realized they were wrong and copped to it coined the word "devops" to describe their insight. Devops just means that you try to establish common ground within the company, in response to any problem you establish common ground and work together toward a commonly-known compromise goal of solving the problem. It's drawn from Theory Of Constraints and other stuff that if you are reading this series of posts still, I probably don't have to explain to you!

You can't sacrifice Consistency

It turns out people really care about their data. You can't build a distributed system that is resistant against partitions. You can't build a site that's up all the time. But you can damn well ensure that if the user saved data with you and you told them you got it, that you definitely really still got it.

The value of data integrity to users is often overlooked. Doubters would do well to remember Ma.gn.ol.ia.

So given that these "ops" exist…

Ops came to prominence in the mid-to-late 2000s as Web 2.0 apps like Gmail and Google Maps exploded in popularity. Not to mention a stupid service called twittr that was started around then too that one caused all kinds of trouble.

The thing is that you can scale hardware and you can scale software but people can't be cloned nor can more people be trained to do hard specialized nerd labor like Ops.

The moral of the story so far

So as a person who is interested in making a thing that will work on the internet, you need to learn about Ops. Now. And you need to learn as much as you can. Because real ops people cost a lot of money and for the most part you can bet you will never even work with one. They are that rare because the Internet of the 2000s got HUGE that fast. It really did. I was there. Ask me.

So dev and ops must find common ground. There are not enough ops any more to run the web and there never will be again because the web got so big so fast and keeps expanding at about the same rate as fuck I have no idea nothing I have ever seen. Like a rainbow kaboom this web we built kind of mostly on accident if history be known.

Oh.

There's that troublesome idea again. History.

Narrrative. Let's get back to talking about how to leverage the insight that software is at its heart a narrative.

Part Three

For the sake of argument

For the sake of argument let's say that I am right and that all software is at its heart a narrative?

Wait I take that back. I can prove I'm right. I don't need you to suspend your disbelief for this to make sense. Although in the future if you keep reading I will teach you how selectively suspending your disbelief (and that of others) can be advantageous.

For the sake of argument JUST LISTEN TO ME HERE

If software were in fact composed of stories that are shared between people, then we could easily decompose software into stories and indeed the software industry fairly blossoms with different options for doing so. Story-driven-development and ideation run amok in silicon alley, to mostly good effect!

If software were narrative then it would be possible to get just the idea of software funded and valued as if it were a real existing software (whatever that means do you start to grok me yet?)

We all know things get funded that don't get built

Things get funded because someone likes the story. Things don't get built for all kinds of Reasons. That a software thing was not built at all does not in any way imply that no work went into trying to build the thing. A common tragedy in the programming profession is that we build a word processor in place of what was actually needed I am not entirely making that up.

That software can be almost built for years but never actually work supports my point. If effort went into the software and the software never worked (to take an extreme case for the sake of argument.)

If that were the case, what do we have, the non-working stuff of the project? Well literally a developer will tell you "we have what's in Git history." Literally we have a story.

Git stores histories which are stories which is what narrative means. Game set match.

Part Four

Software is narrative: so what this is old news.

Great question!

Narratives have certain essential characteristics. All software methodologies to date have failed to reduce software to any certain set of essential characteristics.

To view software as narrative is an application of the Theory of Constraints: by applying the constraint that software must at some level be viewed / viewable as narrative, we reduce all software to simple essential characterstics.

Further we advantage ourselves of the multitudinous perspectives from 3 million years of proto/human evolution that led to having minds that can carry complex things like stories, even stories about how processors are supposed to interact with strange fictional beings we tell each other are called "the Integers."

If you accept that the digital realm is narrative first

If you accept that the digital realm is narrative first then you realize quickly that you can still capitalize on the True Promise of the Web.

This is quite an exciting insight since it means there are numerous ways of getting mad paid on the Web, that have been overlooked because no one was looking to monetize narratives-as-such. But narratives certainly exist as such. And I have now rationalized their value.

In fact I have state and will continue to state that all my success, my career, my talks, Etsy, Barnes and Noble iOs automated builds, all my stuff, it worked (and some of it continues to work in production to this day, amazingly enough!) because I always subscribed to this vision of software as narrative.

This insight is the thing that makes my solutions stand up where others' don't.

It has taken me many years and much talking in private to more people than I can thank (although obviously MY WIFE deserves a big round of applause) to arrive at a place in my life where I can explain how I did what I did at each of those famously successful job sites.

Because I always felt I was carrying out a repeatable process and I was right. It just took time and self-reflection to arrive at a place where I could start to attach allegories and case studies to these: the central insights of my career.

Part Five

How do you use software to control the narrative?

youtube

You should be so lucky as to have a month of vacation saved up and a ticket you can buy to some isolated terrain where you can meditate upon this:

> Given that software products are composed of competing/interacting > narratives, how do I use software to control the narrative?

Because code in a very fundamental way determines the laws of what is and is not possible within a network of people thinking about the same problem.

The insight that code is narrative enables new ways of thinking. If you can go away and meditate on how to monetize and / or make benefit to your fellow beings with this insight you should do that. I sort of already I have I guess. It was cool. You'll like it. Great excuse to take some "me time" and come back with a new startup idea.

