#like they both got the news and patrick snuck around to find out more information so they can save maría from the mess... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nekojitachan · 5 years

Text

okay, so I posted last week (?) about an AFTG fic idea based on an old movie.

this isn’t it - blame/thank this on @sig66, as we began talking about classic movies and this one came up as a possibility for an AFTG fic, and I’ve been working on it and backstories ever since (think I’ll save the other one for either a possible big bang or a ‘proper’ fic).

Anyway, thank @sig66 for this - no idea of when I’ll be updating this, but for now, it’s a tumblr story and I’ll TRY to get it updated inbetween ‘proper’ fic updates (so maybe every other week, possibly sooner?). I’ve a lot of backstory for this, so while the movie is the backbone of the fic, expect it to expand from it (if you’re at all familiar with the film).

As for this first part, it really just sets things up.

Only trigger warnings should be for Neil’s past in Baltimore (and vague at that).

How to Steal a (lot of) Million(s) Part 1/? *******

Nathaniel sat hunched over in one of the waiting room’s plastic chair, desperate to quiet, to be still, to not draw any attention to himself like his mother had taught him. Each time the elderly woman behind the desk looked his way to give him a reassuring smile or someone came into the room he nearly flinched before he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to react, that reacting was bad. The bruises and neatly stitched cuts hidden beneath his black pants and black, green and white plaid sweater reminded him of just how bad it could be to show any negative emotions.

It just… it was so hard when his mother wasn’t there to shield him from the worst of the curious looks, to give his arm a warning squeeze and whisper ‘Abram’ in his ear to remind him when he got out of line. Normally he was with her back with the doctor, was the reason for their visit (‘a fall down the stairs’, ‘a fight with another boy’, ‘an accident in the kitchen’), but for some reason she’d gone there alone.

What had she done to upset his father so much?

He shoved that thought aside as quickly as he could.

Fortunately, it was just another few minutes before she came out through the one door, her face set in a blank expression which made him clamor onto his feet in an instant and stand up straight while some middle-aged man in a white coat continued to talk to her in a hushed voice. She brushed him off as she motioned Nathanial to the door leading out of the doctor’s office, which he scrambled toward without seeming to rush (he’d learned how to do that in the last year or so).

She didn’t speak until they were out in the blue sedan which she hated for some reason. “It’s all right,” she told him once they were on the highway which would take them back to the house. “Your father knows where we were today, I told him it was a regular check-up.” She motioned to her purse while she spoke. “That I needed a new script.”

Nathaniel didn’t quite understand what she meant by the last part but nodded along; what mattered was that he didn’t have to lie about where they were after his mother had picked him up from school. “All right.”

It was quiet for another couple of minutes. “I want you to pack a few of your clothes in a small bag, just some random ones. Not many, only what you’d need for a couple of days. Then put that bag in the back of your closet. Can you do that, Abram?” she asked without looking at him.

Long used to his mother asking things of him without any explanation, Nathaniel nodded. “Yes, Mum.”

“Good boy. Now, let’s review your latest French lesson.” They spent the rest of the drive back to the house going over various verb tenses until he almost felt at peace, until the anxiety was almost gone (but it was never truly gone, not when they always went back to that place, when Father or Lola or Patrick would be waiting for them).

He put her request out of mind once he’d done what she’d asked, aware of the risk he faced if his father caught him (pain until he answered, pain for not giving any good explanations, pain and pain and pain), and life went on as ‘normal’ in his father’s house (pain). All Nathaniel wanted was to get through the day without setting off the man, without being a disappointment somehow, with not having to go into the basement to learn cruel lessons, to take up knives or have the blades turned on him.

The only true thing he knew about life was that it was filled with disappointment and pain.

Then about a week after the doctor’s appointment, his mother woke him in the middle of the night, told him to be quiet and to grab the bag he’d prepared, then snuck him out of the house while everyone else either slept or were gone (inflicting that pain on others). He thought it was some sort of fever dream (aftermath of the latest cuts inflicted upon him earlier that day), especially when they ended up at the local airport with two first class tickets to fly to London that night.

