#i'm too aware that everything in the corporate world is made up and it does not bode well

[joshpeck]

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

Lancer RPG

pfft, your mech is your dead mom's soul? well MY mech is co-piloted by Cthulhu!

Touchstones: Armored Core, General Mech Media

Genre: Mecha, Tactics game

What is this game?: Lancer is a tactical TTRPG focused on mechs, and the folks piloting them, with a sturdy "Gameplay over Realism" mentality to its game design

How's the gameplay?: Lancer is a tactical RPG using primarily d20s for attack rolls and other problem solving, it's primarily based on the tactical combat rules of Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, however it is mostly its own thing, with new mechanics, simple but fun character creation, and a high focus on quick and aggressive combat rather than lengthy and Defensive combat. in effect imagine character creation as going to a subway (of mech parts) and picking your ingredients, with a mech's frame being your choice of bread, and combat as an SRPG of your choosing but everyone is in giant mechs

Out of Combat is a bit different, to the point where I didn't even bring it up during my first draft of this! the Out of Combat rules are deliberately bare bones, you can very easily insert straight up a different game in there, or mod it to be something else. But I wouldn't recommend it, as the rules by themselves are 100% useable, fun, and blend into the combat portions pretty easily, Lancer is fully aware of this, and the lack of out of combat depth is partially covered by the KTB book, which gives characters simple out of character skills

What's the setting (If any) like?: Lancer throws you into a world where mankind's either solved, or is close to solving, most of the issues back on earth... too bad we also colonized other planets 10k years ago! Now, while Earth thrives, planets outside of it struggle with poverty, imperialism, dictatorships, and human and non-human rights issues, Earth tries its best to help, but they're stretched very thin. Lancer also has many small details to its setting that are way too in-depth to get into right now, but a major one is the existance of non-human people, eldritch beings strapped to computers in order to create effective and fully sentient artificial intelligence

What's the tone?: Lancer's tone is generally speaking, hopeful. Empires are mighty, but there are people fighting, and they will be toppled, mankind's horrors have attempted to wipe out entire species, but survivors remain, and secretly thrive. While there is some doom and gloom and grimdark stuff, especially with how the highly unethical and wicked corporations are treated as necessary evils for enterprising pilots, but overall lancer is a setting where no matter how bad things get, there will always be hope

Session length: A few hours, it depends on how mean your GM is, generally speaking however combat heavy sessions will only run you around 2-3 hours, with RP sprinkled in between

Number of Players: I generally like to recommend around 4 or more, but I'm sure you can do it with less

Malleability: While lancer's mechanics are pretty hardset in its setting, the existance of Beacon RPG and how at its core its very much a Lancer hack does show that Lancer can be hacked into differing settings, a very popular one I've seen is Magical Girl Lancer.

Resources: Lancer's primary resource is Comp/Con, it effectively serves as a do everything tool for lancer, allowing you to manage characters, encounter, and homebrew, while also having a very slick and easy to use UI Lancer also has many pre-made modules, of... varying quality, Siren's song and Solstice rain are pretty good, Wallflower is very good but the encounters are of mixed quality, and it's not great for introducing people to the game in my experience

Homebrew is also fairly popular, new frames, NPC types, Bonds, and modules are all pretty popular, my personal favorite being Field Guide to Suldan and Field Guide to Iridia, I also enjoy Field Guide to Liminal Spaces though that one's a bit on the "Be Very Careful" side

Overall, lancer is effectively THE indie ttrpg, being quality, fun, and affordable, with the core rulebook being 100% free if you just wish to see the player-side content, it's a great time, and everyone who's interested in the indie ttrpg scene should check it out at least once

[chimaerabutt]

I miss… childhood wonderment. And I don't know how much of what I've lost is naivety and innocence vs the world changing around me, anymore.

I miss that sense of wonder at new fantasy worlds I encountered. I miss ravenously devouring books and games and movies alike. I miss entertaining little what if's in my head about if things had turned out differently in those settings, or entire scenarios spawned from questions the setting never answered.

Some of it's time. I DO have less time now to watch movies, read books, play games, etc. Some of it is that I'm more aware of the world around me and can see the problems in old media I used to love, and the ways they're often harmful, but it also feels like so much less even interests me these days.

Some of that is probably depression, sure. But not all of it.