Part Six

The Software Development Life Cycle reconsidered as a story cycle

A trilogy. Part the first:

First of all young'n, have ye never yeven heared of ye olde SDLC?

Why then read ye of the s, the d the l and the c fore I whack ye with my specially reserved get-off-my-lawnHammer-of-doom+4!

For I have been a hax0r yes! A hax0r of yore, in the days when bases were belong to us and yet before. When the bases belonged to no one yet.

I am long in tooth and hot of air and I speak for the cats of the internet. And the lolcats say: go forth and do not break the Web. And the cats say: we serve the will of Sir Tim Berners-Lee: break not the Web for it is already yet just a little bit broken. Let none seek to break it further and that's QA or something. Thanks goodbye.

Part Eight

Fix All Errors And Warnings: A Narrative Perspective On The ROI Of De-Noising Logs

Before its use in computing the word log referred to a journal kept by a human: a log is a record of events in the real world. Logs recount histories and by doing so logs participate in the multiple narratives of success and failure in intractably complex sociotechnical organizations.

Logs Contain Historical Evidence

On the Web when something fails the server and application logs are the source of truth about the chain of events. Logs are the primary evidence that we use to reconstruct the chain of failure and then present a new narrative where the system works again.

Logs Contain A Lot Of Signal

The actionability of error messages is of direct business value. The faster a Web product can recover from an incident (MTTR) the less impact that incident is likely to cause. In the best case incidents are detected at the precursor stage and no production impact whatever takes place. Such is the power of high-signal logs.

Now add noise

Now to this high ROI first-responder log capability, add noise. Why?

Right.

There is no value in allowing noise in logs. Noise here can only impact the hard-won ROI of actionable service logs.

Don't add noise to logs, it screws up the narrative

At best a collection of service logs during an incident (and here I include RRD services and StatsD, Splunk --- they are all ways of logging) is a trigger for that eureka moment where an impending incident becomes a simple matter of fixing misconfiguration.

Ignoreable Errors Are A Cargo Cult

There is no logical reason to allow errors in your logs that you can safely ignore. Just filter the spurious errors using grep -v it's that easy. Kill the noise.

#devops #continuous delivery

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marianneainotar-blog · 7 years

Text

Red Ball Jets

Run faster, Jump higher!

I would be sweating, running in navy blue gym shorts, my name embroidered on the lower right hem. The white Red Ball Jets on my feet proclaimed to the world that I could “run faster and jump higher, ” but I skidded to a sudden stop at the centerline, super sneakers squealing on the wood gym floor, and thrust the basketball through multiple leaning, reaching hands to my counterpart on the other side. She’d go dashing away, hoping to make a basket; I would try to stop my momentum, so I wouldn’t tip over at the line. Then we waited, at the ready, for the ball to come our way again. Voices echoing, jumping, running, reaching, our clumps of girls made their way back and forth on our half of the court until the shrill whistle of Miss Hill, the gym teacher, would put a stop to the mayhem.

It was 1959. I was starting 7th grade, and I loved gym. I had been a genuine tomboy in elementary school, playing softball with the boys at recess, marbles in the dirt, and riding my bike no-hands down our blacktop road. I tended to come home, dirty and disheveled, folders frayed, knees bruised. My mom would just shake her head. When someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would retort, “just a plain woman.” I didn’t have a clue then—or later.

In junior high, ideas of what girls could be or do started getting defined. We couldn’t participate in official school team sports. We couldn’t wear long pants in the classroom. Living through a six-month winter meant we stuffed pants under our skirts for the chilly walk to school and stowed them in our lockers. In addition to half-court basketball and the dreaded dodge ball, we did calisthenics in gym class to trim our waists or slenderize our fannies. With her tight ponytail, no make-up, muscles, and no-nonsense attitude, Miss Hill was considered “butch.” We didn’t want to be like her. Getting muscles wasn’t feminine. By 8th grade, most of us pubescent, our upper body exercises were done to the chant of “we must, we must, we must increase our bust.” We tried to get out of gym. Who wants to sweat and then go back to class? Deodorant didn’t do the trick for me. I frequently exhibited large, wet circles under my arms. “Um, I’m having cramps, do I have to dress for gym?” “It’s that time you know, and I have a headache.” Ok. Sit on the side.

Going to dances became my thing. The starched petticoats of elementary school gave way to sneakers paired with slouch socks and leggings, topped by a white “boys’ shirt.” I moistened my pin curls in flat beer for long-lasting curls and used shoe polish to whiten my Red Ball Jets. With stiffened shoes and hair, we girls would descend to the gym, which was now transformed by crepe-paper streamers and toilet paper flowers. When the music started rocking, pairs of us shot to the floor, sneakered feet flying and arms twirling each other—until a “slow dance” came on, then we all demurely scattered to a side (the girls’ side) and waited for the boys, who clustered on the other side. Who would be the first brave one to cross the centerline and come over to us? Our happiness was in their hands. We pretended not to care while we anxiously waited and made giggling small talk. Then the lights dimmed, Elvis would croon “Wise men say, only fools rush in . . .,” and we wallflowers enviously watched the handful of couples who slowly walked the floor together, sometimes even to the beat of the music. Girls didn’t dance together for a slow dance. That could be butch. Shy boys were out of luck too. We couldn’t ask them (too forward), except during the infrequent “ladies choice,” called by the chaperones.