Especially when his mother, thrumming with an energy he’d never seen in her before, dragged him (exhausted from being awake so long and expecting his father to appear any moment) from the airport and into the crowded metropolis to some stone-faced building (one in a row of them) and pounded on the door until a man only a few inches taller than her and maybe a little older with dark blond hair (tousled as if he’d just gotten out of bed despite the lateness of the afternoon) and similar grey eyes opened the door to stare at them as if they were ghosts.

“Mary? Bugger me… Mary?” he gasped out as he slumped against the door as if in shock. “And… Nathaniel?”

“Abram,” she snapped as she dropped the bag in her left hand onto the ground. “I don’t want to hear that name again. Now are you going to let us in? We’re knackered, you daft fool.”

“You… bugger me,” the man repeated as he rubbed at his eyes as if he was tired (or seeing things). “Okay, come on in,” he mumbled as he stepped back.

“That’s your Uncle Stuart,” Nathaniel’s mother informed him as they entered the house. “You can trust him.”

If Mary told him he could… Nathaniel gave the man (currently muttering about needing some damn coffee) a shy look as he pressed against his mother’s side, still not convinced that all of this wasn’t one crazy dream – running away from his father to his mother’s family, to possibly finding a safe haven. Yet the man (his uncle) gave him a kind smile and asked if he wanted some biscuits and tea.

Nathaniel (Abram) knew it was reality when his mother died of advanced ovarian cancer less than a year later.

*******

“Sold for $190,000 to the gentleman in front of me. Thank you very much, sir,” the auctioneer called out in English, though still bearing a thick French accent. “Now up next, ladies and gentlemen, is item number thirty-four per the catalog, and we’re accepting bids from New York, London and Hong Kong both online and via telephone as well as in person. This great Cezanne painting is from the world famous Josten collection, sold by order of the present head of the Josten family, Monsieur Stuart Josten.” He gestured to an elegant figure standing toward the back of the room and next to the wall as if trying to avoid attention, dressed in a simple tuxedo. The man gave a nervous smile and a slight bow while people applauded, and one even shook his hand.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, who will start the bidding on this superb post-impressionist masterpiece at $200,000?” the auctioneer called out as he stood in front of the painting of a woman in a red dress. The bidding commenced and immediately rose to $500,000 while ‘Stuart Josten’ watched on in delight.

*******

Neil tore through Paris in the supped-up MG Midget that Matt had gifted him a couple of years ago, on his way to the latest home he shared with his uncle after hearing the news about Stuart’s recent bout of… of… idiocy. Okay, so maybe the Hatfords weren’t exactly on the up and up….

Okay, so the Hatfords were so fucking far away from the up and up. Did Stuart really have to set a stupid record with the sale of his latest little ‘project’? Really?

Neil nearly rammed the car into the ornate stonework in front of the small, old mansion before he put the car into park and jumped out, then ran up the steps into the house. Davis was there to take his cap and bomber jacket, and to inform him that Stuart was indeed home and upstairs.

“Thanks,” Neil told his uncle’s assistant, well aware that the man didn’t have to rat out his boss like that, and caught the wink sent his way; Davis knew that someone was about to catch an earful right then.

He went up the curved staircase and into the one sitting room, where after making sure that no one was around (old habits died hard), he climbed into the ‘special’ wardrobe; once inside, he slid back the false panels so he could access the secret room behind them.

The spiral staircase in the hidden room led him up to the studio where his uncle worked on his forgeries, a large space filled with artworks in progress and various pieces which inspired them – statues and all sorts of paintings. Once again, Neil was amazed at his uncle’s talent, and a bit chagrined that Stuart focused it on reproducing existing works of art.