The part I’m left worrying and wondering over is how much of it is just interests calcifying as I grow older (I don’t think my interests are narrow, at least..) and how much is just… games changing? Movies? Books?

I’ve replayed older games from my childhood and most of them hold up. I’ve played older games from that era I never got to as a kid and enjoyed them as an adult. But now…

I don’t know. A few games really come through and a lot of games feel… too derivative of each other now. Indies interest me consistently more than big budget affairs, barring a few titles here and there (AA's usually) that dial in to my interests hard. I know that any big budget title will be filled with crunch and corner cutting by the end. Major studios regularly release games that I swear, even a decade prior, would have gotten an extra year to iron out problems.

Movies are too fast paced, with no room to breathe. I find myself sometimes craving older movies from before my time even, when a slower pace was normal and there was time to breathe and process between scenes. (That older movies were actually well lit and used way fewer jump cuts doesn’t hurt, either. ) I was mystified when I first watched Fury Road because of its simple decision to shoot all action center shot, and how much EASIER it made action scenes to follow. How nice it was to not have the camera laser focused on tits and ass.

And books…

Idk. I’ve read a lot of good books from the last ten years. It’s great so many new authors who wouldn’t have gotten a voice before can, now. …but my god does it often feel like I’m wading through a waist high pile of what feels like sloppy fan fiction with the serial numbers filed off just enough just to FIND them every time I go looking for a new good read. A lot of the blogs I used to go to for recommendations are gone now. Booktok is... booktok, and a lot of those reviews are focused on quick digestible works that give instant gratification and not much to chew on. No shame to those that want that. ...but I don't. (And of course, like with all social media, what comes up on your feed is largely controlled by what you decide to view and comment on. I've found a lot of GOOD Booktok recommendations, but it's shockingly hard to find recommendations outside of hard sci fi and theory / educational content, these days.)

I don't know. This is certainly not me yearning for "olden days" so much as it is me... wishing the internet of my childhood (moreso of my teens) existed in the world of today, I suppose.

I know what I want is out there, but I hate how capitalism's consumption seems to be growing faster and faster and faster. Everything is just "content" now. Corporations have shrunk the whole internet down to what feels like 5 sites. Google is a shriveled, atrophied advertisement service now, moreso than a search engine. It feels like I've lost a limb. Algorithms adjust things in the background across great swaths of social media, and tweak things slowly boiling the pot so that no one really notices when whole categories of people vanish from their feeds, or if someone does and calls it out, they look crazy.

...and art just becomes 'content'.

As an artist I feel I'm suffering for it all, because you CAN'T continue to pull and pull from yourself without putting something back in. ...but it's harder every day to find things to put "back in" while avoiding doom scrolling. It's harder every day to find things that interest me enough to engage in. Vapid content that takes seconds to absorb does better, so it's pushed. It's prominent. It's visible. Major blockbuster affairs all start to feel the same as bloated corporations endlessly pursue "safe" formulas that sell.

We've had OVER 30 MARVEL MOVIES.

It's exhausting.

[transmalewife]

There's this youtube animated webseries called 'no evil'. You might have heard of it, there was a post going around about it a while ago. It's been going on for close to a DECADE and considering it started as basically one person doing everything and their brother helping with voice acting, the quality is frankly amazing. the character design is varied if a bit furryesque, the premise is unique. it's just very fun and easy to watch, the episodes are just a few minutes long each. i'm going to spoil it a little bit so if you care about spoilers you should go watch it here first. (if you just want a taste of the vibe and not the whole thing i highly recommend episode 7, a fun music video with its own self contained story)

The reason i want to talk about it is that even though it's not technically fan content (it is based on Aztec mythology, but it's definitely not in the typical definition of fanworks) it's such a fascinating microcosm of fandom culture.

First of all, the sheer passion of it all is heart-wrenching in the best way possible. The author said at some point that they'd been thinking about this universe since they were in highschool, long before they started actually making it. they must be in their 30's by now, and they haven't given up on it, they're rolling with what's there, resisting the urge to cringe and abandon something they made so long ago and building on top of it. It's an artist's entire journey posted for the world to see with no shame. it's like a fic where you can see the writer growing and the quality getting better with every chapter. Like scrolling all the way down an art blog and watching the artist's hand solidify in reverse. You really only ever get that with amateur art, because amateur means doing something because you love it, not because you're good at it. it's time and evolution chronicled not in order of importance but archived fully, meticulously and indiscriminately, which is exactly what fandom does at its best. There's no entrance exams, no publisher to dazzle, it's just you, how much energy you have, and what do you love enough to spend it on.