By 9th grade, school sports soon became something my friends and I watched. “Girls aren’t allowed to do sports” morphed into “girls can’t do sports”—no stamina, no strength, no aggression, not competitive. Never mind that we could downhill ski all day or skate and swim for hours. My best friend and I hiked around Teal Lake one afternoon, fording streams and climbing bluffs. We went to all the basketball and football games, cheering the boys and learning all the chants: “two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, kids from Negaunee stand up and holler, hip, hip hurray, hip, hip hurray.” We even showed up at track meets. Being a cheerleader or a majorette, coached by Miss HIlll, was the closest thing to a girls’ sport. While these activities required some talent and dexterity, girls were clearly there to be pretty and to support the boys.

Our magazines and elders taught us more boundaries and behavior. “Don’t talk too loud, keep your legs together, and don’t lead a boy on.” Why? He could get blue balls, friends whispered. Really? They change color? Poor things. “Don’t let a boy get to first base too soon because he wouldn’t respect you.” This sports metaphor was confusing to me. A base just sits there, right? The player runs past, around, steals, or lands on a base. Were parts of our bodies the bases? First base, lips; second base, boobs; third base, “down there;” rounding home, “all the way”? We never talked specifically about first base or what “too soon” meant. We wondered about “petting” Was that second or third base? We heard what happened to girls who were “easy.” Then there was parking. You drive to a scenic spot, sit in the car, and “make out.” We were warned about making out leading to petting, which led to all the way. During our senior year, several girls disappeared for a time, visiting an aunt or some relative out of town. We’d speculate about whether she “lost” or gave away a baby. Sometimes a couple would get married and drop out of school. Gossip indicated it was the girl’s fault. She was leading him on and trying to get her hooks into him. Clearly she was easy, and he was helpless. Did they “have” to get married, we’d ask, with knowing looks.

In truth, we knew nothing. My mom didn’t want to talk about those things, so I would ask my five-years-older sister. If she was in the mood, she would let tidbits fall. She said petting could mean above the waist or below the waist, and both were bad but below was worse—yet another centerline that shouldn’t be crossed.

I remember accepting on some level the prevailing attitudes about women. It was common knowledge that “all the great chefs (writers, artists, composers, scientists, actors) are men,” or that “no woman can host the news.” We couldn’t compete with the gravitas of Walter Cronkite. The leaders we saw on our black-and-white TV sets in government, business, the arts, sports, and the military were all men. “Boring old men,” I used to say about all the talking heads on TV. Women didn’t have the guts, nervous system, brains, strength, agility, or whatever to do “x” well. We did have sexual power over men and were the keepers of the gate. They couldn’t control their urges, so we did. In addition, we were not to show them that we were too smart or too strong. They were the ones to run faster and jump higher in all areas of life. We could be teachers, secretaries, nurses, mothers, and wives. Nothing, of course, is universally true, and later I learned there were plenty of females at that time, striving to vault the centerline or erase the boundaries. Mostly women operated in the background, not making the news. I didn’t know about them. All I knew was that things didn’t seem fair.

In my senior year, I did “go steady,” wearing a boy’s class ring wrapped in angora yarn to make it fit. Lots of kissing happened. After graduation one night, I felt him briefly touch my breast through my clothes before he drove off in his car. Oh man! I had wild sensations when I walked in the house, nerves tingling. I sensed a line was crossed, but I didn’t realize until some years later what that pulsating in my privates signaled.

What next? My parents and I agreed I needed further education. I had good grades. Plus I need a degree just in case. Just in case, what? Just in case there was a war, and I lost everything but my education. Just in case I needed to dig up an educated man who would have a good job. Just in case, something happened to that future husband, and I had to work. Higher education was like having an extra dime in my pocket. I went to college, not thinking about what I might become but on the hunt for that educated man. Fall of 1965 began my freshman year at the University of Michigan.

On the surface at least in Ann Arbor, familiar uncrossable lines were in place. Girls had curfews in the dorms but boys didn’t. I guess they couldn’t get into trouble without us. Girls couldn’t be in the famous marching band or walk on the field in the Big House. I think there were intramural sports for us, but I hadn’t learned any team skills. In other aspects, Ann Arbor, like the rest of the country was in upheaval, resulting in protests and meetings with people who were against the Viet Nam war, for civil rights, for women’s lib, against rules, for drugs. I learned folk songs, smoked cigarettes, cheated on curfew, and sat in. We felt freer than we were.

Fast forward a few years—I had a BS in education, married an educated guy with a career, had two adorable children—got the dime in my pocket as instructed, but something was still out of kilter. I busied myself at home and with part-time teaching. By chance one day, I saw an ad for an aerobic dance class. Fitness for women was popular, thanks to Jane Fonda and Jazzercise, no beefy men teaching squats or Air Force exercises. Hundreds of women turned out for the classes, building muscle, losing fat, breathing hard, and we did it to music, learning complicated routines and making friends. After I became an instructor and then a manager, I learned that fitness led to real confidence. It became a portal as many of the women started changing their lives, one after another. I had not foreseen that strengthening my body would strengthen my will. I, too, went back to school with more clarity of purpose and became an editor—a job I loved.