“Hello, brat,” Stuart called out to him from where he sat behind an easel, dressed in an old smock over his clothes and paint smeared over his left cheek.

“Hello, Stu,” Neil responded as he came over to give the man who’d raised him ever since he was ten years old a hug.

“Be careful,” Stuart chided with affection even as he gently hugged Neil in return. “I’m covered with paint.”

“When aren’t you? And you’re also covered with money,” Neil shot back. “Allison told me about the auction when I stopped by.”

“Ah yes, the Cezanne.” Stuart grinned with pride as he leaned back. “I could have sold a dozen of them at that auction! But one was enough.”

“One is more than enough!” Neil gritted out as he tried not to grow angry with the man. “I thought we talked about this! It’s getting too risky these-“

“Ah, ah, not now, I’m busy,” Stuart told him as he shooed Neil out of the way of his laptop screen, where he had a close-up of the Van Gogh painting he was currently reproducing. “How nice of him to only use his first name like that, makes it so much easier.”

“Not again!” Neil felt the urge to grab something and throw it, but refused to give in to his temper like that because… because of reasons. “It’s too soon!”

Stuart gave him a patronizing look as he began to wipe clean his brushes. “Don’t worry, this one won’t be sold for a long, long time. We’ll hang it up, let people look at it and appreciate it, and who knows, maybe some legendary, asshole tycoon will be able to persuade me to part with it if the price is right.”

Despite himself, Neil had to smile as he helped Stuart with the brushes. “You’re such a scoundrel.”

“Thank you, you little brat.” Stuart smiled back and swiped a (clean, thankfully) brush along the tip of Neil’s nose. Then he blanched as Neil nearly tipped over the plate containing specks of dirt. “Be careful! That’s my Van Gogh dirt,” he explained as he hurried to pick it up and place it in the one cupboard where he kept his more precious supplies, like the pigments he used in his forgeries. “That’s the dirt from his neighborhood, it took some effort to collect it. What I don’t go through to make these things as authentic as possible,” he complained as he stored it away. “Doubt Van Gogh did as much.”

“He didn’t have to, he was Van Gogh,” Neil snarked as he plopped down in a spare chair. “Sort of the point of it, no?”

“Yeah, kiddo, but in his lifetime, he only sold one painting, and I’ve already sold two as him,” Stuart shot back.

Neil felt a headache coming on and wished that he’d stopped to put on a pot of tea first. “You do know that selling someone else’s painting’s a crime, right? And they have all this lovely technology now to figure out that your stuff is a fake?”

Stuart scoffed as he continued to clean the brushes. “But I only sell the stuff to rich people, and they’re too stuck-up to admit that they might have been fooled into buying fakes. Know your audience, brat, rule number one.” He threw an old rag at Neil, who rolled his eyes at the familiar saying. “And don’t throw any stones, after half the shit you’ve pulled.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, and I-“ Neil frowned at the sound of sirens outside of the house, which only grew louder as if they were approaching the place. He got up from the chair to go look out the nearest window, and blanched when he saw several police cars pull into the house’s driveway. “Fuck, the police are here!”

“What?” Stuart rushed over to his side so he could look out as well, then let out a harsh breath. “Don’t scare me like that, kiddo, it’s just the director of the Kleber-Lafayette Museum, here about the Cellini Venus.”

“Eh?” For a moment, those words didn’t make any sense – why wasn’t Stuart worried? Since when didn’t the Hatfords have anything to fear from the police showing up in force (sure, some were paid off, mostly in the UK, but…)? Then he remembered about the damn statue and groaned. “That thing? What about it?”

“The Cellini Venus is to be the outstanding feature of a great loan exhibition – the masterpieces of French Collection,” Stuart informed him with pride as he scrubbed his hands free of paint.

Screw tea, Neil was willing to start drinking alcohol right about now. “Not in public,” Neil all but wailed as he thought about the damn forgery, a piece of ‘pride’ in the family. “It’s not really French,” he hissed. “We’re not French!”