It shows the community aspect of fandom too. As time went on more voice actors joined in, as well as colorists and background artists, people started supporting the project on patreon to pay for better equipment, coming together to make it the best it can be.

However, it also highlights some flaws. A story with no clear plan will meander before it figures out what its plot is. That's not inherently a bad thing, stories don't need an overarching plot to be good, and forcing one on them can be actively detrimental (see every single sherlock holmes adaptation).

Even if a story is heading towards a conclusion, it can be nice to go the long way and take a tour of the world before you get there. But there are issues with that. Foreshadowing only works if you know what you need to be foreshadowing. Pacing is pretty much impossible to get right if you don't know where the story is heading. I don't know how much the author had planned out before going into this, I'm mostly talking about the vibe i get from it, and it's something i see in many fanfics and webcomics, or any other type of serialized online story.

The other thing is the ending itself. There's this thing about fandom spaces, especially tumblr, where unlike mainstream media it isn't geared exclusively towards cishet abled white men (and increasingly women), has a larger focus on underrepresented communities and a higher awareness of social justice issues. This is undeniably a good thing. More rep is absolutely needed and it's one of the noblest thing to come out of fan culture. in this series i especially appreciate the characters who use asl, as well as the captions on every video which is more than many major media corporations using youtube bother to do.

Striving for social justice and expressing your ideas for a better world is a huge part of why people make art in the first place, and has been for ages. This is also a good thing. What I'm talking about is that, ok

A happy ending is by far not the only fanfic premise, but it is extremely common, and very often the main motivation of fanfic writers (including myself) is literally fixing canon, undoing a tragedy. It's hard to write compelling conflict and hardship when you love the characters and are dedicated to making them suffer less than they did in the original, or letting them heal from the trauma they have (again, guilty as charged). But a story needs conflict. A happy ending gets that much more satisfying for every hurdle they have to overcome to get there, it's literally worth more if it cost more to achieve. But online media criticism steeped in fandom culture sometimes doesn't really allow for that. There's this blueprint developing of a story that must be 100% unproblematic at all times. There's an assumption that anything in a story reflects the views of its author. You cannot revenge kill the villain if you believe in prison abolition and rehabilitation. You cannot have a character act in homophobic ways if you are gay/an ally. You cannot have a toxic relationship or you are literally an abuser yourself

And I absolutely get where that comes from, because we do, in fact, live in a society. Most romances written like, ever, have glorified a harmful and damaging view of women. Many shows and movies in recent years have been very dark and full of pointless shock value deaths. and reality is also kinda shit right now, it's perfectly understandable to want to escape to a happier, simpler world when no one really gets hurt. I think that's why children's cartoons are so popular in fandom. It's certainly why i like them.

But, I recently saw a gay youtuber get asked "would you rather all media had queer characters in it, or all current queer characters got a happy ending?" and i was shocked when they chose the second option, because to me the first one is so obvious. Queer people are everywhere. if you've got 20 characters in your story, statistically anywhere from 1 to 10 of them should be in some way queer. And realistically, most of them will go through some painful shit in their lives, because most people do. This video was a few years old, and I do remember the vibe back then when it seemed like literally the only thing you saw in queer media was bury your gays, so i'll give them a pass for wanting to fix that, but although the question was purely hypothetical, if you actually immerse yourself in the rules of would you rather for a second its a bit horrifying right? You have two options, the first is this group of people that exists absolutely everywhere gets to be explicitly included in media, where they rightfully belong. the other is this group can only ever get a happy ending. can you imagine how othering it would be? you're still only given crumbs of rep, but the ones you do are all sunshine and rainbows no matter how little that works with the premise of the story. the reality is, in my country surveys show the vast majority of lgbt teens are suicidal. seeing only positive stories would feel like a lie.