I know now that barring us from sports in puberty affected our minds as well as our bodies. It took a new wave of feminism plus the legal clout of Title IX to make real changes. I don’t long for the good old days. I am content now because all parts of my life work well. Recently my husband and I attended a women’s playoff basketball game. He was commenting on the game—zone defense, breakaway shots, free throws; I was watching tall muscular women freely race down the whole court, arms pumping, shoes squealing. I always tear up. Every. Damn. Time. They don’t even need Red Ball Jets.

#halfcourtbasketball #rules #redballjets #aerobic #firstbase

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queenofnohr · 7 years

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FGO Material III - Ryougi Shiki (Assassin) Profile

Another commission ^^

Fun Fact - I had to watch Kara no Kyoukai movies (well... I only watched half) because it bothered me that I didn’t know who Shiki was. I kept having thoughts like “Well, this is what it says, but would Shiki really say it the way I’ve translated it?”

*If anyone is interested in commissioning me, here’s my regular commission page, and here’s my chart for Chapter America/E Pluribus Unum!

Class Skills:

Presence Concealment: C

This skill suppresses a Servant’s presence. It’s suited for covert operations.

Independent Action: A

The ability to persist for a time, even while rejecting a Magical Energy supply from a Master. “I wonder if you can manage without a Master, somehow?” is the impression you’re under because of Independent Action. But, even if I don’t need Magical Energy, a Master is needed so I don’t get lonely and disappear, Mikiya-kun!

Personal Skills:

Mystic Eyes of Death Perception: A

The highest level among the ability known as Mystic Eyes. A rare talent among rare talents, a treasure among treasures. Regardless if organic or inorganic, it scans the cause of death of anything that “lives” as a visible phenomena that can be interfered with. Though the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, the world seen is a landscape of endings filled with “lines of death.” It is difficult to face everyday life with a mental structure affected by this. Shiki has a habit of shifting her focus to an overhead perspective to come to terms with this strange way of seeing things.

Eye of the Mind (False): A

The resistance, by way of compensation, to visual obstructions. It is the sixth sense, also called premonition, is the natural ability to have foresight of danger.

Yin and Yang: B

Tajitu Raden. If you want to let it live, kill it - if you want to grant its wish, hurt it. Blessings and losses are two sides of the same coin. It is like the relationship between men and women. …...The echoes of pain. This Shiki gains NP by losing HP.

Noble Phantasm:

Yuishiki - Chokushi no Magan

Rank: EX Classification: Anti-Unit Range: 1 Maximum Number of Targets: 1 person

Yuishiki - Chokushi no Magan. The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception activate to its widest range to cut the target’s “lines of death.” Having hundreds of millions of lifespans, the ability to revive from a suspended state, or hundreds of stocks of lives, she lays bare “the concept of death to an individual,” and thus ignores all agents of immortality to bestow a fatal wound.

There is no life that cannot escape death. ---All things have an ending.

Personal:

Personality:

At first glance, she has a cold, alienating personality. Although she uses a masculine tone and acts like a male, because she can’t avoid her feminine roots, she’s different than a “beautiful woman who disguises herself as a man.”* She pretends to be an outlaw-type, but as a lonely person and moreover an elder sister-type, she’ll take care of someone she likes** to the end. In regards to why she speaks with a masculine tone and her split personality, please refer to the light novel, “Kara no Kyoukai.”

Motivation and Attitude Toward Master:

Although she says, “What is it, this is troublesome,” distastefully when called to some irregular trouble, this life is a once-in-a-lifetime chance and the protagonist is not unpleasantly human, she lends them her power, the feeling being approximate to a date. “A meeting by chance, and all that, huh?”***

Speech Example:

“Servant, Assassin. Ryougi Shiki. …...Was that an alright greeting? What a strange rule, honestly…… My circumstances may be different, but I’ll fight properly” “A wish I want the Holy Grail to grant? The hell’s that? There’s a limit to bullshitting me. Sorry, but this business isn’t buying what you’re selling.****” “Pin-pon-pan. This is a notice to all of you who are curious. The next level was unlocked so if the Master would kindly do the new set of missions, please.” “A new request came in. Stuff happens way too much at this apartment!” “Death Perception--- Only death stands before me.”

This Figure in FGO:

A girl encountered in a rogue singularity, a Shiki from the boundary. She blends Eastern and Western styles in her wear, speaks like a man, and does not hesitate in her actions. She regards everyday life as abnormal. Because she has a unique constitution where she sees death, she encounters various strange situations, and cuts them down. She doesn’t seem to realize at all that she herself is becoming an urban legend that roams the streets in the depths of night.

Although she too was not spared from the King of Magic’s incineration of civilization and is a “burned up” human, she is still asleep in reality, and in the dream she sees she appears as a Servant. She will be incinerated just like any other person if she awakes from her dream, but so long as she is having this dream of herself as a member of Chaldea, she is “disconnected from the axis of time,” and can confront the King of Magic’s plans. Shiki herself doesn’t care about waking from her dream and disappearing, but it seems she cannot tolerate the people around her disappearing.