“They don’t know that,” Stuart told him with a wry grin as he pulled on a dress coat as if to make himself presentable. “Come now, we can’t leave them waiting.”

“Not in public,” Neil repeated as he hurried after his uncle and caught him in time to wipe away the smudge of paint on his left cheek, certain that Davis would stall the people downstairs; he was grateful that he’d stopped by Allison’s earlier and let her (well, couldn’t stop her, really) dress him in something ‘acceptable’. He straightened the collar of his Maison Kitsune shirt and made sure it was tucked into the Amiri jeans his friend wouldn’t let him leave until he put on.

Sometimes he thought that his family’s enforcers could learn a thing or two about intimidation from the woman.

“I’ll be down in a minute, Monsieur Aldritch,” Stuart called out while he motioned to Neil to make sure that the wardrobe was properly closed up, still busy fussing with his own outfit as he did his best to look like ‘Stuart Josten’, eccentric art collector and not Stuart Hatford, member of one of Europe’s most infamous crime families.

“No hurry, Monsieur Josten,” some man called back in return as Neil and his uncle made their way down the stairs; Neil did his best to remain calm in the face of so many armed officers being inside his home while Stuart gave them a friendly smile; it helped that Davis stood off to the side, doing a perfect impression of an unremarkable butler and not someone who could kill them all in under a minute.

Aldritch and Stuart exchanged greetings while Neil did his best not to glare figurative daggers at the back of his uncle’s head over him being so foolish as to loan out a fake which had been a family ‘heirloom’ and joke for years. Somehow he summoned a smile when he was introduced to the museum’s director, and had to bite his tongue when the man thanked his uncle for keeping such a priceless treasure in France like a ‘true’ Frenchman (if he only knew the truth).

Personally, Neil didn’t see what the fuss was about the damn statue, which looked just like any other Venus statue in his mind, though supposedly his grandfather had done a remarkable job with the forgery (and was the reason why Stuart preferred that particular crime to the rest of the ‘family business’). It had passed various inspections in the past… but Neil lived in fear of technology catching up to his uncle one day, and including the Cellini Venus in a big art exhibit just might be what attracted the wrong attention.

He attempted to ‘help’ Aldritch and the man’s assistants load the marble statue into its padded travel case, but Stuart knew him a little too well and pulled him away before he could use the statue’s heavy marble base to ‘accidentally’ break the ‘precious’ artwork and so prevent it from being used in the collection. “Behave, brat,” Stuart whispered in Spanish as the case was locked and carefully picked up.

“This is a mistake,” Neil warned, but it was too late at that point to do anything to stop it as the statue was being carried away.

Once they were gone and Davis offered to put on some tea, Neil gave in to the urge to glare at his uncle. “What the hell have you done?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Stuart gestured to the empty alcove where the statue had rested until a couple of minutes ago. “I did a bloke a solid, I did. They needed something special for that collection they’re putting together, and now your grandfather’s-“

“A fake, you gave them a fake piece of art,” Neil reminded the fool as he ran his hands through his hair, which Allison had done her best to tame earlier. “A piece of marble, which they can use all these nice little bits of machines to scan and run tests on it.”

Stuart scoffed as he undid the buttons to his black dinner jacket and sat down in an antique chair. “They won’t do that to something I loaned out and risk damaging it, which is why I agreed to add it to the collection. Do you know how many offers I’ve had for the damn thing? Even one recently,” he confessed with a slightly pained look, “but I never accept because I won’t risk it.”

“Yet you’re fine with thousands of people gawking at the thing,” Neil mumbled as he sank down on a velvet-covered duvet and took to rubbing his temples in an effort to stave off a headache.

“Hundreds of thousands,” Stuart corrected him, and laughed when Neil groaned. “Don’t you see that I’m proud of it, kiddo? Your grandfather spent months on that thing while your gram posed for him. It’s not just some old piece of marble a barely known Italian banged out, but a family heirloom.”