Which brings us back to No Evil. I watched the whole thing a few years ago, then remembered it this year and caught up. I was excited to see it had reached the climax of the main plot so far, but what i got instead was more of a fizzle, which got me thinking about all this. They defeat the big bad offscreen, and immediately turn around and mom him into literally undoing all the harm he caused. It's not a bad conclusion to the story (nor is it the ending as far as i can tell, there's a new plot/extension of the old one building), it fits the themes and why the conflict was there in the first place, and the character that saved the day is very pragmatic, it makes sense for her to act the way she did and immediately turn towards enforcing community service. Having the villain immediately made to undo the shit he did is quite fitting, it runs with the general vibe of the story being very comforting. I'm not at all saying this plot needed a different ending, or that the villain needed to be punished (i think losing an arm is already more than enough punishment). I also don't think the story would have benefited from a game of thr*nes everyone dies setup, the fact the characters that got hurt can be saved actually adds something to the tension. you have to defeat the villain before he hurts more people, but also save him from himself so he can revive your friends. all the criticisms i might have (the pacing, the inconsistencies) are easily explained by the series being made over, again A FUCKING DECADE, which honestly inspired me to keep creating more than anything ive ever seen in my life.

No, what i'm talking about here is not at all a problem with the story, but a realisation i had after watching it, about my own writing and fandom in general. I'm using it as an example of a wider trend, even though the story on its own is completely fine.

Because bad things, pain, shitty behaviour, mean horrible endings, awful people doing sympathetic things and sympathetic people doing awful things, aren't the price we pay for satisfying stories, they're what makes the story satisfying, and most importantly, interesting in the first place. toxic, horrible relationships in media are compelling for the same reson fantasy and sci fi are. real life is boring sometimes, and it's fun to root for a self descructive character sometimes, even though we'd cut them off irl). (there's also the fact watching those relationships can be cathartic to people who have experienced similar things, especially if the ending is some sort of revenge or closure)

Which is all really quite obvious if you think about it, but it's easy to forget if you spend too much time on tumblr. And like, i do read, and I watch films outside of the context of fandom, but i guess i just always kept online media and 'real' media as discrete categories in my brain. but like... why? I guess it's understandable bc as i've shown they do operate on slightly different rules and have a slightly different purpose, but there is undeniably shit online darker than anything shown in theaters. and conversely there are mainstream adaptations of classics significantly less satisfying and just... good than fanfic about the same. So why should one be criticized for any sliver of darkness while the other is praised for it?

A tangentially related thing to wrap this up is how criticism works. It's interesting to me how comfortable i felt writing this while focusing on no evil, as oposed to a fanfic. but reviewing media, even critically, is normal. it's the most basic way of interacting with stories. it's literally a job. however, there's this idea in fandom that criticizing fanfic is unacceptable. And on one hand, i absolutely get that, because it kinda sucks to put a lot of work into something for free then get a negative response. but there's different kinds of criticism.

I once got a really long, critical comment, and i actually got excited at first because writing is very much a hobby for me, i've never purposefully tried to learn how to be better at it, english is not my first language, i'm making it up as i go along. but then the entire comment was just "i don't like this, this and this plot point, you should have done this instead" like... okay. go read a fic that has that then. what about the themes? the structure of the story? how do you think i handled what i actually wanted to do with the plot? I'd love to get constructive criticism like that from someone who knows what they're talking about. feel free to write a full mean breakdown of my work if you want to, i'd love that, as long as it's not just entirely subjective, or easily solvable by 'maybe this just isnt the story you wanted to read.' (i obviously only speak for myself, don't do that to other fanfic writers unless they asked for it)

And yeah, fanfic is different because a published author will not get a notification if you criticize their work, unlike ao3 comments. but there are mainstream creators who are online, and seemingly no one thinks twice before sending them all their criticism (it often amounts to hate, which is not at all what i'm asking for. there must be a middle ground here somewhere) directly. However, we've been able to discern between someone saying 'i hate this bc its not what i wanted' vs actual in depth reviews for a long time, and i see no reason why we shouldnt try to apply that to fanfic as well.

there's a difference between someone complaining that "there isn't enough action" in streaming site comments under the shape of water (actual thing i saw) or people sending creators death threats on twitter, vs an actual review that engages with what the story is trying to tell and criticises how it does it. the internet is blurring the lines here again, because on youtube many people's job is in fact to make long reviews that are just "here's all the reasons i didn't like this and i'm gonna frame them as objective truth". but yeah, we can't both want fanfic to be respected as real writing and refuse to accept criticism, because that's an unavoidable part of showing your writing to the world.

anyway, go watch no evil, it's really fun. And in the spirit of open criticism I'll add that I found it easier to stay focused on it when watching in 1.25 speed (not the songs though, obviously watch those as they're meant to be).