Ties to Characters:

Jekyll: She is curious in him as her senpai when it comes to split personalities. She’s irritated by Jekyll’s lack of potential to improve…… Or at least seems that way. Truthfully, she seems to be healed by it.

Mephistopheles: Although he’s noisy, he’s interesting so she doesn’t treat him with disdain. “But isn’t it hard to use scissors as a weapon? It’s your policy? I see…… Then it can’t be helped…… Character standing is important to a murderous demon……”

Old Man of the Mountain: She wouldn’t dare to say that they’re the same type of Servant. “That’s some legendary power you have. That being said, why can’t you talk in a way that’s easier to understand?”

Illustrator Comments:

When I look at it now, I have various doubts about her design, but there’s no longer an easy way to fix it. Because I wanted to draw the most striking silhouette, I made her art a concept remake of the cover art of her Kodansha Bunko version.

*It would probably be easier to just say “she isn’t a Mulan-type,” but I think that would lead to misunderstandings within context. It’s basically saying even though she acts like a male, she doesn’t constitute as a Mulan-type because she looks like a woman - she isn’t disguising herself as a man. **To clarify, this doesn’t mean “someone she’s in love with.” It literally just means someone she’s fond of. ***The full quote she’s referencing is “A meeting by chance is preordained.” ****Even though Shiki speaks like a male most of the time, her event lines as the mission person tend to slip into a very……. Business-like tone? It’s a little bit strange, but it suits her role in the event and her family business. You can see it in a few other speech examples as well.

#fgo #fate grand order #grand order #my translations #long post

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

Suppose your company is making $1000 a month now, and what's most admired is to be optimistic about things you can't control. The physical world is very high bandwidth, and some of the most successful people will all like what they do. Into this already bad situation comes the third problem: Sarbanes-Oxley loosened. For years I've been telling founders that the surest route to success is to be the intellectual capital of the world. But you can at least not for something as complicated as technology. The easiest way to get started in angel investing is to find something you like so much that there was nothing they'd rather do. Here's an upper bound: Do what you love in your spare time. How many even discover something they love to work on tedious problems would be very successful. That kind of switch often takes people by surprise. And at least in our tradition lawyers are advocates, trained to take either side of an argument and make as good a case for it as they can. You'd expect opinions to have converged more.

Getting people to use a new service is incredibly difficult. How far behind are you? I'm surprised by how much better it feels to be working on something or b be teleported to Rome and spend the next hour working on something that is challenging and creative, something I believe in, as opposed to the hired-gun stuff I was doing before. 05/1. And don't write the way they write software. The ones who are uncertain believe it and give up, and the odds that anyone will pay in your lifetime for what you want to stay happy, you have to find the city where you feel at home to know what they want to do something else—even something mindless. I was very excited at first. One's first thought tends to be simply This sucks. She can't do it; she just shuts down. The angels made a huge return on that investment, so they're happy. The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the brutal equation that governs the lives of 99. They're quite explicit about it: they like to acquire startups at just the right moment and be the next IBM.

When you know nothing, you have two options: get a job. Did they want French Vanilla or Lemon? How advantageous it is to kill. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as the conversation of people who use interrogative intonation in declarative sentences. In fact, the whole concept of the modern university was imported from Germany in the late 19th century. It's not as if all the opportunities to start companies are going to get fixed is not by explicitly deallocating them, but by 30 they've either lost touch with them or these people are tied down by jobs they don't want to be doctors and whose parents want them to feel this way about the operating system. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. Though, frankly, the fact that most good startup ideas seem bad: If you spend all your time working.

Paris was once a great intellectual center. The era of labor unions seems to have been the same kind of aberration, just spread over a longer period, like a big company or a VC fund. Or at least you won't know what it is, and part of the reason I chose computers. Then finally we realized what it was: I think the best test is one Gino Lee taught me: to try to write novels, for example, started angel investing about a year after me, and he suffered proportionally. And the startup was our baby. Most people don't consciously decide not to be in as good physical shape as Olympic athletes, for example. I'm better at some things than Jessica, and she's better at some things than me. How did she get into this fix? For example, I've always been fascinated by comb-overs, especially the extreme sort that make a man look as if he's wearing a beret made of his own hair. When you're mistaken, don't dwell on it; just act like nothing's wrong and maybe no one will pay for, when you can see into the houses. This is generally true even if competitors get lots of referrals is to invest in bad times. Jessica, and she's better at some things than me.

When you're riding a Segway looks like a dork. Jessica was boiling mad that people were accusing her company of sexism. The two-job route: to work at things you don't like to get money to work on crazy speculative projects with me. Why not start a startup with someone you like, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a prophet, that there would soon be a computer with half a MIPS of processing power that would fit under an airline seat and cost so little that we could save enough to buy one from a summer job. Why bother? You may not have to go to this extreme. Economically, this is partly because great hackers don't know how much they'll need to. Fortunately, this sort of disobedience shows signs of becoming rampant. I'm not saying that issues don't matter to voters. She was ok with that.