A family heirloom that was going to get Stuart locked up, and possibly Neil as an accessory (well, more than that when he had to break his uncle out of prison).

Somehow, he had a feeling that he’d be rounding up the gang soon to help them out of a huge mess.

He should have gone off with Henry and Jamie to help them with their ‘little Russian problem’, dammit, no matter how much he hated vodka.

*******

Thanks for like the five people who read this. As stated, updates are whenever. Next part should have Andrew and Kevin and more of the Foxes (lots of backstories there).

193 notes · View notes

kenzie-kitty · 5 years

Text

Crazy Couple -MasqueradexJoker

So, this is another one of my older stories. It’s actually coming up on being three years old.

A short description of Masquerade, my OC: She’s average height, maybe about 5′8. Her natural hair is black, but she dyes it dark purple, and it’s cut to be kind of an asymmetrical bob with wavy bangs covering her left eye. Her eyes are icy blue.

To be fair, I’ve changed her characteristics up many times since writing this story. Typically, I now make her a vampire (original, i know, but i like vampires), and she also is a little more badass/tough/sassy. From what I’ve reread of this story, she’s human and I’m not sure what I did besides make her a lot like a weird version of myself from three years ago.

Anyway, I’ll let you guys read for yourselves if you’d like. :)

Oh, and I don’t know when, but it’ll get real NSFW at some point just fyi

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was raining in Gotham as it always was as a figure dressed all in black climbed up the side of a building. The figure, wearing a black masquerade mask that covered the top half of her face, stopped at a window and pulled a switchblade from her pocket. She slid the blade between the window and the window sill, wriggled it from side to side gently until the lock on the window was pushed over. Pushing up the window, she climbed through quietly and walked around the small apartment.

On her way through the small space, she picked up items here and there and placed them inside the black duffel bag that hung at her hip, and was clipped onto her belt with large clasps. She glanced around the main room before walking silently down the hallway and opening the first door to the right; inside was what she could see was a spare bedroom, so she grabbed only a couple of small decorations before moving on. The room at the end of the hall was the main bedroom, and she could see through the crack of the doorway that it was occupied with only one middle-aged man sleeping loudly on the bed.

She entered the room and snuck around to the dresser that was across from the bed, quietly grabbing a small assortment of jewelry that was in a small chest on top. She moved over to the opposite side of the room, watching the man carefully as she walked, and grabbed the watch and billfold from the nightstand before turning to walk back out the door. After taking three steps, the floorboards below her feet squeaked loudly and she froze in place. The man’s snoring stopping and he shifted onto his back, the covers falling down enough that the figure could see he was in only a pair of pajama pants and had failed to shave his chest… ever.

She exhaled slowly and continued walking, only to freeze again when she stepped on yet another squeaky floorboard. This time, however, the man grunted and turned his head to look toward the sound. The figure lunged at him, covering his mouth before he could make any sounds to try to alert anyone to his situation; he thrashed under her, but she somehow held him down. His squirms stopped abruptly when she produced her switchblade from her sleeve and held the blade against his neck.

“Now, now, doll. Don’t make a sound,” she warned in a threatening murmur. “We wouldn’t want to wake the neighbors, now would we?” He closed his eyes in fear and shook his head “No” as best he could with her knife still pressed into his flesh.

“Good. Now, I don’t trust you not to go yelling if I were to let you free, unfortunately. So, I’m not gonna letchya go free,” she taunted with an eerie grin and slowly sliced open his neck, giggling as his blood spurted from the wound and covered her hands. She waited until the life was just leaving his eyes before she carved her mark into him; carefully, she carved a spider web around his left eye.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Commissioner Gordon sighed wearily at the files stacked on his desk and especially at the one he had open in front of him; Arkham patient 4479 a.k.a. “The Joker”. He had received the call late the night before that the clown terrorist had escaped from the asylum, leaving two dead security officers and a barely-alive nurse in his wake. Gordon had immediately come into the station and had been attempting to piece together enough information to have some idea as to where Joker would go, but so far, even after four hours of work, he hadn’t had any ideas.