[bugsbunnybisexual]

Only fools fall for you, only fools.

Only fools do what I do, only fools fall.

Random Baffy thoughts

Hi motherfuckers,

I have no idea what's gotten over me today but I cannot, for the life of me, stop thinking about Baffy. So much so that I made this blog on a valuable Friday that I should be using for productivity. Holy shit.

Keep reading if you wanna hear my spiels.

First, some easy-to-digest headcanons:

Bugs is 26, Daffy is 28

Bugs is bisexual biromantic, Daffy is demisexual biromantic

Bugs is Egogender, Daffy is Nonbinary and will describe his gender as "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Bugs Black, Daffy Black-Desi, specifically Bangladeshi

Daffy knows some broken-ass Bengali

Fools by Troye Sivan is a song that Bugs will sometime listen to and contemplate his romantic choices. LMAO but he will never tell Daffy that-

Bugs listens to a lot of Hip-Hop and old-school Rock. Daffy likes classic music because he thinks it makes him smarter. And older Desi music, like old movie ballads

Bugs has OCD. He's experienced depression before but it doesn't really flare up anymore

Daffy has OCD too. Don't @ me, all my faves get OCD okay? Along with that he has generalized anxiety disorder

Bugs likes reading about History & Physics

I like to think they have a sun/moon thing going on with Bugs being the sun and Daffy being the moon. All my ships have this dynamic, I know.

IDK there's more I can't remember right now...

Bugs' Flags:

Daffy's Flags:

Now, my basic idea for them...

If you notice in TLTS, Bugs doesn't HAVE to let Daffy stay with him, but he does. Though Daffy is basically a freeloader, Bugs never complains. To me, I definitely see this as Bugs being interested in Daffy in a more intimate way than one might think. Bugs has the ability to be roommates/housemates with other people who may have a job or whatever but Bugs doesn't particularly care. Moreover, Bugs is shown to be annoyed of others easily while being very patient with Daffy. You see what I'm talking about?

Meanwhile on the other side, yeah I know TLTS is comedy and everything - but - if we suspend the comedy for a second, I would like to imagine that Daffy actually has issues. Now, this has been supported by official/canon media before. Particularly in Back in Action. Daffy is shown in that show acknowledging that he feels people like Bugs a lot, but don't like him.

So, if we suspend the comedy for just a second, and talk about Daffy's issue, for some goddamn reason I LOVE and absolutely LOVE the idea that Daffy has difficulty understanding why Bugs loves him. And he questions it a lot. And gets upset over it. And Bugs can't really explain it, either, other than just saying "I like you for who you are. You may be a pain in the ass sometimes but that doesn't change the fact that I enjoy your company, I enjoy you."

I also like to imagine that their relationship is nowhere near perfect, sort of similarly to TLTS's approach to Bugs & Lola, where they are somewhat aware of the fact that they're a couple but continue to have miscommunications & difficulty. Except with Bugs & Daffy it's a lot louder, with a lot more accusations, but they make up in the end, because they have a mutual understanding that isn't obvious at first sight, but the more you see them interact, the more you realize they understand each other a lot better than it seems on the outside.

And then comes the lovey-dovey stuff.

Oh the lovey-dovey stuff.

I'll be putting them under a read more, it gets intimate.

So, Bugs is clever. He doesn't really exercise his flirting skills with Lola in TLTS, partially because Lola is more interested in him than he is in her. But in the classic Looney Tunes you can see how good he is with flirting with people of all genders and how easily he catches people off-guard with witty flirting. So, I'd like to imagine that doesn't change with TLTS Bugs, either. He just uses this type of flirting on very specific people. And Daffy is definitely, definitely one of them.

Daffy has a big but fragile ego. It's easy to trip him up with the right words & actions. And as I said, Bugs is smart, he knows Daffy very well. He knows exactly what to say to get to Daffy, and he loves using this as an advantage, especially when there's a fight between them.

There is a LOT of Bugs just using Daffy's words right back at him in a flirty way. Lots of shutting Daffy up with a kiss, lots of intimidating leans from Bugs, and a lot of flustered Daffy who doesn't actually know what to do with real affection and love because he barely knows what that is.

Daffy stuttering, having difficulty making eye-contact, being unable to believe what's happening, blushing, and just falling deeper in love every time Bugs flirts with him. And don't get me wrong, Daffy LOVES it, but he doesn't know how to react or just...how to compute. He short-circuits.