What cities provide is an audience, and a funnel for peers. What should they do research on composition? But the staff writers of newsmagazines. So it's hard to get paid three times as much traffic by word of mouth online than our first PR firm got through the print media. It's more efficient just to give them the diffs. Your job description as technical founder/CEO is completely rewritten every 6-12 months. A mere 15 weeks. Imagine what it would feel better; what's surprising is how much better. Apple's overall market share is still small.

Conversely, the extreme version of the two parties cancel one another out. Colleges had long taught English composition. You can be a sign of a good thing. This helps counteract the rule that gets beaten into our heads as children: that things are the way they want. It's not that hard to do it well. In retrospect this was a proper use of the Internet, which was at least not actively repellent, if you have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to arrive at it. It has always mattered for women, but in most ambitious kids, ambition seems to precede anything specific to be ambitious about. Did they want French Vanilla or Lemon? Writing was one of the ways we describe the good ones is to say, not at all, if you're not. I think what a lot of things insiders can't say precisely because they're insiders. Another is when you have to assume there was someone born in Milan with as much natural ability as Leonardo. They just try to help everyone, and assume good things will flow back to them somehow.

Startups usually win by making something so great that people recommend it to their friends. As much as they respect brains in Silicon Valley significantly wider. Steve is clever and driven, but so small and cheap that you could have one of your own to sit in front of a VT100 connected to a single central Vax. But hackers can't watch themselves at work. Productivity varies in any field, but there will be other things they would like that would be painless, though annoying, to lose. What does that mean for investors? Why not start a startup. People seem to like working at Google too much to leave. Hiring people is rarely the way to the top, leaving a vacuum at the bottom. She says being too modest is a common problem for women.

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alfredrserrano · 5 years

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(Over)supply and demand: What Miami’s condo glut could mean for multifamily rents and development

(Illustration by Maciej Frolow)

Tour the Panorama Tower overlooking Biscayne Bay, with its “porte cochere,” poolside cafe, wine tasting rooms, pet spa and home theaters, and you might think that you’re sampling Miami’s latest glitzy condominium offering.

Rising nearly 900 feet, Florida East Coast Realty’s project is the tallest building in the state. But unlike many of the other towers that dot Brickell, the Hollo family’s development firm decided to build rentals. It even tapped Fortune Development Sales, a top condo sales and marketing firm, for the leasing assignment, and targeted trendy and hip Miamians — “Brickellistas.”

Banking on the city’s population growth, its hunger for big corporate tenants and homeownership’s diminishing prominence in the American Dream, FECR and other developers have bet that Miami, like New York, will become a city of renters. They’re building top-shelf product and wooing the prosperous with a playbook they’ve adapted from their condo-building counterparts. But their approach could directly threaten condo investors, who are increasingly looking to generate income by putting their units on the rental market. In Miami-Dade County, nearly 2,200 leases have been signed on the so-called “shadow rental market” so far this year, data from Integra Realty Resources show, up from fewer than 100 shadow rentals in 2014.

In the face of increased competition from rental developers with newer product, a central tenet of buying a unit for investment — renting it out — is being challenged. And while large rental landlords are able to adjust prices in the event of oversupply or a downturn, individual condo owners, dealing with a myriad of fees and taxes, have less wiggle room on pricing, meaning they could be shut out.

“Owning a condo and renting it,” said Manny de Zárraga, the Miami-based co-head of HFF’s National Investment Advisory Group, “is not a great business.”

Apartment therapy

So far, developers’ big bet on luxury multifamily projects seems to be paying off. Panorama is leasing out at rents that range from $2,500 a month for a one-bedroom to over $6,700 for a three-bedroom. More than half its 821 units are leased out, according to Jerome Hollo, president of FECR.

Comparable properties have also done well. Recently built Class A apartments in Miami-Dade saw net operating income grow 74 percent between 2015 and 2017, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of county figures.

That the sector is posting such numbers despite a large supply bump says a lot. Since 2014, more than 20,000 Class A apartment units have come to market in Miami, according to a TRD analysis of data from Integra, which creates residential reports for the Miami Downtown Development Authority. Yet asking rents have only climbed.

“When we went through the last real estate crash, the sales prices of residences went down,” said Jack McCabe, CEO of McCabe Research & Consulting in Deerfield Beach. “But rentals never did.”

All that supply, however, is expected to eventually push rents down. That’s especially true for Miami because, unlike other cities in the Southeast such as Charlotte or Atlanta, it still lacks giant corporations with their well-heeled workers — RIP Amazon HQ2 — to anchor its rental market. Couple that with foreign and out-of-state condo investors who are now dumping their units on the rental market, and some experts sense that something’s got to give.

Calixto García-Vélez, who oversees FirstBank Florida, said he is barely doing any new construction lending for Class A Miami apartment buildings. On top of the new product coming to the market, the banker said, condo rentals will flood the renter pool, which will temporarily drive down rents. The market will be fine in the long term, he thinks, but as rents drop, so will the bank’s lending activity to this asset class.

“Condos that were for sale are now being put in rental pools,” García-Vélez added.