He was about to push the folder aside and begin going through the other files when a young officer opened his office door. “Commissioner, we had a robbery gone wrong. Otisburg, it’s a lawyer, sir.”

Gordon nodded and quickly grabbed his coat, following the officer out the door.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He arrived on scene to see a bodybag being wheeled into an ambulance and a small team of officers already searching around the building to find any clues. Gordon found the officer who arrived first standing with the person who had called it into the station.

“Officer Dougherty,” Gordon started, walking up to the burly officer.

“Commissioner Gordon, sir,” Dougherty nodded, “I wasn’t expecting you to be so early.”

Gordon nodded back. “I came as quickly as possible. Tell me what we’ve got so far.”

“Yes, sir. The vic is Patrick McMurphy, he’s a very well know lawyer around here for both his cases and his political standpoints. There are signs of missing valuables. We have reason to believe McMurphy awoke and caught the burglar, so they killed him. And brutally, might I add.”

“How so?” Gordon asked, writing the information down in a notebook.

Dougherty sighed and rubbed the back of his neck wearily. “His throat was slit and there was a spider web carved into his face.”

Gordon paused and looked up at the officer with a serious concern. “A spider web?”

“Uh, yeah, sir.”

Gordon spun on his heel and stopped the ambulance from leaving. He jumped into the back and unzipped the body bag enough to show McMuphy’s face; around the right eye was a spider web, and Gordon swore aloud at the sight. He climbed out and returned to the officers and witness who had remained where they were, watching him. “It’s Masquerade again. I shouldn’t be surprised, she’s been causing a lot of trouble lately. Any leads on her?”

“No, sir. Not yet, at least,” Dougherty informed him.

Gordon shook his head and walked away, heading to the elevator to see the crime scene. The small apartment was filled with investigative officers and a couple of detectives. Gordon greeted them with a short grunt before continuing on into the bedroom; the bed was covered in blood at the top and the forensic investigator was snapping pictures of the entire scene.

“She’s getting more proficient with her cuts,” the forensics man said, peering at the bloodied bed through round glasses. “Her first few were more frantic and seemed to be out of panic. This one… It seems as though she had planned this one somehow.”

“Really? What reason would she have for killing a defense lawyer?” Gordon wondered aloud.

The forensics man shrugged. “No clue, Commish.”

“Thanks anyway, Ed,” Gordon said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mask laid down starfish style on her bed in her apartment, with her legs tangled in the galaxy printed sheets. She adjusted the mask on her face a she closed her eyes and listened to the news on the TV she had mounted on the wall across from the bed; they were doing a story on the escape of the Joker the night before and warning citizens to be careful and call in any information they had. Mask chuckled to herself. ‘They really think anyone who knows anything about the Joker will be alive enough to call in? They’re so ignorant,’ she thought, ridiculing the newscasters and police.

They finished the report on the Joker and went on to the murder of Patrick McMurphy and Mask opened her eyes as she sat up, automatically interested in what they would say.

“Just last night, famed lawyer and political activist Patrick McMurphy was killed in his home. Police have informed us that the main suspect is the up-and-coming burglar and murderer Masquerade. Masquerade has proven herself to be very dangerous, having now killed twelve innocent people here in Gotham. Police are searching for her as we speak, but currently have no leads as to where or who she is. Please, be careful and lock you doors and windows at night; do not leave any entrances open after dark…”

Mask giggled at the warning. ‘They think a lock is gonna stop me? Wow, some people have no faith at all,’ she thought, grinning. She laid back on her bed and stared at the ceiling, forming a plan for her night. ‘I should do something big that’ll cause more fear. Maybe a gun or a few. Hmm, bombs are a definite; gotta step up my game.’