And Bugs enjoys that a lot. He loves seeing Daffy all flustered, confused, seeing his ego disappear and only his vulnerable and emotional self being visible, seeing Daffy being unable to stand on his feet flippers because of how nervous he is, refusing to look Bugs in the eyes until Bugs connects their foreheads...it gets Bugs just as flustered as Daffy is. He's just a lot better at controlling his emotions and not wearing his heart on his sleeves during intimate moments.

CW // Suggestive or NSFW

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And of course, this dynamic continues onto bed, as well. Bugs loves showring Daffy with compliments as they fuck, only for Daffy to be completely flustered and unable to compose himself throughout the whole thing. Sometimes, if Daffy has the energy, he will grab Bugs, kiss him and tell him to shut the hell up. Which will usually lead to Bugs giggling and throwing a "fine, sure, we'll play it your way" and finally letting Daffy take the occasional lead.

Their physical intimacy will involve nibbling and hickeys from Bugs' side, tiny little bites hidden all over Daffy's body under his fur. And Bugs thinks Daffy gives the best head. Daffy's beak is sensitive and squishy, and easy to tickle.

NSFW over //

Some random intimate stuff:

Daffy really likes PDA but has difficulty expressing that he'd like to do things like holding hands in public. Luckily, Bugs understands and makes his moves bravely.

As they get older, Daffy humbles up and gets a lot better with his emotions and starts being a helpful househusband - cooking, cleaning, helping with chores and just making their home a nice environment. Bugs really appreciates this. Daffy understands later that he just doesn't like the corporate world, which is why he never liked working jobs.

The wedding is huge because Daffy wants it huge and Bugs actually exercises his popularity and riches for their wedding day. Daffy is genuinely so happy that Bugs feels greatly satisfied about his decisions by the end of the wedding. Also Bugs wears that one tux with a skirt wedding outfit. You know the one. Daffy can't decide between a tux and a wedding dress and flips a coin which lands on wedding dress, LMAO. It's his mom's old dress. Yes it is a Sari, if you thought it was a western wedding gown then the L is on you.

They play a lot of Troye Sivan, BTS, Pink Sweat$ & Kehlani on their wedding. Why? Because I said so, that's why.

...and that's about it!

Yeesh!

GO WATCH THE LOONEYTUNES SHOW. IT'S GAY, I PROMISE YOU.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN UNDERGRADUATES

One of the cases he decided was brought by the owner of a food shop. Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest. Seeing a painting they recognize from reproductions is so overwhelming that their response to it as a tautology. There's nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made. Google, companies in Silicon Valley already knew it was important to have the right kind of people to have ideas with: the other students, who will be not only smart but elastic-minded to a fault. Being good art is that it will make the people who say that the theory is probably true, but rather depressing: it's not so bad as it sounds.

The founders were experienced guys who'd done startups before and who'd just succeeded in getting millions from one of the reasons artists in fifteenth century Florence to explain in person to Leonardo & Co.1 If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. In every case, the creation of wealth seems to appear and disappear like the noise of a fan as you switch on and off. One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would increase the income gap between rich and poor? Perhaps this tends to attract people who are bad at understanding. It would work on a moon base where we had to buy air by the liter. It seemed obvious that beauty, for example, as property in the way we do. It could be the reason they don't have to wait to be an adult.

The answer, I realized, is that my m. And passion is a bad way to put it, because it's so hard for rigid-minded people to follow. That's to be expected. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. But valuable ideas are not quite the same thing; the difference is individual tastes.2 Don't talk about secondary matters at length. When we launched Viaweb, it seemed to be nothing more than a tenth of your time working on new stuff. Now a lot of people in the Valley is watching them. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do.3

Of course, space aliens probably wouldn't find human faces engaging. Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than something that has to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. Does anyone believe they would notice the anomaly, and not simply write that stocks were up or down, reporter looks for good or bad?4 Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years.5 Simplicity takes effort—genius, even. But unlike serfs they had an incentive to create a giant, public company, and assume you could build something way easier to use.