New data provides a look at just how pronounced this trend is. So far this year, 2,175 shadow rental leases — contracts between a condo owner and tenant — have been signed in Miami-Dade, up 60 percent year over year, according to Integra. The number of condos on the shadow market today would then represent about a fifth of the total units delivered this cycle — nearly 11,200, according to an analysis by ISG Miami of the condo development hotbeds in Miami-Dade east of I-95, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.

This could be bad news for condo owners because there are a lot more apartments to compete with these days, said Anthony Graziano, a principal at Integra. In Greater Downtown Miami alone, of the more than 24,000 multifamily units in the pipeline this cycle, roughly 11,000 units have been delivered or are under construction, he said.

And while major rental landlords generally have a fair bit of flexibility built into their pricing and can adjust rents in the face of a spike in supply or other challenges, condo owners — burdened with property taxes, homeowners’ association fees and special assessments — can’t be as nimble, putting them at risk of losing the price-conscious renter.

Condos are clearly more expensive. A conventional apartment is renting out for $2.07 a foot, while a condo rental is leasing at $3.28 a foot, according to MLS and CoStar data compiled by Integra.

For a luxury condo market that reportedly already has a years-long oversupply of inventory, this could produce a mass selloff, some skeptics say, or — at the very least — a steep drop in prices.

“It’s a day of reckoning for [condo] owners,” said Peter Zalewski, a principal with the Miami real estate consultancy Condo Vultures and an investor in the bulk-condo market.

Deal flow

Depending on pricing, demand and ability to build, investors and developers will often toggle between the multifamily and condo asset classes.

While some bankers like FirstBank Florida’s García-Vélez have become more skeptical about funding new Class A-rental projects, developers have found themselves with plenty of options ever since the Federal Reserve relaxed rules on commercial lending this year. Apartments generally cost less to build than condos, allowing for potentially healthier profit margins, said Brett Forman, CEO of Trez Forman Capital Group, a commercial mortgage lender.

“What people fail to realize is that the supply that is being delivered is catching up with demand,” said Peter Mekras of Aztec Group, a real estate investment and merchant banking firm. Mekras believes that much of the forthcoming product will compensate for the post-crisis slowdown in supply, which stemmed from developers’ inability to get financing.

But Jim Costello of Real Capital Analytics feels the Federal Reserve’s move came at the wrong time.

“Money may be coming in on the debt side,” Costello said, “but if the tax burden is so high on developers and it’s hard to find the labor, you can’t build a building with debt alone.”

Lenders on such deals tend to be large banks or insurance firms. In Miami-Dade, Wells Fargo ranked as the top multifamily lender this cycle, with over $500 million in deals since 2014, according to a TRD analysis of large loans.

On the condo side, things are quite different. It took Two Roads Development over a year to land a $138 million construction loan from JPMorgan for Elysee, a 57-story tower it’s building in Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood. Many condo developers beginning construction now are largely self-funding their projects, as is the case with Missoni Baia, an Edgewater project being built by Vlad Doronin’s OKO Group and Cain International, and Okan Group’s Okan Tower, a hotel and condo project planned for Miami’s Arts & Entertainment District. Others have looked to Bank OZK, an Arkansas-based bank that has become the Miami metropolitan area’s most aggressive condo lender, with more than $1.2 billion in construction loans from 2013 through 2017, according to the company’s annual reports. This represented over a quarter of the dollar volume of all condo construction loans made in the area during that time.

Gables Columbus Center is among the crop of rental buildings competing directly with the shadow market.

And while the luxury condo sales market is in a funk, Class A South Florida multifamily properties are still fetching top dollar in the investment-sales market. In July, Gables Residential sold a rental complex called Gables Aventura to an asset management arm of Deutsche Bank for $149 million, or $372,500 per unit. And Related Group hopes that Icon Las Olas, its luxury rental tower in downtown Fort Lauderdale, will fetch at least $500,000 a unit, or $136 million.

That may be because many of the bigger investors aren’t necessarily sprinting after fat returns. Institutional players, such as Mill Creek Residential or Greystar Real Estate Partners, tend to make decade-plus bets and aren’t as impacted by short-term fluctuations in rent.

“They will be patient,” said HFF’s de Zárraga.

A condo by any other name …

In 2013, Miami was experiencing a post-crisis development boom. Luxury condos were launching left and right, especially in Brickell, a corner of Miami that has become a U.S. hub for Latin American financial services companies. Top developers such as Ugo Colombo, Related Group and Swire Properties set their sights on the area for their trophy condo projects. By the end of 2016, Brickell had 17 condo projects with over 5,500 units in the pipeline, according to an ISG report. Many of these units were being sold to foreign investors, some of whom then sought to rent them out on the shadow market.

With condo developers like Jorge Pérez and Jeff Soffer rising to aristocratic status in a city that reveres builders, apartment developers wanted in.

Players such as FECR, ZOM Living and Property Markets Group believed that Miami would become a national economic hub that could command high rents. They sought to create amenity-rich product and corresponding services that would cater to this future market.

Gables Columbus Center, a 200-unit apartment building that was completed in downtown Coral Gables this year, offers a resort-style pool deck, 24/7 concierge, electric car charging station, business lounge and gym. Micah Conn, development director with Gables Residential, said the project, which is about 40 percent leased, is now competing with the shadow condo market.