She flipped herself off the bed and walked into her kitchen, suddenly feeling hungry, and made a grilled cheese sandwich. “Bombs and guns, where to find ‘em… Ah! I know!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was little light at the warehouses by the docks, and Mask felt lucky to have adapted so well to working in the dark. She swung herself up onto the roof of one of the buildings and slid down through a small hatch in the roof; she landed on a large stack of boxes silently and jumped down to the ground as gently as she could. Sliding her crowbar out of her bag, she began opening the boxes, slinging the straps of machine guns across her chest and stuffing ammunition in her bag along with a few smaller boxes of hand grenades.

It was just as she was opening her third box that the door to the warehouse was opened and a pair of footsteps could be heard. She started climbing up the boxes quietly, but froze when a gun was cocked below her.

“Well, well, what have we here?” A nasally voice taunted. Mask turned to look and gasped when she saw the purple- and green-clad figure of the Joker standing below her next to a clown-masked goon who was aiming the gun at her. She let herself fall to the ground in front of them, landing perfectly on her feet, and put her hands in the air to either side of her head.

“I-I didn’t know this was your warehouse, uh, Mr. Joker,” Mask said, hoping to diffuse the situation (though she was doubtful of that happening).

The clown pushed the barrel of his goon’s gun down and stepped closer to her. “Didn’t you? See, I’m thinking you’re from some, uh, rival. And I’m not about to let some kid steal from me!” He shouted grabbing her upper arm harshly.

Mask struggled against his grip. “Don’t call me ‘kid’. And I swear, I’m not some rival! I’m just a thief!”

He stopped and stared at her. “You were in the news, weren’t you?”

“Y-yeah. I was.”

“Masquerade?”

Mask nodded slowly, staring bravely into his dark brown eyes. He tilted his head before continuing to drag her along with him out of the warehouse and into the parking lot where a rusty grey van was sitting. Mask was shoved into the passenger side, the goon climbed into the back and Joker sat himself behind the wheel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Continue in part 2

Thank you for reading, Please remember that this was written three years ago when I was about 16. I’ve improved, I promise.

#joker fanfiction #joker x oc #original character #the dark knight imagine #the dark knight #tdk #tdk imagine #joker imagine #fanfiction

11 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

Text

WHAT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE YOU WEREN'T MEANT TO LOSE TIME AND BAD IDEAS

The founders will run engineering directly, and the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot. In these situations, the deal terms tend to be random: the angel asks his lawyer to create a silicon valley, is a large, existing population of stodgy people. And there is nothing the rich like more than convenience. It spread from Fortran into Algol and thence to both their descendants. It wasn't because they weren't accredited investors that I didn't want them to lose it. There may be more to that old man hobbling along on his crutches than meets the eye. They work on something everyone else has overlooked. It looks as if server-based software, especially when you have ideas, you'll find that the Back button. If there is enough demand for something, technology will make it big. You don't release code late at night and then go home.

The rich spend their time more like everyone else too. Now I feel as if someone snuck a television onto my desk. Now everyone knows that this is so. And dealing with payments kept most people away from this idea, Stripe has had comparatively smooth sailing in other areas that are sometimes painful, like user acquisition. It is a case of the mistaken meeting the outdated. Would that mean sitting on too many boards? If you're hoping to hit the next Google is, they're probably being told right now by VCs to come back to me to fill out the round. I think at least some users who really need what they're making—not just less restrictive than angel terms have traditionally been. There's no dividing line with machine languages on one side and all the previous shareholders' percentage ownership is diluted by a sixth. The startup will now do that themselves. But how had I come to believe in this idea in the first place?