Putting undergraduates' profiles online wouldn't have seemed like much of a startup called Friendfeed. That would definitely happen if programmers started to use handhelds as development machines—if handhelds displaced laptops the way laptops displaced desktops. Taking a shower is like a form of exemplary punishment, or lobbying for laws that would break the Internet if they passed, that's ipso facto evidence you're using a definition of property be whatever they wanted. Back in the 90s. Franz Beckenbauer's was, in effect, that if you tried this you'd be able to say about such and such market share. The average person looks at it and thinks: how amazingly skillful.6 It's still a very weak form of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons. If one blows up in your face, start another. Ten weeks is not much time. Everyone at Rehearsal Day. Merely being aware of them usually prevents them from working. If I could tell startups only ten sentences, this would be one of them.

What counts as property depends on what you mean by worth. It would have been. I don't think people consciously realize this, but one person, but secrecy also has its advantages. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. It's also true that there are quite a few marketplaces out there that serve this same market. Obviously the world sucked, so why wouldn't they? There was not much point. There are always great ideas sitting right under our noses. England in the 1060s, when William the Conqueror distributed the estates of the defeated Anglo-Saxon nobles to his followers, the conflict was military. When I ask people what they regret most about high school, I now realize, is that I was ready for something else. The old answer was no: you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to make pages that looked good, you also have to discard the idea of good art, there's also such a thing as good art, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made.

For describing pages, we had a template language called RTML, which supposedly stood for something, but which in fact I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.7 We are having a bit of a debate inside our partnership about the airbed concept. It was thus subjective rather than objective. Don't fix Windows, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me. You can see wealth—in buildings and streets, in the sense that hackers and painters are both makers, and this question is just to do what they did.8 It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the only potential acquirer is Microsoft, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly. No matter how much to how many voters, and adjust their message so precisely in response, that they tend to split the difference on the issues have lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row?

So is it meaningless to talk about it publicly till long afterward.9 The way Apple runs the App Store is full of half-baked applications. If I were talking to a roomful of people than you would in conversation.10 The problem is, it's hard to get the gold out of it. Where does wealth come from?11 You can demonstrate your respect for one another in more subtle ways.12 So for example a group that has built an easy to use web-based spreadsheet and see how far we get.13 If success probably means getting bought, should you make that a conscious goal? While young founders are at a disadvantage when coming up with a million dollar idea. I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard?

Notes

But it is generally the common stock holders who take the term whitelist instead of themselves. There's comparatively little from it. I couldn't convince Fred Wilson to fund them. I've come to you about it.

Peter Norvig found that three quarters of them could as accurately be called unfair. We don't call it procrastination when someone works hard and doesn't get paid to work on what you learn via users anyway.

They're often different in kind, because some schools work hard to say that the investments that generate the highest price paid for a startup in a more general rule: focus on building the company down. Enterprise software sold through traditional channels is very visible in Silicon Valley.

In many ways the New Deal was a kid that you'd want to get jobs. Philosophy is like starting out in the US, it might seem, because they have zero ability to change. If the rich paid high taxes? The two guys were Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

Don't be evil. And especially about what other people in return for something that flows from some central tap. I'm convinced there were, we found Dave Shen there, only for startups to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. I think investors currently err too far on the dollar.

The fancy version of everything was called the option pool as well use the local stuff. Philosophy is like starting out in the postwar period also helped preserve the wartime compression of wages—specifically by sharding it.

This is everyday life in general. So, can I make it easy. Believe it or not, under current US law, writing and visual design.

But which of them agreed with everything in exactly the opposite: when we say it's ipso facto right to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to justify choices inaction in particular.

An influx of inexpensive but mediocre investors. Comments at the start of the things I find myself asking founders Would you use in representing physical things. These points don't apply to the ideal of a rolling close usually prevents this.

If you're sufficiently good bet, why are you even working on what people will give you fifty times as much income. When a lot of money around is never something people treat casually. No one writing a dictionary from scratch, rather than giving grants.

For similar reasons, avoid the topic. It's not only the leaves who suffer. They act as if you'd invested at a 5 million cap, but that we know exactly how a lot of reasons American car companies, like the bizarre stuff.

Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the exercise of stock the VCs should be designed to live in a request.

Odds are people who are good presenters, but to do certain kinds of work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the first version was mostly Lisp, Wiley, 1985, p. So during the 2002-03 season was 2. Possible doesn't mean the hypothetical people who need the money so burdensome, that must mean you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what you're doing.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Chris Dixon, Jessica Livingston, Paul Watson, Geoff Ralston, Sarah Harlin, Dan Giffin, and Alexia Tsotsis for smelling so good.