“We have a professional staff trained at managing and leasing,” he said. “In Miami, there’s a very big investor profile. Getting your toilet fixed or your refrigerator repaired — these kinds of things might take weeks if your owner is out of the country.”

Alex Miranda of One Sotheby’s International Realty has been working and living in the Midtown Miami apartment complex since Joe Cayre’s Midtown Equities, the original developer, completed the first residential building there in 2007. Midtown 6, 7 and 8 (all separate projects) are underway and will add competing rental product to a market with a large condo supply. Consider, for example, that Related Group recently completed the four-tower Paraiso District in nearby Edgewater, bringing about 1,400 new condos to the area.

Inventory is “getting a little bit out of control,” Miranda said, adding that “it’s a lot easier to live as a renter in a rental building.”

The last time a condo building is updated is typically when the developer completes it. Once homeowners’ associations take over, “the first thing they cut is amenities” to keep costs low, Conn added.

“The age of the product gives us the advantage,” he said.

One-night stands

Where condo owners could have a leg up over apartments is in the short-term rental market. The rise of platforms like Airbnb, HomeAway and VRBO has led some investors to ditch traditional 12-month leases and focus on lucrative quickie deals.

Orlando-based ZOM completed Solitair Brickell this summer.

Some developers are emphasizing this opportunity. Aria Development Group and AQARAT are building YotelPad, a hotel and 208-unit condo building in downtown Miami with zero rental restrictions. Buyers there are free to rent their units out themselves, on websites like Airbnb or through the Yotel program. (If they do use the building’s management system, owners would have to commit to a set period of time.)

“It was definitely an intentional differentiating factor,” said David Arditi, a principal at Aria. “It’s something buyers find appealing.”

Sarah Elles Boggs, who works in condo sales at Douglas Elliman, said that end-user buyers are now dominant in the market, and they value the ability to move in quickly after closing. As a result, condos being used as traditional rentals have become trickier to sell.

“I’ve noticed a distinct increase in days on market if it’s a rental and it’s selling to an end user,” Boggs said.

Which is where short-term rentals could come in. At Canvas, a 513-unit condo set to begin closings in January, the market demanded the short-term rental option “from day one,” said Ron Gottesman, a principal at the developer, NR Investments.

NR is allowing furnished units to be rented for a minimum of 30 days at a time. Gottesman said that his main concern with allowing short-term rentals was that Canvas is one of a few dozen condo buildings in Miami to have Fannie Mae approval, and short-term rental activity could affect buyers’ ability to get home loans.

And now that the development is 90 percent sold, Gottesman is focusing on attracting end users, not investors.

“Buyers have their own thoughts about how short-term rentals are going to work,” he said. “They can make a lot of money. [But] I don’t think the buyers understand what it means; it’s intensive management,” he continued, adding that “when the end user is really buying, this is a healthy market.”

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/oversupply-and-demand/#new_tab via IFTTT

#The Real Deal Miami

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juditmiltz · 5 years

Text

(Over)supply and demand: What Miami’s condo glut could mean for multifamily rents and development

(Illustration by Maciej Frolow)

“Owning a condo and renting it,” said Manny de Zárraga, the Miami-based co-head of HFF’s National Investment Advisory Group, “is not a great business.”

Apartment therapy

“When we went through the last real estate crash, the sales prices of residences went down,” said Jack McCabe, CEO of McCabe Research & Consulting in Deerfield Beach. “But rentals never did.”

“Condos that were for sale are now being put in rental pools,” García-Vélez added.

Condos are clearly more expensive. A conventional apartment is renting out for $2.07 a foot, while a condo rental is leasing at $3.28 a foot, according to MLS and CoStar data compiled by Integra.

For a luxury condo market that reportedly already has a years-long oversupply of inventory, this could produce a mass selloff, some skeptics say, or — at the very least — a steep drop in prices.

“It’s a day of reckoning for [condo] owners,” said Peter Zalewski, a principal with the Miami real estate consultancy Condo Vultures and an investor in the bulk-condo market.

Deal flow

Depending on pricing, demand and ability to build, investors and developers will often toggle between the multifamily and condo asset classes.

But Jim Costello of Real Capital Analytics feels the Federal Reserve’s move came at the wrong time.

“Money may be coming in on the debt side,” Costello said, “but if the tax burden is so high on developers and it’s hard to find the labor, you can’t build a building with debt alone.”

Gables Columbus Center is among the crop of rental buildings competing directly with the shadow market.

“They will be patient,” said HFF’s de Zárraga.

A condo by any other name …

With condo developers like Jorge Pérez and Jeff Soffer rising to aristocratic status in a city that reveres builders, apartment developers wanted in.

Inventory is “getting a little bit out of control,” Miranda said, adding that “it’s a lot easier to live as a renter in a rental building.”

“The age of the product gives us the advantage,” he said.

One-night stands

Orlando-based ZOM completed Solitair Brickell this summer.

“It was definitely an intentional differentiating factor,” said David Arditi, a principal at Aria. “It’s something buyers find appealing.”

“I’ve noticed a distinct increase in days on market if it’s a rental and it’s selling to an end user,” Boggs said.

And now that the development is 90 percent sold, Gottesman is focusing on attracting end users, not investors.

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