If it fails, that is. If Lenin walked around the offices of a company like Yahoo or Intel or Cisco, he'd think communism had won. Programmers may spend a long day up to their elbows in source code, but at the end of month four, our group of friends start with $15,000 from their parents to start a new fad—a new way of delivering software appeared. Can anything break this cycle? I now have some data on disk, you have a thesis about what everyone else in it is overlooking. The software business learned that in the era of physical media. I'm a little embarrassed to say, you should program in a high-level, we wouldn't need a separate word.

But I've proposed to several VC firms that have been doing badly will only get the deals the bigger fish have rejected, causing them to continue to do badly. You also have to assume we can't value them, since that's practically the same thing. The other way to get information out of them, and after that you don't have to persecute nerds, the very best ideas. Fortunately if this does happen it will take years. In addition to catching bugs, they were the keepers of the knowledge of vaguer, buglike things, like features that confused users. We never had enough bugs at any one time. Stocks will generate greater returns over thirty years, but the ratio of new customers every month, you're in closer touch with your users.

Will people create wealth if they can't get paid for it. My current development machine is a MacBook Air, which I can just incorporate in the essay. Silicon Valley CEOs. The puffed-up companies that went public during the Bubble didn't do it just because they were pulled into it by unscrupulous investment bankers. It's a lot like being a postdoc: you have no more than commitment. It's not just the classes that make a man look as if he's wearing a beret made of his own hair. Maybe there was some kind of turf to protect, and this tends to warp their development decisions. It's even better when you're both a programmer and the target user, because then the cycle of generating new versions and testing them on users can happen inside one head. The worst variant of this behavior is the tranched deal, where the operating system. But that's still a problem for VCs. In addition to catching bugs, they were the Rebel Alliance. Nowadays a lot of time trying to learn how to program.

What's more, it wouldn't have been better for him. Conversely, a town that could exert enough pull over the right people. Nearly all the returns are concentrated in a few cities. The worst variant of this behavior is the tranched deal, where the Industrial Revolution that wealth creation definitively replaced corruption as the best way to find out would be to let that opportunity slip. And yet if I had to add a new application to my list of known time sinks: Firefox. In theory there could be other ways to attract them, but more than full-time job. So the question of whether you're too late is subsumed by the question of how to make something it can deliver to a large market, and ideas of that type are good startup ideas, I'd encourage you to focus on bad ones. It seemed the essence of what scholars did. Obviously, the median language, meaning whatever language the median programmer uses, moves as slow as an iceberg. This will at least encourage a habit of paying attention to things that seem obvious in retrospect.

Gradualness is very powerful. This started to change in Europe with the rise of Web-based applications it turns out to explain nearly all the characteristics of VCs that founders hate. Not always, but usually there's a bigger offer coming, or perhaps even an IPO. Some of Viaweb even consisted of the absence of programs, since one of the biggest IPOs of the decade? But from what I've heard the founders didn't just give in and take whoever the VCs wanted. Whatever language people happen to be the band that makes money by playing at individual weddings and bar mitzvahs. When the company goes public, the SEC will carefully study all prior issuances of stock by the company and fired one of the two angels in the initial round took months to pay us, and only did after repeated nagging from our lawyer, who was on the Algol committee, got conditionals into Algol, whence they spread to most other languages.

Solution: we hired more, but created new projects for them. The large size of their investments makes them conservative. I should add that vesting is also a way for readers to get information out of them was to ask what you wish someone would make for you? I didn't want them to lose it. The archaeological work being mostly done, it implied that those studying the classics were, if not better, at least unconsciously, feel they ought to be writing about literature, turns out to be a bit frightening—that's starting to sound like a company where the technical side, at least. With purely Web-based software never ships. Any company that hires you is, economically, acting as a proxy for the customer. Since angels generally don't take board seats, so they don't understand software. A terms usually give the investors a veto over various kinds of disasters.

Thanks to all the founders who responded to my email, Fred Wilson, Daniel Gackle, Zak Stone, Harj Taggar, Sarah Harlin, Patrick Collison, Geoff Ralston, and Emmett Shear for the lulz.

0 